Lúshān jì 廬山記
Records of Mount Lú
written by 陳舜俞 (Chén Shùnyú / Báiniú jūshì 白牛居士, ?–1075, 撰)
About the work
A 5-juan Northern-Sòng Buddhist mountain-gazetteer of Mount Lú 廬山 (in Jiāngxī, near Jiǔjiāng) — the great monastic-cultural site associated with the Eastern-Jìn master Huìyuǎn 慧遠 (334–416) and the foundation of the Chinese Pure-Land tradition. The work is by Chén Shùnyú 陳舜俞 (字 Lìngjǔ 令舉, 號 Báiniú jūshì 白牛居士, ?–1075) — a Sòng official who passed the jìnshì in Qìnglì 6 (1046) and the special zhìkē 制科 first place in Jiāyòu 4 (1059); served as Dūguānyuánwàiláng 都官員外郎. The work was composed during Chén’s exile to Lúshān after his disagreement with Wáng Ānshí 王安石’s Xīníng 熙寧 reforms; the author’s preface refers to “twenty years” between his initial mountain reading and his composition of the work, which would place composition in Xīníng 4–8 (1071–1075).
Transmitted in Taishō 51 as T2095. The text was lost in metropolitan circulation in the late imperial period; the principal recovered witness is a Sòng-print copy discovered by Luó Zhènyù 羅振玉 in Tokyo at the Tokutomi Soho 德富氏 Sēikìdō wénkù 成簣堂文庫 in Xuāntǒng yuánnián 1909. Luó’s colophon (dated Xuāntǒng 9 / 1, = 1917) notes that the Sòng-print recension preserves materials missing from the Genroku-printing recension that had been the principal modern circulation copy.
Abstract
The work is a comprehensive Buddhist-cultural gazetteer of Mount Lú, structured in 5 juan covering:
- Juan 1: The mountain’s overall geography, the principal peaks, valleys, and waters; the foundational legends of the mountain (the Mound 廬 from which the mountain takes its name; the early Buddhist establishments).
- Juan 2: Each principal monastery of the mountain in turn, with detailed treatment of the Dōnglínsì 東林寺 (founded by Huìyuǎn 384) and Xīlínsì 西林寺.
- Juan 3: Continuing monastery and site treatments, including the Báiliánshè 白蓮社 (the foundational Pure-Land community, ca. 402) and its associated cave-sites.
- Juan 4: Inscriptions, stele-texts, and dedicatory writings — Chén systematically transcribes the principal Tang and Sòng epigraphical materials of the mountain, many of which are otherwise lost.
- Juan 5: Miscellaneous notices, anecdotal materials, and the editorial-historical essays of the author.
The work is the principal Sòng-period documentary witness to Mount Lú’s monastic establishment and a source of considerable importance for the early history of Chinese Pure-Land Buddhism (the Huìyuǎn / Báiliánshè tradition).
Translations and research
- Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden: Brill, 1959; rev. ed. 2007) — uses the Lú-shān jì extensively for its account of Huì-yuǎn and the early Pure-Land tradition.
- Daniel B. Stevenson and others on the early Pure-Land tradition.
- 賴永海 and others on the Sòng cultural-historical reception of Mount Lú.
- The Luó Zhèn-yù-edited Sòng-print critical edition, available in modern reprints.
Other points of interest
The story of the work’s recovery — through Luó Zhènyù’s chance encounter with a Sòng-print copy in a private Japanese library in 1909 — is one of the most celebrated cases of early-20th-century Chinese-Japanese textual rediscovery. Luó’s recovery of the Sòng print restored substantial materials lost in the late-imperial Chinese transmission and re-established the work as one of the most important sources for Mount Lú’s Buddhist history.