Gǔ qīngliáng zhuàn 古清涼傳
The Old Records of the Cool Mountain (i.e., Mount Wǔtái)
written by 慧祥 (Huìxiáng / Lángǔ shāmén 藍谷, fl. early Yǒnglóng 永隆 era 680, 撰)
About the work
A 2-juan early-Tang gazetteer of Mount Wǔ-tái 五臺山 (the “Cool Mountain” 清涼山, the great northern Buddhist sacred-mountain in modern Shānxī, identified as the dwelling-place of Mañjuśrī), composed by the Táng monk 慧祥 Huì-xiáng 慧祥 (號 Lán-gǔ 藍谷, “the Lán Valley”) in the Yǒng-lóng 永隆 era of Táng Gāo-zōng 高宗 (680–681), per the standard scholarly assignment. The dating bracket is 680 – 683. Transmitted in Taishō 51 as T2098.
Abstract
The work is the first surviving gazetteer of Mount Wǔ-tái — the foundational document of the Wǔ-tái shān Buddhist tradition in its specifically Mañjuśrī-veneration form. Huì-xiáng’s preface frames the mountain as “the purple-mansion famed mountain of the seven-Buddha-master in his zhēn 真 (true) abode, the Cool sacred ground of the ten-thousand bodhisattvas in their hidden traces” — fixing the canonical theological identification of Wǔ-tái as the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī’s earthly residence, in accordance with the Avataṃsaka / Huā-yán 華嚴 sūtra identification.
The work surveys:
- The five terraces (五臺) and their associated peaks;
- The Big-Fú-tú-sì 大孚圖寺 (= Xiǎntōngsì 顯通寺) and the principal early-Tang monastic establishments;
- The canonical Mañjuśrī-apparition sites — the various caves and rock-formations associated with named Mañjuśrī apparitions on the mountain;
- The stūpa-and-relic sites;
- The medicinal flora of the mountain — including the recently-discovered (per Huìxiáng’s account) species transmitted from a “voice-in-the-air” by the monk Pǔmíng 普明, “absent from the Shénnóng běncǎo jīng and from the [Liáng-period Táo Hóngjǐng 陶弘景] Yǐnjū biélù” — a witness to the mountain’s identity as a medicinal as well as religious sacred site.
The work is the foundational text of the genre subsequently extended by KR6r0134 Guǎng qīngliáng zhuàn (1060) of 延一 Yányī 延一 and KR6r0135 Xù qīngliáng zhuàn (early 12th c.) of 張商英 Zhāng Shāngyīng 張商英. The GǔGuǎngXù qīngliáng trilogy is the principal classical-canonical Buddhist documentary corpus on Mount Wǔtái.
Translations and research
- Étienne Lamotte, “Mañjuśrī,” T’oung Pao 48 (1960): 1–96 — the classic study of the Mañjuśrī cult, including the Wǔ-tái identification.
- Raoul Birnbaum, Studies on the Mysteries of Mañjuśrī (Boulder: Society for the Study of Chinese Religions, 1983) — the principal Western-language treatment of the Wǔ-tái Mañjuśrī cult.
- 杜斗成, 《五台山佛教史》 — the principal modern Chinese-language survey.
- Robert M. Gimello, “Chang Shang-Ying on Wu-t’ai Shan,” in Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü, eds., Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) — closely related to the Xù qīng-liáng zhuàn but provides scholarly background.
Other points of interest
The work was composed in the period of the early Tang’s most active state-Buddhist patronage of Mount Wǔtái (under Gāozōng and Wǔ Zétiān, who would in 691 declare the mountain a major imperial-Buddhist site). Huìxiáng’s gazetteer is the documentary foundation on which subsequent imperial patronage was built.
Links
- CBETA: T51n2098