Xù qīngliáng zhuàn 續清涼傳
The Continued Records of the Cool Mountain (i.e., Mount Wǔ-tái)
written by 張商英 (Zhāng Shāngyīng / Wújǐn jūshì 無盡居士, 1043–1121, 述)
About the work
A 2-juan Northern-Sòng autobiographical-pilgrimage / Mañjuśrī-vision narrative by Zhāng Shāng-yīng 張商英 (字 Tiān-jué 天覺, 號 Wú-jǐn jū-shì 無盡居士, 1043–1121), the Northern-Sòng grand-secretary, lay Buddhist scholar, and grand councillor briefly under Huī-zōng 徽宗 (1110–1111). The work narrates Zhāng’s pilgrimages to Mount Wǔ-tái 五臺山 — the canonical residence of Mañjuśrī — and the personal Mañjuśrī-apparition experiences he recorded there. The work was composed during Zhāng’s senior provincial-official career, after his Wǔ-tái pilgrimages of the Yuán-yòu 元祐 era (ca. 1086–1093). The dating bracket is 1088 – 1093. Transmitted in Taishō 51 as T2100.
The work is the third volume of the canonical GǔGuǎngXù qīngliáng trilogy of Wǔtái gazetteers — completing the documentary corpus begun by KR6r0133 Gǔ qīngliáng zhuàn (Huìxiáng, ca. 680) and KR6r0134 Guǎng qīngliáng zhuàn (Yányī, 1056–1063).
Abstract
The work is autobiographical in form rather than gazetteer-style: Zhāng Shāng-yīng narrates his own pilgrimages to the mountain, the documented Mañjuśrī apparitions he experienced, and the visionary-doctrinal materials revealed to him. The work’s anchoring vision is set on the mountain’s Yún-zhōng-sì 雲中寺 (“Among-the-Clouds Monastery”), where Zhāng records that the canonical Mañjuśrī apparition appeared to him in the form of an old peasant tending a field; the narrative includes the famous detail of the gold-coloured world (金色界) into which Zhāng was momentarily transported, with its inhabitants described as Mañjuśrī’s bodhisattva-retinue.
The narrative interleaves:
- First-person pilgrimage account — Zhāng’s stages of approach, the monasteries he visited, the monks he conferred with;
- Documented Mañjuśrī apparitions — both Zhāng’s own visions and those of monks and laity he met on the mountain;
- Doctrinal-philosophical reflection — Zhāng was a major Sòng-period Buddhist apologist (his 《護法論》 Hùfǎ lùn KR6r0147 is the principal Sòng Buddhist counter-attack on the Hán Yù / Ōuyáng Xiū Confucian critique of Buddhism), and the Xù qīngliáng zhuàn threads his pilgrimage-experience together with sustained doctrinal-philosophical commentary.
The work is therefore a hybrid — part gazetteer, part autobiographical-pilgrimage memoir, part doctrinal apology. It is unique in the canonical Wǔtái documentary tradition for its first-person autobiographical voice.
Translations and research
- 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), 89–149 — the principal English-language study, with extensive translation of the Xù qīng-liáng zhuàn.
- Raoul Birnbaum, Studies on the Mysteries of Mañjuśrī (Boulder, 1983).
- Patricia Ebrey, Emperor Huizong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2014) — biographical context on Zhāng Shāng-yīng.
- 杜斗成, 《五台山佛教史》 — Chinese-language survey.
Other points of interest
The Qīng-period (光緒甲申 = 1884) Jiǎng Qīngyì 蔣清翊 critical-reprint colophon, preserved in the Taishō recension, notes that the late-imperial recensions of the Xù qīngliáng zhuàn had been substantially corrupted by interpolation (particularly with Wáng Bó’s 王勃 (650–676) Shìjiā fó fù 釋迦佛賦 and Chéngdào jì 成道記, which are not by Zhāng). Jiǎng’s edition restores the work to its 5-chapter Yuán-period form and is the basis of the modern critical text.
Links
- CBETA: T51n2100