Jí Shénzhōu sānbǎo gǎntōng lù 集神州三寶感通錄
Records of Sympathetic Resonance of the Three Jewels in the Divine Land [of China], Collected
written by 道宣 (Dàoxuān, 596–667, 撰)
About the work
A 3-juan compendium of Buddhist miracle tales (gǎntōng 感通, “sympathetic resonance” — i.e., supernatural phenomena occasioned by piety toward, or hostility against, the Three Jewels) compiled in Líndé 麟德 1 = 664 CE by the great Tang vinaya master and Buddhist historiographer Dàoxuān 道宣 (596–667). The work is the first systematic geographical-historical inventory of the miraculous Buddhist heritage of China itself (as opposed to of the Indian subcontinent and the Western Regions), arranged by the type of marvel, then chronologically and geographically. Transmitted in Taishō 52 as T2106, with three sub-records in three juan: stūpa-relics (shèlì biǎotǎ 舍利表塔), icon-images (língxiàng chuíjiàng 靈像垂降), and sacred monasteries / scriptures / divine monks (shèngsì ruìjīng shénsēng 聖寺瑞經神僧).
Prefaces
Dàoxuān’s auto-preface, dated Líndé 1 (664), opens: “The benefits manifested by the Three Jewels — these have come down a long way. Yet because faith and slander vied with one another, there came to be the connections of sympathetic response (gǎnyìng zhī yuán 感應之緣). From the Hàn down to the Táng, more than six hundred years, the numinous traces have echoed forth, and the various records can be sought. The divine transformations have no fixed direction; awaiting the occasion, they sound forth. The radiant signs come and go, opening faith for one moment; the august images yield their visages, leaving traces for ten-thousand generations.” He explains that he has gathered the essentials into a three-juan work, with the three classes of marvel laid out as the work’s structure.
Abstract
The work is the principal Tang-period inventory of the Buddhist sacred geography of China, organised under three rubrics:
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Juan 1 — Stūpa-relics (二十緣 / 20 entries): the famous Aśokan stūpas miraculously revealed in China — the Kuài-jī Mào-tǎ 會稽鄮塔 (Western Jìn 281), the Jīn-líng Cháng-gàn-tǎ 金陵長干塔 (Eastern Jìn), the Qí-zhōu Qí-shān Nán-tǎ 岐州岐山南塔 (Northern Zhōu, the Fǎ-mén-sì 法門寺 finger-bone-relic stūpa whose 1987 archaeological recovery would re-establish Dào-xuān’s record as historically accurate), the Zhèng-zhōu Qǐ-huà-sì-tǎ 鄭州起化寺塔 (Suí), and so on through some twenty Aśokan stūpas reportedly buried throughout China and recovered by visions, omens, or excavation in the post-Hàn centuries.
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Juan 2 — Icons and images (五十緣 / 50 entries): miraculously-arrived statues of the Buddha — including the famous golden image of Kāng Sēnghuì’s 康僧會 mission to Wú, the Yángzhōu Chángshāsì 揚州長沙寺 image, the Yútián 于闐 sandalwood image — together with self-restoring statues, weeping statues, statues that perspired before disasters, and icon-related visionary phenomena.
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Juan 3 — Sacred monasteries, miraculous scriptures, divine monks: miraculous monastery foundations (omens at the founding, divine architects); miraculously appearing or disappearing scriptural copies; and biographies of monks accompanied by extraordinary events (levitation, prediction of the future, posthumous apparitions).
Dàoxuān draws on a wide range of earlier sources — the 《冥祥記》 Míngxiáng jì of Wáng Yǎn 王琰, the 《集神州塔寺三寶感通錄》 in earlier short-form versions, regional gazetteers, monastic chronicles, and his own contemporary informants. The work was the principal model for the entire later genre of Chinese Buddhist gǎntōng literature, including Dàoshì’s KR6s0002 Fǎyuàn zhūlín miracle compilations (much of whose materials are drawn from this work) and the later SòngYuánMíng gǎnyìng anthologies.
The work is also the principal source for the Tang Buddhist conception of Aśokan stūpas in China: Dào-xuān, writing under the influence of the Aśokāvadāna tradition transmitted by his contemporary Xuán-zàng, lists which Chinese stūpas are to be identified with the legendary 84,000 stūpas erected by Aśoka — a doctrinal-geographical move with major consequences for Tang and post-Tang Buddhist self-understanding of China as a peer civilisation to India in the universal cakravartin dispensation.
A companion work, 《道宣律師感通錄》 KR6r0153 Dàoxuān lǜshī gǎntōng lù (T2107, also Líndé 1), records the author’s own visionary experiences during the same year — together the two works form Dàoxuān’s late-life dual-volume gǎntōng project.
Translations and research
- Koichi Shinohara, “Two Sources of Chinese Buddhist Biographies: Stūpa Inscriptions and Miracle Stories,” in P. Granoff and K. Shinohara, eds., Monks and Magicians: Religious Biographies in Asia (Oakville: Mosaic, 1988): 119–228 — uses the Jí Shén-zhōu extensively to reconstruct Tang miracle-story compositional practice.
- Koichi Shinohara, “The Story of the Buddha’s Begging Bowl: Imagining a Biography and Sacred Places,” in P. Granoff and K. Shinohara, eds., Pilgrims, Patrons, and Place: Localizing Sanctity in Asian Religions (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003): 68–107.
- 牧田諦亮, 《六朝古逸觀世音應驗記の研究》(Kyōto: Heiraku-ji shoten, 1970) — uses Dào-xuān’s records to reconstruct earlier gǎn-yìng tradition.
- 林韻柔, 〈唐代《集神州三寶感通錄》研究〉, MA thesis, Guólì Tái-wān Dà-xué, 2002.
- Robert Sharf, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 2002), discusses Dào-xuān’s gǎn-tōng methodology.
- Kieschnick, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (Princeton, 2003), draws extensively on the work for relic and icon culture.
Other points of interest
The 1987 archaeological discovery of the Fǎménsì 法門寺 finger-bone relic stūpa crypt, with its undisturbed Tang imperial deposits, dramatically vindicated Dàoxuān’s record (juan 1, Qízhōu Qíshān Nántǎ entry) as a historically reliable witness to Tang relic-cultic practice — the work is therefore not only a hagiographic compilation but also an archaeologically-corroborated historical source for the Tang state’s relic veneration.
Links
- CBETA: T52n2106