Dàoxuān lǜshī gǎntōng lù 道宣律師感通錄
The Vinaya-master Dào-xuān’s Record of Sympathetic Resonance
written by 道宣 (Dàoxuān, 596–667, 撰)
About the work
A 1-juan personal testimonial of visionary encounters with celestial beings (gǎntiān 感天) experienced by the great Tang vinaya master Dàoxuān 道宣 (596–667) during his late-life retirement at Jìngyèsì 淨業寺 on the southern Zhōngnán mountain. Composed in Líndé 麟德 1 = 664 CE, the same year as the larger compilation KR6r0152 Jí Shénzhōu sānbǎo gǎntōng lù — together the two works form Dàoxuān’s terminal dual-volume gǎntōng project, the larger work cataloguing the miraculous geography of Buddhist China and the present work supplying the author’s first-person revelatory authority. Transmitted in Taishō 52 as T2107.
Prefaces
The work has no separate preface; the opening section, Xuān lǜshī gǎntiān shìzhuàn 宣律師感天侍傳 (“Account of the Vinaya-master Xuān’s [Visionary] Attendant from Heaven”), opens directly with the author’s recollection: “I once saw the Sōushén lù 搜神錄 of the Jìn Tàicháng Yú Bǎo 干寶 …” — invoking the standard Chinese zhìguài tradition as a precedent — before proceeding to the narrative itself.
Abstract
The work narrates a series of revelatory visits by celestial beings (tiānrén 天人) — chiefly Wáng Pán 王璠 (or Fán 璠), described as a former Lántáijièshǐ 蘭臺解史 (“librarian of the Censorate”) at the court of Wú under Sūn Quán — and other deities to Dàoxuān during his final years on the Zhōngnán mountain. The deities address detailed points of monastic discipline (vinaya) where Dàoxuān’s earlier exegesis is alleged to have erred — specifically, the classification of jūnjià royal robes, qūshù fur-mats, and báiyī white-laic garments under the regulations governing the division of a deceased monk’s property between heavy and light disposal (qīngzhòngwù fēn 輕重物分). The deities give corrective rulings, citing the deeper intentions of the Buddha and the geographical-climatic adaptations of vinaya in cold regions.
The work is the locus classicus for the hagiographic tradition that Dàoxuān received the vinaya directly from heaven, bypassing the textual transmission of the Indian and earlier Chinese vinaya literature — a tradition that became central to the Nánshānlǜ 南山律 school’s self-presentation and that supplied the doctrinal warrant for Dàoxuān’s late-life revisions to his earlier monastic-property and ritual-procedure rulings. The work also contains:
- Sub-revelations about the history and geography of Buddhist sacred sites in China, supplementing KR6r0152 with materials Dàoxuān received only in vision.
- Predictions of future events in the Buddhist saṅgha, attributed to the visiting deities.
- Identifications of celestial-court personnel: Dàoxuān’s heavenly informant Wáng Pán is identified as a Wú-period censor, indicating the post-Han imagined geography of Chinese deities serving in the celestial bureaucracy.
The work was decisive in establishing Wéituó 韋馱 (= Skanda / Vighnāntaka, the divine protector of the vinaya) as a major figure of Chinese Buddhist devotion: subsequent biographical tradition merged the unnamed “celestial protector” of the present text with the Indian Skanda, and by the Sòng period the cult of Wéituó as the Buddhist dharma-protector had become standard in Chinese monastic iconography. (The Sòng gāosēng zhuàn 宋高僧傳 j. 14 Dàoxuān zhuàn, T2061, gives this expanded form.)
The work was disputed in the Tang itself: Dàoshì 道世 in the KR6s0002 Fǎyuàn zhūlín j. 73 reproduces it but with a measure of editorial caution; the vinaya tradition outside the Nánshānlǜ school was more sceptical.
Translations and research
- Koichi Shinohara, “The Kaṣāya Robe of the Past Buddha Kāśyapa in the Miraculous Instruction Given to the Vinaya Master Daoxuan (596–667),” Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 13 (2000): 299–367 — the principal modern study of the work in any Western language.
- Koichi Shinohara, “Daoxuan’s Collection of Miracle Stories about ‘Supernatural Monks’ (Shenseng gantonglu),” Chinese Buddhism: Past, Present and Future, Proceedings of the International Conference held at Foguang University (Yílán: Foguang Univ., 2009).
- Tan Zhihui, “Daoxuan’s Vision of Jetavana: Imagining a Utopian Monastery in Early Tang,” PhD diss., Univ. of Arizona, 2002 — discusses the present work in conjunction with Dào-xuān’s Jetavana-tú visualisation literature.
- 諸戸立雄, 《中國佛教制度史の研究》(Tōkyō: Hirakawa shuppansha, 1990) — Tang vinaya and Dào-xuān’s late-life revisions.
- Stevenson, “Visions of Mañjuśrī on Mt. Wutai,” in D. Lopez, ed., Religions of China in Practice (Princeton, 1996): 203–222 — comparable visionary-revelatory genre.
Other points of interest
The work and its companion KR6r0152 together established the literary genre of gǎntōng / gǎnyìng, which would dominate Buddhist devotional literature in China through the late imperial period. Subsequent independent gǎntōng anthologies — for instance the 《金剛經感應傳》 KR6r0177 and 《地藏菩薩像靈驗記》 KR6r0182 and the late-imperial Pure-Land yìngyàn anthologies — all derive their literary conventions from Dàoxuān’s two 664-CE compositions.
Links
- CBETA: T52n2107