Shìshì méngqiú 釋氏蒙求
A Primer for the Buddhist Novice (lit. The Buddhist [Counterpart of] the Méngqiú)
written by 靈操 (Língcāo, late Tang, 撰)
About the work
A 2-juan late-Tang Buddhist novice-primer, modelled formally on the great secular Tang catechism 《蒙求》 Méng-qiú by Lǐ Hàn 李翰 (fl. ca. 746) — itself a 4-character-couplet enumeration of pairs of historical exemplars used to teach literate-Confucian children the basic facts and lessons of pre-Tang history. The author Líng-cāo 靈操, a jiǎng-xué shā-mén of Hú-zhōu 湖州, has applied the same prosodic-pedagogical scheme to the eminent monks of the Gāo-sēng zhuàn tradition: each line gives two paired exemplars in 4-character couplets (e.g. 「摩騰入漢 僧會來吳」 “Kāśyapa-Mātaṅga came to the Hàn — Sēng-huì came to Wú”), which the student is to memorise and which are then explicated in the prose commentary that follows. Transmitted in the Xù-zàng-jīng as X1623; the work was transmitted to Japan in the early 9th century and survives chiefly through Japanese manuscript copies.
Prefaces
The Shì-shì méng-qiú biāo-tí 釋氏蒙求標題 (the table of paired exempla) opens both juan; the colophonic afterword by Líng-cāo states: “The teaching has flourished in the East from the Latter Hàn down to the present, nearly two thousand years. Of those who have hidden their traces in the forests and wilds, even the Gāo-sēng zhuàn has not been able to record them all in their breadth — how much more so for the Buddha’s western transformation among the lands of India, from the Deer Park to the śāla-grove. The praises and aids of the worthies and sages — these matters are vast and many. They can [only] be known [in part]. Now from the Gāo-sēng zhuàn of the Eastern lands I have made a summary selection of the matters of numinous extraordinariness, and composed them into a méng-qiú. My intention is to encourage and guide the youth and the Confucian youngsters to come, that they may continue in the footsteps of the worthies and sages.” The closing colophon names the editor as the Japanese Dà-sēng-dū Yì-kōng 大僧都釋義空 — fixing the work’s lower dating bracket.
Abstract
The work assembles several hundred pairs of monastic biographical exempla, drawn principally from Huìjiǎo’s 慧皎 Liáng Gāosēng zhuàn (T2059) and Dàoxuān’s 道宣 Xù gāosēng zhuàn (T2060), together with a smaller selection from Tang sources including the Sònggāosēng zhuàn materials’ antecedents and the early-Tang miracle-tale corpus. Each couplet pairs two monks whose deeds illustrate a common theme — paired thaumaturges, paired exegetes, paired ascetics, paired translators, paired contemplatives — and the prose commentary supplies the supporting biographical narrative. A representative sample of the couplets:
- 摩騰入漢 僧會來吳 (“Kāśyapa-Mātaṅga came to the Hàn — Kāng Sēng-huì came to Wú”) — the foundational missionary pair.
- 法喜畫馬 保志畫烏 (“Fǎxǐ painted a horse — Bǎozhì painted a crow”) — paired thaumaturges.
- 法聰入定 慧寬坐禪 (“Fǎcōng entered samādhi — Huìkuān sat in dhyāna”) — paired contemplatives.
- 僧祐集萬 法建誦千 (“Sēngyòu collected ten thousand — Fǎjiàn recited a thousand”) — paired bibliographic and recitational virtuosi.
The work is structured into two juan with internal sub-divisions corresponding broadly to a chronological progression from the HànWèi mission through the Northern-and-Southern dynasties to the early Tang. The commentary is terse, anecdotal, and morally pointed: each pair presents a memorable image which the prose then pins to a specific monk, dynasty, and story.
The work is the earliest surviving Buddhist novice-primer in the méngqiú tradition and the earliest sustained adaptation of secular Tang pedagogical genres to monastic education. It anticipates the long line of later Buddhist primers — most notably the SòngYuán 《禪林類聚》 Chánlín lèijù and the late-imperial 《緇門警訓》 Zīmén jǐngxùn — which would adapt the same encyclopedic-pedagogical format to Chán-lineage and disciplinary instruction. In Japan the Shìshì méngqiú was an influential text in the early-Heian Buddhist seminary, and supplies the model for several later Japanese Buddhist primers in méngqiú form (most famously Genkei’s 玄惠 Kōsoméngqiú 高僧蒙求 of the 14th century).
The work was lost in the Chinese tradition during the SòngYuán period and survives only because of its Japanese transmission: the present Xùzàngjīng text is recovered from a Japanese manuscript, with the Japanese editor Yìkōng’s 義空 colophon preserved.
Translations and research
- 牧田諦亮, 〈釋氏蒙求の伝来と日本における受容〉, in Bukkyō kankei chūsei nihon bunken no kenkyū (Kyōto: Hōzō-kan, 1989) — the principal Japanese-language study of the work’s textual history and transmission.
- 河野貴美子, 〈日本古代における釋氏蒙求の受容〉, Wakan hikaku bungaku 26 (2001): 41–60 — Heian-period reception.
- Charles Lachman, “Why Did the Patriarch Cross the River? The Rushleaf Bodhidharma Reconsidered,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 6.2 (1993): 237–268 — uses the Shì-shì méng-qiú among other sources for the Bodhidharma legend.
- 梶谷亮治, 《釋氏蒙求の研究》(unpublished thesis materials, 駒澤大學) — recent textual-philological work.
Other points of interest
The work’s transmission via the Japanese monk Yìkōng 義空 (= Yìkū) — who travelled to Japan in 841 at the invitation of Empress Dowager Tachibana no Kachiko 橘嘉智子 to inaugurate the first Chán transmission to Japan, and who resided at Tan-rin-ji 檀林寺 in Kyōto — fixes the present text as one of the earliest Chinese Buddhist works to enter the Heian Buddhist library. Its survival is a paradigmatic case of the Japan-as-recovery-archive for lost Tang Buddhist literature.
Links
- CBETA: X87n1623