Liùdào jí 六道集
Anthology of the Six Realms [of Rebirth]
compiled by 弘贊 (Hóngzàn / Zàishēn 在犙, 1612–1686, 輯)
About the work
A 5-juan early-Qīng anthology of karmic-rebirth tales arranged by the six realms of rebirth (liù-dào 六道 — gods 天, humans 人, asuras 阿修羅, animals 畜生, hungry-ghosts 餓鬼, hell-beings 地獄), compiled by the Cáo-dòng vinaya-master Zài-shēn Hóng-zàn 在犙弘贊 (1612–1686) at his residence on Dǐng-hú-shān 鼎湖山 in Guǎngdōng. The work serves as the moral-pedagogical anchor of Hóng-zàn’s three-fold devotional anthological project (the other two being the 《兜率龜鏡集》 KR6r0165 and the 《觀音慈林集》 KR6r0166): where those two works gather positive devotional models for Maitreya- and Avalokiteśvara-devotion, the present work supplies the karmic-cosmological backdrop within which devotion must be understood — a comprehensive demonstration, through historical exempla, of the karmic dynamics governing rebirth across the six realms. Transmitted in the Xù-zàng-jīng as X1645.
Prefaces
The preface (“Liùdào jí xù”) opens with the comparative observation: “As the world deteriorates, those who establish [moral] teaching exhaust themselves more each day. The command of Shùn to Yǔ said: ‘The human heart is precarious’; and Mèngzǐ said: ‘That by which a human being differs from a bird or beast is slight.’ The sages and worthies, when admonishing one another, made their words concise and comprehensive; when speaking to common people, they made their words detailed and immediate. The Buddha’s exposition of the Six Realms, in pursuing the variations of the One Mind to their limit and pressing the causes of the dark and the bright to their extreme, may indeed be described as ‘weeping and shedding tears with grief.’ Yet later persons still regard it indifferently. My countryman, the héshàng Zàishēn, has accordingly compiled this Anthology of the Six Realms, drawing on ancient and modern materials — household tales known to every house and known to every door — for those not yet enlightened, since for them this is unavoidable.”
The preface argues for the cognitive immediacy of the Six Realms as moral framework: “Within a single day, within the time-span of a single thought, [the human being] does not know how many [moments] he is a god, how many a human being, how many an animal, how many a hungry-ghost.”
Abstract
The work is organised by realm in five juan:
- Juan 1 — Gods (tiāndào): tales of beings reborn in the heavenly realms.
- Juan 2 — Humans (réndào): tales of distinguished and meritorious human rebirths, particularly cases of moral or devotional virtue rewarded with auspicious human lifetimes.
- Juan 3 — Asuras and Animals (xiūluó and chùshēng): tales of beings reborn as asuras (the realm of contention) and as animals — many of the latter are tales of named historical persons reborn as identifiable animals as karmic retribution for specific moral failures.
- Juan 4 — Hungry-ghosts (èguǐ): tales of beings reborn as pretas.
- Juan 5 — Hell-beings (dìyù): tales of beings reborn in the various Buddhist hells, with detailed cosmological notes drawn from canonical sources.
Within each realm, the tales are arranged broadly chronologically, drawing on:
- Indian Buddhist jātaka and avadāna literature.
- The Chinese-Buddhist miracle-tale anthological tradition (the Míngxiáng jì, Míngbào jì, Fǎyuàn zhūlín).
- The standard gāosēng zhuàn tradition.
- Contemporary cases drawn from late-Míng / early-Qīng informants.
The total number of tales is approximately two hundred. The work’s distinctive contribution is its comprehensive realm-by-realm structure: where most prior gǎnyìng anthologies are organised by virtue or by source, the Liùdào jí uses the Six-Realm cosmological framework as its principal organising rubric, producing what is in effect a karmic-rebirth encyclopedia with the realm structure as its taxonomic backbone.
The work is the most thorough late-imperial Chinese-Buddhist treatment of the Six Realms in narrative-anthological form, and was a significant resource for both monastic preaching and lay moral instruction in the Cáodòng monastic seminaries of Lǐngnán (Guǎngdōng / Guǎngxī) and beyond.
The dating bracket — 1640 to 1686 — accords with the dating of Hóngzàn’s other major anthological projects.
Translations and research
- 釋長慈, 《在犙弘贊禪師研究》, MA thesis, 國立中央大學, 2007 — covers the Liù-dào jí as part of Hóng-zàn’s larger anthological corpus.
- 廖肇亨, 〈在犙弘贊與清初嶺南佛教〉, Zhōng-yāng Yán-jiù-yuàn Wén-zhé suǒ tōng-xùn 14.2 (2004): 1–28 — Lǐng-nán Buddhist context.
- Stephen Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1994) — broader context for Chinese Buddhist hell-rebirth literature.
- Stephen Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988) — context for hungry-ghost rebirth literature.
- No dedicated monographic study of the Liù-dào jí has been located.
Links
- CBETA: X88n1645