伯亭大師傳記總帙

Bótíng dàshī chuánjì zǒngzhì 伯亭大師傳記總帙

Total Folio of Biographical Records of the Great Master Bó-tíng

posthumously compiled by the disciples of 續法 (Xùfǎ / Bótíng Guàndǐng 伯亭灌頂, 1641–1728)

About the work

A 1-juan posthumous biographical compilation gathering the principal autobiographical, biographical, and memorial documents relating to the great Qīng-period Huáyán-school patriarch Bótíng Guàndǐng Xùfǎ 伯亭灌頂續法 (1641–1728). Compiled by his disciples after his death in Yōngzhèng 6 = 1728, the work serves the standard function of the Chinese-Buddhist zǒngzhì genre — a comprehensive paratextual envelope around a deceased patriarch’s life, gathering autobiographical chronologies, eulogistic prose, tomb inscriptions, and memorial poetry. The catalog meta does not attribute the compilation to any single named compiler, indicating that it was assembled by the patriarch’s monastic-lineage circle. Transmitted in the Xùzàngjīng as X1656.

Prefaces

The first document, identified as No. 1656-1, is the 《慈雲伯亭大師古希紀》 Cíyún Bótíng dàshī gǔxī jì (“Record of the Seventieth Birthday of the Great Master Bótíng of Cíyún”) — the patriarch’s autobiographical chronology composed in Kāngxī 庚辰 = 1700 (his 60th zhēngsuì / huājiǎ year) at his retirement retreat at the northern Lónggāng, with a post-1700 supplement added at age 70 (= 1710). The document opens: “In the summer of gēngchén [= 1700], I took quiet repose at the north of Lónggāng, among the springs and stones; the mountains and rivers were verdant and luxuriant, the pines and bamboo cast deep shade, light clouds passed in the distance, and a few birds came slowly. Suddenly it was as if I had forgotten my life, and did not know there was a human world. The Chóngshòu Sānrú approached, made his obeisance, and asked: ‘Wénshì has come from beyond the years; the master’s circumstances of leaving the household life and learning the Way — pray reveal them from beginning to end. Would not posterity benefit from hearing them?‘” The autobiographical narrative then proceeds in niánpǔ (chronological-biography) format from his birth in 1641 to the time of writing.

Abstract

The work assembles the principal documents of Xùfǎ’s biographical record:

1. The patriarch’s autobiographical chronology (古希紀) covering his life from 1641 to 1710 — the principal first-person source for his life.

2. A tomb inscription 《浙江天竺山灌頂伯亭大師塔誌銘》 by his disciple Xú Zìzhū 徐自洙 of Sìshuǐ 泗水, dated to the period after the patriarch’s death in 雍正 6.4.1 = 17 May 1728. This document supplies:

   • The death-narrative (the patriarch announced his impending death the day before, composed a death-gāthā declaring rebirth in the Pure Land, bathed, sat in lotus posture facing west, and died at noon; his body retained its colour for six days, with strange perfume filling the room, and tens of thousands came to view the body, calling him a “living Buddha”).
   • The full Huáyán-lineage genealogy from Fǎshùn (Dìxīn) down to Xùfǎ — naming all 29 lineal patriarchs and supplying the specific transmission history.
   • The narrative of the patriarch’s institutional career — abbacies, restorations of monastic foundations, and imperial relations (including the five visits of Kāngxī to Shàngtiānzhú between 1699 and 1707, with imperial gifts of carved-stele inscriptions, calligraphy of the Heart Sūtra, the Bǎotǎ Yàoshī jīng, eulogies on the Diamond Sūtra, etc.).
   • The catalog of his major works (over 600 juǎn of doctrinal commentary).

3. Funerary prose (eulogies, lament-poems, and dedicatory pieces) by various disciples and lay devotees.

4. Selected lay-and-disciple memorial pieces preserving the patriarch’s reputation in the post-1728 Hángzhōu Buddhist community.

The work is the principal source for the biography of Bótíng Xùfǎ and an important document of the Qīng-period Huáyán-school’s institutional history — a tradition that, by the late 17th and early 18th centuries, had become the dominant scholastic Buddhist lineage in Lower-Yangzi monastic-academic circles, displacing the contested late-Míng / early-Qīng Línjì controversies that had dominated the previous generation.

The dating bracket — 1728 to 1740 — accommodates the post-mortem compilation date (the work cannot have been completed before 1728) and a plausible upper bound for the assembly of the memorial corpus.

Translations and research

• 釋果鏡, 〈伯亭續法之研究〉, Zhōng-huá Fó-xué yán-jiù 9 (2005): 287–322 — the principal modern monographic study of Xù-fǎ’s life and works, drawing extensively on the Zǒng-zhì.
• 廖肇亨, 〈清初華嚴宗の復興と伯亭續法〉, in 《明末清初の禪と華嚴》(Kyōto: Hōzō-kan, 2008).
• Pingyi Chu, “Imperial Tours of the South: Religion, the State, and Cultural Politics in Late Imperial China,” in K. Hammond and R. Stapleton, eds., The Human Tradition in Modern China (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) — context of the Kāng-xī imperial visits to Shàng-tiān-zhú.
• 楊維中, 《中國華嚴宗通史》(Nánjīng: Phoenix, 2008) — institutional history of the late-imperial Huáyán school, with substantial coverage of Xù-fǎ.

Other points of interest

The work documents the late-imperial Huáyán-school’s distinctive institutional self-positioning — neither aligned with the LínjìYángqí lineage controversies nor with the Cáodòng vinaya-revival, but maintaining a doctrinal-scholastic identity anchored in the Tang-period Fǎshùn → Zōngmì lineage and re-energised by Xùfǎ’s massive commentarial output. The imperial-monastic relationship documented here (the five Kāngxī visits) is one of the most extensive single-monastic-figure imperial-patronage records of the early Qīng.

Links

• CBETA: X88n1656