聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

佛祖心燈

5 min read

Text ID
KR6r0172
Date
1600–1900
Dynasty
明

Fózǔ xīndēng 佛祖心燈

The Mind-Lamp of the Buddhas and Patriarchs

(anonymous compilation, late-imperial transmission)

About the work

A 1-juan late-imperial Chán-lineage primer, of unknown authorship and uncertain date, gathering in compact form the transmission gāthā (傳法偈) of the principal Chán patriarchal lineage — from the Seven Buddhas of the Past (qī-fó 七佛, beginning with Vipaśyin 毗婆尸佛 of the Past Adornment Aeon) through the twenty-eight Indian patriarchs of standard Chán tradition (Mahākāśyapa, Ānanda, Śāṇavāsa, Upagupta, Dhṛtaka, etc., culminating in Bodhidharma) and the six Chinese patriarchs (Bodhidharma → Huì-kě → Sēng-càn → Dào-xìn → Hóng-rěn → Huì-néng) — followed by a systematic genealogical chart of the Five Houses of Chán (五宗次序譜) descending from the Sixth Patriarch through Nán-yuè / Mǎ-zǔ / Bǎi-zhàng / Wéi-shān down to the Fǎ-yǎn-school. The work is anonymous: the catalog meta lists no author, no dynasty, and no source-document of compilation, indicating that it is a late-imperial Buddhist publishing-tradition compilation, of the type produced in the late-Míng / Qīng monastic-publishing ecosystem for use as a study-aid or wall-chart in Chán seminaries. Transmitted in the Xù-zàng-jīng as X1666.

Prefaces

The work has no preface; it opens directly with the qī-fó jì 七佛偈 (“transmission gāthās of the Seven Buddhas”), beginning: “Vipaśyin Buddha (the 998th of the Past Adornment Aeon): ‘The body is born from the formless / Like an illusory appearing of the various forms / The illusory person’s discriminating mind is from the beginning empty / Sin and merit are both empty, with nothing on which to rest.‘”

Abstract

The work is structured as a tightly-organised lineage-primer in three parts:

  1. The Seven Past Buddhas’ gāthās: the standard sequence — Vipaśyin (毗婆尸), Śikhin (尸棄), Viśvabhū (毗舍婆), Krakucchanda (拘留孫), Kanakamuni (拘那含牟尼), Kāśyapa (迦葉), Śākyamuni (釋迦牟尼) — each with its chuán-fǎ transmission gāthā in standard four-line five-character form.

  2. The twenty-eight Indian patriarchs and the six Chinese patriarchs, each numbered (1st through 33rd, with the 28th = Bodhidharma transitioning to Chinese transmission as the 29th = First Chinese Patriarch in the standard Chán enumeration) and supplied with the chuánfǎ gāthā. The Chinese entries are: Bodhidharma (29 = 1st Chinese), Huìkě 慧可 (30 = 2nd), Sēngcàn 僧璨 (31 = 3rd), Dàoxìn 道信 (32 = 4th), Hóngrěn 弘忍 (33 = 5th), Huìnéng 慧能 (34 = 6th).

  3. The Fózǔ yuánliú jué 佛祖源流訣 (Mnemonic of the Patriarchal Origin and Course): a single gé 偈 / mnemonic giving the names of all twenty-eight Indian patriarchs in compressed two-character abbreviations, suitable for memorisation: “Jiāwén Jiāyè Ānán Shāng / Yōubō Jūduō yǔ Tíduō / Míjiā Póxū Fótuófú / Xié Fù Mǎmíng Jiāpímō / Lóngshù Jiānà yú Luóhóu / Sēngjiā Jiāyē Jiūmóluó / Shéyè Póxiū Móná Hè / Shīzǐ Póshè Bùrú Bān / Dámó chuán yú Dōngtǔ hòu / Huì Sēng Dào Hóng Huì zhī tā.”

  4. The Wǔzōng cìxù pǔ 五宗次序譜 (“Genealogical Chart of the Five Houses in Order”): a stripped-down patriarchal chart from the Sixth Patriarch through the Wǔjiā 五家 (Wéiyǎng, Línjì, Cáodòng, Yúnmén, Fǎyǎn) — listing each generation by the master’s standard short-form name (e.g., Nányuè Ràng 南嶽讓, Mǎzǔ Yī 馬祖一, Bǎizhàng Hǎi 百丈海, Wéishān Yòu 溈山祐, Yǎngshān Jì 仰山寂, etc.).

The work is one of the most compact and pedagogically-focused Chán-lineage primers in the late-imperial Buddhist tradition, designed as a study-and-memorisation aid rather than a comprehensive dēnglù (lamp-record) compilation. It supplies the canonical short-form lineage-list that any late-imperial Chán seminarian was expected to commit to memory, and was likely produced as an inexpensive printed wall-chart or pamphlet for monastery-school use.

The dating bracket — 1600 to 1900 — reflects the work’s uncertain compilation date. The lineage-content is doctrinally SòngYuán in form (the Wǔjiā genealogy is fixed by the Sòng-period dēnglù tradition); the transmission and inclusion in the Xùzàngjīng suggests a late-Míng or Qīng compilation, but earlier dating cannot be ruled out, since the materials are derivative throughout from the standard Jǐngdé chuándēng lù (1004) and Wǔdēng huìyuán (1252) tradition.

Translations and research

  • John McRae, Seeing Through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2003) — the standard Western-language critical study of Chán-lineage genealogical literature, including primer-level compilations like the present.
  • T. Griffith Foulk, “The Ch’an Tsung in Medieval China: School, Lineage, or What?” Pacific World, n.s. 8 (1992): 18–31.
  • 椎名宏雄, 《宋元版禅籍の研究》(Tōkyō: Daitō shuppansha, 1993) — Sòng-Yuán Chán-lineage publishing tradition.
  • No dedicated study of the Fó-zǔ xīn-dēng has been located. The work’s status as an anonymous derivative compilation has limited modern scholarly attention.

Graph View