Jīngāngjīng xīnyì lù 金剛經新異錄
Records of the New Wonders of the Diamond Sūtra (titled in full 皇明金剛新異錄 HuángMíng Jīngāng xīnyì lù)
compiled by 王起隆 (Wáng Qǐlóng / Zhǐān 止庵 / Zàishēng jūshì 載生居士, late Míng – early Qīng, 輯著)
About the work
A 1-juan late-Míng / early-Qīng anthology of specifically Míng-period Diamond Sūtra miracle-tales, compiled by the lay-Buddhist scholar Wáng Qǐlóng 王起隆 (hào Zhǐān 止庵, Zàishēng jūshì 載生居士) of Xiùshuǐ 秀水 (Jiāxīng, Zhèjiāng). The work’s full title — 皇明金剛新異錄 HuángMíng Jīngāng xīnyì lù — emphasises its chronological supplementation of the prior tradition: where the Tang and Sòng compilations had assembled the pre-Míng repertoire of Diamond Sūtra miracles, the present work catalogues the new (xīnyì 新異) miracles that had emerged during the Imperial Míng (HuángMíng 皇明) period. The compiler’s preface explicitly cites Duàn Chéngshì’s Tang-period KR6r0175 Jiūyì and the Sòng Tàipíng guǎngjì materials as his predecessors, and frames his own collection as their continuation into the Míng. Transmitted in the Xùzàngjīng as X1633.
Prefaces
The compiler’s preface (Huáng-Míng Jīn-gāng xīn-yì lù xù) opens with a doctrinal-poetic exposition of the Diamond Sūtra’s position within the Mahāprajñāpāramitā corpus and emphasises the work’s purpose: “The Diamond Prajñā Sūtra takes the cutting-off of doubt and the breaking of attachment as its principal aim. Within the great section of 577 juan [of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā], it is named the ‘capable-of-cutting-off’ chapter. Now of the four [classes] of birth and the twelve [types] of beings, what is exhausted is the bodily form; what is not exhausted is the wheel of saṃsāra. Without cutting off doubt and breaking attachment, [we] are born without resolution and die without rest. Yet without entering this sūtra in faith, doubt is not cut off and attachment is not broken… The Tang [scholar] Duàn the Tài-cháng [made] the Jiū-yì; the Sòng Tài-zōng [made] the Guǎng-jì — both record sympathetic-response in detail and discourse exhaustively on the karmic fruit. …The lay-devotee Zài-shēng [= Wáng Qǐ-lóng] takes no attachment in his breast, awakens to the yīn of giving rise to the mind without abiding… [I] have culled in my generation [zhāo-dài 昭代], continuing to follow the prior hearings; the intention is on the new, and the verifying-marvels accordingly are an awakening-call.”
A second preface (HuángMíng Jīngāng xīnyì lù yòuxù) by an unnamed colleague provides an alternative framing.
Abstract
The work catalogues approximately 40–50 Míng-period miracle-tales, drawn principally from Wáng Qǐlóng’s own informant network in Jiāngnán late-Míng lay-Buddhist circles. Tale-titles include:
- 焚衣梵書 (“Burning of clothing and copying-out of the vyākaraṇa”) — Chóng-zhēn era.
- 放回完經 (“Release and return after completion of the sūtra”) — Chóngzhēn era.
Specific cases include the Wànlì 甲寅 = 1614 tale of Wú Yìdé 吳奕德 of Shé Stone Bridge, who while travelling on Mount Huáng in the second month of that year had a transformative encounter at the Pǔménsì 普門寺. Another notable case is the death-bed Diamond Sūtra recitation of a Chóng-zhēn-period (1628–1644) Buddhist matron who, having recited the sūtra many times and being able to expound its general meaning to her daughters-in-law, displayed the appropriate signs at her decease.
The work is the principal late-Míng Diamond Sūtra miracle-tale anthology and supplies a unique window into the late-Míng lay-devotional Buddhist culture of Jiāxīng / Sūzhōu — the same Wáng Qǐlóng who circulated in Yúnqī Zhūhóng’s late-Míng Pure-Land circles is here documenting the Diamond-Sūtra tradition that ran in parallel with the Pure-Land cult.
The dating bracket — 1640 to 1660 — accommodates the late-Míng compilation context (the latest tales reference Chóngzhēn / 1628–1644 cases) and Wáng Qǐlóng’s continued late-life productivity into the early Qīng (his 《金剛經大意》 KR6c0072 is dated Shùnzhì 12 = 1655).
Translations and research
- Chün-fang Yü, The Renewal of Buddhism in China (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1981) — context of late-Míng lay Buddhism.
- 廖肇亨, 〈晚明居士佛教研究〉, Zhōng-yāng Yán-jiù-yuàn Wén-zhé suǒ tōng-xùn (various essays).
- Cynthia Brokaw, The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991) — context of late-Míng moral-bookkeeping and miracle-tale literature.
- No dedicated monographic study of the Xīn-yì lù has been located.
Links
- CBETA: X87n1633