Jīngāngjīng língyàn zhuàn 金剛般若經靈驗傳
Biographical Accounts of Numinous Verifications of the Vajracchedikā
compiled by 淨慧 (Myōdō Jìnghuì 妙幢淨慧, fl. 1688, 集)
About the work
A 3-juan late-17th-century Tokugawa-Japanese compilation of Diamond Sūtra miracle-tales drawn from the Chinese miracle-anthological tradition (deliberately excluding Japanese cases), assembled by the Japanese monk Myōdō Jìnghuì 妙幢淨慧 and dated by his own colophon to Jōkyō 貞享 5 = 1688. The work is the largest and most comprehensive Diamond Sūtra miracle-anthology in the Buddhist canonical tradition, integrating materials from all the prior Tang-Sòng-Yuán-Míng anthologies into a single sequenced compilation. The work was published by Jìnghuì in conjunction with the Chinese KR6r0177 Gǎnyìng zhuàn and KR6r0178 Xīnyì lù of Wáng Qǐlóng — together forming a three-volume Diamond Sūtra miracle-corpus for the Japanese Buddhist seminary. Transmitted in the Xùzàngjīng as X1634.
Prefaces
The work has no separate front-preface; the 跋 (postface) by Jìnghuì at the end of juan 3 frames the work: “The numinous-verifications of the Diamond Sūtra — those that have been transmitted in He-cháo [Japan] and Hàn [China], ancient and modern — could one with brush-and-paper exhaust them all? Now of the sympathetic-responses of He-cháo, scattered throughout various books, I set [those] aside; only from books of foreign lands, [taking] those that fell within my seeing, without distinguishing monastic from lay, without considering temporal sequence, as I obtained each I recorded it. I title it the Jīngāngjīng língyàn zhuàn, and have engraved it together with the Gǎnyìng zhuàn and the Xīnyì lù, that it may be passed on to those of like aspiration in the world.”
Abstract
The work catalogues approximately 120 Diamond Sūtra miracle-tales drawn from across the Chinese tradition, organised by an ad hoc principle of compilation-order (Jìnghuì records each tale “as he obtained it” rather than by chronology or category). The opening sequence privileges major Buddhist patriarchal figures (the Wǔzǔ Dàshī / Hóngrěn, the Liùzǔ Dàshī / Huìnéng, the Míngjiào Dàshī / Qìsōng, the Zhōngfēng héshàng / Zhōngfēng Míngběn, the Yīxī / Yīxī Tàishū, etc.) — anchoring the Diamond Sūtra tradition in canonical Chán-patriarch authority — and proceeds through:
- The early Tang corpus (also found in KR6r0174 Jíyàn jì): Xiāo Yǔ 蕭瑀, Zhào Wénruò 趙文若, Zhào Wénchāng 趙文昌, Zhāng Zhèng 張政, Kuǎi Wǔān 蒯武安, Wáng Yīn 王殷, Wáng Hàn 王翰, Lù Huáisù 陸懷素, Duàn Wénchāng 段文昌, etc.
- The mid-Tang and late-Tang corpus (also in KR6r0175 Jiūyì): Sūn Xián 孫咸, Sēng Zhìdēng 僧智燈, Wángshì 王氏, Zuǒyíng Wǔbǎi 左營伍伯, Sòng Kǎn 宋衎, etc.
- The SòngYuánMíng corpus (incorporating materials from KR6r0176 Shòuchí gǎnyìng lù and KR6r0178 Xīnyì lù).
The work’s closing section is a doctrinal bǐ-jì (“brush-record”) drawn from the Hǎi-yán Zōng-fú-ān shā-mén Rú-guān 海鹽宗福菴沙門如觀 of the late Míng — the Jīn-gāng bō-rě bō-luó-mì-duō jīng bǐ-jì 金剛般若波羅蜜多經筆記, supplying a doctrinal frame that situates the miracle-tales within the canonical Prajñāpāramitā doctrinal context. The closing bǐ-jì discusses the Diamond Sūtra’s position among the eight Prajñā sections (Mahāprajñā, Fàng-guāng, Guāng-zàn, Dào-xíng, Xiǎo-pǐn, Jīn-gāng, Shí-xiàng, Mó-hē), its position within the 577 juan of the great Mahāprajñāpāramitā, and the six Chinese translations (Kumārajīva, Bodhiruci, Paramārtha, Dharmagupta, Xuán-zàng, Yì-jìng) — supplying a substantial doctrinal-philological apparatus to the miracle-anthological compilation.
The work is the single most comprehensive Diamond Sūtra miracle-anthology in the East Asian Buddhist tradition, and an outstanding example of the Tokugawa-Japanese consolidation of Chinese Buddhist devotional literature. Through its inclusion in the Xùzàngjīng tradition (re-imported into China in the modern period), the work has also become the standard reference compilation for modern Chinese-language scholarship on the Diamond Sūtra miracle-tradition.
Translations and research
- 鄭阿財, 《敦煌佛教靈驗記研究》(Táiběi: Xīn-wén-fēng, 2010) — extensive use of the Líng-yàn zhuàn for the reconstruction of the Tang miracle-tradition.
- Donald Gjertson, Miraculous Retribution (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989).
- 牧田諦亮, 〈日本における中国仏教霊験記の受容〉, in Bukkyō chūsei kenkyū (Kyōto: Hōzō-kan, 1957) — Japanese reception of the Chinese miracle-tradition.
- No dedicated Western-language study of the Líng-yàn zhuàn has been located.
Other points of interest
The work’s explicit Japanese-Chinese cross-cultural framing — Jìnghuì’s deliberate exclusion of Japanese cases in favour of Chinese-only material — is striking, and reflects the Tokugawa-Japanese Buddhist seminary’s positioning of itself as the systematic collator of the Chinese-Buddhist textual tradition, supplementing rather than competing with the Chinese miracle-tradition. The same posture is visible in the contemporary Ōbaku-Zen movement at Manpuku-ji and in the Tokugawa scholarship on the Buddhist canon (the Tenmei-zō and the related Edo-period canonical-publishing initiatives).
Links
- CBETA: X87n1634