Fǎyuàn zhūlín 法苑珠林
A Forest of Pearls in the Garden of the Dharma by 道世 (撰)
About the work
A monumental hundred-juan Buddhist topical encyclopedia (lèishū 類書) compiled by Dàoshì 道世 (字 Xuányùn 玄惲) of Xīmíngsì 西明寺 in Cháng’ān, completed on the 30th day of the 3rd month of Zǒngzhāng 總章 1 = June / July 668 CE. The work is the mature successor to Bǎochàng’s earlier Jīnglǜ yìxiàng (KR6s0001) and the single most encyclopedic Buddhist reference work of the Táng: 100 piān 篇 (“chapters”) gathered into 10 zhì 帙 (“bundles”), each piān extracting and topically arranging passages from the canon and adding gǎnyìng yuán 感應緣 (“stimulus-response cases” — miracle reports drawn from secular and religious histories alike). The text is preserved in the Taishō canon at T53 no. 2122 and survives also in the Wényuāngé 文淵閣 Sìkù quánshū.
Prefaces
The text opens with a single substantial preface by Lǐ Yǎn 李儼 字 Zhòngsī 仲思 of Lǒngxī, then serving as Cháoyì dàfū, Lántái shìláng 朝議大夫蘭臺侍郎 (court counsellor and gentleman-attendant of the Orchid Pavilion / Imperial Library). In paraphrase:
Since the six lines arose and the eight trigrams were arrayed — since written graphs first appeared and instruction manuals shone forth — phoenix-script and dragon-charts, gold tablets and jade words, the hundred schools have travelled different roads and the ten-thousand scrolls have divided into regions. Though their reasoning may probe the subtle and their words exhaust the things of the world, in registering feeling and bracketing nature they have not gone beyond the realm; in tracing beginnings and assessing ends they cannot reach what is beyond the conventional. There are also the discourses of the storehouse-historians and the talk of the garden-officials, gem-canon flotations and brocade-volume convolutions — engraved on ice without result, like writing on emptiness, and not real. But contrast these with the sublime intent strung as flowers and the dark words written on leaves: the breadth of the two vehicles, the depth of the eight repositories — to compare these in shallowness or depth, to weigh their excellence or inferiority, is like an ant-mound being compared with Sōng or Huá, like an ox-puddle contending with the Jiāng or the Hàn.
Of the manifest meaning and the hidden rule, of the gate of liberation and the garden of total recall: prior moments and later moments alike accord with tathatā; first thought and final thought all return to right awakening. They guide the deluded out of the sea of desire — defilements of feeling and dust of mind dissolve together; they draw the prodigal son into the chamber of compassion — robe-jewels and crown-pearls arrive at once. The transformation overflows realms numerous as the Ganges sands; the merit covers kalpas as numerous as fine dust. Great and consummate — it cannot be praised enough.
Since the time when the Zhōu omens occurred and Hàn was reached, when Cài Yǐn 蔡愔 traveled west and Zhú-Lán 竺蘭 [Kāśyapa Mātaṅga and Zhú Fǎ-lán] traveled east, the words of the Golden Mouth and the intent of the Jewelled Pavilion have filled the silks and accumulated on bamboo, spreading throughout the central regions. But the juàn and zhóu are numerous, the categories and currents profound and vast — bhūtatathatā and the true source are in the end difficult to grasp in detail.
When our August Táng came to forge things and the Sage-Sovereign assumed rule, the dark teaching was widely promulgated, the black-robed assembly filled the temples, transmitted radiance and copied liquor moistened the regions, and Sanskrit-resonant praise-tones echoed from the throat throughout the metropolitan plain. The flourishing of propagation is hard to indicate by analogy. There is the dàdé Dàoshì fǎshī 大德道世法師, zì Xuányùn 玄惲, of Xīmíngsì 西明寺 — leader of the Buddhist gate. As a child he showed prodigy in piling sand [as stūpas in play]; in his year of taking the colored garment he showed compassion in receiving the ants. He has the resources of complete ordination — the precept-categories full and bright, like guarding a swallowed pearl; vinaya meaning lucidly understood, the same delight as a mirror’s illumination. Loving and longing for the Mahāyāna, penetratingly clear about tathatā — accordingly for his eminent breadth he was summoned to reside at Xīmíng. Then with what time was left over from the Five Sections [of the vinaya] and complete reading of the Three Baskets, he saw that across past and present and the unbroken generations, many had compiled, and though their pleasing flavor and excellent diction were sufficient, none broadly recorded.
Therefore he plucked the flowering grass of the literary garden and inhaled the campaka of the great meaning, arranging it by category and registering it in record — calling it Fǎyuàn zhūlín — totaling one hundred chapters, made up into ten bundles, the meaning ample and the diction concise — knotting Yúshì’s broad-essentials and tracing the propagated Dàojìng and the broadened Hóngmíng of [Sēng-]Yòu, his words pleasing and his Way thereby manifest. Raising the most subtle without omission, embracing the wonderful gate without omission. But where the words are too many, feelings are dulled; where the meaning is too sketchy, the hearer learns little. Not wishing to construct empty floating phrases or fill out juàn and zhóu, but because the matter could not be turned aside, the writing has come to seem many; on long acquaintance one comes to know its essentials.
Therefore on the 30th day of the 3rd month (the gūxǐ lunation) of Zǒngzhāng 1 (the year zhíxú 執徐) of the Great Táng — 668 CE — the compilation was completed.
The Sìkùtíyào assessment in the WYG (which carries the work in the zǐbù 子部 shìjiā lèi 釋家類) treats the work as the chief Buddhist pendant of the secular lèishū, comparing it to Yú Shìnán’s 虞世南 Běitáng shūchāo 北堂書鈔 — a comparison Lǐ Yǎn himself anticipated in the preface (“knotting Yúshì’s broad-essentials”).
Abstract
Authorship and date are unambiguous: the preface, signed by Lǐ Yǎn (a Lǐ-clan official of the secretarial Orchid Pavilion under Gāozōng) and the byline at the head of juan 1 (“Xīmíngsì shāmén Shì Dàoshì zhuàn”) together fix the work as Dàoshì’s, completed under the imperial canopy of Cháng’ān’s Xīmíng monastery in 668. Dàoshì (DILA A000296; native of Yīquē 伊闕, lay surname Hán 韓) ordained in childhood at the Qīnglóng temple, took full vinaya training under Zhìshǒu 智首 (567–635) in Suí Dàyè 11 = 615 — making him a co-disciple of Nánshān-律 founder Dàoxuān 道宣 (596–667) — and was summoned to Xīmíngsì by the crown prince in Xiǎnqìng 顯慶 (656–660). The death notice in Sòng gāosēng zhuàn, j. 4, places his death in Hóngdào 弘道 1 (683 / early 684).
The hundred piān run, juan by juan, through every category of Buddhist cosmology, hagiography, and ritual: kalpas, three realms, sun and moon, six paths, thousand buddhas, reverence to the Three Jewels, prostration, fields of merit, taking refuge, lay men and lay women, entry into the Way, contrition, encouragement of the Way, hearing and preaching, viewing buddhas, congregation of saints, dhyāna, conduct, vows, transmission of the lamp, Tripiṭaka, image-veneration, repentance, salvation of the deceased, and so on through piān 100 Chuán jì 傳記. Each piān is structured into a shù-yì 述意 (“statement of intent”), thematic citations from the canon, and at the close a gǎn-yìng yuán 感應緣 — a register of “stimulus-response” miracle stories drawn from the secular dynastic histories, biji literature, and Buddhist hagiographies. These gǎn-yìng sections preserve a vast body of pre-Táng anecdotal material, including extracts from now-lost works like the Míng-xiáng jì 冥祥記 of Wáng Yǎn 王琰, the Yǒu-míng lù 幽明錄 of Liú Yì-qìng 劉義慶, and the Sōu-shén-jì 搜神記 tradition.
The work thus stands at the center of Táng Buddhist lèishū practice. It is closely paralleled by Dàoshì’s own twenty-juan abridgment Zhūjīng yàojí 諸經要集 (KR6s0003, T2123), which extracts the canonical-citation portions only. The Sìkù editors, while critical of the gǎnyìng miracle-tale apparatus as “absurd and not to be credited” (荒誕不足信), nonetheless acknowledge the work’s indispensable utility for canonical reference and for preservation of lost secular literature.
Editions: T53 no. 2122 (the standard, collated against Sòng, Yuán, Míng, Gōng, Korean, South-Hidden, North-Hidden, and additional witnesses); the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū recension; modern punctuated editions by Zhōu Shūjiā 周叔迦 and Sū Jìnrén 蘇晉仁 (Zhōnghuá Shūjú 中華書局, 2003).
Translations and research
- Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton, 1988), and The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Hawai’i, 1994) — both make extensive use of the Fǎ-yuàn zhū-lín as a primary source.
- Robert Ford Campany, Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (SUNY, 1996) — treats the gǎn-yìng yuán sections as a preservation site for pre-Táng zhì-guài literature.
- Koichi Shinohara, “Two Sources of Chinese Buddhist Biographies: Stūpa Inscriptions and Miracle Stories”, in P. Granoff & K. Shinohara (eds.), Monks and Magicians (1988) — discusses Dào-shì’s source-handling of miracle materials.
- Funayama Tōru 船山徹 and the Kyōto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho working group has published collected source-studies on the Fǎ-yuàn zhū-lín.
- Zhōu Shū-jiā 周叔迦 and Sū Jìn-rén 蘇晉仁 (eds.), Fǎ-yuàn zhū-lín jiào-zhù 法苑珠林校注, 6 vols. (Zhōng-huá Shū-jú, 2003) — the standard punctuated and annotated Chinese edition.
- Tōkyō Daigaku Tōyō Bunka Kenkyūjo’s Hōen jurin sōsakuin 法苑珠林總索引 (1973) is the standard reference index.
Other points of interest
The Fǎ-yuàn zhū-lín is one of the two principal Táng-canonical preservation-sites for Liù-cháo zhì-guài 六朝志怪 anomaly literature (the other being the Tài-píng guǎng-jì 太平廣記 of 978): a non-trivial fraction of all received fragments of works like the Sōu-shén-jì, Míng-xiáng jì, and Sōu-shén hòu jì 搜神後記 are recovered through Dào-shì’s quotations. The work also functions as the most important Táng witness to early Chinese Buddhist relic, image, and ritual culture — its jīng-tǎ piān 敬塔篇 (piān 37) is the principal source for the relic-distribution legends associated with the Aśoka stūpas at Mào-yīn 鄮鄞, Lóng-cuò 龍剉, and elsewhere, foundational to medieval Chinese sacred geography.