Běijīng wǔ dà bù zhíyīn huìyùn 北京五大部直音會韻
Direct Phonological Glosses and Rime-Concordance to the Five Great Sutras of the Beijing Canon by 久隱 (撰)
About the work
A two-juan mid-Míng Buddhist phonological apparatus to the Five Great Sutras (wǔ dà bù 五大部 — the Avataṃsaka 華嚴, Saddharmapuṇḍarīka 法華, Mahāprajñāpāramitā 般若, Śūraṅgama 楞嚴, and Mahāparinirvāṇa 涅槃, with associated penitential texts) as printed in the Beijing canon (the Northern Yǒnglè / Yongle Northern Canon, completed 1440), with collation against the Nán-jīng canon (Southern Yǒnglè) printings. Compiled by Jiǔ-yǐn 久隱 (sobriquet Sōng-yuè 嵩嶽), monk of Líng-táng-sì 凌堂寺 on Shèng-mǔ Mountain 聖母山 in Zhú-shān-xiàn 竹山縣, Yún-yáng-fǔ 鄖陽府 (in modern northwestern Húběi). The work was originally compiled in the Jiā-jìng 嘉靖 era (preface by Lǐ Jīng dated 1543) and recut for printing in the Jiāxīng canon in Wàn-lì 33 (1605, preface by Féng Mèng-zhēn). Preserved in the Jiāxīng canon at J19 no. B048.
Prefaces
The text opens with three prefaces plus an in-line author’s verse-preamble.
(1) Chóng-kè wǔ dà bù zhí-yīn xù 重刻五大部直音序 (“Preface to the Recutting of the Wǔ-dà-bù zhí-yīn”), by Féng Mèng-zhēn 馮夢禎 (lay style Zhēn-shí jū-shì 真實居士, the famous late-Míng official-Buddhist patron, 1548–1605), dated Wàn-lì yǐ-sì = summer 1605, with imprint at the Léng-yán bō-rě táng 楞嚴般若堂 — placing the recutting in the late-Wàn-lì Jiāxīng-canon project context. In paraphrase: the sage made the Yì-jīng by lodging meaning in image, with the wén-yán coming next; the Buddhists discussed chán, working to clarify xiàn-liàng (direct perception), with the Three Baskets coming next. Even for the World-Honored One, even for the patriarchs of Cīna like Líng-yún’s picking the flower, Tiān-lóng’s raising one finger — they did not wait for words to be set out; what is struck by the eye, the Way is preserved. Their entry-into-awakening is undestroyed, reaching to right awakening. … But the great Way, although it does not enter into the speech-and-articulation, also does not leave the speech-and-articulation. The Puṇḍarīka-sūtra says: “The language of governing the world, the works of livelihood — all are not contrary to the True Mark.” So this is. … The five great sutras have phonological-glosses produced from the eunuch-inner-staff (中涓) of the capital — among them not without 亥豕 (corruption-of-graph) errors. And the bundle-folios are heavy — for the wandering-monk it is troublesome. Now in Jiāng-zhè Chán-lín [Hú-zhōu / Jiā-xīng region Chán monasteries], decisively a fine version has been made. I therefore respectfully write its sequence and ask the printers of the four directions, the upper-virtue, to take this as one occasion of seeing the moon by the pointing-finger.
(2) Chóngkè jīngběn wǔ dà bù jīngchàn zhíyīn huìyùn xù 重刻京本五大部經懺直音會韻序 — preface to the original Jiā-jìng-era cutting, by Lǐ Jīng 李經, then bearing the title fèngchì tídū jīngchéng jiǔmén jí huángchéng sìmén Shàngbǎojiān yòu shǎojiān 奉敕提督京城九門及皇城四門尚寶監右少監 (“by imperial command, supervising-overseer of the nine gates of the capital and the four gates of the imperial city; right-junior-supervisor of the Imperial Treasury Section”). Dated Jiājìng guǐmǎo, jìchūn (3rd month) of jí (the auspicious day) = April 1543. Lǐ Jīng was a Beijing-based eunuch-official patron and the immediate sponsor of the original cutting. His preface, in floridly literary mode, sets out the work’s framing: that “the great Way is in heaven’s wonder unfathomable; therefore in human use, in having or not having mind, is also non-uniform.” “The book Zhíyīn jíyùn is in fact the strange writing and ancient characters of the Five Great Sutras, hard to trust and hard to understand…” The preface explicitly identifies the author as Língkōng Jiǔyǐn Sōngdàyuèshī 凌空九隱嵩大嶽師 — i.e. Jiǔyǐn, sobriquet Sōngyuè, of Língtángsì.
(3) Wǔ dà bù zhí-yīn jí-yùn xù 五大部直音集韻序 — author’s auto-preface, signed Yún-yáng-fǔ Zhú-shān-xiàn Shèng-mǔ-shān Líng-táng-sì Jiǔ-yǐn hào Sōng-yuè tí 鄖陽府竹山縣聖母山凌堂寺久隱號嵩嶽題. Opens with the framing observation: “The great sutras of the southern and northern two capitals have many characters that do not match.” The Mahāyāna deep canon — I cannot exhaust it; like a starved-and-thirsty mosquito, how much can it drink? But the ancients have left a small path for first-learners — hard to enter and hard to advance. If one fixes the heart on ritual recitation, with one word the mind-ground opens through and one understands the original face — the merit of escaping birth and finishing death is complete. The sage Bodhidharma faced the wall for nine years; the heart firm as a stone could pierce. Did he not know, indeed, that Miào-guāng in the Lotus Sūtra is the previous-life form of Mañjuśrī, the eye of the worldly able to verify this dharma — so for sixteen small kalpas without rising from his seat, he listened to what the Buddha spoke? How much more so for people of today, who give rise to laxity and tedium, cannot listen, cannot hear, cannot diligently pursue, cannot firmly maintain — and yet all attain the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka samādhi? Yǒng-jiā dà-shī read the Vimalakīrti and awakened to the Way; the Sixth Patriarch met the Vajracchedikā and clarified the heart; Lǐ Cháng-zhě [Lǐ Tōng-xuán] obtained the Buddha-mind seal; Zhāng Wú-jǐn [Zhāng Shāng-yīng] perceived the family-style. Sages and worthies of old still consulted teachers and asked the Way, each awakening to non-arising as a mirror-tortoise to those of after.
[The preface is followed by two verses by Jiǔyǐn / Sōngyuè framing the Mahāyāna canon’s deep meaning…]
Abstract
Authorship and date are unambiguously fixed by the three prefaces. Jiǔyǐn 久隱 (sobriquet Sōngyuè 嵩嶽; DILA A022511; lay surname not preserved; native place not specified beyond his monastic residence at Língtángsì on Shèngmǔ Mountain, Zhúshānxiàn, Yúnyángfǔ in modern northwestern Húběi) was a mid-Míng monk-philologist active in the Jiājìng era. The work was originally compiled at some point during the early-to-mid Jiājìng era and given its first cutting under Lǐ Jīng’s eunuch-patronage at the capital in Jiājìng 22 = 1543; recut for the Jiāxīng canon at the Léngyánbōrětáng project in Wànlì 33 = 1605 under Féng Mèngzhēn’s preface.
notBefore = 1522 (a defensible terminus post quem — the early Jiājìng era, by which time the canonical Beijing-vs-Nán-jīng print-collation problems addressed by the work would have become apparent in monastic practice); notAfter = 1543 (the dated Lǐ Jīng preface). Catalog dynasty 明.
The 2 juan are organized as a textual-collation register of phonological and graphic variants between the Northern (Yǒnglè) capital canon and the Southern (Yǒnglè) capital canon printings of the Five Great Sutras + their associated penitential jīngchàn 經懺 texts. The work belongs to the same general genre as the Sòng Shàoxīng chóngdiāo dàzàng yīn (KR6s0016) but is much more narrowly focused — addressing the practical problem of which characters in the Wǔdàbù canonical text-printings carried Northern vs Southern readings, and which were reading-errors in one or the other.
The work is therefore a primary witness to the Míng canonical-printing collation problem: that the simultaneously-imperially-commissioned Northern Yǒnglè canon (printed in Beijing 1410–1440) and Southern Yǒnglè canon (printed in Nánjīng 1372–1399 + supplements) had developed substantial textual divergence within a single century of canonical existence. Jiǔyǐn’s collation, focused on the Five Great Sutras as the practical core of monastic recitation practice, was the standard mid-Míng response.
Translations and research
No substantial dedicated Western-language secondary literature located. The work is occasionally cited in:
- He Mei 何梅, Lì-dài hàn-wén dà-zàng-jīng mù-lù xīn-kǎo 歷代漢文大藏經目錄新考 (Zōng-jiào-wén-huà Chū-bǎn-shè, 2014) — references for Míng-canon collation.
- Studies of the Jiā-jìng-era eunuch patronage of Buddhist printing (cf. Léon Hurvitz and successors).
- Féng Mèng-zhēn studies (by Liào Zhào-héng 廖肇亨 and others) for late-Míng literati Buddhism.
Other points of interest
The original 1543 cutting under Lǐ Jīng’s eunuch-supervisor patronage is one of the few mid-sixteenth-century imperially-sponsored Buddhist printings to survive in independent textual transmission; most mid-Jiā-jìng Buddhist printing was driven by the imperial-establishment eunuch staff rather than by external monastic patronage. The work is therefore a primary witness to the continuing eunuch-court Buddhist patronage that bridged the Yǒnglè (early Míng) and Wànlì (late Míng) high points of imperial Buddhist printing.
Links
- DILA authority: A022511 (久隱)
- CBETA: J19nB048
- Sponsor of original 1543 cutting: Lǐ Jīng 李經 (Beijing eunuch-official)
- Sponsor of 1605 Jiāxīng-canon recutting: Féng Mèngzhēn 馮夢禎 (1548–1605)
- Predecessor radical-organized Sòng work: KR6s0016 Shàoxīng chóngdiāo dàzàng yīn
- Earlier yīnyì tradition: KR6s0010–KR6s0015