開元釋教錄

Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄

The Catalog of Buddhist Teaching of the Kāiyuán Era (the Kāiyuánlù) by 智昇 (撰)

About the work

The single most important pre-modern Chinese Buddhist canonical bibliography — the foundational document on which every subsequent East Asian Buddhist canon-printing project from the Kāibǎo canon (971–983) onward has been based. A twenty-juan imperially-canonical official Buddhist canonical catalog compiled by Zhìshēng 智昇 (Tang, fl. 730) of Xī Chóngfúsì 西崇福寺 in Chángān, completed in Kāiyuán 18 = 730 CE. The work establishes the 5,048-juan canonical roster that became the standard Chinese Buddhist canon and that all subsequent canon-printings (Kāibǎo, Liáo, Goryeo, Yǒnglè, Qiánlóng, etc.) reproduced. Preserved in the Taishō at T55 no. 2154 and in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū (one of the very few Buddhist works in the Sìkù).

Prefaces

The text opens with Zhìshēng’s auto-preface:

Geng-wǔ year [Kāiyuán 18 = 730], Xī Chóngfúsì shāmén Zhìshēng zhuàn 庚午歲西崇福寺沙門智昇撰.

Now: the rise of catalogs is for the purpose of distinguishing the true and the false, clarifying the right and the wrong, recording the past-and-present of personal generations, marking the multitude or fewness of the canonical bù and juan, gathering up what was lost and pruning the doubled-and-redundant — wishing to cause the right teaching to be ordered, the golden words to have a continuum, the outline raised and the essentials lifted — clearly and observably to be viewed.

But the dharma-gate is dim-and-deep, the transformation-net broad-and-vast. Front-and-back transmission-translation, the years moved and the generations changed. It has repeatedly been through dispersal-and-extinction, the juànzhóu uneven. There have also been strange persons at times adding false-and-empty [works]. Causing it to be tangled and hard to investigate the trail.

Therefore the previous virtues, the worthy Confucians, made these systematic registers. Today those still preserved are about six or seven houses — yet still they have not exhausted the root and source, with much still loose-and-missing. Shēng [I], with mediocre-shallow understanding, have long undertaken the unrolling-and-search, weighed-and-trained the differences-and-similarities…

[The preface continues with a detailed account of Zhìshēng’s bibliographic methodology and the structure of the catalog.]

Abstract

Authorship and date: composed by Zhìshēng 智昇 (DILA A001261; lifedates: active early 8th c., conventionally placed ca. 669–786 with substantial uncertainty) at Xī Chóngfúsì in Chángān in Kāiyuán 18 = 730 CE. notBefore = 730, notAfter = 730 (firmly dated). Catalog dynasty 唐.

The 20-juan structure is organized as follows:

• Juan 1–10: dynastic-period bibliographic register, covering all Chinese Buddhist translations from the Hàn through Kāiyuán of Zhìshēng’s day, organized chronologically by dynasty and within each dynasty by translator.
• Juan 11–18: comprehensive sectional catalogue, organizing the canonical corpus by category (sūtra / vinaya / śāstra × Mahāyāna / Hīnayāna × single-translation / multi-translation, plus suspect / spurious / extracted-from-other / Indian-and-Chinese-biography sub-categories).
• Juan 19–20: the Rùzàng lù 入藏錄 — the canonical roster proper, listing exactly which works should be included in the canon, with each work’s juan-count and bundle-letter (qiānzìwén 千字文 alphabet code). Total: 5,048 juan in 480 bundles — the Kāiyuánlù 5,048-juan canon.

The 5,048-juan canonical roster of Rù-zàng lù is the single most consequential bibliographic decision in the history of East Asian Buddhism. Every subsequent East Asian Buddhist canon-printing — beginning with the Kāi-bǎo canon of 971–983 (the first xylographic Chinese Buddhist canon) and continuing through the Liáo canon, Goryeo canon, Northern and Southern Yǒnglè canons, Wàn-lì canons, Qián-lóng canon (Lóng-zàng), the Korean canon (Goryeo Tripiṭaka), and the Taishō canon of 1924–1934 — has used the Kāi-yuán-lù 5,048-juan roster as its foundational standard, supplementing it with new translations but preserving its core structure.

The work is therefore not only a 730 CE bibliographic snapshot but the canonical-decisional foundation of all subsequent East Asian Buddhist canonical printing.

Translations and research

A vast scholarly literature; selected major works:

• Tāng Yòng-tóng 湯用彤, Suí Táng fó-jiào shǐ-gǎo — extensive treatment.
• Hé Méi 何梅, Lì-dài hàn-wén dà-zàng-jīng mù-lù xīn-kǎo (Zōng-jiào-wén-huà, 2014) — the standard comprehensive treatment of the Chinese Buddhist canonical-bibliographic tradition centered on the Kāi-yuán-lù.
• Antonello Palumbo, An Early Chinese Commentary on the Ekottarika-āgama: The Fenbie gongde lun and the History of the Translation of the Zengyi ahan jing (Dharma Drum, 2013) — uses the Kāi-yuán-lù as a primary source for translation-history reconstruction.
• Stefano Zacchetti, Antonino Forte, and successor scholars on the Kāi-yuán-lù as a source.
• Funayama Tōru 船山徹, Butten wa dou kanyaku sareta no ka — extensive treatment.

Other points of interest

The 5,048-juan number of the Kāiyuánlù Rùzàng lù is itself a culturally and bibliographically iconic figure — referenced in countless subsequent Chinese Buddhist sources as the standard size of the canon. The Kāiyuánlù is one of the very few Buddhist texts to be included in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū (the standard Confucian-imperial reference compendium) — reflecting its status as a bibliographic reference work of universal Chinese intellectual significance, not merely a Buddhist canonical document.

Links

• DILA authority: A001261 (智昇)
• CBETA: T55n2154
• Author: Zhì-shēng 智昇 (Tang, fl. 730), Xī Chóng-fú-sì śramaṇa
• Companion work: KR6s0091 Xù gǔjīn yìjīng tú jì (730, biographical-translator companion)
• Predecessor: KR6s0088 DàTáng nèidiǎn lù of Dàoxuān (664), KR6s0092 DàZhōu kāndìng zhòngjīng mùlù (695)
• Auto-supplement: KR6s0094 Kāiyuán shìjiào lù luèchū (4 juan)
• Major successor: KR6s0097 Zhēnyuán xīndìng shìjiào mùlù of Yuánzhào
• Foundational for: every subsequent East Asian Buddhist canon-printing from Kāibǎo (971) to Taishō (1924–1934)
• Dazangthings date evidence (730): [ T ] T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014. https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/source/1/