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知覺普明國師語録

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Text ID
KR6t0266
Date
1379–1705
Dynasty
日本

Zhìjué Pǔmíng Guóshī yǔlù 知覺普明國師語録

Recorded Sayings of the National Master of Wise Awakening and Universal Brightness by 妙葩 Shun’oku Myōha (語), 周佐 Shūsa et al. (編)

About the work

An eight-fascicle Recorded Sayings collection of 妙葩 Shun’oku Myōha (1311–1388), the dominant Gozan Rinzai-Zen prelate of the second half of the fourteenth century — successively abbot of Tenryū-ji 天龍寺, Nanzen-ji 南禪寺, and Rinsen-ji 臨川寺, and from 1379 the inaugural Sōroku 僧錄 (head of the Bakufu Office of Monastic Registry that supervised the entire Gozan / Jissetsu system). Posthumous title Chikaku Fumyō Kokushi 智覺普明國師, conferred by Emperor Go-En’yū 後圓融院 in Kōryaku 1 / 12 / 28 (1380-02-04 NS) — the imperial shinkan (宸翰) opens the present text.

Abstract

Shun’oku was the nephew and dharma-heir of 夢窓疎石 Musō Soseki (1275–1351), the most influential Zen master of the early Muromachi period and the architect of Tenryū-ji. The recorded sayings collect Shun’oku’s official outputs from his successive abbacies — jōdō (陞座) sermons, nenkō (拈香) memorial-rites, fa-yǔ (法語) instructions, jisàn (自讚) self-portrait inscriptions, sònggǔ (頌古) verses on classical kōan, and jìsòng (偈頌) general verses — together with a closing xíngyè shílù 行業實錄 biographical fascicle and a shíyí 拾遺 / fùlù 附錄 (gleanings + appendix) supplied by the printer.

Compilation and printing history:

  • The recorded sayings proper were edited by Shun’oku’s attendant Shūsa 周佐 (the shìzhě 侍者 named at the head of fascicle 1).
  • After Shun’oku’s death in 1388, his disciple Hōtsū 芳通 (a member of the bōge 芳極 / gokuryō lineage) carried a manuscript copy to Ming China.
  • A preface by the eminent Ming statesman-monk Yáo Guǎngxiào 姚廣孝 (1335–1418, the Black-Robe minister of the Yongle emperor and, as the inscription notes, Tàizǐ Shǎoshī 太子少師 jointly Tídiào Sēnglùsī shì 提調僧錄司事), dated Yongle 2 / 10 / 26 (1404-12-07 NS), records his having received the manuscript from Hōtsū at the Ming capital and praises its “iron-cutting nail-driving” idiom.
  • The text was nonetheless never block-printed during the Ming, surviving only in manuscript copies until Hōei 2 (寶永乙酉 = 1705, mid-summer) when Soen 祖緣 of Shōkoku-ji 相國寺 had it set in movable type (kappan 活板) at Kyoto, with collation by Kenrei 顯靈, Shūjō 集仗, Sokei 祖桂, Bonjiku 梵竺, Jōkō 承頥, Kenyū 乾祐, Sōgon 宗言, Chūjun 中珣, Shūru 周留, and Shōei 紹永. Soen’s colophon explicitly notes: “We have followed the old text without daring to emend it; the gleanings (shíyí) and appendix (fùlù) we have ordered separately, having failed to recover their original sequence.”
  • The Taishō recension reproduces this 1705 Hōei movable-type printing.

The dating bracket in the frontmatter reflects this: Kōryaku 1 / 1379 (the imperial title-bestowal that gives the work its title) is the lower bound; Hōei 2 / 1705 (the editio princeps reproduced in Taishō) is the upper.

The contents touch all the major institutional pillars of mid-Muromachi Gozan culture: the imperial bestowal-edict, the Sōroku appointment, the abbatial sermons at the principal Five-Mountain temples of Kyoto, and a long body of jìsòng exchanges with named monk-poets that form one of the principal source-bases for the prosopography of fourteenth-century Gozan-bungaku.

Translations and research

No book-length English translation located. For Shun’oku’s institutional career and the founding of the Sōroku-shi system, see Martin Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan (Harvard East Asian Monographs 85, 1981), chs. 4–5; Tamamura Takeji 玉村竹二, Gozan zenrin shūha-zu 五山禅林宗派図 (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1985); Imaeda Aishin 今枝愛真, Chūsei zenshū-shi no kenkyū 中世禅宗史の研究 (Tokyo: Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai, 1970). For the Yao Guangxiao preface and Sino-Japanese Zen literary exchange, see Asakura Hisashi 朝倉尚, Gozan-bungaku no chiri-teki tenkai 五山文学の地理的展開 (Kyūko shoin, 2007).

Other points of interest

The Yao Guangxiao preface is one of very few Ming court endorsements of a Japanese Zen master’s recorded sayings, and reflects the thaw in Sino-Japanese contact under the Yongle reign — the same diplomatic opening that produced the Kangōbōeki 勘合貿易 with the Ashikaga Bakufu. Yao’s praise places Shun’oku within the same fraternal idiom Yao used for senior Ming abbots; conversely the fact that Shun’oku’s collection lay unprinted in Japan until 1705 testifies to the long Edo-period rediscovery of late-Muromachi Gozan literature.

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