Guānyú Chánzàng yǔ Dūnhuáng chánjí de ruògān wèntí 關於《禪藏》與敦煌禪籍的若干問題
Some Questions Concerning the Chánzàng and the Dūnhuáng Chán Manuscripts by 方廣錩
About the work
A modern Chinese-language scholarly monograph (one fascicle) by Fāng Guǎngchāng presenting his thesis that the bulk of Dūnhuáng Chán manuscripts represent the surviving fragments of Guīfēng Zōngmì’s 圭峯宗密 (780–841) lost Chánzàng 禪藏 — the Chányuán zhū quán jí 禪源諸詮集 anthology to which Zōngmì’s surviving Dōuxù 都序 (T48n2015) is the preface. The essay argues from internal evidence in the Dōuxù that the Chánzàng was a completed work, traces the Chánzàng concept (coined by Péi Xiū 裴休 in his prefatory remarks to Zōngmì’s Dōuxù), and reads many of the now-known Dūnhuáng manuscripts as physical traces of the Chánzàng’s diffusion to Hexi.
Abstract
This essay is included in the Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn series as a substantive scholarly contribution rather than as an edited primary text — distinct in genre from the surrounding 題解-and-錄文 entries. It develops in print the thesis Fāng first proposed in his doctoral dissertation Bā—shí shìjì de Zhōngguó hànwén xiěběn dàzàngjīng 八——十世紀的中國漢文寫本大藏經 (1988): the Chánzàng, alongside the canonical Zhèngzàng, the Biézàng 別藏, the Pínízàng 毗尼藏, and the Tiāntái jiàodiǎn 天台教典, was one of the great parallel collections circulating in eighth-to-tenth century Chinese Buddhism. The thesis is supported by Péi Xiū’s Dōuxù xù 敘 (河東裴休曰：未曾有也), the structural correspondence between the Dōuxù and the recovered Dūnhuáng manuscripts, and the geographic concentration of Chán material at Dūnhuáng. The essay also engages the prior scholarship of Hú Shì 胡適, Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義高, Suzuki Daisetsu 鈴木大拙, Yanagida Seizan 柳田聖山, and Tanaka Ryōshō 田中良昭. The composition window can be precisely set: the dissertation argument is from 1988, the essay form is from 1995 (the publication date of Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 1).
Translations and research
- Yanagida Seizan 柳田聖山, Shoki Zenshū-shi sho no kenkyū 初期禪宗史書の研究 (Kyōto: Hōzōkan, 1967) — the foundational study of early Chán historiography Fāng builds on.
- Broughton, Jeffrey, Zongmi on Chan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009) — the principal English-language treatment of Zōngmì and the Chánzàng programme.
- Gregory, Peter N., Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) — Zōngmì biographical and doctrinal context.
- Fāng Guǎngchāng 方廣錩, Bā—shí shìjì hànwén xiěběn dàzàngjīng yánjiū 八-十世紀漢文寫本大藏經研究 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 2006) — the published version of the 1988 dissertation in which the Chánzàng thesis is fully developed.
Other points of interest
The essay’s significance for the Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn series is foundational: it provides the interpretive frame for the heavy concentration of Dūnhuáng Chán manuscripts in vol. 1 of the series (KR6v0002, KR6v0003, KR6v0004, etc.), and is the principal modern argument for treating those manuscripts as a coherent textual corpus rather than as scattered apocrypha.