Níngxià XīXià fāngtǎ chūtǔ Hànwén fódiǎn xùlù 寧夏西夏方塔出土漢文佛典敘錄
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Chinese-Language Buddhist Texts Excavated from a Western-Xià Square Pagoda in Níngxià by 方廣錩 (Fāng Guǎngchāng)
About the work
A scholarly xùlù 敘錄 (“descriptive catalogue”) by Fāng Guǎngchāng, item No. 065 in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 7. The paper presents a preliminary survey of a cache of Buddhist texts excavated some years before the article’s writing (ca. 1997) from a fāngtǎ 方塔 (square pagoda) of the XīXià 西夏 (Western Xià, 1038–1227) period in Níngxià. The work was undertaken at the request of Niú Dáshēng 牛達生 of the Níngxià Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute (寧夏文物考古研究所).
Abstract
The cache consists of fragmentary Chinese-language Buddhist scrolls. The fragments are individually small and damaged but collectively significant for the history of Western-Xià Chinese-Buddhist textual production. Fāng’s xùlù describes (in this article) the first major item — Yuánjué dàochǎng lǐchàn yīběn 圓覺道場禮懺一本 (“One Recension of the Yuánjué jīng Worship-and-Confession Liturgy”) — surviving as 7 fragments (A–G) of one paper sheet (47 × 22 cm), with fragment A as the substantial core. The article gives a precise transcription with fragment-by-fragment line-numbering. Yuánjué dàochǎng lǐchàn is unknown elsewhere; it represents a Western-Xià Chinese lǐchàn tradition independent of the Sòng central-plain corpus. The article continues with descriptive entries for the other items in the cache.
The xùlù’s value is twofold: (1) it provides the first systematic inventory of the cache, otherwise inaccessible to most scholars; (2) it makes the case that the Western-Xià Chinese-Buddhist literature is a distinct corpus deserving independent study, alongside the Tangut-language Western-Xià Buddhism that has received more attention. The Western-Xià Buddhist canon (the Hēishuǐchéng 黑水城 / Khara-Khoto discoveries on the western frontier) preserves both Chinese and Tangut materials; this Níngxià cache is comparable in importance to the Hēishuǐchéng finds.
Translations and research
- Fāng Guǎngchāng 方廣錩, Bā—shí shìjì fójiào dà-zàng-jīng shǐ 八——十世紀佛教大藏經史 (Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué, 1991) — broader context.
- Niú Dáshēng 牛達生, Xī-Xià fójiào tànsuǒ 西夏佛教探索 — companion archaeological account.
- Dunnell, Ruth W., The Great State of White and High: Buddhism and State Formation in Eleventh-Century Xia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996) — standard English study of Western-Xià Buddhism.
- Solonin, Kirill, “The Tangut Buddhism: Some Issues of Identity,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 67.1 (2014).
Other points of interest
The Yuánjué dàochǎng lǐchàn fragment is an important data-point for the Yuánjué jīng 圓覺經 (T17n0842) cult in north-and-northwest China during the Sòng / Western-Xià period — the same cult whose Yúnnán manifestation is documented in the Dàlǐguó manuscript of Zōngmì’s Yuánjué shū (the verso of KR6v0066 / KR6v0067). The two regional witnesses together suggest a wider Sòng-period geography for the Yuánjué cult than has been recognised.