Dūnhuáng sìyuàn suǒcáng dàzàngjīng gàimào 敦煌寺院所藏大藏經概貌
An Overview of the Buddhist Canon Held by Dūnhuáng Monasteries by 方廣錩 (Fāng Guǎngchāng)
About the work
A scholarly article by Fāng Guǎngchāng, item No. 070 in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn vol. 8. The paper sketches the canon-holdings of Dūnhuáng monasteries across the various periods of Dūnhuáng’s medieval history (LiángzhōuSuí period, Táng Guīyìjūn period, Tibetan administration period, Cáoshì / Zhāngshì Guīyìjūn lordship, Western-Xià administration), positioning the Dàzàngjīng held at any given moment within the broader history of the Chinese Buddhist canon (Hànchuán dàzàngjīng 漢傳大藏經).
Abstract
The article argues three foundational positions: (1) Dūnhuáng Buddhism is part of the Han-Chinese Buddhist tradition (Hànchuán fójiào 漢傳佛教) and its canonical holdings are constrained by the broader Han-Chinese canon-history; (2) the dàzàngjīng is a theory-driven compilation — a “great Buddhist anthology compiled according to a definite organising principle” (ànzhào mǒuzhǒng lǐniàn biānzǎn de fójiào dàcóngshū 按照某種理念編纂的佛教大叢書) — so canonical holdings of different periods reflect different organising principles even when their contents largely overlap; (3) Dūnhuáng has its own distinctive features — multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic crossroads; alternately under central-imperial, Tibetan, Guīyìjūn, and Western-Xià administration — so its canonical holdings reflect a frontier canon-history, with stronger Western-region (Central Asian) coloration than the central-plain canon.
Fāng holds the “Dūnhuáng yíshū fèiqì shuō” 敦煌遺書廢棄說 (“the Dūnhuáng manuscripts as discard-deposit theory”) — i.e., that the Dūnhuáng cave manuscripts represent texts retired from active monastic use, not a complete collection. From this position, the Dūnhuáng cave deposit is not itself a complete canon, and any attempt to reconstruct a complete monastic canon must combine the cave-deposit with secondary evidence (catalog records, inscriptional witnesses, etc.). This article focuses on the secondary-evidence reconstruction; a planned companion article will treat the cave-deposit’s evidence specifically.
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) — the monograph context.
- Fāng Guǎngchāng 方廣錩, Dūnhuáng fó-jiào jīng-lù jí-jiào 敦煌佛教經錄輯校 (Nanjing: Jiāngsū gǔjí, 1997) — the catalog-evidence base for this article.
- Drège, Jean-Pierre, Les bibliothèques en Chine au temps des manuscrits (jusqu’au Xe siècle) (Paris: EFEO, 1991) — context on Chinese pre-print library history.
- Rong Xinjiang, Eighteen Lectures on Dunhuang (Leiden: Brill, 2013) — context on the cave-deposit theories.
Other points of interest
Fāng’s “fèiqì shuō” 廢棄說 (discard theory) is one of the principal interpretive frameworks for the Dūnhuáng cave-deposit and is opposed to Pelliot / Stein’s implicit “library” theory and to Rong Xinjiang’s “shèngcháo 聖朝 yíshū gōngtáng” (sacred-rejected-storage) variant. The article is part of the broader Sino-Japanese-French scholarly debate on the cave-deposit’s nature.