Guānyú Jiāng Mì nǚzǐ Sēng Fǎ sòngchū jīng 關於江泌女子僧法誦出經
On the Sūtras Recited Forth by Jiāng Mì’s Daughter Sēng Fǎ by 方廣錩 (Fāng Guǎngchāng)
About the work
A scholarly article by Fāng Guǎngchāng, published as item No. 077 in Zàngwài fójiào wénxiàn 藏外佛教文獻 vol. 9 (Beijing: Zōngjiào wénhuà, 2003). The paper studies a remarkable episode in the documentary history of late-5th- to early-6th-century Chinese Buddhism: the production of 21 sūtras in 35 fascicles by 僧法 Sēng Fǎ (491–505), a daughter of the Southern-Qí literatus 江泌 Jiāng Mì, who from age 9 onward “recited forth” (誦出) Buddhist scripture in trance. Their texts were taken down by attendants and circulated in manuscript copies in the Liáng capital Jiànyè, attracting the personal attention of Emperor Wǔ of Liáng (reigned 502–549). 僧祐 Sēng Yòu (445–518) discusses the case extensively in his Chūsānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T55n2145) and uses it to articulate his theoretical distinction between yíjīng 疑經 (“doubtful scriptures”) and wěizhuàn 偽撰 (“forgeries”), making this episode one of the principal source-cases in the early Chinese Buddhist apocrypha-criticism tradition.
Abstract
Fāng’s article reads the Sēng Fǎ episode as a window onto the formation of the yíwěijīng 疑偽經 category in early-medieval Chinese Buddhist bibliography. The article first transcribes Sēng Yòu’s full account from Chūsānzàng jì jí fasc. 5 (the entry Sēngfǎní suǒ sòngchū jīng rù yílù 僧法尼所誦出經入疑錄), then resolves Sēng Yòu’s chronology against 江泌’s biography in the NánQí shū 南齊書 and Nánshǐ 南史 and against the historical Liáng-dynasty era-name framework, establishing Sēng Fǎ’s lifedates as 491–505 (corrected from Sēng Yòu’s slightly inconsistent figures: at age 10 in 永元 2 / 500 she could not have been 12 in the 中興 1 / 501 entry — so Sēng Yòu’s count is one year too high, and Sēng Fǎ in fact died at 15, not 16). Two of Sēng Fǎ’s texts — the Fóshuō Huāyán yīngluò jīng 佛說花嚴瓔珞經 and the Fóshuō Bōrě dédào jīng 佛說般若得道經 — are listed in the recently-recovered Dūnhuáng witness of the Zhòngjīng biélù 眾經別錄 (S.2872 + P.3747), the lost 5th–6th c. catalogue of which only fragments survive. The Zhòngjīng biélù lists them not in a yíwěi section but among the standard Mahāyāna texts, classifying them as wén 文 (“flowing-rendering” style) — which strikingly indicates that at least some of Sēng Fǎ’s recited texts were initially received and circulated as canonical, not as suspect, in some quarters. Fāng then traces the texts’ downstream reception through later catalogues — Fèi Chángfáng’s Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶記 (597), Dàoxuān’s DàTáng nèidiǎn lù 大唐內典錄 (664), Zhìshēng’s Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄 (730) — showing the progressive consolidation of the texts’ wěi status until they fell out of circulation entirely. The article uses the Sēng Fǎ episode to clarify how Chinese Buddhist yíwěi judgments operated as a historicising practice: a text’s authenticity rested less on its philological provenance than on its conformity to the spreading orthodoxy of imported Mahāyāna doctrine.
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 broader monograph context for the yí-wěi problem.
- Buswell, Robert E., Jr., ed., Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990) — the principal English-language collection on the topic, with chapters by Tokuno Kyoko on Sēng Yòu’s catalogue practice.
- Tokuno, Kyoko, “The Evaluation of Indigenous Scriptures in Chinese Buddhist Bibliographical Catalogues,” in Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha (above), pp. 31–74 — extended treatment of the Sēng Yòu yí-jīng / wěi-zhuàn distinction discussed in Fāng’s article.
- Storch, Tanya, The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography: Censorship and Transformation of the Tripitaka (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2014) — the principal English-language monograph on the catalogue tradition.
- Wáng Liánjué 王廉珏 et al. (eds.), Zhōngguó fójiào shū-mù shǐ 中國佛教書目史 (multiple vols., 21st-c.) — Chinese-language survey of the catalogue tradition.
Other points of interest
The Sēng Fǎ case is one of the very few documented instances in Chinese Buddhist history of a child trance-medium producing what was at least partially received as scripture, and stands as a Chinese parallel to phenomena such as the Dà-fó-dǐng-jīng 大佛頂經 (“Śūraṅgama-sūtra”) production-narrative and to the broader Tibetan gter-ma tradition. Sēng Yòu’s response — preserving the texts’ titles in his catalogue while listing them as yí (doubtful) and personally seeking out only one of them (Miào-yīn shīzi-hǒu jīng 妙音師子吼經, 3 fasc.) — exemplifies the careful philological neutrality that has made the Chū-sān-zàng jì jí the foundation of all later Chinese Buddhist bibliography.