Sòng Lián 宋濂
Founding-Míng scholar-official and literary master; posthumous title Wénxiàn 文憲 (“Letters and Norms”). Zì Jǐnglián 景濂; hào Qiánxī 潛溪 (“Hidden Stream”); lay Buddhist sobriquets Wúxiàng jūshì 無相居士 (“Formless Layman”), Xuánzhēnzǐ 玄真子 (“Master of Profound-Truth”). Native of Pǔjiāng 浦江 (Zhèjiāng). Lifedates 1310–1381.
One of the Founding Four Masters of the Míng (Míng chū sì dà jiā 明初四大家) alongside Wáng Yáng 王褘, Liú Jī 劉基, and Zhāng Yǔ 張羽. Served Zhū Yuánzhāng (later Hóngwǔ emperor) from his pre-imperial period as his senior literary-editorial authority and tutor. Chief editor of the Yuán shǐ 元史 (Yuán dynastic history, 1370); senior imperial tutor to the crown prince; Hànlín xuéshì chéngzhǐ 翰林學士承旨 (“Senior Academician-Counsellor of the Hànlín Academy”). Commonly called the Tàishǐ gōng 太史公 (“Grand Historian”) — a title echoing Sīmǎ Qiān’s status in the Hàn. Died in exile in 1381, a victim of the late-Hóngwǔ political purges, after the implication of his grandson in a treason case.
As a lay Buddhist, Sòng Lián engaged seriously with Chán, Huáyán, and Pure-Land traditions. His Buddhist writings — prefaces to sūtras and monastic records, tomb-inscriptions for eminent monks, temple and monastery records — are substantial and were extracted in the late Míng by Yúnqī Zhūhóng 雲棲袾宏 into the ten-juan Hù fǎ lù 護法錄 KR6q0187. The collection, revised and authenticated (dìng 訂) by Qián Qiānyì 錢謙益 in 1616, is a major primary source for early-Míng Buddhist intellectual history.
Sòng Lián’s position as the senior literatus of the founding Hóngwǔ administration made his Buddhist engagement emblematic of the early-Míng state’s accommodation of Buddhism within the Confucian-state order, and his writings are cited in subsequent Buddhist-apologetic literature as evidence of this founding-era tolerance.
Sources: Míng shǐ 明史 biography (juan 128); Dictionary of Ming Biography (Goodrich & Fang, 1976); extensive modern scholarship.