Zhāng Shīchéng 張師誠 (1762–1830)
High-Qīng senior provincial official and lay Buddhist scholar; native of Guīān 歸安 in Húzhōu 湖州 (modern Zhèjiāng). Zì Xīnyǒu 心友, hào Lánzhǔ 蘭渚 (whence the alternate Zhāng Lánzhǔ 張蘭渚). CBDB person id 58465 (1762–1830).
He earned his jìnshì 進士 in Qiánlóng 56 (1791) and rose through the late-Qián-lóng / Jiāqìng / early-Dào-guāng provincial bureaucracy to occupy a sequence of governorships and vice-ministerial positions, culminating in his tenure as Governor of Jiāngsū 巡撫江蘇 (with concurrent vice-ministerial rank in the Board of War 兵部侍郎) — the position from which he signed the 自序 of his Jìng zhōng jìng yòu jìng on the 1st month of Dàoguāng 5 (1825). He earlier held governorships of Fújiàn 福建 and elsewhere.
He is principally remembered today for his lay Buddhist scholarship: as compiler of the four-juǎn Jìng zhōng jìng yòu jìng KR6p0104 (X1185), one of the most consequential late-Qīng literati Pure Land anthologies, gathered over more than a decade beginning in Jiāqìng jiǎxū 嘉慶甲戌 (1814) and finalised under his own preface in 1825. His Pure Land scholarship is read alongside 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng’s late-eighteenth-century lay-Buddhist programme as the principal evidence for the high-status literati Pure Land tradition that fed into the late-Qīng Pure Land revival.
A separate concern of his late official career was the suppression of the Báilián jiào 白蓮教 (“White-Lotus”) sectarian rebellions in the early-Jiā-qìng era; in this connection he is associated with the legendary discovery and recommendation of the young Lín Zéxú 林則徐 (1785–1850), who served on Zhāng’s Fújiàn governor’s staff and was promoted on Zhāng’s recommendation. Lín later cited Zhāng as one of the formative mentors of his own career.