Late-Táng monk-philologist of Shānyīn 山陰 (modern Shàoxīng, Zhèjiāng). Birth date and lay surname not preserved; death between Yuánhé 元和 1, 12th lunar month and Yuánhé 2, 1st lunar month = 29 January 806 – 14 February 807 CE.
He resided on Wǔ-tái-shān 五臺山, where he studied Sanskrit siddham (悉曇 xī-tán) phonology and script under the South-Indian śramaṇa Prajñā-bodhi 般若菩提, who had reached Wǔ-tái via the southern maritime route in the late 770s or early 780s bearing dhāraṇī texts in Sanskrit folios. From this study Zhì-guǎng compiled the one-juan Xī-tán zì-jì 悉曇字記 (KR6s0020, T2132) — the standard Tang-period treatise on the Siddham Sanskrit script in Chinese, structured as 17 chapters of siddham letter-permutations exceeding 7,000 letter-forms in total, with phonological analysis using Chinese tonal-category and articulation-class apparatus.
The work is the foundational document of the Sino-Japanese Siddham (悉曇 / 悉檀) script-study tradition. Through Kūkai’s 空海 importation in 806, it became the founding text of the Japanese Shittan 悉曇 scholarly tradition.
Source: DILA Buddhist Person Authority A010624; Fóguāng dà cídiǎn p. 3862.2; auto-preface to Xītán zìjì (T54n2132).
A different Zhì-guǎng 智廣 of Western Xià (西夏, DILA A001291), floruit late twelfth century. Co-compiler — with Huì-zhēn 慧真 慧真 — of the Mì-zhòu yuán-yīn wǎng-shēng jí 密呪圓因往生集 (KR6j0742, T46 no. 1956), a one-fascicle Western Xià dhāraṇī-compilation prefaced and dated by the Western Xià counselor Hè Zōng-shòu 賀宗壽 to Tiān-qìng 7 = 1200. The work integrates Tibetan-tradition Vajrayāna ritual elements with Chinese Esoteric and Pure Land soteriology, characteristic of Western Xià Buddhist culture’s distinctive Tibetan-Chinese synthesis. Lifedates and broader biographical particulars unrecorded; this Zhì-guǎng is not the Tang-period author of the Xī-tán zì-jì. Per DILA A001291.