Běnjué 本覺 (fl. ca. 1270) was a late-Southern-Sòng Buddhist monk; the preface to his sole surviving major work, the Shìshì tōngjiàn 釋氏通鑑 (KR6r0020), is dated 1270 (Xiánchún 6). He gives little autobiographical detail beyond identifying himself as a monk in the southern Buddhist establishment.
The Shìshì tōngjiàn is a twelve-juan Buddhist universal history modelled on 司馬光’s Zīzhì tōngjiàn — the earliest Buddhist historiographical work to take the great Confucian universal history as its formal model. Unlike the broadly contemporary Fózǔ tǒngjì of 志磐 (KR6r0012), Běnjué’s work is non-sectarian in stance, treating the various schools of Chinese Buddhism with relatively even-handed attention.
No further biographical data is preserved.
The name 本覺 is also a major doctrinal term in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism (Skt. prakṛti-prabhāsvara / “original enlightenment”), and is used as a Dharma-name by many other monks; the present figure must not be confused with later monastics of the same name (e.g. the Japanese Hossō or Tendai Hongaku writers).