Northern Sòng monk-scholar of Qiántáng 錢塘 (modern Hángzhōu), styled Huìwù dàshī 慧悟大師 (“Great Master of Compassionate Awakening”) and resident successively at Lónghuá Chánfǔ 龍華禪府 and the Yuèlún Mountain hermitage 月輪山 in his home prefecture. Birth and death dates are not preserved.
Active in Xián-píng 咸平 / Jǐng-dé 景德 (998–1007) as a cì-zǐ shā-mén 賜紫沙門 (“purple-robed śramaṇa”) on the lecture circuit at imperial monasteries in Biàn-jīng 汴京 (the Northern Sòng capital, modern Kāifēng), then withdrew east to Qián-táng for a ten-year canon-reading retreat (ca. 1009–1019). The retreat was the immediate occasion for his compilation of the Shì-shì yào-lǎn 釋氏要覽 (KR6s0005, T2127), prompted in its final form by Zhēn-zōng’s Tiānxǐ 3 (1019) empire-wide ordination amnesty for monastic novices. The work was finalized with a gentry preface in Tiānxǐ 4 (1020).
He also produced the standard annotated edition of Wáng Bó’s 王勃 Shìjiā rúlái chéngdào jì — the Shìjiā rúlái chéngdào jì zhù 釋迦如來成道記註 (X1509, two juan) — and is credited with two now-lost works: the Ní méngqiú 尼蒙求 (one juan, an ABC primer for nuns) and Shìshì xūzhī 釋氏須知 (three juan).
The Sòng Fózǔ tǒngjì 佛祖統紀, j. 44, lists him among the noted Tiāntái-aligned Sòng monastic lecturers of Zhēnzōng’s reign.
Source: DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001542; Fóguāng dà cídiǎn p. 5939.2.