Yán Dàcān 嚴大參
Late-Míng / early-Qīng lay Chán practitioner and temple patron. Hào 𨍏轢道人 Chēlì dàorén (“the Daoist of Clattering Carts”). Self-identified in his Pǔmíngsì preface as Línjì zhèngzōng sānshí’èr shì 臨濟正宗三十二世 (“thirty-second generation of Línjì orthodoxy”) — i.e., a lay dharma-inheritor in the Línjì line in the generation following Mìyún Yuánwù 密雲圓悟 and his cohort.
Principal patron of the early-Qīng re-founding of Pǔmíngsì 普明寺, where he restored the temple base (huīfù sì jī 恢復寺基), successively invited the Chán masters Xuánwēi 玄微 and then Míngyán 明巖 as abbots, and rebuilt the halls and residences. At some point during this project he supplied the monk Rú Niàn 如念 with the Pǔmíng karmic-origin records and the old temple pictures, which led to the compilation of the Shí niú tú hé sòng KR6q0161 in Kāngxī 1 (1662). Yán contributes three distinct sets of harmonizing verses to the compilation (titled hé, zài hé, and sān hé — “harmonized”, “harmonized a second time”, and “harmonized a third time”), reflecting the seriousness of his lay-Chán practice.