Wáng Zōngmù 王宗沐
Míng scholar-official, literary critic, and lay Buddhist. Zì Xīnfǔ 新甫; hào Jìngxuān 敬軒, Yìxuān 益軒. Native of Mǎpíng 馬平 / Línghǎi 臨海 (Zhèjiāng). Lifedates 1523–1591.
Jìnshì in Jiājìng 23 (1544). Held various senior provincial administrative posts, including Táizhōu prefect (Tái jùn shǒu 台郡守) — in which capacity, per his own preface, he published the Hánshānzǐ shī jí KR6q0188 in 1579 for the Táizhōu reading public. Author of the Hǎi yùn xiáng kǎo 海運詳考 (a major treatise on maritime transport), the Jìngxuān jí 敬軒集 (collected writings), and other scholarly-administrative works.
Wáng’s preface to the Hánshān poetry collection engages the classical literary-critical question of “Chán as poetry” (chán rú shī 禪如詩) — citing Yán Yǔ 嚴羽’s Cānglàng shīhuà 滄浪詩話 — and argues that the Hánshān poems, authored by “a Chán master using poetry to enter into sagehood” (yǐ chán rù shèng 以禪入聖), achieve a three-fold literary-Chán excellence: qīng yōu lěng dàn 清幽冷淡 (“clear-and-secluded, cold-and-pale”); shēn yǒng yǐn ào 深永隱奧 (“deep-and-eternal, hidden-and-profound”); and qiǎn sú liáo dǎo 淺俗潦倒 (“shallow-and-vulgar, dishevelled-and-fallen”). Wáng also proposes the unconventional dating of Hánshān to the late-eighth / early-ninth century, contemporary with Zhàozhōu Cóngshěn 趙州諗 (778–897).