Tenth-century Korean (Goryeo) Tiāntái 天台 master and the principal historical figure in the textual transmission of the Tiāntái scholastic apparatus from Korea back to China. DILA Authority A001620. Native of Fántái 繁臺 (in Korea).
Background: in the late Tang and Five Dynasties period, the political turmoil in China caused most of the Tiāntái scholastic textual corpus to be dispersed or lost. The WǔYuè 吳越 ruler Qián Hóngchù 錢弘俶, desiring to restore the Tiāntái doctrinal tradition, sent emissaries to Korea (Goryeo) in the Jiànlóng 建隆 era (960–962) to request copies of the Tiāntái texts that had been preserved in the Korean Tiāntái library tradition.
Dìguān, by command of the Goryeo king, brought the Tiāntái treatises and various subcommentaries to China and went to the Luóxī Chuánjiàoyuàn 螺溪傳教院 on Tiāntáishān, where he met the contemporary Tiāntái master Yìjì 義寂 (919–987) and took him as teacher. Resided there for ten years until his death.
After his death, fellow students discovered in his old book-chest the Tiāntái sìjiào yí 天台四教儀 (KR6d0168, T1931, 1 juan) — a concise summary of Zhìyǐ’s wǔshí bājiào 五時八教 doctrinal-classification system. The work, recorded (錄 lù) by Dìguān as a synthetic study aid, became the standard introductory text for the Tiāntái scholastic tradition through the Sòng, Yuán, Míng, Qīng, and modern periods — one of the most widely read texts in the entire pre-modern East-Asian Buddhist canon.
Sources: Fózǔ tǒngjì 佛祖統紀 (T2035); DILA A001620; Fóguāng 6296.