Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia

The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon

Jiang Wu, Lucille Chia

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231540193
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Graphic Design

A monumental work in the history of religion, the history of the book, the study of politics, and bibliographical research, this volume follows the making of the Chinese Buddhist canon from the fourth century to the digital era. Approaching the subject from a historical perspective, it ties the religious, social, and textual practices of canon formation to the development of East Asian Buddhist culture and enlivens Chinese Buddhist texts for readers interested in the evolution of Chinese writing and the Confucian and Daoist traditions.

The collection undertakes extensive readings of major scriptural catalogs from the early manuscript era as well as major printed editions, including the Kaibao Canon, Qisha Canon, Goryeo Canon, and Taisho Canon. Contributors add fascinating depth to such understudied issues as the historical process of compilation, textual manipulation, physical production and management, sponsorship, the dissemination of various editions, cultic activities surrounding the canon, and the canon's reception in different East Asian societies. The Chinese Buddhist canon is one of the most enduring textual traditions in East Asian religion and culture, and through this exhaustive, multifaceted effort, an essential body of work becomes part of a new, versatile narrative of East Asian Buddhism that has far-reaching implications for world history.

PART I

Overview

1. The Chinese Buddhist Canon Through the Ages

Essential Categories and Critical Issues in the Study of a Textual Tradition

Jiang Wu

The Chinese Buddhist canon is an organized collection of Buddhist texts translated into or written in Chinese. Its main content centers on translated Buddhist works from Indian and Central Asian regions and is supplemented with Buddhist and related texts written in Chinese. In Buddhist communities, a complete set of the canon has also been treated as the object of worship and devotion, acquiring significant textual and spiritual authority. Because of the complexity of its structure and historical evolution, the formation and transformation of the Chinese Buddhist canon can be considered a phenomenon with religious, social, and textual significance in Buddhist history.

In this chapter, I intend to orient readers toward a basic understanding of the Chinese Buddhist canonic tradition and focus on some critical categories and issues in the study of this great textual culture. I first outline the origin of the Chinese Buddhist canon and its historical development. Next I describe the structure of the canon as seen in various catalogs. Because the canon is also a physical object, its material aspects and physical layout will be discussed as well. Finally, I will single out a few critical issues in the study of the Chinese canon.

The Origin of the Chinese Buddhist Canon

The origin of the Chinese Buddhist canon is an intriguing question because the idea of a canon was clearly brought from India through the translation of various scriptures. But there is little evidence showing that the Chinese modeled their canon on the basis of an existing “Ur-Canon” of non-Chinese origin.

In early history, “Buddha’s word” (Buddhavacana) was authenticated during various councils, and the result was the formation of the so-called Tripitaka—the three baskets (sanzang 三藏) comprising Vinaya (pini 毗尼, or lü 律, disciplines), Sutra (xiuduoluo 修多羅, or xiudulu 俢妬路, or more commonly jing 經, scripture), and Abhidharma (Apitan 阿毗曇, or lun 論, study of the scripture). The Sutra and Vinaya sections took form during the first council immediately after the Buddha’s death at Rājagṛiha, and the Abhidharma section was gradually developed and added to the canon. Early Buddhist sources also refer to a classification of Buddhist literature into nine or twelve divisions (jiufenjiao 九分教 or shi’erfenjiao 十二分教, shi’erbujing 十二部經) based on literary styles. The formation of the early Buddhist canon, especially the Abhidharma section, was also based on sectarian divisions in Buddhist communities, which reflected sectarian views of early Buddhist orders. One version of the early canon was written down around the first century B.C.E. in Sri Lanka and became today’s Pali canon.¹

Although the Chinese Buddhist canon belongs to a distinctive Chinese textual tradition, the idea of constructing a canon was clearly influenced by Buddhist practice in India. Allusions to the existence of a canon were clear in various accounts of Buddha’s parinirvana and the convening of the councils where Buddhist teaching was debated and authenticated.

When the event of Buddha’s parinirvana was narrated in various scriptures and Vinaya texts, the formation of a body of Buddha’s words and the locations of his teaching were inevitable subjects. It was often hinted in these texts that one of the results of early Buddhist councils was the creation of the canon, yet its nature and contents had been disputed. Some later texts even suggested the existence of a “Mahayana Canon,” and this intrigued Chinese Buddhists because the Chinese tradition is overwhelmingly Mahayana. Because Chinese civilization was largely a written culture at the time Buddhism arrived, the Chinese, despite the fact that early Buddhist culture in India was orally based, imagined the canon to be a written collection of scriptures. Various legends emerging during the medieval period promoted the idea of a sacred canon existing in India that was not only written down but also physically stored in mythical and imaginative places such as Dragon King’s Palace under the sea. This imaginative mentality gave rise to fervor among Chinese Buddhists to embark on journeys to India in search of such imaginary canons.²

It is clear that the idea of a canon was impressed onto the Chinese mind through the numerous references to the existence of an actual “Tripitaka.” Chinese Buddhists were aware of the existence of the Buddhist canon during the process of translation and developed an early “Tripitaka Discourse,” according to Stefano Zacchetti’s paper (chapter 3) in this volume. For example, the fifth-century cataloger Sengyou 僧祐 (445–518) made reference to the compilation of the canon in the first council, recorded in the second fascicle of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā śāstra (Dazhidu lun 大智度論) and also in the preface to the Sarvāstivātda Vinaya. He even mentioned the legend of an eight-section Mahayana canon (Bodhisattvapiṭaka) in the translation of Sutra on the Incarnation of Bodhisattvas (Pusa chutai jing 菩薩出胎經) by Zhu Fonian 竺佛念 in the fourth century.³

The formation of the Chinese Buddhist canon is first of all based on massive translations of Buddhist texts imported from India and Central Asia. The translation activities started from the first century, allegedly with the translation of the Scripture of Forty-two Sections (Sishi’er’zhang jing 四十二章經), and stopped around the eleventh century. Roughly estimated, there are about 194 known translators who translated about 1,484 titles and 5,812 fascicles (Ch. juan 卷, literarily “scrolls” or “rolls”), according to a comprehensive catalog compiled in the Yuan Dynasty (Zhiyuan fabao kantong zonglu 至元法寶堪同總錄).⁴ During this process, the content and structure of the canon evolved into a complicated system. For about a thousand years, translating, cataloging, and digesting these texts became a paramount task for Chinese Buddhists.

However, the imported Indian texts failed to mention a list or catalog upon which Chinese monks could have relied. Recent scholarship has developed a hypothesis that the early Chinese translation projects were tied to the scriptural tradition in the Gandhāran region, where a clear path toward creating a more organized and standardized collection of Buddhist literature, possibly a written Gandhārī canon, emerged during the second century C.E. However, it is also evident that this flourishing textual culture was independent of the Chinese tradition, and no linear link with the creation of a Chinese collection can be established.⁵ As Lewis Lancaster shows convincingly, when Chinese encountered missionary monks from India and Central Asia, “the order by which texts were listed was not defined by any of the Indian information available. There was no list to give this order and no rules for making such a list. The Chinese had to invent the rule by which they could determine ordering.”⁶

Although the beginning of the Chinese Buddhist canon is still unclear, early records show that the process of canonization in China coincided with the rise of the Mahayana and the transition from oral to written culture in Indian and Central Asian Buddhism. This transition accelerated when Buddhism was introduced into China and met with the distinctive Chinese textual tradition. The accumulation of translated Buddhist texts resulted in various attempts to examine and classify them. Eventually, Chinese Buddhists organized a unique Chinese canon and continued to produce various editions to update its content and perfect its classification system.

It appears that during the formative age of Chinese Buddhism from the first to the fifth century the only option for the Chinese was to look at their indigenous bibliographical tradition for inspiration about how to organize Buddhist texts. Tanya Storch, in her recent book, shows how deeply the formation of Buddhist canonical catalogs was influenced by Confucian cataloging practice.⁷ As she demonstrates, Chinese bibliographers such as Liu Xiang 劉向 (77–6 B.C.E.) profoundly influenced the formation of Buddhist Tripitaka bibliographies. It seems that in this early stage, “Buddhist bibliography in China could take no other course but to emulate Confucian bibliography.”⁸ Jean-Pierre Drège also suggests that the evolution of Buddhist manuscript culture has to be considered as belonging to the Chinese library and archival tradition, and many Buddhist cataloging activities were first started as part of the archiving efforts in imperial libraries.⁹

The origin of the Chinese canon is still a mystery. To solve it, scholars need to gain better understanding of the Indian textual culture at the time when Buddhism arrived in China. Moreover, the creation of the canon cannot be isolated from the influence of the Chinese bibliographical tradition. It might be futile to search for an “Ur-Canon” or “Ur-Catalog” in the Indian or Central Asian tradition.¹⁰ However, there must be subtle influences from the Indian and Central Asian traditions th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Conventions
• Introduction
• Part I: Overview
• Part II: The Formative Period
• Part III: The Advent of Printing
• Part IV: The Canon Beyond China
• Appendix 1. A Brief Survey of the Printed Editions of the Chinese Buddhist Canon
• Appendix 2. The Creation of the CBETA Chinese Electronic Tripitaka Collection in Taiwan
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index