toward a comprehensive history of chinese buddhism

Toward a Comprehensive History of Chinese BuddhismA Comprehensive History of Chinese Buddhism for Readers of Japanese by TsukamotoZenryūReview by: Leon HurvitzJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1969), pp. 763-773Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/596948 .

Accessed: 18/06/2014 17:12

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal ofthe American Oriental Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.185 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 17:12:49 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aos

http://www.jstor.org/stable/596948?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF CHINESE BUDDHISM*

LEON HURVITZ

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

If the author of the Chigoku Bukky5 tsashi can fulfill his ambition, his work will be complete in five volumes, covering the whole range of the history of Buddhism in China. The volume under review takes Chinese Buddhism from its introduction up to the death of Tao-an (385). The review is not only a review but also a statement of intention to translate the entire work into English, a statement accompanied by an appeal to the learned world for assis- tance. For the translation will be not merely a translation; it will be an attempt to restate the issue in a way that will make it relevant and meaningful to readers of English. To do this, the translator will have to draw on the expertise of many in areas in which he is inade- quately prepared or totally unprepared.

THIS IS IN THE NATURE OF AN APPEAL as well as a review. The appeal, for that matter, is twofold. For one thing, the author is the reviewer's sensei, and the reviewer can, as a consequence, lay no claim to objectivity. The cause of objectivity is ill served thanks to another circumstance as well. Many years ago, when the present work was still in the planning stage, this reviewer agreed (volun- teered, to put it more accurately) to render the Japanese finished product into English for publication. In point of fact, the Suzuki Foundation, which is to publish the original, is also pledged to publish the English version. When a review is followed by a translation of the same work by the same hand, the learned world may raise an eye- brow or two, not without reason. It is to be hoped that the present review will convince its readers that the work in question is worthy of publication in English translation, and that the translator may then be forgiven for being a reviewer as well.

The second prong of the appeal is a more cogent one. For this is to be a work by a Japanese describing what happened to a religious movement when it moved from one foreign land into another.

* A comprehensive history of Chinese Buddhism for readers of Japanese is in the process of being written by Tsukamoto Zenryi, the first volume of which has been published: Chigoku Bukky5 tsiishi, daiikkan. Pp. vii + -ii + 661 +23. Preface; indexes of names of monks, other personal names, scriptural titles, other book titles, monastery names, place names, and miscellaneous items. Tokyo, Suzuki Gakujutsu Zaidan, 1968. 3,000 yen.

In English translation it will be, mutatis mutandis, the same thing. The expression mutatis mutandis, however, implies one very significant difference. For the author is describing "what happened to my religion when it left the land of its origin on the first stages of a journey that was eventually to bring it to my country." A translator will be describing "what happened to that Indian religious system when it left India, a country with which we have not much in common, to go to China, one with which we have even less." The vantage point being totally different, the description must also be radically different, and it stands to reason that mere translation will never do. Above all, the passage of Buddhism from India to China took it through Central Asia, country which was culturally Iranian at the time. What is known of that country has to be pieced together from scraps, some of which are in Indian languages (occasion- ally Sanskrit, more often Prakrit), most of them, however, in Greek and Chinese. To the Chinese materials the author has direct access, but the Greek are beyond him. The latter were translated decades ago into English and/or French, in which form they were and are accessible to Japanese specialists in Central Asia, most of whom know no Greek. These latter translated the modem European versions into Japanese, or wrote other secondary works making use of them, and it is these last-named that were used by Mr. Tsuka- moto. While that is all well and good for a Japa- nese, it will not do for an Occidental, who, after

763



764 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89.4 (1969)

all, is a product of the same cultural tradition represented by the aforementioned Greek his- torians. The English translator must go back to the Greek and Indian, as well as to the Chinese, sources.

There is another aspect to this same considera- tion. The author's exegetical apparatus consists of references to all primary materials and to the best secondary writings, whether of Chinese or of Japanese authorship, available as of the time of writing. While this is indispensable to the serious Occidental reader no less than to his Oriental counterpart, the former must also have his attention called to competent translations and secondary studies written in the languages of Western Europe and (though it is almost irrelevant to this particular case) in Russian. This is where my "appeal," in the strict sense of the word, lies. For I frequently shall not know what secondary work of high quality may exist in the languages of Europe on this or that particular question, and shall be obliged to depend upon my learned colleagues in both Europe and America to call my attention to the pertinent materials.

So much for this. The book itself begins with a preface that adumbrates the prehistory of the work in the broadest sense. Appropriately enough, the starting point for this description is the author's personal history. In his late twenties (which correspond roughly to the late twenties of this century) the author lived through a revolution in the Japanese approach to the study both of China and of Buddhism. The source of the in- spiration for this change was, as the author himself tells us, Europe, notably England and France, the latter in particular. This brought about a change in the approach to a study combining both, viz., that of the history of Buddhism in China. What the author does not tell us is that before that time most Japanese studies that were not narrowly textual were made in hindsight. That is to say, the viewpoint was as follows: "In Japan we have a Buddhist church and Buddhist tradi- tions characterized by such and such phenomena. What do these go back to?" While this is valid enough for Japan, it makes no attempt to account for aspects of Chinese Buddhism, however im-

portant, that have left no trace in Japan. That is to say, the method may do justice to Japan, but not to China. Of the three greats, Chavannes, Maspero, Pelliot, not one knew Japanese, but all three were men of meticulous scholarship and mountainous erudition. Japanese influenced by them would follow their scholarly example, and would depart from their predecessors in seeing China in terms of herself, not in terms of Japan. Another fact of importance that the author does not mention is that he himself is the flower of the application of this method to the study of Chinese Buddhism.

A fact pointed out in this preface, one that is virtually self-evident, is that no history of Chinese Buddhism both intensive and extensive exists in any language. The reasons for this lack are no mystery, but they will not be dwelt on in the present review. Suffice it to say that a person whose total career is not committed to the subject has nowhere to turn if he wishes without a great deal of labor to get information on Chinese Buddhism that has both breadth of scope and pro- fundity of detail. Mr. Tsukamoto, if the years are vouchsafed to him, proposes to achieve a work in five volumes, one that will carry the history of Buddhism in China up to the time of writing of the final volume. The volume under review takes it from the beginning up to the end of Tao-an's life in 385. The reason, as the author says himself, is that Tao-an marks a turning-point, being the first great figure produced by the Chinese Bud- dhist church and teacher of the second (Hui- yuan), one whose death preceded by less than two decades the arrival of the missionary (Kumdra- jiva) who with his arrival revolutionized that church more than any other individual before or since.

The most important fact of all is that the present work is offered as a contribution to the learned community of all the world. It is here that, as the author himself is kind enough to point out, I hope to make my own contribution, being in some position to render the work relevant to Occi- dental readers. The author, understandably, does not mention that he is uniquely qualified to pro- duce this history, being well-read in both areas,



HURVITZ: Toward a Comprehensive History of Chinese Buddhism 765

that of Buddhist scholarship and that of Chinese history, and, incidentally, having a flair for history such as this reviewer, at least, has never seen in any other human being. The author is sadly aware that he has not world and all for time, though one must read this awareness between the lines of his grateful acknowledgments of help and support.

In anticipation of the translation that will appear, hopefully, before too long, it may not be out of place to reproduce the entire Table of Contents of this first volume:

I. Introduction. The peculiar character of Chinese Buddhism, specifically the things that moulded that character. A. Chinese Buddhism as a religion that shed the

skin of Indian Buddhism. B. The peculiarities of the imported religion that

moulded the Chinese religion. 1. The prolonged arrival of "several Bud-

dhisms," both Mahayana and Hinayana, from their SEVERAL RESPECTIVE AREAS.

2. The movement of proselytization after the appearance of icons.

C. The indigenous achievements of Chinese civilization that in their own turn moulded the incoming religion. 1. In the era of undisputed Confucian domina-

tion. 2. Huang-Lao notions and the "Way of the

supernatural sylph" -prayers and charms for the aversion of disaster and the attrac- tion of good fortune.

II. The first transmission of the Faith-Buddhism under the Latter Han. A. Emperor Ming and his "quest of the Dharma in

response to a dream." B. The manner of the Faith at the time of the first

transmission. C. The appearance of, and the influence exerted

by, the Buddhist scriptures in Chinese translation. 1. The Parthian strain-AN Shih-kao's trans-

lations of the Hinaydna scriptures and the community of adherents attracted to them.

2. The Yueh-chih strain-Mahiyana Buddhism in translation.

III. Buddhism under the Three Kingdoms. A. Buddhism and the collapse of the Han. B. The prohibition in early Wei of popular

ancestor worship and the restrictions imposed upon the circulation of magicians and shamans among the general populace.

C. Buddhism and the rise of metaphysics under the Wei.

D. The Buddhist center in Lo-yang under the Wei. E. The Buddhist center in Chien-k'ang under the

Wu. IV. Buddhism under the Western Tsin (265-316).

A. The society and the learned Buddhist community of the Western Tsin after the latter's assumption of power.

B. The tendency of the religious community, specifically of the Buddhist community, under the Western Tsin.

C. Proselytization and the enormous translation project of Dharmaraksa (CHU Fa-hu).

D. The translations of CHU Shu-lan, Chinese- born son of Indian immigrants.

V. The triumph of Buddhism in the North under Chinese and non-Chinese rulers. A. Social dislocation from Western Tsin time on-

ward. B. The forward surge of proselytization in North

China under Fo -t'u-ch'eng. Appendix. Developments in the ceremonial commemorating the birth of the Buddha.

C. Three Chinese monks typifying Fo-t'u-ch'eng's Chinese disciples. 1. The recluse-CHU Seng-lang of T'ai-shan. 2. The exegete (by resort to ko i)-CHu Fa-ya

and others. 3. Quest for doctrinal truth and devotion to re-

ligious practice-SHIH Tao-an. VI. The triumph of Buddhism "south of the River,"

under the Eastern Tsin (317-420). A. The collapse of the Western Tsin and Bud-

dhism's Southern pilgrimage-the missionary (Po) grimitra and what he meant for aristocracy, Sanskrit chants, and mystical charms.

B. Recluse monks (such as CHU Fa-ch'ien and CHIH Tun) and the development of Buddhism in the aristocratic, methaphysical salons of Chien-k'ang and K'uai-chi. Appendix. The essentials of Buddhism (Feng fa yao) as described by Hsi Ch'ao.

C. The study of the Prajfi4paramita and the theories occasioned by it.

D. Development and ultimate decline of Bud- dhism in Chien-k'ang under the late Eastern Tsin.

E. Origin and development of the community of nuns.

F. The movement of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India and Central Asia in quest of the Dharma.

G. The formulation of new problems by the new proselytization movement of the late Eastern Tsin.




VII. Tao-an and his position in the history of Chinese Buddhism. A. General remarks-the achievements of Tao-an

within the framework of Chinese Buddhist history.

B. The first period. Student wanderings in the Hopei, Shansi, and Honan region (then under non-Chinese rule).

C. The second period. At Hsiang-yang (under the rule of the Eastern Tsin).

D. The third period. At Ch'ang-an (again under non-Chinese rule).

E. Tao-an's cultivation of faith in Maitreya and Tusita.

Notes. Indices.

In the space remaining, no attempt will be made to do more than touch upon certain high- lights. The most obvious fact about the evangelization of China is that it was qualitatively unlike the previous evangelization of any other non- Indian community by Buddhist missionaries. The reason, of course, was that before China all nations that had listened to the Indian gospel were culturally inferior to India; for some, in fact, the importation of Buddhism and the importation of a civilized culture were one and the same thing. China, on the other hand, was a phenomenon for which the Buddhist missionaries were not prepared by any previous experience, for it was culturally the equal of India in all respects, while at the same time the civilization was totally different from that of India. Not to be discounted is the gross difference between the two languages, as well as the existence on Chinese soil of an indigenous literature the equal of any on earth. The nature of the Chinese script was such that no previous experience could possibly prepare them for it. All previous written languages with which the Indian missionaries would have been acquainted must have been written with syllabic scripts more or less like the Indic, based ultimately on Semitic proto- types, i.e., an alphabet consisting of consonants, the vowel a being understood, the others being represented by diacritics. The less civilized com- munities were probably illiterate, acquiring the message of Buddha and the script as well from the evangelists. China, on the other hand, had one of the most difficult scripts in the world, a script

that, moreover, recorded a language so different from the Umgangssprache that it could not be understood by ear. As there may be occasion to repeat later, this circumstance probably pre- vented the vast majority of missionaries from ever learning to read Chinese. This in effect made it impossible for the missionary to verify the translation issued in his name.

Another circumstance that distorted the image of Buddhism upon its first entry into China was the fact that the Indian religion was a tissue of sectarian splinters, a fact that was kept from the early Chinese by a conspiracy of missionary silence. In other words, each evangelist conveyed to the Chinese the peculiar views of his own school, which he blandly presented as "the Word of the Buddha." The Chinese, hearing two very different stories as the Word of Buddha, would be perplexed. If he was already committed to Bud- dhism, he would assume the difference to be a product of his own faulty understanding, and would then attempt to reconcile it somehow or other, the assumption being that Buddha's Word cannot contradict itself. He would have had no way of knowing that the two stories were the work of two different schools, and the missionaries were not about to tell him. Above all, the crucial difference between Mahaydna and Hinayana was quite beyond the Chinese.

China was, as has just been said, the most civilized non-Indian community the Buddhist missionaries had ever encountered. This affected not only the missionaries but the Chinese as well. For the Chinese as well as for the Indians, the en- counter with the other nation was the first awareness that they were not themselves the only civilized community in the world. For the Chinese, however, awareness of the existence of another civilized nation did not lead them to conclude, "Une autre culture !" On the contrary, since there can only be one Truth, their truth and our truth must be identical, and the apparent differences are only apparent, slight differences magnified by such incidental things as language and the like. For the orthodox Confucianist, such a conclusion would have been impossible, for he would have dismissed the Indians out of hand as hu (inade-




quately rendered 'barbarians'). For the Chinese dissatisfied with Confucian orthodoxy, on the other hand (and after the collapse of the seem- ingly immortal Han there must have been not a few), the message of the Buddha and that of Lao- tzu must have seemed nearly the same, and the Taoistically inclined Chinese gentleman would in the normal course of events twist each to conform to his notion of the other.

The pious legend of the dream of Emperor Ming has been so definitively dealt with by the late M. Maspero that there will be no repetition of the arguments here. Suffice it to say that well after the fact the pious imagination concocted a tale whereby the Son of Heaven at one and the same time invited into the Middle Land icons (buddha), scriptures (dharma), and monks (samgha). About the first contacts of the Chinese with the Dharma, since neither government nor aristocracy was directly involved, there are no written records, hence there is no way to know any details. The likelihood is that Indo-Iranian merchants trading into China brought icons and/or holy writings with them, sacred objects to which they did obeisance. There is even the possibility that the occasional caravan would be accompanied by an occasional monk, a shaven-headed, ragged, bare- foot fellow to whom, amazingly enough, the rich, well-dressed traders made the most exaggerated show of deference. This would have been enough to excite the curiosity of Chinese trained to de- spise men in rags and to abhor the shaving of the head as an affront to the parents who engendered it. So much for conjecture. What facts there are must be pieced together from scraps of knowledge about Central Asia and from casual references in the dynastic histories to Buddhist matters at Court, the most notable cases being those of Prince Ying of Ch'u, Hsiang K'ai, and Tse Yung. The author deduces from these scraps what he can, to put together a modest but reasonably well- rounded picture of the earliest Chinese Buddhist community. The earliest COHERENT historical evidence is, of course, the series of the first scriptural translations, made about 165, principally by An Shih-kao (Hinaydna) and Lokaksema (Prajia-

paramitd). Both of these are subjected to very close scrutiny.

There follows a description of the primitive Buddhist church in two of the three kingdoms, Wei and Wu, in their respective capitals, Lo-yang and Chien-k'ang. In the former, there appear to have been no more than three monasteries at the time in question (ca. 230), and no more than a beginning was made in the direction of translating the vinaya, because, in the opinion of Dharma- kala, the Chinese were not yet ready for the whole thing. The author concludes that for the Chinese the connection between Buddhism and ancestor worship was still too close for the former to develop independently. In addition to the above Dharmakdla, there are three translator-missionaries worthy of mention who functioned at Lo-yang, viz., Samghavarman, who arrived ca. 250; T'an-ti, a Parthian who arrived ca. 255; and Po Yen, a Kuchean alleged to have translated six scriptural works about the same time. More important than these three, however, was Chu Shih-hsing, who about 260 went as far as Khotan in quest of Prajfidpdramitd texts. Of equal importance was Chih Ch'ien, one of that small and early band of Iranian monks reared and educated in China, bilingual and bicultural men of learning who could and did make their own translations of Buddhist scriptures directly from Sanskrit to Chinese. Ch'ien went south to Chien-k'ang, and it is to that center that the book now turns.

The kingdom of Wu, as indicated above, had its center of government in Chien-k'ang, more or less the present Nanking. Given its location, it was the center of gravity for two missionary movements, one that came overland to the Lo- yang area and thence southward, one that came oversea to Kuang-chou (Canton), thence north- westward overland. As pointed out above, Chih Ch'ien (ca. 195-254), disciple's disciple to the Lokaksema mentioned earlier, was born in Lo- yang, where he was also reared and educated. At the age of 25, toward the year 220, he left that troubled area for the South.

Ch'ien found in the reigning Sun family a set of genial hosts-not so much the patrons of Bud- dhism that the later tradition portrays as, in Mr.




Tsukamoto's view, simply open-minded, culturally curious rulers. As mentioned above, Ch'ien was one of the few translator-missionaries who could work without assistants. His fame as a translator was in direct proportion to his distance in time from the person describing his activities. Thus Tao-an attributes 30 translations to him; the Ch'u san tsang chi chi, in its biographical section, 27, in its catalogue 36; the Kao seng chuan credits him with 49; the Li tai san pao chi with 125. The K'ai yilan Shih chiao lu, apparently in some alarm, reduces the figure to 88. Mr. Tsukamoto singles out six titles that seem to him most significant, and one notes among them the Vimalakirtinirdesa, a sitra of the Jdtaka type, a PrajfApdramita text, and one of the forerunners of the Sukhavativyuha. Another significant fact about Chih Ch'ien is that he was not a monk but a layman.

Another frequent route for the incoming missionary was northward from the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Typical of this was K'ang Seng-hui, a monk of Sogdian extraction, whose family had lived in India for several generations, then moved to the area of what is now Hanoi, an area in the process of becoming sinicized. He too was an independent translator, being likewise bilingual and bicultural. Not much detail may be provided with certainty about K'ang Seng-hui's activities, whether as a missionary or as a translator. He is credited with temple building and with thauma- turgy, as well as with the rendition of sacred texts into Chinese. The third chapter, dealing with the Three Kingdoms, ends on a note that reminds the reader that for the CHINESE who accepted Him, quite apart from what the translator-missionaries did or did not say, the Buddha was another sylph- demigod to be conjoined to a growing pantheon whose function was to grant happiness and to avert disaster in this life or, in the case of the less conventional, to grant immortality and/or superhuman powers.

The kingdom of Wei did, to be sure, take over the other two to unite China for a time under a new dynastic name, that of Tsin, but the unity was to last barely a half-century before it was to be disturbed by non-Chinese peoples from the north. It was under the Tsin, however, both during the

half-century of unified rule and the following century of truncated southern rule, that Buddhism became for the first time a Chinese phenomenon. Mr. Tsukamoto advances several reasons. First, the social dislocation and the grave uncertainties occasioned by it drove many to seek comfort in religion. Second, the scholarly elite was becoming dissatisfied with a world in which the sole business of learning appeared to be the parsing of sen- tences, and in which the more worthwhile goal behind the reading of texts, viz., the quest for the Truth and the Way (tao), was being smothered by exegetes. Those who held this view took, in ex- treme cases, to kicking over all the traces in order to live what for them was an untrammeled life. The way of life of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, for instance, was a living affront to the whole Confucian scale of values, and a Chinese gentleman who could achieve that much of a break with the hallowed Confucian tradition would find Buddhism inoffensive, to say the least, and posi- tively attractive to say the most. Third, there was a nucleus of the above-mentioned bilingual and bicultural Sino-Iranian Buddhists with a foot in each cultural camp. They could, among other things, make the Prajfidpdramitd message available in Chinese, thus affording receptive Chinese minds the comforting, if erroneous, thought that the Buddha and Lao-tzu were saying the same thing, the Buddha at much greater length. The success of Buddhism was such that the Record of the Monasteries of Lo-yang tells us that in Yung- chia times (which ended just five years before the Tsin were forced to flee the northern invaders) there were forty-two monasteries in that city alone.

China's Buddhist community was in transition from an alien growth to an indigenous body. On the traditional Chinese scale of values, the way of life of the Buddhist monk was a monstrosity. Why should a son of good family, brought up in wealth and comfort, of his own free will wear rags and beg for his food? How, moreover, can he bring himself to deny his ancestors their due by depriv- ing them of descendants to tend to their sacrifices? How, finally, can be hold his parents in such low esteem as to shave the hair he got from them




together with the gift of life? By the time in question there was already the modest beginning of a community of Buddhist monks Chinese in language and culture. The leading positions in the said community, however, were occupied by non- Chinese, rather, by both bilinguals and outright non-Chinese. Representative of the former were Dharmaraksa (Chu Fa-hu) and Chu Shu-lan, the former a Yiieh-chih born in Tun-huang, the latter an Indian born in Lo-yang. For the Chinese themselves, however, the motives of adherence to Buddhism were very different from those of the missionaries. For the Chinese there were two distinct motives, one of which cut across class lines. This was the quest for "freedom" and/or superhuman powers, mentioned previously. The other motive, confined to the intellectual class, was the quest for metaphysical Truth, whether in the Three Mysteries (Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu, I ching) or in the burgeoning Buddhist scriptures, the Prajflaparamita series in particular.

There follows a rightfully long treatment of Dharmaraksa, the greatest of the early trans- lators. Several important facts about this man are singled out. First, of course, is the huge range of his activities as a trasnlator, both in quantity and in the variety of the texts he rendered into Chinese. On pp. 207-210 is reproduced a list of 67 translations ascribed to Dharmaraksa over half a century (267-317) by the Ch'u san tsang chi chi. The second fact to which the reader's attention is called is that Dharmaraksa did not confine his translation work to any one particular place, his range in space matching his range in time, from Tun-huang in the west to Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang in the east. This statement is likewise accompanied by a catalogue of Dharmaraksa's activities, date and place specified where known. The third fact is that Dharmaraksa's choice of texts to translate was not a haphazard one but was based on considerations of which had a message to convey that was both religiously significant and appealing to the faith of aspiring converts. A number of titles are singled out, notably the Saddharma- pund1arika and the Vimalakirtinirdesa. The fourth fact is that Dharmaraksa was aided by capable and steadfast assistants, both lay and clerical.

Among the former, Nieh Ch'eng-yiian deserves to be singled out.

The fourth chapter concludes with a treatment of the lay translator Chu Shu-lan, Chinese-born son of Indian immigrants. Since he too was forced south by a northern invasion, specifically that of Shih Lo, his presumable period of florescence in Lo-yang was ca. 290-350. To judge from his father's name, Dharmagiras, he came from a Buddhist family, and it is in fact recorded that two of his maternal uncles were monks. His work as a translator does not compare with that of Dharmaraksa, and the familiar titles of PrajfiA- paramita, Vimalakirti, and Su-ramgama are associated with his name as well.

In 317 the Tsin were driven to take refuge in the south, and for the next century North China was the scene of a succession of states, known in the Chinese tradition as the "sixteen states of the five barbarian nations." How Buddhism fared in the North China of that time is the subject of the fifth chapter. When the old and time-hallowed capital of Lo-yang was occupied by peoples who were by far the cultural inferiors of the Chinese, the Chinese gentry (or as many as could contrive to get away), being unwilling to submit to the hegemony of savages, went south (or "east") to as much of China as remained under Tsin rule. The learned Chinese monk, being no less a gentry man than his secular counterpart, would also leave if he could. The result, as far as the Buddhist church was concerned, was a great loss of the scholarly tradition, specifically of the study of texts already translated, not to mention the continued enterprise of translation itself. Yet this by no means spelt the doom of the Buddhist religion in North China. Popular religious practices, having no connection with texts since the populace was illiterate, continued to flourish, and in some of the northern states there was a church-state alliance such as would have been unthinkable under Tsin rule. At any rate, both came true in 314, when Shih Lo, an unlettered warrior but no savage, united the north and brought a measure of longed-for peace. Also, it was at just such a time that the Buddhist notions of impermanence and douleur fonciere seemed to ring most true. At the




same time, Buddhism offered a way out, in that it promised the pious layman a pleasant life in his next incarnation.

The second subdivision of this fifth chapter is devoted in its entirety to the monk-thaumaturge Fo-t'u-ch'eng (whose real name is as much a mystery as ever; is it too much to venture that between the t'u and the ch'eng there was a pa, and that the original name was Buddhabhadra?), whose place of origin is unknown, but who, after his arrival in Chao territory, remained the confi- dant both Shih Lo and of his son Hu (a tiger in fact as well as in name). Thaumaturge and confi- dant of kings that he was, Fo-t'u-ch'eng is noted in his biography as a strict practitioner of the monastic code. Nothing, however, is said of his learning prowess. Still, says Mr. Tsukamoto, it would be a hasty conclusion that he was un- learned, in view of the fact that one of his disciples was the eminently erudite Tao-an. A good bit of this section is devoted to a description of the Skkyamuni cult, including the elaborate celebration of his birthday, adoration of images, and the development of biographical literature. This in turn led to the cult of the Buddhist pantheon (for the Chinese were no monotheists), supported by the exaggerated assertions in the Mahaydna scriptures, now increasingly available in Chinese, of the infinity of buddhas and bod- hisattvas. There is also brief mention in this section of the beginnings of a community of Chinese Buddhist nuns.

The third and final section of this chapter is devoted to an analysis of Ch'eng's Chinese disciples, here considered in terms of three types, that of the recluse (typified by Chu Seng-lang), that of the homilist-exegete (typified by Chu Fa-ya), and that of the seeker after the true mean- ing of Buddhist doctrine and of the Buddhist way of life (typified by Shih Tao-an, who, however, is treated not here but in the seventh and final chapter of the book). We shall say no more here than that, whether accurately or not, Fa-ya is credited with the invention of ko i, a method of interpreting the Buddhist scriptures by appeal to alleged analogues in Chinese secular literature, specifically the I-Lao-Chuang circuit. As indicated

above, there was nothing revolutionary in this, for the Taoistically inclined Chinese who found himself receptive to Buddhism automatically assumed that the two gospels were identical. Reading only Chinese, he had no way of knowing what underlay the scriptures familiar to him, and in all likelihood he did not care anyway. Ko i is significant in that it is an explicit statement to the effect that textual and doctrinal difficulties are properly solved by scrutinizing Taoist analogues. It is also worthy of anticipation that Tao-an, fellow-disciple to Fa-ya, rejected ko i out of hand-or so he thought. For the Chinese Buddhist monks who read no Sanskrit-hence for the majority of the Chinese samgha-ko i was in China to stay.

As mentioned above, when the north fell to non-Chinese conquerors, the gentry, or as much of it as could contrive to, fled south, there to estab- lish what is known conventionally as the Eastern Tsin, and divided China was to remain until the Sui reunified her in the late sixth century. Pos- sibly the greatest triumph experienced by Bud- dhism on Chinese soil, prior to that of the T'ang, took place under the Eastern Tsin, and that is the subject of the sixth chapter of the work under review. After a detailed treatment of the missionary Srlmitra, the chapter goes on to speak of the capital at Chien-k'ang as a center of sophisticated Buddhistic salons and of the K'uai-chi area as a focal point for Buddhist hermits and recluses. Specific treatment is accorded to Chu Fa-ch'ien and Chih Tun, the latter a moine salonnier if ever there was one. There is an appendix to this second section in the form of a fully annotated translation of Hsi Ch'ao's Feng fa yao, a statement to the Chinese gentry by one of its own members on "what Buddhism is all about." The translation, by Mr. Fukunaga Mitsuji, is a model of clarity and readability. (Mr. E. Zurcher, in The Buddhist Conquest of China, has translated the same essay into English. A worthwhile undertaking would be a comparison of both versions with the original, something that this reviewer, to his shame, has not done.)

The third section deals in detail with what is known of the earliest known schools of Chinese




Buddhism, most of which derived their inspira- tion from translations of Prajftaparamit5 texts. This is not to say that they understood prajnia- paramita correctly, merely that a welter of translations furnished grist for their metaphysical mills. The section also lists all known translations of Prajfiaparamit5 works, whether extant or lost, and mentions by name eleven persons associated with the prajfna movement, names among which those of Chu Shih-hsing, Chih Tun, and Shih Tao- an stand out. The difficulty in sorting out these schools is that the literature on them is so scarce and so scattered, most of it postdating the actual events by several centuries, some of it actually originating in mediaeval Japan. The surviving material has been virtually wrung dry by researchers both Chinese and Japanese, all of whose works are cited in the annotation. Unhappily, there is no mention of Mr. W. Liebenthal's work on this question in The Book of Chao, a secondary source that may not be ignored. It is precisely this sort of lacuna that must be supplemented when the book under review appears in Egnlish.

About sections four and five there will not be much to say here, apart from identifying them, the former being devoted to the development and decline of Buddhism as the Eastern Tsin ap- proached its end, the latter dealing with the community of Chinese nuns. The last two sections of the chapter treat of the renewed contact with India, the sixth being devoted to a study of the Chinese pilgrims, the seventh to a discussion of the issues raised by this renewed contact. Of these pilgrims the best known is of course Fa-hsien, and, in view of his importance, one is somewhat surprised at the brevity of the treatment. The seventh and final section notes several very significant developments. First is the transmission of Hinayana scholarship, specifically of the Abhi- dharma of the Sarvastivada school. In view of the circumstances under which Buddhism was intro- duced into China, it could not be anything but a AMahdydna land. Prajfidpdramiita notions, par- ticularly as misunderstood by the Chinese of the time, lent themselves very easily to "dark learning" and "pure talk," which can surely not be said of Abhidharma scholasticism. Thus the Abhi-

dharma never really had a chance, and the efforts of men like Samghadeva were, ironically enough, doomed by the arrival-in North China, to be sure-of Kumarajiva, himself a convert from Sarvdstivada to Mddhyamika, who was quick to nip the Chinese Abhidharma in the bud by his vigorous rendition into Chinese of the works and thoughts of Ndgarjuna and his fellows. While Kumdrajiva died in North China, the sack of Ch'ang-an a few years after his death put the whole Ch'ang-an school to flight, and its members brought his ideas with them to the south. Also, during his own lifetime he had an extended corre- spondence with Hui-yiian, which must surely mean that there was more communication between north and south, at least where the Buddhist church was concerned, than is commonly sup- posed. Lastly, there began a development on Chinese soil of Mahayana ideas independent of the Prajfiparamit5 tradition, specifically those of the Mahaparinirvana and the Avatamsaka collections.

As indicated above, the seventh and closing chapter of this first volume is devoted to Shih Tao-an, possibly the greatest personality the Chinese samgha ever produced. The chapter opens with a general statement of the significance of Tao-an in the history of the Chinese Buddhist church. It scarcely needs repetition that he was the first Chinese monk of significance to sense that his brotherhood was somehow missing the Bud- dha's message, and to take steps to correct that fault, to the extent that it could be corrected by someone so thoroughly Chinese as he was. Tao- an's career is divided chronologically into three parts, his early years in the North (including his discipleship to Fo-t'u-ch'eng), his direction of a community of scholar-monks at Hsiang-yang, then the end of his career as chief of a state- sponsored translation bureau in Ch'ang-an. In spite of the obvious importance of the last-named, it was during his Hsiang-yang period that Tao-an produced the (unhappily lost) work for which he is best known, the Tsung ii chung ching mu lu. This was far from his only achievement, however. For the Hsiang-yang period alone Mr. Tsukamoto considers Tao-an's career in terms of (1) the spon- sorship of the T'an-hsi-ssu, (2) the spread of Bud-




dhism to the Ching-chou (i.e., Chiang-ling) region, where it was to be so important in subsequent ages, (3) his concern with the monastic code, (4) the study of prajfidpdramita, (5) the compilation of his catalogue, and (6) the adoption of the syllable shih (then pronounced something like

Aiek, used to represent Sakya) as a substitute clan name, a practice eventually to be adopted by the monastic community of all China and, for a time at least, of Annam (thich), Korea (sok), and Japan (shaku). The fourth section paints a portrait of the Buddhist church of Tao-an's Ch'ang-an, a portrait so complete and so engaging that it alone would justify the whole book. Suffice it to say that Tao-an represented himself here as in Hsiang- yang as a many-sided, dedicated Buddhist cleric. Not without reason has it been said of him that he went to his death having done more for Buddhism in China than anyone before him. The book proper concludes with a brief description of the Maitreya cult and of Tao-an's part in it. The annotation, at the end of the book, covers nearly ninety pages, while the indices cover twenty- three.

I will refrain from rendering any further judgment, both because it would be out of place for a translator to do so and because I frankly cannot view this man or his work objectively. It remains for me to put this volume and its successors into English, then to leave the judgment of it up to my colleagues. My plan is to begin the translation of volume I in the summer of 1969, by which time, hopefully, volume II will have appeared. How much time the project will require no one can say, but, once having begun, I propose to work steadily, as circumstances permit, until the translation of the whole work is complete. In the course of the undertaking, I shall have much occasion to call on the help of my learned colleagues. I appeal to the kindness of you all.

GLOSSARY

an shih kao $

annam

ch'ang an

chao

chao

ch'eng

chiang ling \

chien k'ang

chih ch'ien

chih tun

ching chou *S, \'A chu fa ch' ien k_

chu fa hu -

chu fa ya

ch'u san tsang chi chi

chu seng lang _

chu shih hsing

chu shu lan

chuang tzu

chugoku bukky5 tsushi

dai ikkan

feng fa yao

fo tu ch'eng ;

fukunaga mitsuji

han

hanoi V JIj




honan

hopei I Aj X

hsi ch'ao

hsiang k'ai

hsiang yang T2

hu

hu

huang lao S4

hui yUan

i ching

k'ai yUan shih chiao lu

k'ang seng hui

kao seng chuan

ko i -

k'uai chi

kuang chou

lao tzu

li tai san pao chi ez w

lo yang I t

Ming pI2 _-~ nanking71 t

nieh ch'eng yUan

pa

sensei -

shansi ai, (

shih

shih Io t

shih tao an

sun II-.IL ~ suzuki gakujutsu zaidan J t <

t'ai shan /2 4

t'an hsi ssu 4 \v4i

t'ang J tao 2.4 tao an

tokyo ! $

tse yung

tsukamoto zenryU $ (4 tsung li chung ching mu lu

tau p@ t

tun huang n

wei l

wu

yUeh chih M A/

yung chia



toward a comprehensive history of chinese buddhism

Documents