Introducing "Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia"

SPREADING BUDDHA’S WORD IN EAST ASIA The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon EDITED BY

JIANG WU & LUCILLE CHIA

Introduction Jiang Wu and Lucille Chia

The importance of studying the historical development of a religious canon seems obvious. Equally obvious is the daunting challenge of trying to study the many aspects of an immense canon incorporating thousands of works. In the case of the Buddhist canon in Chinese, compiled and recompiled many times and transmitted throughout East Asia,1 much research remains to be done, especially as the canon continues to evolve in the modern digital age of information.

In this volume, we present nine articles of original research on the tradition of the Chinese Buddhist canon that exemplify new directions in studying and understanding the process of canon formation in specific cultural contexts. The chapters are organized into four parts. The first provides an overview of the Chinese canon and highlights some critical issues in canon studies. The second part focuses on the cataloging process during the manuscript age of canon formation. The three chapters in the third part consider the evolution of the Buddhist canon after the advent of printing in imperial China and explore the complex dynamics among the canon, printing technology, the state, and sponsoring communities. The fourth part includes two chapters each on the Korean and Japanese canons, which highlight the East Asian character of the Chinese canon. Finally, the first appendix presents a listing and summaries of the printed editions and the second describes the history of the massive Chinese Buddhist

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Electronic Text Association (CBETA) project of digitizing the Chinese Buddhist canon.

As the chapters in this volume show, even topics that have already engaged much scholarly effort merit further exploration, such as the enormously complex issues of textual variants and the changing views on the organization and classification of works in the canon, including the nature of canonicity. Other topics heretofore less examined, such as the technologies used in the physical reproduction of the entire canon and individual works and the socioeconomic history of the publication of different editions of the canon, are now attracting greater attention. In fact, the emergence of the East Asian history of the book and of print culture as areas of study has provided new opportunities for reexamining the Chinese Buddhist canon and its religious, textual, social, and economic contexts.2 Lastly, although this book focuses on the Buddhist canon in China, the crucial role that the Chinese canon played in the formation of East Asian Buddhism is addressed in two of the chapters. What Kamata Shigeo 鐮田茂雄 termed the “circle of Chinese Buddhism” (Chu¯goku bukkyo¯ken 中國佛教圈) developed as other East Asian countries acquired editions of the Chinese canon produced in China and modified its contents in the course of building their own Buddhist textual traditions.3 Indeed, we cannot fully understand the development of Buddhism in China, Korea, and Japan without understanding the exchanges of canonical texts in Chinese among these regions in Asia.

The remainder of this introduction will discuss briefly three broad topics that will be examined in greater detail in the following essays: the “Cult of the Canon,” in which the canon as a physical object is revered and even worshiped; the textual practices used in the compilation of the canon, which reveal how the management of Buddhist knowledge was influenced by and in turn added to the scholarly methods derived from the Chinese textual tradition; and the socioeconomic and political conditions under which official and private editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon were produced and distributed during various historical periods.

T HE C U LT OF T H E C A N ON A canon is a work of faith that involves a series of devotional activities in its creation, production, distribution, and maintenance, which can be referred to as the “Cult of the Canon.” This religious phenomenon is deeply rooted in the Mahayana tradition of the “Cult of the Book” as defined by Gregory Schopen, who notes that the early Mahayana scriptures placed great emphasis on worshiping written texts.4 Mahayana scriptures such as the Lotus Sutra and the Diamond Sutra suggest that the place where the written texts were located

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should become the object of devotion and the merit field. These scriptures also promoted their own production and reproduction as pious activities.

Mahayana scriptures encouraged five devotional actions directly related to the handling of the text: receiving and keeping the sutra, reading it, reciting it, expounding on it, and copying it. All of these actions would result in immeasurable merit in one’s next life. Especially meritorious was the act of distributing the physical forms of the sutra, such as by copying it. The promise of a better afterlife no doubt stimulated the propagation of Mahayana scriptures.

In China, the “Cult of the Book” was a long-standing cultural tradition that preceded the advent of Buddhism, and the reverence and even fetishization of works such as the Buddhist and Daoist canons were natural developments.

The Buddhist canon represents the ultimate teaching and the essence of the dharma body and is therefore a potent symbol in Buddhist communities, serving as a means to connect with the origin of the tradition and to the ultimate scriptural authority. The state, elite groups, and the common people all aspired to support the production and distribution of the entire set through devotional patronage and sponsorship, ceremonial consecration and worship, ritual writing and reading, etc.5 Ownership of a canon would greatly enhance the prestige of a monastery, stimulating the growth or revival of religious devotion and attracting more patronage. The sponsors of the canon often invoked the rhetoric of repaying “Four Kindnesses” (si’en 四恩, i.e., the kindness of the Buddha, the rulers, the parents, and all sentient beings) and benefiting the “Three Realms” (sanyou 三有, i.e., the realms of desire, form, and formlessness) as their motive.

Thus the production, distribution, and maintenance of the canon and a series of ceremonial routines became an indispensable component of monastic life.

In the process of its creation, the state invested a particular significance in the canon, as it was believed that ownership of such a collection could protect the nation. The Korean kings, for example, had requested Kaibao Canon (Kaibaozang 開寶藏) from the Song government for the security of the nation and later created their own canon as a way to defend themselves against foreign invasions.

Commoners could also sponsor the project out of their devotion. The creation of Zhaocheng Canon (Zhaochengzang 趙城藏) in north China during the Jin (Jurchen) Dynasty, for example, was initiated by a little-known Buddhist figure, Yin Shennai尹矧乃 (?–1176 ), and continued by his better-known female disciple, Cui Fazhen 崔法珍, who severed her arm at age thirteen and vowed to print a canon. This project was supported by laypeople in Xiezhou 解州 (today’s Yuncheng area in Shanxi) and neighboring areas. Legend says that more than fifty followers imitated her devotion and severed their arms as well. They collected funds by “burning arms and fingers,” “cutting eyes and livers,” and even donating all family property and selling their children. It took them about thirty

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years to complete the entire canon. Cui Fazhen was allowed to be ordained and awarded a purple robe and an honorific title.6 The physical canon could be treated as a sacred object for veneration and sacrifice. Donors could adopt one title, one fascicle, or even one booklet to be given offerings (gongyang 供養) for a period of one year, and such an adoption was renewable. During Buddhist holidays, the Hall of Scripture Storage, which was designed for the purpose of devotees’ veneration, was opened to these donors for worship.7 The canon was also regularly brought out from the cabinets to prevent dampness. This practice developed into the ceremony of “sunning the scripture” (shaijing 曬經 or bakuryo¯ 曝凉) for public display and respect.

In the Buddhist tradition, texts have served an essential spiritual purpose for believers. The huge number of texts in the canon has been used for ritual reading and writing. Ritual reading of the entire canon developed when it was still in manuscript form. Commonly known as “turning the scripture” (zhuanjing 轉經), this activity inspired the invention of the revolving wheel storage cabinet (zhuanlun zang 轉輪藏) for symbolic reading of the entire canon. In the Ming Dynasty, it was often referred to as “reading the whole canon in confinement” (jinbu yuezang 禁步閱藏), which involved solitude, worship, ablutions, and even fasting. The devotees vowed to read the entire canon in three or four years for the purpose of “benefiting all sentient beings.”8 Chinese Buddhists also piously devoted themselves to ritual writing, copying the scriptures in the canon. Wealthy donors commissioned manuscript copies written in gold and silver. Poor but zealous devotees paid for the carving of one block or the printing of one fascicle in the canon. Some even went to extremes by using their blood as ink.9 The Japanese even invented a speedy method of copying the entire canon in one day by allotting the job to many devotees, who copied their assignments individually at the same time. In 1211, in the presence of Emperor Gotoba 後鳥羽 (1180–1239), 13,315 monks copied the entire canon in one day.10 Relatively little has been written by modern scholars about the “Cult of the Canon”; the essay by Jiang Wu (chapter 2) redresses this neglect.

T E XT U AL PRAC T IC ES A N D T E XT U A L IMPAC T OF T HE BU DDH IS T C A N ON The Chinese Buddhist canon has contributed to world Buddhism through its nearly two-thousand-year stewardship of texts translated into or written in Chinese. The compilation of the canon involved meticulous manipulation of thousands of Buddhist texts and developed a textual tradition that forms part of the overall scholarly tradition of East Asian book culture. Textual practices include cataloging, bibliographical study, philological and lexicographical study, and

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writing annotations to provide information such as pronunciation notes, results of collation with other editions, colophons with donor information, diagrams, illustrations, etc.

Cataloging is one of the most significant textual practices and has attracted scholarly attention. As some bibliographers claim, Buddhist catalogers were even more sophisticated than their Confucian counterparts. The Chinese Buddhist catalogs are not simply an enumerative list of titles; they also contain much historically descriptive information and textual analysis. A typical catalog describes its origins and summarizes or even incorporates works by previous catalogers. These catalogs often pay special attention to different aspects of a text, such as the time and place of translation, the content, and the history of its circulation. Many provide biographies of translators and prefaces to the translated texts as evidence. The records of translations are arranged chronologically or according to the nature of the content, such as Mahayana scriptures and Hinayana scriptures. Notes and discussions about the history and authenticity of the texts are appended. Even those titles that the catalogers have never seen are documented for later research. Texts written in Chinese, though not the emphasis of early catalogers, are recorded as well and put in a separate category. Very often, a list of titles recommended to be included in the canon is also appended and supplies essential information such as titles, number of scrolls, number of sheets of paper, and later the assigned characters from the Thousand-Character Classic (Qianziwen 千字文). The bibliographical taxonomy is extremely complicated and comprehensive, reflecting the sophistication of the cataloging practice.11 A more pressing concern was the authenticity of these “original” texts, because spurious writings produced indigenously often pretended to be of foreign origins, claiming undeserved textual authority and authenticity. The issue of apocrypha has long been recognized, and it became a major task to identify them and prevent their being confused with the Buddha’s authentic words.

For Buddhist catalogers, the designation “apocrypha” is obviously negative. It means a work to be excluded from the canon, or even barred from further circulation. Generally, the category refers to any indigenously produced Buddhist texts (usually outside India) that claim to be originally transmitted from India.

Early catalogers made judgments based on historical records about the translation process or the content of the scripture. For example, in Daoan’s 道安 catalog, he attempted to identify indigenous texts based on his knowledge of the translation history. Another cataloger, Sengyou 僧祐, used the category “suspicious and spurious scriptures” to distinguish the apocrypha based on internal evidence, such as style and content, and external evidence, such as authorship and textual provenance. Zhisheng’s 智昇 Record of Buddhist Teachings Compiled During the Kaiyuan Era (Kaiyuan shijiao lu 開元釋教錄, often referred to as Kaiyuan Catalog) set the goal of defending the authenticity of the canon, as

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he barred the apocryphal scriptures from being included in the official edition.12 In this sense, Buddhist catalogers exercised great bibliographical control over the received Buddhist texts.

In fact, during the first centuries when the Chinese Buddhist canon was formed, a number of highly influential catalogs both described and prescribed the canon’s contents and how they were to be organized. Stefano Zacchetti in his essay (chapter 3) argues that in particular, the cataloging efforts of Daoan in the late fourth century c.e. not only imitated earlier Indian organizational models but also provided new ways of classifying and organizing both the existing translations and works that he and other Chinese Buddhists continued to search for, thus formulating “the idea (and ideal) of a canon that was a powerful factor even when it had not yet developed into a fully operational framework for collecting and transmitting scriptures—that is, well before complete collections of Chinese Buddhist scriptures (i.e., actual canons) came into existence during the Southern and Northern dynasties period.”

In a different but equally important way, another catalog brought out the canon’s Chinese character—Fei Changfang’s 費長房 Record of the Three Treasures Throughout the Successive Dynasties (Lidai sanbao ji 歷代三寶紀), compiled in the late sixth century. As Tanya Storch’s reassessment in this volume (chapter 4) points out, Fei’s decision to classify Buddhist texts based on the Chinese rulers who sponsored their production and his overgenerous inclusion of far more works in the canon than earlier (and later) catalogers should not be viewed as a totally wrong-headed method, as it has been labeled by many critics up through modern times. Storch examines the historical circumstances in the late sixth century, when Fei and other Buddhists felt the urgent need to defend against what they perceived as Daoist incursions into the political prestige of Buddhism, claims of Daoist historical precedence, and Daoist usurpation of Buddhist literature. Thus Fei’s catalog showed clearly his notion of a Chinese Buddhist canon with contents bearing the imprimatur of the political head of the Chinese state and the chakravartin ruler, rather than of the sangha— which influenced the important Tang catalogs such as Daoxuan’s 道宣 Great Tang Record of Buddhist Scriptures (Da Tang neidian lu 大唐內典錄) and Zhisheng’s Kaiyuan Catalog.

PR ODU C ING A C A N O N The complex process of producing an edition of the Chinese Buddhist canon involved mobilizing enormous financial, material, and human resources. How each edition was compiled, the woodblocks cut and stored, and the paper copies printed and disseminated constitutes a unique story that contributes to our

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overall understanding of the making of the canon both as a revered material object and as the accepted collection of texts recognized by religious communities and the state as the authentic teachings of the Buddha and the essence of the dharma body.

The state’s motives for sponsoring an edition of the Buddhist canon were many and varied. Rulers often wished to give imposing and majestic expressions of their religious devotion by directing and funding the compilation and printing of an entire canon. This enterprise also served to remind their subjects of the extension of state power into the religious realm. Other than the state, few political, religious, and social entities could marshal the resources required for such a project. Moreover, the choice of works to be incorporated, including new texts, was subject to state approval, and those texts deemed subversive were excluded.

In particular, with the publishing of Kaibao Canon (Kaibaozang 開寶藏), the first printed edition, in 983, the Song state assumed the authority to determine, with the assistance of accepted Buddhist editors, the canonicity of thousands of Buddhist works and thereby took over the authority of those earlier catalogers discussed above. The importance of Kaibao Canon as the exemplar for all subsequent Song-period editions in China and the two Goryeo editions, and its influence on the Khitan Liao, the Tangut, and various Yuan-period editions is undeniable. The prestige of a state edition like the Kaibao printing meant that bestowing copies on monasteries, clerics, and foreign states was a signal honor, and in the case of the last, also a powerful diplomatic tool.

Often there were interlocking political and religious motives for the production of a Buddhist canon. For example, the chapter in this volume on Kaibao Canon describes how the activities connected with the production of this first printed edition, including a century-long translation project, accorded with the early Song emperors’ aim to associate their authority with the dharma and to help pacify and order the country. Moreover, the canon served as the religious work among the large literary compilations intended to bring about a cultural revival after the disruption during the Five Dynasties period. As for the Korean canon, chapter 8 by Wu and Dziwenka illustrates how foreign canons (both Kaibao and Khitan) had been successfully transformed into a powerful talismanic tradition to serve the royal court in times of national crisis. And the modern Taisho¯ Canon, as Wilkinson’s chapter 9 informs us, was politically appropriated into Japan’s imperialist agenda.

Just as complex but even more varied were the motives for the production of “private” editions of the canon. Both Buddhist clerics and lay devotees took inspiration from Kaibao Canon to produce their own printed editions. After all, even more than owning a canon, serving as the headquarters of its compilation and printing would greatly enhance the prestige of a monastery and attract more patronage from both the local elite and commoners. The production, distribution,

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and maintenance of the canon and a series of ceremonial routines became an indispensable component of Chinese monastic life. Moreover, because reliance on private donors made financial support more tenuous than state sponsorship, the time required for the completion of a private edition varied widely. Lucille Chia’s chapter 6 on Qisha Canon (Qishazang 磧砂藏) describes the complicated history of its compilation and printing (1216–ca. 1332), including the slow progress due to irregular support from devotees in the Suzhou 蘇州 region during the Song and then the significantly faster pace of work during the Yuan, when the project also enjoyed regional government backing and organization.

The production and reproduction of the Chinese Buddhist canon have facilitated religious transformations in Buddhist revival and become a way of defining religious and political identities. The formation of the canon has been a textual and social process that fostered the reification of various kinds of “textual communities,” in which members adopted a shared hermeneutic strategy formed through reading and interpreting Buddhist texts. Out of these “textual communities,” various ways of interpreting ancient texts emerged, aimed at restoring the “way of antiquity.” As a direct result, declining Buddhist traditions, such as Chan Buddhism in the seventeenth century, were revived.13 The compilation of the canon became a powerful way of asserting sectarian identity as well.

The “heretical” White Cloud movement (Baiyunzong 白雲宗), for example, was eager to sponsor the publication of the Puning 普寧 edition (1277–90) during the Yuan, and through this effort its new religious identity was recognized (see Chia’s chapter 6). In modern times, when new editions were produced in China and Japan, printing using Western technology was largely motivated by the rising nationalism in East Asia.

There were both continuities and changes with the advent of woodblock printing to publish the Buddhist canon. On one level, printing was just another medium for the production of Buddhist texts in order to gain religious merit.

Moreover, earlier methods—the carving of sutras on stone or the copying of sutras on paper, sometimes using ink impregnated with gold or silver, or in blood, were common practices that continued into later times. Moreover, printing did not necessarily make the life of an edition less precarious than that of single manuscript copies. While printing allowed more copies to be made more efficiently, woodblocks were often damaged, destroyed, or lost, so that parts or even all of an edition could no longer be printed, and fewer and fewer paper copies survived with the passage of time. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, of the Song-period canons, only the blocks for Qisha Canon were extant, and even some of those had to be repaired or recarved. As for the physical format of the printed canon, for reasons of conservatism or practical handling, the scroll and sutra binding remained as popular as it had been for manuscript copies. Not until the late sixteenth century was the string-bound format adopted for Jiaxing

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Canon (Jiaxingzang嘉興藏), which also introduced other notable changes in the ways it was produced, compiled, and presented on the printed page.

One notable change was that the state-sponsored Kaibao Canon, the first that was printed, signaled the transfer of authority from the earlier catalogs that had determined the canonicity of scriptures to the canon itself. Thereafter, catalogs continued to be compiled but served as descriptive listings for their respective editions of the canon. Other changes resulted from the nature of block printing.

As long as the woodblocks were available, devotees wishing to earn religious merit could choose to have not the entire canon, but just one or a few works reprinted. This way, with the passage of time, the prestige of the woodblocks as the components of an entire canon gave way to a somewhat more ordinary use, to reprint individual texts on demand for donors seeking to gain religious merit with the replication of one sutra (or part thereof)—which happened with the woodblocks for Qisha Canon, for instance.

The great size of the Chinese Buddhist canon meant that its production required not only funding and material resources but also well-organized administrative offices to supervise the project. State-sponsored editions were usually handled by a special imperial agency created for the purpose. The Ming government, for example, maintained an office controlled by eunuchs, the scripture factory (jingchang 經廠), to manage printing affairs. When such an imperial canon was bestowed upon a monastery, many central and local administrations were necessary to handle the process properly. In the late Ming, the Ministry of Rites in Nanjing was actively involved in creating rules for distributing the canon in Nanjing and treated it as a government duty.

In the private domain, the organization of the printing project could be even more complicated. For example, a sophisticated organization was set up for compiling and printing Jiaxing Canon in the late Ming and early Qing. This agency divided responsibilities among various staff members, such as the sponsors, supporters, chief fund raisers, assistant fund raisers, chief monks to manage the canon, chief monks to manage the print blocks, collators and proofreaders, carvers, and printing workers. Darui Long’s study (chapter 7) considers three Ming editions and one Qing edition, and provides the most detailed information on how the compilation and printing of these canons were managed. When the canon was distributed, it was often treated as a valuable commodity and thus formed its own “commodity chain” in which private printing shops, merchants, and local literati were involved. In addition, the thriving commercial printers such as scripture shops (jingpu 經鋪) and monastic printers played an important role in producing the canon through commissions.14 Finally, in historiographic terms, information about the actual production of editions of the canon becomes relatively more abundant beginning with the age of print. Earlier studies of Kaibao Canon have discussed its printing, the extant

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woodcut illustrations, the role of the Song state in sponsoring and supervising its compilation and publication, and the political and diplomatic functions of this first printed edition of the Chinese canon. The essay by Wu, Chia, and Chen (chapter 5) looks in detail at not only the historical circumstances under which Kaibao Canon was produced but also its influence on the two editions of Goryeo Canon (Goryeojang 高麗藏), especially the second one. Indeed, an examination of the collation notes of the Korean monk Sugi 守其 for the second Goryeo edition provides the opportunity for a reevaluation of Kaibao Canon.

T HE C HINE S E BU D DH IS T C A N ON BE YOND C H IN A So far, not only in China but also in Japan and Korea, the study of the Chinese Buddhist canon has largely focused on the bibliographical aspects and empirical descriptions of various editions. No doubt these fundamental studies provide the foundation for further research. However, it is less clear for scholars of Chinese religion and culture how the handling of such a massive body of Buddhist texts affected Buddhist communities in China and beyond.

Although the Chinese Buddhist canon was first produced in Chinese, it became a collection shared and modified by Buddhists throughout East Asia.

The Goryeo kingdom, having received Kaibao Canon and other Buddhist texts from China, as well as Khitan Canon, produced two editions of their own. As the essay by Jiang Wu and Ron Dziwenka (chapter 8) shows, the second Goryeo edition could justifiably claim to be “better than the original”—that is, superior to Kaibao Canon in its meticulous collation. Indeed, the Goryeo state used their editions in ways not found in China, including having the canon serve as a gigantic talisman to protect the country against various calamities.

As for the modern Taisho¯ edition produced in Japan in the early twentieth century, Greg Wilkinson shows how it was deeply embedded in a nationalist agenda that represented both the country’s imperialist aspirations and a new kind of Buddhist scholarship deeply influenced by the Western academic study of religion.

As varied as the topics covered in this volume are, they also serve as an important, if obvious reminder that so much more can be done in examining the history of the Chinese Buddhist canon in East Asia. As Paul Harrison noted, “‘the Chinese Buddhist canon’ is itself an abstraction of many highly variable collections”15—variable in contents, in organization, and in presentation. These changes were often effected as the canon was presented in different media, including oral transmission, hand copies, engravings on stone, block-printed editions, movable-type editions, and now digitized versions. We are reminded that

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the Chinese Buddhist canon is a complex collection and can but marvel at its continuing transformation even as it preserves the religious teachings of nearly three thousand years.

notes 1. For a succinct introduction to the (notions of a) Buddhist canon, see Harrison, “Canon.”

2. For recent developments in the history of the book, see Eliot and Rose, eds., A Companion to the History of the Book, and Finkelstein and McCleery, The Book History Reader. For surveys of studies in the history of the Chinese book, see Brokaw, “Book History in Premodern China” and “On the History of the Book in China,” 3–5; Bussotti, “General Survey of the Latest Studies in Western Languages on the History of Publishing in China.”

3. Kamata Shigeo formulates this idea in his paper “Chu¯goku bukkyo¯ken no keisei.”

4. Schopen, “The Phrase ‘sa pt.hvı¯prades.as. caityabhı¯to bhavet’ in the Vajracchedika¯.”

5. For details, see Fang Guangchang, Zhongguo xieben dazangjing yanjiu, 210–22 and 540–44.

6. For details, see Li Fuhua and He Mei, Hanwen Dazangjing yanjiu, 98–100; Li Jining, “Jinzang xinziliao kao”; and Zhang, “The Strength of the Forgotten.”

7. See Bai Huawen, “Xinxi shidai de zangjing gongyang.”

8. Nozawa Yoshimi, Risso¯ daigaku tushokan shoso¯ Mintai nanzo¯ mukuroku, 73–74.

For discussions of different modes of reading scriptures in contemporary Taiwan, see Levering, “Scripture and Its Reception.”

9. The allusion is derived from the Avatam . saka (Huayan) scripture. See Kieschnick, “Blood Writing in Chinese Buddhism,” and Yu, Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions.

10. Mizuno, Buddhist Sutras, 171.

11. For details, see Liang Qichao, “Fojia jinglu,” 21.

12. For details about how each catalog handles the issue of the apocrypha, see Tokuno, “The Evaluation of Indigenous Scriptures in Chinese Buddhist Bibliographical Catalogues.”

13. Here we borrow the concept of “textual communities” from European historian Brian Stock, who explains the rise of “heretic” Christian groups in medieval Europe by focusing on how texts were interpreted and literacy functioned in these groups. For discussion of the role of textual communities in the Buddhist revival in the seventeenth century, see Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute, 245–56.

14. Nozawa Yoshimi, Mindai Daizo¯kyo¯ shi no kenkyu¯, 299–320. Chia, “Publishing Activities of Buddhist Monasteries and Sutra Printshops.”

15. Harrison, “Canon,” 114.

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