Great Xingshan Monastery 大興善寺`
by Xiang Wang 王翔
More than half of the scriptures translated in the Sui dynasty were produced at Xingshan Monastery, a famed site of tantric Buddhism and depot of Indic manuscripts. The complete Chinese collection in the monastery had drawn exegetes and bibliographers to the work of two major Sui sūtra catalogues: The Buddhist catalogue of the Sui Dynasty (Dasui zhongjing mulu 大隋衆經目錄) and Record of Three-Treasures of Previous Dynasties (Lidai sanbao ji 歷代三寶記). The palm-leaves collection began with the two hindered and fifty Sanskrit manuscripts brought there by Dharmagupta (Ch. Damoujiduo 達摩笈多?-619), the leading translator of the day.1 In the process of adding the lacuna to the Additional Chapters of the Lotus Sutra (Tianping Miaofa Lianhua Jing 添品妙法蓮華經), Jñanagupta and Dharmagupta found both the Sanskrit and Kuchean editions of previous translations in the Xingshan Library.2 The significance of Xingshan as a distribution center of Sanskrit texts was next mentioned by the Amoghavajra 不空 (705-774), the tantric pundit of Kaiyuan 開元 period (713-741). A memorial submitted in 758 indicated that fanjia 梵夾3 (Indic manuscripts) scattered throughout the empire were garnered and transported to the central repository of Xingshan.
The great enlightened Masters such as Yijing義淨 (635-713), Śubhakarasimha (Ch. Sanwuwei 善無畏, 637-735), Bodhiruci 流支 (?-727) and Baosheng寶勝 had brought back with them loads of fanjia and deposited them in such monasteries like Ci’en, Jianfu at Chang’an, or Sengshan 聖善, Changshou 長壽 and Fuxian 福先 Monasteries at Luoyang. Moreover, copies might be found in small shrines at various counties, towns and villages...many of them remain untranslated by previous maters…what a pity to allow them scattered and dilapidated… now with royal permission to translate these manuscripts…I hope we can search and examine these sūtras.4
The prescriptive document also revealed that at the request of Amoghavajra, the emperor Daizong 代宗 (r.762-779) bestowed a tripitaka of 5050 scrolls to his daughter Master Qionghua 瓊華 who was studying under the tutelage of Amoghavajra in 773.5 As the biggest monastery in Chang’an and the seat of Tang tantrism (Tangmi 唐密), Xingshan Monastery also attracted two other prominent scholars: Śubhakarasihma and Vajrabodhi (Ch. Jingang Zhi 金剛智671-741). With their unremitted effort of translating, Tantrism gave a decisive push to Chinese Buddhism and generated a demand for texts addressing rituals and dhāranī.
Sources:
- Daxingshan si zhilue 大興善寺志略. in Zhongguo fo si zhi cong kan xu bian 中國佛寺志叢刊續編. Bai, Huawen 白化文 and others eds, Nanjing : 2001. p.3
- Tianping miaofa lianhua jing 添品妙法蓮華經 (T09, no. 264, p. 134, b26-c22)
- Shishi jigu lüe 釋氏稽古略 (T49, no.2037, p0816a.) Schafer called fanjia “ollahs”, or “Indic presses” (Schafer 1963a, 270). In this article I would give more examples to shed light on the preservation of palm-leaf manuscripts in Chang’an. Actually the choice of writing surface rests with geography and flora in Indian subcontinent, birch bark was used in Kashmir, aloe bark in Assam. People below the Himalayas use palm leaf, Talipat leaf and plantain leaf (Shaw 2007, 127-128).
- “Qing soujian tianxia fanjia xiuqi fanyi請搜撿天下梵夾修葺翻譯” in Daizong chao zheng sikong dabianzheng guangzi sanzang heshang biaozhi ji (T52, no.2120, p. 828, a26-28)
- ibid. (T52, p0839a.)
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