THE HISTORY OF Chinese Buddhist Bibliography CENSORSHIP AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE TRIPITAKA Tanya StorchThe History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography Censorship and Transformation of the Tripitaka Tanya Storch NA CAMBRIA PRESS Amherst, New YorkCopyright 2014 Cambria Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to: permissions@cambriapress.com, or mailed to: Cambria Press University Corporate Centre, 100 Corporate Parkway, Suite 128 Amherst, New York 14226, U.S.A. The drawing on the front cover was commissioned by Tanya Storch and illustrated by Jonel Imutan. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Storch, Tanya, author. The history of Chinese Buddhist bibliography : censorship and transformation of the Tripitaka / Tanya Storch. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60497-877-3 (alk. paper) 1. Buddhist literature, Chinese--Bibliography. 2. Tripitaka--Bibliography. |. Title. BQ1217.S86 2014 294.3'80951--dc23 2014005534To my friendsForeword | have been waiting for this book for a long time, but the wait was well worth it. Considering the importance of the subject, it is rather amazing that a reliable, comprehensive history of Chinese Buddhist bibliography has never been published before. Of course, already since ancient times, China had its own native tradition of bibliography, particularly as devised and elaborated by Confucian literati. But Buddhism was a mature foreign religion, and its ideas of canonicity were completely different from those of indigenous thinkers. Perhaps it was because of the stark dissimilarity between Buddhist scriptures and Confucian classics (together with other establishment sanctioned texts) that Chinese scholars have paid little attention to Buddhist bibliography. Moreover, for whatever reason, even mainstream modern Buddhologists have not documented the history of Chinese Buddhist bibliography systematically or adequately. Enter Tanya Storch, who is uniquely qualified to remedy the lack. Storch has been researching the development of Chinese Buddhist bibliography since she was a student in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Russia. She has an excellent command of Classical Chinese, in which the Buddhist catalogs were written, and is familiar with relevant Japanese and modern Chinese scholarship. Above all, however, she is tireless in reading the massive Buddhist bibliographies with a critical eye. She takes nothing for granted—she examines all of the data that is available with discernment and exactitude. Consequently, Storch has made significant breakthroughs in the sequence and derivation of Buddhist bibliographies. Another area in which Storch excels is her ability toilluminate intellectual and doctrinal debates within Buddhism and between Buddhism and other religious traditions. Through a precise delineation of the evolution of Buddhist bibliography in China, Storch highlights key issues concerning the nature of Chinese Buddhism and its position in Chinese culture and society. More than anything else, what | consider to be the greatest contribution of this book to the understanding and appreciation of Buddhism as a world religion is the author's remarkable talent for explicating Chinese Buddhist bibliography through comparison with Greco-Roman scriptural catalogs. | am not aware of a single other scholar who is capable of carrying out this task with such skill and success. Thus chapter 7 alone makes this volume indispensable for helping specialists on Western religions come to terms with Chinese Buddhism. Conversely, Storch’s comparative analysis enables investigators of Chinese Buddhism to view their field in an expanded light. The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography deserves to be on the bookshelf of everyone who has a serious interest in the history of Chinese Buddhism and, indeed, of anyone who is concerned with scriptural bibliography in general. Victor H. Mair University of PennsylvaniaAcknowledgments Over the years, these special people have contributed to and supported in many different ways my research on Chinese Buddhist bibliography: Victor Mair, Ling-ling Kuo, Dan Boucher, Tansen Sen, Jinhua Chen, Jiang Wu, Lucille Chia, Ann Matter, Robert Buswell, John Kieshinick, Lewis Lancaster, Rita Gross, Robert Campany, Susanne St. Clair, George Randels, Kevin McGinnis, Zing Nafzinger, and Val Sukhanov. To all of them, | am so grateful.Introduction This book examines the catalogs that describe and classify manuscripts of Chinese Buddhist texts. These catalogs were written by deeply religious people, and not all the information they contain is historical fact in the modem sense of the expression. However, these precious documents constitute undeniable evidence that the earliest Buddhist teachings (dating to the second through the early fifth century) were transmitted to China via the routes of what is commonly known as the Silk Road, from such Central Asian areas as Parthia, Khotan, Kucha, Bactria, and Sogdia, and that original teachings from India arrived later to continue the propagation of the seeds already sown through earlier contacts with Central Asia. Another important dimension of East Asian Buddhism reflected in the catalogs of Chinese Buddhist manuscripts is that during its early phase of transmission, the Buddhist Dharma traveled along the Silk Road not in the form of a written canon (as is often assumed) but memorized and carried in the minds of traveling monks. It is likely that during that time the so-called original manuscripts were not at all involved in the dissemination of Buddhism. Monks who arrived in various Chinese cities had an oral command of the texts they had learned by heart from their teachers. With the assistance of several interpreters speaking different tongues, the orally transmitted texts were translated into spoken Chinese. These translations were then written down in Chinese characters, and it was habitual to incorporate into the written texts thus created the oral commentaries provided during the process of translation. Catalogs itemizing Chinese Buddhist manuscriptswitnessed the influence of Confucian book culture on the formation of the East Asian Tripitaka. Tripitaka—literally, “three baskets’—is a Sanskrit name for the Buddhist canon. At the First Buddhist Council during the fifth century BCE, Buddha’s disciples orally recited everything they had learned from their teacher. The first division (or basket) of this orally created canon was filled with disciplinary instructions and called Vinaya-pitaka; the second was filled with teachings delivered through storytelling, and it was called Sutra-pitaka; the third was filled with commentaries made by the Buddha and his main disciples, and it was called Abhidharma-pitaka. Because in China the importance of Confucian classics had been a dominant cultural feature long before the arrival of Buddhism, the written word was valued there much more than oral recitation was. In the scriptural catalogs by Chinese Buddhists, one finds invaluable evidence that traditional Indic and Central Asian ways of verifying and preserving the “correctness” of the Dharma disappeared under the influence of the preexisting book culture and that a collection of what might be called Buddhist classics was installed in order to compete—culturally, textually, and politically—with Confucian literature and its ideology. As a result of the emphasis on the written dimension of the canon, production of Buddhist manuscripts began to extend and flourish across Central Asia, especially in the Gansu corridor, one of the main areas through which Buddhism traveled to China. Production of Buddhist manuscripts in the areas located near the Silk Road was stimulated by Chinese religious pilgrims who zealously searched for them and were willing to travel a thousand miles from home just to obtain one new text. Buying and selling these manuscripts became a booming business, and many territories west of China became centers for the production of forgeries. Carefully reading through Chinese Buddhist scriptural catalogs convinces one that false manuscriptsspread in China with great success because two of the most influential leaders of fourth-century Chinese Buddhism, Shi Daoan (312-385) and Shi Huiyuan (334-416), were alarmed by this situation. They expressed the opinion that manuscripts from the areas they called Liangzhou, Guanzhong, and Hexi must be approached with great caution. And one may surmise that the abundance of forged manuscripts arriving from Central Asia triggered the development of a critical bibliography among the Chinese Buddhists. Buddhist catalogs also played a crucial role in drawing boundaries between what East Asian Buddhists came to label the Hinayana (Small Vehicle) versus the Mahayana (Great Vehicle) forms of Buddhism. The Small Vehicle of the Chinese catalogs did not correspond to any particular school of the earliest history of Buddhism as it developed in India and Central Asia. But neither did it correspond to the pejorative term Hinayana, by which the followers of Mahayana outside of China referred to other forms of Buddhism. Chinese catalogers created their own categories in this regard, and the process was accompanied by many uncertainties and trials. For instance, Sengyou, considered a founder of Chinese Buddhist bibliography, did not discriminate between the Mahayana and the Small Vehicle texts at all. And although the earliest catalog attempting to separate the Mahayana from the Small Vehicle was published during the Liu Song dynasty (420-479), the separation was Still not complete nearly two hundred years later, at the end of the Sui dynasty (581-618). Only through the work of the Tang dynasty (618-907) bibliographers—in particular, Shi Daoxuan and Shi Zhisheng—were the parameters of the Sinitic Mahayana (Great Vehicle) canon drawn more clearly. Ironically, this accomplishment resulted in a_ precipitous decline in the number of Small Vehicle scriptures included in subsequent canonical editions of the Chinese Tripitaka. The authors of Chinese Buddhist scriptural catalogs wereequally responsible for changing the sequence of the Tripitaka’s parts. According to Indic sources, the first part of the Buddha’s teachings recited by his disciples was the Vinaya-pitaka; therefore, the Vinaya-pitaka should have constituted the first part of the Chinese canon, as well. But for several reasons, discussed in this book, in China the order of the first two parts of the Tripitaka was reversed. There, what was originally the second part, the Sutra-pitaka, was classified above the originally first Vinaya-pitaka. Chinese Buddhist catalogers contributed to the formation of the Tripitaka in many more ways, including by making decisions about the authenticity of each given scripture. Kyoko Tokuno (2004, 116) formulated this best when she wrote that catalogs played “both prescriptive and proscriptive functions” by classifying scriptures in ways that either included or excluded them from the canon. The importance of scriptural catalogs in the formation and transformation of the Chinese Buddhist canon has not gone unnoticed by scholars. Founding figures of Buddhist studies in the West—Bunyé Nanjo, Prabodh Bagchi, Paul Demiéville, and Etienne Lamotte—have paid attention to them, and studying different aspects of these catalogs has become consistent since the 1960s and 1970s owing to Arthur Link, Leon Hurvitz, Arthur Wright, Erik Zurcher, Victor Mair, Lewis Lancaster, Kyoko Tokuno, Robert Buswell, Jan Nattier, and many others. Chinese scholars have contributed a great deal to the advancement of this field. Liang Qichao (1926) and Yao Mingda (1938) pioneered the modern Chinese study of Buddhist bibliography in the twentieth century, and Tan Shibao (1989; 1991), Jinhua Chen (2002a, 2002b, 2005, 2006, 2007), Jiang Wu (2011), and Fang Guangchang (2006, 2011) must be considered today’s leading experts. During the last decade, more Chinese scholars in the People’s Republic of China (among them Dang Yanni, Lue Lin, Wan Jingqing, and Wei Jiajia) have begun examining Buddhist catalogs asuniversity- and library-affiliated studies of the Buddhist canon have become more acceptable. Certainly, Japanese scholars have made a most significant contribution to the field of Chinese Buddhist bibliography from the early 1930s to the present (Tokiwa Daijé, Naits Tatsuo, Hayashiya Tomojiré, Mochizuki Shinkd, Makita Tairy6, Tsukamoto Zenryd, Ui Hakuju, Okabe Kazuo, Kéichi Shinohara, and others). With all these acknowledgments there comes a need to define the main goal of this book. In the simplest terms, it presents a panoramic view of the development of Chinese Buddhist bibliography. The need for such a study is urgent, for although references to and even in-depth studies of individual catalogs and the data they contain have been written, there has not been, until now, an investigation into the entire historical scope of Chinese Buddhist bibliography. Without such a complete overview, one cannot understand how, why, and by what agents crucial changes were made in the Chinese Tripitaka, for those changes happened gradually but consistently as a result of the work of several dozen catalogers working over a period of several hundred years. Therefore, this monograph discusses all the comprehensive catalogs of the Tripitaka written from the time of the Buddhist bibliography’s inception in the late third century until the time when, in the first part of the tenth century, scriptural catalogs lost most of their importance to printed editions of the Tripitaka, and the latter took on the former's role in shaping the canon and defining its ideological and scriptural parameters. Four chapters of this book (chapters 2-6) follow a chronological order. The earliest scriptural catalogs, including those by Zhu Shixing, Zhu Fahu, Nie Daozhen, Zhi Mindu, Shi Daoan, Shi Sengrui, Zhu Daozu, Shi Wanzong, and the anonymous bibliographer of the Subject Catalog of Scriptures (Zhongjing bielu) published during the Liu Song dynasty, are discussed in chapter 2.Chapter 3 introduces the catalogs of the southern dynasties; these witnessed to what might be called the rise of Sangha-authorized scriptural orthodoxy in matters of Tripitaka texts. The focus of this chapter is on three Southern Liang dynasty works—namely, the Catalog of Scriptures from the Buddha Palace in the Flowering Grove (Hualin fodian zhongjing mulu) by Shi Sengshao, the Catalog of Scriptures of the Liang Dynasty (Liangshi zhongjing mulu) by Shi Baochang, and the Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka (Chu sanzang ji ji) by Sengyou. Chapter 4 contains in-depth analysis of the Sui dynasty’s Buddhist bibliography, for it was during that period that the criteria of textual authenticity began to shift, largely because of Fei Changfang, a controversial figure for many scholars. Indeed, having suffered the loss of his monastic status under the rule of the Northern Zhou (557-581) but having received many favors from the ruler of the Sui dynasty, Changfang departed from the earlier Sangha-drawn parameters for scriptural and doctrinal authenticity. He introduced a dynastic- imperial principle for organizing the Chinese Tripitaka and placed new emphasis on a political rulers acceptance of those scriptures. Many texts that earlier bibliographers had disqualified from the canon became canonical because of Changfang; these include but are not limited to such seminal texts of Chinese Buddhism as the Sutra of the Benevolent King (Ren wang jing) and the Treatise on the Awakening Faith in the Mahayana (Da cheng qi xin lun). Titled “The Golden Age of Buddhism and the Catalogs of the Tang Dynasty,” chapter 5 looks into nearly a dozen comprehensive Tripitaka catalogs published during the Tang, including the Catalog of the Inner Canon (Da Tang neidian Iu) by Shi Daoxuan, the Catalog of All Sutras and Shastras of the Da Jing’ai Monastery (Da Jing’aisi yigie jinglun mu) by Shi Jingtai, Notes on the Illustrations to the Translations of Scriptures Made in Ancient and Modern Times (Gujin yijingtuji) by Shi Jingmai, the Corrected and Authorized Catalog of Scriptures of the Great Zhou Dynasty (Da Zhou kanding zhongjing mulu) by Shi Mingquan, the Catalog of Shakyamuni’s Teachings of the Kaiyuan Era of the Great Tang Dynasty (Da Tang Kaiyuan shijiao mulu) by Shi Zhisheng, and the Newly Authorized Catalog of Shakyamuni’s Teachings of the Zhenyuan Era (Zhenyuan xinding shijiao mulu) by Shi Yuanzhao. This chapter also discusses technological innovations that took place during the Tang; eventually, these innovations paved the way to a completely new format for the canon. This book has a second main goal—namely, to serve scholars who specialize in the comparative analysis of sacred scriptures. To this goal chapters 1, 6, and 7 are dedicated. The publication of The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective (Denny and Taylor 1985) more than a quarter-century ago marked a renewed interest in the worldwide study of religious scriptures among American scholars. An impressive variety of textual traditions has been examined as this trend has continued through the end of the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty-first. However, the canonization of the Chinese Tripitaka—a collection of more than two thousand scriptures that affected cultural areas from Tibet to Japan and from Vietnam to Mongolia—has not become a part of the discussion. Not a single chapter on the Chinese Buddhist canon was included in Sacred Word and Sacred Text (Coward 1988), Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective (Levering 1989), What Is Scripture? A Comparative Approach (Smith 1993), Sacred Texts and Authority (Neusner 1998), Sacred Writings (Holm and Bower 1994), Experiencing Scripture in World Religions (Coward 2000), or Anthology of World Scriptures (van Voorst 2003). One reason why comparative examinations of the world’s sacred scriptures have not included the Chinese Tripitaka is most likely that the bulk of studies dedicated to itshistory are either written in Chinese and Japanese or address a narrow circle of Sinologists and Buddhologists and require advanced knowledge of Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian languages. Very little, in fact, has been written for the well- educated specialist who is not a Chinese Buddhologist that would allow experts in other scriptural traditions to understand the canonization processes of Chinese Buddhist texts. It is these considerations that have become additional inspiration for this volume. Consistent with my desire to write a book that would be useful to specialists in comparative studies of the world’s scriptures is the decision to avoid using Chinese characters in the main corpus of the book, providing them only in the Table of Chinese Buddhist Scriptural Catalogs (appendix A). For the same reason, titles of the Buddhist catalogs and of other works of Chinese historiography are introduced by their English translations, and the pinyin transliterations have been provided in parentheses. The Sanskrit names of foreign monks who helped create the Chinese Buddhist canon, as well as the Sanskrit titles of Buddhist works, are given by following rules of English phonology—that is, the letter combination sh represents both the consonant transcribed as s with the acute accent and the consonant s transcribed with the retroflex dot underneath it; the letter combination ch represents what is often written only as the letter c. At the same time, the macrons over the vowels are not provided in the main body of the text—they appear in a separate glossary.This volume has been prepared in this way for the benefit of readers who are nonspecialists or are specialists in other fields and may find it difficult to pronounce and remember names such as Dharmakshema, Buddhayashas, and Kumarajiva even when they are written in plain English characters. It is my firm opinion that if we Sinologists and Buddhologists want specialists from other fields to better understand the Chinese Tripitaka, we must make our research writingaccommodating. Following the idea of serving other fields and rendering the Chinese Tripitaka a “household” name in discussions of scriptural canons in world religions, various comparative observations are spread throughout this book. For instance, to illustrate Changfang’s method of rethinking Chinese history through the Buddhist faith, | have considered Origen’s method of biblical allegory and made a comparison to the Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius. In discussing the religious politics of the Southem Liang dynasty Emperor Wu, it is most common to compare him to King Ashoka, but this explains nothing to a biblical scholar, so | have drawn a parallel between the fifth-century Emperor Wu and Emperor Constantine of the Byzantine Empire. Three chapters, as mentioned, are purposely dedicated to comparative analyses. Chapter 1 looks into Confucian classics and draws conclusions about the influence Confucian catalogs had on the development of the Chinese Tripitaka. Chapter 6 analyzes images of the “translators’—foreign monks believed to be responsible for transmitting the Buddhist Dharma from Central Asia and India to China. The narrative model used in many of the biographies parallels that of the miraculous stories written about the Buddha and his disciples in India and can also be compared to stories about the apostles of Christ. The significance of this comparison is that in both the Chinese Buddhist and the Greek Christian canonical tradition, scriptural authorization derived from knowledge about the figure of the transmitter of the text, and biographies were intended to portray the “proper” figures for such transmission. Following this comparison, chapter 7 presents an analysis of scriptural catalogs of the New Testament, along with a discussion of book catalogs written in the Hellenistic tradition, for the latter provide a perfect antithesis to religious scriptural bibliography. Ultimately, the purpose of the final two chapters is to reflect on the mainprocesses involved in the formation of the Chinese Buddhist canon in such a way that specialists from other fields may better relate to them. This is possible largely because certain typological similarities in theological and historiographical devices were used by both Buddhist and Christian bibliographers as they sought the most efficient means of verifying their respective doctrinal truths.Transliterated Sanskrit Names, Titles, and Terms | have dispensed with the diacritic marks in transliterated Sanskrit words to make it easier for the specialists who are not Sanskrit-Buddhology based to follow the contents of the study and to expedite the process of naturalizing important Sanskrit names and terms. In this list, Sanskrit terms that have already been naturalized in English, such as “sutra” and “nirvana,” are not included. Agama Agama Ashoka Asoka Ashtasahasrika Astasahasrika Avadana Avadana Buddhayashas Buddhayasas Dharani Dharant Dharmaguptaka Dharmaguptaka Dharmakala Dharmakala Dharmakshema Dharmaksema Dharmaraksha Dharmaraksa Dhyana Dhyana Hinayana Hinayana Gunabhadra Gunabhadra Kashyapa Kasyapa Kumarajiva Kumarajiva Lokakshema Lokaksema Mahakashyapa Mahakasyapa Maha-prajna-paramita-shastra Maha-prajfia-paramita-sastra Mahasanghika Mahasanghika Mahavastu Mahavastu Mahayana Mahayana Mahishasaka Mahisasaka Mara Mara Maudgalyana Maudgalyana Paramita Paramita Prajna PrajfiaSarvastivada Sarvastivada Shakyamuni Sakyamuni Sharira Sarira Shastra Sastra Shuramgama-sutra Suraagama-sitra Tripitaka Tripitaka Triyana Triyana Vibhasha Vibhasa Vimalakirti-sutra Vimalakirti-sitraChapter 1 Chinese Catalogs of Traditional (Non-Buddhist) Literature Buddhist catalogs in China developed under the influence of a rich tradition of cataloging the Confucian classics and Chinese national literature, a tradition that started long before Buddhist scriptures were first translated into Chinese. Beginning with the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE), book cataloging came to be viewed as a highly respectable field of knowledge and a task worthy of the most distinguished historians. Particularly, under the influence of two historians, Liu Xiang (79-8 BCE) and Ban Gu (32-92 CE), knowledge about books both lost and preserved, dynasties under whose rule books were written, and the lives of their authors became indispensable information—knowledge believed to have contributed to the advancement of civilization _ itself. Therefore, to fully appreciate the genre of catalog writing in the Chinese Buddhist tradition, one must first develop some understanding of traditional Chinese non-Buddhist catalog literature. The Subject Catalog by Liu Xiang and Seven Epitomes by Liu Xin Although book cataloging undoubtedly began before the father and son Confucian historians Liu Xiang and Liu Xin (26 BCE-6 CE) wrote their two catalogs—destined to become the most famous in the world of Chinese bibliographicalscholarship—there is practically no information about catalogs predating Liu Xiang and Liu Xin’s bibliographical writings.2 Thus, in a pattern that must be familiar to a modern historian working on ancient written culture from any part of the world, scholars must fall back on the Confucian tradition for the description of how book catalogs began in China. According to available sources, during the rule of the Former Han dynasty, Liu Xiang received an order from Emperor Cheng (32-6 BCE) to create a complete description of all the books ever written in China. He was to perform this task with three other officials—Ren Hong, Yi Xian, and Li Zhiguo. Liu Xiang was responsible for searching, collecting, and arranging books in the categories of classics, philosophy, and poetry. Ren Hong was to search for, collect, and describe all the books on military science, Yi Xian was allotted books in divination, and finally, Li Zhiguo was assigned the literature related to medicine. Because the titles were divided according to these six subject areas—classics, philosophy, poetry, military science, divination, and medicine—the catalog they produced was called the Subject Catalog (Bielu).4 This work was not complete at the time of Liu Xiang’s death in 8 CE, but scholars know that the bibliographical procedures that had been followed were these: (1) each book was entered under its title, followed by a list of all the divisions (or chapters) the book contained; (2) this information was accompanied by an explanation of the book’s subject and the author's identity; and (3) the dates of the author's life in terms of dynastic chronology were provided. Because Liu Xiang died without finishing his work, his son Liu Xin received a new order from Cheng’s successor, Emperor Ai (6 BCE-1 CE), to finish what his father had started and to complete the account of all the books in the empire.> In response, Liu Xin wrote a catalog that he titled Seven Epitomes (Qi lue). This work divided books accordingto the same six subjects as in his father’s catalog, but Liu Xin added a seventh division in which he explained the reasons for dividing all books into six categories. The seventh part also contained the table of contents for the entire catalog. Within each of the six divisions, books were described by their titles, tables of contents, and information about their authors (including the dates of their lives).® What makes these two early catalogs worthy of attention, especially in light of my argument that Buddhist catalogs in China were modeled after traditional ones, is that neither the Subject Catalog nor Seven Epitomes was merely technical and free from ideological descriptions of the books available in China. The very fact that the three highest taxonomic categories—classics, history, and philosophy—were reported as having been collected and described by a Confucian scholar points to the process of assigning greater cultural value to these writings than to all the others. In addition, it must be noted that as a Confucian scholar belonging to the Old Text School, Liu Xin favored particular redactions of the ancient texts, and it was largely through the act of cataloging these texts that he was able to establish the so-called truthful transmissions of Confucius’s teachings.’ This is an early and extremely important example of manipulating textual authenticity for the sake of defending certain doctrinal positions. Liu Xiang’s Catalog and Buddhist Bibliography During the second half of the fourth century, when Buddhist scholars in China began seriously examining the authenticity of their scriptural canon, they did not simply address the problems of its translation; they aimed to elevate its sociocultural status to the heights that the Confucian classics had enjoyed for centuries before the first Chinese translations of Buddhist teachings were produced. Their attempts in thisregard are obvious because beginning with Sengyou (445- 518), most Buddhist catalogers wrote in the introductions to their catalogs of the Buddhist canon that Liu Xiang had personally examined the earliest Buddhist translations in China. Such a statement appears in different forms. Depending on the cataloger’s style, a few or perhaps more details are given; nonetheless, the assertion appears consistently in many Buddhist bibliographical works, including the most influential ones by Fajing (published in 594), Fei Changfang (published in 597), and Daoxuan (published in 664).8 For readers unfamiliar with Chinese Buddhist history, it must be made clear that during Liu Xiang’s life, translations of the Buddhist canon into the Chinese language did not yet exist; thus, these references to Liu Xiang as the first examiner of the earliest Buddhist translations served a_ purely ideological purpose. In terms of practical application of Liu Xiang and Liu Xin’s bibliographical methods, | tum to the fourth-century Buddhist scholar Shi Daoan (312-385), whose groundbreaking catalog is examined in the following chapter. Daoan is considered by Chinese Buddhists and modem-day Buddhologists alike the father of the Chinese Buddhist bibliography, and this is because he reformed the way records of Buddhist translations were made and used for determining their authenticity. Specifically, he insisted that all translations be cataloged and that catalogs provide information about the authors (i.e., translators) of each given scripture, as well as about the time period, specified according to Chinese chronology, during which it had been translated. He contended that without such information, spiritual teachings contained in the Buddhist canon could not be trusted. As the earlier brief discussion of the Subject Catalog and Seven Epitomes shows, this is exactly the type of information that Liu Xiang and Liu Xin provided about each book in their catalogs.The influence of Liu Xiang on the Buddhist bibliographical tradition can be also seen in several early Buddhist catalogs because they were named after his renowned work. One Subject Catalog in a Buddhist tradition is described by Changfang in his Records of the Three Treasures throughout the Successive Dynasties. Sengyou, author of the Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka, regularly mentioned Subject Catalog in his writings. It is possible that Buddhists sought to give more weight and credibility to their own bibliographical writings by “borrowing” the title of the most important book catalog ever written in China. One important example of Buddhist reliance on Liu Xiang’s legacy is a Liu Song dynasty (420-479) scriptural catalog. In that work, the anonymous author applied the original tripartite structure of the Tripitaka for the first time in Chinese Buddhist history. Most likely because he considered this new approach to the Buddhist scriptures equal in importance to what Liu Xiang had done for the Confucian classics, he named his work the Subject Catalog of All Buddhist Classics.° Liu Xin’s Seven Epitomes was likewise emulated by Buddhist bibliographers. Its influence can be seen in Daoan’s catalog, in which scriptures were divided into seven categories. Moreover, all Buddhist catalogers widely used the innovation Liu Xin applied to his father's catalog— that is, providing a special division summarizing the entire bibliography’s contents. Such divisions can be found in bibliographical works by Changfang, Daoxuan, and Zhisheng, among many others. It is noteworthy that a particular correlation existed between the traditional catalogs of Chinese literature that used the taxonomic divisions of Seven Epitomes and what might be called bibliographical legitimacy of the Tripitaka. At some point in history, bibliographers of the classics and traditional Chinese books began using a reformed bookclassification known as “four-division” (sibu) classification. These four-section catalogs habitually excluded the Buddhist canon from all types of bibliographical listings and descriptions, but by contrast, catalogs that continued using Liu Xin’s seven-division classification were opened to include information about the Buddhist canon. Examples of such openness are still evident in Seven Reviews (Qi zhi) by Wang Jian (fl. 452-489)'° and Seven Records (Qi lu) by Ruan Xiaoxti (fl. 479-536)."1 The Monograph on Arts and Writings by Ban Gu Ban Gu (32-92) authored the first history of the Han dynasty now known as the History of Han (Han shu),'2 a historical account in which he also provided a catalog of all the books that had ever existed in China entitled the Monograph on Arts and Writings (Yi wen zhi).'> It is because of this source that scholars have knowledge about the Lius’ Subject Catalog and Seven Epitomes: in his bibliographical work, Ban provided detailed information about these earlier works. He also followed Liu Xiang and Liu Xin’s style of describing and classifying Chinese books and classics. All the books in Ban’s catalog appeared under their titles, followed by brief annotations that included the date of compilation and the name of the author or transmitter of the text. At the same time, Ban added several new features; specifically, he introduced counts of the number of fascicles and chapters in each book and provided information about whether each text was extant or lost. Unfortunately, he eliminated the table of contents listings for each book, a feature that was important to the two previous catalogers. All the books in the Monograph on Arts and Writings were divided according to the six subject categories seen in the Subject Catalog and Seven Epitomes, but a_ certainmodification occurred with respect to the explanations provided about these divisions. In Seven Epitomes, explanations appear in a separate, seventh division that follows the main text listing all the books. In Ban’s catalog, however, each taxonomic explanation appears immediately after a particular category has been introduced through the titles of all the books in it. Ban also supplied brief biographical notes about the authors whose books were listed in each category. This change in the organization of a Confucian catalog is important because it was this new structure that became a model for the Buddhist catalogers of the fourth and fifth centuries. My brief study of traditional non-Buddhist bibliography in China is conducted here with a specific goal—to demonstrate the extent to which Buddhist bibliography depended on the principles developed by Confucian scholars for the collection of the classics.‘4 Analyzing the Monograph on Arts and Writings provides an advantage that is not available to studies of the previous two catalogs, those by Liu Xiang and Liu Xin, which are lost and available only in historical reconstruction. In particular, the Monograph provides access to the introduction that Ban wrote in order to explain the importance of fully accounting for all the books written in China. In brief, Ban’s introduction argues that after Confucius died during the Zhou dynasty, true words ceased to exist, and after all Confucius’s disciples had also died, righteousness was perverted. As a result, all the ancient texts, such as the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chungiu), the Classic of Poetry (Shi jing),"5 and the Classic of Changes (Yi jing),’® were passed down in multiple and diverging versions instead of in one true text. Because the classics had thus become faulty, people were led away from true knowledge; they were unable to distinguish truthful words from false ones. Not only could ordinary people no longer see the truth, but the works ofphilosophers also became chaotic. The situation, fortunately, was amended because Liu Xiang and Liu Xin wrote their two catalogs and separated the true transmission of the Confucian teachings from the rest of the texts. As time passed, a similar occasion presented itself and it once more became necessary to follow the example of the Lius, father and son, and to separate the true from the false by compiling a catalog of books.'7 Of special interest here is that Ban firmly connected the act of writing a catalog with the resulting establishment of the truth of Confucian doctrine. Furthermore, it was through Ban’s efforts that the Subject Catalog and Seven Epitomes were established as the earliest book catalogs ever written. An additional claim was made that it was in accordance with these first catalogs that particular redactions of the ancient texts had been identified as the “true transmission” of Confucius’s teachings. Overall, in the hands of the historian Ban, the book catalog form was fully transformed into a measuring system by which the truth of Confucian doctrine could be determined. When Buddhists in China were pressed to establish a scriptural orthodoxy of their own, they had no need to look further than Ban Gu’s example. The Monograph on the Arts and Writings and Buddhist Bibliography A study of the Monograph on the Arts and Writings provides a chance to examine the way that the taxonomic classification used in the traditional Chinese catalogs worked in practice. For one thing, among the six divisions of the classification system (classics, philosophy, poetry, military science, divination, and medicine), the first division seemed to be the most important one. This is because it contained books that were identified with the Confucian classics. Significantly, books in this first division were also divided into six categories (just as the whole catalog was); the six categories of bookslisted as classics were referred to as arts (yi), a label that sets them apart from all the other types of books described in the remaining five divisions of the catalog, which in turn were called writings (wen). For this reason, the first division of the Monograph on the Arts and Writings is known as the “Six Arts” (liu yi), and the first of these is the Art of Changes. Here readers find a list of those texts associated with what is known today as the Classic of Changes; it also includes commentaries on these texts. Second is the Art of History, which is represented by different versions of what later became the Classic of History, along with texts that have similar contents. Third is the Art of Poetry, under which category various versions of the Classic of Poetry and other poetic collections are listed, and that is followed, fourth, by the Art of Ritual, which encompasses a variety of writings about rituals and ceremonies, including several texts that later merged into the classic known as Records on the Rituals.'® Fifth is the Art of Springs and Autumns, composed of several redactions of the Spring and Autumn Annals and similar literature; sixth is the Art of Music. Here, various books on music are listed, including those texts that were associated with the Classic of Music.'® Modem scholars tend to disregard Ban’s explanations about the historical origins of the books included in the “Six Arts,” but if one pays attention to them, a certain pattern becomes apparent. In the explanatory note about the Classic of History, Ban stated that the text had been found in the house of Confucius.2° The Classic of Poetry was also directly related to Confucius because, according to Ban, Confucius had collected and edited poems of the Yin and Zhou dynasties, and this is precisely how the Classic of Poetry came into being.27 Ban wrote that Records on the Rituals were put into perfect order through the work of Confucius but later fell into disarray, whereas Ban ascribed the production ofthe Spring and Autumn Annals directly to Confucius and his disciples.2? Finally, the Classic of Changes was to be recognized as Confucius’s work because, according to Ban, Confucius had written commentaries on the Classic of Changes, and these made the meaning of the text clear.2% Without delving too deeply into this legendary history of how the classics were created, one can simply state that Ban tried to prove that they had come from Confucius in one way or another. This is what E. R. Hughes called the “theological mind” behind the Monograph on the Arts and Writings.24 This essentially quasi-religious approach to the classics has been also noted by Rodney Taylor, who wrote this in The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective: “The books which may be described as the scripture or holy books of Confucianism are ultimately linked to ... [the] tradition of the sages”; Taylor added that Confucius was made instrumental in the formation and transmission processes of the classics.25 Reading even more carefully through Ban’s catalog reveals that in addition to connecting the books in the division “Six Arts” to Confucius, Ban also traced the transmission of a particular redaction of each given classic. For instance, he wrote about what he considered the oldest version of the Classic of Changes and attributed its transmission to specific families; similar procedures were followed for the other classics.26 The Monograph on Arts and Writings also contains cases in which certain writings have been denied authoritative status on the grounds that a book’s title or its authorship happened to be erroneous—that is, its contents were subject to doubt because it could not have been written by the given author or during the given time period. No such cases of textual forgery are marked in the division titled “Six Arts,” but the division that follows it, “Philosophers,” includes several. For instance, a text titled Shennong is declared to beapocryphal because Shennong, the mythical “Divine Farmer,” according to Ban, could not have written such a text; another book called Celestial One (Tian yi) is declared apocryphal on the basis that it could not have been produced during the Shang-Yin dynasty (ca. eighteenth to twelfth century BCE). Although | have not yet considered a particular Buddhist catalog in depth, it is important at this point in the inquiry to emphasize that Buddhist bibliography in China could take no other course but to emulate Confucian bibliography. At least three fundamental historiographical principles were borrowed by the Buddhists from the Confucians. First, the main goal declared for writing a catalog of Buddhist translations is identical to that stated by Ban Gu. Ban used a book catalog to verify the authenticity of the transmission of Confucian teachings; Buddhist bibliographers similarly announced that the goal of a Buddhist scriptural catalog was to verify the transmission of the Buddha’s words. The second point concems the connection made between the authoritative writings and the person responsible for their transmission. Confucian catalogers verified the authenticity of the Confucian classics by establishing a “historical” link between the sage and the classic. A_ similar ideological- historiographical device was used by the Buddhist catalogers, who attempted to separate the “true” translations from the “false” ones. They attributed to known and trusted translators hundreds of anonymously translated scriptures in order to prove their authenticity. Like their Confucian counterparts, Buddhists provided information about the transmitters of the Dharma by giving the dates of their lives according to Chinese chronology and by relating “facts” of their biographies—despite the problem that for some of these translators, these were nothing more than legends.The third important point on which the Confucian catalogs influenced the Buddhist ones concerns the criteria for declaring a false transmission. As noted, Ban rejected certain books becausehe did not believe these could have been written by the individuals they had been attributed to. The same principle served the Buddhist catalogers, who rejected many translations as inauthentic because they considered their authorship apocryphal. 2” That the Confucian catalog served as a model for the Chinese Buddhist scriptural catalogs can be further illustrated by comparing the use of specific bibliographical devices. For instance, a numerical count of books and fascicles, appended to the end of each subject entry, is found in both Confucian and Buddhist catalogs. These counts are introduced by the same formula: “such and such number of books and fascicles to the right belong to such and such category of texts.” Other devices used in both types of catalogs include explanations about taxonomic categories at the end of each subject entry, references to previous catalogs, and indications of whether a given text was preserved or had been lost. Representations of Buddhist Texts in the Four-Division Catalogs Because most Confucian scholars held the view that books in the “Six Arts” division contained the totality of knowledge, they minimized the importance of the books in the other divisions. Ban Gu had already explained that other divisions were merely branches of the tree, whereas the root and the trunk of it were found in “Six Arts.” Catalogers of the Wei dynasty (220-265) in the Three Kingdoms period went one step further and decided that it was necessary to cut off some of these branches so that the root could be seen more clearly. In 235 Zheng Mo published Zhong jing, the title of which can be translated Central Classics or Classics of the Central [Doctrine]. \n that catalog, he proposed that it was necessary to eliminate the last few categories, including medicine, divination, and military science, from the book classification. Then he divided all the books according to four newcategories: classics (jing), history (shi), philosophers (zi), and miscellaneous (za). This new classification was approved by the emperor and supported by many Confucian scholars. During the Northern and Southern dynasties (420-581), a total of fourteen catalogs was published whose authors used this system and argued for its superiority over the old one. The four-division cataloging system took a visibly different approach to the translated Buddhist scriptures from the one exhibited in catalogs that still followed the old seven-division classification. As already mentioned, Seven Reviews (473) and Seven Records (523) included information about the translated Tripitaka, but a search through the four-division dynastic catalogs dating from the Eastern Jin (317-420) through the end of the Tang dynasty (618-907) reveals that only one four-division catalog included information about the Buddhist canon.28 This is the Monograph on Classics and Records (Jingji zhi) written for the History of the Sui Dynasty by the Tang dynasty historian Zhangsun Wuji (d. 659).29 It is vital to remember that this Monograph on Classics and Records employed the four-division taxonomic classification in which the most important books, that is, the Confucian classics, were placed in the first division. Books with slightly less important contents in terms of the mainstream Confucian tradition were placed in the second and third divisions, and books with practically no relevance to Confucian teachings were placed in the last, fourth division. It is significant, therefore, that in the Monograph on Classics and Records the Buddhist canon is not described in any of the four divisions; instead, the description of the Buddhist canon was placed outside the classification system altogether, as a supplement. There, the Tripitaka is represented by a short quote from a Sui dynasty Buddhist catalog written in 617 by Shi Zhiguo.2° Of particular significance is that Zhangsun selected a catalog that had apoor reputation in the Buddhist community; further, the scriptures were not entered by their titles, as traditional Chinese books would be, nor was information provided about the translators of these scriptures or the dynasties under whose rule they were made. Rather, all the Buddhist texts were introduced in groups—for example, “Mahayana sutras— 617 translations in 2,076 fascicles,” and “Suspicious sutras— 172 translations in 36 fascicles.”*" After this abridged description of the Tripitaka, Zhangsun provided an account of the history of Buddhism in China. For the most part, this account must be characterized as neutral. He related details of the Buddha’s origins in India, the child of royal parents, mentioning the Buddha’s miraculous birth from the side of his mother’s body and relating that his birthmarks predicted his future as a great sage. However, some minor details in this account reveal a bit of condescension on Zhangsun’s part in relating the story of the founder of this foreign religion. Buddhist accounts report that the Buddha emerged from the right side of his mother’s body, but in Zhangsun’s version, he is said to have appeared from her left; in Chinese culture, as in most other traditional cultures, the left side is less respected and sometimes even sinister. Zhangsun also noted that the word fotuo, which has been the standard Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit word Buddha, was barbarian and that a more appropriate Chinese expression, jingjue (literally, “pure awakening”) described the same idea more elegantly. Relating the essence of the Buddha’s teaching, Zhangsun stated that it deals primarily with issues of the “immortality of the soul."22 He also described the three stages of the Buddha’s teachings, including the “end of the Dharma.”33 This is very significant in light of scholars’ knowledge about how much political trouble this particular concept caused for practitioners of Buddhism in general and for the followers ofthe three stages in particular. Thus, one suspects that by identifying Buddhism with these forbidden doctrines, a dynastic historian might have intended to discredit it in the eyes of the catalog’s readers. Zhangsun associated the introduction of Buddhism in China with the dream of the Emperor Ming of the Latter Han dynasty (58-75 CE). Here, his Monograph on Classics and Records follows the accounts found in most Buddhist catalogs that tell the story of the emperor who saw a gigantic figure in his dream and sent an expedition to the western regions. The expedition returned with the Buddhist texts and laid the foundation for Buddhist teachings in China.*4 Zhangsun also mentioned in this part of the story the names of some of the most important translators of the Buddhist canon, although these were omitted from the previous part, in which translations were simply introduced by number. The fairness and accuracy of his account in this part of the text is remarkable, but he concluded by mentioning two rather negative events in Buddhist history: the persecution of Buddhism under the Northem Zhou dynasty (557-581) and Emperor Gaozu’s prohibition against the production and purchase of Buddhist texts. Zhangsun followed these with a warning, something one might expect of a court historian: Buddhism is characterized as an “outside doctrine” far removed from the doctrine of the sages—that is, Confucianism. The text accuses Buddhism of tricking people through illusions and exorcisms and blames the new religion for leading China into political chaos.°5 Such is the treatment given to the translated Buddhist scriptures. Books that were not translated from foreign language but written by Chinese Buddhists who followed the respectable genres of national literature (e.g., biography, geographic accounts, genealogy, and book catalogs) were treated differently. Because these works were composed inthe traditional genres, they were honored with classification within the four-division system. Obviously, no books by Buddhist authors were admitted into the first division, reserved for the Confucian canon; however, a certain number of Buddhist books appear in the second division, history. Here | list some examples: Rituals of the Sangha (Sengjia shuyi) by Shi Tanyuan Lives of Eminent Monks (Gao seng zhuan) by Yu Xiaojing Lives of Famous Monks (Ming seng zhuan) by Shi Baochang Lives of Eminent Monks (Gao seng zhuan) by Shi Huijiao Lives of Dharma Masters (Fashi zhuan) by Wang Jing Lives of All Monks (Zhongseng zhuan) by Pei Ziye Lives of the Nuns (Ni zhuan) by Shi Baochang Biography of Faxian (Faxian zhuan), anonymous An Account of Faxian’s Travel (Faxian xingzhuan), anonymous Notes on the Responses to the [Buddha] Relics (Sheli ganying ji) by Wang Shao Account of Buddhist Countries (Foguo ji) by Shi Faxian Notes on Monasteries and Stupas of the Liang Dynasty (Liangshi sita ji) by Liu Liao Notes on the Viharas on Mt. Hua (Huashan jingshe i by Zhang Guanglu Notes on the Monasteries and Stupas of the Capital (Jingshi sita ji) by Shi Tanzong Notes on the Buddhist Worlds (Shijie ji) by Shi Sengyou It immediately becomes clear that the number of books with Buddhist content selected for the catalog of nationalliterature is extremely small. Overall, only a couple dozen were selected from the hundreds of books that had been written by Chinese Buddhists by the end of the Sui dynasty. One next notes that although these books are dedicated to Buddhism, they were classified within the Confucian taxonomic system and ultimately represented the cultural and moral values upheld by Confucianism. For instance, Rituals of the Sangha by Shi Tanyuan is listed before all the other Buddhist books because, according to Confucian views, the topic of the ritual had a higher taxonomic status than other types of writings classified as history. The arrangement of other Buddhist books also conforms to Confucian values and not the values of Buddhism. Books in biography were given a higher status than books in geographic accounts, and these were in turn placed higher than descriptions of individual architectural sites, such as monasteries and stupas. Finally, it is essential to recognize that Zhangsun prioritized his preferences over those of the Sangha. The Sangha had long indicated a preference for the collection of monks’ lives written by Huijiao, yet Zhangsun included collections by other authors, placing them in higher positions than the one selected by the Buddhist community. Conclusion Buddhist bibliography in China developed under the influence of a non-Buddhist, mainly Confucian bibliographical tradition. The most important influence of these bibliographies on Buddhist bibliography is evident in the specific ideological purpose that guided the writing of a book catalog. Liu Xiang and Ban Gu tured the first division of their respective catalogs into a repository of books identified with the Confucian classics. The utmost importance of these books is demonstrated through specific historiographical devices that connect them with Confucius, including knowledge about the transmitter of a particular redaction of the text and the timewhen the transmission occurred. Buddhist scholars in China adopted the goal and devices used by the Confucian historiographers so as to create a scriptural canon they could present to the social elite as equal in perceived historical accuracy to the canon the Confucian scholars had created. Notes 1. This study does not include references and comparisons to the catalogs of the Daozang, the Daoist canon. First, there is still no definitive study tracing its history, especially in the earliest stages, and | am not an expert in the Daozang bibliography. Second, the earliest catalogs of those texts that later formed the Daozang show traces of influences from the Confucian catalogs similar to those in the Chinese Buddhist catalogs. Both Daoist and Buddhist catalogers aspired to have their registers included in official dynastic chronicles, which were usually written by Confucian scholars. Yet registers containing descriptions of the Daoist and Buddhist books were routinely relegated to the rear of the official accounts of national literature. Daoist texts were usually treated with more respect than the Buddhist ones because the former were originally written in Chinese, whereas the latter were translated from the so-called barbaric languages. For information about the earliest Daoist catalogs, see Boltz (2008). 2. XU Shiying argued that book catalogs existed long before Liu Xiang and Liu Xin. According to him, they go back as far as 206-140 BCE and were primarily dedicated to military science (see Xi 1954, 4-5). 3. An account of Liu Xiang’s life and his literary and political career can be found in Knechtges (2010, 60-62, 105-106); also see Loewe (1986, 1:103-122). Liu Xiang was related by blood to the founder of the Han dynasty, Liu Bang, and rose to prominence because of this connection. He was a prolific writer of poetry in the fu genre and authored several important books, including Newly Compiled Stories (Xin xd), Garden of Persuasions (Shuiyuan, or Shuoyuan), and Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lie ni zhuan). 4. The history of this catalog is detailed in Yao (1938, 39-60), Hu (1987, 6-24), and XU (1954, 6-34). Following these scholars, | translate Bielu as Subject Catalog, not as Separate Catalog. Stephen Owen provided a translation with the same meaning but different wording: Categorized Listings. See Chang andOwen (2010, 60). 5. Liu Xin was not merely a bibliographer but also a scientist who made significant discoveries in astronomy. He met a premature death as a result of his involvement in a political plot. For more information on him, see de Crespigny (2007). 6. Both the Subject Catalog and Seven Epitomes are lost; information about them is preserved in the Monograph on Arts and Writings (Yi wen zhi), which is the next catalog analyzed in this chapter. For a more detailed study of Liu Xin’s catalog, consult the aforementioned works in Chinese: Yao (1938), Hu (1987), and Xii (1954); in English, see Tsien (1952). 7. For more details, see Fung (1953, 2:133-136). It is still debated whether the redactions of classics favored by the Old Text School were indeed older than those favored by the New Text School. For the most recent round of debates, see Nylan (1994) and van Ess (1994). 8. The catalogs of Fajing and Changfang were written during the Sui dynasty (581-618) and are considered in great detail in chapter 4. Daoxuan wrote his catalog during the Tang dynasty (618— 907); it is examined in chapter 5. 9. Its Chinese title, Zhongjing bielu, can be translated as the Subject Catalog of Scriptures or the Subject Catalog of All Buddhist Classics. In this Buddhist catalog, for the first time in Chinese Buddhist history, translations were divided according to their subject categories as Sutra, Vinaya, and Abhidharma literature. More information about this catalog is presented in the next chapter. 10. Even after the four-division classification was authorized, some bibliographers continued using the old seven-division one; yet divisions were often different from those designated by Liu Xiang. Wang Jian, a descendant of one of the most powerful noble families of the Southern dynasties period, wrote Seven Reviews, in which he used the following classification: (1) classics, (2) philosophy, (3) poetry and prose, (4) military science, (5) magical arts and divination, (6) maps and charts, and (7) Daoist and Buddhist scriptures. As readers can see, Wang Jian mandatorily kept the first two divisions from the four- division classification but then added categories from the seven- division classification and concluded his description of national literature by listing the scriptures of the Buddhist and Daoist canons. 11. Ruan Xiaoxti was a famous recluse of the Southern Qi and Liang dynasties who refused several offers of high official positions. Instead, he privately conducted intensive research into the bibliographical and historical records of the previous15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. dynasties. In 523 he designed a classification system that drew on the four- and seven-division classifications with some new components. His system was lost after the thirteenth century, but the preface to his catalog, Seven Records, is preserved in a collection of apologetic writings titled An Extended Collection of Records about Propagating the Way and Illuminating Its Teachings (Guang hong ming ji). Alan Berkowitz (1991) examined his innovative system of classifying famous recluses. On Ban Gu and his work, see Knechtges (2010) and Clark (2008). . For a detailed study of this catalog, see Yao (1938, 68-74), Lu Shaoyu (2004, 34-43), Xii (1954, 25-31), and Lai Xinxia (1991, 65-73). However, the extent to which Ban can be considered a Confucian scholar is debatable. Major points of his life are consistent with the career of a typical court official who was obliged to accept Confucian doctrines, at least formally. He was born into one of the most distinguished families of the time but was arrested circa 60 CE on the rumor that he was writing a false historical account of the Western Han dynasty. He was released four years later and given a position in the imperial library. He continued to serve there and at the Han court throughout the second half of the first century. His life ended tragically when he was accused of plotting a rebellion. The title is often translated Odes. Sometimes the title is translated simply Changes. This digest is based on the text of the Han shu (1962, 4:1701). The title is also translated Rites. This classic disappeared toward the end of the Han dynasty. According to Michael Nylan (2001, 8), it might have been incorporated into the Records on the Rituals. Han shu, 1706. Ibid., 1708. Ibid., 1715. Ibid., 1704. Hughes (1938, 173-182). Taylor (1985, 182). For a recent detailed discussion of these transmissions, see Nylan (2001, 28-43). Buddhist catalogers also evaluated the contents of the scriptures; see the discussion in chapter 3. This is not to say that in these dynastic catalogs books with the Buddhist themes were not listed at all. But there is a difference in how the Tripitaka translations were treated versus how books with Buddhist contents (which were not translations but had29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. been written by indigenous Chinese authors) were treated. Further discussion of this phenomenon appears later in this chapter. Zhangsun Wuji was actively involved in political actions leading to the collapse of the Sui and the rise of the Tang dynasty. He held a high post (chancellor) during the reign of Taizong, who was married to his sister. Although Zhangsun retained a degree of political success during the rule of the next emperor, Gaozong, he was accused of having an affair with Gaozong’s new wife and was forced to commit suicide. His biography is detailed in Twitchett and Loewe (1986). This catalog is discussed in chapter 4, along with all the other Sui dynasty catalogs. It was written toward the very end of that dynasty and lacked the sophistication of other catalogs, such as Fajing’s and Changfang’s. The full quote can be found in Sui shu (1973, 4:1094-1095). Huiyuan (334-416) wrote On the Indestructability of Soul (Shen bu mie lun), in which he explained the possibility of reincarnation, insisting that certain elements of the human soul survive after physical death. This treatise led to a controversy and a polemical exchange between the followers and opponents of Buddhism. Documents pertaining to this discussion have been translated by Walter Liebenthal (1952, 327-397). During the Sui dynasty, the monk Xinxing (540-594) established the School of the Three Stages. He divided the Buddha’s teachings into three periods—true Dharma, counterfeit Dharma, and the end of the Dharma—and maintained that China had entered the final stage. This belief led to various messianic- apocalyptic visions and practices, which were severely persecuted by government authorities. For more on the end of the Dharma teachings, see Nattier (1991). A detailed account of Emperor Ming's dream and a full bibliography of studies on this subject appear in Ch’en (1964, 29-31, 508). Sui shu (1973, 4:1099).Chapter 2 The Earliest Chinese Catalogs of Buddhist Literature The Third through the Fifth Century One serious problem in studying the earliest Buddhist catalogs from China is that not a single work written before the early sixth century is extant. At the same time, the earliest source describing these lost catalogs is the work of a late sixth-century Buddhist historian whom many modem scholars consider unreliable. In 597 Fei Changfang (precise dates unknown) wrote the Records of the Three Treasures throughout the Successive Dynasties (Lidai sanbao ji), which includes information about a dozen scriptural catalogs produced in China from the third through the sixth century; yet Chinese and Western scholars alike are reluctant to use this reservoir of knowledge because Changfang is known to have forged historical data in some of his descriptions of the Tripitaka. Further complicating the situation is that the oldest extant catalog, the Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka, published in 515 by Shi Sengyou, informed its contemporary readers that only one catalog of the Tripitaka had existed before the Collection itself. Sengyou attributed this catalog to the fourth-century scholar Shi Daoan, who was credited with many outstanding accomplishments on behalf of the Chinese Buddhist community. | return more than once in this chapter to a discussion of Daoan’s catalog, but first | must address yet another mysterious problem concerning the sources available for the study of the earliest Buddhist catalogs from China. Although Sengyou was consistent in his statements about the lack of earlier Tripitaka catalogs, throughout his work he did, in fact, refer to earlier sources. These sources may simply be some older catalogs, yet none of them received any praise like that which Daoan received for his work. Nor are these sources introduced with any kind of historical commentary —once again, very unlike what Daoan’s catalog had received.Throughout the commentaries Sengyou provided for the variant titles under which a given scripture might be known, he referred to “old records” (jiulu) and the “ancient records” (gulu). But the true nature of these records cannot be determined because Sengyou provided no explanation about them, leaving his readers to guess whether these were older catalogs whose identity has remained anonymous or simply some less important old records and accounts that Sengyou relied on in his writing. Given this confusion in the background information, several choices exist for a starting point. First, one could presume that Changfang invented information about the earliest catalogs and choose to disregard all his data, starting instead with the catalogs compiled by Daoan and Sengyou—for in these two sources one finds relatively solid ground for an investigation. Second, one could speculate that some early catalogs predating Daoan’s and Sengyou’s had indeed existed but were lost by the time Sengyou wrote his catalog. This, of course, raises the question how Changfang could have known about these catalogs in the late part of the sixth century when Sengyou had not known about them in the earlier part of the same century. Or third, one could surmise that Sengyou knew of other old catalogs (beside the one written by Daoan), but it was not in his best religious and political interests to introduce these works by their titles and authors. If he sought a certain type of scriptural orthodoxy (which | think he did), he needed to present a history of the Chinese Buddhist canon in a very particular way. It is the third option that | have adopted as a starting point in this investigation of the earliest phase of Buddhist bibliography in China, for three basic reasons. For one thing, the information Changfang provided about some of the earlier catalogs is historically accurate and cannot be dismissed. Its accuracy is supported by other sources that are considered reliable. Second, if Changfang had access to the older catalogs during the late sixth century, it is very unlikely that Sengyou, who lived only fifty or sixty years earlier than Changfang, would have had no knowledge of them. Although it is true that Changfang was able to access more archives after China’s reunification under the Sui dynasty, Sengyou, as the head of the southern Buddhist community, had access to all the available sources in the country. It is a well-known fact that Chinese Buddhistsregularly traveled throughout the politically divided country, and almost all the scriptures known in the north were also known in the south. Moreover, some of the catalogs mentioned by Changfang were written in the very location where Sengyou was stationed and are separated from Sengyou’s time merely by a few years. Yet even these contemporary bibliographic works received no mention from him. Finally, probably the most convincing argument supporting the hypothesis that Sengyou must have known about the older catalogs but chose to write only about Daoan’s lies in the nature of the religious campaign surrounding the publication of his Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka. Sengyou must be considered one of the earliest cases in the Chinese Buddhist “Book Inquisition” because he personally investigated monastics engaged in writing apocryphal Buddhist texts. Scholars know definitely of one such case, but most likely more existed. Sengyou presided over the doctrinal trial of a monk called Shi? Miaoguang. As a result, the monk was expelled from the community, and manuscripts containing his teachings were burned. Through his scriptural catalog Sengyou made all efforts to prohibit the remaining manuscripts of Miaoguang’s writings from entering public circulation.’ It is this instance of orthodox religious behavior that sets Sengyou apart from other writers of the early Buddhist bibliography. Except for Daoan, the early catalogers did not evaluate scriptures with respect to their doctrinal authenticity but simply listed all the Buddhist texts available in Chinese. Daoan and then Sengyou insisted that the verifiable authenticity of the Chinese translations of Buddhist scriptures become the highest priority. The two must be credited with using Confucian historiographical criteria to verify the authenticity of the Chinese translations of Buddhist texts. Two Apocryphal Catalogs Despite my stated intention of restoring Changfang’s credibility, it is necessary to begin an examination of his records by discussing the nature of two catalog titles that appear at the very beginning of his list but are not credible. Changfang listed these two nonexistent titles as representing the oldest accounts of the Chinese Buddhist canon;2 however, there can be no doubt that both cases represent thehistoriographical forgery for which Changfang is so famous and which has forced many scholars to doubt the rest of his data. The title of the first historiographical forgery is the Old Catalog (Jiulu). Changfang indicated that this work was compiled during the reign of Emperor Cheng (32-6 BCE) of the Former Han dynasty by the Confucian scholar Liu Xiang (79 BC-8 CE), whose work | discussed in chapter 1; Liu Xiang was a famous scholar thought to be the author of the earliest catalog of Chinese classics and other literature. This Buddhist Old Catalog is unlikely to be a real compilation because the Tripitaka had not yet been translated into Chinese in that early phase of the Han dynasty. But even if one is willing to admit that some translations might have already existed, it remains highly improbable that a Confucian bibliographer would have written a catalog of Buddhist translations. As the analysis in chapter 1 shows, Confucians objected to Buddhism so strongly that they consistently excluded Buddhist scriptures from the official catalogs of Chinese books. The title of the second historiographical forgery is The Han Period Catalog of the Buddhist Teachings (Hanshi fojiao mulu). Changfang explained that this was compiled by Kashyapa Matanga, a monk from India who, according to various Buddhists sources, introduced Buddhism to the Latter Han dynasty Emperor Ming (58-— 75 CE) and translated the earliest Buddhist scripture, the Sutra in Forty-Two Chapters.> The authorship and the date of this sutra have been debated since the beginning of the twentieth century. Most Western and Chinese scholars do not ascribe historical accuracy to the records about Matanga and his encounter with Emperor Ming. At the same time, the preserved versions of the text cannot date earlier than the third century.4 Even accepting the earliest possible translation does not authenticate the catalog, for one must question the necessity of publishing a catalog of translations after only one sutra had been translated. Although the Old Catalog by Liu Xiang and The Han Period Catalog of the Buddhist Teachings by Kashyapa Matanga were never written, the information about them is extremely meaningful because it demonstrates how important catalog writing was for the Chinese Buddhists. Changfang’s account of the first title conveys the idea that the Buddhist bibliography began at the same point inhistory as the Confucian bibliography. Furthermore, it states that the person who wrote the first Buddhist catalog was the same person who wrote the earliest catalog of Chinese books and Confucian classics. Likewise, his account of the second invented text provides an inauguration of the Buddhist bibliography from a different source. Kashyapa Matanga is believed by all Buddhists in China to have introduced Buddhism to the emperor and to have produced the first translation of Buddhist scriptures in the national capital, Loyang. The contention that he also wrote the second-oldest catalog of Buddhist scriptures is thus meant to indicate that bibliography was a part of the Buddhist tradition in China from its very beginning. The Catalog by Zhu Shixing Although two of the earliest catalogs described by Changfang were undoubtedly fabrications, other early catalogs he described appear to have been actual compilations. Of these, the earliest is the Catalog of the Han Dynasty’s Translations, written by Zhu Shixing, a Chinese monk who lived in the Wei kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period (220-265).6 The note Changfang left is too short to make a reliable statement about the catalog’s contents; however, several other places in his Records of the Three Treasures throughout the Successive Dynasties refer to the actual contents of Shixing’s catalog— specifically, to the Latter Han dynasty translators An Shigao, Lokakshema, and Zhu Shuofuo.® Quotes from Shixing’s catalog are also found in the Catalog of the Inner Canon of the Great Tang Dynasty.” Shixing’s life is relatively well known and is featured in Lives of the Eminent Monks and the Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka.® According to these two sources, he made a trip to Khotan around 260 CE in search of the Mahayana scriptures. Neither Lives of the Eminent Monks nor the Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka mentions Zhu’s compiling a catalog of the translated texts, yet this alone cannot be used as an argument against Shixing’s having authored a catalog; a biography of Daoan similarly makes no reference to Daoan’s catalog, but this is accepted as an actual work.But why would Shixing, a monk of the Wei period, be compelled to catalog the Han dynasty’s translations? The answer may be that Shixing was intently interested in philosophical differences between the Small Vehicle and Mahayana forms of Buddhism and in the ways these differences were reflected in the scriptures that the Chinese followers had received.9 Shixing’s biography in Lives of the Eminent Monks states that he was possessed by a single desire, to find a complete Mahayana version of the Ashtasahasrika-prajna-paramita, and in the year 260 his religious goal was finally realized. He left with a dozen other monks for Khotan, a neighboring country in which Buddhism had existed for several centuries before it spread to China."° It is plausible that Shixing was pressed to make a catalog of all the available Chinese translations with a view toward taking it on a trip the purpose of which was to find the untranslated Mahayana sutras to supplement the translations already available in Chinese. Zhu Fahu’s Catalog Scholars reach more solid ground in terms of historiographical reliability with the next item in Changfang’s list of early catalogs: Zhu Fahu’s Catalog (Zhu Fahu Iu), which either contained translations by or was written by the translator Zhu Fahu, also known as Dharmaraksha (ca. 233-310 CE).11 Lives of the Eminent Monks contains a biography of the monk Zhu Fahu, who hailed from a border region of China, Dunhuang, located in modern Gansu Province. According to his biography, he descended from the Yuezhi people, who extended their Central Asian state to the northern part of India in the second and third centuries and adopted Buddhism as a state religion. Biji Huang indicated that this catalog could have been compiled by Zhu Fahu between 284 and 313, and Men’shikov gave a more specific date of 305.12 Men’shikov also suggested that this was the earliest catalog of a privately owned collection of the Tripitaka and not merely a list of Zhu Fahu’s translations. If this is true, it means that the translator Zhu Fahu served as the earliest “parameter of the canon.”"13 In addition to the information about this catalog, Changfang provided details about 210 texts that, according to him, wereproduced by Zhu Fahu. By comparison, the early sixth-century catalog by Sengyou listed only 154 translations by Zhu Fahu. Changfang marked all the translations that he had added to Sengyou’s list, indicating that these had come from Zhu Fahu’s Catalog." The Catalog by Nie Daozhen Nearly contemporary with Zhu Fahu’s Catalog, according to Changfang’s records, was the publication of the Catalog by Nie Daozhen (Nie Daozhen lu). According to Nie Daozhen’s biography, he was a son of Nie Chenyuan, and during the Western Jin dynasty (265-316) both father and son lived in the capital, Chang’an, where they became disciples of Zhu Fahu.'® Nie Chenyuan frequently assisted his teacher in the translation process by giving his translations the proper Chinese characters, and his son, Nie Daozhen, apparently wrote a catalog of Fahu’s translations. © Information about the Catalog by Nie Daozhen also appears in the Catalog of the Inner Canon of the Great Tang Dynasty, which contains a more specific reference to the time of its publication, allowing scholars to date this work to 307-312. The Catalog of the Inner Canon of the Great Tang Dynasty also provides the specific number of texts that were accounted for—54 titles in 64 fascicles."7 These numbers seem small compared to all the translations reported to have been made by Zhu Fahu in various later sources, and it is quite possible that they represent the true scope of Zhu Fahu’s translations. The Catalog by Zhi Mindu The Catalog by Zhi Mindu (Zhi Mindu Iu) also appears on the list in the fifteenth fascicle of Changfang’s Records of the Three Treasures throughout the Successive Dynasties. The information provided suggests that this is the work of a Chinese monk named Zhi Mindu who was born during the Western Jin dynasty (265-316) and sometime around 326 crossed the Yangzi and settled in the capital of the Eastern Jin dynasty (317-420), Jiankang. Although no source earlier than Changfang mentions Mindu’s catalog of Buddhist translations, enough is known about Mindu to speculate that he mayhave authored the third-oldest catalog of Buddhist scriptures in China. One source of confirmation that Mindu had _ substantial bibliographical knowledge about early translations is Sengyou’s Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka, in which some of Mindu’s writings are quoted. In one particular text, a Note on the Comprehensive Shuramgama-sutra (Heshoulengyan jing ji), Mindu demonstrated excellent knowledge of the translators who worked in Loyang during the time of Emperor Ling (168-189). This note mentions several translators who do not appear elsewhere in Sengyou’s catalog.'8 And in the Preface to the Comprehensive [Translation of the] Vimalakirti-sutra (He Weimojie jing xu), Mindu discussed three different translations of this sutra, providing a substantial comparative analysis of the methods employed by three different translators, Zhi Qian, Zhu Fahu, and Kumarajiva. Such quotes lead me to suggest that Sengyou used Mindu’s catalog without giving it the recognition it deserved. Apparently, Mindu’s bibliographical work was known under two different titles. In the list of old catalogs in fascicle 15, it is introduced simply as the Catalog by Zhi Mindu, but on several other occasions, it is referred to as A Comprehensive Catalog of Scriptures and Commentaries (Jinglun doulu). Changfang quoted frequently from this catalog; he also supplied an additional piece of information about it in fascicle 6, where he wrote: “A Comprehensive Catalog of Scriptures and Commentaries in one scroll; during the time of the Emperor Cheng [326-343], a monk from Yuzhang, Zhi Mindu, collected and revised many scriptures and then put together old and new records and compiled this Comprehensive Catalog of Scriptures and Commentaries.”'® This reference is significant for two reasons. First, it confirms that Mindu’s catalog was a real compilation because whenever Changfang invented a title for a nonexistent catalog, he usually made no reference to it in other parts of his work. Second, this title suggests that Mindu included in the Tripitaka not only the scriptures translated from foreign languages but also commentaries on these translations written by Chinese Buddhists.2° Mindu’s approach to indigenous Chinese writings separates him from the later Buddhist bibliographers, who rather consistently excluded Chinese writingsfrom the Tripitaka. These writings were included in the canon again in the middle of the Sui dynasty by such Buddhist bibliographers as Shi Fajing and Changfang; so one can say that Mindu’s vision was somewhat prophetic. The Catalog by Shi Daoan Toward the end of the fourth century, in 374, Shi Daoan produced a catalog that was destined to play a crucial role in the history of the Chinese Buddhist canon.2" Daoan (312-385) was a pivotal figure in all the main developments in Chinese Buddhism during its period of adoption in the fourth century. His life coincided with the brutal political situation in the country following the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220. Before reaching age fifty-three, he migrated through many parts of northern China, building up several Buddhist centers, all of which were forced to disperse owing to the calamities of the time. In about 365 he settled in Xiangyang (Hubei), where he headed a distinguished community of more than three hundred members for roughly fifteen years, until the city was destroyed in 379 and he was forced to move to Chang'an. He died in Chang’an just six years later, still serving as the main leader of the Buddhist community.22 Daoan’s contributions to the development of Chinese Buddhism included abolishing the old system of translating Buddhist terms that was known as ge yi, “matching the meaning.”23 It was Daoan’s firm decision to do away with ge yi; he was the first scholar to demand that proper Chinese Buddhist terminology be developed. He also began a tradition of monastic discipline in China. Although a complete translation of the Vinaya-pitaka was still absent, Daoan established strict rules to govem the lives of the Buddhist clergy, introducing the practice of changing monks’ surnames to Shi.24 Writing a critical catalog of scriptural translations is considered by many Daoan’s greatest accomplishment, for in that catalog he formulated the criteria of textual authenticity that were followed by most Tripitaka specialists. Unfortunately, Daoan’s catalog has been lost, along with other bibliographical works written from the third through the fourth century. The difference, however, is that Daoan’s work has been preserved for posterity through the efforts of ShiSengyou, who (at least in the field of Buddhist bibliography) was Daoan’s most arduous follower. Sengyou did not simply admire Daoan’s position with respect to his new demands for the authenticity of Chinese translations; he incorporated the entirety of Daoan’s catalog into his own bibliographical compilation (to which | have already made reference), the Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka. All the available reconstructions of Daoan’s catalog have been made on the basis of the quotes found in Shi Sengyou’s opus.?° The amount of secondary literature written about Daoan’s catalog is rather significant; merely reviewing various positions taken with respect to its history and principles of textual criticism would require a monograph of its own.2® Because the goal of this book is to examine the succession of Tripitaka catalogs produced from the third through the ninth century, | here give Daoan’s work only limited attention. Two points regarding my approach to Daoan must be introduced right away because they are not as widely accepted as the rest of the information provided in this chapter. The first concerns the notion that Daoan’s is the oldest catalog of the Chinese Tripitaka; my position is that it is not. As | have demonstrated, several catalogs were written before Daoan’s, and it is most likely that Sengyou referred to Daoan’s work as the oldest account of Buddhist translations for the same reason Ban Gu wrote of Liu Xiang’s catalog as the oldest—both cases attest a process of building textual and ideological orthodoxy by manipulating information about certain written texts. Another point on which | deviate from the opinion of the majority is the historical accuracy of Daoan’s data. In general, a good degree of trust is placed in Daoan’s textual attributions because they are the oldest known ones. However, in my view, the very fact that these attributions were recorded for a religious and political reason (to present the Buddhist canon as an authoritative collection of writings) is cause for caution. Ultimately, my position is similar to that expressed by Erik Ziircher, who wrote that “the excellent quality of this [Daoan’s] catalogue and its comparatively early date have led all later authorities to accept Tao-an’s [Daoan’s] statements as unquestionable facts ... We must never forget that ... we have to do with attributions.”2”The evidence provided by Sengyou allows for a fairly certain outline of how Daoan’s catalog was organized. He divided all the Chinese Buddhist texts into the seven categories listed in table 1. Because Sengyou also quoted from the actual contents of these seven divisions and composed explanations about them, scholars know that Daoan considered scriptures from the first division to be the most authentic part of the canon. This is expressed in his reference to them simply as scriptures (Chinese jing), without any explanation of this term. Such a design reminds one of the Confucian bibliographer Ban Gu. It was Ban’s intention to separate the classics from all the other books, and for that reason he collected classics in the first division of the Monograph on Arts and Writings and called this division “Arts.” All other books Ban Gu labeled writings and described according to the lower divisions of his taxonomy. Not a single piece from the writings did he admit into the first division. The importance of Daoan’s decision to draw a line between the first division of his catalog and the rest of the Buddhist texts is evident. Sengyou wrote that when Daoan considered a given text an authentic translation of the work of a reliable author, he placed such a text in the first division.2® Translations in the next five divisions were not addressed simply as scriptures because they did not fully measure up to Daoan’s standards for textual and doctrinal authenticity. These needed an explanation as to what kind of translation they really were. Daoan called texts in the second division ancient redactions—literally, “different ancient [translations of] scriptures’"—because he believed them to be old translations of the same (or similar) texts that were known to him in their modern authored versions. All the texts in this category were anonymous. One particular characteristic united the translations of divisions 2-5 in Daoan’s eyes. He called them “scriptures that have lost their [translator's] name,” indicating that these were anonymous works. Jan Nattier noticed that the very phrase Daoan used suggests that he honestly believed the identity of these translators had once been known but was lost in the course of transmission. However (and | agree with Nattier on this), it is more likely that the names were never recorded at all.2° From Sengyou’s explanation, scholars know that Daoan relied on knowledge about the translator of a givenscripture as the main factor in deciding whether that scripture was an authentic transmission of the Buddha’s word. In chapter 1, | discussed the Confucian catalogs, in which the classics, representing the most reliable part of the Confucian canon, were always placed in the first division. One may safely conclude that Daoan's decision to place the anonymous translations toward the end of his classification was an indication that he did not fully trust their authenticity. It is important to underscore that Daoan did not place all the anonymous translations in a single category but instead tried to distinguish among them. The “ancient translations” in the second division were singled out on the basis of their archaic language. Daoan identified the translations he listed in the third division as anonymous but contemporary. The anonymous translations in divisions 4 and 5 were classified separately because of the two geographic regions (Liangzhou and Guanzhong: modern Gansu and southern Shaanxi) in which they had been produced because both regions were known to him for forging Buddhist scriptures. Reviewing, once more, Daoan’s decision to place the anonymous translations after those he believed to be the work of known individuals raises the following pressing question: Is it possible that some of the anonymously translated scriptures represented properly transmitted original Buddhist texts? By way of comparison, in the case of the Septuagint,°° the names of the translators are unknown, yet the translations are considered reliable. Daoan, however, dealt with a situation that was quite different from that which produced the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. On one hand, he did not have in his possession the original manuscripts of the texts that had been translated; on the other hand, he did not know any of the languages in which the original texts existed before they were translated into Chinese. He knew he needed to verify the Chinese Tripitaka but had no textual or linguistic means of doing it. The following quote explains that the Chinese form of Buddhism was a broken tradition as far as the transmission of the sacred texts was concerned: When monks in foreign countries are trained in the teachings of Buddhism, they kneel down and receive it orally. The teacher confers on his disciples the teachings exactly as he received them from his own teacher byrepeating it ten or twenty times. If even one word deviates from the accepted transmission, it is revised after mutual conference and the wrong word is immediately deleted... It has been long since the Buddhist scriptures reached China. But those who delight in this occasion label sand grains as gold, and believe they have succeeded in such forgeries. If no one corrects such deceptions, then how can we distinguish the genuine from the spurious? ... |, An, who dare to undertake this training, see that the presence of both authentic and spurious scriptures is like the Ching [i.e., Jing] and Wei rivers merging their flows, or a dragon and a snake proceeding side by side. How could I not be ashamed of this?" In the absence of continued oral transmission in a language everyone could understand, Daoan decided to rely on the historiographical principles developed in Confucian bibliography. These principles required that the name of the transmitter and the time of the transmission (reckoned according to Chinese dynasties) be known in order for the text to be considered authentic.5? Following these principles with respect to the Buddhist translations allowed Daoan to create trust in the Chinese Tripitaka, yet this extensive reliance on the figure of the transmitter in building the authoritative canon cast doubt on the authenticity of the anonymous translations as a whole. Because many catalogers after Daoan adopted similar views regarding anonymous translations, during the following three to four hundred years, anonymous translations that had been produced during the earliest period of Chinese Buddhist history and that could not be proved to be the work of known translators slowly but surely disappeared from the canon. Their disappearance might have entailed the removal of some genuine early texts not attested in the historical records. Or it might have erased precious evidence of the earliest apocrypha written by Chinese followers of the Buddha. It is impossible to know. But if further confirmation is necessary that anonymous texts were viewed as inauthentic, it exists in the fact that immediately after listing all the types of anonymous translations, Daoan listed (in division 6) the scriptures he openly dubbed “suspicious.” It is practically impossible to decide on the basis of the extant textual evidence what type of scripture Daoan considered suspicious. Kyoko Tokuno concluded that “we remain completely in the darkconcerning the exact canons of textual criticism Tao-an [i.e., Daoan] may have employed.”33 This ambiguity in Daoan’s criteria for defining suspicious texts allowed later catalogers a degree of freedom in judging textual authenticity according to their own assumptions; one of them was a direct follower of Daoan, Sengyou, who relied heavily on the authority of Daoan’s critical position but did not discuss his specific measurements apart from requiring that the translators name be known. Of similar importance in terms of establishing a long-lasting trend for the future development of the Buddhist canon in Chinese language was Daoan’s decision to classify the writings of Chinese Buddhists even lower in the hierarchy than the suspicious translations. In the table of contents for his catalog, a taxonomical hierarchy of texts, the historical documents and commentaries (which are not translations) appear at the bottom of the classification system, in the seventh division. This relegated Chinese indigenous literature to a low status and kept it outside the parameters of the Tripitaka for several centuries. The situation was corrected only during the seventh century, under the Sui dynasty, but even so, owing to the influence of Daoan’s catalog, divisions containing Chinese indigenous writings have never occupied the same high position translations have enjoyed.°4 The Catalog of Scriptures by Zhu Daozu Several more works of Buddhist bibliography were written during the late fourth and the fifth century. One of them is the Catalog of the Two Qin Dynasties (Er Qin lu) by Shi Sengrui (dates unknown), a famous disciple of Kumarajiva.2> Judging by the quotes from this text in the work of Fei Changfang, it was compiled at the end of the Latter Qin dynasty (384-417) and contained information about translators who worked in Chang’an during the Former and Latter Qin dynasties. Changfang mentioned this catalog a number of times, including in a passage in the eighth fascicle, where he also provided Sengrui’s biography and listed all his works, including this catalog.°° Another significant work of fifth-century Buddhist bibliography is the Catalog of Scriptures (Zhongjing Iu), which was finished in 419 by Zhu Daozu. According to Changfang, whose data is supported byother sources, its compilation began under order from Shi Huiyuan (334-416),3” After Huiyuan separated from Daoan and settled at Mount Lu in southern China, he realized that his community was suffering from a shortage of scriptures, the bulk of which remained in the possession of Daoan. Huiyuan sent an expedition in search of the scriptures, and the expedition returned with both the original texts and the Chinese translations. Huiyuan ordered that translations be made from the originals, and later he ordered that one of his disciples, Shi Daoliu, begin writing a catalog. Daoliu died without finishing his work, but another of Huiyuan’s students, Zhu Daozu, finished it in 419, three years after Huiyuan’s death. The catalog published by two of Huiyuan’s disciples was the largest in the history of Chinese Buddhism to that point. It comprised four fascicles, whereas all the previous catalogs, including Daoan’s, were only one fascicle long. And it divided translations according to the dynasties during which they had been done, providing separate divisions for the translations of the Wei, Wu, Western Jin, and Eastern Jin dynasties. This catalog also attempted to separate authentic scriptures from those believed to be false, although criteria of authenticity in this case did not include knowledge of the translator, unlike those applied in Daoan’s catalog. This is evident from the fact that the last division of the catalog Huiyuan ordered is called “False Scriptures from Hexi."°° Hexi (literally, “west of the river’) indicates areas within the Gansu corridor known for forging Buddhist scriptures. This means that Huiyuan and his disciples had followed Daoan by assuming that texts produced in areas known for forgery must be marked in the catalogs in order to warn followers that their origins might be questionable.°9 Concerning another known catalog of that era, the Catalog by Shi Wangzong (Shi Wangzong lu), very little is known. It was published by the monk Shi Wangzong, who was active during the Southern Qi dynasty (479-502), making him nearly a contemporary of Shi Sengyou. Changfang’s biography of Wangzong identifies him as a man who lived during the rule of Emperor Wu (483-494) and lists his other works in addition to the catalog.4° Based on the quotes attributed to him, the Catalog by Shi Wangzong included mostly contemporary translations—namely, those that were made shortly before and during Wangzong’s life and during the Southern Songand Qi dynasties. This text could be an example of a “personalized” catalog of scriptures, one based on a private collection of the Tripitaka. The Subject Catalog of Scriptures The last important catalog written before the end of the fifth century belongs to an unknown author. Titled the Subject Catalog of Scriptures (Zhongjing bielu), it is identified by most modern historians as a work of the Southern (or Liu) Song dynasty (420— 479).41 It included information about 651 translations in 1,682 fascicles. The Chinese Tripitaka is organized in this catalog according to the principles shown in table 2. This classification was executed by an unknown Buddhist scholar in accordance with philosophical and genre principles observed in the Tripitaka outside of China, according to which texts were divided into Vinaya, Sutra, Abhidharma and in which the older form of the canon (identified by Chinese as the Small Vehicle) was separated from the newer canon (identified by Chinese as the Great Vehicle, or Mahayana). This is the first record indicating that Chinese Buddhist catalogers actually tried to observe these principles, and it is noteworthy that the approach, at that time, was radically different from that of Daoan, who had neglected philosophical and genre distinctions among scriptures for the sake of the authorship criteria that he considered more important in terms of the authenticity of the canon. The Subject Catalog of Scriptures evidences that Chinese Buddhists, at the end of the fifth century, still experienced difficulty deciding what type of scripture constituted the Mahayana canon. One solution, created by the anonymous author of the Subject Catalog of Scriptures, was to rely on the concept of the Three Vehicles, or Triyana. He classified texts as representing first, the vehicle of the Arhats, second, the vehicle of the Pratyekabuddhahood, and third, the vehicle of the Buddhahood. That Chinese Buddhists favored the Mahayana scriptures over the other types is evident in that these constituted the first taxonomic division in the Subject Catalog of Scriptures and were featured yet again in the third division, which contained scriptures whose teachings were believed to be consistent with all known forms of Buddhism. The magnitude of the problem of not knowing how to classify scriptures according to their philosophical contents presentsitself fully in the Subject Catalog of Scriptures because not only are the first four divisions of this catalog dedicated to solving this problem, but in addition, another complete division (division 6) was created to address it. That division featured scriptures that the cataloger could not classify as either Mahayana or Small Vehicle doctrines. This difficulty persisted well into the seventh century, and one finds similar divisions in catalogs of the Sui dynasty.42 Conclusion A summary of nearly three and a half centuries during which Chinese Buddhist bibliography was slowly developing must include the following. First, it is extremely important that academic knowledge about these early catalogs become more widespread. Daoan’s and Sengyou’s catalogs are now nearly universally recognized as the earliest catalog of the Chinese Buddhist canon, but this is not historically accurate, as | have shown. Sengyou’s catalog was not the first, chronologically speaking; however, it can be considered the first effective case of scriptural orthodoxy imposed on the Chinese Buddhist community, and it is very likely that this role contributed to the loss of the old catalogs. Second, one must be aware that although Sengyou did not follow the ideological positions of the earlier catalogers, selecting instead Daoan’s methodology as the primary tool with which to measure the truthfulness of the Buddha’s words in China, he was certainly indebted to those earlier catalogers’ work. That is why Zhu Fahu, Nie Daozhen, Zhi Mindu, Zhu Daozu, and Shi Wangzong must be duly recognized for their invaluable contributions to the development of Chinese Buddhist bibliography. In particular, there is every reason to believe that Sengyou used Mindu’s and Daozhen’s catalogs without either mentioning their names or formally introducing their titles. Third, understanding the early Buddhist catalogs that predated the publication of the Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka is extremely important because this phase of history created a rich depository of different ideas and approaches to the Tripitaka. During later centuries, especially during the Sui dynasty (581-618) when the imperial and Buddhist ideologies had merged, the rigidity of Daoan and Sengyou’s approach to the Tripitaka was partially relaxed, and the earlier ideas—including Daozu’s emphasison the dynasties that had sponsored the translations and Mindu's acceptance of Chinese commentaries as a legitimate part of the canon—were restored and brought back into the formation process of the Chinese Buddhist canon. That is, chronologically earlier but more tolerant ways of seeing the Buddhist scriptures in the Chinese language became predominant once again. Table 1. The catalog by Daoan. Division Contents 1 Scriptures* Ancient redactions of scriptures Anonymous translations of scriptures Anonymous translations from Liangzhou Anonymous translations from Guanzhong Suspicious scriptures Commentaries and other records Si] jon] e}oo/ro Note. Here and throughout this book. | translate as “scriptures the Chinese character jing, which is the same word as the one used to refer to the Confucian classics. | have commented on the significance of that in this chapter. Table 2. The Subject Catalog of Scriptures. Division Contents 1 Scriptures of the Mahayana 2 United Doctrine of the Triyana 3 Mahayana within the Triyana 4 Scriptures of the Small Vehicle 5 Scriptures mentioned in the catalogs but actually lost 6 Scriptures that cannot be divided according to Mahayana and Small Vehicle i Suspicious scriptures 8 Vinaya 9 Abhidharma 10 Commentaries Notesyn > > 2 a OND o 14. 15. Miaoguang’s story is examined in chapter 3 in connection with my analysis of Sengyou’s scriptural catalog. See Taisho Shinshad Daizoky6 (Newly revised Buddhist canon [made during] the Taishé era) 2034, 49:76b. Hereafter, references to this source list T followed by the number of the text in this edition, then volume and page numbers. Unless specified, all translations are my own. Here one comes across the same account of the Emperor Ming’s dream that was given by Zhangsun Wuji in the dynastic catalog Monograph on Classics and Writings (discussed in chapter 1). Three different versions of this story appear in T 2045, 55:5c, 478a; and T 2034 49:49a. A comparison of all known versions can be found in Tang (1936); see a more recent discussion in Sharf (1996). See T 2034, 49:76b, 127b. Changfang referred to this work as the Catalog by Zhu Shixing (Zhu Shixing lu), or the Catalog of the Han [Dynasty’s Translations] by Zhu Shixing (Zhu Shixing Han lu). See instances in T 2034, 49:50a—b, 52c, 53b—c. T 2149, 55:221a-224b. The Lives of the Eminent Monks (Gao seng zhuan), the oldest extant collection of monks’ biographies (including biographies of the earliest translators of Buddhist scriptures), was compiled by Huijiao (497-554). It is discussed in length in chapter 6. The Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka by Sengyou is the earliest extant catalog of Buddhist translations and is discussed in chapter 3. For references to Chinese sources, see T 2059, 50:346b; T 2045, 55:47b, 97a-b. Small Vehicle, again, is a translation of the Chinese term xiaocheng. Throughout this book, whenever a Chinese cataloger used xiaocheng, | have rendered it Small Vehicle. In the past, xiaocheng was routinely translated Hinayana; however, expert opinion is that such translation is best avoided because of its pejorative implications. See Nattier (2005, 172-173). . Consult the introduction to McRae and Nattier (2004) for a discussion of Chinese Buddhists’ travel to the west. Liu Xinru’s (1988) classic study is also useful. . Two recent pieces on Dharmaraksha are those by Daniel Boucher (1998; 2006). . The dates can be found in Huang (2009, 20) and Men’shikov (1987, 176). . This label was suggested by Stefano Zacchetti (2011). The existence of this catalog may also explain why Sengyou added more newly identified translations to Zhu Fahu’s works than to those of any other translator of that time. These texts attributed to Fahu were recently analyzed by Jinhua Chen (2005, 645). T 2034, 49:63a-64b. See Nie Daozhen’s biography in the Catalog of the Inner Canon of the Great Tang Dynasty (T 2149, 55:232b). . Boucher (1998) suggested that Nie Chenyuan’s role encompassed more than simply writing down the characters. It is possible that he acted as one of the editors of Zhu Fahu’s translations. This furthers the probability that his son, Daozhen, actually compiled the catalog.ite 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 3 32. 33. 34. T 2149, 55:232b. See T 2045, 55:58b. Western scholars began taking Mindu’s bibliographical work more seriously as they tried to create a list of the authentic translations for the third and fourth centuries. See Zurcher (1991, 277-293). T 2034, 49:74a. T 2034, 49:62a—c; 64c; T 2045, 55:49a—b, 58b—c. In most studies, this text is referred to as A Comprehensive Catalog of Scriptures (Zongli zhongjing mulu), but this is definitely a respectful title given to Daoan’s work by later catalogers, such as Changfang and Daoxuan. Buddhist catalogs of Daoan’s time were all named after their compilers, as in the cases of Zhu Shixing, Nie Daozhen, Zhu Fahu, and Zhi Mindu. Even in Sengyou’s text, Daoan’s catalog is always referred to as An’s Catalog (An lu). For more on Daoan’s life, see Link (1973) and Storch (2004), which both list other works on Daoan. On the history of ge yi and its various meanings, see Mair (2012). Shi is the first syllable of the Chinese transliteration Shijiamouni, which stands in for the Sanskrit Shakyamuni. The latter means “wise man from the Shakya clan”; it became the predominant way of referring to the historical Buddha across East Asia. Ui Hakuju (1959) attempted to reconstruct Daoan’s entire catalog on the basis of such quotes. The problem with such reconstruction is that no one knows what kind of changes Sengyou might have brought about by cutting Daoan’s work into several pieces and inserting them into his own work. Among recent works in which a more critical approach is taken than that of the 1950s and 1960s, | mention the studies by Tan Shibao (1991), Fang (2006), Jan Nattier (2008), and Stefano Zacchetti (2011). Ziircher (1959 [2006], 30). Specifically, Sengyou wrote, “If a scripture was associated with the name of its translator, he [i.e., Daoan] put it in the first part of this catalog. If it was anonymous, he put it toward the rear” (T 2045, 55:16c). Nattier (2008, 10). The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures produced in Alexandria between 300 and 200 BCE. According to the Letter of Aristeas, seventy to seventy-two Jewish scholars were commissioned during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus to carry out the task, hence the title, Septuagint—iiterally, in Latin, “seventy.” For more on its history, see Rajak (2009). . This is Kyoko Tokuno’s translation of the excerpt from Daoan’s catalog that is quoted by Sengyou. Although | have also translated this piece, Tokuno was the first to publish it in the groundbreaking work “The Evaluation of Indigenous Scriptures” (Tokuno 1990, 34). To better understand how different these principles were from those practiced by Buddhists outside of China, read Ray (1985) and Davidson (1990). Tokuno (1990, 35). This is true, as far as the structure of the Tripitaka is concerned, but within the individual schools, certain commentaries were granted high35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. status. See Sengrui’s biography in T 2059, 50:364a-b. In English, see Ch’en (1952, 81-88). T 2034, 49:81c. Shi Huiyuan is mainly known as the founder of the Pure Land school of Buddhism. Before meeting Daoan, he successfully studied with Confucian and Daoist teachers. His encounter with Daoan left a deep impression on Huiyuan and, according to Buddhist sources, was the reason he became a monk. After the Buddhist community in Chang'an was destroyed (ca. 379), Huiyuan moved to southern China and settled on Mount Lu (Lushan), where he remained until his death. This is based on the evidence of Da Tang neidian lu (see T 2149, 55:336c). In Daoan’s catalog, amid classifications based on the authorship of translations, one finds two categories based on the text’s geographical provenance: scriptures from Liangzhou and from Guanzhong. Thus, knowledge about the area from which the scripture was delivered might be the oldest criterion of authenticity used by the Chinese Buddhist scholars. One can also suggest that the influx of manuscripts composed of “false” content (primarily through the Gansu and western Shaanxi areas) spurred the development of Chinese Buddhist scriptural criticism and was followed by the extensive cataloging of all available manuscripts. T 2034, 49:96a. This catalog has been thoroughly studied by Yao (1938) and Xi (1954) and was more recently discussed by Jiang Wu and Guangchang Fang in their papers (Wu 2011; Fang 2011) presented at the First International Conference Spreading Buddha’s Words in China: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon. As noted in the introduction, this process resulted in the creation of the Sinitic Mahayana, a label suggested by Whalen Lai, who wrote that “the temple piety of the Lo-yang of A.D. 495-534 represents a Sinitic recapitulation of the birth of the Indic Mahayana ... understanding of Lo- yang piety is indispensable from understanding the rise of Sinitic Mahayana during the Sui and Tang eras” (Whalen Lai 1990, 230).Chapter 3 Chinese Ideas about the Authenticity of the Buddhist Canon Development during the Southern Liang Dynasty It is possible to argue that the Southern Liang dynasty (502-557) was the time in the history of Chinese Buddhism when ideas about the authenticity of the canon came to occupy most Buddhist scholars’ minds. The reason relates primarily to the decisive political actions taken by the dynasty’s founder to make Buddhism a state religion. Although state support for Buddhism under the non-Chinese dynasties in the north also appeared to be strong, Buddhism under the Southern Liang dynasty never faced imperial persecution, and this allowed the continuous development of internal monastic traditions, including those centered on the issues of scriptural authenticity. At the same time, legal actions taken by the Southern Liang dynasty to minimize the influence of Daoism and Confucianism on court and state affairs resulted in the rapid growth of imperially sponsored Buddhist historiographical writings in which traditional and Buddhist genres completely merged.’ Buddhist writings were subjected to a critical scrutiny similar to textual criticism designed for the Confucian classics. Finally, it was during the Southern Liang dynasty that the Tripitaka catalog was written by the head of the Buddhist community, Shi Sengyou, and this text played the most crucial role in determining how “authentic scripture” was defined in Chinese Buddhism. State Support of Buddhism In 504 Emperor Wu issued a decree forbidding the practice of Daoism in China. Although the title of this document, “Decree about the End of Serving to the Daoist Law,” specifically mentions Daoist practices, its text forbids Confucian ceremonies, as well. The official reason given for the ordinance was that Daoist and Confucianteachings were too shallow and insufficient when it came to understanding the true nature of the world and human suffering. According to the emperor, only the teachings of the Buddha were capable of making the world a better place.” Following this decree of 504, the emperor took several active steps to purge his surroundings of devoted Daoist believers while simultaneously converting Confucian ministers and his imperial relatives to Buddhism. Although most historians compare Wu's patronage of Buddhism to the state policies of King Ashoka, it might be useful for this study to draw yet another historical parallel to Wu's political reliance on Buddhism. To a scholar familiar with the religious history of Europe, Wu's particular form of embracing a new religion must call to mind Emperor Constantine (272-337), known as Constantine the Great and the founder of the Byzantine Empire. Constantine was the first Christian emperor in European history; he supported the church financially, built numerous Christian basilicas in the places where old Roman gods had been worshipped, granted numerous privileges to the clergy, including exemptions from taxes, and promoted Christians to high government positions. He is especially known for being a spiritual judge in religious conflicts and for convening the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea. Although he continued minor forms of Roman pagan cults, especially sun worship, he became most active in organizing an orthodox Christian community; he suppressed dissident movements (such as Arianism) and allegedly burned apocryphal books. All in all, much like Constantine, Wu built his political domination by embracing a new religion and destroying old rituals known since the time of the Zhou dynasty (1122-256 BCE). He kept his empire together by relying on a new ideology with which he had replaced many of the Confucian moral doctrines, exchanging them for the concepts of reincarnation and afterlife rewards following good or bad moral behavior. As Constantine did for Christians, Wu promoted Buddhists to high office, supported them financially, and granted them tax exemptions. Wu converted sacred sites and temples of the old religion, Daoism, into centers where the new religion, Buddhism, could be practiced and celebrated. All these actions certainly resulted in a new balance of power favoring the emperor and his clan. Wu was unlike Constantine in one respect: he did not use the new religion to incite military campaigns against his enemies;nonetheless, he derived serious political benefits from his Buddhist conversion and utilized it widely for international diplomatic victories and trade expansion. This is not to say that his conversion was motivated by economic and political gains alone; there is every reason to be convinced that his conversion was sincere.? The depth of Emperor Wu's dedication to making China a Buddhist state similar to Khotan, Sri Lanka, and Java is evident in the abolishment of traditional sacrifices at the graves of the imperial ancestors and altars of Heaven and Earth. Sacrifices of wine and burned meat have been a staple of Chinese religious life since the Zhou dynasty; abolishing them entailed disconnecting China from its historic roots. Yet for the emperor, the process of reincarnation and attaining Nirvana appeared far more important for the well-being of his country. To be precise, ancestral worship was not entirely abolished but utterly transformed. A new type of ritual was designed that had to comply with Buddhist morals as expressed in the Five Vows.’ This meant that wine and meat could no longer be served, nor could impersonation rituals be performed in accordance with the Records on the Rituals. Instead, the chanting of Buddhist sutras accompanied by incense burning and offerings of fruit and flowers to the image of the Buddha became new ways of serving the spirits. At a later point in Chinese history, these Buddhist elements would develop into an integral part of Chinese funeral rites and ancestor worship. However, in sixth-century Chinese society, they constituted an innovation of unimaginable proportions. Wu's distinctly pro-Buddhist policy included prohibiting meat and wine in the imperial kitchen, as well, and forbidding the use of all living things for medicinal purposes. He was also known for making regular retreats to Buddhist monasteries, where on one occasion, he spent thirty-seven days; on another, he stayed for forty-three days. Both times, his court ministers had to “buy him back’—that is, ransom him—and he donated the money he was paid to return as emperor to the monasteries’ treasuries. Considering the magnitude of these social transformations, it should be no surprise that every form of Buddhist learning flourished in sixth-century China under the Southern Liang dynasty. Buddhist scholars from overseas visited regularly, and the Chinese themselves frequently traveled to various Buddhist countries to learnabout the original forms of Buddhism. Numerous new translations were produced during that time, and the emperor acquired a most impressive library of Buddhist scriptures and commentaries in his own palace.® It was also during the Southern Liang dynasty that some fundamental forms of Buddhist historiography, such as complete collections of Buddhist monks’ and nuns’ biographies, genealogies of the Buddha’s family, and collections of geographic accounts of all the Buddhist lands, were developed for the first time in the history of Chinese Buddhism. This later laid a broad foundation for the entire growth and development of indigenous Buddhist genres in China. As for the writing of Tripitaka catalogs in particular, one may observe that during the Southern Liang, two contradicting tendencies emerged. On one hand, Wu's patronage set in place a tradition in which the emperor acted as the ultimate authority concerning the authenticity of Buddhist doctrines and scriptures (this model corresponds to imperial supervision over the Confucian classics during the Han dynasty); on the other hand, his intrusion into the affairs of the Sangha caused Buddhists to search for their own ways of establishing criteria of scriptural authenticity. This conflict between the emperor and the Sangha can be illustrated through the stories of three Buddhist catalogs published during the Southern Liang dynasty. One of them is familiar by now: the Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka, written in 515 by Shi Sengyou, the head of the Sangha. It represented a position of the Buddhist community's leadership. The other two texts—the Catalog of Scriptures from the Buddha Palace in the Flowering Grove (Hualin fodian zhongjing mulu), published in 518, and the Catalog of Scriptures of the Liang Dynasty (Liangshi zhongjing mulu), published in 520 or 521—were written by two Buddhist historians, Shi Sengshao and Shi Baochang, respectively, who expressed the views of the court and the emperor. Wu directly ordered these two historians to write the official catalog of the Tripitaka after Sengyou’s catalog had already been presented to the emperor. | begin examining the Southern Liang dynasty’s Buddhist bibliography by first considering the two catalogs commissioned by the emperor and written by the historians favored at court. Imperially Commissioned CatalogsWhen the Catalog of Scriptures from the Buddha Palace in the Flowering Grove and the Catalog of Scriptures of the Liang Era were ordered, Sengyou had already completed the largest catalog of the Tripitaka in Chinese history (fifteen fascicles long, compared to the more usual length of one fascicle).© Yet the approval his work met with at court must be considered moderate; the emperor did not grant Sengyou’s catalog the honor of bearing the name of his dynasty: this honor, in fact, went to another catalog, written just a few years later by the court historian Baochang, who was a student of Sengyou. Baochang’s Tripitaka catalog became known as the Catalog of Scriptures of the Liang Dynasty. That Baochang’s and not Sengyou’s text served as the official catalog of the Southern Liang dynasty is evident not only from the title it received but also because the northern dynasties, which competed with the Southern Liang for supremacy in terms of the size and quality of their Tripitaka, used Baochang’s title as a model. When the Northern Wei finished its catalog of the Tripitaka (ca. 534-538), it was dubbed the Catalog of Scriptures of the Wei Dynasty (Weishi zhongjing mulu); and when the Northern Qi dynasty finished its own catalog in 576, it was called the Catalog of Scriptures of the Qi Dynasty (Qishi zhongjing mulu). Examining the structure of these two northern dynasties’ catalogs reveals that in both cases it was Baochang’s Catalog of Scriptures of the Liang Dynasty and not Sengyou's Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka that the northern Buddhist bibliographers used as a foundation for their versions of the Buddhist canon.” Important to understanding the difference and possible conflict between an official approach to the Tripitaka (manifest in the court- sanctioned catalogs) and that of the Buddhist community itself (manifest in the catalog written by Sengyou) is that even before Baochang was given an order to compile an official catalog for the Liang dynasty, Wu had already expressed, albeit indirectly, his dissatisfaction with Sengyou’s work: he ordered another monk, Shi Sengshao, to write a catalog that would correct and rival Sengyou’s. According to Buddhist records, Shi Sengshao, a monk from the Anle monastery, was ordered to compile a new catalog of Buddhist scriptures in 516, almost immediately after Sengyou’s Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka was presented to the court. The text describing Sengshao’s struggles to supersedeSengyou makes apparent that he was under a specific order to produce a new catalog much shorter than Sengyou’s fifteen-fascicle work. Ultimately, Sengshao reduced the contents of fifteen fascicles to just four, leaving out historical descriptions and concentrating on those translations housed in the imperial collection. This private collection of the emperor's was known as the Buddha Palace in the Flowering Grove (Hualin fodian); because Sengshao used these texts as the basis for his four-fascicle catalog, his work was titled the Catalog of Scriptures from the Buddha Palace in the Flowering Grove (Hualin fodian zhongjing mulu).2 Sengshao finished his catalog in 518 and was ordered to rewrite it twice but still could not satisfy the emperor. Finally, in 519 Baochang was ordered to produce a new catalog of the dynastic Tripitaka. Baochang completed the Southern Liang dynasty’s catalog in the following two or three years. His work received the necessary approval at court, becoming the first officially designated catalog of any dynasty in China. The Catalog of Scriptures of the Liang Dynasty counted 1,433 scriptures and was praised for its sophisticated taxonomic classifications, widely viewed as superior to those of Sengyou. Unlike Sengyou, Baochang managed to separate the Mahayana scriptures from those of the Small Vehicle and divided all scriptures according to the Vinaya, Sutra, and Abhidharma genres. To better understand what Baochang accomplished in terms of organizing the Buddhist canon in Chinese tradition, consider the contents of his catalog (table 3). Studying the structure of the Chinese Tripitaka as set out by Baochang makes it easy to appreciate this historian’s greatness, for he brilliantly summarized several previous bibliographic traditions. He was respectful of the Indic and Central Asian tradition, which divided scriptures according to Vinaya, Sutra, and Abhidharma, yet he fully embraced Daoan’s and Sengyou’s positions of textual criticism based on knowledge about the texts’ transmitters; Baochang evidently separated the anonymous translations from those produced by known and reliable translators. Like Daoan and Sengyou, he marked a number of translations as suspicious in division 12, although one cannot be entirely sure whether he used the same critical approach they did. Indeed, Baochang’s classification methods went further than those of others at this point in the history of Chinese Buddhism because he attempted to sort out the difficult problem of shorter and longerversions of translations. Thus, he was the first to distinguish the translations in one fascicle, which represented either separate parts of the longer original compilations or shorter redactions, from the translations in many fascicles, which appeared to be longer or complete redactions of the originals known at the time. It must be pointed out that in his catalog, Baochang paid homage to the so-called higher and lower traditions of using Buddhist scriptures. In addition to classifications of the translated texts, which were mainly used by the clergy and educated elite, he featured different characters and pronunciations of the names of Buddhas and bodhisattvas and explained on which occasions these names might be called upon in order to receive supernatural assistance. This information was certainly presented for the sake of practitioners with little scriptural expertise of their own, and it must be considered the first known case of such listings within a scriptural catalog of the Chinese Tripitaka. In addition, Baochang listed separately the dharani texts (short formulas chanted to produce magic) and epithets of the Buddha that were known to give merits to the one who repeatedly chanted them in a state of devotion. The inclusion of such texts in a scriptural catalog definitely reflected the popular forms of Buddhist practices during Baochang’s time. Of particular interest, too, is his approach to the translations of the avadana literature (listed in division 18). Avadana, “noble deeds” in Sanskrit, is a reference to legendary material centering on the Buddha’s explanations of events by pointing at worthy deeds committed in his past lives. Avadana literature comprises stories of this type scattered throughout the Vinaya-pitaka, as well as separate and independent collections of them. Unfortunately, because Baochang’s catalog is lost, one cannot determine exactly which type of avadana he singled out. The largest and most famous collection that could have been classified as avadana at that time was the Mahavastu, composed of miraculous events in the lives of the Buddha himself; thus, this category in Baochang’s catalog could have been related to the early translations of the Mahavastu. Clearly, during the first half of the sixth century, the Chinese were not yet aware of all the different classes of the Sutra-pitaka, but Baochang already understood that the avadanas were different from other scriptures. It can be said that in Baochang’s text one witnessesthe nascent formation of the Chinese Sutra-pitaka in terms of differentiating its texts according to the value of their contents and their literary forms. Baochang’s approach to the Tripitaka must have greatly delighted the emperor because he rewarded him by placing him in charge of the entire Tripitaka collection in his palace library (no such rewards were bestowed upon Sengyou). While serving as the court librarian, Baochang produced three complete copies of the canon based on the description in his catalog and submitted them to the emperor. After that, Emperor Wu rewarded Baochang further, appointing him to compile several important historiographical texts.° The Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka As history would have it, the catalog written by Baochang that was highly praised by the emperor does not survive, but a catalog written by Sengyou only five or six years earlier and that the emperor did not praise has survived to this day. Thus, it is Sengyou’s catalog that is considered worldwide the oldest extant catalog of the Chinese Tripitaka. It is certainly impossible to fully explain why some medieval writings have been passed down through many generations and why others drifted into oblivion, but in some cases, one can make intelligent guesses about the possible causes. Given the situation with the Southern Liang dynasty’s Tripitaka catalogs, one might speculate that ultimately it was the Buddhist clergy who rejected Baochang’s catalog and allowed it to disappear. At the same time, | suggest that the Buddhist community chose to preserve Sengyou’s catalog because it served the community's interests. That some of Baochang’s positions did not fit well with those of the Sangha becomes more obvious when one considers that not only did his catalog disappear, but so did his collection of the lives of Buddhist monks, titled Lives of the Famous Monks (Ming seng Zhuan). And in this case, an explanation exists: Baochang’s views did not represent those of the Sangha."° His approach to Buddhist clergy was explained as being too secular, too close to the values upheld at court. So when court support for Baochang’s writings diminished, his writings were no longer copied. At the same time, the Buddhist community continued copying Sengyou’s Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka, expressing supportfor his views of the canon. Understanding the significance of Sengyou’s accomplishments requires that one first examine its contents in detail (table 4). It is noticeable that six whole divisions of Sengyou’s catalog were taken directly from the one analyzed in the previous chapter that was written by the famous Buddhist scholar and the head of the fourth- century Sangha Shi Daoan. Namely, divisions 3-6, as well as divisions 12 and 14 appear to have been copied from Daoan’s earlier catalog. According to Sengyou’s statements, a large portion of the first division likewise came from Daoan’s catalog. In addition, two more divisions (10 and 13) are nothing more than extensions that Sengyou added to the lists previously compiled by Daoan. These observations support my earlier argument that Daoan and Sengyou were in complete agreement in their approach to the Buddhist scriptures in the Chinese language. However, there existed essential differences between their method and the approaches taken by other scholars—namely, Baochang. One obvious difference is that Baochang divided scriptures according to their philosophical contents into the Small Vehicle and the Mahayana and according to their genre into Vinaya, Sutra, and Abhidharma. The same decision was made by the author of the anonymous Subject Catalog of Scriptures in the second half of the fifth century (also examined earlier). But before explaining what might have compelled Sengyou to neglect these philosophical and genre classifications of the Tripitaka texts, | first examine the origin of these classifications. As mentioned earlier, the Sanskrit word Tripitaka literally means “three baskets” and is translated Sanzang (also literally “three baskets”) in Chinese. The original Indic sources and their Chinese translations describe the creation of the canon in three baskets as having occurred in the fifth century BCE at the very First Buddhist Council in Rajagrha. There, at the convocation of the Buddha's five hundred disciples, all the Buddha’s words were divided, depending on their contents, into three “baskets” of teachings—the basket of the Vinaya, which encompassed all the disciplinary instructions; the basket of the Sutra, which encompassed teachings delivered through storytelling; and the basket of the Abhidharma, which encompassed explanations and commentaries made by the Buddha and his main disciples."This story has been known to Chinese Buddhists since the early fourth century, making it significant that Sengyou chose not to follow the structure of the Tripitaka as described in the story. Unlike Baochang and the author of the Subject Catalog of Scriptures, he did not divide Buddhist texts according to the Vinaya, Sutra, and Abhidharma, calling them instead jing, which is the same word used to describe the Confucian classics. To be fair, one must recognize Sengyou’s attempt at distinguishing the Vinaya as a particular type of scripture. In divisions 7 through 9 he wrote about the history of the Vinaya literature in India and China, but in the catalog itself he mixed the Vinaya texts with the other scriptures and referred to them all as jing, thus avoiding using the Buddhist terms designed specifically for the Vinaya scriptures. This he did despite being known in a Buddhist community as the Vinaya master and possessing greater knowledge of the Vinaya literature than most other monks. At the same time, he did not recognize the Abhidharma scriptures as a separate division of the canon at all, and the available translations of the Abhidharma literature were labeled jing instead of using the appropriate Buddhist term. Sengyou definitely knew about the First Council and the way the original canon was assembled because he had provided his readers with the digest from the Maha-prajna-paramita-shastra, the main source of knowledge for the Chinese Buddhists about the history of the Buddhist canon in India. He also used the word Tripitaka in the title of his catalog; nonetheless, he chose not to divide Buddhist scriptures according to the three baskets. To understand his decision, one must recognize the pressing need he felt to present the Buddhist canon as an elevated form of literature that was equal in status to the Confucian classics. He could accomplish this only by calling Buddhist texts jing, a label that could have been interpreted as “Buddhist classics,” but if by contrast he had divided the scriptures according to the Vinaya, Sutra, and Abhidharma and used foreign terms to explain the nature of these categories, he would have added to the notion that the Buddhist canon was a foreign invention that did not belong to Chinese culture. The consideration of “foreignness” was less an issue for those historians who served at court and enjoyed the protection of the emperor. But Sengyou had to defend the Sangha, which tried to gain political independence from the court and separate itself from those versions of Buddhism thatappeared to be, culturally speaking, exotic but had been approved at court.1? Moreover, it was the Sangha (not high-ranking officials) that was often accused of bringing to China ways of life that were believed to be anti-Chinese, barbaric, and uncivilized. If Sengyou wished to make the Sangha version of the Buddhist canon more scholastic and more acceptable among the educated elite, he could not have done it more effectively than by referring to all Buddhist scriptures as classics. The Apologetic Nature of Sengyou’s Catalog Sengyou’s Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka began a tradition of what can be called the use of apologetic history and philosophy in the Buddhist scriptural catalogs. By this | mean the catalogers’ explicit attempts at explaining Buddhism as having been a part of Chinese history and culture since its earliest days rather than underscoring Buddhism’s innovative ideas about the nature of human suffering and arguing for the superiority of these ideas over the old views. "3 For modern-day Wester readers, it can be difficult to understand why the Chinese of the early part of the sixth century experienced this need to present Buddhism as part of their ancient history. However, the idea may become clearer if one recollects modern political debates about a return to “original” constitutional rights. All around the world, the strategy of presenting new ideas as a part of traditional national heritage serves the purpose of legitimizing the new message and providing it with higher political status. One can understand even more fully why Buddhists in China felt pressure to present their religion as an ancient practice that had existed in China since its cultural inception during the Zhou dynasty if one realizes that at the time, all things Buddhist seemed barbaric and abhorrent to many in the Chinese empire. Textual evidence abounds that to the fourth- and fifth-century Chinese, the Buddhist rituals of shaving the head, begging for food, keeping one shoulder bare, squatting on the floor “like a fox,” cremating the bodies of deceased parents, refusing to marry and have children, and leaving one’s own mother and father behind appeared to be actions of an uncivilized humanity and signs of deficient morality.14 When Sengyou wrote his catalog in the early sixth century, thisstigma against the foreign, “barbaric” customs of Buddhism was very much alive. It can be argued that the accusations against Buddhism’s uncivilized ways had grown stronger owing to the anti- Daoist and anti-Confucian campaigns that took place during Sengyou’s lifetime. As many Confucian and Daoist scholars were forced to leave the court or convert to Buddhism, anti-Buddhist sentiment grew, and along with it grew the need for apologetics that made this non-Chinese religion and its literature seem more civilized and more Chinese. Sengyou was clearly concerned about public rejection of Buddhism because he collected documents featuring debates and open conflicts between the followers of Buddhism and members of the aristocracy who objected to the spread of this religion and upheld the Confucian and Daoist views. Sengyou did not merely provide information about these instances in the catalog he had written; he actually began a new genre of Chinese Buddhist historiographical literature that purposely featured apologetic writings and public debates. The first collection in this genre, authored by Sengyou, is known today as the Collection of Records about Propagating the Way and Illuminating Its Teachings (Hong ming ji).'® In Sengyou’s collection of apologetic debates, one exchange is of special interest here because it concerns Buddhist scriptures. In 340, during the Eastern Jin dynasty, Yu Bing, regent of Emperor Cheng, issued a decree demanding that all monks make obeisance and show submission to the emperor and his ministers by bowing to them in the same way they bowed to the Buddha. To substantiate his claim that there was nothing so special about the Buddha that would preclude his followers from paying proper respect to the imperial government, Yu wrote, “Let us now investigate the matter of the Buddha’s existence. Did he really exist or did he not exist? If he existed, then his doctrine may spread [in China]. But if he did not exist, what is the use of following such a teaching?”"® When Yu Bing wrote that the Buddha did not exist, he was referring to traditional Chinese histories, which make no mention of the Buddha. Such an ethnocentric argument certainly makes no sense today, but in Chinese society it has been used many times to defend traditional culture against the perceived intrusion of foreign cultures. For example, when Confucian scholars felt threatened by the advance ofChristianity in the seventeenth century, they used the same argument: “If Christ was as important as you [Christians] say, why did the dynastic chronicles never mention his name?”"” In response to such accusations, the defenders of Buddhism introduced the following argument: “Whether Buddha really existed or not, we, your subjects, cannot decide. But we can investigate the scriptures that he left [for us] and thus discern the meaning of his teachings."18 From this exchange it becomes clear that in the absence of mentioning the Buddha’s name in traditional histories, the problem of his doctrine’s legitimacy, in the eyes of Confucian scholars, had to be solved by defending the authenticity of the scriptures that presented his views. However, this task was not easy to accomplish because the authenticity of Buddhist scriptures was constantly called into question by the Confucian historians, and translations from the Tripitaka were rejected by most Confucian catalogers. This returns to my earlier suggestion that although Sengyou was well informed about the tripartite structure of the Tripitaka, he chose to label all the Buddhist translations with the same word applied to Confucian classics in order to set forth the idea that Buddhist scriptures were equal to them in literary and philosophical status. A similar conclusion was reached by Roger Corless nearly two decades ago; he argued that the early Buddhists had purposely chosen the word classic for the Buddhist translations because this had gained them the same level of acceptance and respect the Confucian canon enjoyed.'9 The apologetic nature of the Buddhist canon has been also expressed in the most popular name for it, which has been consistently in use for nearly four centuries: Zhongjing, which literally means “collection of [Buddhist] classics.”2° Only during the Tang era (618-907) were other names given to the Tripitaka, and the change reflected the fact that there was no longer a need to defend the textual and cultural legitimacy of the Buddhist canon.2" The Classification of Scriptures in Sengyou’s Catalog This background to Sengyou’s serious concerns about presenting the translated Buddhist scriptures as authentic in terms of Confucianhistoriography is the context necessary for further analysis of his textual classifications. Based on his terminology, | contend that he divided Buddhist texts according to the characteristics they needed to possess in order to prove their authenticity. Although there are fifteen different divisions in Sengyou’s catalog, he essentially recognized only five categories of texts (see table 5). The first category, scriptures, encompasses only those translations that had come from known and trustworthy translators. That is, all the Buddhist texts in this category were first assigned to a specific translator, such as An Shigao, Lokakshema, and Kang Mengxiang, and then listed under the name of the translator in more or less chronological order. Translators of roughly the same period were listed on the basis of their perceived importance, and translations by a person perceived to be more important were listed before translations by a person perceived to be less important in his role as transmitter of the Dharma. The second category, “Different translations made from [what Sengyou perceived to be] the same original scripture,” comprises texts that, according to Sengyou, translate the same Indic or Central Asian original but whose Chinese texts read differently, supposedly owing to later translators’ new and better understanding of the original and also owing to the individual styles the translators used. In Sengyou’s words, Different translations are [those] that came from the [same] Indic/Central Asian (hu) original but are different in Chinese. The Brahmi [script] (fan) is a complicated and obscure language, and the process of translating it [into Chinese] brings about a great many changes.?2 The talents of the translators are also different: they may use either a simple or an elegant style, render the contents [of the scripture] briefly or in a detailed way. All this leads to the root being one but the tops splitting apart, the old and the new versions diverging.2° The third category constitutes anonymous translations. These were apparently the most voluminous group in the Chinese Tripitaka during Sengyou’s time. In his catalog, they occupy five divisions (3- 6, 10), each of which includes anonymous translations that are slightly different from the others. For instance, texts in division 3, “Anewly complied list of the ancient translations from the venerable An’s [catalog],” were inspected by Daoan. He pronounced them to be ancient versions of the scriptures that were known during his time in their modern versions. Sengyou explained: The ancient translations are the surviving texts of the translations made in earlier times. | searched the Catalog of An. There, scriptures from the Daodi yaoyu to Sixing Zhangzhe, a total of ninety-two, have been identified as ancient translations that are different [from the modern ones]. Unfortunately, their manuscripts have been scattered; many of them are lacking [parts] or have completely perished. But if we look at what has been preserved, we are able to tell the difference between the modern and the ancient translations. For some [of these old translations] do not have any titles and use words from the text as their title. Others, such as the translations from four Agama-sutras, receive their title after a particular story, and then [circulate] separately [from the rest of the sutra]. Their style would also make everyone believe that this is [from] the old canon.24 Anonymous translations in division 4 were not ancient. They were produced during Daoan’s time, and Daoan had recognized them as different translations of scriptures known to him through their authored versions. In contrast, the anonymous translations in divisions 5 and 6 were singled out because they had been produced in Liangzhou and Guanzhong; because these areas were known for forging Buddhist scriptures, the reader was cautioned about the authenticity of these texts. Anonymous scriptures in division 10 were different of all the types of anonymous texts already listed. Sengyou was highly critical of them: Some [of them] can be traced back to the original texts [from which the acceptable translations were made], but they bear titles that are not appropriate. Some, by contrast, have proper titles, but their contents are altered. Still, in some others, the deliberate additions are made mindlessly, and thus, owing to this excessive wordiness, they diverge from the originals. Or as in the case of certain other texts, the titles are cut down to just one half, and the contents of the scripture abridged to the point[that] they differ from the original.2> Thus, this subcategory of anonymous translations was known to Sengyou for its manipulation of the contents of earlier translations, and it shared this characteristic with the next category, what Sengyou called the digest scriptures. According to him, digests were produced by Chinese people who cut the existing translations into pieces and arranged them according to their liking. Nevertheless, a significant difference existed between the anonymous texts in the previous division and the digests because the authorship of most of those digests was known to Sengyou. Names included some famous aristocrats of the southern dynasties (such as Jingling Xuanwang) who had turned dozens of the most popular sutras of his time into digests. The titles of Xuanwang’s entire digest collection appear in this section of Sengyou’s catalog.76 The fifth and last category in Sengyou’s classification of the Buddhist texts comprises the “suspicious and false scriptures.” Although the catalog gives two separate listings—one for the suspicious (yi) and the other for the suspicious and false (yi wei)— analysis indicates that both categories collect similar types of scriptures.2” These scriptures can be characterized in a most general sense as inauthentic and were rejected by the contemporary Buddhist tradition. According to Kyoko Tokuno, Sengyou was suspicious of the texts that “lacked sophistication in doctrinal presentation” because he believed that “the substance and purport of genuine scriptures are eloquent and profound ... [whereas] the phraseology of writings pretending to be genuine is superficial and coarse.”26 Another criterion Sengyou applied in deciding whether the scripture ought to be classified as suspicious and false was proof (or disproof) that it was based on the original text transmitted to Chinese Buddhists by a monk who had arrived from outside China. Sengyou explained that false scriptures come from those monks who never had contact with Buddhists from the original Buddhist countries, who had never traveled to India or Central Asia in search of the original Buddhist texts. Further, he judged the scriptures according to the Notion of false authorship—that is, certain texts popular among contemporary Buddhists were attributed to famous and reliabletranslators, yet Sengyou was able to prove that these attributions were false. For instance, regarding one scripture, Sengyou wrote: “The title of this sutra states that it is a translation by Dharmakshema. | investigated Dharmakshema’s translations, and there is no such translation by him. That is why | have included this text in the list of suspicious scriptures. ”29 Sometimes the reason lay in the knowledge that a scripture had originated with a Chinese person who did not know Sanskrit: “Guanding jing [from the list of the suspicious/false scriptures] was made by a monk ... Huijan. During the Damingyuan era of emperor Xiaowu of the [Liu] Song dynasty, he produced it by putting together pieces which he had extracted from [other] scriptures.”2° Only on several occasions did Sengyou label scriptures false because of the teachings they contained. In particular, he declined to accept as authentic those texts that deal with the messianic- apocalyptic messages. Such messages were, in fact, widespread across Buddhist communities outside China and therefore should have been considered authentic if the authorship criteria Sengyou used in determining other scriptures’ authenticity had been properly applied here. But the messianic scriptures speak of the so-called end of the Dharma (also translated the degenerate Dharma) and include visions of the world coming to an end, followed by the advent of a Buddhist messiah, such as Prince Moon Light or Buddha Maitreya, who would come to the rescue of the good souls, leaving bad souls to perish forever.°1 Because of the dangerous political consequences these doctrines might have brought about if followed by the masses, Sengyou branded these texts false despite the fact that Chinese translations might have been made from the “original” teachings. In the following centuries, all messianic writings in the Chinese Buddhist transmission were branded false by scriptural catalogers and court officials.°2 Regardless of this double prohibition, the literature remained extremely popular, mainly among the lower classes, causing massive socioreligious upheavals throughout Chinese history. Two instances in which Sengyou declared certain scriptures suspicious and false although these do not contain apocalypticmessages are worth noting. One involves a young nun, Shi Sengfa, a favorite of the Emperor Wu. She experienced enlightenment, after which she began chanting scriptures in Sanskrit. These scriptures were written down and translated into Chinese, yet Sengyou proclaimed them suspicious and false even though, according to his own admission, several scholars had agreed on their doctrinal consistency. Another story concerns a monk, Miaoguang, who stood trial for forging scriptures whose content Sengyou considered unorthodox. Sengyou was a supreme judge during that trial, and by his verdict Miaoguang was expelled from the monastery and his books were burned. Sengyou included in the suspicious and false category two titles of Miaoguang’s writings that were still in circulation.5% Conclusion Sengyou’s classification of scriptures was designed to bring a hierarchical taxonomical order to the Chinese Buddhist canon. According to Sengyou’s design, translations in the first category were the most authentic because they were the “proven” work of trustworthy translators. Whether the available information about the translators can be trusted by modern historical standards is debatable. Even if one trusts Sengyou’s information completely, he did not obtain proof of authorship for thirty-three translations (of eighty-three) yet included them in this division of his catalog.°4 Juxtaposed to this most “authentic” part of the canon are the scriptures in the last, fifth category. They were openly declared to be heretical writings, and therefore the followers of Buddhism were urged to avoid them. The remaining three categories present the literature in transition between what was absolutely true and what was absolutely false. That is, multiple translations from the same original (category 2) were somewhat confusing and therefore less trustworthy. The anonymous translations (category 3) could not be entirely trusted, either, because they could have been created by Chinese individuals who had used earlier translations to compile new scriptures. And certainly the digests (category 4) were not to be trusted because they were known to have omitted certain important parts of the original translations.2> It must be noted that, in this system, knowledge about thetranslator of the text was crucial in deciding which category it belonged to. If Sengyou was certain that the translation had been produced by a reliable individual, such as An _ Shigao, Dharmakshema, or Kang Senghui, he considered it authentic and included it in the first category. Absence of information about the translator was a signal that it might be a compilation by a Chinese person who did not understand Sanskrit and had never studied Buddhism in the west. Digests were known to have been written by Chinese people, as were most of the suspicious and false scriptures; creating this type of scripture involved not a genuine process of translating but simply cutting and arranging existing texts. Thus, it is possible to argue that Sengyou classified the Buddhist canon in accordance with five categories—scriptures, different translations perceived to have been made from the same original, anonymous scriptures, digest scriptures, and suspicious and false scriptures— because such a classification allowed him to separate the texts that he considered most authentic from those he considered less authentic, and to separate those from the entirely inauthentic texts. His organization of scriptures according to these five categories and thus his separation of the “true” teachings from “false” ones was executed in a convincing manner consistent with the classifications used in traditional Chinese bibliography, especially for delineating the transmission of the classics. By subjecting Buddhist scriptures to the textual criticism similar to that applied to the Confucian classics, Sengyou managed to elevate the literary and social status of the Tripitaka. It is of particular interest that he not only demanded that all Buddhist texts be verified according to the same historiographical principles used for Confucian texts—namely, correct information about the time of their origin and the person who transmitted them—but also used the additional criteria of an elegant literary style and the clear expression of philosophical ideas as signs of a translation’s textual authenticity. But did the criteria Sengyou imposed on the Chinese translations of Buddhist texts truly guarantee their textual and philosophical accuracy? The answer to this question is not simple. On one hand, a requirement that a text derive from a transmission of Buddhist teachings traceable to a historically known foreign monk should serve as a guarantor of some level of authenticity. On the other hand, once such a requirement was advanced, many early texts thatwere anonymous at the time of translation had to be attributed to some known monk in order to prove their authenticity. The situation is remarkably similar to the way the New Testament canon was created; that is, for Christians, the criteria were found in associating texts with a known and trusted apostle. But when this criterion was applied to the writings extant at the time, false attributions arose en masse. The number of these invented attributions is stunningly high for a canon as small as the New Testament. Out of nearly thirty books, fewer than a dozen can be reliably demonstrated today to be the work of the author named in the titles. One should think, therefore, that the Chinese Buddhist canon would not be immune from similar—and numerous—cases of invented attributions. Jinhua Chen has critically analyzed the information available to Sengyou and concluded that many of his attributions were not covered by reliable historical records. At the same time, reading through Daoan’s catalog in search of the criteria he used in assigning attributions, one finds that practically all of them were based on his personal judgment about the text. That the process of attributing translations to certain important translators was, at least partially, a vote of religious belief and not purely the result of scrupulous textual analysis becomes obvious when one realizes how many new translations were attributed, post mortem, to the famous translators of the past. For instance, Sengyou listed only two translations by Kang Senghui, but in the Tang dynasty’s catalog, written by Shi Zhisheng in 730, seven titles are attributed to that translator. In Sengyou’s catalog, thirty-six translations are attributed to Zhi Qian, but in Zhisheng’s catalog, the number had already grown to eighty-eight. For yet another translator, Zhu Fahu, Sengyou’s record lists 154, and Zhisheng’s 175. For the most famous translator, An Shigao, the number of the attributed texts grew threefold in less than a century. Another important factor to consider while evaluating the effectiveness of the criteria of scriptural authenticity advanced by Sengyou is this. Unlike the Christian Jerome, who evaluated the Greek translations of Hebrew scripture, Sengyou was unable to apply any form of direct textual analysis to the original Buddhist scriptures and their Chinese translations. Such textual comparison was impossible because during the first four or five hundred years of Chinese Buddhist history, the translation process was for the mostpart oral: foreign monks recited from memory and the Chinese adepts converted oral text to written.°° No early cataloger (including Sengyou) had developed a sufficient understanding of the languages in which Buddhist texts existed outside of China. On a final note, although Sengyou’s method of proving the authenticity of Buddhist scriptures seems far removed from that used in India and Central Asia, one can still observe some continuity in Buddhist textual history. The Buddha's words were recited at the First Council by his five hundred disciples, some of whom were mentioned directly by name. In China, Sengyou attempted to trace the line of transmission of the Buddha’s words by pointing to specific translators who could be compared to the five hundred original disciples of the Buddha. Table 3a. The Catalog of Scriptures of the Liang Dynasty. Division | Contents 1 Mahayana scriptures by known translators in many scrolls 2 Mahayana anonymous scriptures in many scrolls 3 Mahayana scriptures by known translators in one scroll 4 Mahayana anonymous scriptures in one scroll 5 Small Vehicle scriptures by known translators in many scrolls 6 Small Vehicle anonymous scriptures in many scrollsTable 3b. The Catalog of Scriptures of the Liang Dynasty (cont.) Division | Contents 7 Small Vehicle scriptures by known translators in one scroll 8 Small Vehicle anonymous scriptures in one scroll 9 Ancient redactions of scriptures 10 Dhyana scriptures 41 Vinaya scriptures 12 Suspicious scriptures 13 Commentaries 14 Abhidharma 15 Notes on the meaning [of Buddhist terms] Names of different [Buddhas and bodhisattvas] arranged in 16 accordance with the events [when it is appropriate to call upon them] Different names of the same [Buddhas and bodhisattvas] 41? arranged in accordance with the events [when it is appropriate to call upon them] 18 Avadana scriptures 19 Epithets of the Buddha 20 DharaniTable 4a. The Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka . Division Contents. | 1 Anewly compiled list of scriptures* 2 Anewly complied list of different translations of scriptures 3 A newly compiled list of the ancient translations of scriptures from the venerable An's [catalog] Anewly compiled list of the anonymous translations of 4 ‘scriptures from the venerable An's [catalog] A newly complied list of different translations of the [same] 5 scriptures made in Liangzhou from the venerable An's catalog 6 Anewly compiled list of different translations of scriptures made in Guanzhong from venerable An's [catalog] 7 A newly compiled description of the Vinaya [texts] which are divided according to the five schools [of Buddhism] 8 Anewly compiled description of the Vinaya [texts] which are divided according to the eighteen schools [of Buddhism] Anewly compiled list of the Vinaya [texts] which are divided 9 according to the four schools of Buddhism fall of which] have spread to China’* 10 Anewly compiled addition to the list of the anonymous translations of scriptures 4 Anewly compiled list of the digest translations of scripturesTable 4b. The Collection of Records about the Production of the Tripitaka (cont.) Division Contents 12 Anewly compiled list of the suspicious and false scriptures from the venerable An's [catalog] 13 Anewly compiled list of the suspicious and false scriptures 14 Anewly compiled list of scriptural commentaries and various other records from the venerable An's catalog List of the scriptures that were chanted by the (Chinese 15 Buddhist nun] Sengfa and that belong to the suspicious scriptures Note. *In some editions, the title of this division contains the character Jun (shastra) after jing, and in other instances, two characters, Hi vinaya) and /un. have been added. In the earliest editions, neither /ur nor /# follows jing. Later catalogers, such as Daoxuan and Zhisheng, rebuked Sengyou for not properly classifying scriptures as sutras. shastras, and vinayas. Their criticism explains why these characters appeared in the later editions of Sengyou's catalog. **Without giving too many details. divisions 7-9 summarize Sengyou's knowledge about the history of the Vinaya, based on the Vibhasha. According to him, regulations of four schools had reached China: Mahasanghika, Dharmaguptaka, Mahishasaka, and Sarvastivada. One school was known to him whose regulations had not reached China, Mahakashyapiya. The eighteen-school classification is too cumbersome to treat here: itis described in Bareau (1955).Table 5. Categories of scriptures in Sengyou’s catalog. Number Category of Scripture 1 Scriptures (jing) 2 Different translations made from [what Sengyou perceived to be] the same original scripture (yi chu jing) 3 Anonymous scriptures (shi yi jing) 4 Compressed or digest scriptures (chao jing) 5 Suspicious and false scriptures (yi wei jing) Notes . Some examples of this are found in the writings of Shen Yue (441-513), who functioned as a court historian, compiling an official history of the previous dynasty, the Liu Song; at the same time, he was known for his Buddhist views and authored, at the command of the emperor, an introduction to the Records about the Buddha (Fo ji), a fundamental history in Chinese of the Buddha’s life. Of similar quality are the writings of Pei Ziye, who served in the traditional capacity of a recorder of the emperor's life but at the same time had authored, also at the order of the emperor, Lives of Buddhist Monks (Zhong seng zhuan) in twenty fascicles. Literature about Emperor Wu's Buddhist policies is abundant. The most complete study of Wu’s political and private life is in Mori (1956). A good overview of the early works in Asian and European languages is in Ch’en (1964, 516-517). Examples of more recent approaches to Wu's Buddhism are in J. Chen (2006) and Janousch (1999). Of particular interest as additional evidence of Wu's anti-Daoist policies is Strickmann (1978). Whalen Lai convincingly argued that Emperor Wu had accepted arguments in favor of the immortality of the soul and sought personal salvation in his pursuit of Buddhism (see Lai 1981). These are the Five Vows: do not kill; do not steal; do not indulge in sexual promiscuity; do not lie; do not consume intoxicants. For a discussion of this library, see J. Chen (2007). The only exception is the catalog produced by Huiyuan’s disciples; that one was four fascicles long. See the section “The Catalog of Scriptures by Zhu Daozu” in chapter 2. 7. Buny6S Nanjé was the first scholar who marked the catalogs of the NS » > Oa