AN HISTORICAL SURVEY
Fourth century Chinese Buddhism, and especially the characteristic type of gentry Buddhism which at that time ourished on Chinese territory south of the Yangzi and which forms the main subject of our study, was the nal stage of a process which actually must have started as soon as Buddhism made its rst converts among the Chinese intelligentsia. We do not know when this happened. As we have said before, the rst clear signs of the formation of an “upper class” Chinese Buddhism, of the activities of gentlemen-monks and of the penetration of Buddhism into the life and thought of the cultured higher strata of society date from the late third and early fourth century, and there are several reasons to assume that this movement as a whole did not start long before that time.
However, this does not mean that this subject can be studied without constant reference to the earlier phases of Chinese Buddhism, and to the little we know about the period of incubation when Buddhism started to take root in Chinese soil, tolerated and hardly noticed as a creed of foreigners, or adopted, in a
Daoist guise, as a new road to immortality. In this chapter the reader will be confronted with the main facts of the earliest phases of Chinese Buddhism. On this subject much has already been said by others, for it is a curious fact that in Chinese Buddhism no period has been studied more thoroughly than the one about which almost nothing can be known. Whenever possible, we have referred to or paraphrased the opinions and conclusions of previous scholars in this eld; most of all we are indebted to Tang Yongtong who in the rst chapters of his Han Wei liang Jin Nanbeichao fojiao shi has treated this period in his usual masterly fashion. This survey merely serves as an historical introduction to the later chapters; it goes without saying that it only contains the outlines of a development which lasted more than two centuries. Some aspects, like the earliest Buddhist “dhy®na” techniques in China in their relation to analogous Daoist practices, and the extremely complicated bibliographical problems connected with the earliest translations of Buddhist scriptures will only be mentioned in passing; an adequate treatment of these subjects would require much more space than can reasonably be allotted to them in an introductory chapter of this kind. Buddhism in secular historical works.
It is an unfortunate circumstance that for reliable information concerning the earliest period of Chinese Buddhism (apart from translation activities) we have to rely mainly upon Chinese secular historical literature; as we shall see presently, Buddhist accounts of the introduction of the Doctrine into China are of a denitely legendary nature. This circumstance is unfortunate because no kind of literature could be less suited to this purpose. Chinese historians are as a rule not interested in religious aairs as long as they have no direct relation to politics or to government circles, and even less in the religious practices of foreigners on Chinese soil.
This means that the few passages about Buddhism which occur in early Chinese historical works are, so to speak, casual remarks made by the historiog rapher in the course of his narrative. Apart from a few phrases in the Hou-Han ji, a fourth century history of the Later Han dynasty, none of these passages were written or included with the intention of saying something about Buddhism itself. In one case, Buddhism happens to be mentioned in an edict of 65 AD, this edict being quoted by the compiler of the Hou-Han shu in connection with the dealings of an imperial prince. In another case it is alluded to in a memorial criticizing the dissolute behaviour of the emperor. A third time an extremely interesting description is given of the building of a Buddhist temple by a Chinese magistrate, but here again the story is inserted by the historian in order to stress the reckless squandering of money and labour by this magistrate, and it is de nitely not intended to picture the building of a Buddhist sanctuary as such. The whole passage about Liu Ying’s Buddhist activities in 65 AD turns around the central fact of his voluntary redemption of an imaginary punishment and the imperial reaction to this virtuous gesture; if in that year the possibility of redemption of punishment would not have been opened by imperial decree, the ocial history would certainly have been silent about Liu Ying’s religious zeal, and in that case Han Buddhism would have
begun for us one full century later, in the middle of the second century AD It follows that we must take care not to overestimate the importance of these passages. They certainly do not indicate the beginning of Buddhism in China, nor are they in any way representative of the spread of Buddhism at the time they were written down. They are important as symptoms of conditions which, by a fortuitous combination of external circumstances, happen to have been recorded. The one conclusion of primary importance which they allow us to make is that even at this very early period Buddhism had in some way or other made contact with the upper strata of society, as is proved by the very fact of its being mentioned in Chinese historical literature.
Apocryphal stories and traditions.
In later times the introduction and earliest history of Buddhism in China became a favourite theme of Buddhist apocryphal literature. Many of these stories obviously had a propagandistic function: they served to enhance the prestige of the Buddhist Church either by telling tales of its triumphant entrance at the imperial court and the immediate conversion of the Chinese emperor, or by demonstrating the early existence of Buddhism on Chinese soil.
We propose to treat this subject in another connection (see below, ch. V); here we shall only say a few words about those traditions the apocryphal character of which is less obvious, and which sometimes have been actually accepted as historical facts by modern scholars. We shall mainly conne ourselves to an enumeration of the traditions in question, the sources, and the conclusions reached by previous investigators.
(a) The arrival of a group of Buddhist priests, headed by the ˜rama&na Shilifang 室利防 with a number of s‚tras at the capital of Qin Shihuangdi (221208 BC). The First Emperor, unwilling to accept the doctrine, immediately had them put in jail. But at night the prison was broken open by a Golden Man, sixteen feet high, who released them. Moved by this miracle, the emperor bowed his head to the ground and excused himself.
Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (18731929) appears to have been among the very few modern scholars who were willing to accept this tradition a fact which is remarkable in view of his otherwise over-critical attitude in dealing with early Chinese Buddhism. His argument, viz. that Shilifang could have been one of the missionaries sent out by A˜oka, is of course no longer tenable.1 The story is very late, being for the rst time attested in the Lidai sanbao ji 歷代三寶紀 of 597 AD,2 the same work which credits Shilifang with the compilation of a catalogue containing the titles of the works which he brought to the Qin court; the Gu (-jing) lu 古[[[經]]]錄.3
(b) When in 120 BC the huge articial lake of Kunming 昆明 (in Shanxi) was dug (a genuine historical fact),4 a mysterious black substance was found at great depth. The emperor questioned the famous eccentric scholar Dongfang Shuo 東方朔 about its origin, and the latter is reported to have answered: “I do not know. But you may ask the barbarians from the West”. When these were asked the same question, they answered: “These are the ashes which remain after the conagration (at the end of a) kalpa”. This is the form in which we nd this story e.g. in the late third century anonymous Sanfu gushi 三輔故事.5
O. Franke regarded this as a proof of the existence of Buddhist monks at Chang’an in the second half of the second century BC.6 In his review of O. Franke’s article, Maspero7 has traced the various early versions of this anecdote; he concludes that it is found for the rst time in the Zhiguai 志怪 by Cao Pi 曹毗 (second half third century),8 and here the story runs diere ntly: since Dongfang Shuo does not know the answer, the emperor deems it unnecessary to ask other people. Later, when the foreign monks arrive at Luoyang under emperor Ming (5875 AD), one of these gives the explanation mentioned above. The same version is found in the GSZ, where it is Zhu Falan himself (cf. below, sub f) who reveals the nature of the black substance.9 This story is evidently based on the legend of emperor Ming’s dream and the arrival of the rst missionaries at Luoyang, and consequently it can hardly be older than the third century AD. Tang Yongtong (op. cit. p. 9) signals a third version of this tradition, alluded to in Zong Bing’s Mingfo lun (ca. 433 AD, cf. above, p. 15 sub 3), where Dongfang Shuo himself is said to have solved the problem.10
(c) Wei Shou 魏收 (506572), the compiler of the Weishu, the history of the Tuoba Wei, states in the chapter on Buddhism and Daoism of this work that the famous explorer Zhang Qian 張騫, who in 138 BC was sent to the country of the Yuezhi and “opened up the West”, after his return to China reported on Buddhism in India, “and then the Chinese for the rst time heard about Buddhism”.11 The same tradition in an even more apodictic form is repeated by Daoxuan in his Guang hongming ji of 664 AD.12 The story is certainly apocryphal as we shall see, the compiler of the Hou-Han shu, the history of the Later Han (hence before 446), even stresses the fact that Zhang Qian in his reports on the Western regions never mentioned Buddhism.
Zhang Qian (second half second cent. BC) plays also an important role in the earliest versions of the legend of emperor Ming’s dream (below, sub f an enormous anachronism, for this event was supposed to have happened ca. 64 AD). However, since Wei Shou in relating this legend follows the GSZ where Zhang Qian does not gure, there seems to be no connection between the two Buddhist traditions concerning the Han traveller.
(d) The famous golden statue of the Hun king which in 120 BC was capturedby the Han general Huo Qubing 霍去病 in the region of Kara-nor, and which in the earliest sources is named “the golden man (used by) the king of the Xiuchu 休屠 in sacricing to Heaven”,13 has sometimes been regarded as a Buddhist image. This no doubt erroneous interpretation does not seem to be of Buddhist origin; it is already found in a gloss of the third century commentator Zhang Yan 張晏.14 But in somewhat later sources the Buddhist element is further developed: the statue is brought to China and placed in the Ganquan palace 甘泉宮; it is more than ten feet high; emperor Wu (14087 BC) in sacricing to it does not use animals, but merely prostrates himself and burns incense before it, and “this is how Buddhism gradually spread into (China)”.15
(e) Liu Jun 劉畯 (died 521) in his commentary to the Shishuo xinyu gives a quotation from the preface of the Liexian zhuan 列仙傳, a collection of Daoist hagiography ascribed to Liu Xiang 劉向 (808 BC). In this passage the compiler declares that he collected biographies of Immortals (仙人) to a total number of 146,
“but seventy-four of these already occur in the Buddhist scriptures, and therefore I have (only) compiled seventy (-two biographies)”.16 Dierent conclusions have been drawn from this passage, which does not occur in the present text of the Liexian zhuan. O. Franke (op. cit.) on the one hand does not believe in Liu Xiang’s authorship of the present text, which in his opinion dates from the third or the fourth century AD, but on the other hand he regards this early quotation as a reliable piece of evidence for the existence of Buddhism in China in the rst century BC. Maspero points out that the Liexian zhuan, falsely attributed to Liu Xiang, is in any case a Han work, since it is twice quoted by Ying Shao 應邵 in his Hanshu yinyi 漢書音義 (2nd half 2nd cent.). That this passage does not occur in the present text does not mean that it is a later interpolation: the text which we have now is corrupt and very lacunose, and only a part of the original preface has been preserved. Maspero rmly believes that these phrases occurred in the original Liexian zhuan: “ce serait, avec le mémorial de Siang Kiai, la plus ancienne mention connue du Bouddhisme dans la littérature profane”.17 Tang Yongtong (History p. 14) points out that the tradition is known to Zong Bing at the beginning of the fth century, but that it is already regarded as an interpo lation by Yan Zhitui 顏之推 (531595) in his Yanshi jiaxun 顏氏家訓,18 which opinion he shares.
From the early fth century onward we nd another highly improbable tradition, according to which Liu Xiang discovered in the Tianlu Pavillion 天錄閣 sixty juan of Sanskrit manuscripts of Buddhist scriptures which under Qin Shihuangdi had been hidden in order to save them from the burning of the books ordered by that despot;19 Zong Bing’s theory of the lost texts (which will be treated in Ch. V) may have been inuenced by this tale. (f) A very famous story, the apocryphal character of which has only beenrecognized in modern times, deals with the “ocial” introduction of Buddhism into China under emperor Ming (5875 AD). Instigated by a dream, he is said to have sent a group of envoys (in the oldest versions headed by Zhang Qian, who died in the late second century BC) to the country of the Yuezhi in order to procure the sacred texts. The date of the mission is variously given as 60, 61, 64 or 68 AD. After three (or, according to one version, e leven) years the envoys returned with the text (or the translation) of the “S‚tra in Forty-two Sections” 四十二章經. They were accompanied by the rst foreign missionaries, whose names from the late fth century onward are given as ?K®˜yapa M®ta1nga 攝 (var. 迦葉) 摩騰 and ?Dharmaratna 竺法蘭. For them the emperor built the rst monastery, the Baimasi 白馬寺, at Luoyang.
Maspero and Tang Yongtong have subjected the many versions of this story to a detailed analysis, which has led both scholars to conclude that we have to do with a pious legend; we shall not repeat their argumentation.20 Their nal verdict is not the same: Tang Yongtong still envisages the possi bility of a nucleus of historical fact behind this tradition (op. cit. pp. 2426); Maspero on the contrary rejects the whole as a piece of ction, a propagandistic story full of anachronisms, which seems to have originated in Buddhist circles in the third century AD, to be further developed in the course of the fourth and fth centuries and to reach its denitive form at the end of the fth century.21
All accounts of the dream of emperor Ming and the embassy to the Yuezhi derive from one source: the “Preface to the S‚tra in Forty-two Sections” 四十二章經序 which at the beginning of the sixth century was incorporated in the CSZJJ.22 This document can be dated fairly exactly. As is proved by the opening words 昔漢孝明黃蒂 “Anciently, the emperor Xiaoming of the Han” , it is certainly of post-Han date. Moreover, since the author of the Weilue (mid. third century), who devotes a paragraph to Buddhism and the earliest transmission of the doctrine to a Chinese envoy, does not breathe a word about this legend, we may assume that it originated around the middle of the third century AD, the terminus ante quem being furnished by the allusion to the arrival of missionaries under emperor Ming in the Zhiguai (second half third cent., cf. above, sub b).
(g) This theme has been developed much later into the story of a magical contest between the rst Buddhist missionaries and a number of Daoist masters, supposed to have been held at the court in 69 AD under imperial auspices, and followed by the conversion of the emperor, the ordination of several hundreds of Chinese monks and the foundation of ten monasteries in and around Luoyang. This fantastic tale was set forth in great detail in a (now lost) apocryphal work, the Han faben neizhuan 漢法本內傳, passages from which have been preserved in later Buddhist treatises. The text probably dates from the early sixth century.23 The Han faben neizhuan is a rather clumsy fake and has been recognized as such by all modern scholars, in contrast with the legend of emperor Ming’s embassy which by the gradual elimination of the most glaring anachronisms and by the addition of “factual” details more and more assumed the appearance of an historical narrative.
Inltration from the North-West.
In actual fact, it is unknown when Buddhism entered China. It must have slowly intrated from the North-West, via the two branches of the continental silkroad which entered Chinese territory at Dunhuang, and from there through the corridor of Gansu to the “region within the Passes” and the North China plain, where in Later Han times the capital Luoyang was situated. This inltra tion must have taken place between the rst half of the rst century BC the period of the consolidation of the Chinese power in Central Asia and the middle of the rst century AD, when the existence of Buddhism is attested for the rst time in contemporary Chinese sources.
Buddhism among foreigners on Chinese soil.
At rst, it must have lived on among the foreigners who had brought it with them from their home countries: merchants, refugees, envoys, hostages. As has been said above, ocial history does not speak about the activities of foreign groups or individuals on Chinese soil. The Confucian world-con ception recognizes only one kind of relation between the inhabitants of the barbarian wastelands and the Middle Kingdom: they are the people from afar, who, attracted by the radiance of the emperor’s virtue, come to oer their “tribute of local products” as a token of their submission. A great number of such “tributes “are mentioned in the Han annals; since all through Chinese history this remains the standard form of trade with the Chinese court, we may safely assume that also these early embassies had a mercantile aspect besides their political function.
Certain data which we nd in later Buddhist biographical literature allow us to say a little more about this aspect of Han Buddhism; although these data bear upon a somewhat later period (late second and early third century) they picture a state of aairs which essentially must have existed earlier. We learn how several important ®c®ryas did not come from beyond the frontiers, but were born in China as members of non-Chinese immigrant families, or that they joined the Order after having come to China as laymen, i.e. for other than missionary purposes. The Parthian An Xuan 安玄 was a merchant who in 181 AD arrived in Luoyang and afterwards joined the monastic commun ity led by his famous countryman An Shigao 安世高.24 The grandfather of the Yuezhi Zhi Qian 支謙 had come to settle in China with a group of several hundred compatriots under emperor Ling (168190).25 In the rst half of the third century the famous Dharmarak◊a (Fahu 法護) was born in a Yuezhi family which had lived for generations at Dunhuang.26 Zhu Shulan 竺叔蘭 was the son of an Indian named Dharma˜¬ras who had ed from his native country and settled in Henan together with his whole family at some date in the rst half of the third century; Zhu Shulan was born in China.27 At the end of the second century we nd among the translators at Luoyang Kang Mengxiang 康孟詳, “whose forefathers had been people from Kangju”, i.e. Sogdians.28 Kang Senghui 康僧會 was born early in the third century in Jiaozhi (in the extreme South of the Chinese empire) as the son of a Sogdian merchant.29
Thus Buddhism was “unocially” represented in China among scattered foreign families, groups and settlements at a rather early date, and there is, indeed, every reason to suppose that this was already the case before the earliest mention of Buddhism in Chinese sources.30 This is furthermore conrmed by a very remarkable fact which so far seems to have escaped the attention of the scholars working in this eld: according to a passage in CSZJJ XIII (biography of Zhi Qian; a later and slightly dierent version in GSZ I) a great number of Sanskrit texts of Buddhist scriptures circulated in China at the beginning of the third century:
“He realized that, although the great doctrine was practised, yet the scriptures were mostly (only available) in ‘barbarian’ (胡, in later ed. replaced by 梵, ‘Indian’) language, which nobody could understand. Since he was well-versed in Chinese and in ‘barbarian’ (戎) language, he collected all (these) texts and translated them into Chinese”.31
The Buddhist scriptures which Zhi Qian collected in China were short texts, only one being longer than two juan, and of a very heterogeneous nature. He collected these either at Luoyang before he moved to the South (ca. 220 AD), or more probably at Jianye 建業, the capital of Wu, where he is said to have started his translation work in 222 AD. The number varies according to the sources, ranging from 27 (in Zhi Qian’s biography quoted above) or 30 (Dao’an’s catalogue according to CSZJJ II 6.3) to a maximum of 129 scriptures (Lidai SBJ V and Da Tang NDL II). Later we shall revert to Zhi Qian and the works translated by him; here the important point was to show how, to judge from the passage translated above, Buddhism at the end of the Han was still largely a religion of foreigners either fresh immigrants or persons of foreign extraction among whom Indian or Central Asian copies of Buddhist scriptures circulated.
c. The Chinese in Central Asia: Jing Lu and Ban Yong
The spread of Buddhism in China may also have been stimulated or facili tated to some extent by the fact that, in the rst decades before and after the beginning of our era, a considerable number of Chinese ocials must have been active in military and civil functions in the Buddhist countries of Central Asia. Most of these ocials must at least have been aware of the existence of that religion.
According to a tradition which goes back at least to the beginning of the third century, a Chinese envoy to the court of Yuezhi, the student at the imperial academy Jing Lu 景盧 (for which we nd in later versions the variant forms Jing Lü 慮, Qin Jing 秦景, Qin Jingxian 秦景憲, Jing Ni 匿) was instructed in the teachings of (a) Buddhist s‚tra(s) by the Yuezhi crown-prince in the year 2 BC. This story occurs for the rst time in the extremely corrupt passage on India from the Xirong zhuan 西戎傳 of the Weilue 魏略, compiled around the middle of the third century by Yu Huan 魚豢, and quoted in Pei Songzhi’s 裴松之 commentary on the Sanguo zhi (published 429 AD).32 The phrase in question runs as follows:
“Anciently, under the Han emperor Ai, in the rst year of the period Yuanshou (2 BC), the student at the imperial academy Jing Lu received from Yicun 伊存, the envoy of the king of the Great Yuezhi, oral instruction in (a) Buddhist s‚tra(s)” 昔漢哀蒂元壽元年博士弟子景盧受大月氏王使伊存口授浮屠經 If we accept the text as it stands, this doubtlessly means that Jing Lu obtained this instruction in China, most probably at the capital, from a Yuezhi who had come to China as an envoy. Ed. Chavannes, who in his annotated translation of the Xirong zhuan has devoted much attention to this passage, has proposed the following emendation, based upon two later parallel versions of the story:33
“ the student of the imperial academy Jing Lu obtained a mission to the Great Yuezhi. The (Yuezhi) king ordered the crown-prince orally to instruct him in the Buddhist s‚tras” 博士弟子景盧受大月氏王使王令太子口授浮屠經. If Chavannes’ reconstruction of the Weilue text is correct, the situation has changed completely: the scene is the Yuezhi court, where a Kushana king (it is, in view of the extreme obscurity of the chronology of this dynasty, impossible to dene which one) orders his son to reveal the teachings of one or more Buddhist scriptures to Jing Lu, who now is an envoy sent by the Chinese court to the West. Chavannes’ solution is no doubt ingenious, but it is based, after all, upon a rather subjective choice between various possibilities. Cun 存 may well be a mistake resulting from a fusion of 太 and 子, but yi 伊 can hardly be explained as a corruption of 使; it could, however, be a mistake for the equivalent shi 令. It must be remarked that Tang Yongtong, after a careful comparison of even more versions of the story than Chavannes had at his disposal, comes to the opposite conclusion: the scene is China, Yicun is a Yuezhi envoy; the account is probably based upon an existing Buddhist text transmitted by Yicun which still existed at the time of the compilation of the Weilue. It is very signicant that it was a Yuezhi who explained or recited the s‚tra(s), in view of the important role which this people played in the propagation of Buddhism in Later Han times.34
Hypothesis upon hypothesis all this is very dubious. No trace of a Yuezhi embassy to China or of a Chinese embassy to the Yuezhi in 2 BC in the annals of the Hanshu; in fact, we have ample reason to question the histo ricity of the whole story. That a Chinese envoy could receive oral instruction from a Yuezhi crown-prince, or that a Yuezhi envoy could transmit a s‚tra to a Chinese scholar is already none too probable, but if this tradition after more than two centuries of silence turns up in some seven versions which are partly unintelligible and in which neither the name of the Chinese scholar nor the function of the Yuezhi nor the place of action appears to be xed, we are no longer allowed to use it as reliable material for historical research.
Another case is that of Ban Yong 班勇, the youngest son of the general Ban Chao 班超 (32102 AD), the great conqueror of the West who spent more than thirty years in Central Asia. In 107 AD Ban Yong was charged with an expedition against the Xiongnu; in 123 he became governor-general of the Western Region 西域長史 and spent the next years in military campaigns in Central Asia. In 127 he was disgraced and imprisoned; he died shortly afterwards.35 Even before his rst appointment in 107 he seems to have lived in Central Asia together with his father, who in 100 AD sent him to the Chinese court, that he might persuade the emperor to allow Ban Chao to return to China.36 It may be signicant that on that occasion Ban Yong went to Luoyang in the company of a Parthian envoy.37 Now in the section on the Western Region of the Hou-Han shu the compiler Fan Ye (died 445) remarks that no document of Former Han times speaks about the existence of Buddhism in India: the “two Han geographical monographs” (viz. in the Shiji and the Hanshu) are silent about it, and Zhang Qian (second half second cent. BC) only spoke about the heat and the humidity of the climate and about the use of elephants in warfare:
“and although Ban Yong has mentioned the fact that they venerate the Buddha and ( for that reason) do not kill or attack (others), yet he has not transmitted anything about the meritorious work of instruction and guidance (contained in) its essential scriptures and its noble doctrine”.38 It is very probable that the words of Ban Yong paraphrased here occurred in some report or memorial on Central Asian aairs; since no writings by Ban Yong have survived, we cannot say anything more.39 Apart from the very doubtful story of Jing Lu treated above, this remains the only known case in which a Chinese magistrate in Han times appears to have been acquainte d with Buddhism outside China, or at least to have been aware of its existence and of one of its most essential moral principles.
d. King Ying of Chu: Buddhism at Pengcheng in 65 AD.
Around the middle of the rst century AD Buddhism appears already to have penetrated into the region north of the Huai, in Eastern Henan, Southern Shandong and Northern Jiangsu. The existence of foreign groups in this part of the empire is easily explainable: the most important city in this region, Pengcheng 彭城, was a ourishing centre of commerce;40 it was situated on the highway from Luoyang to the South-East which actually formed an eastern extension to the continental silk-route by which foreigners from the West used to arrive. Moreover, in a north-western direction it was connected with Langye 瑯琊 in Southern Shandong, and to the South-East with Wujun 吳郡 and Kuaiji 會稽, all important centres of maritime trade, which via Panyu 潘禺 (Guangzhou) were connected with the trade ports of Indo -China and Malaya. We cannot exclude the possibility that some inux of Buddhism took place along that way too, although Liang Qichao’s hypothes is that Han Buddhism was mainly of southern provenance and had spread into China from these maritime centres is not supported by any reliable evidence and therefore no longer tenable.41
It is in this region that we nd, in 65 AD, the rst sign of the existence of a Buddhist community of (no doubt foreign) monks and Chinese laymen at the court of Liu Ying 劉英, king of Chu 楚, who was one of the sons of emperor Guangwu (2558 AD). Liu Ying had since 39 AD been enfeoed as duke (since 41 as king) of Chu; he lived from 52 till 71 AD at Pengcheng, the capital of the kingdom which comprised the southern part of present-day Shandong and the northern part of Jiangsu. According to his biography in the Hou-Han shu he was deeply interested in Daoism (Huanglao 黃老)42 and at the same time “observed fasting and performed sacrices to the Buddha” 為浮屠齋戒祭祀.43 Thus in the rst allusion to Buddhism in Chinese historical literature we nd already this “Buddhism” closely associated with the cult of Huanglao, i.e. the study and practice of Daoist arts which were supposed to lead to bodily immortality, and which were much en vogue at the imperial court and among the princes around the middle of the rst century.44 Tang Yongtong has rightly stressed the fact that both in the case of Liu Ying (65 AD) and of emperor Huan (166 AD) Buddhism is mentioned (a) together with the cult of Huanglao, and (b) in connection with sacrices, and that among the Daoist practices in Han times a prominent role is played by various sacrices 祭祀 to gods and spirits to secure happiness and to avert evil.45 In fact, in later times the term “heterodox sacrices” 淫祀, which in historical literature is frequently used to designate such rites, has sometimes been applied to the Buddhist cult.46 To Liu Ying and the Chinese devotees at his court the “Buddhist” ceremonies of fasting and sacrice were probably no more than a variation of existing Daoist practices; this peculiar mixture of Buddhist and Daoist elements remains characteristic of Han Buddhism as a whole.
In 65 AD emperor Ming decreed that all those who had committed crimes warranting the death penalty were to be given an opportunity to redeem their punishment. Liu Ying, whose loyalty to the central government was certainly open to doubt (as we shall see, ve years later he was deposed on account of plotting rebellion) seems to have welcomed this opportunity to take some preventive measures; he sent one of his courtiers to Luoyang with thirty pieces of yellow and white silk to redeem the punishment he said to deserve. In an edict emperor Ming answered: “The king of Chu recites the subtle words of Huanglao, and respectfully performs the gentle sacrices to the Buddha. After three months of purication and fasting, he has made a solemn covenant (or: a vow 誓) with the spirits. What dislike or suspicion (from Our part) could there be, that he must repent (of his sins)? Let (the silk which he sent for) redemption be sent back, in order thereby to contribute to the lavish entertainment of the up®sakas (yipusai 伊蒲塞) and ˜rama#nas (sangmen 桑門)”.47
The text of this decree was sent to the various kingdoms in order to acquaint all kings with this sample of Liu Ying’s virtuous conduct. However, the fortune of the king of Chu did not last long. There were rumors that he strove to gain independence, that he had Daoist masters (方士) concoct prognostication texts and favourable omens for him, and that he had enfeoed persons and privately appointed governors and generals. In 70 AD he was accused of “great refractoriness and impiety” a crime warranting the death penalty in its most severe form. The emperor was still favourably disposed towards him and changed the death penalty into a milder punishment; Liu Ying was deposed and transferred together with a great number of his courtiers to Jingxian 涇縣 near Danyang 丹陽 in Southern Anhui, where he still was given a rather generous treatment. In the next year (71 AD), shortly after his arrival at Danyang, Liu Ying committed suicide. Buddhism in the region of Pengcheng in 193/194 AD.
The Buddhist centre at Pengcheng probably survived after Liu Ying’s removal. For more than a century we do not hear about it. But a passage from the Sanguo zhi, corroborated by various other sources, reveals the existence of a prosperous Buddhist community in that region at the very end of the second century. In 193 AD the notorious warlord Zhai Rong 窄融 entered the service of the “governor” (and de facto autonomous ruler) of Xuzhou, Tao Qian 陶謙, who entrusted him with the transport of grain in the prefectures of Guangling 廣陵, Xiapei 下邳 and Pengcheng (all in present-day Jiangsu). He did not keep this quiet and extremely lucrative position for a long time: early in 194 his patron died, and Zhai Rong moved with ca. ten thousand partisans and a private army of three thousand horsemen to Guangling, where he murdered the prefect at a banquet. Shortly afterwards he attacked Yuzhang (present-day Nanchang in Jiangxi), killed the prefect and took his place. In 195 he was defeated by the ex-governor of Yangzhou, Liu You 劉繇 (151195); Zhai Rong ed into the mountains where he was killed shortly after his escape.48
When Zhai Rong was still in charge of the grain transport in the region of Guangling, Xiapei and Pengcheng, in which quality he actually appropriated the revenues of these three prefectures, “he elected a large Buddhist temple.49 From bronze he had a human (egy) made, the body of which was gilded and dressed in silk and brocade. (At the top of the building) nine layers of bronze scales were suspended,50 and below there was a building of several storeys with covered ways, which could contain more than three thousand people, who all studied and read51 Buddhist scriptures. He ordered the Buddhist devotees (好佛者) from the region (under his supervision) and from the adjacent prefectures to listen and to accept the doctrine (受道). (Those people) he exempted from the other statute labour duties in order to attract them. Those who on account of this from near and afar came to (the monastery) numbered more than ve thousand.52 Whenever there was (the ceremony of) “bathing the Buddha” (浴佛),53 he had always great quantities of wine (sic) and food set out (for distribution), and mats were spread along the roads over a distance of several tens of li. (On these occasions) some ten thousand people came to enjoy the spectacle and the food. The expenses (of such a ceremony) amounted to many millions (of cash)”.54
This text is of great importance, not only because it contains the earliest description of a Chinese monastery, but primarily because it is one of the very few cases in which the historical records allow us to get a glimpse of popular Buddhism at a rather early date. The account, and especially the numbers mentioned in it, are no doubt exaggerated. But the huge size of the building, the mass communions and the wholesale charitative ceremonies presuppose the existence of a large monastic community, the majority of which probably consisted of Chinese monks. No translation activities are mentioned, nor do we know what kind of scriptures were recited or studied. The fact that wine was oered to the participants on festive occasions indicates that the Buddhism practised at Zhai Rong’s monastery was not of the purest kind. The building was probably at Xiapei.55 For obvious reasons Zhai Rong never became the ideal prototype of the liberal donor in Chinese Buddhist literature; on the contrary, in an early fourth century anti-Buddhist treatise56 he is triumphantly mentioned as an example of moral depravity coupled with Buddhist devotion. In Buddhist sources he is practically never referred to.
Buddhism at Luoyang: rst traces.
Much more is known about the other important centre of Buddhism in Han China: the capital Luoyang.
The fact that Buddhism at Luoyang is not explicitly attested in reliable sources before the middle of the second century does not mean that it did not exist earlier (see our remarks at the beginning of this chapter). Consequently, we cannot agree with Maspero who regards the whole “Church of Luoyang” as a later oshoot of the “Church of Pengcheng”.57 The geographical situation pleads against such a hypothesis. It is highly improbable that Buddhism, gradually inltrating from the North-West along the caravan route from Central Asia, would have passed through Chang’an and Luoyang, the two greatest urban centres in Northern China, without having settled there, and that only after it had become popular in a region in Eastern China, it would have returned to the West and have reached Luoyang at the end of the rst century AD.
The Church of Luoyang as an organised religious community with its trans lation teams and its famous Parthian and Indoscythian leaders does not appear in reliable sources before the middle of the second century, but in view of these geographical factors we are justied, even without scriptural evidence, to assume that it existed in nucleo at least contemporary with and probably even earlier than the community at Pengcheng. However, scriptural evidence for this is not entirely lacking.
There is in the rst place the signicant fact that in the Hou-Han shu pass age quoted above the words up®saka and ˜rama#na gure in the text of an imperial edict. This can only mean that these Indian (or Central Asian) Buddhist terms were known and understood in court circles, and that they meant something to the emperor, or to the literati in the imperial chancellery at Luoyang where the wording of the edict had been formulated. If this inter pretation is correct, we may conclude that Buddhism was represented at Luoyang around the middle of the rst century AD, and that it denitely not was introduced into the capital from the Buddhist centre at Pengcheng at the end of the rst century.
In the second place, another slight indication of the same kind is furnished by a few words from one of the most famous works of Han literature, the “Poetical description of the Western Capital”, Xijing fu 西京賦, by Zhang Heng 張衡 (78130 AD) the rst mention of Buddhism in Chinese belles-lettres. When describing the wonders of Chang’an, and in particular the seductive beauty of the women in the imperial harem, the poet exclaims: “Even (the virtuous) Zhan Ji58 or a ˜rama#na who could not be captivated by them?”59 The context in which here the term ˜rama#na 桑門 gures is of course quite irrelevant, as is the fact that the word is used in a description of Chang’an; it is obviously a rhetorical gure which should not be taken literally.
According to his biography in HHS 89, Zhang Heng began the composition of the Xijing fu in the period Yongyuan (89104 AD) and nished it ten years later;60 at that time he was already living at Luoyang. The importance of this otherwise rather trivial phrase is that Zhang Heng around 100 AD, when active at Luoyang, appears to have been acquainted with the term ˜rama#na, using it as he does in a poem written for the general cultured public of his days. This again points to a fairly strong inuence of Buddhism at the capital around the end of the rst and the beginning of the second century AD. The S‚tra in Forty-two Sections.
Probably in the same period, in the late rst or early second century, we must place the composition of what is commonly regarded as the rst Buddhist scripture in the Chinese language: the “S‚tra in Forty-two sections” 四十二章經, which according to a late tradition was brought to Luoyang by two Indian missionaries, Shemoteng 攝摩騰 (? K®˜yapa M®tanga) and Zhu Falan 1 竺法蘭 (? Dharmaratna), and translated by the latter in 67 AD. The origin of this work is obscured by legend; however, in its original form it is certainly very old, as it is already quoted in Xiang Kai’s memorial of 166 AD. In spite of this, its authenticity has been repeatedly questioned.61 It is a short work consisting of 42 independent sections; it is still an open question whether it is a translation of a Sanskrit original or a Chinese compilation, stylistically probably modelled upon the Xiaojing or the Daode jing.62 The original work is certainly Hinay®nistic in content. Of the dierent recen sions of the text only the one included in the Korean edition of the Tripiflaka seems to correspond in general with the original text; all other versions teem with later interpolations.63 But even the Korean edition shows traces of a later redaction: the earliest quotations from the “S‚tra in Forty-two Sections” do not correspond literally with passages from the present text.64 The Church of Luoyang in the second half of the second century. Our sources.
The arrival in 148 AD of a Parthian missionary, An Shigao 安世高, at Luoyang marked the beginning of a period of intense activity. Unfortunately, our knowledge about the ourishing Buddhist community at the capital in the second half of the second century is extremely one-sided: secular history does not even mention its existence, and the information which we nd in Buddhist sources is almost exclusively concerned with the production of translations of Buddhist texts. Biographical data such as furnished by the biographies of translators in GSZ and CSZJJ are scanty and have to be used with the great caution, owing to the mass of legendary material which has been incorporated in these early sixth century compendia. However, the CSZJJ contains also a number of colophons and introductions which yield scanty but early, sometimes even contemporary, biographical information. In the eld of bibliography, the situation is not much better; the evaluation of the bibliographical material forms a serious problem. As far as Han time Buddhism is concerned, the later catalogues are of no value whatsoever; even in the most critical among these, the Kaiyuan shijiao lu 開元釋教錄 of 730 AD (T 2154), the s‚tras attributed to Han time translators are two to six times as numerous as those mentioned in the oldest catalogues. The earliest extant Buddhist catalogue is the CSZJJ of the early sixth century; its bibliographical parts (ch. IIV) are actually an elaboration of still earlier catalogue, the Zongli zhongjing mulu 綜理眾經目錄, completed by Dao’an 道安 in 374 AD.65 Thus Dao’an’s catalogue has been virtually incorporated into the CSZJJ, and since Sengyou usually species which works were mentioned by Dao’an and which were added by himself, we are fairly well-informed about the contents and organization of Dao’an’s catalogue.
Dao’an’s work was a product of sound scholarship by which he set an example to all Buddhist bibliographers of later times a major achievement in a science which at that time was still in the rst stage of development. However, the excellent qualities of this catalogue and its comparatively early date have led all later authorities to accept Dao’an’s statements as unquestion able facts. Especially when dealing with Han time translations we must never forget that, here as elsewhere, we have to do with attributions. Dao’an had perhaps access to some lists of translations drawn up by earlier bibliographers.66 But the bulk of the work was his own; it appears very clearly from his remarks in his catalogue as well as from the later accounts of his activities in this eld, that in attributing certain s‚tras to certain translators, he based his verdict not only upon external criteria (colophons, translator’s notes, intro ductions), but also and often exclusively upon stylistic features of the works in question. Only in very few cases attributions can be corroborated by contemporary or nearly contemporary material.67 In all other cases we have to rely upon the attributions made by Dao’an and Sengyou, which, it must be repeated, cannot be accepted without some reserve. When dealing with the most ancient period of Chinese Buddhism we shall of course pay no attention at all to the ever-expanding lists of titles and the quasi-exact chronological data furnished by later catalogues.
From the middle of the second to the rst decade of the third century AD, a number of Buddhist teachers and translators, foreigners of diverse origin, were active at Luoyang. The earliest sources speak of some ten ®c®ryas who are said to have translated a considerable number of Buddhist scriptures during this period (fty-one, acc. to Dao’an’s catalogue). Some early colophons which have been preserved contain interesting details about the way in which the work of translation was carried out. The master either had a manuscript of the original text at his disposal or he recited it from memory. If he had enough knowledge of Chinese (which was seldom the case) he gave an oral translation (koushou 口授), otherwise the preliminary translation was made, “transmitted”, by a bilingual intermediary (chuanyi 傳譯). Chinese assistants monks as well as laymen noted down the translation (bishou 筆受), after which the text was subjected to a nal revision (zhengyi 正義, jiaoding 校定). During the work of translation, and perhaps also on other occasions, the master gave oral explanations (koujie 口解) concerning the contents of the scriptures translated. Explanations of this kind often appear to have crept into the text; “translator’s notes” gure in most Chinese versions, and at least one Han time translation forms an ine xtricable mixture of text and explanatory notes.68 Sometimes, however, the glosses were kept apart as separate works of exegesis.69 Many early Buddhist commentaries were wholly or mainly based upon oral explanations given in the course of translating a certain scripture. The material funds for the work of translation were furnished by laymen “who encouraged and helped” (quanzhuzhe 勸助者); the names of two of such pious donors of ca. 179 AD have been preserved in a colophon.70 As far as we know, this kind of team-work was for the rst time extensively practised at the Buddhist centre(s) at Luoyang. All through the history of Chinese Buddhism it remained the normal method of translating Buddhist scriptures, but it is interesting to note that the system in its fully developed form is already attested in Later Han times.
It is unknown how many monasteries (si 寺, cf. below) there were at Luoyang under the Later Han, or where they were situated. The existence of a “White Horse Temple”, Baimasi 白馬寺, at Luoyang, which is tradition ally regarded as the cradle of Chinese Buddhism and as the main Buddhist centre in Han times, is not attested in contemporary sources before the year 289 AD;71 its alleged foundation ca. 65 AD and its very name are intimately connected with the apocryphal story of emperor Ming’s dream and the arrival of K®˜yapa M®ta1nga and Zhu Falan at the capital. Although the formation of the legend (in the second half of the third century?) itself presupposes the actual existence of a Baimasi at Luoyang, there is no guarantee that this temple actually dated from Han times. However, the name may be a later invention, and the building which in later sources is called Baimasi may well have been identical with the “Buddha-monastery”, Fosi 佛寺, mentioned in an ancient colophon as the place where in 208 AD the text of the Banzhou sanmei jing 般舟三昧經 was revised.72 There was furthermore the Xuchangsi 許昌寺, mentioned in the same colophon (208 AD). As has been convincingly argued by Maspero, (cf. note 57) this monastery very probably was originally situated in the ancient mansion of a certain Xu Chang 許昌, marquis of Longshu 龍舒 who was a cousin of the famous Liu Ying, the “Buddhist” king of Chu, and may thus have been a link between the Buddhist colony at Pengcheng and the church of Luoyang. As a monastery the Xuchangsi seems to have been of secondary importance; the colophon to the Banzhou sanmei jing is the only text in which it is mentioned.
Hardly anything is known about the actual size and the internal organization of the Buddhist community at Luoyang. The most basic monastic rules were probably transmitted orally by the rst missionaries, and for the relatively small number of monks and novices this may have been sucient. In any case, among the scriptures attributed to Han translators in early catalogues the Vinaya is not represented.73 In the earliest documents we nd already the basic terms for the various clerical ranks: ˜rama#na (sangmen 桑門, shamen 沙門), monk; bhik◊u (biqiu 比丘); ˜rama#nera (shami 沙彌), novice; ®c®rya (aqili 阿祇梨), master; the use of the term Boddhisattva 菩薩, given to both monks and lay devotees, testies of a touching optimism and of a profound ignorance as to the real meaning of this appellation. The missionaries at Luoyang formed a very heterogeneous group. There were two Parthians, the monk An Shigao 安世高 and the up®saka An Xuan 安玄; three Yuezhi, Zhi Loujiaqian (? Lokak◊ema) 支婁迦讖, Zhi Yao 支曜 and Lokak◊ema’s disciple Zhi Liang 支亮, two Sogdians, Kang Mengxiang 康孟詳 and Kang Ju 康巨, and three Indians, Zhu Shuofo 竺朔佛 (var. Foshuo 佛朔), Zhu Dali 竺大力 and Tanguo 曇果.
The earliest and most famous among these masters was the Parthian An Shigao, who is the rst undoubtedly historical personality in Chinese Buddhism. It was probably he who initiated the systematical translation of Buddhist texts and who organized the rst translation team. In this respect his importance is indeed very great: his translations, primitive though they may be, mark the beginning of a form of literary activity which, taken as a whole, must be regarded as one of the most impressive achievements of Chinese culture.
His name is not very clear: apart from the rst syllabe An, an ethnikon which stands for Anxi 安息 (= Arsak, the Arsacid kingdom of Parthia), it looks like a translation rather than a transcription. Bagchi’s suggestion Shigao = Lokottama is not supported by any evidence.74 It may, however, be a honoric appellation; in later biographies he is usually referred to as An Qing 安清, with the zi Shigao, where zi obviously cannot be taken to mean a “style” of the Chinese type. The two names, Qing and Shigao, are attested in a document of the middle of the third century,75 but a still older source speaks only of “a Bodhisattva hailing from Anxi, whose name (字) was Shigao”.76
According to a very early tradition,77 Shigao had been a crown-prince of Parthia who had abandoned his rights to the throne in order to devote himself to the religious life. Afterwards he went to the East, probably as a refugee,78 and settled in 148 AD at Luoyang where he spent more than twenty years. Nothing more is known about his life; the stories about his peregrinations in Southern China recorded in his biographies in CSZJJ and GSZ79 must be relegated to the realm of hagiography. An Shigao has never been successf ully identied with any Parthian prince guring in occidental sources.80 The futility of such attempts has been pointed out by Maspero; Parthia under the Arsacides (ca. 250 BC224 AD) was not a unied state but a conglomeration of petty kingdoms, and An Shigao had probably been a member of a ruling family in one of these little feudal domains.81
It is still an unsolved problem which and how many translations may safely be attributed to An Shigao and his collaborators. The number of scriptures ascribed to him by later bibliographers ranges from ca. 30 to 176. The earliest available source, Dao’an’s catalogue of 374, comprises 34 titles, but four works out of these were only hesitatingly ascribed to An Shigao. Of the remaining thirty translations nineteen have been preserved,82 but among these there are only four which on account of early colophons or prefaces may positively be attributed to this patriarch of Chinese Buddhism.83 Neither these four nor the other fteen works which with some degree of probability may be attributed to him and his school show any trace of Mah®y®na inuence.
To judge from the nature of the scriptures translated, the two main subjects of his teachings seem to have been (a) the system of mental exercises commonly called dhy®na (chan 禪) in Chinese sources, but which is more adequately covered by the term “Buddhist yoga”,84 comprising such practices as the preparatory technique of counting the respirations leading to mental concentration (®n®p®nasm!rti, 安般, 數息觀); the contemplation of the body as being perishable, composed of elements, impure and full of suering; the visualization of internal and external images of various colours, etc.;
(b) the explanation of numerical categories such as the six ®yatana 六入, the ve skandha 五陰, the four !rddhip®da 四神足行, the ve bala 五力, the four sm!rtyupasth®na 四意止 etc.; short s‚tras devoted to such classications form the bulk of the oeuvre attributed to him. Some of the “dhy®na” practices mentioned above, notably the ®n®p®nasm!rti, outwardly resembled certain Daoist respiratory techniques, and it has repeatedly been stressed that the existence of such mental and bodily exercises in Daoism must have largely contributed to the popularity of this aspect of Buddhism in the second century AD. Daoist inuence is furthermore attested by the use of a number of Daoist expressions in rendering Buddhist terms in early trans lations. However, the importance of Daoist terminology has generally been overestimated: terms of undoubtedly Daoist provenance actually constitute a very small percentage of the Chinese archaic Buddhist vocabulary, the bulk of which consists of terms which cannot be traced to any Chinese source and which probably have been improvised by the earliest translators.
An Shigao’s versions, and the archaic translations in general, are in several respects highly interesting: for the general history of Buddhism, since the approximate date of their translation often forms a terminus ante quem for the existence of the Indian prototypes or for the stage of development of a certain text at that date; for the earliest history of Chinese Buddhism, since both the nature of the texts selected for translation and the terminology employed in translating them reveal some basic characteristics of Han Budd hism; from a literary point of view, since they constitute a new and foreign element in Chinese literature, the stylistic features of which strongly deviated from and often even conicted with the Chinese norms of literary composition; from a linguistic point of view, since the majority of these translations teem with vernacular expressions and syntactic structures which, if studied more closely than hitherto has been the case, would yield much interesting information on the Northern Chinese spoken language of the second century AD.
As translations, they are generally of the poorest quality. It is somewhat surprising that later Chinese Buddhist bibliographers, and especially Dao’an, the great specialist on archaic translations, have praised the products of An Shigao and his school as masterpieces and classical examples of the art of translating. It is hard to see on what criteria their appreciation was based, if it indeed was something more than an expression of the traditional Chinese veneration for the work of the Ancients, the patriarchal, the prototype. Most archaic versions are actually no more than free paraphrases or extracts of the original texts, teeming with obscure and not yet standardized technical ex pressions, and coated in a language which is chaotic to the extreme and not seldom quite unintelligible even when we possess Indian versions or later and more literal Chinese translations of the same scriptures.
