中華佛學學報第07期 (p501-612)： (民國83年)，臺北：中華佛學研究所，http://www.chibs.edu.tw
Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal, No. 07, (1994)
Taipei: The Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies
ISSN: 1017─7132

Wu-t'ai Shan 五臺山 during the Early Chin Dynasty 金朝︰The Testimony of Chu Pien 朱弁

佛法在九州間隨其方而化......北方人銳武。攝武莫若示現。故言神道者宗清涼山。

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　劉禹錫

Throughout the whole of China the Buddha-Dharma has worked its transfromations in accordance with the special characteristics of each particular locale Northerners are by temperament a martial people, and for the quelling of a bellicose spirit there is nothing so effective as visions. Thus is it said that northerners are devotees of the occult who hold Mount Ch'ing-liang in special esteem.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Liu Yu-hsi[1]

Ⅱ. WU-T'AI FROM THE LATE T'ANG TO THE FOUNDING OF THE CHIN.

Located as it is in extreme northern Shansi, Wu-t'ai has always been a border territory. To its south and east lay China proper, the ordered and familiar world of civilization; but to its north and west lay the forbidding steppes, deserts, marshes, and frozen forests of the barbarians. Small wonder then that Wu-t'ai came to be regarded as one of the ramparts of the realm,[6] a spiritual bastion on which the court would lavish support for centuries in the conviction that the political power of emperors and thus the very sovereignty of the empire could be guaranteed or enhanced. Surely such religio-political power was a great part of its significance during the T'ang, particularly when the foreign- born monk　

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Amoghavajra (Pu-k'ung 不空, 705~774) collaborated with T'ang Tai-tsung (唐代宗, r.762~779) to make of the newly established Chin-ko ssu 金閣寺, a major center of esoteric or Tantric Buddhism, a palatial venue for elaborate and expensive Tantric rituals performed in the service of the empire.[7] T'ang Tai- tsung was of course already an "august and sagely sovereign," but his patronage of Wu-t'ai was responsible in good measure for his being also a "Dharma Rāja" (法王 Fa-wang). His patronage helped, in other words, to add Buddhism to the panoply of his authority. Wu-t'ai earned and retained such privilege not only because it was a sacred place but also because it was a sacred place perched on the very edge of civilization. Such was part of the adventure of pilgrimage to Wu-t'ai, as well, for those who visited its heights thereby brought themselves to the outer limits of their accustomed world. And this, as well as the sheer holiness of the place, may help to explain why accounts of such visits abound in references to Wu-t'ai's alterity and its distance from "the center. "In this regard it differed markedly from other peaks, like T'ien-t'ai Shan 天臺山 or Lü Shan 廬山, which were perhaps no less sacred but rather clearly more domestic.

But there is some potential for irony in Wu-t'ai's character as a spiritual redoubt on the northern frontier of the Middle Kingdom, for it was aslo an international Buddhist center and a passageway or link that served often to connect China with other peoples and cultures. Famous throughout Asia as the home of Mañjuśrī, Wu-t'ai was the destination of pilgrims not only from all parts of China but aslo from Central, South, and Southeast Asia, not to mention Korea and Japan. Thus, this domain sacred to an originally foreign deity was also frequently visited by his foreign devotees. And it would maintain its international significance even in times of tension or hostility when the Chinese border near the Five Terraces was to some extent a barrier to travel, or perhaps even a battlefield.

Consider the most vivid and detailied visual image we have of Wu-t'ai before modern times, viz., the famous mural found on the back wall of Cave 61 at Ch'ien-fo-tung 千佛洞, Tun-huang 敦煌. This highly stylized but also quite detailed depiction is believed to have been painted sometime between 980 and 995, and it indicates a significant level of interest in Wu-t'ai on the part of people in the Tun-huang area during the late tenth century.[8] In those days Tun-huang was under　

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the immediate control of a regional war-lord and in close cultural contact with certain Central Asian city-states farther west. However, in general geopolitical and cultural terms it was within the orbit of the Tangut nation. The Tanguts were a people of largely Tibetan stock who, at about the same time the Sung dynasty was taking shape, coalesced politically to form the Hsi-hsia 西夏 state. The Hsi-hsia would come to control most of what is today Kansu and Shensi provinces, as well a some territory further west. Thus, Wu-t'ai was actually not so distant from the easternmost borders of Hsi-hsia territory; in fact, a glance at a map of China's boundaries in the Northern Sung period will show that it was situated quite near the very juncture of Sung, Liao, and His-hsia territories.

Moreover, there is ample evidence indicating that the Tanguts were especially devoted to Hua-yen 華嚴 Buddhism. The Hua-yen Sūtra itself, together with a number of important Hua-yen school texts, figure prominently in the extant archives of Hsi-hsia religious literature, both among texts written in Chinese and among those preserved in the native tongue and script.[9] Likewise in the realm of art; Hsi-hsia murals at Tun-huang, for example, and many paintings at other Hsi-hsia sites like the Yü-lin 榆林 caves in An-hsi hsien 安西縣, Kansu are rich in iconography based on the Hua-yen Ching.[10] As Hua-Yen is a tradition especially associated with Wu-t'ai, Tangut interest in that sacred site was virtually guaranteed. One is therefore not surprised to learn that in the Tun-huang archives there are several manuscripts recounting journeys to Wu-t'ai by pilgrims who hailed from Tangut territory or had to pass through that territory to reach their destination.[11] Chinese historical records amplify this picture of Tangut devotion to Hua-yen and to Wu-t'ai. They tell, for example, that in 1007 the Hsi-hsia ruler Li Te-ming 李德明 sought permission from the Sung court to establish ten temples at Wu-t'ai in memory of his recently deceased mother. In 1037 the subsequent ruler, Li Yüan-hao 李元昊, again petitioned the Sung court regarding Wu-t'ai, this time asking permission to send there an official delegation bearing treasure-offerings on his behalf.[12] Of course, as Tangut-Sung relations entered an era of greater tension and hostility begining in the 1040's and continuing through the fall of Northern Sung, travel from Hsi-hsia territory to Wu-t'ai probably became difficult, and official visits surely became impossible. Nevertheless, the significance of Wu-t'ai for the Hsi-hsia was not thereby lessened. In fact, it may　

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actually have increased as the pious intentions of would-be Tangut pilgrims were thwarted by political circumstances. Shi Jinbo notes, for example, a map of Hsi-hsia territory preserved in the Hsi-hsia chi-shih pen-mo 《西夏紀事本末》, a Ch'ing compilation published in 1885 by Chang Chien 張鑑 but based on careful collection and study of earlier sources. Reference is made in this map to Ho-lan Shan 賀蘭山, a hill or mesa located in what is now western Hsing-ch'ing fu 興慶府. This was the Hsi-hsia capital for a time and the site of many famous Hsi-hsia Buddhist edifices. The map specifically notes the existence at Ho-lan Shan of a cluster of temples known collectively as "The Wu-t'ai monasteries. "Apparently, each of these temples was named after one of the famous temples located at the real Wu-t'ai in Shansi─ for example, the Ch'ing-liang ssu 清涼寺 and the Fokuang ssu 佛光寺. The His-hsia, in other words, were so thoroughly devoted to Wu-t'ai and its mysterious powers that when they were prohibited from actually visiting the place they constructed a kind of symbolic replica of it in the heart of their own land.[13]

If Wu-t'ai was sacred to the Tanguts and other Central Asian peoples, it was probably even more so to the Khitans (Ch'i-tan 契丹). The people of the Liao 遼 dynasty (907~1125), the masses and the elite alike, were devoutly Buddhist. Having acquired the religion not only from the T'ang Chinese but also from the Uighur Turks and the Tanguts, they quickly absorbed it, combined it with their native shamanism, and integrated it into all strata of their culture.[14] One of their capitals, Ta-t'ung 大同 ─ the site not only of the ancient Yün-kang 雲岡 caves but also of some of the most maginficent Liao temples (e.g., the great Upper （上） and Lower （下） Hua-yen ssu 華嚴寺 and the Shan-hua ssu 善化寺 that even today grace the city, albeit largely in the form of later reconstructions) ─ was located just across the border from the Five Terraces and often served as a staging ground for Wu-t'ai pilgrimages. In fact, during the last few years of the T'ang, and for short periods during the Five Dynasties period (907~960), the Wu-t'ai area even came under direct Liao control.

Wu-t'ai's associations with esoteric Buddhism are as well known as its Hua-yen connections. It is therefore significant that some of the leading Buddhist thinkers of the Liao were especially concerned with the amalgamation of Tantric (Mi-chiao 密教 )and Hua-yen Buddhsim, both of which traditions were very closely associated with Wu-t'ai.[15] In fact, one of the leading proponents of the　

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Mi-chiao/Hua-yen syncretism so characteristic of Liao Buddhism was the late eleventh-early twelfth century monk Tao-chen 道,[16] and he identified himself explicitly as a "monk of Wu-t'ai. "As it happens, the Wu-t'ai with which he was associated was a different mountain and monastery complex of the same name, later to be called "Little Wu-t'ai. "It was located some distance north of Wu-t'ai proper, in the mountains near Wei-chou 蔚州, well within the Liao territory. But from this we may deduce at least that Wu-t'ai and all that it represented were so important to the Liao that even during the long period of Chinese-Liao tension when Wu-t'ai was perhaps difficult for Liao Buddhists actually to visit, they created a surrogate for it within easier reach. Not for nothing, then, was one of the Liao emperors (Sheng-tsung 聖宗, r.983~1030) given the childhood name Wen-shu nu 文殊奴 (Servant of Mañjuśrī).[17]

From the late 960's until the late 970's the W'u-t'ai area was held by the short-lived Northern or Eastern Han 漢 Kingdom, the remnant of a client state known as the Latter Han, which was ruled by a family of Turkish origin named Liu 劉 but had actually been set up in the 950's with Liao suppport.[18] The forces of the newly established Sung did not succeed in overcoming this pocket of war-lord resistance until the late 970's.[19] But even for several decades thereafter large areas of northern China, including Wu-t'ai itself, were intermittently embroiled in the continuing military conflict between Sung and Liao forces. At times the sacred mountains appear to have been in Chinese hands ─ for example, in 984 when the Japanese monk Chōnen 然 (938 ~1016) spent three months there at the expense, and under the protection, of the Sung court.[20] At other times, however, the Wu- t'ai area was overrun by Liao armies. It was not really until the treaty of Shan-yüan 澶淵 in 1105 that hostilities largely ceased and Wu-t'ai was put formally under Chinese control, in which it would remain until the second decade of the twelfth century. Even so, this eventual Sung control was never fully secure. Wu-t'ai was quite close to the Liao border. Therefore, throughout the century and a quarter that followed the Shan-yuan treaty, it was deeply implicated in the structure of Sung frontier defense, an element, so to speak, of China's "front-line. "Indeed, the treaty seems to have fixed part of the Sung-Liao border just north and west of Wu-t'ai, at a distance varying from only about thirty to fifty miles.[21]

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Nevertheless, even under such tense conditions, the Northern Sung did witness a resurgence of Chinese pilgrimage to the Five Terraces, and a renewal of official support for their monasteries. We have record, for example, that Sung T'ai-tsung 太宗 (r.976~997), in his inaugural year ─ i.e., the same year in which he imposed the anti-Buddhist requirement that all would-be monks purchase ordination licenses ─ also decreed that the lands of Wu-t'ai should be exempt from taxation. It is perhaps not too much to say that he thereby revived the model of imperial support that had been established two centuries earlier by T'ang T'ai-tsung.[22] There are also frequent references in a variety of sources to a number of Wu-t'ai monasteries that underwent reconstruction or refurbishing during the early Sung. Such support, abetted no doubt by the presence of substantial Sung defense forces in and around Wu-t'ai, established conditions in which Wu-t'ai and Wu-t'ai pilgrimage could flourish. Thus could Yen-i complete his expanded compendium of Wu-t'ai lore in 1060.[23] Thus could the famous Japanese visitor Jōjin Ajari 成尋阿闍利 (1011~1081) visit Wu-t'ai under imperial sponsorship in 1073.[24] Thus too could Chang Shang- ying turn his assignment as governor of the Wu-t'ai area into the occasion for his famous visits during the years 1088 and 1090.

Indeed, the years of Chang's visits, and the several decades thereafter, appear to have been a lively time for the Five Terraces. We may glimpse some of that vitality in the several appendices to the Chang Shang-ying narrative and in the six short narratives that the Chin cleric Ming-ch'ung 明崇 appended to Yen-i's Exp anded Record of Ch'ing-liang sometime near the middle of the twelfth century.[25] Even Hua-yen Buddhism, which had long been associated with Wu-t'ai but which was not longer as vigorous a tradition as it had been during the T'ang, underwent a kind of modest revival at Wu-t'ai during the Northern Sung, evidence for which we see in the person of Cheng-ch'ien 承遷. During the reign of Chen-tsung 真宗 (997~1022) this monk lived at the Chen-jing yüan 真容院, at the very center of the Wu-t'ai complex. He was the teacher of Chin-shui Ching-yüan 晉水淨源 (1101~1188), one of the Sung's foremost Hua-yen masters. A 1096 edition of Cheng-ch'ien's short commentary on Fa-tsang' s 法藏 (640~712) Golden Lion Treatise ─ the Chu chin shih-tzu chang 《註金師子章》─ survives today in the Library of the Japanese Imperial Household and is the basis of the　

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edition of the text found in the Taisho Tripitaka (T1881:45. 667a~670c). Also, the last several decades of the Northern Sung are regarded by Tibetan Buddhists as the beginning of the long tradition of pilgrimage to Wu-t'ai from Tibet. It was in those years that Pha-dam-pa-sangs-rgyas (巴敦巴桑結, d.1117/1118), South Indian missionary to Tibet and founder of the Zhi-byed-pa (喜解派 or 希結派, i.e., the "Pacifiers" or "Alleviators of Suffering") school, is believed to have visited the Five Terraces.[26]

These, it must be noted, are only a few of the many references that could be cited to support the claim that Wu-t'ai was a flourishing religious center during the Northern Sung.

Preface to a New Printing of the Records of Ch'ing-liang

It was when the white horse came east[40] and the symbolic doctrine[41] flowed into China, that the wind of profundity first swelled. Some have held the quiescence of meditation to be its deep purport; others have singled out thaumaturgy as the essential Dharma.[42] But, like the waters that flow on the earth, though it divided into different branches, it has always had the same ultimate goal, the salvation of the world and the benefit of creatures. Liu Meng-te of the T'ang[43] observed that as Buddhism spread throughout the whole of China, working its transformations locally according to the particular genius of each region, it took China's famous mountains to be the splendid embellishments of the nation and, as everyone says, Ch'ing-liang is foremost among all sacred mountains for those who hold mystic manifestation to be the essence of Buddhism. There is a scripture which says the Mañjuśrī has made his home on the Ch'ing-liang mountains in the northeast. Here, together with his retinue, he maintains the ways of the ancient Buddhas and dispenses compassion for the edification of the all beings, sometimes attracting devotion by manifesting his true visage, at other times inciting reverence by displaying auspicious radiances. He performs miracles by the thousands and wonders by the tens of thousands, all condign and quite beyond description how wonderful！

Once there were two stalwarts of the Samgha, Sramanas Hui-hsiang and Yen-i, and two great ministers and protectors of the Dharma, Premier Chang T'ien-chueh [i.e., Chang Shang-ying] and the Imperial Ambassador Chu Kung-shao [i.e., Chu Pien]. Though separated by generations, they complemented each other in being of like mind. Concerned that the deeds of the sage might not be known in distant parts or that after a time they might be obliterated like so much scented powder,[44] they compiled books about Wu-t'ai, combining lore they had gathered far and wide with things they had experienced themselves. Hui-hsiang was first with his Records of Ching-liang in two fascicles; next was Yen-i with his Expanded Record s in three fascicles; then Premier Chang and Ambassador Chu compiled their Further Records as a sequel. From this came　

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a flow of other transcendental discourses as eminent and perspicacious men wrote poems, hymns, encomia, and psalms which were appended to the famous Records. As this splendid tapestry of words, arrayed like a constellation of stars or a string of jewels, circulated throughout the world persons all over China who could not themselves visit the mystic peaks and witness in person the traces of the sage could yet open these volumes, scan their words, and thus be naturally moved to self-reflection and conversion, their minds all the more firmly fixed on goodness. The resulting increase in lay piety[45] defied description！

However, a disastrous fire reduced these wondrous texts to ashes,[46] and were they not to be restored then the miraculous deeds of the sage (i.e., Mañjuśrī) would go untold for years. Commissioner Ch'ao of Tung-an, the Director of the Wine Bureau at Wu-t'ai,[47] was deeply moved by this and approached Abbot Po[48] with a pledge of personal funds to be used as a subvention. The Prefect of Clerics, Ming-ching,[49] spoke to his congregation, saying, "Long will we remember this deed. It is a great boon to our monasteries in their misfortune. I urge that we commit our full resources to the completion of this task."[50] Artisans were then hired to carve the printing blocks and on the day when the work was to be dedicated Mr.Ch'ao came to my gate soliciting a preface to be placed at the head of the text. Ming-ching and the Fromer Monk-Bursar,[51] Shan-i, also sent lettters of invitation. I have always said that although the Tao does not reside in the robe yet by the transmission of the robe one can pass on the Tao, and although the Dharma does not reside in words yet the perusal of the written word may be an occasion for insight into the Dharma."[52] Having great respect for Lord Ch'ao's probity and knowing that these two monks, both deeply attached to Wu-t'ai, are not intent on simony.[53] I have therefore inscribed this preface.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　The seventeenth day of the ninth month of the

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　fourth year of Ta-ting (October 5, 1164).

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　A Preface by Yao Hsiao-hsi of Ku-feng.

If in the mid-eleventh century a man like Yao Hsiao-hsi could have lived on　

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Wu-t'ai the sort of life he is said to have lived ─ a life of reverie, literary cultivation, spiritual reflection, and charitable service ─ and if he was able to place his literary talents at the service of Wu-t'ai in the way in which his preface shows he did, then we have good reason to conclude that the Wu- t'ai of the mid-twelfth century ─ even under the newly established rule of the Jurchen, and despite the general instability of the area in those years ─ was still a functioning religious center, even a focus of the kinds of official support that political authorities have often been prepared to extend to Buddhist institutions in return for Buddhism's spiritual protection. Indeed, the early Chin may have been an especially crucial period in Wu-t'ai's history. One wonders, for example, whether the three Records of Ch'ing-liang, on which later ages have been so dependent for knowledge of Wu-t'ai, would have survived without the reprinting in which Yao Hsiao-hsi, Commissioner Ch'ao, et al. assisted.[54]

The viability and accessibility of Wu-t'ai is further indicated by the presence of foreigners there during the early Chin. Of course, Chinese from the Southern Sung could not visit freely, but persons from other parts apparently could. Thus, a Yüan dynasty chronicle of Buddhism[55] records the following, under the year 1135:

法師蘇陀室利，西竺人也。特禮文殊于五臺。善閑咒術能通利。神異頗多，帝彌加重。時羽士蕭真人亦高士也，技術難問，皆為師伏，於是稽首後違世已。金國唐括相公讚其真曰︰似似是是〔或云奇哉師子〕蘇陀室利西竺來遊一百八歲。雪色連腮碧光溢臂，內蘊真慈外現可畏。在閔宗朝連陰不霽，特詔登壇咒龍落地，赭色伽黎后妃親製，施內藏財度僧起寺。人半信疑，佛陀波利，借路重來五峰遊，禮峨五佛冠曼殊何異。圓滿月面色非紅粹，真人蕭生遙瞻拜跪。

Dharma Master Su-t'o-shih-li (Sudhaśrī? ) was a man from western India who was especially devoted to Mañjuśrī at Wu-t'ai. He was well versed in the arts of incantation and accomplished in thaumaturgy. No matter how many wonders he worked, the emperor always demanded more. Once the eminent Taoist adept Hsiao Chen-jen[56] challenged him to a sorcery contest but was bested by the master and, acknowledging his defeat, retired into obscurity. This prompted T'ang-kua,[57] Prime Minister of the Chin court, to proclaim his authenticity, saying, "Bravo Master, how wonderful. "Su-t'o-shih-li had come from India at　

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the age of one-hundred and eight. With cheeks white as snow and gleaming blue eyes,[58] his awesome outward appearance belied his true inward compassion. Once, when the royal ancestral temple[59] was shrouded in mists that would not dissipate, he mounted the altar at the emperor's behest and recited a prayer that made a dragon (i.e., the cause of the mists) fall to earth. As a reward he was given saffron robes personally sewn by the empress and princesses, and palace funds were provided to purchase ordination licenses and build temples. People wondered if he might be none other than Buddhapāli,[60] feigning yet another journey to the five peaks to worship the Mañjuśrī of the lofty five-fold Buddha-crown. [61]Gazing reverently at his full-round face unblemished by any ruddy hue, the Taoist master Hsiao was moved to prostrate himself in awe.

Another record[62] gives us a fuller and less problematic account of this Indian cleric:

蘇陀室利傳

金蘇陀室利，西域中印度那蘭陀寺僧。內閑三藏，外徹五明，能誦《華嚴經》。久慕清涼文殊住處。年八十五，與弟子七人航海來此土。七人三還三殞，唯佛陀室利一人隨之。凡六載，始達清涼。每一臺頂，誦《華嚴》十部。禪寂七日，不息不食。每入定則見紫磨金城、玻璃紺殿、寶蓮香水、珠網交輝、功德莊嚴，不可稱述，諸天童子斿戲其中。後於靈鷲峰化去，弟子室利，收舍利八合，璀璨如珠，持歸西土焉。

Su-t'o-shih-li was a monk of India's Nālandā Monastery in the Western Regions. Learned in the T ripitaka and well versed also in the five secular sciences,[63] he could chant the whole Flower Garland Scripture hua-yen ching Having long yearned to visit Mañjuśrī's residence at Ch'ing-liang, he set sail for China at the age of eighty-five, together with seven disciples. Three of his followers returned to India and another three perisheden route leaving only one who remained with him, a monk by the name of Fo-t'o-shih-li (Buddhaśrī?). The journey took six years. When he reached Ch'ing-liang he visited all of its terraces. On each one he recited ten chapters of the Flower　

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Garland and sat in meditation for seven days without sleeping or eating. Every time he entered samādhi he had a vision of a city made of gold burnished to a lustrous purple and of palaces made of violet crystal wherein troops of divine youths disported themselves amidst jewel lotuses, perfumed waters, and scintillating pearl-spangled nets, all arrayed in ineffable splendor. When he passed away on Ling-chiu Peak[64] his disciple, Shih-li, collected from his ashes eight ounces of śarīra[65] all shimmering like pearls, which he then took back with him to India.

There is also the intriguing story of another monk from India whose Indian name I cannot confidently reconstruct but who was known to the Chinese as 吽哈羅悉利 ("Ou-ha [or'ka']-lo-hsi-li" or "Hung-ha ['ka']-lo-hsi-li").[66] He is said to have come from the northern Indian country of Mokuang-t'a 末光闥 (Magadha?) and to have lived for a time on Chicken-foot Mountain (Chi-tsu Shan 雞足山 ), in Yunnan 雲南, which was then within the borders of the devoutly Buddhist proto-Thai kingdom of Nan-chao南詔 or Tai-li大理 It is well known that the Tai-li kingdom enjoyed close and continuing relations with India (throught the regions now known as Burma and Assam) and that the Buddhism practiced there, even as late as the twelfth century, was a fascinating mixture of Chinese traditions with continuously imported forms of esoterism. [67] It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that this Indian monk spent his time at Chi-tsu Shan reciting mystic formulae, curing the sick, summoning rain, and taming tigers. Together with seven of his disciples, including one named Sam-mo-yeh-hsi-li (三磨耶悉利, Samayaśrī?), he is said to have managed, sometime in the 1140's and with royal support, to travel through or around southern Sung territory to Wu-t'ai Shan and other parts of the Jurchen controlled North. At Wu-t'ai he is said to have paid homage to Mañjuśrī and Avalokitesvara.[68] Specific mention is made of his visit to a place called "Ling-yen" 靈巖 (岩). This, it would seem, was the temple now known as Yen-shan ssu 岩山寺. It is located in northern Fan-chih hsien 繁峙縣, on the northernmost fringes of the Wu-t'ai area. Founded during the late Northern Sung, specifically in 1079, it apparently suffered considerable damage during the Chin conquest of the area but in the 1150's and 1160's ─ i.e., around the time of Ou-ha-lo-hsi-li's visit ─ it found favor with the Chin authorities who　

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supported its reconstruction.[69] The main buildings now comprising the Yen-shan ssu all date from Chin times and they have attracted considerable interest of late because one of them, the Mañjuśrī Hall, contains a magnificent set of murals completed in 1167 by the elderly count painter Wang K'uei 王逵, which art historians have only recently "rediscoved" and begun to study.[70] It was at Yen-shan ssu the Ou-ha-lo-hsi-li performed and arduous series of circumambulations and fasts in worship of Avalokitesvara. Thereafter he travelled on to Ch'i-nan 濟南 and Ti-chou 棣州, both of which are districts in Shantung. In Ch'i-nan he founded the Temple of Mañjuśrī's True Visage (Wen-shu chen- jung ssu 文殊真容寺) and in Ti-chou the Temple of the Three Instructions (San-hsüeh ssu 三學寺 ). He was still in Chin territory when he died in 1165, at the age of sixty-three sui.

To be sure, the tales of Su-t'o-shih-li and Ou- ha-lo-hsi-li, Yao Hsiao-hsi's preface read in the light of his life story, and Chia Yung's inscription at the An-sheng temple ─ to the extent that they comprise evidence of any sort ─ are merely anecdotal. Nevertheless, the impression they foster is that of a resilient Wu-t'ai Shan, a still vital religious center which survived the Chin conquest intact and which continued to attract consequential visitors and residents from near and far. Neither the havoc wrought by the Chin conquest and the Chen-pao incident nor the generally unsettled military situation that persisted in the region for some years thereafter did permanent damage to Wu-t'ai, and from such damage as it did suffer it seems to have recovered quickly.

It would appear also that official support, of some kind and in some appreciable measure, was helpful in effecting this recovery. However, there is not much indication that any of this support emanated directly from the Chin court, or that patronage of Wu-t'ai was an explicit policy of the central government, at least not during the very early period with which we are here most concerned (from the 1120's through the 1160's); patronage seems rather to have been mostly local in origin, even though some who practiced it may have had court connections. In fact, as several scholars have pointed out, the attitudes of the Chin rulers towards Buddhism are difficult to fathom, and one must take care always to distinguish between their "official" postures and their personal views. It is true that the Jurchen elite had acquired a serious interest in Buddhism even before they established their dynasty, having learned of it from　

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Koryō 高麗 Korea. After constituting themselves as the Chin, defeating the Khitans, and taking control of Northern China, they gradually absorbed the Buddhist culture of the Liao and the Northern Sung and their knowledge of, and respect for, Buddhism grew proportionally. However, official court decisions affecting Buddhism were relatively rare in these early decades, and those few of which we do have record may have pertained chiefly to the metropolitan Buddhist communities in the immediate vicinites of the two principal Chin capitals, Shang-ching 上京 and Yen-ching 燕京. From time to time individual Chin rulers may have decreed certain favors for Buddhism, as expressions of their personal esteem for the religion or in celebration of particular events, but the Chin court seems not to have begun to develop anything that might be called an official national policy toward Buddhism until the reign Emperor Shih-tsung 世宗 (r.1161~1189), and that policy, though nominally supportive of Buddhism, seems actually to have been contrived in the desire to enforce the Samgha's subordination to state authority and to appropriate some of its wealth.[71] In any case, the historical record seems not to support the likely hypothesis that the early Chin court might have designated Wu-t'ai as a special object of partonage. Nor do we find evidence that they followed the model of a T'ang T'ai-tsung in regarding the Five Terraces as a special source of spiritual power to be used in the defense or validation of their political authority. If the first Chin rulers ever did see Wu-t'ai in such light, they left no record of it that we have yet uncovered.

What we do find, instead of national or court support, is a pattern of local protection and patronage. Famous though Wu-t'ai still surely was throughout the Buddhist world, and magnet though it continued to be even to pilgrims from such distant places as India, it seems also to have remained a ditinctively regional treasure especially dependent for its survival in the early Chin on the loyalty and generosity of local devotees. As such it may serve as a reminder that despite its universalistic aspirations, often abetted in history by its incorporation into imperial ideologies, Chinese Buddhism has always had it deepest and most nourishing roots in the particular regions and locales in which it has flourished. Mañjuśrī was surely worshipped by Buddhists the world over, but the people of what is now the northernmost part of Shansi and the bordering region of Inner Mongolia were especially grateful to him for having chosen their five peaks as his earthly　

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residence. Eloquent confirmation of this is provided by yet another document of the early Chin which we have yet to consider, this one written by an eminent visitor from the Sung famous for a special affinity with all genii locorum.

Ⅳ. CHU PIEN AND WU-T'AI.

A. Ch'ao Yüeh-chih, T'ien-t'ai Buddhism, and Chu Pien.

From the Chin conquest of the North in the 1120's until the reunification of China effected by the Mongol conquests a little over a century and a half later, pilgrimage to Wu-t'ai Shan was virtually impossible for those Chinese, at the time the majority of the nation's population, who inhabited the regions south of the Huai river. However, in the years immediately following the conquest, the machinations of Sung-Chin relations did have the inadvertent effect of bringing to the vicinity of the Five Terraces at least one eminent Southern Sung statesman and literatus who has left us interesting literary memoranda of his visit.

As noted in the appended biography,[72] Chu Pien 朱弁 (d.1144) was a scholar-official from Anhwei whose skill as a young poet caught the favorable attention of Ch'ao Yüeh-chih 晁說之 (1059~1129), one of the leading intellectuals and men of letters of the day and a scion of one of the Northern Sung's most distinguished families. Sometime probably at the end of the second or the beginning of the third decade of the twelfth century Chu settled in Hsin-cheng 新鄭, an area located between Kaifeng 開封 and the ancient capital of Loyang 洛陽. This region was home not only to the Ch'ao clan but also to a number of other very prominent gentry families. There, as Ch'ao Yüeh-chih's protégé, Chu entered the cultivated society of poets, painters, calligraphers, philosophers ─ and Buddhist monks ─ that then flourished in Hsin-cheng and in the nearby capitals. This is the same circle that had been led, a few decades earlier, by such luminaries as Su Shih 蘇軾 (1037~1101), Huang T'ing-chien 黃庭堅 (1045~1105), Mi Fu 米芾 (1051~1107), Li Kung-lin 李公麟 (1049~1106), Ch'ao Pu-chih 晁補之 (1053~1110), and others. For some years Chu steeped himself in the culture and lore of this region, and in the writings of the great men associated with it ─ so much so that much later in his life he would be able to compose a collection of anecdotes, the Chü-wei chiu- wen《曲洧舊門》, [73] and a series of essays in literary criticism, the Feng-yüeh-tang shih- hua《風月堂詩話》, to which later ages would be　

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much indebted for their views of late Northern Sung literary and cultural history.[74] Indeed, the Feng-yüeh-t'ang shih-hu a proved to be one of the more authoritative assessments of the greatest poets of the Northern Sung, especially Su Shih, Huang T'ing-chien, Ch'en Shih-tao 陳師道 (1052~1102), and Mei Yao-ch'en 梅堯臣 (1002~1060).

For our purposes it is important to note that the circles within the Sung cultural renaissance to which Chu Pien belonged were those that accommodated Buddhism, not those that condemned and rejected it. Unlike most of the Tao-hsueh movement, which culminated in the thought of Chu Pien's younger kinsman Chu Hsi 朱熹 (1130~1200), the Sung literati whom Chu Pien most admired and with whom he identified were men who found the teachings, practices, and institutions of Buddhism entirely compatible with their visions of the Tao.[75] Some ─ like Chang Shang-ying 張商英 (1043~1122), Chu Pien's precursor among literati pilgrims to Wu-t'ai ─ went so far as to construct sophisticated syntheses of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism in which Buddhism clearly held pride of place.[76] Even among those who did not undertake to fashion their own systematic interpetations of the Dharma there were many who read widely in the Buddhist canon, conducted profound intellectual exchanges with learnèd and saintly Buddhist monks whom they treasured as friends, drew upon Buddhist imagery in their poetry and painting, and generally had recourse to Buddhism for consolation during the course of lives troubled by disappointment and strife.

Chu Pien's mentor, Ch'ao Yüeh-chih, was one such. [77] Like many of the thinkers who were later judged "unorthodox" by the narrow criteria of Chu Hsi's orthodoxy, he was an avid paricipant in the eleventh century's renewal of Confucianism. After earning his chin-shih degree in 1182, he enjoyed the favor, and the official sponsorship, of such eminent literati officials as Su Shih and Fan Tsu-yü 范祖禹 (1041~1098, tzu Ch'un-fu 淳夫).[78] It was his connection with Fan, in particular, that brought him into the circle of Ssu-ma Kuang 司馬光(1019~1086), whom he came quickly to regard as his chief mentor. He even went so far as to borrow Ssu-ma Kuang's sobriquet and to call himself "The Admirer of Yü" (Ching-yü sheng 景迂生). Ssu-ma Kuang, in his turn, treated Ch'ao as a favorite protégé. Alone among Ssu-ma Kuang's disciples, Ch'ao pursued cosmological　

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and metaphysical speculations of the sort that derive from the I-ching 《易經》 tradition, including Yang Hsiung's 楊雄 (53 BC~28 AD) T'ai-hsüan ching 《太玄經》, a text in which Ssu-ma Kung had a special interest. Thus did he come to study symbolic metaphysics (先天之學)[79] for a time with a certain Yang Hsien-pao 楊賢寶 (d.u.), one of Shao Yung's 邵雍 (1011~1077) disciples. He is said also to have studied the "Hung-fan" 洪範 chapter of the Shang-shu 《尚書》 (Book of Documents) under the tutelage of Chiang Ch'ien 姜潛 (d.u., tzu Chih-chih 至之), a disciple of Sun fu 孫甫 (992~1057).[80] As Sun Fu was known for his special interest in the I-ching, we can assume that Ch'ao's studies with one of Sun Fu's students, focused though they may have been on the Book of Documents, also encompassed his continuing cosmological and metaphysical research into the Bookof Cha nges and related texts. Likewise with the thought of Chang Tsai 張載 (1020~1077), another of Ch'ao's interests; this too, we must assume, was related to his persistent interest in topics of the I-ching sort. In fact, although he had written important commentaries on other Confucian classics, at the very end of his life Ch'ao confessed that it was only his work on the I-ching that he regarded as worth preserving; all the rest of his voluminous corpus, he said, should be burnt.[81] In politics, of course, Ch'ao was a conservative, and an outspoken critic of Wang An-shih 王安石 (1021~1086). He even went so far as to request that the Meng Tzu 孟子 be banned from the curriculum of the Imperial Academy because Mencius was so especially admired by Wang An-shih. It is said that when Emperor Ch'in-tsung 欽宗 (r.1126) approved this recommendation the Academy's scholars all rejoiced.[82]

For our immediate purposes, however, the most important point to be made about Ch'ao intellectual development is that at least by the end of his life, i.e., by the second and third decades of the twelfth century, he had conceived a serious interest in Buddhism.[83] For the majority of sympathetic Northern Sung literati Buddhism meant, especially though not exclusively, Ch'an Buddhism. Ch'ao, of course, knew Ch'an. Indeed, he commented on aspects of Ch'an in his writings. Also, for most of his life he lived not far from Sung Shan 嵩山, for which we must assume he had a special fondness since he took its name as one of his hao and the Sung Shan area, it must be recalled, is particularly well known as the location of the Shao-lin 少林 monastery, one of the great historical centers of Ch'an.[84]　

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However, as a Buddhist, Ch'ao's closest personal affiliations and strongest intellectual affinities were with the T'ien-t'ai 天台 tradition,[85] particulary with the so-called "orthodox" or "mountain school" (Shan-chia 山家) faction of T'ien-t'ai derived from the early Sung teacher Ssu-ming Chih-li 四明知禮 (960~1028).[86] Ch'ao was in fact a disciple of a third generation Dharma-descendant of Chih-li named Ming-chin Chun-li 明智中立 (1046~1114),[87] and he had close relations also with several other prominent T'ien-t'ai monks like Chih-li's fourth generation descendent, Chih-yung Liao-jan 志涌了然 (1076~1141) . Indeed, it is not enough to say merely that Ch'ao was interested in T'ien-t'ai; rather his Buddhist writings show him to have been its very enthusiastic proponent and defender. Not at all loath to join the continuing fray of dispute between T'ien-t'ai and Ch'an that had begun early in the Sung, he was quite forceful, occasionally even acerbic, in upholding the T'ien-t'ai point of view whenever the opportunity to do so presented itself.[88] We can be fairly certain, then, that Ch'ao' s decision to call himself "The Old Dharma-Blossom of the Hall of National Peace" (Kuo-an t'ang Lao Fa-hua 國安堂老法華) and "Scholar-Monk of T'ien-t'ai" (T'ien-t'ai chiao-seng 天台教僧)[89] was no mere whim or affectation. Rather it bespeaks the same sincere commitment that led him, as the biographical records also report, to daily recitation of the Lotus Sutra and to his choice of a Buddhist monastery as the place of his interment.

It is apparent, then, that Ch'ao Yüeh-chih was a man of broad and diverse intellectual formation. He was deeply learned in Confucianism and a significant contributor to its Sung revival, but he was also a pious Buddhist quite sophisticated in his knowledge of the Dharma. Any comments such a man may have made about the relations between Buddhism and Confucianism deserve careful attention. Let us note, then, the following observations with which he opened a short essay entitled "Remarks on Fear" that he once addressed to one of the aforementioned monks, viz., Chih-yung Liao-jan.[90]

懼說贈然公

子嘗怪，韓文公歐陽文忠公力排浮圖，而其門多。浮圖之雄，如澄觀契嵩輩，雖自能傳於後世，而士大夫今喜稱道之君，實二公之力為多也。夫毀其教而進其徒，豈非一反哉！

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往年孤山智圓凜然有名當世自成一家之學，而讀書甚博性曉文章經緯師法。韓文公常責其學者不如韓能有功於孔氏。近則嵩力辯毆陽之謗有古義士之風。是二人者，忘其讎而慕其善，又一反哉！

竊嘗思之是惟公乎好惡而務乎厚，不自窘束而壇宇廣大者 , 能為如此若其反乃其合也。

I have always found it strange that although Han Yü (768~824) and Ou-yang Hsiu (1007~1072) attacked Buddhism vehemently, and had many followers, yet Buddhist paragons like Ch'eng-kuan (738~839?) and Ch'i-sung (1007~1072) nevertheless managed to have their teaching transmitted to later generations, and so great has been their influence that nowadays gentleman-scholars are pleased to sing their praises. But to revile a teaching while promoting its adherents is surely a contradiction！

Some years ago Chih-yüan of Ku-shan (976~1022) [91] achieved an awesome reputation among his contemporaries as one who had mastered all the learning of his tradition and who taught the Dharma with broad erudition, natural genius, and a command of letters both sacred and secular. Han Yü regularly condemned such learning as quite inferior to his own exclusive concentration on Confucius, and recently Ch'i-sung has strongly criticized Ou-yang Hsiu's slanders upon the Dharma as reflecting that old pharisee's self-same spirit.[92] To allow admiration of the good qualities of these two men (Han Yü and Ou-yang Hsiu) to efface all memory of their bigotry ─ this too would be a contradiction.

I have always though that if only one were tolerant in his likes and dislikes and intent on liberality, free of hidebound bias and possessed of a commodious breadth of vision, one could thus resolve any contradiction that might arise.

Here we see Ch'ao following the model established by those many Chinese intellectuals of the day who saw Buddhism as quite compatible with the Chinese heritage. He clearly rejected what struck him as the unreasoned intolerance of a　

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Han Yü or an Ou-yang Hsiu, and urged instead a broad but not uncritical religious and intellectual pluralism. From this perspective, he suggested, it would be possible to acknowledge what was valuable in the work of those two scourges of Buddhism without forgetting or excusing their narrow-mindedness. In this way, he further implied, one could dispense with the hypocrisy of publicly condemning Buddhsim while covertly drawing upon individual Buddhist authors for inspiration. Thus, under the broader canopy that Ch'ao would erect, it would be possible to acknowledge the service rendered to the Tao even by such Buddhists as Ch'eng-kuan and Ch'i-sung.

In his advocacy of such ecumenism Ch'ao was prepared even to express his disapproval, albeit gentle and indirect, of the contempt for Buddhism that his own otherwise esteemed teacher, Ssu-ma Kuang, had so ofter voiced. An essay composed in 1124 to celebrate the reconstruction of a monastery in Ch'eng-chou 成州 named the Ta-fan ssu 大梵寺 (Great Brahmin Monastery)[93] opens with the following observation:

The ancient kings all acknowledged the Buddha to be the "Sage of the West" (西方聖人), but Ssu-ma Kuang was contemptuous of this and said, "There is no such thing as a regional sage (聖人豈有方所邪)！"Now, if what the great scholar said could be amended to mean that one may surely expect liberation to be universal in scope (必期放諸四海) rather than regional, then that would be quite true.

Of course, as Ch'ao Yüeh-chih well knew, Ssu-ma Kuang meant no such thing. His assertion that there could be no "Sage of the West" was not really the claim for sagehood' s universality that it might seem to be. Rather it was merely yet another rejection of Buddhism simply because it was foreign. What Ssu-ma Kuang really meant, in other words, was that the only true sagehood is Chinese sagehood. And yet, however much Ch'ao may have admired Ssu-ma Kuang, he was forced to disagree with him on this crucial matter. He thus goes on in the same essay to argue that, in a sense, Buddhism has always been present in China. He debunks, one after the other, all the legendary accounts of Buddhism's historical introduction into China, showing that each such tale presupposes an　

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unexplained prior knowledge of Buddhism. How, for example, could Fu I 傅毅 have interpreted Han Ming-ti's dream as an apparition of the Buddha if the Buddha had not previously been known to the Chinese? Moreover (and here he makes a point more directly related to the topic of this essay), surely one cannot date to the merely historical time of Han Ming-ti such transcendental and timeless realities as Mañjuśrī's presence at Wu-t'ai Shan, Samantabhadra's (P'u-hsien 普賢) Presence at O-mei Shan 峨眉山, or the presence of the Arhats on both Yen-tang shan 雁蕩山 and Ku Shan 鼓山！[94] These, after all, are "inconceivable phenomena, by which the inconceivable mind of the Buddha is limned" (以不思議境照不思議心). The presence of these deities at these sites cannot be explained historically but must be understood as primordial. This being so, there can be no legitimate rejection of Buddhism on the grounds that it is alien to China and associated only with some foreign place. In the borderless realm of ultimate truth, "there is neither Jew nor gentile," neither Chinese nor barbarian. In short, Ch'ao has quite deftly invoked certain of Buddhism's regional cults to demonstrate Buddhism's trans-regional universalism, and in the light of this he has demonstrated that hostility toward Buddhism of the sort we see in Ssu-ma Kuang is mere parochialism.

I have belabored the issue of Ch'ao Yueh-chih's Buddhism in the hope of establishing an adequate framework within which to interpret the attitudes of his protege, Chu Pien, toward things Buddhist. The conventional assumption would be that an enlightened and patriotic Chinese literatus like Chu Pien ─ heir through his teachers and their teachers to the rationalism of the Sung Confucian revival, and to its uneasiness about Buddhism ─ would have been at best skeptical about a place like Wu-t'ai and about reports of Mañjuśrī's apperance there. But consideration of Ch'ao's deep and well informed Buddhist piety, together with appreciation of his influence on Chu, calls such an assumption sharply into question. For these two men, and for many more of their contemporaries than has usually been acknowledged, Buddhism was still a very viable option for faith and knowledge, still a fundament of their intellectual world. Given the extent to which later Confucian and modern western prejudices have conspired to conceal the importance of Buddhism in Sung culture, this is a point difficult to overemphasize.

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B. Ambassador Chu, General Che, and the Miraculous Manifestations of Mañjuśrī.

Assuming that Chu Pien had come under Ch'ao Yüeh-chih's patronage sometime in the second decade of the twelfth century, we may further suppose that their close association lasted for at least a decade before the lives of both men, and of the Chinese people generally, were violently disrupted by the Chin conquest of the whole of China north of the Huai river. Jurchen pressure had been mounting for several years but the actual onslaught against the Chinese heartland began in late 1126 and Kaifeng finally fell on January 9 of 1127. It is easy for us now to forget the havoc that this geopolitical debacle wreaked in the lives of individuals. Of course, many of the Sung élite managed to escape to the south. Many others, however, did not. The current and former emperors were captured by the Chin forces and brought north as prisoners, along with many members of their households. Untold numbers of others died in the fierce fighting. How exactly Ch'ao Yüeh-chih and his family fared we do not know. He himself survived the event, but only for another couple of years; he died in 1129 at the age of sixty-nine or seventy. Chu Pien also survived, but we are told that most of his family were killed. It may have been the combination of this grievous personal loss with his patriotic outrage at the nation's defeat that led him to volunteer as a member of a legation sent north in 1127 or 1128 to negotiate with the Chin for the return of Hui-tsung 徽宗 and Ch'in-tsung 欽宗 and for an equitable peace. The embassy failed in its principal purpose and its members, including Chu Pien, were simply taken captive by the Chin, separated from each other, and held as hostages. Even in custody Chu relentlessly pursued the embassy's mission, repeating over and over again his arguments for peace and his entreaties on behalf of the captive Sung emperors. The Chin commander in whose charge Chu had been placed, Marshal Nien-han 粘罕 himself, simply ignored Chu's pleas. Later he sought actually to compel Chu's defection, pressuring him to serve in the court of the bogus monarch, Liu Yü 劉豫, whom the Chin had set up as ruler of the short-lived puppet and buffer state of Ta-ch'i 大齊. Chu adamantly refused, even at the risk of the death that threatened when his captors confined him to quarters and drastically reduced his provisions. He vowed to starve rather than turn traitor. His repeated and eloquent assertions of　

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unflinching loyalty to the Sung, and his strong defense of the rights of ambassadors, eventually won him the respect of his captors, not to mention an honored place in the Sung annals.[95] The Chin relented their efforts to have him defect and thereafter treated him with courtesy and respect. Although he never did accept official appointment from the Chin, he apparently was willing to serve in a private capacity as tutor to the sons of the Jurchen élite. These relatively honorable conditions apparently conferred upon him some considerable stature, and perhaps also allowed some small measure of free movement. For most of his captivity, it seems, he was restricted to the Western Capital of the Chin, i.e. , the city of Ta-t'ung 大同. However, it may be that he was permitted to travel about in the general vicinity of the capital, and as that general vicinity included Wu-t'ai Shan (and probably also Tai-chou 代州 the administrative center from which Wu-t'ai was governed), he may actually have had the chance to visit those places.

It was under these circumstances that Chu come to know a certain Che Yen-wen 折彥文, military governor of Yen-men 雁門. Yen-men was a frontier post located at a strategic mountain pass; it controlled most travel between the previously Liao city of Ta-t'ung and the previously Chinese territory of Tai-chou and it was situated only about thirty-five miles northwest of Wu-t'ai. In 1141, we are told,[96] Che Yen-wen had led a military expedition of some sort to suppress local rebels. The rebels were run to ground in the immediate vicinity of Wu-t'ai. To mark the success of his expedition, Che made a grand public offering of incense at one of Wu-t'ai's temples. We may presume that he was thereby professing thanks to Mañjuśrī for his victory. Apparently, this offering, which must have been a rather impressive public ritual, proved also to be the occasion for one of Mañjuśrī's characteristic Wu-t'ai miracles. Che reported that as he and the others in attendance gazed up at the clouds of incense billowing into the sky they all saw marvelous visions. Some saw strange clouds of unusual shape and color; others saw uncanny lights or radiances; others saw celestrial arches, ethereal diadems, golden nets, mythical beasts, profusions of heavenly flowers, and rainbows in the shape of crowns; still others were privileged with the paramount vision of Mañjuśrī himself.

Chu Pien tells us that Che Yen-wen had difficulty relating this event.[97] In fact, the General confessed that he was at a loss for words; after all, he was but a　

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war-lord, and he lacked the sorts of literary skill required to do justice to so wondrous and ineffable an occurrence. He therefore asked Chu Pien, the renowned literatus, to make a record of the event for him. Apparently, Chu knew that the clan to which Che Yen-wen belonged had long been the leading military family of the region. Based for generations in the city of Yü-chung 雲中 (i.e., Ta-t'ung), but controlling large parts of what would today be northern and northwestern Shansi, the Che's had come to power during the Five Dynasties period. With the founding of the Sung they had pledged their allegiance to that dynasty, and for a century and a half had effectively defended its borders against threats from the Khitan and Tangut peoples. After the Jurchen conquests, however, they apparently switched allegiance to the Chin.

Chu Pien also learned that for as long as the Che's had been the military authority in the region they had also been generous partons of Wu-t'ai, having funded and defended its many monasteries for four or five generations. As Chu Pien explains the matter, this latter fact ─ viz., the Che clan's long-standing patronage of Wu-t'ai ─ presented something of a puzzle. Visions at Wu-t'ai were commonly understood to be benefactions conferred by the Bodhisattva chiefly on the masses or on unbelievers, for the purpose of evoking or stimulating faith. However, this could not have been the reason for the visions that had been vouchsafed to Che Yen-wen, for the Che family was known to have long been eminent devotees of Wu-t'ai. Chu Pien therefore employs an apt and flattering analogy. He compares Che Yen-wen to Anāthapiṇḍada, the great patron of Śākyamuni himself. Anāthapiṇḍada too had been the object of a miraculous manifestation. Once, while dwelling the Jeta Grove, the park which Anāthapiṇḍata had donated to the Saṃgha, the Buddha projected from his body a marvelous radiance which, after circulating throughout the park in the sight of all present, then hovered above Anāthapiṇḍada's house. Clearly the Buddha had not performed this miracle in order to awaken the great donor's faith; Suhdatta, as he was also called, was already the most devout of believers. Rather, the purpose of the miracle was to proclaim Anāthapiṇḍada's great piety and thus reward his generosity. It was for the same reason, Chu suggests, that Mañjuśrī had effected Che's miracle.

Chu Pien then draws another flattering analogy, this one from more recent　

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history. He compares Che Yen-wen to Chang Shang- ying, the famous man of letters, statesman, and lay Buddhist of the preceding generation, the generation to which Chu's mentor, Ch'ao Yüeh-chih, had also belonged. Chang had died less than twenty years earlier, in 1122. It is not unlikely that Chu and his patron knew the man, or at least that they had met him, when they were all in court service at Kaifeng. This is all the more likely in view of the fact that Ch'ao and Chu belonged to the same conservative political faction Chang had joined late in his life. In any case, Chang's fame was surely still fresh in Chu's memory. Chu therefore probably knew that only about fifty years earlier, during the period from 1087 to 1090, Chang too had been at Wu-t'ai on official business, had taken the opportunity of that assignment to make several piligrimages to the major Wu-t'ai sites, and had been privileged to witness miraculous apparitions very much like those Lord Che described. Chu notes these facts, and notes too that Chang wrote an account of his experiences. Assuming that Chu had read Chang Shang-ying's miracle narrative, we may also assume that he took special note of the several points therein at which Chang expressed his doubts about the true nature of what he had seen. Chang had made it clear that finally he credited the visions he witnessed as genuine epiphanies, but he had also indicated that the impact those revelations had on him was all the greater for his having first doubted them. Chang' s doubts had not been simply those of the rationalist intellectual whose automatic response to all things uncanny is to doubt the representation of his senses or to search for naturalistic explanations. Rather Chang was predisposed to doubt the strange things he seemed to see in part because of his background in Ch'an Buddhism. Ch'an was congenitally and notoriously dubious about the religiosity of "miracles and wonders. "Ch'an teachers frequently warned against the seductive and delusory potential of the altered states of consciousness, the ecstasies and transports, the often befall practitioners of meditation. The Ch'an preference, in other words, is for "the spirituality of the ordinary" ( 平常心是道 ),[98] for the true "wonder and mystery" ( 神通并妙用 ) that resides not in the range of the paranormal but in mundane experiences and quotidian activities, like "carrying water and gathering kindling" (運水及撤柴).[99] At several junctures in his narrative Chang Shang-ying paused to reflect on the tension between such Ch'an attitudes and the vivid apparitions of Mañjuśrī which, in his pilgrim's experience,　

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he had found so compelling.

If we may assume that Chu Pien's own Buddhist predispositions were more like those of his teacher, Ch'ao Yüeh-chih, ie., more T'ien-t'ai than Ch'an, then it is possible that such tensions were not so great for him as they had been for Chang Shang-ying. T'ien-t'ai ─ with its more traditional curricula of asceticism and meditation, and especially with its characteristic emphasis on the transformative power of ritual ─ was not so leery of visionary experience as Ch'an was. Nevertheless, Chu Pien knew of the typical Ch'an attitudes toward such things, knew also how widespread and influential they were, and may even have felt some of their influence himself. Therefore, rather than simply ignore the likelihood that Chang Shang- ying's visions, and Che Yen-wen's, would be doubted as hallucinations, either for reasons of Ch'an or out of common skepticism, he addressed the matter head-on. He noted that "there are some who regard meditative or visionary euphorias 禪悅 of the sort Chang had experienced as symptoms of sickness 病. "Implicit in such an observation is a further suspicion, viz. , that perhaps Chang had had ulterior and worldly motives in writing his narrative. Indeed, this latter suspicion is hard to avoid because Chang himself wrote, in an appendix to his description of his visions, that he chose to write and circulate his account in the hope of securing governmental remedy for certain depredations that the Wu-t'ai monasteries were then suffering. Chu does not reject such doubts out of hand; he does not say straight out that Chang's visions were veridical and not illusory, or that there was not motive in the writing of them. Instead he takes the subtler route, long prescribed by Buddhism itself, of relating such visions, and the subsequent reporting of them, to the overarching Buddhist ideal of compassion. To paraphrase his argument: "Some may say that Chang was hallucinating, but I say that he was simply following the compassionate models of the Bodhisattvas and the Buddhas. Availing himself of his literary skill and his high reputation for probity among both laity and clergy, he reported his miracles in order to awaken, foster, or confirm faith. "He then goes on to congratulate Lord Che for having followed Chang's example, i.e., for having taken his worldly duties (the suppression of rebels) as an occasion for proclaiming the Dharma. For this reason Chu professes himself willing to accede to Che's request and to make a record of the visions. Even at this point,　

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however, the matter is still not quite finished. In the final lines of the essay Chu admits that, although he had agreed to Lord Che's request, he was still hesitant, still not quite ready to record Che's visions. It was only after the urging of other reputable witnesses to the event that he was finally moved to put pen to paper.

What can we make of Chu Pien's miracle tale? Can we assume that he found Lord Che's report credible, or was he simply responding, politely but also very artfully, to a request by an eminent personage, a request which it might have been difficult or boorish to refuse? Two scholars who have recently read the document have favored the latter interpretation.[100] Chen Yangjiong 陳揚炯 and Feng Qiaoying 馮巧英, editors of the recent critical edition of the Wu-t'ai trilogy, have suggested that Chu Pien's manner of speaking about Chang Shang-ying implied disparagment of him, and disdain for the whole enterprise of publishing miracle tales for the masses. The picture of Chu Pien they present ─ in which they quite erroneously identify him as a rationalist Neo-Confucian (li-hsüeh chia 理學家)！─ is that of a skeptic engaging in irony, and an irony, at that, which his original readers presumably could not detect. Moreover, they imply that he found Lord Che's talk about visions to be superstitious nonsense, and that he regarded Chang Shang-ying's earlier niracle marrative as an exploitation of the religious gullibility of common people. Moreover, as to Che Yen-wen's own miracle, is it not true that Chu took special pains to note that the reported visions were seen as their witnesses gazed into clouds of incense? And could they not therefore be taken as products of perfervid imaginations which, under the influence of ritual solemnity, might have forced smoke to assume particular, expected, and ardently desired shapes? Such a reading may seem plausible at first, but I would argue that in the end it is simply not persuasive. It both overlooks and demands too much. It ignores, for example, Chu Pien's amply attested respect for Buddhism; it fails to account for his obvious Buddhist erudition; and it requires that we subject the rest of his essay to the most procrustean, reductionistic, and crude kind of interpretation.

Literary critics have long recognized that an author's conclusions are often most definitively stated at the beginning, rather than at the end, of what he writes.[101] Introductions, after all, are usually written after the writing of the texts they purport to introduce, and it is commonly in the opening of a piece that　

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its author takes special care, after reviewing the finished body of his composition, to announce or intimate its regnant tone or intention. This seems as true of Chu Pien's brief essay as of anything. Accordingly, I would suggest that Chu set out the underlying assumptions of his record most deliberately in its first few sentences. These lines, I believe, merit our special attention and provide our best clue to rest of the text. let us note, then, that the very first theme announced in the very first sentence is that of compassion. There is some special association, Chu insists, between the compassionate intentions of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Arhats, on the one hand, and majestic mountain landscapes, on the other. But one cannot fail to note that Chu's usages here are subtly ambiguous. It is impossible to determine whether he is speaking of the mountains and landscapes themselves, or of the apparitions that are said often to manifest themselves in such awesome locations. And yet, mountains and landscapes, however beautiful or astonishing they may be, are natural phenomena. There is nothing necessarily supernatural about them. By contrast, colossal images of lion-mouted Mañjuśrī hovering above the peaks, set against glorious clouds of many colors, adorned with luminous jewels, arrayed amidst crystalline towers, surrounded by bevies of comely deities, radiating streams or halos of unearthly light ─ these are all quite unnatural, perhaps even supernatural. But which does Chu Pien have in mind? He says these places are visible to the human eye and that those with feet may actually visit them. They are, in other words, "of this world. "From this one might well assume that he is talking of scenery which, for all its sublimity, is nevertheless quite natural. One need not be a Buddhist or believe in Mañjuśrī to find such sights inspiring. On the other hand, these places are also said to be the instruments of divine compassion. Does this mean that the natural beauty of mountainous landscapes is itself an expression of the Buddhas' and the Bodhisattvas' love, or does it rather mean that only such scenes of natural grandeur are appropriate for the worldly manifestation of literally transcendental realities and persons, as though Mañjuśrī would deign to make himself visible only in properly magnificent settings? The Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Arhats are said regularly to produce "brilliant spectacles" (kuang-ching 光景) by which believers and unbelievers alike are inspired, but even the term "kuang-ching" is ambiguous since it may refer either to impressive scenery or to radiant　

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apparitions. Such consistent ambiguity, I would suggest, was intentional; Chu Pien was too deft a write for it to have been otherwise.

In this same connection, note also the way in which Chu's opening sentences link the grandeur of mountain scenery to the sorts of official charisma needed by those who preside over political and religious institutions. Emperors need mountains, or at least compelling images of mountains, to remind them of their awful and weighty responsibilities as regents of Heaven. Likewise, abbots and other ecclesiastical authorities require the inspiration of mountains like Wu-t'ai and T'ien-t'ai ─ i.e., the power of peaks made sacred by the presence on them of both "majestic spirits" and "splendid temples" ─ if they are to be mindful of their equally grave responsibilities to the Buddhist faithful. In this association too there is a kind of ambiguity or double meaning, for the mountains are hereby shown to have both religious and political significance. One is again reminded of the complex and venerable connections between Wu-t'ai, the Buddhist church, and the imperial institution. Modern habits of mind press us to pause at such conflations of politics and religion, to entertain suspicions that religion is being used in such cases as a pretext for politics, as a tool of power. But are we permitted to project our own anxieties about such matters back into the minds of twelfth century Chinese? Would we not do better to accept the likelihood that they saw political authority and institutional influence as natural resonances of the sacred?

Note finally Chu Pien's comments on the natural characteristics of mountains, both actual mountains and the representational mountains seen in paintings and drawings. As natural "weather-makers," mountains are often magnets for clouds and rain. When this is not the case, then they are illumined in special ways by the sun. But Chu states that the sunlight, clouds, and rain associated with mountains are not merely mute natural phenomena; they also have symbolic significance. Sunlight symbolizes wisdom or insight, he says; clouds are metaphors for compassion; and rain betokens the quickening force of the Dharma. This is language that in other traditions would be called theophanic. It intimates that nature is the visage of the divine, the raiment of transcendence. As such it may also provided some insight into the pregnant ambiguity that runs throughout the whole of Chu's essay. Mindful that the term is foreign to Buddhism and to　

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China, one is nevertheless moved to suggest that Chu Pien holds a kind of "sacramental" view of mountains and landscapes. Such special locations, as well as any miracles they may precipitate, are for him vehicles of "grace. "They are more than what they appear to be, and yet they do not cease being all that ordinary apprehension shows them to be. One might even risk stretching the sacramental analogy to say that Chu Pien ─ like others of his sort, e.g., other literati with Buddhist sympaties such as Chang Shang- ying- harbored something approaching belief in "real presence. "It may be recalled that the philosophies of Aristotle and Aquinas, sources of the doctrine of transubstantiation, were able to provide a conceptual framework wherein an otherwise opaque assertion ─ viz., the claim that the bread and wine are actually the body and blood of Christ ─ could be made intelligible. Similarly, Buddhist thought, for example the "three truths" (三諦) doctrine of T'ien-t'ai, was quite up to the task of explaining how a five-peaked mountain could also be the five-lobed crown of Mañjuśrī, how clouds of incense could also form the transfigured body of Mañjuśrī, how the glint of the setting sun on mountain slopes could be Mañjuśrī's aura, and how all these things could be true while mountains, clouds, and sunlight never cease to be mountains, clouds, and sunlight. It is hardly improbable that Chu Pien, the student of Ch'ao Yüeh-chih, could have seen Wu-t'ai Shan and its miraculous apparitions as "provisionally real" 假, i.e., as having ordinary transactional ontological status; that he could also have seen these same things as "empty" 空, i.e., as devoid of determinate ontological status; and that finally he could have understood their ultimate reality to consist in their being poised or exquisitely balanced in the "middle truth" (one might even say the "liminal condition") by which they both are and are not "real. "By such criteria, a manifestation of Mañjuśrī may be held to be "truly empty" (真空) , like a phantasm or a mirage or a trick of vision (but then Buddhism holds all things to be "like a mirage or a trick of vision"). [102] Yet, by the very same criteria, such a manifestation may be judged also to be "marvelously actual" (妙有), that is, genuinely occurring and efficacious. And, of course, in the final analysis it must be recognized as neither one nor the other, nor both, nor neither.

One may be disinclined to delve into such doctrinal depths; historians and other social scientists, not to mention "post-modern theorists," often are.　

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Nevertheless, it would be quite arbitrary simply to discount the basic categories of Buddhist thought with which Chu Pien was surely familiar and which we have every reason to believe he may even have accepted. But it is only by means of such arbitrariness, a pose all too often struck by contemporary scholars, that one could read his consistently and subtly ambiguous references to miraculous events on Wu-t'ai as mere irony, as only a skillful literary slight-of-hand intended thinly to mask condescension and incredulity.

These same attitudes, I would suggest, gently inform Chu Pien' s other written recollections of the Five Terraces, recorded either during his exile or shortly after his return, in his Ch’ü-wei chiu-wen In a cursory scan of that famous collection of anecdotes I have found four brief recollections of curious Wu-t'ai places and events. These sketches carry no burden of weighty significance; they are essentially light pieces, charming tales meant more to tweak the imagination than to stimulate the intellect. Nevertheless, as playful as they may be in tone, they are not entirely without serious intent. They are best read, I think, as expressions of mild amazement, or as reminders that the world is a more magical place than is ordinarily assumed.[103]

代州五臺山太平興國寺者，直金剛經窟之上，乃古白虎庵之遺址也。相傳云，昔有僧誦經庵中，患於乏水。適有虎跑，足湧泉鳥觱沸徐清、挹酌無竭，因號虎跑泉。而庵以此得名。

On Wu-t'ai Shan in Tai-chou, just above the Diam ond Sūtra Cave at the T'ai-p'ing Hsing-kuo temple, lie the ruins of the old White Tiger Hermitage. Legend has it that a monk who chanted sciptures there once fell prey to thirst. Just then a tiger bounded by, and where it stepped a spring bubbled up. Its waters gushed loudly from the ground and gradually formed a clear pool that could never be ladled dry. Thus did it come to be called "Tiger-run Spring," and this is how the hermitage came to be named.

代州清涼山清涼寺，始見於《華嚴經》蓋文殊之地也。去寺一里餘，有泉鶚一鉢泉一。一鉢許挹之不竭，或久之不挹，雖盈不溢。其理不可解，亦一異也。清涼山數出光景，不可勝紀。甲寅年臘月八日，夜現白圓光通夕不散。人往來觀瞻，

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如身在月中。比他日所見，尤為殊異。

The Ch'ing-liang temple, on Ch'ing-liang shan in Tai-chou, is the place where Mañjuśtrī manifests himself, as was first related in the Flower Garland Sūtra. Less than a mile away from the temple there is well called "One Bowl Spring. "It can't be ladled dry with a single bowl and yet, even when water isn't drawn from it for a while, though it stays full it never overflows. The principle of the thing is inexplicable and it is singularly strange. But then, Ch'ing-liang shan produces more marvels than can be reckoned. In the Chia-yen year (1134?), on the eighth day of the twelfth month, there appeared in the night sky an orb of white light, which lasted through the night without fading. People milled about looking at it, as though it were a man in the moon. On other days, however, nothing out of the ordinary was seen.

祕魔嚴靈跡甚多。嘗有飛石入廁，度其石之尺寸，則大於戶。不知從何而入也。僧有不被袈裟而登巖者，則必有石落中路，或飛石過耳如箭聲，人皆恐怖。

The Mi-mo escarpment[104] abounds in symptoms of holiness. Once a flying rock turned up inside a privy, but it was measurably larger than the privy's door and no one could figure out how it had gotten in. It always happens, whenever the monks shed their cassocks and climb the cliff, that rocks fall down into the road. Sometimes the rocks whistle by the ear like arrows, frightening everybody.

長松產五臺山治大風有殊效，世人所不知也。文殊指以示癩僧。僧如其所教，其患即愈。自此名著於清涼傳，而本草未之載也！

Nowadays people are unaware of the fact that the old pines that grow at Wu-t'ai Shan are very effective for curing serious illness. Mañjuśrī revealed this by means of a leprous monk who recovered from his illness after following Mañjuśrī's instructions. This incident is famous in the lore of Ch'ing-liang, yet it is unknown in pharmacology！

APPENDIX I：THE T'AI-SHAN JUI-YING CHI TEXT AND TRANSLATION.

This work is preserved as one of the appendices to the Hsu ch'ing-liang chuan 《續清涼傳》 (Further Record of the Pure and Cold Mountains [i.e., Wu-t'ai Shan]), the body of which is attributed to Chang Shang-ying 張商英 (1043~1122). Chang Shang-ying's work, in turn, is the third in what is usually regarded as a trilogy of Wu-t'ai lore. The other two works in the trilogy are the Ku ch'ing-liang chuan 《古清涼傳》 (Old Records of Ch'ing-liang,) compiled by the T'ang monk Hui-hsiang 慧祥 (d.u.) and the Kuang ch'ing-liang chuan 《廣清涼傳》 (Expanded Records of Ch'ing-liang), compiled by Sung the monk Yen-i 延一 (d.u.). Yen-i's work is safely datable to the year 1060, although (as noted above) some supplements to it were added in the mid-twelfth century by the monk Ming-ch'ung 明崇. However, the precise date of Hui-hsiang's work is unclear. It is often given in modern reference works as ca.660, yet the work as we have it now must have been written sometime after 679, for that date (the first year of the Tiao-lu 調路 era) is mentioned in the text itself (T2096: 51. 1100a8). Recently, Yoshizu Yoshihide 吉津宜英 has argued that the Ku ch'ing-liang chuan contains material taken from Fa-tsang's 法藏 (643~712) Hua-yen ching ch'uan-ch i 《華嚴經傳》 (T2073: 51. 153a~173a).[105] If Yoshizu is correct about this, and if he is also correct in dating the Fa-tsang work to sometime between 692 and 696, then we would be compelled to take those years as the terminus a quo of Hui-hsiang's work. However, although I find Yoshizu's dating of Fa-tsang's Hua-yen ching chuan-chi quite plausible, I do not believe he has demonstrated that Hui-hsiang drew on Fa-tsang's work. He has shown at most that there may have been a direct connection between the two works, not that there must have been a connection. And even if the two works were related to one another, as is likely, Yoshizu gives no convincing reason why their relation could not have been such that Fa-tsang drew on Hui-hsiang.

On the following page there is an edited version of the text based chiefly on its earliest surviving redaction, viz., that found in Juan Yüan's 阮元 (1764~1849) Wan-wei pieh-ts ang 《宛委別藏》, in the 1937 (Shanghai: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan 商務印書館) photo-reprint of Juan's collection, Chu Pien's essay appears in chüan 卷　

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2, pp.10b~12a, ts'e 冊 150, han 函 14. In the same publisher's 1981 Taiwan reprint of the 1937 edition ( an inferior photo-copy, often hard to read ), it appears in volume 90, pp.265~267. This Wan-wei pieh- tsang edition is a reprint of a Ming edition (dated 1462) that had found its way into Juan Yüan's possession.

I have also compared the Wan-wei pieh-tsang version of the T'ai-shan jui-ying chi, indeed its version of the whole Wu-t'ai trilogy, with those available in two of the modern editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon:

The Dainihon zokuzōkyō《大日本續藏經》[abbreviation: ZZ] :

a)	either the original edition printed in Kyoto beween 1905 and 1912 by Zokozōyō shoin 續藏經書院 , in traditional stitched and boxed format, wherein Chu Pien's piece appears in Part IIB (二乙), case 23, fascicle 2;
b)	or the Taipei reprint of the original, in 150 bound volumes─ entitled 《卍續藏經》 (Wan Hsü-tsang-ching abbreviation: HTC)─published first by中國佛教會影印卍續藏經會 and later by Hsin-wen-feng ch'u-pan-she 新文豐出版社 ─wherein Chu Pien's essay appears in Volume 150, pp.505a~506a;
c)	or the new "Shinsan zokuzōkyō" 《新纂續藏》, [abbreviation: SSZZ] published in Tokyo, between 1973 and 1989, by Kokusho kangyōkai 國書刊行會, in 90 bound volumes. Therein Chu Pien's essay appears as No.1664, in Volume 88 (and is thus to be cited as: SSZZ1664: 88.549a~c). This new edition has recently (1991~1993) been reprinted in Taipei, in the identical 90 volume format, by Pai-ma ching-she yin-ching-hui 白馬精舍印經會.

The Taishō shinshū daizōkyō《大正新修大藏經》[Abbreviation: T] (Tokyo: Daizō shuppansha大藏出版社, 1924~1932), which has also been reprinted twice in Taipei─once by Hsin-wen feng; more recently by Pai-ma ching-she. In the Taisho canon Chu Pien's text appears as no.2100 in Volume 51, p.1133a~b (and is thus cited as T2100: 51.1133a~b).

These two Tripitaka versions are identical, except in punctuation (which is in both cases unreliable), and both are based on a separately published Ch'ing　

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edition, dated 1884. The Ch'ing edition itself seems no longer to be available, at least not outside of mainland China, but it was apparently based on yet another Ming edition, which was dated 1396 and was thus earlier than the one Juan Yüan had acquired.

There is also a new critical edition of the entire Wu-t'ai trilogy─Chen Yangjiong 陳揚炯 and Feng Qiaoying 馮巧英, editors and annotators, Gu chingliang zhuan, Guang chingligliang zhuan, Xu chingliang zhuan (Taiyuan 太原: Shanxi renmin chubanshe 山西人民出版社, 1989), in which the Tai-shan jui-ying chi may be found on pp.130~131. This version is based on the 1884 Ch'ing edition, which the editors say they have compared with the Wan-wei pieh-tsang edition.

Still another version of the work exists, under the fuller title Wu-t'ai-shan jui-ying chi, in Chang Chin-wu 張金吾(1787~1829), Chin-wen-tsui 《金文最》, chuan 65 (ca.1822; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju中華書局, 1990), Vol, 1, pp.302~303. The text of this version is identical in every respect to that found in the Hsu ching-liang chua n (indeed, that is the very work that Chang Chin-wu cites as his source). However, in this version the work is attributed to someone named Wen-ch'ung文珫, also known as Sung-ch'i Lao-jen 松溪老人(The Old Man of Piney Creek). However, this attribution is simply a careless error on Chang Chin-wu's part. Sung-ch'i Lao-jen or Wen-ch'ung is the Ming dynasty author of a postface (後序) to the Wu-t'ai Trilogy. This postface immediately follows Chu Pien's essay in all editions of the Trilogy and Wen-ch'ung's name is at the head of it. Apparently, Chang misunderstood it as a name attached to the preceding work. Either that, or he simply could not bring himself to believe, or to admit, that a great uncle of Chu Hsi could have written such a piece.

[For a sketch of the textual history of the Hsü ch’ing-liang chuan, see Robert M.Gimello, "Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t'ai-shan," in Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü, eds., Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China, Studies on China 15 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp.126~127, note 16.]

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臺山瑞應記

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　江東朱弁撰

諸佛菩薩與大阿羅漢，悲憫一切有情，常出光景，以導迷起信，攝服同異。凡山地勝所，示現境界，有趾斯至，有目斯睹。以是因緣故，握符御極宅中圖本者，往往布慈雲以覆之，揭慧日以烜之，霈法雨以濡之，而不忘囑累之重。如天台五臺，比州郡別置僧官，使董正其徒。而莊嚴宮殿，蓋螺髻寶輪，威神所宅，不可不肅也。

雁門史君折侯彥文，下車未逾時，以赤子弄兵澗谷，衣繡持斧，跡捕至臺下。與邑之令佐，奉香火，作禮於狻猊座前。五香之煙，遍滿空際崒兮直上。倏然改容，引人四顧，目不得瞬。

無小無大，各有所見︰為五色雲者七，為白雲者六,為黑雲者一，為金橋者三，為圓光者五。五色雲︰有戴白雲為冠而其中有洞者，有如圓光者，有如日暈五色六七重者，有如孤石蒼黑圓而聳出者，有如仙花之敷紛者，有如仙花而現菩薩像於其上者。白雲中︰亦有菩薩端嚴相者，有奪迅如文殊所乘者，有天橋如龍之上飛者，有橫光青紅黃緣而相間者，有如玉石為佛冠者。黑雲中︰有獨現獅子者。金橋︰有如鯨觬負天者，有如螮蝀而中斷者，有重疊如魚鱗相次者。圓光︰有玉連環者，有現金綱而光耀奪人目者。

史君圖其事而謂予曰︰『此吾與眾人所可見者也。若其他變態，百工所不能伏者，吾亦不能言也。子其為我記之。』

予曰︰『曼殊室利住此山中，誘接群迷，示此方便。史君得其開示，豈無所因哉！昔世尊在舍衛國舉身放光，其光金色，繞祇陀園周遍七匝，照須達舍,猶如段雲亦作金色。須達者佛之大檀越也。光明所燭先至其舍，蓋以導迷起信，攝服同異也。山之上首僧明崇嘗謂︰「我侯家世奉佛自高曾來，尤於茲山開大施門。則曼殊室利今所示現，亦猶世尊之於須達也，可不記乎。」

予聞無盡居士在元祐中嘗遊此山矣。作《清涼傳》，神化變異與身所親睹者，靡不具載。而味禪悅者，或有為病。予謂無盡平生運佛菩薩慈以濟世拯物。清涼之述，所以化導未悟亦為眾人設耳。以是身心無適不可。故於時為元首，則黎民所宗仰，於法為外護，則釋子所依賴。史君能不墜世芬以，無盡之心為心，用報曼殊室利所以開示之意，乃予素所斯也，亦予之樂書也。

始予為史君記其事，而未果也，而油幕諸公宛轉道史君之懇，既不可辭。又嘗見其上首曰明崇者言︰『當是時，我與僧正精惠大德，麟府總制折可直，暨寺眾實從，史君所共睹也。茲事不誣。』於是乎書。

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　皇統辛酉六月辛巳日

APPENDIX II： THE TEXT AND A TRANSLATION OF CHU PIEN'S BIOGRAPHY, FROM THE SUNG-SHIH[143]

《宋史︰朱弁傳》

朱弁，字少章，徽州婺源人。少穎悟、讀書日數千言。既冠，入太學，晁說之見其詩，奇之，與歸新鄭，妻以兄女。新鄭介汴、洛間，多故家遺俗，弁遊其中，聞見日廣。靖康之亂，家碎于賊，弁南歸。

建炎初，議遺使問安兩宮，弁奮身自獻,詔補修武郎，借吉州團練使，為通問副使。至雲中，見粘罕，邀說甚切。粘罕不聽，使就館，守之以兵。弁復與書，言用兵講和利害甚悉。

紹興二年，金人忽遣宇文虛中來，言和議可成,當遣一人詣元帥府受書還。虛中欲弁與正使王倫探策決去留，弁曰︰「吾來，固自分必死，豈應今日覬倖先歸。願正使受書歸報天子，成兩國之好，蚤申四海之養於兩宮，則吾雖暴骨外國，猶生之年也。」倫將歸，弁請曰︰「古之使者有節以為信，今無節有印，印亦信也。願留印，使弁得抱以死，死不腐矣。」倫解以授弁，弁受而懷之，臥起興俱。

金人迫弁仕劉豫，且訹之曰︰「此南歸之漸。」弁曰︰「豫乃國賊，吾嘗恨不食其肉，又忍北面臣之，吾有死耳。」金人怒，絕其餼遺以困之。弁固拒驛門，忍饑待盡，誓不為屈。金人亦感動，致禮如初。久之，復欲易其官，弁曰︰「自古兵交，使在其間，言可從從之，不可從則囚之，殺之，何必易其官？吾官受之本朝，有死而已，誓不易以辱吾君也。」且移書耶律紹文等曰︰「上國之威命朝以至，則使人夕以死，夕以至則朝以死。」又以書訣後使洪皓曰︰「殺行人非細事，吾曹遭之，命也，要當舍生以全義爾。」乃具酒食，召被掠士夫飲，半酣，語之曰︰「吾已得近郊某寺地，一旦畢命報國，諸公幸瘞我其處，題其上曰有宋通問副使朱公之墓，於我幸矣。」眾皆泣下，莫能仰視。弁談笑自若，曰︰「此臣子之常，諸君何悲也？」金人知其終不可屈，遂不復強。

王倫還朝，言弁守節不屈，帝為官其子林，賜其家銀帛。

會粘罕等相繼死滅，弁密疏其事及金國虛實，曰︰「此不可失之時也。」遣李發等間行歸報。其後，倫復歸，又以弁奉送徽宗大行之文為獻，其辭有曰︰「歎馬角之未生，魂悄雪窖；攀龍髯而莫逮，淚洒冰天。」帝讀之感泣,官其親屬五人，賜吳興田五頃。帝謂丞相張浚曰︰「歸日，當以禁林處之。」八年，金使烏陵思謀，石慶充至，稱弁忠節詔附黃金三十兩以賜。

十三年，和議成，弁得歸。入見便殿，弁謝且曰︰「人之所難得者時，而時之運無已；事之不可失者幾，

p. 548

而幾之藏無形。惟無已也，故來遲而難遇；惟無形也，故動微而難見。陛下與金人講和，上返梓官,次迎太母，又其次則憐赤子之無辜，此皆知時知幾之明驗。然時運而往，或難固執；幾動有變，宜鑑未兆。盟可守，而詭詐之心宜嘿以待之；兵可息，而銷弭之術宜詳以講之。金人以黷武為至德，以苟安為太平，虐民而不恤民，廣地而不廣德，此皆天助中興之勢。若時與幾，陛下既知於始，願圖厥終。』帝納其言，賜金帛甚厚。弁又以金國所得六朝御容及宣和御書畫為獻。秦檜惡其言敵情奏，以初補官易宣教郎，直祕閣。有司校其考十七年，應遷數官，檜沮之，僅轉奉議郎。十四年，卒。

弁為文慕陸宣公，援據精博，曲盡事理。詩學李義山，詞氣雍容，不蹈其險怪奇澀之弊。金國名王貴人多遣子弟就學，弁因文字往來說以和好之利。及歸，述北方所見聞忠臣義士朱昭，史抗，張忠輔，高景平，孫益，孫谷，傅偉文李，舟，五台僧寶真。婦人丁氏，晏氏，小校閻進，朱勣等死節事狀，請加褒錄以勸來者。有《聘遊集》四十二卷，《書解》十卷,《曲洧舊聞》三卷，《續骫骳說》一卷，《雜書》一卷，《風月堂詩話》三卷，《新鄭舊詩》一卷，《南歸詩文》一卷。

【Translation】

Chu Pien's Biography, From the Sung-shih

Chu Pien, whose cognomen was Shao-chang, was a man of Wu-yüan in Hui-chou.[144] A child prodigy, he read books at the rate of several thousands of words a day. As soon as he was capped he entered the Imperial Academy. There Ch'ao Yüeh-chih[145] took note of his poetry and, finding it extraordinary, brought him back to his home in Hsin-cheng[146] where he gave him his niece in marriage. Hsin-cheng lies between Pien and Lo and is an area where the customs of many old families have been preserved. As Pien wandered thereabouts, his first-hand knowledge of those traditions increased daily.[147] In the troubles of Ching-k'ang[148] family was wiped out[149] by the Chin brigands and Pien took refuge in the South.

At the outset of the Chien-yen era,[150] when a legation was appointed to sue for the safety of the two royal personages,[151] Pien was keen to volunteer. Commissioned with the rank of Officer of the Ministry of Defense, [152] he was seconded to the Chi-chou[153] Militia Command as an Assistant Envoy. [154] When he reached Yün-chung[155] he presented himself to Nien-han[156] and made very earnest entreaties, but Nien-han would not listen and had him confined to quarters　

p. 549

under military guard. Pien then sent letters in which he thoroughtly explained the harm of war and the benefits of peace negotiations.

In the second year of Shao-hsing (1132), Yü-wen Hsü-chung[157] arrived, having been perempotorily sent by the Chin.[158] He said that peace negotations might be concluded and that one man should be sent to the Sung Military Headquarters to bring back a letter of reply. Hsu-chung wanted Pien and Chief Ambassador Wang Lun to draw straws to decide which of them was to go and which to stay. Pien said,

When I came I was sure that it was my lot to die here. How could I now covet the good fortune of being the first to return!Let the Chief Ambassador take the letter and report back to the Son of Heaven. If the welfare of both nations were to be achieved and if it should soon be reported that the whole world was restored to the care of my two sovereigns,[159] then though my bones should bleach in this foreign country yet it would be as though I had been newly reborn.

When Lun was about to depart for home Pien made a request of him, saying,

Emissaries of old had tallies as their bona fides. Now we have seals rather than tallies, and our seals are our tokens of good faith. Please leave your seal with me. I shall guard it to the grave and beyond,[160]

Lun turned the seal over to Pien and Pien cherished it, keeping it with him at all times.

When the Chin pressed Pien to serve Liu Yü,[161] inveigling him by saying that "this would be a step toward your return home," he said,

Yü is a usurper. I would never so much as eat his meat; as for playing 'minister' to his 'emperor,' I would rather die [162]

This angered the Chin and they cut off his provisions in order to pressure him, but Pien firmly rejected their importunities and, prepared to starve to death,　

p. 550

vowed never to submit. In the end the Chin were moved to relent and to extend again the courtesy they had previously shown him.[163]

After a time they tried once more to get him to defect, but Pien said,

For ages it has been recognized that 'in the midst of hostilities an emissary has free passage,'[164] If you admit that this is a principle you can follow, then follow it; if you cannot follow it, then imprison the emissary or kill him. What need is there for defection?I received my office from my own ruling house, and there is no alternative to it but death.[165] I swear I will 'not disgrace my sovereign'[166] by defecting.

He then wrote to Yeh-lü Shao-wen[167] and his associates saying,

If a sovereign were to receive the august mandate in the morning, then that evening his minister could die content; if he were to receive it at night then the minister could die content the next morning.[168]

He also wrote a testament[169] to the Sequent Ambassador Hung Hao,[170] in which he said,

The murder of an envoy is no trifling matter, but if this is what is destined for me then I would give my life to preserve my righteousness intact. "

Then, as he prepared to dine, he invited his captors to drink with him. When he was half drunk he said to them,

I have already obtained a plot of ground at a nearby temple. If I should happen to die in the service of my country, would you gentlemen kindly bury me there. And for an epitaph write, 'Here lies Mr.Chu, Assistant Ambassador of the Sung'.

They all cried and averted their gaze. But Pien' s conversation then turned　

p. 551

jovial, as before, and he said,

This is just standard behavior for a minister; why are you gentlemen so sad?

At that, the Chin realized that he would never submit, and they did not press him again.

When Wang Lun returned to the Sung court he told of Pien's staunch loyalty. The emperor gave Pien's son, Lin, an official appointment and endowed the family with silver and silk.[171]

Witnessing the deaths, one after the other, of Nien-han and other Chin leaders,[172] Pien secretly recorded these and other matters pertaining to the strengths and weaknesses of the Chin, saying "These are opportunities not to be lost. "On several occasions he sent Li Fa[173] or others back to the Sung court with his reports.

Later, when Wang Lun again returned to the Sung, he presented the Emperor with Chu Pien's account of Hui-tsung's death, along with a valediction[174] in which he said,

Alas, the horses have not grown horns;[175] my soul will dissipate in a snowy crypt. I seized the dragon's beard but could not hold on;[176] my tears were strewn across the frozen sky.

When Emperor Kao-tsung read this he was moved to weep, gave official appointments to five members of Chu Pien's family, and bestowed on him five ching[177] of land in Wu-hsing.[178] The Emperor also told the Prime Minister, Chang Chün,[179] that "the very day Chu Pien returns he is to be brought to the imperial compound. "In the eighth year of Shao-hsing (1138), when the Chin envoys Wu-ling Ssu-mou[180] and Shih Ch'ing-ch'ung[181] arrived at the Sung court, they praised Pien's loyalty and the Emperor decreed that he should receive a supplementary stipend of thirty taels of gold.

In the thirteenth year of Shao-hsing (1143), when peace was concluded between the Sung and the Chin, Pien returned home. He presented himself at the　

p. 552

temporary palace, professed his gratitude, and said,

What is difficult for men to obtain is 'timeliness, 'and the rounds of time are beyond one's own control. Matters not to be lost are 'opportunities,' and the store of opportunities is indeterminate. As timeliness is beyond one's own control, it is slow to come and difficult to meet. As the store of opportunities is indeterminate, its movement is subtle and hard to discern. Your Majesty and the Chin have negotiated a peace. That you have thus brought back the body of the previous emperor,[182] welcomed home your royal mother, [183] and shown pity for your innocent subjects ─ all this is clear proof that you understand the principles of 'timeliness' and 'opportunity. 'However, time flows on, and sometimes the moment is difficult to hold. Opportunities shift and change, and it behooves you to anticipate possible disaster.[184] A treaty is acceptable, and yet one should be wary of treacherous intention; hostilities may cease, but one should vigilant against complacency.[185] The men of Chin regard incessant war as the highest of virtues and for them peace is but a deceptive lull in hostilities. To abuse the people rather than pity them and to expand their territory rather than enlarge their virtue ─ these they take to be their divinely ordained prerogatives.[186] As to 'timeliness' and 'opportunity, 'Your Majesty already understands their beginnings; I only ask that you plan for their consequences.

Accepting his remarks, the Emperor endowed him amply with gold and silk. In return Pien presented to the emperor six royal portraits and a painting done by Hui-tsung toward the end of his reign,[187] all of which he had obtained in Chin.[188] Ch'in Kuei[189] disapproved of Pien's assessment of the enemy and petitioned to have his prior appointment changed to that of Court Gentleman for Instruction and Auxiliary in the Imperial Archives.[190] Although he had seventeen years of official service and deserved promotion through several ranks, yet Ch'in Kuei blocked his career and allowed him to advance no further than the rank of Court Gentleman Consultant. [191] He died in the fourteenth year of Shao-hsing (1144).[192]

p. 553

As he was an admirer of the prose of Lu Hsüan-kung,[193] Pien's compositions were broad and astute in their erudition, factually meticulous and precise in argument. Althought he studied the poetry of Li I-shan,[194] his own verse was unaffected in diction and free of Li's bizarre or forced usages. [195] Many of the famous princes and nobles of the Chin sent their youngsters to study with him, and Pien always took such literary exchanges as opportunities to discuss the advantages of peace. When he returned to the Sung he related the martyrdoms of loyal ministers and upright officials of whom he had learned while he was in the North ─ Chu Chao,[196] Shih K'ang,[197] Chang Chung-fu,[198] Kao Ching-p'ing,[199] Sun I and Sun Ku, [200] Fu Wei-wen,[201] Li Chou, [202] the monk Pao-chen of Wu-t'ai,[203] Madam Ting,[204] Madam Yen,[205] Lieutenants Yen Chin and Chu Chi,[206] and others ─ and he pleaded the case that pensions should be awarded to their descendants. Among his writings [207] are: the P'ing-yu chi (Diplomatic Journeys) in forty-two fascicles,[208] the Shu-chieh (Explanations of the Book of Documents?) in ten fascicles, [209] the Chü-wei chiu-wen chi (Lore of Ch'ü-wei) in three fascicles, [210] the Hsü wei-pi-shuo (Continued 'Stray Conversations') in one fascicle,[211] a Tsa-shu (Miscellaneous Writings) in one fascicle,[212] the Feng-yüeh-t’ang shih-hua (Discussions of Poetry in the 'Hall of the Zephyr Moon') in three fascicles,[213] the Hsin-cheng chiu-shih (Old Style Poems From Hsin-cheng) in one fascicle,[214] and the Nan-kuei shih-wen (Poems and Prose Written While Returning to the South) in one fascicle. [215]

關鍵詞：1.Wu-t'ai Shan　2.Chu Pien　3.Ch'ao Yüeh-chih　4.Chin (Dynasty)　5.Mañjuśrī

[1] These lines are taken from a memorial stele inscription which Liu Yü-hsi 劉禹錫 (772~842; tzu 字: Meng-te 夢得 ) composed for an otherwise unknown T'ang monk named Hsiang-t'an Yen 湘潭儼, a Vinaya Master ( 律大師 Lu Ta-shih) of the T'ang- hsing ssu 唐興寺 on Mt. Heng 衡嶽 in Hunan. The inscription may be found in Liu's collected writings, the Liu Meng-te wen-chi 《劉夢得文集》, chüan 30 (Ssu-pu ts'ung-kan 《四部叢刊》, chu-pien 〈初編〉 chi-pu〈集部〉, 1936 small-print edition, pp.182~183). It was cited in a twelfth century preface to the Records of Ch'ing-liang (see note no. 36, below). Liu's delightful conceit is developed in such a way as to contrast Wu-t'ai with two other famous Buddhist mountains. The Five Terraces, with their supernatural apparitions and strong Tantric associations (echoing in the terms 示現 and 神道 ), are needed by the martially inclined people of the North to quell their warlike natures. By contrast, Sung Shan 嵩山 , a famous Ch'an 禪 center in Honan, is particularly revered by people of the Central Plains because, Liu says, as people who are by temperament especially vulnerable to the seductions of fame and wealth, they are drawn to Ch'an because the illuminations which Ch'an quietism produces are the best antidote to such worldliness. The third mountain is Hsiang-t'an Yen's Heng Shan. In Liu's time it was apparently a center of Vinaya study, and Vinaya is especially important to people of the South, Liu says, because southerners are by nature a volatile or flighty folk who therefore require the sort of discipline and gravity that the Vinaya tradition enforces. This inscription, by a major poet well known for his Buddhist piety, enjoyed hight esteem in the later Buddhist tradition. It is often quoted in anthologies designed to demonstrate the influence of Buddhism on Chinese belles lettres in the T'ang. Recently, for example, it has appeared in volume two, book four of the popular series, Zhongguo fojiao sixiang ziliao xuanbian 《中國佛教思想資料選編》 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1983), Volume 2 ( 第一卷 ), Book 4 (第四冊), pp.374~375.

[2] I am, of course, drawing here on the notion of liminality conceived by the Belgian anthropologist, Arnold Van Gennep, and further developed by the American anthropologist, Victor Turner, who found the concept especially illuminating in the study of pilgrimage. However, I have also in mind the associated concepts of order and disorder, danger and empowerment, proposed by yet another anthropologist, the English scholar Mary Douglas.

[3] The latter pair of terms is used by the editor of the Ming gazetteer of Wu-t'ai, who also noted that the mountains' sacred dimensions can be discerned only by those of pure mind and fervent resolve. See the Ching-liang-shan chih《清涼山志》, chüan 1. This treasure-trove of knowledge and lore about Wu-t'ai was published in 1596 by the eminent Wu' t'ai monk Chen-cheng 鎮澄 (1546~1617), who made use of the draft of an earlier, but no longer extant, gazetteer by another monk named Ch'iu-ai 秋崖 (d.u.) What amounts to little more than an expanded version of it ─ the Ch'ing-liang-shan hsin-ch'ih 《清涼山新志》─ was compiled in 1694 by Ta-la-ma Lao-tsang Tan-pa 大喇嘛老藏丹巴 and was first published sometime in the first decade of the eighteenth century at the command of the K'ang-hsi Emperor, whose preface is dated 1701. Chen-cheng's and Tan-pa's works have been frequently reprinted, each time with new material added, and the former in particular is now widely available in a number of editions. A photocopy of a 1933 reprint of a 1755 edition of Chen-cheng's work was pubished by Tu Chieh-hsiang 杜潔祥 in his chung-kuo fo-ssu shih-chih hui-k'an 《中國佛寺史志彙刊》 (Taipei: Tan-ch'ing t'u-shu kung-ssu 丹青圖書公司, 1980~85), where it comprises vol. 29 of the second series. A photo-reprint of Tan-pa's expanded gazetteer is also to be found in Tu's collection ─ series three, volume 30. See also Li Yumin's 李裕民 new edition of the Chen-cheng work, based on an 1887 edition; it was published in 1989, in Taiyuan 太原 by the Shanxi renmin chubanshe 山西人民出版社. The passage here cited is on p.16 of the first-mentioned Taipei edition, p.20 of the Taiyuan edition. There are, of course, also several popular reprints of the gazetteer available from various monasteries and institutions at Wu-t'ai. For a discussion of Chen-cheng and his philosophical disputes with his more famous fellow Wu-t'ai luminary, Han-shan Te-ch'ing ( 憨山德清, 1546~1623), see Chiang Ts'an-t'eng 江燦騰, Wan-ming fo-chiao ts'ung-lin kai-ke yu fo-hsüeh cheng-pien chih yen-chiu 《晚明佛教叢林改革與佛學諍辯之研究》 (Taipei: Hsin-wen-feng ch'u-pan kung-ssu 新文豐出版公司, 1990), especially pp.203-300.

[4] Chen-cheng notes in the opening section of his gazetteer that in one sense (presumably the ultimate sense) Wu-t'ai is a kind of visionary phantasm of the sort experienced in meditative trance ( 如幻三昧所現 ); as such it is ultimately without location and incorporeal ( 無方無體 ), neither material nor void ( 非色非空 ). And yet, he says, it is reflected within the category of the tactile ( 觸類而彰 ) and manifest according to the conditions of mundane reality ( 隨緣而顯 ). In this way, he continues, "its mists and vapors fuel the flame of wisdom, while the clouds that condense on its rocks plant seeds of enlightenment. "See Ch'ing-liang-shan chih chüan 1 (Taipei ed., p.16; Taiyuan ed., p.19).

[5] Concerning these sources, see the introductory remarks to Appendix I. "Ch'ing-liang"─ i.e., "Clear and Chill" ─ was, of course, the common alternative name for Wu-t'ai.

[6] As Chen-Cheng noted in the introduction to his gazetteer, as he commented on the general geographical setting of the place, it is like a "shield or screen for the whole country" ( 大國之屏蔽 ). See the Ch'ing-liang-shan chih, chüan 1 (Taipei ed., p. 15; Taiyuan ed., p. 19). Again note the inscription by Liu Yü-hsi used as the epigraph to this article (q.v.), which posits a special connection betwen Wu-t'ai and things martial.

[7] See Chou Yi-liang 周一良, "Tantrism in China," Har vard Journal of Asiatic Studies 8. 3~4 (March, 1945): 241~331; Stanley Weinstein, Buddhism Under the T'ang (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp.79-83; Raoul Birnbaum, Studies on the Mysteries of Mañjuśrī. A Group of East Asian Maṇḍalas and Their Traditional Symbolism, Society for the Study of Chinese Religions Monograph No.2 (Boulder, Colorado: Society for the Study of Chinese Religions, 1983), pp. 25~38; also Charles Daniel Orzech, Cosmology in Action: Recursive Cosmology, Soteriology, and Authority in Chen-yen Buddhism with Special References to the Monk Pu-k'ung, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1986.

[8] On this mural, see Hibino Takeo 日比野丈夫, "Tonkō no Godaizan-zu ni tsuite〈敦煌の五台山圖について〉, Bukkyō geij utsu 《佛教藝術》 (Ars Buddhica) 34 (1958): 75~86; and Ernesta Marchand, "The Panorama of Wu-t'ai Shan as an Example of Tenth Century Cartography," Oriental Art , New Series 22. 2 (1976): 158~173.

[9] For a general treatment of Hsi-hsia Buddhism see Shi Jinbo 史金波, Xixia fojiao shilue 《西夏佛教史略》 ( Yinchuan 銀川: Ningxia renmin chubanshe 寧夏人民出版社, 1988). Shi' s study seems especially good and may well be the best work available on the subject. (I should note that there are also Russian scholars working on Tangut Buddhism; however, knowing no Russian, I am unable to compare their works with Shi's. ) Shi's discussion of Hua-yen, on pp.156~157, is especially pertinent to our immediate topic.

[11] For a study of Tun-huang ms. Pelliot#3931, which is a fragmentary account of a visit to Wu-t'ai sometime between 925 and 938 by the Indian pilgrim whose Chinese name was P'u-hua 普化 and whose Indian name is tentatively reconstructed as Rāma Śrīnivāsa, see Richard Schneider, "Une moine indien au Wou-t'ai chan: relation d'un pelèrinage," Cahiers d'Extréme-Asie 3 (1987), 27~40. Schneider also mentions fragments of other, similar records discovered among the Tun-huang mss.

[14] on Liao Buddhism in general, see Kamio Kazuharu 神尾春, Keitan bukkyō bunkashi kō 《契丹佛教文化史考》 (1937; reprint, Tokyo: Daiichi shobō 第一書房, 1982); Nogami Shunjō 野上俊靜, Ryō-Kin no bukkyō《遼金の佛教》 (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten 平樂寺書店, 1953), pp.1-175; You Xia 游俠, "Liaodai fojiao" 〈遼代佛教〉, in Zhongguo fojiao xiehui 中國佛教協會, eds., Zhongguo fojiao, Vol.1 (Beijing: Zhishi chubanshe 知識出版社, 1980), pp.89~94 ─ reprinted in Taiwan as Fo-chiao shih-lueh yü tsung-p'ai 《佛教史略與宗教》 (Taipei: Mu-to 木鐸,1988), pp.92-97; and Kenneth K.S. Ch'en, Buddhism in China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 409~411. On Uighur and Tangut Buddhism as influences upon Liao Buddhism, see Karl A. Wittfogel and Feng Chia-sheng, History of Chinese Society: Liao (907~1225), Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Volume 46 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1947), pp. 291~309, et passim. Everyone who has written on Liao Buddhism has noted the nearly prodigal generosity of the Liao emperors in their support of the Saṃgha and in their construction of many magnificent temples. Particular notice has usually been taken also of the excellent edition of the Tripiṭaka printed at Liao imperial order, and of the existence of a learnèd commentary on Hua-yen ching said (in Liao-shih 22 and in later Buddhist catalogues) to have been authored (perhaps that really means "sponsored") by none other than the Liao emperor Tao-tsung (道宗, r.1055~1100).

[15] On the special importance in Liao Buddhism of the synthesis of Esoterism and Hua-yen, and on the connection of that synthesis with Wu-t'ai Shan, see Wakiya Kiken 脇谷撝謙, "Ryō-Kin jidai no bukkyō" 〈遼金時代の佛教〉, Rokujō gakuhō 《六條學報》 126 (April, 1912); "Ryō-Kin bukkyō no chūshin" 〈遼金佛教の中心〉, Rokujō gakuhō, 135 (January, 1913) and "Ryō-dai no mikkyō" 〈遼代の密教〉, Mujintō 《無盡燈》(1912). All three of these articles were reprinted as appendices to Wakiya' s later book ─ Kegonkyō yōgi 《華嚴經要義》 (Kyoto: Kōkyō shoin 興教書院, 1920), pp. 256~285. See also Matsunaga Yuken 松永有見, "Sō- Ryō jidai no mikkyō" 〈宋遼時代の密教〉, Mikkyō kenkyū 《密教研究》 38 (October, 1930) and Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄, Chūgoku kegon shisō no kenkyū 《中國華嚴思想の研究》 ( Tokyo: Tōkyo daigaku shuppankai 東京大學出版會, 1965), pp.604-618.

[16] There seems to be some considerable confusion surrounding this monk's name. Most sources give the name as 道 or 道. The second characters in both these versions are simply two different versions of the same character (see Han-yü ta tzu-tien 《漢語大字典》, nos.1461 and 2159) and they are both pronounced "Tao-chen. "Most Japanese sources give the name 道. The second character in this version of the name is found in no dictionary that I know of, but of course it may simply be variant orthography for 道. Other Japanese sources ─ specifically some fourteenth century manuscripts preserved in the Kanazawa Bunko in Yokohama ─ see Nōdomi Jōten 納富常天, Kanazawa Bunko shiryō no kenkyū 《金澤文庫資料の研究》 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1982), 34 et passim ─ give the name as 道殷. If this were correct then the name would be pronounced "Tao-yin," but "yin" 殷 may simply be a mistaken transcription of the more likely chen. One particular source, the Ts'ung-jung lu 《從容錄》 compiled by the Chin-Yüan Ts'ao-tung 曹洞 Ch'an monk Hsing-hsiu 行秀 (1166~1246) ─ see T2004: 48. 232c ─ in all of its editions gives the name as 道, but again  may simply be an idiosyncratic form of . None of this would be particularly troubling, however, were it not for the fact that You Xia, in the essay by cited above in note no. 14, identifies the monk in question as 道碩 ("Tzo-shih" or "Tao-shuo" ). Clearly You Xia's version of the name cannot simply be an orthographic variant on Tao-chen, but we do not know where it comes from or whether it is warranted because You Xia, unfortunately, does not cite his sources. Finally, there is yet another version of the name found in the 1880~1887 Tokyo or shukusatsu 縮刻 edition of the Tripiṭaka; there it is given as 道顧 ("Tao- ku"). Again, we cannot tell if this is just a mistake or yet another attested version of the name. Even greater confusion seems to surround the question of when this monk lived. The Bussho kaisetsu daijiten 《佛書解說大辭典》 (Vol. 3, p. 179) says that he was born in 958; the Taishō edition of the Tripiṭaka refers to him as a monk of the Yüan 元; and still other reference works say he was a man of the T'ang！None of these conjectures is possible. At the very least we can say that he lived during the late eleventh century: this we know from evidence internal to the Hsien-mi yüan-t'ung ch'eng-fo-hsin yao chi indicating that it was composed during the reign of Emperor Tao-tsung (1055~1100). Further information about Tao-chen is hard to come by. He is not mentioned in any of the standard sources of Buddhist biography or history. The only information on his life I have been able to find in a pre-modern source is that appended to his only surviving work, the Hsien-mi yüan-t'ung ch'eng-fo-hsin yao chi 《顯密圓通成佛心要集》 (Compendium of Essentials for the Consummate Attainment of Buddha-Mind, According to Both the Exoteric and the Esoteric Methods) in two chüan (T1955: 46. 988b~1006b). The preface to that work, by a certain Ch'en Chüeh 陳覺 (fl. 1067; see Liao-shih 《遼史》 22), together with the postface, by the disciple Hsing-chia 性嘉 (d.u.), tell us that Tao-yin was known also as Fa-ch'uang 法幢, that he was born into the distinguished Tu 杜 family of Yün-chung 雲中 (i.e, Ta-t'ung), that early in life he studied Confucianism as well as Buddhism and soon acquired "the erudition of a Kumārajīva along with the preternatural powers of a Fo-t'u-teng 佛圖燈," and that he was associated with the Wu-t'ai Shan Chin-ho ssu 五台山金河寺.

(This temple, despite its name, was located not on Wu-t' ai Shan proper but about a hundred miles north-northeast thereof, in Wei-chou 蔚州, a provincial capital in a region that now belongs to Hopei but was once part of the Chahar region of Inner Mongolia. In Liao times the local people gave the name "Little Wu-t'ai" to the mountains located about thirty miles southeast of the city of Wei-chou, and it was there that the Chin-ho ssu was built sometime during the late tenth century. It was at this same temple that Hsing-chün 行均 composed his famous dictionary, the Lung -k’an shou-ching 《龍龕手鏡》, during the years 992~997. For a quaint acount of an 1890's visit to "Little Wu-t'ai" by a distinguished but very ignorant English traveler see A.Henry Savage-Landor, "A Journey to the Sacred Mountain of Siao-outai-shan in China," The Fortnightly Review New Series, No.323 [September 1, 1894]: 393~409. Note too that a hundred years ago these mountains were the home not only of many Buddhist monasteries but also of a Trappist cloister!)

This virtually exhausts what I have been able to learn about the man, but there must be other sources of biographical information that I have not yet found. So I conclude from an entry in Bhikṣu Ming-fu's 比丘明復 Buddhist biographical dictionary ─ Chung -kuo-fo-hsüeh jen-ming tzu-tien 《中國佛學人名辭典》 (Taipei: Fang-chou ch'u-pan-she 方舟出版社, 1974), p.462 ─ which gives more information about Tao-chen than can be found in Hsing-chia's postface. It tells us, e. g., that Tao-chen was born in 1056, that he had studied Taoism (Lao-Chuang) as well as Buddhism and Confucianism in his youth, that he was adept in the practice of meditation, that he studied Hua-yen for a long time before taking up esoterism, that he died around 1114, and that his syncretic thought was very influential upon later generations. Unfortunately, Ming-fu does not cite his source for this information (perhaps a gazetteer or a piece of epigraphy?), and I have not been able to discover where he learned all that he tells us about the man. Even a personal communication with Venerable Ming-fu in the fall of 1992 did not resolve the matter as he told me that he was unable to recall all of his sources. Nevertheless, the aforementioned text was incorporated into the Tripiṭaka as early as the Chi-sha 磧沙 edition (compiled in the period 1231~1322), and it appears in every other edition of the Tripiṭaka published since then. We can assume, then, that it has exerted some influence in East Asian Buddhism since at least the early fourteenth century. It is indeed a fascinating text. Combining the Śubhākarasiṃha (Shan-wu-wei 善無畏, D. 735) and I-hsing 一行 (683~727) strain of Esoterism with the Hua-yen of Fa-tsang 法藏 (643~712) and especially of Ch'eng-kuan 澄觀 (738~839?), Tao-chen's work seems to anticipate, and may actually have influenced, the sort of Mikkyō-Kegon syncretism found in Japan in the Kamakura period, e.g., in the writings of Kōben 高辨 (a.k.a. Myōe Shōnin 明惠上人, 1173~1232). Although Myōe never refers to Tao-chen in any of his writings, we do know that a copy of the Hsien-mi yüan-t'ung ch'eng-fo-hsin yao chi was available at his temple, the Kozanji 高山寺, during Myōe's lifetime ─ See Kōzanji kyōzō tenseki monjo mokuroku 《高山寺經藏典籍文書目錄》, Vol.4 (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai 東京大學出版會, 1981) . Nevertheless, Tao-chen's work is really quite unlike any other Hua-yen text I have ever seen. Well annotated (presumably by the author himself) and carrying with it an appended libretto for a very interesting Tantric ritual, it is altogether a subject that fairly begs for further study.

[18] See Wang Gungwu, The Structure of Pow er in North China during the Five Dyna sties (1963; reprint, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967 ), 193~197.

[19] On the history of Sung-Liao hostilities in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries see John Richard Labadie, Rulers and Soldiers Perception and Manag ement of the Military in Northern Sung China (960~1060), Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1981, pp. 24~88.

[20] Chōnen's autograph summary of his visit to China, including his pilgrimage to Wu-t'ai, was sealed away in a famous sandalwood statue of the Buddha that he brought back with him to Japan for installation at his Kyoto temple, the Seiryōji 清涼寺 (a temple named after Wu-t'ai Shan and/or one of its more famous monasteries). When that statue was opened in 1954, Chōnen's account of his journey was discovered and immediately subjected to intensive study. See, for example, Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆, "Seiryōji Shakazō fūzō no Tōdaiji Chōnen no shuin risseisho" 〈清涼寺釋迦像寺藏の東大寺然の手印立誓書〉, Bukkyō bunka kenkyū 《佛教文化研究》 4 (1954): 5~22. An English translation of that account may be found in Gregory Henderson and Leon Hurvitz, "The Buddha of Seiryōji," Artibus Asiae, 19. 1 (1956): 5~55. See also Robert M. Gimello, "Imperial Patronage of Buddhism during the Northern Sung, " Proceedings of the First Internation al Symposium on Church and State Relations in China: Past and Present (Taipei: Tamkang University Press, 1987), pp.73-85.

[21] For a precise delineation of the Sung-Liao border, see Wittfogel and Feng, p.373, note no.47.

[22] See the Ch'ing-liang-shan chih, chüan 5 (Taipei ed., p. 210; Taiyuan ed., p. 69). Also, as Chang Shang-ying indicated in 1090, it was in part for the purpose of having these privileges restored that he wrote the famous account of his visions at Wu-t'ai ─ see Robert M.Gimello, "Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t'ai Shan," in Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü, eds. , Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China, Studies on China 15 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp.89-149.

[23] Note that although most of the Wu-t'ai lore found in Yen-i's Expanded Records pertains to Five Dynasties, T'ang, and earlier periods, there are also accounts of several persons and incidents of the Sung. Any complete account of Wu-t'ai during the Northern Sung take these into consideration (see especially T2099: 51.1123b~1124c), along with the supplementary narrations by Ming- ch'ung appended to Yen-i's work (see note no.25, below).

[24] The best edition and study of Jōjin's famous diary is Hirabayashi Fumio 平林文雄, San Tendai Godaisan ki: kōhon narabi ni kenkyū 《參天台五台山記: 校本並びに研究》 (Tokyo: Kazama Shobō 風間書房, 1978). See also Gimello, "Imperial Partonage, "

[25] Ming-ch'ung, who is mentioned in the Chu Pien essay that is the chief focus of this article, was a high-ranking ecclesiastical official based sometimes in Tai-chou, at other times at Wu-t'ai proper. His "Supplementary Relations" (Hsü-i 續遺 ) may be found at the very end of Yen-i's work ─ see T2099: 51. 1125c~1127a.

[26] See Giuseppe Tucci, The Religions of Tibet, translated from the German and Italian by Geoffrey Samuel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 39; Helmut Hoffman, The Religions of Tibet, translated from the German by Edward Fitzgerald (New York: Macmillan, 1961), pp.133~135; and 'Gos Lo-tsa-ba Gzhon-nu-dpal, The Blue Annals (Deb-ther-sngon-po), translated from the Tibetan by George N.Roerich (1949; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1976), pp.867~872. Pha-dam-pa is said to have spent as many as twelve years in China, but I have encountered no record of him in any traditional Chinese source.

[27] For a useful but incomplete overview of Wu-t'ai history during whole course of the Chin see Xin Rong 欣榮, "Jindai wutaishan fojiaoshi" 〈金代五台山佛教史〉, Wutaishan yanjiu 《五台山研究》, No. 9 (1987): 15~19.

[29] See Yüan's Chung-chou chi 《中州集》, chüan 8 (ca.1250; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), Vol.2, p.396. I have found no other reference to Chia Yung, and all that Yuan tells us about him is that his tzu was Han-fu 漢甫 and that he hailed from Loyang.

[30] The Chen-jung ssu is the site of Chang Shang-ying's first vision of Mañjuśrī. For more on this, and on the story of An-sheng, see Gimello, "Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t'ai Shan," pp.134-135, note no.36.

[31] See the Chung-chou chi 《中州集》, chüan 10 (1962 Beijing edition, Vol.2, pp. 506~513). Yüan's summary of Yao's biography comprises his preface to the thirty-two of Yao's poems that he chose to include in this most important of all Chin literary anthologies (which is also an invaluable source for Chin biography and history). Appended to Yüan's brief biography of Yao are several poetic recollections of him, or "laments" (哀詞) for him, by several other Chin literati. One of these laments, by a certain Tang Huai-ying 堂懷英 (chin-shih 進士: 1170) is also to be found in Chang Chin-wu 張金吾 (1787~1829), Chin-wen-tsui 《金文最》, chüan 113 (ca.1822; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1990), Vol.2, p.1624. The Ch'ing and Republican Period scholar Ch'en Yen 陳衍 (1856~1937) drew on Yuan's account for the brief entry on Yao Hsiao-hsi in his Chin-shih chi-shih 《金詩紀事》, chuan 5, in Li-tai shih-shih chang-pien 《歷代詩史長編》, Yang Chia-lo 楊家駱, ed. (Taipei: Ting-wen shu-chü 鼎文書局, 1971), part 12, pp.76~78. Note that the Chu ng-chou-chi is organized in such a way that its selection of Yao's poetry immediately precedes its selection of Chu Pien's. This placement is significant for it indicates that Yüan regarded Yao as a Sung loyalist, despite the service he had grudgingly and briefly rendered to the Chin. In this connection see the only modern scholarly reference to Yao Hsiao-hsi that I have yet found ─ Hok-lam Chan, The Historiography of the Chin Dynasty: Three Studies, Münchener Ostasiatische Studien, Band 4 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1970), pp.77, 85, ＆ 104.

[35] This is an allusion to the P'ien-mu 駢拇 ("Webbed Toes") chapter of the Chuang Tzu 《莊子》, which tells of two servants, a boy and a girl, each charged to watch over a flock of sheep. Both lost their sheep ─ the boy because he was engrossed in books, the girl because she was absorbed in play. The boy represents the value of conscientious responsibility, and perhaps also Yao's own earlier career as a scholar-official; the girl stands for the life of irresponsible insouciance, and perhaps also for the manner of life the Yao himself led in his retirement. The basic point, however, is that both servants lost their sheep; Yao seems thus to be suggesting that neither of the two courses he has followed in his own life, neither his earlier life of bureaucratic service nor his later life of contemplative leisure, has proved ultimately satisfying.

[36] The phrase hsing-tsang 行藏 is an allusion to Analects 《論語》 VII. 11, in which Confucius praises Yen Yüan 顏淵 by telling him that together they are the only ones who can "act when they are deemed useful but retire when they are put aside" ( 用之則行、舍之則藏 ). Hsing has thus come to refer to the engaged life of official service and tsang to the option of virtuous withdrawal from public life in conditions in which one's service is not wanted or when one cannot serve without compromising one's principles. No doubt Yao has in mind his own early retirement from an active official's career.

[37] These two lines, with their contrast between serene quiescence, on the one hand, and the alert clarity of the awakened mind, on the other, are surely a variation on the ancient Buddhist view of the path as consisting in both "calm" (śamatha, 止) and "insight" (vipaśyanā, 觀). The former is a condition of mystical transport in which the body and mind are utterly stilled; it is often likened to cleansing or purgation. The latter is the active and penetrating discernment of truth of which only a controlled and purged mind is capable. Buddhists have always held that it is only by the exercise of the latter, i. e., insight, that the wondrous truths of Buddhism may actually be apprehended. Note too the artful parallel Yao establishes between the traditional Chinese pair, retirement and engagement, and their counterpart in Buddhist spirituality, quiescence and insight.

[38] Literally: "Among men there is no divining one's 'snail's shell' of an abode. "

[39] The Chung-tiao Ching-liang-chuan hsü《重雕清涼傳序》. This would seem to be a preface to a reprint of all three of the Ch'ing-liang Records, but in all available editions it appears after the Hui-hsiang and Yen-i texts, at the head of Chang Shang-ying's Further Records. In any case, its date places it only seventy-four years after Chang Shang-ying's composition, and only twenty-three years after Chu Pien wrote his Tai-shan jui-ying chi. It is apparent that Chu Pien's piece had been appended to earlier versions of Chang's work (i.e., to the edition that had been destroyed by fire and was replaced by this new edition) for Yao refers to the Further Records as having been authored by both "Minister Chang and Ambassador Chu. "See the preliminary remarks to Appendix I for information on editions and textual history. The Chinese text reproduced here is from the Taishō edition of the Buddhist canon (Vol.51, p.1127). Yao's Preface may also be found in the Chin-wen-tsui chüan 38 (1990 Beijing edition, Vol.1, pp. 547~548).

[40] This refers to the story of the dream of Emperor Ming (明帝) of the Han (r.58-75 AD). According to the various versions of this legend of Buddhism's introduction to China ─ e.g., the preface to the Sūtra in Forty-two Sections ( 《四十二章經序》: see Seng-yu 僧祐 Ch'u san-tsang chi-chi 《出三藏記集》, chüan 6, T2145: 55. 42c), et al. ─ Emperor Ming's dream of a golden man, interpreted as a revelation of the Buddha, led him to send a mission to India in search of knowledge of the foreign sage and his teachings. This mission is said to have brought back to China a group of missionaries, led by one Kāśyapa Mātaṅga ( 迦葉摩騰 ). Mātaṅga is said to have arrived in Loyang riding a white horse (from which came the name of the Po-ma ssu 白馬寺 , purportedly China's first Buddhist temple). See T'ang Yung-t'ung 湯用彤, Han wei liang-chin nan-pei ch'ao fo-chiao shih 《漢魏兩晉南北朝佛教史》 ( 2 vols., Shanghai, 1937; 1 vol., reprint, Taipei: Shih-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she 史學出版社, 1974), pp.16-30.

[41] Hsiang-chiao 象教 (the first character being a variation on the more common 像 ) seems here to have a somewhat ambiguous meaning, as indeed it often does in Buddhist usage. On the one hand, it refers to the second of the three periods of Buddhism's gradual decline, the age of pratirūpakadharma (more commonly rendered as hsiang-fa 像法 ), i.e., the age of the mere semblance or simulacrum of the true Dharma. At times this term has implications of disparagement, referring to Buddhism's deterioration. However, Yao's use of the phrase is surely not pejorative. In this connection it is worth noting that Chinese traditionally thought of Buddhism as having already entered upon this "semblance" stage by the time it first reached China. To the extent that this was so, all Buddhism in China was in a sense hsiang-chiao or hsiang-fa, and from this fact it would follow that Buddhism's hsiang (i.e., its simulacra, signs, symbols, emblems, etc.), however inferior they may theoretically be when compared to the "true Dharma," are still quite worthy vehicles of truth. If so, then the hsiang-chiao, understood here as "the teaching than consists in symbols," would have connotations more reverent that pejorative. Note that Oda Tokunō's 織田德能 entry on Bukkyō daijiten ─ Bukkyō daijiten 《佛教大辭典》 (Tokyo: Daizō shuppansha 大藏出版社, 1969), p.675 ─ equates this term with the term hsiang-hua 象化 defining the latter not as "the semblance Dharma" itself but rather as the religious pedagogy peculiar to that age, i.e. the method rather than the content. Oda also notes that, understood in this not necessarily pejorative sense, the term hsiang-chiao was used to distinguish Buddhism from Confucianism, the latter being understood as a merely "nominal teaching" (m ing-chiao 名教, i.e., as a teaching consisting of mere "names" or designations rather than the more pregnant and powerful "symbols" hsiang by which the Dharna is conveyed. Unfortunately, Oda gives no citations for this last interpretation.

[42] I suspect that Yao is here referring to the contrast between Ch'an Buddhism and Esoteric Buddhism, the two major alternatives available in the Buddhist communities at Wu-t'ai in this period. The term "shen-hua" 神化, literally "spirit transformation," is akin to other terms, like shen-t'ung 神通, that refer to preternatural powers of the sort especially associated with esoterism.

[43] This is Liu Yü-hsi 劉禹錫 (772~842) a leading poet and man of letters of the High T'ang. A close friend of Liu Tsung-yüan 柳宗元 (773~819) and Po Chü-i 白居易 (772~846), but an opponent of Han Yü 韓愈 (768~824), Liu was noted for, among other things, his frequent and sophisticated treatment of Buddhist themes. Yao Hsiao-hsi is here alluding to the Liu Yü-hsi stele inscription from which the epigram to this essay is taken (q.v., see also note no. 1, above).

[44] I am somewhat unsure of the meaning of this clause and my translation of it is conjectural. Also, I suspect that the punctuation of this line in the Taishō edition is in error ─ i.e., that the full stop which there follows yüan 遠 should be place after ying 彰 and the full stop that follows chen 塵 should simply be removed.

[45] I take the phrase wai-hu 外護─ literally: "protection from whithout," (i.e., from outside the clerical community) ─ as referring to the kind of pious support of the Saṃgha which Buddhism enjoined upon its lay adherents. Thus my translation, "lay piety."

[46] More literally: "A disaster brought on by the accident of an encounter with Hui-lu (the god of fire) led to the incineration of these 'dragon scripts'. "

[47] The Tung-an here mentioned is probably Tung-an Yang- ch'eng 東安陽城, a place located just southeast of Ta-t'ung. I can find no other record of a Commissioner Ch'ao, but I assume, given the title of his office, that he was some sort of local Chin revenue officer. Note that the Wan-wei pieh-tsan g edition of the text gives the character Liu 琉 (which would have to be taken as a name) rather than t'ung 統 (which I have taken as a title).

[50] I am not sure I have caught the drift of Ming-ching's remarks; my translation of them is highly tentative.

[51] Shan-i 善誼 is not mentioned in any other source I have consulted, but the office of "Bursar-Monk" (T'i-tien Seng 提點僧 ) is known to be that of the chief financial officer of a monastery, i.e., the cleric in charge of its funds and stores. The title of the office had originally been borrowed from Sung civil administrative terminology.

[52] This is a rhetorical invocation of Ch'an themes of the sort that by Sung times had become de rigueur for persons of the Buddhist persuasion who were also men of letters. In Ch'an lore, the transmission of the master's robe (and bowl) to a disciple was thought to signify the transmission of the Buddha-mind itself. However, the Ch'an tradition found it necessary to qualify references to such formalities with the reminder that the true Tao does not actually reside in the external trappings of religion. Likewise, as a tradition that "does not set up or depend upon words and letters" (pu-li wen-tzu 不立文字 ), Ch'an was by definition required to be at least rhetorically dubious of verbal expression of the truth. That Yao would have invoked such Ch'an themes reminds us of the continuing connection between Ch'an and Wu-t'ai, and of the undercurrent of tension between Ch'an aand the visionary Buddhism that was even more characteristic of the place. In this connection see Gimello, "Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t'ai Shan," particularly pp. 118~123.

[53] The phrase 知非敗佛以眩眾 means literally: "He knew that this was not a case of duping the people by trafficking in Buddhas (i.e., religious articles). "Yao is indicating, in other words, that he did not believe the reprinting of these texts to be simply a fund-raising scheme. However, that he should even have mentioned such a concern suggests that the possibility of such baser motivation for religious activities was widely recognized at the time.

[54] The early textual history of the Ch'ing-liang Trilogy is murky. How widely these texts were distributed beyond Wu-t'ai, separately or as a trilogy, before the 1164 reprint we do not yet, and may never, know. The only datable earlier reference I have yet found to Yen-i's Expanded Records is report in the diary of the Japanese pilgrim Jōjin that he acquired a copy in January of the year 1073. However, Jōjin was visiting Wu-t'ai at the time and he received his copy of the text directly from its author, so this record cannot be used to suggest that the text was then known outside the Wu-t'ai area ─ see Hirabayashi Fumio, San Tendai Godaisan ki: Kōhon narabi ni kenkyū, p.162. It is reasonable to suppose that Hui-hsiang's Old Records written hundreds of years earlier and in Ch'ang-an, would have had some prior wide circulation, but the extent of this has not yet been established and the earliest independent, explicit reference to Hui-hsiang's work that I have yet found is in Ŭich'ŏn's 義天 Sinpyŏn chejong kyojang ch'ongnok　《新編諸宗教藏總錄》 (Comprehensive Catalougue of the Newly Compiled Collection of Teachings of the Various Schools ─ see T2183:55. 1164c); but this Korean catalogue dates from 1090, i.e., the same year as that in which Chang Shang-ying referred to both Hui-hsiang's and Yen-i's works and nearly two decades later than Jōjin's mention of the Yen-i's work alone. It is quite possible, then, that all three works in the Wu-t'ai trilogy owe their preservation and wider circulation to this 1164 reprint.

[55] Nien-ch'ang 念常, Fo-tsu li-tai t'ung -tsai 《佛祖歷代通載》 (A Comprehensive Registry of the Successive Ages of the Buddhas and the Patriarchs), published in 1341. See chüan 20, T2036: 49. 685b19~29. This passage seems truncated and in places corrupt; my rendering of it is tentative. The only other references I have found to the Indian monk Su-t'o-shih-li are those preserved in the Ch'ing-liang-shan chih, given below, and in another Ming collection, Ming-ho's 明河 Pu hsü-kao-seng-chuan 《補續高僧傳》, chüan 1 (SSZZ1524: 77. 369c21~370a11. )

[56] Mention here of the Taoist Master Hsiao raises a problem. He appears also in the Ch'ing-liang shan-chih chüan 3 (just following the entry on Su-t'o-shih-li). There, however, his challenge to a duel of magic is answered not by Su-t'o-shih-li but by another (otherwise unknown) monk named Fa-ch'ung 法沖, and the event is said to have taken place in 1163 rather than 1135. This is further reason to suspect that Nien-ch'ang's version of the Su-t'o-shih-li story may have somehow been garbled, or conflated with the story of Fa-ch'ung.

[Nevertheless, the tale of the encounter between Fa-ch'ung and Wizard Hsiao is interesting in its own right. The Taoist adept dared the Buddhist monk to match him in a bout of wine drinking. The monk refused to break his vows in this way and issued in return a challenge that they both drink arsenic instead of wine. The Taoist agreed, but only on the condition that the monk drink first. Fa-ch'ung drank the poison, and was unharmed; Wizard Hsiao could not bring himself to drink it, but was still unwilling to concede the contest. Fa-ch'ung then drew or conjured up a vajra circle (金剛圈) and forced Hsiao into it with a spell. Confined within the magic ring, Hsiao began to sweat profusely and lost control of his bladder, at which point the emperor ordered that he be released. Fa-ch'ung complied, but only after declaring that, but for the emperor's intervention, he would have smashed the Taoist to bits with his vajra mace (金剛鎚). The Chin ruler is said to have been so impressed by Fa- ch'ung's victory that he sent him to Wu-t'ai where he had the Chien-wan-sui 建萬歲 temple built for him. ]

[57] This person cannot be precisely identified, but the T'ang-kua 唐括 were a prominent Jurchen clan from whom several early Chin emperors chose their consorts (See Chin-shih 《金史》63).

[58] I believe the text is faulty here. It reads 碧光溢臂, but I have translated on the assumption that he word 臂 (meaning "arm") must be a misprint for some other word meaning "eye" or "gaze. " "Arms emitting a blue radiance" seems senseless, but Chinese commonly found the bright blue eyes of Caucasians startling, and one might well expect a comment about the color of the man's eyes to follow a remark about the color of his cheeks.

[59] Reading ch'ao 朝 as miao 廟. I take a min-tsung-miao 閔宗廟 to be some sort of temple or shrine in which rituals of mourning were performed on behalf of the royal ancestors. This reading, however, is somewhat conjectural.

[60] Buddhapāli (variants: Buddhapālita, Buddhapāla) was another famous Wu-t'ai pilgrim from India who had come in the late seventh century and for whom, it is said, Mañjuśrī created the Diamond Grotto (Chin-kang k'u 金剛窟 ), one of the better known of Wu-t'ai's many sacred precincts.

[61] Could "Buddha-crown" (五冠) be an alternative rendering of uṣniṣa the term for the protuberance atop the skull that is one of the chief marks of a Buddha? In any case, the conceit of Mañjuśrī's wearing the five terraces as though they comprised a crown, or their being a kind of quintuple uṣnîṣa adds a powerful dimension to the sacred character of Wu-t'ai, as though the very massif from which the five peaks rise were part of the "body" or living presence of the sage.

[62] Ch'ing-liang-shan chih chüan 3 (Taipei edition, p.131-132; Taiyuan edition, p.162.) Note that this source has Su-t'o-shih-li traveling to China by sea, not across Central Asia, which might have been very difficult to traverse in those troubled times.

[63] The "five sciences" (五明, pañ-cavidyā) were (1) rhetoric and literary composition, (2) the manual arts (craftsmanship, architecture, etc.), (3)medicine, (4) logic, and (5) spiritual psychology.

[64] "Lin-chiu feng" 靈鷲峰 is the name of a hill located in the central valley of the Wu-t'ai complex, in the village of T'ai-huai. The temple on its summit is most commonly known today as P'u-sa ting (Bodhisattva's Crown) but it was once known as Chen-jung tine 真容殿 (Hall of the True Countenance of Mañjuśrī) or Ta wen-shu ssu 大文殊寺 (The Great Temple of Mañjuśrī); this was the site of Chang Shang- ying's first vision of Mañjuśrī in 1088 (which he described in terms very much like those used here to portary Su-t'o-shih-li's visions). In more recent times a climb up the one hundred and eight steps leading to the top of this hill, and a visit to the Ch'ing Lamaist temple on top, has been regarded as one of the highlights of any Wu-t'ai pilgrimage. The name "Ling-chiu-feng" is borrowed from that of the Gṛdhrakūṭa (Vulture's Peak), the hill outside of Rājagṛha where Śākyamuni gave many of his discourses.

[65] The tern śarîra (舍利) means simply "relic," but ─ presumably in East Asia and beginning we know not exactly when ─ it came to mean more specifically the small, solid, pearl-like globules that are found amidst the ashes of cremated saints. It is generally understood that the greater the number of such relics, the holier was the deceased.

[66] See Nien-ch'ang's 念常 1341 chronicle, the Fo-tsu li-tai t'ung-tsai 《佛祖歷代通載》, chüan 20 (T2036: 49.699c20-700a4) and Ming-ho's 明河 Pu hsü-kao-seng-chuan 《補續高僧傳》, chüan 1 (SSZZ152 4: 77. 370a21~b6)

[67] We are fortunate to have a vivid representation of the Buddhism of Ta-li in the form of the famous "Long Scroll of Buddhist Images" painted for the Ta-li king in the years 1173~1176 by the otherwise unknown painter Chang Sheng-wen 張勝溫. See Helen B.Chapin, A Long Roll of Buddhist Images, Revised Edition (Ascona, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae, 1972) and Li Lin-ts'an 李霖燦, Nan-chao ta-li-kuo hsin-ssu-liao-te tsung-ho yen-chiu 《南詔大理國新資料的綜合研究》 (Taipei; Kuo-li ku-kung po-wu-yüan 國立古宮博物院, 1982).

[68] It is interesting to note that Avalokiteśvara or Kuan-yin 觀音 was apparently the object of special devotion in Ta-li Buddhism, as we may surmise from the many compelling images of that Bodhisattva in Chang Sheng-wen's scroll. Mañjuśrī, of course, is also represented in the scroll. It is therefore not surprising to find that our Indian pilgrim continued his devotions to both Bodhisattvas while he was in the North.

[69] See Li Hongru 李宏如, Wutaishan fojiao  Fanzhi pian 《五台山佛教︰繁峙篇》 (Taiyuan: Shanxi gaoxiao lianhe chubanshe 山西高校聯合出版社, 1992), pp. 119~125. This whole book, it should be noted, is one of the most valuable pieces of recent Wu-t'ai scholarship.

[70] See, for example, Particia Eichenbaum Karetzky, "The Recently Discovered Chin Dynasty Murals Illustrating the Life of the Buddha at Yen-shang [sic] ssu, Shansi," Artibus Asiae 42 (1980): 245~261; also, The Shanxi Research Institute for the Preservation of Ancient Architecture 山西省古建築保護研究所編, eds., Yanshansi jindai bihua 《岩山寺金代壁畫》 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe 文物出版社, 1983).

[71] One the Chin dynasty's official policies toward Buddhism see Nogami Shunjō, Ryō-Kin no bukkyō, pp.179~297; Yu Xia 游俠, "Jindai fojiao" 〈金代佛教〉, in Zhongguo fojiao xiehui 中國佛教協會, eds. Zhonogguo fo jiao 《中國佛教》, Vol.1 (Beijing: Zhishi chubanshe, 1980), pp.95~101; Kenneth K.S. Ch'en, Buddhism in China, pp.411~414; Tao-chung Yao, "Buddhism and Taoism under the Chin," in Hoyt C.Tillman and Stephen H.West, eds., China Unde r Jurchen Rule (Albany: State University of New York Press, forthcoming); and Keika Atsuyoshi 桂華淳祥, "Kindai teishitsu no bukkyō shinkō ni kansuru ichi shiryo" 〈金代帝室の佛教信仰に關する一資料〉, Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Ken kyū《印度學佛教學研究》32.1 (December, 1983): 298~301.

[72] Here will be given only a sketch of Chu P'ien's life. Much more detail is provided in the heavily annotated translation of the Sung-shih biography appended to this essay.

[74] The best edition of this work is the one critically edited and punctuated in 1981 by Ch'en Hsin 陳新 and published in 1988─ together with Hui-hung's 慧洪 (1071~1128) Leng-cha i yeh-hua 冷齋夜話 and Wu Hang's 吳沆 (1116~1172) Huan-ch'i shih-hua 《環溪詩話》─ by the Zhonghua shuju 中華書局 of Beijing. However, it is also available in other standard editions, like the one published in 1973 (in the same volume with three other shih-hua) by Kuang-wen shu-chü 廣文書局 of Taipei; also the edition found in the Ssu-k'u ch'üan shu《四庫全書》.

[75] On Buddhism as a basic ingredient in the Sung renaissance, especially in those traditions labelled Wen-hsüeh 文學 (Literary Learning), see Robert M.Gimello, "Mārga and Culture: Learning, Letters, and Liberation in Northern Sung Ch'an, " in Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Robert M. Gimello, eds. Paths to Liberation The Mārga and Its Transformations in Buddhist Thought Studies in East Asian Buddhism 7 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), pp.371~438.

[76] See Gimello, "Chang Shang-ying at Wu-t'ai Shan," pp.91~97. Chang's Hu-fa lun 《護法論》 (Essay in Defense of the Dharma, T2114: 52. 648c~667c), and Ch'i-sung's 契嵩 (1007~1072) earlier Fu-chiao pien 《輔教編》 (Theses in Support of the Teaching, T2115: 52. 637a-646c) are the most important Northern Sung statements of such a synthesis. They both propound an ecumenical Buddhism which subsumes the best of the native Chinese traditions and which argues that their ideals, of a humane society and of harmony with the natural cosmos, are most likely to be realized if built upon Buddhist foundations.

[77] For this brief sketch of Ch'ao Yüeh-chih's career I have relied on what is said about him in Huang Tsung-hsi 黃宗羲 (1610~1695) and Ch'üan Tsu-wang 全祖望 (1705~1755), Sung-Yüan hsüeh-an 《宋元學案》, chüan 22 (ca.1755; Beijing: Zhongguo shuju, 1987), pp.895~900. However, I have also consulted the biographical notices appended to Ch'ao's Wen-chi 文集, which happen to be the primary sources on which the Sung-Yüan hsüeh-an editors themselves drew. It is interesting to note that Ch'ao Yueh-chih, unlick so many other members of his illustrious family, was not accorded a biography in the Sung-shih. The Sung Yüan hsüeh-an editors characterized this omission as the product of vulgar ignorance ( 陋 ) on the part of the Sung-shih compilers. For an overview of the Ch'ao family lineage, which helps explain the rich heritage of learning and influence to which Ch'ao Yüeh-chih was heir, see Wang Te-i 王德毅, "Sung-tai shan-chou ch'ao-shih tsu-hsi k'ao" 《宋代澶州晁氏族系考》, in Kinugawa Tsuyoshi 衣川張, ed., Ryū Shiken hakushi shōju ki'nen sōshi kenkyū ronshū 《劉子健博士頌燾紀年宋史研究論集》 (Kyoto: Dohōsha shuppan 同朋社出版, 1989), pp.21~28.

[78] For a discussion of Fan's career, see Michael Freeman' s biography of him in Herbert Franke, ed., Sung Biographies Vol.1, Münchener Ostasiatische Studien, Band 16.1 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1976), pp.338~345.

[79] For a discussion of the term hsien-t'ien huṥeh 先天學, and for the best western-language treatment the thought of Shao Yung and its influence, see Anne D.Birdwhistell, Transition to Neo-Confucianism Shao Yung on Knowledge and Symbols of Reali ty (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), especially pp.66~94.

[80] On Sun Fu, see Wm.Theodore de Bary, "A Reappraisal of Neo-Confucianism," in Arthur F.Wright, ed., Studies in Chinese Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp.81~111; also Michael Freeman's short biography of him in Franke, Sung Biographies Vol.3, pp.973~975. As regards Chiang Ch'ien himself, I have found no other references to him.

[81] Happily, his wishes in this matter were not honored; a substantial portion of Ch'ao's corpus survives. His Chung-yung chuan《中庸傳》, Ju-yen《儒言》, and Ch'a o-shih k'o-yu 《晁氏客語》 appear separately in several well-known collectanea and also to be found, along with mush else, in the twenty chüan collection of Ch'ao's works known either as the twenty-one fascicle Ching-yü-sheng chi《景迂生集》or(more commonly)as Sung-shan wen-chi《嵩山文集》. This collection was included in the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu 《四庫全書》, but it is also available in the Ssu-pu ts'ung-k'an, chi-pu《四部叢刊》。續編。集部 (Lo no.375). This latter happens to bethe refered redaction, as it s a photocopy of a rare Sung edition printed by CH'ao's immidiate descendants in 1167, only thirty-eight years after his death. See also the late Ch'ing edition reorinted in two volumes by Hsüe-sheng shu-chü 學生書局 (Taipei, 1975) in their series Li-tai hua-chia shih-wen-chi《歷代畫家詩文集》. Appended to the collection, as a short twenty-first chüan, are several items from the family archives ─ ritual biographical notices, memoria, etc. ─ on which we, like the compilers of the Sung-Yüan hsüeh-an rely for information about Ch'ao's life.

[82] Ch'ao's principal teacher, Ssu-ma Kuang, also had doubts about Mencius. Given the primacy so resolutely accorded to Mencius by the later "orthodox" Tao-hsüeh 道學 tradition, Ch'ao Yüeh-chih's and Ssu-ma Kuang's criticisms of him are a salutary reminder of the true diversity of philosophical opinion and allegiance that maked the Northern Sung. The information that it was Ch'in-tsung who approved the prohibition on the Meng Tzu allows us to date that prohibition precisely ─ to 1126 or early 1127.

[83] There was a long tradition of Buddhist piety in the Ch'ao family, extending back to the early Sung progenitor of the clan, Ch'ao Chiung 晁迥 (951-1034). I owe my knowledge of Ch'ao Chiung's Buddhist interests and Buddhist writings (e.g., the Fa-tsang ts'ui-chin lu 《法藏碎金錄》 and the Tao-Yüan chi-yao《道院集要》─ both preserved in the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu《四庫全書》 ) to Huang Ch'i-chiang 黃啟江 who touched upon them in his 1986 University of Arizona Ph.D. dissertation, Experiment in Syncretism Ch'i-sung (1007~1172) and Eleventh Century Chinese Buddhism

[84] Sung-shan is located in the Hsin-cheng 新鄭 region, also known as Ch'ü-wei 曲洧, with which Ch'ao and his family ─ and thus also Chu Pien ─ were so closely associated.

[85] Ch'ao's interests in Buddhism led to his being mentioned in a number of Buddhist sources which were overlooked in the entry on him in Wang Te-i 王德毅, et.al Sung-jen chuan-chi tzu-liao so-yin 《宋人傳記資料索引》 (Taipei: Ting-wen shu-chü 鼎文書局, 1977), Vol.3, pp.1954-1955. Thus we can add to the list found there at least the following: Tsung-chien's 宗鑑 1237 biographical chronicle of T'ien-t'ai, the Shih-men cheng-t'ung 《釋門正統》, chüan 7 (SSZZ1513: 75. 341c~342a) and Chih-p'an's 志磐 1341 general history of Buddhism written from a T'ien-t'ai perspective, the Fo-tsu t'ung-chi 《佛祖統紀》, chüan 15, 22, 24, 49, ＆ 50 (T2035: 49. 226a, 245a, 253, 438a, 444c, ＆ 446a).

[86] On the early division of T'ien-t'ai into two factions and on the important role of Chih-li, see Andpō Toshio 安藤俊雄, Tendaigaku ronshu shikan to jōdo 《天台學論集︰止觀と淨土》 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1975); Guo Peng 郭朋, Sung Yuan fojiao 《宋元佛教》 (Fzuhou 福建人民出版社, 1981), pp.102~106; Wang Chih-yüan 王志遠, Sung t'ien-tai fo-hsüeh kuei-pao 《宋天台佛學窺豹》 (Taipei: Fo-Kuang ch'u-pan-she 佛光出版社, 1992); and Chan Chi-wah 陳至華, Chih-li (960~1028) and the Formation of Orthodoxy in the Sung T'ien-t'ai Tradition of Buddhism Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1993.

[87] For information on this monk's life see Shih-men cheng-t'ung, chüan 7 (SSZZ1513: 75. 339a~b); Fo-tsu t'ung-chi' chüan 15 (T2035: 49. 226c~227a), and Ju-huang's 如惶 1617 biographical collection, the Ta-ming kao-seng chuan 《大明高僧傳》, chüan 1 (T2062: 50. 902b).

[88] On the contentious relations between T'ien-t'ai and Ch'an during the Northern Sung, see Takao Giken 高雄義堅, Sōdai bukkyōshi no kenkyū《宋代佛教史の研究》 (Kyoto: Hyakkaen 百華苑, 1975), pp.75~93. Among Ch'ao's more or less critical treatments of Ch'an see his very interesting 1127 commemorative inscription for the monk Pao-yüeh 寶月 (1057~1117) ─ Sung-shan wen-chi chüan 20, 36a~39b. This obscure cleric of the Ch'ien-ming Ch'an-yüan 乾明禪院 in Kao-yu chün 高郵軍 (modern Kao-yu hsien, Kiangsu) had begun his religious life as a Ch'an monk and had studied with some of the foremost Ch'an teachers of his day. His primary teacher, for example, was Ch'ang-lü Ying-fu 長蘆英夫 (d.u.), a leading disciple of the great Yün-men 雲門 master T'ien-i I-huai 天衣義懷 (993~1064), but he also took instruction for a time with Tung-lin Ch'ang-tsung 東林常總 (1025~1091) of the Huang-lung 黃龍 branch of the Lin-chi 臨濟 line, and he met several other Ch'an luminaries as well. Nevertheless, as Ch'ao explains in unmistakably T'ein-t'ai terms, Pao-yüeh grew disillusioned with the doltish, inarticulate, and bogus Ch'an (variously called ya-ch'an 亞禪, mo-ch'an 魔禪, or an-cheng ch'an 闇證禪) that was so rife at the time. He was thus moved to take up a more traditional style of Buddhism based on scriptural study and rigorous asceticism. Eventually, Ch'ao tells us, he was so successful in erasing the tracesof his earlier associations that no one even knew he had ever been Ch'an monk. (I can find no other record of a monk named Pao-yüeh, but the traditional Ch'an lineage charts do list, as one of Ch'ang-lü Ying-fu's students, a certain Pao-hui, also of the Ch'ien-ming Cloister 乾明寶惠; could this Pao-hui be the Pao-yüeh of Ch'ao's inscription?) Ch'ao asserts T'ien-t'ai's superiority over Ch'an even more forcefully in the concluding section of the stele inscription he wrote to commemorate his own teacher, Chung-li─ see Sung-shan wen-chi, chüan 20, pp.34a~35a.

[89] I take the term "Chiao-seng" 教僧 to be a compound meant to indicate that Ch'ao saw himself metephorically as a a kind of "cleric," albeit as one "ordained" to doctrine rather than to monastic discipline.

[90] This piece is preserved in the Sung-shan wen-chi, chüan 14, pp.21b~23a. I have quoted only its opening section. The "fear" of which Ch'ao here speaks is the sort that usually accompanies narrow-mindedness, a fear of all things "strange" or "other.

[91] This monk occupies in the "heterodox" or Shan-wai" 山外 tradition of T'ien-t'ai a stature equivalent to that enjoyed in the "orthodox" or "Shan-chia" 山家 tradition by his comtemporary Chih-li. However, his eminence was such as to have transcended sectarian rivalries and thus even a Shan-chia adherent like Ch'ao Yüeh-chih could hold him in high regard. A very prolific writer, especially of scriptural commentaries (several of which were included in the standard editions of the canon), he was also a scholar of Confucianism and an accomplished poet. The Hsien-Chüpien 閒（閑）居編, a collection of his occasional writings, stands today as a major but still largely untapped source of valuable information on Northern Sung Buddhism. It was originally published in 1116 in sixty fascicles, but nine of those fascicles were lost by the time of its reprinting in 1248. Even this partial reprint was soon lost in China, but it was preserved in Japan where it became the basis for several later Japanese editions. Today it is most conveniently available in the Japanese "Supplement" to the Buddhist Canon (SSZZ9 49: 56. 865a~948a). It was no doubt the breadth and catholicity of his knowledge of Buddhism that recommended Chih-yüan as an excellent example of the sort of "liberality" Ch'ao is here advocating. For basic biographical and bibliographical information about Chih- yüan see, interalia, Fo-tsu t'ung-chi, chüan 10 ＆ 25 (T2035: 49, 205b-c, 259b~c); Fo-tsu li-tai t'ung-tsai, chüan 18 (T2036: 49, 661b~c), Chüeh-an's 覺岸 1354 chronicle, the Shih-shih chi-ku lüeh 《釋氏稽古略》, chüan 4 (T2037: 49. 863c~864a), and Chu-hung's 袾宏 1584 collection, the Wang-sheng chi 《往生集》, chüan 1 (T2072: 51. 136c).

[92] I translate ku-i shih 古義士 (literally, "ancient knight of righteousness") somewhat freely as "old pharisee" because I assume that Ch'ao was being ─ at the very least ─ ironical and that he meant to emphasize Han Yü's unreasonable and inflexible narrowness.

[93] Ch'eng-chou, of which Ch'ao seems to have been the administrator in the early 1120's, corresponds to the modern T'ung- ku hsien 同谷縣 in Kansu. Ch'ao's essay ─ the Ch'eng-chou hsin-hsiu ta-fan-ssu chi 《成州新修大梵寺記》─ may be found in the Sung-shan wen-chi, chüan 16, pp.39a~41a.

[94] Yen-tang Shan is located in Chekiang, about forty miles east of modern Lo-ch'ing hsien 樂清縣. It is the site of the Neng-jen p'i-chi ssu 能仁普濟寺, a major Ch'an center in Sung times. Ch'ao's remark would suggest that it was also one of the centers of the arhat cult that was widely associated with Ch'an at the time. Ku Shan is located about fifteen miles east of Min-hsien 閩縣, in Fukien. It is the site of the Yung-ch'üan ssu 湧泉寺, sometimes known as the Hua-yen ssu 華嚴寺, another important Ch'an center which was apparently also famous in Sung times as a site of the Arhat cult.

[95] Chu Pien's courage became in fact the stuff of legend, romantically elaborated in popular traditions of Chinese literature. There was, for example, at least one Ming drama ─ the Chu Pi en pieh kung-chu 《朱弁別公主》─ which told the imaginary tale of Chu Pien's platonic relationship with a Jurchen Princess who fell in love with him during his captivity, of his rejection of her entreaties to marry, and of his sad farewell to her when he returned to the South. This play does not survive intact but scenes and arias from it found their way into the traditions of art song practiced in southern Fukien and, more recently, in Taiwan. In fact, today one may even buy tape-recordings of these songs about "Chu Pien and the Princess" in Taipei music shops. See Piet van der Loon, The Classical Theatre and Art Song of South Fukien: A Study of Three Ming Anthologies (Taipei: SCM Publishing, 1992).

[96] What follows from this point is a summary and an interpretation of Chu Pien's T'ai-shan jui-ying chi《台山瑞應記》. The complete text of this essay and a complete annotated translation of it are appended to this article. The reader might wish to review these before proceeding.

[97] In an earlier publication ─ "Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t'ai Shan," p.116 ─ I had written that Chu Pien's essay was composed after his own pilgrimage to Wu-t'ai. It appears, however, that Chu did not himself witness the events he recounts in his essay; rather they were recounted to him back in Ta-t'ung. But this is not to say that chu never himself visited the Five Terraces. After all, Chu spent most of his captivity in Ta-t'ung, and Wu-t'ai is not very far from that city. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge that no explicit mention of any such personal visit is made in any of his surviving writings.

[98] The locus classicus of this theme is the recorded sayings of Ma Tsu Tao-i 馬祖道一 (709~788), the great patriarch of the Hung-chou 洪州 school of Ch'an ─ see Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義高, editor and translator, Baso no goroku〈馬祖の語錄〉 (Kyoto: Zen Bunka Kenkyūjo 《禪文化研究所》, 1984), pp. 32-34 ─ but it came to be a kind of motto widely invoked throughout Ch'an.

[99] This famous line comes originally from the recorded sayings of the Ch'an layman P'ang Yün 龐蘊 (d.808), a student of Ma Tsu ─ see Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義高, editor and translator, Hōkoji goroku《龐居士語錄》, Zen no goroku《禪の語錄》 7 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō 築摩書房, 1973), pp. 15~18.

[101] See Edward Said's insightful but unnecessarily obscurantist and tendentious work, Beginnings: Intention and Method (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1975).

[102] Recall the famous verse found, among many other places, at the end of the Diamond Sūtra (Chin-kang ching 《金剛經》 ):

[103] See Ch'ü-wei chiu-wen 《曲洧舊聞》, chūan 4─ T'sung-shu chi-cheng 叢書集成 edition, pp.27-28. The Ch'ü-wei chiu-wen was often reprinted and there are many other editions of it available today, including those in the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu, in Pao T'ing-po's 鮑庭博 (1728~1814) Chip -pu-tsu chai ts'ung-shu 《知不足齋叢書》 (which is itself available in several different editions), and in at least twelve other collectanea.

[104] This is a famous cliff located just west-northwest of the center of Wu-t'ai and a bit east-southeast of Fo-kuang ssu. A visit to Mi-mo yen was commonly included in the standard Wu-t'ai pilgrimage route ─ see Gimello, "Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t'ai Shan," pp.98, 100~110, 126 (note#16), and 136 (note#56).

[105] Yoshizu Yoshihide 吉津宜英, Kegon ichijō shisō no kenkyū 《華嚴一乘思想の研究》 (Tokyo: Daitō shuppansha 大東出版社, 1991), pp. 151~175.

[106] "Signs and wonders" is a free translation (indebted of course to the Bible ─ e.g. Deut 4:34 ＆ 26:8; Acts 2:43; et passim) of jui-ying 瑞應. Literally, a jui is a jade tablet of the sort given to a nobleman at the time of his investiture; it is the insignia of his rank and authority. By extension it came to mean simply "auspicious" or "of good omen," but the implications of political validation and reward were never completely lost. Ying in turn, denotes a motion of response or resonance to stimulus. It thus connotes the traditional Chinese conception of the cosmos, including both the natural and the human political orders, understood as a whole living organism. The cosmos so conceived is a comprehensive and dynamic pattern of inter-relation among all things and beings wherein any particular event is but a function of, but also a factor contributing to, the ceaseless rhythm of change that comprises the universe's vitality. Jui-ying are thus generally understood to be phenomena, usually strange or uncanny phenomena, which serve as "insignia" of Heaven's or the cosmos' favorable response to virtue. The "auspicious responses" characteristic of Wu-t'ai, of course, are the manifestations of Mañjuśrī─either appearances of the Bodhisattva himself or various atmospheric and photic phenomena that are thought to signal his presence. They too, like the jade tablets of old, can serve to confer and validate political authority, and it appears that just this is one of their chief roles in Chu Pien's record, viz., to signal "divine" approval of Lord Che. One must note, however, that in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism Mañjuśrī is understood as a being who transcends this world, not as a force intrinsic to it. His "responsiveness" ─ understood in traditional Buddhist terms as responsiveness more to the suffering and ignorance of sentient beings than to their virtue ─ is thus a kind of radical and miraculous intrusion of the otherworldly into this world. The use of a Chinese term like “ jui-ying” to label manifestations of Mañjuśrī thus bespeaks an interesting cloaescence of Buddhist transcendentalism with Chinese cosmological and ethical immanentism. It is also a typically Chinese conflation of the spiritual and the political.

[107] Chiang-tung 江東 (East of the Yangtze) is sometimes used as a generic designation of the southern or southeastern parts of the lower Yangtze basin, but in this case it is more likely to be an abbreviation of  Chiang-nan tung-lu 江南東路. As the latter, it refers specifically to one of the twenty-four "routes" (lu 路 ) into which Chinese territory was divided during the Northern Sung, specifically to the area corresponding to those parts of modern Kiangsu and Anhwei that are located south (actually, southeast) of the Yangtze. Of course, Chiang-tung encompasses Chu Pien's native county of Wu-yüan 婺源, in Anhwei. Chu Pien's use of the term "Chiang-tung" in identifying himself would no doubt have served as a reminder to his Chin hosts or captors that he was a man of the South, and thus of the Sung.

[108] Interestingly enough the term kuang-ching 光景, which I have here translated as "brilliant spectacles," has also two other related senses: it can mean "scenery" or "vista" and also, more generally, "conditions" or "circumstances. "It is not impossible that Chu Pien was mindful of this ploysemy and was exploiting it in order to intimate a certain ambiguity that pervades the entire piece. This ambiguity pertains to the implicit question of whether or not reports of preternatural visions on Wu-t'ai are to be taken literally or figuratively. Is it really Mañjuśrī and his signs which are seen, or is it simply the case that Mañjuśrī's image and the uncanny signs of his presence are the products of fervent religious imaginations, excited by the awe-inspiring but quite natural enviornment of the five terraced mountains, now made all the more numinous by billowing clouds of incense? After all, Wu-t'ai is a rather impressive "kuang-ching" in its own right, quite apart from any associations it may have with Mañjuśrī and his regalia. Perhaps Chu Pien is here suggesting that the Buddha' s mercy is conveyed as much in the glorious landscape as in any magical manifestation of a deity looming over that landscape. The use of the term "sheng-suo"勝所 in the next line, which means literally "superior places" and which I have translated as "sites of scenic grandeur," may be taken as yet another expression of such an intentional ambiguity.

[109] The phrase "she-fu'tung-i" 攝服同異─ which appears again, along with the preceding five characters, midway through the essay ─ is obviously crucial to the theme of the whole piece. It is all the more frustrating, then, that is should be so obscure. As a compound, "she-fu" is traceable back to the "Chi-hsi-li" 既夕禮 chapter of the I-li 儀禮 where it is used, in describing certain of the accoutrements of funeral carriages, to refer to the embellished fringe, trim, or hem of a garment. However, I can find no likely application of this or any other conceivable meaning of precisely these characters to the context at hand. I am therefore lead to the conclusion that the “she -fu” 攝服 found in all versions of the text must actually be read as "she-fu" 懾服, the former "she" being often used in place of the latter. The meaning of this alternative "she-fu"─ "to overcome by instilling fear" or "to awe into submission" ─ is quite apposite to our context. About the subsequent phrase "t'ung-i" I am somewhat less sure. My best guess takes "t'ung" to mean "the same" in the sense of "holding views like one's own," i.e. "the orthodox" or "the faithful." "I" I understand to mean "different," "separate," or "distinct, " in the sense of "holding different views, " i.e., "the heterodox" or "the unbelievers. " "T'ung" and "i" together I take to be the double object of the verb "she-fu." If my construal is correct, then the general point of the passage would seem to be that the compassionate deities of Buddhism work their wonders for the sake of those who are "t'ung" ("of the fold"), i.e., those like Lord Che who are already committed to Buddhism, and on behalf of those who are "i" ("of a different view") and so might otherwise doubt Buddhism. Such wonders serve, in other words, both to confirm the faith of the faithful and to convert the faithless. The context of the second occurrence of the phrase "she-fu" t'ung-i." (See note no.127, below) seems also to support this interpretation.

[110] The term "ching-chieh" 境界 has the general sense of "boundary" "circumstance," "condition," or "venue," but it also carries with it certain peculiarly Buddhist connotations with which Chu Pien was probably familiar. Buddhists used the compound to translate the Sanskrit terms "gocara" and "viṣaya." Literally these words mean "range," "sphere," or "domain. "However, their most common Buddhist usage was as more or less technical terms in certain philosophical theories of perception, wherein they meant "object" or "field" of perception. As it is a central tenet of nearly all Buddhist epistemology that perception is seldom fully objective, that it is usually distorted by a variety of subjective and other conditioning factors, so  ching-chieh  came to have the special sense of "phenomenal" (as opposed to "noumenal" ), or "apparent" (rather than "real"). I therefore take Chu Pien to be suggesting that mountains and other settings of natural wonder, though real and objective in the sense that they are empirically available (e.g., "visible to those with eyes, accessible to those with feet"), are nevertheless, despite their imposing grandeur, fundamentally illusory. Like all other objects of ordinary empirical experience they are finally insubstantial and evansecent, resembling mirages or feats of magic. Nevertheless, as illusions go, they are especially impressive. Thus are they quite appropriate instruments for the stupendous "magical" uses to which they are often put by such wonder-workers as the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas.

[It is worth noting that in an inscription Chu Pien wrote in 1143 celebrating the reconstruction of the P'u-en 普恩 or Shan-hua 善化 temple in Ta-t'ung, he uses phrasing very reminiscent of what we find here. Commenting on such pious activitites as the construction or repair of temples, he notes that, despite Bodhidharma's famous rebuke to Liang Wu-ti, these undertakings are meritorious becasue such edifices are "venues for the manifestation of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas" (以示現佛菩薩境界) and so can serve to "captivate the masses and lead them all to goodness" ( 誘接群生同歸於善 ). See Chang Chin-wu 張金吾 (1787~1829), Chin-wen-tsui 金文最, chüan 65 (ca.1822; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1990), Vol.2, p.948. ]

[111] At present I can offer only speculation as to the nature of the "illustrated books" to which Chu Pien here refers. They may have been cultic texts connected with the tradition in which founders of dynasties, or individual emperors upon their ascensions, were endowed with sacred maps or visual depictions of the world over which they were to rule. These may have been not "maps" so much as mystical cosmographs, possession of which was thought to confer special religio-political knowledge and power upon the emperor in his role as thearch. Such diagrams, consisting particularly of mountain images, may have been used in court rituals in which the emperor symbolically enacted or recalled grand processions ( 巡守 ) to T'ai-shan 泰山 and other of the five sacred peaks. Such ritual tours, and the solemn sacrifices prescribed for the emperors once they reached their sacred destinations, were supposed to mark the inception of a dynasty or the beginning of a reign. One possible archetype for such diagrams is the Wu-yüeh chen- hsing t'u 《五嶽真形圖》 (The Diagram of the True Forms of the Five Peaks) which, according to the Han Wu-ti nei chuan 《漢武帝內傳》 (The Secret Account of Emperor Wu of the Han) was given to Han Wu-ti by the goddess Hsi-wang-mu 西王母 (Queen- Mother of the West). Apropos of this, see Kristofer Martinus Schipper, L'emperor Wou des Han dans la légende taoiste, Publications de l'Éxtrême-Orient, Volume LVIII (Paris: École Francaise d'Extrême-Orient, 1965), pp.26~33, et passim. On the whole genre of Taoist sacred topography, to which this example belongs, see Judith Magee Boltz, "Taoist Literature," in Mircea Eliade, general editor, The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1987), pp.323~24. A problem with my conjecture is that such diagrams, at least as they are best known to us in the canonical literature of Taoism, are not the representational (albeit stylized) landscape-cartographies to which Chu Pien seems here to refer. Rather, as the term "chen-hsing" has come to imply, they are talismans (fu 符 ) ─ very abstract and schematic figurations believed to represent the subtle and quintessential forms, rather than the outward appearances, of the places they symbolize. See, for example, the rubbing of the Wu-yüeh chen-hsing t'u stele inscription reproduced in Kiyohiku Munakata, Sacred Mountains in Chinese Art (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), p.113. It may be, however, that the talismanic or Taoist variety of such t'u was not the only type, and Boltz in fact suggests that the talismanic versions of the chen-hsing t'u found in the Taoist texts of the Ling-pao canon are only "variations" on the originals. I imagine Chu Pien to be referring to something more like landscape woodcuts of the sort so commonly inserted into early Chinese printed books, e.g., as frontispieces to Buddhist scriptures. See, e.g., Max Loehr, Chinese Landscape Woodcuts from an Im perial Commentary to the Tenth-Century Printed Edition of the Buddhist Canon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968). See also the much latter woodcut depictions of Mts. T'ai, Hua, and T'ai-pai reproduced in Munakata, op. cit., pp.55-59.

[112] The "phrase kai lo-chi pao lun" 《蓋螺髻寶輪》 I take as a description of a kind of finial or pinncale often found atop pagodas and other Buddhist edifices. This architectural replica of a parasol (parasols being standard regalia of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas) often consists of a series of jewel-like discs of gradually decreasing diameter set one on top of another in the general pattern of a "conch-shaped chignon" lo-chi. That Mount T'ien-t'ai is mentioned here along with Wu-t'ai should not be surprising if one has remembered Chu Pien's affiliations, through his parton Ch'ao Yüeh-chih, with the T'ien-t'ai school.

[113] I can find no other reference to this particular person. However, the family to which he surely belonged is not unknown. Various historical sources on the Sung and Chin dynasties have a fair amount to say about other members of a Che 折 clan that hailed from Yün-chung 雲中. See, for example, Sung-shih《宋史》253: 8861~8868; Sung-shih hsin-pien 《宋史新編》 67:5b~6a; Chin-shih《金史》3:60, 6:124, 72:165 2, 77:1760 ＆ 1764, 81:1827, 128: 2761; and Sung-shih chi-shih 《宋詩紀事》 46:1166~1167. "Yün-chung" is another name for the city later more commonly known as Ta-t'ung. It was there that Chu Pien seems to have spent much of his captivity. The Che's, the dominant military clan of Yün-chung in the early tenth century, rose to prominence under the Chin and Han regimes of the Five Dynasties period (i. e. during the years 937~950) as Che Ts'ung-yüan 從阮 (d. u. ) and his son Te-i 德扆 (917-64 ) were appointed by the rulers of those regimes to defend their realms against the barbarians beyond their northern and western borders. When Chao K'uang-yin 趙匡胤 moved to establish the Sung, Che Te-i switched allegiance to the new dynasty, fought very effectively on its behalf, and thereby won imperial favor on the basis of which his progeny would develop a strong regional power base. For the next century and a half the Che's served the Sung as northern border guards. They operated chiefly in the areas of Lin-chou 麟州 , Feng-chou 豐州, and Fu-chou 府州. Corresponding to the extreme northwest of today's Shensi porvince, in eleventh and early twelfth centuries these districts comprised a spur of Sung territory wedged between the eastern border of the Hsi-hsia and southwestern border of the Liao. If follows then that the Che's were responsible especially to contain or fend off encroachments from the Tanguts and the Khitans. After the Chin conquest of the north, some of the Che's apparently came over into their service, performing for the Jurchens a role rather like that they had played on behalf of the Sung. As the three aforementioned districts are located only about one hundred and fifty miles west of Wu-t'ai and, more importantly still, as Yün-chung itself is located less than one hundred miles northwest thereof, it is not surprising that the Che family should have developed a special association with our sacred Buddhist site. Of course the secular histories say nothing of their Buddhist affiliations, but Chu Pien's later reference to their history of generous support of Wu-t'ai is at least plausible. Although we can find no independent reference specifically to Chu Pien's interlocutor, Che Yen-wen 彥文 , it is noteworthy that the Che family seems to have followed the practice of giving all sons of each generation personal names containing the same first character. We do find reference in the sources noted above to a Che Yen-chih 彥鳥質 (d.u.), son of K'o-shih 可適 (1040~1110). He was a literatus of some distinction who, having apparently fled to the south or been left there at the time of the Chin conquest, went on to become a Southern Sung official. Is it possible then that Yen-wen, who had apparently remained in the North, was a brother of this Yen-chih? Such a conjecture may be the closest we can come to an identification of the man. As for the title "Hou" 侯 by which Chu Pien here refers to Governor Che, I have taken it as a generic form of polite address, not as an actual noble rank, and thus have translated it as "Lord" rather than "Marquis. "

[114] During the Sung and Chin, Shih-chun 史君 were frontier military governors, successors after a fashion to the Chieh-tu-shih 節土使 of the late T'ang and Five Dynasties period but less independent of central authority.

[115] "Yen-men" 雁門 (Gate of the Wild Geese) is the name of a mountain pass located just northwest of Tai-chou 代州 (modern Tai-hsien), the scene of many famous battles. Tai-chou, in turn, was a frontier town, until the mid-1120's the major Chinese city nearest to the Liao (later the Chin) "Western Capital" of Yün-chung or Ta-t'ung. It was located only about thirty-five miles northwest of the center of the Wu-t'ai complex. It appears that throughout the Northern Sung and the Chin either Tai-chou or nearby Yün-chung was the administrative center from which the territory that includes Wu-t'ai was governed.

[116] Literally the phrase "ch'ih-tzu" 赤子 means "babes" or "children," but it was sometimes used, in the paternalistic spirit typical of Chinese politics, to refer to "the common people under one's charge," and it was especially so used when "the people" were misbehaving and in need of discipline.

[117] This flowery phrase indicates that the mission of pacification that Che led was an "official" undertaking, i.e., that he was acting with the authority of office.

[118] In traditional Buddhist iconography Mañjuśrī is most commonly depicted as seated upon a lion. Usually, this animal is called by its common name, "shih-tzu" 獅子 or 師子. The term "suan-ni" 狻猊 is used when one wants to make it clear that the reference is to no ordinary lion but to a mythical beast of lion-like appearance. The term "lion's throne" is probably used here as a syncedoche for Mañjuśrī himself or some image of him.

[119] The phrase "wu-hsiao wu-ta" 無小無大 may mean "without regard to the number, (large or small) of persons reporting each particular kind of sighting" or "without respect to the size of the phenomena. "Another possibility is that it means "without underestimation or exaggeration."

[120] These- especially the five-colored clouds ─ are the visions most commonly reported by pilgrims to Wu-t'ai. For example, all five kinds of visions mentioned here, with the one exception of the strange black cloud, are mentioned frequently in Chang Shang-ying's pilgrimage record ─ see Gimello, "Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t'ai Shan. "An orb of light, perhaps like the one here mentioned, is prominently featured in a painting of Mañjuśrī at Wu-t'ai kept in the Musée Guimet in Paris (EO 3588); it is reproduced in Richard Schneider, "Une moine indien au Wou-t'ai chan; relation d'un pèlerinage," Cahiers d'Extrême-A sie 3 (1987), following p.40.

[121] As there was said to be seven sightings of a five-hued cloud one would expect an enumeraion of seven different varieties thereof, but only six varieties are given.

[122] Some versions of the text have "jui-yen" 瑞嚴, but the reading "tuan-yen" 端嚴─ found in the Wan-wei pieh-tsang edition, among others ─ is preferable.

[123] Again, there is one fewer variety of white cloud than there were sightings of the same.

[124] The term "po-kung" 百工, which I have freely translated as "mere functionary," has the sense of "ordinary workman," or "laborer. "By its use Che Yen-wen was humbly identifying himself as someone quite lacking in the special verbal and literary talents that description of so extraordinary a phenomenon would require. Thus he must ask a master wordsmith like Chu Pien to undertake the task for him. Note also that the Wan-wei pieh-ts'ang edition uses the word "fu" 伏 in this passage, but other editions give "chuang" 狀. It is the latter reading which I follow, rendering it as "to relate."

[125] "Fang-pien" 方便 renders the Sanskrit term "upāya," which means "expedient device" or "practical instrumentality. "It has connotations of illusion, albeit saving illusion, in the sense that Buddhas and Bodhisattvas frequently teach doctrines, tell parables, conjure up visions, project images, etc. ─ none of which is literally true or real in the ultimate sense of truth or reality but all of which, despite their actually fictive status, have real salvific efficacy. The notion of "fang-pien" is itself a versatile conceptual "instrument" that Buddhists have often used to find value in things they cannot literally credit. Thus, when Chu Pien characterizes Che Yen-wen's visions as "fang-pien," he is actually making a subtly ambiguous claim. On the one hand, he is suggesting that those visions are illusory insofar as they have no independent or substantive ontological status. On the other hand, he is at the same time also suggesting that they are quite real insofar as they are truly effected by Mañjuśrī and truly efficactous in inspiring those who witness them. Of course, the seeming philosophical duplicity of the notion of fang-pien is warranted in Buddhism by the underlying premise that, if the whole world is "like a mirage," then even those sorts of experience which we would normally credit as “real” are also illusory or mirage-like. For the Buddhist, then, the sight of Wu-t'ai Shan, for all its grandeur, is in fact no more nor any less veridical than the sight of Mañjuśrī hovering above Wu-t'ai Shan. On this point see also the remarks on the term "ching-chieh" in note no. 110, and those on the terms "kuang-ching" and "sheng-suo" in note no.108.

[126] Sudatta (abbreviated and translated in Chinese as Hsü-ta 須達) is the personal name of the wealthy banker from the city of Śrāvastī (Chinese: She-wei kuo 舍衛國 ) who was recognized from earliest Buddhist times as the most generous of all the Buddha's many patrons. He is better knowen by his honorary epithet, Anāthapiṇḍada (Pali: Anāthapiṇḍika), which means "He who Gives Alms to the Destitute. "The most famous of his many acts of generosity was his very costly purchase of the Jetavana (Ch'i-t'o-yüan 祇陀園, or Shih-tuo-lin 逝多林, i.e., "Prince Jetri's Grove") , a park located on the outskirts of Śrāvastī, and his construction there of an saṃghārāma or vihāra (Chinese: seng-ch'i eh-lan-mo 僧伽藍磨 or ching-she 精舍, i.e. a residence or retreat for wandering ascetics). These he donated to Śākyamuni and they became one of the most common settings for the Buddha's discourses, both in the early and the Mahāyāna canons. As the archetypal lay parton (dānapati; Chinese: t'an-yüeh 檀越 ) of the Buddhist order, Sudatta is mentioned countless times in Buddhist literature, but I have not yet found the source of the particular tale to which Chu Pien here refers.

[127] Here is the second occurrence of the phrase dealt with in note no.109, above.

[128] Ming-ch'ung 明崇, also known as Shen-hsing Ta-te 勝行大德 was a Prefect of Monks (Seng-cheng 僧正 ) at Tai-chou. To my knowledge no biographical information about him has been preserved. However, he compiled several "supplementary memoirs" ( 續遺 ) which were appended to the end of Yen-i's Expanded Records of Ch  ing-liang─ see T2099:51. 1125c~1127a. The term "Shang-shou" ( 上首 ) I have translated as "Head Monk," but it was probably less the title of a specific monastic office or rank than a form of polite and respectful reference, like "Most Reverend" or "Monsignor."

[129] Apropos of the Governor's forebears, see note no.111, above. If the speculations outlined in that note are correct, then the fourth generation prior to Che Yen-wen's own, ie., the "kao" 高 generaton of his great-great grandfather, would have been that of Che Chi-min 繼閔 (d.1050). The third previous generation, i.e., the "ts'eng" 曾 generation of his great grandfather, would have been that of Che K'o-hsing 克行 (d.1108). As we have seen, both of these ancestors were especially known for military exploits sufficiently remarkable to have earned them biographies in the Sung dynasic history.

[130] Chu Pien's clear implication is that whereas miracles are usually granted only to those weak or lacking in faith, serving in such cases as means by which their ignorance or doubt may be overwhelmed, the miracles witnessed by Marquis Che, and by Suddatta, were granted for quite different reasons. Marquis Che, like his forebears for generations, was apparently a famous benefactor of Buddhism, said to be comparable even to the archetype of all dānapati, Sudatta. Thus his vision, like Sudatta's miracle, should be understood as a blessing merited by piety and not, as it would have been for most others, a means by which piety might be induced. However, that such a blessing should be publicly conferred on one so eminent could easily prove inspiring to others of little or no faith. Thus, a vision granted chiefly as a reward to a confirmed believer (t'ung 同 ) could also have had the secondary effect of inspiring unbelievers (i 異 ) as well.

[131] This, of course, is the very work to which the present essay by Chu Pien owes its preservation, for Chu's record has survived only as an appendix to Chang Shang-ying's. For a discussion of Chang Shang-ying's pilgrimages to Wu-t'ai, and a translation of the record of them, see Gimello, "Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t'ai Shan."

[132] "Those who have had such mystical ecstasies" is a free rendering of erh wei ch'an-yüeh che 而味禪悅者, literally "those who have 'tasted the joys of meditation'. "This is surely a reference to the notion of "tasting the delicacies of trance"( *dhyānarasāsvadāna) a locus classicus of which is the second or "Fang-pien" chapter of the Vimalakîrtinirdésa 《維摩詰所說經》 (T475:14. 539a22) wherein it is said of the layman-Bodhisattva Vimalakīrti that "although he appears to partake of common food and drink, it is actually the delights of meditation on which he dines. "In fact, despite its affirmative use in the Vimalakîrti, this term usually has a rather negative connotation, and it is this which probably accounts for Chu Pien's mentioning that some consider "tasting the joys of meditation" to be a kind of sickness. The ecstasies and transports available in meditation are commonly regarded, especially in Mahāyāna, as potentially dangerous and delusory. Practitioners of the "lesser vehicle" of Buddhism are often said to have grown addicted to them, to have gotten permanenly "high" on them, so to speak, whereas the practitioners of the "greater vehicle" are said to be immune to such addiction or intoxication. That Chu Pien should use this term, and that he should note its possible connection with "sickness," indicates that he is mindful of the traditional Mahāyāna association between visionary experience and irresponsible indulgence in ecstasy. On the strength of that association, Chang Shang-ying would have been vulnerable to criticism as one who had allowed himself to be inebriated by powerful delusions; indeed, Chang himself expressed concern over such a possibility (see Gimello, "Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t'ai Shan, "particularly pp.118~123.) Thus we see in this, as in other of Chu Pien's artful locutions, a play on the ambiguous character of visions, which can be seen from one perspective as illusory while from another they can be judged to be quite genuine and transformative.

[133] The meaning of this somewhat obscure passage hangs upon the phrase "shih-shen-shin wu-shih pu-k'o" 以是身心無適不可. I take it to mean, literally, "if this body and mind had not coincided, it would have been impossible." Chu Pien seems to be suggesting, in other words, that only Chang Shang-ying could possibly have succeeded in his bold and generous purpose of awakening faith by proclaiming miracles. No one else reporting such miracles would have had sufficient stature and credibility, among the general populace and the clergy alike, to have elicited such widespread belief.

[134] "Wai-hu" 外護─ literally "outside defender," i.e., a defender of the Dharma who is not himself a monk and so assists the Saṃgha from "outside" its own ranks.

[135] "I wu-chin chih hsin wei hsin" 以無盡之心為心: literally, "taking Wu-chin's mind as [his own] mind."

[136] I take 芬 in the sense of 紛, the two characters being in fact common substitutes for each other.

[137] Both Chang Shang-Ying and Che Yen-wen had come to Wu-t'ai on official business, yet neither one allowed his worldly eminence, his preoccupation with worldly affairs, or the mundane purpose of his visit to blind him to the religious significance of th place.

[138] My translation of this last sentence is both free and somewhat speculative.

[139] Chen Yangjiong 陳揚炯 and Feng Qiaoying 馮巧英, the editors of the newest edition of the Wu-t'ai trilogy (See Gu quingliang zhuan, Guang quingliang zhuan, Xu quingliang zhuan 《古清涼傳》, 《廣清涼傳》,《續清涼傳》 (Taiyuan 太原: Shanxi renmin chubanshe 山西人民出版社, 1989), pp.114~115., have suggested that Chu Pien's hesitation implies some disparagement (p'o-yu wei-tzu 頗有微詞 ) of the sort of religiosity associated with the visionary experiences here described. In addition to his initial reluctance to record Marquis Che's tale, they also cite Chu Pien's reference (above) to ecstatic experience seen as a kind of "sickness" and his observation that Chang Shang-ying had set forth his account "for the masses. "All these points they then offer as evidence for the view that Chu Pien himself did not take any of this seriously and that, in his view, Chang Shang-ying had merely been playing upon the credulity of the masses for purposes of religious proselytizing. They argue further that the later Buddhist editors of the Wu-t'ai texts ignored or misunderstood all this and appended Chu Pien's essay simply for the purpose of lending to the cult of Wu-t'ai the luster of his fame (in this latter connection, by the way, they quite mistakenly suggest that Chu Pien would have been more famous than Chang Shang- ying; in fact, the opposite is true). I would maintain, however, that none of these conclu-sions is warranted by the text itself or by what we otherwise know of its author. Chu Pien did, after all, go on to write his essay, despite his initial (and altogether rhetorical) hesitation. Moreover, the question of whether or not ecstatic experience is sickness is an issue internal to Buddhism (particularly the then dominant Ch'an confession), not an implied criticism of Buddhism. Finally, Chang Shang-ying's decision to address a broad popular audience is better understood as an impulse of charity and faith (indeed, this is just what Chu Pien calls it!) than as an exercise in condescension. I believe that Chen's and Feng's judgments on this matter, their suggestions that Chu Pien's stance as an author is one of disdain and irony, are really quite arbitrary and derive especially from their a priori classification of Chu Pien as a "Neo-Confucian" (They call him a "li-shüeh chia" 理學家). They have prejudged this great uncle of Chu Hsi to have been the sort of rationalist intellectual who could not possibly have credited such weird religious experiences. But this man who called himself by the Buddhist nickname "Kuan-ju chü-shih" 觀如居士 and who indicated in other writings a sincere respect for Buddhism, was surely no rationalist Neo-Confucian!

[140] I have found no other mention of a monk named Ching-hui 精惠. "Seng-cheng" 僧正 is a title given to the person, usually an eminent monk, appointed to oversee the Samgha on behalf of the civil administration. Such a person was thus both a "lord spiritual" and a "lord temporal."

[141] Unlike Che Yen-wen, Che K'o-chih 可直 is specifically mentioned the historical record of the period, as are several other members of this same generation of the Che family ─ e.g., Che K'o-shih 可適 (1040~1110), Che K'o-pao 可褒 (d.u.), and Che K'o-ts' un 可存 (1096~1126). He and these others were probably all of the generation immediately preceding Yen-wen's own, i.e., his father's generation, and all, again, were famous as military commanders.

[142] That is, on July 19, 1141. "Huang-t'ung" 皇統 was a Chin reign era lasting from 1141 through 1148.

[143] This translation is based on the 1977 Beijing (Zhonghua shuju 中華書局 ) edition of the Sung-shih ─ chüan 373, lieh-chuan 132, pp.11551-11553. It should be noted that the Sung-shih biography is but a condensation of the earliest and most extensive biography of Chu Pien, the one on which all later biographies depend ─ viz., that written by Chu Hsi, the subject's own nephew two generations removed. This ear-liest surviving biography ─ the Feng-shih chih-pi-ko chu-kung hsing-chuang 奉使直祕閣朱公行狀─ is preserved in in chüan 98 of Chu Hsi's Wen-chi, the Hui-an hsien-sheng chu wen-kung wen-chi 《晦庵先生朱文公文集》.

The preferred edition of Chu Hsi's Wen-chi is the 1532 (嘉靖十一) xylograph available in the Ssu-pu ts'ung-k'an 《四部叢刊》. Note, however, that an exact copy of the 1532 edition was published in Kyoto in 1711, and a two-volume reduced-size photoreprint of the 1711 Japanese copy was published in 1977 by Kyoto's Chūbun shuppansha 中文出版社. This 1977 edition includes a very useful index compiled by Okada Takehiko 岡田武彥 and Satō Hitoshi 佐藤仁. In 1985, the Taipei publisher, Ta-hua ch'u-pan-she 大化出版社, published a photoreprint of this 1977 Kyoto indexed edition. In the 1977 and 1985 reprints, the Chu Pien Hsing-chuang may be found in volume II, pp.1748- 1750 (original pages: 6981~6991).

Whereas the Sung-shih biography must be dated to about 1345, the date of the Sung-shih's completion, Chu Hsi's Hsing-chuang dates from the late twelfth century, i.e., from only decades after Chu Pien's death. Chu Hsi's Wen-chi also contains, in chüan 83, a colophon (pa 跋), dated 1191, to what appears to be a collection of Chu Pien' s memorials. In chün 87, a sacrifical eulogy (chi-wen 祭文) which Chu Hsi composed in 1194. There are also several passing references to Chu Pien in other of Chu Hsi's occasional writings scattered throughout the Wen-chi; these may be found with the aid of the Okada and Satō index.

[To clarify the family relationship that led Chu Hsi to compose these works it may be noted that Chu Hsi's father, Chu Sung 松─ who died in 1143, the very year in which Chu Pien returned from Chin ─ was the eldest son of Chu Pien's third younger brother, Chu Shen 森. Chu Hsi himself (b.1130) was fourteen years old at the time of Chu Pien's death. The great philosopher never met his famous kinsman but he did visit his grave, once when he was twenty years old (i.e., in 1149) and again in 1183.]

In addition to Chu Hsi's Hsing-chuang and the Sung-shih biography, the following works also contain information regarding Chu Pien's life:

Wang Ming-ch'ing 王明清 (127~1214 ＋ ), Hui-chu san-lu 《揮塵三錄》, san-lu 《三錄》, chüan 3 (ca.1195; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1961), p.253.

Ch'ao Ch'ung-chih 晁沖之 (d.u.), Chü-t'u hsien-sheng chi 《具茨先生集》, chüan 12 (Taipei: Hsin-Wen-feng ch'u-pan-kung-ssu 新文豐出版公司 [Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng, hsin-pien 叢書集成。新編 ], -1986], vol. 70, pp, 612~615).

Liu Cheng 留正, et al., Huang-sung chung-hsing liang-ch'ao sheng-cheng 《皇宋中興兩朝聖政》, cḧan 1, 2, ＆ 3 (ca.1200; Taipei: Wen-hai ch'u-pan-she 文海出版社,, 1970), pp.395, 420, 464, and 508.

Li Hsin-ch'uan 李心傳 (1166~1243), Chien-yen i-lai hsi-nien yao-lu 《建炎以來繫年要錄》, chüan 5 ＆ 15 (ca.1240; Taipei: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan 商務印書館 [Basic Sinological Series 國學基本叢書 ], 1959), Vol.1, p.125~127 ＆ Vol.2, p.323.

Chu Hsi 朱熹 and Li Yu-wu 李幼武, Sung ming-ch'en yen-hsing-lu wu-chi 《宋名臣言行錄五集》, hsü-chi 《續集》, chüan 5 (ca.1250; Taipei: Wen-hai ch'u-pan she 文海出版社, 1967), pp.925~931.

Yüan Hao-wen 元好問 (1190~1257), Chung-chou chi 《中州集》, chüan 10 (ca.1250; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1962), Vol.2, pp.514-524.

T'o T'o 脫脫 (1313~1355), et al., Chin-shih 《金史》, chüan 4, 60, ＆ 79 (1345; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1975), pp.79, 1402, ＆ 1793~1794.

Li Hsien 李賢 (1408~1467), et al., Ta-ming i-t'ung chih 《大明一統志》, chüan 21, p.20. This work was first published in 1461. See the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu chen-pen edition, series 7, volume 89.

K'o Wei-chi 柯維騏 (1497~1574), Sung-shih hsi n-pien 《宋史新編》, chüan 135.2a~b (ca.1554; Taipei: Wen-hai ch'u-pan-she 文海出版社, 1974).

Wang Chu 王洙 (cs.1521), Sung-shih chih 《宋史質》, chüan 49, shen 申 4(1546; Taipei: Ta-hua shu-chü 大化書局, 1977), pp. 295-296.

Ch'ien Shih-sheng 錢升士 (1575~1652), Nan-Sung shu 《南宋書》, chüan 29, p.9. (1797 private edition; available in the library of National Taiwan University, Taipei).

Li E 厲鶚 (1692~1752) and Ma Yüeh-kuan 馬曰琯 (1688~1755), eds., Sung-shih chi-shih 《宋詩紀事》, chüan 43 (1746; Shanghai: Shanghai gujie chubanshe 上海古籍出版社 , 1983), Vol.2, pp.1087~1091.

Huang Tsung-hsi 黃宗羲 (1610~1695) and Ch'üan Tsu-wang 全祖望 (1705~1755), Sung Yüan hsüeh-an 《宋元學案》, chüan 22 (ca.1754; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1987), pp.898~900.

Pi Yüan 畢沅 (1730~1797), Huṥ tzu-chih t'ung-chien 《續資治通鑑》, chüan 98 ＆ 100(ca.1797; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1967), Vol.6, pp.2580 ＆ 2637.

P'eng Chia-kuei 彭家桂, et al., eds., Wu-yüan-hsien chih 《婺源縣志》, chüan 17, Chung-kuo fang-chih ts'ung-shu 《中國方志叢書》, no.677(1755~1857: Taipei: Ch'eng-wen ch'u-pan-she 成文出版社, 1976), pp.1180~1181. [Note: later editions of this gazetteer ─ completed in 1787, 1826 and 1882 (Chung-kuo fang-chih ts'ung-shu, nos.678, 679, ＆ 679) contain the very same biography. However, the earlist Wu-yüan hsien gazetter, published in 1693 by Chiang Ts'an 蔣燦, et al. (Chung-kuo fang-chih ts'ung-shu, no.676) does not.]

Wu Fu-hung 吳輔宏, et al. Ta-t'ung-fu ch ih 《大通府志》 , chüan 33, pp.36a~b [This gazetteer, published in 1776~1782, is rather rare, but copies of it may be found in Taipei, in the libraries of the National Palace Museum and the Institute for Philology and History of the Academia Sinica 中央研究院。歷史語言研究所].

Chuang Chung-fang 莊仲方, Nan-Sung wen-fan tso-che k'ao 《南宋文範作者考》, chuan 1, p.16b (privately published in 1836; recently reprinted in the series Kuo-hsüeh ming-chu chen-pen hui-k'an 《國學名著珍本彙刊》, edited by Yang Chai-lo 楊家駱 [Taipei: Ting-wen shu-chü 鼎文書局, n.d.).

Li Yu-t'ang 李有棠 (b.1840), Chin-shih chi-shih pen-mo 《金史紀事本末》, chüan 7 (1893; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1980), Vol.1, pp.151 ＆ 167~168.

Wang Tzu-ts'ai 王梓材 and Feng Yün-hao 馮雲濠, Sung Yüan hsüeh-an pu-i 《宋元學案補遺》, chüan 22, p.43a~b(1848; Taipei: Shih-chieh shu-chü 世界書局, 1962), Vol.3.

Ting Ch'uan-ching 丁傳靖 (1870~1930), Sung-jen chi-shih hui-pien 《宋人軼事彙編》, chüan 14 ＆16 (Taipei: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan 商務印書館, 1966), pp.704 ＆ 782.

[144] Wu-yüan 婺源 corresponds to the modern county (hsien 縣) of that name, in Anhwei.

[145] Ch'ao Yueh-chih 晁說之 (1059~1129; chin-shih 進士︰1082, tzu 字: I-tao 以道, Po-i 伯以, and Chi-tzu 季此, hao 號: Ching-yü 景迂─ a student of Ssu-ma Kuang 司馬光 and also of one of Shao Yung's 郡雍 disciples, but later in life also a devotee of T'ien-t'ai Buddhism ─ was a member of a well known official, literary, and intellectual lineage. That family was established early in the Sung by Yueh-chih's great-great- great-great grandfather, Ch'ao Chiung 晁迥 (951~1034), a leading literatus, statesman, and Buddhist layman of his day. Yüeh- chih's contemporary, the great literatus Ch'ao Pu-chih 晁補之 (1053~1110; chin-shih, 1079), was also a relative, and we can note that one of Chu Pien's partly surviving works, the Hsü wei-pei shuo 《續骫骳說》 is a continuation of Ch'ao Pu-chih's inextant Wei-pei shuo 《骫骳說》. Both Yüeh-chih and Pu-chih were intimates of such "Wen-hsüeh" 文學 luminaries as Su Shih 蘇軾, Huang T'ing-chien 黃庭堅, Li Kung-lin 李公麟, etc. ─ all of whom were, in one degree or another, proponents of Buddhism; on this see my article "Mārga and Culture: Learning, Letters, and Liberation in Northern Sung Ch'an," in Robert E.Buswell, Jr. and Robert M.Gimello, eds., Paths to li beration The Mārga and Its Trans formations in Buddhist Thought, Studies in East Asian Buddhism 7 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press and Kuroda Institute, 1992), pp.371-437. As a student of Ch'ao Yüeh-chih, Chu Pien may be located intellectually within that same orbit. Such associations, in turn, may help account for Chu Pien's own reverent disposition toward Buddhism, symbolized by, among other things, his taking the Buddhist sobriquet Kuan-ju chü-shih 觀如居士 (Layman Who Contemplates Suchness). Pien's later kinsman Chu Hsi may well have regretted his great-uncle's Buddhist leanings, but for whatever reasons ─ perhaps embarrassment ─ he chose largely to ignore that side of Pien's life in the biography he wrote. As Chu Hsi' s was the account upon which all later biographies of Chu Pien are based, Chu Pien's Buddhist sympathies are largely ignored in the subsequent biographical tradition as well. However, the later orthodoxy that was derived from Chu Hsi was not so loath to pontificate on such things. Thus do we find, for example, the Ch'ing compilers of the Sung-Yüan hsüeh-an 《宋元學案》, chüan 23; (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1984] p. 861) noting the fact that late in life, despite his distinction as a Confucian scholar, Ch'ao Yueh-chih "regrettably" (hsi 惜) turned to the Buddhist faith, going so far even as to refer to himself by such Buddhist nicknames as "Old Dharma-Flower" "Lao fa-hua 老法華) and "T'ien-t'ai Scholar-Monk" (T'ien-t'ai chiao-seng 天台教僧). It is perhaps not so surprising, then, that the student of such a man should also prove to be sympathetic to Buddhism, even a believer.

[146] Encompassing much of the area between Pien 汴 (i.e., Kaifeng) and Lo 洛 (i.e., the ancient and storied capital of Loyang), Hsin-cheng 新鄭 corresponds roughly to the modern county of the same name in Honan. It was a region rich in historical and personal associations for Chu Pien. No wonder, then, that he should later celebrate it (under the alternative name Ch'ü-wei) by committing to writing a delightful selection of anecdotes remembred from his earlier life among the various members of the Ch'ao clan. This collection, to which he gave the nostalgic title Ch'ü-wei chiu-wen 《曲洧舊聞》 (Ancient Lore of Ch'ü-wei), survives in several editions as one of Chu Pien' s best known works (see note no. 205, below). Interestingly enough, as noted above, it includes several anecdotes concerning Wu-t'ai Shan (in chüan 4), including one in which Chu Pien reports his own vision of a mysterious orb of light.

[147] The lore here mentioned is the substance of Chu Pien's best known literary work, i.e., the Ch'ü-wei chiu-wen, mentioned in the immediately preceding note and in note no.205, below. Much that is found in that text derives from, or relates to, the distinguished Ch'ao family, to which Chu Pien was related, as we have seen, both by marriage and by intellectual discipleship. The Ch'ao's, in other words, were surely foremost among the "old families" (ku-chia 古家) here mentioned.

[148] This is a conventional euphemism for the 1126 Chin conquest of Kaifeng and the rest of northern China, the debacle that forced the Sung to flee to the south.

[149] At the end of his Hsing-chuang Chu Hsi notes that Chu Pien's wife, Ch'ao Liu 晁琉 and his son, Cheng-lao 鄭老 , had been killed during the Chin assaults on Kaifeng and its environs, that he later married the younger sister of his fellow ambassador Wang Lun, and that this second wife bore him another son, named Yung 永. Yung, in turn, fathered Chu Pien's grandson, Hsun 勳. When Hsun was serving as an official in Ch'ung-jen hsien 崇仁縣, Fu-chou 撫州 (i.e., the modern county of the same name in Kiangsi) he took a loal woman named Wang 王 as a concubine and she bore a son named Wang Ping 王炳. It was Wang Ping who wrote the account of Chu Pien's life which Chu Hsi used as the basis for his Hsing-chuang.

[151] This is a reference to the officially reigning Emperor Ch'in-tsung 欽宗 (r.1125~1126) and his father, the recently abdicated previous emperor Hui-tsung 徽宗 (r.1100~1125), both of whom were captured by the Chin and died in Chin captivity (Hui-tsung in 1137, Ch'in-tsung in 1157).

[152] "Hsiu-wu lang" 修武郎 (literally: Gentleman Who Cultivates Militancy) was the designation of someone appointed to serve in the Hsiu-wu an 修武案, the Section for the Cultivation of Militancy, which was a unit of the Ministry of Personnel (Li-pu 吏部) charged to oversee the process of military appointment. See Charles O.Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 40-52 and 249. Chu Pien's appointment to this office is noted, in the Sung hui-yao chi-kao 《宋會要輯稿》, ts'e 冊 90 (Hsin-wen-feng 新文豐 edition, p.3527a) as having been made on ninth day of the fifth month (June 20) of 1127.

[153] There were two districts of this name during the period in question. One was in Kiangsi (Lu-ling tao 盧陵道, i.e., the modern Chi-an hsien 吉安縣 ); the other in northern Shansi (Ho-tung tao 河東道, i.e., the modern Chi-hsien 吉縣 ). If the reference here were to the latter it would imply that the Sung were proclaiming the fiction that northern China was still their territory.

[154] "T'ung-wen fu-shih" 通問副使─ this title implies, and the biography later bears out, that Chu Pien was a subordinate member of this delegation, not its chief.

[156] Wan-yen Nien-han 完顏粘罕 (a.k. a Tsung-han 宗朝, d.1137) was one of the two leading Jurchen marshalls of the time. As a younger cousin of A-ku-ta 阿骨打 (a.k.a, T'ai-tsu 太祖, r.1115-1123), the Chin founder, he ranked very high in the Jurchen aristocracy but favored a weaker central govermment so that he might function as a virtually independent warlord. He was known for, among other things, his opposition to those members of the Chin élite who favored institutional sinicization. See Jing-shen Tao, T he Jurchen in Twelfth Century China: A Study in Sinicization (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1976), pp.34, 39, and 41; also Hok-lam Chan, Legitimation in Imperial China: Discu ssions under the Jurchen-Chin Dynasty (1115-1234) (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1984), pp.58-63.

[157] Yü-wen Hsü-chung 宇文虛中 (1079~1146) was an earlier Sung ambassador to the Chin who had been deputed to enlist Chin aid in the Sung's struggles with the Liao. However, in 1126, when the Chin moved decisively against the Sung, they chose to keep him captive. During his captivity he was employed as a family tutor by the Chin general, Hsi-yin 希尹, in which capacity he served as an early influence for sinicization among the Chin élite. Nevertheless, he remained ultimately loyal to the Sung, even serving at times as a kind of Sung spy and managing to get secret (invisible ink!) messages about Chin plans back to the Sung commanders. Despite the esteem in which he was long held by the Chin, he eventually fell afoul of them. They burnt him and his whole family at the stake in 1146. See, interalia, Sung-shih《宋史》371, Chin-shih《金史》79, and Chien-yen i-lai hsi-nien yao-lu《建炎以來繫年要錄》78. Yüan Hao-wen's 元好問 Chung-chou chi《中州集》 1(1962 Beijing ed., p.5), preserves a poem Yü-wen once wrote to matching the rhyme of a poem he had received from Chu Pien in return for the gift of Yü-wen's hand-copy of the Diamond Sūtra. On the early negotiations between the Sung and the Jurchen in which Yü-wen was sent north to participate and in which the possibility of a joint attacks on the Liao was discussed, see Dagmar Thiele, Der Abschluss eines Vertrages Diplomatie zwischen Sung-und-Chin-Dynastie 1117~1123, Münchener Ostasiatische Studien, Band 6 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1971).

[158] I assume this means that Yü-wen Hsu -chung had been sent from the imperial Chin court (in Yen-ching, or was it Ta-t'ung?) to Nien-han's field-command headquarters.

[159] Chu Pien here seems to support a policy of peaceful accommodation with the Chin, but only on the condition that Sung primacy be recognized. Later, after his return to the Sung, his loyalty to the Sung would take the dangerous form of outspoken opposition to Ch'in Kuei's policies of appeasement. See, below, his formal address to Emperor Kao-tsung. The "two sovereigns" in question are, of course, Hui-tsung 徽宗 and Ch'in-tsung 欽宗.

[160] I assume that the seal Chu Pien had in mind was the official seal of ambassadorial office that Wang Lun had in his possession by virtue of his rank as Chief of Mission. The transfer of the seal to Chu Pien, that he might keep it during Wang Lun' s absence, meant in effect that Chu was replacing Wang as Chief Ambassador. In that capacity his continued presence in Chin territory would be no mere detention in exile but rather an extension of a formal Sung embassy. He could thus continue to regard himself, and insist also that others regard him, as an official emissary rather than just a prisoner.

[161] Liu Yü 劉豫 (1073~1143), former Prefect of Chi-nan 濟南, was set up by the Chin as the puppet-ruler of a short-lived buffer state known as Ta-ch'i 大齊. Established in 1130, with its capital first at Ta-t'ung and later (from 1132) in Kaifeng, this bogus state lasted only until 1137.

[162] This is an allusion to a passage in the Tso-chuan 左傳 pertaining to the twenty-first year of the rule of Duke Hsiang 襄. Commenting on Luan-ying's 欒盈 flight from his home state of Chin 晉 to the enemy state of Ch'ü 楚, Tso quotes Luan-Ying as saying he would "rather die" (有死而已) than tolerate the rival Fan 范 family, whom he regarded as rapacious. See James Legge, The Chinese Classics, Volume 5 (1861~1865; reprint, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), pp. 489-~490.

[163] Chu Pien's adamant loyalty to the Sung apparently became the stuff of legend. Writing over a hundred years after Chu Pien's death, Yüan Hao-wen 元好問, in his preface to Chu Pien's poems, recounts one of the exaggerated tales spawned by Chu' s reputation for heroism; Yüan tells us that, "When he was ordered to accept a Chin appointment he firmly refused, pleading an eye ailment. He pricked his eyes with an awl so that he could not close them, and on this pretext was able to return home. " See the Chung-chou-chi 《中州集》, chüan 10 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1962), Vol.2 p.514.

[164] This is an allusion to a passage in the Tso-chuan pertaining to the ninth year of Duke Ch'eng's 成 reign. The story is there told of fighting between the states of Cheng and Chin. When Cheng sent an emissary to Chin to negotiate peace, the Chin killed him. Tso then notes that the murder was contrary to the ritual principle by which "in the midst of hostilities emissaries are to be permitted free passage" ( 兵交使在其間可也 ). See James Legge, The Chinese Classics Volume 5, pp. 370~372.

[165] Another line alluding to the Tso-chuan passage cited above in note no.162, above.

[166] This is an allusion to the Analects 《論語》 XIII. 20 where, in answer to Tzu Kung's question about what a man must be like to be a knight (士), Confucius says that a knight is, among other things, one who "while on missions abroad "literally: 'to the four directions') does not disgrace his lord's commission" (使於四方、不辱君命 ).

[167] The Yeh-lü 耶律, of course, were the populous and powerful Khitan clan to which the Liao royal house belonged. Many of its major families went over to the Chin in the early twelfth century, and some were soon incorporated into the Chin elite. However, I can find only two other references to a "Yeh-lü Shao-Wen" 耶律紹文, neither of them very informative. There is a brief record at the end of the Liao portion of the "Barbarians" (Fan-i erh 蕃夷、二) section of the Sung hui-yao chi-kao 《宋會要輯稿》 (ts'e 冊 196 [Taipei: Shin-wen-sheng 新文豐,1977], p.7697a). This note states that on the fourteenth day of the first month of 1134, Wang Lun 王倫 (the senior member of Chu Pien's mission, then back in Sung territory) was ordered to send a letter to Yeh-lü Shao-wen and to Kao Ch'ing-i 高慶裔. The latter was a Chinese adviser and protégé to Chu Pien's captor, the Chin Marshal Nien-han. We can guess, then, that Yeh-lü Shao-wen may have been another member of Nien-han's staff. Also, the "Basic Annals" of Emperor Hsi-tsung (R.1135~1149) in the Chin-shih (chüan 4, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975], p.72 mentions Yeh-lü Shao-Wen as one of two people who, in the twelfth month of 1137, were ordered to compile a national history. It may be that Chu Pien addressed his excoriation of treason particularly to Yeh-lü Shao-wen because he regarded Yeh-lü, a member of a family previously loyal to the Liao throne but now serving the Chin, as himself a traitor. Shao-wen was a kinsman of the most famous of all Khitan defectors to the Chin, Yeh-lü Yü-tu 耶律余睹, who served for a time as Marshal Nien-han's chief general.

[168] This, of course, is an embellished and indirect allusion to the famous line in Analects IV. 8 in which Confucius says that if he "could hear the Tao in the morning, that evening he could die content" (朝聞道, 夕死可矣).

[169] It is likely that his decision to pen his "dying words" (訣)was intended as a public declaration of the strength of his resolve, i.e., his readiness to die rather than defect.

[170] Hung Hao 洪皓 "1088~1155, tzu; Kuang-pi 光弼, hao: Chung-hsüan 忠宣) was another Sung ambassador to the Chin who had been sent north two years after Chu Pien's mission. He too was held captive and, like Chu Pien, adamantly resisted Chin pressure first to serve Liu Yü's puppet regime and later to join their own court. He did serve, however, in a private capacity as tutor to the sons of the Chin general Hsi-yin 希尹. In that position he came to be well known among the Chin élite and his poetry was as widely admired in the North as in the South. When he was finally allowed to return to the South in 1144 he was praised by Kao-tsung himself as a paragon of loyalty and patriotism and was rewarded with appointment to high office. Later, however, after criticizing Ch'in Kuei's policies of appeasement, he was demoted and then exiled to the Kwangtung area, where he died. Especially famous among his several surviving works is the Sung-mo chi-wen 《松漠紀聞》 (Notes on the Regions of Pine and Desert Wastes) in which he recounted his experiences as a captive of the Chin and very astutely described their customs, their military techniques, and the intrigues of their politics.

[171] The Sung hui-yao chi-kao 《宋會要輯稿》─ ts'e 冊 42 (Taipei: Hsin-wen-feng 新文豐, 1977), p.1711a ─ notes that in 1137, on the twenty-second day of the third month (April 15), generous rewards were conferred in absentia on both Chu Pien and Yü-wen Hsü-chung. Chu Pien received thirty taels of gold and thirty bolts each of thin silk and silk gauze.

[172] Nien-han died in 1137. The years just before and just after his death were a time of fierce struggle among several factions among the Chin competing for supremacy. Many Chin leaders were killed in these struggles. Their deaths, and the attendant general disarray of Chin power, must have seemed to Pien to present excellent opportunities for the Sung to regain the North.

[173] This may be the Li Fa 李發 whose tzu 字 was Hsiu-shih 秀實 and who lived from 1094 to 1174. For information on how he would have been available to Chu Pien as a messenger one would have to consult, as I have not yet done, the biographical sources listed in Sung-jen chuan-chi tzu-liao so-yin 《宋人傳記資料索引》, ed. Wang Te-i 王德毅, et al. (Taipei: Ting-wen shu-chü, 鼎文書局, 1977), p.876.

[174] A fuller version of this eloquent valedictory statement, said to have been included in the preface to an account of Hui- tsung's death that Chu Pien had written and sent back to the Sung court, is recorcded ─ twice(!) ─ in Ting Ch'uan-ching's 丁傳靖 (1870~ 1930) Sung-jen i-shih hui-pien 《宋人軼事彙編》 (A Collection of Anecdotes Concerning Men of the Sung), chüan 14 ＆ 16 1935; (Taipei: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan 商務印書館, 1966), pp.704 and 782. Ting notes that he found the anecdote in a work entitled Sung pai lei-chao 《宋稗類抄》, about which I can find no information.

[175] This is a reference to the legend, told in the Lun-heng and elsewhere, about Prince Tan 丹 of Yen 燕, who was held captive by the King of Ch'in 秦 (later to become Ch'in Shih-huang-ti 秦始皇帝 ). When Yen asked to be allowed to return to his home state, the Ch'in king said he would give permission only when "the heads of crows turned white and horses grew horns, "When Prince Tan then prayed to Heaven for just those miracles, his prayers were answered and his captor sent him home. Chu Pien is here lamenting that he has not had Prince Tan's good fortune and so will likely die in alien captivity. See Wang Ch'ung 王充 (27~97 AD), Lun-heng 《論衡》, chüan 5, "Kan-hsü pien" 〈感虛編〉 (Lun-heng chiao-shih 《論衡校釋》 edited by Huang Hui 黃暉─ Taipei: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan 商務印書館, 1964), vol.1, pp.225~226

[176] This is an allusion to a myth about the Yellow Emperor (黃帝) said, in the "Feng and Shan Sacrifices" (封禪書) Chapter of the Shih-chi 《史記》 (chüan 28 ─ Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1959], p.1393), to have been told by the shaman Kung Sun-ch'ing 公孫卿 to Han Wu-ti 漢武帝. The Yellow Emperor is said once to have cast a copper cauldron. When the cauldron was complete a bearded dragon appeared from out of the sky. The Yellow Emperor mounted the dragon's back, along with over seventy of his courtiers and court ladies. When the dragon flew off the lesser courtiers, who had not been able to mount the dragon, grabbed hold of its whiskers, hoping thereby to stay with their lord. The whiskers came loose, however, and the unfortunate courtiers fell to earth, thereby lossing the chance to follow their lord into the empyrean. By this allusion Chu Pien would seem to be lamenting the fact that he had survived Hui-tsung. For a fictionalized ─ indeed, a melodramatic and often rather lurid ─ retelling of the tale of Hui-tsung's last days as a prisoner of the Chin see William O. Hennessey's translation of the Hsüan-ho i-shih 《宣和遺事》: Proclaiming Harmony, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, No.41 (Ann Arbor: The Center for Chinese Studies of the University of Michigan, 1981), pp.121~151.

[179] Chang Chün 張浚 (1096~1164, tzu Te-yüan 德遠, hao Chung-hsien 忠獻 ). For a recent evaluation of this important statesman, see Yang Dequan 楊德泉 and James T. C.Liu (劉子健), "The Image of Scholar-Generals and a Case in the Southern Sung," Saculum 37.2 (1986): 182~191.

[180] On Wu-ling ssu-mo 烏陵思謀, see Yü-wen Mo-chao 宇文懋昭 Ta-chin kuo-chih 《大金國志》, chüan 27 ─ Ta-chin-kuo chih chiao-ch'eng 《大金國志校證》, edited by Zui Wenyin 崔文印 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1986) pp.389~390.

[182] Literally, "returned the catalpa coffin" (梓宮). Hui-tsung, of course, was Kao-tsung's father and so it was reasonable to assume (but may not have been true) that filial duty was a factor in Kao-tsung's willingness to cease hostilites with the Chin even if the agreements by which this could be done were to prove expensive and humiliating. Chu Pien's remarks at this point would seem to be a recognition of this legitimate motive for peace, and an acknowledgment of the possibility that Kao-tsung may also have been genuinely concerned for the welfare of his long-suffering subjects. These sentiments Chu Pien seems propared to credit as some measure of justification for a peace which he otherwise distrusts. On Kao-tsung's views of the Chin see Tao Jing-shen 陶晉生, "The Personality of Sung Kao-tsung (r.1127-1162)," in Kinugawa Tsuyoshi 衣川強, ed., Ryū Shiken hakushi shōju ki'nen sōshi kenkyū ronshū 《劉子健博士頌燾紀年宋史研究論集》 [Studies in Sung History: A Festschrift for James T. C. Liu] (Kyoto: Dōbōsha shuppan 同朋社出版, 1989), pp.531~543.

[183] Kao-tsung's mother was the Empress Dowager Hsien-jen 顯仁. She too had been captured by the Chin in 1126.

[184] "I chien wei-chao" 宜鑑未兆; literally: "It is fitting that you should mirror (i.e., scrutinize or be alert to) what is not yet even portended. "

[185] "Hsiao-mi chih shu" 銷弭之術; literally: "the arts or techniques of lulling one's opponent into complacency or false security."

[186] "T'ien-Chu chung-hsing chih shih" 天助中興之勢; literally: "power or authority accruing to their heaven-assisted ascendancy."

[187] "Hsüan-ho yu shu" 宣和御書; literally, "royally painted during Hsüan-ho" ─ "Hsüan-ho" being the last of Hui-tsung's reign periods, lasting from 1119 to 1125.

[188] These gifts may have been items which Chu Pien retrieved from the booty that the Chin had taken when they sacked Kaifeng.

[189] Ch'in Kuei 秦檜 (1090~1155, tzu Hui-chih 會之 ) was the infamous "appeaser," the imperial adviser who oversaw the early Southern Sung policy of near capitulation to the Chin, thus earning himself the reputation of craven scoundrel that has been his ever since.

[190] "Court Gentleman for Instruction" (Hsüan-chiao lang 宣教郎 ) was a prestige title carrying with it the rank of "8" (ts'ung-pa p'in 從八品) ─ i.e., rank of 16 on a scale descending from 1 to 18. The "Imperial Archives" (pi-ko 秘閣 ) was the repository of the court's official documents and it was common practice for eminent literati to be given appointments as "Auxiliaries" (chih 直) therein. See Hucker, Dictionary of Official Titles, pp.155 and 376.

[191] "Feng-i lang" 奉議郎 was a prestige title that had been abolished in 1129 but was revived in 1135; it implied nominal assignment to the Tsung-cheng ssu 宗正寺 (Court of the Imperial Clan). As it carried with it the relatively low rank of "8a" (cheng-pa p'in 正八品 ), ─ i.e., 15th on the scale of 18 ─ it amounted to only the slightest promotion from his previous "8 b" appointment. See Hucker, Dictionary of Official Titles, p.214.

[192] Chu Hsi gives the exact date of Chu Pien's death as the sixth day of the fourth month, i.e., May 10, 1144. His age at death is not given in this or in any other source; thus one can only guess the year of his birth. Some modern scholars give incorrect dates for his death. Araki Toshikazu 荒木敏一 and Terada Takanobu 寺田隆信 give the date of 1138; see Étienne Balazs and Yves Herovouet, A Sung Bibliography (Hong Kong: The Chinese University press, 1978), p.104. Charles K. H. Chen, for example, gives 1148; see his A Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of Chin ese Authors, Supplement, Part 1 (Hanover, New Hampshire: The Oriental Society, 1976), p.292. However, there are no pre-modern sources, save perhaps the gazetteers, that give a date other than 1144, and the 1148 date given in some modern works may be the result of a misreading of certain early sources in which the phrase "seventeen years" is mistaken to be a reference to the "seventeenth year of Shao-hsing" 紹興─ see, for example, Chu Hsi 朱熹 and Li Yu-wu 李幼武, Sung ming-sh'en yen-hsing lu Wu-chi 《宋名臣言行錄五集》 (Taipei: Wen-hai ch'u-pan-she 文海出版社, 1967), p.925. Chu Hsi's Hsing- chuang 行狀 notes that at the time of his death Chu Pien was lodging at a place called, "White Turtle Pond" in or near the capital (Hangchow). He is said to have wanted burial near his ancestral home in Wu-yüan 務源 but, as this could not be arranged, he was temporarily interred at the Chih-kuo yüan 智果院 (probably a Buddhist temple) on the shores of West Lake. His remains were still there six year later when Chu Hsi first paid his respects, and it was not until another thirty-four years had elapsed, i.e., not until in 1183, when Chu Hsi made another visit, that he could arrange to remove the remains to their permanent resting place. The exact location of the final grave-site is unknown because its name is effaced in all editions of Chu Hsi's Wen-chi.

[193] I take this to be Lu Chih 陸贄 (754~805), whose tzu was Ching-yü 敬輿 but whose hao was Hsüan 宣 ( "kung" 公 being here an honorific rather than part of a name). Lu Chih was a leading statesman of his day famous especially for his command of the "paralled" (p  ien-wen 駢文 ) style of prose composition and for the use to which he put this literary skill in crafting clear, forceful, well-argued, and convincing memorials to the throne.

[194] I-shan 義山 is the tzu of Li Shang-yin 李商隱 (813?~858), the late T'ang poet famous for his dense and complex syntax, his often sensuous imagery, his highly allusive and abstruse diction, and his emotional intensity. I assume it is Li Shang-yin to whom the biography here refers. However, as the following contrastive clause indicates, Chu Pien's own poetry was held to be unaffected, straightforward, and free of strange usages, and this description coincides with the preference for more transparent forms of poetic diction that he generally expressed in his shih-hua (a preference to which he seems to have made exception only in the case of Huang T'ing-chien). Thus, although Chu may have studied the poetry of Li Shang-yin, he surely did not imitate the T'ang master's style.

[195] Precise and certain interpretation of aesthetic judgments like these is always difficult, but I take it that Chu Pien is here being praised for the lucidity and judiciousness of his prose and for the natural, unpretentious character of his poetry.

[196] Chu Chao 朱昭 (1081~1126) was a military officer captured and executed by the Chin. His biography may be found in Sung-shih 宋史 446. He does not seem to have been a relative of Chu Pien.

[197] Shih K'ang 史抗 (variant: Shih Wan 史玩 ) was a military officer stationed in Tai-chou 代州, near Wu-t'ai Shan, who was captured and killed by the Chin late in the Hsuan-ho 宣和 period, i.e., circa 1125. His biography may also be found in Sung-shih 宋史 446.

[198] Chang Chung-fu 張忠輔 was a military leader who, along with Che K'o-yu 折可與 (another member of the Che clan referred to in the T'ai-shan jui-ying chi), governed the northern Shansi area of Kuo-hsien 崞縣 on behalf of the Sung. He allowed himself to be beheaded rather than surrender to the Chin forces. See his biography in Sung-shih 宋史 448.

[200] Sun I 孫益 was a high-ranking official from Fukien who, in the late Hsüan-ho period(i.e., circa 1125), was a ordered to retake T'ai-yüan from Chin control. He died rather than accede to the entreaties of others who, because they were intimidated by the enemy's strength, were inclined to shirk their duty. Celebrated as a model of courage, he is said to have inspired others to resist the Chin as well. His biography in Su ng-shih 446 also tells of the heroic suicide of Sun Ḱu 孫谷.

[203] The Sung-shih has mistakenly transposed the characters of this name. The reference is actually not to a Pao-chen 寶真 but to Chen-pao 真寶, the cleric who held the office of Prefect of Monks (Seng-cheng 僧正 ) at Wu-t'ai in 1126. In response to the Chin capture of Kaifeng and their arrest of the two Sung emperors, he organized his monks in armed resistance. Eventually, however, Wu-t'ai fell to vastly superior Chin forces, and in the fighting many of its monasteries were devastated. The Chin commander offered Chen-pao his life if he would surrender. However, despite great efforts to convince him otherwise, he refusd, noting that he had already pledged his life-long fealty to the Sung monarch and that his religion forbade him ever to go back on his word. He is said to have gone peacefully to his execution. His exploits are chronicled in many sources; see, for example, Sung-shih 《宋史》 455, Sung-shih hsin-pien 《宋史新編》 172, and Ming K'o's 明可 Pu hsu-kao-seng chuan 《補續高僧傳》, chüan 24(the last mentioned may be found in SSZZ1 524:77. 522b).

[204] This is probably Madam Ting he wife of Chang Chin-ching, who is mentioned in Sung-shih 460. During the invasion of Honan in 1126 she and her husband tried un-successfully to flee. When the Chin troops caught her she proceeded to revile them, vowing over and over again to die rather than submit to their abuse. They beat her to death with cudgels.

[206] According to Sung-shih 《宋史》 449, Wen Chin 閻進 was an officer in the palace guard who was assigned to a delegation sent to the Chin in 1127 (perhaps the very delegation to which Chu Pien belonged). He and the rest of the embassy were arrested after arriving in Yün-chung (Ta-t'ung). After three failed attempts at escape he was sentenced to die but asked to be allowed to face south (i.e., the direction of the Sung) during his execution. His executioners refused his request and forced him to face north, but at the last minute he twisted his body around and died facing south. The same section of the Sung-shih relates that Chu Chi, another offic-er assigned to the same delegation, was sent after his arrest to Nien-han's camp. A few days after his arrival there he made an urgent request for a woman. Nien-han found this amusing and allowed him to choose a woman from among the other captives. To everyone's puzzlement he picked the ugliest one. Less than half a month later he tried to escape but was apprehended and brought back to a homici-dally angry Nien-han. However, he went to his death laughing because his request for a wife had just been a ruse designed to dupe Nien-han.

[207] The Sung-shih biography, like Chu Hsi's Hsing-chuang, lists only eight of Chu Pien's writings. As noted below, two of these ─ the Ch'ü-wei chin-wen《曲洧舊聞》 and the Feng-yüeh-t'ang shih-hua 《風月堂詩話》─ are entirely extant while another - the Hsü wei-pei-shuo《續骫骳說》─ is partly extant. However, Chu Pi en wrote several other works that are not mentioned in these biographies, and three such have survived intact:

(a)One, of course, is the T'ai-shan jui-ying chi《台山瑞應記》, the very text with which we are here especially concerned.

(b) There is also a commentary on the Han dynasty Taoist text known as the Wen Tzu 文子. This commentary is entitled T'ung-hsüan Chen-ching chu 《通玄真經註》and is preserved in the Tao-tsang 《道藏》 (No. 749). It may have been composed earlier in Chu Pien's life, before his mission to the Chin.

(c)Finally there is th Stele InscriPtion to Commemorate The Reconstruction of the Great Hall of the Western CaPital's Temple of Great Universal Grace in Ta-t'ung (Hsi-ching Ta-p'u-en-ssu ch 'ung-hsiu ta-tien pi《西京大普恩寺重修大殿碑》)

"P'u-en ssu" is a former name of the temple ─ one of Ta-t'ung's most impor-tant ─ known since the Ming as the Shan-hua-ssu 善化寺 It is the temple where Chu resided during most of his captivity, specifically the years 1130 to 1143. Its abbot at the time, the monk Yüan-man 圓滿 (d.u.) to whom he refers in the inscription, came to be his good friend. Originally known as the K'ai-yüan ssu 開元寺, this temple was founded during th Tang reign-period of that name (713~742). It acquired the name "P'u-en ssu" in 936when the rulers of the short-lived N. Tang Kingdom made it an object of their support. Shortly thereafter the enthusiastically Buddhist Liao emper-ors transformed it into one of the two or three most important temples in their Western Capital. It was seriously damaged in 1122 when Chin forces captured Ta-t'ung and what Chu Pien celebrates in his inscription is the completion of the Chin rconstruction of its main hall. Nearly three-hundred years later, in 1440, the temple was renamed Shan-hua ssu to mark yet another reconstruction carried out with Ming imperial support; it is by this name that it is still known today. It is located just inside the southern wall of the old city of Ta-t'ung, near what was once the city's main gate. The Shan-hua ssu is of special interest to historians of Chinese architecture (see, e.g., Laurence Sickman and Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of China, 2nd edition [Hammonds worth and Baltimore: Pen-guin Books, 1960], pp. 278~282 and plate 182). As it survives today it con-sists chiefly of three large main huildings ranged one behind the other on a north-south axis. The first and southernmost of these buildings, known as the Hall of the Deva Kings (天王殿), is said to preserve the basic design of the Chin restoration that Chu Pi en had personally witnessed. Also of basi-cally Chin design is the second main building, called the Hall of the Three Sages (三聖殿, the three being Vairocana, Mañjuśrī, and Samantabhadra, the three chief protagonists of th Hua-yen Sūtra). Today it is in this second hall (the "Great Hall" of the inscription's title) that one may find the Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal stele that bears Chu Pien's inscription; it measures about seven and a half feet high by three and a half feet wide and stands to the left or west of the great Ming terra-cotta images of the trinity that is now the hall's dominant feature. The third and northernmost of the principal buildings ─ the Siikyamuni Hall (大雄寶殿) ─ is especially prized for preserving design ele-ments (and even some material components) from the Liao period, for ex-ample, the impressive roof-canopy above the colossal statue of Śākyamuni that dominates the hall.Also said to date back to the Liao is one of the temple's subsidiary structures, a two-story pagoda known as the Samantabhadra Tower (普賢閣), the only surviving member of a pair of such structures of which the other was the Mañjuśrī Tower (only the ruins of which may now be seen).

Chu Pien's inscription is dated "ting-mao, second month, third year of Huangt'ung" 皇統三年二月丁卯, i.e., February 25, 1143. As Chu Pien returned to the Sung in the sixth month of that same year, i.e., only about four months later, this must be one of the last pieces he wrote while still in Chin custody. The stele on which the inscription was incised, a single dark grey stone standing about seven and a half feet high by three and a half feet wide, was not carved un-til 1176, i.e., some twenty-three years after his departure. When I visited Shanhua ssu in the summer of 1992 I tried to take photographs of the stele, but was prevented from doing so by the local authorities. Later, however, I found that the Japanese scholar Mizuno Seiichi 水野清一, of Yün-kang fame, had published a photograph of an excellent rubbing of the inscription which he had made in the late thirties. That photograph, along with a careful transcription and brief discussion of the inscription, appears in Tōhō gakuhō 《東方學報》 [Kyoto} 10.2 (January, 1940): 121~134. A reliable copy of the inscription is also to be found in the Ta-t'ung hsien-chih 《大洞縣志》, compiled in 1840 (copies of this rare gazetteer may be consulted at the Library of Congress and at the library of the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica 中央研究院‧歷史語言研究所 in Taiwan) and in Hu P'in-chih's 胡聘之 1989 epigraphical collection, the Shan-yu shih-k'o ts'ung-Pien《山右石刻叢編》(see the Shih-k'o shih-liao ts'ung-shu《石刻史料叢書》, edited by Yen Keng-wang 嚴耕王 [Taipei: I-wen yin- shu-kuan《藝文印書館》, 1966], Series A, Item 15, Fascicle 13. The inscription is also preserved-albeit in a very faulty copy ─ in Chang Chin-wu's (張金吾, 1878~1829) Chin-Wen-tsui 《金文最》, chüan 65 (ca. 1822; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1990), Vol. 2, pp. 948~949. The numerous errors in Chang Chin-wu's transcription (carefully identified by Mizuno) are difficult to explain, for he says he fol-lowed the Ta-t' ung hsien chih (presumably the same one we have mentioned just above).

This inscription is very interesting in its own right but it is also especially relevant to the subject of the present essay for it employs Buddhist metaphors and locutions very similar to those Chu used in the T'ai-shan jui-ying chi, which had been composed only about a year and a half earlier.

Moreover, mention is made elsewhere of several other works, also unacknowledged in the biographies, which have not survived.

One such is the Yu-hsüan ch 'ang-ho chi《輶軒唱和集》(Stagecoach Harmonies), in three fascicles-a collection of light verse composed on their way home by Chu Pien and his fellow exiles Hung Hao (see note no. 170) and Chang Shao 張邵 (1096~1156). Hung Kua 洪适 (1117~1184), the son of Ambassador Hung Hao 洪哠, mentions this collection in his P'an-chou wen-chi《盤州文集》, chüan 62 (Ssu-Pu ts'ung-k'an《四部叢刊》edition, p. 404).

Also, the Ta-ming i-t'ung chih《大明一統志》, compiled in 1461 by a commision under the direction of Li Hsien 李賢 (1408~1467), mentions several now lost notes (chi 記) which Chu is said to have written on various districts and sites in the Ta-t'ung vicinity-see the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu chen-pen《四庫全書珍本》edition, series 7 volume 89, Chüan 21, p. 41a.

No extensive collection of Chu Pien's poetry survives, but samples of it may be found in certain later anthologies.

(a)Yüan Hao-wen's 元好問 Chung-chou chi《中州集》, chüan 10, contains thirty-eight of his poems.

(b)Li E's 厲鶚 (1692~1752) Sung-shih chi-shih《宋詩紀事》, chüan 43, preserves twelve, all but the last taken from the Chung-chou chi (the last, a quatrain, is taken from the Ch 'ü-wei chin-wen《曲洧舊聞》─ see the 1983 Shanghai gujie chubanshe 上海古籍出版社 edition of Li E's work, vol. 2, pp. 1087~1091.

A collection of Chu Pien's memorials seems also to have circulated for a time, and we have already noted the esistence of a colophon to such a collection written by Chu Hsi (see note no 141, above).

[210] This is Chu Pien's most frequently anthologized work. It was included in the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu《四庫全書》, and the Chung-kuo ts'ung-shu tsung-lu《中國叢書綜錄》names thirteen other pre-modern collectanea in which it may be found. It is also conve-niently available in the Ts'ung-shu chi-ch 'eng, ch 'u-pien《叢書集成、初編》. Curiously enough, none of the surviving versions of the work is in three fascicles; we find only one, two, four, ten, or seventeen fascicle versions. "Ch'ü-wei" 曲洧 , it should be noted, is an alternative name of the region of Honan that lies between Kaifeng and Loyang and is known more commonly as Hsin-cheng 新鄭 (see note no. 147 above). This work, a collection of some 286 anecdotes, is a rich source for late Northern Sung culture. For a general assessment of it I would recommend one of the few pieces of modern scholarship on Chu Pien that I have yet found ─ Chao T'ieh-han 趙鐵寒, "Chu Pien ho t'a-te Ch'ü-wei chiu-wen" 《朱弁和他的曲洧舊聞》Ta-lu tsa-chih《大陸雜志》8.12 (June 30, 1954), 15~20. Chao's very learned article is essentially an historian's analysis of the text, concerned chiefly with technical ques-tions ─ e.g., the value of the work as a repository of historical information; the date of its composition (whether it was done while Chu Pien was still in the North, or af-ter his return); certain internal inconsistencies of dating and the like that might allow one to distinguish between those parts of the work written by Chu Pien himself (the majority of entries) and some added later, perhaps by his descendants; etc. See also the very brief article by Li Yumin 李裕民 entitled "Zhu Bian yu Wutaishan" 〈朱弁與五台山〉 , Wutaishan yanjiu《五台山研究》, No. 15 (1988): 32~33.

[211] Two small, but not identical, sets of excerpts from this work survive in two different versions of the Shuo-fu 說郛 See Shuo-fu san-chung 《說郛三重》(Shanghai: Shanghai gujie chubanshe 上海古籍出版社, 1988), Vol. 1, pp. 648~649 and Vol. 4, pp.1379~1380. As explained above, this was Chu Pien's continuation of a pi-chi 筆記 compiled by his elder and lamented contemporary, and relative-by-marriage, Ch'ao Pu-chih 晁補之 (1053~1110).

[213] As mentioned above in note no. 74, above, this work too was included in the Ssu.k'u ch 'üan-shu《四庫全書》and in other collectanea. It ranks perhaps as the second best known of all of Chu Pien's literary works. Chu Pien wrote the Feng-yüeh-tang shih-hua 《風月堂話》while he was in the North as a detainee of the Chin (the author's preface is dated 1140). It would prove to be a rather influential work. In it he focused especially on the great poets of the Northern Sung (e.g., Oil-yang Hsiu 歐陽修, Su Shih 蘇軾, Huang T'ing-chien 黃庭堅, Ch'en Shih-tao 陳師道, and Mei Yao-ch'en 梅堯臣), and his views of these figures helped shape the estimation of them adopted by later critics and poets, especially those of the Chin like Yüan Hao-wen 元好問, (1190~1257) ─ see Johl Timothy Wixted, Poems on Poetry: Literary Criticism by Yuan Hao-Wen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982], pp. 207~208 and 212~213 and Wang Jo-hsü 王若虛 (1174~1243) ─ see Wang's Shih-hua, in the Hu-nan i-lao chi《滹南遺老集》, chüan 38~41 (Ssu-pu ts'ung-k'an《四部叢刊》ed., pp. 197b~198a and 305b). For a general characterization of the Feng-yüeh-t'ang shih-hua, see Guo Shaoyu 郭紹虞, Song shihua kao《宋詩話考》 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局, 1979), pp. 49~51; but note that Kuo gives the incorrect date of 1148 for Chu Pien's death.

一、	由十世紀至十二世紀中葉，五台山地區的佛教狀況。
二、	由北宋末年至金國初期，佛教，特別是佛教靈感事蹟,在知識分子的生活中所扮演的角色。

Wu-t'ai Shan 五臺山 during the Early Chin Dynasty 金朝︰The Testimony of Chu Pien 朱弁

Summary

Ⅰ.INTRODUCTION

Ⅱ. WU-T'AI FROM THE LATE T'ANG TO THE FOUNDING OF THE CHIN.

Ⅲ. GLIMPSES OF WU-T'AI IN THE EARLY CHIN.

題佛光寺

重雕《清涼傳》序