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Salvation in Writing and the Annex of Indian Buddhism

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Salvation in Writing and the Annex of Indian Buddhism

Stuart H. Young



Abstract and Keywords

Chapter 3 discusses how Sui-Tang Buddhist exegetes integrated Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva into broader efforts to redefine China as the epicenter of Buddhist enlightenment. This chapter illustrates how the paradigms of Buddhist sainthood advanced by Kumārajīva’s associates and in earlier lineage histories were amalgamated in a new idiom that focused especially on the importance of authoring doctrinal treatises. Here scriptural exegesis became the central defining function of the Indian patriarchs in China, particularly as juxtaposed with other means of conveying the Dharma across the Sino-Indian divide. In this way Chinese exegetes advanced a model of Buddhist sainthood through scholarship, but no longer in a benighted China marked by perpetually declining Dharma, which paled in comparison to the brilliance of ancient India. Rather, this model was promoted as part of the broader process of relocating the means and media of Indian enlightenment within the new Buddhist heartland of latter-day China.

Keywords: Xuanzang, Jizang, Guanding, Xixin lun 起信論 (Awakening of Faith), Mohe zhiguan 摩訶止觀 (Great Calming and Contemplation), Xiyu ji 西域記 (Records of the Western Regions), exegesis

THE SEVERED INDIAN LINEAGE of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission was first extended to latter-day Chinese masters within the Cave of Great Perduring Saints, which was excavated near the Northern Qi capital of Ye in 589. Together with the myriad buddhas represented at this site, the twenty-four Indian patriarchs carved inside the cave were rendered as immanent holy beings who could be entreated to confer blessings upon their Chinese descendents. This cave was part of a series of projects—textual, architectural, and ritual—orchestrated by the monastic and secular elite of the incipient Suidynasty (581–618) to localize the means of Buddhist enlightenment within the newly unified kingdom of China.1 Having finally annexed the territory of the southern Chen dynasty (557–589) in 589, Sui emperor Wen (541–604; r. 581–604) sought to legitimize his “restoration” of imperial rule in part by conjoining state and sangha, pouring resources into sociopolitical and religious infrastructure and strengthening efforts to simultaneously expand and regulate the Buddhist institution. To this end the Sui court engaged the services of all the most important monks of the kingdom, including Jingying Huiyuan 淨影慧遠

(523–592), Tanqian 曇遷 (542–607), Yancong 彥琮 (557–610), Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597), Jizang 吉藏 (549–623), and many others. These monks aided in the establishment of imperial Buddhist monasteries, the compilation of scriptural canons, the distribution and enshrinement of Buddha relics, the performance of Buddhist rituals, and other projects designed to represent the new Sui emperor as a Buddhistwheel-turning king” (cakravartin) in the image of Aśoka.2 In this way, not only were the Sui court and sangha jointly empowered in their dominion, but also the entire Chinese kingdom was ostensibly transformed from a Buddhist hinterland into a new epicenter of Buddhist enlightenment.

With the reunification of the empire and centralization of power under the Sui and ensuing Tang regimes, China was no longer to be seen as a soteriological wasteland, hopelessly removed in time and space from (p.112) the Indian cradle of Buddhist civilization. Like the Sui founder, his successor Sui Yangdi 煬帝 (569–618; r. 604–617) and emperors of the Tang and Zhou interregnum (690–705) worked to legitimize their reigns by incorporating the vast resources of the Buddhist institution and centering their kingdoms in Buddhist cosmographic terms.3 Leaders of the Chinese sangha often worked in concert with these imperial courts in organizing further reliquary enshrinements, relocating illustrious Indian bodhisattvas to famous Chinese mountains, identifying Chinese rulers as buddhas incarnate, and constructing Dharma transmission lineages to demonstrate that the “total truth of the Indian Buddhist tradition had recently come to China, where it was perfectly lodged in the bodies of contemporaneous Chinese men.”4 Through these efforts on the part of Sui-Tang imperial courts and monastic elites, the kingdom of China would come to be seen as the equal to India in harboring the media and means of Buddhist enlightenment. And as Sino-Indian transmission lineages functioned to relocate the truth of Indian Buddhism within Chinese masters—especially of the nascent Chan tradition—the Indian patriarchs who constituted these lineages were made to play prominent roles in the redefinition of China as a center of Buddhist civilization.


As discussed in chapter 2, the severance of the Indian patriarchal lineage was one key to the soteriological message provided by the Dharma-Treasury Transmission. Like the Lotus Sūtra before it, this text emphasized the absence of these great Indian saints in order to exhort latterday Buddhists to redouble their efforts at propagating the Dharma. The Buddha and his patriarchal successors were all long gone, the world was dark and the Dharma imperiled, so now it was up to Chinese Buddhists to uphold the light for their benighted contemporaries. Then in the Dazhusheng cave this message was both perpetuated and nullified. On the one hand, the Indian patriarch stele ended with Siṃha, the inscription beneath his image recounted his murder,5 and the lineage appeared adjacent to prophesies of Dharma decline. But on the other hand, the cave’s dedicatory inscription clearly identified the Indian patriarchs as “great perduring saints,” and they may have functioned as part of a ritual program in which a host of Buddhist holy beings could be brought before local supplicants to receive offerings of obeisance. In this way absence gave way to immanence, and the Indian lineage of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission was extended beyond Siṃha to sanctify the Buddhist masters of latter-day China.


This proposed (p.113) ritual engagement was not the same sort of direct master-disciple encounter so valued in the later Chan tradition, and the Indian lineage of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission was not extended through missionary patriarchs who personally brought the Dharma to China, as with the Bodhidharma of so many Chan genealogies. But both models of lineal Dharma transmission and ritual invocation functioned to bridge the chasm between Indian and Chinese Buddhism—as posited in the Dharma-Treasury Transmission and elsewhere—and to establish new sources of enlightenment in local Chinese masters and paradigms of Buddhist practice.

Many of the same ecclesiastic elites who participated in the aforementioned state-sangha building projects also developed another means by which the Indian patriarchs would help instantiate Śākyamuni’s truth in China. This method did not involve face-to-face encounters between Indian masters and Chinese disciples, or rites of obeisance before sculpted images, but rather the transmission of Indian doctrinal treatises and models of exegetical authorship. The most prominent exemplars of this transmission method were Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva, who were first depicted as authors of doctrinal commentaries in a world of declining Dharma in order to resurrect the true teaching. Then, in the Sui-Tang period, these patriarchs were similarly represented as brilliant exegetes whose profound writings transmitted the highest truth of Indian Buddhism to China. For example, the eminent Tiantai master Guanding 灌頂 (561–632) famously claimed Nāgārjuna’s Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise as the primary medium through which Śākyamuni’s teachings were instantiated in the figure of Zhiyi. And the great Three Treatise exponent Jizang likened Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva to the Buddha himself for their efforts at propagating the teaching through doctrinal exegesis. Just as Śākyamuni appeared when the Dharma was lost and preached sūtras to reintroduce it to the world, these patriarchs arose when the Dharma was imperiled and composed śāstras to perpetuate it for their own and future generations.


As these and many other examples illustrate, despite the fact that master-disciple transmission lineages were coming to proliferate in Sui-Tang China, at this time Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva were most often represented not as placeholders in Sino-Indian Dharma genealogies but as singular exemplars of Buddhist sainthood through doctrinal scholarship. Lineage histories like the Record of the Dharma-Jewel through the Ages, the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch, or the Tradition of the Baolin [[[Temple]]]7 downplayed the patriarchsindividual accomplishments by negating their roles as epochaltering figures and deploying them largely as Dharma conduits to bridge the gap between Śākyamuni and Chinese Buddhist traditions. (p.114) However, in contrast to the homogenizing tendency of these patriarchal historiographies, even when Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva were placed in serial lineages they were made to stand out above the faceless patriarchal crowd. The writings of these patriarchs would therefore be valorized as arising from the most significant junctures of post-parinirvāṇa Buddhist history. For instance, Jizang’s Commentary on the Scripture of Benevolent Kings (Renwang bore jing shu 仁王般若經疏) explains that over the first five hundred years after nirvāṇa, twenty-five unnamed Indian patriarchs transmitted the Dharma, while the seventh and eighth post-parinirvāṇa centuries were marked by Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna alone.8 Similarly, Jizang’s disciple Qi fashi 磧法師 (fl. 590–618) excerpted the line of Aśvaghoṣa, Vīra, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva from the Dharma-Treasury Transmission before connecting it to China through the person of Kumārajīva, who purportedly received the teaching directly from Āryadeva.9 And the Buddhist convert and polemicist Falin 法琳 (572–640) provided a brief history of Indian Buddhism by tracing a line from the Lesser Vehicle teachings of Kātyāyana and Harivarman to the “Mahāyāna pillars” Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva.


But aside from the focus on genealogical historiography, these accounts also exemplify the widespread tendency throughout Sui-Tang China of singling out members of this patriarchal triad from the host of Indian masters that abounded in Buddhist sources. Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva had already received special attention from the time of Kumārajīva, but their popularity increased greatly over the following centuries with the appearance of nearly two dozen treatises to their names,11 as well as a pair of influential prophesies in the Mahāmāyā and Laṅkāvatāra sūtras. According to the former, Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna would appear in succession at six-hundred and seven-hundred years after nirvāṇa, destroy false dogmas, and relight the lamp of the True Dharma.12 And in the latter, Nāgārjuna was destined to champion the Greater Vehicle after Śākyamuni’s departure, eventually attaining the first bodhisattva stage of joy (huanxi di 歡喜地; pramuditā bhūmi) and rebirth in the Land of Bliss (Anle guo 安樂國; Sukhāvatī).13 With the addition of such sources that prominently advertised (p.115) these patriarchs as the foremost Mahāyāna champions after nirvāṇa—indeed, as foretold by the Buddha himself—it comes as no surprise that so many Buddhist authors of the Sui-Tang period would uphold Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Nāgārjuna’s chief disciple, Āryadeva, as paragons of Indian Buddhist authority. And just as these patriarchs were represented in the early fifth century as literati-gentlemen first and foremost—mirroring the preferred occupations of their Chinese hagiographers—Sui-Tang Buddhist exegetes likewise lauded these Indian masters for propagating the Dharma through doctrinal exegesis in particular.


In the present chapter, I examine these images of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva as promoted by some of the most influential Chinese scholar-monks from the sixth century to the eighth—the period during which these Indian patriarchs became truly ubiquitous in Chinese Buddhist discourses across traditions. I focus on several important developments in Sui-Tang Buddhist appropriations of these figures—including Guanding’s genealogy of the Tiantai tradition, the attribution of the Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun 大乘起信論) to Aśvaghoṣa, and the patriarchal tales recounted by the famous pilgrim Xuanzang 玄奘 (602–664)—all of which illustrate how Buddhist authors worked to valorize local Chinese traditions vis-à-vis the Indian heartland. While earlier representations of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva evince a central concern with articulating ideals of Buddhist sainthood for a world without a Buddha, Sui- Tang writings about these figures were part of a broader effort to localize the Indian sources of Buddhist truth to create, potentially, a world with many buddhas. In this context the Indian patriarchs not only provided models of Buddhist practice suited to dark times full of dim wits; they also conveyed the apex of Indian truth eastward to help redefine China as a center of Buddhist civilization. Together with the relics, icons, scriptures, buddhas, bodhisattvas, and all the other instruments of Indian sanctity that were now firmly rooted in Chinese soil, Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva were seen to contribute the foremost Indian doctrinal treatises and models of exegesis. With these great works of the Indian patriarchs readily available in China, India was no longer the sole locus of profound Buddhist exegesis. Now Chinese scholar-monks also had the means to elucidate the True Dharma and thereby join the ranks of the greatest Buddhist saints across the Sino-Indian divide.


Exegesis Saves


Question: Now, from the [time of the] True Teaching to the Semblance Dharma [period], the men who upheld and transmitted [the Dharma] in succession were many. Now whom shall we select as the men [most capable of] destroying heresy and clarifying the truth? Answer: Generally speaking, there are no more than four men. The first is the Tamer, the World-Honored One, who is the master of the teaching. The other three are saints who aided the Buddha in spreading [the Dharma]. These three are named Aśvaghoṣa Bodhisattva, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva.


(p.116) 問: 爰及正化, 迄平14 像法, 傳持紹繼, 其人不少. 今定取何人, 破邪顯正. 答: 大格為論, 不出四人. 一是調御世尊, 是能化主. 其餘三聖, 助佛宣揚. 三者所謂馬鳴開士, 與龍樹提婆也.


This brief dialogue, excerpted from Jizang’s Treatise on the Profundity of the Mahāyāna (Dasheng xuan lun 大乘玄論), appears amidst a lengthy discussion of what it meant to “destroy heresy and clarify the truth,” both during and after the time of the Buddha.16 According to Jizang, second only to Śākyamuni in fulfilling this charge were Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva, who Jizang further portrayed as upholding the teaching and saving the world in particular through doctrinal exegesis. This claim reflects a common interest among Sui-Tang Buddhist exegetes in promoting these Indian masters and their writings as the greatest manifestations of post-parinirvāṇa Buddhist sainthood. By elevating this triad above and against the host of Indian patriarchs who transmitted the teaching through the True and Semblance Dharma periods, Jizang expressly contravened lineage histories like the Dharma-Treasury Transmission, which largely compressed all of the patriarchs into a single mold. As previously noted, Chinese scholar-monks of this time most often represented Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva not as placeholders in genealogies of Dharma transmission but as singularly talented exegetical authors who liberated their benighted contemporaries by writing doctrinal commentaries. These commentaries and models of exegesis were especially important to Buddhist authors who affirmed, with the Dharma-Treasury Transmission, that the Indian patriarchal lineage had been severed before ever reaching China. Given this fact, and also given the common understanding that the patriarchs after Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva had grown progressively weaker, Sui-Tang Buddhist authors maintained that the writings of this triad were the sole vehicles through which the perfect truth of Indian Buddhism had been conveyed to China.


Although Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva had been acclaimed since the time of Kumārajīva, it was Jizang in particular who did the most to popularize this patriarchal triad during the Sui-Tang period. Best known to posterity as a champion of Three Treatise teachings, Jizang was also an expert in all the major exegetical traditions of his day—especially those surrounding the Vimalakīrti, Avataṃsaka, Lotus, and Nirvāṇa sūtras—and was one of the most famous and powerful scholar-monks in all the kingdom. Through the Sui and early-Tang dynasties, Jizang enjoyed the patronage of high officials, princes, and emperors, having been invited to reside at several capital monasteries, and was eventually appointed one of the official Ten Monks of Great Virtue (shi dade 十大德) to oversee the Chinese (p.117) sangha.17 Against this backdrop it is not difficult to see Jizang’s works as dove-tailing with the ambitions of the Sui and Tang imperial courts to define Buddhist orthodoxy across the Sino-Indian divide. In this regard, Jizang had much in common with the other scholar-monks discussed in this chapter, who were likewise closely aligned with the secular authority of their times and regularly adduced the Indian patriarchs as paragons of mainstream, elite monasticism and thus stable forms of authority in the eyes of the Chinese state. And just as the Sui and Tang regimes sought to consolidate sociopolitical power in part by centering their kingdoms in Buddhist cosmographic terms, Jizang and his contemporaries likewise worked to localize the paradigms of Indian Buddhist authority provided by Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva.


Modern scholars have often characterized the period of the sixth century through the eighth as one in which Chinese Buddhists and their state patrons sought to consolidate the dizzying array of Buddhist scriptural and doctrinal traditions that had haphazardly filtered into China since the second century. In traditions ranging from ordination platforms and ritual programs to theorized stages of meditative attainment and models of Buddhist sainthood, Chinese Buddhists of this period worked to make sense of disparate Indic traditions that circulated during their time and reshape them to suit contemporary exigencies. Perhaps the best known of these Chinese Buddhist efforts at systematization was the process of panjiao 判教, or “classifying the teachings.” Panjiao essentially involved ordering and explicating the different doctrines found in important Buddhist scriptures according to the time at which the Buddha supposedly preached them, his methods of instruction, or the scriptures’ thematic content. Later Indian scholastic traditions were similarly classified according to their doctrinal emphases, such as Sarvāstivādin notions of causality versus the teaching of provisional existence in the Satyasiddhiśāstra, and the emptiness of the Madhyamaka.18 This practice of panjiao was begun by Chinese scholar-monks in the early fifth century, and it became a central preoccupation of famous sixth- to eighthcentury exegetes such as Jingying Huiyuan, Zhiyi, Jizang, Kuiji 窺基 (632–682) and Fazang 法藏 (643–712)—all of whom also played significant roles in the development of Indian patriarchal imagery during their times.19


The historical component of the panjiao classification method typically involved only the fortyfive years during which Śākyamuni preached the Dharma. The soteriological import of a given scripture was seen to be directly affected by the time at which the Buddha preached it— especially (p.118) whether, for example, this occurred just after his enlightenment or just before his nirvāṇa. And although similar efforts at classifying the teachings of later Indian masters lacked this historical dimension, the panjiao process of consolidating disparate views of Dharmic history during the Buddha’s lifetime was carried over to like efforts at collating the chronologies of post-parinirvāṇa Indian Buddhism. From the sixth century, Chinese Buddhist authors worked to systematize the numerous historical statements found in earlier sources concerning the True and Semblance (and sometimes Final) Dharma periods, or the various chronologies emphasizing specific centuries after nirvāṇa that were marked by epochaltering events or personages. As Jamie Hubbard explains, the underlying motive for these efforts to systematize the history of the Dharma was “the simple need for harmonizing (or at least making sense of) the various schemes that presented themselves in translated texts, exactly the same need that fueled the great systematization of … panjiao” (Hubbard 2001, 68–69). And in the same way, the attempts of this period to or ga nize earlier accounts of the Indian patriarchs’ historical contexts are best understood as part of this wide-spread movement toward simultaneously consolidating and elaborating Buddhist traditions of all varieties.


One important result of these attempts to harmonize earlier Indian patriarch accounts was the merging of Dharma decline narratives—which first framed the tales of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva—with models of direct master-disciple transmission, which later presented a radically different vision of Dharmic history and thus paradigm of Buddhist sainthood. A prominent example of this fusion is found in the Commentary on the Prajñā Scripture of Benevolent Kings Who Defend the Country (Renwang huguo bore jing shu 仁王護國般若經疏), which was attributed to Zhiyi but likely compiled by an anonymous Tiantai exegete between the mid-seventh century and the mid-eighth:20


Within one hundred years of the Buddha’s departure, five men maintained [the Dharma]. The first was Kāśyapa, the second Ānanda, and the third Madhyāntika. These three men saw the Buddha in the world, and maintained [the Dharma] from one to the next. [Thus] through sixty years the practice of the Dharma was not extinguished. Next were Śāṇakavāsa and Upagupta. These two men did not see the Buddha, but still maintained [the Dharma] from one to the next. [Thus] over [the next] forty years the Dharma of proper decorum was extinguished. Therefore, it is said that by this time there was no Buddha, Dharma, or sangha. (p.119) As for what is termed “the eight hundred years,” during the True Dharma period, twenty masters maintained the Buddhadharma. All were saintly men and the dharma was not extinguished. At six hundred years [after nirvāṇa, there was] Aśvaghoṣa Bodhisattva, and at seven hundred years Nāgārjuna. Both were bodhisattvas, so the Dharma was still not extinguished. By eight hundred years [after nirvāṇa] evil teachings came to flourish. Therefore, at this time [the Dharma] was bequeathed to kings. Deva Bodhisattva sounding the king’s drum to propagate the Dharma was [an instance of] this. Eight thousand years [after nirvāṇa] is the time of the Final Dharma, when the Semblance Dharma has been exhausted. Sentient beings believe in falsehoods, so the Dharma is extinguished.


佛去百年內, 五人住持. 一迦葉, 二阿難, 三末田地. 三人見佛在世, 相次住持. 經六十年, 法行不滅. 次商那和修, 優波鞠多. 此二人不見佛, 相次住持. 經四十年, 威儀法滅. 故於此時, 言無佛法僧也.


言“八百年”者, 正法年內, 二十師住持佛法. 並是聖人, 法不滅. 第六百年馬鳴菩薩, 第七百年龍樹。皆是菩薩, 法亦不滅. 八百年中, 邪宗極盛. 故於此時, 付囑國王. 提婆菩薩, 聲王鼓申法是也. 八千年者, 像法盡末法時. 眾生信邪, 故法滅.21


Here commenting on the “Entrustment Chapter” (zhulei pin 囑累品) of the Scripture of Benevolent Kings, an influential Chinese Buddhist apocryphon, this text explained the Buddha’s admonition to King Prasenajit about the destruction of the Three Jewels and the need to transmit the profound wisdom of this scripture to future kings and Buddhist disciples. The Buddha predicted successive stages of Dharma decline at eighty, eight hundred, and eight thousand years after nirvāṇa,22 which accounts for the periodization described here. However, while the source text detailed the decay of the Dharma and emphasized the need for future generations to uphold and transmit the teaching in order to prevent its collapse, the superimposition of lineal master-disciple transmission upon this chronicle of declining Dharma was the work of its commentator. He included the earliest disciples of the Buddha who kept the Dharma in its most pristine state for sixty years after nirvāṇa, but then with Śāṇakavāsa and Upagupta a certain decline was evident. This is because these two had not actually met the Buddha in person, and thus could not maintain “proper decorum” (i.e., fidelity to Vinaya regulations) in the same way that his direct disciples could. The commentator then explained the Buddha’s eight-hundredyear prophesy by emphasizing that because of the saintly character of the twenty patriarchs who transmitted the teaching through the True Dharma period—presumably spanning five centuries —it suffered no further decline. Then at six hundred and seven hundred years after nirvāṇa, respectively, Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna appeared, and they were able to maintain the Dharma untarnished because, simply stated, they were bodhisattvas. But at eight (p.120) hundred years after the Buddha’s departure, the winds of Dharma had again changed, and now it was time for great kings, august defenders of nations, to take the reins in perpetuating the Buddhist truth. This period was exemplified by Āryadeva, whose king-conversion episode from the DharmaTreasury Transmission now served to illustrate Dharma decline amidst lineal patriarchy.


In this way the Commentary on the Scripture of Benevolent Kings amalgamated the paradigms of Indian Buddhist history and sainthood presented in the writings of Kumārajva’s associates and in the Dharma-Treasury Transmission. The earliest accounts of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva frequently emphasized these patriarchs’ triumphs in dark times, several centuries after nirvāṇa, when the Dharma was nearly lost to a world populated by fools. Then in the Dharma-Treasury Transmission, which described a lineage of Indian patriarchs spanning some two dozen generations after nirvāṇa, Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva were shown living in a world uplifted by True Dharma transmitters. These two visions of Dharmic history were both advanced in (ostensibly) Indic scriptures and were equally compelling for Chinese Buddhists trying to determine how best to propagate the Dharma in their own time and place. Thus these schemes had to be reconciled with one another in terms of how Indian patriarchal models were conceived—models that became increasingly important to the localization of Buddhist enlightenment. One way to resolve this discrepancy, as in this commentary and elsewhere, was to assert that the decline of the Dharma continued inexorably even though the greatest Indian masters had transmitted the teaching in succession since the time of Śākyamuni.23 As such, the decline prophesy from the Scripture of Benevolent Kings, the lineal succession of the DharmaTreasury Transmission, and the chronologies of the earliest Indian patriarch accounts were all properly reconciled, while Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva alone were advanced as upholding the teaching after the True Dharma period.


While this melding of Dharmic histories served to resolve discrepancies between earlier authoritative sources, it also laid the groundwork for countering the implication in the DharmaTreasury Transmission that the highest truth of Indian Buddhism had never finally reached China. Although evil teachings had come to flourish and the Dharma would still devolve through the Semblance and Final periods, Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva propagated the teaching before its most precipitous decline. This was an important point for the numerous Chinese scholar-monks who in particular promoted the writings of these Indian patriarchs. Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva could not be allowed to just blend in with the crowd of Indian masters, as they did in the Dharma-Treasury Transmission, (p.121) and the profundity of their treatises could not be asserted only in doctrinal terms. Rather, these works had to be seen as arising from the most significant junctures of Indian Buddhist history, when only the doctrinal discourse of the greatest Buddhist saints could save the world from destruction. Thus it made sense for Buddhist exegetes to reassert the sort of Dharmic history that Kumārajīva’s associates first employed in their Indian patriarch accounts, according to which the Dharma was nearly extinguished before Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva arose to set things right.


Indeed, many scholar-monks of the Sui-Tang period reinscribed this narrative of Dharma decline in order to valorize the writings of their post-parinirvāṇa Indian predecessors. Jizang, for one, often claimed that Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva composed their treatises in order to check the heretical teachings that had arisen over the generations after nirvāṇa.24 And in the same way, the Awakening of Faith commentaries attributed to Huiyuan and composed by Fazang both asserted that Aśvaghoṣa wrote his magnum opus in order to save sentient beings mired in evil times.25 As the former commentary explained: During the time of the True Dharma, the Great Saint’s departure was recent, so people had the capacity for genuine faith and there was no heterodoxy. Seven hundred years later, the Great Saint’s departure was distant and all of the saintly disciples had followed26 the Buddha into extinction, so people had [only] the capacity for shallow faith. Because of this decline of the times, non-Buddhist heterodoxies flourished throughout the world. … For this reason Aśvaghoṣa Bodhisattva then appeared, taking pity on sentient beings dragged into inhuman streams [of rebirth]. Fearing that the Buddha’s ultimate purpose would sink into oblivion, based on the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra [[[Aśvaghoṣa]]] produced the Treatise on the Awakening of Faith.


正法之時, 大聖去近, 人根厚信, 故無異端. 七百歲後, 大聖去遠, 聖弟子眾, 遂佛滅度, 人根薄信. 以世衰故, 外道異端, 競興於世. … 是故復出, 馬鳴菩薩, 愍傷眾生, 拕非人流. 感[厂@煩]佛出極意潛沒, 依楞伽經, 造出起信論.27


Thus, Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva were not to be seen as garden-variety patriarchs who handed down the Dharma undimmed over the generations after nirvāṇa, as in the DharmaTreasury Transmission and elsewhere. This triad did not live in the halcyon days of the Buddha’s light kept bright by the lineage of True Dharma transmitters. Rather, even though (p.122) the model of master-disciple succession was beginning to make inroads in Chinese attempts to propagate Buddhism locally, and this model had become integrated within commentarial traditions elaborating the careers of the Indian patriarchs, Dharma degradation nevertheless remained the primary order of the day. Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva were thus elevated above the rest of the Indian patriarchs in part because they championed the True Dharma within singularly trying times. And as the accounts of Jizang, Huiyuan (?), and Fazang also emphasized, these great masters were seen to have resurrected the Buddhist truth in post-parinirvāṇa India with the very same exegetical treatises that subsequently served as focal points for contemporary Chinese Buddhist doctrinal discourse—the Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise, the Middle Treatise, the Hundred Treatise, and the Awakening of Faith.


In fact, Chinese scholar-monks of the time considered it the primary duty of the greatest patriarchs-cum-bodhisattvas who lived after the Buddha to compose doctrinal treatises in order to rescue deluded beings and transmit the truth to future generations. Huiyuan, for one, defined lun 論 in precisely these terms, as opposed to lesser sorts of writings such as “interpretive essays” (yizhang 義章) that the common rabble composed.28 In dark times after Śākyamuni’s departure, sentient beings ultimately depended on these lun in order to obtain liberation. Just as beings at the time of the Buddha were most suited to liberation through the scriptures that he preached, the karmic conditions of beings in the latter age dictated that they would require the sort of doctrinal commentary that the Indian patriarchs offered in their writings. Consequently, one should revere doctrinal treatises of the latter age just the same as scriptures preached by the Buddha himself.29 The greatest Indian patriarchs did what was most appropriate for their times, composing exegetical commentaries suited to the weakened proclivities of contemporary beings and thereby upholding the Buddhist truth for future generations through the vehicle of the written word. And given access to the treatises that Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva had authored to save the benighted beings of their own times, Buddhist adepts of later generations could likewise benefit from the truth transmitted. These points are made clear in Jizang’s Commentary on the Twelve Gates Treatise (Shi’ermenlun shu 十二門論疏):


Sentient beings have confused the teaching, and their erroneous interpretations have obscured the true scriptures. Now wishing to requite on high the benevolence of the Buddha, his great purpose is briefly explained. The present text [of Nāgārjuna’s Twelve Gates Treatise] is concise and easy to understand; (p.123) it can be forever transmitted to distant generations.30 Thus the Māyā Scripture says, “Nāgārjuna Bodhisattva lit the lamp of the True Dharma, and destroyed the banners of false views.”31 Dharma-master Kumārajīva said, “Nāgārjuna Bodhisattva made the great Dharma of the Thus Come One arise for the third time in Jambudvīpa.”32 A biography of Nāgārjuna says:


“The sun of wisdom had been eclipsed but this man caused it to shine again; the world had long been asleep in darkness, but this man awoke it.”33 眾生迷教, 邪義覆於正經. 今欲上報佛恩, 略明大意. 今文約而易顯, 久傳於遐代. 故摩耶經云, “龍樹菩薩, 燃正法炬, 滅邪見幢.” 什法師云, “龍樹菩薩, 令如來大法, 三啟閻浮.” 龍樹傳云: “智慧日已頹, 斯人令再耀; 世昏寢已久, 斯人悟令覺.”34


In light of sources indicating that the Indian patriarchate was ultimately unable to prevent the decline of the teaching, such assurances that Aśvaghoṣa’s, Nāgārjuna’s, and Āryadeva’s doctrinal treatises succeeded in transmitting the Dharma would lead Chinese Buddhists to uphold these patriarchs’ writings in lieu of direct master-disciple succession as the best means of propagating Buddhism locally. On the one hand, as previously noted, the Indian patriarchate of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission had already been severed long before it reached Chinese masters, so a direct master-disciple link between India and China would require refuting this well-known and authoritative Indic translation (and “sūtra,” according to some). On the other hand, the eventual severance of the lineage in the Dharma-Treasury Transmission turned out to be of little consequence, since after Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva the Dharma was thought to have declined precipitously through the succeeding generations of Indian patriarchs. Therefore, aside from the scriptures preached by the Buddha himself, the treatises of this patriarchal triad were lauded as representing (p.124) the highest expression of Buddhist truth available to latter-day Chinese adepts. And, as Jizang asserted, the karmic conditions of beings during the latter age were no longer suited to enlightenment through scriptural revelation; rather, these beings were karmically connected to the Indian patriarchs and the sort of doctrinal discourse that their treatises provided. Such texts, then, would be the most appropriate means for Chinese Buddhists to propagate the Dharma in their own time and place. These treatises had, in fact, freed the Buddhist truth from the trajectory of decline that the Indian patriarchate could no longer prevent, and they represented a moment in Buddhist history when the Dharma had not yet deteriorated beyond recognition—precisely because Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva championed the truth in otherwise pernicious times. So now their texts could serve as a new starting point for Chinese Buddhists to begin their own transmission lineages, and the written word would form the primary link between the apex of the Indian patriarchate and Chinese masters working to localize the means of Buddhist enlightenment.


Guanding’s Introduction to the Great Calming and Contemplation


This juxtaposition between the images of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva as propagating the teaching through exegetical authorship, as shining beacons in an otherwise dark portrait of declining Dharma, and as links in a failed Dharma lineage, was doubtless one important factor underlying the first known Chinese claim to lineal descent from the Indian patriarchs of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission. This claim was advanced by the eminent Tiantai master Guanding, who in his introduction to the Great Calming and Contemplation (Mohe zhiguan 摩訶止觀) connected his Tiantai predecessors Zhiyi, Huisi 慧思 (515–568) and Huiwen 慧文 (fl. 550s) to the Dharma-Treasury Transmission lineage—and the Buddha Śākyamuni thereby—not through direct master-disciple transmission but through Nāgārjuna’s Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise. Guanding affirmed the account of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission according to which the last patriarch of the Indian lineage, bhikṣu Siṃha, was killed before transmitting the teaching any further. Thus Guanding made no attempt to link Siṃha’s generation with this newly formed line of Chinese patriarchs, as would the Chan historiographers of the eighth and ninth centuries. But because his Tiantai masters had based their teachings on the Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise, so Guanding claimed, the “high ancestral master” (gaozushi 高祖師)35 of the Tiantai tradition was none other than Nāgārjuna, whose written exegesis thus formed a crucial link between the Indian origins of Buddhism and the greatest Buddhist saints of China. (p.125) Much like his contemporary Jizang, Guanding was a well-known and highly regarded scholar-monk whose efforts at defining Buddhist orthodoxy intertwined with projects orchestrated by the Sui regime to strengthen its claims to power.36 In the years following the death of the illustrious Zhiyi, who himself enjoyed lavish imperial patronage, Guanding took to compiling and editing a series of literary encomia for his deceased master. These included the official biography of Zhiyi,37 Zhiyi’s lectures constituting the Great Calming and Contemplation, and a collection of documents relating to the Tiantai community based around Guoqing monastery 國清寺.38 As several scholars have shown, these works were aimed in part at securing continued state support for the Tiantai institution after Zhiyi’s death. One way to do this was to assert that Zhiyi and thus the Tiantai tradition that he left behind were the principal Chinese representatives of original Indian Buddhism, which the imperial court likewise sought to uphold and incorporate. Guanding made this assertion in his newly compiled documents by associating Zhiyi with several different founts of Indian Buddhist authority, including the Indian missionary Buddhabhadra, the Buddha’s preaching of the Lotus Sūtra on Vulture Peak, and especially the


Indian patriarchal lineage of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission.39 In this way, just as Sui emperors Wen and Yang worked to transform their kingdom into a new epicenter of Buddhist enlightenment, Guanding’s writings served to negotiate “the transference of Real Buddhism from India to China” and thereby improve the standing of his Tiantai tradition in the eyes of the imperial court (Cole 2009, 39).


Among these projects initiated by Guanding to imbue his tradition with the aura of Indian authority, the introduction to the Great Calming and Contemplation has drawn particular attention as a “watershed” in the development of Chinese Buddhistsectarian consciousness” (Penkower 2000, 246), as it inaugurated a series of similar efforts to valorize local Chinese traditions by connecting them with the Indian patriarchate. While Guanding’s brief Tiantai genealogy was not necessarily “the first known attempt of any kind to define a Chinese teacher (or text) in terms of a succession theory” (ibid., 268; Morrison 2010, 32), as we saw with Sengyou’s Record of the Sarvāstivāda (Sapoduo bu ji 薩婆多部記), it was nonetheless an important precursor to the Chan and Tiantai master-disciple lineages that began to proliferate during the Tang. Linda Penkower provides a thorough account of Guanding’s early Tiantai lineage, offering a convincing argument for when and why it was produced—in terms of changes in temple inheritance (p.126) structures and contemporary drives to consolidate religio-political power in the wake of Zhiyi’s death and during the transition from the Sui dynasty to the Tang.40 And although Penkower also details the processes by which Guanding’s introduction coalesced into the structure that has come down to us, her analysis leaves room for further consideration of the role that Nāgārjuna’s Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise played in this construct. In particular, two fundamental questions remain: Why, for one, did Guanding see Indian doctrinal treatises in general as the most effective means of connecting Western and Eastern patriarchal lineages, and why did he choose Nāgārjuna’s Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise in particular? By considering the niche that Chinese Buddhists were carving for Indian doctrinal treatises— particularly as juxtaposed with Dharma transmission through master-disciple lineages—as well as Nāgārjuna’s importance to Chinese scholar-monks of all persuasions since the early fifth century, one can see in sharper focus the reasons for Guanding’s choice of this particular Indian master and treatise.


In order to understand Guanding’s reliance on an Indian treatise to connect the DharmaTreasury Transmission lineage with his Chinese masters, we might first recall how contemporary sources decried the inability of the Indian patriarchate to forestall the decline of the Dharma. Given this fact, it makes sense that Guanding would not have considered the latter patriarchs of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission to be the most propitious starting point for his own Dharma lineage. And although he did recount the death of Siṃha from the end of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission, Guanding did not appear overly concerned with the fact that the Indian lineage was terminated at that point. Instead, he lauded the efforts of all members of the patriarchate and proclaimed the benefits of hearing their teachings.41 In this regard as well, Guanding followed the Dharma-Treasury Transmission, upholding the saving power of the Dharma regardless of the ultimate fate of its transmission lineage. However, by singling out the work of Nāgārjuna as the foundation for his own tradition, Guanding made a similar move as his contemporaries in conceiving the Indian lineage as an arc rather than a flat line—with Nāgārjuna’s Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise representing the apex of all the patriarchs’ accomplishments. And since such treatises were upheld in contemporary accounts as the most effective means of eliminating confusion during the Indian patriarchsown times, as well as perpetuating the truth for future generations, Guanding would no doubt have seen these texts as a most appropriate link between Indian and Chinese (p.127) patriarchs, especially since the Dharma-Treasury Transmission clearly stated that the Indian lineage was severed with Siṃha.


This general consideration of Nāgārjuna’s placement at the apogee of the Indian patriarchate provides a good starting point for explaining Guanding’s focus on the Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise in particular. But for more specific reasons underlying Guanding’s selection of this text, scholars often turn to the aforementioned thesis of sectarian competition. This thesis basically runs as follows: Guanding’s main competition for imperial patronage at the time was Jizang and his Sanlun tradition; Jizang and Guanding saw themselves as representing mutually exclusive Buddhist traditions, each with a claim to absolute truth and each with its own Indian basis of authority—primarily the Three Treatises for Jizang and the Lotus Sūtra for Guanding; so Guanding appropriated Jizang’s Indian textual foundation—-i.e., the writings of Nāgārjuna—as a sectarian coup de maître aimed at unseating Sanlun at court and establishing Tiantai in its place. Penkower provides a compelling example of this line of thought, building on the work of several Japanese scholars who maintain that “the natural affinity between Tiantai and the Madhyamaka-oriented ideas of the Sanlun and Silun 四論 traditions … may have combined with political realities to influence Guanding to designate Nāgārjuna, the founder of the Madhyamaka school in India, to the position of ‘high ancestor’ of Tiantai” (Penkower 2000, 282). Alan Cole also argues that Guanding’s use of Nāgārjuna “as the crucial Indian pivot appears all the more aggressive, and derivative, as Nāgārjuna had already been claimed by Guanding’s rival [[[Jizang]]] in this game of truth-by-ancestors” (Cole 2009, 61). And along similar lines, according to Elizabeth Morrison, “Just as Sanlun advocates reacted to the prominence of other schools, like the Chengshi [成實; Satyasiddhi] … the growing prestige of the Sanlun in the late sixth century prompted a response from the nascent Tiantai community” to produce this lineage connecting Zhiyi to the Buddha through Nāgārjuna (Morrison 2010, 32). However, while it certainly makes sense to view this well-documented competition between


Guanding and Jizang as a proximal cause for Guanding’s appropriation of the Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise—especially since Guanding appears to have “borrowed” from Jizang’s writings on several other occasions (as Jizang had done with Zhiyi)42—this particular line of influence has perhaps been overdetermined. For centuries before Guanding and Jizang, the figure of Nāgārjuna, his corpus of writings and especially the Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise had been employed by Chinese exegetes of all traditions to authorize Buddhist ideals and practices across a broad spectrum. Nāgārjuna had never been the exclusive property of any one Chinese Buddhist tradition, and he was never viewed, even by Jizang or other Sanlun advocates, as the founder of a specific sect such as the Madhyamaka. His Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise in particular contained detailed exegesis of doctrines and practices that far exceeded the bounds of (p.128) exclusively Madhyamaka or Sanlun concerns—concerns that were, moreover, determined largely in a medieval Japanese context and later read into the writings of fifth- to seventh-century Chinese exegetes. From the time of Kumārajīva, Chinese authors always represented Nāgārjuna as a master of all Buddhist (and non-Buddhist) teachings, as both his hagiographies and voluminous writings clearly attested, and by the Sui-Tang period he had become a synecdoche for all things Mahāyāna. As such, Jizang’s claim to the authority of this Three Treatise master was but one of many such claims throughout Chinese Buddhist history,


and Guanding had equal right and ample precedent to assert the importance of Nāgārjuna’s exegesis to his own Tiantai tradition.


In addition, while Guanding’s use of the Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise accords with this general trend throughout medieval China of eliciting Nāgārjuna to support all kinds of Buddhist teachings, there are also more specific congruencies between the early hagiographic depictions of Nāgārjuna and the ways in which Guanding attempted to portray his master Zhiyi. In particular, Penkower and Wendi Adamek emphasize how Guanding worked to cement Zhiyi’s legacy both by portraying him as the recipient of Buddhist tradition through the Indian lineage and by highlighting his innate brilliance and personal discovery of the Buddhist truth. This latter basis for Zhiyi’s authority was indicated by tales of his miraculous birth, his portentous physiognomy (having double pupils), and his self-awakening achieved through a meditative repentance practice based on the Lotus Sūtra.43 Similarly, the earlier tale of Zhiyi and Huisi personally attending Śākyamuni’s Lotus sermon on Vulture Peak underscored their direct access to the Buddhist truth, without need for further instruction from Indian masters or commentarial treatises. As such, according to Penkower, Guanding claimed for Zhiyi what had been claimed for the Buddha Śākyamuni, “namely, that his authority is sufficient unto itself and does not rely on what he has learned from a teacher” (Penkower 2000, 262). Nevertheless, Guanding’s rehearsal of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission and claim to Nāgārjuna as Tiantai’s “high ancestral master” also ensured that Zhiyi was joined with the Buddha in quasi-genealogical fashion. This juxtaposition, as Adamek puts it, provided “an elegant solution to the problem of validating both the continuity of transmitted teachings and the discontinuity of individual insight” (Adamek 2007, 112). But it also served to create a clear resonance between Zhiyi and the earlier hagiographic imagery of Nāgārjuna. Just as Zhiyi was chosen to carry on the DharmaTreasury transmission by virtue of his own innate brilliance, as Guanding implied, Nāgārjuna was likewise depicted as both a self-made saint and a recipient of Buddhist tradition through patriarchal transmission.


(p.129) At several points so far I have noted the tension in medieval China between representing Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva as singular exemplars of Buddhist sainthood and as placeholders in lineages of master-disciple succession. Kumārajīva’s associates first depicted these patriarchs as lone beacons of light in the darkness, while the Dharma-Treasury Transmission showed them standing in a long line of similarly brilliant saints. But in the case of Nāgārjuna, this latter hagiography also instantiated the former model of Buddhist sanctity, albeit without the emphasis on decline and revival that marked Nāgārjuna’s earliest accounts. As outlined in the previous chapter, the Dharma-Treasury Transmission was the first Chinese source to claim that Nāgārjuna directly succeeded another master, as he ostensibly received Dharma transmission from Vīra. But at the same time, according to this account, Nāgārjuna was awakened to the Buddhist truth through his own efforts at mastering a cache of scriptures revealed to him in the undersea palace of a great dragon bodhisattva. This tale of Nāgārjuna’s dragon-palace sojourn, akin to the earlier prefaces by Sengrui, Tanying, and Huiyuan, would therefore seem at odds with the emphasis on master-disciple Dharma transmission. But this discrepancy arises only if we understand that model as signaling the necessity of Buddhist preceptors for the realization of Buddhist truth. However, since Nāgārjuna achieved enlightenment through his own study of the vaipulya scriptures, his receipt of the Dharmatreasury transmission was portrayed as the effect rather than the cause of his sanctity.


Nāgārjuna’s placement in the lineage did not indicate his reliance on Vīra, who did not confer any truths that Nāgārjuna did not already know; rather, Vīra simply sanctioned the awakening that Nāgārjuna had achieved on his own. From this standpoint the lineal succession was one of discovery rather than transmission, with Dharma masters simply finding and announcing the next great talent rather than teaching their disciples the means to true enlightenment. As such, Nāgārjuna’s dragon-palace enlightenment and his meeting with Vīra were complementary aspects of his career, with his induction into the Dharma-treasury lineage serving both to validate his self-realization and invest within him the totality of Indian Buddhist tradition. Such was the case with Guanding’s portrayal of Zhiyi in the introduction to the Great Calming and Contemplation, which recounted both sources of Nāgārjuna’s authority before repeating them in the figure of Zhiyi.44 Guanding’s text thus followed Nāgārjuna’s modes of hagiographic representation at the same time that it emphasized how Zhiyi instantiated Nāgārjuna’s model of doctrinal exegesis. Here Zhiyi’s placement at the (p.130) Chinese end of the Dharma-treasury lineage functioned to sanction his innate brilliance and his sermons constituting the Great Calming and Contemplation, rather than indicating his reliance on the line of Indian masters. Similarly, Guanding adduced Nāgārjuna and his Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise as analogues to Zhiyi and his Great Calming and Contemplation, with the former sanctioning the latter as equals rather than serving as requisite instructional guides. As such, Guanding’s use of these Indian media in fact signaled a move away from Indian sources of authority and toward the creation of local Chinese founts of Buddhist enlightenment—as in the person, practices, and teachings of Zhiyi. The Great Calming and Contemplation, otherwise advertised as an


“integrated systemization of the totality of received tradition” (Penkower 2000, 278), was here presented as the Chinese equivalent to Nāgārjuna’s Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise, which was widely viewed as the paragon among Indian doctrinal treatises of the same sort of comprehensive, universalist teaching that Zhiyi (via Guanding) claimed to deliver. In this way, Zhiyi’s natural brilliance and self-realization were perfectly encapsulated within his exegetical magnum opus,45 which was validated by the Dharma-Treasury Transmission lineage and Nāgārjuna especially as a foremost source of Dharmic truth on a par with anything produced in India. And now with the Great Calming and Contemplation to hand, Chinese scholar-monks and secular rulers could look no further than their own borders for the greatest manifestation of Buddhist enlightenment.


The Awakening of Faith in Aśvaghoṣa’s Repertoire


In much the same way that Nāgārjuna’s Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise was seen to transmit the epitome of Indian Buddhist tradition to latter-day China—instantiating both the culmination of the Indian patriarchate and the unique content of Nāgārjuna’s dragon-palace enlightenment—Aśvaghoṣa’s most famous doctrinal treatise was likewise conceived to localize the highest truth of Indian Buddhism. I previously noted the proliferation of texts attributed to Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva after the time of Kumārajīva, which both resulted from and contributed to the wide-spread popularity of these Indian patriarchs in China. Without doubt the most important of these texts was Aśvaghoṣa’s Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, which was a ubiquitous source of Indian authority in Chinese doctrinal discourses throughout the Sui-Tang period. Purportedly translated by Paramārtha (499–569) in the early 550s and again by Śikṣānanda (652–710) around the beginning of the eighth century, this text has long been identified as a Chinese apocryphon.46 As such, modern scholars have (p.131) most often viewed it as an important index to the doctrinal concerns of medieval Chinese Buddhists, especially of the Dilun and Yogācāra traditions. Less attention has been paid, however, to the role that this ostensibly Indian doctrinal treatise played in Sui-Tang Chinese efforts to localize Indian paradigms of Buddhist sainthood. Alan Cole, for one, maintains that the central agenda of the Awakening of Faith was to encapsulate the entirety of Indian Buddhist truth and tradition and make it accessible to Chinese adepts without further need for Indian scriptural or patriarchal authority. Given that the text was nonetheless attributed to a famous Indian patriarch, Cole (2005, 12) reads it as one of several medieval Chinese examples of “relying on


India to end reliance on India”—as with Guanding’s use of Nāgārjuna to show that the totality of Indian Buddhism was perfectly enshrined within the works of Zhiyi. But while Cole (ibid., 4) offers a promising analysis of this text’s agenda in terms of its doctrinal focus on the embryo of Buddhahood inherent within all sentient beings—and thus always already present in China— Aśvaghoṣa’s role in this agenda deserves further consideration. In particular, if this treatise was intended to relocate the crux of Indian Buddhism to China, as Cole argues, what would Aśvaghoṣa have been seen to contribute to this transmission? Why would this particular patriarch have been selected as the most appropriate Indian author for the Awakening of Faith, and what was the relationship between the paradigms of Buddhist sainthood that Aśvaghoṣa exemplified and the contents and contexts of this purportedly Indian doctrinal treatise?


Modern scholarly consensus is that only three extant texts were actually composed by Aśvaghoṣa: the Acts of the Buddha (Buddhacarita), Nanda the Fair (Saundarananda) and the fragmentary Play on Śāriputra (Śāriputraprakaraṇa).47 All three are classical Sanskrit poems that elaborate early Buddhist teachings; they evince little concern with even prototypical Mahāyāna ideals, much less the sort of intricate synthesis of advanced Mahāyāna constructs that characterizes the Awakening of Faith.48 Therefore, scholars typically banish the notion that Aśvaghoṣa authored such a text, arguing that this preeminent Indian poet and Hīnayāna devotee could not possibly have written a philosophical tract having to do with “store house consciousness” (ālayavijñāna; alaiye shi 阿賴耶識) or the “embryo/womb of (p.132)


Buddhahood” (tathāgatagarbha; rulai zang 如来藏)—advanced Mahāyāna doctrines that were developed long after Aśvaghoṣa’s death.49 Medieval Chinese Buddhists, however, expressed no doubt about Aśvaghoṣa’s authorship of the Awakening of Faith.50 And in fact, given the hagiographic imagery of this patriarch that had developed up until the beginning of the seventh century, it would have made perfect sense to Chinese Buddhists of the time for Aśvaghoṣa to have composed this treatise.


Not long after the Awakening of Faith appeared in the late sixth century, it was hailed as a seminal exposition of the most important Mahāyāna principles, and many prominent Buddhist exegetes of the Sui-Tang period drew upon this text as an authority in explicating a variety of Mahāyāna ideals. Much like Nāgārjuna’s and Āryadeva’s treatises before it, the Awakening of Faith came to be seen as one of the most fundamental expressions of Mahāyāna truth produced after the time of the Buddha. And given this fact, it is instructive to recall the previously quoted statement by Jizang, according to which Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva alone aided Śākyamuni in propagating the Dharma after nirvāṇa. Similarly, Guanding joined Aśvaghoṣa with Nāgārjuna as the keystones of Mahāyāna Buddhism as a whole, and Jingying Huiyuan frequently invoked this pair of patriarchs to illustrate various points of Mahāyāna doctrine.51 But these are just a few examples of the ubiquitous tendency in medieval Chinese sources to treat Aśvaghoṣa as a foundational figure for Mahāyāna exegesis across the board, and as joined particularly with Nāgārjuna (and Āryadeva) to form a dynamic duo (or triad) of post-parinirvāṇa Mahāyāna patriarchs. And while these examples all likely appeared after the Awakening of Faith had been attributed to Aśvaghoṣa—and thus could be seen primarily as testimony to the influence of this text alone—they nevertheless carried forth an age-old tradition of joining Aśvaghoṣa with the Three Treatise exegetes as the greatest champions of Mahāyāna Buddhism over the centuries after nirvāṇa.


While the attribution of the Awakening of Faith to Aśvaghoṣa greatly increased the popularity of this patriarch and effectively solidified his image as an unparalleled doctrinal author, Aśvaghoṣa was selected from among the host of available Indian patriarchs as author for this text precisely because he had already been celebrated since the time of Kumārajīva as one of the greatest Mahāyāna exegetes in Buddhist history. In early fifth-century (p.133) sources, Aśvaghoṣa was said to have unified the Greater and Lesser Vehicles rather than promoting the former above and against the latter. But over the following centuries in China, it came to be taken for granted that Mahāyāna masters harmonized all of Śākyamuni’s teachings—which included both Vehicles —while only Hīnayāna advocates were exclusivist in their outlook on the Dharma. And since Aśvaghoṣa was depicted from the outset as ecumenical in his approach to the Buddha’s teachings, he would by the sixth century be seen as the quintessential Mahāyāna bodhisattva who understood Śākyamuni’s need to tailor his teachings to the proclivities of individual sentient beings.52


It was a common refrain within both the Awakening of Faith itself and its early commentaries that this text was composed to suit the weakened capacities of people living during the latter age of Buddhist history, when the True Dharma was nearly overrun by non-Buddhist dogmas. Of course, this was fairly standard rhetoric in a variety of Chinese sources produced around the beginning of the seventh century, when many Chinese Buddhists claimed to be living at the end of the Semblance Dharma period or amidst the Final Dharma. But because Aśvaghoṣa was so often depicted as a great savior and reviver of the Dharma within similarly pernicious times, it would have seemed perfectly sensible to sixth- and seventh-century Chinese Buddhists that the Awakening of Faith was the very text with which this patriarch had once demonstrated his skill in means. And again, because he was so closely connected with Nāgārjuna since the time of Kumārajīva, Aśvaghoṣa would have appeared to the anonymous Chinese author (or authors) of the Awakening of Faith as a most propitious choice for the author of a treatise composed to share the niche long occupied by texts like the Middle Treatise and Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise—Indian doctrinal treatises written by the greatest Mahāyāna masters since Śākyamuni. And finally, with Aśvaghoṣa having been depicted from the outset as first and foremost a master of meditation practice, the Awakening of Faith would have further seemed an ideal match for this particular patriarch’s expertise, given that this treatise was likewise conceived in part as a meditation manual intended to guide practitioners toward realization of the “One Mind” (yixin 一心). In these ways Aśvaghoṣa was the most logical choice for medieval Chinese (p.134) Buddhists as the author of the newly composed Awakening of Faith. With this seminal treatise thus ascribed to Aśvaghoṣa, not only did it serve to localize the means to enlightenment within latter-day China—through a program of meditative practice designed to awaken the embryo of Buddhahood inherent within every individual mind—but it also sanctioned Chinese Buddhist efforts to liberate beings through the practice of doctrinal authorship. With the Awakening of Faith to hand, Chinese scholar-monks now had access to the foremost means by which Buddhism had been saved in India and transmitted to China, as well as a model of exegetical writing that would enable them to propagate the True Dharma without further need for recourse to Indian authority.


The Aśvaghoṣa-Nāgārjuna Connection


The few scholars who have devoted some attention to Aśvaghoṣa’s authorship of the Awakening of Faith have also noted in passing how his association with Nāgārjuna influenced Chinese conceptions of his prowess as a Mahāyāna exegete.53 However, these brief comments do little justice to the fundamental impact of this connection on Aśvaghoṣa’s early Chinese imagery. I have already cited several examples of the close relationship between these two patriarchs in Chinese sources from the time of Kumārajīva, and even a cursory search through the Chinese Buddhist canon reveals numerous instances of Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna being paired as the foremost champions of Mahāyāna Buddhism. From his introduction in China, Aśvaghoṣa was depicted as the predecessor and even acknowledged master of Nāgārjuna, who was otherwise the greatest Indian Mahāyāna champion known to the Chinese. Then, over the Sui-Tang period, this patriarchal association became common knowledge, as Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna were increasingly depicted upholding the Buddhist truth against all encroachment, or cited as authority in Chinese Buddhist discourse on all things Mahāyāna. With Aśvaghoṣa having been thus represented, the application of his name to the newly composed Awakening of Faith would surely have legitimized this text and its central agendas in the eyes of contemporary Chinese Buddhists. And in this regard we can point to one important factor underlying the Awakening of

Faith’s ascription to Aśvaghoṣa—the simple need for the authority of a respected Indian master. But Aśvaghoṣa offered a certain brand of Indian authority, and one that was especially appealing to the medieval Chinese author (or authors) and audiences of the Awakening of Faith. This was the authority of the predecessor and teacher of Nāgārjuna, who was otherwise the archetype of Mahāyāna sainthood who reportedly followed Aśvaghoṣa’s example of upholding the Dharma in dark times through the vehicle of the written word.


Together with the quasi-genealogical statements previously cited, according to which Aśvaghoṣa preceded Nāgārjuna in reviving the True (p.135) Dharma in specific centuries after nirvāṇa, a clear hierarchical relationship was established between these two patriarchs in the biography of Aśvaghoṣa preserved at Nanatsu-dera. In particular, this biography asserted, “Each time [[[Nāgārjuna]]] inked his quill and began composing treatises, he never failed to pay the utmost respect to Aśvaghoṣa. He composed verses for personally taking refuge and expressed his wish to rely on [Aśvaghoṣa’s] profound illumination so as to become enlightened himself” (see appendix 1). I noted in chapter 1 that this is an otherwise unknown tradition in Chinese sources —of Nāgārjuna expressing such fervent praise for Aśvaghoṣa—but that it may be a remnant of the close stylistic relationship between Nāgārjuna’s treatises and Aśvaghoṣa’s Saundarananda. Nevertheless, this assertion of Nāgārjuna’s dependence on Aśvaghoṣa’s “profound illumination,” in an almost master-disciple fashion, indeed reflects the otherwise well-known historical precedence of Aśvaghoṣa over Nāgārjuna in propagating the Mahāyāna in a world without a Buddha. Because medieval Chinese sources rarely suggested that Nāgārjuna personally met Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna’s acknowledgment here of the debt owed Aśvaghoṣa would seemingly refer in particular to the writings that Aśvaghoṣa had bequeathed—in a manner not unlike Guanding’s association between Zhiyi and Nāgārjuna’s Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise. But despite this and similar indications elsewhere of Aśvaghoṣa’s impressive literary output, early Chinese Buddhists had only a small sampling of his work. In part because Nāgārjuna himself extolled Aśvaghoṣa’s writings with such reverence, Chinese adepts would no doubt have longed to see more of the profound Mahāyāna exegesis that Aśvaghoṣa was said to have produced.


At the beginning of the fifth century, a number of Nāgārjuna’s doctrinal treatises were translated into Chinese—including, most notably, the Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise, the Middle Treatise, and the Twelve Gates Treatise, which accounted for two of the famous Three Treatises. Over the following centuries many more works attributed to Nāgārjuna would appear in China, thus providing tangible evidence for the numerous hagiographic assertions that Nāgārjuna resurrected the Dharma through doctrinal authorship. However, the similar hagiographic statements about Aśvaghoṣa must have rung somewhat hollow for fifth-century Chinese readers, who had only brief excerpts of his writings in the Scripture on Seated Dhyāna Samādhi (Zuochan sanmei jing 坐禪三昧經), and then somewhat later the Buddhacarita and Sūtrālaṃkāra—neither of which would have satisfied Chinese appetites for Indian Mahāyāna exegesis.54 In this way, a demand was created for Aśvaghoṣa’s foundational Mahāyāna treatises, which had been advertised (p.136) as demonstrating a brilliance paralleled only by Nāgārjuna’s own writings, and which could thus fit into the niche that works such as the Middle Treatise had already long occupied.


The Awakening of Faith was probably intended to share this Chinese niche for Indian Mahāyāna exegesis rather than to co-opt it outright. By the middle of the sixth century, Nāgārjuna and his treatises were already too well established as integral to the development of Mahāyāna Buddhism to be unseated or denigrated in any way. In fact, as previously demonstrated in the case of Guanding’s introduction to the Great Calming and Contemplation, even when quasisectarian battles were taking place and it may have been in one party’s interest to denounce his opponent’s fount of authority, Guanding would not seek to undermine Jizang by attacking


Nāgārjuna. Instead, Guanding likewise claimed Nāgārjuna’s writings as the foundation for his Tiantai tradition. Further, nowhere in Chinese sources do we see any attempts to situate Aśvaghoṣa above and against Nāgārjuna or depict these two in any way as at odds with one another, even after the Awakening of Faith had gained a foothold in Chinese Buddhist discourse. Just as Nāgārjuna was not only a Mādhyamika, but rather encapsulated the entirety of Mahāyāna Buddhism, Aśvaghoṣa was likewise seen as transcending any doctrinal differentiations that had arisen among Mahāyāna proponents—particularly since the Awakening of Faith was composed as a synthesis of many prevailing modes of Buddhist thought and practice. For these reasons we should not view Nāgārjuna’s expressions of reverent praise for Aśvaghoṣa as a sectarian polemic intended to devalue Nāgārjuna’s own writings.55 Rather, these statements were part and parcel of the broader trend throughout medieval China of linking these two patriarchs in succession as the greatest champions of Mahāyāna Buddhism over the centuries after nirvāṇa.


Aśvaghoṣa’s Dhyāna Expertise


While both Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna were depicted predominantly as the greatest postparinirvāṇa champions of Mahāyāna Buddhism across sectarian bounds, at the same time these patriarchs did have their own specific doctrinal identities. Particularly as author of the Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise—a voluminous commentary on a wide array of Buddhist teachingsNāgārjuna was certainly seen as possessing expertise in many areas aside from his Mādhyamika specialization. Nevertheless, since he had also (p.137) authored doctrinal tracts such as the Middle Treatise and the Twelve Gates Treatise, Chinese commentators viewed Nāgārjuna in particular as a proponent of quintessentially Mādhyamika doctrines such as the “middle way” and the “two truths.” With this celebrated body of Mādhyamika literature in


Chinese translation, Nāgārjuna’s own doctrinal proclivities were fairly well-defined for Chinese Buddhists, even if he was otherwise considered an expert on all things Mahāyāna. Because of this, Nāgārjuna would perhaps have been seen as an unlikely author of the Awakening of Faith, which integrated ideals such as the ālayavijñāna that were understood to contravene Nāgārjuna’s orthodox Mādhyamika doctrinal position. Aśvaghoṣa, in contrast, was depicted from the very beginning as specializing in areas that would have made him an appropriate choice as Indian author for this newly composed Chinese treatise.


It is well known that the fourth and fifth divisions of the Awakening of Faith were devoted to explicating methods of practice by which one could realize the doctrinal insights outlined earlier in the text. While these doctrinal insights have received the lion’s share of attention in the subsequent commentarial tradition—and rightfully so, considering their abstruse nature—the text’s practical emphasis was perhaps equally important to Aśvaghoṣa’s selection as its author. In chapter 1, I discussed how fifth-century sources commended Aśvaghoṣa in particular for his expertise in dhyāna cultivation, and how the only examples of Aśvaghoṣa’s writings available to Chinese Buddhists at the time were instructions for meditation practice. Sengrui’s “Preface to the Dhyāna Scriptures Translated within the Passes” outlined the contents of a meditation manual that has come down to us in the form of the Scripture on Seated Dhyāna Samādhi. Sengrui wrote that this compilation of “dhyāna essentials” was comprised in large part of verses that Aśvaghoṣa wrote in order to explain meditation practices known as the “five gateways” and the “six kinds of thought,” as well as other forms of breathing meditation. Then in his “Comprehensive Preface to the Dhyāna Scriptures on the Cultivation of Expedient Means Translated at Moun Lu,” Huiyuan similarly praised Aśvaghoṣa for having bequeathed his instructions for dhyāna cultivation to future generations. While I have not found any specific correlations between the Scripture on Seated Dhyāna Samādhi and the meditation practices described in the Awakening of Faith, it seems clear that Aśvaghoṣa’s early depiction as a meditation master was one important factor in his subsequent claim to fame as author of this sixth-century Mahāyāna doctrinal synopsis and meditation primer.


How to Write for Dimwitted Readers


A third major factor underlying the attribution of the Awakening of Faith to Aśvaghoṣa was this patriarch’s early and oft-repeated depiction as savior of the benighted masses during the latter age of Buddhist history. I have already cited several examples in which Aśvaghoṣa was described generally as working to benefit beings whose distance from the fountainhead of enlightenment had lessened their spiritual capacities; and I have also noted (p.138) instances in which Aśvaghoṣa was stated more specifically to have liberated his benighted contemporaries by authoring doctrinal treatises. One such instance is worth repeating here, since it prefigured most directly the manner in which the Awakening of Faith was said to conform to the weakened proclivities of its intended audience. The Nanatsu-dara biography of Aśvaghoṣa explained:


At that time, although the end of the True Dharma [period] was approaching, people’s minds could still attain [the Way]. Their ability to realize it themselves was insufficient, and awakening through texts and words was still incomplete. Therefore, Aśvaghoṣa abbreviated superfluous words that strayed from the truth and omitted flowery expressions that [merely] implied meaning. He pronounced the supple teaching through clear principles and related their essentials and fundamentals with the utmost beauty. How could this not be the case? His skillfully composed texts were direct in their expression, and he was without match in his excellence. At that time [his writings] were praised and revered throughout the world, taken as models of composition (See appendix 1). Compare this with the justification for composing the Awakening of Faith offered at the outset of the text:


Though this teaching is presented in the sūtras, the capacity and the deeds of men today are no longer the same, nor are the conditions of their acceptance and comprehension. That is to say, in the days when the Tathāgata was in the world, people were of high aptitude and the Preacher excelled in his form, mind, and deeds, so that once he had preached with his perfect voice, different types of people all equally understood; hence, there was no need for this kind of discourse. But after the passing away of the Tathāgata, there were some who were able by their own power to listen extensively to others and to reach understanding; there were some who by their own power could listen to very little and yet understand much; there were some who, without any mental power of their own, depended upon the extensive discourse of others to obtain understanding; and naturally there were some who looked upon the wordiness of extensive discourses as troublesome, and who sought after what was comprehensive, terse, and yet contained much meaning, and then were able to understand it. Thus, this discourse is designed to embrace, in a general way, the limitless meaning of the vast and profound teaching of the Tathāgata. This discourse, therefore, should be presented (Hakeda 1967, 26–27).


修多羅中, 雖有此法, 以眾生根行不等, 受解緣別. 所謂如來在世, 眾生利根, 能說之人, 色心業勝, 圓音一演, 異類等解, 則不須論. 若如來滅後, 或有眾生, 能以自力, 廣聞而取解者; 或有眾生, 亦以自力, 少聞而多解者; 或有眾生, 無自心力, 因於廣論, 而得解者; 自有眾生, 復以廣論, 文多為煩, 心樂總持, 少文而攝多義, 能取解者. 如是此論, 為欲總攝如來廣大深法無邊義. 故應說此論.56


(p.139) Aśvaghoṣa himself was notably absent from this statement of Dharmic history and justification for authoring the Awakening of Faith, and in fact his name appeared nowhere in the body of the extant text.57 Nevertheless, the obvious congruencies between this passage and the Nanatsu-dera biography of Aśvaghoṣa, as regards the proclivities of beings who are distant from the Buddha and the expediencies that treatise masters must thereby employ, would seem to suggest that the Awakening of Faith’s author (or authors) bore Aśvaghoṣa’s early hagiographic imagery firmly in mind. Both of these quoted texts described the weakened capacities of people who lived over the centuries after nirvāṇa—which was a common sentiment in Chinese sources during the fifth and sixth centuries—but the explanation of how treatise authors should thus tailor their writings was somewhat more specific to Aśvaghoṣa’s Nanatsu-dera biography and the Awakening of Faith. According to the former source, Aśvaghoṣa “abbreviated superfluous words” and “omitted flowery expressions,” so “his skillfully composed texts were direct in their expression.” Likewise, the supposed Indian author of the Awakening of Faith wrote in a way that was “comprehensive, terse, and yet contained much meaning,” in particular for readers “who looked upon the wordiness of extensive discourses as troublesome.” Similarly, the commentary on the Awakening of Faith attributed to Jingying Huiyuan explained that Aśvaghoṣa used “abbreviated wording” (wen lüeshao 文略少) to compensate for the shortcomings of earlier treatises, which were too verbose and allusive for contemporary beings to follow.58 And in what would later become the definitive commentary on Aśvaghoṣa’s magnum opus, Fazang wrote:


Lamenting the snares of decadence and grieving over this sinkhole [of saṃsāra, Aśvaghoṣa] wished to explain the wondrous meaning of the profound scriptures to again illuminate dark roads, reprimand those holding perverted views, and thereby cause them to return to the True Path. He enabled those intent on returning to the source to get back to the origin without deviation. At that time he composed a broad range of treatises for the far-reaching benefit of the multitudes. But, because the words were numerous and the meanings abstruse, they were not discernable by those of shallow intellect. So, out of compassion for the deluded of this last age, he also composed this treatise. We can say that the meaning [of the Awakening of Faith] is rich though the text is concise, and it unites both understanding and practice. Because of this work, even those with less than average capacities can attain awakening.


(p.140) 慨此頹綱, 悼斯淪溺. 將欲啟深經之妙旨, 再曜昏衢; 斥邪見之顛眸, 令歸正趣. 使還源者, 可即返本非遙. 造廣論於當時, 遐益群品. 既文多義邈, 非淺識所闚. 悲末葉之迷倫, 又造斯論. 可謂義豐文約, 解行俱兼. 中下之流, 因茲悟入者矣.60


Here Fazang appears to have combined Aśvaghoṣa’s early hagiographic depictions with the soterio-historical justification offered within Awakening of Faith itself, explaining (in language that also echoed Sengrui’s Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise preface) how Aśvaghoṣa adopted a simplified approach for his exegetical masterpiece so that beings of shallow intellect during the latter age could comprehend it easily—an ironic claim considering how the laconic quality of the Awakening of Faith has often caused such difficulty in interpretation. In any event, given the manner in which the Awakening of Faith as well as its early commentaries rationalized its style in terms of its moment in Dharmic history—as tailored to suit the weakened capacities of beings after the death of the Buddha—it is clear that Aśvaghoṣa’s early hagiographic imagery would have made him an ideal match for this treatise. Aśvaghoṣa had been depicted from the outset as likewise having saved his dimwitted contemporaries by authoring doctrinal treatises, and the Nanatsu-dera biography in particular described how he did this by excising flowery expressions and elucidating the Buddhadharma in a straightforward manner—precisely the style that the Awakening of Faith’s author sought to emulate. Therefore, together with Aśvaghoṣa’s age-old connection with the archetypal Mahāyāna master Nāgārjuna, and his early depiction as a meditation master first and foremost, the soterio-historical association between Aśvaghoṣa and the Awakening of Faith made this patriarch a most viable candidate to serve as a front for the Chinese author of this ostensibly Indian Mahāyāna treatise.


The attribution of the Awakening of Faith to Aśvaghoṣa verified the numerous hagiographic assertions that this celebrated Indian patriarch had saved the world by authoring doctrinal treatises. And with this text to his name, the reasons why Aśvaghoṣa had always been intimately associated with Nāgārjuna—and in fact why Nāgārjuna so fervently praised Aśvaghoṣa’s writings—were thereby brought to light. Aśvaghoṣa’s advertised brilliance in both doctrinal analysis and practical training were made manifest for a Chinese audience. Around the end of the sixth century, when we first have indisputable evidence that Chinese Buddhists attributed the Awakening of Faith to Aśvaghoṣa,61 the popularity of this Indian patriarch soared, and (p. 141) Chinese exegetes had more concrete means to elicit his name as authority in discourse on Mahāyāna ideals. While the Awakening of Faith was ascribed to Aśvaghoṣa precisely because of the ways in which he had been depicted from the earliest times in China, with this seminal treatise to his name Aśvaghoṣa would forever be remembered primarily as an unparalleled Buddhist philosopher and doctrinal author. And according to Jingying Huiyuan, Jizang, Fazang, and their contemporaries, the greatest post-parinirvāṇa patriarchs were, in fact, defined in large part by their function as treatise masters who liberated beings with their writings amidst difficult soteriological circumstances. With the Awakening of Faith now available for Chinese adepts to personally read, practice, and adduce in their own doctrinal commentaries, Aśvaghoṣa was thus seen to have fulfilled this function for both ancient Indian and contemporary Chinese Buddhists.


As indicated, one purpose of the Awakening of Faith was to relocate the highest truth of Indian Buddhism within latter-day China and thus eliminate the need for further reliance on Indian founts of Buddhist authority. Focusing on the embryo of Buddhahood always already present at the core of every sentient being, and offering the practical means by which Chinese adepts could personally realize their potential Buddhahood, this ostensibly Indian treatise ideally obviated any further mediation between India and China. And as part of this agenda, the Chinese author (or authors) of the Awakening of Faith ascribed this treatise to Aśvaghoṣa in order to instantiate in China another Indian model of Buddhist awakening. This was the model of post-parinirvāṇa sainthood through doctrinal scholarship, according to which great bodhisattvas were made by mastering the conventions of exegetical authorship and saving beings through the vehicle of the written word. With Aśvaghoṣa having shown how the vast Indian scriptural and commentarial tradition could be condensed into one convenient textual package, which best suited the proclivities of human beings living far from the Buddha, Chinese scholar-monks were now given the means to elucidate the truth without further need for recourse to Indian authority. The Awakening of Faith conveyed the doctrine of innate Buddhahood and the meditative means to awakening—thus cutting the rest of Indian tradition out of the loop of Buddhist salvation—and in the same way Aśvaghoṣa modeled the exegetical means of this conveyance, thus sanctioning the efforts of Chinese scholar-monks who likewise sought to liberate beings through writing. And with more than one hundred and seventy commentaries written on the Awakening of Faith in China, Korea, and Japan over the following centuries (Hakeda 1967, 5), it appears that scholarmonks across East Asia took up Aśvaghoṣa’s charge of illuminating this path to sainthood through Buddhist doctrinal scholarship.


(p.142) Indian Patriarchs in Xuanzang’s True Buddhism


Perhaps the most celebrated attempt in Chinese Buddhist history to effect the transmission of Real Buddhism from India to China was made by the eminent pilgrim and translator Xuanzang. Similarly focused on the saving power of Buddhist texts and doctrinal authorship, Xuanzang famously journeyed for some sixteen years (ca. 629–645) through the Western Regions in order to locate the most authentic textual representations of Indian Buddhism and bring them back to China. Xuanzang’s pilgrimage was ostensibly motivated by his perception of confusion and disjointedness in the Chinese Buddhist doctrinal traditions of his day, which he thought would be righted by one final transmission—and proper translation—of the foremost Indian sources of Buddhist truth.62 With the enormous cache of Indian scriptures, treatises, and other sacred items hauled back to China by Xuanzang and his retinue, Chinese Buddhists would finally have access to the greatest manifestations of Śākyamuni’s True Dharma, and the continued import of Indian sources of Buddhist authority would no longer be necessary. Upon his return to the capital Chang’an, Xuanzang was reportedly received with great fanfare and was subsequently housed by Tang emperor Taizong 太宗 (r. 626–649) in the imperial Hongfu monastery 弘福寺, established in honor of Taizong’s mother, where Xuanzang could begin translation of the 657 Sanskrit texts that he had retrieved (Weinstein 1987, 24). The rest of his life was spent translating these texts and composing his own doctrinal commentaries—also under the patronage of Taizong’s successor emperor, Gaozong 高宗 (r. 650–683)—in order to remedy the perceived deficiencies of the extant Buddhist canon and ensure that Chinese Buddhists could thenceforth consult the most authentic expressions of Indian enlightenment.


In addition, at Taizong’s request, Xuanzang compiled his famous Great Tang Record of the Western Regions (Da Tang xiyu ji 大唐西域記), which outlined the geographies, climates, industries, sociopolitical and economic structures, cultural mores, and religious proclivities of more than one hundred different kingdoms that Xuanzang traversed across South and Central Asia. And at the same time that Xuanzang’s travelogue served to satisfy imperial appetites for diplomatic intelligence, it also provided for both state and sangha the fullest portrait ever seen of Indian Buddhist history, sacred geography, institutional structure, and traditions of doxa and praxis prevalent over the centuries after Śākyamuni’s departure.


While Xuanzang’s massive body of translation work was the primary means by which he sought to relocate the truth of Indian Buddhism within the imperialmonastic institutions of Tang China, through his Record of the Western Regions Xuanzang also worked to redefine the Chinese paradigms (p.143) of Indian Buddhist sainthood that had developed up until his time, vis-à-vis the Indian patriarchal tales that he recounted from various sites along his journey. For the present analysis, it makes no difference whether these tales were actually told to Xuanzang in the manner that he recorded or whether he embellished or invented them outright. Of interest here is the fact that Xuanzang chose to present stories about the Indian patriarchs in the manner that he did, which in the context of his travelogue lent them the same authority that Xuanzang claimed for all his other works. Just as Xuanzang’s translations were advertised as approximating the original Sanskrit better than any preceding Chinese works, and his exegetical writings were born of years of study under the greatest Indian masters of Nālanda, Xuanzang’s new-and-improved Indian patriarch accounts were ostensibly gleaned from the very sites where Śākyamuni once travailed and where the patriarchs had left their own veritable traces. And with the most authentic narratives of the Indian patriarchs thus transmitted to China, Chinese adepts would finally be equipped with the foremost models of Buddhist sainthood for the generations after nirvāṇa.


Throughout his Record of the Western Regions, Xuanzang recounted numerous tales of Śākyamuni’s disciples and other great Buddhist masters who championed the Dharma in postparinirvāṇa India, such as Asaṅga, Dharmapāla, Dignāga, Pārśva, and Vasubandhu. Given Xuanzang’s predilection for Yogācāra and “consciousness only” teachings, one might expect Asaṅga and Vasubandhu to have received special attention in Xuanzang’s Record; and indeed, therein Xuanzang did have a good deal to say about these famous Indian masters. But also among the most prominent Indian patriarchs depicted in this text were Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva, two of the “four suns that illuminated the world.”64 In the case of the former, who was doubtless the most celebrated Indian patriarch in China and whose hagiographies had received considerable attention since the time of Kumārajīva, Xuanzang offered no less than a wholesale reinvention—even going so far as to change Nāgārjuna’s Chinese name.65 In some respects reinscribing the themes of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission and the hagiography ascribed to Kumārajīva but through completely different narrative arcs, Xuanzang’s tales of Nāgārjuna emphasized the symbiotic relationship between kings and Buddhist masters. And equally significant but perhaps more surprising is the attention that Xuanzang lavished upon Āryadeva, who was confirmed in this account as the foremost disciple of Nāgārjuna and master of public debate who displayed for imperial patrons the superiority of Śākyamuni’s teachings.


(p.144) Given Xuanzang’s heritage in high officialdom and his close personal relationship with


Tang emperors Taizong and Gaozong,66 it comes as no surprise that his Record of the Western Regions would emphasize how these Indian patriarchs were likewise closely allied with the prerogatives of the state. Xuanzang’s account of Nāgārjuna, for example, centered on this patriarch’s relations with a certain king of the Sātavāhana dynasty.67 Known in particular for his skill in alchemy, Nāgārjuna concocted an elixir of longevity that enabled both himself and his patron king to live for several hundreds of years.68 In appreciation of Nāgārjuna’s efforts, the king constructed for him an enormous mountain monastery, replete with storied pavilions, channeled waterfalls, golden life-sized images of the Buddha, and countless jeweled adornments.69 But part way through construction, the king’s treasury was exhausted and work had to be halted for lack of funds. Nāgārjuna again put his alchemical talents to good use, composing an elixir that could transform rock into gold and thus create sufficient funds to complete monastery construction.70 And just as these episodes depicted Nāgārjuna providing for his royal patron the most coveted of alchemical boons—immortality and aurification— Nāgārjuna’s death was likewise portrayed as a great gift to the imperial family. There was a prince who feared that he would never become king because of his father’s extreme longevity. The prince asked Nāgārjuna to end his own life, and thus the life of the king, so that the prince could finally take the throne. Manifesting the bodhisattva’s perfect generosity, Nāgārjuna gladly severed his own head for the benefit of the prince, thereby allowing the imperial succession to follow its natural course.71


Much more could be said about Xuanzang’s tales of Nāgārjuna—and in the following chapter, I discuss their relation to Nāgārjuna’s image as an alchemist—but for now, it is sufficient to note that the primary aim of this account was to establish its protagonist, as well as the religious institution that he represented, as a valuable commodity to be cherished and (p.145) supported by the state. While Nāgārjuna’s royal connections had been elaborated in Chinese sources since the Dharma-Treasury Transmission, Xuanzang’s narrative reinvention of this celebrated Indian patriarch was truly audacious, given how well known and influential Nāgārjuna’s earlier hagiographic traditions had become. In Xuanzang’s account, Nāgārjuna was not a solitary wanderer who found his way to the dragon palace. No mention was made of his vast oeuvre of doctrinal treatises, and he was not part of a Dharma-transmission lineage, nor was he shown resurrecting the Dharma in specific centuries after nirvāṇa. Instead, according to Xuanzang, Nāgārjuna was almost exclusively an exemplar of Buddhist sainthood at the imperial court, which of course reflected Xuanzang’s own station in the Tang monastic-imperial complex. Another factor underlying this hagiographic reinvention of Nāgārjuna may have been Xuanzang’s general disapprobation of the works produced by Kumārajīva. Just as Xuanzang believed Kumārajīva’s earlier translations to have been inaccurate to the point of distortion, he perhaps suspected that Kumārajīva’s tales of Nāgārjuna similarly misrepresented their original Indian sources. So now with this new account derived from the very kingdom where Nāgārjuna himself lived—and where Śākyamuni formerly traveled and an Aśokan stūpa remained (Kośala)72 —Xuanzang’s Chinese audiences would at last know the “real” story of how this celebrated Indian patriarch propagated the Truth for the generations after nirvāṇa.


Like Nāgārjuna in the Record of the Western Regions, the aforementioned post-parinirvāṇa Indian patriarchs who also appeared in Xuanzang’s travelogue largely served to illustrate ideal state-sangha relations, and Āryadeva in particular was depicted winning imperial allegiance through his prowess in public debate. Xuanzang thus solidified Āryadeva’s earlier image as a great debate master and converter of non-Buddhists—as advanced especially in the DharmaTreasury Transmission—and also confirmed that Āryadeva’s debating talents were honed under the tutelage of Nāgārjuna. The earliest Chinese accounts of Āryadeva never actually claimed that Nāgārjuna was his master; the Dharma-Treasury Transmission was the first source to assert a direct master-disciple relationship between these two patriarchs. Later writings that similarly focused on transmission lineage largely repeated the Dharma-Treasury Transmission in this regard (e.g., Guanding’s introduction to the Great Calming and Contemplation). Other texts that instead foregrounded soteriological degradation elided this notion of direct transmission while maintaining earlier chronological progressions (e.g., situating Nāgārjuna at seven hundred years after nirvāṇa and Āryadeva a century later). A third approach was to amalgamate these positions by highlighting the close personal relationship between Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva while asserting simultaneously that the differences between them were determined by their respective stages in Dharmic history.


(p.146) This last approach was exemplified most prominently in the writings of Jizang, who emphasized Āryadeva’s temporal distance from the Buddha and emergence amidst difficult soteriological circumstances. Along the lines of the aforementioned commentaries on the Scripture of Benevolent King— according to which Āryadeva’s circumstances at eight hundred years after nirvāṇa had worsened considerably from the time of Nāgārjuna—Jizang elsewhere asserted that Āryadeva’s particular brand of doctrinal exegesis was especially suited to a world teeming with benighted heretics. Thus when Jizang addressed the issue of Nāgārjuna’s and Āryadeva’s ostensive target audiences—with the former refuting the mistaken views of Lesser Vehicle adherents and the latter dealing especially with non-Buddhists—he argued that Āryadeva was forced to gear his philosophical disputation toward non-Buddhists precisely because so many of them had come to flourish during his time.73


In thus explaining Āryadeva’s particular debate focus in terms of his soterio-historical context, Jizang echoed at least two common concerns of his time regarding the status of the postparinirvāṇa Indian patriarchs. On the one hand, he reemphasized the contention that Nāgārjuna’s and Āryadeva’s doctrinal writings were products of pernicious circumstances—and the most significant junctures of post-parinirvāṇa Buddhist history. On the other hand, Jizang further exemplified the tension in Chinese accounts of these patriarchs concerning their relationship with one another. Did these two work in concert to quash false views and revitalize the truth, as master and disciple, or did they in fact arise at different stages of Dharmic history and thus tailor their teachings to disparate audiences? Clearly Jizang himself was somewhat torn over this question. Throughout his Hundred Treatise Commentary, for example, Jizang maintained that Āryadeva’s main purpose was to defeat the misguided arguments put forth by the myriad non-Buddhists who ran amok during his day, while Nāgārjuna instead focused on undoing the attachments to various viewpoints that contemporary Hīnayāna masters had come to harbor. Jizang accounted for this difference by asserting that the central problem of


Nāgārjuna’s time was that people held to the Lesser Vehicle while shunning the Greater, while in Āryadeva’s time—as much as two centuries later—the most pressing concern was to manage the non-Buddhists who had since taken over the world.74 However, in direct contrast to this stipulated historical gap between Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva, elsewhere in this same commentary Jizang reasserted their master-disciple relationship, even as he acknowledged that the sources available to him were conflicted on this question.75 It is therefore clear that during Jizang’s time Āryadeva’s purported discipleship under Nāgārjuna was a disputed issue, and in fact it was more commonly accepted that there was a (p.147) historical disjuncture between the two that explained why they tailored their respective teachings to different audiences.


In Xuanzang’s Record of the Western Regions, however, this earlier confusion about Nāgārjuna’s and Āryadeva’s master-disciple relationship was finally dispelled, while the oft-repeated narrative of Dharma decline was further deployed to contextualize the works of these patriarchs. In two separate episodes, Xuanzang described direct encounters between Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva, with the former patriarch instructing the latter in matters of Buddhist doctrine and debate. One of these episodes detailed the first meeting between Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva, in which Āryadeva arrived at Nāgārjuna’s abode and was presented with a bowl of water. Āryadeva silently dropped a needle into the bowl, symbolizing his ability to pierce to the heart of Nāgārjuna’s all-encompassing wisdom. With that, Nāgārjuna accepted Āryadeva as his disciple and began training him in the teachings of the Buddha.76 In another episode, Xuanzang described a longstanding debate between the Buddhists and non-Buddhists of Pāṭaliputra, which Āryadeva, with the help of Nāgārjuna, would eventually come to settle. In former times the Buddhists of this kingdom were strong, wise, and able to silence their nonBuddhist opponents in debate. But since then the sangha had become weak, incapable of maintaining the True Dharma, so the non-Buddhists grew powerful and arose to a position of supremacy. The king of Pāṭaliputra oversaw a public debate at which the non-Buddhists emerged victorious and demanded that the bell in the Buddhist monastery no longer be struck. At that time Āryadeva told his master Nāgārjuna that he could defeat the non-Buddhists’ erroneous views. Nāgārjuna tested Āryadeva’s skill in debate by assuming the non-Buddhists’ positions.


Āryadeva eventually won, so he ventured off to Pāṭaliputra to challenge the non-Buddhists. There Āryadeva sounded the monastery bell in order to attract the attention of the king and the non-Buddhist masters. The king then assembled everyone for a debate, stipulating that the defeated debater would pay with his life. In short order Āryadeva vanquished all of the nonBuddhists, so the king declared the superiority of Buddhism and had a great monument constructed in Āryadeva’s honor.77


In this way Xuanzang confirmed both Āryadeva’s discipleship under Nāgārjuna and expertise in debate, while illustrating how this great Indian patriarch had won imperial support for Buddhism at a time when the sangha had otherwise grown weak. Xuanzang also described Āryadeva’s doctrinal debates in at least four other episodes throughout the Record.78 One of these (p.148) served to advertise Āryadeva’s Expanded Hundred Treatise (Guang bailun 廣百論)


—which Xuanzang translated upon his return to China—as the veritable record of this patriarch’s debate prowess.79 Xuanzang thus echoed earlier efforts by Jizang to connect Āryadeva’s tangible writings with his doctrinal debates, which were illustrated in earlier hagiographies. I described in chapter 1 how Sengzhao supplied a brief context for Āryadeva’s authorship of the Hundred Treatise, explaining that, eight hundred years after nirvāṇa, “nonBuddhists ran riot, heterodoxies arose in conflict, and false debates imperiled the truth so that the True Way was nearly lost in confusion.” Therefore, “with the intention of rescuing far and wide those who were drowning,” Āryadeva composed his Hundred Treatise, which was arranged as a sort of Socratic dialogue between “insider” (nei 內) and “outsider” (wai 外).80 As such, rather than elaborating its theses through dry philosophical monologue, the Hundred Treatise offered a compelling cast of characters that cried out for an equally vivid setting and background story for how its patriarchal protagonist emerged victorious. Sengzhao’s preface met this demand to some extent, but the Dharma-Treasury Transmission and Āryadeva’s independently circulating hagiography later did a much better job.


The accounts of Āryadeva’s debates in these two later hagiographies are nearly identical to one another in structure and content. One substantial difference between them is that the DharmaTreasure Transmission depicted Āryadeva’s debates as an examination before a south Indian king, while according to the separate biography, Āryadeva had already won the king’s allegiance by demonstrating his supernormal powers. In both accounts, after having defeated all the arguments of his non-Buddhist opponents, Āryadeva retired to a quiet forest to compose his doctrinal treatises—either the Hundred Treatise Scripture (Bai lun jing 百論經), according to the Dharma-Treasury Transmission,81 or two separate texts, according to the separate biography: the Hundred Treatise and the Four Hundred Treatise (see appendix 2). Neither of these accounts claimed that Āryadeva’s writings were direct records of his earlier debates; it was Jizang who first asserted that Āryadeva “excerpted and compiled the discussions from that occasion to make the Hundred Treatise.”82 Thus, like his contemporaries in the case of Aśvaghoṣa’s Awakening of Faith, Jizang made manifest the link between (p.149) Āryadeva’s hagiographies and his doctrinal exegesis, illustrating how Āryadeva’s philosophical magnum opus was integrally intertwined with the central elements of his life story. And by associating Āryadeva’s Expanded Hundred Treatise with the very site at which this patriarch once silenced non-Buddhists in debate, Xuanzang similarly integrated doctrine and hagiography, showing how both Āryadeva’s writings and the stories about their composition instantiated the means by which this patriarch had helped save Buddhism in India and convey it to China.


Like the texts of Guanding, Huiyuan, Jizang, and other elite monastic authors of the Sui and early-Tang dynasties, Xuanzang’s works were part of a longstanding and widespread effort to localize the highest truth of Indian Buddhism within the imperialmonastic institution of China, thus generating a new, proximal locus of Buddhist enlightenment. Ostensibly concerned that inaccurate translations and doctrinal obfuscations had further distanced latter-day Chinese Buddhists from their Indian heritage, Xuanzang ventured west to study under the greatest living Indian masters and return to his kingdom with the most authentic manifestations of Śākyamuni’s teachings. At the same time, Xuanzang’s pilgrimage also presaged later Chan efforts to bridge the Sino-Indian divide through the bodies and minds of the greatest Buddhist saints who ever lived. Xuanzang claimed for himself the status of foremost transmission medium by virtue of having brought the Dharma to China—like the Indian missionaries of later Chan lineage histories


—while Chan ideologues assumed the mantle of True Dharma bearers by asserting a genealogical link to Śākyamuni through the Indian patriarchs. But also like the authors of these Chan lineage histories, Xuanzang deployed the Indian patriarchs to instantiate within his own person and tradition the authority of hallowed Indian origins. Throughout his Record of the Western Regions, Xuanzang recounted tales of Indian figures who were already well known in China—especially Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva—but he reshaped these figures to suit his own interest in securing state patronage. Within the context of his travelogue, these Indian patriarch accounts were accorded a unique brand of authority. By situating his stories of Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva at the sacred Indian sites where these patriarchs themselves once dwelled, and where Xuanzang had personally visited, Xuanzang rendered his texts and the ideals they exemplified unassailable. And on the strength of these Indian patriarch accounts, Xuanzang’s own efforts to integrate sangha and state would be valorized as the foremost means to Buddhist sainthood for the generations after nirvāṇa.


Conclusion: Locating India in China


Much like the tales of the Indian patriarchs advanced by Kumārajīva’s associates, the works of Chinese scholar-monks of the Sui and early Tang often focused on the difficult soteriological circumstances in which Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva travailed. One difference between the fifth-century accounts and those discussed in this chapter is that the (p.150) latter were written in contradistinction to the model of master-disciple Dharma transmission. Chinese scholar-monks of Kumārajīva’s time had not yet seen any full-blown accounts of Buddhist lineal patriarchy, much less those that included Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva in particular. But by the time of Jizang, his contemporaries. and his successors, these patriarchs had long been accorded prominent positions in Indian transmission lineages—most notably in the DharmaTreasury Transmission—which extended from the Buddha himself and thus maintained the Dharma in its original, pristine condition. Therefore, by reasserting earlier conceptions of Indian Buddhist history in their accounts of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva and by reemphasizing Dharma degradation as against lineal propagation, sixth- to eighth-century Chinese exegetes elevated these patriarchs above their predecessors and successors in the Indian patriarchate. In depicting twenty-three (or twenty-four) Indian masters all playing essentially the same role, and all living within equally propitious circumstances, lineage histories like the Dharma-Treasury Transmission had a homogenizing effect. But for subsequent Chinese Buddhist exegetes who sought to promote the works of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva in particular, these patriarchs had to be seen as standing head and shoulders above their compatriots in the transmission lineage. Thus the Chinese authors discussed in this chapter responded to the Dharma-Treasury Transmission by reemphasizing how Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva had in fact worked within singularly trying times, liberating their benighted contemporaries and transmitting the Dharma to future generations by composing the most profound doctrinal treatises in Indian Buddhist history.


Another major difference between the Indian patriarch accounts of the early fifth century and those of the Sui-Tang period has to do with shifting Chinese perspectives on the relationship between Indian and Chinese Buddhism. In previous chapters, I described how Chinese representations of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva often developed in concert with discourses about the historical trajectory of Buddhism in post-parinirvāṇa India. Whether as a rhetorical stance assumed to promote specific teachings or as a heartfelt “form of paranoia” about the fate of Buddhism (Barrett 1990, 95), Chinese authors of the fifth and sixth centuries often foregrounded the decline of the Dharma in India after the Buddha, as well as in their own soteriological hinterland far removed from the Indian Middle Kingdom. Similarly, models of Buddhist sainthood that developed through the figures of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva often functioned as responses to—or rhetorical deployments of—this claim to grievous embattlement. The Indian patriarchs were shown to have devised their teachings in particular to forestall the demise of the Dharma, thus serving as vehicles through which specific paradigms of practice could be promoted for Chinese Buddhists similarly perched on the precipice of end times. Through all of this, Chinese images of Indian Buddhism more broadly—its historical trajectories and saintly champions—were marshaled primarily as criteria for delineating norms of Buddhist practice in the ostensive soteriological (p.151) wasteland of latter-day China. Chinese Buddhist authors of the fifth and sixth centuries prioritized fidelity to the traditions of India, the heartland of perfect Buddhist enlightenment, without which the authenticity, salvific efficacy, and sociopolitical cachet of Chinese Buddhism were all but lost.


Over the ensuing Sui-Tang period, one can observe a similar effort to negotiate the relationship between Buddhism in China and in the land of its birth. The images of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva produced during this period likewise functioned in part as responses to the rhetoric of decline and the concomitant Chinese “borderland complex,” although these issues would become less prominent over time. And, in fact, as opposed to the earlier emphasis on providing models of Buddhist practice suited to these spatiotemporal handicaps, in the Sui-Tang period the Indian patriarchs were represented as having conveyed to China the full truth of Indian Buddhism. As such, Chinese Buddhists no longer needed to concern themselves with


Dharma’s devolution or China’s distance from the Indian motherland. Rather, with Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva having transmitted the means and media of Indian enlightenment across the Sino-Indian divide, the True Dharma could now flourish in latter-day China. And by the same token, from this standpoint India was no longer just a distant cradle of bygone sanctity, or a model against which local Chinese teachings were measured. Rather, India itself had become localized in China, which was increasingly represented as a new center of Buddhist civilization. Relics of the Buddha, Indian icons, ritual practices, buddhas, arhats, and bodhisattvas, sūtras and śāstras had all become widespread and readily available in Sui-Tang China. Together with all these instruments of Indian sanctity instantiated in the Chinese imperium, Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva contributed the foremost Indian doctrinal writings and models of post-parinirvāṇa Buddhist sainthood. And at the same time, as we will see in the following chapters, Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna themselves were localized in latter-day China, and made imminent in Chinese ritual arenas to personally provide to religious adepts across traditions a wide array of tangible boons—from mountains of riches to magical powers and protection from baleful influences.


Notes: (1.) On Sui patronage of this cave, see Henan Sheng Gudai Jianzhu Baohu Yanjiusuo 1992, 62– 63. (2.) See Chen 2002; Wright 1957a; and Xiong 2006, 151–157. (3.) See, e.g., Chen 2002, chap. 3; Forte 1976; Weinstein 1987; and Xiong 2006, 157–171. (4.) Cole 2009, 1. On these other examples, see the discussion in Sen 2003, chap. 2. Similar campaigns had been organized by previous dynastic regimes—especially the Southern Liang and Northern Wei—but never on such a broad scale. See, most recently, Ku 2010 and Pearce 2012. (5.) “The twenty-fourth [[[patriarch]]] Siṃha bhikṣu; in the kingdom of Kaśmīra he performed great Buddhist deeds and was cut down by a king” 第廿四師子比丘; 于罽賓國, 大作佛事, 為王所絕.


Transcribed in Henan Sheng Gudai Jianzhu Baohu Yanjiusuo 1992, 18; and Lee 1999, 42. (6.) See, e.g., Jizang’s Dasheng xuan lun 大乘玄論, T no. 1853, 45:69c; and Zhongguan lun shu 中觀論疏, T no. 1824, 42:13c, 18c. (7.) Lidai fabao ji 歷代法寶記, T no. 2075 (trans. Adamek 2007); Tan jing 壇經, T no. 2007 (trans. Yampolsky 1967); Baolin zhuan 寶林傳 (see chapter 5). (8.) Renwang bore jing shu 仁王般若經疏, T no. 1707, 33:357c. This periodization follows the Mahāmāyāsūtra. (9.) Sanlun youyi yi 三論遊意義, T no. 1855, 45:116c–117a. Cf. Morrison 2010, 30–31. (10.) Bianzheng lun 辯正論, T no. 2110, 52:493a: 大教之棟幹. (11.) See the list of Chinese texts attributed to Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva provided at the beginning of the bibliography. (12.) Mohemoye jing 摩訶摩耶經 (Mahāmāyāsūtra), T no. 383, 12:1013c.


(13.) Ru lengqie jing 入楞伽經, T no. 671, 16:569a. Completed by Bodhiruci in 513, this was the third of four Chinese translations of the Laṅkāvatāra. The first translation is no longer extant; the second omits this prophesy; and the fourth, translated by Śikṣānanda in 700, contains a similar passage (Dasheng ru lengqie jing 大乘入楞伽經, T no. 672, 16:627c). In the Sanskrit version, this prophecy refers to a certain Nāgāhvaya, or “the one called Dragon,” which was translated as Longshu 龍樹 and always taken in China to mean Nāgārjuna. See Abé 1999, 506n83; Suzuki 1932, 239–240; and Walleser (1923) 1979, 21. (14.) Reading ping 平 as an error for hu 乎, as suggested by the Taishō editors (Dasheng xuan lun 大乘玄論, T no. 1853, 45:69n1). (15.) Dasheng xuan lun, T no. 1853, 45:69a.


(16.) For discussion of Treatise on the Profundity of the Mahāyāna, see Koseki 1977. (17.) On Jizang’s career, see especially Chen 1999, chap. 1 and 4; and Liu 1994, chap. 3. (18.) See, for example, the discussion by Liu (1994, 116–117, 210–211) on the “four creeds” and “four teachings” delineated by Dilun and Tiantai masters, respectively. (19.) Useful discussions of the panjiao schemes developed within this period include Gregory 1991, 93–170; Liu 1994, 110–135 (focusing on Jizang), 196–217 (focusing on Zhiyi); and Mun 2006.


(20.) On the dating and authorship of this commentary, see Satō (1961) 2005, 665–674. My thanks to Dan Stevenson for this reference. This section of the text may have been drawn from Jizang’s Renwang jing 仁王經 commentary, which combined narratives of Dharma decline and lineal transmission in nearly identical fashion. See Renwang bore jing shu, T no. 1707, 33:357c. (21.) Renwang huguo bore jing shu 仁王護國般若經疏, T no. 1705, 33:285b. (22.) See Orzech 1998, 287.


(23.) This model had partial precedent in the writings of Lushan Huiyuan (Adamek 2007, 35), the Mahāmāyā Sūtra, and the Dharma-Treasury Transmission, which also included scattered references to Dharma decline (if not in its accounts of Aṣvaghośa, Nāgārjuna, or Āryadeva). (24.) E.g., Zhongguan lun shu, T no. 1824, 42:13a–b; and Bailun shu, T no. 1827, 42:233a–c (trans. Robinson 1967, 23–24). (25.) The ascription of the Dasheng qixin lun yishu 大乘起信論義疏 to Huiyuan is considered spurious; see Lai 1975, 193. Even so, it could not have been composed later than the seventh century. For Fazang’s comments see Dasheng qixin lun yiji 大乘起信論義記, T no. 1846, 44:246a; trans. Vorenkamp 2004, 57. (26.) Here reading sui 遂 as zhu 逐.


(27.) Dasheng qixin lun yishu, T no. 1843, 44:175c–176a. (28.) Dasheng qixinlun yishu, T no. 1843, 44:175c. (29.) This line of reasoning is stressed, for example, in Jizang’s Sanlun xuanyi 三論玄義, T no. 1852, 45:10a; Shi’ermenlun shu 十二門論疏, T no. 1825, 42:179a; and Weimo jing yi shu 維摩經義疏, T no. 1781, 38:911b. (30.) Empahsis added. (31.) Mohemoye jing, T no. 383, 12:1013c. (32.) Qi fashi attributed a similar statement to Sengrui. See the Sanlun youyi yi, T no. 1855, 45:119a, according to which the Buddha was first to propagate the True Dharma, Aśvaghoṣa was second, and Nāgārjuna third.


(33.) This statement is preserved in Sengrui’s preface to the Da zhidu lun (大智度論 [[[Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra]]], T no. 1509, 25:57b; Chu sanzang jiji 出三藏記集, T no. 2145, 55:75a); see chapter 1 of the present volume. As suggested by Chen Jinhua (personal communication), it would make sense for 悟令覺 in the last line to read 令悟覺, in parallel with 令再耀, which appears above it. However, only the former reading is attested in all other sources that quote these verses. (34.) Shi’ermenlun shu, T no. 1825, 42:180a. (35.) Mohe zhiguan 摩訶止觀, T no. 1911, 46:1b; trans. Donner and Stevenson 1993, 107; and Penkower 2000, 259. (36.) On Guanding’s relations with the Sui court, which to some extent were overblown by later biographers, see Chen 1999, 46–53. (37.) Sui Tiantai Zhizhe dashi biezhuan 隋天台智者大師別傳, T no. 2050; compiled ca. 601–605. See also Cole 2009, 43–49; and Shinohara 1992. (38.) Guoqing bailu 國清百錄, T no. 1934; compiled ca. 601–607. See Cole 2009, 39–42; and Shinohara 1992. (39.) On Buddhabhadra, see Morrison 2010, 33–35. On the Buddha’s preaching on Vulture Peak, see Cole 2009, 45–46; and Penkower 2000, 261–262. (40.) Penkower (2000, 271) argues that the extant lineage statement “may have appeared as early as 607 but was probably completed not long before Guanding’s death in 632.” Cf. Cole 2009, 49n40.


(41.) Mohe zhiguan, T no. 1911, 46:1b; trans. Donner and Stevenson 1993, 103. Morrison (2010, 37; following Barrett 1990, 93) similarly argues that Guanding was “indifferent to the seeming demise of the dharma because he believe[d] it to have been continued elsewhere”—with Nāgārjuna’s writings. (42.) See, e.g., Penkower 2000, 289–291. (43.) Mohe zhiguan, T no. 1911, 46:1b; trans. Donner and Stevenson 1993, 104–105. Double pupils were a mark of sanctity from ancient times in China, especially for sage-kings; see Cole 2009, 44n31. (44.) Mohe zhiguan, T no. 1911, 46:1a: 法付龍樹 … 龍成法身 “The Dharma was transmitted to Nāgārjuna … a dragon completed his Dharma-body.” Cf. trans. Donner and Stevenson 1993, 102. Also, while Donner and Stevenson here have Kapimala as Nāgārjuna’s master (following Yampolsky 1967), this is probably not the proper rendering of Guanding’s Piluo 毘羅. As noted in the previous chapter, Yampolsky’s (1967, 8) Kapimala is based on the Jiapimoluo 迦毘摩羅 of the ninth-century Baolin zhuan, not the Biluo 比羅 of the Dharma-Treasury Transmission itself.


(45.) A similar point is made by Cole 2009, 50. (46.) Liebenthal (1959) provides the fullest discussion in English on the provenance of the Awakening of Faith. He largely follows Demiéville’s (1929) masterful work in French on the same issue, as well as Japanese scholars such as Mochizuki (1922, 1938) and Tokiwa (1943–1944) who pioneered the modern debate over the text’s authenticity. The most thorough examination of this debate is found in Kashiwagi (1981, 61–182), and handy English synopses are provided by Grosnick (1989, 65–66) and Lai (1990, 186–189). See also, more recently, Aramaki 2000, 78–84 (cited in Chen 2002, 37n72, 130n56); Girard 2004; and Seok 2010. (47.) See Hakeda 1967, 5–6; and Johnson (1936) 1984, xviii.


(48.) Yamabe (2003, 227), for one, questions this standard assessment, arguing that “the methods of meditation practice described in the latter portion of the Saundarananda are closely related to those in the Śrāvakabhūmi section of the Yogācārabhūmi.” In light of this similarity, Yamabe (2003, 243) asserts, “it seems very likely that Aśvaghoṣa was close to the meditative tradition that later formed the Yogācāra school.” Nevertheless, Yamabe does not go so far as to suggest that Aśvaghoṣa might have actually composed the Awakening of Faith—Yogācāra characteristics of this treatise notwithstanding. Cf. Kashiwagi (1981, 106), who also notes similarities between the Saundarananda and Awakening of Faith in terms of their Yogācāra proclivities. (49.) See, e.g., Demiéville 1929, 63–65; Hakeda 1967, 6; and Kashiwagi 1981, 101. (50.) Fajing 法經 (n.d.) listed the Awakening of Faith as “suspect” (yihuo 疑惑) in his Zhongjing mulu 眾經目錄 (T no. 2146, 55:142a) of ca. 594; however, Fajing only doubted whether


Paramārtha translated it, not that Aśvaghoṣa authored it. See Demiéville 1929, 4; Girard 2004, xxxiii; and Liebenthal 1959, 158. Also, later Japanese authors quoted a certain Huijun 慧均 (7th century) as saying that the Awakening of Faith was composed by a northern Chinese Dilun exegete. See Demiéville 1929, 66–67; Grosnick 1989, 65; and Liebenthal 1959, 156–157. However, this quote is not attested anywhere in medieval Chinese sources, nor is its skepticism concerning the text’s Indian authorship. (51.) For Guanding, see Guoqing bailu, T no. 1934, 46:817b. For Jingying Huiyuan, s

ee, e.g., Dasheng yizhang 大乘義章, T no. 1851, 44:718b. (52.) Kashiwagi (1981, 103–105) in particular assumes a firm delineation between Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna traditions in his attempt to locate early Chinese indications of Aśvaghoṣa’s scholastic affiliation. Kashiwagi focuses especially on the two Indian lineages in Sengyou’s Record of the Sarvāstivāda. In the first lineage the name Aśvaghoṣa appeared twice, while in the second it was listed only once; in both cases he was labeled a bodhisattva. Kashiwagi suspects that the second Aśvaghoṣa was omitted from the second list because its Chinese redactor (or redactors) took this Aśvaghoṣa to be a Mahāyāna master and thus inappropriate to this otherwise Hīnayāna list. However, as Wang (1994, 177–178, 193n19) rightly notes, in early Chinese sources a given master’s vinaya or nikāya affiliation did not necessarily have any bearing on his perceived doctrinal persuasion (Hīnayāna or Mahāyāna). Further, medieval Chinese Buddhists never considered Aśvaghoṣa to be anything other than Mahāyāna, even if he was said to follow the Sarvāstivādin Vinaya—as were Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Vasubandhu, Kumārajīva, and many other famous Mahāyāna masters.


(53.) See, e.g., Demiéville 1929, 64; and Kashiwagi 1981, 111–112. (54.) The Buddhacarita is a poetic biography of the Buddha, and the Sūtrālaṃkāra is a collection of jātakas and avadānas. Neither evinces any concern with Mahāyāna doctrine. The Buddhacarita appeared in Chinese translation during the first half of the fifth century; two versions were made, the Fo suo xing zan 佛所行讚 (T no. 192) and the Fo benxing jing 佛本行經 (T no. 193). On these translations, see Beal 1883 and Kanakura 1959, 303. The Chinese translation of the Sūtrālaṃkāra (Da zhuangyan jing lun 大莊嚴經論, T no. 201) was probably executed after ca. 515, when Sengyou completed his Chu sanzang jiji. See chapter 1. (55.) Grosnick (1989, 85–86), for one, notes the possibility that one of Paramārtha’s disciples attributed the Awakening of Faith to Aśvaghoṣa in order to “win sympathy” for Paramārtha’s new


Yogācāra translations, which had been suppressed by monks at Jiankang who favored Prajñāpāramitā and Mādhyamika ideals. However, if this were the case, the application of Aśvaghoṣa’s name would not have served to promote Yogācāra teachings above and against the Madhyamaka—since Aśvaghoṣa had long been depicted as Nāgārjuna’s ally—though it may have helped place the former tradition on a more equal footing with the latter. In any event, as previously noted, Chinese Buddhists did not see Nāgārjuna as solely Mādhyamika and Aśvaghoṣa as Yogācāra, in contradistinction to one another; rather, these patriarchs were both depicted as representing the entirety of the Mahāyāna.


(56.) Dasheng qixin lun 大乘起信論, T no. 1666, 32:575c. (57.) Aśvaghoṣa was mentioned in the preface to the text, which was attributed to Paramārtha’s disciple Zhikai 智愷 (or Huikai 慧愷, 518–568). However, this preface is considered spurious; see Demiéville 1929, 8, 11–15; and Girard 2004, xviii, lxvii. (58.) Dasheng qixin lun yishu, T no. 1843, 44:175c–176a. (59.) Translation adapted from Vorenkamp 2004, 26. (60.) Dasheng qixin lun yiji, T no. 1846, 44:241a. In his commentary on the Twelve Gates Treatise (Shi’ermen lun zongzhi yi ji 十二門論宗致義記, T no. 1826, 42:212b–c), Fazang described Nāgārjuna in very similar terms. My thanks to Chen Jinhua for this reference. (61.) Candidates for earliest reference to Aśvaghoṣa’s authorship of this text include the preface attributed to Zhikai, or Huikai (Dasheng qixin lun, T no. 1666, 32:575a–b); the commentary attributed to Tanyan (Qixin lun yishu 起信論義疏, Z 1:71:3:265a; see Liebenthal 1958); and the commentary attributed to Jingying Huiyuan (Dasheng qixin lun yishu 大乘起信論義疏, T no. 1843). However, the authenticity of all these texts has been questioned. The earliest undisputed source to connect Aśvaghoṣa with the Awakening of Faith is Huiyuan’s Dasheng yizhang (T no. 1851, 44:473a–b), which was completed around 590 (Demiéville 1929, 62; Grosnick 1989, 66, 86).


(62.) Da Tang Da Ci’ensi Sanzang fashi zhuan 大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳, T no. 2053, 50:221a (trans. Li 1995, 6–7), 261a (trans. Li 1995, 227–228); cf. Barrett 1990, 94–95. Da Tang xiyu ji 大唐西域記, T no. 2087, 51:868b, 869c; trans. Beal 1884, 1:5, 15 and Li 1996, 12, 19–20. (63.) See the list of works associated with Xuanzang in Lusthaus 2002, 554–573. (64.) Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:942a: 四日照世; trans. Beal 1884, 2:302–303 and Li 1996, 370. The other two “suns” were Aśvaghoṣa and Kumāralāta, similar to the Nanatsu-dera biography of Aśvaghoṣa (see appendix 1). (65.) Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:912c: 唐言龍猛, 舊譯曰龍樹非也 (“Dragon-valor,” in the language of the Tang; the archaic translation of “Dragon-tree” is incorrect). Cf. trans. Li 1996, 231. (66.) See Li 1996, 1; and Weinstein 1987, 24–31.


(67.) Xuanzang gives this king’s name as “Suoduopohe (‘Leading to Righteousness’ in the language of the Tang)” 娑多婆訶(唐言引正) (Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:929a). The identity of this king has received a great deal of attention in modern scholarship, particularly in the effort to date Nāgārjuna. For a recent discussion and citation of relevant sources, see Walser 2005, 61– 68. (68.) Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:929b; trans. Beal 1884, 2:212; and Li 1996, 309–310. On the theme of Nāgārjuna’s longevity in relation to Indian models of Buddhist sanctity, see Ray 1997. (69.) The name and location of this monastery have long been points of scholarly contention, to the extent that they bear on Nāgārjuna’s historical and geographic contexts. See, most recently, Walser 2005, 66, 294n32.


(70.) Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:929c–930a; trans. Beal 1884, 2:214–217; and Li 1996, 311– 313. (71.) Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:929b–c; trans. Beal 1884, 2:212–214; and Li 1996, 310–311. Cf. Benn (2007, 93, 282n70), who mentions this episode in relation to similar tales of selfimmolation. (72.) Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:929a; trans. Beal 1884, 2:209–210; and Li 1996, 307–308. (73.) Dasheng xuan lun, T no. 1853, 45:72b. (74.) Bailun shu, T no. 1827, 42:233b. (75.) Ibid., 233a; trans. Robinson 1967, 23.


(76.) Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:929a–b; trans. Beal 1884, 2:210–212; and Li 1996, 308–309. (77.) Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:912c–913a; trans. Beal 1884, 2:97–99; and Li 1996, 231–233. (78.) Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:891b (trans. Beal 1884, 1:189; and Li 1996, 127–128); 929a– b (trans. Beal 1884, 2:210–212; and Li 1996, 308–309); 931b (trans. Beal 1884, 2:227–228; and Li 1996, 319). On the relationship between Maitreya and the arhats described in this last episode, see Shih 2002, 150–151; cf. De Visser 1923, 20.


(79.) Da Tang xiyu ji, T no. 2087, 51:897b; trans. Beal 1884, 1:231; and Li 1996, 156–157. Xuanzang’s translation is titled Guang bailun ben 廣百論本 (T no. 1570), completed in 647 or 650. Xuanzang also translated a commentary on this text by Dharmapāla, titled Dasheng guang bailun shi lun 大乘廣百論釋論 (T no. 1571). (80.) Robinson (1967, 33–34) provides a handy content summary of this text; Tucci (1929) 1976 translates it in full. (81.) Fu fazang yinyuan zhuan 付法藏因緣傳, T no. 2058, 50:319b. According to Jizang (Zhongguan lun shu, T no. 1824, 42:168c), the Dharma-Treasury Transmission said that Āryadeva composed the Four Hundred Treatise (Sibai lun 四百論). Since this is what the separate biography of Āryadeva now says, Jizang’s assertion may further indicate that the latter text (Tipo pusa zhuan 提婆菩薩傳, T no. 2048) was in fact excerpted from the Dharma-Treasury Transmission. (82.) Sanlun xuanyi, T no. 1852, 45:13b: 撰集當時之言, 以為百論.



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