Frédéric Girard
EFEO
Xuanzang 玄奘 (602-664) is well-known as the great traveller who went in India and translated what he regarded as the most important texts of the Great Vehicle from Sanskrit into Chinese. From the retrospective view of history, his figure seems to have been reduced to that of the founder of the Faxiang-Weishi school, which is judged to have had a limited influence in China, Korea and Japan, in time and space. In fact, the cult of Xuanzang peaked during the Middle Ages in Japan, but the question arises: can the influence of Xuanzang be reduced to such a kind of devotion or is it valable to extend it to more global conceptions ?
From another perspective, the introduction of Zen to Japan is associated from the very beginning to Xuanzang. Dōshō 道昭 (629-700), the individual who was responsible for this, had established a Dhyāna Hall (Zen.in) in the Gangōji at Nara. He had been a pupil of Xuanzang for several years; he also practiced under the Dhyāna master Huiman 惠滿, said to belong to the southern tradition of Bodhidharma and of Laṅkāvatāra before its formation as a school, with the recommendation of Xuanzang. According to a tradition transmitted by Dōshō, Xuanzang himself was a pupil of the fourth patriarch of the Chan sect, Daoshen 道信 (580-651); it thus appears that Xuanzang’s image was connected with the Chan sect and not only with dhyānic practices limited to framework of yogic training associated with prajñā in an abhidharmic perspective.
During the Kamakura period (1185-1333), Xuanzang is associated with the introduction of Zen by Dōgen 道元 (1200-1253), the so-called founder of Sōtō school in Japan. Dōgen is said to have concretized the will of the third shōgun Minamoto no Sanetomo 源実朝 (1192-1219) to travel in China: the will of the shōgun was, in the same way as Dōgen, to establish a new type of monasteries based on a prototype that could be found in China, on Mount Aśoka, Yantangshan and others, where he had been born precisely as Xuanzang in a previous life. This type of monastery is opposed to that of the Daoxuan tradition, which were prevalent in Japan. And one of the most important tenets of Dōgen, as he explains in details in his dialogues with his Chinese master Rujing in China, the Hōkyōki 寶慶記 (1223-1227), was to introduce this new type of monastery in the most direct filiation with to the first monasteries built under the historical Buddha.
These monasteries were precisely those described by Chinese pilgrims in India, amongs them of course Xuanzang; they did not include certain structures, like halls for Nenbutsu recitation, esoteric Goma (Huma) rituals, or formal ordinations, which were criticized by Dōgen because they did not belonged to the primitive forms of practice. That the models described by Xuanzang where those adopted in Japan may be seen in the variant accounts of the past lives of Sanetomo in China, as announced in an oracle by the Zen master Yōsai 栄西 (1141-1215), or by Chen Hojing 陳和卿 (?-?), the famous engineer who restored the Tōdaiji of Nara under the auspices of the shōgun Minamoto no Yoritomo 源頼朝 (1145-1199), and constructed the ship in which Sanetomo had to travel in China: in the most current sources, such as the Mirror of the East, Azumakagami 吾妻鏡, Sanetomo was said to have been a reincarnation of Daoxuan 道宣 (596-667), the great reformator of Vinaya, while in other sources, like those related to the foundation of Saihōji in Wakayama, he was said to have been Xuanzang, as in sources connected to Dōgen’s tradition. These variants regarding the former existence of Sanetomo are symptomatic of the differencies in the ideals of monasteries in Japan: from antiquity, the Daoxuan model was prevalent, until this model was criticized by Dōgen for the fisrt time, and replaced by the one described in sources as the Datang xiyuji 大唐西域記, the relation of Xuanzang’s travel in India.
Associated with these new type of monastic structures was the cult of the Arhats. These rather strange figures, purely human incarnations of the predication of the Law in all its emotional variations, where regarded as substitutes for the Buddha after his Parinirvāṇa, dwelling in all the directions of space, during the very long period between the Parousia of a Buddha (as Lévi and Chavannes have demonstrated). When Xuanzang went in India, he realized the cruel absence of the Buddha and felt the need to replace this lack by the Arhats. That is why he translated the fundamental text concerning them, the Āryanandimitrāvadāna in 654 (Chronicle on the Duration of the Law preached by the Great Venerable Nandimitra (Da Aluohan Nantimiduoluo suoshuo fazhuji 大阿羅漢難提蜜多羅所説法住記), T. XLIX, n° 2030). This text was the basis of the Arhat cult in Japan installed by Myōe 明惠 (1173-1232) and Dōgen, in the ritual that they wrote (Rakan kōshiki 羅漢講式). Xuanzang’s distress when during his travels he witnessed the decline and disappearance of the Law – of Buddhism as well as the Buddhist masters – appear clearly in a Dunhuang text in the private Takeda collection, which has recently been identified as authentic, and which was used in the Sōtō tradition, according to some testimonies. This text gives a historical basis to the existence of a tradition of veneration towards Xuanzang in this tradition. In this paper I intend to present the position of the question concerning the role of Xuanzang in this tradition of Dhyāna school, as a crystallization of a direct importation from India of primary ideals and models.
Document : the version of the lament of Xuanzang, in a Dunhuang manuscript of the Takeda collection.
The lament of the Tripiṭaka master of the Tang [Xuanzang]
Gone, I am gone on the roads to the West, in India,
Far, very far more than one hundred thousand miles!
From oceanic abysses, waves are falling on the shores [of the desert],
And mountain demons always are frightening me.
On the Ruisui River, my boat can hardly float,
The strong winds rising play in an anguishing way.
The river of ice frightening in its coldness,
And the snowy peaks are extremely abrupt.
How many months spent without giving offerings to the ancestors?
And how many years have I been slipping on the roadsides!
One thousand of my coreligionists have already disappeared,
Alone am I on the roads of one myriads miles.
Without any regards to myself, I shall return to the Earth,
My only anguish being to that my vows have not been accomplished.
I want to establish the mind of Bodhi’s rituals,
having the chance to be in this world,
And as a profane to be in search of the Law.
I despair that my masters have passed away
[without my being able to meeting them again in India],
And I fear to die after them.
In the sandy desert, no more visitors to mourn me,
My body will be buried by the snowy mountain [Himalaya].
Where is Rājagṛha [the capital of the Buddha’s teaching]?
Does the country of Vaiśālī still exist?
Without having visiting the Five Indias,
My weeping eyes have not yet dried.
On the roads, where I have to go now?
On a tomb’s epitaph, only, my name is inscribed.
My soul still cries so intelligibly
That is heard my lament.
唐三藏哭西天行記
去去西天路、
迢迢十萬餘。
海深濱皷浪、
山鬼毎驚吾。
弱水舟難汎、
高風起異揄。
氷河偏凛[?]烈、
雪嶺甚﨑嶇。
累月齋[/㪰]無食、
經年寢在途。
千人同侶盡、
萬里一身孤。
不恨身歸地、
唯愁願未俘。
發心縁世界、
求法爲凡夫。
惆恨師先歿、
恓惶我後殂。
流砂絶弔客、
雪嶺掩身軀。
王舎城何在、
毘耶國在無。
五天渾未到、
兩目涙先枯。
衆[?]路今何往、
孤牌上有書。
魂號猶[栖?]不昧、
聽我哭嗚呼。
(Presented in the 2012 Chulalongkorn-EFEO International Conference on Buddhist Studies : Imagination, Narrative, and Localization, 6-7 January 2012, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, organized by Faculty of Arts and Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University In conjunction with The Buddhist Studies Group, EFEO)