The two-fascicle esoteric account titled “Liangbu dafa xiangcheng shizi
fufa ji”兩部大法相承師資付法記 (The Record of Master-to-Disciple Transmissions of
the Two-division Major Procedures), attributed to a Chinese monk named
Haiyun海雲 (?-834+), is an important source documenting the history of the
esoteric Buddhism under the Tang dynasty. But it seems to have been very
poorly circulated in China, where no evidence shows that it ever exerted
any significant impact. On the contrary, this text was very well known
in Japan, where it frequently became a hot point of debate. This disparity
in attention that the same text attracted in China and Japan might raise
the issue of its provenance. Given that this text seems to have been written
for the audience in Japan, does there exist any possibility that it was
actually composed in Japan, rather than in China? This article takes the
provenance of this esoteric account as its main agenda. It will discuss,
first, how Haiyun’s text was used in the bitter controversy at the beginning
of the twelfth century between two representatives of the two major esoteric
traditions in Japan: the Taimitsu monk Yakushun 藥雋 (?-1110+) and his rival
Ejū 惠什 (?-1110+) of Shingon; and then it will subject the esoteric traditions
recorded by Haiyun and a couple of Chinese sources to close comparison,
with the purpose of showing how such a comparative reading might shed new
light on the provenance of this intriguing text and how the text can tell
us about the esoteric tradition in China.
Thanks to Yakushun, we are able to reestablish the Chinese provenance
of Liangbu dafa xiangcheng shizi fufa ji, which, in turn, reaffirms the
origin in Tang China of some esoteric ideologies that were to play a significant
role in the formation and transformation of the esoteric traditions in
Japan. Equally importantly, through this account by Haiyun, which, despite
its enormous importance, has remained little noticed, we are able to trace
the twofold lineage it recounts back to an incipient form that was conceived
by Bukong’s immediate disciples. The linkage between these lineages that
we have been able to recover so far remains broken, and far from complete.
It has, nonetheless, allowed a rare glimpse into the process by which Bukong’s
disciples built and rebuilt their esoteric lineages in the course of the
half century following the demise of their great master. The dynamic and
complex politico-religious agendas behind such a protracted process resulted
in a highly sophisticated two-dimensional esoteric lineage capable of serving
different purposes.
Haiyun’s work also provides an interesting case of showing how the international
textual transmission could have changed the fate a specific text. This
text would have been completely buried in the dusts of history hadn’t Japanese
esoteric masters brought its copies back to Japan, where it was used for
different purposes. It is quite intriguing to note the deep impact that
the esoteric lineages constructed (or recorded) by Haiyun has wielded in
the configuration of esoteric ideology in Japan, although the same text
and the esoteric notions presented therein were almost utterly forgotten
in its original place. What has rendered this text and its transmission
history so fascinating is, however, the following ironic fact. While Haiyun
merely attempted to prescribe, rather than describe, the esoteric tradition
in Tang China, his bipartite pattern was taken up quite seriously in Japan
by esoteric practitioners, who cast and recast their tradition in terms
of such a dichotomy, to the extent that two highly sectarian and hostile
traditions in the names of Saich? and K?kai eventually emerged in Heian
Japan. Modern scholars have further projected such a sectarian notion into
Tang, or even earlier, Buddhist traditions in the Continent, a practice
that has proven to be misleading and distortive in reconstructing Chinese
Buddhism. This, however, can be taken as an excellent example of the influences
on Continental Buddhism from the island state. Our modern understanding
of medieval Chinese Buddhism has been heavily conditioned by the situation
of Japanese Buddhism, which has been-and perhaps continues to be-highly
sectarian. Unaware of or simply ignoring the fact that sectarian consciousness
remained relatively muted among Chinese Buddhist monks throughout the whole
medieval period, scholars have somehow projected the modes of inter/intra-sectarian
relationships of Japanese Buddhism back into medieval Chinese Buddhism.
This has led to the presence in modern scholarship of ideas about highly
independent and mutually hostile schools/sects in China.
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