Vasubandhu 世親 (ca. 320–400 CE) as a Putative Pure Land Patriarch in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism

Abstract

In terms of his reception in East Asia and the legacy of his commentaries and compendia in translation, Vasubandhu 世親 (ca. 320–400 centuries CE) is among the most important figures in the textual history of Indian Buddhism. Although perhaps best known by modern scholars through his works concerning abstruse intellectual ideas presented from the Yogācāra or mind-only and Abhidharma perspectives, his legacy is arguably best represented as an authoritative voice concerning the Pure Land of Amitāyus buddha. Both Nāgārjuna 龍樹 (ca. 150–250 CE) and Vasubandhu are considered to be patriarchs (soshi 祖師) for Jōdo Shin 浄土真宗 Buddhists, following Shinran’s 親鸞 (1173–1263) teachings. In this paper I investigate the textual history of these two Indian masters who are considered to be patriarchs by Pure Land and Shin Buddhists in Japan. No one believes these individuals transmitted some sort of true mind or essential teaching from one to another as in the Chan or Zen 禪宗 tradition; they are recognized because of fundamental texts with key ideas that are ascribed to them. These key texts were never singled out in any Chinese or Indian set of special texts, nor were they highlighted in various catalogs to the Buddhist “canon.” This research demonstrates how the sacred teachings ascribed to Vasubandhu, and to a certain extent Nāgārjuna as well, by Pure Land and Shin Buddhists reveal how and why Pure Land practices were expected to be seen as mainstream Mahāyāna Buddhism and nothing at all like a reformation for a later age.

1. Eschatology and Hagiography Are Not Historiography

When viewed from the perspective of either the historian of the book (or books) or an historian of religions, volumes no. 49 and 50 of the modern Taishō-era Sino-Japanese Buddhist Canon (Taishō shinshū dai zōkyō 大正新脩大藏經, comp. 1924–1935 in 100 vols.; hereafter Taishō Canon) contain a fascinating, if somewhat strange in terms of inclusion, order, and contents, collection of premodern Buddhist literature in the Sinitic language devoted to “histories and biographies” (shidenbu ni 史傳部二).1 Setting aside for the moment postmodern, postcolonial, and other theoretical argumentation, history is typically defined by historians as the study of the past measured according to continuity or change—or both. Historiography, or the study of what historians postulate and discuss about history, need not be limited to what modern historians say; premodern Chinese historians, for example, certainly held rigorous historiographical debates no later than the Han 漢 dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE). Premodern Buddhist texts in these volumes of the Taishō Canon do, in fact, address aspects of history—events that transpired across time. But much of this discussion is presented not to address economic, social, political, or religious history as one would find by modern historians, and instead much of what one reads about is called hagiography. Hagiography is a genre of biography—stories of people and their lives—that treats their subjects with “undue reverence” and almost always serves an agenda, often political and religious in the premodern era as in hagiographies of Christian saints.2 Hagiographical agendas, therefore, have been studied in premodern Sinitic and other Asian Buddhist literature that can be categorized as either history or biography.3 In volumes 49 and 50, we also find texts that have been examined by modern scholars according to their eschatological teachings. Eschatology is a religious studies term that usually refers to doctrinal teachings that concern death, judgement(s), and often the so-called “end times” (as in the Book of the Apocalypse or the Apocalypse of John in the Bible).4

There is a methodological problem when it comes to the modern academic study of premodern East Asian Buddhist historical and biographical literature: I fear that many published authors whose work appears in English, often, though not necessarily in the field of Religious Studies, might benefit from closer scrutiny of what the words biography, hagiography, history, historiography, and certainly eschatology mean. Here, I investigate a rather simple history of a group of seven premodern Buddhist monks, all male, who lived in India, China, and Japan. Most of these seven never met one another and no text or inscription suggests that they did, even via supernormal powers or miracles. All seven are understood to have composed important books, some longer and other shorter, about aspects of Amitāyus or Amitābha buddha’s Pure Land and the benefits of birth or rebirth there after death. Various sources from premodern China, Korea, Tibet, and Japan, address these individuals’ biographies, chronologies, histories, and even their roles in eschatological schemas. My interest in this group of seven is the books that they wrote and their history. On top of that, these books’ history tells us something about how much of the approach modern scholars of premodern East Asian Buddhist literature often take is anachronistic and historically inaccurate. If we wish to study and know something about the history of Buddhism in East Asia, then the so-called Buddhist “canon” is not the place we ought to be looking at all.

Nāgārjuna (Longshu, Ryūju 龍樹, ca. 150–200) and Vasubandhu (typically Shiqin, Seshin 世親 or Tianqin, Tenshin 天親, or Posoubandou, Basubanzu 婆藪槃豆, ca. 320–400) are not only the two Indian Buddhist monks included in this group of seven mentioned above, but they are also among the most famous Indian Buddhist teachers or masters according to premodern Chinese and Tibetan histories (Mochizuki 1946; Tokiwa 1941; Demiéville 1952; Lü 1991; Herrmann-Pfandt 2008; Obermiller [1931] 1964, pp. 18–19). Careful bibliographical and philological research conducted by several of the greatest scholars of East Asian Buddhism, namely Mochizuki Shinkō (1869–1948), Tokiwa Daijō (1870–1945), Paul Demiéville (1894–1979), and Lü Cheng (1896–1989), in addition to sources more recently available from Tibetan so-called palace libraries, demonstrate that texts by Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu figure particularly prominently in literature translated from India languages in China and Tibet from the 5th–9th centuries CE (Mochizuki 1946; Tokiwa 1941; Demiéville 1952; Lü 1991; Herrmann-Pfandt 2008, p. xliii). Scholastic or exegetical traditions based on commentarial literature ascribed to Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu figure conspicuously in the history of Buddhism in both China and Tibet: Madhyamaka follows Nāgārjuna (and others); Yogācāra follows Vasubandhu and his brother, Asaṅga (Wuzhuo, Mujaku 無着, ca. 395–470) and others. Therefore, it would seem to be ludicrous or even absurd, and certainly anachronistic, to suggest that either Nāgārjuna or Vasubandhu supported an exclusive approach to [Mahāyāna] Buddhist practice focused on recitation of Amitāyus or Amitābha’s name (nianfo, nenbutsu 念仏). Yet that is precisely what their inclusion in a group of seven patriarchs (qizu, shichiso 七祖) or seven eminent monks (shichikōsō 七高僧) demonstrates.

Iwanami Bukkyō jiten Iwanami Bukkyō jiten 岩波仏教辞典 (The Iwanami Dictionary of Buddhism, 3rd rev. ed. 2023), for example, lists the group of seven as follows: (1) Nāgārjuna; (2) Vasubandhu; (3) Tanluan 曇鸞 (Donran, 476–542); (4) Daochuo 道綽 (Dōshaku, 562–645); (5) Shandao 善導 (Zendō, 613–681); (6) Genshin 源信 (942–1017); and (7) Hōnen 法然 (Genkū 源空, Enkō daishi 円光大師, 1133–1212). There, we also learn that this is a list from the Japanese True Pure Land tradition (Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗). Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu represent Indian “masters”; Tanluan, Daochuo, and Shandao represent the Chinese “patriarchs” and Genshin and Hōnen are the Japanese eminent monks. Even if the dates show that the Chinese monks’ lives may have overlapped chronologically while the Indian and Japanese masters could not have met in person, the list represents transmission (sōshō or sōjō 相承) of something important. And Foguan dacidian 佛光大辭典 (Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Buddha’s Light, rev. ed. 2007) reveals the same list from Japanese Shin Buddhism, and adds that Zhipan’s 志磐 (Shiban, 1220–1275) polemical Fozu tongji 佛祖統紀 (Busso tōki, General History of the Buddha and the Patriarchs, T no. 2035) contains a list of seven patriarchs of the [White] “Lotus Society” (lianshe 蓮社).5 This list begins with (a) Lushan Huiyuan 廬山慧遠 (Rozan E’on, 334–416), and continues with (b) Chang’an Shandao 長安善導 (Chōan Zendō, 613–681), (c) Nanyue Chengyuan 南岳承遠 (Nangaku Shōon, 712–802), (d) Chang’an Fazhao 長安法照 (Chōan Hosshō, 746–838), (e) Shaokang 少康 (Shōkō, ca. 805), (f) Yanshou 延壽 (Enju, 904–975), and finally (g) Shengchang 省常 (Shōjō, 959–1020).6 What this list exposes, however historically problematical it may be in Zhipan’s Fozu tongji, is that some sort of connection is posited between Shandao and Chengyuan, Fazhao, and Shaokang during the 9th century in China. Both dictionary entries about the seven patriarchs show that in Japan, there exists a distinct understanding from sometime in the premodern into the modern eras of a group of seven Pure Land patriarchs or eminent monks. And in China, the prehistory of Pure Land patriarchs in Japan must be much more difficult to trace because one approach seems to be connected to two Indian masters’ compositions, while the other takes us to the curious case of Lushan Huiyuan and perhaps his relationship to the eminent translator from Kucha 龜茲, Kumārajīva (Jiumoluoshi, Kumarajū 鳩摩羅什, 344–413), whom he met during the early 5th century in the Chinese capital of Chang’an.

More specialized Japanese Buddhist dictionaries, discussed below, as well as another related entry in the Foguang dacidian under the title of sacred or sagely teachings of the seven patriarchs (qizu shengjiao 七祖聖教), tell us that the seven patriarchs from the Japanese Shin Buddhist tradition are revered because of the books they composed about the Pure Land.7 In other words, the Pure Land patriarchs’ books about the Pure Land and exclusive recitation of Buddha Amitāyus’s (or Amitābha) name are what make this list of seven religious individuals important. The focus of this paper primarily concerns the history of the Indian patriarchs’ books in premodern East Asia, rather than the Chinese or Japanese eminent monks’ compositions. Moreover, I investigate the history of the Shin Buddhist list of seven, and argue that Genshin, Hōnen, and the Shin Buddhist patriarch not included in this list, Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263), were neither Pure Land (Jōdoshū 浄土宗) nor Shin Buddhists at all during their lifetimes. Instead, these three eminent Japanese Pure Land devotees were Tendai 天台宗 Buddhists. Later, the individual who formed the institution we can call Shin Buddhism in Japan, Rennyo 蓮如 (1415–1499), created the list of seven patriarchs’ books to highlight the crucial role that he considered Shinran to have played in locating and singling out a unique lineage of Pure Land teachings books that it seems can be traced from Japan back to China, and even to Indian authors. No one believes these individuals transmitted some sort of true mind or essential teaching from one to another as in the Chan/Sŏn/Thiền/Zen 禪宗 tradition; they are recognized because of fundamental texts with key ideas that are ascribed to them. These key texts were never singled out in any Chinese or Indian set of special texts, nor were they highlighted in various catalogs to the Buddhist “canon.” This research demonstrates how the sacred teachings (shengjiao, shōgyō 聖教) ascribed to Vasubandhu, and to a certain extent Nāgārjuna as well, by Pure Land and Shin Buddhists reveal how and why Pure Land practices were expected to be seen as mainstream Mahāyāna Buddhism and nothing at all like a reformation for a later age (mofa, mappō 末法) in the eschatological sense of that term (Shinran and Hisao 2003).8 I also address the curious modern historiographical trend in European language Buddhist studies scholarship that privileges the eschatological role Indian Buddhists appear to have played in early medieval China over the history of the books that were translated during this era from Indic and Sanskrit into the Sinitic language.

2. Pure Land Commentarial Literature, Sacred Teachings Books, and the “Canon”

Just how significant the concepts of textual transmission (and translation) from India to China and composing commentaries to Indic language exegetical texts by East Asian Buddhists (in the Sinitic language) are to the exclusive Pure Land Shin Buddhist tradition can be seen in the name of the “founder” Shinran. Shin in his name refers to the shin in the Japanese name of Vasubandhu (Seshin) and ran comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the second logograph in the name of the [first] Chinese patriarch Tanluan. Tanluan composed a crucial commentary to Vasubandhu’s Wuliangshou jing youpotishe yuanshengjie/Muryōjukyō ubadaisha ganshōge 無量壽經優波提舎願生偈 (*Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa, Discourse on Sukhāvatī, Z no. 687. T no. 1524), which is known as the Wangsheng lunzhu/ Ōjōronchū 往生論註 (alt. Jingtu lunzhu/Jōdoronchū 浄土論註 (Annotated commentary to the *Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa, T no. 1819).9 It is included in the modern Taishō Canon. But Tanluan’s Wangsheng lunzhu was not included in the “canon” as the concept is understood by either Yuanzhao’s 圓照 (Enshō, d.u.) Zhenyuan xinding shijiao mulu 貞元新定釋教目録 (Jōgen shinjō shakkyō mokuroku, Newly Revised Catalogue of Buddhist Scriptures made during the Zhenyuan-era, T no. 2157, hereafter Zhenyuan lu or Z for Zhenyuan lu number, as above), which was compiled in 799 or 800, or Zhisheng’s 智昇 (Chishō, ca. 700–740) Kaiyuan shijiao lu 開元釋教録 (Kaigen shakkyō roku, Record of Śākyamuni’s Teachings, Compiled During the Kaiyuan Era [713–741], T no. 2154, hereafter Kaiyuan lu), compiled in 730. Scholarly consensus holds that the Kaiyuan lu was used as the basis for cataloging nearly all printed Buddhist “canons” in the history of China.10 It is also important to note that 22 extant Buddhist canons printed on the mainland in the Sinitic language followed the order of Mahāyāna (dasheng, daijō 大乗), so-called Hīnayāna (xiaosheng, shōjō), and other texts kept in (ruzang lu, nyūzō roku 入藏録) and left out (buruzang mulu, funyūzō mokuroku 不入藏目録) section of the Kaiyuan lu. According to Shiina Kōyū, Fang Guangchang, and Ochiai Toshinori, among others, it is important to note that these Tang 唐 dynasty (618–907) catalogs did not include commentaries written by East Asian authors—including Tanluan’s Wangsheng lunzhu. We must also take into account that the Kaiyuan lu cataloged a manuscript Buddhist “canon” in 5048 rolls 卷 with 1046 titles 部; the Zhenyuan lu includes 1206 titles in 5351 rolls (Fang 1991, 2006; Shiina 1993; Ochiai 2005).

Tanluan’s Wangsheng lunzhu is a very important text for Pure Land devotees in Japan. That is was neither cataloged in the Kaiyuan lu nor the Zhenyuan lu is historically insignificant unless one’s basis for looking for and finding East Asian Buddhists’ books is something we can call a “canon.” The “canon” was certainly an important collection of Buddhist literature in premodern East Asia, just as the Thirteen Classics (Shisan jing, Jūsankyō 十三經) of so-called Confucian (Rujia, Juka 儒家) literature is a monumentally important collection of ancient Chinese texts studied for the imperial examinations in China and other state-supported curricula in Korea and Japan. Yet historians of so-called Confucianism, as far as I am aware, openly acknowledge that students and scholars read commentarial literature to these classics, and rarely, if ever, the classics apart from reading aides. We know from premodern catalogs to Buddhist libraries in Japan (e.g., Eichō’s 永超 [1014–1095] Tōiki dentō mokuroku 東域傳燈目録 [Catalog of the Transmission of the Torch to the East, T. 2183]) and from one remarkable source in Korea (Ŭich’ŏn’s 義天 [1054–1101] Sinp’yŏn chejong kyojang ch’ongnok 新編諸宗教藏總錄 [New Catalog of the Teachings of All the Schools, T. 2184]) that Buddhist education in both countries seems to have been analogous to what we know about so-called Confucian instruction: scholars and students read commentaries, not the “canon.”11

The list of texts ascribed to the seven patriarchs exceeds seven, and shows whose commentaries seem to have been read most widely, at least in Japan. The list of so-called Pure Land sacred teachings books (shengjiao, shōgyō) are as follows:

• Nāgārjuna’s Shizhu piposha lun/Jūjū bibasha ron 十住毘婆沙論 (*Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣa; A Detailed Explanation of the Ten Stages [of the Bodhisattva Path], Z no. 704, T no. 1521)
• Vasubandhu’s Wuliangshou jing youpotishe yuanshengjie/Muryōjukyō ubadaisha ganshōge 無量壽經優波提舎願生偈 (*Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa, Discourse on Sukhāvatī, Z no. 687. T no. 1524)
• Tanluan’s Wangsheng lunzhu/Ōjōronchū 往生論註 (alt. Jingtu lunzhu/Jōdoronchū 浄土論註 (Annotated commentary to the *Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa, T no. 1819)
• Tanluan’s Zan Amituofo jie 讚阿彌陀佛偈 (San Amidabutsuge, Gāthā to Praise Amitāyus Buddha, T no. 1978)
• Daochuo’s Anleji 安樂集 (Anrakushū, Anthology of the Land of Bliss [Sukhāvatī], T no. 1958)
• Shandao’s Guanwuliangshou jingshu 觀無量壽經疏 (Kanmuryōjubutsukyōsho; Guanjingshu, Kangyōsho 觀經疏, Commentary to the Book of the Visualization of Amitāyus, T no. 1753)
• Shandao’s Zhuanjing xingdao yuanwangsheng jingtu fashi zan轉經行道願往生淨土法事讃 (Tengyō gyōdō ganōjō jōdō hōji san; Fashizan, Hōjisan, Ritual manual for the Practice of Desiring [Re-]Birth in the Pure Land Through Chanting Sūtras and Circumambulation, T no. 1979)
• Shandao’s Guan nian Amituofo xianghai sanmei gongde famen 觀念阿彌陀佛相海三昧功德法門 (Kannen Amidabutsu sōkai sanmai kudoku hōmon; Guannian famen, Kannen hōmon 觀念法門, Dharma Gate of the Merits of the Ocean-like Samādhi of the Visualization of the Marks of Amitāyus Buddha, T no. 1959)
• Shandao’s Wangsheng lizan jie 往生禮讚偈 (Ōjō raisange, Verses in Praise for [Re-]Birth in the Pure Land, T no. 1980)
• Shandao’s Yi Guanjing deng ming Banzhou sanmei xingdao wangsheng zan 依觀經等明般舟三昧行道往生讃 (E Kangyō tō myō Hanjuzanmai gyōdō ōjō san; Banzhou zan, Hanjuzan 般舟讃, Verses to Praise [Re-]Birth in the Pure Land through the Practice of the *Pratyutpanna-buddha-saṃmukhāvasthita-samādhi-sūtra, T no. 1981)
• Genshin’s 源信 (942–1017) Ōjōyōshū 往生要集 (Essentials of Rebirth in the Pure Land, T no. 2682)
• Hōnen Senchaku hongan nenbutsushū 選擇本願念佛集 (A Collection of Passages about Chanting Buddha Amitāyus’ Name Chosen According to the Original Vow, T no. 2608)

The first volume of modern collections of Shin Buddhist texts, Shinshū shōgyō zensho 真宗聖教全書 (Complete Collection of Shinshū Sacred Teachings Books or Documents) and Jōdo Shinshū Seiten zensho 浄土真宗聖典全書 (Complete Collection of Shinshū Sacred Books and Documents), contains the three Pure Land sūtras and the [sacred teachings] texts by the seven patriarchs (sankyō shichiso-hen 三経七祖篇).12 Only the first two in the list of twelve, above, were cataloged in the “canon”; several, we discussed below, only appeared in any canonical collection in the early 20th century.

3. On the Importance of Indic Masters’ Textual Antecedents

Despite the well-known idea that Buddhist literature in India was kept in baskets and there were just three of them, there are twelve divisions 十二分經 (dvādaśāṅga-buddhavcana) of Indic Buddhist literature which, please notice, oddly has the logograph 經 (as in kyōten, jingdian 経典) in most instances.13 Xuanzang 玄奘 (J. Genjō, 602–664) and other translators were known as trepiṭakas 三藏—learned in three baskets—and not just three “baskets” of Buddhist literature (Forte 1990, pp. 247–48n.247; Keyworth 2019). One of the twelve types of Indic Buddhist literature mirrors what we find from the so-called Chinese Confucian tradition mentioned earlier. The connection between Confucian and Buddhists’ educational or commentarial books is mentioned by various premodern East Asian Buddhist exegetes, and unsurprisingly by Tanluan in his Wangsheng lunzhu as follows:

This Upadeśa on the Sūtras of Limitless Life discusses the highest teaching of the Mahāyāna, which sails with the wind and reaches perfection without turning back. “Limitless Life” is the epithet of [Amitāyus] Tathāgata who has the serenely beautiful Pure Land [as his realm].

Śākyamuni Buddha gave teachings on the merits of the adornments of Buddha Amitāyus to great crowds of people, in the city of Rājagṛha and in the city-state of Śrāvastī. That buddha’s name is given to the sūtras because he embodies them.

Later, a holy man, Vasubandhu Bodhisattva, “wearing on his breast” (fuying 服膺) the Tathāgata’s teaching of great compassion, and staying close to the sūtras, composed the Gāthā on the Resolution to be Born [in the Pure Land]. He then wrote an interpretation of it in prose, which he called, in Sanskrit, upadeśa. We do not have a proper translation equivalent of this word in the language of this country, but if we “life up one corner” (juyiyu 舉一隅) we would call it a “discourse” (lun 論).

There is no proper translation equivalent in our country because we have never had a buddha in China. In our country, we have documents edited by Confucius, which we call “classics” (jing 經), and the compositions of others, called “masters” (zi 子). Then there are the “state histories” (guoshi 國史) and the “private chronicles” (guoji 國紀), each in a different style. On the other hand, the sayings of the Buddha are classified in the “twelvefold classics” (dvādaśa-aṅga-dharma-pravacana, shierbu jing 十二部經), in which there are commentaries called upadeśa (youpotishe 優波提舎). If the disciples of the Buddha expound the “classics” in accordance with the Buddha’s essential meaning, then he permits them [their expositions] to be called upadeśa, because they enter into what pertains to the buddhadharma. In China we call them “discourses” (lun), and that is straightaway taken to mean “discourses on the meaning” (lunyi 論議). How can one arrive at a proper translation with that word?

此《無量壽經優婆提舍》，蓋上衍之極致、不退之風航者也。無量壽是安樂淨土如來別號。釋迦牟尼佛在王舍城及舍衛國，於大眾之中說無量壽佛莊嚴功德，即以佛名號為經體。後聖者婆藪槃頭菩薩服膺如來大悲之教，傍經作願生偈，復造長行重釋。梵言優婆提舍，此間無正名相譯。若舉一隅，可名為論。所以無正名譯者，以此間本無佛故。如此間書就孔子而稱經，餘人製作皆名為子，國史國紀之徒各別體例。然佛所說十二部經中有論議經名優婆提舍，若復佛諸弟子解佛經教與佛義相應者，佛亦許名優婆提舍，以入佛法相故。此間云論，直是論議而已，豈得正譯彼名耶?14

Tanluan probably assisted Bodhiruci [I] (Putiliuzhi, Bodairushi 菩提流支, d. 527/535) and his translation team in the translation of Vasubandhu’s *Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa. If we follow that logic and suggest that Bodhiruci [I] may have also considered Vasubandhu to have been some sort of exclusive Pure Land devotee, then we must acknowledge that the same translation team, including Tanluan, perhaps, oversaw the production of Vasubandhu’s version of the Miaofa lianhua jing youbotishe/Myōhōrengekyō upadaisha 妙法蓮華經憂波提舍 or Fahua jinglun, Hokkekyōron 法華經論 (*Saddharmapuṇḍarīkopadeśa, Discourse on the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra, Z no. 682, T no. 1519). By this logic, could we not presume that Vasubandhu ought to be considered to be an eager proponent of the Lotus Sūtra, too? The Wuliangshou jing youpotishe yuanshengjie (*Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa) is not mentioned in the biography of Vasubandhu translated by Paramārtha (Zhendi, Shindai 真諦, 499–569), but the evidence of attribution is various much debated by modern scholars.15 This text was not, however, labeled either dubious (yijing, gikyō 疑經) or spurious (weijing, gikyō 偽經) in the Kaiyuan lu or Zhenyuan lu, and there is no indication that premodern Chinese, Korean, or Japanese scholars questioned the attribution to Vasubandhu.16

At this point I must pause to address two bibliographical points that come from the perspective of book history. First, please note that Vasubandhu’s biography (Z no. 1156, T no. 2049) is included in the portion of the Tang-era manuscript Buddhist “canon” (yiqie jing, issaikyō 一切經) that corresponds with the similar category in the modern, typeset Taishō Canon (vole. 49–50). We may wish to consider this to be an example of premodern Chinese Buddhist historiography or hagiography because Vasubandhu is portrayed as a saint-like figure. This is an important methodological point to bear as mind as we consider the separate histories of medieval Chinese Buddhists’ books and Japanese Buddhists’ books, below. My second point repeats something I said about Vasubandhu above: he is usually understood to be an exemplary Yogācāra scholar (Vijñāna-śāstras or Consciousness[-only] commentaries). Born in Puruṣapura in Gandhārā, in the fourth or fifth century (Takakusu suggests dates of 420–500), he seems to have first been a specialist in Abhidharma literature and wrote the massive *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya-śāstra (Apidamo jushe shilun/Abidatsuma kusha shaku ron 阿毘達磨倶舎釋論, Commentary on the Treasury of Abhidharma, Z no. 1073, T no. 1559) (Herrmann-Pfandt 2008, p. xliii; McBride 2022, p. 10). It is included among the 36 works attributed to him. Later, Vasubandhu is understood to have converted to Mahāyāna Buddhist teachings, and composed many other commentaries or treatises. Several of the most significant ones in East Asia are the Triṃsikā-[vijñaptikārikā] (Weishi sanshi lunsong/Yuishiki sanjū ronju 唯識三十頌 (Thirty verses on Consciousness-only, Z no. 733, T no. 1586), a commentary to the Mahāyāna-saṃgrāha-bhāṣya (She dasheng lun shi/Shōdaijōron shaku 攝大乘論釋, 712, T. no. 1595), the Daśabhūmika-bhāṣya (Shidijing lun/Jūjikyōron 十地經論, Z no. 669, T no. 1522), *Mahāyāna-śatadharmā-prakāśamukh-śāstra (Dasheng baifa mingmen lun/Daijō hyappō myōmon ron 大乘百法明門論, Z no. 756, T no. 1614), and the aforementioned *Sukhāvatīvyuhopadeśa and *Saddharmapuṇḍarīkopadeśa. If any famous figure from India represents a scholar who wrote commentaries to a wide variety of Mahāyāna and non-Mahāyāna Buddhist literature, it is Vasubandhu.

If we return to the list of seven patriarchs discussed above, we can see that Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu’s texts are, in fact, represented by Chinese exegesis as in the case of Tanluan’s commentary (zhushi, chūshaku 註釈) to Vasubandhu’s *Sukhāvatīvyuhopadeśa, and not any of his Yogācāra-orientated literary corpus. Shandao’s commentaries are well represented by the texts in the list and show that he seems to have been oriented toward study of the Guanwuliangshou fo jing/Kanmuryōjubutsukyō 觀無量壽佛經 (Book of the Visualization of Amitāyus, Z no. 223, T no. 365), and is seen by the later Japanese Pure Land tradition(s)—in the writings of Genshin and Hōnen—to establish a distinct sort of practice to recite the name of Amitāyus or Amitābha buddha (nianfo, nenbutsu). It is not my intention to repeat or discuss the abundant scholarly literature that addresses the history of the so-called Pure Land schools in China or Japan. In terms of book history, however, two stand out and present oppositional perspectives from an historiographical perspective: Rhodes (2017) and McBride (2020). Rhodes’ excellent study highlights the pivotal role that Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū played in establishing a Mahāyāna Buddhist textual framework for Genshin’s views about the nenbutsu. Shandao’s and Tanluan’s works are key to Genshin’s argumentation, just as they are to Hōnen in his Senchakushū. Both books by Japanese Pure Land devotees who were Tendai monks present clear examples of textual exegesis reading commentarial Buddhist literature to address a doctrinal, ritual, and matter of practice. Genshin and Hōnen followed a well-documented practice of producing shōgyō as Tendai monks (associated with the massive Enryakuji 延暦寺 atop Mount Hiei 比叡山) who were well aware of similar textual exegesis by Hossō 法相宗 (Yogācāra) experts at Kōfukuji 興福寺 or Sanron 三論宗 (Madhyamaka) scholars from Tōdaiji 東大寺 (and related temples) in Nara.

In late Heian- 平安 (794–1185) and Kamakura-era 鎌倉 (1185–1333) Japan, as is well-known in Japanese language scholarship, it was common practice for exegetical (kyōgaku 教学) scholar monks and their students (disciples) at especially Kōfukuji or Tōdaiji, as well as at various esoteric Buddhist training institutions such as Daigoji 醍醐寺, Tōji 東寺, Kongōbuji 金剛峯寺 (Mount Kōya 高野山), and Negoroji 根来寺 (and elsewhere) related to the Shingon 真言宗 lineages where ritual learning was considered more important, to produce texts that were called shōgyō (sacred teachings books). Teachers would write commentaries to commentaries by Chinese exegetes who, in turn, referred to commentaries by Indian masters including Vasubandhu. Whereas the Hossō tradition of Kōfukuji favored the shōgyō that are traced back to Vasubandhu and primarily the Indic commentarial tradition, rather than the sūtra literature, and the same can be said for Sanron monks from Tōdaiji, certain exegetes also from Tōdaiji produced shōgyō as defined above to favor only Chinese monks’ commentaries to the

Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra (Huayan jing, Kegongyō 華嚴經, T nos. 278 [60 rolls 卷], 279 [80 rolls], and 293 [the Gaṇḍavyūha in 40 rolls]) as in the case of Chengguan’s 澄觀 (Chōkan, 738–839) Huayan jing yanyi chao 華嚴經演義鈔 (Kegongyō engishō, The Meanings Proclaimed in the Sub commentary to the Buddhāvataṃsaka-sūtra, T no. 1736). We know how commonplace this practice of producing and safekeeping these shōgyō was during this time period from Tōdaiji alone from the Tōdaiji zoku yōroku 東大寺続要録 (Continued Essential Records of Tōdaiji, ca. 1181). A definition of shōgyō can be found in the description of the library of the Shin’in 真院 (Shin cloister) of Tōdaiji as follows:

Within various ‘cloisters’ at Tōdaiji, including Shin’in [Shinzen’in], imperial material support allowed for building Halls, Libraries, Images, [collecting] Sacred Teachings [books], Paintings, etc., … and in addition to “scriptures” written character by character [in silver and gold] also kept in the library, a [complete copy] of a ‘canon’ plus exoteric and esoteric sacred teachings [books] and other books were cataloged, as well as statues of the Four Guardian Kings, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Vidyārājas, Indra (Gods and Goddesses), as well as the 16 Arhats, various Patriarchs, and Esoteric Buddhist ritual implements…

請特蒙院庁裁、以東大寺内新禅院永被定置仙洞御祈願所、安長斎梵行浄侶、可致長日不退御祈禱由、下賜御下文状、建立堂舎・経蔵・僧房、安置仏像・聖教・影像、（中略）建立三間瓦茸経蔵一字、安置一切経律論弁顕密聖教・内外典籍等、目録在別、同安四天王三尺像、同安仏・菩薩・明王・天等并十六羅漢・祖師等像六十余鋪、同安真言道具等、目六在別、….

(Tōdaiji zoku yōroku kenkyūkai hensan 2014, pp. 194–95; Nagamura 2023).

The same short account of the recent history of the Shin’in at Tōdaiji as of the end of twelfth century points out that an earlier name for the cloister has been the Nenbutsu’in 念仏院. This is a point I will return to below.

Nearby in Nara, and according to the Tōdaiji zoku yōroku quite close to the Shin’in at the time, at Kōfukuji and its various cloisters, special attention was awarded to what European language scholars typically call Yogācāra Buddhist literature. Although Vasubandhu is revered in this tradition for his Thirty Verses on Consciousness-only (Triṃsikā-[vijñaptikārikā]), a commentary to those verses, because of the massive translation efforts of Xuanzang and his team in the seventh century, it is Ci’en Ji 慈恩基 (J. Jion Ki, 632–682), also known as Kuiji 窺基 (J. Kiki, 632–682) and his commentary to the Cheng weishi lun shuji 成唯識論述記 (Narrative Notes to the *Vijñapti-mātratā-siddhi-śāstra, Jōyuishikiron jutsuki, T no. 1830) that received special attention. This tradition’s exemplary scholar-monk, Jōkei 貞慶 (1155–1213), is infamous with certain Japanese Buddhists because of the petition he wrote condemning Hōnen for his advocacy of exclusive nenbutsu practice (in the Kōfukuji Petition: Kōfukujisōjō 興福寺奏状) (Morrell 1983). This is the same Hōnen from our list of seven patriarchs, whose books are connected with Vasubandhu via the *Sukhāvatīvyuhopadeśa. Setting that consequential historical connection for the moment, Jōkei compiled a commentary to Ci’en Ji’s Cheng weishi lun shuji in the form of his Yuishikiron jinshishō 唯識論尋思鈔 (Extracts of Investigations into the Treatise of Consciousness Only) (Kusunoki 2019, 2024). It has ten rolls and was compiled in preparation for monastic debates (rongi 論義; please note the homonym and connection to Tanluan’s word for “discourses on textual meaning” above) from the perspective of a Hossō-position advocate and ritual expert. This text is a shō—a digest—but of a very specific set of texts with what I will call a singular orientation. That orientation is designed to examine textual antecedents from Japan, back to China, and into the hands of another Indian master named *Dharmapāla (Hufa, Gohō 護法, 6th century) whose commentaries Xuanzang acquired in India and translated after he returned to Chang’an. Modern experts on Yogācāra doctrinal tenets or doctrinal disputations will certainly wish to argue with me about the differences between Vasubandhu’s verses and *Dharmapāla’s commentary that Xuanzang translated, Ci’en Jie commented upon, and Jōkei provided a digest about. But the fact remains that this is the history of textual exegesis in Japan already by the turn of the twelfth century that is understood to have been traceable back through Chinese commentarial literature to Indian monastic training literature from India. And Hōnen, our Pure Land patriarch, was well-aware of this textual exegesis when he compiled his Senchakushū as a Tendai monk.

4. Transmission from Indian Masters’ Works in Medieval Japan

As a Tendai monk like Genshin before him, Hōnen knew about Jōkei and his reputation. Jōkei submitted his Kōfukuji petition criticizing Hōnen and his followers according to the nine “articles” as Morrell’s translation suggests, which serves as arguably the best evidence of just how widespread the practice of the nenbutsu was in Japan at the time and practiced by all other Buddhist traditions in Japan. Morrell’s excellent article outlines how political the petition was, and how Hōnen’s teachings could be seen as deviating from a mainstream Mahāyāna understanding of Amitāyus’ or Amitābha’s Pure Land and of Mahāyāna Buddhism. If Morrell’s observations are correct, and I have checked a rather large array of Japanese language scholarship on the subject of Jōkei and Hōnen as well, then it certainly stands to reason that citing previous Chinese and Indian treatises or commentaries to sūtras for discussion of the Pure Land of Sukhāvatī might not have been nearly as singular or out of the ordinary as some European language scholars have suggested that this practice was. In order to appreciate some of the argumentation presented also in some Japanese and Chinese scholarship, let me step even further into the fray, so to speak, and make an even clearer statement: there was nothing strange about how either Genshin or Hōnen—or Shinran, whom we will address. below—presented their argumentation about the singular practice of the nenbutsu. The way or method they did so mirrors what Jōkei and his followers did at Kōfukuji or other Tendai monks did at the many, many cloisters of Enryakuji at the time. Nor did the way these texts cite commentarial precedents vary very much from how esoteric Buddhist teachers at the same time even at the Tōnan’in 東南院 of Tōdaiji or Shingon centers of learning cited the often illustrated ritual texts or manuals they received from China and cataloged. Catalogs, after all, of what Kūkai 空海 (774–835), Ennin 円仁 (794–864), and Enchin 円珍 (814–891), the latter two notably Tendai and not Shingon monks, brought back to Japan seem to have been the precedent in Japan for cataloging the shōgyō defined in the Tōdaiji zoku yōroku, above.17

Indian, not Chinese, learning is what these shōgyō trace, celebrate, and transmit. Our seven Pure Land patriarchs represent something quite normative if approached from the perspective of the study of not only monastic education and textual exegesis in late Heian- and Kamakura-eras Japan. And there is abundant textual evidence to back up that statement. Therefore, when Shinran, in his Ken Jōdo shinjitsu kyōgyōshō monrui 顯淨土眞實教行證文類 (Classification of Passages on the True Teaching, Practice, and Realization to Manifest the Pure Land, T no. 2646), speaks of the correspondence between Śākyamuni buddha and the nenbutsu, we know that he is celebrating his teacher, Hōnen, and responding to Jōkei and other’s criticisms as follows:

The Collection of Passages on the Land of Peace and Bliss states:

“Repeating the Nembutsu ten times” is simply an indication of the number by the Sage (Śākyamuni). When one repeatedly utters the Nembutsu and focuses one’s thought on it, without being distracted by other matters, one’s act for attainment of birth is accomplished and nothing more is needed. Why do we take the trouble of keeping count of the number of our Nembutsu recitations? There is another piece of advice: those who practice the Nembutsu for a long time should, in many cases, follow this way. Beginners, however, could very well count the number, for there is a scriptural reference to support this.18

安樂集云。十念相續者。是聖者一數之名耳。 即能積念凝思不縁他事。使業道成`辨便 罷。亦不勞記之頭數也　又云。若久行人 念多應依此。若始行人念者記數亦好。此亦依聖教已上

Shinran’s citation from Daochuo’s text follows the practice of citing Chinese texts, which is standard practice in the East Asian Buddhist commentarial tradition. Also from the Kyōgyōshinshō, chapter 3 on Citing Precedent, Shinran defines the term shōgyō in a way that his peers—and opponents—would have equally understood well.

The second tradition is the five grave offenses of the Mahayana, as stated in the Sutra Expounded by Mahāsatyanirgrantha (Mahā-satya-nir-grantha-nirdeśa*):

(1) Destroying pagodas, burning sūtra repositories, or stealing properties of the Three Treasures; (2) slandering the teaching of the three vehicles by saying that it is not the sacred teaching of the Buddha, obstructing and depreciating it, or hiding it; (3) beating and rebuking those who have renounced the world (i.e., monks and nuns), whether they observe the precepts, have received no precepts, or have broken them…19

大乘五逆。如薩遮尼乾子經説。一者破壞塔焚燒經藏。及以盜用三寶財物。二者謗 三乘法言非聖教。障破留難隱蔽落藏。三 者一切出家人若戒･無戒･破戒。打罵呵責。

It seems relevant to point out that the translated-into-Sinitic text Shinran mentions, the Mahāsatyanirgrantha-(Daisasshanikenshijukikyō 大薩遮尼乾子所説經, T no. 272) does not have this quotation; it can be found in the Quan fa putixin ji 勸發菩提心集 [Kampotsu bodaishin shū, Collected Works Exhorting the Generation of the Aspiration for Enlightenment] by Huizhao 慧沼 (Eshō, 648–714) at T no. 1862, 45: 396b29. In any case, Shinran is citing textual precedent that uses the term shōgyō (shengjiao) to refer to the sacred teachings [written down in a book] regarding what the historical Buddha taught. To Shinran and Hōnen, and Rennyo who followed them, the term shōgyō has two meanings. First, shōgyō are the most important books for members of a particular tradition (here defined by exclusive Pure Land practice devotees; later as Shin Buddhists) and second, shōgyō contain the teachings that merit special attention. Those teachings have a long history, and one that can be seen to represent a connection to Indian antecedents through the books written or compiled by the seven Pure Land patriarchs.

Let me conclude this section about Japanese Pure Land exegetes who liked to use the term shōgyō with two additional examples. One is from Shinran’s Tannishō 歎異抄 (Passages Deploring Deviations of Confidence or Faith, T no. 2661) and one is ascribed to Rennyo. In the Tannishō, which I have yet to mention is not written in Sinitic but instead in Japanese, and that in and of itself has merited questions regarding its authenticity, we find the following passage:

Some hold the view that those who do not read or study the sutras and commentaries will not be assured of attaining rebirth in the Pure Land. This view is not worth taking seriously. Various scriptures [正教] that make clear the truth of the other-power stress that we are certain to attain buddhahood only when we have faith in the Original Vow and recall the Name. So for rebirth in the Pure Land what else do we need to study? To be sure, those who are uncertain of this truth ought to study hard if they wish to grasp the purport of the Original Vow. But how pitiful indeed if, after all their reading and study of the sūtras and commentaries, they still fail to grasp the real meaning [of shōgyō]! Because the Name can easily be repeated by those who are unlettered and ignorant of what the sutras and commentaries mean, it is called the easy path.20

經釋ヲ讀ミ學セサルトモカラ往生不 定ノヨシノコト。コノ條スコフル不足言ノ義トイヒツヘシ。他力眞實ノムネヲア カセルモロモロノ聖教ハ。本願ヲ信シ念佛ヲマウサハ佛ニナル。ソノホカナニノ 學問カハ往生ノ要ナルヘキヤ。マコトニコノコトハリニマヨヘランヒトハ。イカニモイカニモ學問シテ。本願ノ旨ヲシル ヘキナリ。經釋ヲ讀ミ學ストイヘトモ。聖 教ノ本意ヲココロエサル條。モトモ不便 ノコトナリ。一文不通ニシテ經釋ノユクチモ知ラサラン人ノ。トナヘヤスカラン タメノ名號ニオハシマスユヘニ。

I do not recommend reading the Taishō version of this text and advocate using either the Shinshū shōgyō zensho 真宗聖教全書 (Complete Collection of Shinshū Sacred Teachings Books or Documents 1941 [Rpt. 1998]: II: 780–781) or Jōdo Shinshū Seiten zensho 浄土真宗聖典全書 (Complete Collection of Shinshū Sacred Books and Documents 2011–2019: II, 1061–1062) edition instead. Nevertheless, it is the use of shōgyō (and the homonym-logographs 正 and 聖 in Japanese, I added from the alternate editions, above) here that adds another layer of meaning to how the term shōgyō should be understood and the two definitions mentioned above. In order to see how the use of the term shōgyō developed across time in medieval Japanese Pure Land practice communities and to illustrate how his disciples understood Rennyo to have used the term, this example from Rennyo’s Letters (Rennyo shōnin Ofumi/Gobunshō 蓮如上人御文章, T no. 2668) should be instructive. For those who are not familiar with this tradition of Japanese Buddhism, [Nishi 西] Honganji followers read the title as Gobunshō; [Higashi 東] Honganji followers read the title as Ofumi. Scholars are generally in agreement that the normative reading was once Ofumi. Because these are letters, collected by his disciples, this one is 3, no. 11 and is On the Services Held Every Year without Exception; Bunmei 文明 7 (1475).11.21:

But recently, although people these days act as if they knew the buddhadharma, [it is clear] from what I have observed that while they give an outward appearance of relying on the buddha-dharma, there is no decisive settling of faith (anjin), the single path in our tradition. Besides that, on the strength of their own ability, they read texts that are not authenticated in our tradition and then talk about unknown, false teachings.21

カレシトコロニ。近代コノコロノ人ノ。佛法シリカホノ體タラクヲミヲヨフニ。外相ニハ佛法ヲ信スルヨシヲヒトニミエテ。内心ニハサラニモテ。當流安心ノ一途 ヲ決定セシメタル分ナクシテ。アマサヘ 相傳モセサル聖教ヲ。ワカ身ノ字チカラ ヲモテコレヲヨミテ。シラヌヱセ法門ヲ イヒテ。自他ノ門徒中ヲ經迴シテ。虚言 …

As with the previous example, because the Shinshū shōgyō and Shinshū seiten were prepared using alternate editions of various texts and provide as close to critical editions of these texts as possible, I suggest using those rather than the Taishō Canon. Here I provide the Taishō, once again, for consistency. The BDK (Buddhist Dendō Kyōkai 仏教伝道協会—Society for the Promotion of Buddhism 1996) translation of Rennyo’s Letters fails to accurately render the term shōgyō at all and provides “teachings.” It is close enough, however, to gauge how the shōgyō read by various groups or factions in Rennyo’s time (15th century) were restricted, and Rennyo made clear that they needed to be “authenticated.” Authentication and authenticity are related terms, and both point to the importance of authority in the history of East Asian Buddhist textual history.

The last two texts above, from Shinran’s Tannishō and Rennyo’s Letters, indicate that they lived in very different times. Studies of Shin Buddhist history address how Rennyo is considered to be the eighth monshu 門主 (keeper of the gate or head of a temple, more significant than an abbot [jūshoku 住職]) of the Honganji 本願寺 or main Buddhist temple of the [Jōdo] Shin Buddhist tradition, a lineage that suggests that a separate Honganji existed before Rennyo. It did not. It is beyond the scope of this paper to address how a distinct group of exclusive nenbutsu followers and relatives of Shinran perpetuated a lineage within the Tendai tradition connected to the Shōren’in 青蓮院 and Shinran’s grave (Ōtanibyōdō 大谷廟), which Rennyo inherited at a crucial epoch in late medieval Japanese history. Suffice it to say here, however, that listing Rennyo as the eighth monshu, rather than the person responsible for establishing the Honganji as a separate Buddhist institution from Enryakuji, perpetuates the lineage of Shinran as the “founder” figure for Shin Buddhist followers. The history of Rennyo has been written. But not yet well enough in English.22 Rennyo may have been responsible for popularizing the idea of seven Pure Land patriarchs or this group may date from much later, likely during the Edo 江戸 period (1603–1868). Rennyo edited many of Shinran’s texts, nevertheless, which makes the history that much more complex.

Separating the institutional history of Honganji and Shin Buddhism from the textual history of the seven patriarchs’ books as we have today takes us back to Shinran’s Kyōgyōshinshō to see how he referred to his teacher, Hōnen, who we know was rebuked by the Hossō master Jōkei. In roll 6 of the Kyōgyōshinshō, Shinran explicitly refers to Hōnen as his Great Ancestor (or patriarch, daiso 大祖, T no. 2646, 83: 642c12). We do not, however, find references to any list of seven patriarchs or ancestors in Shinran’s writings. Vasubandhu and Nāgārjuna, Tanluan and Daochuo, and even Shandao as well, do not receive this reverential moniker. There texts, listed above, are copiously cited, as one would expect, but not if of was looking for either a doctrinal or perhaps even an eschatological explanation for the seven Pure Land patriarchs and their connection to Vasubandhu.

5. Is the Pure Land Patriarch Vasubandhu a Chan/Zen Monk?

Much of the research presented thus far concerns the history of the textual corpus of seven individuals who came to be seen as a group of seven Pure Land patriarchs, most likely after the fifteenth century, and only in Japan. These patriarchs represent the core teachings of both the Pure Land and Shin Buddhist traditions of Japanese Buddhism. From the onset, I presented how no trustworthy Chinese or Japanese dictionary suggests otherwise. And there is scant textual evidence to suggest that Japanese Pure Land or Shin Buddhists, nor even Hossō, Sanron, Kegon 華厳 (Huayan) or Tendai monks would have thought that these seven individual represented anything other than a textual lineage. Since I am not an art historian, I must confess that the abundant materials available from Japanese Buddhist temple libraries, cataloged as shōgyō as we saw in the Tōdaiji zoku yōroku already by the twelfth century, have remained mostly understudied even by me. This is a project for future investigation. Portraiture from the Tendai, Shingon, Hossō, Kegon, Pure Land, and Shin Buddhist traditions exists. Just as it does, of course from the Japanese Zen tradition. The history of Japanese Zen is far better known in the west, and I suspect that for that reason, any serious discussion of the seven Pure Land patriarchs and their significant connection to Vasubandhu and his *Sukhāvatīvyuhopadeśa via Tanluan’s commentary, which was, of course, preserved only in Japan, as is the quite curious case of Jiacai’s 迦才 (Kasai, mid. 7th century) Jingtu lun/Jōdoron 淨土論 (Commentary to the Pure Land, T no. 1963). Chinese sources unsurprisingly make no mention of any Jiacai and a plausible connection to Shandao, nor to the existence of this commentary. This text does, however, serve to better establish how Tanluan’s Wangsheng lunzhu must have been preserved in Tang China so that it could have been brought back to Japan in this era. It also suggests that the Indic Buddhist practice of composing gāthās, followed by a prose explanation, as in Vasubandhu’s *Sukhāvatīvyuhopadeśa that Tanluan further explicates the meaning of at great length, must have been transmitted in Tang Chinese monasteries such as the great Hongfasi 弘法寺.23 This is an especially important point in terms of the history of East Asian Buddhism, and when we turn to how Indian Buddhist masters are often [mis-] understood to play only a pivotal role in the history of mostly the Chan/Zen traditions in China and Japan.

There is a subset of European language scholarship both about the importance of eschatological notions about the decline of the buddhadharma in India, and consequentially in China, which is based entirely upon materials preserved in early medieval China. That much of the earliest available editions of this literature were preserved in Japan, in the same monastic libraries addressed above when my discussion concerned Japanese Buddhist history, and not Chinese Buddhist history, is not something I hope the reader will ignore. The literature in question here was read, and presumably quite widely, in Japan, where we know it was safeguarded—and never sealed up in a cave as was the case with the so-called library cave (no. 17, cangjing dong 藏經洞) from the Caves of Unparalleled Heights (Mogao ku 莫高石窟, a.k.a. Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, Qianfo dong 千佛洞) near the city of Dunhuang, in Gansu province, China. Texts currently available online from the Taishō Canon, which we know are contained in volumes 49–50, on history and biography, show what was preserved in Japan. Most of these texts, in fact, come from the editions kept at the Kanchi’in 観智院 of Tōji in Kyoto, Japan. There, we have editions of early medieval Chinese Buddhist books about Indian patriarchs, including Vasubandhu and Nāgārjuna, and there is an excellent study of this literature by Stuart Young (Young 2015). In my reading of his work, Young does not, as others so effortlessly do, veer into what I will call a Chan/Zen hagiographical-cum-historiographical trap by misrepresenting the history of Chinese Buddhism as an entity that must have led to the creation of the Chan/Zen lineages on the back of early eschatological concerns about the so-called Buddhist End Times (mofa, mappō). Not all modern scholarship, primarily in European languages, leads the reader to such an odd perspective based on a teleological fallacy. But much of it does. For decades, for example, we read books and articles about the so-called Kamakura “New” Buddhist “schools” in Japan, including Pure Land, Shin Buddhism, and Zen, which were thought to have emerged in Japan after so-called founders journeyed to the continent to return with novel teachings designed to simplify the Buddhist path, thereby representing what we once called the “Sinification” of Buddhism in China.24

The teleological fallacy goes like this: because the Chan/Zen tradition presents its own hagiographical pseudo-history in literature such as the Jingde chuandeng lu 景德傳燈錄 (Keitoku dentō roku, Jingde-era Record of the Transmission of the Lamp [or flame], T. 2076, ca. 1004) with a detailed lineage of master to disciple transmission from the present (ca. 1004) back to this historical buddha Śākyamuni, there must be antecedent lineages in China that present relevant lineages of transmission from India to China. Brought to Japan by Chōnen 奝然 (983–1016), who returned to Japan in 986 with a copy of the newly printed Kaibao-era Buddhist “canon” (Kaibao zang, Kaihōzō 開寶藏) and an additional 40 rolls of newly translated texts (for a total of 5425 rolls he brought back to Japan), including an apparently incomplete copy of the Jingde chuandeng lu, the esteemed statesman Fujiwara no Michinaga 藤原道長 (966–1028) acquired these texts during the early 11th century, when he oversaw the construction of a lavish, private temple for his clan in Kyoto called Hōjōji 法成寺. We can only speculate whether or not the Jingde chuandeng lu was kept at Hōjōji.25 In terms of the world of the Chan/Zen transmission narrative, let us not ignore the fact that this lineage, is presented almost always in key Chan/Sŏn/Zen texts (e.g., Linji lu/Rinzai roku 臨濟録, Record of Linji, comp. 1120, T no. 1985) as one that is a separate transmission outside the Teachings (jiaowai biechuan 教外別傳 [kyōge betsuden]) and does not set up the written word (buli wenzi 不立文字 [furyū monji]). The “written word” and “teachings” is glossed across this vast literature as almost anything that does not contain the words/sayings of the Chan/Zen patriarchs. Legends suggest that Chan masters including Dahui Zonggao 大慧宗杲 (Daie Sōkō, 1089–1163) burned their masters’ books and woodblocks (in this case the Biyan lu 碧巖録 [Hekigan roku, Blue Cliff Record], T no. 2003), but I do not seriously consider the idea that Buddhists in medieval East Asia destroyed their own books on purpose.26 That said, the Chan/Zen lineage of twenty-eight patriarchs (including Bodhidharma 菩提達摩 (5th or 6th century), is construed by its own literature around a very different definition of transmission than we found in the commentarial or exegetical traditions discussed above. In books from a slightly earlier time, including the Zutang ji/Sodōshū 祖堂集 (Kor. Chodang chip, Anthology of the Patriarchal Hall, ca. 952), Bodhidharma responded to a question by his disciple Huike 慧可 (487–593), who cut off his arm to receive tutelage, “Master, does this method have a written record or not?” Bodhidharma replies, “My method is a transmission of mind by means of mind: it does not establish any writings” 慧可講曰: 此法有文字記錄不? 達摩曰: 我法以心傳心,不立文字.27

Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu are listed as the fourteenth and twenty-first Chan/Sŏn/Zen patriarchs in this hagiographical literature, which is furthermore understood to be based upon unbroken, mind-to-mind transmission from India to China. The primary source scholars investigate to look for antecedents from pre-Chan literature is the somewhat obscure Fu fazang yinyuan zhuan/Fuhōzō innen den 付法藏因緣傳 (An Account of the Causes and Conditions of the Transmission of the Dharma Treasury, Z no. 1110, T no. 2058). The translation was understood by premodern bibliographers to date from the early fifth century, but modern scholars have concluded that much of its “narrative [is] borrowed from its major source,” the Ayuwang zhuan/Aikuō den 阿育王傳 (*Aśokarāja-āvadāna, Z no. 1137, T no. 2042), an earlier translation ca. 300.28 This literature demonstrates that, as far as we can tell, lists of eminent monks may have circulated in India or Central Asia in the form of āvadāna literature and likely dovetails with what we know of the nascent arhat literature also preserved in Tibet. The Fu fazang yinyuan zhuan is seen by many scholars to present both the narrative of the decline of the buddhadharma through individuals, and it may also be a source that early Chan and Chinese Tiantai (Tendai) hagiographers turned to when constructing the various lineages discussed in part earlier in this research.29 Morrison, whose previous work on Qisong 契嵩 (Kaisū, 1007–1072) and particularly his Chuanfa zhengzong lun 傳法正宗論 (Denbō shōshūki, Treatise on the True Lineage of the Transmission of the Dharma, T no. 2080) is exceptional, as others before her, establish a textual teleology between the presentation of the twenty-four patriarchs in the Fu fazang yinyuan zhuan and later, Chan texts, including Qisong’s masterpiece. Neither Nāgārjuna nor Vasubandhu can be said to play especially interesting roles in much of this early Sinitic Buddhist literature nor in the Chan chronicles under review especially by Adamek (2006). Yet the connection is clear: following the fascinating recent work by Greene (2021, 2022), in China, where a pronounced interest in Buddhist meditation led albeit with vinelike sophistication led to the development of the Chan tradition and its lineage, the overall focus on exegesis we see from the materials preserved in Tibetan translation from India and are revered also in Japan seems to have been lost (Greene 2022, 2021). This focus on practice, as opposed to study or exegesis, forms the basis for the Sinification theory (Ch’en 1964, 1973).

6. Conclusions: On the Importance of Methodology

Historians of religion must take into account various interdisciplinary perspectives when we approach the texts or other material culture we investigate. Take, for example, the discussion about the meaning of the Sanskrit word upadeśa by Tanluan presented earlier in this paper. On the one hand, Tanluan’s text has a history. We know that this commentary was preserved in Japan, and there is little reason to suspect that it was concurrently lost on the East Asian continent in premodern times. But the edition we read and cite as scholars comes from the Taishō Canon, and the edition of the book speaks to the textual history of Buddhism in Japan. A study of Pure Land literature and its transmission in Japan is well beyond the scope of the present study. What is germane for our discussion here is that we know that no premodern “canon” in China, cataloged according to the Kaiyuan lu or the Zhenyuan lu, plus supplemental texts, included Tanluan’s commentary to Vasubandhu’s *Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa. It circulated in Japan as an important shōgyō [text] and was read widely by Buddhist across what we call in European scholarship “sectarian” boundaries (e.g., Pure Land, Shin, or Zen). Genshin, Hōnen, Shinran, Rennyo, and hundreds of other practitioners who were particularly interested in the exclusive practice of the recitation of Amitābha or Amitāyus’s name in Japan—to the present day—looked to Tanluan’s commentary as a key sacred teachings text (shōgyō) to introduce and authenticate their doctrinal views about the concept of shinjin 信心 (“entrusting mind” or “faithful mind”), among other key intellectual tenets of Japanese Pure Land and Shin Buddhist practice.30 Therefore, one can see institutional and doctrinal differences between these practitioners and monks from Kōfukuji, Tōdaiji, Enryakuji or even Tōji, who also recited the nenbutsu, but with different intentions in terms of doctrinal orientation or soteriological objectives. We can see in Jōkei’s well-known Kōfukuji petition that Hōnen’s views were novel, and this condemnation matters in the history of Buddhism in Japan. Of course, Tanluan was not subjected to scrutiny by Jōkei, and reading his commentary was never proscribed. The case of Hōnen’s Senchakushū or some of Shinran’s books is quite different, and lies beyond the scope of this research. The texts ascribed to the seven Pure Land patriarchs all have their own histories, and we can call this book history. Books have histories, as do people, temples, sites, and so forth. And the ideas presented in books also have histories. When we study the ideas in books we can call that philosophy or religious studies, and within that context looking for various examples of eschatological narratives makes sense. Failing to investigate the people and their lives who wrote those books or read or even cited them in their own works is careless because it fails to acknowledge how knowledge is disseminated. People share ideas (Campany 2003). People have ideas, and sometimes these ideas can be shared across time and space. Biographical and hagiographical studies examine how usually religious or politically significant figures’ lives are portrayed and to what ends or goals. This is not the same thing as historiography. That word, we will recall, is used by historians to refer to how modern historians address topics or themes in their research about history, as well as to how history is studied as a topic apart from, for example, literature or politics or even religion. Tanluan’s mention of the public and private Chinese histories speaks to the history of early medieval Chinese historiography in China. My research about the history of Vasubandhu as a putative Pure Land patriarch or eminent monk in Japanese Buddhism, which highlights the history of the reception and transmission of the *Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa can be considered book history because I mostly disregard the doctrinal, soteriological, and perhaps even eschatological readings of the work and how it was received later in China or Japan. I also pay attention to the production of the text from an Indic source text and the process of translation in early medieval China. This approach suggests that there is little history to speak of in terms of the history of Vasubandhu as a pure Land figure in China, at least prior to the Ming period.

Scholars of Chinese Buddhism—and of Japan as well—often look to the Buddhist “canons” as a set of Buddhist literature that can be treated as a whole, as if it could have been or was read as a set. Surely, it was, by some quite learned individuals. Just as many premodern Chinese are known to have studied and memorized the Thirteen Classics. But more often than not, just as was the case with so-called Confucian educational training in the premodern era, most individuals read commentaries about texts in the “canon,” and we know that in Japan, these were categorized and cataloged as shōgyō. The “canon” was mostly a closed set of books. Texts could be added to printed editions across time, but the part arranged according to the Kaiyuan lu or Zhenyuan lu was surprisingly consistent in Chine, Korea, and Japan. The category of shōgyō was never closed. Teachers transmitted the books their teachers taught them, and they added others that interested them for a variety of reasons. The concept of transmission from India to China and to Korea and/ or Japan is also a consistent narrative that can be found in premodern East Asian Buddhist book history (Moerman 2022). The Pure Land patriarchs’ books are an excellent example of the significance of this narrative from probably fifteenth century Japan or later. That Tanluan’s commentary to the *Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa fits in this category, as do so many other commentaries to Indic literature translated into Sinitic or Tibetan, also demonstrates something about the history of the book in premodern Buddhism in Central and East Asia. Separating the patriarchs from their books, particularly in the case of Nāgārjuna or Vasubandhu, and also with Tanluan or Shandao, is a problematical endeavor. If Indian patriarchs are mentioned in various narratives that may or may not be related to eschatological claims in either early medieval China (e.g., in the Fu fazang yinyuan zhuan or related texts from the “canon”) or in eleventh-century north China and Japan, for example, does that mean that Pure Land teachings addressed in the books related to the *Sukhāvatīvyūhopadeśa must be considered to be eschatological? Should we see this as evidence that East Asian Buddhists preferred practice-based devotionalism over exegetical speculation? Should we see mention of Vasubandhu or Nāgārjuna in later Chan/Sŏn/Zen chronicles to be evidence of continued reverence for these patriarchs as saints or buddha-like teachers or were they included because of the well-known books ascribed to them in Sinitic language translations? An historian of the book might make this claim, while an intellectual historian or religious studies scholar would likely not.

Terms like East Asian or Central Asian Buddhism can be problematical because they suggest that peoples in Central Asia may not have interacted with peoples from East Asia when we know that they did, and often. Research by Solonin (2013, 2025) with Buddhist materials in Tangut 西夏文 demonstrates that Tanguts 黨項 (1038–1227) translated books from Chinese and Tibetan, which opens up exciting avenues for further investigations into connections between the Khitan Liao 契丹遼 (916–1125), Korea, Japan, and, of course, northern China (Solonin 2013, 2025). There can be little doubt that the Chinese Chan lineages and their texts deeply influenced Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Tibetans, and Tanguts, at various times (Demiéville 1952). That a connecting thread ought to be the eschatological notion of the decline of the Dharma, which we know from copious sources in Japan and quite separately from epigraphical sources from the Liao was said to have begun in 1052 seems to me to be weak evidence, at best.31 It seems clear that some Buddhists feared apocalyptic times; others chose to rather single-mindedly focus on the practice of meditation; and others focused on attaining birth/rebirth in the Pure Land. As much was addressed by Schopen (1983), and epigraphical evidence from India shows that this was not something that transpired only in East or Central Asia (Schopen 1983). In other words, while it may seem obvious to some that Buddhism developed differently in China than it did, for example, in Thailand, for a variety of reasons, this should not delude us from investigating the textual, epigraphical, art historical and other materials we have to determine what we can learn of the lives Buddhists experienced across time and space.

Over the past several decades, scholars especially in Japan and Korea have endeavored to take a much closer look at the vast amount of material culture we have of the Buddhist history of Japan and let the evidence speak more loudly than the research questions or suppositions we scholars bring to our work. The results have upended what we know about Buddhist history across nearly a millennium. First, we know that many of the larger monastic libraries contained Buddhist literature that cuts across anything we may wish to call a sect or a school. Second, we know that the “canon” was safeguarded and ritually opened and copied for various reasons and as a very large set of sacred literature. Third, the books monks read, studied, and seem to have cared deeply about are and cataloged are called shōgyō. It appears that no tradition, group, or lineage failed to amass copious amounts of these shōgyō. Fourth, textual study was important, and via Chinese books, Japanese sought to connect themselves to India, Indian teachers, and Indic culture, language, and practice. Even if some of these connections are historically suspect to modern historians, because of the power of myth as Lincoln (1999) describes it, history, historiography, and hagiographical chronicles were produced and evolved over time (Lincoln 1999, 2012). The seven Pure Land patriarchs’ history is rather clear. In Japan, Hōnen, and then Shinran and his followers sought to perpetuate the idea of a special set of Mahāyāna teachings that can be traced back to Vasubandhu and even Nāgārjuna were revered, chanted, and celebrated. That Vasubandhu happens to be among the most important scholars in the Japanese Yogācāra (Hossō) tradition in Nara, the same tradition whose spokesperson castigated Hōnen for his teachings, and Hossō experts were taught to debate with texts across the spectrum of Mahāyāna literature with these shōgyō bestowed upon them by their teachers, serves to provide at least one real world explanation about how the Pure Land tradition developed in Japan. On top of that, there seems to have been an era in China, perhaps during and after the translations by Paramārtha and Bodhiruci (I) that lasted into Xuanzang’s day (ca. 5th–7th centuries) that show a pronounced influence by texts ascribed to Vasubandhu, in particular, and this exegetical literature is uniquely significant to Japanese Pure Land Buddhists. Some of this literature became correspondingly important to Chinese Buddhists after the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, and perhaps we can see evidence of something different from Korea as well. McBride (2020) also shows that practice of Pure Land devotionalism in Tang and Silla (57–935) Korea, as in Tang China, fit within the framework of mainstream Mahāyāna Buddhist practice. Because we have such valuable materials from Japan in the form of shōgyō, and we know how these books circulated apart from the “canon,” this could lead us not only to learn much more about the history of East Asian Buddhists’ books, it could also lead us to rethink or reconsider if some of the foundational assumptions scholars have about which books we study might significantly taint or obscure what we see in those books. If, as scholars, we wish to say something meaningful about the history of the people in East Asia who promoted and curated the teachings of the Buddhist religion, and for those of us who primarily wish to study texts and not archaeological materials like Gregory Schopen has done with inscriptions for the medieval period in India (Schopen 1997), then we must start to study the books people actually read, marked up, asked questions about, and shared with one another.

7. Primary Sources

T. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 (Revised version of the East Asian Buddhist Canon, compiled during the Taishō era), 100 vols., eds. Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎, Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭 et al., Tokyo: Taishō issaikyō kankōkai, 1924–1932. Rpt., Chinese Buddhist Electronic Texts Association 中華電子佛典栛會, Rpt., Chinese Buddhist Electronic Texts Association 中華電子佛典栛會, CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka Collection 電子佛典集成, Taipei: 1998–2019 or http://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/ or the SAT Daizōkyō Database: http://21dzk.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT2018/master30.php, accessed 20 May 2025.

XZJ Rpt. Ed. Dai Nihon zokuzōkyō大日本續藏經 (The Kyoto supplement to the canon)), 150 vols., eds. Nakano Tatsue et al., Kyoto: Zokyō shoin, 1905–1912. Xinbian wanzi xu zangjing新編卍字續藏經, Taipei: Xinwenfeng, 1968–1978. Rpt., Chinese Buddhist Electronic Texts Association 中華電子佛典栛會, CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka Collection 電子佛典集成, Taipei: 1998–2019 or http://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/; accessed 20 May 2025.