Sinitic Buddhist Librarianship during the Eleventh Century: On Scholasticism and Cataloging in China, Korea, and Japan

Epigraphical, archaeological, and textual sources from the eleventh century, as far afield as north China under the control of the Khitan Liao (916–1125) and Heian (794–1185) Japan, confirm that some Buddhist monastics and wealthy patrons believed that the end of the world (mofa, mappō 末法) would come in 1052. There is equally convincing evidence from Northern Song China (960–1127), Koryŏ Korea (935–1392), and Heian Japan that demonstrates how other monastics and affluent benefactors clearly came to the opposite conclusion: not only was the end of the world not nigh, but theirs was a time when overland or sea travel made the process of cataloging and collecting vast quantities of Buddhist literature possible. This paper explores the roughly contemporaneous projects to catalog and collect Buddhist commentarial literature, debate texts, and scholastic or educational treatises in Japan by Eichō 永超 (1014–1095) in his Tōiki dentō mokuroku 東域傳燈目録 (Catalog of the Transmission of the Torch to the East; T 55, no. 2183), Ŭich’ŏn 義天 (1055–1101) in his Sinp’yŏn chejong kyojang ch’ongnok 新編諸宗教藏總錄 (New Catalog of the Teachings of All the Schools; T 55, no. 2184) regarding Korea, and Juefan Huihong’s 覺範惠洪 (1071–1128) Shimen wenzi Chan 石門文字禪 (Stone Gate’s Chan of Words and Letters; J. B135) about Song China. Several questions guide this research: What libraries were used to compile these catalogs or records? Did these monks consider themselves to be librarians? How and why were commentaries, ritual manuals, or sets of texts and sometimes images understood by medieval East Asian Buddhist monks ? Finally, how did these sources help to shape how we understand the Sinitic Buddhist canon in the twenty-first century?