ISSN:1017-7132
Bibliographical Notes on Buddhist Temple Gazetteers, Their Prefaces and Their Relationship to the Buddhist
Canon
Marcus Bingenheimer Temple University Abstract
This article is part of the Buddhist Temple Gazetteer Project funded by the Chung-hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies. The project resulted in the digitization of more than 230 gazetteers (zhi 志) of Chinese Buddhist sites.1 The task of compiling a high-quality digital archive involves making both academic and technological decisions, which in turn necessitate research. In order to visualize gazetteer literature in various ways according to temporal or geographic parameters, we need first to understand the provenance of the texts, which often have complex edition histories. The aim of this paper is to summarize some of the bibliographical data for the more than 230 mountain and temple gazetteers of which the archive is comprised, to compare the two available print collections, to illustrate the importance of prefaces for understanding these texts and to outline the relationship between texts on Buddhist religious sites and the Buddhist canon.
Keywords:
Buddhist History, Temple Gazetteers, Chinese Temples, Digital Archive, Digitization Project
1 The project is conducted at the Dharma Drum Buddhist College and the archive is currently hosted at http://buddhistinformatics.ddbc.edu.tw/fosizhi/ (July 2009). The data presented here is largely the result of sustained team work. The catalog data was produced 2008-2009 by Lin Zhimiao 林智妙, Ke April 柯春玉, Peng Chuanqin 彭川芩, Lin Xiuli 林綉麗 and myself.
Many of the texts cited here were first examined in a reading group led by Lin Zhimiao 林智 妙, whose explanations solved many difficult passages. I am grateful to Simon Wiles for improving the English, and Peter Bol, John Kieschnick and Wu Jiang for their valuable comments. The text also profited from the helpful suggestions made by two anonymous reviewers.
書目註記—佛寺志及其序言與之於佛教藏經的關係
馬德偉 天普大學 摘要
此篇文章是中華佛學研究所佛教寺廟志計畫的一部分，此計畫包含超過230個中國 佛教寺廟志。此計畫之任務在於匯編一高品質的數位典藏，而此典藏涉及一必要的 研究，也就是學術與技術上的判斷。根據時間與地理上的參考點，為了從多方面檢 視地方志文本，需要先了解文本的來源，而這些文本通常具有複雜的版本歷史。此 篇文章旨在針對此典藏所包含的超過230個山岳與寺院的地方志，總集部分的書目 資料，比較兩個刻版的收藏，說明其序文對於了解這些文本的重要性，並闡述存於 佛教據點的文本與藏經的關係。
關鍵字：佛教歷史、寺廟志、中國寺院、數位典藏、數位化計畫
Introduction
Among the most precious sources for the study of later Chinese Buddhist history are the large number of gazetteers on Buddhist sites and institutions. Gazetteers, as Sinology has come to translate zhi 志 (or its variant 誌), are composite works compiled from texts belonging to different genres (topographic descriptions, biographies, essays, poems, epigraphia, maps, portraits etc.). The contribution of the compiler was to select, collect and arrange the texts, his own additions ranging from merely adding a preface to writing or rewriting a substantial amount of the volume. The Temple Gazetteer Project, of which this paper is a part, aims at collecting and digitally editing all available temple gazetteers of Buddhist sites with the goal of making them available to a wider audience.
Filled to the brim with facts and legends about a location, the vast majority of these gazetteers were published between the 16th and the 20th centuries2 and offer valuable information about the history of Buddhism. The mature form of the gazetteer, which attempts to provide a comprehensive, cultural description of a site, was widely adopted only after the Northern Song. At that time too it became common practice to include the term zhi 志 in the title (Hargett 1996, 419). The first work on Buddhist chorography which uses the term fangzhi 方志 was Daoxuan’s 道宣 Shijia fangzhi 釋迦方志 (T 2088) of 650, in which he lists places in India and Central Asia.
In the corpus of texts discussed here only a few important ‘proto-gazetteers’ such as the Luoyang qielan ji 洛陽伽藍記 (ZFSH3 001) or the Tiantai shengji lu 天台勝蹟錄 (ZFSH 064), were published prior to the mid-16th century. As in the case of paper editions, digital editions need to carefully record the provenance of their content and describe its relationship with other texts. In the following, therefore, we will give a bibliographic overview of the corpus at hand.
2 See Hargett (1996), Hahn (1997), and Bol (2001) on the antecedents of the gazetteer genre before the Ming and bibliographic references to more extensive discussions of the topic in Chinese. Gu (2010) is the most comprehensive reference work for Song gazetteers. For an analysis of the often mixed Buddhist and Daoist character of “sacred mountains” see Robson (2009). For a periodization and overview of gazetteer production on Buddhist sites see Cao (2011, 235-243).
3 Zhongguo fosi shizhi huikan 中國佛寺史志彙刊.
Bibliographic Research
A considerable amount of bibliographic research has been done on gazetteers in general.4 More still remains to be done. This is a rather dull but indispensable task, both because of the large quantity of gazetteers and because of the complicated edition histories many of them have. Most of the more than 8500 gazetteers that are known to us5 are on governmental administrative divisions such as counties (xian 縣), subprefectures (zhou 州), prefectures (fu 府) or provinces (sheng 省). However, as Brook (2002, 31) has remarked, there are other types of gazetteers, and he provides valuable bibliographic information on 860 “topographical and institutional gazetteers” which take landscape features and individual institutions as their subjects. While the gazetteers on administrative divisions usually include information on Buddhist and Daoist temples and monastics for the region, this information is generally terse and cannot compare with the breadth of cultural information that gazetteers dedicated to a site and compiled or commissioned with religious intent can offer.6
Hahn (1997) in his dissertation on “mountain gazetteers” (shanzhi 山志 ) pays attention to the importance of gazetteer literature for the understanding of religious space;
his focus, however, is exclusively on the category of mountain gazetteers, many of which treat Daoist sites. Our project, on the other hand, includes both mountain and temple gazetteers (sizhi 寺志), but we are interested only in records of Buddhist sites. Among such gazetteers two subgroups can be distinguished: gazetteers that relate information on a number of Buddhist sites and institutions within a certain region; and those only concerned with one temple and its adjacent sites. The former subsumes many of the mountain gazetteers that Hahn (1997) has described, but also includes gazetteers that describe Buddhist sites of a city or region (e.g. ZFSH 1, ZFSH 7, ZFSH 57).
4 In English see Brook (2002), Dow (1969), and Franke (1968) and in Chinese Zhuang et al.
(1985), Jin & Hu (1996), Gu (2010) to name only a few.
5 The most comprehensive catalog so far, the Zhongguo difangzhi zongmu tiyao 中國地方志總 目提要 (Jin & Hu 1996), lists 8577 gazetteers. Even this catalog, however, is not exhaustive, because it includes only gazetteers on administrative regions published before 1949.
According to the editorial policy statement “Mountain-, river-, temple-gazetteers and the like were not included” (Jin & Hu 1996, 凡例 1). This means that none of the temple gazetteers discussed here are listed.
6 Nevertheless valuable quantitative information can be culled from these sources. Eberhard (1964), in one of the first projects that made use of computers to digitize information, analyzed temple building activity in Chinese history on the basis of the founding dates of temples as included in a significant number of entries. To my knowledge his dataset (encoded with punch- cards) was never migrated to a newer format.
In the following, we will outline some basic bibliographic parameters which describe what is known about available gazetteers of Buddhist sites.7First, the paper record: The last three decades saw the appearance of two collections of reprints of Buddhist temple and mountain gazetteers:8
Zhongguo Fosi Shizhi Huikan 中國佛寺史志彙刊. Taipei: Mingwen shuju 明文書局. 1980-1985. Compiled by Du Jiexiang 杜潔祥. (= ZFSH) 110 vols.
Zhongguo Fosizhi Congkan 中 國 佛 寺 志 叢 刊 . Hangzhou: Guangling shushe 廣陵書社. 2006 . Compiled by Zhang Zhi 張智. (= ZFC) 130 vols.
The 110 volumes of the ZFSH contain 100 gazetteers and the 130 volumes of the ZFC contain 197 gazetteers. Although the ZFC is the larger and newer collection, the ZFSH is the better edited. Its editor, Du Jiexiang, has compiled detailed and helpful tables of contents for each gazetteer, and gazetteers that appear in both collections are more often complete in the ZFSH. Most gazetteers in each collection are from Ming and Qing dynasty woodblock prints, while some are copies of manuscripts, and still others are from newer printed editions set in movable type.
In order to build an electronic edition it is necessary to understand the overlap between these two collections. This has not been attempted before, because it is only now that we have the data available to answer some important questions.
How Many Buddhist Gazetteers do we Have in Hand?
Of the 100 gazetteers in the ZFSH and the 197 gazetteers of the ZFC, 78 have an overlap with a gazetteer in the other set, forming 78 gazetteer pairs, i.e. two gazetteers, one from the ZFC and one from the ZFSH, that describe the same location and might have the same or a similar name. In 39 of these 78 pairs the gazetteers are identical, i.e. the reprints in ZFSH and ZFC were made from identical editions.9 The relationships or rather the types of relationship that exist between the remaining 39 pairs are more complex and can be grouped broadly into the following categories:
7 After the work on this paper was concluded, Cao (2011) published his seminal work on Buddhist temple gazetteers in the Ming dynasty. Had it been available earlier, this paper would have looked differently, though its main task to document the printed and digital gazetteer corpus of ZFSH and ZFC would have remained the same. Unfortunately, there was no time to include all of Cao’s important results into this article.
8 In 2009 the Beijing National Library has announced the planned publication of a collection named Quanguo difangzhi fodaojiao wenxian huibian 全國地方志佛道教文獻匯編. This collection will only contain excerpted passages pertaining to Buddhist and Daoist sites from more general gazetteers, much like the data Eberhard (1964) studied. It stands to become an important new resource and hopefully will enable us to follow Eberhard’s early lead in performing quantitative research on the history of religious geography.
9 Here we include re-prints (chongkan 重刊) from the same woodblocks.
- In 22 pairs the reprints were made from essentially the same work, but in one edition some content has been omitted or added. These omissions and additions are usually short, but sometimes significant. Omissions often reflect the fact that the original, from which the ZFSH or ZFC reprint was taken, was already incomplete. Sometimes one edition has been expanded, ZFC 63, for instance, includes two additional chapters (外 篇二卷) which are not found in the correlate ZFSH 72. At other times the situation is even more complicated - in pair ZFSH 39/ ZFC 71, for instance, we find that the first chapter of ZFSH 39 lacks pages pp.151-154 and 259-260 of ZFC 71. In the second chapter, on the other hand, ZFC 71 lacks the material on pp. 267-270 of ZFSH 39.
- In two cases we have different works on the same location with a similar title.
- In five cases we find that on top of omissions and additions, the chapter order or organization differs.
- With ten pairs the relationship is that of print and manuscript, i.e. one edition is a manuscript copy of the other.
This typology does not cover all cases,10 but gives a sufficient overview of the field of similarities and differences. For a more detailed survey of the differences between gazetteers in these sets see Appendix B.
For the temple gazetteer archive we have digitized all the gazetteers from the ZFSH and the ZFC, except those 39 in the ZFC which are completely identical with a gazetteer already found in the ZFSH and another 21 that exhibit only minimal differences, such as a few missing pages, a different set of maps etc. All in all, 237 gazetteers have been digitized, and fifteen will be made available as digital full text for the first time. These fifteen will benefit from new punctuation and XML/TEI mark-up identifying person and place names as well as dates. Of these fifteen, twelve have been selected for a follow-up project for a printed re-edition of the texts, with new punctuation, person and place name indices and annotation.11
10 In one case we have two different manuscripts (ZFC 45/ ZFSH 97) of the same text. There are also a few rare instances where a gazetteer was reprinted with different layout i.e. not from the original woodblocks. The Hangzhou shangtianzhu jiangsi zhi 杭州上天竺講寺志 was re-carved in 1897 (ZFSH 24), the ZFC (ZFC 88) preserves an older woodblock print of 1646. The Nanchao si kao 南朝寺考, of which the ZFC contains a 1907 woodblock print, was re-set in movable type in 1944 for inclusion in the (never completed) Puhui Canon 普慧 大藏經 (ZFSH 56). In the case of the Tiantaishan fangwai zhi 天台山方外志, the ZFC includes a reprint made from the original woodblocks (ZFC 115) and the ZFSH contains a movable type edition made in Shanghai in 1922 (ZFSH 89). The ZFSH (ZFSH 46) preserves a Wanli 萬曆 -era print of the Helinsi zhi 鶴林寺志, while ZFC 76 is an edition with a different layout from 1909.
11 The series will be published with Xinwenfeng publishers 新文豐, Taipei, starting in 2013. It will comprise ZFSH 8: Chongxiu putuoshan zhi 重修普陀山志, ZFSH 9: Putuoluojia xinzhi
How Many Gazetteers of Buddhist Sites are There?
Before taking stock of what we know, let us briefly assess what we can not know. Exactly how many temple gazetteers in total have been compiled is impossible to know for sure.
As with most of Chinese literature many gazetteers are lost forever.12 As we will see below, descriptions of sacred sites were only recently included in the Buddhist canon.
Neither did they command the same esteem as gazetteers on administrative divisions, which had a role in the administration of the realm and therefore the attention of the state apparatus. As a result, throughout the Ming and Qing neither Buddhist nor Confucian communities were strongly committed to the preservation of gazetteers of Buddhist sites.
Another reason why gazetteers were lost is that they were superseded by newer ones.
Gazetteers on administrative regions needed to be updated to stay useful and the same need was perceived for other kinds of gazetteers as well.13 The woodblocks for older editions were sometimes lost and once the woodblocks were gone, it was often more practical to recompile a new, updated gazetteer than to re-cut the woodblocks from an old paper copy. Even the more popular gazetteers only had print-runs of a few hundred copies (Brook 2002, 38). This explains why 51 of the gazetteers in our archive have survived only as manuscript taken from a print copy.
Often the print copies perished together with their woodblocks in fires and wars, especially during the fall of the Ming (ca.1640-1660) and during the Taiping rebellion (1850-1864). The Taiping were especially destructive in the Lower Yangzi area where, as
普 陀 洛 迦 新 志 , ZFSH 10: Mingzhou ayuwangshan zhi 明 州 阿 育 王 山 志 , ZFSH 11:
Mingzhou ayuwangshan xuzhi 明 州 阿 育 王 山 續 志 , ZFSH 17: Yucenshan huiyin gaoli huayanjiaosi zhi 玉岑山慧因高麗華嚴教寺志, ZFSH 43: Hanshansi zhi 寒山寺志, ZFSH 49: Emeishan zhi 峨眉山志, ZFSH 62: Fujian quanzhou kaiyuansi zhi 福建泉州開元寺志, ZFSH 77: Jiuhuashan zhi 九華山志, ZFSH 81: Qingliangshan zhi 清涼山志, ZFSH 84:
Jizushan zhi 雞足山志, ZFSH 86: Huangboshansi zhi 黃檗山寺志, ZFSH 89: Tiantaishan fangwai zhi 天台山方外志.
12 Dudbrige (2000, 8) cites an estimate from the 17th century to the effect that less than forty or fifty percent of books that had been available in the Song survived. Hahn (1997, 17) cites estimates that only 10% of the works listed in the Jingji zhi 經籍誌 chapter of the Suishu 隨 書 survived until the Qing.
13 In his postscript (dated 1589) to the first Ming edition of the Putuoshan gazetteer, Hou Jigao 侯繼高 writes: “It was no longer possible, in the end, to obtain a copy [of the previous edition] for one’s armchair travels.... Since [Sheng] Ximing [盛]熙明 wrote the [previous]
gazetteer more than 230 years have passed. What is contained in the four parts [of his gazetteer] can hardly be all there is [to tell]. When it comes to our Ming, with the increasing incense fires the [literary] writings about the place also increased. Until now no one like Sheng Ximing came and turned them into a chronicle. I sighed and said: ‘These famous mountains, these great temples have to be made known to the world, they should not go without description.’” (ZFSH 9: 594).
we will see below, most gazetteers were produced. The rebels sacked Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Ningbo, singling out temples and religious sites for destruction.
Having acknowledged these losses, we must proceed to assess the extent of the corpus that is still available. Beyond the gazetteers digitized in this project, how many gazetteers on Buddhist sites do we know of ? How many are still available in libraries?
Our database contains bibliographical references from several other works especially Hahn (1997), Brook (2002) and unpublished notes by Du Jiexiang (2009), who kindly shared this material with us. Next to the 219 distinct gazetteers from the ZFSH and the ZFC, this data yields bibliographic data on 59 additional temple gazetteers, most of which are still available in libraries, adding to a total of 278 in our database.
It is unlikely that more than a few pre-Ming gazetteers on Buddhist sites have escaped the attention of bibliographers, as the overall number was so much smaller. For the Ming dynasty Cao (2011, 71-75), against a list of 87 extant temple gazetteers, gives a list of 65 “lost” gazetteers, which are mentioned in catalogs or cited in other works.
Although Cao has mainly used library holdings in China, and some of the titles might eventually be found elsewhere, this means that ca. 40%. of known Buddhist gazetteers from the Ming are now lost. For the Qing, which saw the largest number of gazetteers produced in the 17th and again in the 19th century after the Taiping rebellion, the situation is less clear. Our database lists 131 existing gazetteers for the Qing (1644-1911) and 59 published during the Republican period (1912-1949), the relatively high figure for the latter reflecting both increased publication numbers for the book market in general as well as for the publication of Buddhist material in particular.14
After assessing the available bibliographic information, it would be surprising if the final number of known gazetteers on Buddhist sites published before 1950 were to exceed 500, and the final tally of extant gazetteers is likely to be between 300 and 400.
How Many Locations do the Gazetteers in our Collection Describe?
Although temple gazetteers by definition tend to focus on one location, there are a number of gazetteers which describe several Buddhist sites on a mountain range or in a metropolitan area, such as the proto-gazetteer Luoyang qielan ji 洛陽伽藍記 (ZFSH 001), which describes the temples of Luoyang in the early 6th century; the Qingliangshan zhi 清涼山志 (ZFSH 081) on the temples on Mt. Wutai in the 16th century; the huge Jinling fancha zhi 金陵梵剎志 (ZFSH 006), a collection of material on the temples of Nanjing; or the Wulin fan zhi 武林梵志 (ZFSH 007), a guide to the more than four
14 The latter is documented in a database by Gregory Scott’s Bibliography of Modern Chinese Buddhism (http://bib.buddhiststudies.net/ [Nov. 2011]), which is part of his forthcoming PhD dissertation “Conversion by the Book - Buddhist Print Culture in Republican China”
(Columbia University).
hundred temples in the Wulin hills near Hangzhou’s famous West Lake. Since one gazetteer may describe multiple sites, while a single temple may be the subject of more than one gazetteer, the analysis must be performed with care. One visualization15 of the sites described in the one hundred gazetteers of the ZFSH references 116 temples. As the map shows, most of these are in Zhejiang and Jiangsu province:
Fig.1: Location of Buddhist sites described in the 100 gazetteers contained in the ZFSH.
Clearly recognizable are the centers of some “macro-regions” often used to discuss later imperial China.16 This correlation does tell us more about the economics of publishing than the level of Buddhist activity in the region. For the production of gazetteers considerable resources were needed. Moreover, once printed it had to be sold to an audience of interested literati, a market that was not available outside these centers. We therefore see a cluster of sites in Guangdong (Lingnan), one along the coast of Fujian (Southeast), the many sites around Ningbo, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing (Lower Yangzi), fewer in the area around Jiujiang, Wuhan and Nanchang (Middle Yangzi) and a cluster in the north around Beijing and Mt. Wutai. Interesting too are the absences of gazetteers in certain regions. In the ZFSH, which has no regional bias, there are no gazetteers describing sites in Shandong,17 none in the vast region comprising Hunan,
15 Current visualizations of the archive, which plots the referenced temples on a map can be found at our website in KML format. At time of writing, the visualization includes all the main sites described in the ZFSH and ZFC.
16 See a discussion of these macro-regions during the 18th century (when many of our gazetteers were compiled) in Naquin and Rawski (1987).
17 For the low level of Buddhist activity in Shandong, see Brook (1993, 238-240). The only gazetteer from Shandong in our archive is the Lingyan zhi 靈巖志 (ZFC 18).
Guangxi, Guizhou, and eastern Sichuan (today Chongqing Municipality), and none north of Mt. Wutai.
Somewhat remarkable is the absence of temple gazetteers for the old heartland of Chinese Buddhism around Chang’an, in the area of today’s Xi’an in Shaanxi. There in the northwest we find various editions and continuations of Yang Xuanzhi’s 楊衒之 Luoyang qielan ji 洛陽伽藍記, and the famous Songshan shaolinsi jizhi 嵩山少林寺輯志 (ZFSH 78) of 1612, but on the whole surprisingly few gazetteers were produced in this region. This reflects the fact that during the Ming and Qing Chinese Buddhism in the Northwest was much weaker than during its heyday in the Tang. Though there still were many temples, some of considerable antiquity, culturally, Chinese Buddhism faced competition in this region from both Islam and Tibetan Buddhism. Moreover, Xi’an was not exactly a hotbed of literary activity. According to Naquin and Rawski, “the elite of the northwest played now [in the 18-19th cent.] only a minor role in national literati culture. There were few academies, and the region took a negligible part in the scholarly projects so typical of the Qing period.”18 Gazetteer writing became popular during the Song in the lower Yangzi region. It was a product of later Chinese literati culture, the tastes and sensibilities of which were not universally accepted on the northwestern border of the empire, where Chinese, Muslims, Tibetans, Mongols and Manchus co-existed uneasily.
Even more sites could be added to the visualization above, if all the temples mentioned in e.g.
the Nanchao fosi zhi 南朝佛寺志 (ZFSH 5) or the Jiangnan fancha zhi 江南梵剎志 (ZFSH 57) were included. Moreover, information on one temple can be found in several gazetteers. The site of the Jinshan si 金山寺 in Zhejiang, for instance, is associated with at least four gazetteers (ZFSH 37, ZFSH 38, ZFSH 39, ZFSH 57).
Fig.2: Gazetteers in the ZFSH that contain descriptions of the Jinshan si temple.
As a result of the many-to-many relationship of gazetteers and temples described in them, the archive contains descriptions of at least 400-500 temples. About 50% of these were or are located in the lower Yangzi region (Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui).19
18 Naquin and Rawski (1987, 192).
19 A geo-referenced dataset of the sites described in the 234 gazetteers has been built and is available from the author on request.
Prefaces
When a gazetteer for a location had become unavailable, or an update was in order, new editions were produced.20 Usually, the prefaces or, more rarely, the postscripts of previous editions were included in later ones and from these an outline of the gazetteer’s evolution can be traced. This is true for gazetteers in general as well as for the gazetteers on Buddhist sites. Prefaces and postscripts therefore, play an important role in understanding the genre itself and they are also one of the best places to look for information about the author-compilers, their motivation and the history of the compilation. This provides a useful angle for understanding how literati culture interacted with Buddhism during the Ming and Qing. Moreover, prefaces are often the only place where the voice of the compiler appears at all. As compiled works, gazetteers contain for the most part texts (e.g. biographies, poems, epigraphy) that were collected from earlier sources, the preface, postscript or, in later times, a section on ‘edition policy’ (fanli 凡例) is essential for understanding the selection criteria.
With the gazetteer, as with other historiographical forms,21 a traditional genre was adapted to record the history of Buddhism. Most of the earlier gazetteers of Buddhist sites were not compiled by Buddhist scholar-monks, but by literati scholar-officials or members of the local gentry.22 Often a gazetteer for a site was commissioned by Buddhist monks or lay-believers to a literati writer, who was perceived as sympathetic or at least indifferent to Buddhism. The commissioned compilers were, however, rarely purely religiously motivated. Sometimes a Buddhist monk would later re-edit or rewrite the gazetteer from a more Buddhist perspective. This was especially common during the Chinese Buddhist revival of the late Qing and the Republican era.23 In the 1938 edition of
20 The relationship between a gazetteer and its previous editions is complicated at best (see Qiu 2008 for the edition history of some temple gazetteers from Guangdong and Guangxi). Only sometimes would new editions be marked in the title as such. Generally text from the older edition would be reused in varying amounts, while it was mainly up to the (re-)compiler what to add.
21 The genres used by Chinese Buddhist historiographers are without exception drawn from already existing precedents. Although Buddhism strongly influenced Chinese language and literature, it did not develop a distinct way of writing history. (On the use of genre in Buddhist historiography, see Bingenheimer 2009).
22 Of the 87 Ming gazetteers listed in Cao (2011) only 21 were compiled by monks.
23 During the 18th and 19th the Qing emperors had generally favored Tibetan over Chinese Buddhism. Moreover the Taiping rebellion (1850-1864) had destroyed much of the Buddhist infrastructure in the lower Yangzi region, the heartland of Chinese Buddhism. Therefore founding of the Jinling Scriptural Press 金陵刻經處 in Nanjing by Yang Wenhui 楊文會 (1837-1911) in 1866 is widely seen as the beginning of a new chapter for Chinese Buddhism.
the Jiuhuashan zhi 九華山志 (ZFSH 77), for instance, the eminent monk Yinguang 印 光 (1861-1940)24 compares the new edition with previous ones:
The earlier editions of this gazetteer were written by literati, who would not even dream of the Buddhist teachings. To them, to believe or to doubt the miraculous stories about [the Bodhisattva] Dizang 地藏 was all the same, and they included his biography among those of [ordinary] humans, which were placed after the chapters with literary texts and biographies of Daoist immortals [my emphasis, M.B.]. In our new edition of the gazetteer the first chapter is dedicated to the saintly traces [of Dizang’s deeds]. […] The earlier editions gave pride of place to the temples that were established by imperial decree or had received the inscription above their gate from the court. Those temples that were built by private donations, or for which the funds were collected [by the clergy] were called hermitages, chapels, groves, or halls, and placed after the former. [...] From the Tang to our days more than a thousand years have passed. There have been many upheavals, [dynasties] rose and fell. Only a few monks might [nowadays] live in what was designated a “temple” in the past, and what was called a “hermitage” or a “chapel” now houses many. Society too has changed and no longer follows the will of a king. In this gazetteer we therefore put the large [public]
conglin 叢林 monasteries, where monks from all directions gather, first.
After that we include the smaller family temples [where the monks from one ordination lineage reside].25
Yinguang seems to have relished the freedom gained after the fall of the empire. During the Republican era it was possible for Buddhists to claim superiority for their religious sites in an unprecedented way. Being liberated from the need for rhetorical tributes to the greatness of imperial power, Yinguang wryly comments on the lack of devotion the five marchmounts (wuyue 五嶽) now inspired:
When talking about Jiuhua mountain people often used to regret that it was not included in the five marchmounts where the imperial court makes offerings. Did they not know that at the marchmounts’ temples no one but the local government officials in charge make two offerings per year, one in spring and one in autumn? At Jiuhua mountain, however, devotees from all over the country offer their sincere respects, and the burning of incense and
24 Next to Taixu 太 虛 , Hongyi 弘 一 and Xuyun 虛 雲 , Yinguang was one of the most influential monks of the Republican era. Before the Jiuhuashan zhi (1938) he had organized the re-edition of the gazetteers of the three other ‘great mountains’ of Buddhism: the Putuoshan zhi (ZFSH 9) (1924), the Qingliangshan zhi 清涼山志 (ZFSH 81) (1933), and the Emeishan zhi 峨眉山志 (ZFSH 49) (1934).
25 ZFSH 77: 32.
the prayers do not cease from dawn to dusk. How could the five marchmounts ever hope to compare?26
That temple gazetteers were indeed compiled with the secular attitude criticized by Yinguang can be seen in the three prefaces of an edition of the Putuoshan gazetteer (Chongxiu putuoshan zhi ZFSH 8). These were clearly not written from a Buddhist perspective and the three authors, all of them jinshi 進士 scholars writing in the early 17th century, mainly praise the emperor and the landscape, and emphasize the role secular officials played in reconstructing the site. Clerics and the Bodhisattva Guanyin 觀音, to whom Mount Putuo was dedicated, are mentioned only in passing.27
The literati rhetoric, which downplays both any possible religious motivation on the part of the authors and the religious context of the site, was not limited to literati authors.
Consider Yuanxian’s 元賢 (1578-1657) preface to the gazetteer of the Kaiyuan temple 開元寺 in Quanzhou written in 1643, at a time when Confucian hegemony was still unchallenged. Compared to Yinguang, Yuanxian had to couch his critique of Confucian literati writing on Buddhists sites in more careful language:
The first records [about the Kaiyuan temple of Quanzhou] were composed in the Song, when Xu Lie 許列 wrote the “Biographies of Eminent Monks of the Kaiyuan Temple”. The Yuan dynasty master Mengguan 夢觀28 accused Xu’s work of being unreliable and based on hearsay, its explanations being unfounded and labored, coarse and unrefined, not worthy of being read. Master Mengguan then wrote the “Biographies of Bodhisattvas”, his work was erudite and knowledgeable. […]
Since then more than 300 years have passed and today’s chan 禪 practice cannot compare to that of yesteryear. In these days of decline there hardly seems anything worth reporting. Nevertheless, the ups and downs, the continuities and changes should be recorded somehow. In 1596 Master Chen “Zhizhi” 陳止止29 first produced a gazetteer, but his research was superficial and people felt he did not do a very good job of it. Then in the winter of 1635-1636 some gentlemen of Wenling asked me to teach at the Kaiyuan temple. [...(Yuanxian is asked several times to write a history of the Kaiyuan temple)].
26 ZFSH 77: 31.
27 This attitude in the Chongxiu putuoshan zhi (ZFSH 8) of 1607 is much different from and in fact a reaction to the first full fledged gazetteer of the site that was produced by the Admiral Hou Jigao 侯繼高 and the poet Tu Long 屠隆 only some years earlier in 1589. Hou and his friends were on the Buddhist side of the Confucian-Buddhist syncretist spectrum and broadly sympathetic to Buddhism.
28 This is probably the monk Dagui 大圭 (14th century).
29 Otherwise unknown. Zhizhi was almost certainly a style name.
Though I do not have the ability to write a gazetteer – me being just a rustic from Nanzhou, who, not successful in studying Confucianism, gave up and studied Buddhism instead [!] – I have followed the wishes of these gentlemen. […] I have just tried to fill a gap. Someday a better writer will come and this gazetteer may be replaced.30
Two things should be noted here. Firstly, the overview of previous gazetteers of the site – a standard constituent of gazetteer prefaces – illustrates the change in genre: while in the Song and Yuan dynasties the history of a temple was written in the (by then well-known) form of collected biographies (zhuan 傳) (i.e. the works of Xu Lie and Mengguan), in the late Ming Yuanxian is asked to write a gazetteer. The gazetteer as a genre continues the historiographical tradition of earlier times. Secondly, Yuanxian, in spite of his humble rhetoric, deftly disparages previous attempts by non-clerical writers to write about the Kaiyuan temple. And yet, that the monk Yuanxian, during the last days of the Ming, wrote passages like “not successful in studying Confucianism, gave up and studied Buddhism instead” 學儒不成棄而學佛 testifies to the hegemony of the Confucian discourse, of which Yinguang three hundred years later was newly freed.
Obviously, prefaces are the first place to look for the compilers’ intentions, but their evaluation must take account of context and allow for semantic and rhetorical polyvalence. When looking for prefaces one should bear in mind that they are not always found at the beginning of a gazetteer; sometimes they are prefixed only to certain chapters, while older prefaces might be collected in a special section somewhere within the body of the text.31 Then again there are different types of texts called “preface” xu 序.
The Huangbo gazetteer (ZFSH 86) preserves, attached as “prefaces,” two interesting endorsements of fund-raising appeals.32 The first, titled Preface to the Fund-raising Efforts for the Reconstruction of Huangbo 重 興 黃 檗 募 緣 序 , was written by Ye Xianggao 葉向高 (1559-1627) sometime between October 1614 and 1620.33 Ye, who was a Fujian native, rose through the ranks to become one of the most important grand secretaries during the Ming. He was a gifted writer and starts his preface in literary fashion with a line from the Liang dynasty poet Jiang Yan 江 淹 (444-505), who described the mountain scenery in his Journey to Mount Huangbo 游黃檗山: “The
30 ZFSH 62: 4-8.
31 The prefaces of previous editions of the 1607 gazetteer of Mt. Putou, for instance, are found in Ch.4 (ZFSH 8: 312-389).
32 Endorsements gave the monastery a quasi-legal backing to approach prospective donors and presumably were helpful in raising money from among the gentry. See Brook (1993, 196-213) for a discussion of some other examples of these fund-raising appeals.
33 ZFSH 86: 240-242. For Ye Xianggao 葉向高 see his entry in Goodrich (1976, sub voc.).
dazzling Luan birds glide by sunlit peaks, in shaded brooks gush dragon springs; (...) On the crimson cliffs the cries of birds, monkeys shout in clear and empty spaces.”34
The reference to Jiang Yan, who went to the Huangbo mountains before Buddhist activity is recorded for the area, sets the tone for a secular recommendation in support of a religious institution. Ye keeps his text largely devoid of Buddhist imagery. He recounts how the Wanli emperor, on occasion of the death of his mother the Empress Dowager Cisheng 慈聖 (1546-1614), donated a set of the Tripitaka to the monastery and uses this and earlier land donations by the Hongwu 洪武 emperor as precedents to justify his own support for the fund-raiser.35 He alludes to the fact that official support may not be taken for granted:
Some say the Buddhist teachings are sheer nonsense, are to be avoided by Confucians, and do not merit respect. [These people] do not realize that in this universe this way does exist after all, and cannot just be abolished.
[Nevertheless, in spite of the example] of his majesty Emperor Gao [the founder of the Ming] himself, there are [still people] saying this. When I stayed in the capital I saw how in its vicinity everywhere there were landholdings that temples had received from emperor Gao. Huangbo [Monastery] is more than a thousand years old, and again our Emperor has given orders [to support it].
How can one not admire this?36
Ye supports the rebuilding of the temple, which had been destroyed by a fire in the Jiajing 嘉靖 period (1522-1569) and urges the “believers of the four directions” to assist the monks in this task.
About two hundred years later the temple was again in dire straits and the monks approached Zhang Jinyun 張縉雲, an official posted in the area. His argument is similar to that of Ye. In his Preface to Donation Records 黃檗寺緣簿序 (c.1823-1826) Zhang writes:
When I came to this area in 1823, I visited first Lingshi 靈石 [monastery], then Huangbo. Both temples had fields that had been appropriated by someone. I sent a messenger to make inquiries, and the people returned the
34 陽岫飛鸞彩，陰溪噴龍泉，鳥鳴丹壁上，猿嘯清虛間. As quoted (rather freely) by Ye in ZFSH 86: 240.
35 Huangbo, under its abbot Zhongtian Zhengyuan 中天正圓 (1537-1610), received one of only six sets that were given to various monasteries on this occasion. The late Empress Dowager had been an important supporter of Buddhism. In 1602 it was due to her influence that abbot Xinkong Mingkai 心 空 明 開 (1568-1641) received a Tripitaka set for his Guangming monastery (Brook 1993, 241; also 206 and 262). Recently, a comprehensive study of these events, especially the promotion of Buddhism by the Empress Dowager and her son the Wanli emperor, has been completed (Zhang 2010).
36 ZFSH 86: 241.
fields to the temples, without charging for it.[...] [A while ago] the monks from the [neighboring] Lingshi monastery asked me to write an endorsement [for a fund-raiser]. I consented and less than one year later, the monks from Huangbo too asked me to write an endorsement to raise funds.
Huangbo’s buildings are even more numerous than those of Lingshi, the repair costs are huge and the monks have no choice but to ask for help. The teachings of the two masters [Buddhism and Daoism] are not greatly admired by [us] Confucians, but I felt that as the local official I would be at fault if I would not see to the repair of the famous sites of the area that have been continued for centuries.37
Both Ye and Zhang are hedging here against possible criticism from conservative Confucians. Timothy Brook in his study of the relationship of late-Ming gentry with Buddhism outlines the attempt of Neo-Confucians to integrate Confucianism and Buddhism as well as the conservative backlash against this trend. The conservative reaction against members of the gentry assimilating Buddhist practices had teeth. In 1602 Li Zhi 李 贄 (1527-1602), the radical champion for a synthesis of Confucian and Buddhist ideals, committed suicide in prison after being impeached for heterodoxy. Ye, who would have known Li as a fellow Fujianese personally, certainly remembered the case. Even Zhang two hundred years later probably would have known about the incident, as the indictment was widely circulated in later times.38
This is one of the reasons why, although both Ye and Zhang were supportive of Buddhism on other occasions as well, it is difficult to gauge the depth of their interest in Buddhism. Belonging as they did to “Neo-Confucianism’s captive audience”,39 they had to frame their support as part of their administrative duties and put a certain rhetorical distance between them and their Buddhist subjects.
Gazetteers and the Canon
What is the relationship of the corpus of Buddhist temple gazetteers and the corpus of religious texts preserved in canonical editions? Catalogs and editions of the Buddhist canon existed before the gazetteer emerged as a genre. The Buddhist canon was never closed, however, and new material was included in every new edition. Although by late imperial times some of the proto-gazetteers were already several hundreds of years old,40
37 ZFSH 86: 264-265.
38 The indictment (first translated by Franke 1938, 23-24) is fiercely critical of literati families practicing Buddhism.
39 Brook (1993, 90).
40 The Luoyang qielan ji, written in 547 CE, even neared the 1000th anniversary of its publication.
neither they nor the newer temple or mountain gazetteers were included in canonical editions during the Ming and Qing.41 There are no a priori reasons why temple gazetteers should not be included. The canon contains many works from secular genres such as catalogs, biographies or dictionaries. However, many of the early gazetteers were not written by monks and even the Taishō, one of the most liberal and inclusive editions, contains very few texts that were not written by monks.
Another issue for the incorporation into the canon of post-Tang Chinese Buddhist literature was timing: the older a text the more likely its inclusion. The annals of Song and Yuan Buddhist historiography, for instance, appear only infrequently in canonical editions of the Ming and Qing, and many of them are first included only in a Japanese edition, the Man[ji] zokuzōkyō 卍續藏經 supplement to the canon proper (ed. 1905-1912).
Of the approximately 230 different gazetteers in our archive fewer than ten were produced before 1600. This is in line of what Brook (1993, 64) proposed about the adoption of Buddhism among the gentry during the Ming: that the popularity of Buddhism among the gentry became visible again only in the latter half of the sixteenth century. This perception, that the time between roughly 1350 and 1550 saw less Buddhist activity in China than either before and after, is corroborated by the data Eberhard (1964, 280 and 298) has assembled from gazetteers.42 The decline of Buddhism in terms of personnel and real estate during the early and mid-Ming was apparently due to the restrictive regulations, which the Hongwu and Yongle emperors placed on Buddhist activities.
It is therefore no coincidence that, modeled on gazetteers on administrative units, the first sizhi 寺志 and shanzhi 山志 gazetteers on Buddhist sites appear only after this period of relative decline. It was, however, too late for their inclusion in the Ming canonical editions. The three official Ming editions (Hongwu nanzang 洪武南藏, Yongle nanzang 永樂南藏, Yongle beizang 永樂北藏) were all carved before 1440 and only the privately funded Jiaxing 嘉興 canon would have been late enough to accommodate the then brand-new gazetteer literature. Understandably, the editors of that edition decided that the gazetteers did not merit inclusion, as many of them were compiled by lay-men and there was no precedent for the inclusion of gazetteers. The major canonical edition of the Qing, the Long zang 龍藏 created 1733-1738, was conservative with regard to inclusion and
41 The Ming especially saw the production of several canonical editions both by the court as well as at private hands. Especially the Jiaxing zang 嘉興藏 added many scriptures that were produced during the Song, Yuan and early Ming dynasties and were being included in a canonical edition for the first time.
42 On the decline of Buddhism in the middle period of the Ming see Yü (1998, 918). See also the dissertation of Zhang Dewei (2010), who clearly traces the impact of the imperial support for Buddhism by the Wanli emperor and his mother.
contained fewer texts than the Jiaxing zang.43 Only with the Taishō edition, created in the early 20th century by Japanese scholars rather than government officials or lay Buddhists, twelve proto-gazetteers44 were included. All of them were first published before the Ming.
Title Author / Editor Date
T 2092 (5 juan)
Luoyang qielan ji 洛陽伽藍記
On the temples of Luoyang in ca. 500. Yang Xuanzhi 楊衒之 (active around 547)
after 534
T 2088 (2 juan)
Shijia fangzhi 釋迦方志
On place names of India, and Central Asia related to Buddhism. Last four sections deal with the introduction and establishment of Buddhism in China.
Daoxuan 道宣 (596-667)
dated 650
T 2091 (1 juan)
Dunhuang lu 敦煌錄45
Dunhuang fragment S.5448 (893 characters) describing Buddhist sites in and around Dunhuang
Author unknown after 756
T 2093 (1 juan)
Si ta ji 寺塔記
Short descriptions of some temples in Luoyang (esp. the 大興善寺) ca. 843
Duan Chengshi 段成式 (c. 803-863)
after 843
T 2094 (1 juan)
Liangjing si ji 梁京寺記
Short notes on nine temples in Nanjing during the first half of the 6th century
Compiler unknown
after 116046 T 2095
(5 juan)
Lushan ji 廬山記
Describes the Buddhist sites on Mt. Lu.
Recording biographies of eminent monks, poems and inscriptions. First work resembling the mature gazetteer genre in containing geographic and historical information as well as belles lettres.47
Chen Shunyu 陳舜俞 (d. 1075)
1072
43 Including all supplements the Jiaxing zang contains 2090 texts and the Long zang only 1669.
44 I use the term proto-gazetteers for the chorographical works that do not yet have the size, the self-awareness and the attitude of later gazetteers, but already exhibit the combined interest in history, literary and topographical description that is found in the mature form.
Proto-gazetteers generally do not yet use zhi 志 in the title, but ji 記 or zhuan 傳.
45 Translated by L. Giles (Giles 1914, Giles 1915, cf. Hu 1915).
46 See Suwa (1977, 91) for the complicated history of the short text, which was compiled from several earlier sources.
47 As student of Ouyang Xiu 歐陽脩, the author Chen Shunyu was well versed in historiography.
The Lushan ji has been studied by Reiter (1978 & 1980). Lushan is one of the sites which have a large number of gazetteers, next to T 2095, there is ZFSH 75, ZFC 28, 29, and 118, which remain unstudied.
T 2096 (1 juan)
Tiantaishan ji 天台山記
The earliest account of sacred sites around the Tiantai mountains.
Written by a Daoist associated with the Shangqing 上清 school and mentioning Buddhist influence only in passing.
Xu Lingfu 徐靈府 (c. 760-841)
after 815
T 2097 (3 juan)
Nanyue zongsheng ji 南嶽總勝集
On the sites around Nanyue.
Nanyue, the “Southern
Marchmount” in the system of five sacred peaks is commonly called Hengshan 衡山. The text is also included in the Daoist canon.48
Chen Tianfu 陳田夫 Preface by Sun Xingyan 孫星衍
1131 - 1163 preface dated:
嘉慶六年六月朔日 (1801-07-11 CE)
T 2098 (2 juan)
Gu Qingjing zhuan 古清涼傳
Three short proto-gazetteers on the sacred sites at Mt. Wutai 五台.
Huixiang 慧祥 Preface by Guangying 廣英
after 68049 preface dated:
大定辛丑歲二月十 七日 (1181-03-04 CE)
T 2099 (3 juan)
Guang Qingjing zhuan 廣清涼傳
Que Jichuan 郄濟川
dated: 嘉祐紀號龍 集庚子正月 (1060-02-05 to 1060-03-04 CE) T 2100
(2 juan)
Xu Qingjing zhuan 續清涼傳
Zhang Shangying 張商英
dated: 大定四年九 月十七日 (1164- 10-04 CE) T 2101
(1 juan)
Butuoluojiash an zhuan 補陀洛迦山傳
Contains descriptions and scriptural sources for the Guanyin cult at Mt.
Putuo.
Sheng Ximing 盛熙明 (1323—
1363)
1349-135950
The editors of the Taishō made the decision to include only topographical descriptions that were written before the Ming. This was innovative as most of these texts had not been part of canonical editions before. Although the Taishō has never been superseded as the authoritative edition, there have been a number of attempts to re-edit or supplement the canon. Some of these editions also noticed the value of topographical literature.
48 Robson makes ample use of this text and translated parts of the preface (2009, 2-3).
49 Cao (1999, 195).
50 Based on the remark by Hou Jigao in June 1589 to the effect that Sheng’s work predates the gazetteer commissioned by Hou “more than 230 years” (ZFSH 8: 334).
The uncompleted Puhui Canon 普慧大藏經, 1944 – an unsuccessful, and in the end aborted, attempt to create a new Chinese Buddhist canon in the 1930s and 40s – does include the Nanchao si kao 南朝寺考.51 The Dazangjing bubian 大藏經補編 (Lan 1984), a little known recent supplement to the canon, shows a growing concern with topographical sources and includes for the first time works such as the Jinling fancha zhi (ZFSH 6) and the Wulin fan zhi (ZFSH 7). As the editing principles for canonical editions of Chinese Buddhist texts grow more comprehensive, it is likely that the trend to include topographic descriptions will continue and the (digital) Buddhist canons of the 21st century will eventually include gazetteers. Gazetteers of Buddhist sites are valuable sources for researchers trying to understand the actual practice of Buddhism in a certain place, at a certain time. We hope that the digital archive of Chinese temple gazetteers will make these sources better accessible to all.
51 The Nanchao si kao (ZFSH 56) is not a gazetteer in the narrow sense, but a Qing dynasty attempt to gather or reconstruct information on temples during the Southern dynasties. For an analysis of the information concerning the temples constructed in the Liang dynasty see Suwa (1980).
Appendix A
These are the tables of content for the ZFC and the ZFSH. To my knowledge these lists are not available elsewhere, not even within the collections themselves. They constitute a finding aid by indexing the location of the gazetteer in the collections. The tables also cross-reference the collections: “=” indicates the gazetteer in the other collection is for all practical purposes identical; “~” indicates the other collection contains another, similar edition of this gazetteer. In the latter case the user might want to consult Appendix B for more information. An alphabetical listing of the titles according to the pinyin romanization is available on the web.52
ZFC: Zhongguo Fosizhi Congkan 中國佛寺志叢刊:
ZFC 001 (Vol.001): Huang ming si guan zhi 皇明寺觀志
ZFC 002 (Vol.001): Bei ping miao yu tong jian 北平廟宇通檢
ZFC 003 (Vol.002): Bei jing miao yu zheng cun lu 北京廟宇征存錄
ZFC 004 (Vol.002): Shang fang shan zhi 上方山志 ( ~ ZFSH 099)
ZFC 005 (Vol.003): Fa yuan si zhi gao 法源寺志稿
ZFC 006 (Vol.003): Tan zhe shan xiu yun si zhi 潭柘山岫雲寺志 ( ~ ZFSH 047)
ZFC 007 (Vol.004-005): Pan shan zhi 盤山志 ( ~ ZFSH 080)
ZFC 008 (Vol.006): Shao lin si zhi 少林寺志
ZFC 009 (Vol.007): Luo yang qie lan ji he jiao ben 洛陽伽藍記合校本 ( = ZFSH 004)
ZFC 010 (Vol.007): Luo yang qie lan ji gou chen 洛陽伽藍記鉤沉 ( = ZFSH 003)
ZFC 011 (Vol.008): Luo yang long men zhi 洛陽龍門志
ZFC 012 (Vol.008): Long men zhi xu zuan 龍門志續纂
ZFC 013 (Vol.008): Mai ji shan shi ku zhi 麥積山石窟志
ZFC 014 (Vol.008): Da tong wu zhou shi ku si ji 大同武州石窟寺記
ZFC 015 (Vol.009): Qing liang shan zhi 清涼山志 ( ~ ZFSH 081)
ZFC 016 (Vol.009): Bi shan xiao zhi 碧山小志
ZFC 017 (Vol.009): Qi yan shan zhi 七岩山志
ZFC 018 (Vol.010): Ling yan zhi 靈岩志
ZFC 019 (Vol.010): Zi peng shan zhi 紫蓬山志
ZFC 020 (Vol.011): Lang ye shan zhi 瑯琊山志
ZFC 021 (Vol.012): Ye fu shan zhi 冶父山志
ZFC 022 (Vol.012): Yun ling zhi 雲嶺志
ZFC 023 (Vol.013): Huang shan cui wei si zhi 黃山翠微寺志
ZFC 024 (Vol.013): Jiu hua shan zhi 九華山志 ( ~ ZFSH 077)
ZFC 025 (Vol.014-015): Yu quan si zhi 玉泉寺志 ( ~ ZFSH 096)
ZFC 026 (Vol.015): Hong shan bao tong chan si zhi 洪山寶通禪寺志 ( ~ ZFSH 095)
52 http://buddhistinformatics.ddbc.edu.tw/fosizhi/ (August 2011).
ZFC 027 (Vol.016): Lian feng zhi 蓮峰志
ZFC 028 (Vol.016): Lu shan gui zong si zhi 廬山歸宗寺志
ZFC 029 (Vol.017): Lu shan xiu feng si zhi 廬山秀峰寺志
ZFC 030 (Vol.018-019): Qing yuan zhi lue 青原志略 ( ~ ZFSH 094)
ZFC 031 (Vol.020): E hu feng ding zhi 鵝湖峰頂志
ZFC 032 (Vol.020): Hui li si zhi 慧力寺志
ZFC 033 (Vol.021): Yun ju shan zhi 雲居山志 ( ~ ZFSH 074)
ZFC 034 (Vol.022-025): Jin ling fan cha zhi 金陵梵剎志 ( = ZFSH 006)
ZFC 035 (Vol.026): Zhe yi fan cha zhi 折疑梵剎志
ZFC 036 (Vol.027): Jin ling da bao en si ta zhi 金陵大報恩寺塔志 ( = ZFSH 068)
ZFC 037 (Vol.027): Nan chao si kao 南朝寺考 ( ~ ZFSH 056)
ZFC 038 (Vol.028): Nan chao fo si zhi 南朝佛寺志 ( = ZFSH 005)
ZFC 039 (Vol.028): Xian hua yan zhi 獻花岩志 ( ~ ZFSH 070)
ZFC 040 (Vol.029): Ling gu chan lin zhi 靈谷禪林志 ( ~ ZFSH 067)
ZFC 041 (Vol.030): Niu shou shan zhi 牛首山志 ( ~ ZFSH 069)
ZFC 042 (Vol.030-031): She shan zhi 攝山志 ( ~ ZFSH 034)
ZFC 043 (Vol.031): Qi xia xiao zhi 栖霞小志
ZFC 044 (Vol.031): Wei mo si zhi 維摩寺志
ZFC 045 (Vol.032-038): Wu du fa cheng 吳都法乘 ( ~ ZFSH 097)
ZFC 046 (Vol.039): Cang hai si zhi 藏海寺志
ZFC 047 (Vol.039): Chang shu xing fu si zhi 常熟興福寺志 ( ~ ZFSH 036)
ZFC 048 (Vol.039): San feng qing liang chan si zhi 三峰清涼禪寺志
ZFC 049 (Vol.040-041): San feng qing liang si zhi 三峰清涼寺志
ZFC 050 (Vol.041): Su zhou fu bao en si zhi 蘇州府報恩寺志
ZFC 051 (Vol.041): Kai yuan si zhi 開元寺志
ZFC 052 (Vol.042): Han shan si zhi 寒山寺志 ( = ZFSH 043)
ZFC 053 (Vol.042): Han shan zi shi ji 寒山子詩集
ZFC 054 (Vol.042): Han shan si han tong fo xiang ti yong 寒山寺漢銅佛像題詠
ZFC 055 (Vol.042): Han shan si xiao zhi 寒山寺小志
ZFC 056 (Vol.043): Yao feng shan zhi 堯峰山志 ( ~ ZFSH 066)
ZFC 057 (Vol.043): Feng huang shan yong qing si zhi 鳳凰山永慶寺志
ZFC 058 (Vol.043): Zhu tang si zhi 竹堂寺志
ZFC 059 (Vol.043): Zhu tang si zhi bu 竹堂寺志補
ZFC 060 (Vol.044-045): Deng wei shan sheng en si zhi 鄧尉山聖恩寺志 ( = ZFSH 042)
ZFC 061 (Vol.045): Wu jin tian ning si zhi 武進天寧寺志 ( ~ ZFSH 035)
ZFC 062 (Vol.046): Ling yan shan zhi 靈岩山志
ZFC 063 (Vol.046): Ling yan ji lue 靈岩紀略 ( ~ ZFSH 072)
ZFC 064 (Vol.047): Ling yan zhi lue 靈岩志略 ( = ZFSH 073)
ZFC 065 (Vol.047): Ling yan xiao zhi 靈岩小志
ZFC 066 (Vol.047): Wu xi nan chan si zhi 無錫南禪寺志
ZFC 067 (Vol.047): Ren cao an zhi 忍草庵志 ( = ZFSH 098)
ZFC 068 (Vol.047): Guan hua cong lu 貫華叢錄
ZFC 069 (Vol.047): Fu hui shuang xiu an xiao ji 福慧雙修庵小記
