Collecting, Printing, and Transmitting Buddhist Scriptures: Chinese Vinaya in Vietnam. A Case Study of the Monk Tinh Tuyen’s Trip to Dinghu Mountain in the First Half of the 18th Century

Title

Collecting, Printing, and Transmitting Buddhist Scriptures: Chinese Vinaya in Vietnam. A Case Study of the Monk Tinh Tuyen’s Trip to Dinghu Mountain in the First Half of the 18th Century

Author

Tô Lan NGUYỄN

Page

107-150

DOI

DOI:10.6163/TJEAS.202006_17(1).0003

Abstract

In 1735, Vietnamese monk Tính Tuyền bought back about 300 Buddhist books in over 1000 volumes (titles and the number of volumes of each book remain unknown) from the Qingyun Monastery on Dinghu Mountain in Guangzhou Province, the contemporary Chinese Chan center. This collection included Sutra, Vinaya, and Abhidharma books. The Vinaya section within the Tính Tuyền’s collection not only became a significant material for the reforms of the Buddhist percepts in in the 18th century Vietnam, but also has deeply affected the internal practices of the Vietnamese Buddhist congregation till the present time. In order to reconstruct the Tính Tuyền’s bibliography, this article focuses on the three following issues: (1) The list by Monk Phúc Điền in 1835, which cataloged the books remaining over from Tính Tuyền’s heritage; (2)The Buddhist woodblocks preserved in the Càn An Monastery, where Tính Tuyền served as the abbot and which also was a well-known Buddhist woodblock engraving and printing center in Northern Vietnam at that time; (3) The Buddhist Vinaya books circulated in Vietnam, which probably were hand-copied or reprinted from the books in the Tính Tuyền’s collection. Reconstructing the list of the Tính Tuyền’s collection offers a new perspective on the history of importation, printing, and circulation of the Chinese Vinaya books in Vietnam and to understand its importance to the history of Vietnamese Buddhism in general.

Keyword

Vietnamese Buddhism, Vinaya, Monk Tính Tuyền, Càn An Monastery, Buddhist Woodblocks

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