Notes

1. The early Buddhist missionaries from India and central Asia were given surnames in China that indicated the country of their origin: Chu for India, An for Parthia, K'ang for Sogdia, and Chih for Scythia. For several centuries their Chinese disciples took religious surnames from their masters until the custom arose of using the first character of the Buddha's own name, Shā-kyamuni—or Shih-chia-mou-ni in Chinese transcription—thus giving rise to the practice of all monks and nuns taking the religious surname of Shih.

2. Ching-chien's biography has been translated in Buddhist Texts through the Ages, pp. 291-292.

3. P'eng-ch'eng was in the present-day region of northwest Chiangsu Province and southern Shantung Province. P'eng-ch'eng was a very early and important center of Buddhism in China, with evidence for Buddhist practice, of a sort, dating to mid-first century a.d. It remained a flourishing center lying as it did in a pivotal section of a trade route that connected the Silk Road, with P'eng-ch'eng lying at the extreme eastern end, and southern China, the areas of Kuei-chi and modern-day Nanjing, the capital, under different names, of the succession of Southern dynasties beginning with the Eastern Chin dynasty (a.d. 317). See Maspero, "Les Origins," pp. 87-92.

4. Present-day Wu-wei County in central Kansu Province. See map.

5. Lo-yang served as the capital of the Chin dynasty until the fall of Western Chin in 317. See map.

6. This means only that the nuns have more rules than the monks. The number of rules for nuns in the various schools: Dharmaguptaka, 348; Mahīshāsaka, 373; Sarvāstivāda, 354; Mahāsāmghika, 290; Pali canon, 311; Tibetan canon, 364; Mūlasarvāstivāda, 309. See Mochizuki, Bukkyō-daijiten 5:4292.

7. These are the ten basic rules that the novice in training is to observe— namely, to refrain from (1) harming living beings; (2) stealing; (3) wrong sexual conduct; (4) false speech; (5) intoxicating substances; (6) wearing perfumes or garlands; (7) participating in entertainments or going to observe them; (8) using a high or wide bed; (9) eating at improper times; and (10) carrying or using silver, gold, or other precious objects (which prohibits the use of money).

8. Chih-shan from Kashmir: The table of contents to the Ming seng chuan (Lives of famous monks) (of which only fragments remain) lists in chap. 19 a Chih-shan in the category of foreign meditation masters. Because he is listed as having been active in the Sung dynasty (420-479), it is questionable whether he is the same as Ching-chien's instructor. The book Lives of Famous Monks was also compiled by Pao-ch'ang. See appendix A.

9. This is the most likely date because it refers to the chien-wu reign period of Chin (317), rather than to the chien-wu reign period of the Latter Chao (335). The biographies are dated according to the reign periods of the Southern dynasties. This means he left the same year that the Chinese dynasty of Chin had to flee south from the non-Chinese invaders.

10. According to the records Chu Fo-t'u-teng lived from the year 232 to the year 348. He has a biography not only in the Buddhist collection of biographies, Kao seng chuan, vol. 50, chap. 9:383.b-387.a, but also in the official history of the dynasty, the Chin shu, chap. 95. His biography from Kao seng chuan has been translated by Wright, "Fo-t'u-teng." Fo-t'u-teng, a central Asian of Indian ancestry and hence surnamed Chu, carried out his missionary work in northern China, arriving from Kucha in a.d. 310 in time for the calamitous loss of north China to invading non-Chinese tribes. He remained in north China using his considerable magical powers to ameliorate the harsh rule of the barbarian emperors. His Chinese disciples, in particular the monk Shih Tao-an (whose biography appears in Kao seng chuan, 5:351.c-354.a, and has been translated into English by Link, "Biography of Shih Tao-an"), established the intellectual and institutional foundations not merely of Buddhism in China but also of Chinese Buddhism.

11. The allusion is to Mencius, book 3, part A: "The virtue of the gentleman is like the wind. The virtue of the common man is like the grass. When the wind blows the grass will surely bend." See also the translation by Lau in Mencius.

12. In the year a.d. 317 barbarians took control of north China, forcing the imperial court to flee south where it set up another capital city at Chien-k'ang (present-day Nanjing), on the south bank of the Yangtze River. Many refugees, especially among the upper classes, fled south at the same time. Ching-chien, however, was not among them, remaining instead in or near Lo-yang. The city of Lo-yang had been sacked in a.d. 311 (Ch'en, Buddhism in China, p. 57; Zürcher, Buddhist Conquest, pp. 59, 84).

13. Land of the Scythians, lit. Yüeh-chih people, in present-day Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Pamir. The Yüeh-chih are known in the west as Scythians. The Yüeh-chih Buddhist missionaries were very active in bringing Buddhism to China, and colonies of Yüeh-chih lived in the northwest section of China, e.g., Kansu and the Tun-huang region. The translator monk Dharmaraksha, the "bodhisattva from Tun-huang," for example, was of Yüeh-chih ancestry. The importance of central Asians of several groups such as the Kucheans, Khotanese, and Sogdians in transmitting the Buddha's law from India to China cannot be overemphasized.

14. We have used the variant reading as it appears in the Sung, Yüan, and Ming editions of the Buddhist canon. This makes our interpretation somewhat different from others. For example, Tsukamoto Zenryū, Chūgokubukkyō-tsūshi, p. 438, states, "The foreign monk T'an-mo-chieh-to set up an ordination platform in Lo-yang using the Mahāsānghika Ritual and Rule book brought back from Yüeh-chih by Seng-ching." In Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, p. 4292b., we read, "In the hsien-k'ang period of Latter Chin, Seng-ching got the Mahāsānghika Ritual and Rule book, and in the first year, second month of the sheng-p'ing period requested T'an-mo-chieh-to to set up a bhiksunī ordination platform." We do not see any way to reconcile these differing versions, and we have chosen our interpretation for the reason that the date of the completion of the translation is given.

15. The eighth day of the second month (or, according to some sources, the fifteenth day of the month) was celebrated as the Buddha's nirvana day; i.e., the day he passed into final nirvana. See, e.g., Fa yüan chu lin [Forest of pearls in the garden of the law] T. 53, 371.c.-372.c.; and Nirvāna Scripture, T. 12, 365.c.8-9.

16. The Chinese text for the phrase "scriptures on the origins of monastic rules" could also be interpreted as the title of a specific book. There is such a book, the Origin of Monastic Rules Scripture, translated in the northern capital of Ch'ang-an (see map) between 379 and 385. This date, however, places the translation too late for use by the monk Shih Tao-ch'ang because the nun Ching-chien died no later than 361. It is always possible that an earlier, but now-lost, translation that used the same title could have been available. A text called Pi-nai-yeh (i.e., Vinaya) in ten chüan was translated by Chu Fo-nien of the Yao Ch'in. He went to Ch'ang-an in the chien-yüan reign period (365384) and was part of the translation team headed by Tao-an who had been taken by force to Ch'ang-an in 379. The text was translated between 379 and 385. See Hirakawa Akira, Ritsuzō-no-kenkyū, pp. 155-160, for a discussion of the date of translation. This date means that the text was translated some years after Ching-ch'ien's full ordination and therefore could not be the one specified in the biography. It is possible that the words chieh yin-yüan ching refer to Vinaya texts in general because in the body of these texts the circumstances that lead to the creation of a new rule are referred to as yin-yüan. See, e.g., T. 22, no. 1425, 522.a.10, 522.c.17. Waley, in Buddhist Texts through the Ages, p. 292 n.3, suggests that it is referring to the Ta-ai-tao pi-ch'iu-ni ching (The scripture of Mahāprajāpatī's Vinaya). But the date of translation of this text is approximately 412-439, thus being too late. See Répertoire, p. 126. Another possibility is that it is the title for a text now lost.

17. This sentence is admittedly difficult to interpret. Tsukamoto Zenryū in his book Chūgoku bukkyō tsūshi, p. 438, says that Ching-chien and her companions received the precepts on an ordination platform on the boat. Although this practice of using a floating ordination platform was carried out at times, the circumstances in this instance seem not to warrant that interpretation. The Ssu River was not located conveniently near Lo-yang. Waley, in Buddhist Texts through the Ages, p. 242, says that the foreign monk went south on the river. Regardless of who went south, the goal of such a trip might well have been P'eng-ch'eng, a thriving center of Buddhism since at least the first century (see Zürcher, Buddhist Conquest, pp. 26-28), or even Chien-k'ang. The lower reaches of the Ssu River were "stolen" when the Yellow River changed course in the late twelfth century and flowed into the Yellow Sea south of the Shantung peninsula until the mid-nineteenth century when the Yellow River once again changed course to flow north of the Shantung peninsula. The Ssu River was not restored.

18. Rising bodily to the sky is a Taoist way of death. See Le Lie-sien tchouan, p. 112; Yün chi ch'i ch'ien (Seven tallies in a cloud satchel), e.g., pp. 1619-1620.

19. Thus she was in her late twenties when she received the ten precepts and in her late sixties when she finally received full admission to the Assembly of Nuns.