APPENDIX A: THE TEXT

The biographical collection, the Lives of the Nuns, one of a number of Chinese Buddhist biographical writings, is unique not only because it is devoted to women but also because it covers the time of the founding of the Buddhist assembly for women. Several other collections survive from the same period, but these are all devoted to the lives of monks.

The most important complete biographic documents in addition to the Lives is Shih Hui-chiao's Kao seng chuan (Lives of eminent monks) consisting of 257 major biographies and a number of subbiographies completed "around a.d. 530." Another collection, much smaller, is found in the last three chüan of Shih Seng-yu's Ch'u san-tsang chi chi (Collected notes on the translation of the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese).

A third collection, by Shih Pao-ch'ang, the compiler of the Lives of the Nuns, was a collection of monks' biographies titled the Ming seng chuan (Lives of famous monks) (hereafter MSC). This work is now lost, except for the table of contents and a few extracts made by the Japanese monk Shūshō in the year 1235. Coincidentally, one extract is also found nearly word for word in the Lives in the biography of the Nun Feng (no. 55). This strengthens the assumption that Pao-ch'ang is truly the compiler of the Lives because his name is not associated with the Lives in any extant Chinese bibliographic catalogue, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, until the T'ang dynasty (618-907) catalogue K'ai-yüan shih chiao lu (The T'ang k'ai-yüan reign period collection of Buddhist writings), and the K'ai-yüan shih chiao lu lüeh ch'u (The condensed T'ang k'ai-yüan reign period catalogue of Buddhist writings). Although the attribution of the Lives to Pao-ch'ang first appears in a T'ang-dynasty catalogue, we need not suspect that the Lives is an orphan text to which a name has been arbitrarily assigned.

Nevertheless, in the T'ang-dynasty encyclopedia, Fa yüan chu lin (The forest of pearls in the garden of the law) (hereafter FYCL), the Lives is not to be found in the FYCL list of nine titles attributed to Pao-ch'ang. The FYCL does not quote from the Lives, nor does it quote from Pao-ch'ang's MSC. The Li tai san pao chi (LTSPC) lists only the first eight of the nine titles given in the FYCL. Of the eight, only the MSC is undated. Elsewhere in the LTSPC, however, a date of 519 is given to the MSC. Therefore, the Lives was most likely compiled between 516 and 519, despite the late attribution of the date.

It is a curious detail that the Lives is not quoted in the major encyclopedic collections, whether Buddhist or not, from which are taken the surviving fragments of lost works such as the Ming hsiang chi (Records of mysterious omens) (hereafter MHC). The collections thus do not quote from the Lives, although they quote the sources of many of the Lives. These major collections were compiled in the north, and probably the Lives circulated only in the limited area of the south where it was originally compiled. The T'ang dynasty, consolidating the rulership of the entire country, which had been unified under the Sui dynasty (581-618), brought easier travel and concourse than was possible during the chaotic and warring disunion of the Northern and Southern dynasties. Only then could the Lives became more widespread and thus finally appear in the T'ang catalogues of scriptures with their attribution to Pao-ch'ang.

The text of the Lives as it now stands is part of the Chinese Buddhist canon, the Ta tsang ching (Great storehouse of scriptures), in the Taishō edition (T.) (vol. 50, no. 2063), which is the basic text for our translation. The Lives, with the exeption of one biography, also appears in the Ku chin t'u shu chi ch'eng (Complete collection of books and records ancient and modern) (hereafter KCTSCC), vol. 506, a Ch'ing-dynasty (1636-1911) encyclopedia. The text of the Lives in KCTSCC corresponds to the Ming-dynasty (1368-1644) edition of the Buddhist canon as given in the Taishō edition.

One other of Pao-ch'ang's works to survive, the Ching lü yi hsiang (Different manifestations of the scriptures and the law) (T. 53, no. 2121), is the first title of the nine mentioned above in the FYCL.