知玄と圓仁 : 「入唐求法巡禮行記」研究の一節

Abstract

The biography of Chih-hsuan is found in the Biographies of Eminent Sung Buddhist Priests in the Dynastic History of Sung. He was born in Ssu-ch'uan, and went to Ch'ang-an to stay at the Buddhist temple, Tzu-sheng-ssu, at Tso-chieh during the reigns of Emperors Wen-tsung and Wu-tsung. Incidentally, the Japanese priest, Yenin happened to study at Tzu-sheng-ssu. These two learned priests, one Japanese and the other Chinese, made good friends with each other. Yenin also made many friends with those Chinese adherents of Buddhism who associated themselves with Chih-hsuan, and among them we find such eminent persons as Yang Ching-chih and Yang Lu-shih whose biographies are found in the Sung Dynastic History. If we look at Yenin's "Nyu-to shin-gu shogyo mokuroku" and "Nyu-to gu-ho junrei gyo-ki, " we meet with a number of interesting facts which do not appear in Chinese sources, but so far the personal association between these two eminent Japanese and Chinese priests seems to have been largely overlooked. Priest Yenin not only exercised a great influence over Japanese Buddhism but also he appears to have been one of the most prominent personages in the history of cultural contact between Japan and China in the T'ang period.