본문 바로가기
  • Home

On the Contents and Characteristics of the Jinzang yaojijing

Choe Yeonshik 1

1동국대학교

ABSTRACT

Jinzang yaojijing (JInzang lun) is an anthology of the tales of derived from several Buddhist Sutras. The subjects of the tales are the conversion into Buddhism, the examples of punitive justice, and paying respect to Buddha and his statues and stupas. The editor of this book, Daoji was an famous scholar majoring in Satyasiddhi-sastra during Bei Qi period, but after an incident which brought him a great disappointment at the atmosphere around the Buddhists who were vainly indulged in studying the Buddhist theories without practicing it in their daily lives he retired from the capital and edited this book. On finishing this book he began to making a round of villages outside the capital and read the tales of the book to the common people. By this he preached the Buddhist teachings to the common people and guided them to live Buddhist’s lives by keeping the Buddhist moral and ethics. There is also an emphasis on the filial piety and it might be one of the earliest example of the integration of Chinese important moral into Buddhist teachings. There remain several versions of this book in Korea, Japan and China. But all of them are incomplete. According to the old bibliographies the Jinzang yaojijing was in 7 volumes. The remains are only 4 volumes, volume 1, 2, 5 and 6. Korean version, 13th century woodblock print kept at Beom’eo-sa temple, contain volume 1 and 2. Japanese versions, 3 handcopy manuscripts kept at Kofukuji temple and University libraries, contain volume 1 and 6. Chinese versions, several fractions from 4 handcopy manuscripts found at Dunhuang cave, contain volume 5 and 6. Among the remained versions the Beom’eo-sa has special importance. At the beginning of it the table of chapters is preserved. This table present the name of every chapter. Ant by this table we can also figure out the total composition of Jinzang yaojijing.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.