died in 1655 at the age of fifty-six; his popular posthumous
title was Lingfeng Yuyi Dashi. His extant corpus of writings
is voluminous: Some forty-six titles appear in various canoni-
cal collections and a number of texts still circulate indepen-
dently. Zhixu’s miscellaneous pieces were collected in 1678
by his disciple Chengshi into the ten-volume Ling feng Yuyi
Dashi zonglun.
Zhixu’s corpus includes several works concerned with
the Lengyen jing, a scripture hitherto not commented upon
from the Tiantai standpoint, and works dealing with the pre-
cepts, Buddhist logic, different aspects of Buddhist philoso-
phy, many different scriptural commentaries, and interest-
ingly enough, a Buddhist commentary on the Four Books
(four Confucian classics) and a ten-volume Zhouyi chanjie (a
Chan commentary on the Book of Changes). Zhixu’s largest
work is the forty-four-volume Yuezang zhijin (Examining the
Canon and Determining Its Depth). In this work he com-
ments on every book included in the Buddhist canon, a task
he began when he was twenty-nine years old.
Zhixu’s text divides the whole of the canon into four
parts: Su ̄ tra, Vinaya, S ́a ̄stra, and Miscellaneous. The Su ̄ tra
section is divided into Maha ̄ya ̄na Su ̄ tras and H ̄ınaya ̄na
Su ̄ tras, and the Maha ̄ya ̄na Su ̄ tras are divided on the basis on
the Five Periods: Huayan, Vaipulya, Prajña ̄ texts, Lotus-
related texts, and Maha ̄parinirva ̄n:a texts. The Vaipulya scrip-
tures are divided into Revealed Teachings and Secret Teach-
ings, and the Secret Teachings are further divided into Secret
(i. e., Tantric) scriptures and sa ̄dhana literature.
The Vinaya is here divided into Maha ̄ya ̄na Vinaya texts
and H ̄ınaya ̄na Vinaya texts. The Sastra section is divided
into Maha ̄ya ̄na S ́a ̄stras and H ̄ınaya ̄na S ́a ̄stras. Maha ̄ya ̄na
S ́a ̄stras are divided into three: S ́a ̄stras that comment on scrip-
tures, sectarian S ́a ̄stras, and S ́a ̄stras that comment on other
S ́a ̄stras: this section is also broken down on the basis of those
composed in India and those composed in China. The Mis-
cellaneous section is divided into works composed in India
and those composed in China, and the section of those works
composed in China is divided into fifteen subsections: repen-
tence rituals, Pure Land, Tiantai, Chan, Huayan, Weishi,
Tantrism, Vinaya, compilations, biographies, defense of the
faith (i. e., polemical writings), glossaries, indices, “prefaces,
hymns, poems, and songs,” and last, a list of works that
should be included in the canon. Zhixu comments on a total
of 1,773 titles; for each work he gives the name of the transla-
tor or author, a summary of its contents, and the names of
its chapters. Zhixu’s classification of Buddhist scriptures was
employed in the printing of the Dai-Nippon ko ̄tei shukkoku
daizo ̄kyo ̄; the influence of Zhixu’s classification can also be
found in the internal arrangement of the Taisho ̄ daizo ̄kyo ̄.
The Yuezang zhijin was not published during Zhixu’s
lifetime. It was first printed by 1669, and was reprinted in
1892 in Nanking. The first full Japanese printing came in
1783, and the work is now included in volume 3 of the
Sho ̄wa ho ̄bo ̄ so ̄mokuroku, appended to the Taisho ̄ daizo ̄kyo ̄.
Zhixu also wrote a small work, the Fahai guanlan
(Drops of Insight into the Sea of Dharma), treating his classi-
fication of the canon, which first circulated in a printed edi-
tion of 1654. In this work Zhixu divides Buddhist literature
into five sections: the Vinaya, texts dealing with “teaching
and insight” (Tiantai, Huayan, and Weishi), Chan, the Se-
cret Teachings, and Pure Land works.SEE ALSO Buddhism, Schools of, articles on Chinese Bud-
dhism and Maha ̄ya ̄na Philosophical Schools of Buddhism;
Buddhist Books and Texts, article on Exegesis and Herme-
neutics; Buddhist Meditation; Buddhist Philosophy; Huay-
an; Na ̄ga ̄rjuna; Nirva ̄n:a; Tendaishu; Zhiyi.BIBLIOGRAPHY
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LEO M. PRUDEN (1987)TIBETAN RELIGIONS
This entry consists of the following articles:
AN OVERVIEW
HISTORY OF STUDYTIANTAI 9181