Neglected Materials on Shihua (Tales with Poems) as a Genre of Buddhist Narrative of the Song Dynasty

RESEARCH NOTE NEGLECTED MATERIALS ON SHIHUA (TALES WITH POEMS) AS A GENRE OF BUDDHIST NARRATIVE OF THE SONG DYNASTY WILT L. IDEMA Harvard University The Shijia rulai shidi xiuxing ji 釋迦如來十地修行記 (A record of the ten stages of self-cultivation of the Tathagata Sakyamuni) is a text composed in simple classical Chinese that brings together the story of Sakyamuni’s awakening with the stories of nine of his prior incarnations in which he accumulated by his extraordinary virtues the good karma that will allow him to become the Buddha of the present kalpa. The text does not carry the name of a compiler, and it was never included in any edition of the Chinese Tripitaka. In recent centuries the text was quite popular on the Korean peninsula, and it has often been assumed to be a Korean compilation . The earliest preserved edition, however, was revised by an otherwise unknown Shaoshi shanren 少室山人 and printed in 1448 at the establishment of the Ming-dynasty Prince of Yi 伊 at Luoyang at the order of the eunuch Puxiu 普 秀. This information makes a Chinese origin of the text more likely. The date of the edition on which Shaoshi shanren based his edition is unknown. A date mentioned in the tenth story when discussing the year of death of the Buddha suggests that that story was originally composed in 1328, but it is unclear whether this date also refers to the compilation of all ten stories as a single text. The Shijia rulai shidi xiuxing ji was reprinted in Korea in 1660,1 and continued to enjoy a considerable popularity there, but would appear to have dropped out of circulation in China itself. While there exists a considerable body of scholarship on this text in Korean (unfortunately inaccessible to me), the Shijia rulai shidi xiuxing ji has only quite recently started to attract the attention of Chinese scholars.2 This attention so far has been focused on a single story in the compilation. This is the seventh item in 1 This edition is photographically reprinted in Pak Pyŏng-dong 박병동, Pulgyŏng chŏllae sŏrhwa-ŭi sosŏlchŏk pyŏnmo yangsang: pyŏnmunjip “Sŏkka Yŏrae sipchi suhaenggi” yŏn’gu 불경 전래 설화의 소설적 변모 영상: 변문집 "석가여래십지수행기" 연구 (Aspects of Literary Adaptation in Tales Out of Buddhist Sutras: A Study of the Bianwen-collection A Record of the Ten Stages of the Self-cultivation of the Tathagatha Śakyamuni; Seoul: Yŏngnak, 2003), pp. 243–337. The Chinese text is also available in a typeset edition (with Korean reading signs) as An Chinho, Sŏkka Yŏrae sipchi haengnok 釋迦如來十地行錄 (A Record of the Ten Stages of Cultivation of Shakyamuni Buddha; Seoul: Pŏmnyunsa, 1972, 2nd printing). 2 Wang Jingbo 王晶波, “Cong Dunhuangben Foshuo Xiaoshunzi xiuxing chengfo jing dao Jinniu baojuan” 从敦煌本佛说孝顺子修行成佛经到金牛宝卷 (From The sutra on How a Filial CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 38. 2 (December 2019): 177–182© The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2020 DOI 10.1080/01937774.2019.1695526 the collection, which narrates the tale of the incarnation of the future Buddha as the son of the third consort of the king of the mythical country of Pari. The jealous first and second queens have the baby replaced by a skinned cat, but all their attempts to kill the infant fail. Eventually they feed it to a vicious cow, which swallows the infant whole. Their accusation that the third queen has given birth to a monster meets with immediate success: the king condemns her to hard labor in the “cold palace.” When the cow later gives birth to a beautiful calf, the king takes a fancy to the animal and allows it to roam the palace grounds at will. But the first and second queen soon realize that the calf must be the reborn prince when they learn it has visited the third queen in her prison, and in order to do away with the animal they feign an illness that can only be cured by eating the calf’s heart and liver. The king is reluctant to see his pet calf slaughtered but is in the end convinced by his courtiers to allow the palace butcher to lead the calf away...