Shensengzhuan 神僧傳

Shensengzhuan Shensengzhuan 神僧傳 "Biographies of divine monks" is a collection of biographies of eminent monks compiled by Zhu Di 朱棣 (i.e., Emperor Chengzu 明成祖, r. 1402-1424) of the Ming dynasty 明 (1368-1644). One of his most important advisors was the Buddhist monk Daoyan 道衍 (lay name Yao Guangxiao 姚廣孝, 1335-1418), so that Zhu Di felt more or less obliged to display gratefulness to Buddhism in the shape of this 9-juan-long collection and one thousand poems of his collection Foqu 佛曲 "Airs on the Buddha".

The Shensengzhuan includes the biographies of 208 Buddhist monks through history and describes their conversion and enlightenment. The oldest person is the Indian monk Kāśyapa Mātaṇga (Ch. Jiaye Moteng 迦葉摩騰, shortly called Moteng 摩騰) who came to China during the Eastern Han period 東漢 (25-220 CE), and the latest one the Tibetan monk Dampa (Ch. Danba 膽巴, original name "Qingxicheng" 慶喜稱, also called Kundgah Grog, Ch. Gongjia Gelasi 功嘉葛剌思, 1230-1303). The biographies are not consistently arranged in a chronological manner, so that Jin-period 晉 (265-420) persons are listed after those of the Southern Dynasties period 南朝 (420~589) and Sui-period 隋 (581-618) persons after the Tang 唐 (618-907). The text of the biographies is both historiographically and hagiographically. It praises the virtue and devotion of the saints and is therefore not in all points reliable. Ming-period editions of the Shensengzhuan were quite popular, but published in a quite confuse arrangement, without indicating the date of publication or the publisher. The compilers of the imperial series Siku quanshu 四庫全書 (late 18th century) described the book and provided an index, but did not include the text in the series itself.

There is another book with the same title and the same size, but the name of the compiler and the date of compilation are unknown. It includes the biographies of 208 monks, beginning with the Indians Kāśyapa mātaṅga and Dharmaratna (Ch. Falan 法蘭 or Zhu Falan 竺法蘭) who came to China during the reign of Emperor Ming 漢明帝 (r. 75-88) of the Eastern Han and ending with 派克巴, who was national preceptor (guoshi 國師) under Qubilai Khan (r. 1260-1294), the first ruler of the Yuan dynasty 元 (1279-1368). Strangely enough, there are only 16 persons from the Song period 宋 (960-1279), of which only 3 lived during the Southern Song 南宋 (1127-1279). A lot of stories include supernatural elements, which led to the title of the book, in this case meaning "Biographies of supernatural monks". The text of the book seems to be lost, but it was listed among the book described by the compilers of the Siku quanshu.

A third book with the title Shensengzhuan is a novelistic biography of the monk Futu Cheng 佛圖澄 that was attributed to the Eastern-Jin-period 東晉 (317-420) monk Faxian 法顯 (see Shensengzhuan 神僧傳).