The Bodhidharma Anthology: The Earliest Records of Zen.

• Author: KIESCHNICK, JOHN
• Position: Review

The Bodhidharma Anthology: The Earliest Records of Zen. By JEFFREY L. BROUGHTON. Berkeley and Los Angeles: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 1999. Pp. 186.

The Bodhidharma Anthology is a collection of texts attributed to Bodhidharma, the "first patriarch" of the Ch'an lineage in China, and to his immediate disciples. The collection, found in several recensions at Tun-huang, contains seven distinct pieces: a brief biography of Bodhidharma, a short doctrinal treatise (the "Two Entrances"), two letters, and three lengthy "records" containing expositions and exchanges between different monks on various doctrinal subjects. These texts are generally considered the earliest Ch'an writings, or perhaps more accurately, "proto-Ch'an" writings. Their value lies chiefly in their importance for reconstructing the roots of the later Ch'an tradition.

The seven texts of the Bodhidharma Anthology have previously appeared in a Japanese translation with detailed annotation by Yanagida Seizan, in a French translation with annotation and a long introduction by Bernard Faure, and in an English translation as a Master's thesis by John Jorgenson. [1] The first four of the seven texts have also appeared in an English translation by John McRae as part of his book-length study of the formation of early Ch'an. [2] Broughton's book is hence the first readily available English translation of the entire collection of seven texts.

If these texts can be reliably dated to the eighth century or earlier, then they provide us with clues to the origins of vocabulary and motifs of later Ch'an writings, as well as to elements the later tradition chose to leave out when writing its history. At various points in the commentaries and appendices that appear at the back of the book, Broughton gives information on the dating of the texts. The Tun-huang manuscripts on which the translations are based are not dated, but analysis of the paper used suggests that they were probably completed in the mid-to-late eighth century. Additional textual evidence suggests that the texts may be much older. The brief biography of Bodhidharma, for instance, is attributed to a sixth-century monk named T'an-lin and seems to have been the chief source for the biography of Bodhidharma written in the seventh century by Tao-hsuan, Similarly, Taohsuan seems to have drawn on the letters to write his biography of Bodhidharma's disciple Hui-k'o. The "Two Entrances" contains p hrases referred to by Tao-hsuan and has...