A Jewel in Indra's Net: The letter sent by fazang in china to uisang in Korea.

• Author: Kroll, Paul W.
• Position: Review

A Jewel in Indra's Net Tire Letter Sent by Fazang in china to Uisang in Korea. By ANTONINO FORTE. Occasional Papers, no. 8. Kyoto: ITALIAN SCHOOL OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES, 2000. Pp. viii + 109, illus. (paper).

The most recent publication of the Italian School of East Asian Studies, Antonino Forte's study of the famous letter Sent by the monk Fa-tsang (643-712) to his fellow monk Uisang (625-702) in Korea, continues the high quality of publications issuing from this outlet in the past decade. Fa-tsang and the older Uisang had both been disciples in the 660s of Chih-yen (602-68) at the Chih-hsiang monastery in the Chung-nan mountains, just outside the T'ang capital of Ch'ang-an. Some twenty years or more after Uisang had returned to his native Korea, Fa-tsang wrote the letter that is the centerpiece of this book.

The autograph manuscript of this letter is held today in the Tenri University library, in Japan (a photograph of the manuscript is included on p. 107). Although some scholars have questioned whether this is the actual letter sent by Fa-tsang, Forte shows (appendix A, pp. 69-74) that there is no convincing reason to doubt the reliability of the text itself. The letter was also copied into two extant Korean works, dating from the late eleventh and late thirteenth centuries, and an excerpt from it appears in an early tenth-century Korean biography of Fatsang. While giving priority to the Tenri letter, Forte considers all four versions in his text-critical scrutiny.

Because Fa-tsang did not indicate the precise year in which he was writing, the date of the letter has spurred much debate, with suggestions ranging from 691 to 700. In the third chapter of this book (pp. 45-68), Forte subjects to careful analysis the various opinions that have been advanced. A seemingly simple fact that many before him have ignored--viz., that Fa-tsang refers to himself in the letter's heading as a monk of the T'ang dynasty--is highlighted as testimony that the letter (unless it has been tampered with) cannot have been written between 19 October 690 and 2 March 705, for during that time the T'ang had been formally replaced by the Chou dynasty of Empress Wu. Fa-tsang had been in the direct service of Empress Wu since 670 and would hardly have slighted her dynasty in such a letter, were it already inaugurated. Also in the letter's opening, Fa-tsang identifies himself as associated with the capital's Ch'ung-fu monastery. This establishment had been founded in 670...