Wu, Jiang. "From the 'Cult of the Book' to the 'Cult of the Canon': A Neglected Tradition in Chinese Buddhism." In Spreading the Buddha's Word in East Asia: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, edited by Jiang Wu and Lucille Chia, 46-78. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
| Assertion | Argument | Place in source |
|---|---|---|
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In 1945 Zhou Shaoliang 周紹良 was given a copy of an unknown scripture on a train, the Fo shuo dazangjing zongmu 佛說大藏經總目. The text features a "fictional" catalogue of scriptures brought back to China from India by monks, and can be traced back to the Tang dynasty (following Zhou and Fang Guangchang). It is similar to S. 3565 and P. 2987. Similar apocryphal texts circulate in China today. Wu suggests that these texts "provide a fictional list of an imagined canon for recitation and worship", and links them to what he calls the "cult of the canon" (an extension of the notion of the cult of the book). The Dunhuang texts have been transcribed by Fang Guangchang in Dunhuang Fojiao jinglu jijiao 275-290; Zhou Shaoliang described his discovery in an article entitled "De Fo shuo dazangjing mulu yinyuan ji." |
64-65 |