by MAUDGALYĀYANA, The Story of
Two full-page frontis. woodcuts, printed on each side of first leaf of Vol. I & one full-page woodcut on final leaf of Vol. II. 61.5; 107 folding leaves. Three parts in two vols. 8vo (287 x 171 mm.), orig. wrappers (Vol. I) & modern wrappers (Vol. II), stitched (orig. stitching in Vol. I). Quần phương hạ xã: Anh quang tự, 1928.
First edition of this very rare Vietnamese edition of the story of Maudgalyāyana. The journey of Maudgalyāyana (rendered in Chinese as mulian 目連), one of the Buddha’s earliest disciples, into the most abysmal and gruesome of Buddhist hells in his quest to rescue the soul of his mother was perhaps the single most important story in Chinese popular Buddhism since medieval times. The detailed depictions of tortures inflicted upon sinners relayed in Maudgalyāyana’s story made Buddhist cosmology and morality vividly graspable to the laity, and since the 12th century at the latest, staged performances of his underworld travel have accompanied the Ghost Festival held at the full moon of the seventh month, attended by masses of people across social strata. These theatrical retellings of Maudgalyāyana’s travels remained highly popular until the early 20th century and are still sometimes staged today. The tale’s popularity and influence since medieval times had been so immense that David Johnson, a historian of Chinese popular culture, writes that “among the tens of thousands of Chinese operas, none had deeper religious significance, or was watched with greater excitement, or was integrated into a more complex ritual matrix, than [Maudgalyāyana]” (“Actions Speak Louder than Words: The Cultural Significance of Chinese Ritual Opera,” in Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual, IEAS Publications: 1989, p. 2).
Unsurprisingly, then, there was wide dissemination of Maudgalyāyana narratives and rituals not only in China but throughout East Asia in local and vernacular retellings of his story in a large range of religious and literary genres. Our copy of Penitence at the Compassionate Ritual Grounds of Maudgalyāyana, printed in northern Vietnam in 1928, is one such example. It opens with two illustrations from the canonical narrative of Maudgalyāyana: the assembly of disciples attentively surrounding the Buddha, and Maudgalyāyana entering Avīci Hell riding a cloud, holding the Buddha’s magical staff. The book itself is simultaneously a narrative account of Maudgalyāyana’s travels and a Buddhist ritual of penitence, opening as it does with prayers of refuge and devotion to “Shakyamuni, the benevolent father” (Thích-ca từ phụ 釋迦慈父, an interesting appellation). The prayer sections also make use of the placeholding name giáp mỗ 甲某, which during ritual readings of the text was probably to be replaced with one’s own name.
Despite sharing the same title as a canonical Buddhist scripture (T. 1909) composed in the Liang dynasty, a comparison of contents suggests that ours is a related but substantially different text. The first Preface makes it clear that this text is indeed based on an original in the “northern country” — i.e., China — and an earlier, domestic edition was made possible by the secular and ritual offerings of the monk Trí Giác 智覺. For some time, the woodblocks had been stored in the Trác điền temple 卓田寺 in Bình Lục 平陸, Hà Nam province, and did not circulate widely. As a result, a reprint was made in Tự Đức 9 (1856) by a monk named Thanh Tuyền Bhikṣu 清泉比丘. His Preface, also dated 1856, is found in the first volume.
By the 1920s, however, there was another problem: there were too many variants of the text in circulation, which became a source of confusion. The monk Thanh Hưởng 清亨, using the earlier woodblocks stored at the Anh quang temple 英光寺 (Quần phương hạ 羣芳下 commune, Nam Định province) and with the guidance of Phổ Tụ 普聚, collated various editions in circulation and created a new edition. This editorial history might explain why our copy does not correspond to known Chinese versions of the text, as it probably has incorporated local Vietnamese elements. The woodblocks were carved by two craftsmen (named Phó Dung 付瑢 and Phó Huênh 付轟) from the Liễu choàng xã 柳幢社, with monetary offerings from monks and laypeople across many temples and communes (listed towards the end of the second volume). The carving began in Bảo Đại 1 (1926) and concluded two years later, in 1928; the completed woodblocks were kept at the Anh quang temple.
Despite the country’s long history of Buddhist and Confucian learning, woodblock-printed books published within Vietnam itself are far fewer in number today than their Chinese or Japanese counterparts. This scarcity of extant Vietnamese books is due to a variety of factors, including the cost of local printing, a humid climate that makes preservation difficult, as well as the country’s recent, war-torn past. Outside of Buddhist texts kept by individual temples in Vietnam (whose collections are difficult to access), the bulk of these books are now kept at a handful of institutions such as the Institute of Sino-Nôm Studies in Hanoi and l’École française d’Extrême-Orient in Paris. The catalogue of these collections shows two items with the same title as ours (Viện nghiên cứu Hán nôm AC.607 and AC.647), but there is insufficient detail to determine their editions. We find no Vietnamese woodblock-printed copy by this title on WorldCat.
Very good set. Final three leaves of the second volume are carefully repaired. The full-page woodcut on the final leaf is partially defective at the borders but the main image is completely intact.
❧ Rostislav Berezkin, Many Faces of Mulian: The Precious Scrolls of Late Imperial China (Univ. of Washington: 2017); Beata Grant and Wilt Idema, Escape from Blood Pond Hell: The Tales of Mulian and Woman Huang (Univ. of Washington: 2011); David Johnson (ed.), Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual (IEAS Publications: 1989); Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton: 1988); Yuenan Hannan wenxian ziliaoku 越南漢喃文獻資料庫, Academia Sinica. (Inventory #: 10902)
First edition of this very rare Vietnamese edition of the story of Maudgalyāyana. The journey of Maudgalyāyana (rendered in Chinese as mulian 目連), one of the Buddha’s earliest disciples, into the most abysmal and gruesome of Buddhist hells in his quest to rescue the soul of his mother was perhaps the single most important story in Chinese popular Buddhism since medieval times. The detailed depictions of tortures inflicted upon sinners relayed in Maudgalyāyana’s story made Buddhist cosmology and morality vividly graspable to the laity, and since the 12th century at the latest, staged performances of his underworld travel have accompanied the Ghost Festival held at the full moon of the seventh month, attended by masses of people across social strata. These theatrical retellings of Maudgalyāyana’s travels remained highly popular until the early 20th century and are still sometimes staged today. The tale’s popularity and influence since medieval times had been so immense that David Johnson, a historian of Chinese popular culture, writes that “among the tens of thousands of Chinese operas, none had deeper religious significance, or was watched with greater excitement, or was integrated into a more complex ritual matrix, than [Maudgalyāyana]” (“Actions Speak Louder than Words: The Cultural Significance of Chinese Ritual Opera,” in Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual, IEAS Publications: 1989, p. 2).
Unsurprisingly, then, there was wide dissemination of Maudgalyāyana narratives and rituals not only in China but throughout East Asia in local and vernacular retellings of his story in a large range of religious and literary genres. Our copy of Penitence at the Compassionate Ritual Grounds of Maudgalyāyana, printed in northern Vietnam in 1928, is one such example. It opens with two illustrations from the canonical narrative of Maudgalyāyana: the assembly of disciples attentively surrounding the Buddha, and Maudgalyāyana entering Avīci Hell riding a cloud, holding the Buddha’s magical staff. The book itself is simultaneously a narrative account of Maudgalyāyana’s travels and a Buddhist ritual of penitence, opening as it does with prayers of refuge and devotion to “Shakyamuni, the benevolent father” (Thích-ca từ phụ 釋迦慈父, an interesting appellation). The prayer sections also make use of the placeholding name giáp mỗ 甲某, which during ritual readings of the text was probably to be replaced with one’s own name.
Despite sharing the same title as a canonical Buddhist scripture (T. 1909) composed in the Liang dynasty, a comparison of contents suggests that ours is a related but substantially different text. The first Preface makes it clear that this text is indeed based on an original in the “northern country” — i.e., China — and an earlier, domestic edition was made possible by the secular and ritual offerings of the monk Trí Giác 智覺. For some time, the woodblocks had been stored in the Trác điền temple 卓田寺 in Bình Lục 平陸, Hà Nam province, and did not circulate widely. As a result, a reprint was made in Tự Đức 9 (1856) by a monk named Thanh Tuyền Bhikṣu 清泉比丘. His Preface, also dated 1856, is found in the first volume.
By the 1920s, however, there was another problem: there were too many variants of the text in circulation, which became a source of confusion. The monk Thanh Hưởng 清亨, using the earlier woodblocks stored at the Anh quang temple 英光寺 (Quần phương hạ 羣芳下 commune, Nam Định province) and with the guidance of Phổ Tụ 普聚, collated various editions in circulation and created a new edition. This editorial history might explain why our copy does not correspond to known Chinese versions of the text, as it probably has incorporated local Vietnamese elements. The woodblocks were carved by two craftsmen (named Phó Dung 付瑢 and Phó Huênh 付轟) from the Liễu choàng xã 柳幢社, with monetary offerings from monks and laypeople across many temples and communes (listed towards the end of the second volume). The carving began in Bảo Đại 1 (1926) and concluded two years later, in 1928; the completed woodblocks were kept at the Anh quang temple.
Despite the country’s long history of Buddhist and Confucian learning, woodblock-printed books published within Vietnam itself are far fewer in number today than their Chinese or Japanese counterparts. This scarcity of extant Vietnamese books is due to a variety of factors, including the cost of local printing, a humid climate that makes preservation difficult, as well as the country’s recent, war-torn past. Outside of Buddhist texts kept by individual temples in Vietnam (whose collections are difficult to access), the bulk of these books are now kept at a handful of institutions such as the Institute of Sino-Nôm Studies in Hanoi and l’École française d’Extrême-Orient in Paris. The catalogue of these collections shows two items with the same title as ours (Viện nghiên cứu Hán nôm AC.607 and AC.647), but there is insufficient detail to determine their editions. We find no Vietnamese woodblock-printed copy by this title on WorldCat.
Very good set. Final three leaves of the second volume are carefully repaired. The full-page woodcut on the final leaf is partially defective at the borders but the main image is completely intact.
❧ Rostislav Berezkin, Many Faces of Mulian: The Precious Scrolls of Late Imperial China (Univ. of Washington: 2017); Beata Grant and Wilt Idema, Escape from Blood Pond Hell: The Tales of Mulian and Woman Huang (Univ. of Washington: 2011); David Johnson (ed.), Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual (IEAS Publications: 1989); Stephen F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton: 1988); Yuenan Hannan wenxian ziliaoku 越南漢喃文獻資料庫, Academia Sinica. (Inventory #: 10902)
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