Sengyou (; 445–518 AD) was a Buddhist monk and early medieval Chinese

bibliographer Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliograph ...

and noted chiefly for being the author of ''Collected Records Concerning the Tripitaka'' (出三藏記集 '' Chu sanzang ji ji'', T 2145), which includes a catalogue of Buddhist texts translated into Chinese, and the ''Collection on the Propagation and Clarification of Buddhism'' (弘明集 ''Hong Ming Ji'', T 2102) Sengyou's ancestral home was Xiapi in Pengcheng Commandery (northwest of modern Suining,

Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...

). However, his father moved to Jiankang (建康), where he was born. His secular name was Yu. As a young boy he practiced devotions at Jianchu Monastery. At 14, rather than acquiesce to an arranged marriage, he took novice vows and entered Dinglin Monastery,

Zhongshan Zhongshan ( zh, c=中山 ), alternately romanized via Cantonese as Chungshan, is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, China. As of the 2020 census, the whole city with 4,418,060 inhabitants is n ...

Jiankang Jiankang (), or Jianye (), as it was originally called, was the capital city of the Eastern Wu (229–265 and 266–280 CE), the Jin dynasty (265–420), Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420 CE) and the Southern Dynasties (420–552), including the Ch ...

. He was ordained as a

bhikkhu A ''bhikkhu'' (, ) is an ordained male in Buddhist monasticism. Male, and female monastics (''bhikkhunī''), are members of the Sangha (Buddhist community). The lives of all Buddhist monastics are governed by a set of rules called the pratimok� ...

aged 20 and received instruction in

Vinaya The Vinaya (Pali and Sanskrit: विनय) refers to numerous monastic rules and ethical precepts for fully ordained monks and nuns of Buddhist Sanghas (community of like-minded ''sramanas''). These sets of ethical rules and guidelines devel ...

by Faying (d.480). He became renown as a master of the Vinaya.

''Collected Records Concerning the Tripitaka''

Although there were earlier works of bibliography with respect to Buddhist texts at the time, Sengyou's ''Collected Records Concerning the Tripitaka'' ('' Chu sanzang ji ji'') introduced important innovations in how the texts were arranged, including a hierarchy of authenticity. Not only were Buddhist texts continually trickling in along the

Silk Road The Silk Road was a network of Asian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over , it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the ...

, but the Chinese had begun to pass off local productions as authentic Indian

sutra ''Sutra'' ()Monier Williams, ''Sanskrit English Dictionary'', Oxford University Press, Entry fo''sutra'' page 1241 in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a ...

s. Sengyou proposed criteria for assessing the authenticity of Buddhist sutras at a time when many fake or apocryphal texts were in circulation. He was particularly focussed on the translator of a text, and this made him suspicious of unattributed texts. As Tanya Storch says, "Absence of information about the translator was a signal that it might be a compilation by a Chinese person who did not understand Sanskrit and had never studied Buddhism in the west .e. India The ''Chu sanzang ji ji'' is presented in five sections # A discussion on the provenance of translated scriptures, # A record of (new) titles and their listings in earlier catalogues, # Prefaces to scriptures, # Miscellaneous treatises on specific doctrines, and # Biographies of translators. "By subjecting Buddhist scriptures to the textual criticism similar to that applied to the Confucian classics, Sengyou managed to elevate the literary and social status of the

Tripiṭaka There are several Buddhist canons, which refers to the various scriptural collections of Buddhist sacred scriptures or the various Buddhist scriptural canons.

.” At the Liang court, Sengyou's work was overshadowed by the catalogue of Baochang () who produced his catalogue in 521 CE. However, it is Sengyou's catalogue that survives. Sengyou was assisted in his literary work by his student, Liu Xie,Knechtges and Chang 2014: 806. who went on to write an important work on literary aesthetics.

Bibliography

* Buswell, R and Lopez D. (Eds) ''The Princeton Encyclopedia of Buddhism''. * Knechtges David R. and Chang Taiping (eds). 2014. ''Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature'' (vol. 2) Brill * Storch, T. (2014). ''The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography''. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.

Notes

{{Authority control 445 births 518 deaths Liu Song Buddhists Chinese bibliographers Writers from Nanjing Chinese spiritual writers Liang dynasty writers Southern Qi Buddhists Liang dynasty Buddhists Northern and Southern dynasties Buddhist monks