| Chapter 1: | The Life and Times of Zanning |
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the works of a Buddhist. The point is that Zanning, in Wang’s eyes, is no ordinary Buddhist, and deserves respect and admiration according to literary criteria established for the scholar class (shi) at the Song court.
Heirs of Śākyamuni refer to Buddhist writings as scriptures containing the essential teaching (neidian 內典) and Confucian writings as external learning (waixue 外學). Buddhists skilled in poetry (shi 詩) are common, but those with literary skill (skill in wen 工文) are rare. The only Buddhist to master all four of these (knowledge of Buddhist and Confucian writings; skill in poetry and wen) is the Great Master [Zanning].36
What follows in Wang’s preface is a “biography” more typical of a secular official than a Buddhist monk, a tribute to a respected master of wen, with scant mention of Zanning’s Buddhist associations. Zanning’s career was divided into two distinct periods. The first period corresponds to Zanning’s career in Wuyue, before joining the Song court. The second period corresponds to Zanning’s career at the Song court of Emperor Taizong (r. 976-997) and the “current emperor” Zhenzong (r. 997-1022). The Xiaochu ji preface further divides the second period of Zanning’s career into two phases, according to the two emperors Zanning served under at the Song court. The last phase includes a recapitulation of Zanning’s accomplishments, a summation of his successful career, typical of Chinese biographies. The following account is based on the information Wang Yucheng provides in his Preface.
Zanning was born into the Gao 高 family, taking the name Zanning when he became a monk. His mother’s maiden name was Zhou 周. Neither the Gao family or Zhou family appear to have been prominent. The Gao ancestors, we are told, hailed from the region of Bohai 渤海, the westernmost part of the Yellow sea, extending from the Shandong peninsula in the south to the Liaodong peninsula in the north. This is a vast area encompassing hundreds of miles of territory.37 At the end of the Sui dynasty, three hundred years before Zanning’s birth, his ancestors allegedly moved to the Deqing 德清 district of Wuxing 吳興 prefecture,