Infiltrating the Hermit Kingdom: The Penetration of Chinese Buddhist Texts into Seventeenth Century Korea

During the Chosŏn period (1392-1910), from 1392 to the 1850s, Korean Buddhism was isolated from the Buddhism of China and Japan by a cordon surrounding the country instituted by the Chosŏn court to prevent Buddhism influencing the Korean population any further. This meant no Buddhist texts or materials were imported, with the exception of a few texts imported by the court in the 1450s to be used to write biographies of the Buddha. The only examples of texts successfully introduced from China were the Shishi yuanliu printed in the seventeenth century and texts salvaged from a Chinese ship sending parts of the Jiaxing Tripitaka, probably from Kaiyuan Monastery in Quanzhou to the Chinese expatriate community in Nagasaki, that was wrecked off the southwest Korean coast in 1681. Although even the king was not allowed a detailed reading of the texts that arrived in 1681, and an entire Tripitaka from a ship marooned in 1637 was quarantined from all readers, Paeg'am Sŏngch'ong (1631-1700) soon gathered over 400 fascicles from the 1681 shipwreck, and printed a number of texts that stimulated the study of Hwaŏm thought and contributed to the development of the Korean monastic educational curriculum that is still used to this day.

關鍵字

Dafangguangfo huayanjing shuchao ； Imja Island ； Paeg'am Sŏngch'ong ； Quanzhou ； Shishi yuanliu

並列摘要

朝鮮王朝時期（1392－1910），從1392年至1850年之間，為了避免佛教對朝鮮人民有任何進一步的影響，朝廷對國家的邊境設下了封鎖線，韓國佛教因而與中國和日本的佛教長期隔離。1450年代，除了少數書籍因為朝廷撰寫佛傳的需要而被引進外，這段期間沒有其他佛教典籍或文物被允許輸入。不過，也有幾個從中國成功輸入的例子，如《釋氏源流》十七世紀的印本，以及1681年從一艘擱淺在朝鮮西南海岸殘破的船上所搶救下來的書籍，那艘船也許是要從泉州開元寺載運中國移民到長崎，船上也裝載了部分的《嘉興藏》。雖然儘管在1637年時，朝鮮也曾有另外一艘船漂流到港口，但是，民眾都不得見到船上所裝載的整部大藏經，而1681年漂流船上的書籍則是連君王也不被允許去詳細閱讀的，但是，栢庵性聰（1631－1700）卻有辦法快速地從1681年的漂流船上，收集到400多卷的典籍，他印刷了其中幾部，因而促進了華嚴思想的研究，而且對於韓國僧侶教育課程的發展甚有貢獻，這幾部書籍並且被沿用至今。