Daoxuan

Daoxuan
Daoxuan (ICP) (Nara National Museum)
Personal
Born	596 Chang'an, Shaanxi, China
Died	667 Chang'an, Shaanxi, China
Religion	Buddhism
Parent	Qian Shen (Chinese: 錢申)
School	East Asian Dharmaguptaka

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Daoxuan (Chinese: 道宣; pinyin: Dàoxuān; Wade–Giles: Tao-hsüan; 596–667) was an eminent Tang dynasty Chinese Buddhist monk. He is perhaps best known as the patriarch of the four-part Vinaya school (Chinese: 四分律宗).^[1] Daoxuan wrote both the Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks (Xù gāosēng zhuàn 續高僧傳 ) and the Standard Design for Buddhist Temple Construction. Legends retold in his biographies also associate him to a relic of the Buddha which came to be called Daoxuan's tooth (Daoxuan foya 道宣佛牙), one of the four tooth relics enshrined in the capital of Chang'an during the Tang dynasty. He is said to have received the relic from Nezha (Chinese: 那吒; Sanskrit: Naṭa), a divinity associated with Indra.^[2]

Daoxuan wrote five commentaries on the four-part Vinaya known as the Five Great Works of Mount Zhongnan. He was also part of the translation team that assisted Xuanzang in translating sutras from Sanskrit into Chinese.^[3]

Daoxuan was an influential cataloguer.^[4] His catalogue of Buddhist scriptures, the Catalogue of the Inner Canon of the Great Tang (Datang neidian lu 大唐內典錄), aka Nèidiǎn Catalog (T2149) in 10 scrolls (juan 卷), was commissioned by the Emperor Gaozong and completed in 664. The Nèidiǎn Catalog helped to define the shape of the Chinese Buddhist Canon in future years. Influenced by the apocalyptic Mo-fa or theory of the end of the Dharma, Daoxuan was particularly concerned to expose and denounce suspicious (yiwei 疑偽) or fake (wei 偽) sutras. He even witnessed the wholesale burning of texts suspected of being fake.^[5] The Nèidiǎn Catalog is also notable for being the first bibliographical work to attribute the Heart Sutra to Xuánzàng, who died in 664, the same year as the catalogue was completed.

Daoxuan is also noted for his admonishments to the Emperor Gaozong of the Tang for issuing an edict requiring that monastics bow before the emperor. His petition succeeded in the cancellation of that edict.^[6]