BuddhistRoad Paper 1.3 “Toward a History of Chödrup’s (fl. First Half of 9th C.,Tib. Chos grub, Chin, Facheng 法成) Monastic Activities: An Introduction and a Working Chronology”

Building on previous studies, especially those in Japanese and Chinese, this paper is intended as an introduction to Go Chödrup’s (fl. first half of 9th c., Tib. ’Go Chos grub, Chin. Facheng 法成) monastic career through a wide-ranging survey of primary sources from Dunhuang. Apart from offering an outline of Chödrup’s translations from Chinese into Tibetan, which are relatively better known to Buddhist scholars, this paper further conducts a preliminary study of Chödrup’s translations from Tibetan and Sanskrit into Chinese. This part of the research, presented in section 2, highlights Chödrup’s mastery of the three languages and his efforts in promoting the cross-cultural fertilisation of diverse Buddhist teachings in Dunhuang. Section 3, devoted to the commentaries and lecture notes produced by Chödrup, casts a spotlight on his identity as a Buddhist scholar who integrated various doctrinal schools in contemporary India, Tibetan, and Chinese Buddhist circles into his own teachings. The two active intellectual lineages of Vasubandhu’s (3rd–4th c.?) Yogācāra teachings—one being Xuanzang (600/602–664, 玄奘)-Wonch’uk (613–696, 圓測)-Tankuang (ca. 700–ca. 785, 曇曠) lineage, the other that of Kamalaśīla (ca. 740–ca. 795) and other intermediate Indian masters (such as Jñānadatta)—converged in Chödrup’s oeuvre. The survey of Chödrup’s works also yields a working chronology of his monastic activities, which provides a clearer historical context for these works and more vividly reflects the localisation of Buddhism in Dunhuang as part of a larger network of Buddhism in Eastern Central Asia involving the in-depth interaction and synthesis of diverse Buddhist teachings ranging from Indian to Tibetan and Sinitic influences.