Yang Wenhui 楊文會

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Yáng Wénhuì 楊文會 (1837-1911)
Yang Wenhui

Courtesy name: Yáng Rénshān 楊仁山

  • Born 1837 (11/16 Dàoguāng 道光 17) in Shídài county 石埭縣 (modern Shítái 石台), Anhuī 安徽
  • Died October 8, 1911 (8/17 Xuāntǒng 宣統 3)
Notable Associates:
  • Article editor: Gregory Adam Scott

Yáng Wénhuì 楊文會 (1837-1911) has been called the progenitor of the modern Buddhist revival in China; he established a sūtra publishing house and school for monastics in Nánjīng 南京.

Contents

Biography

Yáng was born into an gentry family. His father, Yáng Pǔ'ān 楊樸庵 had attained the jìnshì 進士 degree in the same year as the eminent official and military leader Zēng Guófān 曾國番. Displaced in Hángzhōu 杭州 by the Taiping Rebellion in the early 1860s, Yáng chanced upon a copy of The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana 大乘起信論 in a bookstore, and from that time on he had a deepening engagement with Buddhist texts.

Yáng founded the Jinling Scriptural Press 金陵刻經處 in Nánjīng 南京 in 1866 to reprint Buddhist sūtras. In 1878 he left China to visit England and France with the mission of Zēng Jìzé 曾紀澤, bringing back several scientific instruments that he donated to researchers in China. During another trip to England in 1886 he met the Japanese Buddhist Nanjō Bunyū 南条文雄 and started a correspondence with him. With Nanjō's help, Yáng was able to import over 300 Buddhist scriptures from Japan that had been lost within China. In 1894 he worked with the British missionary Timothy Richard 李提摩太 to translate The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana into English.

In 1908 he opened the Jetavana Monastery 祇洹精舍[1] to educate lay and ordained Buddhists, but the school closed after only two years because of a lack of funding. Both Tàixū 太虛 and Ōuyáng Jìan 歐陽漸 attended classes there, Dìxián 諦閑 lectured on Tiāntái 天台, and the poet-monk Sū Mànshū 蘇曼殊 taught English. In 1910 Yáng founded the Buddhist Research Society 佛學研究會 and served as its head.

The grounds of the press would later house the Chinese Inner Studies College (Zhīnà nèixué yuàn 支那內學院) founded by Ōuyáng Jìan and Lǚ Chéng 呂澂 in 1922.

Other Associates

Important Works

  • 大宗地玄文本論略註
  • 佛教初學課本
  • 十宗略說
  • 觀無量壽佛經略論

Notes

  1. ↑ Perhaps named after the Jetavana Anāthapiṇḍada-ārāma monastery, the first permanent Buddhist institution in India. See Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, "祇園精舍". Location of the monastery [1].

References

  • 劉成有. 近現代居士佛學研究. 成都: 巴屬書社, 2002. pp. 51-107.
  • Yú Língbō 于凌波. Zhōngguó jìnxiàndài fójiào rénwù zhì 中國近現代佛教人物志. Běijīng 北京: Zōngjiào wénhuà chūbǎnshè 宗教文化出版社, 1995. pp. 297-321.
  • -----. 楊仁山居士評傳. 台北: 新文豐出版股份有限公司, 民國84 (1995).
  • Goldfuss, Gabriele. Vers un bouddhisme du XXe siècle. Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 2001.
  • Yáng Wénhuì 楊文會. Yáng Rénshān quánjí 楊仁山全集. Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 2000.
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