领域：学术论文 · 人文科学

Cave 17 at the Dunhuang cave complex is a cache of religious texts and social records sealed at the beginning of the eleventh century and discovered in 1900. Legal documents from this cave show that ordained Buddhist monks and nuns in Dunhuang actively engaged in legal practices as plaintiffs, defendants, witnesses, mediators, and representatives in the trial of various disputes. Where did these monks and nuns get their legal education? And what roles did they play in circulating legal knowledge in Dunhuang? Addressing these questions is crucial for my larger project on the interaction between religion and law in China as they can help paint a fuller picture of how Buddhism and the state interacted in the legal arena in pre-modern China. Elsewhere, I have discussed how the jurisdictional boundary between the state and the Buddhist monastic community shifted in central China and analyzed cases in which individual monks and nuns litigated in the lay courts in Dunhuang. This article aims to understand the legal landscape on the frontier in Dunhuang, with a particular focus on ordained Buddhists’ access to legal texts and the roles they played in producing and preserving them. My primary sources are colophons on the Chinese manuscripts of Buddhist monastic law texts (Vinaya) discovered in the Dunhuang cave 17.

My examination of the said colophons will reveal that ordained Buddhist monks and nuns played various roles in the circulation of legal knowledge in Dunhuang. They were patrons, scribes, and owners of various Buddhist monastic law texts circulated in Dunhuang. In cave 17, we can find Buddhist monastic law texts of all the major surviving traditions. The majority of them are law texts transmitted from the Dharmaguptaka tradition, but those of the Mahāsāṃghika, Sarvāstivāda, Mahīśāsaka, and Mūlasarvāstivāda traditions have also appeared in the same cave. These monastic law texts cover Buddhist liturgical and disciplinary guidelines ranging from the five precepts for the lay Buddhist householder, to the eight temporary fasting precepts, the 10 precepts for ordained novices, the six additional precepts for probationary Buddhist nuns, and the full set of disciplinary rules for fully ordained Buddhist monks and nuns.

This examination, however, is not comprehensive. Ideally, we need to combine this examination with a study on the Buddhist monastic law texts written in Tibetan and other languages found in cave 17. Since Shayne Clarke and his team at McMaster University are currently working on a project surveying the Tibetan Vinaya texts from the Dunhuang manuscript collection, I did not discuss the Tibetan materials in the present article. It is also important to note that while my discussion below focuses on Buddhist monastic law texts, those were not the only type of legal texts circulated in Dunhuang. In this cave, we also find fragments of the primary legal texts promulgated by the Tang court. These include code, statutes, regulations, and ordinances. Several judicial judgments  from the Tang, one of which I will discuss below, were also found in Dunhuang. Moreover, we have also found damaged copies of the section on The Penal Code  from The Book of the Han.

Before discussing how ordained Buddhists engaged in the copying, collecting, and preserving of Buddhist monastic law texts in Dunhuang, it is necessary to provide an overview of the workflow of text copying in Dunhuang. Scribes in Dunhuang copied Buddhist legal texts over several centuries. The earliest Buddhist monastic law text found in cave 17 is the Sarvāstivāda Prātimokṣa for Ordained Buddhist Monks . The scribe, a Buddhist monk Deyou, stated in the colophon that he copied this text in the southern part of Dunhuang during the summer rainy season retreat in 406, one year after he received his full ordination in 405. Copying of Buddhist monastic law texts continued in Dunhuang without interruption toward the end of the tenth century. Even after Dunhuang fell under Tibetan control, Buddhist text copying continued from 786 to 848.

The Tibetan scholar Zhang Yanqing’s extensive study on the copying of Tibetan Buddhist texts in Dunhuang helps unveil important aspects of the workflow of text copying in this area. At the beginning of the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang, text-copying focused on Chinese Buddhist texts. With support from the Tibetan king Khri gtsug lde brtsan, massive copying of Tibetan Buddhist texts began in 822 and continued in Shazhou until 838. Teams stationed at a particular scriptorium (gur) with multiple scribes and proofreaders copied large texts. Before starting the copying, they would secure a mother copy (dpe’) and proofread it multiple times. Each scribe would receive a mother copy of their targeted text and paper, and an administrator would record the distribution of paper and mother copies. A loan record on Pelliot chinois 3010v illustrates this practice. This manuscript states that on the seventeenth day in the fifth month in a mouse year , Sanjie monastery, one of the local monasteries in Dunhuang, borrowed six bundles of the Chinese translation of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya  and their brocade bundle covers for copying . When a scribe completed a copy, a proofreader would check the replica against the original. It was normal to proofread the copied Tibetan Buddhist texts at least three or four times, or 10 times in rare cases.

In contrast to proofreading the Buddhist text commissioned by the Tibetan king anywhere between three times and 10 times, proofreaders normally proofread the Chinese copies of Buddhist monastic law texts found in Dunhuang once, twice, or none. For instance, Jingtu monastery owned a copy of the Commentary on the Dharmaguptaka Prātimokṣa. Its colophon informs us that an unspecified proofreader proofread it once at the Mogao cave on the first day in the third month in a horse year.

Copies of the Buddhist monastic law texts found in cave 17 were produced in various locations. Some of them were locally copied in Dunhuang. On the nineteenth day in the eleventh month in a dog year, an unspecified scribe copied A Short Collection of Buddhist Monastic Law Texts at Bao’en monastery in Dunhuang. On the twenty-eighth day in the third month in a mouse year, another unspecified scribe copied the third scroll of the Commentary on the Dharmaguptaka Prātimokṣa at Yongshou monastery in Shazhou. This copy was proofread and punctuated in red ink. On the twentieth day in the tenth month in the seventh year of a certain era, a Buddhist monk, Riding , copied The Dharmaguptaka Prātimokṣa for Ordained Buddhist Monks at Dayun monastery. In the twelfth month in a mouse year, a monk from Jinguangming monastery, who was also a Vinaya master, copied the Commentary on the Dharmaguptaka Prātimokṣa  for circulation. On the twentieth day in the fourth month in the second year during the Qianyuan era (759), monk Jingshen from Longxing monastery copied the Dharmaguptaka Prātimokṣa for Ordained Buddhist Monks. Another Longxing monastery monk, Zhizhao, copied the Dharmaguptaka Prātimokṣa for Ordained Buddhist Nuns. From the eighth day in the fifth month to the third day in the sixth month in a horse year, a Buddhist monk, Liji, from Jinguangming monastery copied one scroll of the Tang Buddhist monk Daoxuans (596–667) Randomly Selected Ecclesiastical Proceedings: Abridgements and Emendations to the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya for his monastery’s elder monk, Jinyao, at the beginning of that year’s rainy season retreat.

Another local site where multiple Buddhist legal texts were copied is the Dongshan solitary monastic dwelling, which was most likely one of many such dwellings built near the Dunhuang cave complex. At least three surviving Buddhist law texts were copied at this site in a tiger year. On the sixteenth day in the sixth month in a tiger year, an unspecified individual completed proofreading the Notes on Conduct: Abridgements and Emendations to the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya  at the Dongshan solitary monastic dwelling. One month later, on the fifteenth day in the seventh month of a tiger year, an unspecified scribe finished copying a single-scroll text, A Concise Copy of the Vinaya  at Dongshan, identifiable with the Dongshan solitary monastic dwelling mentioned above. The owner of this copied text was a Buddhist nun, Shengzang. A few months later, on the twentieth day in the tenth month in a tiger year, an unspecified scribe continued copying and proofreading the fourth scroll of the Commentary on the Dharmaguptaka Prātimokṣa.

A bit further away from Dunhuang, the Xiuduo monastery in Ganzhou Prefecture in todays Gansu province was also an important site for the circulation of legal and other Buddhist knowledge in Dunhuang. A Buddhist monk, Huizhen, copied The Sūtra on the Twenty-four Precepts for the Faithful Bodhisattvas Told by the Buddha at this Xiuduo monastery. The date was unspecified. This monastery was also where the Tibetan Buddhist monk, Chos grub (Ch. Facheng), taught and translated texts.

Turfan, located about 800 kilometers to the Northwest of Dunhuang, appeared to be another productive center for copying Buddhist law texts. On the fourth day in the seventh month in the second year during the Guangde era, a Buddhist monk, Yilin, copied Daoxuans Notes on Conduct: Abridgements and Emendations to the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya at a place specified as Peijiata in the Nanping city in the Xizhou Prefecture, in today’s Turfan. At the end of the third and last scroll of this text, the colophons mention the scribe’s name, where and when he copied it. At the end of the middle scroll of this text, an unspecified proofreader wrote in red ink that he proofread the copied text in the early half of the sixth month in a snake year  at the garden of a central Asian mound, whose exact location remains unknown. Because the nearest snake year after 764 was 765, this text was likely proofread in 765.
Some of the Buddhist monastic law texts traveled to Dunhuang from central China. In the Dunhuang cave 17, we found at least two Buddhist monastic law texts previously owned by ordained Buddhists in central China. One is The Manual for Ordained Buddhists to Receive the Bodhisattva Precepts, which was copied under imperial order in the fifth month in the eighteenth year during the Tianjian era (519) during the Liang Dynasty. A layperson, Dai Mengtong, was the scribe, a certain Bi Xianzhi read the text, and its owner was a Buddhist monk, Huiming, from a well-known Waguan monastery located in todays Nanjing. Waguan monastery was first founded in 364 and was still in use during the Liang dynasty. Huiming was likely an influential monk. A few years before the copying of this text, monk Huiming from Waguan monastery collaborated with monk Fayun from Guangzhai monastery and others to preach on the need to stop eating meat during the Tianjian era.


翻译考点：
考点1：“Sarvāstivāda Prātimokṣa for Ordained Buddhist Monks”推荐译为“《十诵律比丘戒本》”
考点2：“bundle”必须译为“帙”
考点3：“Dharmaguptaka Vinaya”必须译为“《四分律》”
考点4：“Randomly Selected Ecclesiastical Proceedings: Abridgements and Emendations to the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya”必须译为“《四分律删补随机羯磨》”
考点5：“Notes on Conduct: Abridgements and Emendations to the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya”必须译为“《四分律删繁补阙行事钞》”
考点6：“solitary monastic dwelling”必须译为“兰若”
考点7：“in red ink”必须译为“朱笔”