Bukka Engo Zenji Hekiganroku 佛果圜悟禪師碧巖錄 or Hekiganroku or Hekiganshu Emerald or Blue Cliff Record
Best.-Nr. 7036Printed in Chinese with Japanese reading marks. 11 columns per page 21 characters per column. 79; 59; 51; 49; 67 folding leaves. Ten parts in five vols. 8vo 240 x 149 mm. orig. brown wrappers new stitching. Japan: mid-Muromachi ca. 1440-50. An extremely rare and important “mid-Muromachi” Gozan-ban edition of The Blue Cliff Record in Chinese: Pi yen lu a collection of Chan Buddhist koan. These were verbal tests used to practice or test a student’s progress in Zen compiled in the Song Dynasty and expanded by the great Northern Song Chan master Yuanwu Keqin 1063-1135 abbot of Tianning Wanshou Chan Monastery in Beijing. The text was first printed in China in 1125 or 1128 and has long been celebrated for both its startling beauty and profound complexity. Around 1140 one of Yuan Wu’s successors Ta Hui destroyed the printing blocks and copies of the Pi yen lu because the work’s rapid and widespread popularity made him fear that its beauty of expression would distract its readers from seeking enlightenment directly within themselves. The text was brought back from China by Dogen 1200-53 the Japanese Buddhist priest who was a founder of the Soto school of Zen in Japan. He had studied in China for four or five years and returned to stay at the Kenninji temple where he introduced many texts. This text was first printed in Japan about 1336-50 early-Nanbokucho by Gyokuho Shorin at the Kenninji; there is a copy at the National Diet Library. Our edition is a reprint of that first Japanese edition using the same woodblocks with minor changes. A later edition appeared in the Donald and Mary Hyde sale lot 65. “For some time Chan monks had been in the habit of extracting snippets from the ‘records’ yulu of past masters isolated them as ‘ancient precedents’ and commenting on them sometimes in verse sometimes in prose. By the mid-eleventh century the core situation was known as a ‘case to be investigated’ or a gong’an. The process was incremental and difficult to stop. Yuanwu’s Emerald Cliff Record for example took a previous eleventh-century collection entitled Master Xuetou’s verses on a hundred old cases and added an introduction and extensive commentary to each ‘case’ sometimes also dropping in comments on the appositeness or more usually inappositeness of the relevant verse so becoming in his turn ‘magistrate.’ A gong’an collection therefore reveals many layers all of them dedicated to undercutting the stability of language while at the same time playing a complex game of competing authorities. Herein lies their fascination.”–Richard Bowring The Religious Traditions of Japan Cambridge U.P. p. 301. “Gozan-ban is a general term embracing all those books published by monks of the Zen sect chiefly at the five Zen monasteries at Kamakura and the five at Kyoto over a period of more than 200 years between mid-Kamakura and late Muromachi. The appearance of the printed page in most Gozan editions follows a distinctly Chinese style. The effect is somewhat dense and crowded caused by packing the Chinese characters tightly together with more regard for economy of space than for aesthetic effect. In this the Gozan editions differ markedly from all other early Japanese printed books which are more generously spaced. The reasons for this are twofold: the books tend to be chiefly reprints of Chinese song and Yuan editions and during the fourteenth century many Chinese blockcutters came over from the continent and practised their craft of a semi-commercial basis and on a fairly large scale.”–K.B. Gardner “Centres of Printing in Medieval Japan: late Heian to early Edo period” in British Library Occasional Papers 11. Japanese Studies ed. by Yu-Ying Brown London: 1990 p. 164. PROVENANCE: This copy has the seals of Hirokata Yashiro 1758-1841 “Shinobazu Bunko”; Awa no Kuni Bunko; and Goroza Uchino b. 1873 “Kyotei Bunko”. It later belonged to the great collector and bibliographer of early Japanese books Kazuma Kawase 1906-99 and has his seal. The chitsu has Kawase’s manuscript title label stating in trans.: “Gozan-ban. Hekiganroku. Mid-Muromachi edition. Shinobazu Bunko provenance. Kazuma put the title on this label” also with his seal. There are four Prefaces: the first is undated the second dated 1300 the third dated 1305 and the fourth is dated 1304. Two leaves of manuscript probably written by Yashiro have been inserted at the beginning of Vol. I. They provide a commentary and a sort of title-page the work was issued without a title. Following Part I there are another two leaves of manuscript relating to this text. Following the tenth part are five Afterwards dated 1125 undated 1302 1317 and 1317. In fine condition all contained in a modern wooden box. The top of the box has been covered in a most attractive silk brocade. A few natural paper flaws and minor staining. Berkeley has an edition of this text but because of the very vague WorldCat cataloguing it is impossible to tell which exact edition it is. ⧠Kornicki Language Scripts and Chinese Texts in East Asia p. 245. unknown books
Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller, Inc. · Vereinigte Staaten85.000,00 $≈ 75.940,36 €
