Jianzhen

Also known as Tangda Heshang

Jianzhen, of the Chunyu family of Jiangyang in Yangzhou, became a monk at the Dayun monastery there at fourteen and was fully ordained at the Shiji monastery in Chang'an, where he studied monastic discipline; back in Yangzhou he lectured on the Vinaya across the Yangzi and Huai region. In 742 the Japanese monks Yoei and Fusho asked him to carry the ordination rites to Japan. Five attempts at the crossing failed; the fifth left him adrift on Hainan, and on the way back north Yoei died and Jianzhen went blind. In 753 he sailed with a returning Japanese embassy, landed in Satsuma, and in 754 reached Nara, where he set up an ordination platform at Todaiji and gave the bodhisattva precepts to the retired emperor Shomu. He built the Toshodaiji in 759 and died there four years later, aged seventy-six. Omi no Mifune's Eastern Journey of the Great Tang Monk tells his story, and his lacquer statue, a Japanese National Treasure, was shown in Yangzhou in 1980.