Early Tang monk of Xuanzang's school who edited and expanded Huili's five-chapter life of Xuanzang into the ten-chapter Biography of the Tripitaka Master of Da Ci'en Monastery.
Mural guide
In a temple courtyard at dusk, a great bronze bell hangs at the right and incense smoke rises from a bronze urn; monks in orange robes and plainly dressed visitors walk toward a lamplit hall, lotus flowers bloom in a stone basin, and a gold prayer wheel stands at the left.
Yancong was an early Tang monk whose family and home are unknown. The Song Biographies of Eminent Monks says he came to the capital at the end of the Zhenguan era to study under Xuanzang and was a gifted writer, versed in both Buddhist and classical learning. Huili had written a five-chapter life of Xuanzang and hidden the draft before he died; when his disciples recovered it, they asked Yancong to arrange it, write a preface and add annotations. The result, in ten chapters with a preface dated 688, is the Biography of the Tripitaka Master of Da Ci'en Monastery, the fullest account of Xuanzang's life and journey to India. Yancong also compiled a collection of documents arguing that monks need not bow to laymen. His death is not recorded.
Life and times
UnknownBornTangjoined Xuanzang's circle at the end of the Zhenguan era (c. 649); prefaced the Biography of the Tripitaka Master in 688
Expanded Huili's life of Xuanzang into ten chapters
Early Tang
The preface to the Biography of the Tripitaka Master of Da Ci'en Temple is signed 'the Tang monk Shi Yancong'. It says the biography first had five chapters, composed by Huili, formerly a monk of the Weiguo West Temple, and that Yancong rearranged the text and annotated it into ten chapters.
MUZIChinese Matrix
Tangjoined Xuanzang's circle at the end of the Zhenguan era (c. 649); prefaced the Biography of the Tripitaka Master in 688
Literature · Prose12