Late Qing Buddhist layman from Shidai in Anhui who founded the Jinling Sutra Press in Nanjing in 1866 and led the modern revival of Buddhist learning
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.
Yang Wenhui, courtesy name Renshan, came from Shidai in Anhui. Converted to Buddhism after reading the Awakening of Faith, he founded the Jinling Sutra Press in Nanjing in 1866 to cut and print scriptures, and its woodblocks survive. He twice went to Europe with the envoys Zeng Jize and Liu Ruifen, and in London he met the Japanese scholar Nanjo Bunyu, through whom he recovered and printed many Buddhist texts long lost in China. In 1908 he opened the Jetavana School for monks and lay students, among them Taixu and Ouyang Jingwu. He died in Nanjing in 1911.
Moved to Nanjing and founded the Jinling Sutra Press
1866
Yang Wenhui (courtesy name Renshan) was a lay Buddhist of the late Qing. In 1866 he moved to Nanjing and founded the Jinling Sutra Press, where he taught for more than forty years and had over a million copies of Buddhist scriptures printed and circulated. In 1886 he met the Japanese scholar Nanjo Bunyu in London and afterwards worked with him to bring back from Japan Buddhist texts that had been lost in China, then edited and published them. The press also set up the Qihuan Vihara, and Taixu, Ouyang Jingwu and Zhang Taiyan were among those who came to study there.
Qing