The Fayuan Zhulin, or the Collection of Pearls in the Garden of Dharma compiled by Daoshi 道世, an early Tang monk is a collection that combines the Buddhist scriptures, interpretations of these scriptures, and miraculous stories to verify these scriptures. Due to its comprehensive collections of scriptures and stories, this text is regarded as an encyclopedia of Buddhism. In this text many early records related to the Western Pure Land of the Amita Buddha can be found. In Chinese Buddhism, Pure Land believes usually follow a type of practice that aims for the rebirth in the Western Pure Land through a whole-hearted worship and homage to the Buddha Amita. In Fayuan Zhulin, two types of miraculous tales related to the Amita Buddha’s Pure Land can be detected. One type of the stories portray examples of rebirth in the Western Pure Land and the other type record incidents in which the Amita Buddha were present in this world for the salvation of sentient beings. Approximately around the time that Daoshi 道世was compiling the Fayuan Zhulin , the founders of the Pure Land School such as Tan Luan 曇鸞, and DaoChuo道綽were making the Pure Land School more accessible to the populace by simplifying the method of Pure Land practice and through the compilation of the so called wangsheng zhuan (往生傳, biographies of the Buddhists who attained Rebirth) to promote the Pure Land Practice. In the Fayuan Zhulin and these Biographies of Buddhists who attained Rebirth, we find different descriptions of the same miraculous incidents that reflect the different authors’ focus in their descriptions and the different perspectives adopted by these authors in their observation of these incidents. After Tang Dynasty, the Pure Land Belief became much more popular in China and more Biographies of Buddhists who attained rebirth were compiled within the Pure Land School. Through a comparison and Contrast of the Pure Land miraculous stories recorded in the Fayuan Zhulin and the Pure Land School wangsheng zhuan, we can obtain a more clear picture of the development of the wangsheng zhuan in China and how some of the later wangsheng zhuan were influenced by the Fayuan Zhulin. Above all, through a contrast of the biographies of Pure Land School founders such as Tanluan and Daochuo recorded in the Fayuan Zhulin and the Pure Land School biographies, the intention and perspectives underlying these Pure Land school biographies would become clear to us.
This thesis contains six chapters. The first chapter is introduction in which I discuss what motivated me to investigate this topic, my method of research and a literature review for related research. The second chapter deals with Daoshi’s biography and briefly introduces the historical development of the Pure Land belief associated with the Amita Buddha in China. The third chapter categorizes the various types of the miraculous stories related to the Amita’s Pure Land collected in the Fayuan Zhulin and attempts to come up with a classification system for these stories. In the fourth chapter, I compare and contrast the stories related to the Amita Pure Land collected in the Fayuan Zhulin and the wangsheng zhuan compiled by the Pure Land School followers from the Tang dynasties through the Ching Dynasty. The focus of my reading center on the characters that appear in both Fayuan Zhulin and the Pure Land School biographies. The Fifth chapter is a detaile
