The Buddha’s life in parallel couplets: A Hagiography of Tathāgata Śākyamuni’s Attaining Enlightenment attributed to Wang Bo

This essay is a study of “A Record of Tathāgata Śākyamuni’s Attaining Enlightenment” (“Shijia rulai chengdao ji” 釋迦如來成道記; hereafter, Chengdao ji) attributed to Wang Bo 王勃 (650–676?). The writing is so elegant that no suspicion has been raised against this attribution in relevant scholarship, but in fact the attribution is dubious and therefore is the foremost issue to address. Studied in connection with related genres, Buddhist references, Wang Bo’s idiosyncrasies in literary composition, and relevant historical background, the false attribution of the Chengdao ji is demonstrated. The piece originally belonged to the genre of the stele inscription (bei 碑), which is typically composed of a “preface” (xu 序) followed by an “inscription” (ming 銘) in verse form. It later came to be called a ji 記 (record) mainly because of its narrative nature. Based on the intellectual and literary background, especially how the genre developed into exquisite parallel prose in the preface, the present study evaluates the innovation and aesthetic appeal achieved by the Chengdao ji with a focus on its visual and aural effects, as well as the art of repetition. These marked rhetorical devices are decisive in this recast version of the Buddha’s life, his teachings, and the formation of the religion and its lineage, all in highly artistic literary forms of parallel prose and pentasyllabic verse. The appendix is an annotated translation of the Chengdao ji. Copyright © 2024 T’ang Studies Society.