Amitābha Worship in Huijiao’s Gaoseng zhuan

Abstract

In this paper, I examine stories of Amitābha worship in Huijiao’s 慧皎 Gaoseng zhuan 高僧伝 by extracting their stories and identifying their locations and networks of faith.

The text contains twenty-four cases of Amitābha worshippers, many of which had ties with Lushan Huiyuan 廬山慧遠 as the center of a network of Amitābha worshippers.

However, there are some who had little or no relationship with Huiyuan. Additionally, most of them were from the northern part of China, and Huijiao’s descriptions of their lives are very brief.

Therefore, it is highly likely that Huijiao’s personal preferences were reflected in how he selected the information include in the biographies.