信仰建构与历史书写——惠皎《高僧传》叙述意图分析

Faith Construction and Historical Reproduction:An Analysis on the Narrative Intention of Hui Jiao’s Lives of Eminent Monks

南朝齐梁之际惠皎的《高僧传》较之早出的僧祐《出三藏记集》在取材上多有借鉴,但在叙述方法上却大有不同。在《高僧传》代表性篇目《鸠罗摩什传》中,惠皎记述了更多人物,借助人物间的对话、矛盾与冲突,展现了鸠罗摩什从小乘到大乘转变的心路历程,再现了当时佛门内部不同思想交锋的情况。惠皎改变了早期僧传作品倚重史料收集,不重细节刻画的倾向。《高僧传》的记述,不仅在篇幅字数上有大量的增加,为高僧形象的"立体化"提供了更大的空间,而且《高僧传》的文本在注重史料的同时,更具文学性。这种文学性的手法,并不是完全的故事虚构,而是通过冲突性的情节,对手形象的塑造,着力再现高僧的"精神本真",呈现时代的"内在精神"。惠皎自如地穿梭在文学与史学之间,一方面更好地贯彻作者弘法传教的著述意图,另一方面通过合理的想象与虚构,更加生动地再现了当时佛教内部不同思想的交流碰撞。慧皎突破了传统高僧传记的撰写观念,运用"出文入史"手法,着力探寻历史人物与时代思想背后之"真实",对后世高僧传记的撰写产生了深远影响。这种新的叙述方式,受到了中国传统"纪传体"史学观念与创作手法的影响,亦是佛教传记文学中国化的重要表现。

Hui Jiao’s Lives of Eminent Monks composed during Qi and Liang of the Southern Dynasties has learnt much from the earlier Seng You’s The Catalogue of Sutra Translation,but the narrative method is quite different.In"The Biography of Kumarajiva",a representative chapter from Lives of Eminent Monks,Hui Jiao recorded and narrated more characters.With the help of dialogues,contradictions and conflicts among different characters,he showed Kumarajiva’s mental journey from Hinayana to Mahayana,and represented the conflicts between different ideological schools within Buddhism at that time.Hui Jiao changed the tendency of early Buddhist biographies,which relied primarily on the collection of historical data rather than the description of details.The narration of Lives of Eminent Monks lays much stress on its literary aspects while paying attention to historical materials.Hui Jiao shuttled freely between literature and history.On the one hand,he carried out the narrative intention of preaching Buddhist tenets more efectively,and on the other hand,through reasonable imagination and fctionalization,he represented the exchanges and collisions between diferent Buddhist thoughts at that time more vividly.