Tiantai Deshao

Tiantai Deshao (天台德韶, 891–972) was a Dharma heir of Fayan Wenyi and the most politically influential Chan master of the Wuyue kingdom (907–978), one of the Ten Kingdoms that succeeded the Tang. Patronised by King Qian Chu, he was appointed National Teacher (*guóshī*) and based at the Tiantai mountains in modern Zhejiang^[1]. From this position he undertook the project for which he is now best remembered: the recovery, at the king's request and expense, of Tiantai-school texts lost during the Huichang persecution of 845, by commissioning copies from monasteries in Goryeo Korea and Heian Japan and re-importing them into China^[2].

Although a Chan master, Deshao thus played the decisive role in the revival of the Tiantai school during the tenth century — an outward instance of the Fayan house's characteristic willingness to engage philosophically and practically with non-Chan Buddhist traditions^[3]. His chief disciple Yongming Yanshou would extend this synthetic temperament into a comprehensive Chan-Pure-Land-Huayan-Tiantai harmonisation that shaped late-imperial Chinese Buddhism^[4].