Chronicle of the Three Jewels Through the Ages (歷代三寶紀)

About 歷代三寶紀

Sui · by 費長房撰

115,213 · about 384 min

The *Record of the Three Treasures Throughout Successive Dynasties* is a Buddhist catalog compiled by Fei Changfang under imperial commission during the Sui Dynasty. Completed in the seventeenth year of the Kaihuang era (597 CE), its purpose was to summarize the transmission and composition of Buddhist scriptures prior to the Sui. The work, in fifteen volumes, is divided into three sections: Imperial Chronology, Records of the Dynasties, and Canonical Catalog. It documents Buddhist history, translation catalogs, and biographies of translators from the Zhou dynasty through the Sui. Not only does it preserve a wealth of precious Buddhist textual materials, it also pioneered the integration of scriptural catalogs with historical chronology—a format that profoundly influenced later Buddhist historical compilation. This text remains an indispensable and authoritative source for the study of early Chinese Buddhist history and the history of scriptural translation.