A practical work sent home
Yijing explains that he organized forty chapters into four fascicles to address practices he considered distorted in transmission. His biography of Dajin records that the monk carried this work, two fascicles of pilgrim biographies, and newly translated texts to Tang China in 691.
The contents range across ordination, residence, dress, meals, teaching, ritual, and illness. The organizing question is how a monk should act. Travel supplied the observations, but the chapters arrange them as practical guidance rather than a chronological itinerary.
Meals, seating, and water
The opening fascicle compares individual meal seats with shared platforms, distinguishes food-handling categories, and describes cleaning after meals and accepting a donor's invitation. These passages connect monastic order to furniture, utensils, food distribution, and repeated work.
Chapters six to eight discuss water vessels, checking and filtering water to protect living creatures, and chewing sticks for cleaning teeth. Yijing also challenges a translation that misleadingly suggests a single kind of tree. Material routines therefore become questions of discipline and vocabulary.
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A particular disciplinary perspective
Yijing declares his principal reliance on Mulasarvastivada rules and describes differences among disciplinary schools and regions. His prescriptions consequently have a defined standpoint.
The work preserves observations while arguing for changes in Chinese monastic habits. Its evidence is most useful when a reader distinguishes a reported practice, a cited rule, and the author's recommendation. The companion biographies add the travelling people behind these exchanges.