The Politics of Place-Making in the Records of Buddhist Monasteries in Luoyang
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_full_journalsubtitle: International Journal of Chinese Studies/Revue Internationale de Sinologie _full_abbrevjournaltitle: TPAO _full_ppubnumber: ISSN 0082-5433 (print version) _full_epubnumber: ISSN 1568-5322 (online version) _full_issue: 1-2 _full_issuetitle: 0 _full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien J2 voor dit article en vul alleen 0 in hierna): Manling Luo _full_alt_articletitle_deel (kopregel rechts, hier invullen): The Politics of Place-Making _full_is_advance_article: 0 _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0 T’OUNG PAO The Politics of Place-Making T’oung Pao 105 (2019) 43-75 www.brill.com/tpao 43 The Politics of Place-Making in the Records of Buddhist Monasteries in Luoyang Manling Luo Indiana University The Luoyang qielan ji 洛陽伽藍記 (Records of Buddhist Monasteries in Luoyang; hereafter Records), compiled by Yang Xuanzhi 楊衒之 (fl. 547) in roughly 547 CE, commemorates the ruined capital city of the North- ern Wei dynasty 北魏 (386-534).1 One of the few major works to survive from the period, the Records has received much critical attention, with topics ranging from its textual history to its historical and literary value. This essay focuses on what I call the “politics of place-making” in the memoir, that is, engagements with Luoyang’s space as expressions of power before and after the city’s abandonment, as represented and un- derstood by Yang. These ignored aspects shed light on the central con- cerns that motivated his writing, thereby revealing his perspective on the intersections of place, power, and human agency. The analysis al- lows us to better understand his innovations in pioneering an unofficial, space-centered historiography that defines historical agents as place- makers whose deeds and lives are anchored spatially as much as tempo- rally. 1) The collection has two Ming editions, which are the main base texts for eight modern reprint editions. There is also an earlier abridged edition; see Wu Jing 吴晶, Luoyang qielan ji yanjiu 《洛陽伽藍記》研究 (Taipei: Hua Mulan wenhua chubanshe, 2013), 30-34. I use the recent reprint edition collated by Yang Yong for textual analysis. See Yang Xuanzhi, Luoyang qielan ji jiaojian 洛陽伽藍記校箋, collated and annotated by Yang Yong 楊勇 ( Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2006) [Hereafter LQJ]. For examples of other reprints, see Fan Xiang yong 范祥雍 coll. and annot., Luoyang qielan ji jiaozhu 洛陽伽藍記校注 (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1958); Zhou Zumo 周祖謨 coll. and annot., Luoyang qielan ji jiaoshi 洛陽伽藍記校釋 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010); and Xu Gaoruan 徐高阮 coll. and annot., Chongkan Luoyang qielan ji 重刊洛陽伽藍記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2013). ©T’oung Koninklijke Pao 105 Brill (2019) NV, Leiden, 43-75 2019 DOI: 10.1163/15685322-10512P02 Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 08:24:47PM via free access 44 Manling Luo Yang Xuanzhi produced the Records against the backdrop of North- ern Wei decline. When the Tuoba Xianbei 拓跋鲜卑 (Tabgatch Särbi),2 one of the non-Chinese ethnic groups in the so-called “Age of Division,” became victorious in the struggles for control of North China and found- ed the Northern Wei dynasty, they chose Pingcheng 平城 (today’s Da- tong 大同 in Shanxi) as their capital. In 493, Emperor Xiaowen 孝文帝 (r. 471-499) decided to move the capital to Luoyang, ushering in a peace- ful and prosperous period of Northern Wei rule which lasted until the sudden death of Emperor Xiaoming 孝明帝 (r. 515-528) in 528. The lat- ter’s mother, Empress Dowager Ling 靈太后 (d. 528), was rumored to have poisoned him, since the emperor, her only son, who succeeded his father as a mere six-year-old boy, had just come of age and was about to assume control from her. In his place she installed a three-year-old prince born to another mother, making clear her ambition to continue her power monopoly. Using the suspicious death of Emperor Xiaoming as a pretext, Erzhu Rong 爾朱榮 (d. 530), a general from an ethnic group known as the Jie 羯, raised an army and seized Luoyang. He threw Em- press Dowager Ling and the boy emperor into the Yellow River, massa- cred more than two thousand court officials,3 and established a figurehead emperor, Xiaozhuang 孝莊帝 (r. 528-531). Although Erzhu Rong was later killed, his clansmen continued to dominate the court until the rise of General Gao Huan 高歡 (496-547). In 534, the puppet emperor installed by Gao Huan fled west to Chang’an, establishing what is known as the Western Wei 西魏 (534-556). Gao Huan promptly en- throned another ruler and moved the capital from Luoyang to Ye 鄴. This regime has been referred to as the Eastern Wei 東魏 (534-550), which was terminated by Gao’s son when he founded his own dynasty, the Northern Qi 北齊 (550-577).4 Through these turbulent years, Luoyang 2) See Luo Xin 羅新, “Lun Tuoba Xianbei zhi deming” 論拓跋鮮卑之得名, Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究 2006.6: 32-48. 3) An alternative number for the people killed is over 1,300. See Weishu 魏書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 74.1648. 4) For an overview of the Xianbei, see Charles Holcombe, “The Xianbei in Chinese History,” Early Medieval China 19 (2013): 1-38; Zhang Jihao 張繼昊, Cong Tuoba dao Beiwei: Beiwei wangchao chuangjian lishi de kaocha 從拓跋到北魏 – 北魏王朝創建歷史的考察 (Taipei: Daoxiang chubanshe, 2003). For the Northern Wei history relevant to Yang’s memoir, see W.J.F. Jenner, Memories of Loyang: Yang Hsüan-chih and the Lost Capital (493-534) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 16-102. T’oung Pao 105 (2019) 43-75 Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 08:24:47PM via free access The Politics of Place-Making 45 suffered serious destructions. Yang Xuanzhi, who is known to have held mid- to low-ranking positions, survived Erzhu Rong’s massacre of court officials and later relocated to Ye with the Eastern Wei court.5 He revis- ited Luoyang in 547 on an official trip and was moved by the desolation to compile his Records. Despite the extensive study of Yang’s memoir,6 little attention has been paid to his interest in the relationship between humans and space because of a common assumption that space is a given. Yang adopts a spatial order of narration moving from the inner city to the eastern, southern, western, and northern suburbs of the outer city. In each sec- tion, he describes major Buddhist monasteries as landmarks of the area and uses them as reference points to recount nearby secular architec- ture and relevant people and events. Some critics have regarded the spa- tial descriptions as historically reliable. Lin Wenyue 林文月, for example, famously argues that Yang’s narration of historical events is emotional and even biased whereas his descriptions of space are distanced and objective.7 Indeed, historians often use the spatial information provided by Yang to reconstruct Northern Wei Luoyang.8 Other critics, however, emphasize historical changes in certain spaces of Luoyang and Yang’s motivations in describing them. Wang Mei-Hsiu 王美秀, for instance, contends that Yang’s accounts of traces of earlier Chinese regimes in Luoyang are not neutral, but were prompted by his strong identification with Han Chinese culture.9 While these discussions offer useful insights, they share a tendency to privilege historical changes, treating space as a mere setting or given reality. Unnoted in Yang’s spatial order of narration has been his keen inter- est in the relationship between Northern Wei residents and Luoyang’s space, especially their engagements with it that are best described as “place-making.” Although both “space” and “place” are terms frequently 5) On Yang’s life, see Jenner, Memories of Loyang, 3-15. 6) For an overview of Chinese scholarship, see Chen Silin 陳思林, “Ershi shiji yilai Luoyang qielan ji yanjiu zongshu” 二十世紀以來《洛陽伽藍記》研究綜述 (MA thesis, Dongbei shi- fan daxue, 2016). 7) Lin Wenyue, “Luoyang qielan ji de lengbi yu rebi” 洛陽伽藍記的冷筆與熱筆, in Zhong- gu wenxue luncong 中古文學論叢 (Taipei: Da’an chubanshe, 1989), 253-99. 8) For example, Ping-ti Ho, “Lo-yang, A.D. 495-534: A Study of Physical and Socio-Econom- ic Planning of a Metropolitan Area,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 26 (1966): 52-101. 9) Wang Mei-Hsiu, Lishi, kongjian, shenfen: Luoyang qielan ji de wenhua lunshu 歷史、空 間、身分 — 洛陽伽藍記的文化論述 (Taipei: Liren shuju, 2007), 133-218. T’oung Pao 105 (2019) 43-75 Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 08:24:47PM via free access 46 Manling Luo used in critical discourses, they are given different theoretical valences by various scholars. In reacting to the persistent subordination of space to time due to the ascendance of historicism since the nineteenth cen- tury, Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, and Edward W. Soja, for example, advocate a re-centering of space in modern consciousness.10 Their theo- rizations have been seen as seminal in bringing spatiality to the fore of a wide range of studies in the social sciences and humanities—the so- called “spatial turn.”11 Coming from a different intellectual tradition, however, scholars of humanistic geography, as summarized by Tim Cresswell, have foregrounded the concept of “place,” defining it as “a meaningful location” created from “space,” geometric dimensions of ar- eas and volumes.12 Place-making is ubiquitous and central to human existence, for “place is also a way of seeing, knowing, and understanding the world” and thus “primary to the construction of meaning and society.”13 Place-making can be achieved not only through architectural means, such as building construction, interior and exterior decorations, and city planning, but also through non-architectural means, such as lan- guage, visual arts, and religious rituals.14 In studies of premodern China, attention has been paid to political meanings of spatial order, religious histories of mountains, geographical writings about locales, literary ac- counts of sites and trips, and human experiences of space, among other rich topics.15 10) See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans.