Norman Harry Rothschild
NORMAN HARRY ROTHSCHILD Emerging from the Cocoon: Ethnic Revival, Lunar Radiance, and the Cult of Liu Sahe in the Jihu Uprising of 682-683∗ Closer examination of a Buddhist movement in Shaanxi 陕西 in the early 680s can help reveal the mechanics of the interplay between wealth, merit, faith and power in popular Buddhism during the early Tang. Bai Tieyu 白鐵余 evolved from a faith healer who amassed a huge fortune from Buddhist be- lievers wishing to gaze upon a planted bronze Buddha he had ‘discovered’ to a messianic deliverer, who, claiming that the mandate had been severed, set up a government and assumed an imperial title. By the spring of 683, Bai Tieyu’s local uprising in Suizhou 綏州 had grown to such proportions that the Tang court ordered general Cheng Wuting 程務挺 and commander-in-chief of con- tiguous Xiazhou 夏州 prefecture Wang Fangyi 王方翼 to suppress it. The uprising must be understood on three interrelated levels. First, it was a peasant rebellion, a response to abysmal socio-economic conditions. Second, it was a religious movement centred both upon local traditions of revivalist Buddhism and apocalyptic beliefs of popular Buddhism, particularly those surrounding Yueguang Wang 月光王 («Prince Lunar Radiance»), a lesser- known Buddhist deity. Third, it can be understood in terms of historical ethnic tensions between the Jihu 稽胡, a sedentary non-Chinese group that had long settled in Shaanbei 陝北 and Shanxi 山西, and the political centre. The analy- sis of the movement from the last two perspectives will require the introduc- tion of another figure, Liu Sahe 劉薩訶, a Jihu monk and folk hero.
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