Regional Buddhism During the Tang

eight Regional Buddhism During the Tang Historians of China often refer to the Tang as a “Golden Age” because of the political, technological, and cultural heights reached during its roughly three-hundred-year existence. Scholars of Chinese Buddhism have traditionally characterized the Tang as an age of seminal developments, including the elaboration of traditional Buddhist philosophical schools (Faxiang and Huayan) and the birth of new indigenous forms of Buddhism (Tiantai, Huayan, Chan, and Pure Land) bolstered by imperial patronage.1 Chinese Buddhism during the Tang can accurately be characterized as a “period of independent growth.”2 The Tang has also been described as marking the high tide of Daoist influence on Chinese religious and political life, not least because the imperial family claimed descent from Laozi himself.3 However we view the complex character of the Tang religious landscape, it is clear that the historical vicissitudes that marked Tang history affected both the dynamics of central political control and the historical development of Chinese Buddhism in fundamentally important ways. As is well known, the Tang Golden Age was punctuated by three major disruptions: the An Lushan 安祿山 rebellion (755–63), the Huichang 會昌 persecutions (841–46), and the Huang Chao 黃巢 rebellion (875–84). Until the An Lushan rebellion, imperial patronage was part of the lifeblood of Chinese Buddhist institutions. With the realignment of the relationship between Buddhism and the state and the termination of access to state resources following the rebellion, those institutions dependent on imperial support suf- fered.4 Some scholars have suggested that the uprising effectively 257 258 Regional Buddhism During the Tang eroded the viability of the older schools of textual exegesis while en- hancing the survivability of Pure Land and Chan because of their popu- lar appeal.5 Contemporary scholars continue to hone our understanding of the development and character of Tang Buddhism, but here, rather than propose a new general theory about the nature of Tang Buddhism, I will instead ask what that landscape looks like when viewed from a combined geographical and historical perspective. As I will argue, when Buddhism is viewed through that lens, certain schools survived that tumultuous period—in part at least—because these movements had taken root in remote areas comparatively free of political strife. In those peripheral areas, Buddhists enhanced their viability by establishing strong regional presences and by forging local patronage relationships. The process of regionalization that began in the wake of the An Lushan rebellion gained new strength during and after the even more chaotic Huichang persecutions and Huang Chao rebellion. In contrast to the usual court-centered vision of Chinese Buddhism, which sees the most significant developments as taking place at the imperial capital, this chapter asks what a picture of Tang Buddhism might look like when written from the perspective of localized regions at some remove from the capital. The historical events of the Tang dynasty are, for example, clearly discernible, in the historical records for the Nanyue region. Along with the demographic shifts to the south noted by Hans Bielenstein, Robert Hartwell, and Aoyama Sadao 青山定雄, there was a precipitous spike—relative to the rest of China—in Buddhist monastery foundation and construction at Nanyue.6 As John Jorgensen has succinctly put it, “The fortunes of Buddhism generally coincided with political, economic and social changes, all of which can be expressed geographically.”7 Together, those historical events led to the increasing decentralization and regionalization of Chinese Bud- dhism and constitute an important background for the events related in this chapter on Tang Buddhism at Nanyue. The combined effect of these political and historical circumstances explains why Nanyue remained an important Buddhist site into the Tang dynasty. The role of Nanyue as a fundamentally important site within Tang Buddhist history has not gone unnoticed in the literature. A recent publication on the geography of Tang Buddhism by Li Ying- hui 李映輝, for example, devotes a special appendix entirely to the .

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