TANG HOUQI WUDAI SONGCHU DUNHUANG SENGNI DE SHEHUI SHENGHUO.

• Author: KIESCHNICK, JOHN
• Position: Review

TANG HOUQI WUDAI SONGCHU DUNHUANG SENGNI DE SHEHUI SHENGHUO [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (The Social Life of Monks and Nuns at Dunhuang in the Late Tang, Five-Dynasties Period, and Early Song). By HAO CHUNWEN [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Beijing: ZHONGGUO SHEHUI KEXUEYUAN CHUBANSHE, 1998. Pp. 425. RMB 30.60 (paper).

As we approach the hundredth anniversary of the discovery of cave seventeen at Dunhuang, the documents found there continue to yield startling information that challenges our assumptions about medieval Chinese Buddhism and society in general. In this study of monastic life at Dunhuang in the late Tang and early Song (roughly from the early ninth century to the late tenth), Hao Chunwen paints a picture of the everyday life of medieval Chinese monks and nuns that is radically different from the ideal conveyed in monastic regulations and biographies of eminent monks. Most surprisingly, he argues that monks at Dunhuang did not live together in monasteries.

The book opens with a chapter that examines documents related to specific ordination ceremonies carried out at Dunhuang. Subsequent chapters treat the number of monks at Dunhuang and their living arrangements, religious activities of monks, monastic income, funerary practices, and the treatment of Dunhuang monks by secular authorities. Throughout, Hao relies on careful readings of a wide variety of types of documents from Dunhuang (now scattered in libraries in different parts of the world). His discussion of religious practices, for instance, makes use of a curious set of documents that record and rank the visions, or failures to have a vision, of monks engaged in contemplative practices. In his discussion of ordination, he analyzes records from particular ordination ceremonies. These documents provide concrete details about the price men paid to be ordained (in one case a donkey and an ox), and the administrative channels one had to go through to receive permission to become a monk (permission was required from local civil authorities and at times from central authorities as well).

Hao then compares Dunhuang ordination records with rules for ordination in the Vinaya and points out some of the discrepancies. Dunhuang nuns, for instance, did not have to complete a probationary "noyice" (siksamana) stage before becoming full-fledged bhiksuni. And monks were often assigned a master after ordination rather than finding one for themselves before...