Images, legends, politics, and the origin of the Great Xiangguo monastery in Kaifeng: a case-study of the formation and transformation of Buddhist sacred sites in medieval China.

AuthorChen, Jinhua
PositionCase study

Buddhist sacred sites are places connected with the Buddha, with various bodhisattvas and deities, and leading religious figures celebrated for their role in the development of the religion. Sacred space is an essential component of any religious tradition. It is especially significant for a trans-cultural religion such as Buddhism, which originated in India and spread through the whole of East Asia via Central Asia. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of Buddhist sacred sites in the history of Buddhism. The spread of Buddhism in Asia may be viewed from one perspective as a protracted and complex process in which numerous sacred sites were created and recreated in different cultural settings. The story of Buddhism increasingly penetrating into all levels of society in Asia is mirrored by another narrative in which some of the most sacred sites--both historical and legendary--in India were reproduced in other parts of the world. This reproduction or doubling was, however, never a simple matter of transplantation; rather it involved complex cultural adjustments and inventions.

The far-reaching and widespread significance of Buddhist sacred sites has attracted the attention of scholars from various disciplines, yet there is still no clear sense of what the overall contours of a history of Buddhist sacred geography might look like. Regarding Chinese Buddhist sacred sites, most scholars have focused their attention on the veneration of a selected number of marchmounts, typically the so-called "Four Marchmounts" (siyue [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or sida mingshan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), usually referring to Mounts Wutai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Emei [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Song [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and Putuo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (1) Very limited efforts have been made to explore the Buddhist histories of other important sites that were overshadowed by that later set of four march-mounts. Very few Buddhist monasteries, for example, have been seriously studied as sacred sites. This is particularly perplexing in view of the fact that a Buddhist monastery (usually a group of monasteries) constituted the most essential part of a "Buddhist mountain." Not only mountain temples/monasteries, but also cosmopolitan monasteries, should be studied as sacred sites. This article presents a case study of such a cosmopolitan monastery.

Springing up from a little known corner of the city of Bianzhou [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (present-day Kaifeng, Henan) in the 710s as a monastery closely related to the Tang imperial family, the Great Xiangguosi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] assumed increasing power and influence during the rest of the Tang dynasty. Under the Song, it eventually emerged as arguably the most important Buddhist center in China.

During the Tang dynasty, the Xiangguosi had already been widely celebrated for its architectural and iconographical brilliance, as demonstrated by its "ten perfect things" (shijue [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), including a huge metal statue of the Maitreya Buddha, whose radiance was believed to have "illuminated Heaven and Earth"; a name-tablet inscribed by emperor Ruizong (r. 684-90, 710-12) himself; a painting by the famous artist Wu Daozi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (680-759) of the figures of Manjusri and Vimalakirti; a towering treasure-pavilion (baoge [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) called "Paiyun" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Cloud-sweeping); and a painting of Vaisravana executed on the basis of an iconographic cartoon of Vaisravana that was secured in Khotan at the command of emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-756) shortly after he returned from his splendid feng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ceremony performed at Mount Tai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in 725. Although most parts of the monastery were destroyed in a great conflagration in 891, it was reconstructed--on an even grander scale--in several years under the direction of the monk Zhenjun [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (847-924). After successive renovations and expansions under the reigns of Song Taizu (r. 960-76) and Taizong (r. 976-97), the monastery rapidly rose to be the most prominent imperial monastery of the Song dynasty (960-1279) and was regularly chosen as the venue to celebrate imperial birthdays and other national holidays. In the meanwhile, the monastery also became a major center in East Asia for both Buddhism and the arts, attracting numerous foreign monks and artists from Central Asia, Japan (e.g., Jojin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [1011-81], who arrived in Kaifeng in 1076), and Korea (particularly a delegation led by the painter Ch'oe Sasun [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], who came to the Xiangguosi in 1074 for the purpose of copying its numerous paintings and taking the copies back to Korea). (2) Finally, it is noteworthy that apparently quite incompatible with its reputation and functions as a religious institution, the Great Xiangguosi also periodically acted as an international trading and entertainment center under the Song and succeeding dynasties. Five times every month, the monastery was opened to the public, attracting merchants and ordinary people, both local and foreign, to gather there "like clouds" for trading and amusement.

Although the Xiangguosi attracted considerable scholarly attention, its origins have been rather ignored. (3) In attempting to shed some light on this aspect of this glorious monastery, I shall first examine a series of legends related to its origin, and then discuss the concerted efforts from different sources to construct and reconstruct this monastery and especially to cast and enshrine an imposing statue of the Buddha therein.

  1. HUIYUN: "THE PATRIARCH WHO BUILT TEMPLES"

    No one can speak of the provenance of the Xiangguosi without mentioning an extraordinary monk known among his contemporaries as "Zaoshi zushi" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("The Patriarch who built temples"). The monk in question was called Huiyun [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (655-713+), a native of Huxiang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (including most of present-day Hunan and Hubei provinces). He became a Buddhist novice when he was ten sui old, in Linde 1 (2 February 664-21 January 665), under a monk who was recognized as the "First Chan patriarch of Mount Nanyue" (Nanyue chuzu chunshi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), probably the northern Chan master Huian [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (582-709, a.k.a. Dao'an [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Daan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], or Laoan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] because of his unusual longevity). (4) Huiyun received full ordination at Yuesi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (presumably Nanyuesi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) when he was twenty sui (that is, in 674). Versed in vinaya, he later renounced his career as a preacher and concentrated instead on "matters of merit" (fushi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) (i.e., projects of constructing Buddhist buildings, including temples, pagodas, etc.), "immensely to the production and accumulation of merits and bliss on the parts of the constructors and patrons." He proved himself a very successful fund-raiser, attracting a great deal of patronage for his intended projects. His activities covered the areas of Jingying [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (in present-day Hubei province), Jiangnan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and Zherui [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (north of River Zhe [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). He was said to have built or renovated over twenty temples, although he never deigned to be abbot of any.

    Zanning [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (919?-1001?), Huiyun's biographer, tells us of a setback in his life, which, interestingly, suggests the influence that Empress Wu's 700 edict ordering the initiation of a Changluo statue-project might have left on Huiyun. There had been a campaign for collecting contributions for a Buddhist project (xinghua [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) in the areas north of the Long River (Yangzi) in the first year of the Jiushi era of Empress Wu, from 23 May 700 to 12 February 701. Huiyun, according to Zanning, was not part of this campaign because of some untoward accidents. (5)

    Zanning here might be referring to a large-scale fund-raising activity in northern China organized by certain Buddhist monks as a response to a government-launched campaign to ask every monk and nun to contribute one cash daily toward an ambitious plan of constructing a huge statue of the Buddha. (6) It seems that Huiyun was stimulated, rather than frustrated, by this failure, for no more than eight months after the fund-raising campaign he missed, Huiyun headed north:

    [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (7) In Chang'an 1 (5 November 701-1 February 702), he came to visit Liangyuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (i.e., Bianzhou). One night, he stayed at Fantai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (a high plateau situated about three li outside Kaifeng), whence he looked toward the northern bank of the River Sui (i.e., Bianhe [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), just in time to perceive an extraordinary aura shooting to the heavens [from the ground]. At dawn, he entered the city to search [for its source], and found a pond in a park to the northwest of the residence of the vice-prefect (sima [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) of Xi Prefecture [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (present-day Xixian, Anhui). As he wandered round the banks of the pond, Huiyun saw reflections of heavenly palaces drifting along with the ripples. [In the reflections,] unevenly arranged mansions and pavilions were decorated with pearls and jades, their doors and windows painted with colorful pictures. The portraits and statues in the nine layers of palaces were circling around, throwing up a thousand shapes. It was exactly the so- called palaces and courts of [Tusita]...

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