Search Results (5)

Miracle tales are almost the sole source for the investigation of the emergence and spread of the relic cult in the early phase of Chinese Buddhism. The earliest excavated relic casket dates back to 453 CE, over four centuries after Buddhism was introduced to China. Through a critical textual analysis of Ji Shenzhou Sanbao Gantonglu, it is evident that the initial form of relic veneration was based on miraculous responses. Legends about imperial relic worship before the 3rd century are all later fabrications. Two archeological finds—the alleged relic murals in a Han tomb at Horinger, Inner Mongolia, and the stūpa-shaped bronze vessel in Gongyi, Henan—are not directly related to relic veneration. Based on the available evidence, it is tentatively concluded that relic worship first emerged around the 3rd century in the vicinity of Luoyang, the capital of the Western Jin, and later spread to the south of the Yangtze River after the Yongjia chaos. The early worshippers included both monks and lay Buddhists, such as merchants and lower-ranking officials. Royal interest in relics did not arise until the 5th century. The rise of relic veneration in China occured two or three centuries later than that in Gandhāra, from which Chinese Buddhism was significantly influenced. Compared to the cult of images or scriptures, relic veneration also emerged relatively late in China. The reluctance to adopt relics as worship objects can be partly explained by (the mahāyāna) Buddhist doctrines and the Chinese cultural mentality. Full article

This paper examines how Chinese people perceived and accepted Buddhist stūpas in medieval China. Doctrinal and ritualistic developments can potentially contribute to the emergence of new ritual objects. Ideological connotations of stūpas witnessed a transition associated with the transformation of the stūpa cult in China. Stūpa burial became progressively accessible to ordinary clerics and laypeople who showed sympathy with Buddhism. The similarity between stūpas and tombs in terms of funerary function largely determined people’s interpretations of stūpas in the early medieval period. However, tombs cannot be the precise manifestation of stūpas in medieval China. Stūpas evolved into multidimensional meanings in medieval China. The perceptions of stūpas witnessed an ongoing process of reconstruction, which reveals how cultural transmission and transformation work throughout history. Full article

In 2008, in the course of excavating the site of the pagoda foundations of the former Nanjing Da Bao’en Monastery 南京大報恩寺, archaeologists discovered Buddhist relics enshrined in nested reliquaries along with some two hundred offering objects. The most impressive finding was a specially designed, richly decorated reliquary stūpa, known as the Seven-Jeweled Aśoka Stūpa 七寶阿育王塔, created in the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE). This paper begins with the history of the site where a series of famous Buddhist structures had been built since the Wu Kingdom (222–280 CE), and which has long been associated with the cult of King Aśoka and relic worship. It then goes on to examine the form and features of the reliquary stūpas prevalent in the Wuyue period (907–978). Through comparisons between the Aśoka stūpas commissioned by Wuyue King Qian Chu 錢俶 (929–988) and those by laypeople around the same time, I will demonstrate that the Seven-Jeweled Aśoka Stūpa is distinct in its secular features. It is not a Buddhist reliquary that strictly conforms to the conventions of reliquary-making in terms of scale, inscription, and functionality; besides relic worship, it also features a remarkable manifestation of laypeople’s beliefs and expectations, sacred or secular. Viewed in its historical context, in which the Song emperors imposed political control over religious affairs and Buddhism became increasingly secular, the stūpa was a product of negotiation between the political authorities and local Buddhist communities in the Song Dynasty. Full article

Material evidence from late medieval China attests that Buddhist of the Wuyue kingdom and Liao empire participated in the pan-Buddhist practice of dhāraṇīs and, more specifically, the cult of textual relics. What formed the basis of the cult is the Sūtra of theDhāraṇī of the Precious Casket Seal of the Concealed Complete-body Relics of the Essence of All Tathāgatas. I argue that the rhetoric of completeness, which is brought to the fore in the sutra’s title and reiterated throughout the text, lay at the heart of the success that it achieved. I trace the transfer of the text from South Asia to East Asia along the maritime routes, while closely examining designs and material forms, and various structuring contexts of the text. By doing so, I contribute to the scholarship on the cult of dhāraṇīs as relics of the dharma across Buddhist Asia. Full article

Chinese translations of Buddhist sūtras and Chinese Buddhist literature demonstrate how stūpas became acknowledged in medieval China and how clerics and laypeople perceived and worshiped them. Early Buddhist sūtras mentioned stūpas, which symbolize the presence of the Buddha and the truth of the dharma. Buddhist canonical texts attach great significance to the stūpa cult, providing instructions regarding who was entitled to have them, what they should look like in connection with the occupants’ Buddhist identities, and how people should worship them. However, the canonical limitations on stūpa burial for ordinary monks and prohibitions of non-Buddhist stūpas changed progressively in medieval China. Stūpas appeared to be erected for ordinary monks and the laity in the Tang dynasty. This paper aims to outline the Buddhist scriptural tradition of the stūpa cult and its changes in the Chinese Buddhist Canon, which serves as the doctrinal basis for understanding the significance of funerary stūpas and the primordial archetype for the formation of a widely accepted Buddhist funeral ritual in Tang China. Full article