Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist architecture and iconography on Wutaishan, seventeenth to early twentieth centuries

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the Qing and early Republican period, Wutaishan had between 25 and 30 monasteries affiliated to Tibetan Buddhism. Their monastic architecture seemed to exclusively follow the Chinese-Buddhist style, except for the Tibetan-style bottle-shaped stupa. The Wutaishan built landscape seemed relatively homogeneous, and travellers were sometimes confused about the blurred visual frontier between Chinese Buddhist and Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monasteries.Were there buildings (other than stupas) typical of Tibetan monasteries that have not been preserved on Wutaishan? Why did the Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist communities settled in Chinese style monastic buildings? Was there local or imperial pressure to ‘keep things Chinese,’ or was it in their interest to entertain a visual confusion between the two traditions of Buddhism? And how did Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monks, whose lifestyles and spatial practices of Buddhist architecture differ from Chinese Buddhist monks’s, adapt themselves to Chinese spatial arrangements?This article will highlight mutual borrowings between Chinese Buddhist and Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monasteries on Wutaishan. Using various sources such as ancient picture-maps, old photographs, floor plans and travellers’ accounts, I will highlight interactions between Chinese and Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monasteries from the point of view of architecture, iconography and material culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.