Abstract
By the first half of the eighteenth century, lineages of the Buddhist Vinaya school (Lüzong) took hold in several monasteries in Beijing. However, when the Yongzheng emperor designed a grand ordination ceremony to be held in 1734 he opted to summon a Vinaya patriarch from a distant Mt Baohua near Nanjing. This article aims to provide an explanation for such a choice by means of exploring the image of relevant Vinaya monasteries in the eyes of early Qing emperors, relying mainly on the evidence in the gazetteers of these monasteries. Our findings show that Vinaya monasteries in Beijing, such as Tanzhe, Guangji, and Minzhong, enjoyed considerable imperial patronage. At the same time, only Minzhong monastery was perceived as a purely Vinaya site, while the image of its counterparts was rather heterogeneous. The main advantage that could have singled out the abbot of Mt Baohua Fuju (1686–1765) was the first full-fledged school genealogy that he compiled in 1733, while other monasteries in question did not possess an identity of sites with strong and stable Vinaya lineages at that time. Accordingly, Yongzheng might have wished to promote a genealogically organized Vinaya school as a check-andbalance against swelling Chan lineages.
Highlights
Yongzheng 雍正 (1678–1735, r. 1722–1735), the third emperor of the Qing dynasty in China, is distinguished by deep involvement with Buddhism
Kangxi’s 1699 stela notes the presence of the library and ordination platform and directly links the monastery with Vinaya practice: “The root of his teaching is benefiting living beings, and the activity is observance of precepts and discipline” [13, p. 47–48]. It was in the 1695 dialogue under the “brass tree” that the emperor clearly demonstrated the assumption that the monastery belonged to Vinaya lineage
Close to the end of the ceremonies he granted purple robe and several jade objects to the abbot and ordered him to return to the mountains in order to “eternally pacify Qianhua to accomplish the enormous deed of Great Peace” [10, p. 0788a15–b09]. This dialogue clearly informed Kangxi that Minyuan Changsong and the whole Mt Baohua belonged to Vinaya school and, even more explicitly, to its Qianhua lineage
Summary
Yongzheng 雍正 (1678–1735, r. 1722–1735), the third emperor of the Qing dynasty in China, is distinguished by deep involvement with Buddhism. 1722–1735), the third emperor of the Qing dynasty in China, is distinguished by deep involvement with Buddhism. He formed close ties with Chan monks and interfered in disputes between Chan lineages, initiated a new edition of the Chinese Buddhist canon and restored a number of monasteries [1; 2, p. A distinguished scholar of Ming-Qing Buddhism Hasebe Yūkei inquired about Yongzheng’s reasons for arranging such ceremony. Without challenging the overall proposition about Yongzheng’s desire to uphold Vinaya lineage to suppress Chana, this research probes why exactly Yongzheng arrived at the decision to summon Fuju at the cost of Beijing clergy
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