Description
Book SynopsisBy the tenth century CE, Mount Wutai had become a major pilgrimage site within the emerging culture of a distinctively Chinese Buddhism. This book traces confluence of factors that produced this transformation and argues that monastic architecture, more than texts, relics, or pilgrimages, was the key to Mount Wutai's emergence as a sacred site.
Trade Review"A must read for any reader interested in Buddhist arts and architecture, or the history of East Asian religious traditions, Building a Sacred Mountain is a superb piece of scholarship and a model of appreciation for the integral relationships between religion and the arts."
-- John Renard * Religion and the Arts *
"Reflects a remarkably ambitious and rigorous scholarly undertaking. It illustrates the reciprocal relationship between a unique geographic phenomenon and a sensitive and enlightened human response. The wide-ranging and exhaustive research that supports this book will give it enduring value to a wide range of scholars. "
* Choice *
"[T]he overall themes of visions, buildings, and pilgrimage that run throughout this beautifully illustrated, meticulously documented book are consistently compelling: there was, Lin demonstrates, much more to building Wutai than buildings."
-- John Kieschnick * Journal of Asian Studies *
"As Lin’s insightful work makes abundantly clear, through the ontology of Wutaishan—from mountain, to monastery, to mandala, to mural, and from vision to built environment—Mount Wutai was always something like a ‘virtual mountain.’"
-- Johan Elverskog * American Historical Review *
"[A] rich and nuanced historicization of Mount Wutai’s ascent and transformations from the third through the tenth century, and an insightful account of the ever-shifting and contextual grounds of sacred geography. Lin’s book is a substantial contribution to the recent wave of scholarship on Mount Wutai, but it’s impact will be felt well beyond the borders of this subfield. . . . Elegantly written and produced. . . . [A] careful reader is rewarded with an expanded vista from which to see the Foguang Monastery, and through which to enter the field of sacred geography anew."
-- Wen-shing Chou * Monumenta Serica *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Chronology of Chinese Dynasties
Introduction
1. Building the Monastery, Locating the Sacred Presence
2. Entering the Mountains, Localizing the Sacred Presence
3. The Sacred Presence in Place and in Vision
4. Mediating the Distance to Mount Wutai
5. Reconfiguring the Center
6. Narrative, Visualization, and Transposition of Mount Wutai
Conclusion
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Conventions and Abbreviations
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
