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Buddhists in the Making of Twentieth-Century Chinese Histories
Organizer: Jan Kiely, Furman University
Chair: Francesca Tarocco, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Discussants: Francesca Tarocco, University of Manchester, United Kingdom and Raoul Birnbaum, University of California, Santa Cruz
The significance of Buddhism to vital social, cultural and political evolutions of Chinese history in imperial times is unquestioned. Yet the dominant narratives of twentieth century Chinese history have ignored the modern Buddhist experience. The loosening of government restraints and a religious resurgence in China along with the efforts of scholars in China and abroad in recent years have created opportunities to study the complex diversity of twentieth century Chinese Buddhist figures, identities, organizations, ideas and practices. Not since Holmes Welch published his pioneering volumes in the 1960s has there been the level of interest and potential for research that we find today in what is now (as it was not for Welch) part of history. This panel gathers religious studies scholars and historians of modern China from Europe, Asia and North America who share a belief in the significance of Buddhists in China after 1900. The nature of that significance is unresolved and something we would like to discuss. Two papers will be locating distinctly modern concepts and practices contributing to the “making” of modern China in republican era cases. A third paper links-up with themes of nationalism and state-religious community relations even as it extends our purview across the 1949 temporal demarcation and gives serious consideration to Buddhist theory and politics in the early PRC. The fourth paper offers a critical counterpoint that challenges and complicates the impulse to historicize by considering three of the century’s most eminent monks’ views of “history” and their place in it.
Buddhist Publishing Activities in Republican China
Francesca Tarocco, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Between 1912 and 1939, during a period of 28 years, an incredible one hundred and fifty Buddhist periodicals were established in China. A few Chinese-language Buddhist journals were also printed in Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore. Private printing presses and bookshops devoted to distributing Buddhist texts were set up in Shanghai, Nanjing and other major Chinese cities. Despite the variety and number of publications produced, and their wide distribution, republican-period Buddhist publishing activities have yet to receive sustained scholarly discussion. This paper will, first, begin to chart the Buddhist printing and publishing explosion that followed the 1911 Revolution. Second, it will explore the extent to which the establishment of a readership community granted visibility to Buddhist cultural activists at a time when traditional religion was coming under increasing pressure. By looking at the traces of a widespread interest toward Buddhism, this paper will challenge the commonly held view that the Chinese modernizing elites were exclusive advocates of secular modernity, nationalism, and revolution.
A Modern Buddhist Charismatic Movement & Chinese Modernity: Master Yinguang and his Followers, 1912-1940
Jan Kiely, Furman University
In the 1920s and 30s, tens of thousands, perhaps hundred of thousands, of people mainly in central-eastern China (Jiangsu and Zhejiang) were attracted to the practices of revived Pure Land Buddhism due to the influence of the monk, Master Yinguang (1861-1940). To his many modernist clerical and secular intellectual detractors, Yinguang represented some of the worst tendencies of hide-bound Chinese traditionalism. How could so many in China’s wealthiest areas and most modern cities, above all, Shanghai, be so interested in this monk who had spent most of his life in remote monasteries mainly on Putuoshan Island? This paper seeks, first, to expose the modern forces of transportation, publication, communication, mass media, urban commerce, state and civic organizations that made this loose religious movement possible. Second, it will show that certain new, modernist conceptions of nation, society, science and technology and individual subjectivity were embedded within and so advanced by a consciously anti-modernist program. In the process, I will seek to reflect upon how this remarkable charismatic spiritual-leader derived mass sensation and the hybrid ideas that it circulated in the republican period reveal, and contributed to, key processes in the making of twentieth century Chinese social and political culture.
Buddhism in China During the Korean War, 1951-1953
Xue Yu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Although the study of Chinese Buddhism has become an important part of religious studies worldwide, research on institutional Buddhism in mainland China after the founding of the Peoples’ Republic of China has remained virtually untouched either because of the lack of materials in the West or due to the political situation in China. The proposed paper pioneers an exploration of Buddhism in mainland China during the first decade of new China after 1949, especially the Buddhist developments during the Korean War (1950-1953). With multi-references through historical survey, case-studies, textual and documentary discussions, and a combination of social and phenomenological approaches from religious studies, the paper investigates how a new form of Buddhism was forged under the new regime and how Buddhist clergy responded to social, economic, and political changes in China by undergoing self-criticism and re-education programs. Buddhist participation in the Korean War will be highlighted to illustrate new phenomena in the continuation of the sinicization of Buddhism. A detailed discussion will be carried out to examine the relationship between institutional Buddhism and the state, Buddhist commitment to the precept of non-violence and the obligation of Buddhists as citizens to fulfill their national duty of serving the country. It is hoped that this will not only fill a gap in Buddhist studies scholarship, but also will contribute to a better understanding of Buddhist attitudes toward violence and the mutual relationship between institutional Buddhism and the state.
Eminent Buddhist Practitioners in 20th Century Chinese 'History': Whose Histories, What Histories?
Raoul Birnbaum, University of California, Santa Cruz
Several twentieth-century Buddhist masters in China made conscious decisions to enter into “history.” Their visions of history, however, may be very different from those of either their non-Buddhist contemporaries or present-day academic historians. These Buddhist monks wrote memoirs or autobiographies, they made sure to retain their correspondence, they participated in the collection and preservation of their oral teachings through transcription, they willingly sat for photographic portraits in studios or other sites and sometimes inscribed these photos with poetry or other modes of comment. All these ways constituted deliberate acts to leave certain types of traces behind after death. Here I think of such very well-known monks as Hongyi (1880-1942), Xuyun (1840-1959), Laiguo (1881-1953), and Tanxu (1875-1963), among many others active in the first half of the twentieth century. Of course, in certain ways their acts were successful, for these monks are still remembered today. The trace-leaving acts of such monks, which at first glance might appear solitary in nature, very importantly were produced within supportive, collaborative communities of monastic and lay disciples. This paper delineates the general terrain of such acts, examines in more detail the relevant activities of several eminent figures, and then considers the kinds of histories that such individuals deliberately engaged with and sought to enter. Thus, it looks at specific material and cultural practices and their underlying conceptual logics.