Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China's Mount Wutai

by Wei-Cheng Lin

Overview

By the tenth century CE, Mount Wutai had become a major pilgrimage site within the emerging culture of a distinctively Chinese Buddhism. Famous as the abode of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī (known for his habit of riding around the mountain on a lion), the site in northeastern China’s Shanxi Province was transformed from a wild area, long believed by Daoists to be sacred, into an elaborate complex of Buddhist monasteries.

In Building a Sacred Mountain, Wei-Cheng Lin traces the confluence of factors that produced this transformation and argues that monastic architecture, more than texts, icons, relics, or pilgrimages, was the key to Mount Wutai’s emergence as a sacred site. Departing from traditional architectural scholarship, Lin’s interdisciplinary approach goes beyond the analysis of forms and structures to show how the built environment can work in tandem with practices and discourses to provide a space for encountering the divine.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295805351
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	05/01/2014
Series:	Art History Publication Initiative Books
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	344
File size:	8 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Wei-Cheng Lin is assistant professor of Chinese art history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

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

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A well-researched, serious, significant book on fascinating subjects with profound impact on Chinese civilization."—Nancy Steinhardt, University of Pennsylvania

Nancy Steinhardt

"A well-researched, serious, significant book on fascinating subjects with profound impact on Chinese civilization."

Editorial Reviews

"[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."

Journal of Asian Studies - John Kieschnick

"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

"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."

Religion and the Arts - John Renard

"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 Elverskogn Historical Review

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.’

American Historical Review - Johan Elverskog

"[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."

Monumenta Serica - Wen-shing Chou

"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

From the Publisher