Buddhism in Late Tang

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Buddhism in Late Tang

Imperial Patronage. The An Lushan rebellion (755)during the Tang period (618-907) had a disastrous impact on the Buddhist establishment, bringing about the devastation of many temples and the loss of important collections of documents. After this period of upheaval, Buddhism at first received increased patronage from the rulers. Convinced that the Tang court owed its survival to Buddhism, Emperor Daizong, who came to the throne in 762, began to provide government aid to build monasteries and he authorized the ordination of thousands of monks. He showed his personal devoutness by revering Buddhist relics and by providing vegetarian banquets for the clergy. In the 780s his successor, Dezong, was more cautious in his sponsorship of Buddhism, but he too became a great patron of the monastic temples and of Buddhist scholarship.

Criticism. The expansion of the temples brought about criticism from opponents of Buddhism. As early as 621 the Daoist priest Fu Yi denounced Buddhist communities, claiming that they were becoming a burden on the state. He encouraged the government to disband the clergy and put monasteries to better use. During the reign of Dezong, Peng Yan, a Confucian official in the Bureau of Records, suggested to the emperor that he abolish the monasteries—because of abuses caused by the ignorance of the clergy—and regain lost tax revenues. Peng estimated that the yearly expense of supplying a Buddhist monk with food and clothing equaled the taxes paid by five peasants.

Scholar Protest. When the Emperor Xianzong ordered that the finger bone of Buddha be brought to Chang’an in 819 so that he could worship it, Confucian scholars began a campaign against Buddhism. The greatest Chinese prose writer since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.),Han Yu, an orthodox member of the literati and a notorious anti-Buddhist Confucian scholar, submitted a memorial to the emperor. He stated that he was surprised Xianzong was promoting Buddhism by greeting the relic. Proclaiming that Buddha was a barbarian who did not speak the Chinese language and who wore clothes of a different fashion, he condemned the scenes of mass hysteria that accompanied the transfer of the relic. Angered by this attack on Buddhism, the emperor initially threatened to sentence the author to death but thereafter ordered him to go into exile in the far south.

Political Motive. The court eunuchs—uneducated, superstitious, and avaricious devotees of Buddha—had played an important role in the emperor’s decision to sup-port Buddhism. To restrain the power of these eunuchs, Li Deyu, the authoritarian chief minister and a committed Confucian who came to hate the excesses of popular Buddhism, encouraged the emperor to change his policy toward the faith, although he did not express the outrage voiced by Han Yu.

Financial Difficulty. The most forceful reason for the government decision to reduce official support for Buddhism was financial. After An Lushan’s rebellion the Tang empire was in financial crisis and lacked copper for coins. This severe scarcity resulted from the use of copper in casting images, bells, and chimes for the Buddhist temples, which held most of the Chinese stock of valuable metals in the form of objects of piety, instruments, and statues. In addition, because of their tax exemption, Buddhist temples became wealthy, while at the same time state revenues were greatly reduced.

Imperial Decrees. In 836 Emperor Wenzong issued a decree prohibiting the Chinese from having any relations with “people of color”—a term that denoted such foreigners as Iranians, Sogdians (from Central Asia), Arabs, Malays, Indians, and Sumatrans. Emperor Wuzong, who took power in 840, vigorously committed himself to Daoism and hated the sight of Buddhist monks. As a result, he took decisive action and issued in 845 the prescriptive decree that charged Buddhism, a foreign religion, with bringing about the moral and economic decline of the brief southern dynasties—the Jin, Song, Liang, and Chen. The great suppression of Buddhism and other foreign religions began under Wuzong’s rule.

Great Suppression. The most radical campaign against Buddhism started in 842. At the beginning authorities aimed only to purge the Buddhist priesthood of uneducated monks and hypocrites. The government, however, then began to confiscate private possessions of the bonzes(monks) and banned Buddhist ceremonies in official worship. Finally, the court made a general inventory of sacred property owned by the temples and forced Buddhists to surrender their estates, slaves, money, and metals. The government demanded that all monks and nuns under the age of forty be secularized. Thereafter, some 4,600 monasteries, temples, and shrines were ruined or converted into public buildings; 250,000 Buddhist monks and nuns were laicized and registered as taxable; 150,000 dependants of monasteries, who enjoyed exemptions from both taxation and forced labor for the government, were put on the census lists; several million acres of land were confiscated; and 40,000 small places of worship were knocked down or rehabilitated for other uses. The emperor preserved only a few official temples that were maintained by a small number of monks. Religions of Iranian (Persian)origin—such as Mazdaism (Zoroastrianism), Manichaeanism, and Nestorianism—suffered a more radical fate: they were totally banned and their monks, a few thou-sand, were laicized.

ANTI-BUDDHISM

In the year 845 the Tang emperor Wuzong denounced Buddhism as a foreign and unwanted doctrine.

It was only from the Han and Wei on that the religion of idols gradually came into prominence. So in the latter age it has transmitted its strange ways, instilling its infection with every opportunity, spreading like a luxuriant vine, until it has poisoned the customs of our nation; gradually, and before anyone was aware, it beguiled and confounded men’s minds so that the multitude have been increasingly led astray. It has spread to the hills and plains of all the nine provinces and through the walls and towers of our two capitals. Each day finds its monks and followers growing more numerous and its temples more lofty. It wears out the strength of the people with constructions of earth and wood, pilfers their wealth for ornaments of gold and precious objects, causes men to abandon their lords and parents for the company of teachers, and severs man and wife with its monastic decrees. In destroying law and injuring mankind indeed nothing surpasses this doctrine!

Now if even one man fails to work the fields, someone must go hungry; if one woman does not tend her silk-worms, someone will go cold. At present there are an inestimable number of monks and nuns in the empire, each of them waiting for the farmers to feed him and the silk-worms to clothe him, while the public temples and private chapels have reached boundless numbers, all with soaring towers and elegant ornamentation sufficient to outshine the imperial palace itself. . . .

Source: William Theodore de Bary and others, ed., Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 435-436.

Restoration. These radical measures greatly damaged Buddhism in Tang China. Since the country was as extensive in size as the whole of medieval Europe, however, Emperor Wuzong’s prohibitions were probably not fully enforced, except in the capital, Chang’an. Everywhere, even among officials responsible for implementing the decrees, there was quiet opposition that made it possible in some distant regions to save the monks and their places of worship. When the successor to the emperor Wuzong inherited the throne, he tried to relieve the severity of the measures by permitting many defrocked monks and nuns to return to religious life and by ordering the restoration of certain temples. As a consequence, the power of Buddhist communities was preserved and strengthened in the tenth century in some regions, such as the kingdom of Min in Fujian and elsewhere in southern China.

Aftermath. Since the end of the eighth century, Chinese Buddhism had been cut off from the great religious centers of India, which had been its source of inspiration for more than five hundred years. Chinese Buddhists could not go to the holy places; the faith itself was endangered on the borders of India and Iran by the expansion of Islam. Only the Chan Buddhist sect remained active in China at the end of the Tang age. Furthermore, translations of Indian texts became less common in China after the great translators and commentators died off.