Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain

Wen-shing Chou

Published by Princeton University Press 2018

Mount Wutai

Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain

Wen-shing Chou

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691191126

Overview
Contents

About this book

The northern Chinese mountain range of Mount Wutai has been a preeminent site of international pilgrimage for over a millennium. Home to more than one hundred temples, the entire range is considered a Buddhist paradise on earth, and has received visitors ranging from emperors to monastic and lay devotees. Mount Wutai explores how Qing Buddhist rulers and clerics from Inner Asia, including Manchus, Tibetans, and Mongols, reimagined the mountain as their own during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Wen-Shing Chou examines a wealth of original source materials in multiple languages and media--many never before published or translated—such as temple replicas, pilgrimage guides, hagiographic representations, and panoramic maps. She shows how literary, artistic, and architectural depictions of the mountain permanently transformed the site's religious landscape and redefined Inner Asia's relations with China. Chou addresses the pivotal but previously unacknowledged history of artistic and intellectual exchange between the varying religious, linguistic, and cultural traditions of the region. The reimagining of Mount Wutai was a fluid endeavor that proved central to the cosmopolitanism of the Qing Empire, and the mountain range became a unique site of shared diplomacy, trade, and religious devotion between different constituents, as well as a spiritual bridge between China and Tibet.

A compelling exploration of the changing meaning and significance of one of the world's great religious sites, Mount Wutai offers an important new framework for understanding Buddhist sacred geography.

Author / Editor information

Wen-Shing Chou is assistant professor of art history at Hunter College, City University of New York.

Reviews

"Chou’s study, like the many examples of maps, gazetteers, paintings, murals, sculptures, and temples discussed in her work, continues to shape, guide, and construct our visions of Mount Wutai."---William J. Ma, Religion and the Arts

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Imperial Replicas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
2. Miracles in Translation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
3. Landscape and Lineage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
4. Panoramic Maps Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
Coda Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
Appendixes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Photo Credits Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226