Was there an imperial distribution of Buddha relics in ninth-century China?

T. H. BARRETT

School of Oriental and African Studies

Chinese imperial attempts at increasing the prestige of a regime by emulating the legendary Ashokan feat of distributing 84,000 relics of the Buddha at one time across the whole world have attracted some attention in recent years. We know now that one important relic distribution took place at the start of the seventh century, and another at the end.1 A tenth-century distribution by a king whose domain encompassed the lower Yangtse area has also been studied, not simply for its religious and political symbolism but also as part of the early history of printing. This is because the Buddhas relics and the Buddhas word were seen as in some respects equivalent, and printing offered an excellent way of achieving the target of productivity suggested by legend, in that short printed texts could be substituted for relics themselves.2 In Japan just such a move seems to have resulted already in the late eighth century in the creation of some of the oldest printed materials to survive to this day.3 In commenting on this sequence of distributions recently, I noted on the basis of a fourteenth-century document cited in a secondary source some indications of another possible distribution of Buddhist relics in the mid-ninth century, facilitated perhaps by the centralization of existing Buddha relics in China by the state as part of the great Huichang persecution of 84045.4 This source, by the historian and lay Buddhist scholar Song Lian (1310 82), was an inscription for the Ashoka Monastery in Zhejiang, as preserved in the nineteenth-century provincial gazetteer for the region.5 This in turn no doubt derived from a 1619 gazetteer for the monastery itself, modern reprints of which derive from a second edition of circa 1758.6 The author of the piece, Song Lian, whose inscription dates to 1378, has not, however, won a particularly distinguished reputation as a historian. The dynastic history of the Mongol period that he edited is generally regarded as a fairly sloppy piece of work, while his own historical writing seems to wander at times from the path of objectivity.7 It is worth noting therefore that the tale he tells is clearly not his
1 The best work on these events may be found in Chen Jinhua, Monks and Monarchs, Kinship and Kingship (Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian Studies, 2002) ch. 2 and 3. 2 On the tenth-century episode, see p. 36 of Edmund H. Worthy, Jr., Diplomacy for survival: domestic and foreign relations of Wu Yeh, 907978, in Morris Rossabi (ed.), China Among Equals (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 744. On its significance for printing, see Tsien Tsuen-hsuin, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. V.1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 578. 3 What we know of this event has been succinctly summarized by P. F. Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), pp. 11417. 4 See p. 55 of T. H. Barrett, Stu r pa, su r tra, and s aarira in China, c. 656706 CE, Buddhist Studies Review 18/1, 2001, pp. 164. 5 Wang Yunwu (ed.), Zhejiang tongzhi 230 (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1934, indexed reprint of 1899), pp. 39245. 6 For this work and its reprints, see Timothy Brook, Geographical Sources of MingQing History, second edition (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2002), p. 181: I have used the facsimile edition from the 1996 Zhongguo fosi zhi congkan series listed there, in which Songs remarks on the events concerned may be found on p. 4B.2a. 7 For Songs shortcomings as an editor, see the remarks of Frederick Mote, in Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett (eds), The Cambridge History of China, Volume 6: Alien Regimes and Border States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 68993; for a study of a document from his own hand, see pp. 6873 of Hok-Lam Chan, Chang Chung and his prophecy: the transmission of the legend of an early Ming Taoist, Oriens Extremus 20/1, 1973, pp. 65102.

Bulletin of SOAS, 68, 3 (2005), 451454. School of Oriental and African Studies. Printed in the United Kingdom.

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alone, but may earlier be found with the precise date 850 in an account of the monastery written in 1355 by an otherwise obscure monk, Wuguang, also to be found in the 1628 gazetteer, though so far I know of no complete source older than that, even if (as we shall see) one may have existed.8 The monastery derived its name from a famous reliquary, supposedly deriving from the legendary distribution of the Indian ruler, which had originally been rediscovered on Chinese soil according to local lore by Liu Sahe, a renowned detector of hidden Buddhist relics said variously to have lived in the third, fourth or fifth century CE.9 This reliquary, already famous in early Tang times, had been confiscated during the Huichang persecution and placed in a nearby government office.10 During the subsequent reign of the emperor Xuanzong (846859) it had been reassigned to an officially supported Kaiyuan Monastery, only to be returned to its original home after popular protests. Now this in itself suggests no more than a mere expedient redistribution of existing sacred objects, not a deliberate campaign involving the simultaneous dissemination of a large number of relics. But however late our sources for this specific event, it would appear to be at least prima facie quite conceivable that the Huichang persecution brought a great many such objects into the hands of the imperial government, and so we might reasonably expect some ideological use to have been made of the resulting opportunity. The topic does therefore demand a review of whatever evidence is still available. Chinese official sources however, while noting the revival of imperial support for Buddhism, reveal nothing useful on this score, and while surviving inscriptions of the period confirm the historians picture of the emperors enthusiasm for the religion, I have found so far none that describes the dissemination of relics.11 One might have hoped that Dunhuang, at this point recently returned to the Chinese fold by a local military leader after a period of Tibetan domination, would have preserved some record of having received a relic. There was a prominent local cleric there who certainly did receive an imperial ordination certificate at this time, according to an inscription unearthed there in the early twentieth century, but though this source suggests that other donations were simultaneously made to reward the clerics local commander, no specific mention is made of any relic of the Buddha, or indeed of any religious items at all as forming part of the imperial largesse.12 The life of this clerics chief disciple, tooa disciple who was much involved in integrating his community back into the larger Chinese Buddhist worldhas been studied at some length through the surviving documents, and here, likewise, while it is clear that he received his due reward in presents, relics seem never to be mentioned.13 What is more,
8 Ayushan zhi 2.3a; cf. pp. 6.2b3a, where the events are recapitulated in a lengthier narrative presumably composed by the seventeenth-century editor. 9 For Liu Sahe, see inter alia Hlne Vetch, Lieou Sa-ho et les grottes de Mo-kao, in M. Soymi (ed.), Nouvelles Contributions aux tudes de Touen-houang (Geneva: Librarie Droz, 1981), pp. 13748; Sun Xiushen, Liu Sahe heshang shiji kao, in Dunhuang Wenwu yanjiusuo (ed.), 1983 nian Quanguo Dunhuang Xueshu Taolunhui Wenji: shiku, yishu bian, shang (Lanzhou: Gansu Renmin chubanshe, 1985), pp. 272310; and pp. 50710 of E. G. Pulleyblank, Ji Hu: indigenous inhabitants of Shaanbei and western Shanxi, in E. H. Kaplan and D. W. Whisenhunt (eds), Opuscula Altaica: Essays Presented in Honor of Henry Schwartz (Bellingham: University of Western Washington, 1994), pp. 499531. 10 The earliest legends concerning the reliquary up to the late seventh century are covered by Daoshi, Ji Shenzhou sanbao gantong lu 1, pp. 404b405b, in the edition of the Taisho Canon, vol. 52. 11 See e.g. Sima Guang, Zizhi tongjian 249 (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1976 reprint), pp. 80478, for Xuanzongs efforts at reviving Buddhism, and some consequent complaints from his officials. 12 This inscription is reprinted in Jiang Liangfu, Mogaoku nianbiao (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985), pp. 3923. 13 Chen Tsu-lung, La vie et les oeuvres de Wou-tchen (816895) (Paris: EFEO, 1966), pp. 2544, covers the period in question; p. 35 mentions presents, unspecified.

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a true imperial relic distribution should have involvedto judge by the pattern of those for which we have more informationthe dispatch of some relics overseas to such places as Japan, but there is not, so far as I am aware, any record of this in Japanese sources, though admittedly these seem not to depict Japan as either asking for or receiving Chinese imperial donations, even where we know that this happened from other materials.14 Korean historians apparently suffered from no such scruples, and the thirteenth-century Samguk yusa, our main Buddhist source for the history of the period, is particularly interested in relics of continental origin.15 For the reign of Xuanzong, moreover, that work first notes that an official envoy to the Tang court, Won Hong, brought back a Buddha tooth, and later in the text that he also brought back scriptures, both under the date 851.16 And the slightly fuller information on this event in the earlier Samguk sagi, compiled by the Confucian scholar Kim Pu-sik (10751151) in 1145, unambiguously conjoins the two events. Here, under the year 851, we read that Won brought back both scriptures and a Buddhas tooth together, and also that the King, Munso h ng (r. 839857), as a sign of reverence, came out to the suburbs to meet him.17 But is this enough evidence from which to conclude that a concerted relic distribution campaign actually did take place? Taking into consideration the general pattern of silence in the surviving documentation, probably not. The reluctance or negligence of some of our sources in discussing such matters is easy enough to understand: few authors, except for those promoting Buddhism, were particularly interested in preserving a full record of imperial support for the religion. In the case of the Empress Wu, moreover, scholars like Antonino Forte have shown that the enthusiastic support of the Buddhist community for her usurpation later necessitated a considerable rewriting of history after the restoration of the Tang dynastic line, so even Buddhist writers tend to be rather restrained in their coverage of the period.18 We know of her relic campaign, therefore, only due to one obscure provincial inscription and a Tang period manuscript rediscovered in the twentieth century.19 But the main Buddhist chronicle for later times, the Fozu tongji, compiled by Zhipan in 1269, does record the earlier relic distribution campaign, and does record the later, tenth century, printed relic distribution.20 The joyful return of the reliquary to its original place in the Ashoka Monastery is also listed, under the year 849, but it is not related in any way to any broader activity.21 Nor is it likely that this lack of any mention of a wider context was due to a shortage of materials. Official sources for the late Tang are less than ideal,
14 The official record may be found in Charlotte von Verschuer, Les Relations Officielles du Japon avec la Chine aux VIIIe et IXe Sicles (Geneva and Paris: Librarie Droz, 1985), Deuxime Partie, which provides a chronicle derived from the basic sources. For a Japanese request known only from the Chinese side, see pp. 1718 and n. 13 of T. H. Barrett, Shinto and Taoism in early Japan, in John Breen and Mark Teeuwen (eds), Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami (Richmond: Curzon, 2000), pp. 1331. 15 The compiler, Ilyon, devotes a lengthy section of his work to such imports, available in English translation in Ha Tae-Hung and Grafton K. Mintz, Samguk yusa: Legends and History of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient Korea (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1972), pp. 22434. 16 Ilyon, Samguk yusa 3, pp. 992b24, 993b2 (in Taisho Canon, vol. 49); cf. Ha and Mintz, Samguk yusa, pp. 226, 231. 17 Lee Kang-lae (ed.), Kim Pu-sik, Samguk sagi 11 (Seoul: Hangilsa, 1998), p. 156. I am grateful to my former student, Dr J. Seo, for the gift of a copy of this useful variorum edition. 18 For some examples of the historiographical consequences for Buddhists, see T. H. Barrett , The date of the Leng-chia shih-tzu chi, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, third series 1/2 (July 1991), pp. 2559. 19 We therefore owe our knowledge of this event largely to the assiduity of Chen Jinhua in tracking down the requisite information: see his Monks and Monarchs, pp. 1235, 1278. 20 Zhipan, Fozu tongji 39, p. 361a1415, 44, p. 394c2427, in edition of Taisho Canon, vol. 49. 21 Zhipan, Fozu tongji 42, p. 387a1517.

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but Buddhist writers of the next few centuries had, for example, a fairly abundant supply of late Tang epigraphical information at their disposal and generally made good use of itthe story of the return of the reliquary from the Kaiyuan Temple to its original place may indeed ultimately derive from such a source. But if there really was any information concerning a concerted campaign of relic distribution at this time, is highly likely to have been recorded somewhere in at least one other simultaneous inscription, and so to have entered the Chinese Buddhist historiographical tradition of later times, even if the full text versions of some inscriptions were subsequently lost. Even so, the Korean references do help to show that in a broader sense the tradition of the political use of relics remained unbroken, and that the association between relics and scriptures in this context was also one that persisted for centuries, and was not just a feature of one particular period.