近代佛教改革的地方性實踐: 以民國南京的寺廟、組織、信眾為中心=Buddhist Reformation In The Local Community: A Study On Buddhist Temples, Organizations and Believers In Republican Nanjing
The Buddhist reformation was a main theme in the history of modern Chinese Buddhism. It showed how did a Buddhist community respond to the challenge of that times by involving the state, Buddhist temples, monks and laypersons. Scholarly attention has been paid on this theme, while there still is room for improvement. Firstly, previous researches preferred lives and thoughts of "eminent monks" or intellectual lay Buddhists who endorsed the reform rather than ordinary believers, which led to the confusion between reform blueprint and real effects. Secondly, the reason why Buddhist reformation failed was vague because few study applied a region-based approach to analyze different roles Buddhism played in local societies. This dissertation focuses on Buddhist temples, organizations and believers in Nanjing during the Republican period (1912-1949). It aims at local responses to Buddhist reformations launched by the government and Buddhist activists respectively. Approaches of social and local history will be applied to analyse various materials such as official documents and archives, Buddhist newspapers and periodicals, local and temple gazetteers, memoirs and collected works of contemporaries. Pictures of the Buddhist community in capital Nanjing will emerge from statistical analysis as well as case studies. / This thesis consists of four main chapters. Quantitative studies have been done in chapter 1 to portray the general picture of temples, monks and temple properties in Nanjing. Chapter 2 & 3 discusses and evaluates the reformative attempts of some officials and monks in Nanjing respectively as to make a model Buddhist community in the capital. Chapter 4 presents the practice of laymen in the city and illustrates its relationship with the reform. It can be concluded that the effects of the Buddhist reform were quite limited compared to its ambitious plan. The reason cannot be simply ascribed to the boycott of those "conservative monks". As a matter of fact, divergent opinions and interests in state and sangha made the reform campaigns exist in name only. Besides, clergy and laity were good at evading reformative pressures come from the top. They maintained those beliefs and rituals they considered valuable, such as the practice of pure land, the tradition of chanting and confession, the dharma assemble and pilgrimage and so forth. As a result, the conventional traditions in Buddhism were much more transparent than those unconventional reformative characteristics in a modern city like Nanjing. / Based on the example of Nanjing, we can shed some light on the research of modern Chinese Buddhism. First of all, Buddhism was considered as a disciplined religion in the religion/superstition dichotomy formulated by government. But the practice of monks and laypersons always went against
