淨土接紅塵 ─ 清代廣州海幢寺的經僧群體、刻書事業與社會網絡=Bridging the Pure Land and the Human World: The Publishing Priests, Printing Enterprise, and Social Networks of the Canton Temple Haichuang during the Qing Dynasty
From the mid-18th to the late 19th centuries, Haichuang 海幢 Buddhist Temple was not only familiar to the local people of Canton (Guangzhou) and the neighbouring regions, but also better known to Westerners than any other similar establishments in China. In addition to its historic legacy and status as a tourist spot, a venue for cultural and diplomatic activities, the temple also published Buddhist texts, and was hence a convenient point both for Chinese to worship Buddha and for foreigners to learn about Chinese Buddhism. For such an important Buddhist temple, however, the history of its middle phase, especially from the mid-18th century onwards, is only faintly discernible. To reconstruct the largely unknown history of the temple, the first major task is to sort out the extant Haichuang texts, which provide invaluable information on inhabitants of the temple who participated in its publishing enterprise as well as their views on Buddhist philosophy and the temple’s history. Founded on the author’s on-site investigation into the texts, this paper is divided into seven parts: the first two sections state the author’s new conception regarding of the re-construction of the history of Haichuang Temple and provides an overview of the characteristics and value of the Haichuang texts. From Section 3 onward, making use of the Haichuang texts in conjunction with other firsthand Chinese and Western sources, the paper investigates the formation and development of the temple’s publishing priests, analyzes the relationship between the publishing enterprise and the censorship campaign during the Qing dynasty, and explains how sponsors from different backgrounds participated in the enterprise of publishing and circulating Buddhist texts. Section 6 discusses the roles played by the Haichuang texts and the priests in exchanges between China and the West. The concluding remarks reassert the immense significance of the study of Haichuang Temple’s history for an understanding of religion and politics in the Qing era, of Buddhism in Guangdong, and of the history of relations between China and the West.
