During the years 1127 to 1143, the Sung scholar, ambassador, and partiot Chu Pien 朱弁(觀如居士，d. 1144 ─ the great-uncle of Chu Hsi 朱熹) was held captive in Ta─t'ung 大同 by the Jurchen rulers of the Chin 金 Dynasty. Shortly before the end of his captivity he wrote an essay entitled T'ai-shan jui-ying chi 臺山瑞應記 in which he described and commented on a series of visions of Mañjuśorī witnesed at Wu-t'ai Shan by members of a Chin military force. Not long after this essay was written it was appended to the Hsu ch'ing-liang chuan 續清涼傳，Chang Shang-ying's 張商英(號：無盡居士 1043~1122) account of his miracle ─ filed pilgrimages to Wu-t'ai Shan some decades earlier (in 1088~1090). This article takes Chu Pien's essay as a focus for the discussion of two related topics: First, the condition of Buddhism in the Wu-t'ai Shan region from the tenth century through the middle of the twelfth century. Second, the role of Buddhism, especially visionary Buddhism, in the lives of the intellectuals of the late Northern Sung and the early Chin. In connection with the second of these themes, Chu Pien and his mentor Ch'ao Yüeh-chih 晁說之 (1059~1129)are presented as eminent representatives of certain important but negelected strains in Sung intellectual life─namely, those trends of thought in which devotion to Buddhism was fully integrated into the culture of the Sung renaissance and not simply overshadowed by Neo-Confucianism. The article includes the Chinese texts and annotated translations of both the T'ai-shan Jui- ying chi 臺山瑞應記 and Chu Pine's biography from the Sung Shih 宋史， along with texts and translations of several other shorter primary sources. 佛法在九州間隨其方而化......北方人銳武。攝武 莫若示現。故言神道者宗清涼山。劉禹 Throughout the whole of China the Buddha-Dharma has worked its transfromations in accordance with the special characteristics of each particular locale Northerners are by temperament a martial people, and for the quelling of a bellicose spirit there is nothing so effective as visions. Thus is it said that northerners are devotees of the occult who hold Mount Ch'ing-liang in special esteem.
