天子即如來=present Son of Heaven as Tathāgata; 贊寧=Zanning; 僧曹=Sangha Office; 興福造像=religious works for making merits; 拓跋珪的漢化=Tuoba Gui's adoption of Han Chinese political system
The official institution of the Sangha office-through which emperors appointed monks to supervise monastic matters for the empire-was characteristic of Chinese Buddhist tradition. This institution, which had no doctrinal foundation in Indian Buddhism, started with an accidental appointment of Chinese monk, Faguo, as Chief of priests, by non-Buddhist nomadic ruler Tuoba Gui 拓跋珪in 398 to facilitate pacifying conquered Buddhists. With Faguo's assertion ＂present Son of Heaven as Tathāgata,＂ priests bowed down to the ruler. Subsequently, Buddhism still suffered from a devastating suppression from 445 to 453 until finally, with the support of succeeding rulers, it became the dominant faith throughout the empire, but at the expense of giving up its autonomy to the newly established Sangha office (initially called jianfucao 監福曹, later renamed zhaoxuancao 昭玄曹). The paper is aimed to reconstruct the development of the Sangha office from its inception to preeminence in the Northern Wei, through a close reading and re-punctuating of primary historical and Buddhist sources, in light of the cultural and political interaction of pastoral Xianbei nomads and agricultural Han Chinese. The study refutes Zanning's view that the establishment of Sangha office was an absorption of Indian monastery management into the existing Chinese bureaucratic system. Additionally, the study reveals that ＂Son of Heaven＂ in Faguo's use referred to the nomadic ruler, the qaghan 可汗, rather than to the Chinese huangdi 皇帝. No permanent office had been assigned to supervise monastic matters before faithful Emperor Wencheng's restoration of the Buddhist faith in 453. During this restoration, the emperor's unprecedented extensive religious works-building temples, erecting stupas, making Buddha's images, engraving steles etc.-made it necessary to establish the Sangha office to facilitate the effort. Moreover, provided with monetary and manpower resources by Emperor Xiaowen, the Sangha office grew increasingly busy, powerful, and well-endowed. All these worldly powers and concerns, however, made the priests become less concerned with the Vinaya and abusive of their powers. Increased imperial stringency in selecting and ordaining Buddhist priests did not reduce the abuses of the Sangha office. The accepted explanation is that the Sangha office served as emperor's personal religious carrier, directed through his ordinances, not an administrative agency, supervised by Administrative Chief Shangshuling 尚書令. The Sangha office was instituted outside the normal bureaucracy and its regulatory protocols. Such ＂absorption＂ of Buddhism under the political ruler resulted in a peculiar scenario at the end of the Northern Wei in 534, which coincided with the apogee of the Sangha office. The imperial dedication to the Buddhist faith in the Northern Wei not only deeply affected the contemporary economic and political infrastructure but also left a rich legacy for the later dynasties to cope with; one of them was the institution of the Sangha office, which was unique among Buddhist traditions of the world.
