Religion as a Binding Force in Urban Society: The 1313–1314 Restoration of the Travelling Palace of the Eastern Marchmount in Changxing Prefecture (Zhejiang)
Since Tim Brook’s Praying for Power (1993) we have come to appreciate the ongoing power of Buddhist religious tradition on all social levels, with the late Ming revival of a remarkably strong link between socio-educational elites and Lower Yangzi region Buddhist monasteries as one particularly clear example. Nonetheless, there are also differences or what we might call roads not taken. While elites connected to local monasteries in more ways than one, by the 1600s these monasteries did not organise society in the same way as local temple networks did. We might not expect this in the first place, but epigraphical evidence and colophons to Buddhist sūtras, for instance, demonstrate that in various places in Song-Jin-Yuan China Buddhist traditions were an important social force that far transcended doctrinal boundaries. In this contribution I analyse an inscription from the year 1314 as an example of the role of some Buddhist monasteries in structuring local society, from local officials and local militia to local guilds and traders. Apparently, something did get lost between the late Yuan and late Ming periods, even if the power of Buddhist ritual and devotional practices certainly continued to exert a strong appeal, whether connected to monasteries or new religious groups or otherwise.
目次
Abstract 111 Keywords 112 Preliminary Remarks 112 The Cult of the Dongyue xinggong 115 The Organisation 121 Erecting a Stone Stele with Inscription 125 The Donors and their Motivations 131 The Land Donations 144 Final Observations 149 Bibliography 153 Abbreviations 153 Primary Sources 153 Secondary Sources 154
