Building a Sacred Mountain
The Buddhist Architecture of China's Mount Wutai
Published on 1. May 2014
Book
Hardback
344 pages
978-0-295-99352-2 (ISBN)
Description
By the tenth century CE, Mount Wutai had become a major pilgrimage site within the emerging culture of a distinctively Chinese Buddhism. Famous as the abode of the bodhisattva Manjusri (known for his habit of riding around the mountain on a lion), the site in northeastern China's Shanxi Province was transformed from a wild area, long believed by Daoists to be sacred, into an elaborate complex of Buddhist monasteries.
In Building a Sacred Mountain, Wei-Cheng Lin traces the confluence of factors that produced this transformation and argues that monastic architecture, more than texts, icons, relics, or pilgrimages, was the key to Mount Wutai's emergence as a sacred site. Departing from traditional architectural scholarship, Lin's interdisciplinary approach goes beyond the analysis of forms and structures to show how the built environment can work in tandem with practices and discourses to provide a space for encountering the divine.
Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/building-a-sacred-mountain
In Building a Sacred Mountain, Wei-Cheng Lin traces the confluence of factors that produced this transformation and argues that monastic architecture, more than texts, icons, relics, or pilgrimages, was the key to Mount Wutai's emergence as a sacred site. Departing from traditional architectural scholarship, Lin's interdisciplinary approach goes beyond the analysis of forms and structures to show how the built environment can work in tandem with practices and discourses to provide a space for encountering the divine.
Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/building-a-sacred-mountain
Reviews / Votes
"A must read for any reader interested in Buddhist arts and architecture, or the history of East Asian religious traditions, Building a Sacred Mountain is a superb piece of scholarship and a model of appreciation for the integral relationships between religion and the arts."- John Renard (Religion and the Arts) "Reflects a remarkably ambitious and rigorous scholarly undertaking. It illustrates the reciprocal relationship between a unique geographic phenomenon and a sensitive and enlightened human response. The wide-ranging and exhaustive research that supports this book will give it enduring value to a wide range of scholars."
(Choice) "[T]he overall themes of visions, buildings, and pilgrimage that run throughout this beautifully illustrated, meticulously documented book are consistently compelling: there was, Lin demonstrates, much more to building Wutai than buildings."
- John Kieschnick (Journal of Asian Studies) "As Lin's insightful work makes abundantly clear, through the ontology of Wutaishan-from mountain, to monastery, to mandala, to mural, and from vision to built environment-Mount Wutai was always something like a 'virtual mountain.'"
- Johan Elverskog (American Historical Review) "[A] rich and nuanced historicization of Mount Wutai's ascent and transformations from the third through the tenth century, and an insightful account of the ever-shifting and contextual grounds of sacred geography. Lin's book is a substantial contribution to the recent wave of scholarship on Mount Wutai, but it's impact will be felt well beyond the borders of this subfield. . . . Elegantly written and produced. . . . [A] careful reader is rewarded with an expanded vista from which to see the Foguang Monastery, and through which to enter the field of sacred geography anew."
- Wen-shing Chou (Monumenta Serica)
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Seattle
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
102 b&w illus., 15 maps, 13 color plates - 102 Illustrations, black and white - 13 Plates, color - 15 Maps
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 178 mm
Weight
839 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-295-99352-2 (9780295993522)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
05/2014
1st Edition
University of Washington Press
€63.49
Available for download
Person
Wei-Cheng Lin is assistant professor of Chinese art history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Content
Acknowledgments
Chronology of Chinese Dynasties
Introduction
1. Building the Monastery, Locating the Sacred Presence
2. Entering the Mountains, Localizing the Sacred Presence
3. The Sacred Presence in Place and in Vision
4. Mediating the Distance to Mount Wutai
5. Reconfiguring the Center
6. Narrative, Visualization, and Transposition of Mount Wutai
Conclusion
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Conventions and Abbreviations
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
Chronology of Chinese Dynasties
Introduction
1. Building the Monastery, Locating the Sacred Presence
2. Entering the Mountains, Localizing the Sacred Presence
3. The Sacred Presence in Place and in Vision
4. Mediating the Distance to Mount Wutai
5. Reconfiguring the Center
6. Narrative, Visualization, and Transposition of Mount Wutai
Conclusion
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Conventions and Abbreviations
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index