By the Letter of Whose Law?: Defining Buddhist Monastic Legitimacy in Twelfth-Century China
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Religious Studies
First Advisor
Greene, Eric
Abstract
The present dissertation explores how the state and Buddhist monastic community mutually defined legitimate monastic status in the Song dynasty 宋 (960–1279). By drawing on twelfth-century secular laws and Buddhist ritual texts, I challenge the generally held assumption that it was only upon receiving the monastic precepts that a man was transformed into a monk. Rather, I argue, both the state and saṅgha recognized someone as a legitimate monk once he had legally acquired an initiation certificate (dudie 度牒) from the government and had subsequently undergone a Buddhist initiation ritual that culminated in his taking the tonsure (tifa 剃髮) and donning the monastic robes (piyi 披衣). I thus contend that, by the letter of both the state’s and the saṅgha’s laws, a man became a legitimate monk immediately upon taking up, in accordance with a set of mutually agreed upon secular and religious procedures, these signifiers of Buddhist monastic identity. In addition to this primary argumentative thread, I also explore how the Song-era monks Changlu Zongze 長蘆宗賾 and Yuanzhao 元照 modified the common Buddhist initiation ritual in order to reckon with questions about monastic identity. I argue that, by incorporating Chan concepts into his version of the ritual, Zongze was able to produce new monks who bore both the corporate monastic identity shared by all members of the saṅgha and a Chan-specific associative identity. These new monks, while corporately-indistinct from other monks, were thus affiliated with the Chan associative community from the moment of their initiation. I argue, in other words, that Zongze used his initiation text to produce Chan monks. In making this argument, I seek to add greater nuance to the otherwise accurate understanding that Chan monks did not constitute their own distinct monastic corporation in the Song dynasty. Following this exploration of Zongze’s initiation text, I then explain that Yuanzhao effectively used his version of the monastic initiation ritual to argue the opposite. Yuanzhao, that is, highlighted the generic elements found across all versions of the initiation ritual to demonstrate that every monk, regardless of any associative identity he may have also borne, was to be identified as a member of the saṅgha first and foremost. Because of Yuanzhao’s keen interest in the vinaya (the Buddhist monastic law code), I also explore how he employed the concept of precept essence (jieti 戒體) to ensure that adherence to the state’s requirements for attaining monastic status did not fall afoul of his understanding of the vinaya’s requirements for the same.
Recommended Citation
Lovdahl, Nathaniel Remington, "By the Letter of Whose Law?: Defining Buddhist Monastic Legitimacy in Twelfth-Century China" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1407.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1407
