Search Results

Chapter 2 illustrates a seismic shift in Chinese representations of post-parinirvāṇa Indian Buddhism and thus conceptions of Buddhist sainthood in a world without a Buddha. While Kumārajīva’s associates advanced a cyclical model of Indian Buddhist history, the sources examined in this chapter instead depicted Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva standing in long lines of Indian patriarchs who together upheld the Dharma after Śākyamuni. Because this Indian lineage was reportedly severed before extending to China, I argue that it served to advance a soteriology of absence akin to that of the Lotus Sūtra. Then, in a sixth-century cave site that includes a sculpted representation of the Indian lineage, this message was both perpetuated and nullified. On the one hand, this cave depicted the Indian patriarchs as long-departed exemplars of Buddhist sainthood. And on the other hand, it rendered them as immanent presences that could be engaged directly through the cave’s ritual program.

Chapter 6 offers a more synoptic perspective on the Indian patriarchs as both models for emulation and objects of veneration in medieval China. Here I aim to articulate the unique sorts of power and authority that Chinese Buddhists invested in the Indian patriarchs, as opposed to other Indian holy beings and in relation to competing Chinese models of sainthood and divinity. On the one hand, the Indian patriarchs served as objects of veneration in medieval China, much like other Indian figures and Chinese deities and saints. On the other hand, the patriarchs were most often represented as “Goldilocks saints” of sorts, who lived neither too close to nor too far from either the Buddha or latter-day Chinese adepts. This made the Indian patriarchs both authoritative representatives of original Indian Buddhism and proximal exemplars of Buddhist sainthood for the generations after nirvāṇa.

The conclusion provides an overview of the main conclusions drawn in this study concerning how medieval Chinese Buddhists conceived Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva. It further explains the approach taken in this study – situating the Chinese hagiographies of these Indian patriarchs firmly within the context of medieval China – vis-à-vis scholarship on Indian figures that either endeavors to locate them in ancient India or trace their imagery across Asian Buddhist cultures. In this light these hagiographies illustrate how Chinese Buddhists developed models of Buddhist sanctity as means of bridging the Sino-Indian divide, demonstrating that great Buddhist saints could be created in the centuries after nirvāṇa, whether in India or China; that ancient Indian holy beings had become immanent presences in China; and that the avowedly foreign religion of Buddhism actually represented – from its ancient Indian inception and through its greatest Indian saints – the most vaunted Chinese ideals of sanctity and salvation.

The introduction lays out the scope of the book, the types of sources used, and the methodology employed. It discusses the meaning of the term “patriarch” and related categories of Buddhist sainthood found in Chinese sources. It explains the implications of the book’s title, which indicates how Chinese Buddhists simultaneously transmitted pre-existing images of the Indian patriarchs and invented them anew. The book examines hagiographic, exegetical, scriptural, ritual, and genealogical writings, as well as art historical materials, emphasizing the interdependent nature of these different genres. Hagiography was not produced or consumed in isolation from these other literary and visual arts; the Indian patriarchs’ career trajectories, doctrinal dispositions, and ritual prescriptions all developed in concert. The introduction also outlines the approach taken on the issue of religious acculturation, arguing for closer attention to local Chinese representations of ancient Indian Buddhism and treating Indianness as a repertoire element that was constantly (re)defined.

This chapter argues that there is no special problem in Buddhist ethics. Instead of solving a problem about ethics in the context of conventional truth, it seeks to eliminate an apparent problem. It does so by analyzing the ethical thought of four important Madhyamaka philosophers: Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Candrakīrti, and Śāntideva.