Draft on the Buddhist Policy of the Song Dynasty

Author: Liu Changdong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-07-01
Features: As for the overall research status of Buddhist history at present, the Song Dynasty Buddhism remains an area in urgent need of further study. Huang Xiannian, in the field of administrative management, had previously proposed the current research status, stating that "the study of Buddhist history should focus on the countermeasures after the Song Dynasty" and recently said, "the research before the Sui and Tang dynasties has always been the main focus of the 20th century, while the Buddhist history after the Song Dynasty has been weak." This can be seen as the common sentiment of Buddhist history researchers. During the Song Dynasty, except for Emperor Huizong's temporary promotion of Taoism and suppression of Buddhism, the Song government generally supported the development of Buddhism, and the relationship between politics and religion was generally positive. Under the new political-religious relationship, the implementation of the government's religious policies and the functional departments responsible for religious affairs management were not fixed in the Song Dynasty; their changes reflected the evolution of the government's Buddhist policies and administrative intentions. The religious policies and monastic management of the Song Dynasty were mainly carried out and implemented through monastic officials. In the Buddhist management policies of the Song government, monasteries had always been the focus of state administrative attention. The management of monasteries varied in the degree of intervention due to different resident systems. Additionally, in the Song Dynasty, some monasteries had imperial halls to enshrine the portraits of emperors and empresses, while others enshrined the birth-month incense of emperors and empresses. Therefore, the appendices at the end of the book include "A Study of Imperial Halls in the Song Dynasty" and "A Study of Birth-Month Beliefs" to help understand the relationship between imperial halls, birth-month incense, and imperial-appointed monasteries. Based on the research achievements of predecessors and contemporaries, this book provides some explorations on certain issues in the Buddhist management policies of the Song Dynasty. The book consists of seven chapters, including the Buddhist prophecies of the enthronement of Emperor Taizu of Song and the reconstruction of the political-religious relationship in the early Song Dynasty, the changes in the institutions to which monks and nuns belonged and their significance, the monastic official system of the Song Dynasty, the procedures for obtaining the legality of Song Dynasty monasteries, the Jia Yi system and the Ten Directions system of Song Dynasty monasteries, the imperial-appointed resident system of Song Dynasty monasteries, and the Five Mountains and Ten Monasteries system of the Song Dynasty.