Branding the Leading Mountain of Southeast China: Studies on the Lingyin Monastic Gazetteers

This dissertation analyzes the editorship of Lingyin monastery’s six monastic gazetteers compiled over the past five centuries, by focusing on both the genealogy and the editorial process followed in compiling the gazetteers themselves. This research investigates how gazetteers were compiled, the motives behind their compilation, and the significance of these gazetteers to Buddhist historiography in both Chinese and East Asian historical contexts. Unlike Buddhist canonical texts, the monastic gazetteer is a structured compilation that sheds light on Buddhist historiographical writing; it serves as a conduit through which scholars may enter a monastery’s past. In addition to the extensive prefaces to the monastic gazetteers, I examine specific fascicles, including writings on monastic history, the geographic landscape of the monastic territory, the monastery’s dominant dharma lineage and writings of or on notable clergy, and tourists’ poems preserved in the gazetteers. The Lingyin monastic gazetteers demonstrate that the monastery adapts and revises the content of existing writing to represent the life of notable individuals in the monastery’s history, omits unfavorable writings that would bring potential political persecution, and utilizes literary content to shape the preferred image of the monastery. The gazetteers’ final products reflect the Buddhist clergy’s stance, and demonstrate how the relationships between the clergy, literati, and the state changed over time. The texts also show how editorial processes establish and restore the monastery’s self-image, or its religious and institutional brand. I focus on the monastic gazetteer as a genre, the similarities and differences of its content and structure with other concurrent publications, and how its structure was reorganized so that the gazetteer became one in a series that portrayed the desired image of the monastery. On the surface, the gazetteer appears to be the monastery’s outreach to an external readership, providing descriptive information on the monastery itself and honoring its secular donors. However, I argue that the Lingyin monastic gazetteer editors’ true focus was not on its local or cultural context but instead its religious content, honoring late or incumbent abbots and promoting the Sanfeng (or Three-Peaks) school of the Chan (Jp. Zen) lineage. These efforts were successful throughout the Qing dynasty. A case study of the Lingyin monastic gazetteers allows us to reconstruct the monastery’s rich history through providing an account of the monastery’s major historical events in chronological sequence. It reveals critical aspects of how the monks coordinated with literati to promote the monastery, how Buddhists portrayed themselves, and how monasteries branded themselves to the public through textual means. The products show the flexibility of the clergy-literati collaboration and present the changing strategies in responding to socio-political change over time. Through the publication of monastic gazetteers, the clergy brands and rebrands the monastery as well as keeps the monastic records archived and updated. Gazetteers thus allow the monastery to properly present its own self-image, securing its own religious tradition and attracting potential support from various forces