Dr WANG Xingyi, Department of Chinese History and Culture

The Indigenous Revival of Buddhism in the Northern Song: Resetting the Monastic Space According the Vinaya. Ordination throughout Buddhist Traditions. Department of Philosophy, Social Sciences, and Education, Perugia University, Italy, 16 December 2023.

Abstract
This talk is divided into two interrelated parts. The first half concerns Yuanzhao’s active project in reactivating the monastic boundary in the local Jiangnan area, based on his relief that a Buddhist monastery is a priori for any healthily functioning monastic community. The second part of the chapter is devoted to the narrative construction after the military and social turbulence between the end of the Tang through the Five Dynasties, in many ways Chinese religion reregistered almost as foreign if we compare it with the high point of the Tang. There is little surprise that in Yuanzhao’s records the most frequently mentioned reference to the disruption of local monastic history is the Huichang abolition of Buddhism.