Buddhist Fund-Raising Poems and Other Lost Verses from Venerable Miaozhan's Gāthā (Printed 1142)
Buddhist fund-raising poetry lays at the intersection of literary arts, religious meaning making, and economic exchange. A twelfth-century woodblock print of Venerable Miaozhan's Gāthā 妙湛和尚偈頌 contains 180 previously lost poems by the Chan master Miaozhan Sihui 妙湛思慧 (1071-1145). Neither Venerabl...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2023
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| In: |
History of religions
Year: 2023, Volume: 63, Issue: 1, Pages: 35-74 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Sri Lanka
/ Conflict
/ Sufism
/ Pilgrimage
/ Buddhism
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| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion BJ Islam BL Buddhism KBM Asia KCD Hagiography; saints |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Buddhist fund-raising poetry lays at the intersection of literary arts, religious meaning making, and economic exchange. A twelfth-century woodblock print of Venerable Miaozhan's Gāthā 妙湛和尚偈頌 contains 180 previously lost poems by the Chan master Miaozhan Sihui 妙湛思慧 (1071-1145). Neither Venerable Miaozhan's Gāthā nor Miaozhan himself have previously been studied, likely because this rare text was in private collections until recently. Unusually, most of his poems are about fund-raising. This article introduces the text of Venerable Miaozhan's Gāthā and its author, as well as the social networks encoded in his poems. Then, I focus on verses about fund-raising, economic exchange, and the role of tea in donations. Socioeconomic changes after war, the economic practices of monastery estates, and fund-raising instructions in ritual handbooks all provide contexts that partially explain Miaozhan's fund-raising poetry. I interpret Miaozhan's fund-raising poems as a religioliterary technology that circulated into the world where it could participate in the fashioning of religious meaning amid economic relationships between the monastery and its patrons. |
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| ISSN: | 1545-6935 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: History of religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1086/725412 |
