The Administration of Buddhism in China: A Study and Translation ...

with the four major suppressions of Buddhism: in the Northern Wei (446), the Northern Zhou (574), as well as the aforementioned ones in the Tang (ca. 845) and Later Zhou (955). These periodic disruptions are sign posts for the problems associated with Buddhism in the Chinese context––its alleged foreignness; its contravention of “true” Chinese values; its concomitant economic, political, and social dislocations. Yet, no major suppression occurred following the Later Zhou persecution of 955.⁷ What is the reason for this?

Dominant narratives of the development of Buddhism in China suggest that after the Tang, Buddhism went into decline,⁸ and could no longer muster the support to cause the ensuing disruptions that led to previous suppressions. While these narratives have been successfully challenged,⁹ suggestions for new narratvies have yet to be adequately drawn. In this work, I would like to contribute to a counter narrative, and suggest that the reason no significant persecutions of Buddhism occurred in post-Tang (really post-Five Dynasties) China owes more to the domestication of Buddhism than to its alleged decline. While this suggestion is not entirely new,¹⁰ the evidence for a consistent and systematic “taming” of Buddhism, tethering it to the administrative structures of the Chinese bureaucracy and curbing its independent tendencies, has yet to be presented.

Zanning’s Topical Compendium of the Buddhist Clergy engages the issue of the Buddhist presence in China directly, arguing for the clear and consistent contributions of Buddhism to Chinese culture and society in an unambiguous way. While ceding claims to independence, Zanning offers that Buddhism is an integral component of China’s culture; not an alien tradition anathema to Chinese values, but an important contributing factor to them. The following chapters offer an analysis and review of Zanning’s life and career (chapter 1), and an introduction to his major work on Buddhist administration, the Topical Compendium of the Buddhist Clergy, amidst the politics of Buddhist accommodation at the Song court (chapter 2). Attached to chapter 1 are two appendices: a translation of Wang Yucheng’s Preface on Zanning from The Literary Collection of