1. Among the expanding list of works on religion in modern China are Daniel Overmyer, ed., Religion in China Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Fenggang Yang, Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), Adam Yuet Chau, Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation (Routledge, 2014), and Max Deeg and Bernhard Scheid, eds., Religion in China: Major Concepts and Minority Positions (Osterreichische Akademie Der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-historischen Klasse Sitzungsberichte), (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2015).

2. A recent exception to this are studies included in the edited volume by Thomas Jülch, The Middle Kingdom and the Dharma Wheel: Aspects of the Relationships between the Buddhist Saṃgha and the State in Chinese History (Leiden: Brill, 2016), in which my own study of Zanning is included.

3. I am greatly indebted to the pioneering work of Peter Bol in this regard, especially “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).

4. Regarding the provisions of the Later Zhou, Shizong suppression, see Wudai huiyao 12 & 16, Jiu Wudai shi 115, and Xin Wudai shi 12. Makita Tairyō doubts the validity of these figures, as they far exceed comparable numbers given for the Tang suppression in the huichang era (Godai shūkyōshi kenkyū, p. 176).

5. See, for example, the rationale given in Jiu Wudai shi 115, p. 1529, translated in Welter, The Meaning of Myriad Good Deeds, p. 25.

6. For an overview of the huichang suppression, see Ch’en, Buddhism in China, pp. 226-233; for a more detailed account, see Weinstein, Buddhism under the T’ang, pp. 115-136.

7. This is not to suggest that Buddhism was without detractors. The Northern Song Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1126) mounted anti-Buddhist policies that culminated in 1119 when he essentially ordered Buddhism to be assimilated into Daoism. This had the potential to eradicate Buddhism as an independent religion in China. On Huizong’s suppression campaign, see Shin-yi Chao, “Huizong and the Divine Empryean Palace 神霄宮Temple Network,” in Patricia Ebrey and Maggie Bickford, eds.,