Buddhism in Tang Dynasty

From the mid Han to Tang Dynasty, Buddhism in China had experienced great changes. With the penetration of Buddhist thinking in the past few dynasties, together with the respect of the Tang emperors, Tang had been the most prosperous dynasty of Buddhism in China. Below will introduce Buddhist activities in Tang Dynasty, their influences towards populace and the society, and discuss the reasons for its extensive growth.
Respect of Tang Emperor
Emperors in Tang Dynasty were mostly believe in Buddhism. Examples have WuHou(武后) was used to be a nun. After being the emperor, she often invited monks to the palace to give speeches. SuZong (肅宗) had ask his officials to surround and bow to hundreds of monks. As the king believed in Buddhism, ministers would follow in order to help or some may fawn the king. Prime ministers in feudal China like SongJing (宋璟) were experts in Buddhism.
The advanced work of translation
During Wei and Jin, the development of Buddhism has started and there were clergies came to China from the West to proselytize. Getting the support and encouragement from the emperors, they had their own monarches to do translation work, and thus, a large amount of sutra then can be readable for Chinese. Nearly 4000 chapters of sutra had been interpreted till the end of Wei and Jin. This provided a solid foundation to those who would like to investigate Buddhism afterwards. Those translators specialize in different areas, they gathered hundreds of people analyzing the shape, sound, and the meaning of words in sutra. This experience had a great impact on the wide spread of Buddhism in Tang Dynasty.
The flourishing temple economy
Before Tang, Buddhism already had a special right that the monks and nuns living in temples didn’t have to pay tax and to do servility work for the state. Also, temples at that time could get endless money from the emperor and the devotion of the populace, so monks had financial ability to start their own business and earn money, they could also engage in renting farmland to make themselves a living. Tax evasion was the reason for the poor masses to become monks, which help the growth of Buddhism.
The pursuit of Buddhist doctrine
The orderliness of Buddhism was poor when it was first introduced to China in time of the eastern Han, there were many omissions and mistakes in contents, which were not satisfied by the scholars in China. In the early Tang period, many of them took their journey to the west for the completeness, this drove the atmosphere of the pursuance of Buddhist doctrine. In order word, Buddhism in Tang focused on both theories and application, researchers merged the Chinese thinking into Buddhist one and apply them on daily lives. The way they use Chinese thinking to explain Buddhism made it unfold an independent road of development in China. Soon, various sects were generated and prospered the expansion of it.
Fits the need of different groups
The internal structure of Buddhism is complex, it contains recondite philosophical thinking, and also a secular state of religious belief. It can satisfied the various requests of different social class, and this is the reason why it was rooted among the rulers, scholars, and general level.
Emperor - Consolidation of regime by Buddhist thinking
One of the main Buddhism thinking is the cause and effect relationship. For the reason to consolidate their regime, emperors valued Buddhism very much, to domesticate his people together with the help of Chinese traditional ritual. Like the second emperor of Tang Dynasty, Li Shi Min, he is one of the Tang ruler that encourage the implementation of Buddhism though he is not a Buddhist follower. Some of them wish to lengthen their life by Buddhist power, while the others may want to penetrate the thinking of earning merit by doing good thing into the public’s mind, they thought it has the effect on consolidation of their power. Civilian – Getting bless and good fortune
Although the general public in Tang period were not knowledgeable enough to get the meaning of the difficult principles and thinking mentioned in sutras, they still acted piously, they would visit temples, join the Buddhist activities and devote themselves, these were mainly because they believed they could gain blessing, keep away from ominous things and earn merits by doing so.
Emphasis on the similarity with traditional Chinese thinking
Although Confucism and Taoism originate in a different social environment with Buddhism, it is impossible to have mutual similarity, however, there must be parts of it complemented for each other. For instance, Buddhism ask us to act kindly and to be patience, this matches with the old Chinese thinking. Like Confucism and Taoism, Buddhism also focus on human value and status, they believe that though different practices, all of us can use our own power to get enlightenment. In its progress of proselytizing in China, Buddhism amplified the part that similar to the old Chinese thinking, in order to have the identity in China. When they translate sutras into Chinese, they would focus and elaborate more on the parts like filial piety and receptiveness towards emperor etc. from the original sutra, on the contrary, for those could hardly be admitted by the Chinese society, they would rather alter the content.
Because of the deep penetration in the society, Buddhism brought a long term influence to China in diverse context.
Literal aspect
Thanks to the clergies and the proper way of proselytizing, Buddhism had gained a great success among varies doctrines. At that time, Buddhism separated into ten major sectarian groups, they may have their own ways to do missionary work, but still, common activities for preaching in the folk existed. Those activities generally involves daily contact with the masses, like “SuJiang” held in temples during festivals. As the theories of Buddhism are too hard to the general, so missionaries would first translate it into common and simple words, then started proselytism by Buddhist story telling. Literally, “SuJiang” means a kind of secular preaching. These speeches were recorded as scriptures and sutras, “BianWen” is the specific term for this kind of sutra. There were also monks and nun, acted as teachers of Buddhist, visiting villages and giving speeches to the public on the Buddhist theory. Monks and nuns may represent the temples they belonged to organize activities and meetings for the public, like regular chanting and vegetarian meal. Vegetation such as flowers and trees would be planted in temples and it would open to public during festivals, while gatherings and meetings would also be held. All these activities have the effect of proselytizing and deepened the belief and piety of the mass toward Buddhism by penetrating it into their daily lives via the above activities.
The development of Buddhism has a great influence on the literacy work and art in Chinese history. In the literacy aspect, because of the popular of SuJiang, BianWen was introduced. BianWen was originated from stories in Buddhist sutras, adding the Chinese folktale and made some alter-isness in order to fit the populace. Colourful and secular, it was a good tool to indoctrinate the people.
Both SuJiang and Bianwen were stemmed from Tang Dynasty. SuJiang was the Buddhist meeting using worldly and simple style to express the content of sutras to mass. Mostly they would choose 《法華》、《涅槃》、《金剛》、《華嚴》、《般若》etc. ,or those classics in Mahayana. The clergy would first read out a piece of sutra, then explained, lastly they would sing a piece of rhymed classical writing to help the audience memorizing the story.
Arts aspect
Tang Dynasty was the golden age in Chinese ancient art history. No matter in building construction, statues, drawings or music areas, they had attain the level that hadn’t been reached before, of which mainly affected by Buddhist culture. New style of buildings and constructions
Temple
It is a place to consecrate Buddha and Bodhisattva, and also the home of monks and nuns. Temples in Tang mainly adopted the classic Chinese wooden structure, decorated by lotus or other patterns with Buddhist features, this combine with the Chinese construction style.
Pagoda
Pagodas originated from India and it was used to store the bones of Buddha. After introduced into China, they were built with pavilion-style and octagonal in shape.
Statue of Buddha – ZaoXiang
Some are made of metal and some made up of stone. There for several reasons for people to construct ZaoXiang. Some believers treat them as role model, to remind themselves to be pious in order to get their road to Buddhahood. While others may modeling Buddha as they wish to gain blessing from Buddha to keep away danger.
The Leshan Giant Buddha is a famous one. It’s locate in Sichuan province. Its fame is come from the size of it, it’s the largest seated statue of Maitreya in China, with 71 m in height, which is higher than 35 floors. It was constructed from AD713 to AD803. The place located at a convergence of three rivers, with rushing water current. This cause losing of lives and properties, especially during flood season, landslides originated from destroyed mountain leaded to further tragedies. Seeing these, the monk Haitong decided to bore a huge Maitreya on cliff, symbolizing endless mana to protect the people.

Change in customs
Apart from literal and art work, Buddhism also affected us on daily lives, especially in Tang period, there were apparent change in the custom.
Practise virtue
Believing in the transmigration and karma, the Buddhist followers largely support charity work in order to earn more merits. The general would donate money as devotion to temple and engage in diverge social charity work, for example building bridges and roads, schools, hostels, hospitals, relief work. Without the financial support from the public, these works could hardly be done. Meanwhile, the precept of non-killing encourage people to be vegetarian. There were several times that the Tang government banned the killing of livestock and fishing. The banning of livestock killing even lasted for four months. As for drinks, they believe tea is the most suitable drinks for those who seek for Zen, as tea has the function of refreshment and purification. This is the reason why different kinds of tea trees were planted in temples, there were also rooms for tea appreciation, drinking of tea was then promoted and stimulated the widespread of tea culture.
To conclude, the prosperous development of Buddhism in Tang Dynasty is due to the encouragement of emperors and the secular way of proselytizing and it affect China greatly in areas of social, cultural, literal and art and so forth. In the past, China is a non-religious country, but after the introduction of Buddhism, the mindset of kindness rooted in the folk. In time of Sui and Tang Dynasty, China is the largest Buddhist country in Asia, it causes a deep and long lasting influence on our nation.

Reference: 1. Christian Cochini
2009 “Guide to Buddhist Temples of China”
2. Cheng Pui Wa, Ng Mei Ying, Lai Wai Yin 1997 “Guo Shi Zhong Lun”
3. Wong Wing Mo 1993 “Duen Huang de Tang Shi”
4. Lam Ching Ho 1971 “Fo Jiao de Jing Shen yu Te Se”
5.