The Transformation of Buddhist Cosmology of Early Modern China: A Study of the Fajie Anli tu 法界安立圖

Abstract

This dissertation probes the development, transformation, and representation of Buddhist cosmology in Chinese history, with a detailed analysis of a Buddhist cosmological treatise from seventeenth century China titled the Fajie anli tu (法界安立圖，Establishment of the Dharma-Field with Illustrations) as its focal point. By critically interpreting and understanding Buddhist cosmology through textual sources, visual representations, and religious practices during the late Ming dynasty, this dissertation examines the Buddhist ways of perceiving the world during early modern era and surveys the social-historical upbringing of Buddhist cosmological formations and expressions during that particular era. The Fajie anli tu is an explicit and orderly account of the configurations and structures of the Buddhist cosmos, the only text that solely focused on Buddhist cosmology in early modern China. This book reflects the best knowledge of late Ming Buddhists could perceive on Buddhist cosmology and the physical world around them. The text is well accepted in China since its first publication and has a far-reaching influence during its transmission to other parts of the world, especially Japan and Britain. Despite its breadth, depth and its historical values, this text remains hardly studied, and this dissertation is the first attempt to have a close examination of the text. This study focuses on a textual analysis of the Fajie anli tu to examine the ways through which Buddhist intellectuals perceive the cosmos. In addition, I bring the text into dialogues with non-textual materials that includes illustrations of Buddhist cosmos, Buddhist world maps, and actual practices to display a broader view of Buddhist cosmology in the late Ming dynasty. To this end, this study employs a variety of other documents that include government records, local chronicles, temple gazetteers, memoirs, and vernacular literature in addition to the Fajie anli tu and other Buddhist scriptures. In short, based upon a scrutiny of textual and non-textual materials, I argue that Buddhist cosmology in China—entangled with Chinese domestic philosophies and interpretations of different sects of Chinese Buddhist traditions in history—shifts from exhaustive literal and visual depictions of physical cosmos to philosophical justifications of the universe that emphasizes the supremacy of “mind” (xin 心). Also, by placing the Fajie anli tu within the larger social-religious background of the late Ming, I argue that the text is an important but scholarly-neglected pioneering work in the Chinese Buddhist campaign against the Western Jesuit missionaries during the late Ming.