The Center for Buddhist Studies is glad to announce the fifth lecture of the Lingyin Buddhist Studies Lecture Series in 2019 fall at the U of A. Professor Xie Yifeng is scheduled to present. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Title: THE COMPETITIONS IN SACRED SPACE: THE SPATIAL INTERWEAVING AND INTERACTION AMONG BUDDHISM, DAOISM AND CONFUCIANISM IN LUOYANG AND HANGZHOU IN MEDIEVAL CHINA
Speaker: Xie Yifeng
Assistant professor in Yuelu Academy at Hunan University
Date and Time: Nov. 5, 2019 3:30 pm
Location: COPPER ROOM STUDENT UNION
Suggested Parking: 2nd Street Garage
In Medieval China, the capitals like Luoyang and Lin’an (Hangzhou), were not only the political center of the empire, but also a sacred city full of religiously symbolic meanings. In 494, Emperor Xiaowen (467-499, r. 471-499) moved the capital from Pingcheng (Datong) to Luoyang. As the capital of previous dynasties, Eastern Han (25-220) and West Jin (265-316), Luoyang was a typical Confucian capital because of the impact of official ideology of these two dynasties. However, when Emperor Xiaowen passed way in 499, the religious landscape in the south area of Luoyang started to change after the boom of pagodas establishment supported by Empress Ling. The development of Buddhism in Northern Wei significantly changed the religious balance and reshaped its culturally geographical landscape of Luoyang. If Luoyang in the late period of Northern Wei is the typical case of competition between Confucianism and Buddhism, Lin’an, as the temporary capital of Southern Song (1127-1276) reveals the interweaving and interaction between Buddhism and Daoism under the influence of political power. With the Song court came to the south area, the number of Daoist temples, especially the imperial Daoist palaces and temples, rapidly increased and considerably enhanced the importance and influence of Daoism in Lin’an. In the process to refresh the religious space in Hangzhou, the Song court constructed and strengthened the local advantage of Daoism in the considerably limited religious space of capital, by the way of spatial invasion and substitution.
Bio: Xie Yifeng 谢一峰 is an assistant professor in Yuelu Academy at Hunan University. His major research areas are ancient Chinese religious history, especially Buddhism and Daoism in Tang and Song, and religious art in Medieval China. He received a B. A. (History) from Sichuan University in 2010, an M. A. (Chinese history) from Zhejiang University in 2012, and Ph. D. (Chinese history) from Fudan University, supervised by Prof. Ge Zhaoguang. From 2014 to 2016, as a visiting fellow in Harvard-Yenching Institute, he completed his Ph.D. dissertation on the interactions between Daoism and political culture in the Song period (960-1276), to cooperate with Prof. James Robson. In 2019, he went to Harvard again as a visiting scholar in Chinese Art Media Lab, to cooperate with Prof. Eugene Wang on the topic of Huayan School and its visual culture in Medieval China. He published more than twenty articles and book reviews in various Chinese journals.