Session Name: Family, Clans, Friends, and Co-Religionists: Chinese Community Networks from the 16th -20th centuries
4 - Jin Bao (1614-80) and His Borrowed Mountain in a Borrowed Time: The Displaced Buddhist Community in Early Qing Guangdong
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
14:00 – 15:45 (GMT+7)
Presentation Abstract This study concerns a less addressed consequence of forced migration caused by war and violence—the experience’s possible impact on personal and group identities. The focus of my discussion is the displaced Buddhist monastic community during the Ming-Qing transition, epitomized by the Danxia Monastery established by Monk Jinshi Dangui 今釋澹歸(aka Jin Bao 金堡; 1614-1680) in Shaoguan, northern Guangdong. Displaced Buddhist communities in southern China during the early Qing was a peculiar historical phenomenon that has caught scholarly attention, notably in Chen Yuan’s 陳垣study. However, to understand this phenomenon better, we need more contextualization and exploration of its cultural significance. Jinshi Dangui, a Ming loyalist turned monk, and his monastic community illustrate how displaced communities could transform their existing networks into new resources and have impact on the cultural geography of the margins of the Qing empire. He received tonsure after a failed Ming cause in the 1640s and integrated himself into the Cantonese Buddhist community. His credentials as a former official and literati enabled him to request the Danxia Mountain from a lay patron and establish a monastery to accommodate displaced monks and lay Buddhists. Many of these individuals eventually returned to their home regions within two or three decades. Yet their temporary displacement in the Buddhist monasteries in Guangdong had created an interregional alliance and left a distinctive legacy in this region.
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