A study on Speaking-for-Others of Object-chanting poems in the Song Dynasty

This chapter looks at how the Song dynasty (960–1279) reconsolidated central power and eliminated the provincial regimes that had developed in the wake of Tang decentralization. During the first thirty years after 960, they fostered astute policies that promoted and took advantage of continuing economic expansion. To administer their new polity, the Song emperors recruited through the examination system a new class of bureaucratic elite that Western writings on China often call the ‘literati’. The aristocrats of Tang had given way to the merchants and bureaucrats of Song. However, although the Song expanded Chinese economic and political power into South China, it never completed the conquest of all the traditional Chinese lands in the north. The Song coexisted with a series of alien or conquest dynasties to its north and west.

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Silent Accord: Qi 契 as a Metaphor for Enlightenment and Transmission in Chan Buddhist Discourse

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel12040279 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 279

Author(s):

Aleksi Järvelä ◽

Tero Tähtinen

Keyword(s):

Song Dynasty ◽

Tang Dynasty ◽

Historical Background ◽

The Song Dynasty ◽

History Of

In this paper, we explore the historical background and the semantic underpinnings of a central, if marginally treated, metaphor of enlightenment and transmission in Chan discourse, “silent accord” 默契. It features centrally in Essentials of the Transmission of Mind 傳心法要, a text that gathers the teachings of Chan master Huangbo Xiyun (d. ca. 850), a major Tang dynasty figure. “Silent accord” is related to the concept of mind-to-mind transmission, which lies at the very core of Chan Buddhist self-understanding. However, Chan historiography has shown that this self-understanding was partially a product of the Song dynasty lineage records, historically retroactive syncretic constructs produced by monks and literati as efforts towards doctrinal and political recognition and orthodoxy. There are thus lacunae in the history of Chan thought opened up by the retrospective fictions of Song dynasty, and a lack of reliable, dateable documents from the preceding Tang dynasty era, possibly fraught with later additions. We situate the metaphor “silent accord” in the history of Chan thought by searching for its origins, mapping its functions in Chan literature, arguing for its influence and thereby its role in helping to bridge the 9th century gap.

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