Chinese Christianities through the Eyes of Master Taixu, a Corpus Analysis

Responding to the call to focus on boundary crossings, the present paper aims to analyze how Chinese Christianities crossed over into the discussions of Buddhist Master Taixu, and how the topics he discussed, words he used, and persons he met can inform our understanding of contemporaneous Chinese Christianities. It introduces a novel method into the field by utilizing corpus analysis to conduct inquiries in the entirety of Taixu’s voluminous Classical Chinese language Collected Works. The research is conducted jointly with data scientist Ádám Radványi PhD, and the questions asked include the following. What were the main topics Taixu discussed concerning Christianity? What names did he use to refer to the religion? Who were his main dialogue partners from the Christian side? Did he differentiate between various branches of the religion? Answering these questions, the paper aims to uncover new aspects of Taixu’s views and trends within Chinese Christianities.