What insights do the epigraphic sources reveal regarding the roles of female Buddhists, including monastics and laywomen, in the development of Buddhism during medieval China? The incorporation of epigraphy for studying Buddhism offers the potential for a radical re-envision of our understanding of Buddhist women from the Northern Wei (386–534 CE) to the Tang dynasty (619–907 CE). This panel seeks to employ innovative methodologies in interpreting epigraphy to unveil the social roles and religious practices of these Buddhist women, which were overlooked in mainstream Buddhist scriptures and historical records, providing fresh insights into gender studies within Chinese Buddhism. Additionally, this panel examines the dynamic interactions between Buddhism and indigenous religious traditions like Confucianism through the lives of Buddhist women. It addresses the challenges and conundrums encountered by analyzing specific cases and texts and illustrates how contemporary Buddhists reconcile the conflicts between Buddhism and Confucianism, achieving a harmonious coexistence.
In this presentation I raise the question of the value that entombed biographies hold for the study of Buddhist women given that, as a genre, these texts were commonly written by men whom historians typically identify as Confucian. I argue that rather than dismiss these invaluable biographies because they were written by elite men with limited access to institutional spaces demarcated for Buddhist women, that we instead adopt a methodology of reading that seriously considers the ways in which Confucian men wrote about the virtues of Buddhist women even when those women’s virtues ran counter to traditional Confucian ones. I draw from three case studies of such biographies written for women who served the Northern Wei court in Luoyang in the early 6th century to reveal how Buddhism provided Confucian authors with a mechanism for appraising the public works of women in a time of intense cultural reinvention.
Scholars of Chinese Buddhism have shown how Buddhist nuns were depicted as ideals of filial women in the Biographies of Bhikṣuṇīs, and in epigraphical texts, as a Buddhist response to the criticism from Confucians. Most of the nuns’ impressive filial deeds in the hagiographies that have been discussed occurred before their renunciation. By employing examples found in the Continued Biographies of Bhikṣuṇīs and other epitaphs of Chinese Bhikṣuṇīs, I introduce more roles Chinese Buddhist nuns played and the efforts they made as filial women in the confrontation of these two traditions, highlighting how nuns maintained their images of filial women after their renunciation. This study sheds light on more aspects of Buddhist nuns in the transformation of leaving the family from an unfilial action to a filial behavior in China, and on how these women undermined the boundary between the religious and the secular spaces in this reconciliation.
What are the last words of Buddhist women who resided and were interred in Luoyang, one capital of the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE)? Why did they hold an unconventional attitude toward the burials of their bodies, in which they prioritized Buddhist identities above their roles in Confucian society? To address these inquiries, this study examines three primary sources: epigraphical materials, encompassing donative inscriptions that convey their viewpoints and epitaphs capturing their final words; Buddhist caves and images patronized by these women; and archaeological evidence from their burial sites, offering insights into the actual execution of their funerary choices. This paper aims to reconstruct the funerary practices of these Buddhist women and reveal their Buddhist thoughts, practices, as well as the religious networks they were involved with, while also addressing the dilemma faced by their executors and their eventual resolutions when Buddhist ideas conflicted with Confucian norms.