Conceiving the Indian Buddhist patriarchs in China

This dissertation explores how medieval Chinese Buddhists understood the history and practice of Buddhism in ancient India, and how this understanding influenced Chinese attempts to propagate Buddhism locally. I focus on Chinese hagiographies of the Indian Buddhist patriarchs Asvaghos&dotbelow;a, Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, which show that Chinese authors were especially concerned to illustrate past examples of Buddhist triumph within difficult soteriological circumstances. Medieval Chinese Buddhists were acutely aware of their own perilous distance from the source of Dharma---an historical locus that was seen to weaken beings' salvific capacities and thereby delimit the forms that local teachings could take. They thus looked for guidance from their Indian predecessors who had also lived far from the Buddha and had resurrected his teachings under similarly difficult conditions. By propagating the works and life stories of Asvaghos&dotbelow;a, Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, and by following the examples of practice that they provided, Chinese Buddhists could likewise bring back the Truth in dark times and join the ranks of the greatest holy beings in Buddhist history. Further, while Chinese Buddhists initially conceived these ancient Indian patriarchs first and foremost as great men, who were models of Buddhist sainthood across the Sino-Indian divide, by perhaps the eighth century Asvaghos&dotbelow;a and Nagarjuna also came to be seen as local Chinese divinities. Asvaghos&dotbelow;a became among other things a god of sericulture, and Nagarjuna became a deity of all trades, personally appearing in the ritual arena to provide a host of material boons and apotropaic powers.;In contrast to previous studies of Asvaghos&dotbelow;a, Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, which focus on their philosophy and historicity in ancient India, this dissertation examines the Chinese hagiographic imagery of these figures in the context of Chinese religion and culture. I show how medieval Chinese Buddhists conceived their greatest Indian forebears as valuable resources for addressing contemporary Chinese concerns about how to be Buddhist in a world without a Buddha. As such, this study attempts to recover the voices of those who produced and disseminated the Chinese hagiographies of Asvaghos&dotbelow;a, Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, which are by far the earliest and most abundant in any body of Buddhist literature. This approach also differs from the standard "Sinification" model of Chinese Buddhist acculturation, which valorizes imagined Indian origins and the god's-eye perspective of the distant observer---gazing at once across continents and millennia to apprehend broad trends imperceptible to local agents. Instead, this study prioritizes the viewpoints of medieval Chinese Buddhists in understanding how the Chinese hagiographies of Asvaghos&dotbelow;a, Nagarjuna and Aryadeva were composed, and in turn how ancient Indian Buddhism has been conceived through the lens of medieval Chinese sources.