A History of China (33 page)

This long-distance trade across central Asia required oases and garrisons. The oases or towns, such as Hami and Samarkand, needed to be multiethnic and multilinguistic – characteristics that would promote and facilitate relations with travelers. Foreign merchants could often find inhabitants who spoke the same language, making commercial transactions smoother. Each town required access to water, either from rivers or from the melting snow of neighboring mountains. The carefully preserved water and the elaborate irrigation works designed to make optimal use of this precious resource permitted the oases to be agriculturally self-sufficient. Needless to say, all were strategically located on one or more trade routes. These towns, which provided vital halting places for merchants journeying across Eurasia, were essential, but defense against bandits and marauders was critical for the survival of commerce. Like the Han, the Tang stationed garrisons beyond the traditional boundaries of China to protect travelers. It erected watchtowers, generally guarded by conscript soldiers, along the major trade routes. These forces used flag or smoke signals to warn travelers of perils and also provided them with hostelries and supplies.

Even with these institutions, merchants encountered innumerable difficulties on the trade routes. The first was the roads themselves, although “roads” is a misnomer and “trails” might be a more appropriate term. These trails were difficult to traverse and by no means easy to follow. Winter snows and summer floods occasionally obscured them or made them impassable. The inhospitable climate and terrain posed other obstacles. Desert travel was extremely hazardous, as travelers sometimes needed to walk across sand dunes as high as sixty or seventy feet. Vivid and frightening descriptions of sandstorms appear in the accounts of numerous travelers. The intense heat of the desert and the frigid temperatures in the mountains, leading to the perils of icy conditions, frostbite, and mountain sickness, were still other concerns for merchants. Finally, yet another difficulty was the enormous capital required for such long-distance trade. Many caravans failed to reach their destinations. Yet sufficient numbers of merchants were willing to risk sizable losses for a regular flow of caravans to persist throughout the height of the Tang. They took such risks because of the anticipated profits. The elites in the civilizations in central Asia, west Asia, and the West paid vast sums for Chinese goods, so the trade was extremely lucrative.

Tang pacification of the western Turks and other groups in central Asia resulted in a seemingly uninterrupted flow of caravans through the region. However, almost directly south the Chinese faced a real challenge, that intruded on their generally stable relations with their neighbors. In the early 660s, Tibet was at war with the Tuyuhun, a confederation of tribes around the Kokonor region. Within a few years, Tibetan forces used these newly subjugated lands as a base to expand into the oases of the Tarim basin, thus threatening China’s Silk Roads trade to the west. The Tang responded to this challenge with several unsuccessful military expeditions, but in 692, capitalizing on internal disturbances within Tibet, a well-organized force recaptured the vital oases of Kucha, Khotan, and Kashgar. This potential impediment to commerce along the Silk Roads was thus removed.

Extended relations with the outside world enriched Chinese culture. Nowhere was this impact more evident than in the profusion of foreign religions that reached China during this era. Since the court adopted a policy of toleration or at least of benign neglect to religions that did not create political or social disruption, foreign clerics faced no insuperable obstacles in building houses of ­worship, monuments, and monasteries in which to expound their religious views.

Chinese Buddhism benefited enormously from the opportunity for closer contact with other centers of Buddhism. Indians and central Asians arrived in China to introduce new sects, to explicate texts, and to teach acolytes. At the same time, a few Chinese monks traveled to the sites of the religion’s origins to study with Buddhist masters, to collect texts, and to gather Buddhist artifacts. Xuanzang (596 or 602–664), the most renowned of these Buddhist ­pilgrims, followed in the footsteps of Faxian (337–ca. 422) by leaving China without specific imperial sanction and spending sixteen years journeying through the oases of Turfan, Khotan, and Dunhuang and through the Indian subcontinent, trekking overland in both directions. He learned about a variety of Buddhist texts and accumulated, through gifts or purchases, vast quantities of Buddhist objects. Having survived blizzards, bandits, and overzealous rulers who wanted to persuade this learned monk to settle in their lands, he returned to the Tang capital at Changan, bringing with him Buddhist writings and artifacts. Emperor Taizong was delighted with the intrepid Buddhist monk and the treasures he brought back to China. He granted Xuanzang a lengthy audience during which he questioned the cleric not only about religious matters but also about the customs, goods, and peoples he had encountered on his travels. Taizong and his successor, Gaozong, provided support and patronage for Xuanzang’s efforts, over the next two decades, to translate the texts he had transported to China. While persisting in his translation projects, Xuanzang also wrote the
Da Tang Xiyuji
(
Record of the Western Regions in the Great Tang
), an account of his travels that broadened China’s knowledge of another part of the world. Like Faxian, who wrote
A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms
(
Gaoseng Faxian Zhuanyi juan
), he mentioned the products of the various regions he had visited; these were reports that would interest Chinese merchants and officials. The Buddhists thus contributed to China’s store of information and ­perceptions of other lands.

The monk Yi Jing (635–713) was the most renowned of the Buddhist ­pilgrims to travel by ship to the Buddhist centers. In 671, he departed from Guangzhou via the sea route to India, where he remained for more than a decade to read and study the Buddhist texts. From there, he traveled to the Indianized states of Srivijaya (in southeast Sumatra) and began to translate the Sanskrit writings into Chinese. After more than two decades, he finally returned to China, where the Empress Wu greeted him as a hero and lavished numerous rewards and gifts upon him.

Such interest and knowledge led to the introduction and development of new Buddhist sects, several of which had little success in attracting adherents. The doctrines of the Sect of the Three Stages (
Sanjie
) met with hostility from the court, which eventually proscribed it. Its proponents contended that history would consist of a first stage of a true implementation of the Buddha’s teachings, another stage of an adulterated version of the teachings, and the last stage of the degeneration of these messages. They insisted that their own times were part of the third stage, when no sages would appear, chaotic conditions would prevail, and people would not be able to understand true morality and would be unable to distinguish between good and evil. They contended that the proper response to these unsettled times was austere conduct and almsgiving. In effect, by maintaining that society was in a state of decay, the Three Stages sect challenged the Tang’s claim that the dynasty had fos­tered prosperity and cultural efflorescence. By emphasizing the degeneracy of the times, the sect also appeared to be indirectly criticizing the Tang, which reacted, predictably enough, by seeking to prohibit its practice. Unlike the Three Sects, the Disciplinary school (
Luzong
) did not attract the hostility of the court, partly because it had limited popular appeal and partly because it did not impart a potentially threatening or subversive message. The monk Daoxuan (596–667), its originator, directed the school toward the monastic community, devising a comprehensive set of rules for monks and nuns. Because his rules would not have wide popular appeal and indeed the school’s doctrines were limited primarily to clerics, his sect did not attract the court’s attention.

The Characteristics of the Dharma (
Faxiang
) school and the Tantric or Esoteric school were two other sects of great doctrinal interest whose appeal to ordinary people was nevertheless limited. The
Faxiang
sect asserted that the only reality consisted of ideas or consciousness and that the world of appearances or external phenomena was illusory and simply a corrupt form of consciousness. They argued that realization of this basic truth led to an understanding of perfect wisdom. This emphasis on consciousness and on denial of external reality was overly abstract and thus attracted few adherents, though these doctrines captivated the pilgrim Xuanzang. Because the sect also offered no tangible formulas for achieving enlightenment, it restricted its potential audience. The Tantric school, borrowing from Hinduism, conceived of a large number of deities who could be influenced by magic, sorcery, and a variety of symbols. Mantras, the chanting of set formulas that are scarcely intelligible, offered one means to ward off evil and to resist the spells initiated by opponents. The most renowned such mantra, “Om mani padme hum,” was deemed to be effective in the attainment of enlightenment or paradise. Mudras, or the positioning of hands or fingers of the deities in a manner designed to be imitated by believers, reputedly offered another means of enlightenment. The mandala, a representation of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas in their respective positions in the cosmos, offered still another technique for understanding the illusory nature of external reality. Indian masters of the Tantric school arrived in China during the early and middle Tang to propagate its views, but the sect gained prominence almost exclusively in Changan; with the cessation of visits from these Indian Buddhists, the sect withered away.

The Huayan school was one of the more successful Buddhist sects in China. Fazang (643–712), a learned scholar and erudite translator, and Guifeng Zongmi (780–841), a charismatic and persuasive lecturer, were among the most renowned proponents of this abstruse teaching, which required concrete illustrations to explain its major principles to baffled students and even to disciples. Its main teaching consisted of a belief in a world of emptiness characterized by the duality of principle (
li
) and phenomenon (
shi
), which were totally ­interlocked. Similarly, all phenomena were not distinct or separate, as all ­phenomena are, in turn, expressions of
li
. In seeking to illustrate this principle, Fazang wrote an essay titled
The Golden Lion
, pointing out that in the nose, ears, and other organs of the lion are found the entire golden lion and, in turn, the entire lion is found even in the tiniest element of its body. Every phenomenon is intertwined with all phenomena, with the Buddha at the core. Again, Fazang sought to illustrate this principle with a concrete example. He placed eight mirrors in line with the eight main points of the compass and added two others, one on top and one below, each facing the other. He then moved a Buddha figure, lit by a torch, into the center, and it turned out that the figure was reflected in the mirrors and that the figure in each mirror appeared in all the other mirrors. Thus he explained the identity of all phenomena with each phenomenon and indicated that the Buddha lay at the center of all phenomena and principles. Despite its somewhat enigmatic teachings, the Huayan sect did attract adherents and survived past the Tang era.

The Tiantai school, a sect with a similarly difficult message, also gained support during the Tang and lasted beyond the dynasty. Zhiyi (538–597), its most prominent adherent, actually lived before the Tang, but the sect achieved its widest following during the Tang. The sect’s name derives from the location where Zhiyi decided to settle: Mount Tiantai, in the modern province of Zhejiang. Zhiyi himself sought to create an eclectic sect that would incorporate and reconcile the teachings of diverse other schools. Recognizing that believers were confused by the differing conceptions of the Buddha and Buddhism represented in the sutras and by the differing emphases of the various sects, he tried to offer an explanation for the seeming inconsistencies in the texts and schools. One rationale he put forth was that the teachings reflected different periods in the Buddha’s life and that they were designed for different audiences. Because some of the early sutras, written after the Buddha’s initial enlightenment, were simply too difficult for all but the most sophisticated believers, the Buddha proposed concepts that could be more widely understood. As more people became aware of these basic principles, he started to offer a third and more sophisticated version of his teachings. In addition, however, the Buddha, recognizing that his lectures reached individuals of differing abilities, simultaneously presented different messages to meet the levels of his diverse audience. The Buddha thus spoke in a variety of voices to reach his different listeners. Zhiyi did not deride any of the messages in the sutras, as they all represented the Buddha’s message modulated to fit the needs of those with a lesser or a greater understanding of Buddhism.

The Threefold Truth embodied the ultimate Tiantai doctrine. The first truth was that things were empty. Yet they were not simply meaningless because they had a transitory existence in the world that we currently perceive, the second truth. The reality or the mean encompassed both emptiness and ­transitoriness – the third truth, which combined the other two and was superior to both. All of these phenomena were integrated in the absolute mind, which incorporated both the tiniest things, even a strand of hair (often used by the Tiantai school to represent the most miniscule element in the universe), and the most colossal. Although the concept of the absolute mind emphasized the nonmaterial world, the Tiantai did not reject the world of phenomena and instead perceived it as a useful place within the purview of the universe. It thus accorded the ordinary activities of human beings a role in the mostly spiritual component of Buddhist teachings.