SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Buddhist Eschatology and the Design of Dazhusheng Cave, Henan

The site known as Baoshan 寶山 in Henan province is a rich network of devotional caves, inscriptions, and reliquary niches. Through analysis of the sixth century inscriptions and images at the site’s formative construction, Dazhusheng ku 大住聖窟 (Great Abiding Holy Ones Cave), we come to appreciate the complex ways that Buddhist eschatology motivated the design of the site and the practices that were intended to be carried out there. The ideology of the “final age of the Dharma” (mofa 末法, moshi 末世) was increasingly influential China in the fifth and sixth centuries and influenced the development of distinctive systems of practice. The best known of these are the Sanjie 三階 (Three Levels) and Jingtu 淨土 (Pure Land) movements, and the practice-program carved in stone at Baoshan can be seen as a precursor to both.

Born in Hawai’i and educated at Stanford University, Dr. Wendi L. Adamek is now a Lecturer in East Asian Buddhism at the University of Sydney. Her current book project, Practicescape: The Buddhists of Baoshan, centers on a 7th-century community in Henan. Her award-winning first book, The Mystique of Transmission, is a study of an 8th-century Chan/Zen school in Sichuan. Other research interests include Daoism, Buddhist art, network theory, and environmental literature.