**1. Introduction**

China's Buddhist community gained extraordinary power and imperial patronage during the Tang Dynasty, which facilitated an unprecedented spread of monasticism throughout the empire1. Historical records indicate that there were 4600 state monasteries and approximately 40,000 smaller, private institutions by 8452. Tang rulers appreciated that this network of Buddhist monasteries had the potential to sustain the imperial state's power, protect the legitimacy of the ruling clan, boost the economy, and maintain central control over the regions. Consequently, the ruling elite lavishly sponsored new building projects as well as the reconstruction of monasteries that had fallen into disrepair. Moreover, members of the imperial family, officials, and eunuchs all donated their private mansions to the state for conversion into monasteries (Forte 1983). Often enormous in scale, state monasteries could easily accommodate dozens of resident monastics, and the senior monks were increasingly recognized as key members of the upper echelons of Tang society.

To date, scholars have tended to focus on the histories, networks, patronage, and architecture of court-sponsored monasteries that were located in the capitals of successive Chinese dynasties: Pingcheng 平城, Luoyang 洛陽, Yecheng 鄴城, and Chang'an 長安 (e.g., Forte 1992; Xiao 2003; Gong 2006; Zhang 2008; He 2013b; Chen 2015). In contrast, China's regional monasteries have received relatively little attention3. This article takes a close

**Citation:** Sokolova, Anna. 2021. Building and Rebuilding Buddhist Monasteries in Tang China: The Reconstruction of the Kaiyuan Monastery in Sizhou. *Religions* 12: 253. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel12040253

Academic Editors: Shuishan Yu and Aibin Yan

Received: 1 March 2021 Accepted: 1 April 2021 Published: 5 April 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

<sup>1</sup> The literature on monasticism during this period is vast. See, among many other sources: (Goossaert 2000; Heirman and Stephan 2007; Xie and Bai 1990).

<sup>2</sup> These are the official figures of monastic institutions that were dismantled and destroyed during the Huichang 會昌 persecution of Buddhism (840–46). See (Weinstein 1987, p. 134).

<sup>3</sup> There are a handful of exceptions to this rule, including Evelyne Mesnil's excellent study on the Dashengci monastery 大聖慈寺 in Chengdu (Mesnil 2006).

look at the Kaiyuan monastery 開 元 寺 in Sizhou 泗 州 (present-day Jiangsu Province), an important regional institution that was dedicated to the cult of the Buddhist monk Sengqie 僧 伽 (628–710) and housed a Buddha tooth relic. After becoming a thriving pilgrimage site in the middle of the eighth century, the monastery was destroyed by fire towards the end of that century, which led to demands for its reconstruction among the local citizenry and foreign pilgrims alike. These calls were eventually answered at the start of the next century with the launch of a large-scale restoration project that was chronicled by three state officials, Bai Juyi 白 居 易 (772–846), Li Ao 李 翱 (772–841), and Han Yu 韓 愈 (768–824), who documented the work on behalf of the monastery's clergy. These scholars' detailed accounts demonstrate that the rebuilt Kaiyuan monastery soon became a grand, multifunctional institution, an important ordination center, and one of the major drivers of southern China's religious, social, and economic development during the first half of the ninth century. Moreover, they highlight the significance of China's regional monasteries as sites of considerable influence and power within a broad network of state monasteries that stretched across the Tang Empire.

#### **2. Buddhist Monasteries in Tang China**
