TITLE:
Tang China and the Buddhist Silk Roads: The Historical Geographies of Daxingshan Temple
AUTHORS:
James M. Smith
KEYWORDS:
China, Buddhism, Sacred Space, Silk Roads, Cultural Globalization
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Anthropology,
Vol.13 No.3,
August
10,
2023
ABSTRACT: Tang China’s capital was the
wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city in the world from the early seventh to mid-eighth
centuries. Crucial to its prestige was its
tolerance of multiple religious traditions and support for long-distance commerce. The Silk Roads, a series of paths through deserts, mountains and grasslands traversing 5000 kilometers of China and
Central Asia carried world-transforming cosmologies and luxury
products between China, India and Persia.
This paper explores how this dynamic circulation created sacred places
and iconographic landscapes in Xi’an, Shaanxi, China. I deploy insights from world history and
historical geography as an interpretive framework to engage Daxingshan, a Tantric Vajrayana temple and crucial site for the translation of
Mahayana Buddhist sutras. Finally, I describe experiential fieldwork at the
site, an engagement with an otherworldly sacred space that was and is a
creation of a previous era of cultural globalization.