Abstract
For a century during China’s Northern Song era, the Yunmen Chan lineage, one of several such regional networks, rose to dominance in the east and north and then abruptly disappeared. Whereas others suggested the decline was caused by a doctrinal problem, this essay argues that the geopolitics of the Song–Jin wars were the primary cause. The argument builds upon a dataset of Chan abbots gleaned from Flame Records. A chronological series of maps shows that Chan lineages were regionally based. Moreover, Song-era writers knew of regional differences among Chan lineages and suggested that regionalism was part of Chan identity: this corroborates my assertion. The essay turns to local gazetteers and early-Southern Song texts that record the impacts of the Song–Jin wars on monasteries in regions associated with the Yunmen lineage. Finally, I consider reasons why the few Yunmen monks who survived into the Southern Song did not reconstitute their lineage, and discuss a small group of Yunmen monks who endured in north China under Jin and Yuan control.
Keywords
Chan, Buddhism, geographic history, mapping, spatial data
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