Tang Dynasty Buddhist monks and Proto-anthropology

Alexander Severa

asevera@unca.edu

SOCIOLOGY & ANTHROPOLOGY

What is the history of caring about “the other” before the emergence of the modern anthropological discipline in the 1800s? How did travelers and those interested about cultures not their own conduct themselves? Who was interested in their works and why? What motivated them to seek out the experiences of those who lived just beyond their city walls, river-valley, culture or state? What compelled scholars, theologians, philosophers and learned people of the pre-modern world to travel for many years, in dangerous conditions, many times by foot, to acquire these insights about strange people in far-away-lands? These questions are of central importance to anthropology as a discipline, by understanding and mapping the history of this impulse, do we chart the core of our discipline. By studying the life and scholarship of two Tang Dynasty buddhist monks,Xuanzang and Hyecho, we will answer this question. I contend that Xuanzang and Hyecho’s scholarship was firstly made possible by the frameworks and social positionality afforded by Buddhism. The social positionality of Buddhism and Buddhist monks within China as a “between” or “liminal” space between “the foreign” and “China”. That Hyecho and Xuanzang trod along well-traveled paths. That Buddhism offered motivation and a drive to travel and understand, that was both personal for Hyecho and Xuanzang and socio-political for Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty as a whole.

May-14-2024