Vinaya monasteries in the eyes of early Qing emperors

By the first half of the eighteenth century, lineages of the Buddhist Vinaya school (Lüzong) took hold in several monasteries in Beijing. However, when the Yongzheng emperor designed a grand ordination ceremony to be held in 1734 he opted to summon a Vinaya patriarch from a distant Mt Baohua near Nanjing. This article aims to provide an explanation for such a choice by means of exploring the image of relevant Vinaya monasteries in the eyes of early Qing emperors, relying mainly on the evidence in the gazetteers of these monasteries. Our findings show that Vinaya monasteries in Beijing, such as Tanzhe, Guangji, and Minzhong, enjoyed considerable imperial patronage. At the same time, only Minzhong monastery was perceived as a purely Vinaya site, while the image of its counterparts was rather heterogeneous. The main advantage that could have singled out the abbot of Mt Baohua Fuju (1686–1765) was the first full-fledged school genealogy that he compiled in 1733, while other monasteries in question did not possess an identity of sites with strong and stable Vinaya lineages at that time. Accordingly, Yongzheng might have wished to promote a genealogically organized Vinaya school as a check-andbalance against swelling Chan lineages.