Map of Mongolia and China. © 2010 / Daniel Dalet
Wutaishan, or Five Plateau Mountain, in China's Shanxi province has been attracting pilgrims from across the Buddhist world for centuries, thanks to its position as residence to Mañjuśrī, bodhisattva of wisdom for Mahayana Buddhists. Owing to the coexistence of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist groups and Wutaishan’s location at the edge of Chinese territory, from the thirteenth century onwards, these sacred peaks became a cosmopolitan meeting place between Han, Tibetan, Mongol and Manchu people. During the Republican era, Wutaishan was certainly the most important site for dialogue and contact between Chinese and Tibetan Gelugpa Buddhists. Today, Wutaishan is one of the most active Buddhist centres in China, home to over a hundred preserved or rebuilt monasteries, continually enriched by donations from not only the Chinese world but from places like Korea, Japan and Nepal as well. The mountain was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2009 and attracts tourists, pilgrims, hikers and Buddhists on retreat.
The most sacred site of the pilgrimage, the Great White Pagoda
of Taiyuan Temple – a 50-metre high stupa built in 1301 by Newa artist
Arniko to house a relic of Śākyamuni. © 2010 / Isabelle Charleux
The Mongol pilgrims who came in thousands every summer, particularly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, did not leave written accounts of their visits. However, more than 340 stelae testify to their donations. These stelae remain standing in the monasteries yet have not been studied or transcribed. In preparing to write a book about the pilgrimages of the Mongols, I have compiled a database of this corpus of stone inscriptions, documenting the name and the origin of the donors, the amount and type of donation, and the date. These stelae also provide information on the specific rituals requested and the expectations of the pilgrims. The inscriptions also show that, although the Mongols primarily financed Tibetan monasteries, they also donated significant sums, statues and land to the great Chinese monasteries.
Chinese pilgrims, scholars, visiting dignitaries and Western explorers, notably from Russia, were astonished by the exotic character of the mountain and wrote about the generosity of the Mongols, who gave jewels, money and livestock to the monasteries. They described the camel caravans of the aristocracy, the women with sumptuous hairstyles and the elaborate prostrations of the penitent. Many Mongols also transported the bones and ashes of departed relatives to be buried on sacred soil and in fact Mongols from Inner Mongolia still have cemeteries on the mountain’s slopes.
Statue of Mañjuśrī, at the Xiantong monastery.
A framed photograph lying against his chest shows the bodhisattva
appearing in the clouds. © 2009 / Isabelle Charleux
In addition to numerous monasteries – 25 Tibetan Gelugpa order monasteries and nearly 100 Chinese order monasteries by the nineteenth century – Wutaishan has over a hundred sacred natural sites, such as mysterious caves, springs and pools of water with curative properties, and uniquely shaped trees and stones. Both the history and legends attached to these monasteries were spread by word of mouth and by guides, instructing pilgrims on the sites to visit, made holy by the relics of Buddha Śākyamuni, Mañjuśrī and numerous saints, or by sacred artefacts like miraculous icons not fashioned by human hands or Buddha footprints in the stone. Pilgrims especially seek out the strange luminous phenomena sometimes seen from the peaks or apparitions of Mañjuśrī in the clouds. There are many stories about pilgrims lost on the mountain who were led to safety by a mysterious old monk, a young girl or even a fox, all incarnations of Mañjuśrī. Much like the Chinese, Mongols today come particularly to pray to the Dragon King, guardian of places identified with Mañjuśrī, who helps wayward pilgrims return home safely. Wutaishan is home numerous relics, otherworldly natural sites, sacred monks, miraculous icons, writings and temples, which all contribute to the mountain’s role as a sacred centre. However, it is the pilgrims themselves who confer meaning on this holy site.
Many aspects of these pilgrimages continue to provoke debate among scholars, namely how and why Wutaishan became the main pilgrimage site for Mongol Buddhists. David Farquhar (Emperor as Bodhisattva in the Governance of the Ch’ing Empire, 1978) suggests that Mongols began making pilgrimages to the mountain when emphasis started to be placed on it by the Manchus it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This explanation, however, is lacking. In fact, Mongol Buddhists, fiercely devoted to Mañjuśrī, became interested in Wutaishan well before the rise of the Manchu Dynasty. Yet it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that pilgrimage to Wutaishan became almost mandatory for all good Buddhists. Starting in the 1840s, the empire was hit by an economic crisis and monastery funding from the Manchus stopped. Penniless, the monks set up a collection, travelling from yurt to yurt throughout Mongolia and as far as Buryatia. They returned to Wutaishan loaded with gold and silver and with Mongol-donated livestock in tow. A special bond was formed; in return for the donations each monastery received, the Mongol donors would be welcomed when they made the pilgrimage to Wutaishan. If Wutaishan monks heard of the arrival of a princely caravan, they would meet it at the border and take care of problems encountered along the way. The average monk or layperson, however, travelling to the monastery by foot, or on horseback leading livestock to offer to the monks, was an easy target for Chinese merchants. In the 200km separating Wutaishan from the Mongolian border, these pilgrims had to pay exorbitant prices to sleep at inns and feed their animals.
Khalka Mongol pilgrim from northern Mongolia.
© John Blofeld, The Wheel of Life: The Autobiography of a Western Buddhist
(London: Rider & Co., 1959), opposite page 97
Wutaishan – like most pilgrimage sites around the world – was also an important economic centre for the region. Some Mongols would come every year to sell their horses, mules and cattle to buyers from all over northern China. Livestock fattened on rich mountain pastures all summer long could fetch a higher price because they had eaten grass imbued with Wutaishan’s sacred power. Far from being remote, Wutaishan was an important meeting place for monks, pilgrims and merchants, as well as for dignitaries and emperors. In winter, however, temperatures would plummet and mountain passes were cut off by snow, leaving monks and local inhabitants isolated.
As a pilgrimage site for various ethnic groups and monastic orders, Wutaishan was as much a place of sharing, tolerance and exchanges as one of conflict, rivalries and usurpations, such as the efforts of the Puji School to claim old Tibetan monasteries at the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is also at Wutaishan that the Han Gelugpa Buddhism tradition flourished during the twentieth century. Can Victor Turner’s notion of communitas describe this shared, pilgrimage experience uniting Mongols, Chinese and Tibetans; aristocrats and peasants; pontiffs and mendicant monks?
Mongol stelae at the Great White Pagoda of Taiyuan Temple.
© 2010 / Isabelle Charleux
Were Mongol, Tibetan and Chinese pilgrims making the same pilgrimage? During the period in question here, stone inscriptions, modern-day pilgrimages and Mongol elders serve as valuable insight. All Wutaishan pilgrims came for similar reasons. They wanted to carry out their Buddhist duties – to accumulate merit for themselves and their deceased relatives in the hope of a better reincarnation, preferably in a “pure land” – as well as to fulfil more earthly wishes for wealth and good fortune or to make specific requests like atonement for sin, recovery from sickness for oneself or a loved one, or deliverance of a male heir. Some came to ask for a favour, others to leave an ex-voto offering. Both Mongol and Chinese pilgrims sometimes made (and still make) the pilgrimage prostrating themselves the entire way, begging as they went, a journey which took several years. Nevertheless, there are differences in dress, religious customs, organisation and sites visited. Furthermore, Mongols developed their own popular rituals, such as the practice of passing through narrow “womb-caves”. It would be interesting to know how ordinary Mongol pilgrims adopted and transformed the pilgrimage and how Mongol practices were transplanted to Wutaishan.
Since the 1990s, Chinese Mongols have been once again making the trip to the mountain, but now find themselves lost in a sea of Chinese visitors. The stelae and cemeteries of the Mongols remain a testament to the important role Wutaishan played – and still plays – in their Buddhist culture.
Mongol stele at the Ten Directions monastery
showing gold leaf affixed by pilgrims. © 2009 / Isabelle Charleux
Bibliography
Charleux, Isabelle. Mongol pilgrimages to Wutaishan in the late Qing Dynasty. Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies. No. 6 (2010), special issue on Wutaishan under the Qing dynasty, Johan Elverskog & Gray Tuttle (eds.), Publication forthcoming.
http://www.thlib.org/collections/texts/jiats/.
Tuttle, Gray. Tibetan Buddhism at Ri bo rtse lnga/Wutai shan in Modern Times. Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies. No. 2 (August 2006): 1-35. Available from:
http://www.thlib.org/collections/texts/jiats/#jiats=/02/tuttle/.
Recent graves of Mongols from Inner Mongolia (China),
south of the Three Stupa monastery. © 2010 / Isabelle Charleux
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