Religious and Literary Infrastructure in the Tang-Song Transition: Bai Juyi and Beyond

ABSTRACTS: When we call a work of literature "religious," we typically do so on the basis of its content, its usage, or the identity of its creator: a hymn praises a deity, a chant accompanies confession, a parable illustrates a doctrine, a poem quotes a scripture, a priest composes a song, a work contains a flash of faith. This paper takes an alternative approach, asking how religion may undergird the physical infrastructure that supports literary activity, and vice versa. Drawing on insights from critical infrastructure studies, it describes how objects like buildings, shrines, libraries, and waterways supported literary and religious activities in overlapping ways. By focusing on Bai Juyi (772–846), it shows how one Tang poet was not only himself a prominent patron of Buddhist infrastructure who recognized its importance, but also one whose literary reputation depended on religious infrastructure. In the century or so after his death, Bai Juyi became the object of religious veneration, as seen through records of his portrait hall at Xiangshan Monastery in Longzhou and his former residence-turned-meditation hall in Luoyang. Bai's cultic veneration was supported by these buildings and the things within them, which in turn helped sustain his literary reputation. This infrastructure required active maintenance and repair in order to ensure Bai's legacy through the upheavals surrounding the collapse of the Tang in the late ninth and early tenth centuries.