Buddhists as Natives: Changing Positions in the Religious Ecology of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty
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Abstract
Within the Chinese religious market, Daoists and Confucians have often attempted to stigmatize Buddhism as a foreign religion. In the early Mongol Yuan dynasty (1206-1368), Daoist circulation of anti-Buddhist tracts such as Laozi huahu jing gave new life to these accusations, even as Buddhist and Daoist clergy came in conflict over government patronage and tax exemptions. Yet after the death of Qubilai Qa’an in 1294, conflicts over the application of Mongol clerical tax exemptions generated a new dynamic pitting the native clergy, Daoist and Buddhist, against the immigrant clergy, Muslim and Christian. Despite the presence of high-profile Tibetan Buddhists, the Buddhist clerical bureaucracy as a whole was able to picture Christian and Muslim clergy in ways that tapped into anti-immigrant feelings. This dynamic reached its apex in the policies of emperor Yisün-Temür (Taidingdi), who reigned from 1323 to 1328, and the reaction against them after his death. These tensions within the Mongol religious policy, which on paper treated the four main bodies of clergy (Buddhism, Christianity, Daoist, and Muslim) equally, shows the impact of the differing economic standpoint implicit in the native-immigrant dichotomy.