This article aims to explore the ambiguous attitude of Han Yu ?? (768-824), a prestigious politician, essayist, and poet, when coping with the issue of Buddhism booming in mid and late Tang China. While scholars well-accepted that Han Yu, with his most famous admonishment to the emperor “Memorial on the ...
(Show more)This article aims to explore the ambiguous attitude of Han Yu ?? (768-824), a prestigious politician, essayist, and poet, when coping with the issue of Buddhism booming in mid and late Tang China. While scholars well-accepted that Han Yu, with his most famous admonishment to the emperor “Memorial on the Buddha’s Relics” ????? (819), is one of the most radical anti-Buddhist officials in Tang, this article, on the other hand, examines how his poetry writing divulges his flexibility with Buddhism. I argue that though Han Yu politically stands firmly against Buddhism, his poetic creation consciously or unconsciously concedes the fluidity of his sympathetic attitude towards Buddhism. In terms of socially engaging with Buddhist monks, employing Buddhist thoughts in poetic creation, and aesthetically borrowing Buddhist mural images, especially the Esoteric Mantra’s (Vajrayana) demonic images, Han Yu weaves the Buddhist ideas into his influential poetic value of eccentricity, which becomes as a reforming writing style in Chinese poetry history.
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