Department of Asian Studies
Subject: State and Buddhism in the Sui Dynasty.
Supervisor: Prof. Yuri Pines.
Abstract: I’m doing a research into the state-Buddhism relation under the Sui 隋 dynasty (581-618). I investigate how the Sui rulers used Buddhism to advance multiple imperial projects, and how the Buddhist clergy (the sangha) attempted to leverage the state-Buddhism relation to their advantage. Both of these two perspectives will be presented in the context of changes in Sui’s overall policies, namely, the re-establishment of new institutional order, the domestic consolidation and foreign expansion, and the dynasty’s eventual collapse. I focus on some milestones that caused changes in the court-sangha relations.