Delivery included to the United States

Building a Sacred Mountain

Building a Sacred Mountain The Buddhist Architecture of China's Mount Wutai - Art History Publication Initiative

Hardback (01 May 2014)

Not available for sale

Out of stock

This service is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Publisher's Synopsis

By the tenth century CE, Mount Wutai had become a major pilgrimage site within the emerging culture of a distinctively Chinese Buddhism. Famous as the abode of the bodhisattva Mañjusri (known for his habit of riding around the mountain on a lion), the site in northeastern China's Shanxi Province was transformed from a wild area, long believed by Daoists to be sacred, into an elaborate complex of Buddhist monasteries.

In Building a Sacred Mountain, Wei-Cheng Lin traces the confluence of factors that produced this transformation and argues that monastic architecture, more than texts, icons, relics, or pilgrimages, was the key to Mount Wutai's emergence as a sacred site. Departing from traditional architectural scholarship, Lin's interdisciplinary approach goes beyond the analysis of forms and structures to show how the built environment can work in tandem with practices and discourses to provide a space for encountering the divine.

Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/building-a-sacred-mountain

About the Publisher

University of Washington Press

Book information

ISBN: 9780295993522
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Imprint: University of Washington Press
Pub date:
DEWEY: 951.17
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 344
Weight: 828g
Height: 262mm
Width: 179mm
Spine width: 27mm