| Building a Sacred Mountain Subjects: RELIGION / Buddhism / History.; HISTORY / Asia / China.; ART / Asian.; Buddhism and culture; Buddhist monasteries; Buddhist architecture; 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 Mañjuśrī (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. Wei-Cheng Lin is assistant professor of Chinese art history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. |