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Narratives of Buddhist decline and the concept of the sect (zong) in modern Chinese Buddhist thought

ABSTRACT This article critically engages the work of Holmes Welch on the ‘Buddhist revival’ in modern China. It focuses on two aspects that received only scant attention in Welch’s work, but that are crucial to understanding what was occurring in Chinese Buddhism. The first half of the article provides an analysis of the narratives of Buddhist decline that existed during the late Qing and Republican periods. Rather than reflecting historical realities, such narratives must be understood as a device employed by Chinese Buddhists and intellectuals to justify reforms in Buddhism. The second half brings this argument into conversation with contacts to Japan during the same period. Under the influence of Japanese works on Chinese Buddhist history, a narrative of Chinese Buddhist decline was introduced into China that was predicated on a particularly Japanese notion of the Buddhist sect (zong 宗). The two narratives interacted and the result was that Chinese Buddhists saw the reason for the perceived decline in the loss of most of the distinct sects that had supposedly marked the flourishing of Buddhism during the Sui and Tang. Although not reflecting Chinese Buddhist realities, this interest in Buddhist sects subsequently became a central part of modern Chinese Buddhist discourse.