Representing Mount Wutai's Past

This dissertation explores diverse imaginings of Mount Wutai's significance put forward between the seventh and fourteenth centuries. It is built around a close reading of five principal miracle tales, various versions of which appear in court memorials, clerical biographies, diaries, statuary sets, temple chronicles, local gazetteers, and inscriptions preserved in China and Japan. Comparing the different portrayals of the mountain in these five primary narratives together with many other miracle tales set at the mountain, this thesis attempts to explain how and for whom the representation of Mount Wutai's significance worked. The dissertation proposes that during the course of its emergence as the focus of regional, national, and international devotion, the site's former importance was repeatedly recast in ways that met the needs of changing audiences in Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) China and Heian (794-1185) and Kamakura (1185-1333) Japan.