Han Yu: “Memorial on the Buddha’s Bones”

Han Yu’s “Memorial on the Buddha’s Bones,” in conjunction with his pro-Confucian essay “The Original Tao,” came to be viewed by later generations of Chinese as the polemical foundation for the Confucian revival known as Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism became the dominant social-political discourse from the twelfth through the nineteenth centuries.

In 819 ce, Emperor Xianzong of the Tang Dynasty held a ceremony in which finger bones reputed to be relics of the Buddha were publicly displayed. Although their provenance is unclear, in 558 the relics were enshrined in a special underground chamber of a stupa (a dome-shaped Buddhist shrine) built at the Dharma Gate Temple in Shaanxi Province. The relics were said to have the power to protect the surrounding area and to bestow good fortune on those who venerated them. Because the imperial family was responsible for the empire’s well-being, such ceremonies also underscored the power of the ruling family. During the Tang Dynasty the relics were publicly venerated by the imperial family six times. Addressed to the emperor, Han Yu’s “Memorial on the Buddha’s Bones” criticizes the practice. Han Yu argued that Buddhism was a foreign religion and that its pernicious influence had led the Chinese away from their native traditions, causing a decline of Chinese culture and political order over the centuries. He urged the emperor to destroy the bone and return to traditional practices, insisting that doing so was the best way to restore order and harmony to China. While Buddhism by no means disappeared from China, as Han Yu had hoped, it lost much of its political influence at the imperial courts of later dynasties, while Confucianism’s influence grew.