Concepts and Institutions for a New Buddhist Education: Reforming the Saṃgha Between and Within State Agencies

Education reforms have played a key role in the turning points of Chinese history. Slogans like ‘saving the country through education’ (jiaoyu jiuguo 教育救國) and ‘omnipotence of education’ (jiaoyu wanneng 教育萬能) became well known when the republic succeeded the empire, at the dawn of the Mao era, and with Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s.[1] China has based its reinvention on education reforms, and the parallel reconstructions of Chinese Buddhism has been also partly based on reforms of the education system for the saṃgha.

As the title underlines, this article focuses on ‘concepts’, and so on the history of the terminology used to indicate education in the Buddhist contexts, as well as on ‘institutions’, and will thus articulate a taxonomy of the new structures of learning for the saṃgha. The Buddhist universities that had been established in Japan since the Meiji period, as well as the Christian colleges that have been present in China since the late Qing, were important reference points for the Chinese saṃgha while they were creating their own educational institutes.[2] A third part of this research discusses the main individuals who changed the history of the Buddhist educational programs and policies within the ideological and political context of early twentieth-century China. Since a comprehensive discussion on all the Buddhist educators and the Buddhist seminaries that were established in China in the first half of the twentieth century would go beyond the limitations of an article, this article addresses mostly ideas and projects of the reformer monk Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947) and his actions between and within the agencies of the state.[3]

Through the analysis of specific case studies, this research will argue why and how, in crucial historical contexts when China had to reinvent itself without deleting the fundamental value of its past, education projects in the secular and religious spheres undertook similar patterns of reconstruction. My research thus demonstrates the interrelations between politics, government law, social history and Buddhist educational policies in the period that goes from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. This study also unveils different levels of intervention of the state in the formation of those concepts and institutions that defined the identity of the new Buddhist monastic education. Finally, the investigation on concepts, institutions, individuals and state agencies will reveal patterns of tension within Buddhist China in the first half of the twentieth century: the tension between state and religion, tradition and modernity, Chinese identity and Westernisation.

My work links the recent field of modern Chinese Buddhism with the scholarship on the history of secular education in China,[4] and integrates recent Western studies on religion and education in modern China that have covered Confucianism, Daoism, Christianity, and Islam.[5]

Historical and Intellectual Background of the New China

If China would justify her existence and retain her past glory, she is bound either to substitute her spiritual civilization for this material civilization, or modify her civilization by adopting the necessary part of Western civilization. Undoubtedly, this falls within the realm of education.[6]

As Theodore Hsia argued above, the renewal of China at the end of the Imperial period and the beginning of the Republican era was rooted in educational reforms. However, it also clearly concerned all sectors of Chinese culture. The new intellectual movements, the mixed feelings for the efficacy of Confucianism, the new challenges posed by Christianity, and the generational movement of scholars to Europe, America and Japan to pursue higher education, all formed the historical and intellectual framework for adopting concepts such as nation and nationalism,[7] ensuing political and religious reforms,[8] and especially for new educational projects.[9]

Douglas R. Reynolds argues that ‘foreign interactions are responsible for China’s most radical discontinuities of the twentieth century’, and, as a result, China started ‘to reinvent itself according to outside rules (European, American, Japanese, Soviet)’.[10] In other words, China’s reinvention was not immune to confusion and hybrids, which were crucial features of the intellectual atmosphere at that time. This formed the background for the reinvention of Chinese civilisation, and provided models that were appropriated by both the reformers of Chinese secular education and the theorisers of modern Buddhist seminaries.

The major concern of Chinese intellectuals and reformers in the early Republican period was the preservation and adoption of Confucianism. On one hand, this was seen as contributing to cultural weakness, and as the principal reason for China’s repeated defeat by Western powers in conflicts during the nineteenth century. Intellectuals thus debated the position that Confucianism could or should have played in the hypothetical ‘Chinese Renaissance’, and the clash between Confucian ethics (and thus the moral principles at the basis of Chinese society) and Western scientific knowledge and religion.[11] A parallel situation was developing in the Buddhist world, where traditional doctrine and practice, which had marked the identity of Chinese Buddhism and the Chinese monastic community, were being questioned, and often replaced by secular (and foreign) cultural discourses.

The dialectical encounter with Western science and ideas dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, and developed through a historical narrative in four main stages: the mid-nineteenth century,[12] the end of the nineteenth century (and of the Qing dynasty),[13] the first decade of the Republic of China,[14] and the second phase of the Republic of China.[15] Each of these periods brought different changes and a continuous renewal in the conceptual structures and cultural practices of China.

From a different perspective, Chinese intellectuals and officials of this historical period expressed three main reactions in their encounter with Western ideas and programs: rejection, acceptance, domestication. In other words, these decades showed the rejection of the Confucian-based pattern of education, the acceptance of foreign models of schooling and learning, and finally the integration of those new ideas and ideals within the frame of Chinese culture. As Gang Ding put it, ‘During the twentieth century Chinese educators encountered varied foreign knowledge patterns and influences and became more and more proactive in utilizing them to pioneer their own national path toward educational development’.[16]

To conclude, the encounter between the tradition and policies of China (and East Asian in general) and the new models arriving from Europe and North America led to a period of intellectual, social and political dynamism. However, it was also often problematic. Buddhist thinkers and reformers experienced this constructive but controversial confrontation too, and, as the following sections of this article will demonstrate, undertook similar paths in terms of conceptual reforms, shared leading figures and institutional reconstruction.

‘Education’: A New Word for a New World

As the concept of education moved from that of an individual, private pursuit to that of an organized, mass activity controlled from above, the language mirrored the change. A new word, or rather an old one retrieved from antiquity through Japan, came into use to describe this phenomenon: jiaoyu.[17]

The history of education in pre-modern China has been a Confucian history. A righteous government, social morality, and a correct family structure formed the core of the Confucian social project. Knowledge (zhi 知) was conceived of as a combination of learning (xue 學) and thinking (si 思).[18]

As Alexander Woodside and Benjamin Elman report in late Imperial China, we see the adoption of a different terminology. The essence of the educational program became embodied in the three categories of teaching (jiao 教), learning, and culture or literature (wen 文).[19]

Almost at the same time, China recovered the term jiaoyu 教育 (literally meaning ‘teach and rear’) from Japan as a new word to translate the Western concept of education, and to help define the new modern educational policies in China. Jiaoyu was one of many words that the Japanese were adopting at the end of the nineteenth century to translate Western ideas and ideologies, and its reception in China became one of the most important aspects of the new educational reforms. Jiaoyu gradually became the main word for education.[20] The Chinese adoption of this new term indicated the implicit acceptance of the foreign model of education, a new way of thinking about education, and therefore shaped the restructuring of the Chinese systems of pedagogy.

The new word, jiaoyu, opened up a new world. At the institutional level, modern education was founded on the blueprint provided by Christian colleges that had been established by Protestants. The increase in Chinese translations of Western philosophical and literary works in the late nineteenth century facilitated the adoption of both Chinese and Western methods of learning as essential parts of the new curricula in schools, and heated the debate concerning the modalities of integration of Western thought into the system of Chinese traditional values. At the same time the word xue came to identify the Western concept of ‘science’ in the sense of scientific study and knowledge of subjects.[21] Quoting Lancelot Forster:

The mistake of the past was the exclusion of scientific thought from China’s scheme of Education, the danger of the present is the crowding out, and therefore the exclusion, of cultural and ethical studies.[22]

The new term jiaoyu, and the newly conceptualised education manifested in a concrete form at the governmental level as well. At the beginning of the twentieth century, China established several organs for educational affairs. Finally, in 1905, the Qing authorised the foundation of the first Ministry of Education (jiaoyu bu 教育部).

The renewed adoption of the term jiaoyu to define ‘education’ had an impact on modern Buddhist educational projects as well. We see a change in terminology between the Imperial and Republican periods, and that provided the theoretical foundations of renewal in educational infrastructures and policies. For instance, in the early twentieth century there was the appearance of the first study hall (xuetang 學堂), and later on the adoption of the concept of Institute of Buddhist Studies (Foxueyuan 佛學院), which represented more complex types of institutions than the previous monastic study-meetings. The first turning point in the history of Buddhist monastic education occurred in the Song dynasty, when the structures of Buddhist education influenced the new form of Confucian institutes of classical learning (shuyuan 書院).[23] During the Ming dynasty, Buddhist monastics undertook an in-depth and parallel study of Buddhist scriptures as well as Confucian texts.[24] During the Ming and the Qing periods there was an increased focus on the study of Chan and Consciousness-Only (Weishi 唯識), and the gradual emergence of lay Buddhist intellectuals and teachers. In fact, at the end of the Qing dynasty, we count the first Buddhist schools opened by the laity and thus a new system of Buddhist intellectual centres.[25] The Hunan Saṃgha Study Hall (Hunan seng xuetang 湖南僧學堂), built in 1903, was the first new-style study hall established in China.[26]

The change in terminology also included the use of the word jiaoyu itself. Monastics started using the expression fojiao jiaoyu 佛教教育 and seng jiaoyu 僧教育 to indicate a more comprehensive and modern pedagogy, and several local saṃgha education societies (seng jiaoyu hui 僧教育會) started appearing from 1906.[27]

Since the end of the nineteenth century, Yang Wenhui 楊文會 (1837–1911) had underlined that the reforms of educational structures and institutions in Buddhism had all to be based on the reinvention of the concept of education.[28] Beginning in the early 1920s, the reformer monk Taixu, who was one of Yang Wenhui’s students, lectured on the modernisation of education for monastics and discussed the concept of jiaoyu in general terms. In his lecture ‘On Education’ (Lun jiaoyu 論教育) delivered at the Wuchang Buddhist Institute in 1924, Taixu explained that Confucianism had embodied the theoretical principles of Chinese education for more than 2000 years, but since the Western ‘invasion’ at the end of the Qing dynasty, the Chinese had also had to deal with the (Western) concept of jiaoyu, and restructure their local educational projects. Taixu classified jiaoyu into four main types:

• education in biological sciences (dongwu jiaoyu 動物教育), which he saw as originating and developing in the West, reaching an important turning point with Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory, and only recently imported to Japan. According to Taixu this form of education was still missing in China.
• humanistic education (renlun jiaoyu 人倫教育), which referred to the study of systems of thought like Confucianism
• theological education (tianshen jiaoyu 天神教育), which referred to the study of Jesus or God in the West, and Brahma in Hinduism
• Buddhicised education (fohua jiaoyu 佛化教育), which was the study of the Buddhist five vehicles (wu cheng 五乘), and also a methodology of study to be applied in other fields and disciplines.

Taixu held a Chinese (and Buddhist) position by arguing that ‘Buddhistic education’ was the most comprehensive and superior type of jiaoyu, because it included each of the other forms of education.[29] Throughout the 1930s, Taixu gave several talks on the state of clerical education and clerical jiaoyu, laying a clear distinction between jiaoyu and the former methods of learning and training for the Buddhist saṃgha, and drawing parallels and comparisons between the reforms for saṃgha education and the change of educational policies in secular schools.

In the 1920s, several Buddhist lay intellectuals and monks engaged in the debate on the overall state of education in China, on the shortcomings of the current education programs for the saṃgha, and on the possible improvements that could have been implemented.[30] The Haichao yin wenku 海潮音文庫 dedicated half a volume to the subject of ‘education’, and this confirms the extent of the debate on the topic. An overview of the most relevant articles that have been published in the journal Haichao yin 海潮音 between 1919 and 1929 shows which themes were mostly under discussion in Buddhist circles. We count writings on the relations between foxue and jiaoyu,[31] as well as articles on the history of the study of Buddhism in China.[32] The changes in jiaoyu were all supported as in line with the correct Mahāyāna Buddhist practice.[33] This way to frame the debate could prove the adoption of a terminology familiar to the Buddhist readership, as well as a sign that significant changes in the education system for the saṃgha had to be justified in terms of Buddhist practice in order to be accepted by the reticent part of the Buddhist community. Finally, education had to be reformed into a moral and virtuous education (daode jiaoyu 道德教育) in order to create and maintain the Great Harmony (datong 大同).[34]

Cai Yuanpei and Yang Wenhui: Two Modern Ministers of Education?

Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao led the Hundred Days of Reform in 1898, and Zhang Zhidong, in not always similar projects, tried to provide China with a different scope of education, which had to be integrated with Western (and Japanese) models but framed within Chinese values. Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940), the first minister of education in the Republic of China, reinforced those principles in post-imperial China. As William J. Duiker correctly stated at the beginning of his book, ‘Ts’ai can be viewed as a representative of his age, symbolizing the dilemmas of an intellectual caught between the cultural worlds of East and West’.[35]

In parallel, within the Buddhist context, Yang Wenhui was the pioneer of educational reforms for Buddhists, monastics as well as laity. Yang tried to provide Chinese Buddhism with a different conception of education, and proposed alternative curricula that included traditional Chinese Buddhist subjects and Western knowledge. Similar to what was happening to secular education, Buddhist education was reshaped not only in terms of the curricula, but also in the methodological approaches. Cai and Yang travelled in the West (mainly in Europe), and made those foreign experiences into leading events in the making of modern educational programs. Cai studied in Germany and France, while Yang’s thought and projects were influenced by his visits to France and England in 1878. While in England, Yang met Nanjō Bunyū 南条文雄 (1849–1927), who was a well-known modern Japanese scholar of Buddhism, and came in contact with the Western Buddhologists in Oxford.[36]

These figures all placed importance on maintaining emphasis on the ‘Chinese tradition’, which was identified with Confucian classics and, in the case of Yang Wenhui, Chinese Buddhist doctrines. Yang founded the Jetavana Vihāra (Zhihuan jingshe 紙洹精舍) in 1908, and the Buddhist Research Society (Foxue yanjiu hui 佛學研究會) in 1910, with the aim of nurturing a modern Buddhist saṃgha. Yang also tried to negotiate different tendencies in his program, fostering coherence between monastic and secular educational systems, and promoting the union of intellectual learning with Pure Land cultivation, as well as the combined study of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra.

The programs issued by Kang Youwei and Cai Yuanpei became the bases of the formation and plans of the next generations of educators, including Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962).[37] Another instance of Cai’s legagy in current Chinese education is the fact that the classification of Five Types of Education (wu yu 五育) that Cai promoted in 1912 have remained as the structure of the learning system in China ever since. It is relevant to mention that Cai Yuanpei’s fivefold division of education was applied to the Buddhist educational system too, and still constitutes the system of classification of the curricula in the Chinese Buddhist seminaries today.[38]

In the same way, Yang’s two main students, the monk Taixu and the lay scholar Ouyang Jingwu 歐陽竟無 (1871–1943),[39] became the main representatives of the second generation of reformist educators in Buddhism who became active in the Republican era: the former initiated a drastic reform of the saṃgha’s structure and system of education, while the latter established new study programs for the laity. The students of Taixu and Ouyang Jingwu formed a third generation of educators, who developed their programs during the Communist regime in China, and set the foundation for later Buddhist institutions in Taiwan.

These projects in secular and Buddhist education occurred simultaneously or were interlinked, as a confirmation of the argument that the making of the state and the making of religion in China were two intertwined and mutually related projects. The new educators were not just embarking on parallel projects, but also participating in dialogue and exchange, so to create a new channel of relations between religion and state.

The First National Conference on Education (quanguo jiaoyu huiyi 全國教育會議), held in 1928, initiated a new era in secular education with the KMT decision to adopt the Three Principles of the People (sanmin zhuyi 三民主義) as core of a new education for the nation. In the same year, the monk Taixu wrote his Buddhist response to that meeting, where he firmly supported the Three Principles of the People the basis of a general educational system (and not merely of a political ideology) — indeed he used the expression education of the Three Principles of the People (sanmin zhuyi de jiaoyu 三民主義的教育), and then proposed his education of the ‘Buddhism for human life’ (rensheng fojiao jiaoyu 人生佛教教育), which he defined as scientific and in line with the new KMT policies. In 1928, Taixu invited the monk Jichen 寄尘, a graduate from the Wuchang Buddhist Institute (Wuchang foxueyuan 武昌佛學院), to teach a course on the Three Principles of the People at the Minnan Buddhist Institute (Minnan foxueyuan 閩南佛學院). The course ran until the end of Taixu’s tenure at Minnan in 1933. In 1927, Taixu had called for the organisation of an International Conference on Education (shijie jiaoyu huiyi 世界教到會議), and planned the theory of a ‘moral and virtuous education of the Great Harmony’ (datong de daode jiaoyu 大同的道德教育) as a form of education embracing the essence of the Three Principles of the People and the core of the Buddhism for the Human Life that could have benefitted the overall society and helped the establishment of world peace.[40] In 1930, Taixu wrote the essay Cong Zhongguo de yiban jiaoyu shuodao seng jiaoyu 從中國的一般教育說到僧教育 and sent it to the minister of education seeking feedback. The KMT minister expressed agreement and support for the projects proposed by Taixu. Taixu’s efforts to present Buddhism as a modern religion for the modern nation continued with the series of lectures that he delivered in the 1930s on the policies of the Ministry of Interior Affairs and the Ministry of Education concerning the saṃgha, and why he felt that clerical education had to follow the principles of the Nationalist government, especially the Three Principles of the People. He did, however, stipulate that the members of the Buddhist saṃgha were not merely common citizens (putong jumin 普通居民), but rather religious teachers (zongjiaoshi 宗教師).[41] During a lecture at the Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Institute in 1938, Taixu was still rethinking the saṃgha education in parallel with the renewal in secular education but sadly concluded: ‘I realise that the general form of education in China has already created its own methods for improvement, but the clerical education (seng jiaoyu) that we need still lacks a concrete plan for renovation’.[42]

The debates and decisions of these secular and religious educators were all in line with the joint project of nurturing the new citizens (xin jumin 新居民) of a new nation, for the final purpose of creating a new modern China. The sharing of these foundational ideas and intentions was then followed by the creation of similar educational structures and adoption of similar programs of study.

Schooling in Practice: Modernisation, Globalisation, and Nationalism

The major changes in the structures of Buddhist monastic education occurred around the beginning of the twentieth century. This was partly due to the emulation of Western and Japanese institutions, as well as of the influence of Christian colleges built in China. Those major changes involved amendments in the organisation of the educational system and the curricula, and one of the main revisions in the curricula of the schools was the inclusion of foreign languages and scientific subjects.

Previous scholarship has disagreed on when the renewal of Buddhist seminaries started and the very first modern Buddhist institutes were established. While Chen Bing and Deng Zimei considered 1908 (when Yang established his institute) as the year in which monastic educational reforms began in earnest;[43] other scholars have traced the roots of these educational initiatives to a time before Yang. The monk Dongchu 東初 (1908–1977) identified 1898 as the year in which the theoretical foundations of the new clerical education system were established; in other words, they were a product of the ‘Hundred Days’ Reform’. However, according to Dongchu, the years 1914 to 1944 saw the actual establishment of at least 30 Buddhist institutes, and that represented another important turning point in the history of the saṃgha education in China. Dongchu specified that one of the big changes embodied in this new Buddhist education was the shift from a sectarian-doctrinal form of education to a style based on the ‘school’ format (xuexiao hua zhi seng jiaoyu 學校化之僧教育).[44]

The study of science was part of the ‘modern scientific knowledge’ that monks had lacked beforehand, but was then introduced in line with the spirit of practical education.[45] Dongchu was not very enthusiastic about these educational changes, and especially disagreed with the adoption of a program of scientific education, which he argued was turning monasteries into ‘social institutes’ (shehui xuexiao 社會學校).[46] Finally, Holmes Welch considered 1904 to be the year in which real changes occurred in monastic schools, although his study does not mention any specific science program for monks.[47]

The layman Yang Wenhui and the monk Taixu were the first Buddhists who integrated Buddhism with non-Buddhist (or otherwise religious) subjects in their educational programs. However, we need to wait until the second decade of the twentieth century before we see monks studying subjects such as biology and astronomy in Buddhist seminaries. It was Taixu who finally made Buddhist monks study natural sciences such as biology, astronomy and physiology — subjects that he wanted mainly lay teachers to lecture on. Quoting Karl Reichelt writing in 1954:

The leading monk in the new Buddhist movement is the famous T’ai-hsü … . The movement is especially strong in the Wu-han centre. There the Chü-shih have provided T’ai-hsü with the funds necessary for opening a Buddhist academy. This is situated in Wuchang and is styled ‘Fu-hsüeh-yüan’. A group of about sixty students, mostly young monks of good education, listen daily to the eloquent and stirring lectures given by T’ai-hsü and the other ‘Fa-shih.’ The curriculum is practical and includes the study of some of the most urgent secular questions of to-day.[48]

In 1923, Taixu emphasised the importance of monastics receiving a general education (putong jiaoyu 普通教育) that included the study of sciences such as physiology and psychology.[49] In his mind, education in the Buddhist seminary should have been divided into five main levels: a Buddhist institute constituted by three grades (corresponding to the secular elementary and high schools, as well as the university level), the institute of monastic discipline, and finally the graduate program. The elementary and high school programs included the study of mathematics (as in secular schools), while the science classes took place at the university level.[50]

In the early 1920s, Taixu added psychology and biology to the curricula (besides other non-Buddhist subjects such as logic and Western languages), and claimed to have identified similarities between Western psychology and Buddhist Chan 禪 (Zen).[51] In the late 1920s, the curricula of the Minnan Buddhist Institute listed a number of non-Buddhist subjects, such as a gen- eric science program (kexue 科學) and mathematics, as well as history, geography, education policies, the Three Principles of the People, arts, and world religions.[52]

This implementation to the traditional curriculum was only the partial realisation of more ambitious plans that Taixu had drafted in his ‘Reforms of Saṃgha Structures’ (Zhengli sengqie zhidu lun 整理僧伽制度論) in 1915. In the reforms that he had planned for the saṃgha, Taixu also envisioned structures of learning that could update and thus upgrade the current education model; this update implied especially the addition of new subjects to the current monastic education.

For instance, the planned Guangwen Vihāra (Guangwen jingshe 廣文精舍) included the following five departments:

• the Department of Chinese Languages (hanwen ke 華文科) for the study of classical Chinese, Japanese, Korean
• the Department of Indian Languages (fanwen ke 梵文科) for the study of Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Manchu
• the Department of European Languages (ouwen ke 歐文科) for the study of English, German, French, Greek, and Latin
• the Department of Translation (fanyi ke 翻譯科) for the practice of translation between the languages taught in the other three departments
• the Department of Miscellaneous Subjects (zuanshu ke 纂述科) for the study of Buddhist history, annual records, gazettes and arts.

Given its emphasis on languages and translation, this vihāra, as Taixu himself admitted, had been planned on the model of Yang Wenhui’s previous Jetavana Vihāra.

The planned Zhongyi Vihāra (Zhongyi jingshe 眾藝精舍) also included five departments and was thought as complementary to the Guangwen Vihāra. The curriculum of the Zhongyi Vihāra included courses on fine arts and literature, logic and mathematics, the study of agriculture, trade, and technology, the study of human sciences (sociology, education, religion, politics, and economics), and sciences such as chemistry, psychology, physics, and physiology. In a more detailed explanation of what was included in the areas of physics and physiology, Taixu listed astronomy, botany, zoology, geology, biology, and the theory of evolution.[53] Obviously, these subjects were still neither very popular nor common in China, and therefore the taxonomy of the courses were translated and explained in a way that would be understandable in the Chinese and Buddhist context.[54] Taixu explained that the subjects taught in the Guangwen and Zhongyi reflected the five classifications of learning (wu ming 五明) that, according to the Mahāyāna tradition, Bodhisattvas have to practice.[55]

Science was also included in the curriculum of the World Buddhicised University (Shijie fohua daxue 世界佛化大學), whose project was drafted in 1925. Here, Taixu laid plans for a college of science (kexue yuan 科學院) that included the curriculum of the vihāra mentioned above.[56]

As discussed above, the new structures and fields of learning were only partly implemented in the modern Buddhist seminaries that had been finally established in the early 1920s. Initially, the Minnan Buddhist Institute was structured into a three-year program. However, in order to face different levels of literacy of the student-monks, Taixu created two distinct programs: the ‘specialisation program’ (zhuanxiu ke 專修科) in two years and for those with a higher level of education, and the ‘regular program’ (putong ke 普通科), in four years and for those with a lesser education; a preparatory phase for those who lack of elementary school was also included in the Minnan system.[57] This was also done in order to mirror the multilevel education in the secular schooling. The curriculum in the initial phase of the Minnan Buddhist Institute (1925) included the study of foreign languages (Japanese and English) in all three years; world history (in the second and third year); natural science (such as biology, chemistry, physics) and social science (including aesthetics, arts, sociology) in all three years; subjects such as psychology, metaphysics and Chinese philosophy in the second year; but Western philosophy and world religions in the third year; and finally the Three Principles of the People were taught for all three years.[58] Policies and contents of the curricula of those seminaries changed further at a later date, which is clearly indicative of the reception that the reformed education that Taixu had planned was receiving in the Buddhist community. If we take Taixu and his institutes as case studies, we can see that the seminaries that he founded in the late 1930s did not require the study of many scientific subjects. Documents from the Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Institute indicate that in the late 1930s, the study of Buddhism and Buddhist languages was integrated with the study of Chinese classics, logic, history and geography, but there is no mention of biology or other natural sciences.[59]

An essential and preliminary part of the project to modernise clerical education was in fact the investigation of secular and religious institutions of higher education overseas. For this purpose, Taixu travelled to Japan (in 1917 and 1925), where he examined local Buddhist seminars for clerics and officially recognised Buddhist academia,[60] and to Europe and the United States (in 1928 and 1929), where he looked at Christian schools, vocational schools and general programs of higher education.[61] In doing this, Taixu followed the path of modernisation undertaken by the reformers of secular schooling in China, who restructured national education policies according to the model provided by the Western and Japanese cases. Indeed the development in the curriculum dated to the 1930s seems to mirror more the systems of learning that were adopted in Buddhist academia in Japan. Besides taking Japanese and Western institutes of learning as reference cases, Taixu had the responsibilities to make the new monastic education fit the overall national system of education (guojia jiaoyu zhidu 國家教育制度).[62]

As stated above, Taixu is the main, but not the only, pioneer in the arrangement of new structures of learning for Buddhist monks and nuns. Yuanying 圓英 (1878–1953) also distinguished himself for his efforts in developing education structures for the saṃgha; the advanced seminaries that he founded included the Yuanming Buddhist Institute (Yuanming foxueyuan 圓明佛學院), which was opened in Shanghai in 1942. However, Yuanying’s education programs never included the secular curriculum that Taixu proposed. Other saṃgha members and Buddhist institutes that have already been documented by Holmes Welch include the Tianning Buddhist Institute (Tianning foxueyuan 天寧佛學院), which was opened at the Tianning Monastery in 1931 in Changzhou 常州 as an upgrade of the previous Tianning Vinaya Hall. TheHongfa Buddhist Institute (Hongfa foxueyuan 弘法佛學院) was the seminary opened at the Guanzong Monastery 觀宗寺 in 1930 in Ningbo; this school was a modernisation of a previous vinaya hall that had been inaugurated by Dixian 諦閑 (1858–1932) in 1913, and that was transformed into a ‘research centre’ (yanjiu she 研究社) in 1918.[63]

The writings on education that Buddhist monks compiled in the first decades of the twentieth century revealed the social and political pressure to create a new Buddhism that could fit the demands of a new China. Chinese people were called to embody a new concept of citizenship, to endorse patriotism, and to defend the nation, and similarly Buddhists of Republican China embarked on a social and political mission. The monk Fafang opined that the monastic community had lost their sense of social responsibility, as well as their sense of belonging to a country, and urged them to regain these:

It cannot be said that once they have left family life [chu jia 出家], monks should also neglect their role in the country [guomin de diwei 國民的地位] … . The monastic community, regardless of whether they are scholar-monks or professionalmonks, are all members of nations, and in any country they have to uphold their national and social duties. Only then they can enjoy the rights guaranteed by their nation. From a more general perspective, it is not only the Buddhist clergy that should be like that; the followers of any religion in any country all over the world have to follow this principle. Buddhists, of course, cannot be an exception.[64]

Fafang affirmed the need for a reformed and socially active Buddhist saṃgha, and argued that this should be achieved through a renewal of the monastic education system, which should, in turn, be aligned with the renewal of China.[65] And even if it was not politically motivated, the training of monastics who were socially useful was generally supported in Buddhist monastic institutions. This shows a clear entanglement between social reality and the religious sphere, and thus between the Buddhist world and China’s ‘awakening’.

There were three ways for Buddhism and Buddhists to be socially and politically engaged in the new China. One was by making the new Buddhist institutes not only the depositary of Buddhist wisdom, but also the point of circulation for certain forms of secular knowledge. Quoting Reichelt:

There was another difficulty; at that time patriotic feelings ran high, and many students of the Academy maintained that it was their right and duty to follow the spirit of the times. In the reading-room were laid out a number of modern periodicals and these contained things both good and evil. Several magazines were not only decidedly atheistic but also anti-religious.[66]

These educational structures were therefore nurturing ‘reformers’ or ‘reformed monks’, and also hiding ‘political rebels’. This was putting Buddhism in a difficult position, and made monastic leaders, Taixu first of all, worried about the reputation of the Buddhist community.[67]

A second way was for Buddhists to present the Dharma as the premier tool for changing society. This was clearly a way to underline the usefulness of Buddhism at a time of anti-religious campaigns. Obviously, in order to create a correct understanding and form of propaganda for the Dharma, Buddhists had to receive a proper education. The monk Xuming 續明 (1919–66) — a colleague of Yinshun — expressed the same thought and intention in Taiwan a few decades later:

What Buddhism hopes for is for you to be able to handle the correct teachings [zheng jiao 正教], to transform and guide the people. And what any society needs is to improve [gailiang 改良] itself, and to change existing habits and customs. In order to achieve this objective, it is naturally essential that we have deep insights into Buddhist studies.[68]

A third social and political aspect of the Buddhist institutes was their role as headquarters for refugees. The best examples of those are found in Taiwan, and to a later period, the mid-twentieth century. The Maitreya Inner Hall (Mile neiyuan 彌勒內院) and the case of the senior monk Cihang 慈航 (1893–1954) is one of them.[69] Whereas Taixu was reforming Buddhist education in Mainland China in a context of national reform, in the mid-twentieth century, political pressures forced the previous group of political and religious reformers to flee to ‘free China’ (ziyou zhongguo 自由中國) —Taiwan — in order to nurture new generations of monastics who were one day supposed to return to the mainland and continue reforming Buddhism. Yinshun stated:

Nowadays there are plenty of disasters, and Buddhism in Mainland China is suffering unprecedented calamities as well. If there is a counterattack against Mainland China, you will certainly all have to go back. You must go back, and propagate anew the seeds of the correct Dharma [zhengfa 正法], in that place where Buddhist activities have already decayed.[70]

It is worth noting that this intention was in line with the aims of the KMT. In subsequent decades, however, as the intention to retake China by military force was gradually abandoned in favour of seeking political independence, Chinese monks also altered their objectives. Instead of seeing Taiwan as a place of temporary refuge, they came to regard it as the starting point of a new path.[71]

Conclusion

It is a fair comment that what has happened in Chinese education repre-sents a transformation of the past as well as a transformation along modern times.[72]

With the end of empire, the creation of the Republic and then of the Communist regime, educational reforms were indeed conceived of as the most important undertaking in the effort to rescue the nation. Although named and structured differently, China associated the education mission with Confucius, and for centuries made Confucius the patron saint of the educational endeavour.[73] The twentieth century, with the push towards secularisation and modernisation (and so Westernisation), debated whether to challenge or maintain Confucian ideas and ideals of mentoring and learning.

The particular nature of the Chinese modernisation project involved an intertwined process of making the state and making religion. The contexts of state and religion creating each other through conflict and negotiations found a parallel in the mutual borrowing and confrontation between the secular system of the state and religious education.[74] This article explored the concepts that constituted the theoretical foundations of the secular and Buddhist educational projects, the main individuals involved in the process of renewal, and the institutional structures that represented the concrete application of intellectual ideas to the learning environment.

This study also demonstrated that Buddhists followed the same narrative in which I divided the history of secular education. At the end of the nineteenth century, we see the first debates on reforming Buddhist education, with the early reformers (lay Buddhists, with the first important pioneer being Yang Wenhui) inspired and instructed during their travels to Western countries and Japan. This important step in renovating the saṃgha occurred as a reaction to the state of corruption that Buddhist monastics had reached by that time. The first years of the Republic of China saw the actual establishment of the first modern Buddhist institutes with the first changes in the curricula (mainly addition of foreign languages, mathematics, history), all changes promoted in line of the contemporary reforms in secular schooling. It was between the 1920s and the 1940s that reformer monks made a further step in the path of modernisation, attempting to emulate the Christian colleges built in China mainly by American Protestants, including science classes into the curricula, rearranging the overall structure of Buddhist pedagogy, and reinforcing the dialogue with offices of the government in order to create not just parallels but also a constructive conversations with the KMT. Finally, and similarly to the pioneers of the modern secular education who encountered strong critiques and opposition, Buddhist reformers did not receive full support from the saṃgha for their innovation in education either. Indeed, important senior monks like Dongchu hesitated to embrace the new curricula, the newly formed saṃgha (xin seng 新僧) and the new generation of scholar-monks (xueseng 學僧).

Given the ‘religious question’ (zongjiao wenti 宗教問題) that had been pervasive in China since the end of the nineteenth century, Buddhists were forced, explicitly or implicitly, to comply with the new vision of China as a modern nation.[75] The project of a new saṃgha became based on founding new models of monasteries, education, and social missions. The social and intellectual dynamics examined in this article reveal that an important part of this Buddhist response to the ‘religious question’ was indeed a negotiation within and between state agencies.