[Buddha-l] persecuting Christians in Tang China

[Richard Hayes]

On Tuesday 03 October 2006 03:40, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> If anyone has anything resembling reliable information on actual Buddhist
> persecution of Christians in China, please share that with the rest of us.

Yes, that would be welcome. I'd like to know more about what went on. I have 
read that many Tibetan claims that Buddhists were persecuted during certain 
periods were highly exaggerated, and I have also heard that there is 
exaggeration in the claims that some Buddhist kings persecuted non-Buddhists. 
When there is real animosity between groups, there often is some sort of 
exaggeration on one or both sides. Hell, I've even seen that happen on 
buddha-l.

> Otherwise, let's consider this "slander" a settled matter.

I have no idea what you mean by slander. I usually understand the term to mean 
a deliberately false statement intended to discredit another or to diminish 
another's reputation. I have not seen any signs of that sort of activity in 
the case under discussion (with the possible exception of your suggestion 
that I am indulging in slander). It may well be that what I have reported is 
inaccurate in some way, but I doubt very much that anything I have written 
constitutes anything even remotely like slander.

Here, as I take it, are the key points I was striving to make. They consist of 
some observations and a working hypothesis that would explain one of those 
observations. First the observations:

1. An instance of persecution has been reported in various books dealing with 
Chinese history. (My main source on the matter is Jacques Gernet's Le monde 
chinois.)
2. The perpetrators of the alleged persecution were Buddhists.
3. The recipients of the alleged persecution were Christians.
4. The reported events took place during the time of the Empress Wu.
5. When I have mentioned this scenario in class, students have been surprised, 
often telling me that surely it was Christians who persecuted Buddhists, not 
vice versa.

Working hypothesis: I suspect students may register suprise because the 
reported events are incompatible with two commonly-held stereotypes: 1) that 
Christians are prone to persecuting others, and 2) that Buddhism is unique 
among world religions in that Buddhists have no history of violence or 
persecution.

Now I am really not particularly interested in quibbling about the meaning of 
the term "persecution"---I agree it is a term that has been overused and 
abused almost as much as the term anti-Semitism. So let's set that issue 
aside and just speak of hostility between groups of people resulting in one 
group being disadvantaged as a result of that hostility. Of that there can be 
little doubt in the issue under discussion.

What I am more interested in is the reactions of students when they hear their 
stereotypes challenged. Their automatic response is to question new 
information rather than to question their own stereotypes. Now I will make a 
REALLY bold claim: in reacting in this way, students are pretty much like 
everyone else. (Just about my favorite article of all time is Charles S. 
Peirce's "The fixation of belief," which brilliantly chronicles the human 
penchant for holding beliefs in the absence of evidence, often despite 
mountains of evidence to the contrary. That seems to happen almost 
everywhere, except of course on buddha-l.)

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes