The Buddhist Nationalism of Dai Jitao 戴季陶

Journal of Chinese Religions 39 (2011) 55 The Buddhist Nationalism of Dai Jitao 戴季陶 GREGORY ADAM SCOTT1 Columbia University “To choose Buddhism in the search for religious identity meant that one was choosing to be Chinese. It was an expression of cultural loyalism, a denial that things Chinese were inferior.” Holmes Welch, The Revival of Chinese Buddhism, 261. In this passage from his seminal 1968 work, Welch identifies something particularly significant about Buddhists in early twentieth-century China: that there were many who conceived of a close relationship between their religious and national identities. This concept manifested itself in a number of ways, from discussions of national crises in Buddhist periodicals to monks enlisting as soldiers in the war with Japan.2 One of the most prominent people who was intimately involved with the nexus between Buddhism and Chinese nationalism is Dai Jitao (1890-1949).3 An early political associate of Sun Zhongshan 孫中山 (Sun Yat-sen; 1866-1925), Dai held several positions in the Republican government, including that of head of the Examination Yuan from 1928 to 1949.4 He was also well-known 1 Gregory Adam Scott is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Religion at Columbia University. Research for this article was supported by a Daniel and Marianne Spiegel Fund Grant from the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and a Faculty Fellowship from Columbia University. I am grateful to the participants in the panel on “Chinese Lay Buddhists in the Early Twentieth Century and the Question of Secularization: Four Case Studies” at the 2009 meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for this publication. I also benefited from reading an unpublished paper by Brooks Jessup on Dai’s Buddhism. 2 For one example of the former, see Taixu 太虛, “Chengfo jiushi yu geming jiuguo” 成佛救世與 革命救國 in Renjian Fojiao 人間佛教, no. 1 (June 6, 1925), pp. 8-9. Available as reprint in MFQB 66 468-469. For details on how reprint periodical articles are cited in this essay, please see the Bibliography section. 3 Dai used the name Chuanxian 傳賢 after the death of Sun Zhongshan in 1925. He adopted the style name 號 Tianchou 天仇 around 1911, and used the courtesy name 字 Xuantang 選堂. For a brief outline of Dai’s biography and relationship to Buddhism, see the on-line resource Database of Modern Chinese Buddhism, . 4 Though formally one of the five main branches of government, in the Republican period the Examination Yuan (Kaoshi yuan 考試院) was a largely symbolic and “weak organization without a substantial base of power.” Julia C. Strauss, “Symbol and Reflection of the Reconstituting State,” 117 and passim. 56 Journal of Chinese Religions both as a Buddhist practitioner and as a political figure who was supportive of Buddhism. Not only did he accept the linkage of religious and national identities described by Welch, but he went even further, adopting an ethos of Buddhist nationalism that sought to mobilize Buddhism’s salvific powers to save China from national crisis. I follow Anthony D. Smith’s succinct definition of nationalism as “an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining the autonomy, unity and identity of an existing or potential ‘nation.’”5 Buddhist nationalism may be understood as when such a movement is expressed using Buddhist idioms of image and language, by a group that identifies itself as part of a Buddhist religious tradition. Buddhist nationalism was initially described in the context of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where religious reformers such as Anagarika Dharmapāla (1864-1933) developed a ‘Protestant Buddhism’ established in resistance to religious and political power of British rule. Ceylon’s role as the protector of orthodox Buddhism came to serve as a powerful symbol for the nascent anti-colonial nationalist movement.6 In Meiji-era Japan, Buddhists transformed their tradition into a ‘New Buddhism’ (shin Bukkyō 新佛教) that was articulated as modern, authentic, and above all, as a core part of the cultural heritage of the Japanese nation. Although this began as a response to state persecution, among some groups it later translated into an explicit support for the nation-state in its military exploits.7 In both of these contexts we find that state-led projects of social modernization, new legal and social categories of...