18 Origins of a Military Tradition
a period of spectacular Buddhist growth in Luoyang. Within decades of the
court’s being established there, the city featured more than a thousand Bud-
dhist temples, whose golden roofs, we are told, dazzled the eyes.^39 The gener-
osity with which these temples were appointed is vividly rendered in the
contemporary Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Lo-yang (547):
Princes, dukes, and ranking officials donated such valuable things as
elephants and horses, as generously as if they were slipping shoes from
off their feet. The people and wealthy families parted with their
treasures as easily as with forgotten rubbish. As a result, Buddhist
temples were built side by side, and stupas rose up in row after row.
People competed among themselves in making or copying the Buddha’s
portraits. Golden stupas matched the imperial observatory in height,
and Buddhist lecture halls were as magnificent as the [ostentatiously
wasteful] E-bang [Palaces of the Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE)].^40The magnificent golden-roofed monasteries of Luoyang no longer survive. In
534, with the fall of the Northern Wei capital, most of its temples were de-
stroyed. However, another expression of the Tuobas’ religious fervor has re-
mained intact. During the same years in which the Shaolin Monastery was
established, work began on what was to become one of the largest monuments
of Buddhist sculpture in Asia. Thousands of Buddha images were carved into
the rock at Longmen, on the outskirts of Luoyang. These gigantic statues—
some are more than two hundred feet tall—still gaze majestically out upon the
flowing waters of the Yi River, unaffected by the ravages of time.^41
Xiaowen’s patronage of the Shaolin Monastery was continued by devout
emperors of the following medieval dynasties. Two notable examples are the
Sui emperor Wendi (r. 581–604) and the Tang empress Wu Zetian (r. 684–
705). The former endowed the monastery with a 1,400-acre estate, which in-
cluded a water mill.^42 (During the medieval period mills were a common
source of monastic income.)^43 The latter felt so attached to Shaolin that she
built there a ten-story stupa for the deliverance of her mother’s soul. In addi-
tion, the empress graced the monastery with a poem, which was engraved on
a Shaolin stele. Both can be admired at the monastery to this day.^44
The proselytizing efforts of devout emperors such as Xiaowen have trans-
formed central Henan into what could be described as a “Buddhist Land.” To
this day, the road from Shaolin to Luoyang is dotted with villages that bear
such Buddhist names as Foguang (Buddha’s Light). Some twelve miles from
Shaolin, at Xuanzang’s native village, one encounters a temple for the famed
pilgr im. Further up the road is the enor mous W hite Horse Temple (Baima Si),
which, dating back to the Eastern Han, is reputed to be the oldest Buddhist
monastery in China. As one approaches Luoyang, the monumental Buddhist
caves of Longmen become visible. It was within this Buddhist realm that, dur-
ing the medieval period, the Shaolin Monastery prospered.