Liu Sahe's Life Between Two Worlds

Nelson Landry

The Legacy of a Medieval Chinese Buddhist Miracle-worker

Liu Sahe 劉薩荷 was a northerner, possibly of Southern Xiongnu descent, who settled in Cizhou (present-day Shanxi) during the Jin dynasty (260–420). He initially made a living as a hunter, though after a near-death experience and a visit to the Buddhist hells he renounced his livelihood to ordain as a monk, taking on the monastic name Huida 慧達. During his near-death experience he was instructed to seek out Aśokan (c. 268–232 BCE) ruins in China. According to varying accounts of his life, he would have discovered various sacred sites and religious objects during his travels—sites that became hallowed places marking the borders of Buddhist China. When he died in the deserts of present-day Wuwei in Gansu, a cult began to form around this mysterious figure, spreading from his home county all the way to the borderlands in Dunhuang.

Liu Sahe occupies a singular place in the history of Chinese Buddhism. He was a foreigner from the north who sought out sacred objects in the southern imperial heartland; he was a source of authority on the alleged transmission of Buddhist sacred objects to China by King Aśoka; he was a charismatic religious figure with dedicated rites who inspired faith in the believers of northern China. This talk will investigate the figure of Liu Sahe in recorded texts and in material culture such as painted representations and manuscripts. By studying his life we can elaborate on various important characteristics of medieval Chinese Buddhism. Some general questions come to mind. How did the medieval Chinese negotiate the temporal and spatial distance between contemporary religious life and the life of Buddhism’s founder in India? Was there a qualifiable difference between a “northern” and “southern” China, and how was Buddhist practice and life different in these geographical areas? These are sweeping questions with no easy answers. Yet, by studying the figure of Liu Sahe, we may yet gain some insights on the dynamics of transculturality that defined the medieval Chinese religious landscape.