Gathering medicines among the cypress: the relationship between healing and place in the earliest records of Mount Wutai

Abstract

ABSTRACT Early imaginings of Mount Wutai’s (the Mountain of Five Plateaus) importance were more diverse than we might expect given the site’s longstanding and intimate affiliation with Mañjuśrī (Wenshu). Alongside its importance as the Bodhisattva’s territory, early accounts of this place preserved in Huixiang’s (seventh-century) Ancient Chronicle of Mount Clear and Cool (Gu Qingliang zhuan) root Mount Wutai’s specialness in the presence of curatives and substances promoting longevity there. These stories indicate that Wutai’s connection with wellbeing played an important role in its seventh-century textual construction as a Buddhist sacred place.