Northern Wei Wutaishan: an outside view of centres and peripheries

ABSTRACT This study is an attempt to look at Wutaishan from an outside, non-Chinese, non-Buddhist perspective in order to imagine its possible religious significance to the Taugast, the group originally from beyond the northern limits of Chinese civilization who came to be known in China as the Northern Wei, when they first began to pay attention to what was then a mountain not strongly associated with Buddhism, or even Daoism. Though the amount of textual material on this period is very limited, it is suggested that the caves of Wutaishan were already regarded by these northern outsiders to China as possessing a religious significance, a significance ultimately relating to conceptions of northern peoples that also continued to exert an appeal on Mongols in later periods. Archaeological study that might further clarify this hypothesis will need to bear in mind that Wutaishan has been both at the centre and at the periphery of more than one culture and indeed thereby perhaps played an important role in mediating cultural conflict.