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Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 8.2 (2025): 98–120; https://dx.doi.org/10.15239/hijbs.08.02.06
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Epigraphy and Women’s History)
Funerary Inscription with Preface for the Late Princess Gao of the Dali Kingdom
Megan BRYSON
University of Tennessee
mbryson4@utk.edu
Abstract: The Dali kingdom (937–1253) ruled much of what is now southwest China, and though its sources are limited, they uniformly reflect Dali rulers’ Buddhist devotion. Given that Buddhism afforded women unique opportunities in other parts of Asia, we might expect to find similar examples of devout Buddhist women ordaining as nuns or sponsoring large-scale projects in the Dali kingdom. The only extant record about a Dali-kingdom woman’s life, the funerary inscription for the royal Gao Jinxian Gui, describes the deceased in strongly Confucian terms, with few direct references to Buddhism. Despite these limited references, by reading the inscription carefully, and in relation to other Dali-kingdom sources, it is possible to piece together an image of Gao Jinxian Gui’s life in a Buddhist and Confucian environment.
Keywords: Dali kingdom, Yunnan, women, royal, epitaph, Confucianism
About the Author: Megan Bryson is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research interests include East Asian Buddhism, Buddhist transmission, Buddhism in the Nanzhao and Dali Kingdoms, religion in Yunnan, and the themes of ethnicity and gender in the study of East Asian religions. She has published the books Goddess on the Frontier: Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Southwest China (Stanford UP, 2016) and (co-edited with Kevin Buckelew) Buddhist Masculinities (Columbia UP, 2023).
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
