Mingtang and buddhist utopias in the history of the astronomical clock

This book has its origins in research which I began in Autumn 1982 in an attempt to understand the nature of an obscure Buddhist building called “celestial hall” or “heavenly mansion” (tiantang). This building was erected in the palatine city of Luoyang in the year 689 A.D. As sometimes happens, when you look for one thing, you find other things which are even more interesting; at a certain point my research, I thus found myself pursuing a path which I never would have predicted…Antonino ForteTable of contentPrefaceIntroductory essay: The clock and the perfect society 1. The Chinese clock and the European clock 2 The great regulator of Wu Zhao 3. The importance of time for the Chinese BuddhistAppendix: On the transmission of the text of Daoxuan on the Jetevana MonasteryChapter one: The tower, the statue, the armillary sphere 1. The great armillary sphere (Day 1) 2. The tower called Tiantang i. Historical Events ii. Size and architecture of the tiantang 3. The Great Statue (Daxiang)Appendix: Matsumoto Bunzaburo confusion of the great lacquer statue with the great bronze statue on the Bai Sima slopeChapter two: The origins of the mechanical clock 1. The Tiantang interpreted as a `sacred tower' 2. The mystique of the Lingtai 3. The Dayi and the origin of the mechanical clockAppendix A: Notes on some great towers prior to the tiantang and their possible relation with the idea of lingtaiAppendix B: Yamada Keiji’s opinion on the meaning of dayiChapter three: The two mingtang compared 1. The dates of the two Mingtang 2. Size and architecture of the two Mingtang 3. The abortive attempt to reconstruct the Mingtang 4. Hypothesis on the first MingtangAppendix A: The paths followed by historians to eject the tiantang from the mingtangAppendix B: The eleven missing characters in the current editions of the Zizhi tongijianChapter four: Some remarks on the social context 1. The Mingtang as an architectural projection of different politico-religious conceptions 2. The fertile soil of Maitreyan utopianism 3. The Mingtang/Clock-Buddhism/Pacifism associationConclusionSummary of three attempts to construct The Mingtang at LuoyangBibliographyGeneral indexIllustrations