Short Abstract
:
In recent years, in addition to community research, the sociology of knowledge research of Yanjing School has attracted more and more scholars’ attention. This paper intends to start with the analysis of the only two research texts on famous Buddhist mountains written by Yanjing School scholars: the two texts are Fei Hsio-Tung’s “Pilgrimage to the Chicken Feet Mountain” written in 1943 and Li An-Che’s “Records of Tibetans Sacrifice to Mount Taizi” written in 1938. Both Fei and Li are representatives of the Yanjing School. Intellectuals and sociology of knowledge are issues of common concern to both of them, and both are influenced by Zhang Doug-Sun. They hope to discover the diversity of the knowledge world in China and the significance of this diversity for reflecting on modern Intellectuals’ groups. These two articles are important works of sociology of knowledge. Both articles deal with sacred mountain far away from the community, revealing the sociological differences between community and sacred mountain. They further point out that the Buddhist sacred mountain in frontier society, as the regional apex, have become a higher level of integration than specific communitiy under the cooperation of intellectuals and the state. The integration based on higher hierarchy of Buddhist mountains has not been given enough attention in previous research on Buddhist sacred mountain. At the same time, the two articles start from the same issue consciousness, but present completely different relationships between intellectuals and society. As two exemplary examples of sacred mountain research, the relationship between sacred mountain, society, and intellectuals extended from this is a key aspect of understanding border society and its spiritual structure, and also one of the key issues in understanding the Yanjing School.
