Healing, Religion, and Politics in Medieval China

Stephen F. Teiser is coming to the British Library on Friday 30 October for a talk on healing, religion, and politics in medieval China. He's the D. T. Suzuki Professor in Buddhist Studies and Professor of Religion, Emeritus, at Princeton University, and he'll be drawing on the Dunhuang manuscripts — a collection of documents discovered in 1900 that give us a rare look at how people in medieval China dealt with epidemics.

One of the documents is a governor's order from 902 CE, telling monks and nuns to perform chanting and confession rituals to combat an outbreak. Alongside that are the ritual texts the Buddhist monks actually used to help communities hit by epidemics in the ninth and tenth centuries. Teiser will be talking through how government officials and Buddhist leaders understood the causes of disease — whether they read it as poor leadership, collective karma, harmful spirits, or wider disasters — and how people sought relief through donations to temples and rituals invoking Buddhist deities. It's a look at the intersection of state power, religious practice, and the way people made sense of sickness over a thousand years ago.

The talk is part of the International Dunhuang Programme's Lecture Series and is supported by the Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art. Teiser has written The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (1988) and Ritual and the Study of Buddhism (2022), so he's well-versed in the ritual side of things.

It's in the Pigott Theatre at the British Library, running from 18:30 to 20:00, with doors open from 18:00 and the bar open from then too. There's a drinks reception from 19:30 to 20:00, so you can stick around and chat after the talk. Tickets are £12, with concessions available.