Mount Jizu and the Mahākāśyapa Legend: The Creation of a Sacred Mountain in the Ming Southwestern Borderlands

This paper examines how Mount Jizu in Dali, incorporated into the Ming empire’s southwestern frontier in 1371, came to be identified with the Indian mountain Kukkuṭapāda, where the Buddha’s disciple Mahākāśyapa is believed to guard Śākyamuni’s robe while awaiting the future Buddha Maitreya. I argue that local elites, Ming state, and Chinese Buddhists collectively produced a new frontier sacred site. Dali elites sought to enhance ethnic prestige by linking their homeland to the sacred geography of Indian Buddhism, while the Ming state promoted Buddhist institutions as part of its broader effort to culturally integrate the southwestern frontier. At the same time, identifying Mount Jizu with Kukkuṭapāda allowed Chinese Buddhists to address a longstanding “borderland complex” arising from Buddhism’s Indian origins by situating the residence of the first Chan patriarch Mahākāśyapa within Ming territory. The case demonstrates how frontier regions could generate new sacred geographies that reshaped the wider Buddhist world.