Little Devotees: Children’s Ritual Efficacy and Soteriological Capacity in Medieval Chinese Buddhism

In Buddhist thought, do children have the capacity to attain enlightenment? Or are they bound by their ignorance, unable to ascertain the Dharma until they develop a certain level of discernment? According to early Indian Buddhist texts, such as the Questions of King Milinda (P. Milindapañha), children under the age of seven possess a soteriological capacity comparable to that of animals: they are powerless and dull, with such an imperfect mind that they are incapable of grasping the idea of nirvāṇa (Mil 6.3.8.; Rhys Davids 1894; Heim 2014). Medieval Chinese Buddhist sources from the third to tenth centuries CE evince a similar perspective. Medieval Chinese Buddhist miraculous tales and hagiographical accounts reveal that ordinary children below the age of six (seven sui 歳) were neither expected to exhibit predilections for the Dharma, nor to partake in religious practices. Reflecting indigenous Chinese concepts of biophysical and moral development—according to which children develop a “moral consciousness” at six or seven, depending on their gender—medieval Chinese Buddhist sources ascribe religious agency to children from roughly six-years-old onward. Upon reaching this developmental milestone, their devotional and absolutive practices are portrayed as ritually efficacious, and they are depicted as capable of progressing along the soteriological path toward enlightenment. Only remarkable, precocious children, who are endowed with “good roots” (shangen 善根) from past lives and who eschew childlike qualities, display such capabilities at younger ages.

By exploring children’s ritual efficacy and soteriological capacity in medieval Chinese Buddhism, my paper invites scholars in Buddhist studies to reconsider how historical and cultural notions of childhood shaped basic tenets of Buddhist thought. Previous studies have considered Buddhist approaches to defining the religious agency and soteriological capacity of animals, as well as obstacles to enlightenment posed by one’s gender (e.g. Ohnuma 2017; Wilson 1996; Appleton 2011, etc.). This paper contributes to these conversations by drawing attention to the overlooked element of age. Human beings are unique in the Buddhist cosmological framework, in that their soteriological capacity changes over time in accordance with maturation and acculturation. I employ what I call an “age-critical perspective” to explore this dynamic in the medieval Chinese case. An “age-critical perspective” treats age as an analytical category to reevaluate textual, visual, and material sources with attention to cultural definitions of children and childhood. In introducing this notion of an “age-critical perspective,” I hope to foster broader conversations in religious studies on how we can theorize age relative to religious norms.

This paper further forges interdisciplinary connections between Buddhist studies and histories of childhood. With the emergence of childhood studies in the 1980s, historians, archaeologists, and historical anthropologists have increasingly urged scholars to consider children’s role in society (e.g. Lillehammer 1989; Moore and Scott, 1997). The insights from childhood studies are important for scholars of Buddhism to wrestle with, as children constitute a significant—albeit historically marginal—section of society and are religious actors in their own right. My paper will offer a tentative model for how our field can better engage with this literature.

Buddhist studies scholarship has indirectly touched upon children through topics such as embryology, fertility and child protection, and monastic laws’ approach to familial ties (e.g. Langenberg 2017, Chen 2010, Clarke 2014, etc.). However, Little Buddhas: Children and Childhoods in Buddhist Texts and Traditions, remains the only intensive study directly focused on children and childhood in Buddhist studies. This foundational edited volume pointed to the promise of studies on Buddhism and children. My paper builds upon Little Buddhas by examining notions of children’s religious agency in medieval Chinese Buddhism, a topic unexplored in the volume but one that, I argue, is crucial to understanding both children in Chinese religions and Buddhist thought more broadly.

This paper considers in what circumstances, in what capacities, and for what purposes children appear as religiously agentive in accounts of Buddhist practice in medieval China. I draw my materials from medieval Chinese Buddhist miraculous tales and hagiographical accounts of eminent monastics. Miraculous tales are helpful sources for thinking about notions of children’s religious agency in medieval China. Tales depict children and youth from six years of age and onward as participating in an array of Buddhist practices, such as receiving lay precepts, participating in abstinence ceremonies, worshipping images, and going forth from the home to join the monastic community. I show that miraculous tales portrays such children’s merit-making activities as efficacious: their devotional practices stimulate sympathetic responses (Ch. ganying 感應); their acts of repentance assuage karmic punishments; and they achieve rebirth in heavenly realms and pure lands due to their devotions.

The paper compares the religious activities attributed ordinary children in miraculous tales with those of exemplary children in monastic hagiographies, who are often described as exhibiting predilections for the Dharma at young ages. Hagiographies provide a useful foil for miraculous tales by defining the normative boundaries between ordinary and extraordinary behavior for children. In reading these materials, I follow scholars such as Robert Campany and Ho Chiew Hui, who argue that miraculous tales and hagiographies are repositories of information on local epistemes. I read these narratives as “crystallizations of social memory” that reflect wider cultural and religious notions and assumptions held by those within these narrative networks (Campany 2012, 29; Ho 2019).

Children have not received enough attention in Buddhist studies. My paper shows that thinking about them as religious agents will help us reevaluate how ideas of one's ritual efficacy and soteriological capacity operated in the minds of medieval Chinese authors.