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Description:
Creator's Description: The Qing Jiaqing Emperor’s Magnificent Record of the Western Tour (xixun shengdian), published in 1812, is the last “magnificent record” of the Qing dynasty and the only one that focuses on the Buddhist sites of Wutai Shan. Jiaqing’s record reproduces imperial inscriptions and poetry on Wutai Shan, as well as maps, and pictures of the site based on the Qianlong-era Qingliang shan shengdian. The Magnficent Record falls squarely into a Chinese genre of official site-specific gazetteers, conveying little sense of the Tibetan and Mongolian presence at Wutai Shan in the early nineteenth century. The site with its temples and vision-inducing topographical features is presented as a Chinese mountain retreat befitting a scholarly gentleman rather than as a sacred site that attracted pilgrims from the entire northern Asian Buddhist world.
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