This dissertation reimagines the world of the Chinese Buddhist scholar monks of the Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907) dynasties by bringing to bear comparative work on scholasticism. With this framework, we come to understand the central skill of the Sui-Tang scholiasts to have been the performance of exegetical mastery of texts. Individual scholiasts did not restrict their exegetical performances to a single scripture or set of scriptures. Instead, the institutions of Sui-Tang Buddhism allowed them to range across many such fields of specialization—lecturing now on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, and now on Prajñāpāramitā texts, modulating their performance to accord with the norms of each field. This reframing allows us to move away from a singular focus on authors and their ideas toward a reading of their works as embedded in tradition and engaging, playfully, in exegesis and Buddhist scholarship. Many of features of their exegetical works, such as outlines and doxographies (panjiao 判教), can now be understood not as abstract philosophical argument but as tools for memorization and interpretation.

Chapter 1 discusses the category of “scholasticism” and its use in comparative contexts, highlighting the embeddedness of the scholastic project within tradition, the understanding and practical use of memory, and several patterns of scholastic pedagogy, including the practice of disputation. I also point to the way knowledge in such cultures is organized not around abstract subjects but individual scriptures or sets of scriptures. The following chapters show the relevance of this framework to the Sui-Tang exegetes. Throughout these chapters, I show how the aforementioned aspects of scholasticism can also be seen in their lives and works. In Chapter 2, I synthesize information from prefaces, colophons, and biographical texts to sketch the lifeworld Sui-Tang Buddhist scholiasts. Chapter 3 presents a broad reading of Sui-Tang scholastic texts, surveying different genres and their conventions. Chapter 4 starts with the suggestion that we may understand exegesis as an artform where performers play on patterns, much as musicians improvise on musical themes. It demonstrates this by presenting a close reading of a passage of commentary by Chengguan 澄觀 (738-839) alongside parallels in the works of other Sui-Tang scholiasts. In Chapter 5, I argue that knowledge in the Sui-Tang scholastic world was organized around groups of scriptures such that individual scholiasts, writing on one scripture or the other, “performed” the discourse appropriate to the scripture at hand. It substantiates this by comparing doxographical schemes (panjiao 判教) and sources used in commentarial works on different scriptures by Fazang 法藏 (643-712) and Tankuang 曇曠 (c. 700-c. 780).