What is in a Name? The Possibility of Identifying the Monk Damo as the Mentor of the First Known Self-Claimed Reincarnation of Maitreya in Medieval China

摘要

On the basis of a memorial inscription dedicated to an obscure foreign monk known to us only by a rather ordinary word,Damo逹摩 (Dharma),which was obviously a part of his name,this study attempts to reconstruct some traces of his life,and several key aspects of his image as was perceived by his contemporaries.Partly due to his obscurities and popularities,starting from a certain point of time this Damo started to be conflated with the famous Bodhidharma.The research presented in this article shows that it is difficult to identify this Damo to be Bodhidharma.However,several major aspects of Damo's image seems to have played a noticeable role in informing the image of Bodhidharma and the Chan ideologies related to him.This case study underscores the complexity of the process through which the life and image of a religious paragon in medieval China,like elsewhere in the world of any time,were made and remade.