The Making of a Sacred Landscape: Visualizing Hangzhou Buddhist Culture via Geoparsing a Local Gazetteer the Xianchun Lin’an zhi 咸淳臨安志

A highly clustered distribution of Buddhist temples in Hangzhou during the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) was revealed through geospatial analysis, correlating with socio-political factors such as fengshui, state power, politics, and commercial exchanges. This study leveraged a local gazetteer, the Xianchun Lin’an zhi, to visualize Buddhist sites at a regional scale, addressing gaps in large-scale religious data collection that often obscure local characteristics. By combining GIS distant reading with close reading of historical materials, researchers identified patterns not easily discernible through traditional textual analysis or nationwide datasets.

Liu, J., & Wan, Z. (2022). The Making of a Sacred Landscape: Visualizing Hangzhou Buddhist Culture via Geoparsing a Local Gazetteer the Xianchun Lin’an zhi 咸淳臨安志. Religions, 13(8), 711. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080711