Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism by Richard M. Jaffe (review)

Abstract

Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 80.2 (2020): 526–532 nothing to our understanding of the narratives’ religious meaning. So, why bother? However, let this quibble not detract from my overwhelmingly positive evaluation of Ter Haar’s work. This book will be an inspiration for research in much wider fields of Chinese religious history, and it sets the standard for all future studies in the narrower sector of Lord Guan’s cult. It is not a conclusive study, but it opens up many new important vistas from which scholars may view and investigate beliefs and practices surrounding Lord Guan. Aside from post-1949 developments, I am thinking here in particular of the many themes touched on in this rich work that invite further study, including the still-puzzling question of Lord Guan’s function as god of wealth as well as the intertextual relationships of the nineteenth-century scriptures that integrate concepts from so-called “sectarian” textual traditions. Finally, for anyone interested in the interplay of written and oral traditions in premodern China, this work offers much stimulation through its empirical data, its finely honed argumentation, and its methodological reflexivity.