Journal of Chinese Religions最新文献

{"title":"Transcendents in Translation: Buddhist Affordances for Imagining xian 仙 in China","authors":"Kevin Buckelew","doi":"10.1353/jcr.2023.a913655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2023.a913655","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Many Buddhist scriptures in Chinese translation render the Indic ṛṣi (non-Buddhist sage or ascetic) as the Chinese xian 仙 (transcendent). This article explores how such a nativizing act of translation afforded Chinese users of Buddhist scriptures, from the medieval to the late imperial periods, various interpretive and polemical opportunities. Sometimes the appearance of xian in Buddhist scriptures facilitated Chinese Buddhist polemics against Daoism, but in other cases the same Buddhist xian provided Daoists the chance to appropriate Buddhist ideas into a Daoist soteriological framework. Still other cases involved complex negotiations over the precise meaning of xian, the nuances of which we must carefully tease out. Besides exploring many cases that illuminate the Chinese reception of Buddhist references to xian, I suggest that the concept of \"affordance\" is useful for analyzing the ramifications carried by particular translation choices made during the rendering of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.","PeriodicalId":53120,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Religions","volume":" 11","pages":"171 - 205"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138611818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Always Being With Her Practitioners: A Study of the Diversified Devotional Practices of the Cult of Zhunti 準提 in Late Imperial China (1368–1911)","authors":"Tianyu Lei","doi":"10.1353/jcr.2023.a913656","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2023.a913656","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:As one of the most venerated Buddhist deities in late imperial China, the core of the cult of the goddess Zhunti lies in the diversity of its devotional practices. Nevertheless, influenced by a problematic methodology, previous studies on this topic highly relied on the prescriptive materials and attached too much importance to the elite practitioners, thus presenting an incomplete picture of the actual situation. Therefore, this article divides the devotional practices of the Zhunti cult into full-fledged liturgies and separately performed devotional practices, and takes advantage of both the descriptive and prescriptive sources to reveal how real historical actors (elites/non-elites, men/women) drew on religious culture to suit their own religious exploration.","PeriodicalId":53120,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Religions","volume":" 1","pages":"207 - 227"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138617642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Family Ethics in Taixu's Humanistic Buddhism: The Wisdom of No-Self and the Action of the Bodhisattva","authors":"Wei Wu","doi":"10.1353/jcr.2023.a913658","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2023.a913658","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The notion \"Buddhism for Human Life\" (rensheng fojiao 人生佛教), coined by the influential Chinese Buddhist leader Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947), has had a great impact on shaping Buddhist life in the twentieth century. Much scholarly attention has been paid to Taixu's modernizing programs in monastic education and reformulation. This article instead examines Taixu's discourse about lay people, with a focus on family ethics. It discusses the way in which Taixu clarifies the role played by Buddhism in secular life. His discourse weaves together a range of intellectual themes. He elaborates on several previously lesser-known Buddhist scriptures, arguing that the Buddhist perspectives can help to reduce tensions between the individuals' quest for autonomy and their commitment to social responsibilities. He suggests that, compared to Confucianism and Western philosophies, Buddhism provides more coherent ideational grounds on which to deal with the challenges faced by individuals and families, thereby contributing to the welfare of Chinese society.","PeriodicalId":53120,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Religions","volume":"12 12","pages":"279 - 308"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138627321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Daoist Yao Aiyun and Modern Education and Other Reforms in Late Qing Nanyang","authors":"Xun Liu","doi":"10.1353/jcr.2023.a913657","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2023.a913657","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This is a study of Daoist encounter with modernity. It reconstructs the history of Quanzhen Daoist monastic activism in late Qing educational and other modern reforms in Nanyang from the 1880s to the 1910s. Focusing on the life and career of the Quanzhen Daoist cleric Yao Aiyun (1845–1912), this study examines the intense Daoist activism carried out by prior Yao and the Monastery of Dark Mystery (Xuanmiao guan) in establishing three new schools from 1905 to 1908. Using evidence developed from new and previously underexplored primary sources, I show that prior Yao and his monastery paid for and operated three new schools to support the Qing state's push for modern education reforms in rural jurisdictions, and more importantly to meet the educational needs of the children in local communities in Nanyang. I further demonstrate that while the threat of temple expropriation by the late Qing state may have been a factor driving some Buddhist and Daoist temples to support to the state educational reforms, prior Yao and his monastery's efforts in establishing new schools must not be seen merely as self-serving or opportunistic instincts at times of crisis. Instead, I argue that they are best understood as a natural extension of the Quanzhen Daoist monastery's long and deep tradition of commitment and service to the local community in Nanyang. As I have shown elsewhere, these efforts trace their roots or origins to at least the early Qing re-construction of Nanyang in the mid-seventeenth century, and to the most recent valiant defense of the city against the Nian-Taiping rebels in the 1860s. I further argue that contrary to the Weberian thesis that religion would either wither under the impact of modernity or oppose the proliferation of science and knowledge, prior Yao's activism shows that Daoism rather willingly pioneered in efforts to establish new western-style schools for the sake of advancing modern education and science-based knowledge among the local population. In the process, prior Yao and his Quanzhen Daoist temple gained both official state recognition and popular respect, and grew stronger in both influence and power in local society in late Qing Nanyang. Indeed, the case of prior Yao also shows that Chinese traditional religions such as Daoism often found ingenious ways to not only adapt to and engage with forces of modernity, but they also evolved themselves and advanced their own interests by immersing themselves deeply in various new social and public institutions of the modernizing society in late Qing Nanyang.","PeriodicalId":53120,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Religions","volume":"25 12","pages":"229 - 277"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138624172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Buddhist Monasteries between Charity and Profit: Taking the Issue of Water Supply of Lin'an (Hangzhou) during the Song Dynasty (960–1279) as an Example","authors":"Silvia Freiin Ebner von Eschenbach","doi":"10.1353/jcr.2023.a899641","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2023.a899641","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The study addresses the role that Buddhist monasteries played as institutions of charity on the one hand and as economic organizations on the other in the interplay with the local elite and the administration, using the water supply activities of monasteries that agglomerated in Lin'an (Hangzhou) and around the West Lake as examples. From local gazetteers it becomes apparent that monastic water supply activities were enabled by the monasteries' proximity to the springs found in the hills and to the water infrastructure that served the lake as the city's freshwater reservoir. The aim of the study is to elucidate how monasteries offered freshwater from their springs to travelers and city residents, especially in times of drought, and accommodated elite members. The study will show in particular how monks made their expert knowledge in hydrological engineering available to infrastructure projects of Hangzhou's local administrators. Besides being charity-minded, monasteries were also profit-orientated as they were well-versed in fund-raising and received generous bestowments and donations, mostly exempt from taxation. What is more, they attempted to encroach on the West Lake for the cultivation of water plants, thus, however, impairing the city's freshwater supply from the reservoir that local administrators tried so hard to preserve.摘要:本文主要以臨安和西湖地區的寺廟如何利用供水活動爲例，考察佛教寺廟作爲慈善機構的同時，又是個與地方官員及權貴合作的經濟機構。地方志記載顯示，這些寺廟參與事飲用水供應活動得益於他們靠近為城市供水的兩個渠道，即山間天然水源及依西湖建立起的供水體系。本文旨在闡明，尤其是在旱年，寺廟如何利用山泉為行人、市民以及逃難來的官員及權貴提供飲用水。特別是僧人們如何利用他們的水利技術知識，得到地方官員授權建立杭州地區的水利設施。寺廟除了以慈善為目的, 還從中獲得, 通過捐贈、施捨、善款等帶來的豐厚的盈利，且大多享有免稅之待遇。此外，寺廟亦試圖占用西湖培植水生作物，甚至因此影響到地方政府極力要保護的城市飲用水供應系統。","PeriodicalId":53120,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Religions","volume":"51 1","pages":"1 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43570928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vernacular Modernism: Humanistic Buddhism from Below in Bade, Taiwan","authors":"Justin R. Ritzinger","doi":"10.1353/jcr.2023.a899644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2023.a899644","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The study of Humanistic Buddhism in Taiwan has typically focused on its largest, most elite representatives. These institutions are a smaller and less representative section of Buddhism in Taiwan than they might appear, however. This paper will take a different angle: looking at Humanistic Buddhism not from above, but from below; not through multinational monastic-led organizations, but through a local working-class lay community; not as a discreet tradition, but as part of a broader religious market. My subject will be the Maitreya Lay Buddhist Lodge, where we find a \"vernacular modernism\" in which core ideas and orientations of Buddhist modernism are articulated within a broader religious field marked by enduring dynamics and tensions identified in studies of late imperial Chinese religion.摘要:一般來講，關於台灣人間佛教的研究著重於最大型、最精英的團體。不過這些團體在全面台灣佛教佔的比率沒有人想像的那麼大，其代表性也有限。本文以另外一個角度來看人間佛教：非從上而下而從下而上，非通過以僧團為領導人員的跨國機構而通過社區型工人階級的在家團體，非視為分離的傳統而視為宗教市場的一部分。本文主題為慈氏居士林。在那裡可以看到一個「通俗現代主義」。此是佛教現代主義核心觀念與方向在一個仍然以明清民間宗教動力與張力為特征的廣泛宗教場域得到表現。","PeriodicalId":53120,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Religions","volume":"51 1","pages":"137 - 159"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43680063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Modeling Peace: Royal Tombs and Political Ideology in Early China by Jie Shi (review)","authors":"Armin Selbitschka","doi":"10.1353/jcr.2023.a899647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2023.a899647","url":null,"abstract":"To conclude briefly, writing a history of a Chinese god will never be the same after Gods of Taishan. My cheeky remarks above notwithstanding, a whole new methodological apparatus and set of questions has been laid out by Susan Naquin, that should be deployed when dealing with any god we would like to research. This apparatus is sure to be a long-lasting landmark in our field, as visible as Taishan soaring from the north China plain.","PeriodicalId":53120,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Religions","volume":"51 1","pages":"166 - 169"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43844914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gods of Mount Tai: Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000–2000 by Susan Naquin (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/jcr.2023.a899646","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2023.a899646","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Gods of Mount Tai: Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000–2000 by Susan Naquin Vincent Goossaert Susan Naquin, Gods of Mount Tai: Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000–2000. Leiden: Brill, 2022. xv, 538 pp. US$305 (hb). 978-90-04-51641-0 Mount Tai 泰山 (Taishan) and its gods deserve a monumental study. Naquin's book, in the making for some fifteen years and long awaited by the scholarly community, is as towering, rock-solid, impressive, and memorable as its subject. At a length that most presses would not even want to hear about, printed in a large format with two columns per page, and luxuriously illustrated—138 images in-text, most of them in color, not to mention maps, graphs, and tables—this is nothing short of an amazing book. The writing is as beautiful as the visual object: Naquin's renowned prose—utterly devoid of jargon and fashionable terms, surgically precise, and ever critical of any assumption (whether in the sources, in her own writing, or in our reading)—is at the same time elegant and attempts to tell the story from the perspective of ordinary Chinese. For the book tells a story: that of the Jade Maiden (Yunü 玉女), a broken stone statue found atop Taishan (then barren and devoid of any built structure) during the preparations for the fengshan 封禪 sacrifices performed on the mountain by Song emperor Zhenzong 宋真宗 in 1008. The hazily-defined deity was modestly enshrined there and survived [End Page 162] for a few centuries, honored by occasional visitors. She was adopted by a combination of court members, Daoist clerics, and pilgrims, and started to gain a foothold at the foot of the mountain, and then in villages ever further away. The cult grew steadily from the fifteenth century onwards and soon her temples were found throughout the north China plain. She was then called by a variety of names and titles including Holy mother (Shengmu 聖母), Heavenly immortal (Tianxian 天仙), Master of the Azure Cloud (Bixia yuanjun 碧霞元君), and My Lady (niangniang 娘娘), assigned various stories—daughter of the Great Sovereign of the Eastern Peak 東嶽大帝, female alchemical virtuoso, flying bird-like fairy—and represented in forms varying from the alluring young woman, over stern matron and smiling granny, to an almost androgynous figure of authority. Naquin describes with unflinching attention to detail and context these variations in time, space, and medium. Then, by the mid-Qing, this phase of expansion gives way to consolidation; new temples and images keep appearing, but the goddess is now part of the landscape—both figuratively and literally speaking—and finds herself ever more conflated and even confused within a larger mass of female protective deities, found everywhere but with few individual traits. To tell this story of the slow emergence, spectacular success, and then routinization of the goddess both at her original home, Taishan, and in thousands of villages, neighborhoods, and hills, Naquin uses t","PeriodicalId":53120,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Religions","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136172989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Revisiting the Xiaoshi Jingang keyi 銷釋金剛科儀: A Textual and Reception History","authors":"Kedao Tong","doi":"10.1353/jcr.2023.a899642","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2023.a899642","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Generally acknowledged as a Southern Song text by an obscure Chan monk, the Xiaoshi Jingang keyi 銷釋金剛科儀 includes a chapter-by-chapter exposition of Kumārajīva's fifth-century Chinese translation of the Diamond Sūtra and survives in multiple different editions from the Ming-Qing era. It has claimed attention from scholars from different fields of Chinese religions and been considered in the context of the study of precious scroll (baojuan 寶卷) or Buddhist ritual literature. With due attention to different components of the whole text rather than the exposition alone, and by situating the work in the history of Chinese Buddhist commentarial and liturgical works on the Diamond Sūtra, this article examines the textual and reception history of the Xiaoshi Jingang keyi. Focusing on its overall structure, source material, and use of verses. I demonstrate that the Xiaoshi Jingang keyi finds roots in the pre-existing Chinese Buddhist literature on the Diamond Sūtra, and show how it inspired Buddhist monastics to compose commentaries on it up to the mid-sixteenth century.摘要:一般被認為係南宋時期一位不知名禪僧所作的《銷釋金剛科儀》包含了對公元五世纪鳩摩羅什譯本《金剛經》經文的逐章闡釋，有多個明清時期的版本流傳。這部作品吸引了來自中國宗教研究多個領域學者的關注，並曾分別被置於寶卷和佛教儀式文本研究的視域下探討。本文通過全面考察《銷釋金剛科儀》的各個組成部分而非單單釋經的部分，以及將其放在與《金剛經》有關的漢文佛教註疏和儀式文本的發展脈絡當中，从文本史和接受史的角度對《銷釋金剛科儀》進行了研究。文章重點關注作品的整體結構、材料來源和當中偈頌的使用，指出《銷釋金剛科儀》和此前漢文佛教文獻中《金剛經》相關文本之間的源流，并略述明代中前期佛教僧人創作的多部《銷釋金剛科儀》注釋。","PeriodicalId":53120,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Religions","volume":"51 1","pages":"47 - 96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46666504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Zhu Xi: Basic Teachings by Daniel K. Gardner (review)","authors":"J. Gentz","doi":"10.1353/jcr.2023.a899645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2023.a899645","url":null,"abstract":"Like an echo of the “Basic Writings” series with selected translations of Chinese thinkers by Burton Watson published in the 1960s as part of their “Columbia College Program of Translations from the Oriental Classics,” Columbia University Press has now again published a book in the same format: Zhu Xi: Basic Teachings, translated by Daniel K. Gardner, a paperback booklet, 155 pages in length displaying, like the “Basic Writings,” a Han dynasty stone rubbing on its front cover. The contents of the book appear familiar as well. In 1990, Daniel K. Gardner published a translation of chapters 7–13 of the Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類 with 79 pages of introduction, notes, commentary, glossary, bibliography, and index, a most wonderful book.1 Zhu Xi basically follows this composition. The fourteen-page introduction follows the same structure of the earlier seventy-nine-page text: providing the reader with a biography, historical background, philosophy, writings. It includes sentences and entire paragraphs that are copied verbatim from the earlier introduction and basically reads like a summary of it. The following “Notes on the Text and Translation” contains many similar points as the “Note on Text and Translation” of the earlier book, but lacks the discussion of the important issue of contradictory passages, a discussion that due to the lack of commentary in Zhu Xi would have been even more important for this shorter and terser translation. The Zhuzi yulei (Classified Conversations of Master Zhu) is again the main source of the translations in this book. It presents selected translations of the first thirteen chapters of the Zhuzi yulei because these chapters, according to Gardner, “constitute the best overview of Zhu Xi’s basic and most enduring philosophical teachings” (p. xxi). The translations are organized into five chapters: 1. “Foundations of the Universe,” with three sections mainly containing passages from chapters 1–3 of the Zhuzi yulei; 2. “Human Beings,” with three sections mainly containing passages from chapters 4–6 of the Zhuzi yulei; 3. “Learning,” with three sections mainly containing passages from chapters 7–9 of the Zhuzi yulei; 4. “A Theory of Reading,” with three sections mainly containing passages from chapters 10–11 of the Zhuzi yulei with some passages from chapter 14 and other writings such as Zhu Xi ji 朱熹集; and 5. “Moral Self-Cultivation,” with two sections mainly containing passages from chapters 12–13 of the Zhuzi yulei. Three of the five chapters thus contain translations from chapters that Gardner had previously translated, commented and annotated in his 1990 book. The other two chapters present translations of many passages for which we also have translations in Wing-tsit Chan’s Source Book in Chinese Philosophy,","PeriodicalId":53120,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Chinese Religions","volume":"51 1","pages":"161 - 162"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48969370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}