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not hold a lot of water for believers, even if it might in acade aca demi mia. a. De Desp spit itee th this is st stru rugg ggle le,, Sax sh show owss po powe werf rful ul empathy and respect for ritual healers, genuine desire to understand his subject on its own terms, and a firm belief in the urgency of challenging modernist dismissals of other systems of healing. Calling for a “hermeneutics of the body,” not just of text, and for an intercultural rethinking of notions of agency, rationality, knowledge, and wellness, Sax invokes diverse thinkers, from philosophers of science to performance man ce the theori orists sts and med medical ical ant anthro hropol pologi ogists sts.. Lig Light ht on jargon, with some wonderful anthropological description, this work will interest specialists and nonspecialists alike. Michelle I. Bakker Concordia University, Montreal
MAJESTIC MAJEST IC NIG NIGHTS HTS:: LO LOVE VE POE POEMS MS OF BEN BENGAL GALII WOMEN. Edited and translated by Carolyne Wright and co-transl co-tra nslato ators. rs. Com Compan panion ionss for the Jou Journe rneyy Seri Series, es, 16. Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2009. Pp. 105. $15.00. Caro Ca roly lyne ne Wr Wrig ight ht is on onee of th thee fin fines estt tr tran ansl slat ator orss of po poet etry ry from any South Asian language into American English who is practicing today. That she is one of very few translators from South Asian languages who makes her living as a writer, not as an academic, is perhaps not coincidental. There is no “Indologese” in her translations. In this volume in White Pine Press’s “Companions for the Journey” series, 50 poems of twenty-three twentieth-century women poets from Bangladesh, West Bengal, and increasingly the Bengali diaspora, join the company of other spiritual poets from aroun aro undd th thee wo worl rld. d. Wr Wrig ight ht ha hass co coll llab abor orat ated ed wi with th ei eigh ghtt cotranslators to produce excellent poems, each of which can stand alone without an extensive scholarly apparatus. This is a shared regional and linguistic poetic tradition that cuts across religious lines. To call it “secular,” however, would not do justice to the ways the poets work within the rich and distin dis tinctl ctlyy Ben Bengal galii accu accumul mulate atedd tra tradit dition ion of Hin Hindu du and Muslim Mus lim pra practic ctices es and imag images. es. Wrig Wright ht has cho chosen sen poe poems ms tha thatt treat love in all its manifestations, and, as she indicates in her preface, to talk of love in Bengali literature often leads to one cultural root of the Radha–Krishna story, and another cultural root of Sufism and the Man of the Heart. She says, “For Bengalis, it can be hard to talk of romantic love without also touching on spiritual yearning.” The poems in this book effectively problematize the “secular–religious” divide that so informs contemporary European and American society. They are also excellent poems in their own right. This book is a deligh delight. t.
This monograph provides a “thick description” of the “beliefs, practice, and infrastructure” of Ôyama, a popular regional pilgrimage center, by meticulously examining how it fit into the “socio-economic landscape of the Kantô-Tôkai region reg ion.” .” Bui Buildi lding ng upo upon n All Allan an Gra Grapard pard’s ’s wor workk on ins instit tituti utiona onall complexes compl exes and Helen Hardacres’s Hardacres’s regio regional nal studies of early modern Japanese religion, Ambros looks at how Ôyama, as a specific spe cific rel religi igious ous ins instit tituti utiona onall com comple plex, x, wor worked ked wit within hin “regional sectarian, parishioner, and pilgrimage networks.” For Japanese pilgrimage studies, the author has broken new ground focusing on the oshi , a class of former ascetics and shrine priests who played a key role in popularizing of Ôyama as well as other sacred sites. In addition, by making Ôyama cult a “lens through which to view the early modern Japanese religious landscape,” she offers a fascinating study of: 1) how sacred geography changes, as Ôyama grew from a hermitage to a place of popular worship; 2) the combinative character charact er of early modern Japanese Japanese religi religious ous life as well as how the official Meiji era policy of separating Buddhism from Shinto changed everything; 3) the diversity of Japanese pilgrimage, by showing how Ôyama as a regional cult had a very different social–political location compared to the more famous pilgrimages of the time, like Ise and Shikoku; and 4) the great mountain of evidence (bad pun) indicating that Buddhism was a vital rather than moribund tradition in the early modern period (in contrast to the scholarly orthodox view). This book is a must-read for anyone interested in Japanese religions and pilgrimage.
John E. Cort Denison University
East Asia EMPLACING A PILGRIMAGE: THE ÔYAMA CULT AND RELIG RELIGIONAL IONAL RELIGION RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN JAPAN. By Barbara Ambros. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Asia Center, 2008. Pp.380
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ill. $39.95. 304
Mark MacWilliams St. Lawrence University
THE PHILOSOPHY OF QI : THE RECORD OF GREAT DOUBTS. By Kaibara Ekken. Translated by Mary Evelyn Tucker Tuck er.. New Yo York rk:: Co Colu lumb mbia ia Un Univ iver ersi sity ty Pr Pres ess, s, 20 2007 07.. Pp. 208 + illustrations. $36.50. This translation of Kaibara Ekken’s classic treatise, the Taigiroku, follows Tucker’s groundbreaking 1989 study of his life and thought. Ekken is best known as a popularizer of Confucian ethics, particularly his Great Learning for Women (Onna daigaku), and for his practical learning learning ( jitsugaku) in fields like botany, agriculture, and health. The Taigiroku, written near the end of his life, encapsulates his broader philosophical critique of Song Confucianism, particularly Zhu Xi’s dualistic philosophy of principle (li , ri ) and material force (qi , ki ). ). In Tucker’s view, Ekken favors a “vitalistic natural nat uralism ism,” ,” a “mo “monis nism m of qi ” th that at is “a un unif ifyi ying ng ba basi siss fo forr th thee interaction of self, society and nature.” Tucker’s translation is both readable and accessible for the general reader. Her lengthy introduction helpfully situates the text within its Neo-Confucian and Japanese historical context. Sometimes she gets bogged down with confusing Western philosophical terminology of doubtful explanatory value. What does it mean, mea n, for exa exampl mple, e, tha thatt som somee int interp erpret reters ers see Ekk Ekken’ en’ss thought as leading toward a “logical positivism”? The point shee is re sh real ally ly mak makin ingg in he herr in intr trod oduc ucti tion on is th that at su such ch We West ster ern n categories skew scholarly interpretations more often than
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not. Ekken, for example, has been seriously misunderstood as “an incipient rationalist and materialist.” Such wrongheaded interpretations assume qi is matter without spirit—a view that unconsciously reflects a Cartesian dualism. Quite to the contrary, Tucker argues that Ekken’s philosophy of ki has a “unified view of spirit and matter” that is basic to his spiritual/ethical view of nature, and makes him extremely relevant today, particularly in environmental ethics.
THE STORY OF HAN XIANGZI: THE ALCHEMICAL ADVENTURES OF A DAOIST IMMORTAL . By Yang
Russell Kirkland University of Georgia
SALT AND LIGHT: LIVES OF FAITH THAT SHAPED MODERN CHINA. Edited by Carol Lee Hamrin and Stacey Bieler. Studies in Chinese Christianity, 1. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Books, 2009. Pp. xi + 240. $28.00. Editor Hamrin, research professor at George Mason University, has gathered together seven other scholars of Christianity in China and they have combined to present ten portraits of influential Chinese Christians who have shaped
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modern China. Readers will be introduced to important educators and college/university presidents (Rong Hong, Tang Guo’an, Mei Yiqi, Wei Zhuomin, Yan Yangchu, and Wu Yifang, president of Jinling Women’s College in Nanjing), an author/editor (Fan Zimei), medical professionals and researchers (including women like Shi Meiyu and Lin Qiaozhi), and institutional organizers and leaders (like Ding Shujing of the YWCA). Many of these Chinese Christians were the product of the western Christian missionary enterprise to China. While most of them studied in the United States and Europe, they remained committed to the rebuilding of modern China. Thus many of them sought not only to “Christianize China,” but also to ensure the formation of a truly authentic and indigenous Chinese Christianity that could contribute to the wider world. The book includes a helpful late nineteenth- and twentieth-century timeline of China and of the persons and events described in the book. This inaugural volume therefore heightens the anticipation of the good things to come in this new book series, and is another sign of the many innovative developments that this formerly reprint-only publisher has now been undertaking in the last decade in order to contribute groundbreaking research to the wider theological academy.
Mark MacWilliams St. Lawrence University
Erzeng. Translated by Philip Clart. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. Pp. 472. $40.00. Han Xiang was a poet-official (fl. 800 CE) with “no particular Daoist leanings.” But early modern plays (fourteenth century) transformed him into one of the “Eight Immortals” ubiquitous in modern Chinatowns. Readers without pertinent background will find the translation of this early seventeenth-century novel, Han Xiangzi zhuan, neither very comprehensible nor very interesting until after careful perusal of the translator’s Introduction. Yet, that introduction is addressed more to sinologists’ academic issues than to readers wishing to understand and enjoy the novel itself as literature. Clart explains much about “Daoism and the Story of Han Xiangzi,” arguing also that “ Han Xiangzi ’s consistent and insistent Daoist message may have offended both the religious syncretist who believed in the equivalence of China’s three teachings and the staunch Confucian or Buddhist.” He adds that the Han Xiangzi zhuan has heretofore been neglected because “the reader unsympathetic to Daoism”—a category that includes virtually all modern scholars of Chinese literature—“is given no escape to another interpretive level.” Clart promises “a future companion volume” providing “a running commentary on and analysis of the text.” But since the explanations needed for basic comprehension are here relegated to endnotes, novices will find the novel, as presented here, puzzling and unrewarding. (Such explanations of its characters and contexts should have appeared in footnotes within the text.) Readers conversant with traditional and modern Chinese religion, and the Daoist universe of discourse, will appreciate Clart’s painstaking contribution, and eagerly await the companion volume.
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Amos Yong Regent University School of Divinity
HIMIKO AND JAPAN’S ELUSIVE CHIEFDOM OF YAMATAI: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, AND MYTHOLOGY. By J. Edward Kidder. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007. Pp. 401. Cloth, $67.00. The author is professor emeritus at International Christian University in Tokyo. He is the author of more than a dozen books and numerous articles on prehistoric and early Japan. Among his books are Japan before Buddhism (Thames and Hudson, 1959) and The Birth of Japanese Art (Praeger, 1965). First, looking at the title, many Japanese would laugh andsay,“YetanotherbookonthemysteriesofYamataiandits queen Himiko. Old men’s hobby stuff and besides, this time it is in English! Never imagined there were antiquarian amateurs of Japanese history abroad!” The reason many regard Yamatai an antiquarian’s obsession is that its location has been hotly debated for over 100 years and is still unsettled. There are more than 100 theories about the location of Yamatai. Among these two are most popular: one postulates its location in northern Kyushu Island and the other in the area of Yamato in central Honshu Island. These two different theoriesreflectalongstandingacademicconflictbetweentwo prestigious Japanese universities: University of Tokyo and University of Kyoto (with Tokyo scholars contending that Yamatai was in Kyushu). But dismissing Kidder’s book this way is very mistaken. The book is an encyclopedic history, archaeology, cultural anthropology on ancient Japan starting from the pre-agricultural Jômon period through the successive stagesof thefirst agricultural Yayoi period, Kofun period (whose characteristics are giant tombs), and finally, Yamato period (the age of the rise of a Japanese state). Centering on
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the problem of the enigmatic passages of the third-century Chinese chronicle Wei Zhi that deal with the kingdom of Yamatai and its queen Himiko, Kidder attempts a synthetic history of ancient Japan. It is anything but an amateurish quest for the location of Yamatai or a speculation about what queen Himiko looked like. Instead, it is one of the best books in recent years on the ancient history of Japan because of the author’s wide-ranging knowledge and meticulous research; allrecentarchaeologicaldiscoveriesaredetailedandrelevant theories are examined. As the most up-to-date source of academic information on ancient Japan, this book is essential reading for scholars of Japanology. Kidder thinks Yamatai kingdom was in Yamato and, although Himiko had been effacedfrom theofficialrecord, shewas definitely a historical person. Kidder speculates that one of largest tumuli of the area, the Hashihaka, is where she rests. I found Kidder’s thesis reasonable, and it follows the majority opinion of present Japanese scholarship.Recently (May 29,2009),it has been reported a team from the National Museum of Japanese History has excavated the outskirts of the Hashihaka tumulus. According to their carbon 14 dating, the tumulus seems to have been made between 240 and 260. The Chinese chronicle Wei Zhi reports that Himikosent her envoy to China in 239 and most scholars agree that she died in 250. Kidder’s conclusions, therefore, are confirmed by the most recent archaeological evidence. Kazuo Matsumura Wakô University
INTRODUCING DAOISM. By Livia Kohn. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Pp. 320 pages. Paper, $34.95. Kohn is both a knowledgeable specialist and the Englishspeaking world’s most prolific publisher of books on Daoism, including a 2001 introductory text ( Daoism and Chinese Culture, Three Pines Press) revised in 2004. This book seems to be the same book, re-written specifically for use as a lower-division college textbook. Like the earlier book, this one cannot decide whether to present material topically or thematically, so it tries to do both at once. For instance, the book’s “Introduction” is not a true introduction to the book’s subject matter, content, organization, or purpose (nor does any preface address such matters), but merely explains the historical context of classical (pre-Han) China. Later sections likewise center their chapters on a text or a historical period, but attempt to drape thematic issues around it: chapter 6, for example, focuses not just on early medieval lay communities and monastic traditions, but also on ethical teachings. The writing’s directnessyieldssomegems(e.g., “Unlike medieval practitioners, who belonged to formally established schools that existed as corporate entities with the right to train, approve, and certify, modern Daoists are independent and work predominantly through lineages”). But the unnuanced narration sometimes misleads (e.g., “80 percent of all Daoists” are just “comfort-seekers,” who “play games, watch TV, chat or otherwise hang out” at monasteries; Kohn presents no data to substantiate this claim, which seemingly
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derives from a Japanese scholar’s assessment of life in Peking’s White Cloud Abbey during World War II). Each chapter ends with titles for “further reading,” thoughwithout explaining their nature or value; a box listing “key points you need to know”—the memorization of which appears designed to demonstrate that the student has read and understood the chapter; and three “discussion questions” for teachers’ usein class. Despite the textbook format (including a useful glossary), the organizational oddities and imprecision of the presentation cannot move one to recommend this over other recent overviews of Daoism. Russell Kirkland University of Georgia
CULTIVATING PERFECTION: MYSTICISM AND SELF-TRANSFORMATION IN EARLY QUANZHEN DAOISM . By Louis Komjathy. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007. Pp. xxii + 554. $217.00. “Modern Taoist Studies” began in the 1970s, extending Henri Maspero’s pioneering analysis of early medieval Daoism, and privileging its surviving relic in Taiwan—the liturgical “Heavenly Master” tradition. But in North China (including Shanghai and Beijing, the subject of major new tomes by Liu Xun and Vincent Goossaert), “Taoism”—from the thirteenth to twenty-first centuries—has been the monastic tradition called Quanzhen, “Complete Perfection.” The price of Komjathy’s book will be repaid by the appendices alone: a glossary of early Quanzhen terminology; a chronology and genealogy of early Quanzhen figures; and a detailed analysis of the tradition’s textual corpus. The book’s introduction is a jewel of clarity about “Complete Perfection,” i.e., the condition in which one’s “inner nature” (hsing / xing ) “associated with the heart/mind, consciousness, and spirit, becomes perfected.” Part 1, “Early Quanzhen in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” is a book in itself: with clarity and precision, it explains all pertinent issues, and is essential reading for all who teach or study Chinese religion. Part 2—again, a separate book—constitutes an annotated translation of a text attributed to the Quanzhen founder, Wang Che, framed as a dialogue wherein Wang explains his teachings to an unnamed questioner. This breathtakingly thorough exploration of Quanzhen’s origins and teachings is a tour de force capable of changing the field for future generations. Russell Kirkland University of Georgia
FERTILITY AND PLEASURE: RITUAL AND SEXUAL VALUES IN TOKUGAWA JAPAN. By William R. Lindsey. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007. Pp. 234. $50.00. What role does ritual play in the lives of women in early modern Japan? This is the basic question of this clearly written and well-organized study. The author argues that ritual practice served as a vital “bridge, a mediator, between the conflicting values of two intensely opposed female roles” of wives and courtesans in Tokugawa society. Rituals of 306
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“entrance, placement, and exit” functioned not only to reinforce idealized values of woman’s sexual identity and to orient them to the new social roles within the communities of home or bordello, but also expressed a woman’s ambivalence and, occasionally, served as a means to resist her change in station. What makes this book valuable is its broad focus—studying popular rituals, which were a synthesis of Buddhism, kami worship, and Confucian moral values, and were central for two key institutions in which women could live during this time—the household and pleasure quarters. Ritual played a powerful role in the Tokugawa period’s “unitized society,” which was characterized by highly formalized role behavior. It also played out the personal and social tensions that the contradictory social values of fertility and pleasure that shaped women’s lives. This book is highly recommended for specialists interested in religious ritual in early modern Japan, but also written for those interested in gender and ritual studies. Mark MacWilliams St. Lawrence University
LOST SOUL: “CONFUCIANISM” IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ACADEMIC DISCOURSE. By John Makeham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008. Pp. xii + 397. $49.95. Few topics are hotter at present than those related to the contemporary revival of Confucianism in mainland China and the Chinese cultural diaspora, one of the most prominent venues of which is discourse among ethnically Chinese scholars. In this exhaustive, erudite study, Makeham reviews an immense amount of evidence and draws several conclusions about such discourse, which he sees as providing “a rare opportunity to study [the] traditional [Chinese] strategy of orthodoxy formation in a contemporary context.” Unlike many who see the revival of Confucianism as the work of official regimes motivated by the need to shore up the state’s authority, he argues that it is academics and public intellectuals motivated by Chinese “cultural nationalism” who are primarily responsible for Confucianism’s revival. Those who are more familiar with pre-modern Confucian thinkers will benefit from his introduction of dozens of key contemporary thinkers in the tradition. Readers who are more interested in popular culture, “lived religion,” and issues of practice may be disappointed by his almostexclusive focus on what people employed in Chinese university philosophy departments have had to say about Confucianism. They would do well to heed his remark that “discourse is, in fact, a type of practice.” His discussions of involvement by scholars of a Confucian cultural nationalist bent in Singapore’s introduction of “Confucian ethics” as a secondary school subject during the 1980s, the rise of unofficial Confucian academies in China and Taiwan during the 1990s, and the production of Confucian anthologies for classroom recitation by Chinese schoolchildren since 2000 all testify to the practical religious role played by this discourse. The final three chapters are particularly valuable for 307
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anyone who wishes to understand the religious character and aims of this powerful movement in contemporary China. Jeffrey L. Richey Berea College
THE WAY OF HIGHEST CLARITY: NATURE, VISION AND REVELATION IN MEDIEVAL CHINA .
By James Miller. Magdelena, NM: Three Pines Press, 2008. Pp. 260. Paper, $30.00. Miller is both a specialist on the fourth-century texts of the Shangqing (“Highest Clarity”) revelations of Daoism, and a Religious Studies generalist who has given us a successful introduction to the Daoist tradition overall. This book seems to present the former material to readers of the latter. Miller concedes that Shangqing “is a dead esoteric tradition,” but announces that “I am motivated by an urgent moral concern for a dialogue of civilizations in the area of religious ideas,” and believes that modern minds need to appreciate the ideas within such dead traditions. He also proclaims that this book “is quite different from the traditional understanding of the scholar as someone in an ivory tower explaining what other people mean,” though onecannotsee how his explanationsof Daoist ideas are truly so vastly different in nature from those of other knowledgeable specialists today (especially for readers familiar with Isabelle Robinet’s interpretive work on this material a generation ago). The book’s first section explicates Shangqing Daoism thematically, in terms of “Nature,” “Vision,” and “Revelation”; the secondcomprises a fine annotated translation (complete with Chinese text—surely an “ivory tower” feature) of three Shangqing texts. Though the texts are quite representative of the dead subtradition in question, one wonders whether many nonspecialists (students, especially) will find compelling reason to slog through their dense, floreate prose, even aided by Miller’s helpful explanatory footnotes. In the end, one struggles to see how these particular texts will facilitate “a dialogue of civilizations” better than hundreds of yet-untranslated Daoist texts might do. Nonetheless, Miller’s guidance through this increasingly well-known material is knowledgeable and trustworthy. Russell Kirkland University of Georgia
DAOISM IN HISTORY: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF LIU TS’UN-YAN. Edited by Benjamin Penny. Routledge Studies in Taoism. New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. xiii + 290; illustrations. $170.00. The first part of this festschrift consists of an appraisal of Chinese-Australian scholar Liu Ts’un Yan’s career by the editor, followed by seven essays by leading scholars focusing on classical Daoist religion and its interaction with Buddhism and popular religion. Topics include demonology, karmic retribution, meditation, and imagery, and aim to show the value of Daoist studies for a wider understanding of Chinese history rather than the significance of Daoism as a religious tradition in and of itself. The exception is Fran-
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ciscus Verellen’s essay on the role of graphic designs in Daoist scriptures. He argues that there is no clear distinction between text and image in Daoist illustrated scriptures: “the words themselves are the graphs and the scriptures as a whole are considered to have the transformative efficacy of the talismans they embody.” Part two consists of a magisterial sixty-five-page essay by Liu Ts’un-Yan, “Was Celestial Master Zhang A Historical Figure?” Originally published in Beijing in a shorter Chinese version, the essay discounts unreliable hagiographies and collates instead a wide array of other textual and archeological evidence to argue that Zhang Daoling, the first Celestial Master, was indeed a historical figure. In so doing, Liu illuminates Daoism’s early history with vivid details that specialists will find invaluable. James Miller Queen’s University, Canada
THE CULTURE OF SECRECY IN JAPANESE RELIGION. Edited by Bernhard Scheid and Mark Teeuwen. New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. xxvii + 397. Cloth, $180.00. Paper, $39.95. This book offers a superb collection of essays on religious secrecy in the Japanese Middle Ages, identified here as the period between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Key scholars in the field, including Fabio Rambelli, Bernard Faure, Anne Walthall, and Kate Nakai, make important contributions. Their essays examine at this period as a whole by tracing the common theme of secrecy, especially related to and inspired by kenmitsu Buddhism, in textual transmission and education, ritual practices, and so on. Examples of topics covered include the Lotus Sutra, the Tachikawa-ryû, Noh commentaries and plays, the three sacred regalia, and the transmission of the Nihon shoki . This book frames its discussion of secrecy and esotericism by including two valuable sections serving as bookends. The book opens with a useful introductory chapter by Mark Teeuwen that situates Japan’s culture of secrecy within a comparative perspective, followed by essays on secrecy in the “ancient world,” as well as in Indian and Chinese Tantric Buddhism. It ends with a set of essays on the “demise of secrecy” in the Tokugawa period. While this volume is primarily aimed at specialists, its subject is inherently interesting to historians of religion generally, and offers a wealth of new information for comparative study.
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(including) an idea of ‘true’ or ‘pure’ Zen . . . that privileged the accomplishments of legendary Chan heroes in the Tang dynasty,” especially “the Linji lineage derived by (spiritual) descendents of (master) Mazu Daoyi,” eponymous “founder” of Japan’s Rinzai. “Stimulated by the discovery of Dunhuang manuscripts . . . Tang scholarship has revealed both a wider cast of contestants and a vastly more complicated story,” though like nearly all Chan scholars, past and present, Welter neglects the intricately interrelated materials of Tang/Song Daoist history, rhetoric and “lineage construction.” After examining Chan’s “official recognition” in Tang times, Welter explores the “Factional Motives and Literati Influences in the Creation of Chan Narratives,” such as the Patriarch’s Hall Anthology ( Zutang ji ) and Transmission of the Lamp (Chuandeng lu). Through sound and nuanced analysis of Chan history as “a complex story of well-placed elites, both religious and secular,” Welter joins more recent works by Alan Cole and Wendi Adamek in demonstrating that “radical Chan rhetoric did not represent the forces of subversion and contestation . . . but the forces of containment and dominance, characteristic of the new position of power that the Chan establishment represented” as it moved into Song times: “To appeal to the new Song Confucian literati classes, Chan staked out a new identity that insulated it from the perceived complicity of Buddhism in the failure of the Tang.” Students may find Alan Cole’s Fathering Your Father (University of California Press, 2009) more readable, but all scholars of Asian religion will benefit from the clarity, depth and precision of Welter’s work.
Mark MacWilliams St. Lawrence University
MONKS, RULERS, AND LITERATI: THE POLITICAL ASCENDANCY OF CHAN BUDDHISM. By Albert Welter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 322. $75.00. A generation ago, Western students of Zen—heirs to D. T. Suzuki’s hermeneutical paradigms—journeyed to Japan and were converted to the more critical paradigms of Yanagida Seizan. As Welter explains, “Zen propagandists and apologists of the 20th century sold the world on a story of Zen 308
Russell Kirkland University of Georgia
CHINESE RELIGIOSITIES: AFFLICTIONS OF MODERNITY AND STATE FORMATION . Edited by Mayfair Mei-hui Yang. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Pp. vii + 464. Cloth, $29.95; paper, $20.95. The introduction and twelve essays in this volume examine the continuities and transformations of twentiethcentury and contemporary Chinese religion. Two major factors dominated the processes these authors describe: the creation of the modern nation-state, with its evolving demands upon the identity of its citizens; and the influx of western religious ideas and institutions that redefined conceptions of religious and secular spheres. The essays explore the relationship of the state to China’s various religious systems and communities, including Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Christianity, Falungong, and the worship of Mazu across the Taiwan Straits. The volume grew out of a conference on Chinese religion, modernity, and the state in 2005 and the authors share a dynamic and cohesive set of goals, arguing against simplistic dichotomies of modernity and enlightenment versus religious tradition, and the secular state versus institutions of belief. Together, the essays offer a nuanced portrait of the interplay and steadily shifting ground between these forces through the different regimes of the twentieth century and up to the present.
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Scholars of Chinese religion will find this book highly useful for its conceptual foundations and detailed information, but the essays are readily accessible to those who are not specialists. Scholars in other fields of modern Chinese studies and in comparative religious studies have much to gain from this book. Peter Ditmanson Oriental Institute, Oxford University
Buddhism DIVINE KNOWLEDGE: BUDDHIST MATHEMATICS ACCORDING TO THE ANONYMOUS MANUAL OF MONGOLIAN ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION . By
Brian G. Baumann. Brill’s Inner Asia Library, 20. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Pp. xviii + 894; tables, indices. $295.00. Baumann’s book is a transcription, translation, and study of an anonymous Mongolian text known as the Manual of Mongolian Astrology and Divination . The text deals with divination of various kinds, such as auspicious times for different undertakings. Ancient cultures used a common name for a certain collection of sciences (some now considered pseudoscience), including not only astrology and divination, but also calendrics, astronomy, and mathematics. Baumann uses mathematics for this conglomerate, a usage that is somewhat confusing to the modern reader; the Mongolian text does not contain any computational material (nor does Baumann’s study). This aside, the book is a valuable contribution to the study of divination. Baumann’s comprehensive study discusses time, metaphysics, divination, and other subjects, contextualizing the Mongolian text and explaining its dependence on other traditions. Especially valuable for a comparative study of omen material are some of Baumann’s appendices, such as a list of omen protases from the Mongolian text. Overall, the book is a good starting point for a study of Mongolian divination and also a useful resource for those studying omens in the ancient world. Toke L. Knudsen SUNY College at Oneonta
THE STANZA OF THE BELL IN THE WIND: ZEN AND NENBUTSU IN THE EARLY KAMAKURA PERIOD. By Frédéric Girard. Studia Philologica Buddhica, Occasional Papers Series, XIV. Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2007. Pp. iii + 83 pages. ¥ 500.00. Anyone who has read at least as far as the second chapter of Do¯ gen’s Shôbôgenzô has encountered the following: [78] My late master, the eternal buddha, says: Whole body like a mouth, hanging in space; Not asking if the wind is east, west, south, or north, For all others equally, it speaks prajña¯ . Chin ten ton ryan chin ten ton.
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(Gudo Wafu Nishijima and Chodo Cross, trs. Sho¯ bo¯ genzo¯ : The True Dharma-Eye Treasury , 4 vols. Berkeley, CA: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2007. I, 33.) This bemusing stanza turns out to have a much wider use than simply Do¯ gen’s. Attributed to Do¯ gen’s Chinese teacher, Rujing, it is striking that this same stanza should come to play a role in Japanese Pure Land (“Amidist” in Girard’s usage), as found in the Myo¯ gi shingyo¯ shu¯ . By focusing on this specific item, Girard develops a new hypothesis regarding the history of both Pure Land and Zen in Japan. Rather than a development of popular religious sensibilities on the one hand, and a transmission solely dependent on its Chinese sources—as the standard history would have it—Girard suggests that the two strains are both to be found among the low-ranking monastics from a very early period. Despite the supposed contradictions of Zen and Pure Land, Girard points out that “the differences between the Nenbutsu new sects and the Zen new sects may only concern the conceptual and habit clothings, and behind these differences, the similarities and affinities may be stronger than we expect.” Richard Payne Institute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological Union
A GARLAND OF FEMINIST REFLECTIONS: FORTY YEARS OF RELIGIOUS EXPLORATION . By Rita M. Gross. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Pp. 340. Cloth, $60.00; paper, $24.95. Gross’s new book contains already published and newly penned essays selected by the author to highlight important moments in her forty-year career as a prominent Buddhist theologian and feminist thinker. Major themes include the methodological contribution of the “feminist paradigm shift” to the study of religion, religion as a resource for feminists, and the fruitful but fraught marriage of feminism and Buddhism in Gross’s own intellectual journey. This bold and unapologetically opinionated work mixes autobiography, political reflection, and academic theory, making it of interest to Buddhist constructive thinkers and potentially useful (if properly contextualized) in undergraduate classes on gender and religion. Gross’s constricted conceptualization of gender, which she describes repeatedly as a prison-like set of norms (rather than a complex and potentially creative category), will quell any interest this book might have held for feminist scholars in other humanistic fields and will represent a source of frustration for younger feminist scholars of religion. Her historically ungrounded and monolithic references to “Buddhism,” “Hinduism,” and “Vajrayana,” and her excessive reliance on secondary literature mean that this book will hold little interest for serious historians of Buddhism or South Asian religion. Amy Paris Langenberg Brown University
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