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This book argues that the most profound and far-reaching effects of Buddhism on Chinese culture occurred at the level of practice, specifically in religious rituals designed to cure people of disease, demonic possession, and bad luck. This practice would leave its most lasting imprint on the liturgical tradition of Taoism. In focusing on religious practice, the book provides a corrective to traditional studies of Chinese religion, which overemphasize metaphysics and spirituality.
Possibly the most profound and far-reaching effects of Buddhism on Chinese culture occurred at the level of practice in religious rituals designed to cure people of disease, demonic possession, and bad luck. A basic concern with healing characterizes the entire gamut of religious expression in East Asia. By concentrating on the medieval development of Chinese therapeutic ritual, the author discovers the origins of many surviving rituals across the social and doctrinal frontiers of Buddhism and Taoism, including transmission to persons outside the Buddhist or Taoist fold. The author describes and translates many classical Chinese liturgies, analyzes their structure, and seeks out nonliturgical sources to shed further light on the politics involved in specific performances. Unlike the few previous studies of related rituals, this book combines a scholar's understanding of structure and goals of these rites with a healthy suspicion of the practitioners' claims to uniqueness.
Thirty major scholars in the field wrote this new, authoritative guide to the main features and development of Daoism. The chapters are devoted to either specific periods, or topics such as Women in Daoism, Daoism in Korea and Daoist Ritual Music. Each chapter rigidly deals with a fixed set of aspects, such as history, texts, worldview and practices. Clear markings in the chapters themselves and a detailed index make this volume the most accessible key resource on Daoism past and present.
Using a wide variety of original sources, this book examines how and why early Taoists carried out such ascetic practices as fasting, celibacy, sleep deprivation, and wilderness seclusion.
This book provides an insightful new study, drawn from the largely unpublished Buddhist paintings at Dunhuang, of medieval Chinese wall painting, workshop production, and artistic performance in theory and practice.
Relations between China and India underwent a dramatic transformation from Buddhist-dominated to commerce-centered exchanges in the seventh to fifteenth centuries. The unfolding of this transformation, its causes, and wider ramifications are examined in this masterful analysis of the changing patterns of the interaction between the two most important cultural spheres in Asia. Tansen Sen offers a new perspective on Sino-Indian relations during the Tang dynasty (618–907), arguing that the period is notable not only for religious and diplomatic exchanges but also for the process through which China emerged as a center of Buddhist learning, practice, and pilgrimage. Before the seventh century,...
"The study of apocryphal texts is probably the single most important task facing Chinese Buddhist studies today. This volume has done much to get it off on the right foot." --Journal of Asian Studies 50 (1991) "Few books of scholarly essays are this ambitious. The editor ... intends to introduce not just new studies, but a new field of study.... However, rather than marking the birth of Buddhist apocrypha studies, the book ... successfully demonstrates its early maturity." --Monumenta Serica 40 (1992) "The essays are without exception meticulous in scholarship and path-finding in significance." --Journal of Chinese Religions 20 (1992)
This new paperback title in Brill s Scholars List presents a thorough investigation into the phenomenon of the Chinese Triads, their ritual and mythological lore, and their meanings and functions. On the foundations of a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, among which also recent Chinese scholarship, the author interprets Triad myth and ritual in their Chinese religious context.
This book examines the complete Ganesh for the first time. Here is the God in his multiple forms from the different geographical areas in Asia. Particularly important are chapters that deal with his Buddhist and Tantric forms. The controversial question of his origins is also thoroughly discussed.