John Kieschnick

Winner, 2023 Toshihide Numata Book Award, Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley Since the early days of Buddhism in China, monastics and laity alike have expressed a profound concern with the past. In voluminous historical works, they attempted to determine as precisely as possible the dates of events in the Buddha’s life, seeking to iron out discrepancies in varying accounts and pinpoint when he delivered which sermons. Buddhist writers chronicled the history of the Dharma in China as well, compiling biographies of eminent monks and nuns and detailing the rise and decline in the religion’s fortunes under various rulers. They searched for evidence of karma in the historical record and drew on prophecy to explain the past. John Kieschnick provides an innovative, expansive account of how Chinese Buddhists have sought to understand their history through a Buddhist lens. Exploring a series of themes in mainstream Buddhist historiographical works from the fifth to the twentieth century, he looks not so much for what they reveal about the people and events they describe as for what they tell us about their compilers’ understanding of history. Kieschnick examines how Buddhist doctrines influenced the search for the underlying principles driving history, the significance of genealogy in Buddhist writing, and the transformation of Buddhist historiography in the twentieth century. This book casts new light on the intellectual history of Chinese Buddhism and on Buddhists’ understanding of the past.

Buddhist Historiography in China

Meir Shahar

In this collection of original essays, leading Asian studies scholars take a new look at the way the Chinese conceived of India in their literature, art, and religious thought in the premodern era.

Myth, Religion, and Thought

India in the Chinese Imagination

Buddhism had a profound effect not only on Chinese philosophy and ritual, but also on the material culture of China. Examining the impact of books, bridges, sugar, tea and the chair, amongst other things, this text looks at how attitudes to such novelties affected the history of Chinese Buddhism.

The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture

"In an attempt to reconstruct an elusive aspect of the medieval Chinese imagination, The Eminent Monk examines biographies of Chinese Buddhist monks, from the uncompromising ascetic to the unfathomable wonder-worker. The book treats representations of asceticism in biographies of Chinese monks, focusing particularly on attitudes toward sex, food, and clothing. It analyzes the image of the Buddhist thaumaturge in these biographies, including the monk's relationship to supernormal powers, spells, and miracles. Finally, it mines the hagiography for clues to monastic attitudes toward scholarship, including a discussion of education in the monasteries, debate, and the constraints on intellectual exchange within the monastic community." "While analyzing images of the monk in medieval China, the author addresses some questions encountered along the way: What are we to make of accounts in "eminent monk" collections of deviant monks who violate monastic precepts? Who wrote biographies of monks and who read them? How did different segments of Chinese society contend for the image of the monk and which image prevailed?" "By placing biographies of monks in the context of Chinese political and religious rhetoric, The Eminent Monk explores both the role of Buddhist literature in Chinese history and the monastic imagination that inspired this literature."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Buddhist Ideals in Medieval Chinese Hagiography

The Eminent Monk

India and China dominate the Asian continent but are separated by formidable geographic barriers and language differences. For many centuries, most of the information that passed between the two lands came through Silk Route intermediaries in lieu of first-person encounters—leaving considerable room for invention. From their introduction to Indian culture in the first centuries C.E., Chinese thinkers, writers, artists, and architects imitated India within their own borders, giving Indian images and ideas new forms and adapting them to their own culture. Yet India's impact on China has not been greatly researched or well understood. India in the Chinese Imagination takes a new look at the ways the Chinese embedded India in diverse artifacts of Chinese religious, cultural, artistic, and material life in the premodern era. Leading Asian studies scholars explore the place of Indian myths and storytelling in Chinese literature, how Chinese authors integrated Indian history into their conception of the political and religious past, and the philosophical relationships between Indian Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, and Daoism. This multifaceted volume, illustrated with over a dozen works of art, reveals the depth and subtlety of the encounter between India and China, shedding light on what it means to imagine another culture—and why it matters. Contributors: Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Bernard Faure, John Kieschnick, Victor H. Mair, John R. McRae, Christine Mollier, Meir Shahar, Robert H. Sharf, Nobuyoshi Yamabe, Ye Derong, Shi Zhiru.

From the first century, when Buddhism entered China, the foreign religion shaped Chinese philosophy, beliefs, and ritual. At the same time, Buddhism had a profound effect on the material world of the Chinese. This wide-ranging study shows that Buddhism brought with it a vast array of objects big and small--relics treasured as parts of the body of the Buddha, prayer beads, and monastic clothing--as well as new ideas about what objects could do and how they should be treated. Kieschnick argues that even some everyday objects not ordinarily associated with Buddhism--bridges, tea, and the chair--on closer inspection turn out to have been intimately tied to Buddhist ideas and practices. Long after Buddhism ceased to be a major force in India, it continued to influence the development of material culture in China, as it does to the present day. At first glance, this seems surprising. Many Buddhist scriptures and thinkers rejected the material world or even denied its existence with great enthusiasm and sophistication. Others, however, from Buddhist philosophers to ordinary devotees, embraced objects as a means of expressing religious sentiments and doctrines. What was a sad sign of compromise and decline for some was seen as strength and versatility by others. Yielding rich insights through its innovative analysis of particular types of objects, this briskly written book is the first to systematically examine the ambivalent relationship, in the Chinese context, between Buddhism and material culture.

John Kieschnick

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