For decades, scholars have suggested that the rise of the Chan (J. Zen) Buddhist tradition between China’s Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties involved an unprecedentedly bold claim to religious authority. Chan masters were understood to be not just eminent Buddhist monastics but actual living buddhas, whose recorded words were considered equally authoritative to Buddhist scriptures. Central to the formation of Chan identity as a school of buddhas was the ceremony of “ascending the hall,” during which Chan masters serving as abbots of public monasteries preached to and answered questions from members of the monastic assembly and the lay public. This article presents a new interpretation of the ascending the hall ceremony’s role in constituting Chan masters as figures of buddha-like authority, paying particular attention to the problem of likeness itself. According to prevailing scriptural and visual-cultural conventions, buddhas were larger-than-life figures with marvelous bodies and miraculous powers. Chan masters in the Song, by contrast, were typically presented as conspicuously lacking these spectacular features. Drawing on overlooked passages from Song period Chan literature, I analyze how Chan Buddhists managed the question of their likeness to the Buddha—but never categorically resolved it—through an intertwined process of routinely ascending the hall and composing literary representations of ascending the hall. Ultimately, I suggest, they succeeded in translating the concept of buddhahood into a distinctively Chinese cultural idiom. By analyzing accounts of Chan ritual failure in the writings of Song period Chinese literati, however, I also argue that there were limits to Chan masters’ capacities to incorporate their own unlikeness to the Buddha into a new, specifically Chinese, vision of buddhahood.
{"title":"Ritual Authority and the Problem of Likeness in Chan Buddhism","authors":"Kevin Buckelew","doi":"10.1086/720627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/720627","url":null,"abstract":"For decades, scholars have suggested that the rise of the Chan (J. Zen) Buddhist tradition between China’s Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties involved an unprecedentedly bold claim to religious authority. Chan masters were understood to be not just eminent Buddhist monastics but actual living buddhas, whose recorded words were considered equally authoritative to Buddhist scriptures. Central to the formation of Chan identity as a school of buddhas was the ceremony of “ascending the hall,” during which Chan masters serving as abbots of public monasteries preached to and answered questions from members of the monastic assembly and the lay public. This article presents a new interpretation of the ascending the hall ceremony’s role in constituting Chan masters as figures of buddha-like authority, paying particular attention to the problem of likeness itself. According to prevailing scriptural and visual-cultural conventions, buddhas were larger-than-life figures with marvelous bodies and miraculous powers. Chan masters in the Song, by contrast, were typically presented as conspicuously lacking these spectacular features. Drawing on overlooked passages from Song period Chan literature, I analyze how Chan Buddhists managed the question of their likeness to the Buddha—but never categorically resolved it—through an intertwined process of routinely ascending the hall and composing literary representations of ascending the hall. Ultimately, I suggest, they succeeded in translating the concept of buddhahood into a distinctively Chinese cultural idiom. By analyzing accounts of Chan ritual failure in the writings of Song period Chinese literati, however, I also argue that there were limits to Chan masters’ capacities to incorporate their own unlikeness to the Buddha into a new, specifically Chinese, vision of buddhahood.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"159 1","pages":"1 - 48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86731383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article draws on the Ṣoḥbetnāme (The book of companionship), a collection of Oğlan Şeyh İbrahim Efendi’s (d. 1655) oral discourses as compiled by his disciple Ṣun‘ullāh Gaybī (d. ca. 1676). Raised in a rural community in the Balkans, İbrahim Efendi was trained in the high culture of Sufism in İstanbul after he arrived in the city as a young boy. Studying the Ṣoḥbetnāme allows us to better understand İbrahim Efendi’s rootedness in the oral thought first molded by his rural beginnings and later defined by his urban associations. The contours of his oral discourse and poetry are discussed as they switch back and forth between the rural and the urban, the heterodox and the orthodox, the vernacular (Turkish) and the literary (Arabic and Persian).
这篇文章引用了Ṣoḥbetnāme(陪伴之书)，这是由他的弟子Ṣun 'ullāh gayb ā(约1676年)汇编的Oğlan Şeyh İbrahim埃芬迪(约1655年)的口头话语集。他在巴尔干半岛的一个农村社区长大，İbrahim埃芬迪小时候来到这个城市后，在İstanbul接受了苏菲主义高级文化的训练。研究Ṣoḥbetnāme可以让我们更好地理解İbrahim埃芬迪在口头思想中的根基，这种口头思想最初是由他的农村出身塑造的，后来又被他的城市联系所定义。他的口头话语和诗歌的轮廓在乡村和城市，异端和正统，方言(土耳其语)和文学(阿拉伯语和波斯语)之间来回切换。
{"title":"Orality in the Tekke and the Circulation of “High” and “Low” Cultures of Sufism in Seventeenth-Century İstanbul","authors":"F. Yavuz","doi":"10.1086/720767","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/720767","url":null,"abstract":"The article draws on the Ṣoḥbetnāme (The book of companionship), a collection of Oğlan Şeyh İbrahim Efendi’s (d. 1655) oral discourses as compiled by his disciple Ṣun‘ullāh Gaybī (d. ca. 1676). Raised in a rural community in the Balkans, İbrahim Efendi was trained in the high culture of Sufism in İstanbul after he arrived in the city as a young boy. Studying the Ṣoḥbetnāme allows us to better understand İbrahim Efendi’s rootedness in the oral thought first molded by his rural beginnings and later defined by his urban associations. The contours of his oral discourse and poetry are discussed as they switch back and forth between the rural and the urban, the heterodox and the orthodox, the vernacular (Turkish) and the literary (Arabic and Persian).","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"6 1","pages":"49 - 72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82951881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Chan before Chan: Meditation, Repentance, and Visionary Experience in Chinese Buddhism. By Eric M. Greene. Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism 28. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021. Pp. 336. $68.00 (cloth); $20.00 (paper).","authors":"Kevin Buckelew","doi":"10.1086/718996","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718996","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79543452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. By Jason Ᾱnanda Josephson Storm. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. Pp. xii+360. $95.00 (cloth); $30.00 (paper).","authors":"Craig Martin","doi":"10.1086/719020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/719020","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89767356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I argue that medieval Chinese Buddhists composed anthologies like A Grove of Pearls from the Garden of Dharma (seventh century CE) to make productive use of the Buddhist canon’s immense scale. By tracing how anthologists produce extracts from the canon, I show how anthologies make canon practicable, drawing a distinction between practical and formal canons in the process. I do this by first charting how a collection of extracts (titled “Bathing Monks”) in A Grove of Pearls economizes diverse canonical source materials to affirm both the canon’s difficulty and relevance. Then I outline how the extracts of “Bathing Monks” were further economized in a single-page manuscript preserved in the Dunhuang cache (tenth century or earlier). My findings suggest that religious anthologies be regarded by scholars of religion not only as textual repositories but also as objects that encourage the religious to mine vast canons and whittle down holy text for use. In the case of medieval Chinese Buddhist anthologies, Buddhist ideas about dharma’s fluidity and usefulness flourished in a burgeoning manuscript culture in medieval China.
{"title":"Making Canon Practicable: Scaling the Tripiṭaka with a Medieval Chinese Buddhist Anthology","authors":"Alexander O. Hsu","doi":"10.1086/719003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/719003","url":null,"abstract":"I argue that medieval Chinese Buddhists composed anthologies like A Grove of Pearls from the Garden of Dharma (seventh century CE) to make productive use of the Buddhist canon’s immense scale. By tracing how anthologists produce extracts from the canon, I show how anthologies make canon practicable, drawing a distinction between practical and formal canons in the process. I do this by first charting how a collection of extracts (titled “Bathing Monks”) in A Grove of Pearls economizes diverse canonical source materials to affirm both the canon’s difficulty and relevance. Then I outline how the extracts of “Bathing Monks” were further economized in a single-page manuscript preserved in the Dunhuang cache (tenth century or earlier). My findings suggest that religious anthologies be regarded by scholars of religion not only as textual repositories but also as objects that encourage the religious to mine vast canons and whittle down holy text for use. In the case of medieval Chinese Buddhist anthologies, Buddhist ideas about dharma’s fluidity and usefulness flourished in a burgeoning manuscript culture in medieval China.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"75 1","pages":"313 - 361"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78155222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay examines the origins of the concept of idolatry in the ancient world. The discourse on idols and idolatry played a central role in the history of Western ideas about religion and religious diversity, framing much of the Christian debates on non-Christian religions, and eventually, on the origins of religion as such (e.g., Hume). It is here argued that idolatry is in fact, from the start, a word for religion, albeit “false religions.” Following a comparative discussion on the respective semantics of idolatry in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, this essay shows how the category emerged at the intersection of ancient Jewish and Greek debates on religion and images, before being appropriated and put to use by early Christian authors. The essay then compares the Jewish and Christian discourse of idolatry in late antiquity. It is here argued that the different narratives developed in this context played a central role in the emergence of an anthropocentric versus a theocentric history of religions in the early modern period.
{"title":"The Invention of Idolatry","authors":"Daniel Barbu","doi":"10.1086/718968","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/718968","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines the origins of the concept of idolatry in the ancient world. The discourse on idols and idolatry played a central role in the history of Western ideas about religion and religious diversity, framing much of the Christian debates on non-Christian religions, and eventually, on the origins of religion as such (e.g., Hume). It is here argued that idolatry is in fact, from the start, a word for religion, albeit “false religions.” Following a comparative discussion on the respective semantics of idolatry in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, this essay shows how the category emerged at the intersection of ancient Jewish and Greek debates on religion and images, before being appropriated and put to use by early Christian authors. The essay then compares the Jewish and Christian discourse of idolatry in late antiquity. It is here argued that the different narratives developed in this context played a central role in the emergence of an anthropocentric versus a theocentric history of religions in the early modern period.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"28 1","pages":"389 - 418"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79004971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this essay I study a piece of early Islamic polemical literature concerned with accusations of libertinism—illicit sex, wine drinking, and other offenses—along with some unorthodox teachings. Through the study of this text, I explore the role of social context and configurations of power in the way premodern Islamic theological discourses have been formulated. In particular, I look at how, in a situation of power imbalance, members of a maligned minority group have pretended to renounce what the majority might have found offensive, while actually trying to renounce as little as possible.
{"title":"The Heretic Talks Back: Feigning Orthodoxy in Ṣaffār al-Qummī’s Baṣāʾir al-Darajāt (d. 902–3)","authors":"Mushegh Asatryan","doi":"10.1086/719004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/719004","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay I study a piece of early Islamic polemical literature concerned with accusations of libertinism—illicit sex, wine drinking, and other offenses—along with some unorthodox teachings. Through the study of this text, I explore the role of social context and configurations of power in the way premodern Islamic theological discourses have been formulated. In particular, I look at how, in a situation of power imbalance, members of a maligned minority group have pretended to renounce what the majority might have found offensive, while actually trying to renounce as little as possible.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"12 1","pages":"362 - 388"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73890809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the deep structural affinities between early Franciscan hagiography and the kabbalah of Gerona through a comparative analysis of how both domains of knowledge valorize the espousal of an impoverished divine bride—Domina Paupertas, or Lady Poverty in the case of the Franciscans and shekhinah, the female divine presence in the case of the kabbalists. Analysis focuses on gender as a key element in the construction of divine economy in both corpora, concentrating primarily on writings produced in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. The materials surveyed here include various anonymous kabbalistic sources, writings of Ezra ben Solomon of Gerona, the anonymous Sacrum Commercium Beati Francisci cum Domina Paupertate and Thomas of Celano’s Memoriale in desiderio anime. This comparative case study sheds new light on old questions regarding the function of interreligious acculturation between Judaism and Christianity, generally, and kabbalists and Franciscans, in particular.
{"title":"Espousal of the Impoverished Bride in Early Franciscan Hagiography and the Kabbalah of Gerona","authors":"Jeremy Brown","doi":"10.1086/717690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/717690","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the deep structural affinities between early Franciscan hagiography and the kabbalah of Gerona through a comparative analysis of how both domains of knowledge valorize the espousal of an impoverished divine bride—Domina Paupertas, or Lady Poverty in the case of the Franciscans and shekhinah, the female divine presence in the case of the kabbalists. Analysis focuses on gender as a key element in the construction of divine economy in both corpora, concentrating primarily on writings produced in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. The materials surveyed here include various anonymous kabbalistic sources, writings of Ezra ben Solomon of Gerona, the anonymous Sacrum Commercium Beati Francisci cum Domina Paupertate and Thomas of Celano’s Memoriale in desiderio anime. This comparative case study sheds new light on old questions regarding the function of interreligious acculturation between Judaism and Christianity, generally, and kabbalists and Franciscans, in particular.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"58 1","pages":"279 - 305"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87016661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Among the primary targets of the so-called reformers of Indian Islam of the eighteenth century were the so-called false mystics of their era. In their oft-expressed complaints against shopkeeper-mystics and pious frauds, this article discerns a sharpening crisis of values between the pursuit of the eternal divine and the allurements of evanescent earthly pleasures. Such a crisis of values, contends this article, should not simply be understood as part of some process of the decline and renewal of Islam in the Mughal empire. Rather, it was caused by a very real anxiety about the erosion of long-standing pious ideals by the forces of commerce that swept across the subcontinent in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. By comparing a range of biographical compendia, hagiographies, epistles, chronicles, poetry, and belles lettres produced by Mughal intellectuals, this article illustrates the ways in which the seductions of both elite influence and mass veneration combined to thwart the Sufi’s path at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
{"title":"“Briskness in the Market of Shaikh-Dom”: The Commercialization of Piety in Early Eighteenth-Century Delhi","authors":"Abhishek Kaicker","doi":"10.1086/717640","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/717640","url":null,"abstract":"Among the primary targets of the so-called reformers of Indian Islam of the eighteenth century were the so-called false mystics of their era. In their oft-expressed complaints against shopkeeper-mystics and pious frauds, this article discerns a sharpening crisis of values between the pursuit of the eternal divine and the allurements of evanescent earthly pleasures. Such a crisis of values, contends this article, should not simply be understood as part of some process of the decline and renewal of Islam in the Mughal empire. Rather, it was caused by a very real anxiety about the erosion of long-standing pious ideals by the forces of commerce that swept across the subcontinent in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. By comparing a range of biographical compendia, hagiographies, epistles, chronicles, poetry, and belles lettres produced by Mughal intellectuals, this article illustrates the ways in which the seductions of both elite influence and mass veneration combined to thwart the Sufi’s path at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"274 1","pages":"243 - 278"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75135170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In approaching Mahāyāna sūtras primarily as documents meant to convey and legitimize theological innovations, scholars have paid less attention to their literary forms and social effects. This article advocates for increased attention to these latter features and argues for one distinctive feature of some sūtras as a case study. The article demonstrates how the literary devices of jātaka (prior birth story) and vyākaraṇa (prophecy of future buddhahood) operate within three influential Mahāyāna sūtras to reconsecrate culture heroes of “mainstream” Śrāvakayāna Buddhism as heroes of the Mahāyāna. It further argues that an important, overlooked feature of these texts is to “break the fourth wall,” suggesting that readers/auditors are also characters in the stories they tell, (re)consecrating them, too, as members of an ancient and honorable company of Mahāyāna stalwarts. This interpretation is made further plausible by observing that this narrative strategy is replicated in a variety of Mahāyāna contexts in, for example, Tibet and Japan, and is arguably a central feature within the Mahāyāna imaginary.
{"title":"Rhetorics of Solidarity in Mahāyāna Sūtra Literature: Or, “You’re So Vain, I Bet You Think This Sūtra Is about You”","authors":"Christian K. Wedemeyer","doi":"10.1086/716452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716452","url":null,"abstract":"In approaching Mahāyāna sūtras primarily as documents meant to convey and legitimize theological innovations, scholars have paid less attention to their literary forms and social effects. This article advocates for increased attention to these latter features and argues for one distinctive feature of some sūtras as a case study. The article demonstrates how the literary devices of jātaka (prior birth story) and vyākaraṇa (prophecy of future buddhahood) operate within three influential Mahāyāna sūtras to reconsecrate culture heroes of “mainstream” Śrāvakayāna Buddhism as heroes of the Mahāyāna. It further argues that an important, overlooked feature of these texts is to “break the fourth wall,” suggesting that readers/auditors are also characters in the stories they tell, (re)consecrating them, too, as members of an ancient and honorable company of Mahāyāna stalwarts. This interpretation is made further plausible by observing that this narrative strategy is replicated in a variety of Mahāyāna contexts in, for example, Tibet and Japan, and is arguably a central feature within the Mahāyāna imaginary.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"71 1","pages":"212 - 237"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73588491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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