In this essay, I analyze the multilayered metaphors of sovereignty and sovereign ritual through which the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka and the Suvarṇa(pra)bhāsa, two Mahāyāna sūtras, represent and enact their own potency. I develop a theory of ritual-poetic speech acts and an interpretative methodology from this analysis. According to these sūtras, the dharma that constitutes them is the verbal essence of sovereignty. It consecrates its listeners through predictions and related speech acts that are activated in the moment of utterance; it proclaims the royal decrees through which buddhas govern reality in their own fields; it embodies all buddhas and makes them present in its eternal ritual-poetic substance. Through the performative strategies mobilized by these metaphors, the sūtras rhetorically position their audiences as subjects of (and subject to) this supreme sovereign power and motivate their engagement in a progressive series of ritual-verbal practices of incorporation by which they are in turn transformed into buddhas with the same sovereign essence. The ritual metaphors and mechanisms through which these transformations are evoked and effected reveal linguistic theories and practices quite different from those that continue to dominate the study of religious texts, and demand that we develop new approaches to the interpretation of these and other texts.
{"title":"Speech Acts of the Buddha: Sovereign Ritual and the Poetics of Power in Mahāyāna Sūtras","authors":"Natalie Gummer","doi":"10.1086/716427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716427","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay, I analyze the multilayered metaphors of sovereignty and sovereign ritual through which the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka and the Suvarṇa(pra)bhāsa, two Mahāyāna sūtras, represent and enact their own potency. I develop a theory of ritual-poetic speech acts and an interpretative methodology from this analysis. According to these sūtras, the dharma that constitutes them is the verbal essence of sovereignty. It consecrates its listeners through predictions and related speech acts that are activated in the moment of utterance; it proclaims the royal decrees through which buddhas govern reality in their own fields; it embodies all buddhas and makes them present in its eternal ritual-poetic substance. Through the performative strategies mobilized by these metaphors, the sūtras rhetorically position their audiences as subjects of (and subject to) this supreme sovereign power and motivate their engagement in a progressive series of ritual-verbal practices of incorporation by which they are in turn transformed into buddhas with the same sovereign essence. The ritual metaphors and mechanisms through which these transformations are evoked and effected reveal linguistic theories and practices quite different from those that continue to dominate the study of religious texts, and demand that we develop new approaches to the interpretation of these and other texts.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"4 1","pages":"173 - 211"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88784366","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 how nikāya traditions and early Mahāyānists understood the bodhisattva path. It makes the point that these traditions shared the understanding that it is only possible to enter the path in the presence of a living Buddha and that it is thus impossible for any person now living to do so. It argues that while Buddhists following nikāya traditions found a few ways to work around this problem, the authors of early Mahāyāna sūtras established a coherent bodhisattva tradition by using a bold approach to attribute bodhisattva status to their followers.
{"title":"The Problem of Becoming a Bodhisattva and the Emergence of Mahāyāna","authors":"David Drewes","doi":"10.1086/716425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716425","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines how nikāya traditions and early Mahāyānists understood the bodhisattva path. It makes the point that these traditions shared the understanding that it is only possible to enter the path in the presence of a living Buddha and that it is thus impossible for any person now living to do so. It argues that while Buddhists following nikāya traditions found a few ways to work around this problem, the authors of early Mahāyāna sūtras established a coherent bodhisattva tradition by using a bold approach to attribute bodhisattva status to their followers.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"16 1","pages":"145 - 172"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74058942","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":"Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South India. Elaine M. Fisher. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. Pp. xii+285. $34.95 (paper).","authors":"Caleb Simmons","doi":"10.1086/716424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/716424","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"180 15-16","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72478147","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 grapples with the problem of applying a nineteenth-century neologism to the relationships between clergy and laity within pre-Reformation Catholicism, essentially between circa 1100 and circa 1530. Broad approaches to the history of “anticlericalism” identify a major shift in its character at the Reformation, without being specific about its nature. Historians employ “anticlericalism” as an analytical concept, but somewhat insecurely, referring sometimes to criticism of the behavior of individual clerics, sometimes to a more fundamental critique of church institutions and practices. While accepting that the vocabulary of “anticlericalism” is now too embedded in medievalist scholarship to be eliminated, the article argues for greater care and precision among medievalists in its use, especially if it is to be transposed from its Western origins to serve as an analytical concept for the “global middle ages.”
{"title":"Medieval Anticlericalism: Terms and Conditions","authors":"R. Swanson","doi":"10.1086/714917","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/714917","url":null,"abstract":"This article grapples with the problem of applying a nineteenth-century neologism to the relationships between clergy and laity within pre-Reformation Catholicism, essentially between circa 1100 and circa 1530. Broad approaches to the history of “anticlericalism” identify a major shift in its character at the Reformation, without being specific about its nature. Historians employ “anticlericalism” as an analytical concept, but somewhat insecurely, referring sometimes to criticism of the behavior of individual clerics, sometimes to a more fundamental critique of church institutions and practices. While accepting that the vocabulary of “anticlericalism” is now too embedded in medievalist scholarship to be eliminated, the article argues for greater care and precision among medievalists in its use, especially if it is to be transposed from its Western origins to serve as an analytical concept for the “global middle ages.”","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"66 1","pages":"6 - 29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74738078","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 proposes to place the anticlerical discourses in late imperial China (1368–1912), notably directed at professional Buddhists and Daoists, in a social context where the rights and duties of religious specialists were closely regulated by local social institutions (rather than by the state) and embedded in thick contractual processes. Drawing on the rich data available for the Jiangnan region, it argues that the fact that one could not freely choose which ritual specialist to employ (or not to employ) for various life-cycle events (weddings, funerals, ancestor worship) directly informed the type of asymmetrical relationships these people had with clerics and hence the discourse they held about them.
{"title":"Late Imperial Chinese Anticlericalism and the Division of Ritual Labor","authors":"Vincent Goossaert","doi":"10.1086/714966","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/714966","url":null,"abstract":"This article proposes to place the anticlerical discourses in late imperial China (1368–1912), notably directed at professional Buddhists and Daoists, in a social context where the rights and duties of religious specialists were closely regulated by local social institutions (rather than by the state) and embedded in thick contractual processes. Drawing on the rich data available for the Jiangnan region, it argues that the fact that one could not freely choose which ritual specialist to employ (or not to employ) for various life-cycle events (weddings, funerals, ancestor worship) directly informed the type of asymmetrical relationships these people had with clerics and hence the discourse they held about them.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"1 1","pages":"87 - 104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88990729","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}
Notwithstanding its origins in modern Europe, the term “anticlericalism” seems appropriate to describe different forms of opposition to groups of religious professionals in other cultures, whose historical trajectory may offer in turn important insights into the value of the term as a category of analysis. After a preliminary definition and inventory of the varieties of anticlerical discourse, based on the relative position of its targets and producers, this study focuses on China and the role of Buddhism in the contested emergence of the clergy/laity divide during Late Antiquity (second–eighth centuries AD). Buddhist monastic elites introduced to China the radically novel idea of a society divided in two bodies, respectively devoted to worldly and otherworldly pursuits, and thus laid the foundations of a “laity” and a “clergy” that were not there before. They grafted these new concepts onto the local categories of “rule” (dao 道) and “folk” (su 俗) that small, inward-looking groups of Taoist seekers of transcendence had used earlier to bound themselves out from the common people. The rise of an organized, translocal Buddhist monasticism since the late fourth century sparked significant hostility from native social networks of Confucian literati and officeholders; it also reverberated in internal debates within guilds of Taoist householder ritualists. Its staunchest critics, however, came from the ranks of Buddhist ascetic minorities and grassroots religious movements. Insider and outsider critiques of the clergy converged on the rejection of the monks’ institutional charisma, and eventually undermined the very notion of a transcendent rule, which can be seen as largely coextensive with an idea of “religion” as a separate sphere of social life and human experience.
{"title":"The Rule and the Folk: The Emergence of the Clergy/Laity Divide and the Forms of Anticlerical Discourse in China’s Late Antiquity","authors":"A. Palumbo","doi":"10.1086/714918","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/714918","url":null,"abstract":"Notwithstanding its origins in modern Europe, the term “anticlericalism” seems appropriate to describe different forms of opposition to groups of religious professionals in other cultures, whose historical trajectory may offer in turn important insights into the value of the term as a category of analysis. After a preliminary definition and inventory of the varieties of anticlerical discourse, based on the relative position of its targets and producers, this study focuses on China and the role of Buddhism in the contested emergence of the clergy/laity divide during Late Antiquity (second–eighth centuries AD). Buddhist monastic elites introduced to China the radically novel idea of a society divided in two bodies, respectively devoted to worldly and otherworldly pursuits, and thus laid the foundations of a “laity” and a “clergy” that were not there before. They grafted these new concepts onto the local categories of “rule” (dao 道) and “folk” (su 俗) that small, inward-looking groups of Taoist seekers of transcendence had used earlier to bound themselves out from the common people. The rise of an organized, translocal Buddhist monasticism since the late fourth century sparked significant hostility from native social networks of Confucian literati and officeholders; it also reverberated in internal debates within guilds of Taoist householder ritualists. Its staunchest critics, however, came from the ranks of Buddhist ascetic minorities and grassroots religious movements. Insider and outsider critiques of the clergy converged on the rejection of the monks’ institutional charisma, and eventually undermined the very notion of a transcendent rule, which can be seen as largely coextensive with an idea of “religion” as a separate sphere of social life and human experience.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"140 1","pages":"30 - 86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86144288","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":"The Buddha’s Footprint: An Environmental History of Asia. By Johan Elverskog. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Pp. xxii+178. $55.00 (cloth).","authors":"Alexander O. Hsu","doi":"10.1086/714968","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/714968","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"92 2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83336618","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}
Western missionaries working for the proselytization of Christianity during the early twentieth century were predominantly representatives of a new worldview that put scientific objectives on a par with the aim of converting the Chinese to their faith. Conventional wisdom stipulates that the 1920s brought about a sea change in public attitudes, transforming the missionaries’ perceived role in China, as well as in the colonized world, into “agents of imperialism.” This article posits that this may well have been the case within the ranks of a radicalizing and ideologically reorienting intellectual elite. However, the majority of the population within the Republic of China held a variety of views, from deep-rooted suspicion (“Western clerics as alien magicians”) to high esteem (“clerics as medical experts”). The May Fourth Movement’s axiom of a monolithic, “patriotic,” and “scientific” opposition to the Western missionaries thus needs to be replaced by a more nuanced interpretation.
{"title":"Western Missionaries in Modern China: From Ministers of Foreign Teachings to Agents of Imperialism?","authors":"L. Laamann","doi":"10.1086/714964","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/714964","url":null,"abstract":"Western missionaries working for the proselytization of Christianity during the early twentieth century were predominantly representatives of a new worldview that put scientific objectives on a par with the aim of converting the Chinese to their faith. Conventional wisdom stipulates that the 1920s brought about a sea change in public attitudes, transforming the missionaries’ perceived role in China, as well as in the colonized world, into “agents of imperialism.” This article posits that this may well have been the case within the ranks of a radicalizing and ideologically reorienting intellectual elite. However, the majority of the population within the Republic of China held a variety of views, from deep-rooted suspicion (“Western clerics as alien magicians”) to high esteem (“clerics as medical experts”). The May Fourth Movement’s axiom of a monolithic, “patriotic,” and “scientific” opposition to the Western missionaries thus needs to be replaced by a more nuanced interpretation.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"2016 1","pages":"105 - 125"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73321006","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":"Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan. By Jolyon Baraka Thomas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Pp. xiv+356. $97.50 (cloth); $32.50 (paper).","authors":"Yukinobu Miyamoto","doi":"10.1086/714967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/714967","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89618274","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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