This study interprets three little-known Mahāyāna sūtras preserved in Chinese that all contain remarkable teachings on the buddhahood of women and the practice of sex transformation along the path to buddhahood. Showing that these three sūtras are part of a larger and more complicated subgenre of texts regarding Mahāyāna notions of emptiness circulating in early medieval China, the study demonstrates the relationship between these texts and the better-known Lotus and Vimalakīrti-nirdeṣa Sūtras, even as it challenges the ability of those more dominant texts to provide a clear doctrinal statement on a very important question: the salvation of women. Finally, the study argues that researching texts like such as the three surveyed here is an act of feminist scholarship; bringing to light this little-known material, the study suggests that its very absence from scholarly discussion is a by-product of the rise of sectarian Buddhist lineages in the East Asian cultural sphere, which have influenced the ways in which we, as scholars, relate to text.
{"title":"Disappearing and Disappeared Daughters in Medieval Chinese Buddhism: Sūtras on Sex Transformation and an Intervention into Their Transmission History","authors":"Stephanie Balkwill","doi":"10.1086/713587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713587","url":null,"abstract":"This study interprets three little-known Mahāyāna sūtras preserved in Chinese that all contain remarkable teachings on the buddhahood of women and the practice of sex transformation along the path to buddhahood. Showing that these three sūtras are part of a larger and more complicated subgenre of texts regarding Mahāyāna notions of emptiness circulating in early medieval China, the study demonstrates the relationship between these texts and the better-known Lotus and Vimalakīrti-nirdeṣa Sūtras, even as it challenges the ability of those more dominant texts to provide a clear doctrinal statement on a very important question: the salvation of women. Finally, the study argues that researching texts like such as the three surveyed here is an act of feminist scholarship; bringing to light this little-known material, the study suggests that its very absence from scholarly discussion is a by-product of the rise of sectarian Buddhist lineages in the East Asian cultural sphere, which have influenced the ways in which we, as scholars, relate to text.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"21 1","pages":"255 - 286"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81640984","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 traces over one hundred years of a campaign against chocolate use in the Mexican province by Jesuit leadership in Rome. The Fathers General posited chocolate use as their “worst enemy” in the Spanish colony. I argue that their angst about chocolate drinking highlights greater anxieties around governance and discipline throughout the seventeenth century in one of the largest overseas dominions of the Society of Jesus. This article clarifies previously presented notions of Jesuits and their involvement with chocolate through a close analysis of hitherto unexamined sources. It disrupts the historiographical interpretation of Jesuits as supporters of the indigenous beverage—a generalization that has led to mischaracterizations of the Society of Jesus. Instead, the movement against chocolate serves as an important lens to better understand challenges to Jesuit authority, in particular, and proselytization in the colonies, more broadly.
{"title":"The Inconvenience of Chocolate: Disciplining the Society of Jesus in Seventeenth-Century Mexico","authors":"D. Williams","doi":"10.1086/713589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713589","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces over one hundred years of a campaign against chocolate use in the Mexican province by Jesuit leadership in Rome. The Fathers General posited chocolate use as their “worst enemy” in the Spanish colony. I argue that their angst about chocolate drinking highlights greater anxieties around governance and discipline throughout the seventeenth century in one of the largest overseas dominions of the Society of Jesus. This article clarifies previously presented notions of Jesuits and their involvement with chocolate through a close analysis of hitherto unexamined sources. It disrupts the historiographical interpretation of Jesuits as supporters of the indigenous beverage—a generalization that has led to mischaracterizations of the Society of Jesus. Instead, the movement against chocolate serves as an important lens to better understand challenges to Jesuit authority, in particular, and proselytization in the colonies, more broadly.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"196 1","pages":"325 - 357"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72744876","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":"Re-ending the Mahābhārata: The Rejection of Dharma in the Sanskrit Epic. By Naama Shalom. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017. Pp. xvii+248. $95.00 (cloth); $32.95 (paper).","authors":"David L. Gitomer","doi":"10.1086/713586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713586","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"53 1","pages":"358-361"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84925233","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":"American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War. By Duncan Ryūken Williams. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. viii+384, 34 plates. $29.95 (cloth).","authors":"T. Tweed","doi":"10.1086/713591","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713591","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"34 1","pages":"368-370"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73474729","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":"Imperiled Destinies: The Daoist Quest for Deliverance in Medieval China. By Franciscus Verellen. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 118. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. x+376, 10 color illustrations. $75.00 (cloth).","authors":"G. Raz","doi":"10.1086/713590","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713590","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"42 1","pages":"362-368"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90757178","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 urges scholars to look beyond the Vinaya Piṭaka when thinking about the regulation of Buddhist monastic life. It makes this case by examining an understudied genre of vernacular legal texts that has influenced the regulation of monks in Sri Lanka for more than a millennium. Monastic constitutions, or katikāvatas, affirm the Vinaya’s authority in principle, while functioning in practice as stand-alone administrative codes. Promulgated by kings and monastic leaders, these constitutions aim to bring unity, discipline, and organization to particular communities of monks by consolidating and updating monastic legal principles “in accordance with the times.” Despite their historical and contemporary importance, monastic constitutions have not been studied comprehensively beyond the eighteenth century. This article fills that gap, charting transformations in katikāvatas from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, a period that saw the end of Laṅkan monarchy and the spread of British colonial control. Following a review of existing scholarship, this article demonstrates that during the nineteenth century a new type of monastic constitution gained prominence, which I call group katikāvatas. Through analyzing group katikāvatas, this article not only provides new insights into the practical adaptation of monastic law in Sri Lankan history, it also calls attention to the importance of Buddhist law-making more generally as a strategic activity undertaken by monastic collectives and their patrons in order to enhance and protect their reputation, independence, and material interests in changing social and political contexts.
{"title":"Buddhist Law beyond the Vinaya: Monastic Constitutions (katikāvatas) and Their Transformations in Colonial Sri Lanka","authors":"Benjamin Schonthal","doi":"10.1086/713588","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713588","url":null,"abstract":"This article urges scholars to look beyond the Vinaya Piṭaka when thinking about the regulation of Buddhist monastic life. It makes this case by examining an understudied genre of vernacular legal texts that has influenced the regulation of monks in Sri Lanka for more than a millennium. Monastic constitutions, or katikāvatas, affirm the Vinaya’s authority in principle, while functioning in practice as stand-alone administrative codes. Promulgated by kings and monastic leaders, these constitutions aim to bring unity, discipline, and organization to particular communities of monks by consolidating and updating monastic legal principles “in accordance with the times.” Despite their historical and contemporary importance, monastic constitutions have not been studied comprehensively beyond the eighteenth century. This article fills that gap, charting transformations in katikāvatas from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, a period that saw the end of Laṅkan monarchy and the spread of British colonial control. Following a review of existing scholarship, this article demonstrates that during the nineteenth century a new type of monastic constitution gained prominence, which I call group katikāvatas. Through analyzing group katikāvatas, this article not only provides new insights into the practical adaptation of monastic law in Sri Lankan history, it also calls attention to the importance of Buddhist law-making more generally as a strategic activity undertaken by monastic collectives and their patrons in order to enhance and protect their reputation, independence, and material interests in changing social and political contexts.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"339 2","pages":"287 - 324"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72451650","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 continues the conversation begun in Esotericism in African American Religious Experience: “There Is a Mystery” (2015) regarding Africana esoteric traditions and the emerging discipline devoted to their critical examination: Africana esoteric studies (AES). We provide an expanded rationale for this multifaceted endeavor, while at the same time offering a collegial exchange to the critique of AES by Wouter Hanegraaff in his article “The Globalization of Esotericism” (2015). Among our more important assertions are that the distinctive foci of AES should in no way be inhibited by or subsumed within the organizational taxonomies or hermeneutical paradigms central to Western esoteric studies and that the exclusionary and centering claims of Western esoteric studies must themselves be understood as part of a larger European colonial enterprise that creates notions of the “West,” marginalizes Africana peoples, and renders their epistemologies as aberrant. AES consciously resists such hegemonic impulses by focusing on ways in which members of a heterogeneous Africana global community deploy secrecy, concealment, selective disclosure, and other strategies for the purposes of survival and flourishing.
{"title":"Africana Esoteric Studies and Western Intellectual Hegemony: A Continuing Conversation with Western Esotericism","authors":"S. C. Finley, B. Gray, H. R. Page","doi":"10.1086/711945","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/711945","url":null,"abstract":"This essay continues the conversation begun in Esotericism in African American Religious Experience: “There Is a Mystery” (2015) regarding Africana esoteric traditions and the emerging discipline devoted to their critical examination: Africana esoteric studies (AES). We provide an expanded rationale for this multifaceted endeavor, while at the same time offering a collegial exchange to the critique of AES by Wouter Hanegraaff in his article “The Globalization of Esotericism” (2015). Among our more important assertions are that the distinctive foci of AES should in no way be inhibited by or subsumed within the organizational taxonomies or hermeneutical paradigms central to Western esoteric studies and that the exclusionary and centering claims of Western esoteric studies must themselves be understood as part of a larger European colonial enterprise that creates notions of the “West,” marginalizes Africana peoples, and renders their epistemologies as aberrant. AES consciously resists such hegemonic impulses by focusing on ways in which members of a heterogeneous Africana global community deploy secrecy, concealment, selective disclosure, and other strategies for the purposes of survival and flourishing.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"10 1","pages":"163 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90096676","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":"Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism. By Banu Subramaniam. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019. Pp. xviii+290. $95.00 (cloth); $30.00 (paper).","authors":"Philip Lutgendorf","doi":"10.1086/711947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/711947","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"22 1","pages":"245-248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88222376","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 history of yoga with attention to mantras and sacred sound. It argues that meditation on the syllable “om” at the moment of death, which is central to the construction of early yoga, has roots in a much older technique from Vedic sacrifice called the “yoking” (yukti). In this rite, the practitioner employs a contemplative praxis with om in order to ascend to the sun and attain immortality. Sacrifice thus furnishes an ancient link in the chain of Indian soteriologies associated with om, death, and solar ascent—a genealogy that extends from the Vedas up through foundational yogic discourses. By examining the interplay between sound and silence in contemplative practices around the sacred syllable, this article aims to explain how om first became integral to early yoga, to emphasize the importance of mantra meditation in the formation of yogic traditions, and to invite a reappraisal of the role of Brahmans in the formation of early yoga.
{"title":"Between Sound and Silence in Early Yoga: Meditation on “Om” at Death","authors":"Finnian Gerety","doi":"10.1086/711944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/711944","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the history of yoga with attention to mantras and sacred sound. It argues that meditation on the syllable “om” at the moment of death, which is central to the construction of early yoga, has roots in a much older technique from Vedic sacrifice called the “yoking” (yukti). In this rite, the practitioner employs a contemplative praxis with om in order to ascend to the sun and attain immortality. Sacrifice thus furnishes an ancient link in the chain of Indian soteriologies associated with om, death, and solar ascent—a genealogy that extends from the Vedas up through foundational yogic discourses. By examining the interplay between sound and silence in contemplative practices around the sacred syllable, this article aims to explain how om first became integral to early yoga, to emphasize the importance of mantra meditation in the formation of yogic traditions, and to invite a reappraisal of the role of Brahmans in the formation of early yoga.","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"96 1","pages":"209 - 244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86675645","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":"Buddhas and Ancestors: Religion and Wealth in Fourteenth-Century Korea. By Juhn Young Ahn. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018. Pp. xv+243. $95.00 (cloth); $35.00 (paper).","authors":"Maya Stiller","doi":"10.1086/711946","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/711946","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45784,"journal":{"name":"HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":"68 1","pages":"250-253"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79880682","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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