Search Results (196)

The spread of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia brought with it a wealth of Buddhist knowledge. Over time, Mongolian scholars and practitioners engaged with this knowledge and produced numerous works encompassing Buddhist learning, particularly in medicine. A prominent figure in this intellectual landscape is the Fourth Mindol Nomun Khan, Jambalchoijidanzanperenley (1789–1839), commonly known as Mindol Qutuɣtu (or Mindol Hutugtu). Despite being recognized for his remarkable contributions to the development of Mongolian medicine, considerable uncertainty has surrounded Mindol Qutuɣtu’s ethnic identity. This article aims to clarify Mindol Qutuɣtu’s ethnic origin and examine the broader medical context of his seminal work, The Treasury of All Precious Instructions (Man ngag rin chen ’byung gnas), highlighting the visionary concepts he presented. While the basis of Mindol Qutuɣtu’s work lies in Tibetan medicine, he boldly introduced treatment methodologies from other medical traditions, including Indian (Ayurvedic), Chinese, and European medicine, into the realm of Mongolian medicine. His insightful work reflects both intellectual ambition and practical occupation on increasing healing efficacy, as evidenced by his influential contributions to a combined and multicultural approach to medicine. Today, his innovative and inceptive contributions remain essential in understanding the historical development and current diverse character of Mongolian traditional medical practices. Full article

Inheriting a tradition of religious tolerance from the Inner Asian Steppe, the Mongol Yuan Empire elevated Buddhism to a pivotal role in unifying its multiethnic and culturally diverse domain, with Tengriist ideology serving as the political foundation for these Buddhist veneration policies. The ruling class of the Yuan dynasty practiced a complex interaction between religion and political unity through the institutionalization of the cult of writing, printing, and reading the Buddhist Canon. Specifically, the Yuan dynasty established specialized government offices to mobilize elites from Mongolian, Han Chinese, Goryeo, and other ethnic groups for the construction of a multilingual Buddhist Canon. They copied the scriptures with gold and silver ink in Chinese, Tibetan, Uyghur, and other languages. Participants in scripture copying were rewarded or granted official positions. In this way, they achieved the goal of enlisting local elites, the cohesion of the community’s beliefs, and enhanced the unity of the local elites. By subsidizing the writing and reading of Buddhist classics, the Yuan rulers succeeded in constructing a space of identity at the level of material culture and facilitated cultural interaction and political integration among various social groups such as the Mongols, ethnic groups, and Han Chinese. Through state-sponsored scripture carving and recitation activities, the Yuan rulers cultivated a shared identity in the material culture sphere, facilitating cultural exchange and political integration across the Mongolians, the Han Chinese, and other ethnic communities. However, the effectiveness of state unification was significantly constrained by the Mongolian rulers’ policy of ethnic segregation, central–local conflict, and the high concentration of social wealth in the Buddhist communities. Full article

The publication of the Puhui Canon began in 1943, was interrupted in 1955, and was ultimately completed in 1998, spanning three significant historical periods: the Chinese War of Resistance Against Japan, the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), and the early years of the People’s Republic of China. Its production was shaped by nationalism, Asian Buddhist interactions, warfare, and diplomacy. As the first Chinese Buddhist canon to incorporate Pāli texts, it reflects the legacy of Sino-Sri Lankan Buddhist exchanges since the late Qing dynasty. The Puhui Canon exemplifies a Pan-Asian vision, seeking to bridge Northern (Mahāyāna) and Southern (Theravāda) Buddhist traditions across Asia. Full article

In 995, Yuanqing 源淸, a renowned master of the Tiantai school in China, requested the Japanese Buddhist community to critique his work, the Guanjing shu xianyao ji 觀經疏顯要記 (Xianyao ji). In response, Genshin 源信 and Kakuun 覚運, two prominent Japanese Tendai scholars, authored the Kan muryōju kyō sho kenyō ki hamon 観無量寿経疏顕要記破文 (Hamon) containing 21 critiques. This paper examines the historical context, content, and influence of the Hamon. The Hamon serves as an important example of Sino-Japanese Buddhist exchange, as it was the Chinese side that first initiated this intellectual engagement with the Japanese monks—and not the other way around. The analysis of the text indicates that the Hamon was not merely a critique but a platform for intellectual exchange. Genshin and Kakuun’s critiques reflect Silla’s Pure Land Buddhism, whereas Yuanqing’s Xianyao ji embodies the Chinese Tiantai commentary tradition on the Guan wuliangshou jing 觀無量壽經. Although not directly recorded in Chinese sources, some records suggest that the Hamon had reached China and potentially influenced Zhili’s 知禮 thought. This study aims to deepen our understanding of Sino-Japanese Buddhist exchanges during the late 10th and 11th centuries, illustrating what may be described as ‘Buddhism on a countercurrent.’ Full article

Miracle tales are almost the sole source for the investigation of the emergence and spread of the relic cult in the early phase of Chinese Buddhism. The earliest excavated relic casket dates back to 453 CE, over four centuries after Buddhism was introduced to China. Through a critical textual analysis of Ji Shenzhou Sanbao Gantonglu, it is evident that the initial form of relic veneration was based on miraculous responses. Legends about imperial relic worship before the 3rd century are all later fabrications. Two archeological finds—the alleged relic murals in a Han tomb at Horinger, Inner Mongolia, and the stūpa-shaped bronze vessel in Gongyi, Henan—are not directly related to relic veneration. Based on the available evidence, it is tentatively concluded that relic worship first emerged around the 3rd century in the vicinity of Luoyang, the capital of the Western Jin, and later spread to the south of the Yangtze River after the Yongjia chaos. The early worshippers included both monks and lay Buddhists, such as merchants and lower-ranking officials. Royal interest in relics did not arise until the 5th century. The rise of relic veneration in China occured two or three centuries later than that in Gandhāra, from which Chinese Buddhism was significantly influenced. Compared to the cult of images or scriptures, relic veneration also emerged relatively late in China. The reluctance to adopt relics as worship objects can be partly explained by (the mahāyāna) Buddhist doctrines and the Chinese cultural mentality. Full article

Traditional studies on Chinese Buddhism have largely relied on printed canons from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Goryeo dynasties. However, recent discoveries of Dunhuang and Turfan manuscripts, along with growing recognition of Nihon kosha issaikyō (Japanese Ancient Manuscript Canons), have expanded the scope of Buddhist textual research. Despite their significance, Japanese manuscript Buddhist canons remain underexplored, particularly in relation to their textual lineages and connections to Tang-dynasty texts. This study examines Nihon kosha issaikyō through a philological analysis of the Shisong lü (Ten Recitation Vinaya), assessing textual variants, structural patterns, and transmission histories. By situating Nihon kosha issaikyō within the broader East Asian Buddhist tradition, this research clarifies their role in preserving alternative textual lineages beyond standardized printed canons. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of Buddhist textual transmission, canon formation, and the interplay between manuscript and printed traditions in China, Korea, and Japan. This study highlights the historical processes that shaped East Asian Buddhist canons and offers new insights into their adaptation and preservation across different cultural contexts. Full article

This paper introduces the concept of “Extracanonical Buddhist Literature” and explores its origins and development in the two major Buddhist cultural spheres of India and China. It investigates the roles such texts played in religious practice, doctrinal interpretation, and cross-cultural transmission. In India, extracanonical texts frequently remained outside the official canon due to factors such as sectarian divisions and geographic constraints, reflecting ongoing debates and dialogues with non-Buddhist thought. In China, the formation of these texts was influenced by indigenous cultural integration, political pressures, and translation practices, highlighting a distinct trajectory of Buddhist localization. By analyzing the complementary relationship between these extracanonical works and canonical scriptures, this study demonstrates that these texts not only supplement the canonical system but also offer critical insights into the diversity of Buddhist thought and cultural exchange. Ultimately, they hold significant academic and cultural value, shedding light on how Buddhist ideas were disseminated and adapted across diverse regional contexts. Full article

Yinyuan Longqi 隱元隆琦 was a pivotal figure in Sino–Japanese cultural exchange. His journey to Japan to propagate Buddhism, founding of the Ōbaku sect (Huangbo zong 黃檗宗), emphasis on the orthodoxy of his Zen teachings, and crafting of an “authentic” identity profoundly influenced Japanese Buddhism and culture. While existing studies have predominantly explored the socio–historical dimensions of Yinyuan’s construction of “authenticity” (benzhen 本真), his extensive corpus of Zen verses remains understudied. By tracing the “Huangbo” (Ōbaku) 黃檗 imagery in his writings, this study addresses how Yinyuan constructed “authenticity” through his poetic works. Before his journey to Japan, Yinyuan employed “Huangbo” imagery to articulate his personal situation and sentiment, elevating it into a symbolic representation of inner “authenticity”. In the early days after Yinyuan went to Japan, driven by the dual imperatives of promoting orthodox Zen and responding to Japanese expectations of Zen origins, he intricately intertwined “Huangbo” with Zen doctrines, transforming the imagery into a marker of “authenticity” that embodied both orthodox Zen philosophy and sectarian identity. Following the establishment of Kyoto’s Mount Huangbo, Yinyuan further reshaped the “Huangbo” imagery into a trans-geographical and cultural symbol of sectarian dharma lineage, thereby ensuring the spiritual continuity of “authenticity” across Chinese and Japanese Huangbo traditions. This process not only reflects the cross-cultural transmission of Buddhism from China to Japan but also serves as a critical lens for examining the interplay between globalization and localization in religious development. Full article

The Āgamas hold significant importance in the context of Old Uyghur Buddhism, as evidenced by the discovery of over 100 fragments of Old Uyghur translations from Turfan and Dunhuang. Of particular significance are the two fragments housed in the Berlin Turfan Collection, U 5464 and U 5501, which contain an Old Uyghur translation of the Chinese Saṃyuktāgama, inscribed on both sides of a repurposed Manichaean manuscript. These fragments correspond to the 22nd and 23rd fascicles of the Chinese source text. This study provides a comprehensive introduction and an edition of these two fragments, accompanied by a comparative analysis with a parallel Old Uyghur translation from Manuscript N, housed in Tokyo. The analysis reveals significant variations, particularly in translation strategies, suggesting the existence of multiple Old Uyghur versions of the text. Full article

Having adopted, appropriated, and altered Indian forms of Buddhism, various schools of Chinese Buddhist thought inherited and transformed essential orientations of both Buddhism and traditional Chinese philosophy insofar as it exhibits a tendency toward seeking universality in its understanding of the world. Within the works of prominent figures and schools such as Sengzhao and the Tiantai school, Huayan, the Consciousness-Only school, and Chan Buddhism, Chinese Buddhist thought integrates the diversity of phenomena through the notion of a unifying “mind-consciousness”. This approach creates the framework for understanding the relationship between humans and all things based on the comprehensive nature of consciousness. Given this foundation, Chinese Buddhist thought places a high value on the equality of all beings, advocates for dismantling distinctions between individuals and the world, and transcends the distinctions of reality to pursue universal unity. By dissolving the boundaries of existence and non-existence, the self and things, and the individual ego, this philosophical outlook lays a cognitive foundation for eradicating the “discriminating mind” in daily life and offers insights into overcoming separatism and isolationism. The Chinese Buddhist pursuit of universal consistency, which is simultaneously of this world yet transcendent, reflects Buddhism’s profound concern for humanity’s shared destiny. Full article

Buddhist women in traditional China used embroidery—considered the most feminine art form—to produce images of deities, allowing them to visualize their religious aspirations while adhering to the decorum expected in Confucian society. This paper examines three Buddhist embroidery designs: one visualized in Avalokiteśvara (1619) and two from a catalog of embroidery designs titled A Collection of Scattered Red Clouds (mid-seventeenth century). By analyzing their similarity to the images found in popular illustrated publications of the seventeenth century, this study explores how Buddhist iconography circulated across different media. Through a comparative analysis of the embroidered works and woodblock prints featuring Buddhist deities such as Avalokitesvara and Bodhidharma, I demonstrate that seventeenth-century Chinese women embroiderers often utilized contemporary woodblock prints as models for their devotional embroidered works. The publications that supplied the models for the embroiderers vary from one for a pronounced ritual value—Dharani Sutra of White-robed One—to one that is fundamentally non-religious and educational—a painting manual titled Canon of Painting. This variety highlights the breadth of reading materials that reached the inner chambers of Chinese women, enabling them to engage with religious visual culture beyond their domestic confines and express their spiritual devotion through artistic means. Full article

As an exemplary and quintessential representation of China’s late-stage religious stone-carving art, previous research on the Dazu Rock Carvings has primarily concentrated on the typical cave remains in core areas like Baoding and Beishan. These investigations have been highly adept at archeological typology and iconographic analysis. This study, based on 134 extant inscriptions, reassesses the Beishan and Nanshan stone-carving complexes from the perspective of cultural heritage integrity. Through long-term landscape analysis, we uncovered their distinctive value in the construction of religious spaces during the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties. During the Song Dynasty (Zhao Song Dynasty), Buddhism held sway in Beishan, while Nanshan developed a comprehensive Taoist pantheon system encompassing the Three Pure Ones (Sanqing) and the Six Imperial Divinities (Liuyu). Together, they formed a religious spatial pattern of “Sakyamuni in Beishan and Taoist deities in Nanshan”. Furthermore, since the Shaoxing era (1131–1162), inscriptions left by Confucian scholars and officials during their visits to these two mountains have been frequently encountered. This spatial overlap phenomenon mirrors the profound integration of religious practices and secular power in the Bashu region during the Song Dynasty. This research breaks through the traditional case-study paradigm. By systematically examining the spatio-temporal evolution of the stone-carving complexes and the network of inscriptions, it reveals that the religious landscape of Dazu is, in essence, the outcome of the cumulative layering of political power, economic resources, and cultural aspirations across diverse historical periods. In particular, the transformation of Beishan and Nanshan from the merit caves of military generals in the late Tang Dynasty to the cultural spaces of the gentry class in the Song Dynasty vividly demonstrates the local practice model in the secularization process of Chinese religious art from the 10th to the 13th century. Full article

As described in several recent studies, the appropriation of the concept “religion 宗教” in modern Japan made “Buddhism 仏教” enter a transformation process that led, ultimately, to the reimagining of its very content; according to historian of religions Isomae Junichi, one of these elements was, for instance, an emphasis on “belief” to the detriment of “practice”. However, in terms of Buddhism’s reframing into the category of “religion”, we should also pay attention to the construction of the idea of “superstition 迷信”, which appears during this time as a concept relative to “belief” or “faith”. Often considered the epitome of this belief-centered version of the dharma, the so-called New Buddhism movement (shinbukkyō undō 新仏教運動) that occurred in the turn of the 20th century played a fundamental role in establishing the concept of “superstition”. This paper focuses on Sakaino Kōyō (境野黄洋 1871–1933), a pioneer of Chinese Buddhist studies in modern Japan and one of the main leaders of the movement. In order to explore the intellectual context that gave birth to such reformist efforts, I explore his ideas during the later 1890s, a period in which he was dedicated to differentiating “belief” from “superstition”. During this time, he emphasized the eradication of “superstition”, arguing that it constituted an unsound element both socially and intellectually. Sakaino offered the idea of “poetical Buddhism” (shiteki bukkyō 詩的仏教), a method for interpreting scripture in general, and segments thereof contemporarily regarded as “superstitious” specifically. This paper situates Sakaino’s contributions to Buddhist reform—analyzed through historical and hermeneutical methods and influenced by liberal Christian theology—within the global discourse on religion and science, while critically examining how his reinterpretations navigated tensions between modern rationality and the preservation of Buddhist truth in Meiji Japan. Full article

In pre-Song Chinese thought, the afterlife, or the subterranean realm was a sacred space distinctly separate from the world of the living, an extension of the political–religious–cultural order of the Chinese empire. Even after the introduction of Buddhism to China, although the Buddhist concept of hell applied karmic retribution to the present life in an attempt to provide ethical norms for real life, the sacredness of the afterlife remained intact. Song Dynasty Chinese thought underwent a profound “modernization” transformation. Su Shi, with the concept of qing 情 [disposition] at its core, disenchanted the sacred afterlife, shaping a new, self-conscious individuality in the interplay between the living and the dead, the finite and the infinite, the mortal and the immortal. This new individuality, with its spiritual spontaneity and freedom, integrated the afterlife with the present world, internalizing infinity and immortality into a utopian spiritual homeland. This free individuality, entirely different from Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, marking a hidden potential in the development of Chinese intellectual history that has yet to be fully revealed. Full article

This paper explores the complex interaction between Buddhist non-killing doctrines and the pervasive hunting culture in China during the 3rd to 6th centuries AD. While Buddhist teachings emphasized abstaining from killing, they also had to adapt to a society where hunting was common, impacting behavior at personal, royal, and state policy levels. The conflict between Buddhist values and hunting practices was not just an ethical opposition but also a reflection of deeper societal dynamics involving political power and cultural adaptation. Through a detailed analysis of the Memoirs of Eminent Monks and other historical texts, this paper examines how monks balanced religious precepts with the realities of their time. It also investigates Buddhism’s influence on royal hunting activities and state policies, particularly its contribution to hunting bans. By doing so, the study sheds light on how Buddhism shaped Chinese society and governance, offering new perspectives on the long-lasting cultural and political effects of Buddhist doctrines. Full article