Buddhism in China
Author: Kenneth Kuan Shêng Chʻen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1964
Total Pages: 574
ISBN-13: 0691000158
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA study of the history of Buddhism in China.
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Buddhist Historiography in China
Author: John Kieschnick
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2022-07-29
Total Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 0231556098
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWinner, 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.
The Science of Chinese Buddhism
Author: Erik J. Hammerstrom
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015-08-11
Total Pages: 372
ISBN-13: 0231539584
DOWNLOAD EBOOKKexue, or science, captured the Chinese imagination in the early twentieth century, promising new knowledge about the world and a dynamic path to prosperity. Chinese Buddhists embraced scientific language and ideas to carve out a place for their religion within a rapidly modernizing society. Examining dozens of previously unstudied writings from the Chinese Buddhist press, this book maps Buddhists' efforts to rethink their traditions through science in the initial decades of the twentieth century. Buddhists believed science offered an exciting, alternative route to knowledge grounded in empirical thought, much like their own. They encouraged young scholars to study subatomic and relativistic physics while still maintaining Buddhism's vital illumination of human nature and its crucial support of an ethical system rooted in radical egalitarianism. Showcasing the rich and progressive steps Chinese religious scholars took in adapting to science's rising authority, this volume offers a key perspective on how a major Eastern power transitioned to modernity in the twentieth century and how its intellectuals anticipated many of the ideas debated by scholars of science and Buddhism today.
The Buddhist Revival in China
Author: Holmes Welch
Publisher: Cambridge : Harvard University Press
Published: 1968
Total Pages: 426
ISBN-13: 9780674085701
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOf all the world's major religions, Chinese Buddhism has probably experienced the most traumatic modernization. Less than forty years have separated the self-contained Manchu Empire from the establishment of a Communist state. The consequences are described in this book. Holmes Welch offers the first detailed account of the careers of recent Buddhist leaders and of the diverse organization they started. Eighteen Chinese Buddhist associations are identified as the author traces the struggle for national leadership. The role of T'ai-hsii, the leader best known to Western readers but not, it is shown, among Buddhists, is given a controversial reassessment. After examining the main features of the revival, Welch puts them into a larger political framework. In the process, he offers copious evidence that our picture of Chinese Buddhism has been distorted. What has been termed a "revival" was actually a secular reorientation. The author's conclusion is that this secularization, vigorous as it was, in reality foreshadowed the decline of Chinese Buddhism as a living religion.
The Renewal of Buddhism in China
Author: Chün-fang Yü
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2021-03-02
Total Pages: 258
ISBN-13: 023155267X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFirst published in 1981, The Renewal of Buddhism in China broke new ground in the study of Chinese Buddhism. An interdisciplinary study of a Buddhist master and reformer in late Ming China, it challenged the conventional view that Buddhism had reached its height under the Tang dynasty (618–907) and steadily declined afterward. Chün-fang Yü details how in sixteenth-century China, Buddhism entered a period of revitalization due in large part to a cohort of innovative monks who sought to transcend sectarian rivalries and doctrinal specialization. She examines the life, work, and teaching of one of the most important of these monks, Zhuhong (1535–1615), a charismatic teacher of lay Buddhists and a successful reformer of monastic Buddhism. Zhuhong’s contributions demonstrate that the late Ming was one of the most creative periods in Chinese intellectual and religious history. Weaving together diverse sources—scriptures, dynastic history, Buddhist chronicles, monks’ biographies, letters, ritual manuals, legal codes, and literature—Yü grounds Buddhism in the reality of Ming society, highlighting distinctive lay Buddhist practices to provide a vivid portrait of lived religion. Since the book was published four decades ago, many have written on the diversity of Buddhist beliefs and practices in the centuries before and after Zhuhong’s time, yet The Renewal of Buddhism in China remains a crucial touchstone for all scholarship on post-Tang Buddhism. This fortieth anniversary edition features updated transliteration, a foreword by Daniel B. Stevenson, and an updated introduction by the author speaking to the ongoing relevance of this classic work.
Recovering Buddhism in Modern China
Author: Jan Kiely
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2016-03-29
Total Pages: 452
ISBN-13: 0231541104
DOWNLOAD EBOOKModern Chinese history told from a Buddhist perspective restores the vibrant, creative role of religion in postimperial China. It shows how urban Buddhist elites jockeyed for cultural dominance in the early Republican era, how Buddhist intellectuals reckoned with science, and how Buddhist media contributed to modern print cultures. It recognizes the political importance of sacred Buddhist relics and the complex processes through which Buddhists both participated in and experienced religious suppression under Communist rule. Today, urban and rural communities alike engage with Buddhist practices to renegotiate class, gender, and kinship relations in post-Mao China. This volume vividly portrays these events and more, recasting Buddhism as a critical factor in China's twentieth-century development. Each chapter connects a moment in Buddhist history to a significant theme in Chinese history, creating new narratives of Buddhism's involvement in the emergence of urban modernity, the practice of international diplomacy, the mobilization for total war, and other transformations of state, society, and culture. Working across an extraordinary thematic range, this book reincorporates Buddhism into the formative processes and distinctive character of Chinese history.
The Buddhist Conquest of China
Author: Erik Zürcher
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 511
ISBN-13: 9004156046
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAt the repeated request of many scholars and students here is a new edition of E. Zürcher's groundbreaking The Buddhist Conquest of China. In his extensive introduction Stephen F. Teiser (D.T. Suzuki Professor in Buddhist Studies, Princeton University) explains why the book is still the standard in the field of early Chinese Buddhism.
The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900-1950
Author: Holmes Welch
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1967
Total Pages: 600
ISBN-13: 9780674697003
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBased partly on unpublished documents and oral information obtained from monks who headed major monasteries on mainland China, Holmes Welch presents a detailed description of the modern practice of Chinese Buddhism. Focusing on the actual rather than the theoretical observances of the religion, he gives an exhaustive account of the monastic system and the style of life of both monk and layman. His study makes new information available for the Western reader and calls into question the whole concept of the moribund state of Chinese Buddhism.
Buddhism in China
Author: Haicheng Ling
Publisher: 五洲传播出版社
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 326
ISBN-13: 9787508508405
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPhoto Album - Chinese Religions Series. Since being introduced to China, Buddhism has combined with traditional Chinese culture to form various schools, each with ethnic characteristics. Buddhism in China with these fascinating photos gives a comprehensive introduction to Buddhism and traces its evolution and development in China.
Heart of Buddha, Heart of China
Author: James Carter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 232
ISBN-13: 0199367590
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJames Carter, accessing previously untapped sources, tells the story of Tanxu's life and gives first-person immediacy to one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history.
