In Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia, editors Jiang Wu and Lucille Chia have put together a much needed English-language survey of the dynamic socio-historical forces at play in the creation of the many different editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon in East Asia. The essays push the boundaries of canon studies beyond the evaluation of Buddhist literature as elite cultural products to “exemplify new directions in studying and understanding the process of canon formation in specific cultural contexts” (1). They ask new questions about the role of political power, technology, economics, and the transcultural flows of people and information over nearly 2,000 years, from the first translations of Indian Buddhist texts by An Shigao 安世高 in the second century to the creation of the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA) digital canon. This volume makes important contributions to the study of Buddhist literature, East Asian history, and textual studies, and sets the stage for further comparative canonical studies.
The volume includes nine essays and two appendices. After an introduction from the editors, in Part I, co-editor Jiang Wu provides an historical overview of the different editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon, noting their diverse organizational structures and the technological innovations that gave rise to their production and maintenance. He emphasizes the role that scriptural catalogs, which have been called “a quintessentially Chinese phenomenon,”Footnote 1 played in determining the content of later editions of the canon. In this regard, Wu notes in particular the “monumental” Kaiyuan Catalog produced by Zhisheng 智昇 in 730 that “directly contributed to the formation of the content of all later editions” (25). He also draws upon theorists of religion and literature like J.Z. Smith and Paul Ricoeur to challenge the very definition of the “Chinese Buddhist canon” and present the volume's methodological approach, which considers the communities that produced the canon as much as the canon's contents (34–40). To illustrate this approach, Wu introduces the notion of the “cult of the canon” to describe the various ritual traditions that developed around their commissioning, production, and use. Emperors earned “symbolic capital” by sponsoring canons (47–48) and commoners demonstrated their devotion to the canon through acts of extreme sacrifice (50). Ritualized ways of symbolically reading the canon were developed, including the use of the “revolving repository” (53) and a tradition of “shortcut” readings (64). Further notes on Wu's use of the “cult of the canon” can be found below.
In Part II, Stefano Zacchetti reminds us that the name “Buddhist canon” is used to refer to various collections of Buddhist texts in different languages, masking the reality that each collection was “shaped by different historical forces, in response to different cultural and political conditions” (81). He highlights the particular tension Chinese canon compilers experienced between maintaining the purity or authenticity of the canon (its “exclusive nature”) while at the same time wanting it to be as exhaustive as possible (its “inclusive nature”) (89). Zacchetti's summary of the unique relationship between the Chinese Buddhist canon and its own history is apt: “Chinese Buddhists did not try to dispel history from their holy scriptures. On the contrary, they saw the historical dimension inherent in the transmission of the canon as being fully part of the holiness of scriptures…” (84). Tanya Storch shows how Fei Changfang's 費長房 late sixth-century Records of the Three Treasures Through the Successive Dynasties (Lidai sanbao ji 歷代三寶紀), often considered unreliable as a record of early translations by scholars of Buddhism (Jan Nattier has called its new attributions “overwhelmingly false”Footnote 2 ), still has a lot to offer the scholar of East Asian religion. Storch shows that Fei Changfang produced “a viable alternative to the Confucian view of Chinese history,” rewriting history from a Buddhist perspective by organizing the texts in his catalog according to the dynasties under which their translation or production was sponsored, and by “connecting almost every important event of Chinese history” described in the Chinese classics (Shu jing, Shiji, etc.) “with events believed to have happened in the process of translating the Tripitaka into Chinese” (124).
In Part III, the essays shift in focus to the technological developments leading to early print canons and the economies surrounding their production and use. The co-editors, along with Chen Zhichao, show how the production of the Kaibao 開寶 Canon, the first printed canon, “was first and foremost a state enterprise,” in which the Song dynasty used the canon to connect themselves to the literary accomplishments of previous dynasties and as a diplomatic tool in lieu of their inability to militarily challenge the various rival states surrounding them (169–170). Co-editor Lucille Chia investigates the Qisha 磧砂 Canon, which, unlike other canons printed during the Song and Yuan periods, survives in multiple nearly complete copies (181). She focuses on the local and regional history of the canon, (182) revealing things like the motivations behind the donors of such a massive project—e.g., incorporating new esoteric materials (195), earning merit (198), etc.—and the practical difficulty of producing and maintaining the woodblocks. Among the highlights of Chia's chapter are the fifteen beautifully reproduced images of a copy of the Qisha Canon kept in Princeton University's East Asian Library and Gest Collection. Darui Long examines the “practical issues of handling the canon,” focusing on four canons produced between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries (220). Two particularly noteworthy details Long illustrates are the role emperor-donors played in adding and deleting works (Yongzheng deleted more than thirty-two works from the Qing Canon [223]), and the pyramid-style fundraising schemes monks employed to create the Jiaxing 嘉興 Canon (225).
In Part IV, essays explore canons created in Korea and Japan. Jiang Wu and Ron Dziwenka challenge the notion that the Korean Goryeo Canon was produced primarily as a means of state protection, especially against the incursions by the Mongols in the thirteenth century. Instead, they argue that the canon was incorporated into a complex religio-political, ritual culture in which it served different functions in accordance with the needs of the state in different contexts. Sometimes it brought blessings or aided in ancestor veneration, while other times it served to avert astral disasters or dispel enemies (251). In the final essay, Greg Wilkinson explores three major factors in the creation of the Taishō Canon: the revitalization of Buddhism during its persecution under the Meiji government and the promotion of a newly conceptualized Shintō (286); the influence of western scholarship, particularly through the lineage of Max Müller at Oxford and the controversial archaeology of Sir Aurel Stein (296); and Japanese imperialism (302). In asking important questions like “Why doesn't the Japanese national rhetoric and inclusion of texts taken from Chinese monasteries [by western “explorers” such as Stein] delegitimize Taishō Canon for Chinese and Korean Buddhists?” (304), Wilkinson highlights the methodological approach found through this entire volume, namely, a combination of the close examination of primary source materials with critical inquiries into the very historiography of those materials.
The volume also contains two useful appendices. The first presents a brief survey of the printed editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon by Li Fuhua and He Mei, which is further compiled by co-editor Jiang Wu. This is an excellent first reference for novice scholars of Chinese Buddhism. The second appendix, written by Aming Tu and translated by Xin Zi, brings the volume all the way forward in time, reviewing the technological and methodological advances in the creation of the CBETA Chinese electronic tripitaka collection.
To offer one small suggestion, because Wu's notion of the “cult of the canon” is referenced throughout this volume, it might have benefited the authors to include a short critical evaluation of some of the issues implicit in its rhetorical jumping off point, Gregory Schopen's “cult of the book.” Schopen originally argued that certain early Indian Mahāyāna texts developed a series of cult practices around them, and the places where they were recited or kept became shrines. This notion was largely drawn from his interpretation of a passage found in multiple texts that said wherever part of a text was recited, that place would become a caityabhūto, which he preferred to translate as “actual caitya [shrine]” instead of “like a caitya [shrine].”Footnote 3 Taken together with prescriptions found in many Mahāyāna texts to “copy, study, recite, and keep” the text,Footnote 4 this interpretation suggested a “cult of the book” with an enshrined text at its center. In recent years, Schopen's notion has been called into question, particularly by David Drewes, who argued that “it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that such [book] shrines simply never existed.”Footnote 5 Schopen himself suggested “revisiting” his theory,Footnote 6 noting that material evidence for such cultic practices in India date much later than earlier thought. In future work, further distinguishing the early Indian Mahāyāna context Schopen originally wrote about from the medieval Chinese practices described in this volume might add a greater richness to the cross-cultural and cross-historical meanings of both the “cult of the book” and “cult of the canon.”
Characteristic of a volume that pushes so many boundaries are the authors’ suggestions for how to go even further. As Wu notes, “To reveal the nature of canon formation and to better understand the Chinese canon itself, there is a great need to conduct comparative studies” (40). Echoing this, in his preface, Lewis Lancaster suggests that scholars use this growing understanding of Chinese Buddhist canons to “throw light on how Indian and Central Asian Buddhism was developing from the second century onward” (xiv). As new Gāndhārī manuscripts from as early as the first century continue to be discovered, we have a unique opportunity to mine more deeply the connection between South Asian and East Asian manuscript cultures. Steps in that direction can be found in Andrew Glass’ comparative study of the arrangement of the Chinese Za ahan jing 雜阿含經 (Samyuktāgama) and the Gāndhārī Saṃyuktāgama sūtras from the Robert Senior Collection.Footnote 7 As more evidence becomes available, further comparisons of Gāndhārī and Chinese collections will break new ground in our understanding of Buddhist canon formation.
Perhaps the most important contribution of this volume will be its use in graduate and advanced undergraduate classes on East Asian history, textual studies, and Buddhist studies, particularly if the instructor wishes to emphasize the historicity of Buddhist literature. This is to the credit of the editors’ vision, which has produced a collection of essays that make valuable contributions to their respective sub-fields, while at the same time maintaining a strong sense of continuity and conceptual clarity as a whole. Students who encounter the Chinese Buddhist canon through this volume will learn from the get-go that canon formation, production, maintenance, and transmission are subject to complex political, religious, economic, and ideological forces. However, for a volume focused on “the Buddha's word,” this book contains very little about the actual words of the Buddha, so any teacher using this book should balance it with a text-focused supplement.
I commend the authors and editors of Spreading the Buddha's Word in East Asia for this excellent work which opens the study and teaching of Buddhist literature in English to many greater possibilities.
