emplacing a pilgrimage: the Ôyama cult and religional religion in early modern japan – by barbara...

not hold a lot of water for believers, even if it might inacademia. Despite this struggle, Sax shows powerfulempathy and respect for ritual healers, genuine desire tounderstand his subject on its own terms, and a firm belief inthe urgency of challenging modernist dismissals of othersystems of healing. Calling for a “hermeneutics of the body,”not just of text, and for an intercultural rethinking of notionsof agency, rationality, knowledge, and wellness, Sax invokesdiverse thinkers, from philosophers of science to perfor-mance theorists and medical anthropologists. Light onjargon, with some wonderful anthropological description,this work will interest specialists and nonspecialists alike.

Michelle I. BakkerConcordia University, Montreal

MAJESTIC NIGHTS: LOVE POEMS OF BENGALIWOMEN. Edited and translated by Carolyne Wright andco-translators. Companions for the Journey Series, 16.Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2009. Pp. 105. $15.00.

Carolyne Wright is one of the finest translators of poetryfrom any South Asian language into American English whois practicing today. That she is one of very few translatorsfrom South Asian languages who makes her living as awriter, not as an academic, is perhaps not coincidental.There is no “Indologese” in her translations. In this volumein White Pine Press’s “Companions for the Journey” series,50 poems of twenty-three twentieth-century women poetsfrom Bangladesh, West Bengal, and increasingly the Bengalidiaspora, join the company of other spiritual poets fromaround the world. Wright has collaborated with eightcotranslators to produce excellent poems, each of which canstand alone without an extensive scholarly apparatus. Thisis a shared regional and linguistic poetic tradition that cutsacross religious lines. To call it “secular,” however, wouldnot do justice to the ways the poets work within the rich anddistinctly Bengali accumulated tradition of Hindu andMuslim practices and images. Wright has chosen poems thattreat love in all its manifestations, and, as she indicates inher preface, to talk of love in Bengali literature often leads toone cultural root of the Radha–Krishna story, and anothercultural root of Sufism and the Man of the Heart. She says,“For Bengalis, it can be hard to talk of romantic love withoutalso touching on spiritual yearning.” The poems in this bookeffectively problematize the “secular–religious” divide thatso informs contemporary European and American society.They are also excellent poems in their own right. This bookis a delight.

John E. CortDenison University

East AsiaEMPLACING A PILGRIMAGE: THE ÔYAMA CULTAND RELIGIONAL RELIGION IN EARLY MODERNJAPAN. By Barbara Ambros. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-versity, Asia Center, 2008. Pp.380 + ill. $39.95.

This monograph provides a “thick description” of the“beliefs, practice, and infrastructure” of Ôyama, a popularregional pilgrimage center, by meticulously examining howit fit into the “socio-economic landscape of the Kantô-Tôkairegion.” Building upon Allan Grapard’s work on institutionalcomplexes and Helen Hardacres’s regional studies of earlymodern Japanese religion, Ambros looks at how Ôyama, as aspecific religious institutional complex, worked within“regional sectarian, parishioner, and pilgrimage networks.”For Japanese pilgrimage studies, the author has broken newground focusing on the oshi, a class of former ascetics andshrine priests who played a key role in popularizing ofÔyama as well as other sacred sites. In addition, by makingÔyama cult a “lens through which to view the early modernJapanese religious landscape,” she offers a fascinating studyof: 1) how sacred geography changes, as Ôyama grew from ahermitage to a place of popular worship; 2) the combinativecharacter of early modern Japanese religious life as well ashow the official Meiji era policy of separating Buddhismfrom Shinto changed everything; 3) the diversity of Japanesepilgrimage, by showing how Ôyama as a regional cult had avery different social–political location compared to the morefamous pilgrimages of the time, like Ise and Shikoku; and 4)the great mountain of evidence (bad pun) indicating thatBuddhism was a vital rather than moribund tradition in theearly modern period (in contrast to the scholarly orthodoxview). This book is a must-read for anyone interested inJapanese religions and pilgrimage.

Mark MacWilliamsSt. Lawrence University

THE PHILOSOPHY OF QI: THE RECORD OF GREATDOUBTS. By Kaibara Ekken. Translated by Mary EvelynTucker. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.Pp. 208 + illustrations. $36.50.

This translation of Kaibara Ekken’s classic treatise, theTaigiroku, follows Tucker’s groundbreaking 1989 study ofhis life and thought. Ekken is best known as a popularizer ofConfucian ethics, particularly his Great Learning for Women(Onna daigaku), and for his practical learning (jitsugaku) infields like botany, agriculture, and health. The Taigiroku,written near the end of his life, encapsulates his broaderphilosophical critique of Song Confucianism, particularlyZhu Xi’s dualistic philosophy of principle (li, ri) and materialforce (qi, ki). In Tucker’s view, Ekken favors a “vitalisticnaturalism,” a “monism of qi” that is “a unifying basis for theinteraction of self, society and nature.” Tucker’s translationis both readable and accessible for the general reader. Herlengthy introduction helpfully situates the text within itsNeo-Confucian and Japanese historical context. Sometimesshe gets bogged down with confusing Western philosophicalterminology of doubtful explanatory value. What does itmean, for example, that some interpreters see Ekken’sthought as leading toward a “logical positivism”? The pointshe is really making in her introduction is that such Westerncategories skew scholarly interpretations more often than

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not. Ekken, for example, has been seriously misunderstoodas “an incipient rationalist and materialist.” Such wrong-headed interpretations assume qi is matter without spirit—aview that unconsciously reflects a Cartesian dualism. Quiteto the contrary, Tucker argues that Ekken’s philosophy of kihas a “unified view of spirit and matter” that is basic to hisspiritual/ethical view of nature, and makes him extremelyrelevant today, particularly in environmental ethics.


THE STORY OF HAN XIANGZI: THE ALCHEMICALADVENTURES OF A DAOIST IMMORTAL. By YangErzeng. Translated by Philip Clart. Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 2007. Pp. 472. $40.00.

Han Xiang was a poet-official (fl. 800 CE) with “no par-ticular Daoist leanings.” But early modern plays (fourteenthcentury) transformed him into one of the “Eight Immortals”ubiquitous in modern Chinatowns. Readers without perti-nent background will find the translation of this earlyseventeenth-century novel, Han Xiangzi zhuan, neither verycomprehensible nor very interesting until after carefulperusal of the translator’s Introduction. Yet, that introduc-tion is addressed more to sinologists’ academic issues thanto readers wishing to understand and enjoy the novel itselfas literature. Clart explains much about “Daoism and theStory of Han Xiangzi,” arguing also that “Han Xiangzi’s con-sistent and insistent Daoist message may have offended boththe religious syncretist who believed in the equivalence ofChina’s three teachings and the staunch Confucian or Bud-dhist.” He adds that the Han Xiangzi zhuan has heretoforebeen neglected because “the reader unsympathetic toDaoism”—a category that includes virtually all modern schol-ars of Chinese literature—“is given no escape to anotherinterpretive level.” Clart promises “a future companionvolume” providing “a running commentary on and analysisof the text.” But since the explanations needed for basiccomprehension are here relegated to endnotes, novices willfind the novel, as presented here, puzzling and unrewarding.(Such explanations of its characters and contexts shouldhave appeared in footnotes within the text.) Readers conver-sant with traditional and modern Chinese religion, and theDaoist universe of discourse, will appreciate Clart’s pains-taking contribution, and eagerly await the companionvolume.

Russell KirklandUniversity of Georgia

SALT AND LIGHT: LIVES OF FAITH THAT SHAPEDMODERN CHINA. Edited by Carol Lee Hamrin and StaceyBieler. Studies in Chinese Christianity, 1. Eugene, OR: Pick-wick Books, 2009. Pp. xi + 240. $28.00.

Editor Hamrin, research professor at George Mason Uni-versity, has gathered together seven other scholars of Chris-tianity in China and they have combined to present tenportraits of influential Chinese Christians who have shaped

modern China. Readers will be introduced to important edu-cators and college/university presidents (Rong Hong, TangGuo’an, Mei Yiqi, Wei Zhuomin, Yan Yangchu, and WuYifang, president of Jinling Women’s College in Nanjing), anauthor/editor (Fan Zimei), medical professionals andresearchers (including women like Shi Meiyu and LinQiaozhi), and institutional organizers and leaders (like DingShujing of the YWCA). Many of these Chinese Christianswere the product of the western Christian missionary enter-prise to China. While most of them studied in the UnitedStates and Europe, they remained committed to the rebuild-ing of modern China. Thus many of them sought not only to“Christianize China,” but also to ensure the formation of atruly authentic and indigenous Chinese Christianity thatcould contribute to the wider world. The book includes ahelpful late nineteenth- and twentieth-century timeline ofChina and of the persons and events described in the book.This inaugural volume therefore heightens the anticipationof the good things to come in this new book series, and isanother sign of the many innovative developments that thisformerly reprint-only publisher has now been undertakingin the last decade in order to contribute groundbreakingresearch to the wider theological academy.

Amos YongRegent University School of Divinity

HIMIKO AND JAPAN’S ELUSIVE CHIEFDOM OFYAMATAI: ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, ANDMYTHOLOGY. By J. Edward Kidder. Honolulu: Universityof Hawaii Press, 2007. Pp. 401. Cloth, $67.00.

The author is professor emeritus at International Chris-tian University in Tokyo. He is the author of more than adozen books and numerous articles on prehistoric and earlyJapan. Among his books are Japan before Buddhism (Thamesand Hudson, 1959) and The Birth of Japanese Art (Praeger,1965). First, looking at the title, many Japanese would laughand say, “Yet another book on the mysteries of Yamatai and itsqueen Himiko. Old men’s hobby stuff and besides, this time itis in English! Never imagined there were antiquarian ama-teurs of Japanese history abroad!” The reason many regardYamatai an antiquarian’s obsession is that its location hasbeen hotly debated for over 100 years and is still unsettled.There are more than 100 theories about the location ofYamatai. Among these two are most popular: one postulatesits location in northern Kyushu Island and the other in thearea of Yamato in central Honshu Island. These two differenttheories reflect a longstanding academic conflict between twoprestigious Japanese universities: University of Tokyo andUniversity of Kyoto (with Tokyo scholars contending thatYamatai was in Kyushu). But dismissing Kidder’s book thisway is very mistaken. The book is an encyclopedic history,archaeology, cultural anthropology on ancient Japan startingfrom the pre-agricultural Jômon period through the succes-sive stages of the first agricultural Yayoi period, Kofun period(whose characteristics are giant tombs), and finally, Yamatoperiod (the age of the rise of a Japanese state). Centering on


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the problem of the enigmatic passages of the third-centuryChinese chronicle Wei Zhi that deal with the kingdom ofYamatai and its queen Himiko, Kidder attempts a synthetichistory of ancient Japan. It is anything but an amateurishquest for the location of Yamatai or a speculation about whatqueen Himiko looked like. Instead, it is one of the best booksin recent years on the ancient history of Japan because of theauthor’s wide-ranging knowledge and meticulous research;all recent archaeological discoveries are detailed and relevanttheories are examined. As the most up-to-date source of aca-demic information on ancient Japan, this book is essentialreading for scholars of Japanology. Kidder thinks Yamataikingdom was in Yamato and, although Himiko had beeneffaced from the official record, she was definitely a historicalperson. Kidder speculates that one of largest tumuli of thearea, the Hashihaka, is where she rests. I found Kidder’sthesis reasonable, and it follows the majority opinion ofpresent Japanese scholarship. Recently (May 29, 2009), it hasbeen reported a team from the National Museum of JapaneseHistory has excavated the outskirts of the Hashihakatumulus. According to their carbon 14 dating, the tumulusseems to have been made between 240 and 260. The Chinesechronicle Wei Zhi reports that Himiko sent her envoy to Chinain 239 and most scholars agree that she died in 250. Kidder’sconclusions, therefore, are confirmed by the most recentarchaeological evidence.

Kazuo MatsumuraWakô University

INTRODUCING DAOISM. By Livia Kohn. London andNew York: Routledge, 2009. Pp. 320 pages. Paper, $34.95.

Kohn is both a knowledgeable specialist and the English-speaking world’s most prolific publisher of books on Daoism,including a 2001 introductory text (Daoism and ChineseCulture, Three Pines Press) revised in 2004. This book seemsto be the same book, re-written specifically for use as alower-division college textbook. Like the earlier book, thisone cannot decide whether to present material topically orthematically, so it tries to do both at once. For instance, thebook’s “Introduction” is not a true introduction to the book’ssubject matter, content, organization, or purpose (nor doesany preface address such matters), but merely explains thehistorical context of classical (pre-Han) China. Later sectionslikewise center their chapters on a text or a historical period,but attempt to drape thematic issues around it: chapter 6, forexample, focuses not just on early medieval lay communitiesand monastic traditions, but also on ethical teachings. Thewriting’s directness yields some gems (e.g., “Unlike medievalpractitioners, who belonged to formally established schoolsthat existed as corporate entities with the right to train,approve, and certify, modern Daoists are independent andwork predominantly through lineages”). But the unnuancednarration sometimes misleads (e.g., “80 percent of allDaoists” are just “comfort-seekers,” who “play games, watchTV, chat or otherwise hang out” at monasteries; Kohn pre-sents no data to substantiate this claim, which seemingly

derives from a Japanese scholar’s assessment of life inPeking’s White Cloud Abbey during World War II). Eachchapter ends with titles for “further reading,” though withoutexplaining their nature or value; a box listing “key points youneed to know”—the memorization of which appears designedto demonstrate that the student has read and understood thechapter; and three “discussion questions” for teachers’ use inclass. Despite the textbook format (including a useful glos-sary), the organizational oddities and imprecision of the pre-sentation cannot move one to recommend this over otherrecent overviews of Daoism.


CULTIVATING PERFECTION: MYSTICISM ANDSELF-TRANSFORMATION IN EARLY QUANZHENDAOISM. By Louis Komjathy. Leiden and Boston: Brill,2007. Pp. xxii + 554. $217.00.

“Modern Taoist Studies” began in the 1970s, extendingHenri Maspero’s pioneering analysis of early medievalDaoism, and privileging its surviving relic in Taiwan—theliturgical “Heavenly Master” tradition. But in North China(including Shanghai and Beijing, the subject of major newtomes by Liu Xun and Vincent Goossaert), “Taoism”—fromthe thirteenth to twenty-first centuries—has been the monas-tic tradition called Quanzhen, “Complete Perfection.” Theprice of Komjathy’s book will be repaid by the appendicesalone: a glossary of early Quanzhen terminology; a chronol-ogy and genealogy of early Quanzhen figures; and a detailedanalysis of the tradition’s textual corpus. The book’s intro-duction is a jewel of clarity about “Complete Perfection,” i.e.,the condition in which one’s “inner nature” (hsing/xing)“associated with the heart/mind, consciousness, and spirit,becomes perfected.” Part 1, “Early Quanzhen in Historicaland Comparative Perspective,” is a book in itself: with clarityand precision, it explains all pertinent issues, and is essen-tial reading for all who teach or study Chinese religion. Part2—again, a separate book—constitutes an annotated transla-tion of a text attributed to the Quanzhen founder, Wang Che,framed as a dialogue wherein Wang explains his teachingsto an unnamed questioner. This breathtakingly thoroughexploration of Quanzhen’s origins and teachings is a tour deforce capable of changing the field for future generations.


FERTILITY AND PLEASURE: RITUAL AND SEXUALVALUES IN TOKUGAWA JAPAN. By William R.Lindsey. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007.Pp. 234. $50.00.

What role does ritual play in the lives of women in earlymodern Japan? This is the basic question of this clearlywritten and well-organized study. The author argues thatritual practice served as a vital “bridge, a mediator, betweenthe conflicting values of two intensely opposed female roles”of wives and courtesans in Tokugawa society. Rituals of


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“entrance, placement, and exit” functioned not only to rein-force idealized values of woman’s sexual identity and toorient them to the new social roles within the communitiesof home or bordello, but also expressed a woman’s ambiva-lence and, occasionally, served as a means to resist herchange in station. What makes this book valuable is its broadfocus—studying popular rituals, which were a synthesis ofBuddhism, kami worship, and Confucian moral values, andwere central for two key institutions in which women couldlive during this time—the household and pleasure quarters.Ritual played a powerful role in the Tokugawa period’s “unit-ized society,” which was characterized by highly formalizedrole behavior. It also played out the personal and socialtensions that the contradictory social values of fertility andpleasure that shaped women’s lives. This book is highlyrecommended for specialists interested in religious ritual inearly modern Japan, but also written for those interested ingender and ritual studies.


LOST SOUL: “CONFUCIANISM” IN CONTEMPO-RARY CHINESE ACADEMIC DISCOURSE. By JohnMakeham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center,2008. Pp. xii + 397. $49.95.

Few topics are hotter at present than those related to thecontemporary revival of Confucianism in mainland Chinaand the Chinese cultural diaspora, one of the most promi-nent venues of which is discourse among ethnically Chinesescholars. In this exhaustive, erudite study, Makehamreviews an immense amount of evidence and draws severalconclusions about such discourse, which he sees as provid-ing “a rare opportunity to study [the] traditional [Chinese]strategy of orthodoxy formation in a contemporary context.”Unlike many who see the revival of Confucianism as thework of official regimes motivated by the need to shore upthe state’s authority, he argues that it is academics andpublic intellectuals motivated by Chinese “cultural national-ism” who are primarily responsible for Confucianism’srevival. Those who are more familiar with pre-modern Con-fucian thinkers will benefit from his introduction of dozensof key contemporary thinkers in the tradition. Readers whoare more interested in popular culture, “lived religion,” andissues of practice may be disappointed by his almost-exclusive focus on what people employed in Chinese univer-sity philosophy departments have had to say aboutConfucianism. They would do well to heed his remark that“discourse is, in fact, a type of practice.” His discussions ofinvolvement by scholars of a Confucian cultural nationalistbent in Singapore’s introduction of “Confucian ethics” as asecondary school subject during the 1980s, the rise of unof-ficial Confucian academies in China and Taiwan during the1990s, and the production of Confucian anthologies forclassroom recitation by Chinese schoolchildren since 2000all testify to the practical religious role played by this dis-course. The final three chapters are particularly valuable for

anyone who wishes to understand the religious characterand aims of this powerful movement in contemporary China.

Jeffrey L. RicheyBerea College

THE WAY OF HIGHEST CLARITY: NATURE,VISION AND REVELATION IN MEDIEVAL CHINA.By James Miller. Magdelena, NM: Three Pines Press, 2008.Pp. 260. Paper, $30.00.

Miller is both a specialist on the fourth-century texts ofthe Shangqing (“Highest Clarity”) revelations of Daoism, anda Religious Studies generalist who has given us a successfulintroduction to the Daoist tradition overall. This book seemsto present the former material to readers of the latter. Millerconcedes that Shangqing “is a dead esoteric tradition,” butannounces that “I am motivated by an urgent moral concernfor a dialogue of civilizations in the area of religious ideas,”and believes that modern minds need to appreciate the ideaswithin such dead traditions. He also proclaims that this book“is quite different from the traditional understanding of thescholar as someone in an ivory tower explaining what otherpeople mean,” though one cannot see how his explanations ofDaoist ideas are truly so vastly different in nature from thoseof other knowledgeable specialists today (especially forreaders familiar with Isabelle Robinet’s interpretive work onthis material a generation ago). The book’s first section expli-cates Shangqing Daoism thematically, in terms of “Nature,”“Vision,” and “Revelation”; the second comprises a fine anno-tated translation (complete with Chinese text—surely an“ivory tower” feature) of three Shangqing texts. Though thetexts are quite representative of the dead subtradition inquestion, one wonders whether many nonspecialists (stu-dents, especially) will find compelling reason to slog throughtheir dense, floreate prose, even aided by Miller’s helpfulexplanatory footnotes. In the end, one struggles to see howthese particular texts will facilitate “a dialogue of civiliza-tions” better than hundreds of yet-untranslated Daoist textsmight do. Nonetheless, Miller’s guidance through thisincreasingly well-known material is knowledgeable andtrustworthy.


DAOISM IN HISTORY: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF LIUTS’UN-YAN. Edited by Benjamin Penny. Routledge Studiesin Taoism. New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. xiii + 290; illus-trations. $170.00.

The first part of this festschrift consists of an appraisalof Chinese-Australian scholar Liu Ts’un Yan’s career by theeditor, followed by seven essays by leading scholars focus-ing on classical Daoist religion and its interaction with Bud-dhism and popular religion. Topics include demonology,karmic retribution, meditation, and imagery, and aim toshow the value of Daoist studies for a wider understanding ofChinese history rather than the significance of Daoism as areligious tradition in and of itself. The exception is Fran-


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ciscus Verellen’s essay on the role of graphic designs inDaoist scriptures. He argues that there is no clear distinctionbetween text and image in Daoist illustrated scriptures: “thewords themselves are the graphs and the scriptures as awhole are considered to have the transformative efficacy ofthe talismans they embody.” Part two consists of a magiste-rial sixty-five-page essay by Liu Ts’un-Yan, “Was CelestialMaster Zhang A Historical Figure?” Originally published inBeijing in a shorter Chinese version, the essay discountsunreliable hagiographies and collates instead a wide array ofother textual and archeological evidence to argue that ZhangDaoling, the first Celestial Master, was indeed a historicalfigure. In so doing, Liu illuminates Daoism’s early historywith vivid details that specialists will find invaluable.

James MillerQueen’s University, Canada

THE CULTURE OF SECRECY IN JAPANESE RELI-GION. Edited by Bernhard Scheid and Mark Teeuwen. NewYork: Routledge, 2006. Pp. xxvii + 397. Cloth, $180.00.Paper, $39.95.

This book offers a superb collection of essays on reli-gious secrecy in the Japanese Middle Ages, identified here asthe period between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries.Key scholars in the field, including Fabio Rambelli, BernardFaure, Anne Walthall, and Kate Nakai, make important con-tributions. Their essays examine at this period as a whole bytracing the common theme of secrecy, especially related toand inspired by kenmitsu Buddhism, in textual transmissionand education, ritual practices, and so on. Examples of topicscovered include the Lotus Sutra, the Tachikawa-ryû, Nohcommentaries and plays, the three sacred regalia, and thetransmission of the Nihon shoki. This book frames its discus-sion of secrecy and esotericism by including two valuablesections serving as bookends. The book opens with a usefulintroductory chapter by Mark Teeuwen that situates Japan’sculture of secrecy within a comparative perspective, fol-lowed by essays on secrecy in the “ancient world,” as well asin Indian and Chinese Tantric Buddhism. It ends with a set ofessays on the “demise of secrecy” in the Tokugawa period.While this volume is primarily aimed at specialists, itssubject is inherently interesting to historians of religion gen-erally, and offers a wealth of new information for compara-tive study.


MONKS, RULERS, AND LITERATI: THE POLITICALASCENDANCY OF CHAN BUDDHISM. By AlbertWelter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 322.$75.00.

A generation ago, Western students of Zen—heirs to D. T.Suzuki’s hermeneutical paradigms—journeyed to Japan andwere converted to the more critical paradigms of YanagidaSeizan. As Welter explains, “Zen propagandists and apolo-gists of the 20th century sold the world on a story of Zen

(including) an idea of ‘true’ or ‘pure’ Zen . . . that privilegedthe accomplishments of legendary Chan heroes in the Tangdynasty,” especially “the Linji lineage derived by (spiritual)descendents of (master) Mazu Daoyi,” eponymous “founder”of Japan’s Rinzai. “Stimulated by the discovery of Dunhuangmanuscripts . . . Tang scholarship has revealed both a widercast of contestants and a vastly more complicated story,”though like nearly all Chan scholars, past and present,Welter neglects the intricately interrelated materials ofTang/Song Daoist history, rhetoric and “lineage construc-tion.” After examining Chan’s “official recognition” in Tangtimes, Welter explores the “Factional Motives and LiteratiInfluences in the Creation of Chan Narratives,” such as thePatriarch’s Hall Anthology (Zutang ji) and Transmission of theLamp (Chuandeng lu). Through sound and nuanced analysisof Chan history as “a complex story of well-placed elites,both religious and secular,” Welter joins more recent worksby Alan Cole and Wendi Adamek in demonstrating that“radical Chan rhetoric did not represent the forces of sub-version and contestation . . . but the forces of containmentand dominance, characteristic of the new position of powerthat the Chan establishment represented” as it moved intoSong times: “To appeal to the new Song Confucian literaticlasses, Chan staked out a new identity that insulated it fromthe perceived complicity of Buddhism in the failure of theTang.” Students may find Alan Cole’s Fathering Your Father(University of California Press, 2009) more readable, but allscholars of Asian religion will benefit from the clarity, depthand precision of Welter’s work.


CHINESE RELIGIOSITIES: AFFLICTIONS OFMODERNITY AND STATE FORMATION. Edited byMayfair Mei-hui Yang. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 2008. Pp. vii + 464. Cloth, $29.95; paper, $20.95.

The introduction and twelve essays in this volumeexamine the continuities and transformations of twentieth-century and contemporary Chinese religion. Two majorfactors dominated the processes these authors describe: thecreation of the modern nation-state, with its evolvingdemands upon the identity of its citizens; and the influx ofwestern religious ideas and institutions that redefined con-ceptions of religious and secular spheres. The essays explorethe relationship of the state to China’s various religioussystems and communities, including Confucianism, Bud-dhism, Daoism, Islam, Christianity, Falungong, and theworship of Mazu across the Taiwan Straits. The volume grewout of a conference on Chinese religion, modernity, and thestate in 2005 and the authors share a dynamic and cohesiveset of goals, arguing against simplistic dichotomies ofmodernity and enlightenment versus religious tradition, andthe secular state versus institutions of belief. Together, theessays offer a nuanced portrait of the interplay and steadilyshifting ground between these forces through the differentregimes of the twentieth century and up to the present.


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Scholars of Chinese religion will find this book highly usefulfor its conceptual foundations and detailed information, butthe essays are readily accessible to those who are not spe-cialists. Scholars in other fields of modern Chinese studiesand in comparative religious studies have much to gain fromthis book.

Peter DitmansonOriental Institute, Oxford University

BuddhismDIVINE KNOWLEDGE: BUDDHIST MATHEMATICSACCORDING TO THE ANONYMOUS MANUAL OFMONGOLIAN ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION. ByBrian G. Baumann. Brill’s Inner Asia Library, 20. Leiden:Brill, 2008. Pp. xviii + 894; tables, indices. $295.00.

Baumann’s book is a transcription, translation, andstudy of an anonymous Mongolian text known as the Manualof Mongolian Astrology and Divination. The text deals withdivination of various kinds, such as auspicious times fordifferent undertakings. Ancient cultures used a commonname for a certain collection of sciences (some now consid-ered pseudoscience), including not only astrology and divi-nation, but also calendrics, astronomy, and mathematics.Baumann uses mathematics for this conglomerate, a usagethat is somewhat confusing to the modern reader; the Mon-golian text does not contain any computational material (nordoes Baumann’s study). This aside, the book is a valuablecontribution to the study of divination. Baumann’s compre-hensive study discusses time, metaphysics, divination, andother subjects, contextualizing the Mongolian text andexplaining its dependence on other traditions. Especiallyvaluable for a comparative study of omen material are someof Baumann’s appendices, such as a list of omen protasesfrom the Mongolian text. Overall, the book is a good startingpoint for a study of Mongolian divination and also a usefulresource for those studying omens in the ancient world.

Toke L. KnudsenSUNY College at Oneonta

THE STANZA OF THE BELL IN THE WIND: ZENAND NENBUTSU IN THE EARLY KAMAKURAPERIOD. By Frédéric Girard. Studia Philologica Buddhica,Occasional Papers Series, XIV. Tokyo: The InternationalInstitute for Buddhist Studies, 2007. Pp. iii + 83 pages.¥500.00.

Anyone who has read at least as far as the secondchapter of Dogen’s Shôbôgenzô has encountered thefollowing:

[78] My late master, the eternal buddha, says:Whole body like a mouth, hanging in space;Not asking if the wind is east, west, south, or north,For all others equally, it speaks prajña.Chin ten ton ryan chin ten ton.

(Gudo Wafu Nishijima and Chodo Cross, trs. Shobogenzo:The True Dharma-Eye Treasury, 4 vols. Berkeley, CA:Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research,2007. I, 33.) This bemusing stanza turns out to have a muchwider use than simply Dogen’s. Attributed to Dogen’sChinese teacher, Rujing, it is striking that this same stanzashould come to play a role in Japanese Pure Land(“Amidist” in Girard’s usage), as found in the Myogishingyoshu. By focusing on this specific item, Girard devel-ops a new hypothesis regarding the history of both PureLand and Zen in Japan. Rather than a development ofpopular religious sensibilities on the one hand, and a trans-mission solely dependent on its Chinese sources—as thestandard history would have it—Girard suggests that the twostrains are both to be found among the low-ranking monas-tics from a very early period. Despite the supposed contra-dictions of Zen and Pure Land, Girard points out that “thedifferences between the Nenbutsu new sects and the Zennew sects may only concern the conceptual and habit cloth-ings, and behind these differences, the similarities andaffinities may be stronger than we expect.”

Richard PayneInstitute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological

Union

A GARLAND OF FEMINIST REFLECTIONS: FORTYYEARS OF RELIGIOUS EXPLORATION. By Rita M.Gross. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.Pp. 340. Cloth, $60.00; paper, $24.95.

Gross’s new book contains already published andnewly penned essays selected by the author to highlightimportant moments in her forty-year career as a prominentBuddhist theologian and feminist thinker. Major themesinclude the methodological contribution of the “feministparadigm shift” to the study of religion, religion as aresource for feminists, and the fruitful but fraught mar-riage of feminism and Buddhism in Gross’s own intellec-tual journey. This bold and unapologetically opinionatedwork mixes autobiography, political reflection, and aca-demic theory, making it of interest to Buddhist construc-tive thinkers and potentially useful (if properlycontextualized) in undergraduate classes on gender andreligion. Gross’s constricted conceptualization of gender,which she describes repeatedly as a prison-like set ofnorms (rather than a complex and potentially creative cat-egory), will quell any interest this book might have held forfeminist scholars in other humanistic fields and will repre-sent a source of frustration for younger feminist scholars ofreligion. Her historically ungrounded and monolithic refer-ences to “Buddhism,” “Hinduism,” and “Vajrayana,” andher excessive reliance on secondary literature mean thatthis book will hold little interest for serious historians ofBuddhism or South Asian religion.

Amy Paris LangenbergBrown University


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