Download or read book De Dunhuang au Japon written by Michel Soymié and published by Librairie Droz. This book was released on 1996 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Books in Numbers written by Lucille Chia and published by Chinese University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays is a result of an academic conference entitled "Books in Numbers" held in celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Harvard-Yenching Library. The aim of this conference was to celebrate the book culture of East Asia by comparing and contrasting the development of manuscript and print culture in each of the separate cultural areas of the region: China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and Central Asia. The essays do not attempt to offer a "complete" picture of the history of writing and the book in East Asia, but rather they hope to make a modest contribution by highlighting the differential developments in each of the cultural regions, as they were influenced by political, economic, social, and cultural factors.
Download or read book The Buddhist Conquest of China written by Erik Zürcher and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At 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.
Download or read book A History of Uyghur Buddhism written by Johan Elverskog and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-18 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, most Uyghurs are Muslims. For centuries, however, Uyghurs were Buddhists. By around 1000 CE, they, like many of their neighbors, had decisively turned toward the Dharma, and a golden age of Uyghur Buddhism flourished under the Mongol empire. Dwelling along the Silk Road in what is now northwestern China, they stood at the center of Buddhist Eurasia, linking far-flung regions and traditions. But as Muslim power grew, Uyghur Buddhists converted to Islam, rewriting their past and erasing their Buddhist history. This book presents the first comprehensive history of Buddhism among the Uyghurs from the ninth to the seventeenth century. Johan Elverskog traces how the Uyghurs forged their distinctive tradition, considering a variety of social, political, cultural, and religious contexts. He argues that the religious history of the Uyghurs challenges conventional narratives of the meeting of Buddhism and Islam, showing that conversion took place gradually and was driven by factors such as geopolitics, climate change, and technological innovation. Elverskog also provides a nuanced understanding of lived Buddhism, focusing on ritual practices and materiality as well as the religion’s entanglements with economics, politics, and violence. A groundbreaking history of Uyghur Buddhism, this book makes a compelling case for the importance of the Uyghurs in shaping the course of both Buddhist and Asian history.
Download or read book Producing Buddhist Sutras in Ninth Century Tibet written by Brandon Dotson, Lewis Doney and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-12-16 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture written by John Kieschnick and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the first century, when Buddhism entered China, the foreign religion shaped Chinese philosophy, beliefs, and ritual. At the same time, Buddhism had a profound effect on the material world of the Chinese. This wide-ranging study shows that Buddhism brought with it a vast array of objects big and small--relics treasured as parts of the body of the Buddha, prayer beads, and monastic clothing--as well as new ideas about what objects could do and how they should be treated. Kieschnick argues that even some everyday objects not ordinarily associated with Buddhism--bridges, tea, and the chair--on closer inspection turn out to have been intimately tied to Buddhist ideas and practices. Long after Buddhism ceased to be a major force in India, it continued to influence the development of material culture in China, as it does to the present day. At first glance, this seems surprising. Many Buddhist scriptures and thinkers rejected the material world or even denied its existence with great enthusiasm and sophistication. Others, however, from Buddhist philosophers to ordinary devotees, embraced objects as a means of expressing religious sentiments and doctrines. What was a sad sign of compromise and decline for some was seen as strength and versatility by others. Yielding rich insights through its innovative analysis of particular types of objects, this briskly written book is the first to systematically examine the ambivalent relationship, in the Chinese context, between Buddhism and material culture.
Download or read book The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha written by Bernard Faure and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2022-08-31 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for the French edition “This is a book that should be read by all those who are interested, whether near or far, in Buddhism, its history and its interpretations. . . . [Faure] proposes considering the ‘Life of the Buddha’ as a kind of treasure that never ceases to be reinvented and experienced, from story to story, from language to language, from culture to culture.” —Roger-Pol Droit, Le Monde Many biographies of the Buddha have been published in the last 150 years, and all claim to describe the authentic life of the historical Buddha. This book, written by one of the leading scholars of Buddhism and Japanese religion, starts from the opposite assumption and argues that we do not yet possess the archival and archaeological materials required to compose such a biography: All we have are narratives, not facts. Yet traditional biographies have neglected the literary, mythological, and ritual elements in the life of the Buddha. Bernard Faure aims to bridge this gap and shed light on a Buddha that is not historical but has constituted a paradigm of practice and been an object of faith for 2,500 years. The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha opens with a criticism of the prevalent historicism before examining the mythological elements in a life of the Buddha no longer constrained by an artificial biographical framework. Once the search for the “historical Buddha” is abandoned, there is no longer any need to limit the narrative to early Indian stories. The life—or lives—of the Buddha, as an expression of the creative imaginations of Buddhists, developed beyond India over the centuries. Faure accordingly shifts his focus to East Asia and, more particularly, to Japan. Finally, he examines recent developments of the Buddha’s life in not only Asia but also the modern West and neglected literary genres such as science fiction.
Download or read book Performing the Visual written by Sarah Elizabeth Fraser and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an insightful new study, drawn from the largely unpublished Buddhist paintings at Dunhuang, of medieval Chinese wall painting, workshop production, and artistic performance in theory and practice.
Download or read book Pasta written by Silvano Serventi and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging from the imperial palaces of ancient China and the bakeries of fourteenth-century Genoa and Naples all the way to the restaurant kitchens of today, Pasta tells a story that will forever change the way you look at your next plate of vermicelli. Pasta has become a ubiquitous food, present in regional diets around the world and available in a host of shapes, sizes, textures, and tastes. Yet, although it has become a mass-produced commodity, it remains uniquely adaptable to innumerable recipes and individual creativity. Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food shows that this enormously popular food has resulted from of a lengthy process of cultural construction and widely diverse knowledge, skills, and techniques. Many myths are intertwined with the history of pasta, particularly the idea that Marco Polo brought pasta back from China and introduced it to Europe. That story, concocted in the early twentieth century by the trade magazine Macaroni Journal, is just one of many fictions umasked here. The true homelands of pasta have been China and Italy. Each gave rise to different but complementary culinary traditions that have spread throughout the world. From China has come pasta made with soft wheat flour, often served in broth with fresh vegetables, finely sliced meat, or chunks of fish or shellfish. Pastasciutta, the Italian style of pasta, is generally made with durum wheat semolina and presented in thick, tomato-based sauces. The history of these traditions, told here in fascinating detail, is interwoven with the legacies of expanding and contracting empires, the growth of mercantilist guilds and mass industrialization, and the rise of food as an art form. Whether you are interested in the origins of lasagna, the strange genesis of the Chinese pasta bing or the mystique of the most magnificent pasta of all, the timballo, this is the book for you. So dig in!
Download or read book Relics of the Buddha written by John S. Strong and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhism is popularly seen as a religion stressing the truth of impermanence. How, then, to account for the long-standing veneration, in Asian Buddhist communities, of bone fragments, hair, teeth, and other bodily bits said to come from the historic Buddha? Early European and American scholars of religion, influenced by a characteristic Protestant bias against relic worship, declared such practices to be superstitious and fraudulent, and far from the true essence of Buddhism. John Strong's book, by contrast, argues that relic veneration has played a serious and integral role in Buddhist traditions in South and Southeast Asia-and that it is in no way foreign to Buddhism. The book is structured around the life story of the Buddha, starting with traditions about relics of previous buddhas and relics from the past lives of the Buddha Sakyamuni. It then considers the death of the Buddha, the collection of his bodily relics after his cremation, and stories of their spread to different parts of Asia. The book ends with a consideration of the legend of the future parinirvana (extinction) of the relics prior to the advent of the next Buddha, Maitreya. Throughout, the author does not hesitate to explore the many versions of these legends and to relate them to their ritual, doctrinal, artistic, and social contexts.
Download or read book Through a Forest of Chancellors written by Anne Burkus-Chasson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liu Yuan’s Lingyan ge, a woodblock-printed book from 1669, re-creates a portrait gallery that memorialized 24 vassals of the early Tang court. Liu accompanied each figure, presented under the guise of a bandit, with a couplet; the poems, written in various scripts, are surrounded by marginal images that allude to a contemporary novel. Religious icons supplement the portrait gallery. Liu’s re-creation is fraught with questions. This study examines the dialogues created among the texts and images in Lingyan ge from multiple perspectives. Analysis of the book’s materialities demonstrates how Lingyan ge embodies, rather than reflects, the historical moment in which it was made. Liu unveiled and even dramatized the interface between manuscript and printed book in Lingyan ge. Authority over the book’s production is negotiated, asserted, overturned, and reinstated. Use of pictures to construct a historical argument intensifies this struggle. Anne Burkus-Chasson argues that despite a general epistemological shift toward visual forms of knowledge in the seventeenth century, looking and reading were still seen as being in conflict. This conflict plays out among the leaves of Liu Yuan’s book.
Download or read book Shinto in History written by John Breen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the only book to date offering a critical overview of Shinto from early times to the modern era, and evaluating Shinto's place in Japanese religious culture. In recent years, a few books on medieval Shinto have appeared, but none has attempted to depict the broader picture, to examine critically Shinto's origins and its subsequent development through the medieval, pre-modern and modern periods. The essays in this book address such key topics as Shinto and Daoism in early Japan, Shinto and the natural environment, Shinto and state ritual in early Japan, Shinto and Buddhism in medieval Japan, and Shinto and the state in the modern period. All of the essays highlight the dynamic nature of Shinto and shrine history by focusing on the three-way relationship, often fraught, between local shrine cults, Shinto agendas and Buddhism.
Download or read book Buddhism Between Tibet and China written by Matthew Kapstein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the long history of cultural exchange between 'the Roof of the World' and 'the Middle Kingdom,' Buddhism Between Tibet and China features a collection of noteworthy essays that probe the nature of their relationship, spanning from the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907 CE) to the present day. Annotated and contextualized by noted scholar Matthew Kapstein and others, the historical accounts that comprise this volume display the rich dialogue between Tibet and China in the areas of scholarship, the fine arts, politics, philosophy, and religion. This thoughtful book provides insight into the surprisingly complex history behind the relationship from a variety of geographical regions. Includes contributions from Rob Linrothe, Karl Debreczeny, Elliot Sperling, Paul Nietupski, Carmen Meinert, Gray Tuttle, Zhihua Yao, Ester Bianchi, Fabienne Jagou, Abraham Zablocki, and Matthew Kapstein.
Download or read book The Temporality of Festivals written by Anke Walter and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-04-01 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism Conversion Contestation and Memory written by Matthew T. Kapstein Associate Professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Chicago Divinity School and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000-08-28 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the Buddhist role in the formation of Tibetan religious thought and identity. In three major sections, the author examines Tibet's eighth-century conversion, sources of dispute within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and the continuing revelation of the teaching in both doctrine and myth.
Download or read book The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism written by Matthew T. Kapstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-02-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the Buddhist role in the formation of Tibetan religious thought and identity. In three major sections, the author examines Tibet's eighth-century conversion, sources of dispute within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and the continuing revelation of the teaching in both doctrine and myth.
Download or read book Signs from the Unseen Realm written by Robert Ford Campany and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2012-05-17 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early medieval China hundreds of Buddhist miracle texts were circulated, inaugurating a trend that would continue for centuries. Each tale recounted extraordinary events involving Chinese persons and places—events seen as verifying claims made in Buddhist scriptures, demonstrating the reality of karmic retribution, or confirming the efficacy of Buddhist devotional practices. Robert Ford Campany, one of North America’s preeminent scholars of Chinese religion, presents in this volume the first complete, annotated translation, with in-depth commentary, of the largest extant collection of miracle tales from the early medieval period, Wang Yan’s Records of Signs from the Unseen Realm, compiled around 490 C.E. In addition to the translation, Campany provides a substantial study of the text and its author in their historical and religious settings. He shows how these lively tales helped integrate Buddhism into Chinese society at the same time that they served as platforms for religious contestation and persuasion. Campany offers a nuanced, clear methodological discussion of how such narratives, being products of social memory, may be read as valuable evidence for the history of religion and culture. Readers interested in Buddhism; historians of Chinese religions, culture, society, and literature; scholars of comparative religion: All will find Signs from the Unseen Realm a stimulating and rich contribution to scholarship.
