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SignS from the UnSeen realm and Buddhist Miracle Tales 37 so.106 But one did not use miracle tales as a platform for expounding on emptiness; and what is more, the doctrine of emptiness, if followed rigorously , could be seen as undercutting the entire edifice of karma and influence -response on which miracle tales were based. Miracle Tales and the Sinicization of Buddhism The miracle tales constitute invaluable evidence of the process of the sinicization of Buddhism—that is, the ways in which the foreign religion was introduced into china and explained, justified, and sometimes accommodated to chinese audiences.107 This is because, as texts, they attempted to effect certain aspects of sinicization at the same time that they reflect aspects of this complex process. i find it useful to think of them as having done so at two levels. at the more basic level, each story contributed to the enterprise of “making Buddhism chinese” and “making china Buddhist” simply by virtue of constituting a piece of historiography. Each story shows, for example , how some practices from the Buddhist repertoire (invoking sound observer, feeding monks, or venerating an image) were deployed—with striking results—at an identified place on chinese soil by a named chinese individual in a way that impacted a particular community; or it shows how some assertions from the Buddhist repertoire (involving the afterlife, or the dead, or the pure land, or the sanctity of Buddha images) were confirmed as true—in striking ways—at an identified chinese place in the presence of named chinese individuals. This most basic mode of sinicization may be likened to the claiming and marking (through narrative, architecture , ritual, and other means) of particular sacred sites on the landscape as Buddhist. in the miracle tale genre, it is particular stretches of chinese social history—and sometimes also particular places on the land—that are being similarly claimed and marked as Buddhist. Miracle tales are, among other things, a means of sinicization via historiography. They helped domesticate Buddhism through the narrative demonstration of its responsive efficacy on the home territory and in the home society— in the lives of individuals their audience may have known or heard of, or at least individuals whom their audience would have recognized as being more or less like themselves. at a subtler level, the miracle stories participated in the sinicization of Buddhism by negotiating a series of complex arguments, adjustments, and counterpositions at those places where elements in the Buddhist reper106 . see items 22, 25, and 90, for example. 107. as distinct from the topic of Buddhism and sinification, or “the long-range enterprise of Han chinese civilization to overwhelm, incorporate, and pacify the peoples within its ever-increasing cultural sphere,” as noted in McRae, Seeing Through Zen, 110–111. other than its portrayal of central asian non-Han peoples, discussed elsewhere in these pages, Signs from the Unseen Realm has little to say about sinification in McRae’s sense. 38 SignS from the UnSeen realm and Buddhist Miracle Tales toire rubbed up against elements in the repertoires of other imagined communities. Here “sinicization” may be thought of not so much as a compromising modification of Buddhist teachings to fit the chinese context but, rather, as an unyielding and self-conscious clarification of the points where Buddhist teachings sharply conflicted with elements of non-Buddhist religion—with a none-too-subtle critique of the latter always implied. again a methodological prelude is necessary here. cultures, societies, and religious traditions can be helpfully seen as contestational fields in which diverse groups assert claims and attempt to persuade others to their points of view. in contrast to an organic model of religious traditions that sees them as “chang[ing] glacially over time as the result of impersonal processes,”108 developing according to their own internal logic, i prefer to see them—as mentioned above—as repertoires of resources developed by particular (if to us often obscure) historical agents in pursuit of various goals. Further, each repertoire element can be seen as a response—whether by intention or in effect—to alternative assertions, goals, practices, and priorities. The components added over time to any religion’s repertoire of resources are each of them contrastive in nature. in addition to whatever intrinsic rationales may be given for a repertoire element —rationales that explain it in terms of cosmological and other beliefs internal to a community—it is also almost always the case that it will carry extrinsic meanings or functions as...

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