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Circumambulatory Reading: Revolving Sutra Libraries and Buddhist Scrolls
- Book History
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 13, 2010
- pp. 1-24
- 10.1353/bh.2010.0020
- Article
- Additional Information
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This article examines the complementary theories that religious demands shape the material forms of sacred text, and that the material form of a text, in turn, affects practices and methods of reading. Exploring technologies created and adapted in East Asia for reading Mahāyāna Buddhist sutras, I argue that specific technologies -- such as the revolving sutra library, the scroll, and the DVD optical disk -- suggest a dominant notion of reading as “circumambulation.” Thus Buddhist ritual reading provides a new way of thinking about the spatial components of textual engagement, apart from traditional “linear” and “radial” models.