Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries (Les aspects économiques du bouddhisme dans la société chinoise du Ve au Xe siècle) (review)

4i8 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996© 1996 by University ofHawai'i Press Jacques Gernet. Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic Historyfrom the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries (Les aspects économiques du bouddhisme dans la société chinoise du Ve au Xe siècle). Translated by Franciscus Verellen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. xvii, 435 pp. Hardcover $42.50, isbn 0-231-07380-1. At one point in Jacques Gernet's Buddhism in Chinese Society, the charming picture of the solitary monastery as a place for reflection and meditation is abruptly shattered. Gernet discusses the last testament of a medieval monk who in his will left a saucepan to a novice monk, a plow ox to a monk who had "been his counselor in family matters," and, to someone named Wuchai, a slave whom he "had bought some years ago" (p. 83). Another document stipulates in dispassionate legal language that the illegitimate children of monastic serfs would henceforth be considered the property of the monastery (p. 107). Clearly, the medieval Chinese monastery was more than a center for spiritual training; the refined monasticism of Tang poetry and biographies of eminent monks came at a price. This is perhaps the greatest contribution of Gernet's work: he demonstrates through the skilled use of a dazzling variety ofliterary evidence the complexity of the interchange between Buddhism and Chinese society. In addition to enormous monasteries in the capital and on famous mountains housing hundreds ofmonks, there were also small Buddhist temples run by two or three persons. There were immensely erudite and often quite wealthy monks, and there were poor, illiterate, and itinerant monks. We need read only a short way into Gernet's work to realize that the conglomerate of individuals, doctrines, and practices that made up Buddhism affected Chinese society in complicated and often unexpected ways. Buddhism and Chinese Society: An Economic Historyfrom the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries is an English translation of Les aspects économiques du bouddhisme dans la société chinoise du Ve au Xe siècle, first published in 1956. In addition to making available to a wider audience a work long regarded by specialists as a classic of its kind, Franciscus Verellen's translation, done with Gernet's cooperation, also makes a number of revisions, most importandy the correction ofmistakes pointed out in reviews published in the fifties by Denis Twitchett and Kenneth Chen, in addition to more precise annotation and an expanded bibliography. The book is loosely structured, and while Gernet does not shirk from generalization , Buddhism in Chinese Society is not easily reduced to a few key arguments. There are, however, several themes to which the author repeatedly returns. Below, I focus on three of these: the role of Buddhism in the Chinese economy, the gap between ideal and practice, and the relative vitality of Buddhism in different periods of Chinese history. Reviews 419 The central focus of the book is on the role of Buddhism in the Chinese economy. Through a deft use ofDunhuang documents, epigraphy, apocryphal scriptures, and secular texts, Gernet paints a picture ofmonastic commerce that, even after forty years, is still unparalleled. He describes in detail the mills, orchards , herds of sheep and goats, inns, and pawnshops that sustained large monasteries . Begging was rare, and, with few exceptions, monks did not themselves work in the fields, relegating such labor instead to serfs, monastic menials, and slaves. Monasteries were also supported by fees for funerals and other religious services, as well as by gifts from donors, a practice that was reinforced in scripture and a doctrine in which, as Gernet puts it, "gifts were transformed into commercial goods and worldly gain intaofferings" (p. 196). In most ofthese enterprises, the monasteries were consumers rather than producers; the Buddhist movement created "an economy more concerned with returns and acquisitions than with production." Although monastic lands and mills were taxed, monks themselves were exempt from taxation and corvée labor. Gernet attributes the success ofmonasticism in China largely to its ability to fill a niche in the Chinese economy. If, as Gernet posits, "the opposition between lowlands and highlands is probably the dominant feature of the rural history of China...