The Cultural Practices of Chinese Buddhism: Attuning the Dharma by Francesca Tarocco (review)

198 Journal of Chinese Religions “free-floating” or “leisurely”). I have since been converted to Benjamin Elman’s rendering of the title as “Remaining Points on Dream Interpretation,” as it fits very well with the alreadymentioned intention of bringing order to the unsystematic world of dreams. 4 Elman’s translation should at least been have been mentioned as an alternative, irrespective of the crucial question whether zhi 旨 should be “principles,” “points,” or “references.” Overall it must be said that this otherwise useful book adopts a rather too self-absorbed attitude and often simply ignores just those issues that should stimulate our curiosity. Sinology should not be satisfied with “lofty translations.” MICHAEL LACKNER, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg The Cultural Practices of Chinese Buddhism: Attuning the Dharma FRANCESCA TAROCCO. London & New York: Routledge, 2007. xii, 183 pages. ISBN 978-0-415-37503-0. US$ 150.00 hardcover. The development of Buddhist art and music, literature and publishing during the twentieth century has so far received little scholarly attention. Francesca Tarocco attempts to fill this gap by presenting her brief overview of The Cultural Practices of Chinese Buddhism during the first half of the twentieth century. Her main contention “is that Buddhism was more relevant to people’s lives during the Republican period than is usually acknowledged, and deserves more attention than it has so far received from scholars of modern China” (p. 25). The book is divided into an introduction and two parts: Part 1 deals with “The cultural practices of Buddhist modernity”, and part 2 is titled “The sound of modern Buddhism.” In her introduction, Tarocco attempts a critical assessment of past research on modern Chinese Buddhism, pointing out various misconceptions which have prevented scholars from recognizing the cultural importance of Buddhism in modern China. The author seeks to “eschew accepted dichotomies of modern versus traditional, revival versus decline, reformist monks versus traditional monks” by “placing Chinese Buddhists … firmly within their sociocultural and historical context, and focusing on what I call ‘cultural practices,’ including printing and music-making” (p. 15). She attempts to reconstruct in this book the “multi-vocal, multi-dimensional conversation about Buddhism” (p. 2) that took place in early Republican China. Her analysis is “based on the reading of a diverse range of printed matter, including 4 Benjamin Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 329. Book Reviews 199 largely untapped printed sources,” and “looking at images, including photographs and drawings” (p. 18). Although various activities and institutions are mentioned, the real focus of part 1 is the publishing and printing activities of Buddhists in Republican-era Shanghai. There are brief accounts of the work of the artist Feng Zikai 豐子愷, the role of the lay Buddhist Yang Wenhui 楊文會, and the writer Su Manshu 蘇曼殊. The author traces the development of book printing and the publication of periodicals by Buddhists during this period, mentioning many astonishing facts. In part 2, Tarocco analyses how Chinese Buddhists reacted to and were influenced by the new, predominantly Western forces on the musical landscape during the first part of the twentieth century—“a time when all strata of society listened to and experimented with modern songs” (p. 121). Focusing on the works of the famous monk Hongyi 弘一 (Li Shutong 李叔同), the chapters elucidate the interplay between the complex factors which contributed to create that distinct kind of Buddhist singing and musical performance characteristic of contemporary Chinese Buddhism. This study will help to understand important aspects of contemporary Chinese Buddhist cultural activities, especially in Taiwan, within their historical context. However, appearing in the Critical Studies in Buddhism series, this study should have paid more attention to problems of theory and method in order to be really critical. Though containing a wealth of information and intriguing observations, the content of the loosely connected chapters does not really add up to a convincing argument. The problem that earlier generations of scholars seemingly overlooked or misinterpreted the scope and influence of the cultural aspects of modern Chinese Buddhism is not merely a result of cultural or personal bias, or of insufficient observation. It was also caused by the perspective and focus provided by the conceptual tools chosen. Although the...