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146 Journal of Chinese Religions The Life of the Buddha: Woodblock Illustrated Books in China and Korea TSAI SUEY-LING 蔡穗玲. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol.76. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012. 314 pages. ISBN 978-3-447-06621-1. €78.00 paperback. Based on her 2004 Heidelberg dissertation, Tsai Suey-ling’s book proposes a meticulous reconstruction of the origins and filiation of Chinese and some Korean versions of woodblockprinted illustrated hagiographies of the Buddha. Starting with the earliest compilation, completed in 1425, most versions are titled Shishi yuanliu 釋氏源流, which Tsai translates as The Origins and Transmission of Śākya’s House. Compiled and published by Baocheng 寶成, an otherwise unrecorded Ningbo 寧波 monk at the Nanjing 南京 monastery Da Bao’ensi 大報恩寺 (Grand Monastery of Requiting Grace), the original book contains 400 illustrations matched with appropriate excerpts from various sutras and other written sources (even Daoist). Evenly divided into two juan 卷, the first half of the book treats events in the life of the historical Buddha and the transmission of his teachings in India, while the second part traces the evolution of the Buddhist church in China through the Yuan 元 dynasty.1 Compared to earlier pictorial presentations of the Buddha’s life in paintings and carved stones, Shishi yuanliu is far more detailed, and its illustrated history of Chinese Buddhism is unprecedented. Later versions of the book differ in the number and configuration of pictures and texts, ranging from 208 to 410 illustrated events. These works were never part of the official Buddhist canon but were “autonomous” “didactic” books (p. 14), which now are treated as, variously, “art objects, religious documents, or as examples of premodern media technology” (pp. 11–12). In a short introduction, Tsai sets out the aims of her prodigious investigation, which are to sort out relationships among Chinese and Korean woodblock-printed illustrated hagiographies of the Buddha, evaluate their artistic qualities, and determine when and for what purposes they were created. After enumerating her examples, she briefly reviews previous scholarship, focusing primarily on bibliographical issues. She describes her own methodology as “book history approach and art history,” by which she means careful visual examination of extant versions (inventoried in Appendix A) and interpretation of their various prefaces, postfaces, colophons, and seals.2 The Introduction also establishes Tsai’s usage of three key terms: “compilation” 1 Baocheng’s revised and expanded version of 1434-1436 adds episodes bringing the history of the Buddhist church into the early Ming period (pp. 138-140); by contrast, prince Yongshan’s 永珊 much shorter compilation of 1794 ends with the dream of Han emperor Mingdi 漢明帝, and it is organized into four ce 冊 rather than two juan (pp. 203, 215). 2 Readers unfamiliar with the arcane terminology of xylography would benefit from the straightforward definitions in David Helliwell, “The Repair and Binding of Old Chinese Books,” East Asian Library Journal 8 no. 1 (Spring 1998), pp. 42-46. Book Reviews 147 (versions differing from one another in contents or arrangement), “edition” (sets of carved woodblocks, one or more per compilation), and “impression” (imprints made from a set of blocks, on demand, sometimes long after carving). The four chapters that follow are devoted to successive compilations, whose contents she itemizes in separate Appendices: Baocheng’s initial production, created 1422–1425, with 400 pictures and texts, referred to throughout the study as “Baocheng I” (chapter 1); his revised and expanded version of 1434–1436, with 410 illustrated events, called “Baocheng II” (chapter 2); a reformatted and more luxurious rendition of Baocheng I with a 1486-dated preface by the Chenghua 成化 emperor, published by the Ming 明 palace, called “Baocheng III” (chapter 3); and a version with just 208 scenes that omits the evolution of the Buddhist church, compiled from 1787 to 1794 by the Manchu prince Yongshan 永珊 and published in 1808 by prince Yufeng 裕豐, called Shijia rulai yinghua shiji 釋迦如來應化事蹟 (rendered as Events during and Traces from the Incarnation of Tathāgata Śākya) (chapter 4). The chapters follow the same basic template, first reconstructing and discussing the first edition of each compilation, under the subheadings “Impressions,” “Description,” “Narrative Inscriptions,” “History,” “Texts,” “Illustrations,” and “Intentions”; and then treating any subsequent editions under many of the same headings. A short conclusion summarizes...

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