Christianity ed. by Zhuo Xinping (review)

Neigh Bodhisattva” (Maming Pusa 馬鳴菩薩), is deliberately woven into this tapestry in the Tang dynasty and beyond. Young’s greatest contribution in this chapter is his push back against simplistic elite/popular dichotomies in the secondary scholarship on Aśvaghoṣa. Japanese scholars like Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨 (1869– 1948) wanted to draw a bright line between Aśvaghoṣa the Indian patriarch (a figure venerable to elite and educated Buddhists) and Aśvaghoṣa the silkworm god, appealing to “folk” devotees.3 Young shows how “both scholar-monks and sericulturists shared agency in Aśvaghoṣa’s Chinese transformation … Aśvaghoṣa’s hagiographic and ritual imagery simultaneously trickled down and bubbled up, with the concerns of the clergy and the laity, educated literati and silk producers alike infusing his silkworm persona” (p. 215). Chapter 6, “Buddhist Saints to Bridge the Sino-Indian Divide,” discusses the different valences of the term “bodhisattva.” On the one hand, we have cosmic bodhisattvas like Avalokiteśvara and Amitābha—grand savior figures who create and inhabit entire worlds. On the other hand, our Indian patriarchs are also bodhisattvas. These figures serve to “bridge” the divide between the sacred antiquity of Buddhist India and the apocalyptic present of Buddhist China. Young draws here from Peter Brown, showing how the Indian patriarchs were “variously imitable and inimitable, serving in some contexts as objects of veneration, in others as models of emulation, and sometimes as both at once” (p. 240). Young’s volume concludes with three appendices, containing translations of hagiographies and ritual manuals for Āryadeva and Aśvaghoṣa. Through the vicissitudes of these Indian patriarchs, Young reveals an exciting dynamism in medieval Chinese religion. This is not the world of our Sinification-obsessed scholarly forebears, a place where “Buddhism” is either conquering or being conquered by “China.” Young’s medieval China is a far more interesting place: a world where Chinese Buddhists are constantly deploying new texts, new rituals, and new appropriations of Indian materials. The diverse range of evidence and its sheer vitality tell us not about a stable Indian past, but about a vibrant and ever-transforming Chinese present. Stuart Young is to be congratulated for drawing deeply from his own repertoires of theory, philology, and sensitive historiography to present a new and compelling vision of medieval Chinese Buddhism. This volume should be on the bookshelf of any scholar of Chinese religion. RYAN RICHARD OVERBEY Wesleyan University ZHUO XINPING, ed., Christianity. Trans. Chi Zhen and Caroline Mason. Religious Studies in Contemporary China Collection, vol. 3. Leiden: Brill, 2013. xxxi, 422 pp. €161, US$209 (hb). ISBN 978-90-04-17452-8 This is a highly valuable volume of selected articles on Christianity written by Chinese authors translated into English. As the third book in the new series “Religious Studies in Contemporary China Collection,” co-advised by Ryan Dunch 3 Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨, Bukkyō daijiten 佛教大辞典, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Bukkyō daijiten hakkōjo 佛教大辞典発行所, 1931–1963), 4862a–4863c. 208 BOOK REVIEWS (Alberta) and Chloë Starr (Yale), it provides insight into the evolving field of Christian Studies in Mainland China, a phenomenon, that, in spite of its actual productivity and relevance in China, has only been marginally perceived by either Western studies on Christianity or by Sinology. A main reason has surely been the language gap. It is therefore the special merit of the translators, Chi Zhen and Caroline Mason, as well as the two above-mentioned series-advisors, to have undertaken this painstaking effort of making these articles accessible to a wider Western readership. The choice of pieces is explained by Starr and Dunch in their helpful introduction. As a first step, they selected an already existing Chinese volume published by the Ethnic Publishing House (Minzu chubanshe 民族出版社, Peking) in 2008 in the series “Selected Studies of Contemporary Chinese Religions” (Dangdai Zhongguo zongjiao yanjiu jingxuan congshu 當代中國宗教研究精選叢書). This original volume contains altogether 24 pieces by Mainland Chinese scholars that, according to the editor Zhuo Xinping 卓新平, offer a representative overview of the field of Christian studies (cf. Zhuo’s preface, p. 3, both in the original and the translation). For various reasons, such as earlier translations of some pieces, the English series advisors decided not to translate the whole 580...