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  • Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon ed. by Jiang Wu and Lucille Chia
  • Elizabeth Morrison (bio)
Jiang Wu and Lucille Chia, editors. Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, Sheng Yen Series in Chinese Buddhist Studies. New York: Columbia, 2015. xx, 405 pp. Hardcover $75.00, ISBN 978-0-231-17160-1. E-book $74.99, ISBN 978-0-231-54019-3.

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Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia is an ambitious treatment of a crucial subject. Although we often refer to the Chinese Buddhist canon in the singular, it exists in many editions and forms, from manuscript to stone to print. This volume takes on the full historical range of the Chinese Buddhist canon, from the first known translations of Buddhist texts into Chinese in the second century to the initial attempt a few centuries later to catalogue Buddhist texts to the contemporary electronic Tripitaka project of the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA) based in Taiwan. In addition to the canon's inherent importance as a major body of religious literature, the process of its emergence represents a major aspect of the process by which the Buddhist tradition took root in China.

This volume on the Chinese Buddhist canon is, simply put, essential reading for anyone concerned with the study of East Asian Buddhism. It also has much to offer for others as well, especially those interested in canon formation, state–religion relations, and the history of printing. Depending on one's needs, it may serve as a reference work, a volume to be pored over from cover to cover, or both.

For those of us who research and teach from the Chinese Buddhist canon, this volume offers the experience of walking into a library complex one often uses, only to encounter a number of specialized guides. These guides introduce the deep history of the complex (and precursors lost to war or neglect), point out architectural details never before noticed or understood, and lead the way into rooms never before glimpsed. They also tell stories of monastics, laypeople, emperors, officials, scholars, scribes, woodblock carvers, printers, and artists, bringing to life not only these people but also the intricate and varied political, social, cultural, economic, and religious motives and circumstances at work throughout the long history of the canon.

Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia represents the collaboration of two editors especially well prepared to take on the topic of the Chinese Buddhist canon. Jiang Wu is a leading scholar of Chinese Buddhism, and Lucille Chia is an expert in Chinese print history. The volume includes a preface by Lewis Lancaster, four sets of chapters organized by issue or period, an appendix by Li Fuhua and He Mei surveying printed editions of the canon, and an appendix by the late Aming Tu, translated by Xin Zi, describing the CBETA project. Notably, the contributors range from eminent senior scholars to junior scholars and reflect the strength of East Asian Buddhist studies in East Asia, Europe, and North America. Their contributions vary considerably in the ratio of broad intellectual questions to technical and historical details, but as a whole, the volume does a very good job of combining the large-scale questions of canon formation and the smaller-scale questions of particular editions.

The first set of chapters, following a helpful introduction by the editors, consists of two excellent chapters by Jiang Wu. In the first, he addresses the issues at play in defining the Chinese Buddhist canon: Is it singular? Is it [End Page 414] Chinese? Is it a canon? He also takes up overarching concerns, including its relation to Indian Buddhist text collections and the common scholarly characterization of the Chinese Buddhist canon as "open," which he disputes. In the second, Wu describes a "cult of the canon," connected to the Mahäyäna "cult of the book." Included among these devotions are some fascinating innovations. Wu narrates, for example, the rise of the "revolving repository," a bookcase for the canon that could be rotated or circumambulated. He also describes the appearance of a...

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