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ii Preface This book began as a study of mainstream Mahāyāna Buddhism as it was practiced on the ground in Silla Korea. In pursuing this course of research I originally intended it as a counterbalance to the detailed descriptions of scholastic Buddhism available on Silla Korea because I had long been fascinated by the anecdotes and narratives about the devotional practices performed by both eminent Buddhist monks and lay Buddhists in Korea during the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla periods (traditional dates, 57 b.c.e.–935 c.e.). Because of the scarcity of early Korean primary sources, I sought to combine work in areas of Buddhist studies that particularly interested me: Sinitic Buddhist hagiography and Korean Buddhist thought, especially exegeses associated to the Maitreya and Amitābha cults that are traditionally labeled Pure Land Buddhism. In seeking to understand the East Asian historical context of the origins of Buddhist institutions and mainstream practices in Silla, I became convinced that Silla Buddhism preserved and further developed many attributes of Buddhism under the Chinese Northern dynasties (ca. 317–589), despite the protestations of certain literary sources that their legitimacy derived from the Southern dynasties. Furthermore, my participation on the translation team associated with the forthcoming CollectedWorksofWŏnhyo Project for nearly all of the past decade caused me to question the utility of the academic discourse on “schools” as a useful methodology in explaining the nature of medieval Sinitic (that is, Chinese and Korean) Buddhism. The Silla monk Wŏnhyo (617–686), for instance, wrote essays crossing the full gamut of Buddhist sūtra literature and participated in a shared Sinitic discourse on intellectual Buddhism with Chinese colleagues. I became increasingly convinced that he belonged to no school in particular and that it would do harm to the evidence to suggest that he was the founder of his own school of Buddhist thought. Buddhist scholar-monks, whom I prefer to describe as exegetes, assuredly existed in Silla, as they did in medieval China, but iii Preface they were not strictly affiliated with particular schools—a fact becoming progressively more evident in studies on medieval China as well. Also, it became increasingly clear that many exegetes were enamored by the conceptions of reality and practice on the bodhisattva path promoted by the AvataṃsakaSūtra or FlowerGarlandSūtra: Hwaŏm Buddhism. If the sectarian-oriented schools approach was not fruitful, what bound Sinitic Buddhism together? The answer was found in the anecdotes preserved in Buddhist hagiography and in epigraphy: the cults of buddhas and bodhisattvas. Originally my research also included treatments of Buddhist spells (dhāraṇī) and thaumaturgy and the cult of Amitābha. To do justice to these topics, however, I will have to set them aside for another occasion. Although coverage has been curtailed in this respect, it has been expanded on the other hand to encompass the entirety of Buddhism in the Silla period, roughly the fifth through the tenth centuries c.e. It had previously concluded at the end of the eighth century, when Silla’s hereditary aristocracy wrested the kingship of Silla from Kim Ch’unch’u’s line in 780. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of my academic advisers at the University of California, Los Angeles, for their guidance , support, and fellowship during the course of my graduate studies there. I am particularly grateful to Robert E. Buswell, Jr., John B. Duncan , William M. Bodiford, and Richard von Glahn, the four readers on the dissertation to which this book owes its origins. I will be satisfied if my work even partially emulates the superb model of scholarship each of them has provided. I would also like to recognize the influence of Gregory Schopen, who arrived at UCLA while I was in the process of writing my dissertation. His emphasis on sources for the study of Buddhism on the ground, as well as appropriate models of scholarship on topics of religion in the West, has been an enduring benefit to my research and methodology. I would also like to thank Kim Sang-hyun of Dongguk University for offering valuable comments and for alerting me to certain key studies that have had important bearing on my research. His examinations of Silla’s Buddhist culture and the Hwaŏm tradition have been the most influential in the formation of my views, although I do not always agree with his interpretations. Several individuals have also read portions of...

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