Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan

C. Pierce Salguero, Andrew Macomber (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

264 Seiten

2020
University of Hawai'i Press (Verlag)
978-0-8248-8121-4 (ISBN)

Infos

From its inception in northeastern India in the first millennium BCE, the Buddhist tradition has advocated a range of ideas and practices that were said to ensure health and well-being. As the religion developed and spread to other parts of Asia, healing deities were added to its pantheon, monastic institutions became centers of medical learning, and healer-monks gained renown for their mastery of ritual and medicinal therapeutics. In China, imported Buddhist knowledge contended with a sophisticated, state-supported system of medicine that was able to retain its influence among the elite. Further afield in Japan, where Chinese Buddhism and Chinese medicine were introduced simultaneously as part of the country's adoption of civilization from the "Middle Kingdom," the two were reconciled by individuals who deemed them compatible. In East Asia, Buddhist healing would remain a site of intercultural tension and negotiation. While participating in transregional networks of circulation and exchange, Buddhist clerics practiced locally specific blends of Indian and indigenous therapies and occupied locally defined social positions as religious and medical specialists.

In this diverse and compelling collection, an international group of scholars analyzes the historical connections between Buddhism and healing in medieval China and Japan. They focus on the transnationally conveyed aspects of Buddhist healing traditions as they moved across geographic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Simultaneously, their work also investigates the local instantiations of these ideas and practices as they were reinvented, altered, and re-embedded in specific social and institutional contexts. Investigating the interplay between the macro and micro, the global and the local, this book demonstrates the richness of Buddhist healing as a way to explore the history of cross-cultural exchange.

Autor

C. Pierce Salguero is associate professor of Asian history and religious studies at Penn State University's Abington College. Andrew Macomber is assistant professor of East Asian religions at Oberlin College.Zhiru, a Buddhist Nun ordained in the Chinese tradition, received her M.A. from the University of Michigan and holds a doctorate in East Asian Buddhism from the University of Arizona. She has authored a number of articles on medieval Chinese Buddhist cults and contemporary Buddhism in Taiwan. She is currently professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Pomona College.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheinungsdatum: 01.09.2020
• Co-Autor: Anna Andreeva, Catherine Despeux, Andrew Macomber
• Zusatzinfo: 10 colour, 5 black & white illustrations
• Verlagsort: Honolulu, HI
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 152 x 229 mm
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Buddhismus
• Themenwelt: Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Geschichte / Ethik der Medizin
• ISBN-10: 0-8248-8121-4 / 0824881214
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8248-8121-4 / 9780824881214
• Zustand: Neuware