The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Blackwell Companions to Religion
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1169

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Comprising the most up-to-date, interdisciplinary research on the study of Chinese religious beliefs and cultural practices, this volume explores the rich and complex religious and philosophical traditions that have developed and flourished in one of the world's oldest civilizations. * Covers the main Chinese traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism as well as Christianity and Islam * Features a unique organizational structure, with groups of readings focused on historical, traditions-based, and topical elements of Chinese religion * Explores a number of contemporary religious topics, including gender, nature, asceticism, material culture, and gods and spirits * Brings together a team of authors who are experts in their sub-fields, providing readers with the latest research in a rapidly growing discipline

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Religion

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Notes on Contributors

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

Chinese Dynastic History

The Study of Chinese Religion

The Traditions in the Western Imagination

“Confucianism”

“Daoism”

“Buddhism”

“Popular Religion” and Religious Syncretism

Moving Beyond the “Three Traditions”: The Structure and Organization of The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions

A Note on the Chinese Language and Chinese Names

PART I: Historical Survey

CHAPTER 2 Chinese Religion in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties

The Mythic Origins of Chinese Civilization

The Shang Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty

The Confucians

The Daoists

The Six Schools

CHAPTER 3 Chinese Religion from the Han to the Six Dynasties

Han Imperial Religion

The Emergence of Daoism

The Integration of Buddhism

Concluding Remarks

CHAPTER 4 Chinese Religion in the Sui and Tang Dynasties

Daoism

Buddhism

The Popular Religious Landscape

CHAPTER 5 Chinese Religion in the Song and Alien Dynasties

Buddhism

Daoism

Popular Religion

Conclusions

CHAPTER 6 Chinese Religion in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

The Religious Landscape of the Ming and Qing

Territorial Temples and Their Gods

The “Three Teachings”: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism

Denominational Boundaries and Ritual Expression

Local Religion vis-à-vis Religious Institutions

Conclusion

PART II: The Traditions

CHAPTER 7 The Confucian Tradition in China

Kongzi and the Analects

Mencius and the Guodian Texts

Xunzi, the Qixia Academy, and the Ru School

The Faltering Steps toward Institutionalization in the Qin and the Western Han

Confucianization in the Eastern Han and Period of Disunity

Confucianism in the Tang

The Rise of Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Yuan

Wang Yangming and Popular Confucianism in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Conclusion

CHAPTER 8 The Daoist Tradition in China

Classical Daoism

Early Organized Daoism

Later Organized Daoism

Modern Daoism

Daoist Religious Culture

Daoism as Lived and Living Tradition

CHAPTER 9 Chinese Buddhism

Early Transmission of Buddhism into China

Growth and Proliferation during the Medieval Period

Decline During the Late Imperial Period

Buddhism in Modern China

Ethical Ideals and Observances

Contemplative Practices

Doctrinal Systematization and Exegesis

Popular Devotion

Intra- and Inter-religious Interactions

CHAPTER 10 Chinese Popular Religion

Conceptual Issues

Gods, Ghosts, Ancestors, and the Cosmos

Religious Specialists

The Transmission of Religious Knowledge

Social Contexts I: Family

Social Contexts II: Local Community

Social Contexts III: Voluntary Associations

Social Contexts IV: Popular Religion and the State

CHAPTER 11 Chinese Islam

Introduction: Muslim Diversity in Contemporary China

The Classification of Muslim Identity in the Communist Era

The History of Islam in China

Islam and the State

CHAPTER 12 Chinese Christianity

Streams Within Chinese Christianity

Chinese Christianity Today: Catholicism

Chinese Christianity Today: Protestantism

Common Threads in Chinese Christianity

Conclusion: New Trends Since 2000

PART III: Critical Terms for the Study of Chinese Religions

CHAPTER 13 Sacred Text

The Chinese Word for “Sacred Text”

The Ascendance of the Written Word in China

The Oral and the Written

Canonization and Religious Identity

“Sacred Text,” “Scripture,” or “Classic”?

The Protestant Bias

Approaches to the Study of “Sacred Text”

The Ritual Context of the Longhua baojuan

Conclusion

CHAPTER 14 Religious Ritual

Chinese Interpretations of Ritual

Performative Aspects of Ritual

Ritual as Efficacious Power

Conclusion

CHAPTER 15 Material Culture

The “Stuff” of Metaphor

Truer Sight: Ritual and the “True Form” of Things

A “Body” of Ritual Work

Conclusion

CHAPTER 16 Nature

Overview of Key Concepts

Case Studies

Conclusion

CHAPTER 17 Divinity

Ancestors, Ghosts, and Gods

Philosophical Views

Chinese Philosophy and Western “Atheism”

Conclusion

CHAPTER 18 Gender

Women’s Roles and Status in the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist Traditions

Shamans and Goddesses

Female Models of Religious Attainment

CHAPTER 19 Divination

A Theoretical and Methodological Reflection

New Parameters and New Perspectives

Re-envisioning and Redescribing Chinese Divination

CHAPTER 20 Asceticism

Asceticism of the Pre-Qin Schools

Ascetic Practices Associated with the Cultivation of Immortality

Buddhist Ascetic Practice

Conclusions

CHAPTER 21 Self-Inflicted Violence

Self-Cultivation and Effective Power

Bodily Practices and Cosmic Efficacy

Late Imperial Cases of Self-Inflicted Violence

Female Chastity and Vengeful Ghosts

Conclusion

Index and Glossary of Chinese Characters

The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Religion

The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Religion series presents a collection of the most recent scholarship and knowledge about world religions. Each volume draws together newly-commissioned essays by distinguished authors in the field, and is presented in a style which is accessible to undergraduate students, as well as scholars and the interested general reader. These volumes approach the subject in a creative and forward-thinking style, providing a forum in which leading scholars in the field can make their views and research available to a wider audience.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

HB: 9781405190312

The Wiley-Blackwell companion to Chinese religions / edited by Randall L. Nadeau.

p. cm. – (Wiley-Blackwell companions to religion)

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-1-4051-9031-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. China–Religion. I. Nadeau, Randall Laird, 1956-

ISBN 978-1-4443-6143-8 (epdf)

ISBN 978-1-4443-6197-1 (epub)

ISBN 978-1-4443-6198-8 (mobi)

 BL1802.W55 2012

 299.5'1–dc23

2011046041

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Dedicated to Professor Daniel L. Overmyer, inspiring teacher and mentor, pioneering scholar—sinological studies “from the ground up.”

Notes on Contributors

Joshua Capitanio is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of the West. He is a scholar of Chinese religions, with an emphasis on issues related to ritual theory and practice during the Tang and Song Dynasties. His current research is focused on interactions between Buddhism and indigenous Chinese religious traditions such as Daoism, particularly in the realms of ritual and meditative practice. He has been a fellow at Peking University and conducted advanced graduate research there. His research interests include Chinese Buddhism and Daoism, and a dictionary of medieval Chinese vernacular translated into English.

Shin-yi Chao is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Rutgers University, Camden. She has conducted research on various topics related to Daoism and popular religion in China. Her publications include Daoist Ritual, State Religion, and Popular Practices: Zhenwu Worship from Song to Ming (960–1644) and articles on Chinese popular religion in traditional and modern periods, the Daoist examination system, and Daoist temple networks in early twelfth century China.

Philip Clart is professor of Chinese Culture and History at the University of Leipzig, Germany. His main research areas are popular religion and new religious movements in Taiwan, religious change in Taiwan and China, and literature and religions of the late imperial period. His monographs include Han Xiangzi: The Alchemical Adventures of a Daoist Immortal and Die Religionen Chinas. He has co-edited Religion in Modern Taiwan: Tradition and Innovation in a Changing Society and The People and the Dao: New Studies of Chinese Religions in Honour of Daniel L. Overmyer. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Chinese Religions, T’oung Pao, the Journal of Ritual Studies, and Ethnologies.

Paul Copp is assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. His research interests center on Chinese Buddhism in the Tang, Five Dynasties, and Northern Song periods. He has recently completed a book manuscript on Buddhist incantation and amulet practice in the Tang, entitled Incantatory Bodies: Material Incantation and Efficacy in Chinese Buddhism, 600–1000. Currently, he is at work on a new book project on Buddhist manuscript culture in ninth and tenth century Dunhuang, as well as on smaller studies of Buddhist exegetical practice in the Tang and Northern Song.

Ryan Dunch is an associate professor of History and Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Alberta. He is the author of Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857–1927, as well as articles and book chapters related to the past and present of Christianity in Chinese society. His principal current research focus is missionary publishing in Chinese before 1911. He serves as one of the editors of H-ASIA, an international listserv for specialists in Asian history and studies.

Stephen Eskildsen is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. He is the author of Asceticism in Early Taoist Religion and The Teachings and Practices of the Early Quanzhen Taoist Masters, as well as articles on Taoist mysticism and inner alchemy. His current research pertains to the sensory and physical phenomena of Taoist meditation. He offers courses on Chinese Religion and comparative mysticism and ascetic practices.

James D. Frankel is assistant professor of Religion at the University of Hawai‘i at Mnoa. His research centers on the history of Islam in China, a field that draws upon and informs his scholarly interests in the comparative history of ideas, and religious and cultural syncretism. He is the author of Rectifying God’s Name: Liu Zhi’s Translation of Monotheism and Islamic Ritual Law in Neo-Confucian China, which examines Chinese Islamic scholarship and literature of the early Qing period. He teaches courses in Islam, comparative religion, and mysticism.

Beata Grant is professor of Chinese and Religious Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests include female monasticism in China, Chinese women’s writing, and popular religious literature. Her articles have appeared in Late Imperial China and the Journal of Chinese Religions, and she was editor of and contributor to a special two-issue volume of Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China on the theme of religion and gender in China. Her most recent publications include Eminent Women: Buddhist Nuns of Seventeenth-Century China and, with Wilt. L. Idema, Escape from Blood Pond Hell: The Tales of Mulian and Woman Huang.

Guo Jue teaches at Western Michigan University and specializes in early China, from the Warring States period to the Han, with a focus on practice and beliefs, particularly on a popular level that is not associated with traditional and institutionalized religions. Her research utilizes recently discovered archaeological materials including tomb objects and texts along with historically transmitted literature. She has published “Concepts of Death and the Afterlife Reflected in Newly Discovered Tomb Objects and Texts from Han China” (in Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought) and is currently working on a book entitled Facing Illness: Practices of Divination and Sacrifice in Warring States Chu China. She teaches courses on Chinese religious traditions; thematic courses on afterlife, divination, and healing from a comparative perspective; and method and theory courses focusing on non-Western traditions.

Thomas Jansen is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David (Lampeter Campus) and director of the Confucius Institute in Lampeter. His research interests include courtly culture in early medieval China and the uses of popular religious scriptures between 1550 and 1949. He is the author of Höfische Öffentlichkeit im frühmittelalterlichen China: Debatten im Salon des Prinzen Xiao Ziliang and a number of articles on early medieval history and culture. Currently, he is co-editing a volume on Chinese religions and globalization since 1800.

Keith N. Knapp is professor of History and Chair of the History Department at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. His research centers on the articulation and transmission of Confucian values and what they disclose about the social and cultural life of China’s early medieval era. He is particularly interested in moral stories, rituals, iconography, material culture, historiography, and education. He is the author of Selfless Offspring: Filial Children and Social Order in Medieval China and a number of articles published in journals and edited volumes on parental authority, ancestor worship, filial cannibalism, and Confucian commoners.

Louis Komjathy is assistant professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego and research associate in the Institute of Religion, Science, and Social Studies at Shandong University. He is also founding co-director of the Center for Daoist Studies and founding co-chair of the Daoist Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion. He has published three books: Title Index to Daoist Collections; Cultivating Perfection: Mysticism and Self-transformation in Early Quanzhen Daoism; and Handbooks for Daoist Practice.

Mark Meulenbeld is assistant professor of East Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His research focuses on the interaction between the institutional tradition of Daoism and local religious traditions in various Chinese regions. In order to explore this interactive relationship, he uses a wide variety of sources, ranging from literature and historiography to ritual manuals and material culture. He is currently finishing his first book manuscript, entitled Rethinking the Novel: Exorcism, Community, and Vernacular Narrative in Late Imperial China. His next project will be based on almost a decade of fieldwork in Hunan and on Taiwan.

James Miller is associate professor of Chinese Studies in the School of Religion and Cultural Studies Program at Queen’s University, Canada. His sinological work has focused on the medieval Daoist religious movement known as the Way of Highest Clarity. More broadly he researches the ways in which religions imagine human relations with the natural world and influence human behavior toward the natural environment. He has published four books on these topics, including, most recently, The Way of Highest Clarity: Nature, Vision and Revelation in Medieval China.

Randall Nadeau is Chair of the Department of Religion and Professor of East Asian Religions at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. He has published research on popular religious literature, deity cults, and folk religion in both China and Japan, as well as methodology in the study of religion, as applied especially to Buddhism and popular religious movements. His book on Confucianism and Taoism treats these two major religions as aspects of a single religious tradition. He is currently working on a book on religions of India, China, and Japan as philosophical and ritual responses to contemporary global concerns. He offers courses on Chinese and Japanese religions, and approaches to the study of religion. In the past two years he has lectured on theory and method in the study of religion at eight Chinese universities.

Mario Poceski is associate professor of Buddhist studies and Chinese Religions at the University of Florida. He has studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as Komazawa University, Japan, Stanford University, and the National University of Singapore. A specialist in the history of Chinese Buddhism, his latest book is Ordinary Mind as the Way: The Hongzhou School and the Growth of Chan Buddhism. His publications also include two other books and a number of articles and chapters on various aspects of Buddhist studies. Presently he is writing a book that surveys the history of Chinese religions, editing a volume on East and Inner Asian Buddhism, and working on several projects on Chinese Buddhist literature and history.

Gil Raz is associate professor of Religion at Dartmouth College. He has conducted three years of field work in Taiwan, working closely with a Daoist priest. His research ranges from medieval Chinese religion to contemporary Daoist practice. His book Emergence of Daoism: Creation of Tradition examines the appearance and development of Daoism in medieval China. His other publications include studies of Daoist sexual practice, the interface between divination and Daoist ritual, and the theory of ritual. He is currently completing a book manuscript that examines the formation of the Daoist religious tradition between the second and fifth centuries CE. He offers courses on Chinese Daoism, Buddhism, and apocalyptic literature.

Julius N. Tsai is a foreign service officer with the United States Department of State. His research areas have included ritual action and ritual change; religious biographies; the formation of religious identity; secrecy in religions; and the relationship between religion and empire. His current research explores Daoist geomantic practices as part of a larger inquiry into ritual efficacy in China.

Jimmy Yu is Sheng Yen Assistant Professor of Chinese Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Florida State University. His research interests center on the cultural history of Buddhism and Chinese religions, including the history of the body, material culture, scholarly representations of Chan/Zen Buddhism, and popular religious movements within the broader context of fifteenth to seventeenth century China. His forthcoming book, Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500–1700, features four distinct extreme bodily practices that cross religious and sectarian boundaries. His second book project is on the formation of a new Chan Buddhist lineage of Dharma Drum Mountain and the thought of Sheng Yen, who was one of the leading figures of contemporary Chinese Buddhism.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Randall Nadeau,

Trinity University

Chinese Dynastic History

Mythic and Prehistorical PeriodXiac. 2200–c. 1600 BCEShangc. 1600–c. 1100 BCEClassical PeriodZhou    Western Zhou    Eastern Zhou       Spring and Autumn period       Warring States periodc. 1100–249 BCEImperial PeriodQin 221–207 BCE Han 206 BCE–220 CEThree Kingdoms Period of North–South Division Six Dynasties220–589Sui 581–618 Tang618–907Song960–1279Yuan1271–1368Ming1368–1643Qing1644–1911Modern PeriodRepublic of China 1911– People’s Republic of China1949–

The Study of Chinese Religion

The Western encounter with Chinese religion began with the Jesuit “conquest” of China in the sixteenth century. Prior to this, it is difficult to find any references to Chinese religion as a distinct entity, even within China itself. This is because religion—arguably all religion, but we will limit our discussion to religion in China—is indistinguishable from wider cultural elements, and its conceptual isolation is a relatively recent (and peculiarly Western) phenomenon.

The first Western missionaries saw “Chinese religion” in reference to Christianity, and identified particular cultural forms that were already familiar to them: worship practices (offerings and sacrifice), institutional organizations (housed in monasteries and temples), a spirit world (gods, ghosts, and ancestors), ethical values and philosophies (usually identified with Confucianism, Daoism, or Buddhism), and a textual tradition (of scriptures or holy books parallel to the scriptures of all the “great religions”). But in the late imperial and modern periods, when Western missionaries and scholars had very little access to religion as actually practiced in China, Chinese religion was identified more and more with its elite forms, and in particular with the textual traditions of the “three religions.” Consequently, one of the most significant achievements of the modern study of Chinese religion was the translation of the religious classics into English, as part of Max Müller’s “Sacred Books of the East” project (fifty volumes published between 1879 and 1910). Four of these volumes were dedicated to “the texts of Confucianism,” all translated by the Victorian missionary scholar James Legge (1815–1897):

Vol. 3. The Shû King [Shujing: Book of History]. The religious portions of the Shih King [Shijing: Book of Odes]. The Hsiâo King [Xiaojing: Classic of Filial Piety].Vol. 16. The Yi King [Yijing: Book of Changes].Vol. 27. The Lî Kî [Liji: Book of History], part 1 of 2.Vol. 28. The Lî Kî, part 2 of 2.

Some ten years earlier (1865), Legge had already translated The Chinese Classics in Five Volumes, including Lunyuü (The Analects), Daxue (The Great Learning), and Zhongyong (The Doctrine of the Mean), all attributed to Confucius; Mengzi (The Book of Mencius); and Shijing (the Book of Poetry) and Shujing (the Book of History), said to have been “edited” by Confucius.

Legge was also the translator of two volumes of “the sacred books of the East” dedicated to “the texts of Taoism”:

Vol. 39. The Tâo the king [Daode jing]. The writings of Kwang-tze [Zhuangzi], books I–XVII.Vol. 40. The Writings of Kwang Tse, books XVII–XXXIII, The Thâi-Shang Tractate of Actions and their Retributions [Taishang ganying pian], other Taoist texts, and the index to vols. 39 and 40.

In addition, one volume included translations by Samuel Beal (1825–1889) of Chinese Buddhist texts:

Vol. 19. The Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king [Foshuo xingcan jing: Sutra on the Footsteps of the Buddha], a Life of Buddha, by Ashvaghosha, Bodhisattva; Translated from Sanskrit into Chinese by Dharmaraksha, A. D. 420.

It is difficult to underestimate the impact of these translations on the Western understanding of Chinese culture and religion, and the scholarly legacy of James Legge in particular has been far-reaching. For one thing, it identified Chinese religion with its texts or scriptures, placing them on a par with the Holy Bible of the Western Abrahamic traditions. In addition, it canonized certain of those texts as foundational for each of the Chinese traditions. For the Confucian tradition, these were the “four books and five classics” that had been identified by the Song Dynasty neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi as the basis for the imperial examinations. For the Daoist tradition, Legge chose the Daode jing and the Zhuangzi, but also included several other scattered works from the Daoist canon, some alchemical and some hagiographic. A whole generation of scholars after Legge saw the Analects, the Daode jing, and the Zhuangzi, in particular, as the holy books of Confucianism and Daoism, and the basis for understanding Confucianism and Daoism as religions. Even a hundred years later, the Western popular imagination equates Daoism with the mystical philosophy of the Daode jing.

The second generation of sinologists (from the 1930s to the Second World War) were also textual scholars. Based on translations of Chinese scriptures, classics, dynastic histories, and other canonical works, these scholars composed the first comprehensive histories of China’s “three religions”:

Herbert Giles (1845–1935)Henri Doré (1859–1931)Lionel Giles (1875–1958)Paul Pelliot (1878–1945)Henri Maspero (1883–1945)Marcel Granet (1884–1940)Arthur Waley (1889–1966)Homer Dubs (1892–1969)Paul Demiéville (1894–1979)Wolfram Eberhard (1909–1989)Holmes Welch (1924–1981)

Representing a more anthropological approach to the study of Chinese religion in China’s late Imperial period was J. J. M. de Groot (1854–1921), professor of sino-logy at the University of Leiden. Though certainly well-versed in China’s classical literature, which he used to contextualize what he observed on the ground, de Groot was primarily an ethnographer, and his six-volume Religious System of China (1892–1910) was based upon fieldwork conducted in Amoy (present-day Xiamen) and the Fujian countryside. In a series of lectures he delivered at Hartford Theological Seminary (around 1907), he began with the religion of the people. His first lectures were on “universalistic animism,” “specters,” and “ancestral worship,” only later turning to Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Even then, his lecture on Confucianism departs significantly from a text-based approach to the tradition, with discussion of the state (or imperial) religion (albeit based partly on the Han Dynasty Book of Rites), of popular temple-based religion, of burial practices and ancestor worship, and of popular religious deities, their images, and their histories.

Among the anthropologists working in China in the pre-Second World War period and immediately thereafter, mention must be made of Francis Hsü (Under the Ancestors’ Shadow, 1948) and C. K. Yang (Religion in Chinese Society, 1961). Hsü, a student of Bronislaw Malinowski, taught at Yunnan University, Cornell University, and Northwestern University, and conducted fieldwork in southwest China from 1940 to 1944. Yang, a professor of sociology at Lingnan University (Guangzhou), Harvard University, and the University of Pittsburgh, based his study on fieldwork conducted in the People’s Republic of China from 1948 to 1951. Their two works, on the ancestral cult and on “diffused religion versus institutional religion,” were landmarks in the social and anthropological study of Chinese religion in the contemporary period.

The third generation of Western-trained anthropologists were severely curtailed in their work by social and political upheaval in China, and were largely forced to conduct their ethnographic research in Taiwan (especially in the 1960s and 1970s), which was heralded as a repository of traditional Chinese culture. Nonetheless, they set the standard for ethnography of Chinese religion, with detailed studies that have now been replicated on the mainland. In addition, a number of scholars, primarily British, conducted fieldwork in Hong Kong and the New Territories during the period between the Second World War and the repatriation of Hong Kong to the mainland.

Today, scholars are trained in both sinology (textual studies) and ethnography, and combine elements of both. Leading lights of this integrated approach are Daniel Overmyer, a scholar of folk religious movements, and Kristopher Schipper, a Daoist scholar who was himself ordained as a Zhengyi Daoist priest. The study of Chinese religion today, especially Daoism, is multidisciplinary and tightly focused, favoring “micro-histories” of particular communities, religious movements, and contemporary religious trends.

The Traditions in the Western Imagination

The paradigm of religious identity that Western scholars have followed for generations is one of distinct beliefs and practices associated with discrete religious institutions. We tend to view “religions” in contrast with one another, such that even Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, despite their common origins, are seen as three distinct, often conflicting, religious traditions. This model has been extended to the “world religions,” often at the peril of failing to recognize multiple religious identities, syncretistic beliefs and practices, and religious borrowing and interpenetration that is in fact more characteristic of religious life as actually practiced throughout the course of human history.

This paradigm dominates the history of Western scholarship on Chinese religion, with its conventional demarcation of “three religions” (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) and, more recently, “popular religion.” Certainly, Chinese themselves—especially at the most elite institutional levels—have sometimes seen these traditions as separate entities and we can view them as such as a point of departure, but this has not been the norm for the vast majority of religious practitioners across the centuries, who have not identified themselves as “believers” of one in opposition to the other two. Indeed, if the question were posed to most Chinese, they would respond that their religious beliefs and ritual practices are informed significantly by all three traditions, and would be hard-pressed to distinguish between them. In this introduction, we will first examine how Western scholars have understood the three traditions and provide brief overviews of each; then, we will turn to the more integrative approach of this volume.

“Confucianism”

In the West, we tend to identify religious traditions with their founders. We think of Christianity as having been founded by Jesus of Nazareth, or of Islam as having been founded by the Prophet Mohammed. The word “Confucianism” suggests a tradition that was “founded” by Confucius, who lived 2500 years ago. Westerners think of “Daoism” as having been founded by Laozi, and of “authentic Buddhism” as having been founded by the Buddha. This emphasis on founders is especially problematic in the study of Chinese religion. “Confucianism,” for example, does not refer simply to one man or one collection of scriptures. We now know that the ideals, values, and behaviors that we call “Confucianism” actually predated Confucius by at least a thousand years.

The English word “Confucianism” is a relatively late invention (there was no use of the term before 1687), and Confucius himself was not known in Europe until Jesuit missionaries visited China in the 1600s. The Christian missionaries saw a strong link between the cultural values that they observed among Chinese officials and the classical texts attributed to Confucius and his followers, so they named this tradition “Confucianism.”

Interestingly, the word “Confucianism” does not exist in the Chinese language. This is largely because “Confucian” values and behaviors pre-date Confucius himself; Confucius’ contribution was to collect, organize, and highlight the beliefs and practices that were definitive of his culture. Confucius is recorded as saying, “I transmit but do not create. I place my trust in the teachings of antiquity.” As a “transmitter” or “systematizer” of values, Confucius was certainly important, but the values and behaviors of “Confucianism” were central to Chinese culture even before the beginning of recorded history, some one thousand years before Confucius. Neither Confucius nor his followers considered the “Grand Master” to be a religious “founder.”

The terms that are equivalent to “Confucianism” in Chinese are Ru jia, Ru jiao, and Ru xue—the Ru school, the Ru tradition, and Ru studies. In Confucius’ time, the Ru were “scholars,” but at a much earlier time (1000 BCE or before), the Chinese character Ru referred to religious priests or shamans who were ritual experts—masters of religious music and dance—especially skilled in summoning good spirits, exorcising evil spirits, and bringing rain and other blessings. By the time of Confucius, the Ru were also historians, because the shamanic rituals of the past had fallen into disuse and were known only in the historical records. Confucius was an exemplary Ru scholar as he was especially interested in cultural history (the history of music, dance, and other arts) and in ritual. One of his major contributions was to codify and advance the ritual traditions of the early Zhou. Consequently, “Confucianism” refers to all of the values and practices of the “Ru tradition,” and does not refer simply to the “religion of Confucius.”

Since the Rites Controversy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Western missionaries and scholars have debated the “religious” status of the Confucian tradition, a debate that reverberated among Chinese officials and intellectuals within China. For reasons far removed from religious practice itself, these constituencies concluded that Confucianism was “not a religion” and was, therefore, depending on one’s point of view, (1) compatible with Christianity or (2) “modern” or “scientific.”

The Rites Controversy revolved around the efforts of Italian Jesuit missionaries, led by Europe’s first sinologist, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), to Christianize China by permitting the practice of “indigenous customs” among the common people, including the veneration of ancestors and the erection of temples to Confucius. Effectively, this meant that Confucianism was “not religious” and therefore not in conflict with Catholic rites and teachings. While the Church ultimately rejected this argument (Pope Clement XI decreed in 1715 that veneration of ancestors, and of Confucius, was incompatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church, a decree that was overturned only in 1939), the precedent was set for a view of Confucianism that was “cultural” rather than “religious.”

For Chinese intellectuals in the late imperial and modern period, it was especially important to cast off the “feudal past” and its “superstitions,” which were blamed on Confucianism. As in the West, considerable intellectual effort was expended to divorce Confucianism from its “supernatural” elements; in particular, the efforts of Chinese intellectuals in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) to restore Confucianism to its pre-Buddhist and pre-Daoist roots (through “evidentiary scholarship” and “Han learning”) were based partly on a desire to prove Confucianism’s “non-religious” character.

At the popular level, the religious status of the Confucian tradition has never been in doubt, and, since the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) in particular, Confucian practice has been fully integrated in a wide-ranging religious system affirming the “unity of the three-in-one”: a syncretic religion incorporating Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian elements. The religion of China includes temples (or halls within temples) dedicated to Confucian masters or culture heroes who manifested Confucian virtues; a value system grounded in the Confucian ethical code (encompassing filial piety, ritual propriety, honesty, integrity, loyalty, and social harmony); and a sense of cultural identity that is explicitly Confucian, with Confucius himself heralded as the “founder” of China’s cultural core.

Nevertheless, among Western sinologists, the religious status of Confucianism was the first and most frequent topic of discussion, and remains an ongoing debate. On the one hand, Confucianism has a strong humanistic and naturalistic emphasis. Tu Wei-ming, a professor at Harvard and at Beijing University who is recognized as a leader of the New Confucian movement, describes the tradition as “anthropocosmic”—that is, human-centered rather than God-centered. Traditionally, Confucian intellectuals often expressed skepticism about “supernatural” events or causes, and saw in worship and sacrifice only a social benefit, in bringing communities together and reinforcing ethical norms. According to this line of argument, Confucianism represents a system of values, not a cosmology or (religious) system of beliefs. It is a philosophy, not a religion, and should be studied as such.

On the other hand, Confucianism has a rich store of ritual norms and practices, set forth first in the ritual classics of the Han Dynasty (221 BCE—220 CE), and scholars today are engaged in focused research on this ritual tradition, based upon ritual codes and manuals as well as local histories, temple steles (engraved tablets), and archeological findings (Confucian ritual as actually practiced in particular times and places). Based on this growing body of evidence, there is little doubt that “Confucianism” does represent a “religious” tradition, with a variety of cosmological views and a complex set of ritual norms and practices.

What, then, is the “Ru tradition,” and how should “Confucianism” be defined? For Chinese, it is the general term for the religious and ethical ideals, values, and behaviors that have shaped Chinese culture for the past three to four thousand years. These include

The veneration of ancestors;Education in history and culture (poetry, music, painting, and calligraphy);The cultivation, through ritual principles and rites-based behaviors, of harmonious, hierarchical relations in one’s family and social life; andThe grounding of moral teachings and ethical principles in a religious or cosmic reality.

These are “Confucian” behaviors and values in the sense that Confucians value them, not because Confucius “invented” them. They have become so much part and parcel of Chinese thought and practice that it is not an exaggeration to say that China, from antiquity to the present, is a thoroughly Confucian culture.

“Daoism”

“Daoism” is an even more complicated term. In English, the word was coined two to three centuries after “Confucianism,” appearing in book titles as “Taouism” in 1839, “Tauism” in 1855, and finally “Taoism” in 1879. The term was used to translate the Chinese Daojia and Daojiao, which mean “school of the Dao” and “religion of the Dao.” (“Dao” is the modern accepted Romanization of the Chinese character that was once Romanized as “Tao.”)

Until recently, Western historians of China limited “Daoism” to a school of philosophy—set out abstrusely in the Daode jing and elaborated by the sages Zhuangzi (dates uncertain, but he lived between 370 and 301 BCE) and Liezi (a historical figure only known by a book appearing in his name, dating anywhere from 300 BCE to 300 CE). These three thinkers were said to be the authors of a philosophy that was distinctly “anti-Confucian”: rebelling against education, against government service, against the moral and ethical codes of social interaction, and against the norms and rules that govern everyday life. These Daoists advocated instead a life of “free and easy wandering” (a chapter title from The Book of Zhuangzi), unbounded by the norms of society, or even by the constraints of language and logic. This is one reason that these books are often so confusing—because they are meant to be! The teachings of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Liezi are the heart of this philosophical tradition, but little is known of a Daoist religious community in this early period, if it existed at all.

Daoists themselves trace their origins to the mythical Laozi, a name meaning “Master Old” or “Old Infant,” the supposed author of the Daode jing (Classic of the Way and its Power). Legends tell of personal encounters between Confucius and Laozi, so this “religious founder” is purported to have lived, like Confucius, in the Spring and Autumn period of the Zhou Dynasty (770–476 BCE). These hagiographic myths relate that, while in human form, Laozi was a recluse or hermit, disgusted with the ways of the world, only deigning to share his wisdom when departing China for the mystical mountains of the West. Beseeched by a gate-keeper at the pass that separated China from the barbarian wilderness “beyond the sands,” Laozi agreed to recite his lessons in “five thousand words”—this explains why the Daode jing is often called in Chinese the Five Thousand Character Classic. According to some schools of Daoism, Laozi was a seer and magician, capable of physical self-transformation, and is now a transcendent deity or “pure spirit.”

Like Confucianism, however, “Daoism” is not limited to the teachings of one sage or one book. Daoists believe that the Dao itself “originated” in a far more distant past: it is a cosmic “Way” (the literal meaning of “Dao”) that formed, or began to form, before the existence of all individual “things.” As the Daode jing relates, “Before there was a ‘two’ and a ‘three,’ there was the ‘One.’ ” This “Cosmic One” describes the original unity of the universe, an undifferentiated energy that “gave birth” to the “ten thousand things.” The Dao continues to exist. In fact, it is eternally evolving or “coming into existence” and is “never complete.” It is an energy that permeates the universe and can be “tapped into” as a source of health, vitality, long life, and supernatural power. The Daoist religion is a historical transmission of texts and rituals that attempt to explain, harness, create, and recreate this cosmic energy.

After the Zhou Dynasty, Daoism emerged as a vibrant religious tradition, not limited to a few abstruse philosophical texts but featuring church-like institutions, rites, and ceremonies (with hundreds if not thousands of ritual instruction manuals), a rich tradition of physical and hygienic practices with the goal of long life or immortality, a pantheon of terrestrial and celestial deities, and mythologies of those deities’ lives and heavenly existence.

Of course, historians have been aware of these religious elements for a long time—and all of these beliefs and practices continue to exist—but in the past we tended to denigrate them as superstition or folk religion, not realizing that they are highly elaborate, intellectually sophisticated, and ritually complex, and not recognizing them as part of a continuous whole. “Daoism,” therefore, includes much more than the teachings of Laozi and his immediate followers. It is rather a religious tradition with all the elements of a complete religious system, including a priesthood, composed primarily of ritual specialists; rituals that benefit individuals or social communities by tapping into the power of the Dao; and a canon of religious texts (one of the most voluminous canons in the world’s religions, including hundreds of scriptures, commentaries, treatises, and manuals).

Though it is meaningful to speak about a “school of the Dao” (Daojia) before the Han Dynasty, it had no identifiable social base or institutional organization. “Religious Daoism” as an institutional entity did not come into existence until the Latter Han, and enjoyed its fullest development as a religious tradition in the medieval period and after. Today, for most Chinese, “Daoism” refers not simply to a “naturalistic philosophy”—though this is certainly part of it—but more comprehensively to a religious tradition of immense color and complexity, replete with a complex institutional history, ritual traditions, architectural and artistic genres, a priesthood and a monastic tradition, and both home-based and communal worship.

Daoism is covered extensively throughout this book, but its basic contours can be summarized as follows:

The sense that reality extends beyond the observable realm, and includes spiritual power that has physical effects and manifestations but is not limited to the physical world;The belief in harmony, not only among persons but between persons, the natural world, and the cosmos;The practice of meditation and physical exercises that emphasize the unity of an individual’s psychological, emotional, physical, and spiritual identity; andThe belief that internal and external harmony has practical benefits, from social welfare to individual health and longevity.

“Buddhism”

Western scholarship on Buddhism was dominated for centuries, arguably since the Jesuit “conquest” of China in the seventeenth century, by a paradigm of historical decline and theological inauthenticity. Matteo Ricci first made his appearance in China in the guise of a Buddhist monk, but, seeing that it was gentrified scholar-officials (“Confucians”) who had greater social prestige, he soon adopted the “costume” of a Confucian intellectual. From that point on, Western scholars bought into the official Chinese view of Buddhism in the late imperial period: a religion of “foreign” provenance that contributed little of any value to the cultural history of the great empire.

Buddhism first appeared in China in the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). The Han saw the establishment of a political meritocracy—the assignment of positions in government bureaucracy by virtue of merit, not birth—based upon classical learning. China during the Han was the most technologically advanced, economically complex, and politically stable nation in the world. Its renown was so great that, even today, the Chinese are known as “Han people” and the Chinese language is made up of “Han characters” (pronounced kanji in Japanese). The Han was the first of China’s great empires: its political boundaries extended as far north as modern Korea and as far south as modern Vietnam.

One effect of the Han’s great power was increased contact with the outside world. It was at this time that China first encountered Buddhism. Central Asian Buddhist monks traveled to the Chinese capital, bringing their scriptures and monastic regulations. They established translation centers and strived to explain Indian cosmologies in Chinese terms. Their influence in the Han was small, but these foreign monks were the seeds of a rich intellectual and monastic tradition that grew rapidly in periods of political disunity and was significantly sinicized (made Chinese) within three hundred years of its arrival.

The close connection between Confucianism and the imperial house meant that Confucian fortunes rose or fell with the imperial state. Consequently, Confucianism flourished during periods of political unity and was eclipsed during periods of political disunity. During the Period of North–South Division (220–581 CE), Buddhism and Daoism enjoyed a meteoric rise in influence and power, and gained widespread followings among the people. For Buddhism, this was a rich period of doctrinal development (including the emergence of rival philosophical schools and sectarian movements within Chinese Buddhism), monastic expansion (from 1800 monasteries housing twenty-four thousand monks and nuns in the fourth century to 40,000 monasteries housing three million monks and nuns by the seventh century), and popular devotional movements (such as “calling upon the name” of the Buddha Amitabha for rebirth in his Pure Land, with associated funerary rites) that appealed to almost all Chinese across the economic and social spectrum.

One of the schools to emerge in the late medieval period was the Chan (Japanese Zen) school. Establishing small mountain cloisters far from the great monasteries of the cities, with their rapidly growing wealth and social prestige, the first Chan communities saw themselves as “traditionalists,” reaffirming the “original intent” of the Buddha by laying claim to an innate “Buddha-mind” and repudiating the “trappings” of institutional Buddhism as it had come to prominence in Chinese culture. Their self-seclusion provided fortuitous, when, in the Tang Dynasty (618–906 CE), a Confucian minister named Han Yu (768–824) composed a memorial to the throne condemning Buddhists and Daoists in a statement of religious exclusivism rarely seen in Chinese history. This memorial expressed the key values of imperial Confucianism: social responsibility, loyalty to the state, veneration of ancestors and of the great teachers of antiquity, and a hierarchical ordering of society based upon intellectual achievement (reading, writing, and knowledge of history and the arts). Han Yu accused Buddhist monks in particular of being parasites upon the productive “four classes” of farmers, workers, artisans, and merchants; of neglecting the core Chinese (that is, Confucian) values of ritual propriety, social harmony, and moral responsibility; and of importing “foreign” or “aberrant” cultural norms. Han Yu’s memorial is representative of the close links between Confucianism and the state, an association that can be traced back to the Han Dynasty and that has typified “imperial Confucianism” for the past two thousand years of Chinese history.

While it is possible to overstate his influence, Han Yu’s memorial led ultimately to a great persecution of Buddhism from 842 to 845, recorded first-hand by a Japanese monk named Ennin who happened to be traveling in pilgrimage to China at the time. Many monks were forcibly returned to lay life, monastic treasuries were taken by the state, and Buddhism never again enjoyed the institutional presence that it did in the later medieval period. This, in combination with the “syncretistic” orientation of Chinese thought in late imperial and modern times, led to the refrain of “Buddhist decline” in Western scholarship. It is only in recent years that scholars have recognized Buddhism—even in the late imperial and modern periods—as a rich, vital tradition with a significant, even ubiquitous, presence in Chinese religious life.

In its long history in China, spanning some two thousand years to the present day, Buddhism offers

A ritual tradition related especially to death and to destinies after death, most notably featuring the participation of clerics in public funerals;Cosmological conceptions of karmic reward and punishment, heavens and hells, and ideas of past and future lives—conceptions that are held almost universally among most Chinese as an underlying assumption about the moral law of the universe;The practice of meditation and worship—the former enjoying a significant revival, especially among young urban professionals, in contemporary China; andThe choice of monastic ordination, open to both men and women, which—while chosen by few—is still admired and supported by society as a whole.

“Popular Religion” and Religious Syncretism

The last millennium of Chinese religious evolution has witnessed a series of creative elaborations on the major concepts and practices of the three traditions (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism). In this period, syncretism was the overwhelming strategy of choice in dealing with religious diversity, and the Buddhist and Daoist traditions outdid one another in developing integrative schemes, seeing the “three religions as one” though always recognizing their own tradition as the highest organizing principle and the most perfect manifestation of the Way. Self-consciously syncretic movements arose especially in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and continue to exist in various forms in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora. There is now a significant volume of Western scholarship on these movements and their social impact.

Western scholars until the mid twentieth century tended to classify Chinese religions in terms of these three “great traditions,” but since the 1950s some of the most exciting ethnographic research has been at the level of the family, temple, and village or neighborhood community, with the study of Chinese “popular religion.” As Philip Clart discusses in this book, “popular religion” is not easily classified but can be seen to include all elements of religious practice—especially in the family and community—determined by “inclusion” rather than by “membership”; that is, as a function of being part of a group as opposed to individually electing to “follow” a certain institutional religion. This is the “religion of the people” (not limited to the peasantry or the uneducated, but in fact including all classes of society) and includes such practices as the veneration of ancestors in the home, the worship of gods and expiation of ghosts in local temples, cyclical rites (such as annual festivals and rites of passage), and various forms of religious self-cultivation inspired by insights and practices that originated in one or more of the three religions.

The practice of religion in China in the modern era has been weakened by a series of cataclysmic events that have shaken the very foundations of Chinese culture. China’s tumultuous modern history began with a crisis of cultural identity, a crisis that in some respects is still ongoing. Following a military uprising bordering on civil war (the Taiping Rebellion: 1851–1864) and the forcible opening of trade to the West (a drug trade in opium supported by the British and American governments), many Chinese intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) blamed Confucian traditionalism, “bookishness,” and self-restraint for China’s failure to compete economically and militarily with the West. This “blame game” led to a wholesale rejection of China’s Confucian past by late nineteenth and early twentieth century students and intellectuals and, most notably, by the Communist revolutionaries who eventually succeeded in gaining power and establishing the People’s Republic of China of today: “Down with Confucianism!” and the backwardness for which Confucianism was to blame. “Smash the Confucian Shop!” “Eliminate the Four Olds [old habits, old ideas, old culture, and old customs]!” “Root out unscientific superstition [veneration of gods and ancestors, shamanism, temple construction, and divination]!” These were the rallying cries from the May Fourth Movement of 1919 to the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s.

Chinese intellectuals of the New Culture and May Fourth movements (in the late Qing and early Republican period) criticized Confucianism as the product of a feudal age. The late Qing reformers dedicated to the creation of a “new China” were skeptical of China’s religious traditions, believing that religious “superstition” had contributed to China’s “backwardness,” to the nation’s lack of resistance to the imperial aspirations of Japan and the West, and to the political despotism and stagnation of the central government. Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism—as well as the local folk traditions of the people—were associated with China’s imperial past. Consequently, the nationalist government of the Republic of China (which was founded in Nanjing in the 1920s and moved its capital to Taipei, Taiwan in 1949) and the central government of the People’s Republic of China (which established its capital in Beijing as a Communist state in 1949) placed restrictions on religious observance, especially at the local level, though these have eased significantly, both in Taiwan and on the mainland.

After the victory of Communist forces and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and for at least the next thirty years, the Chinese government continued its attacks on Confucianism and all things “old.” Confucius himself was reviled as a feudal “slave holder,” and Confucian values were condemned as oppressive and class-based. The Mencian ordering of “people who labor with their minds” above “people who labor with their strength” was reversed, as intellectuals were “sent down to the countryside” to learn from the peasants the values of hard work and physical self-sacrifice. For most of the past century, the nation’s intellectual and political leaders have blamed Confucianism for everything that was wrong with “feudal” China.

Against this tide of cultural self-loathing is a modern tradition of Confucian resurgence. In the past fifteen to twenty years the central government has begun an aggressive “resuscitation” of Confucius and traditional Chinese culture, sponsoring academic conferences, establishing institutes of “classical studies” (guoxue), and even, at least rhetorically, taking public pride in Confucianism as the basis of Chinese civilization. But this follows a much more protracted effort by a small number of Chinese intellectuals—at home and abroad—to preserve the tradition, and to adapt Confucianism to changing conditions within China and the world. Today, a number of intellectuals argue that Confucianism represents what is best of China’s cultural past and the hope of China’s cultural identity in the future.

Today, Daoism, Buddhism, and “popular religion” are all resurgent in China, but the influence of Westernization (including Communism) has been great, and China’s religious culture faces a number of challenges. At an institutional level, Buddhist monasteries and Daoist abbeys are administered by quasi-governmental “religious associations” answerable to political authorities. Religious institutions simply are not permitted complete freedom and autonomy, and voluntary religious associations (“cults” or “sects”) are subject to severe restrictions. Nevertheless, the Chinese people today enjoy more religious freedom than they have had in half a century, and religious observance, writing, and research are enjoying a modest recovery.

Clearly, despite major setbacks since the end of the dynastic period, religion in China still survives, and many Chinese—from the relatively uneducated populace of the countryside to the upward-looking consumers of the booming cities—are looking to the traditions of the past for guidance and inspiration. For Western scholars, the cultural revival of religion in China, in both its communal and individual aspects, is an area crying out for new research.

Moving Beyond the “Three Traditions”: The Structure and Organization of The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions

Most books on Chinese religion (or “Chinese religions”) are limited to “one” of the so-called “three religions” (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) or to an analysis of the three religions in contrast to one another. While accepting this convention to a certain extent (certainly chapters on Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism can be found, and these religious designations are used throughout the book), the traditional view that Chinese religions were defined by and limited to the three traditions is both simplistic and erroneous, if our interest is in knowing how religion has actually been lived and practiced both in history and in contemporary China. This book goes beyond the conventional designations, and the traditional approach to Chinese religion as outlined above, in several ways:

Part I (HISTORICAL SURVEY) traces the history of Chinese religion through the formative periods of Chinese history: the Shang and Zhou Dynasties (c. 1600–249 BCE), the Han through the Six Dynasties (206 BCE—589 CE), the Sui and Tang Dynasties (581–907), the Song Dynasty (960–1279), and the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368–1911). In these opening five chapters the paths of development of the three traditions are outlined both independently and in relation to the others. The authors of these chapters see many of the most significant developments of Chinese religious history as the reflections of encounters between and among the traditions, and employ an integrative approach.

This book does not limit Chinese religious history to the three religions alone, but includes in Part II (THE TRADITIONS) popular religion, Islam, and Christianity in addition to Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. This gives a much fuller and more complete picture of the Chinese religious landscape in all its forms.

Finally, Part III (CRITICAL TERMS FOR THE STUDY OF CHINESE RELIGIONS) eschews the separation of the three religions altogether, with a wholly integrative approach. Though the names (Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism) are still employed, it is clear that all three contributed, in various degrees, to the actual beliefs and behaviors of religious practitioners. The focus here is on religion as lived, not doctrinal separation or institutional identities.

The nine chapters making up Part III can further be divided into three groups of three: (1) the chapters on SACRED TEXT, RELIGIOUS RITUAL, and MATERIAL CULTURE provide the reader with the basic “building blocks” of religion as such, often in comparative perspective; (2) the chapters on NATURE, DIVINITY, and GENDER examine the Chinese conceptualization of the cosmos and personal identity in both theoretical and practical terms, again crossing the lines of “Confucian,” “Daoist,” and “Buddhist” theories and practices; and (3) finally, the chapters on DIVINATION, ASCETICISM, and SELF-INFLICTED VIOLENCE delve into Chinese religious practice on an individual level by examining religious behaviors in terms of personal histories, albeit in relation to social and political forces.

The authors of these twenty essays are some of the foremost sinological scholars in the world, and all build upon the history of Chinese religious scholarship while extending our knowledge—and our orientations—in new directions. Therefore, this book is not simply an overview of Chinese beliefs and practices (though it is this as well) but also a critical examination of the study of Chinese religion as an academic discipline. Each of the authors proposes new modes of classification and categorization, new standards of evidence, new ways of thinking (often informed by comparative analysis with, for example, Western religious traditions), and “brand new” documentary, archeological, and ethnographic findings about the history and living reality of Chinese religious life, from early antiquity to the present day. Certainly the focus is historical, as no understanding of any culture—and this is especially true of China—can ignore its origins and development through time.

Let us turn now to a brief overview of each chapter, highlighting the particular contribution of each author to the academic study of Chinese religion. Each is creative, inventive, and path-finding in their approach to religious beliefs and practices that have been “known,” but little understood, for hundreds of years.

Part I of the volume is a religious history of China, in five parts. The editor, Randall Nadeau, begins, in Chapter 2, with an overview of Chinese religion in antiquity, introducing the indigenous traditions (Confucianism and Daoism) but also the competing religious practices and worldviews of the earliest historical periods, the Shang and Zhou Dynasties (c. 1600–249 BCE). The chapter begins with Chinese mythic accounts of the origins of Chinese civilization, including legends of a primordial flood and the invention of writing. Summarizing the basic contours of Shang and Zhou cosmology (which are remarkably consistent with Chinese religious conceptions today), Nadeau turns to textual and archeological evidence for religious practices of the common people, in particular their veneration for the family dead (ancestors) and their propitiation of vengeful spirits (ghosts). He then introduces the basic religious and ethical teachings of the pre-Han Confucian and Daoist schools.

In Chapter 3, Gil Raz traces both the intellectual and religious histories of the Han through the Six Dynasties periods (206 BCE—589 CE), beginning with the encyclopedic compilations of the Han Dynasty and their elaborate theories of yin and yang, the Five Phases (wuxing), and other aspects of early Chinese correlative cosmology. From this cosmological theory, as well as proto-Daoist writings of the pre-Han period (such as the Zhuangzi and the Daode jing), emerged methods of “immortality cultivation” that enjoyed imperial favor and inspired a full-fledged Daoist religion in the early Common Era. It was during this period that institutional forms of Daoism and Buddhism first emerged. What is especially notable about Raz’s treatment of this history is his emphasis on social, political, and cultic dimensions of early Daoism and Buddhism, and not simply their “teachings” or “ideas.”