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Contextualizing the sutra within a milieu of intense religious and cultural experimentation, this volume unravels the sudden rise of Diamond Sutra devotion in the Tang dynasty against the backdrop of a range of social, political, and literary activities. Through the translation and exploration of a substantial body of narratives extolling the efficacy of the sutra, it explores the complex social history of lay Buddhism by focusing on how the laity might have conceived of the sutra and devoted themselves to it. Corroborated by various sources, it reveals the cult’s effect on medieval Chinese religiosity in the activities of an empowered laity, who modified and produced parasutraic texts, prompting the monastic establishment to accommodate to the changes they brought about.
Price: $183.00
Pages: 520
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Sinica Leidensia
Publication Date:
18 July 2019
ISBN: 9789004405486
Format: Hardcover
"Ho has produced an exemplary piece of research that deserves to be widely read and appreciated. This is a substantial work and the writing is dense, detailed, and nuanced. [...] Reading it forced me to rethink some of my approaches to and understandings of Buddhist narrative materials from premodern China. [...] I think anyone working on Buddhist narrative literature will find this book essential reading. I look forward to spending many more hours with it and discussing it with my graduate students."
– James A. Benn, McMaster University, in JAOS 141.3 (2021).
"Given that scholarship pertaining to the Diamond Sutra is a vast field, it is rather refreshing to see it examined from the perspective of lay empowerment. Few scholars of religion would dispute the importance of the Diamond Sutra in (and beyond) Chinese Buddhism. What Ho has provided in this volume is a most welcome line of inquiry that will hopefully generate fruitful further dialogue."
– Joseph Chadwin, University of Vienna, in Religious Studies Review 47.3 (2021).
– James A. Benn, McMaster University, in JAOS 141.3 (2021).
"Given that scholarship pertaining to the Diamond Sutra is a vast field, it is rather refreshing to see it examined from the perspective of lay empowerment. Few scholars of religion would dispute the importance of the Diamond Sutra in (and beyond) Chinese Buddhism. What Ho has provided in this volume is a most welcome line of inquiry that will hopefully generate fruitful further dialogue."
– Joseph Chadwin, University of Vienna, in Religious Studies Review 47.3 (2021).
Chiew Hui Ho, Ph.D. (2013), Stanford University, is Lecturer in East Asian Buddhism at the University of Sydney. He specializes in the social history of medieval Chinese Buddhism, with a focus on Buddhist narratives.