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Philosopher, Practitioner, Politician: The Many Lives of Fazang (643–712) by Jinhua Chen (review)

Journal of Chinese Religions, 2008, Vol.36 (1), p.134-139 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions ;Copyright Johns Hopkins University Press 2008 ;ISSN: 0737-769X ;ISSN: 2050-8999 ;EISSN: 2050-8999 ;DOI: 10.1353/jcr.2008.0010

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  • Title:
    Philosopher, Practitioner, Politician: The Many Lives of Fazang (643–712) by Jinhua Chen (review)
  • Author: Deeg, Max
  • Subjects: 643-712 ; Biographies ; Buddhism ; Chen, Jinhua ; Fazang ; History ; Philosophers ; Politics
  • Is Part Of: Journal of Chinese Religions, 2008, Vol.36 (1), p.134-139
  • Description: In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Book Review 134 Journal of Chinese Religions 36 (2008) Philosopher, Practitioner, Politician: The Many Lives of Fazang (643 – 712) JINHUA CHEN. Leiden: Brill, 2007. xviii, 539 pages. ISBN 978-90-04-15613-5. €139.00, US$195.00 hardcover. Chinese Buddhism has not only been neglected in the study of Buddhism in the West for quite some time except as a tool for retrieving the otherwise scarcely documented Buddhist past of India and the Western regions (Central Asia), but when it finally arrived on the desk and in the minds of Western scholars it was dominated by notions of Japanese Buddhist traditional segmentation into schools or “sects,” with a clear predominance of Chan-studies in the beginning. The early Buddhist history of China was well-covered by Erik Zürcher’s famous and ingenious The Buddhist Conquest of China,1 the “middle period” from the beginning of the fifth century to the reunification of the empire at the end of the sixth century rather underrepresented, and the periods of the Sui and the Tang have been mainly explored along “sectarian” doctrinal and philosophical lines—clearly pointed out by Chen in the reviewed book (pp. 338f)—of Chan 禪, Yogācāra / Weishi 唯識, Madhyamaka / Sanlun 三論, but also of so-called Huayan-Buddhism 華 嚴 . 2 More general studies of the history of Chinese Buddhism in its socio-political context of the period were rare and the study of important monastic figures had been neglected beyond a rather uncritical presentation of biographical data extracted from the Chinese monk-biographies. General studies of the history of Chinese Buddhism during the Tang in Western languages are still not available, but broader case-studies have become published in the recent past. After the comprehensive short monograph on Buddhism under the Tang by Stanley Weinstein, 3 Antonino Forte’s 4 —to whose memory Chen’s book is dedicated quite 1 The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972), 2 vols. A third edition, with a foreword by Stephen F. Teiser, was published by Brill in 2007. This can be complemented by the English translation cum commentarial appendix of Tsukamoto Zenryū’s work: A History of Early Chinese Buddhism: From Its Introduction to the Death of Hui-yüan, translated from the Japanese by Leon Hurvitz (Tokyo, New York, San Francisco: Kodansha International, 1985), 2 vols. 2 See the recent collection of articles edited by Imre Hamar, Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayan Buddhism (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007). 3 Stanley Weinstein, Buddhism under the T’ang (London: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 4 See Antonino Forte, Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias in the History of the Astronomical Clock: The Tower, Statue and Armillary Sphere Constructed by Empress Wu (Roma: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente / Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 1988); Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century: Inquiry into the Nature, Author, and Function of the Tunhuang Document S.6502, Followed by an Annotated Translation, second ed. (Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian Studies, 2005). Book Reviews 135 appropriately—and Timothy Barrett’s5 works reflect a stronger interest in the broader context of Buddhism in this period so crucial for the formation of Chinese Buddhism. Studies of biographical Buddhist literature from East Asia then have also gained a new impetus by the work of Koichi Shinohara 6 who has clearly shown how the biographies/hagiographies reflect important aspects of Chinese Buddhism, and the reviewed monograph belongs in this paraṃparā, succession lineage. The reviewed book on the biography of the Avataṃsaka-master Fazang 法藏 (643 – 712) was written by Chen Jinhua 陳金華 who is well-known to scholars of the history of medieval Chinese Buddhism, especially of the Tang period (but also of the Sui dynasty and earlier periods). He has published an impressive number of books and articles on the religio-political context of Buddhism and monastic institutions and individuals, and so the author is evidently well-prepared for this task. Chen’s latest monograph now brings together these different strands—the doctrinal-philosophical, the biographical-hagiographical, and the sociopolitical —in an ideal way and on the...
  • Publisher: Atlanta: Johns Hopkins University Press
  • Language: English
  • Identifier: ISSN: 0737-769X
    ISSN: 2050-8999
    EISSN: 2050-8999
    DOI: 10.1353/jcr.2008.0010
  • Source: AUTh Library subscriptions: ProQuest Central
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