Japanese Monks and Chinese Books

Glimpses of Buddhist Sinology in Early Tokugawa Japan

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3136895
AutoresT H Barrett (0000-0002-7381-1387, University of London, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume12
Fascículo10
Páginas871
Data de publicação2021-10-13
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoReligions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
EditoraMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel12100871
OpenAlexW3205605461
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas13

In the17th and 18th centuries, just as English scholars were reading and writing about their heritage in the continental prestige language of Latin, so too were Japanese members of the Buddhist clergy researching and publishing about the Chinese language heritage of their own religious tradition, drawing both on new printed books, often imported from China, and on much earlier manuscripts and printed texts preserved in their own country. The importation and reprinting of the canon by Ōbaku monks and the subsequent flowering of Zen scholarship is already well-known, but we should consider the efforts of Shingon monks in commenting on the heritage they received from China eight centuries earlier, and even the activities of Nichiren monks, who took steps to promote the legacy of Chinese Tiantai Buddhism. Critical reflection on the Buddhist tradition may not have emerged in Japan until the 18th century, but it did so in the context of a world of scholarship concerning an imported classical language that certainly stood comparison with that of the contemporary Anglophone world

Archaeology · Art · Buddhism · China · Chinese language · Linguistics · Literature · Political science · Prestige · Publishing · Scholarship · Sinology · Chinese history and philosophy · Classics · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy