Making Canon Practicable
Scaling the Tripiṭaka with a Medieval Chinese Buddhist Anthology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3973749 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alexander O Hsu (University of Notre Dame, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 313-361 |
| Publication date | 2022-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2710 • E-ISSN: 1545-6935 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/719003 |
| OpenAlex | W4283024415 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
I argue that medieval Chinese Buddhists composed anthologies like A Grove of Pearls from the Garden of Dharma (seventh century CE) to make productive use of the Buddhist canon’s immense scale. By tracing how anthologists produce extracts from the canon, I show how anthologies make canon practicable, drawing a distinction between practical and formal canons in the process. I do this by first charting how a collection of extracts (titled “Bathing Monks”) in A Grove of Pearls economizes diverse canonical source materials to affirm both the canon’s difficulty and relevance. Then I outline how the extracts of “Bathing Monks” were further economized in a single-page manuscript preserved in the Dunhuang cache (tenth century or earlier). My findings suggest that religious anthologies be regarded by scholars of religion not only as textual repositories but also as objects that encourage the religious to mine vast canons and whittle down holy text for use. In the case of medieval Chinese Buddhist anthologies, Buddhist ideas about dharma’s fluidity and usefulness flourished in a burgeoning manuscript culture in medieval China
Archaeology · Art · Buddhism · Canon · China · Dharma · Literature · Meditation · Chinese history and philosophy · Classics · History · Medieval Literature and History · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
Text as FatherPaternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist Literature
The passion to collect, select, and protect
The Book of Memory
Buddhist Manuscript Cultures
Miracles of Book and BodyBuddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan
Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan
The Invention of the “Eminent Monk”
The Development of Bathing Customs in Ancient and Medieval China and the History of the Floriate Clear Palace
Shih Seng-Yu and His Writings
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |