Visualization/Contemplation Sutras (Guan Jing)

The “visualization/contemplation sutras” (Ch. guan jing觀經) refers to six scriptures in the modern Sino-Japanese Buddhist canon Taishō shinshū daizōkyō大正新脩大藏經 (“T”). The six scriptures are each devoted to particular buddhas and bodhisattvas, and in some cases, the pure lands or heavens linked to them. They include: (a) Sutra on the Sea of Samādhi Attained through Contemplation of the Buddha (Guan fo sanmei hai jing觀佛三昧海經; T 643); (b) Sutra on the Contemplation of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life (Guan Wuliangshoufo jing觀無量壽佛經; T 365); (c) Sutra on the Contemplation of the Two Bodhisattvas Bhaiṣajyarāja and Bhaiṣajyasamudgata (Guan Yaowang Yaoshang erpusa jing觀藥王藥上二菩薩經; T 1161); (d) Sutra on the Contemplation of Maitreya Bodhisattva’s Ascent to Rebirth in Tuṣita Heaven (Guan Mile Pusa shangsheng doushuaitian jing觀彌勒菩薩上生兜率天經; T 452); (e) Sutra on the Contemplation of the Cultivation Methods of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Guan Puxian Pusa xingfa jing觀普賢菩薩行法經; T 277); and (f) Sutra on the Contemplation of the Bodhisattva Ākāśagarbha (Guan Xukongzang Pusa jing觀虛空藏菩薩經; T 409). All six scriptures use the Chinese term guan觀 (or kuan) in their titles. All also feature instructions on contemplative techniques, which include fantastic visual imagery and other visionary phenomena. Due largely to these visual qualities, in English-language scholarship since the late 1950s, the most common translation for guan in their titles has been “visualization.” There is, however, no scholarly consensus for an Indic-language equivalent to guan in these scriptures, and the “visualization” designation has been increasingly questioned since the 2000s. Thus many scholars prefer the translation “contemplation,” while some opt for “discernment.” Further complicating study of the visualization/contemplation sutras are persistent questions of their provenance. The traditional translator attributions preserved in the Taishō canon all credit Indian or Central Asian monks for the “translations.” However, all six scriptures are extant only in Chinese or in translations based on the Chinese, and those translator attributions have been widely contested. Scholars thus variously posit Indian, Central Asian, or Chinese origins for the individual scriptures. The consensus as of 2020 is that, as Chinese texts, they all date to around the first half of the 5th century ce, and many scholars do accept the influence of Indian or Central Asian meditation masters active in China then. Such influence receives support in the near-contemporary emergence in China of meditation manuals that share distinctive terminology with the visualization/contemplation sutras and are often grouped with them in modern studies. Further research into the sutras should thus enrich the understanding of scriptural translation processes, the emergence of specific deity cults in East Asian Buddhism, and interlinked developments in the devotional, visionary, and contemplative practices associated with those cults.

Buddhist Medical Demonology in The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas

This essay begins with a brief discussion of the marginalization of demonology in the study of both Indian Buddhist traditions and Āyurvedic medicine. Unlike the study of Buddhist traditions in other geographic regions, there has been relatively little scholarship on the dialogue between Indian Buddhist communities and the localized spirit deity cults with which they have interacted for more than two millennia. The modern study of Āyurverda, with few exceptions, demonstrates a similar trend in the marginalization of bhūtavidyā, or demonology, which has constituted a legitimate branch of Āyurvedic medicine from at least the time that the earliest Āyurvedic compendium, the Carakasaṃhitā, was composed. This essay argues that this lack of proper attention to Indian Buddhist and Āyurvedic medical demonology is symptomatic of a broader, persistent bias in the human sciences. The essay then examines a handful of stories from the Karmaśataka, a collection of Buddhist avadānas, to argue that certain Buddhist communities may have held their own biases against systems of medical demonology, albeit for entirely different reasons. The balance of this essay then concludes with an analysis of The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas that presents this work as an example of Buddhist medical demonology.

Nexus of Mobility

In historical studies of Chinese diaspora, an increasing focus is currently being placed on Chinese “organizational genius,” that is, Chinese are said to have been adept at providing mutual aid and promoting economic ventures overseas, and also effective in governing their own internal affairs and fending off racial discrimination in the age of Euro-American imperialism. This paper examines Chinese migration to West Borneo in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It argues that Chinese social imaginaries and organizational forms ultimately relied on two cardinal institutions: the Chinese deity cults and ancestral cults, with their associated rituals. By studying an early case of Chinese migration to Southeast Asia, this paper hopes to lay a foundation for comparative research on similar organizations developed by Fujian and Guangdong people in Taiwan, China and other parts of the world; and argues that the nexus of Chinese mobility and Chinese people’s relatively successful economic achievements should be located in these symbolic institutions.

Of saints and blood: the Narita Buddhist sword cult in Edo Japan

This article examines the local character of early modern (1600–1868) Japanese Buddhism using a case study of the Narita Fudō cult of Shinshōji Temple, with particular attention to the temple's most sacred treasure, the legendary Sword of Amakuni. Drawing on local sources produced within and beyond clerical circles, it examines how the sword and its popular narratives became central to the public identity of the cult and the temple's proselytization efforts. This article illuminates the evolving, fluid nature of deity cults as highly mobile properties working across sectarian boundaries, and how these properties gained importance beyond the walls of Buddhist institutions among the artistic and theatrical landscapes of the country's capital.

Zur interpretatio Romana in der ,Germania' des Tacitus

This article demonstrates that Tacitus, who coined the term interpretatio Romana, used this concept differently than today's historians of religion. Tacitus differentiated between universal and local gods. It is also shown that this differentiation fits the author's structuring of "Germania", which he divides into a general and a specific part. This carries far-reaching consequences because for instance the cult of the Semnones is a local superstitio in tacitean terms, and the common identification of Roman with ”Germanic“ gods since J. Grimm must be abandoned. Finally, the article establishes that G. Wissowa's seminal work on interpretatio Romana, which assumes the deity cults of Germania superior and inferior, fails to take into account that Tacitus, as a historian of religion, merely dealt with "authentic" and "original" Germania.