Author: John S. Strong
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691188114
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
Buddhism is popularly seen as a religion stressing the truth of impermanence. How, then, to account for the long-standing veneration, in Asian Buddhist communities, of bone fragments, hair, teeth, and other bodily bits said to come from the historic Buddha? Early European and American scholars of religion, influenced by a characteristic Protestant bias against relic worship, declared such practices to be superstitious and fraudulent, and far from the true essence of Buddhism. John Strong's book, by contrast, argues that relic veneration has played a serious and integral role in Buddhist traditions in South and Southeast Asia-and that it is in no way foreign to Buddhism. The book is structured around the life story of the Buddha, starting with traditions about relics of previous buddhas and relics from the past lives of the Buddha Sakyamuni. It then considers the death of the Buddha, the collection of his bodily relics after his cremation, and stories of their spread to different parts of Asia. The book ends with a consideration of the legend of the future parinirvana (extinction) of the relics prior to the advent of the next Buddha, Maitreya. Throughout, the author does not hesitate to explore the many versions of these legends and to relate them to their ritual, doctrinal, artistic, and social contexts.
Author: Brian D. Ruppert
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684173388
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 535
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Book Description
Focusing on the ninth to the fourteenth centuries, this study analyzes the ways in which relics functioned as material media for the interactions of Buddhist clerics, the imperial family, lay aristocrats, and warrior society and explores the multivocality of relics by dealing with specific historical examples. Brian Ruppert argues that relics offered means for reinforcing or subverting hierarchical relations. The author's critical literary and anthropological analyses attest to the prominence of relic veneration in government, in lay practice associated with the maintenance of the imperial line and warrior houses, and in the promotion of specific Buddhist sects in Japan.
Author: John S. Strong
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022680173X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
John S. Strong unravels the storm of influences shaping the received narratives of two iconic sacred objects. Bodily relics such as hairs, teeth, fingernails, pieces of bone—supposedly from the Buddha himself—have long served as objects of veneration for many Buddhists. Unsurprisingly, when Western colonial powers subjugated populations in South Asia, they used, manipulated, redefined, and even destroyed these objects to exert control. In The Buddha’s Tooth, John S. Strong examines Western stories, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, surrounding two significant Sri Lankan sacred objects to illuminate and concretize colonial attitudes toward Asian religions. First, he analyzes a tale about the Portuguese capture and public destruction, in the mid-sixteenth century, of a tooth later identified as a relic of the Buddha. Second, he switches gears to look at the nineteenth-century saga of British dealings with another tooth relic of the Buddha—the famous Daḷadā enshrined in a temple in Kandy—from 1815, when it was taken over by English forces, to 1954, when it was visited by Queen Elizabeth II. As Strong reveals, the stories of both the Portuguese tooth and the Kandyan tooth reflect nascent and developing Western understandings of Buddhism, realizations of the cosmopolitan nature of the tooth, and tensions between secular and religious interests.
Author: David Germano
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791484408
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 213
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Book Description
Embodying the Dharma explores the centrality of relic veneration in Asian Buddhist cultures. Long disregarded by Western scholars as a superstitious practice reflecting the popularization of "original" Buddhism, relic veneration has emerged as a topic of vital interest in the last two decades with the increased attention to Buddhist ritual practice and material culture. This volume includes studies of relic traditions in India, Japan, Tibet, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, as well as broader comparative analyses, including comparisons of Buddhist and Christian relic veneration.
Author: Kevin Trainor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521582803
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
This book is a serious study of relic veneration among South Asian Buddhists. Drawing on textual sources and archaeological evidence from India and Sri Lanka, including material rarely examined in the West, it looks specifically at the practice of relic veneration in the Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist tradition. The author portrays relic veneration as a technology of remembrance and representation which makes present the Buddha of the past for living Buddhists. By analysing the abstract ideas, emotional orientation and ritual behaviour centred on the Buddha's material remains, he contributes to the 'rematerializing' of Buddhism which is currently under way among Western scholars. This book is an excellent introduction to Buddhist relics. It is well written and accessible and will be read by scholars and serious students of Buddhism and religious studies for years to come.
Author: John S. Strong
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780745060
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 639
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Book Description
Buddhism or Buddhisms? By the time they move on to Buddhism in Japan, many students who have studied its origins in India ask whether this is in fact the same religion, so different can they appear. In Buddhisms: An Introduction, Professor John S. Strong provides an overview of the Buddhist tradition in all its different forms around the world. Beginning at the modern day temples of Lumbini, where the Buddha was born, Strong takes us through the life of the Buddha and a study of Buddhist Doctrine, revealing how Buddhism has changed just as it has stayed the same. Finally, Strong examines the nature of Buddhist community life and its development today in the very different environments of Thailand, Japan, and Tibet. Enriched by the author’s own insights gathered over forty years, Buddhisms never loses sight of the personal experience amidst the wide-scope of its subject. Clear in its explanations, replete with tables and suggestions for further reading, this is an essential new work that makes original contributions to the study of this 2,500 year-old religion.
Author: Hsueh-man Shen
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082486705X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
As belief in the Buddha grew and his teachings were transmitted across Asia, Buddhist images, scriptures, and relics were duplicated and reduplicated to satisfy the needs of increasing numbers of the faithful. Yet how were these countless copies of sacred objects able to retain their authenticity and efficacy? Authentic Replicas explores how Buddhists in medieval China (seventh to twelfth centuries) solved this conundrum through the use of traditional methods of replication such as stamping, mold casting, and woodblock printing to create objects that fulfilled the spiritual aspirations of those who possessed them. Setting aside Western notions about the relative value of copies versus the “original,” the book posits Buddhist ideas on what imbues an object with credibility and authority and offers fresh insights into the ways authenticity was represented and reproduced in the Chinese Buddhist context. Each section of the volume focuses on an area of artistic output to provide readers with a thorough grasp of the theological concepts underpinning each act of duplication. Part I looks at the replication of sutras to clarify how the spiritual value of a handwritten sutra differed from a printed one. In Part II, clay tablets, woodblock prints, silk paintings, and cave murals are examined to trace iconographic lineages and uncover the divine identity in each new replica. The chapters in Part III describe in detail the copying of the Buddha’s bodily relics and the endlessly repeated votive act of burying these in stupas. Of particular significance is the visual and textual vocabulary used on reliquaries to persuade adherents to believe in the actual presence of the Buddha concealed inside. Deftly weaving together data and research from several disciplines, including Buddhist studies, archaeology, and art history, Authentic Replicas vividly conveys how replication lay at the heart of Buddhist worship in medieval China, offering a new understanding of how religious belief guided the artistic output of an entire age.
Author: Parākrama Paṇḍita
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195301390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Buddhist chronicles have long been had a central place in the study of Buddhism. Scholars, however, have relied almost exclusively on Pali works that were composed by elites for learned audiences, to the neglect of a large number of Buddhist histories written in local languages for popular consumption. The Sinhala Thupavamsa, composed by Parakama Pandita in thirteenth-century Sri Lanka, is an important example of a Buddhist chronicle written in the vernacular Sinhala language. Furthermore, it is among those works that inform public discussion and debate over the place of Buddhism in the Sri Lankan nation state and the role of Buddhist monks in contemporary politics.In this book Stephen Berkwitz offers the first complete English translation of the Sinhala Thupavamsa. Composed in a literary dialect of Sinhala, it contains a richly descriptive account of how Buddhism spread outside of India, replete with poetic embellishments and interpolations not found in other accounts of those events. Aside from being an important literary work, the Sinhala Thupavamsa. is a text of considerable historical and religious significance. It comprises several narrative strands that relate the life story of the Buddha and the manner in which Buddhist teachings and institutions were established on the island of Sri Lanka in ancient times. The central focus of this work concerns the variety of relics associated with the historical Buddha, particularly how the relics were acquired and the presumed benefits of venerating them. The text also relates the mythological history of the Buddha's previous lives as a bodhisattva and concludes with a prediction about the future Buddha Maitreya. Reflection on Buddhist ethics and instruction on the Dharma, or the Buddha's teaching, are found throughout the work, indicating that this historical narrative was meant both to recall the past and give rise to religious practice among contemporary readers and listeners.This new translation makes a significant work more widely accessible in the West and adds to our knowledge of how local Buddhist communities imagined and represented their religious and cultural heritages in written works.
Author: B. Subrahmanyam
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
The Present Book Examines The Various Caskets, The Different Kinds Of Material Used For Preparing Them, Their Shapes And Sixes And Finally The Method Of Consecration Followed For Enshrining These Holy Relics. Alongside It Also Provides An Uptodate Account Of Buddhism In South India, The Author, Taking Into Consideration The Archaeological And Literacy Data, Tries To Set At Rest The Conflicting Opinions Held By Scholars Regsrding The Identification Of Dantapura, Photographs, Sketches, Etc., Which Lie Scattered In Various Reports.
Author: James C. Dobbins
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824879996
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
Images of the Buddha are everywhere—not just in temples but also in museums and homes and online—but what these images mean largely depends on the background and circumstance of those viewing them. In Behold the Buddha, James Dobbins invites readers to imagine how premodern Japanese Buddhists understood and experienced icons in temple settings long before the advent of museums and the internet. Although widely portrayed in the last century as visual emblems of great religious truths or as exquisite works of Asian art, Buddhist images were traditionally treated as the very embodiment of the Buddha, his palpable presence among people. Hence, Buddhists approached them as living entities in their own right—that is, as awakened icons with whom they could interact religiously. Dobbins begins by reflecting on art museums, where many non-Buddhists first encounter images of the Buddha, before outlining the complex Western response to them in previous centuries. He next elucidates images as visual representations of the story of the Buddha’s life followed by an overview of the physical attributes and symbolic gestures found in Buddhist iconography. A variety of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and other divinities commonly depicted in Japanese Buddhism is introduced, and their “living” quality discussed in the context of traditional temples and Buddhist rituals. Finally, other religious objects in Japanese Buddhism—relics, scriptures, inscriptions, portraits of masters, and sacred sites—are explained using the Buddhist icon as a model. Dobbins concludes by contemplating art museums further as potential sites for discerning the religious character of Buddhist images. Those interested in Buddhism generally who would like to learn more about its rich iconography—whether encountered in temples or museums—will find much in this concise, well-illustrated volume to help them “behold the Buddha.”
