Scholars of Chinese religion will find this book highly usefulfor its conceptual foundations and detailed information, butthe essays are readily accessible to those who are not spe-cialists. Scholars in other fields of modern Chinese studiesand in comparative religious studies have much to gain fromthis book.

Peter DitmansonOriental Institute, Oxford University

BuddhismDIVINE KNOWLEDGE: BUDDHIST MATHEMATICSACCORDING TO THE ANONYMOUS MANUAL OFMONGOLIAN ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION. ByBrian G. Baumann. Brill’s Inner Asia Library, 20. Leiden:Brill, 2008. Pp. xviii + 894; tables, indices. $295.00.

Baumann’s book is a transcription, translation, andstudy of an anonymous Mongolian text known as the Manualof Mongolian Astrology and Divination. The text deals withdivination of various kinds, such as auspicious times fordifferent undertakings. Ancient cultures used a commonname for a certain collection of sciences (some now consid-ered pseudoscience), including not only astrology and divi-nation, but also calendrics, astronomy, and mathematics.Baumann uses mathematics for this conglomerate, a usagethat is somewhat confusing to the modern reader; the Mon-golian text does not contain any computational material (nordoes Baumann’s study). This aside, the book is a valuablecontribution to the study of divination. Baumann’s compre-hensive study discusses time, metaphysics, divination, andother subjects, contextualizing the Mongolian text andexplaining its dependence on other traditions. Especiallyvaluable for a comparative study of omen material are someof Baumann’s appendices, such as a list of omen protasesfrom the Mongolian text. Overall, the book is a good startingpoint for a study of Mongolian divination and also a usefulresource for those studying omens in the ancient world.

Toke L. KnudsenSUNY College at Oneonta

THE STANZA OF THE BELL IN THE WIND: ZENAND NENBUTSU IN THE EARLY KAMAKURAPERIOD. By Frédéric Girard. Studia Philologica Buddhica,Occasional Papers Series, XIV. Tokyo: The InternationalInstitute for Buddhist Studies, 2007. Pp. iii + 83 pages.¥500.00.

Anyone who has read at least as far as the secondchapter of Dogen’s Shôbôgenzô has encountered thefollowing:

[78] My late master, the eternal buddha, says:Whole body like a mouth, hanging in space;Not asking if the wind is east, west, south, or north,For all others equally, it speaks prajña.Chin ten ton ryan chin ten ton.

(Gudo Wafu Nishijima and Chodo Cross, trs. Shobogenzo:The True Dharma-Eye Treasury, 4 vols. Berkeley, CA:Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research,2007. I, 33.) This bemusing stanza turns out to have a muchwider use than simply Dogen’s. Attributed to Dogen’sChinese teacher, Rujing, it is striking that this same stanzashould come to play a role in Japanese Pure Land(“Amidist” in Girard’s usage), as found in the Myogishingyoshu. By focusing on this specific item, Girard devel-ops a new hypothesis regarding the history of both PureLand and Zen in Japan. Rather than a development ofpopular religious sensibilities on the one hand, and a trans-mission solely dependent on its Chinese sources—as thestandard history would have it—Girard suggests that the twostrains are both to be found among the low-ranking monas-tics from a very early period. Despite the supposed contra-dictions of Zen and Pure Land, Girard points out that “thedifferences between the Nenbutsu new sects and the Zennew sects may only concern the conceptual and habit cloth-ings, and behind these differences, the similarities andaffinities may be stronger than we expect.”

Richard PayneInstitute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological

Union

A GARLAND OF FEMINIST REFLECTIONS: FORTYYEARS OF RELIGIOUS EXPLORATION. By Rita M.Gross. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.Pp. 340. Cloth, $60.00; paper, $24.95.

Gross’s new book contains already published andnewly penned essays selected by the author to highlightimportant moments in her forty-year career as a prominentBuddhist theologian and feminist thinker. Major themesinclude the methodological contribution of the “feministparadigm shift” to the study of religion, religion as aresource for feminists, and the fruitful but fraught mar-riage of feminism and Buddhism in Gross’s own intellec-tual journey. This bold and unapologetically opinionatedwork mixes autobiography, political reflection, and aca-demic theory, making it of interest to Buddhist construc-tive thinkers and potentially useful (if properlycontextualized) in undergraduate classes on gender andreligion. Gross’s constricted conceptualization of gender,which she describes repeatedly as a prison-like set ofnorms (rather than a complex and potentially creative cat-egory), will quell any interest this book might have held forfeminist scholars in other humanistic fields and will repre-sent a source of frustration for younger feminist scholars ofreligion. Her historically ungrounded and monolithic refer-ences to “Buddhism,” “Hinduism,” and “Vajrayana,” andher excessive reliance on secondary literature mean thatthis book will hold little interest for serious historians ofBuddhism or South Asian religion.

Amy Paris LangenbergBrown University

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ZEN SKIN, ZEN MARROW: WILL THE REAL ZENBUDDHISM PLEASE STAND UP? By Steven Heine.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. x + 218. $24.95.

A recent work by Alan Cole (Fathering Your Father, Uni-versity of California Press, 2009) employs postmodernistrhetoric to enliven our understanding of the realities ofChan/Zen. Here, Heine (author of several fine studies previ-ously reviewed here) employs postmodernist wordplayhumorlessly, indeed sanctimoniously, in a diatribe thatcensures, and demands “repentence” from, everyone whostudies or thinks about Zen from any perspective other thanhis own. The book was admittedly sparked by a panel atwhich Heine saw two people talking past each other; so heclaims to offer a Tiantai “Middle Way” of understanding Zen,while chastising all others—Zen followers, Zen critics (heredemonized in the most virulent terms), and even Pope Bene-dict! Heine posits an irreconcilable hostility between follow-ers of TZN and HCC—abbreviations for methodologicalstances coined by Heine: the “Traditional Zen Narrative” and“Historical Cultural Criticism.” To Heine, the latter refersnot to honest, insightful studies by living scholars (e.g., inYanagida’s tradition), but to some “Critical Buddhist project”(apparently another reified attitude) “with its. . . excessiverhetoric and hyperbole,” which is “unforgiving of the mis-deeds of others,” such as anyone sympathetic to Zen. Yet,Zen itself must be also castigated: Zen must “correct thewrongs it has perpetrated, for which it must be held account-able,” so that “it can vigorously pursue a regimen of socialright,” that is, by having Zen abbots propagate healthy socialvalues, instead of unhealthy values as they have purportedlydone in the past. “For those who care deeply about Zen andits place in Japan and the world”—which here appears toinclude no one except Heine himself—“the challenge is tohelp define Zen’s role creatively lest the tradition be buriedunder the avalanche of criticism.” One cannot imagine anystudent of Zen finding any insight here into the actual fieldof study or to the actual methods of today’s scholars.

Russell KirklandUniversity of Georgia

THE HONGZHOU SCHOOL OF CHAN BUDDHISMIN EIGHTH THROUGH TENTH CENTURY CHINA.By Jinhua Jia. Albany: State University of New York Press,2006. Pp. xv + 220. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $22.95.

A classic example of the iconoclastic Chan monk, MazuDaoyi (709-788 CE), one of the fathers of Chan in the TangPeriod, is usually depicted in encounter dialogues withmonks using witty paradoxical remarks and illogical actionsto awaken the monk on the spot. Yet the author argues thatthis image of Mazu was largely manufactured by latermembers of the Hongzhou lineage, the school that claimeddescent from Mazu. Using reliably datable texts, includingextant stele inscriptions, he separates out “authentic” Mazutexts from those fabricated by later generations of disciples;these reveal a Mazu who gave sermons, frequently quotedBuddhist scriptures, and was in general rather conservative.

The Hongzhou-School re-writing of the received historicalrecord tracks the great evolutionary change that took placebetween early Chan (based on the Lankavatara� ¯ ¯ Sutra,tathagata-garbha thought, and prajñaparamita theory) andmature Chan that was not based on “words and letters,” butwas conceived as “a separate transmission beyond scrip-ture.” Mazu’s ideas—ordinary mind is the way, originalenlightenment, no cultivation—motivated the eventual devel-opment of encounter dialogue in which the Chan masterused verbal paradox and illogical action to awaken his dis-ciples on the spot. Mazu’s house style was not only carriedon by later generations; his many disciples established mon-asteries through north and south China, finally establishingthe Hongzhou School as orthodox Chan.

Victor HoriMcGill University

HEAD, EYES, FLESH, AND BLOOD: GIVING AWAYTHE BODY IN INDIAN BUDDHIST LITERATURE. ByReiko Ohnuma. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.Pp. xx + 372; illustrations. $48.50.

The body parts for which Ohnuma’s revised doctoraldissertation is named belong to the bodhisattvas who popu-late jataka and avadana tales that date from the thirdcentury BCE to the late second millennium CE. The storieson which Ohnuma focuses are those in which bodhisattvasgive away their bodies and lives for the sake of otherbeings—“pitiful” ones in mortal danger, “evil” ones who aremerely cruel, and the deity Sakra testing for generosity. This“gift-of-the-body subgenre,” as Ohnuma astutely observes,bears Hindu influence yet reflects Buddhist innovation:bodhisattvas not only give their bodies “downward. . . out ofpure. . . compassion” in the manner of generous ksatriya

�kings and give their bodies “upward [out of] a desire forkarmic rewards” reminiscent of those to which patrons ofbrahmana

�¯ priests aspired, but also give up their bodies to

complete the ultimate renunciatory gesture that calls theBuddha to mind. These idealized bodies, Ohnuma compel-lingly contends, contrast starkly with the corrupted humancorpora persistently scorned elsewhere in the Indian Bud-dhist tradition. Although her argument could be made evenmore cogent by integrating the contents of its final chapterinto preceding chapters (so as to illuminate the material onkingship and sacrifice by the aforementioned ksatriya

�and

brahmana�

¯ models of giving and receiving and so as to con-sider the material on offering and death in light of the ide-alized nature of the bodhisattvas’ bodies), her study itself isa generous gift to scholars of Buddhism and/or the body.

Shubha PathakAmerican University

PURE LAND BUDDHISM IN MODERN JAPANESECULTURE. By Elisabetta Porcu. Numen Studies in theHistory of Religions. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Pp. 263; illustra-tions. $177.00.

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The Jodoshinshu (True Pure Land) Buddhist tradition(referred to in short as Shin Buddhism or Shin) is one ofJapan’s largest traditional religious institutions, but it hasnever received attention from non-Japanese scholars whichis actually proportionate to its conspicuous weight on theJapanese scene. Porcu’s densely detailed book is an eye-opening survey of the roles played by Shin in contemporarylife. The first chapter (along with parts of the introduction)examines how the images of Japanese Buddhism andculture, which are currently dominant, have been created.The author refers in a sophisticated manner to conceptionsof Orientalism and Occidentalism to explain how somestreams, Zen in particular, have been privileged. Her argu-ment reinforces a now substantial body of critique concern-ing the misrepresentation of Japanese Buddhism in theWest. Three other chapters deal with specific expressions ofShin tradition. In the case of literature, the author describesthe voluminous number of Shin publications in Japan andShin’s representation in numerous works of modern creativewriting, including important novelists such as NatsumeSoseki. Some of these works have been adapted as films,such as the recent Academy Award winner Departures (dir.Yojiro Takita, 2008). In visual arts, Shin has been linked tothe mingei arts movement led by Yanagi Muneyoshi andMunekata Shiko. Finally, in tea ceremony, besides sustain-ing tea practice inside the tradition of Shin temple institu-tions, Shin has been tied to a special school known as theYabunouchi. Porcu’s ground-breaking study is an indispens-able resource for rebalancing Western perceptions of con-temporary Japanese religion.

Galen AmstutzIndependent Scholar, Acton, Massachusetts, USA

VIOLENCE AND SERENITY: LATE BUDDHISTSCULPTURE FROM INDONESIA. By Natasha Reichle.Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007. Pp. viii + 289;illustrations, maps. $57.00.

Reichle’s book offers both striking imagery and insightinto late Buddhist statuary in Java and Sumatra. Readers willno doubt be familiar with Borobudur, the great ninth-centuryBuddhist monument of Central Java. As the author amplydemonstrates, however, “extraordinary Buddhist imageswere still being sculpted as late as the fourteenth century.”Violence and Serenity is a beautiful volume, with outstandingillustrations printed on high-quality paper. The book is orga-nized around a series of five studies, each focusing on aspecific statue or collection, assessing the pertinent debatesas to purpose, provenance, and broader historical signifi-cance. These central chapters are prefaced by a generalintroduction to the development of Buddhism in Java andSumatra, focusing on the Singasari (1222-1293 CE) andMajapahit dynasties (1293-ca.1520 CE), but also offering abrief survey of the preceding period. Reichle’s grasp of therelevant historical events and circumstances appears to relyheavily on secondary sources, and it is unclear whether shecontrols the primary materials (in Old and Middle Javanese,

Sanskrit, etc.) required for an independent evaluation of themore contentious issues at stake. Her casual use of conceptssuch as “Tantrism,” “art,” and even “religion” itself mayseem at times incautious to readers of this journal. However,the book makes both careful and intelligent use of the extantscholarship, drawing on a wide range of materials in Indo-nesian, Dutch, French, and German. One hopes this attrac-tive publication may stimulate further interest in thisfascinating and woefully understudied field.

Richard FoxUniversity of Chicago

THUS HAVE I SEEN: VISUALIZING FAITH INEARLY INDIAN BUDDHISM. By Andy Rotman. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. 323. $74.00.

This book fits within two significant trends in Buddhiststudies in recent years: an increasing attention paid to visu-ality rather than just texts; and a fruitful investigation ofBuddhist values within the framework of the evolving field ofcomparative ethics. The bulk of Rotman’s book is a detailedphilological investigation of the early Buddhist SanskritDivyvavadana (“Divine Stories”), which the author terms “avast collection of Buddhist moral biographies.” In particularhe investigates the overlapping concepts of sraddha (a feelingof confidence or trust in something or someone based upondirect perception) and prasada (an impersonal but beneficialexperience of confidence that arises in response to perceptionof something or someone). Both of them arise in the stories inthe Divyavadana through visual experience, and both gener-ate a response of the good deed of dana (giving). Since dana isat the heart Buddhist sociality, sraddha and prasada aretherefore tied to larger patterns of Buddhist ethics. Rotman’sextensive and excellent analysis of these concepts could havebeen a stand-alone monograph. To these chapters he hasadded a much shorter and less comprehensive discussion ofBuddha images (as well as the role of narrative paintings intemples). This section of the book reads more as a set of notestoward one of the desiderata of Buddhist studies, a study ofthe Buddha image in light of the extensive recent scholarshipon religious images and icons in all religious traditions. Thisreviewer also finds it odd that a book that emphasizes the roleof visuality in religious experience and ethics is not accom-panied by a single illustration.

John E. CortDenison University

RIVEN BY LUST: INCEST AND SCHISM IN INDIANBUDDHIST LEGEND AND HISTORIOGRAPHY. ByJonathan A. Silk. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,2009. Pp. xviii + 347. $55.00.

This study focuses on the figure of Mahadeva, an inces-tuous murderer turned monk, whom one important com-pendium of the Indian Sarvastivada school holdsresponsible for dividing the original Buddhist community.Demonstrating an impressive command of the major Bud-dhist languages, Silk tracks Oedipal themes through Bud-

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dhist literature from South Asia, East Asia, and Tibet;tackles Indological studies of incest, patricide, and sexualdeception; engages psychological and evolutionary theoriesof the incest taboo; and draws comparisons with medievalEuropean representations of Judas Iscariot as incestuouspatricide. His central, compelling argument is that sectar-ian monk-scholars manipulated a pre-existing Buddhiststory of Oedipal misdoings, drawing on visceral feelings ofmoral disgust and Buddhist traditions of ethical reasoningand monastic law in order to discredit a historical figurethey took to be the schismatic founder of a rival school. Hiswork will be useful to scholars of Buddhism both for its

particular content and as a model for how histories of theancient Buddhist world can and should be written. Thoughhe claims to be interested in theoretical questions aboutthe universality of Oedipal themes, Silk is not as successfulin drawing out these wider implications in clear and directways. That he seems largely to ignore the work of feministscholars of Buddhism and South Asian religion, despite itsrelevance to his material (especially with regard to histreatment of incestuous mothers), also weakens this other-wise superb study.

Amy Paris LangenbergBrown University

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