Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 33 • NUMBER 4 • OCTOBER 2007

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utes to the filling of this gap. She provides an informativeintroduction, providing the reader with a history of this textand its interpretation. Her translation is clear and helpfullyannotated. The section of the book translated here is alsoquite fascinating, as it represents a formative work ofChinese political and social thought presented from the per-spective of a Daoist tradition. It deals with a number offascinating issues, including the status of women and non-Han Chinese people within the ideal state. It should thus beof interest not only to scholars of religion but also to anyoneinterested in the history of Chinese political thought. Hen-drischke has made an important contribution to the study ofChinese thought, and her work should be read by scholarsand graduate students with an interest in Chinese religiousand social history.

David B. GraySanta Clara University

BuddhismOCEAN OF REASONING: A GREAT COMMENTARYON N G RJUNA’S MVLAMADHYAMAKAK:RIK:.By Je Tsongkhapa. Translated by Geshe Ngawang Samtenand Jay L. Garfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.Pp. xxiv + 603. N.p., ISBN 978-0-19-514733-9.

Garfield and Samten have produced an excellent trans-lation of Tsongkhapa’s commentary on N5g5rjuna’sM9lamadhyamakak5rik5, the pivotal work for the Madhya-maka school of Buddhist philosophy. Tsongkhapa’s work ischallenging both on account of its technical nature and itsvery complex organizational outline (sa bcas). Their transla-tion clearly reflects the original without resorting to overlycomplex Buddhist translationese. They also convenientlypresent the entire outline at the beginning of the work, andprovide chapter outlines at the beginning of each chapter.They have also included helpful Tibetan-English glossaries,as well as bibliographies of works of and about Tsongkhapa.In so clearly presenting Tsongkhapa’s text, they have pro-duced a model work, which will hopefully be emulated by

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others working in the field. It is highly recommended foranyone who is seriously interested in Madhyamaka philos-ophy and/or its reception in Tibet.

David B. GraySanta Clara University

SHAPING THE LOTUS SUTRA: BUDDHIST VISUALCULTURE IN MEDIEVAL CHINA. By Eugene Y. Wang.Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005. Pp. xxiv +487; plates, illustrations, maps. $60.00, ISBN: 0-295-98462-7.

One of the most popular texts in medieval China, theLotus Sutra was a common theme in the religious art of theperiod, abundant examples of which survive in cave shrinesand grottoes such as those at Dunhuang, Yungang, and Lon-ghushan. Wang’s book provides an in-depth examination ofthe formal impulses and visual logic of these works. Hestarts with the so-called “transformation tableaux,” usuallycharacterized as illustrations of the stories in Buddhist scrip-tures. Wang, in contrast, argues that these tableaux are notjust pictorial illustrations or derivatives of the sutra, butinstead constitute a holistic spatial and temporal domainthat indicates “an optimum itinerary for the deceased.” Hetraces the cosmological structure and composition of theseworks to Chinese archaic funerary practices and the Daoisttopographic tradition. He shows, moreover, how politicalpower and metropolitan fashion led to changes in thematicand iconographic representation. Wang also reveals how theLotus Sutra inspired the visual representation of a largernuminous world beyond its textual depiction, and that itevoked miracle tales and hagiographies. One problem withhis emphasis on the influence of pre-Buddhist Chinese art isthat Wang tends to overlook the origins of these practicesand styles in the Indian tradition. Despite occasional typos(i.e., Zhan Ziquan for Zhan Ziqian), his book provides novelperspectives for deciphering the medieval Buddhist repre-sentation.

Fan LinMcGill University