Abhinavagupta to Zen

From Abhinavagupta to ZenAuthor(s): John S. StrongSource: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 70, No. 3, The Encyclopedia of Religion (Jul., 1990), pp.368-381Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1205207Accessed: 22/05/2010 09:32

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From Abhinavagupta to Zen*

John S. Strong / Bates College

It is surely not insignificant that, as soon as Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion (ER) arrived in the library of the college where I teach, the thir- teen volumes of James Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (ERE; reprint, Edinburgh, 1955) were removed from the permanent reference collection and consigned to the stacks. The librarians explained this as due to lack of shelving space, but students of religion understand the symbolism of this move better; quite plainly, the ER has displaced the ERE.

Nowhere is this clearer, perhaps, than in the entries dealing with the religions of Asia. To be sure, the Hastings encyclopedia contained some articles by great scholars that will long remain classics (e.g., the thirty-six contributions on Buddhism by Louis de La Vallee Poussin), but many of its entries on Indian and Chinese religions, penned by missionaries or civil servants, are now quaintly obsolete and reflect a perspective that the field has outgrown. Moreover, it is certainly symptomatic of the internationali- zation of the study of religions in the past seventy-five years that, while the vast majority of contributors to the ERE were Westerners (and only six were of Asian nationalities), the ER includes articles by nearly ninety Japa- nese, Chinese, and South Asian scholars.

Clearly, in Eliade's encyclopedia, Asian religions have come to occupy the consideration they merit. Not counting entries on Islam, there are over six hundred articles (more than 2,000 pages) covering different aspects of religion in various parts of Asia. When one adds to this the approximately two hundred transregional studies of religious phenomena (from "Ablutions" to "Zodiac"), most of which include some consideration of Asian materials, it may be said that close to a third of the entries in the encyclopedia deal with Asian religions in one fashion or another.

In the vast majority of these, the level of scholarship and clarity of writ- ing are excellent. By and large, the ER editors were successful in calling on the services of the most competent experts in the field, so that their entries

* A review article on entries concerning Asian religions in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 16 vols., Mircea Eliade, editor in chief (New York: Macmillan, 1987).

? 1990 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/90/7003-0004$01 .00

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Abhinavagupta to Zen

are of interest and value not only to the general reader but to the specialist as well. Nowhere else can one find so much, in so few pages, by such great scholars. It is a treat, for a student of Hinduism, for example, to be able to read articles on various deities by Jan Gonda, Stella Kramrisch, and

Wendy Doniger (O'Flaherty), and to find within a single volume twenty- five pages on "Vedism and Brahmanism" by Jan Heesterman, as well as Eliade's last words on "Yoga." What such scholars say is clearly based on a much broader mastery of their material, and reading their essays is somewhat like reading the term papers of a seminar made up only of top authorities in the field.

Of course, there are some surprises, some disappointments, some curi- ous omissions, and I will be turning to these in what follows. First, however, it is necessary to give an idea of the overall scope of the

encyclopedia's coverage of the subject matter. In an attempt to do this, I have tried to arrange in a chart all of the articles I read that deal specifically with Asian religions (see table 1). I have not included here consideration of religions not originating in Asia (such as Islam and Christianity), and I have left out certain geographical areas as well (such as insular Southeast Asia and the Philippines). Nor have I dealt with the many good and welcome articles on various Asian Religions and the Arts (Poetry, Drama, Dance, Music), which are reviewed elsewhere in this journal.

I. THE REGIONS

It will immediately be seen that one of the basic organizational schemes in the ER is geographical. Major articles treat in a synoptic fashion the traditions of the principal cultural regions of Asia, to wit: India, Southeast Asia, Tibet, China, and Japan. Each of these areas is the subject of an "overview" article, supplemented by separate entries on "popular traditions" and "myths" (in the case of India, China, and Japan), by surveys of basic texts (in the case of China and Japan), and by a survey of the history of scholarship on that area (in the case of India, Tibet, and China but, dis-

appointingly, notJapan). Each is then further supplemented (especially in the case of India and Southeast Asia) by a series of articles dealing more

specifically with ethnolinguistic subregions. The intention, in these various regional and subregional surveys, seems

to have been to offer a variety of approaches from a variety of perspectives by a variety of scholars. In some entries, a genuine attempt has been made to highlight the commonalities of all the religions in a given area, but in others, a decision has been made to accept the definitions of a dominant or an indigenous tradition as normative for the culture as a whole. For instance, Jan Gonda's "Overview" of Indian Religions (row I.A, col. 1, in table 1) does not seek to identify broad pan-Indian themes but focuses

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TABLE I THE Encyclopedia of Religion ENTRIES ON ASIAN RELIGIONS

India and Mainland South- Japan Sri Lanka east Asia Tibet China and Korea

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

I. The regions Indian religions: Southeast Asian Tibetan religions: Chinese religions: Japanese religions A. Overviews and Overview religions: Overview Overview Overview

thematic studies Rural traditions Overview History of study Popular religion Popular religion Mythic themes Mythic themes Mythic themes History of study History of study Religious

Religious texts documents Korean religion

B. Ethno/linguistic Bengali religions Burmese religion Himalayan religions Taiwanese religion Okinawan religion subregions and Hindi religions Khmer religion Inner Asian religions Ainu religion related areas Marathi religions Lao religion Mongol religions

Tamil religions Thai religion Sinhala religion Vietnamese religion

II. The religions A. Buddhism Buddhism in India Buddhism in South- Buddhism in Tibet Buddhism in China Buddhism in Japan

Indian Buddhist east Asia Buddhism in Mongolia Chinese Buddhist Buddhism in Korea schools (10) Biographies of South- Buddhism in central schools (6) Japanese Buddhist

Biographies of Indian east Buddhists (1) Asia Biographies of Chi- schools (10) Buddhists (22) Tibetan Buddhist nese Buddhists (31) Biographies of Japa-

schools (2) nese Buddhists (32) Biographies of Tibet-

an Buddhists (10)

Supporting articles on Buddhist literature and on Buddhist doctrines (21) Supporting articles on Buddhist mythology and cosmology (17)

Supporting articles on Buddhist community/institutions (12) Supporting articles on Buddhist rites and practices (18)

)on

B. Hinduism Hinduism: Overview Confucian thought Confucianism in C. Confucianism Hindu sects and Neo-Confucianism Korea

schools (24) Biographies (17) Confucianism inJapan Biographies (29) Doctrines (8) Biographies (11) Texts and doctrines Myth/cosmology (4)

(35) Community/ Myths and cosmology institutions (4)

(23) Rites/practices (3) Community/

institutions (4) Rites and practices

(24)

D. Taoism Taoism: Overview Shinto: Overview E. Shinto Biographies (23) Biographies (8)

Literature/doctrine Doctrine (3) (5) Myths (7)

Mythology (3) Community (1) Community (2) Rites and practices (2)

F. Other religions Jainism (4) Nats Bon Japanese new reli- and new Ajivikas Cao Dai gions (8) religions Sikhism (5)

Arya Samaj Brahmo Samaj

NOTE.-Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of articles on a given subject when there are more than one.

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instead on the Sanskritic (primarily Hindu) tradition and proceeds through it chronologically. In this, it overlaps with material covered elsewhere by Alf Hiltebeitel in his article on "Hinduism" (row II.B, col. 1), but it nicely contrasts in style and complements in contents two of the other articles in its own section: Pupul Jayakar's intriguing analysis of Indian "Rural Traditions" in terms of agricultural, food gathering, and nomadic ideologies, and Wendy Doniger's seemingly effortless but ener- getically insightful essay on "Mythic Themes," which does exactly what it should do by focusing on significant pan-Indian mythological motifs rather than on the myths of individual gods (which are covered in separate entries elsewhere).

These pieces are then supplemented by a wonderful series of articles (row I.B, col. 1) in which specific attention is paid to the history, practice, and literature of religions in various ethnolinguistic subregions. These "middle traditions" (as one author terms them), between the "great" and the "little" traditions, are especially important to any understanding of religion in India (and in other regions as well). They are nicely covered here by Joseph O'Connell (Bengali religions), John Hawley (Hindi religious traditions), Eleanor Zelliot and Anne Feldhaus (Marathi religions), Fred Clothey (Tamil religions), and Gananath Obeyesekere (Sinhala religion). To these might be added, in a different vein, the article on Indus Valley religion by Thomas Hopkins and Alf Hiltebeitel.

Turning to Southeast Asian Religions we may start with Charles Keyes's fine "Overview" (row I.A, col. 2) of a whole panorama of cultures in that region. Some of these are then dealt with more specifically in separate entries (row I.B, col. 2) by Frederick K. Lehman who, in "Burmese Reli- gions," nicely addresses the question of the interaction of Buddhism and the cult of spirits (the "nats," who are also treated elsewhere in a separate article by Manning Nash); by May Ebihara, whose treatment of "Khmer Religion" needs to be updated by the reference to the important recent work of Francois Bizot in this field; by Charles Keyes, who focuses on the question of the interaction of Thai religion and nationalism and leaves the topic of "Folk Buddhism" to a separate entry by Donald Swearer; and by Georges Condominas, who provides two quite excellent surveys of "Lao Religion" and "Vietnamese Religion."

Tibetan religions (row I.A, col. 3) are "overviewed" by Per Kvaerne, who concentrates on Bon (also covered by him in a separate entry) and nameless popular practices, leaving the fuller treatment of Buddhism to others. His article, then, needs to be complemented by Herbert Guenther's "Buddhism in Tibet" and David Snellgrove's study of schools of Tibetan Buddhism (row II.A, col. 3). The unwary reader should be warned, however, that these two latter articles do not attempt to rise above some of the sectarian advocacies that have characterized present-

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day Tibetan studies. Guenther's article, in particular, is rather open in its

maligning of the dGe-lugs-pa sect and of its founder Tsong-kha-pa, and it

presents the rNying-ma-pa order (usually treated first in surveys of Tibetan Buddhist schools) as the philosophical, intellectual, and moral culmination of the whole tradition. Perhaps it was in order to balance this

perspective that the editors asked Jeffrey Hopkins to write a separate entry on "dGe-lugs-pa" (there are curiously no additional articles on any of the other sects of Tibetan Buddhism) and Robert Thurman to contrib- ute a biography in which Tsong-kha-pa is presented as a prodigy who

brought Tibetan thought to its full maturity. Other articles here, however, are more neutral (e.g., Turrell Wylie's "Dalai Lama," Leslie Kawamura's "Padmasambhava," and Reginald Ray's series on bKa'-'gyud saints, Tilopa, Naropa, Marpa, and Milaraspa).

Chinese Religions (row I.A, col. 4) are covered by Daniel Overmyer, whose "overview" takes a historical approach that is nicely complemented by Alvin Cohen's and Norman Girardot's more thematic studies of popular religion and of myth and by Laurence Thompson's calendrically oriented survey of the "Chinese Religious Year." Also worth noting in this context are several other articles (not listed separately on table 1): Anna Seidel's "Afterlife-Chinese Concepts," Stevan Harrell's "Domestic Observances-Chinese Practices," Tu Wei-Ming's "Soul: Chinese Con-

cepts," and Richard Shek's "Chinese Millenarian Movements," all of which deal with particular interactions of China's three major religious traditions (Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism). Wing-tsit Chan's "Chi- nese Religious and Philosophical Texts" (row I.A, col. 4), on the other hand, has a somewhat different thrust since it limits itself exclusively to a discussion of the "Confucian" classics. Despite this wealth of entries, however, the attention paid to ethnolinguistic subregions, in the case of China, is minimal when compared to the treatment of subregions in India and Southeast Asia. Thus, where we might hope for articles dealing with separate areas of South China, or with Yiinnan or Manchuria, we find only "Taiwanese Religions" covered by Milton Chiu (row I.B, col. 4).

Finally, we turn to Korea andJapan. Here, the "Overview" articles (row I.A, col. 5) are by Yim Suk-jay and Roger Janelli and Dawnhee Janelli (focusing on indigenous Korean beliefs), and, appropriately enough, by Joseph Kitagawa (surveying all Japanese religious traditions). Kitagawa's guiding hand, as one of the editors, can be seen in many of the Asian entries throughout the ER; here, his approach is basically chronological, and, in the course of less than twenty pages, he manages to trace succinctly the whole development of Japanese religions. Perhaps unfortunately, the very next article, Alan Miller's "Japanese Popular Religion," also adopts a historical period-by-period approach, thus causing some feeling of "dbji lu." Readers can easily relieve this, however, by turning to Robert Smith's

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quite differently organized "Domestic Observances-Japanese Practices"

(not listed separately on table 1). Both Kitagawa and Miller are nicely balanced in the attention they pay

to the early periods of Japanese history, but the scales are perhaps tipped too far in that direction in the next two articles, which are intriguing for the perspectives they present but misleading in their titles. In his "Mythic Themes," Matsumae Takeshi limits himself exclusively to the tales recorded in the Kojiki, the Nihongi, and the Kogosh-i, the latest of which was compiled around 800 C.E. In other words, he defines "Japanese Mythology" quite narrowly as being large contained in a few early basi-

cally Shint?5 books. These very same books are then among the principal subjects of H. Paul Varley, who likewise limits his survey of "Religious Documents" to pre-ninth-century texts. This inclination toward antiquity is reinforced, moreover, by the separate attention paid elsewhere to no less than seven of the ancient divinities (kami) listed in the Kojiki. Some of these, granted, are very important figures (e.g., the Sun goddess Amaterasu), but one would like to see them complemented by entries on less classical kami such as Inari or Benzaiten, for which one looks in vain. The balance on these topics is restored, however, in Hirai Naofusa's article on "ShintO" (row II.E), which manages to deal succinctly, in the scope of a dozen pages, with all aspects and periods of that religion, in Toki Masanoki's very useful survey of "Shint5 Priesthood," in Ishida Ichir5's study of the revival of Shinto in Tokugawa times ("Kokugaku") and in the pleasingly large number of biographical entries on various important eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thinkers involved in that movement.

Finally, in terms ofJapanese ethnolinguistic subregions (row I.B, col. 5) we find several entries: Charles Hambrick's "Okinawan Religion" and a perplexing plethora of articles (all by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney) on Ainu religions, including, in addition to a basic survey, separate pieces on "Inaw" (whittled ritual sticks), on "Iresu-Huchi" (the goddess of fire), and on "Kamuy" (the Ainu notion of divinity).

II. THE RELIGIONS

The second major organizational scheme in the ER, evident in table 1, is that which features individual religious traditions-the great "isms" of Asian culture and history. Of these, Buddhism (row II.A) is given by far the most extensive and thorough treatment, partly because of its pan-Asian nature. Here we are treated to a dazzling array of over two hundred articles that surely make this encyclopedia one of today's most important sources of information (and of bibliography) on Buddhism in print. This does not mean that Hinduism (row II.B), Confucianism (row II.C), and Taoism (row II.D) should be thought of as neglected; they too might be

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said to be well covered, but not with quite the same extensiveness. By way of contrast, however, Jainism (row II.F, col. 1) was clearly shortchanged, being the exclusive focus of only four articles, all by one, albeit very competent, scholar (Colette Caillat). Granted, Jains are not very numerous today, but their religion's long history, its voluminous literature, and its influential doctrines and practices might well have received more attention than they did.

Buddhism

The basic entries on Buddhism are introduced by a noteworthy "Over- view" article coauthored by Frank Reynolds and Charles Hallisey. Faced with the seemingly impossible task of surveying and summarizing, in a cogent and meaningful way, the whole of Buddhism throughout Asia over the past 2,500 years, they put to excellent use a three-stage scheme that analyzes the religion's evolution in different contexts through "sectarian," "civilizational," and "cultural" phases. This enables them not only to move through history but through different Asian cultures as well, while main- taining at the same time a sense of what might be called the developmental unity of the religion. They then are able to finish their essay by showing how each of these three dimensions of Buddhism has been affected by its encounter with the modern world. The whole is quite brilliantly carried out in that it succeeds both as a survey and in presenting an interpretative tool whereby to understand Buddhism's pan-Asian success.

Reynolds and Hallisey's "Overview" is then followed by a series of articles on Buddhism in different regions. Here the ER's geographical scheme intersects with its historical-traditions scheme, and we are treated to sub- stantial surveys of "Buddhism in India" (row II.A, col. 1) by Luis Gomez (which is especially strong in the attention it pays to late Mahayana and Tantra); "Buddhism in Southeast Asia" (row II.A, col. 2) by Donald Swearer; the aforementioned "Buddhism in Tibet" (row II.A, col. 3) by Herbert Guenther, which is supplemented by "Buddhism in Mongolia" (Walther Heissig) and "Buddhism in Central Asia (R. E. Emmerick); "Bud- dhism in China" (row II.A, col. 4) by Erik Zurcher; "Buddhism in Korea" (row II.A, col. 5) by Robert Buswell; "Buddhism in Japan" (row II.A, col. 5) by Tamaru Noriyoshi; and, finally, "Buddhism in the West" by Robert Ellwood. Given such thorough coverage, it is very surprising not to find here a separate article on "Buddhism in Sri Lanka." Perhaps it was thought that this would be covered either under India or Southeast Asia, but it is not, and, as things stand, the only place in the encyclopedia that one can glean something of the quite crucial history of Buddhism on that island is in the rather differently oriented entry on "Theravada."

The articles on Buddhism in different regions occupy almost one hun-

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dred pages; they are then followed by another sixty pages of more doctri-

nally oriented surveys of Buddhist Schools. Here, Ziircher's "Overview" is not very satisfying, but it introduces an extremely valuable trio of entries on "Hinayana," "Mahayana," and "Esoteric" Buddhism by Andre Bareau, Nakamura Hajime, and Alex Wayman. Then, more specific sectarian developments in Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan Buddhism are covered

by Stanley Weinstein, Araki Michio, and David Snellgrove. Moreover, readers who wish to dig deeper in any of these areas may readily do so by turning to even more detailed articles on specific sects; the Mddhyamika, Mahasanghika, Sarvastivada, Sautrfntika, Theravada, and Yogacara schools are all the subject of individual entries. So too are the various Chi- nese and Japanese sects that, commendably, are given separate treatment; thus there is an article on Chinese Ch'an and another one on Japanese Zen, one on T'ien-t'ai and one on Tendai, one on Chen-yen and one on

Shingon, one on Ching-t'u and ones on J5do and J3do Shin-shuf, and so forth. Finally, from a different perspective, these same movements can be

approached yet again by reference to some of the many biographical articles on key individuals involved in their development. Thus, there are also

separate entries on such great scholars/saints as Nagarjuna, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Bodhidharma, D-6gen, Chih-i, Saich?, Klukai, Shinran, and so on, and, even more impressively, on important but generally lesser- known figures such as Buddhapilita, Dharmapala, Ingen, K-6ben, Bench5, and so forth.

At times, this embarras de richesses may lead to some redundancy in coverage, but this is hardly a matter to be regretted, for the authors even of many of these shorter articles are often prominent specialists in their fields; of special note here, for example, is the use that has been made of the expertise of Japanese scholars, for instance, three excellent bud- dhologists from Kyi5to University: Hattori Masaaki ("Asanga," "Dignaga," "Sthiramati," and "Yog-cara"), Kajiyama Yuichi ("Madh- yamika"), and Mimaki Katsumi ("Aryadeva," "Buddhapalita," "Candra- kirti," and "Silabhadra").

The entries on Buddhism reviewed so far are further enriched by a large number of "supporting articles" of various lengths and scopes. These include numerous pieces on individual Buddhist doctrines (e.g., "Nirvana" by Thomas Kasulis, the "Four Noble Truths" by John Carter, etc.), as well as studies of Buddhist literature, most notably Hirakawa Akira's survey of Indian Buddhist texts and Lewis Lancaster's utterly useful summary of the development of the several Buddhist canons. There are also essays on Buddhist cosmology (by Randy Kloetzli) and on Bud- dhist mythology, the latter featuring separate articles on various Buddhas and bodhisattvas ("Amitabha," Avalokiteivara," etc.). Curiously, though we are told several times the few things that can probably be accepted as

376


historically true about the Buddha Sakyamuni, nowhere is the full legend of his life spelled out in any detail. Reynolds and Hallisey's article, "Bud- dha," is very good in tracing the ways in which the Buddha's hagiography developed and was used in different contexts and schools, but it never pauses to tell the "story" itself (even if only to question its historicity). Thus, the beginning reader is never treated to the saga of the Buddha's miraculous birth or to the drama of his "great departure," to name only two instances.

Other supporting articles on Buddhism deal with different aspects of the Buddhist monastic community

("Sa.mgha"). First, we find, an overview

article by Heinz Bechert which focuses on the internal organization of the

Sa.mgha and the function of its monastic code, the Vinaya (on which there

is also a separate, differently oriented article by John Holt). Second, we find a general entry by H. L. Seneviratne reviewing the Sangha's relation-

ship to social, economic, and political factors. This is backed up by smaller articles on such topics as "Aloka" (A. L. Basham), "Buddhist Priesthood" (John Holt), "Cakravartin" (William Mahony), "Dutthagamani" (Rey- nolds and Hallisey), and "Kingship in Southeast Asia" (Michael Aung- Thwin). If all of this seems weighted toward South Asia, Martin Collcutt's "Buddhist Monasticism" helps restore the balance somewhat by giving due attention to Chinese and Japanese materials.

Finally, we come to a last series of supporting articles on Buddhist rites and practices. Here, mention needs to be made of Donald Swearer's pan- Asian study of festivals and celebrations during the "Buddhist Religious Year"; of three informative surveys of "Worship and Cultic Life," in South and Southeast Asia (by Richard Gombrich), in East Asia (by Taitetsu Unno), and in Tibet (by Robert Thurman); and of three overviews of Buddhist pilgrimage in the same regions by Charles Keyes, Hoshino Eiki, and Edwin Bernbaum. There are also separate, more specific articles on such things as "Buddhist Puja" (Nancy Falk), "Stupa Wor- ship" (Hirakawa), "Meditation" (Winston King), "Merit Making" (John Strong), and, in a more general vein, "Buddhist Ethics" (Reynolds and Robert Campany).

Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto The basic categories found in the treatment of Buddhism are also fea- tured in connection with the other major religious traditions of Asia, with understandable adjustments in scope and coverage. Thus "overviews" are offered of Hinduism (Alf Hiltebeitel); of Confucianism in China (Wing- Tsit Chan), in Korea (Jahyun Kim Haboush), and in Japan (Peter Nosco); of Taoism (Farzeen Baldrian); and of Shint5 (Hirai Naofusa) (row II.B-E). Likewise, there are numerous (over eighty) biographies of saints

377


and scholars belonging to these various traditions, including, of course, important figures such as Sankara and Ram-nuja, Confucius and Chu Hsi, Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu, Motoori Norinaga and Hirata Atsutane. Schools and sects, mythology and cosmology, texts and doctrines, communities, and rites and practices are, however, presented somewhat differ-

ently within these four religions. In the case of Hinduism (row II.B), we find an impressive array of arti-

cles on different sectarian movements, fully rivaling the attention paid in this regard to Buddhism. Various Saivite communities, for example, are the subject of a closely coordinated set of ten entries by five specialists (Mariasusai Dhavamony, David Lorenzen, Andre Padoux, Indira Peterson, and Alexis Sanderson). Different subgroups of Vaisnavism are treated by John Carman, R. N. Dandekar, and G. R. Welbon, while Friedhelm Hardy, in his "Krsnaism," contributes a fine essay on regional diversity of Krsna worship and its intricate overlap with Vaisnavism. "Durg- Hinduism" is the topic of a disappointingly short entry by David Lorenzen, while Tantrism is dealt with by Andre Padoux. The various divinities that are the foci of these and other groups are, moreover, treated in separate "theographies" (e.g., articles on "Siva" and "Visnu" by Stella Kramrisch and Jan Gonda, John Hawley's "Krsna," and David Kinsley's "The Hindu Goddess"). Moreover, Hinduism is the only religion in which separate entries have been devoted to a number of important texts (as well as to a host of doctrines). Thus we find articles on the Vedas (R. N. Dandekar), the Upanisads (William Mahony), the Mahdbharata (Alf Hiltebeitel), the Bhagavadgita (Eliot Deutsch and Lee Siegel), the Ramayana (V. N. Rao), the Purinas (Caterina Conio), as well as on Sutra and Sastra Literature (Ludo Rocher), and the Hindu Tantras (Padoux).

The treatment of topics dealing with community, on the other hand, is disappointing. David Knipe has been allowed only two pages in which to consider "Hindu Priesthood," and the coverage of caste is totally inade- quate, the only entry being an even shorter piece by Morton Klass on

"Varna and Jdti." Rites and practices, however, are nicely dealt with in numerous entries, including noteworthy contributions on the "Hindu Religious Year" (by Marie-Louise Reiniche), "Domestic Observances" (Brenda Beck), "Rites of Passage" (Patrick Olivelle), "Pilgrimage" (Surinder Bhardwaj), "PiIjK" (Nancy Falk), "Worship and Cultic Life" (Paul Courtright), as well as specific entries on certain festivals: "Holi," "Divali," and "Navar-tri" (all by Reiniche), and "Kumbha Meld" (by William Sax).

Confucianism, not having quite the same proliferation of sectarian movements or of rites and practices as Hinduism, is treated somewhat differently. First of all, attention is paid to thinkers, rather than to schools of thought. To be sure, Wing-Tsit Chan does have an entry on "Neo-

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Confucianism" to go with his overview of the earlier tradition, but for more detail, one needs to turn to articles about individuals: for example, for the classical period, to David Nivison's "Meng-tzu" and Y. P. Mei's "Hsiin-tzu"; and, for neo-Confucianism to Rodney Taylor's "Chou Tun-i"

(whose diagram of the Great Ultimate is also given separate treatment in Tu Wei-Ming's "T'ai-chi"), to Conrad Schirokauer's twin articles on the two brothers, "Ch'eng Hao" and "Ch'eng I"; and, of course, to the same author's "Chu Hsi" and to Tu Wei-ming's "Wang Yang-ming."

The same general point may be made in the case of religious Taoism. Here, something of different Taoist schools can be gleaned from Baldrian's overview article as well as fromJohn Lagerwey's very fine study of the "Taoist Religious Community," but there are no separate entries on, for example, the Way of the Heavenly Masters (T'ien shih Tao), or on the Mao Shan School or on the Yellow Turbans' Way of Great Peace

(T'ai-p'ing Tao), although Anna Seidel does have a fine essay on the use of the notion of "T'ai-p'ing" in various millenarian movements throughout Chinese history. Instead, for more coverage of these sects, one must turn to biographical entries, and here one finds an unexpected wealth of material. For example, not only is the first of the Heavenly Masters, "Chang Tao-ling," the subject of an article (by Isabelle Robinet), but so are the third, seventh, and thirtieth: "Chang Lu" (also by Robinet), "Lu Hsiu-

ching" (by Catherine Bell), and "Chang Chi-hsien" (by Kubo Noritada). Similarly, in the case of other sects, there are entries on the likes of T'ao

Hung-ching (Bell), Chang Tao-ling (Robinet), Hsiao Pao-chen and Wang Che (Kubo), to name but a few. For Taoism's connection to alchemy, one can turn to T. H. Barrett's "Ko Hung," although there is also a separate article on "Chinese alchemy" by Nathan Sivin.

Many of these individuals, of course, while Taoist in affiliation, are

really the products of several currents of Chinese religion. The articles about them, therefore, tend to blur the lines between sectarian divisions. The same is true of the entries on doctrine (both Confucian and Taoist) that, quite commendably, tend to treat of single topics that are then traced through different schools of thought. Thus the essay on "Tao and Te" (by Nivison) bridges both Confucian and Taoist thinkers, as do the entries "Hsin" and "Li" (also by Nivison) or "T'ien" (by Laurence

Thompson). When we turn to the topics of textual canons, organized communities, and rites and practices, however, we find distinctions being made again. Chan's survey of Confucian Classics can thus be set off against Judith Bolz's overview of the Taoist canon. Laurence Thompson's helpful study of the Confucian "State Cult" can be contrasted to Lagerwey's two fine articles on Taoist "Worship and Cultic Life" and on Taoist "Priesthood," and, in a more concrete vein, Nancy Steinhardt's

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"Taoist Temple Compounds" can be contrasted with her own "Confucian

Temple Compounds."

III. THINGS NOT FOUND

The riches of the ER on Asian religions are by no means limited to the articles or to the traditions that I have highlighted in this review. Due attention is also paid to more minor established religions of Asia (e.g., Sikhism) as well as to more recent "new" religious movements throughout the region (row II.F). Enough has been said, however, to make it clear that the encyclopedia's coverage is, on the whole, impressive, authoritative, and thorough. Special strengths lie in the attention paid to regionalism, sectarianism, rites and practices, and biography. Less exciting is the cover-

age of doctrine and of the relationship of religious communities to social, political, and economic institutions, but, throughout, the quality of schol-

arship is high; I found very few factual errors in the articles that I covered, and much that was highly informative. This is an encyclopedia for inter- ested learners as well as for verifiers of facts, and it will quickly become the constant companion of students and scholars alike.

Nonetheless there were, in its pages, some things that I had hoped to find but did not. Space permits only the mentioning of a few of these here. First, the encyclopedia's coverage of sacred places is deficient. Granted, there are a few general articles on pilgrimage within various parts of Asia, but only in the case of Hinduism do we find any separate entries on actual sacred places: David Haberman's one-page entry on Krsna's "Vrndavana" and Diana Eck's slightly longer "Banaras," to which might legitimately be added Indira Peterson's "Ganges River." But that is all. And in the other religions, one finds no entries of this type whatsoever-nothing on Bodhgaya, or Angkor Wat, or Lhasa, or Wu-t'ai Shan, or Ise. It would have added another dimension of coverage to the encyclopedia to have included descriptions of such great centers, discussions of their impor- tance, maybe even a diagram or two showing their layout. To make mat- ters worse, some of these places and many others are not even listed in the index. In an encyclopedia of this size and quality, one should be able to look up "Borobudur," for instance, and find some page reference, if only to a general article on Indonesian religions; but there is nothing. Nor can one look up "Pagan" or "Kandy" or "Omei-shan" or "Madurai," or the Buddha's birthplace, "Lumbini," or his death place, "Kusindrj," or "Sarnath," the site of his first sermon. (Actually, a number of these places are mentioned in passing in some of the more general articles we have sur- veyed above, but they are not in the index, which is obviously deficient in this regard.)

Second, I would have liked to have seen more articles specifically on

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individual religious texts. We do, of course, have a number of fine surveys of various bodies of literature, but, as mentioned above, only in the case of Hinduism, do we find attention paid to particular works. It would have been nice to have had separate entries, for instance, on the I-ching, or the Lotus S9tra, or the Analects of Confucius, or the Tao-te-ching.

Finally, in addition to certain things that I failed to find in the encyclopedia, there were also certain scholars whose absence I noted. There may be, of course, a host of reasons (personal and professional, trite and com-

plex) for their nonparticipation in this project, and it is obviously useless to speculate on these. But, lest it be thought, as it sometimes is, that

"everyone" contributed to the ER, I will end this review with a partial list of prominent Asianists whom I would have liked to have read in these pages, or at least was surprised not to: Charles Archaimbault, Stephan Beyer, Madeleine Biardeau, Francois Bizot, William Theodore DeBary, J. W. DeJong, Edward Dimock, Michael Hahn, Minoru Hara, Yoneo Ishii, P. S.Jaini, Edward Schafer, Kristopher Schipper, Gregory Schopen, David Shulman, Bardwell Smith, Melford Spiro, R. A. Stein, Michel Strickmann, A. K. Warder, and undoubtedly others as well.

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