Buddhism in China, a Historical Surveyby Kenneth K. S. Chen

Buddhism in China, a Historical Survey by Kenneth K. S. ChenReview by: Leon HurvitzJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1965), pp. 448-453Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/597843 .Accessed: 16/06/2014 08:03

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448 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 85.3 (1965)

construction. In no strict sense are the dharmas products of the mind. In Hinaydna scholastics, the mind is itself a dharma. In Madhyamika, it is not allowed to formulate any thought about the dharma, because all thought formulations are false. Reality is what it is, whatever that may be. The view one has of it depends on the lenses through which one looks at it: if Sarvastivdda lenses, there are seventy-five dharma; if Mdd- hyamika lenses, no thought construction is possible. But this has nothing to do with objective reality, with which, in any case, Buddhism is not really concerned. "Reality is the Void" means that and nothing else. (The word "Void," by the way, is one of those late nineteenth-century Japanese-English mistranslations referred to above, one that has done untold damage to the presentation of Mahaydna Buddhism in the West.) Zen is as far as any other Mahayana school from holding that the "Void" is nothing. An elementary assertion about sfinyata, and one that Zen shares, is that no thought one might entertain about it can possibly be true. The classic formulation is that it cannot be said to exist, not to exist, both to exist and not to exist, or neither to exist nor not to exist. The last sentence in the above quotation is, in fact, meaningless.

The passage yin hsing pen shih ch'ing ching yin, ch'u yin chi shih ching hsing shen on p. 144 (see list of characters below) is translated as follows: "The nature of lewdness is originally caused by purity. When lewdness is eliminated, the body of pure nature is present." Even as a matter of crude literal translation, the first verse is mistaken,

for the words "lewdness" and "purity" should change places. The meaning is this: "lewdness" and "purity" are relative concepts, neither of which is possible except as the opposite of the other. The second verse expresses a somewhat different idea, viz., that there is no need to take positive steps to achieve purity, since that is the natural state of things. All that is necessary is to remove the lewdness that obscures it. There is no doubt that the ideas expressed by the two verses are not compatible. It is equally undeniable that Chan's rendition has not resolved that incompati- bility; on the contrary, it makes the verses even more obscure.

A glaring mistranslation throughout Chan's work, one that calls for special comment, is his rendition of fa" with "method." "Fa" originally rendered Sanskrit "dharma," a word vague enough in its Buddhist usages, the vagueness of which is further compounded by the slovenliness with which Chinese Buddhists used the word "fa." One meaning that Buddhist dharma/"fa" never has is "method."

Alas, poor Zen. Will Western Buddhist scholarship never do it justice?

LEON HURVITZ UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

~~~~~~~~~~~~O sL)$ 10eAt

Buddhism in China, A Historical Survey. By KENNETH K. S. CHEN. Pp. xii + 560. Princeton: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1964. $12.50.

The present work fills a yawning gap. Previous Western works on the subject have, all too fre- quently, been done by "China hands" whose im- pressions were very superficial, many of them Christian missionaries who, in addition to everything else, had an evangelistic axe to grind. Works

on Buddhism done by Westerners with valid scholarly credentials have, in the majority of cases, dealt only with Indian Buddhism, even when, as in the case of giants such as La Vall6e Poussin and Lamotte, literary sources in Chinese were amply utilized. Conversely, and for reasons to which the author of the present work pays due attention, the traditionally-minded Chinese scholar has refused to deal with Buddhism, and his disciple, the Occidental Sinologue, has in-


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Reviews of Books 449

herited his anti-Buddhist bias together with some of his other attitudes.

Here one has in English a work that is, in a sense, ground-breaking. It attempts to introduce the Western reader to an important subject, taking nothing for granted but at the same time assuming that the reader is neither a fool nor an ignoramus. Thus, in the just expectation that the book will be put to use by persons whose field of specialization is China proper, the author, in his commendable bibliography, lists many works in Chinese and-most important for this subject- Japanese, on which the qualified researcher can draw for further information. The author is himself aware of the gigantic range of his subject, and pretends to do no more than skim the surface. Yet, in a work intended to serve the interests of those who know no Asian language, this is exactly what is needed as a first step. At the same time, because of the unhappy dichotomy between Sinology and Buddhology, a work of this sort is the very thing needed to bring into focus a subject of which the China specialist must be pre- sumed to be totally ignorant. Once seeing it in some kind of focus, the said specialist can then proceed to read the works suggested in the bibliography, as well as others.

The presentation falls into five parts, Introduc- tion, Growth and Domestication, Maturity and Acceptance, Decline, and Conclusion. Part I, in turn, consists of two chapters, of which the former delineates the Indian background, while the latter tells the story of Buddhism under Han. This latter outlines the dominant sets of ideas in Han China, viz., Confucianism and Taoism, then proceeds to relate the legendary accounts of the introduction of the Faith into China, next to marshal all the genuinely historical evidence. What this means can be surmised from the titles of some of the subdivisions: Han Centers of Buddhism, Early Foreign Monks, Early Chinese Converts, Buddhist Teachings of the Han Period, Buddhist-Taoist Mixtures.

Part II consists of five chapters, the first two of them devoted to the triumph of Buddho- Taoist "dark learning," viz., the Tsin era, the next to the dynasties that followed the Tsin in

the South, the last two to the North, including the Sui, which, of course, put an end to the cleav- age between North and South. A good deal of stress is placed in Chapter V on the theoretical disputes between the friends of Buddhism and its foes, while Chapters VI and VII each devote some space to the notorious persecutions of Buddhism that took place in the fifth and sixth centuries, respectively.

Part III, consisting of six chapters, is a many- sided study of Chinese Buddhism's golden age, the T'ang era. Chapter VIII, the first of them, is devoted for the most part to a history of Church-State relations under the T'ang, but the end of that chapter tells of the great Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India: Hsiian-chao, Hsiian- tsang, and I-ching. The rest of Part III tells the story of the Church itself, and that from many angles: IX describes the Chinese monastic order. X describes the functioning of the monasteries (misnamed "temples," but of that more below) and treats of a much-neglected subject, popular Buddhism. This chapter itself would be enough to justify the whole book, for it presents in readable form one of the most important aspects of the Chinese Buddhist church, its role in the society and in the economy, the latter including the ad- ministration of the monastery as an economic unit, the former comprising, among other things, religious education, religious societies, and welfare activities. In addition to being readable, the chapter gives, in just under forty pages, all the pertinent information on a highly important subject, erring neither in the direction of pedantry nor in that of superficiality. Chinese and Japanese works on the subject cannot be read except by those whose background knowledge is already considerable, while Gernet's epoch-making work on the economy of Chinese Buddhism is far too technical for any but the intense specialist.

Chapters XI and XII describe the schools of Buddhism. The Occidental Buddhologist whose focus is India might well raise his eyebrows at a book that devotes to questions of doctrine "a mere" 68 pages out of 474. In defense be it said that the nature of primary historical sources in the case of the two countries is completely dif-




ferent. In Indian Buddhism there is little narrative history as such, even of works confined to the Buddhist schools themselves. Further, the Indian Buddhist monk was, not only in his own self- image but also on a standard of values common to his whole society, a man not of this world. An Indian Buddhist document would mention no more of secular fact than was unavoidable. His Chinese confrere, try as he might to emulate the Indian prototype, was a product of a society in which the State was everything. There is much more documentation for Chinese history than for Indian, and the State made its presence felt in the Church in the former country as it never did in the latter. An account of Buddhism in China must include historical narrative in a way not possible in the case of India.

The schools treated in these two chapters are San-chieh, Li, Chil-she, T'ien-t'ai, Hua-yen, Fa-hsiang, Chen-yen, Ching-t'u, and Ch'an. Of necessity, not everything can be included. Yet, when due account is taken of the limited space for presentation, the range is impressive. Par- ticularly worthy of note is the description of the Fa-hsiang (Yogdcara) school on pp. 322-25. The explanation of the concept of vasand on p. 324 deserves to be singled out, being the first truly intelligible account of that abstruse doctrine that this reviewer has yet seen.

The final Chapter, XIII, entitled The Chinese Tripitaka, quite expectedly spills over the confines of the T'ang in both directions. For it is a sum- mary history of the translation of the Buddhist canon into Chinese and of the publication of these translations, as well as of Buddhist writings of purely Chinese origin, over the centuries and in countries besides China. For reasons not entirely clear, some eight pages are devoted to a description of the content of the Saddharmapundyarika and the Vimalakirtinirdes4a.

Part IV, consisting of four chapters, takes Buddhism from Sung up to the present. Most significant in this millennium are (a) the Sung Confucian revival, which did Chinese Buddhism greater damage as a movement of the mind than the proscription of 845 had done it as a church;

(b) the relationship between the Mongol rulers of the Ytian and the Buddhist church of Tibet; (c) the situation confronting Buddhism in the "mod- ern," "scientific" world of the twentieth century, whether Communist or non-Communist.

The Conclusion, Chapter XVIII, is an attempt to do in sixteen pages what could easily fill as many volumes, viz., to tell of The Contributions of Buddhism to Chinese Culture. Once more, inexor- able necessity dictates brevity. The aspects con- sidered are (1) the borrowings of Neo-Confucian- ism from Buddhism; (2) the close interaction between Buddhism and Taoism; (3) the influence of the Buddhist scriptures in Chinese translation on the general corpus of Chinese literature, par- ticularly on the quasi-vernacular literature; (4) the infiltration of Buddhist terms, whether in translation or in transcription, into the Chinese language; (5) the positive revolution in the Chinese outlook on their own language occasioned by the transcription of Sanskrit words, mantras in particular (one need think only of the fan ch'ieh); (6) the manifestations of Ch'an in land- scape painting; (7) the knowledge of Indian as- tronomy conveyed into China by Buddhist missionaries; (8) the knowledge of Indian medicine brought into China by Buddhist missionaries and the changes it wrought in Chinese medical sci- ence; and (9) the changes produced by the ubiqui- tous Buddhist religion on the whole Chinese attitude toward religion and religious questions. The chapter concludes with about a page-and-a- half of remarks on ways in which Buddhism adapted itself to its Chinese environment.

The Glossary contains a selection of words, arranged in the order of the Roman alphabet regardless of the language to which the word in question belongs (English, Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese are represented), with brief explana- tions of their semantic content. At times the explanation is so brief as to be meaningless, except to a person thoroughly versed in the subject, who, of course, would have no need of the glossary. The list of Chinese Names and Titles is arranged alphabetically according to the Wade-Giles sys- tem of transcription. Distributed throughout the list are five Japanese names as well. Beside each



Reviews of Books 451

romanized transcription is the name in Chinese characters.

The greatest strength of the book, in this reviewer's estimation, is the Bibliography, forty- four pages of references representing, presumably, but a tiny fraction of this author's bibliographi- cal knowledge. The Bibliography is arranged by chapters, and contains pertinent works in Eng- lish, French, German, Chinese and Japanese (occasionally in other languages as well). Fre- quently the titles are accompanied by brief criti- cal comments. Anyone who had read all these books and articles would be well schooled indeed.

There follow now certain comments on indi- vidual points. On page 63, the word pen t'i is explained by analyzing it into pen, "the base or foundation of all things, the ultimate reality or the transcendental truth," and t'i, the "outward manifestations of this ultimate reality in the phe- nomenal world ... the relative truth." On page 87, the dichotomy t'i yung is explained by the same device, but here t'i is glossed as "unity, noumenon, substance, or foundation." It seems to this reviewer that t'i in both contexts is essentially the same, i.e., the t'i of t'i yung. In other words, if one may gloss the two expressions, they seem to mean pen chih t'i and t'i yii yung, respectively. If this view is correct, then "substance" appears to be the best English equivalent.

The statement on p. 85 f. of the Mddhyamika view of Sufnyata is somewhat misleading. If one may read between the lines, one is inclined to believe that Mr. Ch'en understands the issue himself. However, the beginner reading this ex- position is almost certain to misinterpret it. The point at issue, it seems, is the following: The Buddhist scholastics in general (with the excep- tion of the Yogdcarins), and the Mddhyamikas in particular, were not concerned with the universe except as it impinges on the consciousness. The very same reality, seen through two different pairs of eyes, yields two different visions. If ordinary eyes, the vision of common experience is the image; if Mddhyamika eyes, then the Madhya- mika view, which alleges Truth to be inaccessible to any form of perception other than intuition. What that Reality may be, apart from its impact,

the Madhyamika does not ask himself. The value of the Madhyamika view is that it leads to Buddhahood, while the common view keeps one tied to samsdra. (Of course, when one has achieved the proper Mddhyamika intuition, one is aware that there is no difference between Buddhahood and samsdra.)

P. 129. The restoration of ch'eng shih by satya- siddhi is now commonplace, but almost certainly erroneous. The most cogent argument against it is that shih usually represents tattva. At any rate, it never represents satya, which latter is consist- ently rendered ti. Cf. Frauwallner, Die Philosophie des Buddhismus (Berlin, 1958), p. 119. For another thing, tattvasiddhi certainly does not mean "completion of truth." Rather, it means "ascertain- ment of reality," i.e., the establishment of what is and is not real and the support of this conten- tion with valid proof. (What does "completion of truth" mean, anyway?)

P. 247 et passim. The rendition of ssu with "temple," likewise a commonplace, is no less erroneous. A "temple" is a house in which a god (non-existent in Buddhism) is either housed or worshipped, usually through the medium of sacrifices (likewise non-existent in Buddhism). Ssu most typi- cally renders Skt. samgharama, of which the best English equivalent is "monastery." Mr. Ch'en occasionally uses the phrase "temples and monasteries," without saying what exactly he means, but leaving little doubt that for him, at least, the two words are not synonyms. It would be helpful if he would clarify this point. If a ssu is not a building for the housing of Buddhist monks, then what is it?

P. 298. Here, as occasionally elsewhere, Bud- dhist terms are given, usually in Sanskrit, with laconic English equivalents that are of little help to the general reader. Who, for example, benefits appreciably by being told that s4ravakayana means "Vehicle of the Hearers" and pratyekabud- dhayana "Vehicle of the Solitary Buddha"? The only person who can make sense of these is one who already knows the Sanskrit, for whom, conse- quently, the English equivalent is superfluous.

P. 325. It is very unlikely that tantra means "that which spreads knowledge," if only because




Sanskrit deverbal nouns in -tra- are not agent nouns. They are nouns indicating recipients of action, or at most instruments, but with an em- phasis on passivity, not activity. The noun in question means "that which is stretched taut," i.e., a string, one of its attested meanings. In the present context, it signifies the authority of or- thodox transmission, i.e., the receipt of a valid certificate (albeit an impalpable one) of ordination from a qualified master and the authority to transmit the same to a qualified disciple.

P. 350. The shibboleth of the "practical, earth- bound" Chinese is too well-known to require comment. It is in general highly questionable to what extent such epithets can be applied to whole nations. Mr. Ch'en certainly seems to vitiate his own argument here. For he says that, when Buddhism first entered China, the Chinese, bedazzled, "succumbed." "After a few centuries, however, the practical nature of the Chinese began asserting itself. . . ." The result of this self-assertion? The dhyina exercise, no less! If the word "practical" retains its conventional meaning, what is "practical" about sitting in contempla- tion? All of this, however, is rather beside the point. In no genuinely scholarly work does the notion of Volksgeist have any place whatever.

Pp. 351 ff. The very historicity of Bodhidharma is a matter of grave question.

P. 353. In Tathdgatagarbha the garbha means 'embryo', not 'womb'. The word has both meanings, to be sure. Somewhere along the way it was misunderstood, quite grossly misunderstood, if one may judge by the conventional Chinese translation, ju lai tsang.

P. 382 et passim. There is a regrettable tendency throughout the book to mix Sanskrit and P51i, with no warning to the reader. In the worst cases, as here, the same word appears here in its Sanskrit guise, there in Pdli garb, and the uninitiated reader is none the wiser. The same two men who appear on p. 382 as Sariputta (sic) and Kassapa appear on the very next page as kiriputra and KdAyapa. Incidentally, the transcription of Sanskrit is open to some objections. For one thing, the subscribed dot, of all the diacritical marks, has been omitted, but not in all cases.

Why all other marks should be given and this one alone omitted, one cannot say. Quite apart from this, the macron is omitted from long vowels more times than this reviewer would care to count.

P. 417. The word bla.ma, as used by the Tibe- tans themselves, refers only to reincarnations of holy men, not to monks in general. It is the Mon- gols who use the term to refer to all monks, and it is from them, no doubt, that the usage came into the West.

P. 418. .. . the Mongols had gotten a taste of the magic practices by the Tibetan Tantric mas- ters and had been awed by them. The negotiations ended with the Tibetans submitting to the Mon- gols....." That's what the man said!

P. 463 et al. Shirob-jaltso is probably a misprint for Shirob-jamtso, i.e., shes.rab.rgya.mtsho, "sea of wisdom."

In conclusion, those who are ready to pro- nounce glib judgments on the prospects of Bud- dhism in mainland China would do well to read carefully Mr. Ch'en's remarks on p. 469. There it is correctly stated that the submission of the Church to the State has characterized most of China's history. In that sense, it is absurd to counterpose the "virtuous" governments of yes- terday to the "wicked" regime of today. "Bud- dhism is now subservient to the interests of the Communist state, but this is not something new in the history of the religion.... The Chinese Communists are now doing some of the very things toward Buddhism which the emperors had done in the past."

The book is a proper jumping-off point for minute studies of some of the parts that went into the making of it. The Chinese and Japanese have been doing it for decades. We Occidentals may now think to emulate them, in the just expectation that our work will be more meaningful to our fellow-Westerners, now that they have this book before them. May one hope that Mr. Ch'en himself will be among the authors of these de- tailed studies?

LEON HURVITZ

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON



GLOSSARY

C H Ai N

Quotation from p. 144 *k j! %AX q? ) )t4 S~t ih

fa

C H E N

ch'an Ai-

chen yen A j

ch 'eng ahih

ching t'u

chui-she

fa haiang

fan chieoh

han

haUa chao ,,

hauian taang * 6

hua yen

iching

pan chih te i

peni t'i

8hih

asu

Bui

sung f

ttangk

ti

t'i yii Yung~i

t'i yung 1 t'ien t'ai.

tain

Aan

453



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Buddhism in China, a Historical Surveyby Kenneth K. S. Chen