nuanced understanding of not only faithful maidens andchaste widows, but also their roles in late imperial political,cultural, social, and intellectual history.

Jimmy YuFlorida State University

BuddhismZONGMI ON CHAN. By Jeffrey Lyle Broughton. NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi + 352. Cloth,$45.

This long-awaited book contributes enormously to amore nuanced understanding of medieval Chinese ChanBuddhism. For too long, Japanese sectarian scholarship’sinfluence has dominated the study of Chan, projecting ontoit a one-dimensional caricature as merely eschewing wordsand language. This view has also completely infiltratedpopular representations of Chan and Zen in modern times.Broughton’s study and annotated translation of GuifengZongmi’s (780-841) Chan Prolegomenon and other worksprofoundly challenges this simplistic view. The author pro-vides us with a rare window into a complex landscape ofChan as witnessed by Zongmi, arguably one of the mostarticulate Huayan and Chan masters of his time and in thewhole of Chinese Buddhist history. Zongmi discusses howeach of the extant main houses of Chan in the mid-lateTang times promoted distinct teachings and uniqueapproaches to practice. In the Prolegomenon, Zongmi appro-priates an Indian-style exegesis to critique competing Chanteachings into a threefold hierarchy. While Zongmi arguesthat all of these houses are valid expressions of Chan, hetouts Heze Chan (the lineage to which he belongs) as supe-rior and presents orthodox Chan awakening (zong) asinseparable from doctrine (jiao). Broughton has brilliantlycontextualized this complex history. The book could beimproved with a more user-friendly index, a better render-ing of certain key terms, and a more complete bibliogra-phy. The method for indexing important Chineseterms—according to the Pinyin spelling, without Chinesecharacters, and without reference to cross listings of theterms in English rendering—makes it hard to find the cor-responding English terms. Such terms as “one spiritualmind” and “spiritual knowing,” which are central conceptsto Zongmi, cannot be found in the index under “o” and “s”;the reader would have to know that these are yi lingxin andlingzhi, respectively, before trying to find them in theindex. It is not a problem for these particular wordsbecause they are well known among East Asian Buddhistscholars. When one comes across suspicious renderings,however, it makes it difficult to guess what the Chinesecharacters are. Terms such as “no mindfulness,” which isBroughton’s rendering of wunian, and “divine transforma-tion,” which I still have not identified, are misleading. Wuis always used as a negation modifier for nouns, and nianmeans “thought” or “recollection.” Thus, the term can be

rendered as “non-thought.” In the Chan context, non-thought refers to the absence of deluded, self-referentialthought, or that which cannot be thought of: the intrinsicenlightenment of all beings. Rendering this term as “nomindfulness” somehow brings unnecessary implicationsthat are absent in the original Chinese, such as “absent-mindedness.” The curious omission of certain works in thebibliography may also be a minor oversight. But theseissues do not detract from the significant contribution ofthis book, which will be an invaluable source for scholars,students, and practitioners alike.

Jimmy YuFlorida State University

EARLY TIBETAN DOCUMENTS ON PHUR PAFROM DUNHUANG. By Cathy Cantwell and RobertMayer. Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens,63. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wis-senschaften, 2008. Pp. ix + 228; CD-ROM. Paper, €66.00($99.00).

With this rich contribution, the prolific team of Cantwelland Mayer direct their careful philological and culturalanalysis toward a corpus of early Tibetan literature on theesoteric Phur pa traditions. The book begins with an intro-duction, orienting the reader to the Phur pa literature, itscareer in Tibet and the Himalayas, and then surveying theextent of the relevant Dunhuang sources. The core of thevolume consists of editions, translations, and analyses offour important Phur pa works: the famous and much-studiedPelliot Tibétain 44 (on what has been called “Padmasambha-va’s Invention of the Phur-bu”), IOL Tib J 331.III (on creatingand consecrating Phur pas, and practicing associatedrituals), IOL Tib J 754 sec. 7 (notes on its ritual andmeaning), and Pelliot Tibétain 349 (a terse ritual text).Noting the significant ramifications of the Phur pa cultoutside the corpus that deals directly with the divinity of thatname, the authors conclude the work by providing texts andtranslations of several ancillary texts found among Dun-huang manuscripts, including the Guhyasamaja mchan (IOLTib J 481), the Thabs zhags (IOL Tib J 321), and assortedfragments. Included is a CD containing high-quality scans ofall the British Library materials discussed (but not the PelliotMSS held in Paris). In all, the book offers a wealth of carefuland insightful scholarship that will serve as an essentialfoundation for future studies of early Tibetan Tantrism.

Christian K. WedemeyerUniversity of Chicago

FOUR GANDHARI SAMYUKTAGAMA�

¯ SUTRAS:SENIOR KHAROSTHI

� �¯ FRAGMENT 5. By Andrew

Glass (with a contribution by Mark Allon). GandharanBuddhist Texts, 4. Seattle: University of WashingtonPress, 2007. Pp. 224, 9 illustrations, 1 color foldout. Cloth,$75.00.

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TWO GANDHARI MANUSCRIPTS OF THE “SONGSOF LAKE ANAVATAPTA” (ANAVATAPTA GATHA):BRITISH LIBRARY KHAROSTHI

� �¯ FRAGMENT 1

AND SENIOR SCROLL 14. By Richard Salomon (withcontributions by Andrew Glass). Gandharan Buddhist Texts,5. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. Pp. 496, 22illustrations, 12 in color. Cloth, $95.00.

Since the earliest period of Western knowledge of Bud-dhism, it has been known, both through Tibetan and Chinesetranslations, and directly through the discovery of SouthAsian manuscripts, that there were a number of early textualcollections, which we may loosely call “canonical,” in circu-lation among various groups of Buddhists in the early cen-turies of Buddhism in India. This was evident from as earlyas the 1830s, when the British Resident in Nepal, BrianHoughton Hodgson, sent back to London manuscripts ofBuddhist texts in Sanskrit and what came to be called (afterF. Edgerton) Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS). The discoveryand publication of the entire Canon in Pali, along with com-mentarial and other later texts, in the later nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries, unfortunately often produced themistaken view that the Pali Canon simply was “Early Bud-dhism.” But continuing discoveries of manuscripts in San-skrit and BHS in the twentieth century, notably at Turfan, inwhat is now Xinjiang Province of China, from 1904 on, andat Gilgit in what is now Pakistan in 1931, serve as counter-evidence to that view. The manuscripts brought to light fromthese places, some of which date to the early centuries of theCommon Era, are a great deal older than the earliest knownPali manuscripts, which were mostly written in the last twohundred years. The two publications here reviewed are frommanuscripts made known in the 1990s: In 1994, the BritishLibrary announced the acquisition, through an anonymousbenefactor, of the corpus of manuscripts now known as theBritish Library Kharosthı collection. (Kharosthı is a scriptused to write texts in Gandharı, which is a NorthwesternPrakrit form of Middle Indo-Aryan). Another collection ofKharosthı Gandharı¯¯ ¯ texts, known as the Senior collectionafter its owner, was made public a few years later. Bothcollections are being studied by a team of scholars under thedirection of Richard Salomon at the University of Washing-ton. (Another important collection, in various dialects,known as the Schøyen collection named after its owner, isbeing studied by an international group of scholars underthe direction of Professor J. Braarvig of Oslo.) The best placeto start in studying these texts is Salomon’s 1999 bookAncient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhara: The British LibraryKharosthı Fragments (Seattle: University of WashingtonPress). (Mark Allon discusses the Senior collection in hisintroduction to Four Gandharı Samyuktagama

�¯ Sutras; see

also Salomon’s article in the Journal of the American OrientalSociety 2003, 132 [1]: 73-92.) The discovery of these Bud-dhist texts is sometimes compared with the discovery of theNag Hammadi texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls in early Chris-tianity. But it is worth noting, as Salomon puts it (AncientBuddhist Scrolls), that the new Buddhist collections “are

unlikely to contain anything as radically unfamiliar asappeared in their Christian counterparts. [Studying themhas to date] revealed nothing that is startlingly at odds withearly Buddhist doctrine as previously understood, nor isthere much reason to expect that further analysis will turnup anything that will be.” It will be fascinating to see iffuture publications of these manuscripts will confirm ordeny that view.

Steven CollinsUniversity of Chicago

ONE KOREAN’S APPROACH TO BUDDHISM: THEMOM/MOMJIT PARADIGM. By Sung Bae Park. Albany:State University of New York Press, 2009. Pp. vii + 152.Paper, $14.95.

One Korean’s Approach to Buddhism explores nondual-ism, one of the major conceptual paradigms that character-ize East Asian Buddhism, by employing what the authorcalls the mom-momjit paradigm. The mom in Korean literallymeans the body, and the momjit means bodily functions ormovements. In brief, mom is “invisible” and “indescribable”;it is “universality itself,” whereas momjit is its counterpart,“visible,” “descriptive,” and “particularity.” Also, momdesignates the “absolute and religious,” whereas momjitrepresents the “ordinary.” Park applies the paradigm ofmom-momjit to the main tenets of Zen and Huayan Bud-dhism. Zen Buddhism teaches that once one frees oneselffrom the habitualized tendency of taking a fragmentary“momjit” for the whole, one is liberated. In order to challengehabitual thinking, a radical transformation is required, andZen hwadu meditation serves that function by offering anoccasion to “break through [one’s] ordinary conceptual modeof perception and understanding” so that the practitionercan experience reality “as it is in its totality.” The Huayantenet “One is all and all is one” explains the logic of ZenBuddhism. Park employs the mom-momjit paradigm todiscuss two major thinkers in Korean Buddhism: Wonhyo(617-686) and Chinul (1158-1210). The author incorporatesvarious personal experiences in his discussion, whichmakes the book more accessible for those who are not famil-iar with Buddhism; to those who are already well versed inBuddhism, it also demonstrates how to apply or understandBuddhist philosophy with respect to everyday life events.

Jin Y. ParkAmerican University

RED MDA’ BA, BUDDHIST YOGI-SCHOLAR OF THEFOURTEENTH CENTURY: THE FORGOTTENREVIVER OF MADHYAMAKA PHILOSOPHY INTIBET. By Carola Roloff. Contributions to Tibetan Studies,7. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2009.Pp. xii + 477; plates, illustration, map. Cloth, €98.00.

The subject of this book, the author’s doctoral disserta-tion (Hamburg), is the life of Rendawa Zhönu Lodrö (1348-1412). Its centerpiece is an edition and translation of abiography composed by his disciple, mNga’ ris pa Sangs

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rgyas rtse mo. Until recently, primary sources for under-standing Rendawa’s life and thought have been very scanty.More are becoming available: not only this biography, butalso, now, eight volumes of his collected works. Conse-quently, the timing of this book is perfect, and it will be avery useful resource for those who undertake further studiesof these newly available materials. The author is obviouslyquite taken with her subject and eager for her readers tocredit him, as the author of the biography does, with a (oreven the) pivotal role in the Tibetan revival of DialecticistCentrism (dbu ma thal ’gyur). In the process, the authormakes some rather exaggerated claims, including the notionthat Rendawa’s contributions had been “forgotten.” In fact,scholars both East and West have been well aware of hissignal importance for Tibetan philosophy and the profoundimpact of his thinking on that of Tsong kha pa. Similarly, thehypothesis that the rarity of sources on Rendawa is theresult of a conspiracy on the part of the Geluk tradition, lesthe outshine Rje Rinpoche, is quite far-fetched. On the whole,however, the work is admirably researched, quite clearlypresented, and makes an important and timely contributionto the intellectual and religious history of Tibetan Buddhism.

Christian K. WedemeyerUniversity of Chicago

THE POWER OF THE BUDDHAS: THE POLITICS OFBUDDHISM DURING THE KORYO DYNASTY. BySem Vermeersch. Cambridge, MA: The Harvard UniversityAsia Center, 2008. Pp. x + 485. $49.95.

Examining Buddhist rituals, symbols, and bureaucracy,this book focuses on the political and social roles of Bud-

dhism played in tenth-century Korea. This book opens upsome new avenues for research into areas that have beenrelatively neglected in Buddhist studies, and is thus awelcome contribution to the study of the relationshipbetween Buddhism and politics, religion and power, andideology and history. However, this book is not without itslimitations. To what degree can we trust epigraphic materialto understand Koryo Buddhism? How can we interpretT’aejo’s Buddhist view, which appears to be incongruentwith the Buddha’s teaching as a life education system? Theauthor’s definitions of the state as a small group of top offi-cials and state protection Buddhism as official Buddhismstill remain problematic. Another area in need of furtheranalysis is the Koryo kings’ view of good governing. Inves-tigation of how the ideological underpinnings behind KoryoBuddhist rituals emerge is also discussed in this work. Theconcepts of Buddhist dharma, ideology, and worldview needto be further specified and clarified. The roles of major Bud-dhist events and royal and state preceptors also need to befurther explored from the sociopolitical perspective in medi-eval Korea. Unlike the author’s argument, no record indi-cates that those preceptors were major officiants in theAssembly of Eight Prohibitions and the lantern festival. Inspite of these points requiring further clarification, this bookwill definitely serve as an essential reference for anyone whois interested in the history of Korean Buddhism in a broaderAsian context.

Jongmyung KimThe Academy of Korean Studies

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