Cultural Intersections in Later Chinese Buddhism

Download or read book Cultural Intersections in Later Chinese Buddhism written by Marsha Smith Weidner and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays on later Chinese Buddhism takes us beyond the bedrock subjects of traditional Buddhist historiography - scriptures and commentaries, sectarian developments, lives of notable monks - to examine a wide range of extracanonical materials that illuminate cultural manifestations of Buddhism from the Song dynasty (960-1279) through the modern period. Straying from well-trodden paths, the authors often transgress the boundaries of their own disciplines: historians address architecture; art historians look to politics; a specialist in literature treats poetry that offers gendered insights into Buddhist lives. The broad-based cultural orientation of this volume is predicated on the recognition that art and religion are not closed systems requiring only minimal cross-indexing with other social or aesthetic phenomena but constituent elements in interlocking networks of practice and belief.