Winner of the 1999 Best First Book in the History of Religions,
sponsored by the American Academy of Religion
Politics
and Transcendent Wisdom presents a systematic theoretical framework
for understanding the relationship between politics and religion in
a variety of contexts. This book examines the formation of "national
protection" Buddhism in China and translates the key text of this
important movement. Showing that Buddhist notions of sovereignty were
meant and were taken as more than mere metaphor, Orzech examines the
profound link between Buddhist notions of transcendence and the deployment
of political authority in East Asia. To this integration of philosophical
tradition and political history is brought a new understanding of
Buddhist cosmology.
The contexts of Buddhism as state religion in fifth- and eighth-century
China are examined in detail, through extended consideration of
the Transcendent Wisdom Scripture for Humane Kings Who Wish to
Protect Their States, the text that was the charter for Buddhist
state cults in China, Korea, and Japan into the twentieth century.
The text first appeared during the fifth century as Buddhists were
struggling to understand how their "foreign" religion and the "foreign"
rulers of north China might be adapted to Chinese religious and
political culture. The Scripture for Humane Kings and the
rites enjoined by it were one answer to these questions. Three centuries
later, in the context of a fully sinified Buddhism, the T'ang dynasty
Tantric master Pu-k'ung produced a new version of the text with
new rites that served as the centerpiece of his vision of a Chinese
Buddhist state modeled on esoteric lines. The final section of this
volume presents for the first time a full, annotated translation
of this important East Asian Buddhist text. |
