Sino-Tibetan Buddhism across the Ages
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Studies on East Asian Religions
Edited by
James A. Benn (McMaster University)
Jinhua Chen (University of British Columbia)
volume 5
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sear
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Sino-Tibetan
Buddhism across the Ages
Edited by
Ester Bianchi
Weirong Shen
leiden | boston
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Cover illustration: Gangs dkar (Minyag Gongkar, Ch. Gongga shan 貢嘎山). Slide photo, by Monica
Esposito
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bianchi, Ester, editor. | Shen, Weirong, 1962- editor.
Title: Sino-Tibetan Buddhism across the ages / edited by Ester Bianchi, Weirong
Shen.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2021. | Series: Studies on East Asian religions,
2452-0098 ; vol. 5 | Includes index.
Identifiers: lccn 2021032834 (print) | lccn 2021032835 (ebook) |
isbn 9789004467958 (hardback) | isbn 9789004468375 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Buddhism–Tibet Region–History. | Buddhism–China–History. |
China–Relations–Tibet Region. | Tibet Region–Relations–China.
Classification: lcc bq7576 .s565 2021 (print) | lcc bq7576 (ebook) |
ddc 294.30951–dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032834
lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032835
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface.
issn 2452-0098
isbn 978-90-04-46795-8 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-46837-5 (e-book)
Copyright 2021 by Ester Bianchi and Weirong Shen. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The
Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink,
Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress.
Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for
re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
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Dedicated to the memory of Monica Esposito
(August 7, 1962–March 10, 2011)
∵
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Contents
List of Figures and Tables ix
Notes on Contributors xi
Introduction 1
Ester Bianchi and Weirong Shen
part 1
Early Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Encounters
1
An Invented Tradition: Hva shang Mahāyāna and His Teachings in
Tibetan Literature 21
Weirong Shen
2
Attending to the Elders: Icons and Identities of Dharmatāla and Hva
shang across Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Milieus 67
Linghui Zhang
3
To the Place Where Tea Comes from: Gyi-ljang’s Trip to China
Penghao Sun
90
4
Edicts and the Edible: Digesting Imperial Sovereignty in Lhasa
Fan Zhang
111
part 2
Tibetan Tantra in the Modern World
5
Tibetan Theosophy: Helena Blavatsky’s Tantric Connection
Urs App
141
6
Tantrism, Modernity, History: On Lü Cheng’s Philological Method
Martino Dibeltulo Concu
170
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viii
contents
part 3
Modern Forms of Sino-Tibetan Hybridity
7
The Combined Practice of Vinaya and Tantra in Nenghai’s Path to
Liberation 225
Ester Bianchi
8
Approaching the Perfection of Wisdom: Nenghai’s Interpretation of the
Ornament of Realization 253
Wei Wu
9
Accidental Esoterics: Han Chinese Practicing Tibetan Buddhism
Alison Denton Jones
10
Tibeto-Mongol and Chinese Buddhism in Present-Day Hohhot, Inner
Mongolia: Competition and Interactions 317
Isabelle Charleux
Index
278
365
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Figures and Tables
Figures
5.1
9.1
9.2
9.3
10.1
10.2
10.3
10.4
10.5
10.6
10.7
10.8
10.9
10.10
10.11
10.12
Heinrich August Jäschke, Romanized Tibetan and English Dictionary. Kyelang
in British Lahoul: Moravian Mission, p. 124. 147
Nuona Memorial Hall Main Building, Nanjing. March 2008. Photo by
author. 301
Nuona Memorial Hall side building with Prayer Wheels, Nanjing. March
2008. Photo by author. 302
Dizang Sūtra service attendees circumambulate the Stupa after the service
at Nuona Memorial Hall, Nanjing. March 2008. Photo by author. 304
Map of the Old City of Hohhot. © Isabelle Charleux (from Google
map) 323
Chinese Buddhist monks attending a main ritual (together with Buddhist
jushis and Daoist priests) performed by Mongol lamas in the Siregetü juu,
summer 1995. © Isabelle Charleux, 1995 325
Rebuilt Tongshun Street. © Marie-Dominique Even, 2006 328
Altan Khan square, with the large statue of Altan Khan and the main
entrance of the Yeke juu (see from the south). © Isabelle Charleux,
2012 329
Floorplan of the Yeke juu 335
Jade Buddha, Yufodian, Yeke juu. © Marie-Dominique Even, 2014 336
Abbot’s courtyard, Yeke juu. © Isabelle Charleux, 2012 336
Chinese decoration within Mongol Buddhist monasteries: Wheel of life
(Bhavacakra), central assembly hall of the Yeke juu (top left); dragons
surrounding the Kalacakra symbol, Sitātapatrā hall of the Yeke juu (top
right); Caishen, Chinese god of Wealth, great assembly hall of the Emci-yin
juu (bottom left); Statue of an elephant holding a ruyi 如意 sceptre in front
of the Amitāyus hall, Yeke juu. © Isabelle Charleux, 2016 339
Floorplan of the Guanyinsi 342
Avalokiteśvara hall, Guanyinsi. © Isabelle Charleux, 2016 343
Protector deity, Protectors’ hall of the Guanyinsi. © Isabelle Charleux,
2016 343
Burqan Stūpa, exterior (© Isabelle Charleux, 2016); interior and consecration
ritual (website “Baoerhan fota”) 346
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x
figures and tables
Tables
3.1
3.2
10.1
10.2
10.3
Comparing the two Lam ‘bras histories 95
Comparing lineages in different textual traditions 101
Comparison between Yeke juu and Guanyinsi in 2016 330
Ritual calendars of Yeke juu and Guanyinsi in the mid-2000s
Interior filling of the 81.60 metres Burqan Stūpa 347
337
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Notes on Contributors
Urs App
studied psychology, philosophy, and religion at the universities of Freiburg,
Kyoto, and Temple (Philadelphia, PA). He earned a Ph.D. in Chinese Buddhism
from Temple University in 1989 and is currently senior researcher at the École
Française d’Extrême-Orient. From 1989 to 1999, he was professor of Buddhism
and associate director of the International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism
at Hanazono University, Kyoto. His research focuses on Buddhism (especially
Zen), history of orientalism, history of the Western discovery of Asian religions,
history of ideas in the East and West. He is a producer of video documentaries
on Asian religions, and is author of, among other books, Master Yunmen (1994,
2018), The Birth of Orientalism (2010), Richard Wagner and Buddhism (2011), The
Cult of Emptiness (2012), and Schopenhauer’s Compass (2014).
Ester Bianchi
holds a Ph.D. in Indian and East-Asian Civilization from the University of
Venice (co-tutorial Ph.D. in Sciences Religieuses received from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes). She is currently Associate Professor of Chinese Religions and Philosophy at the University of Perugia. Her research is centered
on Sino-Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese Buddhist monasticism, and the revival of
monastic discipline and of early meditation techniques in modern and contemporary Chinese Buddhism. She is the author of The Iron Statue Monastery,
Tiexiangsi: A Buddhist Nunnery of Tibetan Tradition in Contemporary China
(Firenze 2001) and of the first Italian translation of the Gaoseng Faxian zhuan
(Faxian: un pellegrino cinese nell’India del v secolo, Perugia, 2013).
Isabelle Charleux
earned a Ph.D. from Sorbonne University in 1998, is director of research at
cnrs (National Center for Scientific Research, Paris) and deputy director of the
gsrl (Societies, Religions, and Laicities Group). Her research interests focus on
Mongol material culture and religion (Mongolia and Inner Mongolia) and the
pilgrimages of Mongols in Mongolia and abroad. She is the author of Nomads
on Pilgrimage: Mongols on Wutaishan (China), 1800–1940 (Brill, 2015) and Temples et monastères de Mongolie-Intérieure (Comité des Travaux Historiques et
Scientifiques & Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, 2006).
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xii
notes on contributors
Martino Dibeltulo Concu
is a historian of Buddhism who holds a Ph.D. in Tibetan and Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan. His area of expertise is the history and
historiography of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist relations. His current projects
include a study of the modern incorporation of China into the global flow of
European ideas about the Buddha and a monograph on how the study of Buddhist Tantra has influenced Enlightenment legacies and global thought during
the modern age. He is the author of “Buddhism, Philosophy, History. On Eugène
Burnouf’s Simple Sūtras” ( Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2017), an investigation
of magic, morality, and death in the European search for the historical Buddha.
Alison Denton Jones
is an Associate of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. She is the
author of Blood Drives, Bodhisattvas, and Blogs: Doing Buddhism in China’s 21st
Century Urban Middle Class (forthcoming), which offers the first book-length
study of an overlooked piece of China’s urban religious landscape: the vast
number of white collar urbanites who practice Buddhism. She has also published two previous articles exploring the practice of Tibetan Buddhism by Han
Chinese in the Reform Era. Her research focuses on cultural and institutional
developments in Buddhism in contemporary Chinese societies, with particular
focus on urban dynamics.
Weirong Shen
holds a Ph.D. in Central Asian Science of Language and Culture from Bonn University (1998). Currently, he is Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Philology at
Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is the author of Leben und historische Bedeutung des ersten Dalai Lama dGe ’dun grub pa dpal bzang po (1391–1474)—Ein
Beitrag zur Geschichte der dGe lugs pa-Schule und der Institution der Dalai Lama
(Styler Verlag, Institut Monumenta Serica, St. Augustin, Germany, 2002) and
Philological Studies of Tibetan History and Buddhism (Shanghai Press of Chinese Classics, 2010).
Penghao Sun
is a doctoral student in Inner Asia and Altaic Studies at Harvard University.
His dissertation analyzes etiquette stories, normative debates, and chancellery
translingual practice in order to explore the role of Mongols in the development of Tibetan historical consciousness from the thirteenth century on. His
publications include an edition of the 1780 quadrilingual inscriptions in the
Longxing Monastery and a study of four Tantric documents related to Pha Dam
pa Sangs rgyas, both in Chinese.
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notes on contributors
xiii
Wei Wu
is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Emory University.
She received her Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University in 2017. She is
currently preparing a book manuscript based on her dissertation “Indigenization of Tibetan Buddhism in Twentieth-Century China.” Her book project sheds
light on cross-cultural and trans-regional religious transmission, specifically
showing how the interaction between Tibetan Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism has influenced the religious landscape of modern China.
Fan Zhang
is Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology at
Peking University (China). Her research concerns Tibetan studies, ethnic studies, the study of empire and civilization, and anthropological theory. She has
carried out historical and ethnographical studies in Tibet, Sichuan, and Fujian.
Her major publications include “Grass-root Officials in the Ideological Battlefield: Revaluation of the Study of the amban in Tibet” (2014), “Reorienting the
Sacred and Accommodating the Secular: the History of Buddhism in China
(rgya nag chos ’byung)” (2016), and “Transcendent Space, Mandala, and Our
Holy Empire: Multiple Spatial Imaginations of Mount Wutai and Multiple Identifications in the 18th century” (2019, in Chinese).
Linghui Zhang
holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia and is currently affiliated with the Chinese Academy of History at the Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences. His dissertation project is situated in the field of tantric
Buddhism and traces the discursive trajectory of the Mahāmudrā tradition
from its origination in Indian Buddhist Tantra, through a formative process
nourished by Indian and Tibetan post-tantric ethos, and finally to its systematic presentation as epitomized in the twelfth-century Tangut work Keypoints
of Mahāmudrā as the Ultimate, compiled by a Xixia-based scholarly monk
Dehui. Zhang’s work focuses on how the Keypoints juxtaposes two soteriological modes of the visionary and the embodied and bridges them in the experiential domain of non-conceptual realization, analyzing it against the multiple
philosophical and practical threads from Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Tantra
and Mahāyāna scholasticism.
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