The Journal of Religion
Vol.77 No.1
Jan 1997
Pp.184-185
Copyright by University of Chicago
TEISER, STEPHEN F. Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism 9. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. xxiii+340 pp. $46.00 (cloth). Most studies of Asian religions fall into one of two camps. On the one hand are examinations of doxa, on the other are ethnographic accounts packed with the minute description of praxis. Stephen F. Teiser's study is unusual in combining both to yield a rich and nuanced examination of medieval Chinese Buddhist thanatonic practices centering on the Scripture on the Ten Kings, an "apocrypha" written in Chinese under the pretense of South Asian composition. Such indigenous scriptures were long eschewed as unimportant, but recent studies have demonstrated their significance in the process of "Sino-Indian synthesis" (p. 2) through which South Asian religious ideas and practices were assimilated to Chinese contexts and concerns. Focusing on the social practices underlying the Chinese vision of purgatory, Teiser's work is also a significant contribution to the broader study of homo mortuus. Teiser's work is divided into three segments. Part 1 treats practices enjoined by the Scripture on the Ten Kings, part 2 examines the production and reproduction of the scripture, and part 3 focuses on the contents of the scripture and translates the longest version of the text. In contrast to typical text and context studies, Teiser begins not with the text itself but with mortuary practices, memorial rites, religious art, and the near-death experiences that made up the fabric of medieval Chinese religious life and that constituted the matrix of the Scripture on the Ten Kings. Indeed, "religious life in medieval societies did not revolve around books" but around prayer, images, and moralizing sermons (pp. 76-77). Teiser's aim is to document "the worship of the Ten Kings outside of the major scripture advocating their cause" (p. 19, my emphasis). During the ninth and tenth centuries Buddhism enhanced its connection to Chinese mortuary ritual by promoting a round of ten feasts that guaranteed easy passage of the soul before the ten lords of the underworld. These feasts were accompanied by grisly depictions of punishments meted out in the dark regions. Thus, using the text as "more than a written artifact," Teiser explores the "singing, rhythmic chanting, and worshiping . . . the viewing of pictures" (p. 8) of the Ten Kings in an effort to delineate "the practices of everyday life through which the idea of purgatory emerged" (p. 6). Part 2 narrows the focus to rites enjoined by the text itself. It seeks answers not to the question of authorship but to the questions of who copied it and how; who commissioned it, why, and in what settings; and who owned it and where was it stored. To this end, Teiser examines the actual production and reproduction of the scripture, its forms in handscrolls, hanging scrolls, and booklets, as manifestations of the scripture's own imperative to copy and distribute it as an act of merit. Believers were instructed: "uphold the scripture and you will avoid the underground prisons; copy it and you will be spared calamity and illness" (p. 207). Teiser fleshes out the technical dimensions of scriptural creation and propagation with insightful discussions of canonicity and with vignettes culled from dedicatory colophons from the ninth and tenth century--for instance, "An Old Man of Eighty-five" (chap. 10) and "Miao-fu, a Troubled Nun" (chap. 11). Gathering materials from the Tun-huang manuscript repositories in London, Paris, and Beijing, Teiser sketches for us practices and sentiments of medieval devotions and contextualizes the meritorious copying of the scripture. Though effective in cultivating merit on behalf of the dead, copying the Scripture on the Ten Kings yielded more merit when done before death. To this end the "Old Man of Eighty-five" copied the scripture with ink "sweetened" with his own blood (p. 127). Others sought peace with their enemies (p. 135), and one man sought to repay the service of his ox: "Presented so that the spirit of an old plowing ox may be reborn in the Pure Land. When Meitreya descends . . . may we together hear the sage's Law in the first assembly" (p.136). The most substantial of these vignettes, "Chai Feng-ta in Memory of His Wife" (chap.9), offers us a glimpse of the full liturgical execution of the ten feasts in which "each scripture was dedicated at exactly the moment when Mrs. Ma passed before one of the ten kings" (p. 106). Part 3 of the book looks at the doxa behind the scripture, including an examination of the infernal bureaucracy and other beliefs associated with death. Teiser also establishes a critical edition of the Scripture on the Ten Kings and provides a translation that is both reliable and readable. The book is enhanced by illustrations culled from Tun-huang collections and by fourteen appendices concerning everything from the Ten Kings themselves to scheduling the various feasts. This book is also eloquent testimony to the singular importance of the Tun-huang manuscripts on the study of Central and East Asian religion and society. The cache of over 40,000 documents (in Chinese, Uigur, Tibetan, etc.) that emerged from the Central Asian sands at the beginning of the century dwarfs the Dead Sea Scrolls both in quantity and in significance for the understanding of religion and society. Teiser's book is among a growing number of European and American Studies (John McRae's The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism [Honolulu, 1986] is another) based on Tun-huang materials, and its introduction serves as an excellent entree both to the import of Tun-huang scholarship and to ninth- and tenth-century Chinese Buddhist notions and practices concerning death. While informed by the best of contemporary theory, Teiser's book is a pleasure to read, being lucidly, and in places elegantly, written. Bridging area studies and the history of religions, Teiser offers an exceptional exploration of the concerns, practices, and beliefs of ninth- and tenth-century Chinese Buddhists in a work comparable to Jacques Le Goff's The Birth of Purgatory (trans. Arthur Goldhammer [Chicago, 1984]).