Table Of ContentChinese Buddhism and the Scholarship of Erik Zürcher
Jonathan A. Silk and Stefano Zacchetti† - 978-90-04-52215-2
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Sinica Leidensia
Edited by
Barend J. ter Haar
Maghiel van Crevel
In co-operation with
P.K. Bol, D.R. Knechtges, E.S. Rawski,
W.L. Idema, H.T. Zurndorfer
volume 157
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sinl
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Jonathan A. Silk and Stefano Zacchetti† - 978-90-04-52215-2
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Presentation of the 2014 volume to Princess Beatrix. Pictured left to right: J.A. Silk (Leiden Uni-
versity), H. Pabbruwe (Brill), E.-J. Zürcher (Leiden University), Princess Beatrix
Photograph by Monique Shaw
Jonathan A. Silk and Stefano Zacchetti† - 978-90-04-52215-2
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Chinese Buddhism
and the Scholarship of
Erik Zürcher
Edited by
Jonathan A. Silk
Stefano Zacchetti
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Jonathan A. Silk and Stefano Zacchetti† - 978-90-04-52215-2
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Cover illustration: The Buddha’s Preaching at the Deerpark, from a wall painting in Kizil. Hand-drawn by
Erik Zürcher to illustrate his Het Leven van de Boeddha (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1978): 110. Reproduced
with permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Silk, Jonathan A., editor. | Zacchetti, Stefano, 1968–2020 editor.
Title: Chinese Buddhism and the scholarship of Erik Zürcher / edited by
Jonathan A. Silk, Stefano Zacchetti.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2023. | Series: Sinica Leidensia,
0169–9563 ; vol. 157 | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022035358 (print) | LCCN 2022035359 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004515819 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004522152 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Buddhism—China—History. | Buddhism—China—Study and
teaching. | Buddhism—Study and teaching—Europe—History. |
China—Study and teaching—Europe—History. | Zürcher, E. (Erik) |
Sinologists—Netherlands.
Classification: LCC BQ626 .C535 2023 (print) | LCC BQ626 (ebook) | DDC
294.30951—dc23/eng/20220825
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035358
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035359
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0169-9563
isbn 978-90-04-51581-9 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-52215-2 (e-book)
Copyright 2023 by Jonathan A. Silk and Stefano Zacchetti. 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, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic.
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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Contents
Preface vii
List of Illustrations and Tables ix
Contributors xii
Introduction 1
1 A Unique Trajectory: Erik Zürcher’s Studies of Chinese Buddhism 11
Stefano Zacchetti†
2 The Archaeology of Early Chinese Buddhism: Rethinking
“Han Buddhism and the Western Region” 23
Minku Kim
3 The “Missing Majority”: Dao’an’s Anonymous Scriptures Revisited 94
Jan Nattier
4 Features of the Underlying Language of Zhi Qian’s Chinese Translation
of the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa 141
Seishi Karashima†
5 No Room at the Inn: The Brief Daoist Experiment with Buddhist
Notions of Self 166
Stephen R. Bokenkamp
6 Buddhist Monks and Oral Performance 188
Barend J. ter Haar
7 Jizang’s 吉藏 Sanskrit 233
Funayama Tōru
8 The Waning Years of the Eminent Monk Xuanzang and his Deification
in China and Japan 255
Liu Shufen
9 Blind Spots and One-Way Tracks in Chinese Buddhist
Historiography 290
Stefano Zacchetti†
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vi Contents
10 Buddhism in Premodern China and Its Periodization: In Search of a
New Narrative 304
Antonello Palumbo
11 Middle Kingdom and Wider Buddhist World: Introducing Some
Neglected Sources from Late Imperial and Modern China 390
T.H. Barrett
12 Erik Zürcher’s Study of Christianity in Seventeenth-Century China:
An Intellectual Portrait 408
Nicolas Standaert
Appendix: Corrigenda to Zürcher’s “Han Buddhism and the
Western Region” 441
Index 442
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Preface
This volume appears under the names of two editors, Stefano Zacchetti and
myself. When, on 29 April 2020, Stefano suddenly died, aside from the grief
and shock of the loss of my dearest friend, a much less important, but here
relevant, consequence was that the full weight of editing fell abruptly onto
my much too narrow shoulders. Part, though only a part, of the delay in the
volume’s appearance has been due to my difficulty in returning to this pro-
cess of editing, in which Stefano and I had been so closely cooperating. For we
had agreed, already at the time of the conference at which most of the papers
here were delivered, “Chinese Buddhism and the Scholarship of Erik Zürcher,”
held in Leiden on 12–14 February, 2014, to edit the resulting volume together,
and I should never have dared to attempt it alone. However, as inadequately
prepared as I am, I have felt it my duty to carry the volume to completion. In
the end, there is no question that despite the kind advice and support sev-
eral friends and colleagues offered me, the volume is much the poorer for the
inability of one of its editors—and the one who was actually a Sinologist—to
see it through to publication.
Stefano and I had been gathering and editing the papers which now appear
here for several years in, I confess, a rather desultory and, in hindsight, insuf-
ficiently aggressive manner. As a result of the extended process, while I bear
responsibility for all remaining editorial failures, most of the contributors
were fortunate enough to receive significant feedback from Prof. Zacchetti
himself, and it is clear that their contributions have thereby profited signifi-
cantly. It is fair to say, however, that Stefano devoted more attention to these
contributions of others than he did to his own, something entirely consistent
with his generous and kind nature. But as a result, his own paper, “Blind Spots
and One-way Tracks in Chinese Buddhist Historiography,” was only able to be
brought to completion thanks to his notes for his oral presentation, a recording
of that presentation, and the consequent careful editorial efforts of Antonello
Palumbo, to whom my most profound thanks are due. In addition to his work
on Zacchetti’s paper, Dr. Palumbo helped me by making vital suggestions to
two other contributions. My debt to him in this regard too is profound. As
for his opening lecture, Stefano and I had long ago decided to present it as it
was read out in 2014, and I have only added a few notes to indicate sources.
Otherwise, the lecture is presented here as it was spoken, without, however,
the sorely missed metatext of Stefano’s charming Italianate English accent.
My public thanks are long overdue to those who helped arrange that 2014
conference, chief among them Roxane van Beek and Li Na, and all those who
Jonathan A. Silk and Stefano Zacchetti† - 978-90-04-52215-2
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viii Preface
helped with logistics around the conference itself, and the opening ceremony
in particular. Of course, my most profound thanks are due to the contributors
themselves, not only for entrusting the publication of their work to me, but
especially for their great patience.
I am afraid I cannot say whom Stefano himself would have liked to thank
for supporting his own efforts to produce this volume, and rather than guess,
I would simply like to beg the understanding of all those who would have
expected to find their contributions acknowledged here.
Already when planning the conference at which the papers here were
(mostly) presented, I had discussed with Brill the idea that we publish the
papers as a follow-up to the volume which was presented at the opening of
that conference, namely Buddhism in China: Collected Papers of Erik Zürcher.
I am grateful to the decades-long support of my dear friend Albert Hoffstädt,
who readily agreed to support the project, and I am delighted to be able to
add another volume to Brill’s already more than solid contributions to the aca-
demic study of Buddhism and of Sinology. I am grateful that the editors of the
series Sinica Leidensia agreed to include it in their series, and to the anony-
mous reader for the press for careful and extremely helpful critical comments,
including on the editor’s introduction.
Among the contributions on which Stefano and I worked together is that
of Prof. Seishi Karashima. Although he was not able to attend the conference,
given his enormous contributions to one of the central areas of Zürcher’s
research, we thought it only fitting that he contribute a paper, which he was
happy to do. Alas, Seishi too left long before his time. After his death, Stefano
and I repeatedly discussed how to present his contribution, since although we
had prepared and sent to Prof. Karashima a number of questions and sugges-
tions, it was evident that he had not yet turned to them before his passing. We
decided, therefore, to tacitly correct only what we felt were very obvious over-
sights or typographical errors, and to leave all other remarks for editors’ notes.
These were prepared largely by Prof. Zacchetti, and will be found at the end of
Prof. Karashima’s paper.
Altogether thirteen colleagues read papers at the conference. To my regret,
three of them chose not to submit papers for this volume. For the rest, due
no doubt to the delay in the appearance of the volume, a couple publish here
materials somewhat different from what they presented at the conference
itself, though for the most part, what you read here is a representative selec-
tion of the materials, and types of materials, presented and discussed at the
conference.
Jonathan A. Silk
Leiden, 2021
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