Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan PDF
Preview Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan
Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan Edited by C. Pierce Salguero and Andrew Macomber University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu © 2020 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019058783 ISBN 978-0-8248-8121-4 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Cover image: Vimalakīrti debating. Painting from the Dunhuang Caves, Tang Dynasty. Source: Wikipedia (public domain) Contents Abbreviations vii Introduction 1 C. Pierce Salguero and Andrew Macomber 1. “A Flock of Ghosts Bursting Forth and Scattering”: Healing Narratives in a Sixth-Century Chinese Buddhist Hagiography 23 C. Pierce Salguero 2. Teaching from the Sickbed: Ideas of Illness and Healing in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra and Their Reception in Medieval Chinese Literature 57 Antje Richter 3. Lighting Lamps to Prolong Life: Ritual Healing and the Bhaiṣajyaguru Cult in Fifth- and Sixth-Century China 91 Shi Zhiru 釋智如 4. Buddhist Healing Practices at Dunhuang in the Medieval Period 118 Catherine Despeux 5. Empowering the Pregnancy Sash in Medieval Japan 160 Anna Andreeva 6. Ritualizing Moxibustion in the Early Medieval Tendai-Jimon Lineage 194 Andrew Macomber List of Contributors 243 Index 245 Color plates follow page 257 v Abbreviations DZ Zhengtong daozang 正統道藏; text numbers from Kristofer Schipper and Franciscus Verellen, eds. 2004. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. GR Hanawa Hokinoichi 塙保己一, ed. 1928–1934. Gunsho ruijū 群書類從. Tokyo: Zoku gunsho ruijū kanseikai. Jinyi Dunhuang manuscripts, Tianjin Art Museum. P. Dunhuang manuscripts, Pelliot Chinese Collection. Bibliothèque Nationale de France. S. Dunhuang manuscripts, Stein Collection. British Library, London. T. Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次朗 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭, eds. 1924–1932. Taishō shinshū daizōkyo 大正新修大藏經. 100 vols. Tokyo: Taishō issaikyō kankōkai. X. Wan xu zangjing 卍續藏經. 1975. 150 vols. Taipei: Xinwenfeng chubanshe. Reprint of Dainippon zokuzōkyō 大日本續藏經. 1905–1912. Kyoto: Zōkyō shoin. vii Introduction C. Pierce Salguero and Andrew Macomber One of the most common ways that Buddhists the world over have tended to speak of their tradition is as a means of eliminat- ing suffering.1 As one of the inescapable forms of suffering all sen- tient beings must encounter in our lives, illness has normally been explicitly included within this purview.2 Therefore, from its very inception in northeastern India in the last centuries BCE, the Buddhist tradition has advocated a range of ideas and a repertoire of practices that have been aimed at ensuring health and well-being.3 Early Buddhism provided devotees with certain types of rituals to comfort the sick and dying, advocated ascetic contemplations on the structure and function of the body, and promulgated monastic regulations on the administration and storage of medicines. Early Buddhist texts fre- quently used metaphors and narrative tropes concerning disease, healing, and physicians in discourses explaining the most basic doc- trinal positions of the Dharma. As Buddhism developed in subsequent centuries, its connections with healing became more pronounced.4 A number of healing deities were added to the pantheon, monastic institutions became centers of medical learning, and healer-monks became famed for their mastery of ritual and medicinal therapeutics. As Buddhism spread from India to other parts of Asia over the course of the first millennium CE, its texts and practices became impor- tant vehicles for the cross-cultural dissemination of Indian ideas about health and healing far and wide. In some parts of Southeast and Central Asia (such as Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Tibet), this Buddhist transmis- sion laid the foundation for systems of traditional medicine that are 1
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