Religious Publishing and Print Culture in Modern China: 1800-2012 PDF
Preview Religious Publishing and Print Culture in Modern China: 1800-2012
Religious Publishing and Print Culture in Modern China Religion and Society Edited by Gustavo Benavides, Kocku von Stuckrad and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan Volume 58 Religious Publishing and Print Culture in Modern China 1800–2012 Edited by Philip Clart and Gregory Adam Scott DE GRUYTER ISBN978-1-61451-499-2 e-ISBN(PDF)978-1-61451-298-1 e-ISBN(EPUB)978-1-5015-0019-0 ISSN1437-5370 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData ACIPcatalogrecordforthisbookhasbeenappliedforattheLibraryofCongress. BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationontheDeutscheNationalbibliografie; detailedbibliographicdataareavailableontheInternetathttp://dnb.dnb.de. ©2015WalterdeGruyter,Inc.,Boston/Berlin/Munich Printingandbinding:CPIbooksGmbH,Leck ♾Printedonacid-freepaper PrintedinGermany www.degruyter.com Table of Contents Gregory Adam Scott and Philip Clart Introduction: Print Culture and Religion in Chinese History 1 George Kam Wah Mak Chapter One: The Colportage of the Protestant Bible in Late Qing China: The Example of the British and Foreign Bible Society 17 Joseph Tse-Hei Lee and Christie Chui-Shan Chow Chapter Two: Publishing Prophecy: A Century of Adventist Print Culture in China 51 Gregory Adam Scott Chapter Three: Navigating the Sea of Scriptures: The Buddhist Studies Collectanea, 1918–1923 91 Rostislav Berezkin Chapter Four: Printing and Circulating “Precious Scrolls” in Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai and its Vicinity: Toward an Assessment of Multifunctionality of the Genre 139 Yau Chi-on (Translated by Philip Clart) Chapter Five: The Xiantiandao and Publishing in the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Area from the Late Qing to the 1930s: The Case of the Morality Book Publisher Wenzaizi 187 Wang Chien-Chuan (Translated by Gregory Adam Scott) Chapter Six: Morality Book Publishing and Popular Religion in Modern China: A Discussion Centered on Morality Book Publishers in Shanghai 233 Paul R. Katz Chapter Seven: Illuminating Goodness – Some Preliminary Considerations of Religious Publishing in Modern China 265 Bibliography 295 Contributors 321 Index 325 Gregory Adam Scott and Philip Clart Introduction: Print Culture and Religion in Chinese History¹ From the earliest known uses of printing in China, religious works represented someofthelargestandmostculturallysignificantexamplesofprintedmaterial. Canonical collections of sacred texts, individual scriptural editions,commenta- riesandexegeticalanalyses,booksadvocatingmoralbehavior,divinelyrevealed texts, and other religious works all emerged as major aspects of the centuries- longprintculturethatflourishedinChinafromthemedievalperiodonward.Re- ligiouspublicationswerenotonlyubiquitous,theywerealsowidelybelievedto possessuniquenuminouspowers,suchastheabilitytogeneratepositivemerit, ortoprotecttheirpossessorfromphysicalharm.²Theintroductionofnewprint technologiesinthenineteenthcenturyandtheirdevelopmentintheearlytwen- tieth century, however, rapidly revolutionized the realm of print, transforming both the requirements of and the possibilities offered by the publishing enter- prise. The chapters in this book examine the impact of this new print culture on religious groups in modern China, exploring how changes in the way that printedmaterialswereassembled,edited,collected,produced,distributed,con- sumed, and understood,were relatedto changes in religious thought and prac- tice.Ratherthanattemptacomprehensivesurveyofsuchacomplexandmulti- faceted phenomenon, the essays that follow focus on a handful of religious groups that were mostly based in the vicinity of Shanghai, and offer some rep- resentative examples of how such interactions between print culture and reli- gious culture occurred in modern Chinese history from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards.The people and institutions explored below were allinheritorstothelegaciesofpre-andearly-modernChinesereligiouspublish- ing,buttheywerealsokeenlyadeptatnavigatingthenewconditionsgenerated by modern print culture. In embracing new print technologies and practices, they helped change the field of religious publishing in modern China. Yet in ThisessayisbasedinpartontheintroductiontoGregoryAdamScott,“Conversionbythe Book:BuddhistPrintCultureinEarlyRepublicanChina”(PhDdiss,ColumbiaUniversity,2013.) <http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/item/ac:161473> Ontherelatedreligiouspracticeof“cherishingletteredpaper”seeAdamYuetChau,“Script Fundamentalism:ThePracticeofCherishingWrittenCharacters(LetteredPaper)(xizizhi惜字紙) intheAgeofLiteratiDeclineandCommercialRevolution,”inChineseandEuropeanPerspectives on the Studyof Chinese PopularReligions/ 中國民間宗教民間信仰研究之中歐視角,ed. Philip Clart(Taipei:Boyangwenhuachubangongsi,2012),129–167. 2 GregoryAdamScottandPhilipClart doingso,theywereoftentransformedthemselves,adoptingnewreligiousideas and practices as a result of their engagement with print. It is this bidirectional influence between print and religious groups that is at the core of our inquiry. The term‘print culture’ denotes the particular set of cultural processes in- volved in the use of printing press technology, processes that have a unique typeofimpactontheproducersandconsumersofprintedinformation.Printcul- turecanbethoughtofasencompassingtworelatedcomponents:printartifacts, andthesocialprocessesofprint.³Printartifactsarethephysicalproductsofthe printingpress:books,periodicals,series,advertisements,posters,ephemeraand so on. Asartifacts,theyareinvaluableas sources ofinformation on their mate- rial construction, publication information, internal references to other printed works, editorial structure, page layout, character set, and other related factors. They are the material evidence of the publishing enterprise, and sometimes alsogivecluesregardingreadinghabits,asinthecaseofmarginalia.Thesecond component,thesocialprocessesofprint,referstothepeopleandinstitutionsin- volved in the writing, editing, publishing, printing,distributing, and readingof print artifacts. As print technologies impose certain material, capital, and skill requirements on their use, they help initiate the formation of social organiza- tions such as publishing houses,printer’sguilds, and bookstores.These organ- izations are important as they represent new types of social structures brought about by print technology, as well as conduits through which people’s involve- ment withprintcan haveareflexiveimpactontheirownidentity,composition, andrelationshiptoothers.Printtechnologythusnotonlygivesrisetonewtypes ofmediaartifacts,butalsonew typesofsocialandinstitutionalstructures,cre- atingopportunitiesandchallengesforthosewhoengagedwith,orwereengaged by, new forms of print culture. Someoftheearliestscholarlyattemptstoaddresstheimpactofprintonhis- tory were focused on social factors, as with Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Mar- tin’s pioneering 1957 book L’apparition du livre, which applied the long-term and sociological historical approach of l’École des Annales to the effects of print technologyon medieval society.⁴Anotherearly work,MarshallMcLuhan’s This definition was coined by Professor Greg Downy of the School of Journalism & Mass CommunicationandtheSchoolofLibrary&InformationStudiesattheUniversityofWisconsin- Madison in a conference presentation, and published in his blog “Uncovering Information Labor,” available at <http://uncoveringinformationlabor.blogspot.com/2008/09/print-culture- and-sciencetechnology.html>. LucienFebvreandHenri-JeanMartin,L’apparitiondulivre(Paris:E´ditionsA.Michel,1958). PublishedinEnglishasTheComingoftheBook,translatedbyDavidGerard(London,NewYork: Verso,1997[1976]). Introduction:PrintCultureandReligioninChineseHistory 3 1962 The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, explored how media technologies affect the function of human senses and the organization of societies, looking back from McLuhan’s own time, which he saw as the dawn of an electronic age, to the early effects of movable type and alphabetic printing on Western culture.⁵ In both of these studies, print and media were given a new prominence in the study of social history. A major turning point in print culture theory came in 1979 with The Printing Press as an Agent of Change by Elizabeth Eisenstein, in which she examined the impact of movable type technology in the history of ideas.⁶ Her main argument in this study was that the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centurieswas fa- cilitatedbythewidespreadavailabilityofprintedbooks,withtheprintingpress leadingintellectualdevelopment,usingthepublicationcareeroftheDanishas- tronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) as her central example. Critics of this ap- proach,suchasAdrianJohns,pointedoutthatBrahewasinfactanatypicalfig- ureduringhistime.Johnssuggeststhatratherthanviewtheprintingpressasthe prime mover behind the intellectual and social revolutions connected to print culture,weoughtinsteadtoemphasizetheroleofhumanagencyinconstructing printcultureitself.⁷Hisworkischaracterizedbyafocusonthedifferentmodes oflaborrequiredtoproduceprintedmaterials,andhowtheirauthoritativepower wasdevelopedbythosewhoparticipatedinprintcultureratherthanemanating fromtheinnerlogicofprinttechnologyitself.⁸Critiquessuchasthesehavebeen partofarecentmovetoshiftthefocusofprintculturestudiestowardmorespe- cific, local, and microhistorical subjects, and away from the large-scale narra- tives of print’s impact on history. Onesuchsubjecthasbeenprint’sroleintransformingreligiousthoughtand practice. Early print culture studies recognized that religion, Protestantism in Western Europe in particular, played an important role in the initial spread of movable-type technology and its print products. The English editor John Foxe Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy:The Making of Typographic Man (London: Rout- ledge&KeganPaul,1971[Toronto:UniversityofTorontoPress,1962]). ElizabethEisenstein,ThePrintingPressasanAgentofChange:CommunicationsandCultural TransformationsinEarly-modernEurope,2vols.(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1991 [1979]).Citationshererefertothepaperbackeditionof1997,inwhichbothvolumesarecom- binedintoasinglebook.Eisenstein,PrintingPress,3–8,17,32–40,43.Eisenstein’sworkwas laterrevisitedinSabrinaAlcornBaron,EricN.Lindquist,andEleanorF.Shevlin,eds.,Agentof Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (Amherst and Boston:Universityof MassachusettsPress,2007). Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago and London:TheUniversityofChicagoPress,1998),17–18. Johns,NatureoftheBook,19–20,29–31,42–46.
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