Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries

·期刊原文

Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries

by Jacques Gernet. Translated By Franciscus Verellen

Reviewed by Daniel L. Overmyer

Pacific Affairs

Vol.68 No.4, Winter 1995, pp.596-597

COPYRIGHT 1995 University of British Columbia (Canada)

New York: Columbia University Press

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THIS BOOK is based on a wide variety of Chinese primary texts, with
many translated passages, most from literati or government sources
outside Buddhism. Since the author stays close to the critical
perspectives of these sources there is useful information here not
only about Buddhism, but also about attitudes toward it. Gernet
allows that "Buddhism in medieval China was a religious movement.
That was its essential characteristic," (p. xv) but as its title
indicates, the primary focus of this book is the economic activities
of Buddhist monasteries, monks and nuns. There is interesting
information here about such topics as monastic ownership of land,
serfs, mills, oil presses and pawnshops, as well as on the roles of
monasteries as inns and hospitals. There is also good discussion of
the wills of monks and nuns and the activities of monasteries in
colonizing new land. The author distinguishes three different types
of monasteries, those supported by the state, eminent families, and
"common monks" (p. 4), and reminds us that "Buddhism in China was
not the essentially monastic religion represented by the Vinaya" (p.
96). There is repeated emphasis on the contrast within Buddhism
between charity and profit, religious merit and commerce. Another
strong point of this study is its detailed discussion of Indian
Buddhist teaching concerning economic activities of the sangha as
the theoretical background of the Chinese situation. All this is
helpful.

Nonetheless, there are problems here, the chief of which is that
though this book was first published in French in 1956 it was not
fundamentally revised and updated for this translation. The original
bibliography of secondary sources lists nothing published after
1955; the "additional bibliography" prepared by the translator does
include later materials, but few of them are referred to in the
book. When it was first published forty years ago, this was an
important, path-breaking work, but its republication now is as
significant for the history of Western studies of China as for our
knowledge of China itself. Specialists have used this book for
years, but nonspecialists may not know of more recent
interpretations.

It is good to be reminded of the economic motivations and activities
of some monks and nuns and of the high costs of large monasteries in
labor, precious metals and deforestation, but the author goes too
far toward economic reductionism in such statements as that in the
period in question, "Religious activity appears as a luxury...an
entirely gratuitous activity. The monks themselves were a luxury"
(p. 196). It is in such an approach that the dated nature of this
book is most evident, as is true as well with its discussion of
popular devotional activities in such undiluted Durkheimian terms as
"the frenzy of the faithful", "collective delirium", "abnormal
behavior" and behaving in "an irrational manner" (pp. 237-39). In
the midst of a discussion of T'ang Buddhism, the author jumps back
seven hundred years to Tse Jung (d. 195) to illustrate "the
demagogic nature...of the great religious assemblies..." (pp.
295-96).

Throughout this discussion, "the literati" are discussed as a
unified group represented by a few skeptical intellectuals with
little recognition of the great variety of views that in fact
existed. At the end the author accepts completely the old view that
after the T'ang Buddhism declined and decayed (pp. 308-310), a view
that ignores the vitality of Sung Buddhism that had already been
discussed by Suzuki Chusei in 1941, and has been reemphasized in
recent decades.

The value of this book is its translations of primary sources and
its salutary reminder of the importance of economic motivations and
activities in the history of Chinese Buddhism. But these motivations
are insufficient to explain the vitality and continuity of this
tradition down through the centuries, for which religious faith and
ideas were also important. For a more balanced treatment of this
topic, one should consult Kenneth K. S. Ch'en, The Chinese
Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton, 1973), and the several
articles by Denis C. Twitchett listed in the "additional
bibliography."