Abstract: This paper examines the model of genuineness proposed by Wei Yao 魏堯 ( fl. 1920–1926 ), a master of the Western School of internal alchemy. Wei diverges from the dominant and conventional forms of alchemical practice, emphasizing transcendence through emptiness while downplaying the traditional focus on the body as a central medium of transformation. He identifies two selves: the "genuine self," rooted in emptiness, and the "false self," which takes control after birth, scattering emptiness throughout the body, mind, and space. Wei's method centers on external breathing, allowing practitioners to gather fragmented emptiness and form intention ( yi 意)—the manifestation of the genuine self and seed of an immortal body. Through cycles of forgetfulness and concentration, practitioners refine this intention, coalescing the spirit into new flesh. This process culminates in the visualization of golden light, representing the birth of the immortal body. Wei's model portrays genuineness as subjective, emerging from the practitioner's ability to control imagination and manipulate the shades of emptiness.

Abstract: The fifteenth-century Origins of Buddhism (or "Origins of the Śākya Clan," Shishi yuanliu《 釋氏源流》 , hereafter SSYL) narrates the Life of the Buddha Śākyamuni and the history of Chinese Buddhism in four hundred illustrated episodes, each occupying one page in the "picture-above-text" format. This article examines the compilation strategy of SSYL and its broader impact on Chinese book culture during the Ming dynasty. A highly selective collage that is both polemical and syncretic, SSYL propagates a grand vision of Buddhism that draws on the realms of genealogy, hagiography, and historiography. Beyond its great significance to East Asian Buddhism, SSYL also represents an important milestone in the development of Chinese publishing, particularly significant to the emergence of illustrated accounts of "origins" ( yuanliu 源流 and chushen 出身 ) in anthologies, encyclopedias, and literary works that present cultic traditions as rooted in the life stories of revered patriarchs.

Abstract: The Daoist role within traditional Chinese human/nature relationships has often been characterized as one that aims at achieving harmony with nature. This article challenges many of the basic assumptions regarding the harmony model, focusing instead on the rich trove of judicial rituals that Daoist adepts had at their disposition for disciplining, correcting, or punishing elements of the landscape. A substantial part of these rituals was underpinned by Daoist legal codes from the Celestial Heart (Tianxin) tradition that emerged during the eleventh century and spread more widely soon after. Of the subjects these codices target, the present article focuses on trees, rocks, mountains, dragons, and certain animals. A picture emerges of stringent approaches to achieve order in the natural world, based on Celestial Laws, enforced by ritual officials. Throughout all these rituals, however, runs the idea of a landscape that is brimming with purpose, agency, responsibility, and divinity.

Generally acknowledged as a Southern Song text by an obscure Chan monk, the Xiaoshi Jingang keyi 銷釋金剛科儀 includes a chapter-by-chapter exposition of Kumārajīva's fifth-century Chinese translation of the Diamond Sūtra and survives in multiple different editions from the Ming-Qing era. It has claimed attention from scholars from different fields of Chinese religions and been considered in the context of the study of precious scroll (baojuan 寶卷) or Buddhist ritual literature. With due attention to different components of the whole text rather than the exposition alone, and by situating the work in the history of Chinese Buddhist commentarial and liturgical works on the Diamond Sūtra, this article examines the textual and reception history of the Xiaoshi Jingang keyi. Focusing on its overall structure, source material, and use of verses. I demonstrate that the Xiaoshi Jingang keyi finds roots in the pre-existing Chinese Buddhist literature on the Diamond Sūtra, and show how it inspired Buddhist monastics to compose commentaries on it up to the mid-sixteenth century.

Reviewed by: Gods of Mount Tai: Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000–2000 by Susan Naquin Vincent Goossaert Susan Naquin, Gods of Mount Tai: Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000–2000. Leiden: Brill, 2022. xv, 538 pp. US$305 (hb). 978-90-04-51641-0 Mount Tai 泰山 (Taishan) and its gods deserve a monumental study. Naquin's book, in the making for some fifteen years and long awaited by the scholarly community, is as towering, rock-solid, impressive, and memorable as its subject. At a length that most presses would not even want to hear about, printed in a large format with two columns per page, and luxuriously illustrated—138 images in-text, most of them in color, not to mention maps, graphs, and tables—this is nothing short of an amazing book. The writing is as beautiful as the visual object: Naquin's renowned prose—utterly devoid of jargon and fashionable terms, surgically precise, and ever critical of any assumption (whether in the sources, in her own writing, or in our reading)—is at the same time elegant and attempts to tell the story from the perspective of ordinary Chinese. For the book tells a story: that of the Jade Maiden (Yunü 玉女), a broken stone statue found atop Taishan (then barren and devoid of any built structure) during the preparations for the fengshan 封禪 sacrifices performed on the mountain by Song emperor Zhenzong 宋真宗 in 1008. The hazily-defined deity was modestly enshrined there and survived [End Page 162] for a few centuries, honored by occasional visitors. She was adopted by a combination of court members, Daoist clerics, and pilgrims, and started to gain a foothold at the foot of the mountain, and then in villages ever further away. The cult grew steadily from the fifteenth century onwards and soon her temples were found throughout the north China plain. She was then called by a variety of names and titles including Holy mother (Shengmu 聖母), Heavenly immortal (Tianxian 天仙), Master of the Azure Cloud (Bixia yuanjun 碧霞元君), and My Lady (niangniang 娘娘), assigned various stories—daughter of the Great Sovereign of the Eastern Peak 東嶽大帝, female alchemical virtuoso, flying bird-like fairy—and represented in forms varying from the alluring young woman, over stern matron and smiling granny, to an almost androgynous figure of authority. Naquin describes with unflinching attention to detail and context these variations in time, space, and medium. Then, by the mid-Qing, this phase of expansion gives way to consolidation; new temples and images keep appearing, but the goddess is now part of the landscape—both figuratively and literally speaking—and finds herself ever more conflated and even confused within a larger mass of female protective deities, found everywhere but with few individual traits. To tell this story of the slow emergence, spectacular success, and then routinization of the goddess both at her original home, Taishan, and in thousands of villages, neighborhoods, and hills, Naquin uses the framework of material culture and the concept of familiarity. This concept, which would deserve to be more fully developed and explored, is based on the idea that people could accept a new deity—the Taishan goddess—on the condition that she seemed familiar enough and was thus represented in media and in demeanors that made sense to them. From this perspective, religious change, such as the success story of a goddess, is not one of bold innovation but rather slow adaptation to the material conditions that prevail locally and remain very stable over the longue durée. For this reason an important part of the book is devoted to describing the physical architecture of her temples and the materials for her images: stone, wood, clay, bronze, and iron for her statues, and canvas and paper for painting and woodblock printing. For each of these materials, Naquin details with great care their sources and local availability, their cost, the presence of technical skills, and the market. In so doing, she offers a lesson in methodology, never taking anything for granted, and constantly asking fundamental questions—who? where? how much? Measuring surviving images of the goddess, for instance, allows her to argue that bronze was mostly used for small...

This article examines the nèidān training regimen advocated by Niú Jīnbǎo 牛金寶 (Xuánjīn 玄金 [Mysterious Gold]; 1915–1988), an influential modern lay Daoist practitioner. Niú was a senior disciple and formal lineage-successor of Zhào Bìchén 趙避塵 (Shùnyī 順一 [Accordant Unity]; 1860–1942), author of the influential Xìngmìng fǎjué míngzhǐ 性命法訣明指 (Illuminating Pointers to the Methods and Instructions of Innate Nature and Life-Destiny). Zhào is best known as the founder of Qiānfēng pài 千峰派 (Thousand Peaks Lineage), a sub-lineage of the Wǔ-Liǔ 伍柳 sub-lineage of the Lóngmén 龍門 (Dragon Gate) lineage of Quánzhēn 全真 (Complete Perfection) Daoism. In this study, I begin with a discussion of Qiānfēng pài, including an overview of nèidān training according to the Xìngmìng fǎjué míngzhǐ. I then explore the life of Niú Jīnbǎo and his lineage connection to Zhào. This is followed by a summary of Niú's "Jiǔbù gōngfǎ" 九步功法 (Methods in Nine Stages). The core of the study is a bilingual, annotated Chinese-English translation of Niú's major composition, namely, thirteen poems on Daoist internal alchemy.

The history of Buddhist sites on Mount Tai—the Sacred Peak of the East—has been largely neglected. The focus has remained instead on the role of the mountain in the Chinese state cult and the practice of the indigenous Daoist religion. This paper surveys material and textual evidence from the late fifth century onwards in an attempt to trace the Buddhist acculturation of Mount Tai. The available archaeological evidence is read alongside the traditional founding legend about monk Senglang 僧朗 (ca. 315–400) who is said to have established the “first monastery” on the mountain. A brief survey of early Buddhist establishments in the Mount Tai region ties the most impressive early Buddhist artefact—the giant Diamond Sutra inscribed in Sutra Stone Valley during the Northern Qi dynasty—into this network of sites.

This article addresses the question of zongjiao as a modern translation for the Western term “religion.” Neither criticizing nor defending its application, it instead takes for granted the Western concept’s adoption and argues that the general acceptance of the newly coined binome and its semantics can be best understood through a genealogical approach that includes global, especially Western, as much as local Chinese roots and discourses. The article builds on recent scholarship and adds new insights from a discursive perspective with a special focus on the important transformational period of the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, it argues for the continuing hybrid character of the historically shaped semantics of zongjiao and its lasting semantic ambiguities, which allow one to understand zongjiao as a signifier that interconnects uses in local, traditional, as well as modern academic and international discourses.