This is an excellent book that sets a new standard on the study of premodern Chinese religions. Employing a “place studies” approach, which emphasizes the mapping of sociocultural meaning onto natural geography, Robson examines the Southern Sacred Peak (Nanyue) as a window into the history of medieval Chinese religion across sectarian bounds. Throughout Chinese history a number of famous mountains were called Nanyue. Robson focuses mostly on Mt. Heng in Hunan province, although the shifting locus of the title “Nanyue” occasions important insights into the fluidity of sacred space and the portability of site‐centered hagiography and myth. Mountains were integral to the institutional and mythic development of all religions in China, and Robson argues that this geographic focus resulted in a certain regionalism that often delineated religious communities more than sectarian or lineal affiliations. This is especially true with Buddhists and Daoists, who thrived at Nanyue together with the mountain's local and imperial cults. Robson's study is exemplary in its thoroughgoing analysis of all these religious traditions coalescing around the place of Nanyue. He provides a novel cross‐section of Chinese religions that eschews the ghettoizing tendency of modern Buddhist or Daoist studies. The one disappointing aspect of this book, however, is that Robson organizes its chapters along the same sectarian boundaries that he otherwise works to destabilize. This structure is most obtrusive in the final two Buddhism chapters, which situate Nanyue's inhabitants within the procrustean scholastic categories of “Tiantai,”“Chan,”“Vinaya,” and “Pure Land.” Otherwise, Robson's work is insightful, meticulous, and demonstrates a thorough mastery of diverse bodies of literature. This book is a must‐read for anyone interested in Chinese religions, premodern Buddhism, or the construction of sacred geography.
