Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth Century Monk By James Carter. Oxford University Press; 1 edition, April 1, 2014. 240 pages. ISBN-10: 0199367590 ISBN-13: 978-0199367597
摘要
Rather than writing a straight biography of Tanxu倓虛 (1875–1963), Carter, as an historian, aims to write a “microhistory,” using Tanxu as a device to narrate developments in twentieth‐century China. The result is a combination of religious biography based on Tanxu's memoir and culturally informed historical chronicle. The central thesis is that religion contributed to Chinese nationalism in the twentieth century. Carter supports this thesis by detailing how Tanxu built temples in the foreign enclaves of Harbin and Qingdao supported by local officials interested in erecting a symbol of Chinese culture and nationhood among the distinctively European buildings that marked these towns. Tanxu's success in building temples helped him become a patriarch of the Tiantai School. Major developments in twentieth‐century Chinese history such as the Sino‐Japanese wars, the Boxer rebellion, and the May Fourth movement serve as a dramatic context to the career of Tanxu. In evaluating Tanxu's relationship to the Japanese, Carter prefers the term “accommodation” rather than collaboration. Buddhologists will likely wish that there was a greater attempt to place the book into conversation with other works on Buddhism in twentieth‐century China, especially scholarship on the 1920s and 1930s when many monks all over the country where talking about using Buddhism to save the nation. The book is written in an engaging style that is accessible to a broad readership; it provides a colorful introduction to modern Chinese history appropriate for undergraduates and interested readers.
