THE CULTURAL PRACTICES OF MODERN CHINESE BUDDHISM: ATTUNING THE DHARMA . By Francesca Tarocco . London : Routledge , 2007 . Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism. Pp. xii + 183 ; plates, illustrations. Hardback, $160.00 .
摘要
Tarocco's recent book about Buddhism during the first decades of the twentieth century is an important contribution to what is becoming a growing body of work on Buddhism in the period. Until recently, the period was largely represented by H. Welch's two volumes on the period, which painted a somewhat dismal picture of Buddhism in decline (and efforts at revival). Tarocco's book, one of the few that has been published on the period that is dedicated to Buddhism, provides a view quite different from Welch's, showing Chinese Buddhism's vitality in the modernizing society of China's east coast in the Republican period. She does this by reading hitherto ignored archives, mainly popular Buddhist magazines, and recordings. She nicely shows the ways that even as Buddhists were involved with the major debates of the period, such as the future of the nation, their religious perspectives were not simply reduced to political concerns. Despite the value of the book, it is marred by some limitations. The two major chapters (on Buddhist print culture and Buddhist recordings) are not well integrated and the book could have used a conclusion. More problematically, it would have been preferable if she had used the materials here to critique or at least nuance the predominant view of Buddhist modernism (the most she does is to rely on conceptions of “alternative modernity”). Nonetheless, for its interrogation of an inadequately studied archive, it is a book that scholars of Republican period China should pay attention to.
