The History of the Institute of World Religions
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Wu YunguiI

N my private talks with foreign scholars and friends when I wasabroad in the past years, they often put up such questions to me as“Why should the Chinese Communists have devoted so much attention
to the study of religion, given that they do not believe in any religion atall?” and “Did the Chinese scholars study religion merely for the sakeof eliminating it?” For clearing up these misunderstandings, I havegiven brief explanations on several occasions during my stay in foreigncountries, but have never yet found an opportunity to give a detailed
answer for such misconceptions. So, I hope to take this opportunity togive a systematic account of the founding and developing of the Institute of World Religions (IWR) wherein I have worked for 35 years
since 1964 when I was graduated from a college, which might be useful, I hope for a correct understanding of the basic facts related with it.
Needless to say, what is more significant for our purpose here is toenhance, through face-to-face talks like this, mutual understanding,deepen friendship and broaden academic exchanges and co-operations
between scholars of our two countries. I will talk about three questions
as follows:
The Background for the Founding of IWR
China is an ancient civilized nation with multi-nationalities and multireligious beliefs. Apart from Taoism and folk religions that were born atdifferent times in the native land, there are also Buddhism, Christianity
and Islam that were introduced from overseas in history into China. In
the course of their taking roots, opening out blossoms and bearing fruitin the land, all these religions have left their clear and enduring prints
on the Chinese society, particularly on the knowledge and practice of
the Chinese people. In their long historical development, all these religions—native born or imported from abroad, have experienced a problem of adapting themselves to China’s social environment, and as aresult of in-culturation or sinicization process, these different culturalelements have become mutually complimentary and flourished, and5

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THE HISTORY OF IWR

thus formulated traditional Chinese culture with a good harmony of different elements as what we understand it today. In this sense we cansay, therefore, understanding Chinese religions is understanding Chinese culture, and studies of Chinese religions are the first step to a profound understanding of Chinese society.
However, such ideas were not very clear at first. A decisive factor todeepening our understanding is an instruction given in 1963 by the late
Chairman Mao Zedong. He said in the written instruction that religions
have had a profound impact and influence on the world’s population, ofwhich we have little knowledge. He argued that you can not write out agood history of philosophy, literature or world history without understanding the story of human religion. His instruction came at a crucial
time that it virtually led to the birth of the Institute of World Religions,the first of its kind ever appeared in the Chinese academic world. Since
then China has had a professional research body for religious studies
backed by and serve the state.
At its early days IWR had only three research departments with some
20 personnel. It was affiliated then to the Philosophy and Social Sciences Division of the Chinese Academy of Science (the former body oftoday’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). Its work, however, wassoon interrupted by the Cultural Revolution just after it began to operate. With the ending of the Cultural Revolution, China was ushered into
a new period of reform and opening to the outside world. With the fundamental changes taking place in every aspect of social life, man’s attitude on religions has experienced a big change, which in turn laid down
a good foundation for religious studies on the part of Chinese scholars.
Today as we recollect the history of IWR, we are happy to find that wehave now over 80 working staffs, yet we are more delighted to see that
we truly understand today the nature of religion and the significance ofreligious studies. A general point of view shared in common among mycolleagues in the Institute today is that we should conduct research on
human religion in a correct way that is comprehensive, historical aswell as dialectical in nature. We should not only pay attention to thestudy of human religious ideas as we did in the past but also to thestudy of those ideas that embodied themselves in the forms of humanreligious culture. And to do so, the first step for us is to make friends
with religious believers, Chinese and foreign alike. Our general attitude
towards religious people can be termed as “respect each other, learn
from each other, and co-operate on equal basis.” Compared to the earlydays of IWR, we can say that our understanding of its policy today is abreak-through in the sense that we really understand what religion

THE HISTORY OF IWR

7means to us as human beings. If we must put in simple words ourunderstanding of the scope and meaning of religious studies today, itshould be like this: We are trying to make a deep and systematic studyof human religious phenomena from the dimensions of theory, history
and reality. And religious studies can be conveniently termed “humanscience” because such studies are aimed at understanding of the humannature which exists deep inside the depth of human heart.
The Management System for Scientific Research
As a research institution at the state level, IWR shoulders heavy tasks inscientific research, whose working staffs have a strong sense of mission.
For the sake of discipline developing and personnel-training, we are trying to combine producing academic works with talents-training, combine personal interest with the needs and demands in scientific research,and combine the collective interest of the Institute with the interest ofthe state. For the management of scientific research, a multi-level projects are organized and managed over by the Academy through its Scientific Research Bureau. Projects at the Institute level are organized andcoordinated by the director-general through its Department for Scientific Research Affairs. Projects under the Institute level are organized andcoordinated by the chairman of the department. Another classificationof the projects followed for years is to classify projects according totheir source of funds. Thus, we have six types of projects: state-fundedprojects, academy-funded projects, academy-supported younger scholar
projects, institute-funded projects, department-level projects and personal projects. Apart from these, we accepted each year special tasks
commissioned or distributed by the departments of the State Council
concerned, which were in most cases investigation reports on certain
hot religious issues. The principal purpose of scientific management isto guarantee the quality of the projects undertaken by the working staffs
of the Institute. For this, procedures such as project-sponsoring, middleterm-check up, final examination and approval of the projects, assessment of the final result and publication of the works completed are normal practice for the scientific management department.
Another important aspect in scientific research management is to help
personnel-training. To recruit and train up research workers, IWR has
adopted two measures. One is to recruit working staffs from college
graduates, particularly from those having master and doctor degrees,and help them grow up after they entered the Institute, through suchmethods as sending them abroad for graduate studies or doing research
for a period of time, training them through distributing work to them,8THE HISTORY OF IWRand examining and raising up their working abilities through professional check-ups and promotion of academic titles. This has yielded
good results. Most backbones in the Institute are university graduates in1960s. For example, Professor Yang Zengwen who has been to Japanfor many times for academic visit is one of them. As for those youngand-middle aged backbones, most of them are college graduates withMA or Ph.D. degrees who have worked as guest scholars for a period in
foreign universities. Graduates with doctor degree working in the Institute (17 in number) have played important role in their posts. For example, Dr. He Jingsong who come to Japan this time as a member of ourdelegation is one of those doctors trained by the Institute. As a young
associate professor in Buddhist studies, Dr. He is diligent in work, andhas published three books, including A History of Buddhism in Korea,
the first book of its kind ever published in China.
Another way for talents-training is to find “good buds” in the courseof disciplinary developing and to help them grow up through puttingpressures on them by assigning tasks for them to accomplish. This isbasically a duty of the chairmen of the departments, and we are gratefulto them for their role in this connection. To promote disciplinary building, IWR has established seven sub-departments, each of them constituting a sub-branch of learning. Thus we have departments respectivelyfor Buddhist Studies, Christian Studies, Islamic Studies, Taoist Studies,
Confucian Studies, Contemporary Religious Studies, Studies on theGeneral Theory of Religion and Studies on Buddhist Culture and Art.
For publication of papers, articles and reports written by our colleagues
in the Institute, we have two journals (Studies on World Religions andWorld Religious Cultures), both published quarterly. An old Chinese
saying has it, “an excellent master has good disciples.” As most chairmen of the departments are experts with rich and profound learning,they have trained up through their work a good many of young-andmiddle aged scholars for the Institute. Naturally, not all of those whohave received training will surely become first-rate talents.
Major Academic Works Produced by IWR
Religious studies can be dated back to ancient times in China. However,modern religious studies from new outlooks and with new approaches
have been less popular until the first 30 years after the founding of thePeople’s Republic of China. For a long time in history, Chinese scholars
were interested in their religious studies in Buddhism and Taoism, butthey have left only a small number of works on them. This backwardness in religious studies has changed by a great deal nowadays throughTHE HISTORY OF IWR

9protracted efforts on the part of Chinese scholars. For example, in 1994,
IWR welcomed a special occasion for celebrating its 30th anniversary,and we were very happy to find that on display in the exhibition hallover 150 books and more than 1,000 papers and articles on religion produced by the Institute. If added to them with those works produced byother Chinese scholars, the amount would have become surprisinglybig.
If calculated according to the fields involved, the above-mentionedpublications can be classified into 10 categories: (1) works on the history of different religions; (2) works on philosophy of religion; (3) works
on the general theory of religion; (4) works on different subject matterof various religions; (5) introductory works on religion for general readers; (6) religious classics with annotation; (7) republications of ancientreligious literature, and of valuable materials; (8) republications of religious cultural relics and literature unearthed; (9) religious dictionaries
and other reference books; (10) translations of valuable works by foreign authors.
Of all departments in the Institute, Buddhist studies department is thebiggest one, whose scope of interest covers four aspects, namely Buddhism in the Han nationality populated areas, Tibetan Buddhism,
Theravāda Buddhism and Buddhism in foreign countries. Buddhism
among the Han people is widely studied whose works have a wide coverage, including those on Buddhist scriptures, historical development ofBuddhism, doctrines of different sects or schools, Buddhist philosophy,
temple economy, Buddhist tradition at different localities, biographiesof eminent monks and the inter-reaction of Buddhism and traditional
Chinese culture. Evaluation of scientific result is a complex matter, people may very often than not have different opinions about one book.
Generally speaking, most influential works on Buddhism include: The
Great Buddhist Sutras in Chinese Language (edited by Ren Jiyu), History of Buddhism in China (Ren Jiyu), An Intellectual History of Buddhism in China (Guo Peng), History of Chinese Zen Buddhism, Historyof Chinese Hua Yan Sect (Wei Daoru), A History of Buddhism in Japanand Modern History of Buddhism in Japan (Yang Zengwen), etc.
Apart from Buddhism, other disciplines have also their representativeworks. Christian studies are noted for the best-known works: Contemporary Catholicism (Ren Yanli), Contemporary Theology of Protestantism and Contemporary Theology of Western Catholicism (ZhuoXinping). Major works in Islamic studies include A History of Islam(edited by Jin Yijiu), History of Islam in China (Li Xinghua) and Outlines of Islamic Law (Wu Yungui). Important works in Taoist studies

10THE HISTORY OF IWRinclude Abstracts of Taoist Scriptures, History of Chinese Taoism (edited by Ren Jiyu), Chinese Taoist Metaphysics and Taoist Philosophy (LuGuolong). Theoretical works on religion are best represented by Professor Lu Daji’s two books: On Religious Studies and History of Theoriesof Religion in the West.
Religious studies are a new branch of learning in China. Though wehave made a big progress in the past 20 years, we are still faced withlots of difficulties and problems, such as knowledge-restructuring, training of young scholars, increasing quality of academic works, etc. In aword, we have a long way to go.
In concluding my speech, I would like to express once again myhearty thanks to our Japanese host, Mr. Yasuo Morita, chairman of theboard of trustees of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy for his kind
invitation of our delegation to visit Japan and to make presentations
before such a great audience. Thank You.