The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva
Subtitle: Dizang in Medieval China (Studies in East Asian Buddhism)
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: October 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 305
ISBN-13: 9780824830458
Subjects: Buddhism; Devotional theology & objects of veneration; History of religion; c 500 CE to c 1000 CE; Religion; Religion - World Religions; Buddhism - General; Asia - China; Buddhism - Rituals & Practice; China; Cult; History; Kòsitigarbha (Buddhist deity)
Description: "In modern Chinese Buddhism, Dizang is especially popular as the sovereign of the underworld. Often represented as a monk wearing a royal crown, Dizang helps the deceased faithful navigate the complex underworld bureaucracy, avert the punitive terrors of hell, and arrive at the happy realm of rebirth. The author is concerned with the formative period of this important Buddhist deity, before his underworldly aspect eclipses his connections to other religious expressions and at a time when the art, mythology, practices, and texts of his cult were still replete with possibilities. She begins by problematizing the reigning model of Dizang, one that proposes an evolution of gradual sinicization and increasing vulgarization of a relatively unknown Indian bodhisattva, Ksitigarbha, into a Chinese deity of the underworld. Such a model, the author argues, obscures the many-faceted personality and iconography of Dizang. Rejecting it, she deploys a broad array of materials (art, epigraphy, ritual texts, scripture, and narrative literature) to recomplexity Dizang and restore (as much as possible from the fragmented historical sources) what this figure meant to Chinese Buddhists from the sixth to tenth centuries."--BOOK JACKET.