TY - JOUR
T1 - “This fathom-long body”
T2 - Bodily materiality and ascetic ideology in medieval Chinese Buddhist scriptures
AU - Salguero, C. Pierce
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/6/1
Y1 - 2018/6/1
N2 - An outside observer might be excused for assuming that Buddhists, being focused on transcendence, would have little interest in investigating the body’s structure or constituent parts in any detail. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Bodies and body parts have in fact long been ubiquitous subjects of contemplation, speculation, and veneration in Buddhist circles. This article discusses representative examples of Chinese Buddhist scriptures from the medieval period that forward an ascetic ideology, with special attention to how the corporeal body is spoken about in such texts. It shows that the very Buddhist writings that were most concerned with teaching ascetics how to transcend the material world in fact focused a great deal of meticulous attention on the corporeal body and drew heavily on Indian medical concepts in forwarding that agenda.
AB - An outside observer might be excused for assuming that Buddhists, being focused on transcendence, would have little interest in investigating the body’s structure or constituent parts in any detail. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Bodies and body parts have in fact long been ubiquitous subjects of contemplation, speculation, and veneration in Buddhist circles. This article discusses representative examples of Chinese Buddhist scriptures from the medieval period that forward an ascetic ideology, with special attention to how the corporeal body is spoken about in such texts. It shows that the very Buddhist writings that were most concerned with teaching ascetics how to transcend the material world in fact focused a great deal of meticulous attention on the corporeal body and drew heavily on Indian medical concepts in forwarding that agenda.
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U2 - 10.1353/bhm.2018.0026
DO - 10.1353/bhm.2018.0026
M3 - Article
C2 - 29961714
AN - SCOPUS:85049832492
SN - 0007-5140
VL - 92
SP - 237
EP - 260
JO - Bulletin of the History of Medicine
JF - Bulletin of the History of Medicine
IS - 2
ER -