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How Ajātaśatru was Reformed: The Domestication of “Ajase” and Stories in Buddhist History by Michael Radich (review)

2013; Maney Publishing; Volume: 41; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jcr.2013.0026

2050-8999

Jinhua Chen,

Indian and Buddhist Studies

Among the other chapters, André Laliberté discusses ‘‘State-religion relations’’ and, with David Palmer and Keping Wu, ‘‘Religious philanthropy and Chinese civil society’’; David Palmer reviews ‘‘Religion in Chinese social and political history’’; and Vincent Goossaert discusses ‘‘The social organization of religious communities in the twentieth century.’’ The volume ends with a concluding chapter by Glenn Shive. To return to the original questions: Does the book serve as a good introduction to religious life in Chinese societies? Regarding the diversity and analytical problems that arise in the study of religious life in these societies, would it also be interesting for specialists? All of the chapters would be useful for students or laypersons who know little about religions in China. However, only a few of the chapters would be additionally interesting to specialists or to sociologists, anthropologists, and historians of religions in China who are familiar with much of this literature and who wonder whether the book could deepen their knowledge or conceptual/theoretical sophistication on some of these topics. Most of the book does not aim so high, but it is certainly very useful as a general introduction. GRAEME LANG City University of Hong Kong MICHAEL RADICH, How Aj ata satru was Reformed: The Domestication of ‘‘Ajase’’ and Stories in Buddhist History. Studia Philologica Buddhica Monograph Series, vol. 27. Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2011. iii, 202 pp. ¥800 (pb). ISBN 978-4-906267-65-1 Michael Radich is currently a senior lecturer in Buddhist studies at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He received his doctoral degree in 1997 from Harvard University—where he studied with Robert Gimello—with a dissertation on Buddhist ideas of embodiment.1 Among Buddhologists of his generation, Radich is one of the few with a thorough mastery of all Buddhist classical languages, including Sanskrit, Pa li, Chinese, Tibetan, and classical Japanese. His extraordinary linguistic capacity and his record of publications in this field have made me—probably like many of his other colleagues—hold very high expectations for this book, even before opening it. Radich has not disappointed me. This book is both focused and ambitious. It is focused in that the whole book is devoted to the transformation of the legend of King Aja ta satru (Ch. Asheshi/Jpn. Ajase 阿闍世). It is ambitious in that it traces a long history (of no less than 2,000 years!) of a variety of modifications involved in the transformation of this legend in almost all major Buddhist traditions. This is a kind of tour de force that one may only expect of a Buddhologist of Michael Radich’s linguistic talent and theoretical sophistication. This book is composed of ten chapters, two (chapters 1 and 10) being introductory and concluding, respectively. Of the other eight chapters, one (chapter 2) is about the origin of the legend in South Asia, as denoted by its title: ‘‘Aja ta satru in India: The drama begins to take place.’’ This chapter surveys the 1 Michael Radich, ‘‘The Somatics of Liberation: Ideas about Embodiment in Buddhism from Its Origins to the Fifth Century CE’’ (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2007). BOOK REVIEWS 173 different versions of this legend in canonical Buddhist literature, showing that even at such an early phase the Aja ta satru legend already displayed great variety, although in its development two foci are discernible: the story of Devadatta (the Buddha’s arch-enemy blamed for the first schism within the sam . gha) suborning Aja ta satru, and that of Aja ta satru’s repentance. The following chapter (chapter 3: ‘‘Between India and China: The Mah aparinirv an . a and Contemplation s utras’’), by focusing on the Mah aparinirv an . a s utra and Guan Wuliangshoufo jing 觀無量壽佛經 [Su tra of the Contemplation of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life], covers the development of this legend during the course of Buddhism’s transmission from South Asia to Central Asia, where the Contemplation s utra was probably compiled. Radich detects in the two scriptures two of the most unusual versions of the Aja ta satru legend, unusual particularly for the motif of Aja ta satru threatening the life of his mother, Vaideh ı, a motif which was, according to Radich, otherwise...