
Seeking Sakyamuni
South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism
Richard M. Jaffe(Author)
University of Chicago Press
Published on 22. May 2019
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-0-226-39114-4 (ISBN)
Description
Though fascinated with the land of their tradition's birth, virtually no Japanese Buddhists visited the Indian subcontinent before the nineteenth century. In the richly illustrated Seeking Sakyamuni, Richard M. Jaffe reveals the experiences of the first Japanese Buddhists who traveled to South Asia in search of Buddhist knowledge beginning in 1873. Analyzing the impact of these voyages on Japanese conceptions of Buddhism, he argues that South Asia developed into a pivotal nexus for the development of twentieth-century Japanese Buddhism. Jaffe shows that Japan's growing economic ties to the subcontinent following World War I fostered even more Japanese pilgrimage and study at Buddhism's foundational sites. Tracking the Japanese travelers who returned home, as well as South Asians who visited Japan, Jaffe describes how the resulting flows of knowledge, personal connections, linguistic expertise, and material artifacts of South and Southeast Asian Buddhism instantiated the growing popular consciousness of Buddhism as a pan-Asian tradition--in the heart of Japan.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
33 halftones, 1 table
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-226-39114-4 (9780226391144)
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E-Book
05/2019
1st Edition
University of Chicago Press
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Person
Richard M. Jaffe, an associate professor of religious studies at Duke University, is the author of Neither Monk nor Layman and editor of the Selected Works of D. T. Suzuki.