[marxmail] H-Net Review [H-Buddhism]: Bianchi on Chia, 'Monks in Motion: Buddhism and Modernity across the South China Sea'

[Andrew Stewart]

Best regards,
Andrew Stewart

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> From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-rev...@lists.h-net.org>
> Date: March 23, 2021 at 11:23:28 PM EDT
> To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> Cc: H-Net Staff <revh...@mail.h-net.org>
> Subject: H-Net Review [H-Buddhism]:  Bianchi on Chia, 'Monks in Motion: 
> Buddhism and Modernity across the South China Sea'
> Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org
> 
> Jack Meng-Tat Chia.  Monks in Motion: Buddhism and Modernity across 
> the South China Sea.  American Academy of Religion Series. New York
> Oxford University Press, 2020.  Illustrations. 300 pp.  $99.00 
> (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-009097-5.
> 
> Reviewed by Ester Bianchi (Perugia University)
> Published on H-Buddhism (March, 2021)
> Commissioned by Ben Van Overmeire
> 
> _"Theravādins are not the only Buddhists in Southeast Asia."_[1] 
> 
> Jack Meng-Tat Chia's first book engages with the scholarly discussion
> on international networks of Chinese Buddhism and makes a 
> groundbreaking contribution to this recent and thriving field through 
> the introduction of the new concept of "South China Sea Buddhism." In 
> deploying this concept, the author identifies the forms of Buddhism 
> in maritime Southeast Asia that make use of Mandarin Chinese, 
> southern Chinese dialects, and/or Southeast Asian languages in their 
> liturgy and practices, resulting from the encounter of preexisting 
> Chinese religious environments with Buddhists arriving from mainland 
> China. The majority of the Buddhist population in the area under 
> scrutiny--the southern part of the Malay Archipelago, including 
> Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore--is ethnic Chinese, migrated from 
> China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. _Monks in Motion: 
> Buddhism and Modernity across the South China Sea_ is the first 
> monograph telling the story of how Chinese migration led to the 
> emergence of Buddhist communities in maritime Southeast Asia. As a 
> result, it also offers new perspectives on the history of modern 
> Chinese Buddhism. In a nutshell, while previous studies have already 
> pointed out the South Asian networks of modern Chinese Buddhism, the 
> book under review offers a sophisticated analysis of the connected 
> history of the Buddhist communities in China and the lesser-known 
> Buddhist communities in maritime Southeast Asia, uncovering the role 
> of overseas Chinese practitioners in the propagation and innovation 
> of Chinese Buddhism in China and abroad. 
> 
> The book begins with the story of the author encountering a monk 
> "dressed in Chinese Mahāyāna-style robes on the inside with 
> Theravāda-style saffron robes draped over his shoulders" (p. 1). 
> This episode immediately confronts the reader with the unconventional 
> topic under inquiry. The useful introductory pages include a review 
> of the existing scholarship and present the main analytical concepts 
> that build up the theoretical framework of the book, such as Buddhist 
> modernism, Chinese Buddhism, and Southeast Asian Buddhism. The book's 
> five parts are organized chronologically. Chapter 1 provides the 
> historical and cultural background of maritime Southeast Asia and 
> China. Chapters 2 through 4 focus each on the life and career of one 
> of the main figures in the book who represent three different aspects 
> of the multifaceted forms of Buddhism in the South China Sea. Chuk 
> Mor (Zhumo 竺摩, 1913-2002), Yen Pei (Yanpei 演培, 1917-96), and 
> Ashin Jinarakkhita (Tizheng 體正, 1923-2002) are three pivotal 
> figures in the development of institutional Buddhism in the area. 
> Covering a period from the first decades of the twentieth century to 
> the early twenty-first century, these core chapters offer the first 
> English biography of the three prominent monks and provide an insight 
> into previously unexplored varieties of Buddhist modernism. In the 
> coda, the author touches on contemporary developments and addresses 
> research issues that are not covered in his book. 
> 
> As a historian of the institutional and intellectual history of 
> maritime Southeast Asian Buddhism, as he describes himself, Chia 
> combines a variety of historical sources, ranging from collected 
> works (whose contents are appropriately listed in the appendixes), 
> archival documents, commemorative texts, temple publications, 
> epigraphic materials, and Buddhist periodicals. In addition, his 
> approach is also based on multi-sited fieldwork across Southeast 
> Asia, China, and Taiwan, allowing for the collection of oral history 
> interviews and other ethnographic material. 
> 
> In chapter 1, "Migrants, Monks, and Monasteries," the author explores 
> the beginning of institutional Buddhism in maritime Southeast Asia.
> The chapter provides a description of the ritualistic form of 
> Buddhism practiced by Chinese local communities throughout the 
> nineteenth century, when Chinese monks were mainly ritual 
> specialists, operating in temples run by businessmen, and often 
> housing a mix of Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist deities, a typical 
> aspect of late imperial Chinese religion. The development of 
> institutional Buddhism was a slow but steady process that culminated 
> in the late 1940s. The first wave of missionary monks who arrived at 
> the end of the nineteenth century brought forms of 
> institutionalization, which nevertheless did not reach the majority 
> of the Chinese population. Interestingly for the case made in this 
> book, many of the migrant and traveling monks who arrived in the 
> region during the first half of the twentieth century came from 
> Xiamen, whose Nanputuo Monastery, under the guidance of Taixu 太虚 
> (1890-1947), had become a headquarters for the Chinese Buddhist 
> modernism movement. Their arrival thus also resulted in the spread of 
> Buddhist modernist ideas among the overseas Chinese population. 
> 
> The connection between Buddhist modernism and Chinese migration in 
> the formation of South China Sea Buddhism is well exemplified by the 
> transnational career of Chuk Mor presented in chapter 2, "Scripting 
> Malaysia's Chinese Buddhism." Chuk Mor, deemed the "father of 
> Malaysian Chinese Buddhism," was a student of Taixu at the Minnan 
> Buddhist Institute in Nanputuo Monastery and at the Wuchang Buddhist 
> Institute. In 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, 
> he refused to go back to China from his temporary residence in Macao; 
> he first accepted a position in Hong Kong and, in 1954, moved to 
> Southeast Asia. Chuk Mor's teaching was heavily influenced by Taixu's 
> doctrine of Human Life Buddhism (_rensheng fojiao _人生佛教), as 
> can be inferred by his emphasis on the this-worldly practice of 
> Buddhism, a pragmatic approach that proved particularly appealing to 
> the overseas Chinese community. Chuk Mor created a number of Buddhist 
> institutions for the promotion of his modernist understanding of 
> "orthodox Buddhism" (_zhengxin fojiao _正信佛教), including the 
> first Buddhist seminar in postcolonial Malaysia. He also engaged in 
> secular education and encouraged refuge-taking as a confirmation of 
> one's status as lay follower. These measures were crucial in 
> undermining the existing local forms of Buddhism and advocating a new 
> Malaysian Chinese Buddhist identity. 
> 
> Chapter 3, "Humanistic Buddhism in the Chinese Diaspora," examines 
> the comparable biography of Yen Pei, who is celebrated as one of the 
> four eminent monks of Singapore. Yen Pei studied at the Minnan 
> Buddhist Institute; he later moved to the Sino-Tibetan Institute in 
> Chongqing, where he had his first encounter with the modernist monk 
> Yinshun 印順 (1906-2005), whose interpretation of Humanistic 
> Buddhism (_renjian fojiao_ 人間佛教) was to deeply influence Yen 
> Pei's Buddhist views. In 1949, he joined the exodus of Buddhist monks 
> to Taiwan. Between 1958 and 1964, he undertook three "Dharma 
> propagation trips" to mainland and maritime Southeast Asia, which 
> resulted both in interaction with Theravāda Buddhists and in the 
> dissemination of Humanistic Buddhism in the area. In 1964, he was
> offered the abbotship at Leng Foong Bodhi Institute, the temple of 
> his former teacher Cihang 慈航 (1895-1954) and settled in 
> Singapore. Like Chuk Mor, in his attempt to contrast religious 
> syncretism and create a new "orthodox" Buddhist identity, Yen Pei 
> promoted Buddhist education and scholarship and encouraged the 
> incorporation of religious practice into everyday life. He further 
> prompted Buddhist social engagement and, in his later years, 
> significantly increased his worldly activism for social welfare. 
> 
> Chapter 4, "Neither Mahāyāna nor Theravāda," explores the case of 
> Ashin Jinarakkhita, a Peranakan Chinese born in Indonesia who studied 
> in the Netherlands. Unlike Chuk Mor and Yen Pei, he was not exposed 
> to any Buddhist seminars in China, and his modernist views were 
> inspired by his involvement in the Theosophical Society. Upon his 
> return to Indonesia, he received Chinese novice ordination. He later 
> took Theravāda ordination under the Burmese monk Mahāsi Sayādaw 
> (1904-82), a founding figure of the Burmese _vipassanā_ movement. On 
> an institutional level, Ashin Jinarakkhita established a lay Buddhist 
> organization and a Sangha community. He also started female 
> ordination of _bhik__ṣ__u__ṇ__ī_s. A hybrid form of Buddhism, 
> his Buddhayāna includes both Chinese and Theravāda doctrines and
> practices; it was conceived as an inclusive nonsectarian movement for 
> both Chinese and indigenous people. Ashin Jinarakkhita put his global 
> modernist ideas at the service of local needs. To please the 
> Indonesian government and safeguard Buddhism in the world's biggest 
> Islamic state, he embraced the national discourse of "unity in 
> diversity" and later promoted the controversial concept of Sang Hyang 
> Ādi-Buddha, "the God Primordial Buddha," presented as the Buddhist 
> version of an almighty God. In sum, by reconnecting the Buddhayāna 
> with the Buddhism of the premodern maritime Hindu-Buddhist Indonesian 
> kingdom, he prevented its becoming labeled a "Chinese" religion and 
> strategically promoted it as a multiethnic minority religion in the 
> postcolonial Indonesian state. 
> 
> Titled "Monks in Motion," the coda takes us down to the contemporary 
> era by discussing the political appropriation of the idea of a 
> Pan-Buddhist union by the mainland Chinese government for the 
> purposes of legitimizing its claims over the South China Sea. Chia 
> points to the irony of this narrative, considering that the exodus of 
> Chinese monks to the region was in many cases a consequence of the 
> establishment of the communist regime. Nonetheless, as the author 
> demonstrates convincingly, in the modern era the South China Sea has 
> been--and still is--not merely a thriving zone in terms of economic 
> exchanges but also a flourishing area for transregional religious 
> circulations. 
> 
> The primary contribution of the present volume lies in its creation 
> of the very concept of "South China Sea Buddhism," which also allows 
> for a reconfiguration of the conventional categories of both "modern 
> Chinese Buddhism" and "Southeast Asian Buddhism." Most scholarship on 
> Buddhism during the Republic of China--a field that has received 
> considerable attention in recent decades--adopts a China-centered 
> perspective, often disregarding the transnational dimension. As a 
> matter of fact, in recent years a number of scholars have begun to 
> conceive of globalization as a major aspect of modern Chinese 
> Buddhism, focusing on the cross-border interactions between monastics 
> and laity in China and abroad in the process. This book draws on 
> those few but significant studies and introduces previously 
> unexplored material.[2] Furthermore, the three case studies of Chuk 
> Mor, Yen Pei, and Ashin Jinarakkhita also serve another argument made 
> by Chia, namely, that the overseas Buddhist Chinese community had an 
> active role in the development of Chinese Buddhism, in contrast to 
> Holmes Welch's claims about their allegedly apathetic attitude.[3] 
> 
> Chia's study also fills a gap in Southeast Asian religious studies, 
> which is traditionally bifurcated in the field into mainland 
> Theravāda Buddhism, on the one hand, and maritime Islam and 
> Catholicism, on the other. The identification of Southeast Asian 
> Buddhism with the Theravāda tradition owes to the academic 
> boundaries between scholars trained in Southeast Asian studies and in 
> East Asian studies. The study of Buddhism in Southeast Asia is mainly 
> a target of the former category of scholars, who miss the linguistic 
> and cultural knowledges to cope with Chinese Buddhist texts, rituals, 
> and practices. Departing from this perspective, the book under review 
> urges scholars to extend the study of Southeast Asian Buddhism beyond 
> the Theravāda communities on the mainland and succeeds in 
> identifying Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism in the maritime region as an
> important aspect of the local religious landscape. 
> 
> Chia's book also makes an important contribution to our understanding 
> of Buddhist modernism, which the author uses as a lens to analyze 
> South China Sea Buddhism. Building on the works of Ann Ruth Hansen 
> (_How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial Cambodia, 
> 1860-1930_ [2007]) and David L. McMahan (_The Making of Buddhist 
> Modernism_ [2008]), the author shows how monks such as Chuk Mor, Yen 
> Pei, and Ashin Jinarakkhita made the maritime Southeast Asian region 
> an incubator of novel forms of Buddhist modernism. Their views of 
> Buddhism reveal a quest for "orthodoxy" in the scriptures, but they 
> also entail the assertion of religious and national peculiarities, 
> thus reflecting both the legacy of global trends and the impact of 
> the local postcolonial background. Chuk Mor and Yen Pei received 
> monastic training at Buddhist seminaries in China, where they were 
> exposed to the modernist ideas of Taixu and Yinshun, respectively. 
> Ashin Jinarakkhita, on the other hand, derived his vision of Buddhism 
> from his engagement with the Theosophical Society. Whatever their 
> origins, the same modernist views were employed by the three masters 
> in their creation of a maritime Southeast Asian Buddhist identity. 
> Ultimately, the three cases clarify that Buddhist modernism may be 
> shaped by a combination of transnational networks and local 
> circumstances. 
> 
> Another topic addressed by Chia concerns the encounters between 
> Chinese Mahāyāna and Theravāda Buddhism in the modern era. The 
> example of Yen Pei testifies to the creation of a dialogue between 
> the two Buddhist traditions in terms that became possible only after 
> a modern understanding of Buddhism as a unified Pan-Asian religion 
> gained ground. Additionally, as the case of Ashin Jinarakkhita shows, 
> this process eventually led to the emergence of forms of Buddhist 
> hybridity, a field that has only recently attracted the interest of 
> scholars--including me--who will greatly benefit from taking stock of 
> Chia's case studies.[4] 
> 
> This well-researched and well-documented monograph leaves only a few 
> questions untreated. They are addressed by the author himself in the 
> coda and skillfully presented as directions for future research. 
> First, among the areas deserving further attention is the possible 
> impact Chinese monks traveling to South and Southeast Asia in search 
> of the "original" teachings of Śākyamuni had on modernist 
> Theravāda Buddhism. While scholars have recognized the influence of 
> the Theravāda model on the developments of modern East Asian 
> Buddhism, it is fair to assume, as suggested by Chia, that the 
> opposite may also have happened.[5] Second, studies about Chinese 
> religions in Southeast Asia reveal the resilience and liveliness of 
> syncretic forms of practice in local Chinese temples.[6] One wonders 
> how much of the ritualistic forms of Buddhism survived in the area 
> under scrutiny and to what extent they were affected by the new 
> institutional forms of Buddhism.[7] 
> 
> _Monks in Motion_ is an engaging study that will appeal to students 
> and scholars of Southeast Asian studies and Chinese studies, as well 
> as those of Asian history and religious studies. In my view, this is 
> compulsory reading for scholars with an interest in modern Chinese 
> Buddhism and in the modern religious landscape of Southeast Asia. 
> Quoting the author, "by crossing the artificial spatial frontier 
> between China and Southeast Asia, this study brings Southeast Asia 
> into the study of Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism into the 
> study of Southeast Asian Buddhism" (pp. 155-56). 
> 
> Notes 
> 
> [1]. Justin Thomas McDaniel, "Buddhists in Modern Southeast Asia," 
> _Religion Compass_ 4, no. 11 (2010): 659, quoted by Chia, 156. 
> 
> [2]. Notably, Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank, "The Globalization of 
> Chinese Buddhism: Clergy and Devotee Networks in the Twentieth 
> Century," _International Journal of Asian Studies_ 65, no. 2 (2006): 
> 337-59. 
> 
> [3]. Holmes Welch, _The Buddhist Revival in China_ (Cambridge, MA: 
> Harvard University Press, 1968), 190-93. 
> 
> [4]. See for example, Tzu-Lung Chiu, "Chinese Mahāyāna Monastics in 
> Contemporary Myanmar: Rejection, Accommodation, Assimilation," in 
> _Exploring the Life and Teachings of Mahayana Buddhists in Asia_, ed. 
> Ampere Tseng (New York: Nova Science Publishers), 213-78; Wei-Yi 
> Cheng, "Theravādizing Ghost Festival in Taiwan," _Contemporary 
> Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal_ 13, no. 2 (2012): 281-99; and 
> Ngar-Sze Lau, "Modernising Buddhism: Emergence of Theravāda 
> Meditation Communities in Contemporary China" (PhD diss., Lancaster 
> University, 2017). 
> 
> [5]. Notably, Richard M. Jaffe, _Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in 
> the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism_ (Chicago: University of 
> Chicago Press, 2019); and Justin R. Ritzinger, "Original Buddhism and 
> Its Discontents: The Chinese Buddhist Exchange Monks and the Search 
> for the Pure Dharma in Ceylon," _Journal of Chinese Religions_ 44, 
> no. 2 (2016): 149-73. See also Ester Bianchi, "Understanding _jielü 
> _戒律: Resurgence and Reconfiguration of _Vinaya_-Related Concepts 
> in Modern China," in _Critical Concepts and Methods for the Study of 
> Chinese Religions_, vol. 2,_ Intellectual History of Key Concepts_, 
> ed. Gregory Adam Scott, and Stefania Travagnin (Berlin: De Gruyter, 
> 2020), 54-80. 
> 
> [6]. A recent example for referencing maritime Southeast Asia is 
> Fabian Graham, _Voices from the Underworld: Chinese Hell Deity 
> Worship in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia_ (Manchester: 
> Manchester University Press, 2020). 
> 
> [7]. This very question is at the core of the recently published book 
> by Lee Ooi Tan, _Buddhist Revitalization and Chinese Religions in 
> Malaysia_ (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020). See also 
> Kenneth Dean, "Whose Orders? Chinese Popular God Temple Networks and 
> the Rise of Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist Monasteries in Southeast 
> Asia," in _Buddhist and Islamic Orders in Southern Asia: Comparative 
> Perspectives_, ed. R. Michael Feener and Anne M. Blackburn (Honolulu: 
> University of Hawai'i Press, 2018), 99-124. 
> 
> Citation: Ester Bianchi. Review of Chia, Jack Meng-Tat, _Monks in 
> Motion: Buddhism and Modernity across the South China Sea_. 
> H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews. March, 2021.
> URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55853
> 
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 
> Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States 
> License.
> 
> 


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