Overview
This volume examines how Buddhist ideas, texts, and rituals shaped concepts and practices of healing in medieval China and Japan. The editors and contributors trace how Buddhist medical thought interacted with local religion, ritual practice, textual traditions, and everyday care — from miracle hagiographies and sutra-based doctrine to ritual lamps, pregnancy talismans, Dunhuang manuscripts, and moxibustion lineages.
How to approach this book (step-by-step)
- Start with the Introduction by Salguero and Macomber to get the editors' framing: key questions, methodology, and historical scope.
- Read each chapter first for its narrative or case study: note the primary sources used (sutras, hagiographies, ritual manuals, inscriptions, manuscripts).
- On a second pass, identify the chapter’s argument: what change, continuity, or interaction does the author emphasize?
- Compare chapters: look for recurring themes (e.g., ritual efficacy, embodiment, lay/priestly roles, textual authority) and regional differences between China and Japan.
Chapter summaries and key points
-
Introduction — C. Pierce Salguero and Andrew Macomber
Frames the book’s aims, defines "healing" broadly (physical, spiritual, social), and outlines methodology: textual analysis, ritual studies, manuscript evidence, and cross-regional comparison. Emphasizes interaction between canonical Buddhism and local medical/ritual practices.
-
1. “A Flock of Ghosts Bursting Forth and Scattering”: Healing Narratives in a Sixth-Century Chinese Buddhist Hagiography — C. Pierce Salguero
Analyzes a sixth-century hagiographic account where miraculous healings address illness through exorcism-like scenes and merit-making. Key ideas: narrative as a vehicle for demonstrating monkly power, social role of miracle stories in legitimizing institutions, and the linkage of ghosts/spirit possession to disease.
-
2. Teaching from the Sickbed: Ideas of Illness and Healing in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra and Their Reception in Medieval Chinese Literature — Antje Richter
Examines how the Vimalakīrti Sūtra presents illness, non-dual healing, and compassionate wisdom, and how Chinese medieval writers reinterpreted those motifs. Focus on philosophical framing of suffering, skillful means, and the rhetorical use of illness as a teaching device.
-
3. Lighting Lamps to Prolong Life: Ritual Healing and the Bhaiṣajyaguru Cult in Fifth- and Sixth-Century China — Shi Zhiru
Focuses on devotional and ritual practices surrounding the Medicine Buddha (Bhaiṣajyaguru). Shows how lamp-lighting, merit-building rituals, and textual invocation aimed at life-prolongation and curing disease, and how these rites spread in early medieval China.
-
4. Buddhist Healing Practices at Dunhuang in the Medieval Period — Catherine Despeux
Uses Dunhuang manuscript evidence to reconstruct everyday ritual and medical practices tied to Buddhism: exorcistic texts, mantra-use, protective talismans, and lay ritualry. Emphasizes diversity of texts at the cave site and the mixed religious-medical culture of frontier communities.
-
5. Empowering the Pregnancy Sash in Medieval Japan — Anna Andreeva
Studies the material and ritual culture of pregnancy sashes (obi or belts) used for protection and safe childbirth. Explores how Buddhist rituals, inscriptions, and consecration turned ordinary objects into empowered amulets — highlighting gendered, domestic aspects of religious healing.
-
6. Ritualizing Moxibustion in the Early Medieval Tendai-Jimon Lineage — Andrew Macomber
Investigates how moxibustion (a traditional thermal therapy) was incorporated into Tendai and Jimon ritual repertoires. Shows processes of sacralization: ritual context, priestly authority, and textualization that transformed a medical technique into a religiously sanctioned practice.
Key themes to watch for
- Text and practice: Sutras, hagiographies, and ritual manuals shape, legitimize, and spread healing rites.
- Ritual efficacy: How priests and laypeople believed rituals produced effects — through merit, deity presence, mantra, or ritualized action.
- Interaction with local traditions: Chinese and Japanese practices show appropriation and transformation of indigenous medical and folk rites.
- Material culture: Lamps, sashes, moxa, talismans — everyday objects become carriers of power after ritual consecration.
- Gender and domestic contexts: Pregnancy and household healing reveal often-overlooked spheres of religious action.
Study questions and classroom activities
- Compare two chapters and identify how each defines the causal mechanism for healing (e.g., deity intervention vs. merit vs. therapeutic technique).
- Trace a single ritual object (lamp, sash, moxa) across its social life: manufacture, consecration, use, and disposal.
- Use a Dunhuang text excerpt to practice close-reading: what claims does the text make about efficacy, and what social actors does it mobilize?
- Discuss how medieval Buddhist healing blurred boundaries between religion and medicine. What implications does this have for social authority and healthcare access in those societies?
Terms and concepts to define
- Bhaiṣajyaguru (Medicine Buddha)
- Hagiography
- Moxibustion
- Skillful means (upaya)
- Mantra and dharani
- Talisman/amulet and consecration
Further reading and research tips
- Look at primary sources cited in each chapter (translated passages if available) to see how authors build arguments from texts and material evidence.
- Cross-reference archaeological and manuscript studies (e.g., Dunhuang catalogs) for material context.
- When writing about ritual efficacy, separate descriptive claims (what was done) from interpretive claims (what people believed happened).
Closing note
This book is valuable for students interested in religious healing, medical anthropology, ritual studies, and East Asian Buddhism. Read it as a set of case studies that, together, show how Buddhism participated in everyday care and public health in medieval China and Japan.