Jiang Wu: "Samuel Beal and the Study of Chinese Buddhism in Victorian England: Reassessing the Contribution of a Forgotten Scholar"
Lathrop Library, 518 Memorial Way 2nd Floor, Stanford
Room 224
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Abstract:
In the formative period of European Buddhology, Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhist texts played an important role in shaping a new discourse on Indian Buddhist history through Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat’s French translation of Faxian’s 法顯 travelogue (1836) and Stanislas Julien’s translation of Xuanzang’s 玄奘biography (1856). Largely forgotten, however, is the British scholar and chaplain Samuel Beal (1825-1889) who laid the foundation for the research of Chinese Buddhism. Unlike the French scholars who were largely armchair Sinologists with an interest in Chinese Buddhism, Samuel Beal had been to China and Japan during the Second Opium War (Arrow War, 1856-1860) and had first-hand experience with Chinese Buddhism. Appointed professor of Chinese at University College London from 1877 to 1889, he devoted himself exclusively to researching Chinese Buddhism and translating Chinese Buddhist travelogues and scriptures into English. His Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese (1872) contains the first translation of many Chinese Buddhist texts popular in late imperial China. He was also instrumental in requesting the Ōbaku Canon 黃檗藏 from Japan through the visit of the Iwakura Mission in 1872 and wrote the first catalog of the received canon before Nanjō Bun'yū 南条文雄 published the second catalog in 1883. In this talk, Jiang Wu will reintroduce Samuel Beal and reassess Beal's contributions to the study of Chinese Buddhism, especially the Chinese Buddhist canon. Wu argues that Samuel Beal’s scholarship remains an important reference point for further research on Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhist texts.
Bio:
Dr. Jiang Wu is currently a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and director of the Center for Buddhist Studies. He received his M.A. from Nankai University (1994) and his Ph.D. from Harvard University (2002). His research interests include seventeenth-century Chinese Buddhism, especially Chan/Zen Buddhism, the role of Buddhist canons in the formation of East Asian Buddhist culture, and the historical exchanges between Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. Other interests include Confucianism, Chinese intellectual and social history, and the application of electronic cultural atlas tools to the study of Chinese culture and religion. He has published articles on a variety of topics in Asia Major, Journal of East Asian History, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, and Monumenta Serica. His first book, Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China was published by Oxford University Press in 2008. His Leaving for the Rising Sun: Chinese Zen Master Yinyuan and the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia (Oxford, 2016; 384 pages) won the inaugural Tianzhu Best Book in Chan Studies Award. He has also edited or co-edited Spreading Buddha’s Word in East Asia: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon (Columbia 2016), Reinventing the Tripitaka: Transformation of the Buddhist Canon in Modern East Asia (Lexington 2017), The Formation of Regional Religious Systems in Greater China (Routledge 2022), The Digital World in an Age of Uncertainty: Humanizing Technology for Wellness, Resilience, and Creativity (IEEE 2022). He has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2023 to study the Ōbaku Canon in East Asia and the West.