The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory

·期刊原文
The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism
Reviewed by Charles D. Orzech
The Journal of Religion

Vol.77 No.1

Jan 1997

Pp.184-185

Copyright by University of Chicago

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TEISER, STEPHEN F. Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism
9. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. xxiii+340 pp. $46.00
(cloth).
Most studies of Asian religions fall into one of two camps. On the
one hand are examinations of doxa, on the other are ethnographic
accounts packed with the minute description of praxis. Stephen F.
Teiser's study is unusual in combining both to yield a rich and
nuanced examination of medieval Chinese Buddhist thanatonic
practices centering on the Scripture on the Ten Kings, an
"apocrypha" written in Chinese under the pretense of South Asian
composition. Such indigenous scriptures were long eschewed as
unimportant, but recent studies have demonstrated their significance
in the process of "Sino-Indian synthesis" (p. 2) through which South
Asian religious ideas and practices were assimilated to Chinese
contexts and concerns. Focusing on the social practices underlying
the Chinese vision of purgatory, Teiser's work is also a significant
contribution to the broader study of homo mortuus.
Teiser's work is divided into three segments. Part 1 treats
practices enjoined by the Scripture on the Ten Kings, part 2
examines the production and reproduction of the scripture, and part
3 focuses on the contents of the scripture and translates the
longest version of the text.
In contrast to typical text and context studies, Teiser begins not
with the text itself but with mortuary practices, memorial rites,
religious art, and the near-death experiences that made up the
fabric of medieval Chinese religious life and that constituted the
matrix of the Scripture on the Ten Kings. Indeed, "religious life in
medieval societies did not revolve around books" but around prayer,
images, and moralizing sermons (pp. 76-77). Teiser's aim is to
document "the worship of the Ten Kings outside of the major
scripture advocating their cause" (p. 19, my emphasis). During the
ninth and tenth centuries Buddhism enhanced its connection to
Chinese mortuary ritual by promoting a round of ten feasts that
guaranteed easy passage of the soul before the ten lords of the
underworld. These feasts were accompanied by grisly depictions of
punishments meted out in the dark regions. Thus, using the text as
"more than a written artifact," Teiser explores the "singing,
rhythmic chanting, and worshiping . . . the viewing of pictures" (p.
8) of the Ten Kings in an effort to delineate "the practices of
everyday life through which the idea of purgatory emerged" (p. 6).
Part 2 narrows the focus to rites enjoined by the text itself. It
seeks answers not to the question of authorship but to the questions
of who copied it and how; who commissioned it, why, and in what
settings; and who owned it and where was it stored. To this end,
Teiser examines the actual production and reproduction of the
scripture, its forms in handscrolls, hanging scrolls, and booklets,
as manifestations of the scripture's own imperative to copy and
distribute it as an act of merit. Believers were instructed: "uphold
the scripture and you will avoid the underground prisons; copy it
and you will be spared calamity and illness" (p. 207). Teiser
fleshes out the technical dimensions of scriptural creation and
propagation with insightful discussions of canonicity and with
vignettes culled from dedicatory colophons from the ninth and tenth
century--for instance, "An Old Man of Eighty-five" (chap. 10) and
"Miao-fu, a Troubled Nun" (chap. 11).
Gathering materials from the Tun-huang manuscript repositories in
London, Paris, and Beijing, Teiser sketches for us practices and
sentiments of medieval devotions and contextualizes the meritorious
copying of the scripture. Though effective in cultivating merit on
behalf of the dead, copying the Scripture on the Ten Kings yielded
more merit when done before death. To this end the "Old Man of
Eighty-five" copied the scripture with ink "sweetened" with his own
blood (p. 127). Others sought peace with their enemies (p. 135), and
one man sought to repay the service of his ox: "Presented so that
the spirit of an old plowing ox may be reborn in the Pure Land. When
Meitreya descends . . . may we together hear the sage's Law in the
first assembly" (p.136). The most substantial of these vignettes,
"Chai Feng-ta in Memory of His Wife" (chap.9), offers us a glimpse
of the full liturgical execution of the ten feasts in which "each
scripture was dedicated at exactly the moment when Mrs. Ma passed
before one of the ten kings" (p. 106).
Part 3 of the book looks at the doxa behind the scripture, including
an examination of the infernal bureaucracy and other beliefs
associated with death. Teiser also establishes a critical edition of
the Scripture on the Ten Kings and provides a translation that is
both reliable and readable. The book is enhanced by illustrations
culled from Tun-huang collections and by fourteen appendices
concerning everything from the Ten Kings themselves to scheduling
the various feasts.
This book is also eloquent testimony to the singular importance of
the Tun-huang manuscripts on the study of Central and East Asian
religion and society. The cache of over 40,000 documents (in
Chinese, Uigur, Tibetan, etc.) that emerged from the Central Asian
sands at the beginning of the century dwarfs the Dead Sea Scrolls
both in quantity and in significance for the understanding of
religion and society. Teiser's book is among a growing number of
European and American Studies (John McRae's The Northern School and
the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism [Honolulu, 1986] is another)
based on Tun-huang materials, and its introduction serves as an
excellent entree both to the import of Tun-huang scholarship and to
ninth- and tenth-century Chinese Buddhist notions and practices
concerning death.
While informed by the best of contemporary theory, Teiser's book is
a pleasure to read, being lucidly, and in places elegantly, written.
Bridging area studies and the history of religions, Teiser offers an
exceptional exploration of the concerns, practices, and beliefs of
ninth- and tenth-century Chinese Buddhists in a work comparable to
Jacques Le Goff's The Birth of Purgatory (trans. Arthur Goldhammer
[Chicago, 1984]).