Yang Wenhui and Nanjō Bun’yū: A Sino-Japanese Perspective on the Introduction of Modern Buddhist Studies to East Asia
In: Learning from the West, Learning from the East: The Emergence of the Study of Buddhism in Japan and Europe before 1900Search for other papers by Jakub Zamorski in
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Abstract
The chapter focuses on the figure and thought of the influential Chinese lay Buddhist publisher and educator Yang Wenhui (1837–1911) in order to illustrate some intellectual tensions and dilemmas that accompanied the introduction of academic study of Buddhism to China. Yang’s attitude towards the contemporary academia and its search for “original” Buddhism was to a large degree shaped in the course of his interactions with the Japanese Buddhist priest and scholar Nanjō Bun’yū (1849–1927), who was the pioneer of modern Buddhology in East Asia. Whereas Yang expressed interest in some aspects of Nanjō’s modern expertise, such as study of Sanskrit or secular subjects, he nevertheless remained committed to his own project of revitalizing traditional Chinese Buddhism, which entailed a relatively confessional and Sino-centric approach to Buddhist texts. In his polemics with Nanjō’s co-religionists from the Jōdo Shinshū school, as well as his critiques of modern academia, Yang maintained the view that the Chinese Buddhist canon transmits the proper intent of the Buddhist teachings and that this intent cannot be established merely on the basis of historical research. As argued in the chapter, Yang’s relatively conservative stance in this regard is bolstered by his reading of Buddhist Consciousness-only thought with which he became more familiar due to his contacts with Nanjō. This concern with preserving the legitimacy of Chinese texts, interpretations, and practices in the process of “modernizing” Chinese Buddhism influenced, to various extents, the subsequent generations of scholars and activists.