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Author:
The History of Thought of the Edo Period is a lively area of research. You have the choice between Shinto, Confucianism, Buddhism, National Studies, and Dutch Studies, none of which was the state ideology, and all of which were practised together in a small, interactive intellectual world. The intellectuals shared a common language (classical Chinese), and polemics was one of the ways in which they interacted.
This volume contains the new, annotated translations of two of such polemical treatises (dating from 1686 and 1687): two Buddhist monks attacking the "arch-Confucian" Hayashi Razan (1583-1657) in the name of Buddhism and Shinto.
In a fourth-century tale, two farmers get lost in a pleasure grotto and unwittingly sever their fragile ties with the mortal world. Surprisingly, this simple cautionary fantasy spawned a complex literary tradition. The narrative instability of the tale was part of its snowballing appeal. Early in the tale’s journey through literary history, the girls met by the farmers morphed into female entertainers, Daoist priestesses, and spiritual transcendents. This malleability offered a wealth of artistic possibilities. The feature of “time dilation” and its associated dangers was also to become a flexible literary instrument and a defining feature of grotto fantasy literature.
A Reception History of Texts, Beliefs, and Practices
This is the first book-length study of the reception of Christianity and the epistemic outcomes of contact between Protestant and Catholic missionaries and Indigenous Austronesians in the contact zone of seventeenth-century colonial Taiwan.

In the Age of European Expansion, Dutch Reformed and Spanish Catholic missionaries attempted to win the souls of Indigenous Austronesian people in Taiwan. Christopher Joby answers the question of how the missionaries tried to overcome the gap between their own cultures and languages and those of the Indigenous Austronesians or Formosans to communicate their versions of the Christian Gospel in the contact zone of seventeenth-century Taiwan, and he analyses the consequences of these encounters. As such, this book is a reception history of the texts, beliefs, and practices that Reformed Protestant and Catholic missionaries introduced to convert the Formosans to their mode of Christianity. Using many linguistic and non-linguistic examples, this approach allows for a ‘complementary colour perspective’ by comparing the epistemic outcomes of the Dutch Reformed and Catholic missions.
Series Editor:
The series publish a select corpus of Mahāyāna Buddhist scriptures (sūtra), the Mahāratnakūṭa collection of 49 sūtras. These materials exist in their original versions in Tibetan, Chinese, and sometimes Sanskrit. The series will consist of English translations of the scriptures we study, accompanied by editions of the primary language source(s), and studies. While random scriptures have been translated into English and published, both as books and online, there does not yet exist any venue for accessible yet reliable editions and annotated translations of these fundamental documents of the Asian Buddhist tradition.
The target audience will not be limited to scholars of Asian Studies or Religious Studies, but will extend to Western Buddhists as well. Volumes in the series will consist of editions in the original language(s), facing English translations, with such annotation as would make them understandable to an educated audience. Each volume will also contain an introduction, situating the work in its historical and contemporary context.
Indo-Muslim and Portuguese History, Urban Fabric and Architecture
The ex-Portuguese Island of Diu – a once strategic maritime gateway to the bay of Cambay, Gujarat, India – features in the corpus of Portuguese history and literature, but a comprehensive study of the island was lacking. Mehrdad and Natalie Shokoohy, known for surveying little-known historic sites in India, present the study of the built environment of Diu in conjunction with the contemporaneous Indian histories in Arabic and Persian, resulting in a fresh view of Indian Ocean commerce and conquest. Extensive surveys of the Fort, the Town and the Island, include the epigraphy, fortifications, urban fabric, mosques, shrines, churches, monasteries, water infrastructure and the Zoroastrian Fire Temple and Towers of Silence. Fragmentary Hindu and Jain archaeological remains are also noted.
Editor:
Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions produced hundreds of scriptures and treatises, only a small number of which have received serious scholarly attention. The present volume inaugurates the Buddhist Open Philology Project (BOPP) publication series, which aims to produce state-of-the-art critical editions, translations, and studies of individual works, thereby seeking to advance the comprehensive study of Buddhism’s vast literary tradition.
This volume collects four studies on the composition and impact of the collection of scriptures called the Mahāratnakūṭa (“Great Heap of Jewels”), including critical editions and translations of two scriptures.
Contributors are: Jonathan A. Silk, †Gadjin M. Nagao, and Michael Radich.
Selected Essays by Jao Tsung-i on Literature and Related Topics
Editor / Translator:
Jao Tsung-i’s scholarship illuminated the development of classical Chinese literature from antiquity through the end of the Qing dynasty. In this volume, eight interviews with and essays by Jao are translated faithfully into English, giving a sampling of his diverse insights into literature and its broader significance. Topics range from the religious beliefs underpinning the earliest Chinese writings, to the influence of Chan Buddhism on Chinese poetics, to Gu Yanwu’s (1613–1682) poetic protest against the Manchu conquest. Collectively the essays demonstrate how literary art and spiritual beliefs have been intertwined throughout Chinese history.