The “Religion of Images”? Buddhist Image Worship in the Early Medieval Chinese Imagination
https://architecturasinica.org/bibl/LWXIHWH5Preferred Citation
Greene, Eric M. “The ‘Religion of Images’? Buddhist Image Worship in the Early Medieval Chinese Imagination.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 138, no. 3 (2018): 455–84. https://doi.org/10.7817/jameroriesoci.138.3.0455.View at:
Abstract
This paper explores how image worship was conceptualized and represented by Chinese authors during the first four centuries of Buddhist presence in China (to roughly 500 ce). Previous scholarship has argued that image worship was initially seen in China as a distinctively Buddhist practice, so much so that Buddhism was even known to the Chinese as the “Religion of Images” (xiangjiao 像教). By examining the history of the interpretation of this term, the evolution of stories about sacred images, and the presentation (or lack thereof) of image worship in debates about the compatibility of Buddhism with Chinese culture, I will argue that image worship was first seen as a distinctly Buddhist or non-Chinese practice only in the late fifth century. Ironically, image worship came to be seen or represented as “foreign” only long after it had already become part of most forms of Chinese religion.
Additional Citation Information
Article
Title: The “Religion of Images”? Buddhist Image Worship in the Early Medieval Chinese Imagination
Author:
URI: https://architecturasinica.org/bibl/LWXIHWH5
URI: https://www.zotero.org/groups/architecturasinica/items/LWXIHWH5 
URI: https://www.zotero.org/groups/2267085/items/LWXIHWH5
See Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/jameroriesoci.138.3.0455
Publication
Title: Journal of the American Oriental Society
Volume: 138
Date of Publication: 2018
Pages: 455-484