© Columbia University Press
The Mystique of Transmission: On an Early Chan History and Its Contexts
April, 2007
Cloth, 448 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-13664-8
$51.50
/ £30.50
"An authoritative and illuminating study." — Benjamin Bogin, Buddhadharma
"How does a translated Buddhism work (and does it work)? In this elegant and erudite study, Wendi Adamek has answered this question by bringing the men and women of the late-eighth-century Bao Tang school to life. Their concerns with competition, authority, lineage, gender, and body echo ours, albeit on entirely different terms. In illuminating the Bao Tang struggles in their own eyes and the context of their times, Adamek deserves to be read by not only scholars of Buddhism, but also by cultural historians, anthropologists, and all who are interested in gender and material culture." — Dorothy Ko, author of Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding
"Wendi Adamek's masterful discussion ranges widely through an impressive variety of subject matter, from the very beginnings of Buddhism in China through the emergence of the Chan school in the eighth century. The result is a sensitive and insightful analysis of many of the most significant issues facing this particular field of study. The Mystique of Transmission will be hailed as a major contribution that substantially increases the sophistication of intellectual discourse on the historical development and complex religious identity of Chan and Chinese Buddhism as a whole."-" — John McRae, author of The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch'an Buddhism