What Happened after Mañjuśrī Migrated to China?: The Sinification of the Mañjuśrī Faith and the Globalization of the Wutai Cult. Edited by Jinhua Chen, Guang Kuan, and Hu Fo. New York: Routledge, 2022. 316 pages. $170.00 (hardcover). Comprehensive index. Notes and bibliography follow each chapter. ISBN 9781032073491.
When we write phrases like “the history of Buddhism,” what in the world are we talking about? The very grandiosity of the phrase, which I’ve prattled off myself on many occasions, ought to be a clue that it is suspicious. In the face of such an abstract idea, the answer often seems to be texts—when was this text written, that one compiled, or this one translated, or yet another entombed in a cave?