Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China can be summed up in the following statement: “Though it is often convenient to discuss cross-cultural exchange from the perspective of transmission and influence … [t]he crucial catalyst is always the translational activity of individual people” (p. 44). C. Pierce Salguero's insightful study makes rare scholarly connections among disciplines on the study of the Chinese reception of Indian “Buddhist medicine,” bringing new perspectives utilizing religious studies, translation studies, anthropology, Buddhist studies, and medieval Chinese medical history. This well-documented and informative work disarms the reader to rethink long-standing assumptions about China, Buddhism, and medicine in the medieval period up to the ninth century, calling for the problematization of choice in cross-cultural translation work and “anachronistic” categorizations in studying the history of medicine and Buddhist traditions in the medieval Chinese context. This study expands beyond the strategies employed in cross-cultural translation and reception, touching upon historiography, the politics of transmission of tradition, and identity, as well as providing a refreshing look at the history of Buddhism in China and its impact on healing practices.

The book focuses on the translation strategies employed by Chinese authors on healing traditions under Buddhist medicine, broadly conceived from Indian Buddhist and medical texts. The exploration is divided into five chapters including perspectives of transmission, translators and their strategies, translating medicine in Buddhist scriptures, the rewriting of Buddhist medicine, and its popularization. The five conceptual metaphors that Salguero sees as evident in Buddhist writings on medicine—the body as a collection of parts, health and disease as rewards and retribution, the dharma as medicine, deities as healers, and healing as an occult power—are utilized as frames of reference for understanding translational activity and cross-cultural reception. In applying contemporary translation methods, Salguero reveals that in the reception of foreign cultural ideas, religion as medicine (or healing traditions) had to be taken as a package and not as polar opposites vying for attention. Chinese reception involved intricate networks of several translators (monastics, rulers, local healers, physicians, and others apart or inclusive of these) and textual and oral materials. This work brings forth in moderate detail the conditions under which Buddhist medicine was “translated” and transmitted either by preserving originals or by making it native, or both.

Salguero begins by familiarizing the reader with the Chinese indigenous medical and religious systems of the time. He then draws attention to the interplay of disease, religion, empire, and the politics of healing, and transmission of cultural-linguistic structures in the appropriation and use of Indian texts into China during the introduction of Buddhism to China. Chapter 2 lays the foundation for the rest of the book, perhaps best described by Salguero (relying on translation scholar Martin Fuchs): “every act of translation ‘walks a fine line between reconstructing and reinventing the message and meaning to be conveyed’” (p. 66). Well-known translators (monastic and lay) made an impact on medieval Chinese culture by appropriating and applying Indian Buddhist models in the Chinese context. Chapter 3 provides the critical conceptual metaphors that frame his study. Thereafter, chapter 4 provides a detailed account of well-known translators like Zhiyi and Yijing and scholars like Daoxuan and Daoshi, who impacted Buddhism and Chinese medicine with their appropriation of Indian religious and healing ideas alongside the pressures of Chinese cultural forces. Salguero then provides those crucial analyses into Buddhist texts and the reception of healing traditions employing a kind of anthropological, historiographic lens in order to highlight how Buddhist texts had wider appeal in China than we had imagined, connecting India and China. The shifts in content and genre provide a fascinating insight into how China was impacted by Buddhism politically, economically, and culturally. The final chapter provides rather broad strokes on the waning of Buddhist influence from India or direct and systematic foreign cultural influence on the whole in the later medieval period, yet whets the appetite for future interdisciplinary studies on this latter period.

Although it goes without question that much of the weight falls on Buddhism as the main conduit of this translational activity, a fuller understanding of how the Daoists and other groups were involved in transmitting their own version of healing traditions would likely enhance this present study. Perhaps the sticky point of the entire project was employing the term “medicine” to encompass such a wide range of healing activities and Buddhist traditions, but as recent studies have shown, modern ideas of medicine or religion and the employment of dichotomous categories are not the most reliable ways to get a sense of the reality of certain historical periods, what “medicine” meant, and the subtle processes within translational activity.Footnote ⁷ Salguero goes out on a limb to employ interdisciplinary methods and takes a brave stance to problematize our modern application of categories and disconnected disciplinary methods. Cultural exchanges are all about choices and messy transactions; we need all the methods we can get in order to understand the process of reception. We also need to study the whole intricate web of networks and not just isolate the parts.