This book is Jungnok Park's PhD dissertation (Oxford, 2008), nearly unchanged because of his untimely death. It examines concepts of “soul” or “self” in Chinese Buddhist translations. Park's central claim is that Buddhism “acquired a soul” in China: it came to feature a permanent subject of rebirth and realization, both absent in India. The book rehearses this time-worn narrative from the third to the tenth century, adding important new evidence and some nuance.
In part 1, chapter 1 examines some fairly well-known features of Chinese Buddhist translations, arguing that they produced various changes in ideas. Chapter 2 examines problems of attribution endemic to Chinese translations. The chapter first summarizes secondary scholarship, and then offers a detailed case study that supports Zhi Qian's title to the Ambāṣṭha-sūtra T20.
Part 2 examines Indian points of comparison: self in early canonical Buddhism (chapter 3) and in Abhidharma, Prajñāpāramitā, and Yogācāra (chapter 4); and tathāgatagarbha doctrine (chapter 5). Indian Buddhism, Park contends, began by radically denying self, but gradually gravitated back towards it. Even tathāgatagarbha, however, the strongest of the Buddhist “self” doctrines that resulted from this turn, differed from what transpired in China: it lacked cit and ānanda; and it was not a hypostasized entity, but was “theoretically retro-abstracted from its soteriological result” (p. 148).
Part 3 examines the Chinese side of the comparison. Chapter 6 surveys ideas about self before Buddhism. Chapter 7 discusses a range of terms for the subject of rebirth and liberation in early translation texts. Chapter 8 reconstructs a history of those terms. Chapter 9 completes the story, rapidly striding across several centuries to Yanshou (tenth century).
The book's most significant contribution is its study, in chapters 7 and 8 and in the appendix, of seven key terms denoting “soul.” The use of these terms in translations of Buddhist scriptures presents a significant prehistory to better-known Chinese Buddhist “soul” debates. To date, scholars have attended insufficiently to this prehistory; exceptions are Itō Takatoshi, Stefano Zacchetti, and Jan Nattier (none cited on this topic by Park, in some cases perhaps because they were too recent). Park studies hundreds of passages in over 180 texts. He shows that these terms were common in translation literature from Zhi Qian (third century) to around 400, but that after Kumārajīva and Saṃghadeva their use was largely confined to “minor translators” and to texts composed in China. This evidence must be considered carefully by future historians of these problems.
These strongest sections of the book engage most closely with primary evidence. Elsewhere, Park is overambitious and spreads himself too thin. Large, complex topics are treated with almost no reference to secondary literature (see, e.g., the discussions of Prajñāpāramitā, pp. 110–19; Yogācāra, pp. 119–25; the Buddha's three bodies, pp. 139–44; Confucianism, pp. 152–58; Daoism, pp. 160–66; and Mencius, p. 216). Discussion of many other topics omits some of the most seminal scholarship (e.g., much on early Chinese translations by Paul Harrison, Jan Nattier, and Stefano Zacchetti; Joel Brereton on tat tvam asi; A. C. Graham on Zhuangzi; Robert Sharf on the Bao zang jing T1857; Leonard Priestley or Thich Thien Chau on pudgalavāda; Erich Frauwallner on Abhidharma; Kimura Eiichi on Lushan Huiyuan; and Edward Conze on Prajñāpāramitā). Park also treats many primary texts with little or no reference to scholarly translations, editions, or studies. Unsurprisingly, then, the book also contains errors in translation and fact that could have been avoided by consistent, thorough reference to such prior scholarship.
Park certainly shows himself to be a remarkably promising reader of diverse, difficult primary texts, and sometimes insightful in considering doctrinal and historical problems. Nonetheless, it is rash for anyone to tackle so much single-handedly. Also unsurprisingly, then, the overarching narrative is supported—or challenged—by little concrete evidence. As a result, the book often uncritically rehearses old views, and the bigger picture it paints is somewhat stereotyped.
A further problem is Park's “systematic” hermeneutic, which a priori privileges consistency (pp. 74–78; for exceptions see, e.g., pp. 129–33). Such a hermeneutic is surely sensible for many purposes. However, Park applies it to entire schools, systems, and traditions, and so elides minority voices in Indian Buddhism that could have served as antecedents for his “Chinese” concepts. He thus compares a somewhat monolithic India (part 2) with a depiction of China that similarly risks essentialism (especially in chapter 9). This exaggerates the uniqueness of “soul” concepts to China. For instance, Oliver H. de A. Wijesekera, Tilmann Vetter, and others have shown that “consciousness” (viññāṇa) is sometimes a subject of rebirth and liberation in India; and Priestly, Thich, and others have discussed evidence that Indian pudgalavāda thought was strong in this same period.
As a book, then, this work sometimes seems patchy, but since Park did not live to revise it, it is fairer to judge it as a dissertation. In that light, parts show great promise. To echo Gombrich (p. viii), Park's early death is truly regrettable. It was right to issue the dissertation in print, both for its intrinsic merit and as a poignant monument to a promising young scholar.
