In the Chinese Buddhist world, Dizang numbers among the “primary bodhisattvas” of medieval China, being generally perceived as an underworld sovereign who guides the faithful through the dreadful, byzantine realm of the dead. This image of Dizang may be misleading for modern scholars in their effort to understand the formation and transformation of the Dizang cult, as well as its roles and implications. Not intent on completely undermining (or inverting) this image of Dizang, Zhiru Ng's The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva succeeds to an admirable degree in uncovering the plethora of cultural, religious, and sociopolitical forces at work in the protracted process that resulted in this quintessential Chinese cult.

The book is composed of three parts. The first part investigates the origins, both scriptural and practical, of the Dizang cult. Chapter 1 examines two primary texts for the Dizang cult and the intellectual and sociopolitical climate of the rise of the cult. As suggested by its title, “Cultic Beginnings Reconsidered,” chapter 2 reevaluates the origins of the Dizang tradition. In the second part, chapters 3 and 4 discuss, respectively, further scriptural sources for the Dizang cult, as well as some of the most relevant iconographical and epigraphic evidence. Chapter 5 covers some of the major literary sources. The third part is composed of three appendices. The first appendix scrutinizes the traditional dating of the Scripture on the Ten Wheels, while the second discusses evidence concerning Kṣitigarbha (Dizang) in India and Central Asia. The final appendix provides meticulous translations of three basic texts on Dizang.

This book stands out for the wealth of the material (both canonical and noncanonical, textual and epigraphical, Buddhist and non-Buddhist), and for the delicate balance that is adroitly maintained between different disciplines. It is particularly commendable for its methodological inventiveness. In treating these “primary bodhisattvas” like other cultural phenomena associated with Buddhism, scholars generally have pursued two types of approaches that have been characterized as the model of “Buddhist conquest [of Chinese culture]” or that of “Sinification [of Indian Buddhism],” exemplified by the classic studies of Erik Zürcher (The Buddhist Conquest of China [Leiden: Brill, 1959]) and Kenneth Ch'en (The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism, [Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1973]). These models met a stiff challenge in Robert Sharf's work, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002). Sharf questioned the existence of two distinct entities of either Indian Buddhism (in the case of the conquest model) or Chinese culture (in the case of the transformation model). He argued that neither model suffices, given that a “pure,” “standard” Indian Buddhism never existed to “conquer” China or to undergo “transformation” by a so-called Chinese culture. He proposed the Buddhism that medieval China encountered, from the outset, had already been “Sinicized.”

By exploring the Dizang cult from the perspective of medieval Chinese culture, religion, and society, Ng's study echoes, at first glance, many of Sharf's perspectives and presumptions. It represents, however, a significant modification, pointing to the possible risk that Sharf's argument might imply “a Chinese Buddhism that is culturally self-contained, impermeable, and relatively isolated from other Buddhist geographical regions” (p. 10). Ng perhaps overstates the potential problems in Sharf's logic. She is, nonetheless, certainly right to highlight “the meaningful relationships and rich interchanges that existed among different Buddhist cultures” (p. 11), on the one hand, and, on the other, to warn her readers not to succumb to the illusion of “an unchanging core of Buddhism perpetrated across cultural and geographical boundaries” (p. 11) that can be used as a criterion by which to judge the “genuineness” or “degeneration” of a “local” Buddhist tradition.

The author has helped her readers a good deal by relating the Dizang cult to the notions and practices of Kṣitigarbha in India and Central Asia, and those of Jizō (as Dizang is known) in Japan. The big picture would be even more complete had the author made any effort to include some aspects of the same cult on the Korean peninsula, especially in view of the prominence that Chinese Dizang worshippers gave to a Sillan prince-cum-monk (particularly in the course of “localizing” the bodhisattva on one of the four Buddhist marchmounts in China, Mount Jiuhua).

This book is well written and edited, and the arguments are carefully advanced and well founded. I am slightly disturbed by the practice of referring to a monk by the first character of his dharma-name (generally of two characters) (see, e.g., p. 58 n. 2, referring to the monk Daojing by Dao). Because the first character of a dharma-name is often rather generic and common to many monks, this practice increases the possibilities for confusion.