Wendi Adamek's elegantly written and skillfully executed book adds much to our growing understanding of the complex history that is Chan. It centers around the Lidai fabao ji (Record of the Dharma-Jewel through the Generations), a late eighth-century hagiographical work and the only known relic manuscript produced by the short-lived Bao Tang school, a collateral branch of Chan located in Jiannan (Sichuan). This text, lost to history until its rediscovery in Dunhuang in the early twentieth century, offers its rendition of Chinese Buddhist history and an account of the school's founder, Wuzhu (714–74), claiming that he inherited the robe (and hence the patriarchy) of Chan's first patriarch, Bodhidharma (d. ca. 530), which was passed down through (the now canonical) five successive generations to Huineng (638–713), after which it came into the possession of Empress Wu Zetian (r. 684–705) and ultimately to Wuzhu. The text ends with Wuzhu's death, without naming a successor.
In chapter 1, Adamek lays out her approach, arguing that “the fabrications in the Lidai fabao ji are not simply inaccurate Chan history but faithfully reflect a temporary crisis in the meaning of spiritual transmission” (p. 3). She thus directs our attention to the contradictory Buddhist logics dealt with in the text in its attempts to create an early sectarian history and to promote the antinomian, formless teachings and practices of Wuzhu. She highlights traditional points of oscillation and contradiction, such as continuity and innovation, scripture and experience, as well as issues in the text that are distinctive to the Chinese and Chan context, including the denial of formal precepts and practices, the inclusion of female practitioners, and the influence of Daoist metaphysics.
Adamek proceeds along three lines of inquiry, which highlight the sources of tension and navigate religious ideology, hagiography, and praxis and the Realpolitik of medieval China. The first concerns the continual renegotiation of the vehicles and contents of transmission, including the rhetorical strategies that affect the transmission of authority, especially as it is expressed through emblems of inherited legitimacy. The second relates to the creation and deconstruction of the text as historical narrative, including its styles of discourse. The third regards the political, social, and economic aspects involved in the discourses of transmission and history, especially those related to saṅgha–state interactions.
Chapter 2 focuses on conflicting notions of authority as set forth by various fourth-century personalities. Chapter 3 moves from the mystique of the Buddhist monk to the relatively uncharted waters of the lay practitioner, focusing on scriptures and apocrypha that deal with the bodhisattva precepts, Buddha-visualization practices, repentance rituals, as well as Chinese cultural values and orders of knowledge. Chapter 4 takes up the threat of spiritual materialism and responses to the sense of crisis represented by the rise in popularity of Buddhist decline theory. Chapter 5 returns to the question of sectarian identity, especially as it relates to the conferral of the robe controversy. Chapter 6 deals with the kinship concerns of the Lidai fabao ji, concentrating on the narrative forms employed to validate hierarchies, clarify family values, and demonstrate the effectiveness of Wuzhu's patriarchy. Chapter 7 focuses on the portrait eulogy for Wuzhu in order to understand the development of this genre and discusses the legacy of the text, including in Tibet. Finally, Adamek provides the first English-language translation with extensive annotation of the Lidai fabao ji.
In approaching the multifarious influences between the fourth and eighth centuries that converged to create the hybrid Bao Tang mystique of transmission, Adamek exposes the multiple layers of function built into the instability of the Buddhist nature of authority and their operation at different levels of discourse. This sophisticated approach treats us to a reception history that converges in an eighth-century text and probes many of the most significant issues that absorbed the medieval Chinese Buddhist world. Adamek argues that the Lidai fabao ji should best be understood as an instance of the Sinification of Buddhism, one that struggled to create a mystique that benefited the Bao Tang and addressed Chinese cultural and political concerns.
Adamek has a real knack for bringing to life the many personalities whom she deals with. Perhaps more impressively, she carries on a running dialogue with contemporary scholars of Buddhism, carefully considering their arguments in relation to her own work. That she carries on this conversation in a volume that covers such a large swath of Chinese Buddhist history, while remaining focused on the circumstances surrounding a particular text, makes this monograph an extraordinary first book. This insightful work will absorb a wide variety of readers, and it should provide a blueprint for future research.
