Research*

My field of research is religion in medieval China (roughly fourth to tenth century, CE). To date I have concentrated on three major areas of interest: bodily practice in Chinese Religions; the creation and transmission of new religious practices and doctrines; and the religious dimensions of commodity culture.  In particular, I have focused on self-immolation, Chinese Buddhist apocrypha, and the history of tea.  I work with primary sources written in literary Chinese and my research engages with that of scholars who publish in English and French as well as in modern Chinese and Japanese.  Although my work is grounded in traditional Sinology—a discipline based on knowledge of the literature, history, and culture of pre-modern China—my publications are also aimed towards scholars of Religious Studies. 

I Self-immolation

Self-immolation is an under-researched topic that is important for our understanding both of Buddhism in China and also the bodily forms of religious practice that appear in other cultures.  In my research I seek to explain how seemingly anomalous practices can provide new ways of understanding religion.  This project has resulted in a book, and four articles.
 
My first article on the topic, “Where Text Meets Flesh: Burning the Body as an ‘Apocryphal Practice’ in Chinese Buddhism” (1998), explores how texts (both apocryphal and canonical) and practices in Chinese Buddhism operated in a mutually reinforcing cycle so that doctrinal innovations spurred new modes of bodily piety while, conversely, practices that lacked textual sanction drove the creation of scripture.

The book, Burning for the Buddha, is a comprehensive study of the subject.  It seeks first to place self-immolation in historical, social, ethical, cultural and doctrinal context via a thorough investigation of the practice throughout Chinese history.  Second, it investigates how self-immolation was constructed as a Chinese Buddhist practice by three types of historical actors: self-immolators, their biographers, and the compilers of hagiographical collections.  The book offers a detailed history of self-immolation in China from medieval times until the early twentieth century, and includes many annotated translations from primary sources.
 
Four related articles—“Spontaneous Human Combustion: Some Remarks on a Phenomenon in Chinese Buddhism”; “Fire and the Sword: Some Connections between Self-immolation and Religious Persecution in the History of Chinese Buddhism”; “Self-immolation in the Context of War and Other Natural Disasters”; and “Written in Flames: Self-immolation in Sixth Century Sichuan”—explore in more detail aspects of self-immolation that are only touched upon briefly in the book, such as the spontaneous nature of holy death, self-immolators as martyrs, self-immolation as a response to war and natural disasters, and self-immolation as a practice suitable for end-times.

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II Apocrypha

My articles on Chinese Buddhist apocrypha address how new concepts of religious practice entered the canon in the form of scriptures composed in medieval China.  My piece on a major apocryphal Buddhist text that decisively shaped Chinese Buddhism (“Another look at the pseudo-Śūramgama sūtra”) is the first study of the text in any European language.  “The Silent Samgha: Some Observations on Mute Sheep Monks” presents a new perspective on how monastic practice in medieval China was re-imagined on the basis of certain obscure passages of Buddhist scripture.

I am currently working on a scholarly translation (from Chinese to English) and book-length study of the Śūramgama sūtra. See Work in Progress for further details.

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III Tea

The project on the role of tea in Chinese religions takes the form of a book-length monograph currently in progress and a number of articles.  The chapter “Buddhism, Alcohol, and Tea in Medieval China,” in a volume on food and religion in traditional China, describes how Buddhists were active not only in changing people’s attitudes towards intoxicating substances, but also in spreading tea drinking throughout the empire. 

The book project explores the contours of religious and cultural change in traditional China from the point of view of a commodity.  With recent books on the histories of salt, saffron, tobacco etc., it is becoming clear that everyday commodities may be used to interrogate human history.  This project traces the development of tea drinking from its mythic origins to the late-imperial period (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries), and examines the changes in aesthetics, ritual, science, health and knowledge which tea brought with it.

"no matter how much attention is paid to detail; the construction of a history is always a process of radical simplification which grossly distorts the subject under discussion.”

Stewart Home interviewed by Fabio Zucchella in Pulp Libri #3, Rome September/October 1996.

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