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“Buddhism Enters China” in Early Medieval China
Abstract
Narratives are important platforms for religious thought and vehicles of religious persuasion. They are not merely “didactic,” and they do not just flesh out, secondarily, religious doctrines. The early medieval centuries in China (c.200–600) saw the importation of Buddhism as well as the rise of organized Daoist religions. Members of both of these traditions sought to position their own understandings and priorities against the other. But there were other contending viewpoints as well, including classicist tradition and local religion. Proponents of all of these perspectives generated, recorded, and transmitted narratives to explain and justify their positions vis-à-vis each other. This chapter examines this general phenomenon in the early medieval period and then analyzes in detail some particular stories as examples. It was, in part, by the fashioning and exchange of stories that the similarities, differences, and relations among multiple religious repertoires were negotiated.
Overview
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TL;DR
This chapter argues that early medieval Chinese narratives about Buddhism’s entry into China (c. 200–600 CE) portray it not as a monolithic conquest but as many particular events and story types through which Buddhist, Daoist, classicist, and local religious positions were negotiated. It analyzes five motifs—imperial dream/importation, monks displacing local gods, underground Aśokan relics, use of the Buddhist repertoire, and sutra revelation—as narrative arguments.
Key findings
- Narratives were not merely didactic; they were arguments aimed at implied others, and in manuscript culture they were collectively produced, copied, and transmitted as artifacts of collective memory.
- The chapter identifies five major motifs for narrating Buddhism’s arrival: Emperor Ming’s dream of a golden giant leading to importation of sutras, images, and monks; monks and monasteries taking up positions on the landscape against local gods; discovery of underground Aśokan stupas and relics; people using Buddhist repertoire elements with superior effect; and sutras being directly revealed.
- Examples include the Daoist *Santian neijie jing* reframing the Emperor Ming dream as *huahu* (“conversion of the barbarians”), making Buddhism a foreign teaching designed by Lord Lao for non-Chinese; Huida’s excavation at Changgan Temple finding three relics plus a nail and hair in nested stone, iron, silver, and gold coffers at about eight feet deep; and Zhang Ying’s wife recovering after Buddhist service and receipt of the five lay precepts.
- The paper concludes that “Buddhism’s entry into China” was a “pointillist array of particulars,” not a clash of monoliths; metaphors like conquest or transformation are useful but violently oversimplify finer-grained processes.
Methods
- Design: historical and textual analysis of early medieval Chinese narratives (c. 200–600 CE) about Buddhism’s arrival, treating them as arguments and repertoire elements rather than transparent records.
- Data: close readings of stories from compilations such as *Mingxiang ji*, *Santian neijie jing*, *Shuyi ji*, *Jingyi ji*, *Soushen houji*, *Gaoseng zhuan*, and *Qi Xie ji*.
- Analysis: identifies and interprets five recurring motifs/story types, with attention to narrative framing, implied opponents, and cross-repertoire borrowing.
Limitations
- Stated: the analysis of five motifs is “certainly not exhaustive”; it is a representative sampling, not an exhaustive analysis of repertoire elements.
- Stated/evident: surviving narratives are skewed toward pro-Buddhist sponsors; the paper notes few stories where local gods win because pro-Buddhist narratives had more sponsors.
- Evident: many source texts have complex textual histories, variants, and uncertain attributions (notes mention vexed textual history, emendations, and garbled passages), so the readings depend on selected editions and translations.
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Claims the paper makes
42 Own interpretation · 16 No basis given · 11 Sources not found · 7 Own result · 2 Not checked yet
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In the paper
“Second, it is signig7Fcant that this importation happens by imperial command.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“In almost all surviving stories of this sort, the newly arrived Buddhists win out.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“We have only a few stories in which the local god, at least for a time, wins out.”
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In the paper
“Many stories were circulated of the excavation of ancient sacred sites instinct with relics of the Buddha.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“For the most part, the story of the coming of 'Buddhism' is here a matter of the arrival not of ideas but of new sacred texts, devotional images, and skilled practitioners.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“But often a subordinate niche was created for the local god within a larger, explicitly Buddhist structure of sacred power, as evidenced in hundreds of monasteries and temples across China and elsewhere in Buddhist Asia.”
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“Only one doctrine is mentioned in this narrative, although it is depicted as the most startling thing about the newly introduced religion: that 'when people die their essence and spirit do not perish.'”
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In the paper
“What we have here is a version of the famous 'conversion of the barbarians' ( huahu 化胡 ) narrative that played a central role in early medieval controversies over whether the Dao or the Buddha had priority.”
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In the paper
“Many stories of protagonists engaging in Buddhist activities are at pains to argue not just their efg7Fcacy per se but also their superior effectiveness vis-à-vis indigenous alternatives.”
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“The protagonist, Hu Bizhi, tries using resources from both the Buddhist and the Daoist repertoires to deal with his household's ghostly infusion.”
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- Probably not a substantial claim. 31
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In the paper
“Thousands of such stories once circulated in early medieval China; several hundred survive.”
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In the paper
“Indigenous gods did not always cede control of locales so easily. Sometimes the struggle cost lives, as in this account from the Sui period (581-618 CE ), Citations of Marvels or Jingyi ji 旌異記 , compiled by the court historian Hou Bo 侯白 :”
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In the paper
“Another story, this one from the g7Ffth-century Further Records of an Inquest into the Spirit-Realm ( Soushen houji 搜神後記 ), illustrates the spiritual power of Buddhist monks as perceived by indigenous spirits:”
- Also stated in: § Monks and Monasteries Take Up Positions on the Landscape · p. 7 · plain
“They cower before this new sort of practitioner bestriding the landscape.”
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- Also stated in: § Monks and Monasteries Take Up Positions on the Landscape · p. 7 · plain
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In the paper
“Here we see all the basic elements of what I have elsewhere termed the narrative cult of Guanshiyin as portrayed and performed in such tales”
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In the paper
“This story was widely disseminated-even by Daoists, who, however, recontextualized it.”
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In the paper
“Hundreds of similar tales were recorded in this period documenting the efg7Fcacy of the Bodhisattva Guanshiyin 觀世音 (Sound Observer) in saving devotees from immediate distress such as shipwreck, g7Fre, military attack, illness, or imprisonment.”
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In the paper
“But this story also uses this familiar sort of con ict to frame another, intra-Buddhist one. The story g7Fles a brief for the Diamond Sutra and the power of meditation-and, more generally, for the Greater Vehicleover what it argues is the inferior efg7Fcacy of apotropaic spells (even when incanted by monks well versed in them) and mainstream Buddhism.”
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In the paper
“The argument is as straightforward as the stranger's entrance into the protagonist's studio: the Buddha is a very effective healer.”
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In the paper
“Bizhi, known by all parties involved to be a Buddhist layman (' 'you are a Buddhist disciple who has taken the triple refuge' '), is blamed for availing himself of methods from across these distinct repertoires. The nuisance-causing ghost, Shen, the departed friend, Tao, and the unnamed spirit of goodness all join in urging Bizhi to stick to the Buddhist procedures exclusively.”
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In the paper
“The story portrays two or perhaps three distinct procedures for dealing with troublesome ghosts-three if we count the family's feeding the ghost as representing a venerable indigenous method predating both Daoist religion and the in ux of Buddhism.”
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In the paper
“But this array, although vast, is not ing7Fnitely varied. It is populated by a delimited number of story types , that is to say, certain patterns of action, and by agents-human and otherwise-who play a limited set of recognizable roles .”
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [83]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
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In the paper
“They are not merely 'didactic,' and they do not just esh out, secondarily, religious doctrines.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“Erik Zürcher has shown that this story-versions of which appear in other early texts, including the Treatise on Master Mou's Removal of Doubts ( Mouzi lihuo lun 牟子理惑論 ) and the Sutra in Forty-two Sections ( Sishier zhang jing 四十二章經 )-is probably 'apocryphal,' recorded no earlier than the middle of the third century.”
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Erik Zürcher
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
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A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“If religions are repertoires of resources for solving problems and negotiating life, then one thing we can expect to g7Fnd when a religion newly enters a culture (as we metaphorically and summarily put it) is a proliferation of stories in which people put elements from the new repertoire into practice.”
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In the paper
“Particularly in a manuscript culture, where to make even a single copy of a text was a laborious enterprise, people did not commit religiously signig7Fcant stories to writing to record matters on which there was already consensus.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“Narratives are important platforms for religious thought and vehicles of religious persuasion.”
- Also stated in: § Introduction · p. 3 · plain
“Narratives in general are important platforms for religious thought.”
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- Also stated in: § Introduction · p. 3 · plain
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“For our purposes, the mention of this legend in our story is important for two reasons. It shows how central the veneration of images was in Buddhist practice.”
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In the paper
“In fact, very few Chinese people at the time would have been shocked by this purported doctrinal news because all but a tiny classicist elite took it for granted that some component of the person survives physical death.”
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In the paper
“Finally, a human protagonist with the proper karmic afg7Fnity was needed to perceive the subtle signs of relics' secret underground presence and so show workers exactly where to dig.”
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In the paper
“By being thus reframed, the well-known story was made to do very different work: to show how the importation of Buddhism was a mistake from the start because Buddhism had been designed by Lord Lao for non-Chinese people in a foreign land.”
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In the paper
“Although indigenous physicians and therapies are nowhere mentioned in the story, they were the silent contenders against whom this story staked its claim for the efg7Fcacy of Buddhist medicine.”
plaindirectSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“Buddhism was not an abstraction, nor merely a system of words or ideas: it comprised a great many particular persons and things.”
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In the paper
“What was new and different about devotion to this bodhisattva was the combination of his rapid, vivid responsiveness to supplicants in distress and the fact that he could be called on anywhere and at any time simply by acts of mental concentration or the recitation of his name or of the Lotus Sutra chapter dedicated to him; one need not visit a temple or shrine to make an offering.”
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [56]
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plainSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Rests on an assumption: Readers of the Guanshiyin stories would have been well aware of indigenous alternatives and would have heard or read the story against the background of devotion to many other deities.
- Not matched
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Religious narratives are arguments.”
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In the paper
“They recorded and circulated stories to persuade others to certain views, values, or attitudes.”
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In the paper
“This story argues that when a family member falls ill, the performance of Buddhist devotional acts will cure the illness more effectively than the traditional practice of sacrig7Fcing to indigenous gods.”
plaindirectSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“Perhaps the most surprising motif for narrating Buddhism's arrival in China involved the claim that this event was not recent. What seemed to be Buddhism's newly established presence at specig7Fc locales was actually the rediscovery of a much older, already established presence.”
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In the paper
“It did not merely 'spread' across an inert landscape like liquid spilled across a table. Its coming was to one locale at a time, in the form of particular persons, institutions, and objects.”
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In the paper
“The afterlife scene, where the punishment for sacrig7Fce is made clear, acts as empirical cong7Frmation of the Buddhist teaching of non-killing (and thus of the impermissibility of animal sacrig7Fce).”
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In the paper
“These discoveries clearly implied that 'Buddhism had entered China' centuries earlier, at least in the form of stupas and relics, but that excavation was needed to remind people of this.”
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In the paper
“For all these reasons, these texts constitute invaluable historical windows into the worldviews and persuasive efforts of many people: they are artifacts of collective memory.”
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In the paper
“And because people in the host culture will always already have had other repertoires of resources for dealing with their problems, the stories will often portray or assume a contrast between competing repertoire elements.”
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- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The stories always, therefore, were aimed at implied others-other groups, other practices, other views.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Proponents of all of these perspectives generated, recorded, and transmitted narratives to explain and justify their positions vis-à-vis each other.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“They are prime vehicles of religious persuasion because humans everywhere are storytelling, story-consuming animals.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. The paper may give no reason why it holds. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The landscape, for its part, was not homogeneous or spiritually inert.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The paucity of such tales is surely due not only to the eventual ubiquitous success of Buddhists in establishing monasteries and temples but also, even more, to the fact that pro-Buddhist narratives had more sponsors in early medieval times than stories favoring local gods at the expense of Buddhist monks or monasteries.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds. It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“I believe that there exist, in fact, no such monoliths. The illusion that they do exist is just an epiphenomenon of language and a byproduct of metaphors by which we struggle to gain a handle on naming what was a furiously complex, multifaceted set of much more g7Fnely grained processes and a much more granular ontology of objects and agents.”
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [83]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence. It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The Dharma, such narratives imply, was not merely a human tradition depending on human agency for its propagation. It was also a supercultural reality that might erupt anywhere by such mysterious mechanisms as this.”
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“This should not surprise us because story types, key scenarios, and social roles are the stuff of cultures and religions everywhere.”
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Ortner 1990
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: fails — It may be too vague to check against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Not matched
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“So it's not as if people in early medieval China were somehow incapable of reifying-even of reifying things analogous to what we speak of as 'religions'-or as if this is a uniquely Western thing to do, contrary to what some recent Western theorizing would lead one to believe.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim could be matched to a paper in Crossref, so there is nothing to check it against.
In the paper
“The history of sutra translation was carefully chronicled during the early medieval period. Cataloguers gradually expanded the scope of what counted as the word of the Buddha in Chinese, admitting more and more works to the canon that showed signs of having in fact been originally composed in Chinese and not translated from an Indic language.”
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites [71]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
- Not matchedcites [72]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
- Not matchedcites [73]
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Structurally it falls into a familiar indigenous story type, that of the ghostly disturbance. Such stories typically focus on how the ghost manifests itself and how the disturbance is resolved. But here the story type is adapted to promote Buddhist piety.”
plaindirectSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Thus did direct revelation supplant or supplement scholastic translation and arduous geographic travel-just as the excavation of 'A ś okan stupas' offered a much faster, more efg7Fcient way to procure relics of the Buddha.”
plaindirectSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“It appears, though this isn't stated directly, that Shen causes trouble in the g7Frst place to secure the blessings bestowed by Buddhist services on his own behalf.”
hedgeddirectSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
The paper relies on this without support.
The early medieval centuries in China (c. 200-600) saw the importation of Buddhism and the rise of organized Daoist religions.
“The early medieval centuries in China ( c. 200-600) saw the importation of Buddhism as well as the rise of organized Daoist religions.”
The paper relies on this without support.
Dreams were widely seen as not only prognosticatory but also as real encounters between the sleeper's wandering souls and other beings.
“Dreams were widely seen as not only prognosticatory but also as real encounters between the sleeper's wandering souls and other beings.”
The paper relies on this without support.
Readers of the Guanshiyin stories would have been well aware of indigenous alternatives and would have heard or read the story against the background of devotion to many other deities.
“Again in this case, no indigenous alternatives are mentioned, but readers would have been well aware of them and would have heard and read this story (and the hundreds of others like it) against the background of devotion to many other deities.”
Citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Female Agency in Manuscript Cultures
Grossmann, E. (2024) · De Gruyter eBooks · doi:10.1515/9783111382715 · Cited by 13
“Religious” as a Category: A Comparative Case Study
Campany, R. F. (2018) · Numen · doi:10.1163/15685276-12341503 · Cited by 13
Self-citationPatrons of Paper and Clay: Methods for Studying Women’s Religiosity in Ancient Japan
Lowe, B. D. (2024) · De Gruyter eBooks · doi:10.1515/9783111382715-002 · Cited by 2
Metadata
- Authors
- Campany, R. F.
- Corresponding author
- Campany, Robert Ford
- Venue
- Oxford Scholarship Online
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Published
- 2017-06-22
- OpenAlex
- W4231093184
- Cited by
- 4
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2024: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 0.60
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Oxford University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Indian and Buddhist Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Chinese history and philosophy
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Study and Philosophy of Religion
- Keywords
- Chinese Buddhism, early medieval China, religious narratives, Daoism, religious persuasion, religious discourse, local religion, classical tradition, religious transmission
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-21, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).
A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-21 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
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