The DOI matches its Crossref record, with a small difference in title or year.
The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India
Abstract
This book challenges the notion that modernity in China and India are derivative imitations of the West, arguing that these societies have transformed their ancient traditions in unique and distinctive ways. The book begins with nineteenth-century imperial history, exploring how Western concepts of spirituality, secularity, religion, and magic were used to translate the traditions of India and China. The book traces how modern Western notions of religion and magic were incorporated into the respective nation-building projects of Chinese and Indian nationalist intellectuals, yet how modernity in China and India is by no means uniform. While religion is a centerpiece of Indian nationalism, it is viewed in China as an obstacle to progress that must be marginalized and controlled. The book moves deftly from Kandinsky's understanding of spirituality in art to Indian yoga and Chinese qi gong, from modern theories of secularism to histories of Christian conversion, from Orientalist constructions of religion to Chinese campaigns against magic and superstition, and from Muslim Kashmir to Muslim Xinjiang.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“A third, a (now defunct) Wikipedia page, 'List of Buddhist Universities and Colleges,' listed more than 150 different such institutions in Asia.”
From A preliminary survey of Buddhist higher education in Asia: developing typologies and comparing secularities (2020) · cites this paper as [43]
In the citing paper
“it is clear that not all of the schools listed were accredited, or four-year schools.”
From A preliminary survey of Buddhist higher education in Asia: developing typologies and comparing secularities (2020) · cites this paper as [43]
In the citing paper
“The Wikipedia: did not include obvious criteria for why different schools were listed”
From A preliminary survey of Buddhist higher education in Asia: developing typologies and comparing secularities (2020) · cites this paper as [43]
Citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Borchert, T. (2020) · Studies in Chinese Religions · doi:10.1080/23729988.2020.1865011
Metadata
- Authors
- van der Veer, P.
- Corresponding author
- van der Veer, Peter
- Venue
- Princeton University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Published
- 2013-10-27
- OpenAlex
- W2271884581
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Princeton University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Chinese history and philosophy
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Religion and Society Interactions
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Study and Philosophy of Religion
- Keywords
- Chinese modernity, nationalism, religion and nationalism, secularity, spirituality, magic, Orientalism, Christian conversion, superstition, Wassily Kandinsky, Indian yoga, qigong, nation-building, Indian nationalism, ancient tradition
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.
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.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.23943/princeton/9780691128146.001.0001
- The paper
- van der Veer, P. (2013). The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India. Princeton University Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691128146.001.0001
