In the Land of Tigers and Snakes - (The Sheng Yen Chinese Buddhist Studies) by Huaiyu Chen

About the Book

Huaiyu Chen examines how Buddhist ideas about animals changed and were changed by medieval Chinese culture. He explores the entangled relations among animals, religions, the state, and local communities, considering both the multivalent meanings associated with animals and the daily experience of living with the natural world.

Book Synopsis

Animals play crucial roles in Buddhist thought and practice. However, many symbolically or culturally significant animals found in India, where Buddhism originated, do not inhabit China, to which Buddhism spread in the medieval period. In order to adapt Buddhist ideas and imagery to the Chinese context, writers reinterpreted and modified the meanings different creatures possessed. Medieval sources tell stories of monks taming wild tigers, detail rituals for killing snakes, and even address the question of whether a parrot could achieve enlightenment.

Huaiyu Chen examines how Buddhist ideas about animals changed and were changed by medieval Chinese culture. He explores the entangled relations among animals, religions, the state, and local communities, considering both the multivalent meanings associated with animals and the daily experience of living with the natural world. Chen illustrates how Buddhism influenced Chinese knowledge and experience of animals as well as how Chinese state ideology, Daoism, and local cultic practices reshaped Buddhism. He shows how Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism developed doctrines, rituals, discourses, and practices to manage power relations between animals and humans.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, including traditional texts, stone inscriptions, manuscripts, and visual culture, this interdisciplinary book bridges history, religious studies, animal studies, and environmental studies. In examining how Buddhist depictions of the natural world and Chinese taxonomies of animals mutually enriched each other, In the Land of Tigers and Snakes offers a new perspective on how Buddhism took root in Chinese society.

Review Quotes

[In the Land of Tigers and Snakes] is highly recommended for Sinologists and specialists in Chinese religions. It is exceptionally informative.-- "Studies in Chinese Religions"

The strength of the book lies in its skillful and time-consuming perusal and scholarship in primary sources.-- "Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture"

Offers a well-written and theoretically sophisticated introduction to the topic of animals and religion. Chen's investigation is rooted in textual analysis, but he acknowledges that any treatment of this subject must be interdisciplinary in nature and he therefore employs additional insights drawn from environmental history, anthropology, and material culture.-- "Journal of the American Academy of Religion"

Huaiyu Chen has paved the way for future comprehensive studies of medieval Chinese religious and political culture. [In the Land of Tigers and Snakes] constitutes a significant contribution to the field of animal studies within a historical context and marks a new direction of medieval Chinese intellectual history by correcting the past neglect of animals and human-nonhuman interactions.-- "Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies"

In addition to its importance for the history of Chinese religions, In the Land of Tigers and Snakes is a valuable text for both comparative medieval studies and animal studies. Chen has compiled an impressive array of historical sources, while also making a commendable effort to communicate with scholars beyond his field of study.-- "H-Environment"

...by learning from the work presented in this book, we can promote deeper conversations and mutual understandings between religions, allowing scholars across multiple disciplines other than religious studies to gain inspiration for their respective fields of study.-- "Religion"

Huaiyu Chen makes a significant contribution to our understanding of human-animal interactions in medieval China...[He] tells a fascinating story of the changing boundaries between the "wild and untamed" and the "civilized" world. Particularly rich and cohesive...In the Land of Tigers and Snakes would be an excellent reading for either an undergraduate- or a graduate level class in religious studies and Asian history.-- "Journal of Chinese History"

. . . engaging and rich in detail. In all, this is a much-needed addition to the ever-growing field of Chinese animal studies, demonstrating the applicability and range of the "animal lens" in scholarship.-- "School of Oriental & African Studies"

The question of how humans treat, and should treat, non-human animals has become more urgent in the face of biodiversity loss, and we might find some answers by considering how we have lived with animals in other times and places. Huaiyu Chen's In the Land of Tigers and Snakes. . . provides openings to do so.-- "The Times Literary Supplement"

In the Land of Tigers and Snakes is meticulously researched, richly documented, and well contextualized. Chen shows excellent command of his source materials, and I really learned a tremendous amount from reading this book. A must-read for anyone interested in animals and religion!--Barbara Ambros, author of Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan

An unprecedented survey of some very rich sources, In the Land of Tigers and Snakes is a major contribution to the study of the interactions between the human and animal realms in a pivotal period of Chinese history.--T.H. Barrett, author of Taoism Under the T'ang: Religion and Empire during the Golden Age of Chinese History

In this fascinating and important study, Huaiyu Chen overturns facile beliefs that Buddhism and Daoism have long promoted ecologically beneficent attitudes and practices toward wild animals. Instead, he shows the complex ways religious leaders and laypeople viewed, controlled, killed, and according to legends, tamed and converted wild animals, in processes producing religious hierarchies, involving interreligious competition, and contributing decisively to the spread of agricultural civilizations at the expense of wildlife and wildlands. Highly recommended.--Bron Taylor, Author of Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future and editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature

About the Author

Huaiyu Chen is an associate professor in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He is the author of The Revival of Buddhist Monasticism in Medieval China (2007) and coeditor of Great Journeys Across the Pamir Mountains: A Festschrift in Honor of Zhang Guangda on His Eighty-fifth Birthday (2018), among other books.