Bryan D. Lowe's Books

Ritualized Writing

Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan

By: Bryan D. Lowe

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Ritualized Writing

Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan

By: Bryan D. Lowe

Ritualized Writing takes readers into the fascinating world of Japanese Buddhist manuscript cultures. Using archival sources that have received scant attention in English, primarily documents from an eighth-century Japanese scriptorium and colophons from sutra manuscripts, Bryan D. Lowe uncovers the ways in which the transcription of Buddhist scripture was a highly ritualized endeavor. He takes a ground-level approach by emphasizing the activities and beliefs of a wide range of individuals, including scribes, provincial patrons, and royals, to reassess the meaning of scripture and reevaluate scholarly narratives of Japanese Buddhist history. Copying scripture is a central Buddhist practice and one that thrived in East Asia. Despite this, there are no other books dedicated to the topic. This work demonstrates that patrons and scribes treated sutras differently from other modes of writing. Scribes purified their bodies prior to transcription. Patrons held dedicatory ceremonies on days of abstinence, when prayers were pronounced and sutras were recited. Transcribing sutras helped scribes and patrons alike realize this- and other-worldly ambitions and cultivate themselves in accord with Buddhist norms. Sutra copying thus functioned as a form of ritualized writing, a strategic practice that set apart scripture as uniquely efficacious and venerable. Lowe employs this notion of ritualized writing to challenge historical narratives about ancient Japan (late seventh through early ninth centuries), a period when sutra copying flourished. He contends that Buddhist practice fulfilled a variety of social, political, and spiritual roles beyond ideological justification. Moreover, he demonstrates the inadequacy of state-folk dichotomies for understanding the social groups, institutions, and individual beliefs and practices of ancient Japanese Buddhism, highlighting instead common organizations across social class and using models that reveal shared concerns among believers from diverse social backgrounds. Ritualized Writing makes broader contributions to the study of ritual and scripture by introducing the notion of scriptural cultures, an analytic tool that denotes a series of dynamic relationships and practices involving texts that have been strategically set apart or ritualized. Scripture, Lowe concludes, is at once a category created by humans and a body of texts that transforms individuals and social organizations who come into contact with it.

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Page Count

297

Publisher

University of Hawaii Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

082485943X

ISBN 13

9780824859435

Politics In The Rural States

People, Parties, And Processes

By: Frank M. Bryan

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Politics In The Rural States

People, Parties, And Processes

By: Frank M. Bryan

Blind, jazz-soul musician Ray Charles is an urban black man. But when he published the album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, a decade before Watergate, he displayed a profound clarity of vision. The album's success forewarned a watershed of cultural values that would broadcast a clear message to an urban nation: Come back to rural America. The paucity of research on rural politics sets the direction of this volume in several ways. The book is developed into two parts. The first part treats the nation as a whole, describing and analyzing (1) the socioeconomic characteristics of those who populate the rural areas of America, with some comparison with the same characteristics of urban dwellers; (2) the political views and behavior of rural dwellers in juxtaposition to their urban cousins

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Page Count

275

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1000307514

ISBN 13

9781000307511

Ritualized Writing

Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan

By: Bryan D. Lowe

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Ritualized Writing

Buddhist Practice and Scriptural Cultures in Ancient Japan

By: Bryan D. Lowe

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

297

Publisher

University of Hawaii Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

082485943X

ISBN 13

9780824859435

Book's by Bryan D. Lowe

Ritualized Writing

Ritualized Writing

Politics In The Rural States

Politics In The Rural States

Ritualized Writing

Ritualized Writing

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