Buddhism is often portrayed as a universalising religion that transcends the local and directs attention toward a transcendent dharma. Yet, wherever Buddhism spreads, it also sparks local identity discourses that, directly or indirectly, root the dharma in native soil and history, and, in doing so, frame 'the local' in Buddhist discourse. Occasionally, notably in Japanese Shinto and Tibetan Bon, this localising variety of 'framing of discourse'--here tentatively termed 'nativism'--leads to the establishment of independent traditions that break free from Buddhism; yet, in other contexts,...
Buddhism is often portrayed as a universalising religion that transcends the local and directs attention toward a transcendent dharma. Yet, wherever B...
This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to the combinatory tradition that dominated premodern and early modern Japanese religion, known as honji suijaku (originals and their traces). It questions received, simplified accounts of the interactions between Shinto and Japanese Buddhism, and presents a more dynamic and variegated religious world, one in which the deities' Buddhist originals and local traces did not constitute one-to-one associations, but complex combinations of multiple deities based on semiotic operations, doctrines, myths, and legends. The book's...
This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to the combinatory tradition that dominated premodern and early modern Japanese religion, known as
