Early Chinese Religion: Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC-220 AD) ed. by John Lagerwey, Marc Kalinowski (review)

Abstract

110 Journal of Chinese Religions Early Chinese Religion: Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC220 AD) Edited by JOHN LAGERWEY and MARC KALINOWSKI. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009. 2 volumes. Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section Four: China, Volume 21-1. xvi, 1256 pages. ISBN 978-90-04-16835-0. €249.00, US$369.00 hardcover. Reading through these two massive tomes evokes pleasant memories of a highly stimulating conference held in Paris in December 2006, during which the majority of the twenty-four studies assembled therein, most of them still in very preliminary draft form, were discussed under the benevolent gaze of the portrait bust of the great Fustel de Coulanges.12 At the time, the task of pulling them together into a book appeared sisyphean if not hopeless, and skepticism seemed in order as to whether the planned compilation would be ready for publication while its contents were still up to date. But John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski have achieved the impossible: the work under review—the first part of what Lagerwey has informally dubbed the “Paris History of Chinese Religion”—has come out after less than three years; and it is a masterpiece. Despite the rapid turnover, it shows no signs of haste. The texts are expertly edited, with just enough unity imposed on the rendition of Chinese terms while the substance of the authors’ often conflicting interpretations is left untouched; the translations of those chapters originally written in French,13 Chinese, and Japanese are competently done and often elegant; typos and mistaken characters are few and inconsequential; and an ample index (v. 2, pp. 1213-1256) facilitates accessing the heterogeneous contents making it possible to use the work as the handbook it is intended to be. The level of scholarship is almost uniformly excellent, as indeed one would expect from the roster of authors included—a virtual Who’s who of leading Sinologists in Europe, North America, Taiwan, and Japan (none, alas, from mainland China). In spite of the diversity of the approaches taken by the authors, the work, at least for the most part, carries the scholarly authority the reader expects from a handbook, justifying its formidable price. In short, Early Chinese Religion: Part One stands as a triumphal achievement. Even the briefest digest of the contents would exceed the space allotted to this review; providing such a digest would also be superfluous as the editors in their long introduction (v. 12 I participated in this conference as a discussant. For full disclosure, I should reveal that I was invited to contribute to the handbook, but to my great and enduring regret felt unable to do so due to overcommitment. 13 The French versions of the chapters by Thote, Kalinowski, Lévi, Bujard, and Pirazzolit ’Serstevens are published, together with three other chapters concerning the period covered in Early Chinese Religion: Part One, as well as a group of papers concerning the period between Han and Tang, in John Lagerwey (ed.), Religion et société en Chine ancienne et médiévale (Patrimoines— orientalisme—Chine; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, Institut Ricci, 2009). The latter work is reviewed in the present issue of the Journal of Chinese Religions by Barbara Hendrischke. (See pp. 123-127) Book Reviews 111 1, pp. 1-37) lucidly summarize each of the chapters and point out the connections among them, thus placing them in a wider context of synthesis. Meritorious above all for bringing out the breaks and transitions in the long and tortuous development of religious phenomena in early China, as well as the methodological problems involved in their study, this introduction is an extremely impressive summation of the state of the field that any student of Chinese civilization should read. Rather than repeating what is already stated in it, I will limit myself here to a more general characterization of the work—both of what it delivers and of what, for perfectly justifiable reasons, it does not. Anyone expecting a systematic presentation of deities, beliefs, rituals, and associated priestly personnel in early China will be frustrated by this work. Coherence is not a goal, and the nature of the subject matter, inasmuch as it is even knowable today, would not...