Editor's Introduction

Abstract

This, as well as a number of subsequent issues of Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, will present selected translations from the Sourcebook on Buddhism in Mainland China, 1949-1967. The Sourcebook, published in 1968 by the Union Research Institute in cooperation with the Hong Kong Buddhist Association and the Hong Kong Buddhist Sangha Association, provides the most comprehensive single collection of documents on religion in Communist China available anywhere. Five hundred and forty-one pages of text are devoted to developments in Buddhist circles dating from the Land Reform of 1950 to the cataclysmic events of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966. The range of topics included in this volume is considerable. It begins with a description of Chinese Communist policies toward religious practitioners in general, and Buddhists in particular; examines the formal organizational structure and organizational history of Buddhist associations, their branch organizations and related units; describes the composition and structure of both central and local laity and clerical elites; and portrays the political and religious activities of lay and clerical leaders both at home and abroad. In the chapters that follow, considerable attention is given to the organization of academic research related to Buddhism, Buddhist publications, and ideological reform. The political, religious, and socioeconomic conditions of Buddhist believers are examined in detail. A special chapter takes up Chinese Communist policy towards Tibetan Lamaists, and the book ends with a detailed treatment of developments in Buddhist circles just prior to and during the initial stages of the Cultural Revolution.