Miracle Tales as Scripture Reception: A Case Study Involving the Lotus Sutra in China, 370–750 CE

Abstract

Reception theory argues that meaning resides not in texts but in readers’ encounters with them. What would it mean to take this notion seriously in limning the authority and power Buddhist sutras were regarded as possessing in pre-Song China? In addition to the usual suspects (commentaries and doctrinal discourses), we have copious quantities of texts belonging to a pair of genres that have not been sufficiently examined as evidence for how sutras were received there: so-called miracle tales and biographies. Using narratives concerning the Lotus Sutra as examples, this article is a preliminary inquiry into the modes of sutra reception these works provide evidence of and themselves constituted. Ultimately, many people of most social strata saw sutras not just as doctrine delivery devices but as living entities, powerful platforms for activating divine responses to earnest devotional action. In construing the sutras in this way, Chinese people were not misreading the sutras: instead, they were taking seriously the promises and self-statements made in them.