Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500–1700 by Jimmy Yu (review)

Abstract

messages of the text, the time the text allows us to escape from mundane realities into the fictional world of philosophy and humor. And of course the Monkey King’s quest, from its early pages through chapter 100, is to escape time, to evade mortality. We can only laugh as we confront the novel’s deep truths. Journey to the West thus functions simultaneously as diversion for the reader and as ongoing sermon on mental self-discipline and the nature of human experience. Part IV of Yu’s Introduction addresses the allegorical and symbolic aspects of characters and situations in the novel. Here the reader can appreciate Professor Yu’s encyclopedic command of relevant primary and secondary writings; his essay serves effectively as a comprehensive survey of Xiyou ji studies. Highly learned in both religious lore and literary traditions, Yu’s erudition is obvious throughout the Introduction and the 125 pages of notes to the first volume. (The other three volumes have between 20 and 24 pages of notes each.) Likewise, the breadth of his reading is visible in his insightful references to Hebrew, Hindu, and early Buddhist intellectual traditions for comparisons. Senior scholars of Chinese religions will appreciate his lucid and carefully considered explanations, as will students and comparativists. Reading the revised translation is a delight. Yu’s style of language here is concise, crisp, and immediately comprehensible. For example, in his earlier version Professor Yu translated the title of chapter 1, 靈根育孕源流出 心性修持大道生, as ‘‘The divine root being conceived, the origin emerges; /The moral nature once cultivated, the Great Tao is born.’’ His revision reads, ‘‘The divine root conceives, its source revealed; /Mind and nature nurtured, the Great Dao is born.’’ Even when clarity is not enhanced, concision is much more common in the revised version. The second half of the title for chapter 25, 孫行者大鬧五莊觀, in the first edition reads, ‘‘Pilgrim Sun causes great disturbance at the Temple of Five Villages’’; the revised edition reads, simply, ‘‘Pilgrim Sun greatly disturbs Five Villages Abbey.’’ What conveyed information before now delights as well; throughout the text, Yu’s revised version exemplifies what translation can be in the hands of a true master of the craft. In sum, this new translation provides a signal service, especially to students. It reveals all the joys of a great story well told in a format that provokes rereading to relish its language as well as its images and plot, while providing the information needed for the specialist to appreciate its compiler’s deep knowledge of Chan 禪 Buddhism and Quanzhen 全真 Daoism. The result is a truly enjoyable read that provokes contemplation at every turn. Its intellectual depth—and its stylistic sophistication—demand consideration of Journey to the West as one of the world’s greatest works of religious literature. ROBERT E. HEGEL Washington University, St. Louis JIMMY YU, Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500–1700. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xiv, 272 pp. US$29.95, £18.99 (pb). ISBN 978-0-19-984490-6 Jimmy Yu begins this book with two striking anecdotes: a filial son saves his father by sending the emperor a message written in blood, and a Buddhist cleric sets himself on fire, promising his public that their prayers to him will henceforth be 136 BOOK REVIEWS rewarded by rain. Neither of these deeds fits neatly into the conventional understanding of Confucian or Buddhist tradition, and that is Yu’s point: his project is to show how bodily mortification in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries worked as a language of its own, cutting across religions and traditions to empower performers in an era of rapid social change. Drawing on ‘‘a combination of ritual studies and discourse analysis of different genres of texts, including miracle tales, official history, popular novels, literary essays, local gazetteers, and exemplary narrative’’ (p. 17), Yu treats four kinds of ‘‘self-inflicted violence’’: blood writing, ‘‘filial slicing’’ (feeding and curing an ailing parent with one’s own flesh), the suicide or de-eroticizing self-mutilation of young women resisting rape or remarriage, and the exposure or immolation of one’s body to call down rain. Yu explores the religious roots of all four practices, but argues...