Buddhist Manuscript Cultures in Premodern Japan

Towards a Premodern Manuscript Application Profile

Individuals who wish to develop digital scholarly works and libraries that wish to provide access to their precious and fragile holdings have an interest in digitizing premodern manuscripts. These handmade objects are often beautiful and each one is unique. The features of zooming and light alteration available through digital photography and manipulation are assets to medieval scholars, becaus...

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and Inequality in Premodern Societies Production Systems, Inheritance, and Inequality in Premodern Societies

Premodern human societies differ greatly in socioeconomic inequality. Despite much useful theorizing on the causes of these differences, individual-level quantitative data on wealth inequality is lacking. The papers in this special section provide the first comparable estimates of intergenerational wealth transmission and inequality in premodern societies, with data on more than 40 measures of ...

On Not Understanding Extraordinary Language in the Buddhist Tantra of Japan

The question motivating this essay is how tantric Buddhist practitioners in Japan understood language such as to believe that mantra, dhāran. ı̄, and related forms are efficacious. “Extraordinary language” is introduced as a cover term for these several similar language uses found in tantric Buddhist practices in Japan. The essay proceeds to a critical examination of Anglo-American philosophy of...

Buddhist Hagiography in Early Japan: Images of Compassion in the Gyōki Tradition

Jøkei and Hønen: Debating Buddhist Liberation in Medieval Japan—Then and Now