Multiple Meanings of Buddhist Self-Immolation in China — A Historical Perspective

offer this contribution to the study of the recent wave of selfimmolations in Tibet not because I believe that the historical perspective on Buddhist self-immolation is the only useful one, but in the hope that the issues raised below may still be helpful to interpret current events. As a historian of medieval Chinese religions, my own immediate frame of reference is to things that happened well over a thousand years ago. Here, I am only able to condense a few essential points from my recent publications on selfimmolation and related issues in Chinese Buddhism.1 I will begin with an account of what is probably the earliest recorded case of self-immolation by a Buddhist monk in China. This happened in the year 396: