Rob Campany | Vanderbilt University (original) (raw)
Papers by Rob Campany
Amsterdam University Press eBooks, Dec 4, 2023
Using the Upper Scripture of Purple Texts Inscribed by the Spirits (Huangtian shangqing jingque d... more Using the Upper Scripture of Purple Texts Inscribed by the Spirits (Huangtian shangqing jingque dijun lingshu ziwen 皇天上清金闕帝君靈書紫文上經) as an example, Campany presents a rhetorical analysis of Shangqing Daoist scriptures. This analysis suggests a new way to see these texts as vehicles or scripts for the performance of an alternative identity as a divinely rejuvenated being or cosmic recluse in the here and now, rather than as promises for future salvation. The chapter fleshes out what that means and what difference it might make in our reading and understanding of these scriptures.
SUNY Press eBooks, Jul 1, 2010
History of Chinese religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and popular religion); methods and ... more History of Chinese religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and popular religion); methods and history of the cross-cultural study of religion; religion, culture, literature, and thought in China 300 BCE-800 CE SECONDARY East Asian religions; Asian religions and philosophy; classical Chinese language
Mu-chou Poo, H.A. Drake, and Lisa Raphals, eds., Old Society, New Belief: Religious Transformation of China and Rome, ca. 1st-6th centuries, Oxford University Press, 2017
A study of some of the main ways in which "Buddhism's" initial coming to "China" was represented ... more A study of some of the main ways in which "Buddhism's" initial coming to "China" was represented in early medieval Chinese texts.
Early Medieval China, Sep 13, 2023
Historians of literature are well acquainted with early medieval stories of shapeshifting animals... more Historians of literature are well acquainted with early medieval stories of shapeshifting animals and other beings seducing unsuspecting men and women. This paper re-reads such narratives from the shapeshifters’ point of view. This requires escaping the customary disciplinary boundaries and viewing these creatures’ depictions against the backdrop of concurrently circulating “arts of the bedchamber” (fangzhong zhi shu 房中之術), one of several classes of techniques for “nurturing life” (yangsheng 養生). I argue that the shapeshifters’ actions make sense when understood within the framework of this mode of self-cultivation. This in turn implies a view of nonhumans as selves striving to realize aims—among them health, longevity, the acquisition of enhanced capabilities, and, ultimately, metamorphosis into higher species on the ladder of beings. The tales emerged, then, in a culture to some extent shaped by a worldview of the sort often termed “animistic,” one that saw nonhuman beings as co-participants with humans in self-transformational projects grounded in a common cosmology.
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 2023
Where did the many anecdotes filling the pages of Chinese Buddhist "miracle tales" come from? Wha... more Where did the many anecdotes filling the pages of Chinese Buddhist "miracle tales" come from? What sort of literature do these narratives constitute? And what difference do the answers to these questions make? This paper adduces evidence that these narratives were compiled as reports of events alleged to have actually occurred and that they reached their eventual compilers through networks of written and oral exchange among people who shared an interest in sponsoring, promulgating, and preserving them. To see them as didactic fictions fabricated by individual authors to help inculcate Buddhist values is to fundamentally misunderstand these texts. In fact, the very notion of author proves misleading. Understanding the genre correctly as a textual concretization of social memory has important implications for grasping the ways in which these texts are important and useful for historians both of Buddhism and of narrative literature in China.
Early Medieval China, 2023
Historians of literature are well acquainted with early medieval stories of shapeshifting animals... more Historians of literature are well acquainted with early medieval stories of shapeshifting
animals and other beings seducing unsuspecting men and women. This
paper re-reads such narratives from the shapeshifters’ point of view. This requires
escaping the customary disciplinary boundaries and viewing these creatures’ depictions
against the backdrop of concurrently circulating “arts of the bedchamber”
(fangzhong zhi shu 房中之術), one of several classes of techniques for “nurturing
life” (yangsheng 養生). I argue that the shapeshifters’ actions make sense when
understood within the framework of this mode of self-cultivation. This in turn
implies a view of nonhumans as selves striving to realize aims—among them
health, longevity, the acquisition of enhanced capabilities, and, ultimately, metamorphosis
into higher species on the ladder of beings. The tales emerged, then, in
a culture to some extent shaped by a worldview of the sort often termed “animistic,”
one that saw nonhuman beings as co-participants with humans in self-transformational
projects grounded in a common cosmology.
History of Religions, 2012
The traditional vague terminology of “Early Christianity,” “Jewish,” “Gentile,” “Pagan,” “Greco-O... more The traditional vague terminology of “Early Christianity,” “Jewish,” “Gentile,” “Pagan,” “Greco-Oriental,” etc. will not suffice. Each of these generic terms denote[s] complex plural phenomena. For purposes of comparison, they must be disaggregated and each component compared with respect to some larger topic of scholarly interest. That is to say, with respect to this or that feature, modes of Christianity may differ more significantly between themselves than between some mode of one or another Late Antique religion. The presupposition of “holism” is not “phenomenological,” it is a major, conservative, theoretical presupposition which has done much mischief in the study of religious materials, nowhere more so than in the question of Christian “origins.” (Jonathan Z. Smith)
Early Medieval China, 2018
Reception theory argues that meaning resides not in texts but in readers' encounters with them. W... more 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. KEYWORDS: scripture reception, medieval Chinese Buddhism, the Lotus Sutra in China, Buddhist miracle tales, reception studies 1 Of course, one way in which people may regard a text is to see it as having sacred power intrinsically.
École pratique des hautes études. Section des sciences religieuses
Chaire : Histoire du taoïsme et des religions chinoises
Numen, 2018
Rightly noting that premodern non-Western cultures lacked a version of the modern Western categor... more Rightly noting that premodern non-Western cultures lacked a version of the modern Western category of “the religious,” some scholars have proposed simply abandoning it. Meanwhile, other scholars continue to wield it uncritically. In this article I propose a middle way, using premodern China as an example. Although China had no category exactly matching “the religious” in meaning and scope, it did, I argue, have an analogous category, one that functioned somewhat similarly in a partially analogous discourse that, like the Western category, formed part of an imperial project. More generally, I suggest that we do well to inquire into the extent to which the cultures we study possessed analogues to the categories and concepts in terms of which we characterize them, rather than assume either that they did or that they did not.
Journal of Chinese Religions
Journal of Religion, 1986
Studies in Chinese Religions, 2015
Most of what we know of religion in early medieval China concerns religious virtuosi, the spiritu... more Most of what we know of religion in early medieval China concerns religious virtuosi, the spiritual and intellectual elite. But often, in texts focused on them, we glimpse the activities of some of the surrounding laypersons whose responses to virtuosi are in many cases the reason we have the texts in the first place. We possess normative writings of various kinds prescribing how laypeople should or should not practice religion. Evidence of how they actually did practice religion is harder to find. This modest article attempts to fill a very small part of this gap. I argue that, from at least the late third century, some households in China were furnished with a special room reserved for Buddhist observances, in effect a domestic shrine. I will show what these rooms were used for and something of the significance they were thought to have.
Theology and Medicine, 1994
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), 1991
With the publication of this article, a mere footnote to his masterpiece, I would like to express... more With the publication of this article, a mere footnote to his masterpiece, I would like to express my thanks to Professor Yu for his encouragement and for his example. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers of an earlier draft of this article, as well as to my colleague, Professor Eugene Eoyang, for their helpful suggestions. 2 Questions of the authorship and date of particular zhiguai tales and texts are extremely difficult and will not be addressed here. Authoritative studies of authorship, textual history, and dating include Fu
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), 1985
... 16-17). In this case, too, the demon is so powerful as to require the assistance of Kuan-yin ... more ... 16-17). In this case, too, the demon is so powerful as to require the assistance of Kuan-yin as master. Here, too, the "bogus immortal's" (yao-hsien J{jIi) life is spared so that he may be installed as a guardian god (shou-shan ta-shenj: ll|} 4) at Potalaka Mountain. ...
The Journal of Religion, 1986
Amsterdam University Press eBooks, Dec 4, 2023
Using the Upper Scripture of Purple Texts Inscribed by the Spirits (Huangtian shangqing jingque d... more Using the Upper Scripture of Purple Texts Inscribed by the Spirits (Huangtian shangqing jingque dijun lingshu ziwen 皇天上清金闕帝君靈書紫文上經) as an example, Campany presents a rhetorical analysis of Shangqing Daoist scriptures. This analysis suggests a new way to see these texts as vehicles or scripts for the performance of an alternative identity as a divinely rejuvenated being or cosmic recluse in the here and now, rather than as promises for future salvation. The chapter fleshes out what that means and what difference it might make in our reading and understanding of these scriptures.
SUNY Press eBooks, Jul 1, 2010
History of Chinese religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and popular religion); methods and ... more History of Chinese religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and popular religion); methods and history of the cross-cultural study of religion; religion, culture, literature, and thought in China 300 BCE-800 CE SECONDARY East Asian religions; Asian religions and philosophy; classical Chinese language
Mu-chou Poo, H.A. Drake, and Lisa Raphals, eds., Old Society, New Belief: Religious Transformation of China and Rome, ca. 1st-6th centuries, Oxford University Press, 2017
A study of some of the main ways in which "Buddhism's" initial coming to "China" was represented ... more A study of some of the main ways in which "Buddhism's" initial coming to "China" was represented in early medieval Chinese texts.
Early Medieval China, Sep 13, 2023
Historians of literature are well acquainted with early medieval stories of shapeshifting animals... more Historians of literature are well acquainted with early medieval stories of shapeshifting animals and other beings seducing unsuspecting men and women. This paper re-reads such narratives from the shapeshifters’ point of view. This requires escaping the customary disciplinary boundaries and viewing these creatures’ depictions against the backdrop of concurrently circulating “arts of the bedchamber” (fangzhong zhi shu 房中之術), one of several classes of techniques for “nurturing life” (yangsheng 養生). I argue that the shapeshifters’ actions make sense when understood within the framework of this mode of self-cultivation. This in turn implies a view of nonhumans as selves striving to realize aims—among them health, longevity, the acquisition of enhanced capabilities, and, ultimately, metamorphosis into higher species on the ladder of beings. The tales emerged, then, in a culture to some extent shaped by a worldview of the sort often termed “animistic,” one that saw nonhuman beings as co-participants with humans in self-transformational projects grounded in a common cosmology.
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 2023
Where did the many anecdotes filling the pages of Chinese Buddhist "miracle tales" come from? Wha... more Where did the many anecdotes filling the pages of Chinese Buddhist "miracle tales" come from? What sort of literature do these narratives constitute? And what difference do the answers to these questions make? This paper adduces evidence that these narratives were compiled as reports of events alleged to have actually occurred and that they reached their eventual compilers through networks of written and oral exchange among people who shared an interest in sponsoring, promulgating, and preserving them. To see them as didactic fictions fabricated by individual authors to help inculcate Buddhist values is to fundamentally misunderstand these texts. In fact, the very notion of author proves misleading. Understanding the genre correctly as a textual concretization of social memory has important implications for grasping the ways in which these texts are important and useful for historians both of Buddhism and of narrative literature in China.
Early Medieval China, 2023
Historians of literature are well acquainted with early medieval stories of shapeshifting animals... more Historians of literature are well acquainted with early medieval stories of shapeshifting
animals and other beings seducing unsuspecting men and women. This
paper re-reads such narratives from the shapeshifters’ point of view. This requires
escaping the customary disciplinary boundaries and viewing these creatures’ depictions
against the backdrop of concurrently circulating “arts of the bedchamber”
(fangzhong zhi shu 房中之術), one of several classes of techniques for “nurturing
life” (yangsheng 養生). I argue that the shapeshifters’ actions make sense when
understood within the framework of this mode of self-cultivation. This in turn
implies a view of nonhumans as selves striving to realize aims—among them
health, longevity, the acquisition of enhanced capabilities, and, ultimately, metamorphosis
into higher species on the ladder of beings. The tales emerged, then, in
a culture to some extent shaped by a worldview of the sort often termed “animistic,”
one that saw nonhuman beings as co-participants with humans in self-transformational
projects grounded in a common cosmology.
History of Religions, 2012
The traditional vague terminology of “Early Christianity,” “Jewish,” “Gentile,” “Pagan,” “Greco-O... more The traditional vague terminology of “Early Christianity,” “Jewish,” “Gentile,” “Pagan,” “Greco-Oriental,” etc. will not suffice. Each of these generic terms denote[s] complex plural phenomena. For purposes of comparison, they must be disaggregated and each component compared with respect to some larger topic of scholarly interest. That is to say, with respect to this or that feature, modes of Christianity may differ more significantly between themselves than between some mode of one or another Late Antique religion. The presupposition of “holism” is not “phenomenological,” it is a major, conservative, theoretical presupposition which has done much mischief in the study of religious materials, nowhere more so than in the question of Christian “origins.” (Jonathan Z. Smith)
Early Medieval China, 2018
Reception theory argues that meaning resides not in texts but in readers' encounters with them. W... more 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. KEYWORDS: scripture reception, medieval Chinese Buddhism, the Lotus Sutra in China, Buddhist miracle tales, reception studies 1 Of course, one way in which people may regard a text is to see it as having sacred power intrinsically.
École pratique des hautes études. Section des sciences religieuses
Chaire : Histoire du taoïsme et des religions chinoises
Numen, 2018
Rightly noting that premodern non-Western cultures lacked a version of the modern Western categor... more Rightly noting that premodern non-Western cultures lacked a version of the modern Western category of “the religious,” some scholars have proposed simply abandoning it. Meanwhile, other scholars continue to wield it uncritically. In this article I propose a middle way, using premodern China as an example. Although China had no category exactly matching “the religious” in meaning and scope, it did, I argue, have an analogous category, one that functioned somewhat similarly in a partially analogous discourse that, like the Western category, formed part of an imperial project. More generally, I suggest that we do well to inquire into the extent to which the cultures we study possessed analogues to the categories and concepts in terms of which we characterize them, rather than assume either that they did or that they did not.
Journal of Chinese Religions
Journal of Religion, 1986
Studies in Chinese Religions, 2015
Most of what we know of religion in early medieval China concerns religious virtuosi, the spiritu... more Most of what we know of religion in early medieval China concerns religious virtuosi, the spiritual and intellectual elite. But often, in texts focused on them, we glimpse the activities of some of the surrounding laypersons whose responses to virtuosi are in many cases the reason we have the texts in the first place. We possess normative writings of various kinds prescribing how laypeople should or should not practice religion. Evidence of how they actually did practice religion is harder to find. This modest article attempts to fill a very small part of this gap. I argue that, from at least the late third century, some households in China were furnished with a special room reserved for Buddhist observances, in effect a domestic shrine. I will show what these rooms were used for and something of the significance they were thought to have.
Theology and Medicine, 1994
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), 1991
With the publication of this article, a mere footnote to his masterpiece, I would like to express... more With the publication of this article, a mere footnote to his masterpiece, I would like to express my thanks to Professor Yu for his encouragement and for his example. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers of an earlier draft of this article, as well as to my colleague, Professor Eugene Eoyang, for their helpful suggestions. 2 Questions of the authorship and date of particular zhiguai tales and texts are extremely difficult and will not be addressed here. Authoritative studies of authorship, textual history, and dating include Fu
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), 1985
... 16-17). In this case, too, the demon is so powerful as to require the assistance of Kuan-yin ... more ... 16-17). In this case, too, the demon is so powerful as to require the assistance of Kuan-yin as master. Here, too, the "bogus immortal's" (yao-hsien J{jIi) life is spared so that he may be installed as a guardian god (shou-shan ta-shenj: ll|} 4) at Potalaka Mountain. ...
The Journal of Religion, 1986
History of Chinese religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and popular religion); methods and ... more History of Chinese religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and popular religion); methods and history of the cross-cultural study of religion; religion, culture, literature, and thought in China 300 BCE-800 CE SECONDARY East Asian religions; Asian religions and philosophy; classical Chinese language
History of Chinese religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and popular religion); methods and ... more History of Chinese religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and popular religion); methods and history of the cross-cultural study of religion; religion, culture, literature, and thought in China 300 BCE-800 CE SECONDARY East Asian religions; Asian religions and philosophy; classical Chinese language ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS