부산대학교 도서관

What happens to Buddhist monks and nuns who commit crimes? Buddhism in Court is the first book to uncover a long-overlooked Buddhist campaign for clerical legal privileges that aimed to exempt monks and nuns from being tried and punished in the courtroom. It unveils this campaign’s origins in Indian Buddhism and shows how Chinese Buddhists’ engagement with it reshaped Buddhism’s place in the jurisdictional landscape of China from the fourth century to the present. In Asia, the jurisdictional boundary between Buddhism and the state was never fixed. Buddhism in Court is the first study to examine Chinese Buddhists’ unique contribution in negotiating that boundary: the creation in the fourth century of “hybrid courts” and “hybrid laws” that would deal exclusively with religious legal matters. Drawing on various premodern and contemporary primary sources in Chinese, Buddhism in Court traces the legacy of the campaign for clerical legal privileges from its origins in India to its transformation in China and its continuing impact in the Chinese courtroom to the present day. Diverting from the dynasty-centered approach to studying religion, law, and history in China, Buddhism in Court expands our understanding of this legacy of early Chinese Buddhism and challenges the notion that the passage between imperial and postimperial China was one of disruption.