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Yesterday I finished reading Stephen Teiser's book The Scripture of the Ten Kings. I had read Teiser's previous book on the formation of the Ghost Festival in medieval China and enjoyed it a great deal as well as having read his essay on the formation of Purgatory (or hell) based on this scripture so I was greatly looking forward to reading this book.
The book outlined many of the problems and benefits found in using documents from the Dun Huang caves. Several of the scriptures he used came from the British Library, and my professor has said that we should be able to visit them this year and see them for ourselves! Unfortunate most of the really good pictures, which were reproduced in the book, are to be found in the French collection.
The chapter on the formation of the ten kings I actually found to be less informative than his previous article, perhaps because I had read the article previously I knew much of the material already. In that he outlined how the belief in purgatory took form. In this he paid attention to the ten kings themselves and traced their origins and development. He looked beyond the texts to surviving images of the ten kings to further illustrate his points. Teiser also made several good points about the nature of books in early Medieval China and how they were used. It was interesting to note that while the merit for having a book copied or printed was quite high it was not necessary for the book to be read. Books were also meant to be read aloud by monks at gatherings of lay worshipers as well as with families of deceased members. This gives quite an interesting and alternate route for questioning when looking at texts and trying to determine who their intended audience was.
One of the most interesting parts was the list of dedications given for the sutras. Who the merit in producing the sutras was for and what their circumstances were. There was a high ranking official who had several made on the death of his wife, there was an old man who had them made for himself, as well as a nun who was having tremendous difficulties in her old age and wanting relief. The nun was interesting as she appeared on the registers in a different monastery when she was young and then had the scripture written when she was old so her life could be traced a little with this infomation. It was interesting to note how the nun had to have someone write the sutra for her whereas the old man seemed very proud of the fact that he was writing with his own hand, and in his own blood. (which to be fair had been mixed with ink). But I think my favourite dedication was to "the hard working ox" because of his untiring work so that he would never again be reborn as an animal. I have often wondered if because Buddhism sees all living creatures as equal if people ever did donate merit to their animals. I thought it was just really sweet that the guy was rewarding the Ox who had worked beside him for so many years.
The book ended with a translation of the sutra, heavily annotated. I found it very helpful to read at the end. I could definitely see the vast amount of repetition mentioned in Graham's thesis. Unfortunately the sutra itself was not nearly as interesting as the Pien-wen texts. But it did have nice descriptions of the kings of hell and how to avoid them!
The book outlined many of the problems and benefits found in using documents from the Dun Huang caves. Several of the scriptures he used came from the British Library, and my professor has said that we should be able to visit them this year and see them for ourselves! Unfortunate most of the really good pictures, which were reproduced in the book, are to be found in the French collection.
The chapter on the formation of the ten kings I actually found to be less informative than his previous article, perhaps because I had read the article previously I knew much of the material already. In that he outlined how the belief in purgatory took form. In this he paid attention to the ten kings themselves and traced their origins and development. He looked beyond the texts to surviving images of the ten kings to further illustrate his points. Teiser also made several good points about the nature of books in early Medieval China and how they were used. It was interesting to note that while the merit for having a book copied or printed was quite high it was not necessary for the book to be read. Books were also meant to be read aloud by monks at gatherings of lay worshipers as well as with families of deceased members. This gives quite an interesting and alternate route for questioning when looking at texts and trying to determine who their intended audience was.
One of the most interesting parts was the list of dedications given for the sutras. Who the merit in producing the sutras was for and what their circumstances were. There was a high ranking official who had several made on the death of his wife, there was an old man who had them made for himself, as well as a nun who was having tremendous difficulties in her old age and wanting relief. The nun was interesting as she appeared on the registers in a different monastery when she was young and then had the scripture written when she was old so her life could be traced a little with this infomation. It was interesting to note how the nun had to have someone write the sutra for her whereas the old man seemed very proud of the fact that he was writing with his own hand, and in his own blood. (which to be fair had been mixed with ink). But I think my favourite dedication was to "the hard working ox" because of his untiring work so that he would never again be reborn as an animal. I have often wondered if because Buddhism sees all living creatures as equal if people ever did donate merit to their animals. I thought it was just really sweet that the guy was rewarding the Ox who had worked beside him for so many years.
The book ended with a translation of the sutra, heavily annotated. I found it very helpful to read at the end. I could definitely see the vast amount of repetition mentioned in Graham's thesis. Unfortunately the sutra itself was not nearly as interesting as the Pien-wen texts. But it did have nice descriptions of the kings of hell and how to avoid them!
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