Buddhist Relics and Reliquaries

General

Abé, Ryuichi. The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Benard, Elisabeth. "The Living among the Dead: A Comparison of Buddhist and Christian Relics." Tibet Journal 13.3 (1998): 33-48.

Bentor, Yael. "On the Indian Origins of the Tibetan Practice of Depositing Relics and Dhāraṇīs in Stūpas and Images." Journal of the American Oriental Society 115.2 (1995): 248-61.

Boucher, Daniel. "The Pratityasamutpadagatha and Its Role in the Medieval Cult of the Relics." The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 14.1 (1991): 1-27. 

Brinker, Helmut. "Facing the Unseen: On the Interior Adornment of Eizon's Iconic Body." Archives of Asian Art 50 (1997-98): 42-61.

Brinker, Helmut. "From Image to Icon: Unseen Caches for Animated the Sacred." In Secrets of the Sacred: Empowering Buddhist Images in Clear, in Code, and in Cache, by Helmut Brinker, 3-50 and 161-73. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.

 Brinker, Helmut. Secrets of the Sacred: Empowering Buddhist Images in Clear, in Code, and in Cache. Lawrence, Seattle, and Washington: Spencer Museum of Art and University of Washington Press, 2011: 3-50.

Brown, Peter. "The Holy and the Grave." In Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, by Peter Brown, 1-22 and 132-39. University of Chicago Press, 1982.

 Chen, Huaiyu. "Relics and Monasteries in Buddhist Monasticism." In Revival of Buddhist Monasticism in Medieval China, by Huaiyu Chen, 57-92. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2007.

Chen, Jinhua. "Sarira and Scepter: Empress Wu's Political Use of Buddhist Relics." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 25.1/2 (2002): 33-150.

Cho, Ensu. "Manifestation of the Buddha's Land in the Here and Now: Relic Installation and Territorial Transformation in Medieval Korea." In Images, Relics, and Legends: The Formation and Transformation of Buddhist Sacred Sites, edited by James Benn, Jinhua Chen, and James Robson. Oakville: Mosaic Press, 2012.

Choi, Eung-chon. "Early Korean and Japanese Reliquaries in Relation to Pagoda Architecture." In Transmitting the Forms of Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korean and Japan, edited by Hiromitsu Washizuka. New York: Japan Society, 2003.

Ch'ŏn, Hye-Bong. "Dhāraṇī-Sutra of the Early Koryŏ." Korea Journal 12 (1972): 4-12.

Colwell, Chip. "The Long Ethical Arc of Displaying Human Remains." Atlas Obscura, November 16, 2017:  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/displaying-native-american-remains.

Cross, Julia Heather. "The Hokkeji Nuns, Relic Worship, and Theft in Medieval Japan." Japanese Religions 43.1/2 (2019): 39-68.

Curley, Melissa Anne-Marie. "Dead Matter and Living Memory: Three Ways of Looking at the Higashi Honganji Hair Ropes." Japanese Religions 43.1/2 (2019): 97-120.

Eckel, Malcolm David. "The Synchronic Dimension of the Buddha's Absence." In To See the Fletcher, Alexander, Daniel Antoine, and JD Hill, eds. Regarding the Dead: Human Remains in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 2014.

Fowler, Sherry D. "In Search of the Dragon: Mt. Murō's Sacred Topography." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 24.1/2 (1997): 145-161. 

Buddha: A Philosopher's Quest for the Meaning of Emptiness, by Malcolm David Eckel, 95-113 and 213-16. San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1992.

Faure, Bernard. The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Faure, Bernard. "Buddhism's Black Holes: From Ontology to Hauntology." International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture 27.2 (2017): 89-121.

Faure, Bernard. "The Buddhist Icon and the Modern Gaze." Critical Inquiry 24.3 (1998): 768-813.

Faure, Bernard. "The Ritual Body." In Vision of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism, by Bernard Faure, 198-223. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Fister, Patricia. "Creating Devotional Art with Body Fragments." Journal of Japanese Religious Studies 27.3/4 (2000): 213-38.

Fister, Patricia. "Visual Culture in Japan's Imperial Rinzai Zen Convents: The Making of Objects as Expressions of Religious Devotion." In Zen and Material Culture, edited by Pamela D. Winfield and Steven Heine, 164-196. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Foulk, T. Griffith and Robert H. Sharf. "On the Ritual Use of Ch'an Portraiture in Medieval China” Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 7 (1993-1994): 149-219.

Fowler, Sherry. "Containers of Sacred Text and Image at Twelfth-Century Chōanji in Kyushu." Artibus Asiae 74, no. 1 (2014): 43-73.

Geary, Patrick J. Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Goepper, Roger. Aizen-Myōō: The Esoteric King of Lust: An Iconological Study. Zurich: Artibus Asiae and Museum Rietberg, 1993.

Gómez, Luis O. "The Whole Universe as a Sūtra." In Buddhism in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez, 107-112. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Graham, William. Beyond Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Groner, Paul. "Icons and Relics in Eison's Religious Activities." In Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, edited by Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf, 114-150 and 230-39. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Huang, Chi-chiang. "Consecrating the Buddha: Legend, Lore, and History of the Imperial Relic-Veneration Ritual in the Tang Dynasty." Chung-hwa Journal of Buddhist Studies 11 (1998): 483-533.

Huntington, Susan L. "Aniconism and the Multivalence of Emblems: Another Look." Ars Orientalis 22 (1992): 111-56.

­­­ Huntington, Susan L. "Early Buddhist Art and the Theory of Aniconism." Art Journal 49 (1990): 401-408.

Kinnard, Jacob N. "The Field of the Buddha's Presence." In Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia, edited by David Germano and Kevin Trainor, 117-43. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004.

Harvey, Peter. "The Symbolism of the Early Stūpa." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 7.2 (1984): 67-93.

Hori, Ichiro. "Self-Mummified Buddhas in Japan: An Aspect of the Shugen-Dō ("Mountain Asceticism") Sect." History of Religions 1.2 (1962): 222-42.

Kieschnick, John. "Blood Writing in Chinese Buddhism." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 23.2 (2000): 177-94.

Li, Yuhang. “Embroidering Guanyin: Constructions of the Divine through Hair." East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 36 (2012): 131-166.

Martin, Dan. "Pearls from Bones: Relics, Chortens, Tertons and the Signs of Saintly Death in Tibet." Numen 41.3 (1994): 273-324.

McCallum, Donald F. "The Saidaiji Lineage of the Seiryōji Shaka Tradition." Archives of Asian Art 49 (1996): 51-67.

Moerman, D. Max. "The Archeology of Anxiety: An Underground History of Heian Religion." In Heian Japan: Centers and Peripheries, edited by Mikael Adolphson, Edwards Kamens, and Stacie Matsumoto, 245-71. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i, 2007.

Morse, Samuel C. "Animating the Image: Buddhist Portrait Sculpture of the Kamakura Period." Orientations 35.1 (2004): 22-30.

Nedachi, Kensuke. "Portrait Sculpture and Relic Veneration in Japan." In The Interrelationship of Relics and Images in Christian and Buddhist Culture, edited by Akira Akiyama. Tokyo: The University of Tokyo, 2009.

O'Neal, Halle. "Performing the Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas: Relics, Reliquaries, and a Realm of Text." The Art Bulletin 97.3 (2015): 279-300.

O'Neal, Halle. "Inscribing Grief and Salvation: Embodiment and Medieval Reuse and Recycling in Buddhist Palimpsests." Artibus Asiae 79.1 (2019): 5-28.

O'Neal, Halle. "Marking Death: Stamped Buddhas and Reused Letters in 13th-Century Japan." Ars Orientalis 52 (2022): 10-39.

O'Neal, Halle. "Materiality." In Bloomsbury Handbook of Japanese Religions, ed. Erica Baffelli, Andrea Castiglione, and Fabio Rambelli, 129-136. Bloomsbury: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.

O'Neal, Halle. "Reuse, Recycle, and Repurpose: The Afterlives of Japanese Material Culture." Ars Orientalis 52 (2022): 1-9

O'Neal, Halle. Word Embodied: The Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas in Japanese Buddhist Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018.

O'Neal, Halle and Paul Harrison. "Bodies of Words: Translating Sacred Text into Sacred Architecture in East Asian Buddhism." In Routledge Handbook of Translation and Religion, ed. Hephzibah Israel, 207-231. Oxon: Routledge, 2022.

Proser, Adriana, ed. Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, 14-37.

Rambelli, Fabio. "Materiality and Performativity of Sacred Texts." In Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism, by Fabio Rambelli, 88-128. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

"Relics." In Encyclopedia of Religions, edited by Mircea Eliade, 275-82. Vol. 12. New York: Macmillan, 2004.

"Relics and Relic Cults" and "Reliquaries," In Encyclopedia of Buddhism, edited by Robert Buswell, 715-20. New York: Macmillan, 2004.

Robson, James. "A Tang Dynasty Chan Mummy [roushen] and a Modern Case of Furta Sacra? Investigating the Contested Bones of Shitou Xiqian." In Chan Buddhism in Ritual Context, edited by Bernard Faure, 151-78. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.

Roth, Gustav. "Symbolism of the Buddhist Stūpa according to the Tibetan version of the Caitya-vibhāga-vinayodbhāva-sūtra, the Sanskrit treatise Stūpa-lakṣaṇa-kārikā-vivecana, and a corresponding passage in Kuladattas Kriyāsaṃgraha." In The Stūpa: Its Religious, Historical and Architectural Significance, edited by Anna Libera Dallapiccola in collaboration with Stephanie Zingel-Avé Lallemant, 183-209. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1980.

Ruppert, Brian Douglas. "Buddha Relics as Objects of Contention: Wish-Fulfilling Jewel Worship and the Genealogy of Relic Theft." In Jewel in the Ashes: Buddha Relics and Power in Early Medieval Japan, by Brian Douglas Ruppert, 142-91 and 426-40. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000.

Salomon, Richard and Gregory Schopen. "The Indravarman (Avaca) Casket Inscription Reconsidered: Further Evidence for Canonical Passages in Buddhist Inscriptions." The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 7.1 (1984): 107-123.

Sanford, James H. "Wind, Waters, Stūpas, Mandalas: Fetal Buddhahood in Shingon." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 24.1-2 (1997): 17-21.

Schopen, Gregory. "Burial Ad Sanctos and the Physical Presence of the Buddha in Early Indian Buddhism." Religion 17 (1987): 193-225.

Schopen, Gregory. "Monks and the Relic Cult in the Mahāparinibbāna-sutta: An Old Misunderstanding in Regard to Monastic Buddhism." In From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion in Honor of Prof. Jan Yün-Hua, edited by Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen, 187-201. Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1991.

Schopen, Gregory. "On the Buddha and His Bones: On the Conception of a Relic in the Inscriptions from Nāgārjunikoṇḍa." In Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India, by Gregory Schopen,148-64. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1996.

Schopen, Gregory. "The Phrase 'Sa Pŗthivīpradeśaś Caityabhūto Bhavet' in the Vajracchedikā: Notes on the Cult of the Book in Mahāyāna." Indo-Iranian Journal 17 (1975): 147-81.

Schopen, Gregory. "Relic." In Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor, 256-68. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Schopen, Gregory. "The Stūpa Cult and the Extant Pāli Vinyana." In Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India, by Gregory Schopen, 86-98. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1996.

Sharf, Robert H. "The Buddha's Finger Bones at Famensi and the Art of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism." Art Bulletin 93.1 (2011): 38-59.

Sharf, Robert H. "The Idolization of Enlightenment: On the Mummification of Ch'an Masters in Medieval China." History of Religions 32.1 (1992): 1-31.

Sharf, Robert H. "On the Allure of Buddhist Relics." Representations 66 (1999): 75-99. Trenson, Steven. “Rice, Relics, and Jewels: The Network and Agency of Rice Grains in Medieval Japanese Esoteric Buddhism.” JJRS 45.2 (2018): 269-307.

 Sharf, Robert H. "Prolegomenon to the Study of Japanese Buddhist Icon." In Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, edited by Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf, 1-18. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Sharf, Robert H. "The Scripture on the Production of Buddha Images." In Religions of China in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., 261-67. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. 

Shen, Hsueh-man. "Liao and Northern Song Deposits of the Buddha's Spiritual Relics." Taida Journal of Art History 12 (2002): 169-212

Shen, Hsueh-man. "Realizing the Buddha's Dharma Body during the Mofa Period: A Study of Liao Buddhist Relic Deposits." Artibus Asiae 61.2 (2001): 263-303.

Strong, John S. "Further Extensions of the Buddha's Life Story: Some Tooth Relic Traditions." In Relics of the Buddha, by John S. Strong, 179-210. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Swearer, Donald K. Becoming the Buddha. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Tanabe, Willa J. "The Decorative Tradition of Frontispiece Painting." In Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, by Willa J. Tanabe, 50-77. New York, Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1988.

ten Grotenhuis, Elizabeth. "Bodily Gift and Spiritual Pledge: Human Hair in Japanese Buddhist Embroideries." Orientations 35.1 (2004): 31-35.

Trainor, Kevin M. "When is a Theft Not a Theft? Relic Theft and the Cult of Buddha's Relics in Sri Lanka." Numen 39.1 (1992): 3-26.

Walley, Akiko. Constructing the Dharma King: The Hōryūji Shaka Triad and the Birth of the Prince Shōtoku Cult. (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 

Walley, Akiko. "Strike a Chord: The Principle of Resonance in Early East Asian Buddhist Reliquaries." In Refiguring East Asian Religious Art: Buddhist Devotion and Funerary Practice, edited by Wu Hung and Paul Copp, 21-51. Chicago: Center for the Art of East Asia, Department of Art History, University of Chicago; Art Media Resources, Inc, 2019.

Walley, Akiko. "Through the Open Gate of Heaven: The Tōdaiji Objects and Salvation in Vairocana’s Lotus- Treasury World." Religions 14, no. 4 (2023). 

Walley, Akiko. "Instant Bliss: The Enactment of Miraculous Appearance of Relics in the Hōryūji Nested Reliquary Set." Ars Orientalis 46 (2016): 136-172. 

Wang, Eugene Y. "Of the True Body: The Buddha's Relics and Corporeal Transformation in Tang Imperial Culture." In Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture, edited by Wu Hung and Katherine T. Mino, 79-118 and 377-87. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Wargula, Carolyn. "Embodied Objects: Chūjōhime’s Hair Embroideries and the Transformation of the Female Body in Premodern Japan." Religions 12, no. 9 (2021): 773.

Notes

The foundations of this reading list were generously provided by Halle O'Neal.

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