Chronicle of Taoist Studies in the West 1950-1990

An Overview of the Weiyi (威儀 Dignified Liturgies) of Taoism

“…International Taoist scholarship has placed increasing emphasis on the study of Taoist zhai and jiao rituals. For example, European and American scholars (such as Kristofer Marinus Schipper (Schipper and Verellen 2006), Anna Seidel (1988), John Lagerwey (1986Lagerwey ( , 2010, Kenneth Dean (1995), and Livia Kohn (2003)), Japanese scholars (such as Ōfuchi Ninji (2005), Maruyama Hiroshi (Maruyama 2004), and Asano Haruji (Asano 2005)), and Chinese scholars (such as Chen Yaoting (Chen 2003), Liu Jih-Wann (Liu 1967), Lee Fong-mao and Xie Conghui (Lee and Xie 2001), Zhang Zehong (Zhang 1996(Zhang , 1999, Lai Chi Tim (Lai et al 2007), Xie Shiwei (Xie 2010), Lü Pengzhi (Lü 2008), Zhang Chaoran (Zhang 2015), and Lin Xilang (Lin 2006)) have all studied Taoist zhai and jiao rituals in various ways. However, the nature of weiyi, its construction in Taoist rituals, and its influence on society are still issues worth exploring in Taoist studies.…”

Brushes with Some “Dirty Truths”: Handwritten Manuscripts and Religion in China

“…In Chinese mythology, on the other hand, the written sign precedes the spoken word and has always kept its entirely positive cosmogonic power of unfolding and arranging reality." 59 Indeed, it was precisely this type of power and potential of language itself that drew Bell's scholarly attention to the Taishang ganying pian. In a later reflection on her earlier work on that text she stated that she had "tried to explore the shape of a paradigm in a project on the nature of textuality in China.…”

New Views of Early Japanese Religions

“…The most cogent lesson is that the study of religions in ancient Japan entails not merely an examination of the Japanese archaeological, historical, and textual evidence, but also a knowledge of religious developments in continental East Asia, especially the Korean peninsula, during and prior to Japan's ancient period. Anna K. Seidel made this point twenty years ago, but thanks to the work of scholars such as Bialock, Como, Kidder, and Ooms, we now can more fully appreciate what Seidel meant when she wrote that “what … Japan assimilated during [the ancient period] was not freeze‐dried Chinese culture imported unchanged through a Korean channel but rather Korean culture, including its adopted Chinese elements” (Seidel 1990, 299). In other words, to study early Japanese religious culture also is to study early Korean religious culture, to a large extent.…”