C011: Materializing Religion as Medicine in Premodern China

Organizer(s)

• 

  H.S. Sum Cheuk Shing

  University of Chicago, United States

Chair(s)

• 

  James Benn

  McMaster University, Canada

Paper Presenter(s)

• 

  H.S. Sum Cheuk Shing

  University of Chicago, United States
• 

  Hsiao-wen Cheng

  University of Pennsylvania, United States
• SL

  Simona Lazzerini

  Stanford University, United States
• DS

  Dominic Steavu

  University of California, Santa Barbara, United States

Discussant(s)

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  TJ Hinrichs

  Cornell University, United States

Session Abstract: How and why were religious objects, products, and techniques used as medicines in premodern China? This panel uses varying disciplinary approaches to discuss the mediating roles that herbs, recipes, scriptures, and the human body played in medicinal and healing practices for premodern Chinese peoples, whether medical professionals, religious practitioners, or even peasants. Most pertinently, the papers emphasize the materiality intrinsic to these peoples’ conversion of previously unimbued substances and processes into efficacious healing and spiritual agents. Steavu’s piece, interrogating self-cultivation manuals and pharmacopeias from the medieval period, analyzes how substances and objects such as numinous mushrooms (lingzhi), cannabis, rare minerals, and other stones represent processual pivots towards healing, longevity, and immortality. Lazzerini’s contribution, highlighting mid-Tang texts associated with the demon-goddess Hārītī, examines the mediation of medicinal concoctions and religiously impure substances in a complex framework of ritual practices as laid out by the scriptural innovator, Amoghavajra. Sum Cheuk Shing’s paper, centering Dunhuang medical recipes, investigates grain avoidance (bigu) in the late medieval period and demonstrates how religious practitioners used drugs to attain spiritual goals. Cheng’s study, focusing on the herb cangzhu 蒼术, charts how cangzhu became an integral part of various peoples’ lives and reveals the trade, market, and environmental considerations of the healing and wellness culture in the Song. Together, the panel presents a wide selection of primary documents from various regions and explores both transmitted and manuscript sources, to illustrate the numerous intersections between medicine and religion and their implications for cultural history in premodern China.

Presentations:

• Eliminating Hunger and Thirst with Medicine: Buddhist and Daoist Recipes from Medieval China
  

  Paper Presenter: H.S. Sum Cheuk Shing – University of Chicago
• Drug Market, Environment, and Healing Culture in Song China: A Case Study of Cangzhu (Black Atractylodes Rhizome)
  

  Paper Presenter: Hsiao-wen Cheng – University of Pennsylvania
• “Hārītī Will Always Protect You:” Healing and Cursing Practices in Two Amoghavajra Texts
  

  Paper Presenter: Simona Lazzerini – Stanford University