Buddhism in Chinese Society

by Jacques Gernet

First published in French in 1956, this classic work integrates the study of Buddhist doctrine with that of Chinese society from the fifth to the tenth centuries.

Genres: China, History, Economics, Buddhism, Religion

441 pages, Paperback

First published May 22, 1995

About the author

Jacques Gernet was an eminent French sinologist of the second half of the 20th century. His best-known work is The Chinese Civilization, a 900-page summary of Chinese history and civilization which has been translated into many languages.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does anybody read this book any more? They should. It's quite remarkable. Gernet comes up with the apparently bizarre argument that modern capitalism originates in Buddhist monasteries in early Medieval China. Basically the story (my reconstruction granted) seems to go like this: the Confucian bureaucrats who controlled the administration were inherently suspicious of merchants. They liked markets, and tried to promote them as much as possible as ways for ordinary people to be able to get things they need for prosperous lives, but set up all sorts of policies to ensure that there were no concentrations of speculative capital, seeking profit for its own sake. As Roy Bin Wong, drawing on Braudel, argued, this made China for much of its history the ultimate anti-capitalist market state, since capitalists normally seek to ally with the government (this is the Braudelian line) to subvert the logic of the market, which is ordinarily C-M-C', to make it M-C-M', which requires establish monopolies and oligopolies and other such advantages - and in China this was usually impossible.

Then between around 400-800 AD, something strange happened. Buddhism was carried into China by merchants and the commercial classes were its greatest supporters. But it became a religion of popular fervor and renunciation, where people would abandon their lives to become monks and nuns, many would give up all their worldly possessions or even commit spectacular suicide... Yet somehow, as a result, all that wealth ended up in the Inexhaustible Treasuries of the monasteries that sprang up all over China, and itself became a form of investment capital. Why? How? Because when one gave money to a monastery to, say, light a candle for your mother's soul, or feed a monk, you did so _forever_ - and the way that was effectuated was by lending the money out at interest so the principal wouldn't be touched. Soon monasteries were surrounded by shops and mills and became industrial centers, not to mention enormous investment funds; all the cash around them would be sucked into the temples and melted down to build giant statues of the Buddha, and the government would have to step in to expropriate everything and melt down the statues to be able to create coins and get the economy running again. (The Buddhists didn't need coins much since they ran everything by credit schemes.)

In some ways the argument is kooky - obviously this wasn't really capitalism in the modern sense, and some of specific interpretations, say of the suicides, are extravagant - but I've never seen another book even remotely like it.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

A treasure-trove of information, compiled from a wide variety of sources. Copious translations of primary materials. More entertaining than your normal economic history because you have the constant underlying tension between monks' supposedly "austere" lifestyle and the very real fact that medieval Chinese Buddhism functioned much like a modern corporation: it had assets, made investments, lent money at interest to individuals, etc. Most monks didn't work in the fields their monastery owned - they had slaves to do that. Ordination certificates were sold. Many took refuge in the saṃgha to avoid paying taxes - they simply shaved their head, registered, then kept a wife and children on the side. Likewise, state persecution of Buddhist organizations were driven by economic factors as much as ideological ones.

A fine book, originally published in the '50s under the title Les aspects économiques du Bouddhisme dans la société chinoise du Ve au Xe siècle, translated admirably by Franciscus Verellen. I give only three stars because I personally find the genre of economic history rather tedious to read cover-to-cover, and because the theory underlying the study is way too determinative. Basically, it looks at medieval Chinese society through the lens of economics, and - what do you know? - it turns out economics is responsible for everything. The deck is stacked. Nonetheless, this is a landmark study, and the fact that it still feels fresh today, nearly 60 years later, demonstrate its enduring value.

[Ceef · Rating 4 out of 5]

Provocative and engaging. Though some of Gernet's conclusions are a bit outdated (which is to be expected, given that he wrote the book in its original form in the mid-1950s), he nonetheless offered a detailed view of the day-to-day life of the monks, peasants and ruling classes in pre-modern China, as well as a compelling account of the role of Buddhism in the development of China's economy. Who would have thought that cash donations and ordination certificates would have evolved into usurious financial instruments and proto-capitalism?

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

1950s read on the economic lives of chinese buddhist monks and their serfs, customers, patrons, etc...

Not only does he explain what they do, but he gets into their heads!

More or less revolutionary for the field.

[Tsai Wei-chieh · Rating 4 out of 5]

博論用書。佛教（包括漢傳與藏傳）在帝制中國恐怕還是漢人與內亞民族之間的最大公約數，中國作為佛教帝國還是很值得討論的課題。

[he chow · Rating 5 out of 5]

顫慄、敬畏。

法國漢學家和日本漢學家有來有回，交流對話。
新中國籍漢學家（？）完全沒有對話的資格，
連區區一個譯者也敢在正文中批判作者對中國存在偏見，
何其不自量力的井底之蛙。

新中國籍貫的人是不是對財政金融兩塊內容有什麼誤解？
宗教和財政的認知常識是兩塊軟肋，無藥可救的那種。
法律在謝和耐筆下的中國屬於一種欠缺誠信與討價還價這種可調和的水泥匠活兒。契約既不神聖也不可靠，人們不追求私人財產權神聖不可侵犯，只求一時佔有權的保證且在這段時間內獲得最大利益的回報，隨時反悔，隨時賴帳，隨時下咒嘴炮爽快。

譯者竟然在挑他錯別字上較真，而區分不了奴隸和雜役的宏觀歷史日常景觀。而後隱隱發覺不對也沒有用，純粹靠讀者個人的自覺來糾正導航失智的認知框架。

自我認知是「苦力」的奴隸都高看了自身的階級地位。
發動的階級戰爭自然更是錯誤的方向。

[Jessica Zu · Rating 4 out of 5]

not sure about literati "rationalism" and Buddhist propensity to excessive expenditure, ...
others are well supported, but in terms of literati Buddhist debates, Gernet bought too much of literati perspective (limited by his sources, maybe)