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A Pure Mind in a Clean Body: Bodily Care in the Buddhist Monasteries of Ancient India and China. 2012. Gent, Belgium: Academia Press. Pp. 194. €27.00 Paperback. isbn 978-9-0382-2014-7.This useful book presents a wealth of material about how Buddhist monastics, especially Chinese Buddhist monastics, kept their bodies clean through four regularized practices of bodily care: bathing, toilet regimen, oral cleaning, and the trimming of hair and nails. The authors argue that these practices are worth studying precisely because of their quotidian nature. The history of Buddhism is not merely the history of monarchs, metaphysics, and miracles: it is also the history of maintaining clean bodies so as to purify minds and save lives. Along with cosmologically rich scriptures, Buddhism also brought to China disciplinary texts that introduced new technologies for guaranteeing the proper ordering and health of the saṃgha as an institution, and the physical bodies of which it was composed.By attending to Chinese Buddhist materials translated and composed between the third and fourteenth centuries—but especially from the fifth through eighth—Heirman and Torck construct a lively history of “objects, practices, and mentalities” (4) pertaining to monastic bodily care in medieval China. They show not only that objects like bath
Asian Medicine – Brill
Published: Feb 21, 2017
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