Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes . By Wilt L. Idema
Abstract
BOOK REVIEWS Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes. By Wilt L. Idema. Honolulu: University of Hawaiâi Press, 2008. 227 pages. $50.00. During the past several decades, scholars of Chinese religion have increasingly turned their attention to the texts called precious scrolls (baojuan). In the sixteenthâeighteenth centuries, precious scrolls were usually used as the scriptures of sects (or specific folk religions). However, they co-existed with texts based on popular Buddhist tales. The second kind of text developed rapidly in the late period (nineteenthâtwentieth centuries). During this time, texts that narrated biographies of saints predominated. Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes by Wilt L. Idema contains English translations of two texts, which narrate Buddhist tales. The first of them, Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain (Xiangshan baojuan), as we have it, substantially dates from the fifteenth century, though it survived only in editions made much later than the approximate date of its compilation. The shorter version of it became extremely popular since the second half of the nineteenth century. It is this short version of the text that Idema has translated. Precious Scroll of Incense