Session 213: Printing and Religion in Late Imperial China

Organizer: Elena Valussi, Columbia College

Chair: Robert E. Hegel, Washington University, St. Louis

Discussant: Philip A. Clart, University of Missouri, Columbia

This panel looks at the uses of printing in the dissemination of religion in late imperial China.

The history of printing in China has received a lot of attention, and so has the history of religion, especially in the late imperial period. Many scholars have looked at the relationship between the development of commercial printing and the increasing need for cheap publication in several areas such as education, primary and secondary, practical manuals and fiction, and at how this relationship affects local communities. There has also been a wealth of studies on the development of religious traditions in the late imperial period and the attention has increasingly focused on the localization of traditions. This panel aims at tackling the fundamental issue of the intersection between religion and printing. With the development of commercial printing in the late imperial period, as opposed to individual or temple printing, religious uses becomes a commodity to be peddled, bought and sold, and printing is the tool of the trade. Is printing religious treatises still just a merit-making enterprise, or also a profit-making one? How does printing affect the diffusion of religion, does the medium change the way in which religion is disseminated and the religious message itself? Does mass printing have an effect on the diffusion of local cults? And vice versa, do local religious communities utilize printing as a means for the diffusion of their ideas? How is printing used in the fight to capture an audience increasingly bombarded by publications vying for its attention? And how do recently introduced traditions such as Christianity use printing as a way to reach the masses?

The papers on this panel tackle these questions from different perspectives, looking at different religious traditions, Buddhism, Daoism and Christianity, and at different geographical areas, South China and Sichuan. The aim of the panel is not to find an answer to all the above questions, but rather to start the discussion on this fundamental issue.

Religion and Printing in Nineteenth-Century Sichuan: A Case Study

Elena Valussi, Columbia College

This paper follows the traces of Fu Jinquan, an alchemical author, religious leader and publisher active during the first half of the nineteenth century. I chose to focus on his life and activities because they are a good example of the interconnectedness of religion and printing. Fu was born in Jiangxi and that is where he started his religious activities. After a period of traveling around China, he finally settled in Sichuan, a place where local cults were flourishing. He set up an altar for spirit writing and gathered a community of like-minded people. But Fu’s move to Sichuan was also linked to more practical reasons: Sichuan’s publishing business was just then booming, and a relative of Fu’s, also from Jiangxi, had opened his publishing house there. Fu seized the opportunity of publishing and disseminating all the works he had been writing and collecting during his travels. In this paper, I will present Fu’s life and work, and discuss issues such as the close relationship between the diffusion of religion and printing and the intimate relationship between locale, work and beliefs.

Printing and Religions in Competition: Protestant Missionaries’ Encounters with Indigenous Religions in South China

Kai-wing Chow, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The history of publishing in South China, especially Canton, is crucial to the understanding of many aspects of late imperial history of China. The publishing history of Canton is especially critical to the understanding of the strategies and approach adopted by early missionaries like Robert Morrison. A study of the Chinese collection assembled by Morrison will help us understand some aspects of the complex relationship between religion and the publishing world in Guangdong in the nineteenth century. I argue that the need for Protestant missionaries to invest time in learning Chinese writing; and to write and print Christian tracts in Chinese was to a considerable extent driven by their attempt to combat the deep-rooted indigenous religious beliefs and practices widely disseminated by a diffuse print technology—woodblock printing. Chinese patrons of indigenous religions used print extensively to disseminate their beliefs. In addition, they printed huge volume of moral tracts to promote good deeds and to exhort against social vices such as gambling and female infanticide. Protestant missionaries themselves likewise resorted to printing religious tracts in their attack on social vices in China. The advocacy of social reform by the missionaries was therefore a crusade they shared with indigenous Chinese religious groups with whom they had to compete for audience through the printing of an enormous quantity of tracts.

Printing, Evangelism, and Sinology: A Historical Appraisal of the Sinological Publications by Protestant Missionaries in South China

Timothy Man Kong Wong, Hong Kong Baptist University

To know about Chinese culture was necessary in making converts, as argued by some Protestant missionaries. In doing so, they used printing to disseminate the "knowledge" that they discovered and/or created. Among the few dozens of such missionaries, a sizeable number of their publications were produced in South China. Such notable names as Robert Morrison, James Legge, John Chalmers, Ernest John Eitel, William Pearce, and a few others became the pioneering generation of Sinologists in either Britain or Hong Kong. As a result, South China and particularly Hong Kong became one of the major printing centers. The objectives of this paper are threefold. It is to first examine why they developed their studies on Chinese studies in South China. Moreover, it will give a general picture of how much they published and discuss how they disseminated the knowledge that they discovered and created. It is also aimed at giving an appraisal of the historical meanings of these publications in light of current discussions of issues in East-West studies.

Printing the Dharma: Buddhist Publishing Activities in the Late Qing Period

Francesca Tarocco, University of Manchester

In the nineteenth century, China witnessed an impressive growth in Buddhist printing activities. Long acknowledged by Buddhists as a way to gain merit, the sponsorship of printing activities and the setting up of publishing enterprises was increasingly popular among clerics and laypersons. My paper builds on Holmes Welch’s initial insights on the widespread importance of Buddhist printing in the post-Taiping era and offers a more thorough analysis of such activities. First, I examine the practices of commercial publishing houses responsible for printing texts on behalf of Buddhist temples. Second, I trace the emergence of private scriptural presses in southern China in the 1870s and 1880s. I conclude by showing the continuities and discontinuities in Buddhist printing practices on the eve of the creation of a modern Buddhist periodical press.