Images in Asian religions: texts and contexts

Abstract

"The study of images in Asian religions has tended to emphasize the centrality of image worship in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Little attention has been paid, however, to the arguments against such image worship in these religious traditions."

Contents

Images and their ritual use in medieval India : hesitations and contradictions / Phyllis Granoff -- Theology as history : divine images, imagination, and rituals in India / Gilles Tarabout -- Of metal and cloths : the location of distinctive features in divine iconography (Indian Himalayas) / Daniela Berti -- At the right side of the teacher : imagination, imagery, and image in Vedic and Śaiva initiation / Hans Bakker -- The competing hermeneutics of image worship in Hinduism (fifth to eleventh century AD) / Gérard Colas -- Stories of miraculous images and paying respect to the three jewels : a discourse on image worship in seventh-century China / Koichi Shinohara -- Icon and incantation : the goddess Zhunti and the role of images in the occult Buddhism of China / Robert M. Gimello -- The Tenjukoju Shūchō Mandara : reconstruction of the iconography and ritual context / Chari Pradel -- Ōbaku Zen portrait painting and its Sino-Japanese heritage / Elizabeth Horton Sharf -- Ritual and image at Angkor Wat / Robert L. Brown.