The Economies of Temple Chanting and Conversion in China Eric Reinders

The Economies of Temple Chanting and Conversion in China Eric Reinders e have always found the most earnest idolaters Instructor, and Awake! This large quantity of publications included “Wmake the best Christians; indifference is the hardest numerous stories of these “reading prayers women.” thing to combat,” said a Miss Harrison of the Church Missionary When they observed this practice, many Protestant missionar- Society in 1910.1 Active but low-ranking Buddhists and Taoists ies naturally objected to it, seeing these rituals as praising an idol, were special targets of missionaries in China because they were not the true God. When contemplating this specific practice, they perceived as easier to convert than those who were simply indif- were reminded of the sale of indulgences in Catholicism, which ferent to any religion. So-called heathenism was widely thought they regarded as the worst example of mechanistic salvation. to be a expression of an inherent human impulse toward God, Thomas M’Clatchie, a Church of England missionary, however misguided. reported about his visit to a Buddhist temple in 1845: “In front British missionaries in China thus spent a lot of time in and of the altar was placed a table, on which lay their books used in around Buddhist and Taoist temples. The public spaces in front of temples were logical places to preach. The sight of icons was a common starting point for conversations, which inevitably turned to Jesus. Also, when itinerating, sometimes the only places to stay were Buddhist temples, which effectively functioned as inns. And missionaries knew well the various populations associated with temples—monks, nuns, novices, and lay activists, such as the old women in Buddhist temples who earned religious merit by chanting. The Buddhist idea of merit created by chanting scriptures and mantras is well known, but less so is the fact that these ritual repetitions could be parlayed into hard cash. The key concept here is “transfer of merit,” which is expressed at the end of Buddhist sutras in a short verse in which one compassionately dedicates the merit created by reciting scripture or the name of Buddhist deities for the happiness and enlightenment of all be- ings. Dedicating one’s deeds toward the well-being of all is the gist of the bodhisattva vow. Early on, merit was established as transferable. The prevailing mechanism seems to be that someone creates the merit and then gives it to someone else; a more orthodox explanation is that the act of sponsoring someone to chant is itself meritorious. One could hire monks and nuns, but that could be expen- sive. More reasonably priced, the “reading prayers women”had timetables for chanting and used sheets of paper to record the number of prayers, marking little red dots for a certain number of repetitions.2 This kind of merit-accounting sheet is still in use today, though I suspect the uses of it have changed. Now it seems to be entirely about wish-fulfillment; in late imperial China, it had this function, but it also was much like money. It was a currency, a certificate of labor, exchangeable with the spirit Paper Sheet for Recording Prayers world but also within the human economy. worship, and not one syllable of which is understood, even by the Missionary Views of the Practice Priests themselves.”3 This remark may simply indicate priestly illiteracy, but more likely it points to the use of unintelligible The Church Missionary Society of the Church of England and language in scripture and liturgy. Such remarks refer to Sanskrit related organizations such as the Zenana Missionary Society or pseudo-Sanskrit words in Buddhist worship, primarily in published a large amount of Sinology during the nineteenth and the form of mantra and dharani. Many Buddhist scriptures and twentieth centuries, which included magazines, letter books, liturgies indeed contain extended utterances with no discernable annual letters, annual reports, and circular books. This article semantic meaning for the vast majority of their reciters. A few samples the substantial reportage on China and Chinese religion in missionaries discussed mantras with Buddhists, but one would publications such as the Church Missionary Gleaner (later, Outlook), not expect most British Protestant missionaries to appreciate the India’s Women and China’s Daughters, Homes of the East, Juvenile complex theories behind the use of mantras, especially since they were steeped in a thorough critique of the use of “meaningless” Eric Reinders is Associate Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion, liturgical language in Europe. Throughout Protestant Europe, Emory University, Atlanta. He is the author of Borrowed Gods and Foreign the use of Latin was rejected in favor of the vernacular, as much Bodies: Christian Missionaries Imagine Chinese Religion (Univ. of Cali- during the Reformation itself as during the Victorian movement fornia Press, 2004). against Ritualism. 188 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 31, No. 4 Mantras in particular were denied full conscious meaning. In tions mentioned above realize that their craft is endangered by addition to their unintelligibility, mantras and Buddhist liturgy the spread of Christianity, they are sure to rise up against it. And in general were also objectionable to missionaries because of perhaps soon we shall find the bamboo-planters, the paper-mak- their repetition. John Francis Davis reported, “To the repetition ers, the paper-mill owners, the paper-carriers, the boatmen, the of the bare sounds, without regard to the meaning, they attach dyers, the pattern-printers, the paper-clothes tailors, the tinfoil beaters, the tinfoil-paper makers, the sham-money makers, the the highest importance; hence they occasionally go over the same 4 sham-dollar stampers, the candle-makers, the paper box, paper words hundreds and thousands of times.” Repetition of the same house, paper horse, paper sedan-chair, paper boat makers, and statement was absurd if conveying the semantic meaning of the the keepers of the shops where these things are sold, awaking to words spoken was imagined to be the only worthwhile func- their danger and rising up, a great army, to oppose the extension tion of speech, and if meaning is conceived strictly as semantic of Christ’s Kingdom.6 communication. In the chanting of Buddhist mantras, however, the semantic meaning may be unimportant, so that in Buddhist Such passages show an awareness of the financial commitments terms, to point out their literal unintelligibility is to miss the that had to be broken by converts deserting that army. point—namely, the production of the sacred sounds themselves, for the mantra is the deity, in the form of sound. The Cost of Converting Missionaries associated endless repetition with Catholic practices of liturgical repetition such as the Hail Mary. In the At this time in China a Buddhist nun got a dollar for twenty-four 1860s many British Protestants objected not only to the fact of chants. Temple women were lowlier foot soldiers in that idola- repetition but also to the chanting style in Anglo-Catholic Ritualist trous army, but they could still earn a meager living. Temples worship. Objecting to “intoning” or “intonation” (also known were in this sense havens for old women with little financial support. When they converted to Christianity, their source of income was necessarily ended. Missionaries were insistent that the idolatrous practice must end but were sympathetic to their The solution was for financial plight. Mrs. Ho to chant her For example, in an account from 1900 in India’s Women and non-Christian prayers as China’s Daughters, a certain Mrs. Ho politely inquired of the Gospel and began to attend church, was convinced of the Chris- promised, but very quickly. tian message, but had financial problems because she had been prepaid to chant Buddhist texts. “She was then quite convinced of the folly and wrong of idolatry,” but she felt obliged to those as monotoning), many British Protestants found it aesthetically who had already paid her. Missionary Alice M. Phillips resisted unpleasant, comparing it to dogs howling, but, more important, the temptation to pay off the debt, commenting, “We feared to they felt it to be harder to understand than a plain reading voice or give her money, lest our motive should be misunderstood.” The a hymn. Missionaries in China familiar with the current conflicts rather mundane solution to the immediate obligation was for in England over liturgy would have found the almost-monotone Mrs. Ho to chant her non-Christian prayers as promised, but quality of Buddhist liturgy especially evocative of Catholicism very quickly. and the Romanist tendencies in Anglican churches. Even after she stopped making merit sheets for clients, Mrs. Another theme of anti-Catholic discourse, the hypocrisy Ho still had a stash of her own, which she also needed to get rid and corruption of monastic institutions, was tied to sponsored of. Mrs. Ho said a friend was keeping the papers and that they chanting in China. A missionary in 1929 told of a young woman would be burnt over her coffin. Alice Phillips objected, saying who was destitute after her mother died. “Then came two Bud- that such action would not be religiously efficacious; getting rid of dhist nuns to the little village, with their long robes and shaved these papers now would “please Jesus.” The story continues: heads, seeking to line their pockets by repeating prayers for dead or living.” The young woman also became a nun. But the rituals One afternoon she called me downstairs, and to my delight I “brought no peace to her troubled heart. Too soon she realized saw that, of her own accord, she had brought her basket and all the futility of it all, the insincerity of the other nuns, most of it contained.

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