In their introduction to India in the Chinese Imagination, the editors point out that the book attempts to underscore three aspects of the “Indo-China encounter.” First, it seeks to examine the “impact of Indian religion and literature on the Chinese creative imagination.” Second, it offers a detailed analysis of the “Chinese imagination of India.” And third, it explores the ways in which the Chinese recreated India within China's own borders (p. 2). The ten skillfully written chapters that follow, each penned by a well-known scholar in the field, address these aspects from different perspectives. But Buddhism and Buddhist paraphernalia, including texts and images, are the main units of analysis for every contributor.
The first chapter, by Victor H. Mair, outlines the influences of Buddhism in the creation of literary narratives and other imaginative genres in China. Mair argues that the idea of “transformational manifestation,” used in Buddhist texts as...
