Buddhist Apologetics in East Asia: Countering the Neo-Confucian Critiques in the Hufa Lun and the Yusŏk Chirŭi Non

By Uri Kaplan

While the Neo-Confucian critique of Buddhism is fairly well-known, little attention has been given to the Buddhist reactions to this harangue. The fact is, however, that over a dozen apologetic essays have been written by Buddhists in China, Korea, and Japan in response to the Neo-Confucians. Buddhist Apologetics in East Asia offers an introduction to this Buddhist literary genre. It centers on full translations of two dominant apologetic works--the Hufa lun (護法論), written by a Buddhist politician in twelfth-century China, and the Yusŏk chirŭi non (儒釋質疑論), authored by an anonymous monk in fifteenth-century Korea. Put together, these two texts demonstrate the wide variety of polemical strategies and the cross-national intertextuality of East Asian Buddhist apologetics.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 900440533X
• ISBN13: 9789004405332
• Release Date: August 2019
• Publisher: Brill
• Length: 282 Pages