Professor: Bill Powell
Office: HSSB 2222
Office Hrs: Monday and Wenesday, 1:00-2:00 p.m.
(805) 893-2215
bpowell@religion.ucsb.edu

TA: Katie Tsuji
Sections: Fri, 9 and 10 am
Office: HSSB 3057
Office Hrs: 11:00-1:00
catherine.tsuji@gmail.com

Texts

Richard Foltz , Religions of the Silk Road

Reader available at Grafik Art in Isle Vista

The Course

Our approach to the study of Asian religions in this course is to focus on five sites of religious culture between Persia to China . You are called upon to place yourself in the position of an educated traveler moving from site to site and attempting to make sense out of the cultural and religious phenomena as you encounter them. In a sense, you are being put in the position of some of the well-known Westerners who traveled to Asia over the past millennium such as Marco Polo, Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin.

After acquiring a general sense of the primary scriptural teachings of the various religions we will encounter en route, you will be challenged to relate those teachings to the complex sets of cultural phenomena that emerge "on the ground" in each locale . To rely solely on the "great ideas" of religions, while ignoring their social and historical, on-the-ground contexts, as so many studies of Asian religions do, is to imagine religions as disembodied, static, unchanging truth or belief systems. As most inquisitive travelers have discovered over the ages, one's comfortable assumptions about any particular religion are generally upset, if not demolished, when one finally encounters the communities associated with that religion on the ground.

The fundamental premise in this course is that understanding and appreciation of Asian religions will not arise except through the study of religion as lived by particular Asians in specific places at specific times.

Each religion we will study this quarter will be localized throughout the unit in a particular place: the Yazd Valley in Persia, Madurai in India, Gandhara in Northwest Asia, Mt. Kailash in Tibet, and Beijing in China . Your explorations of each of these sites will expose you to the cultures of Zoroasterism, Saivism/Vaisnavism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Taoism/Confucianism, respectively. Following a general introduction to the religions associated with each site we will proceed to explore the religious culture of the place from four perspectives:

A. Place : To study "religion on the ground" we must begin with an awareness of specific places: their geomorphologies, biological habitats, and built environments. On maps of each locale we will need to take note of mountains, rivers, boundaries, roads, economic and political divisions, sacred sites, sacred images, and the principal temples and shrines.

B. Culture : We will next look at certain activities that are part of the rhythms of life in each place. Specifically, we will focus on a) pilgrimage, b) festivals, c) monasticism, and d) ritual. Note that we will not consider all the major religious activities associated with any particular tradition, only certain obvious ones in each locale.

C. Local History, Texts, and Doctrines : Again, it would be unreasonable in ten weeks to attempt even a survey of the history, or of all the major texts and doctrines of each cultural/religious tradition. Furthermore, even if we could accomplish all this, it would not effectively achieve the goals of the course. Therefore, we will let the cultural activities examined in B (above) determine and limit the range of history, texts and doctrines we consider in each case.

D. Issues and Implications : Our passage through each of the four locale-based units will be focused on several issues of the sort that might concern scholars or sympathetic, but critical, outsiders. Many of the journal topics are designed to elicit your response to these issues. You will be challenged to offer creative, but informed, answers to those questions. Though some answers would certainly be "out of place", there is no one correct answer to this kind of question.

In addition to gaining an appreciation of Asian religions, the student is encouraged to think critically about his or her own modes of understanding non-Western cultures. Placed in an alien environment, on the ground, how does one go about uncovering sense rather than imposing it? These are issues that constantly confront students of religions and culture in the field.

The ultimate objective of the course is to strengthen your analytical and critical abilities, not simply to leave you with a set of curious, perhaps even mildly thought-provoking, truth claims.