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Chinese Buddhist Religious Disputation

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Abstract

From about the fourth to the tenth century Buddhist monks in China engaged in formal, semi-public, religious disputation. I describe the Indian origins of this disputation and outline its settings, procedures, and functions. I then propose that this disputation put its participants at risk of performative contradiction with Buddhist tenets about language and salvation, and I illustrate how some chinese Buddhists attempted to transcend these contradictions, subverting disputation through creative linguistic and extra- linguistic strategies.

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Garrett, M.M. Chinese Buddhist Religious Disputation. Argumentation 11, 195–209 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007747017533

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007747017533

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