About

John Kieschnick is the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Professor of Buddhist Studies and a Professor, by courtesy, of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University. He specializes in Chinese Buddhism, with particular emphasis on its cultural history. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Asian Languages from Stanford University obtained in 1996, a master's degree from the same institution in 1988, and a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986. Kieschnick is the author of notable works such as 'Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Medieval China' and 'The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture.' He is currently working on a book about Buddhist interpretations of the past in China and a primer for reading Buddhist texts in Chinese. In addition to his research, he serves as the chair of the Department of Religious Studies and the director of the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University.

Research topics

• History
• Archaeology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Ancient history
• Library science
• Law
• Art history
• Philosophy
• Theology
• Psychology

Selected publications

• MSG, Vegan Soap, Meatless Restaurants and Buddhism in the Emergence of Modern Chinese Vegetarianism

  Journal of Chinese History · 2026-01-23

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper explores how traditional Chinese vegetarian concerns were adapted to exploit new possibilities in the early twentieth century. Specifically, I examine attempts to promote the vegetarian diet through monosodium glutamate, ventures to manufacture vegan soap, and the emergence of a vibrant culture of urban vegetarian restaurants, all of which were actively supported by the socially conservative monk Yinguang 印光 (1862–1940).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Return to the Forest of Buddhist Historiography

  Religious Studies Review · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • History
  PublisherDOI

• Buddhist Historiography in China

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2022 · 9 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Ancient history
  • History
  • Archaeology

  Since the early days of Buddhism in China, monastics and laity alike have expressed a profound concern with the past. In voluminous historical works, they attempted to determine as precisely as possible the dates of events in the Buddha's life, seeking to iron out discrepancies in varying accounts and pinpoint when he delivered which sermons. Buddhist writers chronicled the history of the Dharma in China as well, compiling biographies of eminent monks and nuns and detailing the rise and decline in the religion's fortunes under various rulers. They searched for evidence of karma in the historical record and drew on prophecy to explain the past.John Kieschnick provides an innovative, expansive account of how Chinese Buddhists have sought to understand their history through a Buddhist lens. Exploring a series of themes in mainstream Buddhist historiographical works from the fifth to the twentieth century, he looks not so much for what they reveal about the people and events they describe as for what they tell us about their compilers' understanding of history. Kieschnick examines how Buddhist doctrines influenced the search for the underlying principles driving history, the significance of genealogy in Buddhist writing, and the transformation of Buddhist historiography in the twentieth century. This book casts new light on the intellectual history of Chinese Buddhism and on Buddhists' understanding of the past

  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture

  2020 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Philosophy
  • History
  • Theology
  PublisherDOI

• India, China, and the World: A Connected History By Tansen Sen. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Pp. 541. ISBN 10: 1442220910; ISBN 13: 978-1538111727.

  International Journal of Asian Studies · 2020-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Chinese Buddhism: A Thematic History by Chün-fang Yü

  China review international · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Reviewed by: Chinese Buddhism: A Thematic History by Chün-fang Yü John Kieschnick (bio) Chün-fang Yü. Chinese Buddhism: A Thematic History. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020. vii, 283 pp. Paperback $30.00, isbn 978-08-24-89347-8. In the preface to Chinese Buddhism, Chün-fang Yü, professor emerita with decades of experience in researching and teaching Chinese Buddhism for an American audience, expresses a frustration shared by many who teach undergraduate courses on Buddhism: no monograph-length overview of Chinese Buddhism has been published since 1964 when Kenneth Ch’en’s Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton University Press) appeared. Even in the relatively slow-moving field of Buddhist studies, research on Chinese Buddhism has accumulated and advanced significantly in any number of areas since 1964. Chinese Buddhism is hence a long overdue update of Ch’en’s groundbreaking but flawed survey from close to sixty years ago. Eschewing Ch’en’s chronological framework, which led the reader through the history of Chinese Buddhism from the Han to the mid-twentieth century, dynasty by dynasty, Yü opts for a thematic approach. In this way, Yü’s work is also a fresh take on Ch’en’s best book: The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton University Press, 1973), which he divided into ethical life, political life, economic life, literary life, and educational and social life, all with a focus on the medieval period. In Yü’s book, only the introduction is chronological—a quick ten-page survey of Indian Buddhism, followed by a dash through major developments in China up to the early fifth century. Subsequent chapters instead treat broad themes: the major sutras and treatises that shaped Chinese Buddhism, cults of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, Buddhist festivals and rituals, the monastic order, Tiantai and Huayan, Chan, Pure Land Buddhism, gender, and finally a return to chronology with a concluding chapter on Buddhism in modern China. Each chapter is followed by a list of five discussion questions and a few suggestions for further reading, all geared toward the undergraduate student. This approach sacrifices the narrative drive of Ch’en’s work, which attempted to tell a grand story of the arrival, domestication, rise, and decline of Buddhism in China. The advantage of Yü’s thematic approach is that it avoids perhaps the greatest fault in Ch’en’s work: his characterization of all of Chinese Buddhism after the ninth century as a tradition in decline. By structuring the book thematically, Yü avoids the erasures that are inevitably a part of charting rise and decline—the assertion of a golden age demands the creation of a tarnished one to lend it luster—and avoids as well the reductionism of the sinicization model that forces a series of questionable decisions on what is Chinese and what Indian (Hu Shih’s “Indianization of China” versus Ch’en’s “Chinese Transformation of Buddhism”). [End Page 213] Yü’s book is easily the best English-language monograph introduction for courses on Chinese Buddhism, but at the same time, it is valuable for what it says about the development of research on Chinese Buddhism in the last fifty years. Deities like the Medicine King Buddha, Dizang, and Guanyin have now each been subjects of monographs, including Yü’s own detailed study of Guanyin.1 The chapter on festivals and rituals is built on the foundation of scholarship scattered over the eighties and nineties. Our understanding of Chinese Buddhist art history has been completely transformed in the past half century by a generation of art historians attuned to both the traditional concerns of art history (dating, style, and taxonomy) and the issues dear to scholars of social history and religious studies (patronage, devotion, ritual, and doctrine). Yü’s chapters, while necessarily far from comprehensive in either coverage or bibliography, nonetheless incorporate the research of dozens of scholars working in various fields. Decades of scholarship on nuns and laywomen contribute to the most successful chapter of the book, “Buddhism and Gender,” which draws vivid examples from the Ming, Qing, and modern periods and, among other arguments, pointedly challenges statements from Wing-tsit Chan in the fifties that the three main reasons a...

  PublisherDOI

• Buddhism

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2019-10-30 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  During the Han, preceding the Six Dynasties period, the picture of Buddhism that scholars have pieced together in recent decades remains peculiar and puzzling, in many respects decidedly different from Chinese Buddhism of later periods. As near as we can tell from what fragmentary evidence we have, the monastic community in the Han was composed primarily of foreign monks, surrounded by small groups of otherwise unknown Chinese. “Monasteries” were mostly ordinary homes that had been donated by devotees, no different in structure and appearance than any other grand house. Translations were carried out independently by monks, seemingly working on their own, far removed from more sophisticated Chinese literary circles. The scriptures they chose to translate, while fascinating both for the style of translation and for what they reflect about the Buddhist community in China and the state of Buddhism outside China, had little impact on subsequent Chinese Buddhist history and were, for the most part, seldom read. At court, Buddhism was of little consequence but was mentioned in passing for its “gentle offerings” of fruit, incense and flowers in place of animal sacrifice; by the end of the Han even the emperor made offerings to Buddhist images, but associated them with the Yellow Emperor and Laozi (Huang–Lao).

  PublisherDOI

• Xu Gaoseng zhuan

  2016-10-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Gaoseng zhuan

  2016-10-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Wang Yongbo and Lothar Ledderose (eds): Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. Shandong Province, vol. 1. xxvi, 508 pp. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag; and Hangzhou: China Academy of Art Press, 2014. ISBN 978 3 447 06931 1. - Wang Yongbo and Claudia Wenzel (eds): Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. Shandong Province, vol. 2. xi, 471 pp. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag; and Hangzhou: China Academy of Art Press, 2015. ISBN 978 3 447 10329 9. - Lothar Ledderose and Sun Hua (eds): Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. Sichuan Province, vol. 1. xx, 441 pp. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag; and Hangzhou: China Academy of Art Press, 2014. ISBN 978 3 447 06932 8. - Tsai Suey-Ling and Sun Hua (eds): Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. Sichuan Province, vol. 2. xii, 448 pp. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag; and Hangzhou: China Academy of Art Press, 2014. ISBN 978 3 447 10267 4.

  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies · 2016-10-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Wang Yongbo and Lothar Ledderose (eds): Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. Shandong Province, vol. 1. xxvi, 508 pp. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag; and Hangzhou: China Academy of Art Press, 2014. ISBN 978 3 447 06931 1. - Wang Yongbo and Claudia Wenzel (eds): Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. Shandong Province, vol. 2. xi, 471 pp. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag; and Hangzhou: China Academy of Art Press, 2015. ISBN 978 3 447 10329 9. - Lothar Ledderose and Sun Hua (eds): Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. Sichuan Province, vol. 1. xx, 441 pp. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag; and Hangzhou: China Academy of Art Press, 2014. ISBN 978 3 447 06932 8. - Tsai Suey-Ling and Sun Hua (eds): Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. Sichuan Province, vol. 2. xii, 448 pp. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag; and Hangzhou: China Academy of Art Press, 2014. ISBN 978 3 447 10267 4. - Volume 79 Issue 3

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• 柯嘉豪

  2 shared

• Bernard Fauré

  2 shared

• Meir Shahar

  2 shared

• John Relics Of The Buddha

  Princeton University

  2 shared

• Duncan Ryūken

  Princeton University

  2 shared

• Charles Hallisey

  2 shared

• Chün‐fang Yü

  2 shared

• Stephen F. Teiser

  2 shared

Labs

• Vice Provost for Student AffairsPI

Education

• Ph.D.

  Stanford University

  1996

• B.A.

  University of California at Berkeley

  1986