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This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Please check back later for the full article.

Archaeology, as it has developed over the last few decades, helps define a context for both relic and image worship. It maps Buddhist sacred spaces both horizontally, across the physical and natural landscape, and vertically, in time, highlighting antecedents of religious sites and subsequent transformations. An important aspect is that of the interconnectedness of sites through pilgrimage and religious travel. Archaeology has helped to contextualize Buddhist religious architecture within its cultural landscape.

The eightfold path shown by the Buddha in the middle of the first millennium bce was founded on wisdom, morality, and concentration. Like other contemporary Indic religions, Buddha dhamma had no central organization, “no single authoritative text, no simple set of defining practices,” according to Jacob N. Kinnard. Its core principle was refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, though as it expanded across Asia, it absorbed local traditions, responded to historical factors, and evolved philosophically. The physical manifestations of the dhamma appeared in the archaeological record at least two to three hundred years later, in the form of inscriptions, stupas, images, and other objects of veneration. Relic and image worship were important features in the expansion of Buddhism across the subcontinent and into other parts of Asia.

From its establishment on the peninsula in 1784 to Pope Francis’s visit to beatify 124 martyrs, in 2014, 230 years later, the Catholic Church in Korea has experienced massive change as it has sought to navigate persecution, imperialism, national division, war, dictatorship, and democratization. Despite the challenges it has faced, the Korean Catholic Church has managed to transform itself from a tiny, marginalized community into a highly respected part of Korean society with millions of members. This history can be divided into four periods: the time of hope, in which some Koreans came to believe that Catholicism would bring both spiritual salvation and this-worldly knowledge (the early 16th century to 1784); the time of persecution in which Catholics on the Korean peninsula suffered and died for their faith (1784–1886); the time of imperialism (1886–1945), during which Catholics had to balance the demands of nation, state, and faith in the face of increasing Japanese control of their country; and the time of development (1945–2014) as the Catholic Church in South Korea (the Catholic Church in North Korea being essentially destroyed) became an increasingly integral and active part of Korean society.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Please check back later for the full article.

The 21st century has often been touted as the “Asian century,” largely because of the remarkable rise of China as a formidable economic power. But there are other developments afoot; foremost among them is the rising numbers of individuals who identify as Christians. Apart from the Philippines and Timor Leste, Christians are a minority in all Asian countries, but over the last two decades a marked increase, especially in India and China, has led to predictions that, by 2025, the number of Asian Christians, now estimated at 350 million, will rise to 460 million. Given Christianity’s often troubled history in Asia, this increase in Christian followers is an intriguing development that calls for further investigation. The arrival of Christianity in Asia coincided with the European arrival in the late 15th century. Christianity has been associated with the West, an association that became more entrenched with the imposition of colonialism in the 19th century.

The multiple ways in which millions of men and women in Asia have incorporated “being Christian” into their own identities thus offers an intriguing history. To some degree, it may be attributed to a growing acceptance of Christian “inculturation,” which allows for ritual adaptations to the local environment. In some cases, too, Christian churches are seen as a voice for marginalized and otherwise powerless communities against non-Christian governments. However, there is a general consensus that the extraordinary rise in Christian numbers in Asia, especially among youth, is due (as in Africa and Latin America) to the presentation of the Christian message via technologically sophisticated techniques that emphasize global links while drawing on underlying beliefs in divine healing and the power of prayer. Regarded with some caution by mainstream theologians, this dramatic and participatory style represents the new face of Asian Christianity.

Throughout the course of premodern China’s history, the planning and performance of religious ritual has been a primary concern. These offerings of bloody victuals, drink, and, later, incense to gods and ancestors seek to ensure the ongoing vitality and prosperity of the living and the peaceful security and well-being of the ancestral dead. Sacrifices were understood as food, sustenance for the occupants of the other world, who would, in return, imbue the sacrificed provender with blessings (fu福), which the sacrificer and family could share by consuming the food. This sacrificial ritual is at the heart of a diffuse, indigenous religion that encompasses people of all social classes, from the poorest peasant to the ruler and his representatives. It was never named, but scholars sometimes isolate segments and discuss them as “folk religion,” “state religion,” “Confucianism,” or “Daoism.” C. K. Yang dubbed the complex “shenism” based on the Chinese word for god (shen神), but this ignores the closely parallel practices directed toward the ancestors. Here we will use the term Chinese popular religion to refer to this complex of beliefs and practices.

Daoism (previously Taoism) is a vexed word that has been used to stand for several distinct terms in Chinese. Here it will refer to China’s indigenous organized religion, a faith founded upon a revelation in 142 ce to a man named Zhang Ling and passed down through the ages by ritual ordination and the transmission of sacred texts, talismans, and ritual regalia. This religion appropriated the ancient philosophical text Laozi老子 and reread it as theology, taking a divinized form of the legendary figure Laozi as their supreme deity, the Most High Lord Lao. Although initially a communal religion with strong millenarian beliefs, Daoism evolved into a religion of religious specialists employed ad hoc by the populace for resolving problems of birth, health, death, prosperity, and security. Similarly, Daoism was initially an evangelical faith requiring of its members a complete break with popular practice, but Daoist priests evolved into caretakers for the popular pantheon, providing the lengthiest and most complex rituals within the array of ritual interventions that might address specific problems or events.

South Asia around the mid-1st millennium bce was a politically and socially turbulent time. Siddhartha, a young man of the Shakya ganasanga, witnessed the cruelty of warfare and the rising social and economic disparity of his time. He realized that the world is full of suffering. This observation evolved into the foremost truth of his doctrine of the Four Noble Truths. This essay will attempt to vividly portray the world of Buddha. It was a world where Brahmans and rajas, merchants and bankers, scribes and artisans, servants and slaves, courtesans-cum-musicians and dancers, farmers and fishermen, and people from mountains and forests, all strived to further (or at least maintain) their place on the newly formed social hierarchy. Some of those from low castes and outside the social core managed to penetrate the mainstream, but some never made it. Others born from elite families were cast out. Meanwhile, the presence of Achaemenid Persian Empire in the northwest of the subcontinent during the Buddha’s time, followed by the establishment of Hellenistic states after Alexander’s invasion in the late 4th century bce, brought new waves of immigration—thus exchanges of goods and ideas—with west and central Asia. Buddhist sangha and other communities of dissidents were refuges for some of the more unfortunate men and women looking for sanctuary. Based on stories in early Buddhist texts, namely the Pali canon and contemporary Brahmana texts (along with inclusion of Buddhist artwork of his time and after, this article will attempt reconstruct the historical Buddha and the time in which he lived.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Please check back later for the full article.

Port cities have long played a critical role as nodes in nascent processes of globalization and in the circulation of peoples, commodities, and ideas within and across the maritime spaces of Southeast Asia. Although port cities had been an indelible component of the islands and archipelagos of this region since at least the 15th century, the rise of global empire in the 19th century rejuvenated these communities by the sea, giving rise to thriving metropolises from Rangoon to Singapore, Bangkok to Penang. These ascendant cities served as “imperial bridgeheads” connecting the products and peoples of the Southeast Asian hinterlands to world markets. Yet, the idea of “cosmopolitanism” arguably pervades our understanding of these port cities; bustling docks, diverse populations, and lively scenes of popular culture take precedence over the imperial coercion unfolding within and beyond its shores.

Port cities and urbanization were also intimately intertwined with the violence of conquest and Islamic insurgency wracking the countryside beyond their borders. When armed conflicts such as the bitter Dutch-Aceh War in the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia) and the Moro Wars in the southern Philippines engulfed venerable Muslim sultanates, maritime metropolises emerged as critical nodes, sites for the dissemination of weapons and smugglers, spies and diplomats, contentious ideas and theologies. These circulations were facilitated not just by Muslim networks or colonial agents, but by the very cosmopolitan nature of port cities. Chinese, Arab, and German, Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian, all became drawn into the whirling vortex of “Islamic insurgencies.” By highlighting the integral position of port cities in the conduct of various armed conflicts, it will become possible to gain new perspectives and suggest reconfigured research paradigms for understanding the connected histories of colonial conquest.

The Khojas of Kashgar name a Sufi lineage, which became a ruling dynasty in eastern Turkestan or present-day Xinjiang in western China. Founded by the Samarkandi spiritual master Ahmad Kāsānī (d. 1542), a member of the Naqshbandiyya Sufi order strongly implicated in politics, the lineage divided into two competing branches, one led by Ishāq Khoja (d. 1599) and the other by Āfāq Khoja (d. 1694). Both leaders were influential at the court in Yarkand and engaged in frequent proselytizing missions among Turkic, Mongol, Tibetan, and Chinese populations. Yet, only Āfāq Khoja and his group of followers, the Āfāqiyya, with the support of Zunghar Mongols, created a kind of theocracy whose religious capital was Kashgar, and which was based on Sufi organization, practice, and ideology. Venerated as Sufi saints (īshān), the Khojas embodied a politico-religious form of Islamic sanctity (walāya) while promoting a doctrine of mystical renunciation. Paradoxically, although the regime did not survive internecine conflicts and the Qing conquest in 1759, the Khojas of Kashgar, including the Ishāqiyya sublineage, continued to be very active in the long run. They conducted insurrections throughout the Tarim basin and created short-lived enclaves until their complete neutralization in 1866 with the forced exile of the last great Khoja, Buzurg Khān Töre (d. 1869). In Xinjiang, the Khojas have remained venerated figures of the past until now, although collective memory kept a contradictory picture of them, oscillating between holy heroes and feudal oppressors. Descendants of the exiled Khojas in eastern Uzbekistan and southern Kazakhstan formed communities that still preserve relics and oral as well as written traditions.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Please check back later for the full article.

The diverse religions of the peoples of Southeast Asia include indigenous traditions of supernaturally oriented beliefs and practices plus four of the largest world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. The main changes that have taken place in religion in 20th-century Southeast Asia include several developments. The first notable change was increased conversion to one or another of the world religions, especially Christianity. The second was national efforts to eliminate or reduce religion in some countries and to shape or control it in others. In addition, popular religion in some instances became more politicized and linked to conflict, especially between Christian and Muslim communities. There were efforts at reform, to modernize religious traditions, or often to bring them into line with orthodoxy.

These religious changes occurred in two phases. The first, involving conversion, had begun in some areas long before, but was furthered and intensified in the 20th century as colonial governments extended control beyond urban areas, to coastal enclaves, lowland agricultural regions, and over interior and mountainous areas, making these more accessible to mission efforts. The second phase of change began in the middle decades of the 20th century as the colonized countries (including all the present-day Southeast Asian nations except Thailand) gained independence and then often attempted to shape religion in various ways. These efforts varied, but the main line of differentiation was between what happened in the socialist regimes, on the one hand, and in the non-socialist ones, on the other. The socialist countries were more inclined than the non-socialist ones to diminish, deemphasize, or control religion, and to block or inhibit missionization. The results can be seen today, where unconverted communities are common or even prevalent in the highland or tribal areas of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, in contrast to such areas in Thailand and—though less can be said about it—Myanmar. Finally, as a result of these changes, over the course of the 20th century and throughout Southeast Asia generally, there has been a reduction in religious diversity, above all as a result of the conversion of people from many different indigenous religious traditions to one or another of the fewer world religions. This is not to say, however, that adherents of Buddhism Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism are necessarily very similar to others of the same world religion.