Kings of Oxen and Horses

Auteur
Meir Shahar is the Shoul N. Eisenberg Chair for East Asian Affairs at Tel Aviv University. His books include Crazy Ji: Chinese Religion and Popular Literature (1998); The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts (2008); and Oedipal God: The Chinese Nezha and His Indian Origins (2015).

Texte du rabat

Meir Shahar examines the place of draft animals in Chinese and Buddhist religious traditions and, in so doing, sheds new light on human interaction with nonhuman animals more broadly.

Résumé
For centuries in China, people beseeched deities to protect the draft animals on which they relied. Across social classesfrom peasants plowing the fields to merchants transporting goods through soldiers riding into battleanimals were essential to daily life and so took on a central place in the religious imagination. Prayers and rituals for animal well-being were most frequently addressed to the Horse King, divine protector of horses, donkeys, and mules, or the Ox King, who watched over oxen and buffaloes.

Kings of Oxen and Horses is a history of these two gods: their myths, their rituals, and their worshipers. It examines the place of draft animals in Chinese and Buddhist religious traditions and, in so doing, sheds new light on human interaction with nonhuman animals more broadly. Meir Shahar traces the history of the Horse and Ox Kings from late imperial China back to ancient India, revealing the long-term Buddhist influence on Chinese rural religion. He explores the myth of the draft animal as incarnate god, showing how Buddhism transmitted a belief in the sanctity of cattle and a taboo on beef from India to China. Shahar considers the ties between humans and their animal companions through the prism of religious practice, and he draws illuminating comparisons to other world religions. Bridging the gap between animal studies and religious studies, this book is a major contribution to both.

Contenu
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Iconographic Prelude
   Part I: The Horse King
2. The Horse King's Ancestry
3. The Horse King's Cult
4. Legends of an Equine God
   Part II: The Ox King
5. The Ox King and the Beef Taboo
6. The Human Ox
7. The Divine Ox
8. The Chinese Ox and the Indian Cow
9. The Ox King Festival
10. A Daoist Relation
    Epilogue
    Appendix A: Bovine-Healing Scriptures Addressed to the Ox King
    Appendix B: Bovine-Healing Scriptures Not Addressed to the Ox King
    Appendix C: Equine-Healing Scriptures Addressed to the Horse King
    Abbreviations
    Notes
    Works Cited
    Index