Autocremation was primarily a Sinitic Buddhist cre-
ation that first appeared in late fourth-century China.
As practiced in China, autocremation was not a con-
tinuation of an Indian custom. Rather, it developed af-
ter a particular interpretation of certain Indian texts was
combined with indigenous traditions, such as burning
the body to bring rain, a practice that long predated the
arrival of Buddhism in China. The most influential tex-
tual models were some of the bloodier JATAKAtales and
the twenty-third chapter of the LOTUSSUTRA(Chinese,
Miaofa lianhua jing; Sanskrit, Saddharmapundarlka-
sutra), in which the Bodhisattva Bhaisajyagururaja
(Medicine-King) burns his body in offering to the bud-
dhas and to the sutra itself. The literary precedents for
the practice of self-immolation found in Indian Bud-
dhist sources are often extremely graphic, even if they
were intended only rhetorically. These have been well
studied by Hubert Durt and Reiko Ohnuma. The va-
lidity of self-immolation was reinforced by the pro-
duction of Chinese apocryphal sutras that vindicated
the practice, by the composition of biographies of self-
immolators, and, in time, their inclusion in the Bud-
dhist canon as exemplars of heroic practice.
Self-immolation was often controversial and at-
tracted opposition from Confucians and sometimes
from the state. The Confucian revivalist Han Yu
(768–824), in his famous Lun Fogu biao(Memorial on
the Buddha Relic), warned Emperor Xianzong (r.
805–820) in 819 that he should not honor the Buddha’s
relic because this would trigger a mass outbreak of re-
ligious fervor, causing people to burn the tops of their
heads and set fire to their fingers. An edict promulgated
in 955 by Emperor Shizong (r. 954–959) of the Later
Zhou explicitly prohibited self-immolation for both
san ̇gha and laity. Within Buddhism, the strongest ob-
jection came from the eminent monk YIJING(635–713),
who wrote a lengthy diatribe against autocremation in
his Nanhai jigui neifa zhuan(An Account of the Dharma
Sent Back from the Southern Seas). Much later the Ming
dynasty cleric ZHUHONG(1532–1612) included a heart-
felt and extremely critical essay on the practice of burn-
ing the body in his Zheng’e ji(Rectification of Errors,
1614). The most coherently and passionately argued de-
fense of self-immolation is that of Yongming YANSHOU
(904–975) in his Wanshan Tonggui ji(The Common
End of the Myriad Good Practices). For Yanshou self-
immolation is primarily a manifestation of DANA(GIV-
ING), and as the ultimate expression of this PARAMITA
(PERFECTION) it is grounded in ultimate truth rather
than at the level of conventional phenomena.
Bibliography
Benn, James A. “Where Text Meets Flesh: Burning the Body as
an ‘Apocryphal Practice’ in Chinese Buddhism.” History of
Religions37, no. 4 (1998): 295–322.
Durt, Hubert. “Two Interpretations of Human-Flesh Offering:
Misdeed or Supreme Sacrifice.” Journal of the International
College for Advanced Buddhist Studies(Kokosai Bukkyogaku
daigakuin daigaku kenkyukiyo) 1 (1998): 236–210 (sic).
Gernet, Jacques. “Les suicides par le feu chez les bouddhistes
chinois de Ve au Xe siècle.” Mélanges publiés par l’Institute
des Hautes Études Chinoises2 (1960): 527–558.
Jan, Yün-hua. “Buddhist Self-Immolation in Medieval China.”
History of Religions4 (1965): 243–265.
Ohnuma, Reiko. “The Gift of the Body and the Gift of the
Dharma.” History of Religions37, no. 4 (1998): 323–359.
Orzech, Charles D. “Provoked Suicide and the Victim’s Behav-
ior.” In Curing Violence,ed. Mark I. Wallace and Theophus
H. Smith. Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1994.
JAMESA. BENNSENGZHAOPractically the entire life of the important early Chi-
nese MADHYAMAKA SCHOOLphilosopher Shi Sengzhao
(374–414 C.E.) was connected to KUMARAJIVA(350–
409/413) and Kumarajva’s translation workshop in
Chang’an. Coming from a poor family, Sengzhao
earned his living as a copyist. This provided him with
an excellent education in the Chinese classics, as well
as Daoist and Buddhist scriptures. Recognized as a dis-
tinguished literatus by age twenty, he was fascinated
with Kumarajva even before Kumarajva arrived at
Chang’an. In fact, according to his biography, Sen-
gzhao traveled to Guzang to meet his world renowned
mentor, by whose side he spent the next twenty years
serving as disciple and interpreter.
Many of Kumarajva’s translations bear the literary
style of Sengzhao, who is said to have had the primary
responsibility for editing Kumarajva’s translations,
adapting them to the taste of the literary elite in
Chang’an. Sengzhao is also responsible for putting to-
gether a catalogue of Kumarajva’s translations, in-
cluding some ninety titles, which circulated in
Chang’an as late as the sixth century and which were
later absorbed into the comprehensive catalogues Chu
sanzang jiji(Collection of Records about the Production
of the Tripitaka) and Kaihuang Sanbao lu(Catalogue
of the Three Treasures of the Kaihuang [Era]).SENGZHAO