The volume under review is the third instalment of a series focusing on Buddhist stone sutras in Shandong. The editors admirably maintain the high quality of previous volumes and continue to impress us with the richness of the Buddhist stone carving tradition, calling for even more questions to challenge our understanding of Chinese Buddhism.

This tome, following the format of previous volumes, arranges the materials according to north–south geographical sequence rather than a temporal order. According to Lothar Ledderose's plan laid out in his introduction to volume 1, the current volume 3 covers a number of sites including Mount Jian 尖山 (16 rubbings), Mount Yang 陽山 (1 rubbing), Yellow Stone Cliff 黃石崖 (10 rubbings), Mount Culai 徂徠山 (10 rubbings), Mount Fenghuang 鳳凰山 (10 rubbings), Mount Shuiniu 水牛山 (3 rubbings), Mount Ziyang 紫陽山 (2 rubbings), Mount Tao 陶山 (2 rubbings), and Mount Long 龍山 (1 rubbing). The dates of these carvings range from ad 526 to ad 921. (A stele about prohibiting stone quarrying dated to 1875–1908 was also included on pp. 119–20.) These inscriptions include numerous Buddha names, excerpted scriptures, and colophons.

This volume represents a new systematic effort to preserve and collect all available primary sources of Buddhist stone sutras in Shandong. In particular, because some of the carvings such as Mount Jian have been destroyed by stone quarrying and more are facing threats, the collection of their rubbings becomes very urgent. Not only did the authors absorb previous scholarship, they also copied the reconstructed layout diagram and distribution maps for many sites such as Mount Jian. Extant inscriptions were created with rubbings – if the carvings were destroyed, previous rubbings from various libraries were found and produced as high-quality reprints.

The existence of these stone carvings provides another angle from which to view Chinese Buddhism. The most important value is that these carvings contain rich socio-economic data about the donors, i.e. the Wei Zishen 韋子深 clan and the Tang Yong 唐邕 (532?–581) family who sponsored the carving project in Mount Jian, and the Wang Zichun 王子椿 clan who sponsored those in Mount Culai. In particular, the identity of Seng'an Daoyi 僧安道一, whose activities were documented in Mount Jian and in Mount Hongding (Vol. 1), and Mount Tie (Vol 2), remains intriguing, because his importance to the carving projects has been completely ignored in the received historical sources. These colophons in stone carving raise interesting questions about the organization of Buddhist communities such as the Fayi 法義 brotherhood, female devotees’ participation, etc.

All these new sources confirm once again the existence of unique regional characteristics in Shandong Buddhism. For example, the carving of the Buddha title “Great Buddha of Emptiness King” (Dakong wangfo 大空王佛), which has been discovered in fifteen different locations, appears again in Mount Jian, Mount Fenghuang, and Mount Culai as documented in this volume, suggesting a unique regional cultic tradition. However, this cult and the Buddha name never appear in the received Buddhist records. Moreover, the selection and arrangement of these Buddhist inscriptions reflects a high level of intellectual and spiritual sophistication as shown in the puzzling quote of 98 characters from Wenshu shili suoshuo mohe bore boluomi jing 文殊師利所說摩訶波羅蜜經 (T 232), which appears 12 times in Shandong carvings, three of which are documented in this volume.

For Buddhologists, this scripture is particularly important for Tiantai and Chan Buddhism and its appearance in stone inscriptions deserves further attention. Although the contributors have done their best to transcribe all the scriptural texts and checked with the standard Taishō canon, I wish the contributors had consulted more available canon editions, especially the collation notes in the Beijing edition of Zhonghua dazangjing 中華大藏經. The stone sutra version as transcribed on page 152 is missing three characters (以，猶，處) if compared with the Taishō edition, whose collators note that in the four witnesses they checked (Song 宋/Zifu 資福, Yuan 元/Puning 普寧, Ming 明/Jiaxing 嘉興, and Palace 宮/Kunaichō 宫内厅 editions) these three characters are missing as well. (T 8 no. 232 731a 15–19). If we check the collation notes in the Zhonghua dazangjing (vol. 8, p. 261), these three characters are also missing in six editions (Zifu 資福, Qisha 磧砂, Puning 普寧, Yongle South 永樂南, Jingshan 徑山/Jiaxing 嘉興, and Qing 清 editions). Since both the Taishō and the Zhonghua dazangjing editions are based on the Kaibao 開寶-Zhaocheng 趙城-Gyoryo 高麗 textual lineage originated from Sichuan and the other textual witnesses which the Shandong stone sutra excerpt conforms with are based on a different textual lineage popular in the south, it is clear that the canonical version of the stone sutra in Shandong is consistent with the canonical tradition in South China. This intriguing and puzzling example shows how far the materials collected in this volume can generate new research opportunities.

One of the amazing features of this book is its bilingual arrangement for both research articles and documented information. For other technical aspects, co-ordinates for each site are provided, including the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) projection system. The volume is also amply illustrated with maps, site diagrams, photos, images of rubbings, and close-ups. All rubbings were provided with Chinese transcriptions checked with various Buddhist sources, in particular the standard Taishō canon. Following the standard format, each site is documented with title, layout text, transcription, English translation, physical description (conditions, lost or not, format, frame, grid, décor, carving technique, overall dimensions, positions and size of large and small characters), followed by detailed references in both English and Chinese. The discussion part in the references section is particularly useful because it is basically an annotated bibliography, summarizing previous scholarship and varied opinions.

This volume, together with the published tomes in the same series, is an achievement of both the Chinese and Western scholarly traditions of studying epigraphs, Chinese Buddhism, and artistic and material culture. As in the previous two volumes, the contributors in the current volume fully assimilated the research accomplished by the Chinese evidential scholarship, especially the study of epitaphs (Jinshixue 金石學), represented by Huang Yi 黃易 (1744–1802), Duan Songling 段松苓 (1745–1800), and Ruan Yuan 阮元 (1764–1849), who did extensive work on Shandong stone carvings. In addition, the contributors utilized and checked local gazetteers extensively. Fieldwork is also indispensable in their research and provides accurate description of the actual condition of the stone sutras.

It should be noted that the incredible Chinese scholarship accumulated in the past several decades makes this volume and the series possible. Some of these scholars are also contributors, notably Lai Fei 賴非. Not only have new large-scale surveys been conducted through decades since the mid-1980s, more and more in-depth thematic research based on these surveys has emerged as well.

In sum, the discovery and reproduction of the Buddhist stone sutras in Shandong are exciting developments and will move scholarship forward. I believe that the publication of this series in English and Chinese has without doubt brought the study of the stone sutra tradition into a new era.