The cult of Zhunti 准提/準提 (Sanskrit: Cundī) is a unique religious and cultural phenomenon in China. However, the scholarship devoted to its history has long been dominated by two problematic models—the model of ‘Sinification’, according to which the goddess Zhunti is a Chinese Buddhist deity borrowed from an Indian source, and the ‘evolution’ model that depicts the persistence of the Zhunti cult as a continuous and gradual process. I challenge these views and instead argue that, far from being a foreign transplant, Zhunti is a deity ‘made in China’ and there is no evidence of continuity in the development of the cult from the Liao to Ming–Qing times. To justify these assertions, I re-examine the development of the cult of Zhunti by exploring its vicissitudes throughout history and highlighting the ‘Chinese creations’ that were produced during the process of the making of the goddess Zhunti.

This article examines the emergence of a new emphasis on contemporary specialized knowledge in sixteenth-century China. During this period, sources of authority such as antiquity and the court came to lose their elevated status. As a result, scholars increasingly saw the expertise of a contemporary disciplinary community as a superior standard for validating knowledge. This trend appeared in scholarly collaboration and the citation of contemporaries, as well as new kinds of paratextual materials such as lists of works cited and literature reviews. These findings on new intellectual communities in the sixteenth century call for a reassessment of the better-documented shifts in East Asian intellectual culture from the mid-eighteenth century to the present.

This paper aims to critically appraise the incorporation of opium poppy into medical practice in Song-dynasty China. By analysing materia medica and formularies, along with non-medical sources from the Song period, this study sheds light on the role of Chinese Buddhist monasteries in the process of incorporation of foreign plants into Chinese medicine. It argues that Buddhist monasteries played a significant role in the evolution of the use of opium poppy in Song dynasty medicine. This is because the consumption practices in Buddhist monasteries inspired substantial changes in the medical application of the flower during the Southern Song dynasty. While, at the beginning of Song dynasty, court scholars incorporated opium poppy into official materia medica in order to treat disorders such as huangdan  and xiaoke, as well as cinnabar poisoning, this study of the later Song medical treatises shows how opium poppy was repurposed to treat symptoms such as diarrhoea, coughing and spasms. Such a shift in the medical use of the poppy occurred after Chinese literati and doctors became acquainted with the role of the flower in the diet and medical practices of Buddhist monks across China. Therefore, the case study of the medical application of opium poppy during the Song dynasty provides us with insights into how the spread of certain practices in Buddhist monasteries might have contributed to the change in both professional medical practices and daily-life healthcare in local communities in that period.