Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Kings of Oxen and Horses: Draft Animals, Buddhism, and Chinese Rural Religion

Kings of Oxen and Horses: Draft Animals, Buddhism, and Chinese Rural Religion

Shahar, Meir

Hardcover

Series: The Sheng Yen Chinese Buddhist Studies

BuddhismChinese HistoryZoology

ISBN10: 0231218281
ISBN13: 9780231218283
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: Mar 4 2025
Pages: 376
Weight: 1.66
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

For centuries in China, people beseeched deities to protect the draft animals on which they relied. Across social classes--from peasants plowing the fields to merchants transporting goods through soldiers riding into battle--animals 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.

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