Bryan S. Turner and Oscar Salemink, eds., Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia

The field of Asian religions is so sprawling that it can seem impossible to survey.First off, "Asia" refers both to an enormous geographic zone as well as to an imaginary realm profusely conjured by explorers, missionaries, merchants, politicians, and reformers.Secondly, "religion" can span countless beliefs and practices, individual experiences and communal formations, ancient artifacts and present-day developments, human and superhuman.Attempts to provide grand narratives or universal theories of Asian religions at large seem increasingly risky and old-fashioned.Recent scholarship, then, has tended toward works of expertise in particular sections of the field.Yet, even with increasingly refined localized studies, institutions-such as universities, media outlets, and government bureaus-still maintain an area of study called "Asian religions" and expect that its professors and authors can say something meaningful about its unifying aspects.Many of us in the field only find ourselves speaking these dreaded generalizations in introductory courses where we fight to restrain ourselves from confusing undergraduates with caveats, exceptions, and the colonial origin stories.The more intrepid among us write textbooks or edit volumes with framing essays that sketch the problematic histories of the field and reconsider definitions for its key terms.