Chinese Buddhism is often portrayed as the product of a protracted encounter between Indian Buddhism and Chinese civilization, an encounter that led to the "sinification" of Buddhist teachings and practices. In a masterful display of scholarship, Robert Sharf makes a major contribution to the re-evaluation of the encounter. He shows that, although the Chinese were cognizant of the foreign origins of Buddhism, their actual exposure to South Asian clerics and Sanskrit texts was limited throughout medieval times. For the most part, Sharf argues, the Chinese dialogue with Buddhism took place among the Chinese themselves. That being the case, Chinese Buddhism is more properly approached as a product of sinitic culture, not a distorted reflection of normative Indian Buddhist prototypes. Sharf draws his argument in part from a close analysis of an obscure, nominally Buddhist text, the Treasure Store Treatise (Pao-tsang lun). The book begins with a careful reconstruction of historical and religious provenance of the text. It next turns to an analysis of internal evidence to demonstrate the close affinity between the Treatise and texts associated with Ox-head Ch'an and Twofold-Mystery Taoism. There follows a fascinating discussion of the metaphysical underpinnings of the Treatise in Chinese "correlative cosmology", in which Sharf points out the degree to which the metaphysical notion of "sympathetic resonance" (kan-ying) structured the medieval Chinese understanding of virtually all aspects of Buddhist doctrine, ritual, and soteriology. The introductory section is followed by a translation of the three chapters of the Treatise, including lengthy annotation that provides extended philologicaland philosophical discussion of dozens of key terms and concepts. The study concludes with a critical analysis of the place of Tantric, or Esoteric, Buddhism within the Chinese Buddhist tradition.

《多元族群与中西文化交流：基于中西文献的新研究》围绕基督教对于中国少数民族、边疆民族等地区的多元民族社会的作用与影响展开，尤其对近代以来多元民族的中西文化交流作了着重探讨，包括了外籍传教士与中国的边疆地区、近代中国少数民族对基督教的认识、传教士对少数民族文化的研究等具有代表性的课题。各研究课题以研究深入、史料翔实、论述严谨、观点新颖等见长，较之当前国内基督教研究的现状作了大胆的突破，一定程度上可以代表基督教在中国边疆少数民族传播史研究的前沿水平，对跨文化、跨宗教的中西文化交流研究具有一定的借鉴意义。

本书采用解构主义的修辞阅读方法，重构了中国儒家注释对于《诗经》诗歌的注释方式，将其视为一种“讽寓性”的古典美学模式。又以同样的修辞阅读法，重新解读了17～18世纪欧洲传教士关于中国哲学问题的争论和黑格尔对中国历史的哲学论述，并将这两者与儒家注经者并置，把他们的工作视为可资比较的、以美学模式建构中国历史的创造。