Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500–1700, by Jimmy Yu, Oxford University Press: New York, 2012, xiv + 272 pp. ISBN 978 019 984488 3, US$99.00 (hardcover); ISBN 978 019 984490 6, US$29.95 (paperback)

Jimmy Yu's book studies practices of bodily mutilation and transfiguration in 16th- and 17th-century China, particularly in the central and southern parts of...