The Buddha's Finger Bones at Famensi and the Art of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism (academic study)

Robert H. Sharf's The Buddha's Finger Bones at Famensi and the Art of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism, published in The Art Bulletin in 2011, is a peer reviewed art historical study by a scholar who holds the D. H. Chen distinguished professorship in Buddhist studies at Berkeley, examining the 1987 Famen Temple crypt discovery and arguing the four finger bone relics and their nested reliquaries should be read through the specific ritual logic of Tang dynasty Esoteric Buddhism rather than as generic devotional objects. Its strength is genuine art historical rigor, close reading of the reliquaries' iconography and construction against the esoteric ritual texts that would have shaped their original use, published in one of art history's leading peer reviewed journals. Its limit is that Sharf's specific esoteric reading is his own scholarly interpretation of ambiguous material evidence, not an uncontested fact about the crypt's finds, so a claim resting on his precise ritual interpretation should note it as one art historian's argued reading rather than a settled archaeological conclusion.