Meir Shahar 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 is the Shoul N. Eisenberg Chair for East Asian Affairs at Tel Aviv University. His books include Crazy Ji: Chinese Religion and Popular Literature (1998); The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts (2008); and Oedipal God: The Chinese Nezha and His Indian Origins (2015).