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Early Medieval China
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Book Synopsis Early Medieval China by : Wendy Swartz
Download or read book Early Medieval China written by Wendy Swartz and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative sourcebook builds a dynamic understanding of China's early medieval period (220–589) through an original selection and arrangement of literary, historical, religious, and critical texts. A tumultuous and formative era, these centuries saw the longest stretch of political fragmentation in China's imperial history, resulting in new ethnic configurations, the rise of powerful clans, and a pervasive divide between north and south. Deploying thematic categories, the editors sketch the period in a novel way for students and, by featuring many texts translated into English for the first time, recast the era for specialists. Thematic topics include regional definitions and tensions, governing mechanisms and social reality, ideas of self and other, relations with the unseen world, everyday life, and cultural concepts. Within each section, the editors and translators introduce the selected texts and provide critical commentary on their historical significance, along with suggestions for further reading and research.
Book Synopsis Philosophy and Religion in Early Medieval China by : Alan K. L. Chan
Download or read book Philosophy and Religion in Early Medieval China written by Alan K. L. Chan and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-08-04 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring a time of profound change, this book details the intellectual ferment after the fall of the Han dynasty. Questions about "heaven" and the affairs of the world that had seemed resolved by Han Confucianism resurfaced and demanded reconsideration. New currents in philosophy, religion, and intellectual life emerged to leave an indelible mark on the subsequent development of Chinese thought and culture. This period saw the rise of xuanxue ("dark learning" or "learning of the mysterious Dao"), the establishment of religious Daoism, and the rise of Buddhism. In examining the key ideas of xuanxue and focusing on its main proponents, the contributors to this volume call into question the often-presumed monolithic identity of this broad philosophical front. The volume also highlights the richness and complexity of religion in China during this period, examining the relationship between the Way of the Celestial Master and local, popular religious beliefs and practices, and discussing the relationship between religious Daoism and Buddhism.
Book Synopsis Making Transcendents by : Robert Ford Campany
Download or read book Making Transcendents written by Robert Ford Campany and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2009-02-18 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention, Joseph Levenson Prize (pre-1900 category), Association for Asian Studies By the middle of the third century B.C.E. in China there were individuals who sought to become transcendents (xian)—deathless, godlike beings endowed with supernormal powers. This quest for transcendence became a major form of religious expression and helped lay the foundation on which the first Daoist religion was built. Both xian and those who aspired to this exalted status in the centuries leading up to 350 C.E. have traditionally been portrayed as secretive and hermit-like figures. This groundbreaking study offers a very different view of xian-seekers in late classical and early medieval China. It suggests that transcendence did not involve a withdrawal from society but rather should be seen as a religious role situated among other social roles and conceived in contrast to them. Robert Campany argues that the much-discussed secrecy surrounding ascetic disciplines was actually one important way in which practitioners presented themselves to others. He contends, moreover, that many adepts were not socially isolated at all but were much sought after for their power to heal the sick, divine the future, and narrate their exotic experiences. The book moves from a description of the roles of xian and xian-seekers to an account of how individuals filled these roles, whether by their own agency or by others’—or, often, by both. Campany summarizes the repertoire of features that constituted xian roles and presents a detailed example of what analyses of those cultural repertoires look like. He charts the functions of a basic dialectic in the self-presentations of adepts and examines their narratives and relations with others, including family members and officials. Finally, he looks at hagiographies as attempts to persuade readers as to the identities and reputations of past individuals. His interpretation of these stories allows us to see how reputations were shaped and even co-opted—sometimes quite surprisingly—into the ranks of xian. Making Transcendents provides a nuanced discussion that draws on a sophisticated grasp of diverse theoretical sources while being thoroughly grounded in traditional Chinese hagiographical, historiographical, and scriptural texts. The picture it presents of the quest for transcendence as a social phenomenon in early medieval China is original and provocative, as is the paradigm it offers for understanding the roles of holy persons in other societies.
Book Synopsis Strange Writing by : Robert Ford Campany
Download or read book Strange Writing written by Robert Ford Campany and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1996-01-25 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the Han dynasty, founded in 206 B.C.E., and the Sui, which ended in 618 C.E., Chinese authors wrote many thousands of short textual items, each of which narrated or described some phenomenon deemed "strange." Most items told of encounters between humans and various denizens of the spirit-world, or of the miraculous feats of masters of esoteric arts; some described the wonders of exotic lands, or transmitted fragments of ancient mythology. This genre of writing came to be known as zhiguai ("accounts of anomalies"). Who were the authors of these books, and why did they write of these "strange" matters? Why was such writing seen as a compelling thing to do? In this book, the first comprehensive study in a Western language of the zhiguai genre in its formative period, Campany sets forth a new view of the nature of the genre and the reasons for its emergence. He shows that contemporaries portrayed it as an extension of old royal and imperial traditions in which strange reports from the periphery were collected in the capital as a way of ordering the world. He illuminates how authors writing from most of the religious and cultural perspectives of the times—including Daoists, Buddhists, Confucians, and others—used the genre differently for their own persuasive purposes, in the process fundamentally altering the old traditions of anomaly-collecting. Analyzing the "accounts of anomalies" both in the context of Chinese religious and cultural history and as examples of a cross-culturally attested type of discourse, Campany combines in-depth Sinological research with broad-ranging comparative thinking in his approach to these puzzling, rich texts.
Book Synopsis Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China by : E. N. Anderson
Download or read book Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China written by E. N. Anderson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese food is one of the most recognizable and widely consumed cuisines in the world. Almost no town on earth is without a Chinese restaurant of some kind, and Chinese canned, frozen, and preserved foods are available in shops from Nairobi to Quito. But the particulars of Chinese cuisine vary widely from place to place as its major ingredients and techniques have been adapted to local agriculture and taste profiles. To trace the roots of Chinese foodways, one must look back to traditional food systems before the early days of globalization. Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China traces the development of the food systems that coincided with China's emergence as an empire. Before extensive trade and cultural exchange with Europe was established, Chinese farmers and agriculturalists developed systems that used resources in sustainable and efficient ways, permitting intensive and productive techniques to survive over millennia. Fields, gardens, semiwild lands, managed forests, and specialized agricultural landscapes all became part of an integrated network that produced maximum nutrients with minimal input—though not without some environmental cost. E. N. Anderson examines premodern China's vast, active network of trade and contact, such as the routes from Central Asia to Eurasia and the slow introduction of Western foods and medicines under the Mongol Empire. Bringing together a number of new findings from archaeology, history, and field studies of environmental management, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China provides an updated picture of language relationships, cultural innovations, and intercultural exchanges.
Book Synopsis Structures of the Earth by : D. Jonathan Felt
Download or read book Structures of the Earth written by D. Jonathan Felt and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-03-07 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional Chinese notion of itself as the “middle kingdom”—literally the cultural and political center of the world—remains vital to its own self-perceptions and became foundational to Western understandings of China. This worldview was primarily constructed during the earliest imperial unification of China during the Qin and Han dynasties (221 BCE–220 CE). But the fragmentation of empire and subsequent “Age of Disunion” (220–589 CE) that followed undermined imperial orthodoxies of unity, centrality, and universality. In response, geographical writing proliferated, exploring greater spatial complexities and alternative worldviews. This book is the first study of the emergent genre of geographical writing and the metageographies that structured its spatial thought during that period. Early medieval geographies highlighted spatial units and structures that the Qin–Han empire had intentionally sought to obscure—including those of regional, natural, and foreign spaces. Instead, these postimperial metageographies reveal a polycentric China in a polycentric world. Sui–Tang (581–906 CE) officials reasserted the imperial model as spatial orthodoxy. But since that time these alternative frameworks have persisted in geographical thought, continuing to illuminate spatial complexities that have been incompatible with the imperial and nationalist ideal of a monolithic China at the center of the world.
Book Synopsis Great Clarity by : Fabrizio Pregadio
Download or read book Great Clarity written by Fabrizio Pregadio and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2006-02-27 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to examine extensively the religious aspects of Chinese alchemy. Its main focus is the relation of alchemy to the Daoist traditions of the early medieval period (third to sixth centuries). It shows how alchemy contributed to and was tightly integrated into the elaborate body of doctrines and practices that Daoists built at that time, from which Daoism as we know it today evolved. The book also clarifies the origins of Chinese alchemy and the respective roles of alchemy and meditation in self-cultivation practices. It contains full translations of three important medieval texts, all of them accompanied by running commentaries, making available for the first time in English the gist of the early Chinese alchemical corpus.
Book Synopsis Women in Early Medieval China by : Bret Hinsch
Download or read book Women in Early Medieval China written by Bret Hinsch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-05 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important study provides the only comprehensive survey of Chinese women during the early medieval period of disunion known as the Six Dynasties, which lasted from the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty in AD 220 to the reunification of China by the Sui dynasty in AD 581.
Book Synopsis A Garden of Marvels by : Robert Ford Campany
Download or read book A Garden of Marvels written by Robert Ford Campany and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 300 and 600 C.E., Chinese writers compiled thousands of accounts of the strange and the extraordinary. Some described weird spirits, customs, and flora and fauna in distant lands. Some depicted individuals of unusual spiritual or moral achievement. But most told of ordinary people’s encounters with ghosts, demons, or gods; sojourns in the land of the dead; eerily significant dreams; and uncannily accurate premonitions. The selection of such stories presented here provides an alluring introduction to early medieval Chinese storytelling and opens a doorway to the enchanted world of thought, culture, and religious belief of that era. Known as zhiguai, or “accounts of anomalies,” they convey a great deal about how people saw the cosmos and their place in it. The tales were circulated because they were entertaining but also because their compilers meant to document the mysterious workings of spirits, the wonders of exotic places, and the nature of the afterlife. A collection of more than two hundred tales, A Garden of Marvels offers an authoritative yet accessible introduction to zhiguai writings, particularly those never before translated or adequately researched. This volume will likely find its way to bedside tables as well as into classrooms and libraries, just as collections of zhiguai did in early medieval times.
Book Synopsis Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China by : Antje Richter
Download or read book Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China written by Antje Richter and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2013-06-09 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention for the 2016 Kayden Book Award This first book-length study in Chinese or any Western language of personal letters and letter-writing in premodern China focuses on the earliest period (ca. 3rd-6th cent. CE) with a sizeable body of surviving correspondence. Along with the translation and analysis of many representative letters, Antje Richter explores the material culture of letter writing (writing supports and utensils, envelopes and seals, the transportation of finished letters) and letter-writing conventions (vocabulary, textual patterns, topicality, creativity). She considers the status of letters as a literary genre, ideal qualities of letters, and guides to letter-writing, providing a wealth of examples to illustrate each component of the standard personal letter. References to letter-writing in other cultures enliven the narrative throughout. Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China makes the social practice and the existing textual specimens of personal Chinese letter-writing fully visible for the first time, both for the various branches of Chinese studies and for epistolary research in other ancient and modern cultures, and encourages a more confident and consistent use of letters as historical and literary sources.
Book Synopsis Kingship in Early Medieval China by : Andrew Eisenberg
Download or read book Kingship in Early Medieval China written by Andrew Eisenberg and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-02-28 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The institution of the Retired Emperor forms the innovative angle from which this study analyzes Classical Chinese political history (4th to 7th centuries A.D.) and lays bare broader patterns of political and social action of Classical Chinese monarchy. The author lays a basis for a new framework to think about kingship and succession in East Asia.
Book Synopsis The Yields of Transition by : Jana S. Rošker
Download or read book The Yields of Transition written by Jana S. Rošker and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-18 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume is dedicated to the Wei Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties (220–589 AD), which is generally regarded as one of the most fascinating phases in Chinese history. The collection opens new theoretical and methodological pathways in sinological studies, bringing to the forefront a new idea of intercultural encounters based upon a culture of recognition. It highlights the significance of transition in the making of Chinese culture and history, revises prevailing historical approaches in the study and research of China and develops and enhances existing theories or methodologies in this specific area of research. The wide diversity of contributions to the present volume reflects the multifaceted potential for creativity and renewal of this period. The focus is upon the interaction of ideas, researches and perspectives concerning a broad scope of relevant and significant issues in contemporary sinology. In order to understand this diversity, a wide range of cultural, theoretical and historical aspects are considered. The book reveals a new image of the period, thereby undermining the absolute authority and putative objectivity of common historical sources and interpretations. It shows that this was a period rich with political, economic, cultural and theoretical achievements that would prove decisive for the future development of Chinese culture and society.
Book Synopsis Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature (vol.I) by : David R. Knechtges
Download or read book Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature (vol.I) written by David R. Knechtges and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-09-10 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited, first Western-language reference guide, this work offers a wealth of information on writers, genres, literary schools and terms of the Chinese literary tradition from earliest times to the seventh century C.E.
Book Synopsis Buddhism and Tales of the Supernatural in Early Medieval China by : Zhenjun Zhang
Download or read book Buddhism and Tales of the Supernatural in Early Medieval China written by Zhenjun Zhang and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-08-21 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the literary thematic changes, Buddhist imagery, and new motifs in the fantastic dreamworld as seen in the tales of the supernatural in early medieval China.
Book Synopsis Reading Tao Yuanming by : Wendy Swartz
Download or read book Reading Tao Yuanming written by Wendy Swartz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tao Yuanming (365?–427), although dismissed as a poet following his death, is now considered one of China’s greatest writers. Over the centuries, portrayals of his life—some focusing on his eccentricity, others on his exemplary virtue—have elevated him to iconic status. This study of the posthumous reputation of a central figure in Chinese literary history, the mechanisms at work in the reception of his works, and the canonization of Tao himself and of particular readings of his works sheds light on the transformation of literature and culture in premodern China. It focuses on readers’ interpretive negotiations with Tao’s works and on changes in hermeneutical practices, critical vocabulary, and cultural demands, as well as the intervention of interested and influential readers, in order to trace the construction of Tao Yuanming. Driven by a dialogue on categories at the very heart of literati culture—reclusion, personality, and poetry—this cumulative process spanning fifteen centuries, the author argues, helps explain the very different pictures of Tao Yuanming and the divergent ways of reading his works across time and illuminates central issues animating premodern Chinese culture.
Book Synopsis Patterns of Disengagement by : Alan J. Berkowitz
Download or read book Patterns of Disengagement written by Alan J. Berkowitz and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the customary path to achievement in traditional China was through service to the state, from the earliest times certain individuals had been acclaimed for repudiating an official career. This book traces the formulation and portrayal of the practice of reclusion in China from the earliest times through the sixth century, by which time reclusion had taken on its enduring character. Those men who decided to withhold their service to state governance fit the dictum from the Book of Changes of a man who "does not serve a king or lord; he elevates in priority his own affairs." This characterization came to serve as a byword of individual and voluntary withdrawal, the image of the man whose lofty resolve could not be humbled for service to a temporal ruler. Men who eschewed official appointments in favor of pursuing their own personal ideals were known by such appellations as "hidden men" (yinshi), "disengaged persons" (yimin), "high-minded men" (gaoshi), and "scholars-at-home" (chushi). What distinguished these men was a particular strength of character that underlay their conduct: they received approbation for maintaining their resolve, their mettle, their integrity, and their moral and personal values in the face of adversity, threat, or temptation. This book reveals that those who opted for a life of reclusion had a variety of motivations for their decisions and conducted widely divergent ways of life. The lives of these men epitomize the distinctive nature of substantive reclusion, differentiating them from those of the intelligentsia who, on occasion, voiced their desire for disengagement or for retreat, but who nevertheless found or retained their places in government office. Throughout, the author places the recluse and reclusion within the social, political, intellectual, religious, and literary contexts of the times.
Book Synopsis Entombed Epigraphy and Commemorative Culture in Early Medieval China by : Timothy M. Davis
Download or read book Entombed Epigraphy and Commemorative Culture in Early Medieval China written by Timothy M. Davis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Entombed Epigraphy and Commemorative Culture Timothy M. Davis explains the social, cultural, and religious significance of early medieval muzhiming —one of the most versatile and persistent commemorative forms employed in the elite burials of pre-modern China.
