Download or read book Empresses and Consorts written by Shou Chen and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here rendered into English for the first time, these chapters provide important insights into the worlds of palace women and court politics, while revealing much about the lives of upper-class women in general at the close of the third century."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature vol 2 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-10-10 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At last here is the long-awaited, first Western-language reference guide focusing exclusively on Chinese literature from ca. 700 B.C.E. to the early seventh century C.E. Alphabetically organized, it contains no less than 1095 entries on major and minor writers, literary forms and "schools," and important Chinese literary terms. In addition to providing authoritative information about each subject, the compilers have taken meticulous care to include detailed, up-to-date bibliographies and source information. The reader will find it a treasure-trove of historical accounts, especially when browsing through the biographies of authors. Indispensable for scholars and students of pre-modern Chinese literature, history, and thought. Part Two contains S to Xi.

Download or read book Civil Military Relations in Chinese History written by Kai Filipiak and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-17 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern studies of civil--military relations recognise that the military is separate from civil society, with its own norms and values, principles of organization, and regulations. Key issues of concern include the means by which – and the extent to which – the civil power controls the military; and also the ways in which military values and approaches permeate and affect wider society. This book examines these issues in relation to China, covering the full range of Chinese history from the Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties up to the Communist takeover in 1949. It traces how civil--military relations were different in different periods, explores how military specialization and professionalization developed, and reveals how military weakness often occurred when the civil authority with weak policies exerted power over the military. Overall, the book shows how attitudes to the military’s role in present day Communist China were forged in earlier periods.

Download or read book The Zhenzheng lun by Xuanyi written by Thomas Jülch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Zhenzheng lun 甄正論 (T 2112, Treatise of Revealing the Correct) is a Chinese Buddhist apologetic treatise with a distinct anti-Daoist stance in three juan. It is organized as a dialogue between a Daoist, the "Venerable Obstructed by Customs" (zhisu gongzi 滯俗公子), and the Buddhist "Master Revealing the Correct" (zhenzheng xiansheng 甄正先生) in which the former is gradually led towards an orthodox Buddhist understanding by the latter through the refutation of his various arguments against Buddhism. Composed in the late 7th century, the text was authored depending on the political interests and strategies of Wu Zhao武曌 (624–705), who in 690 was enthroned as Empress Wu Zetian 武則天. This study of Thomas Jülch offers a richly annotated and complete translation of the Zhenzheng lun along with an introductory part that focuses on reconstructing the political and propagandistic circumstances relevant to the understanding of the Zhenzheng lun.

Download or read book Rhetoric and the Discourses of Power in Court Culture written by David R. Knechtges and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2012-03-25 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Key imperial and royal courts--in Han, Tang, and Song dynasty China; medieval and renaissance Europe; and Heian and Muromachi Japan--are examined in this comparative and interdisciplinary volume as loci of power and as entities that establish, influence, or counter the norms of a larger society. Contributions by twelve scholars are organized into sections on the rhetoric of persuasion, taste, communication, gender, and natural nobility. Writing from the perspectives of literature, history, and philosophy, the authors examine the use and purpose of rhetoric in their respective areas. In Rhetoric of Persuasion, we see that in both the third-century court of the last Han emperor and the fourteenth-century court of Edward II, rhetoric served to justify the deposition of a ruler and the establishment of a new regime. Rhetoric of Taste examines the court’s influence on aesthetic values in China and Japan, specifically literary tastes in ninth-century China, the melding of literary and historical texts into a sort of national history in fifteenth-century Japan, and the embrace of literati painting innovations in twelfth-century China during a time when the literati themselves were out of favor. Rhetoric of Communication considers official communications to the throne in third-century China, the importance of secret communications in Charlemagne’s court, and the implications of the use of classical Chinese in the Japanese court during the eighth and ninth centuries. Rhetoric of Gender offers the biography of a former Han emperor’s favorite consort and studies the metaphorical possibilities of Tang palace plaints. Rhetoric of Natural Nobility focuses on Dante’s efforts to confirm his nobility of soul as a poet, surmounting his non-noble ancestry, and the development of the texts that supported the political ideologies of the fifteenth-century Burgundian dukes Philip the Good and Charles the Bold.

Download or read book Concise Reader of Chinese Literature History written by Yuejin Liu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-26 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book includes the history of Chinese literature before 1949. It firstly outlines the development process of Chinese literature and basic features and then discusses them according to the literary genre, for the literature of each era. This book gathers established scholars in the field and presents their latest research in the Chinese literature history studies. Moreover, it has included the literature history of different nationalities in the history of China and the records of folk literature history, reflecting literature from different classes. In the limited space of this book, the writers who have been loved by the Chinese people for three thousand years are discussed, such as Qu Yuan, Tao Yuanming, Li Bai, Du Fu, Su Shi, Xin Qiji, Yuan Haowen, Nalan Xingde, and so on. Careful elaborations are made on each writer together with quotations and analysis of their work.

Download or read book To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth written by Robert F. Campany and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-04-08 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In late classical and early medieval China, ascetics strove to become transcendents--deathless beings with supernormal powers. Practitioners developed dietetic, alchemical, meditative, gymnastic, sexual, and medicinal disciplines (some of which are still practiced today) to perfect themselves and thus transcend death. Narratives of their achievements circulated widely. Ge Hong (283-343 c.e.) collected and preserved many of their stories in his Traditions of Divine Transcendents, affording us a window onto this extraordinary response to human mortality. Robert Ford Campany's groundbreaking and carefully researched text offers the first complete, critical translation and commentary for this important Chinese religious work, at the same time establishing a method for reconstructing lost texts from medieval China. Clear, exacting, and annotated, the translation comprises over a hundred lively, engaging narratives of individuals deemed to have fought death and won. Additionally, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth systematically introduces the Chinese quest for transcendence, illuminating a poorly understood tradition that was an important source of Daoist religion and a major social, cultural, and religious phenomenon in its own right.

Download or read book Chinese Character Manipulation in Literature and Divination written by Anne Kathrin Schmiedl and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-04-06 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Chinese Character Manipulation in Literature and Divination, Anne Schmiedl analyses the historical development and linguistic properties of Chinese character manipulation, focusing on a late imperial work on this subject, the Zichu by Zhou Lianggong (1612–1672).

Download or read book Three Kingdoms written by Guanzhong Luo and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A material epic with an astonishing fidelity to history."—New York Times Book Review Three Kingdoms tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. Writing some twelve hundred years later, the Ming author Luo Guanzhong drew on histories, dramas, and poems portraying the crisis to fashion a sophisticated, compelling narrative that has become the Chinese national epic. This abridged edition captures the novel's intimate and unsparing view of how power is wielded, how diplomacy is conducted, and how wars are planned and fought. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming dynasty masterpiece continues to be widely influential in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam and remains a great work of world literature.

Download or read book Translating Chinese Literature written by Eugene Chen Eoyang and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enth.: Papers presented at the first International conference on the translation of Chinese literature held in Taipei, Nov. 19-21, 1990.

Download or read book The Taoist Canon written by Kristofer Schipper and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 1684 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taoism remains the only major religion whose canonical texts have not been systematically arranged and made available for study. This long-awaited work, a milestone in Chinese studies, catalogs and describes all existing texts within the Taoist canon. The result will not only make the entire range of existing Taoist texts accessible to scholars of religion, it will open up a crucial resource in the study of the history of China. The vast literature of the Taoist canon, or Daozang, survives in a Ming Dynasty edition of some fifteen hundred different texts. Compiled under imperial auspices and completed in 1445—with a supplement added in 1607—many of the books in the Daozang concern the history, organization, and liturgy of China's indigenous religion. A large number of works deal with medicine, alchemy, and divination. If scholars have long neglected this unique storehouse of China's religious traditions, it is largely because it was so difficult to find one's way within it. Not only was the rationale of its medieval classification system inoperable for the many new texts that later entered the Daozang, but the system itself was no longer understood by the Ming editors; hence the haphazard arrangement of the canon as it has come down to us. This new work sets out the contents of the Daozang chronologically, allowing the reader to follow the long evolution of Taoist literature. Lavishly illustrated, the first volume ranges from antiquity through the Middle Ages, while the second spans the modern period. Within this frame, texts are grouped by theme and subject. Each one is the subject of a historical abstract that identifies the text's contents, date of origin, and author. Throughout the first two volumes, introductions outline the evolution of Taoism and its spiritual heritage. A third volume offering biographical sketches of frequently mentioned Taoists, multiple indexes, and an extensive bibliography provides critical tools for navigating this guide to one of the fundamental aspects of Chinese culture.

Download or read book Prehistoric Maritime Cultures and Seafaring in East Asia written by Chunming Wu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on prehistoric East Asian maritime cultures that pre-dated the Maritime Silk Road, the "Four Seas" and "Four Oceans" navigation system recorded in historical documents of ancient China. Origins of the Maritime Silk Road can be traced to prosperous Neolithic and Metal Age maritime-oriented cultures dispersed along the coastlines of prehistoric China and Southeast Asia. The topics explored here include Neolithisation and the development of prehistoric maritime cultures during the Neolithic and early Metal Age; the expansion and interaction of these cultures along coastlines and across straits; the "two-layer" hypothesis for explaining genetic and cultural diversity in south China and Southeast Asia; prehistoric seafaring and early sea routes; the paleogeography and vegetation history of coastal regions; Neolithic maritime livelihoods based on hunting/fishing/foraging adaptations; rice and millet cultivation and their dispersal along the coast and across the open sea; and interaction between farmers and maritime-oriented hunter/fisher/foragers. In addition, a series of case studies enhances understanding of the development of prehistoric navigation and the origin of the Maritime Silk Road in the Asia-Pacific region.

Download or read book Records of the Three Kingdoms in Plain Language written by Anonymous and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The saga of the Three Kingdoms—which recounts the dramatic story of the civil wars (ca. 180–220 CE) that divided the old Han Empire into the Shu, Wei, and Wu states—remains as popular as ever in China, having served as the basis of not only traditional operas and ballads, but also, in more recent years, of movies, television dramas, and video games. Translated into English for the first time here, the Sanguozhi pinghua (thirteenth century CE) provides a complete and fast-paced narrative account of the events of the period, from the beginning of the civil wars to the demise of the Three Kingdoms and the short-lived reunification of the realm by the Jin dynasty. Shorter, clearer, and more accessible to Western audiences than Luo Guanzhong’s later, greatly expanded Romance (Sanguo yanyi)—and beautifully rendered in this edition by two modern-day masters of the art of Chinese literary translation—the Records of the Three Kingdoms in Plain Language provides an ideal introduction to one of the foundational Chinese epic traditions. Tables of major Chinese dynasties and reigns, a guide to understanding formal Chinese naming conventions, a glossary of Chinese names and terms, and reproductions of some woodcuts from the original edition of the text are included.

Download or read book Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China written by Stuart H. Young and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-02-28 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva are among the most celebrated Indian patriarchs in Asian Buddhist traditions and modern Buddhist studies scholarship. Scholars agree that all three lived in first- to third-century C.E. India, so most studies have focused on locating them in ancient Indian history, religion, or society. To this end, they have used all available accounts of the Indian patriarchs' lives—in Sanskrit, Tibetan, various Central Asian languages, and Chinese, produced over more than a millennium—and viewed them as bearing exclusively on ancient India. Of these sources, medieval Chinese hagiographies are by far the earliest and most abundant. Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China is the first attempt to situate the medieval Chinese hagiographies of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva in the context of Chinese religion, culture, and society of the time. It examines these sources not as windows into ancient Indian history but as valuable records of medieval Chinese efforts to define models of Buddhist sanctity. It explores broader questions concerning Chinese conceptions of ancient Indian Buddhism and concerns about being Buddhist in latter-day China. By propagating the tales and texts of Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva, leaders of the Chinese sangha sought to demonstrate that the means and media of Indian Buddhist enlightenment were readily available in China and that local Chinese adepts could thereby rise to the ranks of the most exalted Buddhist saints across the Sino-Indian divide. Chinese authors also aimed to merge their own kingdom with the Buddhist heartland by demonstrating congruency between Indian and Chinese ideals of spiritual attainment. This volume shows, for the first time, how Chinese Buddhists adduced the patriarchs as evidence that Buddhist masters from ancient India had instantiated the same ideals, practices, and powers expected of all Chinese holy beings and that the expressly foreign religion of Buddhism was thus the best means to sainthood and salvation for latter-day China. Rich in information and details about the inner world of medieval Chinese Buddhists, Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China will be welcomed by scholars and students in the fields of Buddhist studies, religious studies, and China studies.

Download or read book Good Son is Sad If He Hears the Name of His Father written by Piotr Adamek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When in 1775 the scholar Wang Xihou compiled a dictionary called Ziguan , he wrote, for illustrative purposes, the personal names of Confucius and the three emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong in the introduction. In oversight, he recorded their complete names. This accidental writing of a few names was condemned by Emperor Qianlong as an unprecedented crime, rebellion and high treason. Wang Xihou was executed, his property confiscated and his books were burnt. His family was arrested and his sons and grandsons were killed or sent as slaves to Heilongjiang. It is surprising what an enormous impact the tabooing of names (bihui ) had on Chinese culture. The names of sovereigns, ancestors, officials, teachers, and even friends were all considered taboo, in other words it was prohibited to pronounce them or to record them in writing. In numerous cases characters identical or similar in writing or pronunciation were often avoided as well. The tabooing of names was observed in the family and on the street, in the office and in the emperor's palace. The practice of bihui had serious consequences for the daily lives of the Chinese and for Chinese historiography. People even avoided certain places and things, and refused to accept offices. They were punished and sometimes even killed in connection with the tabooing of names. The bihui custom existed as an important element of Chinese culture and was perceived as significant by Chinese and foreigners alike. It was crucial for implementing social values and demonstrating the political hierarchy. The present work A Good Son Is Sad if He Hears the Name of His Father is a systematic study of Chinese name-tabooing customs, which until now have been relatively little explored in Western-language Sinological studies. It attempts to provide a long-term perspective on the changing dynamics of tabooing and elucidates various aspects related to the fascinating topic of tabooing of names.

Download or read book Clinical Handbook of Chinese Herbs written by Will Maclean and published by Singing Dragon. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised edition of Maclean's classic Clinical Handbook of Chinese Herbs is an extensive and detailed guide to the medicinal properties of traditional Chinese herbs, and how they should be prescribed in today's medical practice. The handbook employs comparative charts to help clinicians to select the optimal medicinals for their patients. Each table outlines the characteristics of a group of herbs, including extensive indications with relative strengths of action and function, the domain, flavour, nature, and dosage guidelines. The book also caters for special circumstances in health that may alter a patient's requirements, with appendices giving need-to-know instructions for a number of specific cases. Easy-to-use and comprehensive, the handbook will facilitate efficient comparative reference, as well as detailing the fine points of discrimination.

Download or read book Wisdom in China and the West written by Qingsong Shen and published by CRVP. This book was released on 2004 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: