Download or read book Xiwangmu Queen Mother of the West written by Samantha Bell and published by ABDO. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Xiwangmu is the goddess of immortality and the ruler of heaven. This title explores the goddess's backstory and how and why Chinese people worship her. Easy-to-read text, vivid images, and helpful back matter give readers a clear look at this subject. Features include a table of contents, infographics, a glossary, additional resources, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Kids Core is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
Download or read book Transcendence and Divine Passion written by Suzanne Elizabeth Cahill and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on medieval Chinese poetry, fiction, and religious scriptures, this book illuminates the greatest goddess of Taoism and her place in Chinese society.
Download or read book Gods Goddesses of Ancient China written by Trenton Campbell and published by Encyclopaedia Britannica. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative volume examines the two main faiths, Confucianism and Daoism, that developed before China had meaningful contact with the rest of the world. Aspects of Buddhism later joined features of these faiths to form elements of Chinese ideology and, with the beliefs in immortals and the worship of ancestors, they led to a popular religion. The narrative describes the gods and goddesses that dominated China's mythology and folk culture, roughly from the 3rd millennium to 221 BCE, including the Baxian (Eight Immortals), Chang'e (moon goddess), Guandi (god of war), the Men Shen (door spirits), and Pan Gu (first man).
Download or read book The Sinister Way written by Richard von Glahn and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-04-20 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most striking feature of Wutong, the preeminent God of Wealth in late imperial China, was the deity's diabolical character. Wutong was perceived not as a heroic figure or paragon of noble qualities but rather as an embodiment of humanity's basest vices, greed and lust, a maleficent demon who preyed on the weak and vulnerable. In The Sinister Way, Richard von Glahn examines the emergence and evolution of the Wutong cult within the larger framework of the historical development of Chinese popular or vernacular religion—as opposed to institutional religions such as Buddhism or Daoism. Von Glahn's study, spanning three millennia, gives due recognition to the morally ambivalent and demonic aspects of divine power within the common Chinese religious culture.
Download or read book Taoism and Chinese Religion written by Henri Maspero and published by . This book was released on 2014-09 with total page 730 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taoism and Chinese Religion by Henri Maspero Translated by Frank A. Kierman, Jr. Revised Edition - Quirin Pinyin Updated Editions (QPUE) This book is a translation of Le Taoisme et les Religions Chinoises, which was posthumously published in France in 1971. It is the first English translation of most of the seminal works on Chinese religion of the great sinologist Henri Maspero. First released by The University of Massachusetts Press in 1981, this Quirin Press Revised Edition brings back into print this classic of Western sinology and offers the full original text with the following features: Older Wade-Giles transliteration fully updated and revised to Pinyin. Fully re-typeset and proofed for typographical errors and inconsistencies. Expanded index including Chinese characters. "It is largely thanks to [Maspero's] pioneer work in the fields of Chinese religion, anthropology, linguistics and history that China's contribution to the achievement of man could first be reviewed on terms of parity with those of other civilizations. "To the question whether his discoveries, opinions and interpretations have been outdated by the subsequent thirty years' research, it may be answered that leading scholars still rely with the utmost confidence on his writings as a framework whose validity has outdated their most recent findings, and whose detail has in many cases not been bettered." -Michael Loewe, University of Cambridge (from the sleeve-note to the original 1981 edition) Maspero (1883-1945) was the first Western scholar to study the vast and recondite compendium of Daoist writing, the Daozang, and explore its historic meaning. The first part of the book closely examines Chinese society, religion, and folk-myth; the second part specifically focuses on the practice and form of Daoism and includes an extensive investigation of yoga-like procedures of nutrition, breathing exercises, and sexual techniques-all designed to ensure personal immortality in ancient Daoism. The titles of the nine "books" comprising this study give an indication of its breadth and variety: Chinese Religion in Its Historical Development; The Mythology of Modern China; The Society and Religion of the Ancient Chinese and of the Modern Tai; How Was Buddhism Introduced into China?; Daoism in Chinese Religious Beliefs of the Six Dynasties Period; The Poet Xi Kang and the Club of Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove; An Essay on Daoism in the First Centuries CE; How to Communicate with the Daoist Gods; Methods of "Nourishing the Vital Principle" in the Ancient Daoist Religion. Keywords: Daoism China - China Religion For further information and extracts visit www.quirinpress.com Follow us on Twitter @QuirinPress
Download or read book Women in Daoism written by Catherine Despeux and published by Three Pine Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women in Daoism' outlines the status and roles of women in the Daoist tradition from its inception to the present day. It describes the historical development and role of Daoist women in Chinese society, focusing on the different ideals women stood for as much as on the religious practices they cultivated.--Cover.
Download or read book Taoism and the Arts of China written by Stephen Little and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A celebration of Taoist art traces the influence of philosophy on the visual arts in China.
Download or read book The Chinese Fairy Book written by Richard Wilhelm and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1921 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fairy tales and legends of olden China have in common with the "Thousand and One Nights" an oriental glow and glitter of precious stones and gold and multicolored silks, an oriental wealth of fantastic and supernatural action. And yet they strike an exotic note distinct in itself. The seventy-three stories here presented after original sources, embracing "Nursery Fairy Tales," "Legends of the Gods," "Tales of Saints and Magicians," "Nature and Animal Tales," "Ghost Stories," "Historic Fairy Tales," and "Literary Fairy Tales," probably represent the most comprehensive and varied collection of oriental fairy tales ever made available for American readers. There is no child who will not enjoy their novel color, their fantastic beauty, their infinite variety of subject. Yet, like the "Arabian Nights," they will amply repay the attention of the older reader as well. Some are exquisitely poetic, such as "The Flower-Elves," "The Lady of the Moon" or "The Herd Boy and the Weaving Maiden"; others like "How Three Heroes Came By Their Deaths Because Of Two Peaches," carry us back dramatically and powerfully to the Chinese age of Chivalry. The summits of fantasy are scaled in the quasi-religious dramas of "The Ape Sun Wu Kung" and "Notscha," or the weird sorceries unfolded in "The Kindly Magician." Delightful ghost stories, with happy endings, such as "A Night on the Battlefield" and "The Ghost Who Was Foiled," are paralleled with such idyllic love-tales as that of "Rose of Evening," or such Lilliputian fancies as "The King of the Ants" and "The Little Hunting Dog." It is quite safe to say that these Chinese fairy tales will give equal pleasure to the old as well as the young. They have been retold simply, with no changes in style or expression beyond such details of presentation which differences between oriental and occidental viewpoints at times compel. It is the writer's hope that others may take as much pleasure in reading them as he did in their translation.
Download or read book Beauty Revealed written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together some of the worlds finest "meiren hua" (paintings of beautiful women), a genre of Chinese painting spanning the countrys last imperial dynasty (1644-1912). Often dismissed as decorative or misinterpreted as highbrow portraits of ladies, these enigmatic and relatively unexamined works are the subject of close scholarly scrutiny in this publication.
Download or read book Voices from the Underworld written by Fabian Graham and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Singapore and Malaysia, the inversion of Chinese Underworld traditions has meant that Underworld demons are now amongst the most commonly venerated deities in statue form, channelled through their spirit mediums, tang-ki. The Chinese Underworld and its sub-hells are populated by a bureaucracy drawn from the Buddhist, Taoist and vernacular pantheons. Under the watchful eye of Hell’s ‘enforcers’, the lower echelons of demon soldiers impose post-mortal punishments on the souls of the recently deceased for moral transgressions committed during their prior incarnations. Voices from the Underworld offers an ethnography of contemporary Chinese Underworld traditions, where night-time cemetery rituals assist the souls of the dead, exorcised spirits are imprisoned in Guinness bottles, and malicious foetus ghosts are enlisted to strengthen a temple’s spirit army. Understanding the religious divergences between Singapore and Malaysia through an analysis of socio-political and historical events, Fabian Graham challenges common assumptions on the nature and scope of Chinese vernacular religious beliefs and practices. Graham’s innovative approach to alterity allows the reader to listen to first-person dialogues between the author and channelled Underworld deities. Through its alternative methodological and narrative stance, the book intervenes in debates on the interrelation between sociocultural and spiritual worlds, and promotes the de-stigmatisation of spirit possession and discarnate phenomena in the future study of mystical and religious traditions.
Download or read book Chinese Mythology written by Anne Birrell and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1999-04-26 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Chinese Mythology, Anne Birrell provides English translations of some 300 representative myth narratives selected from over 100 classical texts, many of which have never before been translated into any Western language. Organizing the narratives according to themes and motifs common to world mythology, Birrell addresses issues of source, dating, attribution, textural variants, multiforms, and context. Drawing on exhaustive work in comparative mythology, she surveys the development of Chinese myth studies, summarizes the contribution of Chinese and Japanese scholars to the study of Chinese myth since the 1920s, and examines special aspects of traditional approaches to Chinese myth. The result is an unprecedented guide to the study of Chinese myth for specialists and nonspecialists alike.
Download or read book Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World written by Victor H. Mair and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-05-31 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do civilizations independently invent themselves or are they the result of cultural diffusion? The contributors to this volume do not attempt to provide a definitive answer to this contentious question, one of the most debated issues of the past century. Instead, they shift the focus from theory to reality by presenting empirical evidence on a wide range of cultural phenomena in history and prehistory, thereby demonstrating the processes whereby cultural traits are acquired and modified—the dynamics of transmission and transformation. The range of topics covered in this volume is of extraordinary breadth: the distribution of belt hooks and belts from the steppes to North and Central China; textile exchange in the third millennium B.C.; the spread of bronze metallurgy across Asia; the adaptation of complicated technologies by distant peoples; the mechanisms whereby bronze implements were used to convey political messages in East Asia; the ethnogenesis of the Turks; the complex interrelationships among migratory and settled peoples in western Central Asia during the Bronze Age; the origins of the enigmatic Chinese goddess known as Queen Mother of the West; an account of hunting with trained cheetahs; and the use of abundant botanical and zoological evidence to affirm that the Old World and the New World must have been in contact long before the fifteenth century. Rounding out the volume is a survey of the problem of modernocentrism.
Download or read book Literary Information in China written by Bruce Rusk and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Information” has become a core concept across the disciplines, yet it is still often seen as a unique feature of the Western world that became central only in the digital age. In this book, leading experts turn to China’s textual tradition to show the significance of information for reconceptualizing the work of literary history, from its beginnings to the present moment. Contributors trace the organization of literary information across China’s three millennia of history, examining the forms and practices of information management that have evolved alongside the increasing scale and complexity of textual production. They reimagine literary history as information processing, detailing the many kinds of storage, encoding, sorting, and transmission that constitute and feed back into China’s long and ever-growing cultural tradition. The volume features state-of-the-field essays on all major forms of literary information management, from graphs to internet literature, and from commentaries to literary museums and archives. By shifting focus from individual works and their authors to the informatic schemata of literature, it identifies three scales of information management—the word, the document, and the collection—and surveys the forms that operate at each level, such as the dictionary, the anthology, and the library. Literary Information in China is a groundbreaking work that provides a systematic and innovative reassessment of literary history with implications that extend beyond the particular Chinese context, revealing how informatic practices shape literary tradition.
Download or read book Handbook of Chinese Mythology written by Lihui Yang and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compiled from ancient and scattered texts and based on groundbreaking new research, Handbook of Chinese Mythology is the most comprehensive English-language work on the subject ever written from an exclusively Chinese perspective. This work focuses on the Han Chinese people but ranges across the full spectrum of ancient and modern China, showing how key myths endured and evolved over time. A quick reference section covers all major deities, spirits, and demigods, as well as important places, mythical animals and plants, and related items.
Download or read book Art Political Expression in Early China written by Martin Joseph Powers and published by . This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In This path breaking book Martin J. Powers examines the art and politics of Han dynasty (206 B. C. - A.D. 220) and show that both were shaped by the rise of an educated, non aristocratic public-the Confucian literati - that questioned the authority of the rich and royal at all levels. By considering the design and construction of local tombs and shrines, their mural schemes, subject matter, and style, the author distinguishes three major traditions of taste and places each tradition within a narrative of political rivalries in northeast China.
Download or read book Dictionary of Chinese Symbols written by Wolfram Eberhard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-12-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique and authoritative guide describes more than 400 important Chinese symbols, explaining their esoteric meanings and connections. Their use and development in Chinese literature and in Chinese customs and attitudes to life are traced lucidly and precisely. `An ideal reference book to help one learn and explore further, while simultaneously giving greater insight into many other aspects of Chinese life ... the most authoritative guide to Chinese symbolism available to the general reader today ... a well-researched, informative and entertaining guide to the treasure trove of Chinese symbols.' - South China Morning Post
Download or read book Ways to Paradise written by Michael Loewe and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-04-30 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1979, in Ways to Paradise Michael Loewe, an internationally recognised authority on Han China, assesses a wealth of an archaeological evidence in an attempt to uncover the attitudes of the pre-Buddhist Chinese to matters relating to death and hereafter. Dr Loewe examines in particular three major subjects of Han art and iconography: a recently found silk painting from Central China dating from around 168 BC; the numerous bronze mirrors of the so-called TLV pattern that came into fashion at the beginning of the Christian era, and which are especially rich in cosmological symbolism; and the representations of the Queen Mother of the West which appear as a leading motif of Chinese art from perhaps a century later. These Dr Loewe sets within a framework of contemporary literature and historical incident to create a wonderfully vivid picture of religious life and thought in this early and fascinating period of Chinese history which was to contribute so much to later developments in Far Eastern Philosophy, religion and art.
