MICHAEL NYLAN & GRIET VANKEERBERGHEN
Publication Date:
Jan. 29 2015
Publisher:
University of Washington Press
Abstract:
During the last two centuries BCE, the Western Han capital of Chang'an, near today's Xi'an in northwest China, outshone Augustan Rome in several ways while administering comparable numbers of imperial subjects and equally vast territories. At its grandest, during the last fifty years or so before the collapse of the dynasty in 9 CE, Chang'an boasted imperial libraries with thousands of documents on bamboo and silk in a city nearly three times the size of Rome and nearly four times larger than Alexandria. Many reforms instituted in this capital in the Western Han substantially shaped not only the institutions of the Eastern Han (25-220 CE) but also the rest of imperial China until 1911.
Although thousands of studies document imperial Rome's glory, until now no book-length work in a Western language has been devoted to Han Chang'an, the reign of Emperor Chengdi (whose accomplishments rival those of Augustus and Hadrian), or the city's impressive library project (26-6 BCE), which ultimately produced the first state-sponsored versions of many of the classics and masterworks that we hold in our hands today. Chang'an 26 BCE addresses this deficiency, using as a focal point the reign of Emperor Chengdi (r. 33-7 BCE), specifically the year in which the imperial library project began. This in-depth survey by some of the world's best scholars, Chinese and Western, explores the built environment, sociopolitical transformations, and leading figures of Chang'an, making a strong case for the revision of historical assumptions about the two Han dynasties. A multidisciplinary volume representing a wealth of scholarly perspectives, the book draws on the established historical record and recent archaeological discoveries of thousands of tombs, building foundations, and remnants of walls and gates from Chang'an and its surrounding area.
Table of Contents:
Editorial note
Chronology of dynasties and Han reign periods
Introduction / Michael NYLAN
Part 1. The built environment and archaeology of Han Chang'an
● The evolution of imperial urban form in Western Han Chang'an / TANG Xiaofeng 唐曉峰
● Chang'an and Rome : structural parallels and the logics of urban form / Carlos F. NORENA
● Supplying the capital with water and food / Michael NYLAN
● Mural tombs in late Western Han Chang'an / Arlen LIAN
● Chang'an's funerary culture and the core Han culture / HUANG Yijun
● The residential wards of Western Han Chang'an / ZHANG Jihai 張繼海
● The tombs built for Han Chengdi and migrations of the population / Michael LOEWE
Part 2. Sociopolitical transformations in late Western Han
● Chengdi's reign : problems and controversies / Michael LOEWE
● Recasting the imperial court in late Western Han : rank, duty, and alliances during institutional change / Luke HABBERSTAD
● The suburban sacrifice reforms and the evolution of the imperial sacrifices / TIAN Tian 田天
● Calendrical computation numbers and Han Dynasty politics : a study of Gu Yong's 谷永 Three Troubles theory / LIU Tseng-Kuei 劉增貴
● The politics of omenology in Chengdi's reign / Shao-yun YANG
● Pining for the West : Chang'an in the life of kings and their families during Chengdi's reign / Griet VANKEERBERGHEN
Part 3. Leading figures in late Western Han
● Liu Xiang and Liu Xin / Michael LOEWE
● A fu by Liu Xin on his travels in Shanxi and Inner Mongolia / David R. KNECHTGES
● Yang Yun's biography, his outlook, and his poem / Jurij L. KROLL
● Looking backward : the rise of medical tradition in the Han period / Miranda BROWN
● The social roles of the annals classic in late western Han / Mark CSIKSZENTMIHALYI
● The late Western Han historian Chu Shaosun / Hans VAN ESS
Afterword: New perspectives and avenues for future research / Michael NYLAN
Glossary
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