Editors: N. Harry Rothschild and Leslie V. Wallace Publisher: University of Hawaii Press Publication Date: August 31, 2017
Abstract: Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China presents a rogues’ gallery of treacherous regicides, impious monks, cutthroat underlings, ill-bred offspring, and disloyal officials. It plumbs the dark matter of the human condition, placing front and center transgressive individuals and groups traditionally demonized by Confucian annalists and largely shunned by modern scholars. The work endeavors to apprehend the actions and motivations of these men and women, whose conduct deviated from normative social, cultural, and religious expectations. Early chapters examine how core Confucian bonds such as those between parents and children, and ruler and minister, were compromised, even severed. The living did not always reverently pay homage to the dead, children did not honor their parents with due filiality, a decorous distance was not necessarily observed between sons and stepmothers, and subjects often pursued their own interests before those of the ruler or the state. The elasticity of ritual and social norms is explored: Chapters on brazen Eastern Han (25–220) mourners and deviant calligraphers, audacious falconers, volatile Tang (618–907) Buddhist monks, and drunken Song (960–1279) literati reveal social norms treated not as universal truths but as debated questions of taste wherein political and social expedience both determined and highlighted individual roles within larger social structures and defined what was and was not aberrant. A Confucian predilection to “valorize [the] civil and disparage the martial” and Buddhist proscriptions on killing led literati and monks alike to condemn the cruelty and chaos of war. The book scrutinizes cultural attitudes toward military action and warfare, including those surrounding the bloody and capricious world of the Zuozhuan (Chronicle of Zuo), the relentless violence of the Five Dynasties and Ten States periods (907–979), and the exploits of Tang warrior priests―a series of studies that complicates the rhetoric by situating it within the turbulent realities of the times. By the end of this volume, readers will come away with the understanding that behaving badly in early and medieval China was not about morality but perspective, politics, and power.
Table of Contents: There are maggots in my soup! : medieval accounts of unfilial children / Keith N. Knapp Negative role models: unfilial stories in Song miscellaneous writing / Cong Ellen Zhang Copulating with one's stepmother—or birth mother? / Paul R. Goldin Intransigent and corrupt officials during the early Han / Anthony Barbieri-Low Ritual without rules: Han-Dynasty mourning practice revisited / Miranda Brown and Anna-Alexandra Fodde-Regue Bad writing: cursive calligraphy and the ethics of orthography in the Eastern Han Dynasty / Vincent S. Leung Wild youths and fallen officials: falconry and moral opprobrium in early medieval China / Leslie V. Wallace Stopping drinking: alcohol, alcoholism, and Song literati / Edward van-Bibber Orr Flouting, flashing and favoritism: an insouciant Buddhist monk bares his midriff before the Confucian court / N. Harry Rothschild Running amok in early Chinese narrative / Eric Henry "Wolves shepherding the people": cruelty and violence in the Five dynasties / Wang Hongjie A "villain-monk" brought down by a villein-general: a forgotten page in Tang monastic warfare and state-samgha relations / Chen Jinhua
Martial monks without borders: was Sinseong a traitor or did he open the gate to a pan-Asian Buddhist realm? / Kelly Carlton
Editors and translators: Constance A. Cook and Zhao Lu (趙璐) Publication Date: July, 2017 Publisher: Oxford University Press
Abstract: This book presents for the first time a full translation and analysis of a newly discovered bamboo divination manual from the fourth century BCE China, called the Stalk Divination Method (Shifa 筮法). It was used as an alternative to the better-known Zhouyi (popularly known as the I-Ching). The Shifa manual presents a competing method of interpreting the trigrams, the most basic elements of the distinctive sixty-four hexagrams in the Zhouyi. This newly discovered method looks at the combination of four trigrams as a fluid, changeable pattern or unit reflective of different circumstances in an elite man's life. Unlike the Zhouyi, this new manual provides case studies that explain how to read the trigram patterns for different topics. This method is unprecedented in early China and has left no trace in later Chinese divination traditions. Shifa must be understood then as a competing voice in the centuries before the Zhouyi became the hegemonic standard. The authors of this book have translated this new text and "cracked the code" of its logic. This new divination will change our understanding of Chinese divination and bring new light to Zhouyi studies. Table of Contents: Preface Introduction General Principles of Shifa Interpretation Reflections of Shifa-style Divination in Other Texts Transcription and Translation
Author: Qu Yuan (Edited and translated by Gopal Sukhu) Publisher: Columbia University Press Publication Date: July, 2017
Abstract: Sources show Qu Yuan (?340–278 BCE) was the first person in China to become famous for his poetry, so famous in fact that the Chinese celebrate his life with a national holiday called Poet's Day, or the Dragon Boat Festival. His work, which forms the core of the The Songs of Chu, the second oldest anthology of Chinese poetry, derives its imagery from shamanistic ritual. Its shaman hymns are among the most beautiful and mysterious liturgical works in the world. The religious milieu responsible for their imagery supplies the backdrop for his most famous work, Li sao, which translates shamanic longing for a spirit lover into the yearning for an ideal king that is central to the ancient philosophies of China. Qu Yuan was as important to the development of Chinese literature as Homer was to the development of Western literature. This translation attempts to replicate what the work might have meant to those for whom it was originally intended, rather than settle for what it was made to mean by those who inherited it. It accounts for the new view of the state of Chu that recent discoveries have inspired. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Nine Songs (Jiuge) 2. "Leaving My Troubles" ("Li sao") 3. "Ask the Sky" ("Tian wen") 4. Nine Cantos (Jiuzhang) 5. "Wandering Far Away" ("Yuan you") 6. "The Diviner" ("Bu ju") and "The Fisherman" ("Yufu") 7. Nine Variations (Jiubian) 8. "Summoning the Soul" ("Zhao hun") 9. "The Great Summoning" ("Da zhao") 10. "Regretting the Vows" ("Xi shi") 11. "Mourning Qu Yuan" ("Diao Qu Yuan") and "The Owl Rhapsody" ("Fu fu") 12. "I Lament It Was Not My Destiny" ("Ai shiming") 13. "Calling the Hermit Back" ("Zhao yinshi") Appendix: Dating the Works in the Chuci Selected Bibliography
Authors: Joshua A. Fogel and Fumiko Joo Publication Date: July, 2017 Publisher: University of California Press
Abstract: For many years it has been known that scholars of Chinese history and culture must keep abreast of scholarship in Japan, but the great majority have found that to be difficult. Japanese for Sinologists is the first textbook dedicated to helping Sinologists learn to read scholarly Japanese writing on China. It includes essays by eminent scholars, vocabulary lists with romanizations, English translations, grammar notes, and a wealth of general information not easily available anywhere. The reader will be introduced to a wide panoply of famed Sinologists and their writing styles. The first chapters introduce some basic information on dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other resources for research on China in Japanese materials, including a list of names and terms from Chinese political, historical, and cultural events. The chapters cover a range of topics and time periods and highlight authors, all well-known Japanese scholars, with an appendix of English translations of all the articles. After completing this book, the user will be able to begin his or her own reading in Japanese Sinology without the extensive apparatus this volume supplies.
Table of Contents: Introduction Translation Tables for Sinologists Japanese Dictionaries Aimed at Sinologists Oshima Toshikazu, "Qiu Jin" Ono Kazuko, "Introduction: a history of research on the Donglin party" Takeuchi Yoshimi, "Issues in our view of Sun Yat-Sen" Shimada Kenji, "The commoner nature of culture in the Ming period" Miyazaki Ichisada, "Was the Jingchu 4 mirror produced at the Daifang commandery?" Yoshikawa Kōjirō̄ Niida Noboru, "Fengjian 封建 and feudalism in Chinese society" Naitō Torajirō, "Cultural life in modern China"
Author: Yiu-Kang Hsu Advisor: Mark Pollard, Jessica Rawson School: University of Oxford
Defended: 2016
Abstract:
The study of ancient Eurasian metallurgy has been suffering from (or preoccupied by) two conventional perspectives. One is that of the diffusion model emphasising the importance of the settled empires of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, of south-eastern Europe and of China (Shennan 1986, 1993; Kristiansen 1984). The supremacy of these 'cradles' of early civilisation is marked not only by social hierarchies, but also by technological inventions such as metal production. This view sees the mobile populations of the Eurasian steppe as occupying the "hinterland" of these early settled states in the south, believing that the emergence of metal technologies in the Steppe was the result of the expansions of "advanced" civilisations. The second perspective is rooted in the provenance study which traces metal objects back to their geological sources (Pernicka 2014). It assumes that chemical and isotopic composition of metal is static and only reflects a simple linear relationship between artefacts and specific ore deposits. Drawing from a legacy database of approximately 9,000 chemical analyses of copper-based artefacts, this thesis rejects the simplicity of both the diffusion and the provenance models. While admitting that the use of metal might have originated from western Asia, the development of metallurgy in the Eurasian steppe should be understood on its own terms. It is constantly re-shaped by vigorous circulation of metal artefacts across mobile communities on a regional or inter-regional scale. This observation is based on the application of a new innovative framework to interpret the patterns of compositional data (Bray et al. 2015). This novel method argues that metal can flow, quite literally, from one object to another as it is re-melted, re-mixed and re-cast in different shapes and colours, depending on different social contexts. Thermodynamic modelling and modern experiments have shown that during the copper melt, some volatile elements in copper alloys (e.g. arsenic, antimony, and zinc) are preferentially removed through oxidative loss. Instead, some elements, such as silver, nickel, and gold, tend to be preserved in metals. These predictable patterns of elemental losses provide valuable information to trace the directional flow of metal units between regions/cultures, if we combine chemical data of metal artefacts properly with archaeological context, landscape and chronology. By using this new methodology, several routes of copper supplies have been identified in the Steppe during different periods. They feature the exchange of metals within regional networks, fuelled by local copper sources. The Urals, central Kazakhstan, the Altai, and the Minusinsk-Tuva regions were the primary copper production centres that developed distinct trace-element chemistry and artefact typology. By contrast, alloying techniques employed by steppe peoples, generally demonstrate the long-distance connections based on two major metallurgical practices: arsenical copper in the western steppe and tin-bronze in the eastern steppe. Copper-arsenic production was concentrated in the Caucasus but the recycling of its arsenical copper became more apparent further away towards the Urals. On the other hand, the invention of tin-bronze metallurgy was triggered by the formation of the Seima-Turbino phenomenon (c. 2100- 1800/1700 BC) in the Altai, and this alloying tradition was amplified by the emergence of the Andronovo culture (c. 1700-1400 BC) in the Ural-Kazakh steppe. Tin-bronze ornaments, in particular, were exchanged between eastern and western mobile communities over a considerable distance, through the mechanism of pastoral seasonal movements. In conclusion, traditional views of diffusion and provenance theories cannot be uncritically applied to the inception of ancient metallurgy in the Eurasian steppe. Mobile pastoralists developed multi-regional production hubs based on the accessibility of ore resources and the variations in subsistence strategies. Although steppe metalwork revealed some technological borrowings from settled communities, steppe peoples had transformed them into locally adapted products that could fit into their socio-economic systems. That is, when dealing with the issues of Eurasian metallurgy, we should acknowledge the complexity of human engagement with metal and look into subtler differences in cultural context, landscape, and ideology.
