Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China

Author:
Yan Liu

Publication date:

June 2021

Publisher:

University of Washington Press

Abstract:

At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically deployed as healing agents to cure everything from chills to pains to epidemics. Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious devotees, court officials, and laypeople used powerful substances to both treat intractable illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du 毒—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of techniques to transform dangerous poisons into efficacious medicines.

Recounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the early Tang period, Yan Liu considers how the concept of du was central to the ways people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. Liu also examines a wide range of du-possessing minerals, plants, and animal products in classical Chinese pharmacy, including the highly poisonous herb aconite and the popular arsenic drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with potent medicines, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful.

漢六朝時代の制度と文化・社会

Author:
佐藤 達郎

Publisher:
Kyoto University Press

Publication date:
February 2021

Table of Contents:

はじめに
第一部　官制叙述の形成と展開——官制と礼、歴史意識
第一章　二年律令に見える漢初の秩石制について

第二章　職官儀注書の源流

第三章　職官儀注書の出現と官制叙述のはじまり

第四章　漢代の古官箴

第五章　胡広『漢官解詁』の編纂——その経緯と構想

第六章　応劭『漢官儀』の編纂

第七章　摯虞『決疑要注』をめぐって

第八章　『続漢書』百官志と晋官品令

第九章　王珪之『斉職儀』の編纂

第二部　法と文化・社会

第十章　後漢末の弓矢乱射事件と応劭の刑罰議論

第十一章　『風俗通』にみえる漢代の名裁判

第十二章　魏晋南朝の司法における情理の語について

第十三章　漢六朝期の地方的教令について

第十四章　漢代の教について

第十五章　六朝時代の教について

第十六章　漢代の地方的教令と扁書・壁書・石刻

おわりに
補編　漢代の古官箴　訳注篇

Skill and Mastery: Philosophical Stories from the Zhuangzi

Editors:

Lai, Karyn & Chiu, Wai Wai 

Publisher: 

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 

Publication date:

July 12, 2019

Abstract:

Skill and Mastery: Philosophical Stories from the Zhuangzi presents an illuminating analysis of skill stories from the Zhuangzi, a 4th century BCE Daoist text. In this intriguing text that subverts conventional norms and pursuits, ordinary activities such as swimming, cicada-catching and wheelmaking are executed with such remarkable efficacy and spontaneity that they seem like magical feats. An international team of scholars explores these stories in their philosophical, historical and political contexts. Their analyses' highlight the stories’underlying conceptions of agency, character and cultivation; and relevance to contemporary debates on human action and experience. The result is a valuable collection, opening up new lines of inquiry in comparative East-West philosophical debates on skill, cultivation and mastery, as well as cross-disciplinary debates in psychology, cognitive science and philosophy. 

Table of Contents:

Introduction (Karyn Lai and Wai Wai Chiu)

Part I Reflections on Skill

1 Skilful Performances and the Zhuangzi’s Lessons on Orientation (Wai Wai Chiu)

2 Skill and Nourishing Life (Franklin Perkins)

3 Skill and Emotions in the Zhuangzi (David Machek)

4 Zhuangzi’s Politics from the Perspective of Skill (Timothy Connolly)

5 Elusive Masters, Powerless Teachers and Dumb Sages: Exploring Pedagogic Skills in the Zhuangzi (Romain Graziani)

6 Skill and Embodied Knowledge: Zhuangzi and Liezi (Steven Coutinho)

7 The Unskilled Zhuangzi: Big and Useless and Not So Good at Catching Rats (Eric Schwitzgebel)

Part II The Stories

8 Cook Ding: A Meditation in Flow (James Sellman)

9 Wheelwright Bian: A Difficult Dao (Lisa Raphals)

10 The Cicada-Catcher: Learning for Life (Karyn Lai)

11 The Ferryman: Forget the Deeps and Row! (Chris Fraser)

12 The Unresponsive Fighting Cocks: Mastery and Human Interaction in the Zhuangzi (Wim De Reu)

13 The Swimmer: (Albert Galvany)

14 Woodworker Qing: Matching Heaven with Heaven (Kim-chong Chong)

15 The Naked Scribe: The Skill of Dissociation in Society (Hans-Georg Moeller)

16 The Forger: The Use of Things (Wai Wai Chiu)

Ancient Egypt and Early China: State, Society, and Culture

Author:
Anthony J. Barbieri-Low

Publication date:
July 2021

Publisher:
University of Washington Press

Abstract:

Although they existed more than a millennium apart, the great civilizations of New Kingdom Egypt (ca. 1548–1086 BCE) and Han dynasty China (206 BCE–220 CE) shared intriguing similarities. Both were centered around major, flood-prone rivers—the Nile and the Yellow River—and established complex hydraulic systems to manage their power. Both spread their territories across vast empires that were controlled through warfare and diplomacy and underwent periods of radical reform led by charismatic rulers—the “heretic king” Akhenaten and the vilified reformer Wang Mang. Universal justice was dispensed through courts, and each empire was administered by bureaucracies staffed by highly trained scribes who held special status. Egypt and China each developed elaborate conceptions of an afterlife world and created games of fate that facilitated access to these realms.

This groundbreaking volume offers an innovative comparison of these two civilizations. Through a combination of textual, art historical, and archaeological analyses, Ancient Egypt and Early China reveals shared structural traits of each civilization as well as distinctive features.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. The Landscapes of the Nile and Yellow River

2. Empire and Diplomacy

3. Akhenaten, Wang Mang, and the Limits of Reform

4. Legal Principles and the Administration of Justice

5. Scribal Culture in Life and Death

6. Providing a Model Afterlife (coauthored with Marissa A. Stevens)

7. Gaming the Way to Paradise

Epilogue

The Empress in the Pepper Chamber: Zhao Feiyan in History and Fiction

Author:
Olivia Milburn

Publication Date:
May 2021

Publisher: 

University of Washington Press

Abstract:

Zhao Feiyan (45–1 BCE), the second empress appointed by Emperor Cheng of the Han dynasty (207 BCE–220 CE), was born in slavery and trained in the performing arts, a background that made her appointment as empress highly controversial. Subsequent persecution by her political enemies eventually led to her being forced to commit suicide. After her death, her reputation was marred by accusations of vicious scheming, murder of other consorts and their offspring, and relentless promiscuity, punctuated by bouts of extravagant shopping.

This first book-length study of Zhao Feiyan and her literary legacy includes a complete translation of The Scandalous Tale of Zhao Feiyan (Zhao Feiyan waizhuan 趙飛燕外傳), a Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) erotic novella that describes in great detail the decadent lifestyle enjoyed by imperial favorites in the harem of Emperor Cheng. This landmark text was crucial for establishing writings about palace women as the accepted forum for discussing sexual matters, including fetishism, obsession, jealousy, incompatibility in marriage, and so on. Using historical documentation, Olivia Milburn reconstructs the evolution of Zhao Feiyan’s story and illuminates the broader context of palace life for women and the novella’s social influence.

Table of Contents:

The Empress in the Pepper Chamber
The Scandalous Tale of Zhao Feiyan
Zhao Feiyan's Biography in Historical Sources
Interpreting The Scandalous Tale
Gendering Empress Zhao
Concluding Remarks

ANNOUNCEMENT: About my Facebook Page and my blog

To my dear blog subscribers and Facebook Page followers,

I am sorry to inform you that after a  2-months of Facebook hiatus, I decided to deactivate my FB Page on June 7. One simple reason is that I am no longer interested in managing my FB Page and don't want to receive more FB ads about how to reach more potential "clients."

While my FB Page will go away soon, I would continue to update my blog that is considered by some kind people to be useful to the field. So if you would like to get information about new books related to pre-8th century China, you can go to my blog and follow it via email. Or, just visit my blog whenever you are available.

One more thing about how to subscribe to my blog via email. Since 2012, I've been loyal to Google's Blogger because its layout is very simple. All I want from my blog is that I can catalog and find information in a very effective way and Blogger can satisfy me with that. However, the new Blogger interface 2020 is not user-friendly anymore. Moreover,  Blogger notified me weeks ago that Google's Feedburner will shut down in July, which means that my subscriber will not receive any email from my blog then and this really bothers me. So far, I found an alternative called Mailchimp Signup Form for my blog subscribers. If you are already a subscriber, don't need to do anything (hope Mailchimp Signup Form will work). But if you are a new one, please go to my blog and fill up the form (down the right side of my blog).

If you don't want to follow my blog but are still interested in new releases on early China, I highly recommend checking out the annual bibliography I compile for the journal Early China every year since 2016.

Here is the link to my blog: http://earlychinasinology.blogspot.com/

Here is the link to Early China: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/early-china

Thank you very much for your support and encouragement over the years!