Inscribing death : burials, representations, and remembrance in Tang China

Author: Jessey J C Choo

Publisher: University of Hawaiʻi Press

Publication date: July 2022

Abstract:

This nuanced study traces how Chinese came to view death as an opportunity to fashion and convey social identities and memories during the medieval period (200–1000) and the Tang dynasty (618–907), specifically. As Chinese society became increasingly multicultural and multireligious, to achieve these aims people selectively adopted, portrayed, and interpreted various acts of remembrance. Included in these were new and evolving burial, mourning, and commemorative practices: joint-burials of spouses, extended family members, and coreligionists; relocation and reburial of bodies; posthumous marriage and divorce; interment of a summoned soul in the absence of a body; and many changes to the classical mourning and commemorative rites that became the norm during the period. Individuals independently constructed the socio-religious meanings of a particular death and the handling of corpses by engaging in and reviewing acts of remembrance.

Drawing on a variety of sources, including hundreds of newly excavated entombed epitaph inscriptions, Inscribing Death illuminates the process through which the living—and the dead—negotiated this multiplicity of meanings and how they shaped their memories and identities both as individuals and as part of collectives. In particular, it details the growing emphasis on remembrance as an expression of filial piety and the grave as a focal point of ancestral sacrifice. The work also identifies different modes of construction and representation of the self in life and death, deepening our understanding of ancestral worship and its changing modus operandi and continuous shaping influence on the most intimate human relationships—thus challenging the current monolithic representation of ancestral worship as an extension of families rather than individuals in medieval China.

Table of Contents:
The Rise and Normalization of Familial Joint-Burial
Spousal Joint- and Disjoint-Burials
Burial Divinations
The Hun-Summoning Burial
The Speakers for the Dead

Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo xinyu

Author:
Jack W. Chen

Publication date:
March 2021

Publisher:

Harvard Asia Center

Abstract:

Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance is a study of the Shishuo xinyu, the most important anecdotal collection of medieval China—and arguably of the entire traditional era. In a set of interconnected essays, Jack W. Chen offers new readings of the Shishuo xinyu that draw upon social network analysis, performance studies, theories of ritual and mourning, and concepts of gossip and reputation to illuminate how the anecdotes of the collection imagine and represent a political and cultural elite. Whereas most accounts of the Shishuo have taken a historical approach, Chen argues that the work should be understood in literary terms.

At its center, Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance is an extended meditation on the very nature of the anecdote form, both what the anecdote affords in terms of representing a social community and how it provides a space for the rehearsal of certain longstanding philosophical and cultural arguments. Although each of the chapters may be read separately as an essay in its own right, when taken together, they present a comprehensive account of the Shishuo in all of its literary complexity.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

The Title of the Text

The Structure and Composition of the Text

Anecdote and History

Individualism and Typology

The Shishuo and “Pure Conversation”

Overview of Chapters

1. A Textual History of the Shishuo xinyu

The Shi Jingyin and Liu Xiaobiao Commentaries

Liu Yiqing’s Biography

The Shishuo in the Bibliographic Treatises of the Official Histories

The Shishuo in the Tang Dynasty

The Shishuo in Song Dynasty Encyclopedias and Bibliographic Writings

Wang Zao 汪藻 (1079–1154) on the Shishuo

The Dong Fen, Lu You, and Yuan Jiong Editions

Modern Editions of the Shishuo

Conclusion: On Medieval Textuality

2. On Social Networks

The Shishuo as Network

Six Degrees of Separation, or a Walk through the Network

First Degree: Xu Zhi and Chen Fan

Second Degree: Chen Fan and Li Ying

Third Degree: Cai Yong, Sun Chuo, and Wang Xizhi

Fourth Degree: Wang Xizhi and Xie An

Fifth Degree: Xie An, Wang Xianzhi, Liu Jin, and Huan Xuan

Sixth Degree: Huan Xuan, Huan Xiu, and Madame Yu

Conclusion: Network and Anecdote

3. On Gossip and Reputation

Defining Gossip and Reputation

Gossip and Anecdote: Four Stories about Hua Xin

Knowing Others and Being Known: Chu Pou’s Silence

The Mingshi or “Gentlemen of Repute”

Conclusion: The Anxiety of the Second-Rate

4. On Praise and Insult

On Praise and Appraisal

The Politics of Praise

Virtuosity, Aptness, and Inadequacy

Theories of Insult

Taking Liberties with Pronouns

Three Stories about Sun Chuo

Unintended Offense

Conclusion: The Economy of Reputation

5. On Competition and Composure

Three Stories about Zhong Hui

Conversation as Social Competition

The Aesthetics of Composure

Xie An: Calling Back the Recluse

Xie An Keeps His Cool

Conclusion: Wang Dun Goes to the Bathroom

6. On Ritual and Mourning

Mourning and Sincerity in the Li ji

The Sincerity of Mourning

Friendship and Mourning

A Coda

Conclusion: The View from across the River

[Dissertation] Cosmology, Fashion, and Good Fortune: Chinese Auspicious Ornament in the Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 220)

Author:
Wang, Shengyu

School:
University of Oxford

Year: 

2020

Abstract: 
This thesis studies 'auspicious ornament' in the tombs of Han dynasty China. It offers a new reading of highly decorated tombs found near the two imperial capital cities, Chang'an (Western Han) and Luoyang (Eastern Han), and the elite tombs in central and eastern China. The thesis argues that a system of varied decorations, motifs, and materials developed in the Han dynasty as a means to convey good wishes and engender favourable outcomes, such as protection and well-being in the afterlife, immortality, and blessings for offspring. It interprets the significance, functions, relevant historical perspectives, and symbolic associations of ornament in China through an account of ornamentation on murals, carvings, jade, and gold objects in tombs, which are contextualised within the cosmological and philosophical background of the Han period. The transition to using more auspicious ornament in the Han period was related to the formation of correlative cosmology around the third century BC and Confucian rationalisation in the Western Han court, as well as other factors, including increasing concerns about an ideal afterlife. This is demonstrated through a critical analysis of pre-Han and Han dynasty historical sources to highlight the ideological development, and a contextual archaeological approach to the development of burial forms, materials and structures. On this basis, the three main analytical chapters discuss ornament on murals, carvings, jade, and gold objects in Han tombs, all of which exhibit changes in their motifs and uses. The discussion compares relevant pre-Han discoveries to establish these changes and to reveal the potential origins of the auspicious ornament. The analysis also incorporates local and foreign traits in the material assemblage suggested to have been adapted by Han dynasty people as popular practices through communications both within the Empire and its border regions populated by outsiders. In addition, this thesis presents a theoretical interpretation of the material agency of objects to understand how ornament acted upon people, i.e. bringing auspiciousness. Overall, the thesis explores the Han repertoire of ornamental motifs which may have provided the basis for the development of the prominent concept of auspiciousness throughout Chinese art and culture.