The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China

Author:

Michelle H. Wang

Publisher:

University of Chicago Press

Publication date:

November 2023

Abstract:

This is the first English-language monograph on the early history of maps in China, centering on those found in three tombs that date from the fourth to the second century BCE and constitute the entire known corpus of early Chinese maps (ditu). More than a millennium separates them from the next available map in the early twelfth century CE. Unlike extant studies that draw heavily from the history of cartography, this book offers an alternative perspective by mobilizing methods from art history, archaeology, material culture, religion, and philosophy. It examines the diversity of forms and functions in early Chinese ditu to argue that these pictures did not simply represent natural topography and built environments, but rather made and remade worlds for the living and the dead. Wang explores the multifaceted and multifunctional diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: the work of diagrams

1  Zhongshan and plans for life after death

2  Fangmatan and the bureaucratization of space

3  Mawangdui and earthly topologies of design

4  Mawangdui and the art of strategy

Coda: tunnel vision

Technological Knowledge in the Production of Neolithic Majiayao Pottery in Gansu and Qinghai

Author:
Evgenia Dammer

Publication Date: 
March 17 2023

Publisher:
British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd

Abstract:
This book is the first comprehensive study of the technological knowledge needed to produce Neolithic Majiayao-style pottery (5300-4000 cal yr BP) which is famous for its painted designs in black and red. It examines the technological choices in the production of fine and coarse Majiayao-style pottery found across three river valleys, all located near the border area of Chinese provinces Gansu and Qinghai. Through macroscopic examination, thin-section petrography and experimental archaeology, this book investigates how the same pottery style was made across this large geographical area. Specifically, the study examines whether similar technological knowledge in pottery production at different places is connected to a yet unknown social knowledge shared by prehistoric communities. This book suggests that shared social knowledge could be the reason behind the wide distribution of this pottery style and its production technology.Seven appendices are available online to download, including primary data, photos, and photomicrographs from macroscopic and microscopic analyses of archaeological pottery and sampled geological material.

The Many Lives of the First Emperor of China

Author:
Anthony J. Barbieri-Low

Publication date: 
August 2022

Publisher:
University of Washington Press

Abstract:

Ying Zheng, founder of the Qin empire, is recognized as a pivotal figure in world history, alongside other notable conquerors such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Julius Caesar. His accomplishments include conquest of the warring states of ancient China, creation of an imperial system that endured for two millennia, and unification of Chinese culture through the promotion of a single writing system.
Only one biased historical account, written a century after his death in 210 BCE, narrates his biography. Recently, however, archaeologists have revealed the lavish pits associated with his tomb and documents that demonstrate how his dynasty functioned. Debates about the First Emperor have raged since shortly after his demise, making him an ideological slate upon which politicians, revolutionaries, poets, painters, archaeologists, and movie directors have written their own biases, fears, and fantasies.

This book is neither a standard biography nor a dynastic history. Rather, it looks historically at interpretations of the First Emperor in history, literature, archaeology, and popular culture as a way to understand the interpreters as much as the subject of their interpretation.

Table of Contents:

Part 1: The Historical First Emperor of China -- Sima Qian and His Tragic Hero -- The Confucians' Villain and His Rehabilitation -- The Class Representative and the Nation Builder -- 

Part 2: Unearthed Voices from the Qin Conquest -- Voices of the Qin State -- Voices of the People -- 

Part 3: Great Characters and Events -- The Assassin and the Evil Eunuch -- Burning the Books and Killing the Scholars -- 

Part 4: The First Emperor in the Cultural Imagination -- Tales of the First Emperor -- The First Emperor on Screen -- Imagining the First Emperor's Tomb.

[Dissertation] Taming Metals : the Use of Leaded Bronze in Early China, 2000-1250 Bc

Author:
Huan, Limin

School:
University of Oxford (United Kingdom) 

Year:
2021
30216883

Abstract:
It has long been known that leaded bronze, an alloy consisting primarily of copper with the addition of tin and lead, was widely used in early China, starting from around the second millennium BC. The additional lead distinguishes this metal from common bronze, the copper-tin binary alloy, used by most other Early Metal Age civilisations in Eurasia. The reasons behind the use of leaded bronze have not been fully examined in previous literature. In this thesis, the discussion of metallurgical technologies and the studies on material properties are combined with four case studies of early metal-using communities to reinvestigate the use of leaded bronze in early China. With this approach, the thesis challenges the wide held notion that lead was consciously added by the craftspeople, mainly to facilitate the casting. Instead, I argue that the widespread of leaded bronze objects was mainly due to both the socio-economic concerns in making bronze ritual vessels in Central China and the recycling and reuse of the metals by other communities around Central China. Moreover, the seemingly common use of leaded bronze does not reflect a uniform acceptance of a single set of knowledge and know-how. Rather, people in different communities responded differently to this new material and chose to engage it in different ways. This study on leaded bronze provides us with a new perspective to recognise the complexity and diversity of technology and material culture in early Chinese communities. Meanwhile, through the active discussion on the theoretical frameworks and research methods for archaeometallurgy and material culture studies, I also suggest approaches which may be useful in future studies of early metallurgy and other craft production.

Early Medieval China 29 (2023) Special Issue: The Margins of the Human in Medieval China

Table of Contents:

Editor’s Note
XIAOFEI TIAN

ARTICLES
Mistaken Identities: Negotiating Passing and Replacement in Chinese Records of the Strange
ANTJE RICHTER

Nonhuman Self-Cultivators in Early Medieval China: Re-reading a Story Type
ROBERT FORD CAMPANY

Diverging Conceptions of Apotheosis in Mid-Fourth Century CE Upper Purity Daoism
JONATHAN E. E. PETTIT

Animality, Humanity, and Divine Power: Exploring Implicit Cannibalism in Medieval Weretiger Stories
MANLING LUO

REVIEW ARTICLEBringing Scholarship on the Early Medieval Period to a Broader Audience: A Review of The Cambridge History of China, vol. 2, The Six Dynasties, 220–589, edited by Albert E. Dien and Keith N. Knapp

PATRICIA BUCKLEY EBREY

BOOK REVIEWS
Jack W. Chen, Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo xinyu
GRAHAM SANDERS

Xurong Kong, Fu Poetry along the Silk Roads: Third-Century Chinese Writings on Exotica
QIULEI HU

Yue Zhang, Lore and Verse: Poems on History in Early Medieval China
FUSHENG WU

Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yemc20/current

[Dissertation] Philological Botany: The Poetics of Plant Classification in Early China and Japan

Author:

Loren Waller

School:

Yale University

Year:

2023

30312999

Abstract: 

Flowering plants are a primary topic in Chinese and Japanese poetry, often used figuratively to express human emotions. Over time, as poets alluded to earlier works, these plants developed conventional metaphorical meanings. It is natural that such meanings would shift over time, but what is also striking is that historical understandings of the plants themselves, as well as the names used for the plants, also changed over time. An examination of three case studies will show how the identities of these plants changed over time as they were collected within literary texts and commentaries.
Chapter 1 on the hibiscus (Ch. mujin; J. asagaho, kikkyō, kenikoshi, mukuge) demonstrates the broad diversity of different flowers that share the same name, as well as the references to this ambiguity within some poetic works themselves. This chapter also introduces the complexity of the textual commentary tradition and considers how texts may be interpreted through reading between the lines of commentaries on literary works.

Chapter 2 on the orange tree (Ch. ju; J. tachibana) shows how the trope of regional loyalty to southern China changed as it was adopted in Japan. More than other plants with a shared cultural heritage between China and Japan, the Japanese tachibana developed dominant allusive connotations based on a well-known poem in the Kokinwakashū (905). Still, Chinese examples were not unknown in Japan, and it is productive to consider how Japanese texts might be reinterpreted considering alternative pretexts.

Chapter 3 on the plum looks at how a plant marked as representative of China became domesticated in Japan over time. While there are no plum poems in the Kojiki (712), Nihonshoki (720), or the early period of the Man’yōshū, plum poems and banquets suddenly became popular around the time of a well-known plum banquet at the residence of Ōtomo no Tabito in 730, making plums the second most popular plant in the Man’yōshū poetic anthology. The proliferation was so thorough that plum poems were anachronistically attributed to earlier times. The most extreme case was one commentary’s claim that the plum was the subject of the famous Naniwazu poem, which was also associated with an encounter with a Wani, a scribe from Paekche who was said to have brought writing in Japan in the early fifth century. Another wonderous tale of the plum is the famous flying plum of the apotheosized statesman-poet Sugawara no Michizane (845-903), whose plum tree from Kyoto uprooted and flew to be with him when he was exiled to Dazaifu. Such narratives show how the plum could be seen as a representative Japanese plant.

In addition to tracing the literary history of these important plant tropes, this study also offers cases studies of how plant metaphors are used in cases when the identities of the plants themselves change over time, between languages, or between genres.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Chapter 1. Of the Hibiscus and Fleeting Faces
Chapter 2. Of Orange Trees and Transplantation
Chapter 3. Of Plums and Origins

Animals and Plants in Chinese Religions and Science

Author:
Huaiyu Chen

Year:
2023

Publisher:
Anthem Press

Abstract:
In ancient China, the tradition of observing nature is combined with Yin-Yang and the Five-Phase theories, which were later incorporated into the ancient arts of divination, including the technique of predicting weather changes by observing the behavior and health of animals. The observation of the close connection between animals and weather developed into the worship of animals, that is, what can be called the cult of animals. Plant science and technology in medieval China cannot be separated from the developments in agriculture, economics, and medicine, as well as cultural practice. The Chinese empire ruled most of East Asia in the medieval period. Numerous species of plants were observed, cultivated, harvested, and used in the vast land of China that spanned a wide range of biomes from boreal through to temperate and tropical, with most regions classed as subtropical. Besides indigenous plants, many plants from West, Central, South, and Southeast Asia were introduced into China and East Asia in general. Numerous zoomantic practices appeared in two sets of textual documents in the premodern Chinese bibliographical system, namely official documents and popular documents. Official documents were often compiled by government officials and served political governance objectives. These documents included official histories, annals, and institutional documents, as well as Confucian classics. The authorship or editorship of these documents was often explicit. Popular documents included strange writings, tales, legends, and religious documents from Buddhism and Daoism, which were often not compiled under the sponsorship and support of the court or government. They might be compiled by literati but lost original authorship. They did not serve political motivations and objectives, reflecting how people understood and interpreted correlative cosmology by observing animal behaviors at the local or non-bureaucratic level.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; 
Plant Science and Technology in Medieval China; 
Ordering Plants in the Buddhist World: A Medieval Botanical Taxonomy; 
Animal Divination and Climate: An Environmental Perspective on the Cult of the Pig; 
Zoomancy in Medieval China; 
The Changing Images of Zodiac Animals in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Literature; 
The Were-Tigers in Medieval China and Its Asian Context; 
The Animal Turn in Asian Studies and the Asian Turn in the Animal Studies

In the Land of Tigers and Snakes: Living with Animals in Medieval Chinese Religions

Author:
Huaiyu Chen

Publisher:
Columbia University Press

Year:
2023

Abstract: 
Animals play crucial roles in Buddhist thought and practice. However, many symbolically or culturally significant animals found in India, where Buddhism originated, do not inhabit China, to which Buddhism spread in the medieval period. In order to adapt Buddhist ideas and imagery to the Chinese context, writers reinterpreted and modified the meanings different creatures possessed. Medieval sources tell stories of monks taming wild tigers, detail rituals for killing snakes, and even address the question of whether a parrot could achieve enlightenment.

Huaiyu Chen examines how Buddhist ideas about animals changed and were changed by medieval Chinese culture. He explores the entangled relations among animals, religions, the state, and local communities, considering both the multivalent meanings associated with animals and the daily experience of living with the natural world. Chen illustrates how Buddhism influenced Chinese knowledge and experience of animals as well as how Chinese state ideology, Daoism, and local cultic practices reshaped Buddhism. He shows how Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism developed doctrines, rituals, discourses, and practices to manage power relations between animals and humans.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, including traditional texts, stone inscriptions, manuscripts, and visual culture, this interdisciplinary book bridges history, religious studies, animal studies, and environmental studies. In examining how Buddhist depictions of the natural world and Chinese taxonomies of animals mutually enriched each other, In the Land of Tigers and Snakes offers a new perspective on how Buddhism took root in Chinese society.

TOC:
Introduction
1. Buddhists Categorizing Animals: Medieval Chinese Classification
2. Confucians Civilizing Unruly Beasts: Tigers and Pheasants
3. Buddhists Taming Felines: The Companionship of the Tiger
4. Daoists Transforming Ferocious Tigers: Practical Techniques and Rhetorical Strategies
5. Buddhists Killing Reptiles: Snakes in Religious Competition
6. Buddhists Enlightening Virtuous Birds: The Parrot as a Religious Agent
Epilogue

[Dissertation] Art of Changes: Material Imagination in Early China, c. Third to First Century BCE

Author:

Liu, Ziliang

Year: 

2022

School: 

Harvard University

Abstract:
This dissertation examines the efficacy of material and its impact on early imperial Chinese art. Focusing on a selection of important artworks in jade, bronze, glass, and mercury, I explore how the re-conceptualization of the materials in the Qin (221–206 BCE) and the Western Han (202 BCE–9 CE) profoundly shaped the design and the production of the innovative artworks in the period, while setting new expectations for the relationship between the object and the body. In particular, I highlight the great convergence of artisanal practices and the fangshu 方術 “technical arts” or “occult methods” in the context of court art production. I argue that this body of specialized knowledge played a vital role in the artisanal effort to evoke and harness the power of materials, either through a theoretical re-interpretation of the material’s physical qualities or through symbolic encryptions of the craft process. In doing so, I scrutinize art in early imperial China as a fundamentally intellectualized effort that at once discovered, imitated, and challenged the workings of nature, the process of the zaohua 造化 “Great Transformation.”
The first chapter examines the jade burial suit of Liu Sheng 劉勝, the King Jing of Zhongshan 中山靖王 (d. 113 BCE), which paradoxically mimics his naked body. In the context of the re-imagination of the hardstone as a fluid, ethereal matter capable of corporeal morphing, I uncover the deep ties between the suit’s peculiar design and important ideals in period medical theory, particularly the concept of the “jade body.” Focusing on an oversized bronze dressing mirror excavated in the tomb of Liu He 劉賀 (d. 59 BCE), the Marquis of Haihun 海昏侯, the second chapter demonstrates how methodological encryption of bronze metallurgy, from the selection of raw metals to the process of casting, transformed the alloy into a cosmic matter capable of summoning spirits and healing the body, while also developing a “human dimension” of the material. In light of new findings in conservation science and technical studies, the third chapter scrutinizes a group of translucent glass artifacts from the second century BCE to explore the connection between lead-barium glassmaking and early Chinese alchemy and pharmacology, which imbued glass with cosmic and macrobiotic potencies that in turn inspired the rise of glass vessels and a unique ancient color technology. Following the lead on alchemy, the fourth chapter reveals how a set of fire-gilt metalwork, in evoking the touch of mercury, visually enacted the evolution of the liquid metal toward solid, incorruptible gold in early Chinese imagination, a powerful allegory for corporeal immortalization that enchanted their royal patrons.

The four case studies offer insights into aspects of ancient Chinese culture unavailable through the study of texts alone, while sensitizing us to the materially-based, fangshu-driven artisanal practices and the body-centric modes of perception. In this way, this study aims to contribute to the broader discourses on the efficacy of material in the art of the ancient world, especially how materials mediated ideas — philosophical, religious, political — and in the case of early China presented in this study, the formless cosmic change itself.

Fan Ye's Book of Later Han (Houhanshu): Military History and Ethnicity. Volume 1: The Twenty-Eight Yuntai Generals of the Eastern Han

Translator: 

Shu-Hui Wu &David Curtis Wright

Publisher:
Brill

Publication Year: 

2023

Abstract:

The Book of Later Han (Houhanshu) by Fan Ye (398-445) is enormously important as China’s most complete work on Eastern Han history in biographical form. For the first time in any Western language, the author introduces Fan Ye’s magnificent writings in lively translation with rich annotation and informative and insightful commentary.

This first volume covers its early military history and highlights the lives and achievements of the twenty-eight generals who helped Emperor Guangwu unify China and establish the Eastern Han dynasty.
Also included are images of these twenty-eight founding fathers, maps, and information related to early Eastern Han systems.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Brief Individual Introductions to Each of the Twenty-Eight Yuntai Generals, Including Illustrations, Fan Ye’s Conclusion, and List of Their Ranking Orders in HHS 22
Chapter 1 HHS 16: Biographies of Deng and Kou 鄧寇列傳 6
Chapter 2 HHS 17: Biographies of Feng, Cen, and Jia 馮岑賈列傳 7
Chapter 3 HHS 18: Biographies of Wu, Ge, Chen, and Zang 吳蓋陳臧列傳 8
Chapter 4 HHS 19: Biography of Geng Yan 耿弇列傳 9
Chapter 5 HHS 20: Biographies of Yao Qi, Wang Ba, and Zhai Zun 銚期王霸祭遵列傳 10
Chapter 6 HHS 21: Biographies of Ren, Li, Wan, Pi, Liu, and Geng 任李萬邳劉耿列傳 11
Chapter 7 HHS 22: Biographies of Zhu, Jing, Wang, Du, Ma, Liu, Fu, Jian, and Ma 朱景王杜馬劉傅堅馬列傳 12
Chapter 8 HHS 15: Biographies of Li, Wang, Deng, and Lai 李王鄧來列傳 5
Chapter 9 Commentaries 論曰 and Rhymed Summaries 贊曰 by Fan Ye in Chapters 1–8

Appendix 1 The Twenty-Eight Yuntai Generals and the Twenty-Eight Lunar Lodgings, with Notes and a Table of the Twenty-Eight Yuntai Generals and Their Corresponding Lunar Lodgings

Appendix 2 Ban Gu’s Description of an Emperor’s Funeral and Images of the Burial Chamber Built with Yellow Cypress Wood 黃腸題凑

Appendix 3 Analysis and Translation of Texts on Seals and Seal-Ribbons (yin shou 印綬) in HHS zhi 志 30 B Chariots and Clothing 輿服下

Appendix 4 Metadata and Models for Eastern Han Warships, as Reconstructed and Exhibited at the People’s Military Museum in Beijing 中國人民軍事博物館

Appendix 5 An Iron Charter 鐵券, with Introduction, and an Ancient Chinese hu 斛 Measuring Device

Glossary 1: Titles for Military Leaders and Civil Servants (1) English–Chinese
Glossary 2: Titles for Military Leaders and Civil Servants (2) Chinese–English
Glossary 3: Chinese Military Idioms, Proverbs, and Special Terms in the Book of Later Han

[Dissertation] Gifts from afar : the creation of an imperial lapdog in Tang-Song China

Author:
Granger, Kelsey

Year: 
2022

School:
University of Cambridge

Abstract:
This thesis directly addresses a significant gap in the fields of sinology and pet studies by exploring pre-modern Chinese pet-keeping practices in detail for the first time in either discipline. More specifically, this thesis centres on the social and economic practice of lapdog-keeping across the seventh to twelfth centuries, i.e. the Tang and Northern Song dynasties. Not only does this study provide an adapted framework for identifying pets in medieval China, but the formation of a definitive corpus of lapdog references from this timeframe closely defines what a lapdog was and what it did, moving beyond prior cursory research into these diminutive trick-dogs. Analysis of how humans talked about, with, and through the lapdog further asserts the relevance of pets in the study of human history - revealing the lapdog to be a potent metonym for women and a medium for articulating male sexual desire. In sharing intimate human spaces and emotions as a living treasure, childhood playmate, and female companion, the lapdog thus uncovers nuanced insight into medieval elite culture. When considering the later trajectory of the lapdog in the Song period, we see an entire industry dedicated to producing and selling ornamental animals and animal accessories. Pets were not just emotional beings but economic products, shaped by the shifting socioeconomic dynamics of commercialisation and commodification. The lapdog, China's first systematic pet, was both a physical creature and an abstract site of complementary, contradicting, and competing meanings. With relevance to the study of medieval Chinese animal studies; early childhood; the male gaze; female isolation; animal commodification; aesthetic connoisseurship; and the writing of official historiography, this thesis reaffirms that the history of humanity cannot truly be written without including the animals which shared their most intimate lives.

[Dissertation] Les registres divinatoires et sacrificiels du royaume de Chu au IV e siècle avant notre ère (The divinatory and sacrificial registers of the kingdom of Chu in the fourth century B.C.)

Author:
Liang Zhong

School:
École Pratique des Hautes Études

Year:

2022

Abstract:
This dissertation focuses on Chu divinatory and sacrificial records, and more precisely on one category of practical documents from the 4th century BC’s Chu Kingdom. This unique collection of written records was found in tombs. Since 1965, 12 tombs occupied by individuals from different social origins have brought light to these documents. These mantic and sacrificial activities were conducted to ensure the improvement of the client’s career or health. Firstly, after examining the archaeological context, we analyze the composition of the divinatory and sacrificial records. Then we focused on historical actors such as diviners, persons in charge of sacrifices, scribes and clients, after which we examine divinatory and iatromantic knowledge and skills, as well as ancestors and divinities. Finally, we trace the production procedure of some divinatory registers coming from the best preserved corpus. This study intends to contribute to a better understanding of divinatory practices without direct link with the Yijing (Book of mutations). To a lesser extent, our research is a systematic review of the evolution of one type of practical document produced by a community of diviners without official organization before the unification of China in 221 BC.

You can download his dissertation here:

https://college-de-france.hal.science/tel-04085570/

New DH website: "Religious Itinerancy: Travel Narratives in the Biographies of Eminent Monks"

We are excited to announce that our website is now officially online! 

The website represents an interactive and searchable database encompassing travel narratives found within the biographies of Chinese Buddhist monks and nuns, spanning from the fifth to the seventeenth century CE. 

There are several distinct ways to access the information stored within this repository:

"Events": This feature allows users to identify and peruse travel narratives using various filters, such as person, location, book title, dynasty, and motivations and outcomes of the journeys.

"Maps":  This functionality enables users to locate every place visited by Buddhist monks and nuns, identifying their points of departure and arrival, as well as tracing their travel routes. This is facilitated through three different types of maps and corresponding filters, including person, location, book title, dynasty, and motivations and outcomes of the journeys.

"Search": This option enables users to read comprehensive biographies of itinerant monks online and conduct keyword searches.

Find out more at our website: https://youfun.litphil.sinica.edu.tw/

The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China

Author:
Michelle H. Wang

Publication date:
November 23, 2023

Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract:
This is the first English-language monograph on the early history of maps in China, centering on those found in three tombs that date from the fourth to the second century BCE and constitute the entire known corpus of early Chinese maps (ditu). More than a millennium separates them from the next available map in the early twelfth century CE. Unlike extant studies that draw heavily from the history of cartography, this book offers an alternative perspective by mobilizing methods from art history, archaeology, material culture, religion, and philosophy. It examines the diversity of forms and functions in early Chinese ditu to argue that these pictures did not simply represent natural topography and built environments, but rather made and remade worlds for the living and the dead. Wang explores the multifaceted and multifunctional diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China.

Les Man du Fleuve Bleu : La fabrique d’un peuple dans la Chine impériale

Author: 

Alexis Lycas

Publication year: 

12 mai 2023

Publisher: 

Anacharsis

Abstract:
De la dynastie des Han (206 av. J.-C.) à la fin des Tang (907 apr. J.-C.), il a existé en Chine, sur le cours moyen du fleuve Bleu, une population insoumise qui n’a laissé nulle trace et dont on ignore à peu près tout. Ces mystérieux Man ont pourtant défié l’empire, l’ont parfois soutenu, se sont trouvés tantôt hors et dans les limites de la puissance chinoise.

Alexis Lycas se livre ici à une enquête fascinante sur les écrits des chroniqueurs, poètes, administrateurs ou militaires qui ont tenté un millénaire durant d’appréhender et définir ces populations rétives. À travers les circonvolutions de ces documents de diverses natures se déploie une « rhétorique de l’altérité » rapportant l’histoire d’une colonisation étirée sur plusieurs siècles, en même temps que se laisse deviner comment le pouvoir central a fabriqué un peuple pour mieux le dominer.

The Craft of Oblivion：Forgetting and Memory in Ancient China

Editor:
Albert Galvany

Publication date:
July 2023

Publisher:
SUNY Press

Abstract:
The Craft of Oblivion is an innovative and groundbreaking volume that aims to study, for the first time, the intersections between forgetting and remembering in classical Chinese civilization. Oblivion has tended to be relegated to a marginal position, often conceived as the mere destructive or undesirable opposite of memory, even though it performs an essential function in our lives. Forgetting and memory, far from being autonomous and mutually exclusive spheres, should be seen as interdependent phenomena. Drawing on perspectives from history, philosophy, literature, and religion, and examining both transmitted texts and excavated materials, the contributors to this volume analyze various ways of understanding oblivion and its complex and fertile relations with memory in ancient China.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Albert Galvany

PART I. HISTORIOGRAPHICAL AND POLITICAL NARRATIVES

1. Cultural Amnesia and Commentarial Retrofitting: Interpreting the Spring and Autumn
Newell Ann Van Auken

2. Elision and Narration: Remembering and Forgetting in Some Recently Unearthed Historiographical Manuscripts
Rens Krijgsman

3. Shaping the Historian’s Project: Language of Forgetting and Obliteration in the Shiji
Esther Sunkyung Klein

4. The Ice of Memory and the Fires of Forgetfulness: Traumatic Recollections in the Wu Yue Chunqiu
Olivia Milburn

PART II. PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS

5. The Daode jing’s Forgotten Forebear: The Ancestral Cult
K. E. Brashier

6. So Comfortable You’ll Forget You’re Wearing Them: Attention and Forgetting in the Zhuangzi and Huainanzi
Franklin Perkins

7. The Practice of Erasing Traces in the Huainanzi
Tobias Benedikt Zürn

8. The Oblivious against the Doctor: Pathologies of Remembering and Virtues of Forgetting in the Liezi
Albert Galvany

9. Wang Bi and the Hermeneutics of Actualization
Mercedes Valmisa

PART III. RITUAL AND LITERARY TEXTS

10. Embodied Memory and Natural Forgetting in Early Chinese Ritual Theory
Paul Nicholas Vogt

11. Exile and Return: Oblivion, Memory, and Nontragic Death in Tomb-Quelling Texts from the Eastern Han Dynasty
Xiang Li

12. Lost in Where We Are: Tao Yuanming on the Joys of Forgetting and the Worries of Being Forgotten
Michael D. K. Ing

Northern Wei (386-534): A New Form of Empire in East Asia

Author: 

Scott Pearce

Publisher: 

Oxford University Press

Publication year: 

August, 2023

Abstract:
Emerging from collapse of the Han empire, the founders of Northern Wei had come south from the grasslands of Inner Asia to conquer the rich farmlands of the Yellow River plains. Northern Wei was, in fact, the first of the so-called "conquest dynasties" complex states seen repeatedly in East Asian history in which Inner Asian peoples ruled parts of the Chinese world.

An innovative contribution to East Asian and Chinese history of the medieval period, Northern Wei (386-534) combines received historical text and archaeological findings to examine the complex interactions between these originally distinct populations, and the way those interactions changed over time. Scott Pearce analyses traditions borrowed and adapted from the long-gone Han dynasty including government and taxation as well as the new cultural elements such as the use of armor for man and horse in the cavalry and the newly-invented stirrup. Further, this book discusses the fundamental change in the dynastic family, as empresses began to play an increasingly important role in the business of government. Though Northern Wei fell in the early sixth century, the nature of the state was thus fundamentally changed, in the Chinese world and East Asia as a whole; it had laid down a foundation from which a century later would emerge the world empire of Tang.

Table of Contents:

Prologue: Defining Our Arenas

Section I: On Sources
Chapter 1: The Emperor Taiwu and the Creation of History
Chapter 2: History Writing and Its Discontents

Section II: Origins
Chapter 3: Growth from out Decay
Chapter 4: Myths of Origin

Section III: A Dynasty Takes Shape
Chapter 5: The Interloper
Chapter 6: Establishing a State

Section IV: Creating an Empire
Chapter 7: The Way of War
Chapter 8: The World Shegui Entered
Chapter 9: The World Shegui Created
Chapter 10: Troubling Innovation

Section V: Pingcheng as Center of a World
Chapter 11: The Wei Army
Chapter 12: The Wolf Lord
Chapter 13: Hunting and Gathering in the Land of Dai

Section VI: End Games
Chapter 14: A Transitional Age
Chapter 15: The Two Buddhas
Chapter 16: To Luoyang
Chapter 17: Downfall of the Theater State

Summing Up; Looking Ahead

[Dissertation] The Politics of Ecological Memory: Changes in Human-Animal Relationships from the Neolithic to Early Bronze Age in the Middle Huai River Valley, Anhui Province, China

Author: 

Ko, Wing Tung Jada

School: 

Harvard University

Year: 

2022

Abstract:

In the world we currently live in, we hear about the loss of a slice of biodiversity almost every day. Meanwhile, stories about the repopulation and even overpopulation of some species make us question why certain living organisms are more susceptible to extinction than the others. While not a single explanation or narrative characterizes the disappearance of an infinite array of life forms, as a zooarchaeologist whose work involves bringing back to our living memories animals that no longer exist or no longer exist in their archaic forms, I cannot help but wonder if the survival of a species has anything to do with how it is conceptualized and remembered by human societies. 

My dissertation dissects the meanings, implications, and workings of what I have coined the Politics of Ecological Memory to address this concern. The term deals with the intersections between power dynamics, social memory, and human-animal relationships. It highlights the correlations between the political means by which certain animals are (to be) remembered, the survival of these animals, and the socio-cultural developments and survival of human societies. I argue that the Politics of Ecological Memory is a ubiquitous process in societies at different socio-political scales in both the present and the past, and bring together zooarchaeological analyses with historical and ethnographic research to reconstruct the longue durée of human interactions with animals and the environments within which they live, with a focus in the geo-political boundaries defining China today. 

The central focus of empirical discussions concerns archaeofaunal datasets from three archaeological sites namely Xiaosungang (5200-4800 B.C.), Nanchengzi (3100-1450 B.C.), and Taijiasi (1400-1250 B.C.) located in the middle reaches of the Huai River in Anhui Province. Using these data, I reconstruct the processes by which animals were transformed from inherent members of the biosphere to mnemonic devices that served the needs to construct and sustain different forms of power relations among and between societies. Through these processes, many animals were extracted and anthropogenically reproduced to maintain stable sources of social power. Rather than a linear narrative about how animals are remembered and serve similar political functions, I demonstrate through zooachaeological and historical evidence that the political significance of animals is constantly invented and re-invented, and can even be completely forgotten as human and animal niches overlap. I conclude the dissertation by providing the example of the changing roles various species of freshwater turtles played in China through time to point out how, despite changes in political agendas since prehistory in relation to which these animals were attributed with changing social values, these changes can have lingering effects on the survival of the animals in the long-run. 

This dissertation is an attempt to not only begin a conversation questioning how social memory and politics affect the integrity of the biosphere from the perspective of zooarchaeology, but also provide answers to the question “what it means to lose a species?” particularly in the world we live in today.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Introduction: Embracing my Inner Biophilia

Chapter 2 The Becoming of a Political Animal

Chapter 3 Visualizing the Anhui Middle Huai River Valley (AMHRV)

Chapter 4 The Beginning of a Political Relationship with the Biosphere in the AMHRV:

Zooarchaeological Analysis of Xiaosungang (5200-4600 B.C.)

Chapter 5 Growing Interactions Beyond the AMHRV: Zooarchaeological Analysis of

Nanchengzi (3100-1450 B.C.)

Chapter 6 Animals as Local Sources of State Power: Zooarchaeological Analysis of Taijiasi

(1400-1250 B.C.)

Chapter 7 Pathways to the Politics of Ecological Memory in the AMHRV

Chapter 8 Turtles and their Changing Roles in the AMHRV and Beyond

Chapter 10 Conclusions: Stepping Back into Nature

Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE

Author:
Robert Ford Campany

Publication Date: 
04/18/2023

Publisher:
Harvard University Asia Center

Abstract:
Practitioners of any of the paths of self-cultivation available in ancient and medieval China engaged daily in practices meant to bring their bodies and minds under firm control. They took on regimens to discipline their comportment, speech, breathing, diet, senses, desires, sexuality, even their dreams. Yet, compared with waking life, dreams are incongruous, unpredictable—in a word, strange. How, then, did these regimes of self-fashioning grapple with dreaming, a lawless yet ubiquitous domain of individual experience?
In Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE, Robert Ford Campany examines how dreaming was addressed in texts produced and circulated by practitioners of Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and other self-cultivational disciplines. Working through a wide range of scriptures, essays, treatises, biographies, commentaries, fictive dialogues, diary records, interpretive keys, and ritual instructions, Campany uncovers a set of discrete paradigms by which dreams were viewed and responded to by practitioners. He shows how these paradigms underlay texts of diverse religious and ideological persuasions that are usually treated in mutual isolation. The result is a provocative meditation on the relationship between individuals’ nocturnal experiences and one culture’s persistent attempts to discipline, interpret, and incorporate them into waking practice.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Approaching Dreaming and Self-Cultivation
1. Purifying
2. Diagnosing
3. Spilling Over
4. Not Dreaming, Waking Up, and Not Minding the Difference
Epilogue: Fish Traps and Rabbit Snares
Appendix A: Dream Signs in Explication of Dreams for Bodhisattvas
Appendix B: Comparing Versions of the Chapter on Diagnostic Dreams in Perfection of Wisdom Texts
Appendix C: Incubatory Spells in Three Dongshen Registers of Red Writs of the Most High

Spatial Dunhuang: Experiencing the Mogao Caves

Author:
Wu Hung

Publication date: 

February, 2023

Publisher:

Seattle: University of Washington Press

Abtract:

Constructed over a millennium from the fourth to fourteenth centuries CE near Dunhuang, an ancient border town along the Silk Road in northwest China, the Mogao Caves comprise the largest, most continuously created, and best-preserved treasure trove of Buddhist art in the world. Previous overviews of the art of Dunhuang have traced the caves' unilinear history. This book examines the caves from the perspective of space, treating them as physical and historical sites that can be approached, entered, and understood sensually. It prioritizes the actual experiences of the people of the past who built and used the caves.

Five spatial contexts provide rich material for analysis: Dunhuang as a multicultural historic place; the Mogao Cave complex as an evolving entity; the interior space of caves; interaction of the visual program with architectural space; and pictorial space within wall paintings that draws viewers into an otherworldly time. With its novel approach to this repository of religious art, Spatial Dunhuang will be a must-read for anyone interested in Buddhist art and for visitors to Dunhuang.