Editor:
Nicholas Sims-Williams
Publication:
2019
Publisher:
Turnhout: Brepols Publishers
Abstract:
Containing a variety of texts ranging from liturgy to pharmacology via hagiography, calendars and ascetical works by Isaac of Nineveh, this volume completes the publication of all known Christian Sogdian texts. This volume completes the publication of the Christian Sogdian texts of the Berlin Turfan Collection begun by F. W. K. Müller in 1907. Several Syriac texts are also included, in particular a series of liturgical texts in Syriac with Sogdian rubrics (edited in collaboration with J. F. Coakley).
The texts edited here are mostly short but extremely varied and interesting. The Syriac liturgical fragments are some of the earliest surviving witnesses to the liturgy of the "Church of the East", though the Sogdian rubrics which accompany them show that those who performed them were not native speakers of Syriac. Other texts connected with the liturgy include a Sogdian version of the Gloria in excelsis and a text explaining how to calculate the date of Easter or Lent. Hagiographical texts include fragments of the martyrdoms of St George and of Cyriacus and Julitta as well as part of the so-called "Six Books" on the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. Two pharmacological fragments (edited in collaboration with Dieter Maue) show familiarity with Indian medicine, while a "prayer-amulet" belongs rather to a Syriac tradition. Finally, a chapter contributed by Adrian Pirtea contains the re-edition of a well-preserved folio identified by him as a Sogdian version of a work by Isaac of Nineveh.
The edition and translation of the texts is accompanied by a detailed commentary. The volume is completed by a full glossary, a bibliography, and a word-index covering all five of the author’s volumes of Christian Sogdian texts in the series BTT.
Author:
Filippo Marsili
Publication date:
December, 2018
Publisher:
SUNY Press
Abstract:
Heaven Is Empty offers a new comparative perspective on the role of the sacred in the formation of China’s early empires (221 BCE–9 CE) and shows how the unification of the Central States was possible without a unitary and universalistic conception of religion. The cohesive function of the ancient Mediterranean cult of the divinized ruler was crucial for the legitimization of Rome’s empire across geographical and social boundaries. Eventually reelaborated in Christian terms, it came to embody the timelessness and universality of Western conceptions of legitimate authority, while representing an analytical template for studying other ancient empires. Filippo Marsili challenges such approaches in his examination of the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han (141–87 BCE). Wu purposely drew from regional traditions and tried to gain the support of local communities through his patronage of local cults. He was interested in rituals that envisioned the monarch as a military leader, who directly controlled the land and its resources, as a means for legitimizing radical administrative and economic centralization. In reconstructing this imperial model, Marsilire interprets fragmentary official accounts in light of material evidence and noncanonical and recently excavated texts. In bringing to life the courts, battlefields, markets, shrines, and pleasure quarters of early imperial China, Heaven Is Empty provides a postmodern and postcolonial reassessment of “religion” before the arrival of Buddhism and challenges the application of Greco-Roman and Abrahamic systemic, identitary, and exclusionary notions of the “sacred” to the analysis of pre-Christian and non-Western realities.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: An Empire without a “Religion”
1. Readings of the “Sacred”: Chinese Religion, Chinese Religions, and Religions in China
2. Writing the Empire: Ex Pluribus Plurima
3. Narrating the Empire: Metaphysics without God, “Religions” without Identity
4. Time, Myth, and Memory: Of Water, Metal, and Cinnabar
5. Place and Ritual: From Templum to Text
Conclusions: The Importance of Getting Lost
Author:
John Lagerwey
Publisher:
Brill
Publication date:
October 2018
Abstract:
From the fifth century BC to the present and dealing with the Three Teachings (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) as well as popular religion, this introduction to the eight-volume Early and Modern Chinese Religion explores key ideas and events in four periods of paradigm shift in the intertwined histories of Chinese religion, politics, and culture. It shows how, in the Chinese church-state, elite processes of rationalization, interiorization, and secularization are at work in every period of major change and how popular religion gradually emerges to a position of dominance by means of a long history of at once resisting, adapting to, and collaborating with elite-driven change. Topics covered include ritual, scripture, philosophy, state policy, medicine, sacred geography, gender, and the economy.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Preliminaries
Intellectual Change in the Warring States and Han (481 BC–220 AD)
Religious Transformation in the Period of Division (220–589 AD)
Religion and Thought in the Song, Jin, and Yuan (960–1368)
Structuring Values 1850–2015
By Way of Conclusion
Editors:
Victor Cunrui Xiong & Kenneth J. Hammond
Publisher:
Routledge
Publication Date:
August 2018
Abstract:
Following more than 30 years of market reform, China has become an economic powerhouse, likely to surpass the United States as the world's largest economy in the not so distant future. The resurgence of China has generated much interest not only in the present conditions of that country, but also in her past. Since China is the only uninterrupted ancient civilization that is stilling living today, the study of it can be a very rewarding pursuit in its own right, but can also offer tremendous benefit to anyone who wants to gain an in-depth understanding of modern China. Perhaps more than anywhere else, in China, the present is intricately linked with the past. Providing coverage of the entire Imperial Era (221 BCE-1912 CE) the handbook takes a chronological approach with key themes such as politics, religion, culture, the economy, and science embedded in the chapters. This is an essential resource for upper level undergraduates and graduates studying Imperial Chinese history in class or on their own; it will also be of interest to graduate students and scholars interested in broadening the scope of their research.
Table of contents:
Introduction
Part I: Early Imperial China (Qin–Five Dynasties)
Section 1 The Qin-Han Empire
1. The Qin Dynasty, Charles Sanft
2. The Western Han, Liang CAI
3. The Eastern Han, Rafe de Crespigny
Section 2 The Six Dynasties
4. The Three States (Three Kingdoms), Michael Farmer
5. The Jin and the Sixteen States, Kawamoto Yoshiaki 川本芳昭
6. The Southern and Northern Dynasties, Andrew Chittick
Section 3 The Sui-Tang Empire and Five Dynasties
7. The Sui Dynasty, Victor Cunrui Xiong
8. The Tang Dynasty I (618-756), Seo Tatsuhiko 妹尾達彥
9. The Tang Dynasty II (756–907), Antony DeBlasi
10. The Five Dynasties, Peter Lorge
Editor：
Paul R. Goldin
Publisher:
Routledge
Publication Date:
May 2018
Abstract:
The study of early China has been radically transformed over the past fifty years by archaeological discoveries, including both textual and non-textual artifacts. Thanks to the huge fund of new data provided by archaeology, historians are now keenly aware that traditional accounts of the period are inadequte because they are partisan, prescriptive, and incomplete. Excavations of settlements and tombs have demonstrated that most people did not lead their lives in accordance with the rituals canons, while previously unknown documents have shown that most received histories were written retrospectively by victors, and present a correspondingly skewed and anachronistic perspective.
This handbook provides an authoritive survey of Chinese history from the Stone Age to A.D. 220. It is the first volume to include not only a comprehensive review of political history, but also detailed treatments of topics that transcend particular historical moments, such as warfare, cities, literature, and science. The contributions from doyens in the field and up and coming scholars reflect the cutting edge research that is redefining the study of Early Chinese history.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: What Is Early Chinese History?, Paul R. Goldin
Part I: Chronology
1. Main Issues in the Study of the Chinese Neolithic, Gideon Shelach-Lavi
2. Of Millets and Wheat: Diet and Health on the Central Plain of China during the Neolithic and Bronze Age, Kate Pechenkina
3. The Bronze Age before the Zhou Dynasty, Robert Bagley
4. The Western Zhou State, Li Feng
5. The Age of Territorial Lords, Chen Shen
6. The Qin Dynasty, Charles Sanft
7. The Former Han Empire, Vincent S. Leung
8. The Latter Han Empire and the End of Antiquity, Wicky W.K. Tse
Part II: Topical Studies
9. The Old Chinese Language, Axel Schuessler
10. Writing, Luo Xinhui; tr. Zachary Hershey and Paul R. Goldin
11. The Spirit World, Jue Guo
12. Religious Thought, Ori Tavor
13. Political Thought, Yuri Pines
14. Food and Agriculture, Roel Sterckx
15. Warfare, Wicky W.K. Tse
16. Currency, François Thierry
17. Women in Early China: Views from the Archaeological Record, Anne Behnke Kinney
18. An Overview of the Qin-Han Legal System from the Perspective of Recently Unearthed Documents, Kyung-ho Kim and Ming-chiu Lai
19. Literature, Stephen Durrant
20. Art, Wang Haicheng
21. "Medicine" in Early China, Miranda Brown
22. Mathematics, Karine Chemla
23. Astronomy, David Pankenier
Editors:
Li Tang, Dietmar W. Winkler
Publication Date:
2016
Publisher:
Wien: Lit Verlag
Abstract:
As early as AD 781, the writer of the Xi'an Fu inscription described the spread of Syriac Christianity (called Jingjiao in Chinese) to China as a wind blowing eastward. The discovery of the Xi'an Fu Stele, the Dunhuang Jingjiao Manuscripts, the numerous Syriac tombstones and fragments in Central Asia and many parts of China has unearthed a buried history of Syriac Christianity from the Tang Dynasty to the time of the Mongol Empire. The papers in this volume cover a wide range of topics from manuscripts and inscription, to the historical, liturgical and theological perspectives of Syriac Christianity in this geographic realm.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: winds of Jingjiao / Li Tang
Manuscripts and inscriptions
The Dunhuang Jingjiao documents in Japan: a report on their reappearance / Matteo Nicolini-Zani
Criciacal remarks on the so-called newly discoverd Jingjiao epitaph from Luoyang with a preliminary English translation / Li Tang
Syriac crosses in Central and Southwest China / Dale Albert Johnson
The geograhical context of the Tangtse Inscriptions / Roderic L. Mullen
Commemorating the saints at Turfan / Erica C D. Hunter
More gravestones in Syriac script from Tashkent, Panjikent and Ashgabat / Mark Dickens
The tale of Ahikar according to a Garshuni Turkish manuscript of the John Rylands University library / Peter Zieme
The exorcism in the newly found Khara-Khoto Syriac document / Shinichi Muto
Hisotrical Perspectives
Al-Bayruni - The twelve apostles and the Twelve months of the Julian year / Francois de Blois
Changing mission at home and abroad: Catholico Timothy I and the Church of the East on the early abbasid period / Andrew Platt
The Westwardness of things: Literary Geography and the Church of the East / Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Byzantine-Rite Christians (Melkites) in Central Asia and China and their contacts with the Church of the East / Ken Parry
On Christianity among Central Asian and Syr Daryan Oghuz and their possible Nestorian Connections / Mehmet Tezcan
An anachronism in the Stele of Xian - why Henanisho? / Max Deeg
Beth Sinaye: a typical East Syrian ecclesiatical province? / David Wilmshurst
'Eunuchs for the Kingdom of God' : rethinking the Christian-Buddhist Imperial translation incident of 787 / R. Todd Godwin
Why did Chinese Nestorians name their religion Jingjiao? / Xiaoping Yin
Priests of Jingjiao in the Xizhou Uighur Kingdom (five dynasties - the early song dynasty) / Yuanyuan Wang
Liturgical Tradition & Theological Reflections
Lost in transcription? - the theological vocabulary of Christian texts in Central Asia and China / Samuel N.C. Lieu
Uber die enkulturation der persisch-syrischen Christen im Tangzeitlichen China - am Beispiel der abgewandelten for derZehn Gebote im buch uber Jesus den Messias / Zhu Li
The sacraments of the Assyrian Church of the East / Mar Awa Royel
Theological transfer: how did monks from China influence East Syriac sacramental theology? / Dietmar W. Windler
Ying/?/Nirmana: a case study on the translatability of Buddhism into Jingjiao / Donghua Zhu
Editors:
G. E. R. Lloyd and Jingyi Jenny Zhao
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Publication Date:
February 28, 2018
Abstract:
Ancient Greece and China Compared is a pioneering, methodologically sophisticated set of studies, bringing together scholars who all share the conviction that the sustained critical comparison and contrast between ancient societies can bring to light significant aspects of each that would be missed by focusing on just one of them. The topics tackled include key issues in philosophy and religion, in art and literature, in mathematics and the life sciences (including gender studies), in agriculture, city planning and institutions. The volume also analyses how to go about the task of comparing, including finding viable comparanda and avoiding the trap of interpreting one culture in terms appropriate only to another. The book is set to provide a model for future collaborative and interdisciplinary work exploring what is common between ancient civilisations, what is distinctive of particular ones, and what may help to account for the latter.
Table of Contents:
Introduction G. E. R. Lloyd;
Part I. Methodological Issues and Goals:
1. Why some comparisons make more difference than others
Nathan Sivin;
2. Comparing comparisons
Walter Scheidel;
3. On the very idea of (philosophical?) translation
Robert Wardy
Part II. Philosophy and Religion:
4. Freedom in parts of the Zhuangzi and Epictetus
R. A. H. King;
5. Shame and moral education in Aristotle and Xunzi
Jingyi Jenny Zhao;
6. Human and animal in early China and Greece
Lisa Raphals;
7. Genealogies of ghosts, gods and humans: the capriciousness of the Divine in early Greece and China Michael Puett
Part III. Art and Literature:
8. Visual art and historical representation in Ancient Greece and China
Jeremy Tanner;
9. Helen and Chinese femmes fatales Yiqun Zhou
Part IV. Mathematics and Life Sciences:
10. Divisions, big and small: comparing Archimedes and Liu Hui
Reviel Netz;
11. Abstraction as a value in the historiography of mathematics in Ancient Greece and China
Karine Chemla;
12. Recipes for love in the ancient world
Vivienne Lo and Eleanor Re'em
Part V. Agriculture, Planning and Institutions:
13. From the harvest to the meal in prehistoric China and Greece: a comparative approach to the social context of food
Xinyi Liu, Evi Margaritis and Martin Jones;
14. On libraries and manuscript culture in Western Han Chang'an and Alexandria Michael Nylan
Afterword by Michael Loewe
Author:
Todd Godwin
Publisher:
I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd.
Publication Date:
18 Dec 2017
Abstract:
The Xi'an Stele, erected in Tang China's capital in 781, describes in both Syriac and Chinese the existence of Christian communities in northern China. While scholars have considered the Stele exclusively in relation to the Chinese cultural and historical context, Todd Godwin demonstrates that it can only be fully understood by reconstructing the complex connections that existed between the Church of the East, Sasanian aristocratic culture, and the Tang Empire (617–907) between the fall of the Sasanian Persian Empire (225–651) and the birth of the Abbasid Caliphate (762–1258).
Through close textual re-analysis of the Stele and by drawing on ancient sources in Syriac, Greek, Arabic, and Chinese, Godwin demonstrates that Tang China (617–907) was a cosmopolitan milieu where multiple religious traditions, namely Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Christianity, formed zones of elite culture. Syriac Christianity in fact remained powerful in Persia throughout the period, and Christianity―not Zoroastrianism―was officially regarded by the Tang government as "The Persian Religion."
Persian Christians at the Chinese Court uncovers the role played by Syriac Christianity in the economic and cultural integration of late Sasanian Iran and China, and is important reading for all scholars of the Church of the East, China, and the Middle East in the medieval period.
Table of Contents:
Chapter One: The Late Sasanian Court and Divine Economy
Chapter Two: 'Repairing the Imperial Net' before the An Lushan Rebellion
Chapter Three: The Habitus of Patriarch Timothy I
Chapter Four: The Court of Emperor Tang Dezong as 'Imperial Net,' andthe
Church of the East's Persian Longue Duree
Editor:
Michael Lackner
Publication Date:
December 2017
Publisher:
Brill
Abstract:
Coping with the Future: Theories and Practices of Divination in East Asia offers insights into various techniques of divination, their evolution, and their assessment. The contributions cover the period from the earliest documents on East Asian mantic arts to their appearance in the present time. The volume reflects the pervasive manifestations of divination in literature, religious and political life, and their relevance for society and individuals. Special emphasis is placed on cross-cultural influences and attempts to find theoretical foundations for divinatory practices. This edited volume is an initiative to study the phenomena of divination across East Asian cultures and beyond. It is also one of the first attempts to theorize divinatory practices through East Asian traditions.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Michael Lackner
Part 1: Divination and Literature: Excavated and Extant
1 A Recently Published Shanghai Museum Bamboo Manuscript on Divination
Marco Caboara
2 Hexagrams and Prognostication in the Weishu 緯書 Literature: The Thirty-Two-Year Cycle of the Qian zuo du 乾鑿度
Bent Nielsen
3 The Representation of Mantic Arts in the High Culture of Medieval China
Paul W. Kroll
4 Divination, Fate Manipulation, and Protective Knowledge in and around The Wedding of the Duke of Zhou and Peach Blossom Girl, a Popular Myth of Late Imperial China
Vincent Durand-Dastès
Part 2: Divination and Religions
5 A List of Magic and Mantic Practices in the Buddhist Canon
Esther-Maria Guggenmos
6 The Allegorical Cosmos: The Shi 式 Board in Medieval Taoist and Buddhist Sources
Dominic Steavu
7 Divining Hail: Deities, Energies, and Tantra on the Tibetan Plateau
Anne C. Klein
Part 3: Divination and Politics
8 Early Chinese Divination and Its Rhetoric
Martin Kern
9 Choosing Auspicious Dates and Sites for Royal Ceremonies in Eighteenth-century Korea
Park Kwon Soo
Part 4: Divination and Individual
10 Exploring the Mandates of Heaven: Wen Tianxiang’s Concepts of Fate and Mantic Knowledge
Liao Hsien-huei
11 Chŏng Yak-yong on Yijing Divination
Kim Yung Sik
12 From Jianghu to Liumang: Working Conditions and Cultural Identity of Wandering Fortune-Tellers in Contemporary China
Stéphanie Homola
13 Women and Divination in Contemporary Korea
Jennifer Jung-Kim
Part 5: Mantic Arts: When East Meets West
14 Translation and Adaption: The Continuous Interplay between Chinese Astrology and Foreign Culture
Che-chia Chang 張哲嘉
15 Against Prognostication: Ferdinand Verbiest’s Criticisms of Chinese Mantic Arts
Chu Pingyi 祝平一
16 Contradictory Forms of Knowledge? Divination and Western Knowledge in Late Qing and Early Republican China
Li Fan and Michael Lackner
17 Western Horoscopic Astrology in Korea
Jun Yong Hoon
Part 6: Reflections on Mantic Arts
18 How to quantify the Value of Domino Combinations? Divination and Shifting Rationalities in Late Imperial China
Andrea Bréard
19 Correlating Time Within One’s Hand: The Use of Temporal Variables in Early Modern Japanese “Chronomancy” Techniques
Matthias Hayek
20 The Physical Shape Theory of Fengshui in China and Korea
Oh Sanghak
Editors:
Constance A. Cook and Xinhui Luo
Publisher:
SUNY Press
Publication Date:
November, 2017
Abstract:
Using newly discovered and excavated texts, Constance A. Cook and Xinhui Luo systematically explore material culture, inscriptions, transmitted texts, and genealogies from BCE China to reconstruct the role of women in social reproduction in the ancient Chinese world. Applying paleographical, linguistic, and historical analyses, Cook and Luo discuss fertility rituals, birthing experiences, divine conceptions, divine births, and the overall influence of gendered supernatural agencies on the experience and outcome of birth. They unpack a cultural paradigm in which birth is not only a philosophical symbol of eternal return and renewal but also an abiding religious and social focus for lineage continuity. They also suggest that some of the mythical founder heroes traditionally assumed to be male may in fact have had female identities. Students of ancient history, particularly Chinese history, will find this book an essential complement to traditional historical narratives, while the exploration of ancient religious texts, many unknown in the West, provides a unique perspective into the study of the formation of mythology and the role of birthing in early religion.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: A Chu Text
1. Words and Images
2. Controlling Reproduction: Fertility Prayers
3. Mothers and Embryos
4. Controlling the Pregnant Body
5. Divine Origins and Chu Genealogical History
6. The Traumatic Births of Non-Zhou Ancestral Founders
Conclusion
Publication Date:
Aug. 2017
Publisher:
Tokyo: Tōhō Gakkai
Table of Contents:
IKEDA Tomohisa (池田知久): Introduction
LI Ling (李零): The Revolution in Shu-shu: From Divination Using Tortoiseshells and Yarrow Stalks to Shih Methods and Selection
KUDŌ Motoo (工藤元男): Local Government Officials and Shu-shu: A View from Daybooks (Jih-shu)
TAKEDA Tokimasa (武田時昌): The Six Incurables and Four Difficulties: An Examination of the Paradigms of Chinese Medicine from the Perspective of Shu-shu Studies
KAWAHARA Hideki (川原秀城): A Third Thesis concerning Shu-shu: Is Neo-Confucianism the Study of Shu-shu?
MINAKUCHI Takuju (水口拓寿): Perceptions of “Water Quality” in Early-Ch‘ing Feng-shui Texts: An Inquiry into Shen Hao’s Ti-hsüeh
Editors:
Donald Harper and Marc Kalinowski
Publication Date:
August 2017
Publisher:
Brill
Abstract:
Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China is a comprehensive introduction to the manuscripts known as daybooks, examples of which have been found in Warring States, Qin, and Han tombs (453 BCE–220 CE). Their main content concerns hemerology, or “knowledge of good and bad days.” Daybooks reveal the place of hemerology in daily life and are invaluable sources for the study of popular culture.
Eleven scholars have contributed chapters examining the daybooks from different perspectives, detailing their significance as manuscript-objects intended for everyday use and showing their connection to almanacs still popular in Chinese communities today as well as to hemerological literature in medieval Europe and ancient Babylon.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Donald Harper and Marc Kalinowski
1 Daybooks in Archaeological Context
Alain Thote
2 Daybooks: A Type of Popular Hemerological Manual of the Warring States, Qin, and Han
Liu Lexian 劉樂賢
3 Daybooks in the Context of Manuscript Culture and Popular Culture Studies
Donald Harper
4 Hemerology and Prediction in the Daybooks: Ideas and Practices
Marc Kalinowski
5 Daybooks and the Spirit World
Yan Changgui 晏昌貴
6 The Zidanku 子彈庫 Silk Manuscripts
Li Ling 李零
7 Calendars and Calendar Making in Qin and Han Times
Christopher Cullen
8 Daybooks in Qin and Han Religion
Marianne Bujard
9 The Legacy of Daybooks in Late Imperial and Modern China
Richard Smith
10 Hemerology in Medieval Europe
László Sándor Chardonnens
11 Babylonian Hemerologies and Menologies 408
Alasdair Livingstone
Appendices
Appendix A: Survey of Excavated Daybooks, Daybook-Related Manuscripts, and Other Hemerological Material
Appendix B: Summary of Published Daybooks and Daybook-Related Manuscripts
Appendix C: Description of Select Hemerologies and Classificatory Systems in Daybooks
Editors:
Mu-chou Poo, H. A. Drake, and Lisa Raphals
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Publication Date:
June 2017
Abstract:
In the first century of the Common Era, two new belief systems entered long-established cultures with radically different outlooks and values: missionaries started to spread the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in Rome and the Buddha in China. Rome and China were not only ancient cultures, but also cultures whose elites felt no need to receive the new beliefs. Yet a few centuries later the two new faiths had become so well-established that their names were virtually synonymous with the polities they had entered as strangers. Although there have been numerous studies addressing this phenomenon in each field, the difficulty of mastering the languages and literature of these two great cultures has prevented any sustained effort to compare the two influential religious traditions at their initial period of development.
This book brings together specialists in the history and religion of Rome and China with a twofold aim. First, it aims to show in some detail the similarities and differences each religion encountered in the process of merging into a new cultural environment. Second, by juxtaposing the familiar with the foreign, it also aims to capture aspects of this process that could otherwise be overlooked. This approach is based on the general proposition that, when a new religious belief begins to make contact with a society that has already had long honored beliefs, certain areas of contention will inevitably ensue and changes on both sides have to take place. There will be a dynamic interchange between the old and the new, not only on the narrowly defined level of "belief," but also on the entire cultural body that nurtures these beliefs. Thus, this book aims to reassess the nature of each of these religions, not as unique cultural phenomena but as part of the whole cultural dynamics of human societies.
Editor:
Zhixin Sun
Publisher:
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Publication Date:
April 24, 2017
Abstract:
Age of Empires presents the art and culture of China during one of the most critical periods of its history – the four centuries from 221 B.C. to A.D. 200-- when, for the first time, people of diverse backgrounds were brought together under centralized imperial rule that fostered a new and unified identity. The Qin and Han empires represent the “classical” era of Chinese civilization, coinciding in both importance and timing with the Greco-Roman period in the West. Under the short-lived Qin and centuries-long Han, warring principalities were united under a common emperor, creating not only political and intellectual institutions but also the foundation for a Chinese art, culture, and national identity that lasted over two millennia. Over 150 works from across the full breadth of Chinese artistic and decorative media-- including ceramics, metalwork, textiles, armor, sculpture, and jewelry – are featured in this book and attest to the unprecedented role of art in ancient Chinese culture. These stunning objects, among them soldiers from the renowned terracotta army of Qin Shihuang, China’s first emperor, are drawn from institutions and collections in China and appear here together for the first time.
Essays by leading scholars, accompanied by dazzling new photography of the objects, address the sweeping societal changes underway, and trace a progression from the early, formative years through unprecedented sophistication and technical accomplishment—embodied in an artistic legacy that reverberates in China’s national identity to this day.
Table of Contents:
1. The Making of China: The Establishement of a Lasting Political Paradigm and Cultural Identity During the Qin and Han Dynasties
(Zhixin Sun)
2. Qin and Han Political institutions and Administration
(Robin D. S. Yates)
3. Military Armaments of the Qin and Han
(Yang Hong)
4. The Qin and Han Imperial Citiy: Modeling and Visualizing Architecture
(Cary Y. Liu)
5. The Ingenuity of Qin-Han Craftsmanship
(Pengliang Lu)
6. Popular Beliefs in the Qin an Han Dynasties
(Lillian Lan-ying Tseng 曾藍瑩)
7. Qin-Han China and the Outside World
(I-tien Hsing 邢義田)
Author:
Rebecca Robinson
School:
McGill University
Department:
Department of History and Classical Studies
Year:
2016
Abstract:
Cult and Calendars in the Ancient Empires of Qin, Han, and Rome is a comparison of reforms made to imperial cult and calendar during the formative years of empire. As distinct from ruler cult, I define imperial cult as cult activity worshiped both by the emperor and on his authority. The early years of the Qin Han and Roman empires saw imperially-sponsored cult increase dramatically, and saw the positioning of the person of the emperor at the centre of all cult activity. In both empires, reforms to state cult and calendars were initiated as part of a larger program of consolidating power around the person of the emperor. Despite the very different challenges facing the emperors of Han and Rome, there is a remarkable similarity in the areas in which they chose to consolidate their power, as well as the methods through which they carried out their reforms. In both empires, the rulers sought the advice of advisors from outside of the traditional elite, incorporating astronomical and religious knowledge from diverse regions and peoples. This outside knowledge and practices were then incorporated into state cult, reshaping the way that the emperors and their subordinates worshipped. I argue that these reforms to cult, and the incorporation of outside knowledge, was fundamental to the consolidation of power in the person of the emperor.
Examining the expansion of cult practices, calendrical reforms, and spectacular performances, the dissertation uncovers the processes in the transformation of imperial cult to fit the changing needs of empire. Rather than seeking parallels in belief systems or cult practice, the dissertation compares the ways in which religious institutions both shaped and communicated a new imperial order. The juxtaposition of the two societies reveals not only the similarities and differences in these processes, but also the biases of historical sources and subsequent scholarship in both fields.
Author:
楢山満照 (Narayama, Mitsuteru)
Publisher:
早稲田大学出版部
Abstract:
後漢時代の蜀、すなわち現在の四川地域でつくられた鏡、および画像石や石闕などの石造遺物には、独特の図像表現がみられる。「官営工房の動向」と「儒教の礼教主義」という2つのトピックから、この時代の四川地域で作られた造形美術にみられる独特の表現形式の経緯を探る。掲載写真多数。
Table of Contents:
まえがき
緒論 四川の造形美術と地域文化
1 四川の造形美術をめぐる本書の問題意識
2 後漢の美術を見据えた「四川」という視座
第１部 銅鏡の生産体制と官営工房の動向
序章 後漢鏡研究における四川という極
第一章 広漢郡製作の紀年鏡の資料的意義
はじめに
1 広漢郡製作鏡の概要
2 広漢郡製作鏡をめぐる問題の所在
小結
第二章 広漢郡製作の元興元年銘鏡の製作事情：紀年の偏在に関する考察その一
はじめに
1 銘文をめぐる問題
2 工官の活動とその製品
3 尚方の動向と工官への影響
4 宦官勢力の伸張と元興元年銘鏡
小結
第三章 桓帝・霊帝代の作例の製作事情：紀年の偏在に関する考察その二
はじめに
1 元興元年以降の官営工房の動向
2 桓帝代の官営工房の動向
3 霊帝代の官営工房の動向
小結
終章 広漢郡製作鏡の意義と官営工房の動向
第２部 漢代画像と儒教の礼教主義
序章 儒教による支配と図像表現にみる地域色
第一章 四川における「聖人」の一表現：三段式神仙鏡の図像解釈をめぐって
はじめに
1 三段式神仙鏡の図像と従来の解釈
2 四川出土作品による図像解釈の再検討
3 四川出土作品の製作地
4 劉向『列女伝』と「尭賜舜二女」の役割
5 聖人の図像表現とその志向
小結
第二章 漢代画像にみる聖帝像の機能
はじめに
1 服部コレクションの三段式神仙鏡
2 三段式神仙鏡にみる聖帝像の機能
3 漢代画像石にみる尭舜禅譲図
小結
第三章 仏教受容前夜の四川：その死生観に関する図像学的考察
はじめに
1 後漢の神仙方術的仏教と四川：問題の所在
2 墓域における石閾の位置と役割
3 石閾にみる図像と歴史故事の役割
4 歴史故事図像の表現と石閾造営者の意図
小結
第四章 漢代画像石にみる荊軻刺秦王図：義士の英雄化と神仙化の契機をめぐって
はじめに
1 荊軻刺秦王図の基本構造
2 陝西省神木県出土作品にみる柱の表現と崑崙山
3 銅柱をめぐるイメージの混交
小結
終章 画像資料からみた儒教的徳目実践の目的
結論 後漢の美術における四川の位置付け
あとがき
図版一覧
テキスト出典
索引
英分要旨
Editor:
Michael Szonyi
Publisher:
Wiley-Blackwell
Publication Date:
January 2017
Abstract:
A Companion to Chinese History presents a collection of essays offering a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China’s history from the ancient past up until the present day.
Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Michael Szonyi
Section I: States of the Field
2. How Do We Know What We Know About Chinese History?
Endymion Wilkinson
3. Chinese History in China: The State of the Field (1980s-2010s)
May-bo Ching
4. Chinese History in Japan: The State of the Field
Shiba Yoshinobu
5. Chinese History in Europe: The State of the Field
Harriet Zurndorfer
6. Chinese History in the Era of the China Dream
Geremie R Barmé and Michael Szonyi
7. Chinese History in World History
Gregory Blue
Section II Chronology
8. Early China in Eurasian History
Michael Puett
9. Was Medieval China Medieval? (Post-Han to Mid-Tang)
Charles Holcombe
10. A Tang-Song Turning Point
Nicolas Tacket
11. Periods of Non-Chinese (or Non-Han) Rule
Michal Biran
12. Song to Qing: Late Imperial or Early Modern?
R. Kent Guy
13. Nineteenth-Century China: The Evolution of American Historical Approaches
Paul A. Cohen
14. Republican History
Janet Y. Chen
15. Rethinking the History of Maoist China
S.A. Smith
16. The Reform Era as History
Timothy Cheek
Section III Themes and Approaches
17. Women, Gender, the Family and Sexuality
Weijing Lu
18. History of Premodern Chinese Literature
Graham Sanders
19. Modern Chinese Literature
David Der-wei Wang
20. The Environmental History of China: Past, Present, and Future
Peter C. Perdue
21. Science, Technology, and Medicine
Carla Nappi
22. Legal History
William P. Alford and Eric T. Schluessel
23. Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity in the Study of Modern China
Thomas S. Mullaney
24. The Religious Core of Local Social Organization
Barend ter Haar
25. Beyond the Great Divergence: Current Scholarship on the Economic History of Premodern China
Richard von Glahn
26. Taiwan: Margin, Center, Node
Shelley Rigger
27. Chinese Migrations
Henry S.N. Yu
28. China in the World: Beyond the Tribute System
John E. Wills, Jr.
Glossary
Index
