TOC Journal of Chinese History, Special Issue on 'The State and Migration in Chinese History' -- Volume 5 - Issue 2 - July 2021

Journal of Chinese History, Special Issue on 'The State and Migration in Chinese History' -- Volume 5 - Issue 2 - July 2021

Link here

Special issue articles

Introduction

“THE STATE and MIGRATION IN CHINESE HISTORY”

Anthony J. Barbieri-Low

Early Imperial and Early Medieval China

Coerced Migration and Resettlement in the Qin Imperial Expansion

Anthony J. Barbieri-Low

State-Induced Migration and the Creation of State Spaces in Early Chinese Empires: Perspectives from History and Archaeology

Maxim Korolkov, Anke Hein

War Captives, Left-Behind Wives, and Buddhist Nuns: Female Migrants in Early Medieval China (4th–6th Century CE)

Wen-Yi Huang

Late Imperial China

Rethinking Qing Manchuria's Prohibition Policies

Jonathan Schlesinger

Where Diasporas Met: Hunanese, Cantonese, and the State in Late-Qing Guangxi

Steven B. Miles

Modern China

Together in the Same Boat: Exiled Nationalist State and Chinese Civil War Exiles in 1950s Taiwan

Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang

Transform the Land, Train the Youth: Water and Soil Conservation Teams and State-Induced Migration in mid-1960s China

Micah S. Muscolino

Reluctant and Illegal Migrants in Mao's China: Civil Defense Evacuation in the Tianjin Region, 1969–1980

Jeremy Brown

Modeling Peace: Royal Tombs and Political Ideology in Early China

Author:
Jie Shi

Publisher:
Columbia University Press

Publication date:
March, 2020

Abstract:
Among hundreds of thousands of ancient graves and tombs excavated to date in China, the Mancheng site stands out for its unparalleled complexity and richness. It features two juxtaposed burials, of the first king and queen of the Zhongshan kingdom (dated late second century BCE). The male tomb occupant, King Liu Sheng (d. 113 BCE), was sent by his father, Emperor Jing (r. 157–141 BCE), to rule the Zhongshan kingdom near the northern frontier of the Western Han empire, neighboring the nomadic Xiongnu confederation. Modeling Peace interprets Western Han royal burial as a political ideology by closely reading the architecture and funerary content of this site and situating it in the historical context of imperialization in Western Han China. Through a study of both the archaeological materials and related received and excavated texts, Jie Shi demonstrates that the Mancheng site was planned and designed as a unity of religious, gender, and intercultural concerns. The site was built under the supervision of the future royal tomb occupants, who used these burials to assert their political ideology based on Huang-Lao and Confucian thought: a good ruler is one who pacifies himself, his family, and his country. This book is the first scholarly monograph on an undisturbed and fully excavated early Chinese royal burial site.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Part I
1. The Embrace of Body and Soul
2. The Union of Husband and Wife
3. Integration of Ethnic Han and Non-Han
Part II
4. The Public King
5. The King of Peace
6. The King Under the Gaze
Conclusion

周縁領域からみた秦漢帝国 2

Editors:
髙村武幸 (TAKAMURA Takeyuki) 　
廣瀬薫雄 (HIROSE Kunio)
渡邉英幸 (WATANABE Hideyuki)

Publisher:
六一書房

Publication date:
September 2019

Table of Contents:

第1部　秦の中核と周縁
渡邉英幸　戦国秦の内史に関する覚書
青木俊介　里耶秦簡の公文書における「某主」について　岳麓秦簡・興律の規定を手がかりに
髙村武幸　戦国秦の「帝国」化と周縁領域統治の変遷

第2部　漢代周縁領域地域社会
鈴木直美　前漢後期から魏晋にいたる随葬衣物疏簡の展開
飯田祥子　後漢後期・末期の西北辺境漢族社会　韓遂の生涯をてがかりとして

第3部　周縁領域の史料と遺跡
廣瀬薫雄　1998年敦煌小方盤城出土簡牘初探　兼ねて玉門都尉府と玉門関を論ずる
片野竜太郎　漢代酒泉郡周辺遺跡の基礎的研究　県城と防衛線
森谷一樹　衛星画像が語ること　歴史学・考古学への応用にむけて
森谷一樹 　Corona衛星画像の利用法とその応用

付録　遺跡考証の記録
Ⅰ　甘粛省・寧夏回族自治区の遺跡
Ⅱ　内蒙古自治区の遺跡

The Art and Archaeology of Bodily Adornment: Studies from Central and East Asian Mortuary Contexts

Editor:
Sheri A. Lullo and Leslie V. Wallace

Publisher:
Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge

Publication date:
2019

Abstract:

This book examines the significance of adornment to the shaping of identity in mortuary contexts within Asia, and brings these perspectives into dialogue with current scholarship in other worldwide regions. The mortuary contexts of focus in this volume represent unique sites and events where identity was visualized, and often manipulated and negotiated, through material objects and their placement on and about the deceased body. In both breadth and depth, it will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the archaeology, art, and history of Central and East Asia, as well as anyone interested in the general study of dress and adornment.

Table of Contents:

Dimensions of personal adornment / Sheri A. Lullo and Leslie V. Wallace

Adornments at Odake Shell Midden Site: perceptions of early Jomon hunter-gatherer gender and identities / Ilona R. Bausch

Some features of "Xiongnu" composite belts / S.S. Miniaev

Adornments of golden Silla / Sarah Milledge Nelson

The Yayoi-Kofun transition as seen from the exchange network of beads in the Japanese archipelago / Ari Tanizawa

Why wear dolphins? Greek imagery among the pastoralists along the ancient Oxus / Karen S. Rubinson

The power and authority of exotic accessories: ornamentation of human and equine haniwa at Tsukamawari tomb 4, Gunma, Japan / Karen M. Gerhart and Katheryn M. Linduff

Jade age adornment of the Liangzhu elite / Elizabeth Childs-Johnson

Does a feather in your hat a barbarian make? Headgear and hairstyles in Han Dynasty tomb murals in the Ordos / Leslie V. Wallace

Dressing the dead in Jin China / Sarah Laursen

銅鏡から読み解く2～4世紀の東アジア： 三角縁神獣鏡と関連鏡群の諸問題

Editor:
實盛良彦 (Jitsumori Yoshihiko)

Publication date:
September 2019

Publisher:
勉誠出版

Table of Contents:

序文　銅鏡研究と日本考古学 實盛良彦
総論　東アジア世界と銅鏡 森下章司

Ⅰ　中国の鏡
後漢・三国鏡の生産動向 上野祥史
後漢鏡の図像解釈―中国美術史上における儒教図像の意義 楢山満照
鋳造技術からみた後漢・三国時代の銅鏡 南健太郎
類書に映る鏡の記述―『藝文類聚』を例に 佐藤裕亮

Ⅱ　倭でつくられた鏡
倭における鏡の製作 加藤一郎
倭独自の文様を持つ小型鏡の創出と展開 脇山佳奈
倭鏡に見る「王権のコントロール」 林正憲

Ⅲ　三角縁神獣鏡と関連の鏡
三角縁神獣鏡生産の展開と製作背景 岩本崇
黒塚古墳三角縁神獣鏡の鋳上がりと切削研磨の程度からみる製造状況―二面同形二十号・三十二号鏡の調査から 三船温尚
画文帯神獣鏡の生産 村瀨陸
華北東部の銅鏡をめぐる諸問題 馬渕一輝
斜縁鏡群と三角縁神獣鏡 實盛良彦

Ⅳ　銅鏡から歴史を読む
新見東呉尚方鏡試考 朱棒／藤井康隆（訳・解題）
二・三・四世紀の土器と鏡―土器の併行関係と出土鏡からみた暦年代を中心として
久住猛雄
日本列島における銅鏡の流通と政治権力―二～四世紀を中心に 辻田淳一郎
跋文　銅鏡から読み解く二・三・四世紀の東アジア 實盛良彦

The Politics of the Past in Early China

Author:
Vincent S. Leung

Publication date:
August 2019

Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press

Abstract:
Why did the past matter so greatly in ancient China? How did it matter and to whom? This is an innovative study of how the past was implicated in the long transition of power in early China, as embodied by the decline of the late Bronze Age aristocracy and the rise of empires over the first millenium BCE. Engaging with a wide array of historical materials, including inscriptional records, excavated manuscripts, and transmitted texts, Vincent S. Leung moves beyond the historiographical canon and explores how the past was mobilized as powerful ideological capital in diverse political debate and ethical dialogue. Appeals to the past in early China were more than a matter of cultural attitude, Leung argues, but were rather deliberate ways of articulating political thought and challenging ethical debates during periods of crisis. Significant power lies in the retelling of the past.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. Time out of joint: uses of the past from the Western Zhou to the early warring states

2. A parenthetical past: deep history and anti-history in the late warring states

3. Specter of the past: bureaucratic amnesia under the Rise of the Qin Empire

4. The rehabilitation of antiquity in the early Han Empire

5. Sima Qian's critical past

Epilogue

Asian Studies Vol 7 No 2 (2019): Meaning and transformation of Chinese funerary art during the Han and Wei Jin Nanbei periods

Table of Contents:

Guest Editor’s Foreword
Guest Editor’s Foreword
Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/8589
5-9

Fuxi and Nüwa from Centre to Periphery
Integration and Transformation: A Study of the Sun and the Moon Depicted in the Imagery of Fuxi and Nüwa
Jinchao Zhao https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/8390
13-45

Transmission of Han Pictorial Motifs into the Western Periphery: Fuxi and Nüwa in the Wei-Jin Mural Tombs in the Hexi Corridor
Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/8458
47-86

Chinese-Buddhist Encounter: Synthesis of Fuxi-Nüwa and the Cintamani in Early Medieval Chinese Art
Fan Zhang https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/8318
87-111

Meaning of the Bi Disc and the Hunping Spirit Jar

Representation of Heaven and Beyond
The Bi Disc Imagery in the Han Burial Context
Hau-ling Eileen Lam https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/8415
115-151

The Meaning of Birds on Hunping (Spirit Jars)
The Religious Imagination of Second to Fourth century Jiangnan
Keith Nathaniel Knapp https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/8471
153-172

Tomb Iconography in the Territory between the southwestern to northern Frontiers

Cliff Tomb Burial and Decorated Stone Sarcophagi from Sichuan from the Eastern Han Dynasty
Hajni Pejsue Elias https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/8212
175-201

Dual Portraits of the Deceased in Yangqiaopan M1, Jingbian, Shaanxi
Leslie Wallace https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/8311
203-219

The Representation of Military Troops in Pingcheng Tombs and the Private Household Institution of Buqu in Practice https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/8313
Chin-Yin Tseng
221-243

In Pursuit of the Great Peace： Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture

Author:
ZHAO Lu 趙璐

Release Date:
June 2019

Publisher:
State University of New York Press

Abstract:

Through an examination of the Great Peace (taiping 太平), one of the first utopian visions in Chinese history, Zhao Lu describes the transformation of literati culture that occurred during the Han Dynasty. Driven by anxiety over losing the mandate of Heaven, the imperial court encouraged classicism in order to establish the Great Peace and follow Heaven’s will. But instead of treating the literati as puppets of competing and imagined lineages, Zhao uses sociological methods to reconstruct their daily lives and to show how they created their own thought by adopting, modifying, and opposing the work of their contemporaries and predecessors. The literati who served as bureaucrats in the first century BCE gradually became classicists who depended on social networking as they traveled to study the classics. By the second century CE, classicism had dissolved in this traveling culture and the literati began to expand the corpus of knowledge beyond the accepted canon. Thus, far from being static, classicism in Han China was full of innovation, and ultimately gave birth to both literary writing and religious Daoism.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. Toward a Zeal for Classicism: Intellectual Transitions from 74 BC to AD 9 China
The Search for Heaven’s Will in Emperor Xuan’s Period
Toward the Great Peace: Emperor Yuan and the Restoration of the Kingly Way
The Six Classics: Complete and Fundamental
Restoring the Original Six Classics or Getting Rid of Them: Two Paths of Innovation
Concluding Remarks

2. The Conflation between Heaven and the Classics: The Rise of Apocrypha (chenwei 讖緯)
Discovering the Heavenly Nature of the Classics
Forming a Tradition: The Sociopolitical Background of the Emergence of the Apocryphal Texts
A Case Study: Liu Xiu’s Feng and Shan Sacrifices
Concluding Remarks

3. Apocrypha, Confucius, and Monarchy in Emperor Ming’s Reign (AD 58–75)
Xuan sheng 玄聖: The Dark Sage
Su Wang 素王, the “Uncrowned King”
Zixia 子夏 and Confucius: A Political Analogy
Concluding Remarks

4. Finding Teachers versus Making Friends: The Gradual Departure from Classicism in the First Two Centuries AD
How to Succeed in the Han: Sketching the Han Official Recruitment System
How One Learned Classical Knowledge in the Han: Schools and Curricula
Ma Rong and His Friends: A Case Study of Horizontal Relationships
Concluding Remarks

5. The Radical and the Conservative: Zheng Xuan 鄭玄, He Xiu 何休, the Scripture of the Great Peace 太平經, and Their Stances on the Classics
Zheng Xuan and His Scholarship
He Xiu and His Return to the Gongyang Tradition
The (Re)emergence of the Scripture of the Great Peace
Concluding Remarks

Conclusion
Han Intellectual Communities and Their Features
The Matter of the Great Peace
The Production of Innovation and Its Driving Force
The Impact and Legacy of Classicism

Appendix 1. The Chinese Classics
Appendix 2. The Origin of the Old Script / New Script Controversy
Appendix 3. The Contrast-Debate Model and Its Critique
Appendix 4. The Assumptions of Confucian Empire and Its Problems
Appendix 5. Apocryphal Texts: A History of Superstition and Adulation
Appendix 6. Chen 讖, Wei 緯, and Apocrypha: A Matter of Definition

The Grand Scribe's Records, Volume V.1： The Hereditary Houses of Pre-Han China, Part I

Author: 
Ssu-ma Ch'ien

Editor:
William H. Nienhauser, Jr.

Translators:
Weiguo Cao, Zhi Chen, Scott Cook, Hongyu Huang, Bruce Knickerbocker, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., Wang Jing, Zhang Zhenjun and Zhao Hua

Publication date: 
02/27/2019

Publisher:
Indiana University Press

Abstract:
With Part I of the two-part fifth volume of Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s Shi chi (The Grand Scribe’s Records), we enter the world of the shih chia 世家 or "hereditary houses." These ten chapters trace the history of China’s first states, from their establishment in the 11th century B.C. until their incorporation in the first empire under the Ch’in in 221 B.C. Combining myth, anecdote, chronicle, and biography based on early written and oral sources, many no longer extant, the narratives make for compelling reading, as dramatic and readable as any in this grand history.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction (William H. Nienhauser, Jr.)
On Using this Book
A Note on Terms
Weights and Measures (Lu Zongli)
List of Abbreviations

Hereditary House 1 (Zhi Chen and William H. Nienhauser, Jr., translators)
Hereditary House 2 (Bruce Knickerbocker, translator)
Hereditary House 3 (Weiguo Cao, translator)
Hereditary House 4 (Hongyu Huang, translator)
Hereditary House 5 (William H. Nienhauser, Jr., translator)
Hereditary House 6 (Wang Jing, translator)
Hereditary House 7 (Scott Cook, translator)
Hereditary House 8 (Zhenjun Zhang, translator)
Hereditary House 9 (Zhao Hua and William H. Nienhauser, Jr., translators)
Hereditary House 10 (Weiguo Cao, translator)

Frequently Mentioned Commentators
Biographical Sketches of Shih chi Commentators (Juri Kroll)
Selected Recent Studies of the Shih chi
Index
Maps

How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context: Poetic Culture from Antiquity Through the Tang

Editor: 
Zong-qi Cai

Publisher:
Columbia University Press

Publication Date: 
February 2018

Abstract:

How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context is an introduction to the golden age of Chinese poetry, spanning the earliest times through the Tang dynasty (618–907). It aims to break down barriers—between language and culture, poetry and history—that have stood in the way of teaching and learning Chinese poetry. Not only a primer in early Chinese poetry, the volume demonstrates the unique and central role of poetry in the making of Chinese culture.

Each chapter focuses on a specific theme to show the interplay between poetry and the world. Readers discover the key role that poetry played in Chinese diplomacy, court politics, empire building, and institutionalized learning; as well as how poems shed light on gender and women’s status, war and knight-errantry, Daoist and Buddhist traditions, and more. The chapters also show how people of different social classes used poetry as a means of gaining entry into officialdom, creating self-identity, fostering friendship, and airing grievances. The volume includes historical vignettes and anecdotes that contextualize individual poems, investigating how some featured texts subvert and challenge the grand narratives of Chinese history. Presenting poems in Chinese along with English translations and commentary, How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context unites teaching poetry with the social circumstances surrounding its creation, making it a pioneering and versatile text for the study of Chinese language, literature, history, and culture.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Cultural Role of Chinese Poetry, by Zong-qi Cai

Part I: Pre-Han Times

1. Poetry and Diplomacy in The Zuo Commentary(Zuozhuan), by Wai-yee Li

2. Poetry and Authorship: The Songs of Chu (Chuci), by Stephen Owen

Part II: The Han Dynasty

3. Empire in Text: Sima Xiangru’s “Sir Vacuous/Imperial Park Rhapsody”(“Zixu/Shanglin fu”), by Yu-yu Cheng and Gregory Patterson

4. Poetry and Ideology: The Canonization of the Book of Poetry (Shijing) During the Han, by Zong-qi Cai

5. Love Beyond the Grave: A Tragic Tale of Love and Marriage in Han China, by Olga Lomová

Part III: The Six Dynasties

6. Heroes from Chaotic Times: The Three Caos, by Xinda Lian

7. The Worthies of the Bamboo Grove, by Nanxiu Qian

8. The Poetry of Reclusion: Tao Qian, by Alan Berkowitz

9. The Struggling Buddhist Mind: Shen Yue, by Meow Hui Goh

Literate Community in Early Imperial China: The Northwestern Frontier in Han Times

Author:
Charles Sanft

Publisher:
SUNY Press

Publication date:
May 2019

Abstract:
Through an examination of archaeologically recovered texts from China’s northwestern border regions, argues for widespread interaction with texts in the Han period. This book examines ancient written materials from China’s northwestern border regions to offer fresh insights into the role of text in shaping society and culture during the Han period (206/2 BCE–220 CE). Left behind by military installations, these documents—wooden strips and other nontraditional textual materials such as silk—recorded the lives and activities of military personnel and the people around them. Charles Sanft explores their functions and uses by looking at a fascinating array of material, including posted texts on signaling across distances, practical texts on brewing beer and evaluating swords, and letters exchanged by officials working in low rungs of the bureaucracy. By focusing on all members of the community, he argues that a much broader section of early society had meaningful interactions with text than previously believed. This major shift in interpretation challenges long-standing assumptions about the limited range of influence that text and literacy had on culture and society and makes important contributions to early China studies, the study of literacy, and to the global history of non-elites.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. Interacting with Text in Early Imperial China and Beyond

2. Contexts and Sources

3. Posted Texts

4. Statements of Individuals and Groups

5. Composite Texts

6. Practical Texts

7. Cultural Texts

8. Letters

Conclusion

Chinese Architecture: A History

Author:
Nancy Steinhardt

Publisher: 
Princeton University Press

Publication date:
May, 2019

Abstract:

Throughout history, China has maintained one of the world's richest built civilizations. The nation's architectural achievements range from its earliest walled cities and the First Emperor's vision of city and empire, to bridges, pagodas, and the twentieth-century constructions of the Socialist state. In this beautifully illustrated book, Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt presents the first fully comprehensive survey of Chinese architecture in any language. With rich political and historical context, Steinhardt covers forty centuries of architecture, from the genesis of Chinese building through to the twenty-first century and the challenges of urban expansion and globalism.

Steinhardt follows the extraordinary breadth of China's architectural legacy--including excavation sites, gardens, guild halls, and relief sculpture--and considers the influence of Chinese architecture on Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and Tibet. Architectural examples from Chinese ethnic populations and various religions are examined, such as monasteries, mosques, observatories, and tombs. Steinhardt also shows that Chinese architecture is united by a standardized system of construction, applicable whether buildings are temples, imperial palaces, or shrines. Every architectural type is based on the models that came before it, and principles established centuries earlier dictate building practices. China's unique system has allowed its built environment to stand as a profound symbol of Chinese culture.

With unprecedented breadth united by a continuous chronological narrative, Chinese Architecture offers the best scholarship available on this remarkable subject for scholars, students, and general readers.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Beyond the Forbidden City

Chapter 1: Genesis of Chinese Buildings and Cities

Chapter 2: Architecture of the First Emperor and His Predecessors

Chapter 3: Han Architecture

Chapter 4: An Age of Turmoil: Three Kingdoms, Two Jins, Sixteen States

Chapter 5: Northern Dynasties and Southern Dynasties

Chapter 6: Sui and Tang: Architecture for Empires

Chapter 7: Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Chapter 8: Grandeur and Magnificence under Liao and Western Xia

Chapter 9: The Chinese Building Standards

Chapter 10: Song Elegance and Jin Opulence

Chapter 11: The Chinese City between Tang and Ming

Chapter 12: The Mongol Century

Chapter 13: The Chinese Imperial City and Its Architecture, Ming and Qing

Chapter 14: Late Imperial Architecture in Chinese Style

Chapter 15: Convergences: Lamaist, Dai, Islamic

Chapter 16: Gardens and House

Chapter 17: China comes to Europe, Europe comes to China, Chinese students come to the United States

Conclusion  

[Dissertation] Biological Classification in Early Chinese Dictionaries and Glossaries: from Fish to Invertebrates and Vice Versa

Author:
Federico Valenti

School:
Università degli Studi di Sassari

Defended:
2018

Abstract:
This dissertation problematises the classification of chong 蟲 (invertebrates) and yu 魚 (fish) in Early Chinese texts. The loci classici analysed will range from the Warring States (ca. 453 – 221 BCE) to the Eastern Han period (dong Han 東漢, 25 – 220 CE). The focus is on the lexical ambiguity between these two zoological categories: despite being perceived as different, they include a more or less loose set of “dynamic” words that shift from one category to the other.

The project concentrates on two early Chinese texts: the Erya 爾雅 (III century BCE) and the Shuowen jiezi 説文解字 (100 CE). These works had a pivotal role during the development of Chinese lexicography and gave the lexical basis of later texts. They are also the first texts that deal with the problem of taxonomical classification in Early China.

By systematically applying a philological approach (Coblin 1972, Carr 1979) to a selection of zoological glosses preserved in these sources, this study aims at reformulating the way in which early Chinese “proto-zoological categories” are organised (Needham 1986, Sterckx 2002). Through the analysis of selected case studies, it aims at showing that even if there are fairly well attested categories that constitute a dichotomous system (such as “quadrupeds” versus “winged creatures” or “wild beasts” versus “domestic animals”), Early Chinese taxonomies represent a dynamic and unstable attempt at zoological classification for what we call today “fish” and “invertebrates”.

Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to "Religion" and Empire in Ancient China

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

Blossom on the Run: A Han Dynasty Adventure

Authors:
Michael Nylan & Robert J. Litz

Publisher: 
Metron Publications

Publication date:
July 21, 2016

Abstract:

This is Volume One of a planned trilogy. One morning in Han dynasty China (206 BC - 220 AD), a girl of eleven is waking up... The day Meike grew up started out like most. She woke to the songs of mockingbirds in the camellia tree. She could hear Ahmei, the cook, in the forecourt bang a pot over the stove. She could smell smoke from Ahmei’s fire and from a hundred others in their crowded district. If she concentrated, she could smell other things too – earth still damp from last night’s rain, peppers soaking in a vat, and something she couldn’t quite name riding the breeze that stirred the bamboo in the courtyard and trickled in through her latticed window. The first light that peeked over the roof-tiles of the east wing of the family compound made the soft green of the spring bamboo almost glow. A softer light caressed the petals of the plum blossom sprig in the vase on the table beneath her window. Her name, Meike, with its soft “may” and harder “kuh,” meant Plum Blossom – soft petals, hard branch – and every Spring, on Meike’s birthday, her mother placed a cutting in her room. In a few minutes, Ahmei would call her name, then call again when Meike didn’t hop out of bed as ordered. She knew that if she waited, her father would creep in, slowly lift her cover, then grab her belly in a tickling claw. But then, all of a sudden, she had this unsettling feeling that today would be different.

ATTN: This is Volume One of a planned trilogy, which was interrupted by the sudden demise of Robert J. Litz.

[Dissertation] Women During the Han Dynasty Through the Lens of Excavated Materials

Author:
Pattira Thaithosaeng

School:
University of Pennsylvania

Degree date: 
2018

Advisor: 
Goldin, Paul R.

Abstract:

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the life of Han women on the basis of excavated materials through four themes, namely, convict-labor, motherhood, sexual partners, and the afterlife. The sources include the Shuihudi, Zhangjiashan, and Mawangdui manuscripts along with visual representations and tomb artefacts. I argue that women were always the subject of concern either by the state or their partners. Female criminals constituted a crucial part in the government’s labor force. They were expected to effectively produce offspring and raise the future population with some benefits in return under the principle of filial piety. Sexual relationships between men and women were systematically regulated by the state, while individual men focused on improving health during sexual intercourse and women received pleasure as a by-product. Only in the afterlife would the rules be more relaxed, with life as depicted inside the tomb as evidence. Excavated materials have produced a more nuanced image of Han women, as they offer new insights to our understanding of gender and sexuality during the early periods, for which we previously lacked the resources to study.

目録学の誕生 劉向が生んだ書物文化

Author:
古勝 隆一 (KOGACHI, Ryuichi)

Publisher:
臨川書店

Publication date:
2019

Abstract:

人にとって書物とは何か。なぜ、書物は必要なのか
書物をぬきにして中国文化を語ることはできない。その書物は、どのように書かれ、整理され、系統立てられ、そして伝承されてきたのだろうか。前漢にはじまる皇室の図書事業は、やがて独立した「書物の学問」＝「目録学」に発展し、過去から未来へと学問をつなぐ知の集積がはじまっていく。目録学の始祖とされる劉向（りゅうきょう）は、何を考え、何を成し遂げたのか。原資料と先行研究を幅広く渉猟し、目録学の誕生史を描き出す。

Table of Contents:

はじめに
序章　目録と目録学
　第一節　校書と分類の関係
　第二節　目録と書目
　第三節　「校讐」の起源―校正の始まりについての一試論
　第四節　中国学術の全体像を俯瞰する
　第五節　「儒」の位置
　□コラム　目録学と校讐学
第一章　劉向目録学のインパクト
　第一節　二劉の学の大きさ
　第二節　書目の背後にあるのは「学術」である
　第三節　術をめぐって
　第四節　官職と書物
　第五節　『漢書』芸文志の序文を読む
　第六節　「大序」は誰の文章か
　□コラム　書物と国家
第二章　目録学前史―戦国時代から前漢時代における学術と学派
　第一節　諸子を批判する諸子
　第二節　批判精神の発露―『荀子』非十二子篇
　第三節　道術の衰え―『荘子』天下篇
　第四節　学派内部の分裂をめぐって―『韓非子』顕学篇
　第五節　司馬談の学術観
　□コラム　荀子は子思と孟子を批判したのか
第三章　前漢時代の皇帝と学問
　第一節　焚書のダメージ
　第二節　漢初の学問好尚の変化
　第三節　武帝と儒教
　第四節　ポスト武帝時代から前漢末にいたる学問好尚
　第五節　前漢における六芸の位置
　第六節　漢室と神仙思想
　第七節　前漢における図書蒐集の歴史
　□コラム　芸をめぐって
第四章　劉向の家系と学問
　第一節　『史記』楚元王世家と『漢書』楚元王伝
　第二節　劉向の祖先、楚の元王
　第三節　劉交の子孫たち
　第四節　劉向の曽祖父・祖父・父
　第五節　劉向の生涯
　第六節　毀誉褒貶を生んだ劉歆の生き方
　□コラム　劉安と劉向
第五章　『別録』と『七略』
　第一節　『別録』と『七略』
　第二節　『七略別録』とは何だろう
　第三節　『別録』『七略』のその後
　第四節　『別録』『七略』の輯本
　第五節　姚振宗輯本の登場
　第六節　『別録』『七略』に著録された書物
　第七節　劉氏校書と『漢書』芸文志
　□コラム　姚振宗とその著作
第六章　校書の様相
　第一節　校書を担ったのは誰なのか
　第二節　校書の記録―「荀子書録」を例として
　第三節　校書の実態―『戦国策』の場合
　第四節　序録に見える「中書」
　第五節　校書はどこで行われたのか
　□コラム　天禄閣から飛び降りた楊雄
第七章　『七略』の六分類
　第一節　なぜ「七」略なのに「六」文類なのか
　第二節　『七略』の六分類
　第三節　輯略について
　第四節　六分類の体系性をめぐって
　□コラム　数術略なのか術数略なのか
第八章　ポスト劉向時代の目録学
　第一節　劉向らの校書は無力だったのか
　第二節　劉向らが校讐した本の運命
　第三節　劉向らの校書結果の影響
　第四節　四部分類の誕生
　第五節　現代にも残るその影響力
　□コラム　劉向的分類を乗り越えることの難しさ
第九章　劉向の学を広め深めた学者たち―鄭樵・章学誠・余嘉錫
　第一節　鄭樵の学術観―理想の学術分類を目指して
　第二節　章学誠の見た劉向―目録学の理念
　第三節　余嘉錫の目録学―近代に劉向を伝える
　第四節　目録学は本当に劉向が始めたのか
　□コラム　「言公」の読みづらさ
終章　書物はなぜ必要なのか
　第一節　書物は聖人が遺した糟粕なのか
　第二節　劉向の思い
　第三節　書物肯定と否定のはざま
主要資料・参考文献一覧／あとがき／図版出典一覧／関連年表／索引

[Dissertation] The Southwest: A Study of Regional Identity in Material Culture and Textual Sources during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 - 220 C.E.)

Author:
Hajnalka Elias

Advisor:
Roel Sterckx

Date:

2018

Awarding Institution:

University of Cambridge

Abstract:

This dissertation studies examples of social and cultural memory and identity manifested in the art of the southwest, present-day Sichuan province, during the Eastern Han dynasty. Through the study of the southwest’s material culture, considered special for its distinct artistic style and content by scholars in the field of Chinese art, combined with analysis of early textual sources, it highlights a number of important findings associated with the region’s social make-up, economic activities, burial practices, education and governance, all of which contributed to the formation of a distinct regional identity. The southwest’s geographical isolation and its great distance from the Central Plains; the difficulties and dangers of road and river transport from all directions; its multi-ethnic make-up and the engrained cultural prejudice from the north, especially from the capital’s governing elite and literati, were all factors that contributed to a sense of regional separation that manifested itself in a distinct material culture and is hinted at in early textual sources. The main sources of material culture examined in the dissertation are pictorial brick tiles and stone reliefs discovered in stone and brick chamber tombs; decorated stone sarcophagi placed in the region’s cliff tombs; and commemorative and ancestral stelae erected for the governors of Shu and Ba commanderies. In its methodology, the dissertation employs Western theories on social and cultural memory and identity. It also bridges two fields of study, cultural and art history, which are often pursued separately due to their distinct specialisations. The dissertation’s findings aim to contribute to our knowledge of the southwest and to the study of regional identity in early imperial China.

Memory and Agency in Ancient China: Shaping the Life History of Objects

Editors:
Francis Allard, Yan Sun, Kathryn M. Linduff

Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press

Publication date: 
February 2019

Abstract:

Memory and Agency in Ancient China offers a novel perspective on China's material culture. The volume explores the complex 'life histories' of selected objects, whose trajectories as ginle objects ('biographies') and object types ('lineages') cut across both temporal and physical space. The essays, written by a team of international scholars, analyse the objects in an effort to understand how they were shaped by the constraints of their social, political and aesthetic contexts, just as they were also guided by individual preference and capricious memory. They also demonstrate how objects were capable of effecting change. Ranging chronologically from the Neolithic to the present, and spatially from northern to southern mainland China and Taiwan, this book highlights the varied approaches that archaeologists and art historians use when attempting to reconstruct object trajectories. It also showcases the challenges they face, particularly with the unearthing of objects from archaeological contexts that, paradoxically, come to represent the earliest known point of their 'post-recovery lives'.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: memory and agency in Ancient China: shaping the life histories of objects Francis Allard, Yan Sun and Katheryn M. Linduff

1. Memory, amnesia and the formation of identity symbols in China Gideon Shelach

2. The lives of shovels and bells in early South China: memory, ritual and the power of destination Francis Allard

3. The whole and fragmented lives of jade objects from late Neolithic Middle Yangzi river burials (ca. 2000 BC) Sascha Priewe

4. The social life of salt in Ancient China from the Late Neolithic to the Han Dynasty Pochan Chen 陳伯楨

5. A divergent life history of bronze willow-leaf-shaped swords of Western Zhou China from 11th to c. 10th centuries BCE Yan Sun

6. Bird-pillar basins and cylindrical vessels: object lineage in Ancient China  Xiaolong Wu

7. Toiletries and the production of social memory from the Warring states through the Han (4th c. BCE–3rd c. CE) Sheri Lullo

8. A biographical approach to the study of the mounted archer motif during the Han Dynasty  Leslie Wallace

9. Dynamic between form and material: the bi disc in Western Han noble burial ritual Eileen Lam

10. Crossing the Taiwan Strait: contextualizing and re-contextualizing Taiwan Aboriginal Objects (1895–1980) Du Hui

11. Artifacts that invoke the aura and authority of the ancient Katheryn M. Linduff

Cultivating a Good Life in Early Chinese and Ancient Greek Philosophy: Perspectives and Reverberations

Editors: 
Karyn Lai, Rick Benitez, Hyun Jin Kim

Publication date:
December 2018

Publisher:
Bloomsbury

Abstract:
This book engages in cross-tradition scholarship, investigating the processes associated with cultivating or nurturing the self in order to live good lives. Both Ancient Chinese and Greek philosophers provide accounts of the life lived well: a Confucian junzi, a Daoist sage and a Greek phronimos.

By focusing on the processes rather than the aims of cultivating a good life, an international team of scholars investigate how a person develops and practices a way of life especially in these two traditions. They look at what is involved in developing practical wisdom, exercising reason, cultivating equanimity and fostering reliability. Drawing on the insights of thinkers including Plato, Confucius, Han Fei and Marcus Aurelius, they examine themes of harmony, balance and beauty, highlight the different concerns of scepticism across both traditions, and discuss action as an indispensable method of learning and, indeed, as constitutive of self. The result is a valuable collection opening up new lines of inquiry in ethics, demonstrating the importance of philosophical ideas from across cultural traditions.

Table of Contents:

Introduction (Karyn Lai, Rick Benitez, Hyun Jin Kim)

Part I: Harmony, Balance, Beauty: Understanding Conceptions of Cultivation

1. Cultivation and Harmony: Plato and Confucius (Rick Benitez, University of Sydney, Australia)

2. Cultivating Noble Simplicity: Plato (L.M.J. Coulson, University of Sydney, Australia)

3. The Beauty Ladder and the Mind-heart Excursion: Plato and Zhuangzi (Wang Keping, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing)

4. Awareness and Spontaneity: Three Perspectives in the Zhuangzi (Lisa Raphals, University of California, Riverside, USA)

5. Understanding “Dao's Patterns”: Han Fei (Barbara Hendrischke, Sydney University, Australia)

Part II: Doubt, Predicament, Conflict: Cognitive, Affective and Epistemic Difficulties

6. Skepsis and Doubt: Ancient Greece and the East (Yasuhira Yahei Kanayama, Nagoya University, Japan)

7. Wisdowm and Cognitive Conflict: Outlines for Scepticism (Per Lind, Lund University, Sweden)

8. Understanding Fortune and Misfortune in a Good Life: 'Solon' and 'Confucius' (Hyun Jin Kim, University of Melbourne, Australia and Karen Hsu, University of Melbourne, Australia)

9. Emotion and Self-Cultivation: Marcus Aurelius and Mengzi (Jesse Ciccotti, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)

10. Dislodging Mundane Wisdom: the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi and the New Testament Gospels (Lauren Pfister, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)

Part III. Here, Now, Ever-after: How to Achieve and Practice a Good Life

11. Knowing How to Act: Aristotle (Sophie Grace Chappell, Open University, UK)

12. Learning to be Reliable: Confucius' Analects (Karyn Lai, University of New South Wales, Australia)

13. Auditory Perception and Cultivation: the Wenzi (Andrej Fech, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)

14. Cultivation and the Arts of Writing: Liu Xie (Will Buckingham, Open University, UK)

15. Death and Happiness: Han China (Mu-chou Poo, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)