[Open Access] Keeping Record: The Materiality of Rulership and Administration in Early China and Medieval Europe

Editors: Abigail S. Armstrong , Matthias J. Kuhn , Jörg Peltzer and Chun Fung Tong

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Publication year: 2024

Abstract:

The production and retention of written records was a common and important facet of pre-modern rulership and administration. Much of our understanding of governmental practices and expressions of authority come from the contents of such documents, which have been well studied. Less studied, however, are the records themselves as artefacts. This volume is an attempt to redress this balance by taking a more holistic, material approach to a range of written records. Through a series of case studies, this volume explores questions regarding the material characteristics of various records and their use. It demonstrates that the material features of the records, including the size and shape, the hands that wrote them and the material substrate, can shed new light on the functioning of government and the declarations of power these records asserted. The ten contributions of this volume focus on records from a variety of rulers, political systems and administrations. With four case studies from early China and six from medieval Europe, this volume offers transcultural perspectives to demonstrate how different cultures expressed rulership and administration materially through the use of text-bearing artefacts.

Table of Contents:

1. A Material Approach to Written Artefacts of Rulership and Administration: An Introduction
   Abigail S. Armstrong, Matthias J. Kuhn, Jörg Peltzer and Chun Fung Tong

2. The Charter Scribes of King Henry III. A Palaeographical Investigation of English Royal Charter Engrossments and Enrolments, 1259–1265
   Andrew Kourris

3. The Scribe and the Witnesses: The Drafting of Witness Lists in the Charters of the Counts of Flanders (1071–1191)
   Romain Waroquier

4. To Write or to Seal? New Evidence on Literacy Practices in Early Imperial China
   Tsang Wing Ma

5. Handwriting in the Official Documents from Liye and Bureaucratic Politics in the Qin Empire
   Maxim Korolkov

6. Between Slip and Tablet. Rulership and Writing Support in Eastern Han China, 25–220 CE
   Chun Fung Tong

7. Record-Keeping on the Estates of the Earls of Northumberland. Drafts, Templates and Innovation?
   Abigail S. Armstrong

8. Layouting Authority. Graphic Reflections of Power Relationships in Early Chinese Administrative Documents
   Enno Giele

9. Enrolling Lines of Power: Yorkist Pedigree Rolls as Material Evidence of Kingship
   Matthias J. Kuhn

10. The Cartulary as a Visual Representation of Rulership. King Henry IV of England (1399–1413) and the Great Cowcher (London, TNA, DL 42/1−2)
    Jörg Peltzer

11. The Power of Bookkeeping in Late Medieval Friedberg and Gelnhausen
    Hanna Nüllen

Link: click here

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

Author:
Anthony J. Barbieri-Low

Publication date:
July 2021

Publisher:
University of Washington Press

Abstract:

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

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

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. The Landscapes of the Nile and Yellow River

2. Empire and Diplomacy

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

4. Legal Principles and the Administration of Justice

5. Scribal Culture in Life and Death

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

7. Gaming the Way to Paradise

Epilogue

Rulers and Ruled in Ancient Greece, Rome, and China

Editors:

Hans Beck (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany)

Griet Vankeerberghen (McGill University, Canada)

Publisher:

Cambridge University Press

Publication date:

December 2020

Abstract:

Situated on opposite flanks of Eurasia, ancient Mediterranean and Han-Chinese societies had a hazy understanding of each other's existence. But they had no grounded knowledge about one another, nor was there any form of direct interaction. In other words, their historical trajectories were independent. In recent years, however, many similarities between both cultures have been detected, which has energized the field of comparative history. The present volume adds to the debate a creative method of juxtaposing historical societies. Each contribution covers both ancient China and the Mediterranean in an accessible manner. Embarking from the observation that Greek, Roman, and Han-Chinese societies were governed by comparable features, the contributors to this volume explain the dynamic interplay between political rulers and the ruled masses in their culture specific manifestation as demos (Greece), populus (Rome) and min (China).

Table of Contents:

Editors' preface: 

Introduction. The many faces of 'the people' in the ancient world: δήμος – populus – 民 min  

Hans Beck and Griet Vankeerberghen

Part I. Authority and Lifestyles of Distinction:

1. Of gold and purple: nobles in western Han China and republican Rome 

Griet Vankeerberghen

2. A tale of two stones: social memory in Roman Greece and Han China 

Miranda Brown with Zhang Zhongwei

3. Private associations and urban experience in the Han and Roman Empires 

Carlos Noreña

Part II. The People as Agents and Addressees:

4. Rhetoric, oratory and people in ancient Rome and early China Francisco 

Pina Polo

5. Female commoners and the law in early imperial China: evidence from recently recovered documents with some comparisons with classical Rome 

Robin Yates

6. Registers of 'the people' in Greece, Rome, and China 

Hans Beck

7. Food distribution for the People: welfare, food, and feasts in Rome and in Qin/Han China 

Moonsil Lee Kim

Part III. Inversions of the People: Emperors and Tyrants:

8. Augustus, the Roman plebs and the dictatorship:

22 BCE and beyond 

Alexander Yakobson

9. Liberation as burlesque: the death of the tyrant 

Garret Pagenstecher Olberding

10. Historical necessity or biographical singularity? Some aspects in the biographies of C. Iulius Caesar and Qin Shi Huangdi 

David Engels

11. Employing knowledge: a case study in calendar reforms in the early Han and Roman Empires 

Rebecca Robinson

Part IV. Identities and 'Others':

12. The invention of the 'barbarian' and ethnic identity in early Greece and China 

Yang Huang

13. Ethnic identity and the 'barbarian' in classical Greece and early China: its origins and distinctive features 

Hyun Jin Kim

Rome, China, and the Barbarians Ethnographic Traditions and the Transformation of Empires

Author:
Randolph Ford

Publisher:
Cambridge University Press

Publication date:
June 2020

Abstract:
This book addresses a largely untouched historical problem: the fourth to fifth centuries AD witnessed remarkably similar patterns of foreign invasion, conquest, and political fragmentation in Rome and China. Yet while the western Roman empire was never re-established, China was reunified at the end of the sixth century. Taking a comparative approach to the study of the broader historiographical and ethnographic traditions in the classical Greco-Roman and Chinese worlds, the book turns to the late antique/early medieval period, when the western Roman Empire 'fell' and China was re-constituted as a united empire after centuries of foreign conquest and political division. Analyzing the discourse of ethnic identity in the original texts, with translations by Dr Ford, it explores the extent to which notions of Self and Other, of 'barbarian' and 'civilized', help us understand both the transformation of the Roman world as well as the restoration of a unified imperial China.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1. Ethnography in the Classical Age

2. The Barbarian and Barbarian Antitheses

3. Ethnography in a Post-Classical Age: The Ethnographic Tradition in the Wars of Procopius and in the Jin shu 晉書

4. New Emperors and Ethnographic Clothes: The Representation of Barbarian Rulers
The Confluence of Ethnographic Discourse and Political Legitimacy: Rhetorical Arguments on the Legitimacy of Barbarian Kingdoms

Conclusion

[Dissertation] Mechanical Metaphors in Early Chinese Thought

Author:
Zhou, Boqun

School:
The University of Chicago

Defended:
2019

Abstract:
It is well known that Chinese philosophers in the Warring States period (475–221 BCE) were enamored with metaphors and analogies in their philosophical discussion. Imageries of plants, tools, and bodily skills abounded in debates over morality, politics, language, and human nature. While previous scholarship on ancient metaphors tends to focus on organic and spiritual ones such as plant and water, I argue that the Warring States period witnessed the emergence of a group of mechanical metaphors, and the metaphorical interest in machines is as ancient as it is cross-cultural. These metaphors started with the Mohist mechanics and the advent of the crossbow around the sixth to the fifth century BCE, gradually making their way into the standard vocabulary of morality and politics. They were all based on the lever (quan 權), a simple device widely used in technologies of weighing and weight-lifting. Lever machines, such as the balance, the well sweep, the crossbow trigger, and the trebuchet, provided metaphorical models for conceptualizing balance and imbalance in various kinds of human relationships. Whereas the function of weighing became a metaphor for decision-making in Confucian ethics, the function of weighing-lifting became a metaphor for strategic or positional advantage in military and political craft. The two functions correspond to two opposite kinds of rationality – value rationality that seeks to find moral balance in a dilemma and instrumental rationality that seeks to create strategic imbalance in power dynamics (that is, how the few could defeat or control the many). Due to the double function of the lever itself, the classical quan acquired the paradoxical meaning of “weighing” (as in quanheng 權衡) and “leverage” (as in quanshi 權勢), both of which survived well into modern Chinese but lost the mechanical association.

This dissertation is divide into five chapters. Chapter 1 defines an analytic framework by incorporating the conceptual metaphor theory in cognitive linguistics (with emphasis on the idea of “embodied schema”) and Hans Blumenberg’s historical metaphorology. Chapter 2 defines the ancient Chinese concept of “machine” and compares it with the Greek mechane in the Aristotelian corpus. Chapter 3 describes the embodied schema of the lever’s mechanical functions based on the Mohist Canon with philological analysis of its linguistic expressions. Chapter 4 analyzes the weighing metaphor in the moral philosophy of Mengzi and Xunzi. Lastly, Chapter 5 examines the leverage metaphor in the military philosophy of Sunzi and the political philosophy of Shen Dao.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Theories of Metaphor
The Meaning of Machine
The Lever Schema
Balance
Leverage
Conclusion

Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies. Volume 1: Contexts

Editor:
Sitta von Reden

Publication date:
December 2019

Publisher:
De Gruyter Oldenbourg

Abstract:
The notion of the “Silk Road” that the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen invented in the 19th century has lost attraction to scholars in light of large amounts of new evidence and new approaches. The handbook suggests new conceptual and methodological tools for researching ancient economic exchange in a global perspective with a strong focus on recent debates on the nature of pre-modern empires. The interdisciplinary team of Chinese, Indian and Graeco-Roman historians, archaeologists and anthropologists that has written this handbook compares different forms of economic development in agrarian and steppe regions in a period of accelerated empire formation during 300 BCE and 300 CE. It investigates inter-imperial zones and networks of exchange which were crucial for ancient Eurasian connections.

Volume I provides a comparative history of the most important empires forming in Northern Africa, Europe and Asia between 300 BCE and 300 CE. It surveys a wide range of evidence that can be brought to bear on economic development in the these empires, and takes stock of the ways academic traditions have shaped different understandings of economic and imperial development as well as Silk-Road exchange in Russia, China, India and Western Graeco-Roman history.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Ancient Economies and Global Connections
Reden, Sitta von

Part I: Empires

Introduction
Reden, Sitta von

1. The Hellenistic Empires
Reden, Sitta von

2. Central Asian Empires
Morris, Lauren

3. Early Historic South Asia
Dwivedi, Mamta

4. The Qin and Han Empires
Leese-Messing, Kathrin

5. The Xiongnu Empire
Brosseder, Ursula

6. The Arsakid Empire
Fabian, Lara

7. The Roman Empire
Weaverdyck, Eli J. S.

Part II: Evidence

Introduction
Reden, Sitta von

8. Graeco-Roman Evidence
8.A Material Evidence
Weaverdyck, Eli J. S.

8.B Transmitted Texts
Weaverdyck, Eli J. S.

8.C Documentary Sources
Reden, Sitta von

9. Evidence for Central Asia
Morris, Lauren

10. Evidence for Early South Asia
10.A Indic Sources
Dwivedi, Mamta

10.B Graeco-Roman Indography
Reden, Sitta von

11. Evidence for Arsakid Economic History
Wiesehöfer, Josef

12. Qin and Han Evidence
12.A Transmitted Texts
Leese-Messing, Kathrin

12.B Excavated Texts
Ma, Tsang Wing

12.C Material Evidence: Lacquerware
Leese-Messing, Kathrin

Part III: Historiographies

Introduction
Fabian, Lara

13. Russian Perspectives on Eurasian Pasts
Fabian, Lara

14. The Qin and Han Economies in Modern Chinese and Japanese Historiographies
Ma, Tsang Wing

15. Trends in Economic History Writing of Early South Asia
Dwivedi, Mamta

16. Constructing Ancient Central Asia’s Economic History
Morris, Lauren

17. Economy, Frontiers, and the Silk Road in Western Historiographies of Graeco- Roman Antiquity
Reden, Sitta von / Speidel, Michael

Download here:
https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/505594

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy

Editor: 
Alexus McLeod

Publication date:
21-02-2019

Publisher:
Bloomsbury Academic

Abstract:

Focusing on early Chinese ethical and political thought across multiple schools and thinkers, this book presents a comprehensive overview of the research being done in Chinese comparative ethics and political philosophy. 

In addition to chapters on Chinese comparative and interpretative thought, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy brings early Chinese ethics and political philosophy into conversation with Western and Indian Philosophy, as well as Western Theology. Contributors discuss numerous texts and schools in Pre-Qin and Han Philosophy, including Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, the Xunzi, the Liyun, and the Zhuangzi. The volume also shows how early Chinese ethical and political theories can be used to contextualise contemporary philosophical issues, such as metaethics, human rights, emotions, and the connection between ethics and metaphysics.

Table of Contents:

Introduction (Alexus McLeod, University of Connecticut, USA)

Part I: Historical Approaches

1. Confucian Role Ethics: Issues of Naming, Translation, and Interpretation, Sarah Mattice, University of North Florida, USA

2. From Patterning to Governing: A Constructivist Interpretation of the Xunzi, Kurtis Hagen, SUNY Plattsburgh, USA

3. Some Considerations in Defense of a Radical Reading of the Mohist Jian Ai, Alexus McLeod (University of Connecticut, USA

4. Ritual and Vulnerability of a Prosperous World: A Reading of the Liyun, Michael D. K. Ing, Indiana University, USA

5. Morality Without Moral Reasoning: The Case of Heshanggong, 
Misha Tadd, Peking University, Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, China

6. Nothingness and Selfhood in the Zhuangzi, 
David Chai, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

7. Han Fei's Rule of Law and Its Limits, 
Alejandro Barcenas, Texas State University, USA

Part Two: Comparative Approaches

8. Non-Impositional Rule in Confucius and Aristotle, Matthew D. Walker, Yale-NUS College, Singapore

9. Other People Die and That is the Problem, Amy Olberding, University of Oklahoma, USA

10. The Problem of Anxiety in the Zhuangzi, Indian, and Hellenistic Philosophy, Alexus McLeod, University of Connecticut, USA

11. Son of Heaven: Developing the Theological Aspects of Mengzi's Philosophy of the Ruler, Joshua Brown, University of Dayton, USA

12. Justifying Human Rights in Confucianism, May Sim, College of the Holy Cross, USA

Annotated Bibliography in Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy, Alexus McLeod, University of Connecticut, USA

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

Mourning Rituals in Archaic & Classical Greece and Pre-Qin China

Author: 
Wu, Xiaoqun

Publisher:
Palgrave Pivot

Publication date:
2018

Abstract:

This pivot compares mourning rituals in Archaic & Classical Greece and Pre-Qin China to illustrate some of the principles and methods used in comparative studies.  It focuses on three main aspects of mourning of the dead before burial — lamentation, mourners’ gestures and behaviors, and mourning apparel — to demonstrate the cultural function, purpose, and social influence of mourning. A key comparative study of rituals at the heart of both Western and Chinese culture, this text highlights the cultural function and social influence of rituals of two ancient peoples and will be of interest to all scholars of comparative religion, sociology and anthropology.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Attitudes towards Death in Ancient Greece and Ancient China

Lamentation

Mourners’ Gestures and Behaviors

Mourning Apparel

Conclusions

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)

Geopolitics in Late Antiquity: The Fate of Superpowers from China to Rome

Author:
Hyun Jin Kim

Publisher: 
Routledge

Publication date:
October, 2018

Abstract:
Geopolitics in Late Antiquity explores the geopolitical revolution which shook the foundations of the ancient world, the dawning of the millennium of Inner Asian dominance and virtual monopoly of world power (with interludes) that began with the rise of the Huns and then continued under the hegemony of various other steppe peoples. Kim examines first the geopolitical situation created by the rise of Inner Asian powers, and then the reactions of the great empires of Eurasia to this geopolitical challenge.

A unique feature of this book is its in-depth analysis of the geostrategies (some successful, others misguided) adopted by China, Rome and Persia to cope with the growing Inner Asian threat. The conclusions and insights drawn from this analysis are then used to inform modern geopolitics, mainly the contest for hegemonic power between the United States and China.

Geopolitics in Late Antiquity is a crucial resource for both academic and learned general readership, who have an interest in the fate of antiquity’s superpowers and also for those engaged in current international relations policy-making, who wish to learn from historical precedents.

Table of Contents:

1 Introduction
1.1 The great geopolitical dilemma, theoretical approaches
1.2 Territorial disputes and retrenchment, the re-emergence of policymaking
1.3 Summary

2 The Geopolitical Situation: The Superpowers and the Huns
2.1 Han China and the Huns
2.2. Rome and the Huns
2.3 Sassanian Persia and the Huns

3 The Superpower Reaction
3.1 China strikes back
3.2 Rome falters
3.3 Persian Collapse

4 Conclusion: The Geostrategic Choices for the Future
China as the geopolitical equivalent of the great Turco-Mongol Empires of Eurasia
The geostrategic options for the US
Select Bibliography

The Homeric Epics and the Chinese Book of Songs: Foundational Texts Compared

Editor:
Fritz-Heiner Mutschler

Publisher:
Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Publication date:
2018

Abstract:

The Homeric epics and the Book of Songs are not just the fountainheads of the Western and Chinese literary traditions; for centuries they played a central role in education and communal life, and thus exercised a lasting influence on both civilizations. This volume presents the first systematic comparison of the two corpora. Part One analyzes their genesis and their reception, while Part Two discusses their characteristics as poetic creations. The book brings together Chinese and Western sinologists and classicists, and so promotes significant interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue. Though the contributors rank among the leading experts in their fields, the essays here are accessible not only to their peers, but also to the interested ‘general reader’, and so to all those who seek a deeper understanding of Chinese and Western civilizations, their common human basis and their characteristic differences.

Table of Contents:

Introduction 

PART I. THE HISTORY OF THE TEXTS AND OF THEIR RECEPTION

A. Coming into Being
1. The Formation of the Homeric Epics
Margalit FINKELBERG

2. The Formation of the Classic of Poetry
Martin KERN

3. Comparing the Comings into Being
of Homeric Epic and the Shijing
Alexander BEECROFT

B. “Philological” Reception
1. Homeric Scholarship in its Formative Stages 
Barbara GRAZIOSI

2. Odes Scholarship in its Formative Stage
Achim MITTAG

3. The Beginning of Scholarship in Homeric Epic and the Odes: a Comparison
GAO Fengfeng / LIU Chun

C. Cultural Role
1. Homer in Greek Culture from the Archaic to the Hellenistic Period
Glenn W. MOST

2. Cultural Roles of the Book of Songs: Inherited Language, Education, and the Problem of Composition
David SCHABERG

3. Canon, Citation and Pedagogy: the Homeric Epics and the Book of Poetry
 ZHANG Longxi 

Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE – 250 CE

Author: 
Craig Benjamin

Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press

Publication Date:
April 2018

Abstract:

The Silk Roads are the symbol of the interconnectedness of ancient Eurasian civilizations. Using challenging land and maritime routes, merchants and adventurers, diplomats and missionaries, sailors and soldiers, and camels, horses and ships, carried their commodities, ideas, languages and pathogens enormous distances across Eurasia. The result was an underlying unity that traveled the length of the routes, and which is preserved to this day, expressed in common technologies, artistic styles, cultures and religions, and even disease and immunity patterns. In words and images, Craig Benjamin explores the processes that allowed for the comingling of so many goods, ideas, and diseases around a geographical hub deep in central Eurasia. He argues that the first Silk Roads era was the catalyst for an extraordinary increase in the complexity of human relationships and collective learning, a complexity that helped drive our species inexorably along a path towards modernity.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1. Pastoral nomads and the empires of the Steppe
2. Early China: prelude to the silk roads
3. Zhang Qian and Han expansion into Central Asia
4. The early Han dynasty and the Eastern Silk Roads
5. Rome and the Western Silk Roads
6. The Parthian Empire and the Silk Roads
7. The Kushan Empire: at the crossroads of ancient Eurasia
8. Maritime routes of the first Silk Roads era
9. Collapse of Empires and the decline of the first Silk Roads era
Conclusion.

Ancient Greece and China Compared

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

Eurasian Empires in Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe

Editors:
Nicola Di Cosmo & Michael Maas

Publisher:
Cambridge University Press

Publication Date:
January 2018

Abstract:

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity offers an integrated picture of Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppes during a formative period of world history. In the half millennium between 250 and 750 CE, settled empires underwent deep structural changes, while various nomadic peoples of the steppes (Huns, Avars, Turks, and others) experienced significant interactions and movements that changed their societies, cultures, and economies. This was a transformational era, a time when Roman, Persian, and Chinese monarchs were mutually aware of court practices, and when Christians and Buddhists criss-crossed the Eurasian lands together with merchants and armies. It was a time of greater circulation of ideas as well as material goods. This volume provides a conceptual frame for locating these developments in the same space and time. Without arguing for uniformity, it illuminates the interconnections and networks that tied countless local cultural expressions to far-reaching inter-regional ones.

Table of Contents:

Part I. Historical Thresholds:

1. How the steppes became Byzantine: Rome and the Eurasian Nomads in historical perspective 
Michael Maas

2. The relations between China and the steppe from the Xiongnu to the Türk Empire 
Nicola Di Cosmo

3. Sasanian Iran and the projection of power in Late Antique Eurasia: competing cosmologies and topographies of power 
Matthew P. Canepa

4. Trade and exchanges along the silk and steppe routes in Late Antique Eurasia 
Richard Lim

5. Sogdian merchants and Sogdian culture on the silk road 
Rong Xinjiang 榮新江

6. 'Charismatic' goods: commerce, diplomacy, and cultural contacts along the silk road in Late Antiquity 
Peter Brown

7. The synthesis of the Tang Dynasty: the culmination of China's contacts and communication with Eurasia 
Valerie Hansen

8. Central Asia in the Late Roman mental map, second to sixth centuries 
Giusto Traina

Part II. Movements, Contacts, and Exchanges:

9. Genetic history and migrations in Western Eurasia 
Patrick Geary

10. Northern invaders: migration and conquest as scholarly topos in Eurasian history 
Michael Kulikowski

11. Chinese and inner Asian perspectives on the history of the Northern dynasties (386–589 CE) in Chinese historiography 
Luo Xin 羅新

12. Xiongnu and Huns: archaeological perspectives on a centuries-old debate about identity and migration 
Ursula Brosseder

13. Ethnicity and empire in the Western Eurasian Steppes 
Walter Pohl

14. The languages of Christianity on the silk roads and the transmission of Mediterranean culture into central Asia 
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson

15. The spread of Buddhist culture to China between the third and seventh century 
Max Deeg

16. The circulation of astrological lore and its political use between the Roman East, Sasanian Iran, Central Asia, and the Türks 
Frantz Grenet

17. Luminous markers: pearls and royal authority in Late Antique Iran and Eurasia 
Joel Walker

Part III. Empires, Diplomacy, and Frontiers:

18. Byzantium's Eurasian policy in the age of the Türk Empire 
Mark Whittow

19. Sasanian Iran and its northeastern frontier: offense, defense, and diplomatic 
Daniel T. Potts

20. Infrastructures of legitimacy in inner Asia: the Early Türk Empires 
Michael R. Drompp

21. The stateless Nomads of Central Eurasia 
Peter B. Golden

22. Aspects of elite representation among the sixth- to seventh-century Türks 
Sören Stark

23. Patterns of Roman diplomacy with Iran and the steppe peoples 
Ekaterina Nechaeva

24. Collapse of a Eurasian hybrid: the case of the Northern Wei
Andrew Eisenberg

25. Ideological interweaving in Eastern Eurasia: simultaneous kingship and dynastic competition 
Jonathan Karam Skaff

26. Followers and leaders in northeastern Eurasia, ca. seventh to tenth centuries
Naomi Standen

Epilogue 
Averil Cameron.

Eurasian Empires in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Contact and Exchange between the Graeco-Roman World, Inner Asia and China

Editors:
Hyun Jin Kim, Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, Selim Ferruh Adalı

Publisher:
Cambridge University Press

Publication date:
October 2017

Abstract:

The great empires of the vast Eurasian continent have captured the imagination of many. Awe-inspiring names such as ancient Rome, Han and Tang China, Persia, Assyria, the Huns, the Kushans and the Franks have been the subject of countless scholarly books and works of literature. However, very rarely, if at all, have these vast pre-industrial empires been studied holistically from a comparative, interdisciplinary and above all Eurasian perspective. This collection of studies examines the history, literature and archaeology of these empires and others thus far treated separately as a single inter-connected subject of inquiry. It highlights in particular the critical role of Inner Asian empires and peoples in facilitating contacts and exchange across the Eurasian continent in antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

Table of Contents:

Introduction Hyun Jin Kim and Frederik Vervaet

Part I. Political Organization and Interactions of Eurasian Empires:
1. The Political Organization of Steppe Empires and their Contribution to Eurasian Interconnectivity: the case of the Huns and their impact on the Frankish West     Hyun Jin Kim

2. Tang China's Horse Power: The Borderland Breeding Ranch System    Jonathan Skaff

3.Cimmerians and the Scythians: The Impact of Nomadic Powers on the Assyrian Empire and the Ancient Near East    Selim Ferruh Adalı

Part II. Socio-institutional Aspects of Eurasian Empires:
4. Honour and Shame in the Roman Republic Frederik   Juliaan Vervaet

5. Honor and Shame in Han China    Mark Lewis

6. Slavery and forced labor in early China and the Roman world    
Walter Scheidel

Part III. Cultural Legacies of Eurasian Empires:
7. Homer and the Shi Jing as Imperial Texts 
Alexander Beecroft

8. The Serpent from Persia – Manichaeism in Rome and China 
Samuel Lieu

Part IV. Archaeology of Eurasian Empires:
9. The Alans in the Southern Caucasus? 
Antonio Sagona, Claudia Sagona and Aleks Michalewicz

10. Greeks, Scythians, Parthians and Kushans in Central Asia and India 
Osmund Bopearachchi

11. Enclosure Sites, non-nucleated settlement strategies and political capitals in ancient Eurasia  Michelle Negus Cleary

Conclusion Hyun Jin Kim, Frederik Juliaan Vervaet and Selim Ferruh Adalı.

Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China: The Daybook Manuscripts of the Warring States, Qin, and Han

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