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

Author: 

Scott Pearce

Publisher: 

Oxford University Press

Publication year: 

August, 2023

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

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

Table of Contents:

Prologue: Defining Our Arenas

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summing Up; Looking Ahead

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

Author: 

Ko, Wing Tung Jada

School: 

Harvard University

Year: 

2022

Abstract:

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Introduction: Embracing my Inner Biophilia

Chapter 2 The Becoming of a Political Animal

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

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

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

Chapter 5 Growing Interactions Beyond the AMHRV: Zooarchaeological Analysis of

Nanchengzi (3100-1450 B.C.)

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

(1400-1250 B.C.)

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

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

Chapter 10 Conclusions: Stepping Back into Nature

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

Author:
Robert Ford Campany

Publication Date: 
04/18/2023

Publisher:
Harvard University Asia Center

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

Table of Contents:

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

Spatial Dunhuang: Experiencing the Mogao Caves

Author:
Wu Hung

Publication date: 

February, 2023

Publisher:

Seattle: University of Washington Press

Abtract:

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

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

Early China 44 (2022) 《古代中國》第44輯

Table of Contents:

Letter from the Editor
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Sarah Allan 

Festschrift in Honor of Michael Loewe on his 100th Birthday
MICHAEL LOEWE, A MODEL FOR THE AGES
Michael Nylan, Trenton Wilson 

BAN GU'S VIEW ON THE “SECOND VICTORY” OF “CONFUCIANISM” AND THE FALL OF THE FORMER HAN
Hans van Ess 

WANG MANG 王莽 (c. 45 b.c.e.–23 c.e.) AND CLASSICAL LEARNING AS PATH TO SUPREME POWER
Béatrice L'Haridon 

OPPOSITION TO BUDDHISM AND THE HAN LEGACY
T. H. Barrett 

DU FU 杜甫 ON THE HAN DYNASTY: A MEDIEVAL VIEW OF THE CLASSICAL CHINESE EMPIRE
David McMullen 

NOTES ON THE “NOTE” (JI 記) IN EARLY ADMINISTRATIVE TEXTS
Luke Habberstad 

RETHINKING THE ANCESTRAL SHRINES IN THE EARLY EMPIRES
Tian Tian, Zhou Wen 

WESTERN HAN NOBLE BURIALS: A VIEW FROM ZHANG ANSHI'S 張安世 TOMB
He Ruyue, Song Yuanru, Michael Nylan 

CAI YONG'S 蔡邕 READING OF THE ODES, AS SEEN FROM HIS QINCAO 琴操 AND HIS “QINGYI FU” 青衣賦
Dorothee Schaab-Hanke 

HOW DO EXCAVATED MANUSCRIPTS AND TRANSMITTED CANONS AND COMMENTARIES SHED LIGHT ON EACH OTHER? AN OUTLOOK FROM MATHEMATICS
Karine Chemla 

THE WAY TO THE WHITE TIGER HALL CONFERENCE: EVIDENCE GLEANED FROM THE FORMATION PROCESS OF THE BAIHU TONG
Shi Jian 

THE HAIHUNHOU CAPSULE BIOGRAPHIES OF KONGZI AND HIS DISCIPLES
Mark Csikszentmihalyi 

Research article
DIDACTIC NARRATIVE AND THE ART OF SELF-STRENGTHENING: READING THE BAMBOO MANUSCRIPT YUE GONG QI SHI 越公其事
Yuri Pines 

RE-MAKING ANIMAL BODIES IN THE ARTS OF EARLY CHINA AND NORTH ASIA: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE STEPPE
Petya Andreeva 

WHO SAID THERE WAS A CLASSIC OF MUSIC?
Luke Waring 

THE SOUNDSCAPE OF THE HUAINANZI 淮南子: POETRY, PERFORMANCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND PRAXIS IN EARLY CHINA
Peter Tsung Kei Wong 

Dissertation Abstracts
DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS
Wen-Yi Huang 

Annual Bibliography
ANNUAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wen-Yi Huang 

目錄：

主編的信 艾蘭

魯惟一：世代之楷模
戴梅可、魏德偉 Michael Nylan and Trenton Wilson

班固關於儒教勝利的觀點與前漢的垮台
葉翰 Hans van Ess

王莽經學與奪權之道
羅逸東 Béatrice L’Haridon

反對佛教的史料與漢代的遺産
巴瑞特 T. H. BarreĴ

杜甫的漢代：一個關於中國古代帝國的中古觀點？
麥大維 David McMullen

戰國秦漢時期行政文獻中的「記」
何祿凱 Luke Habberstad

再思早期帝制中國的宗廟
田天

從張安世墓看西漢列侯喪葬制度及陪陵問題
何如月

蔡邕讀《詩經》：以《琴操》和《青衣賦》為視角的審讀
沙敦如 Dorothee Schaab-Hanke

從數學的角度試論出土文獻和經典與其一起流傳下來的注
和注釋如何相互闡明
林力娜 Karine Chemla

走近白虎觀會議：基於《白虎通》生成過程的考察
石瑊

海昏侯墓出土的孔子及其弟子傳記性文字
齊思敏 Mark Csikszentmihalyi

教訓類敘事和自强之術：清華簡《越公其事》思想特徵及其在中國古代史學史上的地位
尤銳 Yuri Pines

中國和北亞古代的動物現象改造：草原視角
安陪雅 Petya Andreeva

誰說先秦有《樂經》？
康路華 Luke Waring

《淮南子》的文本聲景：早期中國的詩歌、表演、哲學與實踐
王棕琦 Peter Tsung Kei Wong

年度論著目錄
黃文儀彙編 Wen-Yi Huang, comp.

博士論文提要
黃文儀彙編 Wen-Yi Huang, comp.

Preparing one’s act: performance supports and the question of human nature in early China

Author:

Maddalena Poli

School:

University of Pennsylvania

Year:

2022

Abstract:

Since the 20th century, Chinese institutions have been recovering a growing number of ancient objects, among which figure manuscripts produced during the Warring States (453–221 BCE) era. These are the protagonists of this dissertation. Chapter one articulates the overarching goal of my study: the importance of rigorous philological and intellectual engagement to promote the significance of these manuscripts in and beyond the study of early Chinese history. In Chapter two, I analyze manuscripts produced around 300 BCE as what I call “performance supports,” rather than self-contained philosophical and historical essays. My notion of “performance supports” incorporates observations about the composite nature of early Chinese manuscripts, but better accounts for other textual features, such as errors, abrupt endings, list-like passages, etc. Chapter three discusses the implications of my argument. I show how performance supports were used in practices of knowledge management that relied on, but went beyond, the written medium. I explore oratory, recitation, literary compositions, and writings used to organize and retrieve knowledge. I then compare performance supports to other Warring States texts, so as to highlight the peculiarities of both groups and confirm that the concept of performance support is not an ad-hoc solution. Chapter four focuses on the performance support *Natural Dispositions Come from Endowment 性自命出, and reconstructs ways in which this manuscript functioned as the basis for central philosophical debates on “human nature” (xing 性) during the Warring States period. The dissertation is completed by a new philological study of *Natural Dispositions.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE. Setting The Stage

CHAPTER TWO. Ancient Chinese Manuscripts As Performance Supports

CHAPTER THREE. The Performance. How performance supports were used, and by whom

CHAPTER FOUR. The Warring States debate on human nature

Concluding remarks