Taiping Guangji; A Collection of Ancient Novels in China; Volume of Gods, Ghosts and Spirits (Vol. 291 – 374)
Taiping Guangji; A Collection of Ancient Novels in China; Volume of Gods, Ghosts and Spirits (Vol. 291 – 374)

Author: Li Fang

Publisher: DeepLogic

Published:

Total Pages: 1233

ISBN-13:

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"Taiping Guangji" （太平广记） is the first collection of ancient classical Chinese documentary novels. The book has 500 volumes with 10 catalogues . It is a kind of book based on the documentary stories of the Han Dynasty and the Song Dynasty. 14 people including Li Fang, Hu Mongolian ﹑ Li Mu , Xu Xuan , Wangke Zhen , Song white , Lv Wenzhong worked under Song Taizong Emperor’s command for the compilation. It began in the second year of Taiping Xingguo (977 A.D) and was completed in the following year (978 Ad.). This book is basically a collection of ancient stories compiled by category. The book is divided into 92 categories according to the theme, and is divided into more than 150 details. The story of the gods and spirits in the book accounts for the largest proportion, such as the fifty-five volumes of the gods, the fifteen volumes of the female fairy, the twenty-five volumes of the gods, the forty volumes of the ghosts, plus the Taoism, the alchemist, the aliens, the dissidents, the interpretation and Spirit vegetation of birds and so on, basically belong to the weird story of nature, represents the mainstream of Chinese classical story. The book includes the Volume of Volume of Gods, Ghosts and Spirits (Vol. 291 – 374) from Tai Ping Guang Ji.

The Eminent Monk
The Eminent Monk

Author: John Kieschnick

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 1997-07-01

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780824818418

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In an attempt to reconstruct an elusive aspect of the medieval Chinese imagination, The Eminent Monk examines biographies of Chinese Buddhist monks, from the uncompromising ascetic to the unfathomable wonder-worker. While analyzing images of the monk in medieval China, the author addresses some questions encountered along the way: What are we to make of accounts in “eminent monk” collections of deviant monks who violate monastic precepts? Who wrote biographies of monks and who read them? How did different segments of Chinese society contend for the image of the monk and which image prevailed? By placing biographies of monks in the context of Chinese political and religious rhetoric, The Eminent Monk explores both the role of Buddhist literature in Chinese history and the monastic imagination that inspired this literature.

An Urban History of China
An Urban History of China

Author: Chonglan Fu

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-07-25

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 9811382115

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This book considers urban development in China, highlighting links between China’s history and civilization and the rapid evolution of its urban forms. It explores the early days of urban dwelling in China, progressing to an analysis of residential environments in the industrial age. It also examines China’s modern and postmodern architecture, considered as derivative or lacking spiritual meaning or personality, and showcases how China's traditional culture underpins the emergence of China’s modern cities. Focusing on the notion of “courtyard spirit” in China, it offers a study of the urban public squares central to Chinese society, and examines the disruption of the traditional Square model and the rise and growth of new architectural models.

Healing with Poisons
Healing with Poisons

Author: Yan Liu

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2021-06-22

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0295749016

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Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749013 At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically employed as healing agents to cure everything from abdominal pain to epidemic disease. Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious figures, court officials, and laypersons used toxic substances to both relieve acute illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of methods to transform dangerous poisons into effective medicines. Recounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the Tang, historian Yan Liu considers how the concept of du was central to how the people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. He also examines the wide range of toxic minerals, plants, and animal products used in classical Chinese pharmacy, including everything from the herb aconite to the popular recreational drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with foreign substances, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful. Healing with Poisons is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University of Buffalo.

The Culture of Love in China and Europe
The Culture of Love in China and Europe

Author: Paolo Santangelo

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789004396869

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The Culture of Love in China and Europe offers a cautiously comparative survey of the cults of love developed in the history of ideas and literary production in China and Europe between the 12th and early 19th century.

The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture
The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture

Author: John Kieschnick

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2003-04-06

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780691096766

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Buddhism had a profound effect not only on Chinese philosophy and ritual, but also on the material culture of China. Examining the impact of books, bridges, sugar, tea and the chair, amongst other things, this text looks at how attitudes to such novelties affected the history of Chinese Buddhism.

Song Blue and White Porcelain on the Silk Road
Song Blue and White Porcelain on the Silk Road

Author: Adam T. Kessler

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2012-07-25

Total Pages: 679

ISBN-13: 9004218599

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Song Blue and White Porcelain on the Silk Road disproves received opinion that pre-Ming blue and white dates to the Yuan (1279-1368 A.D.) and establishes the proper foundation for 21st century study of ancient Chinese porcelain.

A Chinese Bestiary
A Chinese Bestiary

Author: Richard E. Strassberg

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-11-03

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0520922786

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A Chinese Bestiary presents a fascinating pageant of mythical creatures from a unique and enduring cosmography written in ancient China. The Guideways through Mountains and Seas, compiled between the fourth and first centuries b.c.e., contains descriptions of hundreds of fantastic denizens of mountains, rivers, islands, and seas, along with minerals, flora, and medicine. The text also represents a wide range of beliefs held by the ancient Chinese. Richard Strassberg brings the Guideways to life for modern readers by weaving together translations from the work itself with information from other texts and recent archaeological finds to create a lavishly illustrated guide to the imaginative world of early China. Unlike the bestiaries of the late medieval period in Europe, the Guideways was not interpreted allegorically; the strange creatures described in it were regarded as actual entities found throughout the landscape. The work was originally used as a sacred geography, as a guidebook for travelers, and as a book of omens. Today, it is regarded as the richest repository of ancient Chinese mythology and shamanistic wisdom. The Guideways may have been illustrated from the start, but the earliest surviving illustrations are woodblock engravings from a rare 1597 edition. Seventy-six of those plates are reproduced here for the first time, and they provide a fine example of the Chinese engraver's art during the late Ming dynasty. This beautiful volume, compiled by a well-known specialist in the field, provides a fascinating window on the thoughts and beliefs of an ancient people, and will delight specialists and general readers alike.

Yongming Yanshou's Conception of Chan in the Zongjing lu
Yongming Yanshou's Conception of Chan in the Zongjing lu

Author: Albert Welter

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-04-26

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 019984240X

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Yongming Yanshou ranks among the great thinkers of the Chinese and East Asian Buddhist traditions, one whose legacy has endured for more than a thousand years. Albert Welter offers new insight into the significance of Yanshou and his major work, the Zongjing lu, by showing their critical role in the contested Buddhist and intellectual territories of the Five Dynasties and early Song dynasty China. Welter gives a comprehensive study of Yanshou's life, showing how Yanshou's Buddhist identity has been and continues to be disputed. He also provides an in-depth examination of the Zongjing lu, connecting it to Chan debates ongoing at the time of its writing. This analysis includes a discussion of the seminal meaning of the term zong as the implicit truth of Chan and Buddhist teaching, and a defining notion of Chan identity. Particularly significant is an analysis of the long underappreciated significance of the Chan fragments in the Zongjing lu, which constitute some of the earliest information about the teachings of Chan's early masters. In light of Yanshou's advocacy of a morally based Chan Buddhist practice, Welter also challenges the way Buddhism, particularly Chan, has frequently been criticized in Neo-Confucianism as amoral and unprincipled. Yongming Yanshou's Conception of Chan in the Zongjing lu concludes with an annotated translation of fascicle one of the Zongjing lu, the first translation of the work into a Western language.