Metamorphic Imagery in Ancient Chinese Art and Religion
Metamorphic Imagery in Ancient Chinese Art and Religion

Author: Elizabeth Childs-Johnson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-05-30

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1000873129

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Metamorphic Imagery in Ancient Chinese Art and Religion demonstrates that the concept of metamorphism was central to ancient Chinese religious belief and practices from at least the late Neolithic period through the Warring States Period of the Zhou dynasty. Central to the authors' argument is the ubiquitous motif in early Chinese figurative art, the metamorphic power mask. While the motif underwent stylistic variation over time, its formal properties remained stable, underscoring the image’s ongoing religious centrality. It symbolized the metamorphosis, through the phenomenon of death, of royal personages from living humans to deceased ancestors who required worship and sacrificial offerings. Treated with deference and respect, the royal ancestors lent support to their living descendants, ratifying and upholding their rule; neglected, they became dangerous, even malevolent. Employing a multidisciplinary approach that integrates archaeologically recovered objects with literary evidence from oracle bone and bronze inscriptions to canonical texts, all situated in the appropriate historical context, the study presents detailed analyses of form and style, and of change over time, observing the importance of relationality and the dynamic between imagery, materials, and affects. This book is a significant publication in the field of early China studies, presenting an integrated conception of ancient art and religion that surpasses any other work now available.

Helix Network Theory
Helix Network Theory

Author: Runyuan Gan

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-02-08

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13: 981198803X

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Based on the philosophy of Systems Science and the law of evolution theory, the book, by applying the methods of structural functionalism, divides the modern social system into human-culture, economy, polity, science, law, education and other sub-systems through the systematic synthesis of disciplines such as economics, sociology, management, politics, culture theories, history and philosophy, and explores the connection between these sub-systems and their intricate relation with social progress, thus depicting the historical trajectory of the long-term evolution of human social system. Starting from the actual production and operation of the firms, the author systematically analyses the organic connections and sophisticated operating process of social reproduction in modern society from micro, meso and macro, revealing the dynamic structure and evolutionary laws of the social economic system. This book reveals the fractal features such as self-similarity, hierarchy, and recursiveness in the general structure of the firm system, the sector system and the national economic system, thereby integrating micro-, meso- and macro-economics into a unified theoretical framework. This integration is interdisciplinary, and has gone beyond the economics. It can be regarded as the fourth grand synthesis in the history of economics after John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) and Samuelson (1915-2009).

Envisioning Eternal Empire
Envisioning Eternal Empire

Author: Yuri Pines

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0824832752

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This ambitious book looks into the reasons for the exceptional durability of the Chinese empire, which lasted for more than two millennia (221 B.C.E.-1911 C.E.). Yuri Pines identifies the roots of the empire's longevity in the activities of thinkers of the Warring States period (453-221 B.C.E.), who, in their search for solutions to an ongoing political crisis, developed ideals, values, and perceptions that would become essential for the future imperial polity. In marked distinction to similar empires worldwide, the Chinese empire was envisioned and to a certain extent "preplanned" long before it came into being. As a result, it was not only a military and administrative construct, but also an intellectual one. Pines makes the argument that it was precisely its ideological appeal that allowed the survival and regeneration of the empire after repeated periods of turmoil. Envisioning Eternal Empire presents a panoptic survey of philosophical and social conflicts in Warring States political culture. By examining the extant corpus of preimperial literature, including transmitted texts and manuscripts uncovered at archaeological sites, Pines locates the common ideas of competing thinkers that underlie their ideological controversies. This bold approach allows him to transcend the once fashionable perspective of competing "schools of thought" and show that beneath the immense pluralism of Warring States thought one may identify common ideological choices that eventually shaped traditional Chinese political culture

Ancient Chinese Warfare
Ancient Chinese Warfare

Author: Ralph D. Sawyer

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2011-03-01

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 0465023347

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The history of China is a history of warfare. Rarely in its 3,000-year existence has the country not been beset by war, rebellion, or raids. Warfare was a primary source of innovation, social evolution, and material progress in the Legendary Era, Hsia dynasty, and Shang dynasty -- indeed, war was the force that formed the first cohesive Chinese empire, setting China on a trajectory of state building and aggressive activity that continues to this day. In Ancient Chinese Warfare, a preeminent expert on Chinese military history uses recently recovered documents and archaeological findings to construct a comprehensive guide to the developing technologies, strategies, and logistics of ancient Chinese militarism. The result is a definitive look at the tools and methods that won wars and shaped culture in ancient China.

Astrology and Cosmology in Early China
Astrology and Cosmology in Early China

Author: David W. Pankenier

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-10-10

Total Pages: 617

ISBN-13: 1107006724

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Drawing on a vast array of scholarship, this pioneering text illustrates how profoundly astronomical phenomena shaped ancient Chinese civilization.

Religion and Power
Religion and Power

Author: Nicole Maria Brisch

Publisher: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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This volume represents a collection of contributions presented during the Third Annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, held at the Oriental Institute, February 23-24, 2007. The purpose of this conference was to examine more closely concepts of kingship in various regions of the world and in different time periods. The study of kingship goes back to the roots of fields such as anthropology and religious studies, as well as Assyriology and Near Eastern archaeology. More recently, several conferences have been held on kingship, drawing on cross-cultural comparisons. Yet the question of the divinity of the king as god has never before been examined within the framework of a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary conference. Some of the recent anthropological literature on kingship relegates this question of kings who deified themselves to the background or voices serious misgivings about the usefulness of the distinction between divine and sacred kings. Several contributors to this volume have pointed out the Western, Judeo-Christian background of our categories of the human and the divine. However, rather than abandoning the term divine kingship because of its loaded history it is more productive to examine the concept of divine kingship more closely from a new perspective in order to modify our understanding of this term and the phenomena associated with it.

On Their Own Terms
On Their Own Terms

Author: Benjamin A. Elman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 606

ISBN-13: 0674036476

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In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.

The Chinese Navy
The Chinese Navy

Author: Institute for National Strategic Studies

Publisher: Government Printing Office

Published: 2011-12-27

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780160897634

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Tells the story of the growing Chinese Navy - The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) - and its expanding capabilities, evolving roles and military implications for the USA. Divided into four thematic sections, this special collection of essays surveys and analyzes the most important aspects of China's navel modernization.

Chinese Architecture and Metaphor
Chinese Architecture and Metaphor

Author: Jiren Feng

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2012-05-31

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0824833635

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Investigating the historical tradition of Chinese architectural writing from antiquity to the twelfth century, Chinese Architecture and Metaphor reveals significant and fascinating social and cultural phenomena in the most important primary text for the study of the Chinese building tradition. Unlike previous scholarship, which has reviewed this imperially commissioned architectural manual largely as a technical work, this volume considers the Yingzao fashi’s unique literary value and explores the rich cultural implications in and behind its technical content. Utilizing a philological approach, the author pays particular attention to the traditional and contemporary architectural terminology presented in the Yingzao fashi. In examining the semantic meaning of the architectural terms used in the manual, he uncovers a systematic architectural metaphor wherein bracketing elements are likened to flowers, flowering branches, and foliage: Thus pillars with bracketing above are compared to blossoming trees. More importantly, this intriguing imagery was shared by different social groups, in particular craftsmen and literati, and craftsmen themselves employed literary knowledge in naming architectural elements. Relating these phenomena to the unprecedented flourishing of literature, the literati’s greater admiration of technical knowledge, and the higher intellectual capacity of craftsmen during the Song, Architecture and Metaphor demonstrates how the learned and “unlearned” cultures entangled in the construction of architectural knowledge in premodern China. It convincingly shows that technical language served as a faithful carrier of contemporary popular culture and aesthetic concepts. Chinese Architecture and Metaphor demonstrates a high level of engagement with a broad spectrum of sophisticated Chinese sources. It will become a classic work for all students and scholars of East Asian architecture.