Hyecho's Journey

Hyecho's Journey

Author: Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-12-21

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 022651790X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"This book is an introduction to Buddhism told as the story of the Korean pilgrim Hyecho, who traveled through the Buddhist world during its eighth-century golden age. Lopez tells the story of Hyecho's journey, along the way introducing key elements of Buddhism--its basic doctrines, monastic institutions, relationship to Islam, and importance of pilgrimage.


Hyecho's Journey

Hyecho's Journey

Author: Donald S. Lopez

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-12-21

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 022651806X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the year 721, a young Buddhist monk named Hyecho set out from the kingdom of Silla, on the Korean peninsula, on what would become one of the most extraordinary journeys in history. Sailing first to China, Hyecho continued to what is today Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, before taking the Silk Road and heading back east, where he ended his days on the sacred mountain of Wutaishan in China. With Hyecho’s Journey, eminent scholar of Buddhism Donald S. Lopez Jr. re-creates Hyecho’s trek. Using the surviving fragments of Hyecho’s travel memoir, along with numerous other textual and visual sources, Lopez imagines the thriving Buddhist world the monk explored. Along the way, Lopez introduces key elements of Buddhism, including its basic doctrines, monastic institutions, works of art, and the many stories that have inspired Buddhist pilgrimage. Through the eyes of one remarkable Korean monk, we discover a vibrant tradition flourishing across a vast stretch of Asia. Hyecho’s Journey is simultaneously a rediscovery of a forgotten pilgrim, an accessible primer on Buddhist history and doctrine, and a gripping, beautifully illustrated account of travel in a world long lost.


Buddhist Encounters and Identities Across East Asia

Buddhist Encounters and Identities Across East Asia

Author: Ann Heirman

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-05-07

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 9004366156

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Encounters, networks, identities and diversity are at the core of the history of Buddhism. They are also the focus of Buddhist Encounters and Identities across East Asia, edited by Ann Heirman, Carmen Meinert and Christoph Anderl. While long-distance networks allowed Buddhist ideas to travel to all parts of East Asia, it was through local and trans-local networks and encounters, and a diversity of people and societies, that identities were made and negotiated. This book undertakes a detailed examination of discrete Buddhist identities rooted in unique cultural practices, beliefs and indigenous socio-political conditions. Moreover, it presents a fascinating picture of the intricacies of the regional and cross-regional networks that connected South and East Asia.


Communication, Digital Media, and Popular Culture in Korea

Communication, Digital Media, and Popular Culture in Korea

Author: Kyong Yoon Yong Jin

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2018-05-16

Total Pages: 533

ISBN-13: 1498562043

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In recent decades, Korean communication and media have substantially grown to become some of the most significant segments of Korean society. Since the early 1990s, Korea has experienced several distinctive changes in its politics, economy, and technology, which are directly related to the development of local media and culture. Korea has greatly developed several cutting-edge technologies, such as smartphones, video games, and mobile instant messengers to become the most networked society throughout the world. As the Korean Wave exemplifies, the once small and peripheral Korea has also created several unique local popular cultures, including television programs, movies, and popular music, known as K-pop, and these products have penetrated many parts of the world. As Korean media and popular culture have rapidly grown, the number of media scholars and topics covering these areas in academic discourses has increased. These scholars’ interests have expanded from traditional media, such as Korean journalism and cinema, to several new cutting-edge areas, like digital technologies, health communication, and LGBT-related issues. In celebrating the Korean American Communication Association’s fortieth anniversary in 2018, this book documents and historicizes the growth of growing scholarship in the realm of Korean media and communication.


The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900CE)

The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900CE)

Author: Wiebke Denecke

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-03-21

Total Pages: 672

ISBN-13: 0199356602

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume introduces readers to classical Chinese literature from its beginnings (ca. 10th century BCE) to the tenth century CE. It asks basic questions such as: How did reading and writing practices change over these two millennia? How did concepts of literature evolve? What were the factors that shaped literary production and textual transmission? How do traditional bibliographic categories, modern conceptions of genre, and literary theories shape our understanding of classical Chinese literature? What are the recurrent and evolving concerns of writings within the period under purview? What are the dimensions of human experience they address? Why is classical Chinese literature important for our understanding of pre-modern East Asia? How does the transmission of this literature in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam define cultural boundaries? And what, in turn, can we learn from the Chinese-style literatures of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, about Chinese literature? In addressing these questions, the Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature departs from standard literary histories and sourcebooks. It does not simply categorize literary works according to periods, authors, or texts. Its goal is to offer a new conceptual framework for thinking about classical Chinese literature by defining a four-part structure. The first section discusses the basics of literacy and includes topics such as writing systems, manuscript culture, education, and loss and preservation in textual transmission. It is followed by a second section devoted to conceptions of genre, textual organization, and literary signification throughout Chinese history. A third section surveys literary tropes and themes. The final section takes us beyond China to the surrounding cultures that adopted Chinese culture and produced Chinese style writing adapted to their own historical circumstances. The volume is sustained by a dual foci: the recuperation of historical perspectives for the period it surveys and the attempt to draw connections between past and present, demonstrating how the viewpoints and information in this volume yield insights into modern China and east Asia.


To the Diamond Mountains

To the Diamond Mountains

Author: Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2010-11-15

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1442205059

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This compelling and engaging book takes readers on a unique journey through China and North and South Korea. Tessa Morris-Suzuki travels from Harbin in the north to Busan in the south, and on to the mysterious Diamond Mountains, which lie at the heart of the Korean Peninsula's crisis. As she follows in the footsteps of a remarkable writer, artist, and feminist who traced the route a century ago—in the year when Korea became a Japanese colony—her saga reveals an unseen face of China and the two Koreas: a world of monks, missionaries, and smugglers; of royal tombs and socialist mausoleums; a world where today's ideological confrontations are infused with myth and memory. Northeast Asia is poised at a moment of profound change as the rise of China is transforming the global order and tensions run high on the Korean Peninsula, the last Cold War divide. Probing the deep past of this region, To the Diamond Mountains offers a new and unexpected perspective on its present and future.


Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia

Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia

Author: Peter Francis Kornicki

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0198797826

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia is a wide-ranging study of vernacularization in East Asia--not only China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, but also societies that no longer exist, such as the Tangut and Khitan empires. Peter Kornicki takes the reader from the early centuries of the common era, when the Chinese script was the only form of writing and Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and medical texts spread throughout East Asia, through the centuries when vernacular scripts evolved, right up to the end of the nineteenth century when nationalism created new roles for vernacular languages and vernacular scripts. Through an examination of oral approaches to Chinese texts, it shows how highly-valued Chinese texts came to be read through the prism of the vernaculars and ultimately to be translated. This long process has some parallels with vernacularization in Europe, but a crucial difference is that literary Chinese was, unlike Latin, not a spoken language. As a consequence, people who spoke different East Asian vernaculars had no means of communicating in speech, but they could communicate silently by means of written conversation in literary Chinese; a further consequence is that within each society Chinese texts assumed vernacular garb: in classes and lectures, Chinese texts were read and declaimed in the vernaculars. What happened in the nineteenth century and why are there still so many different scripts in East Asia? How and why were Chinese texts dethroned, and what replaced them? These are some of the questions addressed in Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East Asia.


The General Theory of Dunhuang Studies

The General Theory of Dunhuang Studies

Author: Jinbao Liu

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-03-25

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9811690731

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Dunhuang studies refer to a discipline focusing on Dunhuang Manuscripts, Dunhuang grotto art, the theory of Dunhuang studies, and Dunhuang history and geography. It is a broad subject of studying, excavating, sorting, and protecting the cultural relics and documents in the Dunhuang area of China. The General Theory of Dunhuang Studies explores the basic concept of Dunhuang studies. It presents a more comprehensive and systematic study of six aspects of Dunhuang, covering the background of Dunhuang studies in orientalism, the history of Dunhuang, Dunhuang grotto art, the scattering of Dunhuang cultural relics, Dunhuang manuscripts, and the history of Dunhuang studies, and discussing and summarizing the relevant national and international research. The General Theory of Dunhuang Studies has extensively absorbed the research achievements of domestic and foreign academic circles and the author's decades of academic research experience. As a comprehensive and systematic academic monograph with both academic depth and extensive readability, the book provides descriptions, theory and objective comments written in a clear and straightforward style; the book is intended for professional scholars, graduates and general readers. It is an excellent teaching and learning resource for those interested in understanding and learning about Dunhuang studies. However, it is also a helpful reference book for readers interested in Dunhuang culture.