Early China

Early China PDF Author: Li Feng
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521895529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book

Book Description
A critical new interpretation of the early history of Chinese civilization based on the most recent scholarship and archaeological discoveries.

Early China

Early China PDF Author: Li Feng
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521895529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book

Book Description
A critical new interpretation of the early history of Chinese civilization based on the most recent scholarship and archaeological discoveries.

Writing and Literacy in Early China

Writing and Literacy in Early China PDF Author: Feng Li
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295804505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Get Book

Book Description
The emergence and spread of literacy in ancient human society an important topic for all who study the ancient world, and the development of written Chinese is of particular interest, as modern Chinese orthography preserves logographic principles shared by its most ancient forms, making it unique among all present-day writing systems. In the past three decades, the discovery of previously unknown texts dating to the third century BCE and earlier, as well as older versions of known texts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese writing. The long-term continuity and stability of the Chinese written language allow for this detailed study of the role literacy played in early civilization. The contributors to Writing and Literacy in Early China inquire into modes of manuscript production, the purposes for which texts were produced, and the ways in which they were actually used. By carefully evaluating current evidence and offering groundbreaking new interpretations, the book illuminates the nature of literacy for scribes and readers.

Ancestral Memory in Early China

Ancestral Memory in Early China PDF Author: K.E. Brashier
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684170567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 487

Get Book

Book Description
Ancestral ritual in early China was an orchestrated dance between what was present (the offerings and the living) and what was absent (the ancestors). The interconnections among the tangible elements of the sacrifice were overt and almost mechanical, but extending those connections to the invisible guests required a medium that was itself invisible. Thus in early China, ancestral sacrifice was associated with focused thinking about the ancestors, with a structured mental effort by the living to reach out to the absent forebears and to give them shape and existence. Thinking about the ancestors—about those who had become distant—required active deliberation and meditation, qualities that had to be nurtured and learned. This study is a history of the early Chinese ancestral cult, particularly its cognitive aspects. Its goals are to excavate the cult’s color and vitality and to quell assumptions that it was no more than a simplistic and uninspired exchange of food for longevity, of prayers for prosperity. Ancestor worship was not, the author contends, merely mechanical and thoughtless. Rather, it was an idea system that aroused serious debates about the nature of postmortem existence, served as the religious backbone to Confucianism, and may even have been the forerunner of Daoist and Buddhist meditation practices.

Early China News

Early China News PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 104

Get Book

Book Description


Honor and Shame in Early China

Honor and Shame in Early China PDF Author: Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108843697
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book

Book Description
Lewis sheds new light on the early Chinese empires through an ambitious examination of evolving ideas about honor and shame.

Ancient Egypt and Early China

Ancient Egypt and Early China PDF Author: Anthony J Barbieri-Low
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780295748894
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
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.

The Politics of the Past in Early China

The Politics of the Past in Early China PDF Author: Vincent S. Leung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Get Book

Book Description
History mattered to the political elite in ancient China. Leung explores why it was so important and to what end.

Ghosts and Religious Life in Early China

Ghosts and Religious Life in Early China PDF Author: Mu-Chou Poo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316514676
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Get Book

Book Description
What did ghosts look like, what did they do, and what can they tell us about Chinese culture and society?

Ethics in Early China

Ethics in Early China PDF Author: Chris Fraser
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888028936
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book

Book Description
Early Chinese ethics has attracted increasing scholarly and social attention in recent years as the virtue ethics movement in Western philosophy has sparked renewed interest in Confucianism and Daoism. At the same time, intellectuals and social commentators throughout greater China have looked to the Chinese ethical tradition for resources to evaluate the role of traditional cultural values in the contemporary world. Publications on early Chinese ethics have tended to focus inordinate and uncritical attention toward Confucianism, while relatively neglecting Daoism, Mohism, and shared features of Chinese moral psychology. This book aims to rectify this imbalance by including essays on Daoism and Confucianism, early Chinese moral psychology including widely neglected views of the Mohists and newly reconstructed accounts of the "embodied virtue" tradition, which ties ethics to physical cultivation. The volume also includes essays addressing the broader question of the value of comparative philosophy generally and of studying early Chinese ethics in particular. The book should have a wide readership among professional scholars and graduate students in Chinese philosophy, specifically Confucian ethics, Daoist ethics, and comparative ethics. Chris Fraseris associate professor of philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Dan Robins is assistant professor of Chinese philosophy at Stockton College of New Jersey.Timothy O'Learyis associate professor of philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Contributors include Roger Ames, Stephen Angle, Sin yee Chan, Jiwei Ci, Chris Fraser, Jane Geaney, William Haines, Chad Hansen, Manyul Im, P.J. Ivanhoe, Franklin Perkins, Lisa Raphals, Dan Robins, Henry Rosemont, Jr., David Wong, and Lee Yearley.

The Cambridge History of Ancient China

The Cambridge History of Ancient China PDF Author: Michael Loewe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521470308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1192

Get Book

Book Description
The Cambridge History of Ancient China provides a survey of the institutional and cultural history of pre-imperial China.