Ennin's Diary

Ennin's Diary PDF Author: Ennin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781621386520
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
This book is the first complete translation into any modern language of the diary kept by Ennin, a Japanese Buddhist monk who traveled to China in AD 838 in search of new religious texts and further enlightenment in his faith. Ennin tells the memorable story of the hazards of sea travel in the ninth century and of his extensive journeys by foot and by riverboat throughout Northern China. In intimate detail, he describes life in the cities and monasteries of T'ang China, the ways of Chinese officialdom, secular festivals, and public events. He depicts Buddhism as a living religion just at the point when it reached its apogee in China, and offers the most authoritative account available of the great religious persecution of the 840's, which was so critical a turning point in Chinese history. Among the earliest diaries in Japanese literature, Ennin's immersive description of ninth-century China represents one of the first foreign eyewitness accounts of everyday life there. Despite its historical importance, Ennin's Diary has been long out of print, and it is our pleasure to make this great work available once again to the public. With a new foreword by Valerie Hansen, the modern reader will find this account more accessible and engaging than ever.

Ennin's Diary

Ennin's Diary PDF Author: Ennin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781621386520
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 490

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is the first complete translation into any modern language of the diary kept by Ennin, a Japanese Buddhist monk who traveled to China in AD 838 in search of new religious texts and further enlightenment in his faith. Ennin tells the memorable story of the hazards of sea travel in the ninth century and of his extensive journeys by foot and by riverboat throughout Northern China. In intimate detail, he describes life in the cities and monasteries of T'ang China, the ways of Chinese officialdom, secular festivals, and public events. He depicts Buddhism as a living religion just at the point when it reached its apogee in China, and offers the most authoritative account available of the great religious persecution of the 840's, which was so critical a turning point in Chinese history. Among the earliest diaries in Japanese literature, Ennin's immersive description of ninth-century China represents one of the first foreign eyewitness accounts of everyday life there. Despite its historical importance, Ennin's Diary has been long out of print, and it is our pleasure to make this great work available once again to the public. With a new foreword by Valerie Hansen, the modern reader will find this account more accessible and engaging than ever.

Ennin's Travels in T'ang China

Ennin's Travels in T'ang China PDF Author: Edwin O. Reischauer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781621386537
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The perfect companion for Ennin's Diary, Ennin's Travels serves as perhaps the most accurate and detailed account of the extraordinary civilization that flourished in China more than a thousand years.

Ennin's Diary

Ennin's Diary PDF Author: 円仁
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description


The Boundless Sea

The Boundless Sea PDF Author: David Abulafia
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199934983
Category : Navigation
Languages : en
Pages : 1115

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Book Description
"David Abulafia's new book guides readers along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans-the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian-which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. Over time, as passage through them gradually extended and expanded, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks developed, evolving from local exploration to lines of regional communication and commerce and eventually to major arteries. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and of course people-free and enslaved-across vast expanses, transforming and ultimately linking irrevocably the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas"--

Networks of Faith and Profit

Networks of Faith and Profit PDF Author: Yiwen Li
Publisher:
ISBN: 1009303112
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Between 839 and 1403 CE, there was a six-century lapse in diplomatic relations between present-day China and Japan. This hiatus in what is known as the tribute system has led to an assumption that there was little contact between the two countries in this period. Yiwen Li debunks this assumption, arguing instead that a vibrant Sino-Japanese trade network flourished in this period as Buddhist monks and merchants fostered connections across maritime East Asia. Based on a close examination of sources in multiple languages, including poems and letters, transmitted images and objects, and archaeological discoveries, Li presents a vivid and dynamic picture of the East Asian maritime world. She shows how this Buddhist trade network operated outside of the framework of the tribute system and, through novel interpretations of Buddhist records, provides a new understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and commerce.

The Eminent Monk

The Eminent Monk PDF Author: John Kieschnick
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824818418
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
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.

What the Rest Think of the West

What the Rest Think of the West PDF Author: Laura Nader
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520285786
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Over the past few centuries, as Western civilization has enjoyed an expansive and flexible geographic domain, Westerners have observed other cultures with little interest in a return gaze. In turn, these other civilizations have been similarly disinclined when they have held sway. Clearly, though, an external frame of reference outstrips introspection—we cannot see ourselves as others see us. Unprecedented in its scope, What the Rest Think of the West provides a rich historical look through the eyes of outsiders as they survey and scrutinize the politics, science, technology, religion, family practices, and gender roles of civilizations not their own. The book emphasizes the broader figurative meaning of looking west in the scope of history. Focusing on four civilizations—Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, and South Asian—Nader has collected observations made over centuries by scholars, diplomats, missionaries, travelers, merchants, and students reflecting upon their own “Wests.” These writings derive from a range of purposes and perspectives, such as the seventh-century Chinese Buddhist who goes west to India, the missionary from Baghdad who travels up the Volga in the tenth century and meets the Vikings, and the Egyptian imam who in 1826 is sent to Paris to study the French. The accounts variously express critique, adoration, admiration, and fear, and are sometimes humorous, occasionally disturbing, at times controversial, and always enlightening. With informative introductions to each of the selections, Laura Nader initiates conversations about the power of representational practices.

Seeds in the Heart

Seeds in the Heart PDF Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231114417
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1284

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Book Description
Donald Keene, a noted authority in the field, offers a guide through the first 900 years of Japanese literature. This period not only defined the unique properties of Japanese prose and prosody, but also produced some of its greatest works.

Beyond Orientalism

Beyond Orientalism PDF Author: Fred Reinhard Dallmayr
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791430699
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village."

Persian Christians at the Chinese Court

Persian Christians at the Chinese Court PDF Author: R. Todd Godwin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786723166
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
The Xi'an Stele, erected in Tang China's capital in 781, describes in both Syriac and Chinese the existence of Christian communities in northern China. While scholars have so far considered the Stele exclusively in relation to the Chinese cultural and historical context, Todd Godwin here demonstrates that it can only be fully understood by reconstructing the complex connections that existed between the Church of the East, Sasanian aristocratic culture and the Tang Empire (617-907) between the fall of the Sasanian Persian Empire (225-651) and the birth of the Abbasid Caliphate (762-1258). Through close textual re-analysis of the Stele and by drawing on ancient sources in Syriac, Greek, Arabic and Chinese, Godwin demonstrates that Tang China (617-907) was a cosmopolitan milieu where multiple religious traditions, namely Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Christianity, formed zones of elite culture. Syriac Christianity in fact remained powerful in Persia throughout the period, and Christianity - not Zoroastrianism - was officially regarded by the Tang government as 'The Persian Religion'.Persian Christians at the Chinese Court uncovers the role played by Syriac Christianity in the economic and cultural integration of late Sasanian Iran and China, and is important reading for all scholars of the Church of the East, China and the Middle East in the medieval period.