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Author: Charles Sanft
Publisher: Suny Press
ISBN: 9781438475127
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Explores the role of meditation on the five elements in the practice of Yoga.
Author: Charles Sanft
Publisher: Suny Press
ISBN: 9781438475127
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Explores the role of meditation on the five elements in the practice of Yoga.
Author: Charles Sanft
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438475136
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
Through an examination of archaeologically recovered texts from China’s northwestern border regions, argues for widespread interaction with texts in the Han period. This book examines ancient written materials from China’s northwestern border regions to offer fresh insights into the role of text in shaping society and culture during the Han period (206/2 BCE–220 CE). Left behind by military installations, these documents—wooden strips and other nontraditional textual materials such as silk—recorded the lives and activities of military personnel and the people around them. Charles Sanft explores their functions and uses by looking at a fascinating array of material, including posted texts on signaling across distances, practical texts on brewing beer and evaluating swords, and letters exchanged by officials working in low rungs of the bureaucracy. By focusing on all members of the community, he argues that a much broader section of early society had meaningful interactions with text than previously believed. This major shift in interpretation challenges long-standing assumptions about the limited range of influence that text and literacy had on culture and society and makes important contributions to early China studies, the study of literacy, and to the global history of non-elites. “Sanft’s analysis fills out what is still a rather sparse picture of life in non-elite, nonofficial social circles. For the first time ever, we learn how women might have been included in a literate community along the ancient northwestern frontier, and we also learn how soldiers and other members of the uneducated or semiliterate public made use of the extensive knowledge that texts conveyed in their work and lives. None of this information is apparent from traditionally received texts. Sanft therefore does the field a great favor by systematically laying the foundations for a broader understanding of all levels of society, as well as an understanding of how these levels interconnect through systems of knowledge expressed through text.” — Erica Fox Brindley, author of Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c. 400 BCE–50 CE
Author: Charles Sanft
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438450370
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
Challenges traditional views of the Qin dynasty as an oppressive regime by revealing cooperative aspects of its governance. This revealing book challenges longstanding notions of the Qin dynasty, Chinas first imperial dynasty (221206 BCE). The received history of the Qin dynasty and its founder is one of cruel tyranny with rule through fear and coercion. Using a wealth of new information afforded by the expansion of Chinese archaeology in recent decades as well as traditional historical sources, Charles Sanft concentrates on cooperative aspects of early imperial government, especially on the communication necessary for government. Sanft suggests that the Qin authorities sought cooperation from the populace with a publicity campaign in a wide variety of mediafrom bronze and stone inscriptions to roads to the bureaucracy. The book integrates theory from anthropology and economics with early Chinese philosophy and argues that modern social science and ancient thought agree that cooperation is necessary for all human societies.
Author: Robert Ford Campany
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684176794
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
Practitioners of any of the paths of self-cultivation available in ancient and medieval China engaged daily in practices meant to bring their bodies and minds under firm control. They took on regimens to discipline their comportment, speech, breathing, diet, senses, desires, sexuality, even their dreams. Yet, compared with waking life, dreams are incongruous, unpredictable—in a word, strange. How, then, did these regimes of self-fashioning grapple with dreaming, a lawless yet ubiquitous domain of individual experience? In Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE–800 CE, Robert Ford Campany examines how dreaming was addressed in texts produced and circulated by practitioners of Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and other self-cultivational disciplines. Working through a wide range of scriptures, essays, treatises, biographies, commentaries, fictive dialogues, diary records, interpretive keys, and ritual instructions, Campany uncovers a set of discrete paradigms by which dreams were viewed and responded to by practitioners. He shows how these paradigms underlay texts of diverse religious and ideological persuasions that are usually treated in mutual isolation. The result is a provocative meditation on the relationship between individuals’ nocturnal experiences and one culture’s persistent attempts to discipline, interpret, and incorporate them into waking practice.
Author: Robinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197666043
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
Imperial Cults is a comparative study of the transformation of imperial religion and imperial authority in the early Han and Roman empires. During the reigns of the Emperor Wu of Han and Octavian Augustus of Rome, the rulers undertook substantial reforms to their respective systems of cult, at a time when they were re-shaping the idea of imperial authority and consolidating their own power. The changes made to religious institutions during their reigns show how these reforms were a fundamental part of the imperial consolidation. Employing a comparative methodology the author discusses some of the common strategies employed by the two rulers in order to centre religious and political authority around themselves. Both rulers incorporated new men from outside of the established court elite to serve in their religious institutions and as advisors, thus weakening the authority of those who had traditionally held it. They both expanded the reach of their imperially-sponsored cult, and refashioned important ceremonies to demonstrate and communicate the unprecedented achievements of each ruler. Emperor Wu recruited experts in mantic knowledge from far reaches of the empire, while Augustus co-opted loyal followers into the newly revived priestly colleges. Robinson shows how the rulers used their respective religious institutions to consolidate their authority, secure support, and communicate their authority to the elite and commoners alike. By using the comparative approach, the author not only reveals similar trends in the formation of ancient empires, but also shows how new perspectives on familiar material can be found when engaging with other societies.
Author: Patricia Buckley Ebrey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009175580
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 645
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Book Description
The Cambridge Illustrated History of China is an illuminating account of the full sweep of Chinese civilisation – from prehistoric times to the intellectual ferment of the Warring States Period, through the rise and fall of the imperial dynasties, to the modern communist state. Written by a leading scholar and lavishly illustrated, its narrative draws together everything from the influence of key intellectual figures, to political innovations, art and material culture, family and religious life, not to mention wars and modern conflicts. This third revised edition includes new archaeological discoveries and gives fuller treatment of environmental history and Chinese interaction with the wider world, placing China in global context. The Qing dynasty is now covered in two chapters, while the final chapter brings the story into the twenty-first century, covering the transformation of China into one of the world's leading economies and the challenges it faces. Lively and highly visual, this book will be appreciated by anyone interested in Chinese history.
Author: Sitta von Reden
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110604930
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1135
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Book Description
The second volume of the Handbook describes different extractive economies in the world regions that have been outlined in the first volume. A wide range of economic actors – from kings and armies to cities and producers – are discussed within different imperial settings as well as the tools, which enabled and constrained economic outcomes. A central focus are nodes of consumption that are visible in the archaeological and textual records of royal capitals, cities, religious centers, and armies that were stationed, in some cases permanently, in imperial frontier zones. Complementary to the multipolar concentrations of consumption are the fiscal-tributary structures of the empires vis-à-vis other institutions that had the capacity to extract, mobilize, and concentrate resources and wealth. Larger volumes of state-issued coinage in various metals show the new role of coinage in taxation, local economic activities, and social practices, even where textual evidence is absent. Given the overwhelming importance of agriculture, the volume also analyses forms of agrarian development, especially around cities and in imperial frontier zones. Special consideration is given to road- and water-management systems for which there is now sufficient archaeological and documentary evidence to enable cross-disciplinary comparative research.
Author: Abigail S Armstrong
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111323668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
The production and retention of written records was a common and important facet of pre-modern rulership and administration. Much of our understanding of governmental practices and expressions of authority come from the contents of such documents, which have been well studied. Less studied, however, are the records themselves as artefacts. This volume is an attempt to redress this balance by taking a more holistic, material approach to a range of written records. Through a series of case studies, this volume explores questions regarding the material characteristics of various records and their use. It demonstrates that the material features of the records, including the size and shape, the hands that wrote them and the material substrate, can shed new light on the functioning of government and the declarations of power these records asserted. The ten contributions of this volume focus on records from a variety of rulers, political systems and administrations. With four case studies from early China and six from medieval Europe, this volume offers transcultural perspectives to demonstrate how different cultures expressed rulership and administration materially through the use of text-bearing artefacts.
Author: Paul R. Goldin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003861334
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 199
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Book Description
This book presents the foundations of classical Chinese aesthetic discourse - roughly from the Bronze Age to the early Middle Ages - with the following animating questions: What is art? Why do we produce it? How do we judge it? The arts that garnered the most theoretical attention during this time period were music, poetry, calligraphy, and painting, and this book considers the reasons why these four were privileged. Whereas modern artists most likely consider themselves musicians or poets or calligraphers or painters or sculptors or architects, the pre-modern authors who produced the literature that established Chinese aesthetics prided themselves on being wenren, “cultured people,” conversant with all forms of art and learning. Other comparisons with Western theories and works of art are presented at due junctures. Key Features Addresses Chinese aesthetic discourse on its own terms Provides comparisons of key concepts and theories with examples from Western sources Includes more coverage of primary sources than any other English-language book on the subject Each chapter opens with a helpful summary, highlighting the chapter’s key themes
Author: Mark Csikszentmihalyi
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438485441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341
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Book Description
While cultural literacy in early China was grounded in learning the Classics, basic competence in official life was generally predicated on acquiring several forms of technical knowledge. Recent archaeological finds have brought renewed attention to the use of technical manuals and mantic techniques within a huge range of discrete contexts, pushing historians to move beyond the generalities offered by past scholarship. To explore these uses, Technical Arts in the Han Histories delves deeply into the rarely studied "Treatises" and "Tables" compiled for the first two standard histories, the Shiji (Historical Records) and Hanshu (History of Han), important supplements to the better-known biographical chapters, and models for the inclusion of technical subjects in the twenty-three later "Standard Histories" of imperial China. Indeed, for a great many aspects of life in early imperial society, they constitute our best primary sources for understanding complex realities and perceptions. The essays in this volume seek to explain how different social groups thought of, disseminated, and withheld technical knowledge relating to the body, body politic, and cosmos, in the process of detailing the preoccupations of successive courts from Qin through Eastern Han in administering the localities, the frontier zones, and their numerous subjects (at the time, roughly one-quarter of the world's population).
