Mediation of Legitimacy in Early China

Mediation of Legitimacy in Early China PDF Author: Yegor Grebnev
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231555032
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Scholarship on early China has traditionally focused on a core group of canonical texts. However, understudied sources have the potential to shift perspectives on fundamental aspects of Chinese intellectual, religious, and political history. Yegor Grebnev examines crucial noncanonical texts preserved in the Yi Zhou shu (Neglected Zhou Scriptures) and the Grand Duke traditions, which represent scriptural traditions influential during the Warring States period but sidelined in later history. He develops an innovative framework for the study and interpretation of these texts, focusing on their role in the mediation of royal legitimacy and their formative impact on early Daoism. Grebnev demonstrates the centrality of the Yi Zhou shu in Chinese intellectual history by highlighting its simultaneous connections to canonical traditions and esoteric Daoism. He also shows that the Daoist rituals of textual transmission embedded in the Grand Duke traditions bear an imprint of the courtly environment of the Warring States period, where early Daoists strove for prestige and power, offering legitimacy through texts ascribed to the mythical sage rulers. These rituals appear to have emerged at the same period as the core Daoist philosophical texts and not several centuries later as conventionally believed, which calls for a reassessment of the history of Daoism’s interrelated religious and philosophical strands. Offering a far-reaching reconsideration of early Chinese intellectual and religious history, Mediation of Legitimacy in Early China sheds new light on the foundations of the Chinese textual tradition.

Mediation of Legitimacy in Early China

Mediation of Legitimacy in Early China PDF Author: Yegor Grebnev
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231555032
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Scholarship on early China has traditionally focused on a core group of canonical texts. However, understudied sources have the potential to shift perspectives on fundamental aspects of Chinese intellectual, religious, and political history. Yegor Grebnev examines crucial noncanonical texts preserved in the Yi Zhou shu (Neglected Zhou Scriptures) and the Grand Duke traditions, which represent scriptural traditions influential during the Warring States period but sidelined in later history. He develops an innovative framework for the study and interpretation of these texts, focusing on their role in the mediation of royal legitimacy and their formative impact on early Daoism. Grebnev demonstrates the centrality of the Yi Zhou shu in Chinese intellectual history by highlighting its simultaneous connections to canonical traditions and esoteric Daoism. He also shows that the Daoist rituals of textual transmission embedded in the Grand Duke traditions bear an imprint of the courtly environment of the Warring States period, where early Daoists strove for prestige and power, offering legitimacy through texts ascribed to the mythical sage rulers. These rituals appear to have emerged at the same period as the core Daoist philosophical texts and not several centuries later as conventionally believed, which calls for a reassessment of the history of Daoism’s interrelated religious and philosophical strands. Offering a far-reaching reconsideration of early Chinese intellectual and religious history, Mediation of Legitimacy in Early China sheds new light on the foundations of the Chinese textual tradition.

Writing Early China

Writing Early China PDF Author: Edward L. Shaughnessy
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438495234
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Archaeological discoveries over the past one hundred years have resulted in repeated calls to "rewrite ancient Chinese history." This is especially true of documents written on oracle bones, bronze vessels, and bamboo strips. In Writing Early China, Edward L. Shaughnessy surveys all of these types of documents and considers what they reveal about the creation and transmission of knowledge in ancient China. Opposed to the common view that most knowledge was transmitted orally in ancient China, Shaughnessy demonstrates that by no later than the tenth century BCE scribes were writing lengthy texts like portions of the Chinese classics, and that by the fourth century BCE the primary mode of textual transmission was by way of visual copying from one manuscript to another.

Kingly Crafts

Kingly Crafts PDF Author: Yung-ti Li
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549636
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The site of Anyang, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, dated to around 1200 to 1000 BCE, is one of the most important sources of knowledge about craft production in Bronze Age China. Excavations and research of the settlement over the past ninety years demonstrate both the advanced level of Shang craft workers and the scale and capacity of the craft industries of the time. However, materials unearthed in Anyang by different expeditions have since been stored separately in China and Taiwan, making a thorough study of this important aspect of life in Shang China challenging. Despite efforts to integrate the data based on published material, the physical evidence rarely has been considered as a single group. Through a systematic analysis of the archaeological materials available in both China and Taiwan, Yung-ti Li provides a detailed picture of craft production in Anyang and paves the way for a new understanding of how the Shang capital functioned as a metropolis. Focusing on craft-producing activities, including bronze casting, bone working, shell and marble inlay working, lithic working, and pottery production, Kingly Crafts examines the material remains, the technology, and the production organization of the craft industries. Although the level of Shang craftsmanship can be seen in the finished products, Li demonstrates that it is necessary to study workshop remains and their archaeological context to reconstruct the social and political contexts of craft production. Offering a comprehensive investigation of these remains, Kingly Crafts sheds new light on the relationships between craft industries and political authority in the late Shang period.

The Tsinghua University Warring States Bamboo Manuscripts Volume One: The Yi Zhou Shu and Pseudo-Yi Zhou Shu Chapters

The Tsinghua University Warring States Bamboo Manuscripts Volume One: The Yi Zhou Shu and Pseudo-Yi Zhou Shu Chapters PDF Author: Edward L.Shaughnessy
Publisher: Tsinghua University Press
ISBN: 7302601879
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
In July of 2008, Tsinghua University recovered a batch of Warring States bamboo slips from abroad. These were referred to as the Bamboo slips collected by Tsinghua University, i.e., the Tsinghua Manuscripts. A large part of the Tsinghua Manuscripts is comprised of early classical and historical texts. Among these, some can be compared with transmitted classics such as the Shang Shu or “Elevated Scriptures”, but many more are previously unseen texts that have been lost for over two-thousand years. These manuscripts have immense value for understanding the original state of pre-Qin classical texts and for reconstructing early Chinese history. A panel of experts convened to evaluate the manuscripts said of them: these Warring States bamboo slips are tremendously valuable historical artifacts, whose contents speak to the very core of traditional Chinese culture. This is an unprecedented discovery, one which will inevitably attract the attention of scholars both here and abroad. It promises to have a lasting impact in many different disciplines, including but not limited to Chinese history, archaeology, paleography and philology.In order to further develop the international impact of scholarship on the Tsinghua Manuscripts, and stimulate international academic exchange, the Tsinghua University Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts and the University of Chicago Creel Center for Chinese Paleography entered into an agreement to work together on “An International Collaborative Project of Studying and Translating the Tsinghua Bamboo Manuscripts,” which had a planned scope of 18 volumes. Under the leadership of Professor Huang Dekuan of the Tsinghua University Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts, a team was set up to bring together the latest research developments so as to reorganize and collate the Tsinghua Manuscripts. These collated interpretations form a solid basis for the translation work, and in close cooperation with the translation team, together the teams advance the compilation of The Tsinghua University Warring States Bamboo Manuscripts: Studies and Translations book series. Under the leadership of Professor Edward L. Shaughnessy of the University of Chicago Creel Center for Chinese Paleography, a team of scholars specializing in ancient Chinese culture trained at universities such as Harvard, Oxford, and Chicago, was set up to form an exceptional translation team and academic advisory committee, to advance the translation of the Tsinghua Manuscripts. The Tsinghua University Warring States Bamboo Manuscripts: Studies and Translations 1, The Yi Zhou Shu and Pseudo-Yi Zhou Shu Chapters, as the first volume of this series, written and translated by Edward L. Shaughnessy, provides an English translation, introduction, and study of the Tsinghua Manuscripts seen in or related to the Yi Zhou Shu or “Leftover Zhou Scriptures.” The book further provides several insights into the formation and transmission of the Yi Zhou Shu. International experts gave high praise in their review of the book, noting that the book reflects the highest standards of scholarship on ancient Chinese culture, adding that it is not just accessible to experts but presented in a format attractive to a broad readership.

Conquer and Govern

Conquer and Govern PDF Author: Robin McNeal
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824865812
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
China’s Warring States era (ca. 5th–3rd century BCE) was the setting for an explosion of textual production, and one of the most sophisticated and enduring genres of writing from this period was the military text. Social and political changes were driven in large part by the increasing scope and scale of warfare, and some of the best minds of the day (including Sunzi, whose Art of War is still widely read) devoted their attention to the systematic analysis of all factors involved in waging war. Conquer and Govern makes available for the first time in any Western language a corpus of military texts from a long neglected Warring States compendium of historical, political, military, and ritual writings known as the Yi Zhou shu, or Remainder of the Zhou Documents. The texts articulate concretely and vividly the relationship between military conquest of an enemy and incorporation of conquered territories into one’s civilian government, expressed dynamically through the paired Chinese concept of wen and wu, the civil and the martial. Exploring this conceptual dyad as it evolved across the Warring States era into the early Western Han (ca. 2nd–1st century BCE) provides an alternative view of the social and intellectual history of classical China—one based not primarily on philosophical works but on a complex array of ideological writings concerned with the just, effective, and appropriate use of state power. In addition, this study presents a careful reconstruction of the poetic structure of these texts; analyzes their place in the broader discourse on warfare and governance in early China; introduces the many text historical problems of the Yi Zhou shu itself; and offers a synthetic analysis of early Chinese thinking about warfare, strategy, and the early state’s use of coercive power. Conquer and Govern will find a ready audience among specialists and students of Chinese philosophy and history, particularly those interested in the history of military thought and practice, and comparative philosophy.

Bureaucracy and the State in Early China

Bureaucracy and the State in Early China PDF Author: Feng Li
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521884470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
This ook redefines the bureaucracy of Ancient Chinese society during the Western Zhou period. The analysis is based on inscriptions of royal edicts from the period carved into bronze vessels. The inscriptions clarify the political and social construction of the Western Zhou and the ways in which it exercised its authority.

Writing and Authority in Early China

Writing and Authority in Early China PDF Author: Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791441138
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
This book traces the evolving uses of writing to command assent and obedience in early China, an evolution that culminated in the establishment of a textual canon as the foundation of imperial authority. Its central theme is the emergence of this body of writings as the textual double of the state, and of the text-based sage as the double of the ruler. The book examines the full range of writings employed in early China, such as divinatory records, written communications with ancestors, government documents, the collective writings of philosophical and textual traditions, speeches attributed to historical figures, chronicles, verse anthologies, commentaries, and encyclopedic compendia. Lewis shows how these writings served to administer populations, control officials, form new social groups, invent new models of authority, and create an artificial language whose master generated power and whose graphs became potent objects.

Text and Ritual in Early China

Text and Ritual in Early China PDF Author: Martin Kern
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800313
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
In Text and Ritual in Early China, leading scholars of ancient Chinese history, literature, religion, and archaeology consider the presence and use of texts in religious and political ritual. Through balanced attention to both the received literary tradition and the wide range of recently excavated artifacts, manuscripts, and inscriptions, their combined efforts reveal the rich and multilayered interplay of textual composition and ritual performance. Drawn across disciplinary boundaries, the resulting picture illuminates two of the defining features of early Chinese culture and advances new insights into their sumptuous complexity. Beginning with a substantial introduction to the conceptual and thematic issues explored in succeeding chapters, Text and Ritual in Early China is anchored by essays on early Chinese cultural history and ritual display (Michael Nylan) and the nature of its textuality (William G. Boltz). This twofold approach sets the stage for studies of the E Jun Qi metal tallies (Lothar von Falkenhausen), the Gongyang commentary to The Spring and Autumn Annals (Joachim Gentz), the early history of The Book of Odes (Martin Kern), moral remonstration in historiography (David Schaberg), the “Liming” manuscript text unearthed at Mawangdui (Mark Csikszentmihalyi), and Eastern Han commemorative stele inscriptions (K. E. Brashier). The scholarly originality of these essays rests firmly on their authors’ control over ancient sources, newly excavated materials, and modern scholarship across all major Sinological languages. The extensive bibliography is in itself a valuable and reliable reference resource. This important work will be required reading for scholars of Chinese history, language, literature, philosophy, religion, art history, and archaeology.

Statecraft and Classical Learning

Statecraft and Classical Learning PDF Author: Benjamin A. Elman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789004180918
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Devoted to the ancient Chinese Classic Rituals of Zhou, this book presents a multi-faceted picture of the life of the text from its inception some two millennia ago to its modern political and scholarly discourse across East Asia.

Artisans in Early Imperial China

Artisans in Early Imperial China PDF Author: Anthony J. Barbieri-Low
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295749881
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Early China is best known for the dazzling material artifacts it has left behind. These terracotta figures, gilt-bronze lamps, and other material remnants of the Chinese past unearthed by archaeological excavations are often viewed without regard to the social context of their creation, yet they were made by individuals who contributed greatly to the foundations of early Chinese culture. With Artisans in Early Imperial China, Anthony Barbieri-Low combines historical, epigraphic, and archaeological analysis to refocus our gaze from the glittering objects and monuments of China onto the men and women who made them. Taking readers inside the private workshops, crowded marketplaces, and great palaces, temples, and tombs of early China, Barbieri-Low explores the lives and working conditions of artisans, meticulously documenting their role in early Chinese society and the economy. First published in 2007, winner of top prizes from the Association for Asian Studies, American Historical Association, College Art Association, and the International Convention of Asia Scholars, and now back in print, Artisans in Early Imperial China will appeal to anyone interested in Chinese history, as well as to scholars of comparative social history, labor history, and Asian art history.