Death In Ancient China

Author : Constance Cook
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2017-06-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9789047410638

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Death in Ancient China by Constance Cook Pdf

This richly illustrated book provides a glimpse into the belief system and the material wealth of the social elite in pre-Imperial China through a close analysis of tomb contents and excavated bamboo texts. The point of departure is the textual and material evidence found in one tomb of an elite man buried in 316 BCE near a once wealthy middle Yangzi River valley metropolis. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of cosmological symbolism and the nature of the spirit world. The author shows how illness and death were perceived as steps in a spiritual journey from one realm into another. Transmitted textual records are compared with excavated texts. The layout and contents of this multi-chambered tomb are analyzed as are the contents of two texts, a record of divination and sacrifices performed during the last three years of the occupant’s life and a tomb inventory record of mortuary gifts. The texts are fully translated and annotated in the appendices. A first-time close-up view of a set of local beliefs which not only reflect the larger ancient Chinese religious system but also underlay the rich intellectual and artistic life of pre-Imperial China. With first full translations of texts previously unknown to all except a small handful of sinologists.

Author : Amy Olberding,Philip J. Ivanhoe
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2012-01-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781438435640

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Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought by Amy Olberding,Philip J. Ivanhoe Pdf

Mortality in Traditional China is the definitive exploration of a complex and fascinating but little-understood subject. Arguably, death as a concept has not been nearly as central a preoccupation in Chinese culture as it has been in the West. However, even in a society that seems to understand death as a part of life, responses to mortality are revealing and indicate much about what is valued and what is feared. This edited volume fills the lacuna on this subject, presenting an array of philosophical, artistic, historical, and religious perspectives on death during a variety of historical periods. Contributors look at material culture, including findings now available from the Mawangdui tomb excavations; consider death in Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions; and discuss death and the history and philosophy of war.

Author : Colin Renfrew,Michael J. Boyd,Iain Morley
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 469 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2016
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107082731

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Death Rituals and Social Order in the Ancient World by Colin Renfrew,Michael J. Boyd,Iain Morley Pdf

This volume, with essays by leading archaeologists and prehistorians, considers how prehistoric humans attempted to recognise, understand and conceptualise death.

Author : Jan Jacob Maria de Groot
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 1892
Category : China
ISBN : ZBZH:ZBZ-00100506

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The Religious System of China by Jan Jacob Maria de Groot Pdf

Author : Katheryn M. Linduff
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : China
ISBN : 1108407609

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Ancient China and Its Eurasian Neighbors by Katheryn M. Linduff Pdf

This volume examines the role of objects in the region north of early dynastic state centers, at the intersection of Ancient China and Eurasia, a large area that stretches from Xinjiang to the China Sea, from c.3000 BCE to the mid-eighth century BCE. This area was a frontier, an ambiguous space that lay at the margins of direct political control by the metropolitan states, where local and colonial ideas and practices were reconstructed transculturally. These identities were often merged and displayed in material culture. Types of objects, styles, and iconography were often hybrids or new to the region, as were the tomb assemblages in which they were deposited and found. Patrons commissioned objects that marked a symbolic vision of place and person and that could mobilize support, legitimize rule, and bind people together. Through close examination of key artifacts, this book untangles the considerable changes in political structure and cultural makeup of ancient Chinese states and their northern neighbors

Author : Russell Roberts
Publisher : Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc.
Page : 52 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2012-09-30
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 9781612283524

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Ancient China by Russell Roberts Pdf

Qin Shi Huangdi, the First Emperor of China, was a man of incredible contrasts. He was a visionary leader who united all of China’s warring kingdoms into one unified country, thus paving the way for the modern Chinese nation. He developed a national currency, a standard writing style, and a road network that stitched the country together. Yet he was also evil and cruel. He burned books, imposed harsh taxes, and killed thousands of people. The story of Qin Shi Huangdi brackets the story of ancient China emerging into modern times. It’s a story of a country whose discoveries, such as silk, tea and the iron plow, had a significant impact on the entire world but whose people lived simply, unaware of their vast influence. Although the story of Qin Shi Huangdi ended with his unusual death, China’s story was just beginning.

Author : Michael Loewe
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2018-09-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780429850813

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Chinese Ideas of Life and Death by Michael Loewe Pdf

Many of the basic characteristics of Imperial China took shape during the Han period (202 BC-AD 220). This book, first published in 1982, is a key contribution to our understanding of China’s cultural history. It explains the conceptual background of many of the artefacts of China’s past, and calls on the written word of the philosopher, poet and historian, and on cultural treasures revealed by archaeologists.

Author : Michelle T. King
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2014-01-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9780804788939

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Between Birth and Death by Michelle T. King Pdf

Female infanticide is a social practice often closely associated with Chinese culture. Journalists, social scientists, and historians alike emphasize that it is a result of the persistence of son preference, from China's ancient past to its modern present. Yet how is it that the killing of newborn daughters has come to be so intimately associated with Chinese culture? Between Birth and Death locates a significant historical shift in the representation of female infanticide during the nineteenth century. It was during these years that the practice transformed from a moral and deeply local issue affecting communities into an emblematic cultural marker of a backwards Chinese civilization, requiring the scientific, religious, and political attention of the West. Using a wide array of Chinese, French and English primary sources, the book takes readers on an unusual historical journey, presenting the varied perspectives of those concerned with the fate of an unwanted Chinese daughter: a late imperial Chinese mother in the immediate moments following birth, a male Chinese philanthropist dedicated to rectifying moral behavior in his community, Western Sinological experts preoccupied with determining the comparative prevalence of the practice, Catholic missionaries and schoolchildren intent on saving the souls of heathen Chinese children, and turn-of-the-century reformers grappling with the problem as a challenge for an emerging nation.

Author : Mu-chou Poo,Muzhou Pu
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2018-06-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9781107021174

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Daily Life in Ancient China by Mu-chou Poo,Muzhou Pu Pdf

This book employs textual and archaeological material to reconstruct the various features of daily life in ancient China.

Author : Jan Jacob Maria Groot
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 1892
Category : Electronic
ISBN : KBNL:UBL000051572

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The Religious System of China by Jan Jacob Maria Groot Pdf

Author : Timothy D Knepper,Lucy Bregman,Mary Gottschalk
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2019-09-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783030193003

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Death and Dying by Timothy D Knepper,Lucy Bregman,Mary Gottschalk Pdf

The medicalization of death is a challenge for all the world's religious and cultural traditions. Death's meaning has been reduced to a diagnosis, a problem, rather than a mystery for humans to ponder. How have religious traditions responded? What resources do they bring to a discussion of death's contemporary dilemmas? This book offers a range of creative and contextual responses from a variety of religious and cultural traditions. It features 14 essays from scholars of different religious and philosophical traditions, who spoke as part of a recent lecture and dialogue series of Drake University’s The Comparison Project. The scholars represent ethnologists, medical ethicists, historians, philosophers, and theologians--all facing up to questions of truth and value in the light of the urgent need to move past a strictly medicalized vision. This volume serves as the second publication of The Comparison Project, an innovative new approach to the philosophy of religion housed at Drake University. The Comparison Project organizes a biennial series of scholar lectures, practitioner dialogues, and comparative panels about core, cross-cultural topics in the philosophy of religion. The Comparison Project stands apart from traditional, theistic approaches to the philosophy of religion in its commitment to religious inclusivity. It is the future of the philosophy of religion in a diverse, global world.

Author : Sangzhang Juan
Publisher : ATF Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2017-07-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9781921816864

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Funeral by Sangzhang Juan Pdf

The book is one of Chinese Folklore Culture Series, which systematically introduces the funeral conception and manners, burial methods, criteria for choosing burial sites, mourning garments of the dead's relatives and mourning life in Chinese history, and so on. It reveals the development and evolution process of Chinese funeral customs, making readers have a further understanding of Chinese funeral customs and taboos different nationalities comprehensively.

Author : Constance A. Cook,Xinhui Luo
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2017-10-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9781438467122

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Birth in Ancient China by Constance A. Cook,Xinhui Luo Pdf

Reveals cultural paradigms and historical prejudices regarding the role of birthing and women in the reproduction of society. Using newly discovered and excavated texts, Constance A. Cook and Xinhui Luo systematically explore material culture, inscriptions, transmitted texts, and genealogies from BCE China to reconstruct the role of women in social reproduction in the ancient Chinese world. Applying paleographical, linguistic, and historical analyses, Cook and Luo discuss fertility rituals, birthing experiences, divine conceptions, divine births, and the overall influence of gendered supernatural agencies on the experience and outcome of birth. They unpack a cultural paradigm in which birth is not only a philosophical symbol of eternal return and renewal but also an abiding religious and social focus for lineage continuity. They also suggest that some of the mythical founder heroes traditionally assumed to be male may in fact have had female identities. Students of ancient history, particularly Chinese history, will find this book an essential complement to traditional historical narratives, while the exploration of ancient religious texts, many unknown in the West, provides a unique perspective into the study of the formation of mythology and the role of birthing in early religion. Constance A. Cook is Professor of Chinese at Lehigh University and the author of Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man’s Journey. Xinhui Luo is Professor of Chinese Ancient History at Beijing Normal University, China.

Author : Wu Hung
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2015-02-15
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781861897183

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Art of the Yellow Springs by Wu Hung Pdf

We might think the Egyptians were the masters of building tombs, but no other civilization has devoted more time and resources to underground burial structures than the Chinese. For at least five thousand years, from the fourth millennium B.C.E. to the early twentieth century, the Chinese have been building some of the world’s most elaborate tombs and furnishing them with exquisite objects. It is these objects and the concept of the tomb as a “treasure-trove” that The Art of the Yellow Springs seeks to critique, drawing on recent scholarship to examine memorial sites the way they were meant to be experienced: not as a mere store of individual works, but as a work of art itself. Wu Hung bolsters some of the new trends in Chinese art history that have been challenging the conventional ways of studying funerary art. Examining the interpretative methods themselves that guide the study of memorials, he argues that in order to understand Chinese tombs, one must not necessarily forget the individual works present in them—as the beautiful color plates here will prove—but consider them along with a host of other art-historical concepts. These include notions of visuality, viewership, space, analysis, function, and context. The result is a ground-breaking new assessment that demonstrates the amazing richness of one of the longest-running traditions in the whole of art history.

Author : John S. Major,Constance A. Cook
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2016-09-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317503651

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Ancient China by John S. Major,Constance A. Cook Pdf

Ancient China: A History surveys the East Asian Heartland Region – the geographical area that eventually became known as China – from the Neolithic period through the Bronze Age, to the early imperial era of Qin and Han, up to the threshold of the medieval period in the third century CE. For most of that long span of time there was no such place as "China"; the vast and varied territory of the Heartland Region was home to many diverse cultures that only slowly coalesced, culturally, linguistically, and politically, to form the first recognizably Chinese empires. The field of Early China Studies is being revolutionized in our time by a wealth of archaeologically recovered texts and artefacts. Major and Cook draw on this exciting new evidence and a rich harvest of contemporary scholarship to present a leading-edge account of ancient China and its antecedents. With handy pedagogical features such as maps and illustrations, as well as an extensive list of recommendations for further reading, Ancient China: A History is an important resource for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Chinese History, and those studuing Chinese Culture and Society more generally.