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In ancient China, the preparation of food and the offering up of food as a religious sacrifice were intimately connected with models of sagehood and ideas of self-cultivation and morality. Drawing on received and newly excavated written sources, Roel Sterckx's book explores how this vibrant culture influenced the ways in which the early Chinese explained the workings of the human senses, and the role of sensory experience in communicating with the spirit world. The book, which begins with a survey of dietary culture from the Zhou to the Han, offers intriguing insights into the ritual preparation of food - some butchers and cooks were highly regarded and would rise to positions of influence as a result of their culinary skills - and the sacrificial ceremony itself. As a major contribution to the study of early China and to the development of philosophical thought, the book will be essential reading for students of the period, and for anyone interested in ritual and religion in the ancient world.
This innovative collection opens a door into the rich history of animals in China. This title is also available as Open Access.
The first English translation of Deng Yunte's study of famine relief throughout the history of China.
Evidence from Shang oracle bones to memorials submitted to Western Han emperors attests to a long-lasting debate in early China over the proper relationship between humans and gods. One pole of the debate saw the human and divine realms as separate and agonistic and encouraged divination to determine the will of the gods and sacrifices to appease and influence them. The opposite pole saw the two realms as related and claimed that humans could achieve divinity and thus control the cosmos. This wide-ranging book reconstructs this debate and places within their contemporary contexts the rival claims concerning the nature of the cosmos and the spirits, the proper demarcation between the human and the divine realms, and the types of power that humans and spirits can exercise. It is often claimed that the worldview of early China was unproblematically monistic and that hence China had avoided the tensions between gods and humans found in the West. By treating the issues of cosmology, sacrifice, and self-divinization in a historical and comparative framework that attends to the contemporary significance of specific arguments, Michael J. Puett shows that the basic cosmological assumptions of ancient China were the subject of far more debate than is generally thought.
What did ghosts look like, what did they do, and what can they tell us about Chinese culture and society?
Food and cuisine are important subjects for historians across many areas of study. Food, after all, is one of the most basic human needs and a foundational part of social and cultural histories. Such topics as famines, food supply, nutrition, and public health are addressed by historians specializing in every era and every nation. Food in Time and Place delivers an unprecedented review of the state of historical research on food, endorsed by the American Historical Association, providing readers with a geographically, chronologically, and topically broad understanding of food culturesÑfrom ancient Mediterranean and medieval societies to France and its domination of haute cuisine. Teachers, students, and scholars in food history will appreciate coverage of different thematic concerns, such as transfers of crops, conquest, colonization, immigration, and modern forms of globalization.
A pioneering, methodologically sophisticated set of studies describing and analysing key features of ancient Greek and Chinese civilisations, including issues in philosophy and religion, in art and literature, in mathematics and the life sciences, in agriculture, city planning and institutions. Provides a model for collaborative, comparative work on ancient civilisations.
This book puts contemporary calls for decolonisation in context. Featuring an interdisciplinary team of scholars from around the world, the book explores and critically assesses the diverse theoretical visions which inform calls for decolonisation of the mind today. Contemporary calls to decolonise focus less on politico-economic relations between states, more on culture and ideas. Sometimes museums are the target, sometimes universities or academic disciplines, sometimes entire legal systems. Commentators and activists speak out for, others against, intellectual decolonisation: decolonisation of the mind. But what is the colonisation which intellectual decolonisation undoes? Under what circumstances can inculcation or acceptance of ideas constitute colonialism? As this book demonstrates, advocates of intellectual decolonisation give very different—indeed, incompatible—answers to these questions. Critically examining conceptualisations of decolonisation spanning a century and four continents, the book explores what is at stake in the choice between these theoretical alternatives. Some see the aim of decolonisation as truth, via the removal of distorting effects of power and bias. Others troublingly subordinate truth and knowledge to ethnic or regional identity, potentially paving the way for culturally authoritarian politics. Intellectual Decolonisation: Critical Perspectives is an indispensable resource for teachers, students and scholars seeking to deepen their understanding of debates about decolonisation of the mind. Individual chapters will interest researchers of the new right-wing, ethnonationalist political ideologies emerging in Europe, Asia and Africa. Originally published as a special issue of Social Dynamics, this book is also a guide for anyone wondering what decolonisation is all about.
Mozi (ca. 479-381), known as the first outspoken critic of Confucius, is an important but neglected figure in early Chinese philosophy. The book Mozi, named after master Mo, was compiled in the course of the fifth - third centuries BCE. The seven studies included in the The Mozi as an Evolving Text take a fresh look at the Core Chapters, Dialogues, and Opening Chapters of the book Mozi. Rather than presenting a unified vision of Mohist thought, the contributions search for different voices in the text and for evolutions or tensions between its chapters. By analysing the Mozi as an evolving text, these studies not only contribute to the rejuvenation of Mozi studies, but also to the methodology of studying ancient Chinese texts.
In Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body, Xing Wang investigates the intellectual and technical contexts in which the knowledge of physiognomy (xiangshu) was produced and transformed in Ming China (1368-1644 C.E.). Known as a fortune-telling technique via examining the human body and material objects, Xing Wang shows how the construction of the physiognomic body in many Ming texts represent a unique, unprecedented ‘somatic cosmology’. Applying an anthropological reading to these texts and providing detailed analysis of this technique, the author proves that this physiognomic cosmology in Ming China emerged as a part of a new body discourse which differs from the modern scholarly discourse on the body.