Traditional China in Asian and World History

Traditional China in Asian and World History
Author: Tansen Sen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2012
Genre: Aliens
ISBN: 9780924304651

Chronology -- Introduction -- Chinese perceptions of foreigners and foreign lands -- The rise of civilization in the central plains -- The formation and development of the silk routes -- China and the Buddhist world -- China in the age of commerce -- Conclusion

Early Medieval China

Early Medieval China
Author: Wendy Swartz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 745
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231531001

This innovative sourcebook builds a dynamic understanding of China's early medieval period (220–589) through an original selection and arrangement of literary, historical, religious, and critical texts. A tumultuous and formative era, these centuries saw the longest stretch of political fragmentation in China's imperial history, resulting in new ethnic configurations, the rise of powerful clans, and a pervasive divide between north and south. Deploying thematic categories, the editors sketch the period in a novel way for students and, by featuring many texts translated into English for the first time, recast the era for specialists. Thematic topics include regional definitions and tensions, governing mechanisms and social reality, ideas of self and other, relations with the unseen world, everyday life, and cultural concepts. Within each section, the editors and translators introduce the selected texts and provide critical commentary on their historical significance, along with suggestions for further reading and research.

A History of East Asia

A History of East Asia
Author: Charles Holcombe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 495
Release: 2017-01-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107118735

The second edition of Charles Holcombe's acclaimed introduction to East Asian history from the dawn of history to the twenty-first century.

Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan

Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan
Author: C. Pierce Salguero
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-08-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0824884221

From its inception in northeastern India in the first millennium BCE, the Buddhist tradition has advocated a range of ideas and practices that were said to ensure health and well-being. As the religion developed and spread to other parts of Asia, healing deities were added to its pantheon, monastic institutions became centers of medical learning, and healer-monks gained renown for their mastery of ritual and medicinal therapeutics. In China, imported Buddhist knowledge contended with a sophisticated, state-supported system of medicine that was able to retain its influence among the elite. Further afield in Japan, where Chinese Buddhism and Chinese medicine were introduced simultaneously as part of the country’s adoption of civilization from the “Middle Kingdom,” the two were reconciled by individuals who deemed them compatible. In East Asia, Buddhist healing would remain a site of intercultural tension and negotiation. While participating in transregional networks of circulation and exchange, Buddhist clerics practiced locally specific blends of Indian and indigenous therapies and occupied locally defined social positions as religious and medical specialists. In this diverse and compelling collection, an international group of scholars analyzes the historical connections between Buddhism and healing in medieval China and Japan. Contributors focus on the transnationally conveyed aspects of Buddhist healing traditions as they moved across geographic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Simultaneously, the chapters also investigate the local instantiations of these ideas and practices as they were reinvented, altered, and re-embedded in specific social and institutional contexts. Investigating the interplay between the macro and micro, the global and the local, this book demonstrates the richness of Buddhist healing as a way to explore the history of cross-cultural exchange.