Asian history Books

Book SynopsisThrough close examination of a set of educational works discovered among the Dunhuang manuscripts, this book presents new insights into the literary training undertaken by the elite of medieval China. In their contents and structures, these works tell us what parts of the literary and cultural inheritance the elite were expected to learn and how they learned them. The material aspects of these manuscripts—including handwriting, copying errors, and paratextual additions—show how students in Dunhuang used and reproduced them. What emerges is a picture of a literary education that is more diverse in its sources, and also more haphazard, than previously imagined.Trade Review“An insightful and highly original study, which makes a major contribution to our knowledge of Dunhuang and medieval Chinese literary culture in general. Based on a close analysis of a group of Dunhuang manuscripts, it addresses the difficult question of how literary training happened in daily practice. A refreshing read, both enjoyable and informative.” Imre Galambos Qiushi Professor of Chinese at the School of Literature, Zhejiang University, and Professor Emeritus of Chinese at the University of Cambridge “Textual Practices of Literary Training in Medieval China is a ground-breaking study of the history of manuscript culture, elite education, and the production of knowledge in medieval China. Through close analysis of the literary and codicological features of Dunhuang primers that have been little examined to date, Nugent illuminates the many ways that medieval people learned to read, write, and think with the cultural tradition. It sets a new high-water mark for scholarship on Dunhuang manuscripts and literary knowledge in premodern China.” Anna M. Shields Gordon Wu '58 Professor of Chinese Studies, Princeton UniversityTable of ContentsContents Acknowledgments List of Tables and Figures Manuscripts Cited Introduction  1 The Dunhuang Context  2 Literary Training and the Literate Elite  3 Managing Literary Information  4 Overview of Shapters  5 Some Conventions 1 Kaimeng yaoxun: A Foundation for Literary Training  1 Introduction  2 Documents  3 Content: What Kaimeng yaoxun Teaches  4 Structure: What Makes Kaimeng yaoxun “Easy to Understand and Hard to Forget”?  5 Using Kaimeng yaoxun: Evidence from Textual Variation  6 Case Study: P.2578  7 Managing Information: Kaimeng yaoxun as Literary Training 2 Qianzi wen as Mnemonic Scaffold  1 Introduction to Qianzi wen  2 Qianzi wen  3 Medieval Annotations to Qianzi wen  4 Liuzi qianwen 3 Yudui: Parallel Sayings as Tool and Method  1 Introduction  2 Documents and Formats  3 Structure and Content  4 Variation, Production, and Use  5 Yudui as Information Management 4 Zachao: A Complex Miscellany  1 Introduction  2 The Documents  3 Organizational Structure  4 Categories of Content  5 Managing Information  6 Textual Variation  7 Layout, Format, and Use  8 Parallels 5 Tuyuan cefu: A Primer for Exams and Officialdom  1 Introduction  2 The Bibliographic Record  3 Dunhuang Documents  4 Du Sixian’s Preface  5 Content and Structure: “Deliberating the Feng and Shan Sacrifices”  6 Using Tuyuan cefu  7 Tuyuan cefu In (and Out) of Context Conclusion  1 Implications Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn early modern Japan, upper status groups coveted pills and powders made of exotic foreign ingredients such as mummy and rhinoceros horn. By the early twentieth century, over-the-counter-patent medicines, and, more alarmingly, morphine, had become mass commodities, fueling debates over opiates in Japan’s expanding imperial territories. The fall of the empire and the occupation of Japan by the United States created conditions favorable for heroin use, followed, in time, by glue sniffing and psychedelic mushroom ingestion. By illuminating the neglected history of drugs, this volume highlights both the transnational embeddedness and national peculiarities of the “politics of consumption” in Japan. Contributors are: Anna Andreeva, Oleg Benesch, William G. Clarence-Smith, Hung Bin Hsu, John Jennings, Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, William Marotti, Kōji Ozaki, Jonas Rüegg, Jesús Solís, Christopher W.A. Szpilman, Judith Vitale, and Timothy Yang.

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Book SynopsisThis groundbreaking work studies the Arabic literary culture of early modern Southeast Asia on the basis of largely unstudied and unknown manuscripts. It offers new perspectives on intellectual interactions between the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the development of Islam and especially Sufism in the region, the relationship between the Arabic and Malay literary traditions, and the manuscript culture of the Indian Ocean world. It brings to light a large number of hitherto unknown texts produced at or for the courts of Southeast Asia, and examines the role of royal patronage in supporting Arabic literary production in Southeast Asia.

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Book SynopsisWho was Yang Tinghe? Despite being one of Ming China’s most eminent officials, Yang and his career have long eluded scholarly study in the West. In this volume, Aaron Throness engages a trove of untapped Ming sources and secondary scholarship to recount Yang Tinghe’s political life, and in unprecedented detail. Throness explores how Yang, a pragmatic politician and conservative Confucian, rose through the bureaucracy and responded to dire threats to the Ming court from within and without. He also traces Yang’s meteoric rise to power, the clashes that occasioned his downfall, and his apotheosis as dynastic savior. Through Yang Tinghe’s successes, struggles, and failures this political biography offers a critical appraisal of both the man and his times.

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Book SynopsisIn the early twentieth century, the first large batch of Chinese civil engineers had graduated from the USA, and together with their American senior colleagues returned to China. They were enthusiastic about reconstructing the young republic by building new railways, highways, and canals, but what the engineers experienced in China, including mismanaged railways, useless highways, and silted canals, did not always meet their expectations and ideals. In this book, Thorben Pelzer makes the stories of these Chinese and American engineers come to life through exploring previously unpublished letters, rare images, maps, and a rich biographical dataset. He argues that the experiences of these engineers include a myriad of contradictions, disillusionment, and discontent, keeping the engineering profession in a constant flux of searching for its meaning and its place in Republican China.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Figures and Tables List of Abbreviations Glossary of Recurring Civil Engineers Note on Transcriptions Introduction  Open Roads in China  1 Historical Background  2 The Segment of US-Trained Civil Engineers  3 “Specialized but Equally Ordinary Men”  4 Engineering and Its Discontents  5 Chapter Overview 1 Nationalism and the Cosmopolitical  Education Overseas, 1905–1918  1 Early Ways Into the United States  2 Engineering Education  3 Engineering Practice  4 The Cosmopolitan Dimension  5 The National Dimension  6 Bringing the Profession Home  7 Conclusion 2 Financial Constraint  The Grand Canal Board, 1918–1922  1 A Transnational Venture  2 Recruiting a Team  3 Surveying an Unstable Environment  4 The Money Goes Astray  5 Solidarity—The Yellow River Bridge Controversy  6 Frustration—Huai River Improvement Schemes  7 Conclusion 3 Political Dependency  Wang Jingchun at the Chinese Eastern Railway, 1919–1924  1 The Nationalist Paradigm  2 The Efficiency Paradigm  3 Wang Jingchun’s Ascend to Power  4 The Chinese Eastern—“A Railroad Born in Sin”  5 The Wang–Ostroumov Dyad  6 The End of Expert Management  7 Conclusion 4 The Visible College  The Early Association of Chinese & American Engineers, 1919–1927  1 Formation and Organizational Makeup  2 Functions of the Association and Its Journal  3 Ethics and Socialization  4 Career Opportunities  5 Network for Collaboration  6 Transnational Friendship  7 Conclusion 5 Cohesion and Exclusion  The Relief Commission Paves the Provinces, 1926–1934  1 “Good Roads” and Labor Relief  2 Contested Authority in Yunnan  3 Guizhou—The Strong State  4 Guizhou—Mass Mobilization  5 Guizhou—Beneficiaries and Burden Bearers  6 Continuities Between Xi’an and Lanzhou  7 Conclusion 6 Demise without Exhaustion  The Withdrawal of US Engineers, 1928–194  1 Early Troubles of the ACAE  2 Support for the Command Economy  3 The Resurrection of the ACAE  4 Crisis of Repute—The Salaqi Irrigation Project  5 The Militarization of Civil Engineering  6 The Plight of US Engineers  7 Conclusion 7 Wartime Engineering  Ling Hongxun under Pressure, 1932–1945  1 A Career Start of Ups and Downs  2 Abortive Western Expansions  3 From Guangzhou to Hankou: Cutting Time  4 Lessons Learnt and Lessons Dealt  5 Drawbacks of the Strong State  6 The Xinjiang–Gansu Railway  7 Conclusion 8 Conclusion  1 Summary  2 Findings  3 Implications  4 Outlook  5 Coda: Loose Ends Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisZuozhuan (Zuo Tradition) is the foundational text of Chinese historiography and the largest text from preimperial China. For two millennia, its immense complexity has given rise to countless controversies, with scholars debating its nature, time of composition, and historical reliability. In the present volume—the first of its kind in any Western language—leading scholars of ancient China, Greece, and Rome approach Zuozhuan from multi-faceted perspectives to examine in detail Zuozhuan’s sources, narrative patterns, and meta-narrative devices; analyze the text in dialogue with other ancient Chinese works; and open it to the comparative study with ancient Greek and Roman historiography. Contributors are: Chen Minzhen, Stephen Durrant, Joachim Gentz, Martin Kern, Wai-yee Li, Nino Luraghi, Ellen O’Gorman, Yuri Pines, David Schaberg, and Kai Vogelsang.

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Book SynopsisThe essays collected in this volume for the first time foreground the fundamental role Asian actors played in the formation of scholarly knowledge on Buddhism and the emergence of Buddhist studies as an academic discipline in Europe and Asia during the second half of the nineteenth century. The contributions focus on different aspects of the interchange between Japanese Buddhists and their European interlocutors ranging from the halls of Oxford to the temples of Nara. They break the mould of previous scholarship and redress the imbalances inherent in Eurocentric accounts of the construction of Buddhism as an object of professorial interest. Contributors are: Micah Auerback, Mick Deneckere, Stephan Kigensan Licha, Hans Martin Krämer, Ōmi Toshihiro, Jakub Zamorski, Suzanne Marchand, Martin Baumann, Catherine Fhima, and Roland Lardinois.

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Book SynopsisThe book studies utopian fiction as a knowledge apparatus by connecting three aspects of late Qing culture: the rise of modern press, the emergence of new genre, and the epistemology of modernity, while reflecting on the ability of utopian imagination to develop the three-way relationship between new people, new China, and new genre via the Chinese public sphere.Trade Review"In this meticulously researched and carefully argued new study, Shuk Man Leung guides her readers towards a coherent and complex understanding of Chinese “New Fiction” from the first decade of the twentieth century. Building on and moving beyond existing studies of the genre’s literary characteristics, Leung demonstrates its significance in sparking a “utopian imagination” that came to pervade all aspects of Chinese modernity, shaping the ways of knowing China’s future that circulated among participants in the period’s flourishing print culture, intellectual debate, and political activism." – Michel Hockx, University of Notre Dame "Shuk Man Leung’s monograph offers an in-depth and original investigation into Utopian fiction in Chinese in the final years of the Qing dynasty at the beginning of the twentieth century. Her work explores how this genre, imported through translation first of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, played a vital role in the reimagining of the political arena and the nation-state at this critical juncture in modern Chinese history. Leung also demonstrates how utopian visions of China’s future underpinned the entire project of modern Chinese literature. A must read for researchers in modern Chinese intellectual history, modern Chinese literature, and translation studies." – James St Andre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong "Literature does not merely represent reality/history; it creates “reality”/history that leads to a coming future through imagination at a critical historical turning point. Leung’s book precisely tells us how the Chinese literary modernity of utopian fiction in the early twentieth century contributed to modern Chinese nation-building. From a global perspective and fresh way, she demonstrates how modern Chinese utopian fiction functioned as an influential and unique mass medium and contributed to people’s identity formatting at the outset of Chinese nation-building. This book tells us how language, particularly utopian fiction, mediates and bridges between the past, reality and the coming future and how literary imagination can create history." – LIN Shaoyang, Distinguished Professor, History Department, University of MacauTable of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures Introduction  1 Historicizing Chinese Modernity and New Fiction’s Utopian Imagination  2 New Fiction as a New Genre  3 Utopian Fiction in China  4 The Position of the Authors: Liang Qichao and His Contemporaries  5 Chapter Summaries 1 Establishment: New Fiction, Utopian Imagination, and the Generic System  1 The Order of Things: Legitimization of Fiction in the Chinese Bibliography  2 The Emergence of New Fiction and Its Generic Norms  3 The Generic Features of New Fiction: The Future of New China  4 Conclusion 2 Dissemination: the Generic Features of the Utopian Imagination  1 Generic Classification of New Fiction  2 Conclusion: the Intergeneric Element of the Utopian Imagination 3 Channels: the Political Function of Utopian Fiction and the Chinese Public Sphere  1 Utopian Fiction as a Form of Public Opinion  2 Utopia or Dystopia? China’s Partition and Revolutionary Journals  3 Utopia(s) Realized? The Constitutional Campaign and Fiction Magazines  4 Utopia beyond Constitutionalism: the Chinese Revolution of 1911 and Shanghai News  5 Conclusion 4 Origins: Liang Qichao and Chinese, Japanese, and Western Epistemology  1 The Discourse of the Future  2 The Discourse of the Nation  3 Conclusion: Utopian Temporality and Spatiality 5 Borderless Nations? Cosmopolitan Utopias with Anarchist and Socialist Faces  1 A Cosmopolitan Utopia with an Anarchist Face  2 The Third Road: Socialist Cosmopolitanism as a Moral Solution  3 Conclusion: a Moral Order for Building a Nation/Society 6 Crossing the Border: Chinese Settler Colonialism and a Borderless National Imagination  1 The Discovery of Colonization and Chinese Nationalism  2 Lü Sheng’s a Madman’s Dream: Deterritorialized China  3 Yunnan Journal and Its Utopian Novels: Transnational Autonomy  4 Conclusion Conclusion: the Dual Community of New Fiction’s Utopian Imagination: Writing, Reading and Imagining  1 The Way “We” Imagine  2 The Way “We” Write and Read  3 The Power of Utopia: History, Imagination and Knowledge Formation Appendix: Figures Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe small town of Vṛndāvana is today one of the most vibrant places of pilgrimage in northern India. Throngs of pilgrims travel there each year to honour the sacred land of Kṛṣṇa’s youth and to visit many of its temples. The Building of Vṛndāvana explores the complex history of this town’s early modern origins. Bringing together scholars from various disciplines to examine history, architecture, art, ritual, theology, and literature in this pivotal period, the book examines how these various disciplines were used to create, develop, and map Vṛndāvana as the most prominent place of pilgrimage for devotees of Kṛṣṇa. Contributors are: Guy L. Beck, Måns Broo, David Buchta, John Stratton Hawley, Barbara A. Holdrege, Rembert Lutjeharms, Cynthia D. Packert, and Heidi Pauwels.Trade Review"This rich, well-crafted collaborative volume on one of South Asia’s most important pilgrimage sites, the temple town dedicated to Kṛṣṇa at Vṛndāvana draws upon a range of literary, historical, musical and artistic evidence to examine the communities, conceptions and construction of the region of Vraja in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Original, timely and compelling, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Hindu studies, Sanskrit and Hindi literature, historians of early modern South Asia, including its art and music, and anyone interested in the centrality of place, space and pilgrimage to the religious imagination." - Dr. Crispin Branfoot (Reader in the history of South Asian art and archaeology. SOAS, University of London) "This masterful book immerses the reader in the landscapes, temples, texts, and artistic traditions of early modern Vṛndāvana. A variety of sources and methods are blended seamlessly to paint a picture of this dynamic town, as it grows from a small community to a major center of Kṛṣṇa worship. The introduction provides the most engaging overview of Vṛndāvana's history and theology that I have read. This book is a joy to read, and one that you will return to over and over again." - Prof. Ravi M. Gupta (Charles Redd Chair of Religious Studies, Utah State University)Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction  Rembert Lutjeharms and Kiyokazu Okita Part 1: Builders 1 A Sixteenth-Century Testimony on Vṛndāvana’s First-Generation Pioneers  Heidi Pauwels 2 The Hari-bhakti-vilāsa as a Specimen of Early Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism in Vṛndāvana  Måns Broo Part 2: Building 3 The Gauḍīya Reimagining of Vraja as a Bimodal Domain  Pilgrimage Place and Transcendent Space  Barbara A. Holdrege 4 Building Vṛndāvana as a Locus of Rasa  The Stotras of Rūpa Gosvāmī  David Buchta 5 Building the Spiritual Vṛndāvana  Music and the Rāsa Dance at the Centre of Kṛṣṇa Devotion  Guy L. Beck Part 3: Buildings 6 A Temple of Stone and a Temple of Love  Govindadeva in the Religious Imagination of Early Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas  Rembert Lutjeharms 7 Kings of the Mountains  Govardhana-līlā and Kachavāhā Patronage at the Govindadeva Temple in Vṛndāvana  Cynthia Packert 8 The Ideal Real Vṛndāvana of Jayasiṃha’s Dining Room  John Stratton Hawley Index

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Book SynopsisHow did Asia come to be represented on European World maps? When and how did Asian Countries adopt a continental system for understanding the world? How did countries with disparate mapping traditions come to share a basic understanding and vision of the globe? This series of essays organized into sections on Jesuit Circuits of Communication and Publication; Jesuit World Maps in Chinese; Reverberations of Matteo Ricci's Maps in East Asia; and Reflections on the Curation of Cartographic Knowledge, go a long way toward answering these questions about the shaping of our modern understandings of the world.Table of ContentsForeword: Maps, Missionaries, and the Global Exchange of Knowledge in the Early Modern World  M. Antoni J. Ucerler, S.J. Preface and Acknowledgements  Laura Hostetler List of Illustrations Abbreviations Notes on Contributors Introduction: Reflections on Form and Content  Laura Hostetler Part 1: Jesuit Circuits of Communication and Publication 1 Jesuit Contributions to Global Connectivity and Global Consciousness in the Early Modern Era  José Casanova 2 From Manuscript to Print: At the Origins of Early Jesuit Missionary Strategies of Communication  Robert Danieluk, S.J. 3 Dutch Publications on the Jesuit Mission in China in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries  Paul Begheyn, S.J. Part 2: Jesuit World Maps in Chinese, from Ricci to Verbiest 4 Parallels, Engagement, and Integration: The Ricci Maps and Their Afterlives in Ming-Qing China as a Case Study of Intertwined Global Early Modernity  Qiong Zhang 5 The Introduction of Ricci’s World Maps into Edo Period Japan: A Detailed Comparative Investigation of Maps  AOYAMA Hiro’o 6 Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam: Jesuit Mapping in China by Giulio Aleni, Francesco Sambiasi, Niccolò Longobardi, Manuel Diaz, and Others  Paola Demattè 7 The World Revealed: Science, Mythology, and the Natural World in Ferdinand Verbiest’s Kunyu Quantu 坤輿全圖 (1674)  Mark Stephen Mir Part 3: Reverberations of Ricci’s Maps in East Asia 8 Representing an Ideal World Order of the Past: The Cultural Function of the Jesuit World Maps in Eighteenth-Century Korean Government  LIM Jongtae 9 Entering Asia: The Repositioning of Japan  Kären Wigen 10 China’s Nine-Dash Line: Cartographic Science and the Adoption of New Map Languages in the Transition from Empire to Nation State  Laura Hostetler Postlude: Reflections on the Curation of Cartographic Knowledge 11 Writing Technologies and Special Collections: Agents and Arbiters of Change through the Transmission of Knowledge  Marguerite Ragnow 12 East Asian Map Collections in the Library of Congress: A Unique Source for the Study of Cartography and East–West Cultural Exchange  Ralph E. Ehrenberg Index

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Book SynopsisThe 'Opening of Japan' has been central to the retelling of Japan's modern history. Reopening the Opening of Japan fundamentally reconsiders what that historical moment entailed. What did intensified connections between Japan and the world mean both inside and outside of the country, and what does this tell us about Japan's historical significance on a global scale? The chapters excavate a rich array of surprising cross-border connections, from the global trade in mummified mermaids to the Japanese-Russian intellectual links underpinning the work of Akira Kurosawa. Re-thinking connectivity through non-state transnational perspectives, the book guides readers to new ways of doing and writing history. Contributors are: Lewis Bremner, Natalia Doan, Manimporok Dotulong, Maki Fukuoka, Eiko Honda, Sho Konishi, Mateja Kovacic, Joel Littler, Chinami Oka, Yu Sakai, Olga Solovieva, and Warren Stanislaus.Trade Review‘A pioneering critique of the historiography of "the opening." The book is a major contribution to the field, re-thinking approaches to global as well as national history.’ - M. William Steele, Professor Emeritus, International Christian UniversityTable of ContentsContents Acknowledgments and Permissions List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction  Lewis Bremner and Manimporok Dotulong Part 1: Visions of Civilisation 1 The 1860 Japanese Embassy and the Opening of American Civilisation  Samurai, Interracial Romance, and Southern Print Culture  Natalia Doan 2 Laughing at Civilisation  Charles Wirgman’s Japan Punch and the Reopening of Great Britain  Warren A. Stanislaus 3 Minakata Kumagusu and the Microbial Turn in Theories of Evolution and Civilisation, 1887–1892  Eiko Honda Part 2: Life through the Opening 4 Opening the West with Japanese Mermaid Mummies Ningyo in the Making of the Theory of Evolution  Mateja Kovacic 5 Hyakushō in the Arafura Zone  Ecologising the Nineteenth-Century “Opening of Japan”  Manimporok Dotulong 6 The Transformation of Magic Lantern Technology in Nineteenth Century Japan  Lewis Bremner 7 Squaring Experiences with the Opening  The Case of Yokoyama Matsusaburō  Maki Fukuoka Part 3: From Particularity to Radical Universality 8 The Modern Closing of a Tokugawa-Era “Opening”  The Early Modern Origins of an International Humanitarian Organisation  Sho Konishi 9 A Defeated Samurai of the Boshin Civil War and the Search for a New Universalism  Chinami Oka 10 Meiji Civil War Losers in Siam  Miyazaki Tōten’s Utopian Farming Community (1877–1896)  Joel Littler 11 The “Second Ishin” and Kunikida Doppo’s Misunderstood Nature  Yu Sakai Part 4: Epilogue: Postwar Reflections 12 Something Like an Autobiography  Akira Kurosawa on Free Pedagogy and Restoration of Japan’s Democratic Self  Olga V. Solovieva Index

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Book SynopsisThis volume explores the dissemination of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya tradition in Tang China (618–907) in the context of the dispersal of the state bureaucracy throughout the empire and the changing centre–periphery dynamics. The tradition’s development in China during the Tang Dynasty has traditionally been associated with northern China, particularly the capital city of Chang’an, where Daoxuan (596–667), the de facto founder of the “vinaya school” in China, resided. This book explores the dissemination of Daoxuan’s followers and the subsequent growth of interrelated regional vinaya movements across the Tang regional landscape.

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Book SynopsisThis is the first book-length study of the roles played by the Manchu language at the center of the Qing empire at the height of its power in the eighteenth century. It presents a revisionist account of Manchu not as a language in decline, but as extensively and consciously used language in a variety of areas. It treats the use, discussion, regulation, and philological study of Manchu at the court of an emperor who cared deeply for the maintenance and history of the language of his dynasty.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Figures and Illustration ConventionsV Introduction  1 The How and Why of Manchu  2 Manchu Documents, Books, and Three Reasons for Writing this Study 1 Background: The Manchu Language from the Seventeenth Century to the Qianlong Period  1 The Early History of Written Manchu  2 The Manchu Language in China Proper  3 Scholarly Efforts to Describe the Manchu Language and Qianlong’s Project to Change it 2 Public Inscriptions and Manchu Language Reform in the Early Qianlong Reign  1 Background: Manchu Steles and Public Inscriptions  2 Public Inscriptions and Qianlong-era Language Reform  3 The Names for Temples, Altars, and Gates  4 The Inscription at Fragrance of the Teaching Temple  5 Conclusion 3 Linguistic Compartmentalization and the Palace Memorial System  1 Manchu and Chinese Linguistic Regimes  2 Linguistic Compartmentalization and the Palace Memorial System  3 The Experiment of Bilingual Palace Memorials  4 Language Choice and Secrecy  5 The Limits of Linguistic Compartmentalization: Lateral Communications  6 Conclusion 4 Reading Manchu Palace Memorials Against the Idea of Manchu Decline  1 The Idea of Manchu Decline  2 Palace Memorials from Letters to Bureaucratic Summaries  3 How did Qianlong Understand Authorship? The Examples of Kuilin, Kinglin, and Guncukdar  4 Problems Related to the Composite Nature of Memorials  5 Conclusion 5 Imperial Corrections of Language Errors in Manchu Palace Memorials  1 Corrections before Qianlong  2 Qianlong’s Corrections of Manchu Usage  3 Criticism of Language and of the Writer  4 Reprimands for Mistakes in Languages other than Manchu  5 Conclusion 6 Philological Scholarship in Manchu: Linguistic Studies on the Pre-conquest Archive  1 What was “Evidential Learning”?  2 Manchu “Evidential Learning”  3 Manchu Philology before Qianlong: The Translation of Confucian Literature  4 The Pre-conquest Archive and the Early Veritable Records  5 The Book of Characters Without Dots and Circles  6 The Book of Old Manchu Phrases Lifted from the Veritable Records 7 Footnotes to Early Qing History: The Grand Secretariat Copy of the Old Manchu Archive  1 Editing the Old Archive  2 The Yellow Sticky Notes  3 The Philology of Manchu before Manchu: Multilingual Historical Glossaries  4 Conclusion Conclusion: Manchu after Qianlong  1 Manchu as a Language of Court Scholarship  2 Statistics on Manchu Document Production  3 A New Role for Manchu?  4 Survival as an Administrative Language in Multilingual Contexts  5 Socio-political Change and Linguistic Change  6 Manchu’s Survival as a Vernacular Language  7 Limited use of Manchu as a Spoken Language in Nineteenth-century Beijing  8 The Decline of Manchu Bibliography  Archives and Databases Used  Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisThe first book that deals with the territorial cults of early Japan by focusing on how such cults were founded in ownerless regions. Numerous ancient Japanese myths and legends are discussed to show that the typical founding ritual was a two-phase ritual that turned the territory into a horizontal microcosm, complete with its own ‘terrestrial heaven’ inhabited by local deities. Reversing Mircea Eliade’s popular thesis, the author concludes that the concept of the human-made horizontal microcosm is not a reflection but the source of the religious concept of the macrocosm with gods dwelling high up in the sky. The open access publication of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.Table of ContentsContents Preface List of Figures Introduction  The Problem of the Pre-Shinto Cults  Territorial Cults  The Focus on Early Japan  Japan’s Protohistory  Innovations Introduced by the Taika Reform  Different Versions of the Same Story in Nihon Shoki  The God Age Mythology  The Fudoki Mythology  The Method of Interpretation  The Theoretical Model  The Structure of the Book  Various Notes 1 Divination  Divining with Things Thrown and Falling Down  Divining the Place for Founding a Shrine  Absurd Uses of the Falling Motif  Realistic Methods Exaggerated  Land Divination Typically Performed in Front  Divining with Things Cast Overboard  Floating a Wisteria Twig to Find the Right Place  Letting a Cooking Set Float to Enemy Land  Susanoo and the Floating Chopsticks  Kisakahime and the Lost Bow and Arrow  Articles to Play on the Sea  Floats Used for Divining  Divining in Boats  Later Survivals: The Religious Use of Wood Drifted Ashore  Conclusion 2 The Story of Yato no Kami  The Topography  The Mountain Entrance  The Lacking First Part of the Story  The Yashiro at the Upper Boundary  Matachi’s Ritual Procedure Reconstructed  Mibu no Muraji Maro and the Divine Snakes  Moving a Shrine to Another Site  The Location of the Ancient Pond  The New Conditions in the Ritsuryō State  Conclusions 3 Making a Large Territory in Harima  Ame no Hiboko and Iwa no Ōkami  Ame no Hiboko’s Arrival  The Claiming Ceremony on Iibo Hill  Other Claiming Stories  The Iibo Hill and Its Special Relation to the Iwa Jinja  Hardening the Land  A Model of the Grand-Scale Land-Making Myth?  The Two Foundations of the Iwa Shrine  Conclusions 4 Making and Ceding the Land in the God Age  The God Age Mythology: An Overview according to Kojiki  The Land-Making Myth  Sukunabikona  Ōnamuchi as a Beginner in Land-Making  The Land-Ceding Myth according to Kojiki  The Land-Ceding Myth according to Nihon Shoki  Kojiki and Nihon Shoki: Two Different Doctrines  Consequences of the Land-Ceding Myth  Conclusion 5 Ninigi’s Descent and His Territory in Kyushu  The Title Sentence Pattern  The Two Main Versions of the Myth  Cape Kasasa as a Place on the Way to Takachiho  Ninigi’s Arrival at the Coast  Ninigi Questions the Master of the Land at Cape Kasasa  Ninigi at Cape Kasasa  Takama no Hara as a Horizontally Distant Heaven  Ninigi’s Descendants Living in Kyushu  The Conquest of Yamato  Conclusion 6 The Foundation of the Izumo Shrine  Ōkuninushi’s Place of Hiding and Waiting  Prince Homuchiwake Worships the Great God of Izumo  Ashihara no Shikoo and the Worship at Iwakuma  Mt. Kannabi and the Sokinoya Shrine  A Suitable Site at the Foot of Mt. Kannabi  The Political Aspect  The Foundation of the Shrine at Kizuki  The Land-Pulling Myth and the Four Kannabi of Izumo  Summing Up 7 The Foundation of the Ise Shrine  The Later Version of the Foundation Story  Name-Asking as a Form of Claiming  Pillow Words Alluding to Land-Making Myths  The Topography of the Isuzu Valley  Sarutahiko and a Heaven in the Mountains  The Precinct of the Inner Shrine (Naikū)  From Simple to Complex Cult Systems  Sarutahiko’s Destiny  Summing Up 8 Characteristics of Territorial Cults  Divination as the Primary Rite  Variants of the Cult Contract  The Cult Contract and the State Ritual after the Taika Reform  Founder Worship  Shrine and Tomb  The Guardian Deity Is Excluded from the Land Opened Up  Nature Spirits Can Become Manifest in Wild Animals  The Guardian Deity Is Believed to Control the Local Weather  Calamities Blamed on Some Mistake in the Ritual  Cult Places Could Be Moved to Enlarge the Agricultural Land  The Mountain God as a Multifunctional Deity  The Mountain Entrance and the Torii  Boundary Marks  Tabooed Mountain Areas  The Bipolar Structure of Territories  The Chigi Cross as a Symbol  The Name of the Kami Land  The Age of the Yorishiro Concept  The Land-Making Motif in Creation Myths  Conclusion 9 Sacred Groves and Cult Marks  Yashikigami Worship  A Sacred Grove on Hirado Island  The Garō Yama of Tanegashima  The Sacred Forest of the Ōmiwa Shrine  The Matsushita Shrine and the Somin Sanctuary  Cult Marks Replaced by Shrine Buildings  Yorishiro and Ogishiro  The Shimenawa and the Straw Snake  Claiming Signs Made by Binding or Knotting Growing Plants  Pacifying the Site  Ancient Land-Claiming and the Rural Gathering Economy  Sign-Making Dealt with in Ethnographic Studies 10 Comparative Notes  The Settlement of Iceland  Founding Sacred Groves and Colonies in Ancient Greece  The Vedic Tradition  Opening Up Land in Shifting Cultivation  From Terrestrial Heavens to the Heaven in the Sky Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSui-Wai Cheung’s study of the institutional history of copper coins in the Ming dynasty reveals how emperors and statesmen perceived and used the copper coins at their disposal. In this process, he uncovers the reality of the Sons of Heaven, showing that although Ming emperors seemed to have unlimited power, they could not afford the upkeep on their palace. In this revealing history of Ming China, Cheung argues that especially after the breakdown of the household registration system, the aim of the Ming coinage system was to create a new source of income in order to maintain the emperor's domain in Beijing.Table of ContentsList of Figures, Tables, and Maps Ming Dynasty Emperors Ming Weights and Measures Introduction: Currency and Taxation in Ming China, 1368–1644 1 How Precious Is a Precious Note? State Currency in the Early Ming, 1368–1435  1 The Value of Paper  2 Managing an Empire Without Money   2.1 Household Registration for Goods and Services   2.2 Moving the Capital South   2.3 Eunuchs: the Emperor’s Servants and Gatekeepers   2.4 Labor Services and In-Kind Taxes   2.5 The Lijia  3 From Copper to Rice to Precious Notes  4 Civil War, a New Capital, and a Surfeit of Precious Notes   4.1 Moving the Capital to Beijing   4.2 Precious Notes for Capital Officials   4.3 Taking Precious Notes Out of Circulation: the Salt Tax and Crime Restitution Fees  5 Reopening China to Trade   5.1 The Treasure Fleet   5.2 Building the New Capital in Beijing  6 Retrieving Precious Notes: Commercial Fees and Charges  7 Conclusion 2 From Illegal to Official: Copper and Silver, 1400–1487  1 Recession, Piracy, and Foreign Trade  2 Reopening China: Silver in the Market   2.1 Feeding the Capital: Tribute Rice and the Grand Canal   2.2 Commuting the Grain Tax: The Gold Floral Silver Reform   2.3 Silver and the Precious Note  3 Copper Coins in a “Filthy” Reign   3.1 Government Taxes and Fees in Copper Cash  4 Counterfeit Coins and Gresham’s Law  5 Conclusion 3 Household Registration, Foreign Trade, and the Emperor’s Table, 1444–1566  1 Maritime Merchants and Household Registration  2 The Emperor’s Table  3 The Emperor’s Coffers  4 An End to Extravagance?  5 Copper Coins as Income  6 Prodigal Emperors   6.1 The Zhengde Emperor (1505–1521): Extortion and Government Charges   6.2 The Jiajing Emperor (1521–1566): Brass Coins  7 Closing the Baoyuan Mint  8 Conclusion 4 Coins for the Government, 1567–1644  1 Coins for the Country and the People   1.1 Coins for the Ministries   1.2 Provincial Mints   1.3 “Golden Backs” for the Taicang Treasury   1.4 Renting Furnaces at the Nanjing Mint  2 Back Into the Emperor’s Wallet  3 Conclusion 5 Conclusion: Small Change and State Administration in Ming China Works Cited Glossary Index

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Book SynopsisThe old contrast between “universal” and “local” is now collapsing, but a new paradigm has yet to be defined. The contributors claim that the questions they raise will help redraw the lines of demarcation each in a unique way. Their collaborative result is a re-submission of the century-old question regarding “the essence of Christianity,” and the readers will hear answers to this question resounding in polyphonic voices. The book will make a unique contribution to the scholarship by constructing a common forum connecting diasporic Asians and Oceanians who live and work in regions around the Pacific Ocean. Publication in the field of theology has been thick on the American side of the Pacific, and the agenda of discussion are shaped largely in accordance with the concerns of those living on the North-American continent and in British Isles. Theologians living on the other side of the Pacific, while in daily contact with the multi-religious realities that beg theological attention, sometimes lack means of engaging in sustained discussion with other theologians who are similarly struggling to gain insights into different cultural contexts. This book will provide a shared ground for reflection and discussion.Table of ContentsPreface M. Thomas Thangaraj: An Overview: Asian and Oceanic Christianity in an Age of World Christianity Hermeneutical Lenses for Reading Asian Experiences Heup Young Kim: An Asian Journey Seeking Christian Wholeness: Owning Up to Our Own Metaphors (Theotao) Anri Morimoto: Contextualized and Cumulative: Tradition, Orthodoxy and Identity from the Perspective of Asian Theology Peter C. Phan: An Asian Christian? Or a Christian Asian? Or an Asian-Christian? A Roman Catholic Experiment on Christian Identity R.S. Sugirtharajah: Texts and Terrorism: Communal Strife, Sacred Scriptures and Secular Stories Angela Wai Ching Wong: The Economy of God-talk in Asia: A Cultural Materialist Critique Text & Context: Theological Readings of Asian Faith Experiences Hisako Kinukawa: Pacifism: its Frustration and an Alternative J. Jayakiran Sebastian: The Guide Who Stands Aside: Confessing Christ in India Today Benoît Vermander: Blessed are the Peacemakers: The Search for an East Asian Reading Voices & Visions: Asians and Pacific Islanders in Diaspora, their Global Connections, Challenges, and Prospects Seforosa Carroll: Reimagining Home: a Diasporic Perspective on Encounters with the Religious Other in Australia Charles E. Farhadian: Emerging Theology on an Asian Frontier: History and the Future of Memories in West Papua, Indonesia Jione Havea: Pasifika Secrets Fumitaka Matsuoka: Learning to Speak a New Tongue: Imagining a Way That Holds People Together About the authors Index of names

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Book SynopsisReworlding Art History highlights the significance of contemporary Southeast Asian art and artists, and their place in the globalized art world and the internationalizing field of ‘contemporary art’. In the light of the region’s modern art history, the book surveys this relatively under-examined area of contemporary art which first found broad international recognition in the 1990s. Richly illustrated and incorporating cross-cultural and interdisciplinary methods, Reworlding Art History is a foundational reference work for those interested in Southeast Asia’s contemporary art, including scholars of art history, Asian studies, curatorship, museology, visual culture, and anthropology, as well as professionals working in art and museum contexts.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Preface: Departures Prologue: Points of Entry Part I. Preliminary Encounters 1. Contemporary ‘Southeast Asian’ Art: Regional Interventions Part II. Locating Southeast Asian Difference 2. Mapping Regional Difference: Institutionalized Cartographies of Southeast Asian Art 3. Exhibiting Southeast Asian Difference: Global and Regional Currents Part III. Counterpoints: Southeast Asia in Practice 4. Trans/Localities? Between Dwelling and Movement 5. Memoryscapes: Present Pasts Revisioned 6. Corporeographies: Locating Intimate Spaces of Art Epilogue: Origins, Futures, Becomings Bibliography Index

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