Description
Book SynopsisThis book is part of an initiative in cooperation with renowned Chinese publishers to make fundamental, formative, and influential Chinese thinkers available to a western readership, providing absorbing insights into Chinese reflections of late, and offering a chance to grasp todays China. In their influential book Handbook of the History of Religions in China, Zhongjian Mou and Jian Zhang present a panorama of the religions existing in China through time. In their fascinating History, they delineate the emergence and development of Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, and Christianity and explore the roles they played in Chinese society and the interrelations between them. In China, also due to the encompassing Confucian idea of living together harmoniously while maintaining differences, religions -- including newly arrived ones -- came closer together than anywhere else in the world and reached a unique level of peaceful societal coexistence. Despite many frictions and conflicts, communication and reconciliation were indisputably predominant in China throughout history. Buddhism was peacefully introduced into China and, later on, a harmonious, symbiotic syncretism of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism developed -- an exemplary process of how a diverse set of different religions can complement each other and contribute to a better life.
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Phases of History of Religions in China; Historical Characteristics of Religions in China; Roles Religions Played Throughout Chinese History; Primitive Religions; Religions in the Three Archaic Dynasties and the Spring and Autumn; and Warring States Eras; Religions in the Qin and Han Dynasties: The Codification and Early; Growth of Buddhism and Daoism; Religions in Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern Dynasties: Vibrant Growth; Religions in Sui and Tang Dynasties and the Periods of Five Dynasties; and Ten Kingdoms: Prosperity and Pluralism.
