Category: China

The Record of Linji

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“[The Record of Linji] will be the translation of choice for Western Zen communities, college courses, and all who want to know that the translation they are reading is faithful to the original. Professional scholars of Buddhism will revel in the sheer wealth of information packed into footnotes and biliographical notes. Unique among translations of Buddhist texts, the footnotes to the Kirchner edition contain numerous explanations of grammatical constructions. Translators of classical Chinese will immediately recognize the Kirchner edition constitutes a small handbook of classical and colloquial Chinese grammar. It sets a new standard in scholarly translation of Buddhist primary texts.” —Victor Sogen Hori, McGill University

October 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-2821-9 / $53.00 (CLOTH)

Chinese Healing Exercises

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Daoyin, the traditional Chinese practice of guiding the qi and stretching the body is the forerunner of Qigong, the modern form of exercise that has swept through China and is making increasing inroads in the West. Like other Asian body practices, Daoyin focuses on the body as the main vehicle of attainment; sees health and spiritual transformation as one continuum leading to perfection or self-realization; and works intensely and consciously with the breath and with the conscious guiding of internal energies. Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin, by Livia Kohn, explores the different forms of Daoyin in historical sequence, beginning with the early medical manuscripts of the Han dynasty, then moving into its religious adaptation in Highest Clarity Daoism. After examining the medieval Daoyin Scripture and ways of integrating the practice into Tang Daoist immortality, the work outlines late imperial forms and describes the transformation of the practice in the modern world.

“Livia Kohn is absolutely the source on the origins and great luminaries of Qigong, Tai Chi, and Chinese healing exercises. As the world’s appetite for stress mastery, wellness, and complementary medicine grows and the fields of health promotion and personal empowerment explode, there is a need for accurate reflection on the origins of China’s ancient power tools for well-being, healing, and longevity. Based on sound scholarship and accessible to a wide audience, this book fulfills that need.” —Roger Jahnke, OMD, Institute of Integral Qigong and Tai Chi

A Latitude 20 Book
September 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3269-8 / $25.00 (PAPER)

The Shaolin Monastery Now Available in Paperback

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The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts, by Meir Shahar, is now available in paperback.

“A real gift to martial arts enthusiasts and historians alike. Combining scholarly caution and respectful appreciation, Shahar shows how much and how little can be learned about the origins of the monastery in the fifth century, its close relationship with the Tang emperors (618–907), its flowering as a religious and military institution in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and the suspicion with which it was regarded by the Qing state (1644–1911). . . . This refreshingly original study is indispensable for understanding both the history and the hype.” —Choice

September 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3349-7 / $23.00 (PAPER)

Factional Conflict in Late Northern Song China

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Between 1044 and 1104, ideological disputes divided China’s sociopolitical elite, who organized into factions battling for control of the imperial government. Advocates and adversaries of state reform forged bureaucratic coalitions to implement their policy agendas and to promote like-minded colleagues. During this period, three emperors and two regents in turn patronized a new bureaucratic coalition that overturned the preceding ministerial regime and its policies. This ideological and political conflict escalated with every monarchical transition in a widening circle of retribution that began with limited purges and ended with extensive blacklists of the opposition. Divided by a Common Language: Factional Conflict in Late Northern Song China, by Ari Daniel Levine, is the first English-language study to approach the political history of the late Northern Song in its entirety and the first to engage the issue of factionalism in Song political culture.

“This study is important for the clarity with which it presents a critical period in the development of Chinese imperial history and government. It is entirely original, well written, and the scholarship is very sound. Levine is deeply grounded in the texts and debates he is examining, and his command of the language of the sources, both primary and secondary, is excellent. Divided by a Common Language provides a significant contribution to Chinese, and especially Song, historiography.” —Hugh P. Clark, Ursinus College

September 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3266-7 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

A Study and Translation of the Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra

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Bodhisattvas of the Forest, by Daniel Boucher, delves into the socioreligious milieu of the authors, editors, and propagators of the Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra (Questions of Rastrapala), a Buddhist text circulating in India during the first half of the first millennium C.E. In this meticulously researched study, Daniel Boucher first reflects upon the problems that plague historians of Mahayana Buddhism, whose previous efforts to comprehend the tradition have often ignored the social dynamics that motivated some of the innovations of this new literature. Following that is a careful analysis of several motifs found in the Indian text and an examination of the value of the earliest Chinese translation for charting the sutra’s evolution.

“This important study makes the Rastrapalapariprccha-sutra available, for the first time, in an English translation that highlights the differences between the oldest version (a third-century Chinese translation) and the much later Sanskrit version. Highly recommended for all those who are interested in the process of evolution of Mahayana scriptures over time.” —Jan Nattier, International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University

Studies in the Buddhist Traditions
September 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-2881-3 / $54.00 (CLOTH)

Hakka Soul

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Hakka Soul: Memories, Migrations, Meals, by Chin Woon Ping, chronicles the dreams, ambitions, and idiosyncrasies of her family, beginning with the death of her grandmother in pre-Independence Malaya. It was a tumultuous period when the occupying Japanese army had just been defeated, the British colonial government was losing its grip on the country, and a communist guerilla insurgency had broken out in the jungles of the Malay Peninsula. Her stories follow the family’s move to the United States and a journey to China to visit her father’s ancestral home.

Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies
August 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3289-6 / $24.00 (PAPER)

Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific

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What is globalization? How is it gendered? How does it work in Asia and the Pacific? The authors of the sixteen original and innovative essays presented in Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific: Method, Practice, Theory, edited by Kathy E. Ferguson and Monique Mironesco, take fresh stock of globalization’s complexities. They pursue critical feminist inquiry about women, gender, and sexualities and produce original insights into changing life patterns in Asian and Pacific Island societies. Each essay puts the lives and struggles of women at the center of its examination while weaving examples of global circuits in Asian and Pacific societies into a world frame of analysis. The work is generated from within Asian and Pacific spaces, bringing to the fore local voices and claims to knowledge.

August 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3241-4 / $35.00 (PAPER)

Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China

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The seventeenth century is generally acknowledged as one of the most politically tumultuous but culturally creative periods of late imperial Chinese history. Scholars have noted the profound effect on, and literary responses to, the fall of the Ming on the male literati elite. Also of great interest is the remarkable emergence beginning in the late Ming of educated women as readers and, more importantly, writers. Only recently beginning to be explored, however, are such seventeenth-century religious phenomena as “the reinvention” of Chan Buddhism—a concerted effort to revive what were believed to be the traditional teachings, texts, and practices of “classical” Chan. And, until now, the role played by women in these religious developments has hardly been noted at all. Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China, by Beata Grant, is an innovative interdisciplinary work that brings together several of these important seventeenth-century trends.

July 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3202-5 / $46.00 (CLOTH)

Bridal Laments in Rural China

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Performing Grief: Bridal Laments in Rural China, by Anne E. McLaren, is the first in-depth study of Chinese bridal laments, a ritual and performative art practiced by Chinese women in premodern times that gave them a rare opportunity to voice their grievances publicly. Drawing on methodologies from numerous disciplines, including performance arts and folk literatures, the author suggests that the ability to move an audience through her lament was one of the most important symbolic and ritual skills a Chinese woman could possess before the modern era.

July 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3232-2 / $54.00 (CLOTH)

“Performing Grief introduces us to the fascinating culture of the bridal lament. Drawing upon the rich materials from the small village of Shuyuan in Nanhui near Shanghai for her primary materials, the author reconstructs a once vibrant culture in which young women on the eve of their wedding voiced their anxieties in ritual songs. The study is based on extensive local research, makes full use of the existing scholarship on female traditions of lament inside and outside China, and illustrates its argument with the almost complete translation of one of the most fully preserved cycle of laments. This study is an absolute must for anyone who is interested in the position of women in traditional society until quite recently. It also is essential reading for anyone working in the field of Chinese women’s literature as it highlights the rich oral traditions of poor rural women.” –Wilt Idema, Harvard University

Our Great Qing Now Available in Paperback

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Our Great Qing: The Mongols, Buddhism, and the State in Late Imperial China, by Johan Elverskog, is now available in paperback.

“Elverskog’s book is a pleasure to read, managing as it does to weave together a detailed knowledge of modern Mongol history and the broad scope of its relevance for Asian history. His research is solidly based in the classics of Mongol history, as well as close readings of an impressive array of archive materials . . . made accessible to the non-specialist here for the first time. He frames his arguments within a wide-ranging body of theoretical work covering both religion and politics. At the same time, this book is refreshingly comparative, especially in terms of other empires (from the Roman to the British).” —Journal of Chinese Religions

“Masterful . . . represents an important contribution to the ‘new Qing history’ that is now changing the image of late imperial China by offering more nuanced interpretations of this period.” —International Journal of Asian Studies

July 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3330-5 / $23.00 (PAPER)

Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China

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How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute Over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China by Morten Schlütter, takes a novel approach to understanding one of the most crucial developments in Zen Buddhism: the dispute over the nature of enlightenment that erupted within the Chinese Chan (Zen) school in the twelfth century. The famous Linji (Rinzai) Chan master Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) railed against “heretical silent illumination Chan” and strongly advocated kanhua (koan) meditation as an antidote. In this fascinating study, Morten Schlütter shows that Dahui’s target was the Caodong (Soto) Chan tradition that had been revived and reinvented in the early twelfth century, and that silent meditation was an approach to practice and enlightenment that originated within this “new” Chan tradition. Schlütter has written a refreshingly accessible account of the intricacies of the dispute, which is still reverberating through modern Zen in both Asia and the West.

“This is an important book that will significantly contribute to our knowledge of Song-dynasty Buddhism. It joins a growing body of work that seeks to place the development of Buddhism (and particularly Chan) within its broader social and cultural history. Schlütter’s research into a wide range of source materials is meticulous and thorough. Because of the important connections he draws among the state, independent (or local) literati, and Buddhist monks, this work has the potential to appeal to a wide audience of scholars beyond the field of Buddhism, including social, institutional, and intellectual historians of the Song.” —Ellen Neskar, Sarah Lawrence College

Studies in East Asian Buddhism, No. 22
Published in association with the Kuroda Institute
June 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3255-1 / $48.00 (CLOTH)

Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China

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Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China, by Grace S. Fong, addresses the critical question of how to approach the study of women’s writing. It explores various methods of engaging in a meaningful way with a rich corpus of poetry and prose written by women of the late Ming and Qing periods, much of it rediscovered by the author in rare book collections in China and the United States. The volume treats different genres of writing and includes translations of texts that are made available for the first time in English. Among the works considered are the life-long poetic record of Gan Lirou, the lyrical travel journal kept by Wang Fengxian, and the erotic poetry of the concubine Shen Cai.

“Grace Fong has written a wonderful history of female writers’ participation in the elite conventions of Chinese poetics. Fong’s recovery of many of these poets, her able exegesis and elegant, analytical grasp of what the poets were doing is a great read, and her bilingual presentation of their poetry gives the book additional power. This is a persuasive and elegant study.” —Tani Barlow, author of The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism

May 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3186-8 / $32.00 (PAPER)

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