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2014, China and Beyond in the Mediaeval Period: Cultural Crossings and Inter-Regional Connections
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17 pages
AI
The paper explores the phenomenon of filial cannibalism in historical China, suggesting it was influenced by Buddhist tales emphasizing self-sacrifice. It traces the origination of this practice to the Tang dynasty, examining cultural attitudes towards filial piety and the acceptance of such extreme measures in the context of medicinal beliefs. Notably, the paper identifies a lack of earlier accounts of filial cannibalism during the early medieval period and discusses how concepts from Buddhist narratives were integrated into Confucian ideology to justify extreme acts of devotion.
AI
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 2010
The Journal of Daoist Studies, 2009
This paper examines health-and body-related claims made in the Lingbao Wufuxu (The Preface to the Five Lingbao Talismans of Numinous Treasure), an early medieval Daoist text that contains seventy recipes for attaining health, longevity, and spiritual benefit. Synthesizing the text's myriad claims and analyzing their implicit assumptions, I work to develop an integrated picture of what was considered crucial for a healthy body, what techniques were used to attain this ideal, and what goals were sought using these practices. I examine the text's claims about becoming physically and spiritually healthy, its proposed stages of purification and refinement, and the range of indicators by which adherents can measure progress toward their ideal state. Not only does this study provide a new interpretation of the Wufuxu's dietary regimens, it also illustrates how Chinese medical theories influenced the text's authors to present immortality as a logical evolution of health-perfecting practices. This analysis leads to questions of how the idea of perfecting one's health functions within the worldview and ritual practices of early Daoists.
Animals Through Chinese History: Ancient Times to 1911, 2019
2019
This article examines the circulation of medical recipes through vernacular literature and personal networks from the late Ming through the Qing. During this period, vernacular texts played a leading role in circulating practical instructions for everyday healing techniques, especially in the form of recipes. Recipes became a versatile textual form for recording and transmitting experience in quotidian practice. They moved among different genres of texts, providing information about healing, offering advice for entertainment, and delivering moral lessons. Literati sociability as well as philanthropic and religious commitments motivated people of varied social means to distribute vernacular texts bearing healing information to a broad audience. Recipes acquired legitimacy and authority by clearly marking their provenance and thus its relationship to particular social networks and, sometimes, a religious purpose as well.
Twentieth-Century China, 2024
This essay introduces a special issue of Twentieth-Century China that explores the evolution of religiously motivated vegetarianism in Chinese societies from the late imperial period until today, with a focus on the twentieth century. Drawing on ancient practices of fasting and Mahāyāna Buddhist dietary rules, this vegetarianism quickly evolved into a widely accepted form of moral self-cultivation in many religious contexts, one that was intrinsically related to morality, self-actualization, notions of karma and retribution, and ritual purity. Since the late nineteenth century, the impacts of increasing transnational entanglements, new ideas, and changing food practices have subtly transformed this tradition: these transformations include an engagement with global animal protection movements in the wake of the First World War and contemporary attempts to integrate concerns about global warming, food safety, and environmentalism into the discourse. By looking at three specific cases, the special issue traces the persistence and evolution of vegetarian concepts and practices in Chinese societies from the late imperial period until today.
JAOS, 2020
This paper reexamines the concept of filial piety (xiao) from a specific perspective, asking how filial piety is performed by and observed on the body. I argue that in pre-Qin and Han Confucian texts, there was a strong anxiety over the potential hypocrisies of filial deeds; that is, the fact that filial piety could be abused and transformed to become a mere show intended for gaining fame and reputation. Because of this, early commentators felt the need to create methods and criteria for evaluating filial piety. One important way to do this was to examine how filial piety was materialized through the ritual performance of the body. Filial piety was thus embodied and evaluated in terms of corporality. Ironically, this embodiment of filial piety had its own paradox as filial piety could become oversimplified as physical care of the parents and the ritual of xiao be reduced to a performance.
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AI
The research suggests that filial cannibalism emerged in Tang China due to the influence of Buddhist jātaka tales emphasizing self-sacrifice, particularly the Sujāti narrative, which inspired new interpretations of filial piety in the Late Tang period.
Initially depicted as a male bodhisattva, Sujāti's portrayal evolved into a self-sacrificing wife in Confucian narratives, reflecting a shift in focus from universal compassion to specific familial responsibilities.
Unlike earlier narratives that emphasized loyalty or acts of service, tales of filial cannibalism introduced the shocking notion of physically sacrificing one's body, indicating a novel interpretation of filial piety.
Buddhist medical narratives discussed the healing properties of human flesh, leading to acceptance of cannibalism under extreme circumstances, although substantial evidence for this in earlier texts is limited.
The idea of filial cannibalism is believed to have been imported via the Silk Road, influenced by Central Asian Buddhist traditions that prioritized acts of self-sacrifice for others, leading to its later acceptance in Chinese culture.
Printed in the United States of America. back and analyze these paleographic sources with our received texts, and I argue that in this particular case there is much to be learned by doing so: it is now possible to see how the logic of sacrifice outlined in the Liji relates to the practices we are seeing in the paleographic materials, and thus to gain a glimpse of how to link indigenous theories of sacrifice with actual practice. My full argument is that the latter is indeed illuminated by looking at the former, and that, by bringing these sources together, we can begin developing a full history of approaches to sacrifice in early China. 3
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1995
People are eating each other, came the message from southern Guangxi to Peking in the early summer of 1968, as the violent phase of the Cultural Revolution was drawing to a close. When militia reinforcements arrived in Wuxuan, parts of decomposing corpses still festooned the town center (Zheng 1993:2-3). No proper investigation was conducted, however, for this was a county in which order had already been imposed and the rebels had been crushed. Only in 1981-83, long after the Gang of Four had collapsed, was an investigation team sent into the county. It compiled a list of those eaten and a number of the ringleaders in cannibalism. Fifteen were jailed, and 130 Party members and cadres were disciplined. The Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region announced the expulsion from the Party of all who had eaten human flesh. l But the regulations were withdrawn quickly for fear that the document would be slipped out to Hong Kong and reveal this episode of cannibalism to the world (Zheng 1993:52). The local and national authorities wanted to forget about these events, and no Western work mentions them. However, the well-known writer, Zheng Yi, 2 heard of the cannibalism and decided that he would investigate it for himself. He visited Wuxuan and other parts of southern Guangxi in 1986 and Earlier versions of this essay were discussed at the
« When Princes awake in Kitchens : Zhuangzi’s rewriting of a Culinary Myth », in Of Tripod and Palate, Roel Sterckx ed., MacMillan-Palgrave, New York, 2005, p.62-74 (13 pages). This chapter consists in a close reading of the famous story recorded in the Zhuangzi of Cook Ding with Prince Wenhui, which has been blessed by a long exegetical tradition in China and the West and has thus been firmly implanted in the Chinese imaginative world. This story has been so far explained as a pleasant illustration of the art of nourishing the vital principle, leaving out of consideration the social context of self-cultivation practices in early China and the political exploitation of the sharing of meat. In an effort to avoid reducing this story to an enjoyable “lesson for life”-episode illustrated by means of a craft analogy, I contend here this story must be deciphered as a critical charge against the ideology of sacrificial food exchange and the prominent role played by officiants and ritualists in the preparation and the execution of culinary procedures. Zhuangzi outlines a new relationship between physical nourishment and self-cultivation which is devoid of the widespread political rhetoric of the five flavors, the concerns of government and the physical exercises as practiced by adepts in search of longevity. By simple explanation of his method for transforming an animal into consumable food, without consuming it himself, Ding gives his lord a powerful hint on how to exalt his vitality through a graceful state of inspiration. The fact that a butcher, through the carving of meat, enjoys the efficiency of the Spirits (shen), suggests that Ding has re-appropriated a power generally reserved for the nobility or “meat eaters”, whose legitimacy was premised on sacrifices to the ancestors and the exchange of meat. It is in this sense that the story of Cook Ding offers a new perspective on the concept of the “nourishment of life” that steps beyond the familiar self-cultivation tradition of Zhuangzi’s time.
Philosophy East and West, 2006
These are exciting times to be engaged in the study of Warring States thought.
The main purpose of this article consists of examining the crucial significance of mutilation, as a punishment following a crime committed against the prevailing legal and moral order, in the study of early Chinese intellectual history. It aims to show that focusing on this hitherto disregarded topic is highly beneficial in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of some of the most relevant problems in this period since legally mutilated persons seem to embody better than any other category the currently accepted logic about the correlation between body and ethics or, to put it more negatively, between physical deformity and moral deviance. Indeed, as it will be demonstrated, amputees were excluded in early China not only from any kind of politically significant role but also from any important ritual and social functions. This article discusses then the philosophical, political, social, legal and religious implications of those individuals who lost limbs as a result of penal dismemberment. * Financial support for this article was provided by a generous postdoctoral grant from the Department of Education, Universities and Research of the Basque Country Government. I profited immeasurably from consultations with J. Levi, P. Goldin, Y. Pines, O. Milburn, R. Gassmann, and J. F. Billeter. I would like to thank these scholars for the opportunity to share my work with them and for providing me insightful suggestions for improvement. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Emma Graham-Harrison and Julie Wark for polishing my English. In spite of this invaluable help, the inadequacies and errors that remain are of course entirely mine.
Medical History, 2005
Flesh of the QuailSweet, bland, non-poisonous.Not to be eaten before the month of May, eaten with pig's liver it will cause blackheads, with mushrooms one develops haemorrhoids.A visceral tonic and vitalizer. Makes the bones and muscles strong and able to endure cold and heat. It relieves inflammation. With ginger and red mung bean it cures diarrhoea and dysentery. Fried in cream it is fattening to the belly, but it is good for reducing the abdomen swollen on account of water retention. For the chronic disorders of children.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2015
keith knapp