Medieval China

This dissertation examines the sweeping changes in the themes, rhetoric, and forms of prose writing that occurred during China’s late-eighth and early-ninth centuries. I argue that the literary innovations of this period reflect ways in which writers adapted their textual practices to rapidly changing material, social, and economic conditions. Over the course of the eighth and ninth centuries, new technologies for the production of paper significantly lowered the costs of literacy education and literary reproduction. Progressively more efficient and motivated systems of textual circulation allowed writers to address more diverse audiences faster than ever before. Finally, the evolution of public and private markets for literary products during this period opened new avenues for realizing financial gain through writing. Through close examination of patronage, official ritual sacrifice, and the literary marketplace, I demonstrate that these material, social, and economic changes profoundly affected mid-Tang literary practices. In cover letters, writers experimented with different ways of coercing prospective patrons to help them by making the addressees seem petty in the eyes of others should they refuse. Prayers for rain could be used to advertise the quality of one’s performance in provincial office, communicate social critique, or even send warnings to political enemies. And literary reputations could be traded upon to land lucrative commissions composing prefaces or tomb inscriptions for those desiring lasting fame. Through inquiry into how changing material, social, and economic conditions across the late-eighth and early-ninth centuries shaped and influenced textual practices, the dissertation contributes to contemporary understanding of a complex and innovative period in Chinese literary history and at the same time clarifies a methodological approach to understanding literary change applicable to the literatures of other places and times.

本文首先簡述《藝文類聚》成書背景以及初唐崇儒思潮之淵源，繼而羅列《藝文類聚》所載《列子》、《莊子》、《論衡》三書之非儒條文，復從「譏刺孔子」、「詆訿儒者」與「攻訐儒學」三大方面，逐加說明相關條文不合儒家思想之傾向，以及六朝與唐代文人對於相關典故之運用；最後根據《藝文類聚》「兩重意志」選文意識之架構，以及初唐時人對於《列子》、《莊子》、《論衡》之作者觀念，嘗試解釋《藝文類聚》得以取錄三書詆儒條文之原因。

Considering the official recognition of the Confucian cult in the early Tang 唐 court, the inclusion of anti-Confucian passages from the Liezi 列子, Zhuangzi 莊子 and Lunheng 論衡 in the imperially commissioned encyclopedia (leishu 類書) Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚 would appear as unorthodox, especially when chief compiler Ouyang Xun 歐陽詢 asserted a conscious awareness towards literary valorization and distillation in the compendium's preface. This paper examines the anti-Confucian implications of such segments, as well as how they were incorporated as literary allusions into the oeuvre of the Six Dynasties (liu chao 六朝) and Tang literati, then proceeds to argue that the anti-Confucian tendencies of these excerpts had never been the focus of the Yiwen leiju compilers; rather, the excerpts themselves becoming members of the common lore, or even part of the literary canon well-known by literati in early medieval China might have been the prime reason for their collection into the encyclopedia. This paper also discusses the Yiwen leiju's bipartite mechanism of literary selection, as well as the authorship identification of the Liezi, Zhuangzi and Lunheng by early Tang court literati, suggesting that both might have also been factors contributing to the acceptance of said anti-Confucian writings into the compendium.

These maps are designed to be used along with Li Qingzhao's Epilogue to "Records on Metal and Stone" (Jinshilu), a good translation of which can be found in Stephen Owen's Anthology of Chinese Literature. The excellent base map is again by Ian Mladjov. Please e-mail me if you notice any errors.

Map 1: The geopolitical situation ante bellum.
Map 2: The Jurchen conquest of the Liao and the unsuccessful Song attempts at capturing Yan (Beijing) from the Liao.
Map 3: The Jurchen conquest of the Song capital, following the breakdown of the Song-Jin alliance, and Li Qingzhao's flight to the south with her husband Zhao Mingcheng.
Map 4: Li Qingzhao's journey to Zhao's deathbed in Hangzhou (Lin'an).
Map 5: The Jurchen raiding expedition of 1129-1130, Song Gaozong's flight to sea, and the beginning of Yelu Dashi's western expedition to reestablish the Liao in Central Asia.
Map 6: Li Qingzhao's efforts to evade the Jurchen raiding expedition of 1129-1130, which culminate with her joining Gaozong's court at sea.
Map 7: The origins of the Jurchen-installed puppet state of Qi (1130-1137) and the Qara Khitai (Western Liao); Li Qingzhao's return to Hangzhou; Jin conquest of Shaanxi and Gansu.
Map 8: The state of Qi is expanded westward and southward; Yue Fei's campaigns in 1134-1135; Jin abolishes Qi in 1137 and begins negotiating peace with Southern Song.
Map 9: Borders established by the Song-Jin treaties of 1138 and 1141; 1140 Jin attempts at retaking territory ceded to the Song in 1138; Yue Fei's 1140 counter-attack on the Jin, eventually aborted on imperial orders.

[Revised 7/14/2018]

Among the many manuscripts that emerged from the library cave at Mogaoku 莫 高窟 are copies of a medieval vernacular rhapsody entitled "Rhapsody on the Ershi General Spring" (Ershi quan fu 貳師泉賦). The poem relates a legend about the Han general Li Guangli 李廣利 (d. 89 bce), who is said to have created a spring to provide drinking water for his troops traversing the desert near Dunhuang 敦煌. This article introduces the manuscripts containing "Rhapsody on the Ershi General Spring," discusses the background and content of the rhapsody and translates it.

This paper analyzes gold and silver vessels as burial goods during the Tang dynasty. It is based on a data collection of vessels found in tombs from the provinces of Shaanxi and Henan. An unexpected result is that although known from hoard and other findings, no golden vessels have been retrieved from Tang tombs, only silver, gilt, or partly gilt ones. Analyzing the typology, grouping, and placement in tombs of these vessels sheds light on their possible functions in burial, as well as on the social status of the respective tomb owners. The juxtaposition of historical facts and tomb furnishings shows that usage of silver vessels as grave goods also mirrors shifting political, social and regional centres during the Tang.

This article tells two twisted but distinct stories, one about the canonicity of a medical book, and the other about the historical context of the reading and using medical canons in the same period. This canon, which gained magnificent authority in the woodblock print period and the modern world, was at the margin in the period it was written. It was a tiny part of an enormous cultural project sponsored by the empire and hidden in court library with other thousands of volumes. However, it reflected the bigger picture as a mirror at the margin: why was a medical canon included in the imperial cultural project? How did cultural trends in imperial court and bureaucratic system effect on the medical canon making and medical knowledge? These questions intrigued the other story. The medical knowledge and its canons were in the intersection. Canonicity from the community of medical masters and book giving-gaining ritual was replaced by textual characters and teaching methods imitating Confucian classics in the imperial court and school system. Some social groups were excluded from the process of rebuilding canonicity, for their social status or gender.

Curare - Journal of Medical Anthropology 39(2016)1: 56–74

Abstract The medieval Chinese body maps found in the composite text Songs of the Bodily Husk (late tenth century (?)/printed 1445) are analysed as visual source materials and their transmission is followed through several manuscript and print texts. These body maps outline the internal structures of a male torso. Their carefully labelled, impressive details lead up to an overall precise topographical body description. The meditative use of such maps in visualisation exercises is documented for the period of the 11th to 14th century CE. Alteration of the illustrations’ meaning, context and content is discussed.
Keywords Body maps – visualisation – Daoism – transmission of visual sources – Medieval China

• Part of Curare 39 (2016) 1 The Human Body in Asian Texts and Images
Guest Editor: Katharina Sabernig
• Order here: http://www.vwb-verlag.com/Katalog/m806.html
• Full issue: http://agem.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Curare_39_1_S_001-005.pdf

（See abstract in English at the end of the file）：This study investigates the blossoming of woodblock print illustration in late Tang, Song, Liao, and Xi Xia regimes during the late ninth to twelfth centuries. To date, studies of early Buddhist prints have primarily focused on the relationship between text and image, and less on how the images themselves were derived and transported across vast regions to be adapted and transformed by other artisans. This study explores the way in which multiple sources contributed to the stock of imagery used by print artisans, how they standardized visual motifs into modules, and how this distilled imagery was transferred geographically. The prints studied were produced in a number of important centers including Beijing, Dunhuang, Hangzhou, Kaifeng, and Yinchuan. Compared to wall paintings in caves, temples, and tombs, printed images were portable, mass-produced, and wide-spread, hence an efficient medium for spreading these materials across regions well beyond China. This study proposes that Buddhist printed images had multiple visual sources including other prints, painting, and bas-relief tiles, many of which were not Buddhist but secular. It also shows that Buddhist illustrated prints were not necessarily related to the accompanying texts; rather, they were composed of motifs adapted from an existing pictorial vocabulary and used in a modular fashion by print artisans. In conclusion, this exploration of media transfer and modular design evident in Buddhist prints sheds light on the active role played by print artisans. Though anonymous, they were decisive in standardizing a repertoire of popular motifs and assembling, selecting, and modifying these stock images to create original and coherent compositions.

Many modern narratives of the period of Tibetan rule in Dunhuang (ca. 786–848) emphasize ethnic tensions between the Tibetans and Chinese, with clothing styles as their most visible manifestation. The Xin Tangshu claims that the Dunhuang Chinese were forced to wear Tibetan-style clothing except on New Year’s Day, when they were allowed to dress in the Tang style to perform ancestral rites, wailing bitterly as they did so. The Dunhuang manuscript P.3451 claims, however, that the Dunhuang Chinese persisted in wearing Tang-style clothes throughout the Tibetan occupation. A contradiction therefore exists in the sources regarding what kind of clothing the Dunhuang Chinese usually wore, even as these sources agree in interpreting Tang-style clothing as a symbol of ethnocultural identity and Tang loyalism. Yet murals from ninth-century Dunhuang suggest that Tang and Tibetan clothing styles coexisted and even blended together under Tibetan rule. By reassessing the textual and visual sources more critically, I argue that the most plausible interpretation is that there was no forced Tibetanization of clothing in Dunhuang at any time during the period of Tibetan rule. Instead, the people of Dunhuang were free to dress as they wished, but many members of the Chinese (and quite likely Sogdian) elite families adopted Tibetan dress or elements of Tibetan fashion voluntarily as symbols of prestige and loyalty to the Tibetan empire. The elite families of Dunhuang accommodated themselves to Tibetan rule and adopted bicultural identities until the breakdown of Tibetan administration put their interests in jeopardy, upon which they drove the Tibetans out and sought to cover up their past collaboration by inventing a new tradition of “stubbornly Chinese” Tang loyalism.
[For maps to go with this article, see the "History maps" section below]

Despite the legendary role ascribed to Shaolin monastery少林寺it
is probably not an exaggeration to say that it has been considered
sacrosanct within Chinese Chan Buddhist discourse [since at least]
the mid-8th century that legitimacy comes from the south, and not
the north. Since the tenth century, the rhetoric of the so-called ‘five
schools’ has perpetuated peculiarly southern lineages; in practice,
both the Linji and Caodong lineages (in China and beyond) propagate
stories of celebrated patriarchs against a distinctively southern
Chinese backdrop. What are we to make of Chan monasteries or
cloisters in Ningbo, Fuzhou Jiangning, and of course, Hongzhou,
apparently named to reflect the enduring significance of Mount
Wutai五臺山, a notably northern sacred site? In the first part of this
article I outline the less than marginal – or peripheral – role Mount
Wutai appears to have played in ‘core’ Chinese Chan Buddhist
sources. Then I proceed to explain how four Qingliang monasteries
清涼寺in southern China attest to the preservation and dissemination
of a lineage of masters who supported what looks like a
‘Qingliang cult,’ with a set of distinctive teachings and practices
that appears to collapse several longstanding assumptions about
what separates Chan from the Teachings in Chinese Buddhism.

This paper makes a preliminary effort at tracing the complicated history of the relationship between the category Fan 蕃 (also written 番) and the category Han 漢 during the period ca. 500–1200. The late Northern Wei began using Fan as a generic term for foreign countries and peoples, possibly due to influences from the Zhouli 周禮. The Tang empire later adopted this usage of Fan but also used Fan as an abbreviation of Tufan 吐蕃, the Chinese name for the Tibetan empire. Under the Tang, both these usages of Fan commonly placed it in a dichotomous pair with the category Han, a pairing not seen in Northern Wei. Whereas the Northern Wei used Han as an ethnonym for the indigenous “Chinese” population, the Tang used it as an alternative name for the empire. In Tang (and also Song) usage, therefore, the Fan and Han dichotomy was geopolitical, not ethnic, in orientation. However, the dichotomy eventually became ethnic in the Kitan Liao and Western Xia, where Han reverted to being an ethnonym for the “Chinese.” Our understanding of the word Fan as used in the Kitan empire remains incomplete, but one of its uses was as a synonym for Kitan. Similarly, the primary use of Fan in the Xia was as a synonym for Mi, the ruling Tangut people’s most common self-appellation. Toward the end of the Northern Song, the use of Han as a geopolitical name for the Song state seems to have lost popularity among the Song elite. In the Southern Song, this usage survived only on the northwestern Sichuan-Gansu frontier, a geopolitical Fan and Tang dichotomy having become the norm on the south China coast. Meanwhile, the Jin revived the use of Han as an ethnonym for the Chinese in the North China Plain, but banned the use of Fan as an appellation for the ruling Jurchen and their language in 1191—possibly as a way of asserting the political legitimacy of Jurchen rule over north China.

[Chinese translation published in 2020 as 蕃与汉：帝制中国中期（约500—1200 年）一个概念二分法的起源和使用 (translated by Feng Lijun 冯立君), Ouya yicong 欧亚译丛 vol. 5]

本文在華夏與內亞兩種傳統遭遇、碰撞、融合的背景下重新審視流刑入律的過程,指出流刑實爲北族習慣法與儒學觀念表裏結合的產物。內亞草原上存在過一套不同於漢魏刑制的流放刑傳統,匈奴、烏桓、突厥、蒙古等都曾沉浸其中。北魏前期推行的流徙之刑,就是由拓跋鮮卑帶入中原的北族習俗。太安年間源賀的上書,既拓展了流徙刑的施用範圍,又將這一部族刑制比附爲《尚書》所載之"流",爲其融入華夏典制提供了可能。在太和年間以律爲治的法制改革中,廣泛運用且被認爲與經典相符的流徙,始以"流刑"的面目被列爲法定正刑。爲營造取法聖人之制的形象,北朝隋唐歷次修律都將流刑包裝成上古之"流"的繼承者,其內亞淵源遂被掩蓋和遺忘。

These maps depict various stages of the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763), including a number of contemporaneous revolts, and the immediate aftermath of the rebellion in 763-765 (the emergence of autonomous provinces, the loss of the western frontier to Tibetan expansion, the Tibetan sack of Chang'an, and the rebellion of Pugu Huai'en).

In this article I seek to show that T564, the Sūtra on Transforming the Female Form (Zhuan nüshen jing 轉女身經), is not only a composite text which integrates narrative and doctrinal material from a number of other sūtras, but also that it was likely written in early medieval China. The identification of this text as a Chinese indigenous creation is important for the text has enjoyed a long and rich transmission history across East Asia, and also because it contains a new argument for why a woman needs to become a man in order to become a Buddha. By analyzing and presenting the text in such a way, I wish to reveal the important place that composite, indigenous, and other “spurious” texts have held in the development of radically new doctrines within the Mahāyāna and thus argue for their further inclusion in modern studies of the tradition.

PFISTER Rodo (2022) Chapter 22. The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China – underlying emic theories and basic methods of a non-reproductive sexual scenario for non-same-sex partners, in: LO Vivienne, STANLEY-BAKER Michael, YANG Dolly (eds.) (2022) Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine. London: Routledge, pp. 337-355. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203740262-26
https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203740262-26#!

The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China are treated heuristically to form a sexual scenario for non-same-sex partners that is discussed in (1) textual sources dating from approximately 200 BCE to 1000 CE. These texts were transmitted and reformulated throughout this period as part of the wider sexual knowledge culture of imperial China (Wells and Yao Ping 2015; Yao Ping 2018). Minimal referential series of short extracts taken from such primary sources will be presented in a historical order to illustrate some fairly consistent basic ideas, concepts, theories and practical advice documented therein. This concise review discusses (2) general aspects of the sexual scenario of early and medieval China in which gender-specifc roles during the sexual encounter must be emphasised. As 'essence' is considered to be the most precious generative fuid in the human body, men are advised to (3) deal with male essence as a scarce good, and thus learn to avoid emission and ejaculation during a sexual encounter. In stark contrast to this male preoccupation with containment, women are thought to be a superior source of nourishment. (4) Repeated female ejaculation provides the 'female essence' that can be absorbed by the man. (5) Performing a sexual encounter means mutual stimulation to this end during foreplay and onset phase, followed by a series of penetrative 'advances' with 'intermissions', and culminating in a 'grand finale'.

This essay argues that, in Tang foreign policy discourse, the stereotype of a moral dichotomy between barbarian perfidy and Chinese trustworthiness was primarily a tool for rhetorical posturing, deployed to justify making war on foreign peoples with whom the Tang had a prior peace agreement. This is demonstrated through close analysis of the political rhetoric surrounding Tang relations with neighboring steppe or Central Asian powers during the periods 625–645 and 734–739, with particular attention to contextualizing the rhetoric of the emperors Taizong and Xuanzong. The essay also presents a new interpretation of the famous 630 debate over the resettlement of the Eastern Turks, arguing that the rhetoric of perfidy, loyalty, and moral or cultural transformation in which that debate was conducted obscures its origin in a pragmatic strategic dilemma that could not be openly expressed.

This chapter traces the earliest evidence for Chinese ideas of environmental determinism and explains how they later came to be linked to arguments about the purported moral inferiority of the ‘barbarians,’ first in the Han dynasty and again in the Tang. I build on Yuri Pines’s argument that “an idea of the barbarians’ inborn or strictly environmentally determined savagery” was a product of the unified Chinese empires and more specifically, of the second such empire, the Han. However, I also propose an alternative to Pines’s contention that the idea arose due to a new Chinese perception of the nomadic peoples of the northern steppe, particularly the Xiongnu, as unassimilable and therefore absolutely Other, unlike other ‘barbarian’ groups that the Chinese had previously absorbed successfully. Instead, I argue that Han and Tang discourses of barbarian moral inferiority, otherness, and unassimilability, of which notions of environmental determinism formed a part, were rooted in a tradition of anti-expansionist rhetoric deployed by officials who saw constant warfare against foreign polities as a threat to the stability of the Chinese state. The fact that the Han and Tang empires’ ‘barbarian’ enemies were often steppe nomads is incidental, not essential, to the existence of such rhetoric.

The thesis of this paper is that despite the differences in traditional Chinese and Japanese tea cultures, both cultures had members of their elite society using their tea culture to enhance their own prestige. This paper will focus on the time from the mid-8th century to the early 17th century. Three aspects of tea culture will be discussed in this paper: government, religious, and material culture. The government aspect will deal with tea as used by the Chinese emperors, specifically Emperor Huizong (1100-26) who wrote a treatise on tea. For Japan, the government aspect will focus mostly on the shoguns, the military dictators of feudal Japan who used tea culture to increase their prestige through peaceful means. The religious aspect will focus completely on Buddhism, which featured prominently in East Asian tea culture. For China, the major figure that will be discussed is Ennin, a Japanese Buddhist monk who travelled through China in the 9th century and commented often on tea. Zen Buddhism played a huge role in Japanese tea culture, particularly in the person of Sen no Rikyu (1522-91) who was a devout follower of Zen and a revolutionary figure in the Japanese tea ceremony (chanoyu). Rikyu was a merchant, who would traditionally ranked very low in society, but tea culture increased his otherwise low prestige. The third aspect is material culture, particularly tea bowls, which were viewed as prestigious works of art well worth acquiring in both China and Japan to show off one’s wealth and taste. Overall, the purpose of this paper is to compare the tea cultures of China and Japan, as most scholarly research focuses on one or the other instead of noting the similarities- in this case, the elite societies’ use of their tea cultures to increase their reputation amongst their peers.

Inscribing Death investigates how and why medieval Chinese regarded death as an opportunity to fashion and convey desired social identities and memories through burial and life writing during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and the medieval period (200–1000) more broadly. It discusses the burial, mourning, and commemorative practices that were new or controversial and had become the norm during this period, such as the joint-burial of extended family members, disjoint burial of spouses, relocation and reburial of remains, posthumous marriage and divorce, burial divinations, and soul-summoning burial. It sheds light on various selective adaptations, representations, and interpretations of these acts of remembrance in a multicultural and multireligious society by drawing from a vast array of sources, including hundreds of newly excavated entombed epitaph inscriptions (muzhiming). It also identifies different modes of construction and representation of the self in life and death and illuminates the complex negotiations among various parties—the dying, the family, and the state—for control over the arrangement, presentation, and meaning of specific burials, thereby asserting desired individual and collective identities and memories. By highlighting the growing emphasis on remembrance as an expression of filial piety and the grave as a focal point of ancestral sacrifices, the book deepens our understanding of ancestor worship and its changing modus operandi and continuous influence on the shaping the most intimate human relationships, thus challenging the notion that ancestor worship was an extension of families rather than individuals in medieval China.

Sogdians, a group of Central Asians based between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, played a significant historical role at the crossroads of the Silk Roads. Travelling the world as caravan leaders, organised in trading networks, they were found from Byzantium to the Chinese heartland. The Sogdian language was a candidate for the lingua franca of the Silk Roads for some hundred years and Sogdians acted as polyglot mediators at courts and prominent translators of Buddhist texts. In the Chinese capitals, fire temples were erected for their use and the exotic products they imported were cherished by the people and the court.
This socio-historical study by Moritz Huber provides a translation of the transmitted Chinese records on Sogdians in Sogdiana and China and combines them with archaeological evidence to present a differentiated picture of their presence in China from the 3rd to 10th century CE. Besides the transcription and translation of all epitaphs of Sogdians from an archaeological context, used to tell their interconnected biographies, as well as a detailed discussion of their political organisation in China under the sabao 薩保/薩寶, this publication further includes a case-study of the Shi 史 families in Guyuan 固原, Ningxia 寧夏 Province.

Asiatische Forschungen 160
Harrassowitz
ISBN 978-3-447-11380-9

Though various divinatory practices were central to all burial arrangements in Tang China, scholars have paid scant attention to these practices and their social context and effects. This article reconstructs burial divination practices, discusses their ritual and social functions, and examines the social attitudes that influenced and were in turn influenced by them. Focus is on the following questions: why and how did families perform burial divinations? How were the divinatory oracles interpreted, and by whom? Why and to what extent did families subject themselves to these oracles? And what does the practice of burial divinations tell us about the culture of remembrance in Tang China? The article proposes answers to these questions through reading muzhiming (entombed epitaphs) against other transmitted and excavated sources and examining one common, but rarely studied, effect of divination practices on burials: their being rushed or much-delayed. Finally, the article examines a case involving both expedited and postponed burials and reconstructs Tang interpretations and responses to negative oracles in efforts to (re-)create memory.

P.3287, a Dunhuang manuscript belonging to the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale of France, is the middle piece without the beginning or the end of an original manuscript. There are 149 lines remaining in the current manuscript. Previous research on this manuscript tended to consider it as five medical books written in one manuscript. This article argues this manuscript should be taken as a medical book in the making. Detailed research on it reveals the reproduction of medical books and the reconstruction of medical authority in Medieval China.

By analyzing examples ranging from the Sui-Tang transition to the An Lushan Rebellion, I argue that in a practice known as "letting the troops loose," Tang generals frequently rewarded their officers and soldiers (and themselves) for a victory with the freedom to seize the wives, children, and property of the defeated with impunity, and to kill any who resisted. Attempts to censure or prosecute the generals responsible were rare and usually overruled, because military morale was seen as a higher priority than discipline or humaneness. Tang generals were also authorized to massacre surrendered enemy soldiers and conquered civilians for a range of strategic purposes. Moreover, taking slaves from a defeated population was a common prerogative among generals and officers even when an army was not "let loose." When generals refrained from pillage, massacres, and enslavement, therefore, this was usually for reasons that were pragmatic and strategic, not moral or legal.

The fetus and fetal development were discussed in early imperial Chinese texts of various genres, which often approached these matters in one or more of the following terms: (1) the cosmic (human life begins and matures in the same way as the rest of the universe, following the interplay of yin and yang); (2) the correlative (the fetus grows according to the Five Phases, all things corresponding to them going through a cycle of changes that give rise to and diminish one another); and (3) the Indic-Buddhist (the fetus comes into being and suffers as a result of karma). ese texts do not always present the perspective of the expectant parents on pregnancy; the perspective of the fetus on gestation in particular is prominent in the texts bearing Indic-Buddhist influences. is paper argues that over time the confluence of concepts and metaphors presented in these texts added up to an extremely negative attitude widely held toward the fetus and childbirth. is negativity in turn reinforced, and was reinforced by, the concepts and practices of filial piety that emerged in the centuries following the collapse of the Han dynasty, which were different from those that came before. It also profoundly transformed and enhanced the mother-child bond at the expense of that of the father and child. In particular, the salvational dimension of the mother-child relationship, introduced by Buddhism, made possible a women-centered interpretation of filial piety. "

One practice for acquiring examination patronage that became common during the mid-Tang was to “circulate scrolls” (xingjuan 行卷). These were sometimes accompanied by “submitted letters” (shang shu 上書) that functioned like modern-day “cover letters,” describing their authors’ education, character, and ambitions. This study focuses on a cover letter written by Dugu Yu 獨孤郁 (776-815) to Quan Deyu 權德輿 (761-818), his “Letter Submitted to Attendant Gentleman Quan of the Ministry of Rites” 上禮部權侍郎書, using it to illustrate some of the rhetorical strategies and conventional objectives of the cover letter genre. It also examines Quan’s response, his “Letter in Reply to Cultivated Talent Dugu” 答獨孤秀才書, reading it in order to explore how successful these rhetorical strategies may have been and how these letters were read and responded to by potential patrons.

In 1943, Chen Yinke proposed the influential theory that the late Tang court’s inability to reestablish direct control over the provinces of Hebei was due to the latter’s transformation into an ethnoculturally “barbarized” or “Hu-acculturated” (Huhua) region. Drawing on recent critiques of the theory, this essay reexamines the spirit road stele inscription that Liu Yuxi composed for Shi Xiaozhang in 838, a key piece of evidence for Chen’s view that the late Tang elite perceived Hebei as barbaric. By analyzing this passage and various other late Tang and Northern Song texts that have previously been cited to support the Hebei barbarization theory, I demonstrate that most of the texts cannot, in fact, be interpreted as evidence of ethnocultural change in that region or even as evidence for a perception of ethnocultural change on the part of the Chang’an elite. Moreover, rhetoric is a more illuminating framework for understanding why some of these texts (including the spirit road stele inscription) do impose an image of barbarism on autonomous regions like Hebei. This “barbarizing” rhetoric can be traced to a growing interest in associating the classical Chinese-barbarian dichotomy with distinctions between moral and immoral political behavior among Chinese subjects.

[For supplementary maps, see History Maps below]
[Erratum: Footnote 89 omitted the name of the journal that published Su Hang's 2018 article. It is Minzu yanjiu 民族研究.]

Introduction attached

Corrigenda:
p. 35, line 20: "ritual orthopraxy" should be "ritual heteropraxy"
p. 77, line 16: "differed in" should be "differed from"
p. 93, line 1: "Eastern Zhou capital" should be "former Western Zhou capital" (the corresponding footnote should also be changed to indicate that the state of Qin gained control over the original Zhou capital region after 770 BCE)
Glossary is missing the characters for "duobing" on p. 121 (they are 多病)

中世以降，中国哲学（汉传佛教和宋明理学）在根本上就一直受到源自印度佛教的诸多概念以及概念建构的塑造。从六朝到宋代及其后，中国哲学史上的创新发展成就，吸取了这些概念来启发和自我更新。同时，随着时间的推移，这些概念也被本土化了/中国化了，而它们印度的“基因标记”也随之而被遮掩（然并未被抹去）。

这对于介入诸如“同一性”与“差异”、“恒常”与“变异”、“超越”与“内在”、“一”与“多”、“一元论”与“二元论”等等基本形而上学主题的路径而言，给中国哲学（的确也给东亚哲学）提供了一笔博大精深的思想遗赠。这类形而上学主题，作为比较哲学资源，其真正的价值往往在于其背后存在的特定假设。  本文尝试对这些主题之一做一个最低限度的概述，而概述的内容乃是，体用范式是如何被用来表达“内在超越”这一概念。本文将进一步把“中国”哲学的同一性予以问题化，并提出这样的论点：主流中国哲学话语的若干核心元素长期以来在其思想构造上就一直是混合性的。与此同时，本文还间接质疑了那种现在还在流行的假设，即，中国哲学是一个（或一套）密闭的传统，只有通过参照其本身“内部的”规范和前提，才能理解和评判。如果中国哲学要在这个高速全球化的世界中得以兴盛的话，就会越来越有必要肯定中国哲学的“混合性”(hybrid identity) 以及其丰富的遗产，甚至称赞它、丰富它。

本文的第一部分将描述一个核心的概念结构。我申述，这个概念结构是十二世纪理学家家朱熹 (1130-1200) 和六世纪的汉传佛教文本《大乘起信论》所共有的。我主张，这个共有的概念结构有共同谱系的特征。我还要进一步提出，这个共有的概念结构是同源性的 (homologous)。与功能相似，但没有任何共同的祖源特征的类似结构 (analogous structures) 不一样，同源的结构体乃既是功能相似，又是同一个祖源的不同变异的后裔。 本文的第二部分将致力于识别它们的共同的祖源。六世纪的《大乘起信论》所传承这个祖源的遗传标记，首先主要突显在唐到北宋期间的汉传佛教著作里， 后来又被朱熹重新援引为他形而上学的主要特质。我认为这个祖源可以追溯到五世纪下半叶中国南部佛教圈中的话语脉络。这个祖源的确是一个混合物，是印度傳統和中国传统的佛教理論建构经过富有创造性潜能的接触后的产物。它的中国化的一面，是体用极性（ti-yong polarity）；而它的印度化的一面，则是对体用极性的挪用：把体用极性当作一个载体，通过参照无为法和有为法，用它来表达内在超越的概念。我还认定，这个混合性结构之设计，是针对什么样的核心哲学问题。

This essay assesses the diversity of spoken vernacular languages in the medieval Jiankang Empire (Chinese southern dynasties, 420-579 CE) and the social and political role played by each. It concludes that there was no unified "Chinese" spoken language, and that linguistic diversity in fact played a significant role in generating both ethnic and status boundaries between peoples whom we would now call "Chinese."