The ledgers of merit and demerit were a type of morality book that achieved sudden and widespread popularity in China during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Consisting of lists of good and bad deeds, each assigned a certain number of merit or demerit points, the ledgers offered the hope of divine reward to users "good" enough to accumulate a substantial sum of merits. By examining the uses of the ledgers during the late Ming and early Qing periods, Cynthia Brokaw throws new light on the intellectual and social history of the late imperial era. The ledgers originally functioned as guides to salvation for twelfth-century Taoists and Buddhists, but Brokaw shows how the literati of turbulent sixteenth-century China began to use them as aids in the struggle for official status through civil service examinations. The author describes how the responses of some Confucian thinkers to the popularity of the ledgers not only refined the orthodox Neo-Confucian method of self-cultivation but also revealed the serious ambiguity of the classic Confucian understanding of the relationship between fate and human action. Finally, she demonstrates that by the end of the seventeenth century the ledgers were used not so much to facilitate upward mobility as to promote social stability by prescribing standards that encouraged people to keep to their social places. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The ledgers of merit and demerit were a type of morality book that achieved sudden and widespread popularity in China during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Consisting of lists of good and bad deeds, each assigned a certain number of merit or demerit points, the ledgers offered the hope of divine reward to users good enough to accumulate a substantial sum of merits. By examining the uses of the ledgers during the late Ming and early Qing periods, Cynthia Brokaw throws new light on the intellectual and social history of the late imperial era. The ledgers originally functioned as guides to salvation for twelfth- century Taoists and Buddhists, but Brokaw shows how the literati of turbulent sixteenth-century China began to use them as aids in the struggle for official status through civil service examinations. The author describes how the responses of some Confucian thinkers to the popularity of the ledgers not only refined the orthodox Neo-Confucian method of self-cultivation but also revealed the serious ambiguity of the classic Confucian understanding of the relationship between fate and human action. Finally, she demonstrates that by the end of the seventeenth century the ledgers were used not so much to facilitate upward mobility as to promote social stability by prescribing standards that encouraged people to keep to their social places.

A collection of seminal primary readings on the social, intellectual, and religious traditions of China, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 1 has been widely used and praised for almost forty years as an authoritative resource for scholars and students and as a thorough and engaging introduction for general readers. Here at last is a completely revised and expanded edition of this classic sourcebook, compiled by noted China scholars Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom. Updated to reflect recent scholarly developments, with extensive material on popular thought and religion, social roles, and women's education, this edition features new translations of more than half the works from the first edition, as well as many new selections. Arranged chronologically, this anthology is divided into four parts, beginning at the dawn of literate Chinese civilization with the Oracle-Bone inscriptions of the late Shang dynasty (1571–1045 B.C.E.) and continuing through the end of the Ming dynasty (C.E. 1644). Each chapter has an introduction that provides useful historical context and offers interpretive strategies for understanding the readings. The first part, The Chinese Tradition in Antiquity, considers the early development of Chinese civilization and includes selections from Confucius's Analects, the texts of Mencius and Laozi, as well as other key texts from the Confucian, Daoist, and Legalist schools. Part 2, The Making of a Classical Culture, focuses on Han China with readings from the Classic of Changes (I Jing), the Classic of Filiality, major Han syntheses, and the great historians of the Han dynasty. The development of Buddhism, from the earliest translations from Sanskrit to the central texts of the Chan school (which became Zen in Japan), is the subject of the third section of the book. Titled Later Daoism and Mahayana Buddhism in China, this part also covers the teachings of Wang Bi, Daoist religion, and texts of the major schools of Buddhist doctrine and practice. The final part, The Confucian Revival and Neo-Confucianism, details the revival of Confucian thought in the Tang, Song, and Ming periods, with historical documents that link philosophical thought to political, social, and educational developments in late imperial China. With annotations, a detailed chronology, glossary, and a new introduction by the editors, Sources of Chinese Tradition will continue to be a standard resource, guidebook, and introduction to Chinese civilization well into the twenty-first century.

Prosperity signifies success in economic performance. Economic performance always takes place in a spatial context. And institutions matter in economic performance. These three interwoven themes underlie this inquiry into the regional economy of southern Fukien province during the Sung and Yuan dynasties, when the area was one of the most prosperous regions in China. Through a meticulous reading of the sources, the author seeks to understand the meaning of prosperity in the premodern Chinese context and argues that we have to understand economic performance as a process occurring in space and influenced by institutions, which affect economic actors particularly through the means of transaction costs.

The long seventeenth century in China was a period of tremendous commercial expansion, and no literary genre was better equipped to articulate its possibilities than southern drama. As a form and a practice, southern drama was in the business of world-building—both in its structural imperative to depict and reconcile the social whole and in its creation of entire economies dependent on its publication and performance. However, the early modern commercial world repelled rather than engaged most playwrights, who consigned its totems—the merchant and his money—to the margins as sources of political suspicion and cultural anxiety. In The Cornucopian Stage, Ariel Fox examines a body of influential yet understudied plays by a circle of Suzhou playwrights who enlisted the theatrical imaginary to very different ends. In plays about long-distance traders and small-time peddlers, impossible bargains and broken contracts, strings of cash and storehouses of silver, the Suzhou circle placed commercial forms not only at center stage but at the center of a new world coming into being. Here, Fox argues, the economic character of early modern selfhood is recast as fundamentally productive—as the basis for new subject positions, new kinds of communities, and new modes of art.

Outcasts and pariahs are known to exist in several Asian countries but have usually not been associated with traditional Chinese society. Chinese Outcasts shows that some Chinese were in fact treated as outcasts or semi-outcasts. They include the boat people of South China and certain less well-known groups in different regions, including the "musicians' households" and the "fallen people". The reasons for their inferior status and perceived impurity is examined, as well as the intent behind a series of imperial emancipation edicts in the 1720s and 30s. The edict provided an escape route from inferior legal status but failed to put a quick end to customary social discrimination.

'The way that can be told is not the eternal Way; the name that can be named is not the eternal Name.' So begins the first verse of the mysterious "Dao De Jing", foundation text of the ancient Chinese religion of Daoism. Often attributed to semi-mythical sage Laozi, the origins of this enigmatic document - which probably came into being in the third century BCE - are actually unknown. But the tenets of Daoism laid down in the "Dao De Jing", and in later texts like the "Yi Jing" (or "Book of Changes"), continue to exert considerable fascination, particularly in the West, where in recent years they have been popularized by writers such as the novelist Ursula K LeGuin. In this fresh and engaging introduction to Daoism, Ronnie L Littlejohn discusses the central facets of a tradition which can sometimes seem as elusive as the slippery notion of 'Dao' itself. The author shows that fundamental to Daoism is the notion of 'Wu-wei', or non-action: a paradoxical idea emphasizing alignment of the self with the harmony of the universe, a universe in continual flux and change. This flux is expressed by the famous symbol of Dao, the 'taiji' representing yin and yang eternally correlating in the form of a harmonious circle. Exploring the great subtleties of this ancient religion, Littlejohn traces its development and encounters with Buddhism; its expression in art and literature; its fight for survival during the Cultural Revolution; and its manifestations in modern-day China and beyond.

"Sainthood" has been, and remains, a contested category in China, given the commitment of China's modern leadership to secularization, modernization, and revolution, and the discomfort of China's elite with matters concerning religion. However, sainted religious leaders have succeeded in rebuilding old institutions and creating new ones despite the Chinese government's censure. This book offers a new perspective on the history of religion in modern and contemporary China by focusing on the profiles of these religious leaders from the early 20th century through the present. Edited by noted authorities in the field of Chinese religion, Making Saints in Modern China offers biographies of prominent Daoists and Buddhists, as well as of the charismatic leaders of redemptive societies and state managers of religious associations in the People's Republic. The focus of the volume is largely on figures in China proper, although some attention is accorded to those in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other areas of the Chinese diaspora. Each chapter offers a biography of a religious leader and a detailed discussion of the way in which he or she became a "saint." The biographies illustrate how these leaders deployed and sometimes retooled traditional themes in hagiography and charismatic communication to attract followers and compete in the religious marketplace. Negotiation with often hostile authorities was also an important aspect of religious leadership, and many of the saints' stories reveal unexpected reserves of creativity and determination. The volume's contributors, from the United States, Canada, France, Italy, China, and Taiwan, provide cutting-edge scholarship. Taken together, these essays make the case that vital religious leadership and practice has existed and continues to exist in China despite the state's commitment to wholesale secularization.

This comprehensive volume integrates the history of late imperial China with the history of education over three centuries, revealing the significance of education in Chinese social, political, and intellectual life. A collaboration between social and intellectual historians, these fifteen essays provide the most wide-ranging study in English on China's education in the centuries before the modern revolution.

This handbook offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world.