Dynastic History Research Articles

Aristocratic Burial-Mound Bliznets-2 on the West Bank of the Dnieper above the Rapids

Abstract This article is devoted to the Bliznets-2 Burial-mound which is one of the largest Scythian funerary monuments of the 5th century BC and which was excavated on the southern edge of the town of Dnepropetrovsk in 2007. Along with the structural features of the burial-mound, the funerary rite and range of artefacts discovered in it are analysed. The role of the monument among the Scythian élite burial-mounds in the North Pontic region is defined and certain aspects of the dynastic history of the Scythians are discussed.

History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The Chronicle of Regino of Prum and Adalbert of Magdeburg

Thanks to the efforts of the Toronto and Manchester university presses, among others, there is currently an embarrassment of source translations on the market for teachers of Carolingian and Ottonian-Salian history. This valuable and welcome contribution from Simon MacLean to the Manchester Medieval Sources series bridges the gap between the two periods while demonstrating his particularly subtle sense of the intersections between medieval historiography and politics. Regino's early tenth-century chronicle is a good fit for MacLean's strengths, offering key insights into late Carolingian politics while also bearing witness to a particular view of history and its writing. Adalbert's Continuation serves then as a comparative, looking with different eyes through the same literary lens at a political world different from, yet clearly indebted to, its predecessor. After a section describing ‘Regino's world and career’, which serves as a pithy introduction to late Carolingian politics and the place an abbot and historian might occupy within it, MacLean spends the greater part of the introduction discussing Regino as historian. He critiques previous genre-based approaches and advances a strong argument, based on Regino's own statements as well as his structuring of the text around the Incarnation and the Royal Frankish Annals, that Regino turned the rise and fall of the Carolingian Empire into a sort of mirror for princes (more specifically, for Louis the Child) by placing it in the larger context of divine Providence. Later sections cover the sources and themes of the Chronicle’s original two books, making particularly good points about Regino's attitude to chronology and dynastic history, Prüm's Breton connections and the importance for Regino of pure royal motivations for the fate of a kingdom. Two short sections on Adalbert and the design of the translation close the introduction.

Creating a Public Face for Posterity: The Making of Chiang Kai-shek’s Shilüe Manuscripts

In the midst of war, secretaries began selecting and organizing excerpts from Chiang Kai-shek’s diary, telegrams, written reports, and speeches to form the shilüe gaoben , which might be roughly translated as “draft” or “working manuscripts.” Yet because of the Guomindang’s later exodus to Taiwan, these manuscripts remained incomplete and in different stages of draft form. As such, they open an intriguing window into the process of establishing a Chinese leader’s political legitimacy in the eyes of posterity. In comparing the shilüe to its nearest equivalent, the dynastic Standard Histories, this article finds that its content reflected the change from the relationship between emperor and subject to that between national leader and citizen. In addition, by clarifying the methodology informing the shilüe as a political/historical document, this article finds that the secretaries’ varying goals for, and abilities to put together, the shilüe influenced how posterity would view Chiang’s legacy.

Competent to Rule?: Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato and a Secular View of Politics in Habsburg Dynastic History

This article deals with an early modern court historian's judgments concerning the political competence and incompetence of his contemporaries. Although the phrase “political competence” may seem anachronistic when referring to the second half of the seventeenth century, hardly any historian today would deny that, at least since the late medieval period, European intellectuals belonging to political elites had developed their own understanding of what constitutes effective statesmanship. That understanding was not always normative, or based on exempla of the classical past—it could be practical and expressed through evaluations of current events. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the future Habsburg court historian Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato wrote about Oliver Cromwell: “And let it be noted from his extraordinary example, that not the nobility of birth, nor riches . . . qualify one for high office, as it usually solely happens, but that it is the opportunity that . . . wakes up the spirits, and sharpens the minds.” This article will deal with Priorato's judgments of political competence (and incompetence) in the works that he wrote while in the service of the Austrian Habsburgs.

MYTH, HISTORY AND REALPOLITIK: MOROCCO AND ITS JEWISH COMMUNITY

This article is an analytical overview of the history of Moroccan Jewry, from pre‐Islamic times to the present day, exploring the themes of myth, memory and political interests in the multi‐faceted, continuous interactions between the community and Moroccan society as a whole. In referring to seminal developments in Moroccan political history, it analyses the different ways in which the Jews of Morocco experienced them as an integral part of the larger societal mosaic. This survey of the 2,000‐year Jewish presence in Morocco employs a variety of classical and modern sources in order to locate the place of Moroccan Jews within the ebbs and flows of Moroccan dynastic history, particularly following the establishment of the first Islamic dynasty in the eighth century, C.E. It also engages with current historiographical debates on the subject matter. Overall, it provides clarity and order to the subject of Jewish–Muslim inter‐communal relations in Morocco over the longue durée, a matter too often shrouded in myths and half‐truths.

Iran in the 20th century: historiography and political culture

Political upheaval has marked Iran's history throughout the twentieth century. Wars, revolutions, coups and the impact of modernism have shaped Iran's historiography, as they have the country's history. Originally based on oral and written sources, which underpinned traditional genealogical and dynastic history, Iran's historiography was transformed in the early 20th century with the development of a 'new' school of presenting history. Here emphasis shifted from the anecdotal story-telling genre to social, political, economic, cultural and religious history-writing. A new understanding of the nation state and the importance of identity and foreign relations in defining Iran's place in the modern world all served to transform the perspective of Iranian historiography. Touraj Atabaki here brings together a range of rich contributions from international scholars who cover the leading themes of the historiography of 20th-century Iran, including constitutional reform and revolution, literature and architecture, identity, women and gender, nationalism, modernism, Orientalism, Marxism and Islamism.

Micro-Periodization and Dynasticism: Was There a Divide in the Reign of Ivan the Terrible?

In this article, Sergei Bogatyrev offers new insight into the problem of continuity and change during the reign of Ivan IV the Terrible by focusing on the micro-periodization of dynastic history. In modern cultural and historical studies, periodization often includes micro-periods that are based on the perceptions of contemporaries. A micro-period can open a longer historical period, mark dramatic events, or reflect day-to-day activities. Bogatyrev argues that the 1550s was an important micro-period in the dynastic history of Ivan IV's Muscovy. The dynasty was in the center of many political and cultural projects of the 1550s, including the relations between the tsar and his cousin Vladimir of Staritsa, redefining the mechanism of succession, and formulating a dynastic vision of Muscovy's past. The micro-periodization of dynastic history reveals important developments that may be easily obscured by the traditional division of Ivan's reign into good and bad halves.

From Kuṭa Rāja to Singhasāri: Towards a Revision of the Dynastic History of 13th Century Java

In attempting to reconstruct Javanese dynastic history of the first half of the 13th century, scholars have in the past been forced to rely almost entirely upon later works of literature, notably the Deśawarn M ana and Pararaton. Recently discovered epigraphical data demands a re-evaluation of these literary accounts. From an examination of the new evidence provided by the 1255 inscription of Mūla-Malurung, the author concludes that the term Singhasāri as it is currently applied to define 13th century Java is something of a misnomer. The accession of the king Wis J n J uwardhana in around 1250 needs to be viewed as a definitive landmark separating two distinct chapters, represented by the ages of Kut M a Rāja and Singhasāri proper. It is proposed that this new perspective can serve as a more accurate framework upon which to construct a revised history of the Rājasa dynasty.

A middle Indo-Aryan inscription from China

The work comprises a presentation of a decipherment of an inscription on ancient lead objects found in China’s Wei River Valley, and the Han dynastic histories that preserve their memory. To reach his decipherment the author provides a substantial assembly of lexical material — much of it heretofore unpublished and absent from dictionaries — including Indo-European, Sanskrit, Indo-Aryan, and Chinese languages. Augmenting the philological material is a meaningful observation of Brāhmī forms and Chinese graphs also missing from standard works. The author observes the implications of his decipherment for the study of the interaction between Indian and Chinese cultures in antiquity, as well as for the history of the early proselytisation of the Buddhist faith and philosophy outside of India. All of it results in a contribution that should be of serious interest to Indologists and Sinologists alike.

Four Perspectives on “Old Russia” (Rus′)

Four Perspectives on “Old Russia” (Rus′) Francis Butler (bio) Aleksei Karpov, Vladimir Sviatoi [Saint Vladimir]. 2nd ed., corr. and exp. 454 pp., illus. Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2004. ISBN 5235027426. A. F. Litvina and F. B. Uspenskii, Vybor imeni u russkikh kniazei v X–XVI vv.: Dinasticheskaia istoriia skvoz′ prizmu antroponimiki [Name Choice among Princes of Rus′ from the 10th through the 16th Centuries: Dynastic History through the Prism of Anthroponymics]. 740 pp., genealogical charts. Moscow: Indrik, 2006. ISBN 5857593395. Andrzej Poppe, Christian Russia in the Making. xiv + 362 pp. Birmingham, VT: Ashgate Variorum, 2007. ISBN-13 978-0754659112. $144.95. Jonathan Shepard, ed., The Expansion of Orthodox Europe. 532 pp. Birmingham, VT: Ashgate Variorum, 2007. ISBN-13 978-0754659204. $175.00. Contemporary English lacks satisfactory terms to denote the regions that have since become Belarus′, Russia, and Ukraine and to denote the peoples that inhabited these regions before the development of the Russian empire. The standard “Russia” or even “Old Russia” may (however wrongly) bring to a nonspecialist’s mind a region ruled from Moscow or St. Petersburg, whereas the earliest major political center in these territories was Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine. Many scholars now prefer to make the distinction between “Russia” and “Rus′” that exists in contemporary standard Russian, though this distinction may baffle the uninitiated.1 For this reason I have used the [End Page 291] inaccurate “Old Russia” (albeit in quotation marks) in the title of this review and supplied the more accurate “Rus′” in parentheses. The first term is directed towards the uninitiated (and a few of the initiated who refuse to adopt “Rus′”); the second is intended to inform the initiated that I am aware of the terminological difficulty. (In a similar fashion, Andrzej Poppe has entitled his book Christian Russia in the Making but has tended to prefer “Rus′” in the articles that the book contains.) Adjectives present a further problem: if “Rus′” is not “Old Russia,” then how can its language be “Old Russian” or its territory be “Russian”? Here scholars divide, with some preferring “Rusian” or “Rus′ian” (forms that have no equivalent in modern Russian) and some preferring “East Slavic,” a term that may (among other things) gloss over the significance of Scandinavian culture in Rus′. In spite of such problems, I shall here take the latter option. Publication on the history of Rus′ is off to a good start as the first decade of the 21st century ends. The four books reviewed here reflect two trends within that broader pattern. Two of them, collections of mostly previously published articles in English, are both linked to a strong tradition of scholarship that has existed outside the Soviet Union and Russia in the latter half of the 20th century; the appearance of the other two reflects scholarly and cultural developments within post-Soviet Russia.2 The Expansion of Orthodox Europe, edited by Jonathan Shepard, is a collection of articles, almost all reprinted, dealing with what Dimitri Obolensky has called “the Byzantine Commonwealth.”3 Yet Shepard has deliberately and wisely forgone recovering the ground covered by Obolensky; instead he has chosen some studies of phenomena in the Orthodox lands that have largely been ignored and some that approach frequently studied phenomena from unusual perspectives.4 Although some of the articles date to several decades [End Page 292] ago (one as far back as 1949), more than half were first published between 1990 and 2004. Because of the breadth of the collection, this review will focus on 9 (out of 22) articles that relate largely or exclusively to East Slavic territory. Two of these articles deal with trade between Byzantium and the East Slavs; one provides a wonderful synthetic discussion of the nature and boundaries of Rus′; three discuss relations between the East Slavs and the Mongols; two focus on intellectual developments in Byzantium and among the Slavs (South and East) in the 14th and 15th centuries; and one attempts to fit East Slavic hagiography into a broader early Christian context. Two closely related studies by the late Thomas S. Noonan and his energetic protégé Roman K. Kovalev point to what were probably only some aspects of the almost unexamined commercial...

The As-If of the Book of Kings: Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo's Colonial Poetics of History

Prior to the nineteenth century, the book of kings, or dynastic history, was the dominant mode of historiography in Europe and the Americas. This article explores the as-if or in-theory dimension of colonial dynastic history by way of a reading of Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo's early-eighteenth-century histories of Spain and Peru. Peralta's histories have been read as sycophantic, premodern texts that not only do not live up to the modern standards of historiography but moreover are in bad taste, that is, rhetorically prone to the excesses of Lima's colonial court culture. In contrast, I argue that Peralta's poetics of history reveal the subtle and ingenious rhetorical means by which history came to occupy, via imitating the figure of the prince, a sovereign and prognostic position of critique as the prince's simulacrum, that is, as a copy that has no original other than itself. In the case of Peralta's histories, this position of critique was colonial and postcolonial.

Turkish Men and the History of Ottoman Women

This paper discusses the study of Ottoman dynastic history through women’s writings, such as harem women’s personal letter correspondence, women’s harem memoirs and recollections, and foreign women travelers’ accounts, published in popular historical magazines in Turkey during the 1950s and 60s. The paper also considers the popular nature of the publications that featured these writings and their significance in the framework of the changing nationalist discourse and corresponding changes in Turkish historiography during the 1950s. It shows that articles based on women’s writings revealed intimate aspects of the Ottoman elite’s relationships in general and of Ottoman women in particular, and suggests that their publication in popular magazines played an important role in re-imagining the Turkish woman in the framework of the post-Kemalist nationalist discourse. It concludes that women’s writings, used as primary sources by Turkish historians, provided an insider’s point of view on the secretive life of the harem and its inhabitants and attracted a popular readership, thus exposing wider audiences to an Ottoman-centered historical discourse, and ultimately played an important role in the writing of Ottoman women’s history.

Where is Strategic Culture to Be Found? The Case of China

Will the rise of China as a global power bring greater stability or greater conflict to the international system? A small cottage industry has appeared, which attempts to resolve this question through the concept of “strategic culture.” Ancient Legalist and Confucian texts, as well as dynastic histories, undergo exegesis of the most minute and detailed variety in order to shed some light on enduring themes and predispositions inherent in the Chinese approach to conflict and inter-state relations. Of course, this presents a very static and deterministic view of cultural analysis. Lucian Pye rightly opined that cultural “explanations of last resort,” along the lines of “The Chinese act that way because that is the Chinese way,” are not in the end explanations at all (Pye 1988:504, 1991:6). Within this context Feng Huiyun asks a very pertinent question: mustn't the putative strategic culture of a nation interact with the operational code of the actual leader? In addition to re-translating Hsun Tzu's The Art of War for the umpteenth time, shouldn't we also ask what kinds of dispositions towards conflict and cooperation are held by the actual human beings who lead China now? This is certainly a breath of fresh air blowing past stale conversations over, for example, the relative importance of wen and wu in Chinese international relations; or even interminable academic conversations over the appropriate English translation of those Chinese terms.

Conversion to Chastity: A Buddhist Catalyst in Early Imperial China

AbstractThis paper traces the history of the notion of female chastity (zhen) in China from pre-Qin to the mid-imperial era and argues that, prior to the arrival of Buddhism in China, the idea of female “chastity” was concerned not so much with physical virginity as the dutiful fulfillment of wifely obligations as stipulated by the Confucian marriage rites. A woman's chastity was determined by her moral rectitude rather than by her biological condition. The understanding of the physical body as a sacrosanct entity that must be defended against defilement and violation emerged under the influence of Buddhist notions of the uncontaminated body, the pious observance of the Buddhist monastic code, and the performance of religious charity that became popular in early imperial China. Based on a critical analysis of a wide array of Confucian canonical texts, dynastic histories, Indian Buddhist scriptures, biographies of Chinese monks and nuns, the monastic code, and Chinese Buddhist encyclopedias, this paper delineates the gradual process by which the Buddhist concept of the “pure body” became fully assimilated into the indigenous Chinese notion of female “rectitude” and the notion of female chastity finally acquired an ontological identity around the end of the sixth century.

Zhuangzi’s Posthumous Titles and Teachers: How Did Zhuangzi Continue Speaking to the Heart?

Tang Studies 26 (2008) ZHUANGZI'S POSTHUMOUS TITLES AND TEACHERS: HOW DID ZHUANGZI CONTINUE SPEAKING TO THE HEART? SHIYI Yu Tsinghua University, Beijing In the Daoist biographical sketches of Zhuangzi handed down from the Tang and Song period, we find a few new episodes added to Zhuangzi's life story that was first crafted by Sima Qian =P] }~!~ ~ (145-86 BCE) in his Shiji. Among them the most noticeable are Zhuangzi's ascension to the Daoist heavens and imperial sanctification in the year of 742, during the Tang dynasty.! The episode of Zhuangzi's ascension to the heavens can be traced back to the Daoist recount of his life in the fourth century CE, first revealed as a secret message from the Daoist immortals to Yang Xi t18_ (330-387), the second great transmitter of the Upper Clarity Daoist scriptures (shangqing jing l::1Fi#~) at the time.2 According to this revelation, Zhuangzi was lifted up after consuming an elixir, and he was thereafter granted a position as Librarian of the Heaven of the Great Ultimate (taiji weibianlang *f?ffil1lJ*i~~).He first became a Transcendent (xianren {LilA) and later was promoted to a Perfected Master (zhenren _A). In contrast, Zhuangzi's imperial sanctification in the Tang is more or less a historical event, marking the culmination of a secular respect for Zhuangzi that had been in existence since the Wei-Jin period (220-420). It also serves as an official reaffirmation of Zhuangzi's transcendental status with the titles conferred upon him and the book that bears his name-the Perfected Master of Nanhua (nanhua zhenren l¥f~_A) and Nanhua zhenjing l¥f~~#~ (True Scripture ofNanhua). A draft of this article was presented at the Western Branch annual meeting of the American Oriental Society in Tempe, Arizona, in November 2000, and later at the International Conference on Taoism and Nature, held in Chengdu, Sichuan province, in May 2004. I would like to thank Timothy Wai Keung Chan for reading and commenting on this article. 1 See Shiji, 63.2142 (unless otherwise indicated, all references to the twenty-four dynastic histories are to the Beijing Zhonghua shuju edition); Tao Hongjing ~§L~ (456-536), Zhengao ~§~ (HY 1010), 14.11b-12a, and Dongxuan lingbao zhenling weiye tu rlPJ~Ii.~Ii{ir*lJi (HY 167), lOb; Jiu Tang shu, 9.215. Cheng Xuanying's p)G~~ (631-652) Preface to Nanhua zhenjing shu r¥f~~~m, in Nanhua zhenjing zhushu (HY 745), 2b; Chu Boxiu m{S* (fl. 1270), Nanhua zhenjing yihai zuanwei r¥f~~#~~$.~ (HY 734), 1a/b; Lin Xiyi ***~(fl. 1260), Nanhua zhenjing kouyi r¥f~~#~D~ (HY 735), 3a/b. 2 See Michel Strickmann, "The Mao-shan Revelations: Taoism and Aristocracy," T'oung Pao 63 (1977): 1-64, and Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999),6-7. 85 Yu: Zhuangzi's Posthumous Titles and Teachers These new episodes are significant events in the reception of the Zhuangzi, but to what extent they reflect the changes in its understanding in medieval times and the general cultural climate that went with it remains a question. The present study is an attempt to explore the possible meanings of these titles that were retrospectively given to Zhuangzi and the teachers mentioned in the new biographical notes to gauge their implications for understanding Zhuangzi's status in medieval and early modern China. This exploration has a focus on the meaning of the terms the Transcendent, Perfected Master, and Nanhua. There are two major arguments in the present study. First, the change of his title from a Transcendent to the Perfected Master in about the eighth century points to the circumstance that Zhuangzi was given a promotion in rank in the Daoist world. Second, the term Nanhua has an origin in the early Upper Clarity Daoist scriptures. When used for Zhuangzi, Nanhua indicates metaphorically that Zhuangzi was a great teacher of the heart, as understood in the Daoist tradition of this strand since the Jin dynasty (265-420). This interpretation was later amplified in the legend of Zhuangzi's teachers that appears in Daoist writings about Zhuangzi and has become a trademark of Zhuangzian Daoism since...

The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci (review)

Reviewed by: The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci Shuishan Yu (bio) Tracy Miller . The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007. xx + 265 pp., 66 color and 14 b/w illus. Hardcover $45.00, ISBN 978-0-674-02513-4. Ritual architecture, or lizhi jianzhu 禮制建築, is a unique category in traditional Chinese architecture. Compared to other traditional Chinese architectural types-for instance, Buddhist architecture 佛教建築, palace architecture 宮殿建築, or mausoleum architecture 陵墓建築-ritual architecture is not as clearly defined and contains a much broader range of buildings with a variety of functions.1 Ritual architecture originally refered to structures built to fulfill the Confucian ideals. However, since Confucianism as a religious practice is not as specifically defined as Buddhism or Daoism, structures for worship, ritual sacrifice, or memorial function that cannot be fitted into Buddhism or Daoism are all grouped under the category of ritual architecture, including such diverse building types as the memorial archways for chaste women, shrines dedicated to gods of the five sacred peaks, Confucian temples, and the Altars of Heaven. The complicated nature of ritual architecture originates from the diversity of local beliefs in traditional Chinese society, which cannot be simplified as merely "Confucian." Tracy Miller's book The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci takes up the challenge and makes a fine contribution to our understanding of the complexity of both ritual practices in ancient China and the physical environment that was created by and for such diverse and often contradictory practices. The main argument of the book is that the original source of divinity at the site of modern day Jinci is neither the founder of the Jin state, Shu Yu of the Zhou Dynasty, nor his mother, Yi Jiang, as is widely assumed,2 but the life-giving water as represented by the local water goddess-the Spirit of the Jin Springs (pp. 10, 178). Such a conclusion is supported by recent archaeological discoveries (p. 177), a closer examination of historical documents (p. 178), and the extant buildings, sculptures, and paintings in and the general layout of the Jinci complex (pp. 12-13, 179-184). What led to the confusion and opposition about the identity of the main deity worshiped at Jinci are the competing local patronages, whose wills were materialized in various documents and folklores as well as art and architectural forms (pp. 13-14, 181-183). Such a thesis and reasoning procedure are clearly delineated in the introduction and conclusion of the book. Like other ritual architecture throughout China, Jinci is a collection of shrines and temples dedicated to a variety of deities. The most important ones and at the same time the most relevant to the thesis of the book are the Sage Mother Hall 聖母殿 and the Shu Yu of Tang Shrine Complex 唐叔虞祠, on which most of the chapters of this book focus. Chapter 2 discusses the ambiguous meaning of [End Page 407] the name "Jinci 晉祠" and its potential for different interpretations on the identity of main deities. The author argues that the term "Jinci" allows the site to be interpreted as either dedicated to the rulers of Jin State or the Spirit of the Jin Springs. It also provides a general introduction of the present physical layout of the complex in the beginning section. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the changing significance of Shu Yu across time and the impact that had on the shrine complex built for him. Chapter 3 also discusses the significance of the Taiyuan city, where Jinci is located, as a seat of local power, and suggests that this might be the reason why it was misunderstood as the place where the Jin State was originally founded. In chapter 4, based on historical documents from official dynastic histories to stele inscriptions, the author tries to delineate a picture of both an idealized Shu Yu shrine and the evolvement of the cult of Shu Yu as a state founder. Chapters 5 and 6 turn to the worship of the Spirit of the Jin Springs. Chapter 5 focuses on the textual...

The Politics of Mourning in Early China by Miranda Brown (review)

Book Reviews 129 moral submission from all. The humble aspect in ruling as son and younger brother and the caring aspect in ruling as father and mother of the people, according to Birdwhistell, resemble women’s roles as wives and mothers. In addition, Mencius’s four beginnings that take the feeling of compassion as the most basic of all, illustrated by the example of a child falling into a well (2A6), resemble maternal compassionate impulses. A more obvious reference to maternal caring can be seen in the Mohists’ characterization of the way of Ru 儒 as comparable to the way that parents attend to their new born infant. Mencius, in his response, takes this statement to mean that there must be priority given to one’s parents over strangers (3A5). A benevolent ruler must then begin with imitating the maternal activity of caring for the vulnerable, both young and old. The centrality of caring activities and the feeling of compassion, in a word, sets Mencius’s humane ruler apart from the dominant self-centered masculinity of King Hui at the time. But despite the affinities between Mencius’s compassionate ruler and feminist care ethics, Birdwhistell insists on the patriarchal, hierarchal nature of all Chinese intellectual thought. As she writes in chapter one as well as in the conclusion, Chinese philosophy is an affair of elite men and the masculine ideal developed under this pretence is not applicable to women (pp. 136-7). Birdwhistell’s rejection of the resiliency of Mencius’s thought indeed presents a problem in bridging Confucian ethics and feminist care ethics, despite the fact that both take maternal thinking and caring activities as paradigmatic, not just in the realm of personal relationship, but also in the wider world of politics and human community. If the question here is whether Mencius is sexist and whether his intended audience is male, the answer is obviously a “yes,” given the original historical and social context. But then that is true of most human traditions, whether East or West, South or North. So the real issue here, as I see it, is whether we can acknowledge Mencius’s inevitable human-all-toohuman shortcomings in the discourse on gender, race, and class, and, at the same time, celebrate the novelty of his benevolent, compassionate ruler in the face of today’s political reality in which maternal care and compassion are viewed as irrelevant to the masculine discourse on power. And I think in the end the answer for feminists or non-feminists alike should as well be a resounding “yes.” LI-HSIANG LISA ROSENLEE, University of Hawai‘i–West O‘ahu The Politics of Mourning in Early China MIRANDA BROWN. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007. xiv, 205 pages. ISBN 978-0-7914-7157-9. US$75.00 hardcover. Miranda Brown, in her first book, explicitly refrains from making grand claims about either her period (Han 漢, 206 BCE-220 CE) or her topic (mourning practices and policies), instead 130 Journal of Chinese Religions preferring the “open-endedness of historical interpretation” (p. 7). Her book, indeed, moves forward in very concrete steps, question by question. How to evaluate the deeply engrained Weberian views on filial piety that privilege the father-son relation, and see it as a training ground for dutiful service to one’s Lord? Is Emperor Wen’s 文 edict of 157 BCE to be taken as a prohibition on the observance of three years mourning? Are the classical texts (including the Analects [Lunyu 論語], Mencius [Mengzi 孟子], Classic of Filial Piety [Xiaojing 孝經], Gongyang’s Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals [Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳], Book of Rites [Liji 禮記], Annals of Lü [Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋]) as insistent on a son’s obligation to mourn his parents for three years as is often assumed? Can the greater prominence during the Eastern Han of accounts of mourning be attributed to changes in imperial policy? Do the dynastic histories dealing with the Eastern Han (25-220 CE) reflect the realities of the period or Six Dynasties sensibilities? Her answers to these and many other questions are always subtle, fair, and interesting, as she consistently refuses to take common assumptions for granted. Nonetheless, out of this concatenation...

The Grand Scribe's Records, Volume 5.1: The Hereditary Houses of Pre-Han China, Part I (review)

Reviewed by: The Grand Scribe's Records, Volume 5.1: The Hereditary Houses of Pre-Han China, Part I Esther Klein (bio) Sima Qian; William H. Nienhauser Jr., editor; Weiguo Cao, Zhi Chen, Scott Cook, Hongyu Huang, Bruce Knickerbocker, Wang Jin, Zhang Zhenjun, and Zhao Hua, translators. The Grand Scribe's Records, Volume 5.1: The Hereditary Houses of Pre-Han China, Part I. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006. xlviii, 501 pp., maps. Hardcover $72.95, ISBN 0-253-34027-6. This book is the latest installment of the University of Wisconsin group's annotated translation of the Shiji, the massive historical text compiled primarily by Sima Qian (145–ca. 86 B.C.). The present volume covers chapters 31–40, the first ten of the "Hereditary Households" that comprise the Shiji's fourth division.1 This is the first time these chapters have been rendered into English, and they are presented here with a wealth of scholarly annotations. Each chapter recounts the story of a given region's ruling house: from its origins in the semi-mythical past, through the successive ages of its glory and decline, and finally, in each case, to crushing defeat and annihilation. William Nienhauser's introduction includes a brief discussion of the "Hereditary Household" as an historical subgenre and is especially praiseworthy for examining interpretations by various scholars, both traditional and modern. The "Hereditary Households" are chronological in form, and their primary concern is genealogical; the generations of the houses are given, along with the often sordid details of their successions, and sometimes other information about how they conducted the internal and external affairs of their domains. Although Nienhauser does not mention the fact, the "Hereditary Household" as a genre was excluded almost completely from later dynastic histories, though these in other ways modeled themselves closely on the Shiji's structure.2 This is probably because the genre—like the feudal-type system it reflected—was politically problematic. Each chapter in this volume, for example, has its own chronology and version of events, and differences among them (to judge by commentarial wranglings past and present) at times prove irreconcilable. Without discounting the very real possibility that the compiler was simply overwhelmed by the complexity of his material, we can still take these contradictions as a symbol and symptom of tensions between nominal center and the semi-independent states, as well as the diplomatic and military conflicts among those states. The chapters clearly show how each hereditary household was engaged in its own ongoing struggle, whether for domination or mere survival. An analogous tension appears in the nature of the translation. Rather than presenting the work as a communal endeavor, the Wisconsin group has taken pains to preserve the separateness of each translator's contribution (in most cases, one chapter per translator). There is noticeable variation in style and quality from chapter to chapter. Occasionally there are differences in translation conventions as well. One example is the translation of the character Ji 姬 as it appears in a name. Ji [End Page 544] was one of the major surnames (cognomens) during the period in question, but in historiographic conventions of the time it rarely appears as part of a person's name except in the case of high status women. In some cases, it seems to have taken on an extensional meaning of "a palace beauty" generally, as in the present volume's "Duke Li had many favored beauties" (p. 358, original on Zhonghua shuju Shiji 39.1680). Therefore, some translators in this volume have decided to render Ji as "Beauty" (chap. 9) or "Belle" (chaps. 2, 10) or "Lady" (chap. 7) whenever it occurs as part of a woman's name. In the case of the "many favored beauties" mentioned above, a semantic rendering seems appropriate, but in most other cases Ji is better understood as a surname. Thus the translator of chapter 6 quite properly gives it in romanized form (pp. 227, 229).3 Whatever the translators' final decision, it should have been made consistent, rather than causing (for example) the same woman to be referred to as Xia Ji in chapter 6 (p. 227) and as Beauty Xia in chapter 9 (p. 355). In...

The Missing Heir at Yaxchilán: Literary Analysis of a Maya Historical Puzzle

The site of Yaxchilán (Chiapas, Mexico) is one of the best-known Classic Maya cities, despite relatively little stratigraphic excavation. The dynastic history of the site is recorded in numerous legible inscriptions and was worked out more than 30 years ago by Tatiana Proskouriakoff (1963, 1964) in her epoch-making historical interpretations. A historical puzzle left by Proskouriakoff and later investigators is a 10-year gap (A.D. 742-752) between the death of a Late Classic king, Shield Jaguar II, and the accession of his successor and son, Bird Jaguar IV. Various explanations have been offered for this interregnum, often suggesting a rival heir to the throne, as Bird Jaguar was the son of his father's late, secondary, foreign wife. Nevertheless, no evidence has been put forth concerning a child by the king and his earlier, primary wife, a woman known as Lady Xok. This paper reexamines the epigraphic evidence by applying what is now known about Classic Maya grammar and the canons of Classic Maya literature to an inscription on the house of Lady Xok. Viewed from this perspective, a well-known inscription yields the name of the missing heir, and other evidence suggests the nature of his fate and the reason he did not take the throne.

Erlitou and the Formation of Chinese Civilization: Toward a New Paradigm

This paper offers an alternative paradigm to dynastic history and state formation with which to understand the formation of Chinese civilization: cultural hegemony. It argues that an elite culture first crystallized in the early second millennium BCE at Yanshi Erlitou in Henan Province in which bronze was associated with a set of religious practices centered on ancestral offerings. It established a cultural hegemony over the Chinese continental region by the middle of the millennium (early Shang Dynasty). Archaeologically, its primary markers are bronze vessels with a common set of motifs and ritual forms. Although cultural diversity and local political authority remained, it was unlike the previous Neolithic cultures because it had no challenger in range or influence. Moreover, it anticipated the later common elite culture, which in Confucius's time was defined in terms of shared rites. Thus, we may legitimately call it an early stage of “Chinese civilization.”