Body of Jade, Pearls of Blood The Evolution of the King An Dương Story and the Moral Imagination of Fifteenth-Century Đại Việt (original) (raw)
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The Journal of Asian Studies, 2012
Idema and Stephen H. West's previous translations and studies of early Chinese drama: their version of one of the best-known works of pre-modern dramatic literature, The Moon and the Zither: Wang Shifu's Story of the Western Wing (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1991), and their collection of historical materials in Chinese Theater, 1100-1450: A Source Book (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982). Like their brethren, the two recent volumes present lucid and readable translations buttressed by introductions, notes, and appendices, whose unassuming clarity almost masks the broad erudition, precise scholarship, and insightful analysis that informs them. Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals contains translations of eleven early Chinese dramas on a range of themes and subject matters, and provides in its introduction and appendices a brief but comprehensive overview of theater history, performance practice, formal characteristics of the plays, textual transmission, and reception. 1 Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood translates early Northern dramas (zaju 雜劇) and other texts dealing specifically with the Three Kingdoms story cycle, and in its introductory material focuses on the development of this narrative tradition. Had I not agreed to write this review, I most likely would not have read the book continuously from the first page to the last. I would have studied the Introduction, read the first play (Tripartite Oath), then jumped to a favorite (Single Sword Meeting) or to an effort that piqued my curiosity (how on earth did they translate Dream of Western Shu?) before poking around in the appendices. Some of the other plays might well have waited until I had occasion to assign them to a class. I consider myself fortunate that the present task has forced me to do otherwise, to work my way from cover to cover, as if reading a novel; for such a reading reveals the parallel unfolding of two stories, each, on its own, complex and far from unambiguous, proceeding along opposite chronological vectors, and yet reaching a simultaneous and interwoven climax with the final (in one sense; in another sense, originary) play, Dream of Western Shu. The first story is the saga of the Three Kingdoms itself-the civil wars at the close of the Han dynasty, the resulting tripartite division of the subcelestial realm, and the reunification of the empire by the Jin 晉 dynasty in 280. These historical events and the historiographic records thereof formed the nucleus of a variety of narrative traditions, whose richness is already reflected in Pei Songzhi's 裴松之
Vietnam is often seen to have undergone a fundamental shift in the Tran period (1225-1400) from an unfamiliar, highly Buddhist country to a highly Confucian one. Using a key source for Tran history, the Dai Viêt su ky toan thu, this essay challenges this common view. First, it focuses not on post-Tran Confucian representations of the past but on Tran bodily practices. Second, it argues that modern Vietnamese historians in particular, utilizing texts, ideologies, and structural transformations, have slighted the history of bodies and practices and Confucianized the Vietnamese past.
This article discusses the origins and special features of the earliest extant Vietnamese version of the Princess Miaoshan story - the National Version of the Original Deeds of Guanyin, which forms a hagiography of Bodhisattva Guanyin; compiled by the monk Thích Chân Nguyên ca. end of the 17th century. With the use of comparison of different Vietnamese and Chinese versions of this story, we have detected that the National Version of the Original Deeds of Guanyin was based on the Chinese novel Complete Story of Guanyin of the Southern Sea (ca. end of the 16th century), thus contesting the previous views of the Vietnamese scholars on the origins and the history of transmission of the Miaoshan story in Vietnam. This early Vietnamese version represents peculiar features of Sino-Vietnamese cultural exchange in the aspect of Buddhist teaching, including the interchange of written (classical) and popular (vernacular) elements in this story. This article is partly an outcome of a collaborative research project carried out by A.Prof. Dr.Rostislav Berezkin (Fudan University, Shanghai, China) and Dr. Nguyễn Tô Lan (Institute of Sino - Nom Studies, Vietnam Academy of Social Science), sponsored by the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Collaborative Research Fellowships in Buddhist Studies 2015 (American Council of Learned Society, 2015)
Ming Studies, 2017
This paper analyzes early illustrations of the Miaoshan story, which served a popular hagiography of Bodhisattva Guanyinthe murals of the Hall of the Great Mercy of the Monastery of Great Wisdom in Beijing (ca. 1513)in relation to the vernacular narrative of performative nature, the Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain. These murals, though they have not received much attention from scholars so far, are noteworthy as the whole ensemble of this monastery was commissioned by Zhang Xiong, a powerful eunuch of the Zhengde court. This paper clarifies the source of the subject of these murals with the use of newly discovered textual materials, and also tries to contextualize them in the cultural life of eunuchs. Such analysis also leads to redefining the status of precious scroll literature, which, though written in vernacular language, was also used in the higher stratum of society, and entered the Ming inner court in the fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries.
ChiMoKoJa: Histories of China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan, , 2018
Contemporary Korea has been a multi-cultural society from the 1990s. The official figure indicates that there are a large number of Southeast Asians as well as East Asians (Chinese and Japanese) living in Korea. Among them the number of Vietnamese-Korean couples is one of the highest on record. The relationship of Korea with the mainland southeast country was launched through the Vietnam War in the initial Cold War era of the 1950-70s. Has there been any more interplay between the two countries? If, how do they relate to each other? Was the relationship positively interactive, as in these days, or was it complicated? This paper explores not only the transnational narrative of the Vietnamese royal family (the Lý dynasty: 1009-1225) commonly shared among contemporary Vietnamese and Korean people, but also argues the oral tradition that Vietnamese (‘Đại Việt’) political refugees exiled to Koryŏ (918-1392) contains a historical aspect in the ideas of Buddhism, Chinese language, Confucian culture, and international relations.
In Search of the Ethical Empire: Medieval Chinese Debates on Fengjian and Junxian
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and their wonderful children all contributed to this experience in many ways. Also, to the communities of parents, teachers and staff at Apple Playschools, Eberwhite Elementary and the Ann Arbor YMCA. To all of them goes my warmest thank you! The greatest debt I owe to my extraordinary wife, Silvia Merlo, and to our children, Agustina, Catalina and Rodrigo, for whom any words would fail to express my gratitude and love.