"K. E. Brashier, Ancestral Memory in Early China. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011” (original) (raw)

The Western Han Ancestral Temple and Personal Belief

Since the middle of the last century, the Western Han capital of Chang’an has been one of the primary loci for archaeological investigation of this period, as spearheaded by Professor Liu and others. One of the larger sites, though now inaccessible due to construction, was what has generally been referred to as the Wang Mang Nine Temples - a site has whose identification given rise to considerable debate. From remains found in the excavations, the site can be positively identified as having been constructed during the time when Wang Mang was officially reigning as emperor. The various alternative identifications of this site have recently been considered by Liu (2011), who concurs with the conclusion that it was indeed the complex recorded by Ban Gu as having been built during the reign of Wang Mang (Liu 2011:168). It is true that the arrangement of the temples differs in some respects from other sites that have been identified as ancestral temples. But due to the immense size, the very formal layout of the ensemble and the fact that the layout for eleven of the temples is exactly the same, with the twelfth being very similar, it is clear that it is a state ritual complex of considerable importance. Issues of its definitive identification aside, in this article, I wish to address the question of how textual documentation can shed light on how the role of this complex might have been situated in the mindset of the period that produced it: in particular, issues of belief, or what is commonly referred to in Western contexts as religion. Although there is little archaeological evidence for Western Han ancestral temples prior to the construction under Wang Mang, an examination of this tradition as it had evolved through the Western Han is essential for understanding the construction under Wang Mang.

Ren and Gantong : Openness of Heart and Root of Confucianism

In this essay, I take the sense of “gantong (感通)” as a vital clue and establish a line of interpretation that brings the complex meanings of ren 仁 and its various forms of writing into a coherent unity. My interpretation identifies one of the oldest meanings of ren as gantong: open and affective comportment with spiritual, human, and natural beings in the surrounding world. The origin of ren lies in the ancient rites of ancestral worship that featured the spiritual surrogates (shi 尸) who served as the intermediary for the communication and interaction (gantong) between dead forefathers and living descendents, between heavenly spirits and human beings. While this use of ren as gantong did not start with Confucius, what distinguished the Confucian understanding of ren was the shift of priority from the way of heaven to the way of the human, from divination and intuition of godly injunctions to care and compassion among different individuals in the human community. Openness and sincerity of heart turned into the central meaning of ren in Confucian teachings and the root of Confucian moral cultivation, which can be best described as a gradual process of person opening instead of person making.

2019 Daoing Medicine: Practice Theory for Considering Religion and Medicine in Early Imperial China

East Asian Science Technology and Medicine, 2019

This article is a critique of the neologism “Daoist medicine” (daojiao yixue 道教醫學) that has recently entered scholarly discourse in China. It provides evidence that this expression is an anachronism which found its way into scholarly discourse in 1995 and has now become so widely used that it is seen as representing an undisputed “historical fact.” It demonstrates that the term has no precursor in the pre-modern record, and critiques two substantive attempts to set up “Daoist medicine” as an analytical term. It reviews earlier scholarship on Daoism and medicine, or healing, within the larger context of religion and medicine, and shows how attention has shifted, particularly in relation to the notion of overlap or intersection of these historical fields of study. It proposes that earlier frameworks grounded in epistemology or simple social identity do not effectively represent the complexity of these therapies. Practice theory, on the other hand, provides a useful analytic for unpacking the organisation and transmission of curing knowledge. Such an approach foregrounds the processes and dynamics of assemblage, rather than theoretical abstractions. The article concludes by proposing a focus on the Daoing of medicine, that is, the variety of processes by which therapies come to be known as Daoist, rather than imposing an anachronistic concept like Daoist medicine.