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During the Tang dynasty (618-907), changes in political policies, the religious landscape, and gender relations opened the possibility for Daoist women to play an unprecedented role in religious and public life. Women, from imperial princesses to the daughters of commoner families, could be ordained as Daoist priestesses and become religious leaders, teachers, and practitioners in their own right. Some achieved remarkable accomplishments: one wrote and transmitted texts on meditation and inner cultivation; another, a physician, authored a treatise on therapeutic methods, medical theory, and longevity techniques. Priestess-poets composed major works, and talented priestess-artists produced stunning calligraphy.In Gender, Power, and Talent, Jinhua Jia draws on a wealth of previously untapped sources to explain how Daoist priestesses distinguished themselves as a distinct gendered religious and social group. She describes the life journey of priestesses from palace women to abbesses and ordinary practitioners, touching on their varied reasons for entering the Daoist orders, the role of social and religious institutions, forms of spiritual experience, and the relationships between gendered identities and cultural representations. Jia takes the reader inside convents and cloisters, demonstrating how they functioned both as a female space for self-determination and as a public platform for both religious and social spheres. The first comprehensive study of the lives and roles of Daoist priestesses in Tang China, Gender, Power, and Talent restores women to the landscape of Chinese religion and literature and proposes new methodologies for the growing field of gender and religion.

Priesterin. --- Tangdynastie. --- Taoism --- Taoism. --- Taoismus. --- Taoist women --- Taoist women. --- History. --- China. --- Women, Taoist --- Women --- History --- S04/0630 --- S11/0710 --- S13A/0401 --- China: History--Sui and Tang: 589 - 907 --- China: Social sciences--Women and gender: general and before 1949 --- China: Religion--Popular religion: Taoism --- China

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This book focuses on the traditional Chinese ritual system of sacrifice to mountain and water spirits, a significant but largely overlooked sub-field of Chinse religious studies. This system mainly comprised the five sacred peaks, five strongholds, four seas, and four waterways, and was maintained for two thousand years in imperial China. As state ritual, it was constructed of by Confucian ritual culture, but in practice, it gradually interacted and integrated with various religious traditions, such as Daoism, Buddhism, and folk belief, especially in its local manifestation and dissemination. The eighteen great mountains and waters marked geographical and directional borders and territories modelled on the yin-yang and five-phase framework that helped shape Chinese people’s cosmographical understanding of the world. Together, they constituted a set of sacred spaces symbolizing the sanctioned political legitimacy of the imperium and functioning as the loca for communication with the divine, as well as the media between religion and its secular context, state ideology and local beliefs, or various ethnic groups. Through the discovery of a rich variety of historical sources, especially stele inscriptions preserved in the sacrificial temples, the contributors of the ten chapters in this volume examine the sacred peaks, strongholds, seas, and waterways respectively. While each of the chapters explores one or more perspectives, together they reveal the rich implications and ramification of the ritual system and present the first comprehensive study of this sub-field.

Religion & beliefs --- five sacred peaks --- five strongholds --- four seas --- four waterways --- state ritual system of sacrifice --- Chinese religion --- Chinese historical geography --- South Sea God --- state sacrificial ritual --- Zhang Jiuling --- Zhang Jiuzhang --- Zhang Jiugao --- Tang dynasty --- Buddhism --- Mount Yi --- Eastern Stronghold Temple --- state sacrifice --- Daoism --- Complete Perfection Daoism --- early Chinese poetry --- medieval Chinese poetry --- rivers --- fu (rhapsody) --- Milky Way --- noble titles --- mountain and water spirits --- Tang era --- Mount Yiwulü --- Northern Stronghold --- Beizhen --- ethnic minority in northern China --- legitimacy of political regime --- the Yangzi River --- water spirits --- official sacrifice --- codes of state ritual --- imperial power --- Tang China --- Sima Chengzhen --- shrines for the perfected lords of the five sacred peaks --- sacred river --- Jidu --- state ritual system --- political legitimacy --- religious practice --- imperial China --- the South Sea God --- sacrificial ritual --- national god --- folk god --- localization

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Gendering Chinese Religion marks the emergence of a subfield on women, gender, and religion in China studies. Ranging from the medieval period to the present day, this volume departs from the conventional and often male-centered categorization of Chinese religions into Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and popular religion. It makes two compelling arguments. First, Chinese women have deployed specific religious ideas and rituals to empower themselves in various social contexts. Second, gendered perceptions and representations of Chinese religions have been indispensable to the historical and contemporary construction of social and political power. The contributors use innovative ways of discovering and applying a rich variety of sources, many previously ignored by scholars. While each of the chapters in this interdisciplinary work represents a distinct perspective, together they form a coherent dialogue about the historical importance, intellectual possibilities, and methodological protocols of this new subfield.

Taoist women

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For more than a century scholars both inside and outside of China have undertaken the project of modernizing Confucianism, but few have been as successful or influential as Li Zehou (b. 1930). Since the 1950s, Li's extensive efforts in this regard have in turn exerted a profound influence on Chinese modernization and resulted in his becoming one of China's most prominent social critics. To transform Confucianism into a contemporary resource for positive change in China and elsewhere, Li has reinterpreted major ideas and concepts of classical Confucianism, including a rereading of the entire Analects, replete with his own philosophical speculations derived from other Chinese and Western traditions (most notably, the ideas of Kant and Marx), and developed an aesthetical theory that has proved especially far-reaching. Although the authors of this volume hail from East Asia, North America, and Europe and a wide variety of academic backgrounds and fields of study, they are unanimous in their appreciation of Li's contributions to not only an evolving Confucian philosophy, but also world philosophy. They view Li first and foremost as a sui generis thinker with broad global interests and not one who fits neatly into any one philosophical category, Chinese or Western. This is clearly reflected in the chapters included here, which are organized into three parts: Li Zehou and the Modernization of Confucianism, Li Zehou's Reconception of Confucian Philosophy, and Li Zehou's Aesthetical Theory and Confucianism.

Neo-Confucianism --- Neo-Confucianism. --- Philosophy, Confucian --- Philosophy, Confucian. --- Li, Zehou --- Li, Zehou. --- S12/0460 --- Confucianism --- Philosophy, Chinese --- China: Philosophy and Classics--Confucianism: since 1911 (e.g. Liang Shuming) --- Li, Tse-hou --- Lizehou --- Zehou, Li --- 李沢厚 --- 李泽厚 --- 李澤厚

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