Animals through Chinese history : earliest times to 1911 / edited by Roel Sterckx, University of Cambridge, Martina Siebert, Berlin State Library, Dagmar Schäfer, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Knowing animals in Chinese history: an introduction / Dagmar Schäfer, Martina Siebert and Roel Sterckx -- 1. Shang sacrificial animals : material documents and images / Adam C. Schwartz -- 2. Animal to edible : the ritualization of animals in early China / Roel Sterckx -- 3. Noble creatures : filial and righteous animals in early medieval Confucian thought / Keith N. Knapp -- 4. Walking by itself : the singular history of the Chinese cat / Timothy H. Barrett and Mark Strange -- 5. Bees in China : a brief cultural history / David Pattinson -- 6. Where did the animals go? : presence and absence of livestock in Chinese agricultural treatises / Francesca Bray -- 7. Animals as text : producing and consuming 'text-animals' / Martina Siebert -- 8. Great plans : Song dynastic (960-1279) institutions for human and veterinary healthcare / Dagmar Schäfer and Han Yi -- 9. Animals in nineteeth-centry eschatological discourse / Vincent Goossaert -- 10. Reconsidering the boundaries : multicultural and multilingual perspectives on the care and management of the emperors' horses in the Qing / Sare Aricanli -- 11. Animals as wonders : writing commentaries on monthly ordinances in Qing China / Zheng Xinxian -- 12. Reforming the humble pig : pigs, pork and contemporary China / Mindi Schneider.

This volume opens a door into the rich history of animals in China. As environmental historians turn their attention to expanded chronologies of natural change, something new can be said about human history through animals and about the globally diverse cultural and historical dynamics that have led to perceptions of animals as wild or cultures as civilized. This innovative collection of essays spanning Chinese history reveals how relations between past and present, lived and literary reality, have been central to how information about animals and the natural world has been processed and evaluated in China. Drawing on an extensive array of primary sources, ranging from ritual texts to poetry to veterinary science, this volume explores developments in the human-animal relationship through Chinese history and the ways in which the Chinese have thought about the world with and through animals. This title is also available as Open Access.

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Knowing "things and affairs" in premodern China -- Nature, crafts, and knowing -- Private affairs -- The Ming dynasty and the Song family -- Childhood and education -- Driving forces: the appointment of Chen Qixin -- Song's writing campaign -- Affairs of honor -- Knowledge in terms of qi: universal rulings and rationality -- The truth in heaven and the order of qi -- The power of heaven: omens and eclipses -- Systems of value: the sage-kings, the authority of the past, and man's role -- The knowledge in crafts -- Public affairs -- Crafts and the Ming state -- Man's nature (xing) and talents -- Abilities and education -- Social permeability and the commercialization of society: the merchant -- Customs and habits -- Written affairs -- Rhetoric of knowledge inquiry: texts and experience -- Images, technology and argument -- Observing the nature of qi: theory and practice in knowledge construction -- The complexity of qi transformations: composites and compositions of qi -- Formulating the transformation -- Reading the signature of yin-yang qi in gas, salt, wind, and rain -- Growth and decay: wood, corpses, and the proportional relation of yin and yang -- Glitches in the matrix of qi: the concepts of ashes and particles -- Acoustics -- An anatomy of sound -- The human voice -- Volume and velocity -- Resonance and harmony -- Conclusion. leaving the theater -- Epilogue. aftermath -- By virtue of friendship: literary sponsorship -- By virtue of position: outside and opposition -- By virtue of loyalty: moral obligations -- An artifact in transmission: The editions of the Works of heaven -- Writing about practical knowledge in the Chinese literati world -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix 1. Chinese dynasties and various rulers -- Appendix 2. Song Yingxing curriculum vitae -- Appendix 3. Editions of the Tiangong kaiwu.

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Cultures of knowledge : technology in Chinese history / edited by Dagmar Schäfer.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [349]-385) and index.

Introduction / Dagmar Schäfer -- Political, social and economic factors affecting the transmission of knowledge in early modern China / William T. Rowe -- Silken strands: making technology work in China / Dagmar Schäfer -- Technological transmission in China and Europe: a comparative view / Pamela O. Long -- Picturing Yu controlling the flood: technology, ecology, and emperorship in Northern Song China / Heping Liu -- Sympathetic relations: foreign craftsmen at the Qing court / Luo Wenhua -- Symbolic technology politics / Wolfgang Lèfevre -- Ceramics for local and global markets: Jingdezhen's agora of technologies / Anne Gerritsen -- Temples, technology, and material culture in Shouzhou, Anhui / Susan Naquin -- Framing European technology in seventeenth-century China: rhetorical strategies in Jesuit paratexts / Joachim Kurtz -- The knowledge agora: the role of the officials / Matteo Valleriani -- Making technology history / Martina Siebert -- The biographer's view of craftsmanship / Martin Hofmann -- Chinese literati and the transmission of technological knowledge: the case of agriculture / Francesca Bray -- Two cultures speaking with one voice? Invention, ingenuity, and agricultural innovation in pre-industrial European and Chinese discourse / Marcus Popplow.

Local access dig.pdf [Schafer-Cultures of knowledge.pdf]

Looking at knowledge transmission as a cultural feature, this book isolates and examines the individual factors that affect knowledge in the making and created uniquely Chinese cultures of knowledge. The volume is organized into four sections: Internode, Imperial Court, Agora, and Scholarly Arts. Each has a theoretical introduction, followed by two core contributions from experts in Chinese history. The section concludes with a ‘reflection’ by a historian of Western Technology who scrutinizes each sphere and identifies the points that reflect universal technological experience. The combination of broadly sketched theoretical introductions and detailed core contributions provides an unparalleled insight into pre-modern Chinese history from the Song to early Qing dynasty, revealing Chinese attitudes towards innovation and invention.

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Plurilingualism in traditional Eurasian scholarship : thinking in many tongues / edited by Glenn W. Most, Dagmar Schäfer, Mårten Söderblom Saarela.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

List of Illustrations xi

Notes on Contributors xiii

Introduction 1

Glenn W. Most, Dagmar Schäfer, and Michele Loporcaro

Part 1 Language Diversity

1.1 Introduction 19

Glenn W. Most

1.2 The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) 26

Joel S. Baden

1.3 A 5th-Century bce Greek Historian Discusses the Pelasgians and the

Origins of the Greek Language

Herodotus, Histories 33

Filippomaria Pontani

1.4 Language Arose from Spontaneous Feelings and Reactions to Nature

The Doctrine of Epicurus (4th Century bce) and Lucretius (1st Century

bce) 41

Filippomaria Pontani

1.5 Language Diversity as a Result of Social Interaction

Xunzi’s View on Plurilingualism in 3rd-Century bce China 52

Dagmar Schäfer

1.6 Language Is a Collective Product of Mankind

Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History (1st Century bce) 67

Filippomaria Pontani

vi contents

1.7 A 1st-Century bce/ce Greek Geographer Discusses What a “Barbarian”

Language Is in Terms of Homer and the Carians

Strabo, Geography 73

Filippomaria Pontani

1.8 Plurilingualism in China and Inner Asia in the 12th Century ce

“Khitan Reciting Poetry” 83

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Part 2 Etymology

2.1 Introduction 93

Glenn W. Most, Dagmar Schäfer, and Michele Loporcaro

2.2 An Early Post-Vedic Treatise on the Etymological Explanation of Words

Yāska, Etymology 107

Johannes Bronkhorst

2.3 A 4th-Century bce Greek Philosophical Analysis of the Methods and

Limits of Etymology

Plato, Cratylus 119

Glenn W. Most

2.4 A 1st-Century bce Roman Polymath’s Explanation of the Mysteries of

Latin

Varro, On the Latin Language 134

Glenn W. Most and Michele Loporcaro

2.5 A 1st-Century ce Stoic Etymological and Allegorical Explanation of

Greek Gods

Cornutus, Compendium of Greek Theology 155

Glenn W. Most

2.6 Zheng Xuan and Commentarial Etymology (2nd Century ce) 168

Dagmar Schäfer

2.7 Etymology in the Most Important Reference Encyclopedia of Late

Antiquity (ca. 600 ce)

Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 182

Michele Loporcaro and Glenn W. Most

2.8 Buddhist Etymologies from First-Millennium India and China

Works by Vasubandhu, Sthiramati, and Paramārtha 200

Roy Tzohar

2.9 An Influential Latin Dictionary and Its Etymologies (12th Century ce) in

the Linguistic Landscape of Medieval Europe

Hugutio of Pisa’s Derivationes 212

Michele Loporcaro

Part 3 Lexicography

3.1 Introduction 229

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

3.2 Lexicality and Lexicons from Mesopotamia 240

Markham J. Geller

3.3 Translating Oriental Words into Greek

A Papyrus Glossary from the 1st Century ce 245

Filippomaria Pontani

3.4 The Making of Monolingual Dictionaries

The Prefaces to the Lexica of Hesychius (6th Century ce) and Photius (9th

Century ce) 252

Filippomaria Pontani

3.5 A 10th-Century ce Byzantine Encyclopedia and Lexicon

Suda, Letter Sigma 264

Glenn W. Most

3.6 A Dictionary of the Imperial Capital

Shen Qiliang’s Da Qing quanshu (1683) 274

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Part 4 Translation

4.1 Introduction 287

Dagmar Schäfer and Markham J. Geller

4.2 Translators of Sumerian

The Unsung Heroes of Babylonian Scholarship 300

Markham J. Geller

4.3 The Earliest and Most Complete Story of the Translation of the

Pentateuch into Greek (2nd Century bce)

The Letter of Aristeas 317

Benjamin G. Wright iii

4.4 “Faithful” and “Unfaithful” Translations

The Greco-Latin Tradition in Jerome’s Letter to Pammachius

(395/396 ce) 329

Filippomaria Pontani

4.5 A 4th-Century ce Buddhist Note on Sanskrit-Chinese Translation

Dao’an’s Preface to the Abridgement of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā

Sūtra 339

Bill M. Mak

4.6 An 8th-Century ce Indian Astronomical Treatise in Chinese

The Nine Seizers Canon by Qutan Xida 352

Bill M. Mak

4.7 Two 8th-Century ce Recensions of Amoghavajra’s Buddhist Astral

Compendium

Treatise on Lunar Mansions and Planets 363

Bill M. Mak

4.8 Arabic and Arabo-Latin Translations of Euclid’s Elements 376

Sonja Brentjes

Part 5 Writing Systems

5.1 Introduction 391

Dagmar Schäfer, Markham J. Geller, and Glenn W. Most

5.2 A 4th-Century bce Greek Philosophical Myth about the Egyptian

Origins of Writing

Plato, Phaedrus 406

Glenn W. Most

5.3 A Buddhist Mahāyāna Account of the Origin of Language

The Descent into Laṅkā Scripture (Laṅkāvatārasūtra) 416

Roy Tzohar

5.4 Stories of Origin

Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist 425

Sonja Brentjes

5.5 Inventing or Adapting Scripts in Inner Asia

The Jin and Yuan Histories and the Early Manchu Veritable Records

Juxtaposed (1340s–1630s) 444

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

5.6 An Essay on the Use of Chinese and Korean Language in Late 18th-

Century ce Chosŏn

Yu Tŭkkong, “Hyang’ŏ pan, Hwaŏ pan” 454

Mårten Söderblom Saarela

Index of Subjects 463

Index of Names 476

Index of Sources 481

"Was plurilingualism the exception or the norm in traditional Eurasian scholarship? This volume presents a selection of primary sources-in many cases translated into English for the first time-with introductions that provide fascinating historical materials for challenging notions of the ways in which traditional Eurasian scholars dealt with plurilingualism and monolingualism. Comparative in approach, global in scope, and historical in orientation, it engages with the growing discussion of plurilingualism and focuses on fundamental scholarly practices in various premodern and early modern societies-Chinese, Indian, Mesopotamian, Jewish, Islamic, Ancient Greek, and Roman-asking how these were conceived by the agents themselves. The volume will be an indispensable resource for courses on these subjects and on the history of scholarship and reflection on language throughout the world"-- Provided by publisher.

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