Overview

The first concerted attempt to analyze how the histories Shiji and Hanshu described the technical arts as they were applied in vital areas of the administration of pre-Han and Han China. While cultural literacy in early China was grounded in learning the Classics, basic competence in official life was generally predicated on acquiring several forms of technical knowledge. Recent archaeological finds have brought renewed attention to the use of technical manuals and mantic techniques within a huge range of discrete contexts, pushing historians to move beyond the generalities offered by past scholarship. To explore these uses, Technical Arts in the Han Histories delves deeply into the rarely studied ""Treatises"" and ""Tables"" compiled for the first two standard histories, the Shiji (Historical Records) and Hanshu (History of Han), important supplements to the better-known biographical chapters, and models for the inclusion of technical subjects in the twenty-three later ""Standard Histories"" of imperial China. Indeed, for a great many aspects of life in early imperial society, they constitute our best primary sources for understanding complex realities and perceptions. The essays in this volume seek to explain how different social groups thought of, disseminated, and withheld technical knowledge relating to the body, body politic, and cosmos, in the process of detailing the preoccupations of successive courts from Qin through Eastern Han in administering the localities, the frontier zones, and their numerous subjects (at the time, roughly one-quarter of the world's population).

Full Product Details

Author:   Mark Csikszentmihalyi ,  Michael Nylan
Publisher:   State University of New York Press
Imprint:   State University of New York Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.517kg
ISBN:  

9781438485423

ISBN 10:   1438485425
Pages:   426
Publication Date:   02 July 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction Michael Nylan 戴梅可 and Mark Csikszentmihalyi 齊思敏 1. Land Tenure and the Decline of Imperial Government in Eastern Han Michael Loewe 魯惟一 2. Water Control and Policy-Making in the Shiji and Hanshu Luke Habberstad 何祿凱 3. The Hanshu Geographic Treatise on the Eastern Capital Lee Chi-hsiang 李紀祥 4. Celestial Signs in Three Historical Treatises Jesse J. Chapman 柴傑思 5. On Hanshu ""Wuxing zhi"" 五行志 and Ban Gu's Project Michael Nylan 戴梅可 6. Western Han Sacrifices to Taiyi Tian Tian 田天 7. Writing Abstractly in Mathematical Texts from Early Imperial China Karine Chemla 林力娜 8. Commentarial Episodes in Early Chinese Medicine: An Experiment in Decentering the Standard Histories Miranda Brown 董慕達 9. Narratives of Decline and Fragmentation, and the Hanshu Bibliographic Taxonomies of Technical Arts Mark Csikszentmihalyi 齊思敏 and Zheng Yifan 鄭伊凡 Contributors Index

Reviews

Author Information

Mark Csikszentmihalyi is Marjorie Meyer Eliaser Chair of International Studies and Professor of Chinese at the University of California at Berkeley. His books include Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China. Michael Nylan is Sather Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley. In addition to her works devoted to Han history, she is the translator of several classics of early China, including The Art of War, ascribed to Sunzi, and Yang Xiong's Exemplary Figures and Canon of Supreme Mystery.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions