| Description |
1 online resource (xxviii, 607 pages) : illustrations. |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Series |
Daoist classics ; 2
|
|
Daoist classics ; 2.
|
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 553-579) and index. |
| Summary |
In late classical and early medieval China, ascetics strove to become transcendents--deathless beings with supernormal powers. Practitioners developed dietetic, alchemical, meditative, gymnastic, sexual, and medicinal disciplines (some of which are still practiced today) to perfect themselves and thus transcend death. Narratives of their achievements circulated widely. Ge Hong (283-343 c.e.) collected and preserved many of their stories in his Traditions of Divine Transcendents, affording us a window onto this extraordinary response to human mortality. Robert Ford Campany's groundbreaking and carefully researched text offers the first complete, critical translation and commentary for this important Chinese religious work, at the same time establishing a method for reconstructing lost texts from medieval China. Clear, exacting, and annotated, the translation comprises over a hundred lively, engaging narratives of individuals deemed to have fought death and won. Additionally, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth systematically introduces the Chinese quest for transcendence, illuminating a poorly understood tradition that was an important source of Daoist religion and a major social, cultural, and religious phenomenon in its own right. |
| Contents |
ILLUSTRATIONS; FOREWORD; PREFACE; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS; Opening; Ge Hong and the Writing of Traditions of Divine Transcendents; Traditions as Hagiography; Text-Critical Matters; Conventions; Group A: Earliest-Attested Fragments; Group B: Early-Attested Hagiographies; Group B: Early-Attested Fragments; Group C: Later-Attested Hagiographies; On the Source Texts and the Temporal Differentiation of Passages; Items Attributed to Shenxian zhuan Excluded from This Translation; BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Ge, Hong, 284-364. Shen xian zhuan.
|
|
Ge, Hong, 284-364. Shen xian zhuan. English. |
|
Shen xian zhuan (Ge, Hong) |
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Taoists -- China -- Biography.
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Taoists. |
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China. |
| Genre/Form |
Biographies.
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Electronic books.
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Biographies.
|
| Added Author |
Ge, Hong, 284-364.
Shen xian zhuan. English.
|
| Other Form: |
Print version: Campany, Robert Ford, 1959- To live as long as heaven and earth. Berkeley : University of California Press, ©2002 0520230345 (DLC) 2001027086 (OCoLC)45909214 |
| ISBN |
9780520927605 (electronic book) |
|
0520927605 (electronic book) |
|
1417523875 (electronic book) |
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9781417523870 (electronic book) |
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1597349593 |
|
9781597349598 |
|
9780520230347 |
|
0520230345 |
|
