Nourishing Life, Cultivation and Material Culture in the Late Ming: Some Thoughts on Zunsheng bajian (Eight Discourses on Respecting Life, 1591)

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Hsiu-fen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Late Ming

AbstractThis article sets out to explore the ideas and practices of yangsheng (nourishing life or health preservation) in the late Ming, i.e. late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century China. Yangsheng had long played a key role in the traditions of Chinese medicine, religions and court societies. Initially restricted to certain social classes and milieux, knowledge of yangsheng began to spread much more widely from the Song dynasty (960–1279) onwards, mostly owing to rapid social and economic change. In this context, the theories and practices of yangsheng attracted the attention and curiosity of many scholars. The popularisation of yangsheng peaked in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Numerous literary works, essay collections and household encyclopaedias for everyday use have passages and sections on yangsheng. They describe various ideas and techniques of yangsheng by means of regulating the body in daily life, involving sleeping, exercising, washing, eating, drinking, etc. Through a survey of the most famous late Ming work on yangsheng, Zunsheng bajian (1591), this article attempts to highlight how yangsheng came to dominate the scholarly lifestyle. It will give a clear picture of the ideas of a late Ming literatus on prolonging life and replenishing the body, while showing how these practices were inspired by the flourishing material culture of the late Ming as a whole.

The Japanese Village in the Seventeenth Century

1952 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Vital Function ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Physical Barriers ◽  
The Middle Ages

As in the Middle Ages in the West, so in Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868) men were fond of explaining the hierarchical society in which they lived by comparing it to an organism. Social classes, Confucian scholars said, were like parts of the body: each had a vital function to perform, but their functions were essentially different and unequal in value. In this scheme the peasants were second in importance only to the ruling military class. Just as the samurai officials were the brains that guided other organs, so the peasants were the feet that held the social body erect. They were the “basis of the country,” the valued producers whose labor sustained all else. But, as a class, they tended innately to backsliding and extravagance. Left alone they would consume more than their share of the social income, ape the manners and tastes of their betters, and even encroach upon the functions of other classes to the perilous neglect of their own. Only the lash of necessity and the sharp eye of the official could hold them to their disagreeable role. They had to be bound to the land; social distinctions had to be thrown up around them like so many physical barriers; and, to remove all temptation to indolence and luxury, they had to be left only enough of what they produced to let them continue producing.

scholarly journals Los espacios domésticos para la lectura y el atesoramiento de libros: una visión sobre la Zaragoza del barroco

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Juan Postiigo Vidal
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Residential Structures

The intention of this paper is to introduce the reader to the issue of space where one used to read and collect books within the residential structures in seventeenth-century Zaragoza. For this purpose, the author analyzes the inventories of movables, the essential source for studies into aspects of daily life and material culture.

Commercializing Medicine or Benefiting the People – The First Public Pharmacy in China

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asaf Goldschmidt
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Drug Markets ◽  
Relative Ease ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medicinal Drug

ArgumentIn this article I describe the establishment and early development of an institution that is unique to the history of Chinese medicine – the Imperial Pharmacy (惠 民 藥 局). Established in 1076 during the great reforms of the Song dynasty, the Imperial Pharmacy was a remarkable institution that played different political, social, economic, and medical roles over the years of its existence. Initially it was an economic institution designed to curb the power of plutocrats who were manipulating medicinal drug markets in their favor. A few decades later, I claim, the Imperial Pharmacy became a public-health-oriented institution focusing on selling readymade prescriptions in addition to simples. Various records, including local gazetteers and local maps, indicate that the Imperial Pharmacy expanded about a century after it was established to include dozens of branches throughout the empire. The Pharmacy's impact on the practices of physicians during these years is somewhat vague. It seems, however, to have posed an unwelcome addition to the medical scene, since it enabled uninitiated practitioners who relied on the Pharmacy's formulary to fit patients' symptoms to their own prescriptions and dispense medications with relative ease.

scholarly journals 張仲景醫學倫理學思想述評

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-81
Author(s):  
Jinhai YAN ◽  
Yanjie PENG ◽  
Yue YANG
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Traditional Chinese Medicine ◽  
Medical Practice ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Confucian Ethics ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Medical Academy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.東漢時代的張仲景是中醫歷史最重要的醫家之一，被稱之為中國的希波克拉底。其名著《傷寒雜病論》成為中華醫學最重要的經典。在該書的序言中，張仲景系統闡述了其醫學倫理思想和行醫原則。認為醫師行醫的前提是實踐對自我與族群生命的熱愛；行醫的橋樑是用人類理性去發現健康與疾病的規律及控制的手段；行醫的準則是對醫術的認真與創新的態度。就其醫學倫理思想而言，張仲景醫學倫理的基本框架與中國傳統的儒家思想相吻合，反映了醫儒同道的精神。其思想對宋代以後“醫學儒化”的風尚具有一定的影響。作者認為，張仲景醫學倫理學亦對構建當代中國生命倫理學的構建具有啟發意義。Zhang Zongjing (150-219), known as the Chinese Hippocrates, was one of the most eminent physicians in China during the Han Dynasty. In the Shanghailun, a famous treatise on cold pathogenic diseases, Zhang not only described past medicinal discoveries but provided regulations for contemporary medical practice. The Shanghailun is thus an important text for scholars of the history of traditional Chinese medicine. The treatise was privately transmitted with no public acknowledgment until the Jin Dynasty (265-420), when it was re-edited and rearranged. The treatise received more attention and became increasingly popular during the Song Dynasty, when a Confucian basis for medical practice was endorsed by the government. Zhang has since been regarded as a sage of Chinese medicine. The Shanghailun also became part of the compulsory curriculum at China’s Imperial Medical Academy. Zhang has a special status in the history of Chinese medicine due to his efforts to create an orthodox system of medical practice in line with the Confucian (Ru) tradition.In this paper, Zhang Zongjing’s major ideas on medical ethics and practice are explored. The author illustrates the critical role played by Zhang’s approach to medicine in the later Confucianization of medicine during the Song Dynasty, which in turn created the ideal of the traditional Confucian physician. The author also compares the ethical views of Zhang Zongjing with those of Sun Simiao (541-682), another key figure in the history of traditional Chinese medicine, who combined Confucian ethics with the moral teachings of Daoism and Buddhism.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 237 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

scholarly journals A Gift from the Buddhist Monastery: The Role of Buddhist Medical Practices in the Assimilation of the Opium Poppy in Chinese Medicine during the Song Dynasty (960–1279)

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-493
Author(s):  
Jose A. Canton-Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Medical Application ◽  
Opium Poppy ◽  
Medical Practices ◽  
Materia Medica ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Southern Song ◽  
Medical Treatises

This paper aims to critically appraise the incorporation of opium poppy into medical practice in Song-dynasty China. By analysing materia medica and formularies, along with non-medical sources from the Song period, this study sheds light on the role of Chinese Buddhist monasteries in the process of incorporation of foreign plants into Chinese medicine. It argues that Buddhist monasteries played a significant role in the evolution of the use of opium poppy in Song dynasty medicine. This is because the consumption practices in Buddhist monasteries inspired substantial changes in the medical application of the flower during the Southern Song dynasty. While, at the beginning of Song dynasty, court scholars incorporated opium poppy into official materia medica in order to treat disorders such as huangdan  and xiaoke, as well as cinnabar poisoning, this study of the later Song medical treatises shows how opium poppy was repurposed to treat symptoms such as diarrhoea, coughing and spasms. Such a shift in the medical use of the poppy occurred after Chinese literati and doctors became acquainted with the role of the flower in the diet and medical practices of Buddhist monks across China. Therefore, the case study of the medical application of opium poppy during the Song dynasty provides us with insights into how the spread of certain practices in Buddhist monasteries might have contributed to the change in both professional medical practices and daily-life healthcare in local communities in that period.

Funeral Epitaph of Zhao Rugua (1170-1231), the Author of Zhufan zhi (“Records of Foreign Peoples”; 1225). Structural-Descriptive and Archaelogical Analysis of the Source

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-95
Author(s):  
Ivan Alexeevich Zaitsev ◽  
Ilia Sergeevich Kolnin
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Textual Source ◽  
Medieval China ◽  
Geographical Source ◽  
The Creation

The present work is a continuation of two previously published articles in which the biography of Zhao Rugua 趙汝适 (1170-1231), the author of Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志 (Records of Foreign Peoples; 1225) an important historical geographical source about the foreign lands during the Song dynasty (960-1279), was studied through the usage of the text of his funeral epitaph as well as other historical sources. They also included the translation of the text of inscription into Russian and English [1; 2]. The goal of this article is to deepen the study of Zhao Ruguas funeral epitaph by researching the material features of the source, analyzing the structure of the text and comparing it with other similar sources of Medieval China. In contrast with the previous works the inscription in this article is analyzed both as a textual source and as an object of material culture which enables to understand the context of the creation of the source as well as the extent of detalization of the deceaseds biography.

Exorcising the Body Politic

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew King
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Therapeutic Intervention ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
Military Leader ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Eastern Tibet

This study examines thirteenth to twentieth century Tibetan and Mongolian monastic memorializations of the bodily violence enacted upon Köten Ejen at the center of the “Buddhist conversion of the Mongols.” Koten Ejen (Tib. Lha sras go tan rgyal po, 1206–1251) was Chinggis Khan’s grandson and a military leader involved in Mongol campaigns against the Song Dynasty and against Buddhist monasteries in eastern Tibet. In 1240, Koten famously summoned the Central Tibetan Buddhist polymath Sakya Pandita, by then already an old man, to his court at Liangzhou. Examining Tibetan and Mongolian accounts about their meeting from the last seven centuries, this study shows that it was neither compelling philosophy nor some turn of faith that converted the Mongols. It was, rather, Sakya Pandita’s violent therapeutic intervention into the space of Koten’s ill body that wrenched the Mongol body politic into the Dharmic fold.

Touchy-Feely History: The ‘Stuff’ of American Culture

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-18
Author(s):  
Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
New Research

This state of the field essay examines recent trends in American Cultural History, focusing on music, race and ethnicity, material culture, and the body. Expanding on key themes in articles featured in the special issue of Cultural History, the essay draws linkages to other important literatures. The essay argues for more a more serious consideration of the products within popular culture, less as a reflection of social or economic trends, rather for their own historical significance. While the essay examines some classic texts, more emphasis is on work published within the last decade. Here, interdisciplinary methods are stressed, as are new research perspectives developing by non-western historians.

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