Guo Xi on Painting the Invisible Gaze of the Dao

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-306
Author(s):  
David Chai
Keyword(s):  
Song Dynasty ◽  
First Person ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Aesthetics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Invisible

Abstract For the Song dynasty painter and theorist Guo Xi, Daoism runs like veins through his Lofty Appeal of Forests and Streams, helping it become one of the greatest works of landscape painting theory in China. This essay explores the influence Laozi and Zhuangzi had on Guo Xi's thought, paying particular attention to the latter's implementation of spirit, nature, and incompleteness. Guo Xi succeeded in giving these Daoist themes an aesthetic significance that had yet to be fully realized by his predecessors, while expounding them in a manner that remained faithful to the texts from which they were drawn. While Guo Xi was not the first person in China to employ the principles of Daoist philosophy in their discourse on landscape painting, his ability to synthesize them into a cohesive representation of the invisible gaze of the Dao led to his becoming one of the most eminent painters and aesthetic theorists in the history of Chinese aesthetics.

scholarly journals Silent Accord: Qi 契 as a Metaphor for Enlightenment and Transmission in Chan Buddhist Discourse

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 279
Author(s):  
Aleksi Järvelä ◽  
Tero Tähtinen
Keyword(s):  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Tang Dynasty ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
History Of

In this paper, we explore the historical background and the semantic underpinnings of a central, if marginally treated, metaphor of enlightenment and transmission in Chan discourse, “silent accord” 默契. It features centrally in Essentials of the Transmission of Mind 傳心法要, a text that gathers the teachings of Chan master Huangbo Xiyun (d. ca. 850), a major Tang dynasty figure. “Silent accord” is related to the concept of mind-to-mind transmission, which lies at the very core of Chan Buddhist self-understanding. However, Chan historiography has shown that this self-understanding was partially a product of the Song dynasty lineage records, historically retroactive syncretic constructs produced by monks and literati as efforts towards doctrinal and political recognition and orthodoxy. There are thus lacunae in the history of Chan thought opened up by the retrospective fictions of Song dynasty, and a lack of reliable, dateable documents from the preceding Tang dynasty era, possibly fraught with later additions. We situate the metaphor “silent accord” in the history of Chan thought by searching for its origins, mapping its functions in Chan literature, arguing for its influence and thereby its role in helping to bridge the 9th century gap.

Shitao and the Enlightening Experience of Painting

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
David Chai ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Classical Approach ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
Old Masters ◽  
Chinese Landscape Painting

Having reached its zenith in the Song dynasty, Chinese landscape painting in the dynasties that followed became highly formulaic as artists simply copied the old masters to perfect their skills. This orthodox approach was not accepted by everyone however; some painters criticized it, arguing it was better to learn the ideas behind the techniques of the old masters than to blindly copy them. Shitao was one such critic and his Manual on Painting exemplifies his desire to disassociate himself from the classical approach to painting. This paper will investigate the three major themes of Shitao’s text—the holistic brushstroke, brush and ink, and the method of no-method—in order to show how they shaped his view of landscape painting and how said paintings subsequently embodied them. Unlike the near-scientific approach taken by his contemporaries and predecessors, Shitao paints to capture the unifying simplicity of nature, an onto-aesthetic experience that is profoundly enlightening.

History of Luminescence from Ancient to Modern Times

2015 ◽  
Vol 361 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hardev Singh Virk
Keyword(s):  
Solid State ◽  
Chinese Text ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Luminescent Material ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Aurora Borealis ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
History Of

Luminescent phenomena have fascinated mankind since the earliest times. The light from the aurora borealis, glow worms, luminescent wood, rotting fish and meat are all examples of naturally occurring luminescence. E. Newton Harvey’s 770 page volume “A History of Luminescence: From the Earliest Times until 1900” is a classic which narrates interesting stories from ancient cultures to modern times. The earliest written account of a solid state luminescent material comes from a Chinese text published in the Song dynasty (960–1279 A.D.). The Buddhist sacred jewel, called "hashi-no-tama" in Japan, is alleged to be self-luminous and to shed a brilliant light on its surroundings. In the Svetasvatara Upanishad, probably recorded at some time before the sixth century BC, we find a mention of fire-flies as one of the manifestations of Brahma.

scholarly journals The Position of the Futian Calendar on the History of East-West Intercourse of Astronomy

1987 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 135-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shigeru Nakayama
Keyword(s):  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Scholar ◽  
Buddhist Monk ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Fundamental Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
East West

It is proved that the Futian calendar, a non-official one compiled in the Jianzhong reign period (780-783) in China, was brought to Japan in 957 by a Buddhist monk and was employed as the basis of horoscopes by the Buddhist school of astrology (Memo 1964). It was also used in competition with the official Chinese xuanming calendar for the usual functions demanded of a Chinese type lunisolar ephemerides, such as eclipse predictions. According to the view of the Song Dynasty Chinese scholar Wang Yinglin that the Futian calendar was “originally an Indian method of astronomical calculation” but Kiyosi Yabuuti has commented that Wang Yinglin’s appraisal of the Futian calendar is solely based on a resemblance in form as it copied the trivial point of taking its epoch as the Jiuzhi calendar according to Indian astronomical methods and does not display a fundamental understanding of the Indian calendar (Yabuuti 1944).

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.

Women Rulers in Imperial China

NAN Nü ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith McMahon
Keyword(s):  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Tang Dynasty ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
Han Dynasty ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Women Rulers ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Tang Dynasty ◽  
Imperial China

“Women Rulers in Imperial China”is about the history and characteristics of rule by women in China from the Han dynasty to the Qing, especially focusing on the Tang dynasty ruler Wu Zetian (625-705) and the Song dynasty Empress Liu. The usual reason that allowed a woman to rule was the illness, incapacity, or death of her emperor-husband and the extreme youth of his son the successor. In such situations, the precedent was for a woman to govern temporarily as regent and, when the heir apparent became old enough, hand power to him. But many women ruled without being recognized as regent, and many did not hand power to the son once he was old enough, or even if they did, still continued to exert power. In the most extreme case, Wu Zetian declared herself emperor of her own dynasty. She was the climax of the long history of women rulers. Women after her avoided being compared to her but retained many of her methods of legitimization, such as the patronage of art and religion, the use of cosmic titles and vocabulary, and occasional gestures of impersonating a male emperor. When women ruled, it was an in-between time when notions and language about something that was not supposed to be nevertheless took shape and tested the limits of what could be made acceptable.

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.

2. Geology: the early days

2018 ◽  
pp. 9-23
Author(s):  
Jan Zalasiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Geological Time Scale ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Georges Cuvier ◽  
History Of ◽  
Vedic Period

‘Geology: the early days’ provides a brief history of ideas on the Earth and its processes. Among the earliest recorded scientific speculations on the Earth were those of the ancient Greeks, such as Anaximander of Miletus and Pythagoras. Other cultures that independently developed ideas include the Vedic Period of India (c.1300–300 bc) and the Song Dynasty of China (960–1279 ad). Huge strides were made during the Enlightenment period, and the key contributions of figures such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, James Hutton, Baron Georges Cuvier, Mary Anning, William Buckland, Charles Lyell, Abraham Gottlob Werner, and Adam Sedgwick are discussed, with the creation of the Geological Time Scale.

Guanfu Salt Farm and Hong Kong in the Song Dynasty (960-1279)

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecile Kung
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Keyword Search ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
Systematic Compilation ◽  
Different Sources

Purpose This paper aims to collect and compile the historical data of Guanfu Salt Farm, officially built by the Song Dynasty (960–1279) within modern Hong Kong territories, to reconstruct its history for the reflection of Hong Kong society of the time. Design/methodology/approach This paper is largely based on identification and analysis of historical documents, including keyword search on electronic databases and verification with the original sources, with reference to archaeological findings when necessary. Findings This paper reconstructs the history of Guanfu Salt Farm based on documentary sources with reference to archaeological findings. English translation of Chinese sources is also provided when necessary. Originality/value There has been an absence of systematic compilation of historical data of Hong Kong during the Song Dynasty, which are limited in quantity and scattered across different sources. This paper seeks to fill the vacuum of knowledge about pre-colonial Hong Kong, with a more comprehensive reconstruction of the history of Guanfu Salt Farm.

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