Handbook of the History of Religions in China I: From the Beginnings Until the Period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Description

This book is part of an initiative in cooperation with renowned Chinese publishers to make fundamental, formative, and influential Chinese thinkers available to a western readership, providing absorbing insights into Chinese reflections of late, and offering a chance to grasp today’s China. In their influential book Handbook of the History of Religions in China, Zhongjian Mu and Jian Zhan present a panorama of the religions existing in China through time. In their fascinating History, they delineate the emergence and development of Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, and Christianity and explore the roles they played in Chinese society and the interrelations between them. In China, also due to the encompassing Confucian idea of “living together harmoniously while maintaining differences,” religions―including newly arrived ones―came closer together than anywhere else in the world and reached a unique level of peaceful societal coexistence. Despite many frictions and conflicts, communication and reconciliation were indisputably predomi­nant in China throughout history. Buddhism was peacefully introduced into China and, later on, a harmonious, symbiotic syncretism of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism developed―an exemplary process of how a diverse set of different religions can complement each other and contribute to a better life. FrontCover Overall Description About the authors About the translator Contents Major Dynasties in Chinese History Author’s Words Introduction Chapter One Primitive Religions Chapter Two Religions in the Three Archaic Dynasties and the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Eras Chapter Three Religions in the Qin and Han Dynasties: The Codification and Early Growth of Buddhism and Daoism Chapter Four Religions in Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern Dynasties Chapter Five Religions in Sui and Tang Dynasties and the Periods of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms: Prosperity and Pluralism