Oxford University Press, USA
Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500-1700
Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500-1700
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In this illuminating study of a vital but long overlooked aspect of Chinese religious life, Jimmy Yu reveals that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, self-inflicted violence was an essential and sanctioned part of Chinese culture. He examines a wide range of practices, including blood
writing, filial body-slicing, chastity mutilations and suicides, ritual exposure, and self-immolation, arguing that each practice was public, scripted, and a signal of cultural expectations. Individuals engaged in acts of self-inflicted violence to exercise power and to affect society, by
articulating moral values, reinstituting order, forging new social relations, and protecting against the threat of moral ambiguity. Self-inflicted violence was intelligible both to the person doing the act and to those who viewed and interpreted it, regardless of the various religions of the period:
Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and other religions. This book is a groundbreaking contribution to scholarship on bodily practices in late imperial China, challenging preconceived ideas about analytic categories of religion, culture, and ritual in the study of Chinese religions.
Author: Jimmy Yu
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 04/27/2012
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780199844906
writing, filial body-slicing, chastity mutilations and suicides, ritual exposure, and self-immolation, arguing that each practice was public, scripted, and a signal of cultural expectations. Individuals engaged in acts of self-inflicted violence to exercise power and to affect society, by
articulating moral values, reinstituting order, forging new social relations, and protecting against the threat of moral ambiguity. Self-inflicted violence was intelligible both to the person doing the act and to those who viewed and interpreted it, regardless of the various religions of the period:
Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and other religions. This book is a groundbreaking contribution to scholarship on bodily practices in late imperial China, challenging preconceived ideas about analytic categories of religion, culture, and ritual in the study of Chinese religions.
Author: Jimmy Yu
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 04/27/2012
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780199844906
About the Author
Jimmy Yu is the Sheng Yen Assistant Professor of Chinese Buddhist Studies at Florida State University and a grant committee advisor of the Sheng Yen Education Foundation Grant for Ph.D. Dissertation Research on Modern Chinese Buddhism. He teaches courses in East Asian religious traditions, specializing in Chinese Buddhism and late imperial Chinese cultural history.
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