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Full-Text Articles in Asian History
Living In This World: A Social History Of Buddhist Monks And Nuns In Nineteenth-Century Western China, Gilbert Zhe Chen
Living In This World: A Social History Of Buddhist Monks And Nuns In Nineteenth-Century Western China, Gilbert Zhe Chen
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation relies on about 600 legal cases from the Ba County Archive that survive from the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century to investigate the social life of ordinary Buddhist monks and nuns. Although they played a crucial in maintaining the survival and proper functioning of Buddhism at the local level, they have remained significantly understudied. This dissertation adopts a bottom-up approach to investigate ordinary monastics’ involvement in various socioeconomic activities. By shifting the analytical focus from elite monks to their more mundane counterparts, this study illuminates how deeply ordinary monastics were embedded in their communities. The shift also …
The Afterlife Of Corpses: A Social History Of Unburied Dead Bodies In Qing China (1644-1911), Joohee Suh
The Afterlife Of Corpses: A Social History Of Unburied Dead Bodies In Qing China (1644-1911), Joohee Suh
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation began with the reading of numerous Qing-dynasty records pertaining to dead bodies that remained on the ground without proper burial. These bodies were not necessarily the victims of extraordinary events such as wars or natural disasters, but the remains of ordinary people whose families failed to arrange a burial site. A wide range of historical materials recorded the presence of these bodies, such as commentaries and critiques on popular burial customs written by the imperial government and literati elites, and Qing popular tales where these bodies were described as man-hunting zombies (jiangshi 僵屍). These sources demonstrate unburied dead …
Ming China As A Gunpowder Empire: Military Technology, Politics, And Fiscal Administration, 1350-1620, Weicong Duan
Ming China As A Gunpowder Empire: Military Technology, Politics, And Fiscal Administration, 1350-1620, Weicong Duan
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation explores the transformation of Ming China in the gunpowder age. Focusing on the relation between military technology, politics, and fiscal administration, it closely traces the change of the Ming state in association with the gunpowder revolution. Two aspects of institutional change receive special attention. The first aspect is the formation of an absolute authority in the Ming period, a development exhibiting many parallels with the absolute monarchies of other major gunpowder states in Europe and the Islamic world. The second is the modification of the Confucian bureaucratic government. The revolutions in gunpowder technology had a complex impact on …
Native Roots And Foreign Grafts: The Spiritual Quest Of Uchimura Kanzō, Christopher Andrew Born
Native Roots And Foreign Grafts: The Spiritual Quest Of Uchimura Kanzō, Christopher Andrew Born
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Between 1875 and 1890, Japanese academics, writers, legal experts, and intellectuals discussed and debated a host of new ideas and programs in the rapidly-expanding national media. Of great consequence were the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education and the Meiji Constitution. The first sought to establish a strong nativist basis for a Japanese identity under the aegis of an imperial hegemon. The second sought to create a structure for modern citizenship based on Western notions of law and social contract. These seemingly antithetical documents came to symbolize the problematical status of the individual in Meiji Japan. They would become the touchstone …