Compiled by scholars at the court of Liu An, king of Huainan, in the second century B.C.E, "The Huainanzi" is a tightly organized, sophisticated articulation of Western Han philosophy and statecraft. Outlining "all that a modern monarch needs to know," the text emphasizes rigorous self-cultivation and mental discipline, brilliantly synthesizing for readers past and present the full spectrum of early Chinese thought.

"The Huainanzi" locates the key to successful rule in a balance of broad knowledge, diligent application, and the penetrating wisdom of a sage. It is a unique and creative synthesis of Daoist classics, such as the "Laozi" and the "Zhuangzi"; works associated with the Confucian tradition, such as the "Changes," the "Odes," and the "Documents"; and a wide range of other foundational philosophical and literary texts from the "Mozi" to the "Hanfeizi."

The product of twelve years of scholarship, this remarkable translation preserves "The Huainanzi"'s special rhetorical features, such as parallel prose and verse, and showcases a compositional technique that conveys the work's powerful philosophical appeal. This path-breaking volume will have a transformative impact on the field of early Chinese intellectual history and will be of great interest to scholars and students alike.

Through the Taoist tantric arts, women can experience the full flowering of their sexual energy. Rooted in Chinese energy medicine, Universal Healing Tao practices, and ancient Taoist traditions from the Yellow Emperor and his three female advisors, these practices honor and celebrate each stage of a woman's life and allow women to awaken their genuine feminine sexuality-receptive, soft, sensitive, intuitive, and creative-rather than the masculine approach that focuses on strength, endurance, and control. In this comprehensive guide to Taoist tantric arts for women, author Minke de Vos reveals how to channel natural sexual energy to evolve the Divine within and heal deep-rooted negative emotions and traumas related to sexuality. She offers sexual energy practices to prevent chronic conditions like cancer, depression, and osteoporosis and heal issues related to PMS, menopause, and libido. She explains how to experience the three different kinds of female orgasm and provides detailed, illustrated instructions for exercises. She offers evocative meditations to connect with the Goddess within and embrace the innate sexiness at each stage of life. Minke de Vos's detailed guide to cultivating female sexual energy allows you to ease the passage through the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause; harmonize your relationships; and merge your inner male and female energies into wholeness.

Ali Pasha of Ioannina (?1750-1822), the Ottoman-appointed governor of the northern mainland of Greece, was a towering figure in Ottoman, Greek, and European history. Based on an array of literatures, paintings, and musical scores, this is the first English-language critical biography about him in recent decades. K. E. Fleming shows that the British and French diplomatic experience of Ali was at odds with the "orientalist" literatures that he inspired. Dubbed by Byron the "Muslim Bonaparte," Ali enjoyed a position of diplomatic strength in the eastern Adriatic; in his attempt to secede from the Ottoman state, he cleverly took advantage of the diplomatic relations of Britain, Russia, France, and Venice. As he reached the peak of his powers, however, European accounts of him portrayed him in ever more "orientalist" terms--as irrational, despotic, cruel, and undependable.

Fleming focuses on the tension between these two experiences of Ali--the diplomatic and the cultural. She also places the history of modern Greece in the context of European history, as well as that of Ottoman decline, and demonstrates the ways in which contemporary European visions of Greece, particularly those generated by Romanticist philhellenism, contributed to a unique form of "orientalism" in the south Balkans. Greece, a territory never formally colonized by Western Europe, was subject instead to a surrogate form of colonial control--one in which the country's history and culture, rather than its actual land, was annexed, invaded, and colonized.

Originally published in 1999.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This volume contains an investigation concerning the origin and development of Chinese alchemy, wherein evidence is submitted for a probable connection between the alchemy of China and that of medieval Europe.

In recent years, three ancient manuscripts relating to the "Yi jin"g ( "I Ching"), or "Classic of Changes," have been discovered. The earliest -- the Shanghai Museum Zhou Yi -- dates to about 300 B.C.E. and shows evidence of the text's original circulation. The "Guicang," or "Returning to Be Stored," reflects another ancient Chinese divination tradition based on hexagrams similar to those of the "Yi jing." In 1993, two manuscripts were found in a third-century B.C.E. tomb at Wangjiatai that contain almost exact parallels to the "Guicang"'s early quotations, supplying new information on the performance of early Chinese divination. Finally, the Fuyang " Zhou Y"i was excavated from the tomb of Xia Hou Zao, lord of Ruyin, who died in 165 B.C.E. Each line of this classic is followed by one or more generic prognostications similar to phrases found in the " Yi jing," indicating exciting new ways the text was produced and used in the interpretation of divinations.

"Unearthing the Changes" details the discovery and significance of the Shanghai Museum "Zhou Yi," the Wangjiatai "Guicang," and the Fuyang "Zhou Yi," including full translations of the texts and additional evidence constructing a new narrative of the "Yi jing"'s writing and transmission in the first millennium B.C.E. An introduction situates the role of archaeology in the modern attempt to understand the Classic of Changes. By showing how the text emerged out of a popular tradition of divination, these newly unearthed manuscripts reveal an important religious dimension to its evolution.

In this major contribution to the study of the Chinese classics and comparative religion, John Henderson uses the history of exegesis to illuminate mental patterns that have universal and perennial significance for intellectual history. Henderson relates the Confucian commentarial tradition to other primary exegetical traditions, particularly the Homeric tradition, Vedanta, rabbinic Judaism, ancient and medieval Christian biblical exegesis, and Qur'anic exegesis. In making such comparisons, he discusses some basic assumptions common to all these traditions--such as that the classics or scriptures are comprehensive or that they contain all significant knowledge or truth and analyzes the strategies deployed to support these presuppositions. As shown here, primary differences among commentarial or exegetical traditions arose from variations in their emphasis on one or another of these assumptions and strategies. Henderson demonstrates that exegetical modes of thought were far from arcane: they dominated the post-classical/premodern intellectual world. Some have persisted or re-emerged in modern times, particularly in ideologies such as Marxism. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Scripture, Canon, and Commentary is not only a challenging interpretation of comparative scriptural traditions but also an excellent introduction to the study of the Confucian classics.

Originally published in 1991.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Throughout its history, Buddhism has developed alongside other traditions of religious belief and practice. Forms of Buddhism have in every era, region, and culture been confronted by rival systems that challenged its teachings about the world, how to behave in it, and liberation from it. This volume collects studies of Buddhist literature and art that represent the religious other to their audiences. Contributing authors examine how Buddhists in India, China, and elsewhere across Asia have understood their place in shared religious landscapes, and how they have responded to the presence and influence in the world of traditions other to their own. The studies in this volume consider a variety of 'others' that Buddhists of different times and situations have encountered, and the variety of mechanisms that Buddhists have employed to make sense of them. Chapters of this volume explore the range of attitudes that Buddhists have expressed with respect to other religions, how they have either accommodated the other within their worldview, or pronounced the redundancy of their ideas and activities. These chapters illuminate how over the centuries Buddhists have used and reused stories, symbols, and other strategies to explain religious others and their value, in which every representation of the other is always also a comment on the character and status of Buddhism itself.

The ""Zhongyong"" - translated here as ""Focusing the Familiar"" has been regarded as a document of enormous wisdom for more than two millennia and is one of Confucianism's most sacred and seminal texts. It achieved truly canonical preeminence when it became one of the Four Books compiled and annotated by the Southern Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200). Within the compass of world literature, the influence of these books (Analects of Confucius, Great Learning, Zhongyong, and Mencius) on the Sinitic world of East Asia has been no less than the Bible and the Qu'ran on Western civilization. With this translation David Hall and Roger Ames seek to provide a distinctly philosophical interpretation of the Zhongyong, remaining attentive to the semantic and conceptual nuances of the text to account for its central place within classical Chinese literature. They present the text in such a way as to provide Western philosophers and other intellectuals access to a set of interpretations and arguments that offer insights into issues and concerns common to both Chinese and Western thinkers.

This book is about the ritual world of a group of rural settlements in Shanxi province in pre-1949 North China. Temple festivals, with their giant processions, elaborate rituals, and operas, were the most important influence on the symbolic universe of ordinary villagers and demonstrate their remarkable capacity for religious and artistic creation. The great festivals described in this book were their supreme collective achievements and were carried out virtually without assistance from local officials or educated elites, clerical or lay.

Chinese culture was a performance culture, and ritual was the highest form of performance. Village ritual life everywhere in pre-revolutionary China was complex, conservative, and extraordinarily diverse. Festivals and their associated rituals and operas provided the emotional and intellectual materials out of which ordinary people constructed their ideas about the world of men and the realm of the gods. It is, David Johnson argues, impossible to form an adequate idea of traditional Chinese society without a thorough understanding of village ritual. Newly discovered liturgical manuscripts allow him to reconstruct North Chinese temple festivals in unprecedented detail and prove that they are sharply different from the Daoist- and Buddhist-based communal rituals of South China.

Through his intelligent intregration of Eastern philosophy and practical advice, Laurence G.Boldt has helped thousands of readers find personal satisfaction in their work and personal lives. Now he applies these principles to the subject of abundance.

How do we achieve material wealth without sacrifing our souls?

Applying ancient widsom to modern times, THE TAO OF ABUNDANCE reveals all...

The first major publication in English on the bamboo slips excavated from a late fourth century B.C. Chu-state tomb at Guodian, Hubei, in 1993. The slip texts include both Daoist and Confucian works, many previously unknown. Thie monograph is a full account of the international conference held on these texts, at which leading scholars from China, the United States, Europe, and Japan analyzed the Laozi materials and a previously unknown cosmological text. In addition, the contents include nine essays on topics such as the archaeological background of the discovery, conservation of the slip-texts, and the relation of the Guodian Laozi materials to the received Laozi text. An annotated edition of the Guodian Laozi materials and the cosmological text are included, as well as a critical bibliography with summary of Chinese scholarship on the Guodian texts in the year following the conference.

Is human nature good or evil? Does knowledge guarantee right action, or can humans do what is wrong when they know what is right? What parts should teachers, classic texts, and our own moral intuitions play in our ethical cultivation?

Confucianism is one of the world's most influential philosophical traditions, offering profound and challenging insights on human nature, virtue, and the foundations of civilization. In The Ways of Confucianism, David S. Nivison brings out the exciting variety within Confucian thought, as he interprets and elucidates key thinkers from over two thousand years, from Confucius himself, through Mencius and Xunzi, to Wang Yangming, Dai Zhen, and Zhang Xuecheng.

The Inner Chapters are the oldest pieces of the larger collection of writings by several fourth, third, and second century B.C. authors that constitute the classic of Taoism, the Chuang-Tzu (or Zhuangzi). It is this core of ancient writings that is ascribed to Chuang-Tzu himself.

In "Frontier Fictions," Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet looks at the efforts of Iranians to defend, if not expand, their borders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and explores how their conceptions of national geography influenced cultural and political change. The "frontier fictions," or the ways in which the Iranians viewed their often fluctuating borders and the conflicts surrounding them, played a dominant role in defining the nation. On these borderlands, new ideas of citizenship and nationality were unleashed, refining older ideas of ethnicity.

Kashani-Sabet maintains that land-based conceptions of countries existed before the advent of the modern nation-state. Her focus on geography enables her to explore and document fully a wide range of aspects of modern citizenship in Iran, including love of homeland, the hegemony of the Persian language, and widespread interest in archaeology, travel, and map-making. While many historians have focused on the concept of the "imagined community" in their explanations of the rise of nationalism, Kashani-Sabet is able to complement this perspective with a very tangible explanation of what connects people to a specific place. Her approach is intended to enrich our understanding not only of Iranian nationalism, but also of nationalism everywhere.

Warum interessieren sich chinesische Intellektuelle und Kulturschaffende auch heute noch fur den Mythos? Karneval der Goetter ergrundet diese Frage bezugnehmend auf Theorien zu asthetischen und diskursiven Konstruktionen (post-)moderner nationaler Identitat. Die Autorin veranschaulicht die Bedeutung von Mythen und Mythologien in der Moderne: Was zeichnet ihre narrativen Strukturen aus? Welche Rolle spielen Symbole in der Steuerung kollektiver Identitatsbildungsprozesse? - Dynamiken sozialen Wandels spiegeln sich im beweglichen Einsatz mythologischer Vokabularien und Narrative wieder. Karneval der Goetter eroertert auch, wie Aktualisierungen von Mythen die Moeglichkeit eroeffnen, Werte und Orientierungen zu hinterfragen, ohne die Kontinuitat der eigenen Kultur aufkundigen zu mussen. Die Publikation analysiert schwerpunktmassig neuhistorische Romane erfolgreicher Autoren wie Mo Yan und zeigt deren Strategien der literarischen Remythisierung und Konstruktion eines polymythischen kulturellen Imaginaire auf. Sekundare Mythen wie diejenigen der revolutionaren Yan'an-Gemeinschaft oder einer globalkapitalistischen, harmonischen Konsumentengemeinschaft werden als ideologische Konstrukte entlarvt und primare Mythen als wichtige Wegmarken des kollektiven Denk- und Vorstellungsraums einer asthetischen (Gegen-)Moderne neu legitimiert.

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and the Tang Prize for "revolutionary research" in Sinology, Ying-shih Yu is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning two thousand years of social, intellectual, and political change, the essays in these volumes investigate two central questions through all aspects of Chinese life: what core values sustained this ancient civilization through centuries of upheaval, and in what ways did these values survive in modern times? From Yu Ying-shih's perspective, the Dao, or the Way, constitutes the inner core of Chinese civilization. His work explores the unique dynamics between Chinese intellectuals' discourse on the Dao, or moral principles for a symbolized ideal world order, and their criticism of contemporary reality throughout Chinese history. Volume 1 of Chinese History and Culture explores how the Dao was reformulated, expanded, defended, and preserved by Chinese intellectuals up to the seventeenth century, guiding them through history's darkest turns. Essays incorporate the evolving conception of the soul and the afterlife in pre- and post-Buddhist China, the significance of eating practices and social etiquette, the move toward greater individualism, the rise of the Neo-Daoist movement, the spread of Confucian ethics, and the growth of merchant culture and capitalism. A true panorama of Chinese culture's continuities and transition, Yu Ying-shih's two-volume Chinese History and Culture gives readers of all backgrounds a unique education in the meaning of Chinese civilization.

.,."this fascinating book provides the reader with a new and vivid description of a number of prototypes of temple oracles in China and beyond."--Journal of Chinese Religions
"This work will undoubtedly achieve for the Chinese temple oracle the recognition it deserves in histories of divination. More importantly, as Strickmann demonstrates, the study of such divination sequences has a great deal to tell us of the history of the book, the study of morality books, and the history of cultural contact." --Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Indiana University

This new translation presents the "Analects" in a revolutionary new format that, for the first time in any language, distinguishes the original words of the Master from the later sayings of his disciples and their followers, enabling readers to experience China's most influential philosophical work in its true historical, social, and political context.