Ancestors and Anxiety

Ancestors and Anxiety

Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China

$34.95

Publication Date: 2nd August 2007

This innovative work on Chinese concepts of the afterlife is the result of Stephen Bokenkamp's groundbreaking study of Chinese scripture and the incorporation of Indic concepts into the Chinese worldview. Here, he explores how Chinese authors, including Daoists and non-Buddhists, received and deployed ideas about rebirth from the third to the sixth centuries C.E. In tracing the antecedents of these scriptures, Bokenkamp uncovers a stunning array of non-Buddhist accounts that provide detail on the realms of the dead, their denizens, and human interactions with them. Bokenkamp demonstrates that ... Read More
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This innovative work on Chinese concepts of the afterlife is the result of Stephen Bokenkamp's groundbreaking study of Chinese scripture and the incorporation of Indic concepts into the Chinese worldview. Here, he explores how Chinese authors, including Daoists and non-Buddhists, received and deployed ideas about rebirth from the third to the sixth centuries C.E. In tracing the antecedents of these scriptures, Bokenkamp uncovers a stunning array of non-Buddhist accounts that provide detail on the realms of the dead, their denizens, and human interactions with them. Bokenkamp demonstrates that ... Read More
Description
This innovative work on Chinese concepts of the afterlife is the result of Stephen Bokenkamp's groundbreaking study of Chinese scripture and the incorporation of Indic concepts into the Chinese worldview. Here, he explores how Chinese authors, including Daoists and non-Buddhists, received and deployed ideas about rebirth from the third to the sixth centuries C.E. In tracing the antecedents of these scriptures, Bokenkamp uncovers a stunning array of non-Buddhist accounts that provide detail on the realms of the dead, their denizens, and human interactions with them. Bokenkamp demonstrates that the motive for the Daoist acceptance of Buddhist notions of rebirth lay not so much in the power of these ideas as in the work they could be made to do.
Details
  • Price: $34.95
  • Pages: 232
  • Publisher: University of California Press
  • Imprint: University of California Press
  • Publication Date: 2nd August 2007
  • ISBN: 9780520933347
  • Format: eBook
  • BISACs:
    RELIGION / Taoism (see also PHILOSOPHY / Taoist)
Author Bio

Stephen R. Bokenkamp is Regents Professor of Chinese Religion at Arizona State University. He is the author of Early Daoist Scriptures and Ancestors and Anxiety and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Translation grant.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Translation
Introduction: The Problem of Rebirth

1. Envisioning the Dead
2. The Unquiet Dead and Their Families, Political and Agnate
3. Questionable Shapes: How the Living Interrogated Their Dead
4. Doomed for a Certain Term: The Intimate Dead
5. Rebirth Reborn

Postscript
List of Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index
This innovative work on Chinese concepts of the afterlife is the result of Stephen Bokenkamp's groundbreaking study of Chinese scripture and the incorporation of Indic concepts into the Chinese worldview. Here, he explores how Chinese authors, including Daoists and non-Buddhists, received and deployed ideas about rebirth from the third to the sixth centuries C.E. In tracing the antecedents of these scriptures, Bokenkamp uncovers a stunning array of non-Buddhist accounts that provide detail on the realms of the dead, their denizens, and human interactions with them. Bokenkamp demonstrates that the motive for the Daoist acceptance of Buddhist notions of rebirth lay not so much in the power of these ideas as in the work they could be made to do.
  • Price: $34.95
  • Pages: 232
  • Publisher: University of California Press
  • Imprint: University of California Press
  • Publication Date: 2nd August 2007
  • ISBN: 9780520933347
  • Format: eBook
  • BISACs:
    RELIGION / Taoism (see also PHILOSOPHY / Taoist)

Stephen R. Bokenkamp is Regents Professor of Chinese Religion at Arizona State University. He is the author of Early Daoist Scriptures and Ancestors and Anxiety and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Translation grant.

Acknowledgments
Note on Translation
Introduction: The Problem of Rebirth

1. Envisioning the Dead
2. The Unquiet Dead and Their Families, Political and Agnate
3. Questionable Shapes: How the Living Interrogated Their Dead
4. Doomed for a Certain Term: The Intimate Dead
5. Rebirth Reborn

Postscript
List of Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index