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Liexian Zhuan
The ''Liexian Zhuan'', sometimes translated as ''Biographies of Immortals'', is the oldest extant Chinese hagiography of Daoist ''xian'' "transcendents; immortals; saints; alchemists". The text, which compiles the life stories of about 70 mythological and historical ''xian'', was traditionally attributed to the Western Han dynasty editor and imperial librarian Liu Xiang (77–8 BCE), but internal evidence dates it to the 2nd century CE during the Eastern Han period. The ''Liexian Zhuan'' became a model for later authors, such as Ge Hong's 4th century CE '' Shenxian zhuan'' ("Biographies of Divine Immortals"). Title ''Liexian Zhuan'' combines three words: *''liè'' (, "rank; array; order; line up; list") * ''xiān'' (, "transcendent being; celestial being; 'immortal'") *''zhuàn'' (, " tradition; biography; commentary on a classic (e.g., '' Zuozhuan'')"(—cf. ''chuàn'' (, "transmit; pass along; hand down; spread") The compound ''lièzhuàn'' (, lit. "arrayed lives") is a Classic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yu Shi
Yu Shi () is a Chinese spirit or god of rain, also known as or conflated with Red Pine (Chisong, 赤松, or Chisongzi – Master Red Pine), among other names. Translations of ''Yu Shi'' into English include "Lord of Rain" and "Leader of Rain". As Yu Shi Yu Shi in Chinese folk religion and Chinese mythology generally appears in association with Feng Bo, the god of the wind; and Lei Gong, the god of thunder. There are both current religious activities and historical mythical stories associated with Yu Shi. Various references in poetry and popular culture also exist, for example in the ''Chu ci'' poems " Tian Wen" and "Yuan You". His consort is Yu Shiqie (). As Chisongzi According to certain versions, a certain Chisongzi () during the reign of Shennong ended a severe drought by sprinkling water from an earthen bowl and was rewarded by being made the Lord of Rain with a dwelling on the mythical Kunlun Mountain. In another form, Chi Songzi is depicted as a chrysalis of a silkworm wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sima Qian
Sima Qian (; ; ) was a Chinese historian of the early Han dynasty (206AD220). He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his ''Records of the Grand Historian'', a general history of China covering more than two thousand years beginning from the rise of the legendary Yellow Emperor and the formation of the first Chinese polity to the reigning sovereign of Sima Qian's time, Emperor Wu of Han. As the first universal history of the world as it was known to the ancient Chinese, the ''Records of the Grand Historian'' served as a model for official history-writing for subsequent Chinese dynasties and the Chinese cultural sphere (Korea, Vietnam, Japan) up until the 20th century. Sima Qian's father Sima Tan first conceived of the ambitious project of writing a complete history of China, but had completed only some preparatory sketches at the time of his death. After inheriting his father's position as court historian in the imperial court, he was determined to fulfill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scholar-official
The scholar-officials, also known as literati, scholar-gentlemen or scholar-bureaucrats (), were government officials and prestigious scholars in Chinese society, forming a distinct social class. Scholar-officials were politicians and government officials appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day political duties from the Han dynasty to the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912, China's last imperial dynasty. After the Sui dynasty these officials mostly came from the scholar-gentry (紳士 ''shēnshì'') who had earned academic degrees (such as ''xiucai'', ''juren'', or ''jinshi'') by passing the imperial examinations. Scholar-officials were the elite class of imperial China. They were highly educated, especially in literature and the arts, including calligraphy and Confucian texts. They dominated the government administration and local life of China until the early 20th century. Origins and formations Origins of ''Shi'' (士) and ''Da fu'' (大夫) as a concept an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lienu Zhuan
The ''Biographies of Exemplary Women'' () is a book compiled by the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang c. 18 BCE. It includes 125 biographical accounts of exemplary women in ancient China, taken from early Chinese histories including '' Chunqiu'', '' Zuozhuan'', and the ''Records of the Grand Historian''. The book served as a standard Confucianist textbook for the moral education of women in traditional China for two millennia. Description The idealized biographies are divided into eight scrolls, including the eighth addendum from an unknown editor, as shown below. This book follows the ''lièzhuàn'' (列傳 "arrayed biographies") biographical format established by the Chinese historian Sima Qian. The word ''liènǚ'' (列女 "famous women in history") is sometimes understood as ''liènǚ'' (烈女 "women martyrs"), which Neo-Confucianists used to mean a "woman who commits suicide after her husband's death rather than remarry; woman who dies defending her honor." The online C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Twenty-Four Histories
The ''Twenty-Four Histories'' (), also known as the ''Orthodox Histories'' (), are the Chinese official dynastic histories covering from the earliest dynasty in 3000 BC to the Ming dynasty in the 17th century. The Han dynasty official Sima Qian established many of the conventions of the genre, but the form was not fixed until much later. Starting with the Tang dynasty, each dynasty established an official office to write the history of its predecessor using official court records, partly in order to establish its own link to the earliest times. As fixed and edited in the Qing dynasty, the whole set contains 3,213 volumes and about 40 million words. It is considered one of the most important sources on Chinese history and culture. The title "Twenty-Four Histories" dates from 1775, which was the 40th year in the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. This was when the last volume, the ''History of Ming'', was reworked and a complete set of the histories was produced. Collection Inherit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Of Sui
The ''Book of Sui'' (''Suí Shū'') is the official history of the Sui dynasty. It ranks among the official Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written by Yan Shigu, Kong Yingda, and Zhangsun Wuji, with Wei Zheng as the lead author. In the third year of Zhenguan of the Tang dynasty (629), Emperor Taizong of Tang ordered Fang Xuanling to supervise the completion of the Book of Sui, which was being compiled around the same time as other official histories were being written. The Book of Sui was completed in 636 AD, the same year as the ''Book of Chen'' was completed. Contents The format used in the text follows the composite historical biography format (斷代紀傳體) established by Ban Gu in the '' Book of the Later Han'' with three sections: annals (紀), treatises (志), and biographies (傳). The extensive set of 30 treatises, sometimes translated as "monographs", in the ''Book of Sui'' was completed by a separate set of authors and added in 656 – 20 yea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yiwenzhi
"Yiwenzhi" (), or the "Treatise on Literature", is the bibliographical section of the ''Hanshu'' (''Book of Han'') by the Chinese historian Ban Gu (32–92 AD), who completed the work begun by his father Ban Biao. The bibliographical catalog is the last of its ten treatises, and scroll 30 of the 100 scrolls comprising the ''Hanshu''. The basis for the catalog came from Liu Xin's '' Qilüe'' (七略), which gives detailed bibliographical information about holdings in the Imperial Library,A.F.P. Hulsewé: ''Han shu'', in: Loewe (1993:130) which itself was an extension on '' Bielu'' (別錄) by Liu Xin's father Liu Xiang, on which the two had collaborated. The catalog provides important insights into the literature of the various Chinese intellectual currents of the pre-Qin period (Nine Schools of Thought), of which only some 20% are presently known. Origin of the bibliography "Yiwenzhi" closely adheres to the bibliographical system devised by Liu Xiang and Liu Xin with minor excep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Of Han
The ''Book of Han'' or ''History of the Former Han'' (Qián Hàn Shū,《前汉书》) is a history of China finished in 111AD, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. It is also called the ''Book of Former Han''. The work was composed by Ban Gu (32–92 CE), an Eastern Han court official, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao, continuing the work of their father, Ban Biao. They modeled their work on the ''Records of the Grand Historian'', a cross-dynastic general history, but theirs was the first in this annals-biography form to cover a single dynasty. It is the best source, sometimes the only one, for many topics such as literature in this period. A second work, the '' Book of the Later Han'' covers the Eastern Han period from 25 to 220, and was composed in the fifth century by Fan Ye (398–445). Contents This history developed from a continuation of Sima Qian's ''Records of the Grand Historian'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ban Gu
Ban Gu (AD32–92) was a Chinese historian, politician, and poet best known for his part in compiling the ''Book of Han'', the second of China's 24 dynastic histories. He also wrote a number of '' fu'', a major literary form, part prose and part poetry, which is particularly associated with the Han era. A number of Ban's ''fu'' were collected by Xiao Tong in the '' Wen Xuan''. Family background The Ban family was one of the most distinguished families of the Eastern Han dynasty. They lived in the state of Chu during the Warring States Period but, during the reign of the First Emperor, a man named Ban Yi ( or ''Bān Yī'') fled north to the Loufan ( t s ''Lóufán'') near the Yanmen Pass in what is now northern Shanxi Province. By the early Han Dynasty, Ban Gu's ancestors gained prominence on the northwestern frontier as herders of several thousand cattle, oxen, and horses, which they traded in a formidable business and encouraged other families to move to the frontier ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Han
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warring interregnum known as the ChuHan contention (206–202 BC), and it was succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD). The dynasty was briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD) established by usurping regent Wang Mang, and is thus separated into two periods—the Western Han (202 BC – 9 AD) and the Eastern Han (25–220 AD). Spanning over four centuries, the Han dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history, and it has influenced the identity of the Chinese civilization ever since. Modern China's majority ethnic group refers to themselves as the " Han people", the Sinitic language is known as "Han language", and the written Chinese is referred to as " Han characters". The emperor was at the pinnacle o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Han
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warring interregnum known as the ChuHan contention (206–202 BC), and it was succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD). The dynasty was briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD) established by usurping regent Wang Mang, and is thus separated into two periods—the #Western Han, Western Han (202 BC – 9 AD) and the #Eastern Han, Eastern Han (25–220 AD). Spanning over four centuries, the Han dynasty is considered a golden age (metaphor), golden age in Chinese history, and it has influenced the identity of the History of China, Chinese civilization ever since. Modern China's majority ethnic group refers to themselves as the "Han Chinese, Han people", the Sinitic langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Immortality
Immortality is the concept of eternal life. Some modern species may possess biological immortality. Some scientists, futurists, and philosophers have theorized about the immortality of the human body, with some suggesting that human immortality may be achievable in the first few decades of the 21st century with the help of certain technologies such as mind uploading (digital immortality). Other advocates believe that life extension is a more achievable goal in the short term, with immortality awaiting further research breakthroughs. The absence of aging would provide humans with biological immortality, but not invulnerability to death by disease or injury. Whether the process of internal immortality is delivered within the upcoming years depends chiefly on research (and in neuron research in the case of internal immortality through an immortalized cell line) in the former view and perhaps is an awaited goal in the latter case. What form an unending human life would take, o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
