Abstract
In the introduction, the author explains the purpose, method, and content of the book, including the following three aspects: reasons for conducting comparative historical studies, ritual as a research angle, and methodology. The author proposes three basic principles for the study of comparative history. First, comparative history should not involve any value judgement, nor adopt a position of defending the researcher’s own culture as a point of comparison. Second, comparative study is not simply an attempt to identify specific differences and commonalities between two civilizations. Third, comparative studies should not attempt to derive easy and arbitrary conclusions through lists of phenomena or mechanistic analogies, but should be based on careful analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
Steven Shankman and Stephen W. Durrant eds., Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons, State University of New York Press, 2002, p. 6.
- 2.
G. E. R. Lloyd and Nathan Sivin, The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 8.
- 3.
Steven Shankman and Stephen Durrant, The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000, p. 4.
- 4.
Steven Shankman and Stephen Durrant, The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China, p. 4.
- 5.
Steven Shankman and Stephen Durrant, The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China, p. 5.
- 6.
Steven Shankman and Stephen W. Durrant eds., Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons, p. 3.
- 7.
Steven Shankman and Stephen Durrant, The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China, p. 5.
- 8.
Walter Scheidel ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 5. He again said in another recently published book, ‘Comparison allows us to identify problems and questions that are not readily apparent from the historical record of a given time or place or from specialized scholarship beholden to its own “local” priorities and discourse.’ See Walter Scheidel ed., State Power in Ancient China & Rome, Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 3.
- 9.
Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China, Harvard University Press, 1985.
- 10.
Johann P. Arnason, S. N. Eisenstadt and Björn Wittrock eds., Axial Civilizations and World History, Brill, 2005.
- 11.
G. E. R. Lloyd, Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China, Cambridge University Press, 2002; G. E. R. Lloyd and Nathan Sivin, The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece, Yale University Press, 2002; Ancient Worlds, Modern Reflections: Philosophical Perspectives on Greek and Chinese Science and Culture, Oxford University Press, 2004; The Delusions of Invulnerability: Wisdom and Morality in Ancient Greece, China and Today, London: Duckworth, 2005; Principle and Practices in Ancient Greek and Chinese Science, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.
- 12.
Steven Shankman and Stephen W. Durrant eds., The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000; Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons, State University of New York Press, 2002.
- 13.
Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag eds., Conceiving the Empire: China and Rome Compared, Oxford University Press, 2008.
- 14.
Walter Scheidel ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires, Oxford University Press, 2009; State Power in Ancient China & Rome, Oxford University Press, 2015.
- 15.
See, for example, Lisa Raphals, Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China and Greece, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992; Lisa Raphals, Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998; David Scharberg, ‘Travel, Geography, and the Imperial Imagination in Fifth-Century Athens and Han China’, in Comparative Literature, Vol. 51 (Spring 1999), pp. 152–191; Jean-Paul Reding, Comparative Essays in Early Greek and Chinese Rational Thinking, Ashgate, 2004; Hyun Jin Kim, Ethnicity and Foreigners in Ancient Greece and China, Gerald Duckworth & C. Ltd., 2009; Alexander Beecroft, Authorship and Cultural Identity in Early Greece and China: Patterns of Literary Circulation, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- 16.
D. Rueschemeyer, ‘Can One of a Few Cases Yield Theoretical Gains?’, in J. Mahoney and D. Rueschemeyer eds., Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 305–336.
- 17.
In the first chapter of Interaction Ritual Chains, Randall Collins made a historical review of the social theories of ritual studies, and illustrating the development of various ritual theories. See Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains, Princeton University Press, 2004.
- 18.
Cf. Carl Gustav Jung, Man and His Symbols, New York: Doubleday and Company Inc., 1964.
- 19.
Cf. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997; The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, New York: Free Press, 1965.
- 20.
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, New York: Free Press, 1965; The Andaman Islanders: A Study in Social Anthropology, Charleston: Nabu Press, 2011; Social Organization of Australian Tribes, Chicago: Repressed Publishing LLC, 2012.
- 21.
Cf. Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. by Monika B. Vizedon and Gabrielle L. Caffee, The University of Chicago Press, 1960.
- 22.
After a hundred years, ‘the rites of passage’ has become one of the important theories of folklore, universally accepted by scholars as a social mechanism which indicated changes in humans’ status, and as a classic concept of anthropological and other disciplinary research on rituals.
- 23.
Cf. Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, London: Penguin Press, 2011.
- 24.
Also see James Boon and David Schneider, ‘Kinship vis-à-vis Myth contrasts in Levi-Strauss’ Approaches to Cross-Cultural Comparison’, in American Anthropologist, new series, Vol. 76, No. 4, pp. 799–817.
- 25.
Cf. Clifforf Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, New York: Basic Books Inc., 1973.
- 26.
E. Durkheim said: ‘without symbols, social sentiments could have only a precarious existence. […] But if the movements by which these sentiments are expressed are connected with something that endures, the sentiments themselves become more durable. […] Thus these systems of emblems, which are necessary if society is to become conscious of itself, are no less indispensable for assuring the continuation of this consciousness.’ See Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, New York: Free Press, 1965, p. 265.
- 27.
Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition revised, Oxford Press, 2003, pp. 1318–1319.
- 28.
Jan N. Bremmer, The Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 38; also cf. Jan Bremmer, ‘Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece: Observations on a Difficult Relationship’, N. Oettinger, ‘Entstehung von Mythos aus Ritual. Das Beispiel des hethitischen Textes CTH 390A’, in M. Hutter and S. Hutter-Braunsar eds., Offizielle Religion, lokale Kulte und individuelle Religiosität, Münster, 2004, pp. 347–356.
- 29.
It has always been an issue worth exploring—how to best describe Chinese words (especially some academic terms) in English publications.
- 30.
As there have been a huge number of studies of Li, it is impossible to enumerate them one by one. For a general explanation of Li in English, see Cua, ‘Reason and Principle in Chinese Philosophy’, in Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe eds., A Companion to World Philosophies, Basil Blackwell, 1997.
- 31.
Anzhai Li, Sociology Research on Etiquette and Ceremony and the Book of Rites (in Chinese), Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2005.
- 32.
The most reliable English translation of classical Chinese works recognized by the academic community is from James Legge. All of the English translations of Confucian writings I quote in this book are from James Legge, The Chinese Classics: With a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes, Taipei, Republic of China, Southern Materials Center, 1985.
- 33.
Lai Chen, Ancient Religion and Ethic—The Origin of Confucian Thought (in Chinese), Beijing: San-Lian Publishing House, 1996, p. 248.
- 34.
Joachim Gentz, ‘The Ritual Meaning of Textual Form: Evidence from Early Commentaries of the Historiographic and Ritual Traditions’, in Martin Kern ed., Text and Ritual in Early China, University of Washington Press, 2007, pp. 124–148.
- 35.
Joachim Gentz, ‘The Ritual Meaning of Textual Form: Evidence from Early Commentaries of the Historiographic and Ritual Traditions’, in Martin Kern ed., Text and Ritual in Early China, University of Washington Press, 2007, pp. 124–148.
- 36.
In a strict sense, there is no absolute opposite relationship between ‘this-sidedness’ and ‘ that-sidedness’ in the ancient world. For the convenience of the discussion, I borrow these two concepts from Kantian philosophy. In Buddhism, the word ‘paramita’ can substitute for ‘that-sidedness’.
- 37.
See Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, revised by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos, second edition, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002. See also Karanika, Andromache, Voices at Work: Women, Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.
- 38.
However, I think that a book named Comparer en histoire des religions antiques: controverses et propositions should be taken into account (Calame, Claude and Lincoln, Bruce eds., Comparer en histoire des religions antiques: controverses et propositions, Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2012). The eight studies in this book are from the conference held on December 15, 2010 by the Chicago-Paris Workshop on the theme of the comparative history of ancient religions and cultures. A few specialists on the Greek and Roman world have provided a theoretical argument illustrated by a demonstration to adjust the comparative issues of current research and restore its credit by giving it a new style. As a reviewer says: ‘This stimulating bilingual volume on an important topic in the study of ancient religions arose from an on-going international collaboration, and is consequently far more coherent than most collections of conference papers … With its high level of theoretical and methodological rigor, this book will be of value to all those interested in ancient religions, anthropological approaches to ancient cultures, and the intellectual history of the study of religions.’ (Reviewed by Deborah Lyons, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2013.11.15.)
- 39.
Cf. K. C. Chang, The Archaeology of Ancient China, 4th ed., Yale University Press, 1985.
- 40.
Martin Kern, ‘The Ritual Texture of Early China’, in Martin Kern ed., Text and Ritual in Early China, University of Washington Press, 2007, pp. vii–xxvii.
- 41.
The Etiquette and Ceremony is the earliest extant collection of ritual matters and social conduct of the Zhou dynasty. Most scholars agree that the final redaction of the book took place before the Qin dynasty. The Book of Rites is the anthology of books written by Confucian scholars from the Warring-States period to the Qin and Han dynasties about their interpretation of the scripture Etiquette and Ceremonies. It mainly deals with the meaning and significance of rituals as well as with rules of social life. As an important collection of Confucian thoughts, it is one of ‘The Five Classics of Confucianism’.
- 42.
The Rites of Zhou deals with Zhou’s organization and institutions and is the most complete record of official systems in China, perhaps also the most complete record of ancient official systems in the world.
- 43.
Steven Shankman and Stephen Durrant, The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000, p. 8.
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Shankman, Steven, and Durrant, Stephen W., eds. 2002. Early China/ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons. State University of New York Press.
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Wu, X. (2018). Introduction. In: Mourning Rituals in Archaic & Classical Greece and Pre-Qin China. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0632-7_1
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