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The Seven Victories is one of the most influential works in Catholic literature from the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. The seven victories spiritual cultivation contained therein is the result of the localization of the practice of the Christian faith in the West. It is still a living tradition in the Christian religion and even in Western culture. Since the end of the Ming Dynasty, The Seven Victories has aroused significant repercussions in the ecclesiastical and academic worlds. Some scholars converted to Catholicism because of The Seven Victories and wrote preambles in response to it; some scholars wrote essays criticizing the ethical ideas of The Seven Victories; and some scholars were inspired by The Seven Victories to write about Confucian ideas of sin, the work of reform, and the liturgy of repentance. Together, these constitute the history of the reception of The Seven Victories in China. Through Confucian culture integration, Chinese Christian scholars have developed a localized interpretation of the seven victories spiritual cultivation, resulting in a localized Chinese spiritual cultivation of sin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been observed that since the Early Qing Dynasty, the eastward spread of Western classics has been in decline; this article aims to looks at how Protestant missionaries helped to revive it in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, this study examines the circumstances that Protestant missionaries faced upon arriving in China and describes the challenges, opportunities, and issues they encountered when attempting to spread Western classics as part of their missionary effort. Second, this article reveals the strategies Protestant missionaries employed to revive the Western classics, with a focus on the utilization of the translated literature, press, and academic institutions. Third, this article explores the ways the spread of Western classics by the missionaries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century outshone the achievements of their predecessors of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Unlike the missions through secular knowledge in China, the spread of Protestantism in Korea took place in a more direct manner. This comparative study in the last section highlights the importance of each country's endowment in terms of the method and effectiveness of missionary efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the arrival of Christian missionaries in China through maritime trade networks, missionary activities have been changing from the 16th century to the 18th century. Christian missionaries faced numerous challenges stemming from cultural context and religious policies in China. Throughout history, various religious strategies have been employed to address these challenges. The use of Chinese porcelain to depict Christian imagery holds significant importance. The present study is focused on four representative Chinese porcelains dating from the Ming to Qing dynasties, each associated with specific phases of Christianity in China. Examining the connections between the Christian mission in China and Christian iconography on Chinese porcelain leads to the conclusion that the visual culture associated with the Christian mission in China is influenced by and reflects intercultural or interreligious dialogue with mutual understanding. In the meantime, it signifies an intricate process of interaction, appropriation, hybridization, and adaptation, through which Christian iconography gained new significance on Chinese porcelain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From his arrival in China in 1888 to his departure in 1930, Canadian missionary, Donald MacGillivray (季理斐), was in China for more than 40 years. According to changes in the Chinese missionary situation, the key target of his mission was frequently adjusted. From his initial work in the early days in North Honan, to his work with officials and intellectuals in Shanghai in the late Qing Dynasty, then to students, women, and children in the Republic of China, Donald MacGillivray continued to preach to both the masses and the elites. His approach was flexible, ranging from oral preaching to academic publications. Relying on his interpersonal network, MacGillivray paid close attention to the social changes occurring in modern China. An evaluation of his activities in China can not only reveal the impact of individual missionaries in the process of Western learning and the transformation of Chinese knowledge in modern times, but also provide insight into the integration of Christianity into the indigenization process of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wang Lingguan is a significant deity in Chinese Daoist beliefs and folk worship. His belief's formation and proliferation are rooted in specific spatial contexts. This paper introduces a spatial perspective to provide a fresh interpretation of Wang Lingguan's belief, examining it through the lenses of ritual, temple, and geography. In Daoist rituals that bridged sacred and secular spaces, Wang Lingguan emerged as Sa Shoujian's protector, manifesting his divine power to devotees. For the purposes of ritual simplification and spatial solidification, believers constructed Daoist Temples as emblems of sacredness and reimagined Wang Lingguan as the protector of these temples in their design. The active involvement of the Ming royal family in building Daoist Temples significantly contributed to establishing regional belief centers for Wang Lingguan. During the Qing Dynasty, although Wang Lingguan's royal patronage waned, his belief spread across most of China, becoming more localized and secularized. The dynamic interplay of ritual, temple, and geographical factors illuminates the establishment, dissemination, and evolution of Wang Lingguan's belief throughout China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Franciscan Order was one of the most important missionary orders in China during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. While rooted in the local communities, they also engaged in various forms of interactions with Chinese literati. This article will begin by briefly discussing the issue of the Franciscans changing from religious habit into Chinese dress as well as their evolving attitude towards Confucianism and Chinese rituals, aiming to illustrate the process of shaping their "Western Confucian" image and their adaptation to Chinese culture. Subsequently, the focus of this paper will be shifted to exploring the modes of interactions between the Spanish Franciscans and the Chinese literati. The author argues that the interactions between the two sides were primarily power-based. These power-based interactions entailed establishing connections with officials and leveraging their influence to safeguard missionary activities. It can be further categorized into three types. The first type involved socializing with officials, while the second type included interaction with Jesuit officials in court, and the third type was direct involvement in official positions. In their engagement with literati, the Franciscans demonstrated a thorough understanding of and adaptation to Chinese societal and cultural norms, thereby facilitating the development of their mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the origin and role of the Buddhist taxonomic category "zong 宗" ("sect" or "school") in the formation of modern Buddhism in China. It does so by examining a highly significant late-Qing Buddhist text titled Ba-zong-er-xing 八宗二行 (Eight Schools and Two Practices), which the author discovered recently in Japan. Authored by the 19th-century Manchu bannerman official Hešeri Rushan 赫舍裏如山, Eight Schools and Two Practices had a direct influence on the prominent Chinese lay Buddhist Yang Wenhui (1837–1911)'s Shi-zong-lue-shuo 十宗略说 (Brief Outline of the Ten Schools) (1913), which subsequently became the most important narrative model, known as the ten-school model, for describing Chinese Buddhist history in modern times. Historians have long recognized that Yang Wenhui's Brief Outline of the Ten Schools (1913) was influenced by the medieval Japanese text hasshū kōyō 八宗綱要 (Essentials of the Eight Schools) composed by the 13th-century Japanese monk Gyōnen. Identifying, in detail, Hešeri Rushan's influence on Yang Wenhui sheds light on how a narrative model for Buddhism in its national form grew out of trans-national intellectual sharing and interactions, and how Chinese Buddhism emerged from the interactive and mutually enabling Sino-Japanese discursive field of the 19th century. Gyōnen, Rushan, and Yang Wenhui all used the category zong, referring to both doctrine and school/sect, to organize narratives of Buddhist history. Their uses were, however, different. Gyōnen's conception of zong (shū in Japanese) was fixed and exclusive, whereas zong for Rushan and Yang meant more of a mobile, nonexclusive identity. Without knowledge of Japanese Buddhism, Rushan made creative use of zong for describing the history and current condition of Chinese Buddhism, thereby superseding the traditional framework of lineage, doctrine, and precept, or zong 宗, jiao 教, lu 律. Rushan's zong provided the necessary prerequisite knowledge for Yang Wenhui to understand Gyōnen's theories, which he studied for constructing his own historical narrative and vision for modern Buddhism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mount Wutai, China's earliest Buddhist center, dating to the Han Dynasty's first century (206 BCE–220 CE), boasts over a hundred monasteries, numerous monuments, and ruins, drawing global pilgrims and travelers. Over its long history, as the geographical focus of imperial support shifted, the ideological underpinnings for structuring the monastic habitation on Mount Wutai also underwent a transformation, consequently altering the pilgrimage paths, monasteries, and mountain gates. However, there remains a paucity of understanding regarding these changes. This paper aims to map out the representative dynamic pilgrimage routines influenced by geo-capital shifts and to reveal the changeable Buddhist ideology of monasticism on Mount Wutai. Through archival studies on ancient transcripts and maps, the interpretation selects the three most significant periods in the development of Buddhism in Mount Wutai: the Northern Wei (386–534 CE), the Sui Tang (581–907 CE), and the Qing Dynasty (1630–1912 CE). The article indicates that Mount Wutai's monastic strategies have transformed significantly, progressing from free monasticism to the Mañjuśrī maṇḍala mode and ultimately adopting a predominant Tibetan Buddhist character. These changes were driven by shifting Buddhist ideologies and heritage, with pilgrimages and monastic construction responding to these shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a common cultural phenomenon in China and the West, alchemy not only embodies the scientific spirit of people before modern times, but also contains certain religious beliefs, and even creates unrealistic secular imaginations. When Catholicism entered China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Chinese also projected this imagination of alchemy onto the missionaries. Behind this imagination actually lays the strong interest of Chinese people in the financial resources of the missionaries. On the one hand, there is the historical influence of traditional Chinese alchemy, and on the other hand, there is the curiosity caused by the lifestyle of missionaries in China. The imagination of alchemy not only reflects a historical aspect of the encounter between China and the West during the Ming and Qing dynasties, but also reflects a complex social psychology of mixed curiosity, panic, suspicion, and vigilance in pre-modern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Four Heavenly Kings, Sida Tianwang 四大天王, are the guardians of the four quarters of the world in Buddhism. They are among the most frequently represented protective deities in Buddhist art across different traditions. In their standard iconographies developed in China popular during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911), they wear full armor, and each holds exclusive attributes—lute (pipa 琵琶), sword, snake, and parasol—from the east, south, west, to the north respectively. There is no direct textual base in the Chinese cannon for such iconographies. Neither can we find prototypes in India or central Asia. Indeed, how did this iconographic group develop in China? In the past, since the standard iconographies of the Four Heavenly Kings are clear, and identification is no problem, comprehensive in-depth study on this is lacking. Actually, those attributes came from a Tantric tradition related to Tibetan Buddhism filtered through the Xi Xia (1036–1227) and Yuan (1206–1368). What revealed in the development of this iconography is the complex relationship among the Tibetan, Tanguts, Mongols, and Chinese Buddhism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Longmen Xizhu Xinzong 龍門西竺心宗 was a Taoist sect that was active during the Qing Dynasty. The sect reportedly originated in India and has long been renowned for its Xizhu Doufa 西竺斗法. However, due to its secrecy and lack of literature, its true form remains a mystery. Examining the self-reported history of the Longmen Xizhu Xinzong, it can confidently be stated that Xizhu Doufa was often used in conjunction with Dharani and had deep roots in Tantric Buddhism. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Tantric Buddhism gained popularity in China and evolved into Tang Tantrism (Ch. Tangmi 唐密). There is a large amount of Dipper Method (Ch. Doufa 斗法)-related content in Tang Tantrism, which is a variant of China's original Dipper Method observed in India. After being passed back to China, it was named "Western Transmission". Many of the existing documents on the Dipper Method from the Ming and Qing Dynasties originated from Tang Tantrism. In terms of belief, they reflect the combination of Doumu 斗姆 and Marici; in terms of methods, they incorporate multiple elements, including the Taoist Thunder Method (Ch. Leifa 雷法) and Marici mantra. Overall, the ideas, lineage of transmission, and other aspects recorded in these documents are extremely similar to those emphasized by the Longmen Xizhu Xinzong, providing evidence for the origin of Xizhu Doufa. This evidence also provides a new reference for the direction in which Tang Tantrism developed after the Huichang Persecution of Buddhism 會昌毀佛. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the life of Liu Shu (1520–1657), a woman warrior who lived through the social and political turmoil of the violent dynastic transition from the Ming (1368–1644) dynasty to the Qing (1636–1911) dynasty. Drawing on the writings of Liu Shu and on different versions of accounts of her life written by male literati in different time periods, this paper intends to reveal the multiplicity and complexity of how a woman could exert her agency and interact with the dominant structure. Commonly, women's agency has been understood as resistance against the male-dominant patriarchal system. However, recently, scholars such as Saba Mahmood have problematized universalizing overtly resistant acts against the patriarchal society to bring radical changes as demonstrations of women's agency. These scholars argue that this approach fails to recognize that through their autonomy and while living a life of self-fulfillment, women have the capacity to reproduce, sustain, or subtly change the social norms and views of values that justify and support the patriarchal structure. In light of these scholars' studies, this paper explores Liu Shu's engagement in political and military activities and her Buddhist practices to analyze how she transgressed established gender norms in order to uphold rather than reject the virtues promoted by patriarchal ideology. The paper also discusses how conflicting demands on women by a male-centered society in the drastic dynastic transition enabled her to negotiate with or challenge the dominant structure. It also considers how her disobedient acts were accepted and applauded by some male literati to address their own agenda in different cultural, historical, and political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qixiang is a unique sacrificial culture created by the Han army eight banners in northeast China. This culture not only has elements such as shamanism and Han people burning incense, but also has military sacrificial elements. This paper argues that Qixiang is the evolution and legacy of Maji, a military sacrificial ritual in ancient China. The Han military banner people in the Qing Dynasty took Maji as the main body, combined the Manchu Shamanism with the Han incense burning, and created a cultural symbol representing their own ethnic group. At present, the study of Qixiang not only helps to understand the complexity of the development and evolution of Manchu shamanism, but also helps to reveal the ethnic identity of Han bannermen under the Eight Banners system of the Qing Dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has numerous relics from tomb murals. Over 70 years (1949–2019), 1495 relic sites were excavated. Distributed across more than two-thirds of China's provincial administrative regions, the relics of tomb murals span from the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) to the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). In previous studies, scholars focused on the qualitative analysis of tomb murals. In this paper, we applied GIS tools to visualize these relics and analyze their density values for the first time. In terms of academic standards, we propose the material distribution index, the regional distribution index, and the temporal distribution index for relics. The academic innovation of this paper is threefold. First, with regard to the distribution of relic sites, this paper draws a distribution map of the relic sites of Chinese tomb murals and explores the preliminary significance of these relic sites in the culture of the Yellow River basin and its ancient political center. Second, in terms of synchronic viewpoints, this paper designs a material distribution map and a kernel density distribution map based on the distribution map of relic sites. Third, from a diachronic viewpoint, this paper sketches the secondary-level distribution map of six historical periods for the overall kernel density distribution map of relic materials in nine provinces, whereby it outlines the general trend of the development of Chinese tomb murals and the contributions of nine provinces. In brief, with the use of the GIS tool, this paper obtains information on the distribution of relics and reveals the characteristics of tomb murals in terms of their regional and temporal distributions through the ranking of various density values. This paper aims to construct a frame of reference for testing traditional theoretical achievements from the two perspectives of information acquisition and theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the middle of the Ming Dynasty, with the Chinese language becoming the mother tongue of Muslims in mainland China, the religious education of Chinese Muslims faced a dilemma. Meanwhile, a rejuvenated educational system was established by Hu Dengzhou (胡登洲) in Shaanxi during the Wanli (萬歷) period. This system, which was called Jingtang education (經堂教育) after a long time, has epoch-making significance in the history of Chinese Islamic thought. Through Hu Dengzhou's disciples, this educational system gradually spread to North China and Jiangnan, where Shandong School and Jinling School were formed. Sufism played an important role in the two early schools' teaching arrangements and academic activities. In the middle and late Qing periods, Shaanxi School and Yunnan School emerged one after another. Scholars of these two schools paid more attention to rational sciences represented by philosophical theology and attempted to use theological theories to explain Sufi texts. Overall, the establishment of Jingtang education was not only an urgent requirement for Muslims in mainland China to explain Islamic classics in Chinese, but also a fruitful attempt to replace official schools with private schools. The early Shandong School and Jinling School attached great importance to Sufism for two reasons: (1) Sufism became a prominent study after the 12th century, and most of the teachers of early Jingtang education had a close relationship with the Sufis. (2) These scholars live in a Chinese cultural background with Neo-Confucianism as the mainstream, and there are many commonalities between Sufism and Confucianism, which helps Muslim scholars to use Confucian terms to explain Islamic teaching. In the later period, Shaanxi School and Yunnan School turned to pay more attention to philosophical theology for two reasons: (1) In order to deal with the emergence and ideological differences of Chinese Islamic sects in the mid-Qing era. (2) This change was not unrelated to the influence of the Shixue (實學) thought trends in China, especially the Qianjia School. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Jidu 濟瀆 (i.e., the Ji River 濟水), one of the four waterways (sidu 四瀆) in imperial China. Even though it vanished a long time ago, the Jidu had always been a part of the traditional Chinese ritual system of mountain- and water-directed state sacrifices. From the Western Han dynasty to the Qing dynasty, it continuously received regular state sacrifices. However, Western scholars have failed to notice it. Some modern Chinese and Japanese scholars have studied the development of the Jidu sacrifice, but its embodied political and religious significances for the state and local society were largely ignored. To remedy this neglect, I provide here, with new discoveries and conclusions, the first comprehensive study of the Jidu sacrifice in imperial China. Surrounding this coherent theme, this paper draws several original arguments from its four sections. The first section is a brief history of the state sacrifice to the Jidu. In the second section, I analyze the ideas of state authority, political legitimacy, religious belief, and cosmology, as these underlie the ritual performance concerning the Jidu. I argue that the Jidu was not only tightly associated with controlling water but was also a symbol and mechanism of political legitimacy. Relying on concrete official and local records, in the third section I further investigate the role that the Jidu God played in local society. I argue that after the Song dynasty, the Jidu God was transformed into a regional protector of local society and savior of local people in addition to an official water god. In the fourth section, I, for the first time, examine the interaction between the Jidu cult and other religious traditions including Daoism, Buddhism, and folk religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional Chinese state sacrificial ritual represented a symbolic system of integrating religious belief, divine authority, and political legitimacy. The Northern Stronghold (Beizhen 北鎮, i.e., Mount Yiwulü 醫巫閭山) was equal in status to the other four strongholds, which, moreover, served as a strategic military fortress and represented the earth virtue in the early state sacrifice system. In the late imperial era of China, and during the Yuan (1279–1368) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties in particular, the Northern Stronghold swiftly achieved prominence and eventually became an instrument used by minority ethnic groups, namely the Mongolians and Manchus, when elaborating upon the legitimacy of their political regimes. During the Yuan dynasty, the mountain spirits of the five strongholds (Wuzhen 五鎮) were formally invested as kings and, as a result, were accorded equivalent sacrifices in comparison to those given to the five sacred peaks (Wuyue 五嶽). Given that the Northern Stronghold was located near the northeast of Beijing, the Yuan government considered it the foundation of the state. Thereafter, the Northern Stronghold was regarded as the most important of the five stronghold mountains. In the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the Northern Stronghold Temple (Beizhenmiao 北鎮廟) was reconstructed as both a military fortress and religious site, while its representation as a significant site for a foreign conquest dynasty diminished and its significance as a bastion of anti-insurgent suppression emerged. By the Qing dynasty, the Northern Stronghold was regarded as an integral component of the geographic origin of the Manchu people and thereby assumed once again a position of substantial political significance. Several Qing emperors visited the Northern Stronghold and left poems and prose written in graceful Chinese to present their high respect and their mastery of Chinese culture. The history of the Northern Stronghold demonstrates how the ethnic minority regimes successfully utilized the traditional Chinese state sacrificial ritual to serve their political purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a survey of how European rhetoric reached China in the transitional period between the Ming and the Qing dynasties. The focus of my paper is how a verbal ars is transformed into the written ars, thus inaugurating the Christian literature in late imperial China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yijing benzhi 易經本旨 (original meaning of the Yijing, 1774) constitutes a unique piece of Christian literature produced by the Chinese Catholic believer Lü Liben 呂立本 in the Qing period. Following in the footsteps of Jesuit missionaries such as Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730), Lü represents a rare Chinese voice of the Figurist interpretation of the Yijing by claiming that ancient Chinese sages had received and recorded God's divine revelation in this venerated Chinese classic. Focusing on his narratives of Christ's Passion, this paper examines the ways in which Lü interprets the symbolic meanings of the trigrams/hexagrams and deduces their theological connotations in light of Catholic thought. The interweaving of religious devotion, tradition and experience underpinned a creative re-interpretation of the Passion narratives, which strives to sustain the faith of Chinese Catholic communities in the context of the Qing prohibition and persecution of Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]