HANDBOOK OF DIVINATION AND PROGNOSTICATION IN CHINA. PART 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE FIELD OF CHINESE PROGNOSTICATION. Edited by MichaelLackner and ZhaoLu. Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch der Orientalistik. Section Four: China, 37. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022. Pp. ix + 560. Hardback, $215.00.
Hendrischke B (2022)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2022
Journal
Publisher: Wiley
Book Volume: 48
Pages Range: 431-431
Issue: 3
DOI: 10.1111/rsr.16058
Abstract
The volume covers a field of study whose existence and identity have been mainly created by Lackner's research activities. Previously, scholars may have agreed that in China, prognostication was omnipresent, but they linked its aspects to their different fields of intellectual, political, social, or religious history. The volume naturally retains such divisions but also suggests focal points of confluence (Smith). Since the last century BCE, Chinese historians and librarians have, with great circumspection, organized and, following needs and fashions, re-organized the mantic arts' enormous written resources (Kalinowski). At times, components gained independent bibliographic existence, as mathematics and astronomy did finally in the eighteenth century. Technical qualities characterized the mantic arts from their beginning, as did the systematic rigor in their practice. Early court rituals of decision-making relied on oracle bones and the numerologically accessed Changes and charts excavated from tomb libraries (Constance Cook). Divination is, at the bottom, a key form of interaction between humans and the spirit world (Clart). It was always a vital component of popular religion and, as such, still has an intense social and cultural presence (Homola). From a cosmological perspective and some business acumen, Daoists integrated prognosticative practices, as did the Buddhists (Pregadio; Guggenmos). Both scholars ignore the prognostic aspect of millenarianism. A prophesy was a way in which Daoist deities assured their presence to believers and the wider public (Bokenkamp). The Sòng dynasty's socioeconomic innovations increased the role of prognostication in private life and intensified the contact between scholars and diviners (Liao). This comes to the fore when popular Míng dynasty novels integrate the practice and the resulting prognostications in their narration (Schonebaum). A few centuries later, the court's new interest in advanced, Western-stimulated astronomical insights curtailed divination's institutional role (Lü). The volume is well organized, thoughtfully introduced, and contains several massive and highly authoritative contributions that may serve as the starting point for new comparativist or sinological research. It also includes brief papers (Clart; Bokenkamp; Homola) that may interest undergraduates on their way into Chinese religion.
Additional Organisation(s)
Involved external institutions
Austria (AT)How to cite
APA:
Hendrischke, B. (2022). HANDBOOK OF DIVINATION AND PROGNOSTICATION IN CHINA. PART 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE FIELD OF CHINESE PROGNOSTICATION. Edited by MichaelLackner and ZhaoLu. Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch der Orientalistik. Section Four: China, 37. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022. Pp. ix + 560. Hardback, $215.00. Religious Studies Review, 48, 431-431. https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.16058
MLA:
Hendrischke, Barbara. "HANDBOOK OF DIVINATION AND PROGNOSTICATION IN CHINA. PART 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE FIELD OF CHINESE PROGNOSTICATION. Edited by MichaelLackner and ZhaoLu. Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch der Orientalistik. Section Four: China, 37. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022. Pp. ix + 560. Hardback, $215.00." Religious Studies Review 48 (2022): 431-431.
BibTeX: Download