The flood myths of early China

"This book demonstrates how early Chinese stories of the re-creation of the world from a watery chaos provided principles underlying such fundamental units as the state, lineage, the married couple, and even the human body. These myths also supplied a charter for the major political and social institutions of Warring States (481-221 BC) and early imperial (220 BC-AD 220) China." "In some versions of the tales, the flood was triggered by rebellion, while other versions linked the taming of the flood with the creation of the institution of a lineage, and still others linked the taming to the process in which the divided principles of the masculine and the feminine were joined in the married couple to produce an ordered household. While availing themselves of earlier stories and of central religious rituals of the period, these myths transformed earlier divinities or animal spirits into rulers or ministers and provided both etiologies and legitimation for the emerging political and social institutions that culminated in the creation of a unitary empire." --Book Jacket.

שנה

2006

שפה

English

סדרה

SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture

הוצאה

State University of New York Press

מהדורות

1

עמודים

256

ISBN

9780791466636

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata