DOC Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India by Lata Mani in History

Description

In late classical and early medieval China; ascetics strove to become transcendents--deathless beings with supernormal powers. Practitioners developed dietetic; alchemical; meditative; gymnastic; sexual; and medicinal disciplines (some of which are still practiced today) to perfect themselves and thus transcend death. Narratives of their achievements circulated widely. Ge Hong (283-343 c.e.) collected and preserved many of their stories in his Traditions of Divine Transcendents; affording us a window onto this extraordinary response to human mortality.Robert Ford Campany's groundbreaking and carefully researched text offers the first complete; critical translation and commentary for this important Chinese religious work; at the same time establishing a method for reconstructing lost texts from medieval China. Clear; exacting; and annotated; the translation comprises over a hundred lively; engaging narratives of individuals deemed to have fought death and won. Additionally; To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth systematically introduces the Chinese quest for transcendence; illuminating a poorly understood tradition that was an important source of Daoist religion and a major social; cultural; and religious phenomenon in its own right.