{"product_id":"the-legends-of-mountains-seas-a-non-bestiary-interpretation-of-divination-sorcery-demigods-gods-religion-immortality-metamorphosis-cosmology-paperback","title":"The Legends of Mountains \u0026 Seas: A Non-Bestiary Interpretation of Divination, Sorcery, Demigods, Gods, Religion, Immortality, Metamorphosis, Cosmology - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eHong Yuan\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eShan Hai Jing\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eThe Legends of Mountains and Seas\u003c\/i\u003e), commonly titled \u003ci\u003eThe Classic of Mountains and Seas\u003c\/i\u003e or \u003ci\u003eGuideways Through Mountains and Seas\u003c\/i\u003e per Richard Strassberg, was a book that was juxtaposed to the later book \u003ci\u003eShui Jing\u003c\/i\u003e (classic or canons on 137 rivers) written by Sang Qin of the Cao-Wei dynasty (220-265 A.D.). For the absurdities and strange things in the book, such as folklore monsters, weird animals, ancient clan genealogies and strange lands (i.e., \u003ci\u003eterra incognita\u003c\/i\u003e), scholars of different dynasties felt troublesome to determine the genre in the imperial bibliography. In the Manchu Qing dynasty, Ji Xiaolan treated the book as fiction; during the Republic of China, Lu Xun treated the book as sorcery; and subsequently, Yuan Ke treated the book as mythology.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Anne Birrell, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Classic of Mountains and Seas\u003c\/i\u003e, pointed out that the book was taken to be of different genre in history, such as geomancy, geography and cosmology, etc., with the Westerners and Japanese going astray in different directions as well, including the claims of cosmography per M. Nazin (1839), geography per L on de Risny (1890s), tribal peoples per Gustav Schlegel (1892), deities per Edward T. C. Werner (1923), \u003ci\u003emateria medica\u003c\/i\u003e per Bernard E. Read (1928-39), religious and medical per Ito Seiji (1969), ethnographic per R mi Mathieu, folk medicine per John William Schiffeler (1977, 1980), and gendered motif per Riccardo Francasso (1988), etc. Richard Strassberg treated the book as bestiary (2018). Today, in the context of China's assertion of the grandiose imperial past, the book was wrongly treated by the Chinese to be about ancient geological exploration records, a theme also seen in Henriette Mertz's \u003ci\u003ePale Ink\u003c\/i\u003e (1958).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Legends of Mountains and Seas\u003c\/i\u003e, which would be expounded in this book to be about two different kinds of fortune-telling, sorcery and divination, should not be taken as a Han-dynasty equivalent philosophical 'jing'  canons or classic, i.e., longitude\/28 lodges' asterism] learning edited by Confucius and his disciples, nor the nature of the derivative sets of interpretation and commentary books that were known as the Han dynasty 'wei'  'latitude' or \"five planets' divination\"] series, nor the 'chen-wei' (ch'an wei) prophecy and argot books (i.e., implicit prophecy or cryptology that Jacques Gernet called by esoteric commentaries). While the mountain part of the book could be termed 'guideways' as proposed by Yuan Ke and Richard Strassberg, the 'jing'-suffixed seas' components could not be qualified with this tag. The mountains' part was actually the ancient \u003ci\u003eShi-fa\u003c\/i\u003e stalk divination.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Legends of Mountains and Seas\u003c\/i\u003e was compiled by Liu Xin (53 BC - 23 AD). The book, totaling 18 chapters nowadays, apparently developed the different contents throughout the Zhou, Qin, Han and Jinn dynasties. It was deduced that Liu Xin combined the five chapters of the book on the \"mountains\" (\u003ci\u003eWu Zang San Jing\u003c\/i\u003e) with the chapters on the \" over-]seas\" contents to become a consolidated mountains and seas' book. The seas or overseas' components could be further separated into two groups, i.e., the \"inner seas\" and the \"outer seas\" sections that were compiled by Liu Xin and the \"within-seas\" and the \"overseas wilderness\" sections that were possibly collected by Guo Pu (A.D. 276-324), with the former two sections possibly synchronizing with the Han empire's military expansion, and the latter two sharing similar contents as \u003ci\u003eLian-shan Yi\u003c\/i\u003e (divination on concatenated  undulating] mountain ranges), \u003ci\u003eGui-cang Yi\u003c\/i\u003e (returning-to-earth hoarding divination), A.D. 279 Ji-zhong tomb divination texts, and the 1993 Wangjiatai excavated divination texts.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 178\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.41 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e January 15, 2020\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51790929232160,"sku":"9781660979189","price":10.73,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/96baecd867cfe8c735bfe3e07f2546eb.webp?v=1780687845","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/the-legends-of-mountains-seas-a-non-bestiary-interpretation-of-divination-sorcery-demigods-gods-religion-immortality-metamorphosis-cosmology-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}