Five Lost Classics
Tao, Huanglao, and Yin-Yang in Han China (Classics of ancient China)
Robin D.S. Yates
ISBN: | 9780345365385 |
Publisher: | Ballantine Books |
Published: | 14 July, 1997 |
Format: | Hardcover |
Language: | English |
Links | Australian Libraries (Trove) |
Editions: |
1 other edition
of this product
|
Five Lost Classics
Tao, Huanglao, and Yin-Yang in Han China (Classics of ancient China)
Robin D.S. Yates
Three schools of Taoism flourished at the beginning of the Han Dynasty in 2nd-Century B.C. China: the Lao-tzu, the Chuang-tzu, and the Huang-Lao, the last being the most influential philosophy at the court of the Han rulers. But, after Confucianism became the predominant court philosophy in the 1st Century B.C., Huang-Lao Taoism became little more than a name; its central principles virtually forgotten, its texts destroyed or lost.In 1973, among the many unique documents discovered in the richly furnished tomb of a Han-dynasty aristocrat, were five books written on silk, primary texts of Huang-lao Taoism and Yin-yang philosophy that had been lost to mankind for more than 2,000 years. A discovery as important in China as the unearthing of the Dead Sea Scrolls was in the West, the Mawangdui texts created a sensation when they were first published, even leading to the foundation of a new religion on Taiwan. Now Robin D. S. Yates, a noted expert in Chinese history and philosophy, offers the first complete translation of these precious and unique texts to be published in a Western language.As Professor Yates explains in his illuminating introduction to this volume, the recovery of the five lost classics sheds new light on a critical transitional period of Chinese political and intellectual history. Implicit in the texts is the assumption that a ruler who strives to align himself with the unknowable, transcendent order of the cosmos will become a "true king" capable
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