Crosby-Fiske Hand Book of Fire Protection PDF Download

Author: Everett Uberto Crosby
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fire insurance
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Author: N. Harry Rothschild
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231539185
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Wu Zhao (624–705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu, is the only woman to have ruled China as emperor over the course of its 5,000-year history. How did she—in a predominantly patriarchal and androcentric society—ascend the dragon throne? Exploring a mystery that has confounded scholars for centuries, this multifaceted history suggests that China's rich pantheon of female divinities and eminent women played an integral part in the construction of Wu Zhao's sovereignty. Wu Zhao deftly deployed language, symbol, and ideology to harness the cultural resonance, maternal force, divine energy, and historical weight of Buddhist devis, Confucian exemplars, Daoist immortals, and mythic goddesses, establishing legitimacy within and beyond the confines of Confucian ideology. Tapping into powerful subterranean reservoirs of female power, Wu Zhao built a pantheon of female divinities carefully calibrated to meet her needs at court. Her pageant was promoted in scripted rhetoric, reinforced through poetry, celebrated in theatrical productions, and inscribed on steles. Rendered with deft political acumen and aesthetic flair, these affiliations significantly enhanced Wu Zhao's authority and cast her as the human vessel through which the pantheon's divine energy flowed. Her strategy is a model of political brilliance and proof that medieval Chinese women enjoyed a more complex social status than previously known.

Author: Paulin Batairwa Kubuya
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319705245
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Chinese practices related to ancestors have long been the subject of conflicting interpretations. These practices are rooted in the lived experience of practitioners, and therefore need to be considered as embodied expressions of the quest for existential meaning. For practitioners, the achievement of existential meaning requires the inclusion, implication, and mediation of the ancestors. When gestures in ancestor rites are analyzed from this perspective it is possible to appreciate their essence as constitutive of “ancestor religion.” This book uses an inquisitive method that investigates the discrepancies between foreign and local explanations, and proposes another hermeneutic framework for ancestor related praxes.

Author: Patricia Bjaaland Welch
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462906893
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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With over 630 striking color photos and illustrations, this Chinese art guide focuses on the rich tapestry of symbolism which makes up the basis of traditional Chinese art. Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery includes detailed commentary and historical background information for the images that continuously reappear in the arts of China, including specific plants and animals, religious beings, mortals and inanimate objects. The book thoroughly illuminates the origins, common usages and diverse applications of popular Chinese symbols in a tone that is both engaging and authoritative. Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery is an essential reference for collectors, museum-goers, guides, students and anyone else with a serious interest in the culture and history of China.

Author: Lucie Rault
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004380264
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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L’Hymnaire manichéen chinois offre un ensemble de 25 hymnes destinées à la pratique de la religion manichéenne par la Section des Auditeurs. Mis au jour à Dunhuang (actuel Gansu) au début du 20ème siècle, après être resté enfoui dans une cache pendant quelque douze siècles, ce rouleau écrit en langue chinoise, comprend plusieurs hymnes transcrites de diverses langues courantes en Asie centrale à l’époque de sa rédaction. Cette traduction apporte une vision nouvelle de la Religion de Lumière, telle qu’elle se vit adoptée par les Chinois, ainsi que de l’ampleur du message du prophète iranien Mani (216-276), aspirant à une portée universelle et destiné à relier entre eux les hommes de tous horizons de par le monde, quelque soit leur origine, leur langue ou leur histoire. L’Hymnaire manichéen chinois presents a collection of twenty-five hymns that were intended for the Manichean religious practice of the class of Auditors. The scroll, which came to light in the early twentieth century in the province of Dunhuang (modern Ganzu) after lying buried for around twelve centuries, contains several hymns transcribed from a variety of languages that were current in Central Asia during the epoch of its redaction. This translation provides a new perspective on the Religion of Light as it was adopted in China, and on the wide reach of the message of the Iranian prophet Mani (216-276) that aimed at universal scope and was meant to unite people from all parts of the world, of whatever origin, language and history.

Author: Shi Zhiru
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824864832
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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In modern Chinese Buddhism, Dizang is especially popular as the sovereign of the underworld. Often represented as a monk wearing a royal crown, Dizang helps the deceased faithful navigate the complex underworld bureaucracy, avert the punitive terrors of hell, and arrive at the happy realm of rebirth. The author is concerned with the formative period of this important Buddhist deity, before his underworldly aspect eclipses his connections to other religious expressions and at a time when the art, mythology, practices, and texts of his cult were still replete with possibilities. She begins by problematizing the reigning model of Dizang, one that proposes an evolution of gradual sinicization and increasing vulgarization of a relatively unknown Indian bodhisattva, Ksitigarbha, into a Chinese deity of the underworld. Such a model, the author argues, obscures the many-faceted personality and iconography of Dizang. Rejecting it, she deploys a broad array of materials (art, epigraphy, ritual texts, scripture, and narrative literature) to recomplexify Dizang and restore (as much as possible from the fragmented historical sources) what this figure meant to Chinese Buddhists from the sixth to tenth centuries. Rather than privilege any one genre of evidence, the author treats both material artifacts and literary works, canonical and noncanonical sources. Adopting an archaeological approach, she excavates motifs from and finds resonances across disparate genres to paint a vibrant, detailed picture of the medieval Dizang cult. Through her analysis, the cult, far from being an isolated phenomenon, is revealed as integrally woven into the entire fabric of Chinese Buddhism, functioning as a kaleidoscopic lens encompassing a multivalent religio-cultural assimilation that resists the usual bifurcation of doctrine and practice or "elite" and "popular" religion. The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva presents a fascinating wealth of material on the personality, iconography, and lore associated with the medieval Dizang. It elucidates the complex cultural, religious, and social forces shaping the florescence of this savior cult in Tang China while simultaneously addressing several broader theoretical issues that have preoccupied the field. Zhiru not only questions the use of sinicization as a lens through which to view Chinese Buddhist history, she also brings both canonical and noncanonical literature into dialogue with a body of archaeological remains that has been ignored in the study of East Asian Buddhism.

Author: Stephen Jones
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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This book opens the door on the magnificent living traditions of folk music in rural China. Stephen Jones's book illustrates the beauty and variety of these folk traditions, from the plangent shawm bands of the rugged north to the more mellifluous string ensembles of the southeastern coast. Working closely with the Music Research Institute in Beijing, Stephen Jones has used his fieldwork in China to write a book offering a rare insight into the riches of these traditions. It opens up a country where for the outsider official culture still largely obscures folk traditions, and where revolutionary opera and kitsch urban professional arrangements still dominate our image of Chinese music. The book is in three parts. Part one, The Social Background, discuses the turbulent history of folk ensembles in the twentieth century and the survival of folk ceremonial; part two outlines musical features of Chinese instrumental groups, such as scales, melody, and variation; part three gives practical introductions to some of the diverse regional genres.

Author: John Kieschnick
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812245601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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In this collection of original essays, leading Asian studies scholars take a new look at the way the Chinese conceived of India in their literature, art, and religious thought in the premodern era.

Author: John Lagerwey
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004175857
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1584

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Book Description
After the Warring States, treated in Part One of this set, there is no more fecund era in Chinese religious and cultural history than the period of division (220-589 AD). During it, Buddhism conquered China, Daoism grew into a mature religion with independent institutions, and, together with Confucianism, these three teachings, having each won its share of state recognition and support, formed a united front against shamanism. While all four religions are covered, Buddhism and Daoism receive special attention in a series of parallel chapters on their pantheons, rituals, sacred geography, community organization, canon formation, impact on literature, and recent archaeological discoveries. This multi-disciplinary approach, without ignoring philosophical and theological issues, brings into sharp focus the social and historical matrices of Chinese religion.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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