书名：Ancestral Memory In Early China / 早期中国的祖先记忆
定价：450.0
ISBN：9780674056077
作者：K. E. Brashier
版次：1
出版时间：2011-01

内容提要：
书名：Ancestral Memory in Early China / 早期中国的祖先记忆
作者：K. E. Brashier
出版社：Harvard University Asia Center (哈佛大学亚洲中心，由哈佛大学出版社发行)，2011年
装帧：精装，484页
语种：英文
尺寸：约 15.2*22.9 cm（6 x 9 英寸）

ISBN：978-0-6740-5607-7

简介
早期中国的祖先仪式是一场在“在场”（祭品与生者）与“缺位”（祖先）之间的精心编排之舞。祭祀中可见元素之间的关联是显明且近乎机械的，但要将这些联系延伸到无形的宾客，则需要一种本身也是无形的媒介。因此，早期中国的祖先祭祀与对祖先的专注思考相关联——生者需要付出有组织的脑力劳动，去触及已故的先人，并赋予他们形貌与存在。思考祖先——思考那些已变得遥远的人——需要积极的思虑与冥想，这些品质需要被培养和学习。本书是对早期中国祖先崇拜，特别是其认知层面的历史研究，旨在挖掘该崇拜的色彩与活力，并摒弃那种认为这不过是食物换取长寿、祈祷换取繁荣的简单而无灵感的交换的假设。作者主张，祖先崇拜并不仅仅是机械和无思想的，而是一个引发关于死后存在本质的严肃辩论的观念体系，它既是儒教的宗教支柱，也可能成为道教和佛教冥想实践的先驱。

Ancestral ritual in early China was an orchestrated dance between what was present (the offerings and the living) and what was absent (the ancestors). The interconnections among the tangible elements of the sacrifice were overt and almost mechanical, but extending those connections to the invisible guests required a medium that was itself invisible. Thus in early China, ancestral sacrifice was associated with focused thinking about the ancestors, with a structured mental effort by the living to reach out to the absent forebears and to give them shape and existence. Thinking about the ancestors—about those who had become distant—required active deliberation and meditation, qualities that had to be nurtured and learned.

This study is a history of the early Chinese ancestral cult, particularly its cognitive aspects. Its goals are to excavate the cult's color and vitality and to quell assumptions that it was no more than a simplistic and uninspired exchange of food for longevity, of prayers for prosperity. Ancestor worship was not, the author contends, merely mechanical and thoughtless. Rather, it was an idea system that aroused serious debates about the nature of postmortem existence, served as the religious backbone to Confucianism, and may even have been the forerunner of Daoist and Buddhist meditation practices.