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School of Chinese Scholar Seminar

Sacrificing to the Gods and Purifying the People:

New Perspectives on Qin Religious Practices and Beliefs from Recently Excavated and Recovered Documents

Abstract:

This talk will focus on revisiting evidence for the state and empire of Qin from the perspective of recently excavated and retrieved (looted) texts and documents. After a review of the sources in the Introduction, it is divided into five main parts, followed by a brief conclusion:

1. Administration relating to religious practice;
2. Gods and goddesses;
3. Laws concerning sacrifices;
4. Hemerology and religious practice;
5. Concepts of purity and pollution. The latter provides the rationale for the Qin policies in many areas of activities, not just in religious ones.

About the Speaker:

Robin D.S. Yates is James McGill Professor (Emeritus) of East Asian Studies and History and Classical Studies, McGill University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He specializes in the social and cultural history of pre-modern China, the history of Chinese military science and technology, and the history of Chinese law. He has a strong interest in the history of Chinese women and in slavery in China. Among his numerous publications, he co-authored with the late Dr. Joseph Needham the second volume on military technology in the series Science and Civilisation in China, and, later, Law, State, Society in Early Imperial China with Anthony J. Barbieri-Low (Brill, 2015). He is currently researching the newly excavated and recovered early imperial administrative and legal documents and is working on a book, Inscribed on Bamboo and Wood: Revisions of the History of China’s First Empire, the Qin.