Empowered by Ancestors: Controversy over the Imperial Temple in Song China (960–1279)

Empowered by Ancestors: Controversy over the Imperial Temple in Song China (960–1279) examines the enduring tension between cultural authority and political power in imperial China by inquiring into Song ritual debates over the Imperial Temple. During these debates, Song-educated elites utilized various discourses to rectify temple rituals in their own ways. In this process, political interests were less emphasized and even detached from ritual discussions. Meanwhile, Song scholars of particular schools developed various ritual theories that were used to reshape society in later periods. Hence, the Song ritual debates exemplified the great transmission of ancestral ritual norms from the top stratum of imperial court downward to society. In this book, the author attempts to provide a lens through which historians, anthropologists, experts in Chinese Classics, and scholars from other disciplines can explore Chinese ritual in its intellectual, social, and political forms.

作者簡介：

Cheung Hiu Yu is an assistant professor in the History Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has published widely on the intellectual and social history of the Middle Periods of China from the seventh through fourteenth centuries. He is the author of Dowry: Pattern and Significance of Daughters’ Property Ownership in Song China (2008, in Chinese) and a myriad of articles published in both English and Chinese scholarly journals.