[Compte rendu] Philippe Ménard, " L'itinéraire de Marco Polo dans sa traversée de la Chine ", Medioevo Romanzo, vol. XXVI (3e série, vol. VII), fasc. 3, septembre-décembre 2002, p. 321-360, 5 pl.

Compte rendu publié dans Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient 93 (2006): 517-522Compte rendu d'un article accompagnant la publication d'une nouvelle édition critique, appelée à devenir l'édition de référence du texte français, du " Devisement du Monde ", supposée relation de voyage attribuée à Marco Polo (1254-1324) et dont nombre de problèmes d'historicité demeurent non résolus

À vau-l'eau, à rebours : ou : L'ambivalence de la logique triadique dans l'idéologie du Taiping jing

International audienceDespite a problematic textual history, the Great Peace Scripture (Taiping jing) transmitted in the Taoist Canon reflects Han times (206 BC-220 AD) ideology. The cohesiveness of its contents resides in its universal triadic vision based on the Heaven-Earth-Man pattern. But two forms of triadic logic conflict in this vision: (a) a ternary process of decline in which Man has fallen from primordial perfection, and (b) a process of reversion to Unity through the harmonious reuniting of Yin-Yang binarity. The trifunctionality of the scheme fluctuates accordingly.Malgré une histoire textuelle problématique, le Livre de la Grande paix (Taiping jing) transmis par le Canon taoïste reflète l'idéologie de l'époque des Han (206 av. J.-C.-220 ap. J.-C.). La cohérence de son contenu réside dans sa vision triadique universelle basée sur le modèle Ciel-Terre-Homme. Mais deux logiques triadiques s'opposent dans cette vision : (a) un processus ternaire de déclin dans lequel l'Homme est déchu de la perfection originelle, et (b) un processus de reconquête de l'Unité par la réunion harmonieuse de la binarité Yin-Yang. La trifonctionnalité du dispositif varie en conséquence

Editing and Translating the Taiping Jing and the Great Peace Textual Corpus

International audienceThis article first defines the "Great Peace corpus" (four texts from the Ming Taoist Canon and a manuscript from Dunhuang), reviews eight major modern editions and Chinese translations of the "Great Peace Scripture" (Taiping jing), then focuses on Dr Barbara Hendrischke's remarkable English translation of a selection of its chapters, recently published.Cet article définit d'abord le " corpus de la Grande paix " (quatre textes du Canon taoïste des Ming et un manuscrit de Dunhuang), critique huit des principales éditions et traductions chinoises modernes du " Livre de la Grande paix " (Taiping jing), puis s'attarde sur la remarquable traduction anglaise d'une sélection de chapitres récemment publiée par Dr Barbara Hendrischke

Criminalized Abnormality, Moral Etiology, and Redemptive Suffering in the Secondary Strata of the Taiping jing

Drawing from the worldview and beliefs expressed in the early medieval Great Peace Scripture (Taiping jing 太平經), the paper surveys such themes as bureaucratic representations of the superhuman realm, the ceaseless divine surveillance of human beings, the impact of human misconduct on both individual lifespan duration and cosmic equilibrium, the penal fate of the dead underground, and prospects of redemption

The Date, Authorship, and Literary Structure of the Great Peace Scripture Digest

This paper is the first full analysis and reassessment of the Great Peace Scripture Digest (Taiping jing chao 太平經鈔), which has been and is still widely confused with the Great Peace Scripture (Taiping jing 太平經) proper that follows it in the mid-15th century Taoist Canon. It reviews the textual morphology of its various editions, discusses current hypotheses concerning its date and authorship, and investigates its literary structure and form, pointing to clusters of prosodic patterns. Shedding light on coexisting strata of diachronic origin, it shows that the received text should not be considered the product of an inconstant compiler, but rather the conflation of distinct shortened renditions of the Great Peace Scripture perhaps dating to the Tang and pre- or early Song eras. A full linear analysis of the text, including a concordance, completes the study

Traditional Chinese Knowledge before the Japanese Discovery of Western Science in Gabor Lukacs’ Kaitai Shinsho & Geka Sōden

Review Article on Gabor Lukacs, Kaitai Shinsho: The Single Most Famous Japanese Book of Medicine & Geka Sōden: An Early Very Important Manuscript on Surger

Portents in Early Imperial China: Observational Patterns from the "Spring and Autumn" Weft Profoundly Immersed Herptile (Qiantan ba 潛潭巴)

Still neglected by European-language research, the 'Weft' or 'Apocrypha' contain a wealth of data relevant to Chinese history in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. These texts, whose Chinese name (wei 緯) denotes the crosswise threads of woven fabric, have long been perceived as arcane supplements to the 'Classics' (called jing 經, the lengthwise threads). Repeatedly prohibited and destroyed, they survive mainly as citations today. This paper focuses on the remnants of one of them, anonymous and fragmentary, which mostly present extrapolations derived from observed phenomena interpreted as signs. By comparing the observed patterns to the typology of portents in the official monographs on celestial phenomena and the Five Agents of the era, the paper sheds light on the logic at work in the interpretative process

Revelation between Orality and Writing in Early Imperial China: The Epistemology of the Taiping jing

This article focuses on the early medieval Chinese work known as the "Great Peace Scripture" (Taiping jing 太平經). It examines views expressed therein in relation to the superhuman versus human origin of knowledge, media of knowledge storage, and the process of knowledge denaturation through successive oral or written transmission phases. It ends with a discussion of the possible nature of the main speaker's unspecified written source of authority

Le corpus des citations du Livre de la Grande paix (Taiping jing) du ve au xve siècle

Le second volet du diptyque consacré au Livre de la Grande paix a porté sur le corpus des citations du texte dans un large éventail de sources chinoises recouvrant un millénaire, depuis le ve siècle – siècle pénultième du haut Moyen Âge chinois – jusqu’à la fixation de l’édition canonique du texte, au xve siècle, durant l’ère Zhengtong (1436-1449) de la dynastie Ming (1368-1644). Ce corpus n’a jamais fait l’objet d’une publication particulière ni, à ma connaissance, d’une étude systématique d..

The Invention of Buddho-Taoism: Critical Historiography of a Western Neologism, 1940s–2010s

“Buddho-Taoism” is a neologism that appeared in Western academic discourse during the late nineteen-forties, was put to various uses without being consensually defined, enjoyed a brief vogue around the turn of the twenty-first century, and began to fall from grace in recent years. This neologism implicitly created new epistemic repertoires derived from the names of two presumably known religions and has become a highly versatile speech unit, increasingly loaded with a heterogeneous subtext pertaining to Western-centred representations of the non-European Other. By contextualising its appearance and its variants in European-language writings and following their semantic evolution, this essay attempts to shed light on some of the problems raised by its retrospective implementation in contemporary Western discourse on China. It also illustrates the power of seduction of trendy terms that academics tend to overuse without careful consideration for their meaning, thereby adding unnecessary problems to the intrinsic difficulties of their primary materials