The Scripture on Great Peace The Taiping jing and the Beginnings of Daoism [Hardcover]

This first Western-language translation of one of the great books of the Daoist religious tradition, theTaiping jing, or Scripture on Great Peace, documents early Chinese medieval thought and lays the groundwork for a more complete understanding of Daoisms origins. Barbara Hendrischke, a leading expert on the Taiping jing in the West, has spent twenty-five years on this magisterial translation, which includes notes that contextualize the scriptures political and religious significance.

Virtually unknown to scholars until the 1970s, theTaiping jingraises the hope for salvation in a practical manner by instructing men and women how to appease heaven and satisfy earth and thereby reverse the fate that thousands of years of human wrongdoing has brought about. The scripture stems from the beginnings of the Daoist religious movement, when ideas contained in the ancientLaoziwere spread with missionary fervor among the population at large. TheTaiping jingdemonstrates how early Chinese medieval thought arose from the breakdown of the old imperial order and replaced it with a vision of a new, more diverse and fair society that would integrate outsidersin particular women and people of a non-Chinese background.

Barbara Hendrischkeis Senior Research Fellow in the School of Modern Languages at the University of New South Wales. She is author ofWen-tzuEin Beitrag zur Problematik und zum Verst?ndnis eines taoistischen Textes and Taiping jing: The OriginandTransmission of the Scripture on General WelfareThe history of an unofficial text.

No Western scholar has given theTaiping jingthe thorough, painstaking attention that Hendrischke has given it. For the last quarter-century, she has unquestionably been the West's leading expert on the subject. Hendrischke is not only the prime authority on the history and nature of the text itself, but also the prime authority on virtually all relƒ,