EBOOK Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500-1700

In this illuminating study of a vital but long overlooked aspect of Chinese        religious life, Jimmy Yu reveals that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,        self-inflicted violence was an essential and sanctioned part of Chinese culture. He        examines a wide range of practices, including blood writing, filial body-slicing,        chastity mutilations and suicides, ritual exposure, and self-immolation, arguing        that each practice was public, scripted, and a signal of cultural expectations.          Individuals engaged in acts of self-inflicted violence to exercise power and to        affect society, by articulating moral values, reinstituting order, forging new        social relations, and protecting against the threat of moral ambiguity.          Self-inflicted violence was intelligible both to the person doing the act and to        those who viewed and interpreted it, regardless of the various religions of the        period: Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and other religions. This book is a        groundbreaking contribution to scholarship on bodily practices in late imperial        China, challenging preconceived ideas about analytic categories of religion,        culture, and ritual in the study of Chinese religions.