Abstract This paper argues that excavated manuscripts of the Daodejing (Guodian, Mawangdui, and Beida) recover a primordial Daoist phenomenology that offers a more existentially rich conception of the good life than the subsequent, dominant metaphysical reading. This study provides a semiotic analysis of Daodejing Chapter 1 to demonstrate that the text’s transmission history involves a...
In his 1993 paper published in Shaman, Shi (1993) recognized that while Chinese scholars conclude that shamanism emerged and flourished in the prehistoric period and faded in post-industrial society, they are “puzzled by its vitality today” (Shi 1993, p [...]
Abstract The article examines various options that scholars have explored in their efforts to construct a history of shamanism. Recognizing Eliade’s promise that such a history lies in the near future, the article then explores the important ways in which this has been undertaken. It specifies four such ways: with prehistoric rock art, the origins of cultural myths, memory studies, and...