{"product_id":"sanctity-and-self-inflicted-violence-in-chinese-religions-1500-1700-9780199844883","title":"Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500-1700","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Jimmy Yu\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Eastern\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 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\u003cbr\u003escholarship on bodily practices in late imperial China, challenging preconceived ideas about analytic categories of religion, culture, and ritual in the study of Chinese religions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press, USA","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47889981636759,"sku":"9780199844883","price":7118.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9780199844883.webp?v=1781178427","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/sanctity-and-self-inflicted-violence-in-chinese-religions-1500-1700-9780199844883","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}