Animal and the Daemon in Early China

Roel Sterckx is University Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Cambridge and a former Junior Research Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.

• Acknowledgments Introduction: Contextualizing Animals The Animal and the DaemonAnimals as Images 1. Defining Animals Problems of DefinitionAnimals in TextsNaming Animals and Animal NamesConclusion 2. Animals and Officers Managing AnimalsRitual AnimalsAnimals and SpiritsCalendrical AnimalsConclusion 3. Categorizing Animals Qi and BloodYinyang and the Five Phases: Correlative TaxonomiesToward a Moral TaxonomyConclusion 4. The Animal and Territory Animal Patterns as Social PatternsAnimals and TerritoryAnimals beyond TerritoryConclusion 5. Transforming the Beasts Animals and the Origins of MusicAnimals, Music, and Moral TransformationThe Transformation of Animals through VirtueMoral Hybrids"Speaking with Birds and Beasts"Conclusion 6. Changing Animals A Cosmogony of ChangeDemonic TransformationsFunctional MetamorphosisAutonomous TransformationsSymbolic MetamorphosisPortentous TransformationsMetamorphosing AgentsCritique of ChangeConclusion 7. Strange Animals Defining the StrangeInterpreting the StrangeConfucius Names the BeastsWhen the Grackos Nest in LuThe Dog as DaemonThe Capture of the White UnicornConclusion ConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

"With his [Sterckx's] enormous knowledge … and meticulous arguing … he provides us with a unique work that will remain standard in the field for many years, an immense source of information full of stimulating new insights and interpretations dealing with the subject of the mutual relations between man and animal." — East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine"…a fascinating study of animals as metaphors for human behaviour and character, as well as of the anthropomorphism of animals thought subject to moral laws and human virtue." — Archives of Natural History"Sterckx's study deserves wide attention, for it broadens one's perspective of the historical, crossing disciplinary boundaries to suggest a fuller, more complete Chinese universe." — Journal of Asian History"This book provides a sumptuous and detailed typology of an important theme in early Chinese thought. It adumbrates the ways in which the animal world was appropriated by the early Chinese to create some of the most fundamental ideals concerning the spiritual, social, and political aspects of sagehood in Warring States and Han China. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of the way in which the early Chinese perceived the natural world and how such perceptions reflected on and shaped their views of the human world and what it meant to be human." — Sarah A. Queen, author of From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the Spring and Autumn, According to Tung Chung-Shu"I know of no other book, either in a European language or in Chinese or Japanese, which provides such a fascinating portrait of early Chinese interpretations of animals. I suspect that it will be a major reference work for everyone who deals with the intellectual and religious world of early China." — John H. Berthrong, author of Concerning Creativity: A Comparison of Chu Hsi, Whitehead, and Neville