¹ There is, however, one annoying feature of this otherwise very handsomely produced book which does rather detract from the bibliography: the omission of any indication of date for many contributions to periodicals. No possible explanation for this occurs to me.

² Though in dealing with the ‘Maunder minimum’ (p. 7, n. 13)Google Scholar one recent contribution by a China expert does seem to have been overlooked, viz. Cullen, C., ‘Was there a Maunder Minimum?’, Nature 283 (1980), pp. 427–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ E.g. p. 99, n. 34; pp. 428–9, n. 33, cite Semedo from a French translation.

⁴ Viz. p. 266, n. 128; p. 643, n. 163;Google ScholarCf. also p. 273, n. 145; p. 737, n. 61.Google Scholar

⁵ For this work and its author, David, cf. E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 110–16.Google Scholar

⁶ Jonathan, Viz. D. Spence, Emperor of China (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

⁷ This Latin edition, dedicated to the King of Poland, appeared in Amsterdam: under ‘Lectore Salutem’ we find quotations of John, 1.9Google Scholar and of Matthew, 9.37.Google Scholar

⁸ Bellum Tartaricum, or the Conquest of the Great and Most Renowned Empire of China (London, 1655), p. 260. The translation, jointly published with a rendering of P. Alvarez Semedo's Imperio de la China from the Italian, is by an anonymous ‘person of quality’.Google Scholar

⁹ Wakeman's general approach here may profitably be compared with his views as expressed in his earlier textbook, The Fall of Imperial China (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Hsieh, Kuo-chen, Tseng-ting Wan-Ming shih-chi k'ao (Shanghai, 1981).Google Scholar

¹¹ See, for example, pp. 28–31 of Twitchett, D. C., ‘Chinese Social History from the Seventh to the Tenth Centuries’, Past and Present 35 (12 1966), pp. 28–53, a study introducing one of the very few earlier exceptions to this generalization.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Cf. n. 3 of Cf. n. 3 ofJoseph, P. McDermott, ‘The Huichou Sources—A Key to the Social and Economic History of Late Imperial China’, Ajia bunka kenkyō 15 (11 1985), pp. 49–65.Google Scholar

¹³ See Frederick, Wakeman Jr, (ed.), Ming and Qing Historical Studies in the People's Republic of China (Berkeley, 1980), especially Chapter Five.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Susan Naquin, Viz., Millenarian Rebellion in China: The Eight Trigrams Uprising of 1813 (New Haven, 1976);Google ScholarShantung Rebellion: The Wang Lun Uprising of 1774 (New Haven, 1981).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Though some of the Liaoning archives of Ming date were published in 1985, experts on the Manchu conquest, such as Chou Yüan-lien, whose Ch'ing-ch'ao hsing-ch'i shih was published in Ch'ang-ch'un in 1986, clearly write with the advantage of access to unpublished materials. The Japanese scholar Hosoya Masao has, however, obtained access to Liaoning materials through contacts with Chinese colleaguesGoogle Scholar: see e.g. his ‘Gokinkoku, Shinchō ni kikashita Kanjin no yōsō’, Chūgoku—shakai to bunka 2 (06 1987), pp. 42–60. The interest of Chinese scholars in archival research on the pre-conquest Manchus is also indicated by a review article on the exploitation of contemporary Manchu-language materials by researchers outside the People's RepublicGoogle Scholar: see Jung, Sheng, ‘Ch'ing T'ai-tsu T'ai-tsung ch'ao Man-wen tang-an ti ch'u-pan ho yen-chiu’, Chung-hua wen-shih lun-ts'ung 1987. I, pp. 101–7; note incidentally also the publication on Shih K'o-fa on p. 108 from a rare, non-archival source.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Ch'en Yüan, Viz., Ming-chi T'ien-Ch'ien fo-chiao k'ao (Peking, 1940);Google ScholarCh'ing-ch'u seng-cheng chi (Peking, 1941), and a number of shorter studies relating to Buddhism and the Shun-chih emperor.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The plight of seventeenth-century European observers of China living in a society where their distinctions between sacred and secular did not apply has been neatly summarized by Paul, A. Rule on p. 196Google Scholar of his K'ung-tzu or Confucious? (North Sydney, 1986).Google Scholar

¹⁸ See Lt, Col. SirRichard, Carnac Temple (ed.), The Travels of Peter Mundy, 1608–1667, vol. three, pt one (London, 1919), p. 301.Google Scholar

¹⁹ David, K. Jordan, Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors: The Folk Religion of a Taiwanese Village (Berkeley, 1972);Google ScholarDaniel, L. Overmyer, Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional China (Cambridge, MA, 1976).Google Scholar

²⁰ Holmes Welch, Viz. and Yü Chün-fang, , ‘The Tradition of Innovation: A Chinese New Religion’, Numen 27. 2 (1980), pp. 222–46. The Yellow Emperor religion, also briefly mentioned on p. 87, has been the subject of Japanese, as well as Chinese, research: one study by Shinohara Hisao appeared in a festschrift for Makio Ryōkai in 1984. Shinohara has apparently done further work on this cult besides, and has completed a substantial article, complete with photographs, on a sect in the I-kuan tao traditionCrossRefGoogle Scholar (covered by The Flying Phoenix, Chapter Nine)Google Scholar‘Taiwan no minshū shūkyō Chūka Seikyōkai ni tsuite’, Komazawa daigaku bungakubu kenkyū kiyō 42 (03, 1984), pp. 1–62.Google Scholar The only Japanese researcher to have anticipated Overmyer and Jordan in their general approach is Kani, Hiroaki, whose ‘Furan zakki’, Shigaku 45.1 (1972), pp. 57–88, constitutes a far shorter study with distinctly murkier photographs: Kani does refer to a brief report by Ōfuchi Ninji which I have not seen, but otherwise combines his own fieldwork with the historical background provided by Hsü Ti-shan's well-known monograph. More recent Chinese research in this area is harder to find, though where spirit-writing and popular rebellion have coincided a certain amount of work has been doneGoogle Scholar: see Cheng, Kuang-nan, ‘Cho-keng lu chung ti fu-chi-shih shih nung-min ch'i-i ti chan-ko’, Chung-kuo nung-min chan-cheng shih yen-chiu chi-k'an 3 (1983), pp. 103–6, which cites some earlier discussions, but nothing of much relevance to religious practice.Google Scholar

²¹ Mainly that of Chao Wei-p'ang and Hsü Ti-shan; as we shall see below, the Japanese scholar Koyanagi Shigeta also published some remarks on this topic which, though much briefer, could have pointed Overmyer in the direction of some hitherto neglected materials.

²² See Judith, M. Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries (Berkeley, 1987), p. 87, for twelfth-century materials in the Canon which are explicitly the product of spirit-writing. Elsewhere (p. 143, pp. 196–7, p. 283, n. 192, pp. 290–1, n. 243) she notes materials which she or others suspect of originating in spirit-writing. In n. 387 on p. 313 she also refers to a later (1822) product of spirit-writing preserved in Berkeley which would presumably be of interest to Overmyer. Her general observation (p. 141) that many of the lyrics under Lü Yen's name in the Ch'üan T'ang shih cannot be traced back before the thirteenth century should be noted by those who persist in using them as evidence for the T'ang conception of the world: see further below, at nn. 30–3.Google Scholar

²³ Dainihon zokuzōkyō (abbreviated to ZZ below) A 40/1, pp. 44b-45a.Google Scholar

²⁴ Chung-hua ta-tsang-ching series two, vol. 73 (Taipei, 1968), pp. 29925–7.Google Scholar

²⁵ See pp. 165–6 of Zürcher, E., ‘Perspectives in the Study of Chinese Buddhism’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1982. 2, pp. 161–76Google Scholar, and Cf. Shen-ch'ing, Pei-shan lu 2, in Taisho Canon, vol. 52, p. 582c, for an appeal to basic Buddhist principles to distinguish such literature as heterodox.Google Scholar

²⁶ Wang is best known for his edition of the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, recently used (rather unwisely) by Kuo, P'eng in his T'an-ching chiao-shih (Peking, 1983), from an edition of 1944: Wang's preface is reprinted on pp. 157–9. From this, and from other works, such as a commentary on the Heart Sutra in ZZ A 42/1, it would appear that his career spanned the Manchu conquest.Google Scholar

²⁷ ZZ B 22/1 p. 25a–b.Google Scholar

²⁸ Cf. p. 212 of Koyanagi, Shigeta, ‘Shincho no sankyō’, in Hattori Sensei koki shukuga kinen rombunshū (Tokyo, 1937), pp. 203–12.Google Scholar

²⁹ Arthur, Waley, Yuan Mei: Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet (London, 1956), pp. 132–3; P'eng appears on p. 81.Google Scholar

³⁰ Cf. p. xi, n. 8, of Frank, A. Kierman Jr, trans. Henri, Maspero, Taoism and Chinese Religion (Amherst, 1981).Google Scholar

³¹ Cf.Chou Hsün-ch'u, , ‘Hsü Ch'üan T'ang shih ch'eng-shu ching-kuo’, Wen-shih 8 (03 1980), pp. 185–96, for one recent summary of the background to the project.Google Scholar

³² See n. 22 above: examples may be found in the Ch'üan T'ang shih 858 (Peking, 1960), pp. 9697, 9699 and 9700 bearing explicit Sung dates.Google Scholar

³³ Cf. Ching-kang ching chu-chieh, ZZ A 40/2, p. 105b.Google Scholar

³⁴ Cf. ZZ A 42/1, p. 75b. The title given to this Diamond Sutra pao-chüan is not one listed in standard surveys of this type of religious literature.Google Scholar

³⁵ Chinese scholars are just starting to appreciate this: see Li, Hsiao-yu, ‘Ch'ien-t'an Ming-tai k'an-k'o ti Ching-shan tsang’, Wen-hsein 1980. 2, pp. 205–13. ‘Ching-shan Canon' is an alternative name for this work.Google Scholar

³⁶ Tsuen-hsuin, Cf. Tsien, in Needham, J. et al. , Science and Civilization in China, Volume Five, Part One: Paper and Printing (Cambridge, 1985), p. 372, for some existing figures.Google Scholar

³⁷ Cf. Yang Sheng-hsin, , ‘Ts'ung Chi-sha tsang k'o-yin k'an Sung-Yüan yin-shua kung-jen ti chi-ko wen-t'i’, Chung-hua wen-shih lun-ts'ung 1984. I, pp. 41–58.Google Scholar

³⁸ The Hsin-wen-feng publishing house has recently made available the Chia-hsing canon in forty stout volumes; the second series of the Chung-hua ta-tsang-ching, cited in n. 24 above, omits the basic portion of the canon; i.e. those texts already cononical by the thirteenth century, but prints (with some inexplicable and perhaps accidental exceptions) the material actually composed under the Ming and early Ch'ing, including the supplementary sections of the canon. In both cases the reduction in size affects the legibility somewhat, but original exemplars are available in several East Asian collections.

³⁹ Cf.Wang Ch'ing-ch'eng, , ‘T'ai-p'ing T'ien-kuo ti “mo-kuei”’, She-hui k'o-hsüeh chan-hsien 1983. 4, pp. 119–26.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ I have in mind Rudolf, G. Wagner, Reenacting the Heavenly Vision: The Role of Religion in the Taiping Rebellion (Berkeley, 1982), a stimulating but not altogether persuasive reexamination of the topic.Google Scholar

⁴¹ These are reprinted in the series T'ien-ti hui, jointly compiled by the Ch'ing History Research Institute of Jen-min ta-hsüeh and the Number One (i.e. Beijing) Historical Archives: see Volume One (Peking, 1980), p. 18, for the passage in question, a ‘Sword poem’ promising a return both to the Ming and to T'ai-p'ing, Great Peace, through the extermination of the baleful forces of evil.Google Scholar

⁴² One excepts Lin, Ch'uan-fang, ‘Tenchikai no Bukkyōteki seikaku’, Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyü 22. 1 (12 1973), pp. 277–80Google Scholar, though this does little more than insist on the Buddhist elements in the origin myth. It might be pointed out, however, that the very idea of an all-embracing organization identified by a single adopted surname is Buddhist: cf.Zürcher, E., The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden, 1959), pp. 189, 281.Google Scholar

⁴³ Cf. the abstract by Weng T'ung-wen of his paper entitled ‘Identity of Wan Yun Lung, Founder of T'ien-ti Hui’, delivered at XXXI International Congress of Human Sciences in Asia and North AfricaGoogle Scholar, in Abstracts of Papers III (Tokyo, 1983), p. 429. Whether Wan's organization had anything like the characteristics of those which later claimed him as a founder is quite another question: in China recent contributions by Ch'in Pao-ch'i and Ho Chih-ch'ing on T'ien-ti hui originsGoogle Scholar, in Ch'ing-shih yen-chiu t'ung-hsün 1986. I and 4 respectively, also persist in trying to trace a single, unified T'ien-ti Hui tradition back to a specific point of origin, but the assumptions that this involves should surely be discarded.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Though in view of what has been said above of P'eng Ting-ch'iu this may be overdrawing a distinction.

⁴⁵ The text in question is the T'ai-shang tung-shen hsüan-miao pai-yüan chen-ching (HY 857): ‘Chin bandits’ (p. 16b) and ‘demon bandits’ (p. 19b) appear to be used synonymously. For some discussion of demonology in anti-Mongol popular rebellions, see the article by Cheng Kuang-nan cited in n. 20 above.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See Miyakawa, Hisayuki, Chūgoku shūkyōshi kenkyū, vol. one (Kyoto, 1983), pp. 149–74, a study which first appeared in 1969.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Cf.Rob Campany, , ‘Demons, Gods, and Pilgrims: The Demonology of the Hsi-yu chi’, CLEAR 7. 1, 2 (07, 1985), pp. 95–115, especially n. 34 on pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Though the recent work of Erik Zürcher on popular Ming Christianity suggests that Martini's religion was very soon interpreted in terms of native demonology (to say nothing of spirit-writing!): see the summary of a lecture entitled ‘Popular Christianity in Fukien in the Seventeenth Century’, Bulletin of the British Association for Chinese Studies (1982), p. 7.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ For belief in the kalpa, see e.g. Naquin, , Shantung Rebellion, pp. 56–7. For a severely diminished, but still religious, meaning of the phrase tsao-chieh current in the 1940S one might cite the study ofGoogle ScholarLi, Wei-tsu, ‘The Cult of the Four Sacred Animals in the neighbourhood of Peking’, Folklore Studies 7 (1948), pp. 1–94, which reveals (pp. 7–8) that this was the term given to the phase in the spiritual career of the hedgehog during which it feels compelled to lie down in the path of oncoming carts.Google Scholar