Early Medieval China ─ A Sourcebook

This innovative sourcebook builds a dynamic understanding of China's early medieval period (220--589) through an original selection and arrangement of literary, historical, religious, and critical texts. A tumultuous and formative era, these centuries saw the longest stretch of political fragmentation in China's imperial history, resulting in new ethnic configurations, the rise of powerful clans, and a pervasive divide between north and south.

Deploying thematic categories, the editors sketch the period in a novel way for students and, by featuring many texts translated into English for the first time, recast the era for specialists. Thematic topics include regional definitions and tensions, governing mechanisms and social reality, ideas of self and other, relations with the unseen world, everyday life, and cultural concepts. Within each section, the editors and translators introduce the selected texts and provide critical commentary on their historical significance, along with suggestions for further reading and research.

Wendy Swartz is an associate professor of Chinese literature at Rutgers University. She is the author of Reading Tao Yuanming: Shifting Paradigms of Historical Reception (427–1900) and articles on early medieval Chinese poetry and classical literary thought and criticism.



Robert Ford Campany is a professor of Asian studies and religion at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China and three other books and numerous articles on the history of Chinese religions and the comparative study of religion.



Yang Lu has taught at Princeton University and the University of Kansas and is a professor of Chinese history at Peking University. He specializes in the history of medieval China and of Buddhism. His publications include works on the cultural and political history of the Tang dynasty, Buddhist scholasticism in China, and Chinese historiography.



Jessey J. C. Choo is an assistant professor at Rutgers University and specializes in the cultural history of medieval China. She is currently finishing a book-length study on memory, identity, and the transformation of mortuary and commemorative rituals in medieval China.