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  • The Scripture on Great Peace: The Taiping Jing and the Beginnings of Daoism
  • Harold Swindall (bio)
Barbara Hendrischke . The Scripture on Great Peace: The Taiping Jing and the Beginnings of Daoism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. lxvi, 276 pp. Hardcover $60.00, ISBN: 978-0-520-24788-8.

This landmark translation illumines China's spiritual and social history in a way which few others have. Although it is not part of China's mainstream intellectual tradition, the "great peace scripture" (abbreviated as "the TPJ") never received the attention it deserves among sinologists until Werner Eichorn took an interest in it in the 1940s (p. 1). The translator, a senior research fellow at the School of Modern Languages at the University of New South Wales, has also concentrated the scholarship of Max Kaltenmark and numerous Japanese scholars, such as Ofuchi Ninji and Yoshioka Yoshitoyo, into her creation.

Hendrischke's introduction begins with the history of the term "great peace" (taiping), which dates from before the Han dynasty and signified an ideal social state in which all classes were in their place and lived in bounteous harmony with heaven's order. She points out that "great peace" had a "programmatic sense" to "authorize a change of power" in which a new social order would establish this state of collective good. The notion was much influenced by the Daodejing, in which Laozi advocates ruling through virtue and "nonpurposive action," which later thinkers associated with great peace (pp. 5–6). Indeed, the imprint of Laozi can be seen throughout the TPJ, as well as that of Zhuangzi, who Hendrischke quotes in connection with his definition of great peace (p. 8). The term was also linked to aspects of Confucian thought (p. 10). All of these variations on the great peace theme had circulated in Chinese thought for centuries by the time of the TPJ's composition. The TPJ, however, moves away from the benevolence and proper etiquette emphasized by Confucius and turns to communion with heaven and nature on the part of all society as the way to salvation (pp. 13–14). Dating from the decadent end of the Han Ddynasty in the second century A.D., the TPJ addresses a society out of alignment with the dao of heaven and indicates the way back to the mythical society of early antiquity, when great peace was in force. Its main themes are the practice of maintaining vital qi, the rejection of culture (wen) in favor of nature, and the prioritization of heaven by both rulers and people, which will result in fair treatment of girls, sufficient wealth for the whole population, and general social justice—in short, great peace.

Like the writings of Plato, the TPJ's text consists of dialogs between a sage, called the "Celestial Master," and his disciple, who he addresses as "Perfected," another term Hendrischke traces to Zhuangzi (p. 18). The Celestial Master claims to have been sent by heaven with the mission of warning a sinful society to repent in time to avert impending doom. Hendrischke notes that this eschatological element [End Page 220] separates the TPJ from the rest of late Han literati discourse and is one of the book's "radical" aspects (p. 16). On the other hand, she emphasizes that the main lines of thought in the TPJ conform to late Han thinking and social conditions, especially "the misery and despair, as well as [the] beliefs and hopes . . . of the late Han peasants," many of them landless, who wandered through the countryside, eager for social reform (pp. 16–19). This latter consideration leads Hendrischke to devote space to the great peace movements of the second century A.D., including the Yellow Turban Rebellion, and efforts to found societies fair to the people; the appearance of Zhang Daoling and the Celestial Masters, with their theocratic missionary zeal; and early religious Daoism, into whose canon the TPJ was adopted (pp. 16–31). She also mentions the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s (p. 5). All these movements aimed at overthrowing or reforming the existing dynasty and establishing a just social order attuned to what they saw as the way of heaven. Another rebel movement inspired by...

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