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2 results

  • 5 - Transporting Goods and Faith

  • Yiwen Li, City University of Hong Kong
  • Book:
    Networks of Faith and Profit
    Published online:
    25 May 2023
    Print publication:
    08 June 2023, pp 95-127

  • Summary

    This chapter presents a “thick description” of a single prolonged trade relationship between a Chinese and Japanese monastery in which a Chinese merchant functioned as the go-between. This allows the reader to see the precise workings of the religio-commercial network. In 1242, the prominent Chinese monastery Jingshan was severely damaged by fire, and via his former Japanese student’s introduction, the abbot of the Jingshan monastery purchased one thousand wooden planks from a wealthy Chinese sea merchant, Xie Guoming, who was based in Hakata. To embed himself into the Buddhist network, Xie founded a monastery in Hakata to spread Zen Buddhism from the continent to the archipelago. The letters from the Jingshan abbot indicate that Xie’s efforts were not in vain: the abbot showed exceptional trust in Xie and his fellow merchants, helped them when their cargo was detained on the Chinese coast, and even praised Xie’s interpretation of Buddhist scriptures.

  • 7 - The imperial court

  • from PART II - THE GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Edward Champlin, Princeton University, New Jersey, Andrew Lintott, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 February 1996, pp 283-308

  • Summary

    The work of the last generation of historians has represented a large step towards a better understanding of the early imperial court. Several major studies have extended the detailed knowledge of the freedmen personnel, the equestrian amici principis, and of links among the senatorial elite. Above all, study of contacts between emperors and their subjects, the decision-making process and the distribution of resources and patronage, show the network of imperial personnel in operation and reveal something of the structures within which they operate. In discussing the nascent court of the Julio-Claudian period, it is necessary to generalize more broadly about the function of the court in the structure of imperial power. The social rituals of a court may act as a facade to screen the realities of power. Between Augustus and Nero the patterns of court life were developing, and still far from fixed. The court was a system of power which tended to its own perpetuation.