Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought: Chapters Three, Four and Five of the Huainanzi by Major, John S - 1993

Albany, NY, U.S.A: State University of New York Press, 1993. Trade Paperback. Near Fine. This book is a study of three chapters of the Huainanzi, one of the seminal works of Chinese thought at the beginning of the imperial era: The Treatise on the Patterns of Heaven, The Treatise on Topography, and The Treatise on the Seasonal Rules; these treatises collectively comprise the most comprehensive extant statement of cosmological thinking in the early Han period; the author provides, for the first time, full English translations of these treatises with detailed commentaries that clarify the arcane language of the text and present a picture of the ancient Chinese view of how the world was formed and sustained, and the role of humans in the cosmos; also included are two introductory chapters on the Huainanzi and early Han cosmology by the author and a paper by Christopher Cullen originally published in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (plain gray cover with black lettering, slight crease along fold, otherwise a bright, clean, tight copy)