Animals and Plants in Chinese Religions and Science

This book is a unique transdisciplinary study on animals and plants in medieval Chinese religions and science, especially in such a critical era of environmental crisis today. In recent years, environment historians have written intensively on China, yet the study of animals and plants in medieval China was less developed, not much about the role of religions, more precisely. This book aims to bridge the gaps between religious studies and environmental studies, between the history of science and religious studies, and between animal studies and plant studies. It also deals with folklores and other literary sources for examining the changing images of animals in the psychological and imaginative experience, which are often overlooked in the conventional scholarship. This book addresses big issues such as how religious agents responded to the challenges about animals and plants as material culture in the mundane world, and how the religious writers developed their different discourse about animals and plants from the state ideology, and how the spiritual world and natural world mutually enriched each other in the medieval world of China.