TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE AND SYMBOL: THE EAST. 2 CHINA

De: JOHN NOONE

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE & SYMBOL is published here in two volumes Volume One: THE WEST and Volume Two: THE EAST, and each volume is divided into four books. The WEST series is presented as a chronological sequence and the EAST series as individual studies of specific cultures. Together they constitute an in-depth coverage of the image and symbol of the turtle/tortoise throughout the world from the earliest times. Reference is made to specific artifacts, documents and monuments, works of science, literature and art, which may be viewed or consulted today in museums and public places, libraries and private collections, and the writing is intended for all readers with an interest in turtles, scientific or sentimental, for collectors of antiques, curios and objets d'art, and for everyone with an interest in the diversity of cultural history, in myth and religion, custom and art. CHINA is the second of four books in the series TURTLE TORTOISE, IMAGE & SYMBOL: THE EAST. As well as China it concerned with the related cultures of Vietnam and Korea. The early appearance of the turtle/tortoise both actual and mythological is described in the Shang use of plastrons for divination and in the story of Nu Wa and Yu, as turtle, saving the world in the fragmentary accounts which survive the Confucian rewriting of myth as history. The turtle/tortoise reappears entwined by a serpent as Xuan Wu, the theriomorphic symbol of the North in the standard Five Phase classification, with Zhuan Xu ruler of the North, water, winter and the colour black, with the warrior gods Zhen Wu during the Song dynasty and Guandi during the Ming, as the vehicle of Shou Xing and the immortals, as the support of Kui Xing and the stele, as the golden turtle of Vietnam and the turtle ship of Korea. The exposition is followed by a bibliography.