Recipes For Immortality

Despite the global spread of Western medical practice, traditional doctors still thrive in the modern world. In Recipes for Immortality, Richard Weiss illuminates their continued success by examining the ways in which siddha medical practitioners in Tamil South India win the trust and patronage of patients. While biomedicine might alleviate a patient's physical distress, siddha doctors offer their clientele much more: affiliation to a timeless and pure community, the fantasy of a Tamil utopia, and even the prospect of immortality. They speak of a golden age of Tamil civilization and of traditional medicine, drawing on broader revivalist formulations of a pure and ancient Tamil community. Weiss analyzes the success of siddha doctors, focusing on how they have successfully garnered authority and credibility. While shedding light on their lives, vocations, and aspirations, Weiss also documents the challenges that siddha doctors face in the modern world, both from a biomedical system that claims universal efficacy, and also from the rival traditional medicine, ayurveda, which is promoted as the national medicine of an autonomous Indian state. Drawing on ethnographic data; premodern Tamil texts on medicine, alchemy, and yoga; government archival resources; college textbooks; and popular literature on siddha medicine and on the siddhar yogis, he presents an in-depth study of this traditional system of knowledge, which serves the medical needs of millions of Indians. Weiss concludes with a look at traditional medicine at large, and demonstrates that siddha doctors, despite resent trends toward globalization and biomedicine, reflect the wider political and religious dimensions of medical discourse in our modern world. Recipes for Immortality proves that medical authority is based not only on physical effectiveness, but also on imaginative processes that relate to personal and social identities, conceptions of history, secrecy, loss, and utopian promise.

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and the Tang Prize for "revolutionary research" in Sinology, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning two thousand years of social, intellectual, and political change, the essays in these volumes investigate two central questions through all aspects of Chinese life: what core values sustained this ancient civilization through centuries of upheaval, and in what ways did these values survive in modern times? From Yü Ying-shih's perspective, the Dao, or the Way, constitutes the inner core of Chinese civilization. His work explores the unique dynamics between Chinese intellectuals' discourse on the Dao, or moral principles for a symbolized ideal world order, and their criticism of contemporary reality throughout Chinese history. Volume 1 of Chinese History and Culture explores how the Dao was reformulated, expanded, defended, and preserved by Chinese intellectuals up to the seventeenth century, guiding them through history's darkest turns. Essays incorporate the evolving conception of the soul and the afterlife in pre- and post-Buddhist China, the significance of eating practices and social etiquette, the move toward greater individualism, the rise of the Neo-Daoist movement, the spread of Confucian ethics, and the growth of merchant culture and capitalism. A true panorama of Chinese culture's continuities and transition, Yü Ying-shih's two-volume Chinese History and Culture gives readers of all backgrounds a unique education in the meaning of Chinese civilization.

Although the self-definition of Surrealism and the initial defining of science fiction as a genre both took place in the 1920s and the links between the two are manifest, no full study has appeared till now on Surrealism and SF. Across ten original essays, Surrealism, Science Fiction and Comics looks at how the Surrealist movement in France and the USA used, informed, contributed to, and criticised SF from that moment, whilst including discussion of the related genre of comics. Among its aims are a reassessment of Jules Verne in the light of Surrealism and an analysis of the debate in the 1950s on the 'new' Anglo-American literature arriving in France. This received, in fact, a mixed reception from the Surrealists of that decade even though writers and intellectuals close to the movement in the 1920s were directly responsible for its success. The book includes further essays on the subsequent impact of Surrealism on SF novelists J.G. Ballard and Alan Burns, and features essays that argue for Salvador Dalí's closeness to SF in the 1960s and his disagreement with the earlier scientific romance defined by Verne. The chapters that bring in comics range from theoretical discussions of the relation between the original comic strips of Rodolphe Töpffer and the key Surrealist technique of automatism, used in art and writing, through the cybernetic implications of the proto-SF Surrealist ciné-roman 'M. Wzz...' of 1929, which has never discussed in any detail before, to the 1948 Vache paintings by René Magritte, inspired by Louis Forton's strip Les Pieds nickelés. This pioneering set of essays shows how Surrealism from the 1920s to the 1970s did not just receive and adapt SF but impacted the genre in its later manifestations.

To understand Taoism is to understand the roots of contemporary Chinese culture. This hugely significant new book from Hu Fuchen highlights the significance of Taoism in modern day China, and supplies detailed information covering all aspects of a philosophical and religious tradition which is followed by as many as 400 million people worldwide. Comprehensive and user-friendly, the author outlines the principle theories and categories of Taoism covering each aspect in great detail. Whether new to the subject or a follower, this essential book will enable you to better understand all aspects Taoism and appreciate its central role within a newly reformed China.

Much as the modern Western world is concerned with diets, health, and anti-aging remedies, many early medieval Chinese Daoists also actively sought to improve their health and increase their longevity through specialized ascetic dietary practices. Focusing on a fifth-century manual of herbal-based, immortality-oriented recipes—the Lingbao Wufuxu (The Preface to the Five Lingbao Talismans of Numinous Treasure)—Shawn Arthur investigates the diets, their ingredients, and their expected range of natural and supernatural benefits. Analyzing the ways that early Daoists systematically synthesized religion, Chinese medicine, and cosmological correlative logic, this study offers new understandings of important Daoist ideas regarding the body’s composition and mutability, health and disease, grain avoidance (bigu) diets, the parasitic Three Worms, interacting with the spirit realm, and immortality. This work also employs a range of cross-disciplinary scientific and medical research to analyze the healing properties of Daoist self-cultivation diets and to consider some natural explanations for better understanding Daoist asceticism and its underlying world view.

Attitudes toward food and commensality constituted a central fiber in the social, religious, and political fabric of ancient Chinese society. The offering of sacrifices, the banqueting of guests, and the ritual preparation, prohibition or consumption of food and drink were central elements in each of China's three main religious traditions: the Classicist (Confucian) tradition, religious Daoism, and Buddhism. What links late Shang and Zhou bronze vessels to Buddhist dietary codes or Daoist recipes for immortality is a poignant testimony that culinary activity - fasting and feasting - governed not only human relationships but also fermented the communication between humans and the spirit world. In Of Tripod and Palate leading scholars examine the relationship between secular and religious food culture in ancient China from various perspectives.

Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets provides an ethnographic study of varmakkalai, or "the art of the vital spots," a South Indian esoteric tradition that combines medical practice and martial arts. Although siddha medicine is officially part of the Indian Government's medically pluralistic health-care system, very little of a reliable nature has been written about it. Drawing on a diverse array of materials, including Tamil manuscripts, interviews with practitioners, and his own personal experience as an apprentice, Sieler traces the practices of varmakkalai both in different religious traditions--such as Yoga and Ayurveda--and within various combat practices. His argument is based on in-depth ethnographic research in the southernmost region of India, where hereditary medico-martial practitioners learn their occupation from relatives or skilled gurus through an esoteric, spiritual education system. Rituals of secrecy and apprenticeship in varmakkalai are among the important focal points of Sieler's study. Practitioners protect their esoteric knowledge, but they also engage in a kind of "lure and withdrawal"---a performance of secrecy---because secrecy functions as what might be called "symbolic capital." Sieler argues that varmakkalai is, above all, a matter of texts in practice; knowledge transmission between teacher and student conveys tacit, non-verbal knowledge, and constitutes a "moral economy." It is not merely plain facts that are communicated, but also moral obligations, ethical conduct and tacit, bodily knowledge. Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets is an insightful analysis of practices rarely discussed in scholarly circles. It will be a valuable resource to students of religion, medical anthropologists, historians of medicine, Indologists, and martial arts and performance studies.

No-reading-required recipes take you from breakfast omelets to decadent desserts thanks to “really great graphics” (Mark Bittman, The New York Times). With illustrations instead of text, Picture Cook will reinvent the way you make food. Over fifty homey recipes are distilled into their most basic components, each rendered step-by-step in enchanting line drawings like nothing ever before seen in a cookbook. Covering everything from omelets and lasagna to chocolate cake, this cheery bunch of recipes will cure your kitchenphobia, delight the design lover in you and satisfy every tummy in your path. Including a visual tutorial on knife skills, illustrated metric conversion chart, and an index especially organized for various dietary needs, Picture Cook makes the perfect gift for budding chefs, college students, or any home cook in need of some visual inspiration. “An unusual, quirky book, with adorable illustrations, and solid, well-tested recipes. A delight.” —TheKitchn “I totally loved the stripped-down graphics that Katie Shelly illustrated for Picture Cook: See. Make. Eat. I particularly enjoyed how Shelly presented basic dishes that could be adapted to different flavor palates, such as hummus and raita. The book contains enough staple recipes for a beginner cook, while still suggesting advanced variations for the more experienced.” —Serious Eats “An ingenious cookbook.” —Mark Wilson, Fast Company: Design “Unintimidating . . . readers will find it hard not to smile at whimsical drawings of white lasagna, nutty quinoa, Immortality Smoothie, and other easy dishes . . . A treat for visual learners, beginning readers, young people, new cooks, and anyone who enjoys graphic design.” —Library Journal