Edited by leading figures in the fields of early medieval Chinese literature, history, and religion, this is a truly outstanding volume--beautifully conceived and superbly organized, with excellent selections of sources, careful translations. and informative introductions.

(Michael Puett, author of To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China )

Wendy Swartz is an associate professor of Chinese literature at Rutgers University. She is the author of Reading Tao Yuanming: Shifting Paradigms of Historical Reception (427--1900) and articles on early medieval Chinese poetry and classical literary thought and criticism.

Robert Ford Campany is a professor of Asian studies and religion at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China and three other books and numerous articles on the history of Chinese religions and the comparative study of religion.

Yang Lu has taught at Princeton University and the University of Kansas and is currently a professor of Chinese history at Peking University. He specializes in the history of medieval China and of Buddhism. His publications include works on the cultural and political history of the Tang dynasty, Buddhist scholasticism in China, and Chinese historiography.