Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China

Honorable Mention, Joseph Levenson Prize (pre-1900 category), Association for Asian Studies

By the middle of the third century B.C.E. in China there were individuals who sought to become transcendents (xian)—deathless, godlike beings endowed with supernormal powers. This quest for transcendence became a major form of religious expression and helped lay the foundation on which the first Daoist religion was built. Both xian and those who aspired to this exalted status in the centuries leading ...