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Miranda Brown

University of Michigan, Asian Languages and Cultures, Faculty Member

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I am a cultural historian of China, whose primary interests lie in recipes of all kinds: culinary and medical. I have published numerous articles on various aspects of Chinese medical, culinary, and cultural history in English and Chinese. I am also the author of The Politics of Mourning in Early China (2007), the Art of Medicine in Early China (2015) and, with the late Conrad Schirokauer, the co-author of A Brief History of Chinese Civilization (2012).

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Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology HKBU

Hong Kong Baptist University

University of Pennsylvania

Benjamin C Daniels

UC Berkeley

Dankook University

Yuri Pines 尤銳

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

University of Pennsylvania

University of Cambridge

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Books by Miranda Brown

Art of Medicine in Early China: Ancient and Medieval Origins of a Modern Archive

The Politics of Mourning in Early China

Papers by Miranda Brown

Who Was He? Reflections on China’s First Medical ‘Naturalist’

Medical History, 2012

This paper examines the reasons why Physician He (Yi–He, sixth century BCE) was regarded as a fou... more This paper examines the reasons why Physician He (Yi–He, sixth century BCE) was regarded as a founder in the classical medical tradition of China. By most accounts, Physician He’s importance owes much to his theoretical innovations. In contrast to earlier healers, Physician He purportedly framed the aetiology of illnesses solely in terms of natural causes, as opposed to attributing sickness to gods or demons. In this paper, I reread a famous episode in theCommentary by Zuo, which is often cited as evidence of the physician’s naturalism. By paying close attention to the formal elements of the narrative as well as its larger discursive context, I argue that the standard reading of Physician He falls short. The episode provides little evidence of any secular challenge to religious conceptions of illness, and Physician He was, in fact, patterned after occult experts. A careful look moreover at the reception of Physician He in premodern histories of medicine reveals that the physician wa...

The Politics of Mourning in Early China (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

Rituals without Rules

Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine by Hilary A. Smith

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 2020

5. Rituals without Rules Han Dynasty Mourning Practices Revisited

Categories and Legal Reasoning in Early Imperial China : The Meaning of Fa in Recovered Texts

Few terms in classical Chinese are so nettlesome as fa ( or ), a word often rendered in English a... more Few terms in classical Chinese are so nettlesome as fa ( or ), a word often rendered in English as law or penal law.1 Its troublesome nature owes much to the pronounced multivalence it had acquired already in early times. Traditional sources show that the term fa had a variety of meanings, 2 including “penal law,” 3 “standard,” “model,” “method,” and so forth. Hence it is unsurprising that scholarly opinion is divided about how to understand this term in various contexts, a situation reflected in the number of English translations currently in use. The newly recovered legal texts of Qin (221–207 BCE) and early Han (206 BCE – 220 CE) can help illuminate the sense of the word fa. Yet such materials have attracted little attention from Western scholars, whose discussions have focused on philosophical works such as the Mozi , or the text “Jingfa” discovered at Mawangdui (ca. 168 BCE).4 In this paper, we will clarify what fa means in certain, specific contexts. We argue that, although ap...

‘Medicine’ in Early China

A Brief History of Chinese Civilization

PART I: THE CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION OF CHINA. 1. "China" in Antiquity. 2. Turbulent Time... more PART I: THE CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION OF CHINA. 1. "China" in Antiquity. 2. Turbulent Times and Classical Thought. 3. The Early Imperial Period. PART II: CHINA IN A BUDDHIST AGE. 4. China during the Period of Disunity. 5. The Cosmopolitan Civilization of the Sui and Tang: 584-907. PART III: LATE IMPERIAL/EARLY MODERN. 6. China during the Song: 960-1279. 7. The Mongol Empire and the Yuan Dynasty. 8. The Ming Dynasty: 1368-1644. 9. East Asia and Modern Europe: First Encounters. 10. The Qing Dynasty. PART IV: CHINA IN THE MODERN WORLD. 11. China: Internal Crises and Western Intrusion. 12. China: Endings and Beginnings, 1894-1927. PART V: BUILDING A NEW CHINA. 13. China under the Nationalists. 14. China under Mao. 15. The Chinese World since Mao.

A Tale of Two Stones

Politics of Mourning in Early China, The

董慕達(Miranda Brown) 這一本 The Politics of Mourning in Early China(《早期中國的追悼政治》) 可以視為其博士論文... more 董慕達(Miranda Brown) 這一本 The Politics of Mourning in Early China(《早期中國的追悼政治》) 可以視為其博士論文“Men in Mourning: Ritual, Human Nature, and Politics in Warring States and Han China, 453 B.C.-A. D. 220"(《服喪者:戰國至漢代的禮儀、人性本質與政治運作》)的延伸與階段性總結。作者從事的是政治文化史的研究,企圖藉由悼文的說詞及服喪的實行狀況,來闡明漢代人是如何理解並面對形形色色的政治關係。何謂「追悼的政治」(the politics of mourning)?據董慕達本人的定義,「追悼」(mourning)是指「針對逝者而發的儀式性情感表現」,其範圍指涉很廣,自確認死者死亡後的招魂起,一直到納棺、服喪、立碑等都包含在內。因此作者所謂「追悼的政治」,即是以「服喪」及「立碑」的研究為主,探討「盡孝服喪」的概念,在當時菁英形塑的政治論述中所扮演的角色。董慕達在第一章〈孝子該何去何從?〉(Where Did All the Filial Sons Go?)以及第二章〈悲泣與哀嘆的世紀〉 (Centuries of Tears and Woe)中,分別探討西漢與東漢對孝道的不同詮釋。指出其間反映出私情與公義之間的拉鋸,以及個人與團體之間的衝突。第三章〈兒子與母親〉(Sons and Mothers),則延續前二章的餘韻,說明母子關係做為「私」的象徵,與「君父之義」對舉,實際上提供了另一種家庭式的象徵符號來類比當時的政治關係。董慕達指出,西漢雖然號稱以孝道治國,但事實上,為了維持公的秩序,政府會要求官員放棄個人的家族責任。這種政治論述也反映在當時孝道的實踐上, 作者認為西漢存在兩套實踐孝道的標準, 一方面強調以各種個人的奉獻,諸如以守墓等形式,來表達對過世親人的懷念。這種私人對家族的歸屬感與責任感之表現,成為我們熟知的政治哲學,也就是所謂「忠臣出於孝子之門」的家國類比關係。另一方面,西漢的人們雖然接受孝道為政治基礎的概念,但他們也能容忍孝子為了家國公義,而放棄個人服喪的責任,後者甚至要比前者來得更重要。...

Rumor, Chinese Diets, and COVID-19

Gastronomica

Mr. Song's Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644

Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies

This article documents the presence of cheese in the culinary traditions of southeast China betwe... more This article documents the presence of cheese in the culinary traditions of southeast China between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries through a close analysis of a single recipe collection, Mr. Song's Book of Nourishing Life. It opens by examining Mr. Song's techniques for cheesemaking, exploring his many culinary applications for cheese, and situating his interest in dairy within the broader tradition of cheesemaking of his place and time. By reconstructing the flavors of centuries past, this article recovers a forgotten tradition of cheesemaking in southern China and challenges popular stereotypes about traditional Chinese cuisine being dairy-free.

Book Review: Imagining Chinese Medicine edited by Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett

Journal of Medieval Worlds

It would be impossible to do justice to Imagining Chinese Medicine. The editors, Vivienne Lo and ... more It would be impossible to do justice to Imagining Chinese Medicine. The editors, Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett, have united scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America to provide the first sustained look at the intersection of visual culture and healing in China. By visual culture, I am referring to a wide variety of material related to the body: drawings, diagrams, color illustrations, advertisements, photographs, and cartoons, to name but a few. This volume is thus a formidable undertaking and reflects more than a decade of collaborative work. The 35 essays and two general introductions are intentionally wide-ranging. The editors have adopted a broad understanding of both China and medicine. "China" refers not only to the imagination of a state centered in the Yellow River Valley, but also a geographic mass that incorporated people of different ethnicities, religious, and linguistic persuasions. By "medicine, " they mean the multiplicity of strategies that people have used to understand and cure the broken human (or animal) body, as well as to promote vitality and to preserve health. The essays thus consider not only practitioners of the learned classical tradition, but also religious healers, veterinarians, Daoist practitioners, and adherents of sexual cultivation. The essays also span many centuries, mediums, and languages, from the Shuangbaoshan figurines and Mawangdui illustrations of the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 CE), to the medieval images recovered from the Dunhuang caves, to the color colophon pictures found in state-sponsored herbals in Ming China (1368-1644), to contemporary comic books. The essays also include a number of papers about the reception of Chinese visual imagery outside of China-for example, an examination of the images that accompany the quotations of the Classic of Childbirth (Taichan jing) in the medieval Japanese compendium, the Ishimpô; and Chinese medical imaginary in the broader East Asian, medieval Persian, early modern Dutch, and colonial Japanese contexts. Sino-Tibetan and Central Asian traditions also receive their share of attention. The essays diverge in terms of their intellectual styles and goals. Some of the essays provide a useful survey of sources, which will spawn new directions in the scholarship. For instance, the contributions of Zheng Jinsheng and Cao Hui, "Observational Drawing and Fine Art in Chinese Materia Medica Illustration" and "Polychrome Illustrations in the Ming Bencao Literature, " survey the 40 illustrated bencao, which have not until recently

4. Mozi’s Remaking of Ancient Authority

The <i>Mozi</i> as an Evolving Text, 2013

This chapter investigates whether the concept of sage-king was in some sense a Mohist innovation.... more This chapter investigates whether the concept of sage-king was in some sense a Mohist innovation. After providing a brief introduction to the major terms and texts, the chapter examines the vocabulary of sagehood in early China. It shows that the paucity of references to the term for sage-kings in the pre-Mohist corpus cannot be explained away as a historiographical illusion, the consequence of accidents of survival. By tracing earlier references to the six figures held up by the Mohists as sage-kings, the chapter demonstrates that, while the Mohists did not invent either appeals to the past or the six figures, they were the first to put distant figures and Zhou founders into a single class of model rulers. Consideration of the evidences suggests that the invention of the ancient sage-kings represents an important but overlooked legacy of the Mohists. Keywords:ancient authority; Mohists; Mozi; sage-kings

THE WUWEI MEDICAL MANUSCRIPTS: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION AND TRANSLATION

by Miranda Brown, Yang Yong, and Yong Yang

Discovered by farmers from an unmarked tomb in 1972 in Gansu, the Wuwei strips and tablets set fo... more

Huang di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text; A Dictionary of the Huang di nei jing su wen

The Chinese Historical Review, 2009

Art of Medicine in Early China: Ancient and Medieval Origins of a Modern Archive

The Politics of Mourning in Early China

Who Was He? Reflections on China’s First Medical ‘Naturalist’

Medical History, 2012

This paper examines the reasons why Physician He (Yi–He, sixth century BCE) was regarded as a fou... more This paper examines the reasons why Physician He (Yi–He, sixth century BCE) was regarded as a founder in the classical medical tradition of China. By most accounts, Physician He’s importance owes much to his theoretical innovations. In contrast to earlier healers, Physician He purportedly framed the aetiology of illnesses solely in terms of natural causes, as opposed to attributing sickness to gods or demons. In this paper, I reread a famous episode in theCommentary by Zuo, which is often cited as evidence of the physician’s naturalism. By paying close attention to the formal elements of the narrative as well as its larger discursive context, I argue that the standard reading of Physician He falls short. The episode provides little evidence of any secular challenge to religious conceptions of illness, and Physician He was, in fact, patterned after occult experts. A careful look moreover at the reception of Physician He in premodern histories of medicine reveals that the physician wa...

The Politics of Mourning in Early China (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

Rituals without Rules

Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine by Hilary A. Smith

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 2020

5. Rituals without Rules Han Dynasty Mourning Practices Revisited

Categories and Legal Reasoning in Early Imperial China : The Meaning of Fa in Recovered Texts

Few terms in classical Chinese are so nettlesome as fa ( or ), a word often rendered in English a... more Few terms in classical Chinese are so nettlesome as fa ( or ), a word often rendered in English as law or penal law.1 Its troublesome nature owes much to the pronounced multivalence it had acquired already in early times. Traditional sources show that the term fa had a variety of meanings, 2 including “penal law,” 3 “standard,” “model,” “method,” and so forth. Hence it is unsurprising that scholarly opinion is divided about how to understand this term in various contexts, a situation reflected in the number of English translations currently in use. The newly recovered legal texts of Qin (221–207 BCE) and early Han (206 BCE – 220 CE) can help illuminate the sense of the word fa. Yet such materials have attracted little attention from Western scholars, whose discussions have focused on philosophical works such as the Mozi , or the text “Jingfa” discovered at Mawangdui (ca. 168 BCE).4 In this paper, we will clarify what fa means in certain, specific contexts. We argue that, although ap...

‘Medicine’ in Early China

A Brief History of Chinese Civilization

PART I: THE CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION OF CHINA. 1. "China" in Antiquity. 2. Turbulent Time... more PART I: THE CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION OF CHINA. 1. "China" in Antiquity. 2. Turbulent Times and Classical Thought. 3. The Early Imperial Period. PART II: CHINA IN A BUDDHIST AGE. 4. China during the Period of Disunity. 5. The Cosmopolitan Civilization of the Sui and Tang: 584-907. PART III: LATE IMPERIAL/EARLY MODERN. 6. China during the Song: 960-1279. 7. The Mongol Empire and the Yuan Dynasty. 8. The Ming Dynasty: 1368-1644. 9. East Asia and Modern Europe: First Encounters. 10. The Qing Dynasty. PART IV: CHINA IN THE MODERN WORLD. 11. China: Internal Crises and Western Intrusion. 12. China: Endings and Beginnings, 1894-1927. PART V: BUILDING A NEW CHINA. 13. China under the Nationalists. 14. China under Mao. 15. The Chinese World since Mao.

A Tale of Two Stones

Politics of Mourning in Early China, The

董慕達(Miranda Brown) 這一本 The Politics of Mourning in Early China(《早期中國的追悼政治》) 可以視為其博士論文... more 董慕達(Miranda Brown) 這一本 The Politics of Mourning in Early China(《早期中國的追悼政治》) 可以視為其博士論文“Men in Mourning: Ritual, Human Nature, and Politics in Warring States and Han China, 453 B.C.-A. D. 220"(《服喪者:戰國至漢代的禮儀、人性本質與政治運作》)的延伸與階段性總結。作者從事的是政治文化史的研究,企圖藉由悼文的說詞及服喪的實行狀況,來闡明漢代人是如何理解並面對形形色色的政治關係。何謂「追悼的政治」(the politics of mourning)?據董慕達本人的定義,「追悼」(mourning)是指「針對逝者而發的儀式性情感表現」,其範圍指涉很廣,自確認死者死亡後的招魂起,一直到納棺、服喪、立碑等都包含在內。因此作者所謂「追悼的政治」,即是以「服喪」及「立碑」的研究為主,探討「盡孝服喪」的概念,在當時菁英形塑的政治論述中所扮演的角色。董慕達在第一章〈孝子該何去何從?〉(Where Did All the Filial Sons Go?)以及第二章〈悲泣與哀嘆的世紀〉 (Centuries of Tears and Woe)中,分別探討西漢與東漢對孝道的不同詮釋。指出其間反映出私情與公義之間的拉鋸,以及個人與團體之間的衝突。第三章〈兒子與母親〉(Sons and Mothers),則延續前二章的餘韻,說明母子關係做為「私」的象徵,與「君父之義」對舉,實際上提供了另一種家庭式的象徵符號來類比當時的政治關係。董慕達指出,西漢雖然號稱以孝道治國,但事實上,為了維持公的秩序,政府會要求官員放棄個人的家族責任。這種政治論述也反映在當時孝道的實踐上, 作者認為西漢存在兩套實踐孝道的標準, 一方面強調以各種個人的奉獻,諸如以守墓等形式,來表達對過世親人的懷念。這種私人對家族的歸屬感與責任感之表現,成為我們熟知的政治哲學,也就是所謂「忠臣出於孝子之門」的家國類比關係。另一方面,西漢的人們雖然接受孝道為政治基礎的概念,但他們也能容忍孝子為了家國公義,而放棄個人服喪的責任,後者甚至要比前者來得更重要。...

Rumor, Chinese Diets, and COVID-19

Gastronomica

Mr. Song's Cheeses: Southern China, 1368–1644

Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies

This article documents the presence of cheese in the culinary traditions of southeast China betwe... more This article documents the presence of cheese in the culinary traditions of southeast China between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries through a close analysis of a single recipe collection, Mr. Song's Book of Nourishing Life. It opens by examining Mr. Song's techniques for cheesemaking, exploring his many culinary applications for cheese, and situating his interest in dairy within the broader tradition of cheesemaking of his place and time. By reconstructing the flavors of centuries past, this article recovers a forgotten tradition of cheesemaking in southern China and challenges popular stereotypes about traditional Chinese cuisine being dairy-free.

Book Review: Imagining Chinese Medicine edited by Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett

Journal of Medieval Worlds

It would be impossible to do justice to Imagining Chinese Medicine. The editors, Vivienne Lo and ... more It would be impossible to do justice to Imagining Chinese Medicine. The editors, Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett, have united scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America to provide the first sustained look at the intersection of visual culture and healing in China. By visual culture, I am referring to a wide variety of material related to the body: drawings, diagrams, color illustrations, advertisements, photographs, and cartoons, to name but a few. This volume is thus a formidable undertaking and reflects more than a decade of collaborative work. The 35 essays and two general introductions are intentionally wide-ranging. The editors have adopted a broad understanding of both China and medicine. "China" refers not only to the imagination of a state centered in the Yellow River Valley, but also a geographic mass that incorporated people of different ethnicities, religious, and linguistic persuasions. By "medicine, " they mean the multiplicity of strategies that people have used to understand and cure the broken human (or animal) body, as well as to promote vitality and to preserve health. The essays thus consider not only practitioners of the learned classical tradition, but also religious healers, veterinarians, Daoist practitioners, and adherents of sexual cultivation. The essays also span many centuries, mediums, and languages, from the Shuangbaoshan figurines and Mawangdui illustrations of the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 CE), to the medieval images recovered from the Dunhuang caves, to the color colophon pictures found in state-sponsored herbals in Ming China (1368-1644), to contemporary comic books. The essays also include a number of papers about the reception of Chinese visual imagery outside of China-for example, an examination of the images that accompany the quotations of the Classic of Childbirth (Taichan jing) in the medieval Japanese compendium, the Ishimpô; and Chinese medical imaginary in the broader East Asian, medieval Persian, early modern Dutch, and colonial Japanese contexts. Sino-Tibetan and Central Asian traditions also receive their share of attention. The essays diverge in terms of their intellectual styles and goals. Some of the essays provide a useful survey of sources, which will spawn new directions in the scholarship. For instance, the contributions of Zheng Jinsheng and Cao Hui, "Observational Drawing and Fine Art in Chinese Materia Medica Illustration" and "Polychrome Illustrations in the Ming Bencao Literature, " survey the 40 illustrated bencao, which have not until recently

4. Mozi’s Remaking of Ancient Authority

The <i>Mozi</i> as an Evolving Text, 2013

This chapter investigates whether the concept of sage-king was in some sense a Mohist innovation.... more This chapter investigates whether the concept of sage-king was in some sense a Mohist innovation. After providing a brief introduction to the major terms and texts, the chapter examines the vocabulary of sagehood in early China. It shows that the paucity of references to the term for sage-kings in the pre-Mohist corpus cannot be explained away as a historiographical illusion, the consequence of accidents of survival. By tracing earlier references to the six figures held up by the Mohists as sage-kings, the chapter demonstrates that, while the Mohists did not invent either appeals to the past or the six figures, they were the first to put distant figures and Zhou founders into a single class of model rulers. Consideration of the evidences suggests that the invention of the ancient sage-kings represents an important but overlooked legacy of the Mohists. Keywords:ancient authority; Mohists; Mozi; sage-kings

THE WUWEI MEDICAL MANUSCRIPTS: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION AND TRANSLATION

by Miranda Brown, Yang Yong, and Yong Yang

Discovered by farmers from an unmarked tomb in 1972 in Gansu, the Wuwei strips and tablets set fo... more

Huang di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text; A Dictionary of the Huang di nei jing su wen

The Chinese Historical Review, 2009

The Interweaving of Rituals: Funerals in the Cultural Exchange between China and Europe (review)

China Review International, 2009

... Christian Europe. To be sure, some of the missionaries were alarmed by what they saw: The fun... more

Elizabeth Hsu. Pulse Diagnosis in Early Chinese Medicine: The Telling Touch . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Early China, 2014

The Interweaving of Rituals: Funerals in the Cultural Exchange between China and Europe (review)

China Review International, 2011

... Christian Europe. To be sure, some of the missionaries were alarmed by what they saw: The fun... more

Being in Time: What Medieval Chinese Theorists can Teach Us about Causation

by Miranda Brown and Ignacio Villagran

Rituals without Rules: Han Dynasty Mourning

by Anna-Alexandra Fodde-Reguer and Miranda Brown

Brown, Miranda, and Anna-Alexandra Fodde-Reguer. "Rituals without Rules: Han Dynasty Mourning." I... more