Taoism Under the T'ang: Religion and Empire During the Golden Age of Chinese History.

• Author: Kroll, Paul W.

Doubtless the most widely circulated unpublished sinological manuscript of the past two decades has been T. H. Barrett's chapter for the much delayed second T'ang-dynasty volume of the Cambridge History of China. The first T'ang (or rather, Sui-T'ang) volume, on political history, appeared in 1979. It was to have been followed in due course by a companion volume devoted to monographic surveys of various aspects of Sui and T'ang civilization. That book has yet to appear. In 1987 Stanley Weinstein brought out separately his chapter on Buddhism (Buddhism under the T'ang [Cambridge Univ. Press]), before it could become too outdated. In 1988 David McMullen published his superb study of official scholarship (State and Scholars in T'ang China [Cambridge Univ. Press]), originally meant for the CHC. Other fascinating chapters still languish in darkness (e.g., the late Edward H. Schafer's "Exotic Influence on T'ang Culture"), awaiting the touch of the printer's wand. T. H. Barrett's chapter on T'ang Taoism has, because of the growing interest in that topic, enjoyed for many years since its writing a considerable prepublication fame, becoming known and even cited in manuscript form by an expanding number of scholars to whom the author generously provided copies of his work. Now it too is available in bound form, in the tidy little format favored by Wellsweep Press.

Barrett focuses here strictly on Taoism in relation to the T'ang court. This is a compact, chronologically ordered synopsis of official T'ang responses to and uses of Taoist teachers and institutions - as the title has it, "Taoism under the T'ang." It is not a survey of Taoism in the T'ang, that is, of the influence of Taoism in literati or popular culture, or of the development and meaning of selected aspects of Taoist practice, ritual, or imagery. Only a few Taoist texts from the T'ang are mentioned by Barrett. In other words, this is a view of Taoism mainly from the "outside," not from within. But given this self-imposed limit (and the state of the field when the work was written), Barrett has produced an informative and reliable chronicle. Much of what is presented...