On: The Many Faces of the Kingdom of Shu

[est]

Some aspects of Shu in chronological order for those who aren't familiar with:

- invented silk (and Shu brocade)

- birthplace of Taoism

- invented Baijiu (aka Kaoliang liquor, strong distilled from great millet)

- invented banknotes

- home of the Giant Pandas

[kombookcha → est]

What's the connection with taoism - are we talking early inner cultivation type stuff?

[est → kombookcha]

taoism as a religion were founded by the first Tianshi (prophet) Zhang Daoling somewhere near Chengdu during late East Han, then the doctrine spread to poor people and formed a movement called Wudoumi in Sichuan and ultimately its variant Taiping-Tao shook the foundation of the Han empire and began the "Three Kingdoms" period.

[kombookcha → est]

But isn't Zhang Daoling (AD 34-156) born too late to have brough Taoism into Shu (1046BC-316BC)? That's why I am asking about inner cultivation - like are we talking precursor practices that would become relevant to taoism arising in Shu, or do you just mean Shu fits the general area in which Taoism would later show up?

[est → kombookcha]

I see, the Shu is often called as either name of the state (1046BC-316BC) and/or the region of SiChuan basin

[kombookcha → est]

Ah, that makes sense - thank you for clarifying!

[netdevphoenix → est]

Is it? As far as I understand it is a philosophy. Like many ideologies, it got turn into a religion afterwards

[suraci → netdevphoenix]

You're right, don't know why you got down voted

Taoism originally developed by Laozi(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laozi) as one of many ideologies in Warring States period(~4 BC)

It became into a religion starting from Han Dynasty(~1 AC)

[stryan → suraci]

Because they're not: the distinction between "Religious Taoism" and "Philosophical Taoism" is generally recognized as an Orientalist[0] conception i.e. an excuse to talk about the parts they liked or could think of as Western (Philosophical) and ignore the parts they didn't like or couldn't (Religious). It's viewed as emerging from a collection of oral master-student based traditions that have always included spiritual components, such astral-project/"far walking" and mystic unity with the Dao. There wasn't a distrinction between philosophy and religion like there is today, hence why a lot of Chinese philosophy relies on concepts like Tien ("heaven", though more in a process sense) even if it seems otherwise secular/philosophical.

[0] I think you still see this mix-up today due to a lot of people reading the TTC or the Zhuangzi from Gutenberg or some other free online translation, not realizing that all those translations are from the 1800s and not a reflection of modern scholarship. For example, Laozi hasn't been considered a historical figure for a while now.

[netdevphoenix → suraci]

It is a typical HN behaviour to downvote you when they don't like your comment regardless of whether the comment is right or not even though you are not supposed to downvote for those reasons

[est → netdevphoenix]

It's more like a semantics issue. In Chinese there's taoism can either mean 道教 the religion or 道家 the pre-Qin school of philosophy

[soufron → netdevphoenix]

Or the opposite.