Traditions of Exemplary Transcendents by Liu Xiang (79–8 BCE)

Overview & Synopsis

By the middle of the third century BCE, some people in China had begun to imagine it possible to employ esoteric methods to refashion themselves into posthuman beings with spirit-like capabilities, enhanced bodies, and greatly extended lifespans. Such beings were termed transcendents ( xian 仙). Traditions of Exemplary Transcendents ( Liexian zhuan 列仙傳), attributed to the imperial bibliographer Liu Xiang 劉向 (79-8 BCE), is the earliest extant collection of colorful stories about such figures. This volume makes available a critical edition and the first complete, annotated English translation of a text preserving some of the earliest mentions of alchemical, dietary, and medicinal methods of self-cultivation that later became standard in transcendence-seekers’ repertoire of practices. Through this work we can already glimpse the sorts of engagements with local communities that made the quest for transcendence a matter of keen interest not just to practitioners themselves but to many in Chinese society for centuries thereafter.