Professor JIANG Sheng’s monographHeritage of the Han Empire: Ghosts in Han China（《漢帝国の遺産：汉鬼考》）, selected in 2015National Achievements Library of Philosophy and Social Sciences, has attracted wide attention since its publication by Science Press in April, 2016. It was sold out soon and reprinted three times in March and July, 2017, and January, 2019. The Japanese version entitledHeritage of the Han Empire: The Rise of the Daoist Religion（《漢帝国の遺産：道教の勃興》）translated by eight Japanese scholars, was published in October, 2020 in Tokyo; and the English version will also be available soon. For such a profound scholarly work of nearly 600 pages, its rapid reprints and translations persuasively show how it is influential. This book has aroused a strong interest in the spiritual world of Chinese culture among a wide readership, and it satisfies scholars’ and readers’ expectations to pass on the spiritual heritage of traditional Chinese culture. It’s highly praised as “a feast on a jade table,” and “a true classical work which will be handed down for generations.”

Professor Jiang had taken painstaking effort for over twenty years on it. In this representative publication of Professor Jiang, he aimed to explore the spiritual world of Han Dynasty hidden in Han tombs, and to reveal the unknown history of thought and belief in Han China. To this end, he developed his unique methodology for ancient history studies, from a religious perspective rather than a secular one, to interpret the vicissitude of ancient civilization in the ideological and cultural history. He integrated plentiful images unearthed from Han tombs, early Daoist religious literature, historical records and other ancient texts into this ambitious project, trying to understand the inner life which had shaped the prosperity and decline of Han and Tang Dynasties.

Professor Jiang has called for an religious interpretation of ancient history for years. This book is a successful example of his methodology, in which he discovered and systematically proved for the first time that Han tombs were the very reliable remains of beliefsin “refining the form in great darkness” and “immortality through release from the form.” He also revealed the merge of Confucianism, Fangxian Daoism (Masters of Methods) and Huang-Lao Daoism, the plebification of rituals and the religionization of burial customs in Han Dynasty. These original discoveries broke through in unsettled questions in the early history of Daoist religion, and represent the leading research in the international scholarship of spiritual world and Daoist religion in Han Dynasty, and the breakthrough of the “immortal question” in Sinology.