LU DI. Ancient Chinese People’s Knowledge of Macrofungi to 220 AD
LU DI
Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China; Этот e-mail адрес защищен от спам-ботов, для его просмотра у Вас должен быть включен Javascript
As the fi rst step of exploring ancient Chinese people’s knowledge of macrofungi, several aspects including the Chinese characters historically used for macrofungi, the natural descriptions of macrofungi, the historical accounts involving macrofungi, the medicinal properties of macrofungi, the ways in which macrofungi were categorized among living things and macrofungi in literature during the period up to 220 AD (the end of the Han dynasty) are examined on the basis of ancient Chinese texts. It is worthwhile to note that with the transformation from a philosophy to a religion in Taoism, more naturalistic descriptions of macrofungi before the Qin dynasty shifted to the accounts with supernatural effects after the Qin dynasty, and the representative macrofungus was Zhi. This paper aims to lay the foundation for further studies with emphasis on later periods in Chinese history.