An attractive edition of the Jade Guidebook or Jade Alamanac, a guide to the ten kingdoms of hell with origins in folk Confucianism and Buddhism of the 10th-11th centuries.

Euphemistically given the name ‘The Divine Panorama’, the Jade Guidebook depicts the ten courts or ‘dian’ or the underworld, each with its own king reporting to the Jade Emperor, and devoted to the punishment of particular sins. Various unfortunates are sliced in half, boiled alive, minced, bitten by snakes, etc. and then reincarnated.

The present edition was printed in the ninth year of the reign of the Xianfeng Emperor (ruled 1850-1861); his reign was short and bloody, opening with the Taiping Rebellion and closing with the Second Opium War.

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