Writing Early China

Archaeological discoveries over the past one hundred years have resulted in repeated calls to "rewrite ancient Chinese history." This is especially true of documents written on oracle bones, bronze vessels, and bamboo strips. In Writing Early China , Edward L. Shaughnessy surveys all of these types of documents and considers what they reveal about the creation and transmission of knowledge in ancient China. Opposed to the common view that most knowledge was transmitted orally in ancient China, Shaughnessy demonstrates that by no later than the tenth century BCE scribes were writing lengthy texts like portions of the Chinese classics, and that by the fourth century BCE the primary mode of textual transmission was by way of visual copying from one manuscript to another. Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 14 Part I: Inscriptions 24 Chapter One: History and Inscriptions 26 Oracle-Bone Inscriptions 27 The Production of Oracle-Bone Inscriptions 29 History as Seen in Oracle-Bone Inscriptions 30 Oracle-Bone Inscriptions as Secondary Sources 35 Bronze Inscriptions 37 Western Zhou History as Seen in Bronze Inscriptions 45 Bronze Inscriptions as Tertiary Documents 50 The Significance of Inscriptions for the Chinese Historical Tradition 52 Chapter Two: The Bin Gong Xu Inscription and the Origins of the Chinese Literary Tradition 60 Chapter Three: The Writing of a Late Western Zhou Bronze Inscription 70 The Two Qiu Ding Inscriptions 71 The Qiu Pan Inscription 76 A Possible Saga of the Zhou Kings 79 The Shan Family as Seen in the Qiu Pan Inscription 86 The Royal Command 89 The Qiu Zhong Inscription 93 Conclusions 99 Chapter Four: On the Casting of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Shi Wang Ding: With Remarks on the Important Position of Writing in the Consciousness of Ancient China 102 The Date of the Shi Wang Ding 106 Casting Features of the Shi Wang Ding 110 The Important Position of Writing in the Consciousness of Ancient China 119 Part II: The Classics 124 Chapter Five: A Possible Lost Classic: The *She Ming or *Command to She 126 The *She Ming Manuscript 127 The Identification of She 攝 128 Identification of the *She Ming with the “Jiong Ming” Chapter of the Shang Shu and Its Implications for the Authenticity of the “Ancient-Script” Version of the Shang Shu 131 Possible Implications of the *She Ming for Western Zhou History 140 On the Composition and Transmission of the *She Ming 145 Chapter Six: Varieties of Textual Variants: Evidence from the Tsinghua Bamboo-Slip *Ming Xun Manuscript 154 Variety 1: Miswriting or Miscopying 159 Example 1 160 Example 2 160 Variety 2: Classifier Variation 161 Example 3 162 Example 4 162 Variety 3: Phonetic Loans 162 Example 5 163 Example 6 163 Variety 4: Graphic Similarity 164 Example 7 165 Example 8 166 Variety 5: Added or Deleted Text 167 Example 9 167 Example 10 170 Variety 6: A Pseudovariant 172 Example 11 172 Conclusion 173 Appendix 174 Transcription and Translation of Tsinghua Manuscript *Ming Xun 命訓 *Instruction on Mandates 174 Chapter Seven: Unearthed Documents and the Question of the Oral versus Written Nature of the Shi Jing 182 The Theory of Oral Literature and the Shi Jing 184 Recent Manuscript Discoveries and the Shi 187 Other Evidence for the Written Nature of the Shi 193 Writing and the Redaction of the Shi Jing 194 Writing and the Transmission of the Shi 199 Writing and the Composition of Poems in the Shi Jing 203 Conclusion 214 Chapter Eight: A First Reading of the Anhui University Bamboo-Slip Shi Jing 216 Tentative Conclusions 236 Part III: Manuscripts 248 Chapter Nine: The Mu Tianzi Zhuan and King Mu–Period Bronzes 250 Conclusion 265 Chapter Ten: The Tsinghua Manuscript *Zheng Wen Gong wen Tai Bo and the Question of the Production of Manuscripts in Early China 266 The Question of Manuscript Production in Ancient China 269 Appendix 274 Chapter Eleven: The Eighth Century BCE Civil War in Jin as Seen in the Bamboo Annals: On the Nature of the Tomb Text and Its Significance for the “Current” Bamboo Annals 278 The Bamboo Annals 281 The Opening Years of the Eastern Zhou as Seen in the Bamboo Annals 291 The Jin Civil War as Seen| in the Bamboo Annals 294 Conclusion 306 Chapter Twelve: The Qin *Bian Nian Ji and the Beginnings of Historical Writing in China 310 Appendix 325 Notes 332 Bibliography 396 Index 418 "Considers what unearthed written documents reveal about the creation and transmission of knowledge in ancient China"-- Provided by publisher