Philosophy on Bamboo: Text and the Production of Meaning in Early China. By Dirk Meyer. Studies in the History of Chinese Texts, no. 2. Leiden: Brill, 2011. x + 
396 pp.

T oung Pao ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 98 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 557-562
Author(s):  
Michael Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Early China ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Texts

Reading from, Reading into: The Challenge of the Bamboo Odes

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 200-213
Author(s):  
Haun Saussy (蘇源熙)
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Early China ◽  
Formative Stage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Texts

Abstract One of the great fascinations of excavated Chinese texts is the promise of recovering the formative stage of works that later became classics: we might then learn what later editors and interpreters have done to them, and rewrite the intellectual history of early China. But little is inevitable in the history of texts. This paper takes a single short poem from the Anhui Shijing manuscript and reads it both with and against the transmitted Mao edition, using it to imagine various scenarios for the “wonderful life” (Gould) of early Chinese literature.

scholarly journals WANTON GODDESSES TO UNSPOKEN WORTHIES: GENDERED HERMENEUTICS IN THE CHU CI ZHANGJU

Early China ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 333-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica E. M. Zikpi
Keyword(s):  
Gender Bias ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Early China ◽  
Warring States ◽  
Female Deities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Archeological Evidence ◽  
Han Culture ◽  
Eastern Han

AbstractThe influential Chu ci zhangju 楚辭章句, the earliest received edition of the foundational poetry anthology Chuci 楚辭, performs a distinct gender bias in its exegesis of deities, and this bias accords with the Eastern Han ideology of the editor Wang Yi 王逸 (2nd c. CE) more than with immanent features of the original Warring States texts. The gender bias is an essential feature of Wang Yi’s canonization of the Chuci, and it lays the groundwork of the allegorical tradition of interpreting the Chuci. This paper analyzes the zhangju presentation of archetypal Chuci texts to elucidate the hermeneutic transformation of gender and religion in early China, comparing the Eastern Han exegeses with earlier and later interpretations, immanent textual features, and fresh perspectives on Warring States and Han culture that have emerged from archeological evidence. The analysis demonstrates that the Chuci zhangju treats the male deities more literally than the female deities, reflecting the reduction in status of goddesses in late Han discourse. The history of gender ideology is an essential critical lens for understanding the Chuci and the tradition that emerged from it.

Authentication Studies (辨偽學) Methodology and the Polymorphous Text Paradigm

Early China ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 1-43 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Han Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Intellectual ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Last Two Millennia ◽  
Made In

The foundation of Chinese intellectual history is a group of texts known as “masters texts” (子書). Many masters texts were authored in the Han dynasty or earlier and many of these have as their title the name of a master who was generally regarded as the author. The inclination to treat a given book as the product of a single writer is apparently a strong one. Nevertheless, from the very beginning there were Chinese scholars who doubted the veracity of the putative authorship of some of these works and suggested that they may in fact have been the product of several authors. Over time, such scholars developed criteria by which to judge the authenticity of ancient masters texts. But as such textual criticism grew more penetrating, the object of its scrutiny began to come apart at the seams. In the last two decades there has been a growing consensus that most early Chinese masters texts were originally quite permeable and that only later were their received forms settled upon.The branch of textual criticism that deals with authenticating early Chinese texts is called “Authentication studies.” This paper is a survey of the methodological advances made in the field of Authentication studies over the last two millennia. It is not a history of the field, as such a history would be a much longer project. The survey concludes with the idea of the “polymorphous text paradigm,” a paradigm that paradoxically obviates much of the preceding scholarship in its own field. Simply put, if authentication relies largely on anachronism, and anachronism relies largely on the dates of the putative author, then a multi-author work with no known “last author” will be impossible to authenticate. Furthermore, the polymorphous text paradigm does not posit these texts as necessarily having earlier and later “layers,” but rather as having had no set structure over the course of their early redactional evolution.This survey examines the contributions of seventeen scholars to Authentication studies methodology, and concludes with how the changes in this field have influenced the work of three modern, Western scholars.

Sons of suns: myth and totemism in early China

1981 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Allan
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Religion ◽  
Early China ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
Chinese Texts

The ‘problem of myth’ for Western philosophers is a problem of interpreting the meaning of myths and explaining the phenomenon of myth making. The ‘problem of myth’ for the sinologist is one of finding any myths to interpret and explaining why there are so few—for myth-making is generally assumed to be a universal faculty of mankind. One explanation for the paucity of myth in the traditional sense of stories of the supernatural in ancient Chinese texts is the nature of Chinese religion. In China, gods, as well as ancestors and ghosts, were believed to be dead men, spirits who had lived in this world at a certain place and time and continued to need sustenance from the living and to exert influence over them. They related primarily to those who gave them ritual offerings and little thought was given to any possible interaction between them

The Reliable Measurement of Radial Pulse Characteristics

2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 150-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma King ◽  
Deirdre M Cobbin ◽  
Sean Walsh ◽  
Damien Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Radial Pulse ◽  
Reliable Measurement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Concrete Operational ◽  
The Many ◽  
History Of Use ◽  
The Ancient Chinese ◽  
Pulse Characteristics ◽  
The Relationship

The use of the radial pulse as a diagnostic tool is an integral part of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) patient evaluation. In spite of its long history of use, there is little systematic information available to support the many claims about the relationship between pulse qualities and physiological condition contained in the ancient Chinese texts and echoed in modern pulse terminology. This study reports the development of a reliable means of measuring and recording pulse characteristics. This was achieved by reporting on the physical sensations that are detected under the fingertips when the radial pulse is palpated, rather than attempting to translate these into the complex and typically ambiguously defined TCM pulse qualities. The study involved development of a standardised pulse taking procedure and development of concrete operational definitions for each of the characteristics of the pulse being measured. The inter-rater reliability of the pulse taking procedure and operational definitions was assessed by determining agreement levels between two independent pulse assessors for each characteristic. Inter-rater agreement averaged 80% between the two assessors in both the initial data collection (66 subjects) and in a replication collection (30 subjects) completed two months later. Demonstrating reliability of the procedure represents an essential first step for examining the validity of TCM pulse diagnosis assumptions.

Extra-Lineage Cult in the Shang Dynasty A Surrejoinder

Early China ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 182-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward L. Shaughnessy
Keyword(s):  
Early China ◽  
Shang Dynasty ◽  
Group I ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Small Set

I would like to thank Professors Fan, Li, and Wang for what has been for me a most stimulating exchange of ideas on a problem of seminal importance in the history of early China. From these three scholars, we have seen three interpretations, radically different both from each other and also from the interpretation I presented above, of a small set of oracle-bone inscriptions. I believe that these four interpretations represent virtually every possible alternative and, by having them presented together in a forum such as this, the scholarly world should now be better able to evaluate their relative merits.I believe it is clear from each of the above discussions that the differences in interpretation here owe more to anthropology than to paleography (although a correct paleographic interpretation of these inscriptions, and especially of H11:84, is an essential starting point). Would it have been possible for the leader of one kinship group to offer cult to the ancestors of a separate kinship group? I am grateful to Professor Fan Yuzhou for his citation of Sumerian evidence showing that such indeed has been possible in other historical situations. Nevertheless, as Professor Wang Yuxin has properly pointed out in critique of my own reference to Xiongnu sacrifices in honor of Han emperors, this type of evidence, being either temporally or culturally distinct from the society that produced these inscriptions, cannot be used to describe Shang or Zhou practice.

Armenia in Chinese Sources

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-190
Author(s):  
Liu Yingsheng ◽  
Ralph Kauz
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Materia Medica ◽  
Caucasus Region ◽  
Profound Knowledge ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Early 18Th Century ◽  
Wei Dynasty

AbstractThis paper discusses several toponyms in Chinese sources, which may possibly be identified with Armenia. First, Aman country, which can be found in the "History of the Later Han" (compiled 3rd–5th centuries) and in the "Account of the Wei Dynasty" (compiled between 239 and 265), is discussed, and it is suggested that there are reasons for an identification, though doubts remain. Armenia was well known by the Mongols and the "Korean Worldmap", which originates in Chinese geographical scholarship during the Mongol period and depicts possibly even Greater and Lesser Armenia. Another source of that period that mentions Armenia is "Muslim Prescriptions" (Huihui yaofang), which names Armenian materia medica known in China. Finally, two other Chinese geographical texts of the 16th and early 18th century that deal with Armenia and the Caucasus region are discussed. This paper shows that Armenia was described in Chinese texts since at least the Mongol period, and that China had a profound knowledge of the geographical situation in Western Asia.

The Cultural History of the Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) in Early China

Early China ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 185-224 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Giant Panda ◽  
Ailuropoda Melanoleuca ◽  
Early China ◽  
Elephant Trunk ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Historical Times ◽  
Mistaken Identification ◽  
Tapirus Indicus

Since the 1970s scholars in China have identifiedmo貘 as the ancient name for the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). I concur with this identification and I trace the source of the modern misidentification ofmoas the Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus) to the article by Jean Pierre Abel-Rémusat published in 1824. Abel-Rémusat based his identification on woodblock drawings of themodepicted as the quadripartite animal first described by Bo Juyi in the ninth century: elephant trunk, rhinoceros eyes, cow tail, tiger paws. Xu Shen (ca. 55–ca. 149) in theShuowen jiezicomparedmoto the bear, as did all descriptions ofmobefore Bo Juyi. Bo Juyi's description reflects new ideas aboutmoin medieval culture, and cannot be used as evidence of the animal namedmoin early China. As a consequence of Abel-Rémusat's mistaken identification – which was immediately accepted in Western zoology – the wordmolost its original meaning and became the word for tapir in modern Chinese and Japanese. Examination of textual and zooarchaeological evidence confirms the giant panda as the original referent ofmo. Although the tapir inhabited the region of China in prehistory there is no evidence of the tapir in China in historical times.

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