CATEGORIZING LABORERS: GLIMPSES OF QIN MANAGEMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES FROM AN ADMINISTRATIVE DOCUMENT FROM LIYE, HUNAN PROVINCE

The excavation of the Qin wooden documents from Well No. 1 at Liye 里耶, Hunan province has significantly reshaped our knowledge of Qin history. This article examines a multi-slip manuscript from Liye on the Qin management of human resources in a newly conquered area, Qianling County. The manuscript is the best example of the multi-layered structure of a Qin administrative document; it also sheds new light on the difficulties the Qin encountered in resource management during the early years of unification. The manuscript shows that the responsible officials in Qianling County had failed to engage tuli 徒隸 (laborer-servants)—a major labor source in the Qin—in agricultural production, which appears to have deviated from the Qin strategy of managing human resources. To minimize the harmfulness that this deviation might cause, the Qin heavily relied upon a system of supervision and punishment. This article offers a contextualized study of the manuscript with an analysis of the related Qin excavated sources.

THE PROMULGATION OF LAW IN QIN AND WESTERN HAN CHINA

This article studies the promulgation of law in Qin and Western Han China (221 b.c.e.–9 c.e.) based primarily on excavated legal and administrative texts. It shows that a new law was handed down from the emperor to the relevant offices on the day of enactment. The article argues that, to an extent, the subject matter and function of a law determined for whom it was passed and promulgated. Depending upon the location, rank, and official duties of the offices, the laws known and used could be quite different. Although it was required that documents of imperial decisions be forwarded swiftly and safely by courier at the prescribed speed, delays in forwarding such documents to distant local offices were probably common in Qin and Western Han China. Evidence indicates that district- and prefecture-level officials publicized laws that needed to be made known by the common people, by reading them aloud in local gatherings, for example, or posting them in conspicuous places. The article further argues that a law came into effect in offices on the day it arrived at local courts or on the day it was enacted in the central court, depending on the existence of related extant laws. It concludes that a new law in Qin and Western Han China was ex post facto, as it reached backwards to a past action and retroactively attached liabilities to the action at the point when it was performed.

RECENTLY EXCAVATED INSCRIPTIONS AND MANUSCRIPTS (2008–2018)

Between 2008 and 2018 a significant number of inscriptions and manuscripts from early China were discovered or published. These sources include hundreds of new oracle bone and bronze inscriptions; more than thirty scientifically excavated literary manuscripts; thousands of private and official scientifically excavated documents; and more than seventy literary texts acquired from the antiquities market. This review article, focusing mainly on artifacts with archaeological provenance, offers a global overview of these new materials that have already renewed, or will certainly soon renew, the field of early China studies.

SUBTLE AND DANGEROUS: THE CROSSBOW TRIGGER METAPHOR IN EARLY CHINA

The crossbow trigger was a powerful device in early Chinese warfare that had a profound impact on military tactics. Against such a background, the word for “trigger,” namely ji, became a pregnant metaphor in ancient texts from the Warring States onwards. It refers to the correlation between a “subtle” initial state and a “dangerous” and far-reaching consequence, because the small movement of pulling the trigger may kill a person at a great distance. Borrowing insights from Hans Blumenberg's metaphorology, I offer a new theory of the original meaning of ji and argue that the trigger mechanism inspires a complex metaphorical scheme that consists of three levels of ambiguities and a web of associated images. It provides a linguistic and cognitive pattern for organizing a wide range of heterogeneous life-world situations, from the moral precariousness of human speech to the vulnerability of an outnumbered army in battle.

Stanisław Kuczera (5 May 1928–28 July 2020)

Stanisław Kuczera (May 5, 1928–July 28, 2020) was an eminent figure in Polish, Soviet, and Russian Chinese Studies, holding the position of one of leading experts in a vast number of fields (most prominently, archeology, epigraphy, and the translation of classics) over a period decades, until his last days. His life, filled with a thirst for knowledge and harsh vicissitudes, is a story that is worthy of being told and remembered.

THE HAN RIVER AS THE CENTRAL AXIS AND THE PREDOMINANCE OF WATER: QUESTIONING THE CLAIM OF “NO CHU-RELATED TRAITS” IN THE VIEW OF TERRESTRIAL SPACE IN THE RONG CHENG SHI MANUSCRIPT (FOURTH CENTURY B.C.E)

The description of the “Nine Provinces” (Jiu zhou 九州) found in the Rong Cheng shi 容成氏 (Mister Rong Cheng?, late fourth century b.c.e.) manuscript from the Shanghai Museum Bamboo Slips Collection (Shangbo cangjian 上博藏簡) is the only manuscript version of it known to date. Its discovery immediately raised the question of its relation to the cluster of descriptions on the “Nine Provinces” transmitted from the late Warring States to the early Western Han periods. There is general consensus that the manuscript description of the “Nine Provinces” has close affinity with the transmitted descriptions, as well as with a wide spectrum of transmitted early Chinese texts in general. It is distinguished by the eclectic combining of known spatial concepts, rather than manifesting any radically new or specifically Chu traits. In this study I reassess this impression with respect to the reference to the Han River in the manuscript, which up to now has been noted only in passing as an unsolved puzzle. I argue that the Han River is referred to here as the central axis that divides terrestrial space into southern and northern halves, something that implies a shifting of the mapped area to the South and thus conveys a Chu view of space. Together with philological analysis of the descriptions of terrestrial space, I apply an innovative method of investigation of these descriptions through landmarks, using as a visual aid traditional Chinese historical maps. In addition, I explore the predominance of waters as the distinguishing feature of the representation of terrestrial space in the Rong Cheng shi manuscript and demonstrate its difference from the structuring of terrestrial space proceeding from mountains to waterways to be seen in the majority of transmitted early Chinese texts.

A TRIBUTE TO PROFESSOR ZHANG CHANGSHOU 張長壽 (1929–2020)

Zhang Changshou was one of the most important archaeologists of modern China, and a founder of Western Zhou archaeology. Zhang is particularly well known as the author of a series of works that established the chronology of the Western Zhou material culture and is esteemed for his excellent scholarship also on bronzes and jade objects, characterized by a strong basis in field archaeology. Among his academic appointments are Director of the Feng-Hao Archaeological Team in 1963–1988, and Associate Director of the Institute of Archaeology (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) in 1985–1988. Zhang was also a pioneer of Sino-American collaboration (with Harvard University) in field archaeology and was elected a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute in 1988. Zhang passed away in Beijing on January 30, 2020. This article summarizes his academic accomplishments.

THE BEGINNING OF CULTURAL MEMORY PRODUCTION IN CHINA AND THE MEMORY POLICY OF THE ZHOU ROYAL HOUSE DURING THE WESTERN ZHOU PERIOD

This article explores how the memory of the conquest of Shang and the rise of the first Zhou kings was transmitted during the early centuries of the Zhou dynasty, specifically as it was reflected in inscriptions on excavated bronze vessels and bells from the Western Zhou period (ca. mid-eleventh to early eighth century b.c.e.). Approaching these inscribed objects and their texts from the perspective of the theories of social memory and cultural memory reveals that commemorating the foundational past of the dynasty became part of an intentional policy of the Zhou royal house as early as the first half of the tenth century b.c.e. It demonstrates that by the mid-tenth century b.c.e., a stable narrative emphasizing Kings Wen 文 and Wu 武 as the founding fathers of the Zhou dynasty was established at the expense of King Cheng 成, whose role was gradually downplayed following the general logic of lineage organization, according to which the commemoration of the earliest common ancestors serves as the foundation of corporate integrity in a network of patrilineally related families. It shows that most of the men who included such commemorations in inscriptions indeed belonged to the royal patrilineal network, wherein they occupied the highest positions. It further exemplifies that the royal house cultivated the memory of the first kings using various media, including rituals, utensils, royal speeches, and inscriptions. From the analysis of such inscriptions, we can infer that that the foundational memory of the Zhou dynasty was usually reactivated in the context of political negotiations, some of which included addressing lineage outsiders. Finally, it shows that both the royal house and other metropolitan lineages modified the foundational narrative according to their current needs. This article thus contributes both to tracing the roots of the early Chinese historiographic tradition and to understanding memory production in a society as an ongoing process of negotiations and adaptations.