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“XI SHUAI” 蟋蟀 (“CRICKET”) AND ITS CONSEQUENCES: ISSUES IN EARLY CHINESE POETRY AND TEXTUAL STUDIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2019

Martin Kern
Martin Kern*
Affiliation:
Martin Kern 柯馬丁, Princeton University; email: mkern@princeton.edu.
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Abstract

The present article explores questions about the composition, performance, circulation, and transmission of early Chinese poetry by examining a small number of poems from the received Mao shi and their counterparts in recently discovered manuscripts. Starting from a close examination of the poem “Xi shuai” (“Cricket”), the essay briefly discusses the problems we face in dealing with looted manuscripts before advancing toward rethinking the patterns of early Chinese poetic composition and transmission. Instead of taking individual poems as discrete, reified objects in the form we encounter them in the Mao shi, it is suggested to read them as particular instantiations of circumscribed repertoires where the individual poetic text is but one of many realizations of a shared body of ideas and expressions. This analysis is informed by the examination of both manuscript texts and the received literature, but also by comparative perspectives gained from both medieval Chinese literature and other ancient and medieval literary traditions. In emphasizing the formation of poetry as a continuous process, it leaves behind notions of “the original text,” authorship, and the moment of “original composition”—notions that held no prominence in the early Chinese literary tradition before the empire.

提要

通過檢視部分傳世《毛詩》內容及其在近年所見出土文獻中的對應篇章，本文探究了關於早期中國詩歌成篇、表演、流通以及傳的問題。以對《蟋蟀》詩的細緻考察為起點，本文簡要討論了我們在處理盜掘寫本文獻時所面對的諸種問題，進而重新思考早期中國詩歌的成篇和傳播模式。學界通常將各首詩歌視為彼此分離且具象化的個體、以《毛詩》中所見的那種形式存在，與此立場不同，本文建議將它們視作有限素材庫的諸種特定實現。在這些素材庫中，作為個體的詩歌文本僅僅是某個包含多種理念和表達之共享整體的諸多具體實現之一。這一分析源自於對寫本文獻和傳世文獻的雙向考察，也得益於在中國中古文學與其它早期及中古文學傳統之間建立起的比較性視野。通過將詩歌形成強調為一種持續性過程，本文摒棄了諸如“原本”、“作者”以及“原作”時刻的概念，這些概念在前帝國時代的早期中國文學傳統中並不重要。

Keywords

Mao shiClassic of PoetryManuscriptsLooted ArtifactsRepertoiresPerformancePoetic CompositionAuthorship《毛詩》《詩經》出土文獻盜掘文物素材庫表演詩歌成篇作者
Type
Articles
Information
Early China , Volume 42 , 2019 , pp. 39 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Study of Early China and Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

I thank Paul W. Kroll, Paul R. Goldin, and Yuri Pines for many helpful thoughts and timely corrections on the penultimate version of the present essay. I further thank Scott Cook and another, anonymous, reviewer for their valuable suggestions toward the final revision.

References

1. Here and throughout, I follow largely the transcription and interpretation of the individual characters as given in the original publication; see Qinghua daxue cang Zhanguo zhujian (yi) 清華大學藏戰國竹簡（壹）, ed. Xueqin, Li 李學勤 (Shanghai: Zhongxi, 2010), 149–55Google Scholar, and plates 10–13 and 62–72. (All further references to interpretative decisions by the Tsinghua editors are to these pages.) Scholars who are interested in the original graphs may easily consult this source and the excellent photographs there. Empty squares 囗 in the Chinese text (and the corresponding ” … ” in the translation) signify lacunae due to broken bamboo slips; each square signifies one missing character. For further studies on Qi ye, I have consulted Xueqin, Li, “Lun Qinghua jian Qi ye de Xi shuai shi” 論清華簡《耆夜》的《蟋蟀》詩, Zhongguo wenhua 中國文化 33 (2011), 7–10Google Scholar; Feng, Li 李峰, “Qinghua jian Qi ye chudu ji qi xiangguan wenti” 清華簡《耆夜》初讀及其相關問題, in Disijie guoji hanxue huiyi lunwenji: Chutu cailiao yu xin shiye 第四屆國際漢學會議論文集：出土材料與新視野, ed. Zongkun, Li 李宗焜 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 2013), 461–91Google Scholar; Huang Huaixin 黃懷信, “Qinghua jian Qi ye jujie” 清華簡《耆夜》句解, Wenwu 文物 2012.1, 77–93; Minzhen, Chen 陳民鎮, “Xi shuai zhi ‘zhi’ ji qi shixue chanshi: jianlun Qinghua jian Qi ye Zhou Gong zuo Xi shuai benshi” 《蟋蟀》之“志”及其詩學闡釋——兼論清華簡《耆夜》周公作《蟋蟀》本事, Zhongguo shige yanjiu 中國詩歌研究 9 (2013), 57–81Google Scholar; Cao Jianguo 曹建國, “Lun Qinghua jian zhong de Xi shuai” 論清華簡中的《蟋蟀》, Jianghan kaogu 江漢考古 2011.2, 110–15; Li Rui 李銳, “Qinghua jian Qi ye xutan” 清華簡《耆夜》續探, Zhongyuan wenhua yanjiu 中原文化研究 2014.2, 55–62; Zhi, Chen 陳致, “Qinghua jian suojian gu yinzhi li ji Qi ye zhong gu yishi shijie” 清華簡所見古飲至禮及《夜》中古佚詩試解, Chutu wenxian 出土文獻 1 (2010), 6–30Google Scholar; Hao Beiqin 郝貝欽, “Qinghua jian Qi ye zhengli yu yanjiu” 清華簡《耆夜》整理與研究, M.A. thesis (Tianjin Normal University 天津師範大學, 2012); and others. The most detailed study thus far is Marcel Schneider, “The ‘Qí yè 耆夜’ and ‘Zhōu Gōng zhī qín wǔ 周公之琴舞’ From the Qīnghuá Bamboo Manuscripts: An Annotated Translation,” Licentiate dissertation (University of Zurich, 2014). For a detailed discussion of the physical properties of the Tsinghua University manuscripts, including “Qi ye,” see Xiao Yunxiao 肖芸曉, “Qinghua jian jiance zhidu kaocha” 清華簡簡冊制度考察, M.A. thesis (Wuhan University, 2015). Edward L. Shaughnessy uses the case of “Cricket” to repeat his opinion, no longer new to specialists, about the centrality of writing vis-à-vis all other forms of ancient textual practices. See, “Unearthed Documents and the Question of the Oral versus Written of the Classic of Poetry,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 75 (2015), 331–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am not concerned with such rigid dichotomies.

2. More on the questions of dating and authenticity below.

3. While most scholars assume that the narrative presents the Duke as perceptively extemporizing the song upon the sight of a cricket, the wording zuo ge yi zhong 作歌一終 is ambiguous: zuo 作 as a transitive verb can mean either “to create” or “to give rise to”; in the latter sense it would suggest “to perform” an already existing song. The phrase yi zhong 一終 refers to a self-contained musical unit; see Fang Jianjun 方建軍, “Qinghua jian ‘zuo ge yi zhong’ deng yu jieyi” 清華簡“作歌一終”等語解義 (www.gwz.fudan.edu.cn/Web/Show/2295), accessed on July 20, 2018.

4. Shi ji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1982), 47.1936.

5. This is the poem “Jing zhi” 敬之 (“Be Reverent”; Mao shi 288), a text that in the Mao shi comprises 54 characters. The manuscript version of 55 characters is found in the text Zhou gong zhi qinwu 周公之琴舞 (The zither dance of the Duke of Zhou) of 17 bamboo slips, with the manuscript title written on the back of the first slip. Sixteen of the 17 slips are complete; only slip 15 is broken off. See Qinghua daxue cang Zhanguo zhujian (san) 清華大學藏戰國竹簡（叄）, ed. Xueqin, Li (Shanghai: Zhongxi, 2012), 132–43, and plates 8–11 and 52–67Google Scholar. Like Qi ye, the manuscript Zhou gong zhi qinwu has received numerous studies. For a thorough and inspiring analysis, see Shikao, Gu 顧史考 (Scott Cook), “Qinghua jian ‘Zhou gong zhi qinwu’ ji Zhou song zhi xingcheng shitan” 清華簡〈周公之琴舞〉及《周頌》之形成試探, in Disanjie Zhongguo gudian wenxianxue guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji 第三屆中國古典文獻學國際學術研討會論文集, ed. Boqian, Lin 林伯謙 (Taipei: Dongwu daxue, 2014), 83–99Google Scholar. Another detailed study is Schneider, “The ‘Qí yè 耆夜’ and ‘Zhōu Gōng zhī qín wǔ 周公之琴舞’.” The manuscript starts out with a poem “made” or “performed” (zuo 作) by the Duke of Zhou, followed by a suite of nine poems (or a poem in nine stanzas) “made” or “performed” by King Cheng 成王. The first of these nine corresponds to the received “Jing zhi” poem. Unlike in the Qi ye manuscript, there is no situational context provided to the poems, which are simply written out in sequence. In each of the nine parts, the second half is set off by the additional phrase “The coda says” (luan yue 亂曰); the received version of “Jing zhi” does not include this phrase.

6. In Guo yu “Zhou yu, xia” 周語下, 3.4; see Yuangao, Xu 徐元誥, Guoyu jijie 國語集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2002), 103Google Scholar.

7. See Bojun, Yang 楊伯峻, Chun qiu Zuo zhuan zhu 春秋左傳注 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1992), 1495Google Scholar [Zhao 28].

8. Several of the studies mentioned in n. 1 likewise present a comparison between the two versions, albeit without a full discussion of the textual differences and the methodological questions arising from them.

9. Here, I accept the Tsinghua editors’ reading of wang 忘 (“forgetting”) as huang 荒 (“dissoluteness”). In doing so, I am less following the received Mao shi version (which has indeed huang) than considering the context. The theme in this stanza is clearly not about forgetfulness but about the correctly ritualized way of enjoying pleasure in moderation.

10. Here and after the final character of each stanza, the manuscript clearly shows the usual reduplication mark =. While noticing the mark, the Tsinghua editors claim, without further explanation, that its presence here “differs from general usage” (yu yiban yongfa butong 與一般用法不同), and that the editors therefore “suspect that it indicates that the line should be read twice” (yi zhi gaiju ying chongfu du 疑指該句應重複讀). This seems unwarranted speculation. Reduplicatives at the end of a line are among the most common euphonic feature across the Mao shi, and there are ten songs in the received anthology (Mao shi 6, 7, 13, 49, 58, 138, 148, 189, 237, 245) that include the construction zhi 之+ reduplicative, several of them repeatedly. Li Xueqin, the general editor of the Tsinghua manuscripts (sic), treats the reduplication mark in just this conventional sense; see Li, “Lun Qinghua jian Qi ye de Xi shuai shi.” Inexplicably, most other scholars have simply eliminated the reduplication from their reproduction of the text, violating a basic principle in manuscript transcription.

11. In each case, one can easily elide the conjunction er 而 in the first half of the couplet as well as the demonstrative pronoun shi 是, the copula wei 唯, and the genitive conjunction zhi 之 in the second half, turning an irregular couplet such as kangle er wu huang, shi wei liangshi zhi fangfang 康樂而毋荒，是唯良士之方方 into the classical form of kangle wu huang, liangshi fangfang 康樂毋荒， 良士方方. For a discussion of such “irregular lines” in the received anthology, see Kennedy, George A., “Metrical ‘Irregularity’ in the Shih ching,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 4 (1939), 284–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where Kennedy argues that the additional particles are “unstressed” and therefore without effect on the basic tetrasyllabic meter.

12. Qinghua daxue cang Zhanguo zhujian (yi), “Preface,” 3.

13. Jiang Guanghui 姜廣輝, Fu Zan 付贊, and Qiu Mengyan 邱夢燕, “Qinghua jian Qi ye wei weizuo kao” 清華簡《耆夜》為偽作考, Gugong bowuyuan yuankan 故宮博物院院刊 2013.4, 86–94.

14. For a laudable exception, see Goldin, Paul R., “Heng xian and the Problem of Studying Looted Artifacts,” Dao 12 (2013), 153–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For broader cross-cultural context, including the texts of the various international resolutions pertinent to engagement with looted artifacts, see Renfrew, Colin, Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership (London: Duckworth, 2006)Google Scholar. A number of prominent Chinese scholars have engaged in discussions over the authenticity and possible forgery of looted manuscripts; see the well-annotated discussion by Foster, Christopher J., “Introduction to the Peking University Han Bamboo Slips: On the Authentication and Study of Purchased Manuscripts,” Early China 40 (2017), 172–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A particularly pertinent study is Pingsheng, Hu 胡平生, “Lun jianbo bianwei yu liushi jiandu qiangjiu” 論簡帛辨偽與流失簡牘搶救, Chutu wenxian yanjiu 出土文獻研究 9 (2010), 76–108Google Scholar. However, the issue of forgery is separate from the ethical, legal, and scholarly questions concerning looted manuscripts.

15. There are two major exceptions from recent years: the Western Han texts found at the Haihun hou 海昏侯 tomb (Nanchang, Jiangxi, 2011–16), and, reported in 2016, a set of Warring States texts found in Jingzhou 荊州 (Hubei). Both are awaiting publication.

16. One may note that the manuscripts purchased by the Yuelu Academy in 2008 and those purchased by Peking University in 2010 were acquired only after such local and pragmatic writings had finally risen in prestige, lagging the literary, philosophical, and historical texts by about a decade. Finally, certain excavated collections are mixed in nature, e.g., those from Mawangdui or Yinwan 尹灣 (Lianyugang, Jiangsu, 1997), but the overall trend in the purchases of looted manuscripts is nevertheless clear.

17. See n. 1.

18. See n. 11.

19. bowuguan, Jingmen shi, Guodian Chu mu zhujian 郭店楚墓竹簡 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1998), 179Google Scholar (Xing zi ming chu 性自命出), 188 (Liu de 六德); further 194–5 (Yucong 語叢).

20. Baxter, William H., “Zhōu and Hàn Phonology in the Shījīng,” in Studies in the Historical Phonology of Asian Languages, ed. Boltz, William G. and Shapiro, Michael C. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1991), 30Google Scholar. I will return to the question of standardization and canonization below.

21. Most, Glenn W., “What Is a Critical Edition?,” in Ars Edendi Lecture Series, vol. IV, ed. Crostine, Barbara, Iversen, Gunilla, and Jensen, Brian M. (Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2016), 168–74Google Scholar.

22. For a thorough introduction, see Timpanaro, Sebastiano, The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method, ed. and trans. Most, Glenn W. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)Google Scholar. For a brief account, see also Most, “What is a Critical Edition?,” 175–78.

23. Kern, Martin, “Methodological Reflections on the Analysis of Textual Variants and the Modes of Manuscript Production in Early China,” Journal of East Asian Archaeology 4 (2002), 149–50, 171–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Bredehoft, Thomas A., The Visible Text: Textual Production and Reproduction from Beowulf to Maus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 63Google Scholar; for the copying of poetry in Tang dynasty China, see Nugent, Christopher M. B., Manifest in Words, Written on Paper: Producing and Circulating Poetry in Tang Dynasty China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010)Google Scholar.

25. Note the parallel to earlier bronze inscriptions which likewise were not primary records but secondary representations and transformations of such records, as noted by von Falkenhausen, Lothar, “Issues in Western Zhou Studies: A Review Article,” Early China 18 (1993), 162–63Google Scholar.

26. Boltz, , “Why So Many Laozi-s?,” in Studies in Chinese Manuscripts: From the Warring States Period to the 20th Century, ed. Galambos, Imre (Budapest: Institute of East Asian Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, 2013), 9–10Google Scholar.

27. Boltz, William G., “The Composite Nature of Early Chinese Texts,” in Text and Ritual in Early China, ed. Kern, Martin (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 50–78Google Scholar.

28. Note that in both cases, the final claim about Jifu is formally distinct from the preceding text, separated by a rhyme change; that the claim about Jifu as reciter or author is not related to anything within the poems; that Jifu has no presence or voice in either text; that in both cases, the poems are composite structures, including royal speeches, proverbs, language from administrative documents, poetic phrases found elsewhere in the Poetry, and narrative prose; that the poems show a number of parallels especially to other poems that are even more densely modeled on administrative documents and bronze inscriptions; that while quotations of the two poems abound in early sources, these never include the final quatrains; that there is no early reference to the poems that mentions Jifu as their author; that elsewhere in the early textual tradition, Jifu appears as a military leader, but never as a poet or literary author; and that any seemingly self-referential notions of authorship are exceedingly rare in the Poetry, indicating that authorship was not an integral property of such texts.

29. Shanghai bowuguan cang Zhanguo Chu zhushu (yi) 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書（一）, ed. Chengyuan, Ma 馬承源 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2001), 13–41, 121–68Google Scholar.

30. Kern, Martin, “Speaking of Poetry: Pattern and Argument in the Kongzi shilun,” in Literary Forms of Argument in Early China, ed. Gentz, Joachim and Meyer, Dirk (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 175–200Google Scholar.

31. See the seminal works by Cerquiglini, Bernard, In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, trans. Wing, Betsy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Zumthor, Paul, Toward a Medieval Poetics, trans. Bennett, Philip (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and Owen, Stephen, The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Further important studies in this field are discussed in Nugent, Manifest in Words, Written on Paper.

32. Foucault, , “What is an Author?,” in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. and trans. Harari, Josué V. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 141–60Google Scholar.

33. Owen, Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry, 73.

34. Nagy, Gregory, Poetry as Performance: Home and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar. Nagy pushes his model of textual instability of the Homeric epics all the way to c. 150 b.c.e., something that to this extent has been called into question by others. While it is beyond my competence to evaluate the Greek evidence, the comparative data from early China—as well as from various medieval traditions—tend to support his fundamental idea of composition through performance. Neither Owen nor Nagy engage in spurious arguments over the presence of writing or the progression from orality to writing; like Cerquiglini, they talk about textual practices in societies, like Warring States China, where writing had long been developed and was used in a wide range of contexts.

35. It appears that in any ancient and medieval tradition, very few texts—typically legal and religious ones—were deemed sacrosanct enough to be guarded by the “canon formula.” See Assmann, Jan, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 87–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In medieval China, as is evident from the manuscripts found in Dunhuang, only texts that for centuries had been formally canonized either by the imperial state or by religious orthodoxy were thus protected, while more recent and especially vernacular ones, including contemporary poetry, were not.

36. Slip 27; see Huaixin, Huang 黃懷信, Shanghai bowuguan cang Zhanguo Chu zhushu Shilun jieyi 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書《詩論》解義 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian, 2004), 69–80Google Scholar. For further discussion of the nature of such passages, see Kern, “Speaking of Poetry.”

37. I leave aside here the hermeneutic acrobatics of Huang Huaixin, Shanghai bowuguan cang Zhanguo Chu zhushu Shilun jieyi, 69–72, who builds speculation upon speculation to connect “understanding difficulty” to the “Xi shuai” text of the Mao shi.

38. See n. 5.

39. Kern, Martin, “The Odes in Excavated Manuscripts,” in Text and Ritual in Early China, ed. Kern, Martin (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 151–58Google Scholar.

40. For my analysis of the manuscript Black Robes text and its comparison with the received version, see Kern, Martin, “Quotation and the Confucian Canon in Early Chinese Manuscripts: The Case of ‘Zi Yi’ (Black Robes),” Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques 59 (2005), 293–332Google Scholar, with further references to other studies.

41. As suggested in Kern, “The Odes in Excavated Manuscripts,” 181–82.

42. This is not a foregone conclusion: given the high number of homophones and near-homophones in early Chinese, it is possible that different audiences understood different words when hearing the same sounds.

43. For an easy (albeit not complete) overview, see Wah, Ho Che and Kan, Chan Hung, Citations from the Shijing to Be Found in Pre-Han and Han Texts (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004)Google Scholar.

44. The name of a bird; Legge translates it as “turtle dove,” while Waley gives “cuckoo.” Karlgren simply transliterates.

45. This case is also discussed in Wanzhong, Wu (O Man-jung) 吳萬鐘, Cong shi dao jing: lun Mao shi jieshi de yuanyuan jiqi tese 從詩到經：論毛氏解釋的淵源及其特色 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2001), 19–30Google Scholar; see further Goldin, Paul R., After Confucius: Studies in Early Chinese Philosophy (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 25, 166, n. 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Ho and Chan, Citations from the Shijing, 97–98.

47. Kern, “The Odes in Excavated Manuscripts,” 161, 168–71.

48. Yang Bojun, Chun qiu Zuo zhuan zhu, 744–6 [Xuan 12].

49. Xidan, Sun 孫希旦, Liji jijie 禮記集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1989), 1023–29Google Scholar; Legge, James, Li Chi: Book of Rites (New York: University Books, 1967), vol. 2, 121–25Google Scholar. On the song and dance suite “Martiality,” see Guowei, Wang 王國維, Guantang jilin 觀堂集林 (Taipei: Shijie, 1975), 2.15b–17bGoogle Scholar; Zuoyun, Sun 孫作雲, Shijing yu Zhoudai shehui yanjiu 詩經與周代社會研究 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1966), 239–72Google Scholar; Wang, C. H., From Ritual to Allegory: Seven Essays in Early Chinese Poetry (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1988), 8–25Google Scholar; Shaughnessy, Edward L., Before Confucius: Studies in the Creation of the Chinese Classics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 165–95Google Scholar; Xiaoqin, Du 杜曉勤, “Shijing ‘Shang song,’ ‘Zhou song’ yunlü xingtai jiqi yu yuewu zhi guanxi” 《詩經》“商頌”、“周頌”韻律形態及其與樂舞之關係, Kyūshū daigaku daigakuyin jinbun kagaku kenkyūyin (bungaku kenkyū) 110 (2013), 1–28Google Scholar.

50. See Kern, Martin, “The ‘Harangues’ in the Shangshu,” in Origins of Chinese Political Thought: Studies in the Composition and Thought of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents), ed. Kern, Martin and Meyer, Dirk (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 281–319Google Scholar, especially 303–11.

51. Yang Bojun, Chun qiu Zuo zhuan zhu, 1250–51 [Zhao 4].

52. Connerton, Paul, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization; Tambiah, Stanley J., Culture, Thought, and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 123–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kern, Martin, “Bronze Inscriptions, the Shangshu, and the Shijing: The Evolution of the Ancestral Sacrifice during the Western Zhou,” in Early Chinese Religion, Part One: Shang Through Han (1250 BC to 220 AD), ed. Lagerwey, John and Kalinowski, Marc (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 143–200Google Scholar. In drawing on comparative data, I of course assume that ancient Chinese civilization did not operate entirely on its own terms, incomparable to any other ancient civilization, and that therefore, basic competence in comparative anthropology is a sina qua non in the study of early China.

53. Kern, Martin, “The Formation of the Classic of Poetry,” in The Homeric Epics and the Chinese Book of Songs: Foundational Texts Compared, ed. Mutschler, Fritz-Heiner (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2018), 48–49Google Scholar.

54. For example, the four “Eulogies” numbered 286–289 in the Mao shi sequence share lines in several ways, and only with one another; see Dobson, W. A. C. H., The Language of the Book of Songs (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), Appendix II, 247–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. These are Mao shi 277, 292, 293, and 294.

56. Gu Shikao, “Qinghua jian ‘Zhou gong zhi qinwu’ ji Zhou song zhi xingcheng shitan.”

57. See Sinian, Fu, Shijing jiangyi gao (han Zhongguo gudai wenxueshi jiangyi) 詩經講義稿 (含《中國古代文學史講義》） (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue, 2004), 15–34Google Scholar.

58. Wang, From Ritual to Allegory, 73–114; for the “Weniad,” Wang includes Mao shi 245, 250, 237, 241, and 236 in what he claims to be the “correct sequence … for the delineation of the epic fable.”

59. Wang’s earlier attempt to interpret the “Airs of the States” (“Guofeng” 國風) section in the Poetry along the Parry-Lord theory of oral-formulaic composition was more seriously problematic; see his The Bell and the Drum: Shih Ching as Formulaic Poetry in an Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974)Google Scholar. During the 1970s, the study of classical Chinese literature saw a surge in comparative work that tried to show how certain Western concepts could be applied more or less directly to the Chinese tradition. Unfortunately, many of these early comparative efforts were little more than a mechanical and uncritical transposition of Western concepts. Something similar had happened in China already in the early twentieth century, in the wake of the collapse of the empire and subsequent rise of the nation state. It was at this time when Chinese scholars redefined the “Airs of the States” as simple, straightforward folk songs that could be understood at the level of their literary surface. However, it appears that no ancient reader had taken the “Airs” this way; all early sources show them as being in need of complex hermeneutic explication. See Kern, Martin, “Lost in Tradition: The Classic of Poetry We did not Know,” Hsiang Lectures on Chinese Poetry (Montreal: Centre for East Asian Research, McGill University) 5 (2010), 29–56Google Scholar.

60. See, for example, Mao shi 192–197, 209–212, 253–258, or 259–262.

61. Remarkably, Zhou gong zhi qinwu is also divided into nine sections, and the “Lisao” 離騷 (“Encountering Sorrow”) itself contains a reference to “Nine Songs” (“Jiu ge” 九歌, not to be confused with the cycle of the same title within the Chu ci anthology). Other early texts likewise mention nine musical movements.

62. See Lothar von Falkenhausen, “Issues in Western Zhou Studies.”

63. See Kern, Martin, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation (New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 2000)Google Scholar.

64. In addition to Owen, The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry, see also Allen, Joseph R., In the Voice of Others: Chinese Music Bureau Poetry (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65. See Ledderose, Lothar, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

66. Kern, “The Odes in Excavated Manuscripts.”

67. Mengzi 孟子 7B.3 is the one exception in doubting the trustworthiness of the “Wu cheng” 武成 text, a lost account of the Zhou conquest (not to be confused with the chapter of the same name in the “ancient-text” Shang shu 古文尚書). However, the argument in Mengzi is not one of textual criticism but one of moral indignation.

68. In early China, Mengzi 3B.9 is exceptional in attributing the Springs and Autumn Annals (Chun qiu 春秋) to Confucius, and Mengzi 5A.4 and 5B.8 are equally exceptional in emphasizing the persona of the author as well as authorial intent in the Poetry.

69. As I have argued elsewhere, the Qin measures of “burning of the books” and “burying the scholars alive” of 213 and 212 b.c.e. were—if anything—attempts to control the inherited textual tradition, not to destroy it (as then falsely claimed for the purposes of Han Confucian mythology); see Kern, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang, 155–96.

70. Under the leadership of Liu Xiang 劉向 (79–78 b.c.e.) and Liu Xin 劉歆 (d. 23 c.e.) in response to Emperor Cheng’s edict of 26 b.c.e.; see van der Loon, Piet, “On the Transmission of Kuan-tzu,” T’oung Pao 41 (1952), 353–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71. For philosophical texts, see, e.g., van der Loon, “On the Transmission of Kuan-tzu,” 361, and Knoblock, John, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988–94), vol. 1, 106–7Google Scholar. For the typical process of editing down materials from larger corpora, including both philosophical and historical texts, see Kern, Martin, “The ‘Masters’ in the Shiji,” T’oung Pao 101 (2015), 335–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72. A case in point is the “Black Robes” bamboo manuscript from Guodian (and its looted counterpart in the Shanghai Museum corpus) which shows far greater formal coherence and internal textual logic than the disjointed version of the same text in the received Liji; see Kern, “Quotation and the Confucian Canon in Early Chinese Manuscripts.”

73. See van der Toorn, Karel, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

74. Pfeiffer, Rudolf, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968)Google Scholar.