There are seventy-nine places in Wang Bi's Laozi zhu where the text of the Laozi transmitted over this commentary differs from quotations of it contained within the commentary. Building on the textual studies of Professor Shima Kunio, this essay demonstrates that the readings given in the commentary are supported in practically every case by a series of early quotations and texts of the Laozi, such as the Mawangdui manuscripts and the “Old Manuscripts” that form the basis of Fu Yi and Fan Yingyuan's editions. A comparison of all of these differences shows that Wang Bi's original text must have belonged to the same broad textual family as these early manuscripts, being most closely linked to the two “Old Manuscripts” and less directly related to the Mawangdui manuscripts. In most of the these cases, the textus receptus has been supplanted by the reading transmitted through the Heshang Gong commentary. Consequently, it is now necessary to replace the textus receptus of Wang Bi's Laozi with a conflated version of the two “Old Manuscripts” and, in some cases, the Mawangdui manuscripts.

Thus far, scholarship on early China has mainly focused on conceptual debates and re-interpretations of terminology. I showcase in this article a methodology called metaphorology that enables us to analyze how discourses developed through the reworking of images. In particular, I reconstruct a discourse on governance and self-cultivational practices as enshrined in Mengzi 3A.4, the Zhuangzi’s “Mati” chapter and Huainanzi 9.13. While Mengzi 3A.4 purports that the cultivation of agricultural fields and human bodies are necessary steps in the civilizational process, the Zhuangzi’s “Mati” chapter demands a decultivation of the human population and a return to the wilderness. In my reading, Huainanzi 9.13, from the “Arts of Rulership” chapter, amalgamates these two image-based debates with the help of the metaphors of the ruler as an overgrown courtyard and the officials as tilled fields. Hence, I propose that Huainanzi 9.13 creates its integrative vision of governance that promotes both education and decultivation by synthesizing the “Mati” chapter's focus on wilderness and Mengzi 3A.4's concerns with tilling. As a result, I encourage us to engage fully in imagery's role as a central and foundational aspect of early Chinese debate culture rather than a rhetorical side effect of its various discourses.

This article analyzes the bamboo strips recovered from the northern chamber of the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (d. 433 b.c.e.). It argues that the strips comprised at least two separate texts that were integral to the organization and performance of the Marquis's funerary cortège. One text lists on individual strips the chariots and horse teams used in the procession, as well as their donors, categorizing them under bureaucratic offices. A second text describes these same chariots one after another, along with their drivers, decorations, and armor. Counting marks next to each of the chariot names appear to have verified the written totals found in the text. This evidence demonstrates that the director of the cortège combined together donated materials from a vast geographic area in order to create a distinctive funerary spectacle that displayed the wealth, status, and power of the Marquis and the state of Zeng. The article further argues that characterizing the Zeng texts as “inventories” (qian'ce 遣策)—so often analyzed for evidence of ideas about the afterlife—hardly does justice to the complex role that the texts played in the funeral procession and Zeng royal display. It concludes that this political display function drove the production of the texts and the organization of the funeral, not least because Marquis Yi's heir and Zeng state officials would have wanted to ensure a smooth transfer of power.

In 1977, some 17,000 pieces of pyromantic turtle-shell, of which nearly 300 pieces were inscribed, were discovered at the site of the Zhou ancestral temple in Qishan, Shaanxi. Scholarship on this important inscriptional source has been hampered by the piecemeal nature of its publication. Now, Wang Yuxin, in his XiZhou jiagu tanlun, has brought together the information and conclusions of sixteen studies published through 1981. In addition, Wang has also presented his own research into the nature and periodization of these inscriptions. The author of this review article acknowledges Wang's contributions to the study of the Zhouyuan oracle-bone inscriptions, but finds fault not only with Wang's periodization but also with his assertion that a number of these inscriptions recording sacrifices to Shang ancestors manifest instead an exogamic relationship between the Shang and Zhou kings.

Among the texts discovered in December, 1973, at Mawangdui in Changsha, Hunan, was by far the earliest manuscript text (copied about 175 B.C.) of the Zhouyi or Zhou Changes, together with various commentaries, some known—such as the “Xici” or “Appended Statements”— and others —”Ersanzi Wen” or “The Two or Three Disciples Ask,” “Yi zhi Yi” or “The Propriety of the Changes,” and “Yao” or “Essentials”—not heretofore known. Despite the great anticipation with which scholars learned of this discovery, it was not until twenty years later, 1993, that this manuscript was finally published, and even at that only incompletely. In this comte rendu, the author introduces the state and contents of the manuscript, including especially how it varies from the received text, and some of the debate that these variora have already engendered among historians of Chinese thought.

The location of the Chu core area during the reign of King Wu (740-690) is a question rendered uncertain by two issues: 1) the date of the move from Danyang to Ying, and 2) the locations of these capitals. In the traditional literature, both were considered to have been situated along the Yangzi, in southwest Hubei. Recent suggestions, on the other hand, place Danyang in either the Dan Valley (southwest Henan) or west-central Hubei (Nanzhang or Yicheng counties); and arguments have been offered that Ying was also in the Yicheng area.

In the arguments both for and against these hypotheses, a commonly employed assumption is that Chu military activities under King Wu hold the potential for indicating the area from which the campaigns were launched. The present paper analyzes one of these campaigns, the military encounter at Pusao between Chu and Yun, east of the Han River (Handong), in 701. This episode is noteworthy for the number of states and placenames that occur in the Zuozhuan account of it.

The present study suggests that in plotting the states and placenames appearing in this account, geographical sources dating from the sixth century through the early Qing that are frequently cited in defense of the Southern School (Yangzi Valley) view exhibit several deficiencies. Correcting these leads to the conclusion that regardless of whether Danyang or Ying was the capital at the time, in 701 the Chu force could well have set forth from the Nanzhang/Yicheng region.

Since the 1970s scholars in China have identified mo 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 of mo as 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 the mo depicted 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 the Shuowen jiezi compared mo to the bear, as did all descriptions of mo before Bo Juyi. Bo Juyi's description reflects new ideas about mo in medieval culture, and cannot be used as evidence of the animal named mo in early China. As a consequence of Abel-Rémusat's mistaken identification – which was immediately accepted in Western zoology – the word mo lost 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 of mo. Although the tapir inhabited the region of China in prehistory there is no evidence of the tapir in China in historical times.

The article presents the findings of a survey of the imprecation phrase ma yi fei shi 麻夷非是 and its variations, as written (using brush and ink) on several thousand excavated covenant texts (mengshu 盟書) from Houma 侯馬 and Wenxian 溫縣. I argue that the findings support Zhu Dexi 朱德熙 and Qiu Xigui 裘錫圭's analysis of the phrase as mi yi bi shi 靡夷彼氏 “Wipe out that shi” (shi, I suggest, referring to the covenantor and his direct male descendants). Through comparison of scribal hands, I demonstrate that those variations which do not fit this analysis were produced by a small number of scribes and, in almost all cases, can be shown to be errors. I conclude that such variations are generally unreliable and do not require us to reject Zhu and Qiu's analysis. These examples suggest that formulaic, possibly archaic, stock phrases, such as this imprecation, were liable to be misinterpreted, even during the period in which they were in use. Identification of scribal hands and scribal errors was essential to this analysis, demonstrating not only the importance of this methodology in such research, but also the potential value of these particular materials for furthering our understanding of scribal habits and text reproduction in early China.

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.

This article is a preliminary study of the silk diagram of the mourning system excavated from Mawangdui tomb three (dated to 168 b.c.e.) in 1973. Although it is the earliest precisely dated document of one of the most enduring social institutions in Chinese history, this mourning diagram has received little scholarly attention. Through analyzing its structure, inscriptions, kinship terms, and cosmological symbolism, and comparing it with relevant Warring States and contemporary Han sources, the author has reconstructed the diagram based strictly on evidence internal to the diagram itself. The author then explains the cosmological and numerological significance of the Mawangdui mourning system, and, through rereading passages in Lun yu 17/21, the “Sannian wen” chapter in the Li ji, the “Li lun” in the Xunzi, and the testamentary decree of Emperor Wen (d. 157 b.c.e.), he discusses the multiple ways of justifying mourning practices during the Warring States and early Han periods and the changing interpretations of the cosmological/numerological basis of the mourning system by later text-based scholars, such as Zheng Xuan and Wang Su. Finally, the author discusses the nature and function of the diagram as the source of ritual diagrams illustrating a text in the Chinese classical exegetical tradition. This Mawangdui diagram is a schematic representation of the mourning system with its basic numerological principles and cosmological significance. As a kinship chart, it illustrates the five degrees of mourning, which characterize the scope of close kinship in early Han China. It depicts a mourning tradition similar to those recorded in the Yi li and the Li ji, but represents differently in degrees of mourning that people, especially married-out daughters and their children, were obligated to observe for the death of a relative. It is thus invaluable for us to understand the historical formation of the Chinese mourning tradition and subsequent ritual manuals and legal codes, and it provides new materials for the sociological study of issues concerning Han family structure, the nature of descent groups, women's position, and patrilinealism.

When Li Xueqin was born in Beijing on 28 March, 1933, the Republic of China was in power, with its capital in Nanjing, and the Japanese occupied Manchuria. On 29 July 1937 Japanese troops invaded Beijing and brought it under control in little more than a week. The occupation of Beijing lasted until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. The People's Liberation Army entered Beijing in the end of January of 1949 and on 1 October 1949, when Li Xueqin was sixteen, Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China. This period of warfare was followed by periods of political turmoil which often centered around intellectuals—thought reform in the early fifties, the anti-rightest campaigns and the Great Leap Forward of the late fifties and early sixties, the Cultural Revolution from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies.

In this article I question the assumption that all place-names in the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan refer to real places. I suggest instead a mythic origin for many of these seemingly referential elements. By analyzing a complex of myths either referred to or alluded to in the text, I show that several crucial place-names come in fact from cosmological referents rather than geographical ones. The Mu T'ien-tzu chuan cannot then be read purely as a historical account. I extend this argument by revealing how the elements of cosmological myth in the narrative must themselves be read as elements of symbolic discourse; that is, they have to be read within an astronomical context as references to celestial phenomena. By reading the cosmological and astronomical discourses of the myths together, I demonstrate the literary significance of the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan, a significance which to date has been obscured by misreadings of its historicity. Finally, I argue that only by reading the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan as a literary fiction can one understand what it tells us about how notions of political legitimacy were constructed and then altered in the representation of King Mu's (fictional) journey. The narrative is thus revealed to be a wholly symbolic tale whose interpretation has implications for the wider realm of the interconnections among history, literature and culture.

This article defends three theses concerning the semantics of nouns in classical Chinese. First, they are all free to function as mass nouns. Second, though many of them can also function as count nouns, they do not do so as frequently as do corresponding English nouns. Third, unlike English nouns, nouns in classical Chinese do not need to be classified as count nouns and mass nouns in order to explain their behavior in particular contexts. I argue that classical Chinese nouns function as count nouns only when specific elements of the syntactic context force them to do so, including numbers, some quantifiers, and some adjectives. Because classical Chinese nouns usually occur without such elements, they function more often as mass nouns. I develop this argument in opposition to an alternative analysis defended by Christoph Harbsmeier, according to which classical Chinese nouns divide into three classes: count nouns, mass nouns, and generic nouns. I show that the syntactic and semantic distinctions Harbsmeier draws in support of his analysis do not illuminate the behavior of classical Chinese nouns. The article also briefly addresses the ontological issues that have seemed to some linguists and philosophers to be related to the count/mass distinction.

The two parts of this study concern the three extant versions of “The Metal-bound Coffer” (“Jin teng”): the two received texts in the Book of Documents and the Grand Scribe's Records and the newly recovered Warring States manuscript now at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The first part considers an uncontroversial detail shared by all three versions: the reference to a poem composed by the Duke of Zhou called “The Owl” (“Chixiao”). Cross-referencing “The Metal-bound Coffer” with a poem of the same title, now found in the Book of Odes, it is possible to explain not only the place of this poem in the overall narrative of “The Metal-bound Coffer,” but also the considerations of the poem's two ancient commentators, Mao and Zheng Xuan. In the second part of the study, the discussion turns to the three versions of “The Metal-bound Coffer,” looking in turn at three different passages. By positing a greater number of testimonies than the ones that happen to survive, I argue that a comparison of the extant versions reveals an effort by transmitters, commentators, and the re-teller Sima Qian to teach a single lesson: the Duke of Zhou occupied a subordinate place vis-à-vis the ruler, and must never undermine him in any way.

This article offers a new reading of Mozi’s chapter “Ming gui” 明鬼, conventionally considered as a treatise explaining Mohist ideas about ghosts and spirits, by shifting the focus from the ghosts (gui 鬼) to the concept of ming 明, interpreted as “sagely illumination.” The “Ming gui” chapter does not discuss ghosts in general, but instead a specific group of “punitive ghosts” who mete out punishments and rewards; it also shows that ming gui was not a group of ghosts particular to Mozi or Mohism alone, but was widespread in the beliefs and practices of the period. The execution of justice, which is the crucial concern of the treatise, depends on ming—the principle of justice and Heaven’s agency in human life—and not on ghosts. Ming also is an indispensable component of sagehood, as it is the illuminated sage ruler (ming jun 明君) who, on behalf of Heaven, ultimately metes out just punishments and rewards.

This essay examines some key statements in the Later Mohist treatises to gain a sense of their views on language and disputation (bian 辯). I first show that the Later Mohists viewed disputation as an exercise in familiarizing oneself with patterns of language use and the verification of truth-claims in the phenomenal world. I then demonstrate that such an activity helps one attain one of the Mohists’ highest goals: the clarification of ethical imperatives about how to behave, as expressed through Heaven for all people. This claim ultimately links Early and Later Mohist ethical concerns and offers a religious explanation for Later Mohist involvement and interest in disputation. Lastly, I frame these writings from within a culture of debate about language in Early China—a culture which, for example, yielded not only Mohist views concerning the necessary correlation between language and reality, but also Confucian formulations on the rectification of names, and a Zhuangzian insistence on the emptiness of sayings.

In the past decade, it seems, the study of early Chinese manuscripts has at last begun to move from its rather marginal position as a highly specialized subject into the mainstream of scholarship on the Warring States and early imperial periods. This is certainly due in part to the impressive quantity of manuscripts found so far. A still more important factor is probably the fact that the manuscripts recovered to date now include a significant number of politico-philosophical texts. While literature of a more technical nature has attracted attention only in smaller circles of scholars, these more generally appealing finds have spurred a markedly increased interest in early Chinese manuscripts both in China and in the West. This is also reflected by the vast improvement in the quality of publications with regard both to photographic reproduction and to transcription and/or interpretation. The field of palaeography has accordingly gained visibility and esteem. It hardly need be mentioned that orthography is a vital concern in reading manuscripts. Many books and articles on the manuscripts consequently touch upon the subject of orthography when they interpret manuscripts or discuss special palaeographic issues, or when they address the Chinese writing system in a more general way. Yet, to my knowledge, Imre Galambos’s Orthography of Early Chinese Writing is the first monograph ever to elevate the question of early Chinese manuscript orthography to the status of its central subject matter.