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.

The Ching-fa, one of the four “lost” books attached to the Ma-wang-tui Lao tzu, addresses issues of universal concern for legal theory. This paper examines how the Ching-fa's nine short theaties present fa linked with tao as a Law or model for guiding and judging the legitimacy of the ruler's use of coercion. I attempt to demonstrate that the conception of a universal and timeless Law offered a more universally applicable standard for governing than did the old laws based on the practices of the ancient sage kings. The text's notion of law linked with a timeless, natural principle, tao, is compared with early Western theories of universal law and its relation to justice. I conclude that the content and ultimate purposes of law are different in these early traditions but that in both cases the emerging imperial states were better served by theories of law based on abstract standards rather than on particular histories and customs.

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.

A number of interesting anecdotes are recorded in the Shih-chi and the Han-shu, especially in the biographies of various renowned figures. Some of these anecdotes are related to the concept of predestination and fate. The most frequently mentioned cases are the stories of the births of emperors and founders of dynasties and legends related to the ancient sage kings.

At the beginning of the “Annals of Liu Pang,” the founder of the Han dynasty, it is related that he was engendered by a dragon and from this acquired an unusual physiognomy resembling the face of a dragon. His unusual appearance impressed his prospective father-in-law, who decided to let him marry his daughter, the future Empress Lü. An old lady, Madame Hsu, who was noted for her ability to prophesize by physiognomy, was so impressed by the appearance of Liu Pang that she prophesized a good fortune for the whole family. The legend associated with Liu Pang, that his killing of a white snake was lamented by a mysterious old lady as the act of killing the “Son of the White Emperor” by the “Son of the Red Emperor”, is very familiar. It is further related that Liu's wife never failed to locate his hideout because there was always a colorful haze and mist over it.

This study introduces a bamboo-strip manuscript of the Zhou Yi or Zhou Changes purchased by the Shanghai Museum in 1994. The fragmentary manuscript includes 58 strips, about one-third of the received text of the Zhou Yi. Orthographic features suggest that it was copied in the southern state of Chu about 300 B.C.E. Although the manuscript includes numerous orthographic variants vis-à-vis the received text, it does show that the text was stable by this date of copying. The most unusual feature of the manuscript is a pair of symbols written after the hexagram name and at the end of the hexagram text. Although several explanations of these symbols have been advanced, none of them appears to be convincing to date. A final question about the manuscript concerns the sequence of hexagrams in it. Since the binding straps of the manuscript had already decayed and the strips become disordered, and since each hexagram text begins on a new bamboo strip, no sequence is apparent. However, the physical circumstances of the strips, especially the points at which they are broken, may suggest that the sequence was more or less similar to that of the received Zhou Yi.

Over the past few years, additional evidence has surfaced that supplements my prior authentication of the Peking University Han strips, and in particular the *Cang Jie pian 蒼頡篇 manuscript from this collection. The present article surveys this fresh evidence, including confirmation of spiraling verso lines on the archaeologically excavated Shuihudi 睡虎地 Han strips, as well as further textual parallels, both with a previously unidentified Cang Jie pian strip from Niya 尼雅, and also with newly published content from the Shuiquanzi 水泉子 *Cang Jie pian. The article also critically examines in greater detail the methodology previously employed to authenticate the Peking University Han strips. Limitations are acknowledged, both in regard to supporting negative appraisals, and in the determination of “novelty” for manuscript features. To demonstrate these issues, the article analyzes a conflict between the Peking University and Shuiquanzi Cang Jie pian manuscripts and introduces the publication of the so-called “Han board” *Cang Jie pian witness largely unknown to the field before.

With the major exception of the Yi jing, we have neither formal canons nor commentaries for most early Chinese mantic traditions. Indirect reflections on these traditions appear in scattered commentaries, in biographical narratives, and, importantly, in excavated texts. The major source for mantic materials from the received textual tradition is the lists of their titles in Han shu 30, the “Yiwen zhi” or Bibliographic Treatise. It is a guide to the categories of knowledge used by Han thinkers, and created an influential paradigm for the classification of texts and knowledge. The present study provides a necessarily selective survey of mantic texts in the “Yiwen zhi,” with a specific view to: (1) how it underscored the authority of some techniques and marginalized others; (2) its relation to what we know of Han mantic practices; and (3) what it reveals about the role of the mantic arts as constituents of scientific observation and systematic inquiry in early China.

1. The word yu in Classical Chinese usually has the apparent meaning of the existential quantifier in logic, and the grammatical functin of a transitive verb. (That is, e.g., in Nan jen yu yen … … “Among the southern people there is a saying…,” the word yen “saying” is the grammatical object of yu, and if we substitute a pronoun the substitute has to be the object pronoun chih.) Yu also is used in a noun phrase before a group name or general term, and the analysis of its syntax and meaning in this use is the problem that motivates this paper. The use is rare except before dynasty names, where it has continued to the present, e.g., yu Yin, yu Ming, etc. The analysis of this latter use has been disputed by Chinese grammarians for the past three centuries. Two interpretations have emerged. At present, one interpretation appears to be accepted by prominent Chinese linguists and philologists, while the other is generally followed by the leading Western translators of early texts.

While research on Warring States, Qin, and Han manuscripts is flourishing, much less is known about the use of manuscripts during the earlier stages of Chinese history, for which material evidence has not been preserved. Based on the layout features and textual anomalies in the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, this article explores the traces of use of perishable writing supports in the process of the production of bronze inscriptions in this period and reconstructs their functions and physical qualities. Based on the surveyed evidence, the article posits that two distinct exemplar manuscripts were used in the inscription-making process: an original “master copy” that was kept aside for proofreading purposes and a secondary “blueprint” that was employed directly in the technical process of inscription-making. A single blueprint would be used consecutively by several craftsmen to produce a set of inscriptions on different types of vessels. The word count and layout of many inscriptions were already carefully planned during the process of their composition, and any study of a bronze text should therefore begin with the evaluation of its visual qualities. Moreover, this probe provides unambiguous evidence for the use of tube-lining in the inscription-making process and reconstructs the complete chaîne opératoire of bronze inscription production in the Late Western Zhou period. The article also offers insights into the level of literacy and the division of labor in bronze workshops, and touches upon the display function of bronze epigraphy during the Western Zhou period.

One of David S. Nivison's (1923–2014) most important contributions is his work in bridging philological studies and philosophical inquiry. His methodological approach resonates in spirit with an approach to the study of Chinese thought advocated by Confucian thinkers such as Zhu Xi and Tang Junyi, who both emphasize jing toward early thinkers. He pays careful attention to textual details, is respectful of cultural context, and seeks to preserve the distinctive features of Chinese traditions of thought and avoid imposing on them western philosophical conceptions. In doing so, he exemplifies the spirit of jing, a serious and cautious attitude dedicated to a proper understanding of early thinkers in their cultural context.

A surprisingly large number of texts, many heretofore lost to us, werediscovered in a lacquer box in Tomb Three at Mawangdui. (For a summary ofthe excavation and contents of the tomb see Early China 1[1975]:10-15.) Thescrolls had fused together as a result of being tightly packed in thelacquer box; after separation, two of the scrolls were found to contain sixseparate treatises on medicine as well as a set of illustrations oftherapeutic calisthenics.

Our knowledge of the genealogy of the feudal houses of the Chou period is based primarily on the Shih Chi “Hereditary Houses” and secondarily on frequent quotations in medieval commentaries of the Shih Pen, a systematic genealogical treatise which, before it was lost in the T'ang, found favor among such historians as Tu Yü (222-284) and Ssu-ma Cheng (fl. 719-736) and classicists like K'ung Ying-ta (574-648). In the “Hereditary House of Wei,” the Shih Chi presents a genealogy at some variance with the genealogy quoted from the Shih Pen in Ssu-ma Cheng's commentary to the Shih Chi and K'ung Ying-ta's “sub-commentaries” to the Tso Chuan and Li Chi. A central point of disagreement concerns Marquis Wen , who is described as the son or grandson of Viscount Huan . This conflict of genealogy is coupled with a serious discrepancy concerning the length and date of the reign of Marquis Wen between the Shih Chi and the reconstructed Chu-shu Chi-nien. I believe that a careful examination of the chronological difficulty will contribute to a resolution of the genealogical conflict and thus prepare the way for a more general solution of points of conflict between the Shih Chi and Shih Pen versions of the genealogy of the House of Wei.

If one were to speak of the “incipient period” of research on Western Zhou oracle bones, he would have to refer to that period of time after the discovery in 1950 at Sipanmo (SP 11) of oracle bones whose “writing was not consistent with inscriptional standards,” and before November of 1956 when Professor Li Xueqin pointed out that the inscribed oracle bones from Fangdui village of Shanxi's Hongzhao County were artifacts of the opening period of the Western Zhou. Through the study of these oracle bones discovered at Sipanmo and Fangdui village, as well as in Bin county in Shaanxi and Taishanmiao in Luoyang, it was then possible for the first time to recognize that in addition to Shang oracle bones there were also Western Zhou oracle bones, thus debunking the traditional belief that all oracle bones were produced by the Shang. The excavation in 1956 of inscribed oracle bones at Fengxi in Shaanxi then provided positive proof of the existence of Western Zhou oracle bones.

(A recent conversation between the author and Prof. Nathan Sivin of MIT onthe correct translation of the term hsiu was followedup by a thoughtful letter from Prof. Sivin which is quoted at length below.It seemed appropriate to broaden the discussion to include the term wu-hsing, to provide some lexical-historicalbackground, and to share the sense of the conversation with ourcolleagues.)

Technical terms in any language cannot be understood correctly when renderedin another language unless commonly accepted and precise translations, whichevoke neither more nor less than the meaning of the original term, can beachieved. Yet that is a difficult task, bounded by prior connotations of thetranslations chosen, and by differences in general cultural context that maybe very great. The task is made more difficult still because any scholarlydiscipline that relies heavily on translation as one of its methods is oftenheir to “standard” translations of technical terms. Some of these haveachieved general currency through long use, but might not have been, whenthey were first proposed, well thought out or based on adequate scholarlyunderstanding. Others may be, in some cases, just plain wrong. An example ofa standard translation that is not well thought out is “five elements” for wu-hsing; one that is clearly wrong is “lunarmansion” for hsiu.