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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2021
This essay analyzes the early Chinese elite discourse on filial death rituals, arguing that early Chinese texts depict these rituals as performance events. Building on spectacle of xiao sacrifices in the Western Zhou Dynasty, Eastern Zhou authors conceived of filial death rituals as dramaturgical phenomena that underscored not only what needed to be performed, but also how it should be performed, and led to an important distinction between personal dispositions and inherited ritual protocol. This distinction, then, led to concerns about artifice in human behavior, both inside and outside the Ruist (Confucian) tradition. By end of the Warring States Period and in the early Western Han Dynasty, with the embracement of artifice in self-cultivation, the dramatic role of the filial son in death rituals became even more developed and complex, requiring the role of cultivated spectators to be engaged critics who recognized the nuances of cultivated performances.
I want to thank Cong Ellen Zhang for her invitation to submit an essay for this special issue and her support throughout the process. I also want to thank two anonymous reviewers for their thorough critiques of my original draft. Their suggestions have helped me improve the final version significantly. Any remaining errors, of course, are my own.
1 The yu 虞 was a post-burial sacrifice to the spirit of the dead.
2 Liji jijie 禮記集解, ed. Sun Xidan 孫希但 (Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 1989), 8.194–95. Compare translation in Legge, James, trans., Li Chi: Book of Rites. An Encyclopedia of Ancient Ceremonial Usages, Religious Creeds, and Social Institutions (New Hype Park: University Books, 1967), 137Google Scholar.
3 My use of the term “performance” is based largely on the work of Richard Schechner, who defines performance as “restored behavior.” As Schechner puts it, “Performance means: never for the first time. It means: for the second to the nth time. Performance is ‘twice-behaved behavior.’” See his Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 35–36. In this way, ritual is a kind performance, though not all performances can be described as rituals.
4 Marvin Carlson writes, “Performance is always performance for someone, some audience that recognizes and validates it as performance even when, as is occasionally the case, that audience is the self.” See his Performance: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 5.
5 See for example, Jacobs, Fang-chih Huang, “The Origin and Development of the Concept of Filial Piety in Ancient China,” Chinese Culture 14.3 (1973), 25–55Google Scholar; Li Yumin 李裕民, “Yinzhou jinwen zhong de ‘xiao’ he Kong Qiu ‘xiaodao’ de fandong benzhi 殷周金文中的‘孝’和孔丘‘孝道’的反功本質,” Kaogu xuebao 考古學報 (February 1974), 19–40; Kang Xuewei 康學偉, Xian Qin xiaodao yanjiu 先秦孝道研究 (Taibei: Wenjin, 1992); Knapp, Keith N., “The Ru Reinterpretation of Xiao,” Early China 20 (1995), 195–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holzman, Donald, “The Place of Filial Piety in Ancient China,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 118.2 (1998), 185–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Masaru Ikezawa 池澤優,“Kō” shisō no shūkyōteki kenkyū “孝”思想の宗教学的研究 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2002); Chen, Zhi 陳致, “Yuan xiao” 原孝, Renwen Zhongguo xuebao 人文中國學報 9 (2002), 229–51; and He, Jianjun, “Anxiety over the Filial Body: Discussions of Xiao in Early Confucian Texts,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 140.2 (2020), 301–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These studies tend to focus on the term, xiao, and its various meanings in different periods of early China. The present essay, by contrast, will examine descriptions of filial behavior that are not always labelled with that term, but are certainly relevant to it. Of all these studies, He's comes the closest to my approach, as his emphasis on the body also involves performance to some extent.
6 “Dramaturgy” became a popular concept in the social sciences with the publication of Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1973). I am using the term in more straightforwardly theatrical sense. Admittedly, “dramaturgy” and a “dramaturg” are terms that are defined in various ways within the modern theater. For my purposes, I interpret dramaturgy as the theorizing about the elements of a proper performance of a given theatrical piece—or in this case, a ritual. I follow Michael M. Chemers conception of a “dramaturg” as “a total theater specialist, an artist whose passion for the theater is matched only by practical knowledge of the form, vitally integrated into the production process. In this model, dramaturgs are practical aesthetic philosophers whose collaboration in the process of theater making is as essential as that of the director.” See his Ghost Light: An Introductory Handbook for Dramaturgy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), 11; italics in original. In addition, the contemporary dramaturg, Mark Bly, believes “dramaturgs are in a position to influence the kind of social, political, and moral questions that are presented on our stages.” See Moore, David Jr., “Dramaturgy in America: Two Interviews and Six Statements,” What is Dramaturgy?, ed. Cardullo, Bert (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 116Google Scholar.
7 Here I am referring to the Western Zhou “ritual reform” that occurred around the ninth century BCE. Beginning in this period, ritual bronze vessels were larger (and more numerous) with less intricate designs. Jessica Rawson suggests that that this transition from comparatively smaller vessels with more intricate design indicates that the ritual vessels from the early Western Zhou were intended for a more intimate audience who could see the vessels from a closer distance. The vessels from the ninth century, however, might have been intended for a larger audience who spectated from a farther distance. See her “Statesmen or Barbarians? The Western Zhou as Seen Through Their Bronzes,” Proceedings from the British Academy 75 (1989), 89–91. See also Martin Kern, “Bronze Inscriptions, the Shijing and the Shangshu: The Evolution of the Ancestral Sacrifice During the Western Zhou,” in Early Chinese Religion, Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC-220 AD), ed. Marc Kalinowski and John Lagerwey (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 155–56, and Falkenhausen, Lothar von, Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000–250 BC): The Archaeological Evidence (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 2006), 56–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Building on Rawson, Edward L. Shaughnessy has argued that one can trace a stylistic development in the Odes from hymns sung by “concelebrants” to poems sung by ritual specialists to an audience. See his “From Liturgy to Literature: The Ritual Contexts of the Poems in the Book of Poetry,” in Before Confucius: Studies in the Creation of the Chinese Classics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 165–95. In addition, large bells became a standard musical element in ritual performances. See Falkenhausen, Lothar von, Suspended Music: Chime-Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar. As von Falkenhausen states, “Bells were to be seen just as much as they were to be heard” (123).
8 Liu Yu 劉雨, “Xi Zhou jinwen zhong de jizu li,” 西周金文中的祖禮, Kaogu xuebao 考古學報 (April 1989), 519. Several scholars have noted the wide scope of xiao in the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions. In these sources, xiao can be dedicated to brothers (xiong di 兄弟), matrimonial relatives (hun gou 婚媾), and even friends (peng you 朋友). See Li, “Yinzhou,” 22–23 and Knapp, “Ru Reinterpretation of Xiao,” 201.
9 Liu Yuan 劉源 states that in the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn Period bronze inscriptions, xiao refers to the wishes and attitude of the person making the sacrifice. See his Shang Zhou jizu li yanjiu 商周祭祖禮研究 (Beijing: Shangwu yin shuguan, 2004), 54. As will be demonstrated below, the significance of expressing one's attitude will only increase during the Warring States and Western Han periods.
10 Dating individual poems in the Odes is notoriously difficult. For a discussion on dating larger sections of the Odes, see Dobson, W.A.C.H., “Linguistic Evidence and the Dating of the Book of Songs,” T'oung Pao 51.4–4 (1964), 322–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Kern, Martin, “Shi jing Songs as Performance Texts: A Case Study of “Chu ci” (Thorny Caltrop),” Early China 25 (2000), 49–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also his “Bronze Inscriptions, the Shijing and the Shangshu: The Evolution of the Ancestral Sacrifice During the Western Zhou,” in Early Chinese Religion, Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC–220 AD), ed. Marc Kalinowski and John Lagerwey (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 143–200.
12 Compare the translation in Waley, Arthur, trans., The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry (New York: Grove Press, 1996), 297Google Scholar. My own translation has been greatly influenced by Waley's.
13 My use of the term, “audience,” should be interpreted broadly to include not simply passive observers, but also (especially in the case of rituals) observers who are also participants, which Schechner calls an “integral audience.” For more on the complexity of audiences within the broad spectrum of ritual and aesthetic performances, see Schechner, Richard, Performance Theory, revised ed. (New York: Routledge, 2003), 218–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Kern, “Evolution of Ancestral Sacrifice,” 164. It is also possible that this function of the bronzes applied to earlier periods of the Western Zhou as well. See for example, Feng, Li, Bureaucracy and the State in Early China: Governing the Western Zhou (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 11–20Google Scholar.
15 For a detailed history and analysis of the term, shi, in early China, see Carr, Michael, “The Shi ‘Corpse/Personator’ Ceremony in Early China,” in Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited, ed. Kuijsten, Marcel (Henderson: Julian Jaynes Society, 2006), 343–416Google Scholar. It should be noted that there are no instances of shi in the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions or in the Zhou hymns of the Odes. Therefore, given the difficulty of discovering firm dates for the Odes, the origin of the shi within xiao rituals is, admittedly, harder to pin down. Nevertheless, even if its origins are as late as the early Eastern Zhou, my analysis the shi within the Odes as compared to later texts still reveals important developments.
16 Wang, C.H., From Ritual to Allegory: Seven Essays in Early Chinese Poetry (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1988), 45–48Google Scholar. Wang builds upon the research of Liu Shipei, Wang Guowei, and Wen Yiduo, who connect early Chinese ritual to Chinese drama.
17 It should be noted that odes that contain both shi and xiao are all outside the Zhou hymn section of the Odes.
18 Kern, “Evolution of Ancestral Sacrifice,” 175–76.
19 Compare translation in Waley, Book of Songs, 195.
20 Wang, From Ritual to Allegory, 50.
21 The texts of this period, much like the Odes, are notoriously difficult to date. Though I tend to discuss texts in a certain sequence, I do not imply that the texts were composed in this sequence or that the authors of these texts were responding specifically to the portions of the texts that I quote. In addition, these texts were all written by multiple authors, and often (aside from perhaps larger portions of the Xunzi 荀子) were not written by the individuals the texts claim to represent. Kongzi, in fact, will be a character in multiple texts quoted below, and I do not necessarily ascribe to any of them a privileged representation of the historical Kongzi.
22 Recently, the date of the composition of the Analects has come under increased scrutiny. Michael Hunter, for example, has argued that the Analects is best considered as Western Han text. See his Confucius Beyond the Analects (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Even if this text was compiled at such a late date, Hunter concedes that it contains material that probably dates to the pre-imperial period. In addition, there are still those who hesitate to consider the Analects as a representation of Western Han thought. See for example, Paul R. Goldin, “Confucius and His Disciples in the Lunyu: The Basis for the Traditional View,” in Confucius and the Analects Revisited: New Perspectives on Composition, Dating, and Authorship, ed. Michael Hunter and Martin Kern (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 92–115 and Robert Eno, “The Lunyu as an Accretion Text” in the same volume, 39–66. Though these essays represent the most critical reactions to Western Han date of the Analects, several (if not all) the essays in Hunter and Kern's volume are worth reading. For more on the accretion theory, see also Brooks, E. Bruce and Brooks, A. Taeko, The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 201–48Google Scholar.
23 Analects 3.12; Lunyu jishi, 論語集釋, ed. Cheng Shude 程樹德 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1990), 5.175. Compare translation in Edward L. Slingerland, trans., Confucius Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2003), 21–22.
24 Puett, Michael, “Ritual and Ritual Obligations: Perspectives on Normativity,” Journal of Value Inquiry 49 (2015), 547CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a broader discussion of the subjunctive in ritual, see Seligman, Adam, Weller, Robert, Puett, Michael, and Simon, Bennett, Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 Puett, Michael, To Become a God: Cosmology Sacrifice, and Self-Divination in Early China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 98Google Scholar. For more on Kongzi's attitude toward death, see Analects 6.22 and 11.12. For a broader discussion of shen 神 (“spirits” or “spirituality”) in early China, see Sterckx, Roel, “Searching for Spirit: Shen and Sacrifice in Warring States and Han Philosophy and Ritual,” Etrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 29 (2007), 23–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Analects 2.8; Lunyu jishi, 3.88. Compare translation in Slingerland, Analects, 10.
27 Analects 1.11; Lunyu jishi, 2.42. Compare translation in Slingerland, Analects, 5.
28 Lunyu jishi, 6.224.
29 Analects 6.18, Lunyu jishi, 12.400. Compare translation in Slingerland, Analects, 59.
30 Keith Knapp argues that the three-year mourning period was a Warring States innovation. See his “Ru Reinterpretation of Xiao,” 209–16. As one anonymous reviewer noted, the three-year mourning period might be characterized as a set of rituals, rather than one ritual, since it encompassed a range of behaviors that might appear as individual rituals.
31 Analects 19.14; Lunyu jishi, 38.1325.
32 Lunyu jishi, 35.1231–1237. Compare translation in Slingerland, Analects, 209–10.
33 My use of “antitheatricality” is adapted from Barish, Jonas, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981)Google Scholar. Barish traces the beginning of this phenomenon in Western literature to Plato, who famously repudiated the arts in Book 10 of the Republic for producing mere representations of reality or the mere appearance of truth, rather than truth itself. Mohist antitheatricality, as shown below, was directed more towards behavior and the avoidance of actions that ran counter to how one believes the world really is—especially for the sake of creating a spectacle for others.
34 For a discussion of filial piety in the Mozi in relation to the Mengzi 孟子, see Radice, Thomas, “Manufacturing Mohism in the Mencius,” Asian Philosophy 21.2 (2011), 139–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 Mozi jiaozhu 墨子校注, ed. Wu Yujiang 吳毓江 (Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 2006), 25 “Jie zang xia” 節葬下, 259. Compare translation in Ian Johnston, trans., The Mozi: A Complete Translation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 215.
36 Mozi jiaozhu, 39 “Fei Ru xia” 非儒下, 428–29. Compare translation in Johnston, Mozi, 351. The ritual described here bears some resemblance to the ritual of “calling back” (fu 復) the dead that is described in ritual texts from the Han dynasty, and scholars have discerned certain related beliefs about death and a kind of “soul.” For a discussion of this ritual, see Ying-shih, Yü, “‘O Soul Come Back!’: A Study in The Changing Conceptions of The Soul and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (1987), 363–95Google Scholar.
37 Reading si 祀 as li 禮.
38 Mozi jiaogu, 48 “Gongmeng” 公孟, 690. Compare translation in Johnston, Mozi, 687.
39 The Mozi tells of a certain person, conveniently named Guan Gu 觀辜 (“Observed Crime”), who failed to keep the sacrificial offerings to the ancestors clean and pure. As a result, a mysterious individual appeared, and beat him to death. See Mozi jiaogu, 31 “Ming gui xia” 明鬼下, 332–33.
40 Mozi jiaogu, 31 “Ming gui xia,” 333. Compare translation in Johnston, Mozi, 287–89.
41 Mozi jiaogu, 46 “Geng Zhu” 耕柱, 641.
42 Mozi jiaogu, 31 “Ming gui xia,” 336.
43 The Mohists also interpreted Heaven (tian 天) as an ultimate arbiter of morality in the “Will of Heaven” (“Tian zhi” 天志) chapters, though the “vision” vocabulary is not as prominent.
44 Mengzi 7A21; Mengzi zhengyi 孟子正義, ed. Jiao Xun焦循 (Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 1987), 26.906. Compare translation in Bryan Van Norden, trans., Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 176.
45 The most famous passages arguing for the goodness of human nature are found in Mengzi 6A.
46 Mengzi zhengyi, 11.404–5. Compare translation in Van Norden, Mengzi, 75.
47 Mengzi 2B7; Mengzi zhengyi, 9.281. Compare translation in Van Norden, Mengzi, 55.
48 Mengzi 4A27; Mengzi zhengyi, 15.532–33. Compare translation in Van Norden, Mengzi, 101.
49 Xunzi jijie 荀子集解, ed. Wang Xianqian 王先謙 (Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju, 1981), 23 “Xing e” 性惡, 434.
50 Xunzi jijie, 23 “Xing e,” 438.
51 For a more elaborate analysis of the “developmental” and “transformational” forms of self-cultivation in the Mengzi and the Xunzi, respectively, see Ivanhoe, Philip J., Confucian Moral Self Cultivation, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2000)Google Scholar.
52 Xunzi jijie, 19 “Li lun” 禮論, 365–66. Compare translation in Knoblock, John, trans. Xunzi: A Study and Translation of the Complete Works, vol. 3 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 66Google Scholar.
53 Xunzi jijie, 19 “Li lun,” 366.
54 Xunzi jijie, 19 “Li lun,” p. 357. Compare translation in Knoblock, Xunzi, vol. 3, 62.
55 Xunzi jijie, 19 “Li lun,” 364. Compare translation in Knoblock, vol. 3, 65–66.
56 Xunzi jijie, 19 “Li lun,” 368–69.
57 Xunzi jijie, 19 “Li lun,” 369. Robert Campany refers to these acts as “symbolic indirection,” referring to how the specific actions within the ritual mean something other than what is immediately apparent. See his “Xunzi and Durkheim as Theorists of Ritual Practice,” in Discourse and Practice, ed. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 204–5.
58 Xunzi jijie, 19 “Li lun,” 377. Compare translation in Knoblock, Xunzi, vol. 3, 73.
59 Xunzi jijie, 19 “Li lun,” 378. Compare translation in Knoblock, Xunzi, vol. 3, 73.
60 These actions of the performer were part of what Ori Tavor has aptly described as Xunzi's “corporal technology” of ritual. See his “Xunzi's Theory of Ritual Revisited: Reading Ritual as Corporal Technology,” Dao 12 (2013), 313–30.
61 Xunzi jijie, 19 “Li lun,” 364–65.
62 Much like most other texts discussed in this essay, especially the Analects, the Liji is highly complex, containing material composed at different periods of time, and some as early as the Warring States. For a good, concise overview on the issues pertaining the composition of the Liji, see Ing, Michael David Kaulana, The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 219–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 Liji jijie 禮記集解, ed. Sun Xidan 孫希旦, “Ji tong” 祭統, 47.1244. Compare translation in Legge, trans., Li Chi: Book of Rites, 245–46.
64 Liji jijie, “Ji tong,” 47.1244.
65 Liji jijie, “Ji yi,” 46.1208. For an extensive analysis and discussion on whether this ritual fasting was intended to induce hallucinations or facilitate “as if” behavior, see Carr, Michael, “Ritual Fasts and Spirit Visions in the Liji,” Otaru Shōka Daigaku jinbun kenkyū 小樽商科大学人文研究 91 (1996), 99–126Google Scholar. For a brief discussion of the wider context of fasting in several early Chinese texts, see Ori Tavor, “Embodying the Dead: Ritual as Preventative Therapy in Chinese Ancestor Worship and Funerary Practices,” Journal of Ritual Studies 34.1 (2020), 37–38.
66 Liji jijie, “Ji yi,” 46.1209.
67 Liji jijie, “Ji yi,” 46.1210.
68 Tavor, “Embodying the Dead,” 39–40.
69 A similar statement can be found in Analects 2.5. Here, Kongzi stresses that one must serve, bury, and sacrifice to parents according to ritual.
70 Liji jijie, “Ji Tong” 祭統, 47.1237; emphasis added. Compare translation in Legge, Li Chi, vol. 2, 237–38.
71 I am using the term, “tragic” in a broad sense, adapted from Susan L. Feagin, who defines it as a narrative with an unhappy ending. She uses this conception of tragedy to accommodate for the variety of examples in Western literature that are labeled “tragic.” See her “The Pleasures of Tragedy,” American Philosophical Quarterly 20.1 (1983), 95–104. For a discussion of tragedy (or lack thereof) in pre-modern Chinese drama, see Ch'ien Chung-shu. “Tragedy in Old Chinese Drama,” T'ien Hsia Monthly 11.1 (1935), 37–46. In this essay, Ch'ien limits the notion of “tragedy” to Western “classical tragedy,” which is far narrower in scope than Feagin's definition.
72 I borrow the term, “ghosting,” from Marvin Carlson, who uses it to denote (among other things) how a role in a play is portrayed by different actors, who then are inevitably compared to actors who played the role in previous productions. Roles are thus “haunted” by their previous performances. See his The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2001).
73 Mengzi zhengyi, 10.330. The sentence about the gentleman can also be found in Analects 12.19.
74 Mengzi zhengyi, 10.332. Compare translation in Van Norden, Mengzi, 65.
75 For a discussion of moral exemplarism in early Ruism, see Olberding, Amy, Moral Exemplars in the Analects: The Good Person is That (New York: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar. For a broader discussion of moral exemplarism as an ethical theory, see Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus, Exemplarist Moral Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
76 “Elegance” is a translation of wen, but here it is not intended to negate the “ornamentation” of scripted ritual behavior.
77 Xiaojing zhushu 孝經注疏, ed. Jin Liangnian 金良年 (Shanghai: Shanghai gu ji, 2009), 18 “Sang qin” 喪親, 85. Compare translation in Henry Rosemont, Jr. and Roger T. Ames, trans., The Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing (Honolulu: University of Hawai i Press, 2009), 115–16.
78 Liji jijie, “Fang ji,” 50.1289. Compare translation in Legge, Li Chi, vol. 2, 291.
79 Liji jijie, “Fang ji,” 50.1291. Compare translation in Legge, Li Chi, vol. 2, 294.
80 Ing, The Dysfunction of Ritual, 147. Ing refers to these kinds of examples in the Liji in constructing a what he calls a “tragic theory of ritual,” which is different from, though not necessarily incompatible with, my use of “tragic” as an aesthetic relationship between performers and spectators. See The Dysfunction of Ritual, 208–18.
81 See, for example, the “Zengzi Wen” and “Beng Ji” chapters.
82 Liji jijie, “Tan Gong shang,” 8.206. Compare translation in Legge, Li Chi, vol. 1, 144.
83 A version of this text (along with other texts) written on silk was originally discovered in 1973 in a tomb that dates to 168 BCE. It was discovered at Mawangdui 馬王堆 in the province of Hunan 湖南. In 1993, an earlier version of this text written on bamboo slips (again, with other texts) was discovered in a tomb that dates to around 300 BCE. It was discovered in Guodian in the province of Hubei 湖北.
84 Li Ling 李零, ed., Guodian Chujian jiaoduji 郭店楚簡校讀記 (Beijing: Renmin daxue, 2007), 101; see also Guodian Chumu zhujian 郭店楚墓竹簡 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1998), slips 14–15. Compare translation in Scott Cook, trans., The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation, vol. 1 (Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 2012), 494.
85 For a discussion of this notion of “jade-like countenance” and significance of jade for describing a person's appearance in early Chinese texts, especially the Wu Xing and Mengzi, see Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China (Leiden, Brill, 2004), 101–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an interesting analysis on the hierarchical distinction between the visual and the aural in this text, see Erica Brindley, “‘Sagacity’ and the Heaven–Human Relationship in the Wu Xing 五行,” in Dao Companion to the Guodian Bamboo Manuscripts, ed. Shirley Chan (Cham: Springer, 2019), 187–96.
86 Liji jijie, “Tan Gong Xia” 檀弓下, 10.259.
87 Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200 CE) says that Zigong did not understand that grief was the “root” (ben 本) of ritual, and that sacrifices were the “ornamentation” (wen) of ritual; Liji jijie, “Tang Gong Shang,” 8.195.
88 Eno, Robert, The Confucian Creation of Heaven: Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 60Google Scholar.