THE XIA SHANG ZHOU DUANDAI GONGCHENG BAOGAO 夏商周斷代工程報告 AND ITS CHRONOLOGY OF THE WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY

Abstract

The Xia-Shang Zhou Chronology Project was a five-year state-sponsored project, carried out between 1995–2000, to determine an absolute chronology of the Western Zhou dynasty and approximate chronologies of the Xia and Shang dynasties. At the end of the five years, the Project issued a provisional report entitled Report on the 1996–2000 Provisional Results of the Xia-Shang Zhou Chronology Project: Brief Edition detailing its results. A promised full report was finally published in 2022: Report on the Xia-Shang Zhou Chronology Project. Although numerous discoveries in the more than twenty years between the publications of the Brief Edition and the Report have revealed that the Project's absolute chronology of the Western Zhou is fundamentally flawed, and some of the problems are acknowledged by the Report, still the Report maintains the Project's chronology without any correction. In the review, I present four of these discoveries, from four different periods of the Western Zhou, discussing their implications for the Project's chronology. I conclude with a call for some sort of authoritative statement acknowledging the errors in the report.

摘要

“夏商周斷代工程”是中國政府從 1995 年到 2000 年支持的五年學術項目，目的是為了判斷西周時代絕對年代框架以及夏代和商代的大約年代。在 2000 年，這個項目公布了一種階段性的報告，題做《夏商周斷代工程 1996–2000 年階段成果報告：簡本》。二十多年以後，在 2022 年“夏商周斷代工程”終於出版了正式報告，即《夏商周斷代工程報告》。正如《夏商周斷代工程報告》也承認的那樣，這二十多年以來眾多考古發現顯示了原來的西周年代框架含有嚴重問題，甚至有絕對錯誤。雖然如此，《夏商周斷代工程報告》毫無改變地繼承了《夏商周斷代工程 1996–2000 年階段成果報告：簡本》的年代框架。本文對二十年以來代表西周時代四個不同的階段的四種發現作簡單的介紹，及其對“夏商周斷代工程”的結論作評論。最後，我還指出根據學術道德，“夏商周斷代工程”的相關領導有責任公開地指出《夏商周斷代工程報告》的問題。

子曰：過而不改，是謂過矣。

The Master said: “To make a mistake but not to correct it, truly is what is called a mistake.”¹

From 1995–2000, the study of ancient China in China was consumed with a project called the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project” (夏商周斷代工程). Under the leadership of the late Li Xueqin 李學勤 (1933–2019), it brought together some two hundred researchers from such various fields as ancient history, paleography, archaeology, and astronomy, and was sometimes claimed to be the largest humanistic project in China since the Siku quanshu 四庫全書 project of the 1770s. As a government-supported project, the Project's mandate was to produce within five years a precise chronology of the Western Zhou period, a relatively precise chronology of the Yinxu 殷墟 period of the Shang dynasty, and approximate chronologies of the earlier Shang and Xia dynasties. Late in the year 2000, the project released a provisional report entitled Report on the 1996–2000 Provisional Results of the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project: Brief Edition (夏商周斷代工程 1996–2000 年階段成果報告：簡本).² The publication of this Brief Edition of the Project report prompted considerable discussion in the popular press,³ but it seems that many scholars decided to await a promised full report before addressing the scholarly achievements and/or problems of the chronology project.⁴ They had a very long wait, but the full report—Report on the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project (夏商周斷代工程報告)—has now finally been published, twenty-two years after the publication of the Brief Edition. The Report is considerably more detailed than the Brief Version (545 pages as opposed to the 118 pages of the Brief Edition) and includes a few minor revisions to the earlier conclusions. It also includes two Postscripts (後記), the first describing the process of the writing of the Report, and the second noting that in 2019 the Project office was closed and all of the supporting materials were sent to the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (中國社會科學院考古研究所) for storage. Now that the Project is definitively concluded, it should certainly be subject to a broad-ranging critical evaluation. Unfortunately, because the Report is divided almost evenly between textual evidence (including both traditional texts and paleographic texts) and archaeological evidence, the latter of which is well beyond my own expertise, this review will necessarily focus only on the chronology of the Western Zhou and the bronze inscriptional evidence used to support it. That this is the first substantive chapter in the Report, and the foundation on which the rest of the chronology is based, provides at least some rationale for such a limited focus.⁵ I hope that others with greater expertise in the archaeological evidence and/or the earlier periods treated by the Project will evaluate those portions of the Report.

In addition to the various chronologies it proposed, the Project has also pointed with pride to its methodology of bringing together scholars from multiple disciplines to produce a scientific result. In 2002, shortly after the conclusion of the Project's research period, the project leader Li Xueqin made the following statement about the significance of its multi-disciplinary approach:

What the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project” has done is something that no one has ever done before. Under socialist conditions, we have taken various disciplines, including natural sciences and the human and social sciences, which previously had no contact and lacked even a common language, and merged them together. I believe that this has not only guaranteed that we reached the desired goals of the Project, but that it has accumulated valuable experience for even more advanced cross-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research in the future.⁶

I think we can let pass in silence the influence that “socialist conditions” may have had on the success of the Project, but I wonder whether the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the human sciences really do lack “even a common language.” One thing that the scientific method certainly has in common across all of these different disciplines is the requirement that results be replicable when subjected to new data. We have been fortunate in the more than two decades since the publication of the Brief Edition that a considerable amount of new evidence has been unearthed with which to test the Project's conclusions, especially its absolute chronology of the Western Zhou. To the authors’ credit, some of this new evidence is mentioned in the Report, including acknowledgment that some of the evidence is inconsistent with its findings. Nevertheless, the evidence has led to no revision in the chronology, and to the revision of only a single dated bronze vessel,⁷ the implications of which, as we will see, have not been considered by the Report. This evidence, in the form of newly unearthed bronze vessels, appeared between the years 2003 and 2013, and was fully published in the scholarly press before the final editing of the Report.⁸ Below, I will consider five of these discoveries and their implications for the Project's chronology.

The Lai pan 逨盤, Forty-second Year Lai ding 逨鼎, and Forty-third Year Lai ding 逨鼎

On 19 January 2003, peasants in Meixian 眉縣 county, Shaanxi, inadvertently opened a late Western Zhou cache containing twenty-seven bronze vessels, all of them inscribed. To their very great credit, the peasants immediately notified the local archaeological authorities, who excavated the cache. It was immediately hailed as one of the greatest discoveries of the new century—and indeed the new millennium, an evaluation not at all exaggerated.⁹ The cache belonged to the last Western Zhou generation or generations of the Shan 單 family, a family already well known from several earlier discoveries in the same vicinity. The centerpiece of the find was the Lai pan 逨盤,¹⁰ with a 373-character inscription providing a sketch history of all Western Zhou kings through the time of King Xuan 宣王, as well as a genealogy of the Shan family. In addition to the Lai pan, the cache also included two ding-caldrons with a 281-character inscription dated to a forty-second year of some reign and ten other ding-caldrons with a 316-character inscription dated to the forty-third year of the same reign. Both of the ding inscriptions are fully dated, that of the forty-second year dated “Forty-second year, fifth month, after the growing brightness, yimao (day 52)” (惟卌又二年五月既生霸乙卯), and that of the forty-third year dated “Forty-third year, sixth month, after the growing brightness, dinghai (day 24)” (惟卌又三年六月既生霸丁亥). There is no question whatsoever that these two dates refer to the reign of King Xuan. However, no matter how one might interpret the date notations, everyone agrees that they are incompatible with the calendar of the years 796 and 795 b.c.e., the Forty-second and Forty-third years after his generally accepted first year of reign in 827 b.c.e..

I have been told that, early in 2003, after making a trip to Shaanxi to view the Shan-family bronzes, Li Xueqin gave a public lecture at Peking University to report on the discovery and its significance. When someone in the audience asked about the incompatibility of the dates with the calendar of King Xuan's reign and what this might mean for the Xia Shang Zhou Chronology Project, Li responded that the Project's charter was to reconstruct the chronology of China before the year 841, the first year of the Gong He 共和 interregnum between the reigns of King Li 厲王 and King Xuan,¹¹ and therefore this question did not fall under the Project's purview. It might have been a convenient solution to avoid this problem, but it is hardly a very satisfying solution, especially since it is related to a whole series of other fully dated late Western Zhou bronzes that have posed problems for most scholars of Western Zhou chronology. To its credit, the Report acknowledges the problem, first regarding the two Lai ding, and then also of their relationship with one of the other fully dated bronzes.

The date on the Forty-second-Year Lai ding probably cannot be simply regarded as having a mistaken character, since the two Lai ding inscriptions both mention a Shi Yu 史淢, who is also seen on the Yuan pan 㝨盤. The “Xia Shang Zhou Chronology Project” had previously put this latter vessel in King Li's reign, but based on the Lai ding this is incorrect. The Yuan pan's date is:

Twenty-eighth year, fifth month, after the full-moon, gengyin (day 27).

This date is compatible with the dates of the two Lai ding. However, they are all mutually contradictory with the Yu Hu ding 虞虎鼎, which was mentioned above as a “standard” for King Xuan's reign. (77)

Despite this, the Report's Table 2–9, “Dates of Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions,” simply changes the date of the Forty-Second-Year Lai ding from yimao 乙卯 (day 52) to yichou 乙丑 (day 2). Similarly, Table 2–9 also changes the date recorded in the Yuan pan 㝨盤, from “Twenty-eighth year, fifth month, after the full moon, gengyin (day 27)” to gengwu (day 17) (82). Even if this Table did not contradict the Report's own statement that “The date on the Forty-Second -Year Lai ding probably cannot be simply regarded as having a mistaken character,” the cavalier manner of simply changing data that do not fit with the conclusions of the Project should ring alarm bells for all readers. The Report states “These matters possibly reflect that the calendar of this period of King Xuan's reign had some sort of problem, for which there is currently still no means of giving a satisfactory explanation; our method of changing the day-dates is only a temporary measure” (這些可能反映宣王這一時期曆法存在某種問題，目前尚沒有給出滿意的解釋，這裡採用改動干支的辦法，只是暫時的措施) (77). If it were indeed only “a temporary measure,” it would be one thing; however, the Report, twenty-two years in the making, is final.

What is more, while the date of the Yuan pan is compatible with the calendar required by the two Lai ding, just as the Report states, it too is strictly incompatible with a calendar of King Xuan's reign beginning in 827 b.c.e.. It was for this reason that the Brief Edition had dated the vessel to 850 b.c.e., the twenty-eighth year of a putative thirty-seven-year reign of King Li beginning in 877 b.c.e., even though most artistic and historical criteria would suggest a very late Western Zhou date for the vessel (and for its companion piece, the Yuan ding 㝨鼎; Jicheng #2819). The appearance of a court officer named Shi Yu 史淢 in both the Yuan pan inscription and also in both Lai ding inscriptions shows beyond doubt that this earlier dating of the Yuan pan was mistaken, and the Report now corrects it. However, the date of the Yuan pan is significant for other reasons. As I have pointed out in a number of studies,¹² not only is its date compatible with the dates of the two Lai ding, it is also compatible with the dates of a whole series of late Western Zhou bronze vessels with high year numbers, the artistic and historical criteria of which would suggest a King Xuan date, but the full date notations of which are incompatible with King Xuan's traditional regnal calendar. These include most notably the Shanfu Shan ding 膳夫山鼎 (Jicheng #2825; dated to a thirty-seventh year), for which the Report claims to have done “extra research,”¹³ but includes also the Pan Ju Sheng hu 番匊生壺 (Jicheng #9705; dated to a twenty-sixth year), Guo You Cong ding 𩰫攸从鼎 (Jicheng #2818; dated to a thirty-first year), the Bo Da Zhu Zhui ding 伯大祝追鼎 (Mingtu #2396; dated to a thirty-second year), and the Bo Kuifu xu 伯窺父盨 (Jicheng #4438; dated to a thirty-third year). The Report continues to date all of these vessels to the reign of King Li, even though the Brief Edition had to invent a wholly new chronology for King Li (beginning his first year in 877 b.c.e. instead of 878 b.c.e., as one reading of the Shi ji 史記 would seem to suggest), and even though some of the dates do not match even this calendar. For instance, for the date of the Shanfu Shan ding, “37th year, first month, first auspiciousness, gengxu (day 47),” Table 2–9 of the Report indicates that the day in question was two days prior to the beginning of the first month. In a previous comment on the dates of the Jin Hou Su zhong 晉侯蘇鐘, the Report says that discrepancies of one or two days “should be allowed” (61). This would seem to be a very slippery slope, almost as bad as arbitrarily changing terms of full-date notations.

The Report includes a discussion of the Yu Hu ding 虞虎鼎, the inscription of which shows that it is securely dated to the reign of King Xuan, and the eighteenth-year full date of which is consistent with his traditional regnal calendar starting in 827. It then states:

In addition, the Xi Jia pan 兮甲盤 and Guoji Zi Bai pan 虢季子白盤, which past scholars all agree should be dated to the reign of King Xuan, are separately dated to the fifth and twelfth years, and their dates are consistent. Thus, that King Xuan's first year was 827 b.c.e. is credible, and there is also no reason to doubt that Gong He's first year was 841 b.c.e.. (57)

What this comment leaves out is that the two Lai ding and the Yuan pan, not to mention the Shanfu Shan ding and all of the other vessels with high-year full-date notations, are not consistent with this calendar. I might point out that an alternative explanation has been available in the scholarly literature, in both English and Chinese, since at least 1990.¹⁴ None of this scholarship is mentioned in the Report even though the thesis has been repeatedly confirmed by newly appearing vessels—and readily published in two of the most authoritative scholarly journals in China.¹⁵

The Lu gui 簋 and Zuoce Wu he 作冊吳盉

The June 2006 issue of Zhongguo lishi wenwu 中國歷史文物 reported that the National Museum of China had just purchased a fully dated mid-Western Zhou bronze vessel with an inscription that commemorates the appointment of one Lu to be Supervisor-in-Chief of the Horse (zhong sima 冢司馬), equivalent to commander-in-chief of the Zhou army.¹⁶ It seems clear, as the Report states, that this Lu should be identified with the Sima Jingbo Lu 司馬井伯 who is mentioned in the inscription of the Shi Yun gui gai 師𤸫簋蓋 (Jicheng 8.4283) as Shi Yun 師𤸫's guarantor at court (73), and from this it is clear too that he is also the same individual who is mentioned by the name of Sima Jingbo 司馬井伯 or simply Jingbo 井伯 in numerous other mid-Western Zhou vessels. The Report contains an appendix entitled “Table of Relations Between Bronze Vessels Seen in the List of Bronze Inscriptions Dates” (附錄二： 列入金文曆譜的青銅器繫聯表) illustrating eleven such vessels in which some version of his name appears.¹⁷ Most of these are firmly dated to the reign of King Gong 共王, though there are two vessels dated to the reign of King Gong's father, King Mu 穆王, and one dated as late as the first year of the reign of King Yih 懿王, King Gong's son. The first of these is the Lu gui, which is ornamented with the facing long-tailed birds that are typical of King Mu's reign, and which is dated to a twenty-fourth year. There is a consensus, shared by the Report, that it dates to the reign of King Mu; for the Report, this is 953 b.c.e.. The latest is the Shi Hu gui 師虎簋 (Jicheng 8.4316), which bears a date notation that seems to require that it date to the first year of the reign of King Yih 懿王, King Gong's son, which the Report dates to 899 b.c.e.. Thus, there is a firm evidential basis that Sima Jingbo Lu's career at court spanned the latter part of the reign of King Mu, the entirety of that of King Gong, and even into the opening years of King Yih, just as the Report maintains.

I would not disagree with any of the identifications made in this “Table of Relations Between Bronze Vessels Seen in the List of Bronze Inscriptions Dates,” or even with the assignments of the dates to years of reign of King Mu, King Gong, and King Yih. However, the Report seems not to take into account the problem the Lu gui poses for its dating of King Mu's reign. The Report, as did the Brief Version before it, accepts one traditional view, that King Mu reigned for fifty-five years. Since the Lu gui commemorates Sima Jingbo Lu's appointment as Supervisor-in-Chief of the Horse, once again equivalent to commander-in-chief of the Zhou army and presumably an adult with some experience and maturity, in the twenty-fourth year of King Mu's reign, and since the Shi Hu gui has him still active at court in the first year of King Yih, according to the chronology of the Report he would have had to be active for fifty-four years (according to their chronology: from 853 to 899 b.c.e.). As I suggested, only partially in jest, in a review of the Project made fifteen years ago:

This is the equivalent of suggesting in a contemporary Chinese context that Peng Dehuai 彭德懷 (1898–1974), who was defense minister in 1958, or even that Lin Biao 林彪 (1907–1971), who replaced him in the following year, would have still been active in the military in 2006. Even without considering that the average life span in antiquity was certainly far less than it is today (though, admittedly, the ancients did not have to fear airplane crashes), this is simply unimaginable.¹⁸

All jesting aside, good arguments have been made that while King Mu certainly enjoyed a lengthy reign, with evidence that it lasted at least thirty-four years, the life-span of Sima Jingbo Lu shows that the tradition that King Mu reigned fifty-five years is simply unreasonable. However, the Report seems not to have considered this implication of the Lu gui's dating, even though it was thoroughly discussed in the issue of Zhongguo lishi wenwu 中國歷史文物 in which the Lu gui was first made public.¹⁹

The problems of the Report's treatment of King Mu's reign begin, but do not end, with the Lu gui. It simply notes that the full-date notation of the Lu gui is consistent with the calendar of 853 b.c.e., and is consistent also with the dates of three other fully dated inscriptions (the Qiu Wei gui 裘衛簋 [Jicheng #4256], the Hu gui gai 虎簋蓋 [Mingtu #5399–5400], and the Xian gui 鮮簋 [Jicheng #10166]) dated to the twenty-seventh, thirtieth, and thirty-fourth years of King Mu's reign. The Report does not mention in this context, though it does mention just below it, another fully dated vessel that appeared only in 2011: the Zuoce Wu he 作冊吳盉 (73–74).²⁰ The Report's discussion of this piece is extremely unclear. First, the transcription of the inscription (no rubbing or photograph of the inscription is provided) mistakenly writes its date as “Thirtieth year, fourth month, after the dying brightness, renwu (day 19)” (惟卅年四曰既死霸壬午); the “lunar-phase notation” jisiba 既死霸 “after the dying brightness” should be jishengba 既生霸 “after the growing brightness,” as it is in the later Table 2–9, “Dates of Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions.” The Report then concludes its discussion of the piece's date by saying “We can try to place the inscription's date in King Mu's thirtieth year (947 b.c.e.); that year already has the Hu gui gai ‘Thirtieth year, fourth month, first auspiciousness, jiaxu (day 11),’ the first day of the month being bingyin (day 3), so that jiaxu would be the ninth day and renwu would be the seventeenth day” (銘文曆日可試排於穆王三十年（公元前 947 年），該年已有虎簋蓋“惟卅年四曰初吉甲戌,”其月丙寅朔，甲戌九日，壬午十七日), which is in fact where Table 2–9 places it. However, neither here nor in Table 2–9 does the Report note that jishengba “after the growing brightness” cannot possibly be the seventeenth day of a lunar month, coming after the full moon as it would. Thus, the date of the Zuoce Wu he is absolutely inconsistent with the chronology for King Mu given by the Report, and its statement that it “can try to place the inscription's date” can only be regarded as a sleight of hand attempt to avoid admitting this.²¹

Jue Gong gui 覺公簋

In 2007, Zhu Fenghan 朱鳳瀚 published another vessel, which he referred to as Yao Gong gui 公簋 (Mingtu #4954),²² but which the Report refers to as Jue Gong gui 覺公簋. As Professor Zhu notes, this is a very early Western Zhou vessel, the inscription of which commemorates the transfer of Tangbo 湯伯, presumably from Tang 湯 (also written as 唐), to be lord of Jin 晉. Although the vessel was looted and thus is lacking in provenience details, it doubtless came from the cemetery of Jin lords at Tianma-Qucun 天馬曲村, Shanxi, which had suffered looting in the years immediately prior to the vessel's appearance. The inscription is short, but very significant.

覺公作妾姚簋，遘于王令湯伯侯于晉。唯王廿又八祀。

Jue Gong makes for his wife Yao (this) gui-tureen, meeting with the king commanding Tangbo to be lord in Jin. It is the king's twenty-eighth year.

As Professor Zhu demonstrated, this Jue Gong gui is a very early Western Zhou vessel, with similar examples among very late Shang-dynasty bronzes as well as other vessels from the opening years of the Zhou dynasty. He has also convincingly demonstrated that this Tangbo 湯伯 should correspond to a figure known in received sources as Xiefu 燮父, who succeeded his father Tangshu Yu 唐叔虞, the younger brother of King Cheng of Zhou 周成王, as the lord of Tang 唐,²³ before then moving to Jin. The inscription serves to date Xiefu's move to Jin to the “twenty-eighth year” of some king's reign. Professor Zhu cautiously states only that this year must refer to either the reign of King Cheng or that of King Kang 康王, though it is almost certain that it should be the reign of King Cheng. In either event, as Professor Zhu also points out, the date is irreconcilable with the chronology proposed by the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project,” which allotted just twenty-two years to King Cheng and twenty-five years to King Kang, even though traditional chronologies had given them thirty (or thirty-seven) years and twenty-six years.

In the work done at present in dating bronze inscriptions, if we determine that the Jue Gong gui is a vessel of the twenty-eighth year of King Cheng's (reign), then we would certainly have to change the chronology proposed by the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project,” for instance by adjusting the date of King Wu's conquest of Shang. Or else there are also scholars who have suggested, based on bronze inscriptional data, that King Mu's length of reign be reduced. However, the latter would require shifting the Shi ji's clear record regarding King Mu's length of reign, so that would also entail the problem of changing the chronology.²⁴

In fact, the Report acknowledges this problem. It says of the Jue Gong gui:

Concerning whether this vessel should belong to the time of King Cheng or King Kang, as well as the influence this has for the dates of Western Zhou, the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project” convened a special conference in April, 2007. Following this, the scholarly world had a series of discussions, the details of which can be seen in Zhu Fenghan's article “Brief Discussion of Several Bronze Vessels Concerned with Western Zhou Chronology” (簡論與西周年代學有關的幾件銅器); until now, no consensus has been reached.

No matter if one places this vessel in King Cheng's reign or King Kang's reign, it would require revising the dates that the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project” had given for King Cheng and King Kang. We hope that in the future other relevant materials will be discovered, providing still clearer evidence for work in this regard.²⁵

On the one hand, this recognition of the problem is commendable. However, despite admitting that “No matter if one places this vessel in King Cheng's reign or King Kang's reign, it would require revising the dates that the ‘Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project’ had given for King Cheng and King Kang,” the Report's final “Xia-Shang Zhou Chronology” (夏商周年表) does not change the date for either reign.²⁶ One wonders what “clearer evidence” would be required for the Project actually to revise its chronology.

The Jun Gui 㽙簋

In 2012, Wu Zhenfeng 吳鎮峰, published a new comprehensive collection of inscribed bronze vessels, containing many previously unknown inscriptions, including one—on the Jun gui 㽙簋 bronze vessel—the inscription of which contains a full date notation that he and other scholars have argued certainly dates to the reign of King Yìh of Zhou 周懿王 (Figure 1).²⁷ As both the Brief Edition and the Report have stressed,²⁸ the reign of King Yih is crucial to the reconstruction of Western Zhou chronology because of a record in the Zhushu jinian 竹書紀年 Bamboo Annals that is understood to refer to a solar eclipse in the first year of his reign: “the day dawned twice at Zheng” (天再旦于鄭).²⁹ The Brief Edition had named this eclipse record as one of its “seven important points” (七個支點) for Western Zhou chronology, identifying it with a solar eclipse that occurred at dawn on 19 April 899 b.c.e..³⁰ The Report provides fuller discussion of the eclipse than did the Brief Edition,³¹ concluding, as did the Brief Edition, that King Yih's reign began in 899 b.c.e.. Also as did the Brief Edition, the Report states that King Yih's reign lasted eight years, ending in 892 b.c.e..

Figure 1. Inscription on the Jun gui 㽙簋; from Wu Zhenfeng 吴镇烽, ed., Shang Zhou qingtongqi mingwen ji tuxiang jicheng 商周青铜器铭文暨图像集成 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2013), #05386.

The inscription on the Jun gui calls into question this end-date for the reign for King Yih, if not necessarily the start-date. Since it has not yet been published in English,³² it is worth examining in full here.

The inscription can be transcribed and translated as follows.

唯十年正月初吉甲寅，王在周［般］

大室。旦王格廟即位。瓚王，康公入

門右㽙立中廷北嚮。王呼作册尹册命

㽙曰：𢦏甾乃祖考保又功于先

王，亦弗忘乃祖考登裏厥典封

于服。今朕丕顯考龏王既命汝

更乃祖考事，作司徒。今余唯

申先王，命汝兼司西朕司徒，訊

訟，取十寽，敬勿灋朕命。賜

汝鬯卣、赤巿、幽黄、攸勒。㽙拜稽首，對

揚天子休，用作朕烈考幽叔寶

尊簋，用賜萬年，子子孙孙其永寶。

It was the tenth year, first month, first auspiciousness, jiayin (day 51); the king was at the Ban Great Chamber in Zhou. At dawn, the king entered the temple and assumed position. Saluting the king, Kang Gong entered the gate at the right of Jun and stood in the courtyard facing north. The king called out to the head of the slip-makers to read the command to Jun, saying: “In the past, your grandfather and father protected and had merit with the past kings, and I have also not forgotten that your grandfather and father raised up and packaged their registers and field-markers in service. Now that my illustrious deceased-father King Gong had commanded you to succeed your grandfather's and father's service to be supervisor of the multitudes, now it is that I extend the past king's command, and command you concurrently to supervise my supervisor of multitudes in the west and to hear trials, taking as stipend ten lüe. Be careful and do not neglect my command. I award you a bucket of sweet wine, red kneepads, a dark jade-piece, and a harness.” Jun bowed and touched his head to the ground, in response extolling the Son of Heaven's grace, herewith making for my valiant deceased-father Youshu this treasured offertory gui-tureen, with which to be awarded ten-thousand years; may sons’ sons and grandsons’ grandsons eternally treasure and use it.

Since the king in this inscription refers to his own deceased father as King Gong 龏王, it stands to reason, as Wu Zhenfeng has argued, that this king should be identified as King Yih.³³ The date notation beginning the inscription, “tenth year, first month, first auspiciousness, jiayin (day 51),” shows clearly that his reign lasted at least ten years, clearly contradicting the Project's chronology allotting only eight years to his reign. This problem too has been pointed out by Zhu Fenghan.

In this way, the “Western Zhou Bronze Inscription Dates” that the Report on the 1996–2000 Provisional Results of the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project: Brief Edition has published giving King Yih's reign as the eight years from 899–892 has to be adjusted, in only one of two ways. The first would be to move the beginning of the reign earlier in time, but this would eliminate the rationale for setting 899 as the first year of King Yih.

If we were to maintain 899 as the first year, then we would have to move the end of his reign later. According to this, King Yih's tenth year would be 890. However, from the almanac for that year, the first day of the first month was bingshen (day 33), while jiayin (day 51) was the nineteenth day of the month, inconsistent with the “first auspiciousness” date notation. Since all the evidence seen heretofore in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions concerning the term “first auspiciousness” (which is mainly in the first ten days of the month) shows that no matter what, it could not be as late as the nineteenth day, thus setting 899 as King Yih's first year also has to be changed.³⁴

I have argued elsewhere that the 899 b.c.e. date for King Yih's first year does not have to be changed after all.³⁵ Whether that is the case or not, Zhu Fenghan is surely right that this inscription shows that the Project's assigning only eight years to the reign of King Yih is impossible. This is not surprising for anyone who has studied bronze vessels and Western Zhou chronology; the Project's assigning only eight years to King Yih, six years to King Xiao 孝王, and eight years to King Yi 夷王, has always been implausible since there are several fully dated bronze vessels that artistic and historical criteria suggest date to these reigns and which have year notations of twelfth year or greater.³⁶ But what is truly astounding is that even though Wu Zhenfeng's compendium of bronze vessels was published in 2012, and Zhu Fenghan's discussion of the Jun gui was published in 2014, well before the various drafts of the Report were completed, the Report does not mention the vessel at all. Even though “Postscript I” says that the last of the “internal newsletters” (內部傳遞研究資料) was issued on 12 January 2010,³⁷ between that date and the date of “Postscript II,” 10 June 2021, one would think that some one of the editors would have taken note of this important evidence, and at least pointed it out in the Report. Whether the date 899 b.c.e. for the first year of King Yih stands or not, the Jun gui demonstrates that the Project's chronology of his reign, and thus for all of the other mid-Western Zhou reigns, is wrong. Failure to mention this evidence will not make it go away.

Conclusion

In an article published in 2008, I made the following statement:

[T]he public attention given to the Project—almost unprecedented in terms of humanistic scholarship—and the implied government imprimatur given to its results carry with them a special burden of responsibility. The one explicit result that everyone looks to first is the Project's absolute chronology of the Western Zhou dynasty—a result that is on view not only in the stone wall outside the Centennial Altar Museum in Beijing, but also published in the most recent edition of the Ci hai 辭海, and now included in elementary and high school history books all over China (there are even reports that it has been regarded as the required answer on school exams). Now that evidence has surfaced to show this chronology to be flawed—indeed, completely wrong—it is incumbent on the leaders of the Chronology Project to retract its conclusion, and to do so in as public a manner as possible.³⁸

I knew full well at the time that article was published that such a demand was very unlikely to have any effect. The Report is proof that it did not. Repeating the same demand now is just as unlikely to have any effect, and yet it still seems proper to do so. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, Li Xueqin's claim that the Project had “taken various disciplines, including natural sciences and the human and social sciences, which previously had no contact and lacked even a common language, and merged them together,” can only be commendable if the results are subject to the scientific method to which all of these different disciplines adhere: the need to consider all relevant data, and especially to test whether the conclusions drawn from one data set can be replicated when new data emerge. As I hope to have demonstrated in the above discussion, a great deal of new data has emerged since the Project reached its “provisional results” in 2000, and over and over again these new data show that the chronology produced by the Project—and especially the absolute chronology of the Western Zhou period—not only cannot be replicated, but in fact that the chronology is wrong from the beginning of the period to its end.³⁹ This is not to say that all of the contributions of the Project should be repudiated. The various excavations and developments in ¹⁴C dating described in copious detail in the Report have helped to bring Chinese archaeology to an ever greater degree of sophistication and are surely to be lauded. However, these have not made their way into the Ci hai 辭海, or even into the showcases of Chinese museums. It is the chronology that everyone turns to first. It needs to be corrected. Far from stimulating research on this topic, the Project has retarded new research, with scholars in China disinclined to challenge this new orthodoxy.

Li Xueqin, the scientific leader of the Project, is no longer alive, and so his responsibility has come to an end. The other three scientific leaders of the Project were Qiu Shihua 仇士華, responsible for ¹⁴C dating; Li Boqian 李伯謙, responsible for archaeology; and Xi Zezong 席澤宗 (1927–2008), responsible for astronomy. Qiu Shihua is now in his 90s, and Li Boqian is 86 (born in 1937), and neither of them is trained to comment on historical and inscriptional matters. Perhaps Song Jian 宋健, the prime mover behind the Project, might be called upon to address these scientific flaws, but not only is he also in his 90s, he only ever had an amateur's interest in the topic. What is needed is for a bona fide scholar of sufficient gravitas and sufficient knowledge of the issues concerned to make a formal statement admitting that at least the Project's chronology of Western Zhou is flawed and should no longer serve as any sort of standard. Although I myself do not have sufficient standing to make such a statement on my own (and since I would not be viewed as an impartial authority, in any event, having produced my own chronology of Western Zhou), I feel that I should at least issue the call for some Chinese scholar to do so. It would take considerable courage, especially given the current political context, but not only would it be an important contribution to the study of early Chinese history, but it would also be an acknowledgment that the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project” has indeed adhered to the scientific method.