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The Cradle of the East: Supplementary Comments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

David N. Keightley
David N. Keightley*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

Book reviews are too often regarded as an insignificant form of scholarly activity. Journal editors ask us to review a book in 800 words or less. Grant applications ask us to list publications but to omit book reviews. Book reviews do not count, it is rumored, in the publish-or-perish deliberations of tenure committees. This slight regard for reviews -- which is at times accompanied by a decrease in their competence and value (viz. the JAS reviewer [and presumably JAS editor] who thought that Chuanatzu and Chuang Chou were two separate philosophers) -- threatens the health of the field. I believe that good book reviews are vital, especially to our teaching. As lecturers who range over a wide range of materials and eras, we all rely on that questionable, tenuous process by which we abstract material from books in fields in which we are not specialists, and pass it on as quasi-truth. Serious book reviews introduce an essential, critical element into that process. They help keep us honest and alert. They generate the dialogue between the author and ourselves, and the author and the reviewer, upon which the evolution of historical understanding must continually depend. Such considerations are particularly important when a book is on a major topic and likely to be consulted and quoted widely by people outside the field. It is these considerations that lead me to publish here a technical addendum to a book that I have already reviewed elsewhere.

Type
Review Articles and Book Reviews
Information
Early China , Volume 3 , Fall 1977 , pp. 55 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1977

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References

FOOTNOTES

1. JAS 24.2 (02 1965):329–330; 24.3 (May 1965): 556CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Ho, Ping-ti, The Cradle of the East: An Inquiry into the Indigenous Origins of Techniques and Ideas of Neolithic and Early Historic China, 5000-1000 B.C. (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The University of Chicago Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

3. “Ping-ti Ho and the Origins of Chinese Civilization,” HJAS 37.2 (12 1977):392Google Scholar.

4. For an initial treatment, see Keightley, David N., Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 134–156Google Scholar.

5. Noel Barnard (1960b):506. “[Book Review of] Chou Hung-hsiang, Shang-Yin ti-wang pen-chi,” MS 19 (1960):506Google Scholar.

6. Keightley, “The Historicity of the Ku-pen chu-shu chi-nien,” a paper presented to the Western Branch of the American Oriental Society, Stanford University, 23 March 1975. See the abstract in EC 1 (Fall, 1975):29Google ScholarPubMed. I hope to publish a revised version of this paper.

7. See Hsiang-yung, Fan, ed., Ku-pen chu-shu chi-nien chi-chiao ting-pu (Shanghai, 1962), p. 21Google Scholar, and Toshitada, Mizusawa, ed., Shiki kaichū kōshō kōho (Tokyo, 1957), vol. 1, ch. 3, p. 30Google Scholar, for a summary of the considerable textual problems involved. That the earliest figure we have was “773” is supported by Sun Using-yen's reconstruction of Kua-ti chih (a work commissioned in A.D. 638 and completed 4 years later), which at this point, based on Shih-chi cheng-yi, also gives the 773 year figure (Hsing-yen, Sun, ed. Kua-ti chih, in Tai-nan ko-ts'ung-shu [Shanghai, 1924], vol. 31, ch. 4, p. 5a)Google Scholar. Whether Chang Shou-chieh found this figure in the Bamboo Annals itself, or whether as Sun apparently felt, he found it already quoted in Kua-ti chih, is immaterial for our purposes.

8. The 773 figure would place the capital removal back in the 18th century B.C. and would require that the 12 (or 11; see n. 34, below) Shang kings of the P'an-keng-Ti-hsin era have each ruled for an average of 64.5 (or 70) years. But the Bamboo Annals itself tells us that from the time T'ang extinguished the Hsia down to Chou, the last Shang king, there were 29 kings in 496 years (Fan [1962], p. 24); these figures, for what they are worth, give an average reign of 17 years, which accords fairly well with an average reign-length of 20 years calculated for the Chou period (Bishop, C. W., “The Chronology of Ancient China,” JAOS 52 (1932): 234–235)Google Scholar.

9. Yu-tseng, Chu, Chi-chung chi-nien ts'un-chen (1846; reprinted, Taipei, 1959)Google Scholar.

10. Fan (1962), p. 21.

11. Wu Ch'un-chao , editor of a Sung version of Shih-chi, appears to have changed the “773” to “253” to accord with the chronology indicated in the spurious annals (see Wen-hu, Chang, ed., Chiao-k'an Shih-chi chi-chieh so-yin chang-yi cha-chi [Nanking, 1872], ch. 1, p. 15aGoogle Scholar; cf. Fan [1962], p. 21). Other editions of Shih-chi (notably, Kametarō, Takigawa, ed., Shiki kaichū kōshō [Tokyo, 1934], ch. 3, p. 27)Google Scholar have chosen “275,” but for no sound reason (cf. Mizusawa [1957], ch. 3, p. 30).

12. Fan (1962), p. 21; cf. Ichisada, Miyazaki, “Chūgoku kodai no toshi kokka to sono bochi--Shōyū wa doko ni attaka ,” Tōvōshi kenkvū 28.4 (1970), p. 280, n. 2Google Scholar. Wang Kuo-wei presumably felt the phrase, tzu P'an-keng hsi Yin chih Chou chih mieh erh-pai ch'i-shih-san m'en, keng pu hsi tu belonged with the next 23 graphs of Chang Shou-chieh's text, which clearly are commentary. In any event, the text of Chang's Cheng-yi (Takigawa [1934], ch. 3, p. 27)Google Scholar is anomalous in at least two ways. First, it has no direct bearing on the main Shih-chi text which it ostensibly glosses: Ti Hsin (the last Shang ruler) “increasingly collected dogs, horses, and rare items; he filled his palaces and mansions with them; he increasingly expanded the parks and terraces of Sha-ch'iu.” The other glosses at this point are concerned with defining and locating Shach'iu , which was not the capital; a gloss about the lack of capital removal for the 253/273/275/773 (?) years since the time of P'an-keng is out of place; one would have expected to find it after the entry describing P'an-keng's move (ibid., ch. 3, p. 19). Second, there is no yün in Chang's gloss to indicate that he actually is quoting the Bamboo Annals. The text merely reads: Chu-shu chi-nien, tzu P'an Keng hsi Yin … etc. These anomalies suggest the text may be misplaced or corrupt; they further decrease its reliability.

13. The graph in question is . For the different interpretation proposed see, e.g., Mengchia, Ch'enYin-hsü pu-tz'u tsung-shu (Peking, 1956), p. 527Google Scholar; Suetoshi, Ikeda, Inkyo shokei kōhen shakufaun kō (Hiroshima, 1964). 1.31.11Google Scholar.

14. For complete bibliographic references to oraclebone collections, cited here in abbreviated form, see Keightley (1978), pp. 229-231. “S” refers to Kunio, Shima, Inkyo bokuji sōrui (2d rev. ed., Tokyo, 1971)Google Scholar, where transcriptions of the inscriptions cited may be found.

15. Hsiao-ting, Li, ed., Chia-ku wen-tzu chi shih (Nankang, 1965), p. 2373, reads it as Google Scholar.

16. Keightley (1978), p. 17, n. 71.

17. See in particular Cheng-fu, Li, “Ku wen-tzu-shang chih t'ien-ti hsiang-yi su-yüan , Ta-iu tsa-chih 31.2 (1965).50–51Google Scholar; Sukema, Ojima, Kodai Chūgoku kenkyū (Tokyo, 1968), pp. 28–29Google Scholar; Jōken, Katō, Kanji no kigen (Tokyo, 1970), no. 1155Google Scholar; cf. Ch'ien-chün, T'ien, “Shih shih ,” Chung-kuo wen-tzu 50 (1973)Google Scholar.

18. See n. 14, above. The revised edition, (Tokyo, 1971), which Ho does not use, is to be preferred.

19. Karlgren, Bernhard, Grammata Serica Recensa (Stockholm, 1957), nos. 961, 962Google Scholar; Li Hsiao-ting (1965), p. 2063; Akiyasu, Tōdō, Kanji gogen jiten (Tokyo, 1969), p. 69Google Scholar.

20. Karlgren (1957), no. 739; Li Hsiao-ting (1963), p. 2066.

21. On this point, consider the graphs studied by Lefeuvre, Jean A., “Serie ” Typescript (Taipei, 1971)Google Scholar; for a possibly analagous case in another culture, see Basso, Keith and Anderson, Ned, “A Western Apache Writing System: The Symbols of Silas John,” Science 180 (8 06 1973), 1013–1022CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

22. For the number of oracle-bone graphsa see Keightley (1978), p. 59, n. 7; p. 61, n. 20.

23. On the passive voice, for example, see Serruys, Paul L-M., “The Language of the Shang Oracle Inscriptions,” T'oung Pao 60.1-3 (1974), 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See too Takashima, Ken-ichi, “Negatives in the King Wuting Bone Inscriptions,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1973Google Scholar, who finds that pu was used for negating intransitive/passive verbs (his conclusions are summarized at Keightley [1978], p. 70, n. 63).

24. In my own view all the divination charges should be translated as declaratives, not interrogatives (see Keightley [1978], p. 29, n. 7), i.e., “(We) order the lineage. …” But the issue has no bearing on the question of active or passive voice.

25. S189.1; Kunio, Shima, Inkyo bokuji kenkyū (Hirosaki, 1958), p. 364Google Scholar; Li Hsiao-ting (1965). p. 1945, 1991.

26. Wan-li, Ch'ü, Shang-shu shih-yi (Taipei, 1956), p. 87, n. 38Google Scholar.

27. Fa-kao, Chou, et al., eds., Chin-wen ku-lin (Hong Kong, 1974–1975, pp. 1725–1727Google Scholar.

28. Kan, Lao, “Shih-tzu ti chieh-kou chi shih-kuan ti yüan-shih chih-wu ” Ta-lu tsa-chih 14.3 (1957)Google Scholar; Shizuka, Shirakawa, “Seki shi ” Kōkotsu kimbungaku ronso 1 (1955), 1–66Google Scholar; Creel, Herriee Glessner, The Origins of Statecraft in China, Volume One: The Western Chou Empire (Chicago, 1970), p. 110, n. 35Google Scholar.

29. See too Hsü-ts'un 1.70 (S313.1). For a discussion of these two inscriptions, see Keightley, , “The Temple Artisans of Ancient China: Part One: The Kung and To-kung of Shang,” paper presented to the Modern Chinese History Project Colloquium, University of Washington, Seattle, 17 12, 1969, pp. 20–21, and the rear glossesGoogle Scholar.

30. For preliminary research, see Keightley (1978), p. 180.

31. For a summary of the geographical problems involved in the study of these campaigns, see Po-sheng, Chung, Pu-tz'u chung so chien Yin-wang t'ien-yu ti-ming k'ao--chien-lun t'ien-yu ti-ming yen-chili fang-fa (Taipei, 1972), pp. 133–176Google Scholar.

32. On the question of real versus apparent changes in divination topics with time, see Keightley, (1978), p. 122, n. 138.

33. ibid., pp. 139-140; table 31 (p. 223).

34. There is uncertainty, not apparently shared by Professor Ho? about whether or not Lin Hsin of Shih-chi, “Yin pen-chi,” ever came to the throne (ibid., table 1, note h [p. 187]).

35. ibid., p. 11. 39.

36. Ching-chin 1074 (S7.1); it is cited by Yü Hsing?wu on p. 114 (not, as Ho has it, p. 112) of the article cited by Cradle, p. 308, n. 72.

37. Keightley, , “Religion and the Rise of Urbanism,” JAOS 93.4 (1973):530–531Google Scholar.

38. See Miyazaki (1970); Keightley (1973):537-538.

39. E.g., Legge, James, tr., The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Confucianism: Part III, The Li Ki (Delhi, 1968)Google Scholar, in Müller, F. Max, ed., The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 27, p. 116Google Scholar.

40. Tsung-tung, Chang, Der Kult der Shang-Dynastie im Spiegel der Orakelinschriften: Einer paläographische Studie zur Religion im archaischen China (Weisbaden, 1970), pp. 79, 139, 147, 258Google Scholar; for at least one exception to this general rule, see ibid., pp. 97, 147, 160. Length of reign as a living king may also have affected the status of the spirit (ibid., pp. 24, 258). Chou and Han texts confirm the existence of the general rule in later times. See, e.g., Granet, Marcel, The Religion of the Chinese People, Freedman, Maurice, tr. (New York, 1975), p. 82Google Scholar, n., “The substance of the different Shen was fed in proportion to their nobility”; cf. p. 84.

41. The inscription was originally published as Hu Hou-hsüan , Shuang-chien ch'ih so-ts'ang chia-ku wen-tzu (part 2 of Hu's Chan-hou P'ing-chin hsin-huo chia-ku-chi [Chengtu, 1946])Google Scholar, no. 212, which is unavailable to me. A rubbing and photograph are provided by Ch'en Meng-chia (1956), plate 16; for a drawing see Hsü-ts'un 2.915.

42. Shima (1958), p. 390, claims that no inscription records that the Wei-fang were enemies of the Shang.

43. Tso-pin, Tung, “Chung-kuo wen-tzu ti ch'i-yüan ,” Ta-lu tsa-chih 5.10 (1952):349Google Scholar; Ch'en Meng-chia (1956), pp. 300-301.

44. Keightley (1978), pp. 7-8; table 26 (pp. 216-220).

45. The references cited by Professor Ho at p. 345, no. 4, do not deal with the Wei-fang specifically.

46. For an introduction to the problems see Li Hsiao-ting (1965), pp. 4550-4552; Serruys (1974), p. 107, n. 39.

47. S279.3. On the location of Ch'iu-shang, see Chung Po-sheng (1972), pp. 45-57.