This article examines the question whether aspects of Babylonian astral divination were transmitted to East Asia in the ancient period. An often-cited study by the Assyriologist Carl Bezold claimed to discern significant Mesopotamian influence on early Chinese astronomy and astrology. This study has been cited as authoritative ever since, including by Joseph Needham, although it has never been subjected to careful scrutiny. The present article examines the evidence cited in support of the claim of transmission.

Based upon current knowledge of the Yin Oracle-Bone Inscriptions, this article argues that potential inscriptional records of the total lunar eclipse on June 16, 2011, which was observable in Beijing, could only be the same as those of the lunar eclipse recorded in Yingcang 885/886 and that lunar eclipse inscriptions on those two rubbings of Yingcang were records of an eclipse like the one on June 16, 2011. Both eclipses began sometime after midnight and ended shortly after sunrise. Between 1400 b.c.e. and 1148 b.c.e., only the lunar eclipse on August 14, 1166 b.c.e. could match the time and ganzhi dates of the eclipse in Yingcang 885/886. In 1998, Chang Yuzhi and I independently put forward this view. In this article, I reach the same conclusion by means of an innovative method.

Several hundred inscribed bronze objects dating from Western and Eastern Zhou periods were commissioned for or by married women. Several dozen inscriptions are known whose commissioners called themselves sheng 生 (甥) of a number of lineages. In pre-Qin Chinese, the term sheng 甥 designated several categories of affinal relatives: paternal aunts’ sons, maternal uncles’ sons, wives’ brothers, sisters’ husbands, and sons of sisters or daughters. The wide geographical and chronological spread of female- or sheng-related vessels, as well as dedications to “many affinal relatives” (hungou 婚購) in bronze inscriptions point to the importance of marital ties in early Chinese society and politics.

Focusing on the inscriptions commissioned by sheng, the present article suggests that even when concluded at a considerable distance, marriages produced long-term mutual obligations for male members of the participating lineages or principalities. Affinal relationships represented social and political capital that could be converted in terms of individuals’ careers and prestige or benefits for their whole lineages/states. In sum, starting from the early Western Zhou period, marital alliances represented a substantial integrative factor in early Chinese politics. On the one hand, marital alliances helped to consolidate the radial network of Zhou states centered on the Zhou king. On the other hand, they facilitated the construction of decentralized regional and interregional inter-state networks. The latter guaranteed the stability of the Zhou political system even when it had a weak center. As a result, the Zhou networks did not fall apart following crises in the Zhou royal house, but continued to expand by the inclusion of new members.

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.

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.

Investigating textual parallels between pre-Qin writings such as Han Feizi and Lüshi chunqiu and Confucius's statement in Lun yu 13.18 that “a father covers up for his son and a son for his father,” this article argues that the Lun yu passage is most likely derived from the version in Lüshi chunqiu or a closely related version. This has several consequences for scholarly interpretations of the Lun yu. It serves as a reminder that the Lun yu is a heterogeneous collection of textual units drawn from sometimes unexpected sources. It also demonstrates that the Lun yu should be read not in isolation but against the widest possible background of pre-Qin and Han parallels.

In the final part, the article reviews some of the comparisons between Confucius in Lun yu 13.18 and Socrates in Plato's “Euthyphro,” cautioning against over-interpretations of the extremely terse statement attributed to Confucius. A more fruitful way of reading Lun yu 13.18, it is argued, would be to historicize the passage by contextualizing it within the social and legal history of the late Warring States and Han periods.

Recent excavations of Chinese bamboo manuscripts have so far yielded a wealth of information about classical philosophical debates, but conspicuously absent have been contemporary manuscript copies of texts on the most prevalent socio-political issue of the aptly named Warring States Period, namely warfare. Recently, however, the Shanghai Museum began publishing several Warring States bamboo manuscripts from the kingdom of Chu, which it acquired in 1994. Among them is the manuscript of a previously unknown Warring States text titled Cao Mie's Battle Arrays. Through a lengthy dialogue between Duke Zhuang of Lu and his advisor Cao Mie, this manuscript offers new insight into statecraft methods designed to ensure the viability of a small kingdom surrounded by larger bellicose neighbors. While many contemporary philosophical schools considered the welfare of a kingdom or army to be linked to the power of both virtue and the will of Heaven, Cao Mie gives precedence to the real-world efficacy of the ruler's actions and the subsequent response of the populace and soldiers. In this paper I offer an introductory codicological analysis of the manuscript, followed by a study of Cao Mie's central theme of personal action— which requires the ruler to be a visible, decisive, and active participant in handling mundane affairs of the kingdom and in commanding the military.

This study considers Xunzi's criticism of Zisi, Confucius' grandson, providing a detailed analysis of some of the most famous but also difficult passages in the Xunzi. By drawing on the newly excavated text, “Wuxing” (The five conducts), the study shows that not only did Xunzi have an intimate knowledge of Zisi's teachings, but in fact he had available to him a certain version of the “Wuxing.” This understanding makes it possible to evaluate Xunzi's role as a reporter of Zisi's teachings, and to the extent that Xunzi reported these teachings fairly and accurately, the study offers specific suggestions for reimagining a period that has been little understood in Early Chinese intellectual history, or the transition from Confucius to Mencius.

In this paper I discuss paleographic texts recording local-level religious practices during the Qin dynasty that archaeologists recovered from Liye and Zhoujiatai. The Liye materials are bureaucratic records of state-sponsored sacrifices that took place in 215 and 212 b.c.e., indicating the types of sacrifices and reflecting the processes by which the bureaucracy managed the items offered. The Zhoujiatai text appears to give instructions for individual sacrifices and provides information about the locations and types of offerings, as well as the verbal formulae employed. The article begins with consideration of Qin practices in transmitted texts and of the agricultural spirit Xiannong, which appears in both the Liye and Zhoujiatai texts. Since in the past there was virtually no information extant about local-level religious activity under the Qin, the details in these paleographic texts represent an advance in understanding the history of the period.

The towering earthen mound standing at the center of the First Emperor of Qin, Qin Shihuangdi's (259–210 b.c.e.) Lishan necropolis at present-day Lintong in Xi'an, Shaanxi province was arguably the single greatest burial marker in ancient China. For centuries, this gigantic unopened monument has sparked curiosity and aroused interest among people regarding its nature. Without physically damaging the target, in 2001–2003 Chinese archaeologists used a new geophysical remote sensor to scan the surface of the mound, digitally probed into its inner structure, and detected a nine-stepped wall that bounds an aboveground burial shaft stretching down deep into the ground. This novel structure begs the following questions: what are the basic elements of this tomb mound, how do they work together within a coherent plan, and why was it made?

Based on previous scholarship, this article conducts a more thorough analysis of the tomb mound and compares it with the excavated Eastern Zhou royal tombs of the Qin, Wei, Zhao, Qi, Chu, Han, Yan, and Zhongshan states. The results demonstrate that rather than following a single model of a single state, the Lishan tomb mound incorporated almost all the major features of its Eastern Zhou predecessors, including but not limited to the external tumulus, the internal stepped wall or terrace, simulated galleries, and the freestanding ritual halls. This article argues that by creatively incorporating all the provincial ingredients into one imperial unity, the complex tomb mound unified multiple funerary practices of China. What's more, the tomb mound, most likely constructed after Qin's political unification of China in 221 b.c.e., perfectly embodies the new notion of empire and the political ambition of the First Emperor who strove throughout his life for becoming the “first” in Chinese history by merging all the past traditions.

This article deals with facets of the political ideology of late pre-imperial and early imperial China as documented by remnants of a dozen texts belonging to an under-explored genre known in English as weft (wei 緯) writings or the “Confucian Apocrypha.” Its focus is on the transcendence of hierarchy and sovereignty, the transfer of dynastic legitimacy, and the pragmatic vehicle of “tangible” revelation. After a terminological introduction, the study turns to weft concepts of society and sovereignty as being consubstantial with the intrinsic hierarchical order of the universe, then moves on to explore how these concepts are dealt with in a cluster of weft narrative materials. Focused on a rite of jade disc immersion, the final section bridges the gap between the “mythical” sphere of weft narrative and conventional history, showing how some weft ideas actually determined political action. Weft theories contributed to the formation of the early imperial ideas of sovereignty and legitimacy and remained active throughout the early medieval era, having a lasting impact on the political sphere as well as liturgical practices intended to reenact the transcendent experience of epiphany.

One important benefit of the Guodian and Shanghai Museum slips is the new insights they are providing in our understanding of the early intellectual evolution of classical Chinese philosophy. But there is a second important opportunity that the newly recovered documents provide. Beyond what is new in them, these same materials can be used to qualify, corroborate, and reiterate perhaps old but still undervalued insights into the interpretive context within which we construct our understanding of early China. Indeed, our best interpreters of classical Chinese philosophy are explicit in rejecting the idea that Chinese cosmology begins from some independent, transcendent principle and entails the metaphysical reality/appearance distinction and the plethora of dualistic categories that arise from such a worldview. In fact, the recently recovered Guodian materials provide us with both the resources and the occasion to revisit three related cosmological issues: What is distinctive about classical Chinese cosmogony and its notion of origins? What is the Chinese alternative to the assumptions about our own familiar creatio ex nihilo source of meaning? And how is “creativity” expressed in the Chinese philosophical vocabulary?

Though the Guodian manuscripts have been viewed as an eclectic mix of texts, this article argues that, viewed in historical context, the collection has more coherence than has conventionally been supposed. Since the texts were interred in Chu c. 300 b.c.e., they should be read against other expressions of that time and place. The Mozi, much of which was likely used or produced by authors active in Chu at the time of the Guodian internment, is particularly illuminating in this regard. Though the individual Guodian texts do frequently contradict one another, they are yet commonly useful for formulating logical and rhetorical attacks on the teachings of the Mozi. The occupant of Guodian Tomb Number One may thus have collected these texts not for their doctrinal consistency with one another, but for their usefulness in use against intellectual opponents (among whom the Mohists clearly ranked). This, in fact, was likely a guiding principle for many Warring States literati in negotiating their production and utilization of texts.

This article starts by examining how “Li ji” was used as a title in early China. In addition to the Li, Li jing, Shi li, Li yi and Yi li, etc., “Li ji” was used as an alternative title for the Li canon, and the “Li” as a title was used to indicate what we now refer to as the Li ji or the Xiao Dai Li ji as well. By discussing how the Guodian bamboo slip texts are related to the transmitted version of the Li ji, this article argues that the writing styles of the related excavated bamboo manuscripts are the particular Li gujing- or Li guji-styles, that the “Li gujing” or “Li guji” is more a description of those ancient retrieved texts than an actual title, and that many of the Guodian bamboo-slip texts are the Li guji- or Li gujing-style writings. According to the Li guji-style Zi yi text, it is evident that the material in the Li ji comes from creditable pre-Qin textual sources. Although the Li ji text came to its current shape as a result of later editing work, it does not mean that the received Li ji sections have higher textual value than the excavated manuscripts do. On the contrary, the excavated manuscripts could have many valuable early textual sources that the transmitted Li ji has lost.

Based on a special issue entitled “Newly Excavated Texts in the Digital Age,” volume 21.2 (June 2011) of the Newsletter of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica (Zhongyang yanjiu yuan Zhongguo wen zhe yanjiu suo tongxun 中央研究院中國文哲研究所通訊), this article reflects on the various digital resources now being developed at institutions in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere, looking, in turn, at topics related to the graphic form of characters, the relation between character and word, and the question of context. In addition, the article considers the web forum, a platform of research and discussion that is increasingly becoming a part of scholarly exchange.

Twelve years after Professor Keightley published The Ancestral Landscape, which was a fascinating, elegant summary of decades of investigations of the Bronze-Age Late Shang dynasty, he has now published another wonderful book on the same era, under the title Working for His Majesty. As the title suggests, and as he recounts in a highly personal preface looking back at the origins of this work, he returns in this book to the topic of his doctoral dissertation on Shang labor (Public Work in Ancient China: A Study of Forced Labor in the Shang and Western Chou, Columbia University, 1969).

This book is, as the author says in her introduction, “a systematic study of Zuo zhuan,” a “vast repertory of narratives and speeches spanning the 255 years from 722 to 468 BCE.” This text, which, in the form known to us, is tentatively dated by most to the fourth century b.c.e., is where Chinese historical writing begins. As the author also notes, this work “has been accorded a truth status that eludes many other early Chinese texts.” I would suggest that this status arises from 1) the great masses of minute and seemingly factual detail that occur throughout its narratives and 2) its freedom from the obvious anachronisms and absurdities that afflict all other early Chinese historical works, including the all-but-universally venerated Shi ji, or Records of the Historian.

Ever since Hayden White declared that as a literary artifact the historical text is indistinguishable from fiction, the study of historiography has ceased to be the prerogative of historians. It is thus no accident that we owe some of the finest recent works on the Zuo zhuan, China's oldest narrative history, not to historians but to scholars of Chinese literature. In her splendid book on The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography (Cambridge 2007) Li Wai-yee demonstrates just how fruitful it is to treat Chinese historiography from a literary perspective. She puts to rest the “idea that kernels of historical truth can or should be separated from the rich verbal fabric” in favor of “what is more germane to the sense of history,” namely “the conscious formulation of patterns and principles to understand the past” (Li 2007, pp. 2–3).