Bronze Inscriptions of the Western Zhou period show how ritualists were once dedicated to maintaining the ritual apparatus supporting the divine authority of the royal Zhou lineage. Bronze and bamboo texts of the Eastern Zhou period reveal, on the other hand, that ritualists able to manipulate local rulers reliant on their knowledge subsequently subverted power into their own hands. Ritualists such as scribes, cooks, and artisans were involved in the transmission of Zhou “power” through the creation and use of inscribed bronze vessels during feasts. The expansion and bureaucratization of their roles in the Chu state provided economic and ultimately political control of the state. This was particularly the case as the Chu, like the Zhou before them, fled east to escape western invaders.

This essay concerns the single case of illicit sex included in the Zouyan shu excavated at Zhangjiashan. Interest in this particular case has been high, since the case offers indisputable evidence regarding the separation of legal and moral principles in relation to domestic affairs at the time the judgment was rendered. Previous theories about the interpretation of the case have focused upon the quality and timeliness of the evidence brought to the judges for their consideration, while this essay draws attention to the probable relevance to the case of contemporary laws on residency, inheritance, and the proper ways to report crimes to higher authorities.

Intellectual history of the Chunqiu period has not been at the focus of scholarly discussions due to the presumed absence of reliable sources for Chunqiu thought. This article argues that the speeches by Chunqiu statesmen recorded in the Zuo zhuan do reflect the Chunqiu intellectual milieu. First, the sources of the Zuo are discussed. Its author/compiler relied on abundant written materials prepared by the court scribes of Chunqiu states. These “scribal records” contained, among others, speeches by leading statesmen; the evidence suggests that slight embellishments notwithstanding, the records basically reflected the content of the original speech. The reliability of the Zuo zhuan is discussed next. The unequivocal intellectual change from the beginning to the end of the Zuo speeches, particularly the changing mode of use and the changing content of some basic terms of political and ethical discourse, rule out the possibility that the speeches have been invented or significantly edited by the author/compiler of the Zuo. This allows us to conclude that the Zuo is the reliable – and invaluable – repository of Chunqiu thought.

Recently discovered epigraphic sources of Qin's history often seem to contradict the conventional wisdom regarding the history of this state. Thus, the recently published inscription on the jade tablets records a prayer to Mountain Hua by one of the last Qin kings, in which the latter surprisingly laments the demise of the Zhou house–an action for which traditionally Qin was blamed. On the other hand, some of the Shuihudi Qin statutes contain equally surprising statements according to which the Qin populace on the eve of the imperial unification was clearly differentiated from the members of the Xia ethno-cultural community. In both cases the apparent contradiction between the new evidence and the conventional interpretation of the received texts caused most of the scholars to neglect the confusing evidence altogether or to reinterpret it in accord with the traditional views.

In my paper, I suggest that the new evidence can be reconciled with the received texts, if due attention is paid to the complexity of cultural and political dynamics in the state of Qin prior to the imperial unification of 221 B.C.E. During the last two centuries of the Warring States period Qin appears to be engulfed in two contradictory processes of estrangement from and re-integration with the “Central States.” On the one hand, radical reforms of the mid-fourth century B.C.E. brought about not only sociopolitical but also cultural changes, creating the cultural gap between Qin and the rest of the Zhou world. Concomitantly, endless military conflicts between Qin and its neighbors further strengthened the cohesiveness of Qin's populace, increasing furthermore the sense of antagonism between the people of Qin, particularly among the lower strata, and the dwellers of eastern states. On the other hand, however, Qin's eventual separation from the rest of the Zhou world was counterbalanced by the equally powerful integrative factors. The influx of eastern advisors perpetuated cultural ties between Qin and its neighbors, while the desire of Qin rulers to facilitate incorporation of the eastern territories into their expanding realm dictated a more flexible policy of building rather than destroying political and cultural bridges with the Zhou world. Understanding this ongoing tension between conflicting integrative and centrifugal tendencies allows us to build a new interpretative framework for the Qin history, fully incorporating the received and the unearthed texts.

This article adduces additional evidence to substantiate the author's ideas regarding the cosmic board shih published in Early China 4. The most essential points in the discussion concern first the relation between the appearance of the Big Dipper on the cosmic board and the role of the Big Dipper in ancient cosmological belief and calendrical theory; and second, the influence of the cosmic board on religious belief and practice beginning in the Han period. Contrary to Cullen's opinion that the expression “main-cay of heaven” which denotes the Big Dipper is merely a figure of speech, passages from a variety of previn and Han texts show that this term accurately reflects the conception of the Big Dipper in ancient cosmological belief. The development of the cosmic board and the system of divination associated with it are best understood in light of this belief and of the major role played by the Big Dipper in ancient calendriil theory. The influence on Han popular belief of the celestial spirits associated with the cosmic board is attested in the Lun Heng. The presence of several cosmic board divination texts dating to the Han and six Dynasties period in the Tao Tsang are evidence of the absorption of the cosmic board system of divinaion into Taoism at that time. In Taoist hagiography the traditional legend of the transmission of cosmic board divination to the Yellow God is also explicitly linked to the Taoist technique of pacing the Dipper, lese facts, combined with a Buddhist description of a mandala modeled on the design of the cosmic board, npy document the role of the cosmic board in Chinese religion.

The present article explores questions about the composition, performance, circulation, and transmission of early Chinese poetry by examining a small number of poems from the received Mao shi and their counterparts in recently discovered manuscripts. Starting from a close examination of the poem “Xi shuai” (“Cricket”), the essay briefly discusses the problems we face in dealing with looted manuscripts before advancing toward rethinking the patterns of early Chinese poetic composition and transmission. Instead of taking individual poems as discrete, reified objects in the form we encounter them in the Mao shi, it is suggested to read them as particular instantiations of circumscribed repertoires where the individual poetic text is but one of many realizations of a shared body of ideas and expressions. This analysis is informed by the examination of both manuscript texts and the received literature, but also by comparative perspectives gained from both medieval Chinese literature and other ancient and medieval literary traditions. In emphasizing the formation of poetry as a continuous process, it leaves behind notions of “the original text,” authorship, and the moment of “original composition”—notions that held no prominence in the early Chinese literary tradition before the empire.

A.C. Graham understood the “core chapters” of the Mozi as the collected literary remains of three independently evolving traditions of early Mohism. The present study makes use of the remarkable coexistence of parallel texts in a single book to get a clearer picture of how such traditions may have been formed. Examining textual recurrences and “marked” lexical and functional terms in the core chapters, the author argues that the “Ten Theses” may not all have been parts of some “original” teaching by the “master” referred to, but documents attesting to the very process of transmission within still living, competing traditions.

These parts were, it is argued, summarily incorporated within three distinctive “documents” relatively late in the history of transmission, that is, just before or during early Han.

The Xinian or Annalistic History is one of an important collection of ancient bamboo texts donated anonymously to Qinghua University in 2008. The Xinian covers events from the history of the Western Zhou dynasty (1045–771 b.c.e.), through the Spring and Autumn Period (771–475 b.c.e.) and into the Warring States era (475–221 b.c.e.). Since the first publication of this manuscript in 2011, it has been the subject of much research, though this has usually been focused on the sections which have important parallels within the transmitted tradition. This article proposes a new way of understanding the Xinian, as a compilation produced from at least five source texts, and provides a complete translation of the entire text. Furthermore, although the contents of the Xinian are frequently at variance with the transmitted tradition, in particular the account of events given in the Zuozhuan, in some instances it may prove the more reliable source. The Xinian also provides some information concerning the history of the early Warring States era that helps to explain events in this generally badly documented era.

In the Han, the art of the bedchamber belonged to the disciplines called “prescriptions and techniques,” which also included various medical arts such as nutrition, internal conduction, and associated incantations and spells. This essay investigates the Mawangdui art of the bedchamber texts with special emphasis on their terminology, and briefly addresses the importance of these texts in studying ancient Chinese culture.

Seven texts are examined: “Prescriptions for nourishing life,” “Prescriptions for miscellaneous cures,” “Book of childbirth,” “Ten questions,” ’Joining yin and yang” “Prescriptions for miscellaneous spells,” and “Talks on the loftiest ways under heaven.” The terminology found in these works is organized into the following categories: male and female genitals, the steps of foreplay, positions and methods of intercourse, the benefits and harms of intercourse, techniques of ejaculation control, and male and female sexual reactions. The terminology and topical categories of later bedchamber texts are highly consistent with the Mawangdui texts, especially regarding the following three most influential concepts: “the method of nine shallow and one deep,” “ride many young women, but ejaculate rarely,” and “returning jing to supplement the brain.”

This essay studies seven aspects of administration in the Qin state and empire in the light of the texts found at Shuihudi written on bamboo strips: rules for appointment of officials; age and other limitations; length of tenure in office; guarantees of performance; reports; methods of checking an official's performance; and salaries. The evidence is compared with that drawn from traditionally transmitted historical and philosophical texts. In addition, these administrative techniques are situated within the metaphysical and cosmological framework that guided actual Qin bureaucratic practice.

This paper reviews current knowledge on the geography, climate, flora, and fauna of Shaanxi's Guanzhong 關中 Basin, a region that has been particularly well studied because it was a capital region of the Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties. Humans have so thoroughly transformed the region that it is hard to imagine that it was ever full of wild plants and animals. And since much of the English-language scholarship on the Zhou period focuses on the texts and ideas of urban elites, it is easy to forget that most people were rural farmers living in environments full of wild plants and animals, and that many places had no humans at all. Scholars in various fields have produced abundant new information on the environments of ancient China, making it possible to reconstruct climate and ecology far more accurately than was possible before. This research shows that, contra older claims that ancient North China had a subtropical climate, the climate of the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods was only slightly warmer and wetter than the present. The most important factor in the transformation of the region's ecosystems has been humans, not climate. We will focus on the pre-imperial period because various lines of evidence suggest that the first millennium b.c.e. was a period of population growth in which agricultural societies wiped out many of the natural ecosystems of lowland North China. Only by reconstructing what North China looked like thousands of years ago will we be able to understand how humans came to be the dominant force in the region's ecology.

Virtually all Chinese historians, past and present, have viewed the Duke of Zhou as a paragon of the virtuous minister. However, in traditional Chinese sources concerning the Duke of Zhou there is also a distinct negative undercurrent, several texts recording that the Duke “resided in the east” in contexts implying that he went into a sort of exile. Given this ambivalence in the history and traditions regarding the Duke of Zhou, the author examines two chapters of the Book of Documents: the “Shao gao” or “Announcement of the Duke of Shao” and the “Jun Shi” or “Lord Shi.” He posits that these two chapters represent two sides of a debate over political theory and governance. The “Jun Shi,” a speech by the Duke of Zhou to the Duke of Shao, expounds a political theory that privileges ministers over kings. The “Shao gao,” on the other hand, is an address by the Duke of Shao to the Duke of Zhou in which the Duke of Shao resolutely supports the king's prerogative to rule as the “eldest son” of Heaven.

This debate between the Duke of Zhou and the Duke of Shao was but the first instance of a tension that would continue to occupy statesmen and political theorists throughout Chinese history: between the power of the king or emperor and that of his ministers. While, in later times, neither side was ever able long to maintain supremacy in this debate, in the early Western Zhou the Duke of Shao almost certainly prevailed; shortly after the Duke of Shao made the address contained in the “Shao gao,” the Duke of Zhou first relinquished power to King Cheng and then, somewhat later, went into exile or retreat, never again to play a central role in Western Zhou government.

In recent decades, divination records written on bamboo slips have been discovered at such sites as Wangshan, Tianxingguan and Baoshan, all in Hubei province. These slips derive from the ancient state of Chu and date between 350 and 300 B.C. In this paper, the author suggests that these divination records are of two types: an “initial divination” and a “follow-up divination.” He also demonstrates that the “initial divination” type, which is the fuller form, usually consists of five discrete portions: a Prologue, First Charge, First Prognostication, Second Charge, and Second Prognostication; and provides detailed notes on the terminology found in each portion. Finally, he considers such associated questions as whether the Second Charge is a prayer or divination, whether divination was stated in the form of a question or statement, and the nature of the “follow-up divination.”

The contribution of Qiu Xigui and Lin Yun to the debate over the proper dating of the Diviner Li-group inscriptions require a fundamental revision in oracle-bone periodization methodology. Starting with a review of Dong Zuobin's reasons for placing the Li-group inscriptions in his period IV, this article proceeds to consider the new information provided by the Xiaotun nandi oracle-bone inscriptions excavated in 1973 and by the discovery of the Fu Hao tomb in 1975. Li Xueqin's reason for dating the Diviner Li-group inscriptions as roughly contemporary with those of the Diviner Bin-group are summarized, followed by an account of the fuller discussions of Qiu and Lin. Qiu focuses in particular on the significant identity of personal names and specific events recorded in both inscription groups. The use of differing ancestral titles permits the division of the Li- and Bin-group inscriptions into different chronological segments and reveals that a significant percentage of the Diviner Bin-group inscriptions should be dated to the reign of Zu Geng. Lin's epigraphic approach allows him to conclude that the Diviner Dui-group inscriptions are earlier than those of the Diviner Li-group; hence the Dui-group must also precede the Bin-group. The presence of different diviner groups operating contemporaneously and for only portions of a king's reign leads to the conclusion that Dong Zuobin's periodization categories are now too vague. They should be replaced by the more precise categorization of diviner groups.

Archaeological finds of the last several decades in China, Mongolia, and South Siberia encourage a reconsideration of the nature and extent of cultural exchange between Zhou China and the early nomads. This paper considers a number of object types, artistic techniques, motifs, and stylistic characteristics that are frequently associated with a nomadic origin but that have not previously been carefully discussed. These include the use of inlay; the bronze standard top and the belt hook; certain pictorial elements such as the animal combat; and naturalism and the pictorial rendition of narrative. The conclusions emerging from this consideration indicate the necessity of rethinking terminology used in discussions of the nomad world and of its artistic traditions.