In a considerable number of the military texts of ancient China the success of any manoeuvre demands adaptation to constantly changing circumstances and anticipation of the enemy's moves. Hence, idealized descriptions of the figures of the commander and the sage frequently overlap. In both cases, these are individuals who are able to move forward in time and predict the nature of events before they take definitive form. However, these skills of prognostication are the result of attentive scrutiny of the most inconspicuous aspects of reality. By analyzing military episodes and biographical material referring to some of the strategists of the time, this article attempts to demonstrate that the military commander can be seen as a master of signs and that, accordingly, the art of warfare can also be represented as requiring semiotic aptitudes and techniques which enable accurate interpretation of hints that will determine the outcome of the battle.

The inscription on the Li gui, a vessel unearthed in 1976 in Qishan county of Shaanxi province, by substantiating certain key assertions of traditional Chinese historiography, has once again focused attention on King Wu’s conquest of the Shang and his consequent establishment of the Zhou dynasty. It is the expectation, and ever increasing reality, of discovering ancient records, usually in the form of bone or bronze inscriptions, that makes the study of early China so vibrant and open to new interpretations.

The location of the early Chu capital, Danyang, has never been definitively determined. Since Han times, several hypotheses have been offered. That advocating a southwest Hubei location (Zigui or Zhijiang xian), the standard opinion, has generally governed analyses of early Chu historical and cultural development, particularly of the archaeological data uncovered in the past few decades. Another hypothesis, that advocating a southwest Henan (Xichuan) site for Danyang, however, has recently gained popularity.

The Danyang problem can be approached from a number of angles. This paper attempts first to assess the relative probabilities of all of the hypotheses on the basis of a rather strict evaluation of the evidence provided by historical geography and then to judge the quality of the presently available archaeological evidence given in support of each. From the above perspectives, the author concludes that the relative probabilities favor the southwest Henan hypothesis.

The question whether the Xia and the Shang signify a relatively homogeneous culture or relatively distinct cultures is approached through efforts both to determine whether the late Erlitou culture dates to the final years of dynastic Xia or to the beginning of Shang and to identify, in turn, those early Bronze Age sites most likely to correspond to the first recorded Shang capitals. By contrasting traditional chronologies with the developmental sequences of artifacts, the author reaches the conclusion that the Bronze Age remains at Erlitou represent the late Xia culture and the discoveries at Zhengzhou, the period of the Bo capital. A close affiliation between the Shang and the Xia rulers in the time prior to the conquest, revealed by the Bamboo Annals, is shown to be consistent with the archaeological evidence which Indicates that the transition between the two dynastic periods was characterized primarily by continuous development, rather than by disruption or radical change. The proposal is also made that the most significant influence from the eastcoast cultures upon those of the Zhong Yuan may have occurred during Xia times, instead of during Shang.

On the basis of a chronology developed after a review of the datable events in Xunzi's life, his career is divided into seven periods which characterize distinct phases of his intellectual development, some well-attested, others poorly understood. Within his works there are a number of clues, principally conversations he has with historical figures or discussions of and allusions to historical events, which allow some books, or passages within books, to be dated with confidence. These provide a general framework for the development of his ideas. Combining these with the seven phases of his career, makes possible the identification of sixteen criteria that can be used to date his various books and work out the details of his intellectual development. Using these criteria a tentative dating of twenty-six of his thirty-two books is proposed.

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 section of the Xunzi called “Xing e” 性惡 (xing is bad) prominently and repeatedly claims that people's xing is bad. However, no other text in the Xunzi makes this claim, and it is widely thought that the claim does not express Xunzi's fundamental ideas about human nature. This article addresses the issue in a somewhat indirect way, beginning with a detailed examination of the text of “Xing e”: identifying a core text, removing a series of interpolations, analyzing the structure of the core text, and distinguishing between three positions that are defended there. This analysis shows that the claim that people's xing is bad is not really central to “Xing e.” More ambitiously, it supports the conclusion that Xunzi's ideas about people's xing changed over time. Though Xunzi did claim that people's xing is bad, he later abandoned the claim, and replaced it with an account of wei 偽 “artifice.”

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?

Addressing in part the arguments advanced by Morgan, and depending upon more recent anthropological studies from Madagascar, Sarawak, and elsewhere, it is argued in Part I that the evidence from Yangshao burials resembles that of many modern primitive peoples whose collective secondary burials were not defined by kin unit. The matrilineal view of Yangshao society is also challenged by the widespread existence of single-person burial, which appears to have both pre- and postdated, as well as co-existed with, the practice of collective burial. Similar comparative and contextual criticisms are brought to bear, in Part II, on the argument that Yangshao burial customs reveal the dominance of women. There was evidently no system in which children had to be buried with the mother, there is no evidence that the primary burial of women in multi-person collective burials was either common or prevalent, there is no evidence that single Yangshao female burials were generally more richly furnished with grave goods than those of single males. Finally, in Part III, it is shown that same-sex collective burials were rare; they reflect not social organization but the accident of several contemporary deaths. In short, none of the arguments for Yangshao matriliny are found to be adequate. At present, we lack an effective method for using burial customs to reconstruct social organization. The article ends by raising a series of methodological desiderata for future research.

Three related but independent propositions are put forward and investigated: (1) a revised version of a theory of the Old Chinese rhymes based on the assumption that there were only two rhyme vowels, ∕ə∕ and ∕a∕, and eighteen final consonants, namely, labials -p, -m, dentals -t, -n, -l, -s, velars -k, -ŋ, -ɤ, palatals, -kj, -ŋj, -j, labiovelars -kw, -ŋw, -w, and palatolabiovelars -kɥ, -ŋɥ, -ɥ (as found in the modern Fuzhou dialect); (2) a revised version of a theory that the ten Heavenly Stems and twelve Earthly Branches originated as phonograms naming acrophonically the initial consonants of the Chinese language at the time of their invention, the consonants being the same as those reconstructed finally, with the addition of the fricatives x-, xj-, xw-, xɥ-;(3) a hypothesis to explain the calendrical use of these signs on the assumption that the Stems were chosen, as far as possible, from signs with the same initial consonants as the numerals from one to ten, while the remaining twelve signs were treated as a supplementary series of twelve.

This essay introduces the newly published Qin documents from levels 5, 6, and 8 of Well no. 1, Liye, Hunan province, the ancient Qianling County of the Qin dynasty, as presented in two 2012 works, Liye Qin jian (yi) 里耶秦簡 (壹) and Liye Qin jiandu jiaoshi (di yi juan) 里耶秦簡牘校釋 (第一卷), ed. Chen Wei 陳偉, together with some of the documents on display in the Liye Qin jian bowuguan (Liye Museum of Qin Slips). It discusses some of the problems in those two publications, the nature of the documents; dating issues; military logistics; the Qin legal system as revealed in the documents, especially those relating to fines and punishments, rewards, rations for convicts, status distinctions and the purchase of rank, forms for writing up documents, and Qin ordinances (ling 令); and materials relating to the religious activities of local officials in Qianling County. It concludes by offering a speculation on why the documents were thrown into the well as the Qin dynasty began to crumble.

This article is an introduction to and translation of the wall inscription “Zhaoshu sishi yueling wushitiao” dating to 5 C.E., which was recovered from the Xuanquanzhi site, located near Dunhuang, Gansu Province. “Zhaoshu sishi yueling wushitiao” is the sole known example of a Han edict in wall inscription form. It provides new information about the processes by which an edict was created and disseminated in late Western Han times, and about the nature and scope of seasonal governance. The core of this article is an annotated translation of the entire inscription. By way of introduction, the article includes an overview of the Xuanquanzhi excavation; a brief discussion of the people named in the inscription, their titles, and related events; and an examination of the parallels between the inscription and transmitted texts. The two appendices present a transcription of “Sishi yueling” in the original vertical format, and a table showing the correspondences between “Sishi yueling” and its transmitted parallels.

The Huainanzi text (淮南子 presented in 139 b.c.e. compiled by Liu An 劉安 179–122 b.c.e.), while defining itself as a political guide, is replete with references to Music (yue 樂) itself and music-related terms. While no chapter of the work’s twenty-one chapters is specifically dedicated to the subject of music, no single chapter of it is without musical references. This gives rise to the question: Which functions could music possibly have in such an overtly political text?

What this article will examine are the interactions between music and the social and political spheres in the Huainanzi. An analysis of the text’s musical references reveals an intriguing, multidimensional attitude toward music, touching upon moral discourse, discourse on political power, cosmological perceptions, and much more.

The article suggests a dual function of music in the text—on the one hand, music serves as a rhetorical tool for the authors of the Huainanzi, and on the other hand, it is a subject of discussion in its own right. For each of these functions of music, a model is proposed. The first model depicts the innovative musical conceptions of the Huainanzi; the second demonstrates how, through an analysis of musical references in the text, a model of sagely rulership is revealed. These models are illustrated and embodied in the human realm.

The “Duo You ding,” discovered in 1980 in Chang'an county, Shaanxi, contains a 270-graph inscription recording a major battle between Zhou and Xianyun chariotry. In addition to presenting a complete translation of the inscription, this paper attempts to specify the date of the events narrated. The argument is developed along three lines of inquiry. First, it is shown that personal names mentioned in the inscription require that the events took place shortly after the tenth year of King Xuan's reign (i.e., 818 B.C.). Second, evidence from other bronze inscriptions is adduced to show that there was fighting between the Zhou and Xianyun in the years 816-15, suggesting that the battle described in the “Duo You ding” may have been part of this larger warfare. Third, comparison of internal calendrical notations in the inscription with other evidence for the calendrical significance of Zhou victory celebrations not only confirms the first two conclusions but also allows the date to be specified as the tenth month of 816 B.C. Finally, all of this information is correlated to give a rough outline of the Zhou-Xianyun war and to suggest some of its historical significance.

The foundation of Chinese intellectual history is a group of texts known as “masters texts” (子書). Many masters texts were authored in the Han dynasty or earlier and many of these have as their title the name of a master who was generally regarded as the author. The inclination to treat a given book as the product of a single writer is apparently a strong one. Nevertheless, from the very beginning there were Chinese scholars who doubted the veracity of the putative authorship of some of these works and suggested that they may in fact have been the product of several authors. Over time, such scholars developed criteria by which to judge the authenticity of ancient masters texts. But as such textual criticism grew more penetrating, the object of its scrutiny began to come apart at the seams. In the last two decades there has been a growing consensus that most early Chinese masters texts were originally quite permeable and that only later were their received forms settled upon.

The branch of textual criticism that deals with authenticating early Chinese texts is called “Authentication studies.” This paper is a survey of the methodological advances made in the field of Authentication studies over the last two millennia. It is not a history of the field, as such a history would be a much longer project. The survey concludes with the idea of the “polymorphous text paradigm,” a paradigm that paradoxically obviates much of the preceding scholarship in its own field. Simply put, if authentication relies largely on anachronism, and anachronism relies largely on the dates of the putative author, then a multi-author work with no known “last author” will be impossible to authenticate. Furthermore, the polymorphous text paradigm does not posit these texts as necessarily having earlier and later “layers,” but rather as having had no set structure over the course of their early redactional evolution.

This survey examines the contributions of seventeen scholars to Authentication studies methodology, and concludes with how the changes in this field have influenced the work of three modern, Western scholars.

The discovery of neolithic remains in 1936 at a place called Liangzhu near Hangzhou was the first evidence of a culture which in recent decades has revolutionized the prehistory of the lower Yangzi region. The great antiquity of sites in this region was established in the late 1960s by radiocarbon dating, which overthrew the prevailing theory that the agricultural way of life originated at a single center of innovation in the Yellow River valley and diffused to the east coast only in historic times. Subsequent archaeological work not only established the local sequence of neolithic cultures but also, at a series of major Liangzhu sites, revealed extravagantly furnished burials whose wealth raises puzzling question about the structure of Liangzhu society. Chief among the furnishings of these graves are large numbers of jades — objects remarkable for their strange shapes and designs and even more remarkable for their superlative workmanship. The first section of this essay reviews the history of Liangzhu archaeology, connecting it with the changes of thinking that Chinese neolithic archaeology has undergone in the past half century. The second section discusses a few of the issues raised by Liangzhu jades: material sources, the origin of the bi and cong shapes, and the relation between Liangzhu jades and Shang jades.

The Huainanzi is a Former Han 前漢 dynasty (202 B.C.E.–9 C.E.) compendium of knowledge written at the court of Huainan and presented to Emperor Wu of the Han 漢武帝 in 139 by Liu An 劉安 (?179–122), the king of Huainan. Liu An was the grandson of the Han “progenitor” Gaozu 高祖 (Liu Bang 劉邦 r. 202–195), and he was the uncle of the reigning emperor Wu (r. 140–87). According to the author(s) of the text’s postface, “Yao lue” 要略 or “A Summary of the Essentials,” the work seeks to provide a comprehensive account or chronicle of the dao 道 (conventionally translated as the “Way”), understood broadly to encompass the cosmos (tiandi 天地 or “Heaven and Earth”), human beings (ren 人) and their affairs (shi 事), and the relationship between them. The account of the dao presented in its chapters is not, however, purely descriptive. The Huainanzi is foremost a political treatise containing instructions worthy of a sage-king (shengwang 聖王) to be employed by the ruler as the proper model or standard by which to govern the empire.

This article examines two views of the ethics and efficacy of deception. The Sunzi is famous for its praise of deception and indirect strategy in warfare. This explicit praise of deception distinguishes it from other Militarist texts, which either reject deception or advocate it only as a practical and important strategic tool. The Xunzi rejects deception and indirection in both civil and military contexts. The Sunzi and Xunzi's attitudes toward deception and indirection thus represent opposite poles within Chinese philosophical thought.