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.

A Qing dynasty commentator was the first to discover that line 79 of the Chuci “Tianwen”, tian shi zong heng 天式縱衡, referred to the diviner's board, or what the author calls the “cosmograph.” This instrument was a model of the cosmos used by the diviner to determine, among other things, the position of asterisms beneath the horizon. The discovery was echoed by noted scholars in the twentieth century, but no one could determine the significance of the reference. This article analyzes the quatrain in which the line appears and shows how the cosmograph is the microcosmic key to the poem's cosmic interpretation. Quite simply, the answer to the question lies among the stars.

The likelihood that the author of “Tianwen” had a cosmograph in mind when he wrote verse 79 is evidence that other lines may also reflect the existence of such devices. For example, with regard to verse 7, huan ze jiu chong 圜貝九重, in which commentators have always perceived a “nine-tiered” heaven, the author argues that what is “round” is the cosmos, and the jiu chong refers to its “manifold” dimensions. Huan ze then is the “cosmic model”, like the cosmograph, and the succeeding lines of the poem describe its components as a means of depicting the motions of the heavens.

This essay describes a distinct model for intellectual participation in public life promoted by the Tian kings of Qi during the Warring States Period (418–221 B.C.E.). Recent scholarship has too often assumed that categories like “Master,” “disciple,” and “school” had broadly conventional and stable meanings in early China, and that the social patterns of intellectual life ran along common and predictable lines established by these constructs. In fact, however, the sources demonstrate that all of the different categories with which intellectual life was depicted in early texts were heatedly contested and prone to volatile fluctuations in meaning and usage, as different interest groups fought to establish preferred parameters for the conduct of intellectual life. The Tian kings of Qi, in support of their bold usurpation of the Qi throne from the Lü clan, promoted a model for intellectual life radically different than the highly personal Master-disciple bond depicted in the Analects. In patronage texts like the Guanzi and Yanzi chunqiu, the Tian kings advocated that intellectuals identify with the Qi state in the abstract rather than with an individual “Master” or particular “school,” and that they should do so anonymously as thinkers, teachers, students, and writers in the service of Qi. The Jixia patronage community arose as a compromise between this advocacy position of the Tian kings and the preferences of the intellectual community at large, which generally favored the maintenance of the personal prestige of individual Masters. Jixia was founded on the basis of patronage practices that were widely current among powerful and wealthy figures of the Warring States, but Jixia itself was very atypical of such patronage communities. Unlike other client retinues, Jixia was made up exclusively of intellectuals who were lodged as clients of the Qi state rather than of an individual patron. Also, the dispensation of emoluments to individual clients was not tightly controlled at Jixia as in other patronage communities, but was “subcontracted” to the few Grand Masters who retained their own large retinues of disciples. Jixia thus combined the Tian king's desire to subordinate intellectual activity to state service while preserving to a degree the autonomous prerogatives that intellectuals had established for themselves and their own chosen leaders.

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.

Examining the birth and population control methods employed by a given culture reveals much about the power and politics of its religious and legal institutions; it can also yield important conclusions about the hierarchical relations between young and old and male and female. But conventional methods for controlling the size and gender composition of a family in the early phases of Chinese history have received little attention. In this essay I will focus on the ways in which one important form of population control, infant abandonment, was discussed and practiced in Han times, paying particular attention to the various rationales given for it and the arguments made against it.

Since the Jin Hou Su chime-bells from the cemetery of the Jin lords at Tianma-Qucun, Shanxi, became known to the scholarly world, the problem of the dates contained in its inscription has attracted the attention of scholars both in and outside of China. In this article we discuss two aspects of this problem. First, while the “thirty-third year” date of the inscription must certainly refer to King Xuan's reign, which is to say 795 B.C., the four full date notations of the inscription are incompatible with this year, but are instead compatible with the following year, 794 B.C. This article suggests two ways to reconcile this discrepancy. Second, while there can be no doubt that Jin Hou Su is Jin Xian Hou, the “Jin shijia” chapter of the Shi ji gives his dates of reign as 822 to 812 B.C., which is in turn incompatible with either 795 or 794 B.C. However, in the Shi ji's genealogy of Jin lords, the son of Xian Hou is Mu Hou and the grandson of Mu Hou is Zhao Hou, which contradicts the zhao-mu structure of the Zhou ancestral system. Therefore, we propose that the Shiji has reversed the order of Xian Hou and Mu Hou, such that Xian Hou's reign actually extended from King Xuan's thirty-third year through his forty-third year (795-785 B.C.). Not only does this simple change in the genealogy of the Jin lords resolve the problem of the dates in the Jin Hou Su bells inscription, but it also serves to explain an entire array of problems in the chronology of early China.

I believe that Professor Edward L. Shaughnessy's review of Professor Wang Yuxin's book XiZhou jiagu tanlun is an important essay, pointing out several problems in the study of the Zhouyuan oracle bones worthy of attention. I intend here to discuss only one of these, the question of whether there are any Shang inscriptions among the Zhouyuan oracle bones.

I should first explain that, based on my understanding, this question pertains to only a very small portion of the Zhouyuan oracle bones, actually only four pieces, all of which come from pit H11 at Fengchu in Qishan County. In a conference paper entitled “Once Again on the Western Zhou Oracle Bones” presented to the “International Chinese Paleography Conference” in Hong Kong in 1983, I already pointed out that these four pieces are H11:112, H11:82, H11:84, and H11:1, and also attempted an interpretation of them (see Li 1985).

The graph used to write the name of the mythical emperor Shun 舜 in received texts is a puzzling one. It is not obvious that any component in the graph, as it appears today, is semantically motivated, nor is there any element well suited to representing the name Shun phonetically. Texts like the Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 preserve an alternate writing of the name under the rubric “guwen 古文,” but this too is hard to analyze in terms of the semantic and phonological motivation of the graph components. Without a clear understanding of why the name Shun is written the way it is, a reliable reconstruction of its Old Chinese pronunciation is difficult, and many of the graphic and phonological associations with “Shun” and related words made by early Chinese script, texts, and commentaries would be opaque.

A graph that is clearly writing the name Shun, seen for the first time in two of the Warring States-period manuscripts from Guodian 郭店, partially resolved these difficulties, and in particular the question of the phonological spelling of the name. This in turn allows a series of interesting textual problems to be resolved. This article presents a selection of these, and discusses their implications for the history of the Chinese script and for textual transmission.

The “Jinhou Su bianzhong” is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in recent decades. The long inscription of 355 characters provides important information concerning various aspects of late Western Zhou history. This article begins with a preliminary account of the Jinhou Su bells, including an annotated translation of the inscription. Next, studying the identification of the Zhou king in the inscription that has already prompted lively discussions, the author shows that more concrete evidence supports a King Li dating of the inscription. Based on the relationship between Zhou and Jin documented in the “Jinhou Su bianzhong” inscription, the author finally argues that the state of Jin was becoming powerful with the decline of the Zhou king's authority in the late Western Zhou period.

The archeological discoveries of the past several decades have radically expanded our knowledge of the Laozi and its context. Thus far, most research has focused on the various manuscript versions of the text itself, but there is another way in which archeological evidence has changed our knowledge of the Laozi: the discovery of several other cosmogonic texts, all dated to around the same time as the Guodian materials. While these texts share some concerns and assumptions, they also disagree and offer conflicting positions. Thus rather than assuming that anything sounding vaguely like the Laozi is saying the same thing in different words, we should be attuned to subtle differences on issues ranging from cosmogony to conceptions of action. We should also allow for the possibility that the Laozi itself incorporates diverse positions. This article analyzes one particular example, the role of “the one” (yi 一) in the Laozi. It argues that the five chapters discussing the one represent an attempt to incorporate what was originally a distinct position that took the one as the ultimate and had no concern with the interdependence of opposites. That position is expressed in the recently discovered Fanwu liuxing.

The zhiyan described in the “Entrusted Words” chapter of the Zhuangzi (“Zhiyan come forth daily, and are harmonized with the heavenly divisions; through this they spread out, and thus years draw to a close”) have long aroused debate and confusion among readers, as the word zhi usually refers to a type of wine goblet. Contemporary readers cannot easily obtain clear assistance from traditional commentaries, because the mainstream of Zhuangzi scholarship has been disturbed by Guo Xiang's original notes: “This zhi is [a thing which] tips when full, rights when empty, and does not stay fixed.” The questions which arise from this note are two: (1) What sort of goblet could “tip when full, right when empty”? And (2) how would this remarkable behavior on the part of the goblet relate to the original text of the Zhuangzi?

Pigs are prominent in the ceremonial and ritual iconography of the Hongshan culture, including jade pig-dragons found in high-status burials, a life-sized pig statue made of unbaked clay, and a mountain that resembles a pig. To attempt to link real pigs with the iconography, the place of actual pigs in the society is examined. Continuity of artifact types from sites 7000-3500 B.C. allows the assumption that pigs were initially important in the subsistence base. I suggest that pig iconography implies pig rituals, and that the pig rituals may have aided in the formation of an elite class. The elite are archaeologically manifested in the elaborate tombs, and their existence can also be inferred by the need for managers in creating the tombs and the artifacts within, as well as in procuring jade and possibly copper.

No decorative arts in China have aroused as intense modern academic interest as the TLV mirror that was mass-produced in the Han dynasty. Scholars from different fields have strived to rival one another in identifying its obscure design since the beginning of the twentieth century. With new evidence, particularly a mirror and a wooden board unearthed in 1993 at Yinwan, it is time to settle and set aside the old disputation about identification, and to move on to the intellectual adventure of the cultural significance of the TLV mirror in Han China. This paper first considers the complex of art, game and divination. It then discusses how the TLV mirror can serve a cultural sign that demonstrates the “auspicious mentality” of the Han. It also considers how the formal variants of the TLV mirror illustrate the life of a cultural sign.

This article explores how the memory of the conquest of Shang and the rise of the first Zhou kings was transmitted during the early centuries of the Zhou dynasty, specifically as it was reflected in inscriptions on excavated bronze vessels and bells from the Western Zhou period (ca. mid-eleventh to early eighth century b.c.e.). Approaching these inscribed objects and their texts from the perspective of the theories of social memory and cultural memory reveals that commemorating the foundational past of the dynasty became part of an intentional policy of the Zhou royal house as early as the first half of the tenth century b.c.e. It demonstrates that by the mid-tenth century b.c.e., a stable narrative emphasizing Kings Wen 文 and Wu 武 as the founding fathers of the Zhou dynasty was established at the expense of King Cheng 成, whose role was gradually downplayed following the general logic of lineage organization, according to which the commemoration of the earliest common ancestors serves as the foundation of corporate integrity in a network of patrilineally related families. It shows that most of the men who included such commemorations in inscriptions indeed belonged to the royal patrilineal network, wherein they occupied the highest positions. It further exemplifies that the royal house cultivated the memory of the first kings using various media, including rituals, utensils, royal speeches, and inscriptions. From the analysis of such inscriptions, we can infer that that the foundational memory of the Zhou dynasty was usually reactivated in the context of political negotiations, some of which included addressing lineage outsiders. Finally, it shows that both the royal house and other metropolitan lineages modified the foundational narrative according to their current needs. This article thus contributes both to tracing the roots of the early Chinese historiographic tradition and to understanding memory production in a society as an ongoing process of negotiations and adaptations.

With the publication of Madman of Chu: A Myth of Loyalty and Dissent in 1980, Laurence Schneider established the view that the controversy over Qu Yuan between various erudites during the Han dynasty was a dispute between adherents and opponents about the question of what the Chu minister and poet stood for. The present study challenges this view by demonstrating that, aside from the so-called biographies by Sima Qian and Liu Xiang, all other contributions to the debate represent readings of the Li sao. Once this is understood, each contribution to the debate can not only be seen in its own light but it can also be examined in its relation to the section and sentence commentary by Wang Yi written in the second century C.E. The understanding of the controversy as a discourse of rather varied interpretations of the Li sao enables us to regard the Chuci zhangju by Wang Yi as a commentary that stood at the end of this controversy that lasted more than three centuries. It also enables us to see that the controversy rested on a particular set of premises, especially the question of the literary status of the Li sao and its author. The final thesis resulting from the present study is that the main reason for the lasting influence of Wang Yi's commentary together with the fact that it remained unchallenged until the twelfth century is that it was built on a sound and varied exegetical foundation, namely the controversy on the Li sao during the Han.

The first part of this article examines the contributions to the controversy by Jia Yi (201–165), Liu An (?178–122), Sima Qian (145–?86), Liu Xiang (79–8), Yang Xiong (53 B.C.E-18 C.E.), Liang Song (?–83 C.E.) and Ban Gu (32–92) in chronological order. The second part juxtaposes their works with the commentary of Wang Yi in order to understand how the Eastern Han commentator employed the contributions of his predecessors and how he reacted to them.

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).

Through an analysis of every instance of the term qing 情 in the text, this article explores the role of this concept in the ethical thought of the second-century b.c.e. text Huainanzi. The Huainanzi authors draw on several features of the semantic range of qing in the early Han dynasty to help support their overall argument that the text provides an exhaustive and authoritative account of how to effectively govern an empire. As part of this project, I argue that the authors also use qing to articulate the meta-ethical features of the cosmos and human beings that make ideal moral action possible, as well as to explain the process of how humans can cultivate themselves to the ideal state of sagehood. Understanding the role of qing in the Huainanzi is thus essential to understanding the text's ethical content.