1. The word yu in Classical Chinese usually has the apparent meaning of the existential quantifier in logic, and the grammatical functin of a transitive verb. (That is, e.g., in Nan jen yu yen … … “Among the southern people there is a saying…,” the word yen “saying” is the grammatical object of yu, and if we substitute a pronoun the substitute has to be the object pronoun chih.) Yu also is used in a noun phrase before a group name or general term, and the analysis of its syntax and meaning in this use is the problem that motivates this paper. The use is rare except before dynasty names, where it has continued to the present, e.g., yu Yin, yu Ming, etc. The analysis of this latter use has been disputed by Chinese grammarians for the past three centuries. Two interpretations have emerged. At present, one interpretation appears to be accepted by prominent Chinese linguists and philologists, while the other is generally followed by the leading Western translators of early texts.

By Classical Chinese (CC) I mean the language of the texts such as the Tzuoo Juann, the Mencius, the Shyuntzyy and others that we believe to have been written in Northern and Central China during the period 500 - 200 B.C.

In this article I am going to take up the banner of the late George Kennedy and, at the risk of appearing somewhat peevish, try to make the case that CC textual analysis needs to be done with much greater rigor than it generally is. Kennedy said in 1953,

“Sinologists need to recognize that languages are not private cathedrals of mystery adapted for special revelations and pontifical decrees. The materials of language are as wide open as the rocks and the trees, and people have been looking at them for a long time with varying reactions. From the animistic recognition of each tree or rock as the special abode of a particular spirit we have moved to a classification of the features common to all trees, and to a scientific statement of the features that make a tree different from a rock. There has been a progressive increase in our perceptiveness towards these things, and constant improvement in our methods of analysis and description.” (George A. Kennedy, “Another note on yen,” HJAS 16, 1-2[1953], p. 236)

It is well known that the character represents two different particles in classical Chinese. Of these the temporal particle tserng, which refers an event to the indefinite past in the same manner as does charng, hardly appears in the extant literature until late in the third century B.C. According to a note on this word by Inoue Juro , there is only one example in pre-Chyn literature, in the phrase (“There has never been…,”) at the beginning of the first chapter of Mohtzyy. This chapter is among the latest parts of the book, and not necessarily earlier than the third century B.C. The first securely dated example is in the Leushyh chuenchiou, begun under the direction of Leu Buhwei (died 235 B.C.) and completed soon after the victory of the Chyn dynasty in 221 B.C.

In their attempts to date the ten Shih-ku, or Stone Drums (hereafter SD), which are generally regarded to be the earliest stone monuments unearthed in China to date, Chinese scholars have frequently cited the style of the script in the SD inscriptions as a telling feature of their date (e.g., Yao Ta-jung 1911, Ma Heng 1931, Ch'iang Yün-k'ai 1935, Yang Shou-ch'i 1935, Tai Chün-jen 1952, Na Chih-liang 1958, T'ang Lan 1958, Chang Kuang-yüan 1966, and so forth). Yet their analyses of the script and conclusions have differed considerably, with final assessments differing by as many as 1700 years! The primary reason for this disparity, in my opinion, is that the problem has never been approached systematically. The usual procedure has been to select a handful of graphs from the inscriptions which either point to a very early date for the SD texts or a later date, depending on the author's point of view.

Our knowledge of the genealogy of the feudal houses of the Chou period is based primarily on the Shih Chi “Hereditary Houses” and secondarily on frequent quotations in medieval commentaries of the Shih Pen, a systematic genealogical treatise which, before it was lost in the T'ang, found favor among such historians as Tu Yü (222-284) and Ssu-ma Cheng (fl. 719-736) and classicists like K'ung Ying-ta (574-648). In the “Hereditary House of Wei,” the Shih Chi presents a genealogy at some variance with the genealogy quoted from the Shih Pen in Ssu-ma Cheng's commentary to the Shih Chi and K'ung Ying-ta's “sub-commentaries” to the Tso Chuan and Li Chi. A central point of disagreement concerns Marquis Wen , who is described as the son or grandson of Viscount Huan . This conflict of genealogy is coupled with a serious discrepancy concerning the length and date of the reign of Marquis Wen between the Shih Chi and the reconstructed Chu-shu Chi-nien. I believe that a careful examination of the chronological difficulty will contribute to a resolution of the genealogical conflict and thus prepare the way for a more general solution of points of conflict between the Shih Chi and Shih Pen versions of the genealogy of the House of Wei.

Manchu language study has played a significant role in the history of Western sinology. The Catholic Fathers who began to study Manchu after the conquest in 1644 often noted the relative ease with which it could be mastered. Unlike Chinese, which Father Domingo Navarette had described as “doubtless the most difficult [language]in the world … dreadful and stupendious (sic),” Manchu possessed a structure readily amenable to the categories and techniques of traditional Western grammatical analysis. An extreme expression of Western infatuation with this “more logical” language can be seen in H.E.M. James statement that if the Manchus “had imposed their language rather than their pigtails on their conquered foes, how much better it would have been.”

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.

One of the most important reference works for the scholar who studies the Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions is the Yin-xu shu-qi qian-bian of Luo Zhen-yu . This collection of rubbings was published in two editions -- one dated 1913 and a revised version which appeared in 1932. Because most scholars do not have access to either of the two original editions but rather to subsequent reprints which do not provide clear publication information, it is not immediately apparent which of the two editions one is using. This can of course lead to needless confusion. To help avoid this I have gathered information on the two editions which should aid scholars in identifying which edition of the work they have before them.