In the pre-imperial period of China, lack of written records removes even the limited clarity attainable in the analysis of Qin-Han political structures and diplomatic relations. How do we identify “China” and “Chinese”? We have only a vague understanding, based mostly on our understanding of relatively late philosophical works, of how China defined itself, let alone of its relations with other polities or among its own components. Extrapolating backward from Eastern Zhou, we assume a central, ethnically Chinese authority directly controlling a small geographic area.

The present article is a preliminary study of the hemerological system described in the manuscript entitled Xingde yipian (Xingde B) from Mawangdui tomb three (burial dated 168 b.c.), which is one of several manuscripts assigned the title Xingde by the Chinese scholars responsible for editing the Mawangdui manuscripts. The Xingde manuscripts are among a group of Mawangdui manuscripts whose contents are extremely important for the study of calendrical astrology at the end of the Warring States and beginning of the Han. The Xing-De method, which is based on the annual and daily motion of two mantic functions called Xing (Punishment) and De (Virtue) in relation to the sixty binoms of the sexagenary cycle, is attested in the astrological treatise of the Huainanzi. Xingde B not only provides the key to better understanding the very brief description of the Xing-De method in the Huainanzi, but also includes two diagrams that illustrate the motions of Xing and De in space and time.

This essay seeks to argue the merits of one approach to reading the Shiji, which casts the complex text more as a product of contemporary religious beliefs than as the product of either the taishi's individual genius or desire for historical objectivity. By the religious reading, Sima Qian fulfilled some part of his filial obligations when he honored his father's dying wish to “continue our ancestors” by bringing together the tales they had gathered. Equally importantly, insofar as Sima Qian had restored to life an array of remarkable men and women from the Central States, he lived in the pious hope that these especially potent spirits among the civilized dead would choose in return to confer benefits on Sima Qian and his family as long as the Shiji continued to be read. When compared with the more standard readings, this proposed reading strikes the author not only as less anachronistic for the period,but also as more fully reflective of the whole text, including the eloquent appraisals appended to the end of each chapter in the Basic Annals, Hereditary Houses, and Biographical Traditions sections.

From the outside, it would almost seem as if the authors and the editor of New Sources of Early Chinese History (hereafter, Sources) had completed their job before it was due. After all, this volume, which is no. 3 in the Early China Special Monograph Series,1 is the first Western book exclusively devoted to introducing a broad range of Chinese epigraphical materials: inscriptions in bones, turtle plastrons, and bronze as well as manuscripts written on stone tablets, wooden and bamboo strips, and silk.