While it is generally believed that Confucius's devotion to the Zhou ritual system was, in part, a product of his background as a countryman of the traditionalist Zhou state of Lu, this study suggests that Confucius was raised in and influenced by the cultural sphere of a non-Zhou people, the region associated with the state of Zhulou, to which his mother's family belonged. Evidence from the Zuo zkuan lends support to the Shiji account of Confucius's family background, which has long been questioned. This evidence suggests that Confucius's father was a privileged associate of a leading Lu grandee household, the Zang clan, charged with defending the southern border of Lu, an area of Zhulou culture occupied by Lu in the century before Confucius's birth. Accounts of the Zang clan indicate an unusual family stature, involving ritual expertise and hereditary possession of the Lu office of minister of Crime. Shortly before his death, he himself having moved north with the Zangs, Confucius's father took a concubine from the Yan clan of Zhulou, who remained with her family to raise his orphan, Confucius. Evidence suggests that Confucius and his early followers, including members of the Yan clan, displaced, in some critical respects, the role formerly played in Lu by the Zang clan, after the leadership of that clan was exiled from Lu. Tensions between Zang and Yan clan elements appear to have left significant traces in the corpus of early Confucian texts, and to have played a role in the formation of the Ruist school.

This article is a preliminary study of the silk diagram of the mourning system excavated from Mawangdui tomb three (dated to 168 b.c.e.) in 1973. Although it is the earliest precisely dated document of one of the most enduring social institutions in Chinese history, this mourning diagram has received little scholarly attention. Through analyzing its structure, inscriptions, kinship terms, and cosmological symbolism, and comparing it with relevant Warring States and contemporary Han sources, the author has reconstructed the diagram based strictly on evidence internal to the diagram itself. The author then explains the cosmological and numerological significance of the Mawangdui mourning system, and, through rereading passages in Lun yu 17/21, the “Sannian wen” chapter in the Li ji, the “Li lun” in the Xunzi, and the testamentary decree of Emperor Wen (d. 157 b.c.e.), he discusses the multiple ways of justifying mourning practices during the Warring States and early Han periods and the changing interpretations of the cosmological/numerological basis of the mourning system by later text-based scholars, such as Zheng Xuan and Wang Su. Finally, the author discusses the nature and function of the diagram as the source of ritual diagrams illustrating a text in the Chinese classical exegetical tradition. This Mawangdui diagram is a schematic representation of the mourning system with its basic numerological principles and cosmological significance. As a kinship chart, it illustrates the five degrees of mourning, which characterize the scope of close kinship in early Han China. It depicts a mourning tradition similar to those recorded in the Yi li and the Li ji, but represents differently in degrees of mourning that people, especially married-out daughters and their children, were obligated to observe for the death of a relative. It is thus invaluable for us to understand the historical formation of the Chinese mourning tradition and subsequent ritual manuals and legal codes, and it provides new materials for the sociological study of issues concerning Han family structure, the nature of descent groups, women's position, and patrilinealism.

Zhong Hui (a.d. 225–264) was a major, albeit neglected figure in third- century Chinese intellectual history. Author of a Laozi commentary and a treatise on the relationship between “capacity” (cat) and “nature” (xing), Zhong Hui played a significant role in the development of xuanxue (Learning of the Mysterious Dao), which came into prominence during the early Wei dynasty and dominated the Chinese intellectual scene well into the sixth century. This essay presents a reconstructed version of Zhong Hui's Laozi commentary and compares Zhong's approach with Wang Bi's. Zhong Hui's work on “capacity and nature” (caixing) captures a major debate in early xuanxue philosophy and will be scrutinized also in this discussion.

With the publication of volume II of W Allyn Rickett's Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China (Princeton University Press, 1998), a long-neglected and poorly understood text from China's classical period should now be much more accessible to a wider audience of students, teachers, and scholars in the West. The second volume completes the translation of the 76-chapter original, and, like volume I (Princeton University Press, 1985; 2nd, revised edition, Cheng and Tsui, Boston, 2001), includes brief chapter-by-chapter introductions addressing issues of dating and content. The Guanzi has much to offer, spanning as it does the entire classical period proper; the earliest portions of the text date to the fourth or even fifth century B.C., and the work as a whole was only fixed in its present form by Liu Xiang (97–8 b.c.) late in his life, after over three centuries of accretion. Rickett's translation is the fruit of a long career spent studying this text, and it is worthy of frequent and thoughtful consultation; many of the historical issues that this translation sets before us are crucial to a deeper understanding of social and intellectual history in the classical age. To judge from contemporary sources, Guan Zhong , namesake of the text, was a popular figure during this era, around whom formulations of political philosophy and conceptions of new institutions easily accumulated over time. Recognizing this process of accumulation is crucial to placing the text in its historical context, since the Guanzi, like so many of our texts from the classical period, is fraught with difficulties concerning authorship and dating.

With the publication of these two books, A.C. Graham's classic translation of Chuang-tzu is finally available in the form that he intended. The first edition, published in 1981 by Allen & Unwin, has long been out of print, and, as Roth explains (If.; cf. also 184), it was relieved, against Graham's wishes, of several dozen textual notes that he had compiled. These were issued in 1982, by the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), as a sixty-five-page typescript with the title Chuang-tzu: Textual Notes to a Partial Translation. But this pamphlet was not well distributed, and most libraries do not own it. Hackett and Hawai'i are to be hailed, therefore, for bringing both the translation and the textual notes into general circulation, and at very reasonable prices.

Last year (1999), the People's Republic of China celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and made well known the progress of many national projects. Among them, relevant to this column, is the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project,” which aims at establishing an absolute chronology of the historical events before the first year of Gonghe [i.e., 841 b.c.e.]. Meanwhile, last year was also the centennial of the discovery of the Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Many related conferences and events were held. Among them, during the last few years, has been the investigation of several walled settlements that predate the Yinxu period. Moreover, in early 2000, the largest urban site of the Shang dynasty was discovered to the northeast of Yinxu. Though its details have not yet been fully reported, much attention has been focused on this discovery.

At last year's (1999) general meeting of the Nihon Shin Kan shi kenkyūkai (Japanese Qin-Han History Research Group), cosponsored by the International Congress of Chinese Historical Studies, entitled “The World of Chinese (Qin-Han period) History: a system of integration and pluralistic development,”1 TAKATSU Junya , TOMIYA Itaru and DU Zhengsheng presented lectures related to the theme of unification [192]. Mr. Du in particular was most conscientious of the “unification” theme, discussing the topic, “Ancient Chinese Pluralistic Society and the Surge towards Unification.”2 Under this title he makes the following six points: 1) tracing the gradual process of expansion within the areas that were included in the concept of “Zhongguo” according to the written historical materials; 2) examination and organization of the theories regarding how many cultural areas into which the Neolithic Age should be divided; 3) the signs of religion as seen in the archaeological materials in accordance with the phases of political development; 4) the distribution and interrelationships of walled settlements; 5) investigating the area of the Shang and Zhou courts’ influence through the style of bronze pieces and the distribution of burial goods; 6) inferences that can be made by comparing “rishu” (almanacs) and cultural trends from the standpoint of social strata.