Ji Xusheng's 季旭昇 account of the character 〈舜〉 as a derivative of 〈夋〉 and ultimately of 〈允〉 by reference to Warring States excavated manuscript evidence, recently elaborated by Adam Smith in these pages, appears to clear up the mystery of Shun's 舜 doppelgänger—Jun 俊—in the Shanhai jing 山海經. However, while Ji's observations are of value, there is danger in treating early orthographical variation of this kind with one eye on an interpretive problem from the received texts. In this case, attested variation shows clearly that the form 〈舜〉 was no such derivative, its peculiar origins arguably “large and useless” from a textual critical point view.

The Tsinghua manuscript *Ming xun 命訓 contains a compound sentence that reads: 大命殜罰少命＝身. In an earlier article, the author translated this sentence as “The great mandate for generations punishes; the minor mandates command the person,” understanding the “＝” mark to indicate that the preceding character ming 命 was to be repeated. However, scholars in China have recently noted that the “＝” mark can also indicate the repetition of characters that occur in the same context earlier in the text. This would suggest that the “＝” mark here indicates the repetition of the word fa 罰 in the preceding clause, such that the sentence should read “The great mandate punishes the world; minor mandates punish the person,” which is the reading of the received text of the Ming xun. This scribal practice has important implications for the reading of other manuscripts as well.