The description of the “Nine Provinces” (Jiu zhou 九州) found in the Rong Cheng shi 容成氏 (Mister Rong Cheng?, late fourth century b.c.e.) manuscript from the Shanghai Museum Bamboo Slips Collection (Shangbo cangjian 上博藏簡) is the only manuscript version of it known to date. Its discovery immediately raised the question of its relation to the cluster of descriptions on the “Nine Provinces” transmitted from the late Warring States to the early Western Han periods. There is general consensus that the manuscript description of the “Nine Provinces” has close affinity with the transmitted descriptions, as well as with a wide spectrum of transmitted early Chinese texts in general. It is distinguished by the eclectic combining of known spatial concepts, rather than manifesting any radically new or specifically Chu traits. In this study I reassess this impression with respect to the reference to the Han River in the manuscript, which up to now has been noted only in passing as an unsolved puzzle. I argue that the Han River is referred to here as the central axis that divides terrestrial space into southern and northern halves, something that implies a shifting of the mapped area to the South and thus conveys a Chu view of space. Together with philological analysis of the descriptions of terrestrial space, I apply an innovative method of investigation of these descriptions through landmarks, using as a visual aid traditional Chinese historical maps. In addition, I explore the predominance of waters as the distinguishing feature of the representation of terrestrial space in the Rong Cheng shi manuscript and demonstrate its difference from the structuring of terrestrial space proceeding from mountains to waterways to be seen in the majority of transmitted early Chinese texts.

When Li Xueqin was born in Beijing on 28 March, 1933, the Republic of China was in power, with its capital in Nanjing, and the Japanese occupied Manchuria. On 29 July 1937 Japanese troops invaded Beijing and brought it under control in little more than a week. The occupation of Beijing lasted until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. The People's Liberation Army entered Beijing in the end of January of 1949 and on 1 October 1949, when Li Xueqin was sixteen, Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China. This period of warfare was followed by periods of political turmoil which often centered around intellectuals—thought reform in the early fifties, the anti-rightest campaigns and the Great Leap Forward of the late fifties and early sixties, the Cultural Revolution from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies.

This essay examines some key statements in the Later Mohist treatises to gain a sense of their views on language and disputation (bian 辯). I first show that the Later Mohists viewed disputation as an exercise in familiarizing oneself with patterns of language use and the verification of truth-claims in the phenomenal world. I then demonstrate that such an activity helps one attain one of the Mohists’ highest goals: the clarification of ethical imperatives about how to behave, as expressed through Heaven for all people. This claim ultimately links Early and Later Mohist ethical concerns and offers a religious explanation for Later Mohist involvement and interest in disputation. Lastly, I frame these writings from within a culture of debate about language in Early China—a culture which, for example, yielded not only Mohist views concerning the necessary correlation between language and reality, but also Confucian formulations on the rectification of names, and a Zhuangzian insistence on the emptiness of sayings.

In the past decade, it seems, the study of early Chinese manuscripts has at last begun to move from its rather marginal position as a highly specialized subject into the mainstream of scholarship on the Warring States and early imperial periods. This is certainly due in part to the impressive quantity of manuscripts found so far. A still more important factor is probably the fact that the manuscripts recovered to date now include a significant number of politico-philosophical texts. While literature of a more technical nature has attracted attention only in smaller circles of scholars, these more generally appealing finds have spurred a markedly increased interest in early Chinese manuscripts both in China and in the West. This is also reflected by the vast improvement in the quality of publications with regard both to photographic reproduction and to transcription and/or interpretation. The field of palaeography has accordingly gained visibility and esteem. It hardly need be mentioned that orthography is a vital concern in reading manuscripts. Many books and articles on the manuscripts consequently touch upon the subject of orthography when they interpret manuscripts or discuss special palaeographic issues, or when they address the Chinese writing system in a more general way. Yet, to my knowledge, Imre Galambos’s Orthography of Early Chinese Writing is the first monograph ever to elevate the question of early Chinese manuscript orthography to the status of its central subject matter.

The Ching-fa, one of the four “lost” books attached to the Ma-wang-tui Lao tzu, addresses issues of universal concern for legal theory. This paper examines how the Ching-fa's nine short theaties present fa linked with tao as a Law or model for guiding and judging the legitimacy of the ruler's use of coercion. I attempt to demonstrate that the conception of a universal and timeless Law offered a more universally applicable standard for governing than did the old laws based on the practices of the ancient sage kings. The text's notion of law linked with a timeless, natural principle, tao, is compared with early Western theories of universal law and its relation to justice. I conclude that the content and ultimate purposes of law are different in these early traditions but that in both cases the emerging imperial states were better served by theories of law based on abstract standards rather than on particular histories and customs.

This article defends three theses concerning the semantics of nouns in classical Chinese. First, they are all free to function as mass nouns. Second, though many of them can also function as count nouns, they do not do so as frequently as do corresponding English nouns. Third, unlike English nouns, nouns in classical Chinese do not need to be classified as count nouns and mass nouns in order to explain their behavior in particular contexts. I argue that classical Chinese nouns function as count nouns only when specific elements of the syntactic context force them to do so, including numbers, some quantifiers, and some adjectives. Because classical Chinese nouns usually occur without such elements, they function more often as mass nouns. I develop this argument in opposition to an alternative analysis defended by Christoph Harbsmeier, according to which classical Chinese nouns divide into three classes: count nouns, mass nouns, and generic nouns. I show that the syntactic and semantic distinctions Harbsmeier draws in support of his analysis do not illuminate the behavior of classical Chinese nouns. The article also briefly addresses the ontological issues that have seemed to some linguists and philosophers to be related to the count/mass distinction.

In this article I question the assumption that all place-names in the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan refer to real places. I suggest instead a mythic origin for many of these seemingly referential elements. By analyzing a complex of myths either referred to or alluded to in the text, I show that several crucial place-names come in fact from cosmological referents rather than geographical ones. The Mu T'ien-tzu chuan cannot then be read purely as a historical account. I extend this argument by revealing how the elements of cosmological myth in the narrative must themselves be read as elements of symbolic discourse; that is, they have to be read within an astronomical context as references to celestial phenomena. By reading the cosmological and astronomical discourses of the myths together, I demonstrate the literary significance of the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan, a significance which to date has been obscured by misreadings of its historicity. Finally, I argue that only by reading the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan as a literary fiction can one understand what it tells us about how notions of political legitimacy were constructed and then altered in the representation of King Mu's (fictional) journey. The narrative is thus revealed to be a wholly symbolic tale whose interpretation has implications for the wider realm of the interconnections among history, literature and culture.

The Fuyang bamboo-strip “Annals” was compiled prior to 165 B.C., at least sixty or seventy years earlier than Sima Qian edited the various chronological tables in the Shiji. The “Annals,” which begins about the time of the Gong He interregnum of the Western Zhou and continues through the time of Qin Shi huangdi, seems to be incompatible with the “Qin Records” and was perhaps compiled using the “Historical Records” of some state other than Qin. It possibly includes two different types of tables: one in which years denominate the vertical columns and statenames the horizontal rows, with events recorded therein horizontally; and one that records the number of years that the feudal lords reigned. Although extensive damage makes it impossible to reconstitute the “Annals,” it can still provide useful information regarding some historical questions, such as the Warring States-period states of “East Zhou” and “West Zhou,” the appellations “Current King” and “Current Duke,” etc.

The two parts of this study concern the three extant versions of “The Metal-bound Coffer” (“Jin teng”): the two received texts in the Book of Documents and the Grand Scribe's Records and the newly recovered Warring States manuscript now at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The first part considers an uncontroversial detail shared by all three versions: the reference to a poem composed by the Duke of Zhou called “The Owl” (“Chixiao”). Cross-referencing “The Metal-bound Coffer” with a poem of the same title, now found in the Book of Odes, it is possible to explain not only the place of this poem in the overall narrative of “The Metal-bound Coffer,” but also the considerations of the poem's two ancient commentators, Mao and Zheng Xuan. In the second part of the study, the discussion turns to the three versions of “The Metal-bound Coffer,” looking in turn at three different passages. By positing a greater number of testimonies than the ones that happen to survive, I argue that a comparison of the extant versions reveals an effort by transmitters, commentators, and the re-teller Sima Qian to teach a single lesson: the Duke of Zhou occupied a subordinate place vis-à-vis the ruler, and must never undermine him in any way.

This article offers a new reading of Mozi’s chapter “Ming gui” 明鬼, conventionally considered as a treatise explaining Mohist ideas about ghosts and spirits, by shifting the focus from the ghosts (gui 鬼) to the concept of ming 明, interpreted as “sagely illumination.” The “Ming gui” chapter does not discuss ghosts in general, but instead a specific group of “punitive ghosts” who mete out punishments and rewards; it also shows that ming gui was not a group of ghosts particular to Mozi or Mohism alone, but was widespread in the beliefs and practices of the period. The execution of justice, which is the crucial concern of the treatise, depends on ming—the principle of justice and Heaven’s agency in human life—and not on ghosts. Ming also is an indispensable component of sagehood, as it is the illuminated sage ruler (ming jun 明君) who, on behalf of Heaven, ultimately metes out just punishments and rewards.

If one were to speak of the “incipient period” of research on Western Zhou oracle bones, he would have to refer to that period of time after the discovery in 1950 at Sipanmo (SP 11) of oracle bones whose “writing was not consistent with inscriptional standards,” and before November of 1956 when Professor Li Xueqin pointed out that the inscribed oracle bones from Fangdui village of Shanxi's Hongzhao County were artifacts of the opening period of the Western Zhou. Through the study of these oracle bones discovered at Sipanmo and Fangdui village, as well as in Bin county in Shaanxi and Taishanmiao in Luoyang, it was then possible for the first time to recognize that in addition to Shang oracle bones there were also Western Zhou oracle bones, thus debunking the traditional belief that all oracle bones were produced by the Shang. The excavation in 1956 of inscribed oracle bones at Fengxi in Shaanxi then provided positive proof of the existence of Western Zhou oracle bones.

A surprisingly large number of texts, many heretofore lost to us, werediscovered in a lacquer box in Tomb Three at Mawangdui. (For a summary ofthe excavation and contents of the tomb see Early China 1[1975]:10-15.) Thescrolls had fused together as a result of being tightly packed in thelacquer box; after separation, two of the scrolls were found to contain sixseparate treatises on medicine as well as a set of illustrations oftherapeutic calisthenics.

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.

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.

Over the past few years, additional evidence has surfaced that supplements my prior authentication of the Peking University Han strips, and in particular the *Cang Jie pian 蒼頡篇 manuscript from this collection. The present article surveys this fresh evidence, including confirmation of spiraling verso lines on the archaeologically excavated Shuihudi 睡虎地 Han strips, as well as further textual parallels, both with a previously unidentified Cang Jie pian strip from Niya 尼雅, and also with newly published content from the Shuiquanzi 水泉子 *Cang Jie pian. The article also critically examines in greater detail the methodology previously employed to authenticate the Peking University Han strips. Limitations are acknowledged, both in regard to supporting negative appraisals, and in the determination of “novelty” for manuscript features. To demonstrate these issues, the article analyzes a conflict between the Peking University and Shuiquanzi Cang Jie pian manuscripts and introduces the publication of the so-called “Han board” *Cang Jie pian witness largely unknown to the field before.

A number of interesting anecdotes are recorded in the Shih-chi and the Han-shu, especially in the biographies of various renowned figures. Some of these anecdotes are related to the concept of predestination and fate. The most frequently mentioned cases are the stories of the births of emperors and founders of dynasties and legends related to the ancient sage kings.

At the beginning of the “Annals of Liu Pang,” the founder of the Han dynasty, it is related that he was engendered by a dragon and from this acquired an unusual physiognomy resembling the face of a dragon. His unusual appearance impressed his prospective father-in-law, who decided to let him marry his daughter, the future Empress Lü. An old lady, Madame Hsu, who was noted for her ability to prophesize by physiognomy, was so impressed by the appearance of Liu Pang that she prophesized a good fortune for the whole family. The legend associated with Liu Pang, that his killing of a white snake was lamented by a mysterious old lady as the act of killing the “Son of the White Emperor” by the “Son of the Red Emperor”, is very familiar. It is further related that Liu's wife never failed to locate his hideout because there was always a colorful haze and mist over it.

One of David S. Nivison's (1923–2014) most important contributions is his work in bridging philological studies and philosophical inquiry. His methodological approach resonates in spirit with an approach to the study of Chinese thought advocated by Confucian thinkers such as Zhu Xi and Tang Junyi, who both emphasize jing toward early thinkers. He pays careful attention to textual details, is respectful of cultural context, and seeks to preserve the distinctive features of Chinese traditions of thought and avoid imposing on them western philosophical conceptions. In doing so, he exemplifies the spirit of jing, a serious and cautious attitude dedicated to a proper understanding of early thinkers in their cultural context.