Abstract
Newly recovered ancient Chinese texts, particularly those found in the last 40 years, have provided numerous fresh insights into our understanding of Chinese intellectual history and the development of early Chinese thought. Among the manuscript treasures are some 800 bamboo slips found in a fourth-century bce tomb in the village of Guodian 郭店, near Jingmen 荆門 City, Hubei 湖北, China. Discovered in 1993, these texts and their archaeological contexts bear invaluable evidence of development in early Chinese thought, history, culture, and language, some of which have been lost for more than 2000 years. They have augmented the transmitted record with original materials, providing new insight into the formation of socio-political and ethical systems, and challenging the traditional typology of schools of thought and genres. Interred in an early tomb, as the contributors will show in this volume, these recovered documents present philosophical debates and conceptualizations different from those found in the so-called received texts—those that have been continuously handed down to the present. Crucially, the excavated texts have been preserved from centuries of selection and redaction that have adulterated the transmitted corpora. As such, the Guodian manuscripts offer a unique opportunity to re-explore the philosophical discourse in ancient China.
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Notes
- 1.
Li Xueqin cited the inscription on a lacquer cup discovered in a compartment of the tomb as evidence suggesting that the deceased was the tutor of the crown prince. However, it has also been argued that the tomb and its contents are inadequate evidence for proving someone of such status, who would likely have had the rank of Middle Magnate (Allan 2015: 44).
- 2.
Some scholars have argued that the term “Ruist“is more appropriate than “Confucian” (rujia 儒家) because the latter suggests an eponymous tradition that grew out of the foundational teachings of one person and the elaboration of those teachings by a school. Ru, on the other hand, has been suggested as referring more generally to a social group whose members made their living by applying their knowledge of archaic cultural practices to a wide variety of problems. Among the Ruists were scholars of many distinguishable sub-types, all of whom sought to instruct the rulers and other noblemen in culture (wen 文), which, of course, included ancient literature and the knowledge of ritual. The Chinese term Rujia 儒家 contains the word ru, also found in “Ruist”, though the Chinese term makes no mention of Confucius, unlike its standard translation, “Confucian”. It makes perfect sense to use “Ruist” (or “proto-Confucian”) for texts and ideas pre-dating Kongzi, reserving “Confucian” for those works coming thereafter that are either attributed to or directly inspired by him. Since work in the present volume discusses both Confucian philosophy as presented in the Guodian texts as well as earlier Ruist writings in general, individual contributors may choose to use ru or “Ruist”, for obvious reasons.
- 3.
For example, scholars have proposed different readings of the characters wei
that combines action (為) with the heart radical (心) (爲+心) and de 惪 (直+心) that appear in the Guodian Laozi. Such palaeographic conundrums have been the subject matter of workshops in ancient manuscript reading and important implications for our understanding of the development of writing in early China. See Shaughnessy (2006: 19–31).The Guodian manuscripts contain quite a few characters with the component 心, used to write words whose meaning involves some sort of “emotional activity” or a certain orientation of the heart. For example, we have 爲+心, and 甬+心, subsequently subsumed under other forms, such as wei 偽 and yong 勇 made “conventional” by the Han period editors. See Shaughnessy (2006: 30). - 4.
- 5.
In 1994, the Shanghai Museum acquired a bundle of bamboo texts, containing over 1200 slips, from the antique market in Hong Kong. These strips are now commonly known as the Shangbo jian 上博簡 (the “Bamboo Slips Collected by the Shanghai Museum” or the “Shanghai Museum collection”) (Ma 2001–2012). They too are written in the Chu script, in a style similar to that of the Guodian texts, and have been dated to 300 bce. The cache contains large numbers of unknown Confucian texts, two of which, the Ziyi (Black Robes) and the Xingqing lun 性情論 (Discourse of Xing and Qing), are also found in the Guodian corpus.
- 6.
The availability of these newly recovered texts allows us to reconsider the manuscript culture and textual formation of some received texts, such as certain chapters of the Shujing 書經 (Book of Documents) and the Liji 禮記 (Book of Rites).
- 7.
Scholars continue to debate the possible affiliation(s) of the Guodian texts. Many in China hold that the majority of the texts are from the Zisi-Mencian school of thought, whereas others argue they are closer to Gaozi’s, Xunzi’s or even ShiShuo’s ideas. Liang Tao, for example, claims that most of the Confucian texts can be ascribed to the Zisi-Mencian lineage: the Ziyi, Wuxing, Lu Mu Gong wen Zisi and Qiong da yi shi are associated with Zisi 子思 or are part of the text of Zisizi 子思子 (Liang 2008). Others, for example Goldin, opposing the Chinese emphasis on Guodian’s supposed affiliation with Mencius-Zisi, emphasize the Xunzian aspects in many of the texts (Goldin 2005: 36–37). Tao Lei and Maurizio Scarpari argue that the Guodian corpus contains the writings of Gaozi’s school (Tao 2001; Scarpari 2002). Shirley Chan sees more diversity in the content of the Xing zhi ming chu with traces of the teachings from Mencius, Gaozi, Xunzi and SHI Shuo (Chan 2009: 380–81).
- 8.
Such influence can be observed from, for example, the Hengxian 恒先 (Constancy in the Beginning) in the Shanghai Museum collection.
- 9.
For example, Meyer provides close readings of the Guodian philosophical texts and analyses crucial strategies of meaning construction and casts light on the ways in which different communities used texts to convey their philosophical teachings (Meyer 2012).
- 10.
Sometimes, this is achieved through various borrowings of diverse materials from traditions, such as the Shu 書, the Laozi 老子 and the Lunyu 論語, as can be seen, for example, in the Yucong 語叢. While there is proof that the authors of the Guodian texts made use of other existing sources to get their point across, the extent of these borrowings cannot be known.
- 11.
One can say that there is nothing inherently “Chinese” about this as it is so common, among Indian, Near Eastern and even early Western traditions.
- 12.
Shaughnessy translates zhang 章 as “pericope” while most others translate it as “chapter” or “section” (Shaughnessy 2006).
- 13.
The sequence of chapters of the Guodian Laozi is different from that in the received Daodejing; there are also some differences in wording between the Guodian slips and the transmitted Daodejing and the Mawangdui Laozi. Nevertheless, most of the contents and the philosophical messages of the Guodian Laozi are intact (Jingmenshi Bowuguan 1998: 1).
- 14.
Many early Chinese manuscripts were composed of different layers with the words, the pericopes, the paragraphs and perhaps the whole text of earlier sources, as possible pre-formed textual units, or what may be referred to as “building blocks” of later texts (see Boltz 2005). Both the Guodian and the Shanghai Museum collection strongly suggest that the Ziyi existed as an independent text, rather than as a chapter within the Liji, as it was later transmitted from the Han dynasty. The Guodian Ziyi exemplifies both textual stability as well as fluidity in the editing process. Textual stability is demonstrated, for example, by the general structure and many of the compositional patterns and indeed the contents of the Ziyi text, which seem to have undergone no significant change from around 300 bce, reaching its final definitive form almost a thousand years later, early in the Tang dynasty. Textual fluidity is exemplified by the Ziyi being made part of the Liji, a now famous example of how one text, already extant in an independent and recognizable form, was incorporated into another.
- 15.
Zigong, one of Confucius’ disciples, points out that the Master’s view on heaven and xing cannot be heard.子貢曰: 夫子之文章, 可得而聞也; 夫子之言性與天道, 不可得而聞也。(Analects 5.13).
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Chan, S. (2019). Introduction: The Excavated Guodian 郭店 Bamboo Manuscripts. In: Chan, S. (eds) Dao Companion to the Excavated Guodian Bamboo Manuscripts. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04633-0_1
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