Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts

Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts
Author: Guozhang Liu
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2016-05-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 900431234X

The Tsinghua University bamboo-strip manuscripts are among the most extraordinary collections of ancient texts discovered in China to date. In Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts, Liu Guozhong, one of the scholars intimately involved in editing the Tsinghua strips, offers a straightforward overview to the complexities inherent in researching this collection. Liu provides an invaluable glimpse into how these artifacts were cleaned, preserved, and prepared for publication, while also situating them within a history of similar finds. He moreover explores in detail a number of crucial questions raised by the Tsinghua strips, from the transmission of the Shangshu and the nature of the oft-neglected Yi Zhoushu, to the implications these texts have for our understanding of early Western Zhou history.

Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts

Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts
Author: Liu Guozhong
Publisher:
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2016
Genre: Manuscripts
ISBN:

The Tsinghua University bamboo-strip manuscripts are among the most extraordinary collections of ancient texts discovered in China to date. In Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts , Liu Guozhong, one of the scholars intimately involved in editing the Tsinghua strips, offers a straightforward overview to the complexities inherent in researching this collection. Liu provides an invaluable glimpse into how these artifacts were cleaned, preserved, and prepared for publication, while also situating them within a history of similar finds. He moreover explores in detail a number of crucial questions raised by the Tsinghua strips, from the transmission of the Shangshu and the nature of the oft-neglected Yi Zhoushu , to the implications these texts have for our understanding of early Western Zhou history.

The Tsinghua University Warring States Bamboo Manuscripts Volume One: The Yi Zhou Shu and Pseudo-Yi Zhou Shu Chapters

The Tsinghua University Warring States Bamboo Manuscripts Volume One: The Yi Zhou Shu and Pseudo-Yi Zhou Shu Chapters
Author: Edward L.Shaughnessy
Publisher: Tsinghua University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2023-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 7302601879

In July of 2008, Tsinghua University recovered a batch of Warring States bamboo slips from abroad. These were referred to as the Bamboo slips collected by Tsinghua University, i.e., the Tsinghua Manuscripts. A large part of the Tsinghua Manuscripts is comprised of early classical and historical texts. Among these, some can be compared with transmitted classics such as the Shang Shu or “Elevated Scriptures”, but many more are previously unseen texts that have been lost for over two-thousand years. These manuscripts have immense value for understanding the original state of pre-Qin classical texts and for reconstructing early Chinese history. A panel of experts convened to evaluate the manuscripts said of them: these Warring States bamboo slips are tremendously valuable historical artifacts, whose contents speak to the very core of traditional Chinese culture. This is an unprecedented discovery, one which will inevitably attract the attention of scholars both here and abroad. It promises to have a lasting impact in many different disciplines, including but not limited to Chinese history, archaeology, paleography and philology.In order to further develop the international impact of scholarship on the Tsinghua Manuscripts, and stimulate international academic exchange, the Tsinghua University Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts and the University of Chicago Creel Center for Chinese Paleography entered into an agreement to work together on “An International Collaborative Project of Studying and Translating the Tsinghua Bamboo Manuscripts,” which had a planned scope of 18 volumes. Under the leadership of Professor Huang Dekuan of the Tsinghua University Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts, a team was set up to bring together the latest research developments so as to reorganize and collate the Tsinghua Manuscripts. These collated interpretations form a solid basis for the translation work, and in close cooperation with the translation team, together the teams advance the compilation of The Tsinghua University Warring States Bamboo Manuscripts: Studies and Translations book series. Under the leadership of Professor Edward L. Shaughnessy of the University of Chicago Creel Center for Chinese Paleography, a team of scholars specializing in ancient Chinese culture trained at universities such as Harvard, Oxford, and Chicago, was set up to form an exceptional translation team and academic advisory committee, to advance the translation of the Tsinghua Manuscripts. The Tsinghua University Warring States Bamboo Manuscripts: Studies and Translations 1, The Yi Zhou Shu and Pseudo-Yi Zhou Shu Chapters, as the first volume of this series, written and translated by Edward L. Shaughnessy, provides an English translation, introduction, and study of the Tsinghua Manuscripts seen in or related to the Yi Zhou Shu or “Leftover Zhou Scriptures.” The book further provides several insights into the formation and transmission of the Yi Zhou Shu. International experts gave high praise in their review of the book, noting that the book reflects the highest standards of scholarship on ancient Chinese culture, adding that it is not just accessible to experts but presented in a format attractive to a broad readership.

Early Chinese Manuscript Collections

Early Chinese Manuscript Collections
Author: Rens Krijgsman
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2023-03-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004540849

As the first study of manuscript collections, this book asks what changes when sayings, stories, songs, and spells are brought together on the same carrier. Covering a plethora of manuscripts from the Warring States and early empires, and spanning sources from philosophy, historiography, poetry, and technical literature, this study describes the whole life-cycle of multiple texts collected on a single manuscript. Drawing on comparative and interdisciplinary advances and based on careful study of manuscript materiality and textuality, this book shows the importance of collections in the development of and access to text and knowledge in early China.

Chinese Annals in the Western Observatory

Chinese Annals in the Western Observatory
Author: Edward Shaughnessy
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 499
Release: 2019-11-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501517104

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of documents of all sorts have been unearthed in China, opening whole new fields of study and transforming our modern understanding of ancient China. While these discoveries have necessarily taken place in China, Western scholars have also contributed to the study of these documents throughout this entire period. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of these Western scholars to the field of Chinese paleography, and especially to study of oracle-bone inscriptions, bronze and stone inscriptions, and manuscripts written on bamboo and silk. Each of these topics is provided with a comprehensive narrative history of studies by Western scholars, as well as an exhaustive bibliography and biographies of important scholars in the field. It is also supplied with a list of Chinese translations of these studies, as well as a complete index of authors and their works. Whether the reader is interested in the history of ancient China, ancient Chinese paleographic documents, or just in the history of the study of China as it has developed in the West, this book provides one of the most complete accounts available to date.

Fakes and Forgeries of Written Artefacts from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China

Fakes and Forgeries of Written Artefacts from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China
Author: Cécile Michel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-11-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110714418

Fakes and forgeries are objects of fascination. This volume contains a series of thirteen articles devoted to fakes and forgeries of written artefacts from the beginnings of writing in Mesopotamia to modern China. The studies emphasise the subtle distinctions conveyed by an established vocabulary relating to the reproduction of ancient artefacts and production of artefacts claiming to be ancient: from copies, replicas and imitations to fakes and forgeries. Fakes are often a response to a demand from the public or scholarly milieu, or even both. The motives behind their production may be economic, political, religious or personal – aspiring to fame or simply playing a joke. Fakes may be revealed by combining the study of their contents, codicological, epigraphic and palaeographic analyses, and scientific investigations. However, certain famous unsolved cases still continue to defy technology today, no matter how advanced it is. Nowadays, one can find fakes in museums and private collections alike; they abound on the antique market, mixed with real artefacts that have often been looted. The scientific community’s attitude to such objects calls for ethical reflection.

Metaphor and Meaning

Metaphor and Meaning
Author: Constance A. Cook
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2024-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438498322

In Metaphor and Meaning, scholars from China, the United States, and Europe draw on Sarah Allan's groundbreaking application of conceptual metaphor theory to the study of early Chinese philosophy and material culture. Conceptual metaphor theory treats metaphors not just as linguistic expressions but as fundamental structures of thought that define one's conceptual system and perception of reality. To understand another culture's worldview, then, hinges upon identifying the right metaphors, through which it then becomes possible to navigate between shared and unshared experiences. The contributors pursue lines of argument that complement, enhance, or challenge Allan's prior investigations into these root metaphors of early Chinese philosophy, whether by explicitly engaging with conceptual metaphor theory or, more indirectly, by addressing meaning construction in a broader sense. Like Allan's interpretative works, Metaphor and Meaning interrogates both transmitted traditions and newly unearthed archaeological finds to understand how people in early China thought about the cosmos, society, and themselves.

A Tripartite Self

A Tripartite Self
Author: Lisa Raphals
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2023
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197630871

"Chinese philosophy has long recognized the importance of the body and emotions in extensive and diverse self-cultivation traditions. Philosophical debates about the relationship between mind and body are often described in terms of mind-body dualism and its opposite, monism or some kind of "holism." Monist or holist views agree on the unity of mind and body, but with much debate about what kind, whereas mind-body dualists take body and mind to be metaphysically distinct entities. The question is important for several reasons. Several humanistic and scientific disciplines recognize embodiment as an important dimension of the human condition. One version, the problem of mind-body dualism, is central to the history of both philosophy and religion. Some account of relations between body and mind, spirit or soul is also central to any understanding of the self. Recent work in cognitive and neuroscience underscores the importance of our somatic experience for how we think and feel"--

The Methods and Ethics of Researching Unprovenienced Artifacts from East Asia

The Methods and Ethics of Researching Unprovenienced Artifacts from East Asia
Author: Glenda Chao
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 139
Release: 2024-01-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009116657

The immense outpouring of archaeological discoveries this past century has shed new light on ancient East Asia, and China in particular. Yet in concert with this development another, more troubling, trend has likewise gained momentum: the looting of cultural heritage and the sale of unprovenienced antiquities. Scholars face difficult questions, from the ethics of working with objects of unknown provenance, to the methodological problems inherent in their research. The goal of this Element is to encourage scholars to critically examine their relationships to their sources and reflect upon the impact of their research. The three essays in this Element present a range of disciplinary perspectives, focusing on systemic issues and the nuances of method versus ethics, with a case study of the so-called 'Han board' MSS given as a specific illustration.

Reading the I Ching (Book of Changes)

Reading the I Ching (Book of Changes)
Author: Geoffrey Redmond
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2024-05-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350078182

The 3,000 year old I Ching is the most esteemed of the ancient Chinese classics, yet also the most enigmatic. Reading the I Ching (Book of Changes) incorporates recent advances in scholarship, such as recently excavated texts, and demonstrates how the Zhouyi (the ancient textual layer of the I Ching) was compiled from mostly oral material and how it was organized to serve as an easily consulted compendium of divination responses. In this book Geoffrey Redmond clarifies the meanings of the ancient text by examining use of literary devices such as prognostic terms, imagery from daily life, rhetorical tropes, metaphors, proverbs and set phrases. This provides insight on how the Zhouyi was composed and explains its use for divination. It also shows how, centuries later, the Zhouyi was adapted by the Confucians, who believed it to be the creation of ancient sages, and the source of their metaphysics and cosmology. Redmond also analyzes the Changes through a variety of philological heuristics, such as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, methods of analogy and anomaly, the distinction between argumentative and context dependence, as well as modern approaches such as Jungian psychology, and critical theory. Included are the interlinear Chinese text, and a glossary of key words in English, Chinese, and pinyin, making it essential reading for students studying Chinese philosophy, Chinese religion, and early Chinese history, as well as readers looking for a clear and accessible gloss of this text.