Early Chinese Manuscript Collections: Sayings, Memory, Verse, and Knowledge

Description

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. Contents Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1 A Note on Orality 2 Collecting Text in a Manuscript Culture 3 Collections in Manuscript Form 4 The Form and Use of Collections 5 The Role of Collections in Early China 6 Sources and Caveats 7 Outline of the Study Chapter 1 Manuscript Materiality: Organizing Sayings in a Collection 1 The Unborn Laozi: of Materiality and Building Blocks 2 Sound-based Organization: The *Yong yue 3 Visually Enhanced Organization 3.1 Creating a Building Block: Punctuation and Rhyme in the Fan wu liu xing 3.2 Clustering the “Already Said”: The *Yucong 4 4 Building Blocks That Form Arguments 4.1 Visualizing Argumentative Form: The *Yucong 2 4.2 Wedding Principles and Sayings: The *Yucong 3 4.3 Using Saying Collections: Comparative Evidence 5 Conclusions Chapter 2 Collecting Stories: The Reformation and Integration of the Past 1 A Fragmented Past: Songs of Ancestors and Lords 2 The Rongchengshi: Forging an All-embracing Narrative about the Past 2.1 Structuring a Cultural Lineage 2.2 Colonizing the Past 2.3 A Formulaic Framework for the Past 2.4 Causality: Forging a Continuous Chain of Events 3 Warring States Developments in Representing the Past 3.1 Doubt in Antiquity: The *Tang Yu zhi dao and Zi Gao 3.2 Conflict in the Master Narrative of the Past: The *Gui shen 3.3 Restructuring Cultural Memory: The *Qiong da yi shi 4 Conclusions Chapter 3 Collection and Canon: The Formation of a Genre 1 Developments in the Use of Verse 1.1 Large-scale Collections: Little Influence? 1.2 Small-scale Collections of Verse 2 Emergent Properties in Verse Collections 2.1 Grouping by Genre: The Zhougong zhi qin wu 2.2 Performing Authorship: The Qi ye 3 Shi as a Commented Collection 3.1 The Shifting Label 3.2 Verse and Performance Part Ways 4 Teaching Verse as Poetry: The *Kongzi shi lun Read through the *Xing zi ming chu 5 Conclusion Chapter 4 Collecting and Disseminating: Using Technical Knowledge 1 Early Records of Divination: Baoshan, Tangweisi, and Geling 2 Warring States Prayer and Divination Collections 2.1 The Collection as Manual: The Shanghai Museum *Bu shu 2.2 Collections That Store: The Tsinghua *Zhu ci and the Back of the Beida Qin Slips 2.3 Mobile Prayer and Spell Collections: The *Dao ci and *Ci zhu zhi dao 2.4 The *Ci zhu zhi dao 3 Daybooks and Related Collections of the Early Empires 3.1 Professional and Personal Selections of Technical Knowledge: Zhoujiatai 3.2 Sacrifice and Daily Life: Yueshan 4 Conclusions Conclusion: A Manuscript Culture’s Response to the Proliferation of Text Bibliography Index