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Writing early China
Title
Writing early China / Edward L. Shaughnessy.
ISBN
9781438495224
1438495226
9781438495231
Publication
Albany : State University of New York Press, [2023]
Physical Description
xi, 419 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Summary
"Considers what unearthed written documents reveal about the creation and transmission of knowledge in ancient China"-- Provided by publisher.
Archaeological discoveries over the past one hundred years have resulted in repeated calls to "rewrite ancient Chinese history." This is especially true of documents written on oracle bones, bronze vessels, and bamboo strips. In Writing Early China, Edward L. Shaughnessy surveys all of these types of documents and considers what they reveal about the creation and transmission of knowledge in ancient China. Opposed to the common view that most knowledge was transmitted orally in ancient China, Shaughnessy demonstrates that by no later than the tenth century BCE scribes were writing lengthy texts like portions of Chinese classics, and that by the fourth century BCE the primary mode of textual transmission was by way of visual copying from one manuscript to another--back cover.
Format
Books
Language
English
Added to Catalog
January 04, 2024
Series
SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 383-404) and index.
Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Inscriptions
Chapter One: History and inscriptions
Chapter Two: The Bin Gong Xu inscription and the beginnings of the Chinese literary tradition
Chapter Three: The writing of a late Western Zhou Bronze inscription
Chapter Four: On the casting of the Art Institute of Chicago's Shi Wang Ding: with remarks on the important position of writing in the consciousness of ancient China
Chapter Five: A possible lost classic: the *She Ming or *Command to She
Chapter Six: Varieties of textual variants: evidence from the Tsinghua Bamboo-Slip *Ming Xun Manuscript
Chapter Seven: Unearthed documents and the question of the oral versus written nature of the classic of poetry
Chapter Eight: A first reading of the Anhui University Bamboo-Slip Shi Jing
Chapter Nine: The Mu Tianzi Zhuan and King Mu-Period bronzes
Chapter Ten: The Tsinghua Manuscript *Zheng Wen Gong wen Taibo and the question of the production of manuscripts in early China
Chapter Eleven: The eighth century BCE Civil War in Jin as seen in the Bamboo Annals
Chapter Twelve: The Qin *Bian Nian Ji and the beginnings of historical writing in China
Notes
Works cited
Index.
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