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Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts
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.
242 pages, Hardcover
Published June 23, 2016
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May 24, 2022
This might just be the most perfect book for book lovers. We hear enough about devastating, depressing events in history where great treasure troves of the written word were wiped out, most famously (in the West, at least), the Library of Alexandria. China has had multiple such horrors in their history, from the Qin bibliocaust in 213 BC to the loss of the Jizhong texts, which had themselves been recovered from an ancient tomb in 279 AD only to go missing not too long afterwards, leaving only a bibliography and a couple works, like the Bamboo Annals and the Legend of King Mu, to the conflagration that destroyed the 140,000 volumes in the library of King Yuan of Liang in 554 AD.
Over the last few decades, however, some of the damage incurred by those events has been undone! Bamboo, wood, and silk manuscripts have been recovered by the thousands from across China (and, to a lesser extent, in Japan and Korea). While most bamboo slips contain little of value, often simply lists of grave goods, there are some that are invaluable. The Mawangdui silk texts, found in 1973 in Changsha, include early editions of the Dao De Jing of Laozi, featuring many textual variants and a different chapter order, and ancient works on Chinese medicine.
An earlier edition of the Dao De Jing was discovered 20 years later in Hubei, the Guodian Chu slips, along with other philosophical and Daoist works. Discovered in 1972, the Yinqueshan bamboo slips include a series of military treatises, including the Art of War by Sun Bin, a descendant of Sunzi (or Sun Tzu, an ancestor of Bin, whose work was also found therein). The Yuelu Academy bamboo slips include legal cases from the Qin dynasty that have been invaluable in increasing the understanding of early imperial law in China.
These are just a few of many amazing discoveries, and they receive (too) brief treatment in this book, but the main topic is the Qinghua (Tsinghua in the old Wade-Giles transliteration still used for the famous school) collection. Purchased in 2008 from a Hong Kong antiquities dealer, these bamboo slips had been submerged in water likely for some 2000 years before tomb robbers recovered them and smuggled them into Hong Kong, where they waited for two years before administrators at Qinghua learned of them and rapidly set out to buy them, which they accomplished within a month with a generous donation by an alumnus.
Liu describes in detail the acquisition process, the challenge of cleaning them, photographing them, editing them. Qinghua had acquired them during the Olympics, so there were a series of challenges caused by that event: Limitations on bringing chemicals into Beijing, limits on the number of cars allowed into the city. The university had to go to great lengths to preserve the bamboo slips during those weeks, especially when on a daily inspection they found mold starting to form. The scholars jumped into action and succeeded in preventing them from being damaged.
The strips had long since lost their proper order, so just figuring out which went with which was a monumental task (made easier thanks to some clues, things like calligraphy style, strip size, and a few were even labeled). Eventually, the significance of the collection started to come into view. They had even found original chapters, lost since the Qin dynasty over 2200 years ago, of the Shangshu. These chapters had been forged centuries later in the edition known to scholars ever since, but now it can be said with certainty that those are forgeries since pre-bibliocaust editions have been found with very different content within this collection.
Over the last few decades, however, some of the damage incurred by those events has been undone! Bamboo, wood, and silk manuscripts have been recovered by the thousands from across China (and, to a lesser extent, in Japan and Korea). While most bamboo slips contain little of value, often simply lists of grave goods, there are some that are invaluable. The Mawangdui silk texts, found in 1973 in Changsha, include early editions of the Dao De Jing of Laozi, featuring many textual variants and a different chapter order, and ancient works on Chinese medicine.
An earlier edition of the Dao De Jing was discovered 20 years later in Hubei, the Guodian Chu slips, along with other philosophical and Daoist works. Discovered in 1972, the Yinqueshan bamboo slips include a series of military treatises, including the Art of War by Sun Bin, a descendant of Sunzi (or Sun Tzu, an ancestor of Bin, whose work was also found therein). The Yuelu Academy bamboo slips include legal cases from the Qin dynasty that have been invaluable in increasing the understanding of early imperial law in China.
These are just a few of many amazing discoveries, and they receive (too) brief treatment in this book, but the main topic is the Qinghua (Tsinghua in the old Wade-Giles transliteration still used for the famous school) collection. Purchased in 2008 from a Hong Kong antiquities dealer, these bamboo slips had been submerged in water likely for some 2000 years before tomb robbers recovered them and smuggled them into Hong Kong, where they waited for two years before administrators at Qinghua learned of them and rapidly set out to buy them, which they accomplished within a month with a generous donation by an alumnus.
Liu describes in detail the acquisition process, the challenge of cleaning them, photographing them, editing them. Qinghua had acquired them during the Olympics, so there were a series of challenges caused by that event: Limitations on bringing chemicals into Beijing, limits on the number of cars allowed into the city. The university had to go to great lengths to preserve the bamboo slips during those weeks, especially when on a daily inspection they found mold starting to form. The scholars jumped into action and succeeded in preventing them from being damaged.
The strips had long since lost their proper order, so just figuring out which went with which was a monumental task (made easier thanks to some clues, things like calligraphy style, strip size, and a few were even labeled). Eventually, the significance of the collection started to come into view. They had even found original chapters, lost since the Qin dynasty over 2200 years ago, of the Shangshu. These chapters had been forged centuries later in the edition known to scholars ever since, but now it can be said with certainty that those are forgeries since pre-bibliocaust editions have been found with very different content within this collection.
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