Commemorating a Failed Assassin: The Making of the Jing Ke Lore in Early China

Tao Jiang on the Fa Tradition (法家) Yuri Pines (bio) Among the many strengths of Tao Jiang's magnum opus, Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China, his analysis of the fa tradition (or the fa school, fajia 法家, often misleadingly dubbed Legalists)1 stands out as a major achievement. This achievement is immediately observable from the depth and seriousness with which the fa tradition is covered. Two out of the book's seven chapters (nine if we count Introduction and Conclusion) deal with fa thinkers: chapter 4 is dedicated to Shen Buhai 申不害 (d. 337 b.c.e.), [End Page 449] Shang Yang 商鞅 (d. 338 b.c.e.), and Shen Dao 慎到 (fourth century b.c.e.?); chapter 7 deals with Han Fei 韓非 (d. 233 b.c.e.). These chapters account for 112 pages out of the book's 476 (excluding bibliography and index), that is, almost a quarter of the text. This is dramatically more than the habitual allocation of less than ten percent to fa thinkers in other introductory-level studies of Chinese philosophy.2 This feature alone suffices to hail Jiang's book for its readiness to engage the fa tradition systematically and not as an intellectual aberration. The reasons for the habitual sidelining of fa thinkers (especially Shang Yang) in studies of early Chinese philosophy are not difficult to find. This sidelining started long ago, with its seeds traceable to the Han 漢 era (206/202 b.c.e.–220 c.e.). The fa thinkers were detested by imperial literati because of their abusive rhetoric (e.g., the derision of traditional moral values as "parasites" or "lice" [shi 虱] in the Book of Lord Shang), their advocacy of an excessively centralized and intrusive state apparatus, and most of all—their assault on fellow intellectuals, which was viewed as directly responsible for the infamous Qin 秦 biblioclasm of 213 b.c.e.3 One of China's most illustrious intellectuals, Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101), succinctly summarized the literati attitude: "from the Han dynasty on, scholars have been ashamed to talk about Shang Yang."4 So negative was the reputation of the fa tradition throughout the imperial millennia that even those statesmen who admired Shang Yang's and Han Fei's contribution toward creating "a rich state and a strong army" (fuguo qiangbing 富國强兵) eschewed overt identification with fa thinkers.5 To this traditional dislike of Shang Yang and Han Fei, the twentieth century added a new sort of bias coming from the discipline of Chinese philosophy. Scholars engaged in this discipline may have been traumatized by Hegel's derisive remark about Confucius 孔子 (551–479 b.c.e.) as "only a man who has a certain amount of practical and worldly wisdom—one with whom there is no speculative philosophy."6 Insofar as fa texts (most notably the Book of Lord Shang associated with Shang Yang) epitomize "practical and worldly wisdom" and display little interest in "speculative philosophy," they are deemed irrelevant by philosophers. Not accidentally, studies of fa thinkers only very rarely appear in such major disciplinary journals as Philosophy East and West, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, and Dao. Against this backdrop, one can understand fully the achievement of Tao Jiang. Instead of sidelining the fa thinkers or reducing their role to that of practical statesmen rather than theorists, he engages their philosophy in earnest. He shows not only how much they were immersed in a dialog with earlier thinkers and texts, but also the depth of their impact in the late Warring States period, including on such major texts as Xunzi 荀子 and even Zhuangzi 莊子 (p. 283). Jiang particularly excels in demonstrating the philosophical depth behind the fa thinkers' insistence on the institutionalization of political power. Their advocacy of comprehensive bureaucratization [End Page 450] was not just a response to the practical need of improving the state's functioning. Rather, it reflected their understanding of "the uniqueness and independence of the political domain, especially the nature of political power, that is irreducible to personal virtues. Fajia thinkers were the most clear-eyed about this unique and sui generis nature of political power" (p. 237). Jiang explains this point further in his discussion of Shang Yang: Shang Yang's diagnosis of the nature of...

appearance of Mark Edward Lewis' second book, Writing and Authority in Early China, is a long-awaited event in the sinological world. Divided into eight chapters and with the main text running 365 pages, this book is an exceptionally rich study of the intellectual world(s) of the Warring States period and the Han dynasty, approaching its objects of investigation from a variety of different positions. implicit questions How do texts speak 'with authority'? and How, and for what reasons, are certain texts canonized or deemed apocryphal? allow Lewis to demonstrate the different strategies used by state bureaucrats, writers of history, diviners, philosophical schools, poets, and reciters of poetry to authorize their discourse. interrelationship and interdependence of Text and State is an all-pervasive theme excellently dealt with in the two crowning chapters here on the establishment of the Confucian canon during the Han dynasty. Lewis has a clear and concise style, a keen sense for spotting significant connections between seemingly disparate phenomena, and a most impressive grasp of primary and secondary sources-even if the absence, in the bibliography, of the Guodian %Ti texts, Martin Kern's 1997 Die Hymnen der Chinesischen Staatsopfer, David Schaberg's 1996 thesis Foundations of Chinese Historiography, Shirakawa Shizuka's 1976 Kanji no sekai (in a new 1997 edition), and, perhaps, Christopher Connery's very recent Empire of the Text (1998) suggests that we may have been forced to wait for this book for some time. (Christoph Harbsmeier's 1995 article Notions of Time and History also offers some important musings on the notion of writing in early China.) Considering its breadth, the book has very few factual errors, one being the use of commentary to refer to the entire commentarial section included in the Mao Edition of the Odes -, another being the claim that the Odes themselves use tropes such as bi ~L and xing X, when in fact these concepts were inventions of the scholastic commentators. Arthur Waley's important 1933 article The Book of Changes could have been mentioned in the discussion of Richard Kunst's and Edward Shaughnessy's works on the Changes. In what follows I will do no more than make a few remarks in order to initiate the reader into the organizing principles of what, in the final analysis, can only be described as a first-rate scholarly work. I will then endeavor a small contribution,

Reviewed by: Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China by Erica Fox Brindley Pauline C. Lee Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China. By Erica Fox Brindley. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012. Pp. xi + 225. Hardcover $75.00, isbn 978-1-438-44313-3. Paper $24.95. eBook $24.95. In Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China, Erica Fox Brindley further illuminates our scholarly understanding of the spiritual-religious, political, moral, psychological, and medical worlds of early China by carefully tracking the complex and ever-changing relationship between “music” (yue 樂) and conceptions of the cosmos. Her central analytical category is the concept of “harmony” (he 和). She provides evidence that texts (e.g., the Book of Documents, the Zuozhuan, the Analects, and early Mohist writings) preceding the late fourth century b.c.e. on the whole describe harmony as a distinctly human achievement, such as rulers choosing to act virtuously so as to bring harmony to the lives of those they govern or a master chef picking and choosing the right ingredients to create a particularly delicious broth. Harmony is not discovered in the cosmos, but rather is a good created by sages and kings. In contrast, in early Chinese classical writings that can be dated to roughly after 325 b.c.e. (e.g., the Zhuangzi, the Daodejing, the Mengzi, the Lüshi chunqiu, later Mohist writings, the Huainanzi, and the Shiji), a century and a half before the unification of China, Brindley boldly argues that one finds a marked change in descriptions of harmony. Harmony is now described as inherent within the cosmos; countless competing methods are articulated for achieving or discovering harmony, but generally speaking all involve an intimate working with the larger cosmos. Through the course of six chapters, Brindley carefully shows how changes in the role and status of music parallel transformations in views of the cosmos—a cosmos that is in close dialectical relationship with human beings, who affect and are being affected by this transcendent force. Developing themes that were introduced in her first monograph, Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010), Brindley concludes: The common saying “Heaven and human come together to form one 天人和一” … is often understood in terms of how humans should alter their behavior to conform to Heaven’s natural and inevitable laws. My analysis shows that there is no single narrative or assumption that humans are to “fit in” in such a way. Indeed, in many texts, humans are presented as integral agents who … might add to and change the course of the cosmos itself.” (p. 158; italics mine) [End Page 326] The conception of the cosmos that emerged after the fourth century b.c.e. is “creative” and “engendering,” rather than “passive” and “conforming” (p. 158). Brindley notes that there exists a handful of articles, book chapters, and books in English, Chinese, and Japanese on music in China. Her linking of music with sweeping spiritual-religious transformations in particular makes this book a unique and excellent contribution to our understanding of not only early China but also theories of music in general. Brindley’s work is an example of detailed, careful, erudite, creative, and bold scholarship. Both Sinologically sound and theoretically sophisticated, she examines a breadth of texts—including both well-studied classics and newly excavated works. Her translations are clear and lucid. Throughout she argues for her views through careful scholarship and then tests her conclusions regarding early China against common sense. The subject—changing concepts of music and its role and status in our human lives—is fascinating and of significance and interest across a breadth of fields including religious studies, literature, and philosophy, as well as intellectual and sociocultural history. At least two other philosophers have studied the role of music and moral cultivation in early China, notably Philip J. Ivanhoe in “Music in and of Our Lives,” a chapter in his Confucian Reflections: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times (Routledge, 2013), and Kathleen M. Higgins in “Music in Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy,” a 1980 article for the International Philosophical Quarterly...

The Han Dynasty was an important period in the development of traditional Chinese society, and Han Stone Reliefs are epic images of Han society. By studying images from the Han Dynasty, historians can use visual evidence to support historical claims. The emergence of the Han-painted ranger image is a product of the social and cultural changes of the Han Dynasty, reflecting the political and cultural transformations brought about by the unification of the Han Dynasty. The image of the Han-painted ranger holds symbolic significance in the political and power discourse of the Han Dynasty. Through specific analysis, it becomes evident that the culture of wandering knights in the Han Dynasty was a product of the interaction and integration between official and folk cultures. This cultural dynamic provided the foundation for the inclusion of wandering knights as a theme in Han Stone Reliefs. The article categorizes the images of knight-errant stories in the Han Dynasty Stone Reliefs into two types: one depicting acts of resistance, and the other portraying heroic rescues. These two themes reflect how the image of the knights-errant in the Han Dynasty Stone Reliefs became a unique symbol within the political discourse of Han Dynasty power. Through the study of the ranger image in the Han Dynasty stone reliefs, this paper reveals that these reliefs, as an art form, vividly express the aesthetics and values of the Han Dynasty through their image design. When applied to the artistic form of Han Dynasty stone reliefs, this artistic expression is realized through the narrative function of imagery.

A number of publications, including a recent paper in World Archaeology, have developed theories on why stone suddenly became a popular material for tomb construction in Han Dynasty China and how foreign masonry techniques were brought to China from across Eurasia. The object of this paper is to examine further the reception of foreign masonry architectural techniques through an analysis of stone-carved tombs from early China. It argues that the reception of foreign masonry techniques was based on the demands generated by using stone as the primary tomb building material during the Han Dynasty. Through the introduction of advanced masonry techniques, new understandings of the material world were incorporated into masonry architecture in a Chinese cultural context.

Tian, or Heaven, had multiple meanings in early China. It had been used since the Western Zhou to indicate both the sky and the highest god, and later came to be regarded as a force driving the movement of the cosmos and as a home to deities and imaginary animals. By the Han dynasty, which saw an outpouring of visual materials depicting Heaven, the concept of Heaven encompassed an immortal realm to which humans could ascend after death. Using excavated materials, Lillian Tseng shows how Han artisans transformed various notions of Heaven--as the mandate, the fantasy, and the sky--into pictorial entities. The Han Heaven was not indicated by what the artisans looked at, but rather was suggested by what they looked into. Artisans attained the visibility of Heaven by appropriating and modifying related knowledge of cosmology, mythology, astronomy. Thus the depiction of Heaven in Han China reflected an interface of image and knowledge. By examining Heaven as depicted in ritual buildings, on household utensils, and in the embellishments of funerary settings, Tseng maintains that visibility can hold up a mirror to visuality; Heaven was culturally constructed and should be culturally reconstructed.

Abstract: Scholars of early China have dedicated considerable attention to the encounter between the Han dynasty and the Xiongnu, as it stands as the archetypal conflict between the Huaxia cultural order of the Central State(s) and the northern cultural others known as the Hu. This issue has been viewed from an array of diverse perspectives, including literary studies of the Xiongnu ethnographies found in the Shi ji and Han shu . The present article seeks to illuminate the representation of northern others in the post-Han era through an examination of the earliest ethnographies of the Wuhuan and Xianbei, as preserved in the San guo zhi commentary edition and the Hou Han shu . A close reading of the Wuhuan and Xianbei accounts reveals deep resonances with earlier Xiongnu accounts, but finds many divergences as well, which combine to produce a more ambivalent interpretation of the contemporary northern others.

'Early China' refers to the period from the beginning of human history in China to the end of the Han Dynasty in AD 220. The roots of modern Chinese society and culture are all to be found in this formative period of Chinese civilization. Li Feng's new critical interpretation draws on the most recent scholarship and archaeological discoveries from the past thirty years. This fluent and engaging overview of early Chinese civilization explores key topics including the origins of the written language, the rise of the state, the Shang and Zhou religions, bureaucracy, law and governance, the evolving nature of war, the creation of empire, the changing image of art, and the philosophical search for social order. Beautifully illustrated with a wide range of new images, this book is essential reading for all those wanting to know more about the foundations of Chinese history and civilization.

“Early China” refers to a long period from the beginning of human history in East Asia to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty in AD 220, a date that is often, though imprecisely, used to mark China’s entry into the Buddhist Era. As the initial period that gave the Chinese civilization much of its foundation, Early China has always served as the gateway to China, by offering a series of essential lessons in government, social practice, art, religion, and philosophical thought, necessary for students of all periods of Chinese history. But in a more general sense, if history is the best way to teach about a culture in which people live, it is perfectly natural that knowledge of Early China can provide what is often the most fundamental explanation of aspects of the social life in modern China and of its underlying values. As a field of research, Early China Studies is one of the areas that have most dramatically benefited from the advancement in modern academia, particularly in the discipline of archaeology which has been renewing daily our understanding of China’s distant past. It is also a field that has seen occasional interplay between politics and scholarship, and that has been much shaped by different national or international traditions. To begin our journey into this distant past, below I will first introduce the natural and temporal settings of Early China as necessary for understanding the social and cultural developments soon to be discussed in this book. For the same purpose, the chapter will then turn to a brief discussion of the process by which Early China Studies has emerged as a modern academic field, and the state of the field will alert the reader to the need not only to see the past, but also to understand the different ways in which it was seen and interpreted.

Reviewed by: Creating Confucian Authority: The Field of Ritual Learning in Early China to 9 CE by Robert Chard Andrew Lambert (bio) Robert Chard. Creating Confucian Authority: The Field of Ritual Learning in Early China to 9 CE. Sinica Leidensia, vol. 152. Leiden, New York, and Köln: E. J. Brill, 2021. viii, 223 pp. Hardcover $49.00, isbn 978-90-04-46191-8. E-book (PDF) $49.00, isbn 978-90-04-46531-2. Robert Chard's book explores how li (禮)—a term typically translated as "ritual" but which the author approaches with great care—became central to Confucian identity and gradually came to order the political realm in early China. In Chard's words, the book traces "the early formation and evolution of Ritual Learning from before the time of Confucius to the end of the Western Han Dynasty in 9 CE: what it was in different periods, who mastered it, how it was deployed, and what it reveals about the interactions between Confucian Ru and political power" (p. 3). The book explores how a recognized body of ritual practice and norms emerged during this time, eventually becoming codified knowledge in canonical texts. "Ritual learning"—Chard's key term—is defined broadly, as "the study and practice of li" (p. 5) and "all knowledge related to the various aspects of li in early China" (p. 9). The frequent use of the pinyin li is deliberate, as the author seeks to retain its broad range of implications, in contrast to a more constrained term such as "ritual." Chard is careful to limit the scope of his inquiry into li. Excluded, for example, is consideration of analytic treatments of li found in canonical Confucian texts, such as the Xunzi, parts of the Liji and Han cosmological discourse (p. 17). Also, circumvented is the modern trend toward understanding the Confucian tradition in the abstract, as a set of general theoretical commitments or philosophical positions. Instead, using a method described as "cultural history," Chard seeks to understand the practices that constitute early Confucian li, and how knowledge of those practices (rather than other non-Confucian esoteric ritual practices) influenced the formation of later imperial ritual, thereby establishing the Confucian tradition at the heart of state affairs. A further feature of the author's approach is an emphasis on the visual impact of ritual practice (again, in contrast to a more theoretical understanding of ritual). This builds on the author's earlier work, and on the work of other scholars, such as Robert Eno's claim that the driving concern of the early Confucian movement was physical training and mastery, rather than an ideology or set of ideas (p. 9). Understood as a practical and cultural phenomenon, Chard offers four [End Page 177] characteristics of li (pp. 7–8). These are: a "socio-cultural order based on ritual institutions instituted by governments" (lizhi 禮制), "visible, technical mastery," or "ritual performance" (liyi 禮儀), a code of "civilized ethical behavior" (liyi 禮義), and "a regimen of self-cultivation" (xiushen 修身) to which "the personal observation of li was central." The heart of the book consists of three long chapters, each examining a historical period in the development of ritual learning. The chapters move from the Spring and Autumn period, through the Warring States and early Han, and culminate with a study of Confucian ritual's ascendency in the late Western Han (206 B.C.E.–9 C.E.). Chapter 2 covers the first of these three putative stages of ritual learning and focuses on the understanding of li during the Spring and Autumn Era, particularly as portrayed in the Zuo zhuan. At this time, li was one branch of learning, alongside those such as knowledge of the Book of Songs and music. We find a portrait of li as a body of knowledge whose application and significance are in transition: from a "code of conduct among the aristocracy" to a set of practices that were, through Confucius, "made … available to a somewhat broader segment of society" (p. 83). Even though older social orders ruptured, precise observance and visible display of li remained closely linked to social status; however, li also came to be understood as a physical practice that...

Book Reviews 143 Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China ROEL STERCKX. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. vi, 235 pages. ISBN 978-1-107-00171-8. £55.00, US$90.00, hardcover. Roel Sterckx’s new book is a welcome addition to the growing volume of publications on early Chinese history. Sterckx explores aspects of food culture in early China, primarily— albeit not exclusively—in the context of sacrificial activities; this focus allows him to address manifold issues concerning the philosophy of sacrifices, conceptualization of human senses, and early Chinese economic history and political thought. This rich and well written book will become indispensable to everybody interested in China’s food culture, in early Chinese religious history, and also to many students of early Chinese philosophy. References to food and food-related metaphors are ubiquitous in early Chinese texts, and this very richness of sources may have impeded systematic research on these topics in the past. In facing this challenging task, Sterckx relies on his awesome erudition, which was fully visible already in his first magnum opus, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China.1 In Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood Sterckx utilizes, even if inevitably briefly, most of the received texts from the Springs-and-Autumns (770–453 BCE), Warring States (453–221 BCE), and the Han (206 BCE–220 CE) periods; these, in addition to occasional references to the paleographic sources and to archeological discoveries, allow Sterckx to present a panoptic view of Chinese sacrificial culture. The scope of the book is impressive both in terms of the periods covered (Sterckx expands his discussion at times both backwards, to the Western Zhou period [ca. 1045–771 BCE], and forwards, toward the post-Han sources) and in terms of topics covered, which include food habits of the elite, food as philosophical and political metaphor, nature of the human interaction with the deities, the economics of sacrifice, and aspects of sagehood and of rulership in pre-imperial and early imperial China. While not all of these topics are covered with equal density, and while the discussion on many issues may require further fine-tuning and modifications, overall the position of the Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood as a standard for any future exploration in the field seems to me undeniable. The quasi-encyclopedic nature of the Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood allows a reader to select a chapter close to his/her field of interest and read it as a separate essay; yet it is also possible to discern a few common ideas that underlie Sterckx’s discussions. Among these, the most interesting to the present reviewer is the author’s emphasis on multiple tensions that accompanied almost any imaginable aspect of food and sacrificial culture. Food and drinks were the source of nourishment and high joy, but also potentially of self-destructive overindulgence; deities had to be fed much like the humans, but the most exquisite offering was, paradoxically, the tasteless stew; sacrifices were essential for the community well-being, 1 Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002. 144 Journal of Chinese Religions but also potentially damaging due to the waste of resources; and, while the sage rulers were supposed to be all-hearing and clairvoyant (congming 聪明), their ears and eyes had to be covered to prevent direct contact between their senses and their environment. By highlighting these tensions, Sterckx adds another dimension to our understanding of the deeply contradictory nature of China’s sacrificial, and, more broadly ritual culture with its embedded tension between the ritual and reality, between the image of perfect order generated through elaborate ceremonies and the imperfect sociopolitical situation; between persistent appeal to divine support and a somewhat equivocal belief in its efficacy. Speaking of tensions, one may identify some of them in the book itself. Perhaps the most significant one is between Sterckx-anthropologist and Sterckx-historian. The first tends to depict Chinese food consumption and sacrificial practices as if they were uniform throughout the six to ten centuries under discussion, perpetuating, inadvertently, the long bygone image of changeless China. The author frankly explains why he eschews chronological treatment of the topics under discussion: given the notoriously unreliable dating of major texts, most notably of ritual compendia...

Reviewed by: Military Thought in Early China by Christopher Rand Mark Metcalf (bio) Christopher Rand. Military Thought in Early China. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017. vii, 240 pp. Hardcover $85.00, isbn 978-1-4384-6517-3. Explaining the development of first millennium b.c.e. Chinese military thought on the basis of roles of the civil (文 wen) and the martial (武 wu) in governance is not a new approach. Many early China specialists, including Mark Edward Lewis, Lisa Raphals, Robin Yates, have clearly identified the importance of such a wen/wu tension in their writings.1 Where Military Thought in Early China differs from its predecessors, however, is in the way that it frames such a development in a manner that allows the reader to closely follow the development of military thought from the establishment of the Western Zhou through the divergence of ideas during the late Spring & Autumn and Warring States periods to the eventual consolidation of views during the Western Han. Initially written as a Ph.D. dissertation in 1977, after a 40-year career in government Christopher Rand revised his original work to incorporate new insights from research and discoveries during the intervening years. The result is impressive. The book is particularly noteworthy for its extensive use of primary sources to trace this development and the meticulous manner in which such references are documented and commented on in the endnotes. Each chapter also includes a very useful conclusion section that summarizes the key points discussed in the chapter and their significance in the development of early Chinese military thought. Rand's basic premise is that early Chinese views regarding social stability and political order have, at their core, the goal of answering "the Wen/Wu problem"; determining the appropriate roles for the civil and the martial. Presenting examples from the early Chinese literary corpus, he demonstrates the ubiquity of military thought in early Chinese texts and argues "Repeatedly one finds in pre-Qin writings the notion that war is a natural, evolving attribute of the human community, and that martial activity allowed, paradoxically, for the advancement of civilized life . . . the sages of Chinese [End Page 94] antiquity, according to tradition, did not exclude violence but rather stipulated it as an outlet for hostile feelings, much as those manifested by armed beasts. War was perceived as an impetus for positive change rather than a negative feature of social life." (pp. 5-6) Chapter 1, "The Emergence of the Wen/Wu Problem," begins with a discussion of the idealized role of wen and wu in government as evidenced by the actions of the eponymous Kings Wen and Wu in the establishment of the Western Zhou. The world was to be governed by the civil (wen) and the awe inspiring influence of a virtuous ruler was deemed sufficient, in most cases, to maintain order in the world. On the rare occasions when a state threated such order with inappropriate behavior, however, it was appropriate for and incumbent upon the ruler to use military force (wu) to return the world to its proper state. Rand meticulously analyzes several excerpts from early Chinese texts, particularly the Odes, to support this assertion. This peaceable state gradually, yet inexorably, unraveled over the next four centuries and with it the traditional roles of wen and wu. The first chapter concludes with the introduction of three "solutions" that were developed during the Warring States period in response to the "wen/wu problem." The first, militarism, "placed high value on martiality, as opposed to civility" (p. 22). Next, compartmentalization, which argued for "a clear separation between martial and civil" with "martial activity . . . subordinate to civility and . . . applied only in extremis" (p. 25). Finally, syncretism, which "attempted to refocus the wen/wu debate on the need for balance and reciprocality between martiality and civility" (pp. 26-27). Rand also identifies three perspectives, metaphysical, pragmatic, and ethical, which were used to implement the three solutions. These six terms are italicized throughout the text to highlight their significance as de facto technical terms; a very effective way of helping the reader to follow the individual threads of solutions or perspectives as they are woven throughout the narrative...

This chapter develops a model of cultural interfusion for the period of early - before the Qin (221-206 BC) and the Western Han (206 BC-23 AD) dynasties and moving backward in time through the Iron Age to the Bronze Age and beyond. This is the time of China before China, to adopt the fine phrase turned by Fiskesjo and Chen. Instead of a comprehensive survey of the evolution of religion within the present territory of during pre-Qin (i. e., pre-imperial) times, the chapter focuses on a limited number of phenomena that have remained central to Chinese ideas about ethics, spirituality and sacredness right up to modern times. Evidence of pre-imperial xeno-Sinitic religious exchange is presented under four rubrics: lamb of goodness, goat of justice; magi from the west; heavenly horses; heavenly questions. Keywords:early China; intercultural contacts; pre-imperial xeno-Sinitic religious exchange; religious formations

RESPONSES AND REPLIES Martin J. Powers' Response to Jean James' Review ofArt and Political Expression in Early China In her review ofArt and Political Expression in Early China (CRI2 [I]: 1-18) , Dr. James raises a number ofissues ofinterest to me and, I hope, to the readers of this journal. These issues are not limited to Han dynasty art but call into question many ofthe assumptions and methods associated with the (once) "new" approaches to art history developed chiefly during the eighties. It is gratifying that the field ofearly Chinese art history has reached a stage ofmaturation where debates over method can take place. I welcome this chance and am grateful to the editors of China Review Internationalfor enabling me to participate. By the same token, my understanding ofthe aims and assumptions ofthe "new" art history differs from that of Dr. James, and I believe that many ofher queries are the consequence of a misperception ofmy methods and claims. Let me begin with some background regarding the book. As is now well known, during the late 1970s and the 1980s many scholars began exploring a more interpretative and contextual approach to the history of art. In fields such as Chinese painting or ancient bronzes, such enterprises had been undertaken in (by now well-known) studies by James Cahill, K. C. Chang, Wai-kam Ho, Chu-tsing Li, Robert Thorp, and others, but relatively little had been published along these lines in the field ofearly pictorial art. I tried to initiate such work by demonstrating the political and rhetorical uses ofomen images at Wu Liang's shrine in a (perhaps not so well-known) article published in 1983. In 1984 I published another paper attempting to establish the potential impact offunerary monuments on a family's reputation, the role ofreputation in a bureaucratic career, and the influence of a "public" on the reputations oflocal scholars. Once this dynamic was understood, it appeared that local scholars very likely had to take into account the response ofthe local, educated "public" when commissioning a monument . It followed that funerary monuments could be utilized as "arguments" promoting religious, personal, or political goals.1 This is one of the points Dr. James objects to in Art and Political Expression in Early China (hereafter AP), so I shall© 1995 by University return to it later. ofHawai'i PressThese two articles were followed by others exploring similar situations. By the late 1980s, Audrey Spiro had applied sociopolitical analysis to the origins of portraiture in the Six Dynasties period. In his Wu Liang Shrine, Wu Hung 368 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 adopted the interpretation of omens I had offered earlier in the decade, accepting also the view that funerary monuments could encode personal, social, or political messages aimed at an educated "public."2 The primary concern ofhis book, however —as I understood it—was how Wu Liang's shrine presented the reigning ideology of the period, that is, those cosmologica! and social tenets accepted by both the court and the scholars. My purpose in APwas to problematize the relationship between Confucian scholars and the imperial court, replacing a linear view ofpolitical and cultural history (Confucian scholars loyally obey the court) with a more dialectical model, in which the discourses adopted at the court and local level could be seen both as in competition and as shaping one another. In other words, rather than accept the traditional model of the flow of authority in Chinese society, I was suggesting that discourses adopted by the court did not always originate with the court and sometimes could be appropriated or even subverted by groups unsympathetic to the court. Having questioned some long-standing paradigms, one could reasonably expect to be challenged. Jean James has taken up the challenge in her China Review International review. Dr. James' criticisms appear to me to fall into four categories : (1) misunderstandings or misreadings ofthe book; (2) issues of method; (3) historiographical issues; and (4) issues ofpresentation. I would like to address one major misconception first, as one ofthe leitmotifs running throughout her essay appears to me to reflect an honest yet major misunderstanding. Misreadings On page 172, Dr. James tells the...

Reviewed by: Writing and Authority in Early China Lothar von Falkenhausen Writing and Authority in Early China. By Mark Edward Lewis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Pp. vii + 544. Hardcover $92.50. Paper $31.95. Writing and Authority in Early China is a forceful and sparklingly original work in which Mark Edward Lewis explores the role of writing and texts in the transformation of political authority during the Warring States, Qin, and Western Han periods. Following in the footsteps of the author's well-received first book1 and his magisterial contribution to the Cambridge History of Ancient China,2Writing and Authority establishes Lewis as the premier Western historian of the crucial centuries surrounding the unification of China under a centrally administered empire in 221 B.C. The book's complex, comprehensive, and coherent argument is informed by a variety of Western theoretical approaches, but it principally emanates from a close reading of the full record of transmitted texts and recently excavated manuscripts on [End Page 127] bamboo or wooden slips. The inclusion of the latter class of sources, beset with treacherous problems of decipherment, is still unusual in mainstream sinological scholarship and indicates the author's supreme confidence in his philological skills. With a firm hand, undaunted by the multifarious nature of his materials, Lewis guides the reader to some fundamental themes in recent sinology, opening manifold novel perspectives along the way. Even when dealing with well-known texts, he often proposes striking reinterpretations. In his Introduction, Lewis enumerates six main functions of writing in ancient China: enforcing state authority; creating text-based communities and "public spheres"; transcending the confines of space, time, and human mortality; fashioning figures of authority in the past; standardizing specialized technical terminology; and encrypting secret meanings. In Lewis' own words, "the culminating role of writing in the period, and the key to its importance in imperial China, was the creation of parallel realities within texts that claimed to depict the entire world" (p. 4). This ultimately led to the formation of the Confucian canon as a "textual double of the polity" that could survive cataclysmic changes of regimes. In chapter 1, "Writing the State," Lewis points out that before the Warring States period Chinese writing occurred exclusively in religious contexts. After circa 500 B.C., written documents gradually came to be used in the administration of government and trade. Both in their details of formulation and in the implication that anything committed to writing was thereby supernaturally validated, these new types of documents exhibit pervasive continuity with the earlier kinds of texts used in ritual communication with the ancestral spirits. Such continuity is also reflected in the rise of religious beliefs in a netherworld governed by a bureaucratic hierarchy and administrative processes parallel to those of the world of the living. According to Lewis, "the most important modification in the shift to an administrative polity [in the Warring States] was the extension of writing to new elements of the population. The attributes of the Zhou nobility ... were transferred to the common people in the administrative documents of the new state. This widening range of inscription into the state order altered the social meaning of being recorded from a sign of power to one of subjection" (p. 13). Warring States rulers were cast in the role not of the authors of texts but of the authority behind them. Administrative and legal texts were concerned, ultimately, with the proper naming of phenomena, a process that had to adapt itself continually to the changes of the times. The authority of rulers came to encompass both human society and the natural world. "Whereas local and central administration were largely created through reworking and rewriting the ritual bases of the old Zhou order by means of a rationalizing cosmology, the re-invention of rulership drew on the contemporary religious realm and what is sometimes described as shamanism to provide images of cosmic power" (p. 42). Lewis illustrates the mechanics for applying these universal principles of rulership by a comprehensive analysis of the Zhou li (or Zhou guan), emphasizing the cosmological arrangement of the ideal government described therein and the dual administrative and religious dimensions of...