Space, Time, Myth, and Morals: A Selection of Jao Tsung-i’s Studies on Cosmological Thought in Early China and Beyond

Zhang Yinlin’s motivation for writing Early China was similar to that shared by most other writers of general histories during these years, patriotism and a concern for the fate of the Chinese nation and its peoples. While closely involved in the transformation of Chinese historical thought and writing in early 20th century China, Zhang Yinlin stood aside from the mainstream of developments and was not closely aligned to any particular school. One of the reviewers of Early China argued that what non-specialist readers wanted in a history of this kind was a story, China’s story, based on real events but told in a manner that would provide for readers a sympathetic engagement with what was known of early Chinese history. This was exactly what Zhang had tried to achieve, a lively, interesting and engaging account of Chinese history that people would want to read. Keywords: Chinese historical thought; Chinese nation; Early China ; general histories; patriotism; Zhang Yinlin

Discussions of food, the exchange of food, commensality, and food sacrifice pervade the dialogues and treatises of philosophers, persuaders, and ritualists in late Zhou and early imperial China. Meticulous care was invested in the preparation and serving of food in sacrificial rituals and banquets. Ritual codes suggest that the presentation of food reflected a host’s integrity toward the human or otherworldly guests that were to be feasted. Ritual itself, according to the Liji (Book of Rites), originated with eating and drinking (Liji, 21.586). Philosophers and moralists on their part adopted attitudes toward food as a yardstick to measure a person’s character or moral aptitude. In early China, as in most past and present societies, culinary culture transcended the necessities of nourishing the body or pleasing the palate. Debates on fasting or feasting, on eating or feeding others—in this world or the hereafter—reveal a gamut of social, moral, and religious codes that made up the fiber of early Chinese society.

Reviewed by: Text and Ritual in Early China Brian J. Bruya (bio) Martin Kern , editor. Text and Ritual in Early China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005. xxvii, 332 pp. Hardcover $40.00, ISBN 0–295–98562–3. Text and Ritual with Regard to Writing and Authority Text and Ritual in Early China, edited by Martin Kern, is an important book. While reading it, I was repeatedly reminded of Mark Edward Lewis's Writing and Authority in Early China (State University of New York Press, 1999), not just because of the formal and lexical similarities of the titles or to the many references to Lewis's book. Both Lewis and the contributors to Text and Ritual are meticulous in their scholarship, broad in their sources, assiduous in supporting their claims, cautious but insightful in their generalizations, and forward looking in their scholarship. They approach the texts of early China with a view to understanding the sociopolitical dynamics of the time and draw on every available text, leaving no stone unturned and taking nothing for granted. Given the time span of the period they cover, the multiplicity of texts, the variety of media on which the texts were recorded, the array of secondary sources, and the difficulty of the early language in its many manifestations, the task does not come easy. Even though the dates of the publication of Writing and Authority and of the conference "Text and Ritual in Early China" on which Text and Ritual is drawn are fewer than two years apart, there are two ways in which Text and Ritual can be seen as an updating of Writing and Authority. First, whereas Lewis makes numerous references to the Mawangdui, Baoshan, Yunmeng, and Fangmatan manuscripts, he makes little or no reference to such recent finds as the Guodian and Shanghai materials, which the contributors to Text and Ritual repeatedly bring into the discussion. Second, although Lewis and the contributors to Text and Ritual are on equal ground as outstanding expositors of the field of early Chinese studies, some of these same contributors have extolled Lewis's work as a grand synthesis of scholarship in the field, thus giving it, by default, a position of predominance and authority to which related books in the field, for the time being, will naturally be judged as responses and extensions.1 Lewis, showing a concern for the authority associated with ritual and with the texts that developed around it, notes that the relationship of writing and ritual goes all the way back to the earliest days of the Chinese polity and its persistent preoccupation with natural and spiritual forces. That writing was created seemingly for the purpose of recording the significance of events associated with these forces should signal the central importance of ritual in the history of texts in early China. In the first part of this review, I will summarize what I find to be the main insights of each chapter. Though there is very little to criticize, I will, in the second [End Page 338] part of my review, examine three important areas of concern that fall under the general heading of terminological precision. As a heuristic for approaching the diversity of topics in Text and Ritual in Early China, I will group the chapters as they relate to the broad themes of Writing and Authority. Nylan, Falkenhausen, and Brashier on Text and Authority Both Writing and Authority and Text and Ritual begin with the nexus of ritual and political authority. Lewis details its origins in the oracle bones and then shows how later texts, such as covenants (meng盟), local registers, and coins, developed out of the tradition of using ritual texts for the purpose of political control. Michael Nylan, in her chapter, "Toward an Archaeology of Writing: Text, Ritual, and the Culture of Public Display in the Classical Period (475 B.C.E.–220 C.E.)," extends this theme in the direction of artifactual displays. The chapter can be seen as a long and involved answer to the question, why do we "find what we ordinarily think of as 'secular' texts buried in tombs?" (p. 34). Nylan begins with a nice summary of "writing's share in ritual...

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...

'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 Chinese histories sometimes record two extremely different myths about the origins of a foreign people: a native version and a Sinicised version. This is the case with myths about the Xiongnu, Xianbei and Korean peoples. Native and Sinicised origin myths had different functions. Sometimes, Chinese wanted to create psychological distance between themselves and potentially dangerous foreign peoples. Recounting a native myth bolstered Chinese ethnic pride by making other peoples seem strange and exotic, in contrast to normative Chinese culture. In other instances, Chinese told Sinicised myths to assimilate foreign peoples into Chinese culture. These myths legitimised Chinese expansion and conquest, but could also be used against China by foreign invaders. The coexistence of native and Sinicised versions of ethnic origin myths in early historical records shows the mutability of ethnicity in early China, and the manipulation of ethnic identity for political and military ends.

This paper proposes to provide an outline of the development of the concept of ghost in early Imperial China. I will first give a brief account of the emergence of a discourse on ghost in early China, then I will discuss the religious milieu of early imperial China, concentrating on both the establishment of the imperial order and official religious rituals, and the idea of ghost persisted in people's daily life that developed according to local traditions. I will examine how the official and the private idea of ghost interacted or overlapped with one another. Lastly, I will introduce the appearance of the literary ghost at the end of the Eastern Han, as a prelude to the Six Dynasty ghost literature.

“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.

A single bamboo slip was found at Mawangdui tomb M2 inside the passageway leading to the pit where Li Cang (d. ca. 186 BCE), the Marquis of Dai and Prime Minister of Changsha, was buried. Though almost entirely unnoticed in previous scholarship, the M2 slip has much to tell us about the overlapping textual, ritual, administrative, and funerary practices of early Western Han China. I offer a description of the slip, translations of its contents, a consideration of how it was used at the tomb site, and an analysis of what its archaeological context tells us about the use of talismans in Western Han burials. Specifically, I show that the slip originally formed part of a multi-piece tomb inventory manuscript, and that it was removed and ritually deposited inside the passageway in order to protect the tomb from robbers and malevolent spirits.

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...

MichaelJ. Puett's To Become a God is an important contribution to study of early Chinese religions, and it offers dense, ambitious, radically novel, and utterly fascinating reinterpretations of major religious and philosophical works of early China. Puett can be counted among a number of scholars of early China who, over past decade or so, have come to take pride in their efforts, convincing or not, to dismantle several of most seemingly foundational pillars for study of early Chinese thought, including textual classification (Confucian, Daoist, Legalist, etc.), geographic and cultural difference, and role of myth and shamanism. Puett pursues these trends to an extreme degree in attempting to overturn many of even more basic assumptions held by modern scholars in regard to early China. He argues that worldview of early China is best characterized not by an essential harmony between humans and nature, but by a theistic and agonistic dualism producing a similar tension with world that, in West, gave rise to ethical rationalization. To Become a God is Puett's attempt to demonstrate that this worldview reveals a fundamental tension between humans, on one side, and spirits and deities, on other, in which humans strove to separate their spirits from their bodies to become gods controlling all other spirits and natural phenomena. Puett claims that it is only by recognizing this tension that we can come to understand central motivation underlying thought of early China: I will attempt to provide a full historical study of relations of humans, spirits, and cosmos from Bronze Age to early Han. ... Once we move away from a commitment to seeing a lack of tension between humans and divinities as a guiding theme in early China, we may discover a rich, and perhaps more troubled, world of debate concerning humans, divinities and sacrificial practice than previous analyses have accustomed us to expect from Chinese texts (pp. 24-25). Puett quickly adds rejoinder that the recurrent references in secondary literature to 'schools of thought' in early China-such as Con-

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...

“State Cult in Early China and Rome” builds on the groundwork laid in Chapter 2, and turns to compare the histories of state-sponsored religion in early China and Rome as well as the religious institutions that existed in each place. This chapter shows that although we cannot make direct comparisons between the types of religious institutions and practices that existed in early China and Rome, in both societies, religious activity was closely integrated into government systems. Chapter 3 shows that a more fruitful comparison can be made by examining the place of these religious institutions within their respective states as well as by comparing the transformations that took place during the reigns of Emperor Wu and Augustus.

Reviewed by: The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece Steven Shankman (bio) Geoffrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin. The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. xvii, 348 pp. Hardcover $40.00, ISBN 0-300-09297-0. Paperback $20.00, ISBN 0-300-10160-0. Classical studies in the West in the past few decades has confronted the same tumultuous challenges to traditionalism that have affected other humanistic fields, yet in many ways nothing fundamental has changed. It is true that the ancient texts have been reinterpreted from a variety of new perspectives, and courses such as Gender in the Ancient World have sexed up the classics-in-translation curriculum, but "classics" still means ancient Greece and Rome. The canon remains intact. And, as a result, fewer and fewer undergraduates choose to study the classics, and an even more miniscule number choose to do so in the original languages. Clearly something needs to change, especially in the light of the globalization of contemporary culture. How much more interesting and provocative the classics would be if students were asked to study ancient Greece and China, where the contrasts between these two extraordinary and influential cultures are so marked and so revealing, the terrain so relatively unexplored! Yet the power of convention is strong and the perils of comparative Sino-Hellenic studies are many. Its students must learn two very different and challenging languages. And while the contrasts between the two cultures are endlessly thought-provoking, students must be wary, in the enthusiasm of their comparativist endeavors, of making sweeping generalizations about each culture. Geoffrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin have written a stimulating, learned, and important book that, while painting very different and contrasting images of the styles of scientific and medical inquiry in early China and Greece, avoids precisely this kind of cultural stereotyping, this trafficking in vague essences. The book is divided into six chapters: (1) "Aims and Methods," (2) "The Social and Institutional Framework of the Chinese Sciences," (3) "The Social and Institutional Framework of Greek Science," (4) "The Fundamental Issues of Greek Science," (5) "The Fundamental Issues of the Chinese Sciences," and (6 ) "Chinese and Greek Sciences Compared." There is also an appendix on the evolution of Chinese cosmology. The authors focus on investigating what they call the cultural "manifold" in which scientific and medical inquiry was pursued in China and Greece between the years 400 b.c. and a.d. 200. Employing the method established by Geoffrey Lloyd in his earlier pioneering books on comparative Sino Hellenic studies, the authors rightly reject the approach of associating cultures with abstract and mystically bestowed "mentalities." Rather, they describe the social [End Page 422] frameworks and institutions from which the distinctive styles of early Chinese and Greek thought emerged. Lloyd and Sivin make useful distinctions between Chinese and Greek styles of talking about scientific and medical pursuits. The "Chinese norms," they argue, "were identification with a group and aspiration toward an imagined orthodoxy. . . . They were the mirror image of the Hellenic emphasis on a thinker's own ideas even when he belonged nominally to a group" (p. 44). Chinese scholars tended to think "of ideas embodied in teachers" and this "discouraged open disputes with contemporary rivals over concepts" (p. 52). They thought of themselves as participating in lineages (jia) rather than as individual members of competing schools of thought. For Chinese thinkers (with the exception of Zhuangzi, one must observe) "it was not permissible to wander wherever the intellect leads" (p. 65). The Chinese, as opposed to the Greeks, "take exception to people—mostly dead ones—not to disembodied ideas" (ibid.). "The Chinese mirror image of Greek public debate was a tendency to seek agreement and to claim it even when it did not exist" (p. 81). "Compared with their Chinese counterparts, Greek intellectuals were far more often isolated from the seats of political power" (p. 102). The Greeks, in their quest for truth, preferred truth to friendship (p. 118). While the Chinese worked toward consensus and harmony, "the fundamental competitiveness of Greek medical practice is evident" (p. 131 ); in Greece, "the...

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