Tracing the Origin and Development of the Black Ink Marks Daubed onto the Upper Edges of Bamboo Slips in Warring States, Qin, and Han Manuscripts: With the Term jiang 江 from Slip 118 of Vol. 5 of the Yuelu Qin Slips Serving as a Guide

Abstract

Abstract The phrase “make wet its upper part” (jiang qi shang 江其上), which appears in the protocol inscribed on slip nos. 117–118 of Accessory Ordinance C no. 4 卒令丙四 in vol. 5 of the Yuelu shuyuan cang Qin jian 岳麓書院藏秦簡 (“Qin Slips Housed at the Yuelu Academy”) as an instruction for the marking of document label slips, should be read as “[inscribe] a plank-mark onto its upper part” (gang qi shang 杠其上). This phrase in the protocol instructs clerks to mark label slips by inscribing a horizontal “plank” mark (heng gang 橫杠) onto the upper part of a rectangular slip (fang 方). The marks that were produced by this clerical custom are the visually conspicuous markers modern scholars describe as “blackened bamboo slip tops” (jian shou tu hei 簡首塗黑) that frequently appear in caches of early Chinese textual materials. However, rather than using the phrase “blackened bamboo slip tops,” it would be more precise to refer to these as “horizontal oblong black ink marks” (mo heng 墨橫) or “black ink plank marks” (mo gang 墨杠).