What the Single Bamboo Slip Found in Mawangdui Tomb M2 Tells Us about Text and Ritual in Early China

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Healthy profiles of past populations have attracted attention from the academy for years. Parasitic diseases, though not as severe as plagues or endemics, still function as one proxy to indicate and reconstruct the health conditions of the ancient residents. Moreover, parasitic diseases provide valuable insights into dietary behaviors, daily activities, agricultural practices, hygiene, migrations, and human-environmental interactions, which assists in having a better understanding of past societies. This research project attempts to explore the lives of ancient residents of early China through the lens of parasitic diseases. With the temporal focus on early China, sites dating to pre-Han and Han Dynasties were chosen, covering the Shang to the Han Dynasties (17th Century BCE to 3rd Century AD). Sites in three provinces (Hubei, Shaanxi, and Yunnan) were selected due to the rich and long history of human activities. In total, lab analyses were performed on 199 samples from 15 sites. Parasite remains were found in the soil samples of four sites, respectively the Shang-Zhou Dynastic Yunnan Jinning Gucheng Village site, Hubei Warring-States Chu Wangshan Cemetery, Hubei Gaotai Qin-Han Cemetery, and Shaanxi Han-Dynasty Dapuzi site. The findings are roundworm (Jinning Gucheng Village site and Hubei Wangshan Cemetery), Chinese liver fluke (Hubei Gaotai Qin-Han Cemetery), and possible dog roundworm (Shaanxi Dapuzi site). These findings were indicative of the consumption of undercooked and/or raw meat, the usage of nightsoil, pigpens building next to latrines, poor human waste management, and close interactions with domestic and wild animal resources. With the previous research, a distribution pattern of Chinese liver fluke was retrieved in Hubei. Meanwhile, literature reviews on ancient Chinese records were conducted to reveal the knowledge ancient residents had about parasites. It is indicated that the ancient vii residents were clearly aware of parasites and several consequences and thus proposed treatments and preventions. Besides parasitic diseases, this research project performed macroscopic observations of the human skeletal remains unearthed at the Han-Dynastic site, Dapuzi, Shaanxi. In total, 86 individuals were analyzed, and individual inventories, including sex, estimated age at death, height, and pathologies, were recorded. Among the 86 individuals, four individuals displayed pathological changes that are indicative of ankylosing spondylitis, reactive arthritis, and DISH (diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis). HLA-B27 antigen is argued to be associated with several conditions of spondylarthritis. The follow-up of ancient DNA research is expected. Other than these, one individual was diagnosed with septic arthritis for the infectious manifestations on his left hip joint, with the intrigue of the infection remaining unclear. This provides essential information for us to understand the health conditions of the Dapuzi archaeological population, who seemed to be the tomb keepers of the Han emperors. Overall, this research project broadens the publications of parasites in archaeological contexts in China. With the findings of parasitic infections and cases of joint diseases, this research deepens our understanding of past societies from various perspectives.

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...

Libation ritual and the performance of kingship in early China

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...

The complex interplay between center and periphery has shaped much of Chinese history. The first historical conquest, that of the Zhou (ca. 1045 B.C.), came from the western periphery. These conquerors of the north China plain eventually weakened and were in turn supplanted by an intruder from the west, the Qin (221 B.C.). Later incursions, such as those of the Toba Wei (386 A.D.), the Jurchen (1126), the Mongols (1279), and the Manchus (1644), also pushed in from frontier regions. One reason for this dynamic, as Owen Lattimore explained long ago in his Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1940), was the tendency for Chinese civilization to project outward and put pressure on those living on the periphery. During the long duration of Chinese history, no period of outward expansion was more dramatic than that of the Western Han (206 B.C.–8 A.D.). We must therefore celebrate the publication of the first detailed English-language study of this critical period of Chinese imperialism.

A comparison of ancient parasites as seen from archeological contexts and early medical texts in China

Reviewed by: The Politics of the Past in Early China by Vincent S. Leung Lothar von Falkenhausen The Politics of the Past in Early China. Vincent S. Leung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xii + 202 pp. Hardcover US $100, ISBN 9781108425728; Paperback US $30, ISBN 9781108443241; E-book US $80, ISBN 9781108619196. In his introductory chapter, Leung forcefully dismantles the essentializing notion, pervasive in older Sinological writings, that references to the past in early Chinese texts were overwhelmingly didactic in their motivation. He instead proposes to focus on the “deliberate mobilization of the field of the past as ideological capital toward the construction or deconstruction of various political arguments and ethical ideas” (p. 13). So far, so good, but can anyone come up with a new and truly superior understanding? As one reads on, such initial doubts are quickly dispelled. Chapter by chapter, Leung carefully builds a compelling and, as far as I am able to judge, quite original argument that does justice both to the diversity of the texts and the agency of their authors in their historical and sociopolitical circumstances. The textual loci adduced in support of this new narrative are judiciously chosen and conscientiously translated. Rather than attempting to cover every pertinent text, Leung deliberately restricts himself to a limited range. The result is a slim but intelligent volume that is eminently worth reading. Chapter 1, by far the longest in the book, ranges from the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions to the Confucian Analects and the Mozi. In contradistinction to the protagonists of the Bronze Inscriptions, who dwelled upon their genealogical links to illustrious ancestors in ritual settings, Confucius—in what strikes one as an astonishingly modern gesture—was the first to treat the past as a veritable smørgåsbord of precedents available to all comers, regardless of background, to help them determine their course of action as autonomous moral agents in the present age. The authors of the Mozi, while sharing a similar outlook on the past, flipped Confucius’s vision by treating the past as a series of negative examples illustrating the chaos that would ensue if individuals were to exert their autonomy instead of submitting under the discipline of an orderly régime imposed by a sage ruler. Chapter 2 juxtaposes the Laozi (as represented in the manuscript text excavated at Guodian, Jingmen [Hubei]) and the Mengzi. According to Leung, these two approximately contemporaneous texts both implicitly deny the relevance of any historical reference: the Laozi by initiating a “cosmogonic turn” and tracing the origins of the world way back to a patently mythical female figure; and the Mengzi by insisting that it is only one’s inborn moral nature, rather than any precedent from history, that will determine human action in concrete situations of the present. Chapter 3 treats the attitudes to the past espoused in the writings of the Warring States-period Legalist thinkers and the imperial Qin ideologues. While the former constantly referred to the past as a way of emphasizing that times had changed and historical precedent was useless in dealing with new circumstances, the latter proclaimed [End Page 485] the end of all history. The Qin world order was intended to work like mechanical clock-work, creating a never-varying pattern that accommodated all conceivable situations and events, and that, if successfully imposed, would have removed all need to account for individual cases; in other words, it would have assimilated human life to natural history. In chapter 4, Leung describes how the early Western Han thinkers Jia Yi and Lu Jia reacted to the failure of Qin by reviving, in Jia’s case, a Confucian vision of autonomous agency guided by historical precedents (which now included the failures of the Qin), or anchoring, in Lu’s case, a new view of the world in the study of the Confucian classics, which were now reinterpreted as revealed knowledge transmitted from the sages of the past. Chapter 5 zeroes in on two chapters in the Shi ji that deal with economic issues. Leung juxtaposes the anarchist model of a natural economy that works best without any institutional interference presented in the “Huozhi liezhuan [Biographies of the money-makers]” chapter against...

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.

Bamboo-slip manuscripts from Zhoujiatai tomb 30, Hubei (burial dated ca. 209 b.c.e.), provide important evidence of ancient Chinese occult manuscripts belonging to a man of modest status. One manuscript, identified as a rishu “day book” by the modern editors of the Zhoujiatai manuscripts, treats of hemerology and astrology and is the focus of this study. The bamboo slips of a calendar for years corresponding to 211–210 b.c.e. can be associated with the rishu and may have formed one manuscript unit. The contents of the rishu include two large-size diagrams related to hemerological and astro-calendrical systems. The first diagram involves calculations based on the position of the handle of the Dipper constellation and the second diagram is notable for reference to one of the years (211 b.c.e.) of the associated calendar. A third diagram, for which the title rong liri “rong calendar day [divination]” is written on the manuscript, has a slightly different form in a second occurrence on the manuscript. Both forms of the diagram show thirty lines arranged in a vertical column, corresponding to the thirty days of the ideal month, with some lines enclosed in boxes. Days of the month are counted in the sequence of lines on the diagram in order to determine the lucky and unlucky aspects of a given day. A related hemerological system is attested in a manuscript from Mawangdui tomb 3, Hunan (burial dated 168 b.c.e.), and in medieval occult manuscripts from Dunhuang. 湖北省周家臺30號墓簡(約公元前209年)提供了關於古代中國一名低級官吏所擁有的數術簡的寶貴資料。本文主要研究其中由整理者认定为《日書》的簡文及其涉及的擇日、星象等內容。同墓出土的暦譜(公元前211–210年)與《日書》相關,可能本來屬於同一卷簡冊。《日書》包括兩幅大圖,一個與擇日有關,一個與星象曆法體系有關。第一圖講基於北斗七星斗柄指向的算法,第二圖因爲涉及到暦譜記載公元前211年的內容而受到矚目。另外第三幅圖簡文記述其名曰“戎磿日”,存在兩個稍微不同的版本。兩個版本的圖都是由縱向排列的三十條橫綫構成,代表一个月的理想天数三十,並和周圍的綫條組成方框。按照圖中橫綫的順序判斷每個月中相應的那一天是否吉利。與此相關的擇日法也在湖南馬王堆3號墓(約公元前168年)與中古時期敦煌的數術文獻中出現。

Building on foundations from the cognitive science of religion, this chapter synthesizes theoretical insights and empirical evidence concerning the processes by which cultural evolutionary processes driven by intergroup competition may have shaped the package of beliefs, rituals, practices, and institutions that constitute modern world religions. Five different hypothesized mechanisms are presented through which cultural group selection may have operated to increase the scale of cooperation, expand the sphere of trustworthy interactions, galvanize group solidarity, and sustain group-beneficial beliefs and practices. The mechanisms discussed involve extravagant displays, supernatural monitoring and incentives, ritual practices, fictive kinship, and moral realism. Various lines of supporting evidence are reviewed and archaeological and historical evidence is summarized from early China (roughly 2000 BCE–220 BCE), where prosocial religion and rituals coevolved with societal complexity. Published in the Strungmann Forum Reports Series.

This article is devoted to the theoretical understanding of the concepts of “burial rites” and “funeral and memorial ritualism” in archaeological interpretation. Based on an analysis of the works of domestic and foreign researchers, the main approaches to defining the content, structure, and interrelationship of these concepts are considered, and the terminology related to ritual practices recorded in archaeological materials is clarified. Particular attention is paid to the distinction between different levels and aspects of ritual activity, allowing for a more comprehensive reconstruction of the spiritual and material cultures of ancient societies. Burial complexes and the accompanying ritual practices are important sources of information about the social organisation, ideological attitudes, and symbolic models of the world of ancient communities. Analysis of archaeological data reveals insights into ideas about death and the afterlife, as well as demonstrating the complex interrelationships between ritual practice and the society's worldview. The study employed analytical-comparative and historiographical methods, which made it possible to systematise and compare the existing scientific approaches to the interpretation of funeral and memorial rites. This comprehensive approach enabled the tracing of the evolution of ideas about the structure and content of funeral and memorial rites, as well as the identification of their role in archaeological interpretation. The work aims to clarify the conceptual apparatus and the relationship between “burial rites” and “funeral and memorial ritualism”, as well as to identify their significance for the reconstruction of the ideological and worldview attitudes of ancient societies. The methodological basis of the study provided a systematic approach to analysing concepts and theoretical models, which allows archaeological, ethnographic, and semantic data to be combined into a single interpretative framework. Particular attention is paid to the practical significance of the work: the results of the research can be used to analyse archaeological materials and prepare educational programmes and methodological guides on archaeology and ethnology. In addition, the work emphasizes the importance of an interdisciplinary approach that combines data from various humanities disciplines to achieve a deeper understanding of cultural processes and the transformation of ritual practices in ancient societies. The results of this work open up opportunities for integrating archaeological data with ethnographic and historical-cultural sources, thereby increasing the accuracy of interpreting ritual practices in ancient societies. Thus, the work demonstrates a transition from descriptive approaches to complex models of research into ritual and ceremonial practices and emphasises the relevance of clarifying key concepts in modern archaeology

This essay analyzes the nature of slavery in early China from a comparative sociocultural perspective, using the sociological approach of Orlando Patterson (Slavery and Social Death, 1982). Marxist and other theoretical positions are rejected in favor of viewing slaves not as the object of property, but rather seeing that slaves could not be the subject of property. In other words, slaves are “dominated non-persons.” The focus of the inquiry is on interpreting the diverse materials relating to slaves in the Qin legal documents discovered at Shuihudi, Hunan Province, in 1975. Brief consideration is given to other statuses, such as the convict status of lichen and liqie (male and female bondservants), and whether they should be considered slaves or not. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of analyzing early Chinese slavery within its culturally rich context of ritual and cosmological conceptions and practices.

"The Rise of the Chinese Empire. Volume 1: Nation, State, and Imperialism in Early China, ca. 1600 B.C.-A.D. 8; Volume 2: Frontier, Immigration, and Empire in Han China, 130 B.C.-A.D. 157" published on 01 Jan 2008 by Brill.

The rise of the Chinese Empire: v.1: Nation, state, & imperialism in early China, ca. 1600 B.C. - A.D. 8; v.2: Frontier, immigration, & empire in Han China, 130 B.C - A.D. 157