Classical Chinese Texts Research Articles

A Survey on Profound Cultural Diversities and Distinguishability of China

Chinese culture is so substantive content-wise, so broad in diversities, and has had so long history, which is so distinguishable from its outsiders. Most significant components of Chinese culture embraces music, literature, martial arts, cuisine, visual arts, philosophy, religion, ceramics and architecture. China’s literature is in black and white in one language for more than 3,000 consecutive years, resulting easy to read those literature by the Chinese nation in all parts of the country, in spite of steady modifications in pronunciation, the advent of regional and local dialects, and alteration of the characters. Confucianism, Taoism and Chinese Buddhism are pillars for compositions of social values. Chinese architecture was bring into being from more than 2,000 years ago, is almost as old as Chinese civilization and has long been a significant hallmark of Chinese culture. Chinese classic texts are enriching the world with a wide range of topics comprising constellations, calendar, astrology, astronomy, poetry and many more. Chinese art encompasses all characteristics of performance art, folk art and fine art. Chinese painting considered a highly esteemed art in court circles incorporating a diverse variation of Shan shui with specialized styles such as Ming Dynasty painting. Drama is an additional old and significant literary form. China has a very antique and rich convention in literature and the dramatic and visual arts like workings of Confucius (551-479 BC) and Lao-tzu (probably 4th century BC). With rich Chinese philosophical, religious, and historical writings, China also produced dramatic writings, novels, and poetry from an ancient. Chinese drama generally combines vernacular language with music and song and as a result it has been widespread and very popular among the general people. In the famous Peking Opera of the present era, a wide range of popular and standard themes are staged, which is undoubtedly the best known of several operatic traditions that developed in China. China is one of the foremost birth places of Eastern martial arts. The arts have also co-existed with a range of weapons comprising the more standard 18 arms. Chinese tea culture is an essential component in daily life of people. China's legendary tradition endures to the present-day, although much 20th-century writing has focused on efforts to improvement or revolutionize or reform China. Under Communism, writers have been anticipated to endorse the values of the socialist state. Regardless of the fact that China has steadily become modernized during the last one hundred years, the naturalistic view of life is still engrained deeply into the Chinese mind of the contemporary era.

МІСТИЧНІ МОТИВИ В КИТАЙСЬКІЙ СЕРЕДНЬОВІЧНІЙ ПРОЗІ

The purpose of the article is to study Chinese medieval mystical novel’s genesis, the main mystic motives in Chinese early medieval short novel, including Taoism and Chinese Buddhism influence. The historical reason’s observation of medieval short novel`s genesis, including the analysis of intellectual world atmosphere in early dark medieval times is also proposed. This thesis systemized different genres of Chinese medieval mystical short novel, influences from sociо-historical process to mystical novel’s genesis. The key attention is focused on Gan Bao “Sao Shenji” and Buddhist short novel’s genesis and main characteristic.Using the methods of historical cross-culture studies and historiographic analysis of classical Chinese texts, such as Bao “Sao Shenji”, Lu Yiqing, Wang Yan and Hou Bo short medieval Buddhist novel (xiaoshuo) the author explores ер specificity of Chinese medieval prose. Chinese medieval prose is analyzed in the context of world history and in the context of Chinese literature genre paradigm history. It has also analyzed the main characteristic of a short mystical novel chronotope, which, according to the author of the article, usually reflects two mains levels of reality: absolute and relative. The article explores the main religious influences on the short medieval novel, especially the influence of the cult of Heaven, Tengranism, Chinese Buddhism and religious Taoism. Chinese medieval mystical novel was a new Chinese literature genre, which included detailed portrait characteristics of the main heroes, pseudohistorical motives and structured symbolic chronotope.It has combined Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist philosophy, high literary style, unpredictable plot and elements of folklore. Short medieval novel had a strong influence on the further development of Chinese literature.

VIDINIS IR IŠORINIS PASAULIAI: DAIKTŲ, MATERIJOS IR PROTO PRIGIMTIS PAGAL GŌNGSŪN LÓNGZǏ

Šiame straipsnyje apžvelgiamas pažinimo naratyvas, pateikiamas nepelnytai mažo dėmesio sulaukusiame klasikiniame kinų filosofijos tekste Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ. Jis lyginamas su kitais tekstas, priskiriamais vadinamajai logikų (míngjiā) minties krypčiai. Gōngsūn Lóngzǐ itin svarbus pažinimo konstravimo procesams senovės Kinijoje suprasti. Pagal šį tekstą, protas turi gebėjimą veikti distinkcijomis. Jis suskaido tikrovę į prasmingus, suvaldomus vienetus ir juos klasifikuoja pagal atitinkamas kategorijas. Straipsnyje parodoma, kad toks gebėjimas yra ne tik būtinas individo pasaulio pažinimui, bet ir pakankamas, kad užtikrintų vienareikšmį vardų ir tikrovės atitikimą.

Reconstructing lacquer technology through Chinese classical texts

Lacquer has a long and ongoing tradition of use in Asia. Known as qi 漆 in China, its use can be traced back to the Neolithic period and it remains in use today. The earliest known Chinese archaeological lacquered object dates to approximately 6000 bce. Many Chinese classical texts and historical documents over the last 8000 years mention lacquer and related information. An extensive investigation of Chinese literature from different time periods was carried out to search for useful information scattered throughout Chinese texts. This article outlines some of the highlights and research challenges.

2015 개정 고등학교 도덕과 교육과정의 동양윤리에 대한 고찰1) - 유교윤리사상의 내용체계와 교수학습방법을 중심으로 -

In this paper, the study focused on the expression of opinions about the contents and teaching & learning methods about Confucian ethics and thoughts, one of the main pillars of the Oriental ethics, which are included in the high school moral education of the 2015 National Revised Curriculum. In “Ethics and Thought,” it is important to deal with the universal values of the Oriental and Western ethical thoughts and to examine the characteristics of the Korean ethical thoughts from a fair and just viewpoint. The major task of “Ethics and Thought” is to excavate the resources of the Korean ethical thoughts and to reinterpret their modern meaning. “Life and Ethics” needs to offer a balanced view about the Eastern Asian values. For instance, Hyo-Je (filial piety and brotherly love) is one of the greatest asset and tradition that has defined the lifestyles of Korean people for thousands of years. If in-depth contents are taught in the high school moral education curriculum, it can be possible to define the modernity of Korean traditional values and establish the identity of the Korean people. In case of “Classics and Ethics,” if ‘The Four Books’ (Chinese classic texts illustrating the core value and belief systems in Confucianism) and the memoirs and books of Korean ancient sages are carefully selected and reconstructed to be adequate to the value relationship expansion method, they can be utilized as the contents of the moral education curriculum. These classics are considered a treasure trove of wisdom which can enrich the lives of the contemporary people and make the world more balanced. If the newly defined Korean classics and Oriental classics are included in “Classics and Ethics”, it can be possible to provide ethical resources which will enrich the lives of high school students. The 2015 Revised National Curriculum has already been announced. Although it can be difficult to modify the overall framework, it is possible to make up for shortcomings before the textbooks are written and supplied to the education field. Through modifications and revisions, it can establish itself as the core curriculum for personality education by name and in effect and, hopefully, it will be accepted as the mandatory subject in all school curriculum levels.

“Bao wei quan” 保位權, Chapter 20 of the Chunqiu fanlu 春秋繁露

This work provides an annotated translation, together with a brief commentary, of the “Bao Wei Quan” chapter, the 20th chapter of the Chunqiu fanlu. The Chunqiu fanlu is an important Chinese Confucian text. It is ascribed to a pivotal Former Han (206 BCE – 9 CE) scholar, an exegete of the Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳, Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (ca. 195–115 BCE). This text offered to readers an ideal of rulership that remained highly relevant to the development of the ethical and political discourse of Chinese Confucianism. Despite its importance, the Chunqiu fanlu has only very recently been fully translated into a Western language,1 and is one of the rare major classical Chinese texts which still lacks a full Japanese translation. Thus, the purpose of this work is to contribute to the ongoing Chunqiu fanlu translation project and to present to the reader some of the form and content of this influential work.

Chinese Medicine Masquerading as Yi: A Case of Chinese Self-Colonisation by Rhonda Chang

130 BOOK REVIEWS Rhonda Chang, Chinese Medicine Masquerading as Yi: A Case of Chinese Self-Colonisation (Bretti, Australia: Maninriver Press, 2015). ISBN: 978-0-9874733-01. B&W illustrations. 272pp. Rhonda Chang has unearthed deep confusion in what is called ‘Chinese medicine’. The confusion stems from the tendency to identify two fundamentally different streams of medicine as Chinese medicine. The first is found in the tradition of Chinese medicine (zhongyi), which she calls yi and which goes back thousands of years. It consists of herbal treatments, acupuncture, qigong, and massage and is underpinned by theories of yinyang, wuzing (five phases), qihua (Qi transformation), and jingluo (meridians). The second is a more recent development, which Chang calls ‘contemporary Chinese medicine’ that takes a biomedical approach to the body, and which is strongly influenced by western medicine. It follows the theoretical construct of bianzheng lunzhi (pattern recognition and treatment determination) and focuses on the five organs rather than on yingyang and wuxing and on categories of disease rather than on bing (imbalance). The confusion is that both of these are called Chinese medicine because they are practised by Chinese doctors, yet they are irreconcilably different in approach. Chang sets out to unravel this confusion and to give an account of how it arose. The account is partly personal. She began her Bachelor of Medicine at the Beijing Chinese Medicine College in 1979 and in 1986 migrated to Australia where she both practised Chinese medicine and pursued postgraduate studies in physiology and public health. The story of her own confusion and then growing awareness of the general confusion of what constitutes Chinese medicine is recounted between the chapters. Her close analysis of the binary nature of Chinese medicine and of its socio-political causes is presented in four chapters. In chapter one, she sets out the principles of yi, namely, yinyang and wuxing. She first argues dialectically against contemporary authors, and then delves deeply into the etymology of yin and yang before explaining the sense in which they are opposites classifying things while also being part of a cycle of change. It is out of this change that wuxing arises. This endless cycle of yinyang transformation is bound into the five phases, which is the foundations of wuxing theory. This wuxing theory explains the cycle of change in yinyang qualities in five periodical stages, and wuxing is the result of yinyang transformation. (p. 35) Chang enters into a rich discussion of the classical Chinese texts Health & History ● 18/2 ● 2016 131 on yin and yang, on meridians (jingluo) and on medicines (yao). This section will be helpful to anyone wishing to grasp the terminology of ancient Chinese medicine. In chapter two, Chang’s analysis of the development of contemporary Chinese medicine begins with the call by Chairman Mao in 1950 to unite yi and western medicine. He further specified that this should be done by those trained in western medicine as they would be able to give proper scientific basis to the practices of yi. The result was a new ‘fundamental law’ or theoretical underpinning of Chinese medicine called bianzheng lunzhi. Chang points out the difficulty of understanding this term, unknown before 1911. Much of the chapter details attempts by different Chinese doctors to formulate the details of a system that would be based on symptoms, syndromes, and western names of diseases rather than on yinyang transformations, even though it used the traditional therapeutic practices such as herbs and acupuncture. ‘The efforts in creating bianzheng lunzhi have the appearance of making it easier for practitioners to treat sicknesses with older methods, but without substantial or even little understanding of the regulation of yinyang transformation’ (p. 84.) Nevertheless, Chang’s point is that Chinese medicine is no longer yi. The second part of the book is more historical and philosophical. In chapter three, Chang documents growing confusion in medical practice in the People’s Republic of China. Medicine in China is necessarily ‘Chinese medicine’ but as the old practitioners of yi have died off and as practitioners of contemporary Chinese medicine, once confronted with a difficult case, have quickly turned to western biomedical methods, the term ‘Chinese medicine’ has become incoherent. At a practical level, patients...

The Etymological Sense of Truth in Early China

This paper aims to explore the understanding and evolution of the concept of ‘truth’ (眞 理) in the earliest stages of Chinese history on the basis of oracle bone script zhen (貞) and the inscriptions zhen (眞). It further aims to prove that zhen (貞) and zhen (眞) are cognate words. ‘Truth’ in English is commonly translated as zhen (眞) in Chinese. However, it is not easy to find an intersection between two notions of ‘truth’ in the early stage of Eastern and Western culture in spite of a great deal of controversies over the notions in sinological studies, since there was almost no cultural exchange between the East and the West before the modern era. After the nineteenth century, with the expansion of the Western power, Westerners attempted to understand the manifold ways of Eastern thought. Thus, many concepts that were dominant in Western thinking were transplanted in many areas of Eastern thinking; the concept of ‘truth’ (眞理) is such a case. The Western concept of ‘truth’ (眞理) pursues correspondence theory, based on the dichotomy of true and false. Based on this idea, many Western scholars still claim that the notion of ‘zhen’ used in Chinese classical texts can not be equated with “truth” used in Europe and Anglo-American dominant philosophy. Therefore, I would like to return to the primitive sense of truth in the oracle bone script, explore the pre-theoretic understanding of truth before concrete forms of knowledge such as Confucianism and Buddhism were introduced, to show the interconnectedness of zhen (眞) and zhen (貞). Traditional interpretations of zhen (眞) can be roughly classified into three types: ‘a Daoist ascetic with miraculous powers’ (神仙)(see Xu Shen, Duan Yucai, et al.); ‘treasure’ (see Tang Lan, Ma Xulun, Zhou Fangfu, He Linyi, etc), and ‘death as unchanging status’ (see Shirakawa). Among these, the first version of zhen has been considered most authentic, because Shuowen Jiezi《說文解字》, the first authoritative dictionary of Chinese characters, defines zhen (眞) as “a Daoist hermit transforming shape and ascending into Heaven ( 僊人變形而登天也)” with Daoist connotations. Such interpretations, though dominent, were based on Xiaoshuan and did not seem to include closer investigations of zhen (貞), the older form of zhen (眞), based on recently unearthed literatures. Though contemporary archaeological studies provide evidence of more ancient origins, it is difficult to extract the original sense from the primitive script of zhen (貞), because it was only used as the name of a place or a person. This paper thus follows several hypotheses: 1. zhen (眞) is cognate with zhen (貞); 2. zhen (貞) in oracle bone script means ‘to ask Heaven questions from signs or omens obtained by burning tortoise shells or animal bones’ and a person in charge of performing a divination rituals’ is known as a diviner(zhenren ‘貞人’); 3. zhen (貞) was specified into zhen (眞); 4. Under the influence of Daoism during the early Han Dynasty, zhen (眞) was defined as ‘a Daoist hermit’ (神仙), and then acquired the meaning of truth after the introduction of Buddhism. The strategies of the paper are as follows: firstly I will analyze zhen (眞) by breaking it into its component characters and trace back its original forms and senses of zhen in oracle bone scripts; secondly, I will examine its usage in the ancient literatures based on phonetic and semantic patterns; finally I will try to place possible coordinates of ‘truth’ among constellations of various meanings of zhen (貞) and zhen (眞).

On Sound: Reconstructing a Zhuangzian Perspective of Music

A devotion to music in Chinese classical texts is worth noticing. Early Chinese thinkers saw music as a significant part of human experience and a core practice for philosophy. While Confucian endorsement of ritual and music has been discussed in the field, Daoist understanding of music was hardly explored. This paper will make a careful reading of the Xiánchí 咸池 music story in the Zhuangzi, one of the most interesting, but least noticed texts, and reconstruct a Zhuangzian perspective from it. While sounds had been regarded as mere building blocks of music and thus depreciated in the hierarchical understanding of music in the mainstream discourse of early China, sound is the alpha and omega of music in the Zhuangzian perspective. All kinds of sounds, both human and natural, are invited into musical discourse. Sound is regarded as the real source of our being moved by music, and therefore, musical consummation is depicted as embodiment through sound.

Towards an ancient Chinese-inspired theory of music education

ABSTRACTIn this philosophical paper, I propose a theory of music education inspired by ancient Chinese philosophy. In particular, I draw on five classical Chinese philosophical texts: the Analects (lunyu 論語), the Mencius (Mengzi 孟子), the Zhuangzi (庄子), the Xunzi (荀子) and the Yue Ji (樂記). Given that music education was an integral part of the social fabric in ancient China, it is potentially illuminating to uncover the theoretical underpinning of this enterprise, and to examine the implications of such a theory for contemporary music education. Based on the texts, I posit an ancient Chinese-inspired theory of music education that comprises four facets: society, teacher-model, effortful training and effortless action. I conclude this paper with implications for contemporary music education.

The Seongho () School's Study of the Ancient Learning () and Its Influence on the Debate about Materia Medica in the Late Joseon Dynasty

This study will determine the ways in which the ancient learning (gu xue, ) scholarship of the Seongho School, and its interest in the materia medica (ben cao xue, ) were related during the late Joseon period. The Seongho School centered its studies mainly on classical Chinese texts of the Han (206 BC－AD 220) and pre-Han (?－221 BC) (xian-qin lianghan, ) periods rather than those of the Tang and Song dynasties (618-1279). gu xue scholarship emerged during the Ming dynasty era (1368 －1644) as an alternative to the scholarly trends of the Song dynasty, which were dependent on Zhu Xi's (, 1130－1200) Neo-Confucianism and its interpretation of Han and pre-Han classical Chinese texts. This scholarly trend influenced Korean and Japanese literature, philosophy, and even medicine from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Focusing on Korean scholarship, we find a great deal of research regarding the influence of gu xue on Korean classical Chinese literature and Confucian philosophy in the late Joseon period; however, no study has examined how this style of scholarship influenced the field of medicine during the same period. This study will investigate how the intellectuals of the Seongho School, who did the most to develop gu xue among Joseon intellectuals, were influenced by this style of scholarship in their study of the materia medica. Jeong Yak-yong (1762－1836), the representative intellectual of the Seongho School, did not focus on complicated metaphysical medical theories, such as the Yin-Yang and Five Elements theory (yin yang wu xing shui, ) or the Five Movements and Six Atmospheres theory (wu yun liu qi shui, ). Instead, his interests lay in the exact diagnoses of diseases and meticulous herbal prescriptions which formed an essential part of the Treatise on Exogenous Febrile Disease (Shang han lun, ) written by Zhang Zhungjing (, 150－219) in the Han dynasty. The Treatise was compatible with the scholarly purpose of gu xue in that they both eschewed metaphysical explanations. The Seongho School's interest in the materia medica stemmed from a desire to improve the delivery and quality of medical practices in rural communities, where metaphysical theories of medicine did not prevail and the cost of medicine was prohibitive.

Structure sensitive complexity for symbol-free sequences

The study proposes our extended method to assess structure complexity for symbol-free sequences, such as literal texts, DNA sequences, rhythm, and musical input. This method is based on L-system and topological entropy for context-free grammar. Inputs are represented as binary trees. Different input features are represented separately within tree structure and actual node contents. Our method infers tree generating grammar and estimates its complexity. This study reviews our previous results on texts and DNA sequences and provides new information regarding them. Also, we show new results measuring complexity of Chinese classical texts and music samples with rhythm and melody components. Our method demonstrates enough sensitivity to extract quasi-regular structured fragments of Chinese texts and to detect irregular styled samples of music inputs. To our knowledge, there is no other method that can detect such quasi-regular patterns.

The Controversial Cases of Hyunt’o(懸吐) in Interpreting Chinese Classic Texts and Commentaries of Collected Commentaries on the Four Books

The Controversial Cases of Hyunt’o(懸吐) in Interpreting Chinese Classic Texts and Commentaries of Collected Commentaries on the Four Books

“Bamboo Hypertext”: Collective Workmanship in Classical Chinese Texts

“Bamboo Hypertext”: Collective Workmanship in Classical Chinese Texts

Engraving Virtue: The Printing History of a Premodern Korean Moral Primer by Young Kyun Oh (review)

Reviewed by: Engraving Virtue: The Printing History of a Premodern Korean Moral Primer by Young Kyun Oh Gregory N. Evon Engraving Virtue: The Printing History of a Premodern Korean Moral Primer. By Young Kyun Oh, Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013, 299pp. The founding of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) marked a transition through which the Korean elite grew critical of their own past, denouncing Buddhism and proclaiming the rightness of the Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi (1130–1200). Oh’s study traces the consequences of this transition through the history of The Illustrated Guide to the Three Relations (Samgang haengsil-to) and its lessons on proper Confucian behavior. Oh’s “Introduction” (1–11) provides a helpful overview and is followed by “Prelude to a Confucian State: Literati, Morality, and Books” (13–54), which examines how Neo-Confucian influence grew through the end of the Koryŏ dynasty (935–1392). Oh makes the point “that the Yuan and Koryŏ literati were sharing concurrent progress [in scholarship]” (53). That progress occurred one century before the event that prompted the compilation of The Illustrated Guide, and it was enabled by the flexibility of the Yuan rulers (see esp. 44–47). But the Koryŏ literati’s unprecedentedly “direct and personal” (53) access to Sinitic scholarship through Yuan policies culminated in inflexible views. The history of The Illustrated Guide is a case in point. “The Conception of the Samgang haengsil-to” (55–126) introduces the event that prompted the compilation of the book: in 1428, the court learned of a patricide. King Sejong (r. 1418–1450) and his court were alarmed. Although the murderer was sentenced to “death by slow slicing” (nŭngji ch’ŏsa), his crime sparked legal debate. Oh illuminates the debate’s legal background, but there was another element lurking in the near historical past. Sejong’s own father, King T’aejong (r. 1400–1418), had violated each of the main laws that Oh cites (57). Sejong had good reason to be unnerved by the patricide, but it also provided an opportunity to underscore his own commitment to Confucian rule. There was also the sticky problem of diplomacy with Ming China (1368–1644), specifically gifts of Chinese Buddhist and Daoist morality books. These gifts were “troublesome” because “the Chosŏn court aspired to become a strong Confucian state and to put an end to the deep-seated Buddhist practices of the past” (73). By Sejong’s reign, that process was underway, but widespread illiteracy was a problem. At the conceptual level, the solution was [End Page 260] simple: prepare the book in such a way that the literate could interpret the classical Chinese text for the illiterate. This “mediated reading” necessitated illustrations to make certain that the listeners understood (125–126). But it was impossible to foresee how the text would be recreated in each instance of mediated reading. Oh’s discussion of Walter Ong and Sheldon Pollock demonstrates the depth of thought underlying his own analysis. We can thus see the outline of a problem: the assumed fluidity of mediated reading for an audience immersed in “orality” (Ong) was in tension with the “literarized” (Pollock) text. “Vernacular Sounds and the Reduced Edition” (127–196) turns to the vernacular version of 1481, enabled by the invention of the Korean alphabetic script in 1444, and the “doctrinal refinement” in the 1490 “excision of the text” (127). Oh suggests that the purpose of using vernacular Korean was “to assist the reader-reciters…in creating the oral text” (128). The overall result was a tightening of what was recounted and how it was to be recounted. In a lucid analysis of “the problem of language in Chosŏn” (140–154), Oh offers one of his many impressive insights in relation to Sejong’s plan to use the vernacular to “rul[e] all of his people directly,” thus bypassing the literati (154). Sejong’s anxieties over the literati were an amplification of the anxieties over mediated reading. Likewise, the excision of the text aimed at moral-ethical coherence and marked a moment when “Chosŏn society began to stipulate its own social memories” (127). The social memories were typically violent or disgusting—notable examples being cutting off...

Retranslating Ibykos and Li Bai: Experimental, Rhizomatic, Multi-Media Transformations

Retranslating Ibykos and Li Bai:Experimental, Rhizomatic, Multi-Media Transformations Adrienne K.H. Rose (bio) Anne Carson’s “A Fragment of Ibykos Translated Six Ways” and the 85 project’s “Common Autumn Song” raise important questions about the retranslation of ancient Classical texts, specifically lyric poetry. Both works are retranslations that challenge the conventionally singular, linear and unidirectional movement of an original “source” towards a translation “target.” Multiple retranslations—translations of a single original text over and over again—offer unique and complementary facets of the original, and highlight the fact that a text is not a closed unit with a single, identifiable, retrievable meaning. Retranslations also reflect the ideological and poetological currents of the time in which they are made. If nineteenth-century English-language translations of Latin poetry rhyme, even though the Latin does not, then what ideological and poetological currents are motivating Carson’s six ways of Ibykos and the 85 project’s versions of Li Bai? Carson retains the structure and rhetorical gestures of the original poem while breaking with the historically conventional poetic diction used in traditional translations of ancient Classical texts. The 85 project relies on unconventional visual layout and deferral techniques that attempt to mimic for the Western reader the experience of reading Classical Chinese poetry. Carson’s Ibykos and the 85’s Li Bai offer challenges to existing translation and retranslation theories. In this paper I examine a contemporary literary phenomenon in which rhizomatic retranslations metabolize the ancient Classical canon through modern poetic experiments. The rhizome (ῥίζωμα) is a “mass of roots,” or a “stem” or “race.” The botanical rhizome is a subterranean root system that grows new auxiliary shoots from its nodes and is capable of generating new plants from its separated parts, like aspen trees or gingerroots. In the hands of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (D&G), the rhizome is an “image of thought” which challenges the arborescent metaphors that pervade Western culture, a culture in which the mind organizes its knowledge of the world in terms of the tree image, where centralized, hierarchical principles—branches—are grounded in foundations—roots (D&G 1980). A retranslation is a second or later translation of a single source text into the same target language (Koskinen & Paloposki 2010b: 294). It is not the first translation of a work in the translating language. Since my paper addresses ancient Greek as well as Classical Chinese literary texts, I include the national designations. When “Classical texts,” “ancient texts,” and “Classical canon” appear without any cardinal or national specification, I mean to refer to both Western and Chinese literary texts traditionally accepted as most representative and influential in shaping later literature and culture. Responding to the “open concept” and “open field” [End Page 83] descriptions of translation and Translation Studies (Tymozcko 1085), I use Deleuze and Guattari’s open system rhizome, a model that challenges the arborescent metaphors that inform western language and thought, as a scheme for reimaging the discourse of Translation Studies with regard to multiple retranslations of Classical texts. I will outline relevant models of Deleuze and Guattari’s project as they apply to Translation Studies and retranslation, show how the rhizome is an appropriate image for retranslation of Classical texts, and propose a rhizomatic model for multiple retranslations illustrated by Anne Carson’s “A Fragment of Ibykos Translated Six Ways” (LRB 2012; Sylph 2013) and Claire Huot and Robert Majzel’s multi-media distillations of Li Bai’s “Common Autumn Song” in the 85 project (www.85bawu.com; Les Figues/Moveable 2013). Existing Translation Studies discourse is rich with dualist models, like source/target, foreign/domestic, alienating/naturalizing, even original/translation, and I will use some of this language, too. These models describe the process of conveying a literary work in one language unidirectionally into another language for the first time, which is the case with much contemporary literature. As other papers in this volume attest, Classical texts thrive on retranslation—that is, translations that are not first translations but second or third, or more likely hundredth—and Classical retranslations flourish on those translations that precede them. In the case of experimental rhizomatic translations, they sometimes even depend on readers’ knowledge of...

Introduction

Introduction Alexander Beecroft (bio) and Michael Gibbs Hill (bio) The “classics,” however we define them, have an even longer and more intensive history of being under siege than the humanities at large. The field first experienced a crisis in enrollment and hiring during the 1970s, and has in a larger sense been on the decline since the gradual retreat of Latin as a medium for intellectual communication beginning in the seventeenth century. In our age of anxiety over rapidly-evolving technology and ever-globalizing capital, it would be easy to think that the “classics” had continued their long slide into irrelevance, and that texts composed two or three thousand years ago, in languages no longer spoken, would have ceased to exert any special kind of pull on intellectual life. The essays in this special issue demonstrate spectacularly how far the reality is from that gloomy hypothetical picture. Our five contributors explore the reception of “classics,” both Chinese and Western, in both China and the West, with a special focus on the past fifty years or so. That era has seen profound changes in how the classics are deployed in both regions, but our contributors show how ancient texts remain profoundly significant to contemporary political and aesthetic questions—in ways both constructive and harmful. In China, the past fifty years encompasses the period since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), an era in which the study of the ancient past, like most forms of scholarly practice, was dangerous, even impossible, to pursue. The time period encompasses also the period of intellectual openness and ferment between 1976 and 1989, as well as the economic and nationalist resurgence of the past two decades. Both Western and Chinese classical texts experienced changing roles throughout this period of transformation, and today debates about these texts (as our contributors show) are frequently touchstones for a variety of questions of urgent relevance: the relationship between modernization and Westernization; the relevance of liberal or democratic values in the Chinese context; the relative importance of enabling economic and social development versus the need for public order. In the West, the study of the classics has been transformed in the past few decades by the turn to reception studies, to an interest in what the classics have meant to centuries of readers, rather than what they may or may not have meant to an imagined and unattainable “original” audience. While the essays in this volume all participate in some [End Page 1] way in this field of reception studies, they take a variety of perspectives on its development: from celebrating the aleatory hermeneutic possibilities opened up by the downplaying of the “original” meaning of a source text to notes of caution about the dangers a too-rigid insistence on reception history as the only history might leave us prey to. These essays, drawn from a conference held February 27-March 1, 2014, and cosponsored by the University of South Carolina and by Beijing Language and Culture University, do not attempt to offer a unitary narrative, or a singular answer to the questions raised by the study of reception. Rather, and as the brief survey below demonstrates, they demonstrate the range and diversity of such answers, while challenging several currently-popular trends in classical reception, east and west. Zhang Longxi’s essay is a thoughtful meditation on, and provocative critique of, the methodology of reception studies as practiced in the study of the “classics,” however construed, in both China and the west. Zhang grounds his analysis in a careful reading of the debts reception studies owe to Hans Robert Jauss, and of the complex relationship between Jauss’ philosophy of literary history and the Gadamerian “fusion of horizons.” Through this theoretical intervention, Zhang argues for a corrective rebalancing of our current focus on reception history and Rezeptionsästhetik, towards a greater appreciation of the Gademerian horizons of the “classic” itself, and on Gadamer’s understanding of the “timelessness” of a classic as a mode of historical being. Like a number of the contributors to this issue, Zhang draws our attention in particular to the work of recent Chinese intellectuals such as Liu Xiaofeng (1956-) and Gan Yang (1952-), and uses...

Korea’s Great Buddhist-Confucian Debate: The Treatises of Chŏng Tojŏn (Sambong) and Hamhŏ Tŭkt’ong (Kihwa) trans. by A. Charles Muller

Reviewed by: Korea’s Great Buddhist-Confucian Debate: The Treatises of Chŏng Tojŏn (Sambong) and Hamhŏ Tŭkt’ong (Kihwa)trans. by A. Charles Muller Uri Kaplan Korea’s Great Buddhist-Confucian Debate: The Treatises of Chŏng Tojŏn (Sambong) and Hamhŏ Tŭkt’ong (Kihwa)translated with an introduction by A. Charles Muller. Korean Classics Library: Philosophy and Religion. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015. 181pp. Religious polemics can open a window into the process of creating (and erasing) boundaries between traditions. Violent polemics have taken such a central role in the imagery of inter-religious encounters in Europe and the Middle East that we often tend to underestimate the diatribes exchanged between the relatively tolerant East Asian traditions. Nevertheless, they certainly do deserve our attention. Charles Muller’s new book puts together translations of three such polemical works from fourteenth and fifteenth-century Korea: two critiques of Buddhism and Taoism by Chŏng Tojŏn (1342 – 1398), who was a major official in the early Chosŏn period and a founding member of the Confucian Academy of Sŏnggyun’gwan, and an apologetic response in defense of Buddhism by the Confucian-scholar-converted-into-Buddhist-monk, Kihwa (1376–1433). Muller, [End Page 273]a veteran translator of Chinese classical texts and the editor of the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, provides us with a smooth, easy to read English rendering of the essays, accompanied by copious notes and a well-rounded introduction. For those interested in a closer look at some of the passages the full Chinese-character texts are conveniently available in the appendixes. The introduction can be largely divided into two sections. The first section offers the essential historical context, locating the essays within the history of the Buddhist-Confucian encounter in China, as well as within the particular Korean political situation at the time. It is the second more theoretical part of the introduction that I found especially appealing. It centers on what Muller sees as the necessary shared infrastructure that provides the common ground allowing the debate in the first place, that is the essence-function ti-yong(K. ch’e-yong) 體用 framework. In an earlier paper Muller has called this the “pivot of metaphysics and hermeneutics” 1of East Asian thought, and here he attempts to tie this mode of reasoning to what Robert Sharf has termed “sympathetic resonance” (Ch. ganying, K. kamŭng感應), in which localized phenomena and the state of the whole always influence and reflect upon each other. 2Muller explains this connection using the metaphor of a perfume—the concentrated essence “is always wholly unified with the most distant permeation of its aroma” (32). To put it plainly, East Asian polemics centered on arguments regarding the question as to which teachings were the essence and which were the function, which were the root and which were merely the branches. Yet, we must remember that even the farthest branches still resonate and are perfumed by the essence of the roots. This becomes quite clear when reading the first translated essay, Chŏng’s On Mind, Material Force, and Principle( Simgiri p’yŏn, 心氣理篇). Its argument is rather straightforward: Buddhists mistake the Mind to be the root and Taoists mistake Material Force ( Qi) to be the root, but these are only the branches and it is actually the (Confucian) Principle ( Li) which is the primal essence that underlies (and perfumes) both Mind and Qi. This is a fascinating short essay, which, although it may misrepresent Buddhism and Taoism at times, generally helps to elucidate the different foci of the three traditions. It goes on to reiterate Zhu Xi’s critique of Buddhists as being overly fearful of death, saying that both [End Page 274]Buddhists and Taoists spend their lives only attempting to escape or delay death, forgetting that justice and humaneness are more important than one’s body. Chŏng’s later essay, An Array of Critiques of Buddhism( Pulssi chappyŏn, 佛氏雜辨), launches a more vehement attack against Buddhism. It states that Buddhist masters are glib, lewd, and tricky, spreading confusion and disputation among the people, and calls for the burning of their books. Such attacks on...

The Semantic Concept of Truth in Pre-Han Chinese Philosophy

In this paper I argue, contrary to Chad Hansen’s view (Hansen 1985), that pre-Han 漢 Chinese philosophy has the semantic concept of truth. Hansen argues that, first, pre-Han Chinese thinkers do not have motivations to introduce the concept of truth in their philosophy due to their peculiar theory of language; second, the concept does not fit well with philosophical texts at that time, and in particular, the Mozi 墨子 text about the three standards of doctrine. However, I argue that Chinese thinkers indeed have reasons to introduce the concept of truth. Hansen’s reading of the three standards of doctrine takes the standards as standards of correct word use, thus attributing to the authors of the Mozi an understanding of yan 言 (“speech” or “doctrine”) as something without complete propositional content. However, I argue, a reading that sees the three standards as standards for something with complete propositional content explains better the passages in which the authors apply the standards to various issues. Finally I argue that the term ran 然 is sometimes used as a truth predicate in classical Chinese texts, because it has several important features identical to that of the truth predicate “is true” in English.

“Fu hao,” “fu hao,” “fuHao,” or “fu Hao”? A Cataloger's Navigation of an Ancient Chinese Woman's Name

Chinese language catalogers’ work is not only challenged by the revolution in cataloging standards and principles, but also by ancient Chinese names that emerged in archaeological discoveries and Chinese classic texts, which create a significant impact on bibliographic description and retrieval in terms of consistency and accuracy. This article takes an example of one ancient Chinese lady's name that is inconsistently romanized and described in OCLC to explore the reasons that cause the name variations and to propose an appropriate authorized access point after consulting both Western and Eastern scholarly practices. This article investigates the evolving history of pre-Qin Chinese names that are not addressed or exemplified in the Library of Congress Romanization Table, and recommends a revision of that Table.