Early Imperial China Research Articles

Rens Krijgsman: <i>Early Chinese Manuscript Collections: Sayings, Memory, Verse, and Knowledge. Studies in the History of Chinese Texts</i>

The book under review is a study of manuscript texts from Warring States and early imperial China (approximately the 5th to 2nd centuries BCE); its specific topic is “manuscript collections,” that is, “single manuscripts containing multiple (originally) distinct texts”. In this book, Rens Krijgsman explores what happened when multiple texts came to be combined on the same material carrier: How were texts selected, organized, and integrated into individual collections? What relationships obtained among these different texts? And how did collections affect reception, including interpretation and perceptions of genre? Cautious not to overstep the evidence, Krijgsman acknowledges that certain basic information about production and use of early manuscript collections is wanting: we do not (and cannot) know who collected the texts and produced the manuscripts, nor can we know who used collections. Wielding impressive command of the technical aspects of early manuscripts and of a broad range of texts, he seeks to extract as much information as possible through a careful yet comprehensive analysis of the material aspects of manuscript collections, their content, and their organization.

Adultery Law and State Power in Early Empires: China and Rome Compared

Abstract As ancient China and Rome transformed into empires, both states showed an increasing interest in regulating family ethics and individuals’ sexuality. Using excavated documents and transmitted texts, this article compares legal statutes and practices against illicit consensual sex in early imperial China (221 BCE–220 CE) with those in the Roman empire. On the one hand, both legal systems aimed at consolidating social hierarchies based on gender, status, and generation. On the other, the Roman and Chinese statutes had different emphases due to their respective political, social, and cultural contexts, and the actual penalties for adultery and incest differed significantly from those prescribed in the statutes. In both empires, control over individuals’ sexuality facilitated state power’s penetration into the family during empire-building, giving rise to laws in areas that had been largely left to customs and individual will.

Leftover peaches: Female homoeroticism during the Western Han dynasty1

Female homoeroticism in early imperial China has received minimal scholarly attention. This article purposes to investigate lesbianism in the Western Han dynasty, taking into consideration both the literary and archaeological material. I first offer a succinct rundown of the ancient terminology of male homosexuality, principally in an effort to underline the classical Chinese language’s absence of a precise vocabulary to describe lesbian attachments. Next, I turn to the transmitted textual sources, analysing the two extant records of love between women in order to gauge something of the nature and permissibility of female homoerotic relationships. The final section of this essay is dedicated to mortuary objects, namely the moulded bronze phalli and other sexual training tools disentombed from Western Han gravesites. When properly contextualised, the excavated dildos can be interpreted as having been used by concubines, both within same-sex partnerships and in the course of pornographic displays staged for their master’s enjoyment.

Excreted and Left Untreated? Human and Animal Waste: from Dunhuang to Laozi

Abstract Texts from pre-imperial and early imperial China are replete with dietary information, regimens for nourishing the body and instructions on how not to soil its inner purity. Sources have far less to say about the body’s effluvia and the waste and muck that is shed and excreted by human and non-human animals. This article studies references to excreta and excretion in early China. It shows how human and animal faeces as well as the locus of excretion connoted both negative and positive spheres. Excreta were deemed noxious yet also beneficial, they were to be discarded yet also reused. Latrines were liminal zones, operating at the intersection of social propriety and physical and moral rejection. The process of excretion made the body vulnerable to external influences such as demonic illness, yet faecal matter of itself also had medicinal healing powers. In agriculture, matter exuded was matter used to fecundate and fertilize crops. The waste and human nightsoil that accumulated in the concealed domestic space of the latrine and pigpen ended up as sought-after produce infusing life into seeds, fields, and public productivity. By bringing together evidence across a range of textual and material sources – from latrines, to pigs, to a line in the Laozi 老子 and its commentaries – this article traces excretory experience and matter through its cycle from defecation to regeneration.

Astral Science in Early Imperial China: Observation, Sagehood, and the Individual, Written by Daniel Patrick Morgan

Astral Science in Early Imperial China: Observation, Sagehood, and the Individual, Written by Daniel Patrick Morgan

HOW DO EXCAVATED MANUSCRIPTS AND TRANSMITTED CANONS AND COMMENTARIES SHED LIGHT ON EACH OTHER? AN OUTLOOK FROM MATHEMATICS

AbstractBefore the mathematical manuscript titled Writings on Mathematical Procedures (Suanshu shu 筭數書) was found at Zhangjiashan, historians of mathematics could trace mathematics in early imperial China only on the basis of the received canonical literature, notably The Nine Chapters on Mathematical Procedures (Jiuzhang suanshu 九章算術). After the Zhangjiashan and other mathematical manuscripts were found, they were mainly compared with The Nine Chapters, in the belief that these were all early imperial mathematical works and therefore adequate objects of comparison. As such, The Nine Chapters was transmitted with layers of commentaries and subcommentaries. This article argues that Writings on Mathematical Procedures presents important parallels with the commentarial literature on The Nine Chapters. This sheds light on how such exegeses were composed. The article further demonstrates that examination of these commentaries and subcommentaries allows us to perceive parallels between Writings on Mathematical Procedures and The Nine Chapters that to date have not been considered.

Multidisciplinary lines of evidence reveal East/Northeast Asian origins of agriculturalist/pastoralist residents at a Han dynasty military outpost in ancient Xinjiang

Han/non-Han interactions were engrained among the border regions of ancient Imperial China. Yet, little is known about either the genetic origins or the lifeways of these border peoples. Our study applies tools from ancient deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and stable isotope analysis to the study of a Han dynasty population at the Shichengzi site in modern-day Xinjiang. Isotopic analysis (δ13C and δ15N) of human (n = 8), animal (n = 26), and crop remains (n = 23) from Shichengzi indicated that dietary patterns among site inhabitants could be split among agro-pastoral and agricultural groups based on differences in the collagen 15N ratios. DNA analysis divided the four Shichengzi samples into two groups, with one group primarily harboring the ancient Northeast Asian (ANA) related ancestry, while the other showed a dominant Late Neolithic Yellow River (YR_LN) related ancestry. Both ancient DNA and stable isotope evidence point to the Northeast Asian origins of pastoralists and East Asian origins of Han agriculturalists, who, nonetheless, shared a single burial space at Shichengzi. This study thus provides clear evidence for the multiple origins and identities of populations across the porous border represented by the Han Empire and surrounding regions and proposes a new model for the interpretation of border culture in early Imperial China.

Small scale water control works in Early Imperial China

Small scale water control works in Early Imperial China

The Millet of the Matter: Archeobotanical Evidence for Farming Strategies of Western Han Dynasty Core Area Inhabitants.

Despite decades of investigation, consensus has yet to be reached on when and where wheat replaced millet as the primary crop in the core regions of early Imperial China. Previous studies have suggested that wheat cultivation likely became widespread prior to or during the Han Dynasty (202 BC–AD 220). Here, we tested this hypothesis by applying archeobotanical tools to plant remains found in five pottery model granaries (cang) entombed in a newly excavated late Western Han burial at the Longzaocun cemetery in the Guanzhong Basin. This analysis allowed us to explore the extent of wheat expansion and agricultural strategies in the heartland of early dynastic China. Macro- and micro-botanical evidence shows that the Longzaocun residents consumed two kinds of crops: foxtail and common millet. Combining these findings with previous studies, we argue that millet-based multi-crop farming dominated the regional agricultural system during the Western Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 8) and analyze the political and cultural motivations for the Han people’s usage on millet crops from the burial concepts and fiscal systems. Echoing previous studies, we argue that millets remained the most valuable subsistence food for inhabitants of the Loess Basins in the Han core, and that wheat was not cultivated on a large scale in this area during the Western Han Dynasty.

Horses in Qin mortuary practice: new insights from Emperor Qin Shihuang's mausoleum

The horse played a crucial role in China through the first millennium BC, used both for military advantage and, through incorporation into elite burials, to express social status. Details of how horses were integrated into mortuary contexts during the Qin Empire, however, are poorly understood. Here, the authors present new zooarchaeological data for 24 horses from an accessory pit in Qin Shihuang's mausoleum, indicating that the horses chosen were tall, adult males. These findings provide insights into the selection criteria for animals to be included in the emperor's tomb and invite consideration of questions concerning horse breeds, husbandry practices, and the military and symbolic importance of horses in early imperial China.

Lightening bonds: servile resistance in early imperial China

ABSTRACT Resistance to enslavement is a well-known phenomenon, attested to the vast majority of historical societies in which slaveholding was prevalent. Despite this, servile resistance in early imperial China (i.e. the Qin, Western, and Eastern Han dynasties) has received little attention. This article first contextualizes private slavery in the wider milieu of unfree labor, before proceeding to offer a concise rundown of the maltreatment and objectification of bonded persons. With the necessary groundwork laid, the present study then moves to establish an initial taxonomy of resistive behaviors as observable in the ancient literary and legal source material. From everyday acts of work avoidance and theft, to the extremes of abscondence, suicide, and murder, enslaved men and women deployed a range of subversive tactics. As will be demonstrated, such exhibitions of servile defiance moved to challenge the authority of the master class and, in doing so, lighten the bonds of slavery.

Paul Fahr. Remonstration als Institution. Ein Beitrag zum Herrschaftsverstandnis im frühen chinesischen Kaiserreich (Remonstration as an Institution. A Contribution to the Concept of Rulership in Early Imperial China). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2021. 339 pp. ISBN-10 3447115815, ISBN-13 9783447115810.

Paul Fahr. Remonstration als Institution. Ein Beitrag zum Herrschaftsverst ändnis im frühen chinesischen Kaiserreich (Remonstration as an Institution. A Contribution to the Concept of Rulership in Early Imperial China). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, .  pp. ISBN- , ISBN- . The book under review here is the published version of a Ph.D. dissertation submitted at the University of Münster in . It is the first book-length study of the institution of remonstration in early imperial China, and it deserves attention because of the thorough research it provides. After a brief introduction, Fahr begins with a chapter on the theory and concept of institutions both in Western social sciences and in ancient Chinese terminology. As far as the latter is concerned, he discusses such terms as fadu 法度, zhidu 制度, guoti 國體, or jiuzhang 舊章 in order to show that ancient China had, indeed, several concepts at its disposal that are similar to the modern Western term “institution.” Fahr also understand the famous compound yi jia 一家 as an institutional term, following Gan Huaizhen’s idea that guojia actually means “the family that rules the state.” I have to confess that in this case I remain somewhat skeptical. To me, it still makes more sense to understand this compound as “the families (or family) of the capital,” because first there are also guoren 國人 who certainly do not belong to just one family, and second, branches of the ruling family usually had their bases in other cities. In this chapter, Fahr also shows that we should not understand documents (which he calls “Inserate” = insertions) contained in Chinese standard histories as direct quotations from original texts. In this he follows observations that have been made by two other young German scholars recently, namely, Kathrin Messing in her dissertation on the Sanguo zhi and Sebastian Eicher in his work on the Hou Han shu. The third chapter of Remonstration as an Institution is devoted to the word “to remonstrate” (jian 諫), and to the practice of remonstration as a sign of a close bond that existed between ruler and minister. Fahr shows that the office of remonstration officials was, indeed, already established in early Han times. Chapter  deals with official historiography as a historiography of institutions. It starts with “precedents” (gushi 故事) in pre-Han times and proceeds then to a discussion of the major historians of Han times in a chronological sequence, beginning with Sima Tan and Sima Qian and ending with Xun Yue. Fahr Review©  by University of Hawai‘i Press understands Shiji and Hanshu as compilations of precedents for the future, an idea that, of course, can be traced back to the Gongyang zhuan and that is somewhat related to the Latin concept of historia magistra vitae. Fahr agrees with what this reviewer said in the introduction to his work on Shiji and Hanshu, namely, that the title of Hanshu is an expression of Ban Gu’s hope to continue the tradition of the Shang shu. Chapter  focuses on institutions and their preservation through remonstration. Here, Fahr gives examples of remonstrations from three different periods, namely, the Qin dynasty (Li Si is quoted), the reign of Han Wendi, and finally the famous episode when Liu He, the King of Changyi whose tomb has been opened recently (the Haihun hou tomb), was removed from the throne after only twenty-seven days. Fahr also shows in this chapter how important the role was that remonstration played in the education of the young heirs to the throne. The sixth and last chapter before the conclusion somehow looks like what could have been the starting point of the dissertation. Here, Fahr uses the example of chapter  of the Hanshu to demonstrate how remonstration was actually practiced by Liu Xiang. Somewhat similar to Sebastian Eicher’s work on the Hou Han shu, he explains that the “traditions” (zhuan 傳) of the five different persons dealt with in Hanshu  should actually better be understood as episodes, not as “biographies” as the term is conventially translated. This is certainly correct. This reader wonders, however, whether it is really wise to dispense with the term biography for ancient Chinese history. Chinese zhuan may not attempt to do the same what Roman authors such as Plutarch...

Glittering Bodies: The Politics of Mortuary Self-Fashioning in Eurasian Nomadic Cultures (700 BCE-200 BCE)

Non-sedentary cultures have existed on the scholarly fringes and historiographical outskirts of the art-historical canon: there they remain to this day, buried between dated opposites like “east” and “west,” “high” and “minor” arts, torn by interdisciplinary tensions in art history, archaeology and ethnography. Nomadic societies are usually considered in cross-cultural studies only insofar as they can act as sufficiently expedient intermediaries linking settled empires in the designated “East” and “West,” hence the recent fascination with the Pontic Scythians who bordered, traded and fought with ancient Greece, or the Xiongnu whose nomadic confederation became a geopolitical threat to early imperial China. Yet, early pastoral nomads bordering China and Greece left behind a rich corpus of gold adornment which points to an elaborate system of image-making and highly conceptual designs rooted in zoomorphism. The following article focuses on the strategies of self-fashioning and funerary decor employed in the entombment of the elite in the early nomadic societies of Central Eurasia. Golden suits, composed of metonymically conveyed animal images, along with foreign exotica, were the normative elements of a noble’s funeral. Adornment had to showcase the elite’s life on earth as that of a daring, globally recognized politician and a proud steppe resident.

Aesthetic of Brightness in Han Mirror Inscriptions


 
 
 This article analyzes inscriptions cast on bronze mirrors of the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) to trace how the material property of brightness became emphatically aestheticized through an expressive rhetoric of radiance and brilliance, illumination and reflection. It argues that specular brightness as a defining feature of Han mirrors was exploited by artisans to attract potential buyers . In contrast to erudite philosophers who exclusively used the logograph ming 明 to modify the literary mirror in classical texts, artisans promoted their products by featuring terms such as guang 光, zhao 昭, hui 輝, yao 耀, qing 清, and jiao 皎 in rhythmic proses of various lengths . Examining how artisans advertised their high-tin bronzes as embodiments of solar and lunar light, the study shows that specular brilliance was linked to a range of cosmetic, moral, and religious powers, from illuminating the individual and the physical world to revealing the invisible world, whether of human emotions or demons . The article further argues that the inscribed verses, while often formulaic and clichéd, were neither mere decorations nor generic blessings . In fact, they meaningfully structured and communicated a particular aesthetic appreciation shared by both Han artisans and users . This well-developed semantic fascination with specular brightness thus marks these metal discs as a distinctive genre of the decorative arts in early imperial China .
 
 

Not by Valor or Victory Alone: Religious Agency in the Apotheosis of the Chinese Warrior Hero

In the civilizations of the classical West, as exemplified foremost by that of Greece, as well as in that of early imperial China, the idea that humans who excelled exceptionally in war could merit deification was an abiding operative assumption. Given this premise, unsurprising then is the fact that such individuals should be found to have exhibited certain defining traits in common, including exceptional bravery and skill in leadership as well as—at least up until the point of their own deaths—an outstanding record of battlefield success. In addition, whether in Greece or in China, we find that the elevation of the exemplary warrior to the status of a god occurred under religious auspices, or was abetted by a belief structure that at least exhibited many of the core customary functions of a conventional religion. However, if we must regard the normative Chinese paradigm of martial divinization as having consistently departed in conception from its counterpart in the West, then surely the determinative difference is the premium placed on the Chinese demonstration of loyalty. In China, inasmuch as there were credentials for deification, the individual warrior’s unfailing subscription to the virtue of loyalty seems to have superseded all else, and the pathway to immortality as a god was forever obstructed without it.

Law, State and Society in Early Imperial China: A Study with Critical Edition and Translation of the Legal Texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb no. 24, written by Anthony J. Bar­bieri-Low and Robin D.S. Yates, 2015

Law, State and Society in Early Imperial China: A Study with Critical Edition and Translation of the Legal Texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb no. 24, written by Anthony J. Bar­bieri-Low and Robin D.S. Yates, 2015

Portents in Early Imperial China: Observational Patterns from the “Spring and Autumn” Weft Profoundly Immersed Herptile (Qiantan ba 潛潭巴)

Abstract Still neglected by modern research, the “Weft” (or “Apocrypha”) contain a wealth of unexploited data relevant to Chinese history in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Sometimes ascribed to Confucius, these texts, whose Chinese name (wei 緯) denotes the crosswise threads of woven fabric, have long been perceived as arcane supplements to the “Classics,” called jing 經, the lengthwise threads. Repeatedly prohibited and destroyed, they survive mainly as citations today. This paper focuses on one of them, anonymous, undated, and fragmentary, titled Qiantan ba 潛潭巴. Most of its remnants present extrapolations derived from observed phenomena interpreted as signs. By comparing the observed patterns to the typology of portents in the official monographs on celestial phenomena and the Five Agents of the era, the paper sheds light on the logic at work in the interpretative process.

Reflections on Visual and Material Sources for the History of the Exact Sciences in Early Imperial China.

This article takes stock of the seeming wealth of visual and material sources concerning stars and numbers that has come down to us from early imperial China (221 BCE-755CE) and their minimal impact on how we write the history of astronomy and mathematics in this period. My goal is to offer ideas about how we might better engage with these sources and work across ancient and modern disciplines. Ibegin by outlining the conceptual categories into which our historical subjects divided these sciences, followed by an overview of those visual and material sources we know from textual sources to have once existed versus those that are currently extant. The historiographic disconnect, Iargue, is due in part to an inherent disconnect in the sources that have survived and, in some degree, to terminological and categorical confusion between those working in the history of science, divination, and art. Pointing to what are, in my opinion, good examples of how we might move forward and beyond the limits imposed by our sources and disciplinary boundaries, Ithen end on alist of questions Ithink fruitful to explore. What, for example, do we mean by "accuracy" when speaking of how constellations are represented in technical literature and tomb murals?

WOMEN'S ROLE IN THE PRODUCTION AND SALE OF ALCOHOL IN HAN CHINA AS REFLECTED IN TOMB ART FROM SICHUAN

AbstractPictorial brick tiles and stone carvings from the Eastern Han period show women engaged in the production of alcohol, and early histories and literary sources provide an insight into women's role in brewing, drinking, and selling alcohol in shops and in the market. Preparation of alcohol for ritual ceremonies, banquets, and daily consumption is listed among the many household duties for which women were responsible. It was women's work (nüshi 女事), as was the production of textiles, which assigned women with an economic role but also gave them a moral identity in the social sphere. However, women's mastery of brewing—mentioned but rarely elaborated—upon, did not connote feminine virtues in the same way as weaving. Through a close examination of artistic representations that show women engaged in the making of alcohol on the estate and in a workshop setting in the southwest (present-day Sichuan province), this article aims to examine the role women played in alcohol production and their contribution to the economy of both their household and the region in early Imperial China.

Astral Sciences in Early Imperial China: Observation, Sagehood and the Individual by Daniel Patrick Morgan

Reviewed by: Astral Sciences in Early Imperial China: Observation, Sagehood and the Individual by Daniel Patrick Morgan Nathan Sivin Astral Sciences in Early Imperial China: Observation, Sagehood and the Individual by Daniel Patrick Morgan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xii + 257. $105.00 cloth, $84.00 e-book. This book packs quite a wallop. As the author puts it, “the subject of this book is not ‘empiricism’, ‘progress’ or ‘science’ but the legend that these and similar ideas have inspired. The question as concerns legend, the history of religion should teach us, is not whether it is true, but how it is told, how it is acted upon, and how it is reimagined, renegotiated and [End Page 549] repeated” (p. 220). Morgan uses the word “legend” in a sense introduced by Philip Kitcher, a philosopher of science and other topics.1 By “Legend” (with a capital “L”), Kitcher means the convictions with which “successive generations of scientists have filled in more and more parts of the COMPLETE TRUE STORY OF THE WORLD” (emphasis in original, p. 3). Morgan sees its utility for other times and for places beyond Europe and America. The result is a book that analyzes old and new sources in a refreshing way to yield a rich crop of insights. Morgan writes, “it is only when we let go of modern assumptions about ethics, power, gender, reason, and daily tasks that the grunt work of textual and terrestrial archaeology can reveal something of the other beyond the [investigator’s] self” (p. 6). And “[we] must disabuse ourselves of... the very notion of a transhistorical entity called ‘Chinese astronomy’ [and] work instead to substantiate the textual, mythical, conceptual, historical, institutional, social and epistemological framework within which a given community is performing a given activity, and we should do so century by century as we move. The point . . . is not, then, to answer questions about ‘what the Chinese thought’ about heaven; it is to . . . watch what plays out as conflicting elements collide” (p. 49). Morgan pulls off a convincing first approximation to the goal of letting go of modern assumptions and gives many examples of how to work toward it. He has read everything worth reading in European and Asian languages, and he draws on important recent findings. A few of Morgan’s strikingly phrased insights include “‘Heavenly patterns’ are more than just patterns in space (constellations) and time (periodicities); they are the very germ and blueprint of civilisation” (p. 15); “Sagecraft is a joint endeavour, and it is li [曆, calendar] men [that is, practitioners of mathematical astronomy] like Cai [Yong 蔡邕 (33–192)] and Liu [Hong 劉洪 (fl. 167–206)]—Cai and Liu remind us—to whom the burden of sagesse [Fr., wisdom] falls. It is they who apprehend the substance, principle, past and future of the cosmos, and it is they who shall usher mankind into peace and prosperity by this knowledge. All that is required of the emperor is the silence and fixity of a distant star” (emphases in original, p. 19); and “[astronomical] reform [End Page 550] history tends to lodge with the emperor more historical agency than those authoring and executing the policies that he approves, thus placing the cart before the horse” (p. 31). The book argues that, despite the narrative of an astronomy unified by its imperial origin, which has been the norm in ancient and modern times, astronomy is actually a saga of discontinuities and conflicts over the centuries. In addition to its normal duty of preparing and distributing the annual almanac, the Grand Clerk’s office dealt with proposals for change. Proposals that claimed superior methods were deliberated upon by the Three Excellencies (Sangong 三公) or in a “public” debate open to a variety of officials (p. 41). The fate of the proposal was then “settled by popular vote” (p. 139). The debates could be quite technical, but experts on astronomy were widely scattered through the bureaucracy. (Less than a third of named officials who took part in such debates between 206 BCE and 420 CE belonged to the Grand Clerk’s office.) Credibility depended on “an idiom of myth, values, etiquette and cultural tradition that marked [experts] as members of the...