In recent years, three ancient manuscripts relating to the Yi jing (I Ching), or Classic of Changes, have been discovered. The earliest―the Shanghai Museum Zhou Yi―dates to about 300 B.C.E. and shows evidence of the text's original circulation. The Guicang, or Returning to Be Stored, reflects another ancient Chinese divination tradition based on hexagrams similar to those of the Yi jing. In 1993, two manuscripts were found in a third-century B.C.E. tomb at Wangjiatai that contain almost exact parallels to the Guicang's early quotations, supplying new information on the performance of early Chinese divination. Finally, the Fuyang Zhou Yi was excavated from the tomb of Xia Hou Zao, lord of Ruyin, who died in 165 B.C.E. Each line of this classic is followed by one or more generic prognostications similar to phrases found in the Yi jing, indicating exciting new ways the text was produced and used in the interpretation of divinations. Unearthing the Changes details the discovery and significance of the Shanghai Museum Zhou Yi, the Wangjiatai Guicang, and the Fuyang Zhou Yi, including full translations of the texts and additional evidence constructing a new narrative of the Yi jing's writing and transmission in the first millennium B.C.E. An introduction situates the role of archaeology in the modern attempt to understand the Classic of Changes. By showing how the text emerged out of a popular tradition of divination, these newly unearthed manuscripts reveal an important religious dimension to its evolution.

Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yi Jing (I Ching) and Related Texts (Translations from the Asian Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Shaughnessy, Edward

History & Criticism

Columbia University Press

Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yi Jing (I Ching) and Related Texts

The I Ching (The Classic of Changes) is one of the seminal texts of Chinese culture, comparable to the Bible or the Upanishads, and readers everywhere have turned to the hexagrams, line statements, and commentaries for guidance on every imaginable life situation. Thus it was a momentous event when a significantly different I Ching text was unearthed in Mawangdui, China, in 1973--a manuscript buried for more than two thousand years. Now translated into English for the first time by one of the West's leading scholars of the I Ching, the Mawangdui Texts bring welcome clarity, accessibility, and novelty to this beloved classic. In addition, the Mawangdui version contains five new commentaries that had been lost for more than two thousand years, including the surprising discovery of a commentary that quotes Confucius extensively on how he had come to change his earlier, negative, views about the importance of the I Ching. The lucid purity of this translation make this volume a work of timeless artistry, one that is surprising, illuminating, and welcome to even the most educated I Ching reader.

I Ching (Classics of Ancient China)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Ballantine Books

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of documents of all sorts have been unearthed in China, opening whole new fields of study and transforming our modern understanding of ancient China. While these discoveries have necessarily taken place in China, Western scholars have also contributed to the study of these documents throughout this entire period. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of these Western scholars to the field of Chinese paleography, and especially to study of oracle-bone inscriptions, bronze and stone inscriptions, and manuscripts written on bamboo and silk. Each of these topics is provided with a comprehensive narrative history of studies by Western scholars, as well as an exhaustive bibliography and biographies of important scholars in the field. It is also supplied with a list of Chinese translations of these studies, as well as a complete index of authors and their works. Whether the reader is interested in the history of ancient China, ancient Chinese paleographic documents, or just in the history of the study of China as it has developed in the West, this book provides one of the most complete accounts available to date.

Chinese Annals in the Western Observatory: An Outline of Western Studies of Chinese Unearthed Documents (Library of Sinology [LOS], 4)

History

Asia

De Gruyter Mouton

Recent excavations of bronze artifacts from the Western Zhou dynasty (1046–771 B.C.) provide the focus for this collection of essays, which analyze the nature and patterns of lineages emerging from the tombs of ancient lords of states and historically significant individuals located throughout China, including Beijing, Shandong, Shanxi, and Gansu. The editor and his nine contributors provide detailed textual analyses of the inscriptions found on excavated bronze vessels. Their essays offer careful reconstructions of the genealogies, kinship structures, political identities, and relationship networks of leading court figures from Bronze-Age China. This rich scholarship makes important contributions to ancient Chinese archaeology by bringing to light archaeological evidence in support of new discoveries related to the chronology, warfare, and legal structure of the different realms that existed during the Western Zhou period.

Imprints of Kinship: Studies of Recently Discovered Bronze Inscriptions from Ancient China (Institute of Chinese Studies the Chinese University of Hong Kong Monographs)

Ancient Civilizations

The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press

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Books by Shaughnessy, Edward