THE FOURTH-CENTURY B.C. GUODIANN MANUSCRIPTS FROM CHUU AND THE COMPOSITION OF THE LAOTZYY.

• Author: BOLTZ, WILLIAM G.

1. THE GUODIANN TOMB COMPLEX

   THE GUODIANN "TOMB COMPLEX" is one of twenty tomb complexes that have been identified in the area of the Jihshan [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] mountains in Hwubeei province, nine kilometers north of the site of the ancient Chuu capital of Yiing [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], near the modern city of Jingmen [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. It is called "Guodiann" [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] after its specific locale in the Jihshan range. The twenty tomb complexes of this area comprehend hundreds of individual tombs: three hundred or so that are still discernible from their earthenmound forms and perhaps two or three times that many not readily visible because their mounds have become levelled over time. In view of the extensiveness of the tomb complexes in the Jihshan area, their proximity to the Warring States period Chuu capital, and the rich contents found in those that have been entered, it is assumed that most of these tombs are burials of the Chuu ruling families. The particular tomb called Guodiann tomb number one came to the attention of archaeologists only after grave-robbers broke into it sometime in late summer or fall of 1993. Owing to the fact that much of the tomb was flooded with water, the robbers' take seems to have been minimal. Shortly thereafter archaeologists from the Jingmen city museum undertook an official and systematic excavation of the tomb.(1)

   Among the artifacts retrieved from the tomb were significant pottery, bronze, and lacquer-ware items, a wooden seven-string chyn [CHINESE TEXTS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("cithara"), a jade belt hook, and a bronze double-bladed sword. These finds generally reflect styles and designs typical of Warring States-period Chuu material culture. No documents or other objects from the tomb have yet been found that carry explicit dates or precisely datable historical references points, or that name the occupant. But the tomb is very similar in its structure and contents to the Baushan [CHINESE TEXTS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] tomb about two kilometers away, and that tomb contained a document referring to an event dated to 323 B.C. This together with other evidence from the Baushan tomb and its associated complex have allowed archaeologists to establish the Baushan tomb as a dating "benchmark" of about 300 B.C., and this in turn allows the Guodiann tomb to be dated to very nearly the same time.(2) The orthographic evidence of the Guodiann bamboo strips is consistent with this.

2. THE GUODIANN MANUSCRIPTS

   Some eight hundred bamboo strips were found in the tomb.(3) A few of them had no writing and all of them were blackened beyond legibility from having lain in water for two millennia. Once cleaned, those strips with characters were reckoned to number altogether seven hundred thirty. The great majority are either intact and complete or nearly so, and many of the residual fragments have now been reassembled to form complete strips.

   The strips are not uniform in size or shape; they can be separated into three general classes by length and two by shape. By length they divide themselves as: (i) long strips, about 33 cm in length, (ii) medium length strips, 26 to 31 cm long, and (iii) short strips, 15 to 18 cm long; by shape, into two types: (a) those with the tips at both ends cut evenly straight across at a right angle to the lengthwise axis, and (b) those with the corners of the tips cut so as to form a blunt "arrowhead" or slightly tapered shape at both ends. Beyond this, there are two or three cuts or grooves in each strip, presumably to hold cords for binding the strips together.(4) Each strip of long and medium length has two grooves, spaced so as to divide the strip approximately into thirds. The shortest length strips all have three grooves each, top, bottom and middle. The spacing of the characters on the strips shows clearly that the grooves, and therefore presumably the binding, came before any writing; the strips appear, in other words, to have been assembled into multi-strip units before they were written upon.

   When the strips were recovered from the tomb they were all loose and in total disarray. Whatever cords once bound them together had long ago decomposed. The archaeologists and text scholars who first worked with the strips were able to put many of them in order simply by identifying sentences, especially sentences familiar from transmitted counterpart texts, that began on one strip and ended on another and by calligraphic similarities and dissimilarities. It then became apparent that within a given document the length and tip-shape of the strips were uniform and the length of the interstices between the grooves could be expected to be the same. The archaeologists relied on these observations as a basis for their organization of the strips into coherent texts when the content itself was ambiguous or indeterminate.

   The entire Guodiann corpus has been divided by the Chinese editors into thirteen parts, each part constituting either a single text or a group of closely related texts, as follows:

   1. The Laotzyy [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] matches, 71 strips, consisting of three distinct MS documents, A (39 strips), B (18 strips), and C (14 strips);

   2. Tay I sheng shoei [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 14 strips.

      These two parts are the subject of the present paper and will be described and discussed in detail below. The remaining eleven parts consist of the following:

   3. Tzy i[CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 47 strips, each 32.5 cm long, with "arrowhead" tips; matching approximately the text of the Lii jih chapter of the same name, but with a very different order of sections or "paragraphs";

   4. Luu Muh gong wenn Tzyy Syp [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 8 strips, 26.4 cm long, with "arrowhead" tips;

   5. Chyong dar yii shyr [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 15 strips, 26.4 cm long, with "arrowhead" tips.

      The editors say that the strips of numbers 4 and 5 are all uniform in their physical features and that the texts therefore should be considered as going together as a single document. Both of them can be classed generally as "Ruist," that is, as doctrinally associated with the school of Confucius. The former is in the tradition that takes Tzyy Sytzyy [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as the tutor to Luu Muh gong, and the second is an account of how Confucius replied to Tzyy Luh [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] on finding himself in "difficult straits" (kuenn [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) in Chern [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Tsay [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], a story-type that has numerous reflections in Warring States and early Hann period transmitted texts.

   6. Wuu Shyng [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 50 strips, 32.5 cm long, with "arrowhead" tips.

      The wuu shyng of this text are not the so-called "five agents" of Hann correlative thinking, but the Ruist wuu shyng, viz., ren [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], yih [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], lii [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], jyh [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and shenq [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], making this a close affine to the text of the same name included at the end of the Maa wang duei Laotzyy A silk manuscript.

   7. Tarng Yu jy daw [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 29 strips, 28 cm long, flat-headed tips;

   8. Jong shinn jy daw [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 9 strips, 28 cm long, flat-headed tips;

   9. Cherng jy wen jy [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 40 strips, 32.5 cm long, with "arrowhead" tips;

   10. Tzuen der yih [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 39 strips, 32.5 cm long, with "arrowhead" tips;

   11. Shinq tzyh minq chu [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 67 strips, 32.5 cm long, with "arrowhead" tips;

   12. Liow der [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 49 strips, 32.5 cm long, with "arrowhead" tips.

       On the basis of a preliminary inspection it would appear that numbers 9, 10, 11, and 12 might all go together as a single physical document. In addition to the features specified above, all of them show traces of grooves indicating that they were bound with two ties 17.5 cm apart.

   13. Yeu tsorng [CHINESE TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 265 strips, divided into four groups according to strip length and number of ties used for binding: (a) 112 strips, 17 cm long, three ties; (b) 54 strips, 15 cm long, three ties; (c) 72 strips, 17.6-17.7 cm long, three ties; (d) 27 strips, 15 cm long, two ties. These are largely short, discrete passages, often of an aphoristic or didactic style, strung together as collections of "sayings."

       Because the Guodiann strips are manuscript copies of ancient texts of a kind that likely enjoyed some degree of prestige, if not actual reverence, in short a kind that we might call "literature," they seem to have been deliberately and carefully written by skilled scribes. The strips from the nearby Baushan tomb site are by contrast not literature in any sense akin to this, but are rather public and official documents, records of divinatory and ceremonial practices, and grave inventories. This difference is reflected in the relatively more formal, and consequently more legible, appearance of the writing of the Guodiann manuscripts in comparison with the Baushan strips. The characters themselves are written in a stereo-typically Chuu orthography, matching the orthography of the Baushan strips closely.(5) None of the texts originally appeared with a title; the present titles have been devised and added by the editors.

3. THE GUODIANN "LAOTZYY"

   Without doubt those portions of the Guodiann manuscript corpus that have initially been most responsible for attracting widespread attention and interest to this find are the three groups of strips that contain passages matching the traditional, received text of...