Text and Ritual in Early China.

• Author: Pines, Yuri
• Position: Book review

Text and Ritual in Early China. Edited by MARTIN KERN. Seattle: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS, 2005. Pp. xxvii + 332, figs., tables. $40.

Publication of Text and Ritual in Early China is an exceptionally important event for scholars of pre-imperial and early imperial Chinese history. First, this is a model post-conference volume, which sets high professional standards for similar collective endeavors. Second, it comprises eight excellent articles written by some of the best scholars in the field, who introduce variety of subjects that have not been heretofore explored by Sinologists. Third, as a collective statement of these scholars, this volume is revealing of academic trends in the study of early China in the West, and may therefore serve as an excellent introduction to new developments in the field.

Scholars are frequently cautious in purchasing conference volumes. All too often these publications comprise a mishmash of studies produced by contributors with distinct academic and disciplinary background, who ignore each other's research, having in common nothing but participation in the meeting that yielded the volume. It is against this background that the achievement of Text and Ritual becomes particularly remarkable. Out of the original twenty-odd presentations at an eponymous conference in October 2000, the editor, Martin Kern, has selected six thematically homogenous papers, while two participants (Michael Nylan and William G. Boltz) supplied--in place of their original papers--two important introductory discussions, to follow the editor's own introduction. The result is a perfectly organized collective study, the contributors to which are engaged in a mutually enriching dialogue about textual and ritual culture of ancient China. Meticulous editing, abundance of Chinese characters and an excellent index--all these turn Text and Ritual into a model volume.

"Text" and "ritual" are two broad topics applicable to almost any imaginable phenomenon in ancient Chinese history; Kern was careful to focus his contributors on a relatively narrow field of texts as ritual entities (perhaps a better title for the volume could have been Text as Ritual in Early China). While scholars are used to observing intrinsic relations between text and ritual in the earliest extant samples of writing in China, such as oracle bones and bronze inscriptions, the contributors here propose deep ritual context for the variety of later texts spanning the Warring States (453-221 B.C.E.) and Han (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.) periods. They operate with such heterogeneous texts as bronze tallies issued by the court of Chu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to local merchants to allow exemption from road tolls (von Falkenhausen), philosophical texts, either recently unearthed or long transmitted (Kern, Csikszentmihalyi), exegetical texts (Kern, Gentz), historical anecdotes (Schaberg), and stele inscriptions (Brashier). The ritual nature of these texts is disclosed through a variety of means, such as analyzing their formulaic language or structure, focusing on the texts' relation to a ritually significant medium, or analyzing the texts' mortuary context. The authors particularly excel in their analysis of the performative aspects involved in creation, transmission, exegesis or presentation of the texts. They often depict the texts as living entities that interact with their transmitter, are memorized or modified, and demand theatrical gestures of the readers. The contributors analyze the significance of citations and intertextuality, and enrich our understanding of different aspects of the texts' authority. Their novel analyses reflect the refreshing impact of newly discovered manuscripts and new approaches...