Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript Xinian and Early Chinese Historiography.

• Author: Foster, Christopher J.

Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript Xinian and Early Chinese Historiography. By YURI PINES. New York: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2020. Pp. 352. $120 (cloth); $30 (paper).

The discovery of the *Xinian [phrase omitted] manuscript, a previously unknown historical text compiled during the Warring States (ca. early fourth century ??) and acquired by Tsinghua University in 2008, not only provides new evidence for the study of pre-imperial Chinese history, but also offers a point of comparison against received works such as the Zuozhuan [phrase omitted] and Shiji [phrase omitted], through which we may examine broader trends in historiography. Yuri Pines, in Zhou History Unearthed, translates the Xinian manuscript, surveys new information it conveys for Zhou-period events, and, through its critical analysis and comparison to other sources, forwards a fascinating vision for how history writing developed in early China. It is an engaging and accessible book, which both introduces important new paleographic data and problematizes our use of foundational received texts, based on which the history of China hitherto has been written.

Zhou History Unearthed is comprised of two parts. The first consists of Pines's analysis of the Xinian and related historical texts, anticipated by his articles in 2014 (chaps. 2 & 4), 2017a (chap. 2), 2018a (chap. 5), and, with Chen Minzhen, 2018 (chap. 4). The second entails his annotated translation of the Xinian. Part one, "Rethinking Early Chinese History Writing," discusses how, during the Spring and Autumn period (770-453 ??), scribes in each major polity prepared court annals for use in ritual communications with ancestral spirits and other states. Yet supplementing these laconic annals was a rich historiographic tradition of scribal records and local histories. Pines's ultimate aspiration is to understand the nature of this now lost corpus by delineating the imprint it left upon later materials, namely the newly discovered Warring States-period (453-221 ??) manuscripts and our received histories. It is a figurative "unearthing" that complements Pines's attention to the literally "unearthed" manuscripts, making the title of his book especially apropos. Thus, Pines draws upon evidence like the use of different calendar conventions to show how the Xinian abridged local histories from Jin and Chu, alongside Western Zhou records, to compile a diplomatic résumé of past geopolitical dynamics (chap. 2). Similarly, Pines finds embedded within the Zuozhuan training materials for scribes learning the "rules of recording" formal court annals (chap. 1); or, with the *Chu ju [phrase omitted], a selective survey of royal residences as a ritual guide for foreigners in service of the state (chap. 3).

Pines argues that, over the course of the Warring States, the dissemination of historical knowledge witnessed an "edifying turn," shifting emphasis away from informative histories and toward historical anecdotes that impart moral lessons or provide entertainment. In an almost Darwinian sense, Pines suggests that precise (read: dry) facts about long-past events and persons gradually became irrelevant, while the "literary embellishments" in local histories (e.g., didactic anecdotes), due to their brevity, adaptability, and allure, proliferated beyond prior scribal caretakers. This is paired by Pines with the dramatic social changes that occurred at the time, when the decline of a hereditary aristocracy and the rise of ski [+ or -] officers led to an interest in individual merit over genealogical associations with ancestral deeds. The loss of informative local histories, whether through neglect or circumstance (e.g., Prince Zhao carrying the Zhou archives off to Chu, or the Qin...