The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May 1998 (review)

In 1993 a discovery was made that counts as one of the most important new finds for the study of early China to have taken place within this past century: in a Warring States-period Chu tomb, datable to roughly 300 B.C., in the town of Guodian Jingmen Hubei Province was a cache of more than eight hundred bamboo strips containing the earliest known versions of the Laozi (Daodejing) (or, more accurately, three separate texts corresponding in total to roughly one-third of the received Laozi) and the Confucian essay "Zi yi" ("Black Robe," hitherto known as a chapter of the Li Ji), as well as a cosmogonic text titled "Taiyi shengshui" and a number of early Confucian writings with no received counterparts. Immediately following the publication of these strips (Guodian Chumu zhujian) by Wenwu Press in the spring of 1998, an international conference attended by a number of scholars from the United States, mainland China, and elsewhere was held at Dartmouth College in May of that year—focusing primarily on the Guodian Laozi and "Taiyi sheng-shui" texts, but giving some attention to the Confucian texts as well—in which the thorny issues and exciting possibilities raised by this new corpus of materials were first discussed. This finely edited book is the product and official record of that conference.

The volume is divided into four sections. The first consists of English versions of revised background papers selected from presentations delivered by scholars at the conference, or, in two cases, papers that were added subsequent to the conference. These papers are on a variety of topics and methodological issues ranging from Chu archaeology (Li Boqian ); excavation work on the tomb itself (Liu Zuxin ) and post-excavation work on the bamboo texts specifically (Peng Hao ); the transcription, analysis, and reading of the Chu script and the methodological dilemmas this entails (William G. Boltz, Qiu Xigui and Gao Ming ); the text-critical methods and apparatus by which to better establish filiations and determine textual history among the various witnesses to and recensions of the Laozi (Harold D. Roth and P. M. Thompson); the place of the Guodian Confucian texts in Warring States intellectual history (Li Xueqin ); and other related issues.

The second section is a topically arranged summary of the entire conference discussion, subdivided into "The Tomb and Its Contents," "The Laozi," and "Other Texts and the Question of Philosophical Schools." This section, in which the editors have wisely (and painstakingly) chosen to err on the side of inclusiveness, is important because participation at the conference itself was by invitation only, and thus it gives to those who were not able to attend the conference a chance to partake fully of what was discussed there.

The third section is an edition of the Guodian Laozi and "Taiyi shengshui," with accompanying textual apparatus, prepared for the conference by Edmund Ryden. The fourth and final section consists of a subsection of "Textual Notes and Afterthoughts" gathered together after the conference's conclusion, as well as a summary and bibliography by Xing Wen of Chinese publications on the Guodian texts that appeared in the year following the conference—a welcome addition that may serve as a preliminary road map for those yet to begin making their way through the maze of Chinese scholarship that continues to be produced at breakneck speed.

For the purposes of this review, I would like to focus my attention on one particular aspect of working with certain excavated texts that goes most centrally to the core of what makes them valuable to us, but which, if not properly understood and treated with caution, can constitute a potential source of harm as well. This is the issue of "reading" these texts against their received counterparts—an issue that is discussed, from...