Writing Early China by Edward L. Shaughnessy

Writing Early China collects twelve studies by Ed Shaughnessy about how writing shaped the literary tradition, two of which are published here for the first time in English. The volume is well-organized and tightly packaged, and the studies build on each other organically. Divided into three parts, “Inscriptions,” “The Classics,” and “Manuscripts,” these carefully researched studies analyze a range of recently unearthed sources from the very beginning of the literary tradition until its consolidation during the early empires.

The first part, “Inscriptions,” leads with the overview “History and Inscriptions,” which charts the use of writing in ancient China, particularly as it pertains to historical sources. It closes on a sentiment that rings throughout the volume: “I think we can be quite confident in supposing that only a portion—and perhaps just a small portion—of ancient China’s writing has yet surfaced” (p. 45). The argument being that the continued appearance of unearthed materials provides physical proof for the importance and prevalence of the written word even early in the tradition. The second chapter, “The Bin Gong Xu Inscription and the Origins of the Chinese Literary Tradition,” echoes this sentiment with repeated reference to Creel’s statement that “We simply have to accept the fact that the Chous were a people who liked to write books,” highlighting that the ability to write inscriptions such as the Bin Gong Xu is evidence of contemporary ability to write material such as those preserved in the Classic of Documents (pp. 40, 51). In the third and fourth chapters, respectively, “The Writing of a Late Western Zhou Bronze Inscription” and “On the Casting of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Shi Wang Ding: With Remarks on the Important Position of Writing in the Consciousness of Ancient China,” Shaughnessy’s strong awareness of the material processes involved in the production of written media comes to the fore. The articles make the point that these vessels are the result of conscious choices on how to display what is in essence a text twice removed from its first incipience.

In the second part of the volume, “The Classics,” bamboo-manuscript evidence is carefully read against transmitted counterparts to show how the individual manuscripts, and by extension, the classics they represent, may have changed over time. This part is composed of four studies focusing on texts with parallels in the received record. Specifically, chapter five, “A Possible Lost Classic: The *She Ming or *Command to She,” traces the processes involved in the transmission of materials with counterparts in the Classic of Documents; chapter six, “Varieties of Textual Variants: Evidence from the Tsinghua Bamboo-Slip *Ming Xun Manuscript,” presents a close comparison with material in the Leftover Zhou Documents; chapters seven and eight, respectively, “Unearthed Documents and the Question of the Oral versus Written Nature of the Shi Jing” and “A First Reading of the Anhui University Bamboo-Slip Shi Jing,” reflect on the use of writing in the production, transmission, and redaction of the Classic of Odes. Particularly interesting in these studies is the attention to the productive capacity of variants, wherein even a simple mistake or a particular form of writing a graph can produce new readings. Personally, this is also how I understand the different ordering of songs and stanzas in the Anhui University manuscripts of the “Odes of the States.” I do not believe this to be the result of the slips coming undone (p. 213, n. 27). Rather, manuscripts such as the Anhui Odes are a selection reflecting the agency of scribes, readers, and early collectors. As such, I think Shaughnessy’s suggestion that it “would be natural for different readers—and thus different editors—to put them in different orders” is entirely possible even without some original arrangement coming undone (op. cit.).

Part three is titled “Manuscripts” and includes case studies of two recent and two ancient finds. Chapters nine, “The Mu Tianzi Zhuan and King Mu–Period Bronzes,” and eleven, “The Eighth Century BCE Civil War in Jin as Seen in the Bamboo Annals: On the Nature of the Tomb Text and Its Significance for the ‘Current’ Bamboo Annals,” are both exemplary textual studies of transmitted manuscripts that in China would fall under the umbrella of kaozheng 考證-scholarship. Shaughnessy combines evidence from bronze inscriptions, transmitted texts, and unearthed manuscripts to challenge the negative assessments of the materials given by Li Xueqin and Wang Guowei. The latter chapter contains a rare omission of the character images for Zhai Gong and Lüe, proof of the otherwise meticulous editing of the volume (p. 248). Chapter ten, “The Tsinghua Manuscript *Zheng Wen Gong wen Tai Bo and the Question of the Production of Manuscripts in Early China,” presents a fine-grained analysis of how a single copyist faithfully copied two different versions of the same text. Finally, chapter twelve, “The Qin *Bian Nian Ji and the Beginnings of Historical Writing in China,” echoes the concerns of the first overview chapter and draws a link between early record keeping, archives, and the production of annals.

This volume ties together roughly twenty years of scholarship on the importance and the widespread nature of writing in ancient Chinese society. In a veritable masterclass of textual and historical scholarship, the reader is guided through oracle-bone and bronze inscriptions, bamboo-slip manuscripts, and the transmitted tradition. While in the introduction, this approach is described as “pointillist,” drawing on a range of seemingly small and concrete details from vessel casting technique to variation in the execution of the script, this volume surely builds out a larger vision on the importance of the written word in creating and sustaining the literary tradition. I am happy to see that in the introduction, this vision is not taken as diametrically opposed to orality, performance, and memory. I am sure that this study and future discoveries of materials will help us further nuance and contextualize the variety, spread, and significance of engagement with text in early China.