As the second volume of a two-volume set on Chinese ancient characters and unearthed literature, this book brings together the author’s scholarly works on Chinese scripts studies and unearthed materials. In this volume, the author scrutinizes manuscripts unearthed from archaeological findings, including silk books and bamboo slips discovered in ancient tombs that date back to the Warring States period and the Qin and Han dynasties, as well as Turfan manuscripts. These materials serve as supplements of Shuowen Jiezi and other historical documents, which complement our understanding of ancient characters. Through textual analysis of these newly excavated documents, the author reinterprets the texts and resolves some knotty problems in Chinese palaeography. The title will appeal to students and scholars of Sinology, Chinese philology, and palaeography, as well as Chinese characters and unearthed manuscripts.

This text considers the prevalence of Lao-Zhuang Daoism and Huang-Lao Daoism in late pre-imperial and early imperial Chinese traditional thought. The author uses unique excavated documents and literature to explore the Huang-Lao tradition of Daoist philosophy, which exerted a great influence on China ancient philosophy and political theories, from the Pre-Qin period to the Wei-Jin periods. It explains the original and significance of Huang-Lao Daoism, its history and fundamental characteristics, notably discussing the two sides of Huang-Lao, namely the role and function of Lao Zi and the Yellow Emperor, and discusses why the two can constitute a complementary relationship. It also provides a key study of the Mawangdui silk texts, bamboo slips of the Heng Xian, Fan Wu Liu Xing, considering both the theory of human Xing and of Qi.

Guo Qiyong’s edited volume on contemporary Chinese philosophy offers a detailed look at research on Chinese philosophy published from 1949-2009 in Mainland China and Taiwan. The chapters in this volume are broken down into either major themes or time periods in the history of Chinese philosophy. In each chapter after summarizing significant aspects of a particular theme or time period, lists are drawn up of the most important works, along with comments on their individual contributions. This volume allows readers to both familiarize themselves with specific texts and become immersed in the more general philosophical discourse surrounding the history of Chinese philosophy. It provides an in-depth look into serious debates and major discoveries in Chinese language philosophical scholarship from 1949-2009.

The Silk Manuscripts from Zidanku, Changsha (Hunan), are the only preImperial Chinese manuscripts on silk found todate. Dating to the turn from the 4th to the 3rd centuries BC (Late Warring States period), they contain several short texts concerning basic cosmological concepts, arranged in a diagrammatic arrangement and surrounded by pictorial illustrations. As such, they constitute a unique source of information complementing and going beyond what is known from transmitted texts. This is the first in a twovolume monograph on the Zidanku manuscripts, reflecting almost four decades of research by Professor Li Ling of Peking University. While the philological study and translation of the manuscript texts is the subject of Volume Two, this first volume presents the archaeological context and history of transmission of the physical manuscripts. It records how they were taken from their original place of interment in the 1940s and taken to the United States in 1946; documents the early stages in the research on the finds from the Zidanku tomb and its reexcavation in the 1970s; and accounts for where the manuscripts were kept before becoming the property, respectively, of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, New York (Manuscript 1), and the Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution (Manuscripts 2 and 3). Superseding previous efforts, this is the definitive account that will sets the record straight and establishes a new basis for future research on these uniquely important artifacts.

As the first volume of a two-volume set on Chinese ancient characters and newly unearthed literature, this book brings together the author’s research articles that discuss the development of Chinese characters and the tradition of Chinese palaeography. The 23 chapters in this book focus on two aspects of Chinese characters. The first 13 chapters centre on the evolution of Chinese characters, analysing the composition system and its transformation, the motivation, and mechanisms behind its evolution, as well as the methodology of the study of ancient characters. The subsequent 10 chapters mainly revolve around Shuowen Jiezi, one of the oldest character dictionaries in China. The author offers a novel understanding of the core issues related to this most important philological work, such as the version of the dictionary, misunderstandings in previous scholarship, and its relations with other palaeographical materials. The title will appeal to students and scholars of Sinology, Chinese philology, and palaeography, as well as Chinese characters.

As the second volume of a two-volume set on Chinese ancient characters and unearthed literature, this book brings together the author's scholarly works on Chinese scripts studies and unearthed materials. In this volume, the author scrutinizes manuscripts unearthed from archaeological findings, including silk books and bamboo slips discovered in ancient tombs that date back to the Warring States period and the Qin and Han dynasties, as well as Turfan manuscripts. These materials serve as supplements of Shuowen Jiezi and other historical documents, which complement our understanding of ancient characters. Through textual analysis of these newly excavated documents, the author reinterprets the texts and resolves some knotty problems in Chinese paleography. The title will appeal to students and scholars of sinology, Chinese philology and paleography and also Chinese characters and unearthed manuscripts.

Paleography, which often overlaps with archaeology, deciphers ancient inscriptions and modes of writing to reveal the knowledge and workings of earlier societies. In this now-classic paleographic study of China, Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien traces the development of Chinese writing from the earliest inscriptions to the advent of printing, with specific attention to the tools and media used. This edition includes material that treats the many major documents and ancient Chinese artifacts uncovered over the forty years since the book's first publication, as well as an afterword by Edward L. Shaughnessy. Written on Bamboo and Silk has long been considered a landmark in its field. Critical in this regard is the excavation of numerous sites throughout China, where hundreds of thousands of documents written on bamboo and silk--as well as other media--were found, including some of the earliest copies of historical, medical, astronomical, military, and religious texts that are now essential to the study of early Chinese literature, history, and philosophy. Discoveries such as these have made the amount of material evidence on the origins and evolution of communication throughout Chinese history exceedingly broad and rich, and yet Tsien succeeds in tackling it all and building on the earlier classic work that changed the course of study and understanding of Chinese paleography.