textuality and orality

cursory remarks

拜拜• today’s gathering: why these invitees• only some modest attempts to generalize

• 萊頓大學，漢學研究院

long term project

• when data are sparse=>long term trends more revealing

• China scholars connect developments to dynastic boundaries=> find other factors for measuring change, ignore dynasties

• processes of change rather than so-called origins=>inventions just the start of something, not the end

materiality

• what we really know (in historical sequence):– oracle bones: thrown away – bronze inscriptions: on the inside of vessels with sacrifice– oath slips: buried as sacrifice/testimony– bamboo slips: graves, only later in former archival contexts– wooden slips: archival contexts, communication– silk: graves, probably also for public display and prestige– inscriptions in stone

• Qin: invisibly on mountains• Eastern Han: publicly in grave cults, before city gate etc.

– metal, pottery : in graves– fibres=> paper: replaces wood for archive and communication;

replaces silk much later

the person who writes

• prestigious & few & hidden (Shang until mid 4th century BCE)

• professional & writing down prestige contents (late 4th century BCE – 1st century BCE)=> scribes~historians≠thinkers

• professional & management (3rd century BCE onwards)=> scribes

• writing as elite identity (slowly from 1st century CE onwards)

identifying the writer

• remarkably late (Sima Qian—maybe, mostly second half 1st century BCE)

• from “traditions” (not texts) to “canonical books” (of necessity with invented authors)

• self-identification as author– stimulated by phenomenon of the written

memorial?– author as owner books (late 1st century BCE, think

of Ban family)

identifying books

• confusion about non-existence of “closed books” before Han=>stories of destroyed books (from the Qin censorial memorial in Shiji) and their discovery

• crucial efforts Liu Xiang, Liu Xin c.s.• need: timeline when pre-Han books start

being closed down into a canonical version (Lunyu example)

owning texts/books

• patrons– ownership of texts (until after Shiji)=> creation

little libraries in “bookform” (Lüshi chunqiu onwards, including Shiji)

– ownership of single, titled books individuals as owners

– what do we know?

but

• existence texts or their improved version books is not yet the whole history– is a text communication or record– is it an ultimate record or just a record– groups ideas to personal ideas– are texts read and/or only learned for oral usage– where is the ultimate truth: in the text or in the oral

tradition– what happens to the oral– who read, when, where, why – how do texts change the tradition

Wang Mang: questions & claims

• uninteresting questions – usurper: and so what, he was more competent and certainly

more intelligent than most predecessors– socialist: anachronistic label– Confucianist: what does it mean in the first place?– successful: bad luck of worst Yellow River flooding in centuries

• my claim– he reflects a new approach to textuality that presages

Confucian/clasicist/Daoist traditions of the following millennia– pace Kang Youwei, he has far more in common with Wang

Mang than with Confucius

Wang Mang: precursors

• late 1th century BCE recognition “classical” books (≠traditions) as basis political debate

• creation first catalogue of discrete objects (Liu Xiang& Xin) instead of ideas or lineages (Sima Tan)

• new types of quotations (Lunyu and so on)• first revealed text

Wang Mang’s innovations

• based empire on the plan of a quasi-old text (zhouli) instead of new policies for new times

• written propaganda distributed to actual people (compare inscriptions Qin)

• first consciously incomplete quotation (A 至於 B)• analysis of 劉 • belief in power of renaming • creating fictional portents (from texts) on new scale• large scale upgrading classical scholarship in terms of

personnel (later retrospectively ascribed to Emperor Wu)

continuation Wang Mang

• Liu Xiu regime• Daoist traditions• classical scholars