The Chu Silk Manuscripts from Zidanku, Changsha (Hunan Province): Volume I: Discovery and Transmission; Volume II: Transcription and Reproductions

Volume I

The Silk Manuscripts from Zidanku, Changsha (Hunan), are the only pre-Imperial Chinese manuscripts on silk found to-date. Dating to the turn from the 4th to the 3rd centuries BC (Late Warring States period), they contain several texts concerning basic cosmological concepts, including one manuscript (Manuscript 1) with 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 two-volume 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 re-excavation 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.

Volume II

This book is the second in a two-volume monograph on the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts. Looted in 1942 from the Warring States-period Chu tomb at Zidanku, Changsha, the manuscripts date to the turn from the 4th to the 3rd centuries BCE and are the only pre-Imperial Chinese manuscripts on silk found to-date. The monograph represents the culmination of almost four decades of research by Professor Li Ling of Peking University. Volume One addresses the circumstances of the discovery of the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts and the subsequent provenance history in China and the United States. Volume Two provides the first complete transcription of the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts in their entirety together with reproductions of the original manuscripts. The transcription is accompanied by comprehensive annotations, with full paleographic and philological analysis of the texts. An English translation of the texts has been added by Professor Donald Harper. For the first time, the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts can be read as a single corpus, constituting a unique source of information that complements and goes beyond what is known from transmitted texts. The Zidanku Silk Manuscripts reveal a range of cosmological and religious ideas, and shed new light on the formation of correlative thought in the Warring States period.