Yuri Pines - Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript Xinian and Early Chinese Historiography

A ll translations in the text are mine unless otherwise indicated.

In translating passages from the Spring and Autumn Annals and Zuozhuan, I borrow from the recent translation by Stephen Durrant, Li Wai-yee, and David Schaberg (2016), modifying when necessary.

Whenever I refer to a transmitted text that has a stable division into chapters (pian ) and sections/paragraphs (zhang ), I refer only to the number of a chapter and a section/paragraph separated by a period. Whenever such a division does not exist, I identify, whenever relevant, the scroll (juan , indicated by Roman numerals) and the chapter (pian ); they are separated by a period and are followed by the page number of the modern edition, separated by a colon.

Whenever I cite a recently unearthed text, I indicate the slip number according to the sequence proposed by the original publishers; the characters are normally written in their modern form according to the editors or other scholars suggestions. In a few cases of debatable characters, I provide their image as published by the texts editors or an alternative reading.

In translating Xinian and other unearthed texts I add missing words in square brackets. In parentheses I add short explanations that should facilitate reading: mostly the names under which historical personages are more commonly known and years of the events according to the common chronology. In Chinese text in bold square brackets I add the number of the bamboo slip.

Throughout this monograph I mark with an asterisk the titles of unearthed manuscripts if they were given by the contemporary editors. To avoid alienating the reader with too many asterisks, I do this only at the first occurrence of the manuscripts name.

One of the thorniest questions for a translator of terminology related to the Spring and Autumn period is dealing with the aristocratic ranks of that age. The problem is aggravated by the fact that a single Chinese word can have multiple meanings. Thus whenever a five-grade division of regional lords (and of the leading nobles from the Zhou royal domain and from the state of Chu) is concerned, it makes sense to translate gong as duke, hou as marquis, bo as earl, zi as viscount, and nan as baron. But note that most regional rulers were posthumously referred as X + gong, in which case a neutral lord is preferable. Hence, I normally translate YX + gong as Lord X of Y when X stands for a posthumous name and Y for the state; however, I translate Duke of Y or Marquis of Y when the text refers to the persons status. I invariably translate Gongzi as Ducal Son and Gongsun as Ducal Grandson. Bo also has different meanings: it can refer to ones birth sequence (the elder), to ones rank (earl), or to ones position as a regional overlord. The term zi is even more confusing, because, aside from being a designation of ones rank (viscount), it served as a common polite designation of persons of noble status. As such it could be added to a personal name (ming ), to ones appellative (zi ), to a posthumous name (shi ) (in all these cases I simply transliterate), or to a surname, in which case I adopt Sir so-and-so. Finally, in translating heads of local administration in the state of Chu, I distinguish between gong (duke), jun (lord) and yin (governor).

Most of the reign dates in this book are given according to the chronological tables composed by Fang Shiming (1991); for the Western Zhou period, I follow the reconstruction of the Xia-Shang-Zhou chronological project (Xia-Shang-Zhou duandai gongcheng zhuanjia zu 2000). In both cases not a few dates appear to be wrong, but I use them for heuristic convenience, adding ca. whenever the dates are disputable. In reconstructing the reign dates of Chu kings of the fifth to early fourth centuries BCE, I relied on Li Rui 2013 and on the tentative reconstructions scattered through Su, Wu, and Lai 2013. Whenever relevant I utilized also the suggestions of Xiong Xianpin (2017).