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INTRODUCTION John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski Over the Course Of INTRODUCTION John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski Over the course of the 5th–3rd centuries BC, dramatic changes took place in what we now call China. Insofar as these changes led to the founding of the fi rst unifi ed empire in Chinese history—the Qin, from which we probably derive the name “China”—we may say that the essays in these two volumes are about the cultural birth of “China.” But before exploring these transformations in detail, it will be useful for the reader to understand the unique nature of the book he holds in his hands. It is not a standard history, in which each successive period is unfurled before the eyes of the reader in a unilinear account. It is, rather, a multidisciplinary endeavor, with chapters devoted to archaeology, philosophy, divination, sacrifi ce, mythology and many other specialized topics. Th is approach is in the fi rst place a refl ection of the resolutely broad defi nition of religion discussed briefl y in the conclusion below. It is also the result of ongoing discoveries of new materials which have regularly created whole new fi elds of investigation and, in so doing, have renewed the interests and methods of historians of ancient China. Ritual inscriptions of the Shang (1600–1046 BC) and Zhou (1045–256 BC), manuscripts on bamboo and silk from the Warring States (481–222 BC), Qin (221–207 BC) and Han (206 BC-220 AD), as well as the wealth of new information derived from architecture and funerary archaeology —all represent new specialties which help resolve uncertainties and fi ll in the fragmentary picture provided by received texts. For the earliest periods, these discoveries in fact represent all we have, other than some legends and historicized myths. Th ese new developments have in turn been accompanied by and contributed to signal advances in the fi eld of philology and textual criticism. Criteria for dating texts have been refi ned, and our knowledge of the functions and modes of diff usion of writing before the Han dynasty has increased considerably. Interestingly enough, archaeological discoveries have helped give new value to trans- mitted texts, and paleographers and specialists of the manuscripts found in tombs are oft en among the most ardent proponents of the current tendency to fi x the date of composition of texts once thought to be 2 john lagerwey and marc kalinowski late or apocryphal as early as possible. Even if we do well to avoid the excesses of certain reconstructions, received texts as a whole remain an irreplaceable source for the study of ancient China. Th is is all the more so in that the documents discovered in tombs are oft en in deplorable or fragmentary state. In addition, each corpus gives witness to conceptions and practices which have to do with functional contexts, making a simple diachronic assessment extremely diffi cult. For example, as Robert Eno quite rightly remarks, comparison of Shang and Zhou pantheons on the basis of recovered contemporary textual sources is at present simply not a feasible project, precisely because the function of the Shang oracle bone inscriptions is utterly diff erent from that of the Zhou bronze commemorative inscriptions. We must also take into account the fact that excavated texts are not direct expressions of the realities they represent: they use rhetorical procedures which correspond to precise social constraints and ideological motivations and therefore require every bit as much interpretive prudence as received texts. Finally, the further along in time we go, the more abundant the sources become and the more they diversify and include larger segments of society. What might therefore at fi rst glance seem to be the progressive popularization of practices once reserved to the ruling elites proves in fact to be an illusion caused by our lack of information about the customs current outside the elite in the Shang and Zhou. In the same manner, the term “common religion” now widely used to refer to the practices revealed by the Warring States and Han manuscripts has more to do with the fact these practices belonged to the private sphere than that they were truly popular or common to all levels of society. Another problem that needs to be evoked at the outset is that of periodization. It is of course customary to count Chinese time in dynasties, and the very title of this book conforms to that custom: coverage begins with that part of the Shang dynasty for which we have written sources (1250–1046 BC) and ends with the fall of the Han in 220 AD. Th e Zhou dynasty is in turn traditionally divided into Western (1045–771 BC) and Eastern (770–256 BC) Zhou, and the latter yet again into the Spring and Autumn (770–482) and Warring States periods. It is well known that such political time lines are of limited relevance to a religious or cultural—or even an economic or social—history. Both the battle of Muye (ca. 1045 BC)—which marked the start of the Western Zhou—and the self-proclamation of King Zheng of Qin as First Emperor (Shi huangdi) in 221 BC were events destined to have a major .
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