14 replies to this topic

[Yun]

This website started by Bruce and Taeko Brooks represents one of the most influential new movements in the study of Warring States history in the US:
http://www.umass.edu...ndex.html#tools

Of particular interest will be the page on Results of their research: http://www.umass.edu...ults/index.html

Including some investigations into the Chu language: http://www.umass.edu.../chu/index.html

Note, though, that the system used for romanizing Chinese is very idiosyncratic (it's neither Wade-Giles nor Hanyu Pinyin, and is even worse than Needham's system) and takes a lot of getting used to.

[fcharton]

This website started by Bruce and Taeko Brooks represents one of the most influential new movements in the study of Warring States history in the US:

Thanks a lot for the reference Yun. Am I wrong in guessing that they consider that a large part of the history we are taught nowadays are in fact a dense mixture of facts and myths, which philology and chronological analysis (Fomenko-style) might be able to separate?

Do you know more about this movement? Other references? Whether these ideas are followed by modern Chinese academics?

Thanks in advance

Francois

[Yun]

Brooks is considered to be rather a radical in the field even in the US, partly because he presents most of his ideas through his website and the e-mail list of his Warring States Working Group, rather than journal articles or books. But his ideas are indeed taken seriously by quite a number of 'Western' academics, though I have seen no sign of them spreading to academics in China. Here's a blurb for Brooks' "The Original Analects", the only full-length published work by his project so far:

"No one has influenced Chinese life as profoundly as Confucius. Among the most important embodiments of that influence is the Analects, a seeming record of Confucius's conversations with his disciples and with the rulers and ministers of his own time. These sayings, many of them laconic, aphoristic, and difficult to interpret, have done much to shape the culture and history of East Asia. Bruce and Taeko Brooks have returned this wide-ranging text to its full historical and intellectual setting, organizing the sayings in their original chronological sequence, and permitting the Analects to be read for maximum understanding, not as a closed system of thought but as a richly revealing record of the interaction of life and thought as it evolved over almost the entire Warring States period. The Original Analects has clarified contradictions in the text by showing how they reflect changing social conditions and philosophical emphases over the two centuries during which it was compiled. The book includes a fresh and fluid translation, a detailed commentary and interpretation for each saying, illustrations of objects from the Warring States period, and an extensive critical apparatus setting forth the textual argument on which the translation is based, and indicating how the later view of the work as the consistent maxims of a universal sage gradually replaced the historical reality."

I have found references for two other articles by him (and his wife Taeko) in collections of essays by various scholars - one on the Analects again, and one on Mencius:

Confucius and the analects : new essays / edited by Bryan W. Van Norden.
New York : Oxford University Press, 2000.

Mencius : contexts and interpretations / edited by Alan K.L. Chan.
Honolulu : University of Hawai'i Press, 2002.

[fcharton]

Radical indeed! Here is a passage found here (read the whole, it is fascinating): http://www.umass.edu...yths/index.html

Men. The same applies to merely human myths. Thus, the supposed 06c general Sun Wu is a backward projection of the perfectly historical 04c Chi strategist Sun Bin, who however continues to exist alongside Sun Wu in the received account of Chinese history. Unlike Laudz, whose myth as it develops verges into the supernatural, but which can be brought back to the factual germ from which it later grew, the Sun Wu myth is altogether an invention; it has to be expunged so as to make the real figure of Sun Bin intelligible. This is not known a priori; each case must be studied on its merits. But in general, we cannot assume that an exaggerated story has a true story as its kernel: sometimes, as with Sun Wu, there is no kernel at all (it is notorious that the Dzwo Jwan narrates in great detail a battle supposedly won by Sun Wu, but without mentioning him). As to why myth should be made in the first place, consider the shelves of any Barnes and Noble store. If you are selling ancient wisdom, the more ancient, the better. And if you are recommending new policies, the better precedent you can show for those policies, the less resistance the ruler is likely to feel. China carries to an extreme the notion that the tried is better than the untried.

Now, this is provocative and interesting...

Francois

[snowybeagle]

I am really getting disillusioned with the veracity of any pre-Qin materials ...

[Yun]

Brooks is not the first to question the existence of Sun Wu. Several Song and Qing scholars questioned the reliability of the Shiji biography of Sun Wu and argued that Sun Wu never existed. In the 20th century, Gu Jiegang and Guo Moruo also held that Sun Wu is a mythical figure and that the Art of War was written either by Sun Bin or by someone else who lived around Sun Bin's time.

It is only in the latter half of the 20th century, as the Art of War became overhyped as a manual for business and management, that the cult of 'Sunzi/Sun Tzu' achieved mass appeal and everybody 'knew' that Sun Wu was a real person and wrote the Art of War.

[snowybeagle]

What is the more rational approach?

Assume characters mentioned in historical texts as ficticious unless they can find more contemporary accounts?

Or assume they were real unless evidence to the contary can be found?

[Yun]

The historical approach is to look at context and evidence.

The Song scholar Ye Zhengze, who first doubted the existence of Sun Wu, had the following arguments based on the above:

1. Sun Wu is not mentioned in the Zuozhuan, only in the much later Shiji.

2. Professional generals like Sun Wu did not arise until the Warring States period. Spring-Autumn armies were always commanded by ruler, members of their families, powerful vassals, or trusted ministers. Hence, the Art of War's mentions of the difficulties of controlling generals from the state capital are anachronistic.

Liang Qichao argued that what the book says about tactics and planning is relevant to the Warring States, and not the Spring-Autumn.

Feng Youlan analyzed the structure of the book and pointed out that the type of thematic structure in the Art of War is first found in Warring States writing. He also argued that in the Spring-Autumn there is no case of anyone writing books under his own name expressing his own opinions, as opposed to writing histories and official documents.

Samuel B. Griffith, who translated the Art of War in 1963, points out numerous other anachronisms based on what we know of Spring-Autumn warfare.

But these only suggest that the Art of War was not written by a Spring-Autumn person. They do not prove that the man the book is attributed to did not exist in the late Spring-Autumn period. Ultimately, the question of whether Sun Wu was a real person must come down to whether we find the Shiji to be as reliable as the Zuozhuan. Most scholars would see the Zuozhuan as more reliable for that period, since it was written almost contemporary to the events it recorded.

[snowybeagle]

2. Professional generals like Sun Wu did not arise until the Warring States period. Spring-Autumn armies were always commanded by ruler, members of their families, powerful vassals, or trusted ministers. Hence, the Art of War's mentions of the difficulties of controlling generals from the state capital are anachronistic.

Wouldn't control of any commander of an army away from the capital always pose potential problems regardless of whether they were appointed because they were professionals or nobles?

[fcharton]

But these only suggest that the Art of War was not written by a Spring-Autumn person. They do not prove that the man the book is attributed to did not exist in the late Spring-Autumn period. Ultimately, the question of whether Sun Wu was a real person must come down to whether we find the Shiji to be as reliable as the Zuozhuan. Most scholars would see the Zuozhuan as more reliable for that period, since it was written almost contemporary to the events it recorded.

Even the Zuozhuan's reliability have been much doubted in the past. Its date of composition is still unclear, and it is one of these "lost and found" books, which are purported to have been rewritten after the Qin (I think Sima Qian hints somewhere that there were at least two different versions of it extent at his time). But even if our versions of the Zuozhuan have not been mangled by later editors, and if it was actually composed at an early date, it still tells of events which happened centuries before. So it is a bit like a young scholar of today writing about the early 20th century (1911, say).

To me, the most interesting part of this story is the light it sheds on the Shiji. Traditional wisdom has it that Sima Qian is the objective and factual historian par excellence, but the shiji is for a large part a compilation of earlier works, and includes a large number of passages which seem to be "novelised". Sun Wu's implication in wars is one, the story of Laozi is another, and Bao Pu told me yesterday that in the case of Zhuangzi, Sima Qian's quotes of him are actually quotes of the outer chapters, which were almost certainly not written by Zhuangzi (and sometimes do not even belong to his school). Of course, this does not mean that all events in the Shiji are fabrications, but we must be aware that it almost certainly includes a number of fictional passages, which either were added by Sima Qian himself, or were faithfully copied from previous works.

Now, trying to sort these facts and fiction in original sources might be an interesting thing. A project for CHF?

Francois

Edited by fcharton, 02 November 2006 - 05:50 AM.

[ren]

Including some investigations into the Chu language: http://www.umass.edu.../chu/index.html

Brooks's theory and analysis about the Chu language is rather foundationless. If I were to be American abou tit, I would call it c**p. I'll try to update with a critical, responsible comment but everybody is free to check out his link and see how a big theory is based on so little evidence, in fact the "evidence" has to be stretched for it to be evidence. While I used to assume (by reading Western sinologists) that the Chu weren't Sinitic, the fact is upon examinign the evidence, there is no prove they were non-"Chinese". The Zhou considered everyone who was non-Zhou, including the Shang, to be Man Yi ("non-Chinese"). The very concept of Hauxia seems to be later invented and applied retroactively. Initially, the dichotomy was between the Zhou and their conquered subjects, the Shang and the other ethnicities subject to the Shang. Later these merged into one gradually under the Zhou's zhongyuan/central plain dominion.

This does not mean that the Chu were some very foriegn element, merely that they weren't Zhou. In fact, the Chu homeland, NE Hubei, is not south of the Yangtze but very close to the Shang center, and the Chu seems to exist contemporaneously with late Shang and Zhou, so that they probably cousins of the Shang. The language spoken in Chu, based on the evidence, seems to be Sinitic. To assume that the Chu were not "Huaxia" (which has little real meaning) is to assume Qin were not Chinese either, since newly discovered material testifies that the Qin didn't consider themselves to be "Huaxia"/the same people as Zhongyuan/Central Plains either.

I'm not impressed by Brooks assertion that the Shang elite were Indo-European either. What evidence is there besides his personal wishes?

Edited by ren, 16 June 2007 - 12:09 PM.

[Boleslaw I]

I'm not impressed by Brooks assertion that the Shang elite were Indo-European either. What evidence is there besides his personal wishes?

Aha, this is a good spot indeed. I don't agree with this idea too. Sometimes radical idea of Brook could be debatable.
However, another issue arising from this period, methinks, is actually Chinese Military Uniform of each states, except Qin. Some movies showed that two wore exactly the same, really intriguing.

With the idea of whether Chou people is Chinese or not? It must be asked first WHO IS CHINESE? OR WHAT ENCOMPASSES THE TERMN "CHINESE"?

Edited by Boleslaw I, 20 June 2007 - 10:34 PM.

[madalibi]

One published article by Brooks summarized his findings as of 1994. It's called "The Present State and Future Prospects of Pre-Han Text Studies," published in Sino-Platonic Papers 46 (1994): 1-74. It was a review article on a book called Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (1993), edited by Michael Loewe. Unfortunately I haven't seen it, and I'm very far from any library that would subscribe to this relatively obscure journal.

According to references I've seen in other papers, Brooks and others were privately circulating a publication they called the "Notes and Queries of the Warring States Working Group" (founded in 1993), a predecessor of the current "Warring States Project" and its e-mail list. The 1994 article in Sino-Platonic Papers summarized some of their findings.

[fcharton]

One published article by Brooks summarized his findings as of 1994. It's called "The Present State and Future Prospects of Pre-Han Text Studies," published in Sino-Platonic Papers 46 (1994): 1-74. It was a review article on a book called Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (1993), edited by Michael Loewe. Unfortunately I haven't seen it, and I'm very far from any library that would subscribe to this relatively obscure journal.

You can find many Sino-platonic papers online here http://www.sino-plat....org/index.html and this particular article here :
http://www.sino-plat...views_china.pdf

It is quite typical of Brooks' way of looking at ancient texts, very bright and thought provoking, I'd say, although perhaps a little too much on the critical side...

Francois

[madalibi]

You can find many Sino-platonic papers online here http://www.sino-plat....org/index.html and this particular article here :
http://www.sino-plat...views_china.pdf

Wonderful!!! I'll read it as soon as I have time. Thanks a lot, Francois.

It is quite typical of Brooks' way of looking at ancient texts, very bright and thought provoking, I'd say, although perhaps a little too much on the critical side...

I like critical, because it forces other scholars to present detailed evidence for what they took for granted. What we get is either stronger arguments for traditional points of view, or exciting new ideas supported by evidence that few had considered. For readers, I think these debates are very enjoyable. Thanks again for the reference!