-----Original Message-----
From: Chinese [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 09 November 2009 12:46
To: 'Chinese-enquiries'
Subject: FW: [Indo-Eurasia] Massive new cache of Han dynasty tomb texts (the Beida slips)



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-----Original Message-----
From: Dirk Meyer [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 09 November 2009 12:23
To: Rosanna Gosi
Subject: FW: [Indo-Eurasia] Massive new cache of Han dynasty tomb texts (the
Beida slips)

Dear All,

Some more news on the newly received Western-Han mss from Steve Farmer of
the Indo-Eurasia research group.
All Best,
dm



Dirk Meyer
The Queen's College
University of Oxford

________________________________________
From: [log in to unmask]
[[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve Farmer
[[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 07 November 2009 19:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: Steve Farmer; Dirk Meyer; Richard Sproat
Subject: [Indo-Eurasia] Massive new cache of Han dynasty tomb texts (the
Beida slips)

[Mod. note. Set to UTF-8 if reading in a browser. - SF.]

I wrote earlier today that I was eager to hear from any Chinese
specialists on the List any news

> about the vast new cache of Han tomb texts whose discovery was just
> announced two days ago. Nothing yet in English, and from the rumors
> I've heard, the find is the biggest ever, and of extraordinary
> importance. Anything more known yet? There's nothing out yet in any
> language besides Chinese, so far as I know.

I have gotten a few off-List messages: no one really knows much yet --
except that the finds are extraordinary. A few comments I've been sent
from different List members, which is all we can hope for until we
hear from someone in Beijing (conference going on or just finished --
I'm not sure which).

First, for those on the List who read Chinese, see:

*******
Wang Qinghuan $B2&7D4D(B 2009 Beijing Daxue shoucang zhengui Xi-Han
zhushu $BKL5~BgU\[log in to unmask]@>4AC]=q(B.[The precious Western Han
bamboo books stored at Peking University]
in: Guangming Ribao $B8wL@F|Js(B 6.11.2009.

url: <http://www.gmw.cn/01gmrb/2009-11/06/content_1004281.htm>

For amusement value only (!), check out the Babelfish automatic
translation here (pretty amusing):

http://tinyurl.com/yfjd9m5 (well, give the computational linguists
another 50 years or so :^))

**********

Some comments I've received via email from different Chinese scholars
(not in email range at the moment, so I'll give the comments
anonymously: they don't have much to go on now either). From
one:

> These slips are in the Han clerical script. Therefore they will
> presumably be transcribed more quickly than those which were in the
> Chu writing style (which everybody had to learn more or less from
> scratch), or so I assume. Also it seems that the most prominent
> senior paleographers from Beida will work on it.

That means things should move quickly, given that the Guodian slips
(discovered in 1993) were already available in less than five years.
On the Guodian texts, see the links to download the massive thesis
and shorter overview paper by Dirk Meyer at Oxford, which I posted
with discussion back in May. Dirk's work is quite extraordinary -- and
much in line with the work that Michael Witzel, John Henderson, and I
have conducted on the evolution of stratified traditions. (Similar also
in some ways to Luis Gonzalez-Reimann's work on the evolution of
Indian epic traditions.) For the downloads and comments, go to:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/12523

Dirk is certain to be excited about the new finds, for obvious
reasons, since they apparently include still *another* version of the
Laozi (now we have the Guodian materials, the two Mawangdui
recensions, whatever is contained in the Beida slips of the later
Laozi, and the later "received text" -- five data points (truly
ancient ones, not based on medieval manuscripts) of an ancient
stratified work in the process of formation.

Nothing like this exists anywhere else in the world of ancient
philology, unless you include perhaps the Gilgamesh and Egyptian
funeral texts [pyramid texts, coffin texts, so-called Book of the Dead],
but the cases aren't quite parallel, for reasons too complex to
discuss here.

Finally, comments from another Chinese specialist on our List, which I
received last night. I haven't been able to reach him since, so I'll
again give this anonymously:

> [The new finds] date from the period 140-30 BCE roughly, and include
> perhaps 20 complete books. There is a Laozi that is 99% complete
> [SF: I take it that he means in respect to the received text],
> a rhapsody on the two types of Chinese souls
> in a conversation, a short story of some 3000 words, and a host of
> medical and divinatory texts. It is an exciting time to be a
> Sinologist.

Exciting time indeed! This is a huge event for philologists in
general. Consider how exciting it would be if you found five
recensions from the later 4th through 2nd centuries BCE of (say) a key
work that eventually made it into the Platonic or Aristotelian corpora
(both known only from medieval manuscripts, and still naively
represented in all the handbooks as unstratified works by one
hand) or of some claimed Indian classic from the same era -- and
we could watch them in the process of formation.

The result: revolution in our understanding of virtually all of
ancient thought. Stay tuned: the Chinese researchers have the
dynamite in their hands. Their only failure so far is their failure
so far to generalize the importance of this to philology in general.

I hope some of the Chinese specialists on the List can soon tell us
more.

Steve




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