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The Development of Naturalist Thought in Ancient China: A Review of W. Allyn Rickett's Guanzi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

Robin McNeal
Robin McNeal*
Affiliation:
Department of Asian Studies Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 4853, USA
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Extract

With the publication of volume II of W Allyn Rickett's Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China (Princeton University Press, 1998), a long-neglected and poorly understood text from China's classical period should now be much more accessible to a wider audience of students, teachers, and scholars in the West. The second volume completes the translation of the 76-chapter original, and, like volume I (Princeton University Press, 1985; 2nd, revised edition, Cheng and Tsui, Boston, 2001), includes brief chapter-by-chapter introductions addressing issues of dating and content. The Guanzi has much to offer, spanning as it does the entire classical period proper; the earliest portions of the text date to the fourth or even fifth century B.C., and the work as a whole was only fixed in its present form by Liu Xiang (97–8 b.c.) late in his life, after over three centuries of accretion. Rickett's translation is the fruit of a long career spent studying this text, and it is worthy of frequent and thoughtful consultation; many of the historical issues that this translation sets before us are crucial to a deeper understanding of social and intellectual history in the classical age. To judge from contemporary sources, Guan Zhong , namesake of the text, was a popular figure during this era, around whom formulations of political philosophy and conceptions of new institutions easily accumulated over time. Recognizing this process of accumulation is crucial to placing the text in its historical context, since the Guanzi, like so many of our texts from the classical period, is fraught with difficulties concerning authorship and dating.

Type
Review Article
Information
Early China , Volume 28 , 2003 , pp. 161 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 2003

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References

1. See Rosen, Sydney, “In Search of the Historical Kuan Chung,” Journal of Asian Studies 35.3 (May, 1976), 431–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and see Rickett, 's entry, Kuan tzu, in Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographic Guide, ed. Loewe, Michael (Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1993), 244–51Google Scholar. See also van der Loon, Piet, “On the Transmission of the Kuan-tzu ,” T'oung Pao 41(1952), 357–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. The Yanzi chunqiu is a bit more problematic; see Stephen W Durrant's entry for Yen tzu ch'un ch'iu, in Early Chinese Texts, ed. Michael Loewe, 483–89, for a discussion of various positions on the text's date.

3. Liangshu, Zheng addresses the need to reconsider the usage of the term “forgery,” especially in light of newly discovered texts, in his recent book Zhuzi zhuzuo niandaikao (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan, 2001), 1–11 Google Scholar. He also notes how during the Qing dynasty, as scholarship aimed at “determining forgeries” developed and in many ways came to dominate intellectual pursuits, the number of early texts described as forgeries grew steadily.

4. See, for example, Yu-lan, Fung, History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Bodde, Derk (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), I.19–20 Google Scholar. Equally important is the fact that few people would have “read” the way we do; even after Liu Xiang's compilation of the Guanzi text, materials must still have circulated in much less formal aggregations. And prior to that, material associated with Guan Zhong was clearly widely available and demonstrably varied in its makeup; see Rosen, , “In Search of the Historical Kuan Chung,” and Robin D. S. Yates's brief review of vol. I of Rickett's Guanzi translation in Journal of the American Oriental Society 47.1 (1988), 128–29Google Scholar (which notes that manuscript finds from the Western Han show that some material now found in the Guanzi once circulated in a quite different form). The early reception of texts associated with Huangdi can perhaps be taken as an indicator of Warring States and Han willingness to embrace texts we would today call forgeries. Such texts probably only appeared in the third century b.c., by which time a fairly sophisticated literary culture existed. Alongside other, clearly more archaic documents (such as material we know from the Shi [Odes] or Shu [Documents] ), texts concerning Huangdi could hardly have been convincing “forgeries.” Regarding texts attributed to the classical era proper, the term as it is now used is not particularly meaningful.

5. Shi ji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 130.3288–92Google Scholar. Translations and discussions of various portions of this essay have appeared in many places, e.g., Wm.— de Bary, Theodore, Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1960), 1.189–90Google Scholar; Roth, Harold D., “Psychology and Self-Cultivation in Early Taoistic Thought,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51.2 (1991), 605–06CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yates, Robin D. S., Five Lost Classics: Tao, Huang-Lao, and Yin-Yang in Han China (New York: Random House, 1997), 12–13 Google Scholar. A complete, if somewhat inadequate, translation appears in Porter, Lucius Chapin, Aids to the Study of Chinese Philosophy (Beiping: Harvard Yenching Institute, 1934), 51–53 Google Scholar. It is surprising that a new translation of this important essay did not appear until Roth, Harold and Queen, Sarah contributed one to the second edition of de Bary's Sources of the Chinese Tradition: From Earliest Times to 1600 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), I.278–82Google Scholar.

6. See Nylan, Michael, “A Problematic Model: The Han ‘Orthodox Synthesis,’ Then and Now,” in Imagining Boundaries: Changing Confucian Doctrines, Texts, and Hermeneutics, eds. Chow, Kai-wing, Ng, On-cho, and Henderson, John B. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), especially 18–19 Google Scholar; and see also her discussion of Confucians and Confucianism in Appendix I (Key Terms) of The Five ‘Confucian ‘Classics, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 363–66Google Scholar. Jensen, Lionel M., Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), ch. 3Google Scholar, includes a detailed discussion of many of the terms and issues involved.

7. See Dunkang, Yu, “On Guan Zhongf s School of Thought,” Chinese Studies in Philosophy (Winter, 1982–83), 3–60 Google Scholar.

8. Journal of the American Oriental Society 106.4 (1986), 843 Google Scholar.

9. Rickett, Guanzi, II.4.

10. Careful scholarship has noted that our basis for dating the text's completion to 239 b.c. in fact properly applies only to the ji portion of the work in twelve books, representing, in its basic organization, the calendar. In fact, the text as we now have it probably represents the project in an unfinished state; see Knoblock, John and Riegel, Jeffrey, The Annals of Lü Buwei: A Complete Translation and Study (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 19–20, 27–32Google Scholar. D. C. Lau made a careful comparison of parallel passages in the different divisions of the text (the ji, the lan , and the lun ), and made several insightful suggestions concerning the organization of the work. His conclusion that the later two sections were completed after the ji calendrical section is a useful starting point for further research, but does not address such crucial issues as dating of those later sections or the origins of the material used in them. His arguments suggest, however, that much of the material finally used to complete the lan and lun sections was collected well before those sections took their final form. See Lau, D. C., “A Study of Some Textual Problems in the Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu and their Bearing on its Composition” Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiu jikan 1 (1991), 45–87 Google Scholar. More studies are needed to determine if the language of the text supports a later date for the lan and lun sections, or suggests rather a third century provenance. Based on my own admittedly unsystematic reading of the text I am inclined to regard the entire texts as representative of sources from the last half of the third century b.c.

11. The text is treated only briefly in many works, e.g., Hsiao, Kung-chuan, A History of Chinese Political Thought, Volume One: From the Beginnings to the Sixth Century A.D., trans. by Mote, F. W. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 556–70Google Scholar. Recently the text has received more thorough and careful attention: see Knoblock and Riegel, The Annals of Lü Buwei, and Sellmann, James D., Timing and Rulership in Master Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals (Liishi Chunqiu) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001)Google Scholar. In the early 1980s, Kalinowski, Marc published two thoughtful articles centered on the text: “Les justifications historiques du gouvernement idéal dans le Lüshi chunqiu ,” Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient 68 (1980), 155–208 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Cosmologie et gouvernement naturel dans le Lüshi chunqiu ,” Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient 71 (1982), 169–216 Google Scholar. Cook, Scott, “The Lüshi Chunqiu and the Resolution of Philosophical Dissonance,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 62.2 (2002), 307–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, focuses on certain sections and themes in the work, but approaches it as a coherent whole with considerable insight. A. C. Graham made regular use of the text in his work on, for example, the Nongjia (school of the tillers) and Yangists (see, inter alia, Graham, A. C., Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China [Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1989]Google Scholar, esp. 1.4 and II.3; and Graham, A. C., Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990], esp. 67–110)Google Scholar.

12. Surprisingly, the text and its patron, while vilified in some sections of Sima Qian's Shiji, are celebrated in others. See the introduction to Wang Liqi's excellent new modern edition of the Lü shi chunqiu for a discussion of this: Liqi, Wang, Lü shi chunqiu zhushu (Chengdu: Ba Shu shushe 2002), 1–8 Google Scholar.

13. This model of textual transmission is admittedly too simplistic. Clearly, there were other influential groups, such as powerful families, that contributed to the process whereby texts were compiled, copied, and transmitted. A fuller description of this model might include an earlier and equally important transition, perhaps most evident in the fourth century b.c. but in fact spanning the entire Warring States period, when knowledge was first being compiled into coherent texts that could be transmitted in writing; theoretically, this would allow such knowledge to be gradually divorced from practical or performative aspects of the traditions involved. That break would have come at different times for different traditions, and was presumably in many cases incomplete.

14. The nature and extent of this event have often been misconstrued; see Petersen, Jens Østergård, “Which Books Did the First Emperor of Ch'in Burn? On the Meaning of Pai Chia in Early Chinese Sources” Monumenta Serica 43 (1995), 1–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. The two men held quite different views on a number of important intellectual issues; see the entries for each in Loewe, Michael, A Bibliographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin periods (221 BC–AD 24) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 372–75, 383–86Google Scholar.

16. New discoveries and recent scholarship provide many examples. For the Odes, we have newly discovered manuscript fragments from the fourth century b.c. that purport to record Confucius's comments on several poems from the Shi; see Shanghai bowuguan cang Zhanguo Chu zhushu , ed. Chengyuan, Ma (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2001), 1.123–68Google Scholar. The relevant material is known as the “Kongzi Shi lun,” or Confucius's discussion of the Odes, but Li Ling , the first scholar to work on arranging and deciphering the Shanghai manuscripts, maintains that this is but a section of a longer work, entitled Zi Gao ; see Ling, Li, Shangbo Chu jian sanpian jiaodu ji (Taipei: Wanjuan lou, 2002), 13–14 Google Scholar. On the Chunqiu (and the Zuo zhuan ), see Schaberg, David, A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography (Cambridge: Harvard University Asian Center, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Pines, Yuri, Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–253 B.C.E. (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002)Google Scholar. For evidence of textual traditions from the fourth century b.c. that were by Han times considered part of the Li, see the discovered manuscript versions of the “Zi yi” chapter of the Book of Rites from both a tomb in modern day Hubei and the Shanghai museum manuscripts; see Guodian Chu mu zhujian , ed. shi bowuguan, Jingmen (Beijing: Wenwu, 1998), 129–37Google Scholar, and Ma Chengyuan Shanghai bowuguan, 171–213. On the Yi, see Shaughnessy, Edward L., I Ching: The Classic of Changes (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996)Google Scholar, which includes translations of various works appended to the Yi in the second century b.c. Mawangdui manuscripts. New material pertaining to the Shu has not been as abundant, but a brief discussion of its relation to various intellectual traditions of the Eastern Zhou is available in Lewis, Mark Edward, Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 99–108 Google Scholar. Chapter 8 of that book addresses the formation of the canon more generally, as does Michael Nylan, The Five ‘Confucian’ Classics.

17. On the development of xiao as a political value, see Knapp, Keith N., “The Ru Reinterpretation of Xiao ,” Early China 20 (1995), 195–222 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. The term “Six Arts” is itself telling of the process that is discussed above. Originally a term presumably referring to the various aspects of elite culture that the nobility were expected to be trained in, such as archery, chariot-driving and poetry, it is now used to refer to the imperially sponsored Confucian curriculum; the shift can largely be described as a move from practical traditions to textual ones. In both cases, the term indicates a complete and organic whole, cultivation of which engenders proper behavior and thereby a stable social order. The extent of disparity between what the Han imagined as the content of the Six Arts and whatever it might have actually been at any time during the pre-imperial period is admittedly difficult to determine, since we rely so heavily on Han sources for our understanding of earlier times, and since culture was in such a constant state of flux during the preceding centuries. Nevertheless, the distinction between a pre-Han Six Arts and a Han conception of the Six Arts may be an important element in redefining schools of thought in the early periods.

19. With this definition in mind, I will use the term “Confucian” elsewhere in this review. Notice, however, cf. the preceding note, that while this definition of Confucianism seems to have been relatively stable from the fourth to first century b.c., many other aspects of the tradition may have changed over time, e.g., an increasing shift towards concern with textual transmission and a relatively smaller role for praxis.

20. This is an important part of the problem addressed in this review essay: categories such as Dao may obscure many important developments precisely because we now view them in an overly simplistic light, assuming that what later scholars tell us about them is both accurate and complete. But we are far from understanding the historical development of even these two most celebrated and well-documented traditions.

21. Or Syncretic School, but see Vankeerberghen, Griet, The Huainanzi and Liu An's Claim to Moral Authority (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 171nl8Google Scholar, on confusion over the terms syncretic and eclectic. The “Yiwen zhi” itself suggests that the final category, xiaoshuo, is somehow separate from the other categories (Han shu, 30.1745–46), and this may be of some relevance to the meaning of za, since the paragraph that closes the section on zhuzi argues that, with the exception of the xiaoshuo, the various traditions under this heading contain fragments of wisdom that can collectively be used along with the preceding Six Arts to recapture something of the comprehensiveness and insight of the now lost Way of the Sages. From the perspective of the “Yiwen zhi,” then, za could at most have represented texts that in some preliminary or incomplete way attempted such a synthesis, but certainly did not achieve final success. Sellmann may be too eager in describing the zajia category as “eclectic unified approach to philosophy,” for he notes himself that it can also mean “unclassifiable” (11–12). Knoblock and Riegel treat the contents of the zajia category most comprehensively (The Annals, 43–46); see also Cook, “The L¨shi Chunqiu and the Resolution of Philosophical Dissonance”

22. Li Ling has addressed the complexity of the Han shu scheme, noting the difference between xuepai (roughly, school of thought) and xueke (practical or technical discipline), and noting that za and xiaoshuo do not fit either of these very well; Li Ling, Wu Sunzi fawei (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1997), 2–3. We should note also that the structure of the “Yiwen zhi” implies recognition of this important distinction in its separate treatment of technical traditions such as military texts, astronomical works, and manuals or treatises on divination, but Li is right that a strict separation of these does not seem to have been important to those who formulated the categories. Yet we should note that from the perspective of the “Yiwen zhi” what makes the works in the zhuzi category notable is that they all somehow contribute to a recreation of the Way of the Sages. Thus, the distinction being made in the text is a moral and political one, and will not correspond in all ways to our modern understanding of what is a technical tradition and what a philosophical one.

23. On music, see Cook, “The Lüshi Chunqiu and the Resolution of Philosophical Dissonance”; on Agriculturalists, see Graham, Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature, 67–110.

24. Ban Gu adds a note at the end of the zajia section saying that he has added “bing fa” , military texts, to the list, but it is unclear which texts he refers to. Unlike in other such notes, Ban here specifies neither the text name and author nor the number of bundles (Han shu, 30.1741; cf. 30.1720, 30.1727); nor does he mention this information in the summary of the entire zhuzi section, as he does for the Six Arts section (cf. 30.1723). The issue is crucial to approaching the extant Wei (Yu) Liaozi, which is certainly a military text, but one whose content is eclectic enough to draw the attention of anyone hoping to decipher the category zajia. For a detailed review of modern scholarship on this question, see Sawyer's introduction to his translation of the text in Sawyer, Ralph D., The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press, 1993)Google Scholar, especially 238–41; see also Yates, Robin D. S., “New Light on Ancient Chinese Military Texts: Notes on their Nature and Evolution, and the Development of Military Specialization in Warring States China,” T'oung Pao 74 (1988) 211–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. Or, alternatively, the classificatory schemes of the Western Han may have been too close in time to the emergence of new intellectual trends that did not perfectly coincide with accepted models of the transmission of knowledge. This would help to explain why texts from late in the third and on into the second century (e.g., the Lü shi chunqiu, Guanzi, Huainanzi) were problematic.

26. The description of the zajia at the end of the “Yiwen zhi” list for this group is not particularly helpful: “that they bring together (the principles of) the Confucians and Mohists, and unite (the principles of) the School of Names and Legalists; that they understand how the structure of a state requires such an amalgamation; and that they perceive how the ruler's governance runs like a thread through all things—these are their strengths” (Han shu, 30.1742). Concerning the Lü shi chunqiu and the Huainanzi, we can say that the description accurately grasps the underlying desire to create a politically useful syncretism, yet misses the intellectual core of both works. See Riegel and Knoblock, The Annals, 43–46, on this point.

27. It must be noted that the political philosophy of the Lü shi chunqiu was quite critical of hereditary rule, a fact that could only have made classifying and assessing it more problematic during the Han.

28. Even among recent works in English that approach the traditional schools of thought with a critical eye, the term Naturalists is not used with great clarity or consistency. At times it seems to be a translation of the Yin-Yang jia, at others a catch-all category for any text that falls in the broader category of what Donald Harper accurately calls “natural philosophy,” and still other times seems to indicate some combination of the Huang-Lao and Yin-Yang school, plus the style of syncretic Confucianism forged by Dong Zhongshu .

29. The list can easily be added to: the “Xi ci” wing of the Changes shares affinities with these works, but its role in the development of early Chinese thought remains uncertain. That the Lü shi chunqiu ought to belong to this newly proposed category of Naturalists is supported by James D. Sellmann's new work on the text, which identifies timing or seasonality as the most fundamental intellectual position of the text. The crucial term here is the Chinese shi , season.

30. Han shu, 30.1734.

31. Han shu, 30.1734–35. The work attributed to Dong Zhongshu is the only text that shows any strong affinity to numerology, prognostication, or other occult arts. Unlike early chapters of the Guanzi or the Yi Zhou shu, this work seems to have drawn directly and heavily from both the Naturalist and the Yin-Yang traditions, as well as Five Phases thought, allowing its authors and compilers to incorporate elements derived from Yin-Yang praxis; see Queen, Sarah A., From Chronicle to Canon: the Hermeneutics of the Spring and Autumn, According to Tung Chung-shu (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Queen argues forcefully for the composite nature of the work, and identifies five quite different groups of chapters that comprise the work, including separate Yin-Yang and Five Phases groups. The Lü shi chunqiu has drawn on Yin-Yang theory and its structure reflects certain numerological beliefs, but prognostication and occult arts are not defining features of the text's intellectual position. See below on calendrical systems and prognostication.

32. See Yates, Five Lost Classics, 10–16.

33. The views of these scholars are discussed in summary in Yates, Five Lost Classics, 10–12.

34. Shi ji 130; the translation is from Yates, Five Lost Classics, 13.

35. Boltz, Review, 844.

36. Much of Shaughnessy's work on poetry and divination in the Western Zhou suggests that we might find early roots of this perspective as far back as the eighth and ninth centuries b.c. See the section “The Development of the Late Western Zhou Worldview” of “Western Zhou History” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China, from the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., ed. Loewe, Michael and Shaughnessy, Edward L. (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 292–351 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Origins and Early Development of the Yi jing,” in I Ching: The Classic of Changes, 1–13; and “The Composition of ‘Qian’ and ‘Kun’ Hexagrams of the Zhouyi ,” in Before Confucius: Studies in the Creation of the Chinese Classics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 197–219 Google Scholar. Man, Sarah, The Way of Water and the Sprouts of Virtue (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997)Google Scholar is a book length study of nature metaphors in early classical texts.

37. Certainly Mencius draws many of his metaphors from the natural world. His link to Naturalist ways of conceiving of the interaction between mankind and the cosmos may run deeper than this. He is well known for his position on human nature, and that position is rooted in a Naturalist analogy that explains human emotional and moral responses as sprouting within us spontaneously, but requiring nurture. His understanding of the links between nature's bounty and the role of the ruler in managing nature are not as explicit as Xunzi's or the formulations of later thinkers, but his treatment of the natural world is suggestive of intellectual links between the Mencius and what I have described thus far as Naturalist thought. With Xunzi we have an obvious and important precursor to Dong Zhongshu: these two thinkers advance a vision of rulership that places the monarch at the focal point of cosmic order, able to bring the order of nature to perfection through sage administration. The three figures differ considerably on the details and extent of the dynamic interaction between man and nature, and there are obvious developments over time from one to the other, but to a certain extent they may share a common underlying assumption about the role rulers play in cosmic order. Nature is, of course, an important source for analogies and metaphors in the Zhuangzi as well, but generally speaking the notion that nature is left in an unperfected state and requires the intervention of the sagely ruler is anathema to the text.

38. It is tempting to simply replace my new use of the term Naturalists with something like School of the Seasons; yet it is not possible to identify any specific social institution that merits the name “school” behind these ideas. Nevertheless, a hypothetical model of the development of the Naturalist outlook can be reconstructed, wherein calendrical specialists in the courts of Eastern Zhou states would have given the movement its first coherent articulation.

39. There was originally a third chapter in the Yi Zhou shu called “Yue ling”; its name is preserved in the table of contents, but the chapter has been lost. Many scholars assume it was similar or identical to the “Yue ling” chapter of the Li ji and the twelve calendrical chapters of the Lü shi chunqiu. As we will see below, other chapters of the text present much briefer calendrical material. Peirong, Huang , Zhou shu “Zhou yue” pian zhucheng de shidai ji youguan sanzheng wenti de yanjiu (Taipei: Guoli Taiwan daxue, wenshi congkan no. 37, 1972)Google Scholar, is a detailed study of the “Zhou yue” chapter; Huang concludes that it dates to the decades spanning the end of the Warring States period to the early years of the Han.

40. These chapters are 8, “You guan” , 40, “Si shi” (which is examined below), 41, “Wu xing” , and 85, “Qingzhong ji” . See Rickett, I.148–69, for a detailed introduction to these and other early calendrical texts, and Jiacong, Hu , “ Guanzi ‘You guan pian’ xinkao—jianlun Lü shi chunqiu ‘Shier ji pian’ de niandai” , Shehui kexue zhanxian 2 (1981), 139–46Google Scholar. A wealth of manuscript materials related to calendrical and Yin-Yang thought was discovered along with military treatises and other works from a second century b.c. Han dynasty tomb, known as the Yinqueshan tomb, but almost no work has been done on these texts in or outside of China. A welcome exception is Yates, Robin D. S., “The Yin-Yang texts from Yinqueshan: An Introduction and Partial Reconstruction, with Notes on their Significance in Relation to Huang-Lao Daoism,” Early China 19 (1994), 75–144 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Unfortunately, it is not possible to date most of these materials precisely.

41. Apparently, a primary reason that Rickett does not devote more attention to the Yi Zhou shu is that he accepts the traditional (but now demonstrably erroneous) belief that the text was unearthed from a tomb in a.d. 281 and then tampered with; see Rickett 1.159. On the authenticity of the Yi Zhou shu, see Peirong, Huang, “ Zhou shu yanjiu” , Ph.D dissertation, Taiwan University (1976)Google Scholar, and McNeal, Robin, “The Body as Metaphor for the Civil and Martial Components of Empire in Yi Zhou shu, Chapter 32; With an Excursion on the Composition and Structure of the Yi Zhou shu .” Journal of the American Oriental Society 122.1 (2002), 46–60 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. Shin'ichi, Yanaka, “Itsu Shūso no shisō to seiritsu ni tsuite—Saigakujutsu no ichikumen no kōsatsu ” Nippon Chūgoku gakkai ho , 38 (1986), 1–16 Google Scholar. Yanaka discusses a number of shared concepts in the political philosophies of these two texts (8–11), which for the most part center on an approach to managing people and resources that is in fact a crucial element of what I am calling Naturalism in these two texts. This will be discussed below

43. Yanaka, “Itsu Shūso,” 11–12. I agree that there are close ties between the Yi Zhou shu and texts associated with Taigong Wang, a figure linked to both the original ruling house of Qi and the Zhou house in its conquest of the Shang; see McNeal, “The Body as Metaphor,” 60.

44. Guanzi jiaozheng , in Zhuzi jicheng (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1986)Google Scholar, 5.1; Rickett, I.52–53.

45. Guanzi jiaozheng, 7; Rickett, I.93–94.

46. Guanzi jiaozheng, 273; Rickett, II.187.

47. The pairs are: chapters 2 “Xing shi” and 64 “Xingshi jie” ; 4 “Li zheng” and 65 “Lizheng Jiubai jie” ; 7 “Ban fa” and 66 “Banfa jie”; 46 “Ming fa” and 67 “Mingfa jie” . The opening chapter, “Mu min,” originally had such an explanatory chapter, jie , but it has been lost.

48. . Gmnzi jiaozheng, 32, 33; Rickett, I.144. Rickett follows one of three possible explanations for the expression tianzhi , namely, taking zhi as a phonetic loan for zhi . The Qing scholar Yu Yue , however, argues that it is a graphic confusion for de , which indeed we find written in pre-standard script as placed over the heart/mind semantic classifier . Once the opening line is paired with the later passage from the same chapter that I link it to above, the logic of accepting Yu's explanation is clear: each thing that the ruler governs has an innate virtue or capacity, and to manage all things efficiently and effectively, one must accord with those innate virtues just as Heaven harmonizes the virtues of all things in order to create an organic cosmic order. The third possibility is that we accept the graph as it stands, and understand the phrase tianzhi as something like what heaven has engendered in each thing, which is of course in fact not really different from the reading Yu proposes and that I adopt here. Yu Yue's commentary is provided in many editions of the Guanzi; cf. Changyao, Yan , Guanzi jiaoshi (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1996), 72 Google Scholar. Such passages point out the difficulty in translating a text such as the Guanzi, which presents us with numerous textual and intellectual problems. In a review article written for this very journal, Christoph Harbsmeier criticized contemporary western sinologists for failing to consult and take seriously modern editions of the classics, an argument which is in many respects well-founded; see Harbsmeier, Christoph, “Xunzi and the Problem of Impersonal First Person Pronouns,” Early China 22 (1997), 181–220 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But with texts such as the Guanzi, and to a much greater extent the Yi Zhou shu, there simply is no consensus on a large number of problematic passages or phrases. Boltz, in his review of volume one of Rickett's translation already cited above, takes Rickett to task on this issue as well, noting that Rickett's choices in solving such problems are often not defended in any systematic way. The critique is in fact aimed at the state of early China studies in general, and can hardly be taken as a serious failure of the present work. In the introduction to his book The Textual History of the Huai-nan Tzu (Ann Arbor: The Association of Asian Studies, 1992)Google Scholar, Harold D. Roth has argued the need to establish critical editions of even the most familiar texts from ancient China, and the task is most crucial for texts that have received the least critical attention from traditional scholars in imperial times. The realistic option for Rickett was surely not to prepare a careful study of editions of the Guanzi first and then translate it, but rather whether or not to translate it at all.

49. Guanzi jiaozheng, 339, 341–42; Rickett, I.137,144; cf. Taigong liutao “Dali” Song ben Wujing qishu (Xu guyi congshu ed.), 1.4A: “Those above concern themselves with being comprehensive, those below with being settled. As for comprehensiveness, it corresponds to Heaven; being settled, with earth.”

50. Guanzi jiaozheng, 330; Rickett, I.77.

51. Guanzi jiaozheng, 333; Rickett, I.85.

52. Guanzi jiaozheng, 238; Rickett, II.110. My reading is very close to Rickett's.

53. See Yates' discussion of the “Wang bing” chapter and related manuscripts in his review of Rickett, I.

54. Rickett, II.111.

55. Rickett, II.112.

56. Numbered categories in the closing rhymed section may or may not refer directly back to passages of the prose calendar; commentators and modern scholars have to emend this section a bit to find direct correspondences with the prose section, and even if they are correct in such emendations, it is possible that when the chapter was created by bringing two separate pieces of text together in the third century b.c., its “author” consciously found ways to link the two parts. In fact, it is likely that if indeed the two sections were originally separate, they may nevertheless have been generated out of the same pedagogical tradition; the prose piece could easily have emerged during the process of transmission of the earlier rhymed passage as explanation or elaboration. See Rickett, II.117, for notes on the emendations.

57. For a more detailed survey, see McNeal, Robin, “Acquiring People: Social Organization, Mobilization, and the Discourse on the Civil and the Martial in Ancient China,” Ph.D dissertation, 2000 Google Scholar, ch. 6.

58. Huang Huaixin , Maorong, Zhang , and Xudong, Tian , Yi Zhou shu huijiao jizhu (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1995), 189–90Google Scholar.

59. Huang, Zhang, and Tian, Yi Zhou shu, 427–28.

60. Economic developments form an important theme in Yang Kuan's detailed study of the Waning States period; Kuan, Yang , Zhanguo shi rev. ed. (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu, 1997)Google Scholar, for example, 115–22.

61. . Huang, Zhang, and Tian, Yi Zhou shu, 429. The passage is closely paralleled in both Wenzi ch. 20, “Shang ren” (Sibu beiyao fasc. 1413, 2.24a) and Huainanzi ch. 9, “Zhu shu” (Huainanzi zhu , in Zhuzi jicheng 7.147). In both of these texts the verbs in each of the four sentences about the four seasons differs from the passage in the Yi Zhou shu, which in most cases makes for only a subtle difference in nuance; the objects of these verbs vary slightly as well, in some cases only orthographically. The Huainanzi uses the verbs fa , to cut down; qu , to obtain; xu , to store up; and again fa, to cut. The Wenzi uses also fa for cutting down withered grasses and reeds in the spring, then shou , to collect; xu , to store up; and qu . Both passages end the list of seasonal activities with the line , as appears a bit later on in the Yi Zhou shu passage cited above, suggesting that the cut down, collected or harvested materials are indeed to be distributed as resources. We might find the variant fa preferable to fa in the Yi Zhou shu passage, but it seems that the focus there is on the ruler's role in getting these resources distributed to the populace, and in any case the repetition of the same verb in all four sentences makes it less likely that it is a corruption (we might also interpret the verb to mean, not distribute, but rather issue forth, which again subtly alters the entire passage by shifting the focus away from the ruler's duties and to the earth's productive cycle). Presumably we should understand that after dead or withered overgrowth is cleared in the spring, the grasses and reeds are distributed for use in the making of baskets and the like. The relationship between these three passages is complex. First of all, it is well known that many passages of the Wenzi parallel parts of the Huainanzi closely (see, inter alia, Yuanzhi, Ding , Huainanzi yu Wenzi kaobian [Taipei: Wanjuan lou, 1999]Google Scholar). More importantly,z a close examination of the longer passage in the Huainanzi from which these lines come reveals that the authors there are likely to have drawn on two chapters of the Yi Zhou shu (the chapter cited above, “Da ju,” and also chapter 25, “Wen zhuan” ) in fashioning this section of the chapter, or, alternatively, to have drawn on some other source common to all the texts. A full examination of the parallels must await my detailed study of the date and authenticity of the Yi Zhou shu, currently underway.

62. Huang, Zhang, and Tian, Yi Zhou shu, 293. This chapter also includes a brief mention of the Five Phases, but only as one group in a long list of enumerative sets, which show no sign of systematic numerology and do not seem to elaborate any cosmological system based on the Five Phases or any other organizing principles. Chapter 29 (308), “Bao dian” , includes a passage similar to the brief calendrical passage in ch. 28, also as part of a long enumerative list, but with no mention of the Five Phases.

63. Huang, Zhang, and Tian, Yi Zhou shu, 238.

64. Taigong liutao “Shou guo” , 1.6ab. Note that Yanaka finds meaningful intellectual and textual parallels between the Yi Zhou shu and this text.

65. The “Chu Silk Manuscript,” a calendrical chart clearly related to this genre of writing, probably dates to the end of the fourth century b.c. See the translation by Ling, Li and Cook, Constance in Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China, ed. Cook, Constance A. and Major, John S., (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999), 173–76Google Scholar; see also McNeal, “The Body as Metaphor,” 54–55.

66. Some scholars want to link it to the Huang-Lao school (see, for example, Peerenboom, R. P, Law and Morality in Ancient China: The Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993)Google Scholar, but more work needs to be done to determine the parameters of this tradition and its exact relationship with Naturalist thought.

67. Recent archaeological finds from the Dunhuang region include a large silk banner affixed to the outside wall of a late first century Han government building. The banner presented, apparently as a public announcement, a calendrical list of government prohibitions and policies that mirrors the “Yue ling” chapter of the Li ji. See Pingsheng, Hu and Defang, Zhang , Dunhuang Xuanquan Han jian shicui (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2001)Google Scholar and Dunhuang Xuanquan Yuelingzhaotiao , ed. wenwu yanjiu suo, Zhongguo and suo, sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiu Gansu (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2001)Google Scholar.

68. The same argument can be made concerning Harold Roth's recent work on early Daoist practice: it would have been impossible without the Guanzi. See, inter alia, Roth, Harold D., Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

69. Rickett suggests that Xunzi was influenced by “Mu min” (Rickett 1.51); a study tracing fourth century b.c. intellectual history leading up to Xunzi's career, with careful attention to evidence of master-disciple relationships and the development of various branches within the Confucian tradition, might elucidate such relationships, if they exist.

70. Rickett, I.3.

71. The details of economic theory and policy found in the work have attracted the attention of modern scholars especially; see Maverick, Lewis, T'an, Po-f'u and Wen, Kung-wen, Economic Dialogues in Ancient China: Selections from the Kuan-tzu (Carbondale, Ill.: Lewis A. Maverick, 1954)Google Scholar. Liang Qichao was excited by the discovery of economic and political ideas in the text that seemed to him relevant to the issue of modernization; see Liang Qichao, “Guanzi pingzhuan” , appended to the front of the Guanzi in Zhuzi jicheng 5.

72. Rosen, “In Search of the Historical Kuan Chung.” For a brief introduction to the genre of historical romance from the late Zhou era, see Maspero, Henri, China in Antiquity, trans. Kierman, Frank A. Jr. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978), 357–65Google Scholar. Fragments of material related to this genre were discovered among the Yinqueshan manuscripts from the Western Han; see Jiulong, Wu , Yinqueshan Han jian shiwen , (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985)Google Scholar.

73. Rickett, I.3.

74. A similar observation has been made by Griet Vankeerberghen concerning the Huainanzi. That is, that rather than insist on either a careless mixture of Confucian, Daoist, and other ideas into an incoherent whole or, at the other extreme, a systematic text representing one school of thought, we might recognize a third option: the conscious forging of a synthesis drawing on important traditions but not aimed at representing any one of them. What explains the coherence of the Huainanzi, she argues, is that its sponsor believed it contained all the information needed to guide a ruler in governing in accord with the Way. See Vankeerberghen, The Huainanzi, 4–5.

75. Again, see Roth, Original Tao.

76. Rickett's translation of these terms has generated some debate; see Boltz's review of Rickett, I, and the latter's response in II.5–6.

77. I suspect that the success of the Confucian tradition is in part attributable to the fact that Confucians were able to convince contemporaries that they held special intellectual and historical claims on the interpretation of a range of values that were widely embraced; we should not ourselves accept those claims uncritically.

78. Yates notes this problem in his review of Rickett, I.

79. We are still far from understanding early Chinese phonology, regional differences, and poetic or rhetorical conventions in enough detail to be capable of using such a criterion as irregular rhymes to pinpoint a text's date and region of composition. Additionally, attempts to link texts or intellectual trends to specific regional institutions need to go beyond general references to Qi's Jixia “Academy” and Liu An's early Han group of scholars in the Huainan region; these are the two best documented of such institutions, but even their outlines remain indistinct, and there were others, such as Lü Buwei's group of scholars, that ought to be examined as well. The most critical and insightful study of this subject in recent years is Sivin, Nathan's “The Myth of the Naturalists,” in Sivin, , Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in Ancient China (Aldershot, Great Britain and Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum Collected Studies Series CS512, 1995)Google Scholar, especially 19–29. Sivin convincingly argues that there was no “academy” at Jixia, and that scholarly attention would be better spent looking for patterns of patronage in this era than for think-tanks.

80. The calendrical chapters of the Yi Zhou shu mentioned above, “Zhou yue” and “Shi xun” are third century works that include Yin-Yang thought.

81. See Sivin, Nathan, “State, Cosmos, and Body in the Last Three Centuries b.c. ” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 55 (1995), 5–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yates, Robin D. S., “Body, Space, Time and Bureaucracy: Boundary Creation and Control Mechanisms in Early China,” in Boundaries in China, ed. Hay, John (London: Reaktion Books, 1994), especially 67–79 Google Scholar; and McNeal, “Body as Metaphor.”

82. We should expect that Huang-Lao thought had some impact on many texts that were written or compiled in the third and second century b.c., but again, care must be taken not conflate influence with direct intellectual filiation. The details of the relationship between the Guanzi and the Huang-Lao tradition remain to be elucidated.