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Notes on Professor Karlgren's System for Dating Chinese Bronzes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
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The pre-Confucian period has come, during the last decade, to occupy a central place in the attention of students of the history of Chinese culture. Research on the oracle bones, scientific excavations at Anyang and elsewhere, and other investigations and discoveries have not served merely to throw light on the civilization of late Shang and early Chou times. They have also shown us that those periods saw the laying of the foundations of the whole structure of Chinese culture, as it has persisted even to our own day, so that to understand them is no mere concern of antiquarians, but a vital necessity for any deep understanding of the currents of Chinese history.
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1936
References
page 463 note 1 By “contemporary documents” I mean documents physically preserved from that day to this, rather than merely transmitted as to content. In my opinion, while we have many transmitted books from early Chou times, none of the transmitted books sometimes attributed to the Shang period (as for instance the P'an Kêng of the Shu Ching) is really from that time.
page 464 note 1 It is generally agreed that it is better in writing to use one term, either Shang or Yin, consistently, rather than to confuse matters by using both. Many prefer Yin. I use Shang, because the term Yin does not seem to occur in the bone inscriptions at all, because the people apparently called at least their capital Shang, and because the term Yin seems to have been exclusively a term used by the Chou people to designate them.
page 464 note 2 Karlgren, Bernhard, Yin and Chou in Chinese Bronzes, an article, pp. 9–154Google Scholar, with 58 plates, in Yin and Chou Researches (Museum of Far Eastern Antīquītīes, Stockholm, 1935, 7½ × 10½, pp. 223, pls. 90).
page 464 note 3 All such page references in parentheses in the text refer to the work cited in the preceding note.
page 468 note 1 
ku Tai Ming K'é Hui K'ao, Yin Ch'i Y¨ Lun Fu Lu (Tokyo, 1934). laGoogle Scholar.
page 469 note 1 These inscriptions occur in: Chên Sung T'ang Chi Ku I Wên Pu I, shang 13; Chên Sung Tang Chi Ku I Wên, vii, 18; viii, 29; and iv, 47.
page 469 note 2 
Chia Ku Wân pien> xiii 1.
page 469 note 3 Cf 
Chin Wén, pien, xiii, 2–4.
page 469 note 4 These twenty-six inscriptions occur in: Yin Wên Ts'un, shang 24; Chên Sung Tang Chi Ku I Wên, ii, 36, 41; iv, 12, 43; vii, 12, 13, 18; viii, 18, 23 (twice), 24, 25, 29; Chê Sung T'ang Chi Ku I Wên Pu I, shang 13, 18; chung 9, 18; Chên Sung T'ang Chi Ku I Wên Hsü Pien, shang 26, 36; chung 8 (twice), 9, 19, 24, 37.
page 469 note 5 Chên Sung T'ang Chi Ku I Wên, ii, 36, 41, 44 [the i occurring here was not included in the above list because the character is mutilated and the 
element, while clearly indicated, is only partially preserved]; vii, 12, 13, 18; viii, 24; Pu I, shang 13, 18, chung 9; Hsü Pien, shang 26, chung 19.
page 470 note 1 Chên Sung T'ang Chi Ku I Wên, vii, 18; Hsü Pien, chung 24.
page 470 note 2 Chên Sung Tang CM Ku I Wên Hsu Pien, chung 9.
page 470 note 3 See his 
Chia Ku Wên Tuan Tai Yen Chiu Li, in Studies Presented to Ts'ai Yuan P'ei on his Sixty-fifth Birthday (Peip'ing, Academia Sinica, 1933), 412–13Google Scholar.
page 472 note 1 Revue des Arts Asiatiques, ix (1935), 103–104Google Scholar.
page 473 note 1 For instance, he says of vessels of his categories C and D that “the great majority are of later date, from Eastern Chou time” (p. 24). This is because they had a conventionalized dating system, and “Since it is inconceivable that the feudal kingdoms could have such an advanced custom of conventionalized dating at the same time as the Royal Chou had an original free dating system, we must conclude that we are here confronted with a difference in period. Indeed, the ch'u ki ting-hai formula becomes common in the last reigns of Western Chou (B 99, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107), and the feudal states seem to have followed the lead. The feudal vessels with the ch'u ki ting-hai formula are therefore to be placed in the period from about 800 b.c. to 256 b.c. (end of the Chou dynasty), and the majority must be from Eastern Chou time (770–256). Moreover, since there is no reason to believe that just those feudal vessels which happen to have the month quarter indicated should be later than their undated sister vessels, we can assume it to be fairly likely that the great majority of the feudal vessels belong to this period” (p. 25). The last proposition is a non sequitur.