INTRODUCING THE TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY *WU JI 五紀 MANUSCRIPT WITH A FOCUS ON ITS MATERIALITY AND ITS STATUS AS A SOURCE

Abstract

The recently published Tsinghua University bamboo manuscript *Wu ji 五紀 presents a manuscript copy that is riddled with curious irregularities, omissions, and mistakes in its text, punctuation, and the preparation of the slips. Only some of these mistakes were corrected by a proofreader, others reveal errors of misunderstanding by the scribe and/or punctuator. Furthermore, paratext that was included in a previous instantiation of the text was only preserved in paratextual notes in the present copy. An analysis of these aspects of the manuscript helps shed light on its potential status as a source and raises questions about the relationship between unearthed and transmitted texts more generally.

摘要

近期出版的清華大學藏《五紀》簡在文本、標識符號和製作方面充滿有趣的不一致、漏寫和錯誤。這些錯誤能夠反應抄手或句讀者的誤解，然而只有其中一小部分錯誤被校對者修改。其次，母本原有的副文本特徵只通過小題記得以保留。通過分析寫本以上特徵能夠闡明其文本的史料價值，同時使得我們反省出土文獻與傳世文獻的關係。

Introduction

The recently published volume 11 of the Tsinghua manuscripts is comprised of a single, 130-slip long manuscript, called the *Wu ji 五紀 (The Five Guidelines) by the editors.¹ The manuscript's name was based on the frequent repetition of the term wu ji throughout the text, names such as Hou yue 后曰 (Hou said) and Hou fan 后範 (Hou's model) were also considered, given the prominence of the figure Hou in the text and similarities to the Shangshu 尚書, “Hong Fan” 洪範 chapter.²

After an initial organization of the slips and a coarse transcription of the graphs, four editors were charged with transcribing and annotating sections of the text.³ These initial transcriptions were collectively read, discussed, and re-edited three times in sessions attended by all members and affiliates of the Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts at Tsinghua University, before a final session established the text. These sessions were conducted mostly based on a printout of the transcription as it stood, with occasional reference to relevant parts of the images of the bamboo slips projected on a screen. Except in rare cases where detailed observation of graphs was necessary, the physical slips were not frequently consulted at this stage.⁴

Timed just before the publication of the manuscript, several studies appeared written by the editors responsible for the initial preparation of different sections of the manuscript.⁵ These introduce the theme of the text as a whole and similarities to previous materials (Ma Nan), the way it correlates the human body with the heavens (Jia Lianxiang), the twenty-eight mansions (lunar lodges, Shi Xiaoli), and the story of the Yellow Emperor 黃帝 and Chi You 蚩尤 (Cheng Hao). In a Guangming Daily article the text is presented as an encyclopedia, and to the extent that a wide range of knowledge is gathered for non-specialist consumption this seems a fair assessment.⁶ The content of the text provides an interesting counterpoint to the highly specialized astro-calendrical texts found at Mawangdui, for example. Instead of the process of classification, calculation, and divination often seen in technical materials, the *Wu ji appears more focused on the mythical origins and the moral-philosophical applications of these technical principles.⁷

The text deals with a variety of topics, introduced through the figure of Hou(di) 后(帝). The embedded narrative structure has this unknown cultural hero from antiquity responding to a personification of primal chaos You Hong 有洪 perhaps here best translated as “Flood Bringer.” Hou is credited with a range of measures that impose order. In typical fashion reminiscent of texts such as the “Hong Fan” 洪範 chapter of the Shang shu 尚書, Hou establishes the constituent elements of the cosmos, the calendar, spirits and so forth, before correlating these with virtues (li 禮, yi 義, ai 愛, ren 仁, zhong 中), images (xiang 象), parts of the body, numbers, demons and illnesses.⁸ Often, these correlations are made with rhyming statements, many of which are in the Yang-group rhymes familiar from the Daybooks and other technical texts.⁹ In the final sections, we find a short narrative on the Yellow Emperor and Chi You, before returning to Hou's summative discussion on the Wu ji 五紀 (see Table 1).

Table 1 *Wu ji structure

Given the careful integration of this wide range of materials, it seems clear that the text is not a miscellany or understood as a compilation of separate texts. It is nevertheless quite possible that the text originated as a composite that arranged and adapted multiple sources into the single text that this manuscript presents. As an object, however, it appears that the present manifestation of text and manuscript was perhaps incompletely copied from an earlier, more comprehensive ensemble that involved tables or visual structuring, and perhaps images.

The Manuscript

In this introduction to the manuscript, I focus on the quality of the manuscript's preparation and editing. Given the manuscript's length, it is remarkably intact. Besides missing slips 14–15 and 113–114, a number of slips have parts broken off. Slips are about 45 cm long and 0.6 cm wide, featuring three binding cords. Traces of the binding cords remain visible, especially at the last slip of the manuscript where it was tied off. Across the slips the cords left clear imprints, revealing that in the middle of the manuscript the binding cords may have loosened at some point during the life of the manuscript and pressed down slanting upwards along the slips.¹¹

Because each slip is marked sequentially on the recto just below the bottom binding cord, the order of the slips was easily determined. The end of the text is marked with a hook-shaped punctuation mark on the final slip, followed by blank space. Hook-shaped marks are also used to mark section divisions within the manuscript. Dash-shaped marks are occasionally used to this effect as well, and I have not been able to determine any particular significance in the distribution of these two marks.¹² The writing is neatly laid out on the manuscript and generally features well-inked brush strokes. There are areas where the ink is unclear and smudged. This may be due in part to the shifting of the slips noted above; it is not clear when this happened exactly.

Errors and Corrections

Based on corrections visible in the manuscript, some of which are clearly in a different hand, it appears that the manuscript went through at least one round of proofreading. Errors and corrections in manuscripts are of course quite common,¹³ what is noteworthy in this manuscript is the number of mistakes left uncorrected and the large number of errors in the punctuation of the text despite clear signs of proofreading.¹⁴

The writing of the manuscript starts below the top binding cord and ends before the bottom cord, with numerals written below the bottom cord. Graphs avoid the bindings and it seems likely that the manuscript was bound before writing, or, that the scribe referenced the notches in the slips in determining the layout of the text.¹⁵ Against this layout, the presence of two lightly brushed graphs, dong zhu 東柱 “eastern pillar,” above the top binding on slip 83 stand out in stark contrast. These, and the two graphs and punctuation mark, zuo gu 左股 “left thigh,” immediately following on the slip are brushed lighter and squeezed more closely together, as are the preceding graphs at the bottom of slip 82, xi zhu you gu 西柱右股 “western pillar right thigh.” This highly repetitive section of the text (it is preceded and followed by multiple limbs, east and west), may have thrown off the scribe and led him to drop a few graphs. This mistake was then corrected later (see Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1 Left: slips 81–83, bottom. Courtesy of the Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Figure 2 Right: slips 82–84, top. Courtesy of the Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Any previous writing was scraped off (this is admittedly not entirely clear from the images) and the corrections appear to be in a different hand from the immediately surrounding text.¹⁶ The correction is followed by a punctuation mark, which may suggest that the correction was done based on a master-copy that included punctuation, or, that the proofreader supplied it himself.¹⁷ The spacing of the punctuation vis à vis the writing does not suggest an order either way, as there is plenty of space left between graphs to accommodate the punctuation and marks are placed in typical fashion anywhere between a third to halfway in between the space of two graphs.

Other examples of correction can be found in the addition of missing graphs. Slip 97 has ren 人 squeezed in between in smaller script, and slip 61 has bei 北 squeezed in smaller script in between the first two graphs of the slip. These graphs were likely added either in a round of corrections, or, directly after the scribe noticed the skipped graph; their simple composition makes it hard to definitively distinguish the hand of the scribe responsible for the corrections.¹⁸

Slips 59–61—the section of text that contained the supplemented bei 北 noted above—has other errors that were not corrected. For example, the editors note that the writing of zhai 宅 in this section was executed incorrectly with the nü 女 signific in the first instance, switching to zhai 厇 in the second instance, before slipping into the first form again on slip 61. Generally speaking, the *Wu ji shows variation in graph component structure between different sections of the text, a phenomenon that Jia Lianxiang attributes to the scribe faithfully copying different forms from an eclectic range of materials that formed the sources of the present copy of the *Wu ji.¹⁹ But perhaps some of the variation is the result of the scribe slipping into personal scribal habits between attempts to faithfully copy the vorlage.²⁰

The officiant of sacrifices then held on to the rites, and set up an altar in the eastern mansion, saying: “[The one] grasping ritual is called the officiant of sacrifices”; saying: “Following these movements!” The ancestor then held on to humaneness, and set up an altar in the south, saying: “The smells from the sacrificial vessels are gentle”; saying: “Pure smells!” The head of officials held on to propriety, and set up an altar in the western mansion, saying: “Use these animals for the sacrifice”; saying: “The Sacrifice!” The master artisan held onto care, and set up an altar in the northern mansion, saying: “Vessels and silks topped with color”; saying: “Beautiful!” These are called the four mansions, the four regions of the world, ritual is called a standard, humaneness is called food, propriety is called a model, care is called adhering, the four rites are to show respect, when fully loyal it is called a blessing.²¹

祝乃秉禮，壇于西<東><（宅）>曰：丮禮號祝，曰：唯順是行。宗乃秉仁，壇于[59]南宅曰：祭器香柔，曰：唯蠲香。官長秉義，壇于東<西>（宅）曰：牲用比物，曰：唯犧。工師秉愛，壇[60]于北宅曰：器幣上色，曰：唯嘉。曰四<（宅）>，四域天下，禮曰則，仁曰食，義曰式，愛曰服，四禮以恭，全忠曰福 [61]。²²

The passage includes another mix-up of the east and west formula. The correlation of the virtues li 禮 and yi 義 with their corresponding directions established on slip 20 in the manuscript has been inverted here on slip 59. This may of course have been an error already present in an earlier iteration of the text, spaced roughly forty slips apart it would be a stretch to imagine a scribe or proofreader verifying the correlations of these items. Nevertheless, it does reveal that any proofreading of the text did not engage with the actual content. The same is true for the missing graph li 禮 on slip 63 following this section, parallelism with bing yi 秉義 in the next line indicates that it ought to be there:

The virtue of the sun is called: “We meet (according to) [ritual] and set up the seasons, the gathered multitude (of gods) confer and inquire, the world anxiously observes it.”

日之德曰：我期[禮]作時，叢羣謀詢，天下㤕察[63]之。

The gist of this section revolves around pairing the virtues with heavenly bodies, officials, and proper duties. Here, for instance, the time-structuring aspect of ritual is linked to the sun's leading role in the establishment of the seasons, which in turn provide guidance to all the officials, artisans, officers etc.²³ Given the text's careful and regular correlation of these elements, it appears that the occurrence of the mistakes should be attributed to a scribe who was not likely intellectually involved in the content of the text and is perhaps best understood as a copyist. This would, at least for this iteration of the text, exclude the expert user-producers that we tend to associate with technical manuscripts.²⁴

Irregularities and Punctuation

The punctuation likewise contains a number of irregular features. Whether such irregularities are best understood as errors of copying or misunderstanding, or rather reflect an attempt to guide the reader with meaningful distinctions, needs to be evaluated in light of the overall state and habits of execution visible in the manuscript as a whole.²⁵ As was already visible in the example above (slips 59–61), hook- and dash-shaped punctuation marks seem to alternate without particular meaningful distinction, and sometimes seem to have been added irregularly:

The master artisan held on to care, and set up an altar in the northern mansion, saying: “Vessels and silks topped with color”; saying: “Beautiful!”

工師秉愛，壇[60]于北宅曰：器幣上色，曰：唯嘉。

All the other lines in this section feature a mark only after the second yue … 曰 … statement. But here the punctuator adds it after both the first and the second statement, even though no disambiguation was particularly necessary—maybe it alerts the reader to the end of this list of formulaically patterned statements.²⁶ Indeed, there are other examples of irregularities at the end of lists that are equally ambiguous. Take slips 13 and 123 for instance. These feature a repetition mark written with a single instead of a double dash even though the others in the series are all executed with the much more regularly occurring double dash:

Hou said: “In the world, the eyes assist ritual, and ritual exercises straightness; the mouth assists propriety, and propriety exercises squareness; the ears assist care, and care exercises measure; the nose assists humaneness, and humaneness exercises balance; the heart assists loyalty, and loyalty exercises the rounding out of desires.

后曰：天下目相豊=（禮，禮）行[12]直；口相義=（義，義）行方；耳相㤅=（愛，愛）行準；鼻相=（仁，仁）行稱；心相中<=>（忠，忠）行圓欲。

The addition of a mark after cheng 稱 is irregular in this series, but it appears even more pronounced because of the use of a single-dash shaped repetition mark after zhong 中 before the list is closed with a final mark. The mark after cheng was likely intended, as in the example above, to indicate to the reader that the list was about to end and that the rhythm was about to change.²⁷ Perhaps the use of a single instead of a double-dashed mark for zhong is an example of the scribe accidentally skipping a stroke on the reduplication mark because he had just written a single, dash-shaped mark, only three graphs earlier.²⁸ The final mark simply ends the series.

Similarly, on slips 122–23 we find again some irregularities in a series of anadiplosis. It features a missing repetition mark at the beginning,²⁹ a concept that mistakenly occurs twice in the series, and finally, another repetition mark executed with a single dash for the last item of the series:

Hou said: Trustworthiness, those who are trustworthy exercise ritual, those who exercise ritual will necessarily be bright. Hou said: Excellence, those who are excellent exercise propriety, those who exercise propriety will necessarily be adept. Hou said: Long-lasting, those who last long exercise care, those who exercise care will necessarily be pleasing. Hou said: Straightness, those who are straight exercise humaneness, those who exercise humaneness will necessarily have strength. Hou said: Goodness, the good exercise loyalty, those who exercise loyalty will necessarily see results.

后曰：[=]（信，信）者行=豊=（行禮，行禮）者必明。后曰：善=（善，善）者行=義=（行義，行義）者必巧。后曰： [122]義<永>=（永，永）者行=㤅=（行愛，行愛）者必美。后曰：貞=（正，正）者行==（行仁，行仁）者必有力。后曰：良<=>（良，良）者行=中=（行忠，行忠）者必果。

To be sure, there are examples of using a single line to mark repetition found in other unearthed texts. The consensus opinion is that these either represent a convention or “economy” 簡省.³⁰ The examples in the *Wu ji seem to defy a simple explanation as they occur irregularly. Here, it probably was just a slip of the brush. Nevertheless, it is interesting that this and the other mistakes in punctuation were not corrected by the proofreader. Another less ambiguous case can be found on slip 34. It has a mark added in the middle of a phrase:

Birds, beasts, and the myriad creatures engender them. Regarding the people's desired materials, they covet precious metals, jades, and stones.

禽單<獸>百物[33]□（生？）之。民之{}欲材，其珍金、玉、石。

Probably, the mark here is simply mistaken. In a less likely alternative, given that the mark occurs at the top of the slip where errors are prone to occur as the copyist and future readers have to mentally ‘carry over’ the text from the bottom of one slip to the top of the next, perhaps the mark indicates that a reader should not erroneously parse the phrase sheng zhi min 生之民 instead.

Another case where the punctuator likely made another simple mistake presents itself in the superfluous repetition mark present after shi 旹 on slip 54:

Using expenses and not minding the season, (then) above and below will not be compliant.

用費[53]而不旹{=}（時），=（上下）不順。

This may be due to the copyist skipping ahead to the ligature of shang 上 and xia 下 that immediately follows and erroneously adding a repetition mark after shi 旹, if not, it would reflect a case of misunderstanding the text.

Most revealing of the confusion that characterizes the punctuation, however, is the section on the eighteen day-spirits on slips 36–42. The ink in this section of the manuscript has smudged more than the other slips and as a result, punctuation marks are not always clearly visible. In this section of text, the eighteen spirits and the multitudinous gods are listed with their names, an epithetic description, and corresponding stem and branch dates. I divide it into two sections to make it easier to follow:³¹

Hou said: As to the days of these eighteen spirits of heaven, the first jia day of the month is used to refer to the earthly branch day; As to the days of these multitudinous spirits of earth, the earthly branch is used to refer to the heavenly stem day;

As to the names of the multitudes and spirits:

Heaven, its name is called Vast and August, High and Awesome, the first jia day has zi;

Earth, its name is called Descended Expanse, Heaven combines with it and there is soil, the first jia day has a xu;

The four wastes together are called the Heavenly Wastes, the light governs the dark, the first jia day has shen;

The four movers together are called the Heavenly Movers,³² they move and plan with order, the first jia day has wu;

The four pillars together are called the Heavenly Pillars, they establish peace with constancy, the first jia day has chen;

The four wefts together are called the Heavenly Wefts, they move and observe the four regions, the first jia day has yin.

后曰：凡此十神有八之日，上甲以爰辰，凡此羣[36]祇之日，辰爰日。 凡羣神之號：

天其號曰³³蒼皇，高畏，上甲有子。

地其號曰降魯，天合有土，上甲有戌。

四[37]荒同號曰天荒，有光司晦，上甲有申。

四冘同號曰天冘，行猷有倫，上甲有午。

四柱同號曰天柱，建[38]安有常，上甲有辰。

四維同號曰天維，行望四方，上甲有寅³⁴。

The eastern officers are together called Holders of Rites, they govern the regulations, on a favorable branch, stem X;

The southern officers are together called Holders of Humaneness, they govern the seasons, on a favorable branch, stem X;

The western officers are together called Holders of Propriety, they govern straightness, on a favorable branch, stem X;

The northern officers are together called Holders of Care, they govern measure, on a favorable branch, stem X;

The four wefts are together called Moving Stars, they have an end, on stem X;

The southern gate, its name is called Heavenly Gate, Heavenly Opening, it establishes straightness, holds humaneness, sets up compliance and summons followers left and right, on stem X;

The Big Dipper, its name is called Northern Ancestor, Heavenly Compass, it establishes constancy, holds care, corrects the world, and straightens the four positions, on stem X.

東司同號曰秉禮，司章，元辰日某。

南[39]司同號曰秉仁，司時，元辰日某。

西司同號曰秉義，司正，元辰日某。

北司同號曰秉愛，司度，元[40]辰日某。

四維同號曰行星，有終，日某。南門其號曰天門、天啟，建正，秉仁立順及左右徵徒，日某。北[41]斗其號曰北宗、天規，建常，秉愛，匡天下，正四位，日某。

In this section, the phrase yuan chen ri mou 元辰日某 “(on a) favorable earthly branch, stem X,” is punctuated twice differently. First, probably following the logic of the mark placed after chen yuan ri 辰爰日 “the branch is used to refer to the stem day” in the opening of the first section, a mark is incorrectly placed directly after ri 日 and not after mou 某, probably because the punctuator assumed chen ri 辰日 ought to be read together as “branch day.” At the following occurrence of the phrase, it is marked correctly and in addition a mark occurs after the preceding si zheng 司正, effectively bracketing the construction yuan chen ri mou. The next line sees yet another incorrectly punctuated example of the same formula. Placed at the top of slip 41, chen ri—mou 辰日某 is punctuated as if the day name chen ri 辰日 was intended, just like the previous instance of the error (see Figure 3). The next instance of the formula is not punctuated at all and the final two lines of the section finish on the less ambiguous ri mou only, and are marked correctly again. The phrasing ri mou is used in ritual pronouncements wherein the day is left unspecified.³⁵ It is seen more often among the daybooks, spells, and rite-books and required a user to fill in a specific date according to the calendar. Any daybook (or other specialized potential source) in active use would have punctuated consistently after ri mou and it seems likely that these errors were introduced by the punctuator of (some version of) the *Wu ji itself rather than any potential source text.

Figure 3 Slip 41 top.

The inconsistency in punctuation suggests that the punctuator may have been not very careful or unaware of the technical details of the text. The first instance of ri mou is not marked at all and likely not yet understood as a structuring element in the text, the second instance is marked as if a branch day designation were intended. By the third instance of ri mou, the punctuator may have picked up on the formulaic repetition of the text, punctuating both before and after yuan chen ri mou, before falling into error once again at the top of the next slip—likely due to the added visual effect of the term occurring at the top of the slip. Why the next case was missed again is unclear, but the punctuator rallied and correctly marked the final two (unambiguous) examples. The punctuator seems either careless or unsure of the meaning of the text, and as a result did not know how to parse the text. The problems encountered by the punctuator reinforce the understanding that the irregular use of punctuation in the previous examples also reflect the punctuator struggling with the intended parsing of the text.

Paratext

Some things went wrong in the preparation of the manuscript as well. The numbers on the bottom of the slips feature an error (see Figure 4). The number 123 is skipped and instead, 124 百廿四 is marked on the bottom. Nevertheless, the content of the text runs uninterrupted and the carved lines on the back of the slips likewise run continuously (see Figure 5), suggesting that the mistake occurred in the numbering of the slips rather than that a slip has gone missing.

Figure 4 Erroneous slip numbers on slips 122–24, transcription: 百廿{五}<四> [124]百廿{四}<三>[123]百廿二[122].

Figure 5 Verso of slips 115–30.

There are indications that at least in the present arrangement, the text of the manuscript refers to elements not present in the current instantiation. Jia Lianxiang has already suggested the likelihood that the lengthy section describing the main concepts of the text in terms of the human body was accompanied by a number of images. He reconstructs a possible rendering in his study.³⁶ Such images and visual arrangements of data are commonly included in technical material such as the daybooks or the manuscripts from Mawangdui.³⁷

The idea that other material may have accompanied (parts of) the text is further supported by a paratextual note on slip 97:

Straight columns, ten of X and five.

正列十（乘?）有五.³⁸

The note may refer to fifteen content divisions within the text up to this point or reflect a tabular or otherwise visual presentation of the text. Paratextual notes such as these have been discussed for the *Tianwen qixiang zazhan 天文氣象雜占 from Mawangdui as well, and they are often used in reference to images and visual representations of texts.³⁹ It immediately follows a list of evil influences causing a variety of diseases in the body.⁴⁰ More tellingly, it closes the technical content of the text.

After this note, the text again returns to the frame, here narrating the Yellow Emperor's struggle with Chi You.⁴¹ In this sense, the note may reflect a counting, conclusion, or summation of the technical content of the *Wu ji as a whole and thus reflect a tu 圖 “diagram” conceptually if not visually.⁴²

Nevertheless, as striking as this may be, the note is not set apart from the remainder of the text through space or punctuation. Likewise, the next section on the Yellow Emperor is not clearly marked, even though the other sections in the text are clearly indicated. Whether as paratextual note or concluding statement, then, the significance of the remark was not underscored in the production of the present manuscript and it seems likely that it was mechanically copied in without a marked awareness of its significance. If parts of the present text were at some point arranged in a tabular format or included separate tables and/or images, then why were these not included in the present arrangement of the text? If earlier manifestations of the manuscript did not include forms of visualization, then what is the significance of the paratextual mark? Given the lack of further data, any reconstruction is necessarily tentative, but I think at least part of the answer lies in the overall quality of the preparation of the manuscript.

Discussion and implications

The irregularities in the production and proofreading of the manuscript discussed above raise a number of questions. To be sure, I do not expect a manuscript copy to be errorless—my own writing certainly is not. A proofreading likewise often overlooks mistakes or introduces new ones. There is plenty of manuscript evidence to suggest that in early China, this was no different, and that more often than not we need to be talking not about mistakes, but about different habits or standards of writing and reading a text.⁴³ Some of these “readings” are in hindsight clearly mistaken, and others may have had their own contextual sense. Nevertheless, when we combine all these irregularities above, they call into question the status and potential usage matrix of the manuscript and text in its present form.

Some manuscripts were better prepared than others. It is striking to note that the San bu wei in volume 12 of the Tsinghua University manuscripts, while similar in length, complexity, and narrative structure, appears to contain only a few obvious errors at most.⁴⁴ Clearly, more care went into the production of that manuscript.

It is a methodological question to what degree we evaluate the status of a manuscript as a source, especially when comparatively it was not prepared very well. In the present case, the most obvious consideration is how to evaluate the paratextual note and whether or not source material(s) of the present copy came with tables, visualization, or images. To me, the relatively poor levels of production and quality control suggest at least the likelihood that some of the potential qualities and attributes of the source(s) may not have been copied in faithfully or completely. Any paratextual references to them were then likely copied in by rote without an understanding of their meaning.

Such considerations alert us that any “original” meanings, paratexts, and usage considerations that may have been enclosed in a manuscript within a living context of use (sitz im leben),⁴⁵ need not have carried over to every copy, let alone one that ended up in a grave. From a methodological point of view, any definitive assertions that can be made about an unearthed text are therefore necessarily restricted to a particular manuscript instantiation of that text.

Who made and who used the manuscript, and for what purpose? The number of errors of understanding suggests that this particular manuscript copy would have been a sub-optimal copy for specialized use. The lack of visual paratext beyond punctuation and slip numbers further suggests that display was also not likely intended. If display were the main goal, why leave out the text's potential for visual manifestation? If the manuscript was prepared specifically for the grave, why the half-hearted attempt at proofreading and correction? Perhaps this manuscript makes most sense as a partially corrected, or simply imperfect practice copy of sorts.⁴⁶

All of these questions come into play when we evaluate the status of *Wu ji manuscript as a source and base our arguments on its text. What I have tried to show is that at least this particular manuscript copy was likely not prepared by a technical expert, and was probably not the best copy for active use by someone intellectually invested in the subject matter either. To take the present copy as representative of the full usage and intellectual potential of the *Wu ji is therefore probably inaccurate.

In all, it is highly uncertain how to evaluate not just the status of this manuscript, but also what it was intended for and how contemporaries would have perceived its quality and potential for use. This leads to a more general question: what happened to those manuscripts that contemporaries involved in their production and reception did not consider good enough for either transmission or use in the world of the living? To speculate further, could those manuscripts possibly have been “recycled” or repurposed for the grave?⁴⁷ If so, we may need to be careful of the inherent source bias in using unearthed manuscripts, which, in one way or the other, may not have been representative of the materials the living used.