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成之聞之

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Text ID
KR2p0024
Date
-350–-300
Dynasty
戰國

Chéng zhī wén zhī 成之聞之

“He who has accomplished it has heard of it” (modern editorial title, after the opening words)

(anonymous; excavated bamboo manuscript, no attributable author)

About the work

Chéng zhī wén zhī is one of the eighteen text-units excavated from Guōdiàn tomb 1 (郭店一號楚墓) at Jǐngmén 荊門, Húběi, in October 1993, and published in 荊門市博物館 ed., 《郭店楚墓竹簡》, Wénwù chūbǎnshè, 1998. It is a short Confucian discourse — c. 40 bamboo strips, c. 800 graphs in our source’s seven-section reconstruction — on the moral economy of rulership: the jūnzǐ 君子 cannot teach the people unless he first practices what he teaches in his own person; jiào 教 (instruction) without shēn 身 (the personal exemplar of the body, the self) is empty; and the principle of self-rule is therefore the precondition of governance. The conventional title is not original: it is taken from the opening words of the first strip, jūnzǐ zhī yú jiào yě, qí dào mín yě bù qìn, zé qí chún yě fú shēn yǐ 君子之於教也，其道民也不浸，則其淳也弗深矣 — and the same Mandoku-edition source we use opens, in our line numbering, with what is actually the second sentence (chéng zhī wén zhī, …) by accident of strip ordering. The strips were originally bound in a single bundle, but their physical condition and the loss of the binding cords have left the running order of several blocks contested.

Abstract

The Guōdiàn tomb is conventionally dated to c. 300 BCE on bronze and lacquer-cup grounds; the manuscripts therefore belong to the late Wǎrring States Chǔ intellectual milieu, predating the Qín unification. Chéng zhī wén zhī belongs to the cluster of Guōdiàn Confucian texts (alongside Zī yī 緇衣, Lǔ Mù gōng wèn Zǐsī 魯穆公問子思, Wǔxíng 五行 KR2p0021, Liù dé 六德, Zūn dé yì 尊德義, Xìng zì mìng chū 性自命出, Tángyú zhī dào 唐虞之道) that has been intensively studied for what it reveals of pre-Mèngzǐ Confucian moral psychology and political theory. Thematically the work is in the family of the Lǐjì 禮記 chapters Zī yī 緇衣 and Dàxué 大學 — concerned with the priority of self-cultivation over external rule, the language of qiú zhū jǐ 求諸己 (“seeking from oneself”), and the propagation of virtue from ruler to people through ritual exemplification (the famous image of the ruler in mourning robes, in armour at the head of the army, etc., which the manuscript uses to argue that the people will follow only what the ruler personally embodies). Its own argumentative thread is summarised in the recurring formula jūnzǐ zhī yú yán yě, fēi cóng mò liú zhě zhī guì, qióng yuán fǎn běn zhě zhī guì 君子之於言也，非從末流者之貴，窮源反本者之貴 (“for the gentleman, what is precious in speech is not following the trickle of the stream, but exhausting the source and returning to the root”).

The conventional title and division have been vigorously contested in the secondary literature. Working from strip shape, length, binding-mark spacing, and rhetorical seams, Lǐ Líng 李零 (Guōdiàn Chǔjiǎn jiào dú jì, 2002 / rev. 2007) has redivided the present Chéng zhī wén zhī and the related Zūn dé yì / Liù dé / Xìng zì mìng chū clusters into a different set of constituent texts; he renames the principal portion 教 Jiào (“Teaching”) and assigns the cosmological closing block (the section beginning tiān jiàng dà cháng 天降大常 in the original strip order) to a separate manuscript, sometimes published under the modern editorial title 天常 Tiān cháng. Liú Zǔxìn 劉祖信, Lǐ Tiānhóng 李天虹, and Liú Zhāo 劉釗 have offered intermediate positions. The Kanripo source (and the Jīngmén Museum editio princeps) keeps the traditional grouping, which is why the text is catalogued here under 成之聞之 — readers should be aware that the textual unity assumed by the title is itself a modern editorial reconstruction.

The work’s final section, beginning tiān dēng dà cháng yǐ lǐ rén lún 天登大常以理人倫 (“Heaven raises up the great constants in order to order human relationships”), connects ethical norms to a cosmic underwriting and is often read alongside the Xìng zì mìng chū 性自命出 in arguments that the Guōdiàn texts present a “Heaven → nature → way → teaching” 天命之謂性 sequence one step earlier than the Zhōngyōng. This reading goes back to Pang Pú 龐樸 and has been developed in English by Edward Slingerland, Mark Csikszentmihalyi, and Erica Brindley.

Translations and research

  • 荊門市博物館 ed., 《郭店楚墓竹簡》, Wénwù chūbǎnshè 文物出版社, 1998 — editio princeps with photographs, kǎishū transcription, and annotations by Qiú Xīguī 裘錫圭 et al.; Chéng zhī wén zhī is text no. 8 in the volume.
  • Liú Zhāo 劉釗, 《郭店楚簡校釋》, Fújiàn rénmín chūbǎnshè 福建人民出版社, 2003 — standard Chinese critical apparatus.
  • Lǐ Líng 李零, 《郭店楚簡校讀記》(zēngdìng běn), Běijīng dàxué chūbǎnshè 北京大學出版社 2002 / rev. Zhōngguó rénmín dàxué chūbǎnshè 中國人民大學出版社 2007 — the most influential modern re-reading; major redivision of Chéng zhī wén zhī and adjacent texts.
  • Tú Zōngliú 涂宗流 and Liú Zǔxìn 劉祖信, 《郭店楚簡先秦儒家佚書校釋》, Wànjuǎnlóu túshū 萬卷樓圖書, 2001 — alternative collation with rearranged strip order.
  • Lǐ Tiānhóng 李天虹, 《郭店竹簡《性自命出》研究》, Húběi jiàoyù chūbǎnshè 湖北教育出版社, 2003 — adjacent Guōdiàn manuscript study, with implications for the Chéng zhī wén zhī division.
  • Dīng Sìxīn 丁四新, 《郭店楚墓竹簡思想研究》, Dōngfāng chūbǎnshè 東方出版社, 2000 — major Chinese philosophical monograph covering the entire Guōdiàn corpus with extensive treatment of Chéng zhī wén zhī.
  • Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation, 2 vols., Cornell East Asia Series 164–165, Cornell University, 2012 — the standard English translation; Chéng zhī wén zhī (under that title) is in vol. 2.
  • Kenneth W. Holloway, Guodian: The Newly Discovered Seeds of Chinese Religious and Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2009 — religious-historical reading of the Guōdiàn Confucian cluster.
  • Dirk Meyer, Philosophy on Bamboo: Text and the Production of Meaning in Early China, Brill (Studies in the History of Chinese Texts 2), 2011/2012.
  • Sarah Allan, Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early Chinese Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts, SUNY Press, 2015 — chapters on adjacent Guōdiàn political-philosophical texts.
  • Shirley Chan ed., Dao Companion to the Excavated Guodian Bamboo Manuscripts, Springer (Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy 10), 2019 — handbook with chapter-length treatments of Chéng zhī wén zhī and the Confucian cluster.
  • Edward Shaughnessy, Rewriting Early Chinese Texts, SUNY Press, 2006 — methodological reflections on Guōdiàn manuscript editing relevant to the division question.

Other points of interest

Chéng zhī wén zhī is the locus classicus among the Guōdiàn texts for the doctrine that the ruler must “embody” (shēn 身) what he commands: the famous trio of images — the ruler in 袀冕 ceremonial robes producing universal reverence, in 衰絰 mourning dress producing universal grief, in helmet and armour producing universal courage — was already known in slightly different form from the Lǐjì’s Zī yī 緇衣 chapter, but the Guōdiàn text places the formula in a sharper Mèngzǐ-precursor frame, with qiú zhū jǐ 求諸己 made the explicit principle of governance. It is therefore one of the principal pieces of pre-Mèngzǐ evidence cited in current debates over the development of the Confucian doctrine of inner virtue as the foundation of outer rule.

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