性情論

Xìngqíng Lùn 性情論

Discourse on Nature and Emotions (editorial title assigned by the Shanghai Museum editors; the Guōdiàn version of the same text is known as Xìng Zì Mìng Chū 性自命出 KR2p0026)

(anonymous; excavated bamboo manuscript, no attributable author)

About the work

Xìngqíng Lùn 性情論 is the third text in 馬承源 Mǎ Chéngyuán ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 1, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè 上海古籍出版社, 2001, comprising approximately 67 bamboo strips bearing roughly 1,700 graphs in 42 sections. It is the Shanghai Museum version of a text whose Guōdiàn counterpart is published as Xìng Zì Mìng Chū 性自命出 (KR2p0026); the editorial title Xìngqíng Lùn was assigned by the Shanghai Museum editors to distinguish their version from the Guōdiàn one. Both versions share the same governing thesis — xìng zì mìng chū, mìng zì tiān jiàng 性自命出，命自天降 / 性自命出，命自天降 (“nature comes forth from the Mandate; the Mandate descends from Heaven”) — the same seven-operator taxonomy of how external influences interact with nature, and the same extended music-and-emotion section. They are not identical: the two versions differ in strip order in places, in graph readings, and in several passages, suggesting independent archival transmission from a common source.

Abstract

The Shanghai Museum bamboo texts were acquired by the museum in 1994 from the Hong Kong antiquities market; their provenance is unverified archaeologically but their material and palaeographic character is consistent with a Warring States Chu date (late 4th–3rd century BCE). Xìngqíng Lùn is textually very close to the Guōdiàn Xìng Zì Mìng Chū; for the philosophical content of the text — the Heaven–Mandate–Nature–Way–Teaching chain, the seven operators on nature, the music-and-emotion theory, and the origins of the Six Classics in human experience — see the Abstract in KR2p0026.

Differences from the Guōdiàn version. The two versions differ in several identifiable ways:

1. Strip order: a handful of sections appear in a different sequence in the Shanghai Museum version, suggesting either independent manuscript traditions or different scribal copying strategies.
2. Graph readings: the most discussed difference is in section §7, where the Guōdiàn text reads jiāo xìng zhě gù yě 交性者故也 (“what intersects nature is intentional acts”) while the Shànghǎi version reads jié xìng zhě gù yě 節性者故也 (“what moderates/regulates nature is intentional acts”). This one graph difference (交 vs. 節) has generated substantial philological debate and has been used to argue that one version preserves the original reading and the other a scribal error or intentional emendation.
3. Extent: the two versions are approximately the same length, but the Shànghǎi Museum text has 42 sections in the Kanripo source while the Guōdiàn version has 46 sections; some of this difference is due to how individual strips are segmented in transcription.

Importance for manuscript transmission studies. Because Xìngqíng Lùn / Xìng Zì Mìng Chū is the only text in the Kanripo KR2p division (and one of very few anywhere) preserved in two independent pre-Hàn bamboo-slip witnesses, it has become a standard test case for studying early Chinese manuscript transmission. The comparison shows both high fidelity across versions (the intellectual argument is identical) and systematic minor variation (graph substitution, strip-order differences), which is consistent with a model of separate scribal copying from a common archetype rather than direct manuscript copying from one to the other.

Translations and research

• 馬承源 ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 1, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè, 2001 — editio princeps with transcription, photographs, and editorial notes.
• See also the bibliography for KR2p0026 (Xìng Zì Mìng Chū, Guōdiàn version), which covers most of the major scholarship on this text.
• Lǐ Tiānhóng 李天虹, 《郭店竹簡〈性自命出〉研究》, Húběi jiàoyù chūbǎnshè, 2003 — monograph with explicit comparative analysis of the two versions.
• Csikszentmihalyi, Mark. Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China. Brill, 2004 — uses both versions in analysis of xìng and qíng.
• Brindley, Erica. “Music, Cosmos, and the Development of Psychology in Early China.” T’oung Pao 92 (2006): 1–49.

Links

• Wikipedia (Shanghai Museum bamboo texts): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Museum_bamboo_texts