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上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書‧子羔

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Text ID
KR2p0162
Date
-450–-300
Dynasty
周

Shànghǎi Bówùguǎn Cáng Zhànguó Chǔ Zhúshū‧Zǐgāo 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書‧子羔

Warring States Chu Bamboo Texts at the Shanghai Museum — “Zigao” (子羔 Zǐgāo)

(dialogue attributed to 孔子 Kǒngzǐ and 高柴 Gāo Chái / Zǐgāo 子羔)

About the work

The Zǐgāo 子羔 (“Zigao”) is a bamboo-slip text from the Shanghai Museum’s Warring States Chu collection, published as text no. 5 in Volume 4 (2004/2005) of Shànghǎi Bówùguǎn Cáng Zhànguó Chǔ Zhúshū 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書. It is a dialogue between Confucius (孔子 Kǒngzǐ) and his disciple 高柴 Gāo Chái 高柴 (style name Zǐgāo 子羔) discussing the miraculous births of the sage-kings Yǔ 禹, Qì 契, and Hòujì 后稷, the virtue of the sage-emperor Shùn 舜, and the principle of abdication (禪讓 shànràng) by which worthy rule is transmitted.

Abstract

Provenance. The Shanghai Museum slips were purchased from a Hong Kong dealer in 1994, originally from Jiangling 江陵, Hubei. This text forms part of Volume 4 of the editio princeps, which contains seven historically and dialogically oriented texts. The slips are in Chu script, datable to c. 300 BCE or slightly earlier.

Content. The dialogue opens with 高柴 Zǐgāo asking whether the founding kings (三王 sān wáng — conventionally Yǔ 禹, Tāng 湯, and Wén/Wǔ 文/武; here perhaps referring to Yǔ, Qì, and Hòujì specifically) were “truly sons of Heaven” or merely “commoners’ sons whose fathers were lowly and unworthy of mention.” Confucius praises the question, saying it has long been unasked, and then gives accounts of the miraculous conceptions and births of each: Yǔ’s mother (a woman of the Yǒu Shēn 有莘 clan) “observed [something] at a river” and conceived him; he was born by being cut out through her back after three years’ gestation. Qì’s mother (a woman of the Yǒu Sōng 有娀 clan) saw a swallow drop an egg before her on a terrace and swallowed it; after three years Qì was born from her breast, and cried out “Qín!” at birth. Hòujì’s mother (a woman of the Yǒu Tái 有邰 clan) walked in the wilds and stepped in a divine footprint, and Hòujì was born of that. The dialogue then shifts to Shùn 舜, whom Confucius declares worthier than any of the three kings. Zǐgāo asks why Shùn was made emperor, and Confucius explains: Shùn showed filial piety to a difficult family — a stubborn father, a shrewish mother, an arrogant brother — yet kept his devotion; when Yáo 堯 sought him out in the wilderness and tested him on ritual, governance, the affairs of the realm, and music, Shùn answered each perfectly. Confucius concludes that Shùn was a “person of destiny” (shòu mìng zhī mín 受命之民) — a true “son of the people” who was served by all under Heaven. The text breaks off before completion.

Significance. The Zǐgāo provides important early evidence for the mythological traditions surrounding the births of founding cultural heroes and for the ideological justification of shànràng 禪讓 (“abdication and transmission”) that was a central political-philosophical debate of the Warring States period. Sarah Allan’s Buried Ideas (SUNY, 2015) treats the Zǐgāo and related texts as witnesses to a distinct “abdication tradition” that contested the hereditary model of dynastic succession.

Dating. Paleographic evidence places the manuscript c. 300 BCE. The ideas belong to Warring States Confucian and proto-Confucian debate; notBefore -450 / notAfter -300.

Translations and research

  • 馬承源主編. 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》第四冊. 上海古籍出版社, 2004/2005. (editio princeps)
  • 俞紹宏、張青松主編. 《上海博物館藏戰國楚簡集釋》. 社會科學文獻出版社, 2020.
  • Allan, Sarah. Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early Chinese Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts. SUNY Press, 2015. Includes detailed study of the Zǐgāo text and the shànràng tradition.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward L. Rewriting Early Chinese Texts. SUNY Press, 2006.

Other points of interest

The miraculous birth narratives in the Zǐgāo — especially the totem-animal birth of Qì (ancestor of the Shang royal house via a swallow egg) and the divine-footprint birth of Hòujì (ancestor of the Zhou royal house) — parallel traditions recorded in the received Shī jīng 詩經 (Xuánniǎo 玄鳥 and Shēngmín 生民), the Shǐjì 史記, and several Lǐjì chapters. The manuscript thus confirms the antiquity of these aetiological myths and their association with the Confucian tradition.

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