Shànghǎi Bówùguǎn Cáng Zhànguó Chǔ Zhúshū‧Lǔ Bāng Dà Hàn 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書‧魯邦大旱
Warring States Chu Bamboo Texts at the Shanghai Museum — “Great Drought in the State of Lu” (魯邦大旱 Lǔ Bāng Dà Hàn)
(anecdote featuring 孔子 Kǒngzǐ)
About the work
The Lǔ Bāng Dà Hàn 魯邦大旱 (“Great Drought in the State of Lu”) is a short bamboo-slip text from the Shanghai Museum’s Warring States Chu collection, published as text no. 6 in Volume 4 (2004/2005) of Shànghǎi Bówùguǎn Cáng Zhànguó Chǔ Zhúshū 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書, edited by 馬承源. It is one of the shorter texts in the Shanghai Museum corpus, recounting a dialogue in three scenes: Duke Āi 哀公 of Lǔ consults 孔子 Confucius on how to respond to a great drought; Confucius exits and encounters his disciple Zǐgòng 子贡; and Confucius explains his reasoning on the relationship between ritual sacrifice and moral rectitude.
Abstract
Provenance. The slips come from the Shanghai Museum’s 1994 purchase of Warring States Chu bamboo manuscripts, originally from Jiangling 江陵, Hubei. This text was published as part of Volume 4 (2004/2005), alongside several other dialogic texts involving Confucius. The Chu-script paleography dates the manuscript to approximately 300 BCE.
Content. The text opens: “The state of Lǔ suffered a great drought. Duke Āi said to Confucius: ‘Will you not plan for me [how to deal with it]?‘” (魯邦大旱，哀公謂孔子：「子不為我圖之？」) Confucius replies that in times of great drought the ruler has perhaps erred in the application of punishments (xíng 刑) and virtue (dé 德): “Only [through] the rectification of punishments and virtue [can this be remedied]” (wéi zhèng xíng yǔ dé 唯正刑與德). Duke Āi objects that the common people expect him to make offerings to ghosts and spirits (guǐ 鬼), and asks what to do. Confucius says the people understand propitiating spirits but not punishments and virtue; the Duke should not begrudge jade and silk offerings to mountains and rivers, but rectify punishments and virtue to serve High Heaven (shàng tiān 上天), and the spirits will respond — the great drought must stop. After the Duke accepts this advice and departs, Confucius meets Zǐgòng 子贡 who asks if Confucius’s answer was perhaps too harsh (or “over-weighted”). Confucius replies: “No — but my answer was perhaps duplicative” (alas, it doubled up). Zǐgòng then argues that jade and silk to mountains and rivers is not appropriate — mountains consist of stone as their skin and trees as their people; if there is no rain, the stones will scorch and the trees will die; the mountains want rain even more than humans do, so why need one pray to them? Similarly for rivers. Confucius responds: “Alas! Cì [Zǐgòng’s given name]. I tell you: fate (mìng 命) is for noble men a form of embellishment, for the common people a god. Without this [concept of] fate, would not kings and lords still have to provide rations and food to their people? But they can do nothing about the people.”
Significance. This short text is a notable example of Confucian rationalism regarding spirit-propitiation: Confucius’s response to the drought focuses on moral and political rectification rather than ritual offerings to spirits, while acknowledging the social utility of the concept of fate (mìng 命) as a governing fiction for the common people. Zǐgòng’s naturalistic argument — that mountains and rivers do not need prayer because they suffer as much from drought as humans do — is remarkably proto-rationalistic. The text illuminates the Confucian attitude toward religion as discussed in Lúnyǔ 論語 passages about Confucius’s reticence on spirits and fate.
Dating. Paleographic evidence dates the manuscript c. 300 BCE. 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.
- Shaughnessy, Edward L. Rewriting Early Chinese Texts. SUNY Press, 2006.
- Allan, Sarah. Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early Chinese Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts. SUNY Press, 2015.
Other points of interest
The figure of Zǐgòng 子贡 (Duānmù Cì 端木賜) appears here as a sharp-minded interlocutor whose naturalistic reasoning about mountain and river spirits goes beyond what Confucius himself says — a pattern found elsewhere in the corpus of Confucian dialogues, where disciples press arguments to their logical conclusions. The text’s concern with the political function of religious belief (mìng as governing fiction) anticipates debates in later Confucian and Daoist literature.
Links
- Wikipedia (Shanghai Museum bamboo texts): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Museum_bamboo_texts