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上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書‧容成氏

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Text ID
KR2p0166
Date
-450–-300
Dynasty
周

Shànghǎi Bówùguǎn Cáng Zhànguó Chǔ Zhúshū‧Róngchéng Shì 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書‧容成氏

Warring States Chu Bamboo Texts at the Shanghai Museum — “Rongcheng Shi” (容成氏 Róngchéng Shì)

(anonymous historical-philosophical narrative)

About the work

The Róngchéng Shì 容成氏 is a long bamboo-slip historical narrative from the Shanghai Museum’s Warring States Chu collection, published as text no. 9 in Volume 2 (2002) 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 approximately 3,000 characters in length and constitutes one of the lengthiest and most significant texts in the Shanghai Museum corpus. The text narrates the history of Chinese civilization from a series of primordial sage rulers — beginning with Rongcheng Shi (容成氏) himself — through the sage-emperor Yáo 堯, Shùn 舜, Yǔ 禹, down to the founding of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, with a strongly Daoist-inflected ideology centering on the virtue of non-coercive rulership (wúwéi 無為) and the abdication tradition (shànràng 禪讓).

Abstract

Provenance. The Shanghai Museum slips were purchased from a Hong Kong dealer in 1994, originally from Jiangling 江陵, Hubei. This text appeared in Volume 2 (2002), alongside five other texts from the Shanghai Museum collection. The Chu-script paleography dates the manuscript to approximately 300 BCE.

Content. The text opens with a list of twenty-one primordial sage-rulers: Rongcheng Shi 容成氏, Dà Tíng Shì 大庭氏, Bó Huáng Shì 伯皇氏, Zhōngyāng Shì 中央氏, Sùlù Shì 粟陸氏, Lí Chù Shì 驪畜氏, Zhùróng Shì 祝融氏, Hào Yīng Shì 昊英氏, Yǒucháo Shì 有巢氏, Gě Tiān Shì 葛天氏, Yīn Kāng Shì 陰康氏, Zhū Xiāng Shì 朱襄氏, Wúhuái Shì 無懷氏, Zūn Lú Shì 尊盧氏, Hè Xù Shì 赫胥氏, Gāo Xīn Shì 高辛氏, Cāng Jié Shì 倉頡氏, Xuānyuán Shì 軒轅氏, Shén Nóng Shì 神農氏, Hún Dùn Shì 渾敦氏, and Fú Xī Shì 伏羲氏. All of these, the text declares, “possessed the realm without passing it to their sons but to the worthy” (皆不授其子而授賢). Their rule was characterized by clear virtue (liú qīng dé 瀏清德), love from above, unity of will, no warfare, and the employment of people in accordance with their capacities — even the disabled and infirm were given appropriate tasks.

The narrative then turns to Yáo 堯, describing his restraint (he rewarded rarely but governed through innate virtue), his willingness to abdicate to the worthy, and how he searched for and found Shùn 舜 in the wilderness. The Shùn section gives a long account of Shùn’s virtuous conduct toward his difficult family (stubborn father, shrewish mother, arrogant brother), his being sought by Yáo and tested on ritual, governance, and music, and his eventual receipt of the empire. Shùn in turn sought to abdicate to the worthy, eventually passing authority to Yǔ 禹. The Yǔ section is the longest: it describes Yǔ’s flood-control work in exhaustive geographic detail, naming each river system he channeled — the Huai 淮 and Yí 沂 flowing east to the sea, opening up Jìngzhōu 競州 and Jǔ 莒; the Lóu 蔞 and Yì 易 flowing to the sea, opening Bīngzhōu 并州; the Three Rivers 三江 and Five Lakes 五湖 flowing east to the sea, opening Jīng 荊 and Yáng 揚 provinces; the Yī 伊 and Luò 洛 flowing east to the Yellow River (Hé 河), opening Yù 豫 province; the Jīng 涇 and Wèi 渭 flowing north to the Yellow River, opening Yōng 雍 province. Yǔ appoints Hòujì 后稷 as overseer of agriculture, Gāoyáo 皋陶 as judge, and Zhì 質 as music master. After Shùn, Yǔ also seeks to abdicate, but Gāoyáo dies, and Yǔ’s son Qǐ 啟 seizes power rather than allowing the abdication to proceed — ending the golden age. The narrative continues through the founding and decline of the Shang (at Jié 桀) and the rise of Tang 湯, the founding and decline of the Zhou (at Zhòu 受 = King Zhòu 紂), and ends abruptly with the Zhou conquest. The final section describes Wǔ Wáng 武王’s military campaign against Zhòu and the moral justification for it.

Significance and ideology. The Róngchéng Shì is notable for its strongly Daoist-inflected account of the golden age: the ideal rulers do not coerce, do not punish, do not reward with titles or honors, and govern through the sheer force of their inner virtue. This ideological orientation — distinct from the received Shū jīng 書經 / Shàngshū 尚書 tradition and from the Confucian Lǐjì — has led scholars to see it as representing a “Daoist” or “syncretic” strand of the abdication tradition alongside “Confucian” versions. Sarah Allan (Buried Ideas, 2015) provides a full translation and analysis, arguing that the Róngchéng Shì belongs to a broader “abdication tradition” — a coherent alternative historical vision in which virtue, not heredity, legitimizes rule.

Dating. Paleographic evidence dates the manuscript c. 300 BCE. The text’s ideology and narrative content belong to the Warring States debates on rulership and succession. notBefore -450 / notAfter -300.

Translations and research

  • 馬承源主編. 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》第二冊. 上海古籍出版社, 2002. (editio princeps, with transcription by Lǐ Líng 李零)
  • 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. Contains the first full English translation of the Róngchéng Shì with extensive commentary.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward L. Rewriting Early Chinese Texts. SUNY Press, 2006.
  • Pines, Yuri. Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009. (Historical context for abdication ideology.)
  • Cook, Constance A., and Paul R. Goldin, eds. A Source Book of Ancient Chinese Bronze Inscriptions. Society for the Study of Early China, 2016.

Other points of interest

The text’s list of twenty-one primordial sage-rulers in its opening line is the longest such list found in any extant pre-Qin text, and includes figures such as Cāng Jié 倉頡氏 (conventionally the inventor of writing) and Hún Dùn 渾敦氏 (related to the Daoist concept of primordial chaos) as ancient rulers — a remarkable mythological synthesis. The geographic detail of Yǔ’s flood-control work has been compared with the received Shàngshū chapters on Yu and with the Shān hǎi jīng 山海經 tradition. The slip was labelled 容成氏 in the source document’s own colophon-like closing notation.

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