Guōdiàn Chǔjiǎn · Yǔcóng Yī 郭店楚簡·語叢一
Bamboo Slips from the Chu Tomb at Guodian — Miscellaneous Sayings, First Collection
About the work
Yǔcóng Yī 語叢一 (“Miscellaneous Sayings, First Collection”) is one of four collections of aphoristic philosophical maxims recovered from tomb 1 at Guōdiàn 郭店, Jīngmén 荊門, Húběi, excavated in 1993 and sealed around 300 BCE. Designated the fifteenth text (Guōdiàn Chǔjiǎn shíwǔ 郭店楚簡十五) in the editio princeps, it is preserved as a single section of miscellaneous sayings on cosmology, ethics, ritual, music, and the genesis of moral categories. The four Yǔcóng 語叢 collections together form the most explicitly aphoristic stratum of the Guodian corpus, without the extended argumentative prose of the other Confucian texts.
Abstract
Yǔcóng Yī is an anthology of terse philosophical statements on a wide range of Confucian and cosmological themes. The text has no attributed author and no received-tradition parallel. It is understood as an independent compilation of maxims rather than a continuous argument, compiled for some instructional or reference purpose in the late Warring States period.
The sayings cover the following themes:
Cosmological grounding of categories. The text opens with a series of ontological distinctions: 凡物由亡生 (“All things arise from non-being”), followed by a chain of derivations: Heaven generates classes (lún 倫); life generates transformation (huà 化); mandate and measure and name together produce ethical order (lún 倫); earth and form and limit produce thickness (hòu 厚); life and knowledge produce the arising of likes and dislikes. The cosmos is stratified: things → forms → moral virtues → the sage.
The six classics and their functions. The text identifies the Yì 易 as the text that “unites the Dao of Heaven and the Dao of man”; the Shī 詩 as the text that “unites the aspirations (zhì 志) of past and present”; the Chūnqiū 春秋 as the text that “unites the affairs (shì 事) of past and present”; the Lǐ 禮 as the “code of conduct in social intercourse”; music (Yuè 樂) as “something generated and also taught.” This is one of the earliest extant formulations of the six classics’ individual functions.
The inwardness and outwardness of virtue. The Dao of man has things that emerge from within (rén 仁, zhōng 忠, xìn 信) and things that enter from without (lǐ 禮, yuè 樂, xíng 刑 — ritual, music, and punishment). Rén is born from man, yì from the Dao. The derivation of moral virtues forms a chain: rén generates dé 德, dé generates lǐ, lǐ generates yuè, and from yuè one knows xíng.
Social epistemology. One must know oneself before knowing others, know others before knowing ritual, know ritual before knowing action; only when knowledge is broad does one know mandate. Knowing what Heaven does and what humans do, one then knows the Dao; knowing the Dao, one knows mandate.
Critique of false appearances. Lengthy observations distinguish genuine from performed virtue: acting filially is not the same as being filial; acting as a younger brother is not the same as being a younger brother. Knowing what is correct (zhèng 正) and acting accordingly is described as the task of governance; those who fail to reach it fail because they have not grasped the nature of the situation (rán 然).
Social virtue. The text closes with observations on measurement, the nature of power (quán 權), the way categories communicate (tōng 通), the generative principle of things, and a cluster of practical sayings on food, colour, and ease.
The text corresponds broadly to the Confucian canon of the period and shows awareness of all six classical texts. Its explicit classification of the inward and outward sources of virtue anticipates the debates between Mencius and his opponents recorded in the Mengzi and referenced in the Guodian Wǔxíng 五行 (KR2p0021).
The editio princeps is Jīngménshì Bówùguǎn 荊門市博物館, 《郭店楚墓竹書》 (Wénwù, 1998), with slips designated no. 15 in the collection.
No tiyao found in source.
Translations and research
- Cook, Scott, tr. The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation. 2 vols. Cornell East Asia Series, 2012. — full translation and commentary.
- Holloway, Kenneth. Guodian: The Newly Discovered Seeds of Chinese Religious and Political Philosophy. OUP, 2009.
- Li Ling 李零. Guōdiàn Chǔjiǎn jiàodú jì 郭店楚简校读记. Enl. ed. Rénmín dàxué, 2007.
- Liu Zhao 刘钊. Guōdiàn Chǔjiǎn jiàoshì 郭店楚简校释. Fújiàn rénmín, 2003.
- Chan, Shirley, ed. Dao Companion to the Excavated Guodian Bamboo Manuscripts. Springer, 2019.
Links
- Wikipedia (Guodian Chu bamboo slips): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guodian_Chu_bamboo_slips