The December
2021 issue of Chinese Studies will
be a special issue entitled
“Studies on
Recently Unearthed Texts” and guest-edited by Chen Li-Kuei 陳麗桂, professor
at the Depart-ment of Chinese,
National Taiwan Normal University.
Papers may be submitted in either
Chinese or English. Submissions in Chinese should not exceed
25,000 characters, and those in English
should not exceed 30 pages. Form
and style should follow
the “Guide for Submissions
to Chinese Studies” and “Chinese Studies Stylesheet.”
Since the excavation
of the Niya archaeological site in Xinjiang in 1900, a trend of organiz- ing and researching archaeological artifacts and documents has proliferated in China over the last
century. But in the past four to five decades,
an upsurge in the research of unearthed
texts has gripped the field in the wake of related discoveries at excavations of archaeological
and
burial sites. The
locations of these sites are extensive, including Xinjiang, Gansu, Hebei, Henan,
Shan- dong, Jiangsu,
Zhejiang, and in particular, Hubei and Hunan. Concerning the finds themselves, the
variety of silk manuscripts unearthed from tomb no. 3 at Mawangdui,
Changsha, in 1973; the Qin
bamboo slips from Shuihudi,
Yunmeng, discovered in 1976; the Chu slips found at Guodian, Jingmen, in 1993; the Shanghai Museum slips purchased in 1994 from
antique vendors in Hong
Kong; as well as the Tsinghua slips and Peking Han slips
donated to their respective universities in the 2000s have more so catalyzed
wave
after wave of fervent research.
The
period of these unearthed writings spans from the Zhou and Qin dynasties
to the early Han, especially revolving
around the Warring States period, and their contents cover a wide range of topics and categories:
the Six Confucian
Classics, various sects from the hundred schools of thought, and specific medi-
cal
practices. Even more broadly,
they concern numerous
academic fields, ranging from history and culture to politics and society as well as the transition from the Qin to Han dynasty.
The discovery of these new texts has played a vital role in the development of academic research.
We have now been able to verify
certain facts regarding several pre-Qin writings, explore new
directions in studies
on pre-Qin Confucianism, Daoism, military thought, and
health and healing,
as well as starting a new chapter
on our understanding of both the “Huang-Lao” school of thought and the
theory of qihua (transformation of qi) cosmology. In addition, these materials have assisted scholarship
in readdressing or confirming the modes of thought and theories
of previous texts as well as supple- menting ancient writings that have been long lost. Confucian and Daoist
writings unearthed together at Chu burial
sites from the Warring States
period, for example, have proven particularly beneficial in
overturning previous
misconceptions that Confucianism and Daoism are diametric. Likewise, related
research has unveiled
the processes of how Confucianism
was
historically embellished, restoring a more accurate image, and have allowed us to apprehend the fluid boundaries separating various schools
of thought. The above has undoubtedly added a wealth of new information to traditional Chinese schol-
arship and has opened new and broader avenues from which to explore old topics of interest.
This special issue welcomes studies, whether they be from perspectives
of philosophical thought, hermeneutics or textual criticism, classical
studies, history, society,
or culture, on the
above—or other—texts that have been unearthed in the last four
to five decades.
※ The deadline
for submissions to this issue is Feb. 28, 2023. Please send submissions to us by e-mail at chinesestudies@ncl.edu.tw or by the online manuscript submission website at http://journals.ncl.edu.tw