Literate Community in Early Imperial China

Charles Sanft

Description

Winner of the 2020 James Henry Breasted Prize in Ancient History presented by the American Historical Association

Honorable Mention, 2021 Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize presented by the Association for Asian Studies

This book examines ancient written materials from China's northwestern border regions to offer fresh insights into the role of text in shaping society and culture during the Han period (206/2 BCE–220 CE). Left behind by military installations, these documents—wooden strips and other nontraditional textual materials such as silk—recorded the lives and activities of military personnel and the people around them. Charles Sanft explores their functions and uses by looking at a fascinating array of material, including posted texts on signaling across distances, practical texts on brewing beer and evaluating swords, and letters exchanged by officials working in low rungs of the bureaucracy. By focusing on all members of the community, he argues that a much broader section of early society had meaningful interactions with text than previously believed. This major shift in interpretation challenges long-standing assumptions about the limited range of influence that text and literacy had on culture and society and makes important contributions to early China studies, the study of literacy, and to the global history of non-elites.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Interacting with Text in Early Imperial China and Beyond

2. Contexts and Sources

3. Posted Texts

4. Statements of Individuals and Groups

5. Composite Texts

6. Practical Texts

7. Cultural Texts

8. Letters

Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• China
• Anthropology
• History of Asia

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 16 avril 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438475141
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 39 Mo

Extrait

Literate Community in Early Imperial China
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture

Roger T. Ames, editor
Literate Community in Early Imperial China
The Northwestern Frontier in Han Times
CHARLES SANFT
Cover painting by Sarah Moore (from the author’s collection).
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sanft, Charles, 1972– author.
Title: Literate community in early imperial China : the northwestern frontier in Han times / Charles Sanft.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Series: SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018036278 | ISBN 9781438475134 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438475141 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Chinese language—To 600. | Chinese language—Writing—History. | Literacy—China—History.
Classification: LCC PL1077 .S26 2019 | DDC 895.1/001—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018036278
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
to Hsiu-yi (again)
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One Interacting with Text in Early Imperial China and Beyond
Chapter Two Contexts and Sources
Chapter Three Posted Texts
Chapter Four Statements of Individuals and Groups
Chapter Five Composite Texts
Chapter Six Practical Texts
Chapter Seven Cultural Texts
Chapter Eight Letters
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
This project would never have happened without the support and advice of many colleagues and friends, all of whom have my gratitude. Miranda Brown helped me work out my ideas over the course of the project and subsequently read and commented on the manuscript in various forms. Miyake Kiyoshi’s 宮宅潔 scholarship had a deep influence on this project, and he answered questions and gave me advice during the course of research and writing. Michael Hunter read the manuscript and offered much incisive advice in writing and in conversation.
Ma Yi 馬怡 , whose work is a model of rigor and engagement with detail, generously took the time to meet with me and read Han letters together with her students. Thomas E. Burman and Martin Kern gave me reading suggestions that decisively influenced the course of my research. Christopher Foster offered both suggestions and encouragement for this project. Mélodie Doumy facilitated my viewing of Han writing strips from the northwest in the collection of the British Library. Olivier Venture and Robin D. S. Yates graciously shared their time and research materials with me. Enno Giele first introduced me to excavated materials as sources for Han history, and his works are prominent in my bibliography.
I had conversations and email exchanges with a number of scholars about aspects of the book, which helped me tremendously. In this respect, I wish to thank Anthony Barbieri-Low, Raffaella Cribiore, Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Nicola Di Cosmo, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Michael Puett, Matthias Richter, Edward Shaughnessy, and Ori Tavor.
This project benefited from two seminars, and I wish to thank all those involved. The first was a Fragments seminar at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, which Miranda Brown and Ian Moyer organized. I am grateful to Roger Bagnall, who traveled to be there and whose ideas contributed so much to my own thinking. My appreciation extends to the University of Michigan faculty members who made the seminar challenging, exciting, and enjoyable, particularly Susan Alcock, William Baxter, Erin Brightwell, Katherine French, Piotr Michalowski, Sonya Özbey, Hitomi Tonomura, and Thomas Trautmann. The University of Tennessee Humanities Center hosted a seminar discussion of the completed manuscript. My thanks to Lai Guolong 來國龍 , who flew in to take part; Gregor Kalas, who read and commented on the entire manuscript; and Megan Bryson, Maura Lafferty, and Brad Phillis, who gave many recommendations for the manuscript in the course of our conversation—or conversations, rather, as I have been fortunate to talk with each of them about the project outside the seminar, too. Finally, S. E. Kile deserves a special prize for participating in both seminars and marking corrections and suggestions throughout the manuscript.
I gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the American Council of Learned Societies, which granted me a fellowship for the completion of this book. My research and writing also received support from a University of Tennessee Chancellor’s Grant for Faculty Research, a faculty fellowship at the University of Tennessee Humanities Center, the University of Tennessee Jefferson Prize for Faculty Research, and from the Department of History at the University of Tennessee.
The roots of this book reach back to my postdoctoral fellowship at Kyoto University, which the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science made possible. Tomiya Itaru 冨谷至 was my host there, and his erudition and energy remain an inspiration. Without him, this book would not have been written.
Fragments: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Ancient and Medieval Pasts will publish a version of chapter 1 , and some of the translations in chapters 3 and 8 previously appeared in Early China and Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine . My thanks to the editors for permission to include that material.
Introduction
… what people do with language is more instructive than what they know about language or believe they do with it.
—Linda Brodkey, Academic Writing as Social Practice
Text defined society in early imperial China. It did so before and after, too. But in the first centuries of empire, the position of text changed, and those changes resonated throughout society. Men and women at every social level interacted meaningfully with text. This book examines some of those interactions.
I argue in this book that the military bureaucracy of Han-era China brought soldiers and others from different regions and placed them in a literate community in the northwestern border region. There the soldiers encountered text, worked with information transmitted in written form, and heard various sorts of texts read. They were part of the textual culture of the realm.
Text has a long history in China, but the first imperial dynasties leveraged it in new ways. China entered the early imperial period in 221 BCE with a declaration of unification, which the First Emperor of Qin 秦始皇 (r. 221–210 BCE) promulgated throughout the realm in written form. The universal government of the Qin dynasty was a bureaucracy, and the Han dynasty (206/2 BCE–220 CE) inherited and refined that system. 1 It functioned on the basis of text and played a key role in the dissemination of text throughout the realm.
M. T. Clanchy has written about the fundamental role religion played in spreading literate culture in medieval Europe. In Europe, the needs and requirements of the Christian church—its teachings, its authority, its controversies—gave shape and impetus to the development of textual civilization. 2 Document bureaucracy played an analogous role in early imperial China.
During the early imperial period, religion was an important part of Qin and Han culture. But there was no institution to act as a driving force in the development of textual culture. Religious practices varied and were often highly localized. While government was involved in religion, in that it promoted specific observances and prohibited others, there was far more variation across geographical area and social position than there was consistency. As Ori Tavor writes, “early Chinese religion is a particularly amorphous entity, as it lacks many of the features modern scholars view as fundamental—a canonical set of scriptures, organized clergy, or a fixed pantheon.” 3 The situation changed after the arrival of Buddhism, but the spread of textual culture happened another way.
In contrast, the early bureaucracy, the governance that depended upon it, and the documents it produced, were universal influences. The bureaucracy, in theory at least, brought the whole of the Qin and Han realm under a single system, with its center at the capital. Its workings teemed with text; its documents were in front of all eyes. Religion was part of the bureaucracy, but as one matter among many. 4 When Buddhism spread to and within China, it brought with it new texts and inspired new traditions, and contributed to the spread of forms of writing. Buddhism came to influence China in many respects, including written culture. 5 But Chinese culture was already textual prior to its advent.
Due perhaps to text’s central position in their governance and society, the first imperial dynasties in China dominated written culture in unprecedented ways. The Qin took measures that the critical historiography of the Han denoted as “the burning of books”—a putative destruction of much