The Materiality of “Shu”

The Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley presents a colloquium featuring speaker Dirk Meyer- professor of Oriental Studies at University of Oxford.

In the summer of 2008, Beijing Tsinghua University purchased about two thousand and more bamboo slips dating from circa 300 BC. These materials carry writing and show significant overlap with much of what is expressed in the transmitted Shangshu. At the same time, they also yield major conceptual differences to the transmitted body of texts and allow for conclusions to be drawn about the Shangshu as a multi-layered and long evolving project. The different materials therefore manifest the changing philosophical concerns of diverse textual communities and their socio-political realities. This paper traces different material representations of “Shu” texts and addresses the conceptual differences between the received Shangshu and wider “Shu” tradition. By so doing, it engages in a broader discussion about the materiality of “Shu”, and so the spoken and written origins of “Shu” tradition.