Presenting for the first time in a single volume transcriptions, translations, and studies of three recently discovered bamboo-strip divination manuscripts, Unearthing the Changes is a new milestone in Zhou yi studies from the leading Western scholar in the field.
In chapter 1, Shaughnessy sets the stage for the rest of the book by tracing the history of archaeological discoveries in the twentieth century that have contributed to our understanding of the Changes and explores the extent to which archaeology can help unlock the mysteries surrounding the origin, use, and meaning of this pre-Qin classic.
In the study of the Shanghai Museum manuscript Zhou yi in chapter 2, Shaughnessy puts forth novel hypotheses on the hexagram sequence and on how identification of rhymed passages may be important to understanding which passages were included when the received Zhou yi was composed.
Chapter 3 presents a transcription and translation of the manuscript on the left-hand pages, while giving the text and translation of the received version on the right-hand pages. This convenient format makes it possible for the reader to discover the multitude of ways in which the manuscript version enriches and challenges traditional readings of the Changes.
Chapter 4 presents a fascinating study of the Wangjiatai manuscript of the Gui cang. Shaughnessy convincingly argues that the recently discovered Wangjiatai manuscript—mentioned in the Zhou li as one of three traditions of the Changes, but then later lost and, until recently, existing only in allegedly forged fragments—will play a pivotal role in our understanding of the origin and use of the Changes.
Chapter 5 provides transcriptions and translations of “all published fragments from the Wangjiatai Gui cang manuscript and those quotations in medieval sources that have been identified as coming from the Gui cang” (p. 171). By juxtaposing the identifiable hexagram statements of the Gui cang manuscript with corresponding Gui cang passages quoted in received texts, chapters 4 and 5 convincingly identify the Wangjiatai manuscript fragments as belonging to the long-lost Gui cang.
In chapter 6, Shaughnessy argues that it is “easy to imagine that the formulas that did make their way into the Zhou Yi derived originally from the same sort of divination context as that which produced the Fuyang text” (p. 209) and that this may be a reflection of a multistep process of divination, which he has argued for in earlier publications.
Chapter 7 presents a partial transcription and translation of the Fuyang Zhou yi manuscript, which includes the hexagrams, line statements, and attached divination statements for the fifty-three hexagrams that can be matched with the received version. The 531 fragments bearing only on divination statements have been excluded. Shaughnessy is correct “that they are too fragmentary and too lacking in context to make their translation meaningful” (p. 213). However, their omission is still regrettable, since it is exactly the divination statements that make the Fuyang Zhou yi especially useful for the study of the composition and use of the Changes.
One of the strengths of chapter 3 lies in the many footnotes that indicate the textual differences between the Shanghai Museum manuscript and the received text, the Mawangdui silk manuscripts, and the Xiping Stone Classics text. Similar text-critical and philological footnotes for the Wangjiatai and Fuyang manuscripts in chapters 5 and 7 would have been helpful. While Shaughnessy discusses the significance of many of the character variants found in the manuscripts, one is still left wishing for a more exhaustive treatment of the topic, especially since this is an area where the manuscripts have the potential to change our understanding of the received Zhou yi. Shaughnessy endorses Richard Kunst's suggestion that “the polysemy inherent in a word . . . gave it a numinous quality and led to its incorporation in the text in contexts capable of more than one reading.”Footnote 10 To this Shaughnessy adds the proposal that, due to later developments in the writing system occurring after the composition of the Zhou yi in the Western Zhou or Spring and Autumn periods, “the scribes of different times and places, were able . . . to use only a single ‘correct’ character to write it” (p. 66). This is a brilliantly insightful hypothesis with great explanatory potential. However, it does not answer the more concrete question of which character variants in the bamboo manuscripts were merely graphical variants intended to write the same word, and which character variants were used to write different words at the time when the manuscripts were written down and circulated.
In sum, Unearthing the Changes is a groundbreaking work on divination manuscripts, which should be part of the library of any serious student and scholar of the Zhou yi and early Chinese divination.
