Check you have completed your week 2 assignments by the start of class!
IMPORTANT: PASSWORD ACCESS TO PDFs:
Username and password can be found on the Canvas Homepage
Remember you can post questions, queries, musings and ideas on the Pad.
Tue 1/28: Shang dynasty “oracle bones” (jiaguwen 甲骨文)
Read to prepare for class: Take notes, keep track of questions and ideas, and bring to class!
- Textbook: Alkhatib, Inaya. “Divination in Early China”. in HST107: China’s Magical Creatures. Edited by T. D’Haeseleer. URL: https://open.muhlenberg.pub/chinasmagicalcreatures/chapter/the-classic-of-changes-yijing/
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- Paragraphs 1-2 give you some background on oracle bones.
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- Textbook: Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, and Kwang-Ching Liu. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Second ed. Cambridge Illustrated History. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010. (PDF)
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- Box “Ancestors” p. 21, “Shang dynasty” pp. 22-30.
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- Primary source: Keightley, David. “Chapter 1: The Oracle Bone Inscriptions of the Late Shang Dynasty”. In Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1: From Earliest Times to 1600, edited by W. deBary et al. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1999. (PDF)
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- Use the introduction by the translator to familiarize yourself with the kind of material this is; then focus on the translations (starting p. 6), but let the translator’s annotations help you.
- Who used oracle bones? What made these bones, in the eyes of the Shang people, powerful tools to divine the future? What do you learn about Shang state, society and culture through these snippets of text?
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- OPTIONAL EXTRA: If you are interested in the oracle bones, there is a lot of literature about them. David Keightley is one of the world experts on these materials. Here is an excerpt from another book that talks about how the bones were created and used in divination. (note 93 on p. 21 is an interesting account of scholars’ attempts at “cracking bones”, with rather inauspicious results)
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- Keightley, David N.Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. (PDF)
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- Slides (Gdrive)
Thu 1/30: Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing 山海經)
A personalized reading assignment will be emailed to you.
Primary source: The Classic of Mountains and Seas. Translated and with an Introduction by Anne Birrell. London: Penguin Books; New York: Penguin Putnam. 1999. (PDF of Table of Contents)
Slides (Gdrive link)
