Classical Chinese Text Typology
Integral TextsThe integral text is composed on one occasion, or by one person over a modest span of time, but with a single impulse or intent. The authors of Warring States integral texts are rarely known with certainty, but otherwise, this is the authorial type which is standard in our own time, and is the default expectation in all times.
Every sufficiently small bit of Warring States text, whatever context it may now be embedded in, and whether or not it ever circulated independently, presumably had a single author, so that the ultimate compositional modules of other text types are Integral texts. For texts put together at one time from previously existing rather than original material, see the Assembled and Conflated categories.
One important subcategory of Integral texts is larger works whose groundplan was conceived in advance. A groundplan might be modified in the course of the writing, or later accretions may somewhat conceal the groundplan. Where they can reliably be detected, groundplans are an important indicator of original authorial intention.
- The Standard Bronze Inscription offers itself as the transcript of a royal commendation, made on a particular occasion to a deserving individual. From post-Jou times (that is, after 0771), self-commendations also exist. Bronze inscriptions tend to be highly stylized, and are thus not authorial in the usual sense; they cannot be wholly understood without reference to their relevant paradigms. For all its artificiality, though, the bronze inscription is in a sense the ancestor of the later Integral text, just as the Chun/Chyou of Lu is the prototype of the Accretional text. It is relevant that unlike the "deed of conferral" which is the standard content of Jou period bronze inscriptions, Spring and Autumn bronzes increasingly admit a "personal record" type, where the owner composes his own inscription (recounting his or his family's deeds) and casts his own vessel. Social wealth at this time was becoming more widely diffused, and literature tends to grow in wealth contexts.
- Shan Jing (Shan/Hai Jing 1-5; Wu-dzang Shan-jing). A systematic treatise formatted from the beginning in more than one chapter module. It is the earliest such case which we presently recognize. Its conception presumably required the previous example of an Accretional text which had reached a certain number of modules, and was available for public inspection. The fivefold ground plan of the Shan Jing is determined by the five directions (the center, plus four cardinal directions which together define the periphery around the center). That 5-chapter core later attracted other additions (see under Layered).
- Mu Tyendz Jwan 1-4. Whether this was a veritable account, scribally recorded in the 08th century, or (as we prefer to conclude) a fabulous romance composed de novo by some court literatus for the amusement of Lyang Syang-wang in the 04th century (it was recovered from the latter's tomb), this text was probably written at a single time by a single person. It needed the literary precedent of a narrative that was more than a vignette. One possible source is the longer Dzwo Jwan stories (the Dzwo Jwan was definitely known in Ngwei at this time). Mathieu (Loewe 342f) rightly distinguishes MTJ 5 and 6 as later additions. MTJ 1-6, considered together, would have to be put in the Layered category.
- Lu Mu-gung. This Gwodyen text consists of a single anecdote about Dz-sz and Lu Mu-gung. As it stands, it is a unitary composition and undoubtedly has a single author. Such independent vignettes had by this time become a typical module of growth for both the Analects and Mencius texts. Given the characteristics of other Gwodyen texts, LMG may well be an extract from a larger work. The nearest analogues are the anecdotes about Dz-sz and Lu Mu-gung which are sprinkled throughout the Mencius. If our LMG was indeed originally written to be part of a larger work, we will not understand it completely without reference to that work, which unfortunately is unknown.
- Jyou Bai (Gwandz 4H). That this separately titled document is not merely a compositional subsection of the chapter is shown by the fact that it has a separate commentary (comprising GZ 65), but no other section of GZ 4 does so. Jyou Bai ("The Nine Ways to Defeat") is an example of a type of composition that was new in the latter 04c: the numbered set. It may be Indian in origin. Early Chinese examples would include some concepts in the Sundz. Analects 16 (c0285) is a later and literarily more developed example. For the whole GZ 4 chapter as a unit, see Assembled, and for the gigantic Gwandz as a whole, see Accumulated.
- Ywe Ling. A work in 12 sections, each of them giving directions for work to be done in one of the 12 months of the year. The 12-section plan is a guarantee against gradual composition, since there can hardly have been a precursor version with only 11 months. (There may have been a simpler precursor, on a different model: perhaps the model of the four seasons). This is another of the early "numbered set" pieces, where the number in question is "given" by the calendrical tradition.The Ywe Ling itself exists in many later versions, one of which makes up chapter 3 of the Hwainandz; another constitutes Li Ji 4.
- Lw-shr Chun/Chyou 1-12 (Ji). The groundplan for this work (which, like SHJ 1-5, later attracted other material) is the Ywe Ling, which is here cut up and distributed as the first sections of its 12 chapters. The other sections in each chapter consist of new or borrowed material. The LSCC chapter material is organized more along seasonal than monthly lines, and falls into four major divisions, each occupying three consecutive chapters. It appears that all these levels of organization are intentional, and formed part of the initial impulse behind the LSCC.
- Shr Ji. The original plan, conceived by Szma Tan, seems to have called for 120 chapters, divided into 60+60 (60 being the cyclical number; Szma Tan was a calendrologist), with the first 60 being divided into 30+30, and the first 30 being divided 10+6+14. The last section, the 60 Jwan or Accounts, was at some point extended to 70 by Szma Chyen, in order to include material of different type. The present Shr Ji thus contains 130 chapters, a number of no particular cosmic resonance. Szma Chyen may have mentally justified his 70 Jwan as some sort of counterpart of the "70 disciples of Confucius" or another of the emblematic 70's furnished by tradition.
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