Chronology
Simple Graphic Presentation

The interrelationships among the Warring States texts cannot be solved by assigning a single date to each text. We must recognize that many of the texts were compiled over time, and assign dates to the coherent segments of such a text, rather than to that texts as a whole. If the evidence required us to give different dates to one segment, then the chronology would be self-refuting. In fact, this never happens. The dates the Project has assigned to each text segments satisfy the requirements of all the other text segments.

This kind of dating assigns a span of time, rather than a point in time, to most of the texts. The preliminary chart below, which is meant to give only a first idea of the system, shows how four major texts look from the Project viewpoint. Their text formation processes run in parallel, and they overlap for part of their length.

(The Analects or Lun Yw is abbreviated LY. The Mencius, which consists of two parallel strands, and the two ethical portions of the Mwodz, are here presented as single columns for simplicity. The Han continuation of the Mwodz, found only in the military tradition within that school, is not shown).

Year	Analects	Mwodz	Dau/Dv Jing	Mencius
0479	LY
0470	LY
0460	LY
0450	LY
0436	LY
0420	LY
0410	LY
0390	LY	MZ
0380	LY	MZ
0370	LY	MZ
0360	LY	MZ
0350	LY	MZ
0340	LY	MZ	DDJ
0330	LY	MZ	DDJ
0320	LY	MZ	DDJ	MC
0310	LY	MZ	DDJ	MC
0300	LY	MZ	DDJ	MC
0290	LY	MZ	DDJ	MC
0280	LY	MZ	DDJ	MC
0270	LY	MZ	DDJ	MC
0260	LY	MZ	DDJ	MC
0250	LY	MZ	DDJ	MC
0240
0230
0220
0209
0200

All the text strands are cut off at the year 0250. This is because the groups which compiled and sponsored those texts happened, at the time of their extinction, to be located in or near to the state of Lu. Thus, all were affected by the conquest of Lu by Chu in 0249, which resulted in the extinction of Lu.

Notice too that it is not possible to say that the Analects is earlier or later than the Mwodz. It is both, depending which layers of the Analects (and the Mwodz) you are concerned with. The same is true of any two of these four texts. There are chapters of the DDJ which are pre-Mencian, and there are other chapters of the DDJ which are contemporary with Mencius, or with the later additions to his school text. It is this pattern of overlap in time which permits the solution of many otherwise inscrutable problems in the relations between these texts.

We can sum up the Project's approach by saying that we propose to solve the Warring States text chronology problem by making modules of accretion, not whole texts, the units of analysis.

This is a simple picture, designed to make some ideas clear on first acquaintance. The next page will complicate that picture in the way the real Warring States world was complicated. It will divide the composite texts into some of their parallel streams, and distinguish some individual units within each stream. It will also interrupt the text columns to note some important political events (not just the Chu conquest of Lu) that cut across all the text formation processes, and left traces in the texts formed at that time. To go to that more complicated version of the chart, click on this arrow:

5 Nov 2007 / Contact The Project / Exit to Chronology Page