Leiden 2003 (#2)

A personal impression of WSWG 17
17-18 September 2003 / Leiden University

[This is the second of four vignettes, by way of an informal report on WSWG 17]

The Conference

Papers for all the Conference sessions had been predistributed in order to maximize the scarce discussion time. Some papers had indeed been prediscussed on a dedicated E-mail list, NLN (the New Leiden Network), whose roster also included a few interested scholars unable to attend in person. This extension of an occasional WSWG practice was judged a success, and it will probably be exploited further in future conferences. Most contributions were work in progress, written up for the WSWG 17 occasion. Two relevant papers previously presented at other European conferences were made available as additional enrichment for this occasion.

The quality of all papers was high, the cordiality of discussion between student and senior participants was exemplary, and the discussion itself was fruitful and suggestive. The need to be aware of possible textual layering, and to consider different text segments separately and on their merits, which have been consistently stressed as sound methodology by the Warring States Project, were reflected or paralleled in several papers, and in several discussion comments.

Session 1

Session 1 was held in the breakfast room of the Hotel De Doelen. Business travelers who know this room only in its morning, pre-departure guise would have been amazed to see it in evening dress, with the tables in a large U, candlelit up and down, with a Leiden University pad and pen at each place for authorized note-taking. In this session were grouped most topics touching on or rooted in the Jou Dynasty, the WS period's anchor on the left. Constance Cook (Lehigh) dealt with evolution in the concept of the Way of Former Kings during that period; she also noted her own and others' doubts about the reliability of a newly discovered bronze vessel whose inscription is supposed to prove that the Jou Kings recognized Yw as a lineal precursor. (A certain range of opinion had been evident at the previous Dartmouth kickoff conference for this much noticed artifact). Heiner Roetz in "Normativity and History in Warring States Thought" provided a mirror of this early change, by investigating the sense of loss of a former Way as it surfaces pervasively in the familiar Warring States philosophical texts.

Maria Khayutina (Bochum and Munich) addressed the problem of seemingly multiple Jou capitals, and identified some candidates as not proper capitals, but more temporary military headquarters. It was even suggested in the following discussion that the Jou might have had a fluid capital, as did other known early societies, down to and including Nara Japan. Masha's handout, with color topographical map inserts, set (for this reporter) a new standard of technical excellence and historical relevance. Kai Vogelsang (Munich) showed that the five "gau" chapters of the Shu, these being among the Chvng-wang group of Shu which in recent years have been regarded by many as the unassailably genuine part of that corpus, differ so widely from the language of presumptively contemporary inscriptions that they cannot be attributed to early Jou; Kai offered a range of possible later dates. It was agreed in general that the divergence between inscription language and book language for the Jou period (Dobson's "Early Archaic") was important and consequential, despite Dobson's earlier attempt to ignore it. Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann outlined discontinuities in successive definitions of the schematically geographical Nine Provinces, again suggesting evolution where some earlier observers have been inclined to assert unity, and adding more precise definition and new material to a long-standing problem.

Joachim Gentz, in a paper drawing on his recently published thesis, argued that the Gungyang Jwan occupies a doctrinal position that is unique in both Warring States and Han. His position on the date of the text (see the summary on p401f of his thesis, Das Gongyang zhuan, Harrasowitz 2001, headed Schluss, and beginning "Eine eindeutige Datierung lässt sich auch nach dieser ausführlichen Untersuchung nicht vornehmen") is that GYJ, "like most other early texts . . . has grown in different stages." He is not prepared at present to date precisely any part of the composite work, but thinks that"the earliest parts may be dated back to the late 4th or early 3rd century B.C." (this, in the Project's view, would put it essentially on a line with the final layer of the Dzwo Jwan). The text contains one clear instance of a taboo avoidance for Emperor Jing, but Joachim does not feel that any additional material was added at that time, nor does he find specifically Han features in the GYJ stance. Here, as with other papers, is a point newly clarified, and greatly inviting further attention.

Last at this session came Taeko Brooks, whose paper on Disjunctive Ji2 [oyobi] in the Chun/Chyou argued that this word, classed by all modern authorities as meaning "and," actually bears in use some of the nuances which the GYJ and other early commentaries sporadically attributed to it, but that the pattern is only clear if different contexts of use (normal, diplomatic, and military) are systematically distinguished. So clarified, the verb-derived coverb meaning "and including" displays progressively stronger senses of distancing from the thing named or the action described, up to and including outright opposition, as in military encounters, where as in English, "fought with" actually means "fought against." Christoph Harbsmeier, representing the grammarians on this occasion, was gracious enough to comment that he envied her this finding, which he himself had missed in his long study of this language. The implication, agreeing with an earlier and independent investigation of CC words for killing by Carine Defoort, is that there are indeed valuational words in CC, but that the values in question, including reluctancies and antagonisms, are those of the Lu court of the time, not those of any imaginable later moralist. The character of CC as a genuine surviving court chronicle is to that extent confirmed. There are of course major implications for the perennial problem of the Dzwo Jwan.

Afterward

No presentation slot at this session had room for all the comments and questions waiting to be made, and for despite the forbearance of participants with the narrow available time limits, the session still ended somewhat after the canonical hour of 9 (locally, 21:00). It ended with a sense of excitement as well as incompleteness, which on the rested morrow would for some be transmuted into an excited sense of further work to be done. Most participants left the session to go upstairs to their rooms. A few sought their bicycles for a ride home within Leiden. Karel van der Leeuw (UvA), the local hero of the occasion, not to mention visitor Heiner Roetz, both of whom commuted to the Conference sessions from Amsterdam, faced something like an hour of train and other conveyances before sleep. As though to even the cosmic score, some hotel guests experienced analogous delays. Scaliger had complained in 1606 (to Leiden students Jean and Nicolas de Vassan) about the Dutch whom no law forbade to noisily enjoy their beer and its effects at all hours. And from the boat moored across the Rapenburg in front of the English Pub came confirmatory noises, across the centuries, at least for those conferees whose windows looked out on the canal.

 

13 Oct 2003 / Contact The Project / Exit to News Page