Philology
 Date

Time leaves its traces on trees and continents. Human time-keeping has its systems too. Where, in such a framework, can we locate a given piece of writing? This question be answered more often than can the counterpart questions about location and author. We give it due prominence accordingly.

It is usually thought that dating something means assigning it to a particular year. Much more often, the dating of problematical texts is relative: before this one (which imitates it) but after that one (to which it offers a rebuttal), and at roughly the same time as this other one (which addresses the same contemporary issue from a different ideological standpoint). More precise results are welcome when available, and the examples below include both types.

Here as always in philology, it is not assumed that humans (or other entities) have predictive power. Thus a text that predicts an event of 0236 must have been written in that year or later. Similarly, and interestingly, failed predictions suggest that the text was written before the year in which the prediction was refuted. The two types together give what turns out to be a surprisingly accurate date for the conclusion of the Dzwo Jwan.

Indications of date apply only to the segment of text in which they occur, and it us thus necessary to determine the homogeneity of a text before attempting to date it or attribute it. A simple text, or an internally homogeneous segment of a composite text, is the only thing to which a date, whether relative or absolute, may meaningfully be assigned. That is why this section comes late, rather than early, in our introduction to philology. The ground must first be prepared by other kinds of analysis.

Contents
  • Dates
    • Centennial Song
    • Consule Planco
  • Allusions
    • The Chi Kingship
    • The Conquest of Sung
  • Reactions
    • The Three Year Mourning
    • The Usless Goose
  • Anachronisms
    • Example
  • Projected Dates
    • False Eclipses
    • Nihongi
  • Posthumous Names
    • Bamboo Annals
  • Taboo Observances
    • Lawyer Syi
    • Han Feidz
    • Shr Ji
  • Paleography
    • The Peace of Callias
    • Happy in the Analects
    • Stumps in Mencius
    • Attributive Chi in Mwodz
    • Nai and Syi
  • Predictions and Cycles
    • Dzwo Jwan
    • Chin and Jou
    • The Number 218
    • Buddhist Pilgrimages
  • The Zeitgeist
    • Han Feidz

 

Philology is Copyright © 2001- by E Bruce Brooks

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