Growth Texts
Extended
A text, or a corpus, may be may be reopened to further growth in response to some felt demand. Plautus produced his last play in 0184, but new "Plautus" plays continued to be offered to a Roman audiences for a century after his death. The Han Dynasty in China, when the heritage of classical times was being competitively repositioned for a role in the emerging Imperial ideology, or simple developed to meet current needs, was especially favorable to this extension process.
Examples where additional matter is supplied by the original author or group are listed under Layered.
Chinese ExamplesGwo Yw. This is a collection of anecdotes arranged by state. Eric Henry has shown that the Wu and Ywe chapters of GY were added much later to the original core, as an extension. Any analysis of the original GY (see under Figurate) should thus omit these chapters.
Lw-shr Chun/Chyou. Twelve Ji chapters, LSCC 1-12 (see under Figurate) were completed in 0241 under the aegis the Chin minister Lw Bu-wei, who died in disgrace not long afterwards, leaving no successor school. Shortly after the Chin conquest of 0221, the LSCC was revived and extended by Chin court scholars of a moderate Confucian-Legalist tendency, who added eight Lan of "Overview" sections (LSCC 13-20) as a vehicle for certain policy recommendations. Under the Second Emperor (c0210), the six Lun or "Discourses" (LSCC 21-26) were further added behind the Lan. Our final LSCC is thus a doubly extended text. (see further under Rearranged).
Jung Yung. Some portions of this brief text are attested in the early 03c; they at least are, or are from, a late Warring States text. Other portions refer to aspects of the Chin and later Imperial system, and thus probably represent a later resumption and extension of the text.
Ar Ya. This glossary of hard words seems to reflect the Sywndz school's tradition of Shr and Shu explication. AY 1-3 (dealing with various types of verbs) are the Sywndzian core. AY 4-19 (nouns arranged by subject area) are based on glosses drawn from a wider range of texts, not all of them strictly "classical." Some show knowledge of early Han texts; at least these, and perhaps everything after AY 3, were added during Han.
Han Feidz. A genuine policy appeal to the King of Chin by the historical Han Fei (now HFZ 3) was kept in the Chin archive, along with all other such state papers, after his death in a Chin prison. Han Fei was a Legalist thinker who was nevertheless a victim of Chin, and his name was a useful aegis under which the Legalist thinkers of Han could operate, without incurring the odium attaching to Chin itself (as the preserved writings of the Chin minister Lord Shang unavoidably did). Accordingly, the original Han Fei statement became a nucleus around which there seem to have been added, beginning in the early years of Han, a large number of practical Legalist tracts, having to do especially with the always delicate art of the courtier in an autocratic society. The series of chapters winds its way through the various court fads of early and middle Han, producing a result that is sometimes locally brilliant but also drastically inconsistent as a whole. The extensions of this group, as such, would fall into the Accumulated category; it is the change of sponsorship after Han Fei's death that classifies the whole HFZ as an Extended text. Text production in this mode continued until official approval was given to Confucianism as the learning appropriate to the official examination system, a few years after 0140. The length of the HFZ is thus more likely to attest the vigor of Han Legalism, and not the volubility (and, as it would have to be, the philosophical mutability) of the historical Han Fei.
The HFZ extension process is at some points mixed up with the Shang-jywn Shu; for example, SJS 13 was borrowed as HFZ 53 (see Transferred).
Sundz in Han. The pre-Imperial Sundz (containing 13 chapters as finally left by its compilers; see under Layered) was regarded as a military classic in Han. When the border wars heated up under Emperor Wu, and strategy was prized but also felt to be in need of updating, new material began to be added to the Sundz. As of c0134 (the date of the Yinchyweshan tomb text), the extent of this new material was still modest. By the time the Han Palace Library catalogue was compiled, a century later, the Sundz was logged in as "82 chapters; 9 chapters of diagrams." Nor was this the whole extent of Han Sundz activity; see also Sun Bin.
Wu Chi in Han. The Wu Chi, the second in prestige order among the pre-Imperial military texts, was likewise subjected to new growth by anonymous military experts in Han. The 6 chapters of the pe-Imperial text (see Layered) had grown to "48 chapters" by the end of Han.
Shan/Hai Jing. The pre-Imperial Shan Jing ("Mountains Reference") in 5 chapters (see under Figurate and Interpolated) was extended in Han and perhaps also in post-Han times, by several series of increasingly fantastic material. The added groups are SHJ 6-9, 10-13, 14-17, and 18. At least the earliest of these extensions was probably in place by c0110, since the unreliable nature of the Shan/Hai Jing is noted in a late chapter of the Shr Ji (SJ 123). Eventually the work acquired a set of illustrations, and by the 4th century had become something of a best-seller.
Mu Tyendz Jwan. The Mu Tyendz Jwan ("The Story of King Mu"), the earliest long example of a fantastic travel narrative, was written for the amusement of Syang-wang of Ngwei, and with other command literature was buried with him in 0296. That tomb was more or less excavated by government scholars in 317, and the Mu Tyendz Jwan became known from that time onward; it became a popular item in the literature of the Jin dynasty (whose name implies a revitalization of the Jin successor state of Ngwei). Four of its six chapters are a reasonably coherent if always extravagant narrative. The latter two seem to be problematic: MTJ 5 may have been a narrative addition by the team which edited the text after its rediscovery in 281, and MTJ may be a pastiche of otherwise unplaceable bamboo strips found in disarranged form in the same tomb. If this analysis (by Mathieu) holds, then MTJ 1-5 qualify as an Extended text.
Li Sz's Memorial (SJ 87> SJ 6). The recommendation to prohibit the possession of Confucian texts about antiquity was a memorial, and as such probably preserved in the Chin archives. It appears in the Shr Ji (of Han Wu-di's time) in two forms, a mild and coherent one quoted in the biography of Li Sz (SJ 87) and a longer and more draconic one quoted in the narrative of the First Emperor of Chin (SJ 6). The extra material in the latter involves inconsistencies (possessors of forbidden books are to be first executed, then set at hard labor; try figure that one out), and was probably produced in order to make Li Sz and the Chin dynasty more cruel than they actually were. The question of whether Chin played a constitutive or an eccentric role in previous Chinese history was controversial in Han. The Shr Ji team, Szma Tan the father and Szma Chyen the son, were on opposite sides of that controversy. Tan takes a balanced view of the Chin minister Li Sz, and probably transcribes the memorial accurately. Chyen added colorful details, and placed his version where it would attract more attention. The tarted up SJ 6 version is then a propaganda adaptation of the original SJ 87 document.
Lyedz. This late 3rd century work includes Lyedz material culled from the genuine Warring States texts, many of which we still possess; it cannot be doubted that this material is at least as old as the texts from which it was gathered, though the nature of the material does not imply a separate Lyedz text of that period. To this assembled core were then added a number of new stories, some of them more psychologically perceptive than anything in the classical period, and some of them containing reference to customs (for example, the release of living things as a deed of merit) which imply a Buddhist-influenced, and thus a post-classical, stage of society. We have here a case of a text which has been extended without ever possessing a real core.
The above three texts, in their extended form, became popular in the years after 300. They thus together bear witness to the taste and temper of that age. If their extended nature had not been previously determined, allowing them to serve as evidence for the period of their popularity, the historian of that period would be correspondingly hampered and deprived.
Other Examples
Samuel. It is to the credit of Julius Wellhausen and his predecessors to have realized the import of the dual narratives of the early Israelite Monarchy, which intertwine over much of the extent of the Book of Samuel (divided into two only because it was too long for one unit of writing material at the time of its writing). The two series, for example, take different views of the monarchy itself, one being favorable to it or circumstantial about it, and the other blaming on it all Israel's later woes. The latter series are the later, and have tendency similar to that of many post-Exilic additions to the previous Hebrew scriptures. Wellhausen himself speaks of these separate areas as two Documents, implying a Conflation; it is probably more accurate to see the later material as a revisionist layer, added as new to the previously existing Samuel document.
Apastamba Dharma Sutra. This prescriptive text consists of a core (the present 1:1-2:16) followed by two extensions: first a "late addition from a renunciatory handbook" consisting of 2:17-18, and subsequently a still later extension consisting of the present Books 3 and 4. One result of these additions is repetition of topics at several points in the text. But this is true also of the supposed core, which may mean that it too has undergone later additions (Olivelle 127).
The Plays of Plautus. Of the 130 plays then current under the name of Plautus, the Roman philologist Varro (0116-027), coming a century afterward, identified 21 on stylistic grounds as genuine; it is this 21-play corpus which has survived to our time. The ratio of "extended" to original plays was thus 5 to 1.
Luke-Acts. These books, which are not consecutive in the order of our present New Testament, are linked by the preface to Acts as two parts of a single work by Luke, addressed to one Theophilus. There is some stylistic similarity, but other signs suggest a different origin, and Acts itself is probably composite. Acts may represent a later "reopening" of Luke, to add to it highly partisan material about the leaders of the early Jesus movement, especially Paul. The question of authorship is not presently clear; and this classification is thus tentative. If the original "Luke" was involved, then Acts is more properly an authorial layer than a later extension.
Luke in Vaticanus. The 4th century Codex Vaticanus text of the Gospel of Luke contains several passages which are not present in other families of early texts, and which are thus probably additions made only in that family (usually called the Alexandrian). Westcott and Hort, who regarded this branch of the tree as essentially pure, and who accordingly called it the Neutral text, could not bear to admit that, in this detail, the Vaticanus text of Luke was not in fact the most neutral; they called the passages in question "Western Non-Interpolations." They are more accurately Alexandrian Interpolations. They have a common tendency, which is to refine the perception of certain early Church sacraments. As such, they may validly be considered together as a text extension, though admittedly one of small physical extent. The difference between these and a small text accretion, such as the one in Mark 16, is the fact that its source is outside the text, rather than a part of its own gradual organic development.
Acts in Bezae. The text of Acts exists in many early manuscripts, with the usual amount of scribal static as the only differences among them. On a different scale altogether is Acts as it appears in the fifth-century Codex Bezae, which contains narrative expansions which together increase the length of Acts by about 10%. This material is clearly ideological in intention; its theological tendency has been studied by Eldon Epp.
Al-Waqidi (died 823) produced a widely admired history of the campaigns of Muhammad (the Chit al Maghazi) which relied in part on an earlier work by Ibn Ishaq. The two works may be superimposed. Julius Wellhausen described the parts of Waqidi which are without precedent in Ibn Ishaq as being for the most part legendary accretions, a progressive denaturing of historical motives, embellishments, ornamentations, and typifications. "The tradition as represented by al-Waqidi has already gone a step beyond Ibn Ishaq; it has evolved from what was held to be true to what was accounted beautiful. Miracles have increased, angels and devils have a greater role to play, the entire tone has grown more spiritual. The lines of the picture have been retraced, the colors applied more heavily." Between the two we may perhaps see, not the extension of a text, but rather the extension of a tradition.
There are exceptions to Ranke's maxim that the earlier source is the better source, but this instance is not one of them.
The Planets. It was not to be supposed that Holst's popular 1917 orchestral suite, which concluded with a wordless chorus of women's voices in "Neptune the Mystic," would forever ignore the advance of astronomy. A movement for "Pluto" (discovered in 1930) was commisioned by the Hallé Orchestra from Colin Matthews, and premiered on 11 May 2000, to bring the work up to modern astronomical sensibilities, though not necessarily to a more impressive end.
The recent declassification of Pluto as no longer a "planet" puts the astronomy side of things back where Holst had found it in 1917.
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