Manipulated Texts
Transferred

In the late 04c, the northern Sinitic states adopted the all too successful Inner Asian style of mounted archery, along with the non-Sinitic style of clothing which it required. Tradition has it that this was first done in the northern state of Jau, and the long account in Jan-Gwo Tsv #239 purports to relate how the King of Jau persuaded his reluctant courtiers to make the change. Segments of that account also appear in a different context in Shang-jywn Shu 1, an argument by Shang Yang in favor of changing the laws of the state of Chin. One of these stories is evidently reusing material from the other. But which? Such are the directionality problems presented by material which has been moved from one text into another.

Chinese Examples

SJS 1 < JGT 239. The end of Jan-gwo Tsv 239 (the abovementioned narrative of the adoption of foreign archery and dress) corresponds to the whole of Shang-jywn Shu 1 (a debate over changing the Chin laws). It can be shown that SJS 1 is directionally secondary; its construction is part of the Han Packaging process for the earlier "Lord Shang" writings.

SJS 13 > HFZ 53. Each of these tracts has material that the other lacks. Here again, it can be shown, on independent and merely directional grounds, that the relatively early "Lord Shang" essay is the source of the relatively late "Han Feidz" chapter. Roughly the same ideas are shifted from one authorial matrix to another, and acquire increased audience acceptability in so doing.

These are not examples of adaptive quotation, but of the recycling of original material to be used under different circumstances, or with different advocational import.

Other Examples

Demosthenes 8. The end of this speech (On the Chersonese, 8:38-51 and 8:52-67) occurs more or less identically as two long passages located at different points in Speech 10 (Fourth Philippic; 10:11-27 and 10:55-70). Sealey 233 has argued that the passages in question are in place in Speech 10, "and cannot be removed without leaving obvious gaps. They have been added clumsily in a complete block (8:38-67) to Speech 8, where they are followed only by generalities and an epilogue (8:68-77)." Sealey concludes that the transfer of material was done by Demosthenes himself, in the course of preparing his orally delivered speeches for publication. It might seem more plausible to attribute the addition to a local bookseller, but for the perhaps surprising clumsiness of a master in handling his own material, compare next.

Bach. The present Italian text of the cantata Non Sa Che Sia Dolore so badly fits the music, and so frequently violates the standard aria procedures of the time, that Joshua Rifkin is led to conclude "that the cantata must originally have had another text; the version transmitted in Forkel's manuscript represents a none too skillful adaptation undertaken for a special set of circumstances." Those circumstances were perhaps the departure of Bach's young pupil Christoph Mizler from Leipzig for his native Ansbach in 1734. It must then have been Bach himself who did the adaptation, however clumsily; compare preceding. The details of this case will probably never be fully known, but that Bach in general frequently recycled material between his sacred cantatas and his secular works is familiar information.

 

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