Chu Silk Manuscripts from Zidanku, Changsha (Hunan Province) Volume II

Li Ling is a distinguished Chinese historian, a towering figure in the study of classical Chinese civilization. He is Chair Professor of Humanities in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University and has published prolifically in the areas of Chinese archaeology, paleography, classical philology, intellectual history, historical geography, the history of science and technology, as well as material culture and art history (with special emphasis on Chinese bronzes). He is especially interested in the connections between China and other parts of Eurasia in antiquity. He was named Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS) in 2016, and received the 28th I. R. Iran’s World Book Award in 2021 and the Léon Vandermeersch Prize of Chinese Studies in 2023.Donald Harper is the Centennial Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Chicago. His research and publications focus on newly discovered manuscripts and their significance for the history of religion, science and technology, and medicine in early China.

“This volume represents the continuation of the important study that Professor Li Ling devoted to the history of the discovery of the Chu manuscripts from Zidanku. It includes the photographic reproduction, transcription, and detailed study of three manuscripts and several fragments, identified thanks to the efforts spanning more than four decades by the greatest expert on hemerological texts of the Warring States period.” —Marianne Bujard, Professor, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris“This beautifully produced volume, with full color plates of all the manuscript fragments, does vivid justice to the meticulous, painstaking, and rigorous decades of masterful work that Li Ling, the world’s foremost authority on the subject, has poured into the reconstruction, decipherment, and interpretation of these important textual artifacts, much of which is brought to light here for the first time.” —Scott Cook, Tan Chin Tuan Professor of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore“The collaboration of the two most eminent experts of Chinese paleography, Li Ling in Beijing, and Donald Harper in Chicago, is again a felicitous demonstration of what Sino-American cooperation can achieve."" —Lothar Ledderose, Senior Professor, Institute of East Asian Art History, Heidelberg University“This volume compiles and assesses with immaculate accuracy and critical acumen all extant relevant material that Li Ling uncovered during his over forty-year pursuit for answers in and out of China among archaeologists, historians, paleographers, and conservation scientists—a true model of interdisciplinary and international research, and an inspiration to all scholars in early China studies.” —Jenny F. So, Senior Curator for Early Chinese Art (1990–2000), National Museums of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution“Professor Li Ling’s splendid book offers to the Western public the first ever comprehensive monograph on the Chu Silk Manuscripts from Zidanku. This masterful research, to which he has devoted more than forty years, is not only a minute investigation—the most extensive of its kind on the famous manuscripts—but also a very valuable contribution to our understanding of the intellectual life of the Late Warring States period.” —Alain Thote, Emeritus Professor, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris“Complemented by high-quality color pictures, old photographs, hand facsimiles of the manuscripts, as well as an updated bibliography and a comprehensive index of the ancient graphs, this English edition should undoubtedly be regarded as the new reference edition for these excavated texts.” —Olivier Venture, Professor, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris