Shanghai Museum Collection of Chu Bamboo Slips from the Warring States Period Volume Five

Author: Ma Chengyuan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features: The internationally renowned Shangai Museum Collection of Chu Bamboo Slips, discovered in Hong Kong's cultural market several years ago, was rescued and returned to the Shanghai Museum. Through high-precision testing by the Shanghai Institute of Atomic Energy, the bamboo slips were dated to the late Warring States period and are widely recognized by academia as a national treasure, representing a groundbreaking archaeological discovery. This collection comprises over eighty types of bamboo slips, including twenty original titles from the pre-Qin era before the burning of books and burying of scholars, covering topics such as history, philosophy, religion, literature, music, linguistics, and military affairs. They are extremely valuable lost texts with immense documentary value, indispensable for research in various cultural fields. The published bamboo slips include over 1,200 complete and fragmented pieces, totaling over 35,000 characters, showcasing the calligraphic styles of numerous Warring States scribes. The elegance and refinement of their scripts, along with their well-balanced spacing, hold significant importance in the history of Chinese calligraphy. This volume consists of eight bamboo slips, combining two texts: "The Brightness of Ghosts and Gods" and "Master Rong's Succession." The concluding sentence of the first text, "The Brightness of Ghosts and Gods," and the opening sentence of the second text, "Master Rong's Succession," appear on the fifth slip, with a black line marking the division between the two texts.