All Mine! Happiness, Ownership, and Naming in Eleventh-Century China

Abstract

ier material. Chapter 4 focusses on the Shifa 筮法 (Method of stalk divination), a Warring States bamboo manuscript of the ancient state of Chu 楚, now part of the “Tsinghua bamboo slips” collection. Jia conveniently provides the original pictures of the bamboo slips along with an accurate transcription of each of the manuscript’s 30 sections. Chapter 5 concerns the shuzi gua from the Warring States Chu area. Jia first analyses the divinatory records of the Baoshan 包山, Tianxingguan 天星觀, and Xincai 新蔡 bamboo manuscripts according to the Shifa system, reaching the conclusion that they belong to the same divinatory tradition. He then attempts a reconstruction of the ancient computational method, proposing a modified version of the one described in the received Xici 繫辭 (Commentary to the Appended Statements [of the Yi]). Jia argues that the traditional computational method of the Xici must have developed within the state of Chu. Finally, he proposes that the Shifa might be related to the Lianshan 連山 (Joint Mountains), one of the three traditional Yi texts. The conclusions summarize the main argument of the book in seven points. In his final remarks, Jia stresses that his conclusions are inevitably provisional and cannot be considered as the definitive understanding of such a complex and heterogeneous corpus of texts; further research is in order as new palaeographical sources will be discovered. Although his arguments are avowedly tentative and at times not entirely convincing – the 1and 7-systems hypothesis does present problematic aspects, namely the discussion on the coexistence of numbers 1 and 7 in the same shuzi gua – Jia’s monograph undoubtedly represents a fundamental contribution, and will surely become a seminal work in the field of pre-Qin Yi scholarship.