The Dingzhou Wenzi 23

Chapter 2

The Dingzhou Wenzi

Some 277 bamboo fragments of the Dingzhou find have been identified as
remnants of a manuscript entitled Wenzi. A description of the manuscript was
published in the August 1981 issue of Wenwu. Despite its brief nature, the
description was greatly appealing to scholars. This is because the Wenzi is a
controversial text in its transmitted form (the only form in which it was known
at the time), and it was hoped that the manuscript would shed light on the
controversy. However, their patience was tested as the transcription of the
excavated Wenzi manuscript was not published until fourteen years later, in
the December 1995 issue of Wenwu. That publication drew even more scholarly
attention to the Wenzi, for it enabled access to the transcribed text of the earli-
est known Wenzi manuscript to date.

2.1 The Manuscript

Judging by the handful of tracings published together with the transcribed text
of the excavated Wenzi, the 277 bamboo fragments vary in length from barely 2
cm to just under 21 cm, and in width from circa 0.4 to 0.8 cm. When still in the
hands of their Western Han dynasty reader, the strips probably measured circa
21 by 0.8 cm, the length of which approximates nine “inches” (cun 寸) in Han
dynasty standards.1 This means that the Wenzi bamboo strips were distinctly
longer than those of other manuscripts found in the tomb, such as the Rujiazhe
yan (11.5 cm) and the Lunyu (16.2 cm).2 If the lengths of the fragments discov-
ered are representative of the buried manuscripts, then their different lengths
may point to a hierarchy of texts, with longer bamboo strips reserved for texts

1 For an overview of Han dynasty weights and measures, see Denis Twitchett and Michael
Loewe, eds., The Cambridge History of China. Volume I: The Ch’in and Han Empires, 221 B.C.– A.D.
220 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), xxxviii.
2 While the measurements for the bamboo strips of the Rujiazhe yan and Lunyu manuscripts
are given in the introductions to their respective transcriptions, no measurements are given
for the Wenzi manuscript. I reached the sizes of the Wenzi bamboo strips by measuring the
few tracings published with the transcription in the December 1995 issue of Wenwu. The
shortest measures 1.8 cm and the longest 20.7 cm. The accuracy of these measurements de-
pends, of course, on whether the few published tracings are representative of the entire group,
and on whether they reflect the actual length and width of the bamboo fragments.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004365438_004

24 Chapter 2

of greater importance. However, this remains hypothetical as the earliest

known references to a correlation between the importance of a text and the
measurements of the material on which it was written dates from the Eastern
Han dynasty.3
On the charred and fragmented Wenzi bamboo strips, specialists have dis-
tinguished 2,790 graphs, some of which are said to represent words that are
written with a different graph in modern orthography. Some of the graphs
found on the bamboo strips are currently written with an added classificatory
semantic component, or radical. For example, the person who inscribed the
bamboo strips used the graph 兆 zhao < *lr[a]wʔ to express the verb “to flee.”4
This verb is now written with the graph 逃 tao < *lʕaw; that is, with an added
semantic component 辶 at the bottom, which indicates movement. Table 2
compares a selection of graphs as they appear on the Wenzi bamboo strips
with their modern counterparts, and lists the difference between the two in
the final column.
Other graphs on the bamboo strips have semantic components that differ
from their modern counterparts. For example, the graph 適 shi < *s-tek, with
the semantic component 辶, indicating movement, is used on the bamboo
strips to represent the verb “to oppose.” Today, possibly more logically, this verb
is written as 敵 di < *[d]ʕek, with the semantic component 攵 that means “to
beat, to strike” (Table 3).
Some words in the manuscript are represented by more than one graph. The
graph 謂 wei < *[ɢ]ʷə[t]-s is normally written in full, but six times it is only
written as 胃, that is, without the 言 “word” element on the left. The graph 歡
huan < *qwhʕar appears without the 欠 “breath” element on the right, but with
either a 馬 “horse” or a 言 “word” element on the left instead. The graphs 無 wu
< *ma and 毋 wu < *mo, which both mean “to lack,” are used interchangeably
in similar expressions, once even on the same bamboo strip.
Finally, the manuscript contains graphs that differ structurally from their
counterparts in modern orthography. For example, the word bei < *m-pʕək-s
(“back”) is not written with the graph 背, as in modern orthography, but with
the graph 倍, which is used today to write the word bei < *[b]ˤəʔ (“double,
-fold”).

3 Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, Written on Bamboo and Silk (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1962), 116.
4 The graph is followed by the modern pronunciation in pinyin transcription, and the Old
Chinese (OC) pronunciation as reconstructed by William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart, “The
Baxter-Sagart Reconstruction of Old Chinese,” Version 1.1, Updated January 10, 2016, <http://
ocbaxtersagart.lsait.lsa.umich.edu>.