Early Chinese Manuscript Collections

As the first study of manuscript collections, this book asks what changes when sayings, stories, songs, and spells are brought together on the same carrier.Covering a plethora of manuscripts from the Warring States and early empires, and spanning sources from philosophy, historiography, poetry, and technical literature, this study describes the whole life-cycle of multiple texts collected on a single manuscript. Drawing on comparative and interdisciplinary advances and based on careful study of manuscript materiality and textuality, this book shows the importance of collections in the development of and access to text and knowledge in early China.

“Focusing on the creation of “collections” out of originally independent texts and thoughtfully situating these within their wider material and literary-historical contexts, Early Chinese Manuscript Collections is an ambitious and ground-breaking work that will prove indispensable reading for anyone with serious interest in processes of textual formation in early China.”- Scott Cook, Yale-NUS College “In this fascinating study of collections of texts in early Chinese manuscripts, Rens Krijgsman addresses a highly relevant topic almost entirely absent from previous scholarship: multi-text manuscripts. The case studies he presents embrace a wide range of genres. Through a detailed examination of the materiality of the manuscripts bearing these texts, he explores the question of different social uses of written texts and thus offers an important contribution to early Chinese book history. This timely and important study is sure to inspire productive discussions and future scholarship on early Chinese textual culture and related topics.” - Matthias L. Richter, University of Colorado at Boulder “As opposed to most studies of recently unearthed manuscripts, which take a pointillist approach to individual texts, Rens Krijgsman uses a broad brush to paint his picture of Warring States literary history, addressing dozens of different manuscripts representing virtually all of the different kinds of texts from early China. One need not agree with all of his conclusions to be struck by the great erudition on display in his discussions.“ - Edward L. Shaughnessy, University of Chicago

Rens Krijgsman, DPhil (2017), University of Oxford, is Associate Professor at the Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts, Tsinghua University. He has written on memory, reading, intertextuality, and the perceptions and materiality of early Chinese manuscripts.