Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.61.0412070009540.2285@panix5.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: [confucius-list] Scholar interpreting ancient Chinese text (fwd)
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 00:09:58 -0500 (EST)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 10:32:54 +0900 From: Todd Cameron Thacker <newspaperman@gmail.com> Reply-To: confucius-list@yahoogroups.com To: confucius-list@yahoogroups.com Subject: [confucius-list] Scholar interpreting ancient Chinese text http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=1640&u_sid=1277075 December 6, 2004 Scholar interpreting ancient Chinese text GRINNELL, Iowa (AP) - Working among scholars from the likes of Harvard, UCLA and Yale, Grinnell College professor Scott Cook helps to interpret the earliest known versions of some of China's most important philosophical texts. Cook is one of only a handful of Western scholars to be given access to the fragile strips of bamboo, unearthed in 1993 from a tomb that dates back to 300 B.C. "We've seen a number of tombs that had texts buried within them, but this is the first time we've had philosophical texts," Cook said. The mostly Confucian texts have been compared to the Dead Sea scrolls in their historical and philosophical significance, and their discovery has brought together scholars from both mainland China and Taiwan, as well as Ivy League schools in the United States and even Grinnell, a small school of 1,500 students about 60 miles from Des Moines. "We're trying to train people to be leaders in the nation and in the world," said Jim Swartz, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college at Grinnell. "When we have faculty on the cutting edge of their field, it's an example of what we want our students to seek." A trip to Taiwan sparked Cook's interest in China. He got a doctorate in Chinese studies at Michigan after earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in music. While in China in the late 1990s, Cook made contact with some scholars studying the texts and later was invited to conferences on the writings. He wrote his first article on the texts in 1999, a year after the initial findings were published in China, and has been involved ever since. Experts believe the texts were written in the first generation after the death of Confucius, who lived from 551 to 479 B.C. Writing on bamboo was common in early China. The 800 strips found in the tomb are slightly wider than a pencil and range from 6 inches to more than a foot in length. They contain roughly 10,000 Chinese characters. The tomb was near a river in Guodian, in east-central China, close to an earth and thatch farmhouse. The area gets a lot of rain and the wet conditions, rather than eroding the bamboo, helped preserve it. "The tomb already had been looted," Cook said. "Apparently, they didn't touch the texts, not knowing how valuable they were." The texts, stored in Chinese museums, have given scholars a greater understanding of how Confucian philosophy evolved in the centuries just before and after the birth of Christ. About a tenth of the texts stem from the writings of a philosopher named Laozi, who lived in the sixth century B.C. The rest were written by Confucian disciples, according to scholars. The challenge has been determining exactly what they say. While the characters are remarkably clear after 2,300 years, their meanings and sounds have changed through the centuries. Also, Cook said, some characters may have been substituted for others. Cook uses the example of an old edition of a play that contains the line: "She loves you, she wants to marry you." "Now imagine that was written in a different way," he said. "She wants to marry you - it could mean she lacks two happy sheep." In other words, "She wants two merry ewe." Then there's the matter of putting the strips in order. They once were held together by strings, the markings of which are still visible, but those strings have disintegrated. "A number of them, you know from parallel lines that the thought at the end of this strip is completed by the one in the next," Cook said. "But then all of a sudden, you get a place where you really can't tell which strip it might have been connected to or even if there's a missing strip." The reward comes when, after long hours of study, the message becomes clear. "When you connect this strip to that strip and nobody else has made that connection, or you see a way of reading this line that makes sense within the context and . . . can be verified as probable - to have everything fit together like that, yes, it's real nice to accomplish that," Cook said. Cook returned to Grinnell in August after a year in China as a Fulbright scholar. Next year he'll have a fellowship to work with other scholars at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. "The fact that he has been published and won fellowships shows that his peers who really know the field are saying this is fabulous work," Swartz said. Cook is working on a book that he said will be the first comprehensive study of the entire collection of texts. He hopes to finish it next summer but knows it won't be the final word. "From all the problems that are involved in just trying to organize the texts and come up with a definitive reading of them and unlocking all the implications it has for understanding the early history of Confucianism and the early history of texts, there's just so many implications," Cook said. "So they're going to remain important for quite some time." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. 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