At the beginning of the 20th century, the fate of the Chinese Classics was precarious, with many intellectuals seeing them as the source of modern China's problems and advocating burying them with the relics of the past. But the Classics are neither dead nor buried. Today, more than a century later, they literally continue to emerge from the earth. Throughout the modern period, China's relationship with its Classics has been conducted with the scholar's brush in one hand and the archaeologist's shovel in the other. Two major discoveries have attracted the attention of scholars and the general public alike. The first concerns the oldest form of writing, Shang oracular bone inscriptions dating back to around 1200 BC. The second concerns writings on wooden slats discovered in the sands of Central Asia and dating from the beginning of our era. It was during the millennium between these two eras that the Classics were composed and copied onto various media.
In my series of lectures at the Collège de France, I examine how archaeology has influenced the study of the Classics over the past century, focusing on the first three, the Classic of Mutations(Yijing), the Classic of Documents(Shujing), the Classic of Poetry(Shijing), as well as a non-canonical text, the Classic of Way and Virtue(Daodejing). In the first lecture, I show how bone inscriptions have led to a radical rethinking of how the Classic of Mutations might have been composed. The last four decades have brought a steady stream of new discoveries, starting with the Mawangdui silk manuscript from the 2nd century BC, followed by three other bamboo card manuscripts (Shanghai Museum, Wangjiatai and Fuyang). In addition to these Yijing and Yijing-related manuscripts, many other divinatory writings have been discovered, including Zhou bone inscriptions, which provide valuable information on how this Classic was used.