Vol 1, No 1 (2022)

This essay describes the papers published in this issue as (mostly) belonging to one problematic and methodological field, thus composing one scientific school or tradition. The main traits of this school are briefly outlined in the beginning. The papers written by the founder of the school, D. Deopik and his coauthor B. Ganshin comprise the first part of the issue, together with the papers of A. Andreeva and A. Kozhukhov. These papers are united by the problem of the era names, their functions, and correlation between them and real political process in the history of various empires, which existed on the territory of East Asia. The two papers comprising the second part of the issue, written by V. Bashkeev and V. Glazunova, have a common period of studies, that being the Western Han Empire. The last two papers of the issue are authored by O. Bonch-Osmolovskaya and M. Tseluyko. They deal with the problems of canon studies in China, researching exegetic tradition and the contents of ancient canonical text Shujing, respectively. Each paper presented in this issue either broadens or deepens the field of studies for their common scientific school, meaning that it either includes a new hitherto untouched (in this specific scientific school) problem and proposes a distinct approach to solving it or outlines a complication of the already existing problem, proposing an additional method for solving it. The only exception is the paper of O. Bonch-Osmolovskaya, which does not belong to the same scientific school as other papers on the issue but represents a good point for reflection and comparison.

This paper examines the earliest textual layers of the ancient Chinese Classics — Shujing 書經. Analyzing the form and content of its chapters we determine their functions in the context of socio-political communication between different groups of ancient Chinese society and political class. While studying the formal properties of the shu, we come to reconstruct different types of its basic elements. This formal heterogeneity of early shu differentiates them greatly from the poetic hymns of Shijing 詩經, thus contradicting the well-spread hypothesis of the texts’ liturgical nature and functions. Exploring the main elements of narrative reveals the main recipient of its message, that being not the relatives of the royal lineage, but the servants, stewards and wardens of Luoyang, which is the spatial and chronological centre of narration. Thus we can reconstruct the main function of the texts, and that is to legitimize the communication and interaction between such groups of Zhou society and ruling class, which are not connected by kinship. This once again contradicts the “liturgical hypothesis”, as the stewards and servants were not connected to the cult of royal ancestors.

This article discusses four types of documents being preseved in the second part of the first chapter (1B) of the Han shu (The History of Han) [1], the main source for the history of the Western Han state (202 BC — 8 AD). The Han shu 1B chapter covers the period from 202 to 195 BC. — the reign of the first emperor of the new Liu dynasty, Liu Bang, better known as Gao-zu. The article examines the distribution structure, content and the role of documents preserved in the text of the Han shu 1B chapter and singled out by the author as independent structural elements of the chapter, along with “chronicle reports”, “historical reports”, “historical narratives” and “dialogs” in the reflection of the historical reality. These are documents of higher bureaucratic turnover of varying degrees of importance. The analysis of the dynamics of document distribution in the text of the Han shu chapter 1B allowed to establish the fact of increased activity of Emperor Liu Bang in the sphere of administration in the penultimate year of his reign at the very beginning of the transition from the forceful subjugation of political opponents to the peaceful administration of the power he was creating.

This paper compares the subjective Chinese periodization through era (reign) names of the Tang emperor Gao-zong (649–683 CE) reign to scientific model of periodization through means of analyzing change in political process. To accomplish this we explore the historical events laid out in the 4^th chapter of the Jiu Tang shu 舊唐書 (Old book of Tang) chronicle, which is one of Chinese medieval standard Histories zhengshi 正史. Our research shows that the reign names periodization is founded upon the real changes of political and historical dynamic even in cases when our primary source lists the reasons of an era name change among the purely ritual, sacral, mantic and mystical happenings, like the omens, portents and emergence of fairy creatures.

This review discusses a book by a Chinese scientist Teng Mingyu devoted to the archaeological culture of the ancient Chinese Qin state (滕铭予. 秦文化: 从封建国到帝国的考古学观察. 北京, 2003. 216 頁). The book introduces the notion of Qin archaeological culture and studies is based on the research of burial tradition and correspondent excavation reports. The classification of the graves is built on the set of stable characteristics, such as spatial orientation, corpse positioning, types of grave goods, etc. The changes of the archaeological culture in question are traced chronologically (periodization of the culture) and spatially (zoning of the culture). The resulting changes of the culture are interpreted as a transformation of the basic social unit of Qin society and are also deemed consequential to the changes of the ruling class formation process in Qin. The review, in its turn, studies the logic and consistency of the foundational notions and main methods of the book, the entirety of the archaeological material presented by the book, and the reception of this important research in global sinology.