Book Review

Asia

In the late 1960s, when Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank began editing the Cambridge History of China, they made the rather odd decision to begin their monumental work with The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C.-A.D. 220, thus omitting China's axial age, the historical reference point for all later ages. In the general editors' preface, with which each volume begins, they include an apologetic statement, recognizing that the events of the first millennium B.C. laid the foundations for the ideas and institutions of the subsequent periods but arguing that the momentum of archaeological discovery in the previous fifty years had made it impossible to produce a generally accepted synthesis. The volume under review is an attempt by its editors, Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, to fill the gap left by the original series, and it is organized in a similar manner, as essays by various authors.	1
It begins at the beginning, with climatic changes in the late Pleistocene and the emergence of homo erectus (David Keightley and K. C. Chang) and the possible genetic relationship of Chinese to other language families (William Boltz), and proceeds along dual lines of essays on archaeology matched by essays on history. For the Warring States period, archaeology is narrowed to art and architecture (Wu Hung), and there are additional essays on philosophical texts (David Nivison), and on the occult and natural philosophy (Donald Harper). The work is then rounded off with an essay by Nicola Di Cosmo on the northern frontiers and one by Loewe on developments in the Qin (Ch'in) and Han dynasties. The advantage of this dual organization is that it avoids a historical bias in interpreting the archaeological remains. The disadvantage, since the two lines are left unintegrated and there is no essay on historiography, is that there is always an unexplained ghost hovering at the feast: the debate that has been raging for most of the last century about how to interpret the received historical tradition and its relationship to the material evidence.	2
Our understanding of ancient China is certainly different than it would have been some thirty years ago; archaeological discoveries have increased exponentially, and these now include philosophical manuscripts as well as material evidence and early inscriptions. In this rapidly evolving and highly contentious field, however, an enduring synthesis is clearly a chimera. Indeed, in this single volume, the essays are frequently contradictory. Sometimes these contradictions are implicit. Thus, for example, Chang's essay on "China on the Eve of the Historical Period," which points to the early origin and spread of fossil remains of Homo erectus in China to support a multiregional model for the development of Homo sapiens, is difficult to reconcile with Boltz's essay on "Language and Writing," which, even though it is careful and highly nuanced, gives considerable stress to Edwin G. Pulleyblank's theory of an early, genetic relationship between Chinese and Indo-European. In other places, the contradictions are more blatant and yet still entirely unmediated. For example, Shaughnessy's essay on "Western Zhou History" asserts that the Zhou migrated from the Fen River Valley in Shanxi (p. 307). Jessica Rawson's essay on Western Zhou archaeology, by contrast, asserts that the Zhou origins lay to the northwest of its homeland in Shanxi (p. 384).	3
Many of the essays in this book are of very high quality—important, original contributions that significantly enhance our understanding of the development of ancient Chinese civilization—but they are uneven overall. Indeed, were they to be graded, they would make a fine curve. The best essays are truly impressive; these not only synthesize the available material but present new and original research by the author. Some are simply syntheses of current research. Then, there are those who ignore the topic and simply write about what they know. And finally, there is one essay, in which the writer, ignoring the topic, decides the best defense is offense and launches into an irrelevant diatribe against Chinese archaeologists.	. . .