Research On The Characteristics Of Wood And Bamboo Classics Documents And Classifications Of Wood And Bamboo Administrative Documents Of The Warring States To Wei And Jin Periods

Wood and bamboo slips have received lots of attention from the research field ever since their first discovery.Some of these research focus on the characteristics and contents of the slips while others concentrated on the classifications of the slips.In general,wood and bamboo slips can be grouped under 2 broad categories,one being the classics group and the other is the administrative documents group.These two categories can be further classified according to researchers' different viewpoints.In this paper,data of some of the excavated wood and bamboo slips will be sorted and used for this research.Intact wood and bamboo slips will be used as the objects of research and the following work has been done to collect information of the slips:a.search for information of intact slips from excavation reports;b.if excavation reports did not include information on whether the excavated slips were intact or broken into pieces,photographs of the slips will be used to confirm on this information.This paper aims to classify the wood and bamboo slips based on the classification groundwork done by previous researchers.This paper will be divided into four chapters:a.the first chapter will be the classification of wood and bamboo slips according to their geographical locations and the time periods which they belong to in the order of Warring States,Qin,Han,and Wei and Jin periods;b.the second chapter will be the classification of wood and bamboo classics and administrative documents according to their contents,the classics group will be further classified under 6 categories,namely,Liu Yi,Zhu Zi,Shi Fu,Bing Shu,Shu Shu,and Fang Ji,according to Yi Wen Zhi of Han Shu and the documents group will be classified into 7 categories,namely,Shu Xi,Lu Ling,Bu Ji,Lu Ke,Fu Quan,Jian Jie,Qian Ce and Gao Di Ce,according to the classification methods mentioned in the book(Qin Han Jian Du Wen Shu Fen Lei Ji Jie)written by Li Jun Ming;c.the third chapter will be the classification of wood and bamboo slips according to their time periods,i.e.from Warring States to Wei and Jin Periods,types of documents,i.e.classics and administrative documents,and their appearances,i.e.4 types of appearances,namely,Jian,Du,Fang,and Jie,discussions will be focused on the length and width of the slips.One of the findings was the inconsistent lengths of Jian of both the classics and administrative documents of the Warring States and Qin and Han periods.For example,the legal documents of the Qin period were measured to be between one-foot and an inch and one-foot and three inches long,this measurement was different from the two-foot and four inches long and three-foot long legal documents that was recorded in the literature.Some researchers speculated that this situation happened because the excavated legal documents were personal copies instead of original government documents,thus they were not under strict control.Another finding was the consistent length of Du of the both the classics and administrative documents of the Qin and Han periods,however,the width was irregular.The narrowest was measured to be 1.1 centimeters and the widest was 9 centimeters,this showed that there was no rule with regards to the width of the slips.As for the Fang of the administrative documents of the Han and Wei and Jin periods,the length was found to be consistent between one-foot and one-foot and an inch long.The width of the slips was measured to be between 6.1 centimeters and 7.5 centimeters wide,this seemed like there was no regulations to control the width of the slips.The length of the Jie of the Han period was found to be inconsistent,perhaps this was due to the three different types of Jie;the final chapter will be to use the results of the classifications presented in the previous three chapters and make some observations.Classics documents of the Warring States,Qin,and Han periods were found in ten provinces and Hu Bei province had the most documents.The number of Shu Shu type classics documents was the largest and these documents were found in tombs of the Warring States,Qin,and Han periods,this showed that Shu Shu type documents were of a very important status during the three ancient periods.The administrative documents of the Warring States,Qin and Han,and Wei and Jin periods were found in 13 provinces,and all seven categories of the administrative documents were found in Hu Bei province.Half of the documents was made of bamboo and the other half was made of wood,overall,this seemed like there was no preference in terms of the materials.However,if compared with the classics documents found in Hu Bei province,the proportion of administrative documents made of wood was much higher,thus,we could speculate that people during that time would make considerations when choosing the type of writing materials.This observation was superficial as there were many factors that could influence people make decisions,for examples,the environmental issues and the restrictions imposed by the law during that time,and also the limited data collected for this research,therefore,it is necessary to collect more data for a sound research.