Chunqiu shiyu

Chunqiu shiyu is an written on silk which was unearthed in 1973 from the Tomb no. 3 at the site in , , China. The tomb was that of a young man, presumed to be a relative and perhaps the son of Lì Cāng , who was the chancellor of Chángshā and first Marquis of Dài .

The manuscript was unearthed in 1973 along with a large number of other documents on silk and bamboo slips, including the and Laozi, as well as military, medical, and astronomical manuscripts. Chūnqiū shìyǔ records historical events from the Spring and Autumn period and partially preserves over 2000 characters.

The first half of the name of the document refers to the period covered, Chūnqiū 春秋 meaning the Spring and Autumn period , while the second half of the title, shìyǔ , is a historiographer’s narrative, one type of the ‘yǔ’ narrative genre of the period.

The calligraphy of the document is similar to that on some bamboo books, a form transitional between the Qín seal script of the and periods, and the clerical script of the . This, plus the fact that it does not treat as taboo the name of the Hàn dynasty founder , means that it was probably produced around the mid to late 3rd century BCE, before Liú Bāng took the throne in 202 BCE.

Further reading

*裘錫圭 Qiú, Xīguī . ''Chinese Writing''. Translation of 文字學概論 by the late Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman . Early China Special Monograph Series No. 4. Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. ISBN 1-55729-071-7.