Occasional Paper No. 5

Reconstruction of Early Chinese Bamboo and Wood Manuscripts: A Review (1900–2010)

Thies Staack

As integral part of the broader field of the study of early Chinese manuscripts, reconstruction efforts regarding bamboo and wood manuscripts from pre-imperial and early imperial China can be dated back to the first important finds of such manuscripts in the early 20th century. To explain the importance of the most recent developments and to be able to integrate these new perspectives into the frame of criteria and methods that have been developed over the past century, a review seems in order. As new stages in the development of criteria and methods were often enabled by new discoveries and the respective manuscript publications, this review will not try to draw a comprehensive picture of all research related to this topic. Instead it will highlight the most important trends and the manuscript discoveries they were based on. In conclusion it will provide a catalogue of the criteria that were applied for reconstruction until the year 2010 and point out remaining problems.

CSMC's Occasional Papers

The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures regularly hosts meetings to discuss the theory, terminology and other issues in manuscriptology. Several of its members – philologists, historians, art historians, linguists and others – collectively engage in contributing to the systematic and historical study of manuscript cultures. The documents are individual contributions and drafts reflecting some of the provisional results of the Centre’s activities.

The research for this paper was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) within the Sonderforschungsbereich 950 (SFB 950). The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg.