26 Spring / Digital Humanities Seed Grant Project
Principal Investigator: Prof. Tobias Benedikt ZÜRN
A Hyperlinked Edition of the Huainanzi
Cover Image:
Woven Textile, 206 BCE-220 CE, Artist/maker unknown, made in China.
Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with the Bloomfield Moore Fund, 1934-2-1.
Project Background
The Huainanzi 淮南子 is a highly intertextual and comprehensive scripture from the early Western Han 漢 dynasty (206 BCE-9 CE) that Liu An 劉安 (c. 179-122 BCE), the king of Huainan 淮南, submitted to his nephew Emperor Wu in 139 BCE. Presumably produced with Masters of Methods (fangshi 方士) and several other retainers in the middle of the second century BCE, the Huainanzi contains ca. 130,000 characters (ca. 800 pages in English translation), of which it shares more than a third with various pre-Han texts (Le Blanc 1985: 79). For example, a typical section from the beginning of the “Essence and Spirits” (“Jingshen” 精神) chapter looks as follows (Zhang 1997: 719-22):
According to Sima Tan’s model of the Six Kinds of Expertise (liu jia 六家), the Huainanzi includes parallels with texts from a variety of traditions. The color-coded phrases would be variously attributed to the Confucian or Ruist (Xunzi 荀子), Daoist (Laozi 老子, Zhuangzi 莊子, and Liezi 列子), Legalist (Guanzi 管子) and Miscellaneous (Lü shi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋) “Schools,” as well as to historical writings such as the Discourses of the States (Guo yu 國語). In other words, the Huainanzi seems to connect and relate teachings from various writings of the Han and pre-Han period, weaving their words together into a unitary whole.
Due to this intertextual and syncretic design, which led to the Huainanzi’s classification as belonging to the Miscellaneous School (zajia 雜家), a bibliographical category that Ban Gu 班固 (32-92 CE) developed in his “Record of the Literature [of Artistic Writings]” (“Yiwenzhi” 藝文志) in the History of the Han (Hanshu 漢書), Liu An’s text has long been dismissed as an encyclopedia of mumbo-jumbo (Ban 1986, 30.166d). For example, several reformist intellectuals such as Fung Yu-lan 馮友蘭 (1895-1990), Hou Wailu 後外盧 (1903-1987) et al., and Wing-tsit Chan 陳榮捷 (1901-1994), as well as early Western sinologists such as Henri Maspero (1883-1945) dismissed the Huainanzi due to its highly constructed design and interpreted the “Liu Clan’s Scripture” (Liushi zhi shu 劉氏之書), as the Huainanzi refers to itself (Liu 2006: 711), as a mere encyclopedia that lacks originality and a cohesive intellectual program (Chan 1963: 305, Fung 1983: 396, Hou et al. 1957: 78, and Maspero 1924: 12).
This DH project suggests that these pejorative perspectives probably only developed since there was no edition of the Huainanzi available that consequently and clearly displays the intertextual design of Liu An’s text. Therefore, we want to generate a digital version of the Huainanzi that visualizes this peculiar feature. By developing a color-coded, hyperlinked interface and by making these materials and resources publicly available, our DH project will enable scholars to explore the Huainanzi’s intertextuality more efficiently, hopefully resulting in more dismissals of a pertinent yet problematic scholarly truism: namely that Liu An’s text is a thoughtless, mere hodge-podge of pre-Han thought.
Project Objectives
Our project will generate a research tool for scholars worldwide to explore the Huainanzi’s intertextuality, helping substantiate the argument that Liu An and his erudite courtiers consciously and carefully utilized intertextuality as a means to emulate the practice of weaving in their writing practice (Zürn 2020). Moreover, it will provide the groundwork and blueprint for producing more digital editions of early Chinese classics that visualize their intertextual designs, opening new avenues to reading early Chinese classics and their intertextual networks beyond their printed editions.
Bibliography
- Ban Gu 班固. 1986. Qian Hanshu 前漢書. In Ershiwu shi 二十五史 Volume 1. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chuban she.
- Chan Wing-tsit. 1963. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Fung Yu-lan. 1983. A History of Chinese Philosophy Volume 1. Translated by Derk Bodde. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Gao You 高誘. 2006. “Xumu” 敘目. In Huainan honglie jijie 淮南鴻烈集解. Edited by Liu Wendian 劉文典. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju chuban fahang.
- Hou Wailu 後外盧, Zhao Jibin 趙紀彬, Du Guoxiang 杜國庠, and Qiu Hansheng 邱漢生. 1957. Zhongguo sixiang tongshi 中國思想通史. Volume 2. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe.
- Le Blanc, Charles. 1985. Huai-Nan-Tzu: Philosophical Synthesis in Early Han Thought. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
- Liu Wendian 劉文典 ed. 2006. Huainan honglie jijie 淮南鴻烈集解. In Xinbian zhuzi jicheng 新編諸子集成. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju chuban fahang.
- Maspero, Henry. 1924. “Légendes mythologiques dans le Chou King,” Journal Asiatique 204: 1-192.
- Zhang Shuangdi 張雙棣 ed. 1997. Huainanzi jiaoshi 淮南子校釋. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe.
- Zürn, Tobias Benedikt. 2020. “The Han Imaginaire of Writing as Weaving: Intertextuality and the Huainanzi’s Self-Fashioning as an Embodiment of the Way,” Journal of Asian Studies 79.2: 367-402.
Related Publications
- Zürn, Tobias Benedikt. Forthcoming. Text/Bodies: The Huainanzi’s Self-Fashioning as a Powerful Scripture of the Way. Albany: State University of New York Press.
- ——. 2025. “Reading Texts as Bodies: Object Agency in the Age of Human Empowerment,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 37.2: 162-79.
- ——. 2020. “The Han Imaginaire of Writing as Weaving: Intertextuality and the Huainanzi’s Self-Fashioning as an Embodiment of the Way,” Journal of Asian Studies 79.2: 367-402.
- ——. 2016. “Writing as Weaving: Intertextuality and the Huainanzi’s Self-Fashioning as an Embodiment of the Way,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Tobias Benedikt ZÜRN (Division of Humanities)
Students:
Lakshya AGARWAL (Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering)
Oak Soe OO (Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering)
Xinwen ZHANG (Bachelor of Engineering in Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics)
Project Support:
Dr. Steve MA (Division of Humanities)
Yifan WANG (Library)