"From 'Desire' to 'Customs': Tracing the Lexicalization of an Anthropological Concept in Pre-Qín China"
Dozent
Prof. Uffe Bergeton (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Datum und Zeit
13. November 2018, 16 - 18 Uhr
Inhalt
While the term sú 俗 and the concept of ‘customs’ in Warring States (481-221 BCE) texts have been discussed in previous studies (see, for example, Lewis 2003), I argue that existing interpretations of sú as ‘customs’ in pre-Warring States texts are anachronistic projections of later meanings onto the past. The first unambiguous uses of sú in the meaning ‘customs’ appear in Mid-Warring States period texts such as the Mòzǐ 墨子 and the Mèngzǐ 孟子 and in excavated texts from the same period. The graph <俗> does occur in pre-Warring States period bronze inscriptions and, according to some interpretations, is found in the meaning ‘customs.’ Chén (2004:778), among many others, cites passages from the Shǐjì 史記 and a post-Hàn chapter of the Shàngshū 尙書 as evidence for reading <俗> in Western Zhōu inscriptions as ‘customs.’ I argue that such readings are anachronistic and that <俗> in those instances is used to write (a form of) the word yù 欲 ‘desire, want.’
Adopting Baxter and Sagart’s (2014) reconstruction of Old Chinese morphophonology, I argue that the words yù ‘desire’ and sú ‘customs’ derive from the same root. The lexicalization of the word sú in the meaning ‘customs’ emerged as part of the technical vocabulary of thinkers of the Warring States period, who were confronted with a politically fragmented realm in which local differences in conventional behavior formed part of the comparative discussion of the different modes of governance embraced by the various Central States.
Ort
Asien-Orient-Institut, Raum ZUB 416, Zürichbergstrasse 4, 8032 Zürich
Organisation
Asien-Orient-Institut - Sinologie
Weitere News
- On Fighting Tigers and Flies: Unboxing Xi Jinping’s Anti-Corruption Campaign
- Aziz al-Azmeh: Islam, Geschichte und die Moderne
- Making Alliance in Social Movement Work: Spring of Social Movements after the Fukushima Accident in Japan
- Medieval Orientalism. Did It Exist?
- Growing up in Japan: Education, Mobility and Identity of Immigrant Children
- Literarische Kommunikation in der Mamlukenzeit (1250–1517)
- Liu Cixin's The Poetry Cloud and the Utopian Role of Literature
- Aloys Sprenger (1813-1893) and the beginning of press history in India
- Qurʾanic Sanction and the Semiotics of Sovereignty in Contemporary Iran
- Buddhismus auf dem Weg zur Weltreligion: Die Entwicklung von Kunst und Philosophie in Ghandara
- The Impossibility of Remembering the Past at Nanjing
- "Build Back Better" after the 3/11 Disaster: Efforts to Revitalize a Disaster-Affected Region from the Perspective of a Museum Curator
- Das Reproduktionsdispositiv. Geschlecht, Biologie und Biopolitik
- Rhyme and Metre, Repetition and Numbers: Structural Features and Mnemonic Effects in Early Chinese Texts
- Equal Employment Legislation and Careers of College Graduate Women in Japan