J-Docu的mentarySources.doc

J-Documentary Sources In ancient China there were a number of different materials that were used for writing. In addition to metal and stone, which were used for inscriptions, the Chinese of the Zhou through Han periods used bamboo and wood. About the sixth or seventh centuries B.C. writing on silk began to appear. Silk was a common writing material until about the sixth century A.D. The use of paper for writing material is known as early as the second century A.D. For an excellent survey of the history of Chinese writing materials, see Tsien Tsuen-hsuin 錢存訓, Written on Bamboo and Silk; The Beginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962; rev. and rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Chinese version: Zhongguo gudai shushi 中國古代書史 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1975). A. Documents on Wooden Strips The collective term for documents written on wood is jiandu 簡牘. The term jian 簡 means bamboo strip; du 牘 literally means wooden tablet. A great amount of early material written on wooden and bamboo strips survives from the Qin and Han periods. To make a bamboo strip on which to write, a thick section of bamboo was used. The bark was stripped off and the wood was cured by drying it over a fire. This process was called sha qing 殺青, “killing the green.” Characters were incised on the cured strips with a stylus dipped in ink, or more probably a brush. Each strip was about two centimeters wide and could accommodate one or two columns of characters. The number of characters differed depending on the size of the strip. Some were as long as two-feet four inches (Han measure); the shortest were six inches (Han measure). The longer strips were mainly used for writing important texts such as the classics and contained about forty characters. The shortest strips were used for tallies (fu 符) and numerical calculation (suan 算). They also were used for legal documents. The individual strips were joined together with leather