Zhan Guo Ce - History

History

The author of Zhan Guo Ce has not yet been verified: it is generally deemed, after Zhang Xincheng, that the book was not written by a single author at one time. It is thought to have been composed by Su Qin and his peers before being obtained by Liu Xiang. Unlike most of the pre-Qin classics, the authenticity of Zhan Guo Ce, along with the Shijing, Mozi, Yulingzi and Gongsun Longzi had never been questioned since the Western Han period. The earliest to assert the texts were apocryphal scriptures was perhaps the compiler of the Annotated Catalogue of the Siku Quanshu, but he provided no warrant for it. In 1931, Luo Genze put forward an argument that the book was composed by Kuai Tong (Chinese: 蒯通) in his two papers based on six conclusions which he drew, a contemporary of Han Xin. Although this argument had been seconded by Jin Dejian (1932) and Zu Zhugeng (1937), but by 1939 it was refuted by Zhang Xincheng.

The six versions of written works from the School of Diplomacy were discovered by Liu Xiang during his editing and proofreading of the imperial literary collection. Those works of political views and diplomatic strategies from the School of Diplomacy were in poor condition, with confusing contents and missing words. Liu Xiang proofread and edited them into the new book under the title Zhan Guo Ce; it was therefore not written by a single author at one time.

Significant contents of Zhan Guo Ce were lost in subsequent centuries. Zeng Gong of the Northern Song Dynasty reclaimed some lost chapters, proofread and edited the modern version. Some writings on cloth were excavated from the Han Dynasty tomb at Mawangdui near the city of Changsha in 1973 and edited and published in Beijing in 1976 as Zhanguo Zonghengjia Shu (Chinese: 戰國縱橫家書, "Works from the School of Diplomacy During the Warring States Period)". The book contained 27 chapters, 11 of which were found to be similar to the contents in Zhan Guo Ce and the Records of the Grand Historian. That publication appeared in Taiwan in 1977 as the Boshu Zhanguoce (Chinese: 帛書戰國策). The texts were written in between the style of Seal script and Clerical script. The transcript was probably composed around 195 BCE before its burial, as the text tend to avoid using the word bang (邦), the personal name of Emperor Gao of Han, to circumvent naming taboo.