The intellectual history of a culture abides as the theoretical

framework that informs the many facets of that culture. Chinese cul-

ture is a conservative one in that it maintains a deep regard for the schol-

arly paragons of its past. Even aft er the thoroughgoing political, social, and

cultural revolutions of the mid-twentieth century, Chinese people still oft en

refer to the old masters and Chinese bookstores still stock new editions and

new translations of all the old classics. Th e Chinese understand their history

as a continuous thread and are socialized to be mindful of their ancestors. A

great deal of scholarship has been produced over the centuries that both ex-

amines and reinforces this continuity. Today, China’s burgeoning higher ed-

ucation and increasing integration into a globalized world has resulted in a

renewed interest in Chinese intellectual history. Th at its past continues ob-

viously to infl uence its present is why learning about early China remains an

interesting and topical pursuit for scholar and student alike.

One salient aspect of Chinese intellectual history is its innovative syncre-

tism. Th is syncretism, broadly defi ned, is like cooking: many of the basic in-

gredients stay the same, but they are forever being brought together in new

ways. Such creativity is evident in several contexts. One is the well-known

tendency of Chinese people, over the last several centuries, to give simul-

taneous credence to the ideologies of Ruism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Th e

concurrence of these schools of thought extends even further back in time,

when their mutual infl uence oft en went unacknowledged by those within

these traditions. Another kind of conspicuous assimilation is the continu-

ous interplay between these main creeds and that ever-present undercur-

rent of localized theory and practice known as “popular religion.” Observers

in China have always been much more keenly aware of this than scholars

abroad working solely with the texts of one or more particular tradition. A

third kind of syncretism is the integration of ideas from several of the early

Introduction

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Chinese masters who lived in the centuries before the unifi cation of China

into one empire in bce . Sometimes this weaving together of ostensibly

separable traditions is deliberate and sometimes it is simply an unconscious

adaptation. I refer to the unintentional mixing of ideologies as “eclecticism,”

while their conscious blending I call “syncretism.” Th e employment of the

latter by one early Chinese author of intellectual history is the subject of the

present monograph. I will introduce, describe, analyze, trace the transmis-

sion of, and translate the earliest known work of obviously syncretic nature.

Th is book has two aims. Th e fi rst is to describe the content and history

of the Shizi 尸子 (Master Shi; c. bce ), a remarkable yet rarely studied

early Chinese philosophical text. Th e second is to present an annotated

translation of it. I hope it will be useful to sinologists interested in Masters

studies (子學), the study of the many intellectuals active in the four or fi ve

centuries prior to the common era, and particularly to those inquiring into

early Syncretist (雜家) writings, a technical category explained later in this

introduction. I am also writing for students of early Chinese history, es-

pecially those who want a single-volume introduction to a variety of early

philosophical thought. As I will explain, the content and structure of the

Shizi lend themselves to an appreciation of the composite and fractured

nature of early Chinese texts.

Th is book has three introductory sections followed by the translation.

Th is fi rst section contextualizes the Shizi within its intellectual milieu and

elucidates its relevance to modern academia. Th e next section analyzes the

main themes in the text and briefl y describes each of its chapters. Th e third

section traces the transmission of the text from its earliest attestation down

through the last of its several reconstructions. Finally, the second half of the

book is an annotated translation of the Shizi .

Th e Shizi is a good introduction to early Chinese thought. Its explicit

syncretism is plainly representative of the latent eclecticism that has always

been normative in China. It is the earliest Syncretist text still extant today.

And it is the only one conceived during the same time of intellectual fer-

ment as other works representative of the major schools of thought, such as

Ruism, Daoism, Legalism, and so on.

Bringing disparate ideas together is the inescapable essence of intellec-

tual evolution. Th ere is nothing unusual in this. Eclecticism and syncretism

however, when used as technical terms, refer to bringing together ideas from

existing, recognized traditions. Because conscious eff ort distinguishes these

terms, a tradition can therefore only be precisely characterized as eclectic,

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while an author can be either. Unless an author volunteers the information

that he is explicitly combining ideas from more than one tradition, denot-

ing him as eclectic or syncretic is a judgment that can only be made by later

readers.

All major ideologies are eclectic to some extent. Th e three dominant

ideologies of the West and the three of the East, however, cohabitate in

strikingly diff erent manners. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are geneti-

cally related traditions whose followers exhibit a kind of incest revulsion

when confronted with the idea of combining their doctrines. No one ever

claims to be Jewish, Christian, and Muslim simultaneously. Meanwhile, on

the other side of Asia, Ruism, Daoism, and Buddhism are quite diff erent

species, yet there has long been a concerted eff ort to unify their consider-

ably disparate worldviews. Consequently, many in East Asia do self- identify

as Ruist, Daoist, and Buddhist simultaneously. For at least six hundred

years they have been routinely integrated as “three teachings united as one”

(三教合一).

While this fascinating phenomenon is demonstrably apparent from a

distance, upon closer inspection we fi nd that all these individual traditions

are themselves eclectic. Judaism borrowed from the Babylonian tradition,

Christianity from the Greek, and Islam mixed Jewish eschatology with

Arabian djinn lore. Similarly, Ruism in the Han dynasty ( bce – ce )

brought together a revered ethical system with Yin-Yang cosmology, and

Celestial Master Daoism radically reinterpreted Lao Zi 老子 (c. bce )

with Taiping jing 太平經 apocalypticism, just as Chinese Pure Land Bud-

dhists later did with the early schools of Mahayana that had migrated there

from across the Himalayas.

Of these six major traditions, Ruism and Daoism are most relevant to

our discussion of the Shizi because both, in some form, precede it. Th e texts

that later became the Five Classics and the social rituals that were ostensibly

followed during the dynasty in which they took shape were revered by Kong

Zi 孔子 (– bce), a conservative teacher of social and political ethics.

His successors were called Ruists and although they soon split into several

camps, their primary concerns of social and political ethics remained fo-

cused on the human world. A willful heaven somewhat interested in hu-

man aff airs, a range of nature spirits, and dead ancestors that retained some

sort of consciousness were certainly present in early Ruism, but their pres-

ence, and the revelations they might provide, were largely overshadowed by

a kind of rational humanism. Th e transmission of the classic texts and the

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experience of living an ethical life exemplifi ed in those texts was the defi n-

ing feature of Ruism in its fi rst few centuries.

Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (– bce ) was a Ruist scholar credited

with shift ing the focus to the latent cosmological implications of his tra-

dition. He did this primarily by adopting ideas that would be, in his own

day, assigned to an ideology called Yin-Yang. In Dong Zhongshu’s syncretic

Ruism, heaven was perceived as much more interested in human aff airs

than Ruists previously thought. It made its will known through a variety of

natural omens and other portents, but these revelations were usually only

decipherable with the aid of precedents recorded in the classic Ruist texts.

Heaven in Yin-Yang writings is the motive force for earthly activity in gen-

eral. Th e Ruist heaven of Dong Zhongshu and Ruists aft er him, meanwhile,

is primarily concerned with the personal and political behavior of the ruler.

Th us, the conservation of the textual and ethical facets of the tradition were

maintained, and even buttressed, by the new attention paid to Providence

and its mandates.

“Daoism” is of course a Western misnomer that confl ates the two quite

distinct, albeit tenuously related, traditions of philosophical Daoism (道家)

and religious Daoism (道教). Th e philosophical Daoism of Shizi’s day, typi-

fi ed by the Lao Zi , off ered advice on cosmology, ethics, and politics that

clearly diff ered from their Ruist brethren. While the distinctions between

these two camps are oft en overstated, early Ruists did appeal more oft en

to historical precedent and traditional cultural norms, while early Daoists

found their justifi cation for social spontaneity and political detachment in a

mysterious, cosmic Way (道). Th e texts they authored and transmitted were

frabjous treatises expostulating a return to a more natural and arcadian way

of life. Like Ruism, however, later authors would incorporate more super-

natural elements from other established traditions.

Zhang Ling 張陵 (d. ce ) is the fi rst religious Daoist of whom we

know; he is said to have received his wonder-working revelation from a

“heavenly person” (天人) that turned out to be none other than Lao Zi.

His grandson Zhang Lu 張魯 (fl . –) is credited with writing the Lao

Zi x iang ’ er zhu 老子想爾注 (“Th inking of You” Commentary to the Lao

Zi ). Th is commentary presents us with a kind of textual syncretism insofar

as it takes ideas present in popular apocalyptic literature like the Taiping

jing and reads them into the earlier text. Or, as insiders would have it, the

commentary fi nally apprehends the true esoteric meaning in the previously

misunderstood Lao Zi .

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However, I fi nd Zhang Lu’s attempt to harmonize Daoist philosophy and

Taiping jing soteriology to be an example of failed syncretism. Th is is be-

cause syncretism, as I use it, must not only bring together ideas from dispa-

rate traditions into a new, third narrative (even if that narrative retains the

name of one of the original traditions, as with Dong Zhongshu’s syncretic

Ruism), but must also remain more or less true to the original ideas that

were unifi ed. Although religious Daoists past and present will certainly dis-

agree with me, I fi nd Zhang Lu’s handling of the Lao Zi to have turned that

text into a mere cipher for Zhang’s own message. Th at is, from a modern

sinologist’s point of view, religious Daoism appropriated the Lao Zi , disre-

garding its original intentions. It did not faithfully harmonize itself with it

or with the tradition of philosophical Daoism it represents. Of course, this

appropriation was presumably carried out under orders from the highest

authority.

Th ese examples of successful and unsuccessful syncretism were yet cen-

turies away when the Shizi , China’s fi rst overtly syncretic text, was written.

Th e Shizi succeeds in bringing together not just two disparate traditions, but

in integrating several nascent, but nevertheless quite discernable, ideolo-

gies. However, then, as is oft en the case still today, sectarian forces eventu-

ally marginalized the work.

Th e Shizi is a mid-Warring States 戰國 (– bce ) Masters text. It

was authored by Shi Jiao 尸佼 (c. – bce ) who, prior to writing the

text, was an advisor to a minister of a ruler of one of the several states into

which China was then divided. We know very little about Shizi (“Master

Shi”), but the extant, eponymous text consists largely of advice for such rul-

ers. We do not know how infl uential the text was during the two centu-

ries from the death of Shi Jiao until the mid-Western Han 西漢 dynasty

( bce – ce ), but it was well known during the millennium from around

bce until ce . It was lost in the mid-Song 宋 (–), but ap-

proximately percent of it was reconstructed from over seventy sources

by several scholars during the Ming 明 (–) and Qing 清 (–

) dynasties. Th ough only a fraction of its original length, at more than

ten thousand graphs the extant Shizi is still as long as many other Warring

States Masters texts.

Early Chinese intellectual history is dominated by about three dozen

texts that have come down to us over the past two and a half millennia. Th e

Five Classics, the Analects , the Dao de jing , and the Art of War are some of

the best known of these. In the earliest extant library catalog from China,

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several hundred such texts were listed, but time has culled them down to

the received canon. Most of these texts were written in the scrum of interne-

cine intrigue that characterized the Warring States period. Th ey touch on a

broad spectrum of interests, but a primary theme of Masters texts is advice

on how best to rule a country. When this plethora of writings crossed the

desks of some early librarians, they naturally sought to construct categories

that would organize the jumble of competing narratives. Th e Shizi is the

earliest extant example of a type of Masters text that was classifi ed as Syn-

cretist (雜); that is, as a type of text that sought to bring together the ideas

of all the other categories. By the Tang 唐 dynasty (–), this technical

Syncretist category for library catalogs had evolved into a mere miscellany

but the early Syncretist texts had already set the stage for the long history of

syncretism in China.

Because Ruism became the fi rst state ideology aft er the unifi cation of the

warring states in bce , and because it more or less retained that status

until the last imperial dynasty fell in , the Ruist category of Masters

texts held pride of place in the fi rst and all subsequent imperial library cata-

logs. Retrospectively, many people have construed Daoist and Legalist texts

as Ruist competitors: the laissez-faire Daoists on the left and the authoritar-

ian Legalists on the right. Eventually, ideas in the texts of other categories

were thereby either subsumed into a broader Han Ruism or simply became

irrelevant. Th us, the intellectual history of the Warring States period, which

is sometimes described as a period when “a hundred authors contended to

be heard” (百家爭鳴), oft en becomes a story of three schools of thought.

Th e intellectual ferment prior to political unifi cation and its subsequent ho-

mogenization however, was much more complex and interesting.

As the Zhou 周 dynasty (– bce ) gradually lost political power,

punctuated by the forced move of the capital in bce and the exchange

of royal and noble “hostages” in bce , the area it ruled fragmented into

hundreds of “warring states.” Each of these states, some only as large as a

single settlement, was ruled by a relatively powerful family. Over the course

of several centuries, these states fought, conquered, and annexed one an-

other until only about a dozen remained. As the number of states declined,

so too did the number of ruling families, along with their courts and the

educated ministers they employed. Th e rising number of unemployed edu-

cated people who were once employed by royal or ministerial families led to

an increase of an offi cer/offi cial (士) class, the members of which competed

for work that would keep them in the kind of living situation to which they

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had grown accustomed. Some of them sought to give advice—on domestic

and foreign policy, and personal and public morality, among other topics—

at the courts of the remaining ruling families. Kong Zi famously traveled

around for fourteen years trying to fi nd someone to listen to his advice.

Encountering only polite rejection, he eventually decided instead to become

a public teacher. Th ose, like Kong Zi, who succeeded in attracting the at-

tention of enough students to pass on their teachings, were called “masters”

(子). As mentioned earlier, history has preserved the names of a great many

of these masters, but the teachings of only a few dozen have been transmit-

ted down to the present day. Th e eight most popular schools of these mas-

ters may be characterized as follows.

Early Ruist masters (儒家) were conservative scholars who thought,

perhaps naturally enough, that the way for a ruler to maintain or increase

his power was to emulate the policies of previous sage-rulers. Specifi cally,

they thought the way to lead was by example: if a good (仁) ruler were to

act properly (義) and display ritual courtesy (禮) to both dead ancestors

and living contemporaries, each according to their various station, then the

people would spontaneously follow him.

Mohist masters (墨家) did not yearn for a return to a single dynastic

state, but were rather content to keep the multistate status quo. Th ey em-

phasized a meritocracy in which rulers should employ worthy ministers

(尚賢), regardless of their social status. Th is would have been a breach of

protocol for Kong Zi who, despite being open-minded enough to teach stu-

dents from all walks of life, nevertheless revered the old-fashioned social

hierarchy. Mohists were also motivated by practical benefi t for the people

(利民), and undertook to treat everyone equally (兼愛). Th ese doctrines

led to a repudiation of both the warfare (非攻) that others thought neces-

sary to unite the warring states and the various elaborate ceremonies that

Ruists assiduously transmitted. Th ey therefore emphasized frugality (節用)

in traditional Ruist endeavors such as funerals for parents and sacrifi cial

court banquets.

Designative masters (名家) were interested in the relationship between

names and the realities they designate. Th ey pursued and expanded an idea

attributed to Kong Zi whereby a ruler could rule more eff ectively if only he

would “rectify names” (正名). However, both the precise scope of these

names and the means for their “rectifi cation” was never clearly identifi ed.

For example, was Kong Zi only referring to the names of court offi ces, or

might he have included the names of standards for weights and measures

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throughout society? Or did he envision the ruler “correctly naming” even

things like seasons and constellations? Several Designative masters went on

to pursue matters of logic and rhetoric, which led them far afi eld from this

goal, but the correlation between a real artifact and its predicate in human

speech continued to fascinate them.

Yin-Yang masters (陰陽家) believed that the cosmos is made of an en-

ergy-substance called qi 氣, operates in regular and predictable cycles, and

responds to the actions of people (感應). Th erefore humans should always

take into consideration the current workings of heaven and earth before

doing anything. Subsequently, the Chinese have for two thousand years op-

erated with the notion of “lucky and unlucky days” for undertaking certain

tasks. Th is notion, however, has changed greatly as science and pseudo-

science coevolved over time. Yin-Yang thought also lends itself quite easily

to the more secular idea of timely action found in a variety of early Military,

Diplomatic, and Daoist texts.

Daoist masters (道家) advocated eff ortlessness (無為), humility, and

knowing contentment (知足) for both the ruler and the people. Th is Way

(道) they describe as both completely natural (自然) and easy to follow,

despite being deeply mysterious (妙) and conceptually empty (無). Th ey

imagined a number of otherworldly paragons, such as the “spiritous person”

(神人), who embodied this Way to various degrees.

Legalist masters (法家) were the progenitors of the idea of rule by

law (法), encouraged and enforced by rewards and punishments (賞罰).

In China at the time, as in many early societies, the usual way to resolve

disputes was via recourse to a wise elder, such as a Ruist “noble person”

(君子), but Legalists thought such people were in prohibitively short supply.

Instead of pinning all hopes for eff ective government on the personalities of

a vanishingly few moral exemplars, Legalists proposed elevating the myste-

rious authority (勢) of the ruler as the “Son of heaven” for maximum eff ect,

while simultaneously expanding the role of a professional bureaucracy (術)

to carry out the myriad practical duties of his government.

Diplomatic advisors (縱橫家) were famous for their powers of persua-

sion, particularly upon rulers. Th e most famous of these would later argue

for either “vertical” (縱) multistate alliances against the western state of Qin

or “horizontal” (橫) multistate alliances against the southern state of Chu.

Little remains of the writings of early Diplomatic masters, but Pang Xuan

龐煖 (c. – bce ), who lived a few decades aft er Shizi, is noted for his

emphasis on “spiritous” (i.e., timely) action.

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Agriculturalist masters (農家) have few texts that are still extant, possibly

because the agricultural methods they describe were outgrown. Outside of

writing farmer’s almanacs, Agriculturalists wanted the ruler to participate

in the activities of the common people, just as their hero, Shen Nong 神農

(the “Spiritous Farmer”) did in remote antiquity.

Such brief descriptions of these eight schools of thought naturally belie

the complexity of Warring States intellectual history. But while there was

certainly a broad “marketplace of ideas” that was actively discussed in this

period, these authors and their texts were dealing in a generally coherent

spectrum of goods. Early Chinese masters were in fundamental accord far

more than they disagreed. In fact, there was a great deal of overlap, much

borrowing, and very few signs of competing schools. It is largely because of

the retrospective “schools of thought” categorizations that their diff erences

have been magnifi ed at the expense of their congruity. Everyone was in fa-

vor of virtuous rulers, competent ministers, a harmonious society, placated

ancestors, fi lial children, and personal self-cultivation. Indeed, these ideals

are all still very much alive in China today. Even the defi nitions of these

ideals were not usually in serious dispute. Th e unanswered questions lay

primarily in the means by which to attain these goals. Syncretist masters

(雜家) sought to ameliorate the diff erences in these means. But the syncretic

method of Syncretist masters was a natural, almost obvious, route to pursue,

given the eclecticism of their peers.

One indicator that eclecticism was normative in early China is that early

authors all made similar use of a limited number of culture heroes, par-

ticularly the Th ree Sovereigns and Five Th earchs (三皇五帝), who will be

discussed shortly. Another is their willingness to make use of a shared body

of stories, aphorisms, and sayings, which are noted in my translation. Th e

result of this tendency to employ recognizable but unattributed sayings that

were oft en reformulated to fi t a new context is called intertextuality. If

there were acrimonious divisions among masters, we might guess that dif-

ferent factions would claim certain heroes and certain stories as their own,

while their rivals, looking to distance themselves from those with whom

they disagreed, would also have sought a diff erent set of human exemplars

with their own narratives. But this is not the case.

Recent scholarship has recognized this eclecticism and has begun to

adjust its focus from the diff erences between the early schools of thought

to their similarities. It has emphasized that ostensible membership in

such a school oft en obscures more than it reveals about the breadth and

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details of a particular text. Furthermore, the schools that might be said

to have existed were oft en fractious and far from ideologically homoge-

neous.

More evidence that early Chinese intellectuals were doctrinally open-

minded comes from recently excavated tomb libraries dating from the late

Zhou and Han dynasties. Th e collections of writings discovered since the

s at Yinqueshan 銀雀山, Dingzhou 定州, Mawangdui 馬王堆, Shui-

hudi 睡虎地, Shuanggudui 雙古堆, Zhangjiashan 張家山, and Guodian

郭店 all display a typological variety of texts rather than a collection that

adheres to one of the well-known philosophical schools. On the contrary,

these early tombs with signifi cant libraries portray a number of individuals

with a diversity of philosophical interests.

Noting this eclecticism is not to aver that it is impervious to analysis.

School classifi cations are useful analytical concepts and, at any rate, have

long become irrevocably part of the very fi ber of Chinese intellectual his-

tory. But it should be clear that the various schools were both retrospective

library classifi cations of which the masters in question were wholly unaware

and primarily highlight variations on a few themes in which similarities far

outweighed diff erences. Th e “contending schools of thought” were more like

a kitchen full of chefs each jostling to prepare a perfect meal from the same

shelf of ingredients than competing rivals harboring enmity, like the war-

ring state rulers they sought to advise.

Early Chinese masters were not only eclectic in their teachings, but the

writings they generated were transmitted in such a way that these writings

soon became eclectic in a diff erent sense. Th at is, early Chinese Masters

texts are not homogeneous, single-author texts, like books today, but are

rather edited compilations in which a variety of sources were redacted to-

gether. Th ese sources may have derived from the ostensible author’s peers,

students, descendents, and editors, all of whom would have felt no com-

punction about revising, adding to, or taking away from the teachings of

said master. Th is type of authorship may be quite alien to us now, but was

very much the norm in the ancient world.

My aim in the preceding paragraphs is to show that most early Chi-

nese thinkers were, consciously or not, ideological eclectics and not close-

minded dogmatists. But one type of author built upon the prevalent practice

of sharing heroes, stories, and political, social, and personal aims to con-

sciously weave together ideas of diff erent thinkers that others had construed

as irreconcilable. Th ese were the Syncretists.

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Shizi was a successful Syncretist. His writings were popular for many

centuries. He paved the way for the comprehensive Syncretist compendi-

ums Lü shi chunqiu 呂氏春秋 (Mr. Lü’s Annals; c. bce ) and the Huainan

Zi 淮南子 (Th e Huainan Master; c. bce ). His syncretic method would

radically transform Ruism in the Han dynasty when Dong Zhongshu appro-

priated Yin-Yang and Legalist thought into a new Ruist state ideology. But

perhaps most of all, he was a man of his times. His syncretism made explicit

the eclecticism of other authors of his day and demonstrated that many of

their ideas were not necessarily incompatible.

Master Shi uses Ruist ideals of self-cultivation, proper moral conduct,

considerateness toward other people, and a ruler whose goodness naturally

inspires loyalty and harmony in the people. He cites Kong Zi more than

any other person in the text, and while the Ruist infl uence is unmistakable,

it is equally clear that Shizi is no Ruist.

He uses the Mohist idea of having a ruler pursue worthy ministers, re-

gardless of their social station, a revolutionary course of action in any so-

cially stratifi ed society. In chapter , a ruler delights in the advice of a lowly

boatman, and in chapters and , Shizi clearly advises the ruler to pursue

worthy ministers, even if it means humbling himself before them. He also

tells a popular story about how Mo Zi 墨子 (c. – bce ), the founder of

Mohism, convinced the ruler of a stronger state not to attack a weaker state.

He follows Designative masters with a key doctrine intimately linked to

the idea of the rectifi cation of names. Chapter , titled “Allocation” (分), is

a logical extension of the Mohist doctrine of pursuing worthy ministers. In

it he describes the importance of correctly and eff ectively making use of

worthies once their employment has been procured. Rather than rely on

advice from an amorphous “council of elders” or conclave of worthies, Shizi

proposes unambiguously allocating tasks and assigning clear responsibili-

ties to specifi c ministers. Th is involves both a “rectifi cation” of ministerial

titles and an “allocation” of the duties that accompany any given position.

He makes use of Yin-Yang ideology by elucidating the idea that the cos-

mos responds to the morality of a ruler. In chapters and he describes

a utopian realm where heaven and earth, and the winds and rain between

them, conspire to bring health and happiness to the realm of the good ruler.

It is an idea that has persisted in China for thousands of years and even

today informs a popular brand of “correlative cosmology.”

He borrows the Daoist paradigm of a mysterious cosmic Way in chap-

ter  and in fragments , , and . In chapter he describes the eff ortless

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rule of a ruler who delegates suffi cient responsibility to his ministers. In

chapter he speaks of a “spiritous person” that follows the Way of heaven

and earth. He also refers to the equanimity of Tian Zi 田子, Lie Zi’s 列子

pursuit of emptiness, and the noble reclusiveness of Lao Lai Zi 老萊子, all

three of whom came to be categorized as Daoist masters.

Shizi was actually once a retainer for the famous Legalist, Shang Yang

商鞅 (d. bce ). Given this, one might expect the role of law to be fairly

prominent in his text, yet it is only mentioned once, in chapter . Th e util-

ity of rewards and punishments is described in somewhat more detail in

chapters and , where Shizi also subtly distinguishes between the “spirit of

the law” and the “letter of the law” with regard to the ruler’s duties toward

his subjects. Th e Legalist Han Fei 韓非 (c. – bce ) later criticized

Shang Yang’s reliance on law-making ministers for having no way for the

ruler to ensure their competence. Shizi’s emphasis on demonstrable proof

as an indicator of competence in chapters and eff ectively ameliorates

this criticism.

Shi Jiao’s text does not address a specifi c ruler and therefore has no spe-

cifi c diplomatic advice to dispense. However, the persuasive skills of Mo Zi

with regard to a particular item of foreign policy are described in chapter .

And if we take Pang Xuan’s emphasis on timely action to be representative

of the Diplomatic tradition, then Shizi’s insistence on timely “spiritous” ac-

tion in chapter is clearly in that tradition.

Finally, Shizi might be said to use Agriculturalist rhetoric by emphasiz-

ing the role of their ultimate guide: Shen Nong, an early sage-king in Chi-

nese cultural history. Shen Nong appears fi ve times in the Shizi , more than

usual for contemporary writings.

Shizi, as far as we can tell, was China’s fi rst Syncretist. As with the texts

in all early schools of thought, most works in this category have been lost.

Fortunately, two later Syncretist texts, the Lü shi chunqiu and Huainan Zi ,

mentioned earlier, have been transmitted and have been recently translated

into English. Th ese works, respectively written one hundred and two hun-

dred years aft er the Shizi , provide insight into how later Syncretist authors

continued Shizi’s mission. But because Syncretism, like the other schools,

was not a homogeneous ideological lineage, they cannot be read as provid-

ing clues for any linear “evolution” of Syncretist thought. As argued earlier,

all early Chinese masters were eclectic; Syncretist authors were just more so,

and deliberately so.

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Th is translation of the Shizi presents an early form of Syncretism, a simple

blending of philosophies that were current c. bce . As such, it presents

a good picture of several themes that probably enjoyed a broad consensus

during this watershed period in China’s intellectual history. It is quite unlike

the later Syncretist attempts to describe comprehensively the universe and

how humans should relate to it, which are considerably broader and more

ambitious in scope. Nevertheless, the Shizi engages topics as diverse as the

cosmic order, man’s place in it, and how the two are mutually responsive;

the importance of learning, the diligence it requires, and the transformative

eff ects it has upon the learner; the utility of timeliness, the broad outlook

one needs in order to act early, and the probable thanklessness of diverting

misfortune before it manifests; the examples of sage-rulers, their various

exploits, and the lessons that rulers might learn from them; and the logic of

results-based practicality, its egalitarian basis, and how these may be applied

to the employment of ministers. Th us, the Shizi is both quite unique yet still

genuinely representative of contemporary philosophical writings. Among

early Masters texts, it is undoubtedly the best single work for exploring the

variety of mid-Warring States thought.

Th is translation of the Shizi marks a new addition to a growing body of

recently translated works of early Chinese philosophy that had either never

before been translated into English or whose translations had long been out

of print. Th ese include the Mo Zi 墨子, Guan Zi 管子, and Xun Zi 荀子,

as well as the Lü shi chunqiu and Huainan Zi . Many important texts still

remain to be translated, but I trust the Shizi will highlight the place of early

Syncretism within early Chinese intellectual history.

Early Chinese philosophy, and most Chinese philosophy since, is cen-

tered on the twin aims of how best to rule a state and how best to culti-

vate oneself, that is, how to induce both state and self to realize their full-

est potential. Th ese two also may act as metaphors for one another. Ruists

took their cues from an idealized and ritual-laden past; Mohists from

what is now called utilitarianism; Designatives from the power of linguis-

tics, logic, and rhetoric; Yin-Yangists from a proto-science of nature; Dao-

ists from a mysterious and elusive Nature; Legalists from a bureaucratic

legal system; Diplomats from delicate foreign policy; and Agricultural-

ists from a farm-centered and folksy self-reliance. Clearly, some of these

groups were more interested in statecraft while others primarily pursued

introspection.

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In the long run, Ruists and Daoists remained most prominent, with

Ruism focusing on statecraft and Daoism on self-cultivation, though each

tradition underwent great changes over time. Mohism, Yin-Yang, and Le-

galism were eff ectively appropriated by and subsumed into Ruism during

the Han dynasty. Designatism became more a means than an end, just as

early Greek Sophists dissolved into practitioners of rhetoric. Foreign-aff air

diplomats and Agriculturalists became obsolete aft er the warring states

were united in bce and the realm became too large and diverse for

Agriculturalists to credibly make their case.

Early Syncretism, as embodied in the Shizi , is a remarkable refl ection of

most of the concerns of the separate schools. Th us, in the following transla-

tion, we will encounter the importance of a ruler’s correct comportment,

a meritocratic bureaucracy, clearly defi ned job titles and job descriptions

for that bureaucracy, specifi c responses of natural phenomena to human

agency, the ineff able mystery of the Way of heaven and earth, a cogent law

and penal code, good relations with neighboring states, and self-reliance in

one’s education. Many early authors, when arguing the merits of their case,

appealed to the examples of a few mytho-historical personages. Th e Shizi is

no exception.

All cultures venerate their history to some degree and China likewise

celebrates its origin myths. Th e Shizi cites the exemplary actions of many

people, starting with the Th ree Sovereigns and Five Th earchs. Th ese begin

with Sui Ren 燧人, the tamer of fi re; Fu Xi 伏羲, who domesticated animals;

and Shen Nong 神農, who developed agriculture. As even a casual reader

will notice, these three present a neat evolution of protohistory. Th e Five

Th earchs, in turn, start with Huang Di 黃帝, who instituted government;

Zhuan Xu 顓頊, whose monster-fi ghting exploits led to China’s version

of a Flood story; Di Ku 帝嚳, father of the patriarchs of both the Shang

and Zhou dynasties; Yao 堯, the moral exemplar who, rather than pass the

crown to his own son, sought out the best man in the realm and abdicated

to him, thereby ensuring a peaceful transfer of power that depended on

neither death nor warfare; and Shun 舜, the paragon of fi liality, who also

abdicated to a worthy man, Yu 禹, the fi rst emperor of the Xia 夏 dynasty

(– bce ). As myth fades into history, the cast of characters grows

apace, and the Shizi makes reference to a great many of them. Diff erent

kinds of people from all walks of life are mentioned, each one a patch in the

great quilt of the early shared culture of China.

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I have argued that the Shizi is a uniquely representative work of early

Chinese thought in its content, but have only alluded to its somewhat frag-

mented form as also being representative of early Chinese texts. Early Chi-

nese text formation was oft en a complex aff air and no single model can act

as a paradigm for all texts. I mentioned earlier that later emendations and

additions were once common. More specifi cally, scholars have speculated

that some received texts are confl ations of two or more works that were ini-

tially separate, that some are heterogeneous mixtures of writings, that some

are abridgements of prior texts, and that some are “accreted” texts, with an

authentic “core” to which have been added later “layers.”

Subsuming all of these possibilities is the “polymorphous text” paradigm,

the most widely applicable paradigm for pre-Qin Masters texts, which pos-

its simply that early texts probably went through many revisions by several

people before they began to be transmitted as relatively stable texts. Th is

newer paradigm, in turn, derives partly from the study of early Chinese texts

excavated from tombs in the last fi ft y years and partly from advances in re-

cent text criticism in general. One likely scenario is a teacher who taught

orally, changed his teachings over the course of his teaching career, had

several students who took notes, had later editors who redacted those notes,

possibly in diff erent ways for diff erent audiences, and had later transmitters

who changed the narrative to fi t new developments in politics, society, or

the group that was interested in passing on the text. Th is evolution of the

text is not haphazard, any more than is natural selection in biology. Th ings

change to fi t new environments. But the multiplicity of such texts over time

is refl ected in the partial state of the reconstructed Shizi insofar as it reads

like a work under construction, a work evolving. A student encountering for

the fi rst time an early work like the Mo Zi or Zhuang Zi 莊子 may very well

get the impression that he is reading a defi nitive work by a single author.

But this would be a misleading conclusion by which much later scholarship

has been misled.

Yet while the polymorphous text paradigm is the best model for imagining

how early Chinese texts were formed, the Shizi presents itself as something

of an anomaly. Th is is because, unlike most early texts, for which we have

only an implied author in the title and no real bibliographical information,

the Shizi is accompanied by an early claim that Shi Jiao was the sole author.

Th e challenge of reading a reconstructed text with a sizeable number

of appended fragments, such as the Shizi , is partially ameliorated by the

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abundance of backnotes and a relatively faithful translation. Th e backnotes

oft en specify the intertextuality mentioned earlier, which I hope will facili-

tate comparative pursuits among early texts. Th ere are many themes that a

reader may wish to compare and pursue, and the notes will provide a much

more focused starting point than, for example, a web search. For students

who are learning Chinese, I have translated the text as strictly as possible,

while still keeping to the rules of English grammar. Parenthetical words are

not represented in the Chinese, but are necessary either for a smooth trans-

lation or for better understanding.

Finally, transposing names with titles from Chinese to English is an ongo-

ing issue in sinology and probably will not be settled for a few more decades.

In particular, the zi 子 at the end of so many names can mean “Master” or

“Viscount” or simply be part of a person’s name. In this text, it nearly always

means “Master” or “Teacher”. But writing “Shi Zi” invites many Western

readers to assume that “Zi” is a last name, rather than his title. On the other

hand, writing “Shizi” makes it appear that his title is simply part of his name.

In this volume, we have always kept the title separate from the name, as in

“Mo Zi” and “Lao Zi”, with the single exception of Shizi, which we have

written as one word. Th is was done to avoid confusion in the keyword and

database searches that are today so important to scholarship

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