This article reexamines the hypotheses of Guo Moruo and H.G. Creel that Shang Di was the high god of the Shang and Tian, that of the Zhou. It proposes that Shang Di was originally the spirit of the pole star. As such, it was the one celestial body which was higher than the ten suns, with whom the Shang ancestors were identified. Tian was not a high god, but quite literally, the sky. The sky was the location of the Shang Di and the other ancestral spirits, so it came to serve as a euphemism for Shang Di or, more broadly, for Shang Di and all the celestial phenomena and spirits who were under his aegis. The primary distinction between the Shang and Zhou was not that Shang Di was particular to the Shang, but that the Shang rulers identified themselves with the ten suns. Shang Di, as the pole star, was acknowledged by both Shang and Zhou as the highest of the spirits. Tian, as the sky, was understood primarily as the celestial bodies that inhabit it. As in later time, the sky was a spiritual force associated with patterns of time, which were revealed in the movements of the celestial bodies. Thus, the original tian ming (“celestial mandate” or “mandate of heaven”) was, quite literally, an astronomical sign, a “command” seen in the sky during the reign of Wen, whose son Wu founded the Zhou Dynasty.

The Spring and Autumn (Chūn Qiū) is a highly formally regular chronicle of apparently objective entries recorded in the state of Luˇ for the period from 722 to 479 (or 481) b.c.e. The present study is a formal analysis of the Spring and Autumn (Chūn Qiū), showing that its records were written in adherence to strict prescriptive rules governing what types of events could be recorded and the form of those records. Entries recording the same type of event were recorded using the same form, including the same degree of specificity in date notation, style of reference to individuals, as well as main verb and sentence pattern. Other variables affecting the form of records included the rank of individuals mentioned in the record and their home state. Regular diachronic changes in form may also be identified, and their presence demonstrates that the Spring and Autumn (Chūn Qiū) accrued over time and was not the product of a single author or editor. Classes of records associated with events, persons, or states deemed to be of greater importance were marked by inclusion of more detail such as names or precise dates, or use of special (honorific or euphemistic) verbs. The use of formal marking to indicate the exceptional significance of classes of records apparently extended to individual records, suggesting that the value judgment associated with the class had been applied to an individual event. While the Spring and Autumn (Chūn Qiū) contains no explicit value judgments, formal irregularities may indeed have been used to express value judgments on the events recorded in the Spring and Autumn (Chūn Qiū).

The principal function of the ancient Chinese royal capital city was political. From the perspective of archaeology, the physical manifestation of this is primarily revealed through palace buildings and ancestral shrines. Chang’an was the capital city of the Western Han Empire. After extensive excavation and research into the sites of palatial structures and ancestral shrines of Han Dynasty Chang’an city, it is clear that the two are distinct in form. Also, comparative research into the layout of the palaces and ancestral shrines of Han Chang’an that have undergone excavation beside those palaces and shrines of the capital cities of the kingdoms of the pre-Qin era also reveals that the two architectural forms have clear differences. The difference in architectural form between palaces and ancestral shrines reflects the difference in function they performed, between rule through territorial authority and rule through kinship. From the side-by-side placement of palaces and ancestral shrines within the royal precincts of capital cities of the kingdom era (the pre-Qin period), to the separate placement of palaces and shrines in the capital cities of the imperial era (Qin-Han to Ming-Qing periods), as well as in the formation of the system centered on the royal palace, whereby the “ancestors occupy the left, while the altar of soil occupies the right,” the difference in the layout of palaces and ancestral shrines in the capital cities of the kingdom era and those of the imperial era clearly explains how the palace, which represents rule by territorial authority, and the ancestral shrine, which represents rule by kinship, wax and wane in the strength of their social function with the development of society and the change in societal configuration. Archaeological discovery and research into the architectural sites of palaces and ancestral shrines of Han Chang’an city reveals that the kingdom era of ancient Chinese society was a time for the integration of rule through kinship and rule through territorial authority, while from the Qin-Han period to the Ming-Qing era was a time of centralized imperial power, where rule by territorial authority was primary, and rule through kinship was secondary.

The zhiyan described in the “Entrusted Words” chapter of the Zhuangzi (“Zhiyan come forth daily, and are harmonized with the heavenly divisions; through this they spread out, and thus years draw to a close”) have long aroused debate and confusion among readers, as the word zhi usually refers to a type of wine goblet. Contemporary readers cannot easily obtain clear assistance from traditional commentaries, because the mainstream of Zhuangzi scholarship has been disturbed by Guo Xiang's original notes: “This zhi is [a thing which] tips when full, rights when empty, and does not stay fixed.” The questions which arise from this note are two: (1) What sort of goblet could “tip when full, right when empty”? And (2) how would this remarkable behavior on the part of the goblet relate to the original text of the Zhuangzi?

In the past decade, it seems, the study of early Chinese manuscripts has at last begun to move from its rather marginal position as a highly specialized subject into the mainstream of scholarship on the Warring States and early imperial periods. This is certainly due in part to the impressive quantity of manuscripts found so far. A still more important factor is probably the fact that the manuscripts recovered to date now include a significant number of politico-philosophical texts. While literature of a more technical nature has attracted attention only in smaller circles of scholars, these more generally appealing finds have spurred a markedly increased interest in early Chinese manuscripts both in China and in the West. This is also reflected by the vast improvement in the quality of publications with regard both to photographic reproduction and to transcription and/or interpretation. The field of palaeography has accordingly gained visibility and esteem. It hardly need be mentioned that orthography is a vital concern in reading manuscripts. Many books and articles on the manuscripts consequently touch upon the subject of orthography when they interpret manuscripts or discuss special palaeographic issues, or when they address the Chinese writing system in a more general way. Yet, to my knowledge, Imre Galambos’s Orthography of Early Chinese Writing is the first monograph ever to elevate the question of early Chinese manuscript orthography to the status of its central subject matter.