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Sinism: A Study of the Evolution of the Chinese World-View
Excerpt from Sinism
A hopeless situation? For accurate political history, perhaps. Certainly a discouraging situation, from any point of view. Yet, it is the obstacles to be overcome which give zest to any game, from chess to research. In any case, we are certainly faced with a situa tion calling for a peculiar method of approach. For myself, I am unable to place much faith in specific dates and events prior to the time of Confucius, and almost none in those anterior to the found ing of the Chow dynasty (1122 B. Yet this does not make the writing of cultural, intellectual, and religious history by any means impossible. For If we find in the book called The Tribute of Y u that a certain tribe sent earth of five colors as a tribute, it may make little difference whether Yu or the tribe ever existed; the important point for us is that if we can establish an approximate date for the document, we shall know that the five colors as a concept existed at that time (barring later interpolation, of course). And at any rate this provides us with one more evidence of the existence, at whatever date, of an important element of the Chinese natural philosophy.
A hopeless situation? For accurate political history, perhaps. Certainly a discouraging situation, from any point of view. Yet, it is the obstacles to be overcome which give zest to any game, from chess to research. In any case, we are certainly faced with a situa tion calling for a peculiar method of approach. For myself, I am unable to place much faith in specific dates and events prior to the time of Confucius, and almost none in those anterior to the found ing of the Chow dynasty (1122 B. Yet this does not make the writing of cultural, intellectual, and religious history by any means impossible. For If we find in the book called The Tribute of Y u that a certain tribe sent earth of five colors as a tribute, it may make little difference whether Yu or the tribe ever existed; the important point for us is that if we can establish an approximate date for the document, we shall know that the five colors as a concept existed at that time (barring later interpolation, of course). And at any rate this provides us with one more evidence of the existence, at whatever date, of an important element of the Chinese natural philosophy.
139 pages, Paperback
Published August 24, 2018
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