To Do as Said and Written: Excavated Manuals and the Performance of Medicine and Spirit Power in Early China

This dissertation examines excavated medical, incantatory, and divinatory manuals from early China. These manuals are studied collectively as medicine and people's engagement with the spirit world were inseparable. While there has been much research into the early Chinese medical and divinatory landscape, the materialistic and textual features of excavated manuals are often overlooked. These manuscripts are archaeological artifacts, not received texts that have been rewritten and edited through time, which allows the reconstruction of their "life," that is, their compilation and production, their interaction with readers, and their roles in actual medical and spirit practices. The extensive presence of rhymes and paronomasia in these manuals shows how sound correspondence contributed to the construction of meaning, and how the performance of early Chinese technical and mantic knowledge was deeply anchored not only in writing, but also in orality. In addition to an introduction and a conclusion, this dissertation comprises four main chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the archaeological contexts from which early Chinese manuals of medicine and spirit power were excavated, and outlines the general features of these manuals' content and language; a cross-cultural survey of manuscript interment in ancient China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome is also included so as to trace the cultural and religious factors behind this funerary practice. Chapter 2, centering on the recently published, 2nd-century-BCE Tianhui medical manuscripts 天回醫簡, explores the nature of the manuscripts as components of a composite medical curriculum, and the significance of orality and writing in early Chinese medical instruction. Chapter 3 surveys manuals of incantatory rituals and looks into the apotropaic powers of incantations as "performative utterances." Chapter 4 focuses on hemerological manuals, how they codified complex astro-calendrical information, and how they aided the memorization and comprehension of divinatory knowledge.

Author dc:creator

• Zheng, Qiu Jun Oscar

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Goldin, Paul, R.

• East Asian studies
• History
• Chinese literature

Language dc:language.iso

en

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/62808

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.upenn.edu:20.500.14332/62808