Xi Zhu (Pacific Lutheran University)
xi.z@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This panel explores the relationship between excavated Chinese manuscripts and historical phonology through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates paleography, textual criticism, and linguistic reconstruction. Using recently excavated bamboo and silk manuscripts from the Warring States and early imperial periods, the panelists examine how graphic variation, phonetic borrowing, manuscript transmission, and scribal practice preserve valuable evidence for the history of the Chinese language. The session highlights how manuscript materials can both challenge and refine traditional understandings derived from received texts, while also demonstrating the importance of historical phonology for interpreting difficult or ambiguous graphs in excavated sources. Bringing together specialists from multiple fields, the panel aims to foster dialogue between manuscript studies and historical linguistics and to encourage new approaches to the study of early Chinese texts.

The growing body of excavated Chinese manuscripts discovered over the past several decades has transformed the study of early China. Bamboo, silk, and wooden manuscripts from sites dating primarily to the Warring States, Qin, and Han periods have provided scholars with unprecedented access to early textual traditions, scribal practices, and forms of writing that differ in important ways from received texts. At the same time, these materials have created new challenges of interpretation, particularly in the areas of graph identification, textual variation, and linguistic analysis.

This panel examines how historical phonology and manuscript studies can mutually inform one another through an interdisciplinary methodology. The papers in this session investigate topics such as phonetic series, phonological compatibility, graphic variation, textual transmission, scribal substitution, and the interpretation of problematic manuscript graphs. Particular attention is given to the ways excavated manuscripts preserve evidence for earlier stages of the Chinese language that may not be fully reflected in later transmitted traditions.

The proposed session is significant for several reasons. First, it highlights the importance of integrating paleography, historical linguistics, and textual criticism rather than treating them as separate disciplines. Second, it demonstrates how historical phonology can provide crucial evidence for resolving difficult paleographic and textual problems, while excavated manuscripts in turn offer new data for evaluating phonological reconstructions and theories of language change. Third, the panel encourages broader methodological reflection on how scholars approach textual instability, scribal practice, and recensional variation in early Chinese materials.

By bringing together scholars working across disciplinary boundaries, this session aims to promote productive dialogue between specialists in excavated manuscripts, historical phonology, and early Chinese textual studies, while also introducing broader audiences to current developments and methodological issues in the field.