RITUAL, TEXT, AND THE FORMATION OF THE CANON: HISTORICAL TRANSITIONS OF WEN IN EARLY CHINA
Abstract
The word wen X, in Xu Shen's t'tE(c. 55-c. 149) Shaowen jiezi StSF deElned as criss-cross pattern (cuohua Z),1 has been ruminatec3 upon numerous times during the last two millennia, and it is still under sophisticated deliberation wherever students of traditional Chinese culture and literature meet. This phenomenon is in itself remarkable, revealing the genuine depth of a word that in its significance is rivalled by only a few others, like dao t or qi A. Such profound words, in this respect comparable to logos or pneuma in the West, embody almost universal significance through their originally most concrete meanings, relating physical matter, human activity, and cosmological order to one another. For wen, we hear of the different patterns of Heaven, Earth, and Man, and it is wen that mediates between these three, at least in analogical thinking.2 But at the same time, even a word like wen, together with whatever meaning can be proposed for it, is not located beyond the realms of general cultural history; in its usage, it is a genuinely historical phenomenon, changing with times and therefore remaining continuously meaningful in subsequent ages and to different social orders. Wen
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- Authors
- Kern, M.
- Corresponding author
- Kern, Martin
- Venue
- T'oung Pao
- Publisher
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH
- Published
- 2001
- Volume
- 87
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 43-91
- ISSN
- 0082-5433 (ISSN-L)
- 1568-5322
- OpenAlex
- W2063943487
- Semantic Scholar
- 5141ffbb1635b33580eddf9946e02826f1e628ac
- Cited by
- 61
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 1.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- T oung Pao (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Chinese history and philosophy
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Classical Studies and Philology
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Historical and Literary Analyses
- Keywords
- ritual, textual formation, literary canon, early Chinese literature, Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi, character semantics, Chinese cultural history
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