China and Inner Asia

Organized Panel Session

(1) - Rereading the “Memoir of Bo Yi”

The “Memoir of Bo Yi” is one of the most well-known texts in Ancient Chinese literature: the first of the memoirs (liezhuan) in the Grand Scribe’s Records and a relatively short account of the lives of the two brothers Bo Yi and Shu Qi, interspersed with lengthy and introspective remarks by Sima Qian.  This paper offers a new reading of this text, focusing on one specific detail: a song sung by the two brothers as they approach the end of their lives.  Comparing this with “The Grasshoppers” (Caochong), a poem now preserved in the Book of Odes, I will show how the ideal of a perspicacious ruler such as described in various ancient sources related to “The Grasshoppers,” including the newly excavated “Five Virtues” (Wuxing) from the Warring States tomb at Guodian—is turned completely upside down in the “Memoir of Bo Yi.”  The juxtaposition of these different sources reinforces a theme central to the reflections of the grand historian: the frailty of humans in the face of greater powers such as Fate, Nature, and Heaven.

Speaker(s)

• KH

  Kuan-yun Huang

  City University of Hong Kong