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In this chapter I discuss the basic form of narration characterizing the texts in this volume.These narratives contain a narrative frame and dialogue.On the primary level of the frame, the narrator situates the text in time and space.In addition, the narrator establishes relations between the characters of the narrative and labels the genre and illocutionary force of the speech in the dialogues, as admonitions, for instance.The frame thus provides a reading key that tells the audience how to situate and interpret the claims made within the dialogue along a set of discursive power relations.
With the roles and types of speech established, the next part in the narrative structure features a dialogue component that revolves around the search for and granting of knowledge beneficial to the rule of the lord.In most of the narratives, the advisor possesses this knowledge and the ruler seeks it out.The narratives predominantly feature a simple dialogic back and forth along this structure but some are almost monological.Those examples with higher narrative complexity feature a narrator that makes active use of detailed scene changes and a deeper understanding of the inner workings of the characters to increase the audience’s expectations and heighten the dynamism and drama of the story.The voice of the narrator, while appearing neutral, is not just matter-of-factly relating the events of the narrative, but actively shapes the way the audience relates with the characters and judges their actions.
In the following, I give two examples of how the unearthed narratives covered in this study differ from the rendition of the same events in the Zuo zhuan to show the influence of the mode of narration on how we perceive the story.
For example, the Zi Fan Zi Yu manuscript version tells the story of the final part of Chong’er’s重耳exile from his native Jin.After having been at times hosted and denied safe haven by a range of states, we find Chong’er residing in Qin just before he returns to Jin.In this rendition of the story, Chong’er’s travels are only alluded to and not given particular importance.Instead, it highlights particular elements in the structure of events by focusing on the importance of Chong’er’s advisors and by emphasizing the lord’s moral uprightness and hesitance.But other versions are possible.When we look at the narrative in the Zuo , as noted by Wai-Yee Li, Chong’er’s peregrinations are told in retrospect so as to highlight cause and effect, following a logic that departs from the Zuo ’s more regular sense of contingency. [1] The Zuo rendition of this series of events（i.e., Chong’er is in Qin and about to go back to Jin) presents a story of “recompense”( bao 報）about all the states that supported or denied help to Chong’er in his peregrinations. [2] This element is not present in the Zi Fan Zi Yu ’s rendition.
The manuscript instead gives much more agency and voice to the lord’s followers who subtly talk back or correct their royal interlocutors.Accordingly, the Zuo ’s focus on interstate power-dynamics can be contrasted to the Zi Fan Zi Yu ’s back and forth between ruler and advisors in their competition over the power of discourse.Their different ways of telling the narrative thus make for a different reading experience, produce different arguments from historical precedent, and focus on different power relations.
Another example of how different narratives provide vastly different readings and emphases on features of the past can be found in the *
Zheng Wu Furen gui ruzi
manuscript.The narrative is set after the death of Lord Wu of Zheng; his widow Lady Wu admonishes their son and heir to wait and learn from the ministers and high officials before taking command as the ruler.The story then develops around the son’s initial silence and the resulting frustration of the ministers, before ending on a dramatic cry of a son not living up to his father’s expectations.In the
Zuo
rendition, Lady Wu has a different role.She is presented as a femme fatale who in a story of political maneuvering schemes to have her younger son, Gongshu Duan共叔段，placed in power instead.
[3]
Reading the *
Zheng Wu Furen gui ruzi
with the
Zuo zhuan
account in mind would have a reader focus on the mother’s advice with suspicion,
[4]
but this would be misleading.The manuscript’s narrative is not interested in developing any potential suspicion and on the whole has a rather neutral presentation of Lady Wu.
It focuses on the struggles of the young lord to meet the expectations of his late father and his officials and therefore advances a decidedly more psychological reading of Lord Wen of Zheng’s rise to power.
These different narrations of the same historical set of events therefore amount to different stories altogether.Their differences reside not just in a particular ordering of events or choice of central theme.They involve choices in the role division of narration and dialogue, the focalization (i.e., the viewpoint and access to information) of narrators and characters, and the use of language and images to color a particular presentation of the events.Taken together, these aspects reveal the particular reading of an event the narratives wanted to present, whether about the moral underpinnings of Chong’er’s actions, or the advice of a mother faced with a son not entirely ready to follow into the footsteps of his father.These narratives explore the motivations and drama that drove historical characters and events to provide an intimate and vivid view into the past.
Narration refers to the act of telling a story, which can occur on a number of levels.The narratives included in this volume tend to develop a basic structure which in archetypical (often monological) form was used at least from early bronze inscriptions and the shu 書“ writings ”onwards. [5] They open with a short frame introducing the dialogue or monologue.At this primary level of narration, an all-knowing but uninvolved, narrator describes the situation and reports the dialogue. [6] This same narrator then introduces a speaker, a character narrator.These character narrators, operate on a secondary level of narration and introduce the main problem of the story, before introducing other interlocutor(s).These in turn may present the solution, or deepen the problem for another character to resolve.
Many of these narratives only feature a short opening frame and introduction of characters (“X said”).In more complex narratives, the switches between characters are presented as a scene change, and involve more extensive narration, describing how one character left and another enters, and sometimes indicating the mood or setting of the dialogue.While it is tempting to equate the narrator with an author figure, for example, a court scribe from Zheng or a storyteller from Jin, this should be avoided. [7] For one thing, an author may hold different ideas from their narrators, but we will also see that the narrator and the characters (arguably rendered by the same author) exhibit subtle differences of perspective. [8]
Each of these narrators, be they characters talking about one another or the primary narrator relating the story as a whole, manifests a certain perspective or focalization. [9] By providing such coloring and perspective to the events and the inner workings of the characters, focalization reveals the relation between characters, and between the narrator and characters.Characters are presented by the narrative as having access to different levels of knowledge and discursive power.In the texts studied here, the fundamental story dynamic revolves around the clever manipulation of this access and how it is instrumental to good rule.
Especially within the dialogues, the narratives rely heavily on image-based language, including simile, metaphor, allusion, and language meant to evoke a visual experience.The use of image-based language brings the story alive on a linguistic and experiential level, helping the audience commit to the world created within the space of the narrative, all the while reveling in the character’s artistry and skill in decoding, resisting, or accepting the images.
A representative example of how an opening frame is structured can be found in the * Zheng Wen Gong wen Tai Bo A:
子人成子既死，太伯當邑。太伯有疾，文公往問之。君若曰：……
After Ziren Chengzi had passed away, Grand Elder was in charge of the city.Grand Elder had an illness, and Lord Wen went and asked him about it.The ruler said to the effect: …
The narrator is all-knowing and looks back from a privileged vantage point in history at the events that follow.The audience of the text is supposed to understand references to the characters without any formal introduction.Ziren Chengzi, Grand Elder, and Lord Wen are mentioned without further specification.Of figures from the Springs and Autumns period alone, there are numerous lords carrying the posthumous title “Lord Wen.”Many of the designations in these narratives eschew proper names: Tai Bo, or “Grand Elder” is a periphrastic denomination.Such descriptive circumlocutions (more on this below) present a character’s role and place in the hierarchy of the narrative. [10]
Important to the narrative here is not to introduce the historical background of the characters, but rather to establish their roles and relations.Grand Elder is presented as a wizened advisor, and we therefore expect him to present admonitions to the ruler, Lord Wen, who is faced with a problem resulting from the death of Ziren Chengzi.They are type-characters that adhere to a common form and we will encounter several of these characters throughout the texts.
The frames tend to use a recurring set of function words to structure the narrative.In the example cited above, the aspect marker ji 既“after” is used to mark the event that, once passed, anchors and provides the background context of the story.By comparison, in other narratives, xi 昔“In days of yore,”functions as a marker of a story from the past.Finally, wen 問“ask” in the frame introduces the central question that opens the dialogue and will lead towards the central conundrum of the text.In many of the texts, a character “hears”（ wen 聞），such as a precedent or a piece of wisdom, which provides the solution to the conundrum, or, presents a deepening of the first question towards a more profound understanding of the problem.
The example from * Zheng Wen Gong wen Tai Bo is interesting for its introduction of the dialogue, jun ruo yue 君若曰“The ruler said to the effect.”This structure echoes the wang ruo yue 王若曰“The king said to the effect” formula often seen in the Shang shu and as such marks the speech as a form of paraphrase with a hint of royal gravitas.While recognizable, it is not commonly used in historiographical narratives set in the Springs and Autumns.Its occurrence here is both a conceit to traditional forms all the while showing a trace of the narrator’s involvement in the phrasing of the text.The narrator, in marking the illocutionary force and type of speech of the character, suggests how the characters in the story should understand everything that follows.
Finally, this frame takes up another common element: illness as a pretext.The drama bestows a sense of immediacy and necessity to the story and places it within a larger group of deathbed narratives. [11] As the story proceeds, after Lord Wen’s question, the lion’s share of the narrative focuses on the long and final answer, effectively a monologue, by the Grand Elder.The primary narrator does not return anymore.The frame and opening question appear to have been a mere vehicle for the main focus of the text, i.e., Grand Elder’s arguments on how to rule.
The use of such narrative framing as a pretext for philosophical argument is employed quite commonly.The * Zhao Jianzi , for example, frames the narrative in the context of the court, where the newly appointed general Zhao Jianzi receives a’remonstrance from his elder, Fan Xianzi:
趙簡子既受命將軍。在朝，范獻子進諫，曰：……
Zhao Jianzi had just been made a general.When he was at court, Fan Xianzi offered a remonstrance, saying: …
The narrator indicates that what follows is supposed to be understood as a remonstrance: Fan Xianzi cautions Zhao Jianzi to take responsibility for his own actions and show proper behavior.The narrator follows up on this by noting that, seemingly out of the blue,“Zhao Jianzi asked Cheng Zhuan, saying”趙簡子問於成剸曰.By virtue of bringing these two seemingly unrelated scenes together, Cheng Zhuan’s advice is presented as an answer to Fan Xianzi’s admonishment and presented as the main ideological thrust of the narrative.
In short, these dialogues expand on a basic structure where a question（or problem) is specified or redirected before it is finally resolved.Compared to the speech genre markers specifying illocutionary force ( ruo yue 若曰， jin jian yue 進諫曰）in the opening frame, [12] the dialogues that follow in these two texts do not tend to mark how something is said.We can assume that the speech within the dialogue that ensues follows naturally from the opening question and should be understood in the same sense, as a remonstrance for example.As we will see below, however, the reader of the text also has other clues available so that they can generate an image of the relationships between the characters of the story.
Some of the narratives are more complex and introduce a number of scene changes to structure the narrative and events.Take the * Zheng Wu Furen gui ruzi , for instance.In this story, the heir of Lord Wu of Zheng is admonished by his mother, Lady Wu.He is cautioned not to interfere in government until after the mourning period, causing unrest among his ministers.Sir Bian, the senior high official and a benevolent uncle figure like Grand Elder, is sent to inquire, and the tension is finally resolved in the heir’s fatalistic answer to these queries.
The opening frame sets the scene at the wake of Lord Wu of Zheng:
鄭武公卒，既肂，武夫人規孺子，曰：……
Lord Wu of Zheng died, and after his coffin had been placed in a temporary grave, the wife of Lord Wu admonished her young child, saying: …
In the speech marked as an “admonition”（ gui 規），the mother of the future ruler introduces the central problem of this narrative.The ruler-to-be is both young and inexperienced, and will have problems securing his rule.Indeed, the heir is periphrastically introduced as ruzi 孺子（“young child” cognate with and certainly evocative of the image of a babe at his mother’s breast, ruzi 乳子）. [13] In her monologue, the wife of Lord Wu, who is not given a proper name by the narrator but merely a role, also suggests a solution: the heir is to remain silent and uninvolved in the affairs of governance until the mourning period has passed.Later on, Sir Bian seems to challenge this solution by noting the restlessness of the ministers.The remainder of the narrative (eliding the dialogue for ease of reference) develops the burial context of the opening frame to introduce two changes in scene:
The young child bowed, and then they wailed together.From that moment up to the date of burial, the young child did not dare to have any knowledge of it (i.e., the affairs of government), and left it to the high officials and the hundred functionaries.Everyone was afraid, and each respectfully carried out their affairs.Sir Bian admonished the high officials, saying: …
It was the Minor Auspicious sacrifice, and the high officials gathered to plan.They then sent Sir Bian to the lord, to say: …
The lord replied to Sir Bian, saying: …
Many historiographical narratives merely feature a simple alternation of the speaker, sometimes noting a scene change in passing.Time structure in these narratives is commonly highlighted with a limited set of connectives, especially nai 乃“then,”which generally marks the temporal movement into a new event within a scene, and yue 曰“saying,”to indicate the start of the speech.
The * Zheng Wu Furen gui ruzi is slightly more complex.The scenes are all events within the sequence of the burial ritual.The frame starts with a burial in a temporary grave, si 肂.The admonition of the young child in the first scene ends when he wails together with his mother, lin 臨.Then, after an ellipsis, [14] the narrative comes to the time of the actual burial, zang 葬，the setting for scene two.The final scene is placed at the Minor Auspicious Sacrifice, xiao xiang 小祥. [15]
What is more, the primary narrator is aware of the emotional state of the characters, noting that “everyone was afraid and each respectfully carried out their affairs” and describes the action that triggers a change of speaker,“the high officials gathered to plan.They then sent Sir Bian to the lord, to say …”While certainly not a major plot twist, these short descriptions show a rare use of the gaze of the primary narrator into the complexities of the characters and their motives.The majority of these narratives do not have the narrator revealing the inner states of the characters.Instead, a simple reporting of speech is much more common.Compared to the phrase,“Zhao Jianzi asked Cheng Zhuan, saying” quoted above, for example, the involvement of the narrator in the * Ruzi stands out.Most of the narratives discussed here include simple dialogues, and sometimes rather monologic responses by the interlocutors, and leave it at that.
Comparable narrative complexity can be found in the
Zi Fan Zi Yu
.As I have noted in earlier work, the narrative provides background drama and detail to Qin’s support of Prince Chong’er in his bid for power in Jin.
Especially the dialogue portion of the text stands out through its frequent reversal of reader’s expectations and witty subversion of the authority of the ruler by the advisors.While changes in scene have some minimal narration, the frequent and longer dialogues stand out in particular.Here I just present the narrative introductions of the dialogues, eliding any speech content:
[Prince Chong’] Er went from Chu and took to Qin on his heels and resided there for three years ▂.The lord of Qin thereupon summoned Mr.Fan and asked him ▂, saying: …
Mr.Fan replied, saying: …
After a while the lord then summoned Mr.Yu and asked him, saying: …
Mr.Yu replied, saying: …
The lord then summoned Mr.Fan and Mr.Yu, saying: …
Thereupon he bestowed upon each of them a sword belt and upper and lower garments, and praised them.Then he sent them back ▂.
The lord then asked Uncle Jian, saying: …
Uncle Jian replied, saying: …
The lord then asked Uncle Jian, saying: …
Uncle Jian replied, saying: …
Prince Chong’er asked Uncle Jian, saying: …
Uncle Jian replied, saying: …
In these dialogues, the advisor figures repeatedly correct and chide the ruler.This empowerment of the advisor in the dialogue, contrasts with the ostensible authority granted to Lord Mu of Qin in the frame.Where Lord Wen of Zheng mentioned above “went and asked him（Grand Elder) about it”文公往問之，Lord Mu of Qin “summons”( zhao 召）Chong’er’s advisors.At the ending of the first scene, Lord Mu “bestows”（ ci 賜）the advisors with gifts before “sending them off”（ shi 使）.These are acts belonging to the superior, but this ostensible power of the office does not lead the lord’s interlocutors into submission.Instead, they chide him on a rare tertiary level of narration, placing words in the ruler’s mouth by presenting hypothetical indirect speech; e.g.,“If this is what milord would call…”主如此謂.The primary narrator does not appear aware of any emotional complexity or motivations.Instead, the richness of the narrative is focalized by the advisors within the dialogue,“If he has the fortune to gain an advantage, he does not enjoy it on his own ▂, and wants everyone to share in it.”The power dynamic between advisor and ruler that plays out between the characters mimics the different access to discursive power by the primary narrator and the character narrators.
As with the * Ruzi , the structure of the narrative provides more than a mere indication of the progression of events through time, it adds a layer of narrative expectations, heightens drama, and sharpens contrasts.
Compared to the shorter narrative frames in the stories discussed previously, some texts take much more liberty.Their narrators provide rich descriptions of the setting to the point that it gains a prescriptive, involved, or even ideological dimension.By lacing the description of the setting with seemingly innocuous descriptions of character and motivation, the primary narrator appears to influence the audience’s reception of events by coloring the actions and characters.
The * Jin Wen Gong ru yu Jin is revealing in being rather non-dialogic.In effect, the narrative consists of a frame followed by a series of commands of Lord Wen of Jin, fresh in power, and closes with a list of achievements. [16] The “elders of the state”屬邦耆老receive their commands mutely and collectively, and they are not given a voice.The narrator looks back in time to report the words of the ruler and list his victories and achievements, providing a‘summary’of the reign of Lord Wen in a voice that brooks no opposition.The opening frame, while incomplete, hints at the bias of the narrator:
晋文公自秦入於晋，端冕
[王]母，毋察於好臧偏娭，皆見。明日朝屬邦耆老，命曰：
When Lord Wen of Jin entered Jin from Qin, he put on his purple robe and hat of office,..................[grand]mother, he refrained from distinguishing between the good and excellent, and the partial and lowly.They were all granted an audience.
The following day he held court with the elders of the state, and he commanded:
In describing Lord Wen as not distinguishing amongst courtiers, granting each and all an audience, the stock description of the lord in command putting on the apparel of his office is transformed into a prescriptive statement of ideal rule.Following the commands at court, the “inventions”作motif, a formula attributing historical firsts to famous rulers, is introduced to describe improvements to the army. [17] “As a result of (these reviews) he (accomplished) great success,”the narrator notes, following up with a list of victories to buttress this judgement.
Other narratives, such as the * Zi Yi , are more subtle.This complex narrative is dialogically sophisticated, featuring metaphor and simile encapsulated in coded song.Nevertheless, the opening frame presents a reading key causing the audience to judge the protagonist-ruler favorably. [18] Roughly three slips are devoted to the frame narrative of narration, detailing the fears and desires of the lord, describing idealized practices of governance, and the preparation and gathering undertaken by the lord and his three counselors to increase the army beyond its original size.Lord Mu uses this display of military might to assure the Chu emissary Mr.Yi that an alliance with Qin against Jin would be favorable to both:
既敗於殽，恐民之大病，移易故職。欲民所安，其亶不更。公益及三謀輔之，靡土不食，耄幼在公。陰者思陽，陽者思陰，民恒不寘，乃毁常各務。降上品之，辨官相代，乃有見功。公及三謀慶而賞之。乃券册秦邦之羨餘，自蠶月至于秋至備焉。聚及七年，車逸於舊數三百，徒逸于舊典六百，以視楚子儀於杏會。公曰：…
Having been defeated at Xiao, (Lord Mu of Qin) feared that the people would be greatly distressed, and would move and alter their former occupations.He wanted what would pacify the people, and that their trust would not change.The Lord increasingly joined with the three counselors to support them; there was no area that was not fed, and the elderly and infants were taken care of at public expense.(But) those in the shade desired the sun, and those in the sun desired shade, the people were continuously restless, and this ruined the regularity of everyone’s duties.(Lord Mu and his counselors) demoted superiors and evaluated them, and they differentiated officials to replace them, then they achieved results.The Lord joined with the three counsellors to laud and reward them.Then they registered the manpower and surplus of the Qin state, and they completed (the register) from the Month of the Silkworm (i.e., the height of spring) up to the Height of Autumn.They gathered (manpower and surplus) up to the 7th year (after the battle), and chariots exceeded previous numbers by three hundred, and troops exceeded the previous registers by six hundred.They showed them to Mr.Yi of Chu during the meeting at Xing.The lord said: …
In the dialogues that follow, no reference is made to military might and instead the focus shifts to literary artistry in carefully crafted songs riddled with figurative language.Just as in the
Zi Fan Zi Yu
, the primary and secondary levels of narration, i.e., the primary narrator and the character narrators, operate in two different registers.Where the former is prescriptive and guides the audience, the latter is encoded, and invites the audience to engage in a playful teasing out of intentions.
Even in the final lines of the dialogue, where Lord Mu asks what Mr.Yi will tell his ruler, he receives no straight answer but three metaphors instead.Perhaps the clear prescriptive tone of the frame,‘(our) Lord Mu was a good ruler despite his loss at Xiao,’is a strategy to mitigate the poetic vagueness of the message on the secondary level of narration.
The way a story is narrated, is crucial to how the contents are presented to the audience.In this chapter I have discussed the structure of these narratives.All narratives contain narrative frames that bracket and present the monologue or dialogue(s) that follow.This opening frame, together with simple and more complex scene changes, is the primary level of narration wherein the primary narrator tells the story.The narrator, even in simpler narratives, steers the reception of the story by marking the type of speech or by singling out attributes, feelings, and details of the characters.Through such focalization, the dramatis personae are placed in a certain perspective, guiding the way the audience judges their words and actions.Some of the narratives discussed here are narrated with more complexity than others, and a lot of the actual drama of the story is reserved for the dialogues, to which we turn now.
[1] Li, The Readability of the Past, 85
[2] For an analysis, see Maria Khayutina,“Die Geschichte der Irrfahrt des Prinzen Chong’er und ihre Botschaft,”in Kritik im alten und modernen China: Jahrbuch der Deutschen Vereinigung für Chinastudien 2, ed.Heiner Roetz (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 20–47.
[3] Compare the famous rendition in Zuo , Yin 1.
[4] See, for example, Chao Fulin,“Tan Qinghua jian Zheng Wu furen gui ruzi de shiliao jiazhi,”127.
[5] Compare texts such as the “Luo gao”洛誥and “Kang gao”康誥in the Shang shu 尚書.Note that in those texts the interlocutors to the king are often only indirectly present.Likewise, some of the devices in use in these texts date back to the lineage narratives included as early as the Shi Qiang Pan史墻盤；for instance, see David M.Sena,“Arraying the Ancestors in Ancient China: Narratives of Lineage History in the‘Scribe Qiang’and‘Qiu’Bronzes,” Asia Major 25.1 (2012): 63–81.
[6] See de Jong, Narrators and Narratees , and, Irene de Jong, Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004 [1987]) , for discussions concerning the various roles and levels of involvement of the narrator.The narrator in bronze inscriptions (donor) and in the Shang shu (royalty or scribe) tends to be at least indirectly involved or at least present in the context of narration whereas the texts in this volume tend to have an uninvolved narrator looking back in time.
[7] Compare for instance, Egan,“Narratives in Tso Chuan,” passim , in a discussion of the role of the narrator in the Zuo .For an enlightening discussion on narrators and focalization in the Iliad , see de Jong, Narrators and Focalizers .
[8] The audience of the text and the narratee addressed by the narrator within the text can be distinguished in the same way, see for example de Jong, Narrators and Narratees .This distinction does not impact the argument here and as such I refer to the text’s audience more broadly.
[9] Bal, Narratology , 8:“A choice is made from among the various‘points of view’from which the elements can be presented.The resulting focalization , the relation between‘who perceives’and what is perceived,‘colors’the story with subjectivity.”
[10] See for instance de Jong, Narratology and Classics: A Practical Guide , 182.Compare e.g.,“young child”孺子，or,“the one unable to cultivate”不穀.They indicate a particular role and coloring of the characters in the narrative, both in the address of others and in self-representation.
[11] Yegor Grebnev,“The Yi Zhoushu and the Shangshu : The Case of Texts with Speeches,”in Martin Kern and Dirk Meyer eds., Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy: Studies in the Thought and Composition of the Shangshu (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 249–280, and Paul Nicholas Vogt,“Towards a Metavocabulary of Early Chinese Deathbed Texts,”paper presented at The International Conference on the Tsinghua Bamboo Manuscripts 清華簡國際研討會，Hong Kong and Macao, 26–28 October 2017.
[12] Bakhtin has theorized on how speech genres used in day-to-day language are primary to the literary production of stories for instance.See Mikhail M.Bakhtin, Vern W.McGee trans.,“The Problem of Speech Genres,”in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 60–102.
[13] See Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese , 445.Compare also the argument in Liao Mingchun廖名春，“ Shangshu ‘ruzi’kao ji qita”尚書“孺子”考及其他， Wenxian 文獻 2019.5: 76–89, which provides a paleographical analysis to argue that the word means the same as “heir” sizi 嗣子.
[14] Using yi zhi 以至“up to” to gloss over details not germane to the plot and progress to the next scene.
[15] For these terms and their ritual significance, see Li Shoukui李守奎，“ Zheng Wu Furen gui ruzi zhong de sangli yongyu yu xiangguan de lizhi wenti”《鄭武夫人規孺子》中的喪禮用語與相關的禮制問題， Zhongguo shi yanjiu 中國史研究 2016.1: 11–18.
[16] As a form, this is much more akin to the Shang shu ’s indirect presentation of interlocutors.
[17] This formula calls to mind similar narratives about sage kings and mythic rulers of antiquity; see, for example, Michael Puett, The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
[18] It is unclear why the gong 公，Lord Mu of Qin, is not specifically identified in the text but only elliptically through reference to the battle at Xiao.Perhaps the narrative originated from Qin.Local narratives tended to refer to their own lord by honorific only.This would also explain the ideological slant of the text.