School
Mawangdui Silk Texts
Overview
The Mawangdui Silk Texts (traditional Chinese: 馬王堆帛書; simplified Chinese: 马王堆帛书; pinyin: Mǎwángduī Bóshū) are Chinese philosophical and medical works written on silk which were discovered at the Mawangdui site in Changsha, Hunan, in 1973. They include some of the earliest attested manuscripts of existing texts (such as the I Ching), two copies of the Tao Te Ching, a copy of Zhan Guo Ce, works by Gan De and Shi Shen, and previously unknown medical texts such as Wushi'er Bingfang (Prescriptions for Fifty-Two Ailments). Scholars arranged them into 28 types of silk books. Their approximately 120,000 words cover military strategy, mathematics, cartography, and the six classical arts: ritual, music, archery, horsemanship, writing, and arithmetic.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Seven or eight li to the west of the city there is what is called the King's new monastery, the building of which took eighty years, and extended over three reigns. It may be two hundred and fifty cubits in height, rich in elegant carving and inlaid work, covered above with gold and silver, and finished throughout with a combination of all the precious substances. Behind the tope there has been built a Hall of…
Confucius, Chinese literature
States what Mawangdui Silk Texts is.
Since only the simplest outlines of the objects are retained, it may eventually become a matter of doubt whether these really are schematic representations of natural objects, and whether they are not, even from the very beginning, geometrical ornamentations. Nevertheless the fact that there are continuous transitions from the developed animal form to the geometrical ornament, as occurs particularly in America, is…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Close in meaning to Mawangdui Silk Texts; the term itself is not named.
During all the revolutions that have since elapsed, the doctrines of Confucius have retained their hold of the Chinese mind, and the religion of China consists in little more than an attachment to these doctrines, and a veneration for their founder. With abstract notions of the Deity, and of the destiny of man when he quits this life, the Chinese do not trouble themselves; a moral, correct life, and especially an…
Voltaire, Voltaire's Romances, Complete in One Volume
Close in meaning to Mawangdui Silk Texts; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Chinese philosophy.