Holloway Kenneth W. Guodian: The Newly Discovered Seeds of Chinese Religious and Political Philosophy

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. — 198 p.Guodian is the name of a village in the central province of Hubei China. In the early 1990s, grave robbers looted a tomb there that had gone undetected for over two millennia. They left behind what they thought as a worthless pile of bamboo strips. In fact, these strips were a fantastic collection of manuscripts dating from around 300 b. c. e. These Guodian manuscripts are transforming our understanding of the formative era of China’s religious and political philosophy. This book will analyze these manuscripts with an eye toward reconstructing their worldview and will provide a window into a pivotal moment in Chinese history.