Annotation and interpretation of the 'six virtues' (Liude) manuscript of the Guodian Chu Slips

The Guodian Chu Slips were unearthed in 1993 in tomb no.1 of the Guodian Ch u tombs in Jingmen, Hubei province. The archeological team suggested the to mb should be dated to the latter half of the Warring States period (mid-fou rth to early third century BC). The slips should be dated earlier than the tomb itself. There are in total over 800 bamboo slips in this case, includi ng some 730 inscribed slips. After restoration these were divided into the following sixteen texts: 'Laozi', 'Taiyi shenshui', 'Zhiyi', 'Duke Mu of Lu queries Zisi', 'Qiongda yishi', 'Wuxing', 'Tangyu zhidao', 'Zhongxin zhida o', 'Chengzhi wenzhi', 'Zundeyi', 'Xingzimingchu', 'Liude' and 'Yucong (4 p ieces)'. These pre-Qin manuscripts are both Daoist and Confucian in charact er. Composed of forty-nine slips, the 'Liude' text deals with Confucian pri nciples of human relationships. The texts mention three groups of interrela ted concepts: 'six virtues', 'six positions' and six vocations'. The six vi rtues are: duty, loyalty, knowledge, faithfulness, wisdom and humaneness; t he six positions are: ruler, minister, husband, wife, father and son; the s ix vocations are: order, service, leadership, subservience, instruction and learning. Once the six types of human relationships are harmonized then so ciety and state may be stabilized. The basis for all relationships is filia l piety and proper respect among brothers. The 'Liude' text is not extant a mong the traditional transmitted texts and must be considered a lost Confuc ian text of the Warring States period. This article uses the transcriptions published in Chu Bamboo Slips for Guodian (published in May, 1998 by Wenwu ) as a basis along with research on the slips published since that time. Th e article is divided into two: general summary, where I explain the meaning of the text as a whole, as well as discuss the development of its thought, followed by annotation and interpretations. In this main part of the artic le I explicate the characters and phrases of the slips, using traditional t ransmitted texts as evidence. I also provide some new interpretations for t he links among the slips.