楚帛书

choi

Ian Johnson, Retracing a History Scripted 2,300 Years Ago, from China to the US. New York Times, June 8, 2018.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/ ... script-sackler.html


Note:
(a) Today, the cn.nytimes.com does not publish its translation.
(b) "the ancient document, known as the Chu Silk Manuscript 楚帛书 * * * Now, a prominent Chinese historian and archaeologist has pieced together its remarkable odyssey [from China to US in a] 440-page study * * * [which] is largely because of the work of Prof Li Ling 李零 [1948- ; male] of Peking University, a quiet, intense man considered one of the leading scholars on ancient Chinese texts."
(c) "About a decade ago, he began investigating the silk's excavation and what happened to it afterward, which led him to interview two of the original tomb robbers and examine records at museums in Kansas City, Boston, New York and Washington [the American museums that the Manuscript passed through before being ensconced in Sackler ]. * * * it dates to the crucial Warring States period, when lasting Chinese traditions such as Confucianism and Taoism took shape. It is also important because it offers the earliest descriptions of the gods that Chinese worshiped in that formative period."

(d) "In 1942 [sone sources said 1839s, but this NYT report states Prof Li interviewed tomb raider(s). So 1942 is probably correct], tomb raiders in the Zidanku suburb of the central Chinese city of Changsha [长沙市東郊杜家坡子彈庫附近的一座古墓: zh.wikipedia.org]unearthed a remarkable find: an intact tomb that included a sword, a scabbard and a silk document, blackened with age. * * * According to Professor Li's research, the thieves sold the loot to a local dealer * * * It was purchased less than two years later by an antiquities dealer and amateur historian named Cai Jixiang 蔡季襄. * * * But Changsha was at the center of Japan's last-gasp offensive to defeat Chinese forces in World War II [四次长沙会战, from September 1939 to August 1944; all supervised by general 薛岳; Changsha fell in the fourth campaign]. * * * Mr Cai escaped with his four remaining children to a nearby mountain town. * * * Unable to consult other scholars or even basic reference books, Mr. Cai still managed to puzzle out most of its script. He discovered that it spoke of how humans dealt with fate and death — thoughts close to his heart.  He wrote an essay with his conclusions, drew a precise map of the Zidanku site and, to explain why he had done all of this, added a friend's detailed account of the suicides of his wife and daughter.  A local printer published the work in 1945."
(i) scabbard (n): "a sheath for a sword, dagger, or bayonet"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scabbard
(ii)
(A) 蔡季襄, 晚周繒書考證. 藝文印書館, 1945 (reprinted in 1972).
https://books.google.com/books/a ... tml?id=vLk8AAAAMAAJ
(B) 藝文印書館  Yee Wen Publishing Company
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/藝文印書館
(founded in 1952 in Taipei)
)e) "Two years later, Mr Cai traveled to Shanghai to sell some of his antiques. Japan had been defeated * * * In Shanghai, he met an old acquaintance, John Hadley Cox, a 34-year-old American who had worked for the Yale-China Association in the 1930s.

Yale-China Association
www.yalechina.org
(based in New Haven, CT; "雅礼协会是创立于1901年的私人非营利机构")

历史沿革:

"雅礼协会的历史发展与名称由来[:] 雅礼协会建立伊始是耶鲁外国传教团（Yale Foreign Missionary Society）的一个组成部分。1913年之前，人们非正式地将雅礼协会称为“中国耶鲁”。从一开始，雅礼协会就是一个无派别的宗教组织。到了上个世纪二十年代，雅礼协会已经不再公开宣传自身为纯粹传教团体。1934年，雅礼协会重组为世俗组织 ['secular organization': English version of the website]，并于1975年正式采用 '雅礼协会' 这一名称。

"1901 - 1951[:] 雅礼协会是19世纪末美国大学本科校园的宗教热情的产物。雅礼协会由一些耶鲁毕业生和教职员工成立于1901年，是耶鲁外国传教团的一部分。开创者致力于在海外传播基督教，建立基督教的海外基础。他们选择中国开展事业的部分原因，是要向1892届耶鲁毕业生贺拉斯•特雷西•比特金 [Horace Tracy PITKIN: ditto] 致敬，他曾经在中国传教并于1900年死于义和团事件 [Boxer Rebellion: ditto]。他们选择湖南省长沙市作为运行基地，是与其他传教团体商讨的结果。

(f) "Mr Cox was now a key officer in the Office of Strategic Services, the American military intelligence service that preceded the C.I.A. Even before the Japanese surrender in 1945, Mr Cox had been sent to Shanghai to collect intelligence. * * * 'It's fair to say it was smuggled out of China,' said Lai Guolong 来国龙, a professor at the University of Florida who specializes in Chinese antiquities laws. * * * Mr Cox — who went on to pursue research into ancient China * * * In 1964, desperate for money, Mr Cox sold a cache of his collection that included the manuscript at an unknown price to a collector, JT Tai [戴福保，字润斋], acting on behalf of one of America's most famous arts patrons: Arthur M Sackler [1913 – 1987; Jewish, MD from NYU; a psychiatrist]. * * * Mr Sackler had made his fortune by applying the principles of Madison Avenue to the pharmaceutical industry. * * * Mr Sackler had made his fortune by applying the principles of Madison Avenue to the pharmaceutical industry."

But Purdue Pharma was founded by his two younger brothers: Mortimer (1916-2010) and Raymond (1920 – 2017), not Arthur. Based in Stamford, CT, Purdue Pharma, makes painkillers such as Oxycontin, and is privately owned and operated by the families of Raymond and Mortimer Sackler (families worth $13 billion in 2016).
(g) The present owner of the Manuscript is Arthur M Sackler Foundation (1965- ; a private museum in Manhattan), whose president is Elizabeth A Sackler (Arthur's daughter; Arthur had four children).