Online Resources for Chinese Palaeography. Yes, again! 

When I joined the Digital Orientalist, I did so motivated by the desire to share with colleagues in Chinese studies digital resources and databases that help in researching ancient manuscripts. I did so in two pieces, and then reflected a bit on the pros and cons of using data made available by others. The more I used sources, the more I discovered new ones, and so I raised a few questions about the sustainability of all these databases in March 2023, in conjunction with the upcoming conference on sustainability in the DH by the Digital Orientalist. 

And now that I return to reviewing databases, what I first joined the DO to do, I find myself in need of a recap! Not just because new sources have appeared in the last few months, such as the new Full-text database of Warring States manuscripts 戰國竹簡全文資料庫, but also because databases that I have already reviewed quickly evolved. 

So in this piece I do a recap, but with a different approach. Instead of reviewing source by source, I will list which databases are useful starting from three questions that anyone working with manuscripts may face at some point. One note: all of these resources should always be auxiliary to using publications with complete images of the manuscripts, and reading the relevant scholarship. 

Research Question (RQ): you want to read a manuscript online, without having to dig out books with the original publication.

Your best choice for this is currently the new Full-text database of Warring States manuscripts mentioned above. As of November 2023, you can search directly for the manuscript title. For example, by searching for 性自命出, one of the most famous manuscripts from the Guodian corpus published in 1998, you are redirected to the full text: 

Click on “red more” 閱讀更多 to visualize the entire text. There list of the texts that have been uploaded is given by corpora in the introduction page. A few issues with the resource: 

1. The authors of this database decided to provide the direct transcription, i.e. the reflection of what is written on the bamboo strip. Therefore, the direct transcription writes , where the interpretative transcription would have 作. If you don’t know what word this graph stands for, you cannot read the text without opening at least three more tabs. Conversely, this also limits your search: if you type 作, you are only given two results, those occasions where the graph does indeed write 作 and not .
2. The search is also impeded by the use of brackets, which seem not to be excluded. For example, while working on *Then he commanded 迺命, I used the database to search for it. I started from a line in the text, 毋廢朕命 “do not waste my command”. But the database could find nothing, because in the database, it is given as 毋X(X/廢)朕命 (where X stands for a glyph that cannot be typed). The presence of ” ) ” between 廢 and 朕 prevented the result from appearing.
3. Several texts are organized in sections according to the interpretations of the authors. This may or may not reflect the scholarly consensus. 

But overall, it is a good resource that provide a more scholarly alternative to simply searching on google or baidu “manuscript name + 全文.” I would use the database to get a good initial direct transcription, which does not always match the one provided by the editors, as some graphs are interpreted differently), and then you begin to search for competing transcriptions and studies on the text, to produce an accurate reading. 

There are few alternatives to this. CText had started a version of it, but the section never took off. Comprehensively so, because as I mentioned elsewhere, it may take up to years to land on an interpretative transcription that solves all orthographic and interpretative issues in a new text. 

RQ: you have transcriptions of a Warring States manuscript (maybe even competing ones), and want to see by yourself how a word is written on the manuscript. 

First option, as usual, is to look at the original publication. But you may not have immediate access to it. 

For this, you have more alternatives. A good option is the Bamboo and Silk database by Wuhan University, which I reviewed here. It seems that the input of new thumbnails has stopped, but this remains a valuable source, especially because you can see from the homepage which texts are available to search. For example, if you are working with a manuscript from the Tsinghua vol. 10, you will understand right away that this won’t help you, as the database stopped at volume one (see overview of the series here). 

A second alternative is HUMANUM (also reviewed in 2021). This gives you much more than just the thumbnails when you search for a word, but you don’t have an overview of which manuscripts have been added. So you have to search for your word, and try your luck. 

Finally, we also have the Open Ancient Chinese Characters Glyphs Database 開放古文字字形庫, reviewed here. A plus of the HUMANUM and the OACCGD is that you can look at ways of writing the same word in excavated sources other than Warring States manuscripts, such as in bronze inscriptions 金文, Han manuscripts, or transmitted sources. 

RQ: you have heard about excavated sources, but you don’t have a good sense of what is out there. 

In that case, I would suggest that you forget about these databases. Start with Wikipedia and Baidu 百度 searches to find the relevant publications cited for these entries (entries such as this or this are reliable); use online forums like the one run by Wuhan’s Center for Bamboo and Silk Manuscripts; check out issues of Excavated Documents 出土文獻 or of Bamboo and Silk 簡帛 to see what scholars are talking about. The database by Enno Giele is still available, although it was discontinued in 2015 (a new one seems to be coming). Spend some time with keyword searches and reading news, and you will gradually find yourself more and more comfortable.