“Huang niao” 黃鳥 (Yellow Birds) and Poetic Sequence as a Substrate for Narrative History in the Anhui University Warring States Bamboo-slip Shijing manuscript

The Shijing 詩經 (Canon of Odes), allegedly compiled by Confucius, has served for millennia as a paradigm of elite expression. Since the early first century CE, prefaces embedded in the Maoshi 毛詩 (Mao-annotated Shijing) recension have identified a specific historical significance for each ode. But are Shijing odes intrinsically historical? This question has been a matter of controversy since the twelfth century, especially as it regards odes in the Guofeng 國風 (Airs of States) section. These odes, according to the prevailing modern view, are folk songs that have been misread as historical texts, primarily on the basis of the Maoshi prefaces. However, as Shijing hermeneutics enters the twenty-first century, newly unearthed sources from the Warring States period (c. 475-221 BCE) call for a reassessment of this view. These sources include Shijing quotations, proto-commentarial materials, and now a partial bamboo
manuscript of the Guofeng odes, held by Anhui University and published in 2019. Starting from an examination of the ode “Huang niao” 黃鳥 (Yellow Birds) as found in both the Maoshi and the new manuscript, I identify the sequence of odes—rather than the prefaces in particular—as the ultimate substrate on which historical meaning is constructed. Moreover, based in part on a broader analysis of textual and sequential variants in the new manuscript, I trace the historical hermeneutic in Guofeng odes to their earliest date of compilation, several centuries prior to the Maoshi prefaces.