Rewriting Early Chinese Texts examines the problems of reconstituting and editing ancient manuscripts that will revise—indeed "rewrite"—Chinese history. It is now generally recognized that the extensive archaeological discoveries made in China over the last three decades necessitate such a rewriting and will keep an army of scholars busy for years to come. However, this is by no means the first time China’s historical record has needed rewriting. In this book, author Edward L. Shaughnessy explores the issues involved in editing manuscripts, rewriting them, both today and in the past.

The book begins with a discussion of the difficulties encountered by modern archaeologists and paleographers working with manuscripts discovered in ancient tombs. The challenges are considerable: these texts are usually written in archaic script on bamboo strips and are typically fragmentary and in disarray. It is not surprising that their new editions often meet with criticism from other scholars. Shaughnessy then moves back in time to consider efforts to reconstitute similar bamboo-strip manuscripts found in the late third century in a tomb in Jixian, Henan. He shows that editors at the time encountered many of the same difficulties faced by modern archaeologists and paleographers, and that the first editions produced by a court-appointed team of editors quickly prompted criticism from other scholars of the time. Shaughnessy concludes with a detailed study of the editing of one of these texts, the Bamboo Annals (Zhushu jinian), arguably the most important manuscript! ever discovered in China. Showing how at least two different, competing editions of this text were produced by different editors, and how the differences between them led later scholars to regard the original edition—the only one still extant—as a forgery, Shaughnessy argues for this text’s place in the rewriting of early Chinese history.

"The author is one of the few American scholars equipped to address these issues at a level beyond platitudes. His knowledge of the field is impressive: the notes refer to what must amount to hundreds of specialized studies, almost all of them by Chinese scholars and many in journals that are difficult to find in the United States. This is by far the best-documented discussion of these problems in any language." - Paul R. Goldin, author of After Confucius: Studies in Early Chinese Philosophy

夏含夷（Edward L. Shaughnessy），美國漢學傢，芝加哥大學教授。

1952年生於賓夕法尼亞州賽維剋立鎮（Sewickley）。

1970年進入聖母大學（University of Notre Dame），以宗教學為專業。

1974年畢業以後，曾在颱灣留學三年，隨愛新覺羅‧毓鋆學習三玄。

迴國以後，進入斯坦福大學（Stanford University）東亞語文係，1980年獲碩士學位，1983年獲博士學位，博士論文題目為“《周易》的編纂”。

1985年受聘為芝加歌大學東亞語文係助教授，之後一直在芝加哥大學作教，1997年晉升為顧立雅（Greel）中國古史名譽教授。

研究範圍：中國上古文化史、古文字學、經學、《周易》。

主要著作：《西周史料：銅器銘文》（1991），《易經：馬王堆帛書易經第一英文翻譯》（1996），《孔子之前：中國經典的創造研究》（1997），《溫故知新錄：商周文化史管見》（颱北：稻禾齣版社，1997），《古史異觀》（2005），《重寫中國古代文獻》（2006），編輯《中國古代新史料：閱讀銘文與寫本的指南》（1997），與魯惟一（Michael Loewe）閤編《劍橋中國古代史》（1999）。