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This article explores lexical differences among several historical and philosophical texts composed between the fifth and the third centuries B.C. By tracing the changing usage of seven major terms of philosophical and political discourse, clear patterns of temporal change are demonstrated. These findings may suggest a new and reliable means of dating pre-imperial texts, or, more precisely, of dating their Ur-texts.
Several factors may have contributed to a reluctance to continue systematic exploration of the dating of pre-imperial texts. Aside from certain flaws in Karlgren's methodology, which raised doubts in his results, a more important factor that discouraged later researchers from continuing his efforts was the deep reappraisal of the nature of Chunqiu and Zhanguo writings. Modern studies, of which Mark E. Lewis's magnum opus Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1999) may be most representative, question the previous monochromatic picture of major historical and philosophical texts as being products by a single author, compiled within a short period of time. To the contrary, it is widely accepted today that these texts resulted from a long period of accretion, which included not just adding, but also editing out or modifying large portions of a text. Thus, the mere presumption of the fixed dating of a single text seems methodologically untenable. Instead we should prefer to discuss the dating of each passage, and such discussion in all but a few instances cannot but remain very speculative.3 So, if the dating of a single text proves to be largely undeterminable, then attempts to establish a general chronological framework may appear to be hopeless.
Despite the above reservations, which I generally share, I believe that there is potential benefit in reconsidering the dating of pre-imperial texts. Statements like "it is impossible to date pre-Han texts with any degree of accuracy" lead the research of the pre-imperial intellectual legacy to a dead end.4 While almost every received Western Zhou (1046-772), Chunqiu, and Zhanguo text indeed contains later additions and interpolations, this does not mean necessarily that the text becomes entirely non-datable. Unmistakable linguistic differences among pre-imperial texts, observed by Karlgren, Dobson, and others, strongly suggest that at least certain Ur-texts had been produced at a fixable time and space, and while...