In Early China 39 I published an article entitled “Varieties of Textual Variants: Evidence from the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip *Ming Xun Manuscript,” in which in addition to discussing different types of variants seen in the Tsinghua manuscript *Ming xun 命訓 or The instruction on commands vis-à-vis the version of the text preserved in the Yi Zhou shu 逸周書 or Leftover Zhou documents, I also included complete translations of both the Tsinghua manuscript text and also the Yi Zhou shu version of the text.Footnote ¹ This article has barely had time to attract the notice of readers, but I hasten now to offer the following brief note correcting what I think is an error in it. In the most recent issue of the journal Jian bo 簡帛, Meng Yuelong 孟躍龍 has published an article entitled “Qinghua jian Ming xun ‘Shao ming _＝ shen’ de dufa: Jianlun gudai chaoben wenxian zhong chongwen fuhao de teshu yongfa” 清華簡《命訓》“少命_＝身”的讀法：兼論古代抄本文獻中重文符號的特殊用法 or “The reading of ‘Minor mandates _＝ the person’ in the Tsinghua manuscript Ming xun: With a discussion of a special use of the duplication mark in ancient copied documents” offering a new reading of one line in the Tsinghua manuscript (or perhaps an old reading, since he suggests that the reading in the received text is correct). More important than the correction of just this one line in the *Ming xun text, Meng's article makes reference to a series of other articles and on-line discussions published in China in the last several years concerning an important insight into ancient scribal practice.Footnote ² It is because of this issue's broader implications for the reading of ancient manuscripts that I take the opportunity of correcting a mistake of my own to call attention to it here.

On strip #10 of the *Ming xun manuscript, there is a sentence that reads:

I translated this as:

The corresponding sentence in the received text of “Ming xun” reads as follows:

I translated this passage as:

In the “Structured Translation of the Tsinghua University Manuscript *Ming Xun” that I appended to the article, I simply repeated the translation I had offered of the manuscript text, implying that I understood the text in this way. Although I did discuss the variant seen between the manuscript's ming li 命力 “to command force” and the received text's ming zhi 命之 “to command them” in the first portion of this sentence, and suggested that the manuscript's li 力 “force” was a simple scribal error, I did not comment at all on the more important variant at the end of the sentence between the manuscript's xiao ming _＝ shen 少命_＝身, which I translated as “the minor mandates command the person,” and the received text's xiao ming fa shen 小命罰身 “the minor mandates punish the person.” It is easy to see that in this translation, in which I simply followed the reading given by the Tsinghua editors, I understood the mark “_＝” after ming 命 “to command” to indicate that ming was to be repeated (i.e., ming ming 命命), which I rendered as literally as possible as “mandates command.” In offering such a “literal” translation, I rather blithely disregarded the logical incoherence this introduced into the text.

Meng Yuelong has read the sentence sensitive to its context, and suggests that the “duplication” mark here does not indicate that ming is to be repeated, but rather that the fa 罰 “punish” in the preceding clause is to be repeated; thus, “the great mandate punishes the world, the minor mandates punish the person.”Footnote ³ Shocking though this seems to be at first, Meng cites a series of recent studies pointing to this usage of the punctuation mark “_＝”. The first person to have called attention to this feature seems to have been Wei Yihui 魏宜輝, in an article entitled “Zailun Mawangdui boshu zhong de ‘shi _＝’ ju” or “Once again on the ‘shi _＝’ sentences in the Mawangdui silk manuscripts.”Footnote ⁴ In the Mawangdui manuscript *Tianwen qixiang za zhan 天文氣象雜占 or Miscellaneous prognostications of astronomy and meteorology, there is the following series of sentences referring to the appearance of comets:

The first interpretations of the mark “_＝” were as a standard duplication mark, indicating that that the shi 是 preceding it was to be read twice, that is: shi shi 是是. This in turn gave rise to the interpretation, apparently first suggested by Qiu Xigui 裘錫圭, that the first shi be read as the standard classical Chinese pronoun “this,” while the second shi be read as the colloquial Chinese copula “is.”Footnote ⁶ This attracted great attention because it would be more than five hundred years earlier than the earliest generally recognized occurrences of this usage, in the Shi shuo xin yu 世說新語 or A new account of tales of the world. Other scholars troubled by the grammatical anachronism this would entail suggested that the second “shi” might be read as the protograph of shi 寔, understood as a loan word for shi 實 “really.”Footnote ⁷

Similar instances of “shi 是 _＝” subsequently appeared in the still earlier Daybooks (rishu 日書), especially at Fangmatan 放馬灘.

These correspond to parallel passages in other Daybooks, which however read “shi wei 是胃 (i.e., 謂)” “this is called” instead of “shi 是 _＝,” as in the following examples from the Shuihudi 睡虎地 Daybooks.

Despite these parallels, these instances of “shi _＝ 是_＝” in the Daybooks were routinely read as “shi shi 是是,” whether in the sense of “this is” or “this really.”

However, in 2007 the Shanghai Museum manuscript Jing Gong yao 競公瘧 or “Duke Jing's Fever” was published with the following perplexing couplet:

The Shanghai Museum manuscript editor Pu Maozuo 濮茅左 commented, without further clarification, that the mark “_＝” here is a “duplication mark” (chongwen hao 重文號), indicating presumably that the entire character wai 外 is to be read twice; i.e., wai wai 外外;Footnote ¹² he did not indicate what this might mean. Others suggested that only a portion of the character is to be read twice, a feature commonly seen. Thus, He Youzu 何有祖 suggested that it be read as wai xi 外夕, meaning wai yi 外亦 “outside also”; Chen Wei suggested wai jian 外間, the latter word a loan word for jian 奸 “traitorous”; while Zhang Chongli 張崇禮 suggested wai bu 外卜, read as wai pu 外僕 “external servants.”Footnote ¹³ It is obvious that all of these suggestions were nothing more than guesses, really just desperate attempts to use what we know (or what we thought we knew) of scribal conventions to produce some meaning for the text. Confronted with the same dilemma, Liu Xinfang 劉信芳 came up with “an idea that is still lacking in evidence,” that the “_＝” mark indicates that the chong 寵 “favorite” in the first clause is to be repeated in the second clause; thus “now the internal favorite is met with censure, while the external favorite is Liangqiu Ju.”Footnote ¹⁴ In support of this reading, Liu cited the following sentence in the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋 or Springs and autumns of Yanzi:

With this, Wei Yihui first published his study in 2008, arguing that the “shi 是 _＝” passages in the Mawangdui manuscript *Tianwen qixiang za zhan and in the Fangmatan “Daybook” should be understood not as “this is” or “this really,” but rather as “this is called,” the “_＝” mark referring to an earlier explicit usage of “shi wei 是謂.” Wei's study was followed in the same year by Yang Xiquan 楊錫全 with a series of studies published on-line.Footnote ¹⁶ Yang adduced other evidence from Dunhuang 敦煌 manuscripts, some of which is suggestive of similar scribal practices, but which would seem to be too late to shed much light on Warring States, Qin and Han usage. However, his studies prompted considerable on-line discussion, with a consensus seeming to emerge that in addition to its well-known functions as a duplication mark and a ligature mark (hewen hao 合文號), this “_＝” mark could apparently also indicate the repetition of an earlier word, or even the abbreviation of a word that could otherwise be understood from context.

Given all of this evidence concerning the function of the “_＝” mark, it seems to me that Meng Yuelong is correct in pointing out that the passage 大命殜罰少命_＝身 in the Tsinghua manuscript *Ming xun is best understood as “the great mandate punishes the world; minor mandates punish the person.” I offer this brief note not only to correct an error in my own previous article, but especially to call colleagues' attention to yet another feature of early Chinese scribal practice.