Bamboo and wooden slips

Bamboo and wooden slips (Chinese: 简牍; pinyin: jiăndú) were one of the main media for literacy in early China. The long, narrow strips of wood or bamboo typically carry a single column of brush-written text each, with space for several tens of Chinese characters. For longer texts, many slips may be bound together in sequence with thread. Each strip of wood or bamboo is said to be as long as a chopstick and as wide as two. The earliest surviving examples of wood or bamboo slips date from the 5th c. BC during the Warring States period. However, references in earlier texts surviving on other media make it clear that some precursor of these Warring States period bamboo slips was in use as early as the late Shang period (from about 1250 BC). Bamboo or wooden strips were the standard writing material during the Han dynasty and excavated examples have been found in abundance.^[1] Subsequently, paper began to displace bamboo and wooden strips from mainstream uses, and by the 4th c. AD bamboo had been largely abandoned as a medium for writing in China. Bamboo and wooden slips are now no longer used, as they have now been replaced by paper.

The Shanghai Museum corpus was purchased through auction in Hong Kong the year after the Guodian tomb was excavated, and is believed to have come from a tomb in the same area. The Tsinghua collection was donated by an anonymous alumnus who purchased it through auction, with no indication of its origin. The others are from identified tombs.

See also

• Bamboo Annals
• Mawangdui Silk Texts
• Chu Silk Manuscript
• Oracle bone

References