Looking at the past : a description of the visible characteristics of the NeyYeh chapter of the GoanTzyy
Date
1994
Authors
Reeve, Michael A.H.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
In the past, scholarly work on the NeyYeh, the forty-ninth chapter in the GoanTzyy, has been undertaken from two perspectives: to explain where the text came from - its textual filiation; and to explain what it means - its textual exegesis. Much less work has been done on looking primarily at the features and characteristics of the text itself A. C. Graham, in his work Disputers of the Tao, claimed that the NeyYeh was "possibly the oldest 'mystical' text in China" (Graham 1989, 100). If we are to take the remark seriously, then there is a pressing need to arrive at a general consensus on the most basic question - what is the NeyYeh? This thesis provides a mapping of the visible features - what the text is - and investigates some of the repercussions involved in the description of a specific text.
As an introductory study of a description of the visible features of the NeyYeh, the work of this thesis has produced new information in five areas: i) the history of the GoanTzyy text especially concerning the pian numbering and Liou Shianq's role in the redaction process, ii) identification of patterns of word usage in the NeyYeh and the creation of concordances derived from an index of the text using a typology based upon the tzyh (written character), iii) the application of a new descriptive technique, the RIA (Robinson Index of Agreement), to a Pre-Hann text, iv) a suggested partitioning of the text into six lexically distinct segments based upon the RIA process. and v) a translation of the text emphasising the grammatical and lexical components of the Ney Yeh.