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Han scholar Huan Tan 桓譚 (c. 40 BC-32 AD) has attached two characteristic features to “Sandai shibiao” type historical tables that Sima Qian (c. 145 or 135–86 BC) inserted in his Shiji (The Grand Clerk’s Records): according to him, they are pangxing 旁行 and xieshang 邪上. For many centuries, scholars have not made the meaning of these features clear. The author relies on a typological analysis of writing style of excavated sources from early imperial China to offer his own interpretation. He suggests that the expression xieshang has two meanings. Narrowly speaking, it designates a writing style where characters are written along oblique lines, whereas, more broadly, it refers to forms or methods of computation relying on tools for divination (diagrams in the form of a tortoise or human figure, shipan 式盤 divination board and so on). Accordingly, pangxing ‘sideways’ would designate the horizontal writing style of documents that recorded the results of computations obtained in this way, in a tabular “Sandai shibiao” layout. |
