The Ji zhong discovery in AD 279, is an important event in the paleography of ancient China.

Robbers opened the tomb of King Xiang'ai of Wei (r. 318 BC-296 BC) and found there a corpus of ancient bamboo slips

Bamboo and wooden slips (writing material)

Bamboo and wooden slips 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...

. Their discovery became a source of textological studies that were impossible since the editorial work of Liu Xiang and Liu Xin

Liu Xin

Liu Xin , later changed name to Liu Xiu , courtesy name Zijun , was a Chinese astronomer, historian, and editor during the Xin Dynasty . He was the son of Confucian scholar Liu Xiang and an associate of other prominent thinkers such as the philosopher Huan Tan...

 of Han.

The importance of Ji zhong find is compared to the Guodian discovery

Guodian Chu Slips

The Guodian Chu Slips were unearthed in 1993 in Tomb no. 1 of the Guodian tombs in Jingmen, Hubei. The archeological team suggested the tomb should be dated to the latter half of the Warring States period...

 for the modern scholarship.

The initial editorial work for the found slips was done by Xun Xu (d. 289), Director of the Imperial Library, though it was questioned by his successors. Among his editions, only two have survived; the large number of quotations shows extent of Xun Xu work's influence.

Among Ji zhong texts, the most profound influence was the Bamboo Annals

Bamboo Annals

The Bamboo Annals is a chronicle of ancient China. It begins at the earliest legendary times and extends to the Warring States Period , particularly the history of the Wei state...

, but the Bamboo Annals was not the only text retrieved. Collectively known as Jí zhŏng shū 汲塚書, it also included the Guo yu

Guoyu (book)

The Discourses of the States or Guoyu is a classical Chinese history book that collected the historical records of numerous states from Western Zhou to 453 BC. Its author is unknown, but it is sometimes attributed to Zuo Qiuming, a contemporary of Confucius...

, I Ching

I Ching

The I Ching or "Yì Jīng" , also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes and Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts...

, Mu tian zi zhuan, several Warring States period glossaries, and other titles of interest.

Though the majority of the collection have subsequently been lost, the restoration work, which involved identifying a great number of variant scripts as well as collating fragmented bamboo strips and finding parelles in the received literature of the time, sparked renewed interest in ancient texts and epigraphy among Xun Xu's contemporaries such as Lu Shen 呂忱, who extended upon Shuowen Jiezi

Shuowen Jiezi

The Shuōwén Jiězì was an early 2nd century CE Chinese dictionary from the Han Dynasty. Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character dictionary , it was still the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give the rationale behind them , as well as the first to use the...

to write Zilin 字林, Guo Pu 郭璞, who wrote annotations to Erya

Erya

The Erya is the oldest extant Chinese dictionary or Chinese encyclopedia. Bernhard Karlgren concluded that "the major part of its glosses must reasonably date from" the 3rd century BC....

爾雅, Sancang 三蒼, Fangyan

Fangyan

The Fāngyán , edited by Yang Xiong, was the first Chinese dictionary of dialectal terms. The full title is Yóuxuān shǐzhĕ juédài yǔ shì biéguó fāngyán "Local speeches of other countries in times immemorial explained by the Light-Carriage Messenger," which alludes to a Zhou Dynasty tradition of...

方言, Shan Hai Jing

Shan Hai Jing

Shan Hai Jing is a Chinese classic text, and a compilation of early geography and myth. Versions of the text have existed since the 4th century BC, and by the early Han Dynasty it had reached its final form. It is largely a fabled geographical and cultural account of pre-Qin China as well as a...

山海經, and Mu tian zi zhuan, and Zhang Hua

Zhang Hua

Zhang Hua , style name Maoxian , was a Jin Dynasty official and poet. He was a native of Fangcheng County, Zhili.-Background:...

 張華, who wrote an encylopedic treatise on wide-ranging topics, supposedly in a thousand scrolls, the Bowu Zhi 博物志, to note a few.

Sources

• Edward L. Shaughnessy, Rewriting Early Chinese Texts, NY Press, 2006
• Fang Xuanling et al., Book of Jin
  Book of Jin
  The Book of Jin is one of the official Chinese historical works. It covers the history of Jin Dynasty from 265 to 420, which written by a number of officials commissioned by the court of Tang Dynasty, with the lead editor being the Prime Minister Fang Xuanling, drawing mostly from the official...
  
  晋书
• Zhang Hua, Bowu Zhi, 博物志