Repetitions Within and Between Chapters in the Xunzi 荀子: Traces of Liu Xiang’s 劉向 Editorial Work

While the Xunzi 荀子 is often taken as a coherent text authored by the historical Xun Kuang 荀況 (ca. 314–ca. 238 BCE ), it exhibits discontinuities and high rates of repetition, suggesting that many chapters are compilations, not single-author texts. Some meaningful parallels indicate the presence of a skillful compiler who collected variations on the same topic. The best candidate for such an editor appears to be Liu Xiang 劉向 (79–8 BCE ). While Liu claimed to have deleted a large number of “duplicates” from his materials, he also seems to have purposefully integrated some of them into his final version of the text. Thereafter, a pian 篇 (chapter) was no longer the same as its pre-Han ancestor; it had become longer and more comprehensive, yet not a linear unit of meaning.