A Possible Lost Classic: The *She ming, or *Command to She

Volume 8 of Qinghua daxue cang Zhanguo zhujian 清華大學藏戰國竹簡 con­tains a manuscript entitled by the editors *She ming 攝命 (*Command to She), which they argue is the original version of the ancient-script “Jiong ming” 囧命 (“Command to Jiong”) chapter of the Shangshu 尚書. I review the evidence for this and further provide a full translation of the text. I also consider possible implications of the *She ming for Western Zhou history, and how the text may have been transmitted from the time of its original composition, perhaps in the ninth century BCE, to the time that the Tsinghua manuscript was copied, probably in the fourth century BCE.