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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]