Elvin, Chapter 5
On page 89, Elvin mentions: "The horse appeared some time probably in the early second millenium BCE... Divination based on the shoulder blades of large animals, or the undershells of turtles, and interpreting the cracks that appeared when they were pierced with a heated instrument.... The technique was most refined along the east coast. There was thus no single key factor that emerged in one priviledged place." (Elvin, 89)
Now, perhaps I'm wrong, but I think this makes absolutely no sense. What does the domestication of the horse in China have to do with divination by piercing hard parts of animals with hot rods, and then what do both of those have to do with military advantage? Seriously, Elvin just wrote whatever came to mind, didn't he? His next paragraph begins with "Let us anchor these comments in some evidence" (Elvin, 90) and he still fails to anchor anything in evidence.
P. 90: "It also instructed subordinate states/ That their enfeoffment was good fortune's basis", firstly, why on earth would he spend a whole page mentioning the rhyme scheme of the poetry and his system for marking it if he isn't going to use it. Secondly, the definition of enfeoffment as in the Oxford English Dictionary. (Wow, they're as bad as Elvin...)
On a slightly more serious and less rant-y note, I'm mostly confused about where Elvin is taking this. It feels as though he's cramming a lot of non-sequiturs into one chapter.
There seems to be a vague thread of logic that he's following, most notably that the rise of the agrarian city led to the rise of militarization, which led to the concept of war. At least, I think that's what he's trying to say. The key phrase seems to be "the militarized urban-agrarian state". But where the domestication of horses in China and the divination via animal bones fit in, I still don't know.
Now, perhaps I'm wrong, but I think this makes absolutely no sense. What does the domestication of the horse in China have to do with divination by piercing hard parts of animals with hot rods, and then what do both of those have to do with military advantage? Seriously, Elvin just wrote whatever came to mind, didn't he? His next paragraph begins with "Let us anchor these comments in some evidence" (Elvin, 90) and he still fails to anchor anything in evidence.
P. 90: "It also instructed subordinate states/ That their enfeoffment was good fortune's basis", firstly, why on earth would he spend a whole page mentioning the rhyme scheme of the poetry and his system for marking it if he isn't going to use it. Secondly, the definition of enfeoffment as in the Oxford English Dictionary. (Wow, they're as bad as Elvin...)
On a slightly more serious and less rant-y note, I'm mostly confused about where Elvin is taking this. It feels as though he's cramming a lot of non-sequiturs into one chapter.
There seems to be a vague thread of logic that he's following, most notably that the rise of the agrarian city led to the rise of militarization, which led to the concept of war. At least, I think that's what he's trying to say. The key phrase seems to be "the militarized urban-agrarian state". But where the domestication of horses in China and the divination via animal bones fit in, I still don't know.
No comments:
Post a Comment