Shanghai Museum bamboo slips

The Shanghai Museum bamboo strips (lit: Bamboo Books of Chu in the Warring States Period in Shanghai Museum) is a collection of ancient Chinese texts from the Chu state dating to the Warring States period and written in ink on strips of bamboo. The texts originated through illegal excavation, probably of a tomb in Hubei or Hunan province. They appeared on the Hong Kong market in 1994, and were acquired by the Shanghai Museum. The large size of the collection and the significance of the texts for scholarship make it one of the most important discoveries of early Chinese texts.

The manuscripts have been published in nine volumes by the Shanghai Museum starting in 2001, under the supervision of Ma Chengyuan.

Transcription
The text shown on the right, reading downwards and from right to left (with punctuation and damaged characters added) is: