by An Liu
53. Kuafu , “Bragging Father,” was a strongman of legend who raced the sun. See also 4.16.
54. Mi Fei was the goddess of the Luo River. See CC 1/3/4 and 5/18/16.
55. The Weaver Girl was the divine daughter of the Heavenly Thearch, who took a humble cowherd as a husband.
56. literally means “a film over a diseased eye,” thus possibly a disease of the cornea rather than (like cataracts) a disease of the lens. According to Gao You, the bark of the osmanthus is boiled to produce a green liquid with which the eye is washed. See Zhang Shuangdi, 1:195n.30.
57. Similar statements appear in 9.11 and 13.14. A zhang , sometimes (as here) translated as “fathom,” is a linear measure of ten Chinese feet (chi ), or approximately seven and a half feet in English measure.
58. This description of the “age of Utmost Potency” is similar in sentiment to ZZ 9/23/28– 9/24/4.
59. The Yellow Emperor, or Yellow Thearch (Huangdi ), was a legendary ruler of high antiquity, said variously to be the original ancestor of the Chinese people and the inventor of the state and of warfare.
60. The “Nine Vacancies” and “Nine Boundaries” are synecdoches for Heaven and Earth. See Zhang Shuangdi, 1:206n.23.
61. Kun Wu was the progenitor of the dynastic line of the Xia. See Zhang Shuangdi, 1:207n.28.
62. , literally, “to bore a round socket for a square peg.”
63. This line occurs in the famous “fasting of the mind” passage in ZZ 4/10/7.
64. When the mind focuses on an external object, energy in the form of Quintessential Spirit (jingshen) is projected onto it from the spirit within. Normatively, as the subject’s attention moves on, this energy should return to the subject and dissolve into the larger internal fund of energy that composes the spirit (vacuity).
65. A similar criticism of Confucians and Mohists appears in 13.7.
66. Rejecting Lau’s (HNZ 2/17/1) emendation of you for .
67. This is a paraphrase of two lines from ZZ 6/17/15, which read : “What kills life is not death; what gives birth to life is not life.” See Lau, HNZ, 17n.1.
68. “Northern Bank” was a song of ancient Chu. Apparently there was a dance that accompanied the music. See CC 9/23/13. “Northern Bank” appears as “Waving Lotuses” .
69. “Green Waters” was the name of a song, perhaps a lost Ode. See Zhang Shuangdi, 1:227–28n.6.
70. Disregarding Lau’s (HNZ 2/17/20) proposed emendation. Wang Niansun argues that “one” and “ten” have been transposed and that this line should read, “If ten people nurture it and one person harvests it,” but the original ordering seems to read well in context.
71. Rejecting Lau’s (HNZ 2/17/25) proposed emendation.
72. Lau (HNZ 2/17/26) proposes that this be amended to “The Nine Tripods were heavy,” deleting the final character “flavor ” . Zhuang Kuiji notes that the Taiping Yulan contains an alternative reading without “flavor” and that the commentary remarks, “When the practice of the Moral Potency of the monarch was clear the tripods were heavy, when he was wicked the tripods were light” (Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:225n.3). The elimination of “flavor” here seems to break the parallelism, and the line as written works well thematically in context.
73. The “Crimson Writings” and the “Green Chart” are fabled texts variously understood as the revelations of powerful deities or of Heaven itself, which are said to have appeared at particularly auspicious moments in history to both guide and legitimate the efforts of great sages. These “texts” are alluded to occasionally in pre-Han literature (in Analects 9, Confucius laments, “The [Yellow] River does not give up its chart!”). The lore surrounding them became increasingly elaborate in the Han with the proliferation of wei shu (“weft” texts or apocrypha).
74. Xu You was a legendary hermit, attested to in many early texts, who supposedly refused Yao’s offer of abdication. According to Gao You, Fang Hui , Shan Juan , and Pi Yi all were hermits during the time of Yao. Pi Yi appears in ZZ 7/20/3, 12/30/13, and 22/60/31. Shan Juan appears in ZZ 28/81/15 and 29/90/16 and in LSCQ 15.3/83/6.
75. Tang and Yu —that is, Yao and Shun—the last of the mythical predynastic sage kings. Yao found his sons unworthy and ceded the throne to the commoner Shun; Shun in turn ceded the throne to the flood-tamer Yu .
76. Jie (ca. 1550 B.C.E.) and Djou (ca. 1050 B.C.E.) were the legendary or semilegendary last rulers of the Xia and Shang (Yin) dynasties, famous as exemplars of royal misrule.
77. A device with which King Djou tortured and killed people by making them walk across a red-hot metal beam, it is also mentioned in 10.89, 11.1, 12.35, 15.2, and 21.4. See chap. 11, n. 9.
78. Another torture device. The victim was placed on the metal pillar while fire was stoked below. When the pillar got too hot and the victim fell into the flames, the king would laugh. See Zhang Shuangdi, 1:237n.9.
79. King Djou supposedly ordered this done to Bi Gan, to see whether the heart of a worthy was any different from that of an ordinary man.
80. King Djou ordered this done to a knight who could ford cold streams, to see whether there was something unusual about his marrow. The story is recounted in LSCQ 23.4/152/13.
81. According to Gao You, the earl of Mei recommended the lord of Gui’s daughter to Djou as a great beauty. On seeing her, Djou was displeased, whereupon he had both the daughter and the earl literally cooked into a meat sauce (the verbs translated here as “minced” and “pulverized”). Gao notes an alternative story in which the earl of Mei was punished for remonstrating. See Zhang Shuangdi, 1:237n.11.
82. Liyang was a district in Huainan (in present-day Anhui Province) whose administrative capital was evidently destroyed by some Atlantis-like natural disaster. Gao You recounts a story of an old widow who was warned of the impending disaster. See Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:239n.18.
83. Gaoxia is not identified, but it is evidently a plant with fatty or greasy properties. Zizhi is the Japanese glossy ganoderma, related to the fungus known as lingzhi . See “Names of a Selection of Asian Fungi,” at http://www.plantnames.unimelb.edu.au/Sorting/Fungi_Asian.html.
84. Qiji was a legendary thoroughbred said to be capable of traveling a thousand li in a single day.
85. The wuhao , or Cudrania tricuspidata, is related to the mulberry. According to Gao You, its wood makes especially strong bows. See Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:241n.28. Its leaves can be fed to silkworms as a substitute for mulberry leaves. See 5.3. The Cudrania is the emblematic tree of the eighth month. See 5.8.
86. Gao You offers two explanations: (a) Xizi was a southern land renowned for its excellent bows, and (b) Xi Ziyang was a great bowyer of Zheng. See Zhang Shuangdi, 1:241n.28.
87. Odes 3, “Juan’er .” Some commentators and translators understand the last line to mean that the narrator has laid down her basket by the side of the road.
Three
CELESTIAL PATTERNS
“CESTIAL PATTERNS” introduces readers to astronomy and related subjects, including cosmology, positional astronomy, calendrics, mathematical harmonics, and astrology. Although some passages may strike modern readers as both obscure and highly technical, from the point of view of Han intellectual history this chapter treats its topics in rather general terms, omitting the sorts of technical detail that would be the province of specialists. Readers of this chapter would be able to understand a situation in which these topics arose (such as a discussion at court of astrologically based policy) but not themselves be practicing astrologers. The principal message of the chapter is that all things in the cosmos are interconnected, that human plans and intentions are subject to the influence of various cosmic cycles and correlations, and that such cycles and correlations can be understood and taken into account in the formulation of policy.
The Chapter Title
“Tianwen” can be understood as having two complementary meanings, depending on how one construes the grammar of the phrase: “Heaven Adorned,” noun plus past-participle verb, and “Celestial Patterns,” adjective
plus noun. Both meanings are valid, and both would have been present to some extent in the mind of a Han-dynasty reader. In English, however, we must choose one or the other, and in our view the second sense is dominant. The modern Chinese word tianwen is translated in English as “astronomy,” but generally with a wider range of meanings than the English term conveys; for example, it includes atmospheric phenomena such as meteorology and auroras.
Summary and Key Themes
The chapter begins with a lyrical account in parallel prose of how the cosmos originated in undifferentiation and evolved into the familiar world of phenomena through the action of yin and yang. This section ends with the battle between the Titan-like deities Gong Gong and Zhuan Xu, which, by knocking the axis of Heaven and Earth askew, brought an end to the primordial age and ushered in the era of human affairs. This section leads into a demonstration (3.2) that all phenomena conform to the cycles of yin and yang and (3.3) that human actions resonate with the cosmos.
These introductory sections are followed by a list of the principal heavenly bodies and the ninefold divisions of Heaven, correlated with the twenty-eight lunar lodges (constellations), and then by Five-Phase correlates of the five planets visible to the naked eye (Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, and Mercury, in the order in which they are given in chapter 3) and their motions. Sections 3.4 through 3.11 provide, in effect, instructions for drawing a diagram of significant correlations of heavenly bodies, directions, and seasonal time.1 Such a diagram might form the base (the so-called Earth plate) of the cosmological model known as a shi , or “cosmograph,” which consisted of a fixed Earth plate engraved with directions, names of months, lunar lodges, and other correlative categorical information, and a pivoted, movable “Heaven plate” depicting the Northern (Big) Dipper constellation. By rotating the Heaven plate in imitation of the stars’ apparent daily and annual motion, astrological predictions could be made on the basis of where the “handle” of the Dipper pointed on any given day.2 The cosmograph was the preeminent astrological instrument of the late Warring States and early Han periods (being replaced thereafter by the armillary sphere). Because it was a comprehensive microcosm, it allowed practitioners to calculate and interpret a wide range of correlations of astrological significance and is a concrete example of the normative natural order outlined so eloquently in chapter 1.
The remainder of the chapter consists largely of directions for reading and understanding the meaning of such correlations, including the sixty-day ganzhi cycle governed by the heavenly stems and earthly branches, the seasons, the twelve-year orbital cycle of Jupiter, a cycle of eight forty-five-day “wind seasons” correlated with the eight cardinal directions, the twelve tones of the chromatic scale and the five of the pentatonic scale, and the lunar lodges. The chapter includes sections on deriving the twelve tones of the chromatic scale by the “ascending and descending thirds” method (3.29) and correlating the twelve tones with the pentatonic scale; a section on weights and measures correlated with the twelve-tone scale (3.31); the names and characteristics of the twelve years of the Jupiter cycle (3.32–3.34, 3.41); correlations of celestial phenomena with the states and territories of the Warring States period (3.35, 3.37, 3.40); and miscellaneous correlations, prognostications, and omens. The chapter ends with a section (3.43) on using gnomons to measure the size of the cosmos.
* * *
A shi cosmograph from the early Han period, second century B.C.E. The Heaven plate, which can be rotated, is engraved with an image of the Northern Dipper (known in the West as the Big Dipper), allowing its annual movement around the horizon to be tracked so that predictions might be made in accordance with astrological correlative data encoded on the square Earth plate.
The astronomical and astrological correlations and calculations in this chapter are presented only in overview (enabling the ruler to understand what his astrologers were telling him, but not necessarily giving him enough technical information to perform the operations himself), and much of this material appears obscure to modern readers. Both textual problems and the many questions of meaning and interpretation that arise in this chapter are addressed in the very extensive commentary and notes to my earlier translation of this chapter.3 The translation in this book is based on and corrected from (and so is in every case to be preferred to) that in my 1993 work, but that book contains much more scholarly apparatus and commentarial material than has been possible to include here.
Sources
Chapter 3 of the Huainanzi appears to draw on a range of sources, many of which are no longer extant and whose former existence must be inferred from the material in the chapter itself. The most important known source for the chapter is the poetic catechism called the “Tian wen” (Questions About Heaven), dating from perhaps the fourth century B.C.E. and included in the anthology of southern poetry entitled the Chuci (Elegies of Chu). The “Questions About Heaven” appear designed to prompt a narrative about the cosmos, and some of the material in chapter 3 of the Huainanzi conforms closely to the narrative that might be elicited by those questions. The order is not always the same, and sometimes this chapter is more expansive than we would expect from the “Questions About Heaven.” Nevertheless, sections 3.1, 3.4, 3.13, 3.15, 3.16, and 3.25 generally are direct responses to those questions. Indeed, there can be no doubt of the connection between the “Questions About Heaven” and the Huainanzi.
One important source for this chapter was completely unknown before the 1970s: the Mawangdui text4 Wuxingzhan (Prognostications of the Five Planets). That text, lost for many centuries, gives Five-Phase correlates for the five visible planets, along with detailed information about their orbital periods, proper and retrograde motion, conjunctions, occultations, and other technical matters. The discovery of the Wuxingzhan not only supplies a hitherto-unknown source for the Huainanzi but also gives us an important insight into the working methods of Liu An and his court scholars. For this third chapter of the Huainanzi, they quoted verbatim the Five-Phase correlations that begin each of the five sections of the Wuxingzhan, grouping them together in a single section (3.6) that is followed by five sections (3.7–3.11) describing the apparent motions of the planets in terms similar to but much simpler than the text of the Wuxingzhan. In other words, the Huainanzi draws on the Wuxingzhan to give an “executive summary” of the astrology of the five planets but omits entirely the technical details that would have been of interest only to astrological specialists in the monarch’s employ.
We can only guess how many other lost texts are quoted or alluded to in chapter 3 of the Huainanzi. Some of the chapter’s sections look very much like set pieces drawn verbatim from now-lost sources. These include 3.17, on the annual waxing and waning of yin and yang; 3.25, on the daily motion of the sun (related, as noted, to the “Questions About Heaven” but very likely quoted from a now-lost source); 3.27, in which puns are used to explain the correlations between the twelve earthly branches and the twelve chromatic notes; 3.31, on weights and measures; 3.33, on the twelve years of the Jupiter cycle; and 3.42, on the allocation of daily rations to the people on the basis of variations in the Jupiter cycle years. Section 3.44, on the use of gnomons, also was probably an independent text incorporated into this chapter. Many other sections of the chapter may have been derived from now-lost manuals on the use of the cosmograph. It is, in short, impossible to know how much of the Huainanzi’s chapter 3 is original writing by Liu An and his court scholars, but it appears likely that it is in large part an anthology of material quoted from now-unknown sources.
The Chapter in the Context of the Huainanzi as a Whole
Coming early in the Huainanzi, chapter 3 emphasizes the interconnectedness of all phenomena and the influence of cosmic cycles on human affairs. The overview of cosmology, astronomy, astrology, and related subjects presented here is intended to be sufficient for a ruler to understand, if not actively participate in, the techniques by which cosmic cycles and correlations are calculated (particularly by means of the cosmograph) and
taken into account in the formulation of policy. The essential point is that acts of state must harmonize with celestial patterns and cycles in order to be successful.
Chapter 21 of the Huainanzi, “An Overview of the Essentials,” says of this chapter that it enables a person to “possess the means to look upward to Heaven and uphold what to follow and thereby avoid disordering Heaven’s regularities” (21.2). The “Overview” also regards this chapter as part of a subunit of text that includes chapters 4 and 5, and says of them, “Had we discussed ends and beginnings and not illuminated Heaven, Earth, and the four seasons, you would not know the taboos to avoid” (21.3). Thus even the seemingly esoteric subject matter of this chapter is presented by Liu An and his editors as an essential component of the art of rulership.
John S. Major
1. For an excellent study of Chinese schematic cosmography, see Mark Edward Lewis, The Construction of Space in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), esp. chap. 5, “World and Cosmos.”
2. David Pankenier (private communication) suggests that these procedures, which involve rather mechanical readings of good and ill fortune on the basis of cyclical and directional phenomena, might better be known as “astromancy” rather than “astrology.” See also the introduction to chap. 5, n. 4.
3. Major 1993.
4. Part of a funerary library of texts on silk found in the tomb of the younger marquis of Dai, at Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan, dated 168 B.C.E.
Three
3.1
When Heaven and Earth were yet unformed, all was
ascending and flying,
diving and delving.
Thus it was called the Grand Inception.
The Grand Inception produced the Nebulous Void.
The Nebulous Void produced space-time;1
