Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China: The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics

Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics

Harvard East Asian Monographs 266

ii

Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics

edited by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Maggie Bickford

Published by the Harvard University Asia Center Distributed by Harvard University Press Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London 2006

iii

©

2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Printed in the United States of America

The Harvard University Asia Center publishes a monograph series and, in coordination with the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, the Korea Institute, the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, and other faculties and institutes, administers research projects designed to further schol­ arly understanding of China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, and other Asian countries. The Center also sponsors projects addressing multidisciplinary and regional issues in Asia.

library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Emperor Huizong and late Northern Song China: the politics of culture and the culture of politics

/ edited by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Maggie Bickford. p. cm. -- (Harvard East Asian monographs; 266) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN

0-674-02127-4 (cl: alk. paper)

I. China--History--Song dynasty, 960-1279. 2. Song Huizong, Emperor of China, 1082-1135. I. Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, 1947- II. Bickford, Maggie. III. Series. DS75I.E67 2006 951 '.024092--dc22 2006010720

Index by David Prout

Printed on acid-free paper

Last figure below indicates year of this printing 16 15 14 13 12 II 10 09 08 07 06

Acknowledgments

This volume has been in gestation for several years, and along the way we have accumulated many debts. The two of us began talking about Huizong in 1998-99 when we were spending the year at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Pat was working on a book about Huizong and his reign and had decided to spend that year working on his in­ volvement with art; Maggie was working on auspicious imagery in Chi­ nese art and doing a chapter on Huizong's paintings of auspicious ob­ jects and events. As we gave talks on our work at the regular China colloquium, the art history seminar, and the one-day Symposium on Vis­ ual Dimensions of Chinese Culture, we got feedback from Institute pro­ fessors and other scholars participating in these events, including James Cahill, Charles Hartman, Irving Lavin, Marilyn Lavin, Victor Mair, Nancy Steinhardt, Hsingyuan Tsao, and many others. The response to our overlapping projects was positive enough that we organized a panel for the AAS meetings in

2000 with

the same tide

we are using for this volume. For that occasion we wanted to move be­ yond our previous focus on art; Pat therefore turned to Huizong's rela­ tions with Daoist masters and we solicited papers by Charles Hartman on the ban on the partisans during Huizong's reign and by Ron Egan on Huizong's involvement with literati culture. In addition, Paul Smith and Jerome Silbergeld joined us as discussants. So many scholars came up after the panel to tell us that they were working on related subjects that we decided to see if we couldn't flnd a way to get a larger group of people interested in the late Northern Song together. We are grateful that the China Program and the East Asia Center at the University of Washington agreed to fund a work-

Vi •

Acknowledgments

shop on this topic, and it was held in February 2001 in Seattle. Besides those who had participated in the panel, this time we were joined by Peter Bol, Elizabeth Brotherton, Susan Bush, Hugh Clark, David Knechtges, Ari Levine, Freda Murck, and Stephen West. Those who had given papers at the AAS gave new papers this time, generally be­ cause our earlier papers were to be published elsewhere. Thus we had ten essentially new papers on that occasion. The Seattle workshop turned out to be a very stimulating occasion, and by the time it was over we were confident that we had the makings of a strong volume. Still, we wanted to do more there were too many dimensions of court culture and learning that none of us knew much about and we decided to see if we could recruit scholars willing to ex­ amine music, science, and reform programs at Huizong's court. We ap­ proached John Chaffee, Asaf Goldschmidt, and Joseph Lam and were able to convince all three of them to write papers for our volume. The next academic year, 2001-2, both Maggie and Pat had the good fortune to get Guggenheim Fellowships to work on their books. Per­ haps that sparked our decision to try to get everyone together once more. We knew a better final book would result if the three new paper­ writers had a chance to interact with the rest of the group. Besides, some of those who had presented drafts in Seattle were planning sub­ stantially revised papers for the volume, and it would be best if every­ one had the chance to discuss them. This time we were fortunate that units at Brown were able to fund us, including the Thomas J. Watson Center for International Studies, the Provost's Contingency Fund, and the Departments of History of Art and Architecture and of East Asian Studies. We met in Providence in December 2001, and this time were able to involve several new discussants: Richard L. Davis, Robert E. Harrist Jr., Dore J. Levy, and Julia K. Murray. One of the many Song scholars who attended the Brown sympo­ sium was Tsuyoshi Kojima, visiting Harvard from Tokyo University. In his work on Song intellectual history, he had concentrated on the final years of the Northern Song, and we were able to talk him into joining our project by writing a paper for the volume. We are indebted to Byounghee Min of Harvard for translating his paper from Japanese for us. Still we felt the volume would be incomplete without some treat­ ment of Huizong's involvement with Daoism. Luckily, we were able to convince Shin-yi Chao to join our project and write such a paper.

Acknowledgments

Vll • •

Finally we would like to thank our group of authors, who have been a pleasure to work with from the beginning. We learned a lot from one another, perhaps especially when we found ourselves disagreeing. P.B.E. M.B.

Contents

Tables, Maps, and Figures

Xl •

Abbreviations

XlV •

Chronology

XV

Contributors

XVll • •

1

Introduction Patricia Buckley Ebrey Part I

Court Politics and Policies 1

Huizong, Cai Jing, and the Politics of Reform John Chaffee

2

Irredentism as Political Capital: The New Policies and the Annexation of Tibetan Domains in Hehuang (the QinghaiGansu Highlands) Under Shenzong and His Sons, 1068-1126 Paul Jakov Smith

3

Terms of Estrangement: Factional Discourse in the Early Huizong Reign, 1100-1104 Ari Daniel Levine

31

78

131

Part II

Imperial Ideology 4

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too: Emperorship and ,. Autocracy Under the New Policies Peter K. Bol

173

Contents

x

5

Tuning and Numerology in the New Learning School Tsuyoshi Kojima

206

Part III

Extending the Imperial Presence 6

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions Patricia Ebrey

229

7

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health Asaf Goldschmidt

275

8

Huizong and the Divine Empyrean Palace Temple Network Shin-yi Chao

324

Part IV

The Emperor and the Arts 9

Huizong's Palace Poems Ronald Egan

10

Huizong's Dashengyue, a Musical Performance of Emperorship and Officialdom Joseph S. C. Lam

II

361

Huizong's Paintings: Art and the Art of Emperorship Maggie Bickford

395 453

Part V

Who's Telling the Story? Rethinking the Sources 12

A Textual History of CaiJing's Biography in the Songshi Charles Hartman

13

Crossing Over: Huizong in the Afterglow, or the Deaths of a Troubling Emperor Stephen H. West

565

Index

611

517

Tables) Maps) and Figures

Tables I.I

Advisory Office staff, 1I02

1.2

Chronology of politics and reform, II02-21

6.1 6.2

Huizong's stone inscriptions with surviving texts

238

Eight Conducts steles that survived to be recorded by Qing or later epigraphers

242

New medical titles enhancing the prestige of physicians

291

7.1

Maps 2.1

Song frontier on the eve of the Hehuang annexation

2.2

Annexation of Hehuang, I079-II09

Figures followingp. 258 6.1

Cai Jing calligraphy of the title for the Biyong stele, II04

6.2

Huizong's calligraphy on the Biyong stele, II04

6.3

Huizong's calligraphy on the Eight Conducts stele in Taian

6.4

Huizong's calligraphy on the Eight Conducts stele, 1I08

6.5

Huizong's calligraphy on the Stele on Appearance of Spirits in Kunming Hall, III?

6.6

Huizong's calligraphy on the Divine Empyrean Temple stele, In8

38 61

Tables, Maps, and Figures

xii

6.7

Huizong's transcription of the Thousand Character Classic in regular script, 1104

6.8

Huizong's transcription of two poems, beginning "wish to borrow," n.d.

6.9

Examples of Huizong's stops from four early calligraphies

6.10 Examples of Huizong's na strokes from four early calligraphies 6.11 Examples of Huizong's pie strokes from four early calligraphies 6.12 Examples of Huizong's hooks from four early calligraphies 6.13 CaiJing's cursive script calligraphy, letter to Jiefu, n.d. 6.14 XueJi's calligraphy on Stele for Chan Master Xinxing, 706 6.15 Chu Suiliang's calligraphy for Yan Pagoda Prefaces to the Buddhist Canon, 653 6.16 Xue Yao's calligraphy of poems, 700 6.17 Huang Tingjian's calligraphy on stele for Boyi and Shuqi 6.18 Chongning and Daguan coins 6.19 Huizong's Edict for Xiang Yuzhi, n.d. 6.20 Huizong's Edict for Xiang Yuzhi, n.d., detail Music example I: "Welcoming the Deities"

400

10.1 Songshi presentation of the Dashengfu "Welcoming the Deities"

406

10.2 Late Northern Song Kaifeng and its ritual-musical sites

408

10.3 A set of sixteen bell-chimes

413

10-4 The eight classes of musical instruments and fourteen samples

10.5 A late Northern Song courtyard orchestra and its arrangement of musical instruments Music example 2: Jiang Kui, "Zhishao"

followingp. 482 ILl Huizong, The Five-Colored Parakeet on a Blossoming Apricot Tree 11.2 Huizong, Cranes if Good Omen 11.3

Huizong, Auspicious Dragon Rock

Tables, Maps, and Figures 1I.4 Huizong, Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant 1I.5

Huizong, Wax-Plum and Birds

11.6 Huizong, Flowering Peach and Dove 11.7 Huizong, Finches and Bamboo 11.8

Huizong (attributed), Cat

1I.9

Huizong (attributed), Imperial Hawk

II.IO Unidentified artist (late 12th

Blossoms, and Bamboo

) Sparrows, Plum

c. ,

II.II Huang Quan (attributed), Studiesfrom Nature 11.12 Unknown makers, rubbing of Good-Omen slab, Wu Liang Shrine (147 CE) 11.13 Unknown maker (8th c.) , Dunhuang, Au s

Omens Illustrated 11.14 Unknown maker, Illustration 0/the Imperial Guard 0/Honor, 1053 11.15 Unknown makers (Jin dynasty), "Crane Mantle" 11.16 Anonymous (Song dynasty), Immortals in a

Mountain Palace 12.1 The growth and development of the Songshi biography of Cai Jing

X111 • • •

Abbreviations

CB Xu ZiZhi tongjian changbian 1t�ii� -k�, by Li Tao *;l(III584). Usually we cite the Beijing, Zhonghua punctuated edition, but when necessary the older Zhejiang shuju 1883 edition, cited to juan and folio, as in npa.

CB-SB Xu ZiZhi tongjian changbian shibu (either the 2004 Zhonghua shuju punctuated edition, cited by page, or a reprint of the Zhejiang shuju 1883 edition, cited byjuan and folio).

CS]C Congshujicheng it .- 1f< 1&

lm.gH�� SBCK Sibu congkan lm � it flJ SKQS Siku quanshu lm '*1:--.SBBY Sibu be!Jao

SS Songshi*-3t, ed. Tuo Tuo IDtIDt (1313-55) et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua

1977). SHY *- -t- � � �, shuju,

Zhonghua shuju, 1957).

ed. Xu Song

{t {'A (1781-1848)

et al. Beijing:

]SBM Xu ZiZhi tongjian changbian jishi benmo * ii � -k � � � *- * (ca. 1220), by Yang Zhongliang :fIi1.p tt (1241-71). In Songshi zjliao cuibian (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1967).

Chronology

Xia dynasty, ca. 1800--1600 BCE Shang dynasty, ca. 1600--1045 BCE Zhou dynasty, 1045-256 BCE Qin dynasty, 221-206 BCE Han dynasty, 202 BCE-220 CE Three Kingdoms, 220--265 (Western) Jin dynasty, 265-316 Northern and Southern Dynasties, 316-589 Sui dynasty, 581-618 Tang dynasty, 618-907 Five Dynasties, 907-60 Song dynasty, 960--1276 Liao dynasty (Khitans), 907-1124 Northern Song dynasty, 960--1126 Taizu, r. 960--76 Taizong, r. 976-97 Zhenzong, r. 997-1022 Renzong, r. 1022-63 Yingzong, r. 1063-67 wife, Empress Gao Shenzong, r. 1067-85 wife, Empress Xiang Xining period, 1068-77 Yuanfeng period, 1078-85 Zhezong, r. 1085-1100 wife, Empress Meng, Empress Liu Yuanyou period, 1086-93 Shaosheng period, 1094--97 Yuanfu period, 1098-1100

Chronology

XVl •

Huizong, r. 1100-1125 wife, Empress Wang, Empress Zheng Jianguo jingzhong period, 1101 Chongning period, 1102-6 Daguan period, 1107-10 Zhenghe period, IIII-I? Zhonghe period, I118 Xuanhe period, I119-25 Jin dynasty Qurchens), III5-1234 Qinzong, r. 1125-27 wife, Empress Zhu Jingkang period, 1126-27 Southern Song dynasty, 1127-1276 Gaozong, r. 1127-1162 SIX more emperors •

Yuan dynasty, 1215-1368 Ming dynasty, 1368-1644 Qing dynasty, 1644-1912

Contributors

MAGGIE BICKFORD is Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, and Professor of East Asian Studies at Brown University. She is author of Ink Plum) the Making rf a Chinese Scholar-Painting Genre (1996) and Bones rfJade Soul rfIce) the Flowering Plum in Chinese Art (1985). Recently, she has studied imperial Song initiatives in producing a definitive Chinese visual culture and investigated problems of auspicious visuality in China, through works such as "Emperor Huizong and the Aesthetic of Agency" (2002-3). PATRICIA BUCKLEY EBREY is Professor of History at the University of Washington. Her many studies of Song social and cultural history range broadly over topics in family, class, ritual, and visual culture, among which the best known is probably The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lves rfChinese Women in the Sung Period (1993). She is currently finishing a book-length study of Huizong's art and antiquities collections, after which she will return to her "life and times" of Huizong. PETER K. BOL is the Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Lan­ guages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He is the author of 'This Culture rf Ours": Intellectual Transitions in Tang and Song China (1992) and coeditor of Wqys with Wordr: Writing About Reading Texts from EarlY China (2000) and the China Historical Geographic biformation System (2005). He is currently working on the historical role of Neo-Confucian ideol­ ogy and local cultural history.

XV1U • • •

Contributors

JOHN CHAFFEE is Professor of History and Director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Program at Binghamton University. He is the author of The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations (1985, 1995), and The Branches ofHeaven: A History ofthe Sung Imperial Clan (1999) and co-editor of Neo-Confucian Education: The Forma­ tive Stage (1989). His current research involves the history of the Muslim maritime communities of Guangzhou and Quanzhou from the Tang to early Ming. SHIN-YI CHAO is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Rutgers Univer­ sity, Camden. She is author of a dissertation entitled "Zhenwu: The Cult of a Chinese Warrior Deity from the Song to the Ming Dynasties (960-1644)" (2002) and has written articles on Chinese popular religion and Daoism in the traditional and modern periods. Her interests in­ clude popular religion, Daoism, ritual studies, women in religion, and the relationship between state and religion. RONALD EGAN is Professor of Chinese at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of books on the Song dynasty writers Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi, as well as The Problem ofBeauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China (2006). He has also produced a selective translation of the essays of Qian Zhongshu on Chinese aes­ thetics, entitled Limited Views: Essqys on Ideas and Letters (1998). ASAF GOLDSCHMIDT is Lecturer in the History of Medicine and the History of the Song Dynasty at the Department of East Asian Studies of Tel Aviv University. Recently, he has studied the impact of the gov­ ernment and environment on the reshaping of medicine during the Northern Song period, resulting in a manuscript entitled "Politics, En­ vironment, and the Integration of Medical Approaches During the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127 CE)." He also studied the history of the Imperial Pharmacy and other medical institutions during the Song. CHARLES HARTMAN is Professor of Chinese and founding chair of the Department of East Asian Studies, the University at Albany, State University of New York. Author of Han Yii and the T'ang Search for Unity (1986) and associate editor for poetry of The Indiana Companion to

Contributors

XlX •

Traditional Chinese Literature (1986, 1998), he has also written articles on Song dynasty historiography and the textual history of Song historical works that have appeared in the HarvardJournal ofAsiatic Studies, T'oung Pao, the Journal ofSong-Yuan Studies, and Chinese Literature: Essqys, Articles,

Reviews. TSUYOSHI KOJIMA is Associate Professor in the Department of Chinese Philosophy, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Study at the University of Tokyo, Japan. He is author of books on the history of the Song Dynasty and on Neo-Confucianism, two of which were trans­ lated into Korean. Since 2005, he has led a major project involving some 140 researchers entitled "Maritime Cross-cultural Exchange in East Asia and the Formation of Japanese Traditional Culture" (www. l.utokyo.ac.jp/maritime/english/index.html). JOSEPH S. C. LAM is Professor of Music (Musicology) at the School of Music, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is author of State Sacri­ fices and Music in Ming China: Orthodo:>ry, Creativity, and Expressiveness (1998) and many articles on traditional Chinese music and musical culture. Currently, he is completing a monograph entitled "Beautiful and Per­ fect Music from Southern Song China, a Transcultural History" and launching a research project on musical men of late Ming China. Am DANIEL LEVINE is Assistant Professor of History at the University

of Georgia. He has written narrative chapters on the Zhezong and Huizong reigns for volume 5 of the Cambridge History of China. Currently, he is completing a book manuscript on factional rhetoric in the late Northern Song.

PAUL JAKOV SMITH is Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Haverford College and the current John R. Coleman Professor of So­ cial Sciences. He is the author of Taxing Heaven's Storehouse: Horses, Bu­ reaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry, I074-I224 (1991), and co-editor, with Richard von Glahn, of The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History (2003). His contribution to this volume is part of a lar­ ger study of soldiers, courtiers, and the political culture of war in Song China in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

xx

Contributors

STEPHEN H. WEST is Foundation Professor of Chinese of the School of Global Studies and the School of International Letters and Cultures at Arizona State University. Formerly Louis Agassiz Professor of Chi­ nese at the University of California, Berkeley, he is the author, with Wilt Idema, of Chinese Theater IIgQ-I450 (1982) and The Moon and the Zither: Wang Shifu's Story if the Western Wing (1991). Recently he has been in­ volved with the study of memory, place, and materiality in the social and literary life of the Song, as reflected in his recent article, "Spectacle, Ritual, and Social Relations: The Son of Heaven, Citizens, and Created Space in the Eastern Capital of the Northern Song."

Introduction Patricia Ebrey

The Northern Song period (96o-II27) ended in debacle. The alliance that Song had entered into with the Jurchen state of Jin � proved dif­ ficult to maintain and late in II25 the Jurchens launched a two­ pronged attack on Song China, aiming to capture the capital, Kaifeng Ul·j;J-. When Emperor Huizong's #t * (r. IIOo-25) officials learned of the invasion, many proposed moving the capital south to regroup and buy time, but others insisted that it was better to stay and fight. Hui­ zong wanted to leave at once, but on the advice of his closest officials, he first abdicated in favor of his oldest son, Qinzong � * (r. 112527), then twenty-six. When the Jurchens reached the gates of the city, they offered to leave if the Song court paid a ransom of 5 million ounces of gold, 50 million ounces of silver, 10,000 bolts of silk and satin, 10,000 oxen, and 10,000 horses. These were huge sums, equivalent to many times the annual revenue of the court, and 180 times what the Song had been paying annually to buy peace from Jin's predecessor Liao it. The only way the court could raise anything like these sums was to empty out its treasuries and then demand that all private citizens turn over all their gold, including their jewelry. Even though the government was not able to raise everything demanded, it did submit huge quantities,300,000 ounces of gold and 9 million of silver before the Jurchens would depart. The Jurchens left with their loot after a month, on II26/2/II. Soon Qinzong's officials demanded that Huizong return to the capital, where he was set up in his former princely mansion, long since con-

2

PATRICIA E B REY

verted to a Daoist temple. Relations between Huizong and Qinzong were strained, and they rarely saw each other. Once the Jurchens had withdrawn, those who had favored con­ ciliation were condemned and a much tougher stance was advocated, one that court officials must have known would provoke another attack. Qinzong's officials attributed the defense failures to moral weakness and concentrated on rooting out officials who had served Huizong and seeing that they were demoted, exiled, or even executed. When the Jurchens did return in the eleventh month of 1126, the Song refused to negotiate and instead put up a fight. After a siege of forty days, the capital city fell. The Jurchens did not simply sack the city. To extract a second ransom, they placed their soldiers on the walls and threatened to loose them against the populace unless their demands were met. Their

5 million bars of gold (each bar 50 ounces), IO million bars of silver, and IO million bolts of silk and satin. This was 50 times the gold demanded the year before, and IO times the silver, and the Song had not met the previous quota. Qin­ primary demand was again for gold and silver, this time

zong insisted to his officials that preserving life was the highest priority and urged them to do everything possible to keep the Jurchen soldiers from ravaging the city. The demand for silk could be met more than enough

the government warehouses held

but to raise anything approaching that amount of

gold and silver required mobilizing informers to find those who had not turned over everything the year before. Servants who reported that their masters had hidden gold or silver were rewarded with part of what was found. After a month it was apparent that Song efforts to collect gold and silver were not going to reach anywhere near the sum demanded had collected only one percent of the gold and

IO

they

percent of the silver.

The Jurchens then proposed that the Song could fill part of the quota with women, with different values put on princesses, women of the im­ perial clan, wives of officials, entertainers, and the like. In the end, more than

11,000

women were turned over to the Jurchens and most of the

ransom was made up in this way. But it was not just gold, silver, silk, and women that the Jurchens extorted from the capital. They wanted horses, ancient bronzes, books and printing blocks, sacrificial vessels, astro­ nomical instruments, musicians, physicians, all sorts of artisans, and much else. Huizong had been the most aggressive of collectors, especially of books, paintings, calligraphy, and ancient bronze vessels. Every item now became the property of the Jurchens.

Introduction

3

Qinzong was induced to leave the relative safety of the walled city and to enter the Jurchen camp on 11271 II 10. Everyone expected him to return the next day, but instead the Jurchens posted notices that he would not be allowed to return until the gold and silver quotas had been filled. This led to renewed searches, with beatings of those sus­ pected of holding back. After the Chinese officials claimed that there was no more gold or silver to be found in the city, a clever person proposed the perfect way to test this assertion: to offer food for sale only for gold or silver. Because the Jurchens had not allowed anyone to leave the city since they had taken control of it, food was in extremely short supply and people were starting to die of starvation. When cus­ tomers showed up bearing gold and silver to buy rice at exorbitant prices, the Jurchens had the eight Chinese officials who had been as­ signed the task of running the searches for precious metals beaten to death in front of the main south gate. In addition, the failure of the Song to quickly turn over all gold and silver was used as an excuse by the Jurchens to dig up graves in all the surrounding areas, including those of princes and princesses. Firewood was just as big a problem as food was, a situation made worse by a particularly cold winter and several heavy snowfalls. In order to keep people from freezing to death, the Song government permitted the populace to tear down government buildings for firewood. Next they were allowed to dismantle the buildings in Huizong's Genyue El. garden. A few days later, they also were allowed to cut down the rare trees planted there just a few years earlier. Since the large garden rocks, many shipped from the south at great expense, had already been used for the catapults during the battles for the walls, by the time the Jurchens withdrew, there was nothing left of what had been the most spectacular garden in the realm. Toward the end of the third month of 1127, the Jin soldiers ftnally came down from the walls of Kaifeng, which they had occupied for nearly four months. Some 1050 carts were sent north with booty. Soon they were followed by seven convoys transporting nearly fifteen thou­ sand captives, including Huizong, Qinzong, their empresses and other consorts, their children and grandchildren, all the imperial clansmen that the Jurchens could round up, a few dozen high officials, along with the thousands of women, craftsmen, and other specialists whom the Jurchens had decided to take with them. Neither Huizong nor Qinzong ever returned south. It was only because one of Huizong's sons had been

4

PATRICIA EB REY

out of the capital during the siege and managed to rally Song forces that the Song dynasty survived at all, and then with significantly truncated territory and a capital in the southern city of Hangzhou. These events have cast a long shadow over the Northern Song, es­ pecially its last few decades.1 From the first years of the Southern Song (1127-1276) on, historians collected and edited evidence with the goal of explaining what went wrong. In order to account for Song military weakness, some pointed to the Song policy of limiting the. authority of generals and subordinating them to the civil bureaucracy. Others found the root of the problem in the New Policies :&JT� program initiated by Shenzong :# if- (r. 1067-85) and his grand councilor Wang Anshi ��;G (1021-86) in 1068. Those who had been critics of the reforms could take an I-told-you-so stance. Just as they had foreseen, the New Policies had brought confusion and destruction. It was unwise to criticize Huizong personally as long as his son Gaozong � if- (r. 1127-62) was emperor, but recriminations could be heaped upon his councilors and generals. Since their policies in the end had failed, Huizong's advisors must have been inferior men. In time, Huizong also was blamed for paying too much attention to religion, art, and gardens and not enough to what his officials were doing. The long shadow cast by the fall of Kaifeng still obscures our vision of the Northern Song period, not because no one asks new questions or challenges the received moralistic framework for approaching it, but because it has skewed the surviving historical record. Yet, even if Huizong's reign was prelude to disaster, Huizong him­ self stands out among Chinese emperors for his cultural accomplish­ ments. Apparently aspiring to be a latter-day sage-king, Huizong actively participated in the cultural side of rulership and as a conse­ quence he has a place in the history of endeavors as diverse as medicine, painting, music, and Daoism. He collected paintings, calligraphies, and 1. The principal sources narrating these events are Xu Mengxin -Mt-J-"" Sanchao beimeng huibian -=- fJl:Jt.]I i"� (Taibei: Dahua shuju reprint of Shixue yanjiushe 1939 punctuated ed.); Jingkangyaolu *4t*� (anon.) (CSJC ed.) ; Yang Zhongliang �1+� (fl. ca. 1170-1230), Tongjian changbianjishi benmo i!SI-k�R..*-*- (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1967 Songshi ziliao cuibian ed.) ; Cui An 4Jt and Nai An � Jt, eds.,Jingkang baishijianzheng *4t:f1f.3t l tE, ed. Cui Wenyin -lt5t lip (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988); Ding Teqi T#� (d. Il35+), Jingkangjiwen *4tR./lfl (CSJC ed.); Cai Tiao �{. (fl. Ilo0-30), Beishou xinglu :Jt.�;f�t� (CSJC ed.).

Introduction

5

antiquities on a huge scale and had catalogues compiled of his collec­ tions. He took a personal interest in the training of court artists and in­ stituted examinations for their selection. He wrote poetry as well as treatises on medicine and Daoism. He sponsored Daoist clerics and in­ stituted Daoist schools. He initiated an ambitious reform of court music and court rituals. He took a personal interest in architecture and garden design and undertook more than his share of new construction. He created his own distinctive calligraphy style and produced exquisite paintings. His reign may have ended in humiliation, but for twenty-five years he put on a dazzling performance. How do Huizong and his reign fit into the history of the Song period? In recent decades scholars have added tremendously to our knowledge of Chinese society, state, and culture during Song times. China during the reign of Huizong's father, Shenzong, is particularly well studied, undoubtedly because of the significance of the New Policies introduced by Wang Anshi and the reaction that they provoked. We no longer have to be satisfied with simplistic accounts of a moral struggle between good and evil. Intellectual, literary, and art history all now ground develop­ ments during the period in the great political controversies of the time. Following upon the work of social historians, it is now common to stress the differences between the Northern Song (especially the period

1050-1100)

and the Southern Song (especially the period

1140-1240). 2

Part of the genesis of these differences occurred during Huizong's reign. The suppression of opponents of reform, for instance, has been seen as finishing off any remaining idealist hopes of making a difference through service at court. At the same time, in a more positive way, the nationwide school system put in place by Cai Jing

JJ :t- (1047-1126) is credited with

bringing many more families into the educated elite and official service. Shifts in intellectual orientation also owe much to the Jurchen invasion and loss of the north, which created not only a sense of dislocation and discontinuity, but also a profound crisis that required rethinking all the old verities.

2. Robert M. Hartwell, "Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750-1550," Harvard Journal '!fAsiatic Studies 42.2 (1982): 365-442; Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Schirokauer, eds., Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Beverly J. Bossler, Powerful Relations: Kinship, Status, and the State in Sung China (g6o-I279) (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1998).

PATRICIA E B REY

6

The need to reexamine the place of Huizong's reign in the long tra­ jectory of Chinese history was a major impetus for the present volume. The authors of the essays here consider the last decades of the Northern Song from several vantage points. Some are interested above all in the nature of the Chinese state. What roles were played by such key power-holders as the emperor, his top officials, his intimates and favor­ ites, wider circles of officialdom, and the army? Should we think of the politics of the period as contests between emperors and officials? What were the consequences of the expansion of state activity, especially its greater intervention into cultural matters ranging from religion to music and education? Other authors are concerned with the institution of emperor. Did Huizong push the institution of emperor in any new ways? Does Huizong's suppression of dissent lend support to the view that the Song period marks a shift toward more autocratic emperors? Or was he so constrained and manipulated by his officials that he was hardly much of an agent himself? How important was the personality of the emperor? That is, how much of a difference did it make that Huizong was emperor, rather than one of his brothers? Another group of contributors focuses on the cultural products of Huizong's court, ranging from the paintings and poetry attributed to him to the works on medical or music theory written by officials working at his command. Did Huizong's patronage advance fields or stifle them? How should we evaluate the works attributed to Huizong? What does authorship mean in the imperial context? To provide a chronological framework for our essays, we begin with an overview of Huizong and his reign.

Huizong's Life in Brief Huizong was born in the palace in

1082.3 His

emperor, Shenzong; his mother, Consort Chen

father was the reigning

ft,

one of the middle-

3. This brief sketch is drawn from my unpublished manuscripts on Huizong and his court. The only comprehensive biogtaphy of Huizong is Ren Chongyue **-§;, Song Huizong, SongQinzong *,fiH�, *ik if- (Changchun: Jilin wenshi chubanshe, 1998). The fullest treatments in English so far are Betty Tseng Yu-ho Ecke, "Emperor Hui Tsung, the Artist: I082-II36" (ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1972), and Ecke, "Song

Introduction

7

rank consorts. He was 28 months old when Shenzong died. Because his mother died a few years later, Huizong was reared by stepmothers, in­ cluding Shenzong's widow, Empress Xiang

foJ (1047-IIOI). Usually

Huizong is described as the eleventh son of Shenzong, but he did not grow up with ten older brothers, since eight of them had died before he was born. Within a few years, however, he had several younger brothers as well as several sisters, both older and younger. Upon Shenzong's death, Huizong's eldest brother, Zhezong

{ff *

(r. 1085-IIOO), succeeded to the throne. Because of his youth, a regent was required, and the natural regent was the senior empress, Shenzong's mother, Empress Dowager Gao

�

(1032-93). She turned out to be a

forceful ruler who orchestrated a rapid reversal of most of Shenzong's policies. The officials she brought back, including Sima Guang

� .� 7t.

.,* � (1036-IIOI), and Cheng Yi ;f.I ftJi (1033-II07), were known from the reign period name as the Yuanyou faction 3t 1:(;:t . (1019-86), Su Shi

The tutors who were assigned to educate Zhezong's younger brothers made sure that they received a solid education in the classics, but from his early years Huizong was also attracted to the arts. Princes had to prove their indifference to politics in order to avoid arousing suspi­ cion that they had ambitions for the throne. Some princes did this by showing that they enjoyed their indulged life, immersing themselves in the pleasures of dogs, horses, wine, and women. An alternative way to pass their days innocently was to pursue learning and art. This was the route taken by both of Shenzong's younger brothers, the men who offered Huizong his closest role models. His uncle Hao

fJi (1050-96)

was skilled in calligraphy and archery, but his real passion was collecting rare books. His uncle Jun

� (1056-88) was an able painter whose

wife also painted. Affinal relatives of the imperial family were also often involved in the arts. The one who had the greatest impact on Huizong was Shenzong's sister's husband, Wang Shen

.I.-tt

(ca. 1048-

ca. II03), one of the leading collectors of paintings and calligraphies of his day and an accomplished painter. Wang Shen was on friendly terms

Hui Tsung and His Time" (M.A. essay, University of Hawaii, 1967). Much fuller treat­ ment of the politics of the Huizong era will soon be available with the publication of the Cambridge History ofChina volume on the Song, which will have a chapter by Ari Levine on Huizong's reign.

8

PATRICIA E B REY

with many of the men prominent in cultural circles, most notably Su Shi and Mi Fu � '* (1052-1107). In 1098 Huizong moved out of the palace to his own mansion, built by the master builder Ii Jie 4'-� (ca. 1065-IIIO). The next year, at eighteen sui, Huizong was married to a Miss Wang ..I., two years his junior. Later that year, Zhezong, whose only son had just died in infancy, took ill himself. For months he suffered from an ailment that caused vomiting, diarrhea, and intense intestinal pain (perhaps an infected appendix). On New Year's Day, 1100, he was too ill to hold the traditional New Year's audience and twelve days later he died. Because no heir apparent had been appointed and because Zhezong had no sons or nephews, it was up to the senior empress, Empress Dowager Xiang, to decide who would succeed to the throne. Zeng Bu 'if AP (1035-1107), one of the members of the Council of State at the time, left a record of Empress Xiang's discussions with them. After she informed the councilors that Zhezong had died without sons, Zhang Dun " ,t*- (1035-1105) immediately proposed that Zhezong's full younger brother (that is, the younger son of his mother, Consort Zhu *-) succeed, even though he was not the oldest. Empress Xiang, how­ ever, responded, "All of the brothers from Prince Shen 11'..I. on down are Shenzong's sons. It is difficult to distinguish among them. Prince Shen has sick eyes. The next [in age] is Prince Duan 1.t ..I. [= Huizong], so he should be established."4 The other councilors expressed their ap­ proval of Empress Xiang's choice; so Zhang Dun, finding no support, gave up. From Zeng Bu's testimony, Empress Dowager Xiang was quite definite that she wanted Huizong to succeed Zhezong. In other con­ versations Zeng recorded, she repeatedly mentioned how intelligent he was, and in one of these she explicitly said that none of the other princes could compare with him . He was only three months younger than the oldest prince, so their age difference had little more than symbolic sig­ nificance. If the eldest had an eye disease or even just poor eyesight, he would have made a poor candidate for emperor, since emperors had to read through mountains of memorials and other documents.

Zeng Bu '!t AI> , Zeng Bu yilu '!t AI> i!*, in Ouxiang lingshi .fA:ft *".f*" , ed. Miao Quansun ��� (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998), 9.3a. 4.

Introduction

9

Huizong was summoned, and after he had a chance to speak with Empress Xiang, he announced that he wanted her to rule with him. The councilors objected that he was full-grown, but he insisted, telling them that the empress had already agreed. It was not until months later that Zeng Bu realized that Huizong had made a politically astute move. The passed-over brothers could not object to decisions formally approved by their legal mother without opening themselves to charges of unfilial behavior, effectively limiting their opportunities to deliberately or un­ consciously obstruct the new administration. During the fttst six months of his reign, until Zhezong was buried, Huizong kept on Zhezong's councilors, and they reported to Empress Xiang after their sessions with him , although she rarely did more than express her approval of Huizong's decisions. After the burial, Huizong began dismissing the high officials whom he had inherited and brought back people who earlier had been dismissed by Zhezong. For nearly two years Huizong and Zeng Bu, who became his leading councilor, tried to create a bipartisan, coalition government. They never were able to reduce the acrimony between the two factions (the reformers and anti-reformers), however, and in mid-II02 Huizong gave up the effort and decided to side with the reformers (see Levine's chapter). Huizong made Cai Jing his grand councilor and set about reviving the reform agenda of his father (see Chaffee's chapter). He even changed foreign policy directions, reversing decisions that had been made the year be­ fore concerning the campaign on the northwest frontier (see Smith's chapter). Officials kept telling Huizong that men of character and inferior men could not abide being placed together, and that it was essential that he clearly identify who belonged to each category. Huizong decided to take their advice and from 1102 to 1104 he issued a series of lists of men whom he did not want in his government, the longest, issued in 1104, containing 309 names (see Levine's chapter). Since 83 of these men were no longer alive, the goal of these lists was as much to clarify the record as to make sure that those serving in office in fact supported his pro­ grams and would not attempt to subvert them from within. Suppres­ sion of dissent also extended to texts. The government banned the writings of key opponents of reform such as Su Shi and his followers.

While denigrating the opposition, Huizong celebrated the reformers. In 1104 he ordered a statue of Wang Anshi placed in the Confucian

10

PATRICIA EB REY

temple next to Mencius. The Directorate of Education was ordered to make pictures of this statue, print them, and have them distributed throughout the country. Banning the opposition proved to be as unsuccessful as the bipartisan Council of State had been, and a year and a half later Huizong began removing the restrictions on those listed. Huizong's decision to lessen the penalties imposed on the partisans was strengthened by the ap­ pearance of a comet a few days later on 1106/1/5. The comet remained in the sky until 1/26 and eventually led to the dismissal of Cai Jing (see Chaffee's chapter). Huizong did not, however, change his mind about which side to favor. Although he dismissed Cai Jing for several months in 1106 and again in 1109 for several years, he did not bring back any of the leading opponents of reform. During Cai Jing's fIrst and second terms on the Council of State, most features of the New Policies were reinstated, such as the tea and salt monopolies, the hired service system, and the square fIeld land tax sys­ tem. But Cai Jing's reforms went much further than Wang Anshi's had in matters of education, charity, and the imperial clan (see Chaffee's chapter). Already under Shenzong the New Policies had involved a re­ organization of the National Academy in the capital by introducing three levels known as the Three Halls -=- -®-. Cai Jing's plan increased the numbers of teachers, students, and schools, as well as the size of school lands. Not only prefectures, but also counties were to have schools, in­ cluding primary schools for elementary education. Each school would have three grades and tests would be used to promote students from one grade to the next within schools and between schools. Students who reached the National Academy could test directly into offlce. In order to handle the increased number of students arriving at the capital, a pre­ paratory school was built, called the Biyong Academy � $. One aspect of the new school system was the provision of specialized schools of painting, calligraphy, law, and medicine (on the last of these, see Gold­ schmidt's chapter). Huizong was sufflciently committed to these reforms to use his personal presence to promote them. In 1104, Huizong paid a visit to the Biyong and conferred on it a hand-drafted edict extolling the virtues of the new school system. This edict was soon carved on a stele. On Cai Jing's advice copies of the stele were distributed to all the pre­ fectural schools so that they could erect copies of it as well (see my chapter).

---------

Introduction

II

Cai Jing had critics even before he became grand councilor, and the attempts to suppress dissent did not keep people from writing scathing attacks of him. In 1105 one of those serving with him on the Council of State, Zhao Tingzhi :it!.f,tt z (1040-1107), charged that Cai's plan to eliminate the civil service examinations did not have roots in Shenzong's plans; moreover, Zhao alleged, it threatened the principle of fairness rooted in the practice of covering over the names on examination papers. Not long after, an official named Fang Zhen -}f #- (fl. 1100-1120) accused Cai Jing of planning to take the throne himself, as Wang Mang .£1f. (r. 9-23) and Cao Cao t 4� (155-220) had done in Han times. He also charged that Cai Jing treated Huizong like a child, convincing him of any crazy project by saying either that it was ancient or that it had been an unfulfilled part of Shenzong's plans. In addition, he claimed that Cai Jing had sent his son Cai You ,,"1� (1077-1126) to amuse Hllizong, with the result that flowers, strange rocks, and caged birds and animals were brought into the palace in a steady stream. Huizong came to the throne soon after he married, and within months his first son was born. He soon took more consorts, and in contrast to many of the earlier Song emperors, he quickly had lots of children. His wife had become his empress, but she died young in 1108. Nevertheless, by the end of 1108, twelve sons had been born to him, ten of whom were still living. Twelve daughters had also been born, but five of them already had died. Still, seventeen children nine sui or younger, together with their seven mothers, must have absorbed quite a bit of Huizong's time and energy. Huizong also found the time to involve himself in many cultural projects during his first decade on the throne. He supervised the court painters who redecorated his old princely mansion in the course of its conversion into a temple. He also got involved with the examinations for painters at the new painting school. From 1103 to 1108 he carried on a correspondence with the patriarch of the Maoshan *' � sect of Daoism, Liu Hunkang J1il.J.l (1035-1108). In 1104 Huizong put into practice some of the proposals of the seer, wonder-worker, and musical theorist Wei Hanjin 4tiii't (d. 1105), who advocated not merely the codification of new musical scales (discussed in Lam's and Kojima's chapters), but also the casting of nine bronze tripods using water and soil from the nine regions of the realm. The tripods were installed in a special temple where they were used in sacrifices to the Yellow Em-

12

PATRICIA BB RBY

peror, the Duke of Zhou, and others. An especially auspicious sign ap­ peared in apparent response: several thousand cranes circled above surrounded by colored clouds. The second decade of Huizong's reign was looked upon by people of the time as a great age of peace and prosperity. Meng Yuanlao ii.3(.* (fl. II26-47), in his masterly depiction of life in the capital during this period, remembered Kaifeng as an enchanting city, made all the more enjoyable by the frequent imperial processions through the city. Hui­ zong's officials regularly reported to him auspicious signs, perhaps be­ cause Huizong seems to have taken them quite seriously. In 1II3, when he heard that the Yellow River had cleared, he had someone write a com­ memorative account of it and had it carved on stone at the site. It was also during this period that Huizong undertook to have a visual record of the myriad auspicious phenomena that blessed his reign (see Bickford's chapter). Other large-scale projects that he sponsored in this period in­ cluded a huge new guide to the performance of ritual (the Zhenghe wuli xif!JIi Jit;fn A;ft -i1f1l, referred to in Kojima's chapter) and a similarly ambitious medical encyclopedia (see Goldschmidt's chapter). In both of these cases Huizong wrote a preface for the work, making claims of personal involvement in the project and belief in its significance to sage government. At the personal level, Huizong's second decade on the throne had its share of joys and sorrows. The consort Huizong was most attached to died suddenly in III3, leaving him distraught. She had joined the palace service at the age of 14 in IIOO and had borne her first child in II03, followed by another five children in the next few years. But there were happy occasions as well. In III4 his eldest son, Qinzong, was capped and the next year formally installed as heir apparent. He married the year after that, and in III7 Huizong became the first Song emperor who lived to see a grandson born to him. Many more would follow. During the early Zhenghe Jli;f11 reign period (IIII-q) , Huizong be­ came fascinated by a series of seers who could foretell the future or communicate with the dead. He had several dreams that made an im­ pression on him including one in which he was brought before a ruler who told him that it was his destiny to promote Daoism (see Chao's chapter). Huizong soon was sponsoring the compilation of a new Daoist canon and initiating a Daoist school system. One of the Daoists who came to the capital during this period was Lin Lingsu #. t: -t ,

Introduction

13

(I076?-1I20). In 1116 or III? Lin revealed that Huizong was an incarna­ tion of the elder son of the Jade Emperor, named the Great Sovereign of Long Life -k !l. *- ,*" . Huizong was so pleased with learning this from Ijn that he had the palatial Supreme Purity Precious Treasure Temple :k �t f � 1: built for him. He also ordered that Divine Empyrean ;if 1" temples be established in every prefecture to house images of the Great Lord of Long Life and his brother the Sovereign of Qinghua i-"*. Al­ though existing Daoist temples could be converted for this purpose, Buddhist ones were often converted instead. In III? Lin I.ingsu an­ nounced that the Sovereign of Qinghua had descended to earth. Hui­ zong assembled huge numbers of Daoist priests at Precious Treasure Temple to hear Lin tell of this great event. Lin Lingsu persuaded Huizong to place a series of curbs on Buddhism. In 1118 a text by Lin on the slanders of Buddhists was printed and cir­ culated. In 1119 Buddhist temples and monasteries were forbidden to increase their landholdings or buildings. Then, the foreignness of Bud­ dhism was to be erased through a process of renaming. Buddhist monks were renamed "scholars of virtue" �,t ± to correspond to Daoist priests who were called "scholars of the way" l! ± . They were to wear Dao­ ist-style robes, use their original surnames, and salute with raised fists, not joined palms in other words, they were to make themselves visually indistinguishable from Daoist clergy. Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and arhats were given new names Shakyamuni was to be called the Golden Im­ mortal of Great Enlightenment *- f: 1H�. Temples could retain the old statues of these newly renamed deities but had to clothe them in the robes and caps of Daoist divinities. These decrees proved unpopular, and late in 1119 Lin Lingsu was sent away. The following year most of the restrictions on Buddhism were removed. Huizong had long had a passion for building. Early in his reign he took an interest in the redecoration of his old princely mansion and in the layout of the Biyong Academy. In 1113 he began building a new palace complex, called Precious Harmony Hall f :fu�. Decorated in an un­ derstated style, with unpainted wooden beams and rafters, it had pavil­ ions to store books, antiquities, paintings, calligraphy, and musical in­ struments. A much larger palace-related project was the huge extension of the palace to the north, creating the new Extended Blessings Palace � ;f& 1: . Hong Mai �ll (1123-1202) described it as the most extrava­ gant palace construction project done in Song times. It had seven

14

PATRICIA EB REY

halls, thirty pavilions, a 1I0-foot-tall artificial mountain, and a pond 400 by 267 feet. The cranes, deer, and peacocks kept there numbered in the thousands.s In 1115 Huizong also restarted the long set-aside plan to build a Hall of Enlightenment EI}j � , which the master builder Li Jie had planned for him in 1104. Late in his second decade on the throne Huizong undertook yet another construction project, the Genyue garden outside the walls of the palace complex. For this lavish imperial park, plants, animals, and rocks were gathered from all over the empire and transported to the capital at enormous expense.6 During this period Cai Jing was in his seventies and semi-retired, coming to court only every third day, but he still had great influence. Huizong came to place increasing trust in the eunuch general Tong Guan � 1t (1054-1126), even to the point of making him a member of the Council of State in 1116. He had known Tong Guan from early in his reign and had great confidence in his military abilities. It was on Tong Guan's recommendation that negotiations were opened with Jin con­ cerning a joint attack on Liao. The Song already had begun massing troops in Hebei for the planned attack on Yanjing � * (modem Beijing), when a rebellion broke out in the southeast. The leader of the rebellion, Fang La -}fill, preached a form of Manichaeism, but resentment of state exactions motivated many of those who joined forces with him .7 Tong Guan was ordered to take his troops south to deal with the rebellion. He succeeded in suppressing it in mid-1I21, but in the meantime Jin captured Yanjing without Song help. Cai Jing retired in 1120, and Huizong pennitted Cai's successor as grand councilor, Wang Fu 3- 1I\lIi (1079-1126), to dismantle most of the New Policies and other projects that Cai Jing had supported over the years, including the school and charity organizations (see Chaffee's chapter). The government did not, however, retrench in all fields. A new building was erected for the Imperial Library outside the palace and a major book-copying project was begun to make three copies of 5 . Rongzhai suibi � *' � !f (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1978), sanbian 13.568-69. 6. On this garden, see James M. Hargett, "Huizong's Magic Marchmount: The Gen­ yue Pleasure Park of Kaifeng," Monumenta Serica 38 (1988-89): 1-48. 7. On this rebellion, see Kao Yu-kung, "A Study of the Fang La Rebellion," Harvard Journal ofAsiatic Studies 24 (1962-63): 17-63.

Introduction

15

every book in the library, each one to be kept in separate locations for safety. Catalogues were compiled not only of the books in the Imperial Library but also of the paintings, calligraphies, and antiquities kept in the palace. In II23 the Song celebrated the return of Yanjing, but its relationship with Jin became more and more strained. Jin, after all, had learned that the Song was not much of a military threat. The fall of Kaifeng was de­ scribed above. Because Qinzong's officials were very wary of the retired emperor, Huizong played no more than a minor role as the final events unfolded. During the summer of 1126, after he was forced back to Kaifeng, Huizong had to endure learning of the death or execution of many of his closest associates, who had been blamed for the failed mili­ tary policies. Qinzong rarely visited his father, and during the second siege of the capital the retired emperor was not allowed into the palace until after the outer walls of the city fell. The only action required of him in this period was to obey Qinzong's command that he lead the residents of the palace out of the city walls to the Jurchen camp. Conditions on the march north were difficult (see West's chapter). Huizong occasionally rode a horse, but apparently most of the time he traveled in an oxcart pulled by five oxen, driven by two Jurchens who did not speak Chinese. Huizong's two brothers, the princes ofYan and Yue, rode in an oxcart. Others less fortunate had to walk. Most were city­ dwellers who were not used to walking long distances; those who fell behind were beaten or killed. Young children were abandoned along the road when they could not keep up. While traveling, the captives were expected to prepare their own food. Each evening after camp was set up, rice was distributed on a per capita basis but people had to supply their own firewood and water to cook. Since they were not allowed out of the camp, they soon learned to pick up what water and wood they could find while they were traveling and to save it for the evening. Sometimes, in the vicinity of cities, peddlers came with food. On 4/r6, Huizong's brother Wu died, reportedly of starvation. Huizong had him laid out in a horse trough, which was so short that his feet stuck out. His request that the body be sent back for burial was refused, and it was cremated. Huizong took the urn of ashes with him the rest of the way. On 5/13, after a month and a half on the road, Huizong arrived in Yanjing. By this time, his ninth son, Gaozong, who was out of the capital during the siege, had been enthroned, though Huizong did not learn of this for some time.

PATRICIA E B REY Huizong's son-in-law, Cai Tiao

�{1t (fl. IIOo-30), who accompanied

him the entire way, reported that Huizong wrote more than a thousand poems during his exile. One surviving poem is linked explicitly to his period in Yanjing, as it was inscribed on the wall of a Buddhist temple there. With nine generations the great enterprise suddenly stops.

I was crazy not to listen to my upright officials' advice. Willingly I travel ten thousand Ii as a surrendered captive.

It'f.;�*-..f!� m!1-�ltJ1[ El l1t. *,� � � � ,* ,*

Just think how in my former country I was sad when the jade halls grew cool in autumn.s

Song forces, now with Gaozong to offer leadership, were proving stronger than Jin had expected, and after four months in the essentially Chinese city of Yanjing, the Jurchens decided to move Huizong and Qinzong farther north. Huizong arrived at the Jin Central Capital

it :t- (in modem Inner Mongolia) on II27/ IO/ 18. According to Cai Tiao,

at this stage of his captivity Huizong sometimes fell into depression, sleeping poorly and showing no interest in food. Books, however, came to offer him a way both to pass the time and to cope emotionally with his change in circumstances. Although his educational policies had down­ graded the study of history, he now found history books to be the most satisfying reading material. After less than a year in the Central Capital, Huizong and Qinzong and the rest of their party were moved north again, this time to the main Jurchen capital, the Supreme Capital They arrived there on

J:.. :t-

(in modem Inner Mongolia).

II28/8/2I, and a few days later were presented as

offerings at a sacrificial ceremony at the shrine dedicated to the Jin founder, Aguda Fiif 'it .tr, who had died in

II23. As they were led in, five

white flags identified the different members of the group as "the two captive Song emperors," "the captive mothers and wives of the rebel­ lious slave Zhao family," and so on. After the ceremony, the women were divided up. Three hundred women from Huizong's consorts on down were assigned to the palace laundry to work as palace slaves. Others were given to particular men. After Qinzong's empress returned from this ceremony, she commit­ ted suicide by drowning herself. The next day Huizong and Qinzong

8. Fu Xuancong f.f.�� et al. eds., Quan Song shi �*tt (Beijing: Beijing Daxue

chubanshe, 1991- ) , 1495.17070.

Introduction were given humiliating titles: Lord of Confused Virtue of Double Confusion

-t' tt 1*.. The

tt f,t "A' , and Lord

following day twenty doctors were

assigned to evaluate the imperial women, aborting any who were preg­ nant and treating those who were ill, in preparation for their entry into the palace. Only two months later, on

1128/10/26, Huizong, Qinzong, and the

others were forced to move north again to Hanzhou

'** 10('1

(in modern

Liaoning), a journey that took two months. In Hanzhou they were re­ united with

904 members of the imperial clan who had been moved

there earlier. During their stay in Hanzhou Huizong's favorite son, Kai, died. After about a year and a half there, the captives were transferred again, since even Hanzhou, it seems, was not far enough north to calm the Jurchens' fears that the former emperors might be rescued by Song loyalists. In

1130/7, the imperial party reached its ftnal destination,

1i.. 11 �

(thought to be near the northern border of Hei­

longjiang). En route,

500 clansmen and 300 palace attendants were sent

Wuguo city

to other destinations. As a consequence, it was mostly Huizong's im­ mediate family that accompanied him to Wuguo. Not long after arriving in Wuguo, Huizong's Empress Zheng

�

died at age

52. Hllizong lived on in Wuguo another four years; he died in 1135 at age 54.

Cross-Cutting Issues The chapters in this volume do not pursue all of the issues brought to the fore by Huizong's reign. No one examines the Fang La Rebellion, the alliance with Jin, or Huizong's painting academy, to name only some of the topics extensively treated in the Chinese, Japanese, and Western secondary literature. What we do treat in depth are the many facets of Hllizong's performance as emperor, the political and institutional links that join Huizong's reign to those of his immediate predecessors, Shenzong and Zhezong, and the nature of the sources we can use to probe these issues. EXT E N D I N G T H E N E W P O L I C I E S

In contrast to the voluminous scholarship on the political, institutional, ftscal, and military sides of Wang Anshi's New Policies, very little re­ search has been done on the extensions of these policies during Huizong's reign. Several of the essays in this volume begin with Shen-

PATRICIA E B REY

18

zong's reign in order to explore the shifts in policies, attitudes, and ideas that occurred during the course of the six decades when Shenzong and his sons ruled. Peter Bol traces shifting conceptions of the ruler from Shenzong's reign to Gaozong's by analyzing the questions posed at the Palace Examination, a strategy that allows him to show shifts in the ways the throne presented itself to one of its major audiences. Asaf Gold­ schmidt shows how the medical services and pharmacies that were cre­ ated as part of the New Policies were extended and expanded during Huizong's reign. Tsuyoshi Kojima examines the school of Confucian learning associated with Wang Anshi and the forms that it took during Huizong's reign, particularly the preoccupation with certain numbers in ritual and musical theory. Although Wang Anshi usually is thought of as a hard-headed statecraft thinker, the school of learning associated with

him can help to explain facets of Huizong's reign that have often seemed to be anything but rational.

Ari Levine looks at factional discourse and factional practice from Shenzong's through Huizong's reign. He shows that throughout the period political actors claimed moral legitimacy for themselves and cas­ tigated their opponents as evil. Time and again advisors told rulers that the survival of the state depended on expelling the wicked and their factions from the court. Acrimony steadily intensified; the cycles of ri­ valry, hatred, and revenge became progressively more bitter until Cai Jing had won Huizong's wholehearted support and could expel the opposi­ tion wholesale. Paul Smith looks at continuity in the realm of foreign policy, taking the case of the northwest frontier, the area to the southwest of the Tangut state of Xia, inhabited largely by Tibetans. He demonstrates that many of the actors continued their roles from one administration to the next, including professional military strategists from military families and eunuchs who specialized in military affairs. Smith's evidence demon­ strates that we must take seriously Zhezong's and Huizong's commit­ ment to "continue the legacy." The authors discussed so far take one strand of the New Policies and trace it over time. John Chaffee, in his chapter, takes a different approach; he looks at Huizong's extension of the reform program as a set of poli­ cies. He shows first that they were tied to the career of Cai Jing and second that they were parts of a coherent vision. The reforms both raised and spent enormous sums of money. They aimed at both uni-

Introduction

19

versalism and benevolence aiding all students, all of the poor and probably aimed beyond the reach of the state. Yet the specific measures, such as the types of specialized schools, the resettlement of members of the imperial clan outside the capital, and the funding of both schools and clan centers through endowments of land, clearly reflect Cai Jing's ad­ ministrative goals and style. Whenever Cai was out of power the reforms were curtailed or canceled. T H E E M P E R O R AS P A T R O N

Chinese emperorship, in its grandest conceptions, entailed much more than political and military decision-making. From early times the ruler was conceived as a vital link between humankind and Heaven, able through his performance of ritual and his moral cultivation to affect the cosmos. Theoretically, his cultural power was enormous, as he had the potential to promote the good and true through his support for par­ ticular people, ideas, arts, and traditions. By Song times emperors had considerable leeway in the balance they gave to the more political and the more cultural side of emperorship. Huizong went further than most of his predecessors in developing the cultural side of emperorship, appar­ ently enjoying his roles as patron, artist, and sage. As patron, Huizong poured the vast resources of the throne into imperial support for particular fields of learning, religion, and art. Asaf Goldschmidt, in his chapter, argues that Huizong's initiatives had a positive impact on the quality of medical care available to people throughout the country. According to his analysis, by investing in the education of physicians, Huizong's government was able to attract bet­ ter-educated men into medicine. By devoting resources to charitable clinics and graveyards, the government was able to help fight epide­ mics. By establishing dispensaries that sold prepared prescriptions by the dose and by publishing guides that listed appropriate medications for specific diseases or symptoms, it made medical treatment more widely available. Joseph Lam documents Hllizong's investments in the reform of mu­ sic at court and, ultimately, throughout the realm. Huizong supported the proposals of the holy man and musical theorist Wei Hanjin, which took the imperial body to determine the central tone in a Daoist­ based musical system. Huizong also directed resources toward the

20

PATRICIA EB REY

creation of a new bureau responsible for the composition and per­ formance of the new music. In addition, he had new bells cast on which to play the new music. Huizong also lent imperial support to Daoism and to particular Daoist clerics. As Shin-yi Chao shows in her chapter, Huizong inter­ vened in Daoist liturgy and textual traditions in ways that had an im­ pact on Daoist traditions. There is no evidence that rival schools of medicine or music felt threatened by imperial patronage of particular teachings. In the case of imperial support for Divine Empyrean Dao­ ism, however, both Buddhist monasteries and Daoist priests belonging to other traditions had reason to resent the penetration of the central government to the local level. Granting favors to a particular school of Daoism was an intervention that other religious traditions did not welcome. T H E E M P E RO R AS A RT I S T

Many Song emperors were cultivated men, but none went as far as Huizong in mastering the three excellences: poetry, calligraphy, and painting. Deng Chun in the mid-twelfth century described Huizong as a painter of exceptional talent; the somewhat later author of the anony­ mous Xuanheyishi claimed that he was equally talented as a poet, callig­ rapher, and musician.9 Although the authors in this volume take much harder looks at exactly what survives of Huizong's artistic output, none of them casts serious doubt on Huizong's artistic abilities. Huizong as calligrapher is one of the themes I develop in my chapter. From 1104 on, Huizong arranged to have his calligraphy displayed for everyone to see on steles erected at schools or temples. The style of his "Slender Gold" 1t 1t calligraphy was so distinctive that those who caught a glance of it would recognize it instantly. Through his calli­ graphic style, he presented himself as a person in control-disciplined, capable of order and precision, yet at the same time original and able to perform familiar acts with flair.

9 . See William Hennessey, Proclaiming Harmony (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1981), 13-14; Deng Chun fl!4�, Huaji •• , ed. Pan Yungao ill! %, in Tuhuajianwen Zhi, Huaji Ill . JL B!'J ,i;; , • • (Changsha: Hunan me­ ishu chubanshe, 2000), 1.263-64.

Introduction

21

Maggie Bickford investigates Huizong's paintings by considering them as practical objects that were utilized as instruments of cultured rule, rather than as precious, decorative pictures produced by a self­ indulgent aesthete-emperor. She shows how functional concerns as well as aesthetic preferences shaped their style, their means of production, and their deployment. She raises questions of significant contiguities between Huizong's imperial initiatives in the arts and the modes of scholar-amateur painting that emerged during the late Northern Song. Huizong's poetry is less well known than his calligraphy and painting, but still stands out among the works of Song emperors. In his chapter Ronald Egan analyzes the

300

palace poems that are attributed to

Huizong. In order to bring out the cultural meaning of these poems, Egan compares them to earlier works in the genre, especially the sets of

.I.. Jt (ca. 751palace lady, Lady Blossom 1�� A.A.

one or two hundred poems by the Tang writer Wang Jian ca.

830)

and the Five Dynasties

Compared to their palace poems, Huizong's seem largely celebratory. Fewer than half of them deal with palace women and those that do tend to focus on their cultural accomplishments, virtue, or amusing pas­ times. In Huizong's poems virtually all traces of the palace plaint, so widespread in the earlier collections, have been eliminated. Other poems point to the emperor as a calligrapher, painter, or musician, or to auspicious events at court, ranging from military successes to news that the Yellow River had cleared, in the process idealizing the palace as the apex of enlightened worldly power. These poems, like the stone in­ scriptions analyzed in my chapter, show Huizong taking the initiative to create images of his rule as one marked by virtue, beauty, and Heaven's favor.

THE EMPEROR AS SAGE

The early literatures of both Confucianism and Daoism speak of the wonderful results of rule by sages. By Song times, emperors conven­ tionally were likened to sages

their pronouncements were "sage

words," their faces "sage countenances." Although the officials who used this conventional hyperbole need not have thought of the man on the throne as a sage, most held to the view that the more sage-like the ruler, the better he could rule. Huizong's interests in Daoism, in dreams and portents, his willingness to use his own body to recalibrate the musical scale, all suggest that he took seriously the notion of the

22

PATRICIA E B REY

ruler as a sage who, through his presence and correct gestures and words (that is, his correct performance of ritual) positively intervenes in the cosmos and thus brings peace and prosperity to the realm. Early in his reign Huizong experimented with music as a means through which the sage emperor could exert his influence throughout the realm, a subject examined here by both Lam and Kojima. As Kojima explains in his chapter, the numerology of music had cosmic dimensions, as the number three was held to offer a way to integrate the human realm and the natural order. The political language that Huizong deployed conveyed several facets of the emperor as sage. Peter Bol shows that the ruler represented by his Palace Examination questions was not an autocrat but rather the sage-king of antiquity who through his person effects positive change in society. Whereas the New Policies had tried to benefit society through changes in social and political policies, Huizong also wanted to make use of the magic of ritual. During his later years the questions that he posed indicate that he hoped Daoist masters had techniques that might help him toward these goals.

I see similar shifts in the concerns Huizong

conveyed in the edicts he had carved on stone. Huizong presented himself to his subjects as a ruler concerned with their welfare, who wanted to communicate direcdy to them his commitments to the legacy of his father and to the basic values of both Confucianism and Daoism. He could not call himself a sage, but he could allow Cai Jing to entide his engraved edict "the stele written by the great sage"

* 1: 11=Z�. As he

became more deeply immersed in Daoism he also wanted his subjects to know that Daoist divinities had communicated direcdy with him. Moreover, in his edict of

Iu8,

Huizong declared that he was reuniting

the Dao of the Confucians and the Dao of the Daoists, certainly a task for a sage. Cosmological issues also permeated Huizong's interests in the theory of medicine. As Goldschmidt shows in his chapter, by explaining the ancient

doctrines

underlying

medicine,

Huizong

was

re-enacting

the benefaction of the Yellow Emperor. Goldschmidt's chapter also brings out another side of the sage: his concern for the welfare of the people. Huizong's charitable programs, especially his clinics, pharmacies, and free graveyards, demonstrated both compassion and an under­ standing of the ways diseases spread. Moreover, it took a sage to fully comprehend the unity of the body, mind, and environment needed to attain true health. The sage can doctor both the cosmos and the

Introduction

23

body. The Yellow Emperor, after all, was not only the ideal Sage Ruler, but also the founding figure of medical theory. Thus, Huizong's pref­ aces to his medical works illuminate the sage as a person who under­ stands the regularities of the Five Phases and the transformations of the Six Qi. Another understanding of the sage ruler was as the "true lord" of Daoism. As Shin-yi Chao shows in her chapter, Huizong took seri­ ously Daoist teachings about the hierarchies of the heavens and the ability of heavenly divinities to incarnate themselves multiple times on earth. Yet, when the emperor learned that he himself was an incarna­ tion of a high god, he did not become more aloof, on the model of a Daoist high god. Rather, like a devotee, he used his powers as a patron to support an expansion of the Daoist church and to help promulgate Its texts. •

D ISTINGUISHING THE PERSON FROM THE ROLE

As our work on Huizong and his court progressed, we became more comfortable with our understandings of Huizong the emperor. Al­ though a few of us cautiously resort to locutions such as the Huizong reign or the Huizong court, unsure what should be attributed to Huizong and what to other members of his government, most of us have abandoned the traditional stereotype of Huizong as politically unengaged, complacently allowing Cai Jing, Wang Fu, or other power­ ful figures to make the real decisions. John Chaffee, for instance, argues that Huizong personally was committed to the goals of the reform program, seeing in it filial fulfillment of the aims of his father. Although he does not downplay the barrage of advice Huizong received, he sees Hllizong's own terrified reaction to the comet behind his temporary cancellation of the program, not someone else's manipulation. Similarly, Paul Smith portrays Huizong as responding enthusiastically to Wang Hou's proposals for a northwest campaign and caring deeply about its outcome. Ukewise, Joseph Lam, rather than seeing Huizong as de­ luded by Wei Hanjin's mumbo-jumbo, views him as a man interested in music and aware of how court music could contribute to his perfor­ mance as a ruler. Perhaps the strongest argument for seeing Huizong behind much of what issued forth from his court is that we can detect both consistent patterns and change over time. Huizong repeatedly tried to extend

24

PATRICIA EB REY

policies more systematically throughout the country. He repeatedly re­ sponded positively to men claiming expertise in ways to tap extraordi­ nary powers. He repeatedly supported the idea that government institu­ tions should be universal, extended to all of his subjects. Several authors also saw a shift in Huizong's attitudes between the first and second decades of his reign. As issues related to "continuing the legacy" di­ minished in importance, Huizong was more and more drawn toward the more cosmic, sage-like dimensions of rulership in which Shenzong had shown little interest. As a consequence, he took on larger, more ambi­ tious projects, ranging from building a Hall of Enlightenment and the Genyue garden, to assigning scholars to compile new encyclopedic works for medicine and ritual, to cataloguing the imperial library. None of this should imply that we found it easy to say with confidence what Huizong thought. Over the centuries many have wondered whether Huizong believed the cosmological and religious ideas attrib­ uted to him. Did he really think that auspicious omens indicated Heaven's favor, or that Lin Lingsu was in communication with high Daoist gods? No matter how many of the poems, prefaces, and "imperial brush" edicts we attribute to Huizong himself, recovering Huizong's own thinking remains a challenge because of the force of convention in most genres of court writing. Although no one in this volume pretends to know what was in Huizong's mind, several authors try to show that the ideas implicit in his words and actions were far from exceptional in his day, even among the highly educated. Daoism, as many scholars recently have shown, was in Song times a flourishing religion and several new teachings attracted large followings. Shin-yi Chao characterizes Huizong as a religious man. Like other lay followers of Daoism, Huizong may have at times misun­ derstood or even garbled some of the ideas, but taking seriously Daoist gods and heavens was not in Song times a sign of delusion. Both Tsu­ yoshi Kojima and Joseph Lam take a similar approach to the cosmo­ logical ideas connected to Huizong's musical program: these ideas were not weird in the context of established music theory of the time. The problem is not in imputing such ideas to Huizong, but inferring from them that he was credulous or muddle-headed. Chinese traditions of criticism in the fields of poetry, calligraphy, and painting emphasized the way the creator of a work of art expresses himself through it. An edict may represent the emperor's political agenda even if he gave only vague instructions on how it should be worded, but

j

Introduction

25

a poem cannot express his momentary emotional response if someone else came up with its most striking images. Similarly, given that brush­ work was believed to convey the ideas and moral character of the cal­ ligrapher or painter, paintings or calligraphies done to one's order could not fully substitute for those one did oneself. By this line of reasoning, if we could say for sure which works of art were products of Huizong's brush in the narrowest sense of the term, those works would offer us the best access to his personality, character, and emotional reactions to life around him. In this volume, Maggie Bickford is the one who takes up this issue most fully. A central question in painting connoisseurship, even in Song times, was whether a painting was in fact by the artist to whom it was attributed, or whether it was a copy, forgery, or studio work. Here Bickford takes the position that we cannot discover Huizong the indi­ vidual person in the surviving paintings attributed to him, only Huizong the emperor, since he multiplied the works of his imperial hand by acting through the hands of others. On the other hand, as I argue in my chapter, we can detect aspects of Huizong's personality and intentions in the unusual style of regular script calligraphy that he created, the Slender Gold style. This was a style that hid fleeting feelings but conveyed con­ trol, flair, and a desire to stand out. NA RRAT I V E S O U R C E S

All scholars who do research on the late Northern Song have been frustrated at times by the textual sources available to them. The political narrative for this period is not nearly as rich as for the previous half-century (1050-1100) or the succeeding century (1130-1230) . In part this is because few collected works by men active during this period survive. In addition there is no narrative of court politics that approaches the detail of the Xu iiZhi tongjian changbian It 1t n; ii � -k .� or the jialryan yilai xinian yaolu Jt � )';,( *- .. .f � � . At least as important, however, is the pervasive bias in the sources that do survive, many of which depict the main personalities of the politics of this period as cardboard cutouts, without nuance or complexity. All of the authors of essays here struggle with these issues and make the best use they can of the available sources. Levine sketches the impact of intense factionalism on our ability to reconstruct the political history of this period. Kojima points to poor survival of works by scholars of New Learning, whose

PATRI CIA E B REY writings were largely excluded from the historical record, and our need to reconstruct their ideas from fragmentary sources. Chao contrasts the treatments of Lin Lingsu in the Song History and in a Daoist hagiography that implies that if Huizong had only put more faith in Lin, the Northern Song would never have fallen to the Jurchens. Two of the chapters in this volume concentrate on analysis of textual sources. Charles Harttnan shows how political judgments made during the Huizong period itself and subsequent decades shaped the biogra­ phies in the Song History. He takes the case of the biography of Cai Jing. After explaining how the Southern Song historiographical office went about putting together the successive histories that would have included earlier drafts of this biography, he analyzes the construction of the ex­ isting text. Through techniques of comparative textual philology, he shows that drafters of the earliest biographies of Cai drew their main sources from contemporary political tracts that had been written to denounce Cai and his policies. Thus, these mid-twelfth-century biogra­ phies reflect the view of the time that held Cai responsible for the fall of Northern Song and cast him in an exceedingly negative light. Harttnan also shows that officials who worked with Cai Jing but later went on to play positive roles in the early Southern Song were written out of Cai Jing's biography lest they subvert its moral message. With the dominance of the Daoxue 3t � movement in the thirteenth century, the tone of the biographies shifted once again. In addition to being held politically re­ sponsible for the failed policies of the Huizong era, Cai Jing now also became a negative prototype of the supposed moral corruption of the period. Hartman concludes that this Song History biography image of Cai Jing as an exemplar of the evil minister, combined with the near total destruction of his own writings, illustrates the historiographical problems of the late Northern Song and renders an unbiased judgment on Cai's role in that period almost impossible. Images of Huizong in the centuries after his death owe much to in­ formal writings, including ones we would class as historical fiction, a subject that Stephen West takes up in his chapter. As he shows, these images are as complex and multi-layered as the formal products of state historiography bureaus. In Dongjing meng hua lu, Huizong is portrayed affectionately, in the context of the pleasure his appearances brought to the crowds he drew. That he dazzled through the material splendor of the throne added to his appeal. In accounts of his transport north and his

Introduction

27

captivity, these images are inverted. In his chapter here, West gives spe­ cial attention to the story of Huizong's final years as recounted in the

Na'!Jinjiwen � :lt � 8!'l .

The account of Huizong's journey begins with

recognizable topography, but after Yanjing it becomes progressively more nightmarish, both weird and threatening. In exposing the structure of this account as a tale of retribution, West exposes the deep affinities between storytelling and works of putative fact; in doing so he reveals the blurred boundaries between fiction and history as genres.

The editors of this volume made no effort to get

all of the authors to

agree on the stance to take toward Huizong and his reign. In cases where authors appeared to disagree on the facts, the editors have attempted to resolve differences, but when the differences were ones of approach or interpretation, we let each author speak with the voice that he or she found most appropriate. An attentive reader will notice, for instance, that Chaffee and Levine do not have the same take on Cai Jing. Throughout his reign Huizong deployed state resources on a grand scale in projects as varied as collecting art, deploying armies, and mandating free graveyards. Some of us were impressed by the ambition and goals of these projects; others saw imperial manipulation and micromanagement. For instance, Paul Smith, seeing the military ventures as one phase in long-term de­ fense policies, has a much more negative view of Huizong's

willingness

to expend state resources than does Asaf Goldschmidt, who regards Huizong's charitable initiatives as manifestations of an impressively progressive government. We attribute such differences in part to our different vantage points

Huizong's reign looks different when one is

thinking of the history of public health than that of defense policy. At the same time, we do not want to dismiss these differences as inconsequen­ tial, since they provoke our continued exertions to address afresh the problems of Huizong and the late Northern Song period. Here, rather than attempt to achieve a synthesis that evens out

all of our differences

in approach and concerns, the editors decided to organize this volume in a way that does not conceal the tensions among them. The two or

three chapters under each of the headings in our table of contents tackle similar issues in different ways and raise new questions when read together.

P A RT I

Court Politics and Policies

C HAPTER

I

Huizong, Cai Jing, and the Politics of Reform John Chaffee

This chapter aims to investigate the politics of reform at the end of the Northern Song, a topic that has largely been neglected in past studies. So powerful is the narrative of condemnation that pervades both the ma­ jority of sources for the period and the dominant historical tradition through the succeeding centuries that the reforms are often ignored, brought up only when they serve to illustrate the tyranny and rapacity of eai Jing 1J :t. (1046-U26), the chief villain in the account. Many modem historians, by contrast, have been drawn to the refonns as the most in­ teresting aspect of Huizong's • * reign (UOI-26), but their focus has been upon the individual reforms themselves, so they have generally had little to say about the reforms as a whole. In contrast to the New Policies of Wang Anshi ..I.�.ki (1021-86) and Shenzong # * (r. 1067-85) in the 1070s, which have been intensively studied, eai Jing's reforms have been viewed as a kind of poor cousin, individually interesting but possessing neither the plausibility nor the grand vision that distinguished the earlier reforms. Although this view is understandable, the resulting neglect of eai's reforms is unfortunate, for as I hope to show, the eai Jing reforms were broadly conceived and implemented as a package, at least in their early years. There were important differences between the two refonn pro­ grams, to be sure. Although the New Policies made important changes in schools and the examination system, their primary focus was on the

J O H N CHAF FEE

32 economy

agriculture, commerce, and taxation

and rural society. 1

Cai's reforms likewise had major economic aspects, namely concerning taxation, monopolies, and currency reforms. But the most ambitious undertakings were in education

the creation of an empire-wide system

of tiered schools that subsumed the functions of the examination system and the establishment of a host of new educational institutions­ and in two areas unaddressed by the New Policies. These were the creation of two huge residential complexes outside of Kaifeng for the ever-growing imperial clan, and the establishment of new relief institu­ tions for the very poor: poorhouses, hospitals, and cemeteries. Whatever the differences between the two reform programs, the later reformers clearly felt that they were involved in the same great project. In initiating his program, Huizong repeatedly emphasized that he was emulating not only his father, Shenzong, but also his brother Zhezong

1'lf *

(r. 1085-IIOO), who during his period of personal rule from 1094 to

1100 had restored a number of reform policies that had been curtailed during the Yuanyou

7t:ft period (1085-93). This sense of continuity was

distilled into the notion of the "continuing legacy"

M ))it., first formulated

by Zhezong, who in 1098 had chosen Shaosheng

!.{J �,

or "continuing

sagacity," as his reign name, and was cited frequently by Huizong.2 This sense of connection was not limited to reform, however; as Paul Smith argues elsewhere in this volume, it was also integral to Huizong's ag­ gressive foreign policy and to his determination to clamp down on po­ litical opponents. Because my subject is the politics of reform, the substance of the reforms themselves

will receive scant attention in this chapter. I will

consider, rather, the history of their enactment, retrenchments, restora­ tions, and finally abolition, and the specific roles of Huizong and Cai Jing. I will argue that the reforms were first and foremost the personal

The best treatment of these in English is Paul Smith, "Shen-tsung's Reign (1068-8S)," draft chapter for the Cambridge History ojChina, SA (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), sections 3-4. The New Policies are succincdy summa­ rized in Peter K Bol, 'This Culture ojOurs':· Intellectual Transitions in rang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 246-53. 2. Halryu dacidian �l3-* laJ#f. (CD-ROM; Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 2002) explains that shaoshu, which I have translated as "continuing legacy," refers specifically to the reform inheritance of Shenzong. Zhezong not only named his reign period Shaosheng, he also named Zhang Dun as grand councilor in order to pursue the con­ tinuing legacy of the Xining and Yuanfeng reforms. I.

Huizong, Cai Jing, and the Politics ifReform

33

undertaking of Huizong, who saw them as his "continuing legacy," but that they then became personified by Cai, so that the fortunes of reform came closely to parallel his own. One of the challenges of this project has been how to deal with the notorious historiographical biases in the sources for the period as a whole, but especially concerning Cai Jing, a matter analyzed in depth by Charles Hartman elsewhere in this volume. Because my attention has

I have simply ignored many of the inflammatory charges directed against Cai and his followers. More positively, I have

been on the reforms,

used official documents wherever possible, since these are most likely to avoid textual biases.

I pay close attention to sequences of events, espe­

cially concerning the details of the specific reforms. Finally, the chapter focuses on the rises and falls in Cai Jing's career, specifically his elevation

1102, his dismissals in 1106 and 1109, which were followed by restorations in 1107 and 1112, and finally his dismissal in 1120, which marked the end of the reforms. These changes provide to the grand councilors hip in

useful junctures not only for examining the fate of the reforms but also for unearthing the issues that gave rise to them.

The Initiation ofRiform (II02) By the seventh month of 1102, Huizong was just completing the second year of his personal rule. Through most of that period his government had been guided by the grand councilors Han Zhongyan

1109)

and especially Zeng Bu

'it � (1035-1107),

#,t It (1038-

who tried to steer a

conciliatory course between the bitterly divided proponents of reform and their opponents, the Yuanyou party or faction. Whether due to the wily manipulations of Cai Jing, as his detractors argue, or to general in­ transigence on both sides, this attempt had broken down by mid-

1102.3 Han was dismissed in the fifth month and Zeng in the sixth, to be replaced by Cai, who was appointed on the fifth day of the seventh month. This was more than simply a change in personnel. Acting on intentions that were implicit in his selection, at the beginning of that year, of Chongning

'* .

or "esteeming the [Xi]ning

,.� .

era"

(1068-

77), Huizong was determined to continue the reform work of his father. 3. See the account by Ari Levine, "Hui-tsung's Reign (noo-n26)," draft chapter for the

Cambridge History of China, voL 5A.

J O H N C HAFFEE

34

Cai Jing's Song History biography provides the following account of his appointment interview with the emperor: "In the past, Shenzong changed the laws and issued new edicts; but in the end he was not able to carry them through. The previous emperor continued on this project. Yet both had to deal with intervention. As it stands, our national destiny is still not fulfilled. We would like to carry on the work of our father and brother, but from what we have seen at court this will be nigh impossible. Now that you are our right-hand man, what advice can you give us?" Bowing,

# * �IJ � � 10f )IX �ie.? J

Jing answered, "I would give even my life to repay your majesty."4

.:2:. 1M, 7t '*" $lie., Til it � � , IIJ Jt � ;t . JOC �J:.i! X. }{. ie. ,to , :y- 4iJ{ � *, !j{ . ?t.

r

While in this interview Huizong spoke to the general nature of the project, in Cai's edict of appointment, issued the same day, Huizong clearly indicated the challenge facing it, namely the opposition of re­ form opponents. The edict begins with an idyllic portrait of gover­ nance in the Xioing period: "They relaxed service [obligations] and rested the farmers. They honored the Classics so as to produce scholars, settled the etiquette for the suburban sacrifices and temples, restored the harmony between righteousness and profit, and linked the gov­ ernance of selection and schools." But then, "crooked scholars and vulgar Ru it did not know roots and branches. Powerful families and huge factions together forced changes." Promising a reliance on the ancient customs of past masters, filial thought, and public discussion, Huizong concludes by invoking King Wu i(..I.. of the early Zhou and Cao Can fr � of the early Western Han.5 These references carried a message. King Wu "manifested the meritorious deeds of the father Wen." Cao Can as a grand councilor under Han Gaozu gained lasting renown for his success at upholding the regulations JJL of his predecessor

SS 472: 13723. Translation adapted from William O. Hennessey, trans., Proclaiming Harmof!)l (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1981), 16-17. CB-SB 20.2b, cites a variant text from the Song biannian tong/ian ;fUri-+ii�. The two 4.

major differences are that it names the palace screen from behind which the Empress Dowagers Gao

,1i

and Xiang fa] conducted their regencies as the source of resistance,

and it does not provide Cai's dramatic response. 5. Xu Zirning, Song zaifll biannian III xiaobll (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), II: 700-701

(hereafter 20.2b.

Song zaifll). Most of the edict can also be found in fSBM 13I.IOb and in CB-SB

Huizong, CaiJing, and the Politics ifR.ejorm Xiao He

�1iiJ.

35

Ruler and minister are therefore joined, by history, in

their common purpose. On 7/11, six days after Cai's appointment, Huizong took a critical step toward enacting the program of reform, namely by creating an Advisory Office

�� �

under the personal supervision of Cai. This was modeled

explicitly on the Finance Commission in early Xining, an extraordinary body that coordinated the implementation of the New Policies. like the Finance Commission, the Advisory Office was intended to provide both the coordination and the political muscle necessary for overcoming bu­ reaucratic resistance within the established organs of governance. The edict establishing the office does not spell out exactly what would be done, but it does make clear what Huizong considered to be the problem. It begins with general principles that again stress the importance of continuing Shenzong's work: We have heard that those who rule the world make governance and instruction their priority, and that those who respect filial thought make continuing the work of their predecessors a matter of urgency. Now, regulations and their uses

'* flt] #:1 � r * JlX ± Jt 1111 i! � ;t.. J; :f ,� * JlX • ,t; l! * � '�" It *1 ilii Jfl .z-ff 1- �, .fft ilii -1t.z-ff 1- 1--..

reside in law, while implementation and activity reside among men.

It then goes on to offer a broad catalogue of the ills facing the empire: In particular, the imperial clan is multiplying, and those who are not officials are still numerous. Clerks are superfluous and unrestrained, creating great difficul­ ties for those attending to them. Accumulation in the villages is meager, and traveling merchants uncommon on the roads. A sense of modesty is rare, while the hasty rush [for position] is common. Customs are degenerate, while rec­ ommendations and selection suffer from the vice of selfishness. The benefits of salt have yet to be realized, and taxes have yet to be levied. Unnecessary ex­ penses are still numerous, and the worthy and vulgar are hard to distinguish.

iJL $ � l--1it ilii . 't * � � . � JPt: i� ilii ).t.* � •. • ;ft � 4� £ rgj , ;tlj*�i! �l!�. ,t.Jf;; lt ,*, 1tit't4J . �1�iti�, At*:fA � . • i'�-fl, M.��-'f.

When a poor year produces famine, people suddenly become refugees.

� " l1! � , 't�Jft;¥Jt, ��;!f.�.

Finally, stressing the importance of order and method, and the need for men of extraordinary talent, it creates the office and appoints Cai as supervisor.6 6.

SHY zhiguan 5-J2a-b; ]SBM 132.Ia-b; CB-SB 2o.3a-b.

J O H N CHAFFEE The following month, on 8/4, the organization of the Advisory Office was announced and staff were appointed. The Office was divided into seven functional units: the imperial clan * 1: , supernumerary officials 'it: If , national expenditure IJ ffl , taxation JI.t f!ii\:. , itinerant merchants j!lj *, salt '" if , and livestock management � ttl . Three examining editors It -tt If were assigned to each unit, and seven consultants t- -tf If were appointed, presumably to help general coordination and oversight. In addition, the Bureau of Military Affairs established its own Advisory Office with a consultant and an editor. 7 The twenty-seven appointees to the Advisory Office (seven con­ sultants and twenty editors, for livestock management had only two appointees) are listed in Table I.I. The consultants were of higher rank than the editors and are also better represented in historical records, though little can be deduced from that fact (it could be that the traumas of the late 1120S curtailed the careers and therefore the historical prominence of those who had been editors). It is also noteworthy that of the thirteen for whom I have been able to find evidence of native place (five consultants and eight editors), aI/were from either the southeast or Sichuan. Since Cai Jing himself was a native of Fujian, the southern character of this reform, like that of the New Policies, is clear. But the most striking feature of this group is the modesty of their bureaucratic positions. There were no assisting councilors or senior censors, and just one minister. With the exception of Zhang Shangying and Wu Juhou, the consultants were all rank 6 officials, while the editors were overwhelm­ ingly from ranks 7 and 8, or the lower echelons of the administrative officials. Since this was a body with enormous power able to make drastic changes throughout the government it would appear that Cai was determined to use bright but junior officials loyal to him and without vested interests of their own. The only two obvious exceptions were Zhang and Wu, who, with Liu Geng, were initially named by Huizong, with the others then being nominated by Cai;8 as we shall see, Zhang was to become a bitter opponent of Cai a few years later. SHY zhiguan 5·13a-b. 8. jSBM 132.Ib-2a. This is a revealing memorial from Cai Jing, which, though dated 8/5 T e. , must have been written immediately before this memorial. In it he comments on an edict he had received that had laid out the seven areas important for governance Jtz:k.:t and on the appointment of Wu Juhou, Zhang Shangying, and Liu Geng as consultants. Cai suggests the additional appointments of Fan Zhixu, Wang Hanzhi, 7.

Huizong, CaiJing, and the Politics if Reform

37

Once established, the Advisory Office lost little time in proceeding with reform legislation.9 As we can see in Table 1.2 (at the end of this chapter), various major reform initiatives were launched in the latter half of 1102. On 7/12, even before the creation of the Office but after Cai's appointment, the tea monopoly was extended to the southeast.lO On 8/20, charity clinics .!Jt:- � � were mandated for all prefectures and counties, thereby initiating the welfare program. Two days later, Cai submitted his massive ten-point educational reform memorial, which was accepted. Its provisions included the replacement of the examina­ tions with an empire-wide system of schools, each organized into three halls or levels, with students advancing from county to prefectural schools to the Biyong � $., or Outer Hall of the Imperial University, to the university proper, and with the university graduates receiving jinshi degrees.!! Thus it fundamentally altered the institutions at the center of literati life. In the eleventh month Cai turned his attention to the imperial clan, proposing two large residential complexes in the western and southern capitals (Luoyang � � and Yingtianfu J.i*.. lft) to house those clan members distantly related to the emperor, especially those from the Taizu :tAR and Weiwang ;t.!. branches of the clan.!2 In the twelfth month, Cai signaled plans for the changes in the tea monopoly, though the major change the creation of a monopoly for southeastern tea was not enacted for another year.!3 Finally, the Hired Service Sys­ tem � R� of New Policies fame was revived, though using the regu­ lations that had been in effect during the Shaosheng era.

Li Xun, and Ye Di and proposes that three editors be named to each of the functional areas, both measures contained in the SflY measure. 9. See ]SBM 132.1b-5a for the steady stream of proposals that emanated from the Office on a wide variety of reform legislation over the succeeding two years. 10. SflY shihuo 24.34b-35a. II. SflY chongru 2.7h-9a. These reforms have been much studied. Two standard English-language references for them are Thomas H. C. Lee, Government Education and Examinations in Sung China (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1985), esp. pp. 64-65, 126-27, 256-57; and John W. Chaffee, The Thorny Gates ofLearning in Sung China: A Social History ofExaminations, new ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 77-84. 12. SflY dixi 5.15b-18a; SflY zhiguan 20.34a. 13. SflY shihuo 65.30, 31h-32b, 34b.

J O H N C HAFFEE Table 1.1 Advisory Office Staff, II02

Name

Title

Rank

Biographical references

Consultants Wu Juhou

;"'/l;4 Zhang Shangying

� ;6j �

Minister of revenue (Hubu

2b

Hanlin academician (Hanlin

3a

shangshu I' � f.6 t")

xueshi �#* ±) Vice minister of punishments (shangshu Xingbu shilang

6a or b

Fan Zhixu

Imperial diarist (qiju sheren

6b

Wang Hanzhi

Vice chamberlain for ceremonials

6a

Ye Di

Director of the Granary Bureau (shangshu Cangbu langzhong

6b

Vice director of the Minisrry of Personnel (shangshu Libuyuan

7a

Vice director for the Left Office of the Department of State Affairs (shangshu Zuosiyuan

6b

Liu Geng

nlJ' i€. ftJi

.!. il.z.. ��

Li Xun

�Ji] Zeng Xiaowen VI :tti (Military Advisors Office)

Index 2: II52; SS 343 Index 3: 2404

f.6 "' :1foj � 1t t�)

� /l;*A.)

(taichang shaoqing :k f .y' �)

Index 2: 1762; SS 362 Index I: 357; SS 347 Index 5: 3234

f.6 .. * � t� 'f)

wailang f.6 .. � � � 71- t�)

or 7a

Index 4: 2826; SS 312

7a

Index 3: 2222

wailang f.6 " £ � � 71- t�) Editors

Qiang Junming 5l it II,ij

Li Shi

Vice director for Imperial Manufactories (Shaofu

jiancheng .y' J{f � �)

;l

3f-lt

Recorder of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices (faichangsi

Bao Yiqing

Court gentleman for instruction

8b

Li Yan

Gentleman for closing court

7b

Index 2: 880

Gentleman for closing court

7b

Index 13= 2679; SS 348

Wu Chu

Gentleman for discussion

7b

Jia Anguo

Gentleman for discussion

7b

.feM;� 3f- JJi.

Tao Jiefu

•

Zhubu :k f � .:t. i4)

(xua,!/iaolang ��H�) (chaosanlang .tJHtt t�)

IIfiJ � Jl ;"'{$

� � 1fJ

(chengyilang ;ifc. tIV�)

Index 3: 1795

Huizong, Cai Jing, and the Politics ofReform

39

Table 1.1, cont. Biographical references

Title

Rank

WangJue

Gentleman for closing court

7b

Cui Biao

Court gentleman consultant

8b

An Kang

Gentleman for discussion

7b

Yu Fang

Gentleman for discussion

7b

Lin Shu

8a

Han Dunli

Court gentleman for comprehensive duty (tongzhilang ii i! ��) Grand master for closing court

6b

Index 5: 4178

Zeng Shen

Grand master for court service

6b

Index 4: 2812

Yu Shou

Gentleman for closing court

7b

Feng Chen

Grand master for closing court

6b

Li Deng

Gentleman for closing court

7b

Lii Cong

Gentleman for rendering service

9b

Qiao Fang

Gentleman for attendance

Name

I f:

.�

�:;t

Jt F�

#. -ili

.ft• .;!. f 1t

�4t

��1&

Uengyilang ""tl ��)

(chaosan daifu fJlJft**)

(chaoftng daifu tJJ .. **)

Index 1: 238

Index 4: 3196

4-*-l

g i*

*�

Shen Xi

;*- �

Cao You t � (Military Advisory Office)

(chengwulang jf<.� ��)

(chengfenglang jf<."��)

Ezhou revenue administrator

9b ;> •

(EZhou sihu cao/un ill #1 iiJ

i' t- �)

Bureau of Military Affairs, chief recipient of edicts; Enzhou defense commissioner (Enzhou fangyushi, Shumi duchengzhi

Index 1: 688; 55 320

5b

.� #I � *{t, � Wf :ilS jf( � )

All the editors were attached to functional units. The assignments were: imperial clan (Qiang Junming, Li Shi, and Bao Yiqing), supernumerary officials (Li Bo, Tao Jiefu, and Wu Chu), national expenditure Oia Anguo, Wang Jue, and Cui Biao), taxation (An Kang, Yu Fang, and Lin Shu), itinerant merchants (Han Dunli, Zeng Shen, and Yu Shou), salt monopoly (Feng Chen, Li Deng, and Lii Cong), livestock management (Qiao Fang and Shen Xi), and Bureau of Military Affairs (Cao You). SOURCES: SHY zhigllan 5-I2.b-I3b; 55: Song History biography ; Index: Chang Bide S, it 1l et al., Songren chlla'!ft iiliao sII'!Yin *A.1t-l�lt#t'ql (faibei: Dingwen shuju, 1974). NOTES:

J O H N C HAFFEE

Over the following two years, the Advisory Office produced several additional reform measures of importance: the creation of specialty schools or colleges in medicine, mathematics, painting, and calligraphy at the capital, the first established in 1103 and the others in 1104;1 4 the ex­ tension of the poorhouse system /l; . � from the provinces where it had been established in 1098 to Kaifeng in 1103; the creation of paupers' cemeteries � i'f III in II04;15 and the revival of the Land Survey and Equitable Tax -}j \!1 J�ff..� in 1104 (though this was abolished in 1106) . 1 6 There were, moreover, numerous pieces of supplemental legislation de­ signed to address specific issues, especially with regard to education. But so generally successful was the Advisory Office in achieving its goals that it was abolished in mid-II04, its purposes having been served, and most of the officials attached to it were given promotions.17 Before moving forward in time, we should note developments in court music that, while not under the purview of the Advisory Office, were still very much the product of Huizong and Cai Jing's desire for change. As Joseph Lam explains in Chapter 10 of this volume, Huizong was determined to remedy what he saw as the disarray of court music, and in 1104 formally adopted the musical theories of the Daoist music master Wei Hanjin � � it, who, among other things, argued that the court's pitch pipes should be based upon the combined length of three fingers of Huizong's left hand.18 In 1104/7 workmen began casting nine massive musical tripods �liIrI- , which had also been proposed by Wei, fin­ ishing them in 1105/7.19 The following month the Dashengyue *- h\ * -"music of great brilliance," the name given to this new music was formally promulgated and a Dasheng Bureau *- h\ }(f was established to oversee its implementation.2o

14. CB-5B 22.IIa, 24.6a-7a; 55 19: 369. See also the chapter by Maggie Bickford in this volume. 15. 55 19: 368; 5HY shihuo 60.4a-b. For an analysis of the whole relief program, see Hugh Scogin, "Poor Relief in Northern Sung China," Oriens Extremis 25.1 (1978): 30-46. 16. ]5BM 138.3a. On this subject, as elsewhere, I am indebted to Ari Levine, "Hui­ tsung's Reign." 17· ]5BM 132.5b-6a; 5HY zhiguan 5-l4a-15b. 18. Joseph Lam, Chapter 10 of this volume. Wei was recommended to Huizong by Cai Jing. 19. 55 128: 2999. 20. 55 128: 2999;J5BM 135.4b-5a.

Huizong, CaiJing, and the Politics rfReform

4I

By the end of II04 the major elements of the reform were in place, so it might be appropriate to consider here just how they affected condi­ tions in the empire. In the countryside the major change was the revival of two measures from the New Policies: the Land Survey and Equitable Tax System and the Hired Service System. Both of these had been cre­ ated in the early I070S to address pressing rural problems: the excessive tax burden on the poorer peasants in the former case, and the of­ ten-disastrous burden of service obligations for the latter.21 The Hired Service System, in particular, was one of the core programs of the reform faction and had in fact been revived in I094, reversing the return to the use of drafted service that had been enacted by the opponents of the New Policies.22 How well these reforms were implemented is a question that lies beyond the scope of this paper, though the repeated reversals of the Land Survey System point to continuing controversy. But one thing that they and the southeastern tea monopoly reform

had in common is that they

the third major economic

all provided the government with

significant new forms of revenue. I suggest that therein lay their greatest significance, for the common characteristic of the non-economic re­ forms is that they

all involved major new expenditures by the govern­

ment. The welfare reforms were one example of these, although they were still developing, for at their fullest extent they involved pharmacies and poorhouses in addition to the clinics and cemeteries mentioned above. Since Asaf Goldschmidt's chapter in this volume describes these institu­ tions in detail, I

will not pursue them here. But note that, even though

these institutions had earlier precedents Song

mainly in the Northern

their widespread propagation under Huizong represented a

radical assumption of responsibility for at least minimum levels of welfare for the poor. Since these institutions were located in urban centers

prefectural and county capitals

their impact was undoubtedly

greatest on the urban poor, but even this was a very sizable group. At the other end of the social spectrum, the creation of imperial clan centers in Luoyang and Yingtianfu also involved the government's as­ sumption of new responsibilities, in this case for clansmen who had no

21. See Smith, "Shen-tsung's Reign," pp. 57-58 on the Land Survey and Equitable Tax System and pp. 63-69 on the Hired Service System. 22. See Levine, "Che-tsung's Reign," pp. 98-101.

J O H N CHAFF E E

42

mourning relationship to the emperor and therefore should have been on their own, according to Tang precedent. The new centers served to get these clan members out of Kaifeng, where they were an increasing nuisance, but the cost was considerable, for the initial appropriation for the project was an endowment of 10,000 to roughly

qing of fields, which translates

160,000 acres or 250 square miles.23

Most prominent of the reforms were those involving education, for they directly affected all literati. The Three Hall System ..::.. -ff � traced its origins to the New Policies period, when it pertained to the Imperial University only. By expanding it to all prefectures and counties and then decreeing that advancement through schools would supplant the ex­ amination system, Cai Jing and Huizong radically altered academic and

social structures. The road to success lay through entrance examinations, student positions with stipends, periodic testing, and promotion ex­ aminations that took students from hall to hall and school to school. In Kaifeng, the Imperial University, which in 1104 had 3,800 students in the Biyong and

(3,000

800 in the Inner and Upper Halls),24 dominated the

educational landscape, but it was far from alone. The new Schools of Medicine, Mathematics, Painting, and Calligraphy all employed the three-hall organization and seem to have had several hundred students each. 25 There were, in addition, the School of Law (although it was restricted to examination graduates and active officials), the Military School, and the Kaifeng prefectural school.26 Indeed, never before and never again would a Chinese imperial capital have so many different schools offering advanced education in a variety of fields. The flurry of reform activity described above was far from the only matter to occupy the court during these initial years of Cai Jing's grand councilorship. The announcement by the Censor Qian Yu

� :i!

(1050-

23. SHY zhiguan 20.34a. See John Chaffee, The Branches o/Heaven:A History o/the Imperial Clan 0/Sung China (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), 95-98. 24· SS 157: 3663. 25. I know of no student figures for the Schools of Painting and Calligraphy, but the School of Mathematics had 210 students, the School of Medicine 300. SHY chongru 3.2a-b, 12a. See Thomas Lee's informative treatment of these schools in Government Education and Examinations, 91-103. 26. The Military School had 200 students in 1120, and probably also in 1101, although the SHY entry for that year is not entirely clear. SHY chongru 3-3Ia-b, 32b-33a.

Huizong, CaiJing, and the Politics ofRejorm

43

I I2I) of a new military campaign marked the beginning of a yearlong war in the northwest that proved successful but costly and of questionable strategic benefit.27 But like the reforms themselves, much of the inspi­ ration for the campaign seems to have been Huizong's desire to follow in the footsteps of his father and brother, both of whom had been involved in very problematic ventures in the west. More relevant for our purposes were the ruthless and unparalleled political purges that were virtually coterminous with this first phase of reform. By 1102 the dynasty had already witnessed more than 30 years of purges as the tides of reform and anti-reform swept back and forth. The difference in this case was a matter of both scope and method. Although the first moves against the Yuanyou faction :t as the opponents of refonn were usually known predated Cai Jing's ascension to grand councilorship, the wholesale purges began in 1102/9. That month an evaluation of the memorials of 312 officials who had served in the Yuanyou period resulted in their being categorized in terms of their orthodoxy iE. / heterodoxy *�.28 This was followed a few days later by the listing of 117 individuals as unfit for further service.29 In the eleventh month a report of investigations of conduct found some 79 culpable, 27 of whom were ordered into distant exile,3° The same month 57 others were barred from further service.31 The following year, in 1103/9, stone steles were prepared for distribution throughout the empire listing some 93 men half of them deceased as members of the Yuanyou faction.32 Finally, in 1I04f 6, the largest of the blacklists was published, labeling 309 men as wicked and treacherous,33 These blacklists do not begin to cover the scope of Cai Jing's purges, which also involved prohibitions of their writing and teaching, broken careers, a requirement that they live outside the capital, and exiles that could be tantamount to death sentences. We should note, however, that as awful as these penalties were, we do not find the use of gross violence, 27. See ]5BM I30.2Ia-b for Qian's memorial. This campaign is the subject of Paul Smith's chapter in this volume. 28. ]5BM I23.3b-8b. 29. ]5BM I2I.8a-9b. 30. ]5BM I23·8h-9a. 31. ]5BM I2I.5a-b. 32. ]5BM I2I.I5b-I6b. 33· ]5BM I22·9b-I3a.

J O H N CHAFFEE

44

of executions not simply of individuals but also of their families, as was to be the case in the political struggles of the Ming. But since our concern is with the reforms, I would make just two points about the purges. First, they should be regarded as an integral part of the reform process, for in the reformers' narrative of the reforms under Shenzong and Zhezong, the "crooked scholars and vulgar Ru"

to quote Huizong

were villains

who had sabotaged the reforms, and therefore they needed to be handled firmly. Second, in the short

run

at least, the purges succeeded, and the

Yuanyou voices were effectively absent from Kaifeng for the remainder of Huizong's reign.

The First Interlude (II06-7J By the beginning of 1106, eai Jing had been grand councilor for almost four years, and for most of that time he had held that post by himself. By and large the reforms were in place, and when changes had been made from late

1104 through 1105, they tended

to be aimed at extending them

further, though in minor ways. The Yuanyou faction, as broadly defined by the blacklists, had been crushed politically, so eai had no evident political opposition. In Tingzhi

,t!41t-t...

1105/3, he was joined as grand councilor by Zhao (1040-1107), an experienced reformist official who had

been renowned for his partisan attacks on the Yuanyou officials under Zeng Bu's

t' AP

grand councilors hip in

1100-1101.

eai himself had

vigorously recommended Zhao for the post, but they quickly became estranged to the point that Zhao charged eai with treachery and asked to retire, reportedly for fear that if he remained eai would cause him harm. 34 Whatever security eai may have felt was shattered on the fifth day of

1106/1, when a large described in the

comet appeared in the western skies. The comet is

Song History

annals as "filling the heavens"

� *-

and

{T � as several zhang ;t in length and filling the heavens with its tail; it re­

more evocatively in Zhao Tingzhi's "biographical account"

portedly terrified Huizong, who immediately fled the throne hall.35 In­ terpreting the comet as a dire portent, over the next ten days the emperor undertook a host of actions that reversed standing policies. These in­ cluded an empire-wide amnesty, an order for the destruction of the

34· SS 351: 11094, 472: 13725; CB-SB 26.10a-b. 35. SS 20: 375; CB-SB 26.10a-b.

Huizong, CaiJing, and the Politics rfReform

45

Yuanyou steles, abolition of the specialty schools in the capital (these were soon thereafter restored but abolished again in the fourth month), abolition of the Land Survey and Equitable Tax System, and restoration of the ever-normal granaries (whose coffers had been raided to support various refoml activities).36 According to Zhao's biographical account, "Thus he profoundly understood Jing's treacherous deception. In the space of ten days all that Jing had done was completely halted."37 Not surprisingly, Cai Jing's departure quickly followed, on the third day of 1106/2.

During the year of Cai's absence from power, there was a perception, as suggested by the above quotation, that the entire reform program had been nullified. In fact, although there were some highly visible reversals, most of it seems to have remained intact, but without question the rhetoric of reform was out of vogue. Politically, the grand beneficiaries of the new order were Zhao Tingzhi and the vice director of the Bureau of Military Affairs, Liu Kui f1lt, another former Cai loyalist who had become one of his harshest critics following the comet, which Liu argued demonstrated the suffering of the people under Cai's policies.38 Just days after the comet's appearance, Liu was rewarded with appointment as vice director of the Secretariat, but his actual power appears to have been as great or even greater than that of Zhao. Although Cai Jing had left office, his influence remained strong. The historical sources portray active interventions on the part of ''ling's fac­ tion" 1f. 'f to attack his successors and further his interests, and although we must view them with some skepticism, these accounts are interesting. According to the thirteenth-century Xu Song biannian ilZhi tongjian It *

Arilff-n;i!C,

In the second month [of 1106], shortly before Cai Jing left office, he instructed the men of his party to submit statements to the emperor stating that Jing's reforms of institutions and laws all followed the emperor's stated aims and were not selfish; that such varied undertakings as the schools and the Imperial Music Service all followed the admirable intentions of his father Shenzong's continuing legacy; and that now these had all been terminated, raising the fear that this was not the intention of the continuing legacy. As a result the em­ peror restored the educational officials and officials from the Office of Alum 36. 55 20: 375-6. 37. CB-SB 26 loa b. Cai's biography contains a similar charge. 55 472: 13725. 38. 55 351: III09-IO. .

-

J O H N CHAFFEE

This was only an opening salvo. As 1106 progressed, two factors served Cai's interests. First, Liu Kui proved to be extremely high-handed in his exercise of power and thereby alienated many, a reaction that Cai's fac­ tion actively encouraged. Second, as the above anecdote suggests, Hui­ zong came to have second thoughts about abandoning reform: "Before long, Huizong rather regretted the fury of the changes, but outside of the [inner] court, no one knew thiS."40 This last point was critical, illustrat­ ing one of the chronic weaknesses of the imperial system. Since only a tiny group of ministers personally interacted with emperors on a regular basis, when emperors came to be at odds with their grand councilors, communicating with others in the bureaucracy was often not a simple matter. In this instance a back door was used. When Zheng Juzhong Jt!s.JS- t (1059-1123), the associate administrator of the Bureau of Military Affairs, paid a visit to Zheng Shen Jt!s!.lf (d. 1127) his cousin and the father of Consort Zheng Jt!s�e Shen reported of learning from his daughter that Huizong had had a change of heart, but that no one outside of the inner court was aware of it. Together with the vice director of the Ministry of Rites, Liu Zhengfu f1.i£..k. (1062-III9), Zheng Juzhong requested and received an imperial audience, at which he said to Huizong: Your maj esty has built schools and made rituals and music to flourish in order to adorn the great peace and established poorhouses and hospitals in order to rescue the impoverished. How can that be defiance of Heaven or cause for a severe reprimand? F1l:: r Jt *�, � :ft *, )<;,{ rI. '*$ � -t; � )k-l, � � FJt, )<;,{ )lJ JiUl lIl 1;I1"JT l!t k r1Q ft�it 1<-? ,

The emperor was reportedly surprised but pleased by this approach, according as it did with his own private thoughts. This was followed by attacks by Yu Shen � i� (1082 jinsht) and Shi Gongbi ,k; � � (1091 jinsht) identified as members of Cai's faction on Liu Kui for high­ handedness and insulting behavior toward his fellow officials, and for 39. Cited in CB-SB 26.IOb. 40. SS 351: 11109-10. This is from the biography of ZhengJuzhong.

Huizong, CaiJing, and the Politics ifReform rejecting the "excellent laws of the continuing legacy

47

#-?lil!f.z R ):!

and

with using the learning of the heterodox Yuanyou party." The result was Liu's dismissal in

1106/12

and Cai's restoration the following

month.41 Once back in power, Cai moved quickly to restore the specialty schools in the capital. He also tightened some of the restrictions on those in the Yuanyou list that had been loosened the previous year, though in

1108

these were quite significantly relaxed. One of Cai's most

interesting new ventures was the creation, in

1107/6,

of a new route for

advancement to officialdom, namely the Eight Conducts

A -1-[ system of

selection, whereby individuals of exceptional virtue were given special entry into the schools and then promotion through them. This was paired with a group of eight punishments

A*'J, so that if investigators

found that one's actions were contrary to the virtues of the Eight Conducts, one could be expelled from school. Clearly the need for ideological control on the part of Cai Jing and his supporters had not

diminished with time.42 At the same time, the year 1108 also wit­

nessed several measures relaxing restrictions on the Yuanyou group, in­ cluding an amnesty for many of them and the formal removal of 9 5 from the list.43

41. TIlls account primarily follows 5B 26.IOb-na, which cites the Tongjian xubian IiC* Si (according to Hervouet, 75, the third of a three-work sequence based on Zhu Xi's ZiZhi tong;ian gangmu 1t n; Ii � nq � and first published in 1707). A similar though less detailed account is found in Zheng Juzhong's biography (55 351: III04). The quota­ tion is from Shi Gongbi's biography and is ascribed to him (55 348: II032). 42. ]5BM 126.1a-4a. TIlls account of the Eight Conducts system differs from that which I gave in The Thorny Gates ofLearning, 78. At that time I relied on Ma Duanlin, Wenxian tongkao (faibei: Xinxing shuju, 1964), 46: 433, which places its founding in n04. However, ]5BM 126, which is a more reliable source than the Tongkao, clearly indicates that it was created in n07. The eight forms of virtuous conduct were: filiality, brotherly love, friendliness toward agnatic kin, sympathy toward affinal kin, trustworthiness with friends, sympathy toward neighbors, loyalty toward the ruler, and a sense of harmony in distinguishing right from wrong. 43. CB-5B 28·3a, 8a, 9b.

J O H N C HAFFEE

The Second Interlude (IIOf}-I2) Cai Jing's second period out of power was longer and more complicated than the ftrst. His removal as grand councilor in 1109/6 followed blis­ tering memorials accusing Cai, among other things, of treachery, avari­ ciousness, damaging scholarly culture, blatant nepotism, and harming the common people. The authors were Shi Gongbi, the vice censor-in-chief, Mao Zhu �ii:., a censor, and Chen Chaolao Ft -tJj�, a university stu­ dent.44 Of them Shi was easily the most important, not only by virtue of his position but also because he had been a key supporter of Cai during Cai's return to power in 1107.45 By contrast, the prominence given to Chen's memorial which is summarized at length in Cai's Song History biography is probably a reflection of the anti-Cai historiography, for it is unlikely that a university student's memorial would have carried any particular weight with Huizong.46 Two things complicate this account of Cai's removal from offtce. One is astronomical. According to the Xu Song biannian iJZhi tongjian, Guo Tianxin f� :k it, a career offtcial in the Bureau of Astronomy, had long been a favorite of Hllizong because when the emperor was Prince Duan � .1.. , Guo had predicted that "the prince will obtain a position over all of the world." Then in 1109/6 Guo approached the emperor with a re­ port that the sun had black spots El � ;tr .'1.. -=t, thus frightening Hllizong and resulting in Cai Jing's dismissal.47 Second is the fact that Cai, at this point 64 sui, had asked to step down on account of illness. When he did so, however, he remained in the capital; he was accorded the prerogatives of an acting grand coun­ cilor, including the right to stand in the row for grand councilors at

44. These memorials can be found in several sources, but are conveniendy provided

in Song zaifu 12: 747-49. 45. Shi's biography notes the "connections" between Shi and Cai that facilitated Shi's career, but goes on to say that they gradually became estranged, with Cai becoming fearful of Shi (SS 348: 11031.). 46. The biographical entry in Chang Bide, Songren chuanji ii1iao suoyin, p. 2623 (he has no SS biography), indicates that Chen, a longtime university student, is known mainly for critical memorials. 47. Cited in CB-SB 28.15a-b. The same anecdote is given in Guo's Song History biog­ raphy (SS 462: 13525), though with an incorrect date, for it states that it happened in early Zhenghe, or 1111, when Cai was already out of power.

Huizong, Cai jing, and the Politics 0/Reform

49

major audiences; and he continued an ongoing project, the supervision of the

Veritable Records 0/the Emperor Shenzong :ff* .i. * ", •.48 This last

was no small matter, for given the enormous weight accorded Shen­ zong's reign by Huizong and the reformists generally, the

Veritable Records

would be the official and authoritative account of the period. The fact that it was first commissioned more than 20 years earlier, in 1086, sug­ gests how problematic its production had been.49 In fact, Cai was able to complete this work without interference, presenting the

Records to

the

throne in 1110 /4. 50 The month after that presentation another comet appeared, visible between the Kui

:t- and Lou � constellations. Again the emperor was

petrified, and this unleashed a flood of memorials that bitterly de­ nounced Cai. 5! One of their themes was his continued influence in government. Shi Gongbi wrote: ''ling is lingering in the capital without intending to leave, and his ample power shakes the ministers. I hope that there will be a determination that his grasp will be broken, so as to avoid [possible] future regrets."52 The censor Zhang Kegong

;k Jt -A ,

who

attacked Cai's eight years of governance, criticized him particularly for his venality and corruption. 53 As a result, in 1109/6 Cai was sent from the capital to become prefect of Hangzhou

lit 1'1'1

•

Politically, this departure from Kaifeng marks the real beginning of his period out of power. Shi Gongbi's point about his continued influ­ ence during 1109-10 was well taken, for his personal networks had re­ mained untouched. He Zhizhong, his successor as grand councilor, had long been very close to Cai and seems to have done little to upset him.54 There were at this time widespread complaints about waste and corrup­ tion in various reform programs, but apart from an order abolishing yet again the specialty schools in 1110/3,55 the only major cutback was to the

48. Song zaifo 12: 747. 49· SS IT 321. . 50. fSBM 13I.I4a; SB 29.9a. 51. Song zaifu 12: 751. For references to the comet, see SS 20: 382, 348: lIoH, 472: 13725. 52. SS 348: II032. Mao Zhu wrote in a similar vein, arguing that his continuing residence in Kaifeng was harmful (CB-SB 29.9a; SS 348: lI034). 53. SS 472: 13725. This account of Zhang'S memorial is from Cai's biography. 54. See He's biography in SS 351: IIIOI-3. 55· CB-SB 29·7a.

J O H N C HAFFEE satellite centers of the imperial clan, and this occurred in 1109/3, while Cai was still grand councilor. 56 The changes in late 1110, by contrast, were substantial. In 1110/6, in a move that marked a real break from Cai, Zhang Shangying 5l j!'ij � was promoted to the grand councilorship. Zhang, a long-standing reformist, had been one of the most prominent of the consultants to the Advisory Office in 1102, but because of disagreements with Cai he had been de­ moted and placed on the Yuanyou list. After a number of distant pre­ fectural appointments, Zhang was named prefect of Hangzhou in 1109. In 1110/2 he was brought to the capital as an academician at the Zizheng Hall }f n.�, and a month later was made vice minister of the Secre­ tariatY The choice of Zhang was important. Although bitterly opposed to Cai personally, Zhang did not attack the reforms. Indeed, at his ap­ pointment interview for his post as Zizheng academician, Zhang told the emperor: When Shenzong reformed laws and institutions, he took care to get rid of the very harmful and make flourish the very beneficial. If we now sincerely enact [reforms] one by one, then we can fully [realize] the beauty of the continuing legacy. If the laws have shortcomings, then they must be changed, but we must not lose [sight of] his intentions.58 �f * 1f� � J.t, �,,;;I.. *:k. $ , � :k. :f� , 4'-� .-ft IN . �.g i!z � . � * ;tr �, � Pf � � , 1!!. � � Jt. ;t, Jt � . - -

,

Presumably Huizong was mindful of this advice when selecting Zhang as grand councilor, and indeed, Zhang's yearlong tenure was characterized by verbal support for the "continuing legacy" of reform. At the same time, Zhang urged frugality or even austerity in response to the reports on waste that were noted earlier, and as a result a series of cutbacks ensued. Shi Gongbi was important in this process, for according to his biography he argued that the surfeit of officials violated the old Yuan­ feng regulations, and he succeeded in achieving large cutbacks in Min­ istry of Personnel appointments, in stipendiary positions at palace 56. SHY zhiguan 20.35b. 57. SS 351: 11095-98; CB-SB 29.lb, 6a. See also Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, "Zhang Shangying (I043-1122)-An Embarrassing Policy Advisor Under the Northern Song," in Tsuyoshi Kinugawa, ed., Collected Studies on Sung History Dedicated to ProfessorJames T. C. Liu in Celebration ofHis Seventieth Birthdt!J (Kyoto: Dohosha, 1989), 521-30. 58. CB-SB 29.1b; SS 351: 11097.

Huizong, CaiJing, and the Politics qiRiform

51

temples 1: 1fiJ, in the Waterways Command, as well as in counties, the tea administration, and fiscal intendants' offices. 59 More generally, Zhang's tenure witnessed the cessation of the reformed money system and of the Land Survey and Equitable Tax System,60 a major retrenchment of the entire relief system (poorhouses, hospitals, and cemeteries),61 and a va­ riety of austerity measures in education, including the ending of student support in county schools and primary schools.62 In nn/8, Zhang was dismissed as grand councilor and made prefect of Henan fu � � .1ft. The brevity of his tenure can be explained in part by the opposition and frequent criticism that he faced from his fellow councilor, He Zhizhong, and from Zheng Juzhong �Jk � , the admin­ istrator of the Bureau of Military Affairs; it is noteworthy that a central theme of their critique was that he had harmed the "continuing legacy. "63 But Zhang Shangying was also vulnerable because of his close associa­ tion with several non-literati. One was Dehong �#-, a Buddhist monk whom he had befriended and under whose purported influence Zhang had proposed a diminution in controls over monks and temples. Al­ though Huizong initially complied, he soon regretted it.64 Another was the astronomer Guo, who had earlier used his connections with the palace based upon the emperor's special regard for him to lobby for Zhang's promotion to grand councilor. But these connections were subsequently turned on him when ''Jing's faction" was able to bring about Zhang's dismissal through their accusation that Guo had spied on the emperor, and that Guo and Zhang had divulged palace conversations.65 In one respect, Zhang Shangying's fortune was better than Cai Jing's. A short time after he had become grand councilor, when the capital re­ gion had been suffering from a lengthy drought, a comet appeared. But ,

59. 55 348: n032. 60. 55 20: 383-4; jSBM 138.4a. 61 . SHY

shihuo

60.5b-6a. These included the closing of clinics and hospitals in

Kaifeng. Institutions in the prefectures and counties were allowed to continue, but a return to the regulations of the Yuanfu era (I098-noo) was mandated. 62. SHY chongru 2.14b-16a. 63. 55 351: n097. On the harm to the Shaoshu, see

Song zaifu 12: 761.

64. 55 462: 13525. 65. Ibid.; Song zaifu 12: 761. Zhang's biography mentions two other, not-so-respectable acquaintances: Tang Geng

,t 1tj , and Peng Fan j; JL

Jt ,*, who

for unexplained reasons had to flee to Huizhou

(55 351: 11097).

J O H N CHAFFEE the following day there was a big rainstorm and the comet disappeared. In delight, the emperor conferred his own calligraphy upon Zhang with the characters jtlj #. or "Shang'S rain."66 Cai's return to power in 1112 was quite different from that of 1108. In III2/2 his past title of grand preceptor .k. � was restored, and he was recalled to residence in the capital. The accompanying edict praised him for his "leadership in establishing the continuing legacy." 67 Then in III2/5 he was elevated once again to grand councilor status, but this time as semi-retired elder statesman with the privilege of attending sessions at the Executive Office of the Secretariat every third day.68 The sources are relatively silent about what caused this return to power. Xu Ziming ascribes it to collusion between Cai and the eunuch official Tong Guan i: 1f (1054-1126). Tong, he says, having just returned in early 1112 from an embassy to the Uao, falsely told Huizong that the Uao ruler had asked after Cai, and the emperor believed him .69 Even if true, it seems unlikely that this would have been sufficient to cause a change of mind on Huizong's part. It seems more likely that the depar­ ture of Zhang Shangying and Shi Gongbi who had also been dismissed to a provincial post cleared the government of Cai's major opponents, so that his return was mainly a matter of timing. Senior statesman though he may have been, within months of his return Cai Jing made his presence felt through the reform program. Beginning in late 1112, the government undertook an expansion in the service areas of the reforms relief, education, and the imperial clan that dwarfed what had gone before (see Table 1.2). There were economic changes as well the re-establishment yet again of the Land Survey and Equitable Tax System and a comprehensive reform of the tea monopoly70 but these were relatively minor. Welfare changes included the placement of all three institutions under the supervision of the fiscal intendants, in III2, and the establishment of the principle that care be

66.

Song zaifu 12: 755; SS 351: 11097.

67. CB-SB 30.m; jSBM 13I.I5a. 68. CB-SB 30.7a; jSBM 13I.I6a; Song zaifu 12: 765. Although he did not have the title of grand councilor, there was no doubt about his status. In its table of ministers, the

History lists him on the grand councilor's line for the years 1112-20 (SS 212: 69. Song zaifu 12: 765· 70. SS 21: 389; SHY shihuo 30.39b.

5521-27).

Song

Huizong, CaiJing, and the Politics of Reform

53

provided regardless of the numbers of people needing it, in 1114,71 In education, the development and growth of schools at all levels was en­ couraged in a number of ways, and there were attempts to create an empire-wide network of medical schools attached to the local govern­ ment schools,72 As for the imperial clan, in lI12/7 the cutbacks of lI09 were restored and the residential complexes were revived, and from then until H20, they continued to develop dramatically,73 It is not entirely clear why Cai chose to pursue these expanded reform activities after his return in 1112, but several reasons suggest themselves. One could argue that the developments largely were logical extensions of changes already in place: the educational changes fleshing out already­ existing programs, and the relief and imperial clan expansions both the result of increasing demand for the services they provided. There was also a political factor: the voices expressing opposition or even caution had been driven from the capital, so that Cai and the emperor could do what they pleased. This was a period known in the traditional historiography for its profligate spending on palaces, gardens, fantastically shaped rocks from around the empire, and massive ritual and musical objects.74 It was also a period of large-scale state patronage of Daoism. Huizong had a life-long attraction to Daoism, as witnessed by his patronage of the Daoist music master Wei Hanjin discussed above. But as the chronology in Table 1.2 makes clear, the policies that gave Daoism an unprecedentedly privileged place in China's body politic were, with few exceptions, a feature of the second half of Huizong's reign. Beginning with the empire-wide search for Daoist scriptures launched in 1113/12, one measure followed another that symbolically elevated Daoism and channeled resources into Daoist establishments, while Buddhism was restricted. 75 In many ways, the combination of support for Daoism and persecution of Buddhism was reminiscent of the reform activities, and there were times when the two 71. SHY shihuo 60.6a,

6b.

72. For the medical schools, see SHY chongru 3.14a-b, 15b--16a, 16b-17a. 73. See SHY zhiguan 20.35b for the III2 edict. The dramatic developments of III2-20 are discussed in Chaffee,

Branches ifHeaven, pp. I00-IOI.

74. See, e.g., the catalog of costly undertakings at this time described

in

Cai's biog­

raphy (SS 462: 13726). 75. See tronage.

zhuan 127 of BM for a narrative of actions and documents relating to this pa­

54

J O H N CHAFFEE

sets of activities commingled, as in provisions made in 1118 for Daoist teachers and students in prefectural schools, special provisions for Daoists in the examinations, and Daoist professors at the Imperial University. 76 Yet the Daoist initiatives were far removed from the "continuing legacy" reforms; occurring as they did more than a decade after the main reform initiatives, this patronage of what was normally a countercultural tradition in the Chinese body politic was profoundly alien to the policies of Shenzong and Zhezong.77 I suggest, however, that as his reign progressed Huizong underwent a personal transformation, increasingly departing from the models of his father and brother. In his chapter in this volume, Peter Bol uses the triennial palace examination questions to trace the evolution of Hui­ zong's concerns, from the continuing legacy reforms (1103, 1106) to the trans formative functions of music (1109) to rule via the Dao (I115, I118), and he suggests a progressive concern with "how the unity and com­ pliance of the world can be orchestrated by acts the emperor can in fact perform himself." In this the kinds of governmental intervention and social ordering implicit in the New Policies and "continuing legacy" became incorporated into the emperor's cosmic order, even to the point of Huizong's legislating in I114 standardized banquet music to be played throughout the empire, as Joseph Lam has described.

The End ofRiform (II20) The end of reform and the virtual end of Cai Jing's career he was called back once more, but only briefly, in 1124 came almost anti­ climactically, in I120. By this time he was 74 sui, and the health of the duke-councilor � :.f:a , as he was called, was poor. Despite many special dispensations accorded to him, he had submitted more than ten requests to retire, and these were finally accepted in 1120/5, but not before even more honors and riches were lavished upon him, and promotions on his sons (powerful officials, thanks to his patronage) and grandsons.78

76.

]SBM

27.7b-8b;

CB·SB

38.6b, 39.3a. See also Shin-yi Chao's chapter

in

this

volume. 77. As Maggie Bickford shows in her chapter in this volume, the main precedent for

Huizong's policies was Zhenzong in the early eleventh century. 78.

Song zaifu 12: 791--93. For the largesse toward Cai's family, see CB-SB 4I.5a.

Huizong, CaiJing, and the Politics rf Reform

55

With Cai gone, power was concentrated in the hands of Wang Fu

J.. . (1079-1126), who had become a grand councilor the year before.

Song History as the quintessential opportunist, whose sins as grand councilor from 1I19 to 1125 earned him a spot in the Wang is portrayed in the chapter on sycophants

�t-. But about his role in ending the reforms the

biography is full of praise. had

A product of the Three Hall System in that he received hisjinshi degree during the Chongning era (1102-6), Wang

reportedly came into Cai's good graces when he delivered an imperial gift to Cai while the latter was in Hangzhou in

1I11,

and then submitted

memorials praising Cai's governance and attacking Zhang Shangying. Thus Cai undoubtedly considered him to be a safe appointment in

1119.

But following Cai's retirement, ''Wang pretended to be guided by the people's hearts, and completely reversed the things that he [Cai] had accomplished." This included the cessation of the Land Survey and Equitable Tax System, and closing the Biyong and the schools of medi­ cine and mathematics, among other things, and "the four quarters united in calling him a worthy councilor

I" *111 ."79

The broader record corroborates this account of a sudden and wide-scale dismantling of reform programs . The very month that Cai retired, major cutbacks were ordered for the relief programs and the equitable tax system was abolished, as were primary schools and special student status for medical, military, and Eight Conducts students in prefectural schools.8o There quickly followed the closure of the medical and math schools in the capital and a major retrenchment of the imperial clan centers.81 Early in Fang La

1121,

with the court reeling from reports of the

7i JJl rebellion in Zhejiang, a series of additional measures were

taken in education, the most important of which was the abolition of the Three Hall System in

1121/2.82 Thus ended the reforms.

Conclusion In concluding this chapter, I would like to reiterate that I have not tried to present a complete and balanced portrait of Huizong or of Cai Jing, nor to provide a comprehensive treatment of the reforms. My aim, rather,

79· SS 470: 13681-82; Song zaifo 12: 787. 80. SHY zhiguan 60.78a-b; CB-SB 41.8a; SHY chongru 2.30a. 81. SS 22: 406; SB 4I.Ioa; SHY zhiguan, 20.36b. 82. SHY chongru 2.31a.

J O H N C HAFFEE has been to look at the political interplay between individuals and pro­ grams over the course of time, and I believe that this investigation has produced some insights into the roles played by the emperor and his minister, as well as into the nature of the reforms themselves. To begin with Huizong, it seems quite clear that the initial impetus for the reforms came from him personally. Not only did he provide a mandate for reform in eai Jing's edict of appointment as grand councilor, but even earlier, during the councilorship of Zeng Bu, Huizong had al­ ready begun moving away from the conservative policies of Empress Dowager Xiang and in the direction of reform. It is also clear that his desire for reform was intimately related to his desire for filial and fra­ ternal connectedness to Shenzong and Zhezong, as expressed by the repeatedly invoked idea of the "continuing legacy." On two occasions Huizong turned away from his minister and from reform, fIrst in IIo6 and then, in a two-step process, in IIo9-IO. Here we must note the striking role played by astronomical portents, two comets and a sunspot. Unfortunately, we have no accounts articulating how Huizong personally understood these occurrences. They frightened him and made him listen to the complaints against both eai and the reforms that came flooding in each time. For an emperor who took seriously his role as the Son of Heaven, these must have appeared as alarming disturbances of the cosmic order, but they did not stop him from eventually returning to his original inclinations. The story of Zheng Juzhong's learning, via his palace connections, of Huizong's change of heart and then employing it to secure eai Jing's return, is ob­ viously meant to illustrate the deviousness of eai's followers. But it also indicates the extent to which the emperor's commitment to reform was internalized. As for eai Jing, two things stand out about him in the narrative that we have constructed. The fIrst is his identifIcation with and unswerving commitment to reform. With remarkable temporal precision, when he was in power, reform flourished, and while he was out of power, it lan­ guished, and this held true over a span of eighteen years. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explain why this was the case. Principled com­ mitment is a possible answer, though it flies in the face of his traditional reputation. A second possibility is that his support for reform was based upon the enormous opportunities that it offered for patronage and enrichment. Third, we might hypothesize that so essential was his pro-reform identity in his relationships with the emperor and his own

Huizong, Caijing, and the Politics of Reform

57

followers that he could not have compromised on his commitment without weakening those relationships. Probably all three of these factors operated to some extent, but that is as much as can now be said. Second, Cai Jing was clearly an outstanding politician, in the sense of being able to maintain and control his followers over long periods of time. ''ling's faction" or "party" is a persistent refrain in the political narratives of this period. His followers are most visible in his periods out of power, when they are credited with manipulating events in his favor, but perhaps the most telling testimonial to his power came from Shi Gongbi's plea in IIIO to have Cai removed from the capital, since by his very presence "his ample power shakes the ministers."83 In light of the repeated charges in Cai's

Song History biography,

and more generally in

the traditional historiography concerning his greed and spending on his friends and supporters, it is reasonable to assume that patronage played a major role in his power.84 But it should also be noted that Cai was op­ erating in a dramatically different political context than that which had

30 years. Thanks in large part to his ruth­ another aspect of his political persona the 1102-4 purges of

prevailed during the previous lessness

Yuanyou partisans succeeded, and as a result the politics of court and capital were no longer dominated by ideological disputes. It is true that Cai's ouster in

1106 was formulated as an attack on the reform program,

but its quick reversal seems to have ensured that the subsequent attacks would be more purely personal. But between his ties to Huizong and his network of supporters, his ability to outmaneuver and outlast his op­ ponents was unparalleled. What of the reforms themselves? In considering their complex and lengthy history, I offer four observations. First, taken as a whole the reforms raised and spent enormous amounts of money. It is true that the Land Survey and Tax Equalization System was proposed as a means of addressing inequities in the countryside by identifying tax evaders through a new cadastral survey, thereby broadening the tax rolls. How­ ever, according to its critics its main effect was to increase the tax burden on ordinary farmers. The new tea and salt monopolies, by contrast, were explicitly revenue-raising measures, and although the tea measures were to some extent counterproductive, the salt monopoly was a great

83. 55 348: II032. 84. See 55 472: 13724 and 13726 for specific charges in this vein.

J O H N CHAFFEE success.85 The reformers also made liberal use of heirless fields

i' � 111

and ever-normal granaries to support reform activities. Without question, these extraordinary revenues helped to feed the imperial appetite for fantastic rocks and gardens, as well as the

Cai family's infamous appetite

for luxury. But in fact the reforms also involved unprecedented invest­ ment in government activities. So far as I know there are no statistics for the hospitals, pharmacies, poorhouses, and cemeteries, or for Huizong's expenditures on music and Daoism, but figures for education and the

1104 the Three Hall System had more than 210,000 students and annual expenditures of 3.4 million strings of cash and 500,000 dan ;G of rice (ca. 1.35 million bush­ elS) .86 In 1109, during a period of retrenchment, student numbers had declined to 167,622 and expenditures to 2,678,787 strings and 337,944 dan, while endowed lands totaled 105,990 qing j::� of fields (ca. 1.5 million acres).87 We also know that the clan centers had holdings of 44,000 qing (ca. 660,000 acres) in 1120.88 If we assume a proportional relationship of imperial clan may help give us some perspective. In

endowment to expenditure, then clan centers' expenditures would have been around

1,112,000

strings, which would mean the schools and the

clan together spent four to five million strings per year.89 To put this in some context, however approximate, according to Li Xinchuan the government's total cash income was

60+

million strings in

*" ,..:.. 1.,

1068-78

85. In an article on the Southern Song salt administration, Edmund H. Worthy notes that Cai Jing's "policies and manipulatory devices paid off handsomely for the national and imperial coffers, and for the most part they were copied throughout the Southern Sung. In fact, the system worked out at the end of the Northern Sung contained the rudiments of the salt monopoly that functioned for the remainder of the imperial period of Chinese history." See "Regional Control of the Southern Sung Salt Administration," in John Haeger, ed., Crisis and Prosperity in Sung China (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977), 105. 86. CBSB 24.16a. 87. Ge Shengzhong � ,.1'1', Danyangji fJ- � " (Changzhou xianzhe yishu ed., 1896), I.3a. 88. SHY zhiguan 20.37a-b. This is the endowment for the two satellite centers only, and does not include support for the great clan complexes in Kaifeng. 89 . The calculation assumes that clan expenditures will equal the ratio of clan endowment to school endowment times the school expenditure. Thus, (44,000/ 105,990) X 2,678,787 = I,II2,054.

Huizong, Cai Jing, and the Politics ofReJorm

59

and 48+ million in 1086-90.90 We also know that in 1067, the annual costs of the capital bureaucracy, capital army, and imperial clan were 4.8, 13.2, and 8.4 mj]]jon strings, respectively.91 So while we can conclude that these reforms did not dominate government spending, they nevertheless accounted for significant portions of it. Second, when assessing the goals of the reforms, scholars have often focused either on the extraction of wealth, as described above, or on a desire for control. Certainly it is possible to view the creation of the clan centers as an attempt to control increasingly numerous and often unruly clansmen, and the educational program had numerous elements that seem to have been designed to provide the government with intellectual control over the student population. Even establishment of the welfare institutions might have been motivated by a desire for social control of the urban lower classes, though I have found no textual evidence to support such a modern interpretation. In 1109/4, however, an edict did state that "poorhouses, hospitals, and cemeteries create the radiance of humane government" �1.:::.ift 7'e..92 This suggests a kind of idealism that I believe was an element not only of the relief activities, but of the entire reform program. Third, I suggest that this idealism took the form of a universalism that was beyond the resources of the Chinese imperial state to realize. I have argued elsewhere that there was an unresolved contradiction in the Three Hall System between the elitist role of schools to train the governing elite and the promise of universal education inspired by the Rites ifZhou.93 A similar quest for a universalist state can be seen in the welfare measures attempting to address the needs of the poor, the imperial clan centers that represented the dynasty's commitment to the limitless support of imperial descendants, and even the Hired Service and Land Survey and Equitable Tax systems, which attempted to address the entirety of rural society. The experiment was daring but it was also doomed to failure,

't-.� 1*,

.

jia/ryanyiJai Chaoye zaji � tk I'X *- .ttl 1f#"tc. (faibei: Wenhai, 90. Li Xinchuan 1968) pt. I, 14: 187-8. His figures, which cover the early Northern Song to the late twelfth century, are conveniently presented in Worthy, "Regional Control in Salt Administra­ tion," 112. 91. SHY dixi 4.3Ib. 92. SHY shihuo 60.5b. 93· Chaffee, The Thorny Gates ifLearning, 81. As noted there, I am indebted to Thomas H. C. Lee for this idea.

60

J O H N CHAFFEE

since except for the imperial clan, the state lacked the resources and structure to meet such grand goals. This brings me to my fmal point. When Wang Anshi through his famous ten-point memorial caught the attention of the young Shenzong, he was proposing remedies to address the fiscal, political, and cultural ills that he had described, and he was prepared to do so through taking steps unprecedented for the imperial Chinese government. The very name, New Policies, advertised his willingness to undertake them. Very dif­ ferent dynamics were at work for Cai Jing and Huizong. The backward gaze of the "continuing legacy" was intellectually conservative, framed still by Wang's basic analysis and prescriptions rather than their own. This changed, for as Huizong

undoubtedly encouraged by Cai­

focused increasingly upon music and Daoism and on his role as a cosmic emperor, the reforms fit brilliantly, their universalism according well with his goal of an ordered cosmos. But with their failure rejection in

H20

but also the catastrophe of

blamed on Huizong, Cai, and the reforms

H26,

not simply their which opponents

their radical universalism

may well have discredited the cause of state activism and reform more completely than would have been the case had the reforms stopped with the New Policies.

Huizong, Cai Jing, and the Politics ifReform

61

Appendix Table 1.2

Chronology ofPolitics and Riform) II02-2I NOTE: To save room, abbreviations are used for sections of the Song huryao: CR (Chongru), DX (Dixt), SH (Shihuo), and ZG (Zhiguan). In ad­ dition, CB-SB and ]SBM are shortened to SB and BM. GC is used for grand councilor; all GC dates are from SSjuan 212.

Table 1.2 Chronology of Politics and Reform, II02-21

Year II02 CNl

Politics 5/ Han Zhongyan stopped as GC (55 19:363); list of 14 opponents (BM 121.7a-b) 6/ Zeng Bu removed as GC (55 19:364) 7/ Cai made GC (55 5513) ; creation of Advisory Office 9/ creation of Yuanyou list of II7 (BM 121.8a-9b) II/ Yuanyou list of 57 (BM 12I.5a-b); list of 79 evil officials, 27 to be exiled (BM 123.8h-9a) 12/ announcement of military campaign in west (BM 130.21a-b)

Education 8/22 Cai's reform program memorial (5B 20.6a-7b; CR 2.7h-9a) 12/ promulgation of publications on educational standards (5B 20.21b)

Imperial clan II/ creation of the Liangjing complexes ordered (ZG 20.34a; DX 5.15b--I8a)

Medical/welfare programs 8/20 charity clinics (a1!lifaniJ ordered established for all prefectures and counties (55 19:364; 5H 60.3b) 9/ hospital (awuan) ordered for capital

Other 7/ creation of trade superintendencies in Hangzhou & Ming­ zhou (55 19:364); extension of the salt monopoly to the southeast (55 135:4444-5; 5H 24.34b) 12/ Cai's memorial on the need for changes in the tea industry (5B 20.22a-b, 5H 30.31b--32b) nd/ revival of the Shaosheng Hired Service System (mianyifa) (55 131:4331; 5H 65-73a)

u03 CN2

1104 CN3

1/ Cai Jing made minister of the left (55 19:366) 9/ Yuanyou stele created with 93 names (55 19:368; BM 12I.I5h-16b)

1/ Yuanyou individuals barred from the capital (55 19=368) 5/ Advisory Office discontinued (55 19:369)

2/ land provisions for schools (5B 21.4h-5a) 3/ testing at schools (5B 2I.5h-6a) 4/ selection ratios at schools (5B 2I.7b) 5/ educational expenses (5B 2I.IOb); quotas for teachers (5B 2I.Ua) 6/ teacher quotas for small schools (5B 21.13a) 7/ measures against heterodox thought in schools (5B 22.3a) 8/ on examinations in county schools (5B 22.7a) 9/ capital medical school provisions (5B 22.lIa) 1/ increase county school student numbers; lenient exam rules for prefectural schools (5B 23.5a)

8/ clan marriages with Yuanyou families forbidden (5B 22.9b) 9/ clan members barred from marrying children of those on the Yuanyou list (55 19:368)

5/ public pharmacies (bejiju) to be established throughout empIre (ZG 27.17b)

6/ Song forces capture Huangzhou (Smith 43) 12/ creation of a new tea monopoly for southeastern tea (5H 30.34b)

9/ special provisions for clansmen to serve as wine officials

2/ pauper's cemeteries (lout9uan) established (55 19:368)

1/ Huizong's acceptance of Dashengyue, based on musical theories of Wei Hanjin (55 128:2998)

•

Table 1.2, cont.

Year n04 CN3 cont.

...2a_�,,<

Politics 6/ Yuanyou list of 309 (BM 122.9b-13a)

Education 3/ military practice for students (5B 23.6a) 6/ schools of mathe­ matics, painting, & calligraphy estab­ lished (5B 24.6a-7a; 55 19:369); order for country schools to be established where they haven't been (55 19:369); memorial on medical school (5B 24.8a) 9/ prefectural schools to establish special halls for students with military talents (55 19:370) n/ expansion of program to counties; examinations (keju) halted, to be replaced by school exams; 3 Halls officially established for empire (5B 24.1Sb)

Imperial clan

Medical/welfare programs

Other 6/ Wang Anshi enshrined in the Confucian Temple (55 19:369); victory over Tibetans (Smith) 7/ revival of Land Survey & Equitable Tax (BM 138.3a) ; casting of new musical tripods begun (55 128:2999)

1105 CN4

3/ Zhao Tingzhi made GC (55 5515)

1/ rules (fa) for the military schools (55 20:373) 8/ creation of foreign schools

II/ increase in support provIsIOns (DX poa-b)

!O/ poorhouses ordered for Kaifeng (ZG 60.4a-b)

1/ Tong Guan made commander in west (Smith) 8/ inauguration of Dashengyue music & establishment of Dashengfu to oversee it (55 129:3001) nd/ Musical Dashengyue Reform promulgated (BM 135.4b-5a)

n06 CN6

115 comet in the west; nth promotion of Liu Kui; 1/12 Yuan­ you stele destroyed; 14th empirewide amnesty except for Yuanyou people (55 20:375-6) 2/ Cai out as GC (55 5516) 12/ Liu Kui dis­ missed (55 20:377)

1/ 4 specialty schools abolished and restored days later (55 20:376) 3/ school cutbacks at all levels; military schools abolished (55 20:376); restoration of exami­ nations (keju) (55 20:376) 4/ all four specialty schools abolished II/ military scholar tribute program (wushi gongfa) ordered (55 20:377); math school restored 12/ primary school rules elaborated

1/ redress for clans­ men forced illegally to leave Kaifeng (ZG 20.35a)

8/ order putting restrictions on relief homes and paupers' cemeteries (5H 60.4b-5a)

1/7 restoration of ever-normal granaries ill 4 ctrcwts; 14 Land Survey System abolished (55 20:375-6) 2/ Dashengfu placed under Ministry of Rites (Lam) 9/ Dashengfu again independent & Dashengyue to be played throughout empire (Lam)

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Table 1.2, cont.

Year

Politics

n07 DGI

II general amnesty; Cai back in (55 20:377; 27·Ia, 55 5516) 31 Zhao out (55 5516) 51 repeated prohibition on the employment of Yuanyou individuals (55 20:378)

n08 DG2

II general amnesty (55 20:380) 31 amnesty for many Yuanyou partisans (5B 28.3a) 51 removal of 95 from Yuanyou list (5B 28.8a) 61 more rehabilitations (5B 28.9b)

Education II medical school restored (5B 27.3a) 31 painting & calligraphy schools restored (5B 27.4b); 8 Conducts selection promulgated for empire (BM 126.Ia) 8 I stone inscriptions for 8 Conducts ordered 121 creation of the Kaifeng prefectural school (55 20:379) II attempt to enforce orthodox views among students 41 implementation of the Daguan promotion rules for government school students 91 move to discourage school libraries from divesting their collections of histories and baijia (5B 28.na-b)

Imperial clan

Medicallwelfare programs

Other

81 long edict on support measures & restrictions on clansmen-officials (DX PIb-22b)

31 poorhouse relief for those over 50 (5H 60.5a-b)

ndl Hired Service regulations changed from Shaosheng to Yuanfeng forms (55 178:4332)

81 establishment of a residential complex for Baozhou clansmen (55 20:381)

41 & 81 more provisions for poorhouse (5H 60.5b)

31 selection of Daoist monks (5B 28.2b-Ioa) ndl the gongjia orchestra ordered to play music of Iiu Shen (55 129:3002)

II09 DG3

61 Cai out, replaced

II sacrificial ceremo-

31 cutbacks in the

41 very positive

51 Dashengyue

by He Zhizhong

nies at the math school

(5B 28.I5b-I6a; 55 55I9);

(5B 28.I3a) 41 rules for promotion

Liangjing residential complexes-to be moved under local control (ZG 20.35b)

statement of support (5H 60.5b) 121 complaint re the extravagance of the relief institutlons; suggests return to Yuanfu measures

ordered to be played for university visits and banquets

He Zhizhong appointed GC

(55 55I9 ) 81 amnesty for some of the Yuanyou individuals (55 20:383) III lavish retirement benefits and Shenzong shziu assignment for Cai Jing (55 20:383;

from primary school to county school 7 I investigations of schools ordered

(5B 28.I7a) 91 new name given

(55 129:3002-3)

(5H 60.5b)

for government school libraries: jigu or "search into ancient matters"

(55 20:383) III criticism of rituals

28.I9b-20a)

at the math school

(5B 28.I8b-I9a);

IIIO

31 another incremental

DG4

loosening of Yuanyou partisan restnctlons •

•

•

(55 20:384) 41 Cai Jing submits 5henzong shilu

complaints about [mancial abuses & limitation on sale of homes for school purposes (CR 2.I4b) 31 all four specialty schools abolished (5B 29.7a); students from medical, math, calligraphy, and painting entered into respective bureaus, and

8 I relief operations

II halted the

reduced in scale and partially disestablished (5H 60.5b-6a)

reformed money system (tao dang

shiqian) (55 20:383) 51 cessation of 3-year Buddhist monk certificates

Table 1.2, cont.

Year

Politics

UID

(5B 29.9a); criticized & further demoted (5B 29.ub-12a) 5/ appearance of comet (55 20:384) 6/ Zhang Shangying made GC (5B 29.13b; 55 5519)

DG4 cont.

1111 ZHI

8/ Zhang out (5B 30.8a, 9a-b; 55 5521)

Education their teachers dismissed (55 20:384) 4/ special exams because of fears that qualified students were not advancing 8/ more stringent enrollment rules for assigning teachers (CR 2.15a); examinations for government school teachers (55 20:385); end of student support in county schools & primary schools (5B 29.18b; CR 2.15a) 9/ crackdown on student absenteeism at schools (CR 2.15b) 1/ cutbacks for county schools & primary schools reiterated (CR 2.16a; 5B 30.la) 9/ some concession re the 1110 cutbacks

Imperial clan

Medical/welfare programs

Other (55 20:384); University students ordered to perform civil & military dances (55 129: 3003) 7/ Equitable tax policy halted (55 20:384; BM 138.4a) 8/ Huizong's essay on Dashengyue (55 129:3003)

1/ & 12/ more complaints about maladministration (5H 60.6a)

8/ complaints from Sichuan about losses to the SE tea monopoly (5H 30.38a-39b)

1II2 ZH2

21 Cai given promo­ tion and residence in capital (SS 21:389) 51 Cai back in, but in senior semiretired status (SS 21:389) 71 & III new offices established (SS 21:390)

III3 ZH3

II Wang Anshi given a princely title (SS 21:390) III special prestige titles for Shenzong & Zhezong (SS 21:392)

III local request for more support; decrease in student minimums needed for teachers Uiaoshou); new provisions for 8 Conducts students (SB 30.1¥); prohibition against some Yuanyou partisans serving as teaching officials (SS 20:387) IO I all educational sup­ port fields exempted from the 2 taxes III schools' excess income to be returned; provisions foryin candidates to study in prefectural schools (SB 32.I2a)

II complaints about poor teachers, illvesttgatton 31 math school restored .

.

.

7I revival of the Liang­ jing complexes-many were suffering from poverty (ZG 20.35b) 81 special testing of talented clansmen (SB 2O.36a); support for remarriage of clanswomen (SB 20.36a)

II housing provisions for unmarried clanswomen & widows (SB 20.3Gb)

7 I expansion of public pharmacies to more counties & pre­ fectures (ZG 27.2Ia) 91 wet-nurses hired for infants (SH 60.6a) III all 3 institutions under supervision of fiscal intendants­ complaints re relief goods not being distributed to poor (SH 60.6a)

41 re-establishment of the equitable tax system; special banquet for Cai (SS 21:389) 81 comprehensive reform of the tea monopoly system (SH 30.39b) ndl gongjia orchestra to perform for state sacrifices (SS 129:3012-3) 41 detailed prescrip­ tions for gongjia & dengge orchestras (SS 129:3013) 81 new banquet

Table 1.2, cont.

Year 1II3 ZH3 cont.

Politics

Education 4/ nomenclature for 3 Hall students (5B 32.2b); special privileges for 8 Conducts students 4A/ medical school restored (55 21:391); 8 Conducts scholars as teachers (5B 32.¥) 5/ good fields not to be allotted to schools; Secretariat memorial on need to improve county school conditions (32·5b-6a) 6/ nomenclature for military school students in provinces (32.5b) 7/ 8 Conducts memorial (32·7b) 8/ provisions for empire-wide med schools 9/ 8 Conducts memorial (32.9aIO); some resttictions placed on 8

Imperial clan

Medical/welfare programs

Other music promulgated for the empire (55 129:3018) 12/ empire-wide search for Daoist scriptures (55 21:392)

III4 ZH4

Conducts enrollments II/ protests re seizure of land for schools; permission to use 8 Conducts for selection 12/ solicitations for medical scholars to be sent to capital (55 21:392) 1/ student quotas increased; small schools ordered to grow; edict ordering medical schools throughout empire (34.2a-b) 3/ increase in xiaoxue teacher numbers in large schools (5B H.3a); memorial on med school teachers (5B 34.7a) 5/ disbursal of educational . support money stopped 6/ critique of county school conditions; primary schools to use 3 Hall system (5B H.7b) 8/ increase in student numbers (5B H.7b); Jizhou adds prefectural school teacher; increases

6/ increased funding for the recendy re-established Liangjing centers (ZG 20.36a-b)

2/ complaint that only the truly sick & poor be admitted to the hospitals & poor­ houses (5H 60.6b) 4/ care to be given regardless of the numbers (5H 60.6b); upgrading of public pharmacy (ZG 27.21)

3/ provisions for Daoist monks (5B H.3a)

Table 1.2, cont.

Year

Politics

Education

Imperial clan

Medical/welfare programs

Other

in supported scholar

III5 ZH5

quotas; criticism of cor­ ruption in capiral primary school; provisions for medical school advance­ ment from prefecture to capital 9/ all schools ordered to use the name Dachengdian, as done at Biyong (5B 33.9a ) 12/ improvements in the xiaoxue system 1/ provisions for in­ creased medical school support at capital; expan­ sion of med schools to all prefecrures & counties 6/ provisions for selecting med school teachers from among non-official doctors (5B 34.7a) 9/ ditto for Fuzhou; rewards for prefectures with large schools; plan

1/ Dashengfu ordered to compile and distribute new musical charts (Lam) 7/ construction of a new Mingtang; loca­ tion changed the next month (55 21:395)

to IOcrease pnmary school enrollments III title of med school teachers changed (SB 34.IIb); competitive exams stopped; easier promotion procedures for county school students (SB 34.I6a) II enforcement ordered re complaints about cheating; also com­ plaints concerning 8 Conducts 21 increases in financial support; empire-wide increase in schools (SS 21:395) wi 8 Conducts students to sit for examinations together with regular students (SB 35.wb) yI med school moved under the Ministry of Rites (SB 36.9a) III distribution of scholarly robes to all teaching officials (SB 36.\I5b) ndl tightening •

III6 ZH6

41 He Zhizhong out (SS 5523) 51 ZhengJuzhong & Liu Zhengfu join Cai as CCs (SS 5523)

Illy ZHy

81 ZhengJuzhong out for mourning but back in the lIth month (SS 5524) III Yu Shen made a 4th GC (SS 5524)

•

IAI establishment of Daoxue (Daoist school?) (SS 21:395) 8 I military activity on border (SS 211:396)

41 loosening of travel restrictions on the Liangjing clansmen (ZG 20.36b)

yI proposal for an elementary school for educable children in poorhouses (SH 60.ya)

II memorial on Daoism. SB 36.1a-b 21 request to teach anaent songs 10 Dashengfu accepted (SS 129:3019) 41 imperial pa­ tronage of Daoism; •

•

Table 1.2, cont.

Year

Politics

Education

1II7 ZH7 cont.

provisions for service obligation exemptions for students

I118 ZHI

8/ 8 Conducts teachers restricted to border areas (5B 37.14b); incor­ poration of Daoism into school & exam curricula (5B 37.I P-I6b) 9 / restrictions on 8 Conducts

Imperial clan

4/ order that Liang­ jing clansmen actually live there (ZG 20.36b)

Medical/welfare programs

7/ soldiers declared eligible for relief (5H 60.7a)

Other ditto the next month (55 21:398) 7/ provisions for Buddhist monks becoming Daoist (5B 36.9b) 8/ on including Daoist classics in the Guozijian library (5B 36.12a) nd/ Daoist stele by Huizong with copies sent to prefectures 10/ order for use of a new theoretical mode of music (55 129:3020-1) 4/ attack on the Tripitaka as being anti-Confucian & anti-Daoist (5B 37.8a-b) 8/ propagation of Daoist canon & prohibition of wives

9AI long discussion on mechanics involved in integrating Daoists into the schools & exams (5B 38.5b-6a); Daoists entering the prefectural schools limited to monks without wives (5B 38.6b) III provisions for Wang Anshi's works in the schools (5B 38.9a) ndl clerks banned from examinations

1119 XHI

II Wang Fu made a GC (55 5526)

81 complaint about the quality of med schools

of scholars from entering Buddhist nunneries (5B 37.I7a) 9 I professors in Daoism for the university (5B 38.Ia); increase in the square field tax; compilation of a Daoist history, on Cai Jing's advice (55 21:400) 9AI Daoist teachers ordered for pre­ fectural schools & special provisions for Daoists in the exami­ nations (5B 38.3a-b) III re status of the Daoist classics (5B 38.I5a-b) ndl Daoist stele by Huizong erected in capital II change of the Buddha's name & other Daoist mea­ sures (55 22:403)

Table 1.2, cont.

Year

Politics

Education

Imperial clan

Medical/welfare programs

1119 XHl cont.

1120 XH2

4/ promotions for all male offspring of Cai Jing (5B 4I.5a) 6/ Cai's retirement accepted (5B 4I.7a; 55 5527) 11/ Yu Shen out (55 5527)

6/ cessation of primary schools, & ending of student status for prefectural medical, military, and 8 Conducts students (CR 2.30a) 7/ closure of med & math schools (55 22:406; 5B 41.IOa)

8/ return to the Chongning regulations for the the Liangjing-a cutback (ZG 20.36b)

6/ cutbacks in relief programs (5H 60.7a-b)

Other 5/ "virtuous scholars" to enroll in the Dao School (55 22:404) 11/ reports of wide­ spread famine (55 22:4°5) 12/ garden-building activities by Zhu Mian, attacked in poem by a university student (55 22:4°5) nd/ copies of the 1118 Daoist stele sent to prefectures I I cessation of the Dao School (55 22:4°5) 6/ cessation of the equitable tax system (5B 41.8a) 61 Buddhist temple names restored (55 22:406)

II/ & 12/ reports on the Fang La rebellion (55 22:407)

II21 XH3

8/ capital primary school ordered to follow 1078 regulations (CR 2.lb) 10/ provisions for admission to the capital military school, since the prefectural & country military schools had closed (5B 4I.m) 2/ 3 Halls abolished for prefectural & county schools, the Biyong, & the imperial clan schools & the exams (keju) reinstated (CR 2.3m) 4/ educational intendants abolished 6/ reduction of educational income II/ Yuanfeng quotas for University, Guozijian, & Kaifeng restored

8/ Dashengfu factory abolished & composers dismissed (55 129:3027)

6/ reports of child­ eating black demons in the streets of Luoyang & Kaifeng (55 22:408)

C HAPTER 2

Irredentism as Political Capital The New Policies and the Annexation of Tibetan Domains in Hehuang (the Qinghai-Gansu Highlands) Under Shenzong and His Sons, Io68-II26 Paul Jakov Smith

Reviving the Irredentist Dream In the early months of II18, as rumors swirled of a planned Sino-Jurchen pincer attack against the Liao, three men braved the repressive atmo­ sphere of Huizong's court to entreat the emperor to abort plans to ally with the snarling "dog barbarians" who were certain to turn on China in the end. Each urged Huizong to reflect on the experience of the Song founders Taizu and Taizong and to observe the sacred oath of peace sworn by Zhenzong and the Great Liao in 1005. For as Zheng Juzhong argued in a heated exchange with Grand Councilor Cai Jing, it was only because of the Shanyuan Treaty that "our soldiers have been spared knowledge of the sword for [over one hundred] years, and our farmers spared increases in corvee. Not even the

1 ,

j

Irredentism as Political Capital

79

barbarian-quelling policies of the Han and Tang can match those of Our Song Dynasty."! Not since the Yuanyou coalition tried to roll back Wang Anshi's reforms a quarter of a century earlier had the Song founders been in­ voked in so positive a light. Indeed, ever since Huizong's brother Zhezong assumed his short period of personal rule in 1093

(full reign

1086-1100) it was their father, Shenzong (r. 1068-85), whose name was invoked so frequently and with such piety as to make him seem in practice, if not in title, a second dynastic founder. But the defenders of the Sino-Liao peace treaty were waging an uphill battle, for by the year 1118 the exhortations of merit-seeking Song officials at court and on the frontier, fueled by the much-publicized appearance of refugees and defectors from the crumbling Liao regime, had persuaded Huizong that the time was ripe to realize his father's ultimate ambition: to recover

( 1; �'�I , modern Datong) in the west to Yanjing (� :Y- or Youzhou � �tl , modern Beijing) and the the Sixteen Prefectures spanning Yunzhou

Bohai Sea in the east that were ceded by the Shatuo Turk rulers of the Later Jin to the Khitan in 937. 2 As Cai Jing personally warned ZhengJuzhong, "The emperor's mind is made up; how dare you oppose him?"3 Song rulers had ample reason to want the Sixteen Prefectures back, for possessing them gave the Liao control of the mountain passes that traditionally protected the North China Plain heartland

and hence the Chinese

against invasion from the north. But while so strategic a prize

was the understandable object of fervent irredentist longing, neither Taizu nor Taizong had been able to dislodge it from Khitan control. Early in Zhenzong's reign (998-1022) Khitan military might made it clear that continued campaigns were not only fruitless but would also un­ dermine the even more urgent objectives of political consolidation and

I. The three men were recent Grand Councilor Zheng Juzhong �J! "' , current Secretary of Military Affairs Deng Xunwu fIS iij ;i\, and a commoner from Sichuan, An Yaochen 4(- Jt El. . Their memorials and background material are anthologized in Xu Mengxin � !f ' , Sanchao beimeng hllibian .=.. .tJJ :Jl;.]i -t- .tt.Q (Reprint of the 1878 ed., Taibei: Wenhai, 1977), I.6a-8a and 2.la-IOa. 2. For a comprehensive study of the territorial compass of the Sixteen Prefectures, see Zhao Tiehan ;t!�*', "Yan-Yun shiliu zhou de dill fenxi" � '!' + i dtH'JI!!. Jl1. �;j:Jf , Songshiyanjillji, vol. 3 (faibei: Zhonghua congshu bianshen weiyuan hui, 1966), 385-412. 3. 5anchao beimeng hllibian I. 7a.

PAUL JAKOV S M I T H

80

its crucial corollary, the subordination of military power to civilian au­ thority. Thus the Shanyuan Treaty of 1005 so lauded by memorialists in 1118 constituted a recognition that the ritual and financial costs of dip­ lomatic parity and a purchased peace were far less onerous than the social and political costs of mobilizing the country for protracted, aggressive war. Moreover, even when Tangut military prowess obliged Song Ren­ zong (r. 1023-67) to extend the system of "indemnified peace" to the Xia state in 1044, the exchange of Chinese wealth (and pride) for geopolitical stability was generally seen as preferable to the risks and humiliations of continued war. 4 The relative stability that accompanied China's acceptance of its truncated frontier

its tum from active irredentism to passive defense­

enabled Song policy-makers to focus on enacting Taizu's vision of "a state governed by civil institutions, informed by civil values, and driven by civil imperatives."5 Nothing better exemplifies this tum from martial to civil aspirations than the rapid development of the Song examination system, which brought Taizu's goal of political consolidation to fruition by linking the interests of local elites throughout the constituent regions of the new empire to participation in the increasingly bureaucratic state. Over the course of the eleventh century, this bureaucratic state emerged as the primary distributor of status and its material rewards in the in­ creasingly literocentric Song society as a whole. But the equilibrium sustained by the Sino-steppe system of indemni­ fied peace was by no means unassailable, and could be shaken by any combination of internal or external shocks. Externally, equilibrium could be jolted by the entry of a vigorous new player on the steppe or the demise of a stabilizing ruler or state. Yet domestic challenges to frontier stability could be equally great, for the consensus on accom-

4. John Richard Labadie, "Rulers and Soldiers: Perception and Management of the Military in Northern Sung China (96o-ca. lO6o)," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1981, pp. 62-65. The term "indemnified peace" is from Frederick W. Mote, Imperial China gOQ--I8oo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 71. For public and private views of the new international system and of the differentiation between the Khitan "northerners" and the Tangut "barbarians," see Tao Jing-shen, "Barbarians or Northerners: Northern Sung Images of the Khitans," in Morris Rossabi, ed., ChinaAmong Equals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 66-86. 5. Labadie, "Rulers and Soldiers," p. 36.

• •

I

•

Irredentism as Political Capital

81

modation was pragmatic rather than principled, offered grudgingly rather than with enthusiasm. And the very "civilism" of the Song state mar­ ginalized some individuals and groups who might benefit more from war than peace, inclining them to acquiesce in if not agitate for frontier expanslOn. •

All

these potential threats to the post-Shanyuan equilibrium con­

verged in the mid-lOGos as Huizong's father ascended the throne. In­ ternationally, the Xia ruler Liangzuo state-builder Li Yuanhao

3f. 7t �

i,�l'F

(1047-68), son of the Tangut

(1004-48), was inspired by the dete­

rioration of Tibetan rule in the Gansu-Qinghai highlands to launch ex­ peditionary forces against Tibetan political centers, sinified frontier tribes, and even Song commanderies throughout the northwestern borderlands.6 Domestically, the very primacy of the examination-based civil service put indirect pressure on frontier stability by producing a surfeit of potential officials. The numbers of men with ranked civil ser­ vice status almost tripled through the reigns of Zhenzong, Renzong (1023-63), and Yingzong (1064-67), from 9,785 to some 24,000 men. By Yingzong's death, this glut of officials had begun to demoralize the entire civil service, with far more candidates than the system could absorb clamoring for posts, sponsors, and promotion from junior (executory,

J!A.)

to senior (administrative,

:1- '*JJ 'if)

status.7 In a sociocultural en­

vironment dominated by the state, the career aspirations of these super­ numerary officials

(A: 'if) were best served by expansion in the scope of

government activity in either the domestic or foreign arenas. Even more direct pressure came from a group increasingly margin­ alized by the mid-Song civil service: the hereditary military families who constituted the core of the Song general command. As John Labadie demonstrates, in the half-century following the Shanyuan Treaty the Zhenzong and Renzong courts systematically excluded the military's contribution to strategic decision-making, replaced regular troops and effective generals with local militia, and transferred military authority and even outright field command from the generals to such top-ranking ci­ vilian officials as Fan Zhongyan (989-1052) and Han Qi (1008-75).

Al-

6. Li Huarui :t- if;.�, Song-Xiaguanxi shi *-1:.* � J!. (Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chubanshe, 1998), 61-66. 7. I address these issues in my chapter on Shenzong's reign in Denis Twitchett and Paul Jakov Smith, eds., The Cambridge History ofChina, vol. 5A, forthcoming.

PAUL JAKOV S M ITH though the general staff was not dismantled, it was transformed into a bureaucratized and subordinate appendage of the civilian-dominated state. 8 As it happened, Tangut incursions supplied the pretext for one mili­ tary man to take frontier matters into his own hands, thus helping to turn the tide back toward irredentism and frontier expansion. In mid-1067 the frontier commander Chong E

;;ff �

one of four brothers whose father

had distinguished himself in frontier wars of the past, and whose sons and nephews would battle Tibetans, Tanguts, and Jurchens in the fu­ ture-disregarded the orders of his civilian superior and kidnapped the Tangut general Wei Mingshan

!Ji& fI}j J.!

and his 15,000 followers. Chong's

actions unleashed an escalating spiral of violence highlighted by the Tangut execution of a Song emissary and Chong E's walling of the Tangut town of Suizhou

(� g"'I ,

modern Shaanxi, Suidexian), on the

hotly contested northern border of the greater Shaanxi administrative region

(� � tm lii- ;

see Map 2.1).9 Civilian courtiers responded in pre­

dictable fashion, by demanding that Suizhou be returned to the Tanguts and Chong E punished; and Sima Guang

� ,� 7t.

(1019-86) urged the

newly enthroned Shenzong to honor the policy of his predecessors by treating their Tangut treaty-partner with respect and assuming a posture of compliance · that is, to "embrace them with softness"

'rl .t

in

order to reestablish diplomatic entente,lO In the past, such sober-minded exhortations had sufficed to bring frontier adventurism to an end. But the flame of irredentist longing

8. Labadie, "Rulers and Soldiers," p. 199 and chaps. 2 and 4. 9. Greater Shaanxi circuit, encircled by (going clockwise) the Tangut-held regions of the Ordos, the eastern loop of the Yellow River, the Qinling Mountains, and the frontier zone east of the Tao River, was formally established as one of the fifteen civil circuits of the Song in 997. In 1041 Shaanxi civil circuit was subdivided into the four military circuits of Qinfeng, Jingyuan, Huanqing, and Fuyan. In 1072 the civil administration of Shaanxi was divided between Yongxingjun circuit in the east and Qinfeng circuit in the west, with a fiscal and judicial intendant appointed for each. At the same time the military admini­ stration of Shaanxi was divided into six military subdivisions-Yongxing, Fuyan, and Huanqing in the east, and Qinfeng, Jingyuan, and Xihe (the easternmost' sector of He­ huang) in the west-with a military affairs commission ( � � a) ) and pacification commission (� � a) ) designated for each. See CB 42.901; 55 87.2143. 10. ]5BM 8pa-7a. 55 335 is devoted entirely to the Chong military lineage.

Irredentism as Political Capital

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Song frontier on the eve of the Hehuang annexation

burned far more brightly in Shenzong's heart than it had for Zhenzong, Renzong, or Yingzong, and he ascended the throne determined to "de­ stroy the Xia Nation and then personally lead the campaign to subjugate the Great Liao."1 1 Fanned as they were by imperial passion, irredentism and frontier adventure emerged during Shenzong's reign as potent forms of political capital that swept a new constellation of men­ including generals, eunuchs, and hawkish bureaucrats

into power.

Moreover the political capital generated in Shenzong's reign yielded

II. Shao Bowen {/� 1a I;' (I057-II34), Shaoshi wenjian lu {/� l\ Bij JL� (II51) (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1983), 3-26.

PAUL JAKOV S MITH interest for the next half-century, as Shenzong's sons Zhezong and Huizong devoted themselves to completing their father's dream, urged on by Shenzong's own courtiers or their proteges and progeny. Although Shenzong would eventually preside over expansionist cam­ paigns in Vietnam, Sichuan, and Hunan as well as the northern front with the Tanguts, in

1067

it was not yet clear where his irredentist campaign

ought to begin. Liangzuo's unexpected death brought Sino-Tangut hos­ tilities to a temporary and perhaps timely halt, for even the emperor's closest advisor, the New Policies architect Wang Anshi

.I.. �;G 1021-86),

thought that Song forces were not yet ready to "match troops"

3t "*

with the Tanguts, let alone the Khitan.12 A starting point was provided by one Wang Shao

.I.. �

(1030-81),

a member (as of 1057) of that swelling

cohort of supernumerary jinshi holders whose own failure to move be­ yond the lowest-level local government posts inspired him to seek a career as an unattached frontier expert.B In this chapter I focus on the evolution of Wang Shao's plan to clientallze the Tibetan domains of Hehuang

� 51

that is, the highland region of modern Qinghai and

Gansu provinces (Tibetan Amdo) transected by the Huang

�, and Tao �I:.

river valleys

51 , Yellow

through the reigns of Shenzong and his

sons. The Hehuang campaigns are significant in their own right, as a case study in irredentism, imperial self-assertion, and political career-making. But they are also crucial to understanding the Huizong era that is the focus of this volume. For it was the Hehuang annexation that solidified Cai Jing's power as prime minister, launched Tong Guan's

(1054-II26)

i: 1r

ascent as supreme military commander, and served as the

proving ground for the suppression of debate that witnesses to the fall of the Northern Song

in the minds of the

characterized political cul­

ture during Huizong's reign. In many ways the path to the ill-fated

''Yan-Yun initiative"

� '!' .�At and thence to the Jurchen conquest of

North China began in the mountains and valleys of Hehuang.

12. CB 214-5197, 236.5725-26. 13. SS 328.10579-82; Wang Cheng .11i1t, Dongdu shilue ��.� reprint of the 1883 edition, in Zhongguoyeshijicheng 'f � Jf.Jt � A (Chengdu, 1993), 82.3b-4b.

Irredentism as Political Capital I068-74: Wang Shao Opens the Hehuang Frontier The Hehuang annexation was Wang Shao's answer to his sovereign's dilemma of where to launch his irredentist campaign, as well as the means for reviving his own flagging bureaucratic career. In 1068, having spent some years on the northwestern frontier, Wang Shao offered Shenzong the benefit of his new expertise by laying out a detailed pro­ posal to control the Tanguts. His plan focused not on manipulating fissures within the Tangut regime, as Chong E had sought to do, but rather on utilizing the tensions brewing among their neighbors and erstwhile rivals, the fractious sons of the Qingtang ruler and Song ally Juesiluo

("� � mi

Tib. rGyal-sras, "Son of Buddha," 997-1065). Qing­

tang (modern Xining, Qinghai Province) and its surrounding valleys had come under Chinese suzerainty from the Han to the Tang (when it was administered by the Longyou military governor

(rfLG �r It1t), but was

lost in the mid-eighth century to local tribes and outliers from the Lhasa-based Tibetan empire in the turmoil of An Lushan's rebellion. Throughout the late tenth century, rival factions of Tufan

� i- Tibetans

and Tanguts strenuously competed for control of Hehuang, as well as of Liangzhou

iff, 1'1-1

(modern Wuwei) and the oasis towns strung along the

Gansu Corridor to the north. Juesiluo, imported from Gaochang by Huangshui Valley potentates because of his charisma as the last de­ scendant of the Tufan royal line, made adroit use of the Song need for a counterweight against Tangut victory in the Gansu Corridor to emerge as master of the Hehuang region. By the 1030S Juesiluo had not only become a staunch military ally of the Song, he had also become im­ mensely wealthy through his monopoly control over the Central Asian trade

especially in horses

that had to skirt south of the Tanguts

through Qingtang in order to enter Song China. Although Juesiluo's political base was centered on Qingtang and the other towns (particularly Zongge and Miaochuan) of the Huangshui Valley, his influence radiated south to Xigecheng, Kuozhou, and the satellite towns of the Yellow

� � by Song strategists), and southeast to the so-called Tao-He region (�l:.� rEI' ) bounded by Hezhou, on the Da Xia River, and Xi Jf.� , Min �, and Tao �l:. prefectures on

River Valley (referred to as Henan

the Tao River. The region east of Tao-He was occupied by "cooked"

�

that is, semi-sinified

Tibetan tribes, who made their livelihoods in

the terrain between the pre-Shenzong borders of the Song and the

PAUL JAKOV S M ITH

86

Qingtang federation in the northwest and the Tangut Xi Xia to the north.14 (See Map

2.2.)

Although he was a powerful ruler, Juesiluo sowed the seeds of future trouble for his state when he banished his first two wives, daughters of his chief rival, Li Lizun, and disinherited the sons they bore him in favor of Dongzhan

'l'lI

(d.

1086),

his son by a third woman. As Li-clan re­

sentment hardened, a Li grandson, Muzheng

;f.1iE. (?-1077), established

a regime in Hezhou that was implacably hostile to both Juesiluo and the Song. Internal discord prompted a flurry of defections on the part of Juesiluo's extended clan, sending increasing numbers of Tibetan tribes over to the Xi Xia side from the late

1050S

on, and enticing ever greater

Tangut attacks on the acculturated tribal clans of the border region and against Juesiluo himself. When Dongzhan succeeded Juesiluo in

1065,

Muzheng began to openly defy both Qingtang and the Song by submit­ ting with his town to the Tanguts, blocking the tribute traffic from Khotan that entered China through Qingtang, and choking off the all-important caravans of Tibetan horse traders. Thus on assuming the throne in

1067,

Shenzong not only inherited a

simmering war with the Tanguts along the Shaanxi front to the north, but also the prospect that the Tanguts might engulf the Tibetan do­ mains in Hehuang to the northwest. It was this ominous situation that

14. The principal sources on Qingtang and the Hehuang annexation include SHYfaf!Ji 6; CB passim; CB-SB passim; and JSBMjuan 139-40. Many of these sources are antholo­ gized in chronological order in Tang Kaijian ih7f� and Liu Jianli tIJ�ijij, Songdai Tufan shi/iaoji >It f\:. <± i- � ;ft ;f. (Chengdu: Sichuan minzu chubanshe, 1986). For useful sec­ ondary sources, see Tsutomu Iwasaki *� 17 , "A Study of Ho-hsi ;vr i!Jit Tibetans During the Northern Sung Dynasty," The Memoirs ofthe Toyo Bunko 44 (1986): 57-132; Enoki Kazuo :!t-,$:ft, "0 Sei no Kasei keiryaku ni tsuite" .l.. i?J O)�;vr�5i:'.� t::"') It ' -C, Mokogakuho J: 1i"**1i I (1940): 87-168; Liao Longsheng ;Jfl�, "Bei Song dui Tufan de zhengce" :It. >It tt .±. i- fI9 i1t � , in Songshiyatyiuji, vol. 10 (Taibei: Zhonghua congshu bianshen weiyuan hui, 1978), 93-144; and Paul J. Smith, Taxing Heaven's Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction ofthe Sichuan Tea Industry I075-I224 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1991), 41-47. On the rendering ofJuesiluo's name (whose modern Chinese pronunciation is "Gusiluo"), I follow Luciano Petech, "Tibetan Rela­ tions with Sung China and with the Mongols," in Rossabi, China Among Equals, pp. 173203. For the connection between Wang Shao's annexation plan and the all-important state trade policy Crfl � 5k), see Liang Gengyao * '* !t, Songdai shehuijingjishi lunji >It f\:. ;f± -t-����;f., vol. I (Taibei: Yunzhen wenhua, 1997), 123-27.

Irredentism as Political Capital Wang Shao proposed to address, by engaging in a form of "Great Game" politics that would extend Song control more directly (though not at first militarily) over the Tibetan tribes of Hehuang than ever before, as a prelude to re-enfolding the Hehuang Tibetans into an alliance against the Tanguts. Geographically, Wang's focus was on the Tao-He region town of Hezhou and its environs that were most accessible to the Song outpost of Guwei Stockade

-5 �n *-, as well as most susceptible to Tangut inftl­

tration. This was the region Wang was likely to know best, and in his "Plan for Subduing the Barbarians"

..if � * ,

he submitted a brief for

employing someone with intimate knowledge of that region like himself.

a man just

to bring Juesiluo's feuding descendants back into the Song

fold.IS As Wang presented it, the key to co-opting the Hehuang Tibetans was not to use force of arms, but rather to dole out lavish enticements and rewards through the agency of "a prescient and quick-witted man of learning

± who fully understands the imperial intentions," and who can

come and go among the tribal leaders promoting "benevolence and trust"

short for high-sounding titles and generous emoluments. "If we

can get the support of just five or seven of the great chieftains then we

will be able to compel all the remaining small tribes to come to our ser­ vice. Once the Jue-clan rulers have lost the majority of the tribes, then how can they continue to treat us coolly and refuse to submit to us? And once the J ue clan has capitulated to us then the Tanguts will be entangled in our midst." In fact, according to Wang, "For quite a while now many of Muzheng's extended clansmen have already come 'knocking at the frontier gates' wishing to be of use to the Middle Kingdom. The reason is that they desire Chinese titles and offices in order to awe those in their own tribes." Yet Wang complained that, because it was Dongzhan who was Juesiluo's officially designated heir, short-sighted border officials foolishly spurned Muzheng's men, thereby alienating a potential ally and letting Dongzhan monopolize the rich profits of the Sino-Tibetan trade and the marks of merit that served as political capital among the Tibetans.

15. Zhao Ruyu ;!! ik.o!, Songchao zhuchen zotgi * .tIJ;ti ff "� (Shanghai: Guji, 1999), 14I.I590--91, as appended to Wen Yanbo's memorial of l072/n. Copied verbatim into Wang Huai .I. itt et al., Lidai mingchen zotgi !Jl. 1� � ff " � (reprint of the 1416 ed., Taibei: Xuesheng shuju, 1964), 329.I7a-20a, and summarized in SS 328.10579. Analyzed by Enoki, PP· 97-IOO.

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Itredentism as Political Capital In Wang's view, in order to offset Dongzhan's influence over the re­ gional, non-royal chieftains, it was necessary to circumvent Dongzhan by unifying the three most powerful leaders of the disaffected branches of Juesiluo's clan: Muzheng in Hezhou, Xiazheng (lIi�iE, d. II02, Dong­ zhan's grandson by adoption) in Jiehe (1.t�, east of Hezhou), and Xi­ bawen U� e. �.&, Juesiluo's collateral relative) in Huanghetou * � jJ. (along the Tao River). The power of these three men emanated from their lineage, for as Wang Shao noted, "all of the Western Fan folk revere great tribes and esteem old rulers"; but none of them, including Mu­ zheng, could radiate power further than 100 or 200 Ii beyond their im­ mediate strongholds, despite their success in "establishing civil (that is, extra-tribal) culture and law" iL x � . Thus despite the great number of Juesiluo descendants jockeying for power in the Tao-He region, not one of them was able to pull Tao-He together as a counterbalance (from the Song perspective) to the political might of Qingtang. But for Wang Shao, it was the very weakness of the Tao-He scion of the Jue clan that made it feasible to "unite them as one in compliance" .�.:� i7ii :;l� with Song objectives. And the key to that transformation was to employ someone fully versed in "Qiang sentiments" )t.A. tt :t to entice Muzheng into serving as an agent of the Song, by offering him the assistance of Han methods and personnel to help him govern his own people. Thus, Wang Shao recommended, if Muzheng agreed, the Song should dispatch an official with expertise in civil and military matters to reside with him in Hezhou, where he would assist Muzheng in using "benevolence and trust" to co-opt "clientalize" the Tibetan tribes along the frontier.16 "As for those who won't follow along, let Muzheng use both Han and native laws to awe them" #U � � ��)lA JiX...t. With respect to Xiazheng and Xibawen, since they governed their own domains, Wang urged granting them titles and posts as well, to help them control their own subordinates. In Wang's view, this would so familiarize them with Han ways that their own customs would converge with those of the Han. "This will bring them into the closest possible relationship with

benevo16. The operative phrase in Wang Shao's memorial is "X .�1t lence and trust to summon and pacify" ; as the policy took hold, variations on this phrase were gradually replaced by the generic term 4gAA, or "to summon to submit." Because the "summons" and its attendant "submission" are always accompanied by generous rewards and posts, I translate the term as "clientalize."

PAUL JAKOV S M I T H

90

the Han realm, pre-empting any opportunity for the Western Rebels [that is, the Tanguts] to link up with the various Qiang tribes." In the short term Wang Shao's plan did not entail direct annexation of the Tao-He region, for his immediate focus was on political clientaliza­ tion rather than military occupation. But he did propose colonizing the frontier region between the Tao River and the Song border at Gu­ weizhai, whose plateau lands were occupied by acculturated, tent­ dwelling, Tibetan pastoralists who acknowledged Chinese suzerainty. In Wang Shao's view, this frontier zone encompassed more land than the

100,000 families (or "tents'') were able to use, leaving ample room to add 10,000 cultivator soldiers or archers i] � -f-, as long as the roughly

government scattered them sensibly among the Tibetans without up­ rooting entire families. And while he eschewed talk of annexation in the present, for the future Wang Shao offered a grand irredentist vision: Chinese occupation of the fertile lands in the territory once governed by the Han and Tang

that is, the entire Hehuang region now occupied by

the Qingtang federation, along with Lanzhou, under the Tanguts. "If we are able to truly secure these lands for cultivation, then the advantage to us will not stop with simply overawing the Qiang [Tibetans] and the Rong [Tanguts] ." Wang Shao's proposal offered everything his activist young emperor could want: immediate action, in the form of westward expansion to the Tao River, and co-optation of the Tibetan rulers of the Tao River­ Hezhou domains, as a prelude to the ultimate goal of reclaiming all of Hehuang to the west and dominating the Tanguts to the north. More­ over, since Wang Shao's plan was based on clientalization rather than war, Shenzong could get it by his conservative courtiers without ex­ ceeding the political capital of a young, newly installed monarch. Shenzong immediately ordered his Bureau of Military Affairs to con­ sider Wang Shao's plan, which yielded its author an extraordinary prize: from having never served above an executory-level position in local government, Wang Shao was appointed administrative secretary of the Qinfeng Circuit Military Commission

X. * .17 In the

if ft .. Jlt �� � � #l ii:

second month of 1069 Shenzong secured an advisor who

shared his activist ambitions when he named Wang Anshi as a state councilor

17.

1- 9;11 .ifi "* ,

SS 328.1°579.

and not long thereafter Wang Shao added one

Itredentism as Political Capital

91

further element to his proposal that made Wang Anshi an even more fervent patron than the emperor. In late 1069 or early 1070, in the midst of recruiting Tibetans in the border zone between Guwei Stockade and the Tao River, Wang Shao complained about the hundreds of thousands of strings of cash generated by the Sino-Tibetan trade that were being lost to merchants when they could be monopolized by the state. He proposed the establishment of a state trade office

rjf 1& �

in Qinfeng

circuit "that will use government funds as capital [to buy domestic goods for trade to Tibetan merchants] , in order to capture for the state the profits that now flow to merchants and traders." Wang Shao anticipated returns of one to two hundred strings of cash on the monopolized trade, which

he

campaign Tibetans

promised

would

be

enough

to

finance

the

frontier

especially the costly gifts needed to reward clientalized without requiring further government funds. 1 8

If Shenzong was drawn to Wang Shao's plan for expansion without waging war, Wang Anshi was mesmerized by the vision of an expan­ sionist policy that did not require government funds. In conversations with the emperor, Wang Anshi repeatedly stressed the benefits of Wang Shao's monopoly model, which served as the inspiration for the state trade policy that was enacted nationwide in 1072 as a centerpiece of the New Policies economic reforms. For Wang Anshi, Wang Shao's innovation would not only make expansion self-financing, it would also make it culturally trans formative, by utilizing the seductive power of loans, money, and commerce to turn Tibetans into a militarized version of Hanren, who would do the fighting while Han colonists farmed. 19

18. SHY shihuo 37.I4a; CB 226.5502. 19. CB 233.5652-53. For a recent study of the recruitment of Tibetan soldiers during the Northern Song, see Kim Song-gyu � A�, Siidai no seihoku mondai to iminzoku seisaku * f( 0) � ;lt. r", ,,! C: � ��a� (Tokyo: Kyiiko, 2000), 217-308. Not everyone agreed that Tibetans could be transformed into Han. Sometime in Zhezong's reign, Fan Chuncui i� �..e.W (I046-II17) complained that because of the excessive use of offices to "sinify" Tibetan clients, the cultural transformation was going in the wrong direction. As he put it, "All these [Tibetan] officials hail from Qiang tribes and clans, and their forbears were Qiang. Therefore no matter how many generations back they have been rewarded with offices high or low on the basis of their achievements, when it comes right down to it they are all of the Tibetan race. How can we assume that they have suddenly been transformed, and promiscuously mix them in with men of the Flowery King­ dom? . . . It has even gotten to the point that because Tibetan rituals and laws differ

92

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

But if frontier activism boosted Wang Shao's career it also made him an object of envy and the target of widespread denunciations, which Wang Anshi urged Shenzong to disregard as a demonstration of imperial resolve. 20 By mid-1072, at the same time that he himself threatened to resign in frustration at his many detractors, Wang Anshi complained that because of all the sniping from the field, Wang Shao could only devote 30 to 40 percent of his time to his duties, wasting the rest of his efforts on bureaucratic self-defense. In a direct plea for limits on debate, Wang Anshi told Shenzong that "the only reason Your Highness tolerates these [critics of Wang Shao] is out of a desire to broaden what you see and hear. If what they say is all fact, then the ear and eye are expanded; but if they desire to deceive, then [the emperor's] own intelligence is blocked, and of what advantage is that? If [the em­ peror] really wants to expand his ears and eyes, then if [the informants] are loyal and trustworthy reward them; but if they are lying and deceitful then they should be punished."21 The biggest obstacle to Wang Shao's dream of bloodless expansion through clientalization was not official rivalry, however, but rather the recalcitrance of the Tibetan leaders themselves, especially Mu­ zheng. Muzheng, who had held the title of Hezhou "prefect" *,11 Jt since 1060, was an experienced hand at managing the Chinese, and in 1072 he manipulated Wang Shao's rival Guo Kui into transmitting a complaint that Wang had violated their agreements by seizing lands and salt wells and suborning Muzheng's followers. As a result, he told Guo Kui, he intended to submit to his enemy Dongzhan with a plan to reunite the Tibetans. Shenzong and Wang Anshi were clearly taken aback at this unanticipated example of Tibetan impertinence. To the emperor, Wang snapped that "If Muzheng is the Hezhou cishi and the court reaches out to [clientalize] the 'raw' Qiang tribes, without

from those of Han households, intermarriage has turned the proper social order topsy-turvy and funerals follow different rules, despite the fact that the laws specifi­ cally prohibit marriage between Han officials [and Qiang women] . . . . [Moreover these mixed couples] then purchase land in violation of the court's laws. We must be on guard against this disruption of Chinese customs by the barbarian race." In Lidai mingchen ZOlfYi

347.4517-18. 20. See, e.g., CB 212.5144-45, 216.5261-62, 226.5501, 230.5593-96. 21. CB 234.5677-79, 234.5687-89, 233.5665-66.

Imdentism as Political Capital

93

encroaching on his borders, and he then says 'I'm going to tell Dongzhan, and I'm going to unite the Tibetan tribes,' how is this the sort of thing a prefect ought to say? . . . The raw Qiang tribes [Wang Shao] is reaching out to are Dust] those on the point of getting close to the Xia Nation." To this, Shenzong added that "none of the [tribes and clans] Wang Shao reached out to were within Muzheng's borders [any­ way]."22 By the middle of 1072 Muzheng's "arrogant opposition to the Song" led Shenzong to declare that the former linchpin of Wang Shao's pro­ posal must now be "swiftly exterminated."23 Despite the efforts of councilors Wen Yanbo and Wu Chong to distract Wang Anshi and the emperor with alternatives, both men had now become obsessed with the prospect of eradicating Muzheng (and for Wang Anshi, Dongzhan as well) and transforming the entire region west of the Tao River into part of the Chinese domain, complete with prefectures, counties, and wallS.24 In 1072/10 the court promulgated an actual blueprint for sinification of the region by announcing the addition to Qinfeng civil circuit of the new military circuit of Xihe Lu, encompassing all the prefectures that would be included Xizhou, Hezhou, Taozhou, and Minzhou once Muzheng and his followers were subdued.25 As a sign of the altered nature of his mission, Wang Shao's civil posts were augmented with a new military assignment as commander in chief ��* of Xihe circuit, and with the assistance of the eunuch militarist Li Xian 4- :l (Tong Guan's mentor), an all-out campaign against Muzheng was launched. Shenzong and Wang Anshi's zeal for Muzheng's eradication was read in the field as an invi­ tation to slaughter Tibetans, especially the old and the weak. A 5,000-stting bounty on Muzheng's head was supplemented by a smaller reward of 5 rolls of silk for lesser Tibetans, 3,527 of whose heads were submitted for meritorious recognition.26 Wen Yanbo and state councilor Feng Jing strenuously objected to the slaughter to Shenzong, but he

22. CB 230.5596. 23· CB 233.5651-52, 5654-55. 24. CB 237.5767-69; for Wen Yanbo's memorial, see Songchao zhuchen zot!JIi 14I.l590. 25. CB 239.5818-19; 243.5912. For the post-Xining administrative configurations of the circuit, see SHYfangyu 6.la-6b. 26. CB 243.5937.

94

PAUL JAKOV S M ITH

replied that, "If their troops resist like this, how can they not be killed?"27 Hezhou was finally taken on 1073/2/22, but with Muzheng's escape the fighting only intensified, as the seasoned Tibetan warrior Guizhang >t :t killed the Song general Jing Sili and besieged the Song forces with 30,000 of his own men. Wang Shao broke the siege, unleashing a retaliatory bloodbath in which 7,000 Tibetans were beheaded and another 12,000 taken prisoner, and more than 20,000 tent-dwellings put to the torch. Muzheng finally surrendered on 1073/4/30, yielding to the Song some 2,000 square Ii of territory in the Tao-He region and the submission of greater and lesser tribal clans numbering over 300,000 families in all. With Muzheng's surrender, Shenzong declared the frontier at peace, and offered rewards, promotions, and imperial congratulations to all the participants, as well as a post to Wang Shao's son Wang Hou 4, who would inherit his mission under Huizong. 28 The restoration of order also induced Tibetan horse merchants to stream back into the region in search of the Sichuanese tea just appearing in Wang Shao's state trade markets, catalyzing the establishment in 1074 of the state-run tea and horse trade.29

I074-96: The Qingtang Regime and the Limits if Clientalization Hezhou was as far west as the Tibetan campaign proceeded under Shenzong, although Minzhou, on the southeastern loop of the Tao River, was absorbed into the Song fold around the same time.30 The emperor's reformist resolve was shaken by a devastating portrait of the victims of drought, tax-gouging, and military mobilization by Wang Anshi's former protege, Zheng Xia, which was secretly carried into the court in early 1074, forcing Wang to withdraw from office between 27· CB 244.5945. 28. The principal sources are CB 243.5912-16, 247.6022-24; SHYfanyi 6.9b-rob for Wang Shao's account; and 12a-13a for Muzheng's obituary. 29. Smith, Taxing Heaven's Storehouse, 46-47. 30. Song occupation of Minzhou was probably aided by its chieftain Yulongke �-t. Uf, who under the name Bao Shun @. }I/Ji served as a loyal Song agent. Although CB 233.5653 refers to Yulongke as a "Qingtang chieftain," Juesiluo's descendant Longza lo­ cates his residence in Minzhou (SHYfanyi 6.37b-38b), as does Kim Song-gyu, Sodai no seihoku mondai, 220.

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1074/4 and 1075/2. When Wang Anshi returned to power between 1075/2 and 1076/10, the foreign-policy focus shifted from Hehuang to the ill-fated invasion of Vietnam in the south and to border negotiations with the Khitan in the north. Meanwhile, in 1074/12, Wang Shao was promoted out of the field into the post of associate director of the Bu­ reau of Military Affairs. His six sons and three daughters were all hon­ ored on his death in 1081, but Wang Shao himself never escaped the opprobrium of the systematic slaughter of Tibetans, especially the de­ fenseless weak and aged, that occurred under his command, and at his death he developed ulcers on his back resembling the five organs, which were said to be retributive stigmata.3! In 1076/10 Wang Anshi's coalition collapsed under the weight of mutual animosities and Wang's own high-strung and unpredictable be­ havior, and Shenzong was relieved to let him resign for good. Now confident of his own ability to govern, Shenzong gradually assumed di­ rect control over the direction of foreign and domestic policy. Abetted by the manipulative eai Que (1037-93), who shut down protest far more effectively than Wang Anshi ever could, Shenzong was finally free to launch the longed-for campaign against the Tanguts, resulting in a mili­ tary fiasco that burned hot from 1081 through 1082 and then simmered through Shenzong's death in 1085/3.32 Because of the renewed stress on the Sino-Tangut frontier, all forms of active intervention into Tibetan territory, including the policy of clientalizing lesser chieftains, were suspended. Instead, the Song court focused on keeping the main Tibetan overlords especially Dongzhan (in Qingtang and Miaochuan), his adopted son Aligu, and Muzheng's successor Guizhang (in Taozhou)­ from going over to the Xia camp.33 With Shenzong's death, his nine-year-old son ascended to the throne under the regency of his grandmother, the Dowager Empress Xuanren. Xuanren and her anti-reform courtiers sought to turn back the foreign and domestic components of the New Policies, until her own death in 1093/9 opened the way for Zhezong to preside over a return to the re­ form vision of his father and the reform partisans who had served him.

31. CB 313·9b-lOa. 32. See Paul Forage, "The Sino-Tangut War of 1081-1085," Journal ofAsian History 25-1 (1991): 1-28; Smith, "Shen-tsung's Reign," pt. IV. 33. SHYfanyi 6.13a-19a.

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

No firm hand guided foreign policy during either the regency years of the Yuanyou period (1086-94) or the pro-reform years of the Shaosheng (1094-98) and Yuanfu (1098-noo) eras. As a result, Song policy toward the Tibetans was governed primarily by continuing fears of the Tanguts, who continued to dominate Song concerns, despite the appearance of rapprochement in 1086 and 1087 and the desire of many Yuanyou-era principals for a peace with the Xia nation that would bring much-needed relief to the beleaguered soldiers and commoners on both sides of the frontier. Song ambivalence about the Tanguts, combined with an abiding war-weariness, played directly into the hands of Aligu, the son of a Khotanese woman in Dongzhan's retinue whom Dongzhan adopted and then named as his successor not long before dying (at age 57) in 1086.34 From 1086 until his own death in 1096 it was Aligu who determined the direction of Sino-Tibetan relations. If the disintegration of Wang Shao's policy of peaceful clientalization into bloodthirsty war demonstrated the limits of nonmilitary intervention into Tibetan affairs, the Song court's reluctant but unwavering support of Aligu underscored the difficulty of deciding whom to back as one's surrogate in a foreign land riven by po­ litical rivalries, clan hatreds, and the utter brutality of the designated strongman. The Song capture of Aligu's rival Guizhang in 1087 illustrates the dilemmas that confronted the Song even when it opted to leave Ti­ betan affairs in the hands of the Tibetans. Guizhang's arrest in 1087/8 generated considerable debate at court, especially between one group represented by Fan Chunren ;€'$if!.{==- (then co-director of the Bureau of Military Affairs), which called for his im­ mediate execution, and an opposing faction represented by Su Shi and Su Che (then both Hanlin academicians), which insisted that he be spared.35 The affair was precipitated by what Su Shi (whose perspective I adopt here) saw as the court's heedless transfer of Dongzhan's titles, posts, and emoluments as "minister" of the Song immediately to Aligu, despite Aligu's reputation for brutality toward rivals and even allies. According to Su Shi, Aligu had not only kept Dongzhan's death secret for over a

34- 55 492.14165; 5HYfanyi 6.29b-30a. 35. Many of the memorials preserved in the CB are anthologized in Lidai mingchen zouyi 331, which includes more items than Songchao zhuchen zouyi 141, but lacks Zhao Ruyu's contextualizing commentary. For convenience I refer here to the CB and Lidai mingchen zouyi entries.

Imdentism as Political Capital

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year, he had also induced Dongzhan's Khitan princess to murder his two other wives.36 So doubtful were frontier officials about Aligu's legitimacy that they sent emissaries to ask Aligu's most powerful rivals, Guizhang (in Taozhou) and Wenxixin �.:l �� .\; (in Miaochuan), whether Aligu should be installed as the sole holder of the Song mandate to rule, or if it should be divided among the three of them. But (again according to Su) policy-makers opted to grant sole authority to Aligu, creating a dilemma for the Song court that lasted well past Aligu's death in 1096. The Song decision infuriated Guizhang, who responded by walling his own domain of Taozhou with Xi Xia assistance and sending his son at the head of troops to stage raids against the Xihe border garrisons. The Song court had always regarded Guizhang as an irritant in 1080 Shenzong had bridled at Guizhang's effrontery in communicating with the court in Tibetan and in 1087/8 Tibetan agents of the court under the general Chong Yi ;from besieged Taozhou and captured Guizhang alive. On receiving news of his capture "the grand councilors led the hundred officers in offering congratulations [to the ancestors] at the Yanhedian," and as Tangut allies massed along the frontier to show solidarity with Guizhang, the 70-year-old captive was shipped off to Kaifeng in a cart-borne cageY Fan Chunren insisted that the Tibetan warrior be executed as a way of avenging the death of general Jing Sill and of placating the spirits of the deceased Shenzong and the tens of thousands of Chinese troops and Tibetan and Han civilians whom he had killed or harmed.38 But Su Shi argued that Guizhang had been forced into attacking Song positions first by the court's thoughtless support of the brutal and illegitimate Aligu, but more importantly by the very policy of expansion into Tibetan do­ mains initiated by Wang Shao and perpetuated by merit-seeking officials. As Su Shi put it, For successive years we have been engaged in military action in the western regions. The Former Emperor's objective was to console the people and pun­ ish the wicked, . but in their greed for merit his ministers stirred up events, devoting themselves only to killing people and contending for territory in order to gain [a few] feet and inches of land. Without inquiring into the ad-

36. CB 4°5.9862-66; Lidai mingchen zouyi 33I.17a-19b. 37. SHYfanyi 6.16a, 2Ia-b; CB 4°4-9851-52. 38. CB 4°6.9890-93; Lidai mingchen zouyi 34P3b-16b.

PAUL JAKOV SMITH vantages and drawbacks, they built walls and forts and established prefectures and counties. This just made the Four Barbarians loathe and fear the Middle Kingdom, and to believe that in our zeal to obtain their land we would not even stop at exterminating their clans and their entire race $. $Ji . Because of this they will combine forces to the death rather than submit. Now, even though the [current] court professes to love life and to abjure killing and plotting in distant lands, in their hearts the Tibetans do not trust us and their loathing and fear has not been dispelled. . . . Now we have just captured Guizhang [which will further] intimidate and shake up the barbarians. Frontier officers, bold and anxious to compete for merit, believe that the Henan region can be taken in a trice. But in order to really secure the region there is no way to avoid building walls and forts, stationing troops, setting up functionaries, and stockpiling grain. When then will the people of the Middle Kingdom rest? � 7f Jl) *'" � .f . 71:. '*' ..t;t *-.tL "P 1:1t ifQ -t ,:}] !l :f:..t � fft � � A. 4f-Jt �l ft... -t- ..t .±. . � r 1 :t1 $ 7I:. 1A � 1t. ;i. 1fl �. ..

* � . M . t � , � •• � . a�Jt* a��$.$Ji ��. � � * h a� � lr}]l*. �.�*!l.� � � �lt�ifQJI:.·�;>1dt, ·1W .:>1t� . . . � El 1Ifft. >t" Jii. i: f�A'k. II � I � 4f-a2 ':}] , �x �;ar rfJ..tj1!!Alii $Jf� �l . .iE1�Al� ft 1A � 1t. 4!. *'" J:. � � � ifQ !
In Su Shi's view, if Guizhang were executed then his sons would ally themselves with both Aligu and the Tanguts to whom Aligu had mar­ ried a daughter. In place of execution, Su proposed a return to the classic policy of "using barbarians to control barbarians" that Wang Shao's war on Muzheng had abrogated: spare Guizhang, return his lands, and grant him ample riches and tokens of esteem, in return for Guizhang's promise to cooperate with Wenxixin in an alliance perhaps even an attack­ against Aligu in Qingtang. Above all, Su urged that the new emperor order his frontier officials "not to take another foot or inch of land, or burn another hut or dwelling, or murder another old or weak person. If this is done, then in a year's time the various Qiang can again be sum­ moned and settled."40 The Yuanyou leadership was unable to choose between Fan Chun­ ren's or Su Shi's positions, and in the end opted to compromise. In 1088/8 Guizhang was released, designated the Great Chieftain of the Western Fan, and sent to live in Qinzhou, where he died in 1091.41 As for Aligu, after noting that since inheriting his position Aligu had done 39. CB 4°5.9872-75, Lidai mingchen ZO'!Yi 331.19b-2Ia (transcription from 19b-20a). 40. CB 4°5.9872-75, 406.9881-82; Lidai mingchen ZO'!Yi 33I.I9b-22a. 41. SHYjmryi 6.23b-24b.

Irredentism as Political Capital

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nothing but bully his chieftains, oppose imperial rule, and consort with the Xia, an imperial proclamation stated that "since you have now shown remorse the clientalization campaign is suspended, trade rights are re­ stored, and you are in charge of controlling your own kind and guaran­ teeing border security."42 But in

1092 Aligu demonstrated his disdain for

this Song gesture by incarcerating both Wenxixin and his son Xibawen as Song spies. Courtiers in both the anti-reform Yuanyou court and the pro-reform Shaosheng regime (headed by Zhang Dun and Zeng Bu

'if Ali , 1036-11°7)

-:t·tf-, 1035-1105,

supplicated Aligu, in Chinese- and

Tibetan-language missives, to free the Miaochuan leaders, but their pleas were contemptuously ignored.43 Up through

1095

and

1096

the fear of Tangut attack kept the Song

court firmly wedded to its dependence on Aligu. Out in the field, how­ ever, Xihe-region military officers were beginning to chafe at the pro­ hibitions against clientalizing restive Tibetan tribes. Thus even as the court augmented its rewards and honors for members of Aligu's family in early

1096, rumors

swirled that Xihe circuit officials were planning to

attack Qingtang. These rumors the court sought to dampen with firm instructions that all field officials work to keep Aligu's confidence, and when Aligu's death was reported in

1096/9

the court's instinctive re­

sponse was to designate his son Xiazheng as the rightful heir to Song patronage.44 But this time the Tibetan tribes and ruling clans that had bridled under Aligu's reign had other ideas.

I09!rIIOL' Wang Shan and the QingtangQuagmire Aligu's death solved a Song problem, but also deprived the Song of a surrogate overlord. Despite transferring Aligu's titles and honors to his son, Song policy-makers suspected that Xiazheng was not strong enough to control the Tibetans and to isolate the Huangshui Valley from Tangut influence. As a result, the court reinstated the vigorous clientalizing campaign that Aligu's domination of Song policy had pre­ vented. Particular efforts were made to reach out to former foes of Aligu, and to any clans that had moved toward the Tangut state. The

42. Ibid., 6.22a-b [1088/1/24]. 43. Ibid., 6.25b--28a. 44. Ibid., 6.28b, 29b--30a.

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

100 years

1096 to 1099

saw an outbreak of hostilities between the Song and

the Xia, and as the Song forces met with unusual success on the northern frontier, the court enjoyed a substantial harvest of greater and lesser Ti­ betan leaders opting to throw in their lot with the Han side, in return for posts and emoluments calibrated to their native status levels.45 No one more eagerly eyed the opportunities this revival of frontier

.I.Jl,t. Shan was the son of the dis­ tinguished frontier general Wang J unwan � � , an enterprising warrior

activism presented than Wang Shan

whose exploits under Wang Shao earned him appointment as military

� ��#-n and then as Wang Shao's vice commander in chief .tIJ t,t If .46 Although Shan too demonstrated battle­

commander of Xihe circuit

field prowess, he had a reputation for duplicity and capriciousness that regularly got him into trouble, most recendy when he was forced to admit to inflating his battlefield body-counts. In an effort to ameliorate his punishment, Wang Shan talked the fiscal intendant into letting him prepare a pre-emptive attack on Qingtang and Miaochuan, but since neither man first requested permission from the court, both were charged with criminal insubordination, and Wang was summarily de­ moted. Now desperate "to redeem his crime with meritorious deeds," Wang hurriedly dispatched a retainer to the capital to explain his secret plan to capture and wall Miaochuan and Qingtang direcdy to Grand Councilor Zhang Dun.47 Wang Shan was lucky in his choice of sponsor, for Zhang Dun had risen to power by attacking the anti-expansionist Yuanyou partisans. With the prospect of a renewed Hehuang campaign, Zhang and his ssociate councilor Cai Bian

(�-t, 1058-1117)

found a way to neutralize

military affairs director Zeng Bu, whose worries about the perils of military overextension into the inaccessible Huangshui Valley tarred him with the Yuanyou brush and made him vulnerable to the accusa­

tion that his commiunent "to the Former Emperor's will" was soft.48

45. Ibid., 6·30a-32a. 46. SS 350.II070. 47. SS 350.II07o-7I. 48. Zhao Bowen, Shaoshi wetljian lu 5.42, links Zhang Dun's rise explicitly to his promotion of frontier expansion and his assault on irredentism's foes. See CB 514.12212-15 for the debates before the emperor. Ari Levine discusses the jockeying for power by members of the reform faction in his chapter on Zhezong for The Cambridge History 0/ China, vol. 5A; Xu Ziming � ro 11JI , Song zaifu biannian lu jiaobu

----........

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101

But Zhang Dun was less fortunate in his choice of protege, for Wang Shan, true to his reputation, promptly deceived his superior Wang Min

i. � into bivouacking his troops overnight so that Shan could sneak

into Miaochuan first and claim

full credit for the city's capture.49

More serious than Wang Shan's misbehavior, however, was his in­ competence, for Shan's attack on Miaochuan precipitated a chain re­ action among Tibetan leaders all along the Huangshui Valley that he was unable to control. Within Miaochuan itself, Xibawen fled with his second son, Longza

F.f- ·W , to Juesiluo's old stronghold in Zongge,

where he hoped that the "Hanjia" would acknowledge Longza as ruler. But before that could happen, the entrepreneurial Xinmouqinzhan, spurning the gifts Wang Shan frantically scrambled to assemble for him, expelled the Song's client Xiazheng as Qingtang ruler and installed Longza as the legitimate heir to the Juesiluo line instead. 50 Wang Shan fmally subdued Longza and his Qingtang handlers, but only after military commissioner Hu Zonghui

tJj * @1

had threatened him with

punishment by martial law for fearfully avoiding an attack on the forti­ fied town.51 Having staked his personal prestige on Wang Shan, this victory, however disorderly, was just what Zhang Dun needed, and he led the Hundred Officers of the court in congratulations on the great Huangshui conquest in order to make the most of it. In the official text of his commemoration, Zhang Dun escalated the rhetorical importance of the Qingtang recovery by claiming that the Great Song had recaptured the Han and Tang territories of Longyou and Hexi that the Tang house had lost through irresoluteness to the Tufan in the 750s. In this three­ hundred-year period, "no one had thought to recapture these lands, until our predecessor [Shenzong] vowed to undertake the enterprise." But now the tribes had all welcomed Song troops without anyone bloodying

* * till �.f,*At #i (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1986, hereafter Song zaifu), Il.667-76 for Zhang Dun's ouster under Huizong. 49. SS 350.II070-71. 50. CB 514.12223-24, 26-27, 31-32. Xiazheng, his head shaved like a monk, was es­ corted by Song troops to Miaochuan and then to more secure soil in Xizhou. 51. CB 515-12243, 516.12284. For a description of the Buddhist vistas of Qingtang as described in the contemporaryQingtang lu -t .lif�, see Ruth W. Dunnell, The Great State 0/ White and High: Buddhism and State Formation in Eleventh-Century Xia (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1996) , 76-77.

102

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

a sword, prompting Zhang to gloat that "commanderies lost for over three hundred years have, in a trice, been restored to [the rule of] caps and gowns; hundreds of thousands of fierce wild Qiang Tibetans have [succumbed to] moral example and great favor." To inscribe the victory in cartographic reality, place names were changed to reflect Song do­ minion over the Huangshui Valley: Qingtang to Shanzhou, Miaochuan to Huangzhou, and Zongge to Longzhicheng.52 But no sooner had Zhang Dun congratulated the court on its victory than the entire Huangshui Valley was hit by massive Tibetan resistance, confirming the concerns more prudent officials (including Zeng Bu) had voiced about the court's ability to control their new domain. In a me­ morial entitled "Four reasons why Qingtang cannot be held," Shan's nemesis Wang Min complained that the Huangshui campaigns had been prosecuted with neither an overall plan in mind nor any understanding of the larger situation. Moreover, although Xiazheng and Longza had sur­ rendered, their fellow Tibetans had no intention of submitting to the Han. Not only were the Tibetans able to control all the passes and river crossings, but, given the lack of provisions, it was impossible to support massed imperial troops in the Huangshui region. Even those Tibetans who at first worried about the Chinese armies reconsidered once they saw how outmanned were the Chinese, sending their own considerable numbers (with Xi Xia assistance) against Song forces in Miaochuan, Zongge, and Qingtang.53 In the end, the besieged towns were freed through the assistance of emergency Chinese reinforcements, in ways that belied Zhang Dun's glorification of the bloodless transfer of power. In Qingtang, Wang Shan got revenge for the resistance by beheading 4,000 Tibetans and executing the nine great chieftains in his control, including Xinmou­ qinzhan.54 At the same time the court ordered Hu Zonghui to instruct his chief generals that "if the Tibetan rebels flee across the river at the sight of the Imperial Army, then even if they have scattered it is ap­ propriate to slaughter them, in order to thoroughly exterminate all who have transgressed." As Zeng Bu later explained to the deeply hor52. CB 516.12263, 12265-67. 53. CB 516.12286-89. SS 492.14166 reports that the Xi Xia sent 100,000 reinforcements to assist in the Miaochuan siege, which Wang Min only barely managed to survive. 54. CB 516.12289.

J

Irredentism as Political Capital

103

rified emperor, what this meant in practice was that when the Miao­ chuan siege was broken, Hu Zonghui took all the chieftains and their families into detention, and then, starting with the infants and the adolescents, killed them one-by-one by slow slicing, before beheading the chieftains; "how could this not agitate and infuriate the hearts of one and all?"55 Despite the broken sieges, Tibetan resistance continued to run high, and throughout the tenth month of 1099 the court worried that the lack of news from Wang Shan and his forces meant that his armies were stranded. When news did come it was hardly welcomed, for the court learned that one of its principal generals, Chong E's son Chong Pu 1'/' ;j:1', had been trapped and killed in an ambush laid by two Tibetan monks just one of the casualties of the guerrillas' success in repulsing every forward movement by Song forces drawn from increasingly distant parts. At every point the Tibetan troops seemed to number in the tens of thousands, and Han morale was being sapped as "every three times they pressed forward they suffered three defeats."56 By the winter months of 1099, officials being drawn into the deep­ ening crisis from adjacent circuits began to issue their own critiques. In 1099/u, in response to an order that he dispatch troops, commanders, and mounts to Xihe circuit to help rescue ensnared Song forces, the 70-year-old military commissioner of neighboring Jingyuan military circuit, Zhang Jie .. � (1027-U02), complained about the lack of plan­ ning and information that accompanied the headstrong move into Miaochuan and Qingtang. He cited the crushing difficulty of provi­ sioning armies in a region where the roads were treacherous often nothing more than plankways sunk into the rock faces draft animals scarce, and the designated supply regions as far east as Yongxing civil circuit themselves drained of resources by years of war and successive crop failures, their own populations driven to desperation.57 Around the same time the administrative assistant to the Shaanxi fiscal intendant, Qin Xifu " :;Jfr 1# , submitted a report based on his personal observation of affairs in Hezhou that corroborated Zhang's scenario. Like Zhang, Qin Xifu stressed the difficulty of provisioning 55. CB 516.12290, 518.12325-26. 56. CB 517.12295-96, 12303-5. 57. CB 518.12317-22.

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

104 Miaochuan,

250 Ii distant from Hezhou. In that stretch alone the road

was too treacherous for carts, too narrow for rest areas, and utterly de­ void of provisions for the men and beasts pressed into service, for whom it was like entering a land of death. Moreover, Qin saw no easy way to retrieve the Song forces from their entrapment in Miaochuan. The best solution, in his view, would be simply to return Qingtang and Miaochuan to the Tibetans for them to rule as they saw fit: "As for those ten­ thousand and more Tibetans who newly surrendered in [Qingtang] , as soon as our forces leave the area they will all become enemies bent on revenge. I hope that the court will swiftly send Longza and the three so-called princesses back to [Qingtang] to take control of the surren­ dered Tibetans and see to their submissiveness."58 These alarming reports from the field provided Zeng Bu an oppor­ tunity to counter the expansionist rhetoric of Grand Councilor Zhang Dun, by ordering all field and court officials to memorialize frankly on whether to hold onto Qingtang or abandon it.59 Zeng Bu's own opinion put him at direct odds with Zhang Dun. First, Zeng Bu took issue with Zhang Dun's recommendation that the court wage a punitive campaign against the Xia nation because of its role in the siege of Miaochuan: "In recent years all the circuits have pressed forward with the building of town walls and stockades. Now our armies and people are exhausted, and our funds and provisions in short supply. . . . Now because of the use of troops in Qingtang the soldiers are even more drained. If we also try to exterminate the Xia Nation then disaster will come back to haunt the Middle Kingdom."60 Second, Zeng blamed the Qingtang debacle directly on Zhang Dun. For many months, Zeng Bu told the emperor, he had insisted to Zhang Dun:

The reason the people of the Qingtang Nation were unsettled was because Xiazheng and his father [Aligu] committed regicide. As a result, they wanted to expel Xiazheng and install Dongzhan's nephew [Longza]. [The court should have assisted and followed them in this.] But we, interpreting this as disruptive and rebellious, decided instead to seize [their land]. It is abundantly clear that our actions accorded with neither human emotions nor the principle of the situa­ tion. How much more so in that the one thing that this realm as great as the

58. CB 520.12383-84. 59. CB 520.12384. 60. CB 517.12301.

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Imdentism as Political Capital

105

four seas does not need is land. So what use does it have for this desolate and distant territory? Moreover the tribes under Qingtang are as distant from it as sixty-three days on horseback; how can we possibly manage them? In addition, the wild Qiang are unpredictable, their dialects are mutually unintelligible, and it is not easy to join them together. How then can we guarantee that over the long term they will all want to turn with one heart toward Han? * It II A.. :f 4'- lit �iE. X. .:r-.. �, ���z.1Q j:. �fl zH. [.m� of JlhI11Ji .] � 7} l5l $.. lI�L, l!�* Z, #A.. it1H�, :f }l1Ji a}h � 1if�. i}('.m�J'X 1Z!1ilj,z:k., F1f :f Jt ::t .:JF Jt.±. , � JfJ Jl:. 11t aZJt? � -t It f- -r � � � -i- * It,�-ft� + -=- El ::t, �1
��,tft

be sent into the Henan region to

punish and suppress Chong Pu's killers and restore the court's radiating influence, lest frontier officials misread the withdrawal from Qingtang as a sign that the court planned to abandon Miaochuan and Taozhou as well. For abandoning those two, Zeng Bu insisted, would be a big mistake: after all the self-congratulations that accompanied the temporary capture of Qingtang and its designation as a prefecture, there was no way to avoid a certain amount of ridicule from outsiders now that the town was to be abandoned. "But in the midst of this unsatisfactory situation, it is essential to salvage what we can. If [Qingtang] cannot be protected, then we must at least protect [i\1iaochuan] to our west and annex Taozhou . . . for mutual preservation. Moreover this [Shenzong's]

will bring tofruition the Former Emperor directive to turn Xi, He, Tao, and Min [prefectures] into a single

circuit"63 (italics added) .

61. CB 518.12324-26, with [interpolation] from 519.12350; see also 520.12383-84. 62. CB 518.12324-26, 519.12349-50. 63. CB 518.12325, 520.12384.

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

106

Huizong Inherits the QingtangQuagmire Much as Zhang Dun was undermined by Wang Shan's missteps, Zeng Bu was a political beneficiary, for they allowed him to promote a com­ promise approach to the annexation of Hehuang while being seen as true to Shenzong's vision. In the final month of 1099 Zeng used his renewed stature to persuade Zhezong, over Cai Bian's objections, to enfeoff Juesiluo's collateral descendant, Longza (given the Chinese name Zhao Huaide �'I�A!), as the hereditary administrator of all western Fan tribes in Shanzhou and military governor �p �1t of Hexi; and to appoint Muzheng's son, Bangbiwudingwa .f� �� o/J J 1i... (Chinese name Zhao Huaiyi 'I:l.l), as the Kuozhou militia commissioner and vice adminis­ trator of Huangzhou military affairs, with responsibility over the Tibetan tribes in the Huangzhou jurisdiction.64 This was one of the final decisions presided over by Zhezong, who died in the first month of IIOO (Yuanfu 3), leaving the Qingtang quagmire to his brother and surprised successor, Huizong. In Huizong's first for­ eign-policy briefing as emperor, Zeng Bu pointed out that although Longza had been named Hexi military governor, Tibetan fighters still had Wang Shan and other Song soldiers and generals trapped in the Huangshui region. Nonetheless Zeng reiterated that Miaochuan had to be held or it would certainly fall to the Tanguts, earning China the scorn of the barbarians and future troubles on the frontier.65 Already weakened by his responsibpity for the Qingtang quagmire, Zhang Dun lost all remaining power at court when he alone supported Huizong's younger half-brother as heir to the throne. Zhang's miscalcu­ lation opened the way for Zeng Bu to ascend as the de facto head of a politically moderate state council composed largely of political conser­ vatives acting with the authority of the Empress Dowager Qinsheng it � .:t;t Jf; as regent.66 With no one closer to the new emperor at first, it was Zeng Bu's views that shaped Huizong's initial policy toward the

64. CB 519.12348-49. 65. CB 520.12377-78; CB-SB 15018b. 66. See Ari Levine, "Hui-tsung's Reign," Cambridge History of China, vol. 5A (forth­ coming) for the shifting political landscape of Huizong's early reign. Xu Ziming, Song zaifu, n.667-71, notes the damaging effect of the Qingtang affair on Zhang Dun's reputation. •

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Irredentism as Political Capital

107

Huangshui region. In nooh all the principal Tibetan players in the Qingtang drama Longza, Xiazheng, the Khitan, Tangut, and Uighur princesses, as well as a bevy of monks and nuns and the female relatives of Dongzhan and Xiazheng, joined by the male relatives of the principal Tibetan chieftains, all garbed in Tibetan dress were formally feted in the Song capital, where they offered thanks for the Chinese titles, Tibetan offices, and abundant riches that were presented to them by the Chinese court. That day Huizong held a cordial interview (later represented more triumphally in one of his palace poems) with Longza, who attributed Xi­ bawen's disappearance not to truculence but to his detention by the re­ gional warlord Langazhang �� M"".67 The following month Yao Xiong finally evacuated Wang Shan and his troops safely out of Qingtang and back to Miaochuan, leaving behind only the invitation to Langazhang and Xibawen transmitted through all available Tibetan networks to "sub­ mit" to China, and the offer to Xibawen or Little Longza to assume con­ trol of Qingtang. 68 Yet if Zeng Bu thought that the Qingtang affair was over, critics out­ side the state council took a different view, for in the temporary anti-reformist atmosphere that accompanied Huizong's accession, the abandonment of Qingtang was by no means seen to have closed the door on Zeng Bu's own call for frank debate on the court's options in the region. As a result, Zeng's compromise attempt to salvage some modicum of Song honor and strategic gain from the Qingtang debacle was quickly swamped by a flood of memorials calling for complete Chi­ nese withdrawal from the Huangshui valley as part of a widespread renunciation of all the expansionist policies of the Shaosheng era, when Zhezong sought to continue his father's policies. Among the memorialists who besieged Huizong in noo and nOI were Zhang Shun­ min 7R # 1:\ , who decried the wasteful and strategically hollow cam­ paigns waged against the Xia;69 Chen Guan F.tll, who inveighed against Huizong's own misguided emergency orders pouring 30 years of accu-

67. SHYfanyi 6.37b-38b. Huizong's poem, almost certainly based on this occasion, concludes with the lines "Knowing the wily western barbarian has come to swear allegiance / His Majesty personally approaches Crimson Tower to receive the surren­ dered king." It is translated in full in Ronald Egan's chapter in this volume. 68. SHYfanyi 6.39a; CB-SB 15.14a. 69. Songchao zhuchen zouyi 140.1584-87.

108

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

mulated wealth into the sinkhole of the western frontier;7o Gong Guai

:f *- , who underscored the folly of intervening in the affairs of the Jue­

siluo lineage

Song's hereditary allies

in ways that earned nothing but

scorn and hatred from the Tibetans;71 and Ren Boyu �1a �

who added his warning that the vital annual quota

(1047-III9), of 25,000 Tibetan

horses to the court was threatened by the Huangshui campaigns, as evi­ denced by the fact that in the two years of the Qingtang war not a single horse had been purchased from this crucial supplier.72 This steady drumbeat of anti-expansionist memorials achieved the desired effect, and in the second month of

1101

the entire Huangshui

Valley was handed back to the Tibetans: Longza was appointed admin­ istrator of Miaochuan/Huangzhou, and he and the three putative prin­ cesses were granted pennission to govern as they saw fit, according to native customs; or if they preferred to return to Qingtang and send others in to govern Miaochuan, that, too, was acceptable,

however thry

pleased. At the same time all the military and civilian officials originally put in place were ordered to return, and other than those walls, buildings, and huts retained inside Miaochuan's ramparts, all military emplacements and forts along the border were to be destroyed. No less crucially, Xi­ bawen was to be made aware by any means possible that this retrench­ ment was taking place.73 After nineteen months of military intervention, from

109917

to

1101/2,

Qingtang and Miaochuan were officially aban­

doned.

IIOJ-4: Wang Hou Annexes Qingtang Just one piece of business remained to bring the Yuanfu-era campaign to a definitive end. On

110113/21

Military Affairs Director An Tao

!Ji:�

passed along two troubling reports concerning the behavior of Wang Shan and Wang Hou in the Miaochuan and Qingtang campaigns. The

70. CB-SB 18.la-4b. 71. Songchao zhuchen �1f)Ii 141.1594. 72. For Ren's three memorials, see Lidoi mingchen �1f)Ii 333.9b-14b. I have little data on horse purchases in Shaanxi markets from 1085 through 1112, but from 1113 to 1122 they averaged some 20,000 head/year (Taxing Heaven's Storehouse, 264, table 7), a significant achievement of the Hehuang campaign. According to Li Gang ,," $i) (1083-1140), many of these horses were lost in the failed Yan-Yun invasion of 1122: Sanchao beimeng huibian 45.6a. 73- SHYfanyi 6·39a-b.

Imdentism as Political Capital

109

fIrst, by Wang Shan's rescuer Yao Xiong, blamed the entire disaster on Shan's greed for merit (t" slJ the bureaucratic equivalent of a lust for glory) and indicted both Shan and Hou for looting the Qingtang treasury and murdering Xinmouqinzhan and eight other high chief­ tains; the second, unattributed but harking back to a complaint lodged by Qin Xifu, added that Qingtang was looted to fill not only imperial coffers in the capital (as Hu Zonghui had asserted) but also the private storehouses of Shan and Hou. As a result of An Tao's memorial, both Wang Shan and Wang Hou were summarily dismissed from the civil service and ordered under immediate arrest, but before Shan could be taken into custody he escaped to Shandong (Dengzhou), where he hung himself.74 An Tao's memorial of 1101/3 marked the high point of the antiwar voice in Huizong's new regime. With the Dowager Empress Qinsheng's death in the fIrst of the year, the pendulum began to swing back in the direction of activism and frontier adventure. An Tao himself was ca­ shiered as military affairs director in 1101/7, after memorializing that "ever since the Shaosheng and Yuanfu eras, high ministers have used the empty rhetoric of 'continuing [Shenzong's] legacy' !.al! to delude the sovereign" in order to monopolize power for themselves.75 By the start of the new year, "continuing Shenzong's legacy" was once again the of­ fIcial position, as signaled by the change of reign name from "Estab­ lishing the Mean and Stabilizing the State" � tF '* II to "Revering the Xining Era" '* .. . 76 Five months into 1102 Huizong crystallized the move away from the moderate policies of his fIrst two years by ap­ pointing eai ling as assistant director of the left of the Department of State Affairs � .li.�. Like every other facet of political culture in the Huizong era, policy toward Tibet was deeply entangled in eai ling's rise to power and in the sacralization of Shenzong's legacy as a means of gaining power, smothering political debate, and silencing policy critics. One month after eai ling's appointment, Zeng Bu was cashiered as right vice director, making way for eai to replace him in that key post in 74. Ibid., 6.39b-4oa; CB 519.12347; CB-SB Ip8b. 75. Song zaifu II.686. An Tao was among the thirteen men demoted and placed under restricted movement 4i: iL for the Yuanfu abandonment of Huangshui in II03; he was demoted again on the same grounds in IIo6. 76. On the power struggles surrounding this shift, see Levine, "Hui-tsung's Reign," section 2. •

110

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

1102/7; three months later Cai's brother Bian Zhang Dun's forceful cosponsor of military intervention in Huangshui was named director of military affairs.77 Then, in the final month of 1102, censor Qian Yu �:i! made public what can only have been a prior decision by the new leadership to reconquer Qingtang and Miaochuan, by impeaching the principal transition-era officials Zeng Bu, An Tao, Han Zhongyan, and Jiang Zhiqi for misleading the court into abandoning the region and martyring its newly proclaimed hero none other than the feckless Wang Shan. Qian insisted that if those powerful functionaries who per­ sisted in abandoning Qingtang and Miaochuan were not punished, then there would be no way to redress the injustice done to Wang Shan or to arouse in others the spirit of bravery and martial valor that he was now (pace Hu Zonghui's earlier denunciation) seen to represent. In response to Qian's indictment, the ousted minister Zeng Bu, already under a sentence of restricted movement in the relative isolation of Hengzhou (Hunan), was further humiliated with an additional reduction in rank.78 Without the detailed record of court discussions preserved in Li Tao's Changbian (whose last extant chapter ends in 1100/1, the month of Zhezong's death), it is impossible to reconstruct the arguments for reigniting the Hehuang annexation in detail. Because all the frontier campaigns associated with the New Policies were implicated in the fall of the Northern Song, it was standard for Song commentators and histo­ rians to attribute the Hehuang campaign to that most vile inheritor of the New Policies mantle, Cai Jing.79 Certainly Cai Jing was an active pro­ ponent of the campaign. Indeed Zhao Tingzhi :it! 4Jt;t. (1040-1107), Cai's unsuccessful rival in the state council, vividly portrayed in his pri­ vate diary Cai's excitement as the campaign proceeded: Early in the Chongning period . . . plans were laid for taking [Miaochuan], and when it was captured further plans were made for [Qingtang] and Kuozhou. As each prefecture was captured, [Cai Jing] would point out the spot on the map to the emperor and say, "This place gives ready access to [the Xia command center of] Zhuoluo Fort on the western border; from that spot we can hasten to [the

77. 50ng zaifu n.698. 78. ]5BM 130.2Ia-b. Qian's indictment can also be found in 5HYfanyi 6.40b and CB-5B 2o.2oa-b. 79. See, e.g., Shao Bowen, 5haoshi we'!Jian lu 5.42; Zhao Ruyu, 50ngchao zhuchen zouyi 141.1597; and the biography of general Gao Yongnian � �-+ in 55 453-13316.

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Irredentism as Political Capital

III

Xia prefecture of] Youzhou; this area communicates all the way to the Qinghai. [Now] there is no place where the awesome power of the court does not reach." Yet at the same time no thought was given to the cost of [hiring merchants to transport] provisions through the ruzhong :A... 'f provisioning plan. In [Qing­ tang] and Kuozhou a bushel of rice was not less than three to four full strings of cash. Shaanxi was thrown into turmoil, the people were overburdened, and the soldiers were exhausted. But the great merchant houses (who dominated the ruzhong provisioning operation) enjoyed profits of a hundredfold, while even a mid-level eunuch commissary officer 1� � 't , responsible for pricing the vouchers and taking in the rice, made one to two thousand strings of cash per month. Cai Jing would hear none of this, concerned exclusively as he was with raising troops and going to war. 1,ft. 1{. ;fJ1 . . . *" �.t 1i'l [� )II ] , -1!f.�.t 1tl * 5l *" $ [-t J#] 1$ . .ff: -1!f. - 1'N , �:vt Iil J'X ;F J:.. a 'Jtlt "[ J'X ;tl ifI %f.. * ... J:i: � � . Jl:tlt

"[ J'x ;tl� 1H . Jtlt "[ J'X 1& -tilj:. -'Jl��-1.t �;Jf � � * .' .� 't lltl!l!:A... 'f � it1t1iz it, $�*- � T '='lmit ft. � ifI.kt\ � 1!J '*:Ji.. tit '& jSj * 1: �lJt Ef �z;f1, r1Q -*�'t x.�-1!f. *- 'f z 't >lf fl lt-.::.. -t 1t:t-. 1{. - VJ � M ,

"' ;t�,*�* . 80

But Cai was a courtier, not a strategist, and it remained for a frontier entrepreneur to present the grand councilor and the emperor with a case for conquest, as had Wang Shan to Zhang Dun and Wang Shao to Shenzong. This time the catalyst was Wang Hou .1 4 (d. 1106), Wang Shan's lieutenant and Wang Shao's son. This was a role Hou was born and raised to play. As a youth Hou accompanied his father to battle in Hezhou, where he became deeply familiar with Tibetan affairs. On the strength of his father's rank, Hou was appointed to a minor civil post, but he soon transferred from the civil to the military track as assistant ;it 1; ';11 1� to the Xihe military command. By the late 1090S he had risen to the post of manager 1:) 't -A' 1� under the military commissioner of the Xihe-Lanhui circuit, in which capacity he served as Wang Shan's second in command during the abortive campaign in the Huangshui Valley. As Shan's collaborator in murder and theft, Wang Hou was confined to administrative arrest in the Hunanese prefecture of Chenzhou :#� 1tl . 81 When antiwar sentiment waned, however, Hou was restored to active duty as administrator of Kelan Commandery � jl � , along 80. ]SBM 140.7a-b; see also Song zaifu 11.727-28 for Zhao's further reflections on Cai Jing. 81. This summary is taken from Wang Hou's biogtaphy in Wang Cheng, Dongdu sbi/ue, 82.5b-6b, supplemented by CB 516.12265-67 and 519.12348-9.

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

112

the front with the Liao. But Wang's real expertise lay in Tibetan affairs, and he was quick to parlay his knowledge back into a position of influ­ ence by submitting a report on events in Hehuang that portrayed omi­ nous developments since the abandonment of Qingtang and Miaochuan. According to Wang, after the court sent Longza back to Miaochuan in llOI, he was immediately driven south to Henan by a death threat engi­ neered by his brother Xisheluosa i1,.Jl;�dili., to whom the court had transferred all of Xiazheng's titles after Xiazheng's death in 1102/5.82 Hehuang was now under the control of a number of powerful factions, including Xisheluosa and his father Xibawen in Miaochuan, and while animosities among them ran strong, there was clear evidence that the regional clans were attempting to reunite with the goal of disrupting Song positions on the frontier. 83 Wang submitted his memorial in 1103, when (according to Wang's own Record of Conduct) Huizong was keenly intent on "continuing [Shenzong's measures] and resentful of those who had traitorously given up national territory, and he had decided on the policy of recovering all the [abandoned] commanderies." Having won and lost Huangshui once, for Huizong it had now become terra imdenta. And because he was unanimously recommended as the man to recover these lost lands, Wang Hou was given a personal interview in which he laid out a vision of ex­ pansion much like the one his father had offered Shenzong: clientalize the majority of clans with benevolence and trust, exterminate those few clans who resist, and once Miaochuan succumbs, Qingtang and Kuo­ zhou would soon follow suit. In geographic scope Hou's vision was even more ambitious than his father's, for he urged Huizong to expand even further west, to Xigecheng � � � (modern Qinghai, Guide­ xian) "former (Han) territory" so rich and populous that if the Song did not incorporate it into a "New Frontier" # � the natives would soon surely transform it into an independent state.84 With respect to operational control, however, Hou explicitly invoked his father Shao's expertence: •

82. SHYfatryi 6.4oa-b. 83. ]SBM 139.Ia-b. 84. ]SBM 139.Ib. The conquest of Xigecheng and its designation as Jishicheng was left for Tong Guan, in no8.

,

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Irredentism as Political Capital

I13

During the Xining era, Shenzong entrusted [annexation of] the Xihe frontier to my father Shao. At that time many of the court and outer officers debated Xihe affairs to the point of confusion. After the court sent my father to investigate whether Xihe could be reclaimed or not debate gave way to unanimity, and vacillation over policy came to an end. � [.] rHt if. .t. '*" J'A � 5liJ if: =_ -t-1� ..

� � •. • * t � � .� � •• � 5liJ =_ * . • • ��� � .��� •• • �nr.f&*. -

,

On this basis Hou urged the current court to follow Xining precedent by granting the frontier military commissioner and his delegated lieutenants the right to intervene in any official debate over Qingtang policy and to provide the determinative investigative reports.85 Huizong's response to Wang Hou could not have been more enthusi­ astic. Not only did he promote Wang to the position of acting adminis­ trator of Hezhou and pacification commissioner for the frontier west of the Tao River so he could head the new operation, but he also granted Wang a level of autonomy that Shenzong had refused to give Wang's fa­ ther, despite all of Wang Anshi's pleading. Persuaded by Wang Hou's implication that the Yuanfu campaign had failed only because of mutual contention among the generals, Huizong authorized an edict granting Wang Hou supreme authority over all military matters in the region and giving him the prerogative to investigate all official communications to and from the field concerning Qingtang. In addition, the emperor per­ sonally ordered the region's generals, military and pacification commis­ sioners, and the commander in chief to give Wang their fullest assistance, and oversaw all the arrangements for Wang Hou's departure for the front. Accompanying Wang were his brother Duan � and Wang's (and Cai ling's) personal choice as his second in command, the eunuch special agent

*- ,� jf( 1: 1t

and imperial favorite, Tong Guan.86 Without doubt

the renewed Hehuang offensive was as much Huizong's responsibility as it was Wang Hou's or Cai]ing's. Wang Hou's ultimate target was Qingtang, now ostensibly under Xisheluosa. Armed with the plenipotentiary authority granted him by the emperor, Wang assembled a mixed force of some

20,000 Chinese and

Tibetan troops, all under the leadership of nine generals seconded from 85· f5BM 139·2a. 86. f5BM 139.Ib-2b. The Dongdu shilue biography of Tong Guan attributes his as­ signment to Cai Jing, as thanks for Tong Guan's earlier assistance to Cai: Dongdu shilue 12I.Ia-6a.

114

PAUL JAKOV S M ITH

strategic prefectures throughout the Xihe-Lanhui region. Rather than massing for a single assault on the Huangshui Valley, Wang divided his forces for coordinated attacks on key strategic points north and south of the Yellow River Valley as well. At every juncture the Tibetan resistance was fierce, but in contrast with the Yuanfu-era campaigns, Wang Hou was able to discipline his forces and to visit enormous destructive power on such Tibetan "lairs" as Qiedangcheng lIL 'it � (renamed "The Re­ turning Guest" * ��),87 The first major victory came quickly, when Miaochuan surrendered with its ten external fortifications in 1103/6. In his report to the Military Affairs Bureau, Wang made much of the returns: 1,500 square Ii of ter­ ritory abutting the Xia domain, populated by 21 tribes of 100,000 indi­ viduals, under the rule of 50 great and 400 lesser chieftains. As for his own role, Wang portrayed himself as the ideal frontier commander, enacting the filial-driven policy of his sage emperor on behalf of the sovereign and the Tibetan tribes themselves, who all longed to "trans­ form their peculiar barbarian customs and submit to become Han folk. . . . Land that the past generation yearned to recapture has now, in one move, been obtained. This is because the court's divine majesty ra­ diates outward without bounds."88 Miaochuan's recapture prompted a repeat performance of the great official commemoration that Zhang Dun had prematurely orchestrated four years earlier, and Wang Hou and his generals were warmly praised and generously rewarded by their emperor. But Xibawen and Xisheluosa, the city's principal defenders, managed to escape west to Zongge. As Wang was obliged to acknowledge, "Qingtang's flame still burns bright," seducing the nominally submitted chieftains with the prospect of a re­ vival. It was apparently this very possibility that concerned policy-makers in Kaifeng, for right after the Huangzhou success, the court began to intervene more directly in management of the campaign and to press Wang Hou to move quickly on Qingtang and then proceed to Kuozhou, Qingtang's southern satellite on the Yellow River. As was made clear to Wang Hou, "It is the intent of the court to settle Qingtang completely. Do it successfully and you are sure to be handsomely rewarded; oppose it, and you will be punished." Of course Wang Hou had no intention of 87· ]5BM 139.4b-5b. 88. ]5BM 139.ub.

Irredentism as Political Capital

115

opposing a march on Qingtang, but his anxieties about overextending his forces were interpreted by courtiers which must ultimately have meant Cai Jing as prevarication. In 1103/7, just after the Huangzhou celebra­ tion at court, Wang Hou received an edict complaining that "Your memorials state that the troops are too exhausted to move on to Kuozhou. But if you can take Kuozhou by next spring Qingtang will be unable to stand. Your memorials suggest that you have not yet thought this through."89 Henceforth court intervention was increasingly direct. That same month Wang and Tong Guan were allotted fresh resources and an ad­ ditional 10,000 Qinfeng troops to use against Xisheluosa in the Zongge region and Langazhang around Kuozhou.9o By New Year's of 1104, both towns were on the verge of submitting, heralding the end for Qingtang. Although Xisheluosa still commanded 50,000 to 60,000 men when he fled to Zongge, the gates remained closed to him. After a battle that cost the defenders 4,316 heads and over 3,000 prisoners, the presiding prin­ cess of Zongge led her chieftains in surrender, joined by the Kuozhou ruler and many of the surrounding tribes. As the entire region capitulated to the Song, Qingtang, too, turned against Xisheluosa, and although he escaped west to Qinghai, the city's presiding princess, Qingyijiemou * j: .*t 4- of Kucha, led her chieftains and clan leaders from the Inner Asian states of Huihe and Khotan to open the gates of Qingtang, whose Chinese name was changed from Shanzhou to the designation it now bears Xining � "" or "Western Peace."91 Following the surrender, Wang Hou led his troops on a victory tour of the Lanzhou-Yellow River border with the Tanguts before returning to home base in Xizhou. To him was attributed the reconquest of the three prefectures of Huangzhou, Kuozhou, and Shanzhou as well as a sig­ nificant portion of the Henan region. This vast swath, home to 700,000 subjects under 2,700 chieftains, now enabled the court (as they saw it) to radiate Song power past Qinghai all along the southern border of the Xia and beyond, and to control the "Xia rebel routes of communication" in and out of Amdo. 92 89. ]5BM 139.12b-I5a. 90. ]5BM 139.17a-20a. 91. ]5BM 140.3a-4b. All were generously rewarded C5b). 92. ]5BM 140.8a-b. Tibetan casualties were numbered at 10,000 dead or captured in the six major engagements.

n6

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

In recognition of his leadership in the Huangshui Valley offensive, Wang Hou was promoted from "acting" :fl to full military commissioner �if ��� � .. of Xihe-Lanhui circuit, along with his concurrent post as administrator of Xizhou. Titular promotions (and one swiftly reversed demotion) followed, but completing the annexation of Miaochuan, Kuozhou, and Qingtang first envisioned by his father constituted the capstone of Hou's career, and he died shortly afterward, in n06.93 As usual, the emperor's courtiers were also rewarded for military victories in the field, in this case none more than Cai Jing: in n03/7 he was promoted three stipendiary grades (to 2A) for Huangzhou, and then in n04/5 the same month the conquest was reported to the ancestors he was en­ nobled as Prince ofJiaguo for overseeing the conquest of annexation of Qingtang and Kuozhou.94 It is worth asking why Wang Hou succeeded where his erstwhile su­ perior, Wang Shan, had failed. Wang Hou may well have been a talented commander, or so at least he portrays himself to be in his reports to the court. But in comparing Hou's tenure as commandant with those of his predecessors under Shenzong and Zhezong, his most prominent ad­ vantage was almost certainly the political climate of his time, and par­ ticularly the suppression of political debate. Out in the field, as I have noted, imperial writ protected Wang Hou from the divisive competition of military or civilian rivals. Even taking into account the thinness of our sources for Huizong's reign, Wang Hou seems to have confronted little of the sniping or second-guessing that supporters of Wang Shao and Wang Shan decried. But more crucially still, Wang Hou's campaign faced none of the opposition at court that had characterized Tibetan policy under Shen­ zong and Zhezong; as a result, he was free of the political ambivalence and vacillation that buffeted Wang Shao and Wang Shan. For following Cai Jing's rise to power, policy debate was silenced and policy critics suppressed to an unprecedented degree. In n03/8 just one month after Huizong brushed in the names of the 98 members of the proscribed Yuanyou faction thirteen men charged with advocating the aban­ donment of Miaochuan in 1099 and noo were demoted; of these, seven

93. fSBM 140.7b; Dongdu sbilue 82.6b. 94. fSBM 13I.Iob-na, 140.8b; CB-SB 22.1b.

Irredentism as Political Capital

117

were also placed under residential restraint, while four were expelled from the civil service altogether.95 Only one man had the temerity to brave eai Jing's suppression of debate over the campaign, and his remonstration reveals just how im­ portant the annexation of Hehuang had become to Huizong himself. In 1106, the administrator of Fengxiangfu, Feng Xie ;.�� (?-1I40), sub­ mitted a lengthy denunciation of the Hehuang offensive that in its censure of the emperor swerved dangerously close to an act of lese­ majeste. In his memorial, Feng argued: The three prefectures of Huang, Kuo, and Xining are nothing more than a region of small villages where nothing is cultivated, beyond the great river at the frontier of the Celestial Empire. His Majesty has emptied many circuits, squandered our funds, and exhausted the marrow of the people to take these three prefectures. Since they have been recovered, how is it that not one coin or thread of silk [used in the campaign] has been returned to the treasury, nor one shield nor horse �ost in the campaign] restored to the troops? Moreover, the million strings annually needed for these three prefectures all must come from the government, whose coffers are empty; or be taken from the people, whose marrow is exhausted. The officials who manage this are at their wits' end: there are not ten days of provisions on the frontier, the troops are starving, and the people have the pallor of famine . . . . His Majesty has the greatness of the Four Seas and the Nine Continents, blanketing all with his virtue and awing the Four Barbarians into submission. So why then burden and beat down the people of [Shaanxi] for the sake of these two or three insignificant spots, which have long brought nothing but trouble without end to the court? I humbly wish to adopt the "halter and bridle"

it Jf

idea of earlier generations,

that is, to select out their leaders, grant them the regalia of rule, and appoint them to offices in keeping with their rank as chieftains. We should allow those recalcitrant caitiffs who have lost their lands to return to their lairs so that those who have fled like animals can once again have refuge as before. If we strictly enforce their sworn oaths and unite them with benevolence and trust then they are sure to embrace virtue in dread and awe, bow to the ground in

95· JSBM 139·15b-16b. The men were Zeng Bu 'if AP, Gong Guai t: ok: , Zhang Ting­ jian ll��, Han Zhongyan #.'t jj , An Tao ��, Jiang Zhiqi #4-
PAUL JAKOV SMITH

118

obedience, submit sincerely, and long serve as protectors of the Han. This is to have the name [i.e., the substance] of territorial gain without the calamity of squandered resources. �t /.Jii � F�] ..=... 1i·1 * /F k. , j , � :k. ;or .t 7r ;k i'JT Fll l% . f.M: r � tt�, ¥. r*J :Ift}, � ± � f- k .1i1 Jf5t.t. {Ul J'x * 1'1" 't �l - 1t -�A.J{f ,*, - V - � .ff�? .1i1 ..=... � a m � • • # �.t � � .1i1 :1ft}. � � ; Jf5t.t�� .m f- k � � . � � * f- )t � � lt : *- r -AR- -t El .t�, �±irt.;t, A. � *­ @. . . . . f.t r J'X � )lj: :It. 1'1·1 .:.t.:k., {,t:flt . �, Ji'X. j: � � . 7H1' J'X .::.. ..=... .]- � III !JIf M � - � ± � k � � � � • .:.t. � � ? � ��*�� � � .t � �� � * , tt J'X ,.t�, � � 1"4Ji��4p- � . {t 1;. J1!!,-AR-•.t,f{t�l � �, 1t*l&ik�� �-!t . • � .f- � , �t J'X @' 1t -tt M- -1tJi'X.'llu,t, � �lt4p-, tf:J � 3ltJIIJt , k � il ! M .:.t..�. .

,

Huizong was personally affronted by Feng Xie's accusations, and his swift response demonstrates how invested he had become in the He­ huang recovery: Huang, Kuo, and Xining are part of my Divine Ancestor's plan to delineate the frontier that Zhezong's opening of the frontier left incomplete. I am the heir to their ambition. To realize this martial success, to carry on what my forbears held in their hearts, is to manifest the righteousness of filial piety and [fraternal] love. The missive that Feng Xie has just submitted is akin to treachery. He has long harbored perverse notions . . . and his advocacy of the "halter and bridle" idea is in fact just a plot to abandon these lands. To take our carrying on the valor of my forbears as exhausting the troops, and glorious achievements as throwing the nation in turmoil, is to stand in the way of renewing the people. �t /.Jii � [.] :# � � •• * M � :k..* M . • � *� � . � � � � � M �A..t'G. t � �.t�. :1\. 't 9t' �I!p;'� iiIf �JL.t. 1' Mf.-f � � �. � 'If � 'G . . . it � � �.t1t'" � .t� t: .t �. J'X � � � f- � , J'X Og ;r}] � {i.1;. in � II , ;;t tUll. tr � .

Huizong charged Feng with treasonous intent and sent his case to the Personnel Ministry, where Feng's memorial was subjected to further commentary before he was sentenced to Daozhou (deep in southern Hunan) under restricted movement as a warning to any other officials harboring traitorous and disloyal intent.96 Huizong's officials took the warning seriously, for no further ob­ jections to the policy appear in the records. Yet as of 1106 the Divine Ancestor Shenzong's plan to redefine the northwestern frontier re­ mained incomplete, for the tribes occupying Taozhou and Henan still 96. ]SBM 140.9b-na; Songchao zhuchen ZOJ!Yi 141.1596-7 has a fuller version of Feng's memorial, but excludes Huizong's response and the bureaucratic judgment.

Irredentism as Political Capital

119

seethed with anti-Han animosity. With Wang Hou dead and none in his line ready to assume the family's great project, the Henan offensive fell to Hou's former lieutenant, Tong Guan.

Tong Guan and the Henan Offensive 0/IIOS Tong Guan emerged from service in the Palace Apartments as a protege of Li Xian, the eunuch imperial agent *- .� � -t: 'A' =- in the Hehuang, Vietnam, and Tangut campaigns who dominated military affairs during the Shenzong era.97 Tong Guan encountered eai Jing in Hangzhou around 1100, when eai attached himself to Tong's mission as procure­ ment agent for the imperial art collection. This symbiosis helped bring eai into imperial favor as well, and when eai rose to the position of grand councilor, he in turn assigned Tong to the renewed Qingtang of­ fensive as Wang Hou's "army supervisor" ff. � , replicating the prece­ dent established earlier when Li Xian was paired with Wang Shao.98 Tong Guan clearly appreciated the political opportunities represented by this new posting, even ignoring an imperial summons to return to the capital when a flre in the Forbidden Palace made Huizong crave the presence of his confldant. In the end Tong Guan's disobedience paid off: his performance in Huangshui catapulted him to offlcial levels never before attained by a eunuch, including (in 1105) the post of military commissioner in chief �� � ��,*1 � 1t for all of Qinfeng circuit including Xihe.99 It was in this capacity that, in the second year of the Daguan era (1108), Tong Guan assumed control of the Henan offensive. 97. See Dongdu shilue 12o.5b-6b for Li Xian's biography, and Dongdu shiJue 121.u-6a for the biography of Tong Guan. Much of the source material for Tong's biography is an­ thologized injuan 52 of the Sanchao beimeng huibian, as background to his imperially sanc­ tioned assassination in 1126. For a survey of the military careers of Li and Tong as a facet of the military role of eunuchs during the Song, see Chai Degeng � ;ft., "Song huanguan canyu junshi kao" *- 1" 't $-ffi:f *;if, Furen xuezhi �IH::· * � 10.1-2 (1941): 187-225. 98. Dongdu shilue 121.1a, where the term jiaf!fun is used as a generic description for zouma chengshou gongshi *- .�:if<. 1:: 1.;" *' For the interchangeability of terms, see Gong Yanming '" � a}j , ed., Songdai guanzhi cidian *--f\'. 't "*� � #f. (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1997), 444-51. 99. Li Zhi * �, Huang Song shichao gangyao ..t *- + ��� (ca. 1213, Taibei: Wenhai, 1967), 16.366.

120

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

Although much would be made of the Henan campaign, in reality it was little more than a mopping-up operation, intended to protect the newly annexed western circuits and towns from depredations by "rebel­ lious Qiang [who] for years have appeared and disappeared along the new frontier without cease." One source of resistance emanated from the southeast border between Taozhou and Jiezhou ffl 1'1'I , from whence the Luli ·t, � Qiang chieftain Jiezhanpangjian j.tfl JM � staged raids north on Datong *ii� (south of Kuozhou) and Xuanwei i: JiX.� (north of Qingtang). A second source of perceived resistance originated in Xigecheng 100 kilometers upriver from Kuozhou. 100 In order to suppress the threat generated from these two sites, Tong Guan supplemented his contingent of Han generals with the services of Zhao Huaide the former Longza who in lI08/! was raised to the titular ranks of prince and military governor �r .lt1t. In his report to the court of lI08/5 the principal source of information on the campaigns Tong Guan says more about Xigecheng than Taozhou: On the 23rd day of the 4th month I dispatched the commanding generals Xin Shuxian -t.rJt� and Feng Guan ;.�Jfi to lead massive forces from Minzhou into the southern border of Taozhou in order to press the Luli tribes. Their leader, Jiezhan, came out to resist our troops, and addressed your servant in a haughtily worded Tibetan missive. At the same time, the putative prince of Xigecheng, Zangzhengpuge i�Aj£��, also wanted to do battle with the gov­ ernment's forces, and had no intention of submitting. Shuxian and the others augmented their forces in order to compel [Zangzhengpuge to submit], and all the Qiang scattered in terror. Once Taozhou was completely walled [in the 4th month] and the Fan tribes surrounding Taozhou brought into submission, I ordered my subordinate commanders to stealthily lead light cavalry to destroy [Xigecheng's] ramparts; but even after the vanguard had him surrounded, Zangzhengpuge refused to surrender, instead fleeing on horseback [into the Danyin mountains] . . . . I also dispatched the commanding generals Liu Fa J1�, ZhangJie �li/§., and Wang Heng .I. .,. from Xunhua, and Jiao Yongcheng ;1t Jf.I � and Chen Di Fti!!!. from Kuozhou, ordering them to divide their troops among two circuits: Liu Fa and the others displayed the awesome power of massed troops to the front, while Jiao Yongcheng and his group attacked [the Qiang resisters] in their lairs.

100. The II08 Henan offensive is recounted in ]5BM 140.I2b-I5b.

Irredentism as Political Capital

121

I further commanded the Longyou protector general �� Liu Zhongwu 111+ j\ to string a bridge to the shore opposite Xigecheng so the troops could cross. Because the Shunyijun prince, Zhao Huaide, was originally from the Xigecheng tribal clan, I had him accompany the troops so he could make use of the stratagems of generosity and trust as a way of instructing Zangzhengpuge [to do the right thing] . . . . To the east Zangzhengpuge had lost the assistance of Jiezhanpangjian of the Luli tribes, and he was so intimidated, he didn't know where to turn. As a result, he sent Huaide a silver-decorated whip as a token of submission and remained in Xigecheng to wait for the government's troops. On the 3rd day of the 5th month he dispatched his younger brother Quansipo ��(:t to lead such Henan chieftains as Sasiquan 1t�1t in offering their sincere surrender. That day your servant dispatched all the generals to Xi­ gecheng to take Zangzhengpuge's submission and to recover Xigecheng, which was thereupon renamed Jishicheng. I1E1 � .:=- + ;. El If j{AA. *1 l' *..r�.Ct, �., l-AA.*:f � �1+1 J\.�t 1+1 � :tl!·t �lt�. Jt it4Ji .*tfl Jt4e. 't :f, I'x -i- * � If , Jt�it.:!. '&'�l-tJJli.�£-t �� W, -t a�'t :f r" #.;t 1l: '*. �

.Ct l- ji��l!�, ltJt.4tft . .itJHJ.i�JJli. �t 1i'I.-mAA�t 1i'1 - . -i- �, .�� if' * .f.U�·-it 1if JtJJli.. nt ..�.&.i( � �-t � JJl ifQ �� -IT :Ii .$ . . . . 5utAA.*1 't 11�, �lJI§., £ 1" � #111:., � Jfl M(., Fti! � � 1i'1, *,* �J$.. 11 � l- � '* � "'tit � Jfl M(. l- � Jt . � . .&.
�-tJJli.f·I1l.tt � ��. . . . i(��-tf!t t. � ·t· ��fl �il, g l! � �\7.PJT�. � � ••••• .tt � a,*��, � �-tJJli. � . 't ��*. � � ;' El j{Jt *��i,t4Jiiir � it 4Ji .� � l- * AA.tt . If I'x Jt El j{lt���-tJJli.-:t i( � W, -t '* . -fl�-t � � :G � . 101

The Xigecheng campaign, unimpressive even in Tong Guan's narra­ tion, may also have been strategically unnecessary. That, at least, is the implication suggested by Ii Tao, in his background to the event:

In the beginning, although Zangzhengpuge stirred up the Fan with incantations, he lived as a lay person in the empty Xigecheng. Frontier officials took to de­ claring that since he was capable of arousing the masses, he would surely cause trouble on the frontier. Wanting to substantiate the reports, Tong Guan as­ sembled the front-line troops from all the surrounding circuits and dispatched Liu Zhongwu to hasten with an attack force to Xigecheng. Zangzhengpuge came out to surrender, accompanied by no more than 28 persons, all of them women or the weak. From the very beginning there had been no troops! Once [Zangzhengpuge] was captured, the frontier officials strove to exaggerate and

IOI. ]SBM I40.I3a-b.

122

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

embellish their accomplishments. ;fJJ >il1.iE.#;..;rYJ. Jt.U� l- , 1�%�..;r ��.

!l � wt � fj� fh 4t .;l: � !l .�. . i: 1" � l' Jt . , 1! -t-1i-Jf! #< *,-, 1J} it JHt' j\ ili � *'-;t! �..;r�. >il1.iE. #;..;r 18: ,* , #*.ij� ::1 '::' + A A. ,1Q e. . ;fJJ *- 1" lf *'-�. �� wt�!l � '*- k Jt 3':/]. 1 02

Yet even if Li Tao is correct, the campaign made excellent political theater, especially back at court where Cai Jing led the Hundred Officers in solemn congratulations and ordered the prisoner Zangzhengpuge presented to the capital. For in contrast to Wang Shao's original vision, strategic imperatives in particular the need to pre-empt Tangut terri­ torial aspirations had by the Daguan (or Grand Perspective) era be­ come secondary to the use of war as a vehicle of self-promotion and even (for the emperor) self-realization. As a result the benefits to the partici­ pants were far out of proportion to the difficulty or importance of the battles themselves. Take, for example, the case of Liu Zhongwu, an experienced frontier commander who had distinguished himself against the Tanguts and Tibetans ever since the Xining era. 1 03 Although Tong Guan had claimed credit for ordering Liu to span the Yellow River at Xigecheng, it was in fact Liu, drawing on his first-hand knowledge of the terrain between Xige and Qingtang, who conceived of and built the bridge; Liu, not Longza, who induced Zangzhengpuge to surrender; and Liu, not Tong Guan, who first entered Xige and took Zongzhengpuge's surrender. All this was discovered when Huizong dispatched an emissary to present the gift of a golden bowl to Zangzhengpuge's captor. Once the truth was revealed, Huizong summoned Liu to the capital, where he not only personally lauded Liu for "taking the Xige prince's surrender and settling all of Henan," but also granted military offices to all nine of his sons.1 04 If Zangzhengpuge was as innocuous as Li Tao suggests, then Liu Zhongwu and his sons were well rewarded indeed. In keeping with past precedent, courtiers sitting in the capital were also commended for "recapturing Taozhou and Xigecheng": Military Affairs Director Zhang Kangguo 1lhl m1 , Assistant Director Zheng Juzhong �,% � not yet the critic of military activism he would be­ come in I118 and state councilors He Zhizhong {or � � , Liang Zimei 102. ]5BM 140.13b-14a. 103. For riu Zhongwu's biographies, see Dongdu shilue 104.4b-5b and 55 35°.11081-82. 104. ]5BM 140.14b-15a and the Dongdu shilue and 55 biographies.

Imdentism as Political Capital

* .:r J,., and Lin Shu

123

;#.. � were all promoted to the second or third

rungs of the stipendiary ladder. lOS Special imperial commendation was reserved for Cai Jing, then in his second of three terms as grand coun­ cilor; for in Huizong's view it was Cai Jing who enabled him to fulfill his filial obligation to Shenzong, by silencing all critics of the sacred He­ huang annexation: Previously my Divine Ancestor initiated the opening of Wusheng [i.e., Xizhou] and the delineation of the western frontier. Although at that time not even Lintao [i.e., Taozhou] had been recovered, he established a single circuit in order to bring all [the constituent regions] under a common name and to show that this great and sacred design must be brought to success . . . . In nurturing this plan [We have] relied on my grand councilor. If he had not banished the doubting

multitudes fF * tIf�, then how could [We] havefullY realized [Our)forebear's ambition to spread Our mqjesry among the caitiffs bryond the borders? In Our eye it is fitting that he should occupy the position of highest merit. [Italics added.] 1} .f\ #* * Ilt' A.

. � . � � . • * . �. * � « , � � - � � . � � � � • • I � � lPt . . . . .. tt �:t l' � �Q If . %' �F fF * tIf� � d1 1i- � 7'c:. .t: JiX.�� 71- II . .(.f. m 'f .£ ik. "* It ii: % � . 106 -

Yet despite Huizong's special praise for Cai Jing, no one benefited more from the Henan offensive than Tong Guan, whose victory over the Qiang catapulted him to control of the Song military apparatus, gained him international renown, and enabled him to equal if not eclipse Cai Jing in imperial esteem. For while Cai Jing catered to the emperor's domestic and aesthetic interests, Tong Guan promoted Huizong's con­ tinuing dream of fulfilling his father's irredentist vision. As Tibetan­ queller in Hehuang in 1108, as commander against the Tanguts in 1119, as strategist for the Yan-Yun initiative from 1118 on, and as the court's salvation against Fang La in 1121, Tong Guan was Huizong's personal commander in chief. In return, Huizong became Tong Guan's closest patron, raising him to unprecedented levels of power and prestige de­ spite Cai Jing's objections. As the biographical notice by the Dongdu shilue author Wang Cheng (d. ca. 1200) attests, Tong Guan invested the merit earned for his victory against Zangzhengpuge in a swift and successful bid to monopolize 105. ]SBM 140.15a. 106. ]SBM 140.13b. Sanchao beiming huibian 50.Ia-4a dates Cai Jing's three terms as gtand councilor as II02-5, II07-9, and 1III-I9.

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PAUL JAKOV S M ITH

military authority.l07 In this Tong was aided by his sovereign, who per­ mitted Tong to appoint field commanders and their staff through direct imperial edict � � , without going through Cai Jing and the civil service. So close did Tong Guan and Huizong become that the emperor vowed to promote Tong to the very top stipendiary grade in the civil service mJ M1l"=" � . On his first attempt Cai Jing's vitriol successively aborted the promotion: "That a eunuch like Guan should have supreme military authority in his grasp is already excessive. How could it be right for him to obtain the grand councilor's 1t *'1 rank as well?" 1t J'A 'ii" ::It � ip �l! #-. 1�dQ .l. iJf 't 1l�?108 Cai's intervention generated open animosity between the two men, but over time his influence over Tong Guan's career ebbed. In mid-IIII Cai not yet restored to his third term as grand councilor sent a re­ tainer to represent his objections to Huizong's choice of Tong Guan as co-envoy (with ZhengJuzhong) on a diplomatic mission to the Liao. "To send a eunuch as envoy suggests that there are no real men in the Middle Kingdom. This is tantamount to inviting the caitiffs to spy on us." But this time Huizong was not to be swayed: "Because Tong Guan's repu­ tation as the one who conquered Qingtang resounds among the Four Barbarians, the caitiff chieftain wishes to meet him. If that's what they want, then why can't we use this opportunity to spy on them?"1 09 Cai Jing may have been partly correct, for one source reports that members of the Khitan court contemptuously sneered that "the southern court so lacks men of talent that it sends us this castrato � � as an em­ issary." But it was on this very mission that Tong Guan encountered the Liao defector Ma Zhi Jf� lit (later renamed Zhao Liangsi ;til It �), whose seductive plan to help Song capture the Sixteen Prefectures spawned the Yan-Yun initiative. 1 10 Even while stealthily harboring Ma Zhi like a secret weapon to be unsheathed in I118 Tong Guan beguiled Huizong with his own stratagem to finish what Chong E and Li Xian had failed to do under Shenzong, by recapturing, walling, and rearming strategic points along the northern frontier with the Xi Xia. In return, Huizong success-

107. Dongdu shilue 12I.la-b. Wang Cheng'S account mirrors the material anthologized in Sanchao beimeng huibian 52.1a-6a. 108. Dongdu shilue I2ub. 109. Dongdu shilue I2ub. lIO. Huang Song shichao gangyao 17.395; Sanchao beimeng huibian 52.3b.

Irredentism as Political Capital

125

fully promoted Tong to the top rank in the civil service, which as the emperor acknowledged, made him equivalent to the grand councilor. Moreover, because his rank was now so high, Huizong also reorganized Tong Guan's assignments accordingly, to make him generalissimo

� �1t

of Shaanxi, Hedong, and Hebei circuits and concurrent acting

controller of the Bureau of Military Affairs

ll4R � � FiG •. Thus even as

Huizong allowed Cai Jing to control the civil service, he personally en­ couraged Tong Guan to ride the Hehuang annexation to supremacy over the Northern Song military. l 1 1

Conclusion: Hehuang, Political Culture, and the Fall ofthe Northern Song My aim in this chapter has been to highlight the role of the Hehuang invasion as a vehicle for the enactment of political ambition. The He­ huang campaigns generated enormous political capital, the interest on which lubricated the political careers of Wang Shao under Shen­ zong; Zhang Dun and Cai Bian under Zhezong; and Cai Jing, Wang Hou, and Tong Guan under Huizong. Moreover, the Hehuang cam­ paigns remind us that emperors mattered. However much statesmen might encourage their sovereign to eschew "the many bothersome de­ tails of government" in favor of rectifying their hearts, as Sima Guang urged Shenzong, emperors were active political agents with minds and wills of their own.ll 2 For Shenzong, there was no more crucial way to exercise his will than by redefining the international map through ex­ pansion and irredentist war, a project that Wang Shao convinced him should properly begin in Hehuang. Nothing in the historical record suggests that his sons Zhezong and Huizong were equally fixated on conquest per se, but they were clearly imbued with a strong sense of filial obligation to their father, from whom they also seem to have inherited an independent streak. Thus the more ftrmly that conserva­ tive statesmen and dowager empresses pressed the young heirs to reject their father's

expansionist vision, the more

stubbornly Hehuang

III. Dongdu shilue 12I.1b-2a. 112. See Anthony William Sariti, "Monarchy, Bureaucracy, and Absolutism in the Political Thought of Ssu-ma Kuang," Journal ofAsian Studies 32.1 (1972): 53-76.

1 26

PAUL JAKOV SM ITH

emerged as an arena in which to distinguish themselves as filial sons while exercising sovereign autonomy on their own. Nor did the rewards of Amdo flow only to emperors and civilians. The Hehuang annexation, individually and as part of the larger project of frontier expansion, helped to revive the fortunes of that class of hereditary military families that had been shunted to the side in the aftermath of the Shanyuan settlement of 1005. The Chongs of Luoyang, the Wangs Ounwan and Shan) and Lius (Zhongwu and his sons) of Qinzhou (Gansu, Tianshuishi), and the Yaos (especially Yao Xiong) of Wuyuan (in territory on the Yellow River now lost to the Khitan) all gained renewed prominence in Hehuang, as part of a larger group of military lineages to prosper from the irredentist projects of Shenzong and his sons. l 13 Yet renewed prominence for military lineages did not necessarily entail renewed autonomy for the military as a whole, since the general staff had to share authority with another cohort of benefi­ the eunuchs. Shenzong

ciaries from activism and frontier expansion

promoted eunuch imperial agents like Li Xian and Wang Zhongzheng

.I. 'f .if..

to positions of unprecedented military authority in Hehuang

and elsewhere in his frontier campaigns, prompting a trend that so much else in Shenzong's reign

like

culminated in Huizong's sponsor­

ship of Tong Guan as his supreme commander in the field and the eunuchjinshi Liang Shicheng

� trli A (?-II26)

as his principal power

broker at court.114 But the annexation of Hehuang could not have been completed without the suppression of policy debate

that "banishment of the

doubting multitudes" that Shenzong had denied Wang Anshi, but for which Huizong prized Cai Jing. It is this stifling of debate that so worried the Sichuanese commoner An Yaochen in

IllS, as the Hehuang

adventure was about to give way to the next "great game," the im­ pending pact to ally with the Jurchen against the Liao in return for Jurchen permission to take possession of the swath of Sixteen Prefec-

II3. For the Chongs, see 55 335; for the others, see 55 349 and 350, devoted to prominent military lineages under Shenzong and his sons. II4. For contemporary observations on eunuch military power from Shenzong's reign to the fall of the Northern Song, see Chai Degeng, 189-92. Wang Cheng surveys the biographies of powerful Northern Song eunuchs in Dongdu shilue,juan 120 and 121.

Irredentism as Political Capital

127

tures generically designated as Yan-Yun. 115 In his memorial (which never directly mentions Hehuang), An Yaochen seeks to persuade Huizong to re-establish the Shanyuan equilibrium that the 40-year Tibetan campaign had helped to erode. In An's view, Shanyuan exem­ plified the basic objective of frontier policy, which should be to preserve domestic stability at all costs so as to neutralize the impact of events abroad. But it is this principle that Huizong was blinded to by dangerous political currents, most crucially the suppression of remonstrance and political debate: Accepting remonstrance is the gtandest virtue of the sovereign. When remon­ strance is enacted and criticisms heard, then the benefits flow down to the people, and all under heaven enjoy peaceful repose together, to the advantage of the realm. This servant has heard that at the beginning of his reign, His Majesty let remonstrance flow [like water], even prefacing his rescript demanding re­ monstrance with the caveat that "even if what is said is wrong, I will not subject [the remonstrator] to punishments." As a result, brave and frank-speaking men did their utmost to investigate matters with simple loyalty. But then crafty in­ dividuals blocked the route of remonstrance and usurped the awesome powers [of the state], deceiving his majesty into charging [remonstrators] with the crimes of libel. As a result His Majesty has long let the slander of those who oppose investigation be turned against all under heaven. Since then, officials responsible for commenting on affairs memorialize in the morning and are demoted in the evening. Consequently all the men of the subcelestial realm have muzzled their tongues and closed their mouths, regarding speech as taboo.116

'*" J.. z1.t :)t!A##J�. �1ti;4tJlll -f i:fr#�, � r � "� � �z;!1(. . �l. flZl1�. � fifJ f� r�f,ipZ;fJJ-1Jt�-knii.t., 'f r .>"i i; z"* E:1 'i; i1i1 � 'f JOC � ;I}o � .' #k *i�z± if '*- m ���.� .t . i1i1 ·� AAik#-. an, �*��,

� *� � r ;l}o �U_z � . �* � r . a�z.�� r � � . � . � * � .Z � .fJl* 7 Jlf.. � rzA.. .*t ,* #- o , YA a �1t.

An feared that this muzzling of critical debate was about to lead the

nation to disaster, for "these days everyone outside the court is saying that Tong Guan has linked up with eai Jing" to ally with the Jurchen against the Liao. But saying and remonstrating were two different mat­ ters; out of fear of the eunuchs and the imperially sanctioned suppression II5. An Yaochen's memorial is preserved in Sanchao beimeng huibian 2.Ia-IOa and ex­ cerpted in SS 35I.III05-6. An also inveighs against the undue influence of Tong Guan and the eunuch establishment on frontier policy. II6. Sanchao beimeng huibian 2.Ib--2a.

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

128

of dissent, officials dared not speak frankly to His Majesty. Even tough-minded and determined remonstrance officials who loved their sovereign and worried for the realm were silenced, for "as soon as their memorials arrive at court they are charged with violating the law. As a result, no one under heaven says a word, but instead dare turn their bitterness against His Majesty."117 In the end, then, the fate of the realm depended on Huizong's resolve to reopen the avenues of policy debate, so that all might see that the only reason the snarling dog-barbarians "are now wagging their tails and begging to become our neighbor is not be­ cause they are awed by us, but simply because there is not yet a suitable opportunity for them to exploit on the border."118 Events were to prove An Yaochen correct. In

1122,

after years of

negotiating over Yan-Yun as Jurchen warriors carved out vast swaths of the dwindling Liao domain, Tong Guan's expeditionary army, fortified by an edict prohibiting debate, was humiliated and routed by the sup­ posedly impotent Liao forces. 119 When emboldened Jurchen armies advanced on Tong Guan's stronghold in Taiyuan three years later "as if there were no defenders," Huizong apologized to his nation for ob­ structing "the road to remonstrance" 1: � and abdicated the throne to his eldest son.1 20 But it was too late for remonstrance to save the dynasty. In January 1127 Kaifeng fell to the Jurchen, who bundled both emperors and their entourage to their northern exile in the spring. Huizong's po­ litical tions

raison d'etre

to bring to fruition his father's territorial aspira­

had backfired, adding half the Song domain to the category of

terra irredenta. What role did the Hehuang annexation, completed fifteen years earlier, play in the tragedy of dynastic collapse? As the opening wedge for repudiation of the Shanyuan system of geopolitical stability, He­ huang served as the tinder that helped ignite irredentist passions and keep them burning through the dampening periods of conservative retrenchment.

Like

another pillar

Shenzong and the New Policies Sichuan

of territorial

expansion

under

the annexation of southwestern

the Hehuang conquest demonstrated that given time enough

II7. Ibid., 2.8b. II8. Ibid., 2.8b, 3a. II9. Ibid.,juan 7 and II. The first official to challenge the gag order, which is dated the 5th month, was immediately placed in the cangue: ibid., 8.Ia-Ga. 120. Ibid., 25.9a-IOb.

11TCdentism as Political Capital

129

and massive resources, Song armies could lay notional claim to new ter­ ritories by dislodging indigenous populations from their native settle­ ments, fending off their guerrilla defenders, and buying off their chief­ tains with emoluments and titles.121 But Song expansionists concluded too much from their illusory, cartographic success in the mountains of Amdo, which they played up at court and announced to imperial an­ cestors with due pomp and ceremony. For victory in Hehuang meant little when it came to doing battle with the sophisticated armies of the northern frontier: Song forces under Shenzong and his sons never gained more than a stalemate against the Tanguts, when they were not thor­ oughly humiliated, and Song incompetence against the Jurchen surprised even their foe. From the perspective of military organization, the most significant role Hehuang played in the fall of the Northern Song was to facilitate the devolution of military authority from the court to a single individual in the field. The problem was not that Tong Guan was that individual, for despite transforming his anny into a vast political machine, Tong Guan was still one of Huizong's few effective commanders. It was rather that by abrogating military responsibility to a single supreme commander, Huizong and his court lulled themselves into reveling in the theatrics of war without giving due thought to what waging war entailed. Thus by the time of the Yan-Yun initiative, all the refonns championed by Huizong's father as the cornerstone of "strengthening the military" especially the revitalization of the general command through the "cohesive squad measure" -¥f *-" � and the imposition of regular military drill on all baqjia units in Kaifeng and north China had fallen into disuse.122 Despite 50 years of expansionist wars abroad, the Song court was utterly un­ prepared to defend itself and its people at home. This deterioration of Song defenses shocked even the Jurchen commander Wolibu #� � , who on attacking the capital of Kaifeng in II26/I told a Song emissary

121. On the annexation of southwestern Sichuan, see Richard von Glahn, The Country

of Streams and Grottoes: Expansion, Settlement, and the Civili�ng of the Sichuan Frontier in Song Times (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1987) . 122. For discussions of the deterioration of military preparedness under Huizong's reign, see the entries by Cai Tiao and Li Gang in Sanchao beimeng huibian 27ha-6a and 45.5a-7a, confinned by Wang Zengyu £ f It, Songchao bingzhi chutan * .fJJ * "J ;;n � (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1983), 89-95.

130

PAUL JAKOV SMITH

that had the southern court put up any kind of defense at all, his forces could never have crossed the Yellow River to stage their assault. 123 Finally, as a test case for how to pursue an unpopular war by sup­ pressing political debate, the Hehuang annexation not only smoothed the way for Huizong to pursue the ill-fated Yan-Yun initiative, it also made political muzzling a cornerstone of the management of frontier affairs in the Southern Song as well. Twelve years after the fall of the Northern Song, when the survival of the new southern regime finally seemed as­ sured, Grand Councilor Qin Gui

*"1t (I09O-II55)

and Huizong's son

Gaozong once again prohibited political debate, this time not to promote war but rather to silence the irredentist opponents of peace. 1 24 None of this is meant to suggest that the Hehuang annexation led directly and inexorably to the fall of the Northern Song; as a factor in dynastic collapse, Hehuang stands out more as a symptom than as a cause. And it may well stand out most clearly as a symptom of the futility of Shenzong's irredentist ambition, an ambition that could claim He­ huang as its only triumph. That at least seems to be the opinion of Qian Gai

�A, supply commissioner �� $11t of Shaanxi in the last year of the

Northern Song:

The territories around Huang and Shan [prefectures] beyond the River have brought absolutely no benefit to the court, and do not repay their yearly cost. With respect to our efforts to save the realm tF � , they bring only trouble. It would be best to reach out to the descendants of the Qingtang line and set them up so that they can pacify and take possession of their old tribes.125 ;;r 7� �t �

��� . �& � � �1 � a . � • . & tF � & . � * * • • �.� � ��

� � Jt {s ��. Events, as it happened, granted Qian's request, as Jurchen and Mongol rule put Hehuang beyond Chinese intervention for the next two and a half centuries.

123. Sanchao beimeng huibian 27.lb. 124. Ibid., 184.5b-6b; 186.5b-6a (II38/IO and II38/II). For more on Qin Gui's sup­ pression of debate, see Charles Harunan, "The Making of a Villain: Ch'in Kuei and Tao­ hsiieh," HarvardJournal ofAsiatic Studies 58.1 (1998): 59-146. 125. SHYfanyi 6.4Ib.

,

j

C HAPTER 3

Terms ofEstrangement Factional Discourse in the Early Huizong Reign, IIOO-II04 Ari Daniel Levine

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. -George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

The Brutalization rifPolitical Practice) I06f)-II04 In historiographic hindsight, the first five years of Emperor Huizong's reign represented the endgame of a factional conflict that had divided the imperial bureaucracy for more than three decades.! From 1069 to 1104, a series of alternating coalitional regimes fought bitterly for power and This chapter has been adapted from parts of chap. 5 of my doctoral dissertation, "A House in Darkness: The Politics of Histoty and the Language of Politics in the Late Northern Song, I068-1I04" (Columbia University, 2002). Many thanks to my advisor, Robert Hymes, for his insightful comments on this chapter. I would also like to express my gratitude to the other members of my dissertation committee-Peter Bol, Paul Smith, Conrad Schirokauer, and Shang Wei-for astutely critiquing this and other chapters and apdy suggesting revisions and reinterpretations. Charles Harttnan deserves kudos for his perceptive comments as this paper's discussant. I am also indebted to Patricia Ebrey and Charles Harttnan for their thorough, detailed, and constructive comments on the fInal version of this chapter. 1.

ARI DAN I E L LEVIN E

132

patronage at court. Councilors and remonstrators formed factional as­ sociations

C:t;

M :t), packing the bureaucracy with like-minded sub­

ordinates in order to consolidate and leverage their authority over the formulation and implementation of state policy. Throughout the three imperial reigns and two regencies of the late Northern Song, the upper echelons of the imperial bureaucracy were divided into two loosely bounded court coalitions: re formists and anti-reformists.2 The leaders of these opposing factions articulated distinctive and divergent visions of statecraft, devising institutional mechanisms to enhance bureaucratic efficacy, increase state revenue, and uplift public morality.3 After each monarchical transition, new emperors and regents ap­ pointed new coalitional regimes, which implemented a slate of policy initiatives that superseded the political program of the preceding min­ istry. Once they had consolidated their authority over state policy and the imperial bureaucracy, a series of grand councilors

"* lfil

used in­

creasingly brutal and systematic means to exclude their opposition from court. By controlling loyal subordinates in the Censorate Remonstrance Bureau

�F1t,

,fJtp 3t �

and

factious councilors asserted a measure of

ideological control over the staffing of the metropolitan bureaucracy.4 With each change of factional ministerial regimes, political purges

2. In Chinese secondary scholarship, these coalitions have generally been referred to as the "new faction" tIT:t and the "old faction" li :t . The "new faction" was considered to be "new" tIT in the same sense as the "New Policies" tlTj};; or the "New Learning" tIT* of Wang Anshi. This homology is rather strained in English, and so the by-now standard terms "reformists" and "anti-reformists" will have to suffice, for lack of a better alternative. 3. Focusing upon the politics of discourse does not entail severing political history and political culture from their intellectual contexts, and I believe that such an interpretive strategy is ill-advised. For an analysis of the divergent political programs of Wang Anshi and Sima Guang, see Peter K Bol, "Government, Society, and State: On the Political Visions of Ssu-ma Kuang and Wang An-shih," in Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Schiro­ kauer, eds., Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 151-67. 4. For a concise study of the Censorate and Remonstrance Bureau in the late Northern Song and early Southern Song, see Diao Zhongrnin q .t �, "Lun Song Zhe­ zong zhi Gaozong shiqi zhi taijian zhidu" � � � * .i. � * * ��"'���Jt, Sichuan daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) � nl :k. **_ (�± "#*11&.) 1999.6: 61-69. See also Shen Songqin i:t.tAfh, ''Bei Song taijian zhidu yu dangzheng" :It/* ... � �� Jt � :t �, Ushi .

yan/iu � � 1'Jf � 1998.4: 27-44.

Terms ifEstrangement

133

escalated in scope, culminating in the partisan proscriptions of the early Huizong reign. When Huizong acceded to the throne in 1100/1, this factional conflict had riven the imperial court for the preceding 30 years. During the reigns of his father and brother, Emperors Shenzong (r. 1068-85) and Zhezong (r. 1085-1100, personal rule 1093-1100), the imperial bureaucracy had become sharply polarized over policy and personnel debates. The origins of the factional conflict can be traced back to the early years of the Shenzong reign, when Grand Councilor Wang Anshi .£�� (1021-86) silenced and marginalized the opposition to his New Policies $.JT�.5 Those who challenged Wang's state activist program either resigned from court in frustration or were demoted to posts in regional admin­ istration. Heading the reformist-dominated regime that succeeded Wang Anshi, Cai Que JJ __ (1037-93) continued to enforce bureaucratic compliance to the New Policies and to exclude the anti-reformist op­ position from court. Shenzong's untimely death in 1085 enabled Empress Dowager Xuanren � 1::.1\.. If; (1021-93, regent 1085-93), a longtime adversary of the New Policies, to realign the political landscape as she and her allies saw fit.6 Sima Guang � .� 7'e. (1019-86), the standard-bearer of the anti­ reform opposition, ascended to the councilorship after a lengthy period in exile. During the Xuanren regency, Sima's ministerial coalition de­ moted the reformist leaders and rank-and-fIle to prefectural-level posts. With its opposition excluded from power, the anti-reformists abolished the New Policies one by one by 1086. A series of anti-reform ministries monopolized power at court in the following years, which witnessed the brutalization of political practice. In 1089, several anti-reformist remonstrators staged a literary in­ quisition against Cai Que, the exiled leader of the reformist coali-

5. For an expanded narrative of the New Policies era, see Paul J. Smith, "Shen-tsung and the New Policies," in the Cambridge History of China, vol. 5, part I (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, forthcoming). 6. Empress Dowager Xuanren (surnamed Gao) was Emperor Yingzong's consort. In the following section, I will refer to her regency, between 1085 and 1093, as the "Xuanren regency." For a detailed political narrative of the Xuanren regency and Zhezong's per­ sonal rule, see Ari Daniel Levine, "Che-tsung's Reign and the Age of Faction," in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 5, part I.

134

ARI DAN I E L LEVIN E

tion.7 Accused of casting aspersions on the legitimacy of the Xuanren regency in a cycle of poems, Cai was banished to the malarial frontier of Lingnan 4Ji � (modern-day Guangdong and Guangxi provinces), where he died several years later. The pronouncement of this virtual death sentence upon a leader of the opposition represented a break with the comparative civility of past political practices. At the inception of the Song dynasty, Emperor Taizu (r. 960-76) had issued an injunction against the legal execution and corporal punishment of high officials, but this tradition of restraint could be circumvented by shipping ministerial offenders off to the far south of the empire, where it was hoped they would die. 8 After Cai Que's deportation to Lingnan, the spiral of vengeance expanded with each successive ministerial transition. After Empress Dowager Xuanren died in 1093, Emperor Zhezong began his personal rule, rehabilitating the reformists and reappointing them to the Council of State after a lengthy period of exile. Practicing the politics of revenge, the ministry of Zhang Dun "-if. (1035-1105) replayed the purge of 1085 measure for measure by systematically demoting the anti-reformists to prefectural administration. Silencing criticism at court, Zhang and his ministerial coalition adopted a pragmatic and gradualist approach to resuscitating the New Policies. Once their domination of the imperial bureaucracy and control of state policy was assured, the re­ formists raised the stakes of the factional conflict, visiting the suffering of Cai Que tenfold upon his former persecutors. In the Korean Affairs Institute � .:;t � inquisition of 1097, several of the remaining leaders of the anti-reform coalition were indicted on trumped-up charges of sedi­ tion and treason, and later placed under administrative detention in Lingnan. Furthermore, an official blacklist named the names of 37 members of the anti-reform ministry, all of whom were deprived of of­ ficial honors and status and their descendants similarly barred from bureaucratic service. By the end of the 1090S, partisan purges and pro­ scriptions had become standard operating procedure for incoming fac­ tional ministerial regimes.

For an exhaustive treatment of the poetic inquisition against Cai Que, see Jin Zhongshu � 'f �, "Chegaiting shian yanjiu" '* .l..f'tt�.(;Jf�, Chenggong daxue lishixi lishi xuebao h\ "1J * * li3t � li3t*�l 2 (1975): 33-89. 8 . James T. C. Uu, "An Administrative Cycle in Chinese History: The Case of Northern Sung Emperors," Journal ofAsian Studies 21.2 (February 1962): 139. 7.

Terms ifEstrangement After Zhezong suddenly died heirless in

135

1100/1,

the ensuing mon­

archical transition jeopardized the reform faction's political dominance. In the interregnum, Empress Dowager Qinsheng

it?t. :k.. Jf; (1045-1101),

Shenzong's consort, became regent and arranged for Huizong's acces­ sion to the throne, overriding Zhang Dun's nomination of another im­ perial prince. 9 An era of factional reconciliation was inaugurated by imperial edict, as centrism and moderation were decreed to be the guiding principles of governance. The second-generation anti-reformist Han Zhongyan Zeng Bu

-** .'t � (1038-1109)

and the reformer-turned-moderate

if A\1 (1035-n07) were appointed

as dual grand councilors to

lead a bifactional unity miniStry.lO The regent sanctioned the rehabilita­ tion of the surviving anti-reformists to ministerial and remonstrance positions, ending their marginalization

from

court politics.

prominent reformists as Zhang Dun and his lieutenant Cai Bian

(1058-1117) were

Such

1J -t

sacked from the Council of State, under pressure from

hostile remonstrators. Dominating the Censorate and Remonstrance Bureau, voluble remonstrators such as Chen Guan Zou Hao

Ft I.fi (1057-1122) and

��i� (1060-nn) clamored for a complete rollback of the New

Policies and a return to the anti-reformist governance of the Xuanren regency

(1085-93). Yet, after 30 years of conflict, factional enmity ran too

deep to be conciliated from above. Han Zhongyan and Zeng Bu strug­ gled for power, while their supporters contended for control of the metropolitan bureaucracy. Zeng proved politically unacceptable to both sides in the factional conflict, for he was considered a renegade by mainstream reformists, and an unreconstructed reformist by opposition remonstrators. In order to survive as grand councilor, Zeng moved to silence anti-reformist censors and remonstrance officials, and the court drifted further in the direction of reformism.

9. In the following section, I will refer to this short period, between lIOO/! and lIOI/!,

as the "Qinsheng regency." For a more detailed account of this period, see Ari Daniel Levine, "The Reigns of Hui-tsung and Ch'in-tsung and the Fall of the Northern Sung," in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 5, part I. For the court debates over Huizong's suc­ cession, see CB 53°.12356-58. ro. For a recent study of Zeng Bu's pivotal political role in both the Zhezong and Huizong reigns, see Luo Jiaxiang � � *, "Zeng Bu yu Bei Song Zhezong, Huizong zhengzhi shiqi de zhengju yanbian" ., >1\1 � JU1�. {g * , .frt * K � at j\,Ij lJ9 KJ.Q ij( � , Huazhong keji daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) '* 'f #.:tt * **tII. (�± -t"#* JI&.) 200302:

51-57·

ARI DAN I E L LEVI N E When the empress dowager died in 1I0I/!, Huizong began his per­ sonal rule, resolving to restore the reformist governance of Emperors Shenzong and Zhezong, his father and older brother. A reformist chal­ lenger undermined the fragile bifactional ministry of Zeng Bu and Han Zhongyan. Cai Bian's older brother Cai Jing

1J :t.

(1040-1126), a long­

time member of Zhezong's reformist inner circle, soon won the em­ peror's unconditional trust, breaking through the political gridlock that had prevailed during the Qinsheng regency.l l A high-ranking lieutenant of Cai Que and Zhang Dun during the 1080s and 10 9 0S, Cai Jing out­ maneuvered his rivals to ascend to the councilors hip in 1102/5. Once in command of the Council of State, Cai pushed aside all who opposed him, prosecuting them for the political crime of factionalism. With Huizong's

support,

Cai Jing consolidated his

ministerial

authority, moving swiftly to silence his opponents and to revive reformist governance. He created a reform apparatus, the Advisory

�1l ,5J , modeled after Wang Anshi's Finance Planning Com­ mission -=- ,5J 1* J!. ,5J , to centralize authority over the formulation, im­ Office

plementation, and expansion of the New Policies.12 Between 1102 and 1104, Cai Jing instigated the most extensive political purges in the history of the Northern Song. Three separate factional blacklists

l' Ji, naming

Cai's personal and political enemies, were issued as edicts and inscribed upon steles erected within the palace precincts and throughout the empire. 13 In the process, more than 300 anti-reformists and their de­ scendants were banned from officeholding. The entire anti-reform opposition Zeng Bu

along with the reformist ex-councilors Zhang Dun and was exiled en masse to the fringes of the empire, where many

of them died under administrative detention.

II. In traditional historiography, Cai Jing has been maligned as a cynical opportunist

and far worse. In the Song shi *, .Jt and earlier official and unofficial histories of the late Northern Song, Cai was classified as a "treacherous minister" if Il. , and blamed for the collapse of the Northern Song. For a textual history of his condemnatory Song shi biog­ raphy, see Charles Hartman's chapter in this volume. 12. For analyses of Cai Jing's policy program, see the chapters by Peter Bol and John Chaffee in this volume. For an earlier study of Cai Jing's reform apparatus, see Lin Tianwei M-kif, "Cai Jing yu Jiangyisi" � '* $i!."ijl.� � , Shihuoyuekan 1tJt } H� 6·4 (1971): 1 37-43· 1 3 . The most thorough Western-language account of the II02-4 factional proscrip­

tions is Helmolt Vittinghoff, Proskription und Intrigue gegen Yuan:Ju-parteiganger (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1975).

Terms ofEstrangement

137

Accomplished by 1104, the wholesale expulsion of the opposition inaugurated an era of relative political stability at court. After elimi­ nating his opposition, Cai Jing constructed a stable reformist ministerial regime and built an enduring political patronage network. Educational reforms created an empire-wide network of government schools, which channeled reformists directly into the imperial bureaucracy, thereby enhancing the reform ministry's ideological control of the rank­ and-ftle.14 The silencing and marginalization of political and ideological dissent enabled the Cai Jing ministry to revive and extend the New Policies and to pursue an expansionist strategy on the northwestern frontier.15 Reformist domination of Huizong's court was not seriously challenged until the emperor's abdication in the midst of the military and diplomatic crises of 1126-27, wl:tich precipitated the calamitous fall of the dynasty.

Factional Discourse and the Political Imagination 0/the Late Northern Song Yet, even as political practices intensified in brutality from 1068 to 1104, the language of factional politics remained a relatively stable discursive enterprise.16 Through a close reading of the surviving corpus of historical

14. In John Chaffee's analysis, Ts'ai Ching's educational refonns were designed for the purpose of "propagating the refonners' political vision while chastising his enemies." See John W. Chaffee, The Thorny Gates ofLearning in Sung China, new ed. (Albany: State Uni­ versity of New York Press, 1995), 77-80. For a detailed assessment of the Cai Jing ministry's educational and bureaucratic recruitment policies, see also Kondo Kazunari .m:Ri � "Sai Kei no kaky6 gakk6 seisaku" � * 0)#*-" �Jt J(. Tqyoshi kenkyii .t ¥ �;jf1t 53-1 (1995): 25-49· 15. For an analysis of the Cai Jing ministry's fiscal policies, see John Chaffee's chapter in this volume. For a concise treatment of Huizong's fiscal policies, see Wang Zengyu .I. f lt, "Bei Song wanqi zhengzhi jianlun" ;It. >ltI!t JIIJ Jt � ;iil 1il1/, Zhongguoshiyanjiu tF eq �;jf1t 1994+ 82-87. Also see Huang Chunyan 1t��, "Lun Bei Song Cai Jing jingji gaige" 1iI1/;lt. >It � *��lk$, Shanghai shifan daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) J:.1lj,�Je.*­ " " _ (�1."'#"JI&.) 31.5: 37-44. For an examination of the connections between Huizong's Qingtang campaigns and court politics, see Paul Smith's essay in this volume. 16. For a recent study of the impact of factional politics upon Northern Song literati and literary production, see Shen Songqin i1c>rA l!J, Bei Song wenrenyu dangzheng: Zhongguo shidafu quntiyanjiu Zhiyi ;It. >It j:,A.� :t -¥-: tF I!l ± *-}( J¥.#-;jf 1t.z (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1998). -

,

-

ARI DANIEL LEVI N E texts, the "language" of the late Northern Song political conflict can be reconstructedP This factional discourse was a set of vocabularies, defi­ nitions, and usages that political practitioners employed to define and interpret factional discourse and practice.18 Analyzing the history of the language of politics necessitates not only a reconstruction of authorial intentions, but also the contexts in which political rhetoric was inter­ preted by its intended audience of monarchs and ministers.19 From the Shenzong reign to the Huizong reign, councilors and remonstrators employed a common language in order to articulate contending claims to political legitimacy. Their rhetoric was predicated upon shared interpretations of political practice and shared conceptions of ethico-political ideals. Political practitioners of the late Northern Song employed ethical criteria to define political legitimacy and to

17. My definition of a language of politics rests upon that of J. G. A. Pocock, who maintained: "The language of politics . . . is rhetoric, the language in which men speak for all the purposes and in all the ways which men may be found ar­ ticulating and communicating as part of the activity and the culture of politics." See J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1972), 17. For the first application of Pocock's concept to Song intellectual history, see Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Schirokauer, "Intro­ duction," in Hymes and Schirokauer, eds., Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Song Dynasty China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993),

5-9· 18 . Throughout the factional conflict, both the reformists and anti-reformists employed different sets of discourses to justify their political positions and to persuade monarchs to assent to their policy agendas. A reconstruction of these other languages of politics is beyond the scope of this chapter. For reasons of semantic and conceptual clarity, I will refer to the language of factional politics as "factional discourse," not as "political discourse," a term that has broader connotations. By "factional dis­ course," I mean the rhetoric by and through which political practitioners defined, described, and interpreted practices of political association and forms of political orgaruzaoon. 19. In a later essay, Pocock argued: "to situate the text (and the author) in a context is necessary in order to reconstitute the text as a historical event . . . it seems evident that the primary component of this context has to be language. There exists a language, or a complex of more than one language, with which things can be said or illocutionary acts reformed, within which (it is the next step to add) they must be performed." See J. G. A. Pocock, "Texts as Events: Reflections on the History of Political Thought," in Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, eds., The Politics of Discourse: The Uterature and History of Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 25. .

.

Terms ofEstrangement

13 9

demarcate the boundaries of the political community. Employing a binary moralistic vocabulary, what I will term a "dichotomizing dis­ course," rhetoricians claimed ethico-political legitimacy for themselves and their comrades while simultaneously denying it to their adversar­ ies.2° This is not to say, however, that political practices are essentially reducible to discourse

they are most certainly not. Political rhetoric

was an important dimension of political practice, but it was not the only one. For the political actors of the late Northern Song, political rhetoric represented an attempt to persuade the ruler to make policy and per­ sonnel choices that would properly delineate the boundaries of the le­ gitimate political community. These rhetorical and representational conflicts had enormous repercussions in the sphere of political practice, influencing everything from policy-making to personnel decisions to criminal prosecution. Defined in all-or-nothing ethical terms, the concepts of factions and factionalism were central to these discursive representations of political action and organization. In the political imagination of the Northern Song, factions were conceived of as ethi­ cally and politically illegitimate associations, which usurped monarchical authority and undermined the foundations of the polity.21 Rhetoricians urged their ruler to discern and expel factions from court, while categorically denying that they themselves were factious. Regarded as the exclusive province of "petty men"

I

J, A.. ,

factions were invariably

:tA associations. In the political imagination of the late Northern Song, "superior men" � .:r- could and described as "selfish" or "private"

would not form factional associations, since they were portrayed as exemplars of the political virtue of "public-mindedness" or "the public good"

-A'. At least in public discourse, the

authors of court memorials

and the speakers of political utterances rarely if ever applied the term

20. For the term "dichotomizing discourse," I am indebted to James Clifford, The Predicament ofCulture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 268. 21. Lynn Hunt has noted a similar discursive phenomenon in the French Revolution, in which "leading political figures never called themselves politicians; they served 'the public good' (Ia chose publique), not a narrow 'partisan spirit' (esprit de parti). Politics and politicking were consistendy identified with narrowness, meanness, divisiveness, factionalism, opportunism, egoism, and selfishness." See her Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 3.

ARI DAN I E L LEVI N E "faction" to describe their own court coalitions, reserving it exclusively for their adversaries.22 Even as the court was divided by an escalating factional conflict, political practitioners portrayed themselves as ethical exemplars acting alone in selfless service to the state, while accusing their adversaries of the crime of factionalism. When they attempted to persuade emperors and regents to expel their opponents and promote their allies, rhetoricians described their con­ temporaries in all-or-nothing moralistic terms. The vocabulary of fac­ tional discourse consisted of overlapping sets of binary oppositions, which rhetoricians used to dichotomize individual political practitioners into two rival camps: "us" and "them." Through this dichotomizing discourse, they implored the ruler to exercise his or her powers of discriminative judgment, to expel factions of "petty men." At the same time, they at least tacidy claimed that they and their allies were "superior men" who were legitimate political practitioners. In memorials and ut­ terances, rhetoricians described their contemporaries with reference to a series of moralistic binaries, distinguishing the "loyal"

.t

from the

-if; the "righteous" ..iE. from the "wicked" �; the "good" 6l and "benevolent" 5 from the "evil" .� ; the "public-minded" � from the "selfish" {A; the "worthy" I" from the "unworthy" :f )!j ; the "upright" & from the "obsequious" �. The rhetoric of politics served

"treacherous"

to sharpen the boundaries of the political community, which was imag­ ined to be divided between ethically legitimate and illegitimate political actors: "superior men" and "petty men." In the political imagination of the late Northern Song, these moralistic conceptions of the political community were surprisingly resistant to sudden alterations in ministerial regimes and official ideology, and fac­ tional discourse remained a relatively stable field throughout the late

22. After Ouyang Xiu's

��1� "Essay on Factions" !lJl J:1ii1J ofI044 was used against

its author and his affiliates, political practitioners of the Northern Song would never again publicly acknowledge that they had fonned a faction. For a treatment of Ouyang Xiu's faction theory, see chap. 4 of Levine, "A House in Darkness." See also James T. C. Liu, OU-:JangHsiu:AnEleventh-CenturyNeo-Co,!/ucianist (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 4
Terms ofEstrangement

141

Northern Song factional conflict. 23 These conflicting court coali­ tions shared a political vocabulary, using the same key words for similar purposes. When political practitioners reformists alike

reformists and anti­

accused their adversaries of unethical political prac­

tices, they employed a dichotomizing discourse to categorically deny them legitimacy. From the promulgation of the New Policies in

1069-70

to the promulgation of the factional blacklists of 1102-4, political actors were speaking and writing the same political language, and working within similar textual, discursive, and conceptual frames of reference. The polemical and moralistic language of indictments from the Huizong reign bears a striking similarity to that from earlier phases of the factional conflict. By isolating and identifying the key words of factional discourse during the early Huizong reign, it can be shown that both factions em­ ployed similar political vocabularies, which were predicated upon shared moralistic conceptions of political legitimacy.

Factional Discourse During the Qinsheng RegenO', IIOo-IIOI A short-lived period of reaction to the political excesses of the 1090S, the Qinsheng regency proved an abortive experiment in factional concilia­ tion. 24 Intending to avoid the political extremism of the preceding

23. It is certainly possible and conceivable for conflicts to occur between those who share a discursive field. As one cultural theorist has written: "The fact that members of a semiotic community recognize a given set of symbolic oppositions does not determine what sort of statements or actions they will construct on the basis of their semiotic competence. . . . The semiotic field they share may be recognized and used by groups and individuals locked in fierce enmity rather than bound by solidarity." See William H. Sewell, Jr. "The Concept(s) of Culture," in Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, eds., Bryond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Stucfy 0/Sotie!) and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 49-50. 24. For a more concise analysis of the political history of the early Huizong reign, see Luo Jiaxiang iii �#, "Lun Bei Song Huizong zhengzhi chuqi de zhengju yanbian" �;l1:. * .Jl. $ �jUf; :fJJ Jt!J fI9ifth1)1i � , Hebei xuekan ;or ;l1:. *f1 23.5 (September 2003): 151-56. For a more detailed and document-driven political history of the Qinsheng Regency, see Luo Jiaxiang, Bei Song dangzhengyanjiu ;11:. * :f. *,Iff � (Taibei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1993), 252-75. Many of the textual extracts from the Xu �Zhi tongjianjishi benmo that I will analyze in this chapter were also cited in Luo's monograph, which is the most recent and au­ thoritative Chinese-language study of the late Northern Song factional conflict.

142

ARI DAN I E L LEVI N E

30 years, the empress dowager tried to steer a middle course by re­ habilitating exiled anti-reformists to serve alongside reformists in her Council of State. More than any period since the early Shenzong reign, rhetoricians from both sides of the political conflict joined in a free­ wheeling discussion of state policy. However, longtime factional grievances could not be conciliated by imperial order, and political practitioners continued to employ factional discourse to assail their adversaries. Reformist and anti-reformist councilors and remonstrators sought to break through this political deadlock, and struggled to wrest power from their factional adversaries. Like Empress Dowager Xuanren before her, Qinsheng had long opposed the New Policies of the Shenzong and Zhezong reigns. Almost as soon as she was proclaimed regent, she made preliminary moves to rehabilitate several prominent anti-reformists, who formed the nucleus of a nascent opposition to Zhang Dun's ministry. By the third month of noo, the Censorate and Remonstrance Bureau had been packed with a second generation of anti-reformist sympathizers such as Chen Guan, Gong Guai, and Zou Hao. Long barricaded during Zhezong's personal rule by a partisan alliance of reformist councilors and remonstrators, the roads of remonstrance were reopened by an edict of nooh, which affirmed that the new monarchical regime would welcome public­ minded criticism from inside court and the empire at large: How much more since today there are [talented] men worth cherishing within the empire, and ideas worth adopting appear even among those who collect grass and firewood. As for all matters concerning my personal failings, the loyalty or wickedness of those near me, the success or failure of government directives, the perfection or evil of public morality, and the virtue and gener­ osity of the court, if! have not investigated the sufferings of commoners below, or have not heard and fully listened to forthright criticism above, then conceal nothing before me. I hereby open the road of outspoken rectification, and dispel the spirit of obstruction. )x.� %J �t.:.t. 1*J A.;If FJf '/t , � jg .:.t.
;J;R. fL� �S.:.t. � �, � E.;t; .:.t..'& *�, ift -t-.:.t.��, J!t1�.:.t. � ,� , -tJJ�.:.t.f.t if, ;If � '"f � .:.t. Fl] FJ] * -%, ;If � J:. at] � It t1 -t, -g}:;If ,� if, � � Ml t.t.iE.:.t.�, iili � ill .:.t. J!t. 25

25. ]5BM I2pb-2a.

Terms 0/Estrangement

143

In a prime example of dichotomizing discourse, the author of this pronouncement arrayed a series of binary moralistic categories against which the monarch, ministers, and policies would be evaluated. The edict contrasted "loyal"

.t

ministers with "wicked"

them of stifling "forthright criticism" spoken rectification"

ill[ 1;- ,

f�

courtiers, accusing

and appealing for "out­

ttiE. to reveal the failures of Zhang Dun's reform

coalition. Henceforth, anti-re formists in the Censorate and Remonstrance Bureau were granted leeway to clamor for Zhang Dun's dismissal from the councilorship. Zhang was soon buried beneath a heap of hostile in­ dictments. In a memorial of noo/4, Exhorter of the Left

li.. iE. 1;­

Chen Guan took the lead, attacking the grand councilor with moral fervor:

Your servant submits that Grand Councilor of the Left Zhang Dun has mo­ nopolized power as grand councilor for eight years running. He has confused the state and misled the court, and his crimes cannot be concealed. All of the resentment and anger in the empire is focused upon him. Ever since Your Majesty assumed the throne, all the common people within the seas have inured themselves to him like the rising spines of a hedgehog. � 1kJL A:. 1f-M*·tf., �

*ifi�, 1t�A-+. l!. 1I -mft], � ;r: "Tt�. :k -r m M, ."

f,tp J';uf� , ifj: 1*l zA.� -tt ·-:.. *·tf.ittr *� -{. r1i1 �.26

- j{ .

m f-* -r �

..

Words this scathing had not been read since the Xuanren regency, the heyday of anti-reformist governance. By portraying Zhang as a power­ hungry minister and political criminal, Chen endeavored to persuade the empress dowager to exercise her powers of discriminative judgment to restore legitimacy to the imperial polity.

Employing a moralistic

vocabulary to accuse Zhang of undermining monarchical prerogatives, Chen Guan rhetorically excluded Zhang Dun from the political com­ munity. In accusing the grand councilor of "confusing the state" and "misleading the court"

it IE

��, Chen insisted that Zhang had placed

his own selfish and factional interests far ahead of the public good, which more than justified his dismissal from court.

While Zhang Dun still clung to the councilorship, his subordinates were purged from the Council of State. Largely responsible for the re­ vival of the New Policies and the limited purge of the anti-reformists during Zhezong's personal rule, Cai Bian

�J l'

(1058-1117) was the first

144

ARI DAN I E L LEVINE

to fall from power. In 1100/5, Palace Censor � � 1t �3t Gong Guai :f * (n.d.) railed against Cai, using dichotomizing rhetoric to accuse him of grave moral failings and treacherous political practices: [Your servant] observes that Left Assistant of the Department of State Affairs eai Bian's heart is profoundly venomous, and his nature is endowed with wickedness. Originally, he curried favor with powerful ministers and thus was promoted to the two [top] posts . . . . If he was not loyal to the Former Em­ perors [i.e., Shenzong and Zhezong], then how can he possibly be loyal to Your Majesty? At present, he continues to participate in key government decisions, and this has caused virtuous discourse to reach the boiling point. Your servant humbly submits that Your Sagely Munificence should investigate his treachery and wickedness, and banish him with especial severity, in order to assuage the hopes of the empire. 1kYL rl1 :t li.�J.t -t, �'�)*��'iAiFt *� . * � r-r FfHfi If , fH;i:...::.. J{f . . . . � � ,t � 71::.-*- , � �� :& � fl l") � 7] *-ffi �Jt, �� it � $JJl. 1k� � � �.Jt-!tf$, If m � -1utNt:j:J!I:, JlX M k T��.27 Gong Guai asserted that the moral legitimacy of the state could be re­ stored if this "treacherous" "*f and "wicked" *� minister were imme­ diately expelled from the political community. In indictment memorials of the late Northern Song, it was common for remonstrators to claim that their targets were naturally endowed with "wickedness" *� or other moral failings. Moreover, Gong was implicitly contrasting Cai Bian's "disloyalty" � ,t with the "loyalty" of unidentified anti-reformists like himself, who offered "virtuous discourse" �t ;tl to sway the ruler to dismiss these nefarious ministers from court. Within three months of their arrival at court, Gong Guai and other like-minded remonstrators had made major inroads in their efforts to engineer the dismissals of other prominent reformists. By noo/6, the reformist majority on the Council of State had evaporated, with the subsequent dismissals of such prominent members of Zhezong's inner circle as Xing Shu jf�� (n.d.) and Cai Bian's older brother Cai Jing, the latter of whom would return to avenge himself against his political enemies. Spurred on by Zeng Bu and their own sense of resentment and vic­ timization, anti-reformist remonstrators stepped up their campaign to remove Zhang Dun from the councilorship. Memorializing the throne in nooh, Vice Censor in Chief Feng Ji � :fi (1033-n07) and Attending Censor 1t �p 3t Chen Shixi Ft � itb (jinshi 1070s) accused Zhang of 27. ]5BM 120.IOa.

Terms ofEstrangement

145

usurping monarchical prerogatives and undermining the foundations of the polity:

Your servants submit that Zhang Dun has dominated the state for seven years, misappropriating power and authority over the weal and woe of the empire. He has willfully harmed the worthy, daring to kill men. He has handled major events and decided important matters. Harboring sinister schemes, he made manifest his heterodox discourse. How can Your Majesty continue to tolerate this? The dynastic progenitors would have been outraged at Dun for a long time. If �t/(. :f 1f. 't 1l -e,f, tJJ # JiiA,li , �;fi� r. j "t � J- , �*�A., �* �#* • . til ;;;. It&- -fit tt. 19: l'l �J( e!.. �I:,a. �, '�,f.CtJ ft �·

It\:. -r- .!I!. LI. ¢ • � ;> r r"'J 'rJ(��-J .

I.;E.

''' b *� �� h � 28 l'.tL "J' ..... ·I-=t" A.. � . ,

Feng juxtaposed Zhang's inherent treachery with the inherent worthi­ ness of the men he had purged from court during Zhezong's personal rule. Moreover, Feng condemned the grand councilor with such di­ chotomizing terminology as "sinister"

Itt

and "deviant"

Jt.,

accusing

Zhang of straying from the ethical path of governance. Hostile remon­ strance continued to pile up, and anti-reformists impeached Zhang for a litany of crimes against the state: absolutism, favoritism, factionalism, and heresy. Huizong ftnally heeded the calls of his remonstrators, accepting Zhang Dun's request for retirement in Lingnan in

IIOI/2,

IIOO/9.

Banished to

Zhang Dun suffered a similar fate as his victims,

ultimately dying in exile in

II05

as a victim of eai Jing's proscription of

the ''Yuanyou faction."29 Zhang Dun's dismissal permitted Zeng Bu to ascend to the councilor­ ship in

IIOO/IO,

impelling the court further toward the political and

ideological center.

While formally subordinate to Han Zhongyan as

grand councilor of the right, it has been alleged that Zeng actually wielded the reins of power, influencing Huizong to implement a policy of bipartisan "conciliation"

�f+ .30 An

imperial edict of

IIOO/IO

offi-

28. ]SBM 120.nb. 29. This cruel historical irony was certainly not lost on Zhang Dun's biographers. See SS 47I.I3713· 30. According to Zeng Bu's biography in the Song shi: "Although Zhongyan held the higher post, he was weak and soft, and the majority of decisions were Bu's, but Bu still could not tolerate this." .t JlJitlkJ:.., tl\ * .ji, • � �::#-�, ��!!i T- �t�. Since Zeng's Song shi biography is overwhelmingly condemnatory, this editorial statement certainly cannot be taken at face value. See 55 471.13716. For a critical analysis of Zeng's and other "Treacherous Minister" biographies, see chap. 3 of Levine, "A House in Darkness."

ARI DAN I E L LEVI NE cially sanctioned the spirit of factional compromise and political moderatlon: •

Emperor Shenzong was the exemplar of a new era, bequeathed to his descen­ dants. As for the strategy of separating officials, when the intentions of officials in office go too far, I will not follow their advice. As for policy and personnel decisions, I will not follow the strategy of separating one group from an­ other. . . . From now on, those managing the government who use distorted scholarship to be biased and who make unreasonable changes will be publicly rejected. ¥,ttutr:t , tJt - 1�z� �, I'x l!{{A.. /b' �1::1:.z f:Z. , J:f) ;t�i&, JOC frJf ��. �Jlt J:f) A., JOC.1tJ!:.Z r." . . . . m 4'lf tlb !!fd,* JL, *;t�� 1t: , JR.*' 11 . 't � :tJ. :!Z.31 ,

After Empress Dowager Qinsheng formally relinquished the reins of power in lIoo/6, Huizong assumed command over court politics and state policy, asserting his prerogative to determine the proper boundaries of the political community. Henceforth, the emperor's policy and per­ sonnel choices were intended to transcend factionalism and partisanship. As a witness to the political conflict of the past two decades, Zeng Bu convinced Huizong that the survival of the empire and the restoration of political legitimacy and stability necessitated his putting an end to fac­ tional intrigue at court. A bifactional unity government, presided over by Zeng Bu and Han Zhongyan, was formed to palliate both reformists and anti-reformists. By co-opting more moderate elements from both camps into the center of court politics, Zeng sought to defuse tensions and alleviate grievances. Signaling an official break with the preceding age of faction, it was de­ creed that in lIOI, the reign title would be changed to Jianzhong Jingguo Jt t gk � (Establishing the Mean and Stabilizing the State).32 However, Zeng Bu's attempt to impose political harmony from above was too belated a move to meet with any success beyond the realm of symbols. After 30 years of infighting, factional rivalries ran too deep to be con­ ciliated by imperial fiat alone. Ever since the 1070s, political practices had been brutalized to the extent that civility, let alone basic mutual tolerance, could no longer be restored. Moreover, the dichotomizing vocabulary of political language, with its binary divisions between the "righteous" and 3I. Peng Baichuan iFEf )l1 , Taiping zhiji tonglei J\.. -'h� Jijj; i! $Ji (reprinted-Taibei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1966), 24.33b. 32. Taping Zhiji tonglei 24.33b-34a.

Terms ofEstrangement

147

the "wicked," could not easily accommodate conceptions of centering and moderation.33 Whereas Zeng Bu had co-opted anti-reformist remonstrators into his court coalition, he could not control them to ensure his own political survival. Once they had been unleashed upon Zhang Dun, anti­ reformist remonstrators could not be tamed to spare Zeng, who was too deeply implicated in the policies and purges of the

1090S

to remain ac­

ceptable as a grand councilor in a unity government. In an indictment of

1100/11,

Attending Censor Chen Cisheng

Ft ;k 1t (1044-III9)

attacked

Zeng Bu with much the same invective as his colleagues had recently used against Zhang Dun:

Grand Councilor of the Right Zeng Bu's character is treacherous and wicked; his heart harbors fiendishness and venom . . . . Since he was recently elevated to the councilorship, he has monopolized state power and slighted his bureaucratic colleagues. ;6" 1t- -M 'it All , ,ti$�*�, /�/Ill � FR . . . . iii m � * **l, �� iJ #i, � ",) El la 34 -p:: �� fPJ '�- .

Declaring Zeng guilty by association, Chen claimed that Zeng had been conclusively linked with the reformist regime of the

1090S, as a member

of a malign and illegitimate faction. This accusation alone sufficed to delegitimize his councilorship, but portraying Zeng as being naturally endowed with "treachery" and "wickedness" further undermined his ethical claim to the councilorship. Refusing to cooperate with Zeng Bu, anti-reformist remonstrators continued to frustrate the grand councilor's efforts to promote bipartisan conciliation, by situating him beyond the pale of legitimate political practice. Defending himself from hostile remonstrance, Zeng Bu appealed to Huizong to maintain his policy of factional reconciliation. In

1101/7,

during an audience before the throne, he urged the emperor to continue with their experiment in moderation and de-factionalization:

Your Majesty desires to uphold impartiality and employ centering to break through the discourse of factionalism, which will conciliate and unify the empire. Who would dare consider [this policy] to be incorrect? Of men with biased views and deviant opinions, each privately favors his own faction. Moreover, there are those who intend to avenge their grudges, running around 33. For a variation on this argument, see Luo Jiaxiang, "Lun Bei Song Huizong tongzhi chuqi de zhengju yanbian," 155. 34· ]5BM 130.IOa.

ARI DAN I E L LEVI N E helter-skelter, causing Your sagely intentions to be resented. . . . Thus, if such men remain at court, one will certainly not be able to avoid their harboring selfish grievances and attacking one another in enmity. This makes the various gentlemen of the empire ill at ease. And if the gentlemen of the empire are ill at ease, then the court will be ill at ease indeed. I wish that Your Majesty would deeply consider this and not allow either of these factions to succeed. There­ after, harmony and tranquility will prevail, and the empire will be without incident. ft r �#-t Jf) 'f , -it:t A..ttt, yX WII - :k r . :fJt�hX � � fJ(.? .1Q 1(Q YLJ.-tt.tA., � >lA � :t . 5l ;lf *IHlt�11L.t;t, ��:f e. , Jt� ;t�.� . . . . JlI::. � A.-/i .fJJ , * � ;t·ltl>lAtt�, E:. flH1L$ , Jlll :k r ± � :f �. ± � :f �, JI'l .fJJ � # ���. J.tltft r i� .1f; � it, ·AiHtJll::. � :t �l ;t , Jlll ;fu-t�*, :k r �*.35 Like Wang Anshi and Sima Guang before him, Zeng Bu accused his political opposition of being a "selfish" faction, lacking in ethical and political legitimacy, whose words and deeds had always been motivated by private grudges. By associating himself with the "gentlemen of the empire"

� r ±�, the ethically legitimate members of the political elite,

he was proclaiming his own innocence, portraying himself as a loyal minister who had been unjustly accused of treachery. According to Zeng's analysis, factional intrigue was a zero-sum game, which required Huizong's enlightened judgment to prevent it from escalating out of control and destroying the polity from within. On the surface, Zeng Bu's attempts at building consensus evinced a spirit of altruism and magnanimity, but he was actually moving to silence his most vocal critics on the right, who had intensified their attacks on his councilorship. Throughout the first (and only) year of the Jianzhong Jingguo era, anti-reformist remonstrators presented a united front of resistance to Zeng Bu's councilorship, seeking his dismissal and re­ placement. In Chen Guan's eyes, Zeng's involvement in the restored reformist regime of the

1090S

proved that he was no different from

Zhang Dun. For the time being, Huizong took Zeng Bu's side, ordering the dismissal of Chen Guan from the Remonstrance Bureau and de­ moting him to regional administration in

IIOI/8.36 By breaking the back

of the anti-reform resistance, Zeng managed to shore up his sagging position for the time being, but he soon met with even more threat­ ening opposition from his other flank. Beset on both sides by two

35· ]5BM 130.12a. 36. ]5BM 129-4a-5a.

Terms ofEstrangement

149

hostile coalitions, Zeng Bu had alienated both anti-reformists and re­ formists by triangulating himself into the councilors hip as a conciliating centrIst. •

Whether stalwart anti-reformists or apostate reformists, political practitioners of the Qinsheng regency employed similar vocabularies and rhetorical strategies. In an abortive and belated attempt to alleviate factional enmities, Zeng Bu persuaded Huizong to pursue a centered course of governance, by incorporating elements of both factions into his ministerial regime. But once the reformist councilor Cai Que and the surviving leaders of the Yuanyou ministry had both been banished to Lingnan, the clock could not be turned back, and political practices could not be returned to their

status quo ante.

Opposing Zeng Bu at

every turn, anti-reformist remonstrators accused the grand councilor of monopolizing power and ministerial treachery. The Zeng Bu ministry was in many ways a throwback to the days of Wang Anshi and Sima Guang, when ministers engineered the dismissal of their adversaries by accusing them of factional perfidy.

All

the while, Zeng employed the

same language of politics as the anti-reformist remonstrators who op­ posed him. After Zeng Bu was forced out of the Council of State, the polyphony of political rhetoric was silenced, and monotony was forcibly imposed from above.

Factional Discourse and the Chongning Factional Proscriptions) II02-4 Rather than developing into a full-scale anti-reformist backlash, the Qinsheng regency proved to be a short-lived period of reaction. By the time he inaugurated his personal rule late in

1100, Huizong had come

to

distrust Zeng Bu and his policy of factional conciliation. Ruling unchal­ lenged and unchecked, the emperor officially expressed his desire to continue the reforming legacy of his father and older brother. By as­ senting to another change in the reign title from Jianzhong Jingguo to Chongning

'* .

(Revering the [Xi]ning [Era)), Huizong symbolically

sanctioned a return to the reformist course of the Shenzong and Zhe­ zong reigns.J7 At court, a reformist challenger undermined the bipartisan

ARI DAN I E L LEVINE unity ministry of Zeng Bu and Han Zhongyan, paving the way for a full reformist restoration. While Zeng and Han were working at cross-purposes, Cai Jing broke through the bipartisan gridlock at court, swaying Huizong to appoint him to the councilorship. Once courting office, Cai Jing could not be contained or controlled by those who opposed his rapid ascent.38 Ap­ pointed to the Council of State in II02/5, he eliminated his rivals for the councilorship by prosecuting them for nearly every political crime imaginable. Under Cai's influence, Han Zhongyan was dismissed from bureaucratic service in the first month of 1102, even before Cai Jing had been officially rehabilitated. Zeng Bu was the next to go, bringing his bifactional ministry down with him. In II02/6, Palace Censor Qian Yu � .l! (1050-1121), Cai Jing's loyal subordinate, impeached Zeng for having engaged in ethically illegitimate political practices as grand councilor. Qian persuaded Huizong that Zeng had been a turncoat to the cause of reform and had treacherously abetted the anti-reform Opposltlon: •

•

Grand Councilor of the Right Zeng Bu vigorously assisted the treacherous fac­ tion of the Yuanyou era [1085-93] and let them hold important posts. He stealthily purged the loyal worthies of the Shaosheng era [1094-97] and cast them out to distant and scattered territories. . . . Of disloyal ministers, none surpass him. . . . [These unusual signs] are caused by high officials not being public-minded. Men and spirits rage in unison, and Heaven and Earth cannot tolerate it. [Your servant] implores that [his crimes] should be rectified im­ mediately according to the statutes. j;\J :f ;t; 1� M 'if >$', jJ tt;j(AJ> i:: Jk. :t , 71'- 111 -t-it. Ft�$g �i:: .'t 'f , liAtltHt . . . . � !l. � .'t � *:T JI:. . . . . 7j � !l. � � i:: PlT � , A.;ff *' 1.D, .k Jt � �. � t. -¥-.if. #PfiJ. 39

In indicting Zeng Bu for political crimes, Qian Yu deployed the same dichotomizing discourse anti-reform remonstrators had used against Zhang Dun a year earlier. Qian equated the anti-reformists with "treachery" if and "factiousness" 1.' while associating the reformists with "loyalty" .t and "worthiness" J- . Pressuring Huizong to exercise his powers of discriminative judgment, Qian urged the ruler to purge this "disloyal minister" from the councilorship, thereby restoring 38. For an amply documented, albeit condemnatory, analysis of the rise of eai Jing, see Luo, Bei Song dangzhengyanjiu, 276-86. 39· ]SBM I30.2oa.

Terms rfEstrangement moral balance to the imperial court and the empire at large. Soon thereafter, Zeng Bu was dismissed as grand councilor and demoted to the provinces, and officially banished to Lingnan in 1102/9.40 With Zeng eliminated from the Council of State, Cai ling's appointment as grand councilor of the right in 1102/7 was all but assured. During Cai's seventeen years as grand councilor, political stability was ensured at Huizong's court under an enduring reformist ministerial regime. The factional proscriptions of 1102-4 extended and systematized the bans and blacklists of the 1090S, banning the political opposition from officeholding and exiling them to the fringes of the empire. Breaking with past political practice, Cai ensured that all potential con­ tenders for power were not just marginalized or indicted on an ad hoc basis but systematically and permanently excluded from the imperial bureaucracy. Following Cai ling's rehabilitation and ascent to the coun­ cilorship, the political persecution of the so-called "Yuanyou" faction (Yuaf!Jou dang j(.:ft :t ) became the first order of business for his new ministerial regime. Once Cai's opponents had been decreed to be a fac­ tion in political rhetoric, their elimination could be readily accomplished in political practice. The emperor and his newly appointed grand councilor openly dis­ cussed imposing a new series of partisan proscriptions. After Cai ling's first audience with Huizong in 1102/5, a memorial was presented to the throne denouncing the anti-reform ministry of the Xuanren Regency. Probably written by Cai ling, this memorial urged Huizong to exercise his powers of discriminative judgment by assenting to the expulsion of these "petty men" from court: Your servant maintains that if the crimes of the empire are not properly labeled, then there will be no way for the benevolent people of the empire to make themselves apparent. Shenzong reigned for nineteen years, and the policies and institutions he established were all based on those of the ancient kings. When the ministers of the Yuanyou era controlled governance, they created chaos and confusion, and they entirely formed a treacherous clique that deluded the emperor. . . . They were all men who had committed crimes against Shenzong. The Shaosheng era revived the policies of Shenzong, and although the Yuanyou faction had been banished, upon Your Majesty's ascension to the throne, you cherished them with benevolent virtue and allowed

40. ]5BM 130.2Ia.

ARI DANIEL LEVI N E them to be reinstated. The reform faction held numerous posts, but they con­ nived with one another . . . no one could defend against them. Inside and outside court, they responded to one another. Growing and spreading like weeds, the harm they incurred was extreme. El. 8fl k r z � , � � :f ..iE., JlIJ k r Z-!-, �

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Rhetorically associating the anti-reformists with "treachery" and "cliquishness," eai or one of his supporters implored Huizong to acknowledge and punish their crimes against the state to ensure the legitimacy of his personal rule. The author of this memorial attempted to convince the monarch that the anti-reformists who had gained a foothold at court during the Qinsheng regency were an ethically ille­ gitimate political association who had slandered the reformists and the reforming legacy of Shenzong. If Huizong aspired to emulate the ancient sage-kings by employing superior men at court, names had to be named so that the guilty and the innocent, the righteous and the wicked, could be properly discerned. A second memorial beseeched the emperor to order an investigation of the anti-reformists, so that their crimes could be made manifest to the empire. The author claimed that factionalism had been the most heinous crime of the ministers of the Xuanren regency and the remonstrators of the Qinsheng regency. By punishing these men for their political crimes, Huizong could continue Shenzong's unfinished work, the ethical revival of the empire: At present, the names of the treacherous faction are available, and the relevant documents are clear. Of those who debated policy and those who administered policy, those who spoke for them and those who concurred with them, their crimes range from petty to grave, and the seriousness of their crimes from shallow to profound. Let the authorities investigate and categorize them, en­ acting their banishment in a manner appropriate to their individual crimes. . . . Of the loyal ministers and good gentlemen of the empire, each will devote all their hearts to the ruler and not worry that other people will harm them. In this way we can illuminate the flourishing virtue and great enterprises of Shenzong will be brought to fruition, and accomplish Your Majesty's filial

41. ]5BM 121.Ia.

Terms ofEstrangement

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desire to continue his policies. Then the empire can be ordered through inaction. 4'-"*f:t "*'1 .t Jt.1.±., � $: it: 11ij . � tl�*, � �t�*, � l\ .:.t.17�* , �-t:t r1Q �-:t, � ��"i", tt � i� )� . 1t� � �#", 1& �'Hti!, 1t� 't Jt. � . . . .

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The author of this memorial concluded that prosecuting the anti­ reformists as enemies of the state would enable Huizong to accomplish three goals at once: to rectify the boundaries of the ethico-political order, to ensure the ethical uniformity of the political elite, and to bring Shenzong's political legacy to fruition. He insisted that these investiga­ tions and punishments would not be motivated by revenge or partisan­ ship, but by the utmost in ethical rigor. The author claimed that this was not a mass political persecution, but rather an investigation of former officials on a case-by-case basis. After the expulsion and dispersal of this treacherous faction of petty men was accomplished, he argued that the imperial court would become the exclusive preserve of ethical practi­ tioners, ending the factional conflict once and for

all.

Several more memorials followed, in which specific names and events replaced abstract ethical categories. Offering a revisionist interpretation of the recent past, a nameless official singled out the remonstrators of the Qinsheng regency for punishment. According to the memorial's author, the first year of the Huizong reign had witnessed the rehabilitation of a faction of "petty men," who began to sabotage the state as they had once before during the anti-reform ministry of the 1080s. One memorial equated the Xuanren and Qinsheng regencies, describing them as dark ages in which legitimate governance had been usurped by disloyal ministers and nefarious remonstrators:

[Your servant] observes that the former court expelled and banished Sirna Guang et al. for their deviant opinions and their harm to governance. The grand councilors [at the time] discussed and promulgated these actions both inside and outside court, and all the empire knew [of this]. When Your Majesty ftrst ascended the throne but before You assumed full supervision over all matters, those who controlled the state were unable to employ public-minded heatts and just intentions . . . . In recent days, you have again called on people to speak out, which has led to chaos and confusion. Your ignorant servant wishes that Your Majesty would clearly order the grand councilors to discuss this 42. ]5BM I2ub.

154

ARI DAN I E L LEVIN E

publicly and clearly evaluate the situation. 1kYL ;\:' -#J � 1f &J ,� 7'e. �, J{. ;t, $Jt. *- if � 7IJ 4t% 'F 71', :k """F ·jHu. :;f f.t """F I!P1i..zAJJ , �a44t� #\.t�, 't � .t if , � �� � '� -f :t" . . . � El -Pi-;f{iJ..:t , It.f. nt *" . if .�1k � f.t """F El}) Wf.j, � Jt *- if , 1t� *'�"tl, tf�.H.43

This memorial's author asserted that if Huizong had not recently begun his personal rule, anti-reformist ministers and remonstrators would have certainly precipitated the collapse of the ethico-political order with their "deviant opinions" -* :t . Attacking the opposition for blurring the boundaries between right and wrong, this remonstrator pronounced that those who had submitted anti-reformist remonstrance were undeniably guilty of the crime of factionalism: [Your servant] observes that at the end of the Yuanfu era [ca. lIOO] , in the days of the regency, the great ministers of the Yuanyou era took advantage of the opportunity to administer affairs. Of the men who had been charged and prosecuted during the Shaosheng era, either they were restored to their old official status or they undeservingly received official appointments . . , . They did their utmost to unify their faction behind their deviant ideas. We depended upon Your Majesty to investigate their malfeasance, and to vigorously grasp the way of righteousness, so that the laws and institutions of Shenzong may be preserved, and the basic enterprise of the imperial progenitors may be furthered for a myriad generations of order. 5l 't -m YL :k.. 11-.t*, J.loJ1i � ltJt.t El , :k.. � *- if * M rn • . • � � � M , � � * �.tA, � . � � � , ���� 1�. . . . t(tff�:t� � J{.�, fM.t """F � YL � � , :/] #iEl!, 1,!j';�#:t�Jt, �.g l1. ' 'J,. 44 1� :f.tL b ;F � if.; , PQ -L!C Z 10 . ' ,

In the author's view, the restoration of Shenzong's reforms required the pre-emptive purge of those remonstrators who had recently en­ deavored to abolish them. He insisted that ends would justify means, as blacklists and bans were necessary to restore legitimacy to the ethico-political order. Whereas previous factional discourse had acknowledged that factionalism had been a recurrent problem through­ out history, the rhetoric of the Chongning purges promised a final solution. In the utopian language of reformist remonstrators, an ever­ lasting age of ideal governance awaited Huizong in the near future, if he committed himself to exercising his powers of discriminative judgment in the present. 43. ]5BM 12I.2a. 44. ]5BM I2I.2b.

Terms 0/Estrangement

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Huizong responded to these memorials by promulgating an edict that expelled these enemies of the state, whether living or deceased, from the political community. More than 50 leading members of the anti-reform faction among them the former grand councilors Sima Guang, Lii Gongzhu g � i- (1018-89), Lii Dafang g *- 7i (1027-97), Liu Zhi 11 " (1030-97), and Fan Chunren (1027-1101) were stripped of all honors and prestige titles they had received posthumously.45 Denied the honorific status and privileges to which deceased officials were en­ titled, these men were effectively excluded from membership in the bureaucratic elite. Their symbolic exhumation was intended to rectify their crimes for posterity, so that history would remember them as treacherous ministers. It is possible that before his fall from the councilorship, Zeng Bu was no longer presenting himself as a conciliator and had abetted Cai Jing in his suppression of the anti-reformists. Li Tao * � (III5-84), the com­ piler of the Xu ;;jzhi tongjian changbian t.t 'if 5i; iiHIt -k �, attributed the authorship of the following imperial edict, which issued a blanket con­ demnation against the Yuanyou ministry, to Zeng Bu: Fonnerly, during the Yuanyou era, powerful ministers monopolized the state, commanding a faction of wickedness. They slandered the Former Emperor [i.e., Shenzong], and His benevolent governance and good policies were carelessly changed. In the Shaosheng era, [Zhezong] assumed the reins of governance, and He clearly saw through this iniquitous group, expelling and banishing them, punishing them to the full extent of the law. . . . When they were summoned back to court, they joined together in scheming, becoming even more strongly tied to each other. They took avenging their enmities and grievances as their task. . . . They were united in their goal of transforming the policies and insti­ tutions of the Xining and Yuanfeng eras and reviving the governance of the Yuanyou era. {f.(utAt, � I'ZAi*�, 1�4i mJ f�. �1t7l::..�!J" -!Jtlt i£., !t � � � � ?t ,fJs4tJt#l, fl!JJLjf.� , Jf �5i.Li:, J!-.iE�*,J. . . . � qtlJt .g � "tt.m�, aii *��, � � qtJJf I!/ , ihX �1I..tt * :r}] *Il.-f11Ir.. tl< � * . . . . ;6 � .�� .. 7t � zi£. Ji, � 7t:.f,6ZJt i1Q -ft e.. .46 .

-

In the official reformist version of recent history, the anti-reformists had turned the world upside down by forming a disloyal and treacherous factional regime during the Xuanren regency. This edict's author asserted

45. ]SBM 121.2b-4b. 46. ]SBM 121. 5b-6a.

ARI DAN I E L LEVI N E that the anti-reformists had tarnished Shenzong's legacy by prematurely abolishing the New Policies before they could succeed in ethically transforming the empire. In the coming proscriptions, the surviving members of the anti­ reform coalitions of both regencies were to be incriminated alongside their fallen comrades. In the imperial edict that revoked posthumous honors for the ministers of the Yuanyou era (granted a year before by the Qinsheng regency), those who had urged these honors were singled out for punishment. Such anti-reformist remonstrators as Chen Ci­ sheng and Feng Ji, who had heeded the call for upright remonstrance a year earlier, were dismissed from office altogether. Furthermore, other remonstrators of the Qinsheng regency, including Chen Guan and Gong Guai, were condemned for trying to revive anti-reformist governance and for disseminating seditious discourse. In the radically transformed political landscape of Cai Jing's councilorship, the alleged crimes of these anti-reformists could not go unpunished. In the words of Huizong's edict against them: They relied on their clique to flatter and cajole, yet maintained that they them­ selves were upright and sincere, and they did not consult the opinion of other officials. They harbored grievances, pursued success, insisted on the false, and neglected their duty to serve their ruler. When their crimes are investigated, how is death a sufficient punishment? J'A JJjJ J;t. "t81t, m ��&., t1i1 � ;fi';f{-±"MiI. .l. r*J 'll m � , *�1t-1f , t1i1 .� *:#�.l. . 41t� � .'i. , M1if�t�?47

The emperor pronounced that these remonstrators had inverted the moral categories of political practice, turning black into white by falsely accusing innocent reformists of political crimes while falsely proclaiming their own legitimacy. Exiling these alleged slanderers would re-establish the ethico-political standards that they had recently attempted to invert. Cai Jing's ministry swiftly implemented institutional mechanisms to prosecute the anti-reformist remonstrators of the Qinsheng regency for the political crime of slander. A year after these strident denunciations of the reformists and the New Policies were submitted to the throne, these documents were used as ammunition against their authors. In the final months of the Zeng Bu ministry, initial efforts were made to

47. ]5BM I2l.4b.

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investigate all remonstrance submitted during the Qinsheng regency. In 1101/8, an anonymous remonstrator loyal to Zeng, or perhaps the grand councilor himself, reported that anti-reformist remonstrators had been investigated and punished: "[Your servant] humbly observes that those who slandered the former court and agitated to change policies and in­ stitutions, their crimes deserving more than death, have now all been demoted and publicly criticized" 1:k.. YL � EJ iii iJJ;t .m , fh.ti � Jt, � � z.�i.ZA., tt. ;:�fjtjl£ i1Ti � J9:Z .48 A year later, the Cai Jing ministry went a step beyond the classification of dissent, by criminalizing all political dissenters of the recent past and excluding all opposition figures from the imperial bureaucracy. In 1102/9, all of the officials who had responded to the court's call for upright remonstrance during the Qinsheng regency were classified into seven ethical categories: three grades of "righteousness" .if.. and four grades of "wickedness" *�.49 Of 583 men who had submitted remon­ strance, only 41 were certified as politically acceptable to the current ministerial regime, and the remaining 542 were accused of various grades of unethical political rhetoric. The ranks of the "righteous" were stocked largely with the names of obscure regional administrators and other political nonentities with possible reformist sympathies. As might be expected, these 542 "wicked" remonstrators included both major and minor figures who had served in the Censorate and Remon­ strance Bureau during the Qinsheng regency, along with hundreds of mid-level functionaries and regional administrators. 50 By identifying those who had evinced antipathies toward the New Policies and the reformists, this remonstrance investigation had the overt purpose of ensuring ethical uniformity within the imperial bureaucracy, but this entailed the imposition of rigid ideological and political conformity in practice. •

48. f5BM 12pb. 49. In order of appearance, these seven categories were: "superior in righteousness" iEJ:., "middling in righteousness" iE 'f , "inferior in righteousness" iE r, "extremely superior in wickedness" *fIJ:.:t.:g:, "superior in wickedness" *fIJ:., "middling in wick­ edness" *fI 'f , and "inferior in wickedness" *fir. See f5BM 123.3a-8b. 50. For a closer analysis of the names on this list of classified remonstrance, and an exposition of the anomalies therein, see Luo, "Lun Bei Song Huizong tongzhi chuqi de zhengju yanbian," 154.

ARI DAN I E L LEVI N E The classification and investigation of prior memorials was not an unprecedented phenomenon in late Northern Song political history. During the 1080s and 1090S, the anti-reformist ministerial regime of the Xuanren regency had established and re-established the Investigation and Prosecution Bureau ifj:J.!.p/f, later revived by the Zhang Dun min­ istry under Zhezong's personal rule, to prosecute their adversaries for having authored slanderous memorials. What was new about this par­ ticular occurrence of remonstrance investigation were . the extreme punishments that awaited those accused of slander. In 1102/11, those who had been classified into the two most extreme grades of "wicked­ ness," 80 men in all, were exiled to remote prefectures on the fringes of the empire. 51 The classification of past remonstrance, and the banish­ ments that accompanied it, also foreshadowed the factional blacklists to come. At the same time eai Jing was punishing the anti-reformist remon­ strators of the Qinsheng regency, he was also blacklisting the earlier generation of anti-reformists. In 1102/9, the first partisan blacklist :t 11was imposed, officially proscribing 117 men, naming nearly every official who had served in the highest echelons of the anti-reformist ministerial regime of the Xuanren regency. Whether dead or alive, every state councilor of the Yuanyou (1085-93) era was named to the list, as was every prominent academic and remonstrance official. 52 The names of the guilty were inscribed into a stele erected outside the Gate of Rectified Ritual iE.:.ft r, of the imperial palace and were written personally by Huizong in his renowned calligraphy.53 The blacklisted were summarily 51. ]SBM 123.8b-Ioa. 52. Among the 22 state councilors were Wen Yanbo :;t jf -hlf: (1006---97), Sima Guang, Lii Gongzhu, Lii Dafang, Liu Zhi, Liang Tao !¥: ;#; (1054-97), Wang Yansou £ jf � (1043---93), Fan Chunren, and Wang Gui £ # (1019-85). Among the 35 subordinate officials were Su Shi .� � (1036-1101), Fan Zuyu t€A!1.� (1041-98), Kong Wenzhong � :;t 1'1' (1037-87), Zhu Guangting *,- 7t .lit (1037---94), Sun Jue � f: (1028-90), Liu Anshi f1�1lt (1048-1I25),Jia Yi 1t � (n.d.), Wang Di £� (n.d.), Zou Hao, and Zhang Shunmin 7l# � (n.d.). 53. For an investigation of Huizong's imperial brush inscriptions, see Patricia Ebrey's chapter in this volume. The actual extent of Huizong's involvement in the factional proscriptions is unknown, given the extensive revision of the historical record to portray him as a benevolent monarch led dangerously astray by treacherous ministers. It remains debatable whether the emperor was actively involved in the blacklist or simply manipulated by Cai Jing, but no tangible evidence has survived to prove either

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dismissed from bureaucratic service, forbidden from entering the capital, and many were placed under heavy surveillance and virtual house arrest in their native places. 54 A group of officials memorialized the throne urging Huizong to prosecute anti-reform partisans of the Qinsheng Regency along with those of the Xuanren regency: As for the men who did such things as forming factions and altering and de­ stroying policies and institutions during the early Yuanyou era, they have re­ cently been prosecuted by the court. As for the men who did such things as forming factions, altering and destroying policies and institutions, and reviving the Yuanyou faction during the late Yuanfu era [ca. IIOO] , we humbly submit the request that you investigate and prosecute them. iiAf;Z;fJJ#A:t�, � J:lt�

4 .A, .����ff, � � �.z*# A :t �, � � �4, « & � � . A, 1k � tf ��{t.55

This memorial deemed that factionalism had been the chief crime of these anti-reformists, rendering the ministerial regimes of both regencies illegitimate in the extreme. In the factional discourse of the early Huizong reign, political associations were imagined and described as inherently destructive. It was imagined that factious malefactors could be expelled through systematic punishment, which was deemed appropriate for officials who had forsaken the prime political virtue of pub­ lic-mindedness. By the middle of 1103, the opposition had been effectively marginalized, and the majority of the blacklisted anti­ reformists had been banished to the far south. As if the widespread fallout from the first blacklist had been insuf­ ficient to destroy the anti-reform coalition, a second edition was promulgated in 1103/9. 56 Ninety-eight men (nearly half of them de­ ceased) were named as members of the ''Yuanyou faction," including every one of eai Jing's major adversaries and omitting some minor figures who had been included in the first blacklist. In the words of the memorial that prompted this edict, the erection of a blacklist stele within the palace precincts had been insufficient as an admonition for posterity. Henceforth, blacklist steles would be established throughout theory. For an analysis of the tangled textual history of the Huizong reign's official historiography, see chap. 2 of Levine, "A House in Darkness." 54. f5RM 12I.ub. 55. f5RM 12I.9h. 56. f5RM 12I.I5b-qa.

160

ARI DAN I E L LEVI N E

every circuit and prefecture of the empire, thereby identifying this "treacherous faction" and distinguishing them from the rest of the bu­ reaucratic elite for the indefinite future: When a commissioner was recently dispatched from the capital district, there were among the officials of Chenzhou some who questioned him concerning the names on the Yuanyou faction's stele at the Gate of Rectified Ritual. Even though the court has promulgated their names, going so far as to carve them with imperial calligraphy, this is not yet completely known. Your Majesty has made rewards and punishments with enlightened lucidity. Whether this deviant faction of treacherous ministers is living or dead, their enumerated crimes and evil deeds have been graded and personally splashed by the imperial brush, and carved into stone, as a warning to the disloyal ministers of the empire. . . . [Your servant] implores Your Majesty to promulgate an enlightened pronouncement, arraying all the names of the treacherous faction which have been inscribed with imperial calligraphy upon the Gate of Rectified Ritual, and to disseminate it to the offices of the highest officials in exterior circuits and prefectures, who should set up steles with an inscribed record, to manifest [their names] for a myriad generations. it ili 1tJf.f� , f.t 1+1 ± A. ;ff J';.U,t;it r, � .i17t�.6:t �*l-t r", If :-t. � *l -t fJJ�. l' �t r, .f. #-.f!r * .ilj �, JlIJ � :it �P -I!!.. fi': r � aJi 1" -fU . � If J.:t, � r"' 1f?!, � � � � .� , �il.��, R. -Z f1�, J'X � � r If .:r � .t .z iX., . . . � � # f.f 1f tfr , .J!- 71j � :t, J'x .f!r " .ilj � j,t;it r, *l-Z, r3ft 1+1 �, #-J:i � ��a, iI.. � f1lG, J'X iF � 1l!:Y

The empire-wide identification of the anti-reform coalition was intended to be a final act of enlightened distinction, permanently branding these men as a faction. As these steles were erected across the empire, the members of the anti-reform coalition continued to be deported. Issued in 1104/6, the third and final partisan blacklist represented the grand councilor's final attempt to marginalize the political opposition. Carved into stone in steles erected across the empire and upon the west wall of the palace precincts, the names of 309 former officials were permanently condemned as "wicked and "treacherous." 58 These in­ cluded the usual suspects from the first two blacklists: the prominent members of the ministerial regime of the Xuanren regency and the anti-reformist remonstrators of the Qinsheng regency. To these names were added 200 more supernumeraries, drawn from the lower reaches of

57. ]5BM 12I.15h. 58. ]5BM 122.9b-I3a.

Terms 0/Estrangement the bureaucracy. 59 A brief imperial edict prefaced the list, condemning these men as members of a "treacherous faction," equating those officials who served in both regencies. And while the first and second blacklists had consisted solely of known anti-reformists, in the third edition those named as the "treacherous faction of Yuanyou" closely overlapped with Cai Jing's personal enemies list. 60 They included prominent members of the reform coalition who had either challenged Cai for the councilorship or had refused to join his ministry, among them Zeng Bu and Zhang Dun, who were singled out for their "ministerial disloyalty." By including the names of his major reformist rivals on the third and fmal blacklist, Cai Jing succeeded in liquidating all potential rivals for power from within his own faction. With the ranks of anti­ reformists forcibly relocated to Ungnan, alongside his one-time re­ formist colleagues on the Council of State, Cai succeeded in eliminating all who had opposed his ascent to the councilorship. FurthemlOre, the descendants and

kin of the ''Yuanyou faction" were

permanently banned from service in the metropolitan bureaucracy and prohibited by a series of imperial edicts from entering the capital's gates.61 In an edict of 1103/3, the sons and grandsons of the blacklisted anti-reformists were similarly maligned. According to the moralistic language of this pronouncement, the inherited wickedness of anti­ reformist descendants justified their punishment: "As for all the sons and younger brothers of the factions of the Yuanyou era and the late Yuanfu era, whether they are officeholders or not, they all are ordered to reside

59. The names of many of these men are now difficult to discern, and biographical information on hundreds of them is slight at best. Two Southern Song commentators have claimed that a majority of those blacklisted in 1102-4 did not rightfully belong there. In his HuiZhu lu #-f:., Wang Mingqing .I. aJI it (II27-ca. 1215) doubted whether all the men named to the Chongning blacklists deserved to be labeled as the "Yuanyou faction," arguing that many of these 300-plus men included "those who had vigorously argued against Yuanyou governance in the past" ;t � a iJ je.:fit.z..Jl.t :::t . See Wang Mingqing, HuiZhu lu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), houlu ft* 1.64-5. According to the late twelfth-century memoirist Fei Gun " -t" only 78 (or 98) out of the 309 men on the Chongning blacklists were truly members of the "Yuanyou faction," and the list included the "wicked" *It alongside the "righteous" .iE. See Fei Gun, Liangxi manzhi t.fE � il .t: (reprinted-Taibei: Guangwen shuju, 1969), 3.5b-6a. 60. Luo, Bei Song dangzhengyar!Jiu, 301-5. For an in-depth analysis of the 1104 blacklist, see also Vittinghoff, Proskription und Intrigue. 61. ]SBM 121.7b-8a, I2a-I2b, 15a-15b.

ARI DANIEL LEVINE externally, and not to violate the gate towers [of the capital] ." "" 7t ;fi;

& 7t ��*. A a � _ , � M � � & � , �+4�� % ft , � �.11 U!& r .62 In a related effort to prevent the contamination of imperial bloodlines, a subsequent edict universally prohibited imperial clansmen from marrying the children or grandchildren of blacklisted members of the ''Yuanyou faction."63 The full effect of these dictates against office­ holding and marriage cannot be gauged with any certainty, and it is quite possible that the extreme discourse employed to justify the Chongning proscriptions might well have exceeded the actual brutality of political practice. Moreover, as the subsequent section will demonstrate, the blacklists were abolished in II06, before the survival and integrity of the anti-reformist lineages were jeopardized any further. The ideological and biological descendants of the ''Yuanyou faction" persisted into the Southern Song, and the "Lesser Yuanyou" ,J' .71:At ministry of Zhao Ding � JllJrI- (I085-II47) dominated the court of Emperor Gaozong (r. II27-62) in the mid-II30s.64 When the age of faction (I068-II04) is analyzed as a coherent arc of historical change, the partisan proscriptions of the early Huizong reign represented not only the most brutal phase of the late Northern Song factional conflict but also its endgame. Cai Jing had conclusively ended the struggle for power at court between the reformists and anti­ reformists by systematically marginalizing the former. Even so, one can only surmise whether these proscriptions and prohibitions were ever rigorously or widely enforced. While many major figures of the anti­ reform coalition (not to mention two reformist councilors) died in Lingnan, many anti-reformists and their descendants survived into the Southern Song. The Chongning proscriptions should not be anachro­ nistically interpreted as twentieth-century forms of political warfare, but they did represent the most virulent outbreak of factionalism in Northern Song history. During the early years of the Huizong reign, the escalation of this political conflict was justified with dichotomizing rhetoric. Maligned as

62. ]SBM 12I.12a-I2b. 63. ]SBM 122.14a-14b. 64 . For a detailed political narrative of the Gaozong reign, see Teraji Jun -t J1!!. lt, Nan Sii shoki seiji rekishi kenkyii � *- fJ] Jtt] ift � J1l.. !t 1ff � (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 1988).

Terms rifEstrangement treacherous ministers, the anti-reformists of the Xuanren and Qinsheng regencies, as well as several prominent reformists, were accused of slanderous discourse, perfidious practices, and ethico-political illegiti­ macy. Blacklists and bans were described as the ultimate exercise of Huizong's powers of discriminative judgment. Once identified as un­ ethical political practitioners, those blacklisted as the ''Yuanyou faction" were excluded from the political community by proscription and de­ portation. Yet, this disjuncture in political practice did not result in any corresponding break within factional discourse. In the language of factional politics, political associations were imagined as inherently de­ structive to the ethico-political order; the preservation of the state required expelling these malefactors. In this regard, the edicts and memorials of the early Huizong reign were virtually indistinguishable from those of the 1070s, 1080s, or 1090S. From the Shenzong reign to the Huizong reign, from the ministry of Wang Anshi to that of Cai Jing, the factional conflict was fought with similar vocabularies.

The Aftermath ofthe Factional Proscriptions, IIO�7 No matter how permanently they had been intended to stand as a warning to "petty men" throughout the empire, the factional blacklist steles were demolished less than two years after the third series of pro­ scriptions was promulgated. The political purges of the early Chongning era had been intended to harmonize and stabilize the realm, but such idealistic visions of everlasting order were invalidated by a cosmological portent of disaster. After a long-tailed comet was sighted in 1106/1, a terrified Huizong read this as a sign of heavenly disapproval of his ministers, their policies, and their proscription of the opposition. Ac­ cording to the Huizong's "Basic Annals" ;f.. R. in the Song shi *- 3t, the emperor immediately ordered the destruction of the Yuanyou blacklist steles; an edict announced that the banished would be restored to the ranks of officialdom, and that (presumably "upright") remonstrators would no longer be censured or obstructed.65 Soon thereafter, Huizong promulgated an empire-wide amnesty and lifted the prohibitions against 65. For a telegraphic account of these events, see 55 20.375. The most detailed source about these matters is Zhao Tingzhi's ;t!�.t (I04o-n07) official obituary {t�, por­ tions of which were copied into ]5BM 13I.na-I2a. In his chapter in this volume, John Chaffee analyzes this source in greater depth.

ARI DANIEL LEVINE the blacklisted members of the ''Yuanyou faction." The emperor man­ dated the abolition of several of the revived New Policies and signaled his displeasure with Cai Jing by dismissing him from the counci1orship in

II06/2.66 But the emperor's hasty rollback of the Chongning proscriptions and

the reformist policy program did not initiate a tectonic shift in court politics as the coming of the Qinsheng regency once had. Nor did it usher in a renewed period of factional conflict between reformists and anti-reformists. As far as the documentary record

will show, the year of

the comet did not spur Huizong to reappoint anti-reformists to the Council of State or to promote partisan reconciliation at court. The Cai Jing ministry's proscriptions of

II02-4

had succeeded in excluding the

anti-reformists from the imperial bureaucracy, and their relaxation did not lead to the rehabilitation or reemployment of the anti-reform faction. In

IIo6-7, these sudden and belated shifts in policy and personnel came

too late to dislodge Cai Jing's patronage network from the upper reaches of the bureaucracy, and the reformists continued to monopolize authority in his absence. To make a long story short, Cai Jing's loyal

II07/ I, and he retained until II20, when he was

subordinates arranged for his reinstatement in the councilorship (with brief interruptions)

elderly and losing his vision. Cai succeeded in forging a symbiotic rela­ tionship with the emperor that endured almost until the very end of the Northern Song. Compared to the tumultuous years between

1068

and

II04,

the re­

mainder of the Huizong reign represented an era of relative political stability at court. Despite occasional flare-ups, the conflict between re­ formists and anti-reformists was effectively over, and the opposition to the reformists and their policies was no longer based within the imperial bureaucracy itself. The progenitors of the True Way Learning

l! �

movement, who had been affiliated with the anti-reform coalition, re­ turned to their localities as private citizens and scholars, or were em­ ployed as teachers in the expanded state educational system. During the

IIIOS

and

II20S,

the institutional locus of opposition to the Cai Jing

ministry was the Imperial University

;k. � , which

became a hotbed of

66. For a thorough account of the policy changes of the Huizong reign and the re­ curring dismissals and rehabilitations of Cai Jing, see John Chaffee's chapter in this volume.

Terms ofEstrangement dissent in the final years of the Northern Song. The imperial court was not refactionalized until the dire circumstances of the Song-Jin wars di­ vided the imperial court between hawks and doves.67 Other chapters in this volume will demonstrate that the IIIOS and II20S witnessed trans­ formations in political and court culture that diverged dramatically from the first five years of Huizong's reign. In terms of political practice, these decades were a different world from the age of faction, which was effectively over after the final blacklist of II04.

Marryrology and Demonology: The Chongning Factional Proscriptions in Song HistoriograpkJ Historical revisionism has complicated the task of assessing the casualty count and the long-term impact of the Chongning factional proscrip­ tions. The narrative shape of this chapter has been determined by the composition, distribution, and survival of historical texts that cover the early Huizong reign. Portions of the documentary record of Huizong's reign were either lost or destroyed during or after the Jurchen sack of Kaifeng in II27, giving Southern Song court historiographers no choice but to reconstruct the history of the Huizong reign from disparate textual fragments. Due to the paucity of the documentary record, the compila­ tion of the Veritable Records -t� of the Huizong reign occupied Southern Song court historiographers for several decades, from the late II30S until II77.68 During the compilation process, any documents that might have portrayed the achievements of Huizong's ministers in a positive light were systematically excluded from the Veritable Records of Emperor Huizong and from the subsequent State History Jt of the four reigns of the late Northern Song. Sections of these works of official history were incorporated into the Song shi, the standard dynastic history, and into the unofficial chronicles that have survived to the present. Since the Veritable Records and State History of the late Northern Song reigns are no longer extant, historians have long relied upon Li Tao's

67. For a study of the factional disputes of II26-27, see Luo Jiaxiang iIi � #, "Jing­ kang danglun yu Jingkang zhi nan' " � .. :t � �"� "-Z-�," Huazhong shifan daxue xuebao * '1' trr �:k**� 2002.3: 74-80. 68. For a textual history of the long gestation process of the Veritable Records rfEmperor Huizong, see chap. 2 of Levine, "A House in Darkness."

ARI DANIEL LEVI N E

166 privately compiled

Xu iiZhi tongjian changbian (u83)

as the principal

chronicle of Northern Song political history. However, the extant ver­ sion of this text extends only as far as the month after Huizong's en­ thronement. A fraction of entries from the Xu iiZhi tongjian changbian has been collected and classified in a shorter topical compilation, Yang

lIi 1+ It (1241-71) Xu iiZhi tongjian changbianjishi benmo t.t 1t �� l&�-k � .*C. "*** (ca. 1220), which compresses the official court histories of the Northern Song. In this text, as well as the Song shi itself, Zhongliang's

the narrative of the Chongning proscriptions was polarized to eulogize the victimized and condemn their victimizers. The same dichotomizing discourse that had once been employed by ministers and remonstrators in the late Northern Song continued to operate in the Southern Song, when the factional conflict's historians imposed retroactive moral judgments upon the political practitioners and associations of the past. I have argued elsewhere that the discourse and practice of Southern Song and Yuan official historiography involved the articulation of competing claims to political legitimacy. 69 When the final version of Northern Song political history was completed, after a protracted and contested period of gestation, Huizong's reform ministry was retroactively excluded from membership in the political community. Blaming Cai Jing and his fellow reformists for the collapse of the Northern Song in

U26-27,

remembered as the "Calamity of Jingkang"

� llz�, the court historians of the Gaozong and Xiaozong (r. 116289) reigns condemned a series of reformist regimes from Wang Anshi to

Cai Jing as illegitimate. These compilers of the documentary record maligned the reformists as constituting a "treacherous faction" of "petty men," while portraying the so-called Yuanyou faction as an as­ sociation of "superior men" who nobly defended the state from internal and external enemies, only to fall victim to factional proscriptions. Since Gaozong was the only one of Huizong's sons to have escaped Jurchen captivity, the deposed emperor could not be allowed to bear the blame for the fall of Kaifeng, but his ministers could be portrayed as scapegoats for dynastic collapse. Thus, the "Calamity of Jingkang,"

69. For a discussion of the ways in which Southern Song and Yuan official historians revised the narrative of the late Northern Song factional conflict, see chaps. 2 and 3 of Levine, "A House in Darkness."

Terms ofEstrangement which ended the Northern Song, was read back into the history of the Shenzong and Zhezong reigns, as court historians constructed a teleo­ logical narrative of the age of faction. The persecution of the ''Yuanyou faction" during the early Hllizong reign constitutes one strand of this manipulated narrative of late Northern Song history. During the Southern Song and Yuan, the tables were turned and historical verdicts were reversed: those whom the Cai Jing ministry had accused of fac­ tional treachery were now eulogized as virtuous martyrs, and Huizong's reformist ministers were demonized for the treasonous crime of factionalism. Perhaps the greatest of their transgressions, aside from the "Calamity of Jingkang" itself, were the Chongning proscriptions, which had made martyrs of the anti-reformists and demons of the reformists who persecuted them. While historians who study the Hllizong reign can attempt to correct for the biases of their Southern Song and Yuan predecessors, their moralistic judgments pervade the very fabric of historiography, turning primary sources into secondary sources. Even if scholars discard these moralistic categories of historical analysis, and refrain from making judgments about "superior men" and "petty men," the documentary record has been shaped in such a way as to highlight these binary moral distinctions through the composition and distribution of the corpus of primary sources. While it is certainly possible to avoid condemning the Cai Jing regime, it is equally possible that the actual damage done by the Chongning factional proscriptions has been overestimated for narrative purposes. While many on Cai's enemies list died after being deported to Lingnan, many of the biological and ideological heirs of the anti-reform movement survived into the Southern Song. A social history of the Chongning blacklists, drawing upon such sources as funerary inscrip­ tions and genealogies, is beyond the scope of this chapter, but certainly deserves further research.

Conclusions Throughout the late Northern Song, as factions battled one another for power at court, the language of politics remained a relatively stable field of discourse. Political utterances and texts from the early Huizong reign would have been immediately comprehensible to councilors and remonstrators of the Shenzong reign or the Xuanren regency. The key terms of this "language of politics" were consistently employed for

168

ARI DANIEL LEVIN E

more than three decades by political rhetoricians to demarcate the le­ gitimate boundaries of the political community. Factional discourse was premised upon an impermeable boundary between legitimate and illegitimate political practitioners. The vocabularies of political practi­ tioners consisted of sets of paired binary terms, which distinguished the "righteous" from the "wicked," the "loyal" from the "treacherous," the "altruistic" from the "selfish." By rhetorically linking their adver­ saries with these negative moral qualities and accusing them of unethical political practices, the authors of memorials denied them political legitimacy. Councilors and remonstrators urged their monarchs to exercise their powers of discriminative judgment, insisting that the very survival of the state depended upon eliminating illegitimate political actors from court. If these nefarious factions were permitted to remain at court, the established boundaries of the ethico-political order would be blurred, the state would be subverted, and monarchical authority would be usurped. On the other hand, if these treacherous ministers were purged from the political community, ethical unanimity would be achieved at court, and the empire would undergo a moral revitalization from the top down and from the center outwards. Through the Qinsheng regency and the early years of Huizong's personal rule, remonstrators shared these basic assumptions, conceiving of the political community and political practices in terms of binary oppositions. However, in the language of factional politics, one term in this dis­ criminative vocabulary lacked an oppositional counterpart: the word "faction" itself. Rhetorically linked with negative adjectives such as "treacherous" and "wicked," factions were exclusively conceived of as illegitimate political associations. Whether reformists or anti-reformists, remonstrators and councilors invariably indicted their adversaries of the crime of factionalism. In factional discourse (in publicly-circulated texts, at least), factions were invariably described as inherently destructive to the ethico-political order. Factious ministers were charged with forsaking the ideal of "public-mindedness" and "loyalty" to embrace "selfishness" and "treachery," to have engaged in "sycophancy" in order to "delude the ruler." Endowed with malicious natures, unethical political practi­ tioners were impelled to usurp authority and engage in illegitimate activities such as factional collusion. In the political imagination of the late Northern Song, since rulers were considered to be extremely fallible,

----------------------......

---------------

Terms ofEstrangement susceptible to sycophants and malefactors, the ethico-political order would always be vulnerable to factionalism. Only an enlightened ruler who could discern the "righteous" from the "wicked" could prevent factions from increasing in influence. If monarchs did not discern and purge them from court, these malign associations would ultimately de­ stroy the polity from within. Throughout the factional conflict, political utterances and memorials were written within this intellectual context. In both reformist and anti-reformist remonstrance, emperors and regents were urged to identify and eliminate factions before they undermined the state beyond all hope of redemption. Purged members of the opposition were accused of engaging in factional treachery, and ministerial regimes employed increasingly harsh and systematic methods to punish them. All the while, the escalation of political proscriptions was justified to the ruler by employing the same political language. In the political imagination of the late Northern Song, factions were exclusively described as malign and illegitimate political associations. And even as the political landscape was dominated by contending ministerial coalitions, concerted political action was invariably associated with treachery and sycophancy. While these two court coalitions engaged in a protracted struggle for dominance, they did not describe themselves as factions, only their enemies. In political theory and political discourse, "petty men" formed factions to deceive the ruler and subvert the state, while "superior men" acted independently to serve the ruler and defend the state. Nefarious ministers formed factions for selfish gain, while model ministers tirelessly served the public good. Throughout the fac­ tional conflict, opposing political associations were invariably con­ demned as factions, while political practitioners proclaimed their innocence of these charges. Political coalitions dominated the imperial court, but political practitioners could only conceive of concerted political action as unethical and illegitimate. Over the course of three decades of factional conflict, the language of politics did not expand to encompass alternative ways of imagining the political community or alternative ways of describing political associa­ tions. Perhaps the political theorists and rhetoricians of the late Northern Song shared a conception of the essential unity of values and politics that set the boundaries of factional discourse. Peter Bol has suggested that the totalizing political visions of both Wang Anshi and Sima Guang shared a conception of the unity of ethical values and political institutions, and it

170

ARI DAN I E L LEVI NE

is arguable that the political rhetoric of their ideological and political heirs was predicated upon this ideal.70 Hence, members of both minis­ terial coalitions rhetorically associated themselves with the ethico­ political virtue of "the public good," persuading monarchs and regents that excluding the "selfish" and "factious" opposition would lead to the moral revitalization and unification of court, bureaucracy, society, and polity. Yet, from 1070 to II04, the discourse of factionalism was insuffi­ ciently elastic for political practitioners to accommodate themselves to the realities of factional politics. When rhetoricians used a shared language of politics to justify the brutalization of political practice, a disjuncture opened up between political discourse and practice. While their rhetoric had the effect of sharpening the ethical boundaries of the political order between "superior men" and "petty men," no such divisions separated the political languages of reforniists and anti­ reformists. From the onset of the late Northern Song factional conflict to its conclusion, the rules of engagement had changed, but the terms of estrangement had not.

70. See Bol, "Government, Society, and State," 183-87. For an analysis of the efforts of reform ministries from Wang Anshi to Cai Qing to morally transform society through political institutions and state policy, see also Peter Bol's chapter in this volume.

j

1 I

P A RT I I

Imperial Ideology

C HAPTER 4

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too Emperorship and Autocracy Under the New Policies Peter K. Bol

There is a view that China's political history has been marked by au­ tocracy. As Cheng Minsheng writes, "It is [still held to be] a basic his­ torical truth that the course of China's feudal history was, from start to finish, one of ever increasing autocracy, centralization, and despotism."l Moreover, the idea of a regrettable shift toward autocratic rulership has been seen as the foremost political outcome of the Tang-Song transition. The emperor, primus interpares in Tang, became the last aris­ tocrat in Song, a Mongol khan in Yuan, a despot who arbitrarily beat and executed officials in the Ming, and such a powerful figure in the Qing that servitors performed an elaborate obeisance in his presence. Yet even

This essay develops issues I raised in a paper for the first Huizong workshop at the University of Washington, 2000, and published as "Whither the Emperor? Emperor Huizong, the New Policies, and the Tang-Song Transition," Journal ofSong Yuan Studies 31 (2001). Comments by Paul Smith, Philip Kuhn, John Chaffee, Kojima Tsuyoshi, and others have also benefited this essay. I . Cheng Minsheng :U. � !l , "Lun Songdai shidafu zhengzhi dui huangquan de xianzhi" �* 1.1(. ± :k �jfi�1t xfi f!!J Ftt -$.) , in Songshiyanjiu lunwenji * 3t ��� � if; (Ningxia: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 1993), 16r. Cheng's point is to argue that shidafu were sometimes able to restrict and weaken imperial autocracy.

174

PETER K . B O L

those who explained the rise of autocracy as a consequence of the disappearance of aristocracy and rise of meritocracy who argued in effect that the civil administrative leadership chosen on the basis of merit through an examination system lacked the social status necessary to constrain imperial power saw this as a dissonant note in the Tang­ Song transition.2 After all, autocracy seems a bit out of place in a better educated society; with an elite defined by education; with great increases in the production of wealth; in a world in which foreign states had greater power than ever before and foreign policy had to acknowledge a multi-state world; where government was more sophisticated than ever before; and where thinkers were interested in theories that gave them a totalizing perspective on politics, culture, and society. The autocratic thesis needs to be challenged, but it would be foolish to deny that there was an emperor who was surrounded by symbols of his ultimate and unique authority. Huizong's reign provides us with an in­ terestingly complicated case for study. He was not a founding emperor, whom we would expect to have a great amount of personal authority; he was something of a dilettante, whom we would expect to be at the mercy of his ministers; and yet his reign is marked by signs of autocratic rule. On the one hand, the court insisted on policies intended to impose uniformity on mass and elite society. "Making morality uniform and the customs the same" � It.�� Jlt{� applied to both farmers and literati. On the other hand, it went beyond ignoring and banishing critics to suppressing them harshly: blacklisting and exiling leading opponents and suppressing the teachings and writings of their spokesmen. In addition there were signs that the court was catering to the imperial whim rather than restraining it. True, Huizong's self-indulgences were not unprece­ dented: other dynasties had built expensive imperial gardens. His reli­ gious policy was not entirely new either: others had attempted to sup­ press Buddhism. But how often had an emperor suppressed Buddhism in order to patronize a Daoism led by a sect that proclaimed him the son of the divine Jade Emperor, as Huizong did? It is important, if we are to use Huizong to address larger historical questions, to decide whether we wish to see him and his reign as idio-

2. Miyazaki Ichisada '&' �-;jl;t, Tqyoteki no kinsei ,iUf tI-J 0) it i!t (Tokyo: Kyuiku

taimususha, 1950).

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too

175

syncratic and aberrant, a consequence of his whim and personality rather than of plans and an agenda. By his own proclamations and by the sub­ stance of his reign's policies, the Huizong reign can be shown to be an effort to continue the work of his father Shenzong (r. 1067-85) and his brother Zhezong (under regency 1085-93; reigning in his own right 1093-IIOO) and the New Policies agenda to which they had subscribed. If we see him in this light, then we might also see that the Southern Song rejection of Huizong and his court had less to do with the unique aspects of his reign than with the political program his reign continued to defend.3 It is out of the conviction that the Huizong era was of a piece with previous eras that I think his conduct of the emperorship can tell us something about what was happening to emperorship after the Tang order and its oligarchy of great clans fell. Given that so much else was changing between the eighth century and the twelfth, we have every reason to suppose that emperorship was changing as well. Huizong presents an opportunity to see whether "autocracy" provides us with the most useful way of understanding the outcome.

The Question ifAutocra0' In Western scholarship perhaps because the autocracy thesis is still commonplace revisionist attempts to address the question of autoc­ racy have been infrequent at best. But it is hard to identify a Song emperor other than the founders (except perhaps Huizong) who be­ haved autocratically. In fact a more striking feature of Song political life was the powerful grand councilor, such as Huizong's Cai Jing 1}.. :r. (1046-II26), who dominated the court for an extended period. James T. C. Liu once dealt with this phenomenon by substituting "absolutism" for autocracy and describing such grand councilors as the emperor's surrogates.4

3. For a fuller account of the Huizong reign as one part of the New Policies period see Bol, ''Whither the Emperor? Emperor Huizong, the New Policies, and the Tang-Song Transition," JOHrnal ofSong YHan StHdies 31 (2001): 103-34. 4. James T. C. Liu, China THrning Inward: Intel/ectHal-Political Changes in the EarlY Twelfth CentHry (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1988).

176

PETER K . B O L

In China and Japan the question of whether Song gave rise to au­ tocracy is still very much a matter of debate. Some have assumed autocracy and asked how it came about. Liu Jingzhen, for example, ar­ gues that autocracy was a consequence of the first two emperors' efforts to centralize authority.S Other scholars have challenged the characteri­ zation of the Song political system as autocratic. Teraji Jun, for example, in calling for a reconceptualization of political history, envisions the emperor as a central part of the administrative system, not as something apart from it.6 Kondo Kazunari and others argue that the characteristic of the Song political system is not autocracy but "scholar-official (shidqfu) government," made possible by the existence of the examination system as a means of validating political authority.7 Wang Ruilai has developed this extensively in an in-depth study of the Zhenzong reign (997-1021). Wang's argument is that over the long run, the emperor shifted from being a figure with administrative power to one with symbolic power, tightly constrained by the system he was part of, even ifhe did not always act according to the ideals his ministers urged upon him. In an inspired analogy, Wang proposes that we envision the emperor not as the top of a pyramid but as a keystone in an arch, whose successful functioning de­ pended on his staying in his place.8 Cheng Minsheng has pointed to the

5. Not unlike Wang Ruilai (see below), Liu finds a change with the third emperor, Zhenzong. Liu argues, however, that this was not an institutional change but a failure of personality: Zhenzong lacked the personal qualities necessary to function as an autocrat. He contented himself with symbols and let ministers and the empress gain power. Renzong, the fourth emperor, increased his power by acting as the arbiter between scholar-official factions. All in all I am not sure that this account demonstrates the in­ stitution of autocratic rule in practice. See Liu Jingzhen 'Ht fl , Bei Song qianqi huangdi he tamen de quanli :It. *- � M .t i" :fu-N!.1I"l tr.J � fJ (Taipei: Daoxiang chuban she, 1996). 6. Teraji Jun -4f �lt, "Sodai seijishi kenkyii Mho shiron" *- 1-1;.ifiif; 3t �� 7J)};; � �, in Satake Yasuhiko 1ti.1t* fl , ed., So Genjidaishi no kihon mondai *-7tnt1-l;.0)�*" ro' JI! (Tokyo: Kyiiko shoin, 1996) 3: 69-91. 7. Kondo Kazunari .iU.:jjj. - A, "Sodai shidaifu seiji no tokushoku" *- 1-1;. ± :kAifiif; O) # @. , in Iwanami koza sekai rekishi: Chuka no bunretsu to saisei, san-jusan seiki -*i.t�& i!t ..fr- !l 3t 9: t *o)?7'" � t .jlHt, ..::.. � + ..::.. i!t � (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1999) 9: 305-26. 8. Wang Ruilai I � *, SOdai no kotei kenryoku to shidaifu seiji *-1-1;.O).t i"lff. fJ t ± :k AJi if; (Tokyo: Kyiiko shoin, 2001), esp. 493-512. See also Wang Ruilai, "Lun Songdai xiangquan" � ;!U-l;. �I'I �, Lishiyanjiu !l3t�� 1985-2: 106-20; and Wang Ruilai, "Lun Songdai huangquan" � *- 1-1;. .t �, Lishiyanjiu !l 3t � � 1989.1: 144-60.

Emperors Can Claim Antiquiry Too

177

ways in which literati officials effectively constrained the emperor.9 Alan Wood has shown that Neo-Confucianism was not at all the handmaiden of autocratic rule it has been claimed to be. 1 0 This is not to say that there are not strong defenders of the autocratic thesis, who argue, for example, that social integration in China is dependent on and deeply informed by a consistently autocratic mode of governance. 1 1 If there is to be a debate over autocracy, it ought to be part of a larger argument about the changing nature of elite society. There is general agreement that in Tang, at least into the eighth century, the na­ tional elite was defined ideally by a combination of honor, status, and culture, where honor was derived from official rank (for which there were multiple hierarchical ranking systems), status was derived from membership in a clan whose pedigree was recognized by the court (through a national clan list), and culture was defined by a mastery of court texts and literary practices which could be tested through exami­ nation. In the Tang imperial view, political, social, and cultural worth were supposed to be measured by the state system Tang had created. In an effort to end the sometimes chaotic centuries of northern and southern dynasties, Tang inculcated in society a dependence on hierar­ chical authority that simply increased when the elite was no longer led by an oligarchy of great clans and that in fact pervaded the rest of Chinese history and society.

An increasing number of scholars around the world

working on middle-period history argue that elite society changed fun­ damentally when the shi were transformed from a national elite of official families to a national elite of educated families whose officeholding was occasional and whose family fortunes in practice depended on networks for maintaining local dominance in the places where their families had settled.

A

Northern Song literatus could have understood that the Song was

different from the Tang in its sociopolitical structure without concluding

9. Cheng Minsheng, "Lun Songdai shidafu zhengzhi dui huangquan de xianzhi." 10. Alan T. Wood, Umits to Autocrary: From Sung Neo-Confucianism to a Doctrine ofPolitical Rights (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995). II. Chiigokushi kenkyiikai
178

PETER K . B O L

that literati local elites would become the characteristic social fomlation of the centuries to come. After all, the hallmark of Northern Song po­ litical life was the attempt to reform government as a means of trans­ forming society. The New Policies regimes that began in 1068 had ac­ tivist, interventionist agendas. Yet even conservatives such as Sima Guang � .� 7'C. (1019-86) asserted that stopping social change and re­ turning to stability ultimately depended on government. Given that gov­ ernment was central to the agendas of both institutional reformers and conservatives, we may well ask what the place of the emperor was to be in all this. What we find is somewhat counterintuitive. Sima Guang, the great spokesman for opponents of an activist government, wrote at length on the crucial role the emperor had to play to make the system function. Wang Anshi .£ �.ki (1021-86), the foremost author of the New Policies, seems not to have thought much about the role of the emperor (aside from demanding that he support his grand councilor). In the New Poli­ cies themselves the emperor was hardly visible. Certainly the policies themselves came from planning commissions controlled by the ministers; they were not inspired by the emperor. The record of interaction be­ tween the emperor and Wang Anshi found in our most detailed source for the period, the Xu =dZhi tongjian changbian I.t 1t n; it � -k. � (Con­ tinued long draft for Aid in Government), suggests that the emperor was concerned with personnel decisions and challenges to the regime, not that he was providing administrative leadership. This does not seem to have changed after Wang's final retirement in 1076. The restructuring of the government in the Yuanfeng period (1078-85) made the Council of State supreme and had all arms of government reporting to it rather than to the emperor. Chen Guan ft. (1057-1122) suggests that this emphasis on ministerial rather than imperial initiative was quite self-conscious. After he stopped being a loyal New Policies man, he described how he had once told the emperor to recognize Wang Anshi as his teacher, and that it was Wang who was the sage. 1 2 The role of the emperor was a matter of discussion, however, and what seems counterintuitive need not be. Conservatives, who believed that the governmental structure was adequate to meet the challenge of 12. Chen Guan, Song Zhongsu Chen Liaozhai Siming zun Yaoji *- .'t .ft r * \1!1 a}J :f. �

if; (Xuxiu SKQS ed.), preface, citing I.7b.

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too

179

governing unless those in power changed the structure without cause, or maintained it poorly, envisioned a smoothly working government with defIned and limited functions. Sima Guang as leader of the opposition saw the emperor's role as essential to holding together a hierarchical structure of authority in which administrative power was delegated. In Sima's scheme of things, the emperor's task was to manage the bu­ reaucracy, using the power to reward and punish to try to ensure that offIcials fulfilled the required functions of their offIces. 13 The three successive New Policies regimes had a penchant for developing new policies for modern problems; their willingness to countenance local initiative suggests a proclivity for ministerial government, or "shidqfu governance" as Kondo and Wang would put it. In theory the system was autocratic because there was an emperor and because fInal decision-making power was lodged in him. But if in practice the emperor's administrative authority was circumscribed, if the structure of government did not place the emperor in the position to initiate policy or control its formulation, and if those who were writing about how to conceive of government and its relation to soci­ ety did not see an integral role for the emperor or sharply circum­ scribed it, then the continued focus on "autocracy" begins to look more like a moral judgment of "Chinese culture" from a liberal-democratic perspective than a conclusion reached through historical inquiry. For statesmen at the time, the issue was not "autocracy" but the proper balance between "ruler" and "minister" as the key relationship in poli­ tics. But even so, the Huizong reign suggests that this relationship had become destabilized and that the role of the emperor had yet to be clarifIed. So let us go back to the fundamental issue: what was the role of the emperor supposed to be? In particular, what was the role of the emperor supposed to be under the New Policies, when the regime was led by ac­ tivist ministers who envisioned a government that would play an inter­ ventionist and even entrepreneurial role in transforming society? If we can see how the fIrst New Policies regimes and emperors together de­ fIned the imperial role, then we can evaluate what happened under Huizong. To do that, we need a means of conducting a comparative 13. Peter K. Bol, "This Culture of Ours": Intellectual Transitions in Tang and Song China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 220-22, 239-43.

180

PETER K . B O L

analysis extending from the 1070S to the II20S. Luckily, the very first New Policies regime invented the precise vehicle for this inquiry in the course of its attempt to establish a national ideology through the schools.

New Policies' Education and the Palace Examination Question The New Policies regime's policy on education was to literati what the guard and tithing system 18- If � and the "Green Sprouts" rural credit program * iii � were to the farming population. It involved unprece­ dented investments in education, with state schools established in every prefecture and county and salaried teachers appointed. Under Huizong, smaller primary schools were attached to these schools and all schools adopted the three-grade system of the National University. The goal was a graded system in which students would be promoted from the county school to the prefectural school and thence to the National University. Schools were supposed to provide students with room and board, using income derived from rents on local government land. We do not have many figures, but in 1109 there were 167,662 registered students in schools supported by rents from over 100,000 qing (about I.5 mj))jon acres) of land. Special schools for math, law, painting, calligraphy, and medicine were established at the capital (and eventually medical schools were mandated for all prefectures). 14 The school system was real.­ students were expected to be present, they had regular examinations, and they were promoted from one grade to the next on the basis of exami­ nations (at the primary, county, prefectural, and capital levels, there were three grades that might function as separate schools). The newly expanded school system was intended to supersede the examination system. From 1107 to 1120 the traditional examination sys­ tem, in which literati not affiliated with any school might take the pre­ fectural qualifying examinations, was abolished. That is, thenceforth students could enter the examinations only through the school system. The students graduated from the county to the prefecture to the

14. Edward Kracke, "The Expansion of Educational Opportunity in the Reign of Hui-tsung of the Sung and Its Implications," Sung Studies Newsietter I3 (1977): 6-30, citing the Director of Education in II09.

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too National University and then, once every three years, university students took the palace examination, or, if their grades were exceptional, they could be appointed directly from the university to office (about 30 students were directly appointed every year). The quota for passes was increased by about 50 percent (from 550 to 750 every three years), but only those who had passed through the school system were eligible.1s For the first time the educational system and the selection system were united. These developments began under Wang Anshi. In 1069 various offi­ cials were ordered to submit their views on the examination system and education. The policy adopted allowed for a transition period that was completed with the examinations of 1076. What changed? First, the "Various Fields" (li#) that awarded degrees for the memorization of various sets of canonical texts and knowledge of the official commen­ taries were abolished, leaving only the "Presented Literatus" or Jinshi field. The Jinshi field was changed: instead of writing a regulated verse poem and rhyme-prose on set themes, candidates were to write ten discussions of the meaning of passages from a single classic of their choice (Odes, Documents, Change, Rites 0/ Zhou, Book 0/ Rites), and ten discussions of the meaning of passages from the Analects and Mencius, reflecting the new emphasis on the classics as the source of generalizable principles for government. As before, there would be one essay on a set theme, and three treatises in response to questions about policy issues of the day or problems relevant to the study of past texts. The courses and texts were the same for county, prefectural, and capital schools. To a large extent literati learning was being focused almost exclusively on the study of the classics, which students learned to apply in three written forms: essays on the significance of passages from the classics, thematic prose essays, and questions on policy choices and differences of interpretation. Moreover, the government provided students with

15. An authoritative account of changes in educational institutions under Huizong is Yuan Zheng $.1iE., Songdaijiaoyu Zhongguo gudaijiaoyu de lishixing zhuanzhe * 1.1(.� 1f­ 'f 1/ -1; 1.1(.� 1f f!!J If. 3t ,ti .... �". (Guangdong: Guangdong gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 1991), 120-51. A thoughtful discussion is Kondo Kazunari iltiii- - A, "Sai Kyo no kakyo, gakko seisaku" � :Y: 0#,*, '* :tiift�, T6yoshi kenkyii 53-1 (1994): 24-49. Kondo argues that the triennial examinations during these years were exceptions to the rule in each case, and that Cai had hoped to appoint all officials directly from the National University.

PETER K . B O L commentaries on the texts: the

New Meanings 0/ the Institutes 0/ Zhou

)lj 'it tJT.l, Odes, and Documents were produced by Wang Anshi, his son Wang Pang .I. :!f (1042-76), and the Office for Commentaries on the

Change, Book Explanation 0/ Characters � �,

Classics; Wang Anshi himself wrote commentaries on the

0/ Rites,

and

Analects

and produced the

which explained the moral significance of the words used in the classics. Wang Pang wrote the commentary on the

Mencius.

No histories were

to be taught. Under Huizong the curriculum was expanded to include a field in studies of legal codes in 1102 and there was a field in the Daoist

Inner Classic 0/ the Yellow Emperor ,*, * J*.J t& , and Hui­ zong's commentaries on the Laoif, Zhuangif, and Lieif between 1118 and classics

the

1124.1 6 At the same time the court made clear what students should not study. The one classic that used the judgment of historical events as a means of guiding government in the present, the

Spnng and Autumn Annals,

was

dropped from the examinations. Under Huizong the moral philosophy of the Cheng brothers was forbidden. Literary models were not to be taken from Su Shi

.Ii $X.

(1037-1101) and his group. At various mo­

ments the antipathy toward other areas of scholarship was especially pronounced Ouyang Xiu's

as when students at the National University burned

��1t}

(1007-72) writings

but generally it was forbid­

den to teach historical and literary works as well as the teachings and writings of the anti-New Policies officials who dominated the court during the Yuanyou

jtAf; era (1085-93). Criticism ("slander") of the

court was considered a top infraction of school rules and might have resulted in exile.

All this

gives us a sense that the education system was committed to

some sort of uniformity of views, to an orthodoxy. From the start, New Policies educational plans had been geared toward achieving what was presumed to be fundamental to accomplishing the rest of the policy goals: "unifying morality and making customs uniform"

fengsu), 1 7 Unity

(yi daode tong

of values and social mores was fundamental to trans­

forming society, but it was also proof that society had been transformed. Opponents argued Shi in particular

the circle around the great literary intellectual Su

that it was not possible to achieve human uniformity,

16. Yuan Zheng, Songdaijiaqyu, 30-31, 43. 17. SHY xuanju 3.44b, for 1071/2/1.

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too no matter how laudable the ends uniformity was meant to serve. 1 8 But for the court it was good, both as a precondition for the integrated and prosperous social order it sought to create and as a consequence of creating it. Even the edict creating the Painting Academy asserted that it would "unify morality and show respect for following models in order to make

all practices under heaven the same"

:k r � ,%, .19

-l! -tt $I -#(. � J'X M

One of the educational reforms instituted immediately was a change in the palace examination. Beginning in

1070

candidates at the palace ex­

amination wrote a single long treatise in response to one extended ques­ tion issued by the palace in the imperial voice. The questions from to

I172

1070

have survived. 20 These questions provide us with a unique and

continuous record of the imperial voice speaking to

all those who aspired

to enter government service. The questions represent the imperial posi­ tion in a very public and intensely normative forum; they tell us some­ thing about the policy concerns of the moment, but they also reveal how the emperor was being positioned relative to officialdom and society.

National Poliff and the Imperial Voice I: The Shenzong Reign The first of the palace questions was issued in

1070.

It reads:

When the sages exercised kingship over the empire (tianxia), all officials fulfilled the duties of their offices, and all affairs were correctly organized. If there was something left undone, then they did it, and whatever they did succeeded. If there was someone left unreformed, then they reformed him, and whomever they reformed accepted it. The fields were opened to farming; the irrigation

18. Peter K. Bol, "Examinations and Orthodoxies: 1070 and 1313 Compared," in Theodore Huters, R. Bin Wong, and Pauline Yu, eds., Culture and the State in Chinese History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 29-57; and Bol, "The Examination System and Sung Literati Culture," in Leon Vandermeersch, ed., Lz societe civileface Ii /'itat dans les traditions chinoise,japonaise, coreenne et vietnamienne (paris: Ecole fran<;aise d'extreme-orient, 1994), 55-75· 19. See SS 157.3688 and SHY chongru 3.la. Note that the Painting Academy's students were divided between the literati and painters of other social backgrounds. 20. They are found in the SHY xuanju 7.19a-8.14b. From answers preserved in literary collections we can also identify questions for II84, Il90, II99, 1208 (possibly 12Il), 1217, 1232, 1235, 1238 (or 1241), 1253, and 1256.

PETER K. B O L channels were in good repair. Plants and trees flourished. Fowl and beast, fish and snake, all realized their natures. Their wealth was sufficient for making the rites complete; their knowledge was sufficient for extending [the suasive power of] music. Their governance was sufficient for making punishments accurately fit [the crime] . Gentlemen, what must be done to attain this? The failings of the present moment may be said to be legion. The method of repair must have a rationality and the appropriateness of the application of [that method] must have a logic. This is something you, Gentlemen, must have un­ derstood. Since the beginning of civilization what has been called "Perfect Order"

(.f.. n; )

has always been said to have been the times of Yao and Shun, of King

Cheng and the Duke of Zhou. The

Odes and Documents tell of them. Their traces

are visible. In later ages rulers of wisdom and radiance and ministers of loyalty and intelligence worked together to manage the enterprise of their times. Even if they were not completely good, there must be something that can be said about how they accomplished it. Write about the details, We shall read it personally.

1: 1: A.Z.!. k. r�, Ef

1" �!fJt.�, � * �!f Jt. ,q. . lf i'IT � �, � Z .11i � � A . lf i'IT :f $, $z.11i � :f JUt. m "'4 1WJ , )4 ilrt n; , � � � Ii., .� it .�, J., � FJj" � �!f Jt. ·t(Hi *' Jt. t; Jt.J'X � 4., Jt. 9;11 )V'X Jl �,Jt. 5f; Jt ItX it *,1. -t :k. � ItX �, f.;T M1 J1Q � ItX � Jr.? -;? �Z � , � � 4r t-. '*zzl!, ·;L:. lf **-' i'lTM1z11:, ·;L:. lf ;tAt, Jr.-t:k.�FJj" 11: 9;11 �. !t l\ ItX *,i'IT�.f.. if;, .;L:. a Jt II, A %J zat. -tt t' l$i., Jt.J1F� JL. ItX .f.. ft 1l!:, l)f a}] zg, .'t � z lf , �n �1I:fl]JIx * - 1�z!". _*- _ -!-, -t-Jt.i'lTltx A '!'b

..;,. .." -J: � -=- � -J ii- --fl .

,� , IjJ' ')l..i. "FJ

Jt..,;" � ' '" iiTTZ,

Q"" �k lta IGi � 21 �1J'CJ'"�JPt. �� .

The model that Shenzong resorts to (although the likely author is Wang Anshi) is that of universal kingship in which a sage-king governs and all the world is set right. Note, however, that here the bureaucracy and its work is interposed between the king and good order in the agro­ economic, natural, and cultural-political worlds. This is not autocracy, but it does reject two conservative ideas: that received institutions should not be changed and that policy should be decided according to the views of those who are serving in government. Instead, institutions and men must be made to serve the purposes that have been assigned them on the basis of a timeless model of perfect order. The candidates are asked for a systemic analysis: what is the rational structure of government and what is the logical sequence of its activities? The ancient world of "Perfect Order" is vaguely contrasted with the later

21.

SHY xuanju 7.19a-b. The introductory sentences have not been translated.

Emperors Can Claim Antiquiry Too historical world, and candidates are invited to state whether there is anything worth learning from the later historical experience of trying to emulate antiquity. In the question for "facilitated degree" candidates that same year, the contrast between the ancient and the historical (in which the historical epoch begins with the centralized bureaucratic system of the Qin and Han worlds) is one in which antiquity exists as a timeless system em­ bodying both central states and the northern tribes, whereas the later age is bound to time defined by the rise and fall of successive dynasties. In asking candidates to explain this difference, the question rules out what we know was the conservative answer at the time: there is nothing wrong with the system of government as received; it is merely a question of finding the right men to govern it. Simply finding the right men for office is not the solution, the question explains; the sages could not avoid sycophancy and evil ministers even when they were alert to the dangers. "Good officials" are not the remedy. Confucius and Mencius did think that having a certain kind of man govern was what mattered. Bo Yi, who would not work within a government he objected to, and Liu Xia Hui, who would serve in any government he thought he could help, were both sages, but Confucius said, "I am different." Yang Zhu and Mo Di were both concerned with morality, although one was "for myself' and the other "loved all inclusively," but Mencius rejected both. 22 This does not mean that good men are irrelevant, the palace question

1073, for the ancient kings did seek out wise men and listened and they chose what was good and put it into practice. But "if

explains in to them,

the policies were not effective, they changed them, and if the men were not smart, they formed them"

� � �11:z ifQ e. .

* � Jt.. JlX � 1T�

�.k. z ifQ e. . A.. � Jt.. �

And thus offices functioned effectively, fiscal man­

agement resulted in a surplus, prohibitions were respected, criminality punished, the spirit realm contented, and the foreign tribes disciplined. 23 The point, confirmed by the facilitated degree question, is that both policy and admini strators should be seen as means of achieving policy goals, not as things of value in themselves.24

22. SHY xuat?iu 7.19b-20a. 23. Ibid., 7·2ob-2Ia. 24. Ibid., 7·2Ia-b.

186

PETER K . B O L

In 1076 the question recognizes that the policies have not been as successful as hoped for, even though there are classical studies to form the literati and well-defined duties to guide officials; even though the government has been strengthening agriculture through loans for farmers, an end to required labor service, and investment in local infra­ structure; and even though it has been strengthening the military by se­ lecting good officers and training the troops in maneuvers. The question does not ask if these policies are mistaken, but whether there are prob­ lems with how the policies have been put into effect. If there are no problems in effectuation, then why are there literati, officials, farmers, and southern tribes who are not acting according to policy? It then closes with another possibility, that the policies need better packaging: ''We have heard that when the Former Kings governed the people they had ritual to guide them to centrality and music to guide them to harmony so that heaven and earth fulfilled their functions and the myriad things were nurtured. There ought to be something of their numbers and measures that can be verified and put back into practice. Tell Us the details" JOC 8fl 7t.��$, ��, ;ff lt�A l! � tF , ;ff �hA l!�fJr, Jt k �13:. � , � � 1f � . Jt. * _ * Jt., j: ;ff ar � � �t m ::t . Jt. � $, JOC -t �� F! .25 However, "ritual and music" are being offered not as an alternative to gov­ ernment by policy but as a means of getting people to accept what is good for them. In the New Policies view, after all, the ancients governed through policy. In 1079 the question also explores the reasons why the policies are not achieving their legislated ends. But now the question has turned toward the emperor himself. Under Yao and Shun, offices were created and policies instituted; all was well in nature and society. Rulers and ministers worked perfectly together. Nevertheless, even during the Three Dynas­ ties of antiquity there were periods when there was not enough talent to deal with problems effectively, and ever since it has been a given that the problems of the day overwhelmed the capacities of men to deal with them. So how were rulers able to accomplish something in history since antiquity? Was it in fact possible to get by with a few outstanding people? Or was it that the ruler did it all himself without depending on the availability of a great deal of talent? What, in short, should the ruler do under these circumstances? The candidates are invited to consider the 25. Ibid., 7.2Ib-22a.

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too accomplishments of rulers from history since the Qin unification, men who either controlled the world or exercised hegemony over part of it.26 The question has to do with how the emperor can make the government do his bidding. This concern with imperial control is echoed by the fa­ cilitated degree question. Have We made strategic mistakes in carrying out the policies or is it that We have so failed to define good and bad that evil confuses the minds of those who are supposed to be carrying out Our commands?27 In short, officialdom has become the emperor's problem. However, the suspicion that the ruler was prepared to be a Han­ Tang style ruler was contradicted in 1082: "Since Qin and Han there is nothing worth mentioning" * i:l Jl;OJ�., ����*. But the view of the "perfect order" of antiquity has shifted to emphasize a combination of "ritual to distinguish superior and subordinate and law to fix the aspira­ tions of the populace" ;ft JlA :1Jt J:. r, a: JlA ;t � .t. , rather than specific policies. In antiquity, ritual and law regulated everything and forestalled problems. Popular and state needs were met. This is what later ages lost. The question is whether this state of affairs can be attained in a world where "the Way has long not been practiced and Our Culture has long not been functioning" l! z ;r-: �t � , A. * . JYT X ;r-: 110 � , ;# A. * Moreover, "later scholars have generally held that no one could institute this except a sage" 1!z** ? JlA � "*F I:A � �g, � 110. But the ques­ tion asks candidates to consider the following claim (from the "Li yun" ;ftl{ chapter of the Book ofRites): "Rites which did not exist [under the Former Kings] can be established on the grounds of principle" ;ft_*­ .

� 'f JlA .l.�.28

Shenzong died in 1085/3; the Song huryao does not record the palace questions from that year. We are left then with a series of questions that, aside from one complaint about how the emperor can make the gov­ ernment do his bidding, presents the emperor as head of a government and the government as the entity that organizes society. At the same

26. Ibid., 7.22b-23a. 27. Ibid., 7.23a-b. 28. Ibid., 7.23b-24a. Citing Uyun 22; in Ruan Yuan 1?t7t, Shisanjing + -=-f& (Scripta Sinica edition, http://www.sinica.edu.tw/-tdbproj/handYI/). The facilitated degree question also insists on the distinction between antiquity and the imperial period; see SHY xua'!Ju 7.24a-b.

PETER K . B O L

188

time, there is a shift from defending interventionist policies to a more timeless and universal vision of a regulated social, political, and cultural order.

National Polig and the Imperial Voice 2: The Opposition The examinations of 1088 and 1091 were controlled by opponents of the New Policies. In 1088 the sage-king paradigm in which sage-king rule results in the harmonious working of the natural world and prosperity among men is turned on its head: there have been terrible natural disasters and the populace has not benefited, a sign of misrule. Candi­ dates are invited to say what was wrong with government policy. The facilitated degree asserts the need for changes in the policies on educa­ tion for the literati, the official system, tax equity, and hired service.29 In 1091 the Han dynasty is held up as the "model of kingship for all ages" .£Za.. What is this model? The key to it is bringing good literati into government and then turning to them for guidance in dealing with any problems that arise. To select literati on the basis of classical studies is good, but the learning of the Spring and Autumn Annals (which teaches people how to balance ideals and particular contexts) is the most important. We should be guided by Heaven's intent that the populace should benefit. Rather than being asked how the bureaucracy and society can be made to conform to a policy program, the candidates are asked to propose policies that will help the government meet ongoing challenges: to choose which men should govern, to make taxes fair, and to deal with foreign powers. Antiquity is no longer a paradigm but a source of specific models, and candidates will have to make the case that particular ancient models are appropriate for the present. It is to Confucius as the "un­ crowned king" who interpreted antiquity that candidates should look (rather than the Former Kings themselves).30 In short, the ruler stands in a relationship with officialdom of student to teacher and government policy is decided on an ad hoc basis according to the views of leading officials. -

29. SHY xuanju 7.25a-26a. 30. Ibid., 7.27a-28a.

------------------------------------------------......

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too

National Poliry and the Imperial Voice }: Zhezong in His Own Right In 1094 Zhezong was ruling in his own right and opponents of the New Policies were exiled. The return to the policies of Shenzong was the subject of the 1094 questions. Shenzong had the learning of Shun and Yu, the candidates were told, and the rites and music and standards he left to the empire were very complete. Candidates should talk positively about an activist, interventionist approach ;tr � to government. The recent attempts to change the New Policies are said to have failed: they restored the literary exams, yet literati do not know what they should do; they ended the ever-normal granaries yet the farmers have not gotten richer. Debates over hired and obligated service were unresolved, and the service system has malfunctioned. Disputes over the proper course of the Yellow River were unresolved, and there have been floods. They gave back border territory, yet the northern tribes have not stopped raiding. They left more wealth with the people, but the merchant routes have not been functioning. Today there are lots of officials but too few soldiers. There is starvation and banditry. 3 1 Once again antiquity provides a paradigm of governance from above. The ancient model consisted of the perfecting of institutions, the inculcation of social morality, correct scholarship, and unity of opinion. But now there is a new element (al­ though one spelled out by the late Wang Anshi in his writings and in texts used in the school curriculum) : the intellectual foundations for literati are the "ideas of morality and the principles of heaven-and-earth and the myriad things" l!�.t -;t � Jt � tth.t.J.!.. Han and Tang have been surpassed, although there is still a way to go to match the sage-kings. But antiquity is the standard; in analyzing the failings of government in the present, candidates should say what needs to be changed so as to match the order that existed under the Former KingS.32 The end of Zhezong's reign was marked by a resurgence of criticism and some efforts at compromise. The palace examination of 1097 reflects this. Antiquity is still the standard, and the goal is still a society in which

31. Ibid·, 7·28a-b. 32. Ibid., 7.28b-29b. The "ideas of morality" and Ii/principles of the natural order echo Wang Anshi's preface to the Xining if shuo � .. *�.

PETER K . B O L

everyone has an appropriate role and customs are the same for all. However, the question allows that the success of the sage-kings' efforts depended on their ability to recruit worthy literati into government and to trust the worthies they recruited. This question backs away from a search for immediate solutions; change will be gradual: "From Yao and Shun to the Zhou they went through six or seven sages before the system was completely developed" It m It Jt� -T JIj , J?. * --t: ?IlA.. mi {t$.. i! *- 1i.33 Zhezong's attempted restoration of the New Policies thus ends by at least proposing to accommodate literati opinion and the give-and-take of politics, something that the paradigm of antiquity was supposed to make unnecessary.

The New Policies Ruler Prior to Huizong With the possible exception of one imperial fit of pique in 1079, the questions asked at palace examinations use the imperial voice to articu­ late the court leadership'S political program and point of view. The ruler is the symbolic head of the government. The ruler serves the paradigm of antiquity, in which the sage-king through the institutions of government creates a social order that is prosperous and peaceful and returns the natural order to organic harmony. The ruler is not an autocrat; there is no indication that he decides things on his own on the basis of his personal views, nor does he seek to have direct, unmediated power over the population or even the bureaucracy. The policy program developed by scholar-officials on the basis of their understanding of antiquity, the natural order, and the circumstances of the present is the constitution to which all should conform. The paradigm of antiquity is one in which the ruler-and-court plan and promulgate policy based on timeless principles, deduced from written texts but asserted to be inherent in the nature of things them­ selves, which are valid for all places and for all times. If we must label this, then it would be more appropriate to call it "rationalism" and "modernity." In all respects it fits what Stephen Toulmin sees as the basic characteristics of modernity (including the idea of a unity of natural and political orders) in his discussion of the seventeenth cen33. SHY xuanju 7.29b-30a.

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too tury.34 Another way to understand this would be to say that the gov­ ernment was being guided by a universalistic dogma or ideology that indeed had a philosophical foundation, with the provision that we un­ derstand that this dogma required that government plan for and control society from above. However, an alternative to this dogma of antiquity is recognized in the palace questions: a political process in which the views of officials on how to respond to the problems of the moment are the basis for deciding what policies to adopt. This second model was at­ tributed to Han and Tang, but its hallmark is the accommodation of literati opinion. In it, consensus emerges and dissipates around particular issues of the moment, and various factions must balance their own dogmatic interests with practical advantage. Clearly an emperor who cannot be easily removed and who holds the power to appoint and dismiss court leaders was a powerful weapon in the hands of proponents of the paradigm of antiquity, yet these questions themselves show that the emperor at times hoped to strike a balance between these two in­ compatible visions.

National Polif)' and the Imperial Voice 4' Huizong as Sage and King Huizong's first question was issued in 1103, after he turned away from the accommodationist policies of the empress dowager and appointed the staunch New Policies advocate Cai Jing as grand councilor. The question makes clear that the court has returned to the paradigm of antiquity. But now the imperial voice speaks of sage-kings who "managed" the empire directly: In the past when the sages managed the empire Jl A.i!:. Jll � r , they assigned duties to it according to the Way, they established [goals for it] with policy, and they protected it with the right men. Therefore when they promulgated the five norms for social relations, they worked, and when they perfected the nine occupations, they functioned; when they ordered the many offices, they were regulated, and when they comforted the four foreign tribes, they sub­ mitted. This is what We aspire to but We do not yet understand the method the [sages] used to do this. * * Jl A.i!:. Jll � r � , *i!:.)'x l!, .:?Li!:.)'X ifi, 5li!:.)'X

34. Stephen Edelston Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda ofModernity (New York: Free Press, 1990).

PETER K . B O L A.. . �tlt.li*, )Jo] jf£, 1f/v)] )lrj ft, il!. Ei .L )lrj �, � T!!1 � )lrjJJfL � -lut � , aQ � �11 m J'X � Jl:l:.z -}j. But he does know that he can take as guides the policies of his brother and father, who are now depicted as men who ruled all directly, whose policies were ends in themselves rather than means to attain perfect order. We are ever mindful of the complete virtue and great eminence of the pre­ ceding emperors, whose works have extended benefit to us today. We shall restore them, we would never let them be lost. To promote harmony in the [imperial] clan, they gave them rank and salary and graded them by kinship. To form the literati with the classics, they instituted teacher Ru in great numbers and promoted teaching through the school system. They equalized market prices and balanced distribution, and thus perfected policies for managing wealth. They made clear the rewards for military achievement and recovered border territory, and thus proclaimed barbarian-controlling majesty. They glo­ rified the good and faulted the bad to make clear the principles between ruler and minister, father and son, and older and younger brothers. * * 7t. '*" !Ji Ht*.. !.t �J.l{tiJtt1i-*. il r1rdlZ, � � � �. lt J'X ,� Ilt �, it�Z,?r, ���f.k, aQ ��Z�. J'X t&.it±, it�z'; � � ft, ifi1�J.f.*Z$t. f- Jt. rjffW, l! Jt. ;If �, J'X {if £ JI,t zit. B}j Jt. ;r)] t , {I Jt.�.±., J'X � � �zm.. "*J -!-� ,� , J'X a}j :#'

� x..:r >t � z A.

In short loyalty to his predecessors means restoring his predecessors' policies for the imperial clan, education, commerce, expansion of the borders, and political and social morality. But there is a problem: ''Yet why is it that morality is still difficult to make clear and social customs are not unified?" � i1ii It.�z� R}] , Jlt1.a.z� , f.ir-It?35 This first ques­ tion of Huizong's reign echoes the questions of the past but makes the emperor the agent of change and the attitudes of society the obstacle to change. The question from. no6, based on the Institutes of Zhou, is similar. It begins with the early Zhou as a model for governing the empire, but then switches to the Shenzong reign and focuses on the emperor as the pri­ mary agent in the attempt to emulate the Former Kings. -

We observe that the great success of early Zhou was due to the fact that it nurtured men with goodness and literati were selected [for office] through the local [schools] , it stopped disorder with armed force, and the soldiers came from 35. SHY xuanju 7.3Ia-b.

Emperors Can Claim Antiquiry Too

193

the farmers. With the Eight Policies [for society] and the Eight Controls [for government], it established the state and aided the king. With the Nine Occu­ pations [for the population], the Nine Levies [on the population], and the Nine Standards [for moderating expenditures], it increased wealth and brought prosperity to the populace. Extending upwards, it kept the sun, moon, and planets on their paths; reaching downwards, it nurtured the myriad things. But we are distant from antiquity, and mankind has long not understood all this. Our father, Shenzong, did take the Former Kings as his model. He brought renewal to men of talent, forming them with a school system; he brought his populace into mutual association, instructing them in military ways. He con­ trolled the offices of government, directed the officials, employed the populace, collected taxes, and moderated expenditure. He matched the achievements of Zhou. Along the way there was slander, and the reforms were almost completely stopped. We have inherited his extraordinary achievement and for several years have labored night and day to put them into effect in the empire. [Now today] what is good and bad is obvious yet the populace has not yet fully changed. National goals are set yet the literati are not obedient. The rules are clear yet policies have not been entirely successful. Why is this? . . . JOC� A %J z�, Jlx -!--J.A. .ri1 ± 1iJ £�, JlX j\ � �L .ri1 **-#l., JlX Am: ' A��*� � ..f.. ,JlX :k.� ' :k.� ' :k. i\. t j!;f� � . �T J:.J}'J -bliJlx 1f, .it#""f J}.J )t !f1J JlX lt. * *f!j{.l!, A.z� a}) 7-.. t- . ��;f'*, ilm:7t...f.. . 1ttr $.. # , .i!zyx * �, 'ht$.. � , �zYx*m:. 5{; 't Jft �If Il. ' 1:r )t � ' M.j!;fAA" .ri1 � rr z, � %J � . #. tp � �� , �;;' $ � .�. JOC �jf(�#7t..�!I" »l.�1t�, *.ri1#}z :k ""f . � ..f# tt , *.� a}) .ri1 � � E � , II k � .ri1 ± �i!lt, m:�� .ri1Jt� :k.A;t, iljf.iT�?36 '

Once again the problem is with the objects of transformation: society and the literati. Huizong himself is the one who is making all the effort, as if his person is the government. The Zhou founders were successful, but what must he do to stop opposition? In the next examination, in IIo9, the question announces a kind of answer: Ritual and Music. The Former Kings instituted rituals once order was achieved [domestically] and music once there was success [in foreign wars] in order to be in accord with the transformations of heaven and earth. The number of Ritual was five; they ap­ plied them through the Seven Instructions [to inculcate virtue in the populace] and manifested them through Eight Policies [for society]. [For the Rites] there were canons, there were offices. [With the Rites] they determined degrees of 36. Ibid., 7.3Ib-32a. The various policies and functions are enumerated in the Rites of

Zholl (Tian gllan � i', Dazai *- !f).

PETER K. B O L

194

kinship, settled doubtful cases, sorted out differences, and clarified right and wrong. And thus the distinctions between great and small and noble and humble were fixed. The number of Music was six, it was given pattern with the Five Tones and spread through the Eight Pitches. [For the Musics] there were orders, there were duties. [With the Musics] they harmonized the states, made the people cooperative, and gave pleasure to men from afar, and moved all things. And thus the spirits were in harmony with humanity and all creation. We continue the legacy of my ancestors. We transmit it, but We also innovate, thus to follow the Former Kings and continue the will of Our father. Tell me, Gendemen, how can I accomplish this? Ritual and Music have been long abandoned, and we are far from antiquity. If you try to change customs radically, the populace will be upset. Some say that the Three Kings did not imitate one another, or the music of today is similar to that of antiquity, why change it? Does this mean then that we can never come close to the way the sages served spirits and ordered men, the way they altered mores and changed customs? Today Music has been finished, yet people are not yet transformed; proposals have made for Ritual, but a system has not yet been promulgated. Examine antiquity in light of modem experience and state it for us in detail. 1t*;e.!. � � i1i1 ,*1

;,ft, �}])&. i1i1 11< * , J-X ��Jt.t1t.. ;ft.ttUi., �.t-c�, � .tAJlt, ;ff � ;ff ., � g,ut , � *l� ' �IJ � � ' fl}bt IlF, fRft :k J '' Jll: .t �� . *.ttb,"" X .t1i.*, ".tA.:t, ;ff * ;ffJlt, ,fu � fI ' i� � � ' -ptltA. ' fh4h, fRft#� A.4hJ-X ,fu. 1OC�*�!1. * i*?!t l! i1i1 11<.t, J-X il;e.!..t�, i1i1M#* .t ;t . 1:k )�JX lJlf, 1tl7.t1aJi1i1 "iif J-X $JI:.? ;,ftJt* 1lA *" -!- 1i 1$lt, ��.Jt.i9-, IIF ,*" .t 7t$ � )�j:fl � ? � a -=- .!. � lQ m· ., � * �! 1i .t*, •• #-�J:.. IN;e .!. * #�A., � Jit ¥J 19-, � � "iif �.? � * 1&. i1i1 A.;tdt., ;ft"tl i1i1 ,*1*-�JL .Jt.* I

'

J- !fA. � It R'-" -'- ...... • .JII.. "' 37 tJ .=,xx -7 .(t.tJ W\.. �=r a. z � I�� ·

,

"

In 1107/5 a new musical code had been promulgated, and soon (in 1110/2) the elaborate Daguan Era Book 0/ Ritual would be promulgated. In the ancient model, according to the fIrst paragraph of the question, the promulgation of new ritual codes and music followed establishing do­ mestic and foreign control and solidifIed it, but now ritual and music are seen as direct means to effect transformation without doing the neces­ sary political work fIrst. If this reading should overstate the agenda of the question, at least we can see that the new ritual program is meant to have direct effects on society.

37. SHY xuanju 7.32a-b.

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too

195

The investment in ritual and music at Huizong's court took place on ideological and material levels on a large scale.38 In 1104 Wei Hanjin !til it (d. 1105) successfully proposed creating a new musical system and casting anew the Nine Tripods of the ancients (using waters and earths from the ancient nine regions), for which nine special halls were built. In III2 Huizong was building a Hall of light, or Mingtang a}j i:' , following the example of the sage-king Wen of Zhou. And his reign produced a stream of codes for ritual and music. But in the 1109 question there is already an aspiration to create something of real and direct transformative power that can be controlled by the emperor, and it is this that justifies getting rid of traditions accepted by the very predecessors who justify the court's policy agenda. Perfect order can be achieved, it seems, through manipulating the spirit of society rather than by changing its social and economic relations. Huizong's questions were not about what policy was right but how to make the populace conform to those policies and to the roles they had been assigned in them. Ritual and music can be seen as possible means to accomplish this. But still there was opposition enough at times to require a change in court leadership. Not long before the examination of 1112 Huizong had removed Zhang Shangying � ";8j # (1043-1121) as grand councilor he had been too receptive to outside criticism and brought back Cai Jing. The III2 question begins by talking about the duty of the ruler to tell society how to behave: In the past, enlightened kings controlled society with the Way and their personal virtue transformed others. They taught them the Trinity of Kinds [the Six Vir­ tues, the Six Behaviors, the Six Arts] and kept them in line with the Eight Punishments. The people were respectful and not lazy, compliant and not contentious, familial and not resentful, harmonious and not dissonant. There­ fore morality was unified, and the people's will was [lXed. Their roles were clear, and ritual duties completed. In defining right and wrong and making choices, they all accorded with righteous principle, and they were free of any private knowledge at odds with their superiors . . . . The nobleman living in lesser times, 38. Kojima Tsuyoshi's studies of debates over rites and music give particular attention to the Huizong era; see Kojima Tsuyoshi ,J' � 4t, "S6dai no gakuritsu" * f( 0) � #1tilI, Ti!)'o bunko kenytijo kiyo *- * �At1'Jf 1!:: .PJfR.�, no. 109 (1989): 273-305; and Kojima, "S6dai no kokka saishi-"Seiwa gonen shingi" no tokuchO" * f(0) 00 ��;fe.-»t:fp li.Jf-trr1A. O)#.fJt, in Ikeda On it.. 1l1 ),1, ed., Chiigoku reihO to Nihon ritsuryosei tf 00 � � t El *-#4-.� (Tokyo: T6h6 shoten, 1992), 463-84.

•

PETER K. B O L the soldier at the defense, the woodcutter wife, the nymph of the Han River, all loved virtue and did not transgress the rites. This is the way We wish to travel with everyone together. . . . We think about this all the time but do not yet know the method for doing it. * * a}) ..I.. I'X J! $pi!t.1Q e.. , �1tz. ltI'X -=- 4h , �� I'X A

*,J . :l-��.1Q� $) , .i1!.1Q �*, � ,1Q � �, �P ,1Q � * . itJ!�.t - .1ii � .t; ;t, -n"­ !Of a}) ,1Q �%A. JtAFJflt-®-, If' 'f��, ,1Q � li �" t' -le. L . [��i!tz �-r, {-JPtz;i\*-, 1�1tz*fA., � J:.z�*, � � ��, �.�de.�.] . . . JOC-l.� � *' m JlifJ!. »l-ft I'X .�, *- 1.Pi'JT I'X �Zz 7[. ...

.

.

He then turns to the nub of the problem, the malicious opposition of a self-interested elite: The age has declined, the lowly overstep the worthy, the inferior usurps the superior; where the roles of the noble and the humble are not distinct, strong and weak offend each other. The small and great, the first and last, no longer have any bounds. Righteousness is forgotten in the search for profit, and each tries to harm the other. This has become the custom. The literati are immoral, they are false, they are deceitful, they are shameless. We cannot accept this. How are We to change their customs and realize the achievements of the Former Kings. i!tiiL�* -%" -**�, r1tJ:., .llt�-n"- , � .9HQ fk, · J ' k;'cAt, � .ftF��, ;� A.Q�dt 3'UQ � � . -%' I'X A1�, ±��*T, 1t r4 l¥- � , JlfJ � � J:.,

� li .� .". JOC .:l � Jflt, *- Jb :l-1�, "," :l- � , I'X ,t!;t. ..I.. Z!Jl. M 1� .1ii "iif I'X lit ll-t?39

Rites and music, government command, what other methods were there? By 1II5 Huizong had become interested in understanding how by being in tune with the one Dao that was beyond definition but that included everything within it, he might make the world respond as he wished. "The ancient sages ruled the empire with Dao, they managed affairs with non-action, they instructed others without speaking. They employed it without it ever becoming exhausted, and things transformed themselves. We aspire to this Dao." * � �A."A l! � � T, ht#.\.).\�., �t � 1; �$i. m � � g, ifi1 41J m -ft., JOC,*-kl!. And yet putting this Dao into practice in a world of change was not easy, nor was getting different people to agree on what it actually meant. "Dao is One and that is all, but why are the explanations of it different?" l! ifi1 e. , J't. 1; � � Iii] 10r �? But this was the Dao the sage-kings followed; this was the Dao rulers since Qin and Han had not understood. If the candidates could explain it, then ''We, millennia later, will even out the myriad different perspectives -

39. SHY xuat!Ju 7·32b-na.

,

197

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too and clarify the standard for all judgments."4o 10C

� �zJL, EI}J � J(.z�.

-)j i1i:.:i!�-t ilC.z tt , 1f

In the light of this Dao, all disagreement will

disappear and the emperor will be the font of authority in practice. Three years later, in 1118, Huizong had concluded that the path he had to follow to truly govern mankind was the very same path he had to follow to orchestrate nature itself. The year before he had examined the applicants for the jinshi degree from Korea and had asserted that if the Dao was employed in governing, then the bodies of the heavens and the creatures of the earth would all be affected; the natural order and the human order would become a seamless whole.41 Now in

1118 he told the

candidates: "The sages of the past guided heaven-and-earth and con­ trolled yin-and-yang and guided the people's activities."

-%Z�A.. tJt �

:kJ-t, tetJi� �, )'A flt � m . Then he turned to a discussion of the Yel­ low Emperor, Yao, and Shun, and the Great Plan i� � of the ancients for ordering the world. They measured the processes of the natural world and orchestrated the patterns for civilized life and thereby ensured that both heaven and man would stay on a mutually fulfilling and harmonious course. But how, he asks, in a world of flux, do we ensure that the five phases and yin-and-yang attain their proper degree, so that there is nei­ ther insufficiency nor excess, and seamless harmony reigns?42

A year or

so before this, Huizong had announced himself as the Great Sovereign of Long Life and eldest son of the Jade Emperor. May we presume then that he himself, assisted by the Daoists he had brought together in Lin Lingsu's

#' � i:'

(d. ca.

1125)

new Divine Empyrean sect, possessed

the powers to control yin-and-yang and attain the unity of heaven and man? Huizong's solution to the lack of harmony in the world of man was to search for the possibility of adjusting the larger processes of nature within which human activity unfolds. But there were moments when human crises forced a court that wished to be the master of the universe to accept the fact that it might have to respond to the times. The Fang La

-)j JJl rebellion, which devastated the southeast, would not be defeated

until the end of the spring of

II2I.

Such a failure could not be ignored.

The question for that year insists that he has been right to try to govern

40. Ibid., 7.34b-35a. 41. Ibid., 7.35a. 42. Ibid., 7.35b-36a.

PETER K. B O L through Dao, for the "The divine mechanism/empire

#S

is so great

that it cannot be controlled by interference, it cannot be grasped tightly. Therefore I have ruled it with the Dao. Day and night I have simply followed the Dao, I have been guided by the advantages of non-action in order to attain a state where the empire

will be free of problems for a

*ifhtS .t:k., � ar�, � arf)(.. !t)'x l! �.t, �ft •• , * l! .t R •. &�.tA � •• � � � . �& • .c

myriad generations to come."

There is nothing wrong with this, he continues, even if . there may be setbacks. Some adjustment may be possible.

We have established policies and created laws, nothing has been left out, be it large or small. . . . Some of the men putting them into practice were not right for the job, they have committed abuses and deceived their superiors, they have pursued self-interest at the expense of the common interest. As a result, al­ though we have expanded the schools, literati mores are still in bad shape; our methods for managing ftnances have increased, but there is still a deftcit; in ag­ riculture we focus on grain, yet there is still famine; we prohibit immorality and violence, yet there is still banditry. Recently we have ordered the examination offtcials to stop superftciality and dishonesty. If there is anything that is not good for the times and advantageous to the people then it should be changed, in all cases we will follow the precedents of the Xi'ning and Yuanfeng eras. To follow what works and change what does not is how one evaluates what is right for the times. It does not affect Dao at all. j: ltrt �, �1JI :k. � j{ . . . . .fft .1Q �tZ, r,,' .:JF

.Jt.A., �if l%1 J:., f- /fJ. 1t � , tt4Jfz�J(tJl, r1Q ± }iti}l) til; J!.Jl,t Z�� � , r1Q 1J Jfl ll: �; �. �ft, r1Q fUU � *; �if��, r1Q �ltt\ � �. H:. � � � , lj!j �� ).j:u\. * � $ *1�Ht, $ � � I\ ::tt, - m � �z, .� ltAA if z i *. Jr "f 'N � , � JlIJ -'-, :.flHtzir-l!!.. �z�l!, J!l .�� �.44 The area for adjustment remains small. The larger approach to govern­ ance is beyond question. The commitment to legislating all affairs re­ mains. And, more important, if there is to be any revision of policies in response to the exigencies of the moment, the ruler will go no further than resorting to the original legislation under Shenzong. In

1124,

the immediate domestic pressure having dissipated, Huizong

returned to his theme:

In the past the sages used Dao to control matter-energy fl., matter-energy to control change, and change to control phenomena; they orchestrated

43. Ibid., ].36a-b. Shenqi is from the LaoiJ. 44- Ibid., ].36a-b.

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too

199

heaven-and-earth and yin-and-yang and completed the mytiad things. They accorded with their rise and fall, odd and even, and many and few; with the schedule of filling and emptying, the record of being left and right, the ranking of being superior and inferior; and thus the way of creating institutions based on imitating [heaven-and-earth] was clear. Later ages were too bigoted, shallow, and narrow-minded to see this. I follow Heaven's example and find a model in high antiquity and think about how to bring about perfect harmony and agreement

..rt{f, �A.. )o';.( l!$p�, )o';.( �$p1t., )o';.( 1t.$p#], iIi1 5i���, t&��Pi, db A ti; #]. g) �A�, *11lS, � �, Atizit, 1£ ;(:; Z�, �Tz�, iIi1 a m .Azl!� • . • � � #*§. � , . � � � . a}j . JOC 7f<. � 1* :l , m-� "', .If.:.PIT' )o';.( III M • r", )0';.( .t :it:it.45

and benefit the common people .

The question itself is about discrepancies between various numerical schemes used in the Confucian and Daoist classics to characterize natural processes. How, he asks at the end, are we to "bring them into agreement, unify their implications, make coherent their differences, and extend their numbers to ultimate congruity in order to realize the Dao for the empire?" 1;-.:ft. M J. , - .:ft. � if, i! .:ft. � , �.:ft.it, J'X . *­ r zl! ?46 The twenty years of palace questions asked in Huizong's name by him or by others are continuous with the questions asked under the earlier New Policies regimes in this sense: all use the paradigm of antiq­ uity and sagely Former Kings whose government organized and com­ manded the world to state the policy ambitions of the regime. But the Huizong era questions also differ from the earlier New Policies questions in two important respects. First, they insist on depicting the emperor as the agent producing change in society and nature, eliding the mediating role of government institutions. Second, they become progressively more concerned with how the unity and compliance of the world can be orchestrated by acts the emperor can in fact perform himself from ritual and music to Daoist practices. If the emperor was the vehicle for the court in such questions, no doubt the use of the high rhetoric of the Former Kings to construct an imperial voice that allowed no room for disagreement and opposition served their interest as well. Perhaps we can describe this as a personalization of the throne, to make it actually dependent on the ability of the emperor to function as a

45· Ibid., 7·36b. 46. Ibid., 7.37a.

200

PETER K . B O L

"son of Heaven." Is this the emperor's doing? Is he trying to find a place for himself and thus resorting to an old model in which he is all­ powerful? Or is it his ministers' doing, as they find opposition continuing and cast about for some device they can use to get everyone to go along with their policies? I am not sure that knowing who exactly was primarily responsible, emperor or chief ministers, is of much more than anti­ quarian interest. What we can see is that the model of antiquity did not allow for opposition. Was it perhaps that as opposition continued, the court was driven to propose ever more extreme versions of what was essentially the same top-down and center-out mechanism? At this point in history imperial recourse to ritual and numerology to manipulate the minds of the populace and nature itself as a way of coping with political problems makes the emperor a fool. But suppose these really did work as he says; would that make him an autocrat?

Huizong and Rulership Within two years Huizong would be forced to abdicate the throne. His successors in Southern Song did not return to the premises of his questions

that in antiquity and in heaven-and-earth there were grounds

for a style of governing that would transform the world. The question for the palace examination of 1128 began with a rejection of the question of

1124. As I understand it, the way of government is based on heaven and the Dao of heaven is based on the populace, therefore in deciding what to pay attention to and in deciding what course to follow do not be concerned with numerology and prognostication, but instead investigate the situation of the populace .A Btl #;l!*k, kl!* !\ , Mt�JL�-1ftlt, ;f: ,�,��tt 6 {�, r1i1 ,t(t !\ �*.47 .

And then, in a manner that would be typical for decades to come, the ruler proceeded to enumerate the problems of the day, to point out that every policy had advantages and disadvantages, and to ask for advice based on historical experience about which problems were most pressing and how they might best be handled. If Huizong's basic question was how to make the world accord with his

will, the basic Southern Song

question was simply what to do about the problems we now face to­ gether. Collegial government, in which the ruler and court accommo-

47. Ibid., 8.Ia.

,

,

--------------------------------------------....... .....

Emperors Can Claim Antiquity Too

201

dated the shidcifu and their interests and sought to build a consensus on policies for responding to the crises of the moment, held sway. It has been argued that the Song system resulted in a marked increase in autocratic government in China a result of the non-aristocratic bu­ reaucrats being incapable of challenging the emperor as the last man to hold his position by hereditary right. We can see how, if we state the question thus, Huizong would seem to fit the model of the autocratic ruler, albeit a somewhat delusional one. There is, however, an alternative to this formulation. One possible response to the changes that had been taking place since the Tang was to create a government that would try to control those changes. Sima Guang's conservative view envisioned a limited government staffed by an oligarchy of families that would maintain social stability, national defense, and an agricultural economy and that charged the ruler with responsibility for maintaining a balanced po­ litical structure by favoring those ministers who were committed to it. The New Policies represented another possibility: that the government could take charge of all human activities to ensure that new develop­ ments commercial activity, the private market in land, urbanization, the spread of education and knowledge, and increasing wealth would benefit all. The justification for such a model was found in an "antiq­ uity" that transcended time and place, one that existed as texts that could be translated into an integrated yet dynamic system. Not all literati in the eleventh century agreed with Wang Anshi and Cai Jing that society should be (or could be) transformed or that government was the only possible way to transform it. Nevertheless, the New Policies officials and three emperors in succession were committed to this proposition. It seems to me that the Huizong era is a good example of what it meant to transform society through government. In this top-down approach, the court arrogated to itself final authority over culture, society, the economy, and all the states its military power could reach. The paradigm of antiquity also included a ruler one who, in the case of Yao and Shun, gave the throne to the most worthy, or in the case of the Duke of Zhou and King Cheng, allowed for more competent men to act with the authority of the ruler. Perhaps some literati did think about ways of institutionalizing succession by worthi­ ness, but the New Policies regimes insisted only that the ruler should adhere to the model of the Former Kings. This did not make the ruler an autocrat or imply that his authority was in essence autocratic. What it

202

PETER K . B O L

did mean, and this is evident during all three reigns, is that foreign states and domestic interests, the literati and the bureaucracy, were all supposed to conform to the policy agenda of the court, for only then could "per­ fect order" be achieved. The idea that the court should reign supreme over everything was not unique to Song. The Tang national elite of state aristocrats was generally accepting of such a view. After all, it was as much their court as it was the emperor's; their families composed the national elite, ex­ pected the state to guarantee their privileges, and expected that their descendants would continue to hold rank in position. In a sense, then, one might interpret the New Policies regimes as a return to Tang ideals of universal order. By Tang times the cosmic resonance models of Qin and Han emperorship had become inextricably linked to Zhou ver­ sions of the king as the Son of Heaven. From this perspective, one might argue that the New Policies as government by command, and Huizong as emperor playing sage-king, were all too similar to Xuan­ zong of Tang (r. 712-56). The Tang Code of his reign also asserted control over society and economy (and more control than the Song state could claim, if we take seriously the Tang state's rules on redis­ tributing land in every generation). On paper at least, with the Iiu dian "* �} Xuanzong's reign adopted the ancient Rites if Zhou as its model for reorganizing government. It issued a new ritual code. Xuanzong also turned to Daoism and Confucianism like Huizong he wrote a commentary on the Laoij' and the Xiaqjing. Like Huizong he also sought to harmonize the natural world and to control human events with the rituals of his "Heavenly Treasures" (Tianbao) era. In Li Linfu he had his Cai Jing. The outcomes are similar as well: both lost their capitals. The dissimilarities are more important. The New Policies approached antiquity not as a repository of models to be imitated (there are excep­ tions to this generalization), but as a period and a set of texts from which to derive general principles for systematic and planned institutional ac­ tion in the present. The policies themselves aimed to integrate the ener­ gies of a dynamic society and to encourage economic growth. Rather than stabilizing the social order, the program expanded opportunities and, through education, enlarged the pool of talent that could serve in gov­ ernment. Moreover, it aimed to make use of the increase in wealth, the spread of education, and the development of the south to lessen ine­ qualities, not to defend privilege. From a historical perspective, the New

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Policies regime was a programmatic response to the larger changes that had taken place in the centuries after Xuanzong. It was an activist gov­ ernment, where officials planned and drew up specific sets of rules to ef­ fect their goals. Moreover, it was a government that believed that if peo­ ple were properly educated, they too, like the ideologically driven policy-makers, would see that the policies were fundamentally correct and fully grounded in reality. The suppression of no less ideological po­ litical opponents went together with the greatest expansion of educa­ tional opportunity in Chinese history to that point. From this perspective a better precedent for Huizong would be Zhenzong, the third Song emperor. Zhenzong was in many ways the creature of his ministers and has been seen as marking the transition in emperorship from administrative leader to symbolic unifying ruler. Zhenzong, too, was encouraged to proclaim his own unique powers, to build self-glorifying palaces to celebrate the "Letters from Heaven" *- ;f with which he thought he had received divine sanction. But the fact is that the New Policies regimes failed in one signal re­ spect: they did not establish and maintain an elite consensus. The reason for this, I think, is that the relationship between court and national elite had changed in no small part due to the fact that the New Policies themselves tried to take advantage of the larger social, economic, and cultural changes taking place rather than to end them. They created a broader, better educated, and wealthier national elite than had ever ex­ isted. The national elite was less dependent on government than before, and although it had the advantage of effective government, it was not well served by continued interference in local affairs by what Paul Smith has called the "entrepreneurial bureaucrats" of the New Policies re­ gimes.48 The idea of a perfect order of heaven and man in antiquity, the intellectual premise of the New Policies, was false, and it made no al­ lowances for any legitimate opposition or disagreement. The policies themselves demonstrably dealt with real problems, and even if we were to say that ideology was not truly relevant to the particular policies, in describing their venture to the world, through a single examination question asked once every three years that would determine who would 48. Paul J. Smith, Taxing Heaven 's Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destmction 0/the Sichuan Tea Industry, I07�I224 (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991).

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serve in government and would become known to all the literati, the New Policies ministers and rulers fell back on the one large-scale conceptual framework that came close to describing what they were doing. But the ancient paradigm the regimes espoused and taught in their schools included a ruler who was supposed to be a sage. At the same time, the ruler was still a huang di, the emperor / august thearch of later imperial times. The Huizong questions appeal both to antiquity and to history in following his father, Shenzong, the emperor was also in­ sisting on the right to stick to dynastic precedent. Still, the most impor­ tant role for the ruler that the Huizong questions articulate is a kind of master of the universe who through his own magic should be able to quell all opposition. It was opposition, unaccounted for by the rationality of the paradigm of antiquity, that was the problem. Perhaps Cai Jing did believe Huizong should play the role of master of the universe, or perhaps it was a deal between a Cai Jing who wanted imperial support for his policies and a young and equally ambitious son of an emperor who wanted to be central and did have, after all, the power to appoint the court leadership. I do not know. The rhetoric of antiquity allowed for a ruler who orchestrated heaven and man through his gov­ ernment, but it did not fit in an age that, at least in some intellectual circles, no longer believed that it was Heaven that gave an individual or family the mandate to govern and for whom the trade in auspicious omens and evil portents had become low politics. The fact of the matter is that the government continued to expand its institutional activities to the degree feasible; we should not suppose it relied on Huizong's magic. Let us for the moment suppose that Huizong was the author of the questions issued in his name. We can see him trying to play a part, looking for what he can do on his own to remove the great obstacle to success by controlling the mind of the world through his own per­ formance. This is a possible outcome of the rhetoric of sage rulership, but I do not see that it was a necessary outcome. We might do better to say that what Huizong accomplished was to show that if emperors were to claim antiquity too, and to try to be the agent of government rather than the judge of those who wanted to govern, it was possible for them to go beyond the pale of what the national elite was prepared to accept in the long run.

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After 1126 the farce was over, but at tremendous cost to all involved. Neither the emperors to follow nor their courts remained committed to the New Policies, and even the emperor objected to the idea of playing the role of an omnipotent and omniscient sage. If Huizong was an ab­ erration, then we can set him aside as a device created to stop opposition, which was tried but did not work. But if he was the logical outcome of the New Policies, then we must say that he was (nearly) the last gasp of the ancient model in which universal kingship and activist governance transformed society. With very rare exceptions, rulers of Song and Ming would have power to the degree they could manage those who led their government, but they would not think that they or the government could transform society by fiat or performance. In the end, it would be the Neo-Confucianism of the Southern Song, with its ideas about fmding the grounds for a moral society in the individual, its institutions for local elites, its curriculum, and its rituals, that would offer the literati a more persuasive means of responding to the changes that had taken place since the Tang dynasty.

C HA P T E R 5

Tuning and N umerofogy in the New Learning Schoof Tsuyoshi Kojima ,J' � �t

In terms of intellectual history, how should Huizong's reign be charac­ terized? Shenzong's reign (1067-85) was the period of the Five Masters of the Daoxue school !! � of the Northern Song and their political rival Wang Anshi I � .k; (1021-86). 1 The first half of Zhezong's reign (1085-1100) can be characterized as a period when Cheng Yi's ;fI. 1l.fi. (1033-1107) learning (the Luo � school) and Su Shi's .fi #:' learning (the Shu JQ school) were antagonistic toward each other on personal rather than intellectual grounds. Gaozong's reign (1127-62), after the loss of the north, can be portrayed as a period when Daoxue masters were actively engaged in the intellectual world. Scholars have not paid much attention to the intervening period when the reformers were dominant in the later part of Zhezong's reign through Huizong's reign. The neglect of this Kojima wrote this chapter in Japanese originally, and Byounghee Min and Peter Bol translated it into English. 1. The Five Masters of the Northern Song :It. *- 1i. -f" were Shao Yong {lF $ (1011-77), Zhang Zai 5lill. (1020-77), Zhou Dunyi %J:ft!Ji. (1017-73), Cheng Hao :U.JJi (1032-85), and Cheng Yi :U.!Ji. (1033-1107). In general, they are listed in the order of Zhou, the Cheng Brothers, Zhang, and Shao, regardless of the sequence of their births. Sometimes Sima Guang � ,� j(, (1019-86) is added to the list to make the Six Masters of the Northern Song. In either case, the genealogy was created by Zhu Xi as a way to claim legitimacy for his learning. Even today, the history of Confucianism during the Northern Song is constrained by this retrospective perspective. ,

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period in Chinese philosophy and intellectual history has to do with the tendency of scholars to focus on the Daoxue school and to see the sig­ nificance of the Northern Song only in relation to the development of Daoxue. The year 1101, when Su Shi died, was the year after Huizong ascended the throne. A few years later, in 1107, Cheng Yi passed away. Thus the first generation of factional leaders in the struggle between the reformers and the conservatives had left the scene, and the Cheng brothers' disci­ ples had taken the stage. However, Daoxue was not yet the mainstream. It was only in the Southern Song that the second generation of Daoxue leaders, such as Yang Shi -Wi at (1053-1135) and Hu Anguo �}j � 00 (1074-1138), came to play an active role. The so-called Shu school of Su Shi survived as the Jiangxi school of poetry associated with Huang Tingjian -t dt� (1045-1105), but operated in an intellectual sphere dif­ ferent from that of classical studies. Thus, the Confucianism of Huizong's era was largely defmed by the New Learning tJf� school, which stemmed from Wang Anshi.2 Very little has been written about the New Learning of this period, other than studies of Wang Anshi's thought, for the later victory of Daoxue prevented the transmission of New Learning texts, making primary sources on the New Learning school scarce. During the reigns of Shenzong, Zhezong, and Huizong, the classical studies of the New Learning school were the state orthodoxy for the civil service examina­ tions. Therefore, in order to deal with intellectual rivals as well as to prepare for the civil service examinations, Daoxue scholars often felt a need to study New Learning texts. However, previous studies have not examined the influence of the New Learning school on Daoxue scholars' commentaries on the classics after Cheng Yi's generation. Thus, both to clarify the context of the formation of Daoxue and to explain 2. The Xinxue school in this chapter means the school of learning that was founded by Wang Ansru and transmitted by Wang's disciples. The name Xinxue was invented by their opponents in later generations, not by the members of Wang Ansru's school themselves. There is no evidence of a group identity among those who were identified as Xinxue scholars. Therefore, the range of those included in the group is arbitrary and variable. However, the group who belonged to the New Policies regime shared some common features in terms of their academic tendencies, making them distinct from the Daoxue school. I contend that the formation of the Daoxue school is best understood in reference to its rivalry with the Xinxue school.

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New Learning itself, research on the New Learning school during Huizong's era is essential. This chapter is a first attempt to shed light on the New Learning school. In an earlier article on music theory in the Song,3 I discussed Wei Hanjin 4t � it (ca. IOIO-ca. IIIo) and Chen Yang �'*- � (ca. 1055ca. 1122) and located their musical theories in the context of intellectual history.4 Although music theory plays a crucial role in Confucianism, the article did not provoke much response, probably because music has been overlooked in modern scholarship on Chinese philosophy. This chapter returns to that theme with a new perspective. I plan in a forthcoming work to look at the Analects, the Mencius, the Book if Changes, and rituals, the core of New Learning.5 The essay by Joseph Lam in this volume looks at the history of music as a performance art, whereas this chapter focuses on music as a facet of classical scholarship. "Music makes everything harmonious," as the an­ cients said.6 3. Kojima Tsuyoshi .]- � 4t, "S6dai no gakuritsu ron" ;t;: 1\ (7) � �"MIi, Tqyii bunka keni9tijo kryii �� :t.1t.ZJt 1tfJT�c. * 109 (1989), 273-305. 4. Wei Hanjin's and Chen Yang's birth and death years are estimates. Concerning Wei Hanjin, diverse sources document that when he was summoned to the court in Il02, "he was already over 90 years old." That means that he was born around 1010. Considering this, it makes sense that he participated in the reform of the music system in the 1050s. If we assume that maximal life expectancy is 100 years and make inferences from the mention of his name in the sources from the period when Zhenghe wuli xinyi »t:f111L;ittIT � was compiled, I can assume that he died around IIlO. On the other hand, concerning Chen Yang, because his older brother Chen Xiangdao was born in 1053, we can assume that he was born at least after 1054. His biography reports that he died at the age of 68 (of course, it is sui age instead of Western age). In the context of the record, he died before the J urchen invasion, so I estimate that he died around H20. In this chapter I use 1055-Il22, but his dates could be as late as 106o-Il27. Chang Bide & -fJt,fl, Songren zhuan;i" :dliao suqyin *-A.. it- �L 1t ift -t 51 , rev. ed. (Taibei: Tingwen shuju, 1977) 5: 4252, 3: 2496, has entries for Wei and Chen, but gives no birth or death dates. 5. Concerning the Mencius, I presented a paper, "Rethinking the Xinxue School: How Did It Treat Mencius?" at the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting in April 2002. A Chinese version was presented at the International Conference on Song Classical Scholarship at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan in November 2002 and will be published in the proceedings of the conference. 6. The sources available for this topic, such as the music treatise in 55 129 and ]SBM 135, tell the same story; so here I do not give any specific references. For an overview of studies on Song music, see Rulan Chao Pian, Song Dynasty Musical Sources and Their Inter­ pretation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968). ,

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The Proposals if Wei Ha,!/in In 1102 Huizong called for a reform of court music and the recom­ mendations of scholars expert in music. Wei Hanjin, one of those recommended, was more than 90 years old at that time. His biographical record is limited, lacking dates of birth and death. We know only that he was involved in the reform of the music system with Fang Shu ,&- '" (fl. 1050S) under Renzong, 50 years earlier, when it is said that he had a conflict with Ruan Yi I?ti! (jinshi 1027) and resigned. At that time Ruan Yi and Hu Yuan tJHt (993-1059) compiled the Huangyou xi'!Yue ttgz ..t;ft $Jf � II �L (Illustrated record of the new music of the Huangyou period).7 Hu Yuan is famous as a teacher of the Cheng brothers, and Huang Zongxi -jf * � (1610-95) placed his biography in the first chapter of his Songyuan xuean * .it * *. The fact that Hu Yuan played a crucial role in the reform of the music system in the 1050S in­ dicates the significance of music in Confucian thought. 8

7. Huangyou xif!Jue tuji is readily accessible in the Siku quanshu. It was compiled in the same period that the compilation of ritual books took place. For the ritual books, they could not produce texts that could replace the ideology of Kaiyuanli IlI'J 7t;it and Kaibaoli Ilt' f ;it and ended up with the compilation of Taichangyin'geli ;k 'lf g) .1(i.;flt, which re­ corded actual practices. From the viewpoint of intellectual history, it is noteworthy that the systemization of ritual and music according to a new standard occurred in the 1050S. This means that those enterprises reflected the new intellectual trends since 1040. Con­ cerning the meaning of the year 1040 in Chinese intellectual history, see Kojima, Sogaku no keisei to tenkai 5fU¥' G7) jfj � t Jll Ill'J (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1999), Kojima, "Sodai hito no rekishi ishiki-Shushigaku bokko no haikei" *- t'<.AG7))!t �;t�-*-q-*��G7) 1i' *, in Kojima, TOyo tekijinbungaku 0 kakyo sum -it * lI-J AX * � *�T � (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku bungakubu, 2001), and Kojima, "Great Confucian or Mere Strategist? Chia I in the Eyes of Sung Thinkers," in Thomas H. C. Lee, ed., The New and the Multiple: Sung Senses ofthe Past (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2004). 8. Today, Hu Yuan is understood as a scholar who represented the scholarship of the mid-eleventh century and as a crucial figure in the formation of Daoxue. However, in the biographies of Confucian Scholars in Dongdu shilue -it � . � II3, the main focus is on his contribution to the reform of the ritual and music system. This is the very core of his reputation in the Northern Song period. This discrepancy is a reason I am very skeptical of the narrative of the Daoxue scholars since the Southern Song, especially that of Huang Zongxi.

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The gist of Wei Hanjin's reform lies in his method of determining a pitch. In the Song, the consensus had been that the pitch pipes that ftxed the pitch of huangzhong if � (one pitch out of the twelve standard pitches) should be determined by taking the size of a grain of millet as the standard, with the other standard pitches adjusted accordingly. The main disagreement lay in how to use grains of millet to determine the length of the pitch pipe of huangzhong. Should the long side or the short side of the grain be used? Should the stress be on length or capacity? Or should one determine the length of the pitch pipe based on the total length of 90 grains of millet or by measuring the length of a pipe holding 1,200 grains? However, all agreed that milled grain should be used. Wei Hanjin proposed a completely different standard: the length of the emperor's ftngers. Fingers are divided into three parts by two joints. According to Wei, Emperor Yu had used the method of the Yellow Emperor and added the total length of his middle ftnger, fourth ftnger, and ftfth ftnger for a total of 9 inches (cun) and used this as the length of the huangzhong pitch pipe. By so doing, the human and natural realms resonated with one another, thus achieving harmony among all under Heaven. Wei claimed that if Huizong's ftngers were used to determine pitches, weights, and measures, just as Yu had done, the golden era of the sage-kings of antiquity would be restored. The government accepted Wei's proposal. The sources tell us that Cai Jing (1047-II26) was very active in the process. In II04, the court cast a bell that sounded the huangzhong pitch and named it Jingzhong. When it was turned upside down, the bell became a tripod with a capacity of nine bushels (hu �), and a height of nine feet (chi ft...). . In II05 nine tripods were cast and placed in the Jiucheng palace, also as proposed by Wei. The tripods symbolized the nine regions of the empire and were to be used as the objects of state sacriftces performed by the emperor.9 These pitches, weights, and measures, all determined by the length of the emperor's ftngers, were materialized in the form of the tripods, which in turn symbolized rulership over the entire empire.

9. Concerning the nine tripods, see Kojima, "S6dai no kokka saishi-Seiwagorei shingi no tokuch6" * 11(. if) 1!1 � � � r a ;fu K :f.t ttr .. J if) * ,fit , in Ikeda On ;e m Jfr., ed., Chiigoku reihO to Nihon ritsuryo sei 'f 1!1 :f.t� t El *#� $� (Tokyo: T6h6 shoten, 1992), 463-84. -

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The arbitrariness of basing weights and measures on the length of the emperor's flngers is not unlike using the English standard of "feet" based on the size of a human foot. Wei Hanjin's proposal simply extended to music the use of the human body as a standard.lO What is striking here is that the origin of both medicine and music was attributed to the Yellow Emperor. Wei Hanjin conceived of the sage-kings who created civiliza­ tion in antiquity as differentiating the world by the standard of their own bodies, and thus he proposed that the present ruler, Huizong, take the same actions. Huizong and his high offlcials took this old scholar's suggestion very seriously and launched a comprehensive reform of the music system based on a new standard for the pitch pipe. How do we explain these actions? From a modern perspective, the idea that the standard of pitch and measurement should be based on the emperor's flngers seems a form of "Oriental despotism." There was an alternative: the Han scholar Jing Fang 1{. � (77-37 BeE) had several pipes of different lengths planted in the ground on the winter solstice. The length of the huangzhong pitch pipe was determined to be that of the pipe whose shadow moved. This method is more scientiflc in terms of universality and veriflability.! ! If we suppose that history progresses, Wei Hanjin's proposal was deflnitely retrograde, and the adoption of the proposal by the Huizong govern­ ment was anachronistic. To explain it, some have spoken of "the group

10. In China, chi, a measure approximately the length of a foot, is the length between the ends of thumb and pinky, when the fmgers are stretched out. The length of I chi is 10 tun (inches), which seems to be set by the decimal system, but in fact it has independent origin. The length between the ends of the arms is a xun, and the length between a right foot and a left foot at a walk is bu � (pace). The characters, xun, bu, and chi derived their forms from their origins. This is the explanation of Xu Shen wHA (58?-I47?), Shuowenjieif �;;tA1f.*, which I cannot conflrm is correct or not without reference to paleographic studies. However, what matters is that people since the second century had believed Xu Shen's explanation, and that Huizong and Wei Hanjin also trusted it. In one popular view, the form of the character, tun, represents flngers gripping the wrist to feel a vibration, and it means that tun originates from the length from the flnger to the spot where the pulse was examined, an explanation that reflects the role of the examination of pulse in Chinese medicine. Although different from Wei Hanjin's suggestion, it at least shows that cun is not the length between the joints of flngers. II. Jing Fang'S theory is found in the treatise on music and the calendar in the Hanshu. The basic structure of musical theory established in the flrst century BCE had been used by the early twelfth century.

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of corrupt bureaucrats at the end of the Northern Song." The historical fact that the Song was defeated by the Jin makes that explanation more persuasive. 12 I disagree with this view. Even if, in retrospect, Huizong's govern­ ment can be seen as wasting enormous energy on ritual and music reform at the expense of the dynasty, the task of intellectual history is not to pass judgment on past events using a contemporary standard. Intellectual historians try to understand mentalities different from their own by asking why people thought and acted the way they did and by recapturing their experiences. The fact that Wei Hanjin's proposal was approved by the court means that in the context of the common beliefs of the time, his ideas were not outlandish. What does this tell us about the Song so­ ciety? In the next section, I discuss a Song scholar whose ideas on music were very different from Wei Hanjin's.

The Chen Brothers In 1101, four years before Wei Hanjin was summoned to court, Chen Yang completed the Book ifMusic � :f and presented it to the court. Chen Yang had written the book during Zhezong's reign. Although there is no evidence that Chen and Wei influenced each other, a discussion of Chen Yang's theory clarifies the differences between the two and illu­ minates their common assumptions. Together they tell us something important about the mentality of the time. Chen Yang was a native of Fuzhou. His older brother, Chen Xiangdao Ft #3! (1053-93), was a prodigy who passed thejinshi exams at the age of fifteen in 1067. 1 3 The latter was a disciple of Wang Anshi and a major figure in the second generation of the New Learning school. He au­ thored several books, among which only two are extant, the Book ifRitual ;ft :f and the Commentary on the Analects 1(f;; "tt. � f1If. Chao Gongwu's � � i<. bibliography, the Junzhai dushuZhi 1Jf.1lr �t :f ;t , records Chen's LU1ryU qua,?/ie together with Wang Anshi's Luf!Jujie 12. The terms "Oriental despotism," "scientific," and "the corrupt bureaucrats of the end of the Northern Song" are so commonly used by scholars that they need no citation. Re-evaluating Huizong's era has been my research topic for ten years. 13. Chen Xiangdao is recorded in the list of 26 successful candidates in the civil service examinations in Liang Kejia * >t �, Chunxi Sanshan Zhi ;$ 1* -==- JJ ;t (SKQS ed.), 26.2Ib. Chen Yang passed the Zhike 7/11# in 1091 (ibid., 27.3b).

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� iiNf and Wang Pang's .!. � (1044-76) Lu'!Yu kOl!Yi �ii t:1 .A. and notes that "it has been used for the civil service examinations since the Shaosheng reign period [1094-98]." Because the Analects was one of the required "secondary classics" :l ��, as was the Mencius, students for the civil service examinations studied the Lu'!Yu qua'!iie during Huizong's reign. The compiler of Siku quanshu evaluated the text as follows: "[Chen] Xiangdao was expert in the learning of the three ritual classics. His Lishu was admired for its breadth and thoroughness. His commentary on the Analects explains those parts related to the ritual system with special clarity. Ritual scholarship was the core of the New Learning school, and Chen Xiangdao excelled in it."1 4 Indeed, when we read Lu'!Yu qua'!iie, we can see that the focus of its interpretation is different from that of Daoxue scholars. Chen Yang continued the scholarly traditions of his brother. The "Biographies of Confucian Scholars" in the Dongdu shilue .t � .� records two scholars, Gong Yuan � � (fl. 1090) and Chen Yang, among New Learning scholars.ls In this text, Chen Xiangdao's biogra­ phy is appended to Chen Yang's. In the same book, there are two other cases in which brothers were recorded together, but in those cases, the older one was placed before the younger, and the name of a younger brother was written in a smaller font in the table of contents.16 The Chens' case was the exception, suggesting that at the time when the Dongdu shilue or its primary sources were compiled, Chen Yang was more highly thought of than was his older brother. This order was preserved in Songshi 432. But the Songshi does not have a biography of Gong Yuan in its "Bi­ ographies of Confucian Scholars," meaning Chen Yang and his brother were the only scholars of the New Learning listed. The Songshi is famous for its separation of the "Biographies of Confucian Scholars" from the 14. See the Siku quanshu zongmu � Jf. � . � ij entry, also included at the front of the SKQS edition ofLIII!Ju qua'!iie. 15. Dongdu shilue II4.7b-8a, 9a. In addition, Wang Anshi has a separate biography of his own, and Lu Dian is recorded injuan 97. Gong Yuan was a talented scholar, whose Zhouyi xinjiangyi }i] Jb 1JT�.It is extant. 16. The two other cases are the brothers Zhang Zai 5k � and Zhang Jian 5k�, and Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, all of whom, as founders of Daoxue, were in opposition to the New Learning. The absence of Cheng Yi's name in the 1883 edition of Dongdu shilue is inadvertent. In the main body, Cheng Yi's biography is followed by his brother's.

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"Biography of the Daoxue Scholars." However, it consistently views Daoxue as orthodox Confucianism and rejects New Learning as a heresy. Gong Yuan's disappearance may mean that nobody made reference to his theory in the Yuan. Why then did Chen Yang remain in the "Biog­ raphies of Confucian Scholars"? In the Dongdu shilue and in the Songshi, which drew extensively from the former, the compilation of the Book if Music � . was seen as Chen Yang's main achievement. Although it records that Chen Yang also au­ thored a commentary on the Mencius that was widely circulated as a ref­ erence book for the civil service examinations, ever since the Southern Song his musical theory has been his primary achievement. Furthermore, the Songshi describes him as a rival of Wei Hanjin: Wei Hanjin argued for using "the two bian [deflected] tones" and "the four clear tones [octave pitches]" ofJing Fang. Chen Yang responded, "Five tones and the twelve standard pitches are the right way of music, the two bian tones and the four clear tones are parasites to music . . . . " At the time, the majority supported Wei's claim and Chen Yang's argument was dismissed. lt � * � * , ffl * �..::.. � � �t. � l"1 : 1i. � +..::..# , * ziE.-I!!.. ..::.. � � �t, * z � -I!!.. . . . st��i;" .� :"'" 1+ ,

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� .1 7 � � ill. ".L

Given that the completion of Yueshu preceded the Dashengyue k & � reform, this account reveals the views of the author of the biography in the official history (or perhaps of the compilers of the Veritable Records ifHuizong's Era, which was earlier than the Dongdu shilue). ''The two bian tones" and "four clear tones" were not Wei Hanjin's idea. They were the traditional view, later adopted by both Zhu Xi *-� (1130-1200) and Cai Yuanding �7t� (1135-98). Therefore, it does not seem that Chen's opposition to this theory was what mattered, but rather his objection to Wei Hanjin's proposal. To the compilers and their successors, Wei's idea that the emperor's fingers were the standard looked like nonsense, and Chen Yang's music theory seemed more logical, more worthy of being recorded than Wei's, despite the fact that Chen's theory was not adopted in Huizong's era. In all likelihood the compilers saw Huizong's era as a dark age, one in which the better idea, Chen's, was ignored. The expression "was dismissed" implies more than just that they felt it to be regrettable. 17. SS 432.12849. Dongdu shilue 1I4.9a gives the same information but omits the name of Wei Hanjin.

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In fact, in the Songshi, Chen Yang was the only New Learning scholar recorded in the "Biographies of Confucian Scholars," yet even his bi­ ography was eliminated in the Ming dynasty Songshi xinbian *- 3t $.If �. There Ke Weiqi :f;rMi. states, "Hu Dan �JJ ..Q. indulged in delinquent behavior, and Chen Yang expanded New Learning. Therefore, neither of them deserves a record in the 'Biographies of Confucian Scholars,' and he removed them from the biographies."18

The Numerology if Chen Yang As seen from the above quotation, a special feature of Chen Yang's theory is the theoretical elimination of the two deflected tones (erbian ;:­ �) and the four octave pitches (siqing m1 �t). Below, with the under­ standing that there are overlaps with Lam's chapter, I would like to ex­ plain these two items briefly. In Chinese music, as in Western music, there are twelve standard pitches within an octave, each of which is defined by an absolute fre­ quency level. Taking the frequency level of huangzhong (C) as the standard and starting point, the absolute frequency levels of these twelve standard pitches and their intervalic relationships can be mathematically calculated by the ratios of 3:4 or 3:2. This is the methodology called the "addition or subtraction of a third" -=--n..... 4)l�a. with which Chinese music theorists establish the frequency levels of the twelve standard pitches, from the first pitch to the twelfth. To establish the frequency level of the thir­ teenth pitch, which is the octave huangzhong, one would take the original huangzhong as the lowest pitch, count up six pitches from it, find zhonglii (Ji# or F), and multiply its frequency value by 4/3. The resulting value is that of the octave huangzhong, with the new frequency value as that of the thirteenth pitch. Ideally, this new value would make a 1:2 ratio with that

18. See Ke Weiqi *"rMi.iJt, 50ngshixinbian *- 3tilf.� (Xuxiu Siku quanshu ed.) Janli 3b. Hu Dan t}] 1!. has a biography in 55432.12827-30. According to the biography, in his late ,

years, he was so ardent in amassing wealth by extortion that he was looked down on by people. Concerning 50ngshi xinbian, see Chen Xuelin (Hok-Iam Chan) f.t <$�, "Ke Weiqi 50ngshixinbian shuping" *"r Mi. *- 3t tIi' � ..til!"tt, Songshi zuotan hui *- 3t � it .., ed., 50ngshiyaf!}iuji *-3t.liJf� 11< (Taibei: Guoli bianyi guan, 1990), 20: 489-526.

216

T S UYO S H I KOJIMA

of the original huangzhong, if so, a perfect octave has been established mathematically.19 To give an example of the "addition or subtraction of a third," let us consider the case of a key that has the sixth pitch from the lowest key (the twelfth pitch) as a prime. If the pitch uses a tone on the octave of the huangzhong as the dominant pitch, the ratio of the number of vibrations of the prime to the dominant cannot be 2:3. In this case, it sounds very dissonant. In order to make two pitches consonant, we should for convenience set a pitch of which the ratio to the prime is 2:3. This pitch is different from the pitch of which the ratio to the huangzhong pitch is 1:2 (in other words, the pitch one octave higher than the huangzhong pitch). Jing Fang repeated the addition or subtraction of a third method in this way, and made 60 absolute pitches. Because the ratio of the 60 first pitches to the huangzhong pitch cannot be 1:2, this work can be repeated infinitely. In the fifth century, a scholar even established 360 pitches. However, historical sources record that in that case, the number of vi­ brations of consecutive pitches makes no difference to human ears in terms of sound, making them of theoretical interest only. The reason they divided one octave into 60 or 360 is based on the belief that they are sacred numbers. Separate from this theory, in the actual performance of court music, through manipulating the ratio of the number of vibrations of the twelve standard absolute pitches with subtle deviation from the precise number in the addition or subtraction of a third method makes the thirteenth pitch unnecessary. In this case, the needs of performance are satisfied by establishing a pitch that has the 1:2 ratio to the standard twelve pitches. In China, they call the lower keys "dull" 5� and higher keys "clear" �t. The octave of the higher keys is called "clear." Imagining a case in which the most clear tones are needed, if the twelfth pitch from the lowest is set as the prime, in order to feature all the pitches in the scale higher than the prime, all the eleven pitches except the pitch itself should be clear tones. However, in reality, on the twelfth pitch (even though it is not used) a

19. Zhonglii (F ) is six pitches away from C because the twelve standard pitches go C, C#, D, D#, E, F. E# is obviously not F; only in tempered tuning can the two pitches be treated identically. In music performance, performers can easily adjust the pitch differ­ ence; in mathematical calculations, the difference makes a beast that cannot be tamed easily.

Tuning and Numerology in the New Learning School

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clear tone is set. By so doing, 24 a good number chimes and pipes are arranged.20 In an alternative theory, the minimal number of clear tones is desir­ able, and four clear. tones are enough. Because the classics contain a phrase that can be interpreted as "the number of bells are sixteen," the bell chime was often cast with a set of sixteen chimes. In the Song, this method was implemented, and the Dashengyue of Wei Hanjin also used this sixteen-bell chime. When Chen Yang criticized the clear tone itself, in his writing he always used the term "the four clear tones," since it was the number of clear tones used at the time. Why did they think four was enough? The problem lies with flexible pitches. Whereas absolute pitches are called Iii $, flexible pitches are called sheng �. The classics use the term "the five flexible pitches" and call them gong 1:, shang Wj ,jue � , Zhi 1/1.., andyue .>J5J . Because this flexible pitch scale is also set by the addition or subtraction of a third method, the five flexible pitches overlap with the twelve absolute pitches. Each of the five flexible pitches is matched to each of five phases and aspects of human society. Gong is the ruler, shang is the minister,jue is the populace, Zhi is affairs, and yue is utensils. The clear tones were created by the re­ quirements of this metaphor. If the shang pitch was lower than the gong pitch in a certain key, the bell or the pipe of the shang should be larger than those of the gong acoustically. How could you explain that the minister (shang) is larger than the ruler (gong)? In the case of jue, the populace, the problem is even more serious. From a modern perspective, these problems do not make sense at all, but in the Chinese court they were serious issues. In order to avoid the phenomenon of "the lower transgressing the senior" It leo (which actu­ ally was a problem that resulted from performance), a clear tone was created in a key if necessary. Octave pitches have a smaller size bell and 20. In Chen Yang's Yueshu (SKQS ed.) 136.2a-3a, there are three pictures of chimes that had 24, 16, and 12 chime stones, respectively. Chen Yang thought Zheng Xuan's theory, which used a set of 16 chime stones, was wrong (3b). Moreover, he said that chimes that have one stone for each pitch could have 24 chime stones, but 16 is wrong. As to the Yueshu, the Yuan edition that used the Song edition was extant in Lu Xinyuan's I'! .-:. i/.ii copy, preserved in the Seikado bunko #..l'l: X;f. in Japan. This edition had been owned by Yang Rong � � in the Ming (Qianyuan zongji * III � 1f; edition, n.Sh-lSb). Qing bibliographies record Song and Yuan editions of Chen Yang's Yueshu under music classics, showing that these editions were valued.

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TSUYOSHI KOJIMA

pipe. On all the keys the bell and pipe ofgong would be bigger than those of the shang andjue. However, in such a case, it is not necessary that all the octave pitches be "clear." In contrast to the minister (gong; and the populace Uue), which belong to the same human realm, affairs (Zht) and utensils (yue) could be bigger than the ruler, which means it does not matter that the Zhi andyue are lower than gong. (It may also be that it does not matter in actual perfonnance if these notes are lower than the prime.) Therefore, only when shang andjue are lower than gong are octave pitches needed. This kind of problem happens in the case ofjue when the ninth absolute pitch from the lowest is set as gong, when the tenth pitch is gong, and in the case of shang andjue, when the eleventh is gong or the twelfth is gong. Besides those cases, in the cases ofjue when the ninth is gong, shang when the eleventh is gong,jue when the tenth is gong, and shang when the twelfth is gong have the same pitches, four octave pitches have to be set as absolute pitches. They are the four octave pitches. Chen Yang argued that the four octave pitches were unnecessary. However, he did not ignore cases of "the lower transgressing the senior." Because Chen took this as the problem of the absolute pitches instead of the flexible tones, he criticized the four octave pitches. According to his theory, the ruler should be the absolute pitch, huangzhong, rather than the flexible tone, gong. The bell of the octave pitch of huangzhong is smaller than that of any other of the eleven pitches on the original "dull" octave, which he regarded as a serious case of "the lower transgressing the senior." In addition to that, twelve is a crucial sacred number of the natural world. To ignore it and cast sixteen bells is a violation of the ancient ritual system. Based on this idea, the Yueshu developed the theory that the four octave pitches are unnecessary.21 However, the scale structured from the five absolute pitches is matched to the five phases, so it reflects the order of the natural world and human society. But, in actual musical notations, the seven-tone scale, which uses two more tones in addition to the basic five tones, was more common.22 The two tones are the pitches of which the ratio of vibration tojue, the fifth pitch in the addition or subtraction of a third method, is

21. In Chen Yang's Yueshu, there are many remarks that are critical of the four octave pitches. See 24.4a, 49.7a, 77.3b, IOI.ub-13a, 15Pb. 22. This is in theory. In practice, scales not limited to the seven-tone scale were used and even adopted for court music. For details, refer to Lam's chapter.

Tuning and Numerology in the New Learning School

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respectively 3:4 and 3:2. Neither of them has a unique name. They were simply called deflected � gong and deflected Zhi. "Deflected" here means a half-scale lower than the original. Even in contemporary Chinese, the flat in Western music is still called "deflected." For example, E-flat is called "bian E." Chen Yang was critical of the seven-tone scale. He argued that it re­ flected the influence of foreign music popular in the Tang and that the original Chinese scale was the five-tone scale. His reasoning was based on the logic that because five is the number of five phases, it is true to the law of nature. 23 The twelve standard pitches symbolize the twelve months of a year, and the five flexible tones symbolize the five phases. The music based on them is in harmony with the natural world and brings happiness to human society. Chen Yang's music theory was based on reasoning far removed from practical purposes. According to his biography in the official history, Chen's theory was in competition with Wei Hanjin's. Wei Hanjin found the universal measure in an incidental thing, the emperor's fingers, and criticized the existing performance techniques from the perspective of numerology, which takes five and twelve as its central numbers. In this sense, it is more accurate to say that their theories had nothing in common rather than that they were opposed. These theories dealt with different realms. We may find it coincidental that both theories were worked out during Huizong's reign and suppose that they do not necessarily have anything to do with New Learning. However, the ways of thinking underpinning their theories at the level of their fundamental logic have something in common even if superficially they differ.

The Obsession with Three In III3 , the New Meanings of the Five Rites of the Zhenghe Reign Period Jli� li.:ft -8Jf1l was completed. On the problem of the suburban sacri­ fice, debated since Shenzong's reign, this compendium clarified and substantiated the position of the New Policies faction that the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth should be performed separately. Within a year, the sacrificial ceremony to be performed by the emperor was prepared, and the size of the altars in the southern suburb and the northern suburb was 23. Chen Yang, Yueshu I03.3a-3b, I07.6a-8a. This point is discussed in detail below.

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decided. However, the regulations of the just completed Zhenghe wuli xi1!Ji were altered. The altar in the southern suburb for the sacrifice to Hao Tian Shangdi � �...t. '*" was round, symbolizing the shape of Heaven. According to the introductory conventions of the first chapter of Zhenghe wuli xi1!Ji, the altar at the southern suburb was to be a four-tiered structure; its bottom tier 20 zhang ;t in diameter, the second tier from the bottom 15 zhang, the third tier 10 zhang, and the top tier 5 zhang.24 The reform changed every number used in the sacrifice into a multiple of its cardinal number, 3, which was conceived of as an approximation to 11:, a Heavenly number. This meant that the altar itself was to be in 3 tiers, making the diameter of the bottom tier into 81 zhang, the middle tier 54 zhang, and the top tier 27 zhang. It thus changed from multiples of 5 to multiples of 3. Consequently, the size of the new top tier was much larger than the old bottom tier, entailing a huge expansion. The height of the altar was also changed: from 8 chi I cun to 27 chi for each tier. At the same time, the altar of the northern suburb, for the sacrifice to the earth spirits .t. !� ;ffl. , was changed to be based on multiples of 2.25 From a modern perspective, attaching significance to a number, such as three, is mere play with numbers. In the Southern Song period, the altar at the southern suburb, newly built in Lin'an, returned to the four-tiered structure, giving up multiples of three. Even in the Song, Huizong's reform did not last. The extant Temple of Heaven, built in the sixteenth century in Beijing, is three-tiered with nine steps between tiers. Although it looks like a return to multiples of three, it resulted from the reform of Ming Shizong (r. 1521-66). This reform also involved separate

24. Zhenghe wuli xitryi (5KQ5 ed.) 1.3b-4a. Umehara Kaoru ;#t � -fl�, "Kotei, saishi, kokuto" .:t * . �:ff. . f!l �, in Nakamura Kenjiro t' #!f-.;:::.. t� , ed., Rekishi no naka no toshi Zoku toshi no shakaishi J.t 3t 0) t' 0) � rj1-Mt.� rj1 0) :f.l 4H�. (Kyoto: Minerva shobo, 1968), 284-307, thinks the altar was made in these dimensions in the late Northern Song, but I think it is a misunderstanding resulting from overlooking the record of re­ vision. As I see it, the size of the altar had been multiples of 5, but it was reformed to multiples of 3 in III3. 25. 55 99.2434. See Li Shen :'f.. 'f Zhongguo rujiao shi t' f!l fNUt3t (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chuban she, 2000), 2: II9. I agree with Li's methodology, which introduces the changes in institutions of religious rituals offering sacrifices to deities in the first section of each period in the history of Confucianism. ,

Tuning and Numerology in the New Learning School

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sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, which recalls what was done in Huizong's day.26 The Collected Commentaries on the 4Ji � jc. 1f< �, compiled by Wei Shi �tt)Jt. (fl. 1230), circulated widely in the Southern Song. It contains ma­ terials later scattered and lost, including commentaries by New Learning scholars. Chapter 27 begins with commentaries on the number of offi­ cials directly under the Son of Heaven in the "Kingly Institutions" chapter of the Book rfRites: three dukes �, nine ministers �If, 27 high officers k A.} and 81 primal scholars 7t ± ,27 It shows in the first place that the text of the classic has an organizational plan based on multiples of three (3, 32, 33, 34). The Collected Commentaries on the 4Ji quotes Chen Xiangdao, Ma Ximeng .� :.tf;.iii. (I068jinshi), Zhou Xu %J� (I073jinsht), Fang Que 7i � (m8 jinsht), and Lu Dian ili 1\f1 (I050-mo), all scholars committed to the New Learning, on the question of why there are three dukes under the Son of Heaven. In fact, only New Learning scholars wrote on this question. For example, Fang Xu asserted that, "the num­ ber ofyang is exhausted by nine times nine. Therefore, the number of primal scholars is 81. Also for the same reason, the pitch pipe of huang­ zhong ends with 81." His explanation shares common ground with mu­ sical theory. The 81 of the pitch pipe of huangzhong is the number that resulted from multiplying its length of 9 cun by 9 fen} the circumference of the bottom of the pipe. This parallels the width of the bottom tier of the altar at the southern suburb. The subsequent pitch (linzhong) derived from huangzhong by the subtraction or addition of a third method is 54, two­ thirds of 81 (the length of a pitch pipe is 6 cun) , which is the same as the width of the middle floor of the altar, which is also two-thirds of the bottom tier's width. The top tier is one-third of the bottom tier. On the other hand, with regard to pitch, the pitch next to linzhong is 72 (the length of the pitch pipe is 8 cun), which is the result of multiplying 54 by four-thirds. Three, the number of Heaven, as an approximation of 11: is also a cardinal number of an integer, which makes a consonance in acoustics. 26. See Kojima, "Kasei no reisei kaikaku ni tsuite" .,l * 0) ;{t 1li� �.t $ t: --:J \, \ "( , Tf!yo bunko kenkyUjo kiyo Il7 (1992): 381-426; Lam, "Ming Music and Music History," Ming Studies 38 (1998): 21-62; and Carny T. Fisher, The Chosen One: Succession ondAdoption in the Court ofMing Shizong (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990). 27. Wei Shi .f$fik, 4ijishuo ;{t�(. #; 'IDt. (Tongzhitang jingjie ed.), 27.1a-2a.

TSUYO S H I KOJIMA

222

This is not coincidental, as both are based on three. The theory that uses three as the cardinal number appeared in the Han. To modern sensibility the concurrence of these two cases is coincidental. Conceiving of it as necessary rather than coincidental was the mentality of people at the time (and also of Pythagoras). Three, which symbolizes Heaven, has a special meaning for the ruler as the recipient of Heaven's mandate. Nine, or

3

x

3

=

9,

is the largest

number in the decimal system and, in the ritual system, is the zenith of all numbers; it was the number of the Son of Heaven. For this reason the length of the

huangzhong

pitch pipe was fixed at

9

since Han times.

However, this does not answer the questions, Why is it the pitch pipe's

90 grains of millet for huangzhong? Why should it be 9 cun? Wei Hanjin's formula for the length of the pitch pipe of huangzhong was 3 X 3 9, that is the number of joints of Hui Zong's fingers to make length

=

the pipe. Why three fingers? According to Wei Hanjin, the middle finger symbolizes the ruler, the third finger the minister, and the little finger, utensils. Nine

cun thus symbolizes the ruler governing the world with the

aid of the ministers and utensils. The thumb symbolizes affairs, and the index finger the populace, but these fingers are not calculated because they are ruled rather than ruling. However far-fetched, this theory had explanatory power. The

9

representing the governance of space by the

Son of Heaven was also arranged in a old theory of

9 Zhou Ie.. 1"'1 .

3

by

3

grid, corresponding to the

It also corresponds to the layout of the im­

perial Hall of Light, which Huizong built, and the well-field system that his government admired. Wei Hanjin's music theory was derived from the natural order of 3 x 3

=

9, and became a part of a theory governing the

human realm.

Conclusion: The Beliifin "Nature" Chen Yang often used the term "nature" or "natural" m .� .28 This term does not correspond exactly to "nature" in English. In Chen's usage, "the natural" is what is logical or rational to follow. This was conven­ tional; he was not making a revolutionary contribution to the concept of the natural.

28. Chen Yang, Yueshu 28.2a, 49.2a, 76.2b, etc.

--.........

----------

-------------

Tuning and Numerology in the New Learning School

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Chen's numerology was not an abrupt break with the intellectual trends of the time: Shao Yong's {l� $. philosophical system took 4 as its basic number, disregarding the five phase theory. Sima Guang admired Yang Xiong's {;,.tit Taixuanjing :k. j;�fl, which took 3 as its significant number, and Sima himself wrote the Qianxu ;t} .Ii, which is based on 5. At the time, numerological thinking was very popular among Confucian scholars. In its reform s, Huizong's government especially valued the number of Heaven, 3, as Yang Xiong did in the Han. While Chen Yang developed a music theory based on the cardinal numbers of 5 and 12, Wei Hanjin's theory was based on 3. In that sense, their theories are different. However, in terms of their underlying ideas, they shared common ground. Chen Yang said, In deciding pitches, the reason for making the pitch pipe of bamboo is because bamboo is a natural utensil. The reason for using millet to fill the pitch pipe is because millet is a natural product. Because it uses a natural utensil holding natural products, its length, volume, pitch, and weight are all natural, and have nothing to do with the artificial. Therefore, we can acquire the correct tune, and the music system can be successfully established. . . . In later periods, they came to use copper instead of bamboo. When filling natural millet in such an artificial utensil, the length, volume, pitch, and weight cannot acquire a proper number.

�#J'X # � ibtt , :k !t m tt\.t2--\!!" . J'x i_ � 't:t, :k !t m tt\.t4h-\!!" . J'X :k !t m �:.t4h, 't :k !t m tt\.t2-, Jlll �'--t".t��-k, � �.t � -*, �:t.t�t �lJ, ••.t• • - *.t m tt\ � A� � B • . � t �.t*M � � , � k _ M � A-\!!... . . . 1t1l!';tj' � # J'X �, Jt. J'X A�.t 2- 't :k !t.ti_, Jlll �'--t"�� �1l � £ , �:t •• �1l � * 1'-?29 Chen rejected the deflected tone because the 5 tones are natural, corresponding to the 5 phases. He disregarded the 5 octave pitches be­ cause the 12 standard pitches are natural, corresponding to the 12 months. From his perspective, it did not matter whether the number was 5 or 12. What mattered to him was the number, 7, the 2 deflected tones plus the basic 5 tones, and 16, the 4 octave pitches plus the 12 standard pitches. These were his sacred numbers. Seven was the 2 ofyin andyang and the 5 of the 5 phases. Sixteen was one-fourth of 64, which is both 24 and the number of hexagrams in the Yijingo Since the Han, some scholars of the classics had on this basis justified using the 7-tone scale for the relative

T S UYO S H I KOJIMA

224

octave and the 16-tone scale for the absolute octave. Chen Yang's in­ genuity lies in using the concept of nature to explain why the sacred numbers are sacred. The basis for determining the musical scales in antiquity was nature. Therefore, it is impossible to increase or reduce the number of scales arbitrarily. The five tones are the five planets in Heaven, the five phases in Earth, and the five constant virtues in the human. If it is possible to change the five-tone scale into the seven-tone scale, does it mean that it is possible to change the five planets, five phases, and five constant virtues into seven? The twelve standard pitches are sounds that correspond to energy of which the center is each of the twelve months. If it is possible to change these into sixty, does it mean that it is possible to change the twelve months into sixty? .tt\ ;!;-�.t ,*� �4f;, .:l. � :t 1Jliai1ft m

tt\, :f 'f�l ai1 .fji�;t-ll!.. 1arJlIJ? .E.. � 1t- � � .E.. £, 1t-Jt�.E.. H , 1t-�� .E.. 't o .E.. � 'f � � -C -i', tt\ JlIJ .E.. £, .E.. -1t, .E.. 't ;# 'f �l ai1 �.t 1'- ? -t,;::.4f; FIT "X J.t -t ,;::. fJ tF ft.;t-II!. . -!til 'f � ai1 � "* -t, tt\ JlIJ -t ,;::. fJ ;# 'f �l .1ii �.t 1'- ?30

One might think that the five phases and five constant virtues are also artificially determined. But such a criticism is based on our common sense, not on his. In sum, how phrases in the classics are interpreted depends on the worldview of the interpreters.31 Chen Yang was not different because he believed in the five-phase theory, but because he argued that the musical scales should have five tones because the number five of the five-phase theory was natural. Chen Yang's Yueshu was completed before Wei Hanjin appeared. Nevertheless, there is a phrase that we should pay attention to in the text. "In antiquity, the standard of pitch was the human voice, and the stan­ dard of length was the human body. Therefore, the cun was set by measuring the fingers, the chi was set by extending the hand, and xun was set by opening the arms."32 -6 � JI;.{ ,* $,�, JI;.{ .$t $,/t, !t.tlt-�� �\1 i", >ill f- �\1 ft...., ifif�\14 , Mt r1ii � ..t , r1ii 1i.. /t . t- . His account of the origin of the units of measurement cun, chi, and xun merely repeated the Shuowen jiei/. However, when Chen Yang remarked that the human was the standard for pitch, he did not differ from Wei Hanjin. In fact, at the end of the Yueshu, Chen proposed regularizing the music system. We can 30. Ibid., IOJ.3a-b. 31. In general, eight was not the number for scales, but it was interpreted as the number for the categories of instruments. Chen Yang also interpreted it in this way in practice. 32. Chen Yang, Yueshu 96.6a. •

Tuning and Numerology in the New Learning School

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infer that this proposal is part of the background of Wei Hanjin's re­ form.33 Although Huizong's body could be regarded as an extremely ar­ tificial entity in Wei Hanjin's theory, it was conceived as the most natural standard, coinciding with his age of 24.34 Chen Yang's view that the de­ flected tones and octave pitches should not be accepted was ignored in the Dashengyue reform, but the basic assumption of his and Wei's thought was similar. Huizong's regime granted special meaning to particular numbers, which looks like a return to the numerology of the Han. Indeed, begin­ ning with the New Meanings of the Five Rites ofthe Zhenghe Reign Period, the ritual and music system of Huizong's era aspired to return to antiquity as the court understood it. However, the numerology of the time was not justified by an appeal to historical precedents but by the idea of the natural. According to Chen Yang, number was the way to eliminate ar­ tificiality and return to a pure and correct order. Wei Hanjin also stressed the fact that when Huizong was 24 years old, he commanded the reform of the music system. Was Huizong's emperorship the final manifestation of the ancient world? In a sense, it was, but in my view, the numerology of Huizong's era integrated the human realm and the natural order. To put it another way, it expressed the belief that the human order ought to originate in nature. This was also the Daoxue view, which took Heavenly principle as the highest standard for judging value. Was this not perhaps why Chen Yang's book on music theory survived almost alone among New Learning texts, and why his biography was included in the "Biographies of Confucian Scholars"? The New Book ofMusicology � *� .. of Cai Yuanding, Zhu Xi's friend, justified the presence of the four octave pitches in terms of the con­ venience of performance, without considering the sacredness of twelve,

33. Ibid., 200.24b. 34. According to Yang Zhongliang #Hl' 1t in ]5BM 135, the age of 24, the age of Huizong in II05, was explained by two kinds of factorizations, 4 X 6 and 3 X 8. Consid­ ering the sacredness of 3 discussed above, the latter was theoretically reasonable. 3 X 8 is the formula of the multiple of 3 and the cube of 2. But in the case of 4 X 6, three is not important. However, in any case, whereas the modems consider it incidental that they launched the reform when the age of the emperor was 24, Wei Hanjin and his con­ temporaries viewed it as natural and inevitable, at least in their discourse.

226

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the idea that constrained Chen Yang. For Cai, a belief in principle re­ placed numerology. However, it does not necessarily follow that nu­ merological thinking centered on twelve came to be meaningless. Zhu Zaiyu's *ilU� (1536-1610) discovery of the technique of average tones in the twelve-tone scale also represented an extension of the obsession with twelve. Chen Yang's belief that there should be only twelve absolute tones was revived in Zhu Zaiyu's theory.

P A RT I I I

Extending the Imperial Presence

C HAPTER 6

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions Patricia Ebrey

After the Jurchen conquest of 1127 and the retreat of the Song govern­ ment to the south, many literati wondered what had happened to the famous landmarks of the former capital at Kaifeng. After the Mongols reunified north and south in 1276, travel became easier, and by the 1290S a growing number of southern scholars had visited the north. Luo Zhiren lIi It: 1=-, after a trip to Kaifeng in 1296, reported that the site of the former National Academy k * still had the stone titles done by Cai Jing !J 1{.. (1046-1126) on imperial command. Most of the steles that had once stood there, however, including the ones with the Nine Classics inscribed on them, were piled in heaps. At the old Bureau of Astronomy, one hall still had the title plaque inscribed by Huizong (r. 1100-1125) in cursive script 1f t' , reading "Hall of the Nine Celestial Bodies" lLlIfl ..t.«i. And a stele by Huizong had been discovered: With regard to Huizong's stele on settling the tripods, in Slender Gold script, when a commoner's family inside the old palace precincts was excavating in order to build a wall, they suddenly came across an exceptionally tall stele. At the top were a pair of dragons. The head of the turtle at its base was looking Besides the abbreviations listed on p. xiv, the following abbreviations are used in the notes for this chapter: HYHarvard-Yanjing number for items in the Daozang it;&., based on Daozang i/muyinde it,i. 1- ro ijl l' (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1986 reprint). SKSLXB Shike shiliao xinbian .:b i'l � ;ftilf Rh, 30 vols. (faibei: Xinwenfeng, 1977). SYDFZCS Song Yuan difang Zhi congshu ;Jt 7tJt 7i It, . ... ' 12 vols. (faibei: Guotai wenhua shiye, 1980).

230

PATRICIA EB REY

up. The workmanship was extremely fine; this was a true Slender Gold stele. When word got out, those nearby all contributed money to get it, the family [discovering it] getting all the profit. eai Jing's inscribed title reads, "Stele of Settling the Tripods During the Zhenghe Period." 4tt * ;t .Jflrl- �, � J1t t" , i t.

� fJ;H\ � [§ ?M�iAi:M!.Jfit.±., .%r- JL� � � -it, �J:. �it, i&jJt tr �, -it�..r.. , f!p � J1t��. � 7i tltl 1::.. , �b ;f� J1t ¥Jfit, � �lt. �;fIJ . J,!.. :t:Jl!$1! 'iE.;ft1 ;t }tiJrI-

1::..�. '1

By the end of the thirteenth century, when Luo visited, a stele in the distinctive Slender Gold � 1t calligraphy of the Emperor Huizong was treated as a treasure both for its historical associations with a famous emperor and for its qualities as a work of art by a recognized calligra­ pher. 2 The particular stele described, with its turtle base, entwined dragons, and title by eai Jing, seems not to have survived for long, as it is not recorded in any of the major epigraphical works from later centuries. That such a stele would have been erected, that the main text would have been in Huizong's highly distinctive Slender Gold calligraphy, and that its title would have been written out by eai Jing, however, are all plausible, given what we know of other steles Huizong had erected. Because he so often had copies of his steles erected around the country, many survived to be recorded by local historians and epigraphers, and at least three are still extant today in stone, more in rubbings. Surprisingly, no scholars have studied Huizong's steles, even though they offer an excellent source for the study of his calligraphy and direct evidence of how he wished to present himself to his various publics. Huizong is regularly caricatured as an artist-emperor, too frivolous to concern himself with the practical details of governing, which he dele­ gated to others such as eai Jing. The steles show that Huizong tried to project a very different image of himself. By the act of ordering steles I. Zhou Mi }¥j 'If , Guixin zazhi �*$.� (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1988), bieji 2.218. 2. Wang Tinggui Inti!. wrote that even before the Xuanhe period (that is, even before III9), high-ranking people in the capital treasured Huizong's calligraphy, and after the loss of the North it came to have even greater value (Luxi wenji " i� 5t it< [SKQS ed.], 48.1a). Further evidence that Southern Song calligraphy collectors valued Huizong's cal­ ligraphy is found in Yue Ke -ffi- Ji'J , Baozhenzhaifashu zan f � . � . ,", Yishu congshu ed. (Taibei: Shijie shuju, 1962). He records and critiques six pieces of calligraphy by Huizong then in collections (2.13-19). In one case (pp. 18-19), he mentions spending 10,000 cash for a two-line edict in Huizong's hand conferring favor on an official. Yue Ke purchased it from a descendent of the recipient who had fallen on hard times.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

231

to be erected throughout the country, he presented himself as an emperor whose concerns reached down to every prefecture and county, who cared enough about his subjects to communicate with them directly, minimizing the role of his officials as intermediaries. Through the words on them, he presented himself initially as committed both to the New Policies of his father, Shenzong (r. 1067-85), and to basic Con­ fucian values, and later also as having special access to Daoist truths. Through the calligraphy on the steles, he presented himself as a person of creativity and discipline, style and order. In this chapter I examine the creation of Huizong's steles as complex cultural and political acts, acts that consisted not simply of broadcasting words, but of broadcasting them in a particular material and visual way: inscribing them in a very distinctive, legible, elegant calligraphy, on the medium of stone, and erecting them not just in one place, but often replicating them through­ out the country. The texts Huizong had inscribed on stone formed only a small part of his literary and calligraphic oeuvre. During his reign, he claimed au­ thorship of thousands of pieces, including edicts, essays, prefaces, letters, poems, and commentaries. Even though his collected works had to be assembled from texts that survived the fall of Kaifeng, it reached 100 chapters Uuan).3 Huizong was just as avid a calligrapher, and more ex­ amples of his calligraphy survive than for any earlier emperor.4 By the

3 . It included, among other items, 195 shi �t poems, 200 palace lyrics 1: 1"1, 12 prefaces If , 10 commemorative records �(., 4 stone inscriptions 4 , 9 examination questions �;t!, 7 essays 5\:, 2 musical compositions * *, 27 funeral dirges Jt1"1, 15 miscellaneous essays #5\:, 9 explanations of the Odes, 2 explanations of the Analects, 8 explanations of the Daode jing, 20 explanations of the Zhuangif and Ueif, a medical text in 10 parts (�iT.t�), a ritual text in 2 parts (#1l), along with 1,350 hand-drafted documents on politics plus 244 on border affairs (Wang Yingli ..!.. �" [1223-96], Yuhai 3':.. i$: [Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1987], 28.19b). Li Xinchuan :$- ''':'�, Jianyanyilai xinian yaolu Jt � .-;olt *-+-*� (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1956), 167.2729 gives slightly variant figures: 155 shi poems, 3 musical compositions, and 1,550 hand-drafted edicts on political matters. It also divides the explanations on the Zhuangif and Ueif, listing 8 of the former and 12 of the latter. The preface to this collection done by Huizong's son Gaozong (r. II27-89) still survives in Gaozong's calligraphy. See Yujiro Nakata, Chinese Calligrapf?y (A History qftheArlqfChina) (fokyo and New York: Weatherhill, 1983), pI. 57. 4. Betty Tseng Yu-ho Ecke, "Emperor Hui Tsung, the Artist: 1082-II36" (ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1972) lists thirteen pieces, to which could be added the

232

PATRICIA BB RBY

II20S, Huizong had given away so much calligraphy to his leading offi­ cials that several of them built special pavilions to hold the imperial cal­ ligraphy in their possession. 5 Huizong was quite happy to have his calligraphy displayed for everyone to see. The name plaque for the Bu­ reau of Astronomy mentioned by Zhou Mi above was not a unique item his name plaques were to be found throughout the country at Daoist temples, prefectural schools, and even at many private homes.6 Moreover, he wrote out thousands of edicts in his own hand, two of which survive as originals, on fancy imperial paper.7 Huizong would rarely have wielded the imperial brush without po­ litical considerations complicating his act. The imperial brush edicts were explicitly political documents. Most of the commemorative essays cele­ brated actions taken at court, such as the construction of new palaces or gardens, the creation of new forms of music, and the casting of new bells.s Similarly, the prefaces were largely for texts compiled under court auspices.9 Many pieces of calligraphy and paintings were made in order to be given away; they served to strengthen Huizong's bonds with the recipients, usually members of his court.lO Some paintings documented two edicts in the collection of the Liaoning Provincial Museum (see note 7 to this chapter). 5. SHY chongrn 6.na-12a. 6. SHY Ii 5-23b. 6.lIa, 6.I2b-13a; Wang Mingqing .l.. a}J it, HuiZhu lu .:ff ,f: � (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1961), hou 7.164-65; Wu Zeng *- 'It (d. 1170+), Nenggai zhai manlu fit �t." il� (Taibei: Muduo, 1982), 12.368, 13.378. 7. The best reproductions are in Ryonei shO hakubutsu kan �. �#J.4h.ft (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1986), 1: 1I-12, 219-220. Another more commonly available version is in Zhonghua wuqian nian wenwujikan 'F * iIi1t-+;t 4h � -f� (Taibei: Zhonghua wuqian nian wenwu jikan bianji weiyuanhui, 1983- ), fashu 3: 86-103. 8. For some of his records, see ]SBM I28.7a-8a, I28.IOb-na, 33.8a-9a; HuiZhu lu hou 2.72-74. 9. On the preface to a Daoist work (HY 147), see Judith M. Boltz, A SUT'/Jry rfTaoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries, China Research Monograph 32 (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, 1987), 27. On his preface to medical compendiums, see Gold­ schmidt's chapter in this volume. 10. For example, in the collected works of one of the few officials of Huizong's court whose works survive, Wang Anzhong .l.. � 'F (1076-n34), there are many references to receiving gifts of imperial poems or calligtaphy. For instance, once he received a draft of the Thousand Character Classic (Wang Anzhong, Chuliaoji ;fJJ � � [SKQS ed.], 4.49a-50a). Another time he received a talisman in the imperial hand (4.50b-51b). Another official who received poems, paintings, and calligraphy from Huizong was Liu Zhengfu f1 .iE.� (55 35I.IIIOO). Art chroniclers also refer to his habit of distributing both paintings and

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

233

the auspicious events and omens that proved Heaven's favor and thus testified to the correctness of his political policies and actions.!! As Egan shows in his chapter, many of the poems were written at court, as part of court entertainment. Others were done in exchange with leading court figures, such as Cai Jing.! 2 Of all these politicized uses of the imperial brush, none brought the emperor's words and calligraphy to a larger audience than did his steles.13 In erecting so many steles, Huizong was not simply following precedent. His father, Shenzong, so often Huizong's model, had little if any interest in putting his words or calligraphy on display in this way. In fact, no emperor since Zhenzong (r. 997-1022), a century earlier,

calligraphies. See Deng Chun

JII�!, Huaji ... . , Huashi congshu ed. (Shanghai: Renmin

meishu, 1962), 1.1-2. II. On these paintings, see Peter C. Sturman, "Cranes Above Kaifeng: The Auspicious Image at the Court of Huizong,"

Ars Orientalis

20 (1990): 33-68; Maggie Bickford,

"Emperor Huizong (1082-1I35, r. IIOo-II26) and the Aesthetic of Agency,"

Asian Art 53

Archives of

(2002-3): 71-104.

12. Wang Mingqing .I. 11Ji it (1I27-1214+) reported that while visiting the grandson of

Cai Jing he saw manuscripts of poems Cai Jing and Huizong had written for each other on various occasions, such as the completion of court ceremonies or visits to gardens. In one case Huizong sent an eight-line, seven-character regulated verse; Cai Jing matched the rhymes four times, which sparked Huizong to do one more as well. Wang also quoted the grandson as saying that the extant poems were only I or 2 percent of those that Cai Jing had originally possessed, the rest having been scattered after the fall of Kaifeng

(HuiZhu lu yuhua 1.271-73) . Se also Patricia Ebrey, "Literati Culture and the Relationship Between Huizong and Cai Jing," Journal of5ong-Yuan 5tudies, forthcoming. 13. In this chapter, I make the assumption that Huizong was in fact the author of these texts inscribed in his calligraphy on these stones. During Song times some writers expressed doubts that emperors actually wrote everything attributed to them (e.g., by Li Xinchuap

.i�

*,-:.1*

[1I66--1243] ,

Jiaf!Janyilai chaoye �ji � 9t )-;J. *- .tJJ Jf

[Beijing: Zhonghua, 2000], 11.469). For instance, in Huizong's case, one person

claimed that Cai Jing had supplied a line in one of his "imperial brush" edicts

(55

348.1I028). But even if Huizong occasionally borrowed phrases from officials in his hand-drafted edicts, there is little reason to think that ghostwritten texts would be the ones selected for inscribing on stone. Officials working closely with him undoubtedly recognized his calligraphy. What incentive would they possibly have to identify a text not actually by the emperor as so brilliant that it deserved to be inscribed on stone? It should also be remembered that like other emperors before him, Huizong readily commissioned others to compose stone inscriptions for him when he saw no need to get too deeply involved himself.

234

PATRI CIA EB REY

had erected any steles with his own words or calligraphy.14 Going beyond his ancestors in this way could be viewed as evidence of a grandiose de­ sire to imprint himself everywhere in his dominion. After all, the most famous of the steles erected by earlier emperors were those of the First Emperor of Qin, hardly a model of imperial modesty.15 In thinking about Huizong's motivations for erecting these steles, it must be kept in mind that he had other ways to address his officials and subjects. Song emperors issued many sorts of documents edicts, re­ scripts, decrees, and the like. Normally, officials made proposals, and if the emperor approved them, an edict would be drafted by assigned of­ ficials who would phrase it as though it came from the emperor. The emperor could of course take a more active role, instructing officials on what to put in edicts. Moreover, some emperors also wrote some of their own edicts. Of Huizong's Song predecessors, Shenzong went furthest in this regard, using hand-drafted edicts to conduct a wide range of gov­ ernment business.16 Indeed, by 1082, when the edicts in Shenzong's hand dating from his first ten years on the throne were collected and edited,

14. Here I am not counting cases where the emperor supplied the title for the funerary stele of a leading official, which many emperors did routinely. In these cases, the text was both composed and written out by someone else, the emperor supplying the words and calligtaphy only for the four- or six-character title. 15 . On these inscriptions, see Martin Kern, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch'in Shih­ Huang: Text and Ritual in EarlY Chinese Imperial Representation, American Oriental Society Monographs 85 (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 2000). The Tang em­ peror Taizong was the first to erect steles in his own calligraphy. See Robert E. Harrist,Jr., "Record of the Eulogy on Mt. Tai and Imperial Autographic Monuments of the Tang Dynasty," Oriental An 46.2 (2000): 68-79. His Tang successors, including Gaozong, Empress Wu, and Xuanzong, had many stones engraved in their calligraphy. None of them, however, seem to have had their steles duplicated around the country. The first to do that was apparently the Song emperor Zhenzong (r. 998-1022). 16. The electronic index to the CB cites 215 shouzhao 1- -m by Shenzong, considerably more than all of his predecessors put together. (It lists Taizu, 5; Taizong, 12; Zhenzong, 29; Renzong, 64; Yingzong, 20; and Shenzong, 215.) In some cases, these citations are to the notes to the CB, or there may be two citations to the same edict, so that the actual number of shouzhao referred to in the CB is somewhat fewer. Like his predecessors, he wrote out edicts when communicating with commanders at the front, probably both to preserve secrecy and also to ensure that the commander would know that the command came from him. And like his predecessors, he sometimes conferred on a favored official an edict of commendation that he wrote out himself.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

235

the work came to 21 volumes, and contained 1,346 separate pieces,17 Cai Jing had been the editor of Shenzong's hand-drafted edicts, and perhaps encouraged Huizong to issue hand-drafted edicts, regularly called during his reign "imperial brush hand-drafted edicts" � * f-�, or "imperial brush" � * for short,1s To make these edicts more effective as law, they were periodically collected and published, beginning in 1106. These compilations of hand-drafted edicts were widely distributed so that magistrates and prefects would be able to conform to their stipulations.19 Thus it was not because Huizong or his advisors did not understand the value of printing that Huizong turned to stone to broadcast his ideas. Indeed, in several cases his words were made public through both printed books and inscribed stones. By far the best known of the steles Huizong had erected were the ones listing the banned Yuanyou/Yuanfu partisans (see Levine's chap­ ter). In 1102 a stele was set up by a gate of the palace, and in 1104 another with a fuller list was placed by the Cultured Virtue Hall X. ��, both in Huizong's own hand. Court officials, but not the general public, would have been able to view them. Later versions were made for dis­ tribution to the prefectures, with an explanation written by Cai Jing prefacing the list. Both the steles in the palace and the ones in the pre­ fectures were ordered destroyed in 1106, and therefore were not on view very 10ng.20 Because the main text of this stele was by Cai Jing, not Huizong, and also because the stele was on display for such a short

17. CB 328.7897. By contrast, the table of contents of Renzong's roo juan collected works included only onejuan of handwritten edicts (shouzhao). CB 328.7897. 18. About 200 of Huizong's "imperial brush" edicts survive in transcription. Song dazhaolingji * :k � 4- " (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1962) includes the full text of 134 of Huizong's imperial brush edicts. ]SBM also is a good source. The first of the 28 chapters on Huizong's reign had a section on "imperial compositions" (yuZhi) and "imperial brush," (yubi), but unfortunately it is one of the eight chapters that are missing. Scattered in other chapters, however, are over 90 edicts in the imperial hand. On the legal weight of hand-drafted edicts, see Tokunaga Yasuke 1.i Adf1r, "Sadai no gyohitsu shusha" * {-'(. O).f;tp*f-�, Tqyoshi kenkyu 57.3 (1998): 393-426; SHY zhiguan L45a-b, xingfa I.32X; SS 199.4965, 200.4990-91, 348.n028, 352.III23, 468.13662, 472.13726; Chen Bangzhan F.tjj;�, Songshijishi benmo * !tR..�* (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1977), 49.497. 19. SS 20.376; SHY chongru 6.rob--na; zhiguan 55.13a-14a. 20 CB]SMB 12I.15a, 124.3a-b; Jinshi cuibian 1t .:b 4- �, by Wang Chang ':£',}l!. (SKSLXB ed.) ,juan 144-45.

PATRICIA EB REY period, when I refer to Huizong's steles below, I am not including this stele. In subsequent years Huizong had many more steles erected. An 1111 memorial requesting that an imperial composition be carved on stone reported that imperial compositions were routinely carved on stones erected at government buildings. The authors, officials recompiling the government ritual manuals, were responding to receipt of Huizong's draft of a preface for their compilation. One can only hope that Huizong did not take their fulsome praise of his literary efforts as an objective assessment: When we received what was graciously handed down by the emperor, the preface to the Five Categories 0/ Rites NewlY Compiled in the Zhenghe Period, both composed and written out by the emperor, we held it with both hands and knelt to read it. Our minds and eyes were dazzled as though we were facing heaven and the light of the sun, moon, and stars were shining on us. We did not know how it could be exceeded. According to our investigations, in recent years, all promulgated imperial compositions have been carved in metal or stone so that they can be handed down indeftnitely. Remember the edict honoring schools, set up at the guest register of the Biyong Academy, the instruction on the Eight Conducts, carved at the National Academy, the Record on the New Learning, set up at the Dasheng Music [Bureau).21 We request that the recently issued work by the emperor in his hand, the preface to the Five Categories o/Rites NewlY Compiled in the Zhenghe Period, according to this precedent be copied and carved, and set up at the checkpoint of the Court of Imperial Sacriftces. We seek your instruction. 1Je."�.��ift,*�t.� .. Jt;flrtJf1if .n.. 4 ,4, ff

�3h.�, � � �hi, .,X � El J1 .t� .�,Bfl·\:'Hl , � �PJT*. Il. l- �!JJ , �l:..f"X *" PJT�ft�t., � .fJJ :t- -b, "X�*A., %, .� * *�.t�, t<. i"'AlfJ/i -t�, A�t .tl)lj, �J.t:k.*, tJf*.tl�, � .t :k. h\ , ;Jf�4'-*,�ft'*�t.�-tJt;flrtJf* .n.. :f.t ,4, � � #it,*J:.1tft11Ht.fJJ , � # � 't t" lfll3!J1:.. 22

21. I have found no other reference to an essay on the New Learning tIt.f! (the learning promoted by Wang Anshi), but such an essay is entirely plausible (after all, there also was no reference to the stele on the settling of the tripods either). However, since the Bureau of Music does not seem like the natural place for such an inscription, there may be a copyist error here. Perhaps the text should read, the record on the new music was set up at the Dasheng Music Bureau. We do have a record of Huizong writing such a piece, ]SBM 135.5b-6b. 22. ZhengJuzhong .,IS 'f> (1059-1123) et al., Zhenghe wu/i xi1!)i Jt>fu li.. ;ft tlt1l (SKQS ed.), juan shou � 1".38b-39a.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

237

Besides the imperial compositions the authors listed, Huizong had written essays on the Nine Tripods in 1105, the Eight Treasures in 1108, and the Dasheng Music in 1110.23 If, as they state, Huizong's composi­ tions were all carved on stone, these too, presumably, were to be found somewhere in the complex of buildings associated with the palace and central government offices (though the possibility that the authors were using "all" loosely should not be discounted) . What were the attractions to Huizong and his advisors of stone as a medium? Stone differs from paper in many ways. As the authors of the 1111 memorial mentioned, stone evokes the notion of permanence. Only a tiny fraction of edicts were inscribed, conferring importance on those selected. Moreover, the act of reading a stele differs from reading an edict written or printed on paper. Steles are not portable as books and manuscripts are. Although people could copy down the inscription on a stele, or could take the time and effort to make a rubbing of it, most of those who read an inscription would have done so while standing in front of it. Thus the court could tailor the audience for a stone inscrip­ tion by placing the stone where a specific audience would see it. Steles were also always "open," their texts ready to be read by anyone who passed by. Books, by contrast, have to be removed from cabinets or shelves and have to be opened to be read. Steles were thus more ag­ gressive in bringing their message to their audience. They invited reading aloud by those who encountered them and had a presence felt even by those unable to read them. Therefore it would not have been un­ reasonable for Huizong and his advisors to suppose that they would reach more people through a stele that was duplicated around the country on government command than through a book distributed to prefectural governments. Another feature of steles may also have con­ tributed to their attraction. There was a long tradition of using stone to replicate calligraphy, so if Huizong sensed that it would be as valuable to have his audience see his calligraphy as his words (an issue discussed below), stone would be the natural choice.24

23. ]5BM 128.7a-8a, IOb-na, 135.5b-6b. 24. Since Chinese printing usually involved carving a block for each page, there was no technical reason why books could not have been printed in the calligraphy of their authors, but this was not the custom. There is no evidence that the printed versions of Huizong's "imperial brush" edicts replicated his calligraphy.

PATRICIA E B REY Table

6.1

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions with Surviving Texts Survives Tide's Short tide

Date

Biyong Academy Eight Conducts Five Categories

110415 1108 1111

•

10

stone

Dupli-

Size

calli-

or rub-

cated

(largest

grapher

bing?

elsewhere?

recorded) *

Cai Jing

yes

yes

Cai Jing

yes

yes

10' X 3'6" 387 x 140 cm

at least

of Rites

once

1117

Vision in

yes

Kunning Hall

at least

7' x 3'5"

once

Diving Empyrean Daoism Education Commentary

1118 1118 1118

Cai Shu

yes

yes

Cai Shu

yes

yes

214 x 100 cm II' X 4'5"

printed

to Laoif *The sizes in cm are modern measurements; in the case of Eight Conducts the measurement is of the full stele, but in the case of Divine Empyrean Daoism, it is of the rubbing in the Beijing Library.

The measurements in feet and inches are those of Qing scholars, using Chinese feet, and probably not always identical rulers. Moreover, they were measuring rubbings, not steles, and so the meas­ urements may seem more varied than the steles actually were because borders can vary considerably and not all rubbings included the borders.

Of Huizong's steles, we have full texts of seven definitely erected in the capital, at least four of which were also widely duplicated in the provinces. These are listed in Table 6.1.25 25. This is

a very conservative list, leaving out all cases not fully documented or for

which texts do not survive. Thus, not only does it not list the stele mentioned by Zhou Mi, discussed above, but it also omits some where the evidence is uncertain. For instance, it omits a possible stele erected at the Genyue garden. The reference to it being inscribed on. stone is found in Zu Xiu's record of Genyue. See James M. Hargett, "Huizong's Magic Marchmount: The Genyue Pleasure Park of Kaifeng," Monllmenta Serica 38

(1988-89): 19,

41. Assuming this reference is correct, the text would most likely have been the one re­ corded in HOIIZhll l1l hou 2.72-74. The list also omits a stele that at least rwo prefectures erected in the belief that they were doing it on imperial order, which was perhaps a

misunderstanding on their part. A rubbing of the stele erected at Yuanzhou ::it 1"'1 (Jiangxi) survives in both the Beijing University Library and the Fu Sinian Library of the Academia Sinica. It is tided "Imperial Brush Edict." The top half has what looks very much like an imperial brush edict in Huizong's Slender Gold calligraphy on the importance of

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

239

Phase L' Steles with Confucian Messages Between 1104 and 1111, Huizong had three steles erected that publicized his commitment to Confucian-inspired projects. The first two concerned reforms in the government school system. Huizong's ambitious expansion of the school system was initiated in 1102 after Cai Jing submitted a detailed plan to increase the numbers of teachers, students, and schools, and the size of school lands. Not only prefectures, but also counties were to have schools, including primary schools for elementary education. Each school would have three grades, and tests would be used to promote students from one grade to the next within schools and between schools. Students who reached the National Academy could test directly into office.26 To handle the increase in students, a new campus was built for a new lower school for the National Academy. Given the name Biyong :!f.$ , after the schools of the Zhou kings mentioned in the classics, it was lo­ cated outside the southern walls of the city. The architect Ii Jie '*-�

observing the law. Below it is an account by the local authorities explaining why it was erected and reporting that the Ministry of Justice had sent rubbings of an imperial brush edict of 1105/9/23 with instructions to erect stones with it at every prefectural govern­ ment office compound. Then on the 23rd of the tenth month, local authorities had re­ ceived orders to fill in the carving with metal so that no more rubbings could be made. The latter order is also recorded in SHY chongru 6.IOa-b, but could have referred to a different stele (such as the Biyong stele). The only other reference I have found that might refer to this event is in the local history of Wuxing, which lists an imperial brush edict stele at the prefectural office based on the imperial instruction of 1105/9/20. Tan Yao iU�', Wuxing Zhi (Jiatai) *�,t, (l.- �) (1201) (SYDFZCS ed.), 18.2b. Also omitted from the list are steles commissioned by Huizong but composed by others, such as the imperially commissioned inscription on the clearing of the Yellow River of III3 (finshi cuibian 146.16b-22b), as well as steles with Huizong's texts that were erected by the recipients on their own initiative, some of which are discussed near the end of this chapter. 26. See John W. Chaffee, The Thorny Gates ofLearning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 77-84; Edward A. Kracke,Jr., "The Expansion of Educational Opportunity in the Reign ofHui­ Tsung and Its Implications," Sung Studies NewsietterI3 (1977): 6-30; and Thomas Hong-chi Lee, Government Education and Examinations in Sung China (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1985), 290-92. See also Ma Duanlin .� �� (ca. 1250-1325), Wenxian tongkao ;t,iti!;if (Taibei: Xinxing reprint of Shitong ed., 1963), 46.432C-443C.

PATRICIA EB REY (1065-IIlO) was put in charge of constructing its four lecture halls and 100 residence halls housing 30 students each.27 Once construction was complete, in the eleventh month of II04, Huizong paid a visit.28 By this time, the two divisions of the National Academy together had 3,800 students.29 After this visit Huizong conferred on the Biyong Academy a hand-drafted edict extolling the virtues of the new school system. This edict was then carved on a stele erected at the academy. Cai Jing did the calligraphy for its title, "An Edict Bestowed by the Emperor on the Biyong" ..t '*" ��. � (Fig. 6.1))0 It was also Cai Jing who proposed that copies of the stele be made and distributed to all the prefectural schools so that they could erect copies of it)l The timing of Cai Jing's suggestion, in late II04, only a few months after the stele listing the banned partisans was ordered duplicated, suggests that the two actions were linked. The new stele was probably intended to counter any sense that the new emperor was an enemy of literati, education, or Confucian principles. Less than a year later, one of the directors of study at the Biyong asked that Huizong's visit be further commemorated through a written record of the event. The record, done by the high official Xue Ang U- !P (js 1085) on commission, was soon carved below Huizong's original edict. All surviving rubbings are of steles with this postface below Huizong's edict. One of these that survived in Shaoxing 1.g� was described as being written in Slender Gold style, its calligraphy "as fine as hair."32 This de­ scription seems fitting from the rubbings of it I have been able to inspect (see Fig. 6. 2))3

27. Kracke, "Educational Opportunity," 17-18. 28. Yuhai 113.8b; CB-SB 24.827-28. 29. Lee, Government Education, 66, based on SS 157.3663. 30. Lu Zengxiang f! Jt#, Baqiongshijinshi buzheng AJt.i: � �:fiIliE. (SKSLXB ed.), 109.26b, 28a. 31. SHY chongru 6.lOa-b. 32. Ruan Yuan 1!it7C., Liangzhejinshi Zhi A'J*� � ,t (SKSLXB ed.), 7.16a. 33. I saw rubbings of it at both the Beijing National Library and the Beijing University Library, as well as photos of a rubbing at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Because very thin strokes of Huizong's calligraphy could not be incised deeply, with weathering, the postface, written in more typical calligraphy, retains more legibility than the fine char­ acters of the edict above it.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions Another educational innovation introduced during this period was called the "Eight Conducts, Eight Offenses"

i\.. �t i\.. *'1

school promo­

tion system, intended to allow the rapid promotion of students recog­ nized as excelling in eight listed virtues and the expulsion of students who committed offenses. Students recommended by their villages to county or prefectural schools for two or more of the virtues would attend those schools for a year, after which they could be direcdy admitted to the up­ per hall of the National Academy without taking an exam. After they had been checked out there, they could be given degrees and official rank. The new rules also specified the Eight Offenses, the crimes or impro­ prieties that would warrant expulsion from the schools.34 In

1107 Zheng Juzhong �Jk tp (1059-1123) proposed that Huizong's

"imperial brush" edict on the "Eight Conducts, Eight Offenses" system be engraved on a stone at the capital and copies distributed so that du­ plicates could be erected at government schools throughout the country, "next to the stone classics" that earlier emperors had supplied to the schools.35 On the stele itself, which survived in at least

26

copies (see

6.2), is a note that on imperial command Cai Jing did the tide and Ii Shiyong � at $., the Erudite of Calligraphy t' * tf. ± , performed the Table

job of copying Huizong's calligraphy

.. � , presumably as the prepara­

tory step needed to transfer calligraphy on paper to guidelines on a stone.36 The text of the stele also reports that the carved stone was set up first in the palace school, then at the National Academy and at the Bi­ yong Academy, then in the prefectures and cities of the realm. From surviving examples, it is evident that this stele was set up not only at prefectural schools but also at county schools (which undoubtedly ex­ plains why so many more copies of it survived into Qing times than any of the steles erected only at the prefectural level).

34. Chaffee, Thorny Gates, 78-79. 35. ]SBM 126.3a; SHY chongru 6.lOb . Some fragments of the Stone Classics, carved in the mid-eleventh century, survive. See Beijing tushuguan cang lidai shike taben huibian .:It. :t. 1Il .. flt� 8l f<. � jlJ � *- 11. _ (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji, 1990), 38: 176-7736. Li's reputation as a calligrapher is described glowingly in Xuanhe huapu � ,ft> "�, ed. Yu Jianhua �i\H� (Beijing: Renmin meishu, 1964), 12.202-3. If Huizong had done his calligraphy on a scroll, it would have to have been traced twice. The first tracing would have been needed to rearrange his characters into the format of a vertical stele, the second, on the reverse, to outline each character in red, which would have left marks when pressed against the stone.

Table 6.2 Eight Conducts Steles That Survived to Be Recorded by Qing or Later Epigraphers Modern province/ county

Tide

Size (in Qing feet or cm)

Local sponsors

Date

Lines, characters / line

Other information

Source

Trans­ cribed?

Shaanxi

f1f.if'-

* � 1-t.t�

i.f.1t.

�1U'��A H ;'df'J .t� ..

* ft

rPJ

I!:!r. it ii. �lJ

�1t *�A

HA*'H*

�1t *�A

HA*,J�

n'2.5" X 4' 8'8.5" X 3'5·5" 8'2" X 3'4· 5"

7'8" X 4'1" 9'4" X 4'1"

3 county level I county

n08/4/15

5 county

110815/15

6 county

n08/8/29

1108/10/25

I county

28 lines, 68 characters 27 lines, 60 characters 30 lines, 59 characters

34 lines, 51 characters 26 lines, 71 characters

Local calligrapher Two local calligraphers Local calligrapher Local calligrapher

Jinshi mibian 146.5a Jinshi cuibian 146.9a-b Jinshi cuibian 146.9b-

yes

lOa; tide in seal script

Jinshi cuibian 146.IOb-na Jinshi xubian I7.18b; Shaanxijinshi Zhi 23·1{a

j{ lf1

5'8" X 2'9"

7 county

n07/I2/2O

34 lines, 69 characters

Jinshi xubian 17·18b-20b;

Shaanxi jinshi Zhi

�

23·14a-b

* � 1-t.t�

293 X 117 cm;

3 prefectural

After 1115

28 lines, 69 characters

Beijing tushu guan;

photo

377 X 140 cm Shandong

XI'an beilin mingbei 3= 207-8

photo

�JJ'J

::k. � 11'i:..4

10' X 3'9"

none

II08/8/29

27 lines

Characters in tide 5", in main text 1"

5hanzuojinshi Zhi 17·34b-37b

yes

��

::k. � 11'i:..4

14' X 4'; 450 X 155 X 41 cm

none

II08/8/29

20 lines, 71 characters

Text and calligraphy same as above; round top, turtle base Text and calligraphy same as above Text and calligraphy same as above

5hanZ!lojinshi Zhi 17.37b; Taian shike

yes, photo

%t if

::k. � fFi:..4

8'8' X 3'6"

� ;i\

::k. � 11'i:..4

6'3" X 3'i'

li�

::k. � 11'i:..4

10' X 3'6"

fit�

.fir � ;\.AtA

i4" X 3'

..

*,Jft-$'J

$Jf"* � � e.

Several county

II07/6

32 lines

63-64

ShanZ!lojinshi Zhi q·38a Shanzuojinshi Zhi 17·38a

Text same as above

5hanZ!lojinshi Zhi 17-38a

Top and base complete; tide characters 4", main text, 6"

ShanZ!lojinshi Zhi 17·38a-b

Baqiong IIO.X Baqiong IIO.X Baqiong IIO.X

Table 6.2, cont. Modem province/ county

Tide

Size (in Qing feet or cm)

Local sponsors

Date

Lines, characters/ line

Other information

Source

Trans­ cribed?

Jiangsu

t€. .l!

.fjpt. ...'dt A �JMf

iX 3'1"

8 county

f;J Z-

* 1: 1t�Mf

None

*tI!

9' X 3'9·5"

.fjp*A1tA �J-t-m

III3/7/15

28 lines, 49 characters 28 lines, 68 characters

1 prefectural

Calligraphy by prefectural school student Tide characters 6"

Jiangsujinshi Zhi l0·34b Jiangsujinshi Zhi IO.22b--27b Wuxingjinshi lu 6.7a-b

yes

Henan

� fji

1ll � ��

.fjpt.*�A 1tAM�Mf A1tA�JMf

5' X 2'4"

27 lines, 61 characters

4 county

II09/8

J1I f1'l *�

Baqiong IIO.14b--15b Baqiong IIO.15a

Huarryufangbei lu 8.1¥ Jinshi cuibian 146.IIa

A1tAMMf

II09/8

Huarryufangbei lu 8.1¥

Hubei

tI! �

Hubeijinshi Zhi 10.17b--2oa

Hunan

't -ft

Jinshi xubian 17·2ob

yes

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

245

In this case, the steles erected at prefectural and county schools were not all identical. Of those that survived to be recorded, about half re­ produced Cai Jing's title "the stele written by the great sage" :k. � 11= ;t.Mf. and were based on a stele that reproduced Huizong's calligraphy. At least two of these still stand on turtle bases, and rubbings of many more survive (see Fig. 6.3),37 The distinctive features of Huizong's Slender Gold style are, however, still clearly evident from rubbings of the oft-published one in the Forest of Steles in Xi'an (Fig. 6.4) . The other half are not in Huizong's hand. They had different titles, usually a variant on "imperially composed rules for the eight conducts and eight offenses of the schools" �r �Ut � A �t A *,H*. Usually a local person was identified as the calligrapher, and no attempt was made to imitate Huizong's calligraphy style. Apparently these steles were carved on the basis of a transcription of Huizong's edict issued before the rubbings of the stele in the capital were made available. Huizong's third Confucian stele concerned ritual rather than educa­ tion. It reproduced the preface Huizong wrote for the ritual compen� dium, so praised by the ritual officials in the memorial cited earlier, and was erected, as requested, at the Court of Imperial Sacrifices.38 Work on this compendium was begun in 1107 when Huizong set up a temporary bureau for deliberating on ritual, staffed with two deliberators and five examiners, who were to examine the liturgies for all of the state rituals and other rituals associated with the Confucian tradition, such as the family rituals (weddings, funerals, ancestral rites, and coming-of-age ceremonies). They were to submit all their recommendations for revision

37 . For the one held today at the Forest of Steles in Xi'an, see Ii Yuzheng :t-�;f-, ed., Xi'an beilin mingbei i!1��;#"�� (rev. ed.) (Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin meishu, 1996), 3: 208. See also Ii Yuzheng :t-�;f-, Zhao Minsheng ;t!,Jt!1., and Lei Bing **, eds., Xi'an beilin shufayishu i!1 ��;#.. .. �i-*t (Xi'an: Shaanxi renmin meishu, 1983), 197. It is also reproduced in Beijing tushuguan cang lidai shike tabm huibian, 41: 167. A convenient transcription is found in Jinshi cuibian 146.5a-9a. Taian shi wenwuju :i-� rjf 5t 4h Aii , ed., Tashian shike daquan • .l! � i1 :k � (faian: Jilu shushe, 1993) describes a stele very similar to the one at the Forest of Steles, with a rounded top and a turtle base. Although the preface asserts strongly that only steles actually still in the area are included in the book, the rubbing of the Eight Conducts steles is so close to that of the one in the Forest of Steles, showing damage in the same places, that it seems possible that rubbings of the two steles have been confused. 38. Yuhai 34.16b-I7a; ]5BM !33.nb.

PATRICIA EB REY to the emperor for approval, and a long series of memorials and "impe­ rial brush" responses have been preserved in the resulting ritual com­ pendium.39 When this book was completed in

1113,

an effort was in fact

made to disseminate its key rulings. The prefect of Kaifeng was ordered to edit and print a digest of it suitable for common use, though within a few years the hope of enforcing adoption of its provisions was aban­ doned.40 The stele with Huizong's preface, however, does not seem to have been widely duplicated.41 How did Huizong present himself and his policies in these three early steles? The audience for them was not identical. The first two were addressed to students at government schools, an extremely large audience. In

1109

there were

fectural and county schools,

600

to

1,300

167,662 students being supported in pre­ and by 1114 some prefectural schools had

students. 42 The preface about ritual, by contrast, seems

aimed more specifically at current government officials. On

all three

occasions, however, Huizong took pains to show his commitment to basic Confucian doctrine, to reiterate his support for the policies of his father, Shenzong, and to argue the superiority of agreement over dissension. The Biyong inscription begins by asserting that ancient schools were wonderful institutions that improved customs, encouraged hard work, and led people to honor their rulers. Moreover, it was through the schools that the talented and virtuous were noticed, so that they could be recommended for office at higher levels. Shenzong had recognized the need to revive the school system and had made a good beginning in the capital, "abolishing the study of poetry writing and offering instruc­ tion in the six arts"

�1drtt� , �}II*,r-f.. But he had never been able to

39. Zheng Juzhong et al., Zhenghe wuli xinyi, juanshou la-63a. On the proposals made concerning ancestral rites, see Patricia Ebrey, "Education Through Ritual: Efforts to Formulate Family Rituals During the Sung Dynasty," in Wm. Theodore de Bary and John W. Chaffee, eds., Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 293-96. 40. SS 98.2423. 41. One copy, at least, was made in Darning :k. --t . See Qian Daxin �:k.Qif , Qianyan tangjinshi wen bawei if-�� � ;G ;tll&.� (SKSLXB ed.), 15.6b-7a. In this case, it seems the local official commissioning it recycled steles dating from the Tang. See Lu You fi iij:, Laoxuean biji �"'�*"tc. (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1979), 9.122. 42. Lee, Government Education, 131-32; Kracke, "Educational Opportunity," 21-22.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

247

implement his ideas fully. The new Biyong Academy, Huizong an­ nounced, would follow the Three Hall system introduced by Shenzong. With the abolition of the civil service examination system, students now concentrated on the classics and officials were selected by recommen­ dation from the locality. "Books not by the sages and worthies, plus the learning of the Yuanyou period, are forbidden and not to be studied"

�F � I- z t' ,

� itAt; #f * , � � -g}: 1/ .

Huizong ended with a plea:

"Those who are good at cultivating men bring the world into submission. My instruction of the scholars has reached the maximal point, and they wait for and follow the will of the ruler. Thus we will be able to unify the Way and virtue, bring uniformity to customs, and revive the glories of the Zhou at its height, thereby honoring the legacy of our departed Shen­

f'( �.A.. * JJl.k r. JOCzil! ± � * . Jt. � •• � � ��za, J� M-�. � a%, � 4 � z�, �.&� ;if ::f, .ft. � :>tt � ?43

zong. Wouldn't this be right?"

The considerably longer text of the Eight Conducts stele reiterates

some of the themes of the Biyong stele, but also goes beyond it. It begins by stating "True education serves to improve customs and clarify human relations; it is the source for human talent"

1�, r1ii A.. # fJf m tl:: � .

* )lA �a1.a-, a}] A..

It quotes Confucius on how those who are filial

and fraternal rarely rebel against their superiors; it then argues that it is through schools and teachers that people learn filial piety and fraternal respect. The best school system was that of the Zhou dynasty, which focused on six virtues and six forms of conduct. Because the current system of civil service recruitment was not based on selection from the community, people prepared for office by studying for the examinations, and "the unfilial and unfraternal from time to time are admitted. When serving in office they pursue profit and violate duty, they backbite and accept bribes

there is nothing they would not do"

� :t � ·t� � at r1ii

z,. . tt11-1" reif.�, �*He.A., l�� � i"5", � � �*. The school system Huizong was setting up drew on the

Offices of Zhou � 1"

in the specifi­

cation of the virtues candidates would need in order to be promoted from level to level. The virtues were filiality friendliness toward agnatic kin strong ties to friends

fraternal love

·t� ,

Ilt , good relations with affinal kin !1m,

1=-, loyalty to the ruler

43. Shanif/ojinshi Zhi !7.29a-3Ib.

:t ,

.'t , and distinguishing right

PATRI CIA E B REY

from profit �P.44 Recommendations would begin at the village level, with the neighborhood mutual security units 1* 11i. recommending those with the eight virtues; county magistrates would investigate, then admit the men to the county school. People might be ranked higher in one virtue than another, and elaborate rules governed their progress through the different levels and halls of the school system. There are also definitions of the offenses that indicate the absence of a virtue, disqualifying someone for a position in the school (for example, "Those who commit murder, abduction, arson, rape, serious robbery or theft, as well as crimes classed as heinous are guilty of violating the virtue of hannony. Those who plot to kill or sell their relatives within the five grades of mourning or personally strike or accuse a senior relative of the third or higher grade, or commit incest with a senior relative of the fourth or higher grade are guilty of violating the virtue of kinsmanlike behavior" �A. , � A. , � :k. , ,��, '� .1i. * � .1i. ;ft, 2l � It, � � �p-t*'J, ��2l t � $.$Ja)'X J:.iJt, � % :k ;f}pX J:. .:f. -k , ,J, ;f}] .:f. " � r*J ilL , � � Itt -t *'1). Depending on the severity of the offenses, scholars who committed them were barred from the schools for specified numbers of years, but also could be let back in on certification that they had been offense-free for a certain period of time and possessed at least two virtues.45 In this stele, Huizong did not hide the two sides of imperial authority, the power to reward and the power to punish. In his preface to the ritual compendium, in the end titled the Five Categories 0/ Rites 0/ the Zhenghe Period Ji � Ji � $Jf 1-. , Huizong pre­ sented himself to his officials as a conscientious administrator who supported their work and paid close attention to its progress and ac­ complishments. He began by making a strong Confucian argument for the importance of establishing clear guidelines for the performance of ritual, with specifications that drew distinctions by rank and status. He made the typical hyperbolic claims about the effects properly per­ formed ritual will achieve: "Once human relations are rectified, levels of honor established, and ranks distinguished, then each person's status

The meanings of each of these terms are given in the text, based on passages from the Zhou Ii. 45. Jinshi cuibian 146·5a-9a. 44.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

249

will be clear, and once status is clear, the people's will shall be unified and there will be no one who likes to make trouble" � 1tt .iE. , .f. -* ;t , itJlt �IJ , JlH t � EI,ij , � � EI,ij , JlIJ �;t -, � ;t - i1Q if 1'F�L **-..t ;ff -d!.. . Huizong painted a dismal picture of the situation the Song had inherited, with people mired in customs so degenerate that the strong oppressed the weak, the intelligent deceived the naive, and even family members did not perform their proper roles. As in other writings, Huizong credited Shenzong with beginning the reformulation of ritual. Huizong had taken over responsibility, ordered his officials to set up a special ritual discussion bureau, and at night had personally read their drafts and made emendations, ordering them to follow the princi­ ples of the ancients without being bogged down in the details. He now wanted the results distributed throughout the country so that the scholars would be content in their station and not forget principle when faced with the prospect of profit, and the common people would know their place and not harbor thoughts of violating the law or opposing the government.46 Rhetorically, these two steles brought to a broader audience themes found in many of Huizong's edicts. They stressed the need to attain uniformity in customs and opinions. There was nothing controversial in this

the desirability of agreement and the destructiveness of dis­

sension was something both Wang Anshi Guang

� ,� 7'e. (1019-86)

..!.�� (1021-86)

and Sima

could agree on.47 But Huizong staked out a

central place for the throne as the arbiter, the one to establish the basis for agreement. Both also prominently mentioned that Huizong was continuing or extending Shenzong's policies. Framing the issue in terms of filial piety made Huizong's positions difficult to attack from within the Confucian tradition. Another rhetorical strategy Huizong used was to appeal directly to the classics, especially the

Zhou Ii )JJ �, a

text Wang Anshi had also used as a prime canonical source. Huizong thus was continuing a rhetorical ploy already well established among the reformers.

46. Zheng Juzhong et al., Zhenghe wuli xinyi, yuarum J.f. ,q. . 47. Peter K Bol, "Government, Society, and State: On the Political Visions ofSsu-Ma Kuang and Wang An-Shih," in Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Schirokauer, eds., Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

PATRICIA E B REY

On all three of these steles, Huizong's words have a formality that makes for dull reading. The postface by Xue Ang on the Biyong stele, by contrast, quoted conversations and described events. Xue described the construction of the Biyong, and reported that when the master builder presented his plan, Huizong said, "In ancient times schools always had sacrifices to the Former Teacher [i.e., Confucius]. Here we are gathering several thousand scholars from every region. We ought to build a hall with statues in the front and a library in the . rear, and lay out the lecture mats in the four corners. The rest can be as you designed" * * *" ,;6 � 7t:J'li, � � � 7J ± � 1Ltt -t, it Jtt �1t -T -m, �Jt �.¥. M -T �! , ;$" �J$ -T � � , �* filH�. Once the complex was com­ pleted and Huizong visited, he paid his respects to the image of Confu­ cius in the Great Completion Hall and summoned the two directors of study, whom he told, "I have expressed my truest feelings in this callig­ raphy that I did myself. I hereby confer it on the school" JOC41t.i.'Il, tl ;f�,J. , �Z.e� $ . Others, regardless of rank, were also granted the privilege of viewing these precious objects. In addition, Xue gave a history of education, from ancient times on, and summed up Huizong's accomplishment in extending the Three Hall system to the entire country in this way: "At present, there is the worry that scholars might not study, but not the worry that they have no place to study. There is the worry of people lacking talent, but not the worry of them having no way to dem. · taIent" ± $ $ -r -+ -r $ � '"" � f',� -r m. -r $ velop thelr .... /1' "7" , /1' .... .j!!t,'l .;.}.. /J';- 'T' , ,"" /1' -1 , /1' ,,,,, .j!!t,- I'A J7� .,!t. i" .48 '

,

1 r.....

>}

Phase 2: Steles with Daoist Messages The next three steles that Huizong had erected departed considerably from these first three in subject matter, location, and even size. They were all on Daoist themes, placed at Daoist temples, and the two that have survived are considerably smaller. The Daoist steles still represent Huizong's efforts to appeal directly to his subjects, but it is much more difficult to read them as calculated only for political effect. To the con­ trary, Huizong was taking political risks in revealing to his subjects the depth of his Daoist beliefs.

48. Uangzhejinshi Zhi 7·I2b-I6b.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

Huizong's involvement with Daoism began early in his reign.49 Dur­ ing the years 1103-8 Huizong kept up an active correspondence with Liu Hunkang ftliib. (1035-1108), the twenty-fifth patriarch of the Shang­ qing J:.. it lineage at Maoshan * .l! . He once wrote a congratulatory piece � and a poem for Liu, which Liu later got permission to have carved on stone. 50 Wonder-workers -}f ± immersed in Daoism also in­ trigued Huizong in these years, and it was on the advice of one such figure, Wei Hanjin ;t � /l , that in 1108 he cast the Nine Tripods and had court music reformulated (see Lam's chapter in this volume). The intensity of Huizong's involvement with Daoism increased after he met Lin Lingsu ;f� � -t in III3 or 1114 (see Chao's chapter).51 Lin was a master of Thunder Rites 11; #;; and an exponent of a new sect of Daoism, Divine Empyrean ;;ff 1!t Daoism. At his first audience, Huizong asked Lin what techniques he possessed, and Lin rather immodestly claimed to comprehend the Heavens, the world of men, and the sub­ terranean regions. Huizong granted Lin titles and built the Penetrating Truth Temple i! jt 1: for him to live in.52 Lin revealed in III6 or III? that Huizong was an incarnation of the elder son of the Jade Emperor, named the Great Sovereign of Long Life -k 1.. *- * .53 Huizong was 49. See Patricia Ebrey, "Taoism and Art at the Court of Song Huizong," in Stephen Little and Shawn Eichman, eds., Taoism and the Ans oj China (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2000), 94-lll. See also Michel Strickman, "The Longest Taoist Scripture," History ojReligions 17 (1978): 331-54. 50. The texts of these two pieces are included in Maoshan Zhi J.I5a-17a. They have not been included among the imperial brush steles here because carving them on stone was locally initiated. 51. The main primary sources on Lin Lingsu are ]SBM, juan 127; SS 462; Zhao Lingshi M �*, Bintui lu l" i!if:, Songyuan biji congshu ed. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1983), 1.4-6. This subject is also covered in a large body of secondary sources, including Miyakawa Hisayuki 1: )II iLl ,t" "Rin Reiso to S6 no Kis6" #.:1' i" t *- (J) .ftt * , Tokai daigaku kiyo (bunkaku bu) 24 (1975): 1-8; Tang Daijian Ji'1-\;. il'] ' "Songshi 'Lin Lingsu zhuan' buzheng" < *-3t . #. :1' i" ft. } #liE., Shijie zongiiaoyaf!iiu 49 (1992): 23-28; Xiao Baifang Ii Ef *, "Cong Daozang ziliao tansuo Song Huizong chong dao di mudi" 4ftl!� 1t #� � *-.ftt * * i!� m � , Daqjiao xue tansuo 3 (1990): 130-83. 52. Bintui lu 1.4. 53. A surviving text in the Daoist Canon records this revelation, "Formulary for the Transmission of Scriptures According to the Patriarchs of the Most Exalted Divine Empyrean" ("Gaoshang shenxiao zongshi shoujing shi," HY I272). On Shenxiao texts, see Boltz, SUT7Jey, 26-30. On confusion about the date of the revelation, see Tang Daijian, "Songshi 'Lin Lingsu zhuan' buzheng," 25.

252

PATRIC IA B B RBY

so pleased with learning this from Lin that he had the palatial Supreme Purity Precious Treasure Temple ��t . 1! 1: built for him. He changed the name of a Daoist temple in the palace to Divine Empyrean and also ordered Divine Empyrean temples established in every prefecture. These temples would house images of the Great Sovereign of Long Life and his brother the Sovereign of Qinghua -t *' � . Existing Daoist temples could be converted for this purpose, including the Heavenly Felicity temples *- ,f: 1: established by Zhenzong, but in places without any Daoist temples, Buddhist ones could be converted instead, and before long Buddhist temples were taken over even when there were Daoist temples.54 Another project initiated in this period was the creation of a Daoist curriculum at government schools, allowing a concentration on Daoist classics rather than Confucian ones, and leading to appointment as a Daoist official. At some schools, a significant number of students switched to the Daoist curriculum, presumably because it offered fa­ vorable opportunities for advancement. 55 In the period from III? to III9, Huizong had three steles erected to carry his message about Daoism. In these Daoist steles Huizong pre­ sented himself to his subjects as a true believer in the Daoist heavens and the wonders that the Dao and Daoist deities could bring about. Much as in the Confucian steles, he held out the promise of a wonderful age to come, though the Daoist promised land was a more marvelous one, marked more by miracles than by uniformity and agreement. The earliest of these steles commemorated a vision Huizong had experienced. 56 Although the standard historical sources do not mention that copies of it were distributed, one has been found in Shaanxi. This stele, about seven feet tall,57 is visually striking because of the "dragon-

54. SHY Ii 5.411-b; jSBM 127.4a, lOa, for the decree. See also Tang Daijian, "Bei Song Shenxiaogong jiqi weiyi gouji" :Jt. >It '"' 'it 1: .&. Jt. ,rA fA. .'J * , Zhongguo daojiao 1994·3: 47-48, on Shenxiao temples. Many local histories record conversions of Buddhist tem­ ples in prefectures with multiple Daoist temples. 55· jSBM 127·5a-7a. 56. See SS 21.399. 57. Wu Shushan j\:m-!-, Shaanxijinshi Zhi ffl.. e!s � ;f; .to (SKSLXB ed.), buyi A.37a, gives the height of the part inscribed in Huizong's hand as 4 feet 5 inches, but from the rubbing in Yao Sheng kl1., "Yaoxian shike wenzi lue zhi" kl !9.f: ;f; M x *4.to , Kaogu 1965.3: 147, that would account for about only 4/is of the whole. Its width is given as 3 feet 5 inches.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

253

emblem, cloud-seal" script used for the poem by Lin Lingsu �*� -t at the top (Fig. 6.5). The lower part is written in a very personal style, re­ cording Huizong's experiences: In the last month of winter in the Dingyou year of Zhenghe

[III7] ,

on the

evening of the full moon, Heavenly Spirits again descended to Kunning hall. When compared to the time in the middle month of summer, this occasion was even more numinous and unusual. Colored light and stars lit up the beams and rafters. Amid thunder and lightning, [the spirits] came with hairpins, pen­ dants, streamers, and halberds, impossible to fully list. There was marvelous music, its sounds chilling. Amid auspicious clouds and unusual fragrances they could be perceived momentarily before dispersing, as they exited through the northwest. Suddenly among the tables there was a twenty-eight character poem in dragon-emblem, cloud-seal script. The vocabulary was as marvelous as spirits and immortals, beyond the ability of humans to imitate. Before the ink was dry, I looked at it closely. Chu Hui, the Senior Officer of the Western Terrace, had signed the end of it. Chu Hui is none other than the Feathered Guest, Ijn I.ing­ su, who is the Senior Officer of the Western Terrace of the Royal Headquarters of the Exalted Supreme Divine Empyrean ] ade Purity Right Extreme, the first among the regions of Heaven's administrations of the immortals. At this time he was far away in Penetrating Truth Temple sleeping deeply, yet he was able in the night to reach the spirit realm like this. The next day when questioned about this incident, he smiled but did not answer. Thus I knew that the great Dao definitely cannot be communicated in words

which

requires more than images and

sounds to be conveyed to people, for it lies in the conjunction of ideas. Ac­ cordingly I have engraved this on stone to record the facts. Written in the Hall of

Jt-fu T � *�I(t;t � 7 , :k:ff.ft,*#-Jtf.�, �l:.� 'F f;., :f � ;t ·tt �J 7t. £ -t �M j.ft�:f*, i& fi 1! �, �A.f.�+t�, �a " .1i1-1t*, � "iiJ" . *. itlr-kY*, Jt.�it!l\, � t' � :ft, #* 7} tt, � tiJ � ;lt. .1i1 -t. . $#-JL � fl." �lff. "f" t' * it, =- -t A*, Jt.� � # 1.l!�-kY, it -1f i!t1� "f �x � "I * ,.J': �iHdt, -tf. .1i1 :ft� . .5l lr � * -k � fl. � l; , t" 4f.rtJt.1t. � l; IlP 4'-� ;pJ :t;# :f -t . :f -t ;t � .L # 'Jt .li it .!. Jf.t . ;6�� * -k�,:k l' 1.l! ���-I!!.. k*�.rti! .)t. 't !§lt-Jil, 'F 1t .1i1 .it :f �JI:.. if El it Jt. �15l., � .1i1 � $. Jl'HI1:kl! -.F A. it #-fJ f! , /!l � "iiJ" �x "t 14, 4t.rt A. ;t -t- o1ii e. . I!I 'i It -b, �Me. Jt. 't -i;- . 'F � El � -fu � t" .58 Harmony Revealed on a day in the middle of the month.

.

58. Yao Sheng, ''Yaoxian shike wenzi lue zhi," 147. The inscription is also transcribed in Shaonxijinshi Zhi buyi I.37a-b, but there the date is inexplicably changed to the last month of summer rather than winter. The transcription given here in two cases uses the more common form of a variant character.

PATRICIA EB REY

254

Slightly later, Huizong wrote a more general inscription explain­ ing the benefits he saw to promotion of Divine Empyrean Daoism (Fig. 6.6). It had a title by Cai Shu 1'f , Cai Jing's son, and was erected in the capital in IlI8 and in the prefectures in I1I9. At least three copies have survived. From published versions of those erected in Guangdong, Fu­ jian, and Shandong, it seems quite plausible that they were all based on rubbings of the same original stele. All three even have similar decorative borders of cloud patterns resembling ancient bronze designs.59 This stele also deserves to be translated in full: Imperially composed and written out: By embodying the Dao, one can come close to the spirits; by employing it, one can assist Heaven and Earth, by extending it, one can bring order to the realm and the country, can make it so all the people of the world attain the truth of peace, quiet, and constancy and rise to the realms of goodness and longevity. In my view, this Dao is something people deftnitely have, but they have strayed from it for so long that they must be taught about it before it will flourish. Thus I wish to reform the habits of this late age and return to the pure customs of great annqUlty. •

•

From consulting the doctrines of the Daoists and contemplating the marvels of the inftnitesimal I can state the following: The Great Sovereign of Long Life and the Great Sovereign of Qinghua embody the marvels of the Dao, stand above the myriad things, control the Divine Empyrean, and supervise the myriad countries. Unsurpassed blessings, even I will receive, but the lifespans of the people below are the real responsibility of the bright spirits. Thus, I issued an edict to the realm to establish Divine Empyrean] ade Clarity Longevity Temples in order to make reverent offerings, beginning in the capital, in order to show our great reverence and instruct and transform. After several years like this, there will be massive, pervasive response. Recently on the three

59. Compare the illustrations in Beijing tushuguan cang shike taben huibian 42: 101 of the one from Guangdong, Zheng Zhenman ���i� and Ding Hesheng T # 1.. [Kenneth Dean], Po/ian zongjiao beiming huibian #I� $ �4� -t � (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chuban she, 1995), unnumbered plate near the front, for the one from Fujian, and Zhongguo gudai beitie taben 'f II * R 4 ojQ; :ki ;f.. (Beijing: Beijing University Library and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001), 128-29, for the one from Shandong. On the size of the Fujian one, see also Chen Qiren f� * 1=-, Minzhongjinshi /ue r"" 'f 11.ki� (SKSLXB ed.), 8.7b. Full-size reproductions, in page format, have been published in Shoseki meihin siikan .,. J!# ..t £ t: flJ (Tokyo: Nigensha, 1970), vol. 156; and Songchao huangdi mobao *- � Jl *" .� W, ed. Huang Jinxin -:t111t (Lidai diwang mobao, Beijing: Zhongyang minzu daxue, 1998), 95-121.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

255

origin days and the eight festival days, we have performed the Chong

�f

rites,

beginning the pure service. On wind horses and cloud carriages, the spirits come to look after us and enjoy the offerings. Thunder

will

will be heard and

lightning will light up the heavens. Of the group of immortals who come flying though space, some will toss down jeweled swords, some registers, dazzling observers, who

will sprinkle jade

will gain insight into the origins of the

transformations. High civil and military officials will all see and hear it, and sighing that there had never before been such events, they will see that it is all recorded. Alas! The reason I have been promoting Daoism and the gods have been caring for the mandate and giving assistance is that the Way had been cut off for several thousand years since the ancient sage-kings. That it can be seen again today is rightly called splendid. Heaven is about to make this culture of ours flourish and confer it on me, so shouldn't the good fortune of my people be rectified today? Announce to everyone in the realm the message that my intentions should not be disregarded. I order that this edict be carved on a stele at the Divine Empyrean Jade Clarity Longevity Temple in the capital and that copies of the stele be distributed throughout the realm, following the precedent of the Dazhong xiangfu [reign period of Zhenzong,

1008-16]. Copies of the stone

$p� $pt' : l!::1t, �Z
Note that at the end of this stele, Huizong cites the example of the steles erected during Zhenzong's reign. He is undoubtedly referring to 60. Zheng and Ding, Fujian zongjiao beiming huibian, pp. 9-10. ]5BM 127.1Ib-12a gives a summary of the text and Xu iiZhi tongjian 93-2412 dates the initial erection of the stele to the sixth month of 1119.

PATRICIA EB REY

the steles Zhenzong had erected in 1010 at the Daoist Heavenly Felicity temples he had earlier ordered established in every prefecture.61 Zhen­ zong was the Song emperor who provided the best precedents for Huizong's Daoist projects, as he had also established Daoist temples in every prefecture and announced the special favor Daoist divinities had conferred on him.62 In this stele Huizong is associating himself not with Shenzong, who showed no particular interest in Daoism, but with his much earlier ancestor Zhenzong. The two steles just discussed must have been erected in the capital Divine Empyrean temple before rubbings were made to send to the prefectures. In addition, in II18, Huizong had erected stones inscribed with the commentary he wrote for the early Daoist classic, the Lao=?!, something the Tang emperor Xuanzong (r. 712-56) had earlier done. This text, which has been preserved in the Daoist canon, cites a range of authorities, including Confucius and Mencius, but draws most heavily on Zhuangzi and the Yijing.63 Liu Ts'un-yan, who studied the commentary in depth, finds in it evidence that Huizong looked on the text as a guide­ book for rulers on how to govern.64 Rubbings of these inscribed steles were not distributed, but in II23 the commentary was printed and scholars were encouraged to read and comment on it.65 Printing made sense for a text of this length, but did not capture Huizong's calligraphy, only his text.66

61. SHY Ii 5.19a. These Heavenly Felicity temples are widely recorded in South­ ern Song local histories, but reference to Zhenzong's stele is less common. For one recording it, see Shi Nengzhi 3t���, Piling Zhi (Xianchun) rut ;t (Ai$.) (SYDFZCS ed.), 29.1b. 62. See Suzanne Cahill, "Taoism at the Sung Court: The Heavenly Text Affair of 1008," Bulletin ojSung and Yuan Studies 16 (1980): 23-44. 63. Song Huizongyujie Mode zhenjing *-ttt * .f,ipWfl!-tt � � (HY 680), in fourjuan. 64. Liu Ts'un-yan, On the Art ojRllling a Big Country: Views oj Three Chinese Emperors (Canberra: Australia National University Press 1974); see also Liu's much longer Chinese version, Liu Cunren #p 1H=-, "Daozang ben san sheng zhu Daodejing huijian" l!�*--=­ J[ i.t l!-tt � " i. ,. in Hifeng tang wenji :fu Jit � X � (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1991), 223-495· 65. ]SBM 127.9b-na. 66. The Daoist canon contains two commentaries on Huizong's commentary written by contemporaries (HY 681 and HY 694), one a low-ranking official, the other a student at the imperial academy. See Boltz, Suroey, 214-15.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

257

The divergence is striking between the Confucian messages of the three earliest steles on Confucian education and ritual and the three later Daoist ones. Huizong, however, did not want to emphasize the divergence. His goal was to create a larger synthesis that would be able to accommodate the truths of both the Confucian classics and the Daoist revelations. This goal is seen in several of the "imperial brush edicts" he issued during these years. Wanting his subjects to know of the strength of his commitment to Daoism, in the fourth month of

IlI7

Huizong

issued an edict stating that he believed he had been given the mission of saving China from the foreign religion (that is, Buddhism) and returning it to the correct way.67 The next year, when Huizong issued an edict establishing Daoist schools, he started by asserting the common origins and purposes of Daoism and Confucianism, then proposed that students of Daoism and Confucianism each study a major and minor classic of the other:

The Dao is everywhere; it is in the Confucian scholar's administering of the state; it is in the literati's cultivating of themselves. Before there was differen­ tiation, when the separate paths led to the same destination, the ways of the early and later sages matched perfectly. Since the Han period, the Dao has split and become differentiated, with the result that the learning of Huang and Lao is no longer the same as the learning of Yao, Shun, Zhou Gong, and Confucius. Therefore, customs have deteriorated and the completeness of the Dao has been concealed for over a thousand years. I brought renewal to it and investi­ gated its origins. I am bringing the teachings of the Yellow Emperor, Laozi, Yao, Shun, Zhou Gong, and Confucius to proceed in harmony from now on.

It.1- :f{l. {l1t;)'X 5{; II , {l ± )'X 1�Jt , *-*:.I}., �lt Jii] ., 1it�ft � � -@-- #- ;p . tb il )'x j/l, ;fJf .1Q .�. it*"�*, ltJ4!i # %l ;JL�lt :f Jii] . it i!bl.i. �*-m.. :f JL:k �, It tb Jt )'x F! , T:.I}.� * . JOC1'FtIT�, 1t �**, 1tit-t *"-l-!i# %l;JL��, 1lNt�4'- a .68 Another indication of Huizong's effort to see the Daoist and Confu­ cian messages as compatible is that even in the midst of his most in­ tensely Daoist phase, in

I1l8,

he again had an edict inscribed on steles

erected at government schools around the country. It is generally titled either "Imperial Brush Hand-Drafted Edict"

67. ]5BM 127.41. 68. ]5BM 127.5a-b.

f,tp ," .f- � or "Stele of the

PATRICIA E B REY Imperially Written Hand-Drafted Edict of the Zhenghe Period" a;fp,fip .. f- -m �. Rubbings of it survive in several collections.69 This stele employs the rather informal style of the Daoist stele on the appearance of spirits in Kunning Hall. And like the second Daoist stele, it had a title by Cai Shu. Iike the Biyong inscription, it was divided into two registers, with the edict at the top and an official's postface below. The top half, with 22 lines of text, records an imperial brush edict that exhorts scholars to loyalty, faithfulness, and devotion to principle and laments the fact that some individuals had brought shame on the scholar-official class through participation in uprisings and the like. Since the classics offer clear instructions on the principles underlying the ruler-subject relationship and offer cautions about glory and shame, the problem would seem to be that scholars recite the words of the Confucian texts but are incapable of acting on them. The last line transmits the edict to the court official Ii Bangyan :f. � .it (d. 1130) and ends with a large square imperial seal. The lower half of the stele gives Ii Bangyan's account of two conversations he had with Huizong. On the first occasion, Huizong asked how scholars could do evil things, and Ii offered ideas on how to enhance the emperor's transformative powers. Two days later the emperor showed Ii an imperial brush edict and engaged in another conversation with him about the education of scholars, with Li extolling at length its true purposes. This stele thus presented Huizong both as the source of Confucian verities, much as he presented himself a decade earlier in the Biyong and Eight Conducts steles, but also as an open-minded sovereign who listened to the Confucian-inspired advice of his advisors. Confucian scholars who had begun to wonder about Huizong as his pro-Daoist words and actions became better known were reassured that he had not abandoned all interest in them.

69. The Fu Sinian library of the Academia Sinica and the Beijing University Library both have rubbings of the version from the prefectural school of Jinan in Shandong. Beijing University Library also has one from Shaozhou � 1+1 in Guangdong. For Qing records of these and other rubbings, see Weng Fanggang �i 7i f,jiiJ , Yuedongjinshi lue .. *­ ±;G� (SKSLXB ed.), 4.2a-5b; Shan'{!lojinshi Zhi 18.15a-I8a; Jinshi wen bawd 15-lIa-I2b. Lu Yaoyu Ft 1tfl.J.!, Jinshi xubian 1t ;G .* .� (SKSLXB ed.), 17.30b-34a.

Fig. 6.1 Cai Jing calligIaphy of me title for me Biyong stele, IIo4. Rubbing in me collection of me Beijing Library.

Fig. 6.2 Huizong's calligraphy on the Biyong stele, II04. Detail. Rubbing in the collection of the Beijing Library.

Fig. 6.3 Huizong's calligraphy on the Eight Conducts stele in Taian. Photograph courtesy of Robert Harrist, J r.

Fig.

Huizong's calligraphy on the Eight Conducts stele, n08. Detail. Rubbing in the collection of the Beijing Library.

6.4

Fig. 6.5 Huizong's calligraphy on the Stele on Appearance of Spirits in Kunning Hall, III? Detail. After Wang Pingchuan and Zhao Menglin, eds., Song Huizong shula quanji (Beijing: Chaohua,

2002), r65·

Fig. 6.6 Huizong's calligraphy on the Divine Empyrean Temple stele,

m8. Detail. After Wang

and Zhao, Song Huizong shula qllanji, 95.

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Fig.

6.7 Huizong's transcription of the Thousand Character Classic in regular script. Dated Il04, dedicated to Tong Guan. Detail. Collection of the Shanghai Museum.

•

--

,

y/ •

-

","" •

Fig. 6.8 Huizong's transcription of two poems, beginning "wish to borrow." Undated, 33.2 by 63 cm. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taibei.

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(c)

(D)

Fig. 6.9 Huizong's stops from four early calligraphies:

(8) ThOJ/sand Character Classic, II04; (c)

(A)

Biyong inscription,

Eight Conducts inscription,

II04;

IIOS;

(D) ''Wish to borrow," undated.

,\

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.... ....

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(c) Fig.

6.10

•

,

(D)

na strokes from four early calligraphies: (A) Biyong inscription, II04; (8) ThOJ/sand Character Classic, II04; (c) Eight Conducts inscription, IIOS; Huizong's

(D) ''Wish to borrow," undated.

-

•

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Fig. 6.11 Huizong's pie strbkes from four early calligraphies: (A) Biyong inscription, 1104; (B) Thousand Character Classic, 1104; (e) Eight Conducts inscription, 1I08; (D) ''Wish to borrow," undated.

t

,�

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-

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-

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(c)

(D)

Fig. 6.12 Huizong's hooks from four early calligraphies: (A) Biyong inscription, IIo4; (B) Thousand Character Classic, II04; (e) Eight Conducts inscription, 1I08; (D) ''Wish to borrow," undated.

,

•

Fig.

6.13

Cai Jing's cursive script calligraphy, letter to Jiefu. Undated, 23.3 by 42.3 em. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taibei.

Fig. 6.14 Xue Ji's calligraphy on Stele for Chan Master Xinxing, 706. Detail. After Zhongglio meishli qlionji, shlifo bion }, ed. Yang Renkai (Beijing: Wenwu, 1989), pI. 48, p. 1030

Fig. 6.15 (left) Chu Suiliang's calligraphy for Yan Pagoda Prefaces to the Buddhist Canon, 653· Detail. After Zhongguo meishu quatJii, shufa bian J, ed. Yang Renkai (Beijing: Wenwu, 1989), pI. 33, p. 68. Fig. 6.16 (right) Xue Yao's calligraphy of poems, from an engraved rock in Dengfeng county in Henan, 700. Detail. After Zhongguo meishu quatJii, shufa bian J, ed. Yang Renkai (Beijing: Wenwu, 1989), pl. 49, p. 105.

Fig. 6.17 (left) Huang Tingjian's calligraphy on stele for Boyi and Shuqi. Detail. After Wang Zhuanghong, "Zhao Ji de shufa," Yryuan duqying II (1981): 40-47. Fig. 6.18 (right) Chongning and Daguan coins. Photo Patricia Ebrey.

Fig. 6.19 Huizong's Edict for Xiang Yuzhi, undated. After Shui Laiyou, Zhao Ji de shllfayishll (Beijing: Renmin meishu, 1995), 27.

•

Fig. 6.20 Huizong's Edict for Xiang Yuzhi. Detail. After Wang and Zhao, Song Huizong shula quanji, 155.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

259

The Calligrapf?y ofHuizong's Steles Much of the impact of Huizong's steles was achieved not by his choice of words or even by his choice of stone as the medium, but by his decision to display his own calligraphy on them. The calligraphy of these steles links them in a way that their language does not. Even if the verbal messages of the Confucian and Daoist steles were far apart, the callig­ raphy on them was similar (compare Figs. 6.4 and 6.6) . Moreover, even when Huizong used language that could easily have come from someone else, his calligraphic style was distinctly his own, which identi­ fied these steles much more strongly with his person than his words alone could do. There is every reason to assume that Huizong was conscious of the effects created by his calligraphy and that he purposely wrote in ways to achieve these effects. He was an avid admirer of calligraphy and had not only built up the imperial calligraphy collection and published some of its treasures in facsimile, but had also set up a calligraphy academy to train court calligraphers.70 Although he could write in a wide variety of script types

he once did copies of the

Thousand Character

Classic in ten script types71 his surviving works are in only three scripts: cursive $, running it, and his distinctive regular script ��. Two sur­ viving hand-drafted edicts are in running script,72 The title for the Bureau of Astronomy, mentioned in the passage by Zhou

Mi

cited at the be­

ginning of this essay, was in cursive script, as were some of his gift pieces,

70. The imperial collection is catalogued in the Xuanhe shupu � ,fu .,.tt (Shanghai: Shanghai shuju, 1984). On the publication of some of its treasures as the Daguan tie, see Amy McNair, "The Engraved Model-Letters Compendia of the Song Dynasty," Journal of the American Oriental Society II4 (1994): 209-25. On the calligraphy academy, see Ecke, "Emperor Hui-tsung," 54-58. 71. Dong Shi � 3t (thirteenth century), Huang Song shulu .t. * "'� (Zhibuzuzhai congshu ed.), I.6b. See also SHY zhiguan 18.21a-23b for an occasion in II22 when Huizong distributed copies of this text in ten script styles to his high officials. 72. Published, among other places, in Zhongguo gudai shuhua tumu tf> II 7;- 1-'{. .,. :t lll EJ (multivolume) (Beijing: Wenwu, 1987- ), 15.33. According to Yue Ke, Baozhen zhaifashu zan 2.17, 18, Huizong sometimes did edicts or other state papers in standard script, and two of his edicts carved on stone were in standard script (for illustrations, see Shui Laiyou 1)<.1Ht>, Zhao Ji de shufayishu ;t! 1-1; Qq "' � �{fr [Beijing: Renmin meishu, 1995], 27-28).

260

PATRICIA EB REY

including two that survive.73 The steles, by contrast, were all in regular script. There was nothing exceptional in using standard script for stone inscriptions: it was, to the contrary, by far the most common script for them. 74 There was something exceptional, however, in the style of Huizong's regular script, called at least since Zhou Mi's time the Slender Gold style.75 Examples of Slender Gold calligraphy datable to early in Huizong's

Thousand Character Classic (Fig. 6.7), the 1104 Biyong stele (Fig. 6.2), the 1108 stele for the Eight Conducts (Fig. 6.4), and several inscriptions on paintings dated 1107. In reign

include

the

1104

standard-script

addition, the undated transcription of poems beginning ''Wish to bor­ row" (Fig.

6.8)

is very close in style. Several features characterize all of

these works. They all use extremely thin brush strokes, though for technical reasons the strokes appear thinner on paper than on rubbings from carved stone. There is a general angularity to the style of the characters, with sharply chiseled corners rather than rounded ones. The upward slant common to characters in regular script is kept to a mini­ mum.

Horizontal

strokes

end with

pronounced

stops;

that is,

they reveal rather than hide that the brush was brought back in the re­ verse direction (see Fig.

6.9). Na

strokes (sweeping strokes down and

right) have a distinctive hitch in them (Fig.

6.10). Pie

strokes (vertical

strokes on the left of characters that slant slightly left) often begin with a

73. The two surviving pieces of Huizong's calligraphy in cursive script are an undated fan and a transcription of the Thousand Character Classic dated 1122. Both are in a re­ markably fluid and graceful style. One of many illustrations of the Thousand Character Classic is Song HuiiPng caoshu 'Qianziwen" ,lUI. $ 41- .. 1- !f X. (Beijing: Wenwu chuban she, 1997); the fan is illustrated in Yang Renkai �1;:.,1:t, "Song Huizong Zhao Ji shufa yishu suotan" >1t.fl.$,i! 1-t 1f m-i§.,*"JJllt, Shufa congkan 1988.14: 8. Another fan with a poem in cursive script is mentioned in Baozhen zhaifashu i!'n 2.14. The Jiangxiao :;;}ring tie '*'t '* JJt oJr.I; preserves a rubbing of a cursive script piece attributed to Huizong. See Shui, Zhao Ji de shsifayishu, 20-21. 74. It was, however, not the only possible script. In Tang times, Taizong, Gaozong, Empress Wu, and Xuanzong did steles in other scripts (running, cursive, or clerical) (see , Harrist, "Record' ). Moreover, in Song times, running script was gaining ground, as can be seen by leafIng through the Song volumes of Beijing tushuguan shike taben huibian. 75. The exception is his inscription on literati Gathering in the Palace Museum, Beijing, in cursive script. For an illustration, see Masterpieces 0/ Chinese Painting in the National Palace Museum (taipei: National Palace Museum, 1970), pI. 8.

Huizong's Stone Inscnp#ons curved corner (Fig. 6.11). Another very distinctive feature is the upward hooks at the end of strokes, which are lengthened and often curl, whether they are hooking to the right or the left (Fig. 6.12). Examples of Slender Gold style dating to the middle of Huizong's reign (Zhenghe period) show that his style had evolved, becoming less hesitant and less emphatic in its insistence on keeping lines as thin as possible. In these works the thinnest parts of the strokes are not quite as thin, and the width of the strokes varies a little more. Good examples here would be the three inscriptions dated 1118-19 and the inscriptions on Cranes ofGood Omen and Five-ColoredParakeet, both datable to the Zhenghe period. Undated paintings and calligraphies, such as Hisbiscus and Golden Pheasant, Wax Plum and Birds, and the large-character calligraphy of Two Poems in the National Palace Museum in Taibei seem closer to this later style than to the earlier one,76 What was Huizong trying to convey by making his standard script so distinctive? In surviving texts, Huizong never discusses this, nor do his contemporaries raise it as an issue. Certainly he was not conforming to what has been termed the court style. Beginning in the early Tang, the style of the two Wangs (Wang Xizhi .1."'Z, 307-65, and Wang Xianzhi .1.J,(tZ, 344-88) was favored at court. Tang Taizong (r. 626-49) avidly collected their works, wrote in their styles, and encouraged his courtiers to work in their traditions. The early Song rulers did not reject this tra­ dition; to the contrary, with the publication of rubbings of the Wangs' works in the Chunhua #e �$ 1t. f.!; of 992, the second Song emperor Taizong (r. 976-97) aligned himself with it. Amy McNair has recently interpreted the promotion of Yan Zhenqing's � � �I!p (709-85) calli­ graphic style by Song literati, above all Ouyang Xiu Et�1t� (1007-72) and Su Shi, as oppositional acts, ones that resisted this court style,77 But labeling a style of calligraphy a "court" style raises as many questions as it 76. For illustrations of these pieces, see Bo Songnian it ;tA l¥-, Zhao Ji it! 1-5 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1998), 6-15; and James Cahill, "The Imperial Painting Academy," in Wen C. Fong and James C. Y. Watt, eds., Possessing the Past: Treasuresfrom the NationalPalace Museum, Taipei (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996), 166-67; and Figs. 11.1, II.2, 11.4, and lI.5 in this volume. 77. Amy McNair, The Upright Brush: Yan Zhenqing's Calligrapf?y and Song Literati Politics (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998). On Tang court style, see also Stephen J. Goldberg, "Court Calligraphy of the Early T'ang Dynasty," Artibus Asiae 49.3/4 (1988/89): 189-237.

PATRI CIA EB REY answers: Is the court style the style adopted by the emperors? The style of the calligraphy they favored as collectors? The style they encouraged their officials to employ? The style taught by the instructors at the court calligraphy academy? The style used by court scribes to write out govern­ ment documents? The style practiced by leading court officials acting on their own in the absence of imperial indications of preferences? In other words, would a style count as "court" style even if court patronage had little to do with its success? Moreover, what if the court patronized more than one style? To disentangle these issues for the entire Northern Song period is beyond the scope of this study, but it is possible to clarify some of them with respect to Huizong's own reign. The catalogue of his calligraphy collection shows that the two Wangs were well represented, with Wang Xizhi having 243 pieces and Wang Xianzhi 89, but Tang calligraphers who worked in other styles were well represented as well. In fact, there were 28 pieces by Yan Zhenqing, and even more (98) by the "mad cur­ sive" calligrapher Huai Su 'Il "! (725-85). Huizong's calligraphy acad­ emy was said to have taught the styles of eleven different masters, dif­ ferent ones for different scripts.78 In other words, the Wang style was neither single-mindedly advanced at court, nor neglected. There is, moreover, no evidence that Huizong encouraged his officials to imitate his own calligraphic style. His long-term chief councilor, Cai Jing, was a calligrapher of considerable repute himself and did not change his style to correspond to Huizong's style (see Fig. 6.13).79 To put it another way, Huizong did not use court resources to back a single style. Court re­ sources were used instead to promote diversity in calligraphic style, making Huizong's personal style stand out rather than serve as the standard. Huizong's Slender Gold is an exacting style, and there are parallels between the Slender Gold style of calligraphy and the highly exacting style of painting birds and flowers that Huizong used for some types of paintings. In both cases, the goal is not to give a general impression, but to provide a full, unabbreviated representation; and toward this end

78. Dong Shi, Huang Song shulu I.7a-b. 79. It has been said that some palace women or scribes were taught to write Slender Gold calligraphy, but to pass off their calligraphy as Huizong's, not to show that his style was widely popular and being adopted by everyone at court. Jianyanyilai chaqye Zaji n.67!.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions brushwork is carefully controlled. In both cases, these were not the only styles in which Huizong could work he could do cursive and draft calligraphy, and he could also do ink paintings with much freer brushwork. 80 But he saw occasions when precise control served his purposes best. Parallels with his practice in painting, however, do not explain everything about the Slender Gold style. Like any calligrapher, Hui­ zong must have begun the practice of calligraphy by copying the works of earlier masters, and historians of calligraphy usually begin their analyses of Huizong's style by identifying his models. Cai Tao �1t, the only contemporary to discuss Huizong's calligraphic style, reported that in his youth Huizong was influenced by the styles of his teachers and older associates Wu Yuanyu *7t1if.J and Zhao Lingrang :it! 4-- tt, who in turn had modeled their calligraphy on the Tang cal­ ligrapher Xue Ji U- � (649-713) (Fig. 6.14) and the eleventh-century master Huang Tingjian it di. � (1045-1105), respectively.81 The Qing scholar Ye Changzhi 1t fb � (1847?-19I7) also saw influence from in­ scriptions on ancient bronzes and jades.82 Modern scholars have pur­ sued these possible sources in various directions. Chuang Shang-yen stresses the influence of Xue Ji's model, the early Tang master Chu Suiliang ;it l! It , whose characters were relatively slender.83 Although their scripts are far from identical, Huizong's opening bend at the top of pie strokes strongly suggests that he had spent many hours copying Chu's calligraphy (Fig. 6.15). 84 Yang Renkai stresses similarities be­ tween Huizong's Slender Gold and the regular script of Xue Ji's brother Xue Yao U- Bl, who wrote in nearly as slender a style.85 Again, there are as many differences as similarities, in that Xue Yao wrote with more of an upward tilt, did not lengthen his hooks, and the like

80. On Huizong's ink paintings, see Maggie Bickford, Ink Plum: The Making ofa Chinese Scholar-Painting Genre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 92-96. 81. Cai Tao �{t, Tiewei shan congtan �1fI Jt 1h�, Tangsong shiliao biji congkan ed. (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1983), 1. 5-6. 82. Cited in Wang Zhuanghong 3:. JIHt.. , "Zhao Ji de fashu" :>la 1MI-J )! t" , Yiyuan duoying I I (1981): 40-47, at 46. 83. Chuang Shang-yen, "The Slender-Gold Calligraphy of Emperor Sung Hui Tsung," National Palace Museum Bulletin 2 (1967): 1-9. 84. I am indebted to Qianshen Bai for demonstrating this to me. 85. Yang Renkai, "Song Huizong Zhao Ji shufa yishu suofan," 4-10.

PAT RICIA EB REY

(Fig. 6.16).86 Shui Laiyou also sees some influence from Huang Tingjian, pointing to Huang's Bo Yi Shu Qi miao bei 1a � .r.lt � /.fjJ4, a work in standard script much more regular than Huang Tingjian's more famous running script (see Fig. 6.17). Shui also suggests that Huizong carried over into his calligraphy certain of the brush strokes that he learned for fIne-line painting.87 Even if we can detect in Huizong's calligraphy traces of the models he copied in his youth, however, he was clearly not trying to announce allegiance to any earlier calligrapher through his writing style. Tseng Yuho sees the signifIcance of his style in its origi­ nality, concluding, "His writing shows him an innovative individualist and intellectually independent, a man who understood personal expres­ sion and originality." 88 Peter Sturman makes this point even more forcefully, stating that its "purpose is to appear unprecedented and unique."89 Certainly innovation was not frowned on in the art circles of Huizong's youth.90

86. A rubbing of this stele is found in Beijing tushuguan cang shike taben huibian, 40: 67· 87. Shui, Zhao Ji de shufayishu, 40. 88. Tseng Yuho, A History ofChinese Calligraphy (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1993), 182. 89. Peter C. Sturman, Mi Fu: StyJe and the Arl ofCalligraphy in NOrlhern Song China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 189-90. Although I agree that Huizong was not aiming to suggest historical precedent, I am less comfortable with the second part of Sturman's interpretation of Huizong's Slender Gold style, which connects it to "orna­ mental," "unusual, barely legible scripts" with names like "Immortal" (xianren), "Phoe­ nix" (Juan), "Unicorn" (qiJin), and so on, that "were auspicious in nature and semimagical in function." Not only is the Slender Gold style exceptionally legible, but Sturman does not point to any visual connections between these scripts and Huizong's Slender Gold style. The only examples he cites, those in Tseng's chapter on magical scripts, are ex­ tremely varied, none of them having much obvious connection to Huizong's style. There are at least as many very plump characters as very thin ones, and the line-thin ones are entirely curvilinear, without the sharp corners and hooks of Huizong's writing. He offers no evidence that pronounced hooks and stops were viewed as more auspicious than understated ones. 90. Calligraphers like Huang Tingjian and Mi Fu *- '1tf (I052-II07) were praised for creating their own distinctive styles. Su Shi credited Yan Zhenqing with creating a style "entirely his own" and all at once transforming all earlier models. With regard to his own calligraphy, Su took pride in expressing "new meaning" and not following "in the foot­ steps" of earlier men. Ronald C. Egan, "Ou-yang Hsiu and Su Shih on Calligraphy," HarvardJournaJ ofAsiatic Studies 49.2 (1989): 365-419, at 413.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that Huizong was aiming to demonstrate his originality in creating a distinctive script. But why make it distinctive in the ways that he chose? When I look at Huizong's Slender Gold style calligraphy, I see on the one hand concern with order, precision, discipline, and control, and on the other concern with ele­ gance, style, refmement, and flair. That these would have been the atttibutes Huizong was trying to convey is entirely plausible, if we remember that Huizong had developed the Slender Gold style in his youth. His calligraphic style may have been fully formed before he took the throne, but we have no securely dated works before was

1104,

when he

22. As a prince, Huizong made efforts to present himself as a man of

cultivated tastes, as several anecdotes describe his few years as a prince outside the palace as a time when he associated with art collectors and studied painting and calligraphy. 91 During his first few years on the throne Huizong had to demonstrate both that he was his own man, not a creature of his councilors, and also that he was not too absorbed in aesthetic concerns to manage the bureaucracy, in other words, that he was capable of method, precision, and discipline.92 By perfecting a dis­ tinctive but highly disciplined style, Huizong was presenting himself as a person of creativity and flair who was also methodical and in contro1.93 He may also have consciously or unconsciously wanted to announce his distance from leading men of the political opposition, most notably Su Shi, whose enormous influence had irritated Huizong from the begin­ ning of his reign.94 Whatever Huizong's reasons for developing such a distinctive calli­ graphic style, by

1104

he was confident enough in the impression he

made when writing in this style that he was willing to have steles dis­ playing his style erected throughout the country. A relatively young emperor's calligraphy had thus been made as public as possible. The

91. E.g., HuiZhu lu houlu 7.176; Tiewei shan congtan 1.5-6, 4.78. 92. On doubts raised about Huizong at the time of his accession, see Ren Chong­ yue ***, SongHuiifJng, SongQinzong *-f#t*, *M.:. * (Changchun: Jilin wenshi, 1998), 6-9· 93. Wang Pingchuan .l.. .if )11 and Zhao Menglin ,;t!f-�, Song Huizong shufa quanji *-f#t * ;t iJ;; � t. (Beijing: Chaohua chubanshe, 2002), 3, stress that the degree of con­ trol required by this script type made it difficult for others to copy successfully. 94. Zeng Bu 'it AP, Zeng Buyilu 'it AP4*, in Ouxiang lingshi _:f-*�, ed. Miao Quansun ��� (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998), 9.20b.

266

PATRI CIA EB REY

identification between Huizong and his calligraphy in the public con­ sciousness thus became much stronger than that of any earlier Song emperor, and people took note when the coins issued during Huizong's reign also appeared to reproduce his handwriting (Fig. 6.18).

Schools and Temples as Sitesfor Huizong's Steles How viewers of the time responded to Huizong's steles would have been shaped not only by what the steles said and the style of their calligraphy, but also by where they were placed. In Huizong's own time, those who stood in front of one of his steles generally did so within the compound of a government school, office complex, or state-supported temple. No one would have to confront Huizong's Daoist and Confucian steles at the same time, as they were never placed together. Both temples and schools were established sites for steles, and viewers would often have looked at his steles in the same compound where other steles stood as well. Huizong's steles may have been treated in a distinctive way, but they are unlikely to have been the only steles in the vicinity. Consider the case of local government schools. In II09 it was reported that there were over 167,000 students in prefectural and county schools, so the audiences for steles placed at them was huge. County schools were mostly new with Huizong, and so would not have had earlier steles, but prefectural schools had been around since early in the dynasty, and most would have had other steles, including one with Zhenzong's praise of Confucius, which he had ordered the schools to erect in 1013. 95 These had his words, but not always his calligraphy. These steles were popular enough that long after the end of Zhenzong's reign, schools continued to erect them. A few, in the hands of several different calligraphers, still survive.96 Not all steles at schools were initiated by the central government. As an example of the sorts of steles that would have been in a prefectural 95. The original of this stele had been erected at Qufu in 1008, during Zhenzong's trip east to give thanks for the Heavenly Letter. Although there is no evidence that every prefecture did in fact set up this stele, some Southern Song local histories listed it, and even more would have had it in Huizong's day. See Baqiongshijinshi buzheng 88.la-2b; Quan Song wefl �*� (Chengdu: Bashu, 1988- ), 263-142; Yuhai 3I.25a-26b. On the Heavenly Letter, see Cahill, "Taoism at the Sung Court." 96. See Beijing tushuguan cang shike taben huibian 38: 18, 38: 23, 40: 1I3, 41: 1I9.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

school compound in Huizong's time, consider the case of Wuxing � � Qiangsu). The local history ofWuxing, completed in 1201, made an effort to record all local steles.97 By Huizong's reign, besides Zhenzong's stele in praise of Confucius, the prefectural school already had two other steles associated with earlier emperors. One recorded an edict by the Tang emperor Xuanzong enfeoffing Confucius, copied out by a descendant of Wang Xizhi. This stele was erected in 769 on local initiative, not imperial command. In addition, in 1040 a poem that Renzong had written for a prefect had been carved on stone and erected at the school, probably by the prefect or his friends.98 The steles without imperial connections in­ cluded the record of the establishment of the shrine for Confucius from the early Tang, written by a local official.99 In the 1040s, a stele was erected with a record of the school written by the prominent literatus Zhang Fangping 5*--)j if (1007-91) and written out by his contemporary, better known for his calligraphy, Cai Xiang ?J .. (1017-67). 100 The school also had two titles in the hand of the calligrapher Shi Yannian ;G � -f (994-1041), one a name plaque for a particular hall, the "Pavilion of the Classics and Histories" �£ 3t M , the other for the entire complex, the "Prefectural School Established by Decree" th � 1"" *' .101 Finally, early in Huizong's reign, in II07, a stone was re-inscribed with a record of the land owned by the school.102 In Wuxing, although the Biyong stele was, as ordered, placed at the prefectural school, the stele on the Eight Conducts promotion system was instead placed at the prefectural offices.103 This site was also rich in 97. Wuxing zhi,juan 18. Many of the surviving Song and Yuan local histories make no effort to record steles, and some of those that do record them do not seem to have done so systematically. Some record only local authors, for instance. 98. Ibid., 18.1a-2a. 99. Ibid., 18·3a. 100. Ibid., 18.5a. This text is preserved in Zhang Fangping's collected works. See Zhang Fangping �7J-t, Lequanji * � ;f; (SKQS ed.), 3Hb-6b. 101. Wuxing Zhi 18.6b. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid., 18.2b. How exceptional this was is unclear. In 1261, when the Jiankang local history was compiled, the prefectural school had one of Huizong's steles (the Il18 one), but there was a copy of the Eight Conducts stele in a counry schooL Zhou Yinghe %J �1;-, Jiankang Zhi (fingdiniJ ��,to (-!";t) (1261) (SYDFZCS ed.), 4.7a-8a. The 1345 Zhang Xuan �ii,JinJingxinzhi (Zhizheng) 1tftwr ,to (�.iE.) (SYDFZCS ed.), 12.89b, says all the prefectural and county schools had the Eight Conducts stele.

PATRICIA EB REY

268

steles. In 1043 Renzong had ordered prefectures to erect a stele recording

his father Zhenzong's admonitions to civil officials, and two years later had similarly ordered them to erect its mate, a stele with Zhenzong's

admonitions to military officials. Both of these were at the Wuxing prefectural offices.104 In addition, just north of the prefectural residence was the Pavilion of the Marvels of Ink prefect Sun Jue

.I -!&.f,

built in

1072

by the

� f: (1028---90) to house inscribed stones that were lying

abandoned in the region. Su Shi visited later that year and agreed to write a commemorative record, which was in turn duly inscribed on stone. lOS

Inside this pavilion were some

20 inscribed stones, ranging from centu­

ries-old funerary and temple steles, including two in the calligraphy of

Ali � � (709-85), and one with a text by Bo Juyi a Jl; 1J (772-846), to six lyrics by Su Shi from 1091.106

Yan Zhenqing

How would the presence of these earlier steles have influenced the way people who entered these compounds approached Huizong's ste­ les? First, viewers would have been reminded that stone inscriptions formed a distinct genre with its own expectations and conventions. Most stone inscriptions were in some sense commemorative; they took a positive tone, praising a project completed, extolling the virtues of a god or a deceased person, exhorting people to positive moral action, or re­ cording an agreement. There were also conventions about their physical appearance, including the use of turtles for their bases, decorative tops, and the careful placement of the text over the tall rectangular surface of the stele.107 By seeing Huizong's steles among other steles, viewers would notice their similarities and differences as physical objects. From surviving rubbings, it is evident that Huizong's steles were better than average as examples of carving art.

All

had decorative borders, with designs of

104. Wuxing Zhi 18.2a. The text of the fIrst admonition is recorded in Qian Yueyou itf1t�, Un'an Zhi (Xianchun) � � .t, (�i-,") (SYDFZCS ed.), 42.2a. 105. Wuxing Zhi 13.6a-b; Su Shi ,ij. $\, Su Shi wenji ,ij. $\5C. " (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1986), 11·354-55· 106, Wuxing Zhi 18.2b-5b. 107. On stele conventions, see also Robert E, Harrist, Jr., "Reading Chinese Callig­ raphy," in Robert E. Harrist, Jr. and Wen C. Fong, eds., The Embodied Image: Chinese Cal­ ligrapf?yfrom theJohn B. Elliott Collection (princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1999), 9-11.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions flowers, clouds, dragons, and the like, generally very fmely done. Just as readily apparent, they were large. The three steles Huizong had erected at schools averaged ten to twelve feet tall, dwarfing the more typical six- to seven-foot steles. I 08 At Wuxing and presumably many other places, government schools and offices had three kinds of steles: ones with imperial associations, ones linked to nationally famous literati like Su Shi and Cai Xiang, and ones of more limited local significance. But no two prefectural schools would have had the same set of steles. Huizong thus could control to some extent what one of his steles looked like, but he could not control how it would appear to someone entering the compound where it was located, who would not necessarily view it as the most valuable, elegant, or historically resonant stele there. Controlling the culture of steles in every prefecture was beyond the capacity of the central government. Buddhist and Daoist temples were also established sites for the erection of steles. Like government schools, each temple had its own distinct history, and therefore no two temples would have identical sets of steles. This was particularly true of the temples Huizong had des­ ignated as Divine Empyrean temples. A few, undoubtedly, were newly built, but most were converted from other temples, usually Buddhist ones. In Piling, it was a temple believed to date back before the Tang that was converted.109 In Fuzhou, Fujian, it was the Kaiyuan Buddhist temple, established by the government in Tang times.l I O In Jinling, by contrast, it was a relatively newly-built Buddhist temple, dating back only to 1082. I I I Old steles were most likely retained, even if they were moved to less prominent places. The three steles that survive in

lOS. Huizong's steles were substantially larger than most steles erected by local ini­ tiative, but not out of line with steles erected in the name of the emperor elsewhere. Some Qing epigraphers were meticulous in recording the sizes of stone inscriptions, and from their records, it is clear that Huizong's steles would not have seemed unreasonably large for imperial steles. The majority of the steles erected at the command of Song emperors were ten or more feet high. A typical imperial stele would be the one commissioned to mark Zhenzong's performance of the feng and shan sacrifices, eleven feet four inches tall (Jinshi cuibian 127.36b). The largest I found recorded is the stele erected at the temple by the Song imperial tombs in 1034, which was eighteen feet tall (ibid., 132.Sb). 109. Piling Zhi 2p3a. lIO. Liang Kejia * !. � , Sanshan Zhi ..=. J.r ,t, (SYDFZCS ed.), 7975, 7979. III. Jinling xinzhi II.S6b.

PATRICIA EB REY

270

prefectural Divine Empyrean temples are not as large as the three in government schools, perhaps to be more in keeping with the typical size of steles at temples, letting the emperor take a more modest posture. In the refurbished temples, Huizong's steles would have been given pride of place. The account in the local history of Guiji, written in

1201,

makes this clear. It begins its description of the temple by noting that "The imperially composed temple stele was placed above the Dharma Hall, where a red lacquered storied pavilion was built to reverently pro­

.. �

� J:.,

jl �.

� The rest of the -it *- ii- � M tect it" ,flip 1l -g- 4 complex was extensive, and its grounds were maintained by imperial soldiers. The main hall had statues of the two main deities, the Sovereign of Long Life and the Sovereign of Qinghua, each with two attendant Perfected Ones, paintings of immortals on its walls, and a full set of 24 items of processional paraphernalia. There was a pavilion for dispensing talisman water, a lecture hall, a scripture hall, a treasury, and so on. On five specified festivals each year, ceremonies were held at the temple, with up to

1,200

people participating. On these occasions, imperial in­

cense would be sent along with prayers on green or red paper.112 It would have been the people attending these ceremonies who were most likely to see the steles in Huizong's hand and either read them or listen to someone else relate their contents. Did local communities welcome the opportunity to erect steles with Huizong's words and calligraphy? Certainly there is no sign that local communities resented instructions to erect them or that they got rid of them after his abdication. Local histories most commonly treat them as sources of local pride, but since these were written decades if not cen­ turies after his death, one could imagine that as they became historical relics, people looked at them differently. Therefore, better evidence that people of the time welcomed them is that they not only took the trouble to erect the steles that Huizong called for, but often did other ones as well, solely on their own initiative. Local histories record quite a few of these. For instance, a circuit official in

1114

erected a stele with two

1109, and on the own commentary on them.ll3 In 1117 a prefect had a

edicts, one by Shenzong and one by Huizong from reverse offered his

stone carving made from an imperial brush instruction that he had

II2. Shi Su �-$, Guiji Zhi (Jiatai) ... � ,t, (.,t�) (SYDFZCS ed.), 7.qb-I8b. II3. Shanif/ojinshi zhi 18.6a-9a.

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

received.114 In another prefecture someone erected a stele with poems that Huizong wrote to the Daoist official Xu Zhichang, a local resi­ dent. ll 5 Two of these sorts of steles that survive in rubbings are in Huizong's Slender Gold calligraphy. One has the title "Imperial Brush Hand Edict" surrounded by incised dragons above a brief edict confer­ ring privileges on a Daoist master returning home (Figs. 6.19-20). It ends with both a seal and a cipher.116 Edicts did not have to be hand-drafted to merit carving on stone. Particularly common were steles made to display an imperial edict granting a title to a local god. These usually have the character chi th, "decreed," large in size, as it was in actual paper edicts. Some of these edict steles are in regular script, others in running script. ll7 Leafing through the rubbings of steles from Huizong's reign pub­ lished by the Beijing Library provides a different sort of evidence that people at the local level were eager to have stone-carved evidence of the involvement of the emperor in local affairs. Quite a few inscriptions for temples or schools begin with a reference to the emperor. For instance, an 1102 stele for a county school in Anhui begins "The Son of Heaven, thinking of how to expand Emperor Shenzong's Three Halls system for cultivating scholars . . . . " 118

U4. Zhang Jin ,*- it, Siming tujing (Qiandao) � B)j Iil �� (ft:l!) (I169) (SYDFZCS ed.), 2·5b. u5. Piling Zhi 29.lb. u6. For the other one, see Shui, Zhao Ji de shufayishu, 2S; and Wang and Zhao, Song Huizong shufa quauji, 155-56. 117. Regular script ones include an I100 stele from Shandong, an I104 one from Si­ chuan, and an I125 one from Henan. Beijing tushuguan cang shike taben huibian 41: 22, 41: 104, 42: 15S. Running script ones include an IIo3 one from Guangxi, an IllS one from Shandong, and an 1II9 one from Henan. Beijing tushuguan cang shike taben huibian 41: 94, 42: 95; Taishan shike daquan 331. lIS. Beijing tushuguan cang shike taben huibian 41: 79. For other examples, an I103 stele for a prefectural school in Henan begins: "The Son of Heaven is gready cultivating the po­ litical policies of the Xining and Yuanfeng periods" (41: 96); an I103 stele in Hebei, in general praise of Huizong's school policies, starts: "The year after the emperor took the throne . . ." (41: 97); the IIo9 stele for a Daoist temple in Hunan begins by saying that in 1107 the Son of Heaven sacrificed to Shenzong in the Hall of Light and extended benefits to everywhere within the four seas (41: 172); an 1112 stele for a popular temple in Shaanxi begins: "The emperor has reigned for thirteen years" and goes on to discuss his ac­ complishments in reviving ritual (42: 13).

PAT RICIA EB REY Taking these sorts of steles together, it is evident that at the local level people sought visual and material connection to the emperor. In this light, Huizong's penchant for sending prefectures and counties rubbings of his steles was politically astute. He was exploiting local desire for recognition from the center toward his end of winning people over to the New Policies or to Daoism. His very distinctive calligraphy aided his efforts because it personalized the object, tying it not just to the dynasty or imperial institution, but to Huizong the person.

A major theme of this chapter has been that reproducing an emperor's words on stone is not a minor variation on reproducing them on paper, but a fundamentally different act. That Huizong adopted this practice on a large scale tells us important things about him as a political actor and also about the political and cultural environment in which he operated. What do we learn about Huizong as a political actor? One reasonable inference is that Huizong was confident that both his writing and his calligraphy would be admired. Like other emperors, he frequently commissioned other writers to compose commemorative texts to be inscribed on stone. However, when officials suggested that compositions that he had already written be inscribed in stone in his own calligraphy, he did not resist. He certainly was aware of the long-established view that both character and personality are revealed in writing, in both the choice of words in an essay or poem and in the way one fonned characters with the brush. He would have known that if his subjects thought his writing mediocre, they might also begin to doubt his character. That from early in his reign he had no qualms about letting his writing be seen suggests either that he began the reign with considerable confidence in these matters, or that he acquired it soon thereafter as his leading officials volubly praised his efforts. In many ways the stone inscriptions with Daoist messages are more revealing of Huizong as a political actor than the ones on Confucian subjects because they seem to be rooted in deeply held beliefs, beliefs he wished to convey even at the risk of offending the Confucians trained in his schools. One could have hypothesized that Huizong was just going along with his grand councilors in erecting Confucian steles, but such an interpretation does not seem plausible for his Daoist steles. That

Huizong's Stone Inscriptions

273

Huizong had these steles erected is strong evidence that he was making crucial decisions himself. Did these steles accomplish their purposes? Did the Confucian steles convince their audience that Huizong was committed to a Confucian agenda? Or the Daoist steles that Daoist divinities were favoring the Song rulers? To pose the question this way is to privilege the literal messages carried by the words over the more general messages of the calligraphic style and the act of giving to his subjects something tied closely to his person. The messages about Huizong carried by his cal­ ligraphy could have been received even by readers of the steles resistant to the explicit policy messages. The steles are better seen as parts of public relations campaigns that worked on several levels at once. These campaigns also had more concrete components, such as the construction of hundreds of new schools and the increase in stipends to students enrolled at the schools. It is true that, like advertising copywriters today, Huizong may sometimes have misjudged what would go over well with his audience perhaps they were not as swayed by references to his fa­ ther as he expected them to be. But Huizong did think it was worth having hundreds of steles carved in order to try to reach local educated men. If all he achieved was to show them that he valued them, this might have made the effort worthwhile. Perhaps the best evidence that erecting steles had political value is that later emperors adopted the practice. Although Huizong's school system was curtailed and Divine Empyrean temples were abandoned by his son Gaozong (r. II27-62), Gaozong readily followed his lead in seeing to it that steles with his calligraphy were erected around the country.119 Gao­ zong and his successor, Xiaozong, both had edicts inscribed on stone. In addition, each also had works that could simply be viewed as calligra­ phy carved. In Gaozong's case, his transcription of the Classic rf Filial Piety was widely found at government schools. In addition, most

II9. On Gaozong as a calligrapher, see Julia K Murray, Ma Hezhi and the Illustration of the "Book of Odes (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), II-15, 21-31; and Murray, "The Role of Art in Southern Sung Dynastic Revival," Bulletin ofSung and Yuan Studies 18 (1986): 41-59. On the calligraphy of the Southern Song emperors more generally, see Hui-liang Chu, "Imperial Calligraphy of the Southern Sung," in Alfreda Murck and Wen C. Fong, eds., Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligrap0t, and Painting (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), 289-312. "

274

PATRICIA BB RBY

local schools erected a "Pavilion for the Imperial Calligraphy" to treat the calligraphy they received from Gaozong with proper reverence, includ­ ing rubbings of his transcriptions of the six classics, inscribed on stone at the National Academy in the capital. 120 Even if Huizong's steles had a historical impact in their day and on the practices of later Song emperors, it is worth noting that as monuments these stones proved to be far from permanent. Their attrition was probably not any greater than that of other steles erected in Song times, but it is still notable that of the hundreds that were erected in Huizong's day, only a few dozen survived to be recorded by Qing epigraphers, and even fewer are extant today. In 1890, the editors of a book on the in­ scribed stones of Wuxing went through the inscribed stones recorded in the 1201 local history of Wuxing; they had to mark n6 "stone missing," and could mark only two as "stone present." 121

120. For an example, see Piling zht; 29.1a-2b. 121. Lu Xinyuan f!'� ifY" Wuxingjinshizhi �1'f� ;& .-t (SKSLXB ed.), 6.4bff.

C HA P T E R 7

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health Asaf Goldschmidt

Besides his well-known interests in the fine arts, Huizong took a per­ sonal interest in medicine and did more to advance the field of medicine than had any earlier emperor. He initiated new policies designed to enhance public health and the status of physicians, such as providing medicine to the poor and expanding medical education. In addition, he produced treatises on medicine and the cosmological doctrines under­ lying it. At the end of the preface that he wrote to his huge medical formulary Medical Enryclopedia: A SagelY Benefaction of the Zhenghe Reign Period (Zhenghe sheng ji zong lu .i&. :fP � m � � , in short, Medical Enryclopedia), Huizong stated how he thought medicine should be learned and practiced:

Besides the abbreviations listed on p. xiv, the following abbreviations are used in the notes for this chapter: SDZLJ Song da zhaolingji *- :k -m�� (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962). SYQYJK Songyiqianytjikao *- �X lit lUi;;t, 4 vols. (faibei: Guting, 1969). ZGYJTK Zhongguo yiji tongkao tf i1 lUi i!;;t, 5 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai zhongyiyao daxue, 1993). I thank Nathan Sivin, Patricia Ebrey, and Maggie Bickford for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. All errors or omissions are my responsi­ bility alone.

ASAF G O L D S C H M I D T When Zhang Zhongjing of the Han dynasty wrote the

Disorders,

Treatise on Cold Damage

he intermixed formulas in it. When Sun Simiao of the Tang dynasty

compiled the Prescriptions Worth a Thousand, he followed it with a supplement [that is, the

-t � .x. �].

One might say that otherwise [that is, without the formulas

included in these books] their successors would have been unable to make use of their skills and knowledge. While these two explored the art of prescription, they also had exceptional insights outside this

art.

But only when they looked down at

the followers of Qi Bo and debated them can we speak of their knowing the Dao [of medicine] . I have written the

General Register to meet an urgent need of this world and to

be used in curing the people's diseases.! But it is no more than a "fish trap and rabbit snare" designed to catch the Way of medicine.2 Let future generations throughout the realm focus on forgetting the trap and the snare and obtaining [mastery of medicine] themselves. As quickly and easily as nodding the head or changing the expression on one's face, let them master the constant [relations] of the Five Phases and manipulate the changes of the Six Qi.3 Thus they can physiognomize heaven and earth and nourish the myriad things. And if they can succeed to the extent of returning souls and reviving all those who should live,

i�� 1+-l'1t ( 11 �� ) , ,1Q#i::.. /lX �. Jt�.��1t ( -t � � ) , rfJ Mz/lX .x.. /IX � � -iP � Jl'1i!!: � � .If] Jt $T. t!\ i::..'::"A.. * , � T � $Ti::.. 1*J * -I/!... -1t�.� � JL T � $Ti::.. 7�. r_ Jo:t 1ai::.. i!.i. ,1Q �i::.. ll , "*'iif � �I1i!. J1Ht ( fit� ) :#/lX .�,i!!: .If] , rfJ a � * . # J!lfi!i::.. � 3f.z-.Jf. :k rfti!!: ltJt.�:#.t, �3f,1Q m �l*. 1Rl1(Pi::.. fkt � �i::.. surely that is no small matter. In the future it will come!

I. "General Register" is a direct translation of the Chinese term. It refers to the grand formulary Huizong commissioned and closely supervised, the Medical Encyclopedia. In the text, Huizong uses the character 11:, which I have translated as "written," since similar language is used to refer to the books by Zhang Zhongjing and Sun Simiao. We do not know if Huizong himself participated in the compilation, we only know for certain that he commissioned it and supervised its compilation. 2. Here Huizong alludes to Zhuangi} section 26, where the "fish trap and rabbit snare" are referred to as the mere means to attain a goal, with no independent value. 3. I leave qi ft. without translation since there is no satisfactory translation for the term in English. We might define qi or at least sum up its use in Chinese writing about nature by about 350 BeE-as simultaneously "what makes things happen in stuff," "stuff that makes things happen," or "stuff in which things happen." Given these somewhat vague definitions, the reader is advised to consult Nathan Sivin, Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China, Science, Medicine, & Technology in East Asia 2 (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1987), 46--53, for a more complete discussion of the topic.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

277

Jt , fir .EAt�it, II � ft.�1t.. I'A �Q 3d1/!., I'A f;f It 411 . .f.*D.. *;;tr1ii � 'f !t ::t, � �Il1*� . .l.M-�*- ::t � !4 In this preface, Huizong compares himself to two of the most famous doctors in Chinese history, Zhang Zhongjing (150-219 CE) of the Han dynasty and Sun Simiao (581-682) of the Tang. Like them, he wrote a book of medicinal formulas that was intended to serve as the basis for treating disorders in clinical practice or, in Huizong's words, as the "means for attaining the Way of medicine." This comparison is all the more striking because prior to Huizong's reign, medicine was not con­ sidered to be a worthy art for the elite, let alone for the emperor.s To Huizong, the art of medicine goes beyond prescribing drugs. In order to attain the Dao of medicine, physicians have to understand the doctrines of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon (Huangdi neijing -}f * I*J �), with its dialogues between the Yel10w Emperor and Qi Bo. They must assimilate both cosmological and medical doctrines until they become second na­ ture. Only when they can apply these doctrines with the ease of "nodding the head" are they true physicians. To improve physicians' medical knowledge, Huizong introduced enhancements to the existing medical education and examination system and prepared new texts, but he also complemented these lofty enterprises by establishing down-to-earth public health institutions that aided the common people. In this chapter I demonstrate that Huizong's initiatives had a signifi­ cant impact on many facets of medicine. In the first section, I show how Huizong's government attempted to alter the status of medicine by es­ tablishing a new medical school and adding official medical positions, thereby luring the sons of the elite to study and practice medicine. In the second section, I discuss Huizong's impact on public health. To promote the health of the people and to prevent the outbreak of epidemics, he created charity poorhouses, public hospitals to serve the common

4. Zhenghe shengji zong lu Jt;fu ����, preface. The preface also appears in SYQYjK, 797-98; ZGYJTK, 5272-73- I am grateful to Nathan Sivin for his help in translating this passage. 5. Hymes claims that during the Song, medicine was a very unlikely choice for the sons of elite families or imperial officials, and it was not until the Yuan dynasty (12761368) that medicine became an accepted and more common occupation among men of elite pedigree. See Robert Hymes, "Not Quite Gendemen? Doctors in Sung and Yuan,"

Chinese Science 8 (1987): 9-76.

ASAF G O LD S C H M I D T people, paupers' cemeteries for those who could not afford burial costs, and public pharmacies to provide regulated medications at stable prices. Taken together, these four institutions constituted an attempt to improve public health and to lessen the impact of epidemics by supplying food and shelter to the poor, treating those who were most susceptible to diseases, burying those who posed the greatest danger of spreading contagion, and increasing the availability of drugs. Huizong's impact on medicine as described in the first two sections involved mostly administrative changes in the government offices and institutions related to medicine. The specific features of these programs may well have been designed by education officials or senior central government officials, such as eai Jing, rather than by Huizong himself, though he approved them. Moreover, because of limitations in the available sources, these sections focus more on the intentions implicit in Huizong's medical policy than on the results. Huizong's deep personal interest in medicine is, however, amply documented in the third section of this chapter, which concentrates on Huizong's writings on medicine. There I discuss the reasons that led Huizong to write a medical treatise and to oversee the compilation of an enormous formulary.

Medical Schools and the Status rfPhysicians One of Huizong's greatest contributions to medicine was to expand medical education. Before his time there were two main means of transmitting medical knowledge. The first was direct transmission from a master to a disciple. Generally the disciple lived with his master and as­ sisted him for many years, until the master decided it was time to hand down his written knowledge to the disciple and to allow him not only to memorize but also to copy down his medical texts.6 The elite regarded this apprentice-like form of learning as unacceptable for a gentle­ man. Han Yu #:t (768-824) wrote, "Healers, musicians, and the other

6. For extensive discussion of this form of transmission of medical knowledge in China, see Nathan Sivin, "Text and Experience in Classical Chinese Medicine," in Don Bates, ed., Epistemology and the Scholar!J Medical Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 1995), 177-204; Wu Yiyi, "A Medical Line of Many Masters: A Prosopog­ raphical Study of Liu Wansu & His Disciples from the Jin to the Early Ming," Chinese Science II (1994): 36-65.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

279

people of the hundred occupations do not disdain being one another's masters [and disciples). Regarding gentlemen, if one even as much as mentions the words 'master' or 'disciple,' then everybody will ridicule him."? The second form of transmission of medical knowledge was via a state medical service that trained qualified candidates. This fornl of transmission originated during the Tang dynasty and was systematized during the early Song. It was not a preferred path for the sons of the elite either, since it did not provide them with prestige or rank associated with or comparable to the civil service.8 What Huizong added to these established routes was a medical school designed to attract the sons of the elite. This school was modeled on the National University :k. * and, like it, was under the authority of the Directorate of Education 11 -=J-Ii. Although Huizong established this medical school as part of a larger education program, it also seems to reflect Huizong's particular concerns with medicine. Huizong was troubled by the inadequate proficiency of practicing physicians, who were competent in neither the doctrines of the ancient medical classics nor in their application in clinical practice. In his view, the low status of medicine deterred the sons of the elite from pursuing medical careers, leaving the field to less competent candidates. In his preface to the

Medical Enryclopedia: A SagelY Benefaction if the Zhenghe Reign Period Ji�I1 ?t. ���, Huizong wrote: I [the emperor] feel pain and pity over the stasis of the great way and how it accumulated [faulty] common customs. I acutely feel for the prolonged illnesses of my people, and I am pained by the undisciplined practices of incompetent doctors whose study is not extensive and whose knowledge is unenlightened. They ignore the regularities of the Five Phases and the transformations of the Six Qi, and they do not search for their hidden meaning [and application in medicine]. No one attempts to estimate their further implications [regarding medicine] . By ignoring small details such as the temperature and its changes, they may cause great harm to the patient. In cases of excess [of qtJ condition, they supplement [the patient's qtJ; in cases of insufficient qi, they further drain [the level of qtJ. They recklessly apply therapies, prescribing herbs and minerals without order or pattern. Half of their

7. Han Yu .. ;t, Han Changli xianshengji " £ �jcA... " (SBBy), 12.139.

8. For further discussion. see Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. VI: 6, Medicine, ed. Nathan Sivin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), !O1-5.

280

ASAF G O LD S C H M I DT

JIJUOO :k. lt z.;f, iJ.i.. 1G-z� 7C . M �Z)Jl. � , Jt-lz*1t, *.1Ffktf. �.1F·t!-JW., .EAt zit, �1t.z1t., � i: Jt. F! . �.Jt.it. El � El �, ��zla4f, .!Z{:�, � Z -t Jl.. ili1 �iit:t liz, :f Ji.:t�j1Z. * ;t JfJ � , 1f. �atti!. :1d£:t-f, "f • •� �!9

patients die before their time. How can this be regarded as success!

According to Huizong's testimony, the majority of doctors did not understand the basic cosmological doctrines that provided the theo­ retical foundation for medicine, doctrines such as yin-yang � �, the Six Qi r- ft., and the Five Phases liAt. Consequently, their treatment often did more harm than good, at times even killing the patient. 1 0 During the early years of his reign, Huizong appointed the Advisory Office � � � to look into the matter (see the chapters by Chaffee and Levine in this volume). The officials of the Advisory Office submitted a memorial to the court in 1103 advocating several changes in medical education: We, your humble officials, have studied the Xining reign period [1068-77] and the following three decades. During this time the government ordered the es­ tablishment of the Imperial Medical Service to educate [medical] students. They were assigned to treat diseases of [students of] the Three Schoolsll [of the Directorate of Education] and various military personnel. They helped them dramatically. However, [the school] did not reach everybody and was not established throughout the empire. This institution is still functioning.

9. Zhenghe shengji zonglu Jt:ful:���, preface. The preface also appears in SYQYjK, 797-98; ZGYJTK, 5272-7310. The claim that uneducated doctors harmed patients was very common during the Song. The best example is provided by Xu Shuwei "tf-,J'Jt.f;l (I079-II54), who in II32 compiled the first book of medical case histories (Shanghanjiushi lun {l�1t. +�), in which each of his cases begins with a description of such failure in treatment, which he either corrects or explains why the patient will die. For additional information on these doctrines and their application to medicine, see Sivin, TraditionalMedicine, 43-94; Manfred Porkert, The Theoretical Foundations ofChinese Medicine: Systems ofComspondence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974), 9-106. II. The Three Schools is a Northern Song dynasty term referring to the three major schools operated by the Directorate of Education II -=f IIi.: the National University .k"f!, the Military School ;i1(.*, and the Law School '*"f!. See Gong Yanming . � II,ij , Songdaiguanzhi cidian )lU� 't $1 at � (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997), 358.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health At present, there is no means to encourage or promote all the medical workers.12 Generally, the social class of people engaged in this occupation is not high. literati consider medicine as a disgraceful [occupation] . Therefore, emi­ nent scholars with extensive knowledge do not study medicine nor value its practice. (Z l- >i :t � . i!l!-=-1�. It � � � :t. " ��.!l Jt . * � -=-*,

jf��ffl. � .t lki4. f.t\*-�:ffHt :k r, Mli!Jt :f:.iE.(f.. � El , PJT lr .. ..L*­ lr � l!z�. �Jtil,t.� � � . ±A.PJT�. it����til,t. i\' rJ;J Jt :f:. 13

The authors of this memorial believed that the existing system of medical education was satisfactory for teaching medicine, since the students successfully treated fellow students studying at other imperial schools as well as some military personnel. The scope of the existing system of medical education, however, was too limited. The majority of medical schools were located in the capital and thus other regions had limited means for training physicians. Moreover, the status of medicine was too low to attract the best possible candidates. The authors were disturbed by the fact that members of the literate elite despised medicine as an occupation. The term these officials use to denote doctors ("medical workers" -I..:L) implies that they considered doctors to be technicians proficient in applying medical treatment rather than scholars. The bureaucratic positions held by these "medical workers" were rela­ tively low in rank in comparison to graduates of other imperial schools and consequently were not attractive to members of the scholarly elite.14 The ideal doctor, unlike these so-called medical workers, would speak the language of his upper-class patients and explain illnesses by reference to cosmological doctrines that were part of the patients' conception of the world and the body. In order to remedy these deficiencies, the officials of the Advisory Office recommended the establishment of a new medical school. To place this initiative in context, I need to review the status of medical education during the early years of the Northern Song dynasty.

12. This sentence is ambiguous and can be read in two different fashions. It can either mean that there is no method to promote the graduates of the Imperial Medical Service within the imperial bureaucracy, or that there is no way to encourage gentlemen to be­ come medical practitioners. 13. SHY chongru 3.nb. 14. Chen Yuanpeng f!7tJPJ, liang Song de "shangyi shiren"yu "ruyi" R'J *- 69 rlJ I- ± A.. �-ftl- (Taibei: Guoli Taiwan daxue wenshi congkan, 1997), 183.

ASAF G O LD S C H M I D T

M E D I CA L E D U CAT I O N I N T H E EARLY S O N G

The increasing urbanization of China in Song times, as well as the shift in population to the south, required a new approach toward public health and medical care.15 Unlike earlier dynasties, the Song government from its early years concerned itself with supplying qualified physicians to care for the population. In 963, the founding emperor, Taizu, realized that the qualifications of many doctors in the prestigious Hanlin Medical Institute were inadequate. Consequently, he examined their medical and clinical knowledge in the hope of weeding out unqualified doctors. In 987, Taizong, in an attempt to bolster the ranks of the Hanlin physicians, unsuccessfully tried to recruit qualified physicians from among the common people.16 During the Qingli Reforms (1041-48), the role of medicine was re-examined. Fan Zhongyan tit 1'i'i-t- (989-1052), the most prominent reformer during this era, proposed a comprehensive plan for improv­ ing medical care through education and testing. He observed that "at present, the capital's population stands at one million, but only several thousand doctors can be counted. [Moreover,] the majority of them have picked up [their skill] in the streets, rather than being taught by a master."17 Attempting to address this shortage, Fan encouraged failed candidates for the civil service to pursue a medical career. "If you cannot serve as a good minister, then serve as a good physician" was Fan's motto.18 Because of these convictions, Fan promoted the establishment of an office designed to concentrate solely on medical education.19

15. For a discussion of epidemics during the Song and their impact on medical policy and public health, see Asaf Goldschmidt, "The Transformations of Chinese Medicine During the Northern Song Dynasty (A.D. 96O-II27)" (ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1999), 21-71. 16. For the examination of Hanlin officials by Taizu, see CB 4.26.b and 55 1.16. For the search for qualified doctors by Taizong, see Song Taizong shi lu 41.2a; and 55 5.81. For further discussion, see Zhang Ruixian � J,t 'f and Yuan Xiurong :.t � � , "Bei Song chunian de taiyishu xiaokao" ;It. *- ;fJJ -+ :k. .. :i- .J'::f, ZhonJ!Jijiaoyu 2 (1994): 41-42. • � (SBCK ed.), 17. Fan Zhongyan t€. 1'1'i-t-, Fan wenzhengji-Zouyi t€. j:iE � 2·4oa. 18. Wu Zeng � 'if , Nenggai zhai manlu �� �x. " il � (CSJC ed.), 13.332. 19. Fan wenzhengJi-Zouyi 2.40a-b. 0

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health The first medical school during the Song was set up in 1044, when Emperor Renzong (r. 1023-63) adopted Fan's proposal to establish a bureau devoted to medical education. Subsequently, the government established the Imperial Medical Service ± .. It}, under the authority of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices ± 't -t , to concentrate on medical education.2o Initially, the Imperial Medical Service offered medical edu­ cation to anyone who applied to study, requiring neither examinations nor recommendations. Prominent medical practitioners lectured there, including the chief stewards of the Palace Medical Service iJfJ M "�. The total number of students was approximately 200 over a ten-year period.21 Though we have no specific records, it is possible to speculate that the establishment of the Imperial Medical Service gradually helped to increase the number of qualified physicians in the capital prefecture. Its effect outside of the capital, however, was limited. In 1045 most of the Qingli reformers' programs were repealed, but the Imperial Medical Service was retained.22

T H E EXPAN S I O N A N D S Y S T E M AT I ZAT I O N O F M E D I C A L E D U C AT I O N

Starting in 1060, the government took steps toward systematizing and solidifying medical education and introducing an examination system. Concurrently, the government extended the medical education and 20. SHY zhiguan 22.35a. The Imperial Medical Service replaced the existing Imperial Medical Office k -I- ;f , a remnant from the Tang dynasty that concentrated on medical issues but not on education. The SHY includes a reference that claims that the change in name and designation occurred as early as 992 CE (SHY zhiguan 22.35b). However, recent scholars agree that it must be either an error or just a change in the office tide since other available records indicate that medical education did not begin until the 1040s. See Zhang Ruixian 9:.�t- and Yuan Xiurong :i � � t "Bei Song chunian de taiyishu xiaokao" Jt. *:';n 4- fl-J k -l- ;f .J - :t, Zhongyijiaoyu 2 (1994): 41; Iiang Jun t¥- �, Zhongguo gudaiyi­ zheng shilue l' � ;5" 1�-I-Jlt3t� (Urumqi: Nei Menggu renmin, 1995), 99; Zhang Ruixian ��t-, "Shilun Bei Song zhengfu yu yixue de guanxi" �1IfiJJt. *Jlt.!it�-I- * fI-J n;] � (ph.D. dissertation, China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing, 1988), 13-14. 21. See Zhang Ruixian, "Shilun Bei Song zhengfu yu yixue de guanxi," 14. 22. For further discussion, see John Chaffee, The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History ofExaminations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 66-69·

ASAF G O L D S C H M I D T examination system to the local level. These moves aimed to increase the number of physicians with systematic medical knowledge of both clas­ sical doctrines and clinical techniques. Originally, the Imperial Medical Service imposed no quota on the number of students attending classes, since the demand for physicians was great and the number of candidates low. This changed in 1060, when the government imposed new regulations. The student quota was set at

120 and an elaborate application process was introduced. Each pro­ spective student, who had to be at least fifteen years of age, filled out registration forms including details about his family. He then had to obtain a recommendation from an official serving in a medical position.23 Before starting studies at the Imperial Medical Service, students had to undergo a year of general education at the Court of Imperial Sacrifices and to pass an exam.24 These new regulations added prestige to medical education and actually increased the number of candidates pursuing it.25 Once admitted to the Imperial Medical Service, students were divided into nine fields of study. The vast majority of them, however, studied general medicine.26 The curriculum of the Imperial Medical Service stressed classical medicine.

r*J �

All

and the

Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon -i' '*" Yellow Emperor's Canon if Eighty-one Problems -i' '*" A 1- -

students studied the

.. ��. In addition to these two treatises, the curriculum also included the

Imperial Grace Formulary if the Great Peace [and Prosperous State} Reign Period :k. if- ?t. .t 7i and the Origins and Symptoms if Medical Disorders 1t � if§.. 1��. Once the students began their narrow specialization, additional textbooks, such as materia medica *1? collections, were added.27 The next major change in medical education came during the reign of Shenzong (r.

1068-85). In 1076, the Imperial Medical Service became an

23. SHY zhiguan 22.36b. 24. SHY zhiguan 22.36a-b. 25. See Gong Chun :t�, ''Wang Anshi bianfa yu Bei Song de yixue jiaoyu" J. � k �)t;W3t. * i¥.J . *�"1L Zhonghuayishi zazhi 3 (1955): 169-75. 26. This information is based on SHY zhiguan 22.36a-b. For a detailed discussion of the changes in medical education during the mid- and later Northern Song, see Gong Chun, ''Wang Anshi bianfa yu Bei Song de yixue jiaoyu." 27. SHY zhiguan 22.36a.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health independent office no longer under the authority of the Court of Impe­ rial Sacrifices. This did not last long, since within a few years it came under the authority of the Ritual Academy :k. 't it Ff£ .28 During this pe­ riod the number of students increased to 300, and acu-moxa therapy was introduced as a separate specialized field of study. Also in 1076, Wang Anshi introduced the Three Hall System :=,, -%- )1::, already in use at the National University, to the Imperial Medical Service.29 The 40 students in the Upper Hall were promoted from the 60 in the Inner Hall, who in turn were promoted from 200 in the Outer Hall. The introduction of this promotion system into medical education was another significant step toward raising physicians' status in the eyes of civil service candidates. This process culminated during the reign of Huizong, who established a new medical school that was equal in standards and prestige of the other schools under the Directorate of Education.

T H E E S TA B L I S H M E N T O F T H E M E D I CA L S C H O O L

Huizong's perception of a gap between what medical practice might be and what it was underlay his approach toward medical education and the social status of medicine. The officials of the Advisory Office who pre­ sented the problem to the throne also proposed a possible solution: At the present we wish [to recommend] the establishment of a Medical School to train and educate superior physicians

J:.. " .30 We

have studied the estab-

28. 55 157.3689; CB 27I.IIa; 5HY zhiguan 22.37. See also Zhang Ruixian and Yuan Xiurong, "Song Shenzong shiqi Taiyi ju jiaoyu de fazhan." 29. In this system, the National University and later schools at all levels in the empire were divided into three grades or halls, hence the name. Promotion from grade to grade depended upon periodic examinations. For further information on the Three Hall Sys­ tem, see Chaffee, Thorny Gates, 77-84. For the implementation of the Three Hall System in medicine, see 55 157.3689. For further discussion on the topic, see Gong Chun, ''Wang Anshi bianfa yu Bei Song de yixue jiaoyu"; Zhang Ruixian and Yuan Xiurong "Song Shenzong shiqi Taiyi ju jiaoyu de fazhan." 30. The officials of the Advisory Office used the term "superior physician" to dis­ tinguish the graduates of the Medical School from the "medical workers" mentioned earlier in the edict, referring to contemporary doctors (see translation earlier in this chapter). For further discussion on the different references to physicians in historical literature and their implications, see Zhang Zongdong 7*- if- #t, ''Yisheng chenwei kao" -I- 1.. fA: �:if, Zhonghuayishi zazhi 20·3 (1990): 138-47.

286

ASAF G O LD S C H M I DT

lishment of the Imperial Medical Service during the Xining [1068-77] and Yuanfeng [1078-85] reign periods, when it was placed under the supervision of the Office of Imperial Sacrifices. At present we recommend the establishment of a different school, the Medical School, designed to foster superior physicians. It will be difficult to accomplish this task if we leave the school under the supervision of the Office of Imperial Sacrifice. We wish to make it comparable to the Three Schools [the National University, the Military School, and the Law School] and accordingly place it under the supervision of the Directorate of Education. It should also adopt the [Three Hall] System used in the Three

4'� �IJ if -l * . tt-l-J:. -I . tJJ � ,.� . 7t � if Ai . '-X #;t 't � . 4' f!Jt �1 � -I * . tt-l-J:. -I . J.ft.,X �#;t 't �. �ft. .=.. * . ## Iil .:r J:i:. �.=.. * Z�1 .3 1

Schools.

Following these recommendations, Huizong, in II03, established the Medical School _., placing it under the Directorate of Education.32 For the fIrst time graduates of a government medical school were guaranteed civil service appointments.33 like its precursor, the Medical School served 300 students, now divided into three halls. The method of examinations was similar to that of the National University. The teaching staff included four permanent positions of erudites and a head for each of the three halls.34 Early in III5, Huizong ordered each prefecture and district to establish a local branch of the Medical School, modeled on the central school. Later that year he ordered that all the erudites of the local schools be replaced by medical erudites. He also instructed the local schools to include separate classrooms. These schools were to be at­ tached to the regular prefectural or county schools.35 The Three Hall system, the curriculum, and the required textbooks were to be similar to

31. SHY chongru 3.nb. 32. During the second half of the eleventh century, the Directorate of Education oversaw the operations of the most important and prestigious schools: the National University, the Military School, the Law School, and the Biyong School. For further discussion of the Directorate, see Thomas H. C. Lee, Government Education and Examina­ tions in Sung China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1985), 58-62. 33. SHY chongru 3.13b. A partial translation appears in Hymes, "Not Quite Gentle­ men?," 70.

34. SHY chongru 3.I2a. 35. SHY chongf1l 3.I7b. See also, jSBM 135.9b-IOa.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

the central Medical School, but the examination system differed in that it stressed the student's proficiency in the Confucian c1assics.36 Like other schools established by Huizong, the Medical School ex­ isted for less than twenty years. Even during this short span of time, it was abolished and re-established three times, probably for many of the same reasons that the other schools were (see Chaffee's chapter in this volume).37 The Curriculum ofthe Medical Schoo/. From the outset, the Medical School had a set curriculum and sequence of examinations. The school had three major branches of medical studies and thirteen specialized fields. The three branches were: internal and general medicine -}j n�, acu-moxa therapy �,38 and external medicine �#. The thirteen fields were sub-

36. SHY chongru 3.18b-19a. See also Gong Chun :t t.t, Zhongguo lidai weisheng i!lZhiji yixue jiaqyu 'f � 1f. 1� 4ft ± n � &. .. '" � 1.f (Xi'an: Shijie tushu chubanshe, 1998), 66-67· 37. The chronology of the Medical School is as follows: The government estab­ lished the Medical School in II03/9. On II06/I/I4, an instruction came down to close the schools of literature, calligraphy, mathematics, and medicine and to attach them to the existing schools of the Directorate of Education. The reasons for these actions are not detailed in the records (SHY zhiguan 28.17a). On II07/2/17, an order came down to reopen the Medical School (SS 20.377). In IlIO, an edict was issued that medical students should enter the Imperial Medical Office, and to discontinue the Medical School (SS 20.384 and 157.3687; ]SBM 135.9a). On IlI3/4/1, an order came down to re-establish the Medical School (SS 21.391; SHY zhiguan 22.38b). In IlI5/I, branches of the Medical School were established in various prefectures (SS 21.394; SHY chongtu 3.17b. See also ]SBM 135.9b). In II17, the Medical School was transferred under the authority of the Libu (SHY chongru 3.21a). In II20, the Medical School in the capital was abolished. Local branches of the Medical School continued to flourish (fSBM 135.IOa; SHY chongru p6a). 38. The term "acu-moxa therapy" refers to a group of traditional Chinese clinical techniques designed to stimulate specific loci on the human body in order to obtain a desired therapeutic effect. Acupuncture and moxibustion are the most popular but not the only techniques in this therapeutic approach. Acupuncture is based on inserting needles of various gauges and lengths into the skin at specific loci. Moxibustion is based on burning tinder made of Chinese mugwort (Artemisia argyi or Artemisia vulgaris) next to a locus or on it. The Chinese term for moxibustion is ai :>t. For comprehensive discussions of acu-moxa techniques and doctrines, see Lu Gwei-djen and Joseph Needham, Celestial Lancets: A History & Rationale ofAcupuncture and Moxa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 69-153, 170-84; and Sivin, Traditional Medicine, 258-64.

288

ASAF G O LD S C HMIDT

divisions of the three branches. Internal and general medicine was divided into internal medicine *- -,;;1 � , pediatrics IJ' -,;;1 � , and convul­ sive and paralytic diseases J1t#. Acu-moxa therapy was divided into acupuncture � , moxibustion k , stomatology and dentistry t1 11; , laryngology ,,� �, ophthalmology Oil, and otology .Jf . External medicine was divided into surface lesions ttJJf, orthopedics 1�4Jf, injuries from weapons 1ttt, and interdiction . #c .39 The teaching material in the Medical School included major canonical works as well as clinical texts. All the books were newly published, gov­ ernment-sponsored editions of ancient medical works, including: the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon BasicQuestions 1ft '*' J*J �if -t r " the Yellow Emperor's Canon if Eighry-one Problems, the Origins and Symptoms ifMedical Disorders l. lc\ � ,7.f" the Jiqyou Era Materia Medica l. ;fi; *- $ , and the Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand -t 1t � -,;;1 .40 Each of the three major branches of study required additional texts. Students of the in­ ternal and general medicine branch were also required to study the Pulse Canon ��!i and the Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders. The students of the acu-moxa therapy branch were also required to study the Yellow Emperor's "A-B " Canon ifAcu-moxa 1ft '*' -=- � �t k �!i and Nagarjuna's Discussions on Ophthalmology ff.;f.. �.41 The students of the external medicine branch were also required to study the Yellow Emperor's (�-B " Canon ifAcu-moxa and the Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand.42 The inclusion of these books in its curriculum supports the claim that the Medical School stressed the teaching of medical classics. These medical classics included the best available theoretical treatises on both medical doctrines and their application in clinical practice. This approach should have provided the students with a firm grasp of the foundations of medicine, which was then supplemented with the more specialized texts assigned to each branch of study. ..

39. SHY chongru 3·nb-I2a. 40. For a discussion regarding the revision and printing of medical books during the Northern Song, see Goldschmidt, "The Transformations of Chinese Medicine," 56-68, 136-44, 198-2°3, 207-12. 41. There are variant titles; see Li Jingwei 4-�� et al., Zhongyi do cidian 'f " k.-� (Beijing: Renmin weisheng, 1995), 391, 1352. 42. 55 157.3689; SHY chongru 3.I2a-b.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

289

The course of study at the Medical School, like that of the Imperial Medical Service before it, included clinical experience. Students from the major universities in the capital were referred to the medical students for treatment when they were ill. The medical students were evaluated based on their diagnosis, choice of treatment and its application, and, of course, on the outcome of the treatment.43

Examinations in the MedicalSchoo!.

The Medical School established in 1103

made extensive use of examinations. Besides entrance examinations

;fif]ii\, there were progress exams, one given by the school lL. ii\ and one given by an imperially dispatched examiner �ii\. In order to succeed in the entrance examination, the candidate had to show basic medical knowledge by answering a number of hypothetical questions regarding diagnosis or therapy of possible medical cases.44 The head of the Medical School himself wrote the questions for the school's examinations, which were given every three months. Two parts of the exam tested the students' knowledge of the medical classics; the third part tested their analytical and clinical skills. The examination given by an imperially dispatched examiner resembled the school's ex­ amination but consisted of only two parts, one on knowledge of the medical classics and one on clinical skills. The results of the examination by the school and of the examination by the imperially dispatched ex­ aminer were used to determine students' placement in the Inner Hall or the Upper Hall. The exams included three types of questions: written elucidation questions, elucidation about the meaning of medical texts, and therapeutic questions on hypothetical cases, with emphasis on the last. Students who did well in questions about diagnosing hypothetical cases were supposed to receive priority in promotion. In order to evaluate students' clinical skills, their success in caring for patients was examined.45

43. SS 157.3885; SHY chongru 3-I3b. 44. SHY chongru 3.I2b-13b. For further discussion, see Zhang Ruixian, "Song Huizong shiqi de teshu yixue jiaoyu sheshi-'yixue'" * .fti. * ,* jlJj � �1lIt ff * � 1f "tt �­ "ff .. ," Zhongyijiaqyu 3 (1989): 41· 45 . SHY chongru 3.12b-13b. See also Liang Jun, Zhongguo gudai yizheng shilue, 101. For additional information on medical examinations in general, see Joseph Need­ ham, "China and the Origin of Qualifying Examinations in Medicine," in Joseph Needham, Clerks and Craftsmen in China and the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University

ASAP G O L D S C H M I D T

Regulations issued in the years 1111 and 1113 show that local medical officers had been placed under the control of the newly established Office of Educational Intendants tl** :f: . This was an attempt to include all examinations civil service examinations and other special examinations to recruit technical officers under the control of the Directorate of Education and the Office of Educational Intendants.46 •

Official Positions for Graduates if the Medical Schoo!. In order to raise the status of medicine and physicians, Huizong's court changed the titles of medical positions to resemble those of the civil service. During the first century of the Song, physicians often were given military ranks.47 During the Zhenghe reign period (1111-17) , the government established a num­ ber of unique titles, replacing the military ranks, to be assigned to doctors and graduates of the Medical School. This measure sent a clear message to the officials and the graduates of the Imperial schools that medicine was an independent field of knowledge worthy of being endowed with its own titles.48 The new titles, and their old military equivalents, are listed in Table 7.1. During the same period, the government also increased the number of medical positions, thus ensuring that graduates of the Medical School would be assigned medical positions. In 1114, a court official reported that "we, your officials, humbly observe that at present the number of officials serving at the Medical Institute $ff �*-* l' has expanded many­ fold since the Xining [1068-77] and Yuanfeng [1078-85] reign periods." The official then provided specific examples detailing how the govern­ ment increased the number of officials in specific official medical

Press, 1970), 340-78; an updated version appears in Needham, Medicine, 95-II3. For examples of typical questions and answers used in medical examinations during the Song dynasty, see He Daren tor k #:: , Taiyiju zhuke chengwen :k. " J.ii it#:f.I 5c. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1991). 46. 5HY chongru 3.14a-b. 47. These titles were also long associated with eunuchs and inner court staff and were not considered "regular bureaucratic post" lfl* 1' ; they commanded rather low political respect. I am grateful for this comment brought up by the anonymous reviewer of this chapter. 48. 55 169.4059. For further discussion, see Zhang Ruixian, "Shilun Bei Song zhengfu yu yixue de guanxi," 40-41; Yi Buyang J& :.r-4Ji and Yi Tian J& �, "Songdai yishi de pin yu jie" *- 1� " Uiji {f.J .fc, �ffl, Zhongyiyao xuebao 2 (1982): 61-62.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health Table 7.1 New Medical Tides Enhancing the Prestige of Physicians New tide tJrffl

Old tide li ffl

Grand Master of Health and Peace

;fn�kJ;.

Grand Master of Perfect Health

A;fnkJ;.

Grand Master of Complete Peace

A�kJ;.

Grand Master of Complete Wholeness A� kJ;. Grand Master of Preservation and Harmony 1lf; ;fnkJ;. Grand Master of Preservation and Peace 1lf;�kJ;. Excellent Physician of the Medical Institute �#- It .. Gendeman for Health and Peace

Commissioner of the Armory

:+: aJf.1t

Commissioner of West Office of Embroidery ,!ft �t� ft Monopoly Exchange Commissioner

� Jh ft

Commissioner of the Medical Institute �#. .. l' ft

1lf;���

Gendeman for Perfect Health

A;fn��

Gendeman for Complete Peace

A���

Gendeman for Complete Wholeness A��� Gendeman for Preservation and Harmony 1lf;;fn �� Gendeman for Preservation and Peace 1lf;� �� Incumbent Physician of the Medical Institute �#-".if..

Vice Commissioner of the Armory

:+: aJf.1tft

Vice Commissioner of West Office of Embroidery ,!ft t.t �1t� Monopoly Exchange Vice Commissioner � Jh 1t ft Vice Commissioner of the Medical Institute �#''' 't 1tft

SOURCE: SS 169.4°59.

positions. For example, the number of commissioners of the Medical Institute ... 't1t increased from 6 to 33; the number of aides to the imperial physician k ", � increased from 6 to 48. Altogether the number of medical officials in the Medical Institute reached 732.49 49. SHY zhiguon 36.I02a. For further discussion of medical tides and their ranks, see

Miyashita Saburo 1: r .:.. �� , "So-Gen no iryo" *- ;it IT) .. . , in Yabuuchi Kiyoshi

ASAF G O L D S C H M I D T

A N I N N O VAT I V E T I T L E : L I T E RA T U S P H Y S I C IA N

The establishment of the Medical School, the designation of new official ranks for physicians that went along with it, and the increase in the number of medical officials may not have been enough to raise the status of medicine and induce the sons of the elite to study medicine. In 1113, the court tried a new way to draw candidates from the ranks of the elite by coining an innovative term for doctors, literati Physicians or �i 1� •.50 In an imperial edict dated 1II3/4/9 the court states: In the early stages of the establishment of the School, we emphasized the desire to expand the acquisition of literati physicians. We humbly saw that in various prefectures there are students in the Inner and Outer Halls who always thor­ oughly understand medical skills. We have instructed all instructors at the pre­ fectures that they should wisely understand that their responsibility is to the court. Thus, they should repeatedly promote those candidates whose name and surname have been reported to the throne by school officials.

�tf: -i!:.AJJ , ��

.� ••. • �. � � 4tf: � *.� ••••. +. ffl.��.e � t

tVJ.tf: � . Jl.-M.-Z Btl � r .51

There is more than meets the eye in this edict. The "School" refers to the Medical School, but to whom does the term "literati physicians" re­ fer? When the author of the edict notes that the students of the prefec-

• flit, ed., 50-Genjidai no kagaku gijutsu shi ;lut ot 1-\;'0)#"'#.#r� (Kyoto: Kyoto daigaku jinbun kagaku kenkyusho, 1967), 134-35. 50. The combination of these two characters, 1t"', does not appear in any official histories up to and including the 55. The only time it appears in the official dynastic histories is in the History ofthe Yuan Dynasty, where it appears twice. Furthermore, neither the CB nor the ZiZhi tong/ian includes this combination of characters. Although surviving records do not state that applying the term royi to graduates of Medical School was a new policy, the appearance of such an innovative and compelling reference to physicians could not have arisen accidentally. According to Joseph Needham (Medicine, 42) this term became popular when well-educated scholars turned to study medicine during the Yuan and on to the Ming dynasties. Robert Hymes ("Not Quite Gentlemen?," 64-66) claims more specifically that it was the diminishing number of opportunities to teach that may have been crucial in leading scholars to choose the medical path and become royi. However, based on the two following quotations it seems that it was during Huizong's reign that this term was invented, even if its impact was not immediate. 51. 5HY chongro 3.14b-15a.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

29 3

tural schools' Inner and Outer Halls are proficient in medicine, he could not be referring to medical students, since the government ordered the establishment of local Medical Schools in the prefectures only in III5. It seems that he refers to students who study in the mainstream course of Confucian education who were also proficient in medicine. Those are the students targeted as candidates for the Medical School in the capital and designated to become literati physicians. 52 In 1117, the term "literati physicians" is mentioned once again in an official record. This time, however, the connection to the Medical School is much more pronounced. In a memorial dated III?/8/10, an official stated that: I humbly observe in its education of gentlemen, the Medical School, set up by the court, makes those who study Confucian arts also gain proficiency in medical canons [literally, the

Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon] , understand diagnosis

and treatment, and apply them to disease [in the clinical realm] . I call them

If * 1: , 1:k.�jJ�tJ!.� .*�.±�� � ������, � �., ��#*�. �z� • . � *

Literati Physicians; their benefits are extremely great.

.t -l!!.. . 53

The character ru 1:t implies learning, usually Confucian learning. Thus the authors of both the edict and the memorial linked Confucian scholarship with medicine and medical practice. This marriage of Confucianism and medicine, initiated during Huizong's reign, lasted from that time to the present. Although some present-day scholars have attempted to show that this marriage predates Huizong, their evidence is weak. From Huizong's reign onward, the usage of the term "literati physicians" became increasingly common. Accordingly, we fmd increasing numbers of references in both literary and medical works dating to the Southern Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties.54

52. See Chen Yuanpeng, Liang Song de ''shangyi shiren "yu "ruy� " 186-87. 53. SHY chongru 3 .20b . 54. See Zhang Ruixian, "Rujia wenhua xiang yixue shentou de tujing zhiyi: shilun liang Song 'Ruyi' de chansheng" 1t�� 1�fo) -I-*i�it fI!J it�-z- : ��� * "11-1-" fI!J A. ± , Tiardin ZhonlJi xuryuan xuebao 2 (1990): 23-24. For further discussion of the various titles of doctors following the Song, see Chao Yuan-ling, "Medicine and Society in Late Imperial China: A Study of Physicians in Su-zhou" (ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1995), chap. 3, esp. 174-77. -

ASAF G O LD S C HM I DT

294

In addition to all these measures meant to attract members of the elite to the study of medicine, Huizong added another unique measure aimed at familiarizing regular students with medical doctrines. In III7, Huizong wrote that "Confucians use [the Dao] to order the world, and gentlemen use [the Dao] to repair the body." After discussing the importance of other traditions of knowledge, such as the Study of Huanglao if ::t z * and the diversity of the meaning of Dao throughout the ages, Huizong ordered that "all the students in all the schools in the empire, according to their affiliation, should add one great and one small canon [to their curriculum] from those listed below. The great canons are the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon (Huangdi neijiniJ and the Dao De Jing. The small canons are the ZhuangiJ and the LieiJ."55 In another record from the same year, we have a similar claim that the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon became part of the curriculum in all the imperial schools. 56 These records suggest that Huizong ordered the addition to the curriculum of the general education system the most important classic of medicine, the one that serves, even to the present, as the doctrinal foundation of medicine, the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon. The books added with it remind us of Huizong's commitment to Daoism, discussed further by Shin-yi Chao in her chapter.57

Public Health Initiatives During Huizong's Reign Western discussions of the history of public health often begin with the Hippocratic treatise Airs, Waters, Places (ca. fifth century BCE) , in which diseases are divided into "endemic," which were always present, and "epidemic," which occurred only occasionally and excessively. 58 When discussing public health as an organized governmental activity, historians of medicine generally begin with the Western Renaissance. This is despite the fact that isolation as a means of protection from epidemics began in Italy in the fourteenth century, when a number of 55. SDZLJ 224.864.

56. Gong Chun, Zhongguo lidai weisheng i!lZhijiyixuejiaoyu, 64; SHY chongru 4.IOb-na. 57. For details on Daoism in general during the Song dynasty, see Lowell Skar, "Ritual Movements, Deity Cults and the Transformation of Daoism in Song and Yuan Times," in Livia Kohn, ed., Daoism Handbook (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 413-63. 58. Dorothy Porter, "Public Health," in W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter, eds., Companion Encyclopedia ofthe History ofMedicine (London: Routledge, 1993), 1232.

-

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

-

----

295

city-states introduced quarantine to protect themselves against the major epidemic of bubonic plague that began in 1346, commonly known as the Black Death.59 This initiative, however, did not involve public sanitation or therapy. Although private and religious groups most often founded public health institutions in China, during certain eras governments also made important contributions. When epidemics or other natural calamities struck, the government enacted relief measures, usually in the form of dispensing drugs and providing financial aid to affected areas. At times, it also set up institutions that aided the poor in normal times by providing shelter, food, and sometimes drugs. The reign of Huizong provides an early example of the imperial establishment of a public health system aimed at limiting epidemics. Huizong's public health institutions in­ cluded public hospitals, paupers' cemeteries, and poorhouses. The first two institutions promoted public health by providing medical services for the indigent and burial for the needy as well as for travelers from far places. The rationale behind these institutions was probably twofold. On the one hand, they constituted yet another attempt to provide relief for the poor. On the other hand, based on surviving records, they were designed to prevent contagion and the outbreak of epidemics. Another institution related to public health was the Imperial Pharmacy, designed to sell drugs and in times of catastrophe to dispense them free of charge. As I have shown elsewhere, epidemics played a major role in shaping medical policy in the mid-eleventh century; so the establishment of such institutions should not come as a surprise.60 P U B L I C H EA L T H P R I O R ' TO HUIZONG S REIGN

The earliest mention we have of hospices with dispensaries dates back to the Southern Qi dynasty (late fifth century). The first reference to a government hospital dates not much later, to the Northern Wei dynasty (early sixth century). 61 During the Tang, both religious institutions 59. Ibid., 1233· 60. Goldschmidt ''The Transformations of Chinese Medicine," 21-71. 61. Needham, Medicine, 54.

ASAF G O LD S C HM I DT

and the government were involved in poor relief and public health op­ erations. The increasingly elaborate programs of Buddhist monasteries, which were more dominant than government institutions, provided lodging facilities as well as food and drugs for the indigent. These reli­ gious programs, called Compassionate Fields Houses .� Il1 f.1t , were funded mostly by income derived from land donated by the faithful or expropriated by the emperor and allocated for that purpose. The Tang government got involved in poor relief mostly at times of crisis, but also subsidized some private philanthropic institutions on a regular basis.62 Charity clinics or hospitals established during the Tang dynasty were called literally Patients' Buildings � � and were often associated with the privately operated Compassionate Fields Houses. 63 These clinics treated the indigent, but it is unclear who qualified for treatment or what kind of treatment patients received. The earliest Song relief institutions can be traced roughly to the first half of the eleventh century.64 They were a continuation of Tang dynasty practices but with a new name, Blessed Field Houses #! Il1 f.1t, a name probably associated with Buddhism in that it resembles the Tang dynasty name. This institution operated on a very small scale. In addition to poor relief, the government engaged in other welfare activities on an ad hoc basis, such as establishing public cemeteries in certain regions or distributing medicines to the poor in times of catastrophes and epidemics. Poor relief underwent a major change during the early Song dynasty. It was transformed from a mostly private and often religious endeavor into one in which the government played an ever-increasing role. The Song government continued to provide disaster relief, but in addition established relief institutions that functioned on a regular basis and not solely during catastrophes.65

62. Ibid., 54-55; Hugh Scogin, "Poor Relief in Northern Sung China," Oriens Extremis 25 (1978): 30-3I. 63. The first record of the name bingfang #i� appears during the years 713-42. See Tang huiyao (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998), 49.862-63. 64. Scogin, "Poor Relief," 3I. 65. Discussion of these poor-relief institutions can be found in ibid.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

297

T H E W E L FA R E A N D P U B L I C H E A L T H '

SYSTEM DURING H U I Z O N G S REIGN

During Huizong's reign, the government instituted a new system for poor relief, entitled the Poorhouse System Jk -l- �, literally the Reside and Support System.66 In two edicts, dating to the years IIo6 and III2, Huizong stated: At the present widows and widowers, the orphaned and sole survivors, all have the Poorhouse System. (The state] uses it to aid the poor. But, what if they are sick and have no medicine or doctor? To solve this we are establishing the Peace and Relief Hospitals. To deal with poor men who die and have no [means of] burial, we are establishing the Paupers' Cemetery. My mind is deeply with the

4'.• -*��.

�;t J.k • .t�. J';.< l-f iH\ . *, * .1Q • • . JN � .t � � ��. it .1Q :f Jf. . JN � .t � � ;' III . JOC.t;t �H\ i* � .67

people.

The widows and widowers, the orphaned and sole survivors, have the Poor­ houses to be used for rest and relief. The sick have the Hospitals for their Peace and Relief.68 Those who have died have the Paupers' Cemeteries for burial. This is the foundation of the kingly way [Dao] . I have ordered the implementation of

. .•-*-�\.�. ;t Fit J';'< J.k •. * �;ff ;t� J';'< �if.l . ?t;ff ;t 1II J';'< Jf. . .£l!.t*-tI!... �4'J!.{l. . .1Q � :f * � .69

this system, but officials have not followed my orders

The language Huizong uses here suggests that he perceived the three institutions as complementary parts of a single integrated system.7o The

66. The term "Poorhouse System" is adopted here since it seems that the Song government and Huizong in particular conceptualized a system made of three different and specialized institutions. 67. SDZLj 186.680. 68. Huizong is using here the characters of the institutions in reverse order to show their meaning and functions. 69. SDZLj 186.681. 70. Hugh Scogin ("Poor Relief," 32, 34) claims that the Song government established a new system of welfare institutions referred to collectively under the term Poorhouse System }!.j.;:t;. He further claims that the "charity clinic," or the Peace and Relief Hospital, was an ad hoc health care measure functioning outside the system. However, edicts by Huizong cited above, along with additional edicts (also recorded in the SDZLj, chapter 186), suggest that Huizong conceptualized the system as a whole and not as a poorhouse with ad hoc health care measures. Scogin also claims that the Peace and Relief Hospital was not a concern of the emperor, tying its development and demise to the rocky career of eai Jing (1046-1126), who served as grand councilor during the reign of

ASAF G O LD S C HM I DT Poorhouse System included three separate institutions. The first was the Poorhouse % -tF.1t , a hospice designed to provide shelter and food to the indigent.71 The second was the Peace and Relief Hospital ���, a charity clinic designed to provide free medical care for those who could not afford medical treatment. The third was the Paupers' Cemetery � if IE , literally translated as the Left Out of Favor Funerary Park, an insti­ tution that provided free burial plots and services for both the poor and for travelers who died away from home without anyone to take care of their funeral arrangements.72 During Huizong's reign, the Poorhouse System was expanded, and the government established new facilities throughout the empire.73 The government financed this new Poorhouse System primarily by confis­ cating property of the heirless dead.74 This new financial foundation enabled the system to aid more people than its Tang and Song fore­ runners had. In addition, the new system functioned on a year-round basis, unlike its precursors, which operated only in emergencies. How-

Huizong ("Poor Relief," 41). Similar claims are made by Angela Ki Che Leung, "Organized Medicine in Ming-Qing China: State and Private Medical Institutions in the Lower Yangzi Region," Late Imperial China 8.1 (1987): 136; Paul R. Katz, Demon Hordes and Burning Boats: The Cult of Marshal Wen in Late Imperial China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 46. However, a closer analysis proves this alleged lack of direct interest to be incorrect. As is discussed elsewhere in this chapter, Huizong personally wrote several edicts discussing the importance and the goals of the public health and relief system initiated by his government. These edicts show that Huizongwas concerned about the state of public health among the common people in the empire. In these edicts he specifies the target population of each institution and how he foresaw its function. 71. There is a distinction between two terms when referring to "poorhouse,"fa it; and yuan �. According to Scogin ("Poor Relief," 33) the former refers to a system or ap­ proach, while the latter implies the existence of a specific facility. Prior to 1106 the term "Poorhouse System" Jl;", 5t. was used as a general term meaning either the system or the facility, depending on whether the relief functions of the facility were listed or not. From 1106 the term "Poorhouse" Jl;"'� was used for the facility (SHY shihuo 68.132b). 72. The imperial agency of the Left Out of Favor Funerary Park i& if III does not appear in Charles Hucker, A Dictionary ofOfficial Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985). For clarity I follow the title "Paupers' Cemetery" proposed by Scogin, "Poor Relief." 73. For further discussion of the topic, see Scogin, "Poor Relief," 33-34. 74. SHY shihuo 68.I28b, 130a-b.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

299

ever, the system did not always function ideally. In one surviving record the author complained that the system had outrun its sources of in­ come,75 Poorhouses. The Poorhouses were designed to provide food, clothing, and shelter to the needy, who were defIned as the aged poor, widows, orphans, abandoned children, and all those otherwise unable to care for themselves. The forms of aid varied according to local conditions and the age of the person.76 Generally, each adult was to be allotted one sheng 7t of rice, approximately 0.7 liter, and ten cash per day, with children receiving half as much,77 During the winter months, an addi­ tional fIve cash per day was allotted for fuel. Over the years, the Poor­ houses also provided residents with clothing, bedding, utensils, and at times even mosquito nets. The scope of relief operations was widened during the winter when the need for shelter became more acute, espe­ cially in northern China.78 Peace and Reliif Hospitals. The Peace and Relief Hospitals had a more direct effect on public health than did the poorhouses. These charity clinics or infIrmaries, established in 1102, were modeled on the clinic founded by Su Shi (1036-1101) in Hangzhou. In 1089, Su was appointed the prefect of Hangzhou. Confronted with poverty and a high rate of disease, he dispatched offIcials to distribute medicine. Soon thereafter he established what may have been China's fIrst specialized charity clinic, titled the Peace and Happiness Hospital � * #. Su funded the clinic mostly from private funds,79 According to surviving records, during a three-year span of operation, the clinic treated without charge more than 1,000 poor patients.80 During Huizong's reign, Su Shi's privately run

75. Ibid., 68.136b· 76. Ibid., 68.132b-I33b. 77. Ibid., 68.137a. For metric conversion, see Wu Chengluo �jf<.�, Zhongguo du liang heng shi '" If,! J1 "I:{t-� (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1987), 61. 78. Scogin, "Poor Relief," 33-34. 79. SHY shihuo 68.130 or 60.3b. See also Leung, "Organized Medicine," 136. 80. Scogin, "Poor Relief," 32. For further discussion regarding Su Shi's relief efforts, see Kondo Kazunari, "Su Shih's Relief Measures as Prefect of Hang-chou-A Case of the Policies Adopted by Sung Scholar-Officials," Acta Asiatica 50 (1986): 31-53.

ASAF G O LD S C H M I DT

300

Peace and Happiness Hospital was incorporated into the national system of hospitals. The Peace and Relief Hospitals were established in response to a memorial submitted to the court by Wu Juhou � Jl; Jl (I037-III3), the governor of the capital prefecture.81 Wu urged that Rest and Recupera­ tion Houses j/fJ!.!t;t be established in all prefectures for the poor.82 Wu's memorial specified: The Rest and Recuperation Houses ought to take the sick and separate them according to the severity of their illness and then place them in different wards. This is done to prevent contagion. There should also be a kitchen to decoct drugs and prepare food and drink for the patients. The living quarters of the attendants and the wards of the patients should be separated. The wards, which are differentiated based on the severity of the patients' disease, each location [that is, ward] can be constructed of up to ten rooms. �J.!.� 1i: J'X fflJ.....� �iTQ J(. i: 1tZ. J'X F� i# � . 5t 11< $j- -%- J'X � � ftHt *' J..... -lii -%-ll ffl J..... � . � � J(. i: , �1t � -(it � !J.. + rEI' .83 -

Wu's proposal constitutes one of the earliest mentions of quarantining patients in order to prevent contagion within the hospital. To make these hospitals self-sufficient, they were to have a pharmacy to prepare me­ dicinal formulas and a kitchen to prepare food for the patients and to boil the medicinal formulas before consumption by patients. Contrary to the more common procedure of starting such facilities in the capital, the network of hospitals was established first in the provinces. For example, we have a record stating that a hospital was established in 1102/11 in Hebei.84 Another source records that a hospital was estab­ lished in Hangzhou in 1104.85 Huizong himself questioned leaving the capital out of this new network. In 1105 he personally wrote an edict to rectify the situation: The capital is the heart of the land, the place where the king's transformative influence begins. Concerning widows and widowers, the orphaned, and sole survivors, along with those who are poor and without anyone to turn to, in the 81. For details on Wu Juhou, see Chang Bide � it{l et aI., Songren zhuanji iJliao suqyin *A. "'�c. 1t # -t 51 (faibei: Dingwen shuju, 1974), 2: 1I52. 82. This name was proposed but never adopted in practice (SHY shihuo 68.130a). 83. Ibid., 68.129b. 84. 55 19.365. 85. Chunyou Unan Zhi i$;fi;Wf..t(-.t, (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin, 1983), 7: 133.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

301

rest of the country the Poorhouse System has been put in place, but it has not yet reached the capital. This misses the idea of beginning with what is close at hand and then extending it to distant places. Now, although we have Blessed Fields Houses, they cannot care for many. At the coldest and hottest times of the year, the poor without anyone to turn to as well as the ill may lack places to live, which pains me deeply. I order Kaifeng prefecture to follow the law used in the outer prefectures to establish Poorhouses for widows and widowers, orphans, and sole survivors, as well as Peace and Relief Hospitals, thus according with my

:Y- � *�*-Z.� . ..I.. 1 t.-Z.m- jc . ���ilji41t o1ii �%::t. Jk-t--Z. *. � -T l?!1 i/j: 01ii *-ll:Y- � . � � m ililli!-Z.;t. 4'-.lr � lInt. m-.-Z.it *- •. i� * ••. • o1ii � %ll . � ::t 4 � � m- . • � •. �+M #M** 1i'1 *. Jk -t-.� * �iIj ll M �if.lJh". J<;q=$j..;t.86

intentions.

The Peace and Relief Hospital was designed to have several wards with administrators assigned to manage them. Each physician was re­ quired to keep accurate records of the cases he treated, listing the number of patients who were cured and the number who died under his treatment. At the end of the year, these records were examined and the status of each physician was decided on the basis of his success rate.87 Physicians could be compensated financially when they were successful in their treatment.88 Each clinic was to be managed by a staff of four persons, who were replaced seasonally.89 86. SDZLJ 186.680-81. This edict in almost the same wording also appears in the SHY shihllo 68.130b-3Ia. 87. SHY shihllo 68.132a. 88. Physicians who lost no more than 20 percent of their patients were rewarded according to the numbers of patients they treated in a year: if over 1,000, they received a Monastic Certificate JiJl$; if over 500, 50 strings of cash; if over 200, 20 strings of cash. A physician who treated 1,000 patients and lost no more than 10 percent would receive a special bonus. (See Gong Chun, Zhonggllo lidai weisheng 'IJIZhijiyixlIejiaqyll, 43. SHY shihllo 68.13Ib and 68.138a-b.) Gong Chun claims that this system was already in place during II05. The record as it appears in the SHY describes the situation in II31 but refers to previous times. It is safe to assume that even if Gong is wrong in his claim for the exact year, Emperor Gaozong (r. II27-62) modeled his public hospital system on Huizong's. Regarding the Monastic Certificate, originally this was a certificate issued by the gov­ ernment to prove that a certain person is a Buddhist monk or nun. Later, during the Tang and the Song dynasties, it began to carry a financial value similar to present-day gov­ ernment bonds. For further information, see Zheng Tianting JfII � ;JJt and Tan Qi­ xiang �Jt., Zhonggllo lishi da cidian 'f II M.;t*� � (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu, 2000), 2249· 89. Scogin, "Poor Relief," 35.

302

ASAP G O LD S C H M IDT

The Paupers' Cemetery. Bodies lying in the streets posed an even more pressing hazard to public health than did the sick. The Secretary of the Court tF ... reported in 1104 that "all the prefectures and counties [of the empire] have poor people who are without means to cover their own burial when they die. Also, there are visitors [from out of town] who die, and their corpses lie exposed in the streets untouched. This is extremely sad and distressing." 90 The sanitation problems associated with the disposal of the bodies of the indigent as well as the traditional Confucian emphasis on filial piety made this matter one of great official concern. The need for public cemeteries was made more acute by the social and geographical mobility of Northern Song China. Care for the sick and burial of the dead had long been viewed as family responsibilities in China, but the increasingly commercial and mobile nature of Song so­ ciety brought people to the cities without their kin.91 As early as the I020S, the Song government began buying up plots of land to provide burial grounds for the poor. These early efforts to set up cemeteries for the poor were consolidated and institutionalized during the first years of the twelfth century, much as other relief measures were.92 The Paupers' Cemeteries were formally established in 1104. Originally they were conceived as an improvement on the precedent set in Shen­ zong's reign (1067-85).93 Each prefecture was ordered to establish a cemetery on a plot of unfertile public land. It was also ordered to appoint officials to keep records and maps II fi of the cemeteries and to parcel out the burial plots when needed. Each body buried in these cemeteries was to be allotted an eight-chi [ft...] plot (approximately 2.46 sq. meters) and a coffin. Each grave was dug to be at least three chi deep (approxi­ mately 0.92 meter) and was also provided with a marker recording the name, age, dates, and other details about the deceased. A central shrine was to be set up in each cemetery to provide a place for ancestral sacri-

90. SHY shihI/O 68.130b. 91. The newly emerging urban community did not have the means to deal with the death of indigents. In earlier times, either the rural community or the urban precinct dealt with such problems. With the development of the new urban environment in which there was no restriction on movement within and without the city, there was no organization to take care of these problems. 92. Scogin, "Poor Relief," 35. 93. SHY shihI/O 68.130b.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

3 03

fices.94 During the 1960s, a Song-dynasty Paupers' Cemetery was dis­ covered in Shanxi province. Following excavations conducted during the 1990S, altogether 849 tombs have been unearthed at the site with records of burial dating to the years 1105-16.95 T H E D E M I S E O F T H E W E L FA R E A N D P U B L I C H EA L T H S Y S T E M

The idea behind the Poorhouse System was altruistic and noble, but costs were high and corruption a persistent problem. The first mention of corruption appears in 1105, when a report was made that prefectural officials were not keeping proper records of relief operations. Subse­ quently, inspectors were sent to check into the actual number of people being handled.96 Surviving records mention local officials padding the lists of relief recipients with names of healthy people or dead people in order to obtain more support from the government for their own use. Punishments for corruption often were harsh and included public beatings.97 Even Huizong lamented that officials did not implement the system in the way it had been designed and thus brought grief instead of relief to the indigent.98 There is corroborating evidence that corruption was widespread. The following testimony, dating to 1114, described the situation of the Poorhouse System: I have ascertained that in the various prefectures the people who actually are elderly and who should be placed in a Poorhouse, those who actually are sick and should be hospitalized in a Peace and Relief Hospital, and those who actu­ ally should receive aid, suffer because those with family connections enter false claims and bend the regulations at will. The local officials protect one another making it impossible to investigate.

Il. *�� BfJ li��z 1" � .1Q iE 't .t%-1- ,

94. Ibid., 68.130b, and 168·mb. 95. For further details regarding the excavated Paupers' Cemetery, see Sanmen xiashi wenwu gongzuodui -=- " � rjf *.. tth.:r.. 1tFt, Bei Song Shanzhou loui!Yuan ;It. *- � �+I � if III (Beijing: Wenwu, 1999). The original discovery, as quoted in Scogin, "Poor Relief," is outlined by He Zhenghuang, "Songwuming shi mu zhuan," Wenwu 1966, no. 1: 53-43. 96. SHY shihuo 68.131b. 97. Ibid. 98. SDZLJ 186.681.

ASAF

G O LD S C H M I DT

't � ,1Q � ���::t, {i.{i. )'A *-t���� � .-t , Jt ± $:�, J/t Jfzp::t {l:fJt Jt. �. l' � AB it, .)'A * � .99

ffltatj{�{t*,

't

During Huizong's later years, the government cut back allocations to the welfare system. Accordingly, the number of poor and indigent aided by the system declined significantly. A memorial submitted by the Department of State Affairs in II25 describes the dire consequences of the cutback: In the winter cold, people who collapse are not, being cared for. Beggars are falling down and sleeping in the streets beneath the imperial carriage. Everyone sees them, and the people pity them and lament. The benevolence and sympathy of our enlightened ruler are great. In establishing Poorhouses to save these people from their misery, the expenditure is utterly insignificant, while the

�. {J1 IR A. � � J/t •. t. " A. {J11R#r�.fiz r. + EI i'Jf:ftA.PIT � '/jl1. i: a}] ,(i. J:. i�tPIT1.::. '�. ± '%. )'A �Jt. IIJ , PIT " �., ,1Q ,t i"f � i* . �{t1�f!�Z.100

blessings to be gained are great. [The system] should be re-established.

Although Huizong's public health system had to be cut back, it remained in place for at least a few more decades during the Southern Song. Its long-term impact, however, seems to have been limited. T H E P U B L I C P HARMACY

One of the most interesting public institutions during the latter decades of the Northern Song period was the Public Pharmacy ,fu�J Io1 . 101 The Public Pharmacy was established in the capital, Kaifeng, in 107 6/6 under the authority of the Imperial Medical Service. During its first 25 years, the pharmacy did not change. From II03, two years after Huizong ascended to the throne, a number of transformations in the structure and functions of the Public Pharmacy occurred. The most noticeable change was a major expansion of its facilities.

99. SHY shihuo 68.135a; translation adapted from Scogin, "Poor Relief," 40. Scogin

provides additional information about the prevalence of corruption in the system (40-41). 100. SHY shihuo 68.137b; translation adapted from Scogin, "Poor Relief," 41. 101. For further discussion of the topic, see Asaf Goldschmidt, "Commercializing Medicine or Benefiting the People: The First Public Pharmacy in China," Bu/Jetin ofthe History ofMedicine, forthcoming.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health The Public Pharmary Prior to Huizong's Re�n.

The Public Pharmacy was not just another stall at the market specializing in selling drugs and me­ dicinal materials to physicians. Instead, it was an elaborate institution with distinct functions. More than anything else, it was an agency pro­ ducing and holding a large inventory of processed drugs � � , serving the everyday needs of patients and physicians. At the same time, it served as an imperial arsenal ready to battle widespread epidemics when they erupted. Initially, the pharmacy in the capital was designed to fulfill two distinct functions. The first was to process the drugS . 1 02 As a drug factory, it processed drugs precisely to preset standards under the close supervision of imperial officials. When the preparation process was finished, the drugs were packed and sealed with an official dated seal. This elaborate procedure was designed to prevent illegal sale of the high-quality drugs outside the pharmacy and the substitution of fake drugs within. The date, much like modern expiration dates marked on medications, served offi­ cials as a guideline regarding when to discard a package of drugs. If drugs became spoiled in the pharmacy, the official in charge was held ac­ countable.1 03 The second purpose of the pharmacy was to sell the drugs. It is unclear whether or not the officials in charge of the pharmacies, who were not necessarily physicians, served any function in prescribing drugs to individual patients who came to the pharmacy. According to surviving records, anyone could purchase drugs at the pharmacy. l04 When epidemics spread, the pharmacy was expected to compound drugs according to the directions issued by the Imperial Physician Office in large quantities for distribution in the affected areas. At other times, the pharmacy distributed medications designed to prevent the outbreak of epidemics. In this way the pharmacy played an active role in battling

102. "Processed drugs" � ftl is a Chinese term that indicates that certain preparation methods were used on the drugs in order to give them a longer shelf life than fresh drugs. Such methods include various drying techniques, frying, baking, cooking, etc. 103. SHY zhiguan 27.67a-b; Taping huimin hejijufang i\.. .;p. .t t\. ;fI1;titJ J.ii :ff , ed. Chen Shiwen f! �;t., Chen Cheng f!;f<., and Pei Zongyuan � * ;i(. (Reprint, Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe, 1962), preface, p. I; Wan Fang ;it :ff and Lii Xichen g ��, "Songdai guanyaoju de kaocha" * 1� � ftl J.ii {r!J :if �, Shandong Zhongyi xuryuan xucbao II.3 (1987): 34-35· 104. SHY zhiguan 27.67a-b.

ASAF G O LD S C H M I D T epidemics. For example, in 1094 an epidemic raged through the capital district. The emperor, following a tour of the region, dispatched medical officials from the pharmacy to determine the disease that had struck the region and to prescribe a formula to counter it. I DS

The Public Pharmary During Huizong's Reign. The first major change in the Imperial Pharmacy occurred in 1103, when the government ordered the formation of two separate and independent departments, the Drug Factory 1�� flit 'If and the drugstore, called Office for Processing Drugs � flit i'Jf .106 As part of the new organization, the Public Pharmacy had under its authority five locations for selling drugs and two sites for processing drugs. It is important to note that although the number of facilities increased, the variety of products for sale at the pharmacy'-­ individual processed drugs remained unchanged. During the same year, 1103, He Zhizhong 1iif fA. � , who was a member of the Council of State,107 submitted a memorial stating that, "Since the benefits of the Public Pharmacy are so great, it should be promoted throughout the empire." He further suggested that the government should permit all localities with a Market Exchange Office rfr � � to establish a local satellite branch of the pharmacy. He's proposal was subsequently implemented.l OB In 1112, the government approved yet an­ other expansion of the pharmacy service to the remaining prefectures and districts.109 These local branches of the pharmacy sold drugs fur­ nished by the central factory located at the capital. Surviving sources do not give the number of branches of the pharmacy, but I would speculate that there were a few dozen. In 1114, supervision of the pharmacy was transferred to the Court of the Imperial Treasury ;tAt-1=". In addition, the pharmacy's name was changed to Bureau for Benefiting the People .t � J..1 . Consequently, the name of the factory department also changed to the Mixing Drugs and Compounding Prescriptions Service -I- flit �11 �J J..1 .11 O This alteration of

105. Ibid., 22.3Sa, 27.I5b. 106. 55 165.3907; Qing bo zazhi iti'oc#.lt 12.525; Tiewei shan congtan . 1II al! ltit 6.S5. 107. Chang Bide, Songren zhuanji :;;jliao suqyin, 2: 1279. lOS. SHY zhiguan 27.I7b. 109. Ibid., 27.20b-2Ia. lIO. Ibid., 27.2Ib-22a, 27.69.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

307

the official titles may hint at an important change. The title of the phamlacy's factory now used the word "prescriptions" ;!ttl along with the word drugs � , which indicates a change in the line of products on sale. The phamlacy, originally designed to keep a stable supply of drugs from which physicians compounded medicinal formulas, came to emphasize in addition the sale of prepared prescriptions.111

Wry Did Huizong Expand the Public Pharmary? Expanding the pharmacy to the provinces and opening dozens of branches throughout the empire probably was linked to Huizong's other initiatives. The chain of pharmacies provided the government with another tool to fight epi­ demics. If the Peace and Relief Hospital and the Paupers' Cemetery provided means to prevent epidemics, the branches of the Imperial Pharmacy provided the arsenal for imperial doctors once epidemics broke out. Selling prescriptions changed the way medicine was practiced. For the first time in Chinese history, anybody could buy prepared prescriptions without the aid of a doctor. These prescriptions were easy to consume and carry around. Moreover, patients probably increased the use of prescriptions over unprepared formulas since they no longer had to boil the components of the formula to make an infusion of herbs. Instead they could simply swallow a pill or a dose of powder in much the same way that we ingest medications today.

The Formulary ifthe Pharmary.

Initially, the pharmacy or the government assembled a list detailing the medications for sale at the Public Pharmacy, but the list was never promulgated publicly. During Huizong's reign, the government published a formulary listing the products for sale at the pharmacy. During the years 1107 to 1110, the Public Pharmacy commis­ sioned a group of physicians, headed by a distinguished doctor, Chen Cheng ft7f<., to revise and update the existing records of medications

III. Prepared prescriptions jilj are regular medicinal formulas that include several

drugs. However, instead of boiling drugs and drinking the infusion �, preparers made these formulas into a more convenient form of consumption such as potion -ik, powder ft, pill :JL, or paste ... .

3 08

ASAF G O L D S C H M I D T

sold by the pharmacy and to collect additional effective formulas. 1 12 The need to revise these records probably resulted from the change in the pharmacy from selling processed drugs to selling prepared prescriptions. The new formulary, entitled the Formulary of the Pharmary SenJicefor Bene­ fiting the People in an Era of Great Peace J\.. -t .t � � �j .ItJ -)j, listed 297 prescriptions sold by the pharmacy. After its compilation, the book was printed and distributed to all prefectures. This formulary details the symptoms that each prepared prescription was designed to treat. It rarely mentions underlying doctrines, such as yin-yang or the Five Phases, or clinical issues, such as methods of di­ agnosis. Moreover, it lacks almost completely the determination of the pattern of overall somatic imbalance in patients and of the formula appropriate to the pattern. Lastly, it does not discuss adjustments of formulas according to the specific patient's condition.ll3 Given this in­ formation, it seems that the formulary was aimed at an audience of customers or patients who did not possess medical background but who could purchase prepared prescriptions off the shelf by matching them to their symptoms. The publication and wide distribution of the formulary expanded the use of prescriptions. For example, prescriptions sold at the phar­ macy were used to treat patients at the Peace and Relief Hospital.114 The ease of being able to purchase prepared prescriptions from the pharmacy by using the information in the formulary encouraged the hospital's doctors to skip the lengthy process of adjusting a formula to the needs of a patient. The treatment may not have been the best possible one, but under the circumstances it was readily available, con­ venient to use, and cheap.

II2. For information on Chen Cheng, see He Shixi forst:lf;, Zhongguo lidaiyijia chuanlu '" � Jf f\. . � 1-** (Beijing: Renmin weisheng, 1991), 2: 415-16. II3. The adjustments of a formula to suit the needs of a patient and his unique

manifestation of the disorder are at the heart of Chinese drug therapy. Formularies provided standard drug formulas for treatment. It was the role of the physician to modify the formula by adding or deleting ingredients and by changing the amounts of its various components to provide the medication best suited for each individual patient. II4. SHY shihuo 60.9b, 68.14oa.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

309

Reintegrating Medical Theory into Medicine: Huizong's Attempt to FundamentallY Change Medicine By now it should be obvious that Huizong was highly involved with many facets of medicine. More remarkable, he felt competent and knowledgeable enough in medicine and medical doctrines to write his own medical treatise. Huizong was not the first Song emperor to possess medical knowl­ edge or to show interest in medicine. Taizu, the founder of the Song dynasty, applied moxibustion to his brother Taizong. The official History ofthe Song * Jt records that "once when Taizong became seriously ill, the emperor [Taizu] came to see him. Taizu himself treated Taizong by burning moxa to the point where Taizong felt pain. The emperor also applied moxibustion onto himself." 1 1 5 Taizong, the second Song em­ peror, also was interested in medicine. Before ascending the throne, he avidly collected hundreds of medicinal formulas. According to his own account, while serving as an official in remote regions, he collected proven medicinal formulas. His private collection of over 1,000 formulas eventually found its way into a government-sponsored formulary. 11 6 Another example of imperial involvement with medicine comes from Renzong (r. 1023-63), the fourth Song emperor. He applied acu-moxa therapy but preferred needling to moxibustion. It is recorded that, "In 1056, Renzong became ill and was confined to bed. He himself inserted needles [to a location] on the back of his head. As soon as the needles were removed, he opened his eyes and said, 'It is good to be clear-headed ·t!H!I. .' The following day, the emperor's body felt well. He decided to name the acu-point he needled 'head clearing' or xingxing." 11 7 115. 55 3.50. See also Qian Yuanming � :i! it et al., Jingshi baijiayilu � 3t 1f � -1* (Guangdong: Guangdong keji, 1986), 271. 116. 55 46I.I3507; Yu hai ];.i/j: (Jingdu shi [Kyoto] : Zhongwen, 1986), 6pIa; Junzhai dushu Zhi �1f-"tt .. ;t , Houzhi ft .t: 2.870-71. See also preface to Imperial Grace Formulary in 5YQYJK, 714-15; ZGYJTK, 2174-75. 117. 50ngrenyishi huibian }ji:A.�.*tQ, ed. Ding Chuanjing T14�, 2 vols. (Reprint, Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1958), 1.27. See also Qian Yuanming et al.,fingshi baijiayilu, 271. According to Shi Xuemin ;.G *,Ji and Zhang Mengchen �.i;.,*-, Hanying shuangjie zhe,yiu da cidian il � -/fM#k:k�� (Beijing: Huaxia, 1998), 511, xingxing is another name for a point on the Superintendent tract, jengfu JitJlf (GVI6) . The point is indeed located at the back of the head, one inch above the middle of the natural hairline. The

310

ASAP G O LD S C H M I DT

Although these three Song emperors took an interest in medicine, it was practical know-how, such as the collection of formulas or acu-moxa points, that interested them. There is no record that any of them dis­ cussed medical theory or cosmological doctrines and their application in medical practice. Their contributions to the theoretical side of medicine was largely limited to sponsoring the collection, revision, and publication of ancient medical books. lls Huizong was different. He became deeply involved in the textual and theoretical side of medicine. He wrote a medical treatise dealing primarily with theory. In addition, Huizong commissioned, graced with an impe­ rial preface, and, according to certain records, helped compile a huge compendium of medicinal formulas.119 It was common in Song times for an emperor who wanted to endorse a field of learning to commission a book on the topic and to write a preface for the resulting book. The book would then be promulgated to all prefectures and at times even serve as a textbook. By writing the preface, the emperor conveyed to the literate reader how important he considered the topic to be. Huizong made use of this convention to promote medicine and medical knowledge by supplying the preface to the largest and most comprehensive formulary of the Northern Song dynasty, the Medical Enryclopedia: A SagelY Benefaction of the Zhenghe Rezgn Period a ¥ I: � � � . By doing so, he ensured that this book received due attention and joined the pantheon of medical books. This was not enough for Huizong, who took a step never before taken by an emperor, or, for that matter, by any highly ranked official. He chose to write a theoretical treatise on medicine, the Canon of SagelY Benefaction I:�t.&, meant to set the foundations and standards for future medical discourse. This was a daring step for Huizong, since he could have been ridiculed by experts if his book seemed shallow or simplistic to

location of the point makes the account of Renzong needling himself somewhat ques­ tionable. u8. For information about the projects of collection, revision, and publication of medical books, see Liang Jun, Zhonggllo glldaiyizheng shillle, 80-85. u9 . Shengji zong III, preface; SYQYjK, 797--98; ZGYJTK, 5272-73; Zhao Pushan �JtJlllt, "Taping sheng hllifang, Shengji zong III, Taping hlliming hqijllfang jieshao" � -'t � .t �, ����, � -'t .t �>fu�Jf07�1i'-�, Zhongyi zazhi (pec. 1984): 56-57·

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

311

them. From the prefaces that Huizong wrote for the two books, it seems that he was motivated by a desire to remedy the sorry state of medi­ cine. 120 We have already seen that Huizong attempted to change the status of medicine and thus to attract better-quality candidates to study medicine. He also invested much effort in personally studying medicine in order to advance contemporary medical discourse. Furthermore, he attempted to reshape medical knowledge by accommodating changes in the larger intellectual environment, such as the emergence of new Neo-Confucian cosmological doctrines and a range of previously un­ available ancient medical classics. By the last decades of the Northern Song dynasty, medical classics were widely available to officials and were incorporated into the cur­ riculum in the school of the Imperial Medical Service. 121 Yet Huizong was not satisfied: "Essential medical notions have not been passed down [through the ages]. The Inner Canon includes disease names but no one studies them; it also includes treatment methods but nobody learns them. If one pursues its subtleties to the limits then one can reach mastery of immortality [or understanding sageliness], yet no one under­ stands it." 122 Thus, according to Huizong, contemporary physicians did not read or understand the Inner Canon, let alone apply its princi­ ples in clinical practice. 123 In a similar vein, in his preface to the Canon 0/ SagelY Benefaction, Huizong presents a dismal picture of the state of

120. The translations of the relevant sections of the prefaces to the two books are presented below. 12I. Zhang Ruixian and Yuan Xiurong, "Song Shensong shiqi Taiyi ju jiaoyu de fa­ zhan"; Zhang Ruixian, "Fan Zhongyan yu Taiyi jun." 122. Shengji zong lu, preface; SYQYjK, 797-98; ZGYJTK, 5272-n 123. The Inner Canon, like other important medical classics that concentrated on dis­ cussing cosmological and medical doctrines, was compiled during the Han dynasty. However, since the fall of the Han, the circulation of these classics was very limited, and accordingly only a small number of physicians were familiar with them. During the Tang dynasty, both Wang Bing .1* and Yang Shangshan �J:.� revised a version of the Inner Canon but their editions were not widely circulated. It was not until the eleventh century, when the Song government sponsored the revision and publication of these canons, that these texts became more widely available. For further details on the various editions of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon, see Nathan Sivin, "Huang Ii nei ching," in Michael Loewe, ed., Ear!J Chinese Texts (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993), 196-215.

ASAF G O LD S C H M I D T

312

medicine during his era, complaining that physicians in his day were as ignorant of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon as diviners were of the Book of Changes. 124 THE STATE OF CANONICAL KNOWLEDGE '

PRIOR TO HUIZONG S REIGN

After the fall of the Han dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE), physicians rarely had access to medical treatises. Instead, during those centuries the number of clinical manuals, mostly formularies, increased, and this genre became more prominent. The authors of some of these manuals showed fa­ miliarity with the basic notions of the classics, but most of them were not familiar enough with the contents of the medical canons and their doc­ trines. Instead, they developed the clinical side of medicine by relying mostly on formulas for drugs or various acu-moxa loci, designed to cure disorders of patients. During the early decades of the Song, on a number of occasions the government collected books on many subjects from the people. Once the books were gathered, government officials compared surviving edi­ tions of each title, revised the texts, corrected errors, and arranged pub­ lication. These book-collection projects provided authoritative versions of many books, including medical books.1 25 Among the newly published medical books were some of the most important medical works, in­ cluding the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon, the Yellow Emperor's Canon of Eighty-one Problems, the Yellow Emperor's "A_B n Canon ofAcu-moxa, and the Pulse Canon. Following their publication, the government distributed copies of these books to the prefectures. In total, there were four major projects of publishing ancient medical texts during the Northern Song dynasty prior to Huizong's reign. 1 26

124. Emperor Huizong 1ft if- (Zhao Ji � 1ti), Shengjijing lJV�·� (Beijing: Renmin weisheng, 1990), 8; SYQYjK, 797--98; ZGYJTK, 2209-10. 125. Wan Fang � � , "Guanyu Songdai Jiaozheng yishu ju de kaocha lUI:#-*- 1.1(.�.iE -1- .. J,Q €A � �," Zhongyiyao xuebao I (1982): 46-52; Liang Jun, Zhongguo gudaiyizheng shilue, 80-85; Goldschmidt, "The Transformations of Chinese Medicine," 55-65, 207-8. 126. The four projects took place roughly during the years 970-90, 1026-35, 1057-65, and the 1090s.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

313

In an environment in which only a few copies of these works circulated, as was the case during the first millennium CE, complaints such as Huizong's would have sounded reasonable. However, Northern Song society had a higher rate of literacy and the ancient canons were comparatively widely available. It seems that physicians, who ac­ cording to Huizong should have been proficient in these texts, either were illiterate or unable or unwilling to apply their principles in clinical practice. Huizong attempted to solve the problem by working from both ends. On the one hand, he authored a treatise that provided the doctrinal and theoretical basis for all clinical aspects of medicine, such as acu-moxa, drugs, formulas, diet, and techniques for prolonging life. On the other hand, he supervised the compilation of a voluminous formulary that provided a diverse range of therapeutic procedures to alleviate and cure symptoms and manifestation types. 1 27 What set this formulary apart from earlier manuals was the fact that it provided a more extensive theoretical basis for each disease and its treatment.128 •

,

HUIZONG S TEXTUAL PROJECT

Convinced that physicians were not proficient in the doctrines of the ancient classics, Huizong apparently decided to go beyond establishing the Medical School and to intervene personally. He looked for a new way to teach students and practitioners the ideas essential for practicing medicine. The fact that the ancient classics were widely available, and that at least some physicians had attended the school of the Imperial Medical Service, which included in its curriculum most of these texts, was evidently not enough. Huizong must have decided that these canons by themselves were inadequate or incomprehensible to contemporary doctors.

127. "Manifestation types" are schematic representations of the whole-body disorder, linking together groups of symptoms with the projected treatment. For further discus­ sion, see Sivin, Traditional Medicine, 106-n. 128. I have discussed this issue with a specific focus on acu-moxa treatment elsewhere (Asaf Goldschmidt, "Changing Standards: Tracing Changes in Acu-moxa Therapy dur­ ing the Transition from the Tang to the Song Dynasties," EastAsian Science, Technology and

Medicine, 18 [2001]: 75-m) .

ASAF G O L D S C H M I D T

Huizong undertook to provide physicians with new texts written in the contemporary classical language and fully annotated to increase their accessibility. The first part of the project consisted of two editions of the largest materia medica compilation to that date. Huizong, who came across a manuscript of such text, appointed a group of scholars to revise the manuscript and integrate into it the majority of earlier materia medica. 129 In the second part of the project, Huizong took it upon himself to write a new medical book, one that dealt with the meaning of medical doc­ trines.130 He could have felt that only he, the highest scholar and the Son of Heaven, would be up to the task of explaining the ancient doctrines that were at the foundation of the Chinese conception of the cosmos and the body. Thus he would re-enact the benefaction of the Yellow Emperor. Huizong's personal project of preparing medical texts included two complementary books. The first, Canon if Sagefy Benifaction, was a doc­ trinal classic. It did not ignore the clinical application of these doctrines, but nor did it discuss therapeutic techniques and treatment of specific disorders. The second book, Medical Enryclopedia: A Sagefy Benifaction ifthe Zhenghe Reign Period (in short, MedicalEnryclopedia) concentrated on clinical medicine, mostly discussing therapeutic techniques and treatments for disorders, with only limited discussion of cosmological doctrines and medical theory. In Huizong's own words, "The words of the Canon if Sagefy Benifaction are the way or the Dao. A physician who grasps them thoroughly understands the doctrines. The contents of the Medical En­ ryclopedia are the means. A physician who uses or applies them can end [all] diseases" < � } -tfJf i; ;;f{-� -\l!. . lH'-t.1Q g # . < �� } -ti'lf-';;f{­ J!. -\l!.. f! m -t .1Q e. * .131 129. These two materia medica compendia were the Materia Medica ofthe Daguan Reign Period, Classified and Verifiedfrom the Classics and Histories �!'. 3t �!IJi:k lit-*-$, completed in 1108, and the Zhenghe Reign Period NewlY Revised Materia Medicafor Urgent Use, Classified and Verifiedfrom the Classics andHistories Jt;futltf�� 3t�!IJi {tj m -*-$, completed in m6. For further details on these books, see Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 72-77; Liao Yuqun Jl.1fIf, Fu Fang f11 =*, and Zheng Jinsheng �1t ± , Zhongguo kexuejishu shi:yixuejuan 'f III #* ;Jt*T3t: .*� (Beijing: Kexue, 1998), 340. 130. It is unclear whether Huizong indeed wrote the book on his own, but he did take credit of authorship. 13I. Shengji zong /u, preface; SYQYjK, 797-98; ZGYJTK, 5272-]3.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

315

In his preface to the Medical Enryclopedia, Huizong outlined the project and its goals: In the time left over after attending to the myriad affairs of the state, I authored

zhang " , to clarify the arcana of the [Yellow titled it the Canon of SagelY Benefaction. Its intention is main ideas are far-reaching lilt. Its words pertain to

a book consisting of forty-two

Emperorj-] Inner Canon.

I

profound and subtle; its

principles and doctrines; its discussions reach the subtlety of the world. I also ordered those in the empire with technical skills to present their [knowledge] to the throne, gathered it along with what is stored at the imperial storehouses, and published them in the Appendix

#i �

and the chapter titled

Treatment Methods, ajuan for each. Altogether there are two hundredjuan and over twenty thousand formulas. The book classifies the entries according to diseases, and each entry includes [doctrinal] discussion, with generalities added. It begins with the transformations of wind disorders and ends with medicines to be ingested for immortality. Its details encompass specific acu-points and cir­ culation tracts, incantations, and amulets. Everything without exception is in it. I titled it

Medical En�clopedia: A SagelY Benefaction of the Zhenghe Reign Period.

Its

contents are all about practice; it is the means to help reach the divinity of the world. The basis for awakening the [contemporary] world

.�i!t by the sages lies [in

the] earlier [book, namely the ShengjijinjJ, its ramifications are in the latter [book, namely the

Shengji zong lu] .

If one does not look at the former [book], then the

way [Dao] of healing does not exist. If one does not look at the latter [book], then

� ;#\1:..iit, it .. 1m + =- .. , -i- atJ ( I*J #&. ) 1:..*y, t=J ( �if.H� ) , �;t�-f1it, � \fr lilt , � fJT 1; {:OJ., PJf JI/{ �k. r 1:.. �ttt , # � k. r Jl/{ ��* .1:.. , #�pJi'tPJfitnJl1:.. , � #i � - �, 5� � - � . � ft.=-Ef, � _=- � , JI/{ �?t rt r ' � lf�, mi iti'Jt. FIt � . � 1:.. JI/{ Jit � 1:.. � tQ , �1:.. JI/{ #1J.r1:..nU.!f, '$f�*����, � ro 1f � , . :f � -$, � 1:.. t=J (alP ���*). �fJT�.(i.*, fJT JI/{ ;fJ; k. r 1:..� # . lt �A.1:...�i!t, *.(i. -r .1:.., *­ .(i. -r r, • JL -r .1:.. JI'J � 1:..3t :f .:2: , • JL -r r JI'J � 1:.. J!- :f �t . 132 the means of treatment cannot be applied.

From these statements it is clear that Huizong saw the two books as complementing each other, constituting a part of one whole undertaking. Although it is unclear whether Huizong was personally involved in the compilation of the Medical Enryclopedia, he endorsed it by writing the preface. It seems that Huizong's aim in his textual project was to promote a new order in medicine, defined and propagated by the government and 132. Ibid.

316

ASAF G O L D S C H M I D T

meant eventually to be self-propagating among the educated elite. As Nathan Sivin observed: What had earlier been an ideal qualification of hereditary physicians was, in the newly fluid social circumstances of the Northern Sung, becoming the key to the definition of an amateur ideal

exactly as was happening in art at the same time.

By "amateur ideal" I mean that all skills and goals were subordinated to a way of life. Earlier, to put it as simplemindedly as possible, the doctor was expected to speak the language of his upper-class patients, since although he was usually an inferior he strove to be better than a servant. But in late traditional China the social mythology of medicine made the ideal doctor the patient's equal. Only a moral (and, to be sure, social) paragon for whom medicine was a facet of self-cultivation could fully comprehend the unity of body, mind, ambiance, and moral life that constituted true health. It is obvious that for Huizong the Dao was at the same time an ethical and phenomenal balance, uniting the microcosm with its macrocosmic surroundings and with the norms of society. No one less than a philosopher could doctor the body, the cosmos, and the values of the patient at the same time.133 ' HUIZONG S

CANON OF

SAGELY BENEFACTION

Emperor Huizong authored the Canon if Sage!J Benifaction, and Wu Ti *;f}t , who was a physician serving in the Directorate of Education, annotated it.134 The book, published and promulgated in 1118, consists of ten chapters of which the last two discuss doctrinal aspects related to drugs and formulas. It seems that Huizong's main goal in compiling this book was to update the classical medical literature. The book discusses the classical doctrines of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon with relation to contemporary neo-Confucian perceptions of nature. 135 Huizong, in the preface to his book, outlined its goals and contents: 133. Nathan Sivin, "Ailment and Cure in Traditional China: A Study of Classical and Popular Medicine before Modern Times, with Implications for the Present" (unpub­ lished paper). 134. There is very limited information regarding Wu Ti besides the fact that he an­ notated the book and was originally from Shaowu {l�A in Fujian ;fi�. For further in­ formation, see He Shixi, Zhongguo lidaiyijia chuanlu, I: 405, and the introduction to the 1990 reprint of the 5hengjijing, 4. 135. See Qiu Hongzhong ��it, "Zhongyi xueshu yu ruxue fazhan guanxi de bijiao"

'f � **T�11i;*1iJil IUl 1� fr!J �t.�, Yixueyu zhexue 4 (1993): 27-29.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

317

Ever since my succession to the throne, I have been constantly attentive and busy, never daring to be careless day or night. In the time left over after handling the myriad affairs of the state, I clarified the [Neijinis] principles and studied its meanings. I devoted myself to the model of high antiquity. 136 Accordingly, I discussed the subtle aspects of heaven and man, and traced to the source the principles of man's nature and the

will

of heaven as embodied in him. I ex­

plained the pure and impure aspects of the constructive and defensive

qi. 137

I studied the maturation and decline of the body according to the concept of aging by increments of seven and eight years.138 I differentiated abnormal and normal courses [of disorder and therapy] and reflected on pathologies of abundance and depletion [of qt] . I assembled this knowledge into a book of ten chapters that included altogether forty-two sections. I entitled it the

Canon 0/ SagelY Benefaction. m #" H � Jo'A *-, aa "#:"#:, »tR :f� •. � �.z:it, �i1 �� r"t lj � J:. ?; , �"- A..z:ttt , J.Mi 4r.z:J.!., El}] � 1$f.z: �t ill , � -c A.z:� �. $fit JI�, � jilt, � � -t- �, fL � -t-..::.. "' , .-t .z: E1 < Jl.��2 } .139

It is important to note that Huizong drew all the themes in this quotation from topics discussed in the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon. This implies that he was familiar with this ancient medical classic and probably de­ voted time to meditate on issues discussed in it. The Canon ifSagelY Benefaction discusses mostly medical doctrines with little emphasis on clinical practice. This was one of the first attempts since the Han dynasty to compose a text devoted to medical theory. Among the doctrines discussed are yin-yang and Five Phases, the four seasons, microcosm and macrocosm, and the visceral systems of func136. Here Huizong is alluding either to the general doctrines of antiquity or, more likely, to the title of the first chapter of the Huangdi neijing suwen 1t * rJ;j 1& i: r"" titled "Shanggu tianzhen lun" ..I:. -t- *-. 1)\ �. 0

137. The original text has the character rong � instead ofying -t. However, given the fact that this character is followed by the characters weiqi 4tf ft., it seems that the correct character should beying. A similar claim appears in Wang Li .s.. f1 , WangLigu Ha'!)'u ifdian .I. f1 -t- il"*�*, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2000), 509; Li Jingwei, Zhongyi da cidian,

1041. 138. Literally, the sentence should be translated as, "I studied the prosperity and de­ cline of the seven and eight." The seven and eight age concept appears in the Suwen volume of the Inner Canon 1.9-13. There, Qi Bo, the emperor's advisor, explains to the emperor the changes in a person's body over a lifetime for both females and males. For the former the increments are of seven years and for the latter of eight years. It is im­ pottant to note that the Inner Canon presents the ages as multiples of seven and eight, namely two times seven, three times eight, etc.

139· Shengjijing, 9; SYQYjK, 797-98; ZGYjTK, 2209-10.

318

ASAF G O LD S C H M I D T

tions. The text analyzes the relationships between these doctrines and how they affect the body and promote health or induce disorder. In short, the text focuses on the systems of correspondence between the body and the cosmos in which it exists. Huizong summed up his perception of the world and the importance of the cosmological doctrines at the beginning of his preface to the book: One yin and one yang [that is, their constant alternation] are called the Dao; bias toward yin or bias toward yang is called disease. Those who fail to clearly

un­

derstand the Dao have never been able to cure man's diseases. Yin and yang illuminate each other, cover each other, and order each other. The four seasons succeed each other, give rise to each other, and kill each other. The Five Phases in turn become sovereign, are set aside, and serve as ministers. Human beings are being born and live in their midst, conform to yin and yang, are attentive to the four seasons, and regulate [themselves] according to the Five Phases. With the median comes felicity; with excess comes calamity;

� � .:t. � l!, � � � �.:t. � * . � EI}J 1" l!, *- � ij� e. -"..:t.*::t. � � �6 AA, �6 A, �6 5f:l. \l!1 at �6 1�, �6 1:. , �6�. Idt� .l.. , ��, � �6. -".1:. Jt. fkt Ti1 j{- ft � , -ftj{-\l!1at, $�j{-liAt. f- Jllj � �, ��

with license comes disease.

-

-

Jllj � � , ;� Jllj � * . 140

The book does not ignore clinical aspects of medicine. It discusses diet, techniques for prolonging one's life, and drug therapy.141 Yet the Canon of SagelY Benifaction is not a drug therapy text as modern scholars often categorize it.142 In a unique way, it analyzes the classical cosmo­ logical and medical doctrines, on the one hand, and shows how to apply them to clinical practice, such as drug therapy, on the other. This is the first book that attempts to imitate the classical canonical genre of the Inner Canon while discussing relations of these doctrines to individual drugs as well as medicinal formulas. Not many authors of medical works added to the title of their book the character jing �, which means a classic or canonical work. This is exactly what Huizong did. He could have revised or annotated an earlier medical classic, much as he authored a commentary to the Laozj, and that

140. Shengjijing, 9; SYQYJK, 797-98; ZGYJTK, 2209-10. Adapted, with slight changes, from an unpublished translation of the preface to the Shengjijing by Nathan Sivin. 14I. For further discussion of the clinical aspects of Huizong's canon, see the modern editor's introduction to the 1990 reprint of the Shengjijing, 2. 142. See SYQYJK and ZYYJTK.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

might have had a similar impact. Instead, he chose to write an innovative text that enhanced and improved medicine and answered the pressing questions of his era. DISSEMINATING CLINICAL KNOWLEDGE

­

THE

MEDICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA

In 1111, Huizong ordered a group of scholars to compile a new com­ prehensive formulary.143 Work on the MedicalEnryclopedia began the same year and was finished around 1117.144 The emperor was personallY' in­ volved in managing and supervising the compilation. The resulting book consists of 200 chapters and includes over 20,000 formulas. Approxi­ mately a decade after the completion of the book, the Jin invaders con­ fiscated most of the copies. Consequently, the book was not widely available in the Southern Song. The Jin government, realizing the im­ portance of the text, reprinted it sometime between the years 1161 and 1189.145 The Medical Enryclopedia is composed of information collected from practitioners as well as from contemporary and ancient texts. 146 The book itself is divided into 66 categories of general manifestation types. This does not differ from earlier clinical formularies. Instead of just providing the reader with the specific formula for treating a disorder, the text also includes theoretical discussion as a background for the treat­ ment, which is more detailed than the discussion included in earlier formularies. Each clinical category is further broken down into more refined manifestation types. For each category, the text discusses the 143. The details regarding the authorship of the text are ambiguous. We know that Huizong gave the order to compile the text, but there is no record regarding who headed the project and who participated in it. See Ma Jixing .� .�, Zhongyi wenxian xue 'f ", ;;t ilt,* (Shanghai: Shanghai kexue jishu, 1990), 173-77; Zhang Canjia �JtJlf', Zhongyiguji wenxian xue 'f ", ;!;' .;;tilt '* (Beijing: Renmin weisheng, 1998), 103. 144. The date of completion, around II17, is according to Sivin, TraditionaIMedicine, 451. Most works compiled in China claim that the book was completed during the Zhenghe reign period (m0-q); see, e.g., Ma Jixing, Zhongyi wenxian xue, 173-76; and Li Jingwei et al., Zhongyi da cidian, 487. At least one source claims that this book was completed later than the Canon 0/5agefy Benefaction. See Tanba no Motoyasu � R. 7t AA , Yi sheng '" JJl, as quoted in SYQYjK, 795. 145. See Liao Yuqun et al., Zhongguo kexuejishu shi:yixuejuan, 300.

146. SDZLJ 219.843.

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ASAF G O LD S C H M I D T

origin of the disease, its development or pathogenesis, the medicinal formula to prescribe, its recommended preparation method, the rec­ ommended way of administering it, and contraindications for usage. Contrary to earlier formularies, the number of infusions is very lim­ ited, with a sharp increase in other types of formulas such as powders, ointments, pallets, and boluses. This change is probably linked to the establishment of the Imperial Pharmacy, which sold these new forms of prepared prescriptions rather than providing the ingredients for formulas that the patient had to boil at home to make the infusion. An important contribution of the Medical Enryclopedia was the incor­ poration of the "Phase Energetics" � ft. doctrine.147 It is one of only a handful of medical works that discussed this doctrine during the Song dynasty.148 In the Chinese conception of the world, the microcosm and the macrocosm are interrelated and influence each other. When ob­ serving nature, or the macrocosm, the calendar is the most basic state­ ment of variation. Each cycle of seasons or hours shows individual characteristics in terms of meteorological phenomena as well as analo­ gous changes in the body's activity. In order to maintain physiological order, the body has to be in concord with the cosmic order. "Phase Energetics" designates a discipline concerned with the changes of qi ft. configurations, both macrocosmic and microcosmic, during various in­ tervals of time (yun �). The termyunqi is actually a fusion of a longer term wl!Yun liuqi 1i.� � ft., the Five Phases and the Six Climatic Con­ figurations. This doctrine, which occupies the first two lengthy chapters of the book, concerns the correspondence of changes in the world and the body based on the Five Phases and the six types of qi, namely wind,

147. I follow Manfred Porkert's terminology in translatingyunqi as "Phase Energetics" (porkert, Theoretical Foundations, 55-56). This term may not be the best translation for the Chinese doctrine, but I have not encountered a better one. It is interesting to note that Porkert fails to mention in his literature review of primary sources discussing the topic that the Medical EnfYclopedia extensively discusses Phase Energetics (porkert, Theoretical Foundations, 58-59). For further discussion of this topic, see Catherine Despeux, "The System of the Five Circulatory Phases and the Six Seasonal Influences (wuyan Jiuqi): A Source of Innovation in Medicine Under the Song (960-1279)," in Elizabeth Hsu, ed., Innovation in Chinese Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 121-65. 148. Zhao Pushan ,itJtJ/llt, Zhongguo gudaiyixue t � -;l; 1� 4Hf! (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 54; Yan Shiyun lti!t 'f , Songdaiyijia xueshu sixiangyanjiu * 1� " � !f! $T.� �1>ff � (Shanghai: Shanghai zhongyi xueyuan, 1993), 9-13.

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heat, dampness, fire, dryness, and coldness. This doctrine provides a pattern that interrelates the doctrines of yin-yang and Five Phases with the seasons and the 60-years-based Chinese calendar. According to this doctrine, as long as all the seasonal changes and characteristics appear at their proper time, the body should correspond to them. However, when climatic factors appear off schedule, for example a heat wave in the middle of winter or a snowstorm in summer, these untimely changes promote diseases. Huizong was a major advocate of the Phase Energetic doctrine, per­ ceiving it as the foundation of pathology.149 It is only natural that a text he supervised included sections on the topic. This theory depicts the natural world as a cycle of changes all organized in strict order. Whenever there is deviation from normal climatic cycles, disease can ensue. The fact that the discussions of the theory, as well as how deviations cause disorder, occupied the first two chapters of the book indicates its im­ portance. ISO It provides a computational and divinatory way to determine imbalances between the body and its changing environment. One of the most important characteristics of the MedicalEnryclopedia is that throughout the text, classical doctrine is interwoven with the dis­ cussion of formulas. If we compare the MedicalEnryclopedia to the Imperial Grace Formulary, which was published I25 years earlier, we see that in the earlier formulary the formulas are categorized according to symptoms. l SI In contrast, in the Medical Enryclopedia, in addition to the traditional categorization according to manifestation types, we see another catego­ rization according to visceral systems of functions. The integration of the classical doctrine goes beyond the organization of the contents of the text. In the discussion of each formula the authors meticulously added information about effects on the visceral systems of functions as well as about the Five Phases doctrine. 149. Liao Yuqun et al., Zhongguo kexuejishu shi:yixuejuan, 318. 150. Examples of some applications of classical doctrines, including Phase Energetics, in the Medical Enryclopedia are provided by Hu Longcai �JHt ;;f and Zhang Wen'gao � X � , "Shengji zong lu kanglao fangfa juyu" � ����it���.�, Shandong Zhongyi xueyuan xuebao 11.3 (1987): 36-38. 151. The Imperial Grace Formulary was the most influential formulary of the early Northern Song. The complete title of this formulary, completed in 992 by a group of officials headed by Wang Huaiyin .I.·It�, is the Imperial Grace Formulary ofthe Great Peace

and Prosperous Rezgn Period (Taiping sheng huifang ;k .if- � .t �).

322

ASAP G O LD S C H M I D T

Conclusion Given the information and evidence presented above, including many edicts issued by Huizong, it is apparent that he was highly involved in the formulation of medical policy and was not merely following his minis­ ters' initiatives. But how deeply was he involved in designing and im­ plementing these policies? Moreover, did he perceive all of these mea­ sures and institutions as part of one grand scheme? In order to answer these questions, there is still one additional piece of evidence to be presented. It is Huizong's own summary of his medical policy at the end of his preface to the Canon if Sage!J Benifaction. After discussing the doctrines that form the foundation of medicine and the way they should be applied to understanding the body and disease, Huizong concluded in grand style, "The divine physician will never ad­ minister drugs to a disease that is already fully manifested."152 This sen­ tence alludes to one of the most famous passages in the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon and seems like a fitting conclusion to the preface. 153 The preface, however, does not end there, and the following short passage seems disjointed from the rest of it. In the passage, Huizong provides an overview of his achievements in medicine. He even goes as far as stating that this is the correct way to govern a state: In conclusion, in order to implement the art of the Way [that is, correct gov­ erning], I supported the upright and the honest and discarded the crooked and the dishonest. I established [medical] schools and set up official positions [for medicine]; so scores of gentlemen could be educated [in it] . [I appointed] offi­ cials who distribute grain rations without being requested, who save the sick, and who bury those who died. Then, I promulgated [these actions] via government decrees and deposited it at government offices. This need not be discussed again.

� 7i 4jtAtlt*T, .fiIl .iE r1Q *�, 2 ��'t, jf � ± r1Q�., Jt�%, ��*, r1Q .Jt Jti:"?l. J111 A!lZjf�:�, �tfAf a) , J(:. :f {l4t.154 Following this passage by Huizong comes Wu Ti's annotation and clarification of Huizong's words. These notes provide the final evidence that Huizong did indeed see all these seemingly disparate measures as part of an overarching policy to change the face of medicine: 152. Shengjijing, 9; SYQYjK, 797-98; ZGYJTK, 2209-10. 153. Huangdi neijing suwen 1( * rJ;j �* r.." 2.32. 154· Shengjzjing, 9; SYQYjK, 797-98; ZGYJTK, 2209-10.

Huizong's Impact on Medicine and on Public Health

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The art of the Way [that is, correct governance] is under the heavens. Only Your Majesty, the august emperor, has implemented it. It can be seen in your laws and moral standards. For example you supported the upright and discarded the crooked, thereby benevolently aiding and supporting the well-balanced con­ struction of the upright. You established [medical] schools and set up official positions [for medicine], so scores of gentlemen could be educated [in medicine] . Then, you established the [medical] schools both in the center and the periphery. There are Poor­ houses that distribute food without being requested, there are the Peace and Relief Hospitals that treat diseases, and there are Paupers' Cemeteries that bury the dead. For managing these institutions there is a system, for controlling them

l! #t.t.tt. *-. r. tit X '*' f� r lf Jlx #t�t.t. Jt. JL;#-�Jt.t r t ��.iE r1iJ **�, JloJ1.::. if.l �.iE.t .f � � . 2*�'t , "If � ± r1iJ �-I-, Jllj r*J �1-.t* 2 � . lf Jk-l-JlX .t .%, lf ��JlX affl*, lf � if JlX Jf Jt.i:"1i. �t.tlf �, � .t lf 't , 1i1 tF .&. �I-.155

there are officials, extending from the center to the periphery. ..

This evidence, coming at the end of the preface he' composed for his own book, amply testifies to Huizong's view of his personal involvement in medicine and public health. His investment was so profound that he regarded enacting public health policies and bestowing medical educa­ tion on gentlemen and officials as the foundation of good governance. Huizong completed his attempt to transform medicine, in my mind, once he finished his textual project and provided new means for students and physicians to understand medicine the ancient cosmological doctrines reintroduced in his book and their clinical application in the formulary he commissioned.

155. Wu Ti's annotation of the preface, Shengjijing, 15.

C HAPTER 8

Huizong and the Divine Empyrean Palace �f /�" 'l: Temple Network Shin-yi Chao

From its genesis in the second century CE, organized Daoist religion was woven into the fabric of statecraft and emperorship. Indeed, its or­ ganization and priesthood have been seen as a spiritual reconstruction of the "lost cosmic unity of the Han." l Early Daoist scriptures predicted the coming of a messiah, or "the true lord of the great peace" :k. -t � �, who would descend and bring prosperity to the earthly realm.2 Daoist I am immensely grateful for the advice and help I received from Daniel L. Overmyer, Patricia Ebrey, Maggie Bickford, Vincent Goossaert, Stephen Eskildsen, and Kevin N. Clark. Any errors and shortcomings that remain are my own. 1. Anna Seidel, "Imperial Treasures and Taoist Sacraments-Taoist Roots in the Apocrypha," in Michel Strickmann, ed., Tantric and Taoist Studies: In Honor of R A. Stein (Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, 1983), 2: 291. 2. See Sunayama Minoru, "Ri K6 kara K6 Kenshi e: seireki yongo seki ni okeru shiik6 .. It 1m Ji. i!t" R. t: s tt � * � lr9 teki hanran to kokka shiiky6" :t- 51. iJ' c., ;Itil.z.. ....-ifft &' �L t I!l � * �, ShUkan Tqyogaku 26 (1971): 1-27; Anna Seidel, 'The Image of the Perfect Ruler in Early Taoist Messianism: Lao-tzu and Li Hung," History of Rli/igion 9 (1969-70): 216-47; Seidel, "Taoist Messianism," Numen 31.2 (1983): 161-74; Richard B. Mather, "K'ou Ch'ien-chih and the Taoist Theocracy at the Northern Wei Court, 425-451," in Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel, eds., Facets ofTaoism: Essqys in Chinese Rli/igion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 103-22. An early Taoist text advocating mes­ sianic messages is the Taipingjing ;k. f'� (Classic of great peace), ed. Wang Ming .I.. a,ij (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1976 [1960]). For research on the Classic ofGreat Peace in English, see Max Kaltenmark, "The Ideology of the T'ai-p 'ing ching," in Welch and Seidel, eds., Facets of Taoism, 19-52; see also Barbara Kandel, Taiping Jing: The Origin and Transmission of The

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patriarchs were often ready to glorify the ruler in power as the long-awaited true lord and to offer their support as well as divine assent. 3 Monarchs rarely refused such recognition. In fact, some of them sought to prove their mandate by making the most out of the popularity of Daoism; the famous example of the royal house of the Tang dynasty (618-84, 705-907) claiming to be descendants of Laozi quickly comes to mind.4 Song sovereigns also sought legitimacy for their rule from Daoism when needed. Taizong (r. 976-97), who as­ cended the throne after bypassing the late emperor's four sons (two of them adults), claimed to receive spiritual sanction for his enthronement from the oracles given by a divine general, the Aiding Sage � � . 5

Scripture on General Welfare The History ofAn Unqfficial Text (Hamburg: Gesellschaft fur Natur- und Volkerkunde Ostasiens, 1979). 3. Examples can be found in the "Shi Lao zhi" ff::t;t (Treatise on Buddhism and Daoism), in Weishu •• , which has been extensively studied by Tsukamoto Zeruyli �..f.. � 1i- in his Gisho ShakurOshi no kenkyu •• ff::t.t O) .IiJf � (Kyoto: Bukkyo bunka kenkyiijo shuppanbu, 1961). See also John Lagerway, "Taoist Ritual Space and Dynastic Legitimacy," Cahiers d'itudes chinoises 8 (1995): 87-94; and Terry Kleeman, Great Perfection: Religion and Ethnicity in a Chinese MillennialKingdom (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998). 4. For a survey of Taoism as an instrument of legitimacy for political rulers, see John Lagerway, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 253-64. For the use of Chinese religion in general for political ends by both monarchs and the rebels, see C. K Yang, Religion in Chinese Society: A Stucfy of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), 104-243. 5. The legitimacy of Taizong's unusual succession has generated debates among scholars. For a recent concise discussion of this incident, see Deng Guangming, "Song Taizong jiwei zhaoshu zhi mi" *- k * I!p 1.2: � .. �.:P!, in Deng Guangming Zhishi conggao iF If< j& iii ;t . � (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1997), 475-513; and John W. Chaffee, Branches ofHeaven: A History of the Imperial Clan of Sung China (Cambridge: Harvard Uni­ versity Asia Center, 1999), 26-27. Under Taizong's order, Wang Qinruo 14k%', then grand councilor, documented the divine revelations of the Aiding Sage in Yisheng baode zhuan � � ,lMi it- (HY 1275; the abbreviation HY serves as the prefix to the serial numbers assigned to texts of the Daozang l!�, in Daoiflng iimuyinde l!� 1" � 5 J 1' .

[Combined Indices to the Authors and Titles of Books in Two Collections of Taoist Literature), Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, no. 25, by Weng Tu-chieh [Reprint, Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service, 1966) . For discussions of this particular divine sanction episode, see Edward Davis, Society and the Supernatural of Song China (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 200I), 67-86.

S H I N -YI CHAO Zhenzong (r. 997-1022), who gradually developed a sense of humiliation about the treaty that he had signed with the Khitan kingdom in the north, Liao it, "discovered" that a Heavenly Text 7:.. .. had been bestowed on him and that the imperial house was of divine origin.6 The benefits of a close relationship between the state and religion were not one-sided. Sovereigns supported, subsidized, and sometimes proselytized Daoism through imperial resources.7 For the Song mon­ archy, the imperial promotion of Daoism reached its apex during the reign of Huizong (r. 1101-25). 8 He launched projects to codify Daoist liturgy, to canonize extant Daoist texts and produce new ones, and to recruit Daoist priests and priestesses for his court. He annotated the Daodejing, the primary guideline of Daoist philosophy, and conscien­ tiously popularized his commentary. His medical and school projects also involved paoist elements in varying degrees.9 As this chapter will show, he actually intended to develop a new Daoist school based on the Divine Empyrean :# 1It ritual movement. In its concluding remarks on Huizong's biography, the Songshi, the official history of the Song dynasty, remarked that the emperor "overindulged himself in believing in emp­ tiness [i.e., Daoism]" �� 11; Jt . , and his religious devotion along

6. For a critical survey and analysis of the religio-political scenario of Zhenzong's court surrounding the Heavenly Text affair, see Suzanne Cahill, "Taoists at the Sung Court: The Heavenly Text Affair of 1008," Bulletin ojSung Yuan Studies 16 (1980): 23-44. See also Sun Kekuan .n.Jt:t, Song Yuan Daqjiao zhifazhan �U(.j!�:�.AiJtl (Taizhong: Donghai, 1965), 71-92. 7, For the imperial promotion of Daoism from the eighth to the seventeenth centu­ ries, see Ren Jiyu * m ;t et al" eds" Zhongguo Daqjiao shi 'f il i!� � (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 1990), 266-87, 464-88, 588-612, 8, Ebrey chronicles Huizong's activities elevating Daoism in her "Taoism and Art at the Court of Song Huizong," in Stephen Little, ed" Taoism and the Arts ojChina (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2000), 94-III, Another comprehensive study on this topic is Jin Zhongshu it 'f �, "Lun Bei Song monian zhi chongshang Daojiao" 'iit' ;lt. *' *,..f1:.. * � i!�, in Conference of Song History, ed" Songshiyanjiuji *, �.Iff � � (Taipei: Guoli bianyi guan, 1975-76), 7: 291-392, 8: 207-78, 9, I will discuss the Daoist elements in Huizong's medical projects below, See also Goldschmidt's chapter in this volume, For the Daoist elements in his school projects, see my article, "Daoist Examinations and Daoist Schools During the Northern Song Dy­ nasty," Journal oj Chinese Religions 31 (2003): 1-37,

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with the many activities inspired by it directly contributed to the collapse of the Northern Song.lO Nevertheless, even a cursory survey of these Daoism-promotion projects reveals that they clearly went beyond religious devotion. Huizong's involvement in religious affairs extended to the political or administrative level. Through the projects he initiated, the secular ruler was able to govern the spiritual realm of Daoism: he directly intervened in its liturgical, theological, and textual sectors to manipulate the religion from within. He could accomplish this only because he was both an emperor and a well-learned practitioner of Daoism. The apex of Huizong's promotion of Daoism undoubtedly was the project intended to develop the Divine Empyrean ritual into a new order, an order in which he was the cultic leader and the cultic ideal. The Divine Empyrean cosmology and liturgy were introduced to him by his religious adviser, Lin Lingsu #. � -! (I076?-II20),11 who dominated court Dao­ ism from 1115 to 1119. 1 2 To promote the Divine Empyrean teaching, Huizong established a temple network across the country, formally called the Divine Empyrean Jade Purity Longevity Palaces :off 1t .li �t � "* 1: , but usually abbreviated as the Divine Empyrean Palaces, as the infra­ structure of the campaign. This chapter will explore this temple network and will show that, as a result of the collaboration between the monarch and courtiers, the Divine Empyrean temples functioned as a manifesta­ tion of emperorship to commoners as well as to officials. The network, the center of local Divine Empyrean worship, served as an instrument by which local officials could demonstrate their loyalty to the central court. In addition, it also functioned as a means through which the emperor further extended his control over local officials and put his personal stamp on state orthodoxy. The Divine Empyrean temple network testi­ fies both to Huizong's religious policy and to his emperorship.

10. SS 22.418. II. Un composed a poem before his presumed death in H20, in which he indicated his age was 45 sui; see the Mirror (HY 296), 53-I3b.

12. Traditional sources disagree about when Un rose in Huizong's favor. Tang Daijian Ji-fe.M detennined it should be III5 ("Songshi 'Un Ungsu zhuan' buzheng" *- � ;#' f: 1." 14:ijj�, Shijie zongjiaoyanjiu 49.3 [1992] : 23-28, esp. 25).

S H I N -YI CHAO

Huizong, Lin Lingsu) and Divine Empyrean Daoism Huizong demonstrated a particular interest in recruiting Daoist masters. From the earliest days of his reign, he warmly patronized esteemed priests of established schools 13 as he painstakingly sought individuals with exceptional SkillS.14 It took him more than a decade of ceaseless effort to find the person who fulfilled his expectation of an ideal secre­ tary of religious affairs, one who could "quiet the minds of the multi­ tude" �}]Il� r .15 This was Lin Lingsu, a native ofWenzhou iii �'H and a master of the Shenxiao ritualS.16 Lin developed the imperial promotion 13. For example, Liu Hunkang f1i£'* (I035-II08), the twenty-fifth patriarch of the Highest Clarity (Shangqing J:.. it) school on Mt. Mao *" al! , a Daoist order that emerged in the fourth century. Huizong corresponded with Liu and showered him and his mon­ astery on Mt. Mao with gifts and subsidies. See Ebrey, "Taoism and Art," 99; and Caro­ line Gyss-Vermande, "Lettres de Song Huizong au maitre du Maoshan Liu Hunkang, ou Ie patronage imperial comme pratique de devotion," in Jean-Pierre Dieny, ed., Hommage a Kwong Hing Foon, Etudes d'histoire culturelle de la Chine (paris: College de France, In­ stitut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, 1995), 239-53. (I thank Vincent Goossaert for bringing this article to my attention.) Another example, the twenty-ninth and thirtieth patriarchs of the Heavenly Master (Tianshi 3idifi) school on Mt. Dragon and Tiger (Longhu shan 1thtal!), received honorable titles from Huizong. See Han Tianshi shijia � k �il!:"� (HY 1451), pb. 14. In seeking anchorites and miracle-workers, Huizong invited Yu Xiangu -r1Jdt in II07 (Yang Zhongliang �1t Ill , [Xu] ZiZhi tongjian changbianjishi benmo [�] lf i{;ii� -k .� R. *** [Taipei: Wenhai, 1967], 127.13 [3841]; hereafter, JSBM), and Wang Laozhi .I.*.'t and Wang Zixi .I.fI-* in III3 (Chen Bangzhan ft. *� �, Songshijishi bemo ;;;: .Jt R.*** [Beijing: Zhonghua, 1977], 5I.5II). After Lin Lingsu came to the court, Hui­ zong still continued to welcome seers from the provinces, for example, Liu Dong 'H i in III6 (jSBM 127.14 [3844]). Figures not mentioned in traditional history records included Chen Nan ft.oM'J (MitTOr [HY 296], 49.15a), and more (MitTOr, 51.4b, 5b; 52.4a, 6b, 7b, 15b, 16b). 15. "At the time [when Lin Lingsu came to the court], his majesty had advocated Daoism for almost ten years. He was especially concerned with the lack of a person [who could] quiet the minds of the multitude" (jSBM 127.2-3 [3820-21]). 16. For studies on Lin Lingsu, see Michel Strickmann, "Sodai no raigi: Shinsho undo to Doka nanshii ni tsuite no ryakusetsu" ;;;: 1-\:. (7) 1; {l: ;f,'f lIth t it � � $ t: -::> \" -C (7) �1lf., ToM shiik(yo 46 (1975): 15-28; idem, "The Longest Taoist Scripture," History oj Religions 17 (1978): 331-54; Matsumoto Koichi ;f'A *� , "Sodai no raiho" ;;;: 1-\:. (7) 1; �, Shakai bunka shigaku 17 (1979): 45-65; and Tang Daijian, "Songshi 'Lin Lingsu zhuan' buzheng," Shijie zong;iaoyan;iu 49 (1992): 23-28. -

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of Daoism to its fullest extent, despite the fact that he wielded power for less than five short years. It is generally agreed that Lin was a master in an emerging ritual movement called the Thunder Rites 1; � , which appeared with increasing frequency from the tenth century onward in south­ east China (Lin's native region). 17 Even the Songshi, a source hostile to Lin, reluctantly acknowledged the efficacy of Lin's Five Thunder ritual in rainmaking. 18 Nevertheless, initially Lin captured Huizong's attention not by producing rain on demand, but through his elaboration of the Divine Empyrean liturgical exegesis. The Songshi recorded Lin's Shenxiao discourse in brief to the following effect.19 The Divine Em­ pyrean was the highest level of the nine empyreans IL It of heaven. The Divine Empyrean Pure Jade Monarch :# It .L �t � I was the legitimate son of the Supreme Emperor J:. ,*". His title � was Grand Lord of Long Life -k 1.. *.. '*" ;ft , and he governed the south. However it was his younger brother, Sovereign Green Florescence 1f * '*" ;ft , who was taking care of the administration for him because he had descended in reincarnated form as a ruler in Song China. This earthly reincarnation was, as it turned out, none other than Huizong. Lin Lingsu, too, was a reincarnated divinity from the Divine Empyrean administration manor At, whose name was Chuhui � � . Lin, in addition, identified many other courtiers as reincarnations of divine officials, including Cai Jing JJ.. � (1046-1126), the current grand councilor, and Tong Guan i: 1t (?-1I26), the eunuch who was so powerful that he was mockingly nick­ named the "grand counciloress" � Aij . Lin was in fact tactful enough to include the emperor's favorite consort, Lady Liu, in this long list of diVIne personages. Lin quickly became influential and powerful in the court. He con­ vinced the emperor to suppress Buddhism,20 allegedly in revenge for the insulting treatment he had received from Buddhist monks when he lodged in their temples as a wandering celibate. He was also known for •

17. Lowell Skar, "Administering Thunder: A Thirteenth-Century Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites," Cahiers d'Extreme-Asie 9 (1990--91): 159-202, esp. 159. 18. SS 462.13529. 19. Ibid. 20. Liu Hunkang already had talked disparagingly about Buddhism to Huizong (]SBM 127.12.3480).

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rewarding even the slightest kindness he received during this humble period by bestowing official positions upon those who had helped him.21 He gave monthly lectures in the Palace, which Daoists, officials, and the emperor himself attended. The lectures received a great deal of promo­ tion. The Daoist audience could receive banquet food, new garments, and subsidies. Selected students in government schools in the capital were assigned to attend. This was actually regarded as a short cut to a prominent career since they would be introduced individually by name to Lin and the emperor at the lectures.22 State and Confucian historiography, the Songshi for example, accused Lin of being a malevolent influence who led Huizong into the hands of religious fanatics, wasted state resources in temple construction and re­ ligious activities, and, last but not least, demoralized the court.23 How­ ever, Daoists in the next two centuries, notably Zhao Daoyi �l!­ (fl. 1294-13°7), evaluated Lin entirely differently. Zhao was the first and primary compiler of the largest hagiographical collection in the Daoist canon, the 53-chapter Ushi zhenxian tidao tongjian 1i.1lt A 1.4 fltl! i! � (A comprehensive mirror on successive generations of perfected tran­ scendents and those who realize the Dao, HY 296; hereafter the Mirror). The Mirror, along with its two sequels (HY 297 and 298), was first com­ pleted in the early Yuan period, although the appended text dates to more than a century later.24 It contains rich material but was lightly used for an obvious reason: the inherent bias and flattering nature of hagi­ ography. However, it is exactly from this so-called bias that we see the opinions, interpretations, and evaluations of Lin Lingsu circulating in contemporary Daoist circles. Zhao devoted half of the final chapter of the Mirror to Lin Lingsu, while most of the other chapters treated a dozen or so figures.25 He began the hagiography of Lin by relating various unusual signs before and at the time of Lin's birth. These signs included his mother's dream

21. Lu You ftiij., Laoxue an biji �*�*�(. (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1977), 3.30. 22. 55 344.10945. 23. 55 462.13529. 24. Boltz, A 5UT7Jey ofTaoist Literature, Tenth to 5eventeenth Centuries (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, and Center for Chinese Studies, 1987), 56-57. 25. Lin's biography, in length, was second only to that of the founding Heavenly Master Zhang Daoling &li!fk, who had a chapter all to himself (chap. 18).

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during an unusually long pregnancy (24 months) of being covered in red clouds preceding his conception; a divine person entering her bed­ chamber before labor; golden radiance filling the room upon his birth; and the child's complete silence until the age of five, when a mythical Daoist paid a visit. Although varying in details, these all are typical ele­ ments in hagiographies of sect patriarchs or deified personalities.26 This account of miracles serves as an indicator of Lin's revered status in Daoism up to the turn of the fourteenth century when the Mirror took shape.27 The Mirror continues to relate that as a young man, I.in was smart and diligent. He even impressed Su Shi ,� $\:. (1°36-1101), one of the most renowned literati-officials of the Northern Song, with his brilliance,28 At the age of 30 SUt�29 Lin traveled to western Luo � (Sichuan)30 and met a Daoist with the surname of Zhao ;t!. Several years later, Zhao predicted that he would soon die and left all his belongings to Lin, including a work in three volumes of nineteen chapters � , written in fine print, containing incomprehensible heavenly characters f!::.. l.. The book bore the title The Jade Book of the HeavenlY Altar of the Divine Empyrean #' � f!::.. 4 J:,. t' and contained methods for making rain and employing ghosts and spirits.

26. For example, see the Hantianshi shijia � :k �1lt� (HY 1451). Unusual phenomena occurred during the birth or childhood of many generations of the Heavenly Masters. 27. Qiu Chuji AltJt (Il43-1227), the renowned patriarch of the Complete Perfec­ tion � � Daoism, also revered Lin Lingsu highly; see Xuanftng qinghui lu I Ji{.,f:i'� HY 176, 6a. By early Ming times, the general attitude toward Lin had shifted in Daoist circles. Zhang Yuchu � * ;fJJ (1361-1410), the forty-third Heavenly Master, for example, did not even mention Lin Lingsu in the line of patriarchs in his account of the lineage of the Divine Empyrean order (Daomen shigui l! r, +�JL HY 1222, LIla). 28. According to some accounts, Lin leaned toward the Old Party. In one partiuclar anecdote, he bowed to the stele that bore the names of the ''Yuanyou partisans" of the Old Party (Yuanyou dangbei :1t1;G:t�) and explained to Huizong that he did so because they were all incarnations of stars. See Ding Chuanjing T 14 '*, Songren yishi huibian *A.� . � � (Beijing: Shangwu 1958 [1935]), 20.1037. 29. He would have been 28 or 29 years old in Western calculation. Thus, the trip likely took place in Il04 or Il05. 30. The place-name used here is xi luo i5s�. While Xiluo could be the name of a town in Shanxi, Luo by itself was a prefecture in Sichuan. Zhao Yushi's ,!Ii � * (Il72-1228) Bintui lu 1; i!� said that the encounter between Lin and Zhao occurred in Sichuan (Baibu congshu jicheng ed. [Taipei:Yiwen, 1967], 1.5a). Therefore, I take xi to be an ad­ jective and xiluo to mean the western part of the Luo prefecture.

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Armed with the powerful secrets in the Jade Book, Lin was able, according to the Mirror, to capture evil spirits, cure illnesses, keep away the plague, and destroy the temples of the popular deities 1�Ji. Then, a year later, I.in unexpectedly encountered again the supposedly dead Daoist Zhao. Zhao then unveiled his identity as Zhao Sheng ;t! 1t, the cele­ brated disciple of the first Heavenly Master, Zhang Daoling of the second century CE.31 Zhao Sheng told Lin to keep secret the "Jade Book of the Five Thunders" (referring to TheJade Book ifthe Heaven!JAltarifthe Divine Empyrean). Zhao also revealed Lin's destiny to become the Chief Judge of Thunderclaps for the Lord of the Divine Empyrean Teaching ;ff � �.i. il lt -k *'1 l' and to rescue from disaster the Sovereign of Eastern Florescence .t. "* ,*";f;, a reference that later was connected to Huizong.32 Meanwhile, Huizong, the Mi1Tor conveyed, had a dream in 1106 about ascending to the Divine Empyrean Manor in heaven at the re­ quest of the Jade Emperor. He came to the Jade Pivot Court (Yushu yuan J,.�fi£), that is, the Bureau of Thunder, where he saw many of­ ficials at work. One official came out to greet him telling the emperor that this was his old residence i" /l; and asking him to sit on the east seat (that is, the host's seat) to wait for the Jade Emperor to send for him. Shortly thereafter, the Jade Emperor received Huizong and admon­ ished him to "seriously attend to state affairs, remove the malicious ministers, use the loyal and talented ones, and hold up the royal lineage and the country." On his way out, Huizong came across a Daoist daoren ltA in a blue outfit �:i<. � 7; on a blue ox � 4-, surrounded by demonic-looking attendants. The Daoist greeted Huizong before he entered the heavenly gate. Huizong woke up and wrote down this dream. When Huizong searched for Daoist masters across the country in 1108, the Mi1Tor claimed, Liu Hunkang whom Huizong revered dearly, as mentioned in footnote 13, recommended Lin Lingsu. Huizong sent for ,

31. Zhao Sheng's biography can be found in the Mirror, 19.1. Stories about him and his

master, Zhang Daoling, can be found in the latter's hagiography in chap. IS of the same book. 32. This is the only primary source, to my knowledge, that identifies Huizong as the Sovereign of Eastern Florescence.

- -

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Lin,

who had returned to Wenzhou at the time; Lin declined the sum­ mons. Then, without any explanation, the Mirror informs us that Lin went to the capital and met Huizong via the then Daoist Registrar of Left Avenue li... 1tr l! il Xu Zhichang .ft �11 't . During the encounter, Huizong recognized Lin as the man in a blue outfit on a blue ox in his dream of ten years earlier and accordingly invited Lin to stay in the court. The emperor assigned Lin the task of correcting mistakes in the history of Daoism, Daoist scriptures, registers, and altar arrangements. Lin thus compiled rituals of the Pure Offerings of Yellow Registration of the Correct Unity, designed the divine hierarchy of the three realms, and rectified the Daoist scriptures and philosophical works for the court. In addition, Lin, so it was claimed, passed on to Huizong the secret scrip­ tures preserved in the heavenly court and produced seals for liturgical use and other material unknown to human knowledge. Zhao Daoyi asserted in agreement with the Songshi that it was under Lin's influence that Huizong built the Precious Register Palace -t i¥: 'l: , the Humane Aid Pavilion 1;: �;f to distribute talismans of therapeutic value 1f � , and the Divine Empyrean Palace temple network. The Mirror continued to describe in detail the various revelations of deities and spirits in response to Lin's invocation. In addition to the Sovereign Qinghua, Lin summoned the soul of Huizong's beloved late consort; the Perfected Warrior .)t. j\ , whom Zhenzong, Renzong (r. 1023-63), and Huizong himself all patronized,33 the Queen Mother of the West, and many others. In calling Zhenwu, Lin specifically requested the collaboration of Heavenly Master Xujing Ji*:k � . Together with the story of Lin and Zhao Sheng, mentioned earlier, the assumption that ..

33. The Perfected Warrior rose to prominence in the Daoist pantheon during the Northern Song. Zhenzong decreed the construction of the Auspicious Fountain Temple (Xiangyuan guan Wi7.f-.) at the spot where a spring with healing power appeared, fol­ lowing the revelation of the deity's symbols, a turtle and a snake (SHY Ii P4a.472). The temple became a popular political-religious location in the capital. In 1020, Renzong (r. 1023-63), then the crown prince, visited the temple and gave a banquet, inviting im­ portant ministers .tffl � (SHY Ii 5.14b-472). It burned down by accident in 1054/4 and was rebuilt in 1055/12. Renzong renamed the newly rebuilt temple as Sweet Spring Temple (Liquan guan .At.) and personally wrote .f;tp t" the name placard for it. Huizong, too, personally wrote Zhenwu's name tablet JR�, which was enshrined by 1113/9, that is, before he met Lin Ungsu (SHY daoshi I.3Ia.7884).

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a bond existed between Lin Lingsu and the Heavenly Master school is clearly reflected. It is noteworthy that the Mirror painstakingly portrayed Lin Lingsu as an opponent of Cai Jing, Tong Guan, and their followers, who were loathed in contemporary and later public opinion. According to the Mirror, Lin told Huizong that the courtiers currently in power, such as Cai, Tong, and their fellows, were reincarnations of demonic spirits (in disagreement with Songshi and all other sources, both semi-official and private) and that the emperor should keep away from them. However, the emperor would not listen to Ijn; instead Cai won the emperor's favor and I .in retired from the court. When the emperor made clear that he regretted Lin's departure, the Mirror maintained, a follower of Cai poi­ soned Lin, killing him or so it appeared. However, the former grand councilor Zhao Ding ;!! lll- (I085-II47), according to the Mirror, met Lin Lingsu years later during the Shaoxing reign (II31-62), and Lin looked as healthy as ever.34 In sum, at least until the late thirteenth century, Lin Lingsu was a semi­ immortal of great power, from the Daoist point of view. He was given credit for all aspects of the imperial promotion of Daoism that occurred during his sojourn at the court and that continued after his departure. The Mirrorprovided a Daoist discourse on the fall of the Northern Song: it was destiny,35 and this destiny was fulfilled by the demonic incarna­ tions in the court. The Jade Emperor had warned Huizong in advance about the ministers. In addition, Lin was given the mission by a disciple of the founding patriarch of the Orthodox One Daoist school to come to court to save Huizong from this catastrophe. Yet Lin's efforts were in vain and nearly cost him his own life. As for the lavish Daoist activities at the court, the Mirror justified the spending as a means by which the country acquired divine blessing. Was such a rationale merely a clever spin? If we take it for granted that Confucian scholars sincerely believed that the state could benefit from holding Confucian rituals and building Confucian temples, then we cannot justifiably deny the possibility that ,

34. Zhao Ding was demoted and removed to Quanzhou in II38 (SS 29.540). 35. The view that the Song was doomed to lose its mandate to Jurchen can also be found outside Daoist sources; see Chen Xuelin [Chan Hok-lam] ff."'�, "SongJin erdi � ;f114.:ifff­ yiqi dingtianxi-Xuanheyishi kaoshi yize" � 1t.::. * � #t;tk r JlIJ , in Chen Xuelin, Songshi futyi � 3t � 1f; (faibei: Dongda, 1993), 2II-40. -

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Daoist masters had genuine confidence that their temples and rituals could do the same for the country. While the Confucian criticism ap­ peared to be the dominant opinion in traditional historiography about Huizong's religious activities, we also need to look into less readily available interpretations stemming from different ideological biases. Without an extensive understanding of the pluralistic cultural climate of Huizong's court, the complex social and political phenomena of China at the turn of the twelfth century cannot be properly assessed, and vice versa. Both the Mi1TOr and the Songshi agreed that Lin Lingsu introduced to the court numerous Daoist scriptures, although none of them are iden­ tifiable in the Daoist Canon,36 The Scripture ifSalvation (Durenjing JtA.. 1£) in its current version is generally agreed to be one, thanks to the research of Strickmann.37 I would suggest that The Wondrous Scripture on the Great

One's Preseroation if the Embryo and the Jade Infant's Divine Traniformation, Spoken I?Y the Peifected King ifthe Divine Empyrean ifHigh and Supreme [Realm] if Jade Pun!), (Gaoshang yuqing shenxiao zhenwang shuo Taryi baotai y'!)ing shenbian miaojing � J:. .li �t #' 'Jt � ..I. -IDt.:k. - 1*'% .li..f,lf � .Jtjl �), often abbreviated as Wondeiful Scripture on Jade Itifant's Divine Traniformation .li..f, #' � .Jtjl �, is another one.38 This scripture, as far as can be determined, is lost. Nevertheless, Huizong bestowed copies of it on some of his courtiers; one of whom, Wang Anzhong ..I. � � , wrote a lengthy summary-review of it in his expression of gratitude to Huizong.39 Wang, nevertheless, did not identify its authorship, which after all was supposed to have been divine, as indicated in the title. Fortunately, when Cai Jing asked Huizong to circulate this text by putting it in print in III9/n, Cai indicated that the scripture was proclaimed i'1T-IDt. by the Jade Perfected 36. The only piece in the DaoistCanon that is under the name of.Lin Lingsu is "Song of the Celestial Stalwart of the Golden Flames and the Blazing Tocsin from the Triple Emanations of the Divine Empyrean" (''Jinhuo tianding shenxiao sanji huoling ge" 1t k k T#1t ..::.. i'* k�,iJk.) in Daofa huryuan l!5!--t-7t HY 1210, 199.1a-5b. On top of its questionable authenticity, it does not qualify as a scripture. 37. Strickmann, "The Longest Taoist Scripture." 38. A text with a similar tide, "Jiuling yiiying shenbian jing :Jt. � .l..;ff � �," was attributed to Yang Xizhen � :;t !l (UOl-24) of the Youthful Incipience i: ;fl1 lineage; see Maoshan Zhi ;f .l! ,t, (HY 304), 16.5a. I thank Professor Kristofer Schipper for bring this piece of information to my attention. 39. "Xie si Yuying shenbian jing zhazi" *J!h.l..# � � �l-r , Chuliaoji ;f11 � � (SKQS ed.), 3.22-23, esp. 23a.

S H I N -YI CHAO

Lord ..li $. .i. of Divine Empyrean Palace.40 One of Lin Lingsu's titles was the Jade Perfected Lord of Teaching L $. .$t.i..41 I would suggest that Lin Lingsu involved himself in the production of the Wonderful Scripture onJade Infant's Divine Tran.ifOrmation. This text, seen through Wang Anzhong's review, articulated a complex Shenxiao soteriology. It possi­ bly represented the last development that Lin Lingsu made in Shenxiao theory; Lin left Huizong's court in III9/I2, only one month after Cai Jing's proposal to circulate the text, and died soon after. In addition to its own liturgical pantheon and scriptures, Shenxiao Daoism had its own registers lie. and talismans. Huizong once (m8/IO) transmitted the Secret Register of Jade Clarity Divine Empyrean (Yuqing shenxiao milu L �t;ff � ;f.iklle.) to 800 people in Kaifeng in the Precious Register Palace (Baolu gong f' t! 1; ).42 Furthermore, when Huizong sent envoys to Koguryo � .. (Korea) in II22,43 he provided them with a set of thirteen ritual items, including Divine Empyrean Jade Pure Nine Yang Talismans and Registers of All Perfected (Shenxiao yuqing jiuyang zongzhen fulu ;ff � L �t lt. � � .)t. 1ft!), to be used at the ceremony upon their dispatch to KOguryO.44 Lin Lingsu contributed to the pro­ duction of the Shenxiao register.45 One Shenxiao talisman of 28 heavenly characters was directly linked to Lin. He, or his divine counterpart, was found among the descending divine figures at a seance and produced the talismans upon request.46 Lin was arguably a master of seance. Huizong realized his divine identity only after seeing the revelation at the seances arranged by Lin Lingsu. According to one account, around the third watch -=.. it one night, palace guards saw fireballs move about ten meters above the ground and heard sounds of wind and thunder as well as the arrival of immortals. The two leading figures were the Grand Lord of Long Life 40. j5BM 127.12b.3839. 41. Mirror, 53.6a.This tide also can be found in the Bintu lu 1.6 and "Colophon of the Great Rites of the Celestial Stalwart of Golden Flames in the Divine Empyrean" ("Jinhuo tianding dafa houxu" 1t k k T k 5idt .4) by Liu Yu �1.li (fl. 1258) in Daofa huiyuan 198.26b, although it is not mentioned in official history works such as 50ngshi. 42. j5BM 127.11b. The registers possibly included the YUalryi lil!Yang shenxian milu 7t i:; � �"'1J4.M! and Baoxian milu 1ifdJ4;b1!. 43. 55 22·410. 44. Xu Jing -ftAA., Xuanhefengshi Gaoli tlfiing � ;fu.1� � ,l. 1Il � (5KQ5 ed.), 34·10. 45. 55 382.11767· 46. See Ebrey's chapter in this volume.

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and his younger brother, Sovereign Green Florescence. Eunuchs were called by name in a voice exactly like that of Huizong ± � ± -l .li�.47 The immortals bestowed talismans that they wrote on the spot; the ink was still wet when people received them. After the immortals left, all the offerings were found to have been consumed; this was regarded as ad­ ditional evidence that they had come. The authenticity of the seances granted legitimacy to the Shenxiao literature that Lin offered. Seance was evidentially essential to Lin Lingsu's success at Huizong's court and to the Shenxiao rituals that he introduced. Those who con­ demned Lin as an imposter naturally tried to explain how Lin did it. Hong Mai i*31 (U23-1202) recorded a story about Zheng Juzhong �Jk 'f (?-U23) being swindled by a con man in Daoist disguise.48 This story is not directly related to Lin Lingsu, but at the end, a reference was made to him that merits some attention here. According to Hong Mai's source, an imposter Daoist once arranged a divine revelation at night at Zheng's household. The altar exhibited splendid offerings, and members of the household stood up in awed silence to wait for the visitation. All of a sudden, young girls and musicians playing instruments appeared in the clouds; they walked in the air approaching the ground Ai ?J: iTiJ *' Next, men who appeared to be divine officials arrived. After a while, thick smoke and clouds descended, obscuring everyone's vision; a loud sound broke out and silence ensued. The seance was over; the divine figures were gone, and so were the utensils on the altar, all made of gold and silver. Only then did the Zhengs realize that the seance was trickery and that they had been robbed. Retrospectively, they figured out that the smoke was created by the same method used in stage plays, and that the young girls tightrope walkers. In conclusion, Hong Mai commented: "the seances of the Divine Empyrean, I suspect, were like this" ;ff 1lt .:.t.. .M�JlI:...z.. Were they? With the production of the Shenxiao literature and pantheon, Huizong decided to begin his own Daoist lineage. In III7 / I, following Huizong's guidelines *- � � �� � , the Daoist Registry (Daolu yuan l!IlFfi::) designed a protocol that divided Daoism into five sects l! � 1i. $ plus "the divine transforming way of high clarity penetrating per47. jSBM 127.3-3822. Although the Divine Empyrean Jade Pure Monarch was sup­ posed to be incarnated as Huizong, he still somehow appeared in the revelation. 48. Hong Mai, Yijian Zhi, bu 20.1737.

SH I N -YI CHAO

fection reaching numinousness J:. rn- 1& � it I �f 1t. .t l! " (not a sect but a way, if not the Way). 49 The latter, the Registry declared, was far superior to the five sects. It "summoned the transcendents and the sages. It is not within the teaching and rituals, but is a high and supreme way. The grand master is the Emperor Lord of Way" � '* 1.l! i: , :f 1��)!'.t rJ;j , � � J:..tl!; �.i.. l! :# .t ,*" . The Emperor Lord of Way was Huizong himself. In the meantime, Huizong granted I.in Lingsu four honorific characters to his title: Penetrating Perfection Reaching Numinousness 1& � it I , the same four characters found in the description of Huizong's own Daoist lineage.5o The choice of this honorific prefix demonstrated the emperor's appreciation of his chief religious adviser as the embodiment of his own and ideal Daoist school. Huizong and Lin Lingsu worked hand in hand to realize their ideal Daoism, the Shenxiao tradition, and to evangelize across the country.

The Establishment if the Divine Empyrean Palace Network Within a month after announcing the "five sects and one way" de­ nomination of Daoism, Huizong launched the project of a nationwide temple network for the lineage that he headed, the Divine Empyrean Palaces. Starting in III?/2, successive imperial decrees were issued to every local administration, instructing them to supervise the inauguration of the Divine Empyrean Palaces in their jurisdictions. Officials who were reluctant to carry out the order were punished promptly. In IlI8/8, only eighteen months after the first decree that initiated the Divine Empyrean Palaces, the court was confident enough to announce the completion of the network.

49 . ]5BM 127.3a [3821]. The five sects are: the teachings of Heavenly Worthy k .�$:, the teachings of the Perfected One !i\. A., the teachings of divine transcen­ dents #1.l!, the teachings of the Orthodox One .iE. , and finally, the teachings of Daoist scholars l! � . 50. 55 221.13529. He was further promoted to the master of six characters and ac­ cordingly received additional Xuanmiao j:1& in m815 to become Master of Penetrating Perfection and Reaching Numinousness, Mysterious, and Wondrous :ii � it :f j:1&7t. !:t (55 21.400). -

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The Divine Empyrean Palace network did not start from scratch. It was based on an imperial Daoist temple network that had existed earlier, the Heavenly Peace Longevity Daoist Temples ,k . � .:$-lit, originally called Chongning Daoist temples 1# .lit.51 The process by which the Chongning temples were established merits our attention. The Chong­ ning temples originally included only Buddhist ones. Cai ling, grand councilor .£ 1� -# at the time, presented a memorial on 1103/9/ I7 sug­ gesting that the throne grant the title "Chongning" to a Buddhist temple in every prefecture across the country in order to celebrate the emperor's birthday in the next month (the tenth day of the tenth month). 52 Chongning, which was the name of the current era (1102-6), means "exalting 1# the [Xi]ning [�] . era" (1068-77),53 the era during which Shenzong (r. 1067-85) and his grand councilor Wang Anshi ..I.. � .ki (1021-86) initiated the New Policies. Chongning was the first era-name that Huizong decided for himself; the previous one had been chosen by the Empress Dowager Xiang foJ (d. 1101), who tended to accommodate both reformers and conservatives in the court. With the adoption of the new era-name, Huizong illustrated his decision to alter the dowager's policy to one of favoring reform policies, following in the footsteps of his late father, Shenzong. The establishment of the Chongning temples thus served the additional purpose of reminding the public of the shift in the direction of state policy. On 1103/10/1, the first day of Huizong's birth month, Vice Censor in Chief f,ip1t tF � Shi Yu .kilt. proposed setting up Daoist counterparts of the Chongning Buddhist temples. 54 The emperor agreed. We know the proposal was not carried out thoroughly; later, when Huizong began to convert Chongning Daoist temples (or Tianning Daoist temples, as they were called at the time; see below) into Divine Empyrean temples, he was aware that the former did not exist in some prefec­ tures. Nevertheless, this was the origin of Huizong's Daoist temple 51. Song da zhaolingji **- �<},. (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1962), 179.649. 52. The memorial was presented on 1103/9/17 (SHY Ii P5a). Huizong's official birthday, the Tianning jie :k . ;fj , fell on the tenth day of the tenth month (Song da zhaolingji 1.4), although some sources from the Southern Song indicated that Huizong was actually born on the fifth day of the fifth month, traditionally an ill-fated day (Ding Chuanjing, Songrenyishi hllibian, 2.47). 53. Cai Tao, Tiewei shan cong/an '-llfl J" lOt (SKQS ed.), I.I6a. 54. SHY Ii P3a-b.

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network. Huizong also ordered that the regulations governing the Buddhist Chongning temples would apply to the Daoist ones as well. Nine days later, on the eve of his birthday, the emperor decreed that starting in that year, each Chongning Daoist and Buddhist temple could ordain one apprentice on the sovereign's birthday. Those located in larger prefectures � 1i'1 would, in addition, receive an honorable purple robe � :R.55 More detail on the regulations of the Chongning temples was given in this decree. 56 The next year, on II04/2/8, Huizong an­ nounced the addition of the two characters, "wanshou" � .. Oongevity), after Chongning, in the names of both the Buddhist and Daoist temples. The inclusion of "longevity" li, .. in a temple's name indicates that the temple had the task, and the privilege, of praying for the emperor. Not surprisingly, all of the temples in the two networks were soon granted 1,000 mu w.. of farmland from the local administration to cover their expenses. During the ensuing month, a proposal concerning the Daoist Chongning temple network came to the emperor's attention. Fan Zhixu te.itli (jinshi 1089), prefect of Henan � � at the time, suggested that the emperor write the two characters "Chongning" and that this imperial

55. SHY daoshi I.38a. Ordination and bestowing on clergy the honor of wearing a purple robe on emperors' birthdays was a way to bring divine blessing to the emperor, since granting ordination was a gesture of revering the divinities. For example, Lii Jia wrote in his memorial submitted to the throne on Chongning 2.II.22: "The Chongning Chan monasteries are built everywhere [lit. under heaven]. On Your Majesty's birthday, ordinations and purple robes are granted [to these monasteries] in order to revere Buddha and to pray for blessing for your Majesty. The merits are tremendous" � r �

* :f"'JlJt, l! � :f � Jtft, ��*, PJT J.'X * f*;f}{.�, Jf. "h-tt .£ :k. (SHY daoshi I.30). 56. The decree announced that the Chongning temples could be built within urban areas or on mountains as long as the chosen spots were not in forbidden areas. If there were unregistered temples • .-t $Ji 4" IfiJ or private temples 1fT G fiAt in a prefecture that could be adapted, the local administtation was allowed to proceed by themselves without reporting to the court. If commoners wished to raise funds to help the administration build a Chongning temple, they were allowed to do so, and the construction materials transported for this purpose were exempt from duties (SHY Ii 5.15b). Two decrees fol­ lowed within the next three months that protected the newly established Chongning temples from the abuse of government officials. The first, issued on II03/I2/17, pro­ hibited government officials from taking residence in the Chongning temples. The other decree was issued on 1104/1/27 to prohibit any religious ceremonies other than praying for the emperor's longevity ;f}{. Jk ... . Both of the decrees can be found in SHY Ii P5b.

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brush be replicated in a stone inscription erected at Chongning Daoist Temple in Hangzhou *£ 1')-1 ,57 In the same memorial, he also proposed copying this piece of imperial calligraphy, engraving it on plaques, filling in the engraved characters with powdered gold, and dis­ tributing the plaques to all Chongning Daoist Monasteries for display. Huizong agreed. The idea of using the Chongning temples as a platform for manifesting and glorifying the emperor's personal touch in such a manner ostensibly came from his officials instead of from the emperor himself. In reality, it was a conventional practice of Song times that the emperor would suggest, orjeng WilJ that his officials make proposals that the emperor himself wished to initiate. 58 Fan's proposal, therefore, might have been a result of Huizong's unofficial order or could have been motivated by a desire to advance his own career by pandering to the emperor's wish. In any case, Fan actively participated in Huizong's project and his suggestion to promote Huizong's calligraphy furthered the purpose of the temple network.59 The Chongning temples as a po­ litical instrument were a result of mutual interaction between the em­ peror and his officials. Less than two months after Fan's memorial, the court ordered local officials to present incense regularly at their local Daoist Chongning temple. Circuit-level officials were to do so as well when they per­ formed their routine investigative tours of prefectures under their ju­ risdiction. The next year, on 1105/5/20 and 1105/11/7, the Chongning temples (both Daoist and Buddhist) were ordered to be exempt from taxes and levies. This order must have been carried out to a large extent, for it actually created a tax loophole that allowed lay people to hide their property by falsely donating it to Chongning temples. The Minister of Revenue ? .g� proposed to rectify this flaw, but Huizong did not accept this and retained the tax exemption to Chongning and other

57. 5HY Ii P3b. 58. For example, after "discovering" himself to be the incarnation of a heavenly monarch, Huizong decided to call himself "Lord of the Teachings, Emperor Lord of Way" $i.iJ!� ..t ,*" . He then feng the Daoist Registrar (Daolu yuan l!l!F;t) to make such a petition (55 21.398). 59. As Ebrey's in-depth analysis of Huizong's stone inscriptions elsewhere in this volume argues, both the words and calligraphy of Huizong's steles served the political ends of statecraft.

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temples. 60 The Chongning temples laid a foundation for the Divine Empyrean temple network. For the next decade, the Chongning temples received little attention from the state. There were no memorials presented nor decrees issued concerning these temples, with the exception that in Zhenghe 1 (on 1111/8/8), Huizong decreed that Chongning in the temple's name be replaced with Tianning k " (Heavenly Peace), the same name as the festival of his very own birthday.61 The formal name of these temples thus became Heavenly Peace Longevity Daoist (or Buddhist) Temple. During this period, the court's religious interest concentrated on liturgy, protocol, and canonization instead of on temples. 62 Yet, fully realizing the value and potential of a temple network, Huizong included one in his blueprint when he decided to establish a new Daoist order, and the imperial temple network thus entered a new phase.63 On III?/ 2/ 13 , Huizong decreed that all the Heavenly Peace Longevity Daoist Temples would change their names to Divine Empyrean Jade Clarity Longevity Palaces.64 In prefectures with Daoist temples that did not have a Heavenly Peace Longevity Monastery, the administration could choose an existing Daoist temple, change its name, and enshrine the images of Great Lord of Long Life and Sovereign Qinghua. For smaller prefectures .J, 1'1-1 � fi that had no Daoist monasteries at all, the conversion of a Buddhist temple would dO.65 With this simple innova60. SHY Ii P3b. 61. Ibid., P3a. 62. For example, Huizong ordered the Daoist priests and priestesses to precede Buddhist monks and nuns in state protocol on 1I07/1/2; issued "The Model for Daoist Altars of the Golden Registration of the Lingbao Daoism" on 1I08/213; bestowed a new honorific tide on the Supreme Emperor of Grand Veil Heaven on IIIO/4/1; and issued decrees for seeking Daoist specialists and scriptures on various occasions (Chen Bangzhan, SS]SBM 51.51I-512). 63. Emperor Zhenzong and his Heavenly Felicities Daoist Temple �Jf:. network set a precedent for Huizong's use of the state-sponsored temple network for his religious promotion. Zhenzong, in tum, imitated the Emperor Tang Xuanzong, as one of his courtiers criticized in a memorial. See Sun Kekuan, Song Yuan Dao/iao, 82. 64. Song da zhaolingji 179.649. 65. Ten days after the inauguration of the Divine Empyrean Palace network, Huizong approved a memorial proposing that the prefectural administrations converting Buddhist temples to Divine Empyrean Palaces must select only those temples with properties and completed functional buildings (SHY Ii H).

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tion, the old temples qualified as new local Divine Empyrean Palaces. They also could receive 1,000 mu of farmland from the government as a subsidy, continuing a policy that dated from the establishment of the Chongning temples, and some of Divine Empyrean temples obtained even larger pieces ofland.66 Tax exemptions would also apply to the new temples.67 On 111715/1, two-and-a-half months after the establishment of Divine Empyrean temples, the emperor again guaranteed every one of them the privilege of ordaining at least one apprentice to the priesthood and investing one priest with the honorable purple robe 't::R every year.68 Such a privilege brought temples not only income but prestige and influence as well. 69 On III?/ 7/22, the court decided to allow only Buddhist monasteries to be made into Divine Empyrean Palaces. Bud­ dhist residents in the selected monasteries were forced to moveJO Monks of the Nengren �� 1=- -+ Buddhist Temple in Changzhou 't 11', (in Jiangsu province), for example, were among those expelled. Their object of worship, the mummified corpse of a late patriarch, was also re­ moved.7! Meanwhile, in III?/5, the capital established its Divine Empyrean temple as well. This was created by changing the name of an existing imperial temple, the Jade Purity Harmonic Yang Palace .li �t;fP � 1: .72 66. Lu You, Laoxuean biji 9.II 5 The Divine Empyrean Palace of Hangzhou, for ex­ ample, received 2,000 mu of rich farmland from the West Zhe Circuit as a fmancial supplement, thanks to the petition of Xu Zhu �,., then prefect of Hangzhou. The ra­ tionale for Xu's request of 2,000 mu of land and the state's approval of the request might relate to the fact that Huizong's Hall of Destiny was located there. 67. Thanks to the memorial of the DepatUnent of State Affairs � .. � on II17/ 6/28 (SHY Ii Hb). 68. Ibid., 50469. The purple robe was such a desirable honor for both Daoists and Buddhists that the Song court could sell it to help alleviate financial crises. For more information, see Tang Daijian Jt1-1:. jlj , "Songdai daoguan ziyi, shihao zhedu" * 1-1:.�� ,*;R, � � �vt, Zongjiaoxueya'!Jiu 1 (1997): 23-31; see also Huang Minzhi i't.tt{t, Songdai Fqjiao shehui jingjishi IU'!Ji * 1-1:.1.$t�.l" � 1tIiI ;f. (Taipei: Xuesheng shuju, 1989), 443-510. 70. SHY Ii Hb; XZZTjCBjSBO 127. 71. Sun Du .J.t.Jt, "Changzhou Yongqing chanyuan xingzao ji" 't 1tl *Jt"'F;t�.it 1.(', in Hongqingjushiji �Jt.% ± ;f. (SKQS ed.), 22.17. 72. 55 21.398. Tang Daijian argues that the Precious Register Palace (Baolu gong) was the real headquarters of the Divine Empyrean Daoism in the capital, instead of the Di­ vine Empyrean Palace. See Tang, "Bei Song Shenxiao gong jiqi weiyi gouji" :ll:. * # iIt 1: .&.Jt.�.{gtJft, Zhongguo zongjiao 3 (1994): 47-48. .

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The Harmonic Yang Palace was located to the east of the Blessed Peace Hall ;f& "�, the residential palace of the previous emperor, Zhezong (r. 1086-1100), and where Huizong was born,73 The local Divine Em­ pyrean Palaces were called lower temples r Fi£, whereas the one in the capital was referred to as the upper temple J:.. Ff£ . By such means, a critical mass of temples was created and the Empyrean Palace network officially commenced. The local Divine Empyrean Palaces could be spectacular since many of them had been converted from established Buddhist temples. In ad­ dition, many local administrators renovated the temples as elaborately as they could,74 The one in Jinshan � J-J (Zhejiang province) was con­ verted from the Dragon Visited Buddhist Temple -Rt3&1 1'. It was some 200 years old and the makeover took nearly a year.75 The renovated temple contained three halls, two towers f; , two chambers,76 and one residential building for the abbot, who was appointed by Huizong himself.77 Students of Daoism came in great numbers to visit this new center of Daoism. The emperor was so pleased that he personally wrote the names of the halls and compartments, ten in total, on plaques to be posted in the temple. Examples of imperial brushwork were again dis­ played for subjects to admire and revere. While many government officials appeared to be as enthusiastic as the emperor himself about the Divine Empyrean Palace project, some were much less so. An attitude of passive resistance could be found among some local officials, such as Wang Jin .£.ijt Uinshi 1106), the prefect of Pujiang county im �..L (Zhejiang). Responsible for the establishment of

73- Zhou Cheng f,iJ �, Song Dongjing kao )\<: ,t :Y: * (Beijing: Zhonghua, I988), I3.234. The Jade Purity Harmonic Yang Palace, an appendix of the Grand Blessing Palace -;f;fSr1;, was completed in 1II3/4 (SS 2I.39I). At that time, Huizong had not "discovered" himself as the Grand Lord of Long Life. He was revered as the Heavenly Emperor of Red Bright Harmonic Yang 1F B}J lu � k * in a revelation, according to Cai Tao, cited from CB, chap. 27. The Harmonic Yang Palace was likely built in response to this legend. 74. SS 380.II725· 75. Wang Zao i£ �, "Dai Mao You zuo Zhenjiang fu Jinshan shenxiao gong bei" 1�-{;'� 1-tiA�}(f� .l! # 1t 1; 4, in Fuxiji i¥i$. " (SKQS ed.), 20.5-7. 76. One of the two chambers was a library �& All . 77. The appointed abbot, Huang Cheng -ti1t, was a Daoist official with the titular post of grand master of supreme simplicity ;k. i::k.A.. (rank 5b) and belonged to the Highest Clarity Daoism from Mt. Mao.

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the local Divine Empyrean Palace, he chose a temple in the remote countryside to "fill the quota" Jt:. ... 78 When Wang's supervisor ques­ tioned him about this choice, he answered: "The imperial decree does not specify whether the temple should be within or outside the city wall. There is a temple available within the county territory; so I used it. I did not disregard the imperial brush .fir � ." Passive opposition by local officials to the temple project was also expressed through their perfunctory manner of carrying out the task. In converting Buddhist temples into Divine Empyrean temples, for exam­ ple, some prefects did not even bother to remove Buddhist statues or Buddhist traits 1� .;f 1f} M} from the temples.79 The resistance of local administrators was enough that the emperor saw the need to condemn their efforts. On 1II8/2/20-0ne year after the initiation of the Divine Empyrean temple network Huizong issued an edict concerning the problems that the temple project faced and the actions he would take to ensure its success. The edict merits a full translation:8o Nothing is more wonderful than the Dao and nothing is more divine than Heaven. It is the Dao and Heaven that cover all the myriad creatures. The Su­ preme Emperor rules Heaven according to the Dao. He watches the four di­ rections and aids only the virtuous. I, Your Emperor, succeeded to the throne with sincere reverence and regarded it with awe. The Supreme Emperor came at times, and the lofty Perfected One de­ scended from high frequently.81 Auspicious signs appeared one after another, and the realm has been at peace. I was deeply concerned that my sincerity in repaying [the divinity] has not been properly expressed. Thus, I issued an edict to the realm to establish Divine Empyrean Jade Purity Longevity Palaces in order to make reverent offerings to the Great Lord and the Sovereign to repay them scrupulously, and to plead for divine blessing for the people of the country. Pondering on the labor for construction, I feared wearying the people, and

78. Zhang Shi, ''Wang Sijian muzhi ming" .l.. � �£'it1i, in NanxuanJi � .ff � (SKQS ed.) , 38.7. 79. SS 348.n030. 80. Songda zhaolingji I79.649-50. The same edict can be found in SHY Ii 5.4b-5a but in a shorter version. 8!. Huizong had seen such revelations more than once before and after Lin Lingsu's arrival at the court. He took these revelations seriously; they were documented either by his courtiers or by himself, for example, in the stone inscription translated in Ebrey's article in this volume. For another example, see Song da zhaolingji 136.482. .

S H I N -YI CHAO therefore converted the Buddhist temples instead of creating new ones. It has been nearly a year now. What scholar-officials should do is follow orders, obey teachings, and co­ operate wholeheartedly to make offerings to the upper realm in order to help [me, the emperor,] to make reciprocation most venerably. However, a few prefectural administrators have been trifling and irreverent; they never seriously offered bright halls or retreat-cottages. [The temples] are either facades or could only accommodate a few priests. They are shabby, humble, unclean; not at all in accord with the luminous and numinous ones. When Daoist priests appealed [to local officials] they often received capital punishment. How could this be what I expected? I wonder if [the administrators] did so because they have sunk into heretic opinions of prevalent custom and followed the likes and dislikes of the contemporary times? Otherwise, they have reviled the teachings of the sages and delayed the orders of the state; the crime is not pardonable. Now, I order that judicial commissioners and investigative circuit commissioners carrying out their inspection tours must visit recendy established Palaces en route in person to pay their respects, as well as to conduct their investigation; to examine what has been neglected and what has been completed; to observe what has been left out and what has been retained for the temple equipment; and to check every temple arrangement. Make reports to the throne, which will be evaluated. With [this] handwritten edict to decree and instruct, you should understand my mind.

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The tone of the edict was serious and its enforcement no less so. The next month (m8/3), the prefect of Jianchang � & (Sichuan province), Chen Bing Ft #-, was removed from his position for building the Divine Empyrean temple insincerely and for punishing Daoist priests,82 a charge

82. SS 21.399.

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brought against him by Huang Baoguang if -i 7'G , an attendant censor it,fip �, whom the Songshi deemed to be otherwise a man of dignity.83 Huang brought the same accusation against three other local administrators, all of whom were suspended from their positions 1+ It. Iiu Ji f1&. Uinshi 1097), who governed Yanling �F! county, Kaifeng MJ .jt , was demoted after Zhao Ting :M! � , a fiscal commissioner "'lfi�,84 reported him for not building the Divine Empyrean temple according to government regulation.85 If this amounted to a battle be­ tween the emperor's personal interests, enforced in the form of state power, and individual officials motivated by their consciences, the latter clearly lost the first confrontation, and it was their colleagues who turned them in. The solidarity of the shi, if it existed in the first place, was easily undermined by imperial power. In imposing the temple project, or any other imperial projects, on local administration, the authority of the emperor expanded. Daoist priests also could report local officials for neglecting Divine Empyrean Palace matters. eai Juhou Jj. /b Jf, who was governor of Yingtian, Henan, at the time, was accused by Daoists of building the Divine Empyrean Palace in a swamp and was transferred to Ruzhou i"k ?'N (in present-day Henan).86 Zong Ze * i"f (1059-1128), for another example, had offended some Daoists earlier. They seized the chance to report Zong to the court for building the Palace improperly during his tenure as prefect of Dengzhou * ?'�I (in present-day Shandong).

83. SS 348.11030. 84. While fiscal commissioners were primarily responsible for taxation and other fiscal matters, they were also the investigators for the emperors during the Song period (Xu Huailin 1f'ltlll*, "Bei Song zhuanyun shi zhidu luelun" ;It. ***j{{t��, in Deng Guangming ill Jl it et al., eds., Songshiyanjiu lunwenji * 3t 1ff � � ;,t � [Henan: Henan renmin, 1984], 287-318, esp. 331-32). Kracke notes that together with judicial commis­ sioners (tidian xin;gu gongshi .j,tl!;1ftJ�J';/] {t), fiscal commissioners led the Circuit In­ tendants Evaluation Bureau (Zhuanyun shi fu tidian xingyu keji yuan **j{{t.i�.j,tl!;1ftJ ��*F;t), an office established in 1049, to conduct personnel evaluations under their jurisdictions. See E. A. Kracke, Jr., Civil Service in Earjy Sung China, 96o-I067, Harvard­ Yenching Institute Monographs 13 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1968), 44. See also Hucker, A Dictionary ofOfficial Titles in Imperial China (Reprint-Taipei: SMC, 1995 [1985]), 186. 85. SS 448.13200. 86. SS 356.11210.

S H I N -YI CHAO

Zong was already semi-retired and living in the countryside of Dongyang .t. � (Zhejiang) at the time, but he was still punished by dismissal from his nominal assignment Ji. and forced relocation to Zhenjiang ��.!. .87 The duties of the prefects did not end at building the Divine Empy­ rean temples. The temples, after being built, were placed under their direct jurisdiction instead of under that of local Daoist registrars J! ..iE.. . 88 Nevertheless, day-to-day temple affairs required abbots in residence, positions which would soon be filled by the graduates of the government Daoist schools that Huizong had launched two years earlier. At the court, in IIl8/7, Huizong assigned his trusted courtiers to attend to his project. The appointments included CaiJing, ZhengJuzhong, and Yu Shen �iJ to be the palace commissioner 1; 1t and Wang Fu and Cai Xiao, among others, to be the vice palace commissioner ,%IJ 1t of the Divine Empyrean Palace, and the next month, he announced the completion of the Divine Empyrean Palaces. 89 From that point on, the Divine Empyrean Palace project moved into full gear.

The Function ofLocal Divine Empyrean Palace After a year of painstaking effort through decrees, rewards, and pun­ ishments, the court finally felt confident enough to announce the com­ pletion of the Divine Empyrean Palace network. Huizong promptly proceeded to make it into a fully functional religious agent for his Shenxiao Daoism. He announced, in IlI8/8, that the graduates of the recently established government Daoist schools could fill the positions of the supervisors and vice-supervisors of local Divine Empyrean 87. SS 22.404; see also Zong's biography by Yu Ao ��, collected in Zong Zhongjianji * .t AA 1t< (SKQS ed), 7·5b. 88. SHY I27.IO. 89. SS 22.404. For a translation of the edict, see Ebrey's article in this volume. Never­ theless, new local Divine Empyrean temples continued to be added to the network. The Nengren jj�1.::. Buddhist Temple in Changzhou of 1+1 (in present-day Jiangsu), for ex­ ample, was not converted into the Divine Empyrean Palace until the Xuanhe era (Sun Du -If,Jt, "Changzhou Yongqing chanyuan xingzao ji" of 1'''' *..f:;jf.'*�.it�(., in Hongqing jushiji �.f:% ± 1t< [SKQS ed.), 22.17a). And in Pingding + Jt 1'�1 prefecture (in pre­ sent-day Shanxi), the Palace was not finished until 1124 (Shanxi tongzhi ..4 tEi llL .t. [SKQS ed.), 170.55a).

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Palaces. The next month, the state granted the Divine Empyrean Palaces the Daodejing with the emperor's own commentary to be engraved on stone in the temples.90 The following month, Daoists were ordered by imperial edict to receive ordination 1: � at Divine Empyrean Palaces in the capital or in the counties.91 Huizong clearly intended to make the temple network the basis for his Divine Empyrean Daoism in order to recruit clergy to be led by his academically trained lieutenants, and they would all be exposed to the achievement of Huizong, their "lord of teachings," in Daoist philosophy. Outside the temples, the hatchets � , were erected in the same manner prescribed for Confucius temples �Ji...f.. :Jt. 5t � .£ 1fJ .ft. fJe..92 Steles were also erected. The Daode jing with Huizong's commentary was engraved on stone at the temple and, beginning in 1II9, Huizong's imperial brush inscription "Record of the Divine Empyrean Palace" was engraved as well.93 The stone inscription certainly could remind the locals of the divine sanction that the sovereign's authority had received. In addition, Huizong ordered prefects in prominent locations to compose records for the Divine Empyrean Palaces in their own jurisdictions as, for example, in the case of the one in Zhenjiang prefecture.94 The central altar of a Divine Empyrean Palace enshrined the statues of Great Lord of Long Life and his younger brother, Sovereign Green Florescence. The two brothers embodied the core religio-political func­ tion of Divine Empyrean Daoism. They manifested to visitors, especially scholar-officials who were required by imperial order to go to pay their respects, the divinity of their current emperor.95 In the main hall surrounding the sanctuary, a set of ceremonial pro­ tocols m.1l bestowed by the court were exhibited on four shelves, two on each side. On the east side, on the first shell, the following items were

90. ]SBM 127;ua.3837. 91. SHY daoshi 2.3. 92• ]SBM 127.ua.3835. 93. The inscription is translated by Ebrey elsewhere in this volume. 94. Wang Zao, Fuxiji 20.5-8. 95. On this topic, see Patricia Ebrey, "The Emperor and the Local Community in the Song Period," in Satake Yasuhiko, ed., Chugokii no rekishi sekai-togo no shisutemu to ta­ kugenteki hatten (Tokyo: Tokyo toritsu daigaku shuppan kai, 2002), 373-402.

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displayed from east to west: a brocade umbrella i$ . , a red­ tasseled staff ,� ifj , a precious canopy f ..l., a pearl flag .41t, a five­ brightness fan 1i a,ij �, and a banner hoisted on a feather-decked mast �; and on the second shell, also from east to west: a silk dust-remover �.� �, a narrow flag �, two crane-feather fans ��, a gold ax 1t�, and a scepter -!til;!:. The west side hosted symmetrically the same objects except that a jade ax .L 1r replaced the gold ax.96 This imperially be­ stowed set of ritual objects certainly enhanced the majesty of the temple in the eyes of the audience. On top of this, it supplied one more direct link between the central court and the provincial temples, and further­ more, it regulated the design of the Empyrean Palace down to the ar­ rangement of the halls. From the steles outside, to the sanctuary, to the decor of the main hall, the entire panoply of a Divine Empyrean palace brought to mind the divinity and majesty of the emperor in his far­ away capital. The Divine Empyrean Palaces also housed the therapeutic agencies of the state, the Humane Aid Pavilions. On III9/6/3, Huizong issued the following edict:97 I, Your Emperor, regard the Dao to be merciful toward the world. Isn't it from the starting point of the Dao that my people are made free from suffering illness, injury, or early death? Talismans, registers, incantations, and prayers are indeed efficacious for curing illness and vanquishing virulent plague. In previous times, residents of the capital using these means surely benefited from them. I have always desired to extend this to the entire realm and widely distribute them to aid the people. This is what I wish to achieve now. All prefectural administrations should install the Humane Aid Pavilion in a space three pillars wide in a corner of the Divine Empyrean Palaces. Select three to five charm-water Daoists or lay people who have mastered such techniques to practice the teachings according to the rituals and give out charm-water from dawn until noon. They must be concentrated and purified to remove evil and dispel plagues. Whatever the specialists need, the official clerks will supply to them in full. Do not harass them and cause them to double their already vexed labor. Meanwhile, assign an official clerk and a Daoist official to look them over, record their meritorious deeds, and make evaluations every twenty days. At the end of the year, report to the supervising transport intendants and investigation

96. Laoxue an biji 9.82 (Taipei: Shanwu, 1966). 97. Song da zhaolingji 219.843.

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commissioners with veritable records, and there shall be awards. Those who have made mistakes or are insincere, and expecting gratuitous reward for no merit will be treated without pardon according to the legal code. This is to allow all commoners to receive concrete benevolence from me, to enter the realm of longevity together, and to keep peace. J1�Y).l!.tf.;ff 7C. """f , 1t�4z�.:1dl

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The edict made the Divine Empyrean Palace a place where people could go for free therapeutic treatment provided on the emperor's be­ half. By going to these therapists, the patients were exposed to images celebrating the alleged divine origin of their sovereign and to other divine figures of the Divine Empyrean myth. They were also exposed to tem­ ples regulated by state directions, which provided a visual affirmation of the state-promoted religious belief. It is intriguing that Huizong should choose a clinic to be the affiliated government institution of the Divine Empyrean Palace. Huizong himself was an accomplished medical theorist. His Canon if SagelY Benifaction l:��� "investigates the signs of the Five Phases and illuminates the transformation of the six qi It. (cosmos breath). The wording is trans­ parent yet the meaning is profound. . . . Song Huizong . . . perfectly understood the medical specialists' words and had formed his own . . " � .Ii {- .d. II"' ..!.lit. = .:ir- :'I!! �1. b .;.1.. .� � 0plmon 1"," 1T�J:t.J{ , Y1 )f.t�'1J"u. 5C. l� '"I � '''" , . . . 1®l � ff�-Jj)l.. � � 1;, "'��i�.it m 1,.98 He also oversaw a project that collected, com­ piled, and circulated clinically proven efficacious prescriptions, and the result was a monumental summation of Chinese medical achievement up to the twelfth century, the Medical Enryclopedia: A SagelY Benefaction if the Zhenghe Reign (Zhenghe shengji zonglu it ;fil l: � � � ; hereafter, Medical Enryclopedia) .99 Nevertheless, Huizong was also a believer in the divine healing properties of Daoism. When his consort had red eyes, he .

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Ai:

•

•

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•

•

•

98. Lu Xinyuan ft ·,:; � (1834-94), "preface" to Song Huizong Shengjijing (CSJCCB vols. 1381-82). 99. See Goldschmidt's chapter in this volume.

352

S H I N -YI CHAO

requested treatment from Wang Zoo 11f%, a Daoist seer invited to reside in the court.lOO Huizong's belief in religious healing did not con­ flict with his enthusiasm for the medical profession. The former was part of the latter, in the emperor's ideal. This attitude was well manifested in the Medical Enryclopedia, for which Huizong himself wrote the preface. 1 0 1 This encyclopedic work included information ranging from acupuncture to talismans, from pharmaceutical prescriptions for illnesses to a formula for an elixir. 1 02 In addition, its ftnal three chapters, excluded from the Siku quanshu edition, contained nutritional advice, breath practices, elixirs, and instructions for the elimination of the "three worms" -=- ? . 1 03 The last two subjects were typical Daoist practices, while the ftrst two were commonly discussed in Daoism. Huizong's passion for religious healing as part of healing practices was not unique in his times. A widely circulated formulary of the time, the Fine Prescriptionsfrom 5u and 5hen .ij. �:t R 7J,104 included in its very ftrst chapter various Daoist elixir recipes that promised longevity. As a matter of fact, while the medical profession had had its own tradition since Han times, it was hardly completely apart from Daoism. 1 Os This was particu­ larly evident during Tang times, when physicians such as Sun Simiao demonstrated familiarity with Daoist rituals and invocations, and "masters of incantations" � JE � was one of the four divisions in the court's medical bureau. 1 06

100. SS 462. 13528. 101. For the personal involvement of Huizong in this medical encyclopedia project, see Goldschmidt's chapter in this volume. 102. Song Huizong Shengjijing, annotated by Wu Ti �;f)t (CS]CCB, vols. 1381-82). 103. Various interpretations of the "three worms" can be found in Daoist texts. Ba­ sically, the three worms are spirits who reside in a person's body and who are happy to see the host person die. Eliminating the three worms was an important practice for longevity. See Kubo Noritada i1 � ,$, Koshin shinkO no kenkyu: NitchU shUkyo bunka kOshOshi JJt t 1t {1)1 o:> Z1t 1E: EJ
Huizong and the Divine Empyrean Palace Temple Network

353

However, it should be noted that the healers who served at the Hu­ mane Aid Pavilions were not necessarily Daoist priests. The inclusive attitude that this reveals suggests Huizong's general belief in the thera­ peutic power of rituals, and that he intended to subordinate to state supervision what he perceived as a powerful technique. This becomes clear when we juxtapose it with other examples of Huizong's conduct. He issued an edict for the destruction of more than 1,500 so-called "excessive shrines" )� �� in the capital in 1111/1.107 The next year he be­ stowed an official title, among other forms of patronization, on a fourth-century immortal, Xu Xun "tfll, whose cult had risen in popu­ larity since the early Song period.1 08 Huizong's repeated requests for miracle-workers, discussed in footnote 14, probably served more pur­ poses than religious curiosity alone. Local religious practices, including ritual healing, were either to be included in the imperial scheme or to be destroyed. In light of this, it is not surprising to find that two years before the establishment of the Humane Aid Pavilions, in III?/6, Huizong de­ creed the prohibition of sorcerers and sorceresses £.3!Jt .109 As Davis's book on Song China shows, a major function of vernacular spirit me­ diums was that of religious healing.110 Huizong banned vernacular sha­ mans not from disbelief in the authenticity of their healing power; on the contrary, he recognized their power and thus wanted to replace unau­ thorized practices with government-regulated ones. The Divine Empyrean Palaces also provided space for Huizong's Daoist Canon project.111 In 1114, Huizong launched a campaign to search for Daoist texts and solicited specialists to compile an updated Daoist Canon at the court. 112 The result was the Daoist Canon if the Longeviry if the Zhenghe Reign Jlt�11 � "' l! � . In 1116, the prefect of Zhenjiang brought the Canon as well as diagrams and registers to the Divine Em-

107. 55 20.385. 108. Boltz, A Surory, 72-73. 109. 55 20·398. IlO. Davis, 50ciery and the 5upernatural of50ng China. III. For Huizong's Daoist Canon project, see Chen Guofu f! iI .r.t, Daozangyuanliu kao i!��i/,t.:if (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1963), 130-47; Piet van der Loon, Taoist Books in the Libraries ofthe 5ung Period:A Critical5tudy and Index (London: Ithaca Press, 1984); and Boltz, A 5urory, 5. Il2. For example, Iiu Yuandao, see the Mirror (HY 296), 51.4.

354

SHI N -YI CHAO

pyrean Palace in Fuzhou ;f,i 1'1'1 for carving printing-blocks.l13 And the Divine Empyrean Palace in Kuocan #; � (in Zhejiang) processed a complete set of the 4,551-chapter canon.

The End 0/the Divine Empyrean Palace Network Although Lin Lingsu fell out of Huizong's favor and accordingly left the court in late 1119, Divine Empyrean Daoism continued to hold Huizong's favor. The Divine Empyrean myth in fact played a role in Huizong's abdication of the throne in favor of the crown prince, the future Qin­ zong (r. 1126-27). On 1125 /12/23, Huizong was persuaded by Wu Min � � to cede the throne to the crown prince.1l4 Wu Min hinted to Huizong that the crown prince was the reincarnation of the Sovereign Qinghua, sent to aid the emperor.l I S Qinzong ascended the throne and abolished 105 unnecessary bureaus at the court; the Divine Empyrean Palace temple network was not one of them.1 I 6 Ouyang Che � � mt, a courtier, actually submitted a memorial to condemn the temple network and admonished the emperor to destroy it.ll7 Yet it was not until the reign of Gaozong (r. 1127-62) that the edict abolishing the Divine Empyrean Palaces was issued (1127/ 5) . 11 8 The statues and decorations enshrined and distributed by the state were re­ located to the Heavenly Celebration Monasteries . We should not inter­ pret the decree as an authorization for the destruction of the Empyrean

113 . liang Kejia * >t � , [Chunxi] 5anshan Zhi [ i$. � ] .::. J.r ;t (5KQ5 ed.), chap. 38. 114. The scenario in which Huizong announced to the crown prince the decision to pass down the throne is noteworthy. Huizong's original plan was to let the crown prince be the regent Ii: eg , but under the persuasion of his courtiers, he changed his mind and decided to abdicate in favor of the crown prince. Upon learning of his father's decision, the future emperor insistendy but unsuccessfully refused the throne and became so shocked that he actually passed out (Yang Zhongliang, j5BM 146.9). 115. Yang Zhongliang, j5BM 146.6-7. Also see Li Gang *�, jingkang chuanxinlu * .,.,t*, collected in Iiang.ld [.ldansheng] quanji * i.A [7t:. !l]� � (Taibei: Hanhua, 1970), chap. 17I.5a.[4885]. 116. 55 23.422. 117· 01!Yang .lduzhuanji et �*Jjf � (5KQ5 ed.), 3.3Ib. 118. 55 24.443.

Huizong and the Divine Empyrean Palace Temple Network

355

Palace Temples, but rather as one disqualifying the temple network as an imperial institution. It is true that Li Gang suggested using the con­ struction materials of the Divine Empyrean Palaces to reinforce local city walls for the purpose of defense, but this was a cursory reaction to the critical military situation. 119 Within two months after the above­ mentioned edict was issued, Gaozong's court twice confiscated the assets (lit. grains and cash Mft:) of the Divine Empyrean Palaces. The second confiscation order actually targeted the temples' income from farmland as the fall harvest was approaching. Obviously the exiled court had ex­ pected the Divine Empyrean Palaces to be functional enough to collect their rent from the tenants. The court also decided to return the Divine Empyrean Palaces con­ verted from Buddhist temples or ancient shrines to their original status. The estates of such temples were ordered to be given back to the old owners. Buddhist monks of the Nengren temple discussed earlier, for example, reclaimed their temple, returned the relic to the altar, and renovated the temple decor in the Buddhist style. The Temple of Still­ ness and Wisdom ;t !; F7t in Pingjiang fu if- �.L. Jft (in present-day Jiang­ su) retrieved not only its old property but also the nearly 700 mu of farmland granted to it as the subsidy of the Divine Empyrean Palace. 1 20 Yet the process of restoring the old names was often slow and drawn out. The Divine Empyrean Palace in Jiangning fu �.L. � Jft, converted from a Buddhist temple, remained a Divine Empyrean Palace for at least two years after the order was issued. 1 21 Individual Divine Empyrean Palace temples survived in different ways. Some of them remained Daoist temples. The one in Jincheng *� county (in Shanxi) went through the turmoil of the Song-Jin tran­ sition as a major local Daoist temple. Prefect Cui Zhongtong . 1+i&. of Jincheng, for instance, chose it as the venue for the Daoist priests he commissioned to conduct a Grand Offering of the Yellow Register there to console the souls of those who had died in the war or in the famine

II9. Li Gang, Jianyanjintui zhi � � i! i! ,-t , in LJangxi quanji, 177.6, 5104. 120. Nevertheless, the prefect discovered this flaw and corrected it. Dushanji (5KQ5 ed.), chapter 37.8b-9a. 12I. Gaozong took shelter there in II2915 as he fled from Jurchen troops, and it was still called Divine Empyrean Palace at the time. 55 25.465.

S H I N -YI C HAO and plague that resulted. 122 The two in Mingzhou i..t 1+1 and Xiang­ zhou �Q 1+1 also continued to be prosperous and eventually received abbots from the powerful Complete Perfection Daoism (Zhao Zhi­ yuan � ."t iJ.f. and Wang Zhitan .£ ."t J!!., respectively).123 The ones in Zezhou if 1+1 were maintained as functional Daoist institutions and trained talented Daoist masters for the next century. 124 Never­ theless, only a small number of the Divine Empyrean Palaces survived as Daoist temples. Most of them left little or no trace, for they were de­ stroyed, abandoned, or occupied without authorization during the cha­ otic period of the Song-Jin transition. Some of them, thanks to the local officials and elite, were converted into prefectural schools, such as the one in Shaozho � 1�'1 (Hunan) and the one in Wuzhou � 1+1 (in Guangxi).125 They thus received some care and attested, in the locals' memory, to a monumental state religious movement at the high point of the Song Empire. Divine Empyrean Daoism survived and actually thrived after the fall of the Northern Song. Wang Wenqing .£ j: � and Bai Yuchan E7 .J,.;j, two great Daoist patriarchs expert in Divine Empyrean ritual, extensively developed this ritual movement. During the Ming dynasty, another Di­ vine Empyrean Daoist master, Tao Zhongwen Ffa 1+ j: (?-1562), in the reign of the Daoist-influenced emperor Ming Shizong (1521-66), domi­ nated imperial religious activities during his sojourn at the court. How­ ever, neither the emperor nor his religious adviser seemed interested in establishing a temple network across the empire.126 Post-Northern Song

122. Li Junmin :!f1U\ , Chuangftngji J1. * " (SKQS ed.), 9.6-8. 123. For the Divine Empyrean Palace in Mingzhou, see "Qingping zi Zhao Xiansheng shendaobei" �t -t.:r,t!;\:' !l �{t,,*, in Daqjiajinshiluc, compo Chen Yuan f.f.�; ed. Chen Zhichao ft 9irJt! and Zeng Qingying if.f:J9t (Beijing: Wenwu, 1988), 649-50. For the Divine Empyrean Palace in Xiangzhou, see "Chongzhen guangjiao chunhe zhenren daoxing zhi bei" * � 7I:.� if ;f
shiluc, 1073-74. 125. For the one in Shaozhou, see Hu Hong tJ3 *, "Shaozhouxue ji" i MtI *lL, in Wuftngji li.oIf " , chap. 3, 1 (SKQS ed.). For the one in Wuzhou, see Guangxi tongzhi If< � l! ;t , chap. 37 (SKQS ed.); Hong Mai composed an essay to commemorate the estab­ lishment of the school; see Guangxi tongzhi chapter 103.5-6. 126. Shizong did support the construction of various temples, but these were indi­ vidual temples rather than a systematic temple network.

Huizong and the Divine Empyrean Palace Temple Network

357

emperors took a different approach to using Daoism for the purpose of political legitimation that reflected the changed circumstances of their time.1 27 f0

Huizong was first and foremost an emperor, not a founding emperor but a successor, continuing the house of Zhao started 140 years earlier. Huizong's acts cannot be separated from his performance as an emperor, as Bickford argues elsewhere in this volume with regard to his art. There were undoubtedly political motivations in his religious policies; the Di­ vine Empyrean mythology was a new version of an old political legiti­ macy strategy. Yet there is no evidence that Huizong saw lin lingsu and his revelations or ritual power as fraudulent. Belief in revelations was prevalent across social strata, as Hong Mai's anecdotes about Zheng Juzhong, quoted above, illustrate. The supernatural power of rituals was taken seriously in Song society, as Davis argues in his book. In addition, much of Huizong's behavior attested to the sincerity of his religious be­ liefs. He kept a record of divine encounters in his dreams, for example, and talked about them with his courtiers. Huizong was as much a reli­ gious man as he was an ambitious emperor. An ambitious emperor he was indeed. Huizong intended to be not only a sage-king in the Confucian mold but also a messianic "true lord" in Daoist theocracy. He perceived his court to be the fountainhead of culture, knowledge, and spiritual power, and he used the office of the emperor to put his personal stamp on religious affairs. In his design, the sovereign's palace was not only the capital of the empire but also the headquarters of the church in both the hierarchical and physical sense. It could be said that Huizong used Daoism to legitimize his rule and used his rule to legitimize Daoism. Huizong was not the first to attempt such a feat. His great-great-grand-uncle Zhenzong (r. 998-1022) tried to realize this ideal, and before Zhenzong, Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty (r. 712-56) had also tried.1 28 After Huizong, however, monarchs only su­ pervised, regulated, and controlled Daoism; the ideal of building a state-church enterprise faded into history along with the Northern Song. 127. Lagerway, Taoist Ritual, 263. 128 . Victor Xiong, "Ritual Innovations and Taoism Under Tang Xuanzong," T'oung-pao 82 (1996): 258-316.

SHI N -YI CHAO The Northern-Southern Song transition was a turning point for Chinese society in many respects. For Daoism, on the one hand, the textual innovation generated in Huizong's court largely preserved and practiced in present Daoist rituals and canon nourished Daoism and facilitated its growth. On the other hand, Huizong's project of a state church did not even survive him. As it turned out, the tragic ending of Huizong's reign ensured the eternal separation of church and state in China. From that point on, Daoism remained one of many autonomous institutions that the state desired to control, without having to assume the burdens of participation.

PART IV

The Emperor and the Arts

C HAPTER 9

Huizong's Palace Poems Ronald Egan

Huizong's output as a poet consists primarily of a lengthy series of "palace poems" 1; laJ . The recently published "complete" collection of Song dynasty poetry, Quan Songshi -±- * -tt, includes 296 of these poems, all four lines long, all individually untitled, that it attributes to Huizong, making him the most prolific poet among Song dynasty emperors.1 The poems treat a great range of subjects and themes concerning life inside the imperial palace. Aside from the palace poems, Huizong left just a handful of other poetic works. The best known of these were written after the fall of Kaifeng to the Jurchen armies, during Huizong's north­ ern captivity. They are predictably filled with expressions of lugubrious regret and self-incrimination. They offer little insight into anything dis­ tinctive about Huizong's personality or poetic talent. The sizable collec­ tion of palace poems, however, is a promising source for just such as­ pects of Huizong's temperament. To my knowledge, it has not been studied in any detail. In undertaking to do so here, I want to begin with an examination of precedents to Huizong's series. The two most noteworthy of these are sets of palace poems by the Tang poet Wang Jian IJt (ca. 75I-ca. 830) I. Only Taizong ;k. * has a comparable amount of surviving poetry attributed to him. But Taizong's corpus consists overwhelmingly of Buddhist and Taoist hymns, not secular verse. Emperor Zhenzong also left a large collection of verse, but virrually none of it survives. For Taizong's poems, see Quan Songshi �*"tt, ed. Fu Xuancong 1.t_J;f< et al. (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1998), I: 22.1.310-39.18.449. For Zhenzong, see Quan Songshi 2: 1178-83.

RONALD E GAN

and the Five Dynasties poet whom I will call Lady Blossom (she is known to us as Huarui furen 1t.�*-A..) . To make any credible assess­ ment of the distinctive traits of Huizong's poems, it is necessary first to know what the poetic type was like before the Song emperor turned his hand to it. We may be sure that Huizong knew of the two earlier collec­ tions of palace poems and that he was writing under and against their influence. Wang Jian's palace poems, numbering 100, come down to us without any explanation of the poet's intentions.2 The only revelation Wang makes about them is that he was privy to goings-on in the imperial harem because a eunuch friend of his, Wang Shoucheng 3. � i'i-, told him about them.3 There was no well-established precedent for writing such poems, and certainly not in the quantity that Wang Jian produced. The individual poems do not even have titles to help us understand their point and focus. We can only infer the poet's meaning and purposes through the poems themselves. Scholars who have studied his life con­ clude that Wang Jian's entire set of palace poems was written in a brief period the two years (825-26) of the reign of Emperor Jingzong a * .4 So we cannot account for the number of the pieces by pointing to a gradual accretion over years or decades. A few of the poems describe the emperor engaged in various activities: returning unexpectedly to his palace late at night (no. 10), personally administering literary examinations to distinguished young men (no. 7), riding at the head of a hunting party (no. 23), calling for his carriage in the early hours of the morning and leading his ladies out to view blossoms in the palace garden (no. 20), and so on. Here is one that shows His Maj­ esty's solicitousness toward the trusted officials who ghostwrite decrees on his behalf: no. 4 Before the clear jade window sit the drafting officials, Newly ripened red cherries are given to them to taste.

a .L1J��1f. El. ��t;fJJ "* �'f *'f

2. I use the version of Wang Jian's poems inQuan Tangshi ± Jt�t (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960), 302.6.3439-46. 3. WangJian, "Zeng Wang Shumi," Quan Tangshi 300.4.3402. 4. See Chi Naipeng j( 7] ., WangJianya1!Jiu conggao .l.. Jt .l>Jf1tI:� (Chengdu: Ba Shu shushe, 1997), 89-90.

��

- -

--

Huizong's Palace Poems For addressing the throne, the golden steps are too distant, All they can do is send messages, expressing thanks to the Sage.

The emperor may be mindful of those who serve him so diligently, fa­ voring them with the first cherries of the season, but it is a kindness that descends upon them from an almost immeasurable distance. It is his role to confer token gifts, but not theirs even to be able to express their thanks to him in person. What is stressed here is the gulf between the ruler and his diligent officials, which makes the ruler's act of kindness seem all the more magnanimous and remarkable. Another poem takes as its theme the emperor's concern for the em­ pire's border defenses: no. 9 The youthful emperor values frontier victories, And goes personally to the painting gallery in Rising Mists. He selects generals of merit and has their portraits copied To be made into screens in the Palace of Everlasting Life.

j,' .f k. .::r y i! �h itt JIJ it � . M 'f

Rising Mists was the gallery in which Emperor Taizong (r. 627-49) had paintings displayed of the meritorious generals and ministers who had assisted in the founding of the dynasty. The Palace of Everlasting Life is said to have been a residential palace, perhaps where the reigning em­ peror in the poem (Jingzong) slept. Jingzong was sixteen when he ac­ ceded to the throne for his brief reign of two years, hence the reference to his youth in the opening line. The poem describes Jingzong's rever­ ence for the great ministers of earlier reigns by narrating how he took the extraordinary step of duplicating their portraits that hung in the tradi­ tional portrait gallery for dynastic heroes and installing the copies in his own residence. Still, these poems that concern the emperor himself and his various activities are the exception in Wang Jian's series of 100. The great ma­ jority of the poems do not mention the emperor at all and have as their subject another sort of person altogether. That person is the palace 5. Reading the variant sheng !t forJiang � in this line.

RONALD EGAN lady, the imperial concubine. Her cloistered yet pampered life is treated in poems that detail dozens of different scenes, events, and emotions in her daily activities. We may suggest a few reasons for this particular emphasis in Wang Jian's palace poems. There is perhaps no aspect of life in the Forbidden City that would be more intriguing to the person outside, especially to the excluded male reader, than the hidden life of these palace ladies. The prospect of catching a glimpse of the way these famed beauties lived, seeing them, indeed in private and unguarded moments, would have had an immediate appeal to Wang Jian's contemporaries. In this regard his readers would be no different from those of different times and places who have likewise shown a seemingly endless fascination with the private lives of privileged and beautiful women, who happen also to be associ­ ated socially and sexually with the highest level of male authority and power. In certain respects, furthermore, the palace lady makes a more likely choice of subject than even the emperor himself. To write poems about the private life of the emperor would be unseemly. It would degrade Wang Jian's effort to the level of hearsay or unverifiable story (xiaoshuo ,j, 'IDt), like the disreputable fictions that grew up around Emperor Wu of the Han and Empress Wu of the Tang. Moreover, there is an assumption that an emperor is a special being, someone divinely favored by Heaven, and consequently quite aloof and apart from ordinary mortals. He might not make a good subject for the poet because he might not have a personality easy for the reader to identify with certainly, he would not be prey to the foibles that make ordinary lives interesting to others. The ladies around the emperor, however, are intriguing precisely because they are ordinary people. The ladies thus combine the mundane and the extraordinary in their persons. They are us the reader but different, because they, unlike us, have been transported to an unimaginatively privileged and secretive setting. Who would not be interested in seeing how they adjust to life in the "celestial precincts"? The official aspects of palace life would not hold as much interest for the poet. Court activities are already abundantly recorded in other types of writings: the court annals, the diaries of the emperor's "activity and repose," and the draft national history. A genuine expose of inner palace politics and power-brokering would, to be sure, hold considerable interest. But it would be a prose document perhaps a secret diary,

Huizong's Palace Poems or a collection of scandalous anecdotes, such as appeared from time to time in Chinese history. It would not be the work of the poet. The reader who is familiar with court poetry from earlier periods of Chinese history may suppose that Wang Jian's series resembles the "palace-style poetry"

1: mit

of the Six Dynasties period. That sub­

genre of poetry also takes the elegant and richly appointed lady as its primary subject. But the similarity between what Wang Jian produced and the earlier verse does not, in fact,

run

very deep. Certainly, Wang

Jian's choice of subject owes something to the "palace-style poetry" tradition. But the way Wang Jian treated his subject departs in several significant ways from its older cousin. To begin with, the ladies in Wang Jian's poetic series are unambig­ uously presented as imperial concubines. They are not just aristocratic women situated in luxurious surroundings, as is the case with the women in

Yutai xif!Jong J:.. .. tFfj;jc.

(the premier anthology of Six Dynasties

"palace-style poetry"). Second, the overriding tension or problem in the lives of Wang Jian's women is whether they

will win the emperor's at­

tention and favor. This problem bears some resemblance to its counter­ part in the lives of the

Yutai xif!Jong women,

but it differs in important

ways. Women in palace-style poetry are nearly always depicted alone and lonely, separated from the husband or lover who formerly attended upon them. There is usually no cause for optimism that he will return. Indeed, the poet dwells instead upon the lassitude and decline, physical as well as emotional, of the now abandoned woman. In Wang Jian's poems, by contrast, there is always the possibility that the woman concerned

will

win the emperor's favor. Thus, although Wang's women also live under severe restrictions, their situation is not the hopeless one that pervades palace-style poetry. In fact, sometimes in Wang Jian we even glimpse women who have won and currently still enjoy the emperor's attention. Moreover, since this is theoretically a possibility for all the palace ladies (except those few who have

lost His

Majesty's favor and who are then

confined), we also frequently witness them plotting to become a new imperial favorite. The moods and emotions of Wang Jian's women, then, are consid­ erably more unpredictable than what we find among the women in palace-style poetry. The settings also admit of greater variety. Wang's poems are not set so consistently indoors as is the earlier verse, and the atmosphere is therefore less stifling. We meet in Wang Jian's series im­ perial concubines in a wide range of different settings, circumstances,

RONALD EGAN moods, and stages of their lives. It seems to be Wang's intent to present as many images of these ladies as he can. It appears, actually, that the primary reason Wang's poetic series is so large is precisely because it attempts to portray the imperial ladies in all their variety of moods and situations. Here are some representative examples: no. 80 She dances until perspiration soaks through her gown of light silk, Someone helps her down the jade ladder to leave the upper story room, Back in her apartment she washes her face a second time, Specks of silver clay sprinkle into the basin inlaid with gold. Une

4: "Silver clay" is the name of a type of makeup.

no. 16 New jackets, all one style, in the yellow of the throne, Silver belts studded with jade, long otter tails.6 They all hold jade whips and ride on imperials steeds, Black hair knots and pink foreheads, the scent of musk.

• �;#If -jj tiJt fc

#.He.I. ¥ft�$p ,�

The luxuriousness of the ladies' life inside the palace is a persistent theme of Wang Jian's poems. Ordinary dancers outside the palace would also go home at the end of the evening and wash off their makeup. But the jade ladder and the specks of the "silver clay" floating in the basin inlaid with gold point unmistakably to the exclusiveness of the setting in which this dancer performs. The details of the ladies' dress, perfume, and equipment in no. 16 have a similar function. What other women or men, for that matter would ever have the chance to "hold jade whips and ride on imperial steeds" while, moreover, wearing silver and otter? Such luxury would have been all but unthinkable in the lives of most

6. For the phrasepaifang ;/lf 7J designating closely spaced jade studs used as decoration on belts, see Wang Dechen .I. 4!!- � , Zhu shi ,f: 3t (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986), A.9·

Huizong's Palace Poems readers. It is of course precisely such revelations that account for the poems' appeal to the reader outside the palace. For all of their comfort, these ladies are remarkably active. Several poems describe them engaged in games and sports, including horseback riding, archery, polo, and also a kind of polo played without horses (like our field hockey) . There is, to be sure, a certain fascination on the part of the poet, and perhaps the emperor as well, that the ladies are capable of such exertions. Hints are dropped about gender crossing (for example, in no. 22, where the ladies practicing archery kneel "in the manner of men" when they thank the emperor) . Likewise, part of the interest of poem no. 16 is the apparently incongruous mixing of images of delicacy and re­ fmement (for example, the musk perfume) with those of athletic or even martial endeavors. Still, it appears that these athletic diversions were an important part of the ladies' life and gave them opportunities to develop skills and even compete with one another in fields other than the gentler accomplishments of song and dance. Another poem (no. 33) features a lady who is so proud of her riding skill that she is eager to display it even during a storm. Yet no matter how luxurious their surroundings and how high­ spirited certain of them may have been, the central facts of these ladies' lives are these: they are virtual captives inside the palace; they are there for no other purpose than to serve and please a single male; their future, whether it be elevation to a more exalted rank (such as "honored consort" "'11(.) or repudiation and neglect, depends entirely on the emperor's fancy. This leads in turn to rivalries between the women, and to sexual politics, scheming, and machinations. Wang Jian is acutely aware of these facts of life in the imperial harem, and he alludes to them constantly in his poems. It is to his credit as a poet that he does so. In other words, Wang Jian does not allow the sump­ tuousness of the palace setting to blind him to the ladies' plight. As a whole, his series does not idealize or romanticize their situation. The references in his poems to the ladies' lack of freedom and control over their lives may at times be subtle, but they are a constant presence in his series and serve, in conjunction with all the images of splendor and lei­ sure, to greatly enrich and complicate his poems. Without this awareness of the limitations and vulnerability of the ladies' existence, Wang Jian's poems would be shallow evocations of palace luxury. With it, they are much more. Below is a selection of poems that, in one way or another, broach this theme.

RONALD EGAN no. 767 Who taught the parrot to curl its tongue in speech? Raised by the palace ladies, it has grown devious. The more it talks the more it feels His favor and attention, And reminisces often to His Majesty of Mt. Longshan.

����,*-t- fijJ rJ;] A.-t •• *-t\ "* � � f: ift .� if

Mt. Longshan was known for its parrots. In this poem the bird is like a palace lady who, corrupted by the intrigues of palace life, still longs for the freedom of its native place.

no. 39 No one had ever bothered to repair the old courtyard before. But now palace attendants are ordered to construct a building there. They say a new beauty has just been selected, Until they see her, all the residents of the Six Palaces are vexed.

fi.* {f � � llff i8:fh �4tU1�. BtJ ;fif }t. A.t1" l! J\. * 't *- JL - nt �

The "Six Palaces" refers collectively to the residences of all the palace ladies.

no. 69 The palace ladies clap their hands, laughing and calling one another. They do not recognize the caretaker sweeping below the stairs. Giving him the gold coins he begs for, they vie to question him, "On the outside, are things like they are here?" no. 59 Tomorrow is the special day, the birthday of the Sage. Secretly she has someone enlist a eunuch's help. She herself writes the red gift card trimmed with gold, Sending ahead of time a shirt with paired phoenixes.

1: A. !t El a}] .fJJ Jt. >lA Jt�A. ..I rJ;] J:i: m �1t1�n.JIt.:r lit iJUt l!Jl..t #

7. In Quan Tangshi this poem is also found among Lady Blossom's works (where it is no. 149, Quan Tangshi 798.8980). I take this secondary attribution to be erroneous. See my discussion of the problems with various versions of her corpus below. 8. Adopting the variant paishou .f{J -t- in this line.

Huizong's Palace Poems no. 40 She boasts that she sings and dances better than the others, And resents not winning the ruler's favor to be summoned frequendy out. Through the night they renovate an apartment in the ladies quarters The carpets and blinds are replaced all at once. An aparunent is being readied for a new favorite, and this serves only to exacerbate the proud

subject's jealousy and frustration.

After Wang Jian probably the most celebrated author of palace poems was the woman Lady Blossom (Huarui furen). We know little about her life and even her identity is questionable. It is generally thought that she was the concubine of Meng Chang �7� (9 19-65), ruler of the Later Shu during the Five Dynasties period, selected by him for her beauty and literary talent. Later, when Meng Chang was captured and put to death, Lady Blossom is said to have gained favor with his conqueror, the founder of the Song dynasty, and to have been brought into his harem. The heir apparent (Taizong), displeased with this, eventually had her killed in a hunting "accident." This identification of Lady Blossom is affirmed in the most recent and fullest study of her and her poetry, written by Xu Shiwen .ft #.... 5t and published in 1992.9 But this identification had already been challenged in a study written in the 1940S by Pu Jiangqing iM �.:r. it. On the basis of internal evidence in the poems, Pu argued that they are most likely to have been written slightly earlier, at the court of the Former Shu (901-25). 1 0 It has long been known that there was a Lady Blossom at that court too, who was the consort of the founder, Wang Jian .I. � (not to be confused with the Tang poet of the same name), and mother ofJian's successor, Wang Yan .!.. �it . 11 Pu Jiangqing thinks that this earlier woman was more probably the author of the "Lady Blossom" poems, or that she and

9. Xu Shiwen, Huareigongcijianzhu 1�ti 1: 16) l ii: (Chengdu: Ba Shu shushe, 1992). 10. Pu Jiangqing iiff � it, "Huarui furen gongci kaozheng" 1� ti *- A. 1: 16) ;f � (1947), reprinted in Pu Jiangqing wenlu iiff � it *-* (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1958), 47-101, see esp. 79-80. II. See, e.g., Cai Tao �it, Tiewei shan congtan -' 111 J.r "it (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 6.108---9 .

37°

RONALD EGAN

others may have jointly authored them. While most scholars argue for authorship by one or the other Lady Blossom, it is also possible that the "Lady Blossom" corpus that we have today combines poems by the two ladies. What is clear is that in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries a corpus of palace poems attributed to "Lady Blossom" came to enjoy considerable repute. The poems must have been known to Emperor Huizong, as Wang Jian's poems also surely were. During the Xining period (1068-77), Wang Anguo ..I. � � , younger brother of Wang Anshi, came across a tattered manuscript of them in an imperial library. He copied out 3 2 of the poems and spoke of them to his older brother, noting what a shame it was that Wang Jian's palace poems were so well known, but that these, which were equally accomplished, were ne­ glected and forgotten. Two other officials, Wang Gui ..I.{i and Feng Jing ;.� 1{.. , are said to have joined in the effort to promote Lady Blos­ som's works, with the result that soon they "circulated widely in the world." 12 We know from two early sources that the original manu­ script that Anguo came across contained 100 poems, or close to it ("80 or 9 0" by one account, and exactly 100 by another). 13 Why Anguo copied out only 3 2 we do not know. But to judge from references to the corpus and quotations of it that are widespread by the early Southern Song, it is clear that the version that "circulated widely" contained the full complement of poems, not just the 3 2 that Anguo first recopied.14 It is very likely, then, that the entire corpus was known to Huizong when he devoted himself to the task of producing his own palace poems, and, indeed, tripling the size of what had evidently become a conventional number of pieces in a palace poem series. It should be noted here that the version of Lady Blossom's palace poems found in Quan Tangshi �J!tt is particularly unreliable. There, its size is swollen to 157 pieces, being based on Ming editions that mistakenly include many poems that were actually written by earlier authors (such as Wang Jian), as well as

12. Hu Zi t}] H-, Tiaoxiyuyin conghua {t iAi.�, r! . �, houji 40.333. 13. Liu Ban lint, riu Ban shihua lint�t�, in Song shihua quanbian *-�t���, ed. Wu Wenzhi �xn; (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1998), I: 28.447; and Chen Shidao f! /iiji l!, Chen Shidao shihua f! /iijil!�t�, in Song shihua quanbian 2: P017. See also Pu Jiangqing's discussion of these accounts of Lady Blossom's works, 69-70. 14. See Pu Jiangqing, "Huarui furen gangci kaozheng," 90-91.

Huizong's Palace Poems

371

other pieces whose provenance is unclear but that are not attested in Song editions. Xu Shiwen's study includes a collated text of the authentic 100 poems, together with annotations and a translation into Modern Chinese. It is his text and piece numbers that I use below. But I also provide secondary piece numbers (in parentheses) to the Quan Tangshi version of Lady Blossom's works, since that is so much more widely available than Xu Shiwen's volume. Chen Shidao Ft tiifi it (1053-1101) uncritically asserts that Lady Blos­ som "modeled" her palace poems on the well-known work of Wang Jian. 1 5 While everyone who wrote palace poems after Wang Jian was in­ fluenced to some degree by the conventions and parameters of his 100 poems, Lady Blossom's verses occasionally explore sentiments and subjects in ways that set them apart from the Tang prototype. One of the ways they do this is by presenting to the reader aspects of palace life that are arguably less predictable than those we ordinarily find in Wang Jian's poems. There is a concentration of detail and surprising particulars in Lady Blossom's poems that is distinctive. We do not need to account for this by saying that Lady Blossom wrote from personal experience, whereas Wang Jian wrote, by his own admission, from hearsay. Personal experience is no guarantee that the poems that result from it will be any more convincing or "authentic" than those written second-hand. But in Lady Blossom's case, she evidently took full ad­ vantage of her life behind palace walls to include in her poems specifics of goings-on there that would have been difficult for an outsider to imagine. Two examples are given here: no. 34 (81) The water-pump lifts water up the palace wail, A trickling sound is heard from the eaves in the palace of repose. To enhance the sweetness of our Sage's pillowed slumber, Through chilled nights they create this sound of a distant mountain stream.

:1]<. . �:1]<.J:. 'l: � . � M jj! 5� 5� ��

15. Chen Shidao, Chen Shidao shihua, in Song shihua quanbian 2: p017.

372

RO NALD EGAN no. 32 (88)

As the month begins they are supplied with coins to buy flowers, The ladies of the entire palace must number several thousand. When their names are called in roll most of them say nothing, Bashfully hurrying past, before the imperial couch.

Another divergence of Lady Blossom's poems is that they are less apt to dwell on the sheer luxury of the circumstances of the palace lady's life. There is less of the tone of breathless wonderment over the extrava­ gances of the emperor and his attendants than we find in Wang Jian. Again, we sense the presence of the insider in these poems, who has long ago become more or less accustomed to her unusual circumstances, rather than the outsider who writes with a voyeuristic sense of envy and awe. Lady Blossom generally does not indulge in self-pity for the plight that she and the other ladies fmd themselves in. Her poems are remarkably free of traces of the palace plaint, which are so common in Wang Jian's verses. Perhaps the inherent insecurity of the palace lady's position, and her virtually complete lack of control over her life, were too close and too real for Lady Blossom to want to write about them, much less feature them as Wang Jian had done. In Lady Blossom's poems we are more likely to encounter ladies who give the impression of being quite satisfied with their situation. The following poem conveys this mood: no. 38 (86) The light silken blouse shows her skin underneath, The summer days are growing long, the paneled hall deserted. She leans on the railing by herself, without a single care, Where the water-borne winds are cool, she reads her book.

;t ili � .:rJtJlJLJf

l:. El ;fJJ iHUll .It

One of Lady Blossom's poems that does express commiseration for someone does so not for palace ladies but for eunuch, who must answer

Huizong's Palace Poems

373

both to the ladies and to the emperor. This poem is remarkable for its sympathetic portrait of the eunuch's dilemma: no. 86 (68) A eunuch of the rear apartments wraps his head in a silken kerchief, Entering and leaving the imperial residence constantly. Gauging the expression of the Sage, he worries about making a slip, When in the inner rooms he fears the ladies there.

� Af.&lf&�fit�

�*i:bil:��

As a poet Lady Blossom has a special gift for structuring her verses around visual images that evoke, one way or another, the leisure and beauty of the palace lady's life. Often these images occur as the con­ cluding line in a quatrain. In contrast to WangJian's verse, these featured images are not ones of loneliness, apprehension, or helplessness. They are instead details that capture some fragment of the comfort and indeed the beauty with which these ladies were surrounded. Lady Blossom, as befits her appellation, has an eye for beauteous detail of color and texture. The gauze gowns of ladies picking lotuses are splashed by magnolia oars, as their boats race each other (no. 26 [24]); sitting beside a dark stoneware basin from Yue filled with clear water, a lone lady splits open a silver melon (no. 3 8 [85]). By making such vivid and elegant images the climax of her poems, Lady Blossom helps to impart to them a tone of pervasive satisfaction. Concluding this survey of Lady Blossom's work, we return to the sense of the lived experience of palace women, persuasively presented, that we find again and again in her verse. The experiences are apt to be fleeting, and they are sketched with attention to their unique combination of particulars. It is those details and the special moments they capture rather than any weighty emotions that are key: no. 18 (17) When spring winds first appear, after completing her makeup She sneaks out to pluck sprigs of blossoms along the water's edge. Caught sight of from afar by a eunuch, She makes a show of throwing love-seeds at the orioles.

�� I*J J,tl!�Jl. *H� k .a.fr"*,:t

374

RONALD EGAN no. 70 (112)

Late at night the drinking party ends, the moon begins to set, Countless palace ladies have carelessly stuck blossoms in their hair. The attendants and fair ladies are first to cross the lake, On the distant shore we hear them shouting to the boatmen. "Fair ladies" in line 3 is one of the several titles of imperial concubines, rank 3b.

As a poet, Lady Blossom chose not to follow Wang Jian in his em­ phasis on the frustrations of the palace lady's life. The distinctive traits of her palace poems lie in another direction. Her talent is for recording the revealing details and visual beauty of the life she knew. It is odd to think that this one palace lady, when she expressed herself in verse, gave in certain respects a more sanguine portrait of life in the women's apart­ ments than did the Tang official, who had gleaned information about that life from his eunuch friend. We can only guess at the complex mixture of biography, imagination, and self-encouragement that informs her verse. But we may also note that she allowed less of the poetic tra­ dition into her poetry than did Wang Jian. Hers is the collection that stands further apart from the stereotype of the palace lady and her plaint as conveyed by earlier court poetry. This survey of the two best-known earlier corpora of palace poems prepares us to gauge more accurately the special traits of Huizong's contribution to the genre.

While the poems by Wang Jian and Lady

Blossom diverge in certain respects, they also share many traits. Joindy, these two earlier collections had the effect of establishing the dominant conventions and range of palace poems in terms of subject matter, mood, and texture. Huizong's poems depart from many of these conventions in a way that is unmistakable and idiosyncratic. The first issue that must be dealt with concerning Huizong's poems is the rather complex one of authenticity. The culmination in just the past few years of the massive publication project of

Quan Songshi,

in

72

volumes, has facilitated the study of Huizong's poems but has also contributed its own complication to the matter. That publication credits Huizong with a large corpus of palace poems, nearly

300

of them,

which it presents together with a small number of other surviving

Huizong's Palace Poems

375

poems attributed to him.16 It is safe to assume that the inclusion of this large number of palace poems in this authoritative collection of the dy­ nasty's "complete" poetry will give new prominence to Huizong's iden­ tity as a poet. It will also certainly make his palace poems more widely available than they had previously been. Huizong has no surviving lit­ erary collection of his own from Song times. Moreover, in recent cen­ turies his palace poems have never circulated independently but have always been found in books devoted to the poetic type that present more than one collection. The best known of these is a book entitled E,jia gongci � 1: laJ, which presents Huizong's collection followed by that of Empress Yang of the Southern Song dynasty (wife of Emperor Ning­ zong). This book is reprinted in several widely available congshu it :t, including Shi ci zazu tt laJ�fHJl, Congshu jicheng it :t I. A , and Siku quanshu tm '*� •. Historically, Huizong's poems have also appeared in books that contain not two but either four or ten collections of palace poems. Quan Songshi takes its version of Huizong's palace poems, in three juan, from one of these, a rare copy of a Song woodblock entitled Sijia gongci tm � 1: laJ, found in Beijing Library. Citing this provenance, the editors present the poems as Huizong's own and give no hint that their authenticity is problematic. One can distinguish two different types of problems and, indeed, authenticities. The ftrst is the more ordinary. It involves what we usually mean when we ask if poems attributed to a writer were really written by him or her, implying the possibility that later imitations or outright forgeries have mistakenly come to be taken for the author's own. This problem was raised by the Siku quanshu editors in their cata­ logue entry on Erjia gongci. 1 7 Their source for that work, compiled and printed by the often unreliable Mao Jin �* (1599-1659), had a post­ face to Huizong's palace poems ostensibly written by one of the em­ peror's own consorts, one Zhang Ankai ... �·ti, and dated 1124/8, that is, just two years before incursions by the Jurchen armies forced Hui­ zong to abdicate. The postface gives a ftrst-hand account of the ini­ tial collection of Huizong's palace poems, telling us that it was done on command by Zhang and another palace lady, Kong Zhen :JL#! . . -

16. For Huizong's palace poems, see Quan Songshi 26: 149I.I.l7043-1493,3-l706I. 17. Ji Yun R.$:), ed" Siku quanshu zongmu tryao £!l Jf�t'� � .f;t.�, in Hqyin Siku quanshu zongmu tryaoji Siku weishou shumujinhui shumu 1;- 51 £!l Jf � t' � � .f;t.�a £!l Jf� 1It:t � �;I;t(:t � (faibei: Shangwu, 1976), 5: 38,4215-16,

376

RO NALD EGAN

Together, the two collected 300 pieces that had been composed during the 24 years of Huizong's reign. The Siku editors challenge this postface on the basis of two of its details: it applies a title to the lady-compilers ("princess" -A' .3:..) that was no longer in use at the time, the titles of imperial consorts having been changed during Huizong's reign by Cai Jing 1J :t.. The editors also point out that the given name of the second woman, Zhen, violates a taboo observed at the time for the Emperor Renzong's temple name. The Siku editors thus conclude that the post­ face is spurious and its account of the first collection of Huizong's poems unreliable. They further note that Mao Jin, in his own postface to Huizong's collection, acknowledges that several versions he has seen of the emperor's palace poems vary somewhat in size, from 280 to 29 2 to 3 00 to a few more than 3 00. Siku editors then take up the second col­ lection in the book, that by Empress Yang. Mao Jin's own remarks, they remind us, cast doubt on 20 of the 50 poems, which he only recovered from a "palace" manuscript in the possession of a friend that was oth­ erwise unknown. Also, several of those additional 20 poems had else­ where been attributed to earlier poets. The Siku notice ends with the discouraging observation that among the 3 50 poems in ErJiagongci (that is, in the two collections), genuine and spurious pieces are mixed confusingly together in roughly equal measure. This conclusion may be appropriate regarding Empress Yang's collec­ tion, based on what the editors have said about it. But nothing the editors have said seems to justify the application of the conclusion to Huizong's collection as well. The editor's rejection of the imperial consort's post­ face, which itself might be challenged, appears to have unduly affected their evaluation of Huizong's collection. What are the worst of the implications and scenarios here? That not only is the postface to Huizong's collection spurious, but the collection it seeks to validate is a complete fabrication done by some later hand. The existence of the Beijing library copy of Sijiagongci shows at least that the collection cannot be later than Southern Song. But there is reason to be less skeptical than one might suppose. In fact, the Siku editors pass over other information that can be found in Song dynasty sources pertaining to Huizong's writings, information that supports, if it does not prove, the traditional attribution of the palace poems to the ill-fated emperor, or at least to his court. It turns out that a sizable quantity of Huizong's palace poems are attested to have been part of a collection of his complete literary works,

Huizong's Palace Poems entitled

Huizongy1!/i • * � #<, which was

377

compiled by imperial decree

not long after the establishment of the Southern Song. Early and gen­ erally reliable Southern Song sources give consistent accounts of this literary collection, which does not survive. Both Xiong Ke

�� .>t

1189), in Zhongxing xiaoji � � ,J, te. , and Li Xinchuan (1166-1243), in Jia1?Janyilai xinianyaolu � � Jf;'U�. "' -+�.,

(ca. IIII-ca.

� '-:; 1l

report that the collection was commissioned at the court of Gaozong in

1140, at the request of Zhu Yi � �, a collator in the Palace Library, to be compiled by Zhu and court historians. The fmished work in 100juan was

formally submitted to the court fourteen years later and then deposited in Tianzhang Hall

� ... /WI

peats this information.19 A list of the contents the bibliographical section of

(1223-96),

Songshi * � re­ of Huizongy1!/i is given in

in the Hanlin Academy.1s The

Yu hai

..I.. *

by Wang Yinglin

� � ..

during whose time the manuscript was still in Tianzhang

Hall.2o Among the genres of writing included in the list is the entry "palace poems,

200 pieces." Wang adds that the collection has a preface

written by Emperor Gaozong himself, which also circulated separately and is attested in several other sources.21 There is no evidence that the

Huizongy1!/i was ever printed. It was eventually lost, though when is not clear. In the Ming dynasty, Wen Zhengming x. .flt aJ,l (1470-1559) sizable

refers to it as one of a number of literary collections by Song dynasty rulers that have not survived.22 The significance of

Huizongy1!/i

for our purposes is that it shows

that a considerable quantity of palace poems attributed to Huizong were collected together shortly after his reign. Furthennore, the col­ lecting of the poems was done under court auspices and by officials who specialized in such endeavors and who were charged with the serious task of codifying the late emperor's literary output for posterity. It is unlikely that transparent forgeries would have escaped their notice.

18. Xiong Ke, Zhongxin xiaoji (SKQS ed.), 28.6a-b; and Li Xinchuan, jia'!Yanyilai xinian yaolu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988), 135-2162. 19. SS 114.2713 (c£ 102.2499). 20. Wang Yinglin, Yu hai (SKQS ed.), 28.19a-20a. 21 . Ibid., 28.2oa. See also Zhang Chou � .Jl: , Qinghe shuhua fang it M .. .- � (SKQS ed.), 1OA.6b-7b; and Ni Tao f${. � , Li'!Yi Zhiyilu idS· .z � (SKQS ed.), 313A.30a-31a. 22. Wen Zhengming, "Ba Song Gaozong yuzhi Huizong yuji xu," Funanji m lf1 ;If< (SKQS ed.), 22.12a. -

RONALD EGAN One's confidence in the reliability of the poems as genuine products of Huizong's court is heightened when one notices that certain of them were clearly inspired by contemporary events that are corroborated in other sources. For example, no.

151

(translated below) must be based on

an auspicious event that occurred in the eighth month of 1107, as is at­ tested in the historical record. It is extremely unlikely that after Hui­ zong's reign, especially considering how it ended, anyone would know to, or would care to, compose a poem celebrating that event of some twenty or thirty years earlier. But the impulse to do so in Huizong's court at the time the omen was reported is easy to imagine. We do not know for sure that the

200 palace poems in Huizongy'!fi are

the same poems that eventually appeared under Huizong's name in Southern Song collections of palace poems, such as that featuring four poets, mentioned above. Yet it is probable that they are. They might have been taken directly from Huizongy,!ji or from some other or intermediate collection of Huizong's verse. Naturally, the palace poems were printed and did survive, while the other genres of Huizong's writings languished and eventually perished in manuscript form, because the palace poems had greater interest for readers outside the walls of the palace than did the emperor's other and generally more "weighty" writings. Parallels to such a pattern of literary transmission and demise could be found among the writings of other high officials of the time, whose small col­ lections of entertainment songs ("song-lyrics"

1�)

sometimes outlasted

and eclipsed their voluminous output in documentary prose and more sertous verse. •

200 palace poems in Huizong Sijia gongci (and from it to Quan

But what of the discrepancy between the

y'!fi and the 300 attributed to him in Songshi)? The latter is unlike many other authors' collections in that one

does not find in it large numbers of poems that also appear in other writers' corpora. Where did these "extra" poems come from, and why were they passed over by the compilers of Huizongy'!ft? This brings us to the second type of authenticity problem. We may approach it by mentioning a fact that

will be worrisome for anyone

seeking reassurances about the genuineness of palace poems attributed to Huizong. There is silence in the early collateral sources regarding the composition of palace poems by our emperor. No source that I have found makes any mention of palace poems written by Huizong. This seems especially odd when we notice that some sources do make note of Huizong's poetic talent and quote other poems written by him to

Huizong's Palace Poems exemplify it. There are a number of "poetry talks"

37 9

tt�

and anecdotal

collections that either focus on or refer frequently to Huizong's court. If the emperor had distinguished himself by writing a greater quantity of palace poems than had any earlier poet in literary history, one would normally expect at least some reference to that body of work in the supporting literature. Literary historians do not normally require any such external, corroborative evidence before accepting as genuine works attributed to a particular poet. If we rejected as suspicious all bodies of writing for which no such corroborative reference exists, our canon of Song dynasty literature (not to mention that from earlier periods) would be a fraction of what we commonly accept today. To earn credibility, it is usually enough for us to know something about the textual provenance of a collection that connects it plausibly with the reputed author, and to see that the writing itself presents no inherent contradictions of what we know about the author's life and times. These conditions are satisfied in the case of Huizong and his palace poems. Still, the lack of any outside reference to the palace poems

is

worrisome. It is the quantity of

Huizong's output that makes it so. How could such a large corpus of poems devoted to a specialized type go completely unnoticed? Then there is the troublesome discrepancy with regard to the number of poems, ranging between

200 and 300 pieces. Finally, there are the doubts

about the imperial consort's postface, the one document that, if it were not suspicious, would have established Huizong's authorship conclu­ sively. The solution to be proposed here involves altering our ordinary sense of what we mean by authorship and authenticity. We think of Huizong's court as being distinguished for its promo­ tion of and achievements in the visual arts, but the court had literary interests and pretensions as well. Naturally, there was poetry at all courts, but not, it seems, to the extent that there was in Huizong's or with as much active involvement of the ruler himself. Huizong presents a con­ trast to his two predecessors, his father Shenzong and his older half-brother Zhezong, in this regard. We do not hear much about the poetic talents of either predecessor, nor did they leave any poems to speak of.23 Huizong, however, is eulogized for his poetic talent and for

23. For what little survives, seven poems by Shenzong and a single line by Zhezong, see Quan Songshi 18: I043.II957-59 and 24: 1394.16018.

RONALD EGAN his frequent poetic exchanges with his ministers.24 The regularity of such exchanges is confirmed by the surviving works of eminent officials, including Cai Jing and Wang Anzhong ..I. � t , which include poems that announce in their tides that they were written "in response" to Huizong's initial poem.25 Some accounts make it seem that Huizong went to considerable lengths to surround himself with persons with the talent and inclination to celebrate his reign in verse.26 Of special note is the practice Cai Jing emphasized of having officials submit poems of praise to the throne whenever a ducal minister celebrated a birthday. The court musician and ci poet Zhou Bangyan )i] *� n was one who wrote such pieces, and we are told that through the years of Huizong's reign "a large collection" of these compositions was amassedP We know that Huizong also encouraged the poetically gifted among his high officials to commemorate features of his extravagant imperial pleasure park, Gen­ yue R ., in verse. Li Zhi 4- W and Cao Zu t �!l each wrote appro­ priately elaborate rhapsodies on the park. They followed these exercises with a joindy authored series of 100 poems on the park, each piece devoted to a different one of its plantings or formations (these poems are written in the same form, the seven-character quatrain, as are Huizong's palace poems).28 As we would expect, poems ascribed to emperors frequently must have been composed by their subordinate officials, that is, those who sat in attendance at official functions and entertainments. That this was so is noted by Liu Ban f1nt (1023-89) in a comment on the poems that were regularly presented by Emperor Renzong to officials he feted: "the poems he bequeathed upon others were very numerous, but not all of them were necessarily written by the emperor himself. "29 Also relevant is the observation by Li Xinchuan that the presence of the phrase yubi �p '" or yuZhi �p � in the tide of a literary composition attributed to

24. Cai Tao, Cai Tao shihua �ft�tif; in Song shihua quanbian 3: A.I.2485-86. 25. See, e.g., Cai Jing, "Gonghe yuzhi . . . ," Quan Songshi 18: I043.Il944; and Wang Anzhong, several poems injuan 1 of his works in Quan Songshi 24: 139I.I.l5976-81. 26. Cai Tao, Tiewei shan congtan 2.27-28. 27. Cai Tao, Cai Tao shihua, in Song shihua quanbian C.I02.2512. 28. The rhapsodies and poems are contained in Wang Mingqing .I. � it, HuiZhu lu 4f4:ift (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), hou Iu, 2.75-98. 29. Liu Ban, Uu Ban shihua, in Song shihua quanbian I: I.44I.

Huizong's Palace Poems Huizong or other Song emperors is no guarantee that the ruler himself either composed or wrote out the work. 30 The nature of palace poems under examination here is that they lend themselves, as a type, to being especially separable from the life and identity of the person who wrote them. Unlike the bulk of Chinese verse, palace poems are not occasional or autobiographical. They do not even have individual titles. They thus have a timeless and impersonal quality. This characteristic of the type must be partly responsible for the confu­ sion over authorship that is so prominent in the works of Wang Jian, Lady Blossom, and others. Over time and through different recensions of separate collections, individual pieces migrate fluidly between collec­ tions because there is little basis for keeping them secured where they appear to belong. Regarding paintings variously attributed to Huizong or to court painters under him, Maggie Bickford has argued for a sense of attribution "to Huizong" that allows for the possibility that the work was not painted by the emperor's own hand. Her concept of imperial agency resolves the questions of authenticity, "borrowed brushes," and imita­ tions that surround so many of the paintings ascribed to the emperor. "The executant is the emperor's instrument. . . . we should recognize that sometimes the emperor's brush is attached to the hand of another person. That other is Huizong's agent his living brush and the imperial au­ thenticity of the work is undisturbed and undivided. Huizong is as surely the maker of the Boston Parakeet as he is of his sacred bronze tripods, which incidentally were cast by others."31 Here, I would like to extend this notion of agency to the palace poems credited to the emperor. These poems were mostly, if not entirely, written by Huizong's literary courtiers rather than by the emperor himself. The courtiers would have been only too eager to celebrate and distinguish the world of their ruler's inner palace. The authorial "voice" in the poems is detached and impersonal. There is no use of the imperial fIrst-person pronouns (zhen JBt, guaren -J.A, and so on) , and occasionally there are third-person references to

30. Li Xinchuan, Jianyanyilai chaoye Zaji � � ,,;ol�. �Jf#1c., vol. 10.1-2, of Songshi iJliao cuibian *- 3t It;fl-�� (faibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1967), yiji r. 1f< , 10.2: ll.Ia-b. I am indebted to Lee Hui-shu for this reference. 31. Maggie Bickford, "Huizong and the Aesthetic of Agency," Archives 0/Asian Aft 53 (2002-3) : 78. See also the concluding section of her chapter in this volume.

RONALD EGAN

the emperor (as shang J:.. and tianif :k -3-).32 It is likely that many of the 300 poems were composed on social occasions inside the palace, that is, during feasts and entertainments, in which officials with literary talent took turns offering new contributions to an ever-expanding corpus of palace verse. Individual credit for this or that composition would not have been an issue of great importance. While Huizong may not have composed any of the poems, it still makes sense to speak of the corpus as being his. These palace poems bear, as we shall see, the stamp of Huizong's singular court. They are the product of an environment and mentality that has the imprint of Huizong's reign all over them. One of the traits of that environment, as suggested by what we know about painting at this court, was prolific output in aesthetic endeavors by individuals who were only too glad to have credit for the decorous evocations of an enlightened era that they created transferred to the sage-ruler who was thought to have brought that era about. Huizong's palace poems are a marked departure from the tradition established by Wang Jian and Lady Blossom. The number of poems in his large corpus that would be conspicuously out-of-place in either of the earlier bodies of poems is very large. Huizong and his collaborators evidently viewed the conventions of the tradition as ill-suited to their special intentions. They replaced it with a poetic account that idealizes their palace as the enlightened apex of worldly power, verging in its splendor and virtuousness on divinity itself. Worthy pursuits rather than self-indulgent ones predominate. Nearly all hints of personal frustration, disappointment, or intrigue have been eliminated. This is a palace of supreme happiness, goodness, and beauty, reinforced fre­ quently by signs of Heavenly favor. As such, there are obvious parallels between these 300 poems and other forms of expression that emanated from Huizong's court that are analyzed elsewhere in this volume. The parallels in tone and intent with Huizong's paintings as analyzed by Maggie Bickford, his Dashengyue musical reforms as described by Jo­ seph Lam, and his stone inscriptions as described by Patricia Ebrey are especially clear. The most pronounced difference of Huizong's poems is one of sub­ ject matter. His poems do not dwell on palace ladies as exclusively as do 32. See no. 153 translated below, and also no. 291.

Huizong's Palace Poems earlier collections. Ladies are certainly the subjects of some of his poems, but only of some. The distribution of subjects is thus in a sense the in­ verse of what we find in Wang Jian and Lady Blossom. The earlier poets occasionally stray from the primary focus on ladies to treat another subject. Huizong regularly returns to the subject of ladies from the other aspects of palace life that hold his attention, but he does not write about them to the near exclusion of all other aspects of palace life. An exclusive focus on palace ladies would not suit the intent of these poems, as we can infer it. That intent is to describe and exalt the virtue of Huizong's palace and by implication his reign itself in all regards: its justice, wise governance, concern for the common people, divine blessings, restoration of ancient institutions, veneration of the classics, moderation, intimidation of alien powers, and aesthetic accomplish­ ments and taste. One cannot achieve this goal by writing only about the imperial concubines. Huizong's series retains the interest it does from the ways it goes about its task, interspersing restrained evocations of courtly learning and decorum with more transparently eulogistic lines. It is also interesting to see how thoroughly certain traits that we normally associate with literati taste and preferences that is, pride in the achievement of a kind of high-minded contentment that was not supposed to be dependent upon the trappings of luxury and power infuse these poems from the very apex of the imperial institution. Some examples will first be given of poems whose laudatory intent is especially clear and unsubtle. no. 151 On a clear morning, the post messenger announces a phoenix report, Congratulations are exclaimed at Purple Mansion, where the hat-pins and tassels gather. From Qianning comes news of the latest ausplclOUS Slgn, For several nights the Yellow River flowed clear, right down to the bottom. •

•

•

33. Emending qianchong .ft; * (a phrase that is unattested in Song sources) to qianning ft: •. I am grateful to Charles Hartman for suggesting this emendation.

RONALD EGAN Line 2: Purple Mansion is the name of the emperor's residential palace. Hat-pins and tassds are metonymy for high officials. Lines 3-4: Qianning was a commandery on the Ydlow River (modem-day Qingxian, Hebei).

This poem must have been inspired by an auspicious event of 1107/8 that is recorded in Song sources, when the Yellow River turned clear at Qianning.34 no. 93 Loquats in the Zhe circuits flourish in the right spot, Transplanted to the vermilion roofs their yield doubles. Heaven acts to confer such inordinate luxuriance, Precious objects ·always appear when Great Peace prevails.

�*�;fe.�i-Jt� �*,fJ- ��!lA �'�M.��1t-� �4h li1 *, :l: � if

Line 2: "Vermilion roofs" must be a reference to the palace buildings and grounds.

no. 96 The colored streamers of Tortoise Mountain rise above forbidden streets, Blinds are raised at Duan Gate, Five Clouds stands open. The marvelous sights of Prime Eve are shared with the people, Pedestrians are not prohibited from approaching Dew Terrace.

� r" "�.n.1; MJ :it 1f 1! -;t � � *

Tortoise Mountain is an enortnous dome-shaped structure, also known as Lantern Mountain, erected at the New Year to serve as the focal point for the capital's festivities and popular entertainments. During the cdebration, which lasted from the end of the year until past the fifteenth of the first month (prime Eve), city-dwellers were allowed into areas nortnally forbidden to them, hence the statements in lines 3-4. It may be the emperor himsdf who sits behind the raised blinds in line 2, viewing the performances on nearby Dew Terrace, a stage also built especially for the season. 35

34. See SS 20.379 and 6I.I338. 35. See Meng Yuanlao .ii. j(. �, Dongjing menghlla III .t. :r. .f *it (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), ''Yuan xiao," 6.34-35. The term "Tortoise Mountain" does not occur in Meng Yuanlao's account; he uses Lantern Mountain (deng shan �.lt) and Mountain Loft (shanpeng .It tNi). "Tortoise Mounrain" does occur in Zhou Bida p.iJ .;l;:k, Qianchlln shllishi ji '#'):f.It.*t�, ''Yuan xi," in Shllo/11 ���, 120jllan version, contained in Shllofll san zhong ���-=-� (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988), 69.2b.

Hllizong's Palace Poems no. 153 The Music Bureau proclaims the music that had long been lost, Our ruler personally set the tonal standards, reforming the wanton and indecent. At Long Gate winged cranes come to soar and dance, It is only the correct and proper that His Majesty esteems.

-fdH ��*�.

.iE.$ � �p.J:.*ikitt

no. 30 A row of crimson banners flickers in the morning sun Ten thousand horses neigh in the wind, the road back stretches afar, Knowing the wily western barbarian has come to swear allegiance, His Majesty personally approaches Crimson Tower to receive the surrendered king.

k$lt .I atAHt � .� '1IrJ.tt *" �-k

no. 190 Policy advisors study the Shao, Xi, and Feng reigns, To follow and improve on the achievements of the Three Kings and Two Emperors. Morning and night they labor anxiously, never daring to be idle, Calling for their clothes before the dawn bell rings.

� � fi*p,;�� I!l �.=... I;:;... *' :I}]

line I: the reformist reigns of Wang Anshi's New Policies during the 1070S and 1090S. line 2: the three founders of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, and the emperors Yao and Shun who preceded them.

These few poems already broach aspects of Huizong's reign that are well known from other sources, such as the preoccupation of his court with auspicious omens, its reforms of ceremonial music to "recover" the ancient standards (found conveniently enough in the lengths of His Majesty's fingers), and the filling of the palace grounds with plantings from every corner of the empire. We may first be surprised also to find the motif of the intimidation into surrender of the foreign barbarian, given what we know of deteriorating foreign relations during Huizong's rule, not to mention how it ended. Probably such poems and there are several of them reflect not the reality so much as the level of 36. Reading the variant wa ;'i for wang i.I. in this line.

RONALD EGAN

apprehension at the court over the foreign threat, here transformed into comforting assertions of supremacy. A considerable number of Huizong's poems focus not on such vir­ tuous activities, or reactions to them (by Heaven, by border enemies), but rather on the sheer beauty and elegance of the palace world. These accounts may lack direct references to deeds of imperial sagacity or be­ nevolence, but they are equally intended as evidence of Huizong's goodness as ruler. Beauty is virtue in the mentality of these verses. Every additional manifestation of beauty in the palace grounds, in Huizong's poetry and painting, in the imperial calligraphy collection, or in other precious objects is further evidence of the emperor's profound learning and impeccable inclinations. Aesthetic beauty is not shallow ornament in this environment. It is, rather, testament to the ruler's superior cultiva­ tion. Here is a selection of such poems: no.

194

Coir-palm and tall bamboo grow in equal number along the paths, With all the fresh interest of a Southland scene. Low junipers and little pines stand among strange-shaped rocks.

il- 1.x �J:. � J-A!!tJt 1�;Jt ,J' >fA j. -Il- >b

The purity surpasses apricots blossoming In sprIng. •

•

no.

177

Jade roofs are remote and inaccessible, the inner doors bolted. Pine and cypress on the little hills display green all four seasons. The winding railing looks down on the emerald flow of a stream, It's just like a painted screen of the land of immortals. no.

A

15

small rock from Cloudy Cliff is shimmering emerald,

The bright object is moved beside the Jade Throne.

A

thousand-fathom peak may rise above all others,

It does not have the divine essence of this delicate, Intricate stone. .

.

1; J. ,J' >b � #f Jfi)

� .fit 1J} � L J.i � -t1Y.1*�J(t� �

Huizong's Palace Poems no. 51 A jade hook and red ribbon suspend the pipa, Its seven jewels gleam more brightly as it is played. His Majesty has newly painted a sprig on its surface, What if plucking the strings causes the precious blossoms to fall?

#r 1H ! -c f' .t1. EI}).�1.. J41-Wi �IffttJf f,tp :t -IT �i "it 1� �Jl Jt 1� ..£. i� �I.!.t

no. 8 Authentic brushwork by Xi and Xian exceed anything from antiquity, Only an exhaustive search brought them to the imperial seat. Retiring from court, aloeswood is lit in the ancient bronze tripod, The frost-white hairs are blackened to practice wntlng agam. .

.

.

Line I refers to Huizong's collection of calligtaphy masterpieces by Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi. Lines 3-4 describe the emperor applying himself to the study of these ancient models.

In earlier collections of palace poems, one occasionally finds a com­ parable poem that dwells on some art object or aesthetic pursuit. But in Huizong's collection such poems are so numerous that they form a conspicuous component of the collection as a whole. It is noticeable too how extreme are the statements and implicit claims made about the art objects. In earlier palace poems the treatment of the aesthetic object is apt to be passing or incidental. A lady practices calligraphy in idle mo­ ments, or she presents a painting of herself to her lord, or she trains a parrot to recite poetry.37 In Huizong's poems, there is nothing incon­ sequential about aesthetic beauty. It is often the emperor himself who is the artist-subject, as painter or calligrapher (such as nos. 51 and 8 above) . The purity of the objects and scenes is perfect; nothing in this world matches them; the calligraphic models used are masterworks for all time; the exquisiteness of the miniatures surpasses, in fact, the forms they replicate, and so on. Moving now to poems in Huizong's collection that do concern palace women, and are thus truer to the conventions of their type and more readily comparable to those by Wang Jian and Lady Blossom, we come

37. See Lady Blossom's poems, nos. I6 (I5), 43 (9I), and I5 (I4).

RO NALD EGAN

first to a large group of poems that treat ladies involved in conspicuously virtuous activities. These pieces are set in deliberate opposition to poems in earlier collections that dwell on the sheer beauty of the imperial concubines and the pampered opulence of their lives. Huizong is sug­ gesting that his ladies are not content only to be fine looking or to in­ dulge themselves in frivolous pastimes. They devote themselves to edi­ fying and self-improving activities, or to those that perform some service inside the palace. Significantly, the ladies are positively averse to elabo­ rate applications of powder and rouge. This enlightened preference is complemented by the interest they show in refmed pursuits, which happen to be precisely those that are usually associated with lofty scholars. no. 4 After their amusements, the palace consorts find pleasure in quiet leisure Showing no taste for heavy makeup or competing with coy smiles. After playing the lute, wind off the bamboo purges all dusty thoughts, A bright full moon illuminates the screen. Line 3: the instrument named, the ancient man JIit., is similar to the pipa.

no. 222 On a clear morning blinds are lifted before Emerald Hall, Pale makeup and simple hairdo ensure an accumulation of merit. Gradually transformed by moral power she has forgotten all worldly desires, Joyfully she keeps reciting "The Dochilos Grew." Line 4: the song is the no. 2 in the Book ifSongs, which begins with reference to a creeping plant ("dochilos''), whose fibers can be woven into cloth. The song is said to celebrate the virtue and industry of an ancient queen, who, by tending the plant and fashioning clothes out of it, sets a model for women throughout the realm.

Huizong's Palace Poems no. 34 The cock-fighting pen is truly not a place of elegance, Shooting ducks in the pond is not satisfying, no matter how many. Her pleasure is in caltrop and lotus fragrances off the bank, Rehearsing pipes and song as her painted boat sways.

1I1 "�.1f# 38

M-'f.t;t.lf:�Jt �

Line 2 of this may be deliberately set in opposition to a poem by Lady Blossom (no. 36 [83]), which mentions duck shooting as one of the palace ladies' pastimes.

no. 171 The street is filled with flying catkins, swirling everywhere. The sluggish mood is like becoming weary from wine. When the consorts in the palace grow tired of their amusements, They go in search of embroidered leaves to feed the young silkworms.

-It I!J -ft -If 1i), ilJi ifiIt

:kt f,ip 't 'f 4t * �

no. 221 Peaches form her fragrant cheeks, jade her skin, Fluttering skeins of cloud is the trailing hem of her robe. Rare and gorgeous sewing, she can do it all. But all she cares to exert herself at is reading.

:#t11' 'it-�.li 11' ,f

.... # � � *� 1tf �JJ � .. t ijg, * ft .\,; fh ;;t �t t" -

Huizong does not sustain this emphasis on womanly virtue all the time. There are pieces that present descriptions of feminine beauty and go no further. In other words, there are poems that dwell on the sort of details as contained in the fIrst two lines of no. 221 above, but do not move on to something so upstanding as a wholehearted enthusiasm for book learning. There are even poems that describe elaborately coifed and bejeweled ladies. Even so, what is emphasized is how tasteful their ap­ pearance is. Owing to this, and to the context provided by the other poems, the reader perceives that these ladies are cultured and cultivated, that is, virtuous, even when the poems present to us nothing beyond descriptions of their striking visual beauty. Here are two examples:

38. Reading the variant cheng � for cheng J/}t in this line.

390

RO NALD EGAN no. 103

Fine eyebrows, cinnabar cheeks, and a tiny waist, She's perfect for the long tight-fitting dress now ill vogue. Her hair adorned with palace blossoms, in the kingfisher style, The jeweled cicada and pearled butterfly are about to fly away. •

.� Ai f} Mr· j 'JllJlt 1i: :I '* $f .II;!] *' *'

nO. lIo The palace lady wants to affect the Shouyang look, And scrutinizes the courtyard plums as they blossom one by one. She brushes on pale rouge and lightly applies powder. Sloping and thin, she draws her eyebrows long.

'l: A.. .� * .. ��

*;t5!.�;k � �

i� � H� Hl,l t1.1f;ts} -.r 8,f Jt � :i: Ai -k

Line I: named for the Princess of Shouyang (fifth c.), this manner of makeup had the likeness of a plum blossom drawn on the forehead.

Ladies in Huizong's poems rarely convey the sense of a well­ developed personality or will.

Still less

do they have the worries or com­

plaints that we Hnd among the women in the series by Wang Jian. The individuals tend to be viewed in an external gaze, as in no.

103

above, so

that we read about appearances or actions, but not thoughts or emotions. When we are permitted to be privy to an inner life, that life often consists of little more than attention to diversions or external appearances, as in no. no. One of the main purposes of Huizong's poems is to convey images of palace life that are idyllic. This was not a purpose of earlier collections. We may Hnd images of comfort, lavishness, and leisure in the earlier poems, but they do not attain such a perfection of carelessness as we regularly encounter in Huizong's poems. Huizong's ladies truly have no cares and no demands placed upon them:

no. 191 Goddess-like in her loveliness, with skin of jade, A pampered disposition, she is used to having fun. If she doesn't go to the garden for a flowerpicking contest, She'll join some companions in a game of pitch-pot.

1����.I,.flJtJt .·tl·�tt* m � /F M Ill 1lli 4 i1l:f.

This lady's life is one amusement after another. The fact that she is pampered or spoiled is mentioned without any embarrassment: it is a

Huizong's Palace Poems

391

measure of how generously she and the other women are treated by their lord. Rarely, we find in Huizong's series a portrait of a lady caught in some awkward moment. But the problem will be a passing and superficial one. The point is less to touch upon some issue of emotional depth in the lady's life than to contrive to present one more aspect of her charm. In the poem that follows, it is her endearing shyness that is featured: no. u8 The palace lady arranged to play with others on the swings, Charming now in her weariness, her jeweled hairbun is askew. Fearful of running into someone who would make fun of her, She ducks into a fragrant path to straighten her flower hair ornaments.

There are numerous poems in Huizong's collection where, in fact, palace ladies are just one more attractive element of a beauteous scene. They are indeed the "flowers of the rear apartments," treated on a level like that of the lovely plantings or landscape formations in the palace gardens. Yet they would not be so comely if they were sitting around moping. So we view them viewing the attractions of the place, per­ forming, or having fun. Their enjoyment brings out their loveliness: no. 264 The sun is warm, the wind soothing deep inside the palace, Amid high blossoms and tall bamboo leisurely birds chirp. Palace ladies, hand in hand, approach the cnmson pen, Delighted to watch the patterned ducks' impulse for water play. •

no. 163 Rock piles and circling streams surpass the palace in Paradise, The fragrances and beauties of the scene change everywhere you look.

392

RONALD EGAN

Jade pendants tinkling, incomparably delightful, Their elegant songs and comely dances have endless appeal.

{,Ijt..I.. �� • FtHf �iulk."*Jt1'ff.;[ g

no. 99 Sights of spring in the Forbidden Palace are entirely alluring, Peach and plum luxuriant with blossoms fill the view. Flower-picking and enjoying the foliage, they go hand in hand. Where else would you look for a painting of goddesses?

We made the point earlier that, as for Wang Jian and Lady Blossom, it is in the latter's collection that we find more images of calm acceptance of the palace lady'S lot, or even of contentment in her life. That may sound like what we are seeing here in Huizong's series, but the resem­ blance is only superficial. Lady Blossom's women are content, but in her collection we do not sense the insistent gaiety that we find in Huizong's lines. The pleasure in Lady Blossom's poems is serene and quiet; occa­ sionally, it even has about it a touch of wistfulness and resignation. What has been taken from the concubines to provide them with such pleas­ ure control over their own lives is never completely forgotten. For example, the motif of a lady sneaking off to enjoy some solitude, only to be caught or summoned back to her room, is recurrent in Lady Blos­ som's poems (see no. 18 above). This sense of deprivation is missing in Huizong's poems. His ladies are the gayest and luckiest in the empire. Another difference is the more consistent effort to capture plausibly lived female experience that we find in Lady Blossom's works. Often, though not always, this results in highly individuated portraits of a particular girl. We have noted earlier instances of this interest in the particular and plausible moment, that is to say in avoiding both stock and idealized scenes, such as in her poem on the ladies answering roll call to collect their monthly flower allowance (no. 3 2), and that on women listening to their superiors being ferried home first late at night (no. 70). Here is one more of Lady Blossom's portraits of a young concubine:

Huizong's Palace Poems

393

no. 43 (79) A youthful palace beauty enters the inner garden, Her cloud side-locks uncombed, her face like a lotus. Ever since she was elevated to "lady," She's no longer allowed to board boats impetuously in search of blossoms.

IJ' + 'l: �jIJ I*J 111

*-l!.f.� t-Mt�f! m .fJti5f.�:kA..ft � 1t 41�jLA,f,}

Clearly, this poem also broaches the theme of the loss of freedom. It would be out of place in Huizong's series. Huizong's poems may be read as a projection of life within his palace as he wanted it to be known to others and to history. Perhaps they even reflect his own perception of what palace life was actually like during his reign. His poems will never be as famous or as important as the paintings attributed to him they are not so remarkable in literary history as the paintings are in art history but they are a literary complement to those exquisite and meticulous paintings that we know so well. The idealization of palace life that we find in the nearly 300 poems is a parallel to the perfection of birds and blossoms in the paintings attributed to him. As with the paintings, there is interest not just in the artistic product, but also in the impulse to produce it in the first place. Unlike earlier rulers, Huizong took the initiative to create his own poetic account of the palace he presided over. He was not going to leave the task to anyone else. By writing or overseeing such a voluminous collection, Huizong also took steps seemingly to ensure that his poetic series would eclipse all others, if there were any others, for what ordinary subject would presume to offer a different version of life within Huizong's palace, once the emperor had done so? There is something pre-emptive about Huizong's poem senes. The poems' dual emphasis on goodness and beauty has special sig­ nificance. One would be hard put to say which of the two receives more attention in the series. Given the later image of Huizong and his reign, we might have expected the attention to beauty to predominate. But we see that the emperor himself was as anxious that he be perceived as virtuous, and as fostering the spread of virtue among all those around him, as he was devoted to aesthetic pursuits and beauty. Here, too, we see parallels between Huizong's poems and other, nonliterary forms of expres­ sion that he promoted, as analyzed elsewhere in this volume. On •

394

RONALD EGAN

the other hand, the interest in beauty found in the poems is certainly not an intermittent or cursory one. It is even, as I have argued above, inti­ mately connected in the poems with the goodness that we are meant to see as being pervasive inside the palace. Here for once in Northern Song culture we find a blending of the two that is harmonious and almost completely unproblematic. This may be the greatest accomplishment of Huizong's poems, and the legacy not necessarily of his reign but of the emperor's perception of it: the suggestion of an occasion when aesthetic refinement and excellence was perfectly integrated with sagely virtue, and done at the very pinnacle of political power, all without necessitating any compromises to either of the two.

C HAPTER 1 0

Huizong's Dashengyue, a Musical Peiformance ofEmperorship and Officialdom Joseph S. C. Lam �*- ¥- t-

Revisiting Huizong's Dashengyue Traditional history characterizes Huizong's Dashengyue *- Ix. � (Mu­ sic of Great Brilliance) as an inauspicious music produced by evil offi­ cials and devious music theorists.1 It is, on the surface, a convincing characterization, one that references historical facts and classical theories of music. The Northern Song collapsed in 1126; Cai Jing �-f.. � (I047-1126), Tong Guan � 1r (I054-1126), and other leading officials of the time were not blameless. Proper music *It � , Confucians believed,

1. This traditional understanding is, however, more implicit than explicit; traditional descriptions usually gloss over the issues by reporting litde more than a chronology of the events of the music and its peculiar tuning and temperament standard. See, e.g., 55 129.3001-27; Wenxian tongkao �itli.:t (5KQ5 ed.), 131.52b-54b. That 55 (126.2938) describes the tuning and temperament standard as absurd ;t -*, however, vividly sug­ gests what the official historians thought but did not elaborate. Informal histories are more forthcoming. On the argument that Huizong was tnisled by evil officials, see 55 22.418, and Zhang Juzheng �Jl; iE, Dijian tushuo '*' � 1iI "IDt (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1996), 440.

J O SE P H S . C . LAM nurtured its audience, whereas improper music destroyed those who indulged in it.2 A product of moralistic and political historiography,3 this charac­ terization offers little historical or musical explanation. It neither estab­ lishes any cause-and-effect relationships between the Dashengyue and the fall of the Northern Song nor explains the nature of the music and its operation. Although widely accepted throughout traditional China, this characterization also says little about the role, if any, that the Dashengyue played in Chinese music history. Current musicological studies, however, have established that the transition between the Northern and Southern Song was a turning point in that history, one that foreshadowed the course of development of traditional Chinese music from the twelfth through the nineteenth centuries.4 In order to probe the nature of the Dashengyue and to grasp its historical, cultural, and musical significance, new interpretations are needed to supplement what the traditional characterization has offered. Toward that goal, I propose to discuss the Dashengyue as a musical performance of emperorship and officeholding. 5 In pursuit of their political and personal agenda, and in the exercise of their authorities and duties,6 Huizong and his officials publicly and purposefully ma2. The antithesis ofyt£Yue is variously labeled as Zheng music _*, music of Zheng and Wei States _m�*, licentious music � *, excessive music 1� *, or vernacular music %*. Hereafter, I will useyt£Yue to refer to proper music and "licentious music" to its antithesis. 3. See Hartman's discussion of twelfth-century Chinese historiography in this volume. See also Cai Chongbang �*:tt , Songdai xiushi Zhiduyanjiu *- f.l(.f�� '*�Jt1'Jf1t (Taipei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1993), 198-211. 4. See Feng Wenci A�5t � , "Yinyue, wudao, xiqu di fanrong yu fazhen" 1l-*, -4,m, � db €I!J � � �Hr' Jl , in Han Xinbao # t1f 18-, ed., Zhonghua wenhua shi 'f * 5t1t� (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1994), 694-714; see also Yang Yinliu �ii ill], Zhongguogudaiyif!Jue shigao 'f iii i!1 f<.1l- * �� (Beijing: Renmin yinyue chubanshe, 1981), 275-76. 5. On theories of performance, see Richard Schechner, Peiformance Theory (New York: Routledge, 1988), 1-34, 278-83; and Marvin Carlson, Performance: A Critical Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). 6. There is a vast literature on ritual and power; in particular, see David Cannadine and Simon Price, eds., Rituals ofRoyalry: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). David McMullen's chapter in the volume (181-236), "Bureaucrats and Cosmology: The Ritual Code of Tang China," is particularly relevant.

Huizong's Dashengyue

397

nipulated music as a code of historically and culturally established theories and practices of emperorship and office for themselves and for their audience the court, the populace, and their ethnic rivals, the Iiao, Xixia, and Jin. In other words, the Dashengyue did not, of itself, topple the Northern Song. However, its compositions, theories, and performances, by means of which Huizong and his officials negotiated their public and private agenda, contributed to the forces that eventu­ ally destroyed them. Thus, the Dashengyue is historically and cultur­ ally significant; it not only demonstrates the complex dynamics of late Northern Song politics and culture but also illustrates theories and practices of Chinese court music. The Dashengyue was, however, a short-lived music, one that vanished with the demise of the Northern Song. Having formally existed for only 23 years (1104-26), it did not have time to take root as a musical tradition. Its stylistic and perfor­ mative influence, if any, was glossed over by Chinese musicians and theorists. In contrast, the lesson it gave on proper and licentious musics was well remembered. In this chapter, I elaborate on this interpretation by contextualizing the Dashengyue and analyzing the ways in which its sonic and non­ sonic elements constituted a musical performance that successfully engaged its performers and audience in political and cultural negotia­ tions. As this chapter develops, I show that, while the canonical mes­ sages and operational principles of the performance were orthodox and thus intelligible to all, many of its self-referential and performative details were creative and personal,7 and thus debatable, provoking ne­ gotiations among its performers and audiences. In other words, while the sonic elements of the Dashengyue embodied classical and con­ temporary theories and practices of music, its non-sonic elements evoked the legacies of earlier Song emperors and advanced the agenda of the participants.8

7. For further description of canonical and self-referential meanings in ritual, see Roy

A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making ofHumanity (New York: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1999), 52-54, 69-106. 8. To facilitate discussion, the term "Dashengyue" will hereafter be used to describe all

sonic elements of the music, namely its repertories, structure and style of individual compositions, and performances, whereas the term "Dashengyue campaign" will be used to refer to all its non-sonic elements, namely the series of court activities that established

J O S E P H S . C . LAM

Data for this chapter are drawn from a variety of sources. Basic his­ torical materials are taken from standard sources of the period, such as the Songshi *- 3t, which provides a detailed chronology of music activities in the Song court, and which preserves lyrics and summaries from Song music treatises, most of which are now lost;9 the Song huryaojigao *- t--* -k_ [1.t] 1f )�ii� �� and the [Xu] ZiZhi tongjian changbianjishi benmo �(. * *- *," ,1 0 which provide many historical details not recorded in the Songshi; and Dongjing menghua lu t.. * ,. "* itt. and Mengxi bitan ,. �� * �t,ll which vividly describe the music culture of the late Northern Song. Additional information has been found in Tieweishan congtan il lfl J.! l: �t , * Songchao shishi leryuan *- -Wl l' � ;e. , and other miscellaneous writings of the period.12 Music data are largely taken from three documents. The first is the Zhongxing lishu 'f �lt" of u84, a recently rediscovered document that provides a musical-technical base from which to probe the nature of the Dashengyue. Currently no notated music of the Dashengyue is known; thus its stylistic features can be investigated only through the notated music of 378 Southern Song state sacrificial songs preserved in the Zhongxing lishu, many of which were composed in the early years of Gaozong's reign (U27-63).13 The second music source is Chen Yang's F! � (I068-U28) Yueshu * .. , a music encyclopedia that offers a broad

the Dashengfu (Office of the Music of Great Brilliance), which produced and promoted the music and administered its officials and musicians. 9. See SS 126-31.2937-3064; 132-41.3067-337; 142.3339-63. 10. SHYyue 1-7.280-397; JSBM, in particular 133-1-14, 134.1-15, 135-I-7a. II. Meng Yuanlao �j(.::t, Dong;ing menghualu quanshi *- :r. .J-**�*f, annot. Jiang Hanchun 4#�. (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 1998); Shen Gua it#>, Xin jiaozheng Mengxi bitan *f$tiE..J- i� * It (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1975). 12. Cai Tao �ft, Tieweishan congtan � 11/ JJ lht (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1997 [1983]); Jiang Shaoyu � �' It, Songchao shishi leiyuan Jt -tJJ :f.,!,fji;e. (Shanghai: Guji, 1981). 13. Zongxing lishu, MS (Zhongshan daxue tushuguan, Guangzhou, China [hereafter ZXL5]); a facsimile reprint is now available in the Xu Siku quanshu It $J Jf.� •. For further details on the manuscript, see Joseph S. C. Lam, "Musical Relics and Cultural Expressions: State Sacrificial Songs from the Southern Song Court (A.D. 1127-1279)," Journal of Sung-Yuan Studies 25 (1995): 1-8. Since 1138, when his court settled in Lin'an, Gaozong of the Southern Song launched his state sacrificial music, emulating examples and practices created by his father, Huizong; see SS 130.3029-37 and ZXLS 12.8a.

Huizong's Dashengyue

399

view of late Northern Song musical knowledge. 1 4 The third document is Jiang Kui's -l � Baishi daoren gequ EJ ,k; l!A� lib , an anthology of ci �� songs, notated samples of which evoke Dashengyue tunes.15 Additional music references include the twelve ritual songs transmitted by Zhu Xi, the 31 ceremonial songs by Xiong Penglai 1i� JJJHf� (1246-1323), and sev­ eral popular songs from the Southern Song and Yuan eras preserved in the Shi/in guangji *:#.,f �(. .16 The Dashengyue, especially its state sacrificial songs, was stylistically distinctive, a fact that is clearly established by available textual descrip­ tions and by its direct descendant, namely the Southern Song state sac­ rificial music. The ''Welcoming the Deities" for the Southern Song state sacrifice to Heaven, which premiered in 1143, for example, features short and zigzag phrases of modal melodies that are syllabically set to ritual lyrics. (See Music Example I.) The musical modes of the four variations of the tune changed according to rules stipulated in the Zhou/i J,¥J ;ft.17 The tunes were performed solemnly and slowly by court musicians of the courtyard orchestra 1: �, providing a distinctive blend of many timbres and numerous instruments.1 8 ..

14. Chen Yang, Yueshu (SKQS ed.). 15. Jiang Kui -4- � , Baishi daorengequ E1 ;G l!A...ilk. 1lb (Sibu befyao ed.). For a modern Chinese study of Jiang's music, with transcriptions in Western staff notation, see Yang Yinliu �iti �J and Yin Falu Jlt5! ·t- , SongJiang Baishi chuangzuogequyaf!/iu )\;: -4- E1 ;G ;tHt .ilk.1lb1'Jf� (Beijing: Yinyue chubanshe, 1957). 16. For information on these Song music works, see Rulan Chao Pian, Sonq Dynasty Musical Sources and Their Interpretation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). 17. Zhouli jinzhu jinshi JiJ :ft � Ii. � ff (hereafter Zhouli), annotated by Lin Yin #.?" (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1985), 6.231-32. 18 . Depending on the ritual stages it accompanied, state sacrificial music was performed by either the courtyard or the terrace * .ilk. orchestras, both of which were grand displays of power and resources (SS 129.3013-15). For example, the music accompanying the welcoming of the deities was always performed by the courtyard orchestra, whereas that for the first offering of wine was performed by the terrace orchestra. Arranged in a · square or rectangle inside the courtyards of palaces, temples, or al­ tar-compounds, the courtyard orchestras featured 32 singers and 351 instrumentalists, who played bell-chimes (12 sets); stone-chimes (12 sets); single bells �� (12); single chimes #� (12); grand single drums �At (4); suspended barrel drums �At (4); han­ dled drums ., At (4); a wooden-crate tlr.. (I); a wooden-tiger & (I); zithers (a total of 141: one-stringed, 7; three-stringed, 18; five-stringed, 18; seven-stringed, 23; nine­ stringed, 23; twenty-five-stringed, 52); mouth-organs (31); bass mouth-organs 1f (20); panpipes if (28); di flutes ti (28); chi flutes .l. (28); ocarinas JJq (18); suspended single

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Music Example I, "Welcoming the Deities": from the Southern Song state sacrifice to Heaven, fout modal tunes, II43 version (ZXLS 15.8a-b; continues on facing page) The yang has animated the imperial palace; The sun is spinning over the south. The heavenly gate is grand, Welcoming the deities who have agreed to come. The imperial altar radiates, lights of yellow and pearl colors. Why do the deities come so enthusiastically? Because my ancestors are virtuous.

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drums fiit (2); hand-held rattle drums (2), and a grand military drum -t-it (I) . For an illustration of such arrangements, see Figure 10.5. Set on either the terraces of the palace halls or temples or on the altars, the terrace orchestras included 4 singers and 52 instrumentalists who played bell-chimes (I set); stone-chimes (I set); a wooden crate (I); a wooden-tiger (I); brfu drums #1-.:Ht (2); zithers !.F (a total of 18; one-stringed, 2; three-stringed, 2; five-stringed, 2; seven-stringed, 2; nine-stringed, 2; twenty-five-stringed, 8); di flutes (4); chi flutes (2); small mouth-organs • tf (8); large mouth-organs ,fl1 tf (8); gourd mouth-organs � tf (3); ocarinas (2); and panpipes (2).

Huizong's Dashengyue

401

Music Example I, cont.

Staging the Dashengyue Huizong and his officials initiated the Dashengyue campaign as a strategy for implementing imperial ambitions. 19 The timing was op­ portune and the circumstances advantageous. Succeeding his heirless elder brother Zhezong (r. I085-1I00), Huizong inherited an empire beset by internal and external conflicts. One way or another, he had to take action to address the issues. Being ambitious, he wanted not only to revive the declining empire but also to establish himself as a legiti­ mate and effective Han sovereign, one who would bequeath a lasting legacy to future generations. In pursuit of this imperial goal, he first consolidated his control of the court and then strategically proceeded to change government programs and adopt an expansionist policy, 20 reviving the New Policies of his father, Shenzong (r. I067-85). 21

.

19. See Patricia Ebrey, "Huizong's (r. 1100-1125) Stelae and the Song Culture Wars" (paper presented at the Workshop on Huizong, University of Washington, Feb. 1-3, 2001), 1-3; Peter Bol, "Imperialism's Last Gasp? Huizong and the New Policies" (paper presented at the Workshop on Huizong, University of Washington, Feb. 1-3, 2001), 33. 20. See Smith's chapter in this volume. 21. See Chaffee's chapter in this volume.

402

J O S EPH S . C . LAM

Huizong punished those officials who opposed his actions and re­ warded those who sided with him, moves that not only aggravated fac­ tional rivalry among the officials but also attracted many collaborators.22 They would eventually dominate the court and work with Huizong to generate what appeared to be a resplendent court culture. Literature, calligraphy, painting, and other cultural productions flourished, and the capital of Kaifeng saw the building of luxurious palaces, temples, and gardens. Ritual and music then became an integral part of court activities. Living in a land permeated with the religious-philosophical theories and practices of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, along with local traditions, Huizong and his people regularly communicated among themselves and with the supernatural through ritual and mu­ sic.23 If the state sacrifices and state sacrificial music of the time distin­ guished Huizong from his subjects, the communal events and musics of the lantern festivals and the tide-watching outings connected them across geographical, cultural, and social boundaries. The ritual and music showcased their ethnic and cultural attributes, setting their Han identity in sharp contrast with those of the Liao, Jin, and Xixia peoples.24 Educated in the ways of emperorship, Huizong understood the im­ portance of communicating with his officials and subjects through ritual and musical spectacles comprising words, sights, and sounds . Re­ sponding to the call of "returning to antiquity," a communal goal that was being promoted by contemporary intellectuals,25 and stimulated by

22. See Levine's chapter in this volume. 23. Peter N. Gregory and Patricia B. Ebrey, "The Religious and Historical Land­ scape," in Patricia B. Ebrey and Peter N. Gregory, eds., Religion and Society in Tang andSung China (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1993), 1-44. 24. It should be noted that these non-Han empires had their own court ritual and music. See Dajinjili :k � � ;ft (SKQS ed.); Sun Xingqun �!l If, Xixia Liao ]inyitryue shigao �.l.Jt � il- * 3t � (Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 1998); Han Xinbao, ed., Zhonghua wenhuashi, 92-93, 1004-06; Dong Kechang � Jt lb , Da ]in zhaoling shiZhu :k ��4-*,ii:. (Harbin: Helongjiang renrnin chubanshe, 1993), 148-88. 25. Peter Bol, 'This Culture of Ours':' Intellectual Transitions in Tang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 191-211; Yao Yingting �i�� ed., Songdai wenhuashi >I<: f\;. x 1t.3t (Kaifeng: Henan daxue chubanshe, 1992), 131-75; and Han Xinbao, Zhonghua wenhuashi, 677-87.

Huizong's Dashengyue

403

archeological and politically timely discoveries of ancient artifacts and musical instruments,26 Huizong wanted to reform court ritual and music by emulating ancient practices. By evoking the authority of ancient sage-kings and the ideal societies that they purportedly built, Huizong presented himself as a legitimate Son of Heaven, a filial descendant of his ancestors, a benevolent ruler to his people, and a shining model for

fu­

ture rulers. Huizong's enthusiasm for ritual and music appeared to be personal and genuine. He was sensitive to musical sounds and styles and under­ stood their cultural and ethnic meanings, a fact that was vividly evoked

"Yan'ermei" QLl � -Mi and other palace poems 1: �aJ attributed to himP If he were the qin performer depicted in the Tingqin tu lt � Ii ,28

. by

he would have known first-hand that people do not argue with music, especially ritual music, while it is being performed. 29 In other words, Song people who attended performances of Huizong's Dashengyue they scholar-officials, staff, or bystanders

be

could do nothing but listen.

Like the emperor's edicts written in his Slender Gold script, Huizong's music was an imperial utterance of authority and power that his subjects had to accept obediently and loyally. Huizong's use of music was strategic because he knew orthodoxy/ orthopraxy would work for him; the court tradition of state sacrifices and sacrificial music and the Confucian ideology regarding ritual and music would transform his personal quest into a national and cultural cam­ paign. As ancient oracle inscriptions and bronze ritual vessels clearly demonstrate, the court tradition of ritual and music was as old as

26. For a reference to the discovery of Song Chenggong's (r. 636-20 BeE) bells, see 55 129.300. 27. Tang Guizhang � :!: Jf, Quan 50ngci � *- �"l (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), 896-97; see Egan's discussion of the palace poems in this volume; notice that the poems make many references to music. 28. See Wang Zhenghua 1iE.,*, "Tingqin tu di zhengzhi yihan: Huizongzhao yuan­ hua fengge yu yiyi wangluo" It ¥- III fI!J Jt n> ;t iift : .fa if- .til Fit ... JiI. � � ;t A. ��, Guoli Taiwan daxue meishushiyar!Jiujikan m j:. � � * * 1.. 1# 3t.&Jf� ;f. I'll (Taibei: Guoli Taiwan daxue, Meishushi yanjiusuo, 1998), 83-84. 29. On a theory of formalized and restricted communication, such as music, see Maurice Bloch, "Symbols, Song, Dance, and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority?" in Bloch, Ritua4 History andPower: 5elected Papers in Anthropology (London: Athlone, 1989), 22-33.

JOSEPH S. C.

LAM

documented Chinese civilization. 3D Confucianism became a state ideol­ ogy during the early Han, and since then ritual and music became un­ challengeable means of governance. Extensively described in the classics and court documents, the historical and cultural forces behind the Dashengyue campaign were unmistakable. As formal and public worship of Heaven, Earth, imperial ancestors, and other deities, state sacrifices were large-scale, complex, and auspi­ cious rites tJ ;jf performed by the emperor or his delegates according to codified liturgies on specified days and at sacred sites. For example, the liturgy of the state sacrifice to Heaven included a relatively fixed se­ quence of court and ritual activities that began with a formal an­ nouncement of the performance schedule and ended with celebratory events such as a state banquet and/ or an amnesty)! The central event of a state sacrifice was, however, the sacrificial ceremony �: a ceremony that was performed in formalized stages, namely the welcoming of the gods to the site of the performance; the offerings of jade, silk, wine, and sacrificial victims to the deities being honored; the burning of ritual utensils; and the farewell to the deities. State sacrifices were performed with yqyue; much of Huizong's Dashengyue was practiced and discussed as such. Promoted by Con­ fucians, yqyue was ideally and broadly conceived not only as musical expressions that emulated ancient and exemplary compositions such as the Shao � and Wu i<. of the Zhou dynasty, but also as a means of governance that cultivated people's hearts and minds. In other words, technical discussions of yqyue were · not separable from debates about political, social, and moral issues, and similarly performances ofyqyue, which were furnished by musicians of the Court of State Sacrifices :k. 'f -t, and were watched by the whole court as musical reflections on the current state of the empire. Discussed as a specific genre of music, yqyue usually referred to state sacrificial music, namely songs that com­ mented on and accompanied particular ritual actions in sacrificial ceremonies. Thus state sacrificial music is regularly presented in musi­ cal-textual sources as cycles of ritual songs, each of which is specified by

30. K C. Chang, Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authoriry in Ancient China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 33-43, 81-94. 31. For a comprehensive description, see Zhenghe wuli xinyi Jt;fu li.;iltJf1i. (SKQS ed.), Juan 25-29. •

Huizong's Dashengyue a title, by the ritual stage it serves, and by its distinctive musical attributes. For example, the first four of the fourteen tunes that the Dashengfu prepared for the state sacrifice honoring Confucius were grouped under the ritual stage of "Welcoming the Deities"

�;ff

and were titled

"Gathered Peace" � � .32 Their musical modes, the attributes that de­ fined the tunes and evidenced their realization of classical music theories, were also clearly marked. (See Fig.

10.1.)

State sacrificial music was not the only music that Chinese courts accepted as Yf!Yue. Music for various secular and essential functions of the court, such as imperial auditions and state banquets, was also con­ sidered proper, and was often referred to as Yf!Yue. In technical discus­ sions, however, these secular and ritual musics were specifically called

yatryue, � � / t: � , a term that is often translated into English as "court entertainment music" or "court banquet music." A substantial part of the Dashengyue was yatryue, which could, however, be more ritual than entertainment. It included, for example, songs that accompanied the emperor's approach and his seating on the throne

-1t Ji during imperial

audiences or the political toasts offered to foreign dignitaries during state banquets.33 fice

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yatryue were probably similar to those of vernacular entertainment musics of the time; this overlap blurred boundaries between what conservative officials would otherwise have considered musically proper and im­ proper. Indeed, time and again they would attack the courtly music entertainment they had witnessed, criticizing the licentiousness of its musical sounds and the social delinquencies of interest in featuring fe­ male musicians.34

32. SS 137.3236. 33. SS 139.3298-99. 34. For a discussion of Chinese female musicians and music, see Joseph S. C. Lam, "The Presence and Absence of Female Musicians and Music in Confucian China," in Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, and Joan Piggot, eds., Gender and Text in Pre-Modern China, Korea, andJapan: The Making and Unmaking ofConftlcian WorJdr (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 97-120.

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In addition to their intellectual zeal in trying to make all court music proper in the Confucian sense, the officials' attack pinpointed the need to distinguishyqyue from other musics of the time, revealing that in their minds, the musical and nonmusical meanings of yqyue were defmed through its contrasts to other kinds of musics. Yqyue was not the only music heard during state sacrifices, which were large-scale spectacles that featured diverse types of music, involved numerous participants, and moved among and within different physical sites of altars, temples,

Huizong's Dashengyue

palace halls, and public places. In other words, in addition to yqyue, various types of processional music and yatryue were also performed during state sacrifices. This sounding of a diversity of musics in close temporal and physical proximity rendered their stylistic con­ trasts and non-sonic meanings unmistakable. The solemn music ofyqyue that accompanied the emperor's sacrificial communication with the gods and deified ancestors marked the emperor's political access to super­ natural powers. The loud and percussive processional musics that es­ corted the emperor and his entourage on their journeys between the palace and the altars established a presence of imperial authority and power all over the capital, and by extension, the empire, forcing com­ moners to listen as passive subordinates. By the same token, on occa­ sions when diverse types of vernacular and dramatic music were played at the conclusion of the state sacrifices for the entertainment of com­ moners, commoners became the immediate beneficiaries of these courtly exercises. As they were entertained, they experienced the ruler's be­ nevolent actions. This contextual and illocutionary power of the Dashengyue cannot be physically felt nowadays, but it still can be intellectually experienced by reading contemporary reports. Performed with distinctive imperial or­ chestras of bell-chimes and stone-chimes, the Dashengyue was not re­ petitive, rhythmic, percussive, loud, theatrical, and festive like the other musics of the time. This is clearly reflected in Meng Yuanlao's ii..it-t (fl. 1126-47) vivid description of the ritual and musical spectacle of Huizong's state sacrifice to Heaven.35 Two months prior to a performance of the sacrificial ceremony on the Round-Mound Altar 1II .Ii:. in the southern suburb of the capital on the day of the winter solstice, the court started daily rehearsals of the ele­ phant escort. Thus, every day during that ritual period, several tens of flag-holders and ten-plus drummers and gong-players walked seven elephants along the imperial main street of the capital that stretched from the Gate of Virtue Revealed � �t r� of the inner palace city :k J*J south to the Southern Infusion Gate m J: r� of the outer city. The trip

35. Meng Yuanlao, Dongjing menghuaJu quanshi, 10.234-60. See also lriya Yoshitaka A. � .l � and Umehara Kaoru ;ffj, �.fl�, trans. and annots., Tokyo Mukaroku *- :Y: "'*� (fokyo: Iwanami, 1983), 330-64.

J O S E P H S . C . LAM

408

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Fig. 10.2 Late Northern Song Kaifeng and its ritual-musical sites (after Iriya Yoshitaka and Umehara Kaoru, trans. and annots., To);yo Mukaroku [Tokyo: Iwanami, 1983]). The seven numbered sites in the map are: (1) The Gate ofVirrue Revealed; (2) the Eastern Temple of Spectacular Numina; (3) the Western Temple of Spectacular N umina; (4) the Grand Ancestral Temple; (5) the Dashengfu; (6) the Court of State Sacrifice; and (7) the Southern Infusion Gate.

was punctuated by a repetitive music: two gong strikes followed by three fast beatings of the drums. People watched along the imperial main street.36 (See Fig. 10.2.)

36. See Patricia Ebrey, "Taking Out the Grand Catriage: Imperial Spectacle and the Visual Culture of Northern Song Kaifeng," Asia Major 12 (1999), part I: 44-52.

Huizong's Dashengyue During the three days prior to the sacrificial ceremony, the emperor traveled to the Temple of Spectacular Numina cestral Temple

f; I 1: , the Grand An­

�.Ii, and the Round-Mound Altar to perfonn the pre­

paratory ceremonies. He was escorted on his travels by processional music; his ritual performances inside the temple compounds were ac­ companied by state sacrificial music. 37 During this three-day period, drum and horn music marked the passing of the

afternoons and the third night watch

-=- � .

shen hour

'f *" in the

At those moments,

200

musicians, who were set outside the Gate of Virtue Revealed, struck drum s and blew horns loudly or softly according to how high or low the

officer-conductor moved his rattan belt and whisk. On the day of the sacrificial ceremony, the emperor presented of­ ferings to Heaven and to Taizu (r. 960-76), the founder of the dynasty, at the Round-Mound Altar. Whenever he was on the top tier of the altar performing the offerings, the terrace orchestra

1t'*

would

perform; and between the offering acts, while the emperor waited at the bottom of the altar, and while the civil and military dances were performed, the courtyard orchestra would play the accompaniment •

mUSIC. As the ceremony concluded, performance of yat!yue began. The Imperial Military Band

.�� it performed their processional tunes, and

musicians of the Entertainment Music Office, who had been waiting outside the outer wall of the altar compound, perfonned musical en­ tertainments. First, a military dancer perfonned a movement of fast music-dance tIb � , and then other musicians joined in, producing sounds loud enough to shake heaven and earth. In the meantime, the emperor and his entourage returned to the palace, escorted by proces­ sional music. After arriving at the palace, the emperor would appear at the Hall of Virtue Revealed amid music performed by a courtyard orchestra. Then he proclaimed an amnesty to prisoners who earlier had been lined up in the courtyard outside the hall. At the cue of the ex­ pected drum call, they were released by the guards and became free. At that point, and outside the palace, a musical celebration started. The Imperial Military Band perfonned wind and percussion music, while

37. For a description of the activities at the Temple of Spectacular Numina, see Patricia Ebrey, "Portrait Sculptures in Imperial Ancestral Rites in Song China," T'ollngPao 83 (1997): 42-46, 65-71.

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the Entertainment Music Office put on a show of dramas, musical pantomime, and variety acts.

Hearing the Dashengyue and Its Enactment if Classical Theories ifMusic As described by Meng Yuanlao, the context and the performance ren­ dered the Dashengyue a formidable expression of emperorship, engaging performers and audience in discourse with one another. In other words, to Huizong, to Northern Song officials, or to anyone who listened to the Dashengyue and understood its non-sonic references, every detail of the music was meaningful. It stimulated not only sonic reactions but also intellectual responses to non-sonic entities, be they the constituents of the cosmos, the structure of the empire, the roles of rulers and com­ moners, or the functions of other animate and inanimate objects. The foundation of that discourse is a body of classical music theories that are copiously discussed in the classics, such as the Liji and Zhouli, and in contemporary documents, such as Shiwuj!Juanjilei *4h�� � � and Shilin guangji.38 Known to all educated Song people, these theories cover a wide range of musical and nonmusical topics, of which the following are relevant to this discussion of the Dashengyue. The launching of yqyue is an imperial and authoritarian act that occurs only at appropriate times of meritorious rulers. Yuqi # Hc., a seminal document of Confucian thought on music, instructs that only rulers who have achieved their civil and military goals would have music launched at their courts. 39 In other words, while rulers used •

38. Gao Cheng it:J if<, Shiwujiyuanjilei *4hk. � � !lJl, in Zhongguo gudaiyinyue shiliao jiyao t/> 1I -i> 1� il- * J?.#�� (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 2.209-18; Chen Yuanjing F.t 7t -At, Shilin guangji *;#. J1f �L, in Zhongguo gudaiyinyue shiliaojiyao, 4.694-97; 12.689-93. Gao's text, for example, gives basic definitions and histories of music concepts, reper­ tories, instruments, and practices, quoting extensively from the classics, standard histo­ ries, and references, such as the IJji, Tongdian i@. � , and Wenxuan :;til. A practical guide, Chen's book provides not only basic information about music history and theory but also illustrations of musical instruments and notated examples of qin and ci music, genres that were closely affiliated with the Song elite. 39. IJji,jinzhujinyi ;tt � L�).i��f (hereafter IJji), annot. and trans. Wang Meng'ou L 'f � (fianjin: Guji chubanshe), 19.498. The text of what is now referred to as Yueji is the same as chap. 19 of IJji.

Huizong's Dashengyue

411

military and political measures to conquer territory and control their subjects' behavior, the rulers also employed ritual and music to guide people's hearts and minds, harmonizing their voices. like ritual, pun­ ishments, and law, music served the purpose of governing and achieving the ideal society.40 Music was effective because it came from people's hearts and minds and affected all who heard its sonic vibrations trans­ mitted through qi ft . This is why virtuous rulers, who understood the true nature of music, would on one hand promote proper music and on the other hand denounce licentious music. The sage-kings of ancient times were thought to have achieved the ideal society, and thus their musical programs and practices formed the models for later generations. As reported in the "Dasiyue" *- � � chapter of the Zhouli,41 ancient rulers assigned virtuous persons as music teachers to train national university students, who, upon graduation, would serve as officials of the empire. Through musical sounds, the teachers showed the students the six virtues of being moderate, harmo­ nious, respectful, persistent, filial, and friendly; through music rehears­ als, the teachers demonstrated the expressive skills of using metaphors, exhortations, declarations, discussions, memorization, and chanting; and, through practicing the choreography of ancient dances, such as the Yunmen 1; r, and the Wu, the teachers guided the students in experiencmg anCIent mstltutlons. In the process, the students would master the music elements, all of which are correlated with non-sonic entities, such as numbers, heav­ enly constellations, directions, seasons, rituals, and colors. 42 In brief, the students would understand the elements as follows. 43 The twelve standard pitches + it constitute a set of twelve absolute pitches that are divided into six yang and six yin units, and are comparable to what Western music theory describes as the twelve pitches of an octave. Representing all musical sounds available for music-making, the twelve standard pitches are: huangzhong -t it (c), dalii *- g (c sharp), taicu .!.. � (d), jiazhong � it (d sharp), gusien -M; i5t (e), zhonglii 1+ g (f), •

•

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40. Lijt; 19.490. 41. Zhouli, 6.231-48. 42. See "Yueling" in Liji, 6.201-41. 43. The following description of the musical elements is based on my understanding of the theories as they are described in Song documents, and as they are commonly discussed among Chinese musicologists.

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ruibin � fi (f sharp), linzhong #.� (g),yize � JIll (g sharp), nanlii � g (a), wl!Yi • M (a sharp), and yingzhong .f. � (b). 44 The twelve standard

pitches are conventionally produced with pitch pipes made according to an "accurate" tuning and temperament standard, the attributes of which are derived from "authentic" measurements of length, width, and vol­ ume, qi, and other natural and cosmological qualities "accuracy" and "authenticity" of the measurements constitute the crux of the delibera­ tions. Traditional Chinese theorists do not disagree on. the types of physical or cosmological measurements that they should consult, but they do disagree on what makes a measurement "authentic" and "accu­ rate." Among the measurements, length is discussed most because length is what clearly differentiates pitch pipes, and the length of a pipe largely determines the pitch of the sound it produces. Thus, the standard pitch huangzhong is often discussed as having a length of nine cun i"; what constitutes an accurate length of nine cun is, however, debatable. De­ scribing the huangzhong in terms of linear length attests to the fact that the association/ equation between pitches and non-sonic entities is funda­ mental in Chinese music theory. For example, huangzhong corresponds with the primordial qi and thus should be used as a controlling pitch in songs that honor ancestors. The four octave pitches llE1 �t are the qing �t huangzhong, qing dalii, qing taicu, and qingjiazhong, namely octave counterparts of huangzhong, dalii, taicu, and jiazhong, which complement the twelve standard pitches to constitute a standard musical gamut of sixteen pitches/tones, one that is conventionally featured in the bell-chimes and stone-chimes, the quintessential musical instruments of Chinese proper music. (See Fig. 10.3.) The use of these four octave pitches is, however, problematic. Since they duplicate the four lowest pitches of the gamut, the duplication theoretically conflicts with the cosmological understanding that, as there is only one ruler in the world, there should be only one huangzhong in music.45

44. For comparative convenience, I equate the twelve standard pitches with the

twelve pitches in Western music. 45. Ruan Yi 1'1t11 and Hu Yuan tJjJ;t, Huangyou xinyue fuji j, 1;(;tIT* III 'iL (Congshu jicheng ed.), quan zhong � 'f , 38-39.

Huizong's Dashengyue

Fig. 10.3 A set of sixteen bell-chimes (Ruan Yi and Hu Yuan, Huangyou xi'!Yue luji [Congshujicheng ed.J, 40-41). The sixteen bells are arranged in two tiers and from the lowest in tone to the highest. The lower tier begins from the right-hand side, while the upper tier begins from the left. The last four bells of the upper tier give the four octave pitches.

The five-tones .1i.. 1f:- , the two bian-tones � , and the seven-tones -c 1f:- are relative tones; as a scale, the five-tones constitute what is described as a pentatonic scale in Western music theory; they are: gong 1: (do), shang ;tlj (re), jue � (mz), Zhi .fa (so!), and yu 5jj] (fa) . The two bian-tones are the bianzhi � .fa and biangong � 1:, which can be equated to the Western fa-sharp and Ii tones. When the two bian-tones are combined with the five-tones, the seven-tones, a heptatonic scale in Western termi­ nology, results. Like the twelve standard pitches, all these relative tones are closely associated with non-sonic entities; these include, for exam­ ple: gong/ruler/earth; shang/officials / metal; jue/ commoners /wood; Zhi/ human events/fire; yu/objects/water. The close association between sonic and non-sonic entities was the cause of many heated debates at the Northern Song court. For example, some theorists, like Chen Yang, argued that since the huanzhong/gong tone represented the sovereign, it should be dignified, and thus be lower in pitch level than . -

J O S E P H S . C . LAM

all other tones.46 In other words, any pitch/tone that theoretically or sonically goes lower than the huangzhong/gong/ sovereign tone committed a "usurpation" It �e., an offense that disrupted musical and social hier­ archies. When implemented literally, this cosmological-musical inter­ pretation would severely obstruct the free use of pitches/tones, a necesslty 1n muslC composlt1on. The musical modes 1: � are particular pools of five-tones or seven­ tones, the constituent members of which are used in some recognizable and hierarchical ways. The musical mode used in a particular piece of music is conventionally defined by the first and last notes of the com­ position under discussion.47 For example, a tune beginning and ending with a huangzhong pitch functioning as a gong tone would be classified as a tune in the huangzhonggong mode. Similarly, a tune that featured the Zhi tone as its defming attribute could be discussed as music of the Zhi tone. Since each of the twelve standard pitches could serve as a modal initial or final, and since each mode could feature up to seven pitches/tones, there were theoretically 84 modes. Nevertheless, some theorists found the use of the two bian-tones as modal initials or finals objectionable and thus they counted only 60 modes. As used in ycryue, the selection of musical modes depended more on cosmological considerations than on musical needs. An illustrative case is the prescription of the monthly rotation of modes: as the months changed, different modes were used. Another case is the ways in which modes were featured in state sacrificial music: music honoring imperial ancestors were to use the huangzhong gong mode while that honoring heavenly deities were to feature thejiazhong gong mode. In addition to theories about musical elements, the national students would also learn about the eight classes of musical instruments /\.. iT- , which are built with eight basic types of materials metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, earth, leather, and wood. (See Fig. 10-4-) As the musical instruments physically embodied historical facts, cosmological entities, cultural values, and other symbolic meanings, Northern Song theor­ ists and officials meticulously debated not only the sizes and de•

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46. Chen Yang, Yueshu, IOI.Ib-3a. 47. For a technical discussion of Song musical modes, see Pian, Sonq Dynasty Musical Sources, 43-58.

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signs of individual instruments, but also the ways in which they were displayed and used in the imperial orchestras. For example, Shi/in guangji explains the yu � as a musical instrument that looks like a crouching tiger with 27 ridges, ayang manifestation (3 times 9), on its back; a stick would be used to strike the instrument to stop performance of a piece of music.48 Chen Yang explains the musical practice as: the stick has theyin and numerical attribute of ten, and thus it can be used to control theyang ridges.49 Only after such training would the national students perform grand spectacles of music and dance, which the rulers would use to honor heavenly and earthly deities, to build peaceful relationships among 48. Shilin gllonji hou 12.7. 49. Chen Yang, Yllcshll, I24.4a-b.

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nations, to harmonize diverse groups of commoners, to entertain guests, to win over foreign and ethnic peoples, and to nurture animate and in­ anim ate beings. These spectacles were considered efficacious because their sonic and non-sonic elements activated hannonious correspon­ dences. This is why emulation of ancient and proper music is urgent, a point that Confucius clearly explained. To emulate the golden past, the Master instructed: "Follow the calendar of the Xia, ride in the carriages of the Yin, and wear the ceremonial cap of the Zhou, but, as for music, adopt the Shao and Wu. Banish the tunes of Zheng and keep plausible men at a distance. The tunes of Zheng are wanton, and plausible men are danger­ ouS."50 Confucius singled out Shao and Wu because the former was, in his assessment, perfectly beautiful and good, while the latter was perfectly beautiful though not perfectly good.51 Wu referred to the use of military force in stabilizing society and was thus not "perfectly good." Confirming the power of proper music, Confucius confessed that once after wit­ nessing a performance of Shao, he was so overwhelmed that he forgot the taste of meat for three months.52 Teaching that people are stimulated by poetry, guided by rituals, and perfected by music,53 the master declared that ritual involved more than the offering of jade and silk to the deities and that music expressed more than the sounds of bells and drums per­ formed.54 When a ruler practices music properly, he is implementing his duties as a benevolent ruler. 55 Huizong probably considered himself to be a benevolent ruler. The palace examination question that he asked on 11091316, for example, shows his understanding of classical theories and reveals his political and personal mission. It reads:56 In the past, the ancient sovereigns coordinated the transformations of heaven and earth by instituting ritual when their empires stabilized, and by launching music when their political goals are achieved. . . .

50. The AnaJeds, trans. D. C. Lau (London: Penguin, 1979), 15.133-34. 51. Ibid., 3-71. 52. Ibid., 7.87. 53. Ibid., 8·93· 54· Ibid., 17.145. 55· Ibid., 3.67. 56. SHY xuat?Ju 7.32. On the palace examination questions, see also Bol's chapter in this volume.

Huizong's Dashengyue As music had a numeral attribute of six, it was expressed through the five­ tones, and performed with the eight categories of musical instruments. Thus, there were orders and policies that harmonized nations, coordinated com­ moners, pleased the ancestors, and excited the animate and inanimate objects. As a result, gods, spirits, people, and objects existed in harmony. I, Your Emperor, have inherited the brilliant legacy of my imperial ancestors. I want to take action to trace their tasks, and continue the mission of my imperial father. What would you, scholars and officials, say about ways to achieve my goal? %:f-, ;;t I ns � j(Q iM �, �hllk. Jlx 11:m, JlX ��jt.z.1t.. . . . m .z. itr- , X

.z.1i.*, -il.z.Af", ;ff .4 ;ff lt, :fp � II , l� ;\\ �, .Pt.JtA., fhtth, t!ft#;M.A. tth JlX :fp. Jllt � jf(�1I. * � .�!J., U! j(Q 11:.z., JlX il;;t I.z. At, j(Q . #:if .z. ."t . -=t :k it. JlX iPl1nr.z.-M" ilQ if JlX "JI:..

Huizong knew the answer, and he expected the examinees to write what he wrote in his 1110 preface to Liu Bing's J1 � (fl. 1098-IIq) Dashengyueshu k l& * ... Establishing the reasons for his Dashengyue campaign, clarifying his acceptance of Wei Hanjin's !til it (ca. 1017II06) theories, and stating his desire to create a legacy for posterity, Huizong's essay reads:57 In his time, Taizu [r. 960-77] summoned He Xian -M".tJL [933-88] [to regulate music]; Renzong [r. 1022-63] ordered Li Zhao *- � [fl. 1034-38] and Ruan Yi /!1t it [fl. 1034-50] [to undertake a similar task; and] my imperial father instructed Fan Zhen ;€. � [1008-89] and Liu Ji J1JL [to rectify music] . Nevertheless, the myopic studies of these old teachers and commonplace scholars were hazy and superficial. And until now, they have neither illuminated the fundamentals [of music] nor served the needs of the world. I, Your Emperor, admire the an­ cestors, and want to continue their brilliant legacy by promoting and clarifying it. In the past, those rulers who composed music had their efforts match their times, and their merits coordinated with their achievements. Thus, their insti­ tutions were different from one [ruler to] another. . . . I, Your Emperor, have inherited the plans of the ancestors and there are reasons for me to implement them. Nevertheless, a hundred generations have passed, and [it is difficult] to trace the ancient origins; remnants of ancient customs and traces of the ancestors hardly exist. I think about this day and night. Thanks to Heaven's blessing and the ancestors' grace, a disciple of Li Liang *- It emerged from the lowly ranks of foot soldiers to present to the court the theory of the "accurate middle sounds" .p * of Huangdi and Houkui If; � . Similarly, the best bells of Song Chenggong *- llk. � [r. 636-20 BCE] emerged

57. ]SBM 135·5I:r-6a.

J O SE P H S . C . LAM from the land where I received the mandate to rule. [Thus, I] learned the measurements of ancient institutions, and they help me to implement my goals . . . . [The Dashengyue that I have launched] has followed the path of the Shao of Zhou, and removed the shallow musics of the hundred kings of the past. It will be given to my children and grandchildren and inherited by tens of thousands of generations. They will forever preserve and enjoy this music. .(i. � �!L. at, 1" WJ

,fp,),JL : .(i.1.::. if- at, 'f WJ "- ,1W, , I?t�; .(i.�f*at , 'f WJ tMA, j1#l . � � � 1�ft **IliFfi, � .it Jt � , 'It � � I'A . � -, I'A � i'"4'. '*.1(p.7\::. �t fft .1Q fl}] Z. A -t- z 1t � :it, .�at iit, -Z � ;r;/] 1�, $Ht� :f M . . . '*.jf( � ?Kz�, iili J1i1 1t Z, If .(i. 1'- k. � l- 1'- 11 -tl!:-z r , I'A it -t -t- z� , it)£\.it-!.t )t If 1f:it, »l 1t I'A .�. � :k z � , �!L. if- z-f*, "- !t z *, -=t ili i'" �iliz�, "ut ,*, J€; � .if. *, t *z5!; * h\ �z**, ili i'" -t �z*�, �l Jt $Ht.'�A�zJt, mi'"'*. .-t . . . m %J iWJz1{, $. 11 £zFfi, I'A it � -tl!:-, J!��-=t�, Ad8- 1fJ :f: . .

Grounding the Dashengyue in the Tradition ofNorthern Song Court Music Huizong's confidence was exaggerated, but not groundless. As the Da­ shengyue realized classical theories, its campaign continued the tradition of Northern Song court music. When Huizong used music to exercise his imperial authority and power, he followed in the steps of his ancestors. When he and his officials manipulated standards of tuning and tem­ perament, modes, instruments, repertories, and other musical features, they exploited sonic and non-sonic elements that had always been ma­ nipulated in musical and intellectual negotiations at imperial courts. The musical compositions they performed, the debates in which they par­ ticipated, and the memorials and music treatises they produced were typical products of court music reforms. Their personalities and political agenda shaped the course of the Dashengyue campaign. What distin­ guished the Dashengyue campaign from its Northern Song predecessors is that Huizong and his officials performed creatively, elaborately, and effectively; a further distinction was the extent to which they imple­ mented classical theories of ritual and music. This is apparent if the events of the Dashengyue campaign are compared with earlier music activities in the Northern Song court. For this comparison, an analytical survey of the music activities in the Northern Song Court will be pre­ sented here, followed by a chronicle of the Dashengyue campaign in the next sectlon. •

Huizong's Dashengyue As soon as Taizu, the first Song ruler, had secured political control of the empire, he began his musical performance of emperorship by or­ dering Dou Yan 'f � (919-60), a music scholar-official, to produce a new system of state sacrificial music. 58 Thus, in 960, the first year of the Song empire, the court heard the Twelve Peaciful Music + .:- �P , a musical declaration that a new empire had been established, and an explicit ref­ erence to the classical saying that music of prosperous times is peacefu1.59 That Taizu considered his time prosperous attests to his personal con­ fidence and wish. Neither the music nor the tuning and temperament standard used were new; the former was developed from the state sac­ rificial music at the court of Later Zhou (951-60), and the latter from a system that Wang Pu ..I.. �+ prepared for Emperor Shizong (r. 955-59) of that short-lived empire. Taizu's launch of the music was prompt, but it was not a long-term solution. In fact, by 966, Taizu was already dissatisfied with the court music being played, and thus he ordered He Xian to conduct a reform. Taizu complained that the tuning and temperament standard being used was too high, and the music performed then was sad and dissonant. His criticism was more ideological and associative than technical and audi­ tory. The classics instruct that music that sounds high reflects distressed hearts and minds; it does not serve the ruler's needs and is undesirable.60 Taizu's appointment of He reflected a traditional practice; emperors always appointed music scholar-officials to supervise reforms of court music. To satisfy Taizu's demand, He emulated Tang practices; he re­ organized the makeup of the imperial orchestras and produced new compositions, some of which celebrated the recent appearance of aus­ picious animals. This evocation of ancient music and classical theories was not unique; it was only the first of many similar attempts that were made throughout the Northern Song period. Building on Taizu's foundation of state sacrificial music, the next Song emperor, Taizong (r. 976-97),61 devoted his energy to developing 58. 55 126.2939-43. This chronology of Northern Song court music is based on 55, juan 126 through 129. For convenience, all the pages that provide infortnation on specific reigns will be treated as a unit and marked with one footnote. Exact pages will, however, be given for materials directly cited or paraphrased. 59· 4i, 19.490. 60. Ibid. 61. 55 126.2943-45.

420

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Song dynasty ya1ryue. He, too, wanted to leave a musical legacy of his own. In 996, he had two unique musical instruments, namely the nine-stringed qin and the five-stringed man I?t and their music crea­ ted. Alluding to classical theories, he explained his imperial action as follows:62 Yqyue is different from the music of Zheng and Wei States. Zheng music is li­ centious, and does not [illustrate] the way of being moderate and harmonious. I, Your Emperor, always remember that proper and accurate music can cultivate the heart, a principle of ancient sages that still operates. The qin usually has seven strings. Now I ordered it expanded [into a zither of] nine strings; the strings would then be specified as those of ruler, officials, culture, martial arts, ritual, music, rectification, commoners, and their hearts and minds ;#" ll. x ;i(.;ft�.iE l:\ .\.; .63 By so doing, the playing of nine variations of music will be harmonious and will not be confusing. The man usually has four strings. Now, I, Your Emperor, order it expanded as [a lute of] five strings, naming them, respectively, as strings of water, fire, metal, wood, and earth. By so doing, all the five elements will be used, and will not conflict with one another. # � ��, 1!t :f � , �� )j; , qF -r :fuZ� . JOC 't .� #.iEZ.>ff "iif J'A � .\.;, � ?; i:z � , � 1f

l! �. � -c �t , JOC�JtZ � /t. , Jt. � E1 : ;#" , Il. , x , ;i(., ;ft, � , .iE , l:\ , \.; JJtJ /t. � .>tt� .1i1 :f �L *, . I?t � �t, JtZ�1i., Jt. � E1 : 1}<., k, 1t, �, ±, JI.J 1i.#3t m .1i1 � ·It *' . .

,

There is no extant evidence that Taizong's unique instruments and music ever found wide acceptance outside the court.64 However, that they were made and used attests to Taizong's use of music to exercise his empe­ rorship. Only emperors commanded the authority and resources, both material and human, to have new instruments and music made and used instantly. Zhenzong (r. 997-1022), the third emperor of the Northern Song, paid administrative attention to the affairs of court music.65 In IOOI, I upon learning that some court musicians had not correctly imple­ mented the monthly rotation of musical modes in their performance of 62. SS 126.2944. 63. The nine items can also be read as: the emperor and officials would use civil and military measures, ritual, and music to correct people's hearts and minds. 64. Shen Gua, however, has recorded an official's objection to Taizu's making of the nine-stringed zither; see his Mengxi bitan yinyue bufen Zhishii 'f iA * lJi. t- * � 7t i.i ff (Beijing: Renmin yinyue, 1979), 12.

65. SS 126.2945-47.

Huizong's Dashengyue

421

state sacrificial music, he ordered a review to identify and promote those musicians who were most skilled; previously, the musicians were promoted according to seniority. Zhenzong's order may have involved only musical personnel, but symbolically it demonstrated that the em­ peror was performing his imperial duties by overseeing court affairs ac­ tively. Four years later, Zhenzong appointed Hanlin scholar Li Zong'e

:f. * � (965-1013) and archivist Qi Guan �� to launch a comprehen­

sive overhaul of court music and personnel, a reform that Censor

Ai

:>t 1'i'l.t had requested earlier. To guide the music reform, Li compiled Yuezuan � �, a treatise on tuning and temperament standards, Zhongru

definitions, and histories of music and musical instruments, procedures for the musicians' examinations, and training programs. Li's compilation is a typical product of court music reforms, which often involved com­ plex ideas and facts, and needed verbal clarification. Concrete results soon emerged. In

1006/8,

Zhenzong attended a

performance of the reformed music and musical instruments, in which the musicians played duets and trios on the instruments to highlight their accurate tuning and temperament standard. Zhenzong was quite pleased with the performance, for he had just acquired a "perfected" tool of governance and had viewed evidence of his officials performing their duties. As a result, Northern Song court music operated smoothly in the following three decades. Then, in

1034/8, Yan Su

� Ii (961-104°), a supervisor of the Court

of Imperial Sacrifices, reported to Renzong, Zhenzong's successor, that court music of the time was in disarray. 66 Typically, such reports emerged during the early years of a new reign. Although the immediate purpose of such reports might be musical, their fundamental motive was to request the new emperor to become an active ruler. 67 Thus, Renzong ordered leading musical scholar-officials, namely Yan Su, Song Qi

*- ;f� (998-1061), Li Sui :f. r.t, and Li Zhao, to launch a music

reform, which turned out to be a war of theories and personalities among the officials. In

1035/2, Yan presented a performance of 51

state

sacrificial songs with musical instruments that he had adjusted to Wang

66. SS 126-27.2947-72. 67. Renzong ascended to the Song throne as a child in 1022; only after 1033, when Empress Dowager Zhangxian 1:,it died, did he actually begin to rule. See SS 242.8614.

422

J O S E P H S . C . LAM

Pu's tuning and temperament standard.68 Li Zhao rejected Yan's solu­ tion, criticizing Wang's standard as five semitones higher than that of ancient music, and denouncing Yan's adjusted musical instruments as deficient. Sounds of the large instruments, such as the single bell, were overpowering, Li commented, while those of the small ones, such as the constituent chimes in the stone-chimes, sounded stifled; none were in­ struments of moderate measures. Like the conflicts that followed, the disagreements between Li Zhao and Yan Su were not only musical and personal, but also political and intellectual; they represented the officials' individual efforts to serve the empire. To demonstrate his position, Li Zhao requested and got court per­ mission to implement what he claimed was an ancient and accurate tuning and temperament standard. In 1035/5, he presented bell-chimes and stone-chimes of twelve constituent pitches, featuring a tuning and temperament standard that was four semitones lower than that which was currently used. Both the standard and reduced instruments evoked strong objection. Feng Yuan ;,�7t (975-1037), for example, argued that there was no reason why the bell-chimes and stone-chimes featured only twelve pitches, citing the existence of mouth-organs £. of thirteen pipes and se Gt zithers of twenty-five strings. He also asserted that the four octave pitches were needed to bar the musical "usurpation" from ap­ pearing.69 Feng, however, could not stop Li's advance. Exercising his imperial power, Renzong ordered that Li's reduced bell-chimes and stone-chimes be used until definitive answers were found. Thus, the reform continued, and more debates, research, and ex­ periments resulted, exposing issues of musical instruments, dances, cosmological considerations, and performance practices. To clarify the issues, Renzong had the Jingyouyuesui xinjing * 1;t; * flitJT�£ compiled. And in the eleventh month of 1035, Li Zhao's music and musical in­ struments premiered at the Round-Mound Altar at the south of the capital. This performance, however, only led to more musical-political­ personal skirmishes. In 1036/9, Ruan Yi I?t:i!, who, like Hu Yuan �}j J.t (993-1059), was summoned to court as a result of the 1035 search for music masters, memorialized, repeating his proposal to adopt the 68. SS 126.2948-49. 69. SS 126.2950.

Huizong's Dashengyue

423

measurements specified in Zhouli and complaining that his theories had so far been ignored. In 1036/10, Ding Du T Jt (990-1053) offered his theories on the use of millet grains in deriving tuning and temperament standards, attacking those proposed by Ruan Yi, Hu Yuan, and Li Zhao as erroneous and not worthy of implementation. As criticism accumu­ lated, Renzong's support for Ii Zhao dwindled. Thus, when Censor Han Qi #Hi- (1008-75) recommended suspension of Ii's music in 1038/5, Renzong acquiesced and ordered: "All should revert to the old practices; whatever Ii Zhao produced should not be used again."70 The emperor's order, however, seems not to have erased Ii Zhao's influence totally. In 1050, new music that apparently used none of the four octave pitches was composed for the Mingtang state sacrifice, and provided an excuse for the Hanlin scholar Wang Yaochen .I. ;t fl. (1001-56) to sharply criticize the use of musical modes in the new compositions.71 All of them used only the huangzhong mode, and thus, in Wang's mind, they contradicted the notion that the music honoring different deities should feature rotating modes. For example, the music honoring the Green Deity -t ,*" , Wang argued, should use the w'!Jigong mode. If Wang's criticism had any effects, they were not reported. However, Wang's criticism shows how strong officials used classical theories as excuses to influence the emperor. In any case, in 1050/9, Renzong ordered an audition of newly com­ posed music for the Mingtang state sacrifice. At the end of the rehearsal, Renzong lamented an obvious failure of his emperorship. He wanted to have proper music created so that he could use it to honor Heaven and the imperial ancestors and to demonstrate his own virtues; although music was performed, there was no guarantee that it was proper. Ren­ zong then ordered further discussions and instructed Hu Yuan to rectify whatever errors remained. Thus, Renzong effectively launched another round of music reform. Indeed, in the first month of 1051, he ordered the army to cut stones to be used in making more stone-chimes, and he directed officials to search for ancient measures that had been preserved among the common people. In the following month, he demanded a discussion about the titles of the music compositions being performed then. In 1051/12, 70. 55 126.2962. 71. 55 126.2963-64.

J O S E P H S . C . LAM

Renzong ordered a rehearsal, featuring musical instruments made ac­ cording to the newly formulated measurements. Debates, experiments, and construction of musical instruments continued until 1053, when the censor Li Dui *" Jt analyzed the situation, and requested a compro­ mise:72 The court has been revising music for a number of years. Now when the empire is in a time of insufficient funds, the court [still] spends a lot of money on the music reform. [Expensive] instruments have been made, [but] the court wants to change them into something else. Although the emperor has ordered top-level officials Ri:J ;{f to discuss the issues, they have not produced any appropriate solutions. I request that the court mixes the new and the old musical instruments and adjusts their tones; use whatever instruments that produce proper and harmonious sounds. -Wlht.�� � it.f, 'f il tl.t Il �1:.. Bt, ttt t -!,l. 2-fltJi\* ,

5l��� ).\ , J!t4rRi:J ;{f :k. If ��, fl\*-$i� � � � 'f . 1t )'X Wf Ji\it���!l * � � -t-:tx ��, 1!!�iii' ll110: #:t � m 1:...

Li's request was a pragmatic one, but he missed the point, because music reform was not only a matter of instruments and sounds. As nothing conclusive followed, criticisms began to appear that the con­ tested state of the empire was caused by the unstable situation of court music. Refuting the criticisms, which rendered music a negative force and an inauspicious omen,73 Renzong charged: "Music had not followed ancient principles for a long time. The recent flooding and drought re­ sulted from the merits and demerits of governmental measures. How could they be the result of the current state of court music?" *.i::. .>F � � -5 , 1<.. * . ;1JOf· .i::. *- , -f- lit it �-¥- � , .ft. * m- � � ?74 Renzong's re­ sponse was lame, as it put blame on the loss of ancient principles, when it was his failure to take control of the court that had allowed the officials to fight, asserting their views and agenda at his expense. The endless music debates and changes only accentuated the deficiencies in his emperorship. Yingzong (r. 1064-68), Renzong's successor, ruled Song China for only five years, and no significant music change occurred during his

72. SS 127.2969. 73. For a modern explanation of Chinese theories of omens, see Fung Yulan, A History ofChinese Philosophy (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 2: 55-58. 74. 55 127.2970.

Huizong's Dashengyue reign.75 His successor, Shenzong (r. 1068-86), the ambitious Song em­ peror who appointed Wang Anshi .f.. � ;G (1021-86) to implement the New Policies, faced a disharmonious state of court music.76 Neverthe­ less, Shenzong began to address the issues only during the second decade of his reign. In 1079, he ordered a revision of imperial audience music, emphasizing the need to emulate ancient practices. As a result, the music performances were made more elaborate and the make-up of the impe­ rial orchestras was adjusted. The number of mouth-organ players and singers in the terrace orchestra was, for example, increased from four to eight. 77 In the following year, 1080, Shenzong ordered Liu Ji, Fan Zhen, and YangJie �1� (jinshi 1059) to discuss and revise state sacrificial music, an action that was prompted by an earlier memorial of Yang's. Reflecting historical practices, theoretical arguments, performative difficulties, and an individual scholar-official's thorough music efforts, Yang's memorial contains seven specific recommendations and explanations, summarized as follows:78 1. The musicians should sing the ritual songs syllabically, that is, each word of the lyrics should be sung to one musical note. The ritual songs, Yang observed, had been sung with ornamental notes, and the vocal and instrumental parts had not been played homophonically. The practice had contradicted the ancient principle that singers should chant the lyrics, while the vocal and instrumental parts played the proper pitches. 2. The musicians should restore the four octave pitches in the bell­ chimes and stone-chimes so that the heavy/low/ruler tones could harmonize with the clear/high/commoner tones. 3. The musicians should stop their repeated striking of identical pitches on the single bells, single chimes, bell-chimes, and stone-chimes. Such striking, Yang commented, had produced confused and loud sounds that had overpowered the other instruments.

75. 55 127.2972-7376. 55 127-28.2973-88. 77· 55 127.2974-77. 78. 55 128.2981-83. A fuller version of the proposal appears in Quan 50n.f!}Ven �*x (Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1994), 38: 164°.161-65.

J O S EPH S . C . LAM

4. Music/dance officers should create new choreography for the civil and military dances. The current dances, Yang observed, neither demonstrated the military achievements of the imperial ancestors nor manifested the orderly patterns of civility. 5. The music officers should create new rhythms for the music so that it would sound unified and structured. The current music, Yang noticed, was rhythmically confused. 6. The music officers should compose music for the sacrifices hon­ oring the four directions, mountains, and rivers. They should also im­ plement the classical instructions, so that appropriate modes and tones would be used in the music for the various sacrifices. 7. To ensure that vernacular music would not contaminate proper music, scholars and officials should learn to perform proper music. When ignorant musician-dancers were entrusted with performances, Yang claimed, they would fmd opportunities to mix proper and ver­ nacular musics. Yang also presented twelve illustrations of musical modes and their operations. Shenzong responded by ordering Fan Zhen and Liu Ji to examine Yang's proposal and to take appropriate actions. As a result, Fan recommended that the tuning and temperament standard be lowered only two semitones, that the four octave pitches be re­ installed, and that a mix of new and old bells be assembled to serve the needs of the new music. Liu made his own recommendations. Disagreements between Fan and Liu necessitated more debates and changes. Further complications came from the officers of the Court of State Sacrifices. In 1081/11, they rejected the scholar-officials' idealistic ar­ rangement of musical instruments in the courtyard orchestra, and they proposed adopting a simpler design, one that coordinated the arrange­ ment of the musical instruments with positions of the twelve earthly branches Jt<.. and the 24 solar terms ;p ft. Then as the scholar-officials and the musicians compromised, concrete results began to emerge. In the first month of 1083, the music revised by Liu Ji premiered at the Hall of Great Celebration :k.f:�. This was, however, not the end of the Northern Song pursuit of proper music. In fact, in 1085, when Shenzong died, he left an unfmished music reform to his successor, Zhezong (r. 1085-1100), who took up the

Huizong's Dashengyue challenge,79 In that context, officials competed to take control of court music by gaining the emperor's attention and support. In

1088,

Fan

presented to Zhezong a whole new proposal for court music and a treatise, namely the

Yuelun � �, which detailed music histories, theories

of pitches and tones, measuring standards, and the eight classes of mu­ sical ins truments. As an attempt to refute Fan's interpretations as idio­ syncratic and unworthy of implementation, Yang presented his own

Yuaf!Jouyuryi

7t1� � "tl.

In

1089,

Ye Fang

1f. f� ,

a music master, pre­

sented his new choreography for the civil and military dances for the imperial audiences. In

1093, Sun E � �, an erudite of the Court of State

Sacrifices, recommended the use of music at the altar honoring the deity

ll; until then, music was provided only for the altar of the deity of earth ;fl.. .

of grains

Then, in

1098/11,

when Zhezong was reviving his father's New

Policies, he stopped the musical changes, and ordered that instructions from the Yuanfeng years

(1078-85)

be implemented again. The em­

peror's action reflected not only his desire to continue the legacies of his father, but also his decision to pursue a new direction for his court. In the

� Il .?ifl to revise court music; Yueshu � .. of 44 chapters. When

following year, he summoned Wu Liangfu Wu had previously presented his Zhezong died in

1100, he left an unfinished music reform to his brother,

Huizong.

Tracing the Dashengyue Campaign Ascending to the throne, Huizong faced pressure to take care of court music. If he could resolve the musical problems, he could musically perform as a strong Son of Heaven, one who could control his court and officials. In that role, Huizong could project himself as not only a filial descendant who would complete the unfinished projects of his ancestors, but also as a benevolent ruler who would take care of his people with governmental measures that emulated ancient practices and realized classical theories. Huizong performed spectacularly: wit-

79 . 55 128.2988-96. It should be noted that Empress Dowager Xuanren � 1;::. (1032-93) controlled the court during the first eight years of Zhezong's reign, 1085-93.

J O S E P H S . C . LAM ness the way he played the leading role throughout the Dashengyue campaign.80 In II02, Huizong summoned the officials to discuss the disarray of proper music. As reported in the Songshi, the tuning and temperament standard of the music being played then was too high; many musical instruments were broken; the musicians, many of whom were tem­ porarily drafted from the city for specific performances during state sacrifices or audiences, did not know the music; the performances were underrehearsed; and the sounds produced were confused and different from the notation. Huizong was not satisfied with the music officials present at court, who had been discussing and adjusting music for many years, producing nothing definitive. Therefore, he ordered a nation­ wide search for music masters ��, acting out the traditional argument that because the "Classic of Music" had been lost since the burning of books in the Qin dynasty, emulation of ancient music could not de­ pend solely on preserved texts, but needed the help of music masters who possessed extraordinary, if not supernatural, skills and knowledge of music. As a result, Wei Hanjin, a 90-plus-year-old music theorist, was sum­ moned to court in II02. Recommended by Cai Jing, Wei presented a peculiar theory that appealed to Huizong, a development that caused some concern in the court. To compete against Wei, Chen Yang, a vice director in the Ministry of Rites, presented his Yueshu of 200 chapters to the court in II03/9. He proposed that the use of the two bian-tones and the four octave pitches be banned, because such use would corrupt court music.81 Huizong was not convinced; but following court procedure, he ordered a court discussion, emphasizing that all he wanted was to launch ritual and music to please the gods and imperial ancestors, to rule the people, and to leave a permanent legacy for posterity. By II04/ I, Chen and his conservative colleagues had lost the intel­ lectual and musical battle. Huizong had publicly accepted Wei's proposal that the measurement for establishing the correct tuning and tempera­ ment standard could be derived from the combined lengths of the middle, ring, and little fingers of the emperor's left hand, and that the tripods / grand single bells JtDrI- / -I":£i should be cast as tuning and 80. 55 128-29.2997-3027. 81. Chen Yang, Yueshu, I01.Ua-I3a, I07.6a-b.

Huizong's Dashengyue ritual ins truments.82 Huizong found Wei's proposal appealing because it underscored the supremacy of his emperorship and personal being, and because it evoked classical knowledge about ancient practices of music and their transmission. As summarized in his 1104 memorial, Wei theo­ rized:83 I, your official, have heard that to guide the 20 qi, to manipulate the 72 periods of

time �, to harmonize Heaven and Earth, to enlist the help of deities and spirits, music is the best. Fuxi �4l used hanwei %., a one-cun instrument, to make the music of Fusang 1k !tt , Niiwo *� used wefyue ... .. , a two-cun instrument, to make the music of Guangyue Jt. � . Huangdi used xianchi mtit., a three-cun in­ strument, to make the music of Daquan *�. Three times three equals nine is an equation for measuring the pitch pipe of the huangifJong. [It is a principle that has been] followed by posterity, and until the time of Tangyu J! It, it was never changed. With the flooding of the land, musical instruments scattered. Thus, Yu emulated Huangdi's method [of finding the tuning and temperament standard]. Using sounds and bodily measurements as guides, he labeled the left hand middle finger of three joints "the sovereign's finger of three cun" and used it to derive the [nine cun] pipe of the huangzhong note. He labeled the left hand fourth finger of three joints as "the officials' fmger of three cun," and used it to derive the pipe of the shang note. He labeled the left hand little fmger of three joints "the fmger of objects," and used it to derive the pipes of theyu note. [By the same token,] he equated the second finger with the commoners, and derived the jue note; he equated the thumb with affairs and derived the Zhi note. Commoners and affairs are ruled by sovereigns and officials and are sustained by objects. Thus there is no need to tailor � their pipes. [In the process of adjusting tuning and pitch pipes,] the combined lengths of the third, fourth, and fifth fingers would give the nine cun [the length of the huangzhong pitch pipe] ; thus the huangzhong pitch can be fixed. Once the huangzhong is fixed, the remaining pitches can be developed accordingly. Since the Zhou and the Shang dynasties, people used this method. Never­ theless, because the Qin dynasty burned books [and buried scholars], the measurements and methods were all lost. Han dynasty scholars like Zhang Cang * � and Ban Gu #I I!) [32-92] knew only the methods of measuring and stuffmg millet grains in pipes and thus mistakes resulted. Since the Yongjia

82. There is no clear information on how a tripod can be suspended and struck as a grand single bell. To reflect this double duty of the instrument, however, I will label it as the tripod / grand single bell. 83· ]5BM 135.Ia-b.

430

J O S E P H S . C . LAM

mutiny [3°7-13] at the end of the WesternJin dynasty, the method of measuring and stufftng millet grains has been abolished. In the Sui dynasty, Niu Hong 4- �/... [545-610] used Wan Baochang's 1i, f l' [ca. 556-95] "water measure" 7}<.Jl. Thus, Tian Ji ro * of the Hou Tang and Wang Pu of the Hou Zhou all used the method of the "water measure" 7J<.Jl. In our dynasty, [Taizu] found the Wang Pu pitches too high and ordered Dou Yan and others to adjust the pitch levels. Only then, the pitches were harmo­ nious; its harmony, nevertheless, is not based on ancient methods. Hanjin, your offtcial, now begs to have the measurements of the three fingers of Your Majesty, namely those of the middle, fourth, and fifth fingers. [I would] first cast the nine tripods/grand single bells, and then the imperial big bells, the four clear-tones bells, and the twenty-four solar-term bells. After that, [I would use the cast instruments as aids to] balance the strings and adjust the pipes to make music of the generation. � 6tl i!.::- -t- \!!1 $,., 1;--I::" -t- .::-� , ltr ;}i:.Jt, {�>t

#, :Jt-!--r�. 1k4i�x --
With an assertive exercise of his imperial power and personal will, Huizong decided to implement Wei's theory, and thus the Dashengyue campaign formally began. In 1104/7, the first and largest tripod / large bell was cast, embodying classical theories and traditional practices of Northern Song court music. As described in the Songshi, the tripod/ large bell was an imposing ritual-musical object made with a mixture of jade and copper. Standing nine chi ft.... tall, its body, surrounded by a carving of nine dragons, featured the inscription of a commemorative essay. When struck, the tripod/grand single bell gave out the "central tone" tF ,*, a sound that was pure and refined, and could be heard from afar. Set in the middle of a courtyard orchestra, the tripod / grand large bell would only be struck to indicate the emperor's presence during

Huizong's Dashengyue

431

performances of state sacrifices. Extolling the achievements of Huizong and his imperial ancestors, the commemorative essay by Zhang Kangguo � . , a Hanlin scholar, reads:84 Heaven made our Song empire, We ceaselessly respect Heaven. Since people from the four corners of the world came to make peace, One hundred and forty-four years have passed. Now, music and ritual have been instituted, At the right time. While Xia started the institutions, Yu established the measuring standards. His majesty receives them, In the form of his ftnger that is unique between heaven and earth. With it, the offtcials discussed the tripod/grand single bell, Where the Central Sound resides. New institutions are now made; They are not imitations of past models. Where the number nine multiples, Is the root of the musical pitches. Oh, this [newly cast] tripod/grand single bell, It is neither understated nor excessive. Inside the courtyard of the palace It stands tall and ftrm. Long live the emperor! He has received many blessings. For this tripod/grand single bell, Results from Heaven's order. Why is it received? To nurture the people. Let it be treasured and declared: It represents the beginning of Song dynasty music.

�r!.f\5R ��� e..

� -;7*-lP + :t.::- R, � � �J&

MiJt.nt�

i!! f(t :t L

Jt m �� .f\!t �.t � ;ttl!. �lii -

'f:> � i'Jf Jl:. :t 1'F -f" i!IT

.� -f"-tt It. lt. J';{ !l '* g �El:M. MiJt.!-� .;JF # .:JF 1�

,;t5R.thl .Lt.fl\ 'f:> � � .:r � .f � � ��

MiJt.!-,t J:. * � fij Jt. * #'"1;r J';{ � • .:r 7jct t" .t 5R � .t -M;

By 1105/7, the set of nine tripods / grand single bells proposed by Wei was fmally completed. It was an event that promptly led to other musical actions. In the next month, the musician in chief, Liu Bing, success­ fully requested a purge of vernacular musical instruments in the court 84. 55 128.2999·

432

J O S E P H S . C . LAM

orchestras of the time. He wanted to make them proper so that they could be used to play the newly composed music. A rehearsal soon followed, and it began with the playing of three pieces of the old music. Before the playing had concluded, however, Huizong had it stopped, declaring that the music sounded like weeping, echoing what Taizu had said in 966. Then the new music was played, and Huizong liked what he heard, a reaction that prompted the attending officials to congratulate him. This exchange was a discourse of imperial power and official loyalty. Theoretically, the music was efficacious be­ cause it realized classical theories and emulated ancient practices. In practice, it was authenticated by the emperor's acceptance. By con­ gratulating the emperor for the success of the newly created music, the officials pledged their obedience, flattering the emperor as a meritorious ruler proper music, the theorist believed, only appeared during op­ portune times of benevolent rulers. Two months later, the new music formally premiered at the imperial birthday celebration. As the scholar-officials offered toasts to the em­ peror, the Songshi reports, auspicious cranes flew in from the northeast, circled over the imperial terrace where the music was being performed, and sang their approval before flying away.85 Delighted by this auspicious omen, Huizong proudly wrote an edict explaining the reasons and goals for his launching of a new music. Naming it the Dashengyue, he ordered its use in state sacrifices, replacing pre-existing state sacrificial songs. The edict reads:86 When the Dao takes shape, it rises. This is a fact that the early sage-kings un­ derstood. Thus, they coordinated the Dao with measurements and numbers and embodied it with sounds and literature. The resultant music thus flows with Heaven and Earth. . . . I, Your Emperor, inherited the empire, and the deities and ancestors de­ scended from heaven [to help. Thus] the land marked by the four seas is peaceful, and the crops mature regularly. People living in lands as far south as Yelang xiangke lt �� *:for and as far west as Jishi qinghai � .-b -k iJ§: are all obedient. Ritual and music should be instituted at this opportune time, which occurs once in a hundred years . . . .

85. See Peter C. Sturman, "Cranes Above Kaifeng: The Auspicious Image at the Court of Huizong," Ars Orientans 20 (1990): 33-68. 86. ]5BM 135.4b-5a.

Huizong's Dashengyue

433

Recently, the court found a hermit [i.e., Wei Hanjin] who emerged from the lowly ranks of foot soldiers, and acquired ancient musical instruments in the land where I received the mandate to rule. As now is an opportune time [to institute music, I have offered] my body to set the measurements, and ordered the casting of the tripods / large bells to establish a tuning and temperament standard, according to which musical instruments were made. [When the newly composed music was] performed on the terrace of the palace hall, the sounds produced with the [newly created] eight categories of musical instruments were harmonious. This is a result not of my own merits but of the ancestors' accumulated virtues and Heaven's help. In the past, Yao had the Zhang, Shun had the Shao. The sage-kings of the Three Eras had different musics and titles. Now, [I] emulate models practiced a thousand years ago, and establish the music of our generation. I thus name it Dashengyue. I will have it performed at the altars and shrines to honor the deities and spirits, to hamIOnize the nations, and to share it with all under Heaven. This is a great [development], is it not? The old music should not be used any more. l! � i1i1 ..t., 7\:. .f.. tt .t, tAf"ltit, .f"�"tt, $.. � � kJl!!. M i/,i. $ � :f 1t � * . IDtrlQiJ*4-- � , # k Ft ll, �if§,*�, -fttJIIJiA . .w � -1t �� #�, �*�.:b -tif§, J%] :f "'�; � � .t� , Ef -ff" JI:.. tt\ -t- l:lt lt, l!�-1t if. i!::t, 1!f '* l!..t ±; f" 1;t *.tllt , � � ]t .t a f" 1: 1r .t *�. it at .t iI: , itA jJ- �Jt, "/r} ltA �#, � * ltA $� a , �tAf" nt., A.:t J? .t�. A;fll. * � ;¥. .t1*, ..t. '*" � A2 , :! IDt .t -ft �! 1H't. lf tl, # If :k �; .=.. 1�.t.f.. , # � J't. � . � 1!. -t � r1Q A - 1�.t$�, il: J!h � a 7d� . IDt��Jt3(�tm, * .>V:Af, �P � *�, � k r #.t, :! :f � �? $.. � � o/J Jf) . .

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And to administer this new court music and its performers, Huizong created the Dashengfu (Bureau of the Music of Great Brilliance), an act of emperorship that underscored his individuality and understanding of music. By establishing this unprecedented court office, Huizong not only defied the institutional tradition of entrusting ritual and music to the Court of Imperial Sacrifices but also highlighted his personal under­ standing of music as something distinctive from ritual. A full-scale office, the Dashengfu was staffed by one musician in chief *- � � , two music managers � � , one music officer *- � �, four composers WJ# ��, and other supportive personnel for the production of scores, musical in­ struments, and other musical needs. Thus, the Dashengyue campaign proceeded into high gear. In 1106/9, the emperor ordered that the new state sacrificial music should be performed not only at the imperial altars and temples but also throughout the empire. Implementation of the order, however, could progress step by step. Performance of the Dashengyue should begin in

434

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the capital and spread from there to the three regional capitals of Luoyang, Nanjing, and Beijing, to their suburbs ll!1 � and to the military regions �M. Realizing the emperor's commitment to music, career-minded scholar-officials began to present various proposals to the court, claim­ ing that their theories would help achieve the emperor's goal. Without doubt, they were also trying to advance their own careers by drawing the emperor's attention to themselves. Peng Ji jj It, a jinshi, for example, presented his music treatise to argue that because the Song dynasty was built with the virtue of fire, its state sacrificial music should highlight the zhilfire tone, while suppressing theyu/water tone. Wu Shi �at, a vice director in the Ministry of Rites, found the arguments convincing and requested the court to summon Pengo He came; how his music worked with the court is, however, not recorded. By 1108, Liu Shen fH! also successfully presented his music of the Zhi tone, which was rehearsed by musicians from both the Dashengfu and the Entertainment Music Of­ fice. Huizong ordered the rehearsals, arguing that without the Zhi andjue compositions, his state sacrificial music could neither harmonize with the Dao nor change people'S customs. With this rehearsal, it should be noted, Huizong began to control not only state sacrificial music of the court, but also itsYalryue. Then, Huizong issued a series of edicts to solidify his control. In the fifth month of 1109, Huizong ordered that whenever he visited the na­ tional university and hosted banquets there, the Dashengyue should be performed. Until then, vernacular music, including music performed with dramatic acting, had been used. In 1110/4, Huizong granted a court request that courtyard orchestras be used in the state sacrifices honor­ ing Ganshengdi � 1.. * and the imperial ancestors of Xizu and Taizu. With this grant and the use of the courtyard orchestras, Huizong ac­ centuated the imperial status of the Dashengyue and the deities being honored. In 1110/6, Huizong commanded that national university students be selected and trained to perform the civil and military dances at state sacrifices. This edict was resisted, a fact that significantly pinpoints the ways in which music provided a means for the emperor and the officials to negotiate with one another, expressing their intellectual and social concerns. Song scholar-officials resisted because they found training alongside the socially low musician-dancers � .:L to be undignified.

Huizong's Dashengyue

435

Eventually, a compromise was reached: only those university students who volunteered would learn the ritual music and dance. In order to theoretically support the recent musical changes, in 1110/8 Huizong ordered Uu Bing to compile a music treatise. This was the Dasheng yueshu of 20 chapters, which addressed a wide range of topics, including numerological and cosmological attributes of the Dashengyue, the merits of Wei Hanjin's theory, and Huizong's goal of creating a musical legacy for posterity. This treatise was distributed throughout the empire to promote the Dashengyue, and to spread Huizong's musical presence. Results soon emerged; these included, for example, the use of proper music at the scholars' annual banquets ht �t t: in the provinces. By that time, the state sacrificial repertory of Dashengyue appeared to have approached maturity, and further codification of technical par­ ticulars became necessary. Thus, in 1113/4, the Office of Rites presented to the court detailed prescriptions on the use of the courtyard and terrace orchestras during the state sacrifices. Those performing in ceremonies at which the emperor personally officiated were to have more instruments and were to be arranged in more elaborate patterns. Figure 10.5 demon­ strates the physical arrangement of a courtyard orchestra for a state sac­ rifice at which the emperor officiated.87 In the meantime, Huizong began to work on the yatryue repertory of Dashengyue. In 1113 /5 a rehearsal of banquet music took place in the Hall of Esteemed Governance * Jlt�. After the rehearsal, Huizong decreed that from then on, the Entertainment Music Office should practice only the new banquet music of Dashengyue; all other pre-existing banquet music should be banned. This order was not easy to implement. In order to provide the ap­ propriate musical instruments for the new music, the Dashengfu ad­ justed, constructed, and distributed to the responsible offices ocarinas, flutes, mouth-organs, stone-chimes, and other musical instruments. To teach the musicians the ways in which the new/adjusted musical in­ struments could be used, the office produced notated scores and illus­ trative diagrams, two sets of which were distributed, respectively, to the Entertainment Music Office, the Imperial Military Band, and the

87· Yang Yinliu, Zhongguo gudazjif!Jue shigao, 398-99.

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Huizong's Dashengyue

437

Kaifeng municipal music office. The musicians were ordered to follow the instructions closely. Anyone who dared to adjust the tuning or de­ signs of the new instruments would be punished. All vernacular musics and instruments that had heretofore been in use, such as the Shifan + .. dances and small flutes, were banned. Anyone who violated the bans or performed with prohibited instruments and tones would be punished. These measures were draconian, but they were imperial means of gov­ ernance sanctioned by the classics.88 Three months later, in III3/8, the Dashengfu reported that they had revised court banquet music using the proposed "central tones," and that they had remedied the lack of music in the Zhi and jue modes and in­ struments of earth, stone, and gourds. Upon receiving this news, Huizong decreed that the Dashengyue be promulgated throughout the empire. This rather vague edict was followed by another in the next month, specifying the use of the new banquet music at the National University. To help promulgate the banquet music and to ensure that musicians throughout the empire would not use the wrong modes and cause un­ desirable effects, Liu Bing requested a codification of the seasonal use of musical modes. Citing the authority of the ''Yueling'' fl � chapter of the Liji, Liu argued that during the summer months, music of Zhi tone should be promoted, while those of shang and yu should be banned; if the latter two tones were improperly used, Liu commented, they would lead to war and crime. Responding to Liu's argument, Huizong ordered the Dashengfu to produce and distribute instructional aids to the musicians. This exchange between Huizong and Liu Bing did not, however, solve the complicated issue of musical modes, and debates continued. In III4/I, the Dashengfu requested that musical modes of vernacular banquet music be adjusted according to the classical theory of monthly rotation of modes. And in III6/I, Huizong ordered the Dashengfu to compile and distribute charts for manipulating the 84 musical modes; he also instructed Liu Bing to compile Yatryue xinshu .t: *.iJf"t' to explain the new banquet music. This series of actions regarding vernacular banquet music amounted to a forceful and intrusive exercise of imperial power, one that had •

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88. I�ji, 5-170.

J O S E P H S . C . LAM neither precedence nor subsequence in Chinese music history the only exception appears to be the exclusive perfonnance of the eight model revolutionary operas $. 4r tt lR j� during the Cultural Revolution. Unlike state sacrificial and court banquet music, which were performed only in the court, vernacular banquet music was performed all over the empire, involving all sorts of musicians and audiences with diverse mu­ sical traditions and social status. Thus, to force all vernacular banquet music to operate according to classical and intellectual theories was a tall order. To what extent Huizong succeeded is not clear. The authoritarian nature of his effort is, however, unmistakable. Around this time, Huizong's Dashengyue campaign reached a turning point; the music activities that occurred after 1116 concerned mosdy practical or minor matters. In 1116/10, for example, the court requested the composition of songs to celebrate the appearance of auspicious animals and objects in recent years. In IIIl /2, Pei Zongyuan II * 7(. , a music manager, requested permission to teach the singing of ancient poems in the Dashengfu. In the following month, the Ritual Office requested that the military dancers perform only with the props of axes � and shields -f ; until then they had featured spears and shields. The office also wanted to suspend the use of the twelve large bells with the courtyard orchestra, arguing that such use was not an anclent practice. Other activities involved mosdy the music for the Mingtang state sacrifice.89 To provide for the musical needs of the state sacrifice, many musical instruments were made in 1116 and 1I1l. As the need for musical instruments abated, debates on theoretical matters emerged. In IIIl/10, the Secretariat t .. :-iJ' adjusted the theoretical mode ofyingzhong that Huizong once proposed, specifying correspondences between the mu­ sical modes and ritual details in the state sacrifice, and provoking per­ sonal rivalries. In this context, Cai You �1&' (1077-1126), the head of the Dashengfu of the late IIIOS, openly attacked what appeared to him to be errors by other theorists and performers. In 1118/8, he criticized the use of nanlii as gong in the Mingtang music, arguing that huangzhong should be used instead. In 1119, he presented his theories of tai :k and shao j,' classification of tones and proposed a number of changes in the use and design of musical instruments. •

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89. 55 101.2472-73.

Huizong's Dashengyue

439

Cai wanted to undo Liu Bing's legacy, charging that the latter had subjectively and erroneously created two types of huangzhong pitch and had faked the music of the Zhi andyue modes, which, Cai admitted, was nevertheless beautiful and harmonious. In order to compete musically and personally, Cai and Tian Wei, his music collaborator, worked to create what they claimed to be the authentic music of the Zhi and yue modes. Time was against Cai and his music, however. With the dis­ missal of Cai Jing in H20, the court stopped the operation of the Da­ shengfu musical instrument factory and laid off the composers, as was the case with so many other measures associated with Cai's tenure (see Chaffee's chapter). Five years later, the Jurchens attacked the capital, and more musicians were dismissed. Then, as the Northern Song em­ pire collapsed in H26, and Huizong was sent to the north as a captive of the Jurchens, the Dashengfu ceased to exist and the Dashengyue soon vanished.

Assessing the Performance of Huizong and His Officials What has survived is the impression that the Dashengyue was an inaus­ picious music produced by corrupt officials and devious music theorists. The name of Wei Hanjin became a target of ridicule. Blaming the music or ridiculing Wei, however, glosses over the fact that the Dashengyue and its campaign were deeply rooted in the traditions of Chinese em­ perors and officials. What rendered the music and its campaign unique phenomena in Chinese history and culture is the fact that together they constituted a spectacular performance. In sharp contrast to the music reforms of Renzong, Shenzong, and Zhezong, in which the emperors failed to control the officials and stop their infighting, Huizong and his officials perfectly complemented one another. Together, they made a perfect ensemble, manipulating music as an orthodox expression of emperorship and officialdom in personalized, effective, and perhaps exceSS1ve ways. Cai Jing, the dominant official of the time, appeared to be a key player who performed only backstage in the Dashengyue campaign. 90 He prompted Huizong to pursue ritual and musical reforms and recom•

90. See Hartman's chapter in this volume; and 55 231.13721-28.

J O S E P H S . C . LAM mended to him the two key figures of the Dashengyue campaign, namely Wei Hanjin and Liu Bing. Through his control of the court personnel, Cai probably benefited, one way or another, from the career advancement of his proteges, the making of numerous musical in­ struments, and the training of musicians, all of which entailed great expense. Wei Hanjin, the peculiar music theorist who is historically perhaps the most notorious actor in the Dashengyue campaign, performed more prominently, but for a shorter period of time.91 He played not only the role of a deviant theorist, but also those of an extraordinary music master, an opportunist, a political-musical puppet, and a scapegoat for the collapse of the Northern Song. He blended biography, music facts, cultural myths, historical claims, contemporary concerns, and imperial desire into a musical performance of official service that had no match in imperial China. Wei appeared to be a music master of extraordinary skills, and the

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heard the sound of water and was immediately able to tell that there was jade underneath the water. He then took off his clothes, dived into the water, and re-emerged with a piece of rock that turned out to be jade . Shortly before his death in late II05 or early I106, he predicted that within 30 years, the world would be in disarray

and, sure enough, the

Northern Song collapsed in 1126. Wei had a long career as a music theorist, as he was first recom­ mended to the court during the Huangyou years (1049-54). He made no impact then, as he was dismissed by Ruan Yi, who was in charge of reforming music at the time. In 1102, upon Cai Jing's recommendation, Wei was summoned to court again, and this time he drew imperial at­ tention. Though discredited by most scholar-officials of the time as convoluted and odd, Wei's theories were put into action in II04. And in

91. 55 461.13525-26. See also Li Wenyu 3f-3t.��, "Dashengfu kaoliie" * h\ JIl;;f�, Cixuejikan 1OJ * * f1 2/2 (1935): 7-32; Ling Jingyan ;� -;t-�, "Song Wei Hanjin yue yu Dashengfu" >Ii: 4t# it * � *- h\ JIl, in Zhugongdiao lianzhongfu Xiefenshi wencun ;if 1; WIJ fl'J � FIt f.Ji � :£: 3t.# (Ji'nan: Qilu shushe, 1988), 259-94.

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II05/8, he was awarded the prestigious title of Xuhe chongxian baf(Ying xiansheng JI-fp if M f � 7t 1.. ; his music treatise was copied and dis­ tributed nationally. Not long after the award, however, he died, cutting short his involvement with the Dashengyue campaign. He was a player for only three years (II02-5). As evidenced by his memorial quoted above,92 Wei performed bril­ liantly as the "right" music master for Huizong's court. He had, verifiably or not, the "right" cultural qualifications, namely the extraordinary skills attributed to him His theories worked by postulating what the young, ambitious, and egoistic Huizong wanted to hear. That Wei theorized opportunistically is suggested by a number of circumstantial facts. His IIo4 argument that the 24-year-old Huizong had reached just the right stage of biological growth and thus had the right digital measurements for establishing the desired lengths of the huangzhong pitch pipes seems to be theoretically and contextually too convenient. As a friend of Cai Jing, Wei could not have been ignorant of contemporary court debates about music; and, had Wei stayed in the capital or maintained contact with court officials after his appearance in Renzong's court, he would have been in a position to anticipate what Huizong and his dominant officials wanted to hear (Wei's whereabouts between the 1050S and II02 is un­ known). There is no evidence that Wei had formulated his peculiar theories before II02. Had he formulated them before that year, they could not have been ignored and Wei did not appear to have been a person who would keep his theories a secret. The association between huangzhong and the imperial digits is simply too potent an idea to have been ignored in imperial China. No other theorist in Chinese music history directly connected physical measurements of pitch pipes with physical parts of emperors, even though the correlation between rulers and the huangzhong/gong tones is a fundamental concept in classical Chinese music theory. If Wei acted opportunistically and politically, he was not alone. He was recommended by Cai Jing, whose motives must have been both personal and political. He obviously gained political credit for advancing Wei. Huizong also benefited from this arrangement, because it allowed him to act as a strong emperor and gave him the trigger to overhaul court .

92. See Wei's memorial on p. 429.

442

J O SEPH S . C . LAM

music in the way he wanted. Huizong, however, acted shrewdly. He did not ask Wei to lead the music campaign; there is no evidence that Wei ever supervised any aspect of the project or composed or performed music. Judging from a secret exchange between Wei and Cai, the for­ mer's theories were not even literally implemented.93 Wei once told Cai that only 30 to 40 percent of what he had proposed was implemented in the Dashengyue repertories and musical instruments that were produced under Liu Bing's direction. In the future, Wei advised, Ren Zongyao, his student, should be summoned to correct the music; Ren was eventually appointed a music manager in the Dashengfu during the latter part of the Zhenghe period, but he was ostracized by Cai You and was in no posi­ tion to make any difference. In other words, Wei was as much a puppet, needed for a political­ musical campaign, as a music master. This is clear from Huizong's 1105 edict, in which he interpreted Wei's "appearance" as a sign that it was an opportune time to reform court music. Again in his 1110 preface to Liu Bing's Dashengyueshu, Huizong explicitly described the significance of Wei's appearance. Above all, Huizong used Wei's peculiar theory as the excuse to dismiss the learned but abstract theories of music scholar-officials such as Chen Yang and Hu Yuan, who constituted a conservative force that Huizong had to address. Being a practic­ ing artist sensitive to the sonic features and meanings of music, Hui­ zong saw in Wei's theories a way out of the intellectual-musical­ political conundrum. In the context of court debates and politics, the theories were unchallengeable because they persuaded by means of classical notions about sage-kings and ancient practices, and because they forced a solution to the complex and convoluted problem of tuning and temperament with an imperial and "natural" authority, namely Huizong's fingers. Whether Huizong realized it or not, Wei's theories also rendered it possible for the court musicians to bypass those pedantic theories and to do what was musically feasible. Anyone who practiced music would know that intellectual theory and musical practice seldom match per­ fectly. Music theories are abstract and verbal, while music practice is 93. SS 462.13526; Wan Yi � *, "Songdai huangzhong di gaizuo ji Dasheng huang­ zhong di yingxiang" *- 1-1;. ��tfr!J i1k 1t&*,l �itfr!JfJW, Yillj'lIeya'!iill {N�./OJf � 1993, no. 1: 73-78.

Huizong's Dashengyue

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pragmatic and performative. Words and sounds do not, and cannot, substitute one for the other. Classical Chinese music theory, which ex­ plains music with cosmological and moral perspectives, tends to produce prescriptions that cannot be implemented easily in music compositions and performances. Thus, Huizong's court musicians found it convenient to accept the emperor as the final arbiter in deciding tuning and temperament stan­ dards. The musicians would have known that they could adjust the measurements to make the pitch pipes as needed. They also would have known that there was little chance that their unofficial adjustments would ever be noticed.94 The emperor's digital measurements were not announced publicly, and Wei Hanjin did not actually supervise musi­ cians' music and musical activities. A case in point is Liu Bing's musical actions. He only implemented Wei's theories selectively. In III?, he did not even follow Huizong's secret command of making a flute according to Wei Hanjin's theories.95 Had Wei lived longer, would he have performed differently? He might have participated more in the actual operation of the Dashengyue campaign, but there is a limit to what he could have done. A commoner for most of his life, he might not have had the skills required for com­ posing, performing, and administering court music, especially state sac­ rificial music. Witnessing state sacrifices and court functions from afar, a commoner would have had only limited knowledge and experience of imperial ritual and music, which were court monopolies. A commoner would not have had the know-how and experience to oversee effectively the administration of court music, which involved a multitude of officers and musicians. In II05, Wei was already a 90-plus-year-old man; he would hardly have the years to learn to become an effective music official. He probably coveted neither the time to learn to become an official nor the position; he had already performed as well as he could, and he had been rewarded bountifully. His brief moment of success secured him a role in

94. It is obvious that court musicians would infrequendy deviate from music orders of emperors and officials, and that is why the latter would always blame the former for musical-political failures. Qing historians, for example, put some of the blame for Huizong's musical "failure" on the court musicians; see LUlii zhengyi it g .i£..A, (Shangwu wanyou wenku ed.), 87.5597-98. 95. SS 128.2999·

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J O SEPH S . C . LAM

the Dashengyue campaign and a place in Chinese music history. His peculiar theories allowed Huizong, Cai Jing, and other officials to pursue what they wanted for the empire and for themselves: the court musicians made music, and the traditional historians found someone to blame for the fall of the Northern Song. Wei's loyal service sharply contrasts with that of Liu Bing, which is more clearly recorded.96 Supervising the Dashengyue campaign, direct­ ing the making of musical instruments, and composing music, Liu per­ fonned more as a music official-theorist and less as a politician or op­ portunist. In 1105, the second year of the formal operation of the Dashengyue campaign, Liu was in the prime of life and had the knowl­ edge, experience, and vitality to lead the project. Since receiving hisjinshi degree during the Yuanfu period of 1098-99, he had worked through many court positions and had accrued prestigious titles, which included: erudite in the national university, music director, minister of works, minister of revenue, Xuanhedian academician, and Grand Master for Splendid Happiness 7t.�*- �. Liu came from a learned family with a special interest in music and ritual; his elder brother, Liu Wei f1 :J:.t, was known for his musical expertise; their younger brother, Liu Huan f1 �, memorialized in 1112 a request to use proper music in the scholars' annual banquets in the provinces. Liu Bing was a close collaborator of Cai Jing. Upon Cai's recom­ mendation, Liu first became the music director of the Dashengyue campaign, and then a director of the Ritual Office ��101 of the Zheng­ he period. As a ritual official, Liu examined the ancient bronze ritual vessels that Huizong collected, and used them as models to design those of his time. As a music official, Liu supervised the making of the mu­ sical instruments and the composition and performance of the Da­ shengyue. In addition, he compiled three musical-historical treatises: Dashengyueshu *- It � .. , Dashengyaf!Jue *- It � � , and Dingshu II!- ", none of which have survived; brief summaries are, however, preserved in the Songshi and the Song huryao. 97 Though based on Wei's peculiar theories, the writings attested to Liu's perfonnance as a scholar. More­ over, he was not without his own theoretical ideas; he substituted his own system of huangzhong as the "central sound" for Wei's classification 96. 55 356.II206-7· 97. 55 129.3003-12; 5HYyue 2.31-32, 3-26-28, 4.1-2, 5-18-26.

Huizong's Dashengyue

445

of musical tones. Judging from the summaries that have been preserved, Liu was nevertheless a traditional musician-theorist. Like his colleagues, he cited the classics in his treatises and discussed established topics of music theory, such as modal and pitch correlation with the trigrams, seasons, physical directions, and other non-sonic entities. Unlike many scholar-theorist-officials, Liu's accomplishment in musicianship appears to be irrefutable. As reported by Cai Tao, the tunes of Zhishao .fa;f� and Jueshao � ;f� of the early llIOS, created under Liu's supervision, were popular, and evoked jealousy among musicians of the Entertainment Music Office. Liu Bing was last heard of in 1117, when Huizong dreamed about the inaccuracy of the contemporaneous tuning and temperament standard and then ordered Liu to adjust the standard with a new measurement of his imperial fingers. Soon after that, Liu's court career ended. He be­ came entangled with the indictment against Wang Cai .!.. � (fl. IIIOS),98 and was banished to Qiongzhou Jt. 1'I·j , where he died at the age of 57. Liu's fall was not unique; in Huizong's court, officials frequently rose and fell. By that time, Cai You, Cai Jing's eldest son and a favorite official of Huizong, had taken leadership of the Dashengyue campaign, creating new music and rectifying what he perceived to be erroneous. Cai in­ troduced musical changes for political and personal reasons; his actions, however, might not have been without musical grounds. Cai was a performer himself: to please Huizong, he would put on makeup and costumes to perform with actors in the emperor's private parties, en­ tertaining him with vernacular and amatory shows.99

Silencing Huizong's Dashengyue What Cai sang vanished long ago. No notated music of the Dashengyue has been preserved, rendering many questions unanswerable at present. What was composed or performed under the supervision of Liu Bing or Cai You? How did the compositions actually sound? How were they performed by the socially marginalized musician-dancers? How were the performers trained? How did the average Song commoner respond? 98. SS 328.10584. 99· SS 472.13731.

J O SEPH S . C . LAM Why did the reform leave so few musical traces? The questions go on and on. Nevertheless, judging from the few preserved lyrics of state sacrificial songs that were created during the campaign, it is clear that the Dashengyue was musically distinctive. Realizing the court's obsession with emulating ancient music and with the "return to antiquity," the Dashengyue compositions apparently followed classical prescriptions. As shown in Figure 10.1, the ''Welcoming the Deities" of the state sac­ rificial music honoring Confucius had four stanzas,100 each of which featured a different musical mode. The lyrics of the song were cast in the classical structure of eight four-word phrases. The banquet music repertory of the Dashengyue is more elusive. While some ci lyrics of the Dashengfu poets, such as Zhou Bangyan %J *� � (10 5 6-1121),101 Jiang Han �.J:. � (fl. 1120-30s), and Chao Rulli £�;ft (1046-I1I3) have been preserved, little is known beyond the fact that those lyrics lauded Huizong and the splendor of his reign. For the time being, even the much-discussed Dashengyue tunes ofjue and Zhi tones can only be imagined through the works of Jiang Kui (ca. 11 55ca. 1221), the Southern Song poet-composer. As described in the preface to his "Zhizhao" .fa�, jiang's understanding of the Dashengyue was already more nostalgic than factual.102 (See Music Example 2.) 103 If the Dashengyue compositions had been as expressive as was Jiang Kui's music, they should have appealed to many Northern Song audi­ ences, connecting them together as members of the same culture and society. Many people participated in the extensive Dashengyue campaign: craftsmen who constructed the musical instruments; workers who pro­ vided the costumes, props, and other equipment needed for the per­ formances; composers who made the tunes; poets who wrote the lyrics; musician-dancers who performed; and officials and commoners who witnessed, actively or passively, the events of the campaign and per­ formances of the music.

100. 55 137.3236-37. 101. Murakoshi Kiyomi #�-Jtf<. -1.. , "Hoku S6 matsu no shi to gagaku" ;It. * * (7) 1� t � � (phD. dissertation, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, 1997). 102. Jiang Baishi, Baishi daoren gequ tJ � l!A.� Ilb (5BBY ed), 4.4a-5b. 103. See also Yang Yinliu and Yin Falu, 50ngJiang Baishi chuang'?}lo gequyanjiu, 62-63.

Huizong's Dashengyue

447

The Dashengyue appeared to have reached far and wide during the late Northern Song. One indication of its reach is that the songs that the Dashengfu proposed for the state sacrifice honoring Confucius became the exemplar for the Yuan and Ming versions. 104 Fragments of the Yuan tunes have survived;lOS the Ming tunes for the state sacrifices honoring Confucius have been preserved in many sources and are still being performed in present-day Taipei.106 Other than the Confucian ceremonial songs, there are, however, few verifiable musical traces of the Dashengyue. The only exceptions are records that the courts of the Southern Song and the Jin used some Dashengyue bells in their court orchestras, and that at least 2 5 of the bells have survived.lo7 The records, nevertheless, attest only to the historical relationships among the courts. Whether the presence of the bells sig­ nifies general acceptance of some Dashengyue theories and practices cannot be established for the time being. I 08 The surviving bells evoke the grandeur of the Dashengyue, but they raise more questions than they answer. As an ephemeral art that could hardly have been preserved through notation and verbal descriptions, the Dashengyue could easily have vanished as did many other historical genres of Song dynasty music. Having formally existed for only 23 years (no4-26), the Dashengyue did not have enough time to take root, and thus could not survive the widespread destruction during the collapse of the Northern Song the

104. Joseph S. C. Lam, State Sacrifices andMusic in Ming China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), II4. 105. Zhu Zaiyu *,�J�, Uiliijingyi 1f: "?HtA, in Yueiii quanshu *1f:�� (Taipei: Shangwu, 1965), waibian 3.31. 106. Joseph S. C. Lam, "The Yin and Yang of Chinese Music Historiography: The Case of Confucian Ceremonial Music," Yearbookfor Traditional Music 27 (1995): 34-51. 107. Li Youping :t- #J "f reports that at least 25 Dashengyue bells have been preserved; see his "Dashengzhong yu Songdai huangzhong biaozhun yinyao yanjiu" :k ,l �$it >it 1.1(. .�� � t- � .;Jf � (ph.D. dissertation, Zhongguo yishu yanjiuyuan, Beijing, 2000), 16-34· lOS. For arguments that the Dashengyu promoted the appearance of a relatively stable tuning and temperament standard in Chinese music since the Northern Song, see ibid., II-15; Wan Yi, "Songdai huangzhong di gaizuo ji Dasheng huangzhong di yingxiang," 7S; and Yang Yinliu, Zhongguo gudaiyinyue shigao, 426.

J O S E P H S . C . LAM

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Music Example 2, Jiang Kill, "Zhishao" \'iang Yinliu and Yin Falu, SongJiang Baishi chuangzuo gequyanjiu [Beijing: Yinyue chubanshe, 1957], 62-63) As the tide rises I cross the Xiling waters, The flat boat can hardly hold an unemployed scholar. How long have I been away That the millet has spread like this? I now have tired of the wanderer's road, All I have gained is a heart full of ideas for poetry. I remember the South, When I let my sail drop to the sand­ Again this time it is so. Those winding mountains in Yan I meet again and feel the love of old friends.

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Huizong's Dashen!!Jue

449 1f,( � ;r- * �

They seem to complain that I'm not on a journey, And hold up their twelve sad topknots. To visit again just one of these mountains Is unworthy of Youyu's high ambitions. At dusk the water plants endlessly Sway in the mist, But I cannot go horne yet.

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(trans. Lin Shuen-fu, The Transformation ofthe Chinese LyricalTradition: Chiang K'uei and Southern Sung TZ'u Poetry [princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978], 215.)

Dashengyue campaign actually lasted only ceased to function in

H20, when

17

years in that it practically

the Dashengyue composers were laid

off and the factory for making musical instruments was closed. Never­ theless, if one contrasts the dearth of Dashengyue remnants with the relative abundance of data about Huizong's poems, paintings, calligra­ phy, and other cultural products, the silencing of the music cannot have been accidental. In fact, the nature of the Dashengyue offers some revealing clues to its rapid disappearance. As state sacrificial and state banquet music per­ formed by court musicians, the Dashengyue could have been performed only in palatial and ritual venues. Performed by hundreds of musicians with grand orchestras and expensive musical instrum ents, the Dasheng­ yue could not have existed without the financial support of the court. As the music of a fallen emperor, it was not treasured. No subsequent court wanted to be publicly associated with the music. 1 09 As an imperial music associated with a peculiar theory, the Da­ shengyue was stylistically distinctive, and it could hardly merge with other musics of the time. Its state sacrificial songs were different from those ritual musics performed in communal activities of the time, such as the lantern festival or the watching of the tides of the Qiantang River. Its

ya'!Yue repertory may have

overlapped stylistically with the vernacular

ci

songs, but it could not have been mistaken for those secular and ethnic musics heard in the entertainment quarters. There is, for example, no evidence that the once-popular Dashengyue tunes of Zhi orjue tones were ever integrated into the commoner musicians' standard repertory. Some

109. The ZXLS, for example, cites the Dashengyueshu, without offering any comments

on the Dashengyue.

450

J OS E P H S . C . LAM

remnants of Northern Song ci tunes are found in Yuan and Ming dramas, but none has been verifiably traced to the Dashengyue. 110 The Dashengyue apparendy included neither dramatic nor narrative music i}t.. ,,�, genres that dominated the course of traditional Chinese music culture in the thirteenth through nineteenth centuries. Current studies have demonstrated that changzhuan "�JIl, zhugongdiao 1t 't l}!J, and theater #41 of the transition period between the Northern and the Southern Song were the roots of traditional Chinese narrative singing and operas. Like the Dashengyue, they were multivalent expressions of history, culture, ritual, politics, and individuals; but, unlike the Da­ shengyue, the vernacular genres could be performed with a minimum of musicians and instruments and were always a part of the commoners' daily and musical lives. That the Dashengyue was detached from such lives is perhaps one of the crucial reasons it did not take root and why Huizong won a musical ballie but lost the cultural war of his time. The Dashengyue was silenced, a fact that is poignandy suggested by the ways in which Northern Song qin music was remembered and transmitted in subsequent times. Like state sacrificial music, qin music was often discussed asYtfYue, and indeed, qin music theories and practices echoed classical prescriptions on music as a means of governance and self-cultivation. Qin music was inseparable from the ideological and aesthetic lives of the Northern Song elite. As Confucians argued, no virtuous person :tt .::r would go far away from his qin. Moreover, as Zhu Changwen *- -k X. (1041-1100) reported in his Qinshi � 3t , 1 1 1 the Northern Song saw the rise of distinctive schools of music and per­ formers. Legacies of the schools were indirecdy preserved in Zhu Quan's *-ll (1378-1448) Shenqi mipu #-t � "tt of 1425,11 2 demonstrating the ways in which Northern Song qin music was cherished by scholar­ official-musicians of subsequent times. IlO. See Fu Xueyi 1f1. 1f iJ4', Jiugong dacheng nanbei ci gongbu xUafryi IL 1: k � � :It.16j 1: "tt il� (Beijing: Renmin yinyue, 1991), 5-19. III. Zhu Changwen, Qinshi � 3t (SKQS ed.). Il2. Zhu Quan, Shenqi mipu # � � "tt (Beijing: Yinyue chubanshe, 1956 facsimile edition). For a discussion of qin music transmission from the Southern Song to the Yuan, see Jao Tsung'i 1! $ !Jt, "Songji Jin Yuan qinshi kaoshu" *- * �7t�3t,;fU!i (A his­ torical account of the lute: from the close of Song to the Jin and Yuan dynasties), re­ printed in voL 2-1 of Tang Chien-Yuan Jt�J2., comp., Ch'inju �;{f (Collection of materials on the Chinese seven-stringed zither) (Taipei: Lianguan, 1971-73), 1991-2017.

Huizong's Dashengyue

451

Since qin music captured the heart and minds of the Song elite, it obviously appealed to Huizong. In fact, the only known pictorial illus­ tration of Huizong's music-making is the famous "Listening to Qin Music" lt� iii , a painting that may have depicted Huizong performing on the qin with Cai Jing as one of the two attentive audience members.l13 Does this depiction of music-making suggest that when Huizong and his officials were not performing their political roles, they expressed their private hearts and minds through qin music? Was the Dashengyue only a performance of emperorship and office?

Epilogue: Historical and Cultural Echoes If the Dashengyue was such a performance, its silencing is neither a his­ torical accident nor a natural development. For political, moral, and music reasons, the Dashengyue had to stop the moment the curtain fell on the late Northern Song. As its sounds vanished and its original messages were lost, the Dashengyue acquired, however, new cultural and historical meanings. It became a symbol of licentious music, a music that Confucians would repeatedly denounce throughout Chinese history. Until the end of imperial China in 1911, music, especially state sacrificial music, remained an essential means for emperors and officials to per­ form their duties. However, having learned from Huizong's spectacular but disastrous performance, they managed to avoid the mistake of confusing ritual and musical realities with military, political, and social ones. No other Chinese emperor performed musically as Huizong did.114 No other repertory of Chinese music flashed like the Dashengyue. Revisiting the Dashengyue now and hearing it in the contexts of classical theories of Chinese music, the Northern Song tradition of court music, the historical time and place of Huizong's reign, and the biographies of the key players, one learns that the music was a sonic component/ counterpart of other human activities of the time, be they debates of classical theories, planning of court strategies, writing of edicts

II3. Hanging scroll, ink and color, Palace Museum, Beijing; reproduced in Fu Xinian ff;l-+, ed., Liang Song huihua R'J *�., part 7, vol. 3 of Zhongguo meishu qua'!ii 'f � J. #r� � , huihua bian, no. 44. II4. Ming Shizong Cr. 1522-67), who launched a drastic ritual-music reform in the 1530s-1540s, is somewhat comparable.

45 2

J O S E P H S . C . LAM

in the Slender Gold style script, painting auspicious cranes, displaying stone steles and other evidence of power, worshipping of deities and ancestors, introducing governmental and educational programs, fighting wars, or other activities discussed in this volume. The Dashengyue and the Dashengyue campaign provide a musical prism through which can be seen the ways in which Huizong and his officials lived, asserting their agency and manipulating history and classical theories to address their present problems and to prepare for their unknown future. The Dashengyue and the Dashengyue campaign illustrate the theories and practices of Chinese court music, which concerned not only the five­ tones or seven-tones but also what emperors and officials should and could do. That Huizong and his officials performed so spectacularly with music and failed so miserably in their military endeavors only under­ scores the tragedy of their inability to coordinate the realities of their world. It also pinpoints the perspicaciousness of classical Chinese music theory. Music, and especially music such as the Dashengyue, can help make or break an emperor.

C HAPTER

II

Huizong's Paintings Art and the Art of Emperorship Maggie Bickford

The problem with the "Problem of Huizong" as a construction typical of art-historical inquiry is treating Huizong . * (r. IIOQ-25) as if he were a person a private person instead of Emperor of China. We readily acknowledge that political life profoundly affected the poetry, callig­ raphy, and painting of the late Northern Song literati (whose political concerns are seen to enrich, not to diminish, the value of their cultural accomplishments). Let us now extend this recognition to the art of their emperor. I gratefully acknowledge support for this essay in the form of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2000) and a Brown University sabbatical leave (2001-2). I first raised some of the issues that I investigate here in a paper that I read at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, developed for the first Huizong workshops at the University of Washington (Feb. 1-3, 2001), and published as "Huizong and the Aesthetic of Agency" (see note I) . Readers will be referred to that work in instances where fuller discussions and citations are available there. I prepared an earlier version of the present essay for the second Huizong workshops at Brown University (Nov. 29-Dec. I, 2001), where I benefited greatly from the responses of participants, especially from those of the discussants, Robert E. Harrist, Jr., Julia K. Murray, and Marilyn Wong-Gleysteen. I re­ main grateful to Patricia Ebrey, who first drew me into the problem of Huizong, and to Charles Hartman, who has helped me to reach beyond the limits of my specialized sphere of inquiry. I have enjoyed electronic conversations about the problem of copies with Richard M. Barnhart. Needless to say, when it comes to the thorny problems of Huizong, I alone am responsible for my conclusions.

454

MAGGIE B I C K F O RD

Traditionally, the "Problem of Huizong" has been approached within a bio-connoisseurial framework. We know the paintings as works of fine art, precious little pictures, decorative and highly finished, made by a feckless aesthete-emperor who, instead of attending to urgent matters of state, whiled away his hours by meticulously depicting the small wonders of his escapist garden world, and in consequence lost half his empire to the barbarian conquest of north China. This is the myth of Huizong the artist-emperor with which we are all familiar. Because they are canonical works in "The Story of Chinese Art," Huizong's paintings typically have been studied in their own visual terms, as if they were normative for Song painting. Under these conditions, connoisseurs focused on determining which paintings were real and which ones were fake, while, more recently, contextualists have pursued connections between the paintings and the wider world of which they were a part. But the signal visual features of Huizong's paintings were taken as givens and remained largely unquestioned. In fact, Huizong's paintings are not normal Song flower-and-bird paintings. They are very peculiar images unnerving in their clarity, compellingly real yet flat as a board. They were distinctive in their own time, and their peculiarities demand explanation in ours. The explanations that I will develop in this chapter rest upon the following proposal: Huizong's paintings were as much works of state as they are works of art. The emperor's unique status is the key to under­ standing his pictures. Huizong's emperorship and the mechanisms through which his intentions were realized in tangible, visual ways were integral to the conceptual and practical processes that eventually made these paintings look the way they do. Beginning with the observable evidence, I first approached these paintings in an article entitled "Emperor Huizong and the Aesthetic of Agency." There, I argued that Huizong's most famous extant paint­ ings (Figs. 11.1-7) were not made as useless pictures for pleasure (that is, as merely decorative). Nor was their political efficacy limited to self-representations of a cultured and talented sovereign or as manifes­ tations of the artistic resources at his command personally or other­ wise. Rather, they were made as specialized practical objects­ auspicious-omen paintings (Figs. 11.1-3) and auspicious presentation paintings (Figs. 1I.4 and 11.5). These practical functions, more than courtly taste and personal ability, I argued, crucially shaped the visual outcomes. I further discovered that each of these paintings seems to

Huizong's Paintings

455

have been made by a different person (or persons). Even so, I proposed, under the peculiar conditions of emperorship, all of these works properly should be considered to be authentic "Huizongs."l In this chapter, I redirect my inquiry toward understanding Huizong's paintings as instruments of Huizong's rule:

I. I begin with the paintings as objects, defining the Huizong corpus, treating each of nine paintings in turn, and refining my earlier analyses and arguments. 2. I then site these paintings historically in a functional visual context (auspicious-image traditions) and in a more nuanced relationship to literati painting, with particular reference to the development of text-and-image relationships in the history of art in China. 3. I pursue functionality and its consequences, especially the sanc­ tioned use of many hands. 4. In the final section of this chapter, I bring together the visual evi­ dence and new investigations into Huizong's cultural apparatus in order to address key issues of autograph, authenticity, and authority. It will be seen that in the case of Huizong's paintings, "works of art as works of state" is more than a metaphor: recognizing Huizong's purposeful inte­ gration of governmental and cultural functions subverts the myth of Huizong the hapless artist-emperor.

Huizong's Paintings as Go/eets Huizong's paintings have stood as cultural icons for a long time. Like Tang Hou i� Jf; (active ca. 1322-29) in the fourteenth century, we think we know a Huizong when we see one.2 What do we see on these pieces of silk that provokes, unreflectively, our recognition of Huizong?

Maggie Bickford, "Huizong and the Aesthetic of Agency," Archives ofAsian Art 53 (2002-3): 71-I04 (hereafter "Aesthetic of Agency''). 2. Tang Hou: "[As for works] personally done by Huizong, I myself can look and recognize them" ,tt\ ttt if< 81L1t:t-, � ro 'f ;t .1i1 �.z.., in Tang Hou � J€;, comp.; completed by Zhang Yu 5l iifiJ (U77-after 1329), Huajian .. �, in Yu Anlan -r-�iI¥J, comp., Huapin congshu .. £ It .. (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1982), 420. I.

MAG G I E B I C KF O RD D E F I N I N G T H E H U I Z O N G C O RPUS First, Huizong works identify themselves as Huizongs by displaying the emperor's stunningly idiosyncratic "Slender Gold" 11 � style of callig­ raphy, together with his personal cipher, "First Man Under Heaven" :k r A.. , and his seal, "Imperial Writing" �P • . Second, they conform to expectations generated by Song and later texts: the subject matter of most of them is flowers and birds, the category of painting that tradi­ tional texts emphasize in their accounts of Huizong's art. These sub­ jects (again as reiterated by texts) are meticulously observed, brilliantly colored, and fastidiously executed. But these criteria could be met by many of the 50 or so so-called "Huizongs" that constitute the gross corpus including obviously later paintings, pathetic fakes, and plausible but problematic works.3 We can refine this corpus by isolating a smaller number of works that can be seen to constitute a coherent group in terms of visual system, style, and quality. And, yes, we feel that we can recognize them as Huizongs just by looking at them. Beyond general observations of Song courtly preferences in subject matter, technique, and finish, works like our Figures II.I-4 and II.6-8 share singular qualities that distinguish them from the myriad colorful, exquisitely executed Song pictures of birds, flowers, and small animals, including some that bear Huizong-style epigraphic additamenta. All of these pictures exhibit a strenuous drive toward clarity that was achieved -

3. The material evidence for Huizong's activity in painting is a corpus of about fifty extant hanging scrolls, handscrolls, and album leaves that bear his cipher or are otherwise attributed to him. James Cahill lists 56 paintings under his entry for Huizong in his An Index 0/ EarlY Chinese Painters and Paintings: T'ang, Sung, Yuan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 99-104. Betty Tseng Yu-ho Ecke, whose work remains the only comprehensive study of Huizong's painting and calligraphy, lists 49 recorded or extant paintings and treats 26 of them in sustained analysis in her "Emperor Hui Tsung, The Artist: 1082-II36" (ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1972). Most of these works are not plausible attributions and can be ruled out as much later paintings on the basis of gross visual examination. Of the twenty-some works that stylistically can be dated to Huizong's time and related to courtly production, perhaps a dozen have emerged as canonical Huizongs in the specialist and popular literature of the history of Chinese art. Preferences that reflect national biases can be discerned by comparing the Huizong works that are illustrated in standard survey publications issued in the U.S., PRC, Taiwan, and Japan.

Huizong's Paintings

457

through rigorous, significant stylization. They observably partake of a shared visual system, through which, as I shall show, each subject was matched to form-types, colors, and techniques of depiction that heightened its defining physical features and qualities (often through visual contradistinction) and that, in aggregate, construct its defini­ tive image. These images are impressively impersonal, expressively opaque, and (at least fictively) objective. The painter took care to efface himself as an artistic persona: he left no overtly individual touch, no visual quirks by which to know him. Instead, having made the work, the maker stepped aside and left the picture to stand alone, no longer his, but rather, standing out there on its own, an isolated, objective image. It seems to have made itself, to have been there always, a con­ dition that Benjamin Rowland characterized as "an exquisite but empty decorative quality."4 How do these pictures come to look this way, and why?

T H E H AN D S C RO LLS Three Huizong handscrolls Five-Colored Parakeet, Cranes if Good Omen, and Auspicious Dragon Rock (Figs. 11.1-3) share closely similar dimen­ sions and originally shared the same format (viewing from right to left): a picture followed by an inscription comprising preface, poem, and sig­ nature. All three inscriptions end with the same formula: "Imperially composed (or produced), imperially painted and written; [cipher] First Man Under Heaven" � 1i � . jE "' ; *- r J..... , with Huizong's large, square, relief seal, bearing the legend, "Imperial Writing" -fjp .,. , im­ pressed over the second character (1i).5 The preface describes the event or object that provoked the work; the heptasyllabic eight-line poem celebrates it; the painting manifests it as visual image. -

4. Benjamin Rowland, Jr., "The Problem of Hui Tsung," Archives of the Chinese An Society ofAmerica 5 (1951): 9· 5. For measurements, see below, notes 6, 9, 17. The format is reversed in the present

state of the Five-Colored Parakeet. It is generally agreed that the inscriptional and pictorial portions of this handscroll were reversed during the course of mounting. Most of the formula at the end of the inscription has been effaced, but enough remains to reconstruct it. See Wu Tung, Tales from the Land of Dragons: I,OOO Years of Chinese Painting (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1997), no. 13.

MAGGIE B I C K F O RD The Five-Colored Parakeet Ji. @. .� (Fig. 11.1) . This painting exemplifies Huizong's flower-and-bird paintings (Figs. 11.1, 11.4, 11.6, and II.?) and the formal system that produced these distinctive images. The traditional title of this work derives from the opening words of the inscribed pref­ ace, which sets the scene and fixes the moment.6 The poem that follows specifies particulars and praises the bird's colors, demeanor, and talents: this extraordinary bird came to the palace as tribute; its plumage is complete in the five colors � Ji. @. ; it is elegant and contented, and it knows how to speak in pleasing tones. This being the case, the author composes a new verse, strolls, and sings. There follows on the scroll (in its present state) an exquisite isolated image of the brilliantly colored bird perched on the luxuriantly blooming branch. The bird is presented in strict proftle against a blank ground; the blossoming branch on which it perches is displayed as flat, splayed pat­ tern. The painter built up the parakeet's plumage with patterned lami­ nations of semitransparent color washes (now faded) and touches of ink, stroked with fine, faint, texture strokes. The result is a shimmery surface over a delicately contained shape that the painter brought into focus by sharply delineating the bird's beak and claws in ink and by ringing its black, beady eye. The flowering apricot, in contrast, is decisively defined in all structural particulars: the painter outlined branches in black, seg­ mented strokes and infilled the outlines with color. He firmly delineated the contours and the internal structures of buds and blossoms with a fine, even line, and he colored the flowers with opaque white and dots of green and red. The differences between the image of the bird and the image of the branch both technically and with regard to affect are striking, so striking that they may seem to be mismatched or perhaps the imperfectly synthesized work of two hands'?

6. Handscroll; ink and color on silk; 53.3 X 12p cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 33.364. Maria Antoinette Evans Fund, 1933. Inscription transcribed in Zhang Zhao � !!« et al., comps., Shiqu baoji .k; � W It (1745; facsimile reprint-Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1971) (hereafter SQBJ), 2: 770AB; trans. in Kojiro Tomita, "The Five-Colored Parrakeet [sic] by Hui Tsung (1082-1135),'' Bulletin of the Museum ofFine Arts, 31, no. 187 (Oct. 1933): 78. Reproduced in color, T. Wu, Tales, no. 13. 7. James Cahill raised the possibility of a collaborative work in his comments at a meeting of the art history group, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1998-99. Perhaps a Painting Academy professional painted the Hne-style flowering apricot and the

---------- ---- Huizong's Paintings

459

But one hand or two, the disparity of depiction between the subjects and among their elements is not a naive attempt at verisimilitude. These overt contrasts were made deliberately. They are the purposeful outcome of significant stylization. Through composition, brushwork, and color, the inherent contrasts among smooth, exquisitely articulated flowers; rough, woody branch; and fluffy bird have been pushed into states of definitive clarity. Thus the painter laid down the bird's soft plumage in systematic pat­ terns of wash that distinguish among the sizes, shapes, and textures of its feathers, defining them by tonal contrast but (except for the wing) leaving them unbound by line. He depicted the parakeet's hard and bony parts, made for pecking and for grasping, with sharp black strokes

a fine, in­

cisive line for its beak, and a stouter brush for its scaly legs and horny claws. The pose is informational. The color, pattern, and brushwork are diagnostic

both of the shape and markings of a "five-colored parakeet"

and also of the characteristic qualities of plumage, beak, and claw. This system produces a definitive image of "five-colored parakeet." It permits no arguing about its visual authority. 8

Cranes if Good Omen � j.� II

(Fig.

n.2) .

Of

all of Huizong's works,

this one is the most impressively impersonal in pictorial image.9 It also is the most circumstantial in textual narrative. Peter Sturman effec­ tively explores, interprets, and expands upon the inscriptional and

emperor-amateur painted the parakeet with becoming naivete. Or perhaps the bird ac­ tually required more skill than did the blossoming branch. 8. For more extensive analysis of the Five-Colored Parakeet, see Bickford, "Aesthetic of Agency," 79-81. 9. Handscrol1; ink and color on silk; 51 X 138.2 cm. Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang. Inscription transcribed in WangJie .1 � et al., comps., Shiqu baoji xubian ;G � • � � G (1793; facsimile reprint-Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1971) (hereafter SQBJX), 4: 1915A; trans., annot., and discussion by Peter C. Sturman, "Cranes Above Kaifeng: The Auspicious Image at the Court of Huizong," Ars Olientalis 20 (1990): 33-68. Reproduced in color in Fu Xinian 1f.:l-+, ed., Liang Song huihua, shang R'J *-.*t "l", J:.. (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1988), vol. 3 of Zhongguo meishu quanji: huihua bian '" mJ �*t 1: #; : � .. � (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1984- ) (hereafter, MSQJ: Hua), no. 47.

MAGGIE B I C K F O RD visual evidence in his contextual study of this work, "Cranes Above Kaifeng: The Auspicious Image at the Court of Huizong."1 0 Even among Huizong's highly stylized images, Cranes rfGood Omen is distinguished by its opaque beauty and compelling pattern. In no way is it naturalistic. However ornithologically informed the flying cranes may be, they appear here as four-bladed figures: two long blades for wings, one short blade hooked to receive the curving neck, the other compressed to receive stiff legs flanked by tufts of feathers, a dab of red on the head.1 1 The painter repeated this schematic type eighteen times, executing economical modifications of its basic form and manipulating its angle of placement and orientation (right-side-up, upside-down; pointing up, pointing down, facing left, facing right; some are near mirror images) to indicate actions of soaring, diving, and wheeling. He made more exten­ sive adjustments to the form-type to depict the pair of birds that perch at the roof tips. Were this image executed at an inferior level of finish or in the context of craftwork (discussed below), we would characterize these cranes as generic. The present circumstances, however, universalize these schemata and elevate them to the status of archetypes that con­ stitute an authoritative imperial image. The white birds and their sky-blue ground are laid on the silk with an evenness that is utterly impersonal, revealing scarcely any touch of the hand or stroke of the brush. The image is flat and static. These cranes lie entirely on the surface. Although their movements are de­ scribed sequentially in the text that follows this picture and the gestures of those movements are signaled by their poses, the visual image nev­ ertheless denies temporality. This image is devoid of the suggestion of

10. Sturman's is the most extensive contextual study of this work. See also Ogawa Hiromitsu -1- J1I�Jt., "Auspicious Cranes, by Hui-tsung" (in Japanese, with English ab­ stract), in Bijutsushi ronso }t{# 3t�. (Studies in Art History) 12 (Tokyo: Tokyo University, Department of Art History, Faculty of Letters, 1996): 129-37; and see notes to his "Si­ noiserie Around Japonaiserie: A Study ofJaponaiserie: Oiran (tifter Keisai Eisen) by Vincent van Gogh," in Bijutsushi ronso 8 (1992): III-27. II . This may be apprehended conveniently by looking at the terrible, high­ contrast reproduction of Cranes in Xie Zhiliu jti-$.#P, Song Huizong ZhaoJi qua'!Ji .fa if- ,t! 1t1:- #' (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin meishu chubanshe, 1989), no. 2, where the painting's gorgeous color and the cranes' plumage do not distract from its starkly schematic ap­ proach.

Huizong's Paintings process, nor does it invite us to imagine imminent action. The image seems to appear of its own accord like an omen. And it was an omen, as Huizong's preface and poem make clear. It compels us to attend to the crane configuration. Indeed there is nothing else to look at. What are we meant to see in it? Emperor Huizong directs us through his inscription: On the evening of the day after Shangyuan, the renchen year of the Zhenghe reign, suddenly auspicious clouds coalesced and descended about the Duanrnen [palace gate], illuminating it. Every one of those assembled raised his head to gaze at them. Suddenly, flocked cranes appeared, flying and calling in the sky. There were two cranes that came to rest, face-to-face, at the tips of the owl-tails [roof ridge end ornaments], completely at ease and self-composed. The others all wheeled in the sky, as if responding to some rhythm. Among the residents of the capital city moving to and fro, there was none who did not bow down and gaze up in reverence and sigh in wonder over this marvel at length. For a time the cranes did not disperse. Then, with undulating calls, back they flew to the northwest quarter, and scattered. Moved by this auspicious sign, I therefore made this poem to record its facts: Jt�Il±�...t. 7t i:.. ;k .7 , .� :fr # 't' � fj, Jt. Il#t � rt 4J. �t. 1(p m1 �ti:.. . 1� :frff�� �It� � 'F , 17} :fr ,;:..�, t-t .Jl:.��)ti:.. �, ilJi -l ""' i!, �Iij' ��, �J.i* ip . {.i*- � � , � � ft 1" � ;t , � J+ Ri:.. .

� * �*, �j(.� � ;lt. � *. � �#�-ti1-t'tt)'i< k. � 't :

Just as the sky grows light, rainbow-hued clouds brush the [palace watchtower's] roof ridge. Immortal birds, proclaiming good auspices, suddenly come with their measured gambollings [into the court]. Soaring windborne, truly companions of the Three Mountains (Isles of Immortality), Two by two, they present in review their venerable, noble forms. They seem to be imitating the blue luan that roosted atop the jeweled halls, Could they be the like of the (auspicious) red geese that gathered at Heaven's Pond? Lingering, they sound their pure and limpid calls and face the cinnabar watchtower [of the emperor's palace residence], Therefore [having witnessed all of this], the ignorant and unsure are brought to certainty.

�tat�:ft�*} :t 1J.. #- * � .� *- 1"

•• 7t:.lt-=- .l! 18 ffl ffl J! � -t It �

1fl.. � I :fl" M � Jii] 1F lffi l: � )t. -U��,,*'9k of ft /I!..IJ -ti1�.'li ·li J.!f, 1��11

MAGGIE BICKFORD Imperially composed, imperially painted and written. [Cipher:] First Man Under Heaven. :k r

-

f.... 1 2

��� • .3t it

Huizong's inscribed preface identifies the picture that precedes it with an "auspicious sign" #� that appeared on the evening of February 26, lII2, and that prompted the present work. "Moved by this auspicious sign," Huizong wrote, "I therefore made this poem to record its facts." The poem that follows connects this contemporary event with a long tradition of auspicious avian responses by means of a sequence of allusions. 13 Working with these materials, Sturman identifies the points that were made to converge within the text, within the image, and intertextually between words and image. The cranes arrived during the Lantern Fes­ tival, at the moment during the New Year's celebrations when the em­ peror and the people reaffirmed their bonds and mutual satisfaction. This crane-sighting occurred at the epicenter of these events: at the Duanmen palace gate, where the emperor showed himself to his subjects and where his subjects shouted their wishes for his long life, and in the present case the cranes added their thousand-year wishes too. At this auspicious juncture, at the start of a promising new year, all bore witness to the events described in the text and depicted in the painting. Sturman persuasively argues that the pivot of these events is the proper music that traditionally provoked the arrival of auspicious cranes as a sign of Heaven's approval of the music and of the ruler re­ sponsible for it. The poem's allusive tissue connects this phenomenon and its auspicious significance to antiquity; internal references in the inscribed texts establish it in the present; and, external contemporary references in government records and anecdotal literature repeatedly and specifically attest to the linkage between the responsive arrival of cranes and performances of Huizong's proper music the Music of

12. Transcribed in SQBJX 4: 1915A. My translation is based on Stunnan's, in "Cranes," p. 33, with substantial modifications; see also his discussion, pp. 38-42. In line 2 of the poem, I have adopted James Legge's translation of lai yi * �-"come with their measured gambollings into the court'-as it occurs in its locus classicus text. See James Legge, The Shoo King, vol. 3 of The Chinese Classics (reprinted-Taipei: Southern Materials Center, 1985), 88. I have replaced his italicized interpolation with text in square brackets. 13. On these allusions, see Stunnan, "Cranes."

Huizong's Paintings Great Brilliance, Dashengyue -k. � � that was the product of the music reform that Huizong initiated.14 The cranes, however, are much more than merely winged seals-of­ approval. They come as noble emissaries from another court. They are the designated agents of congratulations between the parallel courts of Huizong at the Song capital city and the eternal Daoist realm of the immortals. Their attendance honors the emperor's place in the terrestrial and celestial hierarchy. Decorously, they dance into Huizong's court, making gestures of homage and blessings for long life. Then they fly home. Huizong's text is expertly calculated to fuse the archetypal and eternal with the particular and circumstantial. The arrival of auspicious cranes is contextualized scrupulously with respect to both past and present: broadly, back to antiquity, through allusions; precisely by flxing this generic auspicious response at a particular time and place, by stipulating witnesses Huizong and his people and by claiming the emperor's personal emotion and active response. Throughout, the language is impersonal and the images opaque. The reportage of his preface, its format and formulae, is little different from that of offlcial reports of crane sightings that were recorded in the Song hu!yao * -t� .15 With one important difference, however: the em­ peror himself is witness and respondent. The preface having established the narrative, Huizong's poem expands its observable elements by matching them with allusive language and developing them through an orderly series of appropriate historical citations that project this auspi­ cious event retrospectively and then concludes by sharply returning to present witness and signiflcance. Having read Huizong's preface and poem, the reader now has been prepared with great care to view the emperor's pictorial image and to receive it properly.

14. See ibid., 40 and 52, nn, 90-91, On Dashengyue, see Lam's chapter in this volume, 15. For SHY notices of auspicious crane sightings, see Sturman, "Cranes," 51, n. 76. It is tempting here to consider that such reports, thousands of which were submitted by officials to the court and were collected, compiled, and archived there, were the base source materials used for making the text-and-image units of Huizong's huge auspi­ cious-omens projects, in which these documents were transformed into courtly texts and images. Mechanisms by which this process might have been carried out are discussed below,

,

MAGGIE B I C KF O RD The picture looks different after the text is read. We return to the picture and now find its conventional architecture and generic cranes fixed in the particular situation stipulated by Huizong's preface and poem. Directed by his inscription, we are made to understand that this configuration of twenty cranes appeared in just this way on the evening of III2/I/I6, when, auspicious clouds having descended on the Duan­ men, two cranes perched on its roof tips, while eighteen others soared and swooped overhead. This conjunction of impersonal, . universalized conventions (be they verbal or visual ones) with particular events and personal authorship lies at the heart of Huizong's paintings. What is the point of all this care lavished on crafting the text, in­ scribing Huizong's Slender Gold calligraphy, and creating the perfect image? The point is, as the emperor writes in concluding his poem: "Therefore [having witnessed all of this], the ignorant and unsure are brought to certainty." And in this work of bringing certainty through the objective, observable indications of Huizong's effectiveness and efficacy as emperor of China, the exquisite exteriority of the painting is an asset of incalculable value. One might dare to quibble with the text, but seeing, in the case of Huizong's painting, is believing. 1 6

Auspicious Dragon Rock :fHt ;{; il (Fig. 11.3). Of the three handscrolls under study, this is the one where Huizong most insistently asserted direct engagement with the text, with the painting, and with the subject matter.17 He precisely situated the image, specifically stipulated its aus­ picious aspect, and repeatedly wrote himself into the record as maker of text and image. Furthermore, Huizong literally marked the subject with his ownership.

16. Observed also by Sturman, "Cranes," 34, 35-36. 17. Handscroll; ink and color on silk; 53.8 x 127.5 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing. In­ scription transcribed in Wu Rongguang ��7t., Xinchou xiaoxiaji *:ll:i',!j,l.'ic., Yishu shangjian xuanzhen �1#'f .i!�, 2d ser. (Taipei, 1971), 1.29h-30; excerpts trans, in Sturman, "Cranes," 36, 50, n, 56; the painting is discussed on 36, Reproduced in color in Fu, Liang Song huihua, no, 46, Because of its emphatic patternization and hard edges, some scholars consider Aus­ picious Dragon Rock to have been painted long after Huizong's time (among others, James Cahill, in discussions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1998-99). To me, the same distinctive qualities seem appropriate to its purpose and no obstacle to con­ sidering it together with Five-Colored Parakeet and Cranes ofGood Omen (Figs. ILl and 11.2).

Huizong's Paintings Like the white cranes, this black rock compels attention to configuration to its sharp, contorted silhouette, isolated against the blank ground; to its impressive perforations, systematically carved into the silk by means of patient tone-against-tone inkwash applications; to the deliberate patterning of its deeply pitted surface. Here again the painter underscored the distinctive qualities of his main subject through visual contradistinction. Like the blossoming apricot of the Five-Colored Parakeet and like the fine-line bracket sets and roof ornaments beneath the Cranes if Good Omen, here the painter planted delicately de­ lineated green-leafed plants and shrubs in the hollows of this mono­ chromatic monolith, where they act as circumstantial foils to its em­ blematic affect. In his inscribed preface Huizong began by naming his subject: "Auspicious Dragon Rock" a proper name, not a generic one like "five-colored parakeet." He then situated it precisely "south of the En­ circling Jasper Pond, east of Fragrant Isle Bridge" .ft.. *J! � ;�..;t. m , ;q ijfj .t.t..;t. � among the rare rocks installed in the garden precincts around the Xuanhe palace. 1 8 Then, turning his attention to the rock itself, he praised its configuration and dynamic power, rearing and soaring, springing and thrusting, "like the form of a dragon emerging as an omen of favorable response" � j}�;� *:kLit l:b ���..;t."*-. 1 9 As in his Five-Colored Parakeet and Cranes ifGood Omen, Huizong closed his inscription with his threefold claim to authorship by means of his signature line: "Imperially composed, imperially painted and written." And again he thrice claimed the work: by inscribing that signature, by executing his "First Under Heaven" cipher, and by impressing his "Imperial Writing" seal. But in this work Huizong went further. In Auspicious Dragon Rock, Huizong asserted his direct participation by ex­ plicitly identifying himself as actor throughout the process. In his pref­ ace, he recorded his active responses to this extraordinary monolith: "And so I personallY painted on the painting silk and relied on [a] four-rhyme [poem] to commemorate it" �a!ut_ -.t JWr JlA 'Il!1 iJiR...;t.. In

18. For Encircling Jasper Pond and its environs, see Cai Jing's 1.f.. * (1046-1126) ac­ count of Huizong's entertainments of H12h, in Wang Mingqing .1. aJJ it comp., HuiZhu lu, houlu,yuhua ;f.f!l:i�At�#.� (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961),yuhua 1.274 (item 365). 19. For a slighdy different translation, see Stutrnan, "Cranes," 36.

MAGGIE BICKFORD the poem that follows, he reiterated, "Therefore, relying on the color[-charged] brush, I personallY copied its image" !t)� �) " 8l� � . Finally, Huizong made the rock his own by naming it. He named it "Auspicious Dragon," and he inscribed that name on the surface of the painted rock in his empowering imperial script Huizong's unmistak­ able Slender Gold calligraphy, written in gold ink. In doing so, he enacted on the painted image his practice of bestowing official titles and lofty names upon his favorites among the garden rocks that he amassed at his Northeast Marchmount R Mk, where he caused the very finest among them to be engraved with their names inscribed in his calligraphy, the incisions inlaid with gold.20 THE HANGING SCROLLS

Two hanging scrolls Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant and Wax-Plum andBirds (Figs. 11.4 and 11.5) share similar dimensions and compositions: their signature lines are identically worded and placed. In each, pictorial ele­ ments were arranged so as to frame and point up a four-line pentasyllabic verse inscribed in a regular four-by-five-character block of Huizong's Slender Gold calligraphy. Each displays the signature phrase along its lower-right edge: "Xuanhe Palace, Imperially composed (or produced) and written" � �t1!G:. {jp '-4+ . ; [cipher] "First Man Under Heaven," with Huizong's large, square, relief seal, bearing the legend, "Imperial Writing" -fjP ., impressed over the first three characters (� �!G:.). Here again flowers, shrub, and birds are exhibited in an informative configu­ ration. The flatness of the image, as Rowland observed of another Huizong painting, "is emphasized by the way in which the artist's in­ scription forms a part of the design."21

Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant }t � � )1t (Fig. 11.4). Huizong's great golden pheasant, implausibly perched on pliant hibiscus stems, reminds us that in the works under study clarity of display received higher priority

20. The inscription is just below and to the right of the upper hollow. A clear detail is reproduced in Fu, Liang Song huihua) no. 46. For Huizong's inscriptions on rocks and for their connection to auspicious glyphs, see "Aesthetic of Agency," 84-85 and notes 56 and 57. 21. Rowland, "Problem of Hui Tsung," 8.

Huizong's Paintings than did naturalistic depiction.22 The modes of depiction and the ex­ posed geometric placement of its elements belie any notion that this image was taken from life: the large bird dominates an orderly system of diagonals, the picture pinned neatly into place by butterflies and chry­ santhemums at its upper-right and lower-left corners. The overt or­ ganization of the subjects is matched by the aggressive stylization of their internal elements. Huizong's painting here amounts to a visual rectification of forms. In this situation, so-called realism or naturalism is not merely beside the point; they are undesirable. To the extent that circumstantial detail compromises paradigmatic clarity, such effects might be seen to sub­ vert the painter's mission to make a definitive, authoritative image. As Rowland observed of another Huizong bird, "the feathers of the quail . . . stand out almost like the scales of a carapace."23 Even allowing for the overpainting of the pheasant's upper body, its plumage is styl­ ized and patterned to such an extreme degree that it suggests the prac­ tical deployment of taxonomic protocols for assembling form. Did the painter of Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant have at hand an illustrated index of authorized avian advisories as he visually spelled out in color, shape, and pattern the golden pheasant's crest, cowl, and magnificent tail?24 22. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; 81.5 x 53.6 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing. Inscription transcribed in SQBJ 2: II38B (assigned to "secondary category" lk � ); translated, annotated, and interpreted in Charles Hartman, "Poetry and Painting," in Victor Mair, ed., The Columbia History ofChinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 482, and in Harunan, "Literary and Visual Interactions in Lo Chih-ch'uan's Crows in Old Trees," The Metropolitan MuseumJournal 28 (1993): 148-49. Reproduced in color, Fu, Liang Song huihua, no. 41. 23. Rowland, "Problem of Hui Tsung," 9. I think it very possible that craft schemata, specifically embroidery design, influenced the particular stylization of this painted pheasant. See, e.g., the Sh6s6in fantastic bird (especially its speckled comb and patterned breast) embroidered on silk (fragment; mid-eighth c.), reproduced and discussed in Kaneo Matsumoto, Jodai-giri: tfh and 8th Century Textiles in Japanfrom the ShOsoin andHoryuji, trans. Shigetaka Kaneko and Richard L. Mellott (Kyoto: Shikosha, 1984), no. 99. For more on the relationship between these paintings and craft techniques, see Bickford, "Aesthetic of Agency," 82-84 and figs. 9, I2A, and I2B. 24. A Song taxonomic system for painters is attested to by Guo Ruoxu :fJl * J.t (fl. 1075); see "On the Models [to be followed] in Working" �� 1t�#t, trans. in Alexander Soper, Kuo Jo-Hsii's Experiences in Painting (T'u-hua chien-wen chih) (Washington: American Council of Learned Societies, 1951), 12-13. For visual taxonomy in action, see

MAGGIE B I C KF O RD Huizong's inscription is the heart of his scroll: hibiscus gracefully bracket it, chrysanthemums stretch out toward it, like flowers seeking the sun; the pheasant turns his head toward it, his beak like a pointer; but­ terflies hover over it, as if attracted by the scent of imperial ink. The focus of this attention reads, in Hartman's translation:25

His autumn strength wards off the fearsome frost, with lofty cap, the brocade-feathered fowl: his knowledge complete, perfect in the Five Virtues, in ease and rest he surpasses the ducks and widgeons.

�jJJ �E�� � � ,* .;pJ l� e. ��E-� �i\.·k �

In his detailed investigation of this work, Hartman observes the pro­ ductive interaction between this text and the picture that surrounds it: "The inscription fixes the image of the pheasant as a figure of moral perfection, a symbol of the Five Virtues." He goes on to speculate plausibly that the painting may have been made as a gift from the em­ peror "to a high official perhaps on the occasion of promotion to sec­ ond-class rank" (a status that was associated with the golden pheasant from Tang times on) .26 As in the case of the flying cranes (Fig.

11.2) ,

this image of a golden

pheasant becomes more than a depiction of a wild bird after the im­ portance of the emperor's inscription sinks in; so, too, with the minor elements. The chrysanthemums underscore the seasonal reference made in Huizong's poem and carry as well the association of stead­ fastness under harsh conditions (matching the claim made for the pheasant in Huizong's first line). They are also associated with lon­ gevity. Extraneous to the major theme but contributing to the con­ gratulatory payload, this embodied wish for long life is repeated once more for good measure at the upper right: butterflies homophonous with a word

(die

-:I)

that means

70

(hudie

*'*Jl*t)

are

years of age.27 The

Huang Quan 1t � (903-68), Studies from Nature :!fj !tJt* III it (Fig. n.n) , discussed below. 25. Translated, annotated, and interpreted in Hartman, "Crows in Old Trees," 148-49; I follow Hartman's readings here. 26. Ibid., 145-49; see also Hartman, "Poetry and Painting." 27. See Nozaki Nobuchika Jf��14:, Zhongguojixiang tu'an, Zhongguofengsuya,!/iu Zhlji 'F elI "\!r # III *", 'F ell Jit�.j;Jf�i::.. - (Taipei: Zhongwen tushu, 1980), Chinese-language adaptation of the 2d ed. (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1940) of Nozaki's KisshO zuan kaidai, Shina fuzoku no ichi kenkyu "\!r # Iil *" Nf *! t. JJfl Jit{� O) - .j;Jf � (Tianjin: Zhongguo tuchan

Huizong's Paintings multiple functions of these minor motifs as formal elements and as bearers of good wishes

the chrysanthemums as seasonal indicator,

emblem of virtue, wish for long life, seconded by longevity butter­ flies

are typical of the systematic organization of auspicious visuality in

the arts of China.28

Wax-Plum and Birds *li#t J.t *

(Fig.

11.5).

This work reverses and in­

verts the placement of picture and poem as composed in

Golden Pheasant:

Hibiscus and

the framing device extends from right to left, its flow­

ering branch pointing down to the poem that was inscribed at the lower left of the work.29 This painting is unique among the group not only because it is nearly monochromatic (the same could be observed of

Auspicious Dragon Rock, Fig. 11.3), but particularly because the painter uses techniques that had been developed in ink-painting traditions. Here the controlled strokes that were ftrmly subordinated to delineating the

Parakeefs perch (Fig. II.I) were freed up into lightly applied brushstrokes

that set up a formal rhythm at the same time that they formed the broken contours of the wax plum. In place of the

Parakeet's patterned plumage,

neatly set out in color-against-color, the painter here made the wild birds from soft modulated ink washes, brought into focus by markings, beak, and tail (the deftnition possibly enhanced beyond the original by over­ painted repairs) . The strong visual contradistinction between flowers and birds, or birds and architecture, or rock and plants, which is characteristic

gongsi, 1928), with additions and deletions. For chrysanthemum, see no. 43, 176-77; for chrysanthemum and butterfly, see no. 70, 252. 28. For extended explication of multitasking motifs and their organization, see my "Three Rams and Three Friends: The Working Life of Chinese Auspicious Motifs," Asia Major 12, pt. I (1999): 127-58. 29. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; 83.3 X 53.3 em. National Palace Museum, Taipei. Inscription transcribed in Hu Jing t}] &;t et al., comps., Shiqu baoji sanbian � � 1f It -=- _ (1861; facsimile reprint-Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1969) (hereafter SQBJS), 3: 1371B; annotated entry, National Palace Museum, Gugong shuhua lu Mt 1; .. .. �, rev. ed. (faipei: National Palace Museum, 1965), 5.66; trans. by Charles Mason and color repro. in Wen C. Fong and James c. Y. Watt, Possessing the Past: Treasuresfrom the National Palace Museum, Taipei (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, and National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1996), 165 and pI. 72. Full-page color repro. in National Palace Museum, ed. and comp., Gugong shuhua tumulu Mt 1; .. .. 111 � � (faipei: 1989- ) , I: 301.

470

MAGGIE B I C K F O RD

of Huizong's other works (Figs. II.I-4), here give way to a harmonious monochromatic presentation. Here again Huizong's inscribed poem directed the reading of this conventional image of little birds on wintry branches (wax-plum flowers in late winter) . It reads, in Charles Mason's translation:3o Mountain birds, proud and unfettered, Plum blossom pollen soft and light. This painting will be our covenant Until a thousand autumns show upon our hoary heads.

� **�� ����� eAf -Jt -t �

-t;fk�� EJ �

Huizong's text turns these generalized wild birds into particular ones: these wild birds are the birds that popularly are called "white-haired old man" E1 ill �1 , an image associated with lasting fidelity. Now the picture may be read as a visual pun, or rebus. Huizong might have inscribed this work to honor a betrothal, wedding, or anniversary; or he might have had it made as a token for a favored palace lady.31 Again an auxiliary mo­ tif the bee Huizong set buzzing between the lower branches of the shrub resends the message of the stirrings of spring, possibly with erotic overtones.32

TWO A L B U M LEAVES A N D A S H O RT HAND S C RO L L Within the large Huizong corpus, three additional paintings, Flowering Peach and Dove, Finches and Bamboo, and Musk Cat (Figs. II. 6-8) , belong to the group under study. They lack the extensive self-documentation of the

30. Fong and Watt, Possessing the Past, 165. 31. Qianshen Bai, "Image as Word: A Preliminary Study of Rebus Play in Song Painting 060-1279)," in Metropolitan Museum 0/ Art Journal 24 (1999): 64. Bai (n. 34) credited Wang Yao-t'ing as the first to relate this painting to the theme of love in his "Images of the Heart: Chinese Painting on a Theme of Love," National Palace Museum Bulletin 12, no. 6 (Jan.-Feb. 1988): 5. Bai observed that baitou weng as an allusion to con­ nubial fidelity has literary origins but that it passed into popular usage as a common name for these birds. He further took this rebus, which, in his view, turns on literary reference, as evidence of the penetration of literati ideas into the Academy. I think it more likely that by Song times baitou weng functioned both as the vernacular name of a bird and also as a symbol of fidelity independent of reference to its remote literary origins. 32. For the possible significance of the bee, see Wolfram Eberhard, A Dictionary 0/ Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought, trans. G. L. Campbell (1986; reprinted-London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 37-38.

Huizong's Paintings

471

five works just discussed, but I find their visual affinities strong enough to make them part of this group. I will treat them briefly, in descending order of imperial documentation.

Flowering Peach and Dove �t� II (Fig. 1I.6)�3

This album leaf mounted as a hanging scroll bears a short inscription in airy Slender Gold calligraphy along its upper-right side: "The year 1107 Imperial Brush" T � � * , inscribed over a large seal, "Imperial Writing" .fitp " , followed by Huizong's cipher. Held in aristocratic collections in Japan since the fourteenth century, this painting long has been considered by Japanese connoisseurs and scholars to be the finest surviving Huizong painting.34 Benjamin Rowland judged it to be one of "the only two paintings that can be unconditionally accepted as genuine examples of Huizong's style."35 Set out in visual terms that now are familiar to us, the picture frames the imperial inscription between outstretched, patterned leaves and up-swung branch. Again, this artist visually polarized pictorial elements in the interest of diagnostic clarity: he made the dove's breast and upper wings by lightly applying delicately-colored transparent washes and faint texture strokes; he sharply delineated its beak and claws; he firmly outlined branches, leaves, buds, and blossoms, neatly partitioned their interior structures, and colored between these lines with opaque p1gment. •

Finches and Bamboo tt. III (Fig. 11.7).

Huizong's marks on this work consist of his cipher, inscribed over his "Imperial Writing" seal, with a

33. Dated to 1107. Album leaf mounted as a hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; 29 X 26 cm; Setsu Gatodo itJUf: $ P$J 'l" Collection, Tokyo, former Inoue Collection; repro­ duced in color in Etoh Shun mRj.�, Sogenjidai no kaiga 5futatf<. (7) �:t, Miyabi $, vol. 6 (Tokyo: Setsu Gatodo, 1982), pI. I, and widely reproduced elsewhere. See also the long entry on this painting in Max Loehr, "Chinese Paintings with Sung Dated Inscrip­ tions," Ars Orientalis 4 (1961): 219-84, 238-39, and see Loehr's entries on three additional works bearing dinghai T � (1107) Huizong inscriptions, 239-40. 34 . According to Loehr ("Sung Dated Inscriptions," 239), this painting passed through the collection of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu Jt *11 Aoiti (1358-1408), as indicated by his seal in the lower-left comer. 35. Rowland, "Problem of Hui Tsung," 8. The other unconditionally genuine Huizong is the Five-Colored Parakeet.

MAGGIE B I C KFORD

472

"Xuanhe" seal impressed over the join of the painting to the left mounting.36 Among Huizong's birds and plants, this image is the flattest and most strenuously stylized one. Presented in strict proftle, the finches are cleanly parsed into colored and patterned components, the bamboo into telescoped, emphatically segmented jointed stalks that end in splayed, spear-shaped malachite leaves. This impressive evenness of execution is at once relieved and emphasized by the fluid ink strokes with which the painter contoured the earthen bank and its ferny growth, by his scumbling of wet-on-wet washes at the bamboo joints, and by his fine drawing of a few desiccated leaves.

Musk Cat ��

(Fig. 11.8). This work, attributed to Huizong, bears no inscriptions or seals.37 Its impressive iconic presentation distinguishes it from the many animated images of pets at play depicted by Song aca­ demic artists. Moreover, its spherical stylization and emphatic display of black head-spot and tail against the cat's pure white coat are suggestive of yin/yang graphic devices and their symbolic correspondences or possibly mantic affect. Taken together with the painting's courtly fastidiousness and its high level of finish, these features lead me to assign it to the Huizong group.

AN

(A L M O S T )

L O S T H A N G I N G S C RO L L

To these paintings that I have inspected directly I now add a fmal work that I know only through poor black-and-white reproductions. Imperial Hawk � J.t II fib (Fig. 11. 9) is a severely damaged painting that bears Huizong's title inscription and cipher, dated to 1114, and a long inscrip­ tion by Cai Jing �J:t- (1046-1126), dated to 10/5 of the same year.38 Its 36. Handscroll; ink and color on silk; 27.9 X 45.7 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1981.278. For colophons, seals, collection history, and citations to traditional cata­ logues, see Laurence Sickman's entry on this painting in Laurence Sickman et al., Chinese CalJigraplg and Painting in the Collection ojfohn M. Crauford, fr. (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 1962), no. 15; color repro., pI. 3, and widely reproduced elsewhere. 37. Undated album leaf, ink and color on silk, Setsu Gatodo, Tokyo, repro. in color in Etoh, Sogen, pI. 6. 38. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; dimensions unknown. Location unknown. For inscriptions, seals, collection history, and citations to traditional catalogues, see Xu Bangda �*�it, Gu shuhua wei'e kaobian * • • ��:ttJt (n.p.: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1984) (hereafter, Forgeries), vol. I, pt. I, 225. Repro. in Xie Zhiliu, Tang Wudai Song Yuan

Huizong's Paintings

473

condition prevents us from drawing visual conclusions. However, Cai ling's inscription (transcribed in earlier times) allows us to understand this and the other works as active sites of interaction between the em­ peror who bestowed them and the officials who received them in this case Huizong's most trusted minister. Earlier, we looked at Huizong's Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant (Fig. 11.4), which Charles Hartman persuasively interpreted as having been made as a gift to an (unknown) · official upon promotion. His in­ terpretation drew upon broad literary associations of the pheasant with steadfast loyalty and upon particular visual reference that correlated the golden pheasant with second-class rank in the imperial bureaucracy. Hartman extended his researches to Imperial Hawk. He expanded the effective context of Huizong's terse "Imperial Hawk" title inscription by turning to records of a lost painting of the same subject that also was inscribed by Huizong and presented to Cai ling; there, the emperor's substantial inscription makes it clear that the image embodied his rec­ ognition of Cai as his "shield and wall."39 In Cai's inscribed response to the present painting he identified the rare white hawk as an omen of af­ firmation and joined it to Huizong's wonderful painting: Birds, animals, and plants change their features and their colors in response to the prodigious power of Your virtue and become auspices of good omen for the State. . . . It is not only an auspicious augury from feathered creatures; it is a marvel of inspired brush to which nothing can be added.4o

I have no doubt that this is precisely the response that Huizong wished to elicit in making (or causing to be made) the paintings that we study here. CWe can count on Cai ]ing to have known the right answer.)

mingji � 1L 1�*- .7t --t .i;zJ: (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue, 1957), pL 34. Translation and in­

terpretation in Charles Hartman, "Chinese Hawks: An Untided Portrait," paper read at the Association for Asian Studies, Mar. 25, 1994, ms. pp. 32-35; I am indebted to Charles Hartman for sharing his manuscript with me. See also Loehr, "Sung Dated Inscriptions," 242-43. 39. Hartman, "Chinese Hawks," 34. 40. Ibid., 33-34. I am very grateful to Hartman for permitting me to publish his translation here (excerpt) and in "Aesthetics of Agency," 89, where his full translation of this long inscription appears.

474

MAGGIE B I CKFORD

In reviewing Huizong's cat and cranes, parakeet, pheasant, fmches, dove, and rock, we witnessed a stylization that is so thoroughgoing in its selection of essential elements, in its elimination of circumstantial detail, in its evenhandedness of presentation, and in its erasure of process and effacement of artistic personality and touch, that, under these conditions, the maker vacated these pictorial images. They seem to have appeared of themselves. They stand as isolated, impervious images of impersonal visual authority. Why do they look that way? C O M PA R E D T O W H A T ? F I N D I N G T H E R I G H T V I S UA L C O N T EXT

Typically, art historians can go some distance toward understanding one work by comparing it to another one. By asking the question "compared to what?" we make a visual context for the unfamiliar object either synchronically, by grouping it with contemporary works (in this case Northern Song paintings) and by identifying shared observable features and formal conceptions (that is, period style), or diachronically, by siting it within a developmental visual sequence so that it stands among earlier, contemporary, and later works of its kind (in this case, presumably, flower-and-bird painting). But in the case of Huizong's paintings, "compared to what?" the art historian's traditional diagnostic tool­ doesn't get us very far. Although to many, Huizong's works epitomize Song flower-and-bird painting, few Song flower-and-bird paintings look very much like them. If we compare Huizong's Finches and Bamboo (Fig. 11·7) with a Song courtly painting of similar subject matter, for in­ stance the anonymous Sparrows, Plum Blossoms, and Bamboo (Fig. 11.10), we see more difference than we do similarity of composition, technique, and affect.41 In this case, flower-and-bird paintings are not the most pro­ ductive comparanda. In this situation, "compared to what?" rapidly turns back on itself and the answer is "compared to other Huizongs." This answer has some utility, as we have seen: formal analysis enabled us to isolate a plausible Huizong corpus on the basis of observable, distinctive commonalities. In 41. Unidentified artist (late twelfth century). Sparrows, Plum Blossoms, and Bamboo. Fan mounted as an album leaf; ink and color on silk; 25.7 X 26.8 cm. The Metropolitan Mu­ seum of Art 24.80.487. Color repro. in Fong et al., Bryond Representation, pI. 47.

Huizong's Paintings

475

the end, however, it was unable to help us account for the existence of these defining features in the first place. That is, we still do not under­ stand why these peculiar paintings look the way they do. Another ap­ proach to addressing that question is by trying to answer another one: "For what purpose were they made?"

Huizong's Paintings as Agents I claimed at the outset that Huizong's engagement in the arts was in­ separable from his exercise of emperorship. Indeed, without under­ standing these so-called artworks as actively deployed instruments of imperial rule, it is not possible to understand satisfactorily why they were made or why they look the way they do. Like the elegant images of his palace poetry, Huizong deployed these dazzling visual images as in­ struments of a glorious rule in which, as Ronald Egan observes elsewhere in this book, "Beauty is virtue." Under these conditions, it is useful to approach them in three interlocking and interactive contexts: ancient traditions of auspicious-image display, long-established customs of be­ stowal of works from the emperor's hand as tokens of grace and favor, and the modern Song dynastic project of rule by culture. ' H U I Z O N G S AUS P I C I O U S I MAGES

Visually, the Song image of birds that comes closest to Huizong's distinctive images is, to my eye, Studies from Nature � !t Jt * III � (Fig. 11.11), attributed to the tenth-century flower-and-bird Academy master Huang Quan -jf � (903-68), but stylistically dating to Hui­ zong's time.42 It shares the overriding lucidity, stasis, crisp silhouettes, clean parsing of elements, and decisive plumage patterning that we observed as characteristic of Huizong's paintings. There is a reason for these shared features. An inscription on Huang Quan's painting records that he presented it to his son, Huang Jubao -jf /l; f (fl. mid-tenth century) (who continued his family'S service in Academy painting), 42. This painting is reproduced widely, including a color reproduction in Zhongguo lidai huihua, Gugong bowuyuan canghuaji 'f mJ Jfl1-\;.�., !t 't �#JF;ti!. #; , vol. 1 (Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1978), 74-75. Although this work is ascribed to the tenth­ century Academy master, James Cahill (Index, 35) proposed a "middle Song date (time of Huizong)?" This, I think, is exacdy right.

MAGGIE B I CKFORD presumably for instructional purposes. Huizong's paintings, like Huang Quan's, are works of typology, but typology directed toward a particular definitive point. During the last 25 years, the Huizong handscrol1s that we have con­ sidered works long regarded as exemplars of the decorative art of flower-and-bird painting have come to be recognized as properly be­ longing (also) to the category of imperial auspicious-omen painting. Many scholars consider that the Five-Colored Parakeet, Cranes rfGood Omen, and Auspicious Dragon Rock (Figs. 11.1-3) likely were made for one of Huizong's massive auspicious-omen painting projects. Projects like Huizong's celebrated Albums for the Emperor's Perusal in the Xuanhe [Re�n-Petiod] � ;frJ 11- f. RJt originally comprised thousands of auspicious images and matching inscriptions in prose and poetry. Today, we only have these few. These survivors stand for more than one aesthete-emperor's grandiose schemes. They are the latest (and the earliest surviving) products of the ongoing practice of imperial Song omen painting by means of which Song emperors, from the founder Taizu on, caused images of the auspicious omens that blessed their reign and confirmed their virtue to be made in very large (documented) numbers.43 In "Huizong and the Aesthetic of Agency," I proposed that we consider these paintings as useful objects objects that were made for practical ends with the strong implication that treating them as fine art, as previously had been done, obscured rather than illuminated . their situation. Furthermore, I asserted that in shaping these imperial paintings (making them look the way they do today), the particular functional demands of auspicious-image making that is, the practical means whereby to embody auspicious omens or aspirations in visual, possibly efficacious founs were much more influential than were courtly aesthetics or Huizong's personal taste or artistic skills. Pro­ ceeding from these premises, we can understand Huizong's paintings in new ways. Once we reposition these paintings within the "auspicious image" category, they begin to look different, and certain of their disconcerting visual features begin to reveal sense and system. Now we can consider

43. For extensive discussion of the culture of auspicious visuality at Huizong's court, with special reference to Albumsfor the Emperor's Perusal in the Xuanhe [Re{gn·PeriodJ, see Sturman, "Cranes"; and Bickford, "Aesthetic of Agency."

Huizong's Paintings

477

them as members of a long, vertical tradition of auspicious-omen images that went back to ancient times. If, from this vantage point, we look at them again, their overriding demand for clarity realized by means of isolated image, silhouette, stasis, diagrammatic configuration, diagnostic brushwork, and color becomes functionally normative in the long term, rather than aesthetically aberrant during the Northern Song, as defined by fine-arts developments that pursued naturalistic description or expressive spontaneity. This is because the primary purpose of the image is to be itself and no other, to be recognized instantly as to its kind, and to be identified with particularity by its matching text. Considered as naturalistic flower-and-bird fine art, these paintings looked stiff, sche­ matic, and static; flat and archaic. Taken as segments of auspicious-omen indices or catalogues, the same paintings can be seen to be beautifully crafted, ingeniously contrived, and strikingly modern images, informed by Song learning in the natural sciences and by Song advances in de­ picting the natural world. Having noted that it is likely that the Five-Colored Parakeet, Cranes of Good Omen, and Auspicious Dragon Rock which survive as free­ standing works of art originally were connected to many, many similar segments that formed one of Huizong's grand auspicious-omen painting programs, I now propose to focus that hypothesis more specifically. I consider that they were part of illustrated auspicious-omen books, gen­ erically termed "Auspicious Pictures (or Diagrams)" � II , and, further, that they were made in full awareness of that tradition, as revealed by their format. The Yuhaz's J.,. iJij: "Auspicious Pictures" subsection offers the fol­ lowing notice: During the Xuanhe reign period, the auspicious birds and beasts, grasses and trees, that had been obtained, fifteen kinds in all, were painted to make the Picturesfor the Emperor's Perusal in a Time oj Peace :k.. -'t 1f-jt Ill , in one juan. An imperially composed .f,tp�J prose preface and poem headed each [section], to the right of the picture. � � 'F 4l.� it 1f. ;f..Z �, JL + A � . f>t $, :k.. -'t 1f-jt 111 4 . .f,tp�JVfx, -tt"f, � � [iJ i; .44 44. Wang Yinglin

.I.. �. (1223-96), ed., Yuhai (1883 Zhejiang shuju ed., reprinted­

Shanghai: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, lianhe chubanshe, Shanghai shudian, 1987) (hereafter YH), 200.32b-33a, ''Viewing of Auspicious Things from the Three Reigns in the Halls of the Dragon Diagram and the Heavenly Manifestations During the Qingli [Reign-Period,

MAGGIE B I C KFORD This composite unit, comprising an imperial preface and poem and matching auspicious image, is seen in the present paintings, although not all follow the recorded sequence.45 This identification leads to the introduction of a new group of com­ paranda. It may be helpful now to compare Huizong's auspicious images to one of their early ancestors the Good-Omen slabs at the Wu Liang Shrine (dated 147 CE; Fig. II.I2) . Here auspicious omens were arrayed in grid-like fashion, engraved on the stone slabs that formed the ceiling of the shrine. Each square of the grid was devoted to an omen, which was visualized as a silhouette and identified by a short text that also indicated its significance. (For instance, the two-headed bird whose cartouche text reads: "The Birds Joined at the Wing. They appear when a ruler's virtue reaches high and far.")46 The Wu Liang Shrine as a whole is famous for its severe simplicity: even the most complex pictorial situations were resolved into the flat, silhouetted shapes and sparse, strategic interior lineation that dramati­ cally distinguish its style from other modes of Han-period picture­ making. Moreover, even within this world of strenuous stylization, the Good-Omen slabs stand out by virtue of the emphatic flatness of their images, as Wu Hung noted in his study of this engraved-stone monument. Wu attributed this to the function of these Good-Omen images. He placed them among a broader group of Han images that de­ rived from illustrated books of auspicious omens in which the omens so

1041-48]" �Mit /l1 ;k :f Ml'lP".::,AJI !,tl/h. The organization and format clearly are re­ lated to the famous Albumsfor the Emperor's Perusal in the Xuanhe [Re�n-Period] project. See also SS 206.5259, where the item is listed as "Huizong's Picturesfor the Emperor's Perusal in a Time ofPeace, in onejuatl' .fa. * ;k .if 1i - lt /11 -�. Our entry cites "Catalogue" .. � , now lost. Modern scholars have used this entry in their reconstruction of the Zhongxingguange shumu tf �tW M .. � compiled by Chen Kui ft� (1128-1203) and now lost. See Songshi Yiwenzhiguangbian *- 3t � :t. .-t , JiG (reprint of Songshi Yiwenzhi, bu,fu bian *- 3t � :t. .-t , :Mi FIt G [Shanghai: 1957]) (faibei: Shijie shuju, 1963), 5227. 45. In their present condition, Cranes ofGood Omen and Auspicious Dragon Rock present the reverse of the Yuhai sequence the inscription is to the left of the painting. The Five-Colored Parakeet (painting and calligraphy transposed in remounting, as noted above) follows the Yuhai sequence. 46. Trans. and repro. in Wu Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology ofEarfy Chinese PictorialArt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 24 and fig. 100. ,

Huizong's Paintings

47 9

registered were displayed in a manner that Wu termed "The Cataloguing Style." Books, paintings, and engraved stones in this format arrayed image-and-text units, each unit comprising a schematic omen image accompanied by an identifying or explanatory cartouche.47 Of one such unit, the Wu liang "Birds Joined at the Wing" (Fig. 11.12), he observed, "Given the function of this pictorial image, such a schematic representation was perhaps the best way to illustrate an omen for the purpose of future identification." In this case, he conclu­ ded, "a 'naturalistic' description would only weaken its usefulness as an index."48 With minor adjustments, Wu's observations on these Han­ period omen slabs apply as well to Huizong's auspicious-omen paintings. The shape-pIus-text set-up seen on the Wu liang ceiling is the basic structure that guides Huizong's elaborate pictures and their inscribed prefaces and poems. Wu's notion of a "Cataloguing Style" is particularly appropriate to Huizong's auspicious-omen handscrolls (Figs. 11.1-3) because, as I noted earlier, they likely were segments of the magnificent word-and-image catalogues in which the myriad auspicious phenomena that appeared in response to Huizong's blessed reign were displayed in brilliant color and celebrated in imperial poetry and prose. Earlier, in attempting to characterize the art of Huizong, I quoted Rowland's articulation of the signal affect of the emperor's flower­ and-bird paintings as exhibiting "an exquisite but empty decorative quality."49 Now I would amend Rowland's phrase to read "an exquisite and empty decorative quality." In the particular instance of these auspicious images, empty is a positive good: emptied of assertive artis­ tic personality and overtly subjective individual expression, the image so isolated is fit to embody impersonally heaven's observable endorsement of Huizong's rule. Here, too, the word decorative frequently a dismissive term descriptive of fine-style flower-and-bird painting in contradistinc­ tion to scholar-amateur ink painting also acts as a positive force. The beauty and high technique exhibited by these dazzling images make them, like Shang ritual bronze vessels, fit objects for use in the royal cult, whether as occasions for impressive display or as numinous trea-

47. Ibid., 77; Wu cited as examples auspicious-omen registers in the Han tomb wall paintings at Wangdu, Hebei (illustrated, 79, fig. 36), and Holingol, Inner Mongolia. 48. Ibid., 85· 49. See above, n. 4.

MAGGIE B I C KFORD

sure. That we mistake these useful instruments for useless art is a measure of their success in achieving Huizong's goal. Illustrated omen books flourished in medieval China, as documented in the textual record and reflected by survivals such as the Auspicious Omens Illustrated � J.l 1iI handscroll (Fig. 11.13), an eighth-century copy of an earlier book, preserved in the Dunhuang library and now in the Bibliotheque Nationale.50 If such books began as practical manuals for identifying and interpreting omens and for distinguishing between genuine and fake omens by means of definitive images, sometimes they became the occasion for displaying Heaven's approval by means of fine illustrations by artists such as Zong Bing * � (373-443), whose Auspi­ cious Omens Illustrated was recorded by Zhang Yanyuan *- $lt (fl. 81 5) in his Fashuyaolu � t" ��.51 Huizong's auspicious-omens projects were the culmination of these traditions. They are, in my view, new hybrid works. In addition to Song illustrated omen books, omen paintings produced at court, and provin­ cial omen paintings presented to the court in tribute (all now lost), they drew on many kinds of visual sources. The naked schemata of the Wu Liang birds were now clothed in dazzling plumage. Their authority was enhanced by ornithologically informed conceptions, gleaned from Song initiatives in the natural sciences, and coupled with the representational achievements of Academy painting. Beyond these exploitations of modern fine arts and science, they drew upon the emblematic clarity developed in craftwork the painted, embroidered, and woven auspi­ cious devices that marked imperial processional banners (Fig. 11.14), re­ ligious vestments (Fig. 11.15), and pictorial textiles (Fig. 11.16), and which formed a ubiquitous culture of auspicious visuality at Huizong's court and beyond it.52 50. Anonymous maker, eighth century, &tiying tu �� Ii} ; handscroll, ink and color on paper; Bibliotheque Nationale, P.2683. Reproduced and discussed in Jean-Pierre Drege et al., Images de Dunhuang. dessins etpeintures surpapier desfonds Peliiot et Stein; Mimoires Archio­ logiques 24 (paris: Ecole fran<;aise d'Extreme-Orient, 1999), 120-23, fig. 17, and 164-65. The definitive study of the scroll remains Matsumoto Eichi ;t..: * � , "Tonka hon Zui6 � kan" :ftJt*�� Ii} �, Bijutsu kenkyu *#f1ff � 184 (1956): 241-58. 51. See Matsumoto, "Tonka hon Zui6 � kan," 243; he lists other illustrated omen books in early collections on 244. 52. For extensive discussion of the role of crafts in informing Huizong's paintings and for the varied manifestations of auspicious visuality at his court, see Bickford, "Aesthetic of Agency." For processions, see Patricia Ebrey, "Taking Out the Grand Carriage: Im-

Huizong's Paintings With Huizong's work, the cartouche captions of the old omen books were expanded into prefaces and poetry. What typically was the province of unknown artisans and scribes became the emperor's personal painting and his Slender Gold calligraphy. Huizong's Celestial Brush transformed these utilitarian objects into works of fine art. The consequences of this conflation confound our neat divisions between art and craft, between the beautiful and the useful. This was part of Huizong's plan. C O M PA R E D T O W H O M ? F I N D I N G T H E R I G H T P A RA D I G M

Although we call these works "paintings," it is essential to recognize that they are image/text objects. In the case of Huizong's handscrolls, the typical publication of the pictorial portion alone mutilates the work and consequentially has obscured, for a long time, the meaning and the function of these works as well as our understanding of the style of the pictures and of their authorship. In the case of the hanging scrolls, removal of the text literally would mutilate the picture'S ground

it would make a hole in it. Here, the integration of picture and

text was pursued emphatically: the picture wraps around the text. The layout of the picture anticipated the reception of writing. Moreover, the subject matter so arranged was selected with specific reference to the text that it framed. Unlike earlier and contemporary works that illustrated narrative and poetic texts by placing the text before or after the image, or by alternating text and image, or by inserting text into appropriate interstices among pictorial elements, these works set up a situation in which word and image were unified both visually and with regard to meanings that were generated through interactions (as opposed to complementary reinforcement, merely) between their in­ formative texts and pictorial subject matter. (Huizong's

Golden Pheasant

[Fig.

Hibiscus and

11.4] is a good example.) We typically regard these

integrative strategies as the signal achievement of scholar-amateur art. In fact, the most significant Northern Song painting-poetry inter-

perial Spectacle and the Visual Culture of Northern Song Kaifeng," Asia Major, 3d ser., 12.1 (1999): 33-65.

MAGGIE B I C K F O RD actions typically took the form of colophons that were attached to the paintings, which were not an integral part of the painting proper. Huizong's paintings, in contrast, stand as the earliest extant body of work in which these word-image integrative strategies are consistently em­ ployed. The works under study compel us to reconsider the beginnings of this fundamental development of the history of Chinese painting in an imperial context.53 The art-historical aspect of the adversarial relationship between the Song emperors and the scholars that is, between Academy and scholar­ amateur painting urgently needs to be reassessed.54 There is no doubt that courtly flower-and-bird painting and scholarly ink-bamboo painting represent (and represented to Song people) contrasting and competing approaches and values, and that their significant, observable differences and the values tied to them were developed in terms of contradistinction, at least on the part of the scholars. Yet the scholars had not always been literati, and Huizong was an emperor and a literatus.55 On the one hand, there is an essentialist notion of the Song wenren JtA., as epitomized by Su Shi. On the other hand, habits of categorization (including the routine conflation of wenren with shidaifu ± *-�) make it seem as if "literatus" and "emperor" are mutually exclusive terms.

53. On this issue, see Chen Pao-chen (Baozhen) f.t.. 1i. .J. , "Song Huizong huihua de meixue tezhi: jian lun qi yuanyuan he yingxiang" *-.* � . � � * # 'f : *� Jt. iJl-� ;7.f­ :fu!5f!, Wen shi zhe xuebao x. :Jt {g*tl 40 (June 1993): 295-344, 309-16. She argues 01o-II) that Huizong developed an approach that began during the Southern Tang and that was practiced by Li Houzhu 4- 1t.i. (r. 961-76). She designates Huizong's Wax-Plum and Birds (our Fig. II.5) as the earliest extant work that manifests the three arts in a single work. 54. See my "The Painting of Flowers and Birds in Sung-Yuan China," in Maxwell K. HeaIn and Judith G. Smith, eds., Arts ofthe Sung and Yuan: Papers Preparedfor an Inter­

nationalSymposium O'l',anized I?Y The Metropolitan Museum ofArtin Conjunction with the Exhibition Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei (New York: MMA, 1996), 293-315. 55. Cf. Peter Bol's characterization of the shifting conception of shi ± during the Northern Song. He writes: ''Were I to translate the concept, I would need to take into account the dominant quality in the prevailing conception of shi and thus render it 'aristocrat' from the Period of Division into the ninth century, 'scholar-official' from the ninth century into the late Northern Song, and 'literatus' from the late Northern Song on." Peter K. Bol, 'This Culture of Ours": Intellectual Transitions in Tang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 33.

Fig.

Emperor HOOong (Zhao Ji, ro82-1135; r. 1l 0l-25) ,

lI.l 011

The Five-Colof7id Parakeet

a Blossomillg Apricot T,.... Northern Song, datable to lIlOS. Handscroll; ink and color on silk; 53.3 X 125-1 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Maria Antoinette Evans Fund, 33-364. Photograph © [2006]. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Fig. 11.2

Emperor Huizong (Zhao Ji, ro82-II35; r. IIOI-25),

X 138.2 cm. Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang. Fu Xinian, ed., Liang Song huihlla, shang, vol. 3 of Zhonggllo meishtl qtlanji: huihlla bian (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1988), no. 47.

Handscroll; ink and color on silk; 51 From

Cralles ofGood Omell.

Fig. II.3

Emperor Huizong (Zhao Ji, ro82-II35; r. IIOI-25), AuspiaollJ Dragon

Handseroll; ink and color on silk; 53.8

X

Rock.

127.5 em. Palace Museum, Beijing.

Courtesy Palace Museum, Beijing.

Fig. 11.4

�mperor Huizong (Zhao Ji, 1082-1135; r. 1101-25),

Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; 81.5

X 53.6

HibimIJ a/ld Goldm Pheasa/lt.

cm. Palace Museum, Beijing.

Courtesy Palace Museum, Beijing.

Fig. 11.5

Emperor Huizong (Zhao Ji, 1082-1135; r. IIOI-25),

Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; 83-3

X 53-3

Wax-Plum and Birds.

cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Photograph: Palace Museum Photographic Distribution, Ann Arbor. SV50. Courtesy National Palace Museum.

Fig.l1.6

Emperor Huizong (Zhao Ji, 1082-II35; r. IIOI-25),

Flowerillg Peach alld Dove.

Inscribed 1107. Album leaf mounted as a hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; 29

X 26 em.

Former Inoue Collection. Setsu Gatodii Collection, Tokyo. Courtesy Setsu Isao.

•

Fig. 11.7

Emperor Huizong (Zhao Ji, I082-II35;

Handscroll; ink and color on silk; 33.7

r.

IIOI-25),

Finches and Bamboo.

X 55.4 cm. The Metropolitan Museum

of Art.,

John M. Crawford Jr. Collection, Purchase, Douglas Dillon Gift, 1981 (1981.278). Photograph by Malcolm Varon. Photograph

© 1990 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fig. II.8

Attributed to Emperor Huizong (Zhao Ji, I082-II35; r. IIor-25), Co/. Album leaf mounted as a hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; Setsu Gatod6 Collection, Tokyo. Counesy Setsu 1sao.

Fig. 11.9

Attributed to Emperor Huizong (Zhao Ji, I082-1135; r. llOI-25),

Imperial Hmvk.

Inscribed 1114. Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk. Dimensions and location unknown. From Xie Zhiliu,

Tallg lFlldai Song Yllall millgji (Shanghai:

Guman wenxue, 1957), pI. 34.

SparrOlJJS, PIli'" Blosso",s, alld Bamboo. Fan mounted as an album leaf; ink and color on silk; 25.7 X 26.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 24.80-487. Bequest of Mary Clark Thompson 1923. Fig.

11.10

Unidentified artist (late twelfth c.).

Courtesy The Merropolitan Museum of Art

Fig. II.II

Attributed to Huang Quan (903-68), ink and color on silk;

41. 5 X 70

Stlldies fro", Naillre, short handscroU;

cm. Palace Museum, Beijing.

Courtesy Palace Musewn Beijing.

Fig.

1I.I2

Unknown makers. Rubbing of Good-Omen slab, Wu Liang Shrine (147 eEl. Detail. •

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Fig.

1I.15

Unknown makers (Jin dynasty, twelfth century), "Crane Mantle."

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Immortals ill a MOlllltaill Palace. Silk tapestry; 28.2 x 35.8 cm.

National Palace Museum, Taipei. Photograph: Palace Museum Photographic Distribution, Ann Arbor. Archive no. 7262. Courtesy National Palace Museum.

Huizong's Paintings The peril of this kind of thinking is evident in our current under­ standing of the painting of Huizong and his Academy; it comes into clearest focus around issues of word-and-image relationships. Modern studies of Huizong paintings that are inscribed with poetry (for instance, Fig. 11 .4) , of court painting examinations that turn on the visualization of poetic phrases, and of court painting curricula that included literary and calligraphy requirements often suggest that these are evidence of the penetration of "literati" values to the center of the court or that they reflect imperial appropriations of "literati" innovations in the service of co-opting the scholar-elite. But Huizong, who had no expectation of becoming emperor, grew up in palace literati culture. He lived in a closed world in which princes attracted attention and rewards princi­ pally through their display of cultural accomplishments, as John Chaffee has shown.56 Young Huizong studied calligraphy and painting, collected art, and consorted with imperial-amateurs such as Wang Shen .£ �! (1046-aft. 1100) and Zhao Jjngrang :M! �lt (1070-1100). Was Huizong influenced by the new artistic ideas articulated by Su Shi and his circle? He probably was, and thereby received ideas and values that the myriad literati of the late Northern Song also received. In trying to understand the relationships between Huizong's painting and the emerging practices and values of scholar-amateur art, it is useful to distinguish between influence, appropriation, and co-optation. "Adaptation" to the exigencies of emperorship seems to me to be a better way to understand Huizong's particular deployment of poetry, painting, and calligraphy. Patricia Ebrey's investigations of Huizong's engagements with art are very valuable here. In her "Beyond Patronage: Huizong's Art Politics," she recognized that "no one would argue that the distinction between literati and court culture had been erased or that the court itself had become the center of literati culture." At the same time, she incisively observed an important qualification of this situation: "As I see it, Hui­ zong rejected the distinction between court and literati culture implicit in much literati art criticism. The culture Huizong sought to be the center

56. See John W. Chaffee, Branches ofHeaven: A History ofthe Imperial Clan ofSung China, Harvard East Asian Monographs 183 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), chap. 3, 37-63, and 267-71, especially his discussion of painters who were Song imperial clansmen.

MAGGIE BICKFORD

of was Chinese culture, not some fragment of Chinese culture defmed negatively by the literati as what they did not like."57 It is generally accepted that toward the end of the Northern Song, Su Shi and his associates extended the reach of their impressive accom­ plishments in literature and calligraphy to embrace painting as well, and that in doing so, they developed peculiar approaches and critical expec­ tations that were particularly fitted to their experience and values. As we survey their accomplishments in politics and the arts, we see an ambi­ tious comprehensiveness of aspiration that is nearly omnivorous in its appetite to ingest and to command the entire culture. Such also was the case with Huizong and not inappropriately, considering that he was emperor. If we were to configure Huizong's position as ruler and as a man of culture as a hyphenated term, we would say "emperor-literatus." What­ ever his situation as a princely amateur had been, after he ascended the throne, the "emperor" part always came first. What does this mean in practical terms? If he shared with other literati the wish to join poetry, calligraphy, and painting, then the ways in which he deployed these "Three Perfections" must be appropriate to emperorship. Here a certain decorum and opacity is required by his station. The emperor must exhibit his perfection and authority. His paintings must be highly fmished. His calligraphy must display command and composure. His poetry­ properly palace poetry must maintain an appropriate distance. 58 Visu­ ally and verbally, the unmediated expression of the personal through the revealing brush stroke or the lyric voice is inappropriate. It is a mistake to look for these qualities in Emperor Huizong's works and it is a mistake to fmd them wanting for lack of it. Similarly, if we consider the successful visualizations of poetic lines that are described in accounts of the painting examinations that Huizong supervised, we can see that these are marked by wit, ingenuity, and precise aptness, rather than by stimula­ tion of open-ended emotion or retrospection. This, too, is appropriate in a courtly object the pictorial complement to what, again, is properly palace poetry. 57. Patricia Ebrey, "Beyond Patronage: Huizong's Art Politics," paper read at the ''Visual Dimensions of Chinese Culture" seminar, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1998, 25. I am grateful to her for sharing her manuscript with me. 58. For Huizong's palace poetry, see Egan's chapter in this volume.

Huizong's Paintings ' H U I Z O N G S P A I N T I N G S I N AC T I O N : HOW DID HE USE THEM?

In her chapter on "Huizong's Stone Inscriptions" in this volume, Patricia Ebrey explains how Huizong extended his imperial presence through the medium of monumental stone steles that were engraved with his texts and in his hand. This ambitious project projected the virtual emperor into the courtyards of schools and temples throughout his empire. At the center of that empire, Huizong strategically directed material manifesta­ tions of his virtue and his culture by means of the kind of works that we study here. Through his display and distribution of his calligraphy and painting (Figs. 11.1-9); Huizong summoned his ministers, clansmen, and officials to witness his creation of an ideal realm in which, as Egan in this volume observes, "aesthetic refinement and excellence is perfectly inte­ grated with sagely virtue." The three auspicious handscrolls with which we began (Figs. 11.1-3) belong to one of Huizong's grand projects in which the amassed omens of affirmation that blessed his reign were visualized as painting and celebrated in poetry and prose, and in this form were exhibited at court and probably remained archived there. The auspicious presentation scrolls (Figs. 11.4, 11.5, and 11.9) were among the (literally) numberless works bestowed upon favored individuals, who brought them out to the wider world, extending the sphere of display of Huizong's virtue (and their own). In these ambitious undertakings and in their strategic de­ ployment, as in his stele projects, Huizong's actions found Song imperial precedents in those of Zhenzong J\. * (r. 997-1022).59 My previous investigations of the visual dimensions of Zhenzong's Heavenly Texts "- t' Affair revealed projects of astonishing scale and system.60 Zhenzong entrusted much of this work to his minister Ding Wei 1'" � (966-1037), who was one of the greatest art collectors of his time. Ding oversaw the most spectacular visual outcome of the Heavenly Texts Affair the Palace of Reflecting and Responding to the Realm of

59. For Huizong's direct reference to Zhenzong as precedent, see Ebrey's chapter in this volume. 60. See Bickford, "Aesthetic of Agency," 94-95, where citations to primary sources are made. The best study in English remains Suzanne E. Cahill, ''Taoism at the Sung Court: The Heavenly Text Affair of lO08," in Bulletin ifSung-Yuan Studies 16 (1980): 23-44.

MAGGIE B I CKFORD Jade Purity .L �t � "" ,&" , which Zhenzong ordered built to house the Heavenly Texts.61 He also directed the production and display of many hundreds of auspicious images that I consider to be the direct prede­ cessors of the extant paintings we study today. While much of the pictorial production connected with the Heavenly Texts was made for archival or practical purposes, impressive suites of paintings were aimed at target audiences at court. Ding Wei and his Of­ fice for the Collection and Compilation of Auspicious Omens �_# � i'1T magnified Zhenzong's virtue visually by celebrating his perform­ ance of the great ritual sacrifices through pictures that were directed toward the emperor's kinsmen and officials. In separate, sequential convocations, first members of the imperial clan, ministers, and high officials, then massed officialdom were summoned to view arrayed scrolls of 155 Paintings 0/ Auspicious Omens [Attending] the Feng and Shan [Sacrifices] ·H;;f.f#� 1/ and 151 Paintings 0/the Auspicious Omens [Attending] the Fetryin [Sacrifice] ��#� This deployment may serve as a plau­ sible functional context for Huizong's auspicious images.62 Zhenzong's strategies for constructing and asserting cultural he­ gemony stand behind practices that we consider to be characteristic of Huizong's aesthetic indulgences. One of Zhenzong's most consequen­ tial initiatives was his establishment of the Hall of the Dragon Diagram � M , the first of a series of nine repositories, each successively dedicated by a Song emperor to his predecessor. The operation of the Nine Halls IL M was somewhat analogous to our modern presidential libraries, in which are deposited official and personal documents and historical and cultural relics associated with an individual president, and at which scholarly and cultural events are convened to celebrate the accomplishment of the president so honored.63 .

61. See SSJSBM 22.172-73 and Zhou Cheng %l �, Song Dongjing kao *- t. 1{; ::t (Bei­ jing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988), 13.227-33. Soper offers a composite description culled from collected sources in Experiences in Painting, 166-67, n. 467. See also Hong Mai i# .i! (n23-1202), Rongzhai sanbi � � .=.. * (n96) in Rongzhai suibi � . at * (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1996), san II. 543-44. 62. See YH 98.29b-30a and 200.30a-32b; and SHY chongru 704ob. 63. YH 27.7b-13b, 52.3b, 98.35a, 163.20b-21b, 200.31a-b; SHY chongru 7.39a-41b; Yue Ke *PJ (n83-1240), Kuilan lu ·tt�F� (15juan), 14.1a-3a; reprinted in vol. 8 of Biji xiaoshuo daguan * �c. .J'�:k.fit (n.p.: Jiangsu guangling guji keyin she, 1983); and Zhou Cheng, Song Dongjing kao, 2.35-40.

Huizong's Paintings The upper level of the Hall of the Dragon Diagram was devoted to Taizong J\.. * (r. 976-97), to whom the hall was dedicated, and included his imperial writings, collected works, paintings, and imperially inscribed fans, together with documents, auspicious things, and imperial clan reg­ isters and genealogies. The lower level displayed Zhao family accom­ plishments: a set of the Taiqinglou J\.. �t:ft library in 26,296Juan (spon­ sored by Zhenzong and thus his achievement), a hall of astronomy, and a hall variously recorded as comprising collections of "Painting and Cal­ ligraphy" il :f M or "Auspicious Objects" .J.t4h M . Four auxiliary halls were designated for banquets, viewings, and storage. 64 Thus in the Hall of the Dragon Diagram, Zhenzong constructed an optimal imperial microcosm comprising lineage, learning, culture, aes­ thetics, wealth, political power, and legitimacy endorsed by heaven. In other words, Zhenzong created and controlled a site at which the Song imperial cult, the Song dynastic culture project, and Heaven's endorse­ ment of Song rule were made to converge. He activated that site by summoning at least two dozen times during his reign large and small groups of imperial clansmen, ministers, and high officials to join him in viewing the personal and imperial cultural relics of his predecessor to­ gether with the fruits of his own cultural and political initiatives and the auspicious objects that affirmed them. Together, Zhenzong and his guests inspected Taizong's calligraphy and old-master exempla, antique and modern paintings, books, and numinous treasures. On such occa­ sions, the emperor also engaged with his guests in flower viewing, banqueting, and drinking and poetry contests, drawing them closer and sharing his cultural power. Zhenzong's successors continued these practlces. Notices of Zhenzong's events at the Hall of the Dragon Diagram­ the calibrated guest lists, the kinds of objects displayed, the mix of ac­ tivities, the emperor's interactions with his kinsmen and ministers:­ find strong echoes in Huizong's elegant parties, epitomized by those that Cai Jing vividly recounted. I consider that Zhenzong's cultural convo­ cations were the precursors of Huizong's. In this, as in other actions, •

64. The number of items in each category varies in different accounts; here I have used the enumeration in YH I63.20b, which also records the "Auspicious Objects" al­ ternative. Yue Ke (Kuitan lu, I4.Ia) elides the alternative designations for the sixth unit. For a breakdown of the components of each of the six sections, see YH 52.36b. For the four auxiliary halls, see Zhou Cheng, Song Dongjing kao, LII. ,

1

jI

MAGGIE B I C KFORD

1

,

�, I

�

Huizong took these practices to new levels of refinement and personal engagement. In the developmental history of the Zhao cultural project, Huizong's elegant gatherings represent the culmination of the aestheti­ fication of the imperial cult. In the old story of Huizong the Artist-Emperor, accounts of these elegant events have evoked Huizong's withdrawal into an aesthetic Never-Never Land, peopled with insidious ministers and insinuating eunuchs who coaxed him and his empire toward disaster. In a fresh reading of the same texts, Ebrey has argued effectively that these me­ ticulously calculated events were active elements of Huizong's " art poli­ ticS." 65 Such was also the case with Huizong's distribution of calligraphy and painting from his hand. Huizong, like his predecessors, bestowed his calligraphy on favored members of his court. He went further by favoring them with presenta­ tion works that, like Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant (Fig. 11.4), displayed the emperor's Three Excellences poetry, calligraphy, and painting. His practice is well known but the scale of his artistic largesse and the implications of that scale remain to be addressed. In an often­ adduced anecdote recorded by Deng Chun i1q� (d. 1167+), Huizong is seen on 1114/3/2 at the Imperial Archives entertaining his clansmen and ministers, showing them works from the imperial collections,­ paintings and calligraphies by old masters and by his imperial ancestors and bestowing upon them gifts of painting and calligraphy from his own hand: two hanging scrolls of painting and calligraphy to each prince and minister; for each of the lesser officials one imperial painting � . and one sheet of semi-cursive and cursive calligraphy. After a long night of partying, the emperor chuckled at the disarray of broken pendants and mangled hats as his departing guests struggled to be first to collect their gifts. "This was a fine gathering of sovereign and servitors," wrote Deng.66 Read in the context of the traditional image of the artist-emperor, Deng's text evokes a literary gathering. But Deng's is a much-truncated account of Huizong's grand visit to the Archives, where on this occasion 65. Ebrey developed this argument and translated and interpreted Cai Jing's "Record of the Banquet at Preserving Harmony Hall" 1!t.:fu� Ilb � in her "Beyond Patronage: Huizong's Art Politics." 66. Deng Chun, Huaji ... . (167; reprinted-Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1963), 1.4; trans. in Ecke, "Emperor Hui Tsung," 99-100.

, ,

, , ,

Huizong's Paintings

he distributed paintings and calligraphies from his hand to 56 ministers and other officials, and to nine members of the rank and flle.67 It seems that each recipient received two Huizong works, making a total of more than 100 Huizong paintings and calligraphies dispersed in one day. This was a major event, but not an isolated one. In establishing a context for "Huizong's Stone Inscriptions" among his calligraphy corpus, Ebrey, in her chapter in this volume, discovered evidence of gifts of calligraphy from his hand on an astonishing scale. Through his systematic, large-scale distributions of works from his Celestial Brush, Huizong created expectations of himself as a producer of calligraphy and painting that no emperor, however devoted to the arts, had the time to fulfill. Having suggested that the self-contained visual authority of Huizong's flower-and-bird painting responded to the de­ mands of auspicious-image making and to the distance required by Huizong's imperial status, I now propose that there also were practical reasons for maintaining an impervious visual presence. The pictures could have been made by anyone, but the Slender Gold calligraphy in­ scribed upon them demands identification with a unique individual­ Huizong. The visual situation that I have described a unitary picture/ text object in which are conjoined an impersonal pictorial image and Huizong's signal Slender Gold calligraphy was a particularly useful arrangement in an operative practical situation in which any number of anonymous court painters stood in for one prolific emperor-artist. Huizong's "Slender Gold" script stunningly idiosyncratic but ulti­ mately impersonal and his lapidary pictures of flowers and birds em­ ployed styles of calligraphy and painting that lent themselves to sanc­ tioned imitation. At the outset of this chapter, I cited the connoisseur Tang Hou, who wrote that he knew a Huizong painting when he saw one. His assertion of his powers of discernment concluded his review of the Huizong paintings that descended from the hundreds or thousands of album leaves made for one of the emperor's auspicious-omens projects. Tang considered Huizong's moments of leisure and wondered how he could have produced works of such meticulous craft to this extent. He 67. See SHY zhigllan 18.21-23; and Cheng Ju U.{.J!; (1078-1144), Lintai gllshijiaodeng .*iit.�� (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2000), 50207-8; YH 33.9b. See YH,jllan 33-34 for a range of distributions of works from the imperial hand on ceremonial and festive occaslons. •

MAGGIE B I C K F O RD

490

hypothesized that "it must have been that several persons in the Painting Academy at that time imitated his work, and he only inscribed and sealed them." But, "as for [paintings] personally done by Huizong, I myself can look and recognize them," Tang concluded *' It $.- � � ..Z :�, .!JH¥- J:. f.;ft ..f. :�·h)t; � k 't at • fit ;tt.A.. #H3tt $.-110, #-,fJUr ..t .If, 11\ � * !ti.11o ::.It, *' m "T � i1i1 �..t.68 Tang was assessing the Huizong paintings that survived the fall of the Song and circulated among fourteenth-century collectors and connoisseurs. I shall now return to the paintings that survive today. The question now becomes how many unknown artists does it take to make one emperor-artist? ..

Whose Hand or Hands? Cai Tao

�J{t

(d. after II47), in his insider's record of Huizong's court,

Collection of Talks from the Iron Mountains Surrounding This Mundane World

� III J.! j{ 11, discoursed on the talents of renown who were recruited to

Huizong's service at the time of the emperor's accession. His chatty disquisition on the names and reputations of chess masters, qin and pipa players, flautists, and dancers came to a halt on the matter of painters. He explained: OnlY [when it came to] painting, because His Majesty arrogated to himself the best and the brightest, therifore many of the famous hands entered his personal palace service, substituted [for him] in imperial painting, and because ofthis nothing was ever heard of them again. 4IjfJ- * )';Ct. j: m .tfJt.�f�, itJL --t -f- � A I*J ��, 1..1(..f,ir� � , >t )'A . � � m .69

If we return to the works under study with Cai's observation in mind, we are more prepared to observe significant visual differences among them and to give weight to those differences in assigning authorship. Among the works under study, two exhibit specialized skills that dis­ tinguish them from the technical stock-in-trade of flower-and-bird painters. The maker (or makers) of Cranes of Good Omen (Fig. II.2) con­ fidently deployed the techniques and conventions of the ruled-line %f.. • 68. Tang Hou, Huajian, 420. 69. Cai Tao, Tiewei shan cong tan 'l /Il .l! J: l� (ca. II30) (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1983), 6.107-8, my italics. On the absorption of painters into Huizong's neigongfeng J*J **, see Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), no. 2816.

Huizong's Paintings

491

genre of architectural painting in making the palace gate-tops, together with the craft technique of wax-, paste-, or paper-resists in reserving against the perfect blue-washed sky the immaculate cranes, whose ra­ diance was enhanced with white pigment applied on top of, and possibly underneath, the reserved white silk ground. The impressive contortions of Auspicious Dragon

Rock

(Fig. 11.3) turn on distinctions among inkwash

tonalities and ground. The painter manipulated high contrasts between dark ink and light ground to carve out the rock's hard, jagged silhouette and to hone the striking negative spaces that form its weird perforations; then, laying ink tone against tone, he drilled its pitted surface and elaborated its cavernous interior. In all this drama, brush strokes played no part

it was a matter of patiently laying down the wash.

In contrast, the maker of Wax-Plum and Birds (Fig. 11.4) was a seasoned painterly monochromist: that is, he did not merely paint with ink, but rather he used techniques that had been developed specifically for ex­ ploiting the potentials of the flexible-tip brush to make pictorial images economically. This is seen most clearly in his branchwork; where (in contrast to the ink-outline-color-infill branches and stems of apricot, hibiscus, and peach) individual, modulated brushstrokes simultaneously define the wax plum's contour, develop its texture, and suggest its volume: a shredded twig signaled by a single sinuous stroke. The polychrome birds exhibit differences among them that go beyond the requirements of the significant stylization that visually distinguishes their kind

fluffy parakeet and dove, sleek pheasant, tidy finch. The

plumage of parakeet and dove (Figs. 11.1 and 11.6) alike were formed from semitransparent washes: in the former, these are laid on in regular pat­ terns with clean separations between the colors; in the latter, plumage patterning avoided regularity and pains were taken to penetrate contour lines and color boundaries. The flat silhouette of the parakeet was compromised minutely by the tiny interstice between its wrapped claw and its perch, while the dove's feet were modeled, its claws given bright highlights on their hard, reflective surfaces, and the interval be­ tween grasping claws and woody perch was crisply and cleanly marked. Similarly, the painter of

Flowering Peach and Dove

modeled the

joints, scars, and shredded stump of the branches that, by means of set­ ting angles and applying shading, he tweaked into torsion pushing clockwise, right pulling counter-clockwise suggestion of space.

left twig

and thus into the

492

MAGGIE B I C K F O RD

The assembled pictorial elements of

Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant

(Fig. 11.4) were set down in a geometric display that subverted natu­ ralistic plausibility in the service of emblematic clarity, an approach that extended to the assembly of the bird that was built from discrete colored shapes solidly slotted one into the others. Flattest of all are the ftnches and bamboo blades (Fig. 11.7): the bird forms taken twice

really one bird

crisp as a stenciled silhouette, their patterned plumage

with the look of embossing; the bamboo like folded strips of pasted paper, their shapes undisturbed by passing under or over one another. In contrast, the painter of the tender hibiscus (Fig. 11-4) delicately distorted the forms of flexible leaves as they bulged and buckled against less-giving stems and he iterated three-dimensionality by using fore­ shortening and color-contrast conventions to tum the leaves in space. More examples of signiftcant formal and technical differences could be adduced.70 Among these works, the differences that I have enumerated are not ones of quality, nor are they, in my view, indicative of authenticity or of proximity to Huizong's hand; they are, however, signiftcant. It is not merely that these features are observably different from one another. They are different in signiftcant ways: the differences that we can see are indicative of those that we cannot see. These observable differences are the outcomes of conceptual ones in the mind of each person who painted one of them: trained to the same standard and system, different hands understood and executed their work in different ways.71 One conclusion that we can draw from these observations is that the paintings in the group under study were made by several unidentifted artists and then received Huizong inscriptions, signatures, ciphers, and seals. In the case of two of them, this situation is attested to by Song records.

70. For more detailed analysis, see Bickford, "Aesthetic of Agency," 75-76. 71. The situation I have described is only one part of the possible authorship situa­ tions of Huizong's paintings, as attested to or suggested by the Song textual record. Summarizing that evidence, Chen Pao-chen observed, "During the last years of the Northern Song, his [Huizong's] works in circulation at Bianjing would have included personally executed paintings, imperially inscribed paintings, substitute-brush paintings, and copies of these." Chen Pao-chen, "Huizong's Aesthetics," 304; for the Song texts she adduced, see 302-4.

Huizong's Paintings

493

THE WO R K S REVI S ITED In the Supplement to An Account of the Southern Song Imperial Library and

Associated ScholarlY Agencies of Government [1127-78] tW *- ;t M !.!f�, Hi­ biscus and Golden Pheasant and Wax-Plum and Birds (Figs. 11.4 and 11.5) were

recorded, with their present inscriptions and signature lines, under the heading "Emperor Huizong Imperially Inscribed Paintings" � $ .t * �p ,t!". There they are entered in a list of works in the "Old [Southern Song Imperial] Collection" {$ it, compiled by Yang Wangxiu fh ..I.. {* in 1199.72 In assigning these works to this heading, the compiler categoricallY distinguished them from those that he had entered under his preceding rubric, "Emperor Huizong Imperial Paintings" � $ .t *� .. Yang's categories, together with his annotations, allow us to return (better in­ formed) to Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant and Wax-Plum and Birds and to use the signature formula inscribed upon them to clarify some ambiguities of authorship. Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant and Wax-Plum and Birds were entered among a group of eight unattributed paintings at the head of Yang's list of "Imperially Inscribed Paintings." Each of these eight entries recorded the title of the painting and transcribed its inscription, preceded by the annotation "Imperially transcribed poem" �jp.�t. A collective annota­ tion followed the last of these paintings:73 .

72. list and "Postscript" (I2Io) in Nan Song guange lu, xulu � * tt All � $f( � , ed. Zhang Fuxiang � 1; #- (Beijing: Zhonghua chubanshe, 1998), xulu 3-179-96 ("Old Collection''). The recorded Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant (3.180-81) has one variant character in its inscription. Wax-Plum and Birds (3-181) is listed as Fragrant Plum and Mountain White-Head 1f-�ol! a iJi; the recorded inscription is the same as that seen on the present painting. Yang Wangxiu's list and "Postscript" circulates as an independent text, entided "Song zhongxing guange chucang tuhua ji" * 'f � tt All {$ii. Ill . �c., in Yishu congbian i-#f • • , compo Yang Jialuo ;fJjtJn� (preface 1962) (faibei: Shijie), vol. 10, text no. 73, 204-19. 73. The paintings in Yang Wangxiu's list that follow our group of eight are (with one exception) credited to named artists. Most of these works are inscribed with short tide-and-artist imperial inscriptions, sometimes followed by a date or short comment. Among the paintings under study here, Blossoming Peach and Dove (Fig. 11.6) is an example of a flower-and-bird painting bearing this kind of short Huizong inscription. See Loehr, "Sung Dated Inscriptions," 238-39; as well as his entries on other Huizong-inscribed paIntings. •

•

MAG G I E B I C K F O RD

494

On the above[-listed] eight hanging scrolls, after the imperially transcribed poem there also is the seven-character [inscription]: "Xuanhe Palace, Im­ perially composed and written" J'X ..t.A-tm, *�!pt" "tt1i.3tlf " � ��.f!p�.3t

t" " -l: * .

In the light of Yang's "imperially transcribed poem"

.f!rt"tt annota­

tion, we may now read Huizong's inscribed credit line composed and written"

.f;ip � .3E ..

"Imperially

as referring to the poem only.

Read thus, Huizong wrote that he made the poem (or caused it to be made) and also inscribed it. Huizong made no claim that he painted the picture. Now, an appropriate translation of the signature line on these paintings might read: "Xuanhe Palace,

[Poem]

Imperially composed and

transcribed." If we accept this evidence, we conclude that at least two hands were involved in making these hanging scrolls: a painter and a callig­ rapher.

Wax-Plum and Birds

appears to be the work of one painter.

The stylistic disjunction (and underlying technical specializations) ap­

Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant (and in the Five-Colored Parakeet, Cranes rifGood Omen, Auspicious Dragon Rock, and Flowering Peach and Dove [Figs. 11.1-3 and 11.6]) strongly suggests that two artists collaborated to

parent in

make the painting, making at least three hands in all. We may posit, then, a two- or three-part production system in which painters prepared im­ ages that subsequently were inscribed by Huizong (or by authorized others). This situation distinguishes these hanging scrolls from other paintings that bear Huizong

additamenta

in an important way: other paintings

that the emperor wrote upon or stamped were fully formed works before imperial inscriptions or seals were added to their surface. In sig­ nificant contrast, Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant and

Wax-Plum andBirds (and

other paintings like them, for instance the six lost works that appear with them in Yang Wangxiu's list) were conceived, composed, and painted as partial works, intended to achieve formal completion through the ap­ plication of imperial script to a space that purposefully was shaped as a receptacle for the visual imperial presence in the form of Huizong's cal­ ligraphy. Huizong's inscription on on

Finches and Bamboo

(Figs.

Flowering Peach and Dove and his cipher 11.6 and 11.7) imply no claim that Hui­

zong painted them. They simply attest to themselves as graphic mani­

dinghai T :t: (1107) dating Flowering Peach and Dove was used as a subsidiary

festations of the imperial presence. The formula inscribed on

Huizong's Paintings

495

inscription to Huizong's certification inscriptions on named old-master paintings (or copies of them) as they appear on three additional extant works and on one work recorded by Yang Wangxiu,?4 Thus interpreted, this documentation, together with additional textual and visual evidence, clears the way for resolving some problems of au­ thorship for Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant, Wax-Plum and Birds, Flowering Peach and Dove, and Finches and Bamboo. However, Huizong's inscriptions and especially his peremptory signature lines on Five-Colored Parakeet, Cranes rfGood Omen, and Auspicious Dragon Rock (Figs. 11.1-3) are another matter. They prohibit any facile resolution of the question "Whose Hand(s)?" In contrast to the isolated images of his inscribed hanging scroll quatrains, Huizong wrote himself into the texts of his handscroll in­ scriptions by means of a circumstantial narrative preface and some­ times a poem as witness and respondent engaged in the sequence of events that ultimately produced the works at hand. Of the parakeet: "Gazing upon him, he seems to present a sight superior to a picture. Therefore I compose this poem about him I!J M,k it � " (preface); "His yellow breast and purple feet are truly per­ fect. / Thus I compose a new verse and sing as I stroll � M, mr 1; � i(�" (poem),?5 Of the cranes: "Suddenly flocked cranes appeared flying and calling in the sky. . . . Moved by this auspicious sign, I therefore made this poem to record its facts" � .e ;;f.f J.lt*t11=it)lA .*C. Jt.1f (preface),76 With the rock, as noted earlier, the extent of Huizong's claimed engagement surpassed his responses to the parakeet and cranes. He

74. See Loehr, "Sung Dated Inscriptions," 238-40; Wu Tung, Tales, 143-44; and Nan Songguange xulu, p80. The extant paintings are: Han Gan ## (c. 715-81+), Two Horses and Groom 4t .� Ill , album leaf, National Palace Museum, Taipei, repro. in Jin Weinuo 1tMt�, ed., Sui Tang Wudai huihua � Jt 1i.f'(.�", vol. 2 of MSQJ: Hua, no. 27; Han Huang #i}t (723-87), Scholar's Garden x?€. III , handscroll, Palace Museum, Beijing, re­ pro. in ibid., no. 63, where it is entered under Zhou Wenju %J X� (fl. second half of tenth c.; Han Huang attribution made by Huizong inscription; modem scholars attribute to Zhou Wenju or contemporary copyist; see Xu Bangda, Forgeries, 150-54); and He Cheng �Mt (fl. second half of tenth c.), Horse and Groom A..� Ill , album leaf, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, repro. in Wu Tung, Tales, no. 15. 75. Trans. in Tomita, "Five-Colored Parrakeet," 78, with slight modifications. 76. Trans. in Sturman, "Cranes," 33.

MAGGIE B I C KF O RD declared that this marvelous monolith defied description in words. "Therefore," he wrote, "I personally painted on the painting silk and relied on [a] four-rhyme [poem] to commemorate it" :i§$t�.-tJWrJfA � i,Uc,,z (preface). Still, fearing it would fly away, "Therefore by means of the color[-charged] brush, I personally copied [its image]" tt;J�"*j * $t.f� � (poem). And if that were not enough, Huizong named and claimed the rock by inscribing "Auspicious Dragon" #it in gold ink upon its surface.77 Furthermore, the emperor comprehensively bound the rock, the parakeet, and the cranes to him , by word and image, by calligraphy and painting, by signing these works, "Imperially composed, imperially painted and written" ,fjp � ,fjp :t 3t :f , by executing his cipher, "First Under Heaven" 7'::... r A.. , and by impressing his seal, "Imperial Writ­ ing" �r :f . By doing so, Huizong left us modern interpreters little room for negotiation. If we agree that no two of these works were painted by one person, must we conclude that the emperor was a liar? -

T H E CALLI G RA P HY REVI EWED A N D THE P O ETRY QUE S T I O NE D Long ago, Tseng Yu-ho Ecke observed a correlation between format and calligraphy among the works that we have been examining. Although she believed that none of the inscriptions had been executed by Huizong, she concluded that shared stylistic features "tie the writings in Cranes ifGood Omen, Auspicious Dragon Rock, and the Five [sic] Parakeets into one group." In Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant and Wax-Plum and Birds, Ecke observed affinities in the large character size and placement of the poetic inscrip­ tions; she noted that their signature lines were identical; and she sug­ gested that the signature line of the former "may even have been traced from" the latter. Dismissive of the calligraphy on Flowering Peach and Dove, she found it to be so consistent with three other extant Huizong dinghai T :t: inscriptions that she concluded that they "are all likely to be the work of one forger."78 77. The inscription is just below and to the right of the upper hollow. A clear detail is reproduced in Fu Xinian, Liang Song huihua, no. 46. 78. Ecke, "Emperor Hui Tsung," 71, 74-76, and 170. Ecke (76) found the similarities between the inscriptions on the Five-Colored Parakeet and on an engraved reproduction of Auspicious Dragon Rock so striking that she considered, "One may go so far as to claim they

Huizong's Paintings

497

I find Ecke's three groups to be a visually persuasive division, but I would not limit that division to three individual executants. Rather than three hands, I consider that what we see in these inscriptions the squarish characters of the hanging scrolls, the elongated ones of the handscrolls, and the thready dinghai writing is the work of three scribal schools (or subschools) of calligraphers who had been trained to write in Huizong's Slender Gold script. Thus, the hanging-scroll workshop cal­ ligraphers wrote the large-character poetic inscriptions; the handscroll workshop calligraphers inscribed the long prose and poetry texts; and another group of calligraphers inscribed the contemporary and old­ master paintings that were given to them to provide with Huizong cer­ tifications of various kinds. These calligraphers were not copyists. They had been trained to write in the emperor's hand. They were among the many authorized hands by which Huizong achieved his prodigious production of writing.79 What of the texts that these calligraphers inscribed? As Song texts attest to Huizong's devotion to making paintings and to practicing cal­ ligraphy, they also attest to his activity as a writer of poetry and prose. But which of the texts inscribed in Slender Gold calligraphy, or carved in stone, or collected among his works did he himself compose? We recall the boilerplate of Huizong's crane-sighting preface and the impersonal images of his poetic inscriptions. In his study of Huizong's palace poetry in this volume, Egan concluded that much of the poetry that appears in Huizong's collected works likely was composed by others at his court.80 We are left in a situation in which the Huizong works that we have been studying may possibly comprise prefaces and poems composed by others, paintings painted by others, inscribed by other unknown others,

are by the same hand." For extant paintings bearing dinghai inscriptions, see also Loehr, "Sung Dated Inscriptions," 338-40. 79. Julia K Murray identified several surrogate hands in the Song Gaozong inscrip­ tions on various · sets of the Book of Songs. See her Ma Hezhi and the Illustration of The Book of Odes (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and see her "Sung Kao-tsung as Artist and Patron: The Theme of Dynastic Revival," in Chu-tsing Li et al., eds., Artists and Patrons; Some Social and Economic Aspects of Chinese Painting (Law­ rence, KS: Kress Foundation Department of Art History and The Nelson-Atkins Mu­ seum of Art, Kansas City, in assoc. with University of Washington Press, 1989), 27-36, especially 30. 80. See also Ecke, "Emperor Hui Tsung," 43.

MAGGIE B I C K F O RD and sealed by yet other authorized others. Where is the emperor? This brings us to the question ofyuZhi {;ir1i: imperially composed or imperi­ ally commissioned?

Works 0/Art as Works 0/State: Autograph, Authenticity, and Authority We are accustomed to regarding Huizong's paintings as works of art that were created by a gifted emperor-artist, an assumption that brings along with it expectations about authorship and authenticity that may not be appropriate to the works at hand. I have asserted elsewhere that I con­ sider all of these works to be Huizong's and that under the peculiar conditions of emperorship, authorship appropriately is severed from executants.81 I continue to hold that view. But the notion of "author­ ship," however provocatively argued in our contemporary critical theory, now seems to me to be anachronistic, and somewhat beside the point, as applied to this particular Song situation. More to the point are issues of authenticity and authority, to which I now turn, beginning with the fol­ lowing points: First, I consider that the paintings under study are not copies of original works by Huizong (although the painters might well have had recourse to institutional models, such as our Fig. n.n) . Second, I consider that the inscriptions are not copies of original Huizong calligraphies. The inscriber of Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant (Fig. 11.4), for example, did not work from a Huizong holograph quatrain at his side, reproducing that particular piece of writing. Rather, he had been trained to write in Slender Gold script and he directly transcribed the selected text in Huizong-style calligraphy onto the space that had been designated to receive it on the silk scroll. Third, I consider that the authorized use of surrogate hands­ painters and scribes was not conceived as or received as an act of duplicity. Fourth, and fmally, to rephrase my initial formulation of au­ thor/ executants separation, I consider that in these circumstances it is appropriate to sever authenticity from autograph. These works carried the authority of the imperial presence. 81. See my "Aesthetic of Agency," 77-78 and 91.

Huizong's Paintings

499

The notion of autograph as a precondition for authenticity is a presumption of modern Western connoisseurship. (In premodern and early modern Europe, the authenticity of a named master's work did not preclude the participation of several hands, as documented, before the fact, by commission contracts.) In the case of the connoisseurship of Chinese art, the identification of authenticity with autograph rests appropriately in the valuation of calligraphy and of scholar-amateur ink painting, where the value of the object resides not merely in its visual merit, but profoundly in the conviction that the brushstrokes that we see on the paper or silk are the marks of a unique, valuable individual (not only as the direct result of the actions of his particular hand, but also, consequentially, as the authentic, observable traces of the individual heart and mind that impelled the hand that propelled the brush).82 But this is not the only way of considering the issue of au­ thenticity. In traditional Chinese critical writings, the various uses of the term "true trace" I)i. Jl#, with regard to genuine original works, excellent tracings, and authorized copies, reflects multiple possibilities for acceptance. So, too, does the range of acceptance of "substitute brush" 1-\ -f works, in which the named master sometimes contributed only his inscription, or signature and seals.83

82. The remarks of Robert E. Harrist, Jr., who served as discussant for my paper at the Brown Huizong workshops (see my acknowledgments, above), have been es­ pecially helpful to me in understanding these issues. In a personal communication (Dec. 2001), he wrote: "The classic 'problem' of Rowland's article [on Huizong] was determined by a model of creativity and process well suited to literati brush arts, a process that we can call the 'gestural.' This is a notion of indexicality that posits a direct, physical connection between the acts of painting or writing and the record of these acts recorded on a surface. The supreme example of this gestural art making is the Wang Xizhi letter." 83. See R. H. van Gulik, Chinese PictorialArt (Rome: Instituto Italiano per Il Medio Ed Estremo Oriente, 1968), 386 (on "substitute brush," there termed "ghost artists''), 398-99, and 410, where he observed: "In fact I suspect that the word zhen in the term zhef!ii � Jf# 'true specimen' often meant 'true to the original' rather than 'genuine.'" (The Slender Gold inscription "Han Gan true trace" that appears [together with a supplementary "n07 imperial brush" -'* # � Jf# , T � ,f!p * inscription and a "Sagacious Contemplation Eastern Hall" $.�.t. M seal] on a painting that stylistically postdates that Tang master may reflect this usage.) See also E. Zurcher, "Imitation and Forgery in Ancient Chinese Painting and Calligraphy," OnentalArt, n.S. 1.4 (Winter 1955): 141-46.

500

MAGGIE B I C K F O RD

In the case of the objects under study, seeking the emperor's hand in one (or more) of these paintings and inscriptions, as much of Huizong scholarship has attempted to do, may not be the most appropriate means by which to establish these works as authentic Huizongs, or as copies, forgeries, or fabrications. It is at this point that the idea of considering Huizong's paintings to be "as much works of state as they are works of art" is more than a metaphor. Rather, it becomes a point of departure for a different kind of analysis. Whatever else they might have been, the works that we are examining here were imperial instruments agents of Huizong's exercise of empe­ rorship. That being the case, a useful way to understand their authenticity and, perhaps even more appropriately, their authority is through analogy with the production and force of Song imperial documents and with the nomenclature indicative of imperial sanction, engagement, and presence. The defInitions and usage of these terms are elusive, and they seem to have been so for Song people as well as for us. They suggest fluid conditions for acceptance, against which the rigid application of an authenticity autograph test seems to be an arbitrary and anachronistic demand. If we consider the evidence of the Song huryao ?it t- -l-, of compilations such as the Yuhai, of the Songshi ?it ;t , and of Song and later informal texts as they bear on Song imperial writings, on the generation of imperial documents, and on questions of actual authorship, we fInd a complicated situation. In the case of Huizong's documents, the content might be generated by the emperor or, much more frequently in the voluminous texts required by state activity (bureaucratic, ritual, and cultural), by imperially authorized named or unnamed drafters, the latter including palace women and eunuchs. The transcription of content as a physical entity was made by the emperor directly in some instances (including those in which his holograph text was replicated by hand-copying, carving, or engraving) and, much more frequently, by clerks who wrote in an institutional clerical hand, and also by calligraphers, palace women, and eunuchs who had been trained to imitate Huizong's Slender Gold script. Documents in all these categories were empowered by Huizong's personal cipher and seals, proper application of which was not restricted to the person of the emperor, but fell within the purview of authorized others offlcials, palace women, and eunuchs. Documents created under these conditions were =

Huizong's Paintings

501

considered to be authentic and to have the force of Huizong's will and authorship. 84 Among the terms that we encountered in the signature lines of the works under study, yuZhi -fitp � , which may be translated as "Im­ perially produced," "Imperially made," or "Imperially composed" (see Figs. 11.2-5) is the most comprehensive one. It may designate personal imperial authorship and execution of texts or paintings. In practice, however, it appears that this term also designated works that were de­ vised by the emperor and executed by others, works that were made at the command of the emperor, works that were commissioned by the emperor or his deputies, and works that were presented to the emperor and appropriated by him or by his subordinates on his behalf. The usage ofyubi -fitP . , "Imperially brushed" (see Fig. 11.6), is similarly complex. The extent of the emperor's direct contribution or intervention in the conception, shaping, or production of the products so marked varied from case to case and often remains unknown.85 Not only we moderns, but Song scholars also considered the ambi­ guities of imperial authorship. Some concluded that yuZhi and yubi documents were not necessarily made by the emperor and personally written by him. And some of these scholars adduced evidence to prove it. Particularly suggestive for our purposes are notes by the Southern Song scholars Li Xinchuan 4- .\,; 1-* (1166-1243) and Yue Ke * J;;Y (11831240+), who approached these issues from different angles of inquiry. In his entry entitled " 'Personally Brushed' and 'Imperially Brushed' Internal Comments Are Not the Same" � . � -f,tp . I*J 4tI:. :f � , Li wrote: In our dynasty, the terms "imperially brushed" f;tp .. and "imperially com­ posed" f;tp � do not necessarily indicate the personal brush and ink of the sovereign. Early in the dynasty, when a matter was administered from within the imperial residence and transmitted to the outside, one called [this document] an "internal comment" r*J ;pt. In the Chongning and Daguan eras [no2-IO],

84. This is not to say that forgery and overstepping or misusing authority in generating documents issued in Huizong's name did not exist. Song bureaucratic procedures for doublechecking the orders conveyed in documents generated by authorized palace women and eunuchs are indicative of slippage in the system. (Charles Hartman, personal communication, Nov. 2002.) 85 . For yuZhi with regard to Huizong's poetry, see Egan's chapter in this volume.

502

MAG G I E B I CKFORD

one called this "imperially brushed" f� jf. After this period, it came about that palace women would write [these documents] for the emperor. In recent times, the so-called imperial seal comment � f' 4tt is sometimes His Majesty's com­ ment and sometimes a comment written in his stead by the Palace Domestic Service [eunuchs] and ladies. But in either case, [these documents] use the im­ perial seal. There are also so-called personally brushed Vl. jf [documents] , on which His Majesty personally writes his signature. These do not necessarily carry the imperial seal. As for imperially composed writings f,tp � X. * , officials close to the emperor are sometimes ordered to compose them also. For example Shenzong's [r. 1067-85] "Lament for Di Qing [1008-1057]" was composed by the censor Teng Dadao [feng Fu � ifl" ; if .it 1i- Yuanfa; 1020-90]. Gaozong's [r. II27-62] "Edict for Removing Wang Anshi's [1021-86) Status as Temple Acolyte" was written by the Drafter Hu Mingzhong [Hu Yin �JJ 'fi ; I098-II56). And Guangzong's [r. II90-95] "Preface to the Record of the Late Emperor's [Xiaozong :;f $ ; r. II62-89] Sagely Government" was written by Chen Junju [Fuliang 1ti til ; II37-1203] · Today these Oatter two texts] appear in the Zhitang and Zhizhai we,!/i [collected works of Hu and Chen] , but no one is aware of this. *-.m � jf .f� �. If qF .;l.: A..i. Vl. f,tp� ,J: �. �!l $ at. � 'f It n'" :$= 1t 11' :t. � z P1 4tt . * lifiAt. � z f,tp jf. �1t� J'X P1 A.A.1�z . .1t i!t i'JT� � f' 4tt :t . � J:.. 4tt . � P1 ii A. A.1� 4tt . If ifI f,tp f' . 5l :fr FIf ��,Fl. jf:t. J)'l J:.. Vl. t" # * ' � .;l.:

ifl f' . .f.. � f,tp � x. * . # � • .1t � �t1ft � . ;¥:�f $ �4:k. i" x. . 'f ��ltl! Flf1t�. � $ !lJll � � ;G �L � -m . %A.�JJ aJJ 'f Flf1t�. 7'6 $ ji • .t 1:Jt� ft . #;J:[Ft�*Flf1t�. ll!:. X. 4' JLft� .u:.. � 'f . 1E!A. � �l1 fij .86

Yue Ke considered the issues of the authorship, authenticity, and authority of Huizong's writing in the context of connoisseurship. In Yue's record of his family's calligraphy collection, the Baozhenzhai fashu zan f' � • il;: t" f' , he scrutinized a specimen of Huizong's Imperial-brush writing: "Emperor Huizong's Imperial Brush Concern-

86. Ii Xinchuan, Jianyanyilai chaoye zaji � � J'x *- iIl Jf$:iL (CSJC ed.) yi G 11.469. Trans. Charles Hartman, with minor modifications. I am grateful to Charles Hartman for making this translation and for giving me permission to use it here and to Ronald Egan for bringing this text to my attention. For other translations of this passage and for other Song texts that discuss the practices of palace women and eunuchs who imitated Huizong's hand, see Ecke, "Emperor Hui Tsung," 46-48, and see Hui-shu Lee, "The Domain of Empress Yang (n62-I233): Art, Gender and Politics at the Southern Song Court" (ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1994), 152-73. Hui-shu Lee develops these issues further in "The Emperor's Lady Ghostwriters in Song-Dynasty China," Artibus Asiae 64.1 (2004): 61-101; her article was issued subsequent to the completion of the present study and is not incorporated in it.

Huizong's Paintings ing Salary Disbursements for Academic Agencies" ii * .t * � M j: '* �r" . 87 Executed in standard script in two columns and stamped with a vermilion seal, it was certified as transmitted by the eunuch Zhang Quwei 5R * � on II22/6/28.88 This directive included an offi­ cial warning: "This is imperially brushed, any violation of it will be punished as the commission of a major offence" 18: �r " -:/(tJ:it �A k /F � � � �1tfQ .

Yue began his long annotation to this item with a quotation from eai Tao's Guoshi houbu � 3t ft;ffll (now lost): Inner directives r"J '* have existed since the beginning of the dynasty; they are simply promulgations of the imperial will. During the Chongning reign-era [Il02-6], [actual] "personally brushed" 1t � [documents] were called "imperi­ ally brushed" �� [documents] . In the summer of IIlO, there was ftrst issued the edict [to the effect that] violation of an imperially brushed [document] will incur punishment [identical to] violation of an edict. In the spring of m6[?], all the imperially brushed [documents] were very unlike the emperor's handwriting. After the initiation of the Xuanhe reign-era [III9], internal directives even more from time to time were executed in the style of clerks and not in the brush of the palace women. Therefore, the Duke of Lu [Cai Jing] asked the emperor, "How can Your Majesty permit your orders to issue from [the hands of] outsiders in [Liang] Shicheng's [�] �iJi J&.. [ca. 1063-1126] style?" The emperor said: "The old-style writing of the palace women was not handsome. I personally instructed them. Now their writing is very like that of men, truly excellent. You, sir, are mistaken." After that, it ftrst became widely known. Presently, in the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation Writings-Outer-Storehouse It.!tJlbt -r 91' ,*, clerks like Yang Qiu :Wi* [fl. ftrst half of the twelfth century] and others manage [these documents] ; Zhang Bu 5l#l [fl. ftrst half of the twelfth century] and others check them, and three or four eunuchs manage the paper flow and use the [offtcial] seals in order to transmit them to the outside. This place is the corridor at the back of the Xuanhe Palace. It is the place that simply is called the Eastern Corridor .t.�. In fact, Liang Shicheng runs the whole thing. r"J '* m �ll. * *' If ,z. 1g1tl: m- Hr. * . lf1t � 75 ;f�#,p� . :k. lit� -+.l., '*� "lt �

� J'A lt $��." �-+�JL#'p � � � �J:..* . � tc>� 7tAt , r"J '* JJtj 5t nt nt 1t � it; .:J� '&" A.. � lL . ·t
87. Yue Ke, Baozhenzhaifashu zan (SKQS ed.), 2.8b-lOb. 88. For Zhang Quwei's biography, see SS 469.1361.

MAGGIE B I C KF O RD

Yue Ke went on to record accounts of corruption and collu­ sion among these clerks and other officials. He wrote that he firmly had dismissed such suspicions as wild rumor. But, now, "Having gotten this specimen writing and having compared it to the [writings from the] Celestial Brush [i.e., the emperor's calligraphy] in my family's col­ lection, it shows itself to be unlike" � �l .11:1:. 'I'� , t- )fA If � k � .:.t.. � 1i Bg 1'- Jt. � � -I!!. . He concluded that this Huizong imperially brushed document actually was the "[brush-]traces of Yang Qiu or Zhang Bu" � '* �:Mi .:.t.. ll1F .90 Yue Ke's entry on Huizong's imperial brush holds great interest for the historiography of Huizong's calligraphy. Here Yue Ke stood poised between the Northern Song interest in dfective authenticity (Is this order properly issued? Should we execute this imperially brushed order?) and Southern Song issues of connoisseurial authenticity (Was Huizong's hand holding the imperial brush?), in which after the fall of the north, the working document had been transformed into an aesthetic object and an imperial relic.91 (Indeed, our continued preoccupation with issues of connoisseurship has impeded our resolution of problems of authen­ ticity.) Yue used the passage from Cai Tao to contextualize his Huizong imperially brushed specimen, to gloss the official warning that concluded the imperially brushed text, to open up broader issues, and then to bring them back to bear on the authentication of his Huizong calligraphy specimen. In the end, Yue returned from the transmitted textual record to the material evidence at hand. Resorting to the basic tool of the connoisseur (and art historian), he placed the specimen before him alongside reliable Huizong calligraphies, and asked himself, "How does it compare?" Naturally, the question of "whose hand?" looms large in Yue Ke's calligraphy catalogue; it is also the opening gambit in the Cai Jing / Cai Tao exposition encapsulated within: the emperor's hand? the hands of his women? the hands of his eunuchs in the emperor's hand? Underlying 89. Yue Ke, Baozhen zhai shufa zan, 2.9a-b. 90. Ibid., 9b. 91. See Ebrey's chapter in this volume.

Huizong's Paintings these material manifestations of the emperor's will were Huizong's choices among the processes and instruments by means of which he ruled. Underlying the anxiety of "whose hand?" were concerns about power, power-sharing, and the proper or improper delegation of powers. Whosoever held the "Imperial Brush," yubi (imperially brushed direc­ tives) issued directly from the emperor to the agencies involved. Yubi thus bypassed the bureaucratic process of ministerial consultation, of­ ficial drafting, consultative review and discussion, imperial approval, of­ ficial transcription, stamping, and transmission by means of which edicts were produced and promulgated. Song emperors took this direct route from the beginning of the dynasty, but Huizong seems to have resorted to this extra-consultative mode on an unprecedented scale. Regarding the imperial authority of such documents, Huizong's yubi edict left no room for doubt: it mandated the effective . reception of imperially brushed orders on pain of punishment. An alternative per­ sonal system was created, in effect; and, from 1110 onward, Huizong resorted to it with increasing frequency. Huizong's chosen instruments for the construction and implementation of this personal apparatus were his eunuchs, notably liang Shicheng and his staff at the Palace of Saga­ cious Contemplation Writings-Outer-Storehouse. The scope of this operation extended beyond the production of authoritative imperial documents to comprehend the production of authoritative objects, some of which we now call "art." Song biographers of liang Shicheng noted that Huizong ordered him to manage all imperially brushed .f!p*" documents.92 Accordingly, liang operated a scriptorium at the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation Writ­ ings-Outer-Storehouse, where he selected clerks who were able in composition and calligraphy and trained them to imitate the emperor's writing. Wang Cheng �A1f. (d. ca. 1200) claimed that "mingled with outgoing directives no one in the Outer Court was able to distinguish them $. � � J'X tI:: �r JJt)t �� tit [from documents actually brushed by Huizong]."93 liang's enumerated abuses of the system notwithstanding,

92. The account that follows is based on Wang Cheng .!.fIi., Dongdu shilue � :iIS .� (5KQ5 ed.), 12I.loa-b and Xu Mengxin �� ,* , 5anchao beimeng huibian -=--tJJ :JI;.Jl. -t-. (5KQ5 ed.), 32.16a-b. These texts are affiliated closely with one another and with liang's biography in 55 468.13662-63. 93. Wang Cheng, Dongdu shilue, 12I.IOb.

MAGG I E B I C K F O RD these sources clearly indicate that Liang was operating the system at Huizong's command. Among Liang's qualifications was his experience in the Calligraphy Service t" � It} , where he started out as a young eunuch under Jia Xiang I' �f (d. III 2+), whom he succeeded upon the latter's death. In addition to this practical experience, Liang had attracted Huizong's trust and confidence, favor that biographers attributed to Liang's ingratiating encouragement and practical advancement of Huizong's immersion in ritual, music, and omens of affirmation. Huizong entrusted to Liang oversight of the construction of his Hall of Enlightened Rule (Mingtang) EI}J i." and of his Northeast Marchmount, rewarding him on the suc­ cessful completion of these projects with promotions that culminated with the title of Commander Unequalled in Honor nr., 1ft 1" Iii] -=- .5J (rank Ib), conferred in 1122. The chronology of Liang's scriptorium is not clear. Xu Mengxin .ft j&, l (1126-1207) claimed that during the Zhenghe reign-era (1111-17), Liang "already secretly managed the emperor's writing" e. Itt .i. J:.. X. t" .94 The I1I0 edict cited by Cai Tao on punishment for violation of yubi orders suggests that this system was in operation a little earlier. This system had both the capacity and the authority to produce the Huizong inscriptions that we have been investigating. Because of the extraordinary nature of the Palace of Sagacious Con­ templation Writings-Outer-Storehouse operation, evidence for it and for the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation 1t .�� as sites for the produc­ tion and authorization of paintings, calligraphy, and literary texts during Huizong's reign is scant in the Song official record and scattered through informal writings and the literary record. The Palace of Sagacious Con­ templation was built by Shenzong # * (r. 1067-85) in 1075. Zhezong {g * (r. 1085-1100), out of deference to his late father, built for himself in the garden behind it a new palace, which was completed in 1095 the Xuanhe Palace � ��. Later, Huizong used the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation for receptions and dining.95 Deng Chun, in his miscel­ laneous anecdotes about painting at Huizong's court, wrote that the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation, exceptionally, always kept on night duty a daizhao #� who was able in various painting genres, in order to 94. Xu Mengxin, Sanchao beiming huibian, 32.16a-b. 95. YH 160·4Ib; SHYfangyu :;5'� I.I9ab.

Huizong's Paintings stand in readiness for unexpected summons .it .w. � El �#-m-A�I§. '* :t :t � Li . "A 1i � )IIIJ � �. 1t!!. Jl; �&' �i:.�.96 In addition to imitating the emperor's hand in yubi documents, the calligraphers of the Writings-Outer-Storehouse also replicated the em­ peror's hand in the process of making stone steles. Rubbings from fragments of Huizong's personally brushed m *" "Record of a Special Banquet at the Taiqing lou" :k. �* it4� * �(. (dated III4) are the subject of an entry in Ye Sheng's 1t!Jl (1420-74) Shuidong rtji 7J<. .t El �(.. A list of personnel involved in the execution and oversight of this stele was en­ graved on one of these Song fragments. This roster included Liang Shicheng (co-director of the project) and three staff members of the Writings-Outer-Storehouse: two Ruisidianyuqian wen'?! waikujuan,?!yixue $:.w. � .{ir Rt X !f 71' If � !f i- * and one Ruisidian yuqian wen'?! waiku zhrying wl!Jilang .it .w. � {;ip Rt X !f 71' If ;ft. J.@. A X. t� , who worked to­ gether with members of regularly constituted units, such as the Callig­ raphy Service.97 In addition to applying imperial seals, calligraphers of the Writings-Outer-Storehouse also styled the ceremonial script of their legends. According to Zhao Yanwei � � {tf (d. 1206+), Huizong, having determined to add his own stamp to the sacred Eight Seals of State i\ f' , ordered a Palace of Sagacious Contemplation Writings­ Outer-Storehouse calligrapher under Liang Shicheng to make a ninth seal, writing the auspicious text in archaic fish-and-insect seal-script.98 In addition to writing documents and engraving stones in Huizong's hand and making his seals, other personnel at the Palace of Sagacious Con­ templation composed literary texts on imperial command. For instance, on the completion of Huizong's Northeast Marchmount in 1122, Liang's proteges Li Zhi * 1f (fl. first half of the twelfth century) and Cao Zu if #Jl (fl. first half of the twelfth century), both of whom served as Ruisidianyingzhi .it .w. �J.@. -$1, were commanded to compose celebratory iu and to collaborate on a suite of "One Hundred Poems in Praise of the Northeast Marchmount" FLll Ef �.99 Meanwhile, the fulsome praise ..

96. Deng Chun, Hucgi, 10.125. 97. Ye Sheng, Shuidong riji (completed between 1465 and 1472) (Beijing: Zhongguo shuju, 1980), 25.242-44. 98. Zhao Yanwei, Yunlu manchao �Jtil�) (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1996), 150265. 99. Wang Mingqing, HuiZhu lu, houlu, 2.75 and 84; for the fu, see 2.75-80; for the hundred poems, see 2.84-89.

MAGGIE B I CKFORD lavished on the Marchmount's project director, Liang Shicheng, in the emperor's "Record of the Northeast Marchmount"

R .1(.

suggests

that Li or Cao or another Liang associate actually drafted this Huizong essay. Clearly, the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation and its Writings­ Outer-Storehouse operation had Huizong's confidence and also had the calligraphic and literary expertise requisite to generate both the content and the Slender Gold calligraphy of the emperor's inscriptions on our paintings. What of the pictures? Ecke connected Liang Shicheng's documents operation at the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation Writings-Outer-Storehouse with his man­ agement of Huizong's art collection.IOO This seems very likely on several grounds. It is consistent with liang'S major assignments, such as Huizong's Mingtang and Northeast Marchmount. It is consistent also with Liang's cultural pretensions, especially with regard to the arts. Liang's personal engagement in art collecting and connoisseurship is attested to peculiarly by a much-repeated anecdote in which he is said to have had the custom of setting out calligraphy and painting hand scrolls and hanging scrolls, inviting scholars to view them, to express their opinions, and to compose colophons. Subsequently, he favored those who agreed with his judgments by furthering their official careers. IOI Ecke considered that Liang Shicheng was likely to have been the chief compiler of Huizong's calligraphy and painting catalogues,

� ¥ .. �

and

Xllanhe hllapll � ¥ "'�.

Xllanhe shupll

Her evidence is circumstantial

but suggestive: she noted the surprisingly large number of eunuch­ artists who were given entries in these catalogues.102 Gaozong, in his

Annals rf Brush and Ink

�.J. ,t. ,

noted that, in the aftermath of Hui­

zong's art-collecting campaigns, Liang Shicheng, together with Cai Jing and others, was ordered to separate the genuine works from the fakes, in preparation for their entrance into the imperial col-

100. Ecke, "Emperor Hui Tsung," 34-35. 101. SS 468.13662-63. 102. Ecke, "Emperor Hui-Tsung," 15, n. 14, and 34-35. Several of these entries laud the eunuchs for qualities associated with scholar-amateur painting. Perhaps Liang paid trib­ ute to his mentor Jia Xiang by giving him a substantial entry in the imperial painting catalogue, where seventeen of Jia's paintings were listed as being held in the imperial collections. See Xuanhe huapu :!: :fu "-tf, ed. YuJianhua �1iH� (Hong Kong: Wen feng chubanshe, n.d.), 19.297--98.

Huizong's Paintings lections.103 Thus Liang's role as an imperial arts manager seems to be a plausible one. Did he and his staff process and make art too? Deng Chun's notice of the regular night-duty assignment of a daizhao painter skilled in several genres to await summonses at the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation indicates that the commissioning and produc­ tion of paintings took place at that location. Yue Ke (owner of the du­ bious Huizong stipendiary rescript) also owned a replica of a work by the Tang calligrapher Zhang Xu �11!!.. (fl. 713-40), replete with Huizong's gold-ink inscription and a panoply of his seals, that Yue attributed to the Sagacious Contemplation Writings-Outer-Storehouse, and the hand of Chu Hong 1$ * (jinshi n24) and his like.104 The most tantalizing indi­ cation of mass processing and possibly painting at the Sagacious Con­ templation Writings-Outer-Storehouse arises from the conjunction of nomenclature and surviving visual evidence. We remember that Yue Ke's passage noted that Liang's Palace of Sagacious Contemplation Writings-Outer-Storehouse *,��� � 71- Jf scriptorium also was known as the "Eastern Corridor" .t. � . Large Song imperial seals bearing the legend "Ruisi dongge" * ,� .t. M , "Sagacious Contemplation Eastern Hall," appear on at least nine extant old-master paintings, or on replicas or re-creations of them (as on Huang Quan's Studies from Nature, our Fig. n.n) , and are recorded as appearing on many more old masterworks that now are known only through texts. The extant paintings so stamped were attributed to masters whose period of activity ranged from the fourth to the tenth century. The actual date of execution of these stamped paintings range from pre-Tang or Tang copies of earlier works (for instance, Admonitions oj the Instructress to the Court Ladies * 3t a II , attributed to Gu Kaizhi .'t!i:.. [ca. 345-ca. 406); British Museum) to replicas or recreations made during Huizong's time (for instance, Huang Quan's Studies from Nature). Five of these surviving paintings also bear authentication in­ scriptions that were executed in Huizong's Slender Gold script. The thready Huizong-style calligraphy that appears on these works (as seen also on Huizong's Flowering Peach and Dove; our Fig. n.6) form s a dis­ tinctive "Slender Gold" subset but appears to have been executed by (Song) Gaozong, Hanmo Zhi, in Yishu congbian, Cllm. I, vol. 2 � (Song Yuan ren shuxue lunzhu * fc. A.*�:i-), text no. 9, 5. 104. Yue Ke, Baozhen zhai shufa zan, pIa. 103.

-

� , �.::.. :IlIt

510

MAGGIE B I C K F O RD

several hands, almost certainly the hands of scribes who were trained by Liang Shicheng to write in Huizong's style. !Os Whatever the status of these paintings original works, or antique or contemporary repro­ ductions or recreations and whenever their actual date of execution, all of them passed through the Sagacious Contemplation Eastern Hall. Perhaps these works were authenticated or certified (some as copies?) and so inscribed there; perhaps some of them also were made there. 106 There is no smoking gun here. We do not know the organizational relationship among the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation (where a

105 . This conclusion is supported retrospectively by Gaozong's collection­ processing protocols, which generally are considered to continue those of Huizong. Zhou Mi's � !Bf (1232-1308) record of Gaozong's regulations includes the following (in van Gulik's translation): "All superior model writings and famous paintings of the Six Kingdoms, Sui and Tang periods, writing copied by the Imperial brush, and autographs by famous statesmen of the present (i.e., Song) dynasty, must have tide labels written by the Emperor" J.t id}] � It J:.. -!f 5! t" --t :£. #�i!i, --t 1\!; , * Wl --t !Z 1\!; . ]t�. IiI �. Given the enormous scale of Huizong's collection campaigns, writing out labels for each superior accession item would have been a lot of work. For translation and text, see van Gulik, Chinese PictorialAft, 211. For a slighdy different version of the text, see Zhou Mi, "Shaoxing yufu shuhua shi" ���JIt . :£ .t\., in his Qidongyryu �,tJflt (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1980), 6.100. 106. Dating the seal has been problematic: some scholars, including Loehr ("Sung Dated Inscriptions," 222) consider it to date from Gaozong in the Southern Song, when a palace of the same name existed; others, including Ecke ("Emperor Hui Tsung," 35) and Kohara Hironobu (see below), consider that the large "Ruisi dongge" seal dates to Huizong and the small seals bearing the same legend date to Gaozong in the Southern Song. Wang Yao-t'ing (see below) has concluded that the large seal was Huizong's. For more on this seal, see Kohara Hironobu -6 Jfi- * 1.p, "Joshi shin zukan" *" 3t a 11/ �, pt. I, Kokka IfJ ,*, no. 908 (Nov. 1967): 24-28; and translation by Shane McCausland, "The Admonitions ofthe Instructress to the Couft Ladies Scroll by Kohara Hironobu," Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art Occasional Papers 1 (London: University of London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2000), 22-29; and Wang Yao-t'ing, "Beyond the Admonitions Scroll: A Study of Its Mounting, Seals and Inscriptions," in Shane McCausland, ed., Gu KaiZhi and the Admonitions Scroll (London: British Museum Press in association with Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 2003), 196-98, 207, where three specimens are reproduced as figs. 10.1-10.3. I investigated this group of paintings in "Relic, Replica and Romance: Possessing the Past at the Courts of Song China," paper read at "Song Painting and Its Legacy," Yale University, Apr. 3, 2004; I continue to pursue the implications of the "Ruisi dongge" group in "Learning from Emperor Huizong," work in progress.

•

Huizong's Paintings

5II

daizhao painter awaited night orders) and the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation Writings-Outer-Storehouse, also known as the Eastern Corridor (where Liang Shicheng presided over a eunuch-staffed opera­ tion that managed Huizong's documents and often wrote them in his hand, calligraphed imperial seals, composed imperial directives and literary texts, and replicated old-master calligraphy and Huizong's cal­ ligraphy for carving in stone), and the activities of the Sagacious Contemplation Eastern Hall that left a mark on the paintings that bear its seal today. Still, the plausible possibility arises of a unit in which painters, like scribes, were schooled in producing Huizong imperially brushed paintings �P • . Earlier, in addressing the issues of autograph, authenticity, and au­ thority, I proposed a sequence and division of labor by which the works under study might have been produced: prefaces and poems composed by unnamed writers, paintings painted by others, inscribed by other unknown others, and sealed by yet other authorized others. My hypo­ thetical process for producing Huizong's paintings strikingly finds its match in the document-production scenario recorded by Yue Ke. Song sources attest to the capacity of Sagacious-Contemplation operations to produce and coordinate all the constituent elements. Although the production of painting remains to be documented to a more satisfying extent, Liang Shicheng's scriptorium demonstrates the realized possibility of a system that was set up at Huizong's order to produce, outside of the official bureaucratic and palace-women systems, quantities of imperially brushed documents, executed in the emperor's script and backed up in effective authority by his edict. This may well be the case with the production and authority of the extant works under study and with the thousands of lost Huizong paintings that were gen­ erated by recorded projects such as the massive Albumsfor the Emperor's Perusal in the Xuanhe [Rezgn-Penod] . 1 07 Huizong's Painting Academy was full of famous artists who ornamented his court both through their art and through their reputations and of lesser painters who decorated his palaces and temples and filled out his collections with copies of old­ master works. However, the institutionally sited Academy was not the most likely venue for the mass production of paintings that presented 107.

34-37·

See Bickford, "Aesthetic of Agency," 86 and n. 63,

101;

and Sturman, "Cranes,"

512

MAG G I E B I C K F O RD

themselves as works from the Celestial Brush. More likely was resort to an alternative system, managed by trusted intimates, along the lines of the Palace of Sagacious Contemplation Writings-Outer-Storehouse. Perhaps it was into such a unit that the "many famous hands," remembered by Cai Tao, entered Huizong's "personal palace service, substituted [for him] in imperial painting, and because 0/ this nothing was ever heard of them again."!08

Conclusion In his execution of emperorship, Huizong acted on the under­ standing that in the work of effective and efficacious rule, "art helps." He was a patron of art and culture on a magnificent imperial scale. Moreover, Huizong was a prodigious producer of cultural products in his own name. Marshaling the talents of his empire, he multiplied his im­ perial hand through the hands of many others: an organization of au­ thorized surrogates who made thousands of Huizong calligraphies and paintings that the emperor displayed and distributed to key members of his court. A significant locus for the manufacturing and processing of Hui­ zong's personal imperial products is the Palace of Sagacious Contem­ plation and its affiliated units. More than merely providing a plausible practical context for the production of Huizong's paintings, investigation of the scope of Sagacious-Contemplation operations reveals Huizong's (perhaps unprecedented) integration of cultural initiatives into a personal apparatus of imperial rule. Evidence suggests that the eunuch-staffed Palace of Sagacious Contemplation units acted for Huizong by pro­ ducing documents, poetry, calligraphy, and painting, often in the em­ peror's name and sometimes in his hand. Huizong charged these units to manage his paper flow and to train scribes to write in his hand, and he authorized them to produce and transmit his imperially brushed direc­ tives. Calligraphers, engravers, and poets attached to these same units collaborated on the production of Huizong's personally brushed steles and composed poetry at his command. Sagacious Contemplation per­ sonnel replicated old-master calligraphy, processed old-master paintings in Huizong's collection, and probably equipped those masterworks with 108. See above, note 69.

Huizong's Paintings

513

Huizong's title and authentication inscriptions and seals. It now seems likely that they, or their unknown palace colleagues, composed and in­ scribed the texts, applied the seals, and possibly also painted the pictures that survive as the Huizong works that we see today. Recognizing Huizong's purposeful instrumental integration of gov­ ernmental and cultural functions

substantially subverts the myth

of Huizong the emperor-artist. Far from the traditional notion of Huizong's engagement with art as an introspective indulgence and de­ bilitating distraction, these arrangements reflect Huizong's determina­ tion to harness art to the work of the Zhao dynastic enterprise

the rule

of culture. Viewed in dynastic perspective, Huizong's achievements in painting, music, poetry, and calligraphy (each treated in the present volume) achieved the culmination of this enterprise

an enterprise ini­

tiated at the founding of the Song. Huizong explored, expanded, and exploited the potential of visual art to a degree that far surpassed his predecessors. If he faithfully carried on the Zhao family business of making and manifesting imperial culture, his ambitions as performer, patron, and collector were vastly greater than theirs had been. Huizong aspired to nothing less than a comprehensive grasp of the entire material history of Chinese high culture, from the ancient ritual bronzes that he recovered to the fresh, modem traces of his own Celestial Brush.

Afterword Where does this leave the executants, the individuals who held the brush and made the works we have examined? The evident requirement for the suppression of individual marks notwithstanding, if a greater fraction of the thousands of flower-and-bird paintings that were produced by the emperor's order survived today, we might well circumvent the system and discern the oeuvres of the Master of Cranes, the Master of Rocks, the Master of the Golden Pheasant, or the Master of the Luminous Dove. But they do not. We can keep a lookout for traces of their hands in other unsigned Song court paintings; and, in the meantime, like our Song predecessors, we can put a name to their imperially inscribed and sealed works: "Huizong."

P A RT V

Who 's Telling the Story? Rethinking the Sources

C HAPTER 1 2

A Textual History of Cai Jing's Biography in the Songshi Charles Hartman

The voluminous biographies in the Songshi * 3t, completed under the Yuan dynasty in 1345, are the first line of reference for details about the lives of Song political figures. Yet scholars have long lamented the in­ adequacies of these biographies. Common thinking has blamed both the constrained format of the dynastic history biography and also the Mongols, whose long delay in beginning work on the Songshi, combined with the extreme haste of the actual editing itself, produced the sup­ posedly unsettled and inchoate text of the present Songshi. To a large extent, these are valid criticisms. A full study of the composition of the Songshi remains to be undertaken. But certainly the many deficiencies of 3t , which the Mongols acquired after the the Song state histories surrender of Hangzhou in 1275, and the minimal research and editing they applied to these Song drafts, produced the most lightly edited of all the dynastic histories. But therein lies the great value and interest of the Songshi, especially its biographies. Traditional Chinese historians worked largely by copying text. They generated the state history by processing the documents of routine court administration through multiple and lengthy stages of re­ organization, rewriting, and compression. The final compilation and ed­ iting, completed under the succeeding dynasty, aimed to remove traces of these multiple recopyings and to produce a stylistically cohesive and seamless text. The Mingshi a}j 3t is usually considered the most successful example of such final editing. But, because the Mongols subjected the

CHARLES HARTMAN text of the Song state history to a minimum of stylistic editing, the origi­ nal passages that make up the fabric of the Songshi text are more visible than in other dynasty histories. Accordingly, the careful reader can often discern the seams or di­ viding lines between the various individual foundation texts that make up the composite text of a Songshi biography. By "foundation text" I mean a passage of text whose ultimate origin can be known, a passage whose original author the first writer of the lines can be identified. These primary foundation passages, if their sources can be determined and if they still exist, can then be read in both their original contexts and in their new context in the Songshi. The examination of a Songshi biography in light of its constituent parallel texts produces not simply a close reading but rather an understanding of what might be called the "archaeology of the text." With careful research, and a certain amount of luck, it is sometimes possible to discern the various stages in the growth of a Songshi text. In short, one can often move beyond the simple collection of parallel passages and proceed to layer-out the accumulated chronological strata of editing and textual recombination that have gone into the production of a specific passage in the Songshi. The real value of a Songshi biography then becomes not what it writes about its defacto subject,--­ most scholars agree modern notions of objectivity were hardly a concern to traditional biographers but what its text can tell us about the history of its own composition. As we shall see, eai Jing's biography in the Songshi tells us little about eai Jing himself but much about the percep­ tions of eai Jing in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The text thus becomes a primary document in the intellectual history of the Southern Song. I have in an earlier article employed this method of analysis to dem­ onstrate how the Song historians reworked to their own ends the con­ stituent passages in a single paragraph from the Songshi biography of Qin Gui *'-:ft (1090-1155).1 The extension of this technique of textual exca­ vation to the entire biography of eai Jing JJ � (1047-1126) presents the opportunity further to refine this methodology and to apply it to a much larger block of text. As is well known, the biographies of eai Jing and 1. Charles Hartman, "The Making of a Villain: Ch'in Kuei and Tao-hsiich," HJAS 58.1 (June 1998): 105-17.

A Textual History rfCai Jing's Biograpf?y in the Songshi Qin Gui belong to a subset of biographies that make up ters

471-74

519

Songshi chap­

and are devoted to the lives of "nefarious ministers"

-if If .

The application of this methodology

strata

works particularly well with the biographies of the "nefarious

the analysis of textual

ministers," because the composition of these chapters presented tradi­ tional historians with special problems. And these problems have left "seams" in the text that are larger and thus easier to detect than those in the biographies of less controversial figures.

Twelfth-Century Histonograplzy The official process that generated the biographies of the

Songshi

was designed to transform routine bureaucratic careers into uplifting examples of moral probity. The process almost certainly began with the individual personnel fIles official's

career

postings,

�r i�,

which recorded the details of an

promotions,

performance

evaluations,

commendations, reprimands, and so on.2 Readers will already perceive the framework of a typical

Songshi biography beginning to

emerge from

this basic record of one's bureaucratic life. The key point is that each official maintained and retained possession of his own fIle. At his death, his heirs commissioned renowned literary stylists to reassemble the contents of the fIle into the "biographical accounts" records and inscriptions"

£.1.tji

.fffR and "tomb

that formed the basis of his public

biography. These documents in turn were submitted to the court history office, where they became with little modification the draft biographies that were inserted under the date of the subject's death into the officially

DailY Calendar El Ii.. When the DailY Calendar was condensed into Veritable Records ..,�, the biographies remained under the date of the subject's death. For the State History, however, the biographies were compiled

gathered together into such suitable groupings, as characterize the pre­ sent

Songshi.

2 . For a useful description of Song personnel files, see Winston W. Lo, An Introduction to the Civil Service ofSung China (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1987), 179-87. Lo's account is based on surviving portions of Song regulations from the Min­ istry ofPersonnel, the Libu tiaofa � �ft� as preserved in Yongle dadian * * k* (1408; reprinted-Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 14626.23a-31a.

520

C HARLES HARTMAN

Although official historians at each stage of the process were ex­ pected to verify the information they received from the prior stage, few except the most committed made the time or manifested the enthusi­ asm to do so. The privately compiled "biographical accounts" thus became the baseline on which the official drafts depended. Further­ more, it seems to have been a common expectation in the Southern Song that the biographies in the Veritable Records and State History should accord with the "family biographies" � 1* that circulated pri­ vately.3 But neither Cai Jing nor Qin Gui had routine bureaucratic careers. Ouyang Xiu � � 1if (1007-72) and Song Qi *- ;f� (998-1061) first cre­ ated the biographical grouping called "nefarious ministers" to serve as moral counterexamples in their Xin Tang shu if Jt .. . The category posed few procedural difficulties at the time, since these authors were rewriting history reworking text that was already 300 years old. The notion of a "nefarious minister," however, worked at cross-purposes to the his­ toriographical process that generated contemporary official Song biographies. Although Cai Jing's personnel ftle does not survive, one may remain confident it did not describe the actions of a "nefarious" indi­ vidual. In fact, the appointment edicts -$1 't� for all Song councilors through 1215 have been preserved in the Song zaifu biannian lu *- * � � -+�, which has served as a major source for this study. As might be expected, the edicts that appointed Cai Jing describe a paragon of abil­ ity and virtue totally at variance with his malevolent portrait in the Songshi. The question thus becomes: how did the Song historians draft biog­ raphies for officials whose personnel ftles, biographical accounts, tomb records, and family biographies were either nonexistent or were ex­ pressed in positive language that, in the case of "nefarious ministers," was useless for the historians' larger purposes? The answer is: with great 3. Zhu Xi * * (II3O-I20o), for example, complained that the biography of Wu Zhizhong � fJt. l' in the Huizong shiiu -ftt * .,. � and the ensuing 5ichao guoshi I!F1 Wl Il 3t was at odds on two points of detail with Wu's "family biography," and Zhu called the reliability of the state versions into question. Interestingly, the text of Wu's biography in the present 50ngshi largely follows Zhu's quotations from the Huizong shiiu rather than from the "family biography." See Guo Qi :fJl 1} and Yin Po P'iJt, eds., ZhuXi ji * * � , 10 vols. (Chengdu: Sichuan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1996), 71.3695ff, 83-4305-6; and 55 356.11204-5.

A Textual History if Cai jing's Biograpry in the Songshi

521

difficulty. The history as well as the present state of Cai Jing's biography in the Songshi provide excellent confirmation. Cai Jing died at Tanzhou 5, 1+1 , modern Changsha, on 1126/7/21 during the journey to his ultimate place of confinement on Hainan Island. Local officials buried him at the Chongjiao si *' $t -t, a Buddhist temple outside the city.4 Within several months, Kaifeng was under siege again; the Northern Song came to an end, with two emperors and a host of officials transported into Jurchen captivity. Under these circumstances, it is highly unlikely any of the customary post-mortem biographies of Cai Jing would have been composed. Cai's sons and grandsons, who would have been responsible for commissioning these works, were widely dispersed across southern China, on their way to confinement, under confinement, or soon-to-be suicides. Since Cai's death fell within the reign of Emperor Qinzong it * (1101-61; r. 1125/12/23-1127/4), the protocols of the history office re­ quired that a draft biography be included in the Qinzong rili it * El J!. .5 Preparation of the calendar was under way by 1140/2, since the project is first mentioned in an edict of that date that transferred the functions of the former History Office 3t 't to the Imperial Library �;bt" �.6 Work probably continued through 1144h when Qin Xi i-:J:J, son of the grand councilor Qin Gui, took charge of the Imperial Library, and its histo­ riographical functions came to a virtual standstill. 7 There were many problems. Not only was Qinzong still alive in northern captivity, but Qin Gui had played an important role in the cataclysmic events of 1125-27, a transition period whose politics and personalities remained highly sen­ sitive issues. However, Qinzong's death in 1161/5, the retirement of Emperor Gaozong � * (1107-87; r. 1127-62) in 1162/6, and the ascen­ sion of Emperor Xiaozong .:t * (1127-94; r. 1163-89) created political circumstances more conducive to the project. 4. Xu Mengxin � f- " Sanchao beimeng hllibian -=- .tJl ;lt. ]Ii " s:" 4 vols. (Il96; reprinted-Taibei: Dahua shuju, 1979) (hereafter Hllibian), I: 493, quoting the report of the official in charge of Cai Jing's transport. 5 . For a list of items that legal statutes governing the DailY Calendar required to be included, see Chen Kui f.t � (Il28-1203), Nan Song gllan'ge III � * � M � (reprinted-Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998), 4.39-40. 6. SHYyllnli I.22b. 7. On court history writing under Qin Gui, see Hattman, "The Making of a Villain: Ch'in Kuei and Tao-hsNeh," 68-73-

1

1

522

CHARLES HARTMAN

The great Southern Song historian Li Xinchuan :$- '�1* (1167-1244) described the completed Qinzong fili as consisting of "additions made to the daily calendar by Gong Maoliang" J: Ii. It (d. 1178).8 Since Gong Maoliang worked in the Imperial Library between 1162/5 and 1164/3, Li's brief mention implies: (I) that a draft of the calendar already existed in the early 1160s, and (2) that the final version resulted from additions that Gong made to this earlier draft.9 Fortunately, we know something about the difficulties involved in making those additions. In 116317 the librarian Liu Yifeng JHl.Jt (mo-75) memorialized that work on the DailY Calendar was nearing completion but that prob­ lems remained with certain biographies. According to Liu, loss of pri­ mary documentation, together with the large number of officials who had died during the Jingkang period, resulted in the absence of biogra­ phies for 41 individuals. He requested that these 41 names be distributed to circuit fiscal commissioners with instructions to search for any local documentation that might be relevant to their biographies. A list of the 41 was appended to the memorial, which was approved. The list included Cai Jing and his son Cai You � 1� (1077-1126), Wang Fu .f.. *i (1079-1126), Tong Guan i: 1t (1054-1126), and Liang Sicheng � ,� A (d. 1126), all central and controversial figures in the fall of the Northern Song.10 Three years later, in 1166/12, the Qinzong fili in 75 juan, was finally presented to the throne. Work began immediately on trans forming this DailY Calendar into the Qinzong shilu it * "' � . 11 The great polymath Hong Mai i#� (1123-1202) was in charge of the project. He discovered that Liu Yifeng's search for biographical documentation on the 41 Jingkang figures had turned up virtually nothing. Knowing that an­ other search would likely produce similar results, he suggested a somewhat unorthodox alternative. He proposed that the retired official 8, Li Xinchuan, Jianyanyilai chaqye ZtYi � � I';O!t .tJl Jt.�(. (1st collection, 1202; 2d collection, I2I6; reprinted-CSJC ed.) (hereafter Chaqye ZtYi), "jia" If , 4.60. 9. Nan Songguan'ge lu 7.79, 8.II4, 122, 131. 10. SHYyunli 1.25a-26a. Liu Yifeng served in the history office of the Imperial Library from II61/7 through II6513; see Nan Songguan'ge lu 7.85, 88, 8.130, 131. As an interesting aside, in II66/r, the Censorate indicted Liu and dismissed him from office for storing in his private residence over 10,000juan of historical documents that he had copied during his tenure at the Imperial Library; see SHY zhiguan 71.13a and SS 389.II941. II. SHYyunli 1.27b.

,

1 1

�

, ,

, ,

I

,

,

i !

A Textual History if Cai Jing's Biograpry in the Songshi

523

Sun Di �ft (1081-n69), who had served in the Censorate during the Jingkang period, be ordered to compose the biographies and submit them to the court. 1 2 Emperor Xiaozong approved this plan, and Sun Di, after some initial hesitation, submitted in n67 / 10 a manuscript enti­ tled CaiJing shishi 1J.. :Y:."'. It is not certain what, if anything, Hong Mai did with the manuscript that Sun Di submitted. The completed Qinzong shilu in 40juan was submitted to the throne in n68 / 4.13 Work on transforming these veritable records into part of the state history was already well under way. Since state histories for the reigns of the first five Song emperors already existed, plans called for the compi­ lation of a Sichao guoshi TlE1 � 3t that would encompass the reigns of Shenzong, Zhezong, Huizong, and Qinzong and so complete the state history through the end of the Northern Song. The basic annals for the first three of these reigns had in fact already been submitted on n66/I9/29, and the basic annals of Qinzong, a mere one juan, were submitted along with the Qinzong shzlu. 1 4 The Qinzong annals were compiled by the great historian Li Tao *" Ii: (III5-84), whose monu­ mental Xu ZiZhi tongjian changbian tt 1t �� iifl e -k fiij remains the primary source for Northern Song history. Li Tao had been summoned from his native Meizhou Al g·1'! in Sichuan and appointed to the Imperial Library in n67/8 largely on the basis of the growing reputation of the Changbian. The emperor ordered the library to make a clean copy of the book's completed portions (covering the period 960-1067), and this was pre­ sented in 1168/4. Shortly after his arrival in the Library, Li Tao differed with Hong Mai over a point of contemporary protocol, and the emperor decided in favor of Li Tao. The dispute reportedly caused Hong Mai to harbor ill feelings toward Li Tao, with serious consequences for the Sichao guo­ shi. Hong Mai left the library in the autumn of 1168 and was in the provinces until his return in 1185/6. Li Tao remained and worked on the Sichao guoshi until his departure in 1170/6. He was recalled as head of the Imperial Library in II76/I, where he remained through 1177/9. 12. SHY zhiguan 18.67a-b. 13. Ibid., 67b-68a; Nan Songguan'ge lu 4.37-40. For a full discussion of Sun Di's in­ volvement in the Qinzong shilu and evolving twelfth-century notions of the Northern Song fall, see Charles Hartman, "The Reluctant Historian: Sun Ti, Chu Hsi, and the Fall of Northern Sung," T'oung Pao 89 (2003): 100--148. 14. Nan Songguan'ge lu 4.35.

CHARLES HARTMAN He immediately initiated another search for documents for the Sichao guoshi and in 1177/5 presented the ftnished Changbian for the reigns of Huizong and Qinzong. 15 In n80/I2 the Library presented the completed monograph sections for the Sichao guoshi, which were drawn largely from material in the Changbian, thus leaving only the biographies to be com­ pleted. In n83/3, Li Tao, now working again from Sichuan, completed ftnal revisions to the entire Changbian and submitted the work to the court. He was recalled to the Library that summer and on 1183/7/17 submitted a report on the status of the Sichao guoshi. He focused naturally on the biographies, and, in an extremely important passage, described the state of the manuscript and presented a plan for its completion: Biographies of officials from the Shenzong era have already been revised four times; those from Zhezong three times; those from Huizong twice; and those from Qinzong once. If these old versions have erroneous passages, and there are supplemental passages, then the errors [in the old versions] should be clearly indicated and stricken. The sources of supplemental passages should continue to be fully stated, and if, after investigation, there are no discrepancies [among the supplemental passages], then [the old version] may be altered, and a record entered into the "investigation of differences." Otherwise, the old versions should be followed. There should be no further additions or changes. �I't jf � ?H . e.. �if � ikftf�, $I't":="ik, ;fi; 1't � ik, �.-ik. � Hf * ;tr llHl, II ;tr�i�A., J!p 't a}j ;fJt.�, �Ij *. �i�A.fJ}.J!.i!P1f�f.;T �, �#�lt, 7Ht ftf�, fJ}� � � � � . 7F 'lUIHft � . � nJtj!� .t6

Li Tao states that with proper support he can complete this process within a year. Unfortunately, he died in 1184/2, his work on the biog­ raphies still unftnished. A year later, in 1185/6, Hong Mai was brought back to the Library and offered his own report on the status of the biographies. His opinion was very different from Li Tao's. He lamented the political complexity of the period in question and the dearth of documentation that had resulted from the loss of the North. He noted that biographies had been assigned for 1,300 individuals, but almost half of these were imperial clansmen 15. SHY chongru 4.30b, document dated II761 519. For the completion of the Changbian in II77, see the "spirit inscription" for Li Tao composed by his son Li Bi 3f � (II55-1222) in 1201, reprinted in CB, introduction, I: 29. 16. Gao Side � JIIf �l UinshiI229), Chitang cungao JF;; :t." #� (CSJC ed.), 2.34-35, where Li Tao's entire report is quoted from the Xiaozong shliu -
A Textual History ofCaijing's Biograpf?y in the Songshi

525

about whom little was known and about whom more information must be obtained. He suggested that some biographies be combined and that biographies of individuals with few accomplishments, even grand coun­ cilors, be omitted. Hong did not suggest a time limit for submission. Two days later, he was given a year to complete the work.17 It is interesting to note the different emphases of the two plans. Li Tao would focus on the textual level, working through the historical and philological problems of the existing versions, resolving these where possible, and documenting the process in the "investigation of differences," a proposal that, not surprisingly, mirrors his procedure for the Changbian. Hong Mai addresses the problem in larger terms, com­ plaining once again of insufficient documentation and seeking permis­ sion for major reductions in the overall length of the text. It seems that Hong Mai was unwilling or unable to complete the revision process that Li Tao had outlined. It also seems clear that the court, having in hand Li Tao's optimistic appraisal of u83, was ill-inclined to accept an­ other long delay. Li Xinchuan relates that Hong Mai, still in a pique over his loss of face to Li Tao over the ritual controversy, dawdled with his revisions to the biographies for the Sichao guoshi. When pressed by the emperor to complete the work, Hong Mai copied verbatim the biographies from the Dongdu shilue 1t � • � , which had just been presented to the throne by Wang Cheng .fAiJ.. According to Li, "Most people simply look at the many lacunae and errors in this new version [of the Sichao guoshtl and do not realize that because of the extreme haste there was no time to verify or select anything" � 11'-1.12. JL � -.f iE,t� � � � � , ifQ � �\1�4-.z.. rEl' � Bri * ?f-l!!. . 18 The "extreme haste" that Li Xinchuan describes may in fact be something of an understatement. The Dongdu shilue was submitted on u86/8/26, and just 43 days later, on u86/IO/9, Hong Mai submitted the biographies of the Sichao guoshi. Perhaps Hong Mai intended to remedy the situation subsequently, since he immediately requested permission to combine the three separate state histories of the Northern Song into a so-called jiuchao guoshi Ie. W'J 1l 3t .19 He apparently worked for about two years on this project SHY zhiguan 18.59b-6oa. 18. Chaqye Zaji, "jia," 9.n6. 19. SHY zhiguan 18.6oa. 17.

CHARLES HARTMAN before leaving the Library in II88/6. Work on combining the three separate state histories of the Northern Song was abandoned and never resumed. The Dongdu shilue is among the most important surviving Song works on Song history, not for the excellence of its text, but for what it tells us about the development of Song historiography. 20 Most thirteenth-century historians and bibliographers roundly criticized the work. Li Xinchuan set the tone when he characterized the Dongdu shilue as "plucked from among the biographies in the state histories of the five courts [i.e., for the period 960-1067] and those appended to the veritable records of the four courts [of Shenzong, Zhezong, Huizong, and Qin­ zong], augmented with some minor additions from private histories; in all, an extremely careless and jumbled work" Jt. " 4t4j{�1L .¥JJ ;t 1*& lm .¥JJ lr � Jl(t 1*, ilQ .f,l )lA Jf ;t Jl(t �z, :K.i.ilt�.21 In his recommenda­ tion for Wang Cheng, Hong Mai acknowledged that 90 percent of the Dongdu shiluewas copied from the state histories, but Hong used that fact to argue for its reliability. He also related that Wang Cheng had com­ pleted the work from materials left to him by his father, Wang Shang .£. 1' (d. II49).22 The elder Wang worked in the Imperial Library between II4213 and II43/I2, the very period that probably saw the first spate of work on the Qinzong Tili. Before relating these findings to the Songshi biography of Cai Jing, it is necessary briefly to address the complex but important issue of the rela­ tionship between the Dongdu shilue and the Changbian. The problem con­ cerns the ultimate authorship and period of composition of the Dongdu shilue. The Qing scholar Wang Shizhen .£. ± #! (I634-I7II) argued that

20. Also important, the work survives in a contemporary imprint of the Shaoxi period (1I9O-95), reprinted as Wang Cheng, Dongdu shilue, 4 vols. (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1979)· 21 . Chaqye Zqji, "jia," 4.63. The great thirteenth-century bibliographers echo Li Xinchuan's opinion; see Chen Zhensun F-f.. ��� (ca. 1I9O-1249+), Zhizhai shulujieti ill. � .. �M"! (reprinted-Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1987), 4.lIO and Zhao Xibian ;>!! ;/f; Jr- (d. 1250+) in Chao Gongwu £ � j\ (d. 1171) and Zhao Xibian, Junzhai dushu Zhi jiaozheng �.1t .. ;t ;j:i� (1250; reprinted-Sun Meng ��, ed. [Shanghai: Shang­ hai guji chubanshe, 1990]), 1I07; also Wang Yinglin .l.. � . (1223-96), Yuhai .1.. i4(reprinted-Shanghai: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1988), 46.51a. 22. SHY chongru 5.41a-b, also printed as front matter to the Shaoxi period edition of the Dongdu shilue.

A Textual History rfCai Jing's Biograpry in the Songshi

527

Wang Shang had drafted the bulk of the Dongdu shilue before his death in 1149 and that Wang Cheng, concealing his father's prior contribution, submitted his manuscript with only minor additions in 1186 in order to obtain the court preferment that routinely accompanied such presenta­ tions.23 Also arguing for an early composition date for much of the text, the modern scholar Zhao Tiehan :il!�� noted the presence of quota­ tions from the Dongdu shilue in the Changbian and argued that the Dongdu shilue must therefore have been accessible to Li Tao long before 1186.24 Mainland Chinese scholars, however, argue that these quotations were not part of the original Changbian and were added by later editors and publishers. These scholars insist that whatever Wang Shang'S contribu­ tion may have been, Wang Cheng should be acknowledged as the real author of the book, which they suggest he completed just prior to its presentation in 1186.25 As we shall see, the Songshi biography of Cai Jing presents important evidence that helps resolve this puzzle. Wang Shang and his son were natives of Meizhou in Sichuan, the same native place as Li Tao, and it is difficult to imagine that the two families of historians were not ac­ quainted. Li Xinchuan states clearly that most of the Dongdu shilue was copied from the state histories and the four shilu. One may thus infer that Wang Cheng must have copied some portions from the Qinzong shilu after its completion in 1168. Li Xinchuan further states that Wang Cheng was prefect of Longzhou it 11', in Sichuan in 1186 when he presented the Dongdu shilue and that he died in court office during the Qingyuan period (1195-1201). But there is no evidence he was ever in the capital before 1186. The most reasonable scenario that accommodates all these facts would seem to be the following: Wang Shang copied large portions of the state archives and material from the various veritable records avail­ able to him in 1142-43, and this material passed into the possession of his son upon the father's death in 1149. There was certainly some 23 . Wang Shizhen, Canwei xuwen 2t � � :;t , 19.IIa, also quoted in Chen Shu f,*- :i!, "Dongdu shilue juanren Wang Shang Cheng fuzi" -!t ::ll!l . ��n}.. .I.. 'l ff!.x...:r, Zhongyangyanjiuyuan Lishiyuyanyanjiusuojikan 8.1 (1939): 133-34. Chen Shu's article remains the best introduction to the problems of the Dongdu shilue. 24. Dongdu shilue, vol. I, intro., 1-2. 25. Cai Chongbang �* :tt , "Songdai Sichuan shixuejia Wang Cheng yu Dongdu shi­ lue" JIU� � III 3t '* � .I.. ff!.W.-!t ::ll!l .�, Chengdu daxue xuebao I2 (1985, no. 4): 24-25.

C HARLES HARTMAN degree of interaction between Li Tao and Wang Cheng, probably during the early n60s before Li Tao was called to the capital or during the later periods of Li's life when he was again resident in Sichuan (117273, n8o-83). It was probably during these periods, and through the intermediary of the manuscript of the Changbian, that Wang Cheng gained access to the veritable records that had come into existence since his father first copied documents in the 1140s. This material would have included the revised edition of the Zhezong shilu and the veritable records for the Huizong and Qinzong reigns, including the biography of Cai Jing.26 The results of this exploration of the history of Song history, with specific reference to the biography of Cai Jing, can be summarized in Fig. 12.1. The earliest parts of the biography may go back to the early 1140s, when compilation of the Qinzong rili first began. The general climate toward Cai Jing at this time was still extremely hostile.27 Al­ though Wang Shang may have transcribed some of this early material, he more likely confined his copying to the completed, more established histories of the earlier Northern Song periods. Gong Maoliang revised an early draft of the Qinzong rili in 1162-64. Gong, a Fujian native, eventually rose to be assistant grand councilor in the 1170S and was an important political supporter of Zhu Xi. Under the supervision of Hong Mai, the DailY Calendar was revised in 1166-68 into the Qinzong shilu. Hong solicited direct input on Cai Jing from Sun Di, who in 1126 had spearheaded the Censorate attacks that drove Cai from office for the last time. Li Tao undertook much of the initial work of incorporating the Qinzong shilu into the 5ichaoguoshi during his tenure at the Imperial Library in the late 1160s and once again in the mid-1I70s. During this time,

26. The issue of what, if anything, Li Tao took from the Dongdll shillie is a complex bibliographical problem that need not be addressed here. 27. For example, in 1144/9, upon learning that the wife and sons of Cai You had entered the capital, the Censor Wang Bo i£:th so strongly objected to their presence that they were secredy apprehended and returned under escort to their place of confinement. An edict reinforced the permanent exclusion of 23 sons and grandsons of Cai Jing from all future amnesties. See Li Xinchuan, Jianyanyilai xinianyaolll � � �X *' .-+*� (1208; reprinted-CSJC ed.), 152.2451. The incident is also mentioned in the funeral inscription for Wang Bo wtitten by Ye Shi 1t i! (1150-1223); see Ye Shiji (reprinted-Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), 24.480.

1

,

1

; I i ,

,

A Textual History oj Cai Jing's Biograpf?y in the Songshi

5 29

I. Primary Sources Anecdotes, Memoirs

Original Memorials

Diary ofActivity and Repose

Qinzong rili .. . .

II.

'

'

.' '

'

.

• ••

.

'•

(n4o-66/I2) . .

•

•• '• '.

'

'

. ! '

Wang Shang (n42-43) ;> •

Sun Di (n67/ro)

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

/

Qinzong shilu (n66-68)

• • • • • • •

Changbian (n77)

• • • •

Dongdll shi/lle (n42-n86/8)

--Sichao guoshi (n68-n86/n) III.

Daoxlle sources: Zhu Xi ChenJun XII Song biannian ifZhi tongjian

Songshi (1345) Fig. 12.1

The growth and development of the Songshi biography of Cai Jing.

he was working intensely on the Huizong and Qinzong portions of

Changbian, which he finished in 1177. At the time of his death in 1184, historians at the Imperial library had prepared a draft manuscript of the biographies for the Sichao guoshi, including certainly a biography of eai Jing, by making additions and corrections to the Qinzong shilu the

biography. li Tao believed a careful review and evaluation of these

530

C HARLES HARTMAN

proposed changes could produce a final text for the Sichao guoshi. Hong Mai apparently believed otherwise, and, in extreme pressure to submit the finished work, copied many biographies from the Dongdu shilue, a work that had been submitted to the court in u86. There were certainly also changes made to the biographies between the Sichao guoshi text of u86 and the fmal Songshi text of 1345.

The Songshi Text I have dealt at some length with the development of the Sichao guoshi and its relation to the Dongdu shilue because there are, to my knowledge, only two biographies of Cai Jing that survive from the Southern Song. The first, in the Sanchao beimeng huibian -=.. *'l Jt. .M. -t-� of Xu Mengxin 1t.J- :f- (1126-1207), is a composite of material from two private histo­ ries, both dating from the end of the Shaoxing period (U31-63).28 This material, although important for the perception it affords of Cai's image at this time, is textually unrelated to the Songshi biography and so is be­ yond the scope of this article. The second, Cai Jing's biography in the Dongdu shilue, however, is clearly related to that in the Songshi, and the two biographies share a linked textual history, a feature that many biographies in these two works have in common. Appendix I of this article reproduces the text of Cai Jing's biography from the Zhonghua edition of the Songshi, on which I have superimposed a number of analytical features. First, I have divided the text into 22 major sections and then subsections. These divisions are based not only on logical divisions within the text but also on my examination of parallel passages. In brief, whenever Song historians copied passages from one text to another, they reveal to us how they perceived divisions in the source text. In other words, they show us how they thought the con­ stituent passages of their source text should be separated, and these in­ dications can be useful for the present analysis. Appendix II presents an outline of the biography, utilizing these 22 sections and indicating the location of relevant parallel passages.

28. Huibian 49.493-95. The two works in question are the Zhongxingyishi l' �l!3t and the Youlao chunqiu *h � f-fk. For the dating and character of these texts, see Chen Lesu ft * *, "Sanchao beimeng huibian kao" '::" .¥Jj ;lI:.M. ... ��, Zhon�angyaf!iil!Yuan lishi yl!Yanyaf!iiusuojikan 6.3 (1936): 284-85. .

A Textual History of CaiJing's Biograpi?J in the Songshi

531

Second, the differing typefaces of the text printed in Appendix I attempt to reproduce something of the "archaeology" of Cai Jing's Songshi biography. On the one hand, passages that are identical between Dongdu shilue and Songshi (discounting minor stylistic variations) are re­ produced in plain, roman typeface. On the other hand, Songshi text that is not present in Dongdu shilue is printed in italics. Lastly, passages that I have been able to identify as "foundation text," that is, passages whose point of origin can be identified, are printed in bold typeface and un­ derlined. Before analyzing the patterns these markings form, it may be useful to state some general observations about Cai Jing' s Songshi biography.29 Like virtually all biographies in the Songshi, Cai Jing's can be divided into two parts. First, a chronological time-line, formed largely by changes in bu­ reaucratic office, provides an overall framework. Second, in the biog­ raphy of a non-nefarious official, one would find interposed along this chronological base a series of anecdotes and vignettes of actions in dif­ ferent posts and quotations from memorials presented to court. The sources of both categories of information were the personnel mes and biographical accounts of each individual as well as memorials and per­ sonnel actions recorded in the "diary of activity and repose," a prede­ cessor of the daily calendar. One notices immediately that the chronological base of Cai Jing's biography is compressed, perfunctory, and at several points simply wrong. Routinely, the titles of major offices are condensed (for example, Section VII, which chronicles Cai's first rise to grand councilor) or paraphrased (Section XV, which describes his return to power in 1112). Alternatively, in a serious chronological displacement, Cai's dismissal from the councilorship in 1106/1 is mentioned twice, in diction that suggests the writer was not aware that both sections refer to the same action (Sections XI.C and XIILA). There are also minor displacements in the chronology of Cai's appointments in IX.D and XV.A. By and large, the Dongdu shilue text does not share these features. This difference suggests that the writers of the later Songshi sought to minimize the 29. There is no English translation of Cai Jing's Songshi biography. There is, however, a full, annotated translation into German in Rolf Trauzettel, Tsai Ching (Io46-II26) als Tj;pllS des illegitimen Ministers (Bamberg: K. Urlaub, 1964), 139-72. This translation, ap­ pended to a larger work on Cai Jing, is a remarkable achievement for its time but is now seriously dated and should be consulted with caution.

532

CHARLES HARTMAN

positive impact of the full official titles for the major positions that eai held. Such abbreviation of titles, even in the biographies of the "nefarious," never occurs in the works of the better Song historians such as Li Tao or Li Xinchuan. The chronological displacements, absent in the Dongdu shilue, also suggest that the Songshi text suffered revisions and careless manipulation sometime between the late twelfth century and establishment of the present text in 1345. Onto the barebones chronology of dates and positions came the sto­ ries and texts that gave life and character to the subject. In the case of eai, however, the framers of the Songshi text could have no recourse to the usual biographical sources, if indeed these even existed, and were forced to devise alternative strategies. Three such strategies are in evidence. First, contrary to their practice when drafting the biographies of positive moral exemplars, the makers of the Songshi carefully excluded from their biography anything actually written by eai Jing himself. There are no quotations from his memorials or from his writings of any kind. Even the Dongdu shilue, for example, contains only one such example, a quotation from a memorial eai wrote when he presided over the Korean Affairs Institute M X � trial in 1097.30 But even this one example of eai's actual writing has been removed from the Songshi text, with the result that the entire section on the Tongwen guan trial has been redacted and reduced to the point of incomprehensibility (Section IV.B). The reason for the omission is obvious: in this memorial eai Jing accuses Sima Guang and other members of the Yuof!Jou government of plotting with eunuchs to thwart the succession of Emperor Zhezong in 1085. This allegation against the Yuof!JOU partisans was commonplace in texts of the late Northern and early Southern Song. But as time progressed and the dooxue image of Northern Song history took shape, these references began to disappear from accounts of the period. Second, to take the space of these memorials that would normally explain the subject's policies in his own words, the framers of eai's Songshi biography had recourse to large tracts of "discourse " �t;t- that 30. I refer here to direct quotations from memorials, cited and acknowledged by name. The foundation text in Section VIII.A.I, which describes the functions and staffing of the Advisory Office �"tl aj , in fact derives from a CaiJing memorial of 1102/8/4 (see SHY zhiguan P3a), but the text does not acknowledge this passage as originating from Cai's pen. The Dongdu shilue, however, attributes its direct quotation on the Tongwen guan trial to Cai Jing.

A Textual History ifCaifing's Biograp1!J in the Songshi

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enumerated his policies in negative terms. The Dongdu shilue contains all these sections, which are obviously an early component of the text. The seventeenth-century scholar Wang Wan ii. � (1624-90) admired this feature of the Dongdu shilue biography of Cai Jing and compared these passages to the monographs on imperial sacrifices and standards in the Shiji 3t �L, that is, to monographs that made use of specific incidents as concrete examples to support a more generalized topical discourse.31 In this case, the generalized discourse is the perfidy of Cai Jing and his perversion of the Song state, a topic whose details, as we shall see, originate in the attacks made against Cai during his lifetime. Sections VIII, IX, XVI, XVII, and XVIII are examples of such passages, and they account for almost a quarter of the present text. A third strategy is to interpose into the chronological baseline con­ crete anecdotes that reflect negatively on Cai Jing. Often, these anecdotes are not inserted in the proper chronological location, or they manifest only a tangential relation to Cai. A good example occurs in Section XV, which begins with a chronological account of Cai's return to power in 1112. The section is composed of two parts: the chronological entry (XV.A) and an appended anecdote that is not in the Dongdu shilue (XV.B). This story concerns the activities of one Su Yu .� �, a Huaixi education official who suggested that during Cai's absence from power, education officials in Huaixi province had framed examination policy questions in terms that invited responses critical of Cai's regime. Su requested a ju­ dicial review of policy questions from the preceding five years, and more than 30 individuals were punished. The Song huryao, however, contains a more detailed version of this story quoted from the Laoxue'an biji �* �*�L of Lu You Fi � (1125-1210). This version places Su Yu's inqui­ sition around 1107-08, after Cai's first, not his second, period out of power,32 Presumably, since this passage is not in the Dongdu shilue, it was added to Cai's biography sometime after the Laoxue'an bijii, which dates from the late 1190S. A careful comparison of Cai's biographies in the Dongdu shilue and the Songshi suggests that, although the two versions are related, this rela­ tionship is not strictly linear. In other words, the Dongdu shilue is not 31. Wang Wan, Yaofeng wenchao !tJf5t�) (SKQS ed.), 2pob. 32. SHY Ii 19.16a. Only a fragment of the passage quoted in the Sung huryao is in the present text of the Laoxue'an biji. Another document in the Sung huryao dates Su Yu's ac­ tivities in Huaixi to llo8/7; see SHY xingfa 2.48a-b.

•

534

CHARLES HARTMAN

the direct ancestor of the Songshi text. The evidence suggests rather that the two biographies derive from a common ancestor, and that each has excerpted and supplemented that ancestor in its own way. The above review of the compilation of the Sichao guoshi and its relation to the Dongdu shilue indicates that the most probable ancestor for both texts is the Qinzong shilu of 1168. This work of course does not survive, and I am not aware of any extant direct quotation from the Qinzong shilu text of Cai's biography. However, full transcriptions of 27 biographies from Northern Song shilu have survived in the Mingchen beizhuanyuaf!Jan zhiji � � 41*J#.J.� ..t� compiled by Du Dagui :.f±::k..Ji in 1194. Du Dagui was also from Meizhou in Sichuan and was a contemporary of Li Tao and Wang Cheng. His work contains shilu biographies for four indi­ viduals included in the "nefarious ministers" category of the Songshi: Cai Que 1J.. . (1037-93), Lii Huiqing g ,t �!?p (1031-mo), Zhang Dun ...- 'ff. (1035-1105), and Zeng Bu t All (1035-1107), whose biographies comprise virtually the entire chapter 471, the first of the "nefarious ministers" chapters in the Songshi. Of course, all four officials also have Dongdu shilue biographies. The shilu biographies for the last three individuals, all of whom died during the Huizong years, almost certainly derive from the revised Huizong shilu, completed by Li Tao and Lii Zuqian g ;j!l. it (1137-81) in 1177.33 A detailed comparison of the shilu, Dongdu shilue, and Songshi biogra­ phies of all four individuals is beyond the scope of this chapter and is complicated because Du Dagui may have made editorial deletions from the shilu texts. Yet several preliminary observations drawn from these surviving examples of Song shilu biographies may shed some light on the probable general character of the Qinzong shilu biography of Cai Jing, the ultimate source text for his biography in both the Dongdu shilue and the Songshi. First, the shilu texts as printed by Du Dagui provide

33. 5HY zhiguan 18.70b. The review that follows does not include the biography of Cai Que, since this biography would have been included in the Zhezong shilu, a work with a complicated history, essentially completed before Li Tao arrived in the capital. For the texts of the three remaining biographies, see, for Lii Huiqing, Zhang Dun, and Zeng Bu, respectively: Du Dagui, Mingchen beizhuanyuanyan Zhiji (Harvard-Yenching Institute Si­ nological Index Series, Supplement no. 12; reprinted-Taibei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966), 3.24a-25b, 3.43a-44a, 3.49a-b; Dongdu shilue 8pa-3b, 95· la-4a, 95·4a-5a; 55 471.13705-9, 13709-14, 13714-17.

A Textual History ofCai ling's Biograpf?y in the Songshi

535

only a basic chronology of official positions, but this chronology is very precise, especially with regard to official titles. In fact, most of the text of the shilu biographies of Lii Huiqing, Zhang Dun, and Zeng Bu is made up of official titles. The reader of these shilu feels almost that, for the professional historians and officials who compiled these accounts, the biography of an individual, expressed as a chronological list of his full official titles, was in essence all the biography one needed to know. Second, the Dongdu shilue inserts anecdotes, conversations, and quoted memorials into this basic shilu chronology but rarely alters the existing chronological structure or inserts new dates into it. These additions must be the "supplemental passages" that Li Tao observed in the Sichao guoshi manuscript in n83; in other words, it was material that had been pro­ posed as additions to the chronological base of the shilu biographies. There is an interesting anecdote in the Songshi biography of Yuan Shu :t.� (n3I-I20 5) that sheds light on this process with regard to the very biography of Zhang Dun. From n79/I-n8ol3 Yuan served as junior compiler in the State History Office. Yuan and Zhang Dun were natives of the same place, and the Zhang family used this connection to entreat Yuan to "embellish his biography" in the state history. Yuan replied in­ dignantly that he would rather betray his neighbors than undermine the public record for all posterity, and the grand councilor compared him to the famous historians of antiquity. Yuan was promoted and remained at the Library through n82/5.34 If we accept the veracity of this tale the time period fits perfectly into what we know about the compilation of the Sichao guoshi it supports the notion that the Sichao guoshi biographies were compiled by a process of augmentation to the shilu. It also suggests that Yuan Shu, a figure with strong daoxue affiliations, may have been the historian responsible for making these changes to the biography of Zhang Dun. Third, the relation of the Songshi to the Dongdu shilue is different in each biography: very close for Zhang Dun; far apart for Lii Huiqing; and somewhere in the middle for Zeng Bu. In general, however, the trend is to add textual material that intensifies the "nefarious" character 34. SS 389.11935; Nan Songguange xu lu 9.366. Yuan Shu was, of course, the author of Tongjian jishi benmo ;ii m R. **-*, the first history in the "outline and detail" #lJ � format, published in 1175. He was a close associate of Zhu Xi, and Gong Maoliang sponsored his work at court.

CHARLES HARTMAN

of the subject, material that underscores the notion that this individual was not a junif � .:r- . Often, where the shilu text only mentions in passing a memorial that attacked the subject of the biography, the Dongdu shilue inserts quotations from the actual text of the memorial. The process also works in reverse: the Dongdu shilue and the Songshi both suppress material in the shilu that blurred the distinction between a hypothetical junif standard of behavior and the "nefarious." For example, the shilu biography of Zhang Dun mentions that he was recommended early in his career by Ouyang Xiu. Lii Huiqing's shilu biography mentions that he was supported early in his career by Han Jiang ".!!if (1012-88). The Dongdu shilue and Songshi biographies omit both these references because they confuse the moral distinctions that these later texts were trying to create. Wang Cheng, in fact, has a self-authored historian's comment appended to his biography of Zhang Dun that contrasts Zhang and Sima Guang as xiaoren .J'A. and junif respectively.35 Applying these insights to the biography of Cai Jing, I have italicized the typeface in Appendix I to mark those passages present in the Songshi but not in the Dongdu shilue. The italics includes only passages that are totally absent in the Dongdu shilue; it does not include passages whose variations have arisen solely from stylistic rewriting. There are fifteen such Songshi passages absent from the Dongdu shilue, and these vary in length from a single character (XVIILA) to about 125 characters in length (VI). None of these fifteen passages alters the chronological baseline or interjects new dated material. None contains dates or official titles for Cai Jing. Rather, most serve to intensify or develop ideas that are already present in the Dongdu shilue text. These passages may be divided into two general groups. First are those appended as intensifiers or clarifiers to previously existing text (III.B, VILC, VIILB.2, XVI.B, XIXB); second are those that insert new content not present in the Dongdu shilue (VI.A

35. Subsequent to the presentation of this paper at the Seattle Huizong conference in February 2001, Ari Levine conducted a comparative study and translation of the shilu, Dongdu shilue, and Songshi biographies of Cai Que, Lii Huiqing, Zhang Dun, and Zeng Bu. The results of his study present a detailed confirmation of the hypothesis presented above. See Ari Levine, "A House in Darkness: The Politics of History and the Language of Politics in the Late Northern Song, I068-II04" (phD. dissertation, Columbia Uni­ versity, 2002), 204-308, 597-638.

J 1

,

A Textual History 0/ Cai Jing's Biograpf?y in the Songshi

537

and B, VIILB.2, X, XV.B). Let us examine an example from each group

in detail. Section VII relates the circumstances of eai Jing's first elevation to grand councilor over the course of the year 1102.

[VILA] In n02, he was transferred as prefect of Darning. [VILB] When Han Zhongyan and Zeng Bu quarreled, [Han] planned to use Cai Jing to assist him, so he was again appointed academician recipient of edicts [no2I3].36 Huizong intended to restore the government policies of the Xining and Yuatifeng periods. The Imperial Diarist Deng Xunwu, a member of Cai Jing's faction, composed and presented a "Chart of Those Who Love But Cannot Help," and Huizong then decided to make Cai Jing councilor. When Han Zhongyan was dismissed, Cai Jing was appointed assistant director of the left in the Department of State Affairs [no2/5]; then suddenly he replaced Zeng Bu as vice director of the right [no2/7]. [VILq On the dqy his appointment edict waspromulgated, he wasgranted a seated audience in the Hall ofExtended Harmo1!J; and [HuizoniJ commanded him asfollows: "Shenzong initiated and established a rystem of[New} Laws, and theformer emperor [ZhezoniJ continued thesepolicies. But twice thry encountered reversals, and the state is still unsettled. My desire is to propagate the intentions of"!Yfather and elder brother. What canyou do to bring that about?" eai Jing kowtowed in gratitude andpromised to devote himse!f till death to this cause. [VILD] In n03/I he advanced to vice director of the left.

36. TIlls passage presents a fascinating example of later textual manipulation to force an earlier text into accord with evolving images of historical reality. The Songshi text reads: **.t it � t Ali 5t �, l!f. � J * m .IIh .fl m � '" ± if<. lfr . The passage is slighdy ambiguous, since it leaves unsaid whether it was Han or Zeng who planned to "use" Cai Jing and thus engineered his recall to the capital. The implication, however, is that Han was the agent, since he is the subject of the fIrst clause; and indeed, the twelfth-century parallel passages cited in the note below state unambiguously that it was Han who recalled Cai. However, Han Zhongyan was the son of Han Qi #P.t (1008-75), a major eleventh-century grand councilor and associate of Ouyang Xiu and Sima Guang. Therefore in the Ming dynasty reworking of this text, the passage has been rewritten: -t**.t it � t Ali 5t .� , Ali l!f. � J * m .IIh . . . , thus totally changing the agent of Cai's recall from the subsequendy sainted Han to the "nefarious" Zeng. See Chen Bangzhan f!# .t (1557-1602), Songshijishi benmo >!t � � .�*- (1605; reprinted-Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977), 49.479. TIlls example underscores the danger of using convenient post-Song compilations to research Song history.

C HARLES HARTMAN The text of VILA, B, and D is largely identical between Dongdu shilue and Songshi. VILB represents a compressed version of a fuller recounting of these events that is preserved in Li Tao and another source from the 1170s. The text of VILA, B, and D was thus certainly part of the Qinzong shilu biography of eai JingY However, neither the Dongdu shilue nor these other twelfth-century narratives contain the passage at VILe (printed in italics in the translation above), which purports to record an exchange between Huizong and his new grand councilor on the day that eai's appointment edict was promulgated. This passage at VILe is narrative and anecdotal in tone. It breaks the chronological flow and reinforces the notion, adumbrated in VILB, that eai Jing was appointed solely for his knowledge and devotion to the New Policies, not for any inherent administrative talent or ability. It serves to confirm and emphasize eai's commitment to the New Policies and functions in his Songshi biography as a transition to the following Section VIII, which is a long catalogue of eai's policies and the hardships they provoked. However, this dramatic passage at VILe does not occur in Song historical texts until the daoxue "outline and detail" ?� � compilations of the mid-thirteenth century.38 Even if this passage is "genuine" in the sense that it derives from twelfth-century history office material that has simply not found its way into surviving portions of Li Tao, Li Bing, or other sources its strategic placement in

37. The story relates how Huizong decided to use Cai Jing as gtand councilor after viewing a chart presented by one Deng Xunwu fII iil] i\ (I055-1II9). Deng's chart was constructed to show Huizong that opponents of the New Policies dominated upper-level government positions and that Cai Jing's elevation to the councilorship could address this imbalance. For Li Tao's narrative, see ]SBM 130.14b-15a. For another account see Li Bing :$- i£J , Dingwei lu T '*-�, completed in II72, as quoted in Xu Ziming � ro 1lJ3 , Song zaifu biannian lu *- * tm �-+� (ca. 1220; reprinted-Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), II.70I-2. The Dongdu shilue contains a longer version of this incident in the biogtaphy of Deng Xunwu, Dongdu shilue 98.2b-3a. 38. Chen Jun F.t � (ca. II65-1236+), Huangchao biannian gangmu beryao .i .t'l .*, -+� I'l ffti-* (Song edition Of I229; reprinted-Taibei: Chengwen, 1966), 26.qb-18a (pp. 1210II). The passage also occurs in another anonymous daoxue work of the mid-thirteenth century known as the Xu Songbiannian iiZhi tongjian !.t *- .� -+1t #3ii� in 18juan, a work that has not been printed since the Yuan. For the passage, see Xu Song biannian iiZhi tongjian (Yuan ed.; reprinted-Siku quanshu cunmu congshu 1m J.f±t"# I'l l: t" [Ji'nan: Qi Lu shushe, 1997]), 15.5b. The passage in question is also quoted from this latter source in the notes at CB-SB 20.2b-3a.

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the Songshi biography transforms its meaning from a passage that illus­ trates eai's commitment to the New Policies, and to Huizong personally, to one that foreshadows the catastrophes that will ensue from eai's im­ plementation of those policies. As an example of the second group material without trace in the Dongdu shilue that appears wholly added to the Songshi one may consider the two accounts at VIA and VI.B: [VI.A] Tong Guan went to the Wu region in his capacity as palace servitor to search for calligraphy, paintings, and other rarities. He stayed in Hangzhou for several months, and eai Jing traveled with him without cease day and night. Every day Guan sent all the painted screens, fans, and other items they acquired to the Palace. Furthermore, he appended descriptions and reports that reached the emperor; and in this way the emperor came to take notice of eai Jing. [VI.B] Also, Fan Zhixu, a scholar in the Imperial University, had long been friends with Xu Zhichang, an official of the central Taoist registry. Zhichang had gained access to the palace of the Yuanfu Empress through his talisman water. Zhixu had an especially close bond with him and told him every day what he was thinking, maintaining that nothing was going to happen unless eai Jing was made councilor. As a result, the palace ladies and eunuchs were united in their praise of eai Jing. Zhixu was promoted to remonstrator on the right, and eai Jing rose to become prefect of Dingzhou.

The first of these back-to-back anecdotes relates how the eunuch Tong Guan i:1r (1054-1126) , who had been assigned to collect paintings and calligraphy for the emperor in the Yangtze delta, spent several months traveling with eai Jing in the Hangzhou area assembling screens and fans for the imperial collection. The anecdote is important in the general framework of the Songshi biography because it introduces the topic of eai's close collaboration with eunuchs, especially Tong Guan, a major theme in the eventual catalogue of charges against him. However, there is, to my knowledge, no trace of this story in any Song text; and both traditional and modern scholars have called the chronology of the event into question.39

39. CB-SB 18.I7b and Gu Jichen . -E .$., Songshi bishi zhiyi jf;: � J;t. * 'If � (Beijing: Shumu wenxian, 1987), 517-18. The basic problem is that Tong Guan was appointed to the Yangtze delta in lIo213, but Cai Jing had already left Hangzhou to assume his ap­ pointment as prefect of Dingzhou in 1I0l/12.

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Section VI.B relates a parallel story about how eai's influence spread within the palace. The academician Fan Zhixu ;€. JtJi was on good terms with the Taoist master Xu Zhichang tt �l1 't , whose own skills had gained him access to the quarters of the Empress Uu (I079-III3), consort of the recendy deceased Zhezong. Fan presumed upon this relationship to have Xu promote the merits of eai Jing among the palace ladies and eunuchs, with the result that Fan was promoted and eai was appointed prefect of Dingzhou ;t 1�'1 , the fIrst step of his re­ habilitation that would culminate in the grand councilorship in 1102. There is likewise, to my knowledge, no textual parallel for this story in any Song text. However, the gist of the tale is contained in the Zhui! yulei *- .:r-� � of Zhu Xi, where Fan and Xu are fellow natives of Jianyang Jt � in Fujian and where Fan, after Xu introduces him to Huizong, direcdy memorializes the emperor proposing eai as grand councilor.40 Whatever the historicity of Zhu Xi's account, the absence of this event from Song historical sources, even the daoxue histories, and the divergences between the Zhu Xi and Songshi versions suggest this tale is a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century addition to eai's biog­ raphy. In short, neither of the anecdotes in VI.A and VI.B have textual parallels in other Song sources. Both are probably post-twelfth­ century insertions into the Sichao guoshi version of eai's biography intended thematically to emphasize eai's supposed close associations with eunuchs. We move now to discuss those passages printed in bold typeface in Appendix I and characterized as "foundation texts." As Appendix II demonstrates, there are Song parallel passages for much of eai's Songshi biography. In contrast to passages marked in italics, which are probably later additions to twelfth-century text, the majority of passages printed in bold typeface are "bedrock," text whose original provenance can be identifIed as passages that antedate the offIcial biographies of eai Jing in the Qinzong shilu and the Sichao guoshi. Most of these passages are common to both the Dongdu shilue and Songshi, thus suggesting they belong to these early strata of the text. These passages are of particular interest, not only because of their early date but also because careful examination of them can reveal the attitude of the mid-twelfth-century historians toward eai Jing. Lacking the usual post-mortem biographical 40.

Zhu Xi, ZhuiJyulei (1271; reprinted-Beijing: Zhonghua, 1986), 3128-29.

A Textual History of Cai Jing's Biograpry in the Songshi

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sources, these were the primary texts that Gong Maoliang, Hong Mai, and Li Tao selected to manipulate and fashion into a biography for Cai. These passages can be divided into three groups for analysis: first, con­ temporary edicts and memorials directed against Cai (VIlLA; XILA; XIV.B and C; XIX.B); second, anti-Cai anecdotes and memoirs from private histories (ILB; lILA; XILB; XX.B); and third, Li Tao's own evaluation of Cai (XXII). Passages from the first category show that the official historians looked to contemporary memorials written against Cai not only for language but also for many of the general themes of his biography. Analyzed thematically, there is a stark congruence between these memorials and Cai's biography both in the Dongdu shilue and the Songshi. This fact itself is of supreme importance. It demonstrates that the twelfth-century historians first framed Cai's life using the language and viewpoint of his political adversaries and detractors. Among the earliest of these is the long memorial by one Fang Chen 7.f#, written in 1107 after the beginning of Cai's second term as councilor. Although the biographers do not lift the language of this tract, Fang's memorial had already laid out many of the charges that later appear in the Dongdu shilue and Songshi: Cai's concentration of military forces around the capital is contrary to Song policy (IX.C); his manipulation of the impe­ rial secretariat (XVI); his opulence (XII); his destruction of the salt merchants (VIILA.6); and his persecution of the Yuaf!JIou parti­ sans (XI).41 Section XIV contains two extensive quotations of memorials written against Cai in connection with his second removal from the counci­ lorship in 1109-10. Neither of these texts is included in the Dongdu shilue, although the second is mentioned in passing. The Songshi attributes the first of these quotations (XIV.B) to a memorial by the student Chen Chaolao Ft .m ::t- dated 1109/6. The passage contains a list of fourteen 3 -character phrases that purport to sum up Cai's "evils." As befits a 41. For the full memorial, see Wang Mingqing J:. II}J it (II27-1214+), HuiZhu lu .ff ,f: � (HuiZhu qianlu, II66; HuiZhu houlu, II94; HuiZhu sanlu, II95; HuiZhuyulu, II97) (reprinted-Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), houlu 3-109-12. For extracts, see Xu Ziming, Song zaifu biannian lu 11.723-26. Wang Mingqing's entry relates that the text of Fang's memorial was delivered to Li Tao for inclusion in the Changbian; but it does not survive among the collected fragments of the Changbian from this period; see CB-SB 27.12b-14b, which reprints Wang's text in the footnotes.

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student composition, many of the phrases are classical citations: "pro­ faning the Supreme Thearch, deceiving his Lord and Father, forging a secret alliance, squandering money and resources, changing laws and standards, disregarding imperial edicts," and so on. Chen's list con­ cludes his memorial, dated n09/6, in which he provided detailed charges for these fourteen categories of malfeasance and raised the at­ tacks against Cai to a rhetorical level much above that of Fang Chen's memorial of n Ol. 42 The second passage (XIV.C) derives from a me­ morial dated 1110/5 by the Censor Zhang Kegong � Jt -A' and is com­ posed in a parallel prose style that is carried over directly into the Songshi text: "He made light with imperial benefice and so pillaged the resources of state; he made use of office and salary and so traded in private favors." The rhetoric of this text continues in the vein of Chen Chaolao and made official the escalation of the political and rhetorical attack on Cai.43 These themes and others are also prominent in the last of the me­ morials the official historians drew upon to describe Cai and his poli­ cies. The Censor Sun Di's memorial of n26/2, a text widely quoted in twelfth-century sources, was instrumental in ousting Cai from power for the last time.44 We should recall in this context Hong Mai's decision to involve the same Sun Di in the composition of Cai's biography for the Qinzong shilu of n68. The Songshi mentions Sun's memorial (XXI) , and both the Dongdu shilue and Songshi take language directly from it (XILA). The importance of this memorial in the development of Cai's persona cannot be overestimated, because Sun Di was the first to place primary responsibility for the Jurchen invasions on Cai Jing. Although there are few verbal traces of Sun's memorial in the existing Cai biog-

42 . For the full text of Chen Chaolao's memorial, see Huibian 50.498-500. Cf. also Xu Ziming, Song zaifu biannian lu 12.751, where this list is quoted from the an­ notation to the Changbian, and CB-SB 28.15b-16a. 43. For Zhang's memorial see Huibian 50.496-97. The passage translated above was incorporated into the appointment notice that dismissed Cai from the councilorship in IIIO/5; see Xu Ziming, Song zaifu biannian lu 12.749; and CB-SB 29.IIb-13b. 44. For Sun's text in twelfth-century sources, see Wang Zao .x. i� (I079-II54), Jing­ kangyaolu �k .$:*� (CS]C ed.), 3-46-47; Zhongxingyishi as quoted in Xu Ziming, Song zaifu biannian lu 13.836-37; Huibian 39.389---91 ; ]SBM 148.7b-8b. A major factor contrib­ uting to the popularity of this text was its powerful parallel prose, at which Sun Di was an acknowledged master.

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raphies, Sun's 1126 text already contained an evaluation of Cai's person­ ality, his policies, and his place in Song history that the later biographies fully develop. In his memorial, Sun presents himself as the voice of public opinion, whose anger at Cai for the Jurchen invasions must be assuaged. Sun argues that Cai simply used the New Policies as a cover to impose an oppressive government, whose ultimate purpose was his own enrich­ ment. In the process, he destroyed the legitimate institutions of the state. Under the cover of promoting Daoism, "he promoted an atmosphere that encouraged extreme opulence, such that the accumulated public and private wealth of the realm was swept away without a trace" (language used at XILA). He corrupted the memorial system and promoted fac­ tionalism and cronyism. He was corrupt: he took bribes and sold offices. This corruption extended to his entire family. He has been the worst "nefarious minister" in history. His rule has been so bad it upset the yin":)'ang balance and caused droughts and floods that laid waste the countryside, encouraged banditry, and decimated the population. "And so the Ti of the north have taken advantage of this void to drum forward their advance, as if they walk through an area devoid of people!" Sun Di concludes by calling for Cai's execution. We move now to the second category of "foundation texts," passages taken directly from anecdote books and memoirs. Both the Dongdu shilue and the Songshi, after the opening preliminaries, proceed immedi­ ately to relate an incident from 1086/12 when Cai was mayor of Kai­ feng (lLB). As soon as Sima Guang took office as grand councilor, he ordered a reversal of the hired services policy Jii �9:.5J;; , a key provision of Wang Anshi's New Policies, and a return to the previous practice of requisitioned local services 1:. �9:.�. He also set a rather unrealistic time limit of five days for the transition. Cai was the only official to meet this deadline, successfully converting the entire capital city without a single objection. When he informed Sima Guang, the councilor replied, "If everyone takes to the program as you have, there's no reason we can't carry it offl" Several lines later, both texts continue (lILA), "In 1094 Zhang Dun once again wished to change the local service policy and put the matter to deliberation; but there was no decision for some time. Cai Jing said to him, 'Just take the policy that was set during the Xining period. What's to discuss?' Zhang Dun agreed, and the hired services were established once again." To ensure the point will not be missed, the Songshi inserts

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a follow-up passage that is not in Dongdu shilue (III.B), "Sima Guang and Zhang Dun had opposing views on the two local service policies. Within a space of ten years Cai Jing completely reversed himself on the issue. He inclined toward Sima's position then toward Zhang's position in order to help himself in each case. From this, the careful reader will be able to observe how nefarious he was." Placed at the beginning of his biography, and reinforced in the Songshi text by this inserted enhancing passage, the anecdote about his policy reversal plants an initial impression of Cai as unprincipled, mercurial, opportunistic, and ruthless. However, both the language and this pairing of the two separate incidents come straight from the Henan Shaoshi we'!iian lu M � .g� 1\ Bt!) JL� completed by Shao Bowen .g� 1{:J j1\ (1057-1134), son of the daoxue forebear Shao Yong .g� $ (1011-77) in 113I. As is well known, this work is extremely biased against the New Policies.45 The choice of Shao Bowen's account of these matters signals to the careful reader once again that the framers of Cai's biography have chosen to frame his life in the language and terms of his steadfast opponents. A second example of material taken from anecdote books and mem­ oirs illustrates yet another aspect of the growth of Cai's negative persona: the rush of erstwhile allies to dissociate themselves from Cai following 1126. Section XX.B describes Cai's last period as grand councilor, which began in 1124/12. Both Dongdu shilue and Songshi describe an aged and almost blind figure who has delegated total authority to his son Cai Tao � 1t. The biographies describe Cai Tao's abuse of this authority in vivid terms: "Whenever he appeared at court, hordes of officials greeted him whispering into his ears, and dozens of clerks followed behind clutching his documents and ftles; and he took advantage of this situa­ tion to engage in all manner of illicit and nefarious schemes." This

45. Shao Bowen, Henan Shaoshi wC'!Jian lu (II31; reprinted-Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), II.II9. Another version of the story occurs in the Dingwci lu, as quoted in Xu Zirning, Song zaifu biannian lu II.703-4. Li Tao called attention to several inconsistencies in Shao Bowen's account of the I086 meeting between Sima Guang and Cai Jing, but accepts the basic facts of the encounter; see CB 367.15a-17a. Cai Jing himself referred to the incident in a later memorial of I096/2; see SHY shihuo 14.IOa-b. The Cai Jing biographies, how­ ever, follow Shao Bowen's original, not Li Tao's revised version of the encounter, yet more evidence that Li Tao probably had minimal impact on the final Sichaoguoshi version of Cai Jing's biography.

i

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characterization, however, comes directly from the brush of Zhu Sheng­ fei *-_.1F (1082-II44), whose political memoirs, entitled Xiushui xiar!Ju lu �7� flJ JS�, were composed in the late II30s.46 Zhu Shengfei, grand councilor from II32/9 through II34/9, is a good example of an official who began his career during the Cai Jing years, obtaining his jinshi in II03. For Zhu to have attained the rank of grand councilor by II32, he must have had an active career during the Huizong period. Yet neither his biography in the Songshi nor the documents in the Song huryao contain a single mention of his activities during this period.47 I have elsewhere discussed the problem of the wholesale "washing" of sources that transpired during the II30S and II40S in efforts to camou­ flage responsibility for the debacle of 1126.48 Zhu Shengfei's memoirs are a good example of the rush to blame Cai Jing for the Northern Song fall and to extend blame to other members of the Cai family during pe­ riods when Cai would obviously have been too ill to shoulder the full blame himself. The third and final example of "foundation text" is perhaps the most interesting, given the association ofLi Tao with the development of Cai Jing's biography. Section XXII, which closes the biography in both the Dongdu shilue and the Songshi versions, is written in the tone and style of the "historian's comment," a standard genre of Chinese history writing since Sima Qian. The passage occurs in the Xu ZiZhi tongjian changbian jishi benmo It 1f if; 1& C -k _ R. .. *' *' of Yang Zhongliang lIi 1+ It (ca. II7o-ca. 1230), where it is quoted, presumably verbatim,

46. For this passage in Zhu Shengfei's memoirs, see Hllibian 50.496 and ]SBM 13I.20b-21a, also CB-SB 48.16b-I7a. For the date of the Xillshlli xiat!ill lll, see Chen Lesu, "Sanchao beimeng hllibian kao," 291--92. The work survives only in extracts. Cai Tao had been dismissed from office on 1123/9/13, when critics charged his scholarship was het­ erodox because his Xiqing shihlla i1!l it"tt� relied too heavily on Su Shi and Huang Tingjian; see SHY zhigllan 69.13a. However, apparently he returned to power shortly thereafter. An edict, once again dismissing him from office, dated 1125/4/21, employs language identical to the second foundation text at Section XX.B describing his in­ volvement with the Xuanhe Depository � fc> J-f; see SHY zhigllan 69.I7b-18a. 47. 55 362.11315-19. For a text that places Zhu Shengfei in academic office about 1120, see Hong Mai, Rongzhai sllibi (reprinted-Shanghai: Guji, 1978), 790. 48. Hartman, '''!be Making of a Villain: Qin Gui and Tao-hsiieh," 86-105.

CHARLES HARTMAN from the lost portions of Li Tao's commentary to the Changbian.49 This text, translated in the left column below, represents Li Tao's own verdict on eai Jing.50 The passage is a carefully balanced and formulated summation of eai's personality and his place in history. Although its viewpoints are largely identical to those expressed in the contemporary memorials against eai, its language is more evenhanded. Both the Dongdu shilue and the Songshi, however, take extensive liberties with Li's original. The Dongdu shilue especially, translated in the right column below, rewrites the passage extensively, omitting and adding material. This fact is yet another indication that Hong Mai ignored Li Tao's contributions to the bio­ graphical section of the Sichao guoshi. The Songshi confines itself largely to omitting material, adding only one sentence that emphasizes the discord among members of the eai family. By natural temperament, Cai Jing was crafty and duplicitouS.51 He made bad use of his intelligence to control others. 52 When he was in the presence of the Sovereign, he was constantly on the alert, focused solely on devising plans to secure his own position. From beginning to end he advanced but one policy: he maintained that [Huizong] should transcend the restraints of convention and

Cai Jing was by nature crafty and deceitful.

His extravagance was unbounded. He exhausted the resources of

49. For a study of Yang Zhongliang's compilation and its relationship to the Changbian, see Charles Hartman, "Bibliographic Notes on Sung Historical Works: Topical Narratives from the Long Draft Continuation That Aids Administration (Hsu T�-chih t'ung-chien ch'ang-pien chi-shih pen mo If lf jiii!4Ik$R.***-) by Yang Chung-liang #HI' It and Related Texts," Journal ofSung-Yuan Studies 28 (1998): 177-200. 50. JSBM 13I.22a-b, which is certainly the best text; cf. also CB-SB 55.1a-4a and Chen Jun, Huangchao be!Jao, 30.13a-b (pp. 1419-20). 51. Note that the Songshi alters Li Tao's "crafty and duplicitous" F1t� to the more malevolent "evil and duplicitous" � �. 52. The beginning of Li Tao's text (ff: :k lfF1t�, JiF t' "A �A.) contains a strong allusion to the biography of Zhang Tang � iIi in the "harsh officials" Iii � section of the Shiji (i� �A. � -tt, JiF t' ''A �A.); see Sima Qian, Shiji (reprinted-Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 122.3138. With this allusion, Li Tao sets the tone for the entire passage to follow and signals in advance his verdict on Cai Jing.

A Textual History of Cai Jing's Biograpf?y in the Songshi exhaust the resources of the nine provinces and the four seas in order to enrich himself.53 Although Huizong enriched and ennobled him, yet deep down he realized that he was a nefarious flatterer who could not be entrusted with the state. Therefore, he repeatedly promoted and then demoted him; and he selected those with whom eai did not get along, such as Zhao Tingzhi, Zhang Shangying, Liu Zhengfu, Zheng Juzhong, and Wang Fu, and one after the other appointed them as grand councilors to keep him in check. Whenever eai Jing heard that he was about to be dismissed, he would rush to the palace for an audience, kowtow and beseech and bemoan, without a trace of the integrity and honor of a grand councilor. When the Yanshan campaign began and his son eai You was already under way, eai Jing sent him off with a poem whose obvious message was that the matter was impossible. He hoped thereby to extricate himself should the outcome prove unsuccessful.54

547

the four seas and nine provinces in order to enrich himself.

Although Huizong favored him and made him councilor, he nevertheless repeatedly promoted and then demoted him.

Whenever eai Jing heard that he was about to be dismissed, he would insist on an audience with Huizong, kowtow and entreat and bemoan, without a trace of the integrity and honor of a grand councilor. When the northern affair began, Jing was its primary advocate. During the Yanshan campaign, his son You was already under way, and eai Jing sent him off with a poem that cautioned against stirring up hostilities. He hoped thereby to absolve himself should the outcome prove unsuccessful.

53. This passage alludes to the Xin Tang shu 1Jf It .. biography of the early Tang of­ ficial Dou Jing 'f *, who criticized another official for being "as wasteful as Emperor Yang of the Sui, who exhausted the four seas in order to enrich himself' (1Iu�*.1}, � � il;: ro *-); see Song Qi and Ouyang Xiu, Xin Tang shu (1060; reprinted-Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 95.3848. U Tao therefore creates an implicit comparison between Huizong and Sui Yangdi. 54. This paragraph refers to a poem that Cai Jing sent to Cai You during the course of the military campaign to recover Yanzhou from the Uao in 1122. The failure of this

CHARLES HARTMAN [Songshi adds: When they saw profit, they forgot honor, to the point where older and younger brother were like two constellations at opposite ends of the sky, and father and son were like the states of Qin in the northwest and Yue in the southeast.] In his later years, his house was turned into a government office, and those eager for profit and advancement loitered around his

In his later years, his house was turned into a government office, and flatterers and those eager for advancement waited around his

campaign set in motion the Jurchen invasions that culminated in the fall of the Northern Song in u26. The poem survives and its authenticity is beyond doubt, being quoted in Huibian 7.60 from the BeizhengJishi j!:. -f,!. R. " written by Cai Tao himself. For a German translation, see Trauzettel, Ts'ai ching als Typus, 170. The poem is widely quoted and commented upon in twelfth-century sources: Wu Zeng -* f (d. U70+), Nenggaizhai maniu �t�.t.il* (U57; quoted in Huibian 7.60); Hu Zi tJj1f, TiaoxiY1!)'in conghua houji � iA: i.�, rt; * #; it " (u67; reprinted-Taibei: Shijie, 1966), 36.696; Zeng Minxing f �1t (d. Il75), Duxing zazhi 4J;jM. ••-t (Il75; CS]C ed.), 5.38; and Chen Yanxiao ft. j!j , Gengxi shihua nt iA: �t#; (Il90?; SKQS ed.), I.20a. Two of these sources (WU Zeng and Hu Zi) agree with Li Tao that Cai Jing wrote the poem, which expresses grave reservations about the viability of the undertaking, as a hedge to extricate himself should the venture later prove unsuccessful. The other two, however, accept the poem on its merits as evidence that the Yanshan campaign was ill-conceived, since even Cai Jing had reservations; and some later scholars support this view (cf. Wang Wan, as cited in Cheng Fangkun JtJI:;7"Jf Uinshi 1723], Quan Min shihua � /lkHt#; [SKQS ed.], 3.21b-22a). Another important and little-known text brought to my attention by Pat Ebrey demonstrates that Cai Jing strongly and consistently opposed the northern military venture and thus also supports the benign interpretation of the poem; see Zhou Hui %l j.f (II27-98+), Qingbo biezhi i·ht �1 .-t (Il94; CS]C ed.), I.I24-25. Given the unsettled interpretation of this poem in the twelfth century, it seems unusual that Li Tao would choose to foreground this incident in his evaluation and come down so strongly in favor of the malevolent reading of the poem. Furthermore, the gratuitous, added preface in the Dongdu shiiue to this passage (''When the northern affair began, Jing was its primary ad­ vocate" j!:. -,.:t.. � -t!!., ;y. -t f!§l.:t..) likewise seems out of character with the general his­ torical understanding in the late twelfth century that Wang Fu, Tong Guan, and Cai You were the major instigators of the attack on Yanshan. These facts suggest the possibility that even Yang Zhongliang's ]SBM text of Li Tao's appraisal may not represent Li's original version.

A Textual History if Cai Jing's Biograpry in the Songshi gate. Even his porters and servants lined up to obtain good appointments. He viewed the regulations and standards of government as so much empty verbiage. The discerning were personally troubled by him. But his mentality, one that fretted over the slightest loss, spread everywhere and formed intertwining roots that no power could dislodge. In the end, the strife he caused and the damage he did to the country brought untold disaster to the ancestral altars. Although he died a condemned man, everyone still considered it was a pity that he never suffered the full consequences of the law.

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gate. The number of even his porters and servants who obtained good appointments cannot be counted. The regulations and standards of government thereby suffered great lnJury. •

•

In the end, this was a disaster for the ancestral altars.

The three texts vary most in how they handle the delicate question of the relationship between Cai Jing and Huizong. In Li Tao's original text, the two share a nuanced, symbiotic relationship. Cai Jing encourages Huizong toward opulence; Huizong rewards Cai Jing with the council­ orship but distrusts him and enlists others to thwart his authoritarian ambitions. A major difference is that, in Li Tao, Cai Jing encourages Huizong's own inherent tendency toward opulence; the Dongdu shilue omits Huizong as agent and makes Cai Jing's own greed the subject. In the former, Cai Jing encourages the emperor to make himself rich; in the latter, Cai Jing enriches himself. The Songshi preserves Li Tao's opening largely intact. But, with selective editing, the ensuing passage in the Songshi becomes: "The em­ peror knew he was nefarious, and so repeatedly dismissed then ap­ pointed him; moreover, he selected those with whom he did not get along as grand councilors in order to keep him in check." The major ef­ fect of this editing is to remove the agency of Huizong and to advance Cai Jing from "nefarious flatterer" to all-encompassing "nefarious." It is no longer Huizong who enriched Cai Jing, who secretly understood him and who did not trust him to run the empire. This drastic reduc­ tion of Huizong's role was necessary because, in the Songshi biography, it is Cai's manipulation of Huizong through the members of his clique ,

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that enabled his triple return to the councilorship (see Section XIILB). It is significant that Li Tao's critique of Cai mentions neither his clique nor his family, but focuses solely on the man himself. The Songsht� fol­ lowing the Dongdu shilue, also omits the long list of grand councilors who opposed Cai, because this list destroys the image of Cai's mono­ lithic control over the Huizong government. In other words, for Li Tao, the relationship between Huizong and Cai Jing was a symbiotic one. The Songshi and the Dongdu shilue diminish the agency of Huizong and thereby increase the culpability, the "nefariousness," of Cai Jing. Li Tao's synopsis continues to focus on the personality of Cai Jing, his craven behavior before Huizong, his egocentric concern for his own welfare, his nepotism and disregard for regulations. The end of the pas­ sage describes how these personal tendencies of Cai spread to the rest of society and so led to the demise of the Northern Song. Here, once again, the Songshi omits a key phrase ("The discerning were personally troubled by him''), a textual omission that reduces the culpability of others who, like Huizong, knew of Cai Jing's corrosive effect yet were unable or un­ willing to stop it. In short, Li Tao's original verdict presents Cai as a product of Huizong's own greed and vacillation and the weakness of late Northern Song society. The derivative works manipulate Li's text to present Cai as a self-created incarnation of evil, personally and solely re­ sponsible for the fall of the Northern Song. It remains to say several words about the relationship of thirteenth­ century daoxue inspired histories and the Songshi text of Cai's biogra­ phy. We know little about what changes were made to the Sichaoguoshi between the time of its completion in 1186 and its transfer to the Mongols in 1275. As we have seen, there is some evidence of daoxue influence on Cai's biography even before 1186. However, as a glance at Appendix II shows, there is a close convergence between the topics covered in both the Dongdu shilue and Songshi versions and the "out­ line" � entries in Chen Jun's Huangchao biannian gangmu beryao, printed in 1229. There is also considerable overlap between these topics and the chapter divisions in Yang Zhongliang's Xu ZiZhi tongjian changbian jishi benmo, completed about 1210. The causality here is hard to establish: did the thematic choices of the Dongdu shi lue and the Si­ chao guoshi influence these later historians? Or, is the present Songshi text the product of revisions made in the waning years of the Song to bring it into accord with these daoxue histories? The topic is complex and awaits a detailed bibliographical examination of the thirteenth-

A Textual History ofCai fing's Biograpry in the Songshi

551

century daoxue histories. Suffice it to note that many of the passages that are not in the Dongdu shilue of 1186 do appear in the daoxue histo­ ries of the first half of the thirteenth century. This fact does not suggest that these passages, printed in italics in Appendix I, are forgeries but rather that a keener, daoxue sense of Northern Song history guided the thirteenth-century historians in their choice of which passages to ex­ tract and foreground from the twelfth-century Changbian and Sichao guoshi.

Conclusion Referring again to Fig. 12.1, we may conclude by noting that the de­ velopment of Cai Jing's biography can be divided into three stages, with each stage culminating in the compilation of a major historical work. The first stage, completed with the Qinzong rili in 1166, made the initial gathering of primary documents. In Cai's case, the official his­ torians were compelled, in the absence of the standard post-mortem private biographies, to compile a rough biography from original me­ morials and private memoirs of the period, written not by Cai but by his political enemies. His biography never recovered, nor was it ever expected to recover, from this initial deficiency. The second stage is marked by ostensible attempts to broaden the field of documentation. But, as Hong Mai's attempt to involve Sun Di reveals, in Cai Jing's case, these attempts were probably nothing more than camouflage to con­ firm the existing historical verdict that blamed Cai Jing for the fall of the Northern Song. Although Li Tao essentially agreed with this verdict, his attempts to deepen its historical base and elevate the rhetoric against Cai above the diatribes of 1126 had only a minimal impact on the Sichao guoshi text of 1186, which was, in the case of Cai Jing, probably close to the present Dongdu shilue version. The third stage, culminating in the present Songshi text, is marked by the increasing identification of Cai as a ne­ farious minister, a pure stereotype against whom to compare later Song autocratic councilors. For it is in this period, basically the thirteenth century, and probably quite early in the century, that the notion of a succession of "nefarious ministers" becomes a major theme of Song historians. I have in another article examined the life of Qin Gui and the ma­ nipulation of historical sources that was necessary to bring his life into line with this developing stereotype of the "nefarious minister." The

l !

I 1

552

CHARLES HARTMAN

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present chapter reveals that much less effort was required to bring Cai Jing into this category. Unlike Qin Gui, who was responsible for much of the stability of the Southern Song, even in his own lifetime Cai Jing had been portrayed as the man who lost the Northern Song. It was therefore quite easy to typecast him as the prototypical "nefarious min­ ister." But the present chapter shows that, although this portrayal was no difficult historical undertaking, it nevertheless still occurred in stages. The process was not complete until the notion of a succession of "ne­ farious ministers," with Cai Jing as its head, became established. For the concept of a succession to become operative, one needs not one, not two, but at least three members of the category. This notion took hold following the failure of the Zhao Ruyu � i-k .� (1140-9 6) govern­ ment and the advent of Han Tuozhou #1Jt lf (11 51-12°7) during the Qingyuan period (119 5-1201). The finished portrait of Cai Jing, as mani­ fested in his Songshi biography, is a product of the historical imagination that followed in the political wake of those events Cai Jing, Qin Gui, Han Tuozhou . . . .

:

A Textual History ofCaiJing's Biograp1!J in the Songshi

553

Appendix I Key: J.t :t. "* it -k: indicates passages that are identical in the Dongdu shilue and Songshi (discounting minor stylistic differences); #!A lnifJ:Xjftf: italicized pas­ sages are found in the Songshibut not in the Dongdu shilue; � ."'te.*i.l: boldface and underlined passages are "foundation text," that is, passages whose origins can be identified.

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A Textual History ofCaiJing's Biograp0' in the Songshi

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Appendix II Outline Songshi 472.13721-28 (Biography of Cai Jing) I. (1372I.9-II)

Name; place of origin; 1070jinshi; early posts through mayor of

Kaifeng. [ro84/II] . Protocol issue over higher rank of his younger brother, Cai Bian (cf. CB 340.3a, 34I.2a). II. (1372I.I2-13722.1)

1085 through posting as prefect of Chengdu [1089/6]. A. 1085, Cai Jing sides with Cai Que in unsuccessful attempt to take credit for imperial succession from Wang Gui (cf. CB 35I.8a). B. Cai implements quick restoration of requisitioned service policy in Kaifeng and impresses Sima Guang (cf. CB 367.15b; SHY shihuo 14.10a-b; Huangchao beryao, 990). Foundation text: Shao Bo, Henan Shaoshi wetljian lu, II.80. C. Censorial attacks �ed by Su Che, cf. CB 368.I2bff; 369.15b, I7b, 2Ob; 379.15b (1086/12-6)] lead to dismissal as Kaifeng mayor and appointment to Chengdu; this opposed by Fan Zuyu, but, after several interim posts, is ultimately approved [in 1089/6; CB 429.14b-15b]. Return to Court in 1094 as acting minister of revenue. A. Urges Zhang Dun to revert to hired services system. C£ CB-SB 9.18a; also Song zaifu biannian lu, 703, quoting Dingwei lu. Foundation text: Shao Po, as above. B. Passage emphasizing the duplicity of Cai in opposing hired services in 1086, then supporting it in 1094. This passage absent from Dongdu shilue.

III. (13722.2-4)

IV.

(13722.5-8) The period 1095-IIOO. A. Cai Bian appointed assistant grand councilor [1095/10]; Cai Jing ap­ pointed Hanlin scholar and history compiler. B. Account of legal case against Wen Jifu [1097] . Text is very abridged, as compared to Dongdu shzlue, almost to the point of incomprehensibility, omitting larger issues to focus on punishment meted out to eunuchs and minor characters. C. Enmity of Zeng Bu toward Cai Jing thwarts his advancement; his pro­ motion is confined to the Hanlin. Notice different transition between sections B and C in Dongdu shilue.

,

CHARLES HARTMAN v. (I3722.9-n)

His dismissal following Huizong's ascension in noo. A. Appointed prefect of Taiyuan [nooh]; Empress Xiang, regent from noo/2-7, requests that he remain in capital to complete work on Shenzong history. Zeng Bu [noo/4] opposes this plan (cf. CB-SB I5·9b-IOa). B. Censor Chen Huan attacks Cai for his association with eunuchs ([noo/9]; cf. CB-SB I6.6a ff; for the text see Song wef!!ian [Beijing: Zhonghua, 1992] 62.917-21); appointed prefect of Jiangning. He delays assuming this post; is attacked by censors Chen Cisheng and others, is demoted, and assigned to sinecure in Hangzhou ([noo/Io--n] ; CB-SB I6.IOb, I3b-14a, I4b-15a).

VI. (13722.12-15)

His residence in Hangzhou; his association there with Tong Guan; their acquisition of paintings; Fan Zhixu and Xu Zhichang support Cai within the palace. His appointment as prefect of Dingzhou [noo/n-nOI/I2] . A. Tong Guan is appointed to search for paintings and calligraphy in "San-Wu," and spends several months in Hangzhou; Cai joins him in his travels; their acquisitions are transported to the palace; the accompanying reports mention Cai, and Huizong thus hears of him Note that this passage is quoted and questioned on chronological grounds in the commentary at CB-SB I8.I7b. B. The Academician Fan Zhixu uses his friendship with the Daoist Xu Zhichang, who enjoys access to the Empress Liu (Zhezong's widow), to spread the opinion among palace ladies and eunuchs that Cai should be grand councilor. Fan is promoted, and Cai appointed prefect of Dingzhou. (For another version of this story, see Zhu Xi, Zhuifyulei, 3128-29.) Note that the absence of both stories from the Huangchao be!Jao argues for their late insertion into the Songshi text. .

Transfer to D arning [n02/2]. Background of his fIrst appointment as right grand councilor [in n02/7], then as left grand councilor [in n03/I]. A. Transfer to Daming. B. Cai is returned to court as academician [n02h] because Han Zhongyan wishes to use his experience in the New Policies in his struggle with Zeng Bu. Deng Xunwu submits a chart to Huizong that suggests Cai should be councilor. When Han is dismissed, Cai is appointed assistant councilor [n02/5]. He replaces Zeng as right councilor [in n02/7]. Note different version of this story in Dingwei lu (Song zaifu biannian lu, 701-2; note closeness of Songshi version to that in Vue Ke, Tingshi [Beijing: Zhonghua,

VII. (13722.15-13723.4)

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A Textual History ofCai Jing's Biograpf?y in the Songshi

559

1981j, 173-74). Also Huangchao beryao, II99-1200. Note total absence of the Han/Zeng controversy and the Deng Xunwu chart story from CB-SB. C. Initial audience at which Huizong presses Cai to complete implementa­ tion of the New Policies. Note absence of this story from Din!!}Vci lu ac­ count and Dongdu shiluc, and its earliest appearance in thirteenth-century Xu Song biannian iiZhi tongjian (Yuan ed.), 15.5b, a daoxue text. Cf. CB-SB 20.2b-3a for quotation that also incorporates textual material from Sec­ tion XII.B. D. Elevation to left grand councilor in II03/I. VIII. (13723.5-24.1) Cai Jing's policies as councilor. A. Internal 1. Advisory Office Oiangyi si; II02/7; CB-SB 20.3a ff; ]SBM 132.1a ff; Huangchao beryao, 1211-12). Foundation text: SHY zhiguan P3a, me­ morial of Cai Jing, dated II02/8/4!! 2. Demoted Empress Meng (II02/9; CB-SB 20.12b; Huangchao beryao, 1218). 3. His changes to the school system (II02/8; CB-SB 20.6a ff; ]SBM 126.4b ff; Huangchao bcryao, 1217-18). 4. Land tax applied to the entire country (II04/7; CB-SB 24.9b-IOa; ]SBM 138.1a ff; Huangchao beryao, 1239-40) . 5. He monopolizes the tea industry (II03/2; CB-SB 21.3a-b; Huangchao beryao, 1219-20, under II02/12). 6. Reforms to the salt and currency systems; the hardships that ensued; mention of the Zhang Zai affair (II03/4, etc.; CB-SB 21.IOb; ]SBM 136.1a ff; 137.4a ff; Huangchao bcryao, 1225-27). B. External 1. Conquests on the southwestern border; Jingzhou fortified. 2. Suppression of Man rebellion in Zhen and Xizhou [II03iIj. Story of one Ma Cheng, the local governor, who advocated a more tolerant policy toward the Man; his removal and punishment by Cai; he is re­ placed by Shu Dan. Cf. Huangchao be!Jao, 1221 for positive account that focuses on Shu Dan without mention of Cai or Ma Cheng. For Ma's dismissal, see SHY zhiguan 66.9. Also CB-SB 21.3a note. 3. Expansion into Gansu (]SBM 131.IIa [also CB-SB 24.1bj links this conquest to Cai promotion to Sigong and Duke of Jia in II04/5; see also Song zaifu biannian /u, 709; and Huangchao beryao, 1237-38 without mention of Cai).

l j C HARLES HARTMAN IX. (I3724.2-5) Other activities. A. He promoted Tong Guan and his associates. B . He disturbed the routine patterns of eunuch personnel management (see Huangchao befyao, I227-28 [in n03.5]; also note in CB-SB 2I.I2b) and ruined the dynasty's laws. C. He established the four protectorate prefectures around the capital, in­ creased their staffing and support, placed his relatives in command in order to control the military. Cf. ]SBM I28.2b-4b, I3I.ub-I2a and CB-SB 2p2a-b; Huangchao befyao, I250 [in n0517]. D. He is elevated to Sigong and Duke of Jia. Note chronological problem here, since this promotion occurred in U04/5 and rightly belongs at the end of the previous section. His increasing greed. After promotion to Sigong, he continued to draw his salary as left councilor. He converted all in-kind salary from both positions to cash and issued imperial notices to effect these conversions without informing the emperor. Note this material is not in the Dongdu shilue. Cf. how­ ever, Songshi I7I.41I7, the monograph on officials, which mentions the matter, but adds that the practice was common among all high officials during the period. x. (I3724.6-7)

XI. (I3724.8-n) Persecution of the Yuanyou partisans. A. Cai, unsatisfied with exile of the partisans, categorizes their degrees of guilt, engraves stele in the capital, and writes a version for distribution to the provinces. B . Brief account of the Yuanfu period submitters and the sanctions imposed on them. e . Removed as grand councilor in n06. Note: this is a very poor account of the persecutions, compared, for in­ stance, to the excellent summary, probably by Li Tao, in Song zaifu biannian lu, 709-10. The conclusion to the passage, Cai's removal as councilor in II06/2 as a result of the comet, is here seriously out of sequence. This removal is mentioned again at XIII.A, where it more properly belongs. XII. (I3724.I2-I372P) His taste for opulence and his encouragement of Huizong in this regard. A. Cai exhausts the treasury by lavish use of state funds. Foundation text: for source phrases from this passage, see Sun Di's attack on Cai of II26/2 (text in ]SBM I48. 7b-8b; Jingkangyaolu [CS]C ed.] , 3-46-47). B. Story of how Cai encourages Huizong to use expensive jade bowls at banquets by relating that during his mission to the Khitan they boasted

A Textual History of Cai Jing's Biograpf?y in the Songshi

561

the Song had no such objects. Note: for the same text, see Zhou Hui, Qingbo zazhi (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1994), 2.79-S0, completed II92, a pos­ sible foundation text, also CB-SB 20.2b-3a, where the note prints a shorter version from the thirteenth-century Xu Song biannian iiZhi tongjian. His dismissal as councilor and return, IIo6-S. A. Appearance of comet in IIo6/r; Huizong orders the destruction of all steles. Cai is dismissed with a sinecure. Cf. Song zaifu biannian lu, 723-25. B. His retainers secretly lobby for his return; in II07 he is again appointed left grand councilor; taiwei [in IIo713] and taishi [in IIOS/r] .

XIII. (1372502-4)

First "retirement" and removal to Hangzhou, IIo9-II. A. II09, Censorate attacks him; he is forced to retire; but retains post as re­ dactor of Zhezong shilu. (This in II09 / II, cf. CB-SB 2S.19a; Song zaifu biannian

XIV. (13725.5-12)

/u, 747·) B. Synopsis of fourteen points in memorial of student Chen Chaolao. (This is II09/6, cf. CB-SB 2S.15b-16a; for extracts of Chen's text, see ]SBM 13I.I3a-b and Song zaifu biannian /u, 74S-49.) Foundation text at Song zaifu biannian /u, 751, probably from Li Tao's commentary to the CB, has fourteen 3-character phrases that are identical to this Songshi passage. C. IIIO/5 comet and memorial of censor Chang Kegong. Foundation text: anonymous Censorate memorial at ]SBM 13I.14a-b. Note that phrases from this memorial also occur in Cai dismissal notice at Song zaifu biannian /u, 747, also Song we'!!ian 36.562. Cf. also this text in Huangchao beryao, 1272-73. D. Previous attacks from censors Shi Gongbi and Mao Zhu. Dismissal and removal to Hangzhou [mol5] . His return to the capital; story of Su Yu. A. lII2, recalled to capital as grand councilor [II12/2], ennobled as Duke of Lu [II12/II], reports every three days to Dutang [II12I5J. Note chrono­ logical mistake in this sequence. Song zaifu biannian /u, 764 counts his return as councilor from the II12/5 action. B. Anecdote concerning one Su Yu, a provincial education official in Huaixi, who suggested a judicial investigation of examination essay questions for the preceding five years; over thirty were found guilty of transgressions. Cf. Lu You, Laoxue'an bi/ii, ch. 3 end, and SHY Ii 19.16a; SHY xingfa 2.{Sa-b. Note absence of this extract from Dongdu shi/ue.

xv. (1372P3-15)

XVI. (13726.1-5)

Cai's manipulation of the edict system. A. History of the traditional Song system of edict approval and drafting; how Cai thwarted this system in order to avoid criticism of his actions: he

CHARLES HARTMAN drafted edicts and secretly submitted them to Huizong for copying. These were called "imperially brushed hand-written edicts" (yubi shouzhao). Those who resisted these orders were charged with disobeying an impe­ rial edict. Eventually, the "hand-written edicts" did not resemble Hui­ zong's hand, but no one dared to speak out. Note the similar passage in Duxing zaifJi (II75; CS]C ed.), 8.60-61, which relates some of the same information in different language, but does not explain how Cai thwarted the system. Curiously, many texts mark the ftrst use of theseyubi shouzhao to recall the Yuanyou partisans in II05i7 (cf. CB-SB 2P2b-13a). Huangchao beryao, 1269-70 places part of this text in II091 5, when it claims the pro­ visions against disobeying these edicts were ftrst promulgated. B. Story of how one Yang Qiu, a eunuch, eventually wrote such edicts at the request of various parties within the palace; how even Cai was troubled by this, but was unable to stop it. Note this story is not in Dongdu shilue, nor in other material relating to these edicts. [Yang Qiu was the son of Yang Zhe, a onetime clerk in Cai's house; cf. SHY xuanju 3I.20a-b.]

XVII. (13726.6-9)

Cai's actions subsequent to his return in III2. A. He changed the names of the highest executive offtces. [fhis in 1II2/9, cf. CB-SB 3I.7b ff; Huangchao beryao, 1285-86.] For a positive account of these changes, quoted from Cai Tao's Guoshi houbu, see Song zaifu biannian

lu, 749· B. He ennobled Wang Anshi and Cai Que (for Wang, see CB-SB 32.1b [in III3/r]; Huangchao beryao, 1288). C. He expanded the staff of his offtce far beyond the number of billeted lines; when the censor Huang Baoguang complained, Cai had him dismissed. Cf. SS 348.II029. D. He named Wei Bochu head of the Monopoly Tax Commission. Cf. 55 182.4452-53.

XVIII. (13726.10-14)

More items in the same vein. A. He encouraged Huizong to use the enormous influx of money to expand court ritual and music, to cast the nine tripods [in II04/1, ]SBM 128.6a-1Oa] , to build a Mingtang (Huangchao beryao, 1299), to establish Daoist abbeys, to create the Dasheng music (CB-SB 2p6b ff [in II05/8]; Huangchao beryao, 1250-52; ]SBM 135.1a ff), and to fashion all manner of precious objects (]SBM 128.1Oa-13b [in II07III)). B. He engaged Meng Changling as commissioner of waterways; he dug through three mountains at Dabi, constructed two bridges at Tiancheng and Shenggong (Huangchao beryao, 1299 [in III5 I 6) ; the corvee hardships on the population. Cf. 55 8502100, and Huangchao beryao, 1293-94, which

:i

i

,

. •

A Textual History ifCai Jing's Biograpf?y in the Songshi

563

has a much longer, better text. For a long indictment of Meng and his relatives, dated

1126/2, see Jingkangyaolu, 3.51

ff.

e. He engaged Tong Guan to enlarge the harem and to construct the Yanfu Palace

(Huangchao befyao, 1293-94

[in

1121/8]; cf. also CB-SB 33.8a ff notes)

and the Genyue. XIX.

(13726.15-13727.1)

The sons of Cai Jing.

A. List of Cai's sons and grandsons who became academicians and executive class officials. B. Cai Tiao married a daughter of Huizong, who often visited his house, lavished presents on him drank wine with him and used family protocols ,

,

with him. Even the servants in his household held high office; his con­ cubines held titles of nobility. But as public opinion became increasingly negative, even the emperor grew to despise him Note the much fuller text .

in Dongdu shilue, which lacks the last sentence. Foundation text: the fuller

Dongdu shilue text derives from the Zaifu baiba 114 of Fan Chong, a text of the II30S, as quoted in Song zaifu biannian 114, 792. For a text much like the Songshi version, including the concluding statements of Huizong's disgust, see Huangchao befyao, 1336, also CB-SB 41.7a note. XX. (13726.2-10) From II20 through the ascension of Qinzong in II25. A. He retires in II20. [In II20/6, see ]SBM 13I.19b-20a; also Song zaifu biannian 114,

793-94,

where the appointment notice phrases many of these same

actions of Cai in positive tenns.] B. Out of retirement in

II24, resumes

post as grand councilor. This was his

fourth time as councilor. He was almost blind and so relied heavily on his son, Cai Tao. Description of the latter's perfidy: how he abused this po­ sition; how he was surrounded by flocks of courtiers and clerks; how he plotted with his brother-in-law Han Lii to dismiss other officials; how he established the Xuanhe Depository and used it to divert money into the private control of the sovereign; how the chief councilors were powerless to stop him; how he was stopped only when his brother Cai You in­ fonned Huizong. Foundation text: much of the early part of this passage is taken directly from remarks of Zhu Shengfei, written in the late II30S, as recorded in

befyao, 1373.

]SBM 13I.20a-21a,

also

CB-SB 48.16a-19b;

also

Huangchao

Foundation text: the language describing the Xuanhe De­

pository is taken from the imperial edict that condemned Cai Tao; see

Song �ifu biannian 114, 809-10 and SHY zhiguan 69.I7b-18a. e. Councilor Bai Shizhong uses the dismissal of Cai Tao to force Cai Jing from office, but Cai is reluctant to leave. Huizong sends Tong Guan to pressure Cai. Their interview, during which Cai weeps and refuses to re-

C HARLES HARTMAN tire. Huizong orders his secretaries to draft a retirement petition on eai's behalf and issues an edict permitting his retirement. [This is in II25/4, see Huangchao beryao, 1376-78; but there is no record of these events in the better sources, see CB-SB 49.8a-b.] XXI. (13727.II-13)

From the ascension of Qinzong to eai's death. After the ascension, the military situation becomes precarious. eai moves his household south and thinks only of his own salvation. Everyone places him at the head of the "six thieves"; attacks by censor Sun Di begin. eai is demoted, then ordered conftned at Hengzhou, then transferred. He dies upon reaching Tanzhou, aged 80 sui. Note the much more restrained treatment in the Dongdu shilue text. For Sun Di's ftrst memorial, see jingkangyaolu 3.46-47.

XXII. (13727.14-13728.4)

The historian's comment. These remarks also occur, almost verbatim, in jSBM 13I.22a-b, also CB-SB 55.1a-4a with long commentary; also Huangchao beryao, 1419-20. The Dongdu shilue presents a very truncated ver­ sion. There is no doubt this appraisal of eai Jing's career was written by Li Tao and derives from the commentary to his Changbian. Li accepts the major criti­ cisms against eai generated during his own time, but his language is even­ handed, almost all newly devised, and shies away from the strident language and tone of the Jingkang memorials.

C HA P T E R 1 3

Crossing Over Huizong in the Afterglow, or the Deaths of a Troubling Emperor Stephen H. West

The story of Huizong's last days is one of crossing boundaries: natural boundaries marked by different biological life zones; geographical boundaries between the Song and states on its northern periphery; boundaries of gender, of dress, of food; boundaries between life and death, between human and ghost, and between tianxia � r the world under heaven and tianxia Zhi biaf!Juan � r ..:t.il� or tianxia Zhi wai � r ..:t. �r, the physical world contingent to or outside that subcelestial realm that really only defines "China." Moreover, the story is also one that obscures the boundary between empirical and representational truth and between the genres employed to tell the tale itself. The fall of the Northern Song and the diaspora of the Song clan is a fascinating story, rich in documentation of many forms: shi "history," including standard history (zhengshi iE. 3t ), separate histories (bieshi �� 3t), miscellaneous histories (Zashi $. 3t), unofficial histories (yeshi Jf 3t), insignificant histories (beishi ff( 3t), pen-notes (bjji "* jc.), and historical fiction (pinghua, xiaoshuo jf tf, / f- tf" .J,"IDt). The total number of records for this period is truly staggering. In addition to stan­ dard historical sources, Xu Mengx:in's {t-J :f Sanchao beimeng huibian ;. � :Jt. M t- _ (Comprehensive collection of treaty violations of three reigns) contains some 200 sources, ranging from imperial rescripts to

:

;

, ,

STEPHEN H . WEST private notes to memorials to grave inscriptions to 102 unofficial histo­ ries.I Some of these documents have been published as separate texts and were assigned varying levels of worth by the Siku quanshu editors based on how closely they accord with the "factual" record found in standard histories: Annalistic history: Anon., Jingkangyaolu � .-. �� (An essentialized record of the Jing­ kang era), 16 vols. (Siku tryao: extremely reliable) .2 Unofficial history: Cao Xun t WJ , Beishoujianwen lu :Jt. �� JL Bfl � (Eyewitness account of the northern visit), 1 vol. (Siku tjyao: reliable).3 Ding Teqi J�t�(?), Guchen qixue lu � � ii:..mz. (Record of an or­ phaned official wept in blood), 16 vols. (Siku tjyao: problematical).4 Cai Tiao �{it, Beishou xinglu :Jt. ��1t� (Record of a journey of the northern visit), 1 vol. (Siku tjyao: reliable, although may be authored or partially authored by Wang Ruozhong .!.. � .,&).5 Li Gang * �, Jingkang chuanxin lu � '-'1-f.1t � (A transmitted record of the true facts of the Jingkang era), 3 vols.6 He Lie 1orJ.!J,(?), Jingkangjiwen sh!Ji �'-'R. Bfl 4*l! (Corrigenda to a personal account of the Jingkang era), 2 vols. (Siku tjyao: reliable in part).?

The portion of the Sanchao beimeng huibian dealing with the fall of Kaifeng has been translated into German by Sabine Werner as Die Belagerung von K'aifeng im Winter II26/27nach Kapita' 64-69 des San-ch'ao pei-meng hui-pien, kompi/ierl von Hsii Meng-hsin, Miinchener ostasiatische Studien 61 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992). See also Ji Yun � � (1724-1805), ed., Siku quanshu zongmu t[yao 11!1 tf. � . ijt � Vt-l-, in Hryin Siku quanshu zongmu t[yaoji Siku weishou shumu Jinhui shumu, 11!1 tf. � . ijt � Vt-l-&.11!1 tf.*-J/t .. � �jjf" � , ed. Wang Yunwu (Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1972), 2: 1070-71. Here­ after cited as SKI¥. 2. SKIT 2: 1033; Yu Jiaxi � I. � , Siku t[yao bianzheng 11!1 tf. Vt -l- .tJt � (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980 [1958]), I: 226-30, suggests this was written by Wang Zao I.

iI ;� .

3. SKIT 2: 1133· 4. Ibid., 2: 1144. 5. Ibid., 2: 1145. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid.

Crossing Over

Chen Dong �t -it (?), Jing Yan liangchao jianwen lu � � � .tJl YL 6t] � (Eyewitness account of the two reigns of Jingkang and Jianyan), 2 vols. (Siku tfyao: part is detailed, part written after Chen Dong's death).8 We certainly do an injustice to the tale and to the variety of texts that represent it if we consider "truthfulness" only in the form of represen­ tation based on principles that we in the modern Western world deem historical or fictional particularly since "history" and "fiction" are not natural categories but are ultimately cultural and rhetorical forms that adumbrate areas of discourse that themselves are mutually implicated as variant patterns of narrative development. We often forget that history and fiction in the West are but two possible narrative structures that develop from myth and epic. As such, "history" and "fiction" are equally problematical categories within our own tradition.9 It was not until the advent of scientific empiricism and the application of rules of experi­ mentation to the collection and interpretation of data that history and fiction took on the pretense of being completely separate. Reading his­ tory from Herodotus to modern social-science products, however, skeptics might ask, indeed, just how coincidental any act and its written representation might be; or if data can be arranged in narrative form without an underlying pattern of unity that is, can fact have meaning without a story? We tread on even thinner ice when we assume that the same dis­ tinctions that we consider (either by intuition or through examination) to obtain between fiction and history in the West will also hold be­ tween shi and xiaoshuo or pinghua. While we are inclined to view these as differences between the real and the fictive, the Chinese tradition clearly views them as belonging to different generic, even biblio­ graphical, classifications: shi and if. 1 0 Moreover, biji and xiaoshuo in particular have been distributed differently over time, dependent on 8. Ibid., 2: 1146. 9. Although now itself perhaps overshadowed by modern works on narratology, Robert E. Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature ofNarrative (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), remains a critical source for anyone attempting to understand the com­ monalities of structure that underlie various forms of narrative discourse to which we are heirs. 10. See Chen Wenxin f.t ;t ·\.;, Zhongguo biji xiaoshuo shi tf II * �c. .J'�� (Taipei: Zhiyi chubanshe, 1995), 23-38.

STEPHEN H . WEST the predilections of compilers of bibliographies. In the Tang, xiaoshuo had been classified both as "history," shi; and as if, "philosophy," or "masters," and it was not until the compilation of the Siku quanshu that xiaoshuo were fully appropriated into the "masters" category. This re­ solved a long-standing conflict of opinion about whether xiaoshuo were "offshoots of history" 3t J.\ i!.Ui'J or "offshoots of the masters" .J, wt, -r t" if.t. . ll This ambivalence about where to put xiaoshuo both demon­ strates how resistant the genre is to categorization and shows just how it operates between levels of "truth." On the one hand, it shares with history the desire to see truth defined as "exemplification" �t-, �1;:., �JYL, that is, as ethical value exemplified through human action; and with the "philosophy" category it shares the desire to see a "truth" rep­ resented in a general even allegorical sense, in which the point of any tale, no matter how marvelous, carries within it a generalized and phi­ losophical truth about life. Simply put, this is why we sometimes feel that fiction comes closer to explaining real life than does a story woven from putatively objective fact. I have written this preamble because I want to look at material that has been considered spurious since the beginning of the Yuan: the Na,!/in jiwen � :J;t � 6fJ (A personal account of southern leftovers), a description of Huizong's and Qinzong's peregrinations and ultimate demise in the north after the fall of Kaifeng. Portions of this text are known by several names and are attributed to different people:

I. Xin Qiji * "* *, Nandu lu � it�, Nandu qieftn lu � it a ltt �, Nandu qieftn xulu � it a 'tt � �, Qieftn lu a 'tt �, Qieftn xulu a 'tt ��. 2. Anonymous, Nandu lu, Nandu qieftn lu, Nandu qieftn xulu, Qieftn lu, Qieftn xulu. 3. Egiti (Ajiti) Jfi1" it"*, Na,!jinjiwen. 4· Huang Jizhi it jf..t, Na,!/injiwen.

II. Liu Zhiji first made the move to place xiaoshuo in the category of history. Moreover,

even though Ouyang Xiu put xiaoshuo back into the "masters" category in the "biblio­ graphical section" of the New Tang History, he was forced to acknowledge that they did stem from history Uie chuyu shiguan Zhi liu ye 't :l:: ;#- 3t 'if Zil,i.�). For an excellent discussion, see ibid., 10--1 8. It is significant that the decisions made by the major bibli­ ographers were primarily based on the rhetorical shape of the text, and not necessarily on the issue of factualness.

Crossing Over

5. Anonymous, Jingkang mengchen lu $* 4t lt &� . 1 2 We know from near-contemporary evidence that the text was popular by the end of the Southern Song. In his Wild Discussions of Eastern Qi (Qidongyryu 'If .t. Jf-ti),B completed in 1291 and ftrst published sometime in the early Yuan, Zhou Mi %J � (1232-98) remarked: The disaster of the Jingkang reign period approximates the affairs during the Kaiyun period [of Later Jin] there is a plethora of miscellaneous works that chronicle the entire period. And, none of the others are the equal of the so-called Na,!/injiwen in their complete unrestraint in speaking of taboo subjects . . . . The Na,!/injiwen says that the two emperors were fIrst transferred to Ansu Commandery, then moved to Yunzhou, and again to Xijiang zhou, and then to Wuguocheng, 3,800 Ii from Yan, 2,IOO Ii from Huanglong at the place where Li Ling fought and lost. Later they were moved westward to Juncong zhou, which was Yizhou under the Khitan. Now, if we compare these places with other sources contemporary with [Na,!/in jiwen], the actual geographical distances are completely wrong and incalculable, which gives some idea of just how absurd the book is. Moreover, it says that this text was a manuscript by Egiti, and that the Jin rescripts were later obtained from a Jin noble. 1 4 It also says, "Egiti was originally a Song subject from Dizhou in Hebei, who was captured by the caitiffs. After the eastern capital was lost, the Jin ordered him to accompany the two emperors to Yan, and then to accompany them on to Wuguocheng, so that he knew every affair intimately from head to tail." If we actually look at what was written, however, it reveals the most intimate and unspeakable affairs in the emperors' thoughts. One wonders how Egiti could have known such things? Moreover, the Jin caitiffs were extremely suspicious,

12 . Each of these editions varies in some slight way from the others. I have chosen Na'!iinjiwen as the text I will treat here because it is the earliest text mentioned in historical sources. Of course, any further study of the topic would entail a variorum edition that would be the result of a careful historical survey and equally diligent collation of text. 13. Translation of the title is based on Zhou Mi's comments in his preface, in which he states he aimed for historical authenticity, but his friends called his work "wild" and claimed him in truth a "Qi person." This is an obvious reference to the Qixie �t'i;\', one of the first collections of tales of the supernatural and marvelous. See Zhou Mi }ij � ,Qidong yeyujiaozhu � *- Jf�;j:tii:., ed. ZhuJuru *- i\;) � et al. (Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue chubanshe, 1984), i. 14. I have repunctuated this portion of the text, which I feel is in error in the Shanghai edition (from JI.. � JlI:.'" 7] M" lt*-fif:M- 'f � ev i::.. � , 1t ��i::.. � ev itA.::t to JI.. �JI:. ... 7] M"lt*-f*. m- 'f � ev i::..� , 1t ��i::.. � ev it A.::t). Ibid., 355.

570

11

STEPHEN H . WEST

and they changed the overseers guarding the emperors at every place they reached, so would they not be unwilling to allow a Southerner to follow them along their whole route? perors in the beginning, so how does it turn out that he bravely suffered through all the travails, that he himself ran afoul of envy and suspicion, and yet never abandoned them? Moreover, just when did the emperors have time to compose poetry and make music when they were right in the autumnal period of their peril and suffering? And when did Egiti have time to write it all down? It is in this way that the egregious errors and absurdities of the text appear at last without any real research necessary. My opinion? Whoever wrote this book was certainly someone of the last years of the Northern Song, a disappointed little man who took utter delight in manufacturing such excoriating and vile affairs. Can one bear to speak of that which even animals cannot bear to do?15 I fear that those curious gentlemen, without seeking out the source of such things, will lightly believe his words, so I have written about it to expel the confusion of later days.16

We can see that the historical accuracy of the Na1!Jinjiwen has been questioned since a time very close to its production. The editors of the Siku quanshu zongmu tfyao likewise considered it a forgery, falsely attributed to Xin Qiji. 1 7 And Yu Jiaxi, while suggesting a plausible explanation based on his own experience for why the attribution occurred in the first place, accepts the document as a legitimate Song or Yuan, though "not truthful or actual" .;}F "t ., product. 18 The Siku editors are put off by a vile scene of rape in the text (alluded to by Zhou Mi), in which one of Huizong's granddaughters is ravished in the presence of the emperor. Their argument is that Jin was a rule of proper behavior when they established their state. How could Yeli bring himself to rape the granddaughter of a person right in front of them? As for the text saying, "The vile sound of the act was heard by both the em­ this was something created

by some rebellious minister, a traitor19 of the Northern or Southern Song who

Referring to the rape scene discussed below. 16. Zhou Mi, Qidongyeyujiaozhu, 355. 17. SKIY 2: II5I. 18. Yu Jiaxi, Siku tfyao bianzheng, 295. 19. From the "Teng Wengong" chapter of the Mencius, where the term is used to refer to people with no sense of "father or ruler," that is, those who are inclined by the lack of moral knowledge to violate the hierarchies of Confucian society in which filiality and 15.

,

,

,

iI

,

Furthermore, Egiti lacked even a single day of consideration for the em­

perors [who closed their eyes so as not to watch]"

1

Crossing Over

571

went unnoticed [i.e., unappreciated] by his sovereign father and so fabricated

lL � fJJ Im iJ , J!. � �.flAl, Jf *1 #1or.i. di1 A..t�!l ;� Jt.*�. "*"i'JT��.� .t�, .:::.. * *' 6IJ * Jf�, Jl:. .)6 � 31:. � fl., ,.L IH � .:r- , :f �l.t; � � x. *, lt Jl:. �A � Jt. ·1l m . lIf lIf-t �F 't��.20

this to vent his ire and enmity. It is absolutely not an accurate record.

The editors of the bibliography use as their benchmarks the standard historical sources of the Song (formal history, nalistic history,

biannian shi

,� � 3t), which are

zhengshi i£ 3t and an­ actually relatively silent

on the fate of Huizong and his son. The reaction to the writing in the

Na1!fin jiwen, however, is as much to its violation of the propriety of historical language and to its frank descriptions as it is to the actual topic touched, for which there are rules of circumlocution that govern such incidents, all known to Chinese history. As Chen Wenxin re­ marks in his book on

biji xiaoshuo, "Genre is inherently a way to

control the world." That is, it defines a process by which language, form, intent, and style interweave to form a seamless and congruent harmony between expression and subject defined for each particular genre, and by which each particular genre is suitable for representing specific elements of the world. Chinese theorists' interest in literary forms, as Chen points out, is "not constructed on the basis of some kind of localized, technical system of value, but always looks at the larger picture, seeking to expose on the grandest scale what it is that belongs to each genre." 21 The

Na1!fin jiwen is simply too graphic and too explicit to be counted as orthodox "shi," which seems to

value reticence in the description of this particular kind of personal violence

random, directed toward women and the emperors, and

egalitarian and leveling in its application and effect. The violence seemingly does not derive overtly from vengeance or retribution, nor

obedience are owed to those above. These "disordering ministers and violent sons" were made fearful by the judgments of Confucius in the Chunqiu. Thus the term implies those who lack proper ethical knowledge, who are out of control, and who are promised damnation by being held up as negative examples in history. See Mengif zhushu � -1-)i.1Jt, in Shisanjing Zhushu + .=.. � )i.1Jt, ed. Ruan Yuan F.lt;i(., 1815 ed., vol. 13, Teng Wengong B, VI.b, 181. 20. SKTY 2: 1149-50. The SKTY entry is for the Nandu lu and the Qiefen lu, but they are essentially the same as the Nanjinjiwen. Note how closely the entry paraphrases Zhou Mi's passage. 21. Chen Wenxin, Zhongguo hiji xiaoshuo shi, I.

I I

STEPHEN H . WEST

572

does it seem to be fitted to any specific crime or guilt. Even the pinghua

Da Song Xuanhe yishi *- * � �P l!. "$ tones down the violence of the Na,!/injiwen that it incorporates in its later chapters. So, although osten­ sibly a "personal account" $C. 8fJ , it is simply too excessive to be counted

as lEgitimate "history."

Siku tfyao also places the Na,!/injiwen (by its other titles, Nandu lu and Qiifen lu) in the category of "Miscel­ laneous History" and not in the category of xiaoshuo, under the "mas­ It is highly significant that the

ters" section. This means that the work is judged by the criteria per­ taining to

shi and therefore is found lacking on that level alone. As I

suggested above, however, this is largely due to a violation of the homological rules of genre. The incident they select as their test case is revealing: On some day we reached some district that had been completely desolated. There were only seven or eight buildings. The city wall and its outside environs had tumbled down, and there was a young girl at the side of the road, perhaps twenty or so. She shed tears and explained her situation, saying, "I am a granddaughter of the august emperor of the southern court. Because I took sick, the anny simply abandoned me here, where

I

have no way to stay alive." She

bowed to the Empress Dowager and said, "Take me with you." The empress would not leave her behind, and servants reported this to Yili, who looked her over and said with a slight grin, "Take them all." Then he ordered the servants to help her get up on the horse. On this night, we overnighted in a fortress in the wilds, and Yili, on a tide of drunkenness, raped her. No one could bear to listen to those vile and ftlthy sounds. The emperors and empresses simply dared not open their eyes. The following days, whenever there was drink and food, [Yili] would portion out a share of it for this girl. And he told Empress Zhu, ''You

$\(. El ilJ - !M: , � Jit �, Jl:. � ll --t: A fb, . ��1J1 .t-� , �-;t -*, � -+.::. -t1t. � iJt mi 1; E1 : r � 7] � .fJl .t.'t �*, I!l �, k � � �{lJl:., � ��ffi*' J 1.f-:k. J6 E1 : r ,"�:!oc:!oc-!-. J J6 � 'flI , E. ;t;*It� *'J , ;ft .z-fM.� E1 : r -f,t-!-. J l!4fl-iL ;t;ftx..� . k 7' � -rJf", � *1*1f�.z. It ,�.z�, � ,� lt r..fl . '*" J6 � # � � BfJ � . ;x. El � )�*, ,)l; �'"21Jl:.*, � � J6 E1 : r 1$ � �1t . J 22

really aren't as good as she is."

Note that the

Siku tfyao entry (translated above) considers this a fab­

rication based on the expression of resentment and anger, something "absolutely not an authentic account"

flfflf-t-1F 1r*-I!!...

It levies two

Huang Jizhi, Naryinjiwen in Biji xiaoshuo daguan * "ic. ,J' �*-. (Yangzhou: Jiangsu Guangling guji keyinshe, 1983), 3.nh/9Ih. 22.

I

Crossing Over

573

judgments against the text: the fIrst is that the Jin were incapable of such actions, and second that such an expression of violence can only be the product of enmity or rage accumulated by a fractious offIcial. Given the overall atmosphere surrounding the compilation of the

Siku tryao,

we can ascribe the fIrst judgment to a heightened anxiety about ex­ pressing negative judgments about the Jurchen, ancestors of the Man­ chu. The second criterion, however, stems from the conviction that the violence of the language itself, of its expression, is a product of a dis­

(/uan �L ) personality, incapable of correct moral reasoning. Given the long tradition (stemming from the Springs and Autumns) of

ordered

the judicious use of moral lexica to levy ethical judgments in historical texts, we can see that such a violent and disordered expression, which stems from the desire to place self-benefIt above obedience, simply does not fIt with correct historical process. Moreover, place to vent one's anger and resentment more fIt for representing personal indignation

shi is not the proper

there are genres much poetry, for example­

although the same rules of modulated restraint and circumlocution apply there.

Siku tryao passage provides further insight. After commenting on the fact that the Na,!/injiwen text gives the wrong Another section of the

dating, the wrong locations of activities, and the wrong enfeoffment titles for Huizong, it concludes: If we compare it to the standard histories, there is not one instance in which it is not mistaken and, moreover, absurd. Now, the two emperors were incapable of dying on behalf of the altars of earth and grain and their whole clan was moved northward. Indeed, they were deeply shamed, but why go to such lengths to be so fIlthy and vile as the Record does? �)
.- � �lL�. A...::.. * � ��

?fAi.ll, .�;Jl:..t!, Jt. 4 !!l it, # f.;I �.iftit $] }1t, ��;Jf.z..z.?23 The text of the

Na,!/injiwen is so violent and so excessive in its de­

scription of terror and shame that, despite being classed as a historical text, it ends up either being classed as a fabrication from whole cloth

(zao

.it)

or rejected as completely f.tlthy and vile. Yet it remains "his­

tory" and at least provokes the intriguing question that, if history can be fabricated, what separates it from other created tales? The answer lies in the fact that, in its sturdy, if inelegant, classical Chinese and in its rhetorical shaping, it deals with real people. The 23. SKIY 2: II49-50.

Siku tryao dislikes the

574

STEPHEN H . WEST

text not because it tells a shameful tale of the two emperors (which it acknowledges as, if not true, at least plausible), but because it does so in vile language. The kind of vituperation encountered in this classical text is more often seen in colloquial fiction, which of course was beyond the scope of history and beneath the contempt of bibliographers. It is because Na1!Jinjiwen does indeed tell a tale different from those found in more "acceptable" historical sources from that period that it is incorporated so easily into the Xuanheyishi, a historical novel, a pinghua, which dates from the late Southern Song or early Yuan. Within this text the Na1!Jin jiwen is contextualized in a way that makes its underlying narrative transparently allegorical. To understand that allegory fully, however, we must first evaluate Na1!Jinjiwen in its relationship with other sets of documents contemporary with it. These are seven "histories from the verge" that exist (except in one case) independently of texts quoted in the Sanchao beimeng huibian or examined in the Siku quanshu zongmu tfyao. These texts, now known by the comprehensive title of Jingkang baishi (Minor histories concerning the Jingkang reign), bear an original colo­ phon dated to 1167 , written by one Nai'an ��, who claims to have copied the text from the second half of a document written by Que An .�, called Tongfen lu M /ltif< (A record of shared ire).24 The text was never published in China, and manuscript copies were nearly unknown. One copy of the text found its way to Korea some time during the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. According to a colophon written in 1407 by the Choson emperor Lee Pangwon *- %=- a (also known as Yudok i!.1,i), the royal library copy of the manuscript bore a seal of King Ch'ung-yol (also known as Wang Chun .!. 'Ii of the Koryo dynasty, r. 1274-13 08). The works were brought to light in 1892 by Xie Jiafu �� 1; , who commissioned a hand copy to be sent to his friend, the biblio­ phile Ding Bing T � . In 1910, Ding Bingheng T *-{tj- made an attempt to collate the Ding Bing edition, which was then printed by Wang Dalong .!. *.. Fi in his Jimao congshu e. �P • • . The quality of the colla­ tion was extremely bad. These errors have been rectified by Cui Wenyin it X �p in his modem edition, Jingkang baishijianzheng � at � 3t l �.25 24. Ding Bing makes the interesting suggestion that this Nai'an is none other than Shi

Nai'an, the purported author of the Shuihu zhuan; see next note. 25. Cui Wenyin,Jingkang baishijianzheng, ed. and coil. (Shi? �) Nai'an (Beijing: Zhong­ hua shuju, 1994).

Crossing Over

575

The seven works in this collection have been carefully collated against accounts of the same events in the Song History *- 3t and the

Comprehensive

Collection if Treary Violations if Three Reigns. Of course, the seven works themselves quote lengthy passages from other accounts, by both Song and Jin writers, among others. They are:

XuanheyisiftngshiJinguo xingcheng lu i: :fu L. e. "1� it liI -1t :f.I � (Record of the journey of envoys to the state of Jin in 1125). Wengzhong mryu � � A.l� (Words of a person trapped in a vase). Kaifengfu zhuang Ptj :!t 1ft*- (Summons from the Kaifeng prefecture) . Nanzheng lu � 1.l.� (Record of the �outhern campaign). Qinggongyryu -t 1: �f� (Translations of the Palace at the Green City). Shef!)in lu pt"4'-� (Record of lamentations). Songfuji *-#-1(. (Record of those captured from the Song) . While we should treat these works with the same caution due any text without a traceable past, they probably fell victim to the remarkable re­ pression of private histories that dealt with the Song royal house and particularly with the fall of the Northern Song and the brief usurpation of Gaozong's reign in the Southern Song. While the repression of private histories was ostensibly justified as a way to control the resurgence of factionalism in the south, it is clear that only those records that deal with the history of the royal family were severely censured. Of the histories cited in the

102 private

Sanchao beimeng huibian that deal with this period, for

instance, only a minuscule number have survived in complete form. As Cui Wenyin has pointed out, the praise heaped on the

huibian upon its

completion may pardy be due to the fact that it quotes none of its sources in their entirety, selecting only appropriate passages to insert in the general outline it draws of the era.26 The one thing that binds many of these shi 3t together with the Na1!/in

jiwen is that they are written in the first person and for the most part (with

26. See ibid., xxi-xxv. One should note that Cui himself has made some questionable calls on the authenticity of other texts from this era. See Deng Guangming flIAIl:U , "Zailun DaJinguozhiheJin ren nanqian ltl' �� ( ;k.� � ,t, } � ( �A. � il � } , in Deng Guangming Zhishi conggao flI AIl :U if; .Jt it � (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1997), 389-98; orig. published in Jinian Gu Jiegang xueshu lunwen ji R. ;t,AA tJl l'4'j '" #r� X I­ (Chengdu: Ba Shu chubanshe, 1990).

STEPHEN H . WEST the notable exception of Li Gang) an authorial signature is missing or only weakly attributable. From the time of the Shiji (which 'draws on earlier precedent), writers of standard histories were agents who were supposed to act on behalf of thejun=d �.:r, a moral figure who was an implicit narrator, never intrusively present in the text except at moments of judgment, when he was called on (in prefaces or in encomia, zan f') to give voice to collective ethical principles. Standard history has behind it a certain moral clout that is measured by a universal standard of ethical action (which, in the Mencian case, is tied directly to Heaven). If a his­ torian is accused of bad writing (qubi lib *, for instance), the focus of the indictment is the misrepresentation of substantive authenticity (sbi 't), an arena of action in which event and character are chosen to emphasize or highlight the ethical personal or relational qualities exposed by those actions. In even the direst straits that call for the most practical responses, in historical texts the practical and the moral are interwoven in the arguments of ministers or generals who pleaded for one action or another. This is, of course, to be expected in a highly relational world constructed on hierarchies of moral obligations and responsibilities, but it also brings to the foreground the function of rhetoric, a function to which we will return. Paradoxically, whereas first-person narrative histories R. BlJ do not have this same body of universalized ethical agency behind their com­ position, moral interest is refocused more directly on the author. That is, as a writer who is directly uttering an opinion and judgment, one's ethiqli state can be called directly into question. This is why the commentary on the texts of this era (and particularly the Naf!!injiwen) constantly evokes the "anger," "frustration," "enmity," and "disordering nature" of the authors as a way to question the validity of the work. Commentators are of course sensitive to the issue that no tale is constructed solely from actual fact, but from the creation of a story. Moreover, this act of crea­ tion (zao) and the value of the story are tied directly to the ethical nature of the author. Their personal moral development not only defmes what and how they represent, but also the quality of their perception of the events that they portray. No event, no fact, no person remains a firm actuality or retains a set meaning the level of moral wisdom of the perceiver makes of these events, facts, and people variables that are to be manipulated within a narrative universe. The upshot is that all of the texts under discussion may tell the same general story and all from the point of view of personal participation.

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577

The historicized judgment of the bibliographical and "standard histori­ cal" tradition, however, will select only one or more among all possible stories, and then on the basis of an ethical judgment which is morally right or wrong rather than on a factual judgment which is factually right and which is not. This can account, I believe, for the repression of these seven histories, all of which are quite accurate in terms of fact, but which are extremely frank in their portrayal of actual events. The facts they cite are generally verified in either the standard Song History or the Sanchao beimeng huibian, but the level of personal detail goes far beyond what is related in either of those two texts. Of course, I am not arguing that Nar!finjiwen is what we would call a historical rather than fictional text. It is clearly what we would term historical fiction and deals allegorically with the demise of the two em­ perors. Despite the fact that Siku tfyao bibliographers knew that it had been incorporated into the Xuanheyishi and that it bore a striking re­ semblance to other historical fiction (pinghua), they felt compelled to categorize it as "miscellaneous history" and comment on it even though they did not include it in their compendium. Siku tfyao editors had no problem excluding other pinghua that incorporated wholesale passages from, for instance, Sima Guang's ZiZhi tongjian, and that had an equal relationship to standard historical sources as the Nar!finjiwen did to the standard historical texts that treated the same topic. It is this combination of fabrication, hesitancy to exclude the work from the shi category, and the need to make a commentarial judgment about a work that is marked in all extant textual reference as "fabricated" (zao), "non-substantively authentic" (jeishi .1F 1r), or "forged" (wei )27 as well as this work's incorporation into a pinghua text (sometimes called a xiaoshuo) that allows us to test the boundaries between shi and pinghua/xiaoshuo. It allows us to examine how a plurality of first-person accounts can supplement one another, bolster one another, or contest with one another for the power to interpret, and how these contestations can be influenced by social pressures, audience, and by inclusion with, exclusion from, or affiliation with a corpus of standard canonical works. More important, it can allow us to see how rhetoric works to create alternate forms of historicity that can be resistant to mainstream mterpretatlon. •

•

27.

See Zhu Yizun's *-4.f comments in his Rixiajil/wen El r {j tl!'J (SKQS ed.).

STEPHEN H . WEST As a test case, I would like to look at the deaths of Huizong. I say deaths because the description of his passing and its place in "story" vary considerably among historical accounts: From the "Basic Annals of Huizong," of the Song HistOry:28 Dayjiaif of the fourth month of the fifth year of Shamcing reign [June 4, II35] [Huizong] died an emperor's death in Wuguocheng, he was 54. $3� 1i. -f \1!l �

\f ::r, AI! � 1i. 1I �, -f 1i. + lf \?!1 .

From the "Basic Annals of Gaozong," of the Song History:29 Dayjiaif [of the fourth month of the fifth year of Shamcing reign (June 4, II35)] Grand Retired Emperor died an emperor's death in Wuguocheng. ($3 � 1i. -f \?!1

m \f ::r, :1'--.l:.. .:t '*' AI! � 1i. 1I �.

From the "Basic Annals of Xizong," of the ]in History:30 Day bingyin [of the fourth month of the thirteenth year ofTianhui reign (June 6, II35)] Duke of Clouded Virtue Zhao Ji died a death of a feudal lord, an envoy was sent to offer sacrifices and provide funds for a proper funeral. (�-t- + -=..

-f \?!1 � ) 13:i "li , . -tt �:M � *, It{tJt�&�Jlt.

From Shetryin lu (A record of moaning):31 Twenty-first day of the fourth month [of the thirteenth year of Tianhui reign (June 4, II35)] Grand Retired Emperor died a death of a feudal lord at Wuguocheng. His posthumous order was that he be buried within the "inner land" [that belonged to Song]. The caitiff in command, in compliance with the family's wishes, was about to assent to it, but the court's decision was to not allow it. (�-t- + -=.. -f \?!1 m .:::. + - El :k.J:.*� 1i. eg�. Jt.�?Jt. If.i.faJ

1; 'f ;t, �if. �� � ar.

From Songfuji (Record of those captured from the Song) :32 Twenty-first day [of the fourth month of the thirteenth year of Tianhui reign (June 4, II35)] Duke of Clouded Virtue passed away. (�-t- + -=.. -f) \1!1 � .:::. +

- El . -tt � i:".

28. 55 22.417. 29. Ibid., 28.520. 30. Tuotuo et al.,Jinshi � 3t (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 4.70. 31. Anon., 5he'!}in Iu, in Cui Wenyin, Jingkang baishijianzheng, 227. 32. Ke Gong "if $.(?), 50ngfuji, in Cui Wenyin, Jingkang baishijianzheng, 251.

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579

From Na'!iinjiwen: Some morning or the other the young emperor came out of his earthen pit to look at the Grand Retired Emperor, and it turned out that he had already fallen down dead [reading �� for �P.f]. He wept, he wailed, and he cried out loud. Egiti said, ''We can bury him right here." Later, [Egiti] wrote up a request, but the locals said, ''We don't bury people here. We cremate the corpses of the dead, but only halfway, then we throw them into a stone pit [quarry hole?] north of the city. Because of this, the water can be used for lampoil. . . ." He hadn't ftnished speaking before several people came into the room, loaded Grand Retired Em­ peror onto some wooden staves, and carried him out. The young emperor fol­ lowed them north to the stone pit, where they hoisted the corpse onto a wooden frame next to it. Then they burned it with t1!Yu wood. The body was nearly burned halfway when they doused it with water, and using larger timbers, they speared the remaining skeleton, drug it over, and threw it into the pit. It sank right to the bottom of the pit, clear out of sight. There was no way the young emperor could stop them, so he jumped up and down and cried out, wailed, and then wanted to jump into the pit himself. All in attendance pulled him back to stop him, saying, "Some years ago a live person jumped into this pool, and the water suddenly became clear and we couldn't use it for oil anymore." They all hastened to stop him. The young emperor asked a local, ''What is the date to­ day?" Someone said, "The eighteenth of the ftrst month, in the third year of Tianjuan [February 8, II40] ." � El .!j!-, jI' * m "±'#f. :l: �.t:.k.J:., Jlll � j{l- ?E. � . W, lI$J :k �:k'Ifh. Fif iH} a : r "iif itJl:. 'F It-it.. J {t.J!- 'f � . ..±. A. �, r JI:. Itt, �lf it. •. JL ?E. ;t .;t k �Jt.M., a -f, /!p t:Z 1t! ;lt � #f. 'F . Ib �JI:.�"iif )'X 1t� -\!!.. . . r��:;t, /!p ;lfjtA.A� 'F , )'X -*-�*-�:.k.J:..rQ :l: . jI' * �z, ;It1£. � #f., �M.#J:., m ;f.fi -*- 1t z. ;1tJlJ�-f, {t)'X �iJA(.z, m :k-*- it Jt.�:lt, � .

t:#f. 'F . IIl A#f.�, �:Jcii � JL, jI' *�z � �l, 7} JiJtW,:k'Ifh, #-titJiJtA#f. 'F , 4rA..t.i�z, a : r *.f it ;If )� A.;!flA, JI:.�� �t � "iif 1t ;d7. J �*-Fll.z. jI' * r.., ..±.A., r � El �M El ? J � a , r �"'-=-.f.iE fl + A El -\!!.. J 33

If there were any doubt about the fictionality of Na'!iin jiwen, it is dispelled by this account. Before we reject it as completely "untrue," however, we might ask more pertinent questions: whence stemmed this version, and how did it become popular enough to become textualized and incorporated into a bibliographical classification of "miscellaneous histories?" And why, of all putative accounts of the fall of the Northern Song and the deaths of the last two emperors, was this one important enough to elicit a direct response about its credibility? 33. Huang Jizhi, Nanjinjiwen i, 30a/IOob.

STEPHEN H . WEST The markers of orality are present in the text: a third-person narrator who employs clever rhetorical devices to establish credibility in his ac­ count; a text that is segmented by moments of climax marked by a slowing of narrative time and more detailed descriptions; and modes of commentary, description, and exposition. Its use of demotic classical Chinese is closely related to that found in pinghua and other forms of performance literature (shuochang, the binbai recitations in drama, tanci, and so on). In the Sanchao beimeng huibian, we find an intriguing story of a certain Inner Servant Gang, who created stories to entertain Gaozong himself. The anecdote is dated to 1131, only a few years after the fall of the Northern Song: Shao Qing Accepts Pacification and Becomes Regulator-General of the Navy for the Bureau of Military Affairs Before this time, when Du Chong was defending Jiankang, there was a certain . . . Zhao Xiang who was in charge of the water gates. When the Jin forces crossed the Yangzi, Shao Qing assembled his multitude and Xiang was then obtained by Qing. When Qing accepted pacification, Xiang first got to get himself out of the mess and go home. Thereupon, he relied for help on the Inner Retainer, Gang. Gang was skilled at

xiaoshuo,

and The One on High loved lis­

tening to them. Gang wanted to acquire some "recent affairs" from which to create a xiaoshuo, and so he ordered Xiang to explain everything about the events after Qing assembled his multitude, as well as explain in detail about his loyalty and untrustworthiness, the strength and weakness of his followers, and every­ thing there was to know about his generals who fought in battles. [Gang] put them in proper sequence and, when called up to wait upon The One on High, he told the stories. Therefore His Highness both learned that Qing was acceptable to employ as well as being able to take delight in the loyalty and righteousness of Shan Dezhong [who laid siege to Shao Qing] .

{l� -t -j: .jg � $, � � Fi£ 7]<.:f � $1 7t.kl±Jt.� �.* . . . lr * I<. �� :M#*, fu]<. r , . :t-A.Jv.r.{l� -t ;rr , iflJ # $, -t i9f �l. -t -j: .jg�, #-!tt; �lIDf. A- •. 7} *# rJHt�. �-!-/J'1t, .l.. -i- ltz. �.�Hl *,-:', �/J'1t, 7} 4'-#J!.1t-t m � ;rr e.. {t�Jf#, #Jt..ft:t .t l1'lUi oUt �r'z;J4**-'£ ·,W·. ��ikJf. 1t .l.. JN1tz. -tt .l.. �t1 -t tif m f1i1 t- !f � ...

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34. Anon., Yanxing shi � � 3t (A history of the revival of the Jianyan reign), 49, in vol. 2, Xu Mengxin, Sanchao beimeng huibian (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988, reprint of 1908 Xu Handu lt�Ji ed.), 149.nb, 1084.

Crossing Over

These "recent events" were popular both at court and in the city pleasure districts ("tile yards" washe 1i... -%-, wali 1i... £. , wail 1i... .:r), between which there was an uninterrupted flow of performance and performers. One can certainly imagine that the stories would be different in each venue. Normally, the court was quite comfortable with satire and ridicule of almost everything except the emperor himself. Certain performances had to be toned down for different types of audiences,35 The burgeoning entertainment districts, however, saw a far wider reach of tales and sto­ ries. There were no outright prohibitions against portraying emperors on stage at this time, for instance. No matter what these entertainers did before the emperor, their daily rice bowl was filled by their performances on the urban stages. There, such tales as the Shuihu cycle (Outlaws of the marshes) began to form, and we can also imagine that there, among other tales, sentimental or retributive stories of the deaths of Huizong and Qinzong also circulated. These reflected a popular understanding of how and why the dynasty was lost and were embedded within sets of popular beliefs about how the world operated. These "popular" beliefs, in turn, indirectly reflected those shared by the culture at large. What lies at the bottom of the story in Na,!/inJiwen as well as in the histories of the period is an exploration of the concept of retribution as a critique of Huizong's zeal as a collector of artifacts, of natural ob­ jects, of women. Most of the interest in Huizong's collecting has fo­ cused either on the infamous Huashi gang ("convoy of flowers and stones" 1t k; �) or on the important artifacts of culture. Huizong's collections were enormous in scope. According to Cai Tao's �J it Tieweishan congtan �1fJ � t:1t (Talks from the mountains around Tie), Huizong's collection of bronzes, kept in the "Alcove of Wide-Ranging Antiquity" if. -5 M grew from around 5 00 in 1107 to over 6,000 by the end of the dynasty.36 Wang Guowei considers that this is either an exaggeration or that it includes items other than those listed in the catalogue of this bronze collection, Xuanhe Bogu ge tu � :fa if. -5

35. Acting troupes could alter their performances quite easily to fit their audience. The best example is in chapter 9 of the Dongjing meng Hna In, in which actors tone down their satire of foreigners because the entertainments are going to be staged in front of Iiao envoys. 36. eai Tao, Tieweishan congtan (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 79-80.

STEPHEN H . WEST

M ,37 I would argue that the collection contained far more. Cai Tao remarks elsewhere on the wealth contained in Huizong's personal col­ lection: When the Grand Retired One received the mandate, he enjoyed the offerings due to one who was the most exalted in a state of 10,000 chariots; so all the valuable artifacts of the whole time were all sent to him. Add to this the fact that he delighted in the rare and took pleasure in the strange, therefore all of the rare treasures of the world that were sent into the Bureau of Manufacturing were all collected in a small storehouse in The Palace of Virtue Proclaimed. This small storehouse was the personal treasury of the emperor. I once heard in those days that the emperor himself was delighted to be able to bestow hair ornaments on one of the servants of a favored concubine / his favorite concubine who was in attendance upon him at that time, and so ordered a retainer to bring out boxes of northern pearls. His Highness opened the boxes and with the imperial hand personally selected one to evaluate. He culled out five or six to give to her. At first no thought was given to the number nor did we know how many boxes were involved. During the Xuanhe reign period, northern pearls that were an inch in circumference were worth two or three miJIion. J\.. J:.. 1: �, ... � 3ft.f."

1Ja,*�-i-Jt

!t� rJt�.A. ril ,#, Iij' ¥-� � ��IJ'If. � ��IJ'If:t, � -rZlAit-l!!.. �ll BlJ 1c.., J'A iUez1t-1:t:t"1l �#, J:.. -3- J1Q �z, � JkJ 1t*;Jl:.4 g *-. J:.. llf] g , �P + lUl.#J J1Q � z, fL .ft. -c � J'A -1t � . ;flJ � lt JUt-l!!., 1L x. � 9iI1Jt.� g . ;Jl:.4{.f.� � fbt III 1-:t1t.f. :: - = tIi 3 8 I:Ii 13CJ .

Z", J1Q - atjf�z4h*.f.,

-

-

This abundance of wealth was reflected as well in the Genyue Park,39 which had assembled all of the rare flora and fauna of the empire in Kaifeng, where they were carefully tended. Nearly as well tended was Huizong's harem, the women which, in some accounts, numbered in the thousands. According to Translations ifthe Palace at the Green City, The Ancestor of the Dao inevitably favored a single virgin every five to seven days. The first time that they were favored, they would be raised to a titled rank; each time they were favored after that, they were raised one grade. After he abdicated, some 6,000 palace girls were sent out fitting, indeed, his loss of the

37. Wang Guowei .l.. II Mt, "Songdai zhi jinshi xue" ;!U\;'z1t ;b*, Guoxue luncong II *�. I.l (1927): 45-49. 38. Cai Tao, Tieweishan congtan, 105. 39. See James Hargett, "Huizong's Magic Marchmount: The Genyue Pleasure Park of Kaifeng," Monumenta Serica 38 (Fall 1990): 1-49.

Crossing Over state. l! * li.. -t:- El ,;l; � - ht-k, �l� - ik j!P !f1iLJJt, � -t - ik�-Fit. if!. {iL

ft* -t�, :t1ti:" f,J .40

If we look at the other records from the Jingkang baishi, we see that they give extensive accounts of the materials looted from the imperial city. For instance, from the Wengzhong retryu: Twelfth month, fifth day: Caitiffs searched out more than 7,000 horses and took them out of the city. Sixth day: Caitiffs searched out all of the military weapons and took them out of the city. Thirteenth day: Caitiffs demanded 10,000,000 bolts of silk, which were transported by soldiers and citizens to Nanxun Gate and turned over. They also demanded the areas of Puzhou and Jiezhou. Both were granted. Twenty-fifth day: Caitiffs demanded all of the books from the State Academy and took them out of the city. Twenty-eighth day: Caitiffs demanded all of the ancient implements listed in the Catalogue of the Bishu Library. First month, fourth day: Gold and silver for rewarding the Jin army were transported by palanquin to the caitiff encampment. Ninth day: Caitiffs demanded all of the lanterns and adornments for the First Prime Festival and took them out of the city. Eighteenth day: Caitiffs demanded all of the ritual implements from Jingling Palace. Nineteenth day: Kaifeng Superior Prefecture reports that 160,000 taels of gold and 6,000,000 taels of silver were turned over to the caitiff encampment. Twenty-fifth day: Caitiffs demanded the records of the imperial lineage, the royal palanquins, caps and hats, and all of the regalia of the palace court, as well as 600 maidservants and several hundred musicians from the Court Enter­ tainment Bureau. Twenty-seventh day: Caitiffs seized 50 inner retainers, but returned 36. Twenty-eighth day: Caitiffs demanded 47 household beauties from the families of Cai Jing, Wang Mian, and Tong Guan and took them out of the CIty. Twenty-ninth day: Caitiffs demanded all of the instruments and regalia of the grand sacrifices, the musical instruments from the Dasheng Yuan, hats and robes of the empresses and concubines, and all of the accoutrements for the imperial horse and took them out of the city. •

40.

Anon., Qinggongyfyu /u, in Jingkang baishi, 17I.

STEPHEN H . WEST Second month, first day: Caitiffs demanded all manner of artisans and craftsmen and the households of the magistrates of the 36 prefectures and took them out of the city. Second day: Caitiffs demanded the astronomical instruments from the Tiantai, all of the documents and maps of the Taiqing Hall of the Three Offices, all of the printing blocks of the State Academy, and several tens of thousands of catties of silk thread and took them out of the city. Third day: Caitiffs demanded male and female musicians as well as doctors and took them out of the city. Fourth day: Caitiffs demanded the printing blocks for the Buddhist and Taoist canons and took them out of the city. Sixth day: Caitiffs ordered WU Yan and Mo Chou to take a forged edict into the city, remove the emperor and make him a commoner, set up another sur­ name on the throne, and request that the Grand Retired Emperor, empresses and concubines, consorts, various princes, wives of the princes, imperial beau­ ties, and sons-in-law to go out of the city. Seventh day: Grand Retired Emperor and 3,000 others all went out of Nan­ xun Gate; caitiff cavalry escorted them to the encampment. Eighth day: Caitiffs demanded the current emperor's household and took them out of the city. Twelfth day: Caitiffs demanded all of the clerks of the Six Boards and took them out of the city. Fourteenth day: Caitiffs demanded Astronomical Officials, Inner Retainers, Buddhists and Taoists, clerks of the Directorates, tailors, dyers, woodworkers, silver workers, ironworkers and Yin-Yang specialists, magicians, shadow pup­ peteers, string puppeteers, singers, and their families and took them out of the CIty. Sixteenth day: Caitiffs again demanded all of the talented ones from the rear palaces and took them out of the city. Seventeenth day: Caitiffs demanded the families of all lower officials, all of the silver stored in the palace treasuries, and the ancestral register of the royal family and took them out of the city. Eighteenth day: Caitiffs demanded four million plus bolts of silk from the official warehouses, together with the bells and their frames from Jingyang, any remaining consorts or imperial family, and took them out of the city. Twentieth day: Caitiffs entered the inner courts, rounded up all of the jewels and implements, and took them out of the city. Twenty-third day: Caitiffs burned Fengqiu and Chenbridge Gates, and were again given 75,800 taels of gold, 1,400,00 taels of silver, and 48,400 bolts of sattn. Twenty-ninth day: Caitiffs demanded the paintings and calligraphy from Zhu Mian's household. . . . herbal simples, and tortoiseshell. •

•

Crossing Over Third month, twelfth day: Caitiffs plundered all of the clothing and accou­ trements arrayed on the ancestral images in Jingling Temple. . Thirteenth day: Caitiffs plundered all of the items from the Ancestral Temple.41

This same plunder is given only general description in the Song His­ tory: First day,gengshen, of the fourth month, summer [May 13, II27], a great wind blew rocks and snapped trees. The Jin sent the Emperor [Qinzong], the Empress, and the Crown Prince northward. Everything the imperial carriage, the regalia of his entourage, the chariots of the empresses and those below her and the regalia of their entourages, court hats and court robes, ritual vessels, all of the ritual implements of the ancestral halls, the musical instruments of the court music bureau and the court entertainment bureau, sacrificial vessels, the eight treasures [imperial seals], the nine cauldrons of state, jade gui tablets and bi circles, as­ tronomical instruments, bronze statues of men, clepsydra, ancient vessels, the sacrificial implements from Jingling Temple, the books from the Taiqing lou, Imperial Library, and the Three Halls, the maps of the provinces and districts of the Subcelestial Realm, as well as officials, female and male inner servants, en­ tertainers, craftsmen and artisans, and actors, as well as everything stored in the warehouses and treasures was all taken away. ..I. � fl JJt 'f ¥}] , kJit'* � �If;f..

� A.J'A '*' 1l.tJf>, .t � 1-;/1:. •. JL;:J;; �, Ii! ff, .t Jf> J'A r .�, Ii! ff, �}nt, ;ft2-, ;:J;; 4h, k � , �J.t � 2-, �2-, A -t, 7t.JlIi,f- , :l �, i" � -fl, �A., i1 �, * 2- , !' :£ 't f*' 2- , � �t.� I�'L=-tt;t, � r �+I }(f lil ll 'it � , I*J A., 1*J 1t, ;ft�, J.. 1lE , :k�1I:, }(fJt "i" �, $,Z _ � .42

The detailed listing of Wengzhong retryu appears to be just a blank list of items, but its message seems rather clear. Huizong spent a great deal of his later life collecting as a way to appropriate the material world and "create an all-encompassing world order within the imperial palace."43 This appropriation may be seen as a desire to possess the world at large and to claim dominion over it. The detail with which the dismantling of the court and its dispersal to a world beyond China is

41. Anon., Wengzhong mryu, in Jingkang baishi, 71-88, a detailed list of all the imperial blood and marital relatives taken into captivity by the Jurchen; this was evidendy based on the registers of the imperial family. See IGifengfu zhuang, in Jingkang baishi, 89-124. 42. SS 2.436. 43. Kevin K. Huang, "Some Notes on the Imperial Palace Collection During the Reign of Huizong in Northern Song," unpublished paper, 9.

STEPHEN H . WEST Wenzhong ref!JIu

described in

leaves little doubt that it is a critique of

that megalomaniacal desire. It is a subtle critique to be sure, but the repetitive plunder of physical and material objects (which includes people as well) grounds the critique in substance and inevitability. The

Song History

is more intent on emphasizing the moral nature of Hui­

zong, a person whom the historians regard as "flippant" and "super­ ficial."44 I suppose that Huizong's obsessive collecting would be con­ sidered only a symptom of this moral nature, a manifestation of the ease with which his "selfish desires" allowed sycophantic ministers to pander to his wishes. The

Wenzhong ref!JIu

and the

Kaifengfu zhuang

begin to lay out a

different kind of analysis and a different type of metaphorical universe, one much more in tune with the popular perception of Huizong. The roots of this critique of collection and appropriation of material objects are found in contemporary sources, where Huizong is constantly con­ textualized within a culture of consumption, excess, and spectacle. In

Dongjing meng Hua iu, which is the only eyewitness public account we have of capital life in the reign of Huizong, we find the emperor to be a common figure, part of the street life of Kaifeng. Of the

43

subsections

of the part of the text given over to describing yearly events, the emperor figures in

22

of them. It is clear from the text that the royal family, and

Huizong in particular, were trendsetters in the capital, in terms of clothing, food, and so on: This text

[Dongiing meng Hua lu]

represents a wholesale appropriation and

recontextualization of the court and its major figure, the emperor. He was loved, as the Dream makes clear with its frequent references to the crowd he drew and the pleasure his appearances brought. But at other points it also suggests that it was the surface trappings of the court that were desirable, both as objects of the eye

to look at with pleasure

and as objects of the hand­

something to possess, to own. In a capital noted for its consumption of material goods, the emperor was the lead consumer, the pace setter for his people. Foods he ate became desirable and dear; the clothing his court wore became the object of envy and emulation . . . . Everyday familiarity and the role the court played as leaders of a group of leisured consumers moved them from a distant world to a

44.

See the zan if to "Huizong benji," 55 22.417-18.

Crossing Over familiar one, one in which they were at the apex of material life, the tip of a common triangle defmed primarily by the power of money.45 This public image of Huizong as an obsessive collector and con­ sumer finds its voice

in

popular texts such as the

Xuanheyishi.

In one

passage Huizong replicates the markets of Kaifeng within the imperial palace:

Let us talk for moment about Huizong, after he obtained the district of Yan­ shan. Not a day went by that he did not drink and take pleasure with the likes of Gao Qiu, YangJin, Zhu Mian, and Wang Fu. Then in the center of the palace he made a market district and had his court ladies sell tea and wine, and not a single one of the 120 guilds of merchants was missing. Sometimes His Highness would dress up as a poor beggar and go about the Grand Interior begging, just for fun. Sometimes he drank all night, dusk to dawn. He had citizen laborers refurbish Longlife Mountain, and again transport Taihu stones. From Suzhou and Hangzhou all the way to Bian, any family that had one adult male had to provide one worker; two adult males, two workers. The people could not tend to their livelihood, and on the banks of the two rivers the dead males lay pillowed upon each other. The sounds of "injustice" and "cruel" were shouted out in the wilds, but His Highness was never aware of it. lL�. If- m �l � .It ..t.{t, ffit � ,*, �

�, *-ltitJ, .!. • ..t.,ft, � EI �*tt1t � , lt� 't 'P r-J 111 � 'fHf, � � 't * t � t � , J.t - Ef .;:. + {t�R., t Jl Jf�. � *...t. .t31k i:. 1t.".:r, H i:. � 'P , J'X Jfst��. 5l � -k1t..t.it, J'X 1f ltlI.. 5l 1t � AJt1if � � .It , � l! :l\. � .:b , m .ij. , lk.�>tt lt �t, A.� � - J , � A -t , Til J � A Til -t , � � JWr±, Til � )fl!, ?t J fst,t, � *..t.*, w."f�Jf, ...t. -t � �-I!!. .46 -

This little anecdote draws together three important strands of in­ formation. The first is the text's linking of the re-creation of the bio­ logical and physical world outside of the Palace

in

the Genyue with

Huizong's "play" market, which re-creates the sights of Kaifeng. The second is how this re-creation of the market is an inverse reflection of Huizong's gathering, viewing, and awarding of monies to vendors in the capital on the occasion of the New Year, where vendors were judged not only on clothing but also on their performances of trademark 45. Stephen H. West, "The Emperor Sets the Pace," in Lin Yao"fu, ed., SelectedEssqys on Court Culture in a Cross-Cultural Perspective (Taipei: National Taiwan University, 1999), 2H o. . 46. Anon., Xuanheyishi � :fu4., annot. and punct. Cao Jiping t �-t, in Xuanhe yishi deng liangzhong � :fu 4 • � idt (Zhongguo huaben daxi '" II tt ,f.:k �) (Yang­ zhou: Jiangsu Guji chubanshe, 1993), 53-54.

STEPHEN H . WEST songs and shouts. This makes an important tie between the outside and inside world based on "play-acting" and performance, in which Huizong can switch roles between emperor and beggar (or lover, as with Ii Shishi).47 The third is that the criticism of being "unaware" points to a problem inherent in Huizong's moral constitution that makes him blind to the suffering that his obsession with objects causes, but also secon­ darily to the issue of costuming, to the failure to maintain proper hier­ archical roles and the moral responsibilities inherent in them. The

Dongjing meng Hua lu (Dreaming a dream of splendors past in the Eastern Capital), which is a reliable indicator of the public image of Huizong, constantly levels all hierarchies except that of wealth, and in many cases, markers of imperial status are erased or downplayed. A classic example is part of a section entitled, "Ceremonial Guard of the Return of the Auriga":

When the Auriga returns, his head is wrapped in a small cap, and he has flowers stuck in his hair as he rides his horse. His retinue, the high officials, and hundred officials, and his ceremonial guard all are given flowers. At the beginning of the Daguan era, he rode a bayard. He would come to the front of the Palace of Grand Harmony and then suddenly call for Reddy48 and the horse would come before the emperor. The horse would be held back and not allowed to go for­ ward and the servants would say, "By this he desires to be enfeoffed." The

47. Huizong's adventures have pejorative parallels in earlier texts, for instance, with Emperor Xiao Ling of the Han, who also set up market stalls in the rear palace and dressed up dogs in official garb. Emperor Ling is a particularly apt example, since he, too, was a weak-minded emperor who was duped by ministers until he was finally deposed by Dong Zhuo 'I -¥-. See Hou Han shu 4t ;'� '" (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 8.346 for the anecdote, and 8.349 for the judgment of him as "a little man in the imperial role." Likewise, Huizong's night-time escapades with Li Shishi are a reflection of the custom of Emperor Wu of the Han, who would go out into the capital after the dissatisfaction of night-time revels. While Huizong consorted with a renowned courtesan shared by the rich of the capital, Emperor Wu made his way back into the "lateral courtyards," his own harem, before debauching himself. I would like to thank David Knechtges for these references. See Zhang Heng's "The Western Metropolis Rhapsody," in The Wenxuan, compo Xiao Tong, trans. David Knechtges (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 1: 235. 48 . Wu is shortened from the horse's full name, Uhulan .� li Ali , which is an Altaic word for "red" (private communication from James Bosson). See Zhang Zhifu ��I1 ;fl , Keshu
Crossing Over emperor granted the title of Dragon Courser General, and then Reddy would take the bit. Now Reddy was the horse that the emperor really loved. It was all: Damask and brocade filling the capital, flowers' radiance flooding the eyes, imperial scents sweeping the road, grand music ringing discordant in the air, jeweled mounts racing hither and yon, bunted boxes lining the road. Gauze and silks, pearls and kingfisher feathers.­ door after door of spiritual transcendents; painted galleries and red lofts,every house a grotto precinct. Roamers both noble and common, horses and carts numbered in the thousands. Singsong girls mostly rode asses in the old days, but during the Xuanhe and Zhenghe reigns they only rode horses, mantled in their "cool dusters" with their head coverings tied to the backs of their caps. Young brothel rats often followed behind them, also astride horses and dressed in light gowns and small caps. Three or four tattooed young toughs controlled the girls' horses, and they were called "flowers falling from the horse." They controlled the horses' heads with short tethers, and struck at the ground as they went along, which was called "breast tether." They shouted and yelled as they raced and ran, competing to

� \E1 ,

JlIJf,ip. + f. 1�* .�, �{t-tt � , � *, er a) , 1l4tf � J!;j1�. :k#JIAlJ, *.�.�. £jdl1 't �, .� � ,J' .�, Jt. .� £f,ip�, �E .1Q � l!, iL i; fJ : I Jt.lfJHt 't . J ftJ!;j���, ?l\{t:tt W . A 'J' .� -t E f,ipf:. Z.�-tI!.. � ;JFi�U4Uit�, 1U 6iti m , �;f-�$, Jt�'1:�, t �3t�, � Wl � $, ����, r r #1.l!, :t M 1L., � � iI.i] Jft, l&!A.±$.;, * .� � •. "*t-k {f E � *., � Jt ft" .I1t* .�, t.t )ff. ;¥J M-A jji 1-l' .� .:r J:.. . jt' .flfi:, {i.ii. I�At. # � .�, �;¥J 'J'oJr"l , ;If -=- .E-X j[ .� jt' .f�.� , �Z, I 1�;fjI! .� . J JlHft ¥l1J{.� jji, fIJ Jt.1i1it, �Z, I �¥l. J l1iif "!]�", �i!.�l!c.49 show off their spirited elegance.

The low parody of the imperial retinue with the entourage of pros­ titutes 50 successfully deconstructs the markers of imperial authority 49. Meng Yuanlao .:i£7t::t, Dongjing meng Hua iu t. :r. f-*� (Seikaido ed.), 7.7b. 50. This passage can profitably be compared with the use of Du Fu's poem, "Aijiang tou" ��J:.jji, in the zqju drama "Rain on the Wutong Tree" �� � . There is, in both texts, a faux military entourage made up of women, and this inversion of the normal order becomes a central theme in the exploration of the public performances of the emperor. This back text of comparison between Huizong and Xuanzong of the Tang that

STEPHEN H . WEST

590

and privilege and makes of the emperor's procession only one more scene in an urban theater of spectacle. Essentially this and other pas­ sages in the Dongjing meng Hua lu collapse the hierarchical structure of authority into a single level dominated by economic power, and in which the possession of objects itself becomes a mode of self-fashioning in a world of conspicuous consumption. 51 The emperor is neither im­ mune from this general collapse of ranks or grades of ethically or his­ torically determined values or from replicating it in his collection and display of treasures. In the Xuanheyishi, we find a passage (which has a parallel in the Huangchao biannian gangmu beiYao .t � � -+ � � 1#i�) that is illuminating in its description of a party to which eai Jing was invited in

III2: Summer, fourth month, Cai Jing was summoned to enter the gardens of the Forbidden City to partake of a feast held on his behalf. Supporting ministers and royal princes all were able to participate in the banquet. Huizong himself wrote a record of the event, a summary of which says, Let those in charge sweep clean the Hall of Supreme Purity in the garden of the forbidden city, cleanse all of the precious vessels we use that are stored in the inner warehouse, gather together the beautiful flavors of the four direc­ tions. Ahead of time to inspect them and gather them together and I will personally visit there. ,

The female musicians he used from the palace were arranged in ranks to perform within the courtyard; he ordered one of the royal sons, the one named Kai, to wait upon them at the side in order to urge them to forget their cares. He also brought out his consorts to thrum the zither and dance, and he urged them on to drink from cups of porcelain, agate, and white jade. Cai Jing also presented a record, which says in summary, At the feast at the Hall of Supreme Purity, his Highness said, "We are just a few steps from the Palace of Proclaimed Harmony." He ordered my son, Cai You, to lead him by the arm into the Palace to look around. Eastward we entered into a small flowered path, to the south we traversed a thicket of blue reeds, and then again to the east we entered a small side door and

one finds in Dongjing meng Hua lu and other popular texts of the Song is always muted, but ever present. It usually revolves around costuming, performance, and play-acting and is probably a topic worth exploring. 51. So much for Fredric J arneson's nostalgic belief that consumer culture is a product only of late-capitalist modes of production.

Crossing Over

591

reached the Palace of Harmony Proclaimed, which comprises only three bays. There are also three bays each in the left and right sidehalls and in them are stored charts and documents, pens and inkslabs, ancient tripod bronzes [used for rituals] , ablution vessels and there were also small tables, desks, stands, and couches. Beside each of the eastern and western corridors were individual halls, each also of three bays. The one on the east called, "Rose­ quartz Thoroughwort," had stones stacked to make mountains, with peaks and crags protruding here and there, with springs issuing from holes in the rock to collect into a pond. On its north side was a decree by the imperial hand, "Quiet Retreat," and between the rafters was a wooden plaque with the phrase, ''Wash Your Heart, Cleanse Your Thoughts." On the west was one called "Congealed Fragrance," behind it was "Gathered Verdure." On the north was a grotto, called "Jade Retreat." From the place where the walls were obscured by sedges, rocks rose high and craggy into the sky and rare flowers and strange trees leafed out in splendor and grew thick with leaves. Behind was a pond, called "Circling Lapis," and it had pavilions on either side, called "Overlooking the Ripples," and "Flowery Islet." Beyond the pond were mountains and a Hall called "Cloud's Florescence," and the gal­ lery was named, "Great Peace." One ascended by paths on the left and right. In the middle of the paths were pavilions, called "J ade Empyrean," "Hanging Clouds," and "Rising Phoenix." Layers of rocks hundreds of feet tall stood jutting up, and one could look down on steep cliffs and pinched peaks and it looked just like great valleys deep in the mountains. Next was "Gallery of Gathering Spring," below which was a hall called ''Jade Florescence." At the side of the front hall is a wooden tablet carrying the emperor's own inscrip­ tion, "Hall of the Rosequartz Text of the Three Grottoes," and it is for of­ ferings to the Realized Ones of the Highest Realms. Directly across the way is the "Studio of Green Clouds Sown with Jade." At noon, the majordomos brought in the high ministers and those below them. Four hundred young girls in boots, robes, and jade belts formed ranks on the performing ground below, and it was so quiet one dared not even cough. The palace ladies wore headdresses caged in pearls as well as belts of jade. They held fans, whisks, pitchers, cloths, swords, battle-axes and they carried incense censers as they crowded near the imperial throne and stood in line

none of them dared get

out of rank or out of place. His Highness looked at his assembled officials and said, ''We are completely at peace, and lord and ministers can share in the joy. It is fitting that we dispense in large part with the annoying trifling ex­ actitudes of ritual. In matters of drinking, eating, rising, or sitting, let each follow his own will without asking permission." Those in charge brought in jeweled implements and Huizong poured out wine to bestow on his minister, and he ordered Zhao

Kai, Prince ofJia, to urge

59 2

STEPHEN H . WEST

them on to drink. Then he took water from the springs of Huishan and jade cups from Yihao in ]iaruci to brew up "Tea of Auspicious Portents of Peace,"

Cai ling to drink. .l., 11!1 fl , .g � :Y: J\. P'J?€'��; lm � lW..£ , !f �l�,*. -fa * lW.).\ZlL, � � a : I � � JJ -if ft pH€. ;k �t., � rJ;j 1ft m i&. Jt JfJ z a , � 11!1 -;? Z � ,*, nt JtlJ Ilil � , �#flW. -t � . J � ;Jj- JfJ 1; tf ·Jdt�, ,'j 4:#hi; 1fl- .t. -=r- � � � , #-1Jl� #h f-; 5l :!: �t·Jdt�JJt., #h J'X Jf.t.�, �Jii, E7 .f. Z fr- . :Y: # J:. iL�a I ;k �tz�. J:. a : Ii" J(.J!i � � -fll. .JJ 4'- -=r- {�.tr{J\. " � . -it J\. J < ft.�, .w Jt � "At, 5l -it J\. 1t r1, � � ��, P- -=-�. Ii. ;t;.tr{ # -=-�, tf M III :f, � ';Jl" * �1iIrl- 4, A:i7\:" f.t. Jl *" , :fl�. -it � �1J!1���, # -=-�. -it a J1 M , � � ).\ J.J , "f� ra, :!: , ;tr it :!: � f, ii.:# ig . ;lt � f,tp;fL*�, #' � ra, J'X i7\:,'�5ftJ.t. � a £t %' , {t a � IF-, .w a J1#. ;lt� iM a .f. �, � m � Fi oP+ , *A-AJti:, � 1t. � ;f;.. , �J9If.� ;ff . {t � m a J-l !B , � 1t � of a ��, *it"; ig ik � J.J , � a 1." *, M a ;k !f , Ii. ;t;14l!J'x 1f. tf l!� of a l�Ut , :ft 1." , .f.•. ,f � 11 ft.. � Jt, *�t"';!j �;fJ"f, -kni� J.J k�. ik a -t-:tf. M , r � � a .f. *. nt�z1JlIJ, � �p � #' a -=- iM J1 xz�, J'x " � A; � � .f.� 1."fflfl�. El 4- , ·�l]:t- ql * f)(. J'X r J\.. * :t 11!1 1I.¥It�.f.1I/t, ,·j -#f�r, "tt\.�.�:t-. 1;A..� ti. rp , .f. * 1I/t, * Aq , Mt>, � , rp , it·j , �, #1H!, .f,tphhx iki:, #.�.�t �uk:t-. J:.,jJ{�# � l!: Ii" jf<.-t •• , :# � * � , ii:�*:Jj[ �4;ft, -fk*��, � ii: m 1t. r..1 .JJ . J f)(. . :t- J'X -f a it, -fa * � ilJi J'X � , 1fl- .t -=r--A-.£l� � #h. 5l J'X ,t J.J it � il � � �, ;t $T j" ;k -t-A-J.t*", ��:Y:-fkZ.52

which had been newly offered in tribute, and gave it to

'

7

7

,

We notice in this passage that in the collections that Huizong keeps in the Hall of Virtue Proclaimed are for the most part items to be displayed and enjoyed at banquets. They range from the absolutely quotidian to ritual vessels (dingzun 1rl-4 usually refers to bronzes used for ritual sac­ rifices at the ancestral halls) and are all here converted to use for enter­ tainment. The irony of this passage is clearly reflected in the emperor's misconception about how safe the empire is, the name of the tea ("peace"), and his bestowal of the banquet upon the very minister whose sycophancy would bring about his own demise. The bronze vessels themselves are a powerful symbol of the way that Huizong treats mate­ rial objects: for him their value is as collectible pieces, items for display, items for use in banquets that dismiss the hierarchies of ritual :t�* ni .:,f 4;ft. This treatment of material goods without regard to their ritual significance can probably be read as a metaphor for the way that he judges people as well, and can account in the narratives of his decline for his absolute inability to read the moral quality of his ministers. 52. Xuanheyishi, 15-16.

Crossing Over

593

I cite this because it offers us a place to begin in order to place the Na,!/in jiwen in perspective within the popularization of tales about Huizong during the Jin and early Yuan. The manner in which Na,!/in jiwen is incorporated into the Xuanhe yishi suggests that it may be part of a larger story cycle and not necessarily an independent text. We have, on the one hand, the story of Shao Qing and the creation of tales of the fall of the Northern Song that were told at the Southern Song court and, because of what we know about the free flow of entertainers between court and city, probably in the urban theater districts in Hangzhou as well. On the other, we have one extant drama, "Tippler Zhao Encounters the Former Emperor" :!t!7t:i!J:., which is about a chance encounter between a drunk and the emperor at a tavern, and a whole section of proto-dramas fJt *- about Huizong, the titles of which suggest scenes also found in the Xuanheyishi. What all of these tales and the Na,!/injiwen share is an interest in the person of Huizong, both as the leading figure in the decline and loss of the dynasty, but also as a personality, a central human figure caught in a web of retribution. The retribution, as described in Na,!/in jiwen, is both personal and universal: both for his sins as a single human being and for his role as ruler. As told in the combined text of the Xuanheyishi and the Na,!/in ji­ wen, the central story of Huizong is worked out (I) geographically in terms of a journey from the center, his court, to the periphery in Manchuria; (2) cosmically from tianxia where Yin and Yang circulate in the "world" in a manner we can establish as "normal" (zhengchang if.. 't) to tianxia zhiyuanbian k r .t.itil, where Yin and Yang are im­ perfectly formed in abnormal (janchang D... 't ) events and things, to tianxia Zhi wai k r .t 71' , where objects (wanwu � 411) are no longer recognizable; and (3) metaphorically from the world of the living to the world of the dead. In Na,!/injiwen, the geographical movement of Huizong and his en­ tourage starts, like the histories, with an accurate description of his journey from Kaifeng to Yanjing; however, after that point Na,!/injiwen traces a journey that becomes at once nightmarish and at odds with any sense of geographical logic. Like one of Borges's works that begins with quotidian life and ends in the realm of the miraculous, Na,!/injiwen traces a peregrination that begins firmly rooted in the known world, tianxia, but moves across a topography that dissolves into an unknown and threat­ ening environment that is witness to both terror and miracle. In the fmal

STEPHEN H . WEST

594

stages of their journey, it has become a place that can fmd no match in their experience or memory: Some day of the second month. This day we traveled about 60 li. Day turned to evening and the road was already so dark that we couldn't make anything out. Foxes howled angrily amid the forested mountains, there was a slight wind and misty rain

it found no equivalent in the human world. Those who accompa­

nied us cursed and complained incessantly. Ghosts and demons flew this way and that, and no one slept the whole night. We were forced on our way the next morning, and a cavalry troop that trailed us gave us some dried grain. Every one in the party was made sick by the water, and their mouths hurt so much that they were incapable of speaking. Only after a long while did we recover. The em­ perors' feet hurt so much it was hard to walk, and there was a poisonous fog that blocked all sides

it bore no resemblance to a road traveled by ordinary peo­

ple . . . . There was drifting sand everywhere, and it was as hard to raise one's feet as it was walking through sticky clay. The sand buried one up to the ankles. From time to time fellow travelers lost both of their sandals. The emperor's foot was injured by shards and pebbles, and blood flowed from between his toes. It was so painful that it was hard for him to move. We rested on a stony slope, and it was already noontime before we ate breakfast. We traveled until nightfall but covered only ten or twenty

Ii [five or six miles]. One of the native servants who

was traveling with us died of pain in the heart. He was quickly covered with sand for burial. It went on like this for several days, and we saw absolutely no sunlight, it was like being covered by a heavy fog. There were poisonous ethers that

=- .Fl � El . k El 1.9H* + .'It . El llt, Jt3. � �, � *,Ut �. ��l'lv*l1VJ'#lt /lo" .� � � , � �A.i!t. Bt�tA. Jf � -i';f � . >i.�Ut*, � 7 .�. �nt1l�t, �Ht�" l'Htlf. 4J. A. Jf �?J<.PJj-1i, 0 � � fi� -t �, /t A.��. =- * # R-�_�t. 11. .a:tm., � � 't A.1i.*-Jt3.� . . . . � ih¥ �,', .?�1t�'�A�-itW )i±,,*. at � 1t*, ·fUl��-!-. * R- � A. �;Jf1l, k)j,jA� /Iot � Jt_�t. � ,�#,k;JJt .z.J:.. El � 1'-�-f*, �t±lIt, .JL-=- + .'It , �Bt�t-tl-Joc, '-:;� ai1 ?t . Ilp � i" J£lc... �Jtit El , � � JL El � , 't * �a:tl f. . � -4-#LA. o " .p , If �.;t ::l: k.53

entered into the nose and mouth, and everyone coughed up blood.

Just before they reach their fmal destination at Wuguocheng, they en­ counter an interesting sight: On some day in the progress of our journey we saw about twenty wild pheasants calling as they flew, fonning into flocks, and it seemed as if they were squabbling over something. We looked, and they were all pecking a dead snake on the

53. Na,!jinJiwen, 28a-h, 99h.

Crossing Over

595

ground. It had already been pecked apart and about seven or eight feet of it remained, its head forked

in two and its body was a greenish blue color and it

was scaleless. After a while, they had picked the dead snake's flesh clean, and the pheasants started to fight, pecking each other. In no time at all nearly all of them were dead, and there remained only one large one. Male. In several days we

� El , 1tn.;kJl.. Jt n..::.. +�, 1l�tt4�, *'' If i'Jf�. :.ft �, !f �Jt� - ?t *E. e. :fJt��, rl1 lf #::t�lH�: -eAft..., � � �Jt, tt -t !a @. r1i1 ... . lf �� , P� Z ?t *E ,t) , �� m la � r" #Ht ?i:.::t + -e A, t(t - :k::t, .tit, it El Mo1i. Il�. 54

reached Wuguocheng.

Of course, this is clearly a metaphorical representation of the demise of the two emperors (a double-headed dragon), picked apart by North­ erners, who squabble with each other until only one is left. It more or less reflects the Chinese attitude about the loose confederations of tribes that ranged along its northern border. This presages Huizong's death, but it also brings into relief the fact that this description of the two emperors as they wander in their journey far into the north is certainly about more than simply geography. The phrases "not like the world of humans" bulei renshi � $j{Ai!t and "not like the roads traveled by normal humans" bulei changren xingdao � $j{ 't A1tl! are more than simple uses of comparative forms, for which there are many synonymic constructions. I presume that they actually mean "not in the category of" referring to the deeply rooted cultural predilec­ tion for classifying the world by categories; that is, there is no match for what they see in the world of "people": a world that does not exist be­ yond tianxia. As I remarked at the beginning of this chapter, Huizong's last days are marked by crossing boundaries. The world grows stranger the farther they travel from China. This strangeness is introduced into the text gradually, most often in the fonn of ethnography a putative account of local customs. The narrator remarks casually, for instance, on two inci­ dents from the New Year's period. The first is the "free steal" day, when women are allowed to steal anything, "On the third day of the month, by custom the Jin take this day as 'free steal day,' when all kinds of goods implements, tools, dishes, valuables, jewels, and clothing are stolen by women. Official law does not prohibit this. People who are in charge of households simply have to keep careful watch, and if a thief 54. Ibid., 28b, 99b.

STEPHEN H . WEST

-=- El , � 1i1 111, JlA iC. El �:.&t1� El , - m1t4h 3Ja., Jt- t , *-Jut, :fJt"*,A.. ,fA -i-. 't a- :f �, 'f � * � � m � !Of , Ja .J.. , J}Ij � ifQ It.t. 55 More strange customs are

comes, they laugh and send them on their way" lJJ

noted on the night of the lantern festival: On the fifteenth day lanterns were strung up on the streets of the market, but there was no music. One only heard the sound of metal drums ringing in the sky, all the way until dawn.

Hu women and hu girls hold hands and enter wineshops.

If they encounter someone that strikes their fancy, they immediately fall in to­ gether and go home with them. Elders, aunts and uncles, husbands and boy­ friends, fathers and mothers

none put a stop to it. Sort of like "free steal day."

+ .E. E1 , #f rjf &'kJ.f-, _ if * , 1!L M 1t it � :k , fit at i1Q e. . �Jl � �Jl*, _.f­ A. ��� tF . � of ;t::t, I!Ptf�i1Q •. 't ft, Jf #, * 15 , Si:.. -ll}: , Iij' :f �. J4:$.:1t 1113- Iii] . 56 The quaintness of these rituals (which find a pale reflection in the pairing up of couples at New Year's in the Song) 57 loses its playfulness as they move farther toward the periphery and more distant from recognizable customs. The next two New Years are much more baleful.

The description of the first festival is prefaced by a description of their digs (literally)

in

Wuguocheng, where they huddle in earthen pits to

ward off the cold. "At night," the narrator tells us, "there are no candles or lights. They simply collect water from a stone pit north of the city and mix it like oil.5 8 Sometimes they squeeze moka sprouts together or squeeze together wild grasses to make torches. These they soak with water from the stone pit, and when they light it on fire it is as bright as

.J.. 1t .��, fftJIA 1i'I .tHi.;lt. ki ;t}f. tf �7j<., �.t� ab, �;fLiih� � � If] Jf :¥-;fL � j( .re., JlA ki JjVj<. it.t, 1.,5 j( !l}J ;'t -{(n � .59 The final

a lamp"

New Year mentioned is marked, as before, with local customs that por­ tray a society without any understandable ritual propriety. The descrip­ tion begins simply enough, with a point of correspondence between Chinese and border customs: "On New Year's morn, these people also fete each other and they cross their arms(?), and take singing and danc55· Ibid., I7a, 94a. 56. Ibid., 17b, 94a. 57. One also has to wonder if this is an implicit critique of the way that restrictions were lifted in the capital on festival days, when women "of good families" were allowed to go into winehouses unaccompanied, to gamble, and to drink. 58. Perhaps a natural well of oil? 59. Na1!Jinjiwen, 29b, IOoa.

Crossing Over

59 7

ing, talking and laughing as their ritual. They also put out lanterns on Prime Eve

which are all moka stems from the stone pit" iE .R .1!.

El , Jt.

A. # l� Jt l' , l� Jl.J'A -f- x;Jr{, '*1t, 1!� � � . .f.. 7t 1f # 5�Jf·, �b � J;;t � fJf � ii h� 1lt -I/!.. But the day is also one in which another custom

occurs that is repellent to our narrator: "On this day the boys and girls of

this area join in marriage. In each case they pair up on the basis of similarities of height, coloring, and looks, and the male carries the female home on his back. They don't bother with the guidance of parents or

� El Jt. � � *1;-11\}. � JlA � 1t. @. if l� l- ::t � � �. � m Jl * t1ii •. /F �li x. �*�-¥-J QI -l/!..60 This last phrase is of course a

go-betweens"

muted reference to the famous passage of the

Mencius,

"If one does not

await upon the order of the parents or the words of the go-between, but bores holes or cracks to peek at another, or jumps over the wall to force compliance, then the parents and all of the people of the state will all

/F#x. �z4p-, *�-¥-Jz -t , 4tK F* l� a, *� x. � A. Jij' �Z. The Mencian phrase, which indicates how

consider that one base" � , JJIj

l�

"base" they are, is paired here with the phrase "not to bother with"

btifan,

which seems a rather offhanded comment to indicate indifference on the part of the society about the role of parents. This accentuates the for­ mation of a reproductive pair on the basis of superficial, outward quali­ ties, with no thought given to family status or the moral nature of either individual. What we are presented with here is a stage of human existence that is more or less represented as a natural process of bonding based on the observation of animal species. At the end of their j ourney, Huizong and his son have reached a point where human civilization (as defined in

tianxia)

has run out and the world of nature has claimed dominion over

that of culture. This is no more clearly demonstrated than in a scene of worship of local spirits that comes in the text just a few pages before Huizong's demise. This is the second scene of human sacrifice and the consump­ tion of human blood, but it is coupled here with a surprising twist: On some day we saw several hundred natives on the street, carrying knives, beating on a large drum, leading two oxen, on top of which were seated a male and a female human, both decapitated. Flowing blood covered their bodies, and it was said, "these are used for sacrifice." The crowd followed into the of­ ficial courtyard, where they rang a metal drum, brandished their knives and

60. Ibid., 29b-30a, IOoa-b.

STEPHEN H . WEST swords. The implements were all arrayed, and the tribal elder knelt down words were incomprehensible

his

and in a little while they took the bodies off the

backs of the oxen and minced up their flesh and put it into a pit. Then they slew an ox, too, and minced its flesh and put it in the pit, and then they were done. Suddenly from among the rafters of the courtyard there was a sound like thunder, and several small boys clad in woven-hair clothes shinnied down the posts from the rafters. They were carrying bows and arrows, and they danced and sang and jumped up and down. We looked closer, and they each had three eyes. They picked up the dishes and went to the pit, took out the gore, and ate as fast as they could. In a second they had flnished half of it. When they were done, they sang and danced as they came before the two emperors, then prostrated themselves on the ground in obeisance. Everyone was taken aback and said, "We have sacriflced to these spirits for years on end; their spiritual might is unfathomable. And now they make obeisance only after seeing the two of you. Why?" The two emperors turned around to avoid them, and only then did the lads arise, and then go up the posts and into the rafters where they made a noise and then disappeared. Everyone then portioned out the remaining gore and ate it. The emperor and Egiti inquired into it in a more detailed manner, and the crowd said, "These are the local spirits ofJuncongzhou, and they bring calamity or fortune. Each year we offer up to them, by custom, humans and oxen. If they are pleased, then the winds and the rain are timely. If they are angered, however, thunder peals and lightning strikes, they kill people with stones, shoot them with arrows. They have also taken hold of people and chewed them, sucking out their blood, and they have gnawed on their skin and flesh. We don't know why they

� EI , #r-lr 8fJ Ji.it Ef .:lot, #""* JJ, _kit, *.::.. 4- , � - 1l -*, Iij- fIi" Jt�, ii.i.¥i�jjt . 'idf) Jll:.� #. 4I A.at� 'if nt r, ���it, . 7J �ll . �.mz.i/i 1Il , 1$-k!f�, ;; lf � ar�, jI' ill m 4- 'f.t ft lfstJtA. r, -ft4Jt � , tl.Jjt 'f, 4+� -4-, #4Jt � , 4+tl.Jjt 'flf. . �ntJ:.� r"t -i-��\7jj, Ji.*��it,J'5l., m � ��l.i.1Q r, #" ij *-JU�� 4fIs�. lU::f!Lz, Iij- -=- I§l , #" S-, m Jjt 'f lfstJu. � -¥--t-. �fl ill , • Jt.f, -t-*, "It. � .::.. * nt, !f ihHt. 4I A. Iij- . '101;1 ��:ff )J{ i!t"t-, Jt�� � ar illlJ , � Ji..::..A. 7Hf1k, :f 9;\7 f.;r t;t. J'::" * lm �.Jaic.., ,J' 5l. 7} �, 1t1tntu. A. � 1'F�, "* :f Ji. . 4I A.*� Ju. � "�z. * 1!- r-r it. r", Jt 1¥, 4I t=1 : r Jll:. 7} � � U+I '±' :ff, fit $, �:fir. -If � ffl � -(111 m A. 4-. .j. JIll J!(. f,f,] �at, � JIll jj -4 't' *, �A. �x � , MA. �x it 'f fJt A. '" '!&. Jt Ju., 4+ "I} Jt 1JJt. , �!f.::..A. :f 9;\7 f.;r�.61

have decided to bow to the two of you."

.

One can imagine the repugnance felt by the two emperors, both at the actual act of sacrifice and at being the object of respect by such alien spirits. We can read this passage as confimlation of the necessity for the

61. Ibid., 29b, IOoa.

Crossing Over

599

Chinese for the sustenance of life in the north. The childlike spirits feeding on the blood and gore of humans (and the cannibalism of the supplicants as well) invoke the bloodshed of warfare. In the other major metaphor of the text, the overflowing well, there is the idea presented that the fringes of China are constantly caught in tides of barbarism and civilization that ebb and flow across the northern plains: Next in their travels they came to an old temple, of the kind that has no outer perimeter. There were only several stone statues of humans, all similar to tribal chieftains among the Hu. They were very cleverly incised and carved. Egiti said, "Our old ministers pass down the legend that this is none other than a shrine to Li Mu, a general of the Spring and Autumn period. " He did not know why the temple was constructed. In front of the hall that held the [main] statue was a well, walled with stone. Its surface glittered like agate and it was hundreds of feet deep. Each time the Han prevailed, then the water in the well dried up and vanished. When the Hu prevailed, then its waters overflowed. Toss a clod or

;k�t � - * Ii�ii. z$Jt, t(t� -b {�it A- , � * t}J 'f ilt-k, �,(U1 -tP1. FliJlt� a : r **�af.t, JI:. 7} $;fkat4�:f3f.4t¥l. on ;f �I1�liz � . Jt{� i." nt � #, � -bWl, Jt mHf � ���, )� {:J ;t, *��, JlIJ #)jt#�: t}J � , JlIJ #)jt�i�; YX .±. -b ·Rz, JlIJ � � � 4-I!JL .62 a stone into it, and it made a sound like an ox bellowing.

In the decidedly binary (Yin-Yang) world of the Chinese cosmos (which produces this text), there is a kind of perverse need of each for the other. The vampire-like spirits of the north feed, in the larger picture, on the blood of China, and their obeisance can be seen as a metaphorical instantiation of what is mentioned overtly in several places in the text that it was the weak and turbid ethical natures of the emperors, and of Huizong in particular, that provoked the Jurchen attack. Here, at the edges of the world, things are backwards: respect is given them not as the rulers of the Song, but as players in a recurrent drama, a historical necessity in the constant cycle of warfare. 63 The alien nature of this world extends even to objects. During the same period that the emperors witness this bloodfest, the town is visited by traders, who are designated as Meixunbu daren ;#t4.g� kA., elders of 62. Xuanheyishi, 95-96. 63. One should notice the frequent comparisons drawn by the emperors themselves with the last rulers of the Latter Jin and of the Liao, all of whom were emperors captured by nottherners and all of whom were implicated in the fall of their states.

600

STEPHEN H . WE ST

the Meixun tribes,64 "who came to Juncongzhou to trade. There were sixty or seventy in the group, all dressed in woven-hair clothing. The things they were trading were unrecognizable. They drank goat's blood for wine and ate raw ox skins as though gnawing on lotus root or sugarcane [and gradually entering the realm of delight]. They left after staying a few days. Even the natives here called them "a strange species." .f.. ;� � 1'1'1 rp lb . Jt. i!fJ. ;;{if -k � + A.. , )J- � '&-R. fir lb 411 � ;r:: � .

Jt.A.. -ik ..f-.mz.�A � �� , 1t"!t 4- Jk �11"l�t;i. }bit E1

Jl. ;fi� .65

1i ·k .±.A.. ;# � �

In the curious inversion of this world, Huizong's death can be seen both as a logical extension of blood sacrifice and as one more incom­ prehensible act in a world in which even material objects cannot be identified nor even named. The repugnance of the act stamps the alien culture as violent, without proper ritual, without hierarchies, without families. It is a cannibalistic world, one that feeds on a mixture of human and animal gore, people and beasts indiscriminately melded in an un­ differentiated mass. Huizong's corpse becomes part of this hole of death, his body turned to practical use; just as the blood of his soldiers fed the earth and spirits of the north, his own body now feeds a primitive and necessary firelight in the darkness. This journey is marked in its narrative flow by many points of change. Huizong and Qinzong are stripped of their official robes and given, first, the robes worn by Jurchen soldiers and officials, and then those of commoners; the empress and empress dowager are given clothes worn by "ordinary women." The text is full of Jurchen who turn out to be Chinese, of people switching sides. It is about how women become empowered to save whole branches of the imperial clan, and about the switching of gender. Each of these highly symbolic moments in the text marks a movement from one world to another, the crossing of certain boundaries. With each of these crossings, the shapes of Huizong and Qinzong undergo distinct changes, marking their decline from human to ghost, a change that precedes their actual deaths. When they first start out on their journey from Kaifeng they are clothed in the same

64. Daren is a term often applied to the leaders of northern tribes; its use in works on exotic geographies is usually confined to meaning something like "giant." 65. Nanjinjiwen, 29b, IOoa.

Crossing Over

601

garments as their captors, simple blue robes. Yet they are immediately recognizable: Eighteenth day, morning. The cavalrymen pressed them to leave. They led four horses to give to the two emperors and empresses for them to ride on their northern journey. Neither of the empresses was able to ride, so an underling helped set them in their saddles. Dowager Zheng was still ill, and she traveled a dozen miles draped in her saddle. There were several elders by the side of the road, who wept when they saw the party and said, "Our emperors, father and son, depart to the north. And us, we common folk, when will we see peace?" As they did, they offered up two containers of pottage. The emperors and em­ presses divided it up to eat, but it was so coarse they could not choke it down. The cavalry in retinue number more than 500, and they were clothed in exactly the same color as the empresses. Not knowing how the elders recognized them,

[1,

the narrator(?) / the emperors(?)] questioned them, and they said, ''We have

heard for a long time that the imperial retinue was going to go to Yanjing. Now

+ A El , .Jf-, � � ill H. * � ,� �;::.. 0$- Jifi 3ft .z.;lIAt. ;::.. Jifi � 1i��, � � .rii 3ftZ. .:k. Jifi � � � , 1:k� Ut +�!L �� ;tit)(�. JLzi.;i r a : r .:t 0$- )( -r31:.-!-, � � Ef *1, f.;J" El JL :k. ..if ? J � *J:.-f&. :l ;::.. �. 0$- Jifi 71'" *Z. $. � 1i� r P/!l. � � -15t�t::t .E.. Ef�A.. �:;a�;::.. o$- � - � . � � )( �f.;J" Ti1 1��. r", Z..z.: r � �7-.. 6t'l * ;';�A� ,*, � JL diT � � fiiJ , !t�t1Z. J 66

we see that their visage is different, that's how we knew it."

...

This episode takes place on the eighteenth day of the third month. By "some day in the fourth month," they are described as having "fllthy clothes that were covered in lice and their hair had knotted into a jji ,�t }]�Hll g) .-f;t..67 greasy matC?) just like convicts"

*JJIlJ;\iJl\!t��,

�

They are worn out, broken down, no longer "looking human" � � A. *J . 68 By the sixth month, traveling through the desert, the very char­

acteristics that had identified them to the old men by the side of the road were gone: "Fifth day, sixth month. . . . At the hottest time of the day, high noon, they got to rest in the shade of some trees, At that time the young emperor was

29 sui and the Grand Elder was 46 sui, but both were

withered and black, and no longer had the features of a person of nobility"

� -171 1i. El .

.

.

-+ rErH��at, �llj!ff,tFt{*.�-. at �- '*"

66. Ibid., Sa.S9c/parallel passage in Xuanheyishi, So. 67. Nanjinjiwen, I2b.91d. 6S. Ibid., 13a.92a.

. -

+ Jt�,

602

STEPHEN H . WEST

:kJ:.� + * ,j., # � #�� .w" • .ftt-}"'Jfj � .69 Finally,

en route to their third place of confinement in the third month of the next year, the remaining three prisoners the two emperors and Dowager Zheng reach the nadir of their existence, turned into ghosts: On some day the way they took was stony, strewn with boulders and uneven. One person accompanying the group was someone from "behind the moun­ tains" whose speech could be roughly made out. He told the emperors, "This place is the foundation of the great wall." They traveled 70 miles a day, but in fact it was really

80

or 90. The feet of the two emperors and the Grand

Dowager blistered, then split so that it was hard to even take a single small step. Some of the retainers carried them along on their backs. Then, they gradually entered the desert where the wind and frost was bitter and biting, and the cold that assailed a person was no different than that of dead winter. The emperors' and empress's clothes were all single layered and thin, and this was coupled with hunger and the hardship of the j ourney. At some time a pestilence swept through, and they lay prostrate in an old building. After seven or eight days they got a little better, and the overseers constantly pushed them to go on. The emperors and empress

after their illness their bones poked out here and there

against their skin. Moreover, there was nothing that tasted right to them in food or drink, and they looked just like ghosts. The retainers made a wooden frame, covered it with reeds and grass stalks, and carried them on their shoulders. They

� El : i'JT4tJt�.;r: 4'-, ;ff -�At:t, � JdtA.., 1;-ti�i7fm:, 1; -r * a : r Jt1t-k�*-Jt. J El 4t-l:.- -t- Jr, 'f ;ff AlL -t- Jr . .::.. * 1l ± Jf> , Jt 'r JJi 1IJ , 1"" "!F .#, ��:t 1! -t ilii 4t. nt itJf A)!l � -t Jt, Jit�·Ii·It-,?��Ul:A.. ,?�� )J�. * Jf>*�", if, * J'x fdltM..f*. nt �11', ��Wd; "- 'f . -l:.- A El fllf�!f�;t. fi:t � nt1l-(,'{, * Jf> � * j: . , 5l�i! o -fk1t, AA.-kn.t.�, �:t11'��, rJ JX * 1f., -if-ti1Q 4ti�Mt�!l.70

would pass into oblivion and then come out of it again.

One can, indeed, read the progress of the two emperors as a trip through various layers of hell. This would explain many of the features of the text, for instance the frequent references to their inability to eat and drink without causing some form of vital illness. Time and again, they gag on the food provided to them, throw it up, have blisters form in their mouths, or find the water too noxious to drink. They witness two human sacrifices, and in the first they share the mixture of human 69. Ibid., 14b.92d/parallel passage in Xuanheyishi, 87, which give the ages of 22 and 56 sui, respectively. 70. Nanjinjiwen, 18b.94d/parallel passage in Xuanheyishi, 90.

,

i

, ,

,

, , , ,

Crossing Over and animal gore. In doing so, they go beyond the point of return, since one can never return from the world of Yin if one partakes of the food prepared there.71 In this sense, we can also read the frequent references to family members and subjects preparing or sending them food along their journey as a form of ancestor worship, nourishing the souls of their departed kinsmen. There is no need to see "hell" (if that is how we can translate it) as a world any less concrete or manifest than the world in which we live our daily lives. Buddhism, of course, preaches, "All common ways arise from the mind

heaven above, the world of people, earthly prisons, hungry

ghosts, and animals all arise from the self."72 The representation of their travails has all of the marks of punishment, including those of hungry ghosts, and brings into relief the issue of personal retribution. It is this personal nature of retribution that allows

Na'!fin jiwen

to

become the major part of the Xuanheyishls second half. No matter what it was in its original form, there is something in this text that allows it to be shaped by the

Xuanheyishi

and incorporated into its conglomerate

text, namely, that the deeply personal nature of Huizong's travails can be highlighted as part of a larger cosmic process. This is presaged in the opening passage of the Xuanheyishi: Uttered in rhyme: For the moment I cease thrumming the zither on my knee, To idly peruse past and present in volumes of affairs gone by; Oft we sigh in admiration at how worthy rulers labored at diligence and thrift, And profoundly lament middling lords who worked at wild debauchery. Highest harmony stems from the start from drawing close worthy sages, Cumulative disorder comes always from favoring flattering ministers; To tell all there is to know of the many events of rise and fall, There must be a true listener to hear of high mountains and flowing waters.

71. See Shen Zongxian's l7c if< :€ excellent study, Songdai minjianyouming shijie guan *1-1;. � fill . � i!t.rf.1it (Taipei: Shangding shuju, 1993), 144-48. 72. The Fo shuo zhangzhefa Zhi qijing 1�llt.-k*�;t ��, cited in ibid., 145.

STEPHEN H . WEST From far, far in the distant past, unbroken to the present

from then to now,

three thousand years, in a hundred, a thousand, a myriad affairs, the times of

I

J

sunlit breezes and clear moons were few indeed, the times of cloudy rains and dark days were many; few the periods of regalia of robes and caps, icons of culture, many those of buckler and spear, of campaigns and battles. All you need to know of the two paths of proper rule and disorder will be found in the single principle of Yin and Yang. It is the Central Kingdom, the Proper Lord, the Principle of Heaven

these belong to Yang. The Yi and the Di, the little

man, the desires of humans

these are of the category of Yin. And those times

when the brightness of Yang rules in affairs? The Central Kingdom is solid and secure, the Proper Lord is in his position; from heaven come the portentous and timely signs of sweet dew and auspicious clouds, on earth are the lucky portents of sweet springs and magic fungi. All under heaven and the hundred surnames all enjoy a proper rule of great peace. When the turbidity of Yin rules, the Yi and the Di cut loose, the little man gets his way; from heaven there are the calamitous portents of tailless comets and solar eclipses, on earth there are the trans formations of locust plagues and starvation. The hundred surnames under heaven suffer wandering and dislocation. This Yin, this Yang

they are tied solely to the true or deviant heart's designs of that one man:

the emperor.73

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In colloquial literature of the Song era, this suffering and dislocation take one beyond the pale of China proper, beyond the cultural world adumbrated by tianxia. In the proper world, heaven, earth, and people are tied together by a flow of qi that takes its shape in wu #J regular, nameable objects or events that are formed by the proper .iE 't mixture of Yin and Yang; things of similar nature form like categories � that 73.

Xuanheyishi, I.

i

'i j

t •

Crossing Over resonate with each other to create naturally harmonic relationships

� � :.ttl � , � � :.ttl "' .

Political order is the perfection of these rela­

tionships in the realm of human institutions, in a cultural world governed by Yang.

Tianxia, however, is the area adumbrated by these relationships;

it includes as part of its world order a periphery of acquiescent peoples who pay tribute to the center. Their acquiescence and respect is not a product of direct pressure or military containment, but a natural feeling that arises from the influence of the overwhelming moral worth of the emperor and the desire to emulate his virtue. As we have seen, however, the peripheral area is by nature unstable and easily becomes an arena of contestation. Whatever the practical nature that brings that contest forth, metaphorically it is an area (as shown by the story of the overflowing well) in which Yin and Yang are often in flux. Indeed, the idea that the well dries up when China is in dominion and overflows when the Hu are in power seems to indicate that this area is not meant to be controlled

it is either dry or flooding,

never just full. Beyond this periphery, however, and into the most distant reaches of the emperors' journey, we move beyond the area of flux to the area of Yin itself. As we have seen, its minions drink blood, use their dead for lamp oil, and trade in unrecognizable goods. It represents the opposite binary pole of the center of China. This is carefully worked out in the text. In the marginal zones of their journey, the emperors encounter a world of half-formed objects. On the way to their penultimate stop at Juncongzhou, they witness a falconer "of 40, who killed a large pheasant, ate its head and drank its blood. In a flash his bones and flesh both split apart, and his stomach and back stretched open, and the knife he held in his hand did not fall to the ground as though it had a life of its own, and suddenly he ascended into

..f Tm +ft, �:k. Mt, * $.. 1", -ik.$.. .mz., :i! �, -t � 4ft}., JJt 1l' mJ � , f;ft�4" J] � � �!t, � m Jt1t-;k, -Ji}.-Ji}..rQ -i;. likewise, on his return trip to Yanjing through the same territory,

the sky, and slowly went off"

Qinzong witnesses birds who peck at foxes, then turn into vermin and burrow in the snow. But some of them remain incompletely formed, with "rat heads and bird's wings"

�1!i jt 1" .�.x.. There was also a "great

eagle with tiger's head, serrated canine teeth, long talons, a 30-foot wingspan, a red tail like a tiger, that seized a wolf in each claw"

- :k. It,

JJt 1", . :t , -k�, iQ JA- -=.. 5t ft, � # �JJt, � Jt�,*-�tt, as well as a "fish with two legs that looks like a fulvous duck or gull" 1f :�" � @. :

Jt�·k �.

, .;

606

STEPHEN H . WEST

What makes the

Naf!iinjiwen such a successful part of the Xuanheyishi

is the way in which it creates a congruence between geographical dis­ tance, a descent into hell, and a cosmological move from the binary pole of Yang to that of Yin, from the Yang-centered world of

tianxia to

the

Yin world outside of tianxia. There one finds no correspondence to the

(bulei renshz), the emperors move along paths "normal people" do not use (bulei changren xingzhi dao), and as they move through a horizontal world that

world of "people." The land does not resemble the world of people

replicates the vertical descent into hell, the emperors become ghosts who no longer find a match in human form

(bulei renxiniJ. Naf!iinjiwen creates

a powerful vision of the pain of retribution, wrought personally on Huizong for his faults as a ruler and as a man. Like the "minor histories" it is interested in a just balance between his excesses as a man libertine, possessor

collector,

and his punishment by loss and banishment. But

unlike the circumlocutive and understated histories, which venture only to suggest that there was a correspondence between the births and deaths of Wuqimai, Jin Taizong, and Huizong,

Naf!iinjiwen

details the

traumatic end of Huizong, reveling in the exquisite detail of his torment, his torture, and his final death.

While we may want to see this only as fiction, it does represent as real a version of Huizong's death as do more standard sources. What I mean by this is that we should consider the boundary between

xiaoshuo

shi and

more from the point of view of the site of production and

rhetoric than from the nature of sources. We are becoming more aware of the extent to which even basic records are tainted by ideology. We

4- � Continuation of the Long Version of the MitTOr of History (Xu ZiZhi tongjian changbian � 1f n; i!

have but to look at the way Li Tao's

� -k _)

is colored by the controversy over the New Policies of Wang

Anshi to see that even the blankest of sources are never free from the ideological control of the editor.74 It is highly unlikely that any form of historical record-keeping that went through a process of editing was ever free from the exercise of ideological inscription. Certainly the level

74 . See Charles Hartman, "The Making of a Villain: Ch'in Kuei and Tao­ hsiieh," Harvard Journal rj' Asiatic Studies 58.1 (1998): 59-146; and idem, "Bibliographic Notes on Sung Historical Works: Topical Narrativesfrom the Long Draft Continuation That Aids Administration (Hsu T!IfI-chih I'ung-chien ch'ang-pien chi-shipen-mo * _ �i!;&t) by Yang Chung-liang �1+ It and Related Texts," Journal rj'Song-Yuan Studies 28 (1998): 177-200.

Crossing Over of that inscription

will vary from source to source, but when those

sources are formed into In one real and basic

shi they undergo a profound rhetorical shaping. sense, shi is a form of tautology bounded by

homological rules of genre. The ethical bases of standard history are too well-known to rehash, but we seldom pay attention to the actual forms of argument (based on Yin-Yang cosmology, Confucian worldview, and so on) and how they negotiate between discovery or invention (the pur­ ported revealing of truth) and memory: an appeal to the values of the Sage-Kings as an arbitrating ideology. The speeches and edicts, the modes of commentary and description all purport to reveal a historical situation anew, but in actuality they simply confinn a pre-existent con­ clusion already in play about the value and shape of those incidents. That is, they put their facts into a narrative form that allows them to be shaped according to a ritualized underlying pattern of unity. Constituents of this homology are of course linguistic models and ethics; this accounts for the vehement rejection of the Naf?Jinjiwen by the Siku tfyao editors; it both violates the linguistic boundaries of the

shi

form and also runs dead

against the high-culture moral abhorrence of violence. More traditional and conservative sources betray, in fact, a deep anxiety about combining violence with language. Violence usually falls into the same category as ghosts and spirits, which Confucius did not talk about

.:r- ::f�:

their

presence is acknowledged but unspoken, since the very act of linking them linguistically would involve a deep betrayal of moral and social conSCIence. •

But

Nar?Jinjiwen does

revel in violence and if, as I have suggested, it

stems from a site of production that is implicated with storytelling and performance, it foregrounds violence as a form of pleasure and enjoy­ ment in a way that is nearly diametrically opposed to the constraints of

shi.

In fact, violence and pleasure are linked in many of the world's lit­

eratures (particularly performance literature). This linkage implies, how­ ever, that violence can simply be reduced to sets of linguistic or aesthetic acts. This is certainly suggested in the allegorical interpretation of Hui­ zong's journey through hell, which we may view as a verbalization or poeticization of the ordeal of torture and retribution. In a real and fun­ damental sense, however, pain inflicted by violence or torture cannot be reduced to a linguistic act, since it is essentially pre-verbal and perhaps, as Elaine Scarry says, it destroys language itself. Still, we cannot escape the simple fact that the representation of pain is always bound to a linguistic act. The way we can escape the trap of aestheticization, and the way that

,

,

608

STEPHEN H . WEST

Na1!Jinjiwen escapes that trap, is simultaneously to show violence and pain as strong social and moral indicators what is accepted in language cannot be denied in reality, and therefore must have some basis in the social or ethical order. It is, I suggest, turned to use as a hermeneutic, a way of discovering, a method to reach an epistemological goal. The pleasure lies in the aesthetic structuring of the allegorical tropes that de­ fine the descent of Huizong and Qinzong through hell, but the reality of the text is one that confirms a pre-existent social and cultural sentiment. It articulates the deeply embedded belief in Chinese society in bao lit, reciprocity, repayment, retribution, and so on you reap what you sow. In this sense, violence is the other version of court rhetoric, the suasive arguments of shi, which it resembles in its tautological manipulation of artifice, power, and agency. It is in this sense that Na'!Jinjiwen tells a story that people can see as "true" even if not "real." It recounts suitable personal torture for a man who caused the deaths of thousands of common people in his desire to collect the world, it depicts punishment for his sexual excesses, and it creates a metaphorically powerful story to explain a loss that was un­ equalled in history in its violence and impact on the lives of millions of people. It is a version that makes of Huizong a failure larger than life itself because of its power as a proof of an already-concluded belief. While the Na'!Jin jiwen may be excessive in its detail, shameless in its representation of violence and torture, it was capable of exercising out­ right condemnation in a way that heightened the importance of the moment because it brought the listener or reader uncomfortably close to the pain that was thought to lie in retribution. Standard histories were critical but circumspect, burying their criticism in the hallowed tradition of suasive moral arguments about the nature of kingship. They told a story that high tradition could accept and perpetuate. But the Xuanheyishi and the Na1!Jinjiwen created, on behalf of their listeners and readers, a version of history that resonated with deeply held beliefs about the na­ ture of a universe beyond China, about how humans and the cosmos were linked, and about the terrors of life in a world of death. People could accept the palpable terror of the text as the unfolding of a truth that governed their own lives, could enjoy it for its excesses, and could use it to explain the workings of a world in a way that formal historians never saw fit to do.

Index

Index

Acu-moxa therapy, 285, 287-88, 309, 352 Acupuncture, see Acu-moxa therapy Advisory Office, 35-40; model for, 136; and medical education, 280-81 Ai Zhongru, 421

Albumsfor the Emperor's Perusal in the Xuanhe, 476, 478n44, 5II Aligu (Qingtang ruler), 95-99

Bao Yiqing, 38 "Barbarian" alliances, 78-80, 91nI9, 98 Bell-chimes, 217-19, 232, 412, 413, 417-18, 422, 425 Bickford, Maggie, xvii, 21, 25, 54n77, 357, 381, 382, 453-513 Biyong Academy, 10, 13, 37; closing of, 55; steles for, 238-40, 246-50, 258, 260

An Lushan rebellion, 85

Blacklisting, 43-44, 57, 134, 136, 141, 151-67. See also Factionalism

An Shan, III

Blessed Field Houses, 296

An Tao, 108-10

Bloch, Maurice, 403n29

An Yaochen, 126-28

Bo Juyi, 262

Analects, 181, 182, 212-13. See also Con­

Bo Yi, 185

An Kang, 39

fucianism

Annals ofBrush and Ink, 508-9 Astronomy, Bureau of, 229-30, 232, 238n25, 259, 584

Auspicious Dragon Rock (painting), 457, 464-66, 469, 476, 477, 491, 494-96

Bol, Peter K., xvii, 18, 22, 54, 132n3, 169-70, 173-205, 482n55

Book of Changes, 181, 182, 256, 294, 312 Book ofMusic, 212, 214 Book of Rites (Li/i), 182, 212, 221, 410-II, 437

Auspicious-omen paintings, 261, 455,

Borges, Jorge Luis, 593

476-80, 485-86 Authenticity, 498-513

Bo Yi Shu Qi miao bei, 264 Bubonic plague, see Plague

Authorship, 490-98; surrogate, 381, 382,

Buddhism, 339-40; and Daoism, 13, 252, 269, 355; suppression of, 174, 257,

454-55, 498 Autocracy, 173-205

Baishi daoren gequ, 399 Ban Gu, 429

329, 339-46 Cahill, James, 456n3, 458n?, 464n17, 475n42

612

Index

326n6 Cai Bian, 100, 106, IIO, 125; factionalism of, 135-36, 143--'44 Cai Jing, 18, 175, 195, 487, 549, 590-92; and educational system, 5, 10, 32, 37, 137, 239-40; refonns of, 9, 10, 18-19, 33-60, 278; dismissal of, 10, 44-50, 164; critics of, II, 26, 27, 31-33, 136nn, 166; retirement of, 14, 54-55; biog­ raphy of, 26, 34, 48, 57, 517-64; purges by, 43-44, 57, 136-37, 144, 151-63; factionalism of, 45, 51, 57; and frontier campaigns, 78-79, 84, II5-17; rise of, 109-10, II6, 123, 125, 126, 136, 150, 191; Zhao Tingzhi on, IIo-II; and Tong Guan, 124nII5, 127, 539; musical beliefs of, 210, 395, 43945; calligraphy of, 229-30, 238, 262, 472-73, 508; poetry of, 233nI2, 380, 548n54; as Huizong's editor, 235, 240, 241; and Lin Lingsu, 329, 334; and Li Tao, 532, 535, 541, 544n45, 545-51 Cai Que, 95, 133-34, 136, 149, 534 Cai Shu, 238, 254, 258 Cai Tao, 263, 445, 490, 512, 562; Guoshi houbu by, 503-4, 506, 562; biography of, 544-45; Tieweishan congtan, 581-82 Cai Tiao, 4nI, 16, 129nI22, 566 Cai Xiang, 267, 269 Cai You, 438-39, 442, 445, 522, 528n27 Cai Yuanding, 214, 225-26 Calligraphy: schools for, 40, 42, 45, 180, 262; Cai Jing's, 229-30, 238, 262, 472-73, 508; on steles, 229-31, 240, 245, 259-66, 507; dragon-emblem, cloud-seal, 252-53; styles of, 259-62; Su Shi's, 261, 264n90, 268; Gao­ zong's, 273-74, 51OnI05; paintings with, 456, 464, 466, 471, 481, 489, 494-98, 509-10; scriptorium for, 505-13. See also Slender Gold callig­ Cahill, Suzanne,

raphy

Canon ofSagelY Benefaction, 310-II, 314-19, 322-23 Cao Can, 34-35 Cao Cao, II Cao Xun, 566 Cao You, 39 Cao Zu, 380, 507� Cemeteries, pauper, 22, 32, 40, 41, 278, 297, 302-3, 323 Censorate and Remonstrance Bureau,

132, 135, 142-43, 157 Chaffee, John, xviii 18-19, 23, 27, 31-60, 137nI4, 483 Chao Gongwu, 212 Chao Ruili, 446 Chao, Shin-yi, xviii 20, 23, 24, 294 Chen Chaolao, 48, 541-42 Chen Cheng, 307-8 Chen Cisheng, 147, 156 Chen Dong, 567 Chen Guan, 135, 142, 143, 148, 156, 178 Chen Jun, 529, 538n38, 550 Chen Shidao, 371 Chen Shixi, 144-45 Chen Wenxin, 571 Chen Xiangdao, 212-15, 221 Chen Yang, 208, 212-19, 223-26, 398-99, 413-15, 428, 442 Cheng Hao, 206nI, 213nI6 Cheng, King, 201 Cheng Minsheng, 173, 176-77 Cheng Yi, 7, 206-7, 213nI6 Chenggong, Emperor, 417-18 Chong E, 82, 85, 126 Chong Pu, 103, 105, 126 Chongning temples, 339-43 Chong rites, 255 Choreography, 422, 426, 427, 437. See also Music Chu Hong, 509 Chu Suiliang, 263 Chuang Shang-yen, 263 ,

,

Index Chunhua tie, 261 Civil service examinations, 5, 10-11, 18,

22, 533; and Eight Conducts, 47; meritocracy of, 81, 174, 203-4; re­ quirements for, 181-82; during Shenzong's reign, 183-88; during Zhezong's reign, 189-90; during Huizong's reign, 191-200, 239. See also Education Classic ofFilial Piety, 273-74 "Clientalization," 89-99 Clifford, James, 139n20 Collected Commentaries on the Liji, 221 Compassionate Fields Houses, 296 Complete Perfection Daoism, 356 Confucianism, 18, 207, 570nI9, 607; and Daoism, 22, 252, 256-58, 266; and Huizong's steles, 22, 239-50; and civil service examination, 181-85; musical beliefs of, 209, 395-96, 403-11, 416; numerology of, 223; and Zhenzong's steles, 266-67. See also Analects; Mencius; Mencius; Neo­ Confucianism "Continuing legacy" reforms, 31-32, 45,

54, 56-60 Cranes ofGood Omen (painting), 261, 457, 459-65, 476, 477, 490-91, 494-96 Cui Biao, 39 Cui Wenyin, 574-75 Cultural Revolution, 438 Daguan Era Book ofRitual, 194 Dance, see Choreography Daodqing, see Lao:d Daoism: Maoshan, II, 251; Huizong's support of, 11-13, 21-23, 53-54, 174, 182, 251-58, 326-58; and Buddhism, 13, 252, 269, 355; Divine Empyrean temples of, 20, 197, 238, 251-56, 269-70, 324-58; and Confucianism,

22, 252, 256-58, 266; Lao:d of, 182, 202, 238, 256, 257, 318-19, 349; Zhuangzi of, 182, 256, 294; and Xuanzong, 202; and steles, 250-58, 341, 349-50; Heavenly Felicity tem­ ples of, 252, 256, 342n61; and Zhen­ zong, 252, 256, 333n33, 342n60, 344, 357; and Gaozong, 273, 354-55; and medicine, 275-77; Thunder Rites of, 329; Orthodox One school, 334; and Chongning temples, 339-43; Shen­ xiao, 348; Complete Perfection, 356; and Cai Jing, 543 Daoist Canon, 335, 353-54 Daoxue school, 26, 206-8, 213-14. See also Neo-Confucianism; True Way Learning movement Dashengfu (Office of the Music of Great Brilliance), 397n8, 406, 433,

437-39 Dashengyue (music of great brilliance),

40, 214, 217, 219, 224-25, 382, 395452; Huizong's essay on, 236-37; sources of, 398-99; examples of, 400-401, 448-49; staging of, 401-10; traditional grounding of, 418-27; campaign for, 427-45; decline of, 445-51; and omens, 462-63. See also Music

Dashengyueshu, 417, 435, 442, 444 Davis, Edward, 326n5, 353 Dehong (Buddhist monk), 51 Deng Chun, 20, 488-89, 506-7, 509 Deng Guangming, 325n5 Deng Xunwu, 537, 538n37 Dentistry, 288 Diao Zhongmin, 132n4 Ding Bing, 574 Ding Bingheng, 574 Ding Du, 423 Ding Teqi, 566

Index Ding Wei,

485-86

Examinations,

Divine Empyrean Daoism,

20, 197, 238,

251-56, 269-70, 324-58; temple work for, 338-48; functions of, 348-54; decline of, 354-57. See also Lin Ungsu

Dongdu shilue, 123-24, 209, 213-14, 525-56 Dongjing meng hua lu, 26-27, 398, 581n35, 586, 588-90 Dongzhan (Qingtang ruler), 86-89, 92-93, 95, 96, 107 Dou Yan, 419 Dragon-emblem, cloud-seal calligraphy,

252-53 534-35 Du Fu, 589n50 Du Dagui,

Ebrey, Patricia, xvii,

1-27, 229-74, 382,

483-85, 488-89 456n3, 496-97, 508 Education: Cai Jing's reforms of, 5, 10, 32, 37, 137, 239-40; New Policies for, 31, 42, 180-83; and specialty schools, 42, 45, 47, 55, 180; Three Hall System of, 42, 55, 58, 59, 247, 250, 285-86; expeditures on, 51, 58-59; and Yuanyou faction, 182, 188, 247; purposes of, 247. See also Civil ser­

Ecke, Tseng Yu-ho,

vice examinations; Medical schools Egan, Ronald, xviii ,

21, 233, 361-94, 475,

497 Egiti, 568-70, 579, 598-99 Eight Conducts, Eight Offenses sys­ tem,

47, 55, 236, 238, 241-48, 258,

260 Eight Policies,

193

Eight Punishments,

195

237 Epidemics, 294-95, 305, 332, 350, 356 Etjia gongci, 375, 376 Eight Treasures,

see Civil service exami-

nattons •

131-70; of Cai Jing, 45, 51, 57; of Shenzong, 133; of Wang Anshi, 133, 149, 163; of Zhang Dun, 134-36, 141-45, 147, 158, 161; of Zeng Bu, 135-36, 144-49, 156-57; of Cai Bian, 136, 141-49; during Qinsheng re­ gency, 136, 141-49, 157, 159, 160; language of, 138-41; of Gaozong, 162; of literati, 191. See also Black­

Factionalism,

listing; Yuanyou faction

91nI9 Fan Chunren, 96-98, 155 Fan Zhen, 417, 425-27 Fan Zhixu, 36n8, 38, 340-41, 539-40 Fan Zhongyan, 81, 282 Fang Chen, 541 Fang La rebellion, 14, 17, 55, 123, 197 Fang Que, 221 Fang Xu, 221 Fan Chuncui,

Fang Zhen,

II

161n59 Feng Chen, 39 Feng Ji, 144-45, 156 Feng Jing, 93-94, 370 Feng Xie, Il7-18 Feng Yuan, 422 Fei Gun,

136 Finches and Bamboo (painting), 470-72, 474, 495 Five Categories of Rites, 236, 245-46, 248-50 Five-Colored Parakeet (painting), 261, 457-59, 465, 476, 477, 494-96 Five Dynasties period, 21, 362, 369 Five Phases, 23, 224, 276, 279-80, 308, 318, 320-21 Flower-and-bird paintings, 454, 458, 474-82, 489-91, 513 Finance Planning Commission,

Index Flowering Peach and Dove (painting), 470-71, 491, 494-96, 509-10

Hangyou xinyue tl!fi, 209 Hangzhou, 1-3, 49

C;ansu, 81, 83-85, 126

Hanlin Academy, 377 Hanlin Medical Institute, 282

C;ao Cheng, 41On38

Hanzhou, 17

C;ao, Empress Dowager, see Xuanren,

Harrist, Robert E., Jr., 234nI5, 499n82

Empress Dowager C;aozong, Emperor, 4, 18, 130, 206, 502; enthronement of, 15; as military

Hartman, Charles, xviii, 26, 33, 131nI, 383n33, 468, 473, 501n84, 517-52

leader, 16; and factionalism, 162, 166;

He Lie, 566 He Xian, 417, 419

and Daoism, 273, 354-55; calligraphy

He Zhizhong, 49, 51, 122-23, 306

of, 273-74, 51On105; steles of,

Health care, see Public health

273-74; musical beliefs of, 398nI3;

Heavenly Felicity temples, 252, 256,

Annals o/'Brush and Ink of, 508-9 C;enyue Park, 3, 14, 24, 239n25, 380, 582, 587 C;oldschmidt, Asaf, xviii, 18, 19, 22, 27, 41, 275-323 C;ong Chun, 301n88 C;ong C;uai, 108, 142, 144, 156 C;ong Maoliang, 522, 528, 541 C;ong Yuan, 213, 214 C;oossaert, Vincent, 328nI3 C;reat Sovereign of Long Life, 251-52, 329, 336, 342, 349 C;reen Deity, 423

342n61 Heavenly Peace Longevity temples, 339-43 Hehuang, annexation of, 83, 84-94, 110, 117-19, 125-30 Henan region, 85, 88, 98, 105, 112, 115, 118-25, 244

Hibiscus and Golden Pheasant (painting), 261, 466-69, 473, 481, 488, 492-96, 498 Hippocrates, 294 Hired Service System, 10, 37, 41, 59-60, 188

"C;reen Sprouts" program, 180

Hong Mai, 13-14, 337, 357, 522-26, 528,

C;u Kaizhi, 509 C;uangzong, Emperor, 502

541, 551 Horse trade, 85, 94, 108

C;uizhang (Qingtang ruler), 96-98

Hospitals, 32, 37, 41, 51, 59, 277-78; history of, 295-96; Poorhouse Sys­

C;uo Kui, 92 C;uo Tianxin, 48, 51

Guoshi houbu, 503-4, 506, 562 C;uwei Stockade, 87, 88, 91

tem for, 297-301, 323. See also Public health Hu Anguo, 207 Hu Yuan, 209, 422-23, 442

Han Dunli, 39

Hu Zonghui, 102-3, 109, 110

Han C;aozu, Emperor, 34 Han Jiang, 536

Huai Su, 262

Han Qi, 81-82, 423

HuangJizhi, 568

Han Tuozhou, 552

Huang Jubao, 475

Han Zhongyan, 33, 110, 135-36, 145, 146,

Huang Quan, 475-76, 509 Huang Tin�ian, 207, 263, 264, 264n90

150, 537

Huang Baoguang, 347

616

Index

209 Huarui furen, see "Lady Blossom" Huizong shilu, 534 Huizongyuji, 377-78 Hunan province, 84, 1I0, 244, 271n1I8, 356 Hunt, Lynn, 139n21 Hymes, Robert, 277n5, 292n50 Huang Zongxi,

232-35, 241, 258 Imperial clan, 35, 584, 585n41; housing for, 41-42, 53; expeditures on, 58-60; biographies of, 524-25 Imperial Grace Formulary, 284 Imperial Hawk (painting), 472-73 Imperial Medical Service, 280, 283-85, 304, 31I Imperial University, 37, 42, 164-65 "Imperial Writing," 387, 456, 457, 465, 466, 471, 494-96, 500 Institutes ofZhou, 192-93 Imperial brush edicts,

Investigation and Prosecution Bureau,

158 Irredentism,

78-85, 90-94, 108-19,

125-30 Jade Book ofthe HeavenlY Altar ofthe Divine Empyrean, 331-32 Jade Emperor, 197, 251-52, 329, 332 Jameson, Fredric, 590n51 Japan, 176, 471 Jia Anguo, 38 Jia Xiang, 506 Jiang Han, 446 Jiang Kui, 399, 446 Jiang Zhiqi, 1I0 Jiangsu province, 244, 343, 35 5 Jiangxi school, 207 Jiaf!Janyilai xinianyaolu, 25, 377 Jin dynasty, see Jurchens Jin Zhongshu, 326n8

21I Jing Sili, 94, 97 Jingkang baishi, 574, 582-85 Jingyouyuesui xi,!jin& 422 Jingzong, Emperor, 362, 363 Jinshi degree, 181, 197 Juesiluo (Qingtang ruler), 85-89 Junzhai dushuZhi, 212-13 Jurchens, 430, 573, 600'-601; Huizong's alliance with, 78, 126-28; music of, 397, 402 Jing Fang,

17 Kaifeng, 229; Jurchen sack of, 1-4, 15, 130, 165, 583-85; housing in, 40; map of, 83; markets of, 587-88 Katz, Paul R., 298n70 Ke Weiqi, 215 Kellogg, Robert, 567n9 Khitans, 79-80, 84, 95, 1I2, 127-28, 599n63; Shanyuan treaty with, 78-81, 127, 326; map of, 83; and Tong Guan, 124-25; music of, 397, 402 Kojima, Tsuyoshi, xix, 18, 22, 24-26, 195n38, 206-26 Kondo Kazunari, 176, 179, 181nI5 Kong Zhen, 375-76 Korea, 197, 336, 574 Korean Affairs Institute trial, 134, 532 Kracke, E. A., Jr., 347n82 Kai, Prince,

80n4, 81 "Lady Blossom," 362, 369-74, 381-83, 392-93 Lam,Joseph, xix, 19-24, 40, 54, 208, 382, 395-452

Labadie, John,

Land Survey and Equitable Tax System,

40, 41, 52, 59; cessation of, 45, 51, 55; critics of, 57 Langazhang (warlord), 107 Laozi (sage) , 257, 325. See also Daoism

617

Index LaoiJ (book), 182, 202, 232n3, 326; Huizong's commentary on, 238, 256, 257, 318-19, 349 Law schools, 180, 286 Lee, Hui-shu, 502n86 Lee Pangwon, 574 Legal system reforms, 50 Legge, James, 462nI2 Leung, Angela Ki Che, 298n?0 Levine, Ari Daniel, xix, 18, 27, 131-70, 536n35 li Bangyan, 258 li Deng, 39 li Dui, 424 li Gang, 355, 566, 576 li Jie, 8, 239-40, 250 li liang, 417 li Linfu, 202 li Shi, 38 li Shiyong, 241 li Sui, 421 li Tao, IIO, 121-22, 155-56, 165-66, 606; career of, 523-30; and Cai Jing, 532, 535, 541, 544n45, 545-51 li Xian, 93, II9, 126 li Xinchuan, 58-59, 230n2, 377, 380-81, 501-2, 522, 525-27, 532 li Xun, 37n8, 38 li Yan, 38 li Yuanhao, 81 li Zhao, 417, 421-23 li Zhi, 380, 507-8 li Zong'e, 421 liang Shicheng, 126, 503, 505-II liang Zimei, 122-23 liangzhou (city), 85 liangzuo (Xia ruler), 81, 84 liao, see Khitans LieiJ, 182, 294 Liji, see Book of Rites lin Lingsu, 12-13, 26, 197, 251-52, 327-38, 354, 357

39, 123 Lishi zhenxian tidao tongjian, 330-34 "literati physicians," 292-94 liu Ban, 380 liu Bing, 417, 431-32, 437, 439-45 liu, Empress, 540 liu Geng, 36, 38 lin Shu,

liu Huan, 444

II, 251, 328nI3, 332 liu, James T. c., 175 liu Ji, 417, 425, 426 liu Jingzhen, 176 liu Kui, 45-47 liu, Lady, 329 liu Shen, 434

liu Hunkang,

liu Wei, 444

185 liu Yifeng, 522 liu Zhengfu, 46 liu Zhi, 155 liu Zhiji, 568nII liu Zhongwu, 121, 122, 126 Liu dian, 202 Lii Cong, 39 Lii Dafang, 155 Lu Dian, 221 Lii Gongzhu, 155 Lii Huiqing, 534-36 Lii Zuqian, 534 LUfryujie, 212-13 Lutryu kouyi, 213 Lutryu quanjie, 212-13 Luo Jianxiang, 141n24, 147n33, 165n67 Luo Zhiren, 229-30 Luo school, 206 liu Xia Hui,

Ma Ximeng, Ma Zhi,

221

124

14 Mao Jin, 375-76 Mao Zhu, 48 Manichaeism,

Maoshan Daoism,

II, 251

618 Mason, Charles,

Index 470

40, 42, 45, 55, 180 Matsumoto Koichi, 328m6 McNair, Amy, 261 Medical Encyclopedia, 275-80, 310-16, 319-21, 351-52 Medical schools, 40, 42, 45, 53, 55, 180, 323; and physicians' social status, 278-81, 290-94, 301; establishment of, 282-83, 285-87, 290; expansion of, 283-85; curriculum of, 287-89; examinations in, 289-90 Mencius (sage), 185, 576, 597. See also Mathematics schools,

Confucianism

Mendus (book), 181, 182, 256, 570m9; commentanes on, 213, 214 Meng Chang, 369 Meng Yuanlao, 12, 410 Mi Fu, 8, 264n90 Military Affairs, Bureau of, 36-39, 45, 81-82; annual budget of, 59; and Hehuang annexation, 90-91, 95 Mingshi, 517 Mo Di, 185 Monetary reforms, 51 Mote, Frederick, 80n4 Moxibustion, see Acu-moxa therapy Murray, Julia K., 497n?9 Music, 19-24, 45-46, 54; Wei Hanjin's theories of, 40, 208-12, 217, 219; and Nine Tripods, 195, 210, 237, 251, 381; Renzong's beliefs about, 206, 42124; Chen Yang's theories of, 208, 212-15, 223-26; Confucian beliefs about, 209, 395-96, 403-ll, 416; Cai Jing's beliefs about, 210, 395, 439-45; Jing Fang's theories of, 2ll; Zhu Zaiyu's theories of, 226; Huizong's poem about, 385;y�ue, 396n2, 404-7, 4l0-ll, 414, 420; Gaozong's beliefs about, 398m3; orchestral, 399, 42526, 432, 435-37, 447;yatryue, 405, 407,

409, 420, 435-37; processional, 4079; instruments for, 414-15, 420, 422, 433, 435-37; Taizu's beliefs about, 417, 419, 432, 434; Taizong's be­ liefs about, 419-20; Zhenzong's be­ liefs about, 420-23; Shenzong's beliefs about, 425-26; Zhezong's beliefs about, 426-27; operatic, 438. See also Dashengyue . Musk Cat (painting), 470-72 Muzheng (Hezhou ruler), 86-89, 92-95 Nandu lu, see Nar!Jinjiwen Natginjiwen, 27, 568-81, 593-98, 600-603, 606, 607; Siku tryao evaluation of, 572-74, 577, 607 Needham, Joseph, 292n50 Neo-Confucianism, 177, 206, 3ll. See also Confucianism; Daoxue school New Book ojMusicology, 225-26 New Learning school, 207n2; and Wang Anshi, 18, 207, 212, 236n21; suppression of, 25-26, 225-26; mu­ sical theories of, 206-26; numerol­ ogy of, 221-26 NewMeanings ojthe Five Rites ojthe Zhenghe Reign Period, 219-20, 225 New Policies, 4, 5, 10, 17-19, 31, 32, 44, 79, 543; and educational reforms, 31, 42, 180-88; and Hired Service Sys­ tem, 37, 41; Land Survey and Equi­ table Tax System of, 41; origins of, 60, 178; and frontier campaigns, llO; factionalism with, 132n2, 133-34, 141, 149, 154, 163; role of emperor in, 179-80, 201-3; and Huizong, 201-3, 231, 537; failure of, 203-5. See also Wang Anshi; Yuanyou faction

229 Nine Tripods, 195, 210, 237, 251, 381 Niu Hong, 430 Numerology, 200, 215-26, 435

Nine Classics,

- -

-

- - -------

Index Offices of Zhou, see Zhouli

485--90, 512-13; authorship of,

Omens: comet, IO, 23, 44-45, 49, 51-52,

489--98; authenticity of, 498-

56, 163-64; crane, 12, 233nn; and poems, 385, 495; and music, 432, 462-63.

See also Auspicious-omen

prunttngs •

•

513 Palace examination questions, 18, 22, 183-200.

See also Civil service ex-

ammatlons •

Operas, revolutionary, 438.

See also

•

Palace poems, 361-94 Pei Zongyuan, 438

Music Orchestras, 399, 425-26, 432, 435-37,

Penetrating Truth Temple, 251, 253

See also Music Origins and Symptoms ofMedical Disorders,

PengJi, 434

447.

Perfected Warrior, 333 Pharmacies, 18, 22, 41, 278, 304-8; for­

284, 288 Orthodox One Daoist school, 334

mularies of, 284, 307-IO, 319; ref­

Orwell, George, 131

erence works for, 288, 314, 320;

Ouyang Che, 354

hospital, 300.

Ouyang Xiu, 140n22, 182, 261, 520, 536,

See also Public health

Phase Energetic doctrine, 320-21 Pheasant, symbolism of, 468

568nn

Pitchpipes, 220-22 Painting(s): Huizong's, 21, 232-33, 261-63, 393, 453-513; schools for, 40, 42, 45, 180, 183;

Cranes of Good Omen,

Plague, 295, 332, 350, 356 Pocock, ]. G. A., 138m7 Poetry, 361-94; Huizong's, 21, 233, 361,

261, 457, 459-65, 476, 477, 490--9 1,

374--94, 403; Wang Jian's, 361-69;

Five-Colored Parakeet, 261, 457-59, 465, 476, 477, 494-96; Hi­ biscus and Golden Pheasant, 261,

Taizong's, 361m; Lady Blossom's,

466-69, 473, 481, 488, 492-96, 498;

Poorhouses, 32, 40, 41, 277-78, 297-99,

494--96;

Wax-Plum and Birds,

261, 466,

362, 369-74; Shenzong's, 379n23, 502; authorship of, 496-98 323

469-70, 491-96; and agency, 381,

Porkert, Manfred, 320m47

382, 454-55, 475, 498; flower­

Prescriptions Worth a Thousand,

and-bird, 454, 458, 474-82, 489--91,

Printing, 237n24; and imperial brush

276, 288

513; auspicious-omen, 455, 476-80,

edicts, 234-35; steles versus, 237,

485-86; as objects, 455-75; callig­

24In36, 256, 272; of medical books,

raphy on, 456, 464, 466, 471, 481,

288, 31In123, 312-14

489, 494-98, 509-IO; Auspicious

Pu Jiangqing, 369

Dragon Rock, 457, 464-66, 469, 476, 477, 491, 494-96; Flowering Peach and Dove, 470-71, 491, 494-96, 509-IO; Finches and Bamboo, 470-72, 474, 495; Musk Cat, 470-72; Imperial Hawk, 472-73; Sparrows, Plum Blossoms, and Bamboo, 474; context for, 474-75;

Public health, 19, 22-23, 27, 294-308,

Pulse Canon, 288, 312 Purges, see Blacklisting

paradigms for, 481-84; uses of,

Pythagoras, 222

3 50-53; and medical schools, 40, 42, 45, 53, 55, 278--94; history of, 295-96; and corruption, 303-4. Hospitals; Pharmacies

See also

620

Index

Qi: six, 23, 276, 279-80, 320-21; defInition of, 276n3; and music, 411, 412 Qi Bo, 276, 277, 317nI38 Qi Guan, 421 Qian Gai, 130 Qian Yu, 42-43, lIO, 150-51 QiangJunming, 38

Qianxu, 223 39 Qieftn 111, see Nanjinjiwen Qin Gui, 130, 518-20, 551-52 Qin Xi, 521 Qin Xifu, 103-5, 109 Qinghua, Sovereign of, 252, 270, 342, 354 Qingli Reforms, 282, 283 Qingrang region, 85-90; maps of, 83, 88; and Wang Shan, 85, 100-104; "cli­ entalization" in, 89-99; and Zeng Bu, 99, 102-7; and Zhang Dun, 99-102, 104, 106; and Huizong, 106-8, 125-30; and Wang Hou, 108--1 9 Qingyijiemou, Princess, lI5 Qinsheng, Empress Dowager, 7, 8, 56, 106, 109, 135, 339; factionalism of, 136, 141-49, 157, 159, 160 Qinzong, Emperor, 1-3, 12, 15-17, 605 Qinzong rili, 521-22, 526, 528, 529, 551 Qinzong shilll, 522-23, 527-30, 534. 538, 540, 542 Qiu Chuji, 331n27 Qllan Songshi, 361, 374-75, 378 Qllan Tangshi, 370-71 Que An, 574 Qiao Fang,

Remonstrance Bureau,

see Censorate

and Remonstrance Bureau

108 Ren Jiyu, 326n? Ren Zongyao, 442

Ren Boyu,

80, 283, 309; civil service of, 81-82, 176n5; musical be­ liefs of, 206, 417, 421-24; steles of, 268; Daoism of, 333n33; poetry of, 380 Rites of ZhOIl, see Zhollli Robinet, Isabelle, 352nI03 Rowland, Benjamin, 457, 466, 467, 471, 479, 499n82 Ruan Yi, 209, 422-23, 440 Renzong, Emperor,

Sage-king, 188, 190-91, 204; Huizong as,

21-23, 191-200, 202-5, 357; Shen­ zong as, 184-85, 189; and musical theories, 210-lI, 411, 432, 433 Salt monopoly, 57-58 Sanchao beimeng hllibian, 530, 565-66, 574-75, 577, 580; Siku tfyao evalua­ tion of, 566--67 Scrurry, Elaine, 607-8 Scholes, Robert, 567n9 Schools, see Education Scogin, Hugh, 297n?0 Scriptoriums, 505-13. See also Calligraphy Seances, 336--37

141n23 Shaanxi province, 82, 86, III, II7; steles of, 242, 253-54. 271nII8 Shandong province, 109, 243, 254, 272nII8, 348 Shanyuan Treaty, 78-81, 127, 326 Shao Bowen, 544 Shao Qing, 580, 593 Shao Yong, 544 Shen Gua, 420n64 Shen Xi, 39 Shenxiao Daoism, 348 Shenzong, Emperor, 4-7, 17-18, 79, 175, 417; Veritable Records of, 49; legal system reforms of, 50; irredentism of, 82-84, 90-94, II6--1 9, 125-26; Sewell, William H., Jr.,

,

1

i

__

;

1

I

,

,

,

,

, • ,

Index factionalism of, 133; and civil service examinations, 183-88; as sage-king, 184-85, 189; edicts of, 234-35; and

621

Song History, see Songshi Song hufyao, 187-88, 463, 500 Songshi, 163-66, 576-78, 585-86; Cai

medical education, 284-85; poetry

Jing in, 26, 34, 48, 57, 136nn, 517-19,

of, 379n23, 502; musical beliefs of,

530-64; Wang Fu in, 55; Zheng Bu

425-26.

See also New Policies

in, 145n30; Chen Yang in, 213-15;

Shi Gongbi, 46-50, 52, 57

Taizu in, 309; Huizong in, 326, 377;

Shi Yannian, 267

Lin Lingsu in, 329, 330, 333, 335;

Shi Yu, 339

Huan Gaoguang in, 347; music in,

Shilin guangji, 399, 410, 415 Shiwujfyuanjilei, 410

398, 428, 444; editing of, 500-501, 517-52; sources for, 518, 529, 531-56

Shizong, Emperor (r. 955-59), 419

Songyuan xuean,

Shizong, Emperor (r. 1521-66), 220-21,

Sovereign Green Florescence, 329, 336,

356, 451nn4

209

349

Shui Laiyou, 264

Sovereign of Eastern Florescence, 332

Shu school, 206-7

Sovereign of Qinghua, 252, 270, 342,

Sichao guoshi,

523-25, 528-30, 534, 535,

540, 546, 550-51 Sichuan province, 36, 84, 128-29

354

Sparrows, Plum Blossoms, and Bamboo ( painting) , 474

Sickman, Laurence, 472n36

Spring and Autumn Annals, 182, 188

Sijia gongci,

Steles, 22, 45, 136, 229-74, 382; callig­

375, 376, 378

Sima Guang, 7, 82, 125, 133, 149, 155,

raphy of, 229-31, 240, 245, 259-66,

169-70, 577; on emperor's role,

507; Zhenzong's, 233-34, 255-56,

178-79, 201; and Daoxue school,

266-67; purposes of, 234-35,

206m; numerology of, 223; and

272-74; printing versus, 237, 241n36,

Wang Anshi, 249, 543; biography of,

256, 272; sizes of, 238, 242-44, 269;

543-44

surviving texts on, 238; with Con­

Sima Qian, 545

fucian messages, 239-50; with

Sivin, Nathan, 276n3, 316

Daoist messages, 250-58, 341,

Six Dynasties period, 365

349-50; sites for, 266-72; Renzong's,

Six

qi,

23, 276, 279-80, 320-21

268; Gaozong's, 273-74

Sixteen Prefectures, 79, 124, 126-28

Strickmann, Michel, 328nI6

Slender Gold calligraphy, 20, 25, 229-31,

Sturman, Peter, 264, 459-60, 462

238n25, 240, 245, 260-66; paintings

Su Che, 96

with, 456, 464, 466, 471, 481, 489,

Su Shi, 7-9, 269; on Guizhang, 96-98;

494-98, 509-10; imitators of, 500.

and civil service examination, 182;

See also Calligraphy

and Shu school, 206-7; calligraphy

Smith, Paul Jakov, xix, 18, 23, 27, 32, 78-13 °, 203 Smuts, R. Malcolm, 140n22

of, 261, 264n90, 268; Huizong's view of, 265; health clinic of, 299; and Lin Lingsu, 331; paintings of, 482-84

Song Chenggong, 417-18

Sun Di, 523, 528, 529, 542-43, 551

Song Qi, 421, 520

Sun E, 427

I

j

I

i

622

Index

Sun Jue, 268 Sun Simiao, 276, 277 Sunspots, 48, 56 Supreme Purity Precious Treasure Temple, 252

Taixua'!Jing, 223 Taizong, Emperor (r. 626-49), 234nI5, 26on?4, 261, 363 Taizong, Emperor (r. 976-97), 78, 79, 261, 487; medical beliefs of, 282, 309; succession of, 325; poetry of, 361nI; and Lady Blossom, 369; musical beliefs of, 419-20 Taizu, Emperor, 78-80, 134; and medi­ cine, 282, 309; musical beliefs of, 417, 419, 432, 434 Tang Daijian, 328m6 Tang Hou, 455, 489-90 Tanguts, 18, 80-99, 124, 129; and Tibetans, 80n4, 85-87, 90, 93, 96, 102; maps of, 83, 88; music of, 397, 402 Tao Jiefu, 38 Tao Zhongwen, 356 Tao-He region, 88-90 Tea monopoly, 37, 41, 57, 94 Teng Fu, 502 Teraji Jun, 176 Thousand Character Classic, 259, 260 Three Excellences, 20, 488 Three Hall System, 55, 59, 247, 250; origins of, 42; expenditures of, 58; and medical schools, 285-86 Three Schools, 280nll, 286 "Three worms," 352 Thunder Rites, 329 Tian Ji, 430 Tian Wei, 439 Tibetans, 81-130; and Tanguts, 80n4, 85-87, 90, 96; Tufan, 85, IOI; sinifi­ cation of, 9Inl9

Tong Guan, 14, 52, 128, 129; frontier campaigns of, 84, 113, 115, 119-26; mentor of, 93; assassination of, 119n97; and Cai Jing, 124n1l5, 127, 539; and Lin Lingsu, 329, 334; and musical theories, 395; biography of, 522, 539 Toulmin, Stephen, 190-91 Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders, 276, 288 Trinity of Kinds, 195 Tripods, Nine, 195, 210, 237, 251, 381 True Way Learning movement, 164

Veritable Records, 519-20, 523, 526-28; of Shenzong reign, 49; of Huizong reign, 165-66, 214 Vietnam, 84, 95 Wan Baochang, 430 Wang Anguo, 370 Wang Anshi, 4, 5, 126, 136, 169-70, 178, 285; statue of, 9-10; New Learning school of, 18, 207, 212, 236ml; on frontier wars, 84, 90-94, 113; resig­ nation of, 95; factionalism of, 133, 149, 163; writings of, 182, 212-13; and Sima Guang, 249, 543. See also New Policies Wang Anzhong, 232nlO, 335-36, 380 Wang Cai, 445 Wang Cheng, 123-24, 505, 525-28 Wang Dalong, 574 Wang Duan, 14 Wang Fu, 14, 55, 522, 587 Wang Gui, 370 Wang Guowei, 581-82 Wang Hanzhi, 36n8, 38 Wang Hou, 94, 108-19, 125 Wang Jian, 21, 361-74, 381-83, 392 Wang Jin, 345 Wang Jue, 39

Index Wang Junwan, 100, 126 Wang Mang, II Wang Min, 101, 102 Wang Mingqing, 16w59, 233nI2, 541n41 Wang Pang, 182, 213 Wang Pu, 419, 421-22, 430 Wang Ruilai, 176, 179 Wang Shan, 100-103, 106-10, II6, 126 Wang Shang, 526-29 Wang Shao, 84-95, 100, II2-13, II9, 125 Wang Shen, 7-8, 483 Wang Shoucheng, 362 Wang Tingkui, 230n2 Wang Wan, 533 Wang Wenqing, 356 Wang Xianzhi, 261, 262, 387 Wang Xizhi, 261, 262, 387 Wang Yan, 369 Wang Yaochen, 423 Wang Yinglin, 377, 477n44 Wang Zhongzheng, 126 Wang Zixi, 352 Wox-Plum and Birds (painting), 261, 466, 469-70, 491-96 Wei Hanjin, 19-20, 40, 53, 195, 251, 417, 428-30, 433; and New Learning school, 209-14, 217, 219, 224-25; assessment of, 439-44. See also Dashengyue Wei Mingshan, 82 Wei Shi, 221 Welfare programs, 32, 37, 40, 52-53, 59, 277-78; poorhouses of, 297-301; and corruption, 303-4 Wen Yanbo, 93-94 Wen Zhengming, 377 Wenxixin (Qingtang ruler), 97-99 West, Stephen H., xx, 26-27, 565-608 Wolibu (Jurchen commander), 129-30 Wood, Alan, 177 Worthy, Edmund, 58n85 Wu, King, 34

623

Wu Chong, 93 Wu Chu, 38 Wu Juhou, 36, 37n8, 38, 300 Wu Liangfu, 427 Wu Liang Shrine, 478-79 Wu Min, 354 Wu Shi, 434 Wu Ti, 316, 322-23 Wu Yuanyu, 263 Xiang, Empress Dowager, see Qinsheng, Empress Dowager Xiao He, 35 Xiao Ling, 588n47 Xiaozong, Emperor, 166, 273, 502, 521, 523 Xibawen (Qingtang ruler), 99, IOI Xie Jiafu, 574 Xin Qiji, 568, 570 Xing Shu, 144 Xinxue school, see New Learning school Xiong Ke, 377 Xiong Penglai, 399 Xixia, see Tanguts Xu Bangda, 472n38 Xu Mengxin, 4nI, 505n92, 506, 521n4, 530, 565-66 Xu Shen, 2IInlO Xu Shiwen, 371 Xu Shuwei, 280nIO Xu Zhichang, 333, 539-40 Xu Ziming, 52, 106n66 Xuanheyishi, 20, 574, 577, 587, 590, 593 , 599, 603-8 Xuanren, Empress Dowager, 7, 95-96, 427n?9; factionalism of, 133-35, 142, 158-60; Cai Jing on, 151-52 Xuanzong, Emperor, 202-3, 256, 357 Xue Ang, 250 Xue Ji, 263 Xue Yao, 263-64

1 1

'· 1

'I

Index Xu Song biannian zjZhi tongjian, 45-46, 48 Xu ZiZhi tongjian changbian, 25, 155, 165-66, 178, 606 Xu ZiZhi tongjian changbianjishi benmo, 14In24, 166 Yan Su, 421-22 Yan Zhenqing, 261, 262, 264n90, 268 Yang, C. K., 325n4 Yang, Empress, 376 Yang Jie, 425-27 Yang Qiu, 503, 504 Yang Renkai, 263 Yang Shi, 207 Yang Wangxiu, 493-95 Yang Xiong, 223 Yang Zhongliang, 166, 225n34, 545-46,

550 Yang Zhu, 185 Yanyue music, 405, 407, 409, 420,

435-37 Yan-Yun region, 83, 84, 124, 127-30 Yao Xiong, 105, 107, 109, 126 Yqyue music, 396n2, 404-7, 410-II, 414,

Yu Jiaxi, 570 Yu Shen, 46-47 Yu Shou, 39 Yuan Shu, 535 Yuan Yi, 417 Yuan Zheng, 18In15 Yuanyou faction, 33, 43-47, 50, 57, 79; and Aligu, 99; and Zhang Dun, 100, 145; purging of, 150-63, 235; after­ math of, 163-67; and educational system, 182, 188, 247. See also Fac­ tionalism; New Policies

Yuanyouyuryi, 427 Yubi (imperially brushed), 235nI8, 380-81, 501-7 Yue Ke, 230m, 259n?2, 487n64, 501-4, 509, 5II Yuqi, 410-II Yue/un, 427 Yueshu, 398-99, 428 Yuezuan, 421 Yutai xinyong, 365 YuZhi (imperially composed), 235nI8, 380-81, 498, 501

420 Ye Changzhi, 263 Ye Di, 37n8, 38 Ye Fang, 427 Ye Sheng, 507 Yellow Emperor, 23, 182, 197, 2II, 257 Yellow Emperor's "A-B " Canon of

534, 535, 537 Zeng Shen, 39

Am-moxa, 288, 312 Yellow Emperor's Canon ofEighty-one Problems, 284, 288, 312 Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon, 277, 284, 288, 293, 294, 3II-12, 315-17, 322 Yijing, see Book of Changes Yingzong, Emperor, 81, 424-25 Yin-yang, 543, 584, 599, 604-6; medical implications of, 280, 308, 317-18, 320-21; and painting, 472 Yu Fang, 39

Zeng Xiaowen, 38 Zhang Ankai, 375-76 Zhang Bu, 503, 504 Zhang Cang, 429 Zhang Daoling, 332 Zhang Dun, 8, 32n2, IIO, II4, 125; on Qingtang, 99-102, 104, 106; fac­ tionalism of, 134-36, 142-45, 147, 158, 161; biography of, 534-36, 543-44 Zhang Fangping, 267 Zhang Jian, 213nI6

Zeng Bu, 8-9, 33, 44, 56, 150-51; on Qingtang region, 99, 102-7; and Cai Jing, 109-10, 155, 161; factionalism of, 135-36, 144-49, 156-57; biography of,

I

,

Index ZhangJie, 103, 120 Zhang Kangguo, 122-23, 431 Zhang Kegong, 49, 542 Zhang Quwei, 503 Zhang Shangying, 36, 38, 50-52, 195 Zhang Shunmin, 107 Zhang Xu, 509 Zhang Yanyuan, 480 Zhang Yuchu, 331n27 Zhang Zai, 206m, 213m6 Zhang Zhongjing, 276, 277 Zhangxian, Empress Dowager, 42In67 Zhao Bowen, lOon48 Zhao Daoyi, 330-31, 333 Zhao Ding, 162, 334 Zhao Huaide, 120, 121 Zhao Kai, 591-92 Zhao Liangsi, 124 Zhao Lingrang, 263, 483 Zhao Ruyu, 552 Zhao Sheng, 332 Zhao Tiehan, 527 Zhao Tingzhi, I, 44-45, no-n Zhao Wu (Huizong's brother), 15 Zhao Yanwei, 507 Zhejiang province, 55, 344-45 Zheng, Empress, 17, 600-602 ZhengJuzhong, 51, 56, 241, 337, 357; and frontier campaigns, 78-79; promo­ tion of, 122-24 Zheng Shen, 46 Zheng Xia, 94-95 Zheng music, see Yqyue music

Zhenghe wuli xif!Ji, 220 Zhenzong, Emperor, 176; Shanyuan Treaty of, 78-81, 127, 326; civil ser-

vice under, 81-82; rulership of, 203; steles of, 233-34, 255-56, 266-67; and Daoism, 252, 256, 333n33, 342n61, 344, 357; poetry of, 361m; musical beliefs of, 420-23; Heaven Texts Affair of, 485-87 Zhezong, Emperor, 17, 79, 175; regency of, 7, 95-96; death of, 8, 401; advisors of, 9; reforms of, 32, 44; irredentism of, 84, n6; fac­ tionalism of, 133-35; and civil service examinations, 189-90; poetry of, 379n23; musical beliefs of, 426-27

Zhezong shilu, 528, 534n33 Zhongxing lishu, 398 Zhongxing xiaqji, 377 Zhou Bangyan, 380, 446 Zhou, Duke of, 12, 201 Zhou Dunyi, 206m Zhou Mi, 230m, 232, 238n25, 259, 51Om05, 569-70 Zhou Xu, 221 Zhouli (Rites ojZhou), 59, 202, 247-48, 249, 399, 410, 411, 423 Zhu Changwen, 450 Zhu Quan, 450 Zhu Shengfei, 545 Zhu Xi, 214, 399, 520n3, 529, 540 Zhu Yi, 377 Zhu Zaiyu, 226 Zhuang::j, 182, 256, 294 Zong Bing, 480 Zong Ze, 347-48 Zou Hao, 135, 142