Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China
Sinica Leidensia Edited by
Barend J. ter Haar In co-operation with
P.K. Bol, D.R. Knechtges, E.S.Rawski, W.L. Idema, E. Zürcher, H.T. Zurndorfer
VOLUME 79
Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China The Warp and the Weft
Edited by
Francesca Bray Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann Georges Métailié
LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007
This book is printed on acid-free paper. On the cover: No. 9 of the “Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning (㎇䞯㕃☚; ᆣᖂԼቹ)” by Li Huang =( ✸ޕYi Hwang 㧊䢿, 1501–1570) [Yanji tu 3b, 13th century]; see Lackner, p. 368. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISSN: 0169-9563 ISBN: 978 90 04 16063 7 Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS Acknowledgements…………………………………………… List of Contributors……………………………………………
ix xi
Introduction: The Powers of Tu……………………………… Francesca Bray (University of Edinburgh)
1
PART ONE: THE POWER OF ORDER – TU AS SYMBOLIC MEDIATION I. THE ORIGINS OF TU 1. La représentation visuelle dans les pratiques pyro-ostéomantiques dans la Chine archaïque……………………… Olivier Venture (EPHE, Paris)
83
2. Placed into the Right Position – Etymological Notes on Tu and Congeners…………………………………………… Wolfgang Behr (Ruhr-Unversity Bochum)
109
II. TU AS MAGICO-RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS 1. Time, Space and Orientation: Figurative Representations of the Sexagenary Cycle in Ancient and Medieval China…… Marc Kalinowski (EPHE, Paris)
137
2. Communication by Design: Two Silk Manuscripts of Diagrams (Tu) from Mawangdui Tomb Three……………… Donald Harper (University of Chicago)
169
3. Picturing or Diagramming the Universe………………… Wu Hung (University of Chicago)
191
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CONTENTS
III. TEXT AS TU: TEXTUAL DIAGRAMS 1. Mapless Mapping: Did the Maps of the Shan hai jing Ever Exist?……………………………………………………… Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (CNRS-EHESS, Paris)
217
2. The Tables (biao) in Sima Qian’s Shi ji: Rhetoric and Remembrance……………………………………………… Griet Vankeerberghen (McGill, Montréal)
295
3. The Avatamsaka-sûtra as a ‘bodhi mandala Text’……… Hermann-Josef Röllicke (Ekô Centre, Düsseldorf) 4. Diagrams as an Architecture by Means of Words: the Yanji tu………………………………………………………… Michael Lackner (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)
313
341
PART TWO: PICTURING REALITY? TU AS TECHNICAL ILLUSTRATIONS I. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MEDIUM 1. Imagining Practice: Sense and Sensuality in Early Chinese Medical Illustration……………………………………… Vivienne Lo (SOAS, London)
383
2. Geometrical Diagrams in Traditional Chinese Mathematics………………………………………………………… Alexei Volkov (National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan)
425
3. Woodcut Illustration: A General Outline………………… Michela Bussotti (Ecole française d’Extrême-orient, Paris)
461
II. TEXT AND IMAGE IN THE ERA OF PRINT-CULTURE 1. The Representation of Plants: Engravings and Paintings… Georges Métailié (CNRS, Paris)
487
CONTENTS
2. Agricultural Illustrations: Blueprint or Icon?…………… Francesca Bray (University of Edinburgh) 3. ‘Like Obtaining a Great Treasure’: The Illustrations in Song Yingxing’s The Exploitation of the Works of Nature…… Peter J. Golas (University of Denver) 4. Song Yingxing’s Illustrations of Iron Production………… Donald B. Wagner (Copenhagen)
vii 521
569
615
III. WESTERN INFLUENCES AND THEIR USES 1. The Body Revealed. The Contribution of Forensic Medicine to Knowledge and Representation of the Skeleton in China………………………………………………………… Catherine Despeux (INALCO, Paris) 2. New Maps for the Modernizing State: Western Cartographic Knowledge and Its Application in 19th and 20th Century China…………………………………………… Iwo Amelung (University of Frankfurt)
635
685
INDEX…………………………………………………………
727
COLOUR PLATES……………………………………………
745
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The co-editors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, whose generous subsidy made this publication possible. Our warmest thanks go to Tatyana Gardner, Ph.D. candidate at the East Asian Department of the University of Göttingen, for her prodigious and meticulous work on copy-editing and preparing the final text. We are also most grateful to Professor Dieter Kuhn, Institute for Cultural Studies of East and South Asia, University of Würzburg, and to the anonymous reader for Brill, for all their helpful comments and suggestions for improvement. Finally, we would like to thank our contributors for their generosity in allowing us to publish their papers in this collection, and for their patience as the editorial processes unfolded.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Iwo AMELUNG Professor Sinology University of Frankfurt Germany Wolfgang BEHR Akademischer Rat, Lecturer in Classical Chinese Faculty of East Asian Studies Ruhr-University Bochum Germany Francesca BRAY Professor of Social Anthropology University of Edinburgh UK Michela BUSSOTTI Maître de conférences École française d’Extrême-Orient Paris France Catherine DESPEUX Professeur Institut des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) Paris France Vera DOROFEEVA-LICHTMANN Chargé de Recherche Centre Chine-Corée-Japon Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) Paris France
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Peter J. GOLAS Professor History Department University of Denver USA Donald HARPER Professor Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Chicago USA Marc KALINOWSKI Professeur École Pratique des Hautes Etudes à la Sorbonne Paris France Michael LACKNER Professor University of Erlangen-Nuremberg Germany Dr. Vivienne LO Lecturer and Convenor of Asian Studies, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine University College London UK Georges METAILIE Directeur de recherche Centre Alexandre Koyré Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) Paris France
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
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Dr. Hermann-Josef RÖLLICKE Member of scientific staff Ekô Centre of Japanese Culture Düsseldorf Germany Griet VANKEERBERGHEN, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of History and Department of East Asian Studies McGill University Montreal Canada Olivier VENTURE Maître de conférences École Pratique des Hautes Etudes à la Sorbonne Paris France Alexei VOLKOV Associate Professor Center for General Education and Institute of History National Tsing-Hua University Hsinchu Taiwan Donald B. WAGNER Independent scholar affiliated with the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies [formerly Senior Lecturer in Chinese at the University of Copenhagen] Copenhagen Denmark WU Hung Harrie H. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History Department of Art History University of Chicago USA
INTRODUCTION: THE POWERS OF TU Francesca Bray1 The images (tu ቹ) are the warp threads and the written words (shu ) are the weft. As warp and weft alternate to form the pattern of a fabric (wen ֮) [so images and written words alternate to form the meaning of a text (wen ֮)]... To see the writing without the image is like hearing a voice without seeing the form; to see the image without the writing is like seeing a person but not hearing his words.2
The contributors to this volume focus on tu ቹ, technical images, and on their relationship with written text in the production of technical knowledge. The articles encompass a broad range of graphic forms and categories of specialised knowledge, from metaphysical cosmograms and magical talismans through mathematical diagrams to coroner’s charts. While we cannot claim to offer a comprehensive span of all significant forms of tu, this is, as far as we know, the first collection of studies devoted specifically to tu as technical images, and to the functional relation of such tu to the written text which almost invariably accompanies them. In his well-known treatise on the importance of tu, the Song scholar Zheng Qiao ㈕᮴(1104–1162) insisted that tu played as essential a part as written words in the techniques (or arts) of learning, xueshu ᖂ.3 The best way to convey specialist information was to lay it out in an illustrated register, tupu ⼆, a sequence of rubrics where for each item a graphic illustration was paired with an explanatory text. Among the fields of knowledge which Zheng Qiao listed as depending on tu for the adequate transmission of knowledge were a number whose technical dimension is immediately evident to modern readers, who would naturally be inclined to link the term “technical” with technology or science as we know them today.4 These fields of ——— 1 This introduction, though written by a single author, is the fruit of intensive discussions between the three co-editors. 2 Zheng Qiao, Tupu lüe, Tongzhi j. 71/837a. 3 Xueshu is more usually translated by the single term scholarship. 4 Studies of tu which assess them from the perspective of the history of technology and/or science include Edgerton (1985), Haudricourt and Métailié (1994), Golas
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learning included geography, cosmology, building, the construction of implements and machines, astronomy, mathematics, military science and medicine. But Zheng Qiao’s list of subjects where tu were essential aids to learning also included linguistics, law, official rankings, the study of ritual, music, history, ethics and fine arts, as well as talismans and Daoism. 5 While Zheng Qiao’s essay highlights tu as tools of scholarship and understanding, tu also served as important instruments of statecraft and government, both material and symbolic, and they played a key role in pedagogy. Furthermore tu were closely associated with craft skills,6 and with magical arts and cosmological techniques such as divination or geomancy. Not surprisingly, different technical fields such as magic, law and agronomy generated very different types of tu. Some represented objects, plans, figures or scenes in more or less realistic fashion; others were maps or abstract diagrams or schemata; others consisted entirely of arrangements of written words. There were also significant historical shifts in the predominant forms and functions of tu, associated not only with the evolution of a particular field but also, for example, with changes in elite ideas about education, or with the rise of woodblock printing. What then were the shared characteristics of tu, and what distinguished them from other Chinese visual categories such as hua (picture or painting) or xiang ွ (image or icon)? Taking into account the full graphic and thematic range of tu and the contexts in which the term was applied, it becomes apparent that in pre-modern Chinese usage the term tu was not—as often supposed today—a general term for pictures, of which pictures of technical themes were one sub-category. In fact it was a specialist term denoting only those graphic images or layouts which encoded technical knowledge: tu were templates for action. This concise definition seems to us to capture the essence of tu across its many variations in pre-modern China. It elegantly resolves many of the confusions about the apparently fuzzy boundaries between tu and other graphic categories which have puzzled historians trying to place tu as an intellectually coherent category. It highlights the fact that from the Chinese perspective tu was not a stylistic but a functional category: tu were instructive images ——— (1999, 2001), Vogel, forthcoming. 5 Reiter (1990: 314) notes that Zheng Qiao’s bibliography of works whose title included tu (divided into two sections listing works where the tu had been preserved along with the text and those where it had not) is not very reliable. 6 The relationship was not always straightforward, as will be discussed below.
INTRODUCTION
3
conveying skilled, specialist knowledge. Tu offered spatial encodings (often but not necessarily two-dimensional) of factual information, structures, processes and relationships, translating temporal or intellectual sequences into purely spatial terms, and encrypting dynamic processes as static layouts. The perusal and decoding of the tu by the viewer constituted what Ames calls “performative looking”: the knowledge contained in the tu was unfolded into realisation and into action.7 Sometimes a tu stood alone, without textual explanation, but usually it contained or accompanied written characters. This means that tu cannot be studied independently of the texts with which they were paired (or from which they were constructed). The epistemological relationship between written text and tu showed many variations and generated recurrent debates among Chinese intellectuals. Text and tu might contribute equally to the viewer’s understanding, but in some cases the tu was held to be of primary importance, while in others it seems that the tu served merely as an organising device, or even just as a mnemonic, for the detailed factual information contained in the text. Sometimes it was context that determined whether a given image was considered a tu or a hua, that is to say whether its purpose was seen as instructive—or rather as entertaining or aesthetically pleasurable.8 The fact that the classification of a given image could depend upon the purpose for which the image was intended supports our argument that tu was a functional rather than a morphological or aesthetic category.9 Though the Chinese themselves did not usually make analytical distinctions between different types of tu,10 here we argue that they fell into two broad categories representing distinctive principles of ——— 7 “There is an unbroken line between image as what is real, image as the presentation (not representation) of what is real, and image as the meaning of what is real. Image is reality ... [Zhi ⶹ ‘to know’] is fundamentally performative – it is ‘realizing’ in the sense of `making real’” (Ames 1990: 239). 8 During the print era, for example, woodblock illustrations of novels or plays were usually classified as paintings, hua ⬿, or images, xiang 䈵 or ڣ. Not infrequently identical or very similar illustrations were included in anthologies of instructive anecdotes or exemplary biographies, but here they were categorised as tu, because in this context they were believed to play an important pedagogical role in imparting the moral meaning of the text (Bussotti, this volume; on the use of imagery in moral instruction see also Carlitz (1991), Raphals (1998)). 9 Of course in certain contexts aesthetics and function cannot easily be separated; see below on late Ming arguments that hua communicated to the educated viewer while tu were suited to the ignorant. 10 But see below on Luo Hongxian.
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spatial representation: (i) diagrammatic or schematic tu, forms of symbolic mediation whose formal patternings of space created understanding or generated action by guiding the viewer through a strictly ordered trajectory;11 and (ii) representational images, closer in intent and in cognitive operation to technical illustrations in the modern sense. The main effects of tu and their accompanying text, as we shall show below, could be communicative (displaying information), pedagogical (inculcating understanding), and/or transformative (effecting cosmic or other changes through the very act of inscription). As templates for action tu were powerful devices. Some tu were powerful in themselves, others as instruments. It is surely no coincidence that the first flurry of philosophical statements concerning tu coincided with the flourishing of shushu ᑇ, the occult arts or art of numbers, that began in the late Warring States.12 While the diagrammatic tu discussed in the first section of the book were powerful because they were plans for interpreting and mobilising cosmic forces, the secular, representational tu discussed in the second half of the book were more commonly mobilised in the service of statecraft, and they raise interesting questions about ideology and its tools. Another set of questions arises from consideration of the technical and aesthetic vocabularies of tu and their accompanying texts. What might they tell us about the relations between technical knowledge and artistic expression, or about attitudes towards precision versus allusion, abstraction versus accuracy, the establishment of conventions and the cumulative development of knowledge? Given the dramatic role that the development of technical drawing and technical writing has played in the rise of modern Western science and society, the comparative interest of our collection is clear. Unlike the post-Renaissance West, China did not develop a self-conscious, structured discipline of technical drawing that progressed ——— 11 Henderson speaks of geometric cosmography (1994: 204–204, 222); see also the discussion of forms of symbolic mediation in the production of ritual space in Dickhardt (2003). Vankeerberghen and Röllicke discuss the emotional, political and spiritual dimensions of such ordering. 12 Li Ling 2000, Li Jianmin 2001a. The mantic and numerological techniques of shushu included hemerology and several other types of divination and were closely associated with practices of prolonging life. Li Jianmin notes that all these techniques aimed to combine time, position and direction in a characteristically Chinese concern with cosmic resonances. Recently excavated documents and artefacts show that graphic images, accompanied by numbers or text, were an important part of early works on the occult arts (ibid).
INTRODUCTION
5
hand in hand with steadily evolving disciplines of science.13 A number of interesting insights into the nature and workings of Chinese society and the Chinese state may be stimulated by asking why China did not follow the path of the West, even when examples of Western accomplishments in science and technology were often freely available.14 Another set of questions arises from acknowledging that Chinese world views and the political goals of its rulers were distinctive, as was the social and cultural context within which technical and scientific knowledge were generated. Then we are led to ask not why China failed to be like the West but whether (or how far) it succeeded in achieving the goals it set for itself.15 This approach leads us to ask which domains of technical knowledge were considered particularly important, and what efforts can we see (if any) to make them more effective—technically perhaps, but also morally or symbolically.16 Most previous studies of tu have considered only partial sets of the whole spectrum of tu, focusing on one type of graphic form, or on a specialised subset of the whole range of technical fields in which tu were created.17 The contributors to this volume start from our encompassing functional definition to analyse tu variously as programmes for action, process-oriented schemas, functional representations and blueprints. The examples of text and tu that they discuss include encodings of: cosmic processes; a path to enlightenment; the exegesis of a classical text; the construction of a silk-reeling machine; the reconstruction of a criminal assault; and the coursing of energy through the human body. 18 The advantage of the shared functional approach is ——— 13 Golas 1999, 2001 and this volume. 14 For examples in the field of cartography see Amelung, this volume, and also
Yee (1994: 170–202); for the impact of encounters with Western anatomy, see Despeux, this volume. 15 In his comparative analysis of the historical trajectories of early modern China and Europe, R. Bin Wong (1997) carries this approach one step further. He proposes a method which he calls “symmetrical comparison”, whereby each society is evaluated by the standards of the other rather than allowing unquestioned privilege to Western categories, values and goals. In the history of science, Lloyd and Sivin (2002) represents an analogous approach to balanced comparison between intellectual traditions. 16 Bray, Despeux, this volume; Amelung specifically emphasises the need to avoid bending historical study to teleological models if we wish to see how history goes. See also for example Amelung (1998, 2000), Brook (1994), Elvin (2004), Golas (1999), Will (2003). 17 See below on cartographic studies of tu; Lackner and Reiter's studies highlight abstract, diagrammatic tu, while other scholars (e.g. Edgerton 1985, Golas 1999, 2001) have focused on tu as expressions of scientific and technological knowledge. 18 Other recent publications that discuss tu, text and technical learning include:
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that it allows us to highlight what the Chinese considered to be the knowledge-producing characteristics common to the whole range of graphic representations known as tu, as distinct from or in coordination with written text. In the rest of this introduction, we outline the background to this project; provide a brief survey of the history of tu in the light of the papers in this collection and of other recent scholarship; and offer preliminary explorations of some themes suggested by the contributions. We propose a basic typology of tu (reflected in the two main sections into which the collection is divided), and offer some suggestions about historical trends or shifts in the uses of tu; changing conceptions of the nature of tu and their relation to text and to other categories of graphic representation; the media in which tu were executed; and the design and production of different kinds of tu.
MODERN TU STUDIES: THE STATE OF THE FIELD Most modern scholarship on tu, both Chinese and Western, has been marked by a paradox. In a study of two famous Song-dynasty maps published in 1903, the great French sinologist Édouard Chavannes suggested that we should think of tu as a category that encompasses “all forms of graphic representation”.19 Yet after proposing this very broad definition Chavannes went on to focus exclusively on tu in the sense of maps, and until very recently most Western (and modern Chinese) studies that analysed tu as cognitive tools followed Chavannes in confining their scope to maps and cartography.20 The choice to concentrate on this specialised application of the term tu is certainly ——— Golas (1999, 2001) and Vogel (forthcoming) on illustrations of technology; Smith (1991) on divination, geomancy and physiognomy; Yee (1994: 101 ff.) and Amelung (1998, 2000) on hydraulics (though Vermeer (1987), Dodgen (2001) and Elvin (2004) also discuss the practice and evolution of hydraulics, they do not pay specific attention to the importance of tu in the discipline). On much later administrative versions of the historiographical biao 㸼 or tables in the Shiji (analysed by Vankeerberghen), see Will (2003) on the eighteenth-century tables developed as guides to the penal code, and Hegel (2002) on the interplay between text and tu in Qing legal cases. 19 “Toutes les représentations graphiques quelles qu’elles soient” (Chavannes 1903: 236). 20 See the Chinese and Western language works cited in Sivin and Ledyard (1994: 28, n.13). Such studies could include celestial as well as terrestrial maps. Needham and Wang (1959) discuss star-maps, planispheres etc. in Section 20 on astronomy, and cartography in section 22.
INTRODUCTION
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not arbitrary, for its use in this sense was prominent throughout Chinese history. 21 But the cartographic perspective tended not only to confine studies of tu to a restricted range of examples, but also to limit the kinds of questions that were asked about them as a form of technical communication. 22 At the other end of the spectrum some scholarly enterprises have followed Chavannes’ exhortation to complete comprehensiveness and presumed that in its broader sense the semantic field of tu could be extended to encompass almost any illustration or drawing.23 This approach opens up a range of interesting questions about systems of visual communication, and intersects fruitfully with the new wave of studies of visual cultures and print cultures in China. But in conflating tu with visual forms considered by the Chinese to belong to other categories of visual communication it shifts the focus away from what it was that the Chinese felt were the distinctive features of tu. It is only recently that modern scholars have begun to address Chavannes’ underlying challenge of studying tu both in their full variety, yet within the boundaries of the Chinese concept. Indeed the lack of recognition of tu as a coherent conceptual category is not surprising when we consider that historians of mathematics in China usually encounter tu in the form of abstract diagrams, while historians of agriculture are familiar with tu that consist of drawings of implements and machinery. Furthermore earlier scholars interested in tu usually adopted the perspective of classic history of science, which meant that certain important categories or dimensions of tu eluded their attention. Chavannes chose to discuss his two Song maps in terms of accuracy, setting the agenda for a positivist approach to maps in particular and to tu more generally. There is certainly valuable information to be gained from considering specific tu as more or less successful attempts to observe, measure and then render in two dimensions such objects as the boundaries of a territory or the construction of a waterpump. But on the one hand this approach screened out the ritual, ——— 21 See for example Reiter (1990), Harley and Woodward (1994). 22 Yee (1994: 37 ff.) offers a critique of the flaws inherent in studying Chinese
cartography primarily as a mathematical discipline for understanding geographical space. 23 This agenda is implicit for instance in the programme of the conference entitled “From image to action” discussed below, and even to some extent in Vogel, forthcoming; see also Behr’s repeated assertion that he can find no evidence in ancient or classical texts that tu was a term that applied to pictures in general. We would argue (see below) that often it is not so much form or medium as use and context that determined whether a given image was considered a tu.
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cosmological or moral dimensions of such forms of representation, and thus distorted their original goals.24 On the other hand it focused attention on tu characteristic of fields of thought or activity that corresponded to modern branches of science or technology and their recognised precursors, but ignored the continuity of these fields with other domains of thought and action that the Chinese considered epistemologically, philosophically or pragmatically related. The line of studies that treated tu as geographical maps can be traced from Chavannes to Needham and Wang Ling, 25 and it remained a guiding thread in later studies by Lackner and Reiter.26 But Lackner and Reiter achieved a breakthrough in tu studies because they also tried to answer the question of what tu might be apart from geographical maps. Both scholars focus on the surge of interest in tu among Song philosophers and on the metaphysical diagrams or cosmograms that they (re)created (see below): they thus shift the focus from the mapping of territory to the plotting of structured relationships. Lackner notes that tu refers to maps or charts not only of landforms or political territory, but also of the heavens, of ritually significant buildings, or of genealogies. He makes the crucial point that such tu are characterised by ordering “mapped” things with respect to definitive positions, wei ;ۯthus the category includes divinatory and medical as well as geographical “maps”. Lackner describes the philosophical tu of the Song dynasty as maps of spiritual regions (Landkarten geistiger Gebiete), and characterises divinatory tu as mandalas—that is to say, he emphasises their importance in structuring a trajectory for the reader or user of the tu.27 Reiter’s article raises another important aspect of tu, which is the connotation of such mapping or positioning with norms and laws. He also remarks on the manifold administrative powers accorded to tu: maps, for example, may record the real boundaries of a territory or they may map symbolic claims to control; in either case they constitute an assertion of the authority to rule. Lackner and Reiter’s papers established the need to include maps, plans or charts in the very broadest sense into the study of tu, and underlined that symbolic tu must be integrated into any analysis of ——— 24 Bray, this volume, Henderson 1994. 25 They quote Chavannes’ article almost in its entirety in the course of develop-
ing his arguments; Needham and Wang (1959: 534–551). 26 Lackner 1990, 1992, 1996 and 2000; Reiter 1990. 27 Lackner 1990: 138–139 and 153.
INTRODUCTION
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the nature of tu and their role in Chinese thought. Meanwhile the study of tu as maps has also been transformed in tune with broader trends in critical cartography. In 1987 J.B. Harley and David Woodward argued forcefully that historical cartography could greatly enrich our understanding of past societies if it set aside narrow scientistic approaches and redefined maps as all forms of “graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world”. 28 At much the same time historians of China began to address the significance of the wide range of varieties of map produced in China, analysing them as products of aesthetic, political, socioeconomic, ritual and administrative concerns. Innovative studies by Amelung, Brook, Clunas, Hostetler, Smith and other historians, covering such genres as route maps for merchants, temple tours for affluent gentlemen indulging a taste for leisurely travel, assertive demarcations of nebulous imperial frontiers, and the meticulous charting of the hydraulic features of the Yellow River, have made significant contributions to rethinking what maps were and why and how they were made in China.29 A landmark contribution is the section on China by Cordell D.K. Yee and his colleagues30 in the Chicago History of Cartography, a monumental study of maps and mapping throughout the world, edited by J.B. Harley and David Woodward whose expansive approach to maps has just been quoted. It is noteworthy that only one of the contributors on China, F. Richard Stephenson, is a historian of science and technology as conventionally defined; John B. Henderson is a historian of cosmology and Yee himself was trained in English literature before becoming interested in cartography. One striking and stimulating feature of the enterprise is its emphasis on the many roles that maps played in statecraft. From the perspective of “tu studies” as distinct from “map studies”, we might also note that this collection affords Henderson the opportunity to reinstate the crucial ritual and/or cosmological dimensions of many tu, whereas earlier studies had usually simply ignored the non-secular aspects of such forms of representation.31 Innovations in map studies matched the broadening of horizons in ——— 28 Harley and Woodward 1987: xiv. 29 Amelung 1998, 2000; Brook 1988, 1994, 1997, 1998; Clunas 1996, 1997;
Hostetler 2001; Smith 1996. 30 Yee 1994, Sivin and Ledyard 1994, Henderson 1994, Stephenson 1994. 31 Henderson 1994: 203.
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the history of science more generally. Of particular interest to anyone studying graphic representations are the new attention to the role of visual expression in knowledge production, and to the aesthetics and rhetoric of explanation and persuasion.32 Approaches to scientific and technical activity as art, craft, and/or social mobilisation offer fruitful new insights for the analysis of images. The essential underpinning for all such efforts has been the shift to examining systems of knowledge rather than teleologically defined branches of science. 33 Not only does this eliminate artificial boundaries between science and non-science, or between the technological and the technical, it is also an indispensable prerequisite for any serious study of science as culture, or of science as ideology.34 The history of science (or of “the sciences”, scientiae) in China is now integrated into the history of thought more generally, while techniques and technology are beginning to be incorporated more convincingly into the history of government and cultural history.35 As a consequence of these shifts it has been possible to focus more closely on how domains of knowledge and practice were articulated, and to gain new insights into what powerful knowledge was at different points in Chinese history, and how it was expressed and realised. One of the many benefits of these new approaches for anyone interested in understanding tu is that they help circumscribe the fields of knowledge and action in which tu were seen as operating. In recent years historians interested in images have also begun to expand the scope of their studies to think beyond narrow specialist fields, to consider in broader terms the visual cultures of particular social groups or historical periods. This too has opened new opportunities for “tu studies”. Thinking in terms of visual cultures offers possibilities for spanning the divide between “art” and “science”, between “decoration”, “representation” and “symbol”, and helps us to reconstruct the visual conventions, the aesthetic grammar and the iconographic cross-references that a viewer of the time might have ——— 32 See below on visual cultures, as well as for example Kuriyama (1999). 33 For example Chemla et al. (2001). 34 The work of Benjamin Elman (1984) and his colleagues on Confucianism and
knowledge is an excellent example. 35 For example work by Li Jianmin (2001) and by Richard Smith (1996) casts light on fang ᮍ (technical knowledge), fa ⊩ (specialist methods) and the role of “technical specialists”. On techniques of government and the state we might cite recent work by Pierre-Étienne Will and his associates.
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11
drawn upon to decode a specific image.36 Craig Clunas’ Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China, which discusses visual cultures in the late Ming, is notable for its specific and sustained attention to how the relations between image and text were conceptualised. Although as Clunas notes the role of painting, hua , figured far more prominently in Ming debates about perception and knowledge than that of tu,37 he is nevertheless able to devote several pages to how conceptualisations of tu evolved during the Ming, seen in the context of contemporary metaphysics and classifications of knowledge, aesthetics, print culture and property relations.38 As he ranges through the vast array of media and styles in late Ming images, covering such diverse forms as literati hand-scrolls, decorated tableware, navigators’ sketch maps, religious paintings, and most notably the proliferation of woodblock illustrations in every kind of printed book,39 Clunas provides a salutory reminder that drawing hard lines between modern visual categories often obscures more than it reveals. The recent surge in studies of print culture and of the book trade in late imperial China has also influenced the study of tu, suggesting new ways to think about the production, transmission and reception of specific images and visual themes, and highlighting questions about the role of graphic media (painting, woodblock print, manuscript, rubbings, etc.) in the design and effectiveness of technical graphics.40 Such sea-changes in the history of knowledge production and in approaches to visual cultures have promoted a growing awareness among sinologists that tu is an important epistemological category which has been poorly understood and deserves renewed attention. In the broad sense of “graphic representations”, tu have figured as the theme of three sinological panels or conferences in recent years: Wu Hung and Hans-Ulrich Vogel organised panels at the Association of Asian Studies in Chicago in 1998 and at the International Conference on East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine in Singapore in 1999 respectively,41 and the whole third meeting of the European and ——— 36 E.g. Wu Hung, this volume; Powers 1991, Cahill 1994, Yee 1994, Hwang 1996, Smith 1996, Li Lin 2000, Ledderose 2000, Li Jianmin 2001. 37 Clunas 1997: 33, 110. 38 See especially pp. 104 ff., and also Clunas 1996, Brook 1998. 39 See also Chia (2002: 52 ff.) and Bussotti (2001), and below. 40 Bussotti, Métailié, this volume, Chia 2002a, Reed 2004, Brokaw and Chow 2005. 41 “Tu (diagrams, charts, drawings) in traditional Chinese culture”, Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Chicago, 1998; “Illustration (tu) in Traditional Chinese Science, Technology, and Medicine: Comparative and Cross-cultural
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North American Exchanges in East Asian Studies Conference, held in Paris in 2001, was devoted to the theme “From image to action: the dynamics of visual representation in Chinese intellectual and religious culture”. The 1998 Chicago panel looked primarily at tu of the cosmographic type, presenting four studies of ritually, religiously or politically powerful tu from the Warring States through to the Tang. The panel was intended as “a first step towards a more comprehensive interdisciplinary study of tu as a distinct system of knowledge, changing over time”.42 The Singapore panel included twelve papers on the uses of tu in “Chinese sciences and production techniques”, and aimed to explore their historical evolution and to sketch a contrast with Western developments. Topics included secular uses of tu in such fields as mapping, mathematics, engineering and medicine, as well as three papers on cosmographic and symbolic tu.43 The Paris conference, where over forty papers were presented, did not attempt to differentiate specifically between Chinese categories of visual representation. However, the conference’s theme, linking image to action, suggested to the co-editors of this volume the rich possibilities of a new approach to the epistemological powers of tu, treated as graphic guides to action employed across a broad range of technical fields. We also realised that the complex relation between tu and text could not be ignored if we were to throw some new light on how tu worked or were thought to work. Most of the papers in this volume are revised versions of selected presentations made in Paris; Wolfgang Behr wrote his article especially for this volume, as did Michela Bussotti and Francesca Bray whose original presentation in Paris were on different topics; Wu Hung’s contribution was first presented at the Chicago panel and Michael Lackner’s chapter is an elaboration of his contribution to the same panel; Donald Wagner graciously provided an abbreviated version of a paper he gave at another symposium, tailored to fit our analytical framework.44 ——— Perspectives”, 9th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia (ICHSEA), Singapore, 1999. 42 http://www.aasianst.org/absts/1998abst/china/c189.htm; three of the contributors to this volume, Wu Hung, Donald Harper and Michael Lackner, gave papers in this panel. 43 http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/sinologie/sino/personal/vogel/ichsea.html; five of the contributors to this volume, Dorefeeva-Lichtmann, Métailié, Amelung, Golas and Lackner gave papers at the Singapore meeting. 44 3rd International Symposium on Ancient Chinese Texts and Records on Science and Technology, Tübingen, 2003. Wagner’s paper is published in the proceed-
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WORDS AND THINGS: A BRIEF SURVEY OF TU IN CHINESE HISTORY
Recent archaeological discoveries of texts and artefacts are transforming our understanding of the early history of tu.45 Both as a concept and as a class of material artefacts tu have a very ancient pedigree in China, but we often need to be wary in postulating equivalence between the words and the things, particularly in pre-imperial China. The character tu itself can be traced back to inscribed bronzes from the early Zhou period (ca. 1000 to 800 BC). Although the exact form of the practices or artefacts that the term tu referred to in these inscriptions and later pre-imperial texts often remains unclear, the primary connotations of the character tu were “to order”, “to position in space”.46 As objects or practices that established or displayed relative positions in time, in space or in rank, the early tu, whatever precise forms they may have taken, were instruments of considerable ritual, political and/or social power.47 By the Song dynasty it was routine for maps, charts and other technical graphics to bear a caption in which they were explicitly identified as tu. But this seems to have been a relatively late development, and although Harper presents one document from an early Han tomb in which a passage in the written portion explicitly refers to the drawings in the graphic portion as tu, all too often we have no proof that all the early figurative representations we now consider to be forms of tu would have necessarily been given this name at the time.48 Conversely, pre-imperial and early imperial texts often refer to tu whose forms cannot now be identified with precision. Chinese scholars were apt to assume that ancient tu were conceived in the same forms and executed in the same media as those at their own disposal, but in fact quite dramatic ruptures between eras can now be ——— ings of this conference (Wagner 2006). 45 See especially Kalinowski, Harper and Lo, this volume. 46 Behr, this volume. 47 Behr, this volume; for more on the importance of relative position, wei ԡ, in Chinese thought see for example Lackner (1990) and especially the papers in Chemla and Lackner 1996. 48 Kalinowski, for example, notes that of the ten calendrical and hemerological documents that he analyses as having forms of tu layout, only one is explicitly designated as a tu. See also Lo on the frequent difficulty of matching text and image. One potential source of confusion is that archaeologists often name finds of early diagrams or pictures as tu in their reports.
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identified. In some cases it appears that early tu took a form that was completely different from that hypothesised in later interpretations; in others it seems that both form and function changed.49 Thus when archaeologists today identify an ancient artefact as tu, based on its function, form or layout, this does not necessarily mean that it would have been called tu at the time of its manufacture. Indeed the earliest surviving artefact that can be unambiguously identified as a tu is a bronze plaque depicting a plan for a mortuary monument (see below) and dated to no earlier than around 310 BC. By this time the meanings of tu discussed in contemporary texts converge rather clearly with the forms and functions of certain material objects.50 Nevertheless archaeologists and ancient historians argue plausibly that predecessors of the class of figurative representations which later came to be called tu can be traced back as far as certain abstract, symmetrical motifs on neolithic ceramics from the Taihu region, Liangzhu jade mask designs, and even perhaps to the disarticulation and reassembly of bones in human burials in the fifth millennium BC Yuanjunmiao site of the Wei river valley—“the body had, as it were, been turned into a diagram, a tu, of its former self.”51 Certainly the careful spatial ordering of piercings and written questions on the Yin oracle-bones belongs to a form of inscription that later was considered a tu, even though it is unlikely that such nomenclature was applied to them at the time of their creation. Osteomancy was practised in China well before the Shang period, but the Yin diviners made significant modifications in its techniques: they recorded the questions in written characters, and the characters were carefully arranged according to principles of symmetry and sequence, explored by Venture and Kalinowski. It has also been suggested that Yin diviners chose to use turtle plastrons for divination in addition to the more traditional scapulae of bovines and caprines because their symmetrical form had cosmic significance.52 For the early Zhou period no artefacts that can unequivocally be identified as tu have yet been found, but the character occurs in several bronze inscriptions from which Wolfgang Behr concludes that it “originally denoted some sort of representational token which was used in feudal or military exchanges of the Western Zhou royal ——— 49 50 51 52
Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Volkov, this volume. Behr, this volume. Keightley 1998. See Venture n.22; Kalinowski, this volume; Allan 1991; Li Ling 1993: 54–56.
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house, and aimed at the fixing of territorial affiliation or rank in a court ritual”.53 Textual references from the late Warring States and early Han show that the term had by then come to designate geographical maps, as well as plans and magico-religious cosmograms. The inscription on the bronze plaque from the tomb of King Cuo of Zhongshan, the Zhaoyu tu ٢ቹ, dated to ca. 310 BC, contains the term tu in a context where it clearly signifies “to plan”, “to make a layout”, in other words to ‘design a blueprint’ for King Cuo’s necropolis.54 Planning of this kind was as much ritual as architectural, and there are many references to charts of this kind in the various works on ritual, li ៖, that date from the Warring States–Han transition on. Ritual charts emphasised positioning in time as well as space, and were thus closely related in conception to divination diagrams. There are numerous references to mantic tu of this kind in the “apocryphal” (chenwei ᨅᒮ) literature which proliferated in the Eastern Han dynasty.55 The bibliographic section of the Hanshu records numerous illustrated works, as does that of the Suishu, almost all of which were works on such mantic techniques as divination, astrology or calendar-making.56 The term cosmogram denotes diagrams representing the cosmic forces of creation and change which shape the natural world and its processes, including history and individual human destiny. 57 Cosmograms, whether in the form of two-dimensional diagrams and patterns or of three-dimensional models, were another common theme in the philosophical and technical literature of the period. One prominent cosmic model was the Mingtang ࣔഘ or Luminous Hall. The Mingtang was alluded to cryptically in such pre-Han classics as the Mengzi ([Book of] Master Meng) and the Zhuozhuan ؐႚ (Zuo’s tradition [of interpreting the Chunqiu or Spring and Autumn annals]). From these works it was clear only that the Mingtang was “a ——— 53 Behr, this volume, p. 120. 54 Behr, this volume. Yee (1994: 36–37) provides a photograph, plan and analy-
sis of the bronze plaque. Though the design for the necropolis included five huge ceremonial halls situated above the burial mounds, intended to form what Behr calls “a megalomaniac ‘funerary park’ ”, the excavation reports show that only one and a half of them were constructed. The failure to complete the project, which as Behr notes was not exceptionally extravagant for the time, was probably due to the invasion of Zhongshan by Zhao in 296 BC. 55 Behr; Kalinowski, this volume. 56 Vogel, forthcoming. 57 Henderson 1994, Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 1996, Dorofeeva-Lichtmann and Kalinowski, this volume.
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sort of cosmological temple designed for the performance of imperial rites”, and “an architectural symbol of virtuous government”.58 In the absence of precise descriptions of the Mingtang in the classics, Han scholars enthusiastically seized the opportunity to recreate it according to their own cosmological principles. It is now recognised that the complex form of the Mingtang elaborated in the Han texts was not architecturally feasible; however this did not deter a number of Han and later rulers from ordering Mingtang to be built, for as Wu Hung explains, in building a Mingtang they considered that they were realising a harmonisation of the human with the cosmic order.59 The Mingtang provides a vivid example of a newly emerging understanding of how to interpret and act upon the world. “Among the elite of the third and second centuries BC design and epistemology coalesced in a new idea of tu ... [in] a conception of knowledge in which diagrams functioned together with the written word to reveal a universal plan—at once cosmic and divine”.60 The world was constituted and shaped by cosmic energies and processes whose principles of transformation were being formulated ever more systematically by the philosophers and technical specialists of the time, in terms of a theory of transformations based on yinyang or wuxing (five agents) correspondences. Humans inhabited “an encoded world that sages decoded and made accessible to society in material form”, namely as tu. Tu were microcosms: they depicted the cosmic and divine pulses and patterns, and they provided a framework for human comprehension, interpretation and manipulation of these patterns.61 Primal images of cosmic principles revealed to the sage kings of antiquity and translated into diagrams also included the hexagrams of the Book of Changes (see below), and the Luoshu (Luo River writing) and Hetu ࣾቹ (Yellow River chart). These legendary cosmic diagrams were, like the Mingtang, debated and reconstructed by Han scholars, and they too continued to provoke debate and speculation throughout imperial times. They were considered by early scholars to be the source of nonary cosmography, and later came to be regarded as “the paradigms ... of all tu”.62 ——— 58 Henderson 1994: 212. 59 Wu Hung, this volume, and see also Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume. The
plan of the mausoleum from Zhongshan bears some resemblances to the reconstructed layout of Han versions of the Mingtang (Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, n. 51). 60 Harper, this volume: p. 186. 61 Ibid. 62 Henderson 1994: 213. For a fuller review of the literature on the Hetu-Luoshu
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Donald Harper suggests that the philosophical preoccupation with tu, and the proliferation of tu-like objects or images in tombs of the period, represent an unprecedented dialogue between technical specialists and the elite. “New cosmological ideas arose from divination and astrology, and new ideas about universal knowledge occupied a middle ground between the mantic wisdom of the specialists and the intellectual programs of the philosophical masters (zhuzi 壆).”63 In his analysis of the images in two manuscripts discovered in the 168 BC tomb at Mawangdui, Harper discusses the elaboration in various domains of communication of a set of signs (“paradigmatic patterns”) that allowed people to perceive natural phenomena as part of a universe that was knowable, communicable, and applicable to human affairs. 64 Late Warring States and Han tombs have yielded a wide range of images and objects of this nature, produced by technical experts to serve the elite.65 The tombs have also yielded a great number of hitherto unknown written texts on the arts of divination, healing and the prolongation of life, many of them illustrated.66 Among the illustrated manuscripts recovered from Warring States or Han tombs, some depict what Harper calls “paradigmatic drawings or patterns”, stylised images or signs that appear sometimes in astrological or mantic documents, sometimes as talismans, or banners, or tokens. They appear to have operated equally effectively in magicoreligious or administrative contexts. In one astrological manuscript recovered from Mawangdui the drawings are paired with a text which ——— see Lackner (1990: 136–139), Reiter (1990: 314), Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (2001/ 2005), and the literature cited by Behr, this volume. Nonary layouts, formed by the division of a square into three rows of three smaller squares, were a frequent structuring device found not only in cosmography but also in the legendary “well-field system” (jingtian fa ѩ⬄⊩: the character jing consists of a three-by-three square) supposedly typical of land allocation in villages in high antiquity, and in the “nine provinces”, jiuzhou бᎲ, nine square regions into which the empire was said to have been divided during the reign of the legendary emperor Yu (see below). 63 Harper, this volume: p. 170. 64 See also e.g. Peterson (1982: 91 ff.) on how the Han commentary to the Book of Changes, the Xici zhuan, implies that “cosmological processes are intelligible and humans can adjust their conduct on the basis of that intelligence”. 65 Li Ling (2000) lists the whole range of magical tu so far discovered from the period. 66 As Harper has suggested, the proportion of occult works found in the tombs compared to that of more secular or philosophical texts strongly suggests that the occult arts preoccupied the ruling elite more than the philosophical questions debated in the canonical texts written or compiled at the time, even though it is the latter that were established as canonical during the Han and passed down to posterity in an unbroken textual tradition.
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explains how to use them for divinations; this text explicitly refers to the drawings as tu.67 Other tu-like cosmographs of the period include divination boards (shi )ڤ,68 and the various plane and solid layouts for hemerological calculations discussed by Kalinowski. One particularly potent and widely-used cosmograph devised at this time was the so-called “cordhook diagram”, consisting of a square defined by two lines intersecting at their centre, with other lines forming right-angles at each corner of the square. This diagram constituted “a schematic device representing the five sectors of the world, the five agents and the four seasons”; the Xuangong tu خ୰ቹ (Diagram of the mysterious palace) chapter of the Guanzi ጥ was also organised according to the symbolism of the five sectors.69 Another characteristic cosmic layout of the period was the “TLV” motif, found on many bronze mirrors and used for the layout of the board for liubo ք໑, a game of chance much in vogue among members of the elite. A third was the diagram of the “nine palaces” (jiugong ୰), in which the layout of the nine palaces was ingeniously conflated with that of the five agents.70 Such cosmograms led the user on an itinerary through space which also encoded the passage of time, patterned by the dynamics of cosmic forces and by shifts in orientation. Sometimes the cosmographic layout consisted of patterns of lines, like the game-boards; sometimes the pattern formed by lines was richly decorated with largely abstract motifs, like the bronze TLV mirrors; and sometimes the layout was achieved through an oriented arrangement of written characters, with or without a framework of drawn lines, like the calendrical and hemerological tu discussed by Kalinowski. Similar cosmographic layouts can also be found in written, or written and illustrated documents of the period. Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann shows that the Chu Silk Manuscript (4th or 3rd century BC) followed the layout of a divination board. It is “a rare example of a text that bears the clear stamp of a certain operational function. This text is characterised by an attribute that demands a certain action while reading it—rotating the manuscript or a circular movement by ——— 67 Harper, this volume. 68 A circular disc representing the Heavens, marked with astral and planetary
configurations, was mounted by a central pin on a square board, representing the Earth, marked with the compass directions; Stephenson (1994: 526–527). 69 Kalinowski, this volume: p. 141. 70 Ibid.
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the reader or user around it, or a combination of these actions.”71 The original version, Dorofeeva-Lichtmann suggests, might have been written on bundles of bamboo slips or on wooden tablets, thus facilitating the successive changes in orientation which were a key element in the significance of the document.72 Considering the importance of movement in creating the meaning of documents of this kind, Dorofeeva-Lichtmann proposes that the term jing ᆖ in the title of the document Shanhai jing ՞௧ᆖ should be translated not as “canonical work” but as “itinerary”.73 This work, compiled no later than the beginning of the first century BC, contained “a comprehensive and systematised [verbal] description of the inhabited world”.74 It was taken for granted by later Chinese scholars that such a text must originally have been illustrated with drawn maps, as it would have been in their day, and that the maps had subsequently been lost. However Dorofeeva-Lichtmann argues that drawn maps were unnecessary: in its original form the written text itself was so configured as to lead its readers through an itinerary that was the conceptual equivalent of a map, albeit a map of a highly symbolic type representing the “world ordering travels” of the legendary sage emperor Yu. The term tu also acquired a range of more secular connotations during the Warring States and Han dynasty, as new forms of tu were incorporated into the repertory of government. It is to be noted that the meaning of tu as “to plan”, first attested in the bronze plaque from Zhongshan where it signified the planning of a ritual space, had also acquired a more secular, administrative significance by the Han. The dictionary Shuowen jiezi ᎅ֮ᇞ( ڗExplanation of writing and explication of graphs), compiled ca. 100 AD, defined tu as “picturing things that are difficult to plan” hua jinan ye ૠᣄՈ.75 A plan in this context was not a diagram or blue-print for construction, but an algorithm for political action. ——— 71 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume: p. 246. 72 Dickhardt (2003) offers a stimulating discussion of the importance of move-
ment and other sensory experiences in the production of significant spaces. 73 Its title should thus be translated “Itineraries of mountains and seas” rather than “The classic of the mountains and the seas”. Manipulation of a diagram by the reader, and the re-orientation in space, this time not of the whole tu but of certain segments, are also a key feature of such mathematical procedures of demonstrationcalculation as “mending the void with the excess”, yi ying bu xu ҹⲜ㺰㰯, expounded by Liu Hui ᖑ in the third century AD and analysed by Volkov. 74 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume: p. 217. 75 Our translation is somewhat different from that of Sivin and Ledyard (1994: 26, n.6), often cited in later studies.
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Another form of tu that was institutionalised as a powerful tool of government during this period was the territorial map. Cordell Yee cites various textual references indicating that maps, called tu or ditu چቹ, were being produced and used regularly in military affairs during the late Warring States. The Zhanguo ce ᖏഏ (Stratagems of the Warring States), a text that may date to the third century BC, de scribes the politician Su Qin ᤕ convincing the king of Zhao to join an alliance to attack the more powerful state of Qin by saying: “I have examined a map [tu] of the empire, and according to it, the territory of the princes is five times that of the Qin”.76 The Sunzi ୪ (Master Sun’s [Art of war]), believed to date to the fourth century BC, includes a chapter on “Topography” (dixing ;)ݮچwhile it does not explicitly mention maps Yee maintains that their use can be inferred. The Guanzi ጥ ([Book of] Master Guan), parts of which date to the third century BC, does refer explicitly to use of maps (ditu) by military commanders and contains a chapter of that name. A passage in the Han Feizi ឌॺ ([Book of] Master Han Fei), from the third century BC, suggests that maps were vital to state security and that giving up your map to another ruler was tantamount to giving up your state. And other texts of the late Warring States like the Xunzi ಃ ([Book of] Master Xun), parts of which are third century BC, and the Guoyu ഏ (Discourses of the States), perhaps ca. 300 BC, highlight that maps served as symbols of institutional integrity and political continuity; they aided not only spatial but also moral understanding, “functioning in part as guides to moral behavior”.77 The Zhouli ࡌ៖ (Ritual forms of Zhou), compiled in the first century BC, discusses maps as crucial documents of state, used not only to establish a ruler’s claims to territory, but also to chart natural resources such as mines, to locate mountain ranges, rivers and roads, to set up cadasters and adjudicate land disputes.78 Other texts of the period refer to tushu ቹ (maps and documents) or to tuji ቹᤄ (maps and archives) as essential to the administrative and symbolic function of the state.79 From the Han dynasty on, the central government always included offices for documenting and mapping the heavens as well as its earthly territories. Celestial maps were even more potent political and symbolic tools than terrestrial maps: the emperor ruled by the man——— 76 77 78 79
Yee 1994: 74. Ibid: 73, 74. Ibid: 75. Ibid: 77, Reiter 1990.
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date of Heaven, and unless he understood the celestial phenomena and could predict and respond to celestial anomalies disaster would result. Astrology and celestial maps thus played a key part in legitimising political power.80 Terrestrial mapping, as the Zhouli suggests, offered many essential if more mundane advantages to administrators, not to mention the symbolic powers mentioned earlier. It became recommended practice for officials to compile local gazetteers (fangzhi ֱ )ݳof the administrative units under their jurisdiction; these contained pertinent economic, social and topographic information and were usually accompanied by a series of maps. Copies of the local gazetteers were sent to the capital and used to compile comprehensive gazetteers of the whole empire. Local gazetteers apparently date back to the Han, and the bibliographical section of the Suishu ᙟ (History of the Sui, compiled in the seventh century AD) “lists nearly 140 geographic works, including gazetteers and maps”.81 What physical tu in the category of maps have survived from this period? The earliest surviving astral charts date back to Han-dynasty tombs, and several fine star maps from the Tang or Five Dynasties (sixth to tenth century AD) have been discovered in the grottoes of Dunhuang. 82 One remarkable artefact that can be considered a tu since it was a model of the heavens was the design of the city walls of the Western Han capital at Chang’an, built between 194 and 190 BC in the shape of two major constellations. The ideal Chinese city was square, enclosed between straight walls. But in the case of Chang’an the southern city wall, about 6 km long, followed the outline of the Southern Dipper, nandou ত֯ (Saggitarius), and the northern wall, about 7 km long, that of the Northern Dipper, beidou ( ֯קUrsa Major).83 As for territorial maps, the oldest that have survived to date are seven wooden boards excavated from a tomb in Gansu, dating to ca. 239 BC and belonging to an officer in the Qin army. All seven depict different parts of a strategic region around a key pass into the state of Qin; six have maps painted on both sides. A Han tomb at the same site, dated between 179 and 141 BC, yielded a small fragment of a map drawn on paper. And from the Mawangdui tomb of 168 BC came three silk maps of the Changsha region. All these maps are ——— 80 Stephenson 1994. 81 Yee 1994: 89; and also 71–75. Fangzhi were not compiled for all regions of
China during the early dynasties; coverage started to become more complete during the Song (see below). 82 Stephenson 1994. 83 Stephenson 1994: 524, fig. 13.5.
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planimetric, and the styles of execution suggest some conventions for the notation of topographical features.84 Other Han tombs, and several of the Dunhuang caves, contain murals of what Yee calls “maps as paintings/paintings as maps”: they show buildings and features of the landscape in elevation and include human and animal figures like a painting, but they also contain planimetric elements—in other words they are both pictorial and cartographic.85 Here there is a similarity with murals in estate-owners tombs of the same period, which depict captioned scenes of different farming procedures executed in the style of decorative paintings.86 Are these pictorial renderings of cities, estates and farming scenes tu? We argue that they are, in that they were intended to transmit the functional details of the tomb occupant’s customary surroundings or sources of wealth and well-being to the world beyond the grave, to encode them so that they could be realised (in Ames’ term) in the afterlife. Although during the print era every field of technical knowledge generated graphic forms of tu, the range seems to have been rather more restricted before the Song dynasty. To some extent this may simply be due to the failure of fragile materials, or of mundane objects not sufficiently valued to be included in noble burials, to survive over long periods. The medieval images and documents that survived in the Buddhist grottoes of Dunhuang, including early woodblock prints of calendars, almanacs and sutras, often represent more plebeian or monastic concerns than the aristocratic tombs that are the main source of artefacts in the central regions of China. Several of the hemerological tu analysed by Kalinowski come from Dunhuang, including the only one of his twelve examples actually to bear the label tu. From the Dunhuang evidence it is quite clear that tu associated with divination, healing, astrology, the calendar or popular religious symbolism were in regular use among commoners as well as the elite throughout the medieval period. It can be shown that some images from this graphic repertoire were transmitted for centuries almost unchanged, an example being the signs of the zodiac as depicted in a privately printed calendar for the year 877, which reappear in printed works of the Yuan and Ming,87 and it is likely that this period contributed a number of iconic tu which achieved wider dissemination ——— 84 85 86 87
Yee 1994: 37–45. Yee 1994: 147–153. A good compendium of these images is Hayashi (1977). Chia 2002: 57.
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during the print era (see below). As Volkov notes, however, this was also a period where many tu must have been lost, for the state imposed strict controls over the use and possession of any tu that it considered might be turned to cosmo-political use. The Tang Code of 653 imposed two years of forced labour on any private household found in possession of such works as the Luo River Writing or the Yellow River Chart; similar bans were imposed by subsequent dynasties right up to the Song, leaving only restricted lists of divination works that provided procedures for the indispensable and legitimate calculations of dates for marriages and funerals.88 In certain technical fields where tu later figured prominently, for example mathematics, it appears that tu in the sense of drawn figures inserted in the text were not used by early writers. The author of the Jiuzhang suanshu ີጩ (Nine chapters on mathematical procedures) makes no reference to in-text figures, but Liu Hui’s Ꮵᚧ commentary of ca. 263 contains explicit reference to diagrams. Some historians have proposed that in medieval times cut-out paper figures or solid models were used in conjunction with the text to demonstrate certain procedures, although none have survived as physical objects. 89 Alexei Volkov argues that Liu Hui provided coloured diagrams, drawn on paper and bound together separately from the text, which illustrated general principles through specific examples (see below). At another level, just as the textual configuration of the Shanhai jing provided its readers or users with a map-like experience, so too it can be argued that the arrangement of a work like the Jiuzhang suanshu constituted a tu (a structured progression or set of algorithms) in itself.90 Text-as-tu was also used as a structuring device for exegesis or spiritual training in Daoist and Buddhist texts as early as the medieval period. Hermann–Josef Röllicke demonstrates that the Avatamsaka–sûtra, the foundational text of the Huayan ဎᣤ School of Buddhism, was compiled so as to form a textual mandala. Röllicke lays out for us the structure of the mandala-diagram which led the reader on a journey of awakening, sketching out a rhythmic flow of thoughts through confined corridors of time. An extraordinary achievement of the sutra is to take the reader through a process of awakening which is textually graded in time and space, while extinguishing all consciousness of grades. Thus the structure of the text ——— 88 Volkov, this volume. 89 Ibid. 90 Chemla and Guo 2004.
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anticipates its own doctrine, namely the all-presence of confined portions of verbally exposed Dharma anywhere in the universe.91 Another early form of text-as-tu was the biao । or table, literally a laying-out of signs. By late imperial times the terms biao and tu were often used interchangeably for tabular arrangements of data that facilitated information management. The earliest uses of the form were historiographical, and date back to pre-imperial times. The great Han historian Sima Qian ್ᔢ, author of the Shiji ಖ (Historical records, completed ca. 90 BC), claimed to have invented biao as a way of displaying historical information. But a find of bamboo strips in Anhui in 1977 included 200 strips collated as chronological tables; they record events between roughly the ninth century and the end of the third century BC and predate the Shiji by about a century. Sima Qian elaborated two forms of biao, one with time, the other with place as the organising principle. Griet Vankeerberghen notes that while textual historical narrative is necessarily selective, biao are inherently exhaustive and permit the dramatic representation of geographical or chronological dynamics. Sima Qian’s tables dramatically highlight how the consolidation of imperial rule correlates with the decline of the feudal families—as Vankeerberghen remarks, the visually suggestive layout of a table can carry considerable rhetorical force. Many late imperial biao were devised as tools of statecraft (see below). Sima Qian’s biao, however, were inherently subversive, offering a subtle visual challenge to the new political structures of the Han imperial state.92 In the transmission of technical knowledge about the body, Vivienne Lo notes that among the archaeological finds of documents from the Han dynasty there are tu, and there are texts, but so far there are no examples of illustrations being paired with explanatory text. The forty-two images in the so-called Daoyin tu ᖄ֧ቹ, “Guiding and pulling chart”, discovered at Mawangdui, depict a form of gymnastics designed to rejuvenate aging bodies and to ease discomfort. Some have short captions naming the posture depicted, or indicating what ailment it is good for. Unillustrated texts recovered from another roughly contemporary burial seem to correspond rather well to the concept of the body and of therapy suggested by the technical ——— 91 Röllicke, this volume. 92 This is probably not true of the chronological biao in later dynastic histories;
nevertheless, many would doubtless repay critical analysis from some of the perspectives suggested by Vankeerberghen.
INTRODUCTION
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drawings of the Daoyin tu. But in the case of the lacquer figurine from a tomb at Shuangbaoshan in Sichuan, sealed in 118 BC, it is not easy directly to relate the understandings of the body it suggests to any single existing text of the period. However by medieval times we find straight pairings of text and tu, for example “mediaeval moxacautery loci charts discovered in the cache of manuscripts at Dunhuang, and in the Hama jing ᓚᝂᆖ (Toad Canon) bring together simple textual instructions with practical illustration.”93 The bibliographical sections of the early dynastic histories list numerous works with tu in the title, but almost none have survived.94 It is not easy to be sure just what form of tu they contained, or what the relation was between tu and text. The works on healing just mentioned are among the relatively few tu-like artefacts surviving from early or medieval times that display the tu-text interplay which was to become standard in the print era, namely a direct pairing of twodimensional graphic images with text. On the other hand in the preprinting era other forms of tu-like artefacts were common, including “paradigmatic patterns” and two- or three-dimensional cosmic models, all apparently usable independently of linear written text, as well as characters arranged (with or without other graphic elements) in diagrammatic or schematic form, and written texts containing no graphics but structured as tu in themselves. The flowering of the print era naturally marked an important transition in what we might call the “tu culture” of China. Woodblock printing was already quite a well-known medium by late medieval times, used as early as the eighth century to produce sutras, religious images, calendars, dictionaries, primers, books on geomancy and divination, and other documents where the rapid production of multiple copies offered an obvious practical or religious advantage. Woodblock printing lends itself both to the reproduction of images and to the organisation of text into structured patterns (for example the layout of calendars or tables), so it is not surprising that tu of various kinds feature in the few early printed documents that have survived.95 A true publishing industry, based on woodblock printing, began to ——— 93 Lo, this volume: p. 384. The Hama jing was probably not compiled till the early Tang, but it contains materials that are quite consistent with Han ideas about the uses of acupuncture and moxibustion to exorcise evil spirits and to protect spirit and qi; correct orientation of the patient while undergoing needling was an important consideration (Lo 2001). 94 Volkov, this volume. 95 E.g. Tsien 1985: 146–159.
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develop in the tenth century. Now every field of technical knowledge began to generate its own tu, many of which rapidly entered general circulation, not least because printing greatly facilitated the production of encylopedias, compendia and other collections that included illustrated materials from a range of fields of technical knowledge. But a negative effect of the woodblock medium was that it was much easier for printers to make more or less direct copies of earlier images than to create new ones. A number of tu which entered the iconographic repertory in the early print era were the original creations of writers or woodblock carvers of the Song and Yuan; some dated back to the pre-print era. Although new tu were created during the Ming and Qing in a number of technical fields, all too often publishers simply picked more or less appropriate illustrations from earlier works. Technical drawing never became a specialised skill, let alone a critical discipline, in China—and this, as Peter Golas argues, was a definite impediment to technological creativity. The social history of print culture in China followed a different path from Europe. 96 The earliest uses of printing in China were largely popular and religious, and it was only after a couple of centuries that the medium’s potential for scholarship was realised. In the tenth century several Buddhist and Daoist foundations decided to go beyond printing individual sutras and religious ephemera for distribution to their congregations, launching ambitious projects of critical scholarship. The first complete printed edition of the Tripitaka was produced between 971 and 983 in Sichuan. Other editions of the Tripitaka, and a printing of the complete Daoist corpus, followed. In the late 980s the Song state also took the plunge into print culture. The National Academy undertook a critical edition of the Confucian classics, to which was soon added a critical edition of the seventeen dynastic histories, begun in 994 and completed in 1061. As well as these milestones of orthodox scholarship, the Song state also printed all kinds of technical works that it considered would aid good government and promote the welfare of the general population. Government offices, central and local, printed and distributed dictionaries, anthologies and technical works, including treatises and technical handouts on farming and textile technology, which were circulated to local magistrates so they could develop the rural economy in their district. In 1088 the Office of Medical Administration ——— 96 The thumbnail sketch of the early history of printing that follows is based principally on Tsien (1985).
INTRODUCTION
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ordered the printing of a small-character edition of the medical classics and collected prescriptions (cheaper and more convenient than the standard large-print versions) to be sold at cost by local governments to practising physicians. The official printing offices also produced forms and documents to facilitate administration, including tax registers, census figures, maps and the legal code. The Jin, Liao and Yuan governments too made extensive and creative use of printing, for scholarly and for administrative purposes. Governments also printed documents that could be used to educate ordinary people, providing instruction both in material technologies like farming or medicine, and in moral practices like ritual and filiality (see below). From the beginning of the Song commercial and private publishing houses kept pace and competed with the official printing offices.97 By the late Song popular genres included works on ritual, farming, medicine and materia medica, treatises on geomancy and other forms of divination, collections of philosophy, poetry and biji (personal notes on miscellaneous topics), and historical studies. Works intended for a more popular readership, including household encyclopedias and illustrated fiction, started to appear in the late Song. From about 1100 on, guides to studying and pocket-sized cribs that could be smuggled into the official examinations sold like hot cakes.98 Many of the technical works were illustrated with tu99 (the illustrations in collections of fiction, as mentioned earlier, were referred to not as tu but as hua or xiang).100 One type of printed tu that apparently became common fairly early in the Song and whose popularity never ceased to grow throughout imperial times was the star-chart.101 Among other examples of Song usage of these charts, Needham cites Zheng Qiao who “advised chanting over portions of the Bu tiange on clear nights to familiarise oneself with the celestial patterns”, but “complained that the available printed star-charts were generally not to be relied upon ——— 97 Chia 2002. 98 Tsien 1985, Chia 2002. For government memorials, edicts and decrees at-
tempting to curb the abuse of such texts, see Chia (2002: 121–123). 99 See the list of subjects which Zheng Qiao records as having produced illustrated studies. As well as providing several reproductions of tu from the Song on, Lucille Chia discusses the technical production and choices of page layout for tu in the Song and in the Ming (Chia 2002: 52–62, 212, 217). 100 Bussotti, this volume. 101 Stephenson 1994. “By the Qing dynasty, the number of surviving star maps and celestial globes escalated to such a degree that it would take a separate essay to describe them in any detail” (ibid: 573).
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and hard to correct”.102 The number of Song and Yuan imprints that has survived what is almost a thousand years to the present is not surprisingly rather small. Nevertheless the texts that have survived, together with bibliographies, references, and copies or reproductions of early editions from later dynasties, provide a fair idea of what printed materials were available. Clearly printing helped circulate images of many kinds (both decorative hua and instructive tu) far more widely than before, contributing to the consolidation of an iconic repertory familiar to ordinary people as well as to the educated and travelled elite. Printed books were still too expensive for most, but multi-media visual circuits helped to popularise a number of images. Scenes depicting advanced farming methods were painted as murals on the walls of county magistratures. The scenes from the painted scrolls of the Gengzhi tu (Farming and weaving illustrated), for instance, were carved on stone tablets from which rubbings were made, and made into woodblock versions for printing. These forms of reproduction ensured their widespread diffusion.103 Another interesting multi-media pedagogical tool of the Song was the famous life-size bronze statues drilled with acupuncture points, commissioned from Wang Weiyi ׆൫ԫ, an officer of the Medical Board, in 1026 and finished the following year. The figures were designed as a teaching aid for medical students; it seems that one was placed in the Central Medical Institute (yiguanyuan ᠔ࡴೃ) and the other in a Buddhist temple at the capital. The acupunture points were covered with wax to conceal their location, and the figure was filled with water so that when the student needled the correct location drops of water would appear; furthermore “the figure was made in two halves, front and back, which could be fitted together to make one whole body”, and contained “the inner and outer viscera [which] were all complete”.104 In preparation for this stage of physical, three-dimensional learning, Wang Weiyi had compiled for the students a study book, also completed in 1027, consisting of a critical selection of written and illus——— 102 Needham and Wang 1959: 281. The Butian ge ℹ℠ (Song of the sky pacer) was a late sixth-century work by the poet Wang Ximing ⥟Ꮰᯢ that “gave a brief description of almost 300 asterisms and enumerated the stars in each”; these descriptions were verbal, not illustrated, but it was claimed that they corresponded to a third-century star map (Stephenson 1994: 532). 103 Bray, this volume. 104 Lu and Needham 1980: 131. A Ming version of the figure is shown in fig. 27, p.130.
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trated texts entitled Xinzhu tongren shuxue zhenjiu tujing ᄅᦷᎭԳ ⟿لಾ߁ቹᆖ (Illustrated classic for the use of the newly cast bronze men showing the acupuncture and moxibustion points).105 So here we have a multi-media system comprising model, tu and text, all of which were considered necessary components of the learning process. The growth and prosperity of the later Ming and high Qing supported a second dramatic expansion of the printing industry starting in the early sixteenth century. Books now reached new audiences of women, children and less privileged families, and bibliographies and publishers’ catalogues of the period indicate that new illustrated editions of earlier works sold well. Popular genres included primers, guides to the classics and to ritual, biographies of virtuous women, household encyclopedias and medical treatises. Many of these works were illustrated on the grounds that tu appealed to the semi-educated or illiterate while helping them to grasp ideas or information. But it seems that all levels of society had by now acquired an appetite for illustrated works, and in the highly competitive world of late Ming publishing editors seem often to have insisted on adding illustrations to any work that passed through their hands. Georges Métailié suggests that the set of rather rough illustrations to the first edition of the Bencao gangmu ءᖙጼ( ؾSystematic materia medica) by Li Shizhen ޕழੴ, published in 1596, was added by the publisher without consulting the author. 106 Another interesting case is that of the Lu Ban jing ᕙఄᆖ (Carpenters’ canon), a compilation of arcane craft knowledge about magical measurements, the taboos and rituals of different phases and types of construction, geomantic precepts, and a series of descriptions of how to build common items of furniture or joinery. Historians of crafts presume that this work originally served not as a how-to guide for young carpenters— who would have been trained through practical apprenticeship, not through studying books—but as an esoteric, holy text that would have been copied in manuscript and kept among the ritual paraphernalia of the carpenters’ guild. In the Jiajing era (1522–1566) an elegant illustrated woodblock edition of the Lu Ban jing was produced.107 Some ——— 105 An illustration from this work is shown ibid (fig. 28, p. 132). The work was considered so important that it was engraved on stone before 1030, and reinscribed by imperial order in 1443; ibid (133–134; 134 fig. 29) shows a section on the Song engraving. 106 Métailié, this volume; Haudricourt and Métailié 1994. See also Bussotti on the addition of images by publishers. 107 Ruitenbeek 1993.
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of the tu, for example those depicting talismans, charms and spells, probably came from the original versions of the text; others, for instance the pictures of items of furniture shown in typical domestic settings, were probably newly drawn; the geomantic diagrams appear to have been borrowed from illustrated encylopedias. The publisher of the Jiajing edition is less likely to have intended it for a readership of carpenters than for wealthy people who routinely employed carpenters for building work.108 It would also have catered for a general interest among the leisured class of the period in how everyday objects were made. Craig Clunas has argued that the illustrated technical descriptions of the Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ (Exploitation of the works of nature) by Song Yingxing ݚᚨਣ, first published in 1637, were likewise intended for entertainment rather than for practical instruction.109 Neither Peter Golas nor Donald Wagner would agree that this was Song Yingxing’s intention in writing Tiangong kaiwu, but we cannot presume that the publisher shared Song’s seriousness of purpose. As Wagner points out, the discrepancies between text and image in certain passages suggest that while some of the illustrations may have been drawn specifically to Song’s specifications, in others the publisher may have supplied a picture without reference to the written text. One interesting and unusual feature of the Tiangong kaiwu is that its illustrations, whatever their quality, were new, not reworked versions of earlier tu. But even borrowed tu could be assembled to new effect, as in Wang Qi’s ݆׆encyclopedia Sancai tuhui Կթቹᄎ (Illustrated compendium of the Three Powers) of 1609, one of the fullest collections of tu ever assembled (see below). Another great illustrated project of the period, still more ambitious in scope, was the Gujin tushu jicheng ײվቹႃ( ګComplete collection of graphics and texts, ancient and modern), commissioned by the Kangxi emperor in 1701 but only completed and printed under his successor, the Yongzheng emperor, in 1725. This colossal enterprise, which ran to some 800,000 pages, was printed in movable copper type, and the illustrations were all new versions rather than direct copies of the original prototypes. 110 Unfortunately no research has ——— 108 It was most important for a client not to antagonise the carpenters when they were building, and to have some knowledge of the construction process, for disgruntled carpenters could easily ruin the family fortunes by secreting unlucky objects or signs on ritually important parts of the house like the rafters. 109 Clunas 1997a. 110 Ledderose 2000: 140 ff.
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been carried out specifically on the production of these tu, but we shall offer a few remarks on their qualities below. As the population and the economy expanded through the late Ming and Qing dynasties, the challenges of political control and effective administration grew. It is in the field of statecraft and administration that many of the most interesting innovations in late imperial tu occurred. Two scientific domains closely associated with statecraft were mathematical astronomy and water conservancy, both of which as Cordell Yee notes can be considered established disciplines in late imperial China, “following Stephen Toulmin’s two-tiered definition of an intellectual discipline as having a well-defined subject matter and an explanatory (or procedural) idea”.111 The science and politics of astronomy in late imperial China is a subject that has commanded sustained attention. From the perspective of tu, Stephenson provides a concise survey and evaluation of the star maps produced by the imperial bureau of astronomy, and discusses the impact of Jesuit uranography at the end of the Ming and into the Qing.112 The role of tu in state hydraulics was equally important but has so far attracted rather little specific attention. The management of such vast rivers as the Yangzi and the Yellow River generated a long tradition of official documentation, research and public works. Hydraulic policies and large-scale public works dated back to pre-Imperial times. During the Ming the tax grain transported along the Grand Canal from the rice regions of the south to the capital in Beijing was the lifeblood of the empire, but the steady silting of the Yellow River endangered the Qingkou intersection where the Canal crossed it, and by the second half of the sixteenth century it was clear that a still vaster and more comprehensive system of water management was required than the existing system of dykes and flood basins. Pan Jixun ᑰࡱ (1521–1595) was first appointed as river commissioner in 1565 and “is credited with establishing the paradigm of hydraulic management that would dominate Yellow River engineering for the next three centuries”.113 Using a multimedia approach that included detailed maps at different scales as well as historical data on floods and public works, and a survey of previous memorials, ——— 111 Yee 1994: 96, n.2. 112 Stephenson 1994: esp. 540–555 and 568–578. 113 Dodgen 2001: 18. Dodgen traces the history of the specialised bureaucracy in
charge of managing the Yellow River from the Ming dynasty through to the midnineteenth century.
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edicts and policies, Pan attempted to grasp the complex hydraulic principles at work in order to “craft a system in which the force of the river was harnessed to do the work of man”.114 The preface to the Siku quanshu edition of Pan’s study, the Hefang yilan ࣾԫᥦ (General view of the control of the Yellow River, prefaced 1590), comments that “although changes in methods were afterwards necessary to fit changing circumstances, yet experts in river control always take this book as a standard guide”. 115 Pan’s use of sophisticated maps and charts has seldom been the focus of analysis in the various studies that refer to his work, except for a recent paper by Amelung.116 Clearly they would merit further study given the impressive impact of Pan’s technical analysis.117 Other notable statecraft trends in the production of tu in late imperial China include the elaboration of new charts and tables designed to improve administrative precision or to increase expert command over large and unwieldy bodies of information and procedure (discussed below in Typology). A salient trend in the official use of tu during the Qing dynasty was the production of symbolic representations of the dynasty’s authority to rule. As foreign rulers the Manchu emperors were especially anxious to show themselves to be good Confucians and ardent supports of the Chinese moral and ritual order. Among the tu they deployed to reinforce their image as wise rulers committed to the welfare of the common people were four new versions of the Gengzhi tu ౙ៣ቹ (Ploughing and weaving illustrated), a set of scenes of rural labour first composed by a Song magistrate, Lou Chou ᑔ㙭, in the 1130s. The images of the Gengzhi tu were as much invocations of a harmonious and productive social order as depictions ——— 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid: 20. The Siku quanshu was compiled between 1773 and 1782. 116 E.g. most recently Vermeer (1987), Yee (1994: 131–134), Dodgen (2001 pas-
sim), Elvin (2004: 137 ff.), Yee (1994: 98–99, Figure 5.2 reproduces portions of Pan Jixun’s charts in Hefang yilan). Amelung (2000) pays explicit attention to the role of maps in hydraulic management and policy. 117 My thanks are due to Ramon Guardans for his insights into Pan’s methods of analysis and conceptualisation of dynamic processes. One key long-term failing of Pan’s system, as Dodgen remarks, was that “as the state arrogated to itself more and more complex technical tasks, it failed to anticipate the fiscal or bureaucratic consequences. A weak tax system and an ad hoc approach to technical training proved inadequate to the job of financing, managing, and maintaining the Yellow River system”; Dodgen (2001: 22). Elvin adds ecological considerations, and notes that “the mass mobilization of unpaid labor was not feasible under the Qing to the same degree as it had been in previous dynasties” (Elvin 2004: 123).
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of advanced technology.118 Other tu that served to reinforce the symbolic authority of the regime included the elaborate ceremonial plans for the reception of foreign visitors or tributaries to the Qing court, and these in turn are closely connected to the symbolically powerful liturgical tu that prescribed the annual cycle of court rituals.119 The boundaries of the Chinese empire were greatly extended by the military and diplomatic campaigns of the early Qing emperors, who also put great effort into drawing all the non-Chinese inhabitants of far corners or remote enclaves of the empire into the imperial fold. Maps were important symbolic as well as military and administrative tools in these campaigns. 120 The government also commissioned compilations of illustrated descriptions of aboriginal, non-Han populations, for instance the “Miao albums” or “Illustrations of the hundred Miao tribes” (baimiao tu ્ۍቹ). Historians like Hostetler have identified such projects as part of a colonial enterprise. Unlike earlier travellers’ tales of exotic and monstrous beings these albums, Hostetler argues, consisted of accurate verbal and visual ethnographic observations of the kind that would assist an administrator in governing such a population.121 At the end of the Ming and in the early Qing the Jesuits had introduced the knowledge and equipment used to produce maps in Europe (mathematics and astronomy; sextants, quadrants and theodolites). But as Iwo Amelung notes, whereas the impact on Qing mathematics and astronomy was profound, the impact on Chinese cartographic practices was negligeable. It seems that Chinese cartographers misunderstood the principles of such key features of Western cartography as the meridian-based grid, and in fact a mid-sixteenth century atlas, Luo Hongxian’s ᢅੋ٣ Guangyu tu ᐖᝨቹ (Enlarged terrestrial atlas, completed ca. 1555) “was reprinted almost unchanged as late as 1799, and probably was the most popular map available in China up to this time”.122 Only with the shock of the first Opium War of 1839–1842 did Qing rulers, officials and intellectuals eventually feel the urgency of acquiring maps which possessed the same powers as the maps of the colonialist Western nations who threatened to overwhelm them; only in the 1880s was a systematic national survey ——— 118 119 120 121 122
Bray, this volume. Hevia 1995, Bastid-Bruguière 1996. Hostetler 2001, Smith 2001. Ibid. Amelung, this volume: _p. 688.
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using Western methods initiated. Amelung discusses the resources mobilised for the ambitious large-scale surveys of the 1880s and 1890s, and the benefits Chinese officials hoped to reap from “modern” maps, as part of the often reluctant drive towards transforming China into a modern nation.
TU: A TYPOLOGY AND SOME DEBATES The attention of Chinese thinkers focused essentially on two distinct types of tu, those which revealed or explained cosmic processes and were thus endowed with symbolic or ritual power; and those which represented or organised secular information or knowledge, whose power was by and large didactic. Although Chinese discussions of tu seldom formulated or even acknowledged the differences between them, it is usually immediately apparent which type of tu is at issue. Broadly speaking, Section I of this book, The power of order: tu as symbolic mediation, addresses the first category of tu; the cases discussed include several instances where a complex structuring of written words was in itself the tu. Section II, Picturing reality? Tu as technical illustrations, discusses the second category. As we have seen, tu of both kinds were subjects of reflection in the literature of the late Warring States and Han. Philosophical texts discussed powerful primal images like the Mingtang and the Hetu, and historical records or discussions of statecraft indicated that tushu, “maps and records”, were considered essential tools of government. The popularisation of woodblock printing stimulated a new surge of reflection, among Song and later intellectuals, on how tu of different types functioned. The intellectual impact of printing on the Song literati elite was dramatic. With the routinisation of printing “changes in the ways of learning, remembering, reading and writing and in the ways that text could be collated in a stabilized and easily replicable form began to affect all areas of learning”.123 Among the new cognitive and communicative possibilities that interested Song literati were the contributions that tu could make to scholarship and to the diffusion of knowledge. They were especially interested in the balance of power between tu and verbal expression. ——— 123 Chia 2002: 8.
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The relation between tu and text was an ancient and enduring debate in Chinese philosophy. The Xici zhuan ᢀႚ (Commentary on the attached verbalizations), the early Han commentary on the archaic document known as the Yijing ࣐ᆖ (Book of Changes), attributes to Confucius the following views on the importance of the graphic image in conveying complex knowledge: The master said: [It is well known that] writing does not bring out exhaustively what is said, and what is said does not bring out exhaustively what is thought. That being so, is it the case that the thinking of the sages [which the Changes supposedly represents to us] cannot be [fully] perceived? The master said [in response to this question]: Sages set up figures (xiang ွ) [rather than rely on words] in order to bring out exhaustively what is thought. They set out hexagrams (gua ࠳) in order to bring out exhaustively the actual circumstances and the false.124
The graphic conventions of the figures and hexagrams in the Book of Changes constituted a system of metaphysical notation (supposedly invented by the ancient sages) that elegantly codified the forces and dynamics of cosmic change and their translation into human emotions and actions.125 These cosmic principles were matters so complex that words alone were inadequate to encompass them126—yet the diagrams themselves would elude human interpretation without the sagely verbal counsel that was paired with them.127 The daoxue ሐᖂ or neo-Confucian philosophers of the Song were especially interested in revealed tu. These included the trigrams and hexagrams of the Changes, and indeed the very structure of the Book of Changes which, as Lackner notes, they considered to be the quintessential tu. Wang Bo ׆ড (1197–1274) echoed the Xici zhuan: “the meaning(fullness) of one single tu can not be exhausted by millions of words”.128 Whether or not through divine revelation, the daoxue philosophers contributed a number of new and highly influential cosmograms to the repertory: Zhou Dunyi ࡌཉᙲ (1017–1073) built his ——— 124 Peterson 1982: 98–99. The Xici zhuan was traditionally attributed to Confucius, but is now dated to the early Han dynasty (third or second century BC); ibid: 69 ff. 125 Ibid: 95. 126 In his Preface to his commentaries, illustrated with diagrams, on the mathematical classic Jiuzhang suanshu, Liu Hui quotes the Xici zhuan; Volkov, this volume. 127 Ibid: 94, “The third claim”. 128 Lackner, this volume: p. 345.
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metaphysics around the “diagram of the supreme ultimate” (taiji tu ֜ ᄕቹ), an image which he created under divine inspiration. Shao Yong ३ሸ (1011–1077) was the first to render into graphics another primal image, the “River diagram” (hetu ࣾቹ), in the form in which it has come down to us today.129 Zhu Xi ڹᗋ (1130–1200) made copious use of exegetical diagrams in his expoundings of the Confucian canonical texts. As Lackner demonstrates in his paper, these diagrams were not considered to be illustrations supporting a verbal argument—rather, they were themselves the argument, and indeed they could stand alone without verbal explanation. An analytical tu could constitute an explanation, shuo ᎅ, in itself.130 Here we observe an analogy with Sima Qian’s biao, designed to structure understanding in such a way as to convey a moral or political message at no point made explicit in the accompanying text, and with the processual diagrams devised by Liu Hui as a form of mathematical explanation. The daoxue philosophers of the Song were principally concerned with two sub-sets of what we might call “transformative” tu. The first set consisted of primal forms that were at the origins of the cosmos, images of fundamental dynamisms revealed to humans and translated into diagrams. The second were exegetical devices, configurations of script or graphics patterned in such a way as to elucidate ancient wisdom; through their very form they expounded cosmograms or canonical works, or important insights into processes of cognition or of knowledge formation. Lackner notes that many of these exegetical diagrams were stemmatic in form, similar to the genealogical charts which starting in the Song became increasingly popular as claims to social status. In both cases the tu consisted essentially of abstract orderings of space/time. The person who engaged with the tu followed the transformative trajectory laid down by the patterning of the tu, which was intended to reflect the fundamental patterning of the cosmos or of certain forms of wisdom. (Röllicke and Lackner discuss the Buddhist and Daoist contributions to the formation of this epistemological-ontogenetic tradition.) In following these paths, the observer was transformed (acquiring knowledge and/or understanding, conforming with the natural flows of the cosmos), or effected a cos——— 129 Clunas (1997: 107, and 106–108) more generally on late imperial imagings of he tu. Ibid: 30, fig. 5 shows a Ming version of 1599. 130 A concrete example of a tu that is in itself a shuo is the geomantic compass, which first gained currency during the Song. The compass is a cosmograph that translates a landscape and plots it in terms of a formal cosmic grid; Henderson (1994: 217).
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mic transformation (as in the drawing of talismans, or the performance of Daoist rituals such as the “steps of Yu”).131 The acquisition of knowledge and of the capacity to put that knowledge into action was conceived as a spatial and temporal experience folded into the tu. Yet although they played a considerable role in the formation of Song thought, it seems the daoxue philosophers did not theorise about how the tu which they used so creatively should be constructed.132 As shown in the previous section, transformative tu have a pedigree that stretches back into high antiquity.133 The earliest examples of cosmograms included talismans and charms,134 as well as divination materials 135 and hemerological tu. 136 The charms, talismans, spells and astrological charts from this tradition of tu have continued in popular use right through to the present day. As just mentioned, the more elevated and intellectual forms of cosmogram were the object of intense debate during the Song dynasty, and as the Song philosophers developed their repertoire of metaphysical diagrams they made strenuous efforts to purge them of magical connotations. Although they never rose to quite such philosophical prominence again, intellectuals continued to work with these metaphysical cosmograms right through late imperial times—often as an alternative perspective that co-existed in their world-view with new cosmologies adopted (and adapted) from the West. As Richard Smith notes: Recent research, including my own on the Yijing (Classic of Changes), has shown that support of Jesuit mathematics, science and technology by scholars of “evidential research” did not necessarily undermine inherited assumptions about cosmology and cosmography. Kaozheng-oriented individuals such as Jiang Yong (1681–1762), for example, might enthusiastically endorse “Western learning,” yet cling tenaciously to the old correlative cosmology, including explanatory devices such as the Hetu (River Chart) and Luoshu (Luo Writing).137
As well as cosmograms and exegetical diagrams, more straightforwardly representational, illustrative tu also had an important epistemological role to play in the philosophical projects of the Song ——— 131 On the “steps of Yu” see Harper n.39. 132 Lackner, this volume. See also Clunas (1997: 105), on this tradition of phi-
losophical tu and its Ming exponents. 133 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Wu Hung, this volume. 134 Harper, this volume. 135 Venture, Behr, this volume. 136 Kalinowski, this volume. 137 Smith 2001: 12 and 1998: passim.
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daoxue philosophers. Illustrative tu played a key role in the project of gewu ढ, the investigation of phenomena (ranging from plants to history) which paved the way to understanding the fundamental principles that directed Heaven, Earth and Man. Tu also figured in classical studies which aimed to recover the true forms and meanings of the foundational canonical works. In both domains, an important step towards understanding was the correct pairing of “name and referent”, mingwu ټढ.138 Tu were considered to contribute to a full understanding of all the classics, but were particularly important as exegetical devices for those which discussed rank and ritual, namely the Zhouli ࡌ៖ (Zhou rituals) and the Liji ៖ಖ (Record of rituals). Here images helped recreate the embodied understanding and emotions imparted through the correct practice of liturgies and the manipulation of ritual paraphernalia. Sometimes the reconstructions were technological in nature. In about 1235 Lin Xiyi ࣥݦၝ completed a study of the Kaogong ji ەՠಖ (Records on investigating crafts) section of the Zhouli, an ancient work which provided rather cryptic textual descriptions of the construction of carriages, tools, vessels and other artefacts supposedly used at the Zhou court. His study, entitled Kaogong ji jie ەՠಖᇞ (Kaogong ji explained), included drawings to accompany every scholarly explanation.139 Tu were also needed to provide accurate representations of the natural species mentioned in the Shijing ᇣᆖ (Book of poetry), to bring to life important historical episodes, and—in a somewhat different approach to recapturing the past—in antiquarian studies which catalogued collections of ancient bronzes and other treasures.140 In works of this type the philological explanation of each archaic term was usually directly paired with an illustration (invariably captioned tu) of the object or phenomenon in question—in other words, these studies took the form of tupu ቹᢜ or illustrated registers.141 In a well-known essay entitled Tupu lüe ቹᢜฃ (A brief account of illustrated registers), completed ca. 1150, the twelth-century histo——— 138 Elman 2002. 139 The great scholar Dai Zhen ᠈䳛 repeated this exercise, in the light of subse-
quent archaeological and antiquarian discoveries, in his Kaogong ji tu 㗗Ꮉ㿬೪ (Illustrated Kaogong ji) of 1746, and in ca. 1805 Cheng Yaotian ⨸⬄ produced a further illustrated study entitled Kaogong ji chuangwu xiaoji 㗗Ꮉ㿬ࡉ⠽ᇣ㿬 (Brief notes on the manufacture of the objects in the Kaogong ji). 140 Chia 2002: Appendix A lists examples of illustrated studies of the classics. Bussotti, this volume, discusses illustrated catalogues of antiques. 141 For two fine examples of Song tupu-type entries to studies of the classics, see Chia 2002: 54, Fig. 9 Part I.
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rian and philosopher Zheng Qiao ᔤᖱ (1104–1162) penned an eloquent rationale of tupu as the only truly effective way to transmit any form of technical skills or knowledge.142 As quoted at the beginning of this Introduction, Zheng Qiao begins the Tupu lüe with an analysis of the respective roles of text and image in conveying knowledge.To suggest their respective roles he proposes an analogy: “the images (tu ቹ) are the warp threads (jing ᆖ) and the written words (shu ) are the weft (wei ᒮ)”.143 Obviously warp and weft are both indispensable to the structure of cloth. But since the warp threads are the long, strong threads that run longitudinally through a fabric giving it shape and strength, Zheng is suggesting here that images play the primary role in framing understanding, while the written text plays an epistemological role similar to that of the weft thread, weaving back and forth through the warp threads to form the detailed patterns of the cloth. The jing-wei terminology also invokes the cognitively hierarchical relationship between a canonical text and the commentaries or apocrypha written later to elucidate it. 144 The jing-wei relationship also included spatial networks, as in the Zhouli, where jing is used to refer to the principal north-south routes of the capital city and wei denotes the secondary east-west routes that crossed them, completing a grid of location and communications.145 Jing precedes and frames wei, and while wei varies over time, jing cannot be changed. Zheng Qiao’s jing-wei contrast146 thus implies that while images and words work together to convey the full range of meaning, it is the image which is prior, and which establishes the fundamental matrix of understanding—an interpretation fully in accord with the tu-practices of other daoxue philosophers of the Song. Zheng Qiao’s essay discusses the interweaving of tu and text in the form of tupu—registers where each item within a category is described by an illustrative graphic image, tu, paired with a written ex——— 142 Zheng Qiao was fascinated by issues of categorisation and the effective arrangement of knowledge; his most influential work was the Tongzhi 䗮ᖫ (Comprehensive treatises) encyclopedia, which included the Tupu lüe as well as a treatise on bibliography proposing a novel twelve-division classification of knowledge. Zheng also wrote a monograph on the six rules of formation of written characters, and a fivevolume recensus of earlier materia medica, the Caomu wailei 㤝串 (Alternative classification of plants, completed ca. 1161), intended to correct the confusions that had arisen in earlier Song compilations. 143 Tongzhi j. 71/837a. 144 Lackner, this volume. 145 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume. 146 For more details on how Zheng elaborated the distinctions see Lackner’s contribution.
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planation, shu or shuo.147 Zheng Qiao lists sixteen technical fields in which tupu are essential for conveying the embodied, practical skills essential for the passage from study to action: such skills include building houses; casting ritual vessels; discerning between primary and secondary effects when setting the levels of taxes; and grasping the significance of the topography laid out in a map. Without tu, declares Zheng Qiao, practical or concrete knowledge (shixue ኔᖂ) degenerates into empy words.148 Despite Zheng Qiao’s ritual lament that attitudes towards tu had degenerated since the Han he was able to list a number of contemporary tupu in his bibliography, for as we have just mentioned illustrations of this representational kind played a central role in Song daoxue scholarship, as they did in statecraft. Tupu continued to be a popular format for technical works through the Yuan, Ming and Qing. Perhaps one of the finest examples of the tupu as applied in the field of technology is the Nongqi tupu (Illustrated register of farming tools) which forms the centrepiece of the Nongshu (Agricultural treatise) completed by the agronomist Wang Zhen in 1313.149 Another notable enterprise intellectual organised in tupu form is Wang Qi’s encyclopedia Sancai tuhui (Illustrated compendium of the Three Powers) of 1609, an ambitious attempt to cover all human knowledge, organised under the three general rubrics of Heaven, Earth and Man (see below). Most of the tu which Zheng Qiao argued were necessary to convey practical or concrete knowledge fall into a different epistemological category from the symbolic diagrams discussed in Part I of this collection. The tu which form the focus of Part II, Picturing reality? Tu as technical illustrations, are mostly representational (if not necessarily “realistic” in the modern Western sense): depictions of the human body and its functions, of territory, of plants or of machinery. Although the representations are (as any representation must be) selective, they consist of a sort of point to point imaging—an illustration in other words—of a concrete object or phenomenon. In his discussion of cosmograms Lackner raises Peirce’s distinction between image and diagram: an image contains many aspects of the signified in the signifier, a diagram is restricted to selected structural aspects of ——— 147 Zheng Qiao uses shu, written text, but other writers use shuo, explanation; see for instance Lackner, Bray, this volume. 148 837c. Ironically Zheng Qiao makes his argument entirely in linear text. 149 Bray, this volume.
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the signified. In this respect many of the tu in our second category are in fact hybrids, containing both structural and non-structural, material and moral elements. More to the point, perhaps, unlike the transformative tu, the tu in this second broad category were not designed to draw viewers into the image and so to guide them along an ordered trajectory through space and time. They were technical devices whose perusal, in conjunction with a textual explanation, was intended to provide the basis for action on the world, rather than constituting a transformative process in itself. With these representational tu the observer remains outside the image and comprehension can be achieved in a more flexible fashion: understanding emerges as the eye roves back and forth freely over the image, or between the image and the explanatory text. With this kind of tu it is sometimes difficult to say where “technical” or “functional” illustration ends and “decorative” illustration begins; as already mentioned, the same image may fall into one category or another depending on context.150 At the same time there is also considerable scope for abstraction within this category. We might mention the simplification into visual tropes of certain botanical types;151 the highly stylised renderings of acupuncture channels152 or of coroners’ charts;153 and the radically different conventions in the maps produced for merchants, sailors, land-owners or magistrates. 154 The level of abstraction reaches its limit in such graphic images as mathematical diagrams155 or administrative charts and tables.156 One could certainly make the case that these last two forms of tu, since they involve guiding the mind through the ordering of space, fit better in the category of tu addressed in the first section of the book. But as objective representations designed to facilitate direct action in or on the world, we feel they belong, or evolved to belong, in the second half with the more clearly “illustrative” tu.157 Technical tu in the representational category are also very ancient; ——— 150 See for example the papers by Bussotti, Métailié, and Bray. Of course our first class of tu was not immune to such transformations: cosmograms like the hexagrams or the TLV diagram were frequently used as decorative motifs. 151 Bussotti, Métailié, this volume. 152 Kuriyama 1999. 153 Despeux, this volume; see also Hegel (2002). 154 Brook 1994; Clunas 1996; and Amelung, this volume. 155 Volkov, this volume. 156 Will 2003. 157 The texts and tu of geomancy, or siting, which is so clearly a form of applied cosmology, form a similarly ambivalent or mixed category.
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early examples include the “Guiding and pulling chart” and the lacquer figurine, both from the early Han dynasty, discussed by Vivienne Lo. But although written texts of the period have been discovered that provide context for interpreting the figurine and the images in the chart, in neither of these cases are the representations named as tu or paired with any written explanation.158 In the domain of agriculture we also find that early texts make no reference to any kind of table or illustration, although they were written at a period when figurines and murals depicting farm tools and activities abounded. Only in the Song dynasty do we find the first pairings of text and image, in other words the first appearance of agricultural illustration.159 Similarly, the original text of the Jiuzhang suanshu ີጩ (Nine chapters on mathematical procedures, a work compiled in the first century AD on the basis of earlier mathematical writings) “does not refer anywhere to figures or to other forms of visualisation. The first references to visual aids in ancient Chinese mathematics are found in the [third-century AD] commentaries to the Classics, as if figures etc. were linked to the activity of exegesis”. 160 The early mathematical commentators refer to two- and three-dimensional figures in their explanations of mathematical procedures and Volkov argues that Liu Hui’s written commentaries on the Jiuzhang suanshu were accompanied by a separate work, containing a corresponding series of coloured diagrams illustrating the various procedures, shu , by which each problem could be solved. The processes of spatial transformation that underpinned such operations as “mending the void with the excess”, yi ying bu xu אઆᇖဠ, highlight fundamental differences between the theoretical premises of axiomatic mathematical traditions like the Euclidian, and non-axiomatic traditions like the Chinese. Volkov suggests that it was only in the early Song, with the advent of woodblock printing as a readily available format for the inscription and circulation of technical works, that diagrams and figures began to be inserted into the mathematical texts themselves. However this should probably not be seen as a simple translation of existing practices into a new medium. Volkov argues for a radical ——— 158 The images in the “Chart” are labelled, very simply, with the names of the positions they represent, but textual explanations of the positions have to be sought in separate documents (Lo, this volume). 159 Bray, this volume. 160 Chemla 2004: 34.
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epistemological break between the use of figures in the early mathematical works and in works dating from the Song and later. The earlier “conceptual diagrams” constituted a form of demonstration in themselves, featuring the interrelationship between geometric and algorithmic-algebraic features of the objects under consideration; but starting in the Song many mathematicians began to use diagrams simply as illustrations of geometrical objects. We might say that by and large, some time after the Tang, mathematical tu shifted from our first category of transformative, exegetical tu to our second category of representational tu. Representational tu certainly predate the Song, but they came to real prominence during that era thanks to the popularisation of woodblock printing.161 Because the state had adopted printing as one of its key tools of government, many new tu of this type were developed for statecraft purposes. Sometimes tu and text were intended to communicate knowledge between experts or to help professional training: examples include officially produced administrative maps; the paintings of plants and other materia medica commissioned by the emperor as a central resource for medical practitioners throughout the realm;162 the modular architectural drawings of the Yingzao fashi ᛜ ທऄ( ڤNorms and models for building) which served as a handbook for managers of official construction sites ranging from palaces to stables around the empire;163 the illustrated acupuncture manual and bronze figures designed by Wang Weiyi; 164 the maps, sketches of equipment and extraction processes, and taxation tables developed for the administration of the salt industry (a government monopoly);165 and the technical drawings of farming tools in Wang Zhen’s ׆ᄙ Nongshu ል (Agricultural treatise).166. Another dimension of statecraft which first came to prominence during the Song was the use of tu for popular pedagogy. The kings and emperors of the Warring ——— 161 Lucille Chia notes that tu were very common in Buddhist printed works dating back to the Tang; however it is difficult to assess how prevalent tu might have been in non-Buddhist imprints pre-Song because so few have survived (Chia 2002: 337, n.89). 162 Unschuld 1986: 53 ff. 163 Compiled by Li Jie ᴢ䁵 (1035–1110). In 1097 Li, who was serving in the Department of Construction, was ordered to re-edit an earlier manual of building standards. He presented the Yingzao fashi, in 34 chapters, to the emperor in 1103. The work has survived in a revised printed edition of 1145. See Ledderose 2000: 132 ff; also Chen Mingda 1981, Glahn 1984, Guo 1995. 164 Lu and Needham 1980: 131. 165 Vogel 1999 and forthcoming. 166 Bray, this volume; Wang Zhen’s treatise was completed in 1313.
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States and Han used cosmograms as the visual symbols of their claims to power. Late imperial ruling elites devised a new range of representational tu for pedagogical purposes, demonstrating their moral worth by educating the common people. When the daoxue philosophers declared that tu conveyed profound levels of understanding that went beyond words, they were by and large treating tu as a form of communication between fellow intellectuals. Only men of learning would be able to profit from the sophisticated cosmograms of Zhou Dunyi and his colleagues. The same was true of the mandala texts analysed by Röllicke, whose wisdom was only available to Buddhists who were highly literate and educated. But tu, frequently of the representational type, were also widely used to convey knowledge and understanding to the uneducated, whether illiterate or semi-literate; here the rationale was that tu conveyed the essentials, yao , simply and accessibly. Among the earliest printed tu were Buddhist images that were distributed to general congregations. But starting in the Song we see the educated elite making systematic use of tu, considered to be an effective means for transmitting secular knowledge to ordinary people, along with other media that were considered to be pedagogically effective such as simple verse. Illustrative tu were enthusiastically adopted by late imperial statesmen and rulers as a tool of governance and pedagogy. Print and other media combined in such endeavours. Improving or inspiring scenes were sometimes painted on the walls of palaces or magistrates’ courts. Along with simple texts or adaptations into easily memorised forms like ballads, tu were used to popularise what the state believed were essential forms of knowledge for the common people: herbal prescriptions for common complaints, improved farming methods, moral principles and the essentials of ritual. Representational tu also served the pedagogical purposes of the daoxue philosophers. One example is the Jiali ୮៖ (Family rituals), compiled by Zhu Xi ca. 1169. This handbook was intended as an accessible liturgical handbook for ordinary families that would encourage the widespread adoption of orthodox ritual practices and values. It is not certain that the earliest versions were illustrated, but the work soon became immensely popular (not least because it quickly received imperial endorsement), and tu depicting key ritual layouts are a crucial element of some of the earliest surviving printed editions.167 ——— 167 Ebrey 1991.
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With the second print revolution of the sixteenth century it became common for publishers to include illustrations in almost every work. Yet, notes Craig Clunas, “when one looks at the titles of Ming books [it is noticeable] how rarely, rather than how often, the presence of illustration is signalled in the work’s title”. Of the nearly 10,000 works listed in a recent bibliography of Ming editions, Clunas calculates that just over seventy fall into the category of tujie ቹᇞ or tushuo ቹᎅ (illustrated explanations), while another 120 or so are works of illustrated (xiang ቝ) drama or fiction.168 Tu were everywhere by the mid-Ming, but nobody was paying much attention. Did people now just take tu for granted, or had the terms of reference shifted with the ubiquity of images, creating what Clunas calls a crisis of representation? Despite the respect paid to earlier philosophical debates that had placed tu at the centre of understanding, as Lucille Chia notes, in most late imperial imprints tu were very definitely considered secondary to the text by the authors, publishers, woodblock designers and carvers who produced printed works. By the mid-Ming, when it seems that almost every work that was printed contained illustrations, most literati believed that the real meaning of a book lay in the words. Chia argues that this view had considerable impact on the design of many tu: “the simpler and more schematic certain tu were, the more efficiently they served to clarify the text”.169 At the same time, although the text was considered primary by the producers of books, it was certainly not uncommon for the consumers of books to look at (or “read”) images or diagrams in preference to the text.170 In the case of popular dramas, histories or morality works, the books “were not only read privately by individuals but also read aloud to a listening audience to whom the pictures [usually mediocre to crude images drawn from a stock repertoire] would be shown. In addition, the caption placed on either side of the illustration was often a catchy couplet that would be recited aloud and memorized”.171 In the case of fiction Chia surmises that the illustrations may often have “served as visual distraction, in the sense of both entertainment and relief from the often hard to read text below”, whereas in technical publications such as “physiognomy works, medical works, and household ency——— 168 169 170 171
Clunas 1997: 34. Chia 2002: 61; see also Clunas 1997: 33 ff. Chia 2002: 61. Ibid: 242.
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clopedias, the pictures not only illustrate the text but also can function somewhat independently as pictorial references for a “reader” who dispenses with the text because the person is illiterate or because the image (possibly with captions) supplies adequate information”.172 Tu could also help readers find their way around a work, or they could serve as mnemonics, for instance in reading primers, where individual words were paired with illustrations of the objects to which they referred. The intellectual debates about the nature and powers of tu during the Song had made no attempt to distinguish between different types of tu: for the daoxue philosophers the crucial contrast was between tu and written, linear text. But during the Ming and into the Qing we see different contrasts coming to the fore. The famous sixteenth-century cartographer Luo Hongxian ᢅੋ٣ (1504–1564) drew an interesting distinction between the epistemological bases of the two different types of tu that we have just proposed. Some tu including maps, Luo said, had to be based on measurement, so that they could serve as an accurate guide to official action. But other tu, for instance acupuncture charts or the Daoyin tu ሐ ֧ቹ, “Guiding and Pulling Chart”, that Luo included in a manual that he wrote on preserving health (weisheng ᓡ)س, conveyed a reality that could not be measured. What was important in acupuncture charts was to indicate the relative positions of the needling points. In the Daoyin tu the main function of the tu was to provide a metaphoric vision of an immortal in a perfect state of health to which the practitioner could aspire.173 Luo classified the Daoyin tu in his manual as revealed tu, like the Taiji tu: he received them from an immortal whom he had encountered on his travels.174 The epistemological distinction that Luo proposes corresponds rather neatly to a broader division of elite knowledge and its visual applications, already apparent in the different types and functions of tu being produced in the Song or even further back in the Warring States and Han, namely the distinction between statecraft skills applied to government or public service, and the scholarly or private practices of self-cultivation. The two projects were theoretically ——— 172 Ibid: 207. 173 This is the same mode of operation that Lo hypothesises for the Han daoyin
tu that she discusses. 174 Rogaski 1999, cited Vogel, forthcoming. Luo Hongxian wrote a manual called Weisheng zhenjue: xian chuan sishijiu fang (True formulas for guarding life: forty-nine prescriptions transmitted by an immortal).
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complementary, for good government was considered to be rooted in the personal virtue of members of the literati class from whom public servants were recruited, while educating the common people in orthodox values was one of the first duties of a wise and responsible ruler. Zhu Xi’s “Family rituals” were initially intended for private use, as a manual that families of reasonable means could use to ensure that their daily behaviour and ceremonies adhered to orthodox Confucian practice. The founding emperor of the Ming used the “Family rituals” as a tool of governance, declaring that all families, however humble, must conform to its prescriptions for the conduct of marriage ceremonies. Tu depicting templates for the correct ritual design of domestic space played an important role in diffusing orthodox values through every level of society during the late imperial period.175 The private techniques of self-cultivation were also a preparation for public office. They ranged from the study of philosophy and the classics to the practice of medicine (considered a duty for filial sons and responsible patriarchs), and of exercises to maintain health and prolong life and mental acuity. From there to the cultivation of leisure and refinement was but a step. During the late Ming tu and texts that served projects of self-cultivation, refinement and leisure proliferated. For example in 1591 the Hangzhou merchant and connoisseur Gao Lian ᖷ published Zunsheng bajian ᙅسԶጧ (Eight discourses on the art of living), a compilation which included advice on reading, collecting and art appreciation, along with illustrated sections listing the furnishings and appurtenances of a refined life and demonstrating several types of weisheng technique. Although some of the tu were probably adapted from earlier publications, some appear to have been designed or at any rate directly commissioned by Gao Lian himself, including for example his various ingenious inventions for picnics, notably a cunning multi-tiered basket for keeping wine warm, the description and tushi ቹ( ڤdesign, blueprint) of which were later incorporated into the section on “useful objects”, qiyong ᕴش, in the Sancai tuhui, published only a few years later in 1609.176 Another good example of tu used in the service of leisure and refinement is the illustrated collection Xinshang bian ࣲ ᓾᒳ (For pleasure), a compilation by Shen Jin ާ੍, completed in 1511 and reprinted several times, including a popular expanded version printed ——— 175 Bray 1997, ch.3. 176 Zunsheng bajian 232, 233; Sancai tuhui, Qiyong 12/28, p. 1347. On Gao
Lian see for instance Clunas (1997: 118–119).
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during the Wanli era (1573–1620). Among the many works included, on topics such as the collection of antique jades, tea-drinking, luteplaying, hygienic exercises and a variety of games, was a short treatise entitled Yanji tu ᗊԷቹ (Illustrations for arranging low tables), attributed (dubiously) to the Song author Huang Bo’en ႓ ܄ (1079–1118). Michela Bussotti suggests that the Yanji tu, which contains only tu without text, could be a form of solitary mathematical game, but more probably represents another kind of game in which a host could display his social and symbolic artisty through cunning arrangements of the tables at parties. A large number of the illustrated sections in the Xinshang bian deal with games, demonstrating the importance of these “unproductive activities” in the creation of late imperial social networks.177 In the rich, dense networks of visual culture of the prosperous late Ming and Qing we also see cases of tu, originally functional or didactic depictions of technical themes, being translated into decorative motifs,178 and conversely, we see a growing snobbery about tu. During the late Ming many well-off people aspired to refinement, while members of the elite were determined to maintain their distinction. Understanding the nuances of material objects was as important in this struggle for status as it had been for the Song classical scholars striving to recapture the authentic meaning of ancient practices, hence didactic tu figured prominently in the guides to leisure activities, connoisseurship and self-cultivation of the period. It is probably no coincidence that we now see the educated elite beginning to disparage tu and to give the term new nuances. At a time when paintings and decorations of all kinds abounded, freely available to anyone who could afford the price, the appreciation of the essence of fine painting, designated by the term hua, was singled out as a sign of true aesthetic refinement. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, “realistic” styles of painting were still given serious critical consideration. By the late Ming literati painters liked it to be thought that they had abandoned representational painting in favour of nearly abstract landscapes that “portrayed impressions”. It is interesting that the terms in which a literati painter like Gong Xian ᔃ (1619–1689) chose to contrast the genres were tu, for representational paintings likely to please the vulgar, and hua for what he considered true art. Tu were ——— 177 Bussotti 2002. 178 Images from the Gengzhi tu, for example, were used to decorate vases, plates,
screens and wallpaper; see Bray, this volume.
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the work of anonymous painters who were paid for their work like any other craftsmen, while hua were the creations of well-known and revered artists, and were definitely not classed as trade goods.179 In the late Ming, then, we see contrasts being drawn between tu and hua which equate the former with representation through vulgar mimesis, the latter with evocation through refined metaphor. Hua are accessible only to the educated elite, while tu can be understood by anyone. This is a very different formulation of the tu-hua distinction from that formulated by the Tang critic Zhang Yanyuan ്৯ (fl. 847–874), in his tripartite distinction between tu, trigrams and diagrams that inscribed abstract principles, shu, written characters that conveyed cognitive values, and hua, paintings that represented visual forms. 180 It is also quite different from the tu-hua distinction proposed by Wu Hung in his study of how iconographic systems were deployed during the Han. Wu Hung contrasts tu and hua as two fundamental semiotic systems, both used to represent the universe, neither aimed at mimesis. They were complementary iconographies, each designed to reveal a different set of essential characteristics of the universe. The semiotic system of tu, embodied by the Mingtang tradition, worked through diagrams, developing an abstract cosmological vocabulary of geometric shapes, orientations, colours and numerology. It was closely associated with the imperial court of the early Han, and with the symbolic consolidation of imperial rule. The system of hua, embodied in the bas-relief sculptures of the Wu Liang family’s memorial shrine (late second century AD), used a pictorial language of figures, icons, allusions, and narratives drawn from history and mythology. This iconography was associated with the Confucian scholars and their families who became increasingly influential as critics of the centralised imperial regime during the Later Han.181 By the Ming, then, refined consumers were inclined to put a pejorative spin on tu, implying that it was a mode of visual communication inferior to high art, hua. Another equally important trend in late Ming thought, however, was concerned with tu in the more classic sense of technical images that benefited society, and with their role in statecraft. During the late Ming and Qing, as noted earlier, the chal——— 179 Clunas 1997: 184 ff. Clunas notes that even the most esteemed scholar-artists of the period received some form of compensation for most of their work, and produced works across a range of genres, some more distinguished than others. On the anonymity of tu as opposed to hua see also Vogel, forthcoming. 180 Eugene Y. Wang 1998. 181 See also Powers 1991.
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lenges of government brought statecraft concerns and the importance of shixue, concrete or practical studies, to heightened prominence. We have already mentioned Luo Hongxian’s assertion that accuracy was essential for statecraft documents such as territorial maps. Timothy Brook describes what he sees as a revitalisation of cartography in the mid-sixteenth century, initiated by Luo Hongxian’s revival of a grid system that had fallen out of use since medieval times, which he refined to produce “a universal collection of regional maps”, the Guangyu tu ᐖᝨቹ (Enlarged terrestrial atlas, completed ca. 1555). 182 Ye Chunji ᆺਞ֗ (1532–1595), a county magistrate, was an acquaintance and disciple of Luo. Appointed to Huian County in Fujian in the 1560s, Ye set to work planning his administration using the gazetteer compiled by a distinguished predecessor in the late 1520s. But he found this gazetteer insufficient on various counts and decided that he must give priority to updating its contents, especially the maps. Ye left an account of the steps he took to remedy the situation, which included carefully noting the discrepancies between maps of local areas; sending out clerks to produce improved maps; and cross-checking the results for fit and consistency. Ye Chunji’s goal was to produce accurate maps that encoded precise territorial knowledge, maps that would be used “as one technology among several to organize knowledge efficiently”. He was aware that maps did not offer a suitable format for encoding all the types of territorial information useful to a magistrate, so he devised charts and text to accompany the map of each township. The text summarised the main characteristics of the township, the five charts (biao ।) showed: (1) human settlements and structures; (2) lijia household categories; (3) population figures (male, female, adult, child); (4) arable land; and (5) taxes. The data compiled in the charts were collected specifically for the occasion rather than being taken from the archives.183 Ye was just one magistrate of his period who contributed to the elaboration of a new set of norms and procedures for the compilation of local gazetteers, later spelled out in a well-known magistrates’ handbook of the late Ming which emphasised the need for accurate, up-to-date maps and information for “planning one’s administration”. Brook notes that these procedural conventions continued to be refined during the first century of the Qing; “nonetheless, the gazetteer by the late Ming had ——— 182 Brook 1994: 9. Yee (1994: 59 ff.) offers a critical analysis of the Guangyu tu in the context of Ming cartography together with an evaluation of Luo’s grid system. 183 Brook 1994: 13.
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become a recognizable genre, communicating local knowledge within general categories”.184 The quest of Ye Chunji, a relatively obscure minor official, to generate a system of accurate local knowledge displayed in easily accessible formats, highlights the extent to which the commitment to statecraft philosophy and techniques had penetrated the ranks of the official class by the mid-sixteenth century. “Perfect action [was] predicated on perfect knowledge, and the impairment of knowledge [caused] the impairment of action.”185 Tu, both illustrative and diagrammatic, had a key role to play in shixue, here conceived as “practical studies” whose goal was better government. There are clear analogies between the goals and methods embodied in Ye Chunji’s maps and charts and Pan Jixun’s studies of the hydrological characteristics of the Yellow River. Both highlight important characteristics of shixue in the service of government: shixue strove to identify principles of dynamic, systemic change through studies which included the specific, accurate documentation of natural phenomena in their social and historical context. Pan Jixun’s Hefang yilan is remarkable in that its goal was to work at multiple timescales: as an effective basis for routine management, for improved engineering of hydraulic works, and for planning long-term policy.186 Not all exponents of shixue invested in the creative use of tu, however. One notable figure in “practical studies” at the end of the Ming dynasty was the polymath statesman Xu Guangqi ஊ٠ඔ (1562– 1633). 187 Like many of his contemporaries, Xu believed that new administrative responses to the military, economic and social threats besetting the late Ming regime could best be generated through shixue. Xu was one of a group of officials of the period who engaged enthusiastically with the Western sciences and techniques brought to the Ming imperial court by the Jesuits, though not all converted to Christianity like Xu. Perceiving the potential of this new knowledge for practical improvements at every level of government, Xu became familiar with Western astronomical equipment and observation methods as he worked on calendrical reform, and he also collaborated closely with Jesuit colleagues on translating treatises concerning mathematics, astronomy and mechanics, all of which contained tech——— 184 185 186 187
Brook 1994: 6, emphasis added. Ibid: 7. See the discussion of Pan Jixun above. Jami et al. 2001.
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nical illustrations designed according to conventions quite alien to Chinese graphic traditions. It has frequently been observed that Chinese artists and woodblock carvers were very selective in their adoption of Western visual and graphic techniques, including perspective or cross-hatching. It is also notable that Western originals of technical drawings were never copied exactly, but—like the text that accompanied them—were essentially translated.188 The works that Xu helped publish were no exceptions. Xu Guangqi did not imagine that an influx of Western practical knowledge would suffice in itself to save the empire. The problems facing the late Ming had to be understood in the context of Chinese history and institutions, its resources and the demands made upon them. The wide range of new measures and policies Xu proposed drew on his extensive historical researches in the national archives of the Hanlin Academy, on enquiries he conducted in his extensive travels throughout China, on experiments that he conducted himself, and on intensive debate with colleagues on key administrative topics like water-control. Although it is Xu’s work in fields influenced by Jesuit science that have commanded most attention, the work which Xu himself considered his greatest contribution to shixue and to the preservation of the Ming was one that owed nothing to Jesuit science, namely his great treatise on agronomy, the Nongzheng quanshu ልਙ ٤ (A complete treatise on agricultural administration), published posthumously in 1639 by a group of admiring disciples as part of a last-ditch effort to save the dynasty. The published work was lavishly illustrated, not surprisingly since it included the Yuan agronomist Wang Zhen’s Nongshu (Agricultural treatise)—a highly original piece of iconography—in its entirety.189 It also included the complete text and illustrations of the Taixi shuifa ֽ۫ऄ (Hydraulic machinery of the West), a study of pumps, screws and related machinery that Xu had produced with Sabatino de Ursis in 1612. (This section is in no way integrated into the rest of the work, however, and the machinery it describes was never adopted in China.) There are one or two new illustrations in the section on hydraulics, including templates for labour tallies and one or two drawings of tools. Xu also added a long final section on famine foods in which were included two illus——— 188 Bussotti provides a brief critical analysis in her paper. See also Edgerton
1985.
189 See Bray, this volume, on the originality of the Nongshu illustrations. The Nongzheng quanshu versions differed only in the most minor details.
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trated works in tupu form: Zhu Xiao’s ڹ㒺 Jiuhuang bencao එء ౻ (Famine-relief flora) of 1406 and Wang Pan’s ׆ᒙ Yecai pu ມလ ᢜ (Treatise on edible wild plants) of 1524. All the novelty of Xu’s approaches is conveyed through text.190 It could be that Xu would have devised new graphics if he had lived long enough to see his magnum opus into print. As it is, the work offers a dramatic contrast with Song Yingxing’s Tiangong kaiwu, published two years earlier in 1637, in which almost all the images were new. Xu’s templates for tallies used to organise paid or corvée labour are, however, good examples of another category of administrative tu that drew increasing attention in late imperial times. Administrative forms and tables were not new. Catherine Despeux’s study of autopsy charts traces their history back to 1211. This was when the first woodblock engravings showing the back and front of the human skeleton were designed as models that the expert ostensor used both to check and to note missing or damaged bones and points of injury in the reconstruction of the causes of death. The completed forms were included in the legal file. Despeux shows that there were progressive if not dramatic improvements to these charts over the centuries, driven not by advances in medical knowledge and practice but by the cumulative experiences of forensics. These representations of the body were diagrams, not pictures, notes Despeux, designed to serve administrative not therapeutic needs. By 1770 one driving quest was to find anatomical norms and standards and to represent them in the charts in such a way as to avoid judicial error—and to minimise the discrepancies between the anatomical sketches and the texts that accompanied them. A new study was commissioned at court, and there were lively debates about how standards should be established, many involving the commentaries of specialised secretaries or judges who worked closely with the ostensors. But only in the late nineteenth century did a judge named Xu Lian bring an expert draughtsman (hua jiang ဎٰ) with him to autopsies to make drawings based on direct observation. As a result, the autopsy charts that Xu published bore rather little resemblance to those of 1770. Although they showed a few signs of Western graphic influence, for example a “timid” introduction of perspective, Xu Lian’s anatomical drawings remained very different from Western anatomical ——— 190 On Xu’s highly successful blueprint for locust prediction and control, based on comparative historical and geographical analysis, and on his signal achievements in the introduction of new crop plants, see Bray and Métailié (2001).
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representations, even though these had been known and admired in China since they were first introduced by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century. One reason, argues Despeux, is that the Vesalian tradition, though based on the dissection of corpses, aimed to represent living bodies. Chinese therapeutic medicine also focused on living bodies, but conceptualised them from the perspective of the circulation of energies. Chinese physicians felt that Western representations of bones, muscles, nerves and organs were irrelevant to the physiological processes which most interested them. Chinese judges and ostensors, on the other hand, were interested only in dead bodies and trauma, so again the relevance of Western anatomy to their work did not become apparent until very recently. Another form of administrative tu which flowered in late imperial times was the table. Tables were referred to either as tu or as biao during the Qing. The tradition of inherently political tables, by Sima Qian, like other forms of tu was facilitated by the medium of print. A late imperial example of a biao with similarly forceful moral import to those of the Shiji, but here designed to uphold the claims of the regime in power rather than to subvert them, is the table (here called tu) showing the orthodox transmission of political power to the Ming ruling family, included in the Sancai tuhui of 1609.191 Biao were also a powerful tool for the organisation of administrative knowledge. A recent study by Pierre-Étienne Will analyses the role of tables in improving access to the Qing penal code. The official penal code was a huge and complex compilation of laws and amendments. Magistrates had to deal with a constant flow of cases and were expected to make appropriate judgements rapidly, under penalty of fines or even punishments. By the Qing, magistrates routinely employed professional financial and judicial consultants to help them keep abreast. The first legal manual arranged in tables appeared in 1734; there was a steady flood of similar handbooks for the next twenty years, but then no more appeared till 1824. But in the interval another genre of manual appeared: an administrative encyclopedia in table form which did not simply facilitate access to specialist categories of knowledge, but conveyed a sense of the organising principles, the underlying rules and procedures.192 The prefaces of these manuals always claimed that they were intended for newly appointed officials, but Will observes that the works in fact presumed a fair degree of ——— 191 Illustrated in Clunas (1997: 106, fig. 60). 192 Will 2003: 95, 111 ff.
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experience with the rowdy atmosphere of the courtroom. He suggests that the manuals were intended as everyday tools for seasoned administrators who needed to make quick decisions under pressure, avoiding appeals or rejections. It is relevant here that the tables were designed wherever possible to lay out all the key information so that it could be seen at a single glance, rather than having to turn the page as was so often the case with more traditional shuo-tu arrangements.193 Disagreeing with William Skinner’s classic argument that the late imperial bureaucracy failed to keep pace with rapid population and economic growth, Will suggests that technical aids like these tu or biao, and a growing cadre of aides including professional technical consultants and trainee magistrates, 194 allowed the imperial administration to meet expanding demands without significant increases in the number of official posts.195 Henderson sees the seventeenth century as a turning point in literati attitudes towards tu. This was the period when both shixue, concrete studies, and kaozheng ەᢞ, evidential enquiry, crystallised as the guiding philosophies of responsible scholarship. The late Ming revival of geographical studies, discussed earlier, criticised the geographical principles that had predominated since the Song dynasty, where the map itself was not so much a precise record of a given locality as a general visual guide for arranging information contained in the accompanying text. 196 Instead, says Henderson, geography became “a precise field of evidential inquiry” and “an important element of concrete studies” intended for practical application in such fields as land reclamation and hydraulic works. Such scholars, says Henderson, used and conceptualised the term tu “not as cosmological diagrams but as realistic maps”.197 There was a significant shift in intellectual mood, Henderson believes, where some leading scholars rejected the order and abstract tidiness of Song cosmology with its emphasis on balance. Whereas formerly anomalies had been considered dangerous aberrations from the natural order, by the early Qing they were seen not as a source of evil but as a significant part of that order. It was important not to try to smooth over the details of irregular and complex phenomena but to examine their significance. Hen——— 193 Ibid: 122, 125; see Métailié, Table 1, for contrast. 194 Candidates who had qualified by passing the examinations but had not yet
been allocated to a post. 195 Ibid: 147. 196 Henderson (1994) and Brook (1994) both draw this contrast. 197 Henderson 1994: 224.
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derson gives the example of Yan Yuan ᠱց (1636–1704), who argued that “proper moral cultivation could begin from any point on the moral map, not just the mean position”, and indeed put together a set of moral maps that he included in his Cunxing bian ࢤژᒳ (Treatise on preserving the nature) “as a guide to show how those with different endowments or propensities might improve their moral stance”.198 Repudiating the visions of coherence that inspired great Song thinkers and artists, many Qing scholars and painters were more inclined to agree with the cosmological critic Zhang Huiyan ്༡ߢ (1761– 1802), who stated that “the ways of heaven are invariably uneven and irregular”.199 Henderson lists a series of distinguished Qing scholars, including the mathematician and astronomer Mei Wending ම֮ቓ (1633–1721), who criticised what they saw as the unnaturally neat models of European cosmology and astronomy. Their solution was to document and analyse anomalies, discrepancies and irregularities, while acknowledging that any model they developed to explain them could have only temporary validity.200 One consequence of this critique of regularities was a growing interest in the specificities of locality. This fostered new ideas about the importance of regional or local microenvironments and their impact on natural processes, expressed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in such fields as medical theory.201 Tu played a central role in these philosophical disputes. Henderson argues that Qing scholars’ evidential critique and rejection of the authenticity and validity of the Hetu and Luoshu cosmograms, which had played such a pivotal role in the formation of Song philosophy, “was a major episode in the intellectual history of the era ... [that] did more to subvert cosmology and cosmography in the traditional mode than did any other affair in the intellectual history of late traditional China”.202 Yet the great cosmographic tu continued to exercise fascination and power among other late imperial intellectuals, and their appeal to the imperial house remained untarnished. The great imperial encyclopedia Gujin tushu jicheng (Complete collection of graphics and texts, ancient and modern) of 1725 devotes more space to materi——— 198 In his work of ca. 1700 entitled Yi tu tiaobian ᯧ೪ṱ䕼 (Systematic critique of the diagrams associated with the Book of Changes); quoted Henderson (1994: 225). 199 Quoted ibid: 225. 200 Ibid: 226, 227. 201 Hanson 1998. 202 Henderson 1994: 224.
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als on the Hetu and Luoshu than to some of the individual Confucian classics, and for many respected scholars these tu were still “among the primary sources of order in the world, as important in this regard as the books of the Confucian canon”. Eminent theoreticians from Wang Fuzhi ֛׆հ (1619–1692) to Kang Youwei ൈڶ (1858– 1927) continued to write on the Mingtang. Such attention to geometric cosmography, as Henderson notes, was “not simply an aspect of the traditional worldview or solely a matter for cosmographical speculation. Even as late as the nineteenth century, political reformers in China and Japan proposed to establish squared administrative districts as a prelude to a reign of virtue, or at least the improvement of government”, assuming “that the geometrization of political districts was an important aspect of serious political reform”.203 Even within the late imperial rubric of shixue, “concrete” or “practical studies”, it is not always easy to separate the material, symbolic and moral dimensions of the knowledge produced, or of the administrative or didactic uses to which it was put. In many of the technical works from the late imperial period discussed in Section II the role of the tu was directly informative. Usually the design of the tu was closely and specifically linked to the text and it was intended to complete, complement or clarify the information it contained; sometimes text was written to explain the technical details of the image. Yet many of these functional, technical tu also worked at another, more evocative or allusive level. Writers on the high-art forms of painting, hua, stressed their power to move those who contemplated them, to generate powerful emotions, to evoke the gentle warmth of autumn sunlight or to strike fear in the heart and set one’s limbs trembling.204 Although late imperial aesthetic theorists belittled tu by comparison to hua, often dismissing them as fit only for women or simpletons, there is no doubt that many tu were, like hua, intended to elicit a rather precise emotional response. This is particularly obvious in morality works. Just as an image in a primer was intended to conjure up the corresponding word, so the illustrations of moral episodes that featured in collections of exemplary stories, almanacs and household encyclopaedias were intended to stimulate appropriate feelings of filiality, respect and affection, or disgust for bad behaviour.205 ——— 203 Ibid: 213, 207. 204 Kerlan-Stephens 2002: 77. 205 Moral works for women and children were usually illustrated, for example Lü
Kun’s ਖസ Guifan 䒠㆘ (Standards for women) or the various collections entitled
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Such moral concern frequently spilled over into the composition of more obviously technical works. The painting and poems of the Gengzhi tu ౙ៣ቹ (Pictures of farming and weaving), produced by the Southern Song magistrate Lou Chou ᑔ㙭 in the 1130s, depicted the main processes of local methods of rice-farming and sericulture, often in considerable technical detail. However Bray argues that although these tu accurately portrayed advanced techniques and so could be used to instruct farmers in improved practices, perhaps the main purpose of their composition was to convey a moral message, to remind members of the ruling class how hard poor farmers toiled to produce the rice and silk upon which the imperial order, and the wealth of the landlord class, depended—and to elicit suitable feelings of gratitude and respect. In 1696 when the Kangxi emperor penned his own preface to a new version of the Gengzhi tu that he had commissioned, he too reminded his readers of the hardships suffered by the common people in order to produce the grain and cloth they took for granted. In a recent study of the oeuvre of Song Yingxing ݚᚨਣ (1589– 166?), the author of the famous work Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ (usually translated as “The exploitation of the works of nature”) which describes all the main productive activities and crafts of the period, Dagmar Schäfer argues that this work too should be seen as a moral and metaphysical statement as much as a technical treatise. Schäfer remarks that, unlike several other famous authors of technical treatises, Song Yingxing could not claim any practical experience with crafts or technology. She also notes that Song had originally intended to include in the Tiangong kaiwu (published in the same year as four other much shorter treatises on metaphysical, scholarly and political themes) additional chapters on the observation of natural phenomena and on musical tones. She deduces that Song’s interest in productive techniques did not coincide with modern definitions of “technology”: It must be considered that for Song the documentation of technical details merely served as an approved means to an end—as it was able to carry his main belief: that it is the congruence of knowledge and action which ought to shape man’s world.
The translation she therefore proposes for the title Tiangong kaiwu is ——— Riji gushi ᮹㿬ᬙџ (Stories for daily notice); Raphals (1998) and Chia (2002: 235, 236, 242).
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“Heaven, work and the inception of things”.206 Peter Golas, however, believes that Song’s rationale for his composition of the Tiangong kaiwu was “the idea that technology involved human beings employing their skills to make useful the resources provided by nature”, tying in with “the neo-Confucian idea of man as the co-creator rather than merely a creature of the universe”.207 This humanist perspective, says Golas, explains the striking differences between the tu of the Tiangong kaiwu and those in Wang Zhen’s Nongshu of 1313: the Nongshu illustrations highlight the technical details of the implements or machinery and seldom show people, but the Tiangong kaiwu illustrations focus on craftmen or workers engaged in the processes of using the tools. As Golas remarks, although the emphasis on process is unusual and often revealing, “this is not a view likely to encourage consistent emphasis on precise construction details of the tools and machines”.208 In early modern Europe the producers of scientific graphics progressively removed human operators from their representations of experiments or technical procedures, representing them as formal, abstract processes. At another level of objectivisation, the language and iconography of science increasingly strove to divest themselves of subjective emotions and sensuality. It might be supposed from the late imperial debates around tu and hua that a similar process was at work here too, a divergence between the subjective, allusive, metaphoric operations of hua and the down-to-earth, factual operations of tu. Yet Robert Hegel very convincingly argues that the texts which accompanied coroners’ charts in the legal case reports of the Qing dynasty worked as emotional narratives. The chart itself (discussed in detail in the paper by Catherine Despeux) was filled in by the magistrate himself during his examination of the corpse, aided by the coroner and the clerk of the criminal section; in the chart were recorded the objective details of the wounds inflicted. Then depositions were taken from the accused and from witnesses describing the circumstances which led up to the crime and the details of how it unfolded. The depositions charted the dynamics of an emerging emotional crisis and its violent outcome, and were thus a necessary dimension that explained both the nature of the injuries inflicted, and also the social and psychological circumstances. This was essential to a proper ap——— 206 Schäfer 2005: 54. 207 Golas, this volume, p. 585, and ibid, n. 77, quoting Fong (1992: 75–76). 208 Ibid; see also Bray on the Nongshu illustrations.
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preciation of the crime and a proper judgement of its severity.209 Luo Hongxian’s distinction between the cognitive operation of maps and of the tu used in treatises on acupuncture and on techniques of hygiene or self-cultivation (weisheng) was discussed earlier. Luo Hongxian argued that acupuncture charts operate by presenting the relative positioning of points of action, while weisheng diagrams operate through sensual metaphor. These explanations demonstrate strong epistemological continuities with the health-related images and therapeutic texts from the early Han that Vivienne Lo analyses in her paper. She concludes from her analysis that as early as the Western Han the bodily images and operational mechanisms of therapeutic medicine and of self-cultivation techniques were and must be recognised as distinct. Already in the early Han, Lo sees: ... a dialectic between exercises to preserve and enhance health and the treatment of disorder ... Where self-cultivation is solitary practice and aims at perfecting the physiology of the body the records naturally generate a lyrical and animated body imagined through metaphor, not just a passive object upon which we construct realities. By appealing to the animal images the daoyin forms engage all the senses of the self-cultivator, not just the visual, but through imagination, both movement and mood. In contrast as the body increasingly becomes the subject of professional observation it is, inevitably, silenced and contained within its visibly perceived boundaries, or other such boundaries that are amenable to the physician’s control.210
What is fascinating here is the transmission of this dialectic of knowledge, and of its visual and verbal representations, right through the imperial era. Yet even if therapeutic medicine generated “a passive object upon which [the physician] constructs realities”, the importance of metaphor and allusion in scientific and technical language and imagery, even in late imperial times, should not be underestimated. Shigehisa Kuriyama’s discussion of the “haptic knowledge” involved in the pulse-taking of therapeutic medicine reminds us that in the Chinese tradition poetic metaphor was a legitimate technical language for conveying complex natural realities. Referring to Chinese writings on the pulse, John Floyer wrote in 1707 that “Europeans excel in reasoning and judgement, and clearness of expression ... Asiatics have a gay luxurious imagination”.211 The key Chinese terms for describing the ——— 209 Hegel 2002. 210 Lo, this volume: p. 413, emphasis added. 211 Quoted Kuriyama (1999:62).
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pulse have remained stable since they were first laid out by Wang Shuhe ( ࡉ ࠸ ׆210?–286?) in the Maijing ౧ᆖ (Classic of the pulse), but the descriptions were continually elaborated by later physicians. The language of the pulses worked through simile and metaphor, not through definition. A rough pulse was described as “like sawing bamboo” or “like rain-soaked sand”. The Classic describes a floating pulse thus: “If one lifts the finger, there is abundance, if one presses down, one finds insufficiency”; the Ming physician Li Shizhen ޕழੴ elaborated: “[It] is like a subtle breeze blowing across the down of a bird’s back. It is quiet and whispering, like falling elm pods, like wood floating in water, like scallion leaves rolled lightly between the fingers”. As Kuriyama points out, here the goal of language was not to define facts but to convey sensual perceptions. The metaphors guided the novice to grasp the subtle differences between twenty-four basic variations in the pulses so that he could confidently classify the whisperings experienced under his fingers. As an aid to categorising his sensations, the novice referred to illustrated charts. To anyone not familiar with the haptics of Chinese pulse-taking, such tu appear crude and almost devoid of informational content. To anyone trained in the haptic traditions, the images serve as a mnemonic that economically yet forcefully evokes the qualities and the dynamics characteristic of each pulse.212 In the Chinese tradition most physicians, astronomers, producers of maps or writers of farming treatises were not specialised technical professionals but broadly educated scholars, trained to express themselves in poetry and painting. This was certainly an important factor militating against the progressive separation between technical drawing and art which played such an important role in the emergence of modern science in the West.
THE CRAFT OF TU: MEDIUM AND DESIGN Here we briefly address the question of how tu were produced, in what media and by whom, and we outline a comparison of the production of technical graphics in China and the West. The tu discussed by our contributors include artefacts of bronze, wooden blocks, wooden strips, paintings, engravings on stone and ——— 212 Ibid: 84, figure 13.
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woodblock prints. The majority of tu are two-dimensional, but there was some disagreement between the co-editors as to whether only two-dimensional artefacts could or should be considered tu. Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann was inclined to exclude three-dimensional artefacts from the category. Francesca Bray, taking into account the arguments of Keightley, the importance of three-dimensionality in the hemerological artefacts discussed by Kalinowski, the existence of such tu-like objects as the early star-maps painted on the inside of domed roofs, and the hypotheses of Volkov and of Chemla concerning early mathematical models for demonstrations, would argue instead that whereas early tu could also be produced in three-dimensional forms, the passage to print culture encouraged the restriction of the term to two-dimensional expression. The flexibility of several of the principal media in which tu were produced has also to be borne in mind. Silk, wooden or bamboo strips and paper can all be considered as media that essentially constitute a plane surface for inscription and for reading. Yet all can be rolled, folded or cut to form objects or patterns in three-dimensional space—or, in the case of scrolls for example, to offer presentations that unfold in chronological sequence. Dorofeeva-Lichtmann herself argues that in the case of archaic “maps” like the Shanhai jing the act of viewing or reading required the wooden strips carrying the text to be rearranged; this allowed the reader to experience significant shifts in orientation as well as sequences in time. But three-dimensional layout and chronological sequencing seem to have figured less frequently in the design of later tu, with a tendency in the print era to reduce them to one plane surface completely visible at a single glance. Nevertheless we might suppose that even in late imperial times there was still some significance to the use of such proxies for multidimensionality and diachronicity as tu laid out in sequence over several pages. Yet here we have to bear in mind the possibility of conflicting interests between author and publisher. It seems that in many printed works containing tu their ordering, layout, and spatial combinations with text were dictated by convention or publishing convenience. Zheng Qiao stated that “in order to study, the scholars of antiquity required that the tu be placed on the left and the text, shu, on the right”. 213 In primers 214 and in other works that followed the tupu ——— 213 Tongzhi j.71/837a. 214 Clunas (1997: 112, figure 62) shows a fine example from the mid-fifteenth
century.
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(illustrated register) format where there was room for several entries on a page, for instance the Sancai tuhui, this recommended layout was followed. In other technical works designed as tupu, including the Nongshu (Agricultural treatise) by Wang Zhen discussed by Bray, text and corresponding tu are carved on the right and left side of a single block. Once the paper is folded to make up into a book, however, the text is on the first fold of the printed page and the image on the second, so that the reader has to turn the page to look at the tu. In the case of the Tiangong kaiwu, the pictures are grouped at the end of each chapter. Michela Bussotti and Georges Métailié both discuss the wide range of layouts to be found not only in printed but also in painted technical works. Acknowledging that having to turn the page or go to the end of the chapter to look at the tu reduces their functional value, Bussotti remarks that this is a choice determined by printing convenience rather than by the technical weaknesses of the wood-block medium or the ignorance of the craftsmen. Focusing on studies of plants, Métailié lists a wide range of variations in the placing of the tu. In one or two cases all the images are placed at the beginning or end of a chapter or of the book; generally, however, texts and pictures were placed close together, though often it would be necessary to turn one or more pages to get to the picture. Sometimes elements in the illustrations would be numbered and referred to specifically in the text. “However, in the great majority of texts, there are no explicit textual references to the pictures, as if their mere presence was enough.”215 The visual quality of the illustrations was not necessarily directly related to their technical value. Sometimes very crude drawings of plants could effectively indicate the key characteristics that distinguished them from similar plants (very useful in the case of manuals showing famine foods); in others artistic elegance belied the poor quality (or lack) of observation. Sometimes the choice of illustrations was so arbitrary that it seems they must simply have been added by the publisher to sell the book. As Métailié remarks, it seems that by the Ming and Qing authors felt free to use illustrations in whichever way they chose, which suggests that in these contexts tu had no ritual dimension at all. Just as we have to consider how tu worked in conjunction with linear text, so we also need to think about other clusters of multimedia information. How did models, for instance, connect? It seems that in ——— 215 Métailié, this volume, p. 491; emphasis added.
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ancient and early imperial China distinctions but also communicative connections were made between tu and xiang ွ/ቝ (image, likeness),216 as well as between the tu and hua discussed by Wu Hung. It is possible that other terms for, or types of, graphic or solid representation, for instance shi ( ڤthe term denoting divination board, which also had the more general meaning of “template, model”), or mo ᑓ (also “model”), were used in conjunction with or in place of tu to convey technical information in ancient times; this is suggested, but in the current state of knowledge cannot be proved, by Lo in her analysis of the lacquer figurine. A much more recent example is the eleventh-century bronze acupuncture models produced by Wang Weiyi of the Medical Board to help train students. These models were simply referred to as xuewei tongren ۯلᎭԳ (“the bronze men with the acupuncture needling positions”); thus neither the term tu nor any term denoting “model” was used, even though the figures were in essence a three-dimensional map that charted the relative positions, wei, of the acupuncture points. As mentioned earlier, the students practised with the models but they were first expected to study a text containing tu. The treatises with their combination of text and tu were thus expected to prepare the students for a first stage of material action; the bronze men provided a medium for testing their booklearning and gaining a first level of embodied experience before moving on to human patients. Even after the popularisation of printing not all tu were printed: as discussed in the papers by Bussotti, Bray and Métailié the media of paintings, murals and carvings also figured prominently in the imagecircuits that helped form the visual cultures of the Song and later. Cordell Yee discusses the use of jiehua , “ruled-line paintings” involving the use of ruler, square and compass as well as brush, in cartography. The jiehua technique began around the sixth century AD, but although initially it was admired as a genre of fine painting, by the late Song the technical procedures involved had begun to clash with high artistic ideals. But the technique survived in the realm of tu because it was so well suited to architectural drawing. It seems that building plans were sometimes designed using jiehua during the Song, while city plans and other maps of architectural constructions continued to be produced using the straightedge technique through to the nineteenth century.217 ——— 216 See Keightley (1998), in his comments on Harper. 217 Yee 1994: 122 ff.
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While the advent of a print culture did not lead to the abandonment of all earlier forms of tu, it reshaped many of the ways in which tu were conceptualised. Woodblock printing offered distinctive opportunities for graphic representation, and for placing tu in relation to text. Yet in some domains of knowledge it can be shown that printing led to the impoverishment or elimination of certain patterns of thought. Volkov argues that the mathematical tu of printed editions of the classical mathematical texts no longer presented arguments, but merely illustrated the forms discussed in the text. Furthermore the ubiquity of two-dimensional tu in the print era led many scholars to project their own norms and expectations onto the past. Projects for the critical reconstruction of ancient classical texts led late imperial scholars to propose what they imagined were reconstructions of the original tu included in canonical works. Yet as Dorofeeva-Lichtmann demonstrates, in the case of the “maps” of the Shanhai jing, Qing scholars’ everyday experience of tu rendered them unable to perceive that the text between their hands constituted a map-like experience in itself. Who designed tu, and how were they executed? Many of the mantic and magical tu of early China were the apparatus used by “technical specialists”, fangshi ֱՓ. Harper suggests that the graphic vocabulary of these specialists and of scholars began to merge during the late Warring States. The artefacts and motifs of the aristocratic and royal burials of the period were presumably produced by the technical specialists routinely employed by members of the ruling class. The burial chamber of the first emperor of unified China, Qin Shihuangdi ࡨ০, was surrounded and protected by a magnificent model of the universe: All the country’s streams, the Yellow River and the Yangzi were reproduced in quicksilver and by some mechanical means made to flow into a miniature ocean. The heavenly constellations were shown above and the regions of the earth below.
Shihuangdi put his chancellor Li Si ޕཎ in charge of planning and constructing his tomb, but we may presume that the details of this gigantic cosmogram were designed not by Li Si himself but by technical specialists.218 On the other hand in the pre-print era the philosophers who wrote on cosmology and on primal diagram must have ——— 218 Shiji, quoted Ledderose (2000: 52 ff.). Shihuangdi began plans for his burial as soon as he ascended the throne of Qin, at the age of 13, in 247 BC.
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drawn their tu directly into their manuscripts themselves, to be passed down, like the text, in manuscript copies. When it comes to the great cosmograms developed by the Song philosophers, clearly they too drew the original versions of the diagrams themselves, and these drawings provided the basis for the subsequent engraving onto woodblocks. Images like the Taiji tu, with its dramatic symmetries of black and white, have the appearance of being designed directly for woodblock. Tu of this diagrammatic type were relatively simple to draw and required no special skills to translate into woodblock for publication. Generally speaking, the observational and graphic quality of representational tu was high in the Song and Yuan dynasties. We know little about how woodblock tu were designed and by whom, either in the Song and Yuan or later, though Michela Bussotti provides a detailed description of the technical procedures involved in their production.219 It seems reasonable to suppose that in the earlier printing era, during the Song and the Yuan, not only were there fewer readymade images in circulation for woodblock carvers to copy from than during the Ming and Qing, but also greater attention was paid to accurate observation in the design of tu, and greater care was taken in translating non-woodblock originals into woodblock form. Golas has argued that the forty-seven technical illustrations in the Xin yi xiang fa yao ᄅᏚွ࿇ (New armillary sphere and celestial globe system essentials), compiled by Su Song ᤕቈ in the early 1090’s to describe the construction of his famous clocktower, were “unique in the history of Chinese representations of technology; no other machine or apparatus in traditional China ever received even remotely similar detailed visual treatment”.220 Others note that Song or Yuan paintings and woodblock illustrations of such subjects as water-mills, textile apparatus, chain-pumps or human skeletons show a degree of technical precision that is seldom found in later representations of the same objects.221 Wang Zhen we are told made drawings based on his direct observation of tools and machines, which he had workmen disassemble and ——— 219 See also Chia 2002: 52 ff. 220 Golas 1999: 49. 221 Kuhn (1987: ch. 3) discusses paintings of mills, Despeux paintings showing
skeletons. Golas notes the pertinent observation by historians of art including Michael Sullivan and James Cahill that after several centuries of efforts by painters to achieve greater precision and realism in their work, the late Song marked a significant shift away from realism in painting.
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reassemble so that he understood their structure. The magnificent paintings of mills or other technical subjects of the period, often cited as the acme of accurate technical observation in China, are realistic in approach, showing only what the eye can see. Unlike them Wang’s drawings (and the matching text) take deliberate steps to highlight the details of technical structure. His tu are true technical illustrations, presenting “a schematic representation of a technological principle”.222 Among Wang Zhen’s innovative representations are: a drawing of a winnowing-fan that cuts away the casing to show the mounting of the fan inside; drawings of water-mills that also use cut-away to show the mechanical connections between the components situated on the different floors of the mill, from the water-race up to the grinding-stones, sifters or bellows; and a drawing of a silk-reel in which all the main working parts are labelled by name, and explained in the accompanying text. Wang Zhen intended his work for wide circulation in print, and the graphic style of his tu takes full advantage of the woodblock medium, without apparently suffering in the translation from the author’s manuscript.223 It seems that Song Yingxing may have faced greater difficulties in the process of illustrating the printed edition of the Tiangong kaiwu. In Peter Golas’ study of the capacities and limitations of technical illustration in late imperial China, he explores who the illustrators might have been, the economic factors affecting illustration, and how the illustrative styles reflect Song’s philosophy of technology. Golas suggests that Song intended his work much as Wang Zhen had his treatise on farming, namely as a work that an official could show to an experienced craftsman, providing sufficient information to construct an experimental version of a machine hitherto unknown in the locality. Even on purely stylistic grounds it is clear that more than one workshop was involved in the production of the woodblocks for the first edition. Golas stresses the remarkable technical precision of Song’s text, not always matched by that of the illustrations, and argues that “rather than being disconcerted by mistaken or incomplete portrayals of the technology in the illustrations, he was probably satisfied when the illustrations generally succeeded in providing essential information that he understood could not be conveyed by the text ——— 222 Kuhn 1977. 223 Bray, this volume. The earliest surviving edition of the Nongshu is from
1530, but experts believe that the illustrations were very close to the originals.
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alone”. 224 Golas presents us with a picture of an author who is in control of his knowledge but in less than perfect control of his illustrators. Donald Wagner has a very different view. He believes that Song based much of his technical text on earlier sources, most of which were reliable, but which he did not always understand correctly. Focusing on the sections on iron-working, Wagner distinguishes between three cases. In one illustration and text match perfectly; in the second the text gives an accurate account of one method while the picture accurately portrays another process; in the third, the picture simply has nothing to do with any likely real methods of the period, presumably because Song misunderstood his source. Wagner’s paper underlines the importance of looking at just how familiar the author and the illustrator were with the technical process that was being illustrated, both through personal experience and through knowledge of other written or illustrated sources. In some cases where original illustrations were reworked for later editions technical details were distorted or quite brazenly hidden behind a wisp of cloud or a swirl of water where the woodblock designer failed to understand the mechanisms involved.225 And yet this trend was not invariable. In Chen Menglei’s ຫኄሼ Gujin tushu jicheng ײվቹ ႃ( ګComplete collection of graphics and texts, ancient and modern) of 1726, for instance, several of the reworked Tiangong kaiwu illustrations show greater technical accuracy than the original Ming illustrations (see below). Yet, as Samuel Edgerton shows in his comparative study of technical illustration, in the case of Agostino Ramelli’s 1588 engraving of a complex mechanical windlass, first rendered by a Chinese woodblock engraver in Johannes Terentius’ and Wang Zheng’s ׆ᐛ collection of translations of European works on mechanical design entitled Qiqi tushuo ࡛ᕴቹᎅ (Illustrations and explanations of strange devices, 1627), and subsequently reworked in the Gujin tushu jicheng, the Gujing tushu jicheng version is even more fanciful and incomplete than the Qiqi tushuo illustration. The difference may lie in the fact that the woodblock designers for the Gujin tushu jucheng were likely to have laid eyes on the apparatus discussed in the Tiangong kaiwu, but not on the European machinery, which was never adopted in China. The ease with which woodblock lent itself to copying was probably one key factor standing in way of the professional specialisation ——— 224 Golas, this volume, p. 587. 225 Edgerton 1985.
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of draftsmen and of innovation in techniques of representation. By late imperial times, although great artists (or lesser artisans capable of imitating their style convincingly) were often commissioned to design original, attributed hua for woodblock editions, the majority of the images used in works illustrated with tu were not original creations. There was no sense that tu or any subset of tu formed graphic categories with any special technical requirements, nor that the craftsmen who produced these tu required any special training or experience. Hans-Ulrich Vogel argues that one distinction between hua and tu in late imperial times was that the former were attributed, the latter always anonymous. 226 In fact many printed hua were anonymous as well, and some tu were attributed, for example the diagrams of the Song philosophers, and the scenes and poems of the Gengzhi tu in their various renderings right through to the late eighteenth century. In the case of the Gengzhi tu, emperors themselves contributed to the tu by inscribing them with poems of their own composition. But we do indeed know frustratingly little about the designers and carvers of the majority of tu. As a medium that facilitated the reproduction of existing images, woodblock printing made it particularly tempting for authors to delegate the design or choice of illustrations, and for publishers to insist on cheap copies rather than new images. As Bussotti demonstrates, there is no inherent reason why the woodblock medium could not be used to produce graphics of great technical sophistication and accuracy, and she provides examples of the subtlety and cognitive creativity achieved in late imperial woodblock images. But most of these fell into the category of hua; meanwhile the techniques of technical illustration seem to have stagnated. The Jesuits made available graphic techniques which played a key role in the development of scientific and technical illustration in post-Renaissance Europe, such as shading or hatching to show volume, the use of perspective, or standardised graphics to represent common forms or mechanical components. But none of these seems to have attracted much interest in China until the late nineteenth century.227 As Golas and Amelung demonstrate, the development of shared graphic norms and conventions which played ——— 226 Vogel, forthcoming. 227 Edgerton 1985. Several Qing court artists were admired for their mastery of
Western perspective. In the 1690s the Kangxi emperor commissioned Jiao Bingzhen ⛺⾝䉲 to paint a version of the Gengzhi tu using Western perspective and everyone was delighted with the result. But it did not add in any significant way to the technical accuracy of Jiao’s depictions; Bray, this volume.
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such a powerful role in the advancement of knowledge in the West was largely absent in late imperial technological tu and in cartography, though some standardisation of graphic representation did emerge in the genres of adminstrative tu discussed by Despeux and Will. As Donald Wagner suggests, the graphic lineages of tu in specific technical fields would repay further study. Often it is impossible to trace an individual image back to its origins, yet it is fairly obvious that the illustrator was drawing from a repertoire of conventional images that he had perhaps been taught as an apprentice, or had copied from a pattern-book or from an earlier illustrated work on a similar subject. This was a time-honoured practice among book illustrators in late imperial China just as it was in Europe in the early period of print-culture.228 An interesting case is the Shinzoku kibun 堚ঋಖ ፊ (Recorded accounts of Qing customs) of 1799, an account of everyday life and practices in the cities of Southeast China commissioned by the Governor of Nagasaki and based on extensive interviews with Chinese merchants from the region. The woodblock illustrations were produced by Japanese artesans who had been trained by a Chinese master. One striking feature of the work is that the majority of the delightful full-page or double-page illustrations are completely original, and show contemporary scenes and settings that correspond closely to the specific locales and settings described by the merchants in the text. However most of the illustrations of individual items, types of furniture or farming tools for example, were copied from centuries-old Chinese prototypes, and had presumably been transmitted to Japan through works like the Sancai tuhui or the Gujin tushu jicheng.229 Many Chinese book illustrators drew on a repertoire of traditional components even when they were creating new images, or they might change one or two key details of an existing image in order to fit a new textual context. Katherine Carlitz gives the example of a woodcut portraying a standing woman. In the version illustrating a romance she is holding a letter in her hand; in the version illustrating a moral tale of virtuous women she holds a knife that she is using to slice flesh from her arm to make restorative soup for her sick fatherin-law. (The former, intended to entertain and give pleasure, is a hua; the latter, didactic in purpose, is a tu.) Some illustrators of fiction ——— 228 Hegel 1998. 229 Bray 1997: 65–67.
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“drew on the work of major figure and landscape painters to weave even conventional elements (now exquisitely drawn) into unified compositions with a new narrative power”.230 More frequently, however, as Bussotti shows, repeated scissor-and-paste assemblage, like straightfoward copying, led to a progressive degeneration of the quality and accuracy of the original image. Bray shows how the original Nongshu version of a tu depicting a chain-pump degenerated in technical quality as it was copied for reproduction in two late-Ming works, the Tiangong kaiwu and the Nongzheng quanshu. Yet in technical tu as in aesthetic hua copying did not always mean degeneration: contrary to received opinion, Golas shows that in several cases the Qing copies of the original Ming illustrations to the Tiangong kaiwu were not only stylistically more elegant, but also technically more accurate and informative. In deciding to design new illustrations for the Tiangong kaiwu, Song Yingxing was perhaps making a more subversive choice than would be immediately apparent viewed from a purely technological perspective, opening the way to a social realism that was seldom seen in tu of the period—perhaps in part because direct copying of images was an inherently intellectually as well as visually conservative technique. An example: orthodox representations of textile production during the late Ming and Qing continued to represent women working reeling machines and looms, even though with the expansion and commercialisation of the textile industry men had generally replaced them in these tasks. The original Ming illustrations of Tiangong kaiwu, and the Qing reworkings, are unique in showing men reeling, weaving and mounting the looms, thus accurately reflecting a social reality frequently deplored by the orthodox as a reversal of the natural order, a non-traditional gender division of labour occluded in all the other depictions of textile production of the period.231 The comparison with the role of technical representation in China and Europe in the early modern period is inevitable, because of its perceived key role in the development of Western science and society. In Europe from the Renaissance we observe a steady development of observational techniques and of corresponding graphic conventions for recording natural or technical knowledge—geometric diagrams and Cartesian coordinates, Vesalius’ anatomical charts, diagrams of machinery or botanical drawings, to mention just a few. ——— 230 Carlitz 1991: 120. 231 Bray 1997: ch. 6.
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As technical graphics and text entered an era of professionalisation and of consistent, critical efforts at improvement, they quickly came to constitute a system of differentiated, specialised and highly effective codes of communication. The development of such specialised technical and scientific styles of graphic representation is acknowledged to have played a key role in the emergence of modern science and technology. Indeed it has been argued that the privileging and disciplining of vision that underpinned the search for such methods is a characteristically western—and uniquely efficacious—approach to investigating and portraying the world. Unlike in Europe, in the Chinese tradition of technical representation we observe no systematic attempts to improve the accuracy of observation or effectiveness of imaging. Nor did norms or conventions of representation emerge in most fields. Given that tu as a concept covered a much broader range of technical knowledge than science and technology as they emerged in Europe, we should not perhaps be surprised at this lack of coordination. Yet at least in the domain of the technical fields associated with statecraft, the absence of standardisation is somewhat curious, especially viewed in the context of rather carefully standardised governmental and administrative practice. Obviously late imperial officials saw potential for tu as tools for maintaining norms and increasing efficacy in some areas. The tables developed to provide algorithms or flow charts for magistrates faced with the huge complexities of the Qing legal code, like the autopsy charts and the new forms of map discussed by Despeux and Amelung, show conscious efforts by officials to incorporate graphic design into the devising of more effective management techniques in sub-sets of the vast, overarching domain of statecraft knowledge that officials were expected to master for administrative competence.
*
*
*
Throughout Chinese history statecraft knowledge made use both of “transformative”, diagrammatic tu and of “representational”, illustrative tu. So, too, did the technical fields associated with personal selfcultivation and health, or with mantic practices. “Tu studies” have tended to focus on one category of tu or the other, depending on whether the specific topic is more closely related to cosmology and its applications or to domains of knowledge that we now classify as
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“science” and “technology”. But we have argued here that tu of both classes had a conceptual unity in Chinese thought: what distinguished a tu from other forms of graphic expression, and gave it its peculiar powers, was that it was an encoding of knowledge that served as a template for action. We have argued in this Introduction for an inclusive approach acknowledging the whole spectrum of tu, and of the technical fields which generated tu, rather than a selective focus on small sub-sets which often risks distorting our picture of what was considered technical knowledge, and of how tu were deployed in a specific technical setting. From our perspective, the comparison of Eastern and Western technical graphics retains its interest but acquires a new breadth, more akin to the studies of visual cultures and of the circulation of images and knowledge that are proving so fruitful in Western intellectual history.232 The more inclusive approach to tu that we advocate also provides a framework for what R. Bin Wong calls “symmetrical comparison”, focusing greater attention on what it was that Chinese graphics were designed to do rather than what they failed to do or to become. Acknowledging the full range of graphics belonging to the category of tu also permits us to formulate new questions. What types of tu are characteristic of a particular field of technical knowledge? How did they convey the philosophical preoccupations and practical goals of the specialists working in that technical field? How did they function cognitively as graphics, alone or in conjunction with other media? We hope that the Typology proposed in this introduction has been suggestive in this respect. Equally significantly, perhaps, we have argued that the presence of tu signals a technical field, so that recognising the full range of tu may cast interesting new light on how technical knowledge was conceived and expressed in China, and how different fields of technical knowledge were related and articulated. This reframing of technical knowledge and its uses is hinted at in many of the papers included in this collection, but a fuller exploration awaits future research.
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——— 232 Stafford (1993), to cite just one example.
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Center. ——. 2002a. “Text and tu in Context: Reading the Illustrated Page in Chinese Blockprinted Books.” In: Drège 2002, pp. 241–276. CLUNAS, Craig. 1996. Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China. Durham: Duke University Press. ——. 1997. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——. 1997a. “Luxury Knowledge: the Xiushi lu [Records of lacquering] of 1625.” Techniques et culture 29/1997 special issue, De la Chine et des Andes, pp. 27– 40. DICKHARDT, Michael. 2003. “Creating and Representing Sacred Spaces as Processes of Symbolic Mediation: A Theoretical Introduction from a Cultural Anthropological Perspective.” In: Creating and Representing Sacred Spaces, eds. Michael Dickhardt and Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann. Göttinger Beiträge zur Asienforschung 2-3: pp. 7–33. DODGEN, Randall A. 2001. Controlling the Dragon: Confucian Engineers and the Yellow River in Late Imperial China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. DOROFEEVA-LICHTMANN, Vera. 1996. “Political Concept behind an Interplay of Spatial ‘Positions’”, in: Chemla and Lackner (eds.), pp. 9–34. ——. 2001/2005. “Spatiality of the Media for Writing in Ancient China and Spatial Organization of Ancient Chinese Texts.” Göttinger Beiträge zur Asienforschung 1 (2001): 87–135. Revised as “Spatial Composition of Ancient Chinese Texts”, in: History of Science, History of Text, ed. Karine Chemla (Boston Studies in History and Philosophy of Science). London – Dordrecht – Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 3–47. DREGE, Jean-Pierre ed. 2002. Dossier: Texte et image dans le livre illustré chinois. Special section in Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 89: 237–326. EBREY, Patricia Buckley. 1991. Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals: A Twelfth-Century Chinese Manual for the Performance of Cappings, Weddings, Funerals, and Ancestral Rites. Princeton: Princeton University Press. EDGERTON, Samuel Y., Jr. 1985. “The Renaissance Development of the Scientific Illustration.” In: Science and the Arts in the Renaissance, ed. John W. Shirley and F. David Hoeniger. Washington: Folger Books, pp. 168–197. ELMAN, Benjamin A. 1984. From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard East Asian Monographs. ——. 2002. “Jesuit scientia and Natural Studies in Late Imperial China.” Journal of Early Modern History: Contacts, Comparisons, Contrasts 6.3 (Fall 2002): 209– 232. ELVIN, Mark. 2004. The Retreat of the Elephants: an Environmental History of China. New Haven: Yale University Press. FONG, Wen C. 1992. Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8th to 14th Century. New Haven: Yale University Press. GLAHN, Else. 1984. “Research on the Yingtsao fa-shih.” In: Chinese Traditional Architecture, ed. Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt. New York: China Institute of America, pp. 47–57. GOLAS, Peter J. 1999. “The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China; the Xin yi xiang fa yao and its Antecedents.” History of Technology 21: 29–63. ——. 2001. “Technological Illustration in China; a Post-Needham Perspective.” In: Science and Technology in East Asia; the Legacy of Joseph Needham, ed. Alain Arrault and Catherine Jami. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, pp. 43–58. GUO, Qinghua. 1995. “The Structure of Chinese Timber Architecture: Twelfth-Century Design Standards and Construction Principles.” Ph.D. diss., Chalmers Uni-
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LEDDEROSE, Lothar. 2000. Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press. LI Jianmin ޕ৬ا. 2001. Sisheng zhi yu: Zhou Qin Han mai xue zhi yuan liu ڽᜢհ Υࡌዧ౧ᖂհੌ . Taibei: Academica Sinica. ——. 2001a. “Shushu – la divinazione: Introduzione all’arte dei pronostoci.” In: Chemla et al 2001, pp. 116–119. LI Ling ޕሿ. 1993. Zhongguo fangshu kao խഏֱە. Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe [repr. 2000]. LLOYD, Geoffrey and Nathan SIVIN. 2002. The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece. New Haven: Yale University Press. LO, Vivienne. 2001. ‘Huangdi Hama jing (Yellow Emperor’s Toad Canon).” Asia Major 14.2: 61–99. LU Gwei-Djen and Joseph NEEDHAM. 1980. Celestial Lancets: a History and Rationale of Acupunture and Moxa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. NEEDHAM, Joseph with WANG Ling. 1959. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. III. Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. PETERSON, Willard J. 1982. “Making Connections: ‘Commentary on the Attached Verbalizations’ of the Book of Change.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42.1: 67–116. POWERS, Martin J. 1991. Art and Political Expression in Early China. New Haven: Yale University Press. RAPHALS, Lisa. 1998. Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China. Albany: SUNY . REED, Christopher A. 2004. Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism 1876– 1937. Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press. REITER, Florian C. 1990. “Some Remarks on the Chinese Word t’u ‘chart, plan, design’.” Oriens 32: 308–327. ROGASKI, Ruth. 1999. “Efficacy and Accuracy in Luo Hongxian’s tu”, paper presented at the 9th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Singapore. RUITENBEEK, Klaas. 1993. Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China: A Study of the Fifteenth-Century Carpenters’ Manual Lu Ban Jing. Leiden: Brill. Sancai tuhui Կթቹᄎ (Illustrated compendium of the Three Powers). 1609/1970. Wang Qi ݆׆. Facsimile edition, Taipei: Chengwen Press, 1970. SCHÄFER, Dagmar. 2005. “The Congruence of Knowledge and Action: the Tiangong kaiwu and its Author Song Yingxing.” In: Chinese Handicrafts Regulations of the Qing Dynasty: Theory and Application, ed. Hans-Ulrich Vogel, Christine Moll-Murata and Song Jianze. Munich: Iudicum, pp 35–60. SIVIN, Nathan and Gari LEDYARD. 1994. “Introduction to East Asian Cartography.” In: Harley and Woodward 1994, pp. 23–31. SMITH, Richard J. 1991. Fortune Tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society. Boulder, Co.: University of Colorado Press. ——. 1996. Chinese Maps. Hong Kong, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ——. 2001. “Maps, Myths and Multiple Realities: Images of the ‘Other’ In Late Imperial China”, paper presented at the European and North American Exchanges in East Asian Studies Conference, “De l’image à l’action : la dynamique des représentations visuelles dans la culture intellectuelle et religieuse de la Chine / From Image to Action: The Dynamics of Visual Representation in Chinese Intellectual and Religious Culture.” Paris, September 3–5, 2001. STAFFORD, Barbara Maria. 1993. Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
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STEPHENSON, F. Richard. 1994. “Chinese and Korean Star Maps and Catalogs.” In: Harley and Woodward 1994, pp. 511–578. TSIEN, Tsuen-hsuin. 1985. Science and Civilisation in China, Volume V, Part 1, Paper and Printing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tupu lüe ቹᢜฃ, ca. 1150, Tongzhi ຏ ݳj. 71/837–840, by Zheng Qiao ᔤᖱ; Taipei [?] Xin Xing Shuju, no date, 10 vols. (Collection: Guoxue jiben congshu). UNSCHULD, Paul. 1986. Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics. Berkeley: University of California Press. VERMEER, Eduard B. 1987. “Pan Chi-hsun’s Solutions for the Yellow River Problems of the late 16th Century.” T’oung Pao 73.1–3: 33–67. VOGEL, Hans Ulrich. 1999. “Illustrations (tu) and Explanations (shuo) of Traditional Chinese Salt Production and Salt Administration”, paper presented at the 9th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Singapore, August 1999. ——. Forthcoming. “Diagrams and Illustrations.” In: Enciclopedia Italiana, Storia della Scienza, addendum to “La scienza in Cina.” (see Chemla et al. 2001). WAGNER, Donald B. 2006. “Iron Production in three Ming Texts: Tie ye zhi, Guangdong xinyu, and Tian gong kai wu.” In: Studies in Ancient Chinese Scientific and Technical Texts (Proceedings of the 3rd ISACBRST), ed. Hans-Ulrich Vogel, Christine Moll-Murata and Gao Xuan. Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe, pp. 173–188. WANG, Eugene Y. 1998. “What is tu (chart/picture)? Or what became of tu in medieval China?” Paper presented at the panel “Tu” (diagrams, charts, drawings) in traditional Chinese culture, Association of Asian Studies, Chicago. WILL, Pierre-Étienne. 2003. “La réglementation administrative et le code pénal mis en tableaux.” Études chinoises 22: 93–157. WONG, R. Bin. 1997. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. YEE, Cordell D.K. 1994. “Reinterpreting Traditional Chinese Geographical Maps”; “Chinese Maps in Political Culture”; “Taking the World’s Measure: Chinese Maps between Observation and Text”; “Chinese Cartography among the Arts: Objectivity, Subjectivity, Representation”; and “Traditional Chinese Cartography and the Myth of Westernization.” In: Harley and Woodward 1994, pp. 35– 70; 71–95; 96–127; 128–169; 170–202.
PART ONE THE POWER OF ORDER: TU AS SYMBOLIC MEDIATION
I. THE ORIGINS OF TU
LA REPRESENTATION VISUELLE DANS LES PRATIQUES PYRO-OSTEOMANTIQUES DE LA CHINE ARCHAIQUE1 Olivier Venture La célébrité actuelle de la ville d’Anyang provient en grande partie de la découverte au début du siècle dernier, dans la banlieue nord-ouest de la ville, près d’un village appelé Xiaotun, de milliers d’os et de carapaces de tortue sur lesquels figuraient des inscriptions datant de la fin de la dynastie des Shang (env. 1250–1300 av. notre ère).2 Ces inscriptions ne représentent pas les seuls témoignages écrits que nous possédions pour cette période, mais elles constituent néanmoins le corpus de textes le plus important.3 Les chercheurs ont rapidement constaté que les pièces en os et en carapace qui servaient de support aux inscriptions avaient préalablement été utilisées dans le cadre de pratiques divinatoires. Ces pratiques consistaient à faire apparaître sur les supports, sous l’effet d’une forte chaleur, des craquelures que des devins étaient ensuite chargés d’interpréter. Le travail des épigraphistes révéla que les textes qui accompagnent parfois ces pratiques sont des comptes rendus de divinations. Les découvertes archéologiques qui se sont succédé tout au long du XXe siècle montrent que cette forme de divination, que nous désignerons par le terme de pyro-ostéomancie, ne fut pas une invention des Shang, mais remonte beaucoup plus loin dans le temps.4 En revanche, l’ajout d’inscriptions sur les supports paraît bien être une innovation des devins Shang, innovation qui focalise jusqu’à aujourd’hui l’attention des chercheurs, pour la plupart, intéressés avant ———
1 Ce texte avait été présenté au colloque From image to action: the dynamics of visual representation in Chinese intellectual and religious culture (3–5.09.2001, Collège de France, Paris). La version définitive de cet article a été remise en septembre 2003. Je tiens à remercier Grégoire Espesset, Marc Kalinowski et Alain Thote pour leurs précieuses relectures du présent travail. Toutefois, j’assume seul l’entière responsabilité de cet article et des idées qui y sont formulées. 2 Sur les circonstances de la découverte, voir Lefeuvre (1975). 3 D’autres inscriptions contemporaines sur bronze, sur pierre et sur céramique sont aussi attestées pour cette période (Qiu Xigui 2000: 60). Pour une description d’ensemble de ces inscriptions, voir Venture (2002: 30–169). 4 Voir ci-dessous notre présentation des origines de cette pratique.
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tout par le contenu des textes.5 Mais l’ajout de caractères d’écriture sur les supports de divination est loin de constituer la seule modification que les devins Shang ont apportée à cette ancienne pratique. Une analyse chronologique des supports montre en effet qu’une des préoccupations majeures des devins était l’organisation de la disposition des inscriptions et des éléments visuels que constituent les craquelures en fonction de certains principes. C’est en cela que ces pratiques nous paraissent annonciatrices de l’utilisation des diagrammes (tu ቹ) telle qu’elle se développa dans les pratiques mantiques ultérieures. Pour mieux mettre en valeur les choix des devins Shang, et essayer de comprendre les relations existant entre la forme donnée à la pratique mantique et ses principes, il convient de replacer cette tradition dans le contexte d’une évolution générale des pratiques de pyroostéomancie depuis le Néolithique jusqu’aux alentours de notre ère.6
1. LES ORIGINES La pyro-ostéomancie est une tradition extrêmement ancienne en Chine, puisque les premières traces connues, qui ont été relevées à Fujiamen மኅ㐷, au Gansu, remontent aux environs de 3500 ans avant notre ère.7 Dès cette époque, les omoplates apparaissent comme le support privilégié de ces pratiques mantiques. On peut penser que ce sont avant tout des raisons techniques qui ont motivé le choix de ces os en particulier. Les omoplates présentent en effet à l’état naturel des parties assez planes, de très fable épaisseur, où des craquelures peuvent être obtenues relativement aisément sous l’effet de la cha———
5 Nous ne remettons pas en cause l’intérêt de telles études, mais regrettons seulement ici le fait qu’elles ont largement occulté des travaux qui auraient pu être menés sur les pratiques mantiques elles-mêmes. Pour une présentation du contenu des inscriptions dites oraculaires, voir Keightley (1978 et 1997). 6 Si les techniques des devins Shang ont suscité d’assez nombreux de travaux, les études spécialisées concernant les autres périodes sont rares. L’étude de Li Hengqiu (1981a, 1981b et 1982), sur laquelle nous nous sommes entre autres appuyé ici, fait figure d’exception. D’une manière générale, les supports de divination, lorsqu’ils ne portent pas d’inscriptions, ont assez peu intéressé les chercheurs. Cette absence d’intérêt se retrouve aussi dans les rapports de fouilles où les descriptions des os sont souvent peu précises (quantités pas systématiquement indiquées, absence parfois d’identification de l’animal auquel appartenait l’os, etc.), les reproductions sont généralement peu fréquentes, et lorsqu’elles existent, c’est presque toujours en petit nombre. Ces problèmes ont nécessairement limité notre travail d’analyse. 7 Zhongguo Gan Qing 1995: 293.
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leur.8 La découverte d’autres pièces antérieures à 2500 avant notre ère semble confirmer l’origine septentrionale de ce mode de divination.9 On soulignera toutefois qu’il reste alors un phénomène ponctuel et qu’il ne s’agit pas encore d’une véritable tradition. C’est là une des différences fondamentales par rapport à ce que l’on peut observer dans différentes régions de Chine à partir de 2500, et qui apparaît clairement comme un véritable phénomène culturel durable. En témoignent les nombreuses découvertes réalisées dans les vestiges rattachés aux cultures de Qijia 㥱ኅ (2100–1600) au Gansu, de Xiajiadian ᄐኅᐫ inférieur (2000–1500) dans le Nord-Est, de Longshan 㦖 ጊ du Shandong (2200–1900) et de Yueshi ጪ⍹ (1900–1700) dans le Shandong, de Longshan du Henan (env. 2800–1900)10 et de Erlitou ੑ㉿㗡 (env. 1700–1500) dans la région du cours moyen du fleuve Jaune. Certaines de ces cultures ont utilisé des méthodes très simples, semblables à celles qui étaient en cours avant 2500. Les personnes en charge de la divination se contentaient d’appliquer la source de chaleur (probablement un morceau de bois incandescent) directement sur un support n’ayant apparemment fait l’objet d’aucune préparation particulière. La disposition des différentes traces de brûlage ne suivait manifestement aucun ordre précis. Les traces sont en effet concentrées sur les parties les moins épaisses de l’omoplate soit au centre de ——— 8 L’utilisation de côtes aussi est attestée sur différents sites néolithiques, mais de manière ponctuelle. Voir par exemple Li Hengqiu (1981b: 44). 9 On a en effet aussi découvert des supports de divination très anciens en Mongolie Intérieure, sur les sites de Fuhegoumen ༄ࣾᄮ॰ (env. 2785 ±110) et de Zhaizita ንჃ (env. 3000). Voir respectivement Zhongguo Neimenggu (1964: 3 et pl. I.9), et Neimenggu yanjiusuo (1997: 303, fig. 26.1–3 et p. 304). Une découverte plus méridionale a été faite dans le Henan, sur le site de Xiawanggang Հ ൂ׆où un support de divination a été mis au jour dans une couche relevant de la culture de Yangshao ٛᏄ (env. 3800–3600). Voir Henan Changjiang 1989: 200 et pl. LIII. 8. Toutefois, on soulignera que la couche à laquelle appartient cette pièce date de la fin de la culture de Yangshao. Araki Hiroko (1999: 258) a avancé de manière convaincante l’hypothèse que l’objet pourrait en réalité provenir de couches supérieures du site appartenant à la culture de Longshan du Henan et dans lesquelles plusieurs supports de ce type ont été retrouvés. Pour une vue d’ensemble des découvertes depuis le Néolithique jusqu’au début de l’Age du bronze, voir la présentation d’Araki Hiroko (1999: 257–265). 10 Nous l’utilisons ici l’expression de “culture de Longshan du Henan” par souci de clarté, la “culture de Longshan” étant un terme évocateur même pour les personnes non spécialistes de la période. Toutefois, de plus en plus d’archéologues estiment qu’il s’agit d’une appellation trop large et préfèrent distinguer différents types, mais le nombre et le nom de ces types varient aujourd’hui encore suivant les auteurs. Au sujet des problèmes posés par l’appellation de “culture de Longshan du Henan”, voir la traduction par Alain Thote d’un article de Yang Xizhang (1988: 60–77).
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la palette de part et d’autre de l’épine. De telles pratiques sont en particulier attestées dans la culture de Qijia, où ce sont des omoplates de mouton, et de porc dans une moindre mesure, qui furent principalement utilisées [Fig. 1:1].11 Sur le site éponyme d’Erlitou, cette méthode que l’on pourrait qualifier de “primitive” a été pratiquée pendant environ deux cents ans, mais là essentiellement sur des omoplates de porc [Fig. 1:2]. 1
2
Qijia12
Erlitou13
Fig. 1: Traces de techniques primitives de pyro-ostéomancie sur omoplates.
D’autres cultures ont opté pour des pratiques moins simples, impliquant un travail préalable sur les supports. Ce travail visait à faciliter l’apparition des craquelures d’une part sur des os plus épais que les omoplates de mouton (par exemple: des omoplates de bovidé), et d’autre part sur des parties de l’omoplate jusqu’alors inutilisées (col et bords latéraux).14 Deux techniques furent alors employées, parfois en ——— 11 12 13 14
Au sujet de la culture de Qijia, voir Debaine-Francfort (1995). Voir Zhongguo Gansu 1974, n°2: 55, fig. 30. Voir Zhongguo shehui 1999, pl. 114.7. Les raisons du choix d’un autre animal que le mouton pourraient être liées à des traditions d’élevage différentes: essentiellement tournée vers les ovins dans le Gansu, et plus vers les bovins dans les plaines fertiles du cours inférieur du fleuve Jaune. Mais ces choix étaient sans doute aussi probablement liés à des considérations touchant au statut accordé à l’animal au sein des différentes cultures. Ceci pourrait expliquer un phénomène dont témoigne par exemple le site de Zhukaigou ڹၲᄮ, en Mongolie intérieure, qui fut en activité de 2000 à 1500 avant notre ère. L’étude de l’ensemble des ossements retrouvés sur ce site a montré que c’étaient avant tout des porcs et des moutons qui étaient consommés par les habitants. En revanche, on note une nette préférence pour les bovidés pour les pratiques ostéomantiques. Voir Huang Yunping 1996: 534.
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association, pour amincir les supports et ainsi faciliter la production de craquelures. La première consistait à racler la surface du support, la seconde à y creuser des cavités. Ces deux techniques sont en particulier bien attestées sur les supports retrouvés dans les vestiges de la culture de Xiajiadian inférieur. Sur certains supports, on a relevé de très grandes quantités de cavités disposées densément, mais sans ordre apparent [Fig. 2].
Fig. 2: Fragment d’omoplate de la culture de Xiajiadian inférieur.15
La superficie du support ainsi aminci était donc là relativement importante. Toutefois, ces cavités n’étaient pas toutes destinées à être brûlées, seule une partie d’entre elles l’était. Malheureusement, les descriptions des rapports de fouilles sont trop peu précises à ce sujet pour nous permettre de savoir si le choix des cavités répondait à un ordre quelconque. On voit donc qu’il n’y a pas eu dans le domaine des pratiques de pyro-ostéomancie une évolution globale et continue des techniques sur l’ensemble de ce qui constitue aujourd’hui le territoire chinois. Ainsi, les habitants du site de Erlitou, pourtant reconnus pour leurs innovations technologiques dans le domaine du travail du bronze,16 se sont contentés de méthodes de divination relativement archaïques, alors que des cultures moins avancées dans l’art de la métallurgie comme celle de Xiajiadian inférieur développaient parallèlement des méthodes relativement sophistiquées.17 ——— 15 Li Hengqiu 1981b: 44, fig. 10.1. 16 Au sujet de la culture de Erlitou, voir Thorp (1991). 17 On soulignera que la culture de Dongxiafeng ࣟՀ႑, considérée comme un
sous-groupe de la culture de Erlitou, a clairement choisi d’adopter des techniques de pyro-ostéomancie beaucoup plus complexes. Voir Zhongguo shehui 1988: 28, 49, 99, 146–147, 185 et 207. Cela nous incite à dire qu’il ne s’agit pas là d’un développement local et que l’apparition de ces techniques est sur ce site clairement liée à l’introduction de l’omoplate de bovidé en tant que support de divination. Or, comme
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Mais qu’ils relèvent de techniques rudimentaires ou complexes, aucun des témoignages de pyro-ostéomancie laissés par ces cultures ne révèle un quelconque souci de régularité dans la disposition des différents éléments (cavités ou craquelures) apparaissant sur les supports. Cette constatation s’applique aussi aux supports de divination retrouvés dans les plus anciennes couches des vestiges de la capitale que les Shang avaient établi à Zhengzhou entre 1500 et 1300 savant notre ère.18
2. LES SHANG On a exhumé du site de Zhengzhou de très nombreux supports de divination, témoignant d’une activité mantique plus importante que sur les sites antérieurs.19 Les techniques employées jusque vers 1400 y restent relativement simples. On note un travail au niveau du col, l’épine est généralement supprimée et la surface de l’os où se trouvait cette dernière est le plus souvent polie. Le brûlage s’effectue encore directement sur la surface, sans recours aux cavités. Ce n’est qu’après 1400 que l’on voit se développer, à Zhengzhou, un travail associant un amincissement de l’os par raclage sur une large surface et l’emploi de cavités [Fig. 3:1]. Dans la disposition des éléments, les archéologues ont observé que plusieurs supports datant d’une phase correspondant à 1450–1400 environ attestaient d’une volonté des devins d’organiser les traces de brûlages selon des axes linéaires [Fig. 3:2].20
——— à Erlitou, cette culture utilisait à l’origine essentiellement des omoplates de porc. 18 Pour une présentation récente du site de Zhengzhou et des découvertes archéologiques concernant les Shang d’une manière plus générale, voir Bagley (1999). 19 En 1953, 384 supports et fragments de supports (dont 9 en carapace, le reste en omoplate) ont été mis au jour sur le site de Erligang. Voir Henan sheng wenhua ju 1959. En outre, plus de 200 autres supports et fragments de supports ont été découverts sur l’ensemble du site de Zhengzhou entre 1953 et 1985. Voir Henan sheng yanjiusuo 2001: 174, 681 et 834. En comparaison, sur la plupart des sites antérieurs, le nombre de supports se compte généralement en unités, voire en dizaines d’unités pour les découvertes les plus importantes. 20 Voir Henan sheng yanjiusuo 2001: 681.
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1
2
1400–135021
1450–140022
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Fig. 3: Omoplates Shang à Zhengzhou.
Mais on ne retrouve pas ce phénomène sur les supports des phases suivantes au cours desquelles se sont développées les techniques complexes que nous avons évoquées ci-dessus. Une autre innovation des devins Shang de Zhengzhou connut une remarquable destinée. Au lieu d’utiliser des omoplates, ces spécialistes ont commencé à employer des carapaces de tortue, et plus particulièrement la partie inférieure de la carapace que l’on appelle “plastron”.23 L’introduction de ce support est, dans le cadre de cette étude, particulièrement intéressant. En effet, les plastrons de carapaces présentent une surface constituée de plaques agencées de manière symétrique de part et d’autre d’un axe allant de la tête à la queue de l’animal. Cependant, adopté à partir de 1450 environ comme support concurrent de l’omoplate, le plastron ne semble pas avoir immédiatement suscité une plus grande rigueur dans la disposition des points de brûlage. Quelques-uns de ces supports témoignent certes d’une volonté d’organisation, mais on est encore loin de la régularité naturelle présente dans l’organisation des plaques de plastron [Fig. 4]. ———
21 Henan sheng yanjiusuo 2001: 835, fig. 560.2. 22 Henan sheng yanjiusuo 2001: 682, fig. 467.5. 23 Le choix de ce support n’est assurément pas fortuit, car la carapace de tortue
est un objet qui jouissait depuis longtemps d’un certain prestige. On la retrouve en particulier dans les pratiques funéraires de différentes cultures indiquant qu’elle avait alors probablement une valeur religieuse ou magique. Voir Li Ling 1993: 54–56.
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1
2
1450–140024
1400–135025
Fig. 4: Plastrons Shang à Zhengzhou.
Au cours du XIIIe siècle, les Shang déplacèrent leur capitale dans le nord de l’actuelle province du Henan, près de Anyang. Là, vraisemblablement sous l’influence d’une tradition locale,26 les devins de la maison royale firent évoluer leur pratique d’une manière qui révèle une prise en compte plus importante de l’aspect visuel de l’objet. Ainsi, l’adoption de la technique de la “double cavité” a permis la normalisation de craquelures qui jusque là avaient tendance à s’étoiler dans tous les sens.27 Celles-ci prennent désormais la forme d’un “T” renversé, que les devins pouvaient orienter à leur convenance vers la droite ou vers la gauche (Ō ou ō). La seule variable visuelle, probablement utilisée par le devin dans son interprétation, était alors l’amplitude de l’angle entre les parties horizontale et verticale des craquelures.28 ——— 24 Henan sheng yanjiusuo 2001: 683, fig. 468.4. 25 Ibid., p. 837, fig. 561: 1 26 On a en effet retrouvé sur le site de Xiaqiyuan ՀԮূ, dans le Hebei (à moins
de 20 km au nord du site de Xiaotun) des supports de divination antérieurs au XVIe siècle témoignant de nombreuses innovations qui seront ensuite reprises et développées, à très grande échelle, par les devins de la cour des rois Shang. Voir Hebei sheng wenwu 1979: 199. 27 Ce point a déjà été souligné par Léon Vandermeersch (1980: 161). La technique de la “double cavité” consistait à creuser une petite cavité peu profonde sur l’un des bords latéraux d’une cavité de manière à influer ultérieurement sur la forme de la craquelure. Voir ibid., p. 287. 28 Nous devons ici reconnaître que nous ignorons encore aujourd’hui la manière exacte par laquelle les devins parvenaient à définir le caractère faste ou néfaste d’une divination. Si l’amplitude de l’angle des craquelures apparaît comme un critère vraisemblable de leur interprétation, il est probable qu’il en existait d’autres que nous
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Les plus anciennes pièces attribuées au règne du roi Wu Ding ᱞৼ des Shang (environ 1250–1192 avant notre ère)29 témoignent du fait que l’organisation des différents éléments apparaissant sur les supports ne s’est pas faite de manière brutale. Sur certains d’entre eux on observe qu’une partie des cavités est déjà disposée en colonnes, alors que d’autres présentent encore un désordre rappelant les pratiques antérieures [Fig. 5:1 et 5:2]. 1
2
3
Heji 19946 recto
Heji 19946 verso
Tunnan 2316 verso
Fig. 5: Omoplates Shang à Anyang.
Mais vers le milieu du règne de Wu Ding, la notion d’ordre semble s’être imposée pour les omoplates comme pour les carapaces et la disposition du texte commence également à être prise en compte. Sur les omoplates, les craquelures sont disposées en colonnes généralement calées au niveau du col du support (voir Fig. 5:3). Mais c’est sur les plastrons que la notion d’organisation des cavités (et donc des craquelures) a pris sa forme la plus aboutie. Sur les plastrons, deux types d’agencements sont alors attestés; nous les désignerons par les lettre A et B [Fig. 6].30 ——— n’avons pas encore réussi à identifier. 29 Dates indicatives données dans Xia Shang Zhou (2000: 88). 30 Au sujet de ces deux styles et de leurs liens avec la “mise en page” des inscriptions oraculaires, voir Venture (2001).
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A
B
Fig. 6: Dispositions des cavités sur plastron sous le règne de Wu Ding.
La disposition de type B est essentiellement basée sur un principe de symétrie, mais les cavités ne sont pas forcément alignées [Fig. 6:B]. Les textes que nous pouvons lire sur ces pièces nous apprennent que la symétrie était alors un principe de base de cette pratique divinatoire. Les devins présentaient généralement leur demande d’oracle sous la forme de deux prédictions parallèles. Ainsi on peut lire sur la moitié droite de la pièce 32 du Heji “le roi ne suivra pas Wang Cheng ᦸ” s’opposant (à gauche) à “le roi suivra Wang Cheng” [pl. I]. La symétrie est donc ici à la fois présente dans la disposition des craquelures et du texte, mais aussi dans la forme même du discours prédictif. Ce style de “mise en page” des plastrons fut abandonné à la fin du règne de Wu Ding. Les devins lui ont en effet préféré l’agencement de type A qui était pratiqué concurremment jusque-là. Celui-ci repose aussi sur un principe de symétrie. Mais ce qui domine avant tout ici c’est une impression d’ordre beaucoup plus grande, qui est due à l’utilisation d’alignements de colonnes (voir Fig. 6:A). Cette disposition a été adoptée pour l’ensemble des plastrons jusqu’à la fin de la dynastie. Or, on constate que ce choix n’est pas d’ordre esthétique, mais s’inscrit dans un ensemble de profonds changements ayant à cette époque touché la forme même des demandes d’oracles. 31 Si ———
31 Sur ces changements, voir Peng Yushang (1995: 228–246).
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dans le passé un texte pouvait fréquemment être associé à plusieurs craquelures, voire même plusieurs supports, ce phénomène devient de plus en plus rare. L’association d’un texte à chaque craquelure va de plus renforcer l’impression de régularité, comme le montre un fragment de plastron du Musée Guimet qui peut être daté d’entre 1190 et 1150 environ [pl. II]. On décèle en outre sur ce support la logique ayant présidé à l’orientation des caractères, selon qu’ils se trouvent sur la moitié droite ou sur la moitié gauche (disposition en miroir). Ce phénomène, qui atteint alors son apogée, a pratiquement été abandonné par la suite (sauf pour la graphie bu ඵ) comme en témoignent les pièces datant de la toute fin de la dynastie des Shang, entre environ 1100 et 1050 [pl. III]. Cette normalisation des éléments visibles sur le support (cavités, craquelures et textes) s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une évolution globale touchant non seulement les pratiques mantiques, mais aussi les pratiques rituelles dans leur ensemble. Parallèlement en effet, les sacrifices aux ancêtres ont été intégrés dans un cycle annuel précis et les demandes d’oracle sont devenues de moins en moins variées et de plus en plus formelles.32 Toutefois, l’évolution qui vient d’être retracée ci-dessus fut propre aux pratiques des devins de la cour des rois Shang. En dehors de ce cercle, la normalisation s’est manifestée de manière beaucoup moins rigoureuse, comme en témoignent par exemple les supports de divinations retrouvés dans les vestiges Shang de Daxinzhuang ᄢㄆ⩑ au Shandong,33 et même ceux découverts à la périphérie du site de Xiaotun, près de Anyang.34 Là officiaient des devins qui devaient certes prendre pour modèle les pratiques de la cour, mais sans atteindre la régularité des devins officiant pour le roi dans l’organisation graphique des supports.
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32 Au sujet du processus de normalisation des rituels voir Keightley (2000: 47–
49). 33 Voir Xu Ji 1995: 47–52. L’auteur de cet article insiste essentiellement sur les similitudes existant avec les pratiques d’Anyang. Cependant, il nous semble évident que les spécimens présentés dans ce travail se démarquent clairement de leur probables modèles. 34 Liu Yiman (1997) a été un des premiers chercheurs à mettre en avant cette particularité.
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1
2
Daxinzhuang35
Xiaotun36
Fig. 7: Plastrons Shang de tradition non royale.
Tout comme d’autres éléments culturels, les pratiques de pyroostéomancie Shang ont aussi connu un certains succès dans d’autres cultures. Cependant, leur diffusion s’y est traduite par des pratiques encore moins régulières que celles des zones Shang périphériques qui viennent d’être évoquées. Parmi les rares traditions prenant en compte l’aspect visuel et qui semblent s’être développées de manière indépendante, on relève en particulier le cas de celle attestée, à partir du début du deuxième millénaire avant notre ère et jusque sous les Zhou occidentaux, dans la partie occidentale de la péninsule du Shandong. Celle-ci repose sur un choix sensiblement différent dans l’organisation des cavités. L’unité de base est là une ligne horizontale de trois cavités liées entre elles.
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35 Shandong daxue kaogu zhuanye 1995: 24, fig. 23.1. 36 Zhongguo shehui 1987, pl. XLIV.3.
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Gaohuangmiao (Jiangsu)37
Yinjiacheng (Shandong)38
95
Fig. 8: Omoplates témoignant d’une tradition à part.
Malgré l’absence de données plus précises, cette particularité semble bien refléter une forme de divination qui repose sur des principes différents de ceux à l’œuvre dans les pratiques Shang où la symétrie revêtait une importance majeure. Après les Shang, les témoignages de divination sur os ou sur carapace sont beaucoup moins nombreux. Cependant, les quelques pièces retrouvées apportent des éléments de réflexion intéressants sur le rapport entre les principes de la pratique et sa forme.
3. APRES LES SHANG Les techniques utilisées par les Zhou au moment de la conquête sont beaucoup plus proches des pratiques de la cour des Shang que celles en vigueur dans les autres cultures au tournant du premier millénaire.39 En particulier, les plastrons présentent pareillement des cavités en colonnes serrées. ———
37 Yan Yiping 1978: 540, fig. 83. 38 Shandong daxue kaogu jiaoyan shi 1990: 252, fig. 166.2. 39 Des supports de divination contemporains des règnes des derniers rois Shang
ont été découverts, parmi d’autres plus tardifs, en 1977 à Fengchu Ꮥᠩ, au Shaanxi. Pour une présentation de cette découverte et des inscriptions, voir Xu Xitai (1987).
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1
2
Qijia, Shaanxi (1050–950 av. notre ère)40
Luoyang, Henan (1050–950 av. notre ère)41
Fig. 9: Plastrons des Zhou occidentaux.
De même, comme dans les pratiques royales Shang, certains supports sont inscrits. Mais contrairement à leurs prédécesseurs, les Zhou semblent avoir traité le texte comme un élément extérieur à l’organisation visuelle des supports. Aucun parallélisme, aucune régularité n’est perceptible dans le contenu ni dans la forme des inscriptions Zhou.42 Celles-ci semblent alors à ce point secondaires qu’elles finissent même par disparaître avant la fin des Zhou occidentaux. Seuls demeurent alors des anciennes pratiques Shang les principes de régularité dans la disposition des cavités. C’est du moins ce dont témoignent les rares fragments de plastrons retrouvés pour les périodes dites des Printemps et Automnes et des Royaumes combatants.43 ———
40 Wang Yuxin 1984: 345, fig. 300. 41 Zhao Zhenhua 1985: 376, fig. 5.2. 42 A ce jour, une seule inscription Zhou semble obéir à une certaine forme de pa-
rallélisme, mais celui-ci est loin d’être aussi manifeste que sur les pièces Shang. Voir Xu Xitai 1987: 119–121. Pour une présentation d’ensemble des inscriptions Zhou de Fengchu, voir Xu Xitai (1987). Pour les nombreux problèmes posés par ces pièces, voir l’article de Shaughnessy (1987) dont le titre explicite est malheureusement toujours d’actualité: “Zhouyuan Oracle-Bone Inscriptions: Entering the Research Stage ?” 43 Pour une description de quelques-uns de ces supports, voir Zhao Zhenhua (1985: 374–377).
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2
3
Houma (env. Ve siècle)44
Luoyang (env. Ve–IIIe siècle)45
Luoyang (env. Ve–IIIe siècle)46
Fig. 10: Fragments de plastrons des Zhou orientaux.
Privés de cette précieuse clef que constituaient les inscriptions, nous ne pouvons pas savoir si les principes qui sous-tendaient les pratiques de pyro-ostéomancie des Zhou étaient ou non différents de ceux élaborés par les devins Shang. On perçoit certes une constance dans la disposition régulière des cavités, mais on ne peut affirmer que celle-ci reflète une continuité des principes mantiques. On note par ailleurs que les Zhou semblent avoir progressivement abandonné l’omoplate, qui était alors sans doute considérée comme un support moins noble, moins raffiné.47 A partir de cette époque on ne trouve plus de traces de pyro-scapulomancie dans le monde chinois. En revanche, cette pratique a survécu dans certains groupes ethniques non-Han, comme chez les mongols, les Yi ᒸ ou les Naxi ⚊.48 Mais ces traditions ne peuvent être rattachées aux pratiques des Shang et des Zhou; les techniques employées sont beaucoup plus proches des celles des premières traditions néolithiques évoquées plus haut et aucune d’elles ne traduit un souci d’organisation des ——— 44 45 46 47
Shanxi sheng yanjiusuo 1993: 426 et pl. CCCIV.3. Zhao Zhenhua 1985: 377, fig. 6.4. Ibid., p. 377, fig. 6.5. Wang Chong ך׆, au premier siècle de notre ère, y fait d’ailleurs allusion sur un ton ironique dans un passage du Lunheng ᓵᘝ: Avec des omoplates de porc ou de mouton, on peut obtenir des craquelures. Avec des tiges de roseau ou des brins de paille, on peut obtenir des chiffres. Alors pourquoi utiliser l’achillée et la tortue ? “Bushi pian Խᆑᒧ”, édition Han Wei congshu ዧᠿហ, 1592, Réimp. Jilin daxue chubanshe, Changchun, 1992, p. 750–892: 866a). 48 Au sujet de la tradition mongole, voir Bawden (1958–1959), concernant celles des Naxi et des Yi, voir Wang Ningsheng (1986). On soulignera que dans la tradition mongole, les omoplates étaient directement déposées sur le feu.
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éléments apparaissant sur les supports. Dans le monde sinisé, c’est donc le plastron qui s’est imposé comme le support de pyro-ostéomancie par excellence. Les Chinois ont d’ailleurs développé à propos de cette technique mantique une véritable littérature spécialisée. Malheureusement, c’est à peu près à partir du moment où cette documentation apparaît que l’on ne trouve plus dans le matériel archéologique de traces de cette pratique.49 La confrontation est donc impossible. En outre, nombre de ces textes ont aujourd’hui disparu et ne nous sont connus que d’après leur titre dans les catalogues ou par quelques citations figurant dans d’autres textes transmis.50 D’après Li Ling, qui semble avoir eu accès à des manuscrits dont les plus anciens remontent à l’époque des Song (960– 1279), les représentations que l’on trouve dans ces ouvrages sont très éloignées des témoignages que nous avons décrits.51 Il estime que, parmi les textes transmis, les seuls reflétant véritablement des pratiques assez anciennes sont le Zhouli ⑥, le “Guice liezhuan” 㦟╷ ொ, chapitre du Shiji ผ⸥ consacré à la divination, et quelques mentions faites dans certains des Treize classiques.52 Mais, là encore, on relève de nombreuses références aux cinq agents ou au yin et au yang, ———
49 Des fragments de supports de divination en carapace présentant des cavités disposées de manière très régulière ont été découverts à Canton dans la tombe du deuxième roi du Nanyue ত။ datant de la deuxième moitié du IIe siècle avant notre ère. Voir Guangzhou wenwu 1991: 217–218 et pl. CCXXVI.2. Il serait tentant de considérer ces pièces comme des témoignages des pratiques mantiques des Han. Cependant celles-ci ne proviennent pas d’une simple fosse, mais se trouvaient à l’origine dans une boîte en laque qui avait été placée dans le compartiment de tête du cercueil du défunt. Cet ensemble, placé là comme un objet précieux, est peut-être un vestige d’une tradition plus ancienne et ne reflète donc pas forcément les pratiques de cette époque. La périphérie de ce royaume a aussi pu jouer un rôle dans la conservation de pratiques déjà obsolètes à la cour des Han. Par soucis d’exhaustivité, signalons enfin ces quelques fragments de plastrons qui ont été récemment exhumés à Mingyueba ִࣔ᧸, dans le district de Yunyang ႆၺ au Sichuan, et qui datent de la dynastie des Tang. Voir Sichuan daxue 1998: 106–107. On n’observe là aucune régularité dans la disposition des cavités. Les auteurs du rapport de fouilles situent d’ailleurs ces pièces dans un contexte d’habitat populaire (ibid. p. 109), bien éloigné de celui des pratiques qui nous préoccupent ici. 50 Ces deux sources posent des problèmes distincts. Premièrement, il est difficile d’être sûr du contenu d’une méthode uniquement à partir de son titre et tous les ouvrages de divination comprenant dans leur titre le terme de tortue, gui ᚋ, ne concernent pas forcément la pyro-chéloniomancie. C’est ce que montre par exemple un des textes exhumés en 1993 d’une tombe Han à Yinwan ձ, au Jiangsu. Pour une présentation de cette méthode, voir Liu Lexian (1999: 175–176). Deuxièmement, les quelques citations que l’on peut trouver de ces textes se rapportent essentiellement aux cinq agents ou à la théorie du yin et du yang. 51 Li Ling 1993: 58. 52 Li Ling 1993: 57–58.
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que l’on considère généralement comme des notions s’étant développées au cours du quatrième siècle avant notre ère.53 Des changements importants se sont donc produits dans les pratiques mantiques sous le règne des Zhou. Mais les supports retrouvés de cette période (voir cidessus) ne nous permettent pas de percevoir une manifestation visible de tels bouleversements. Parmi les rares représentations graphiques anciennes qui nous soient parvenues, il en est une qui figure aujourd’hui dans un manuel de divination par la tortue appelé La méthode de divination par la tortue de Wu Zhong (Wu Zhong bufa 藀ਛ ඵᴺ), inséré, au début du XVIIIe siècle, dans le Bufa xiangkao ඵᴺ ⠨ de Hu Xu ⢫ᾕ (1655–1736). Cette représentation de plastrons (Fig. 11) est instructive sur deux plans. Premièrement, elle montre, peut-être encore plus clairement que les textes, une distance par rapport aux pratiques révélées par l’archéologie. Deuxièmement, les schémas et les explications qui s’y rapportent donnent l’impression d’une pratique extrêmement abstraite plus influencée par les théories du yin et du yang et des cinq agents que par une tradition concrète de pyro-ostéomancie.
Fig. 11: Représentation de supports de divination en plastron (env. XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle).54
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53 Un tel constat nous invite à la plus grande prudence face à des travaux dans lesquels les auteurs essaient d’utiliser les textes transmis pour éclairer les pratiques Shang telles qu’elles nous apparaissent au travers des découvertes archéologiques. Pour un exemple d’une telle démarche, voir Liu Yujian (1992: 88–212). 54 Bufa xiangkao, Hu Xu, édition Siku quanshu. Réimp. in Siku quanshu shushu
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CONCLUSION Malgré ses limites,55 notre analyse des pratiques de pyro-ostéomancie dans la Chine archaïque nous aura permis de mettre en lumière certains aspects particuliers de la tradition Shang. Les devins de la maison royale ne se sont pas contentés d’introduire l’écriture dans les traditions mantiques existantes. Ils ont développé leur propre tradition en insistant plus particulièrement sur la mise en ordre des éléments visibles sur le support, se distinguant en cela de tout ce qui avait été fait jusque là et se faisait encore dans d’autres cultures. L’évolution a commencé à Zhengzhou, par des essais d’alignements réguliers des brûlures faites sur les omoplates. Mais l’étape la plus importante a sans doute eut lieu à Anyang lors du règne de Wu Ding. C’est là qu’en s’appropriant des techniques plus complexes de préparation des supports, les devins sont parvenus à une plus grande maîtrise du processus de production des craquelures. Parallèlement, la carapace de tortue que les devins Shang avaient adoptée comme nouveau support à Zhengzhou connut un important succès lors de la phase Anyang. Ce support permit en particulier aux devins Shang d’aller encore plus loin dans leur entreprise de mise en ordre de cette pratique mantique. Grâce aux inscriptions qui figurent sur de nombreux supports, on a pu constater qu’il existe un lien assez fort entre les fondements de la pratique mantique, dont la caractéristique majeure est le parallélisme, et la disposition des éléments sur le support. Si l’aspect régulier de la disposition des cavités et des craquelures a bien été repris par les Zhou, on ignore si les principes d’origine sont restés inchangés, car les rares inscriptions présentes sur certains supports de l’époque des Zhou occidentaux ne nous permettent plus de suivre la procédure. Mais dans les plus anciens textes consacrés à cet art, qui reflètent probablement des pratiques de la fin des Zhou, les techniques décrites paraissent très éloignées de celles des Shang, et ce, alors que les rares supports contemporains retrouvés indiquent plutôt une continuité. Il semble donc que les évolutions qui ont touché la pyro-chéloniomancie sous les Zhou ne se sont pas traduites de manière visible sur les supports. Le recours de l’élite Zhou à une forme de pratique divinatoire extrêmement proche de celle de la cour des Shang a probablement été ——— congshu ٤ᑇហ, Shanghai guji chubanshe, Shanghai, 1990, vol. 6, p. 849–981. 55 Voir ci-dessus, note 4.
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fortement motivé par la volonté de s’approprier un élément de légitimité supplémentaire contribuant à renforcer leur nouveau pouvoir. On note d’ailleurs qu’avec le temps, les témoignages de pyrochéloniomancie se raréfient et les inscriptions disparaissent des supports. La concurrence d’une autre pratique mantique doit sans doute être évoquée; la cléromancie, ou divination par tirage au sort, dont le Livre des Mutations constitue l’exemple le plus célèbre. Des traces de cette pratique sont attestées dans le matériel archéologique sous la forme de suites numériques dès la fin des Shang.56 Alors que sous les Shang les techniques de pyro-ostéomancie semblent avoir été au centre des spéculations théoriques des devins dont elles suivaient l’évolution, elles paraissent avoir, sous les Zhou, été dépassées par ces spéculations. La cléromancie reposait sur des objets plus simples (tiges d’achillée, jetons etc.) et était mieux à même, sans doute, de s’adapter aux évolutions théoriques successives. Il resta toutefois de la pyro-chéloniomancie le prestige d’une pratique royale qui poussa par exemple les empereurs Wu Di des Han et Wang Mang à la remettre à l’honneur.57 Mais ces tentatives n’ont pas abouti à la résurrection d’une tradition difficilement conciliable avec la complexification des théories divinatoires développées dans le milieu des devins. 58 Finalement, dans la représentation proposée au début du XVIIIe siècle par Hu Xu, la carapace de tortue n’apparaît plus que comme un support de prestige sur lequel est tracé un cadre rectangulaire, semblable à une feuille de papier vierge, où la disposition des craquelures n’est pas spécifiée, mais où apparaissent en revanche, disposées sous une forme de diagramme, les indications se rapportant aux principes du yin et du yang et des cinq agents.
REFERENCES ARAKI Hiroko ⨹ᧁᣣํሶ. 1999. “Zhongguo xinshiqi shidai de bugu jiqi shehui yiyi” ਛᣂ⍹ེᤨઍ⊛ඵ㛽␠ᦩᗧ⟵. In: Zhongguo Yin Shang wenhua xuehui ਛᲒᢥൻቑᦩ, Shangdai wenming yanjiu ઍᢥ⎇ⓥ. Pékin: Zhongguo wenlian chubanshe, pp. 257–281.
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56 Voir les références données par Li Ling (1993: 244–252). 57 Voir Liu Yujian 1992: 397–403. A ce prestige, s’ajoute aussi l’importance
symbolique accordée à la tortue en tant qu’animal. Au sujet de la pratique de la divination par la tortue sous les Han, voir Loewe (1988). 58 On notera d’ailleurs que dans les nombreux manuscrits concernant la divination découverts à Dunhuang, et qui sont datés d’entre le VIIe et le XIe siècle de notre ère, on ne trouve aucun traité de pyro-ostéomancie. Sur ces manuscrits et sur les pratiques mantiques qu’ils reflètent, voir Kalinowski (2003).
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BAGLEY, Robert. 1999. “Shang Archaeology.” In: The Cambridge History of Ancient China – From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., éd. Michael Loewe et Edward L. Shaughnessy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 124–231. BAWDEN, C. R. 1959. “On the Practice of Scapulimancy Among the Mongols.” Central Asian Journal 4: 1–44. Bufa xiangkao ඵᴺ⠨[by Hu Xu ⢫ᾕ], 1990. Siku quanshu shushu congshu ྾ᐶ ోᦠᢞⴚฌᦠ. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, vol. 6, pp. 849–981. [Réimp. de l’édition Siku quanshu ྾ᐶోᦠ]. DEBAINE-FRANCFORT, Corinne. 1995. Du néolithique à l’Age du Bronze en Chine du Nord-Ouest: la culture de Qijia et ses connections. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilisations. GUANGZHOU WENWU. 1991. Guangzhou shi wenwu guanli weiyuanhui ᑝᎺᏒᢥ‛ ▤ℂᆔຬᦩ et al. éd., Xi Han Nanyue wang mu ṽධ₺Ⴤ. Pékin: Wenwu chubanshe. GUO Moruo ㇳᴜ⧯, éd. 1978–1982. Jiaguwen heji ↲㛽ᢥว㓸, 13 vol. Pékin: Zhonghua shuju [ci-dessus abrégé en Heji]. HEBEI SHENG WENWU. 1979. Hebei sheng wenwu guanlichu ᴡർ⋭ᢥ‛▤ℂ⯪, “Ci xian Xiaqiyuan yizhi fajue baogao” ⏛❐ਅ৾၂ㆮဇ⊔ជႎ๔. Kaogu xuebao 2: 185–214. HENAN CHANGJIANG. 1989. Henan sheng wenwu yanjiusuo ᴡධ⋭ᢥ‛⎇ⓥᚲ– Changjiang liuyu bangongshi kaogu dui Henan fendui 㐳ᳯᵹၞㄐቶ⠨ฎ㓌 ᴡධಽ㓌, Xichuan Xiawanggang ᶲᎹਅ₺ፘ. Pékin: Wenwu chubanshe. HENAN SHENG WENHUA JU. 1959. Henan sheng wenhua ju wenwu gongzuo dui ᴡධ ⋭ᢥൻዪᢥ‛Ꮏ㓌, Zhengzhou Erligang ㈕Ꮊੑ㉿ፘ. Pékin: Kexue chubanshe. HENAN SHENG YANJIUSUO. 2001. Henan sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo ᴡධ⋭ᢥ‛ ⠨ฎ⎇ⓥᚲ, Zhengzhou Shang cheng – yijiuwusan nian – yijiubawu nian kaogu fajue baogao ㈕Ꮊၔ – ৻ਃᐕ – ৻ᐕ⠨ฎ⊔ជႎ๔. Pékin: Wenwu chubanshe. Heji. Voir Guo Moruo. HUANG Yunping 赣⯄ᐔ. 1996. “Zhukaigou yizhi shougu de jianding yu yanjiu” ᧇ 㐿Ḵㆮဇ₭㛽⊛㐔ቯ⥜⎇ⓥ. Kaogu xuebao 4: 515–536. KALINOWSKI, Marc, éd. 2003. Divination et société dans la Chine ancienne. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France. KEIGHTLEY, David N. 1978. Sources of Shang History – The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley–Los Angeles–London: University of California Press. ——. 1997. “Shang Oracle Bone Inscriptions.” In: New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to the Reading of Inscriptions and Manuscripts, éd. Edward L. Shaughnessy. Berkeley: Early China special monograph series n°3, The Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. KEIGHTLEY, David N. 2000. The Ancestral Landscape – Time, Space and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200–1245 B.C.). Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California; Center for Chinese Studies (China Research Monograph 53). LEFEUVRE, Jean. 1975. “Les inscriptions des Shang sur carapaces de tortues et sur os – Aperçu historique et bibliographique de la découverte et des premières études.” T’oung Pao 61.1–3: 1–82. LI Hengqiu ᧘੧᳞. 1981a. “Bohai Yanya zaoqi wuzi bugu zhi yanjiu” ᷳᶏᴪፗᣧ ᦼήሼඵ㛽ਯ⎇ⓥ (1). Gugong jikan 16–1: 41–56. ——. 1981b. “Bohai Yanya zaoqi wuzi bugu zhi yanjiu” ᷳᶏᴪፗᣧᦼήሼඵ㛽ਯ ⎇ⓥ (2). Gugong jikan 16–2: 41–64.
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Planche I 1 plastron. Heji, 32, verso. (29 x 17,5cm); 1 plastron. Heji, 32, recto. (29 x 17,5cm)
LA REPRESENTATION VISUELLE
105
106
OLIVIER VENTURE
Planche II 1 fragment de plastron, Musée Guimet, MG–S3–3, recto (hauteur: 11,2 cm). D’après J. Lefeuvre, Collections d’inscriptions oraculaires en France. Taipei, Paris, Hongkong: Institut Ricci, 1985, p. 64.
LA REPRESENTATION VISUELLE
Planche III 1 plastron. Heji, 36639, recto. (20,5 x 10,5cm)
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II. TU AS MAGICO-RELIGIOUS SYMBOL
TIME, SPACE AND ORIENTATION: FIGURATIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SEXAGENARY CYCLE IN ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL CHINA Marc Kalinowski The sexagenary cycle is the most salient characteristic of Chinese chronologies and calendrical notations. It has traditionally been presumed that the application of this cycle to the numbering of days, which was already a widespread practice in the oracle-bone inscriptions of the Shang dynasty (13th–11th centuries BC), continued uninterrupted thereafter, and hence that it constitutes one of the surest methods for dating historical events and documents. Unlike the cyclical systems of the ancient civilisations of the Middle East, the Chinese cycle is not composed of a series of sixty separate terms forming the basis of a sexagesimal arithmetic. Instead it consists of twocharacter expressions, in which the first character is taken from a denary series (the ten stems, shigan Լե) and the second from a duodenary series (the twelve branches, shier zhi ԼԲ֭). Combining the two elements by running through six complete series of stems and five of branches forms a cycle of sixty units or “binomes”. Hereafter, I will designate the stems as “s”, the branches as “b” and the binomes as “n”, followed by a number corresponding to their position in their respective series (see Fig. 1). Thus the first binome (n1) represents the combination jiazi (s1–b1), the second (n2) represents the combination yichou (s2–b2), and so on through to the last (n60), which represents the combination guihai (s10–b12). One fascinating characteristic of the cycle is the way in which its use was progressively extended to the numbering of the other important divisions of time: years, months, and hours of the day. It thus formed a kind of combinatory algebra in which all the functions of time could be expressed in a single set of terms and subjected to the same chronological, divinatory and symbolic manipulations. What is more, the cycle’s use was still further extended to designate not just the divisions of time but also positions in space: celestial sectors, terrestrial directions, etc. This was accomplished at the price of dissociating the stem and branch elements of the binomes. Some oracle-
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bone inscriptions seem to indicate that days could be noted by a single element as early as the Shang, but these were probably abbreviations, since in most cases the second element can be deduced by referring to the other inscriptions on the piece.1 The spatial distribution of the ten stems and twelve branches marked the decisive point in the evolution of sexagenary notation towards the marking of position. In this context, stems and branches were assigned fixed positions on a schematic device representing the five sectors of the world (north, east, south, west, center), the five agents (water, wood, fire, metal, earth) and the four seasons. 2 The archaeological discoveries of the end of the 20th century have greatly expanded our knowledge of the various forms that such spatial designs took in the pre-imperial period and during the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220). The most common and characteristic diagram consists of a square defined by two lines that intersect at their centre, indicating the four directions—called the “two cords” (ersheng Բᢃ), and of right-angles set at each corner of the square thus formed—called the “four hooks” (sigou ራ).3 The twelve branches were arranged clockwise along the twelve end-points of the diagram, beginning in the middle of the Northern section (zi b1). The ten stems were laid out two by two along the cords, also clockwise, with the two middle stems (wu s5 and ji s6) placed in the central section (see Fig. 2). Given the conditions defined by the “cord-hook” diagram, assigning a specific position to any binome generally came up against the impossibility of fitting both of its elements into a single sector-agent. In other words, the spatial representation of the sexagenary cycle could only be effected at the expense of its ordering in time. Yet ancient and medieval manuscript sources show that such figurative representations (tu ቹ) of the sixty binomes did exist, even if they were few in number. In this article, I propose to go through these various tu, examining how the sexagenary cycle articulates with the layout of the diagrams in each case.4 ———
1 See for example the inscriptions on a turtle plastron discovered in 1991 at Huayuanzhuang–East (Liu Yiman and Cao Dingyun 1999: 274, 281 and 291–293). See also Keightley 2000: 40, n. 11. 2 Little is known about the process through which the spatial transposition of the elements of the sexagenary cycle was effected. The first certain traces of the use of the ten stems and twelve branches to designate orientations appear in the Zuozhuan (ca. 4th century BC). 3 This terminology appears in the Huainanzi ত (ch. “Tianwen xun” ֚֮ಝ), see Kalinowski (1998–1999: 138, and 139–145) for the various applications of the “cord-hook” diagram at the end of the Warring States and during the Han. 4 My enquiry will be limited to the materials brought to light by the archaeologi-
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TABLES AND ILLUSTRATED LISTS The earliest representations of the sexagenary cycle appear during the Shang period. They are found on the bones and turtle shells used in ritual divination by the elites of the period.5 Specialists generally tend to consider them as writing or engraving exercises, and this is obviously what many of them were.6 Yet, as David Keightley notes, given the extreme care taken to provide precise sexagenary notation of the days on which the charges were put to the oracle, some of these pieces may well have been engraved as reference tools for the diviners and scribes responsible for recording the results of divinations.7 The piece shown here may be of this type (Fig. 3).8 It is also the only one which is sufficiently well preserved to contain a complete list of the sixty binomes. The discontinuous layout of the text in a table of six columns, each containing ten binomes, is characteristic of all the lists inscribed on divinatory media during this period and reflects procedures that are specific to the notation of days in the Shang ritual calendar. From such tables, one can deduce that the scribes divided calendrical time into blocks of ten days, and this is broadly confirmed by the inscriptions, where the “sexagenary decade” (xun )ڲplays a preponderant role. 9 Similarly, given the regular sequence of stem elements in each ten-day period (jia s1 = day 1, yi s2 = day 2, etc.), the stem can be considered as the principal identifier of a day in the sexagenary calendar, and this too is confirmed in the oracle inscriptions where the use of stems to designate days is attested, whereas branches are almost never used.10 In other words, however rudimentary the layout of the text appears to be, it conveys information that would not have been available if the text was simply laid out in linear ——— cal discoveries of the last century: Shang oracle inscriptions for the archaic period, manuscripts from the Warring States and the Han for the ancient period, and manuscripts from Dunhuang for the medieval period. 5 These pieces are all to be found in volumes 5, 8, 10 and 11 of Jiaguwen heji 1978–1982, ed. by Guo Moruo. See especially heji 11730 to 11742, and 37986 to 38082. 6 Indeed, the majority of such pieces consist of fragmentary lists, usually of the first thirty binomes. On some pieces the same series is repeated twice (heji 38006) or three times (heji 38007). 7 Keightley 2000: 39, n. 7. 8 Heji 37986. 9 See Keightley 2000: 39–43. Later the term xun was applied to the division of the month into three “lunar decades”, at which point the six sexagenary decades were usually referred to as liujia ք( ظthe six [decades beginning with the stem] jia). 10 See above, n.1.
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and continuous form. The second document comes from the Dunhuang manuscripts (9th–10th century, Fig. 4).11 Here the list of sixty binomes is contained in a diagram consisting of a square formed by the eight trigrams. Inside the square is a central pattern of intersecting circles, enclosed within a circular ring picked out in red. The eight trigrams, which according to Chinese tradition represent the eight directions, are set at the corners and at the mid-points of the sides of the square. The sixty binomes are inscribed clockwise around the circular ring.12 According to the text on either side of the diagram, they are meant to facilitate the calculation of the binome that corresponds to the year of an individual’s birth. In fact, the diagram is unnecessary to perform this calculation since there is no functional link between the two elements in the figure (the diagram and the sexagenary cycle), except that the first binome (jiazi t1–b1) has been placed next to the most highly ranked of the eight trigrams: Heaven (qian , NW corner). Qian is also the first hexagram in the Book of Changes. Apart from its ornamental aspects, reminiscent of our own illuminated manuscripts, the diagram has an additional, symbolic level of meaning. Arranged as they are around the celestial circle, the binomes are marking the course of time along the eight directions represented by the eight trigrams, thus imparting a tangible cosmological reality to horoscopic data. The third document, also from Dunhuang, consists of a large square, the bottom part of which is missing (Fig. 5).13 In the central part of the square, a text laid out in columns demonstrates the method of calculating the “annual motion” (xingnian ۩)ڣ, an important feature of medieval horoscopy.14 On the outer perimeter of the square we see a list of the sixty binomes, arranged clockwise, with additional technical information under each binome. Finally, inscribed in large characters in the band between the inner and the outer edge of the square are the agents (wuxing ն۩) corresponding to the binomes two by two (jiazi s1–b1 and yichou s2–b2 = Metal, etc).15 ——— 11 Stein 6157. 12 To locate the binomes more easily, in each figure we have included the ordi-
nals corresponding to the first binomes of each ten-binome series (n1, n11, n 21, n31, n41, n51). Under each group of two binomes is indicated the one of the five agents (wuxing ն۩) associated with them according to the so-called method of “induced sounds” (nayin ଃ). 13 Stein 5772. The missing part includes binomes n53 (bingchen) to n8 (xinwei). 14 On the system of annual motion see Kalinowski (1991: 425–429). 15 That is to say, the corresponding agent according to the method of induced
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We may ask why this arrangement was chosen, given that the text could as well have been composed in linear form, starting with the preface, then the rest of the text, followed by the sixty columns corresponding to the sixty binomes. Should we see it as constituting a diagram with a special meaning, or is it simply a framework used to organise the layout of the text? At first sight the framework seems more likely: ultimately its absence would entail no changes in the overall presentation. However a closer look reveals that the thirty-first binome (jiawu, s1–b7) is placed exactly in the middle of the top side of the square, and in consequence the first binome (jiazi, s1–b1) must have been placed directly opposite, in the middle of its bottom side. This arrangement is reminiscent of the “cord-hook” diagram, and more generally of all the astro-calendrical devices containing the twelve branches, where the first (zi b1) is always placed at the bottom and represents North, the winter solstice, and the beginning of the astronomical year. So although strictly speaking we are dealing here with a frame rather than a diagram, the layout of the text is in fact significant, if only because of the symbolism of the five sectors of the world (wufang նֱ) attached to this type of representation. Moreover, this example is reminiscent of similar procedures in domains other than sexagenary horoscopy. The most celebrated example is the “Xuangong tu” خ୰ቹ (Diagram of the Mysterious Palace) chapter of the Guanzi ጥ, which today we know was also organised according to the symbolism of the five sectors (Fig. 6, see also Fig. 9a in Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume).16 Another is the Shuihudi ጕॡ چmanuscript entitled Wei li zhi dao ٴհሐ (The way of the [good] administrator). A copy of part of this text, dating from the same period (second half of the 3rd century BC), has just been discovered at Wangjiatai ׆୮—Zhengshi zhi chang ਙࠃհൄ (Constant [rules] in the practice of administration). Not only is it laid out in a square, but it also has frames surrounding the different parts of the text (Fig. 7)17 ——— sounds; see n.12. 16 See Allan 1991: 102–103. 17 On the Shuihudi manuscript (3rd century BC), see Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian (1990: 165–176). There have so far been no publications on the Qin-period Wangjiatai document, so we must refer to the sketch made by Wang Mingqin and presented at the International Conference on Recently Discovered Manuscripts (Beijing University, 18–22 August 2000), see Wang Mingqin (2004: 39–42; see esp. p. 41 for the sketch reproduced in Fig. 7). The letters A, B, C and D designate the four parts of the text, which can be read by level (from BI to BXII, etc.), or by combining the same levels (for instance BI, CI, DI).
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The next representations we shall discuss are calendars. The oldest surviving pieces date back to the 3rd century BC. They show that it was then common practice to carry full-length calendars indicating, for each day of the twelve months, the corresponding binome. This is not surprising given the key role played by the sexagenary cycle in the calculation of time. Since the laying out of the binomes in the full-length calendars simply follows the ordering of the days in each month, there is no need to discuss it further here.18 We should however mention one particular type of calendar which seems to have thrived for a while during the 1st century BC in Northern China. What is different about these calendars is precisely that they were not organized in tables, with the twelve months as the horizontal axis and the numbered days as the vertical axis, but on the basis of the sexagenary cycle. The copy shown here was excavated in 1993 at Yinwan ձ in the modern province of Jiangsu (Fig. 8).19 It consists of a wooden tablet about 23 cm long and 7 cm wide, and corresponds to the calendar of 12 BC (Yuanyan yuannian ցց)ڣ. The sixty binomes are regularly and continously set out along the four sides, starting with the top right-hand corner of the rectangle: jiazi n1 to jisi n6 (top, width), genwu n7 to guisi n30 (left, length), jiawu n31 to jihai n36 (bottom,width) and gengzi n37 to guihai n60 (right,length). The lunar data (the number of the month and the number of days it contains: twenty-nine xiao ՛, or thirty, da Օ) are indicated on the narrow edges of the tablet, above the binomes corresponding to the month’s first day (shuo ). As for the solar data (solstices, equinoxes and beginnings of seasons), they are noted in small characters under the binomes of the days of the month to which they correspond for the year in question. This cunning design allows the complete calendar for a year, with all the solar and lunar notations needed to orient oneself in time, to fit on a tablet which is really quite small. The counting of days begins with the binome of the first day of the first month (at the bottom right: initial month, “I”, zhengyue ִإ, day jihai n36), and continues day by day anti-clockwise as far as the binome of the first day of the following month, situated on the opposite side (top left: intercalary first month, “I*”, runyue ၱִ, day jisi n6). The progression continues from month to month and from one side to the next of the tablet, ———
18 On the form of Qin and Han calendars, see Arrault (2002: 169–190) and Kalinowski (2002: 143–148). 19 See Liu Lexian 1998: 247–257. The months are marked by number with roman numerals, with an asterisk for the intercalary month (I*).
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coming to an end after six and a half circumvolutions (because of the intercalary month), on the last day of the twelfth month (renxu n59, day hui ඤ), and after having passed through the 384 days of this thirteen lunary-month year. Though the spatial design is highly technical, it also has a symbolic dimension, expressed through the arrangement of the lunary data. For a year which theoretically consists of twelve months of regularly alternating twenty-nine-day and thirty-day months (354 days), the even months will all be aligned on one width of the tablet, and the odd months on the other. Furthermore, the round of days will alternate between opposite lengths, with the binomes corresponding to the days of the even months on one side, and of the odd months on the other. This feature is reminiscent of the various representations of the seasonal cycle in traditional cosmology, which divide it into two periods, one Yin (even) and one Yang (odd). More generally, we can say that the role played by the sexagenary cycle in calendars of this type is related to its function as the underlying norm of astronomical cycles, and as the principle regulating the apparent diversity of time. Despite the absence of a frame or diagram, the layout of the text has been conceived with great attention. It is noteworthy that the division of the months into two groups of six along the widths of the tablet corresponds, firstly to the more or less regular alternation of one long and one short month (59 days = 60 – 1), and secondly to the theoretical gap of six binomes (or of thirty-six for intercalary years) between the sexagenary count and the calendrical year (360 – 354 = 6, or 420 – 384 = 36). Taking into account the rectangular form of the tablet, this articulation of the sixty binomes to the lunar year is both simple and technically functional. The representativity of the device is suggested by another calendar of the same type, dating to 55 BC (Wufeng sannian նᏕԿ )ڣand identical in every way to the Yinwan tablet, except for the necessary adjustments to match lunary and sexagenary elements in that specific year.20 The last document in this category that I shall discuss here comes from the manuscript Xingde ݮᐚ (Punishment and Virtue), discovered at the beginning of the 1970s at Mawangdui ್׆ഔ (Changsha, Hunan; 168 BC). It consists of a list of the sixty binomes written in a geometric grid (Fig. 9).21 The arrangement of the cycle in six col——— 20 This calendar is from Dunhuang (Jinguan ८ᣂ); see Liu Lexian (1998: 249). 21 See Kalinowski 1998–1999: 135–136. For reproductions with the transcrip-
tions of the three Xingde manuscripts from Mawangdui, see Chen Songchang (2001).
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umns of ten binomes, representing the six decades, is identical to that of the tables inscribed on bones or turtle-shells. The right-hand column contains the first decade, from jiazi n1 (s1–b1) to guixu n10 (s10–wb10), and so the series proceeds from top to bottom and from right to left. In the boxes corresponding to the binomes renchen n29, dingwei n44 and yimao n52, historical notations mention respectively the formation of the short-lived kingdom of Zhang Chu ്ᄑ (209 BC), the accession to the throne of the emperor Hui ༡ of the Han (194 BC) and the first year of the reign of Ying Zheng ᤢਙ, the future First Emperor, in the kingdom of Qin (246 BC). The list thus clearly functions as a chronological table whose special feature, just like the Han calendars inscribed on tablets, is its ordering by sexagenary principles. Thus the ordering of the historical events does not follow the chronological order of the dates at which they occurred.22 Contrary to what one might think, the geometric grid which contains the sexagenary table is neither a frame nor a decoration. We must understand it as an implicit figure, formed by a set of sixty “cord-hook” diagrams corresponding to the sixty binomes. On each diagram we see two round dots, grouped differently. These dots represent what the Chinese hemerological tradition calls “calendar spirits” (shensha 壀ᅉ), that is to say the mantic functions that will impart benevolent or malevolent properties to the positions they occupy. In the first year of the cycle (jiazi s1–b1), the first function (black dots), named Taiyin ֜ອ (the Great Yin), is located on the zi b1 (North) end-point of the diagram.23 It then moves clockwise, year by year, along the twelve end-points, from zi b1 to chou b2, yin b3 and so on, returning to its point of departure after six circumvolutions. Let us note that there is a functional link between the cycle of the years and the cycle of the movement of the Taiyin, since the branch which corresponds to its position in any year is identical to the branch element of the binome of that same year (jiazi s1–b1 = position zi b1, etc.).24 The movement of the second mantic function (white dots), named De ᐚ (Virtue), is more complex. It passes through the intersection ——— 22 Since King Zheng of Qin’s accession to the throne took place in the year yimao (n52) of the sexagenary cycle that preceded the cycle containing the two other dates (n29 and n44), it is noted in third position in the table. 23 That is to say in the middle of the lower part of the diagram; for the orientations of the “cord-hook” diagrams, see Fig. 2. 24 The Taiyin function here is equivalent to the later and better-known Taisui ֜ ᄣ (the Great Year), although the latter usually designates the complete binome, not just its branch element.
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and the four end-points of the two cords of the diagram in the order: East–Wood ĺ West–Metal ĺ South–Fire ĺ North–Water ĺ Centre–Earth.
In the five-agent theory, this is the opposite order to that of “mutual domination” (xiangsheng ઌ: Earth ĺ Water ĺ Fire ĺ Metal ĺ Wood). The first year (jiazi s1–b1) De is located at East-Wood, the second at West-Metal, and so on; after twelve revolutions among the five sector-agents, De returns to its original point of departure and a new sixty-year cycle begins.25 The relationship between this movement and the passing of the years is less obvious. We may set the stem elements of the annual binomes against the positions successively occupied by the function De to observe the following regularities: Position Wood–East
ĺ Years jia s1 (Wood Yang dominant) and ji s6 (EarthYin dominated)
Position Metal–West
ĺ Years yi s2 (Wood Yin dominated) and geng s7 (Metal Yang dominant)
Position Fire–South
ĺ Years bing s3 (Fire Yang dominant) and xin s8 (Metal Yin dominated)
Position Water–North ĺ Years ding s4 (Fire Yin dominated) and ren s9 (Water Yang dominant) Position Earth–Centre ĺ Years wu s5 (Earth Yang dominant) and gui s10 (Water Yin dominated)
What is important here is that the cycle of De is connected to the stem elements of the annual binomes, just as the revolutions of Taiyin are to the branch elements. In other words, the sexagenary table and the “cord-hook” diagrams are functionally interdependent, and it is sufficient to know the binome of any year to deduce automatically the position of Taiyin and De for that year.26 The complexity of the layout comes from the dual articulation of the text, firstly, with a surface level represented by the sexagenary table of the reign-years, and secondly, with a deeper level in which the stem and branch elements of the binomes are disassociated from each other and located, each according to its own cycle, on the positions defined by the “cord-hook” diagram. ———
25 For a more detailed study of the annual movement of the function De, see Kalinowski (1998–1999: 160–168). 26 For example, in jiawu years (s1–b7, n31), Taiyin will necessarily be on the wu branch and De will be at the East (jia stem). Similarly, if Taiyin is on wu and De is at the East, we can deduce that the binome of the year is composed of the branch wu and the stem jia (the stem yi, although it also corresponds to the East, must be excluded because the binome yi + wu does not exist).
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DIAGRAMS AND SCHEMATA Under this heading we shall first examine a figure from the same Xingde manuscript (Fig. 10).27 At the centre of the diagram is a circle divided by its diameter into two equal parts. Around the circle and connected to it by straight lines are eight squares of two types, one type corresponding to the four true directions, the other to the intermediate directions. The explanations provided in the manuscript indicate that this is a diagram—the earliest one known—showing the “nine palaces” (jiugong ୰). Under the four large squares, called “regular” (zheng )إpalaces, are inscribed the four agents which correspond to the four directions: North–Water at the bottom, South– Fire on top, East–Wood on the left and West–Metal on the right. The four small squares, or “odd” palaces (qi ࡛), located to the left of the regular palaces, are affiliated to the same agents: North–East = Water, South–East = Wood, South–West = Fire and North–West = Metal. The central palace (zhonggong խ୰) is itself divided into an upper and lower part. Thus, the layout of the nine palaces can be conflated with that of the five agents: one regular and one odd palace for each of the four peripheral sectors, and the upper and lower parts of the central palace for the Center–Earth sector. The structural homology between the nine palaces and the ten positions representing the five sector-agents is essential to understanding the dynamic of the system as a whole (see below). The diagram serves as a medium for displaying the “daily transfer of Virtue and Punishment” (xingde riyou ݮᐚֲሏ). Prognostications are drawn from the position occupied each day by a set of six mantic functions associated with the branch elements of the sexagenary cycle, each function being controlled by two opposite branches.28 The sixty binomes are divided among the ten positions of the diagram by groups of six (see Fig. 11A).29 The wandering of the mantic functions around the nine palaces follows the chronological order of the binomes, beginning with the South–East sector (the odd ———
27 See Kalinowski 1998–1999: 177–180. The reconstruction of the diagram shown here is taken from Hu Wenhui (2000: 164). 28 The Xingde function corresponds to the branches zi (b1) and wu (b7), the next function (Fenglong ᠆ᚊ, the Luxuriant Dragon) to the branches chou (b2) and wei (b8), and so on. For studies of the system of the nine palaces, see Kalinowski (1998– 1999: 177–195) and Hu Wenhui (2000: 160–219). 29 For the fixed associations between the ten stems and the five sectors, see the sketch of the “cord-hook” diagram in Fig. 2.
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palace of Wood), which contains the first six (jiazi n1 to jisi n6). It proceeds according to two rules: the rule of the inversed order of mutual domination of the five agents (see above), and the rule of alternation between regular and odd palaces. On days corresponding to the six binomes of the second group (gengwu n7 to yihai n12), the mantic functions will reside in the regular palace of the West–Metal (Metal dominates Wood), on days corresponding to the six binomes of the third group (bingzi n13 to xinsi n18) they will reside in the odd palace of the South–Fire (Fire dominates Metal), the fourth group (renwu n19 to dinghai n24) in the regular palace of North–Water (Water dominates Fire), and the fifth group (wuzi n25 to guisi n30) in the lower part of the central sector (Earth dominates Water). Their movement continues through the regular palace of the East–Wood (Wood dominates Earth) from day 31 to 36, ending in the upper part of the central sector on day 60 (see Fig. 11B).30 The remarkable aspect of this hemerological procedure is the strong coherence established between the structurally ordered yet discontinuous distribution of the binomes between the nine palaces, and the principles regulating the passage from one palace to the next. These principles breathe a cosmological dynamism into the representation, restoring the chronological ordering of the binomes and thus giving the impression that the shifting of the mantic functions through space is the natural consequence of their movement through time. A similar, if much less complex, figure is the one regulating the prohibitions linked to the “daily transfer of the God of the Soil” Tugong youri Ւֆሏֲ) in medieval hemerology (Fig. 12).31 This figure has the advantage of being the only one of the documents discussed here that is explicitly referred to as a Tu.32 The nine palaces are represented by the division of a large square into nine boxes, with North placed at the bottom. The sixty binomes are distributed around the edge of the large square in chronological order, clockwise, starting from the Northern palace. The regular palaces each contain six binomes, the North–Eastern and South–Western intermediate palaces ———
30 Because the six mantic functions are linked, in order, to the six first branches and then to the six following branches (see n. 30 above), each of them resides one day in each palace in the course of a sexagenary cycle. For example the function Xingde (branches zi and wu) will be located in the South–East (Wood) palace on the first day (jiazi, n1), in the West (Metal) palace on the seventh day (gengwu, n7), in the South– West (Fire) palace on the thirteenth day (bingzi, n13), etc. 31 Dunhuang manuscripts, Pelliot chinois 2964. 32 At the end of the explanatory text that goes with the diagram (column 10).
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each contain eight, and the two others (South–East and North–West) each contain ten. The binomes written in the intermediate palaces correspond to the days when the God of the Soil remains idle at home.33 The binomes in the regular palaces denote the days when he travels through the four sectors of the world and constitutes a threat to humans, moving successively from the North (from jiazi n1 to jisi n6) to the East (from wuyin n15 to guiwei n20), the South (from jiawu n31 to jihai n36) and the West (from wushen n45 to guichou n50). The diagram is functionally linked to the arrangement of the binomes. It provides a visual account of the periods when the God of the Soil is present or has withdrawn, even if during the periods corresponding to the binomes written in the intermediate palaces he really occupies the central room (zhongting խஅ) of the diagram. Because the binomes follow one another in order around the edge of the square, no rule is necessary to link the course of time with the movements of the god through space. Nevertheless, the dynamism of the system is suggested by the images which show him riding his steed towards the four directions.34 The next figure is drawn on a wooden tablet from the same funerary site (Yinwan) as the calendar analysed above. It consists of a diagram which reproduces the structure of the chessboard used in the celebrated Liubo ք໑ game, fashionable among the literati of the Han and Six Dynasties (Fig. 13).35 We can recognise the famous TLV marks arranged regularly around the four sides of the diagram, supplemented here by a central square called fang ֱ (square, sector) and by diagonal cross-bars connecting the points of the Vs to the four corners of the square. As shown by the characters nanfang তֱ (Southern sector) written above the figure, it was conceived as an oriented space. The sixty binomes are divided among the five elements of the chessboard following an identical to and fro movement between the Vs and the central square. Because some elements have as many as three binomes, each trajectory consists of nine stages. Here is what the trajectories from the exterior (the Vs) to the interior ——— 33 These are n7–n14 (NE), n21–n30 (SE), n37–n44 (SW) and n51–n60 (NW). The idle position of the God of the Soil is illustrated by the human figure seated in the central square. 34 One also has to memorize the periodicity of the alternation between the deity’s positions of rest at the centre of the design, and his periods of activity when he moves in the four directions. 35 See Yinwan Hanmu jiandu ձዧች១ᡪ 1997: 21 (YM6D9) and 125. The diagram reproduced here is based on the reconstruction by Li Jiemin ޕᇞ( ا2000: 73–75). For a photograph of a Liubo board, see Col.Pl. I.
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of the diagram (the central square) look like:36 V
CROSS-BAR
L
T
CENTRE
NORTH:
n1–n2
n3
n4–n5
n6–n7–n8
n9
WEST:
n18–n19
n20
n21–n22
n23–n24–n25
n26
EAST:
n35–n36
n37
n38–n39
n40–n41–n42
n43
SOUTH:
n52–n53
n54
n55–n56
n57–n58–n59
n60
Under the figure there is a list of prognoses, classified by type, for the nine stages of the trajectory. The nine stages are designated by technical terms specific to the game of Liubo, terms that we also find listed, with minor variants, in the biography of a Han Liubo master included in the Xijing zaji ۫ࠇᠧಖ.37 Even if we still do not understand the rules of the game, it is clear that the arrangement of the binomes is functionally linked to the movement of pawns on the Liubo chess-board.38 In other words, the chronological order of the sixty binomes is restored as soon as one follows the rules of the game of Liubo. On the other side of the same tablet another figure is drawn, consisting of a diagram in the form of a lozenge divided into four equal parts. The sides are stepped so as to form ten columns of different lengths (Fig. 14).39 The sixty binomes are represented as follows: two sets of ten binomes in the two central columns; on either side of these two columns, we find in decreasing order eight, six, four and two binomes. The arrangement is not completely arbitrary, since the binomes that correspond to the first days of the six sexagenary decades (n1, n11, n21, n31, n41, n51) are all located at the top of the righthand columns. An inscription under the figure specifies that it was the medium for a hemerological procedure for predicting rain (zhanyu )ॸ , but there are no indications of how the prognoses were made. We may however conjecture that they were deduced from ———
36 The opposite trajectory includes the same stages, but moving from the inside outwards: T (n10, n11, n12), L (n13, n14), cross-bar (n15), V (n16, n17), and so on from n27 to n34 and from n44 to n51. 37 See Xiang Xinyang and Liu Keren 1991: 203. 38 See Zeng Lanying 1999: 62–65. 39 Yinwan Hanmu jiandu 1997: 20 and 123.
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the position that the day in question occupied in the diagram.40 Another figure of the same type appears in the hemerological treatises of Shuihudi (later 3rd century BC), entitled “Mount Gen” (genshan ۤ՞). It consists of a trapeze divided into two equal parts by a central line, and containing thirty positions represented by small white circles (Fig. 15). The five little semi-circles marked all along the central line form, together with the central line, characters for shan ՞ (mountain).41 The figure was intended to find, for any given month, the binome or binomes corresponding to the mantic function Liri ᠦֲ (Day of Separation), considered unlucky for marriages or journeys.42 First, one had to fill up the diagram by writing in the daily binomes of the month, starting with the top right-hand position and then moving from right to left and from top to bottom (see Fig. 15). Once this was done, one had simply to note which binome was located next to the mountain sign to deduce the Liri day or days of this month.43 As in the previous figure, we have here a diagram specially conceived to generate an arrangement of the binomes such that some of their positions will determine a mantic function or a prognosis according to a rule fixed in advance.
CONCLUSIONS The ten documents examined above represent the sexagenary cycle in a non-linear, discontinuous form, and they are all connected to calendrical and hemerological practices. Of these ten documents, we have seen that only one (i.e. the figure showing the daily transfer of the God of the Soil) is explicitly designated as a Tu. This figure is composed of three elements: a diagram, a text and drawings. On this basis, the “Tu layout” may be defined as the arrangement of a text in multi-directional form, divided into sectors, and following a predefined plan represented by a diagram. In so far as most of the documents meet this definition, they may also be considered as Tu. In ——— 40 See Liu Lexian 1999: 177. 41 See Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian 1990: 189. 42 The text which accompanies the diagram states that the prohibition of Li days
was connected to the legendary cycle of Yu the Great, who left his home after his marriage and lived “separated” from his family for many years. 43 Here I follow the hypothesis proposed by Li Xueqin (1991: 30–32). The binomes shown in Fig. 15 are those for the tenth month of the first year of the Yuanguang ց٠ era (134 BC), as they appear in the calendar discovered at Yinqueshan າ՞ (Shandong) in 1972.
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contrast, the documents which present a certain degree of arrangement but keep the normal alignment of text in columns can be called cases of “textual layout”. Yet the role played by the process of “Tu layout” in calendrical and hemerological applications of the sexagenary cycle was far from uniform. In this article, I have tried to suggest groupings based on the nature of the diagrams constituting the skeleton of the Tu, and on the way in which the layout of the cycle is linked to the configuration of the diagrams. In a first group we can place the tables. The list of sixty binomes inscribed on a divinatory medium of the Shang dynasty (Fig. 3) is the prototype of this kind of table. Here the textual layout of the binomes in six units of ten is obviously linked to the use of the sexagenary cycle in the calendrical computation of days. We find the same arrangement again in the chronological table from Mawangdui (Fig. 9), with the binomes applied this time to the computation of years. Despite the presence of a diagram appended to each binome, the layout in six columns is not disturbed, and the principal element of the figure, here too, remains the sexagenary cycle. The case of the calendary tablet from Yinwan (Fig. 8) is rather different. Although the sixty binomes are set out in a loop around the edge of the wooden block, the absence of a diagram implies that we cannot speak of a “Tu layout” in the sense defined earlier, especially as it is the sexagenary cycle itself which constitutes the skeleton of the calendar, determining the location of the lunar and solar data on the tablet. From this perspective, the layout of the cycle on calendary tablets like the one from Yinwan testifies above all to a technical need for producing a pocket-size version of the usual full-length calendar. A second group includes the two Dunhuang documents (Figs. 4 and 5) which show the sixty binomes arranged in a loop inside a diagram. As we have seen, there is no direct relationship between the text and the structure into which it is integrated. The value of the structure is thus essentially decorative, and yet it also works at the level of its own cosmological symbolism, placing the loop of binomes within an implicit representation of celestial movements and earthly sectors. Here, then, we have a true Tu layout. Yet it displays only minor differences with the textual layout of the preceding tables, since the omission of the diagrams would in no way affect the intended use of the sexagenary cycle. That is the reason why I have defined these figures as illustrated lists of the sixty binomes and placed them in the same category as the tables.
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The five remaining figures may be seen as forming a quite homogeneous third group. Firstly, they all contain a diagram which is their distinctive feature. Secondly, the Tu layout of the sexagenary cycle is technically articulated to the diagrams by means of the rules that determine the overall configuration of the figure. The typical example is the diagram of the nine palaces from Mawangdui (Fig. 10). This structure, composed of squares laid out in a star around a central circle, constitutes a schematic representation of the world, a “cosmogram” with its multiple connotations such as the oriented sectors and the five agents.44 The movement of binomes across this spatial arrangement is equivalent to the passage of time, a process regulated by principles deriving from a natural dynamism. It thus produces a coherent figure which connects and integrates space (represented by the diagram), and time (represented by the sexagenary cycle). The contradiction between the fixed nature of the positions assigned to the sixty binomes, and the dynamism that governs their arrangement through space, is resolved by the presence of the calendary spirits. Just as the stars move through the sky, so the calendary spirits move around the nine palaces, and their daily revolution generates the mantic virtues of the system. The method of the daily transfer of Virtue and Punishment is similar in its complexity to the three great systems of calendrical astrology that took shape during the Six Dynasties. In them too cosmograms play a structuring role, and it is no coincidence that the name given to these systems in Chinese tradition—sanshi Կ ( ڤthe three models)—refers explicitly to how each configures space and time.45 The four other figures in this third group share the same characteristics in varying degree. In one, the figure of the daily transfer of the God of the Soil (Fig. 12) serves as a simplified and to some extent artifical representation of the above principles, since the link between the diagram of the nine palaces and the arrangement of the sixty binomes around its edges is more anecdotal than technically relevant. The late date of the document may signify a shift in hemerological practices from a Tu layout to purposes that are largely illustrative—a shift we have already observed in the two lists included in the second group, also from Dunhuang. Next, there is the method of prognosis based on the design of the Liubo chessboard (Fig. 13). Here we have ———
44 On the term “cosmogram” and its applications, see Major (1984: 133–166). 45 On the three models (Taiyi ֜ԫ, Liuren ք֙, Dunjia ሜ)ظ, see Yan Dunjie
(1985: 445–463), and Ho Peng-yoke 2003.
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a good example of the close relationship between divination and games of chance. The binomes are laid out on the chessboard following the same rules that govern the movement of the pawns, and one has only to locate the binome that corresponds to a specific day to obtain the right prognosis, without recourse to any mantic function. Finally, we have the two figures specifically conceived to determine the position occupied by the binome corresponding to a given day (Figs. 14 and 15). These diagrams lack any cosmological significance but have strong religious connotations, the Mount Gen diagram through the myth of Yu the Great, and the other perhaps through the symbolism of the turtle.46 The sparsity of documents offering schematic representations of the sexagenary cycle is certainly due to the relative lack of manuscript sources for the ancient and medieval periods. However the few examples examined here are enough to show that the two forms of figuration which have been distinguished in this article—the illustrative Tu and the functional Tu—are closely linked to how the role of the sexagenary cycle in calendrical practices was envisaged. In the figures of the first type, the binomes are arranged in chronological order, in the form of lists set out in columns or in a circle, with no clear reference to any particular orientation. In the figures of the second type, the role of the diagrams is to define positions within a space that is constructed precisely for that purpose. The way in which the binomes are used depends on their spatial position, not on the rank attributed to them within the sexagenary cycle. This applies not only to the cosmological diagrams, where each position clearly matches an orientation in space, but also to the other diagrams whose function is always to locate the sixty binomes in such a way that they may be used in a mantic context. Although the sexagenary cycle was never as fully assimilated into a system of location by position as the ten stems and twelve branches, nevertheless the examples of Tu layout which have come down to us demonstrate that serious attempts were made to transform the sixty binomes into complex symbols combining both temporal and spatial attributes, and that these efforts were continued through the spatial designs devised for use in calendrical astrology.47 ———
46 See above, note 44. The lozenge-shape of the diagram in Fig. 14 recalls the image of a turtle which is drawn just above it on the same tablet. Although the turtle image serves as the medium for a quite different mantic technique, there may well be a formal link between the two. 47 See Kalinowski 1996.
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REFERENCES ALLAN, Sarah. 1991. The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China. New York: SUNY. ARRAULT, Alain. 2002. “Les premiers calendriers chinois du IIe siècle avant notre ère au Xe siècle.” In: Les calendriers, leurs enjeux dans l’espace et le temps (Colloque de Cerisy), ed. J. Le Goff, J. Lefort and P. Mame. Paris: SOMOGY édition d’art, pp. 169–191. CHEN Songchang ຫ࣪९. 2001. Mawangdui boshu ‘Xingde’ yanjiu lungao ್׆ഔ ࢇ‘ݮᐚ’ ઔߒᓵᒚ. Taipei: Taiwan guji chuban youxian gongsi. Heji, see Jiaguwen heji. HO Peng-yoke. 2003. Chinese Mathematical Astrology. Reaching out to the Stars. Needham Research Institute Series. London: RoutledgeCurzon. HU Wenhui ֮ᔕ. 2000. Zhongguo zaoqi fangshu yu wenxian congkao խഏڰཚ ֱፖ֮ហە. Guangzhou: Zhongshan daxue. Jiaguwen heji ظ֮ٽႃ. 1978–1982. [Ed. by Guo Moruo ພःૉ]. Beijing: Zhonghua. [Abbr. heji] KALINOWSKI, Marc. 1991. Cosmologie et divination dans la Chine ancienne. Le Compendium des cinq agents (Wuxing dayi, VIe siècle). Paris: Ecole française d’Extrême–Orient. ——. 1996. “Astrologie calendaire et calcul de position dans la Chine ancienne.” Extrême–Orient Extrême–Occident 18: 71–113. ——. 1998–1999. “The Xingde ٩ᐚ Texts from Mawangdui.” Early China 23–24: 125–202. ——. 2002. “Nature et fonction des premiers calendriers chinois.” Annuaire de l’Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes. Section des sciences religieuses (2000– 2001) 109: 143–148. KEIGHTLEY, David. 2000. The Ancestral Landscape. Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China (ca 1200–1045 BC). Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California; Center for Chinese Studies (China Research Monograph 53). LI Jiemin ޕᇞا. 2000. “‘Yinwan Hanmu boju zhan mudu shijie’ dingbu” ձዧች ໑ֵݝᡪᇢᇞૡᇖ. Wenwu 8: 73–75. LI Xueqin ޕᖂႧ. 1991. “Shuihudi Qinjian zhongde ‘Genshan tu’” ጕॡچ១խ ऱۤ՞ቹ. Wenwu tiandi 4: 30–32. LIU Lexian Ꮵᑗᔃ. 1998. “Yinwan Hanmu chutu lipu jiqi xiangguan wenti” ձዧ ችנՒᖟᢜ֗ࠡઌᣂംᠲ. Huaxue 3: 247–257. ——. 1999. “Yinwan Hanmu chutu shushu wenxian chutan” ձዧችנՒᑇ֮ ॣ൶. In: Yinwan Hanmu jiandu zonglun ձዧች១ᡪጵᓵ, ed. Lianyungang shi bowuguan ຑႆཽؑ໑ढ塢 – Zhongguo wenwu yanjiusuo խഏ֮ढ ઔߒࢬ. Beijing: Kexue, pp. 175–186. LIU Yiman Ꮵԫ and Cao Dingyun ඦࡳճ. 1999. “Yinxu Huayuanzhuang dongdi jiagu buci xuanshi yu chubu yanjiu” ᏹक़Ⴜ᪾ࣟظچԽᙇᤩፖॣޡઔ. Kaogu xuebao 3: 251–310 MAJOR, John. 1984. “The Five Phases, Magic Squares, and Schematic Cosmography.” In: Explorations in Early Chinese Cosmology, ed. Henry Rosemont Jr. (JAAR, Thematic Studies, 50/2). Chico: Scholar Press. Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian ጕॡچችێ១ 1990. [Ed. Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu ጕॡچችێ១ᖞ՛ิ]. Beijing: Wenwu. WANG Mingqin ཱུࣔ׆. 2004. “Wangjiatai Qinmu zhujian gaishu” ׆୮ችێ១ ᄗ૪ In: Xin chu jianbo yanjiu ᄅנ១ࢇઔߒ(Proceedings of the International Conference on Recently Discovered Chinese Manuscripts, August 2000, Bei-
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jing), ed. Sarah Allan ۦᥞ and Xin Wen ߴ֮. Beijing :Wenwu, pp. 26–49. XIANG Xinyang ٻᄅၺ and Liu Keren Ꮵ܌ٚ. 1991. Xijing zaji jiaozhu ۫ࠇᠧಖ ீ ࣹ. Shanghai: Shanghai guji. YAN Dunjie ᣤཉࣧ. 1985. “Shipan zongshu” ڤᒌጵ૪. Kaogu xuebao 4: 445–464. Yinwan Hanmu jiandu ձዧች១ᡪ. 1997. [Ed. Lianyungang shi bowuguan ຑႆ ཽؑ໑ढ塢 et al.] Beijing: Zhonghua. ZENG Lanying མ៴ᛜ. 1999. “Yinwan Hanmu boju zhan mudu shijie” ձዧች໑ ֵݝᡪᇢᇞ. Wenwu 8: 62–65.
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Fig. 1: The ten stems, the twelve branches, and the sixty binomes in numerical notation: n1 = s1+b1 = jiazi, n2 = s2+b2 = yichou … n11 = s1+b11 = jiaxu, n12 = s2+b12 = yihai, and so on.
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Fig. 2: The “cord-hook”-diagram with the corresponding stems, branches and orientations.
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Fig. 3: A Yin shoulderblade with a table of the sixty binomes.
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Fig. 4: List of the sixty binomes arranged in a hoop in a diagram (Dunhuang, Stein 6157).
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Fig. 5: List of the sixty binomes in a square with prognoses (Dunhuang, Stein 5772).
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Fig. 6: The “Diagram of the Mysterious Palace” (Xuangong tu خ୰ቹ) chapter of the Guanzi ጥ.
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Fig. 7: The layout of the text on the Zhengshi zhi chang ਙࠃհൄ manuscript from Wangjiatai ׆୮.
Fig. 8: The calendrical table from Yinwan ձ (12 BC).
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Fig. 9: The table of sixty binomes from the “Xingde ݮᐚ B” manuscript from Mawangdui ್׆ഔ.
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Fig. 10: The diagram of the nine palaces from the “Xingde ݮᐚ B” manuscript from Mawangdui ್׆ഔ.
Fig. 11: The stem and branch elements of the first binome in each group (B), and the arrangement of the sixty binomes between the nine palaces (A).
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Fig. 12: The diagram of the diurnal transfer of the God of the Soil (Tugong youri Ւ ֆሏֲ, Dunhuang, Pelliot chinois 2965).
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Fig. 13: The sixty binomes on the chessboard of the Liubo ք໑ game (Yinwan ձ manuscripts).
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Fig. 14: The sixty binomes in a stepped diagram (Yinwan ձ manuscripts).
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Fig. 15: The Mount Gen (genshan ۤ՞) diagram from the Shuihudi ጕॡ چmanuscripts (above) and an example of the arrangement of the sixty binomes on the layout (below).
COMMUNICATION BY DESIGN: TWO SILK MANUSCRIPTS OF DIAGRAMS (TU) FROM MAWANGDUI TOMB THREE Donald Harper Pattern and repetition underlie much of what constitutes human recognition and knowledge. Both are at play in the predisposition to formulate a world of resemblances from visually and aurally experienced phenomena, and to attribute existence and significance to that world. I propose to explore the implications of this feature of human mentality in the context of the Han conception of tu ቹ “diagram” through an examination of two silk manuscripts of diagrams from Mawangdui ್׆ഔ tomb 3, at Changsha, Hunan (burial dated 168 BC). The first manuscript contains several hundred drawings of celestial and atmospheric phenomena for divination. The title assigned to it by the Chinese editorial team is Tianwen qixiang zazhan ֚֮ွᠧ (Assorted astrological and meteoromantic divination).1 Their choice of tianwen and qixiang has precedent in medieval Chinese usage, when qixiang zhan ွ first occurs in the meaning “meteoromancy.” 2 However, most readers probably understand tianwen and qixiang, in accord with modern usage, as “astronomy” and “meteorology”; and this understanding furthers the assumption that the drawings reflect empirical observation. I argue below that the drawings are better treated as a system of signs related to divination rather than as a record of observed phenomena. I choose to name the manuscript Tianwen tu ֚֮ቹ (Diagrams of heaven’s patterns), understanding tianwen to refer to any significant pattern manifest in heaven, or in the space between heaven and earth. The second manuscript is the main focus of this chapter. It has been assigned the title Guaxiang tu ———
1 The most accurate published reconstruction of the entire manuscript is in Zhongguo wenwu խ㧺֮ढ 1 (1979), pp. 1–4 (black and white plates of the original manuscript) and pp. 26–29 (transcription of the text portions of the manuscript). See Chen Songchang and Fu Juyou (1992: 154–160) for color plates of sections of the manuscript. 2 See Kalinowski, ed. 2003: 43.
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࠳ွቹ (Diagrams of the images of mantic figures).3 In an unpublished paper first presented in 1998 I argue that the manuscript, which contains over a hundred drawings, is unrelated to any type of figure used in cleromantic divination, but is instead a collection of drawings for use on banners and related tokens. Moreover, these drawings are conceptually related to the drawings in Tianwen tu—in several cases the two manuscripts share the same drawing. My name for the second manuscript is Fanxin tu ᐑॾቹ (Diagrams of banner tokens), and I argue that the manuscript includes the earliest drawings of fu ฤ “talismans” intended to be used for magico-religious purposes.4 My focus on Fanxin tu is intended in the first place to provide a more accurate account of the manuscript itself. At the same time, once Fanxin tu is correctly positioned within a larger context that includes Tianwen tu, relevant archaeological materials, and received texts, we can see more clearly the patterns in intellectual and spiritual conceptions that arose in the Warring States and became increasingly prominent during the four centuries of Han rule. Two interrelated questions are of particular concern to me. First, what evidence do the manuscripts provide regarding developments among specialists in various technical and occult arts—diviners, astrologers, and the like—as their specialized knowledge influenced patterns of thought among the elite? New cosmological ideas arose from divination and astrology, and new ideas about universal knowledge occupied a middle ground between the mantic wisdom of the specialists and the intellectual programs of the philosophical masters (zhuzi 壆). The ———
3 The only published reproduction of the original manuscript is the color plate in Chen Songchang and Fu Juyou 1992: 162. 4 Harper (typescript, 1998a). Both manuscripts were in very fragmentary condition at the time of excavation. In August 2004 I visited the Hunan Provincial Museum and examined the reconstructions of the original manuscripts together with Chen Songchang, the curator in charge of the Mawangdui tomb 3 manuscripts. Chen has discovered errors in the earlier reconstructions, and is making new reconstructions of the manuscripts. Work on Tianwen tu is nearly complete. The most significant change from the reconstruction published in Zhongguo wenwu is the restoration of fragments with text at the end of the manuscript; the earlier reconstruction filled the same space with blank fragments of silk (the fragments with text were among many unpublished silk fragments that Chen is analyzing as he reevaluates the earlier reconstructions of all Mawangdui manuscripts). Work on Fanxin tu has not yet begun, but Chen noted several places on the reconstruction where silk fragments were clearly placed incorrectly. Chen also confirmed my judgment in 1998 that the plate of Fanxin tu is printed upside down in Chen Songchang and Fu Juyou (1992). The assigned title, Guaxiang tu, and orientation of the photograph were due to Chen’s earlier surmise that the drawings on the manuscript might be mantic figures based on cleromantic divination methods (not necessarily trigrams or hexagrams of milfoil divination systems associated with the Zhouyi ࡌ࣐ tradition).
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emergence of yinyang ອၺ and wuxing ն۩ “five agent” theories in the third century BC and the “cosmologizing” of the trigrams of the Zhouyi ࡌ࣐ (Zhou changes) are symptomatic of this trend. However, Tianwen tu and Fanxin tu bear witness to the existence of systems of signs producing universal knowledge that are not derivative of a particular theory such as yinyang or wuxing. Moreover, both manuscripts appear to represent the knowledge of the specialists (especially evident in Tianwen tu, where several specialists are cited by name) while at the same time appealing to an elite readership; the manuscripts bear witness to how the knowledge that arose among specialists became part of the general perception of the world and its phenomena among the elite of the third to second centuries BC (as exemplified by the man buried in Mawangdui tomb 3).5 Second, what light do Tianwen tu and Fanxin tu shed on the Warring States, Qin, and Han conception of tu “diagram”? Already in my 1998 paper I note the occurrence of similar patterns in the drawings of both manuscripts—especially the “cord-hook” (shenggou ᢃራ) pattern (also known as the TLV pattern in Western studies of early China) that is ubiquitous on astrological artifacts and has clear cosmological significance in its occurrence in a variety of other artifacts, including the so-called TLV mirror and the liubo ք໑ game board.6 How should we understand the occurrence of the cord-hook pattern on the slotted bottom of fifth to fourth century BC bronze steamers (zeng よ)?7 On Warring States seals?8 And on Han period decorated bricks?9 At issue is the relationship between what might appear to be decorative motifs—an element of aesthetic design—and particular patterns used as signs to form a system of signs whose function is to render the world intelligible. “Communication by Design” (the chapter title) plays on the dual meaning of design as “a decorative work” and “an intentional plan.” ———
5 The text portions of Tianwen tu are invaluable for contextualizing the significance of the drawings in the manuscript. Despite its fragmentary condition, it is evident that Fanxin tu does not include written statements that might aid in explaining the significance and function of its drawings. 6 See Kalinowski (1998–1999) for detailed discussion of the cord-hook pattern, especially in cosmological diagrams (in the astrological chapter of the Huainanzi ত the “cords” are the vertical and horizontal axes; the “hooks” are the four corners of the layout of the cosmos). For a representation of the pattern, see Fig. 2 in Kalinowski’s chapter in this book. 7 See Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei 1994, vol. 4, p. 141 and color plate 24; and vol. 6, p. 113. 8 Luo Fuyi, ed. 1981: 493, nos. 5465 and 5466. 9 See Ba Shu Handai huaxiang ji 1998, nos. 402, 416, 417, 418.
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To summarize my argument in advance, by the late Warring States it was widely accepted among the elite that the world manifested itself in ways that were convertible to systematic notation. Both the Warring States conception of writing and the cosmological system formed from the lines of the Zhouyi trigrams are evidence of this idea. 10 However, the Tianwen tu and Fanxin tu drawings attest to another, more concrete aspect of human beings as symbolic creatures in early China. The Tianwen tu drawings render phenomena using designs that, once established, predisposed the ancient observer to correlate what was seen in nature with these drawings from the initial moment of observation; that is, the drawings had a determining influence on the elite’s perception of nature. People see what they are looking for, and a record such as Tianwen tu explicitly guided the vision of the elite for whom the manuscript was produced. When the same patterns occurred on everyday objects, including the tokens and banners whose patterns are represented in Fanxin tu, the linkage between the world at large and the sphere of human culture was materially present. In short, the tu “diagram” constituted a medium of communication. Like language and writing, tu provided a vocabulary that paralleled writing and was far more culturally pervasive than the trigrams of the Zhouyi. Let me begin my argument concerning the conscious exploitation of systems of signs in the late Warring States with a passage from the Lüshi chunqiu ּܨਞટ (Master Lü’s spring and autumn) essay “Guan biao” ᨠ। (Observing indicators). According to the essay, everything has “indicators” from which people can learn the essential characteristics of a thing. The certain knowledge of horses derived from horse-physiognomy is cited as evidence, and the essay then proceeds to broaden the scope of its argument:11 ॺᗑઌ್ྥՈ. Գٍڶᐛ. ࠃፖഏઃڶᐛ. ᆣԳՂवՏᄣՀवՏᄣ. ॺრհՈ. ።۞ڶճՈ. ጸቹᐑᜳൕߎسڼ. It is not just with physiognomizing horses that this is so. Humans also have signs; affairs and states all have signs. The sage knows the thousand years ascending and knows the thousand years descending. This is not a matter of guessing it. Rather, there is doubtless something that expresses itself.12 Registers, diagrams, banners, and tokens arise from this.
———
10 See Lewis 1999: 197–209 and 243–278. 11 Chen Qiyou 1984: 1414. 12 I follow Chen Qiyou in interpreting yun ճ in the compound ziyun ۞ճ to
mean “speak, say.” My interpretation of the compound in the context in which it occurs, however, is different. I treat ziyun as syntactically analogous to ziran ۞ྥ “so
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Lu ጸ “register,” tu “diagram,” fan ᐑ “banner,” and fu ᜳ “token” designate four categories of related objects.13 To paraphrase the Lüshi chunqiu argument, everything exhibits signs—their manifestation is spontaneous, and their significance can be “read” by the sage. Registers, diagrams, banners, and tokens—rather than writing or trigrams—are the cultural products that serve as a material demonstration of the correlation between the signs and knowledge. The Lüshi chunqiu passage explains the function of tu “diagrams” and related objects as part of Warring States epistemological ideas according to which diagrams as well as words provided access to universal knowledge through the formation of a system of signs. Moreover, the signifying function of these objects was embedded in the daily conduct of life and was activated every time one of the objects was utilized. While it is certain that objects with designs possessed symbolic significance in earlier times, it is within the context of Warring States, Qin, and Han conceptions of signs, language, and knowledge that we must situate both the Lüshi chunqiu statement and the evidence of the two Mawangdui manuscripts. Let me turn now to Tianwen tu. The manuscript is approximately 48 cm high by 150 cm wide. Arranged in six registers across the width of the silk, there were originally between 200 and 300 drawings of clouds, occultations, solar and lunar haloes, comets, and the like, many accompanied by omen statements. At the end of the manuscript, there is a section of text without drawings.14 Doubtless the drawings recorded on the manuscript did not constitute the entire repertoire of significant images used in divination. However, we may regard the text as conceptually comprehensive in the sense that it claims to represent a complete system of signs. This is evident from the statement that concludes the text-only section at the end of the manuscript: ڼլթ (ሉ) ࠡቹՀृ, ٺբൕࠡߎ. In this manuscript, whatever is not recorded beneath its diagram (tu), in each case follow its equivalent category.
——— of itself,” hence the translation “expresses itself.” In context, I interpret the “it” that the sage does not guess about as the subject of the following phrase containing ziyun: “there is something [the “it” of the preceding phrase] that expresses itself.” Chen takes the sage as the subject of this phrase, and paraphrases: “[the sage] has something that serves as the basis for speaking of it” ࢬڶᖕۖߢհՈ (Chen Qiyou 1984: 1423, n.45). 13 Following the argument of Chen Qiyou (1984: 1423, n.46). 14 Chen Songchang has identified additional silk fragments with text that belong to this section of the manuscript (see above, n. 4).
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On the one hand, the statement concerns the linking of omen statements in the text-only section with the preceding drawings: it invites the user of the manuscript to extrapolate by “equivalent categories” (deng ) in order to match a written omen statement with a paradigmatic visual representation among the drawings. At the same time, the drawings fulfill the function of a system that is not limited to the set of textual omen statements and drawings recorded on the manuscript. The Han reader was expected to match omen statements not recorded in writing on the manuscript with the categories represented by the drawings; and the claim of comprehensiveness for the drawings themselves did not preclude the addition of other paradigmatic designs. There is a similarity to the system of signs represented by the sixty-four hexagrams of the Zhouyi as elaborated in the cosmological ancilla to that text. It is noteworthy, however, that tu “diagram” does not occur as a technical term in the Zhouyi and ancilla; rather, the gua ࠳ “mantic figures, line patterns” are regularly associated with a xiang ွ “image.”15 Further investigation of the Warring States conception of tu and xiang is needed to determine the distinctive significance of each term. I suspect that the explicit reference to tu in Tianwen tu and the absence of tu in the argumentation of the Zhouyi is significant, and may even reflect a contrast between tu and xiang traceable to differences between the traditions of astrologers and milfoil/hexagram diviners. In any case, the Mawangdui Tianwen tu provides us with a concrete basis for examining the correlation between paradigmatic drawings and phenomena observed in nature in early China, as codified within the omenology of the practitioners of astrology. Unlike the Zhouyi trigrams, the Tianwen tu drawings have a much stronger claim to depicting an observed phenomenon. Yet the paradigmatic character of the drawings is what ensured their polyvalence in several cultural spheres, as evidenced by the occurrence of similar drawings in Fanxin tu. The Tianwen tu drawings are of several types. Some are recognizable as animals, plants, or objects. Some involve linguistic puns. The drawing of a fish (yu/*ng(r)ja ູ) represents a cloud whose omen statement is “great rain (yu/*w(r)ja? ॸ)” (Col.Pl I.1). 16 The statements attached to some drawings label the drawing, as in the case of ——— 15 The single occurrence of tu in the Zhouyi is in a stock reference to Hetu ࣾቹ (River diagram) in Zhouyi, Shisanjing zhushu ed., 1955, “Xici shang” ᢀՂ, 7.29b: “The He put forth the diagram and the Lo put forth the document” ࣾנቹנ. 16 The Old Chinese reconstruction is from Baxter (1992: 483).
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drawings of fourteen clouds associated with states and “barbarians” in the Warring States. Drawings of comets often are named by their resemblance to something in nature, such as bamboo, or by allusion to legend, such as “Chiyou’s banner” (Chiyou qi ಌ֠).17 Many drawings are schematic. For example, drawings of solar and lunar haloes mostly consist of rings or lines around a dot or crescent (the latter for the moon) at the center. A drawing of six concentric rings with a crescent moon at the center includes a long omen statement that is significant for using the technical term for halo (yun ᄉ) and for using the drawing itself as the basis for extending the range of phenomena covered by it (Col.Pl. I.2): ִք૨ (ᄉ) ࠩ૨ (ᄉ), ֚ ՀڶՋ߶. Լԫ૨ (ᄉ), ֚ Հޓᇆ. Լ Կ ૨ (ᄉ), [֚ Հ] ׆ޓ. When the moon has from six to nine haloes, in Under-heaven there is a state that perishes. Eleven haloes: in Under-heaven there is a change of title. Thirteen haloes: in Under-heaven there is a change of king.
As a textual witness to the conduct of astrology, the omen statement’s precision bespeaks the certainty of the correlations between phenomena and their human consequences. What of the relation of the statement and drawing to an observed celestial event? Lunar haloes are noted in medieval Chinese astrological sources, which sometimes mention the ominous appearance of a lunar halo of “several layers.” 18 In modern scientific observations, however, there is no precedent for the occurrence of six or more haloes around the moon. Rather than voice skepticism of the accuracy of ancient observations as recorded in Tianwen tu, we should consider the omen statement and drawing in the light of divination as a system of thought. What motivated the astrologer or diviner to predict increasingly dire consequences should a minimum of six haloes surround the moon, followed by eleven and thirteen haloes? I suspect the statement and drawing realize the ideal structure of the phenomenal world as perceived through the paradigmatic function of tu “diagrams”. The drawing satisfies all possibilities; together with the omen statement, the drawing exemplifies extrapolation based on “equivalent categories” (deng ; the term used in the Tianwen tu passage cited above) in the formation of a system of signs.19 ———
17 On the comet drawings, see Loewe (1980). 18 Ho Peng Yoke 1966: 167. 19 Rochberg (1999: 564–565) notes of Mesopotamian divination that “the system
of divination itself determined what the diviner should attend to in the world of phe-
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Omen statements such as the one just cited and the many schematic drawings in Tianwen tu indicate that Tianwen tu records a system of signs related to phenomena in nature, and that it is not a record of empirical observation in our modern sense of the term. To be sure, the Han elite recognized the correspondence between the drawings and observable phenomena. However, the drawings were purposefully polyvalent so as to set observed phenomena into a larger scheme of significance. The occurrence of the cord-hook pattern in Tianwen tu attests to precisely this type of polyvalence. The drawing is in red, and shows a central dot surrounded by four v-shaped hooks that define a cross (Col.Pl. I.3). The omen statement is: “There is an assassination of a lord while abroad” ڶ؆(ڤმ)ܩ. The drawing suggests medieval Chinese accounts of a solar halo with ti ༼ “supporting brackets”: “(Halo) vapours appearing like triangles at the four sides of the sun form the T’i (Supporting Brackets).”20 However, the term ti “bracket” occurs in the omen statements attached to three drawings in Tianwen tu, where the brackets are red dots surrounding the central red dot—two drawings are of four brackets, one is of six brackets (Col.Pl. I.4). If we lack sufficient evidence to make an unqualified identification of the drawing of hooks in the form of a cross as a specific type of solar halo, there is no ambiguity about the resemblance of the drawing to the cord-hook pattern. Beyond noting that the cord-hook pattern belonged to a system of signs, I cannot explain its specific significance in Tianwen tu or Fanxin tu (to be discussed presently). Perhaps what mattered was this: the cord-hook pattern and other drawings constituted a set of signs that reinforced the idea of a universe that was knowable, communicable, and applicable to human affairs. In the case of natural phenomena, such drawings constituted the ground of observation and interpretation; they were tu “diagrams,” understanding tu both as patterns invested with significance and as a system for the organization of disparate phenomena into a body of knowledge. Let us now investigate more closely the conception of tu evidenced in Tianwen tu by turning our attention to Fanxin tu. The manuscript is approximately 48 cm high by 51.5 cm wide. Assuming that the reconstruction of the silk fragments is generally accurate, the manuscript ——— nomena”; and that “what counted as empirically valid in the series of omens, i.e., what could or could not be an event that presaged, stemmed from the presuppositions of divination.” 20 Ho Peng Yoke 1966: 142.
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appears to have been first folded in half from side to side, leaving reverse impressions of some drawings on either end. However, some reverse impressions in the middle section make it difficult to determine the exact manner in which the manuscript was folded. The drawings are arranged in a grid of rows and columns, roughly twelve across and ten down.21 While some of the drawings incorporate written graphs (see below), there is no evidence of a written text accompanying the drawings.22 Before discussing the identity of the Fanxin tu drawings as “banner tokens,” let me note examples of similarities between drawings in Tianwen tu and Fanxin tu. There are two occurrences of the cordhook pattern in Fanxin tu, in the second and third rows (Col.Pl. II.1). There are five occurrences in Fanxin tu of a teardrop shaped loop: in the second row it is solid black (Col.Pl. II.2); in the fourth row, solid red; in the sixth row, the black outline has lines drawn in red and black inside; in the eighth row, two parallel curving lines emerge from the black outline; in the last row, the shape is red inside a black outline with additional black lines inside. The corresponding shape in Tianwen tu is the cloud for the Shu ᇋ state (Col.Pl. I.5). The drawing reflects the description of the Shu cloud in the Later Han weft-text Chunqiu kaoyi you ਞટەฆၡ (Examination of oddities and transgressions in the Spring and autumn [annals]) as having the appearance of a loop (jun ᰌ).23 Another cloud drawing in Tianwen tu is a square divided into a grid of sixteen equal compartments (Col.Pl. I.6), with the omen statement: “When the cloud is like this, there is victory in battle” ճ (ႆ) ڼڕᖏ. The drawing in the third row of Fanxin tu is basically the same (Col.Pl. II.3), making allowance for slight differences due to other features of the drawing. To be sure, differences between the drawings on the two manuscripts outnumber similarities, ———
21 See above, n. 4, on problems with the reconstructions of Tianwen tu and Fanxin tu; and on the reason for printing Fanxin tu upside down in Chen Songchang and Fu Juyou (1992). In August 2004, Chen Songchang had not yet determined how the manuscript was folded so as to account for all reverse impressions. Given the fragmentary condition of the manuscript, a reverse impression of a drawing confirms the accuracy of the drawing in the reconstruction. As discussed below, some reconstructed drawings for which there is no reverse impression may be inaccurate. 22 The occurrence of the graph nian ڣinside a drawing in the third row from the bottom is the clearest indication of the correct orientation of the manuscript [it appears upside down in Chen Songchang and Fu Juyou (1992)]. 23 For a comparative table of the “clouds of the states” in four received sources (including Chunqiu kaoyi you) and Tianwen tu, see Yamada Keiji, ed. (1985, Yakuchnj hen ࣹᒧ, 50). The Chunqiu kaoyi you includes Song Yun’s ( ݁ݚLater Han) commentary; see Yasui Kǀzan and Nakamura Shǀhachi (1971–1992, vol. 4B, 47).
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but the resemblance suffices to indicate that the manuscripts share a similar “design vocabulary” and a similar conception of tu. Two features of the Fanxin tu drawings provide the key to my identification of them as “banner tokens.” First, the element placed at the top of many drawings is most likely a representation of the pole from which banners are suspended (Col.Pl. II.4). The element occurs in Xu Shen’s შ Shuowen jiezi ᎅ֮ᇞ( ڗExplanation of primary signs and analysis of graphs; completed ca. 100 AD), as part of the (standardized as ); as explained by Duan graph classifier yan Yucai دဪ (1735–1815), represents the gang “ ޞflagpole.”24 Second, the majority of the Fanxin tu drawings are bipartite, with symmetrical designs on each side. The homology between banners and the type of bipartite token most commonly called fu ฤ or jie ᆏ in early China is well attested, and in Fanxin tu we have graphic illustration of the characteristic bipartite form.25 Investigation of the rich vocabulary for various tokens and banners in early China goes beyond the scope of this chapter. Both fu and jie are well attested in pre-Han and Han sources as general terms for objects used to grant authority to the bearer, to permit entrance or passage, and to fix contractual obligations. At the same time, banners and badges served to mark identity and status; they were a visual signal or semaphore (for example, to a local populace or to soldiers). This semaphore function is the basis for the Shuowen jiezi analysis of the word/graph wu (֎):26 [It] is the flag established in districts and towns. [The graph] replicates its pole, and there are three streamers.27 The color of the silk is mixed, each half of the cloth being different.28 It is what is used to hasten people. Thus the word for “hurry” is wuwu ֎֎.
Han sources use fanxin ᐑॾ “banner token” as a broad term for this large and diverse group of objects; there was even a style of script (niaochong shu ຺ “bird-bug script”) used especially for fanxin ———
24 Shuowen jiezi zhu 1981: 7A.14b–15a. 25 For an overview of all of the related terminology that incorporates paleo-
graphic and archaeological evidence, see Xue Yingqun (1983a, 1983b). 26 Shuowen jiezi zhu 1981: 9B.33b. 27 That is, the curved line on the right is the pole, while the three slanting lines are the streamers. No doubt the Shuowen jiezi graph etymology also reflects Late Warring States ideas. Modern paleographers analyze the graph differently. According to He Linyi (1998: 1305–1306), the Shang graph is composed of a knife (Ը) with three lines representing drops of blood ( ). 28 As noted by Duan Yucai دဪ (1735–1815), the two halves ought to have been red and white.
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“banner tokens.”29 This usage is the basis for my assigning the title Fanxin tu (Diagrams of banner tokens) to the Mawangdui manuscript. Some of the Fanxin tu drawings can be correlated with other ancient terms for bipartite tokens, in particular drawings that include written graphs in their composition. Two basic types can be identified. There is one example of a drawing with the graph zhong խ “center” in the center, its vertical line coinciding with the line that divides the drawing in two equal parts (Col.Pl. II.5). Several drawings with circles in the center must be related designs (Col.Pl. II.6), without involving the use of written graphs. Another type has identical graphs on the two parts of the drawing, such as the graph si “four” (Col.Pl. II.7). We find explanations of both types in Zheng Xuan’s ᔤ( خ127– 200) commentary to a Zhouli ࡌ៖ (Zhou rites) passage concerning eight kinds of instruments used by administrators in connection with government or commerce. The fourth and seventh instruments are two categories of token, fubie ແܑ (the fu is the same word used in the Lüshi chunqiu passage cited above) and zhiji ᔆᕪ, which Zheng Xuan describes as follows:30 ແܑᘯՕ֫࣍ԫؤխܑڗհ. Fubie refers to writing in large script on a tablet and dividing it in the center of the graph. ᔆᕪᘯࠟԫܑۖٵؤհ. Zhiji refers to writing in duplicate on one tablet so that [the two sides] are identical and dividing them.
Based on Zheng Xuan’s explanation, the Fanxin tu drawing with zhong խ in the center would be classified as fubie; the drawing with si is an example of zhiji. Zheng Xuan adds the further comment that “fubie and zhiji are both what today are called quanshu ࠦ”; that is, by the second century AD fubie and zhiji were old terms for the current quanshu “contract document.” Quan alone is an old term, defined in the Shuowen jiezi as a bipartite document of wood or bamboo on which the same text “is written separately [on the left and right sides], split in two with a knife, and notched on the edges [of the two halves].”31 The holder of a quan “contract” demonstrated its validity by matching his part with the other part (often held by a government authority). Such contracts were used for functions ranging from government authoriza——— 29 Shuowen jiezi zhu 1981: 15A.17a. 30 Zhouli, Shisanjing zhushu ed., 1955, 3.5b–6a. 31 Shuowen jiezi zhu 1981: 4B.50b.
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tion for travel (a kind of passport) to transactions in the market. The compound quanshu as used by Zheng Xuan referred to the broad category of bipartite documents, not just to the notched wood or bamboo contract.32 The coincidence between Fanxin tu drawings that are bipartite and Zheng Xuan’s description of fubie and zhiji does not explain the function of the Fanxin tu drawings. However, the identification of a relationship helps to situate the drawings in their contemporary cultural context, and to clarify the ideas that linked contract documents to banners and other symbolic tokens in daily life. Let me give a concrete example from Tianwen tu. The drawing of the cloud of the state of Qi Ꮨ in Tianwen tu depicts a bipartite banner with four streamers at the bottom (Col.Pl. I.7). The equation of Qi with the banner design must be related to the bipartite contract-token, ji ᕪ, which makes the drawing both a visual and linguistic pun for the name of the state. A trace of this symbolism is evident in the description of the cloud of Qi preserved in astrological sources: jiangyi ۪ “red garment.” 33 The meaning of the term as applied to the cloud of Qi can be deduced from Zheng Xuan’s Zhouli commentary on the “nine flags.” First, the line in the Zhouli:34 ൄ༳հढټ. ڶٺ᥆אৱഏࠃ. The Director of Constancy manages the form35 and name of the nine flags. Each has a property36 so as to serve the affairs of the state.
Zheng Xuan’s explanation of the Zhouli statement draws on contemporary Han custom: ढृټ, ࢬฆढঞฆټՈ. ᥆ᘯᚧᢝՈ. Օႚᘯհᚧᇆ. վৄ॰ቜ ୴ࢬ֗ॼ९ထ۪ઃࠡ៱ွ. As for “form” and “name,” what is drawn are different “forms” so there are different “names” [for the flags]. “Property” refers to silk-badge markers. The [Shangshu ࡸ] dazhuan (Great commentary on the Book of documents) calls them silk-badge titles.37 Today, what is worn
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32 See Harper (2004: 249–256) for further discussion of the kinds and functions of bipartite (and sometimes tripartite) documents during the Han. 33 See Yamada Keiji, ed. (1985: 50) and Kaiyuan zhanjing, Siku quanshu ed., 94.11a. 34 Zhouli, 27.16a. 35 “Form” translates wu ढ , referring to the “types of wu-banners” (see the Shuowen jiezi definition of wu ֎ cited above). 36 The sense of shu ᥆ as “property” is explained in Zheng Xuan ᔤ’خs (AD 127–200) commentary. 37 Hui ᚧ “silk badge” is written with the cloth signifier (դ) rather than silk at Shuowen jiezi zhu (1981: 7B.49a), where it is defined as a huizhi ᢝ “silk-badge marker” made of red silk and worn on the back.
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by the commandants at city-wall gates and the red garment (jiangyi ۪) worn by village heads both replicate the old precedent.
In Zheng Xuan’s usage, jiangyi “red garment” denotes a kind of red silk badge worn by officials, not an article of red clothing. Presumably this badge and the Tianwen tu drawing of a bipartite banner to represent the cloud of Qi shared identity in Han ideas about tokens and banners, both as employed in human affairs and as signs associated with various phenomena.38 Returning to Fanxin tu, without text to explain the drawings and with only the clues I have detailed, it is difficult to determine the intended meaning and function of the drawings in the manuscript. We might see the manuscript simply as a set of exemplary drawings, and as a source of useful designs for everyday life. Perhaps this was one impression that Han viewers would have had of the manuscript. However, they would have known what the drawings signified and their function. Some Fanxin tu drawings probably served as models for banners or badges in functions already mentioned above. Some might have been applied to tokens used for passports. Xu 㓭 is one of several words for a type of passport drawn on silk and torn in half, the authenticity of which was verified by matching the two halves.39 Another function for the Fanxin tu drawings would have been for magico-religious talismans called fu ฤ. The earliest attestation of fu as the name for talismans is in one of the astro-calendrical and hemerological almanacs from Shuihudi ጕॡ چtomb 11, at Yunmeng, Hubei (burial dated ca. 217 BC). Both almanac manuscripts record rituals to be performed when departing on a journey; and both rituals include use of the “pace of Yu” (Yu bu છ)ޡ, a magico-ritual walk that was later practiced in Daoist religion.40 Only the second manuscript specifies the use of “Yu’s talisman” (Yu fu છฤ). Lacunae in the text render the exact use of the talisman unclear. However, Yu’s talisman occurs at the beginning, middle, and end of the passage, and ———
38 The homology between banners and badges is evidenced as well in the interchangeability of zhi ᢝ with zhi ᐐ “pennant” in Han sources (see the definition of qi ⩬ at Shuowen jiezi zhu 1981: 13A.12b, and Duan Yucai commentary). 39 See the entry for xu in Shuowen jiezi zhu (1981: 13A.18b), and Duan Yucai commentary (there is pre-Han and Han attestation). 40 See Harper (1997: 240–242), for more detailed discussion of the departure rituals in the Shuihudi almanacs and the “pace of Yu.” Yu is the culture hero who conquered a chaotic world. The pace of Yu is also attested in other third and second century BC manuscripts, and its use in magico-religious operations is not limited to ensuring safety on a journey; see Harper (1999: 872–873).
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must be a key element of the ritual.41 A Mawangdui medical recipe text, assigned the title “Wushier bingfang” նԼԲఐֱ (Recipes for fifty-two ailments) by the Chinese editorial team, uses a bingfu ڢฤ “paired talisman” to treat the demonic ailment gu ᧡; the paired talisman is burned and its ash thrown into hot water together with sheep buttock, which is used to bath the person afflicted with gu.42 Before discovery of the Shuihudi and Mawangdui manuscripts, fu ฤ as the name for talismans was not attested prior to roughly the first century AD. Pre-Han and Former Han received sources understand fu to be another type of multi-purpose bipartite token used in Warring States, Qin, and Han administration: one part of the fu was retained by the government; the other part was carried by the person, who was required to match his part to the government’s part in order to prove his identity and authority.43 Extended meanings of fu attested in received sources include: signs exhibited by phenomena; congruence between things; 44 and in omenology, matching auspicious signs in nature with human correlates.45 Knowledge that magico-religious fu were already used in the third century BC contributes to our understanding of the semantic range of the word, especially in connection with occult ideas and practices. The following passage from Huainanzi ত , “Benjing” ءᆖ (Primordial constant), can now be seen to use fu in a double sense as talisman and omenological expertise:46 ࣔ࣍ࢤृ, ֚ چլ౨ౡՈ. ᐉ࣍ฤृ, ࢡढլ౨༝Ո. ਚᆣ Գृط२ वۖᆄԫ. For those who are illumined in the matter of life, heaven and earth cannot threaten them; for those who are learned in fu, prodigious entities cannot confuse them. Thus the sage proceeds from the near to know the distant and the myriad differences are made one.
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41 Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian 1990: 240. 42 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu, vol. 4, 1985: 73. See also Harper (1998b: 301). 43 Robert des Rotours (1952: 1–43) summarizes administrative uses of fu and
other bipartite instruments in pre-Han and Han times, as well as in later centuries. The Shuihudi administrative manuscripts attest to the use of fu as a “credential” carried by anyone not subject to regular household registration procedures. See Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian (1990: 80) and Hulsewé (1985: 104). 44 There is an interesting paleographic example of this meaning in a short text entitled “Xingshou” ۩ ښamong the texts written in front of the second copy of the Laozi ۔ from Mawangdui, which writes that words are the fu “tokens” of the heart. See Mawangdui Hanmu boshu, vol. 1 (1980: 78). 45 Guanzi, Zhuzi jicheng ed., “Shuidi” ֽچ, 14.236, describes jade as a material that is furui ฤᅗ “fortune betokening”; later uses of furui in received sources clearly denote signs from heaven. 46 Huainan honglie jijie 1989: 8.249.
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“Learned in fu” parallels “illumined in the matter of life,” and in both cases the knowledge empowers individuals to confront “heaven and earth” without fear and “prodigious entities” without confusion. In the latter case, “prodigious entities” are not only uncanny phenomena addressed by omenology, but are also spirit-world hazards that talismans control (exemplified by Yu’s talisman to ensure safe travel and the paired talisman to treat demonic gu). I am not the first to speculate that the Fanxin tu drawings might include talismans. Before the manuscript was published, and assigned the title Guaxiang tu, it had been referred to as Fulu ฤ仁 (Talismans; the term fulu originated in Daoist religion but has come to be the general word for “talisman”).47 If that title was replaced by Guaxiang tu because there seemed to be insufficient evidence to prove that the drawings are talisman designs, it is time to reevaluate the evidence. To be sure, the Fanxin tu drawings do not resemble talisman designs discovered on Later Han pottery jars and other materials (datable examples are all second century AD), which do resemble talismans used in early Daoist religion.48 However, resemblance to second century and later talismans should not be the basis for determining the appearance of the talismans named in the Shuihudi and Mawangdui manuscripts. The very name bingfu “paired talisman” in the Mawangdui medical text suggests a talisman that has the bipartite form of other early fu tokens—a bipartite form that is illustrated in most Fanxin tu drawings. If it can be shown that a Fanxin tu drawing fulfills the function of talisman, we have a basis for matching the drawing with the Shuihudi and Mawangdui manuscript references to fu as talisman and for identifying a form of talisman that preceded the second century examples. I judge one Fanxin tu drawing to provide the necessary evidence. The drawing is in the lower right corner of the manuscript (Col.Pl. II.8).49 ———
47 See the list of manuscripts in Changsha Mawangdui ersanhao Hanmu, vol. 1 (2004: 90). In the list, the title Guaxiang tu is given first, following Chen Songchang and Fu Juyou (1992), and my Fanxin tu is cited as a third proposed name for the manuscript. In early Daoist religion, fu and lu (usually written 㙷) refer to lu “registers” received at different stages of religious initiation and the fu associated with the registers. See Schipper 1978: 376–378. 48 Wang Yucheng (1996: 267–301) discusses evidence of early talismans, including the second century examples, which Wang regards as “Daoist.” His judgment is not shared by all scholars who study early talismans. For a recent study of several second century talisman designs, see Liu Lexian (2003: 272–296). An example of a talisman on a pottery jar is discussed below (see n. 54). 49 Specifically, the drawing is the second from the right in the next to last row. The accuracy of the reconstruction for this part of the manuscript is confirmed by
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There are identical marks on both parts of the drawing, and it is clear that the marks are graphs, which makes the drawing an example of zhiji (“writing in duplicate on one tablet so that the two sides are identical”).50 The graphs are da yi (ՕԬ);51 that is, they record the name of the deity Taiyi (Grand One), variously written ֜ԫ, ԫ, ֜Ԭ, Ԭ in received sources; and written Օԫ in a late fourth century BC manuscript from Guodian ພ ࢋ tomb 1, at Jingmen, Hubei, 52 and in the inscription accompanying the depiction of the deity on a Mawangdui silk manuscript.53 Li Ling has established the relationship between the Mawangdui manuscript, which he refers to as Bibing tu ᝩቹ (Diagram to repel weapons), and three talismanic objects: the fourth or third century BC dagger axe with the inscription bingbi Taisui ᝩ֜ᄣ (weapon to repel Grand Year), which depicts the standing figure of Taiyi just as in Bibing tu; the Taiyi feng ֜ԫᔴ (Grand One spear), a ritual banner described in Shiji ಖ ([Grand] Scribe’s records) and Hanshu ዧ (Book of Han); and the second century AD talisman written in red on the pottery ordinance jar from the tomb of Mr. Cao ඦּ, which combines a representation of the stars of the Taiyi constellation with written graphs (Fig. 1). 54 The ordinance-jar talisman is one of several archaeological examples of talismans from the Later Han period. Li Ling’s study is invaluable for demonstrating the correspondence between the ordinance-jar talisman and earlier iconographic depictions ——— reverse impressions of all four drawings in the lower right corner on the opposite side (the result of folding the silk in half). 50 See above, n. 30. A drawing located second from the left in the next to last row also appears to be an example of zhiji, with columns of identical lines in both parts. However, I cannot identify the graphs. 51 Examples of this form of the graph Օ, in which the upper and lower parts of the graph are not connected, are numerous in Warring States paleographic materials; see He Linyi (1998: 920–921). For an example in the Mawangdui tomb 3 bambooslip inventory of burial goods, see Changsha Mawangdui ersanhao Hanmu, vol. 1 (2004: pl. 21, slip 14). 52 The assigned title is Dayi sheng shui Օԫ( ֽسGrand One generates water; they are the first words of the text). See Guodian Chumu zhujian (1998: 13). 53 Chen Songchang and Fu Juyou (1992: 35). For a study of the manuscript that connects its structure with references to magico-religious practices in received texts and with archaeological examples of Later Han talismans, see Li Ling (1995–1996: 1–39). 54 Li Ling (1995–1996: 18–25). A second talisman design is written on the jar next to the Taiyi talisman. The talismans are preceded by a text whose function is described by Seidel (1987: 25), as “celestial ordinances for the dead” both to protect the tomb site and to “introduc[e] the deceased to the netherworld administration.” Chinese archaeological reports refer to such texts as zhenmu wen ች֮ “tombquelling texts.” I follow Seidel in referring to the jars as “ordinance jars.”
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of Taiyi, thus showing visual antecedents to the later talisman. The Fanxin tu drawing adds to the body of evidence of Han magico-religious ideas and practices associated with Taiyi, and attests to one form of a Taiyi talisman in the second century BC. Although it is the only Fanxin tu drawing that I can identify as a talisman, the manuscript probably includes more examples that may represent other forms of talisman composition.55 Regarding the proper name to apply to the Taiyi talisman, the bipartite form is the visual counterpart to the term bingfu “paired talisman” in the Mawangdui medical text. As a talisman, the drawing shows the link between fu as bipartite tokens with multiple uses in second century BC society and talismans; that is, it shows a specifically religious application of a widely used written instrument. I would argue that in Han times the magico-religious uses of some drawings in Fanxin tu were not distinguished from administrative and other uses of the manuscript’s drawings to make tokens, banners, or contracts. As a collection of drawings for various purposes, including magico-religious operations, Fanxin tu bears witness to a world in which intellectual and magico-religious attitudes were integrated as the elite pursued everyday life. Modern scholarship on early China tends to continue to view Han life through the lens of received sources, which mostly ignore the everyday or common religion in which the elite also participated. Fanxin tu and other new archaeological materials are restoring evidence of the place of religion in Han elite life, which also adds clarity to our understanding of the formation of Daoist religion in the Later Han.56 Many details about Fanxin tu remain unknown. However, I feel ———
55 In my 1998a paper (see above, n. 4) I speculate that another Fanxin tu drawing includes a stylized rendering of the graph Yu છ, associate the drawing with fubie tokens (“writing in large script on a tablet and dividing it in the center”), and suggest that it might be an example of the Yu talisman mentioned in the Shuihudi almanac. The drawing is in the upper right corner of the reconstruction of Fanxin tu. Based only on the plate in Chen Songchang and Fu Juyou (1992) it is evident that the drawing was reconstructed by patching together fragments of silk, and that at least one fragment is clearly misplaced. Moreover, there is no trace of a reverse impression to confirm the accuracy of the reconstructed drawing. After examining the original manuscript together with Chen Songchang at the Hunan Provincial Museum in August 2004, I determined that probable errors in the current reconstruction make it unwise to speculate about the drawing. The speculation might be worth reviving if warranted by a new reconstruction of Fanxin tu by Chen Songchang. 56 Harper (2004: 229–231 and 248–266) discusses evidence of “religious contracts” used as part of prayer and sacrifice in the everyday religion of the elite, and proposes use of “common religion” (rather than folk or popular religion) to refer to this religion.
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confident in relating the manuscript to the Lüshi chunqiu statement on the universality of signs and their use in everyday objects such as diagrams (tu ቹ), banners (fan ᐑ), and tokens (fu ᜳ). The influence of the drawings in elite culture lay in their ubiquity, and in the fact that the drawings bespoke a confidence in a world that was open to examination—an encoded world that sages decoded and made accessible to society in material form. Recognition of a phenomenon in heaven that was perceived to conform to a paradigmatic pattern (such as the cord-hook pattern or the sixteen-square grid in Tianwen tu) and encounters with the pattern in the routines of daily life were mutually confirming; they reinforced the conviction that the world was meaningful and not random. Viewed in the light of the two Mawangdui manuscripts, the argument on signs articulated in the Lüshi chunqiu represented a common understanding rather than an argument in need of demonstration. There remains the issue of how the awareness of signs—as crystallized in paradigmatic patterns that the conclusion of Tianwen tu explicitly calls tu “diagrams”—related to broader appreciation of designs and illustrations. There were surely many decorative designs that the elite did not perceive as significant signs; and surely their response to figural drawings differed from their appreciation of the stylized shapes of the majority of drawings in Tianwen tu and Fanxin tu. Further, I cannot say how the elite responded to every occurrence of an obviously significant pattern such as the cord-hook pattern—in astrological devices, game boards, seals, mirrors, tokens, decorated bricks, steamers, and so forth. Nevertheless, judging from the Lüshi chunqiu and the two Mawangdui manuscripts, among the elite of the third and second centuries BC design and epistemology coalesced in a new idea of tu. That a trend was underway is evident in first century BC references to tuchen ቹᨅ “diagrams and prophecies” and tuwei ቹᒮ “diagrams and weft-texts” as terms for a conception of knowledge in which diagrams functioned together with the written word to reveal a universal plan—at once cosmic and divine.57
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57 See Dull 1966: 1–14.
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REFERENCES Ba Shu Handai huaxiang ji ֣ᇋዧזቝႃ.1998. [Ed. Gong Tingwan ݪᆄ, Gong Yu د, and Dai Jialing ᚮቯສ]. Beijing: Wenwu. BAXTER, William. 1992. A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Changsha Mawangdui ersanhao Hanmu ९׆್ޥഔԲԿᇆዧች, vol. 1. 2004. [Ed. Hunan sheng bowuguan ྋতઊ໑ढ塢 and Hunan sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiu suo ྋতઊ֮ढײەઔߒࢬ]. Beijing:Wenwu. CHEN Qiyou ຫ࡛ᅏ. 1984. Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi ּܨਞટீᤩ. Shanghai: Xuelin. CHEN Songchang ຫ࣪९ and Fu Juyou ແᜰڶ. 1992. Mawangdui Hanmu wenwu ್ ׆ഔዧች֮ढ. Changsha: Hunan. DULL, Jack L. 1966. A Historical Introduction to the Apochryphal (Ch’an–Wei) Texts of the Han Dynasty. Ph.D. diss. University of Washington. Guanzi ጥ. Zhuzi jicheng 壆ႃ ګed. Guodian Chumu zhujian ພࢋᄑችێ១. 1998. [Ed. Jingmen shi bowuguan ౸॰ؑ ໑ढ塢]. Beijing: Wenwu. HARPER, Donald. 1997. “Warring States, Qin, and Han Manuscripts Related to Natural Philosophy and the Occult.” In: New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to the Reading of Inscriptions and Manuscripts, ed. Edward L. Shaughnessy. Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China and Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, pp. 223–252. ——. 1998a. “The Magico-religious Conception of Tu ‘Diagram’ in Early Chinese Thought” (typescript). ——. 1998b. Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts. London: Kegan Paul. ——. 1999. “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought.” In: The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., ed. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 813–884. ——. 2004. “Contracts with the Spirit World in Han Common Religion: The Xuning Prayer and Sacrifice Documents of AD 79.” Cahiers d’Extrême–Asie 14: 227– 267. HE Linyi ۶ྱᏚ. 1998. Zhanguo guwen zidian ᖏഏ ࠢڗ ֮ײ. Beijing: Zhonghua. HO Peng Yoke. 1966. The Astronomical Chapters of the Chin Shu. Paris: Mouton. Huainan honglie jijie তព௺ႃᇞ. 1989. Beijing: Zhonghua. HULSEWÉ, Anthony F.P. 1985. Remnants of Ch’in Law. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Kaiyuan zhanjing ၲցᆖ. Siku quanshu ٤ ed. KALINOWSKI, Marc. 1998–1999. “The Xingde ٩ᐚ Texts from Mawangdui.” Early China 23–24: 125–202. ——, ed. 2003. Divination et société dans la Chine médiévale: Étude des manuscripts de Dunhuang de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et de la British Library. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France. LOEWE, Michael. 1980. “The Han View of Comets.” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 52: 1–31. LEWIS, Mark Edward. 1999. Writing and Authority in Early China. Albany: State University of New York Press. LI Ling. 1995–1996. “An Archaeological Study of Taiyi (Grand One) Worship.” Early Medieval China 2: 1–39. LIU Lexian Ꮵᑗᔃ. 2003. Jianbo shushu wenxian tanlun ១ࢇᑇ֮൶ᓵ. Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu. LUO Fuyi ᢅ壂ᙲ, ed. 1981. Guxi huibian ײᡮნᒳ. Beijing: Wenwu.
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Mawangdui Hanmu boshu ್׆ഔዧችࢇ, vol. 1. 1980. [Ed. Guojia wenwuju guwenxian yanjiushi ഏ୮֮ढ֮ײݝઔߒ]. Beijing: Wenwu. Mawangdui Hanmu boshu ್׆ഔዧችࢇ, vol. 4. 1985. [Ed. Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu ್׆ഔዧችࢇᖞ՛ิ]. Beijing: Wenwu. ROCHBERG, Francesca. 1999. “Empiricism in Babylonian Omen Texts and the Classification of Mesopotamian Divination as Science.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 119: 559–569. DES ROTOURS, Robert. 1952. “Les insignes en deux parties (fou ฤ) sous la dynastie des T’ang (618–907).” T’oung Pao 41: 1–148. SEIDEL, Anna. 1987. “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs.” In: Dǀkyǀ to shnjkyǀ bunka ሐඒ圲ࡲඒ֮֏, ed. Akizuki Kan’ei ટִᨠ䀆. Tǀkyǀ: Hirakawa, pp. 21–57. SCHIPPER, Kristofer. 1978. “The Taoist Body.” History of Religions 17: 355–386. Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian ጕॡچችێ១. 1990. [Ed. Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian zhengli xiaozu ጕॡچችێ១ᖞ՛ิ]. Beijing: Wenwu. Shuowen jiezi zhu ᎅ֮ᇞࣹڗ. 1981. Shanghai: Shanghai guji. WANG Yucheng ګߛ׆. 1996. “Wenwu suojian Zhongguo gudai daofu shulun” ֮ढ ࢬߠխഏזײሐฤ૪ᓵ. Daojia wenhua yanjiu ሐ୮֮֏ઔߒ 9: 267–301. XUE Yingqun ᆢ. 1983a. “Handai fuxin kaoshu shang” ዧזฤॾە૪Ղ. Xibei shidi ۫ چק1983.3: 72–82. ——. 1983b. “Handai fuxin kaoshu xia” ዧזฤॾە૪Հ. Xibei shidi 1983.4: 69–80. YAMADA Keiji ՞ضᐜࠝ, ed. 1985. Shin hatsugen Chnjgoku kagakushi shiryǀ no kenkynj ᄅ࿇ խ ഏઝ ᖂᇷ ற圸ઔߒ. Kyǀto: Kyǀto daigaku jinbun kagaku kenkynjjo. YASUI Kǀzan ࡺڜଉ՞ and NAKAMURA Shǀhachi խޘᑾԶ. 1971–1992. Jnjshnj isho shnjsei ૹଥᒮႃګ. Tǀkyǀ: Meitoku. Zhongguo kaogu wenwu zhi mei խഏ ֮ײ ەढհભ. 1994. Beijing: Wenwu. Zhouli ࡌ៖. Shisanjing zhushu ԼԿᆖࣹง, ed. 1955. Taibei: Yiwen. Zhouyi ࡌ࣐. Shisanjing zhushu ԼԿᆖࣹง, ed. 1 955. Taibei: Yiwen.
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Fig. 1: Talisman on second century AD ordinance jar (from Kaogu yu wenwu ײە ፖ֮ढ 1980.1, 47).
PICTURING OR DIAGRAMMING THE UNIVERSE Wu Hung1 This paper is a broad speculation on image-making from the late Eastern Zhou to the Han. The kinds of images I want to consider include pictorial motifs and compositions (which are conventional subjects of art history) as well as abstract signs and patterns (which usually escape art historians’ attention). My main thesis is that during this period, not one, but a number of systems developed side by side to supply different types of images. A single “subject matter” could thus be rendered in different visual presentations that operated as different languages and interacted in an increasingly complex visual culture. Having laid down this basic claim, I want to focus on one such “subject matter”—the universe—defined as an all-inclusive entity, encompassing all things—heavens, earth, and all that is in them—as well as time and space. Based on this definition the universe means an absolute interiority, a closed system that has everything inside and nothing outside. It is easy to understand why this interiority was imagined in terms of architecture in various ancient cultures. Such imaginings, in turn, stimulated the interest in fashioning a building as a microcosmic architectural representation of the entire cosmic order. Two kinds of microcosmic buildings were pursued through divergent cultural practices in China from the Eastern Zhou to Han. One of these was an idealized ritual structure known as Mingtang ࣔഘ , translated into English as Bright Hall or the Hall of Light. Fig. 1 a–b shows the remaining foundation of the Bright Hall constructed by Wang Mang ׆๔ in 4 AD. The structure was highly geometric. The central building, the Bright Hall itself, had a ya-shaped (ࠅ) floor plan, with three rooms on each side. Standing on a round platform, it was surrounded by alternating circles and squares, the shapes of Heaven and earth. Han texts praise the Bright Hall as “the greatest thing ———
1 The editors would like to thank Wu Hung for kindly allowing us to include this transcribed version of the presentation that he gave at the panel on “Tu (diagrams, charts, drawings) in traditional Chinese culture”, Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Chicago, 1998. The editors took the liberty to add cross-references to other contributions in this volume.
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among all things,” which “manifests the deepest meaning of all meanings.” This is not because the hall has an imposing monumentality (in fact, Wang Mang’s building is said to have been completed in a mere twenty days), but because the hall’s architecture demonstrates the working of the Universe. The building itself thus becomes “the source of changes and transformations.” As the second-century author Cai Yong ᓐಶ wrote, “It brings all things into its unifying light, and this is why it is called Bright Hall.” The other kind of microcosmic architecture developed in a quite different context. It resulted from changing mortuary practices and especially from a new vision of the afterlife. Understandably, a grave was by nature divided from the world outside and had interior only. From the Eastern Zhou to the Han, when the afterlife began to mimic life itself in people’s imagination, images of heaven, earth and men were fabricated and installed in a tomb to transform it into a self-contained microcosm of the universe. The earliest known example of such a structure is probably the grave of the First Qin Emperor ࡨ ০. According to Sima Qian ್ᔢ, it contained artificial rivers and oceans, models of palaces and the hundred officials, and all sorts of strange objects and valuables. Sima Qian summarizes the tomb’s decoration in a single sentence: “Above were all the Heavens and below all the Earth.” We have no way to verify his report: the burial chamber at Lishan ᨿ՞ has not been opened, and to my knowledge no excavated tombs from the third and second centuries BC had celestial bodies painted on their ceilings. Such architectural murals have only been found in tombs dating from the first century BC, actually very close to Sima Qian’s own time (Col.Pl. III). These murals began a powerful art movement, in which numerous images were invented to transform a tomb, a mortuary shrine, or a sarcophagus into a vivid pictorial universe. In this universe, Heaven is not an abstract circle, but a concrete space filled with gods and spirits, emerging in clouds whose changing shapes convey the sense of transformation (Fig. 2.1– 2.2). Other spaces in this universe include the immortal realm and the human world, where one finds different sorts of figures and events (Figs. 10–12). The title of this paper thus intends to capture a main difference between these two systems of visual presentation: one system diagrams the universe with abstract symbols and patterns; the other pictures the universe with a predominantly descriptive language. That these two systems developed in parallel for hundreds of years must imply some
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profound reasons for this remarkable persistence. What are these reasons? What are the theoretical foundation and practical applications of each system? What is the relationship between them? It is perhaps still premature to give a systematic answer to these questions—many more factual details need to be investigated and many more theoretical problems need to be considered. My purpose here is to begin this research by focusing on a single aspect of the two kinds of representations of the universe, namely, their connections with different tu, a term used variably in ancient texts for diagrams, charts, illustrations, or pictures.
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Let us begin with the Bright Hall. Numerous studies have been devoted to this structure in both traditional and modern scholarship.2 Without going into too much detail, I can propose that the symbolism of this hall as a microcosmic representation of the universe resulted from a historical process, during which an ancient structure of the same name was reinvented and given a new form and meaning. This ancient Bright Hall was a principal structure in the Western Zhou royal temple and a major site of state ceremonies. The “Mingtang wei” ࣔഘ( ۯPositions in the Bright Hall) chapter in the Liji ៖ಖ (Book of Rites) records one such ceremony, albeit in a highly idealized form. (Part of this text is also found in the “Mingtang” section in the Yi Zhoushu ၝࡌ.) As shown in a reconstruction of the ritual (Fig. 3), the assigned “position” (wei )ۯof the king, as well as those of the courtiers, the feudal lords, and the barbarian chieftains, implies a courtyard building with a clearly defined central axis and southfacing orientation. This form resembles actual Shang-Zhou ritual buildings found in archaeological excavations (Fig. 4); but differs fundamentally from various forms of Bright Hall developed during the Eastern Zhou to Han, which all omit the north-south axis but emphasize the four directions and the center. Nevertheless, what these later Bright Halls derived from the old Bright Hall was not just a name. As its title signifies, the “Positions in the Bright Hall” chapter is about wei—position or two-dimensional spatiality. This text maps out a political system as architecture; the same technique is then used to fashion the Bright Hall as a microcosmic structure. (It should be ——— 2 See footnote 63 in Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume.
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noted, however, that neither the political structure nor the architecture described in the “Positions in the Bright Hall” chapter is all-inclusive and self-sustaining. The building stands for the Central Kingdom only; barbarians or foreigners outside its walls belong to an open space.) By the end of the Eastern Zhou, the old Bright Hall had become a historical memory. But its reputation of being a supreme embodiment of sovereignty and political order was only enhanced. In an interesting twist, this elusive building came to symbolize not only a lost past but also an approaching future. “To rebuild” the Bright Hall became synonymous with the founding of an ideal government for a unified country. Thus when Xunzi ಃ finished presenting his political plan to a feudal lord, he concluded his speech by saying: “If things are done this way, then the Bright Hall can be constructed, and you can hold court there to receive the feudal lords.” Mencius made a similar claim in his conversation with King Xuan of Qi Ꮨ. Neither Mencius nor Xunzi proposed an architectural plan for the new Bright Hall. One scholarly opinion attributes the emergence of such plans to philosophers in the School of Yin-yang and Five Phases. But as Li Ling has recently argued, this school had a broad base in various religious, shamanistic, military, technical, astronomical, and medical traditions and practices. Many of these traditions employed and developed tu ቹ diagrams, charts, and drawings. Enough evidence indicates that when Bright Hall was reinvented during the late Eastern Zhou, it derived forms and concepts from at least three kinds of tu, including the cosmograph shitu ڤቹ, architectural drawings, and a kind of non-linear text I call “tu-texts.” Shitu has been discussed extensively by Li Ling, Don Harper, and other scholars.3 Shi ڤis an instrument used in divination, usually consisting of a round “heaven plate” and a square “earth plate”; both plates are engraved with various marks indicating astronomical and calendrical divisions (Fig. 5). As Li Ling has demonstrated, the patterns formed by these shapes and marks (which he calls shitu) are not only found on the shi divining board, but can be seen in the designs of chess boards (see Col.Pl. IV), mirrors, and certain texts dating from the late Eastem Zhou to Han.4 As a representation of the universe, a shitu necessarily consists of a number of geometric patterns, which are in turn composed of highly abstract visual elements such as lines ———
3 Harper 1978–1979, 1999: 833–843; Li Ling 2000 [rev. of 1993]: 89–176. See also footnote 80 in Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume. 4 Li Ling 2000 [rev. of 1993]: 89–176. See also Kalinowski, this volume.
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and shapes. Li Ling has defined five basic patterns in a shitu, including “four directions” (sifang ֱ) “five positions” (wuwei ն)ۯ, “eight points” (bawei Զ ) ۯ, “nine palaces” (jiugong ୰ ), and “twelve divisions” (shier du ԼԲ৫) (Fig. 6). We may add yet another: the circle and square or tiandi ֚چ. Each of these basic patterns has the potential to generate new patterns, and can be combined with other visual elements such as colors and zoomorphs. The second type of tu that played an important role in visualizing and conceptualizing the new Bright Hall were architectural drawings, which demonstrated a set of conventions in representing buildings. Two such drawings have survived from the fifth and fourth centuries BC. One of them, a drawing inlaid on a bronze plate, details the plan for a royal mausoleum of the Zhongshan խ՞ kingdom (Fig. 7).5 It shows a rectangular compound defined by double walls. Within the inner wall, five squares indicate the king’s tomb and those of his queens and concubines. Short inscriptions specify the measurement of each architectural feature. The other drawing is painted on the lid of a lacquer ware, found in a Qi tomb near Linzi ᜯ (Fig. 8). Though damaged, it still shows an architectural complex conforming to an overall ya-shape, with three rooms on each side and surrounded by a ring of “water” patterns. The two drawings represent different buildings, but they employ similar techniques to render a three-dimensional structure as a two-dimensional plan. By reducing architectural features to nearly geometric shapes, these drawings most effectively define their wei—the positions and juxtapositions of these features within a definite spatial boundary. These two drawings are thus close to diagrams. The one from Linzi in particular shows strong affinities with a shitu. In fact, the striking similarities between this drawing and Wang Mang’s building has led Hwang Ming-Chorng to identify it as a fifth-century BC design for the Bright Hall.6 The third source for reinventing the Bright Hall is a kind of tu-text, which has been studied by Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann.7 But her subject is a larger group of materials which she calls “non-linear textual structures.” In my own definition, a tu-text must possess two basic features: first, it must be arranged into a non-linear spatial pattern and this pattern must accord with an established tu; and second, the same tu-pattern must be internalized as the text’s intrinsic textual structure. ——— 5 For the Zhongshan “Mausoleum Plan” or “Design of the Mausoleum District” (Zhaoyu tu ٢ቹ), see also Behr, this volume. 6 Hwang Ming-Chorng 1996: 27–31. 7 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2005, also this volume.
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Although some texts, including the inscriptions on the Zhongshan mausoleum design, are arranged in specific spatial configurations, I refer to them only as “spatial texts,” not tu-texts, because their spatial arrangement does not demonstrate an identifiable tu-pattern. Conversely, once a tu-text has been converted into a linear text and thus lost its original spatiality, its textual structure alone does not warrant its identity as a tu-text. To regain this identity, its spatial layout has to be reconstructed. An Eastern Zhou tu-text in its original form is the famous Chu Silk Manuscript (see Fig. 12a–d in Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume).8 A restored tu-text is the “Youguan tu” ؔࡴቹ or “Xuangong tu” خ୰ቹ in the Guanzi ጥ (see Fig. 6 in Kalinowski, Fig. 9a in DorofeevaLichtmann, this volume). 9 Despite some obvious differences, these two works share two important features. In terms of layout, both works are arranged in a cardinally-oriented composition with a clearly defined center. In terms of content, both works have close relationship with the literary genre yueling ִ חor “monthly ordinances.” Generally speaking, yueling originated from a type of almanac that prescribes appropriate human activities according to seasons and months. Toward the end of Eastern Zhou, this form was adapted by some politically-minded intellectuals in an effort to design both a correlative cosmology and an ideal government. In their plans, the “monthly ordinances” not only give the astronomical and five phase correlations of each month, but also regulate the correct ritual and administrative behavior for the ruler. Such plans are found in a series of late Eastern Zhou to early Han texts, including Guan zi, Lüshi chunqiu ּܨਞટ, Liji, and Huainanzi ত. In these texts yueling and Bright Hall are integrated, a point important to this paper. Through this integration, the textual structure of yueling was given an explicit architectonic form, and the Bright Hall finally gained a definite cosmological symbolism. As these three kinds of tu—shitu, architectural drawing, and tutext—all contributed to the reinvention of the Bright Hall, they also explain some major features of this building as envisioned in the late Eastern Zhou to Han. Simply stated, in this vision, (1) the basic elements of the Bright Hall are abstract signs and patterns; (2) these ———
8 For the seminal studies of the Chu Silk Manuscript, see footnote 70 in Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume. 9 Scholars have proposed different reconstructions; this figure shows the earliest proposal by Guo Moruo ພःૉ. For other reconstructions, see Fig. 9b–d in Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume.
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signs and patterns are arranged on a two-dimensional plane; and (3) this geometric imagery developed largely within a textual tradition and attracted attention mainly from philosophers, politicians and ritual specialists. This textual tradition continued to expand during the Han. An important development is the appearance of a series of texts entitled “The Yin-Yang Principles of the Bright Hall” (Mingtang yinyang ࣔ ഘ ອ ၺ ), which began to contain architectural designs for the monument. (A fragment of “Mingtang yin-yang” survives in the Taiping yulan ֜ؓൗᥦ; a more detailed plan is given in the Da Dai liji Օᚮ៖ಖ.) Although such designs became increasingly complex as they incorporated more and more intellectual and political agendas, the architectural complexity of the proposed Mingtang structures resulted from superimposing multiple tu-patterns and numerological systems onto a basic “five phase” pattern. This development culminated in Cai Yong’s “Treatise on the Bright Hall and Monthly Ordinances” (Mingtang yueling lun ࣔഘִחᓵ), the most detailed account of the Bright Hall given by a Han author. The building is conceived as a collection of disembodied features, each indexing a particular cosmological component, value, or movement: The various sections of the Bright Hall have their regulations. The whole building has a square floor plan of 144 chi on each side, a measurement determined by the numerical value assigned to Earth. The round roof is 216 chi in diameter, which is based on the numerical value assigned to Heaven. The Great Temple in the center is three zhang on each side, and the Room of Communing with Heaven is nine zhang in diameter, because nine and six represent the transformation of yin and yang. . . The building’s 8 openings imply the eight trigrams. The 9 chambers symbolize the nine provinces. The 12 rooms correspond to the 12 zodiac constellations. Each of the nine chambers has four doors and nine windows, so that there are altogether 36 doors and 72 windows. . . The Room of Communing with Heaven is 81 square chi, a measurement based on squaring the length of the Yellow Bell pitch pipe. 28 columns are arranged along the four sides of the building; each group of seven columns symbolizes the seven xiu. Each chamber is three zhang tall, a measurement based on the three realms of Heaven, earth, and Man. The building has four sides and is painted with five colors; four and five are the numbers of the four seasons and the Five Phases, which determine the activities taking place there. The structure covers an area of 24 zhang on each side, a figure that echoes the 24 divisions of the year. It is surrounded by water, which symbolizes the four seas.
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This diagrammatic mode of representing the universe clearly differs from a pictorial rendering of the universe. The difference, however, is not just the type of sign being used. I have mentioned Sima Qian’s description of the First Emperor’s tomb chamber, which ends with the sentence “Above were all of the heavens and below all of the earth.” This statement introduces a standard formula in documenting funerary decoration. An inscription on a second-century mortuary shrine, for example, first surveys individual motifs that decorate the shrine’s interior and then summarizes the whole decorative program into two large sections “above” and “below”: There are interlocking dragons and winding serpents; fierce tigers stretch forward their heads, gazing into the distance; black apes ascend heights; lions and bears roar, strewn everywhere like clouds. There are towers and pavilions of unequal heights; great processions of chariots set forth. Above are clouds and immortals; below, figures of filial piety, excellent virtue and benevolence.
What we find here is a standardized visual model, in which a microcosmic representation of the universe is confined in a three-dimensional space, constructed by large sections that pertain to the realms of heaven and earth. This representation thus differs radically from the Bright Hall, which manifests its meaning through abstract signs arranged on a two-dimensional plane. Existing funerary structures confirm this difference. Several tombs dating from the first century BC are painted with heavenly bodies on the ceiling while earthly landscapes and historical scenes decorate the lintels and walls (Col.Pl. III). This vertical structure of the universe is further combined with a horizontal dimension: in Eastern Han tombs and shrines, the gables became the legitimate space for portraying immortal paradise (Fig. 11). (This arrangement follows a convention that Wolfgang Bauer pointed out years ago, “it was the West and the East that were the classical compass points for paradise.”)10 An example that combines the three realms of Heaven, Earth, and immortality is Wu Liang’s memorial shrine ࣳඩర built in 151 AD (Fig. 9a–b).11 As I have discussed elsewhere, Heaven manifests itself as concrete omens on its ceiling; the two gables are occupied by the Queen Mother of the West and the King Father of the East; and the three walls provide the space for ——— 10 Bauer 1971: 142. See also pp. 142–150. (Engl. translation 1976.) 11 Wu Hung 1992.
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depicting human history, from the creation of mankind to the time of recording (Fig. 9a,b). In fact, Wu Liang’s shrine and Wang Mang’s Bright Hall offer two supreme examples for understanding the two Han systems for representing the universe. Wang Mang’s Bright Hall demonstrates an official cosmology; each feature of this building, based on a specific numerical value, is definite and unchangeable. The Wu Liang Shrine, on the other hand, is a personal interpretation of a basic cosmological structure; the content of heaven, earth, and the immortal world—the pictorial motifs on the ceiling, walls, and gables—are chosen to reflect a specific view. The structure of the Bright Hall, as I have proposed earlier, is based on a highly abstract tu and can actually be considered a tu in an architectural form. The structure of the Wu Liang Shrine is not determined by any tu; instead it derives its decorative motifs from multiple sources including some tu catalogues. I should remind the reader that tu is a very general category, including not only geometric diagrams such as shitu, but also more concrete images such as maps, astronomical drawings, omen catalogues, and even illustrations of historical figures and events. While the Bright Hall is firmly associated with abstract tu patterns, images in the Wu Liang Shrine and other funerary structures are often supplied by those “pictorial” tu. For example, images on its ceiling are selected from the Ruitu ᅗቹ or “Omen Catalogue” (Fig. 10). Those on the walls are chosen from illustrated texts called tu zan ቹ刓, or “tu-pictures accompanied with eulogies,” that summarize and illustrate the biography of a filial son or an exemplary woman (Fig. 12b). Other funerary structures derive pictorial motifs from “Shanhaijing tu” ՞௧ᆖ (Tu of the Canon of Mountains and Seas), “Xingtu” ਣቹ (Star maps), “Chengtu” ৄቹ (City maps), ֞ஈԳቹऄ “Kongzi turen tufa” (Methods for drawing Confucius and his disciples), and others. Very seldom is an abstract tu-pattern used to decorate a tomb or shrine. In fact I only know one such example, a tomb near Luoyang ၺ in which a “five phases” pattern appears on the ceiling. Not coincidentally, this tomb was built during Wang Mang’s reign (Col.Pl. V). Many things may be learned from a synthetic study of these two visual systems and their relationship. To conclude I want to propose a possible connection between these two systems and different traditions in Han historiography. As part of his cosmic design, Wang Mang’s History evolves in an abstract linear pattern: a circular fivephases movement “produces” all the dynasties, the last one being his
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own Xin dynasty (Fig. 13). The “block construction” of the Wu Liang Shrine’s decoration, on the other hand, finds an excellent parallel in Sima Qian’s Shiji ಖ. Its portrayals of ancient sovereigns (Fig. 12a) are a counterpart to the “Basic Annals” (“Benji” ء伃) in the Shiji; the subsequent depictions of famous historical figures (Fig. 12b) match the “Memoirs” (“Liezhuan” ٨ႚ); and the last scene of the pictorial program, which represents an event in Wu Liang’s own life (Fig. 12c), echoes Sima Qian’s “Self-statement of the Grand Historian” (“Taishigong zi xu” ֜ֆ۞ )ݧthat ends the Shiji. In this history, historical patterns and principles are exemplified by people and events, and the past is recorded from a retrospective vintage point embodied by the historian himself.
REFERENCES BAUER, Wolfgang. 1971. China und die Hoffnung auf Glück. Paradiese, Utopien, Idealvorstellungen. München: Hanser Verlag. (Engl. ed.: China and the Search for Happiness. New York: Seabury Press, 1976.) CHEN Meidong ຫભࣟ, ed. 1996. Zhongguo gu xingtu խഏײਣቹ. Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chuban she. DOROFEEVA-LICHTMANN, Vera. 2005. “Spatial Composition of Ancient Chinese Texts.” In: History of Science, History of Text, ed. Karine Chemla. (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 238). Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 3–47. FAIRBANK, Wilma. 1941. “The Offering Shrines of ‘Wu Liang Tz’u’.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1: 1–36. FENG Yunpeng ႑ႆᣛ and FENG Yunyuan ႑ႆ㑼. Jin shi suo ८ ف.1821, 12 vols. (Jinsuo ८ 6 vols., and Shisuo ف6 vols.). HARLEY, J.B. and D. WOODWARD, eds. 1994. The History of Cartography. Vol II, Book 2. Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. HARPER, Donald J. 1978. “The Han Cosmic Board (Shi).” Early China 4: 1–10. ——. 1999. “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought.” In: Loewe and Shaughnessy, eds. 1999, pp. 813–884. HWANG Ming-Chorng. 1996. Ming-Tang: Cosmology, Political Order and Monuments in Early China. Diss. Harvard Univ. LI Ling ޕሿ. 2000. Zhongguo fangshu kao խഏֱە. Peking: Renmin Zhongguo Chubanshe [revision of 1993]. LI Xueqin [trans. by K.C. CHANG]. 1985. Eastern Zhou and Qin Civilisations. New Heaven, Conn.: Yale University Press. LOEWE, Michael and Edward L SHAUGHNESSY, eds. 1999. The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SEKINO Tei 䕦ມૣ. 1916. Shina Santǀshǀ ni okeru Kandai Fumbo no Hyǀshoku ֭ ߷՞ࣟઊ圵࣍圛坚ዧזᏻችऱ।堸. Tǀkyǀ: Imperial University of Tǀkyǀ, College of Engineering. ——. 1995. Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
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WU Hung [1989] 1992. The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ——. 1995. Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
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Fig. 1: (a) Floor plan of the ritual site of the Bright Hall and Biyong, late Western Han dynasty. AD 4. Excavated in 1956 at Chang’an, Shaanxi province. (b) Floor plan of the Bright Hall. Reproduced from Wu Hung (1995: 178).
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(a)
(b) Fig. 2.1: Wu Family Shrine carving on a stone slab of the rear group showing celestial scenes. Upper half. (a): Ink rubbing. Reproduced from Sekino Tei (1916), pl. 77. (b): Redrawing from the original ink rubbing. Adapted from Feng Yunpeng and Feng Yunyuan (1821, Shisuo vol. 3, houshishi (৵ف 5–6).
(a)
(b) Fig. 2.2: Wu Family Shrine carving on a stone slab of the rear group showing celestial scenes. Lower half. (a): Ink rubbing. Reproduced from Sekino Tei (1916), pl. 77. (b): Redrawing from the original ink rubbing. Adapted from Feng Yunpeng and Feng Yunyuan (1821, Shisuo vol. 3, houshishi (৵ف 5–6).
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Fig. 3: Reconstruction of the ritual “positions” in the Bright Hall according to the “Mingtang wei” ࣔഘۯ. Adapted from Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996: 699).
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Fig. 4: An Early Western Zhou temple-palace structure. 11th–10th centuries BC. 45x32.5 m. Fengchu, Shaanxi province. (a): Floor plan. (b): Reconstruction. Reproduced from Wu Hung (1995: 87)
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Fig. 5: Cosmograph (shi ڤ, the jiugong ୰ type). After Kaogu (1978.5: 341), reproduced from Loewe and Shaughnessy (1999: 842).
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Fig. 6: (a) “four directions” (sifang ֱ), (b) “five positions” (wuwei ն)ۯ, (c) “eight points” (bawei Զ)ۯ, (d) “nine palaces” (jiugong ች), (e) “twelve divisions” (shier du ԼԲ৫). Reproduced from Li Ling (2000: 130–133).
Fig. 7: Drawing of the “Mausoleum Plan” or “Design of the Mausoleum District” (Zhaoyu tu ٢ቹ). Bronze tablet with gold inlay, 94 x 48 cm, Zhongshan kingdom, late 4th century BC. After Wenwu (1979.1: 23), reproduced from Loewe and Shaughnessy (1999: 714).
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Fig. 8: The lid of a lacquer ware found in a Qi tomb near Linzi (Langjiazhuang, Shandong), the Warring States period. Reproduced from Kaogu xuebao (1977.1: 82).
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Fig. 9a: Reconstruction of the Wu Liang Shrine (built in AD 151) by Wilma Fairbank (1941) showing the interior sides of the walls and the roof. Reproduced from Fairbank (1941: Fig. 2).
Fig. 9b: The Wu Liang Shrine carvings on the interior walls and roof. Drawing. Reproduced from Wu Hung (1995: 239).
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Fig. 10: Omen images carved on the ceiling of the Wu Liang Shrine (built in AD 151). (a) Qilin unicorn, (b) yellow dragon, (c) white tiger, (d) intertwining trees, (e) jade horse, (f) birds joined at the wing, (g) fish joined at the eye, (h) white horse with red mane, (i) red bear, (j) lake horse, (k) six-legged beast, (l) beasts joined at the shoulder, (m) silver jar, (n) black gui tablet, (o) jade sheng headdress, (p) glass bi disk. Reconstruction. Reproduced from Wu Hung (1995: 228).
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Fig. 11: The gables of the Wu Liang Shrine (built in AD 151). Ink rubbings and drawings. (a,b) the paradise of the Queen Mother of the West on the west gable. (c,d) the paradise of the King Father of the East on the east gable. Reproduced from Wu Hung (1992: 110).
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(c) Fig. 12: The Wu Liang Shrine (built in AD 151) wall carvings. Ink rubbings. (a) The five “ancient sovereigns” or legendary emperors. Reproduced from Wu Hung (1995: 230). (b left) Jing Ke’s attempted assassination of the King of Qin. (b right) Yao Li’s assassination of Prince Qing Ji. Reproduced from Wu Hung (1995: 236). (c) A county official paying respect to a retired gentleman. Reproduced from Wu Hung (1995: 225).
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Fig. 13: Wang Mang’s pattern of dynastic transmission. Reproduced from Wu Hung (1995: 186).
III. TEXT AS TU: TEXTUAL DIAGRAMS
MAPLESS MAPPING: DID THE MAPS OF THE SHANHAI JING EVER EXIST? Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann*
INTRODUCTION The Shanhai jing ՞௧ᆖ (Itineraries of Mountains and Seas, hereafter the SHJ),1 is a comprehensive and systematised description of the inhabited world compiled no later than the beginning of the 1st century BC, the largest of the terrestrial descriptions to have survived from Ancient China.2 It is characterised by the impression of topographical accuracy, providing details of precise distances and cardinally-oriented directions between the 447 mountains described in the first part of the text, the Shanjing ՞ᆖ (Itineraries of Mountains) or the Wuzang shanjing նፔ՞ᆖ (Itineraries of Mountains: the Five Treasuries, hereafter WZSJ),3 and the directions and confluences of rivers emanating from these mountains. Although precise distances between landmarks are not given in the second part, the Haijing ௧ᆖ (Itineraries of Seas), this does not really affect the overall impression of general topographical accuracy of the text. Indeed, in contrast to the Shanjing, which features the centre of the world (roughly corre———
* I am indebted to John Moffett and Tatyana Gardner for corrections of my English. Any mistakes found in this paper are my own responsibility. 1 The proposed translation of the text’s title will be elucidated in the course of this paper. 2 For the standard edition of the SHJ, see Shanhai jing jianshu ՞௧ᆖጧง (Explanatory notes and sub-commentary on the Shanhai jing) by Hao Yixing’s ಸᦜ۩ (1757–1825) first published in 1809 and reproduced in the Sibu beiyao ຝໂ editions (hereafter SBBY). For basic information on the SHJ (its structure, textual history, major editions and bibliography), see Fracasso (1993: 357–367). A useful introduction to the SHJ is also provided by Schiffeler (1980: 41–47). For a detailed outline of its textual history and a critical survey of studies on it, see Suh Kyung Ho (1993: 17–40 and 53–95, respectively). For a classified list of related sinological literature, see the complementary bibliographies of the SHJ compiled by Fracasso (1983: 695–700, 1991), for up-dated list of its translations, see Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (2003a: 62, endnote 4). For general characteristics of its form and content, see Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (1995: 58–61). 3 For the title Wuzang ն៲ (Five Treasuries), see Fracasso (1983: 659, esp. footnote 4).
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sponding to the basins of the Yellow and Yangzi rivers), the Haijing is focussed on peripheral parts of the world—mostly countries populated by “exotic” peoples, but also far-away mountains and rivers. The lack of precision in describing far-away lands seems, therefore, to be quite natural. Elsewhere, I have demonstrated the elusiveness of the topographical accuracy of this text.4 The text actually deals with matters markedly different from those considered in modern geography, and, in particular, is not aimed at conveying topographically accurate information. Rather, the SHJ conveys an ideal organisation of terrestrial space characterised by a quite complex, yet remarkably regular structure. The nucleus of this structure is the system of 26 itineraries marked by 447 mountains. An itinerary is comprised of mountains that submit to similar guardian spirits (shen). This means that the itineraries are delineated according to the spatial dispersion of divine powers indicating the sacred nature of the terrestrial space thus represented. I define this representation of terrestrial space as a “spiritual landscape”.5 Yet, whatever the nature of the description of terrestrial space in the SHJ and its accuracy, one is immediately led to think of some sort of maps that might accompany the text. Thus, modern studies of the geographical background of the SHJ, and, especially, the WZSJ, represent the geographical information derived from the text in the form of maps. However, in contrast to pictures, there is an almost total absence of traditional maps attached or related to the SHJ made prior to the diffusion of Western cartography in China. In the first part of this paper I evaluate a supposition widespread in sinological literature that such maps existed in remote antiquity and then disappeared. In particular, I show the late origins of this supposition—the preface to an edition of the SHJ by the famous Qing commentator Bi Yuan ฅީ (1730–1797)—and reveal contradictions in his arguments. Then, in the second part, relying on the character of ——— 4 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 1995, 1999, 2001a, 2003a, 2003b; for a survey of 1995, 2003a, 2003b, see Lewis (2006: 284–303). 5 It belongs to the so-called “totalistic” conceptions (as defined by Stanley Tambiah 1985: 252–259, following Marcel Mauss) simultaneously embracing cosmological, religious, political, topographical, economic and other dimensions, which cannot be disaggregated, being part of a single complexly interrelated whole. Referring to the conception of the terrestrial space derived from the SHJ as to “spiritual landscape” I mean the dominant (but not exclusive) role of religious aspect here. For another example of a “totalistic” view of terrestrial space in ancient China, see a recent study of an “ancestral landscape” in late Shang China (ca. 1200–1045 BC) by David Keightley (2000).
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the textual structure of the SHJ, I advance the hypothesis that the original layout of the text in itself combined a map or spatial (= cardinally-oriented) scheme and a terrestrial description, making maps to accompany the text superfluous. Extending this hypothesis to other texts dealing with space may also provide some further keys to the problem of “lost” ancient maps.
I. MAPS AND MYTHS
The so-called “wheel” map and “global” schemes of the Shanhai jing The only extant map conveying the overall view of the world, according to the SHJ, is the “Map of the Under-Heaven” (Tianxia tu, Korean Ch’onhado, ֚Հቹ, sometimes the “General map of the UnderHeaven”—Tianxia zongtu ֚Հ᜔ቹ) or the so-called “wheel” map (in its several slightly differing Chinese and Korean variations6—for an example, see Col.Pl. VI). Yet, this map dates from about 1760, that is, almost two millennia after the SHJ was compiled, and, therefore, far removed from the SHJ’s cultural and historical setting. In addition, it bears some indications of having been influenced by Buddhist and Western cartography, and, therefore, although it still continues East Asian cartographical tradition, cannot be regarded as a pure example of this tradition. Some SHJ toponyms, in particular distant “exotic” countries are found in earlier Chinese maps, for instance, the “General map of Chinese and barbarian [territories] within the Four [cardinally-oriented] Seas” (Sihai huayi zongtu ௧ဎ᜔ڎቹ), a sinicised version of a Buddhist map representing the Jambudvîpa continent and included into the Tushu bian ቹᒳ collection (compiled from 1562 through 1577 or 1585; printed in 1613) by Zhang Huang ີⰐ (1527–1608).7 ———
6 Needham and Wang Ling (1959: 565–565, plate LXXXIX facing p. 566, the reproduced map is entitled the “General map of [the territories encompasses by] the Four [cardinally-oriented] Seas” – Sihai zongtu ௧᜔ቹ), Bagrow (1964: 204 and map on p. 205 [Fig. 71] reproduced from Needham and Wang Ling 1959, plate LXXXIX), Harley and Woodward, eds. (1994, colour plate 16, Fig. 10.10 on p. 257, Fig. 10.11 on p. 258); the two latter maps are reproduced considerably reduced in Smith (1996, Fig. 3.4 on p. 30). 7 Needham and Wang Ling 1959: 565–566, Bagrow 1964: 197 and map on p. 198 [Fig. 67], Yee 1994: 173–175, Fig. 7.4, Smith 1996: 35–36, Fig. 3.7, Strassberg 2002: 34–35, Fig. 8.
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Yet, the overall view of the world in this map determined by Buddhist cartography has little in common with the SHJ. In this respect the two maps, despite their affinity through some toponyms and the round shapes of terrestrial surface, differ markedly from each other. Another important difference is that the centre of the world in the “wheel” map, following Chinese cartographic tradition, is associated with China. It is also noteworthy that the SHJ toponyms first appear on a map conveying a foreign cartographic tradition. The “wheel” map also represents only a few of the multiplicity of landmarks mentioned in the SHJ, and these are mostly far-away countries described in its second part, the Haijing, that is peripheral landmarks about which the text is rather vague. Rather surprisingly, the most convenient subjects for mapping—landmarks supplied with precise distances, such as the 447 mountains of the Shanjing and the rivers related to these mountains—are not in evidence, with the rare exceptions of the most famous mountains and rivers (e.g., Kunlun Mountain and the Five Peaks,8 the Yellow and Yangzi rivers). Since the Shanjing describes the central part of the world, the centre plays a much less important role in the map than peripheral lands. The map has a round frame encompassing a nest of more or less round concentric zones, somewhat resembling a wheel, inspiring its conventional name. The top of the map is oriented to the north. The borderline of the central zone of the map is more irregular in its right (= eastern) part where the territory of China and the lands of its closest neighbours, in other words, the “best known” part of the world, are found. China is placed at the centre of the map, and, as a result, the central zone is shifted to the left (= west) of the map. The centre is marked by two large characters—Zhongguo խഏ (The Central Empire) or Zhongyuan խ (The Central Plain)—further accentuated by being circled, sometimes in red. As already mentioned above, very little detail is given for Chinese territory, just a few prominent mountains, the Yellow and Yangzi rivers (without even their basic tributaries), and the Great Wall. The latter is, of course, not mentioned in the SHJ at all. The representation of Chinese territory in the map is quite similar to those found on many traditional maps of China, the earliest dating from the Song dynasty (960–1279), with the difference that the latter provide more geographical detail.9 ———
8 Five mountains marking the centre, east, south, west and north of the territory in the basins of the Yellow and Yangzi rivers. 9 For a comprehensive atlas of Chinese maps, see Cao Wanru et al. (1999 [repr. 1990], 1995 [repr. 1994], 1997); see also Yan Ping et al. (1998). For studies of Chi-
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The rest of the central zone is occupied by the names of foreign countries (in the south-western part arranged into neat lines), and also two rivers in the south around which there seems to be a depiction of India. The second zone is the sea, with many far-away countries depicted as islands and with some mountains standing up out of the sea. The third circular zone is a strip of land with many countries, some mountains and two rivers. Apart from the names of countries written as straight lines in the central part of the map, many names of foreign countries are formed into rectangles or sometimes circles, so that countries that form islands in the sea and those found on pieces of land look similar. Finally, the fourth zone is again the sea, devoid of any inhabitants, but containing markers of the “extreme east” and the “extreme west”, the places where the sun rises and sets, respectively. In both cases the extreme points are represented by an island with a mountain and a cosmic tree growing out it, as described in the SHJ. A more detailed study of the map and comparison of its variants are far beyond the scope of this study. Here it is sufficient to sum up that the “wheel” map provides a general schematic view of the world as a system of concentric zones, and that it lays special emphasis on the distant periphery. The system of concentric zones on the “wheel” map more or less reflects the system of concentric terrestrial zones named in the titles of chapters (juan ࠴ in the extant version) of the SHJ. The table of contents of the SHJ (see Table 1) is, in effect, a typical list of “positions” in a regular cardinally-oriented scheme representing the entire terrestrial space.10
——— nese cartography by Chinese scholars discussing the most important of these maps, see Wang Yong (1998 [repr. 1938]), Chen Zhengxiang (Chen Cheng-siang 1979), Chen Feiya, ed. (1984), Lu Liangzhi (1984), Jin Yingchun and Qiu Fuke (1984), Wang Chengzu (1988 [repr. 1982]), Yu Xixian (1990). For a seminal study of Chinese cartography in Western scholarship, see Yee (1994) and Henderson (1994) in the Chicago History of Cartography series edited by Harley and Woodward; see also Smith (1996). 10 I discuss characteristics of “global” schemes or cosmograms and the typological similarities between cosmograms and Chinese cartographical tradition elsewhere, see Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (2003a: 38–43). The similarity between traditional Chinese maps and schemes has also been pointed out by Henderson (1994) and Smith (1996: 36–39). On the term cosmogram and its applications, see also Major (1984).
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TABLE 1 The table of contents of the Shanhai jing ՞௧ᆖ N° of juan
1
TITLES OF JUAN ࠴ (chapters) and their sub-divisions (sub-chapters)
Part I. “Itineraries of Mountains” Shanjing ՞ᆖ “Itineraries of Southern Mountains” Nanshan jing ত՞ᆖ 1 “[First] Itinerary of Southern Mountains” Nanshan jing ত՞ᆖ 2 “Second Itinerary of Southern [Mountains]” Nan ci er jing তڻԲᆖ 3 “Third Itinerary of Southern [Mountains]” Nan ci san jing তڻԿᆖ
2
“Itineraries of Western Mountains” Xishan jing ۫՞ᆖ
1 “[First] Itinerary of Western Mountains” Xishan jing ۫՞ᆖ 2 “Second Itinerary of Western Mountains” Xi ci er jing ۫ڻԲᆖ 3 “Third Itinerary of Western Mountains” Xi ci san jing ۫ڻԿᆖ 4 “Fourth Itinerary of Western Mountains” Xi ci si jing ۫ڻᆖ
3
“Itineraries of Northern Mountains” Beishan jing ק՞ᆖ
1 “[First] Itinerary of Northern Mountains” Beishan jing ק՞ᆖ 2 “Second Itinerary of Northern [Mountains]” Bei ci er jing ڻקԲᆖ 3 “Third Itinerary of Northern [Mountains]” Bei ci san jing ڻקԿᆖ
4
“Itineraries of Eastern Mountains” Dongshan jing ࣟ՞ᆖ 1 “[First] Itinerary of Eastern Mountains” Dongshan jing ࣟ՞ᆖ 2 “Second Itinerary of Eastern [Mountains]” Dong ci er jing ࣟڻԲᆖ 3 “Third Itinerary of Eastern [Mountains]” Dong ci san jing ࣟڻԿᆖ 4 “Forth Itinerary of Eastern [Mountains]” Dong ci si jing ࣟڻᆖ
5
“Itineraries of Central Mountains” Zhongshan jing խ՞ᆖ 1 “[First] Itinerary of Central Mountains” Zhongshan jing խ՞ᆖ 2 “Second Itinerary of Central [Mountains]” Zhong ci er jing խڻԲᆖ 3 “Third Itinerary of Central [Mountains]” Zhong ci san jing խڻԿᆖ 4 “Fourth Itinerary of Central [Mountains]” Zhong ci si jing խڻᆖ 5 “Fifth Itinerary of Central [Mountains]” Zhong ci wu jing խڻնᆖ 6 “Sixth Itinerary of Central [Mountains]” Zhong ci liu jing խڻքᆖ 7 “Seventh Itinerary of Central [Mountains]” Zhong ci qi jing խڻԮᆖ 8 “Eighth Itinerary of Central [Mountains]” Zhong ci ba jing խڻԶᆖ 9 “Ninth Itinerary of Central [Mountains]” Zhong ci jiu jing խڻᆖ 10 “Tenth Itinerary of Central [Mountains]” Zhong ci shi jing խڻԼᆖ 11 “Eleventh Itinerary of Central [Mountians]” Zhong ci shi yi jing խڻԼԫᆖ 12 “Twelfth Itinerary of Central [Mountians]” Zhong ci shi er jing խڻԼԲᆖ
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TITLES OF JUAN ࠴ (chapters) and their sub-divisions (sub-chapters)
Part II. “Itineraries of Seas” Haijing ௧ᆖ “Outside the Seas” Haiwai ௧؆ 6 7 8 9
“Southern Itinerary of Outside the Seas” Haiwai nanjing ௧؆তᆖ “Western Itinerary of Outside the Seas” Haiwai xijing ௧؆۫ᆖ “Northern Itinerary of Outside the Seas” Haiwai beijing ௧؆۫ᆖ “Eastern Itinerary of Outside the Seas” Haiwai dongjing ௧؆ࣟᆖ
“Inside the Seas” Hainei ௧փ 10 11 12 13
“Southern Itinerary of Inside the Seas” Hainei nanjing ௧փতᆖ “Western Itinerary of Inside the Seas” Hainei xijing ௧փ۫ᆖ “Northern Itinerary of Inside the Seas” Hainei beijing ௧փקᆖ “Eastern Itinerary of Inside the Seas” Hainei dongjing ௧փࣟᆖ
“Great Wilderness” Dahuang Օ 14 15 16 17
“Eastern Itinerary of the Great Wilderness” Dahuang dongjing Օࣟᆖ “Southern Itinerary of the Great Wilderness” Dahuang nanjing Օতᆖ “Western Itinerary of the Great Wilderness” Dahuang xijing Օ۫ᆖ “Northern Itinerary of the Great Wilderness” Dahuang beijing Օקᆖ
“Inside the Seas” Hainei ௧փ – addition 18
“[Central] Itinerary of Inside the Seas” Hainei jing ௧փᆖ
This “global” scheme is constituted by the following four terrestrial zones: “Mountains” (Shan ՞), “Outside the Seas” (Haiwai ௧؆), “Inside the Seas” (Hainei ௧փ) and “The Great Wilderness” (Dahuang Օ). All the zones are divided into four sections oriented to the cardinal points, but “Mountains” and “Inside the Seas” also each include a fifth section. This fifth constituent element explicitly corresponds to the centre in “Mountains”, and probably plays the same function in the “Inside the Seas” set. 11 The peculiarity of the fifth section of the “Inside the Seas” is that it is placed at the end of the table of contents (chapter 13), separate from the four cardinallyoriented sections of its group (chapters 10–13). The most widespread representation of the four terrestrial zones (“Mountains”, “Outside the Seas”, “Inside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness”) in sinological literature is as a nest of concentric zones, in the majority of cases of square shape. It is based on the symbolic ———
11 As I have pointed out elsewhere, the character nei փ (“inside”) is very close in its meaning to zhong խ (“centre”), for this reason adding the adjective zhong to the title of this chapter (Hainei jing ௧փᆖ) may have seemed redundant (DorofeevaLichtmann 1995: 79).
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quadrature of the Earth in Chinese cosmology.12 The square shape is rigidly respected in the surviving graphic representations of the systems of concentric “zones” (fu ࣚ)—the “Five Zones” (wufu նࣚ) and the “Nine Zones” (jiufu ࣚ)—described in the two most authoritative geographical ancient texts, the “Yugong” છಥ (Yu’s [System of] Tribute, 5th?–3rd? centuries BC),13 chapter 6 of the Shangshu ࡸ/Shujing ᆖ (The Book of Documents), and the “Zhifang shi” ֱּ (The Official in Charge of the Cardinal Directions, late Warring States [475–222 BC]—early Former Han [206 BC–AD 8] periods),14 chapter 33 of the Zhouli ࡌ៖ (Zhou Rituals), respectively.15 No such graphic representations of the SHJ have survived, explained perhaps by the modest interest in this text in Chinese cultural tradition, in marked contrast to the “Yugong” and the “Zhifang shi”. Yet, since the zones of the SHJ are typologically similar to the fu of these two texts, also highlighted by the fact that the last fu in the “Yugong” is named huang – “Wilderness”, there seems to be good reason to believe that the zones of the SHJ were also conceived of in Chinese tradition as a nest of concentric squares. There are, however, several suggestions as to how these zones are positioned with respect to each other. John S. Major arranges the zones of the SHJ into a nest of concentric squares following the sequence of zones in the table of contents (see Fig. 1). 16 He places “Mountains” in the centre, encompasses them by “Outside the Seas”, “Inside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness”, and regards the last section of “Inside the Seas” as an addi——— 12 The earliest occurrence of the classical formula “Heaven [corresponds to a] circle, Earth [corresponds to a] square” (Tian yuan di fang ֚Ⴝ )ֱچis found in the philosophical treatise Huainanzi ত compiled shortly before 139 BC, see Huainanzi, SBBY ed, 3/9a, see also 3/1b, 15/3a. It is also found in the opening section of the astronomical and mathematical classic Zhoubi suanjing ࡌ㌣ጩᆖ (compiled ca. 50 BC–AD 100), see Qian Baozong, ed. (1963: 4). 13 Shangshu zhengyi ࡸإᆠ, SBBY ed., 6/1a–19b; Legge, tr. 1865: 52–67, Karlgren, tr. 1950: 12–18, 1948, glosses 1352–1396. For a detailed discussion of the dating of the “Yugong”, see Qu Wanli (1964). 14 Zhouli Zhengzhu, SBBY ed., 33/6a–9a, Lin Yin 1984: 344–345, Biot, tr. 1969 [repr. 1851]: 263–279. 15 The extant graphic representations of the “Five Zones” and the “Nine Zones” (blockprint illustrations) are considerably later than their descriptions in the “Yugong” and the “Zhifang shi”. For blockprint representations and a brief discussion of the “Five Zones” of the “Yugong”, see Needham and Wang Ling 1959: 502– 503, Strassberg 2002: 32–33, and for the “Nine Zones” of the “Zhifang shi”, see Henderson (1984: 142, 1994: 207). For reconstructions of these systems by modern Western scholars, see Karlgren (1948: 159), reproduced in Yee (1994: 76, Fig. 4.1), Müller (1980: 52–54). 16 Major 1973: 99–100.
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tional outside zone mapping the ocean that encircles all the other zones. The proposed arrangement has, however, certain contradictions. Firstly, the proposed placement of the last section of the “Inside the Seas” means duplication of this zone in the scheme. Secondly, there are many indications of overlapping (occurrences of the same landmarks) between “Outside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness”,17 which are divided in the scheme by “Inside the Seas”. John Schiffeler (see Fig. 2) distinguishes the square centre (corresponding to “Mountains”), then three encompassing zones that he depicts as circles—“Inner Seas”, “Outer Seas” and “The Wilderness Beyond the Civilised World”.18 It is not clear in this scheme where the last section of “Inside the Seas” is located. The same order of zones is given by Riccardo Fracasso (see Fig. 3).19 He, however, demarcates only three zones—“Mountains”, “The Seas” and “The Great Wilderness”—represented as a nest of concentric squares. He places “Outside the Seas” on the borderline between “Inside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness”, thus implicitly taking into account the overlapping between “Outside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness”. The last section of “Inside the Seas” he simply places outside the scheme, thus acknowledging that there is no proper place for it in the scheme. Having pointed out the cases of overlap between “Outside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness”, Hwang Ming-Chorng considers them as two different spatial conceptions of peripheral regions (see Fig. 4a, b).20 Although he does not discuss an overall scheme of the SHJ, having represented both “Outside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness” as the outside zone of a nest of three concentric squares, he implicitly follows the just mentioned division of terrestrial space into three encompassing zones—the central lands, the seas and the distant peripheral lands. Li Ling ޕሿ does not provide an overall scheme of the zones of the SHJ, but instead shows separate arrangements of neighbouring zones, in each case as nests of two concentric squares. Specifically, he represents “Inside the Seas” as encompassing “Mountains”, “Outside the Seas” as encompassing “Inside the Seas”, and “The Great ——— 17 18 19 20
Hwang Ming-Chorng 1996: 635–637, esp. footnote 346. Schiffeler 1980: 43–44. Fracasso 1983, facing p. 660. Hwang Ming-Chorng 1996, Fig. 6.14 on p. 798 and Fig. 6.13 on p. 797, respectively, “Outside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness” are discussed on pp. 494– 509 and 537–677, respectively.
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Wilderness” as also encompassing “Inside the Seas” (see Fig. 5b, c, d, respectively).21 These three separate schemes of zones in effect convey an arrangement quite similar to that proposed by Fracasso— “Mountains”, “Inside the Seas” and then “Outside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness”—with the difference that “Outside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness” are simply regarded as two overlapping zones. The proposed arrangements, however, still do not solve the problem of the last chapter of “Inside the Seas”, but simply mask it. Richard Strassberg distinguishes three different worldviews— according to the Guideways through Mountains (chapters 1–5), Guideways through Seas (chapters 6–13), and the “Great Wilds” and the “Lands within the Seas” (chapters 14–18), Fig. 6a, b, c, respectively. 22 In contrast to all the other attempts at reconstructing the worldview(s) conveyed in the SHJ, Strassberg’s representations of the three worldviews seem to be in the first place inspired by Chinese cartography, especially the surviving and reconstructed maps related to the SHJ, and less by the systems of square concentric zones. As a result, Strassberg’s representations look like simplified maps and although they still have attributes of schematic mapping (for instance, the regular division of mapped space into the cardinally-oriented sections and the centre), they lack the rigid square framework that is characteristic of all the other advanced reconstructions that rely on the systems of concentric zones. In particular, his Guideways through Mountains is a simplified representation of the famous map of mountain ranges of the Shan jing by Wang Chengzu ิګ׆, see in Fig. 6d Wang’s map redrawn by Strassberg who supplied it with translations of toponyms and some additions and useful notes, for instance a numbered list of represented itineraries.23 The two latter worldviews are ——— 21 Li Ling 2000 [rev. of 1993]: 138. 22 Strassberg 2002: 30–43. It is, however, not quite clear why in his scheme of
the Guideways through Mountains (ibid., Fig. 9 on p. 35) Strassberg represents the four cardinally-oriented parts of “Mountains” by three mountain units each, and the central section by four mountain units, or what he means by the statement that such a representation is similar to a “magic square” pattern. The 26 itineraries marked by mountains indeed form an interesting regular structure—3 itineraries in the north and the south, 4 in the east and the west, and 12 (= 3x4) in the centre (for the symbolism of these figures, see Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (1995: 72–74 [footnote 81 on p. 72 contains an error, it should be “…a circle inscribed into a square”], Fig. 3a, b on p. 97; 2003a, Fig. 2.6 on p. 48; 2003b, Fig. 3 on p. 207). 23 Wang Chengzu (1988 [repr. 1982], map on p. 19), reproduced in Yu Xixian (1990: 48) and Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (1995: 95), redrawn in Strassberg (2002, Fig. 10 on p. 37). Strassberg, however, mistakenly considers it to be a “modern map of mountains” described in the Shanjing. I, in contrast, point out the schematic character of Wang’s map and its affinity with Chinese cartographic tradition, see Dorofeeva-
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represented as map outlines that resemble the “General map of Chinese and barbarian [territories] within the Four [cardinally-oriented] Seas”. Strassberg notes that there is much similarity between the two latter worldviews, but does not develop this interesting issue (especially, their possible overlap). Finally, he relates the four cardinallyoriented chapters of “Inside the Seas” and its last chapter to two different worldviews, and, therefore, also masks, but does not solve the problem of this stray chapter. A possible solution of this problem has been proposed independently by Suh Kyung Ho (Fig. 7b–c) and myself (Fig. 8a, b, c).24 We each advance the suggestion that not only “Outside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness” represent overlapping zones, but that “Inside the Seas” and the “Mountains” also overlap, both referring to the centre of the world but describing it from different perspectives. I define such spatial representation as parallel complementary mapping. My major argument is that in all the ancient Chinese sources prior to or contemporary with the SHJ “Inside the Seas” designates the central part of the world encompassed by the cardinally-oriented seas associated with the basins of the Yellow and Yangzi rivers, and that only such a view of “Inside the Seas” allows one to position the additional (fifth) chapter of “Inside the Seas”.25 I would also like to note that, as one can see from Fig. 8a, b, c, apart from the nest of concentric squares pattern, the SHJ can equally be represented by the cruciform and the 3x3 grid patterns. These representations are easily transformable one into the other.26 Yet, no matter which configuration is preferred, each has all the attributes of a regular “global” scheme or cosmogram. The “wheel” map also shares many of these attributes, with the difference that it is based on a circle model, not a square. ——— Lichtmann (2003a: 38, 43). 24 Suh Kyung Ho 1993: 304–309, Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 1995: 81–84, fig. 7a–c on p. 99. 25 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 1995: 78–79, esp. footnote 101. Suh Kyung Ho only provides spatial arrangements of the chapters of the SHJ, but does not elucidate much on the proposed arrangement. The overlapping is also not in evidence in his general map of the SHJ (see Fig. 7d). 26 For the 3x3 grid pattern and the nest of concentric squares, see DorofeevaLichtmann (1995: 63–69, 1996: 10–12, 1999: 168–172, 2003a: 66, endnote 46). Both are derived from the cruciform pattern discussed by Sarah Allan (1991: 74–111). She considers the quinary cardinally-oriented cross as an image of the Earth originating from the Shang dynasty (ca. sixteenth–eleventh centuries BC), and makes some suggestions about the cruciform shape of the world according to the SHJ (ibid: 87).
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The choice of a round shape for the map seems to be a curious combination of three cartographic traditions—Chinese, Buddhist and modern Western cartographies. The round frame of the “wheel” map has some affinity with the egg-shaped Jambudvîpa amidst the sea in Buddhist cartography, the affinity accentuated by distant countries of the SHJ incorporated into the sinicised versions of Buddhist maps. At the same time, the “wheel” map is an attempt to adapt both the traditional schematic representation of terrestrial space and the Buddhist maps to the code of representation characteristic of the maps of the world in Western cartography. In particular, terrestrial zones, traditionally conceived of as a nest of concentric squares, are represented as concentric circles inscribed onto the general round shape of the map in order to give it a “Western look”, and, eventually, on one late variation of the map such a representation of terrestrial space has superimposed on it meridians and parallels, making it look like a halfglobe representation in Western cartography.27 Yet, the depiction of China in the “wheel” map is still very similar to how it is depicted in traditional Chinese maps, not to mention its central position in the map. Apart from the absence of traditional maps of the SHJ, the very idea that geographical maps related to the SHJ ever existed only appears in traditional scholarship at about the time of the “wheel” maps. It was advanced by Bi Yuan in his edition of the SHJ entitled Shanhaijing xinjiaozheng ՞௧ᆖᄅீ( إNew Collated and Corrected [Edition] of the SHJ) first published in 1781. The reflections of Bi Yuan will be discussed below. Here I would simply like to draw attention to the fact that this idea is found surprisingly late in traditional scholarship, allowing one to suggest here at least some indirect influence from Western science. Moreover, initially the SHJ was considered as an unreliable source in imperial historiography, 28 clearly demarcated from the official conception of “terrestrial organisation” (dili چ).29 The change in appreciation of it occurred about the 5th century AD, when for a cer———
27 Yee 1994, Fig. 10.11 on p. 258. This variation of the “wheel” map most likely dates from the late 19th century. Yee in his caption to the map points out some attributes of its “degeneration” with respect to the earlier variations. 28 This point of view is clearly expressed in the two first official histories, the Shiji ಖ (The Grand Scribe’s Records) by Sima Qian ್ᔢ (145?–87 BC) (Shiji 1972: 3179, de Groot, tr., 1926, 44–45, Watson, tr. 1969: 299), and the Hanshu ዧ (History of the [Former] Han [Dynasty]) by Ban Gu ఄࡐ (AD 32–92) (Hanshu 1975: 2705, Hulsewé, tr. 1979: 237–238). 29 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2001b, 2005a.
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tain period of time (until the Song dynasty) it became regarded as part of the dili corpus.30 In all these respects the SHJ contrasts markedly with the most authoritative ancient Chinese text dealing with geographical matters, the “Yugong”, which serves as the conceptual basis of the dili corpus. A whole series of maps directly related to the “Yugong” have survived, the earliest dating from the Song dynasty,31 and few references to any earlier maps related to this text are found in the dynastic histories.32 In sum, a certain type of graphic representation usually related in one way or another to a text on geographical matters seems to be lacking in traditional scholarship on the SHJ. This relationship was established only when this text came to be regarded in the context of modern Western natural sciences. Since this approach dominates studies of the geographical information contained in the SHJ,33 it is not then surprising that Bi Yuan’s supposition, further developed by Chinese scholars in the first half of the 20th century,34 came to be taken for granted in sinological literature. As a result, the assumption that originally there were maps related to the SHJ is found in various studies by Western sinologists.35 ———
30 Chu Ping-yi 1990: 51–62. 31 See, for instance, one of the earliest Song maps, the famous Yuji tu છᇾቹ
(Map of Yu’s footprints) engraved on a stone stele in 1136 together with the Huayi tu ဎڎቹ (Map of Chinese and barbarian [territories]) placed on the other face of the stele. The Yuji tu was reproduced with slight differences in 1142. For an analysis of the Yuji tu (usually made in comparison with the Huayi tu), see the still seminal study by Chavannes (1903, large-scale transcriptions of the maps are folded between pp. 18 and 19, first the Yuji tu, then the Huayi tu), see also Needham and Wang Ling (1959: 547–549), Yee (1994: 46–48). Copies of rubbings of these maps are found in the majority of survey studies of the history of Chinese geography and cartography by Chinese scholars, e.g., Cao Wanru et al. (1999 [repr. 1990], the Yuji tu—plates 54– 56, photograph of the stone, rubbing, and transcription, respectively, the Huayi tuʊplates 60–62). Other early examples are the Yugong jiuzhou qiangjie tu છಥ ڠᖅቹ (Map of boundaries of the Nine Provinces, according to the “Yugong”) and the Yu dao shanchuan zhi tu છᖄ՞՟հቹ (Map of Yu’s delineating [itineraries through] mountains and rivers) from the Liujing tu քᆖቹ (Maps related to the Six Classics) set of maps engraved on stone in 1229. For this set of maps, see Cao Wanru et al. (1999 [repr. 1990]), the rubbings of the maps are shown on plates 89–92, the stele on plate 93, the two maps are found on plates 89 and 90, respectively. For a study of these maps, see Wang Qianjin (1993: 83–90, the copies of rubbings from the atlas by Cao Wanru et al. are reproduced on p. 88). Many later examples of maps related to Yu are found in the comprehensive series of atlases by Cao Wanru et al. (1999 [repr. 1990], 1995 [repr. 1994], 1997); see also Yan Ping et al. (1998), Chen Cheng-siang (Chen Zhengxiang 1979). 32 Chavannes 1903: 240–242, Needham and Wang Ling 1959: 534–536. 33 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2003a: 36–38. 34 Wang Yizhong 1934, He Cijun 1934, Wang Yong 1998 [repr. 1938]: 16–35. 35 E.g., a study of the history of Chinese geography and cartography by Needham
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The only scholar, to my knowledge, who has ever questioned this assumption is Michael Lackner.36 He has suggested that these maps might have been not simply of a purely geographical nature, but could have also possessed philosophical features in the sense of the attribution of corresponding “meanings” to certain “positions”. In other words, though he questions the purely geographical nature of these maps, he too does not doubt that maps or rather some sort of schemes existed.
Tracing the myth of the “lost” maps in the commentarial tradition At the first sight, the suggestion that maps originally existed seems to be highly plausible. Indeed, apart from the content of the SHJ, which makes one immediately think of a map, it is prompted by Chinese historiographical and commentarial traditions. Moreover, it has received some supporting evidence from recent archeological discoveries. 1) The dynastic histories often mention maps no longer extant, and report a massive loss of ancient maps collected in the Qin (221– 207 BC) and Han official archives after the fall of the Han empire. 37 These references were impressively confirmed by the recent finds of Qin and Han maps, giving impetus to a reconsideration of the loss of ancient maps, including those of the SHJ. For example, Cordell D. K. Yee in his survey of the history of Chinese cartography notes that the Qin and Han maps are all local maps, and that maps of the empire mentioned in contemporaneous and later sources did not survive from this time.38 He, then, no longer questions their existence, as Edouard Chavannes did. 2) The SHJ has long been associated with “graphic representations” (tu ቹ). Several series of tu related to the SHJ have survived from the Ming and Qing dynasties. All of them are “pictures” of creatures described in the text. Yet, since “map” and “picture” both belong to the class of “graphic representations”, formally Bi Yuan was keeping to the letter (or it would be more precise to say to the ——— and Wang Ling (1959: 503), a study of medical knowledge in the SHJ by Schiffeler (1980: 43), a study of its illustrations by Fracasso (1988a: 93). 36 Lackner 1990: 139. 37 Chavannes 1903: 240–242, Needham and Wang Ling 1959: 534–536, Reiter 1990: 308. 38 Yee 1994: 46.
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character) of the commentarial tradition of the SHJ. However, according to the earliest available piece of scholarship related to the SHJ—the “Indications” (biao ।) by its editor Liu Xin Ꮵ✛ (ca. 46 BC–AD 23)—its origins are clearly derived from the “written notes”(ji1 ધ) made during the “world-ordering” travels of the mythical emperor Yu છ.39 Whether the “indications” contains an allusion to any sort of graphic representations related to the SHJ is a matter of discussion, but none is mentioned here directly.40 A similar version of the SHJ’s origins is found in two other texts of a slightly later date, the Lunheng ᓵ ᘝ (Making Statements and Balancing [them]) by Wang Chong ޫ( ךAD 27–ca. 100) and the Wu Yue Chunqiu ܦ။ਞટ (Springs and Autumns of Wu and Yue [Kingdoms]) attributed to Zhao Ye ᎓ᖢ (mid. 1st century AD).41 In all these texts the “written notes” are attributed to Yu’s assistants (whose names and number vary slightly between the texts), who are reported as making these notes simultaneously with Yu’s “world-ordering” actions. The association of the SHJ with graphic representations was made somewhat later, most likely first by Zuo Si ؐ৸ (ca. 3rd century AD), 42 who made a link between this text and the Xia Cauldrons (ding ቓ) where “beings and things” (wu ढ) were “figuratively represented” (xiang ွ), as described in the Zuozhuan ؐႚ (Zuo Narrative, ca. 4th century BC?), in the passage dated as the 3rd year of Xuan Gong ֆ (605 BC). These figurative images of “beings and things” in their turn were fashioned after “graphically represented” (tu) “beings and things” sent from “far-away lands” (yuanfang ֱ). Since this passage has long attracted great interest from sinologists,43 I do not provide a detailed analysis of it here. I would only like to stress that, according to the context of this passage, the represented ——— 39 Shanhaijing jianshu, ed., “Xulu” ඖᙕ, 1a–3b; Eitel, tr. 1888: 330–348, Cheng Hsiao-Chieh et al. 1985: 383–384, Campany 1996: 134–136. 40 For the passage that might contain indications to some “visual representations”, see Fracasso (1988a: 94). 41 In these two texts the “written notes” are signified by the character ji ಖ. 42 Wenxuan ֮ᙇ, SBBY ed., 5/6b, compiled by Xiao Tong ᘕอ (501–531). 43 Legge, tr. 1872: 292–293, Couvreur, tr. 1951 [repr. 1914]: 574–577, Watson, tr. 1989: 81–83. For its analysis (in many cases comprising a translation), see Chavannes (1903: 236–237), Kiang Chao-yuan (1937: 130–134), Wang Yong (1998 [repr. 1938]: 16–21), Needham and Wang Ling (1959: 503–504), Seidel (1983: 320– 321), Harper (1985: 479), Fracasso (1988a: 93–94, 1988b: 93), Wu Hung (1992 [repr. 1989]: 92–96, 1995: 1–16), Sterckx (1996: 18), Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996: 496–502), Campany (1996: 102–104), Strassberg (2002: 4–5). The SHJ is not mentioned in this passage, or elsewhere in the Zuozhuan.
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“beings and things” are local spirits.44 Landscape features mentioned in the passage (“rivers and marshes, mountains and forests”—chuan ze shan lin ՟ᖻ՞ࣥ) certainly do not belong to the “beings and things”. Consequently, “graphically representing” here means making pictures, sketches or diagrams of spirits. As a possible example of such pictures of spirits one can take those drawn on the Chu Silk Manuscript (Chu boshu ᄑࢇ, ca. 3rd century BC, see Fig. 12a).45 It should be taken into consideration, however, that drawings of such images depend heavily on the medium used (silk). The style of figurative representations and ornament on ancient Chinese bronze vessels implies schematic or diagrammatic representations of spirits (somewhat similar to those one can find in the “Daoist Treasury”— Daozang ሐፔ). In any case, as pointed out by Edouard Chavannes, “Il n’est donc aucunement question ici de cartes géographiques”.46 A whole series of “graphic representations” of creatures described in the SHJ existed about the time of Zuo Si, or appeared shortly after. They are the subject of the collection of “appraisals of graphic representations” (tuzan ቹᨬ) appended by Guo Pu ພᗖ (276–324) to his edition of the text. They were also found in a now lost similar work (tuhua zan ቹᨬ) by Zhang Jun ്ទ (301–346), the title of which is especially noteworthy because of the distinction drawn between tu (“pictures, diagrams….”) and hua (exclusively “pictures”, reminiscent of the “drawing pictures” of spirits mentioned in the Hanfeizi ឌॺ, philosophical treatise of the late 3rd century BC).47 None of these “graphic representations” have survived. The earliest extant “graphic representations” related to the SHJ date from the Ming dynasty. These “graphic representations” and those found in Qing editions of the text are all pictures.48 Although these late illustrations give some idea of how the pictures commented on by Guo Pu may have looked, one should keep in mind that the latter may have been considerably or even completely different, considering the profound cultural changes that occurred between the time of Guo Pu and the Ming dynasty, in particular changes in the (re)production of texts after the invention of block-printing. ——— 44 This key aspect of this passage is pointed out by Harper (1985: 479). 45 This dating is proposed in Harper (1999: 845).The Chu Silk Manuscript and its
typological parallels with the SHJ will be discussed below. 46 Chavannes 1903: 237. 47 Hanfeizi jijie ឌॺႃᇞ, Zhuzi jicheng 壆ႃ ګed., p. 202, Liao, tr. 1959: 40. 48 For an account of lost and extant pictures of the SHJ, see Fracasso (1988a: 94– 96).
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Now let us take a closer look at the supposition by Bi Yuan. At the beginning of his preface, he outlines the step-by-step formation of the text in connection with the “graphic representations”. 49 He distinguishes the following stages: 1° The SHJ originates from what was “graphically represented” on the Cauldrons cast by Emperor Yu, and described in the passage found in the Zuozhuan. Bi Yuan concludes from this text that the “graphically represented” items included “famous mountains and rivers of the country” (guo ming shan chuan ഏټ՞՟) and “spirits and divinities, strange and amazing [matters]” (shen ling qi guai ḏᨋ࡛ࢡ). In other words, according to Bi Yuan, the original “graphic representations” on the Cauldrons are mostly pictorial images with some textual interpolations. 2° The Cauldrons disappeared during the Qin dynasty. People living prior to this event seem to have been able to “elucidate” (shuo ᎅ) these “graphic representations” and wrote down their elucidations on bamboo slips. This is how the version of 13 pian ᒧ (bound rolls of bamboo slips) mentioned in the Qilüe Ԯฃ (Seven Outlines) by Liu Xiang Ꮵ( ٻ77–6 BC) (edited by his son, Liu Xin, and incorporated into the bibliographical treatise (“Yiwen zhi” ᢌ ֮ )ݳof the Hanshu ዧ (History of the [Former] Han [Dynasty]) appeared. 3° Liu Xin took this text and added five more chapters (pian) to it, making a total of 18 pian. (Bi Yuan mentions Liu Xiang and not Liu Xin with regard to the Qilüe. This enables him to avoid the discrepancy between the 13 pian in the bibliographical treatise of the Hanshu and the 18 pian in Liu Xin’s edition.) Liu Xin had at his disposal Han “graphic representations” (apparently pictures), quite different from the original “graphic representations” on the Nine Cauldrons. He looked at the Han “graphic representations” while writing his additional chapters to the SHJ. The “appraisals” by Guo Pu and Zhang Jun refer to these pictures. After this general outline Bi Yuan makes a statement concerning the maps. He says “… the 34 pian [version] of the WZSJ of the SHJ in antiquity [was] “graphic representation(s)” of lands and earth” (Shanhaijing Wuzang shanjing sanshisi pian, gu zhe tu1di zhi tu ՞௧ ᆖնፔ՞ᆖԿԼᒧΔृײՒچհቹ). “Graphic representation of ——— 49 Bi Yuan 1977: 1.
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lands and earth” (tu1di zhi tu Ւچհቹ) is a longer and more elegant variation of “terrestrial graphic representation” (ditu چቹ, he mentions this simplified variation further in his “Preface”) at the time of Bi Yuan, standing for a geographical map. In other words, the WZSJ in its earliest version on the “bound rolls of bamboo slips” was, according to Bi Yuan, a map (or maps). This key statement became the starting point for further reflections on maps in relation to the SHJ by Bi Yuan himself and his followers. Bi Yuan first compares WZSJ map(s) to those referred to in the Zhouli and the philosophical treatise Guanzi ጥ (compiled about the end of the 1st c. BC).50 Then he meticulously describes the traces of the map(s) in the extant form of the WZSJ found in the accounts of mountains, each bearing the common title jing ᆖ. (I shall discuss this characteristic of the textual structure of the WZSJ below). He regards these accounts as the result of the later transformation of map(s) into text (shu ). He also points out that all these accounts being of the jing category (lei ᣊ), assured the survival of the text until the present time. It should be noted that Bi Yuan’s derivation of the origins of the SHJ from the Cauldrons described in the Zuozhuan in many ways resembles that by Yang Shen ᄘშ (1488–1559).51 The latter, however, does not draw any conclusions about maps. When Bi Yuan uses a single character tu (“graphic representations”) he mostly means “picture”, and when he mentions maps he adds the adjective “terrestrial”. When establishing his link between the Cauldrons and the maps Bi Yuan may have taken into consideration the idea that the Nine Cauldrons represented the “Nine Provinces” (jiuzhou )ڠ. According to this idea the set of Cauldrons was arranged in a regular cardinallyoriented fashion. Each Cauldron corresponded to a square of the 3x3 grid, and hence formed a sort of map of the “Nine Provinces”. Such an arrangement of the Cauldrons, as well as their direct relation to the “Nine Provinces”, is, however, nowhere in evidence in the passage from the Zuozhuan. The idea became explicit much later, in relation to the Nine Cauldrons re-cast in 696 or 697 for Empress Wu ࣳ ———
50 This point in Bi Yuan’s speculations was elaborated on in the discussion of the relation between the so-called “Maps for mastering tribute” (Zhigong tu ಥቹ) and the WZSJ map, see Wang Yizhong (1934), He Cijun (1934), Wang Yong (1998 [repr. 1938]: 21–25). 51 This similarity is pointed out by Wang Yong, who first cites Yang Shen and then analyses the outline of the textual formation of the SHJ by Bi Yuan; see Wang Yong (1998 [repr. 1938]: 16–21).
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(r. 684–704) of the Tang dynasty, which were said to be modelled on the ancient Cauldrons.52 Having described the stages of the evolution of the textual division of the SHJ, from the 34 “bound rolls of bamboo slips” reconstructed by himself to the 18 “rolls” mentioned in the edition by Liu Xin (to be discussed below), Bi Yuan once again returns back to the “graphic representations”.53 In particular, he says that the “graphic representations” (pictures) “elucidated” (shuo) in the “Outside the Seas” and “Inside the Seas” sections of the 13 “bound rolls of bamboo slips” edition are those that were found on Emperor Yu’s Cauldrons. “Graphic representations” (pictures) “elucidated” in the last 5 chapters of the text (the “Great Wilderness” and the last chapter of “Inside the Seas”) date from the Han dynasty. He further concludes that the pictures were the major reason for classifying the SHJ under the “Xingfa” ݮऄ (Methods of forms) subsection of the Qilüe bibliography, although no explicit references to “graphic representations” are found in the outline of this section.54 In sum, Bi Yuan distinguishes three types of “graphic representations” related to the SHJ: I. Original “graphic representations” found on Emperor Yu’s Cauldrons. I.a Some of these original “graphic representations” generated secondary “graphic representations”—the WZSJ map(s). At the same time elucidations (shuo) of the original “graphic representations” found on the Cauldrons (apparently the pictorial images among them) constituted “Outside the Seas” and the first four chapters of “Inside the Seas”. These map(s) and elucidations became the early version of the text on the “bound rolls of bamboo slips”. II. Han “graphic representations”—pictures the elucidation of which constituted the last 5 chapters of the text composed by Liu Xin. These are the pictures “appraised” by Guo Pu and Zhang Jun. III. Later “graphic representations”—pictures made from the Liang dynasty (502–557) onward. ———
52 On these Cauldrons, see Fracasso (1988b: esp. 92–93). 53 Bi Yuan (1977: 7), the conclusion to the Shanhaijing gujin ben pianmu kao ՞
௧ᆖײվءᒧ( ەؾExploration on the table of contents of the ancient and modern editions of the SHJ). 54 Hanshu 1975: 1774–1775.
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This outline of the SHJ’s formation is, in effect, an attempt to unify the references to the text accumulated in traditional sources and scholarship into a coherent sequence, and such attempts can rarely succeed without some “cheating”. In particular, Bi Yuan placed first the association of the text with the Nine Cauldrons, one that was established rather late and is not mentioned by Liu Xin (nor is the SHJ mentioned in the Zuozhuan). This association, however, somehow matched Liu Xin’s derivation of the SHJ from the time of Emperor Yu. Bi Yuan avoided referring to the “written notes” (ji1) made during Yu’s travels considered by Liu Xin as a sort of proto-text, but pointed out his rather ambiguous allusion to visual representations. He also never mentions the attitude towards this text as being unreliable in early imperial historiography.55 Therefore, the initial point of his argumentation is the most doubtful. This, however, does not mean that the link between the SHJ and the passage from the Zuozhuan is entirely groundless. On the contrary, they share the highly important feature that they both focus on the local spirits. The descriptions of spirits in the SHJ are rather “picture-like”. As a rule, they are described as hybrids of different animals, or an animal and a human being,56 according to the “animal/human body – animal head/human face or head” model, for instance, “bird’s body – dragon’s head” (niaoshen longshou ຺ߪᚊଈ), “dragon’s body – human face” (longshen renmian ᚊߪԳ૿) in the first and the third itinerary of the “Southern Mountains” (S1 and S2), respectively (see Fig. 11a and complementary Fig. 11b).57 If further detail is given, it too mostly concerns constituent elements of the creature’s shape (e.g., horns, tail, legs, etc.). Colour with one exception is never mentioned. Such descriptions seem to be addressed to a “reader” who is able to compose an image of the creature (at least in his mind) from constituent elements of some more or less “standard” pictures of animals and people. One could also suggest that these descriptions accompanied original pictures or substituted for these pictures. The suggestion that the SHJ originally incorporated pictures is elaborated by Hwang ———
55 Bi Yuan 1977: 1. 56 For hybrids, “anomaly” animals and daemons in the ancient Chinese culture,
see Loewe (1994 [repr. 1978]: 38–54), Sterckx (1996, 1998, 2002). 57 I discuss in detail the system of guardian spirits and its representation in Fig. 11a in Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (2003a: 53–59, 2003b: 159–164). Here I provide Fig. 11b to facilitate its comprehension.
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Ming-Chorng with respect to parts of the Haijing. 58 The Chu Silk Manuscript combining pictures of spirits and elucidations of these pictures serves as important support in favour of this suggestion. Further support may be seen in the totals of characters in the SHJ, which show that the Guo Pu edition of the WZSJ ended up more than 5000 characters longer (ca. 25%) than the Liu Xin edition. Such an increase in the textual body might have resulted from having pictures substituted by text. All these arguments, plausible as they may seem, are, however, outweighed by the restrictions imposed on making illustrations by the media on which the texts were written. Incorporating a series of illustrations into the textual body seems rather difficult to effect on bamboo slips, which were the first medium used for writing down the SHJ.59 Indeed, as one can see from a representative number of bamboo slips from archeological finds, only one example of making an illustration on bamboo slips has been discovered so far, the so-called “human being character” (renzi Գ), a diagram incorporated into the divinatory tables from Shuihudi (late 3rd c. BC). 60 This rough sketch of a human body is hardly comparable to the sophisticated pictures found in the ancient silk manuscripts. The suggestion that the SHJ contained pictures, then, can only be considered for its versions written on silk. These versions are derived from those on bamboo slips, and the earliest seems to be that of 18 juan (silk scrolls) by Guo Pu. The “appraisals” of pictures by Guo Pu confirm that pictures did indeed exist at the time he was editing the text. Yet, since his “appraisals” constitute an appendix to the main text, the pictures then most likely existed separately from the text, rather than being incorporated into it. These illustrations seem to appear as the result of reflections on what is written in the text, rather then having served as an inspiration for its composition.
———
58 See Hwang Ming-Chorng 1996: 506–509. 59 Liu Xin in his “Indications” (biao) reports having transformed the original 32
“bound rolls of bamboo slips” (pian) into 18. An edition of 13 pian is registered in the bibliographical chapter of the Hanshu (Hanshu 1975: 1774). The importance of this writing medium in the case of the SHJ will be discussed below. 60 Li Ling 2000 [rev. of 1993]: 204, 206.
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II. THE TEXTUAL BODY OF THE SHANHAI JING AS A MAP AND SOME SIMILAR CASES
Now let us take a closer look at how the textual body of the SHJ is organised, comparing its organisation with other typologically similar cases, and with respect to structural aspects of the medium on which it was originally written (bound rolls of bamboo slips).
The general textual layout of the Shanhai jing As was briefly mentioned above in the context of the discussion of the “global” scheme of the SHJ, its textual structure is remarkably regular and consistent. This characteristic applies, in the first place, to the arrangement of its chapters and sub-chapters (see Table 1). The principle underlying their arrangement is primarily “spatial”, and is stated in a clear, straightforward and consistent way in the titles of chapters and sub-chapters. Indeed, each chapter and sub-chapter is given a title that refers it to a section of a particular terrestrial zone, and each of these sections is oriented to the cardinal directions. In sum, the textual structure of the SHJ meticulously emulates an orderly spatial scheme, and the titles of chapters and sub-chapters serve as indicators to “positions” attributed to the constituent elements of this scheme (e.g., “Itineraries of Eastern Mountains” – Dongshan jing ࣟ՞ᆖ). Moreover, the titles of chapters of the “Itineraries of Seas” are characterised by a rather striking feature, one that seems to have been completely overlooked in the numerous translations of this text. These titles simply indicate the cardinally-oriented placement of the corresponding chapters. For instance, the Haiwai xijing ௧؆۫ᆖ literally means the “Western Itinerary of Outside the Seas”, rather than the “Classic/Book of Western Outside the Seas”, the sense it is attributed with in the majority of translations. Although the textual spatiality of the SHJ has been given little consideration in most studies and translations, the outlines of a global scheme derived from this text show, in effect, a spatial placement of its chapters. The global scheme becomes an outline of the general textual structure of the SHJ when the titles of its chapters are used as markers of the scheme’s sections. For instance, good illustrations of such spatial textual layouts are provided by the reconstructions by John Major, Riccardo Fracasso and Suh Kyung Ho discussed above
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(see Fig. 1, 3, and 5, respectively). These authors, however, do not seem to recognise the importance of this fact, being primarily interested in the “global” scheme it maps. The cardinally-oriented layouts of chapters of the SHJ can be compared to the “Youguan” ؔࡴ chapter of the philosophical treatise Guanzi. The “Youguan” is divided into textual sections that have explicit references to the arrangement of these sections with respect to the four cardinal directions and the centre. These references given at the end of the textual sections served as a basis for the reconstruction of its original spatial layout by Guo Moruo ພःૉ and Wen Yiduo ፊԫ( ڍsee Fig. 6 in the article by Marc Kalinowski in this volume and Fig. 9a in this paper).61 Slightly differing reconstructions were further proposed by Wang Meng-o ׆ኄᧉ, Li Ling and Hwang Ming-Chorng (see Fig. 9b,c,d, respectively). All these scholars accept the ten-fold cardinally-oriented framework of the initial reconstruction, though they propose slightly differing arrangements of its ten constituent elements.62 The reconstructed textual layout is considered to be ground plan of the Dark Palace (Xuangong tu خ୰ቹ). The title of the chapter originally contained the characters xuangong خ୰ that are supposed to have been mistakenly replaced by similarly looking characters youguan ؔࡴ, so the chapter should be entitled the “Dark Palace”. A similar principle of textual tailoring—with respect to a set of “positions” oriented to the cardinal directions—is present in the opening section of the “Mingtang wei” ࣔഘ( ۯPositions in the Luminous Hall) chapter of the Liji ៖ಖ (Records on Rituals [compiled maybe as late as the 1st century AD]). The reconstruction of its spatial layout delineates a plan of the Luminous Hall (Mingtang ࣔഘ), the counterpart of the Dark Palace.63 The reconstructed layout is strikingly simi———
61 See the elucidations of this reconstruction and its analysis by Rickett (1985: 148–192). I survey a series of spatially laid out texts that have survived from ancient China and some reconstructions in Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (2005b). 62 For a critical survey of proposed layouts, followed by his own reconstruction, see Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996: 85–91, fig. 2.37, 2.38 and 2.39 on pp. 727, 728, 729, respectively), see also Li Ling (2000 [rev. of 1993]: 136–137). 63 A reconstruction of textual layout of the opening section of the Mingtang wei was made by Blinova (1988, 1989). I proposed a different layout of textual passages of the Mingtang wei at the 9th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Singapore, 23–27.08.1999. For a scheme of “positions”, according to the “Mingtang wei”, see Fig. 4 in Wu Hung, this volume. For other references to the Mingtang in Chinese texts and its role as a cosmographic conception, see Maspero (1948–1951), Soothill (1951: 84–96), Sickman and Soper (1956: 212), Bilsky (1975: 290–299, 324–330), Henderson (1984: 59–87, 1994: 212–216), Allan (1991: 92), Wu Hung (1995: 176–187, this volume), Shatzman Steinhardt (1999 [repr. 1990],:
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lar to that found on the so-called Mausoleum Plan (Zhaoyu tu ٢ ቹ, the late 4th century BC) engraved on a bronze plate.64 The layout of the Wuzang shanjing Parts and sections of the SHJ, as one can see from reconstructions by Suh Kyong Ho and Li Ling (Figs. 6 and 5, respectively) for instance, have a certain structural autonomy, and can be regarded as independent textual and spatial structures.65 My exploration of the SHJ is primarily concerned with the spatial organisation conveyed by the first core part of the text, the WZSJ. Discussion of its structure in sinological literature is, as a rule, limited by the general quinary framework of its division into five chapters oriented with respect to the cardinal points and the centre. The ramification of the 5 cardinally-oriented chapters of the WZSJ into 26 sub-chapters is more often than not overlooked, despite the fact that the sub-chapters are also distinguished according to the spatial principle. Indeed, each subchapter has a title that corresponds to the cardinal orientation of the chapter it belongs to, and, beginning from the second sub-chapter, its ordinal number in the chapter (see Table 1). A sub-chapter corresponds to an itinerary marked by mountains. The titles then give indications as to how the itineraries and also the sub-chapters are distributed within the quinary frame emulated by the 5 cardinally-oriented chapters. ——— 15–16), Lewis (2006: 260–273) and the comprehensive study by Hwang MingChorng (1996). 64 For a reproduction of the Mausoleum Plan, see Fig. 8 in Wu Hung, this volume. For a large-scale photograph of the Mausoleum Plan bronze plan, and a copy of its characters and transcription, see Cao Wanru et al. (1999 [repr. 1990], figures 1, 2 and 3, respectively). For examinations of the Mausoleum Plan, see Fu Xinian (1980), Yee (1994: 36–37). A meticulous exploration of the Zhaoyu tu and translation of its textual passages, with helpful schemes aimed at highlighting the structure of the designed plan and the reading order of the incorporated text are provided in a M.A. thesis by Petra Klose (1984: esp. 23–40), partially published in Klose (1985: 13ff). I would like to express my thanks to Alexander Mayer who called my attention to this work. For detailed description of the excavations, see Hebei sheng wenwu yanjiusuo/The Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics (1995). See also Behr, this volume. 65 For explorations of the WZSJ, Hai jing and the general structure of the SHJ, see Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (1995: 71–78, 78–81, 81–84, respectively). Some parts of the SHJ, in particular, “Inside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness” are explored as independent texts by Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996: 494–509 and 537–677, respectively).
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One of the rare scholars to have considered the arrangement of the 26 itineraries is Wang Chengzu. 66 Similarly to the outlines of the “global” scheme of the SHJ, the spatial sections of which are marked by chapter titles in Chinese, Wang Chengzu supplies each itinerary with the title of the corresponding sub-chapter. His reconstruction, therefore, can also be regarded as a spatial layout of the sub-chapters, but he does not seem to give much importance to this fact. The reconstruction by Wang Chengzu is, however, aimed at deriving a physical map of the described region from the arrangement of itineraries. For this purpose his arrangement is superimposed on a simplified physical map of the Yellow and Yangzi river basins, and the general quinary framework of the system of itineraries is present only in an implicit way—the itineraries form more or less distinct groups corresponding to their cardinally-oriented chapters. Relying to a considerable extent on the reconstruction by Wang Chengzu, I proposed an outline of the system of itineraries with respect to the quinary framework that highlights its attributes of a “global” scheme or cosmogram.67 In particular, the scheme shows positions of the itineraries in their sections, their dominant directions, and also their ordinal numbers within their section and with respect to the entire set of the itineraries. Now, if we replace the symbols of the itineraries in the proposed scheme— numbered arrows—by the titles of the corresponding sub-chapters, we achieve an outline of the spatial layout of these sub-chapters (see Fig. 10), typologically similar to the outlines of the layout of the “Youguan” by Wang Meng-o, Li Ling and Hwang Ming-Chorng. The itineraries are delineated with respect to the local guardian spirits to which they submit. As a result, an itinerary is comprised of mountains that are in the charge of spirits of the same appearance and requiring similar sacrifices. The system of itineraries, therefore, maps a cardinally-oriented dispersion of sacred powers (local spirits) over terrestrial space. A good visual image of this dispersion provides a representation of the itineraries/sub-chapters according to the appearance of their spirits. The appearance of the spirits is a convenient characteristic for analysis, as it is given in the majority of cases (it is missing in 7 ———
66 See footnote 23. 67 I first proposed such an arrangement of the itineraries in Dorofeeva-Lichtmann
(1995, Fig. 9 on p. 100 elucidated on pp. 71–78) and then a slightly corrected version in Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (2003a, Fig. 2.7 on p. 50 elucidated on pp. 47–53, 2003b, Fig. 4 on p. 208 elucidated on pp. 153–159). The system of itineraries is also represented in Fig. 10 of this paper.
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routes out of a total of 26) and in a uniform way—as hybrids of different animals, or an animal and a human being (see Fig. 11a and Fig. 11b). 68 If we now imagine pictures of spirits incorporated into the body of the sub-chapters (= descriptions of the itineraries) in their spatial layout shown on Fig. 10, the resulting cardinally-oriented layout of textual parts and pictures immediately reminds us of the famous Chu Silk Manuscript (see Fig. 12a).
The layout of the Chu Silk Manuscript The Chu Silk Manuscript, excavated in 1942, still enjoys considerable scholarly interest. 69 One of the reasons for this interest is the peculiar spatial layout of the manuscript.70 Since this layout has striking structural parallels with the reconstructed layout of the WZSJ, it deserves to be discussed in some detail here. At a closer look at the structure of the Chu Silk manuscript suggests that it may have originated from a layout of bound rolls/sets of bamboo slips. The central part of the manuscript is occupied by two relatively long textual sections71 placed upside down with respect to each other. The length of the columns in both of these sections conforms to the numbers of characters often found on bamboo slips. From this point of view the layout of characters in these sections strongly resembles two bound rolls/sets of bamboo slips placed upside down in relation to each other. The central textual sections are framed by pictures and associated textual passages.72 The pictures show twelve divinities or spirits de———
68 See footnote 54. 69 For seminal studies of the Chu Silk Manuscript, see Barnard (1972, 1973),
Loewe (1994 [repr. 1978]: 38–54, esp. 42–50), Jao Tsung-i (Rao Zongyi) and Zeng Xiantong (1985), Li Ling (1985), Li Xueqin (1994: 37–91). For the main problems raised in the studies of the Chu Silk Manuscript, see the “Discussion” in Lawton, ed. (1991: 176–183). For a survey of studies of the manuscript followed by its transcription, see Li Ling (2000 [rev. of 1993]: 178–196). 70 I discuss the layout of the Chu Silk Manuscript in more detail in DorofeevaLichtmann (2005b: 13–23). 71 The shorter of these two central textual sections contains eight columns of thirty-six characters, the longer section thirteen columns of thirty-four characters, see the transcription of the Chu Silk Manuscript by Li Ling (reproduced on Fig. 12c) supplied with numbers of characters in rows and columns (cf. transcription by Barnard 1972: 10). In both cases the last columns are not filled up completely. The textual sections include 263 and 412 characters, respectively. They are referred to as texts A and B by Noel Barnard, and vice versa by Li Ling. 72 These passages are referred to in scholarly literature as texts C.
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picted with their heads adjacent to the central textual sections.73 Each spirit is supplied with a name and a concise definition of its function. These are given in three characters and placed at the level of the spirit’s head. Additional elucidations appended for each spirit are placed closer to the border of the manuscript. These elucidations consist of two to four short columns differing slightly in their length (full columns contain eight to thirteen characters). The framing pictures and associated textual passages form four groups—three at each side of the manuscript. The passages within a group are written along the side of the manuscript and in the same direction. All together they form a clockwise sequence. The total number of characters in columns along each side of the manuscript (in a group of framing passages) roughly conforms to the length of the columns in the central sections, and, hence, to the numbers of characters often found on a bamboo slip.74 Such a sophisticated placement of text on a silk scroll required much skill and a good eye for operating with textual passages. Although almost no other examples of similar textual arrangements on silk from the second half of the 1st millennium BC have been found so far, it may be that such an elaborate arrangement represented a developed practice of producing non-linear textual arrangements rather than being an exceptional case.75 Elsewhere, I have advanced a supposition that the high transpositional potential of texts written on bamboo slips and wooden tablets might have served as an important favourable factor for producing non-linear textual structures. 76 Indeed, the Chu Silk Manuscript is constituted of few parts, which, as just mentioned, correspond well to the format provided by these writing media. It seems at least possible, then, to suggest that the Chu Silk Manuscript might have been inspired by or originated from a nonlinear textual arrangement composed of six bound sets of bamboo ———
73 For exploration of the appearance and functions of these spirits, see Barnard 1988, Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996: 72–85). 74 Somewhat similar combinations of pictures and textual passages elucidating them are also found on a silk manuscript from Mawangdui that deals with similar matters—astronomy, astrology and divination (Tianwen qixiang zazhan ֚֮ွᠧ )discussed by Harper, this volume. Here all the combinations of pictures (showing creatures and astronomical symbols) and accompanying textual passages are arranged into strips. This arrangement resembles the strip-like layout of text on bamboo slips mentioned above, especially the “almanac” from Shuihudi with incorporated pictures (the renzi diagram, see Li Ling (2000 [rev. of 1993]: 206). 75 This supposition, however, can only be confirmed by new finds of similar texts. 76 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2005b: 12–13.
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slips (or six wooden tablets)—two in the centre placed upside down with respect to each other, framed by four bound sets or tablets with a strip–like textual layout, and, probably, incorporating pictures. The spirits depicted on the manuscript represent a sort of zodiacal cycle (see Fig. 12d). Each spirit represents a month, and the accompanying textual passages elucidate the permitted or forbidden activities during the respective month. The spirits are arranged into groups of three—three spirits at each side of the frame. The spirit to the left on each side, according to the accompanying elucidation, “controls” (si )one of the four seasons. This spirit corresponds to the last month of a season. Therefore, a side of the manuscript comprising three spirits/months represents a season. Since the seasons correlate with the four cardinal points, the arrangement of spirits and, consequently, the entire layout of the manuscript, are then implicitly cardinally-oriented. The arrangement of the twelve pictures of spirits is complemented by pictures of four trees, which, in contrast to the former, are not accompanied by textual passages. These four pictures are placed at the corners of the cardinally-oriented frame as “separators” between the seasons and markers of the semi-cardinal directions.77 The set of pictures delineates a tempo-spatial scheme—correlated structuring of time and space. The main text placed in the centre of the manuscript also deals with calendrical matters—the longer section concerns the year, the shorter the four seasons—considered in an astrological and cosmological context. When the shorter of the central textual sections is placed head up in front of the “user” it is cardinally-oriented in such a way that its top corresponds to the south. Taking into consideration the prominent southern orientation of ancient Chinese divinatory schemes, spatial models and maps, this seems to be the probable initial position of the manuscript.78 ———
77 The symbolism of the four trees in Chinese cosmology is extensively discussed by Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996: 328–402). For the four trees depicted on the Chu Silk Manuscript, see ibid: 330–334. 78 A good example of a TLV or “cord-hook” scheme oriented to the south is found on the Yinwan wooden tablet (face B), see Fig. 13 in Kalinowski, this volume; see also a “cord-hook” diagram on his Fig 2. For discussion of the “cord-hook” pattern, see Kalinowski (1998–1999), also Harper, this volume. A list of other examples of southern orientation is provided by Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996: 67–71) in his discussion of the reading order of the Chu Silk Manuscript. He also provides some other convincing reasons in favour of such an initial position of the text. Yet, Li Ling, as one can see from his transcription of the text reproduced on Fig. 12c, nevertheless proposes to start the reading of the manuscript from the opposite position—beginning from the longer of the central sections placed head up in front of the “user”. The top
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Whichever reading order of the manuscript one accepts, reading of the other central section of the text and the framing passages, which constitute a clockwise sequence, requires either rotating the manuscript or a circular movement around it by its “user”. The pictures of spirits are also designed in such a way—with the heads adjacent to the centre—that their examination, similar to reading the related textual passages, also requires rotating the manuscript or a circular movement by its “user”. In this respect, the text strongly resembles the rotating astronomical/astrological instruments known as shi ڤ, divination boards or cosmographs.79 Moreover, it is, in fact, designed as just such an instrument, as has been pointed out by Li Ling.80 Shi cosmographs consist of a square board representing the Earth with a round rotating board placed on top representing the Heaven,81 both boards supplied with several sets of degree markers. The degree markers indicate orientation to the cardinal and semi-cardinal directions, especially prominent on the lower, terrestrial part of the cosmograph. More specifically, the four cardinal points correspond to the centre of each side of the bottom board, the four semi-cardinal directions to its corners. The structure derived from the Chu Silk Manuscript is especially similar to one of the two types of cosmographs, the liuren ք֙ type, seen in Fig. 13 (for another type of cosmograph, the jiugong ୰ type, cf. Fig. 6 in Wu Hung, this volume). It has a set of twelve degrees on the bottom board in addition to the prominent cardinal and semi-cardinal directions, and the Northern Dipper on the upper rotating part. The place of the “heavenly” part on the Chu Silk Manuscript is occupied by the main text.82 The frame of ——— of the text in this case corresponds to the north. 79 The earliest of the discovered cosmographs date from the Former Han dynasty. For cosmographs, see Harper (1978–1979, 1999: 833–843), Loewe (1979: 75–80), Cullen (1980–1981), Field (1992), Li Ling (1991, 2000 [rev. of 1993]: 89–176), Major (1993: 39–43, 1999: 141–142), Li Ling and Cook (1999: 172), Allan (2003), Kalinowski (1998–1999, 2004; for critics of Allan’s paper, see footnote 58 on pp. 116–117), Lagerwey (2004), Pankenier (2004). 80 Li Ling 1991, 2000 [rev. of 1993]: 180, 190–191, Li Ling and Cook 1999: 172. 81 See footnote 12. 82 For a list of similarities between the cosmograph and the layout of the Chu Silk Manuscript, see Li Ling (2000 [rev. of 1993]: 190–191, five similarities are distinguished). In particular, he argues, that the central textual sections are placed at the position of the Northern Dipper or Taiyi (ibid: 190, § 5). A strong argument in favour of such suggestion is found in the preface to the Laozi zhigui ۔ਐូ by Zhuang Zun ๗ᙅ (83/88 BC–AD 1/6) where the similarities between the structure of a cosmograph and the textual structure of Laozi are discussed, see Röllicke (2005: 144–
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pictures corresponds to the bottom board. Li Ling calls the arrangement of text and pictures of the Chu Silk Manuscript a “pictorial cosmograph” (tushi ቹڤ, see Fig. 12b; see also his cosmograph-like representation of the pictures in Fig. 12d), which in Chinese is an inversion of shitu ڤቹ (“cosmograph design”).83 This elegant inversion plays with the broad meaning of the character tu, which designates varying types of graphic representations, and highlights the instrumental character of the Chu Silk Manuscript. This is something that is, however, given little consideration in sinological literature. As I have already noted above, taking into account how the text was used and what its original users were supposed to do with it is as important for understanding its meaning as a linguistically accurate translation of its content. Yet, scholars who are products of literary traditions where the majority of texts are meant for reading rarely raise these questions when dealing with ancient texts. They assume without much reflection that ancient texts are no different from contemporary texts in this respect. The major difficulty here is that there is no way one can actually see what the original readers of texts, or “users” as I would prefer to say, actually did with them. We can only look for traces of this use. In the case of the Chu Silk Manuscript we have a rare example of a text that bears the clear stamp of a certain operational function. This text is characterised by an attribute that demands a certain action while reading it—rotating the manuscript or a circular movement by the reader or user around it, or a combination of these actions. Although we do not know the reading order of the textual passages, or whether there was supposed to be a single definitive order at all, the result of these actions is quite obvious—the tailoring of time and space according to the model given in the textual layout. Since this tempo-spatial model is “controlled” by spirits, the space created based on this model is of a sacred nature. Creation of this sacred space then means establishing relationships and correspondences between parts of time-space and spirits. Seen from this perspective, the “pictorial cosmograph” is as much a tool to be used for tailoring space and time with respect to certain cosmological patterns as the cosmograph itself and other similar ——— 166).
83 The outline of the “pictorial cosmograph” tushu (Li Ling 2000 [rev. 1993]: fig. 21 on p.111) is part of Li Ling’s discussion of the “cosmograph design” shitu (ibid: 89–176).
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tools—divinatory schemes and “magic” mirrors. 84 The only difference between these pure instruments and the Chu Silk Manuscript is that the latter incorporates textual passages. This difference seems, however, to be something imposed by our ideas of a tool and a text on Chinese cultural tradition, rather than being characteristic of this tradition. This problem is closely related to the interrelationship between text and picture in the manuscript. The textual passages of the Chu Silk Manuscript are arranged in such a way that they form a single whole with the pictures. Nevertheless, as with studies of the inscriptions on oracle bones and bronzes, even the most up–to–date works on the Chu Silk Manuscript are not entirely free from an exclusively philological perspective centred on its textual parts, divorcing them from the pictures. For example, Jao Tsung-i 墌ࡲᙲ refers to the manuscript as “a text and diagram on matters related to astronomy”,85 as if the diagram and accompanying text were separate. Li Ling outlines the layout of the Chu Silk Manuscript comprising both text and pictures (Fig. 12b), but still provides separate representations of the textual parts (Fig. 12c) and the pictures (Fig. 12d), thus breaking up the cohesion of the representation as found on the manuscript. 86 Having recognised the structural importance of its textual parts, for instance, the placement of the two central sections at the position of the Big Dipper or Taiyi, he, nevertheless, considers that the major constituent element of the Chu Silk Manuscript are pictures and that text serves to comment on them.87 Hwang Ming-Chorng is more sensitive to the cohesion of the manuscript and the structural importance of its textual passages, but since his study is primarily focused on the spatial model conveyed by this text, he does not clearly articulate it.88 I would like to point out here that this represen———
84 Loewe (1979: 60–85), Li Ling (2000 [rev. of 1993]: 89–176), Kalinowski (1996; 1998–1999); for a survey of studies of “magic” mirrors and divinatory schemes and boards, see Lewis (2006: 273–284). 85 See the “Discussion” in Lawton (1991: 176). 86 The layouts of the textual parts and the pictures are even given from different angles. 87 Li Ling distinguishes two types of tushu ቹ (“graphical representation” – “writing”) relationship: 1) “graphic representation” and text are separate from each other; in this case “graphic representation” complements a text which plays the major role; 2) textual passages are incorporated into a “graphic representation”; here text comments on “graphic representation”, the latter playing the major role. Li Ling refers the Chu Silk Manuscript to the second type (Li Ling 2000 [rev. of 1993]: 190). This point of view is highlighted in singling out pictures for a cosmograph-like representation (Fig. 12d). 88 Especially in his discussion of the reading order of the Chu Silk Manuscript,
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tation is a single diagram that has pictorial and textual parts. In other words, the spatial textual layout of the Chu Silk Manuscript plays as important a role in the diagram as the pictures. As one can clearly see from the manuscript, using silk as a writing medium is one indication of a feature of “conservation” in Chinese written culture. Thus, a text written down on a piece of silk could not be transposed or transformed as easily as if it were on a bound roll of bamboo slips. Eventually, block-printed books provided a remarkably effective means for preserving and reproducing textual versions with the precision of carbon copies. It seems that the evolution of textual arrangement engendered by new writing media and multiple rewritings of texts gradually overshadowed possible network relationships between constituent elements of non-linear textual structures. The SHJ is often considered in relation to the Chu Silk Manuscript,89 particularly by comparing how the spirits are described in the SHJ and how they are depicted on the Chu Silk Manuscript. The Chu Silk Manuscript also contains a few references to landmarks connected to spirits and sacrifices90 in the same sense as one finds in the WZSJ. In this paper I would like to draw attention to the striking typological similarity between two interrelated aspects of these two texts: -
how space is mapped by the “pictorial cosmograph” and by the “spiritual landscape” derived from the WZSJ;
-
the layout of the Chu Silk Manuscript and the reconstructed layout of the textual body of the WZSJ.
Before pointing out the similarities between the “pictorial cosmograph” and the “spiritual landscape” of the WZSJ, I would first like to mention aspects in which they differ. The major difference is that the “pictorial cosmograph” is focused on temporal cycles, which implicitly correlate with cardinal orientation. The main text of the Chu Silk Manuscript, which, as just mentioned, occupies the place of the upper “heavenly” part of the cosmograph, deals mainly with celestial matters. In contrast, the SHJ in general and the scheme derived ——— see Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996: 67–71). 89 For some discussion of the texts in relation to each other, cf., for example, the studies of the SHJ by Suh Kyung Ho (1993) and Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996). 90 See the latest translation of the Chu Silk Manuscript by Li Ling and Cook (1999: 171–172), parts of the text labelled here as “Chapter I, section C, and the entire Chapter II”. No specific mountains are mentioned, only general references, e.g., “mountains and rivers” (shan chuan ՞՟).
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from the WZSJ in particular is focused on terrestrial space. There is, however, some evidence that this terrestrial space correlates with celestial space and temporal cycles.91 The similarities between the “pictorial cosmograph” and “spiritual landscape” of the WZSJ are as follows: -
representation of a regular cardinally-oriented structure of space;
-
the sacred nature of this space;
-
the instrumental character of the spatial representation.
I have discussed the “process-oriented” character of the system of itineraries found in the WZSJ elsewhere. 92 It is implied in the sequence of the itineraries, which provide an “algorithm” for assembling an orderly and balanced terrestrial organisation. Thus, first a circular tour is made around the four cardinally-oriented peripheral sections (beginning from the south to the west, then the north and the east), then a tour of the central section—first its northern part and then the southern, returning back to the initial point.93 Since the assembled space is tailored with respect to the local spirits, the sequence of itineraries provides an “algorithm” for creating a sacred space.
The Shanhai jing reconsidered with respect to the original writing media The SHJ is, however, distinguished from all these texts by its considerable length. It could hardly be laid out on a single piece of any writing medium used in ancient China, such as, for example, a piece of silk, suggested by W. Allyn Rickett as a sufficient surface for the layout of the “Youguan”.94 He, however, underestimated the mobility ———
91 For some insights into these correlations in the SHJ, cf. Lu Sixian (1998), Golygina (1996: 43–53), Frühauf (1999: 43–45, 2000 (Vol. 2): 80–93). Golygina believes that the SHJ is a codified representation of celestial space. Her arguments, however, do not seem substantial enough to draw this conclusion. 92 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 1995: 78, 88. 93 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2003a, Fig. 2.7 on p. 5, 2003b, Fig. 4 on p. 208, additional diagram in the lower right corner. See also the diagram showing the reading order of the WZSJ corresponding to the sequence of the itineraries in Fig. 10 of this paper. 94 Rickett 1985: 152.
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and reconfigurative properties of certain media used for writing in ancient China, especially bound rolls of bamboo slips. In this respect the textual structure of the SHJ is characterised by another interesting feature also not given much attention in studies of it. This feature concerns the rarely considered “material” aspect of the text, namely, the media it was written on prior to block-printing, and the difference this makes. As mentioned above, the extant version supposed to be based on the edition by Guo Pu includes 18 chapters, each chapter corresponding to a “silk scroll”. These 18 “silk scrolls” in their turn originate from the 18 “bound rolls of bamboo slips” in the edition by Liu Xin. This means that prior to block-printed editions the chapters of the SHJ were separate material units, each unit “labelled” by a title allocating it to a certain spatial “position”. One can then suggest that such chapters could be assembled into a cardinallyoriented layout based on the outlines of the textual structure of the SHJ. Some traces of such manipulation of textual parts that existed in the form of separate material units may be seen, as mentioned above, on the Chu Silk Manuscript. The evidence that such reconfigurative practices actually existed is found in the Songshu ݚ (History of the Song [Dynasty]” by Shen Yue ާપ (441–513).95 Although this source dates from several centuries later than the earliest versions of the SHJ, it still can be taken into consideration, since during this time the same writing media were still used. The described reconfiguration is carried out with an object mapping a terrestrial space—a map on wooden plates made by Xie Zhuang ๗ (421–466). It should also be noted that Xie Zhuang was an older contemporary of Shen Yue, so that the latter may have even seen the map he describes. The map had a square shape and consisted of several wooden plates. When these plates were “separated” (li ), the “provinces” (zhou )ڠbecame “divided” from each other (bie ܑ) and the “commanderies” (jun ಷ, a sub-division of the “provinces”) became “isolated” (shu , literally “decapitated”). In other words, separate plates served as local maps. When they were “assembled” (he )ٽinto a single whole, they constituted a “global” map. The “segmentation” of the “global” map into the local maps occurred on two levels—separation of the general map into the maps of the “provinces”, and then further separation of the maps of the “provinces” into the maps of “commanderies”. This allowed a wide ———
95 Songshu 1983: 2167, Chavannes 1903: 243–244, Wang Yong 1998 [repr. 1938]: 34–36.
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range of manipulations, such as singling out a particular “province” or a group of “provinces”. The hypothesis advanced in this paper that the chapters of the SHJ were engaged in the same sort of “jeu de patience” (as defined by Edouard Chavannes) requires a meticulous analysis of each piece of the textual body of the SHJ. In particular, testing it would require laying out its complete textual body according to the outlines of the layout of its chapters and sub-chapters, similar to the way of laying out the textual body of the “Youguan”, though the latter is much easier to accomplish due to its much shorter length. It is, however, possible to provide considerable support for this hypothesis from the perspective of the structural characteristics of the original material form of the SHJ. Since the above discussion has been mostly focussed on the WZSJ, and since this part of the SHJ is distinguished by a complex structure, let us reconsider its original “material” form. The general cardinallyoriented layout of the five chapters (= “bound rolls of bamboo slips” or “silk scroll”) of the WZSJ is shown in Fig. 5a and Fig. 7a. Taking into consideration the length of the chapters,96 each would make a relatively long “bound roll of bamboo slips” or “silk scroll”. It is, however, necessary to consider that, in contrast to a “silk scroll”, a “bound roll of bamboo slips” is distinguished by a high transpositional potential. Specifically, the segmental structure of the “bound rolls of bamboo slips” allows one to make easy rearrangements of the sets of slips within a “roll”, to add on to a “roll”, to unite a few “rolls” together, and to separate a “roll” into several parts.97 The chapters of the WZSJ in the form of the “bound rolls of bamboo slips” would, indeed, be prone to sub-division. Apart from their rather considerable length, each consists of clearly demarcated subchapters—lists of mountains that are labelled by a title at the beginning of the list, and given “summaries” at the end. There is also some evidence to believe that the division of the text into five long “bound rolls of bamboo slips” comprising subdivisions, the structure apparently imposed by Liu Xin, originated from a division into a considerably larger number of “bound rolls of bamboo slips”. Indeed, as mentioned above, Liu Xin reports having transformed the original 32 “bound rolls of bamboo slips” into 18, but ———
96 For the number of characters in the chapters of the WZSJ, see DorofeevaLichtmann (1995, Table 3 on p. 92). 97 Maeder 1992: 27–29, 81–82.
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never mentions that he suppressed any “rolls” or their parts. It seems, then, most likely that his editorial work consisted mostly in restructuring and rearranging. Bi Yuan suggests that 32 is a mistake for 34. The 34 “bound rolls of bamboo slips”, according to Bi Yuan, included the 26 sub-chapters of the WZSJ and the 8 first chapters of the Haijing. First Liu Xin made 5 “rolls” out of the 26 shorter ones in the WZSJ, and added to them the 8 “rolls” (this makes up the version of the 13 “rolls” referred to in the bibliographical treatise of the Hanshu).98 Then he composed the 5 last “rolls” of the Haijing, making the total of the 18 “rolls”.99 An argument in favour of the suggestion that each list of mountains of the WZSJ originally constituted a separate “roll” is found in the numbers of characters in the chapters and sub-chapters of the SHJ. Indeed, the sub-chapters in the WZSJ are comparable in their length to the chapters of the Haijing.100 As mentioned above, each list consists of descriptions of successive mountains that delineate itineraries, each characterised by a dominant direction. A description of each mountain forms a clearly demarcated “paragraph”, so that a list looks like a chain of such “paragraphs”—similar to the itineraries delineated by chains of mountains. A list of mountains, taken as a separate material unit, would then materially represent an itinerary. Serving as material representations of the itineraries, the lists can be laid out according to the cardinally-oriented system of itineraries, as shown in Fig. 10. The direction of an itinerary would correspond in such a spatial textual layout to the direction of the reading of the respective list. In other words, such a layout of the WZSJ would emulate the system of itineraries delineated in this text and materially represent their arrangement. If such a non-linear arrangement of the WZSJ on bound rolls/sets of bamboo slips existed, this arrangement could have only been displayed when the text was being used. This implies a knowledge of the algorithm for establishing the connections between the constituent elements of the “deconstructed” textual structures, and would require special techniques or practices for using texts. It is, however, neces———
98 Among the six texts listed here, all the texts are reported to have been written down on “silk scrolls” with the exception of the SHJ. This points to some particular reason for keeping the “bound rolls of bamboo slips” as a writing medium for the SHJ (see Hanshu 1975: 1774). 99 Bi Yuan 1977: 5–6, Shanhai jing gujin ben pianmu kao. 100 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 1995, Tables 3 and 4 on pp. 92 and 93, respectively.
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sary to bear in mind that there are likely to be very few traces of these techniques, since they were applied while using the text and transmitted through demonstration.101
The jing of the Shanhai jing The revealed system of itineraries of the WZSJ and its textual structure rigidly emulating this system allows one to reconsider the meaning of the character jing ᆖ (literally “warp”) in the titles of the textual divisions of the SHJ. Translating the title of this text is not as simple as it may seem at first glance. The character jing is a standard signification of a certain type of original text (distinguished from commentary), mostly a text of recognised importance in traditional Chinese literary culture. However, the most common meaning of the character jing when used in the titles such texts—“classic”, “canon”, “book”—does not seem to fit well in the case of the SHJ. The major inconvenience results from the fact that jing is systematically applied throughout the text in the titles of all of its sub-divisions—the two main parts, and its chapters and sub-chapters (see Table 1)— something unique, as far as I know, to the SHJ among early Chinese texts. This means that if jing is translated as “classic”, “canon”, or “book” in the title of the text, it should be translated in the same way in the titles of its chapters and sub-chapters, making such translations rather awkward, especially since some of the chapters and subchapters so titled contain only about 500 characters, 102 much too short for a “book” or “classic”. Bi Yuan’s suggestion that the textual units all being of the jing category assured the preservation of the text still does not explain why the same preservation technique was not applied to other ancient Chinese texts.103 ———
101 Elsewhere, I have suggested that another ancient Chinese text the “Book of Songs” (Shiing, texts dated to the early 10th–late 6th centuries BC, compilation attributed to Confucius), in particular, its first part, “Guofeng” ഏ᧨ (Airs (literally “Winds”) of Principalities), the structure of which maps an ideal system of principalities of the Zhou dynasty (1046/45/40–256 BC), could be making use of such spatial layouts and transpositions, see Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (1991). It should be noted here that, as one can judge from the designation of each song as pian, the original writing medium of this text was bound rolls of bamboo slips, that is, a medium especially favourable for such practices. 102 For the total number of characters in each chapter and sub-chapter of the SHJ, see Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (1995, Tables 3–4, pp. 92–93). 103 Bi Yuan 1977: 1.
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Rather than trying to adapt the common meaning of jing in book titles to the case of the SHJ, Yuan Ke ಒṘ questioned it, arguing that jing here is used in the sense of jingli ᆖᖵ (“to go through, to pass, to undergo, to stretch over”), and not jingdian ᆖࠢ (“classic, canon, book”).104 He calls attention to the usage of jing in the former sense in the conclusion to the WZSJ, something also pointed out by Hao Yixing: છֳ:
֚Հټ՞Δ ᆖնՏԿۍԮԼ՞Δ քᆄՏնԼքߺΔࡺچՈΖ
“Yu said: [as far as] the famous mountains of the Under-Heaven [are concerned], [I passed through and thus linked by itineraries] 5370 mountains, [the established itineraries are] 64056 li long, [these are the dimensions of] habitable land.”
Hao Yixing elucidates the jing as follows: ᆖΔߢછࢬᆖመՈ (“Jing means [the itineraries that were] passed through by Yu”).
A reference to this passage is also found in commentary by Liu Zhao Ꮵਟ (fl. 502–520) to the “Junguo zhi” ಷഏ( ݳTreatise on Commanderies and Kingdoms) of the Hou Hanshu ৵ዧ (History of the Later Han [Dynasty]), “Treatises” by Sima Biao ್ (ca. 240–ca. 306), other parts by Fan Ye ૃᖢ (398–446). There are doubts about the proper place of the character jing in the commentary—in the beginning of the first phrase or in the beginning of the second phrase: ᆖټ՞նՏԿۍնԼΔ քᆄՏնԼքߺΖ
or ټ՞նՏԿۍնԼΔ ᆖքᆄՏնԼքߺΖ
———
104 Yuan Ke 1980: 180–184; cf. a review on this work by Fracasso (1986).
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Depending on where the jing is placed, it can be translated as follows: “[Yu passed through and thus linked by itineraries] the 5350 famous mountains,105 [the established itineraries are] 64056 li long.”
or “There are 5350 famous mountains; [the itineraries linking the mountains stretch over] 64056 li.”106
Yuan Ke prefers the latter position of jing in Liu Zhao’s commentary. He also regards the mingshan ټ՞ in the conclusion to the WZSJ as an adjective to jing, having placed a comma after the jing in his reference to this passage: ֚Հټ՞ᆖΔնՏԿۍԮԼ՞.107 In this case the passage should be translated as follows: “[As far as] the itineraries [marked by the] famous mountains of the Under-Heaven [are concerned]…” But whatever grammatical function of the jing one prefers, it is clear that it obviously refers to “itineraries”, and not to “classics” or “canons”. Even more important, this occurrence of jing summarises the description of the twenty-six itineraries of the WZSJ, each labelled as jing. Yuan Ke also points out that use of jing in the sense of “classic, canon, book” (jingdian) is relatively late. The use of jing in the sense of “to go through, to pass, to undergo, to stretch over” (jingli) in preHan texts, in effect, precedes its occurrences with the sense of “classic, canon, book”, and Yuan Ke provides some examples of these. Moreover, as far as the titles of Confucian classics comprising jing are concerned (e.g., the Shijing ᇣᆖ, Shujing ᆖ, Yijing ࣐ᆖ, the jing was added there after these texts have been circulating as simply Shi ᇣ, Shu and Yi ࣐ respectively, as a result of their recognition as “classics”. Yuan Ke calls attention to the radical difference of such texts from the case of the SHJ whose title never occurs without the jing. He regards these as the major argument in favour of his interpretation of the jing in the titles of the SHJ in general and all its subdivisions as an “itinerary”. In sum, Yuan Ke calls attention to the fact that the character jing has another secondary meaning even closer to its primary meaning of “warp” than “classic, canon, book”, that of a “(system of regularly established) passages or routes”, “to pass through, to pave (regular passages or routes)”, the meaning that proves to be of central impor——— 105 The total of mountains given by Liu Zhao is 20 items fewer than those found in the SHJ. 106 Hou Hanshu 1973: 3387, 3410. 107 Yuan Ke 1980: 183, note 3.
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tance for comprehending the title and sub-titles of the SHJ. The use of jing in this sense appears during the late Warring States to the Former Han, that is, within the time span of the compilation of the SHJ. A classical example of such use is found in the “Kaogong ji” ە ՠಖ (Records on Investigating Crafts) chapter of the Zhouli108 where it designates the nine “lengthwise routes” inside the capital city, namely, the routes crossing it from north to south (they are complemented by the nine “crosswise routes” – wei ᒮ “weft”): ٰԳᛜഏ Η ֱߺ Η லԿ॰ Η ഏխᆖ Η ᒮ Η ᆖῥ૩ Η The craftsmen plan the capital city. [It has a shape of] a square with a side of nine li long. Each side has three gates. Inside the capital city there are nine lengthwise (north-south) routes and nine crosswise (eastwest) routes; each lengthwise road has a passability of nine chariots.”109
This ideal design of the Zhou capital city proves to be not just a pure abstraction, but is apparently derived from some real organisation of space during the Warring States period. Specifically, some traces of a strikingly regular system of lengthwise (north-south) and crosswise (east-west) roads and paths was found as the result of topographical examination of the patterns of fields in China, in particular throughout much of the north, that is, the former areas of the Qin and Jin kingdoms.110 Although all the itineraries of the SHJ are referred to as jing regardless of their direction, in contrast to the routes mentioned in the “Kaogong ji” where crosswise and lengthwise routes are differentiated clearly, in both texts jing implies an orderly arrangement of a set of routes. Another interesting occurrence of jing related to an orderly system of routes is found a passage of the Zuozhuan under the 4th year of Xiang Gong (ᝊֆ 569 BC) concerning the mythical emperor Yu who “drew out and created the ‘Nine Provinces’; delineated and broadened the nine routes” (hua wei jiu zhou, jing qi jiu dao ڠΔᆖ ඔሐΖ). Taking into consideration the orderly character of the SHJ’s itineraries, the use of jing in the sense of a “[system of regularly established] passages or routes”, “to pass through, to pave [regular pas———
108 Boltz 1993: esp. 25. 109 Zhouli Zhengzhu, SBBY ed, 41/14b; Lin Yin 1984: 471, Biot, tr. 1969 [repr.
1851]: 556 (§ 23). For a representation of an idealised plan of the capital city, see Loewe and Shaugnessy, eds. (1999: p. 666). 110 Lewis 1990: 63.
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sages or routes]” seems to fit perfectly well in the case of the SHJ, if seen as a set of descriptions of the revealed itineraries. The use of the character jing in the sense of “itinerary” also brings to mind the character jing1 உ (differing from jing in its radical), but sharing with it the meaning of a “route”. According to the Shuowen ᎅ֮ (Elucidating on Writing) dictionary (ca. 1st century AD), jing1 உ is a “pedestrian route” (bu dao ye ޡሐՈ). A commentary by Xu Kai ஊㅥ (920–974) adds that it is “a route that does not accept chariots, that is why [it is] called pedestrian route” (dao bu rong che, gu yue bu dao ሐլ୲߫ΔਚֳޡሐՈ). Furthermore, jing1 உ seems to occur with the meaning of a principle “pedestrian path” in the “Minggui xia” ࣔՀ (Elucidating on Spirits or Clairvoyant Spirits, part III) chapter of the philosophical treatise Mozi ᕠ (ca. 5th–4th centuries BC). This chapter has some parallels with the SHJ in conceiving of features with respect to spirits.111 Jing1 is mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, in the combination “routes and roads, principle paths” (dao lu shuai jing1 ሐሁஉ), implying a certain opposition between “routes and roads” (dao lu ሐሁ) and the “principle paths” (shuai jing1 உ), the former most likely being intended for chariots and the latter for pedestrians only.112 Paths and roads (jing1 lu உሁ) also occur in the definition of the Trigram Gen ۤ symbolising mountain(s) found in the Shuogua ᎅ࠳ (Elucidating on Trigrams, late Warring States period), § 16: “Gen is mountain(s); is paths and roads,…” (Gen wei shan, wei jing1 lu,…ۤ ՞Δஉሁ). This definition establishes a relation between mountains (shan) and paths (jing1), especially interesting in the context of the system of itineraries marked by mountains and the use of jing in the SHJ. The link of the character jing to the semantic field of “route/path”, more often than not overlooked in sinological literature, needs a special study. The results of the present investigation into the system of itineraries of the SHJ and its relation to the structure of the text provide some highly interesting material for such a study. However, although Yuan Ke’s edition of the SHJ became an essential tool in subsequent SHJ studies, some scholars still prefer to keep to the common meaning of jing (classic, book) when translating the title of the SHJ, for instance, as found in the recent translations of the text by Riccardo Fracasso, Libro dei monti et dei mari (1996) and ———
111 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 1995: 87. 112 Mozi xiangu ᕠၵဴ, Zhuzi jicheng ed., p. 138.
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Anne Birrell, The Classic of Mountains and Seas (1999).113 Surprisingly, Fracasso makes a reference to Yuan Ke’s interpretation of jing in the SHJ at the very beginning of his introduction,114 yet translates jing in the titles of the text and chapters as “Libro”. He also leaves the titles of sub-chapters of the WZSJ untranslated, but provides a summarising list of numbered “Itineraries” (Itinerraria), without translating the full titles of the sub-chapters where they are described in the “Geographical recapitulation” (Riepilogo geographico). 115 It seems that Fracasso tried to find a compromise between the usual translation of jing in book titles and Yuan Ke’s interpretation of jing in the SHJ. Other authors simply avoid translating the inconvenient jing, for instance, Rémi Mathieu (1983) and Cheng Hsiao-chieh ᔤ՛ௐ et al. (1985), who entitled their translations of the SHJ Etude sur la mythologie et l’ethnologie de la Chine Ancienne and Shan Hai Ching: Legendary Geography and Wonders of Ancient China, respectively.116 Attempts to find a more appropriate translation have long been made in sinological literature—the Catalogue of Mountains and Seas [Katalog gor i morey] (Elektra M. Yanshina 1977), the Records of Mountains and Seas (Suh Kyung Ho, 1993), Kompendium der Berge und Seen (Manfred W. Frühauf 1999; 2000), the Lists of Mountains and Seas (Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2003a). These translations highlight the list-like style of the text, but none has really solved the problem of the use of jing in the title. The right word does seem to have been found recently, though, by Richard Strassberg (2002), who translates the title as the Guideways Through Mountains and Seas, but, unfortunately, does not provide much elucidation on his innovative translation. Independently, as a result of investigating the representation of terrestrial space in the SHJ as a system of itineraries, I proposed the translation Itineraries of Mountains and Seas (Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2003b). 117 These two rather similar translations of jing as “guideways” or “itinerary/itineraries” (I prefer the ——— 113 See the review of these two most recent translations of the SHJ by Campany (2000) who also makes useful remarks on the translation by Rémi Mathieu (1983). For review of Mathieu’s translation, cf. Casu (1988a). 114 Fracasso 1996, p. XIII, footnote 2. 115 Fracasso 1996: 119–126. The lists of numbered itineraries include names of all the mountains in an itinerary and names of rivers emanating from these mountains, as well as the cardinal direction and distance from mountain to mountain in the itinerary. 116 Cf. review of translation by Cheng Hiao-chieh et al. by Fracasso (1987) and Giovanni Casu (1988b). 117 My paper was submitted to the publisher prior to the publication of the book by Richard Strassberg.
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latter for its more neutral sense) correspond to another secondary meaning of the character jing – “principal route”.
Map-like textual layouts and the “lost” maps The proposed reconstruction of the textual layout of the WZSJ, in effect, has much in common with the supposition by Bi Yuan that the earliest version of the WZSJ on “bound rolls of bamboo slips” was a map (or maps). The major difference here is that Bi Yuan derives the text of the SHJ from “graphic representations”. According to him, the text was written as “elucidations” (shuo) on “graphic representations”. I, relying on the analysis of references to the SHJ in Chinese cultural tradition, give priority to the text, at the same time pointing out that the original form of the text had attributes of a “graphic representation”. I suggest that its original layout constituted a terrestrial scheme or map (its reconfigurative possibilities allowed making different schemes and maps), and that later pictures were aimed at illustrating descriptions found in the text.118 The resulting textual layout would somewhat resemble the layout of textual passages found in the Chu Silk Manuscript. However, in contrast to this considerably shorter text, the layout of the WZSJ existed only when the text was used and had to be “deconstructed” into constituent elements due to its considerable length. Some parts of this layout might have been conserved in the versions on “silk scrolls” that provided a larger space for writing, but none of these versions has survived.119 The spatial layout of the WZSJ especially resembles the reconstruction of the “Dark Palace” from the “Youguan”—an orderly spatial scheme of the palace filled out with text. The spatial ———
118 The original textual structure of the SHJ is also discussed by Kukhtina (1982). Her hypothesis, however, builds on the assumption that this text was originally engraved on the Nine Cauldrons. As a result, she discusses possible arrangements of the text on a set of cauldrons and does not mention other, apparently later from her point of view, writing media. As mentioned above, this assumption which is taken for granted in sinological literature originates from the interpretation of the text as dating from as late as the 3rd century AD. Rather surprisingly, Kukhtina does not pay much attention to the spatial titles of chapters and their corresponding layout. Her reconstruction does not include cardinal orientation or attributes of a general spatial scheme. At the same time, she makes interesting observations on the reconfigurative possibilities implied in the textual division of the SHJ. 119 Once silk started to be used as a writing medium, combining text and picture could be considered. From this point of view it seems more likely that the pictures were derived from the text rather than the text originating from pictures.
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layout of the lists of mountains would then constitute an orderly spatial scheme representing the “central” part of the world, whose parts are delineated and filled out by text. Complemented by the four itineraries delineated by the four chapters of “Outside the Seas” it would constitute a “global” scheme.120 Now let us return to the references to the lost ancient maps. As mentioned above, maps belonged to a broad class of “graphic representations”. Yet, relatively early, about the 3rd century BC, they became distinguished into a special sub-class—“terrestrial graphic representations” (ditu چቹ).121 Although this term was not applied consistently, and was quite often reduced to the single character tu, it still shows a certain demarcation from the other types of “graphic representations”. Traditional Chinese maps share many common features with spatial schemes. In particular, the majority of “global” maps known from Song and later dynasties have clear attributes of orderly survey schemes.122 In effect, many references to ancient [di]tu understood as maps 123 can equally imply maps and orderly survey schemes. The latter seem to be more likely when “global” mapping is mentioned. A good example is provided by the often cited reference to a “graphic representation” of Tianxia ֚Հ (Underheaven) at the beginning of ———
120 A certain complementarity between the WZSJ and “Outside the Seas” and their correspondence as, respectively, the centre and periphery is pointed out by Meng Wentong (1962: 43–70) and supported by Suh Kyung Ho (1993: 99 and 302– 9). My reconstruction of the system of itineraries and guardian spirits – itineraries and local spirits of the WZSJ encompassed by the four cardinally-oriented itineraries of “Outside the Seas” and the four gods of the cardinal directions – provides further evidence in favour of this hypothesis. For the representations of the itineraries, see Doroveeva-Lichtmann (2003a, Fig. 2.7 on p. 50, 2003b, Fig. 4 on p. 208, the system of spirits is reproduced on Figure 11a of this paper). 121 The earliest occurrences of the term di tu are found in late Warring States – Former Han texts: the Zhanguo ce ᖏഏ (“Plans of the Warring Kingdoms”, SBBY ed., 19/2b (§218), 31/5b and 6a (§440), the philosophical treatise Guan zi, which contains a special chapter (No 27) concerned with this term (SBBY ed., 10/7a–8a), and the Zhouli (for a list with comments of its multiple occurrences here, see Needham and Wang Ling 1959: 534). As can clearly be seen from comparison with the other occurrences of the character tu in these texts, di is quite often omitted in similar constructions, and is, therefore, optional. At least some of these early uses of ditu imply a cosmogram rather than referring to a map (cf., e.g., citations from the Zhouli by Chavannes 1903: 237). Needham and Wang Ling (1959), however, interpret all these early occurrences as “geographical maps”. 122 Good examples of such schematic maps are the Huayi tu, the Yugong jiuzhou qiangjie tu and the Yu dao shanchuan zhi tu mentioned in footnote 31. See also footnote 9. 123 E.g., those discussed by Chavannes (1903: 237–241) and Needham and Wang Ling (1959: 534).
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the “Zhifang shi”, which is followed by a description of the system of the “Nine Provinces” that has clear attributes of an orderly scheme. As I have tried to show using the example of the SHJ in general and the WZSJ in particular, such mapping can be realised by means of spatial textual arrangements, rather than by making maps accompanying the text. Such schemes filled out with text would not be much different from a certain type of later “global” maps that incorporate textual passages and have a shape similar to that of a regular scheme.
CONCLUSIONS In sum, in the case of the SHJ, maps seem simply not to be needed, as the spatial layout of the text would have combined the properties of a tu (scheme-map) and elucidation (shuo) on this tu. In this respect it would be similar to a series of ancient Chinese texts the layout of which—original (such as the Chu Silk Manuscript and the Mausoleum Plan) or reconstructed (the Youguan = Xuangong)—emulates a spatial model.124 One can further suggest that, at least in some cases when the “loss” of ancient “global” maps is reported, no maps accompanying texts were lost or indeed ever existed. The loss concerned the spatial layouts of the texts and the practices of using these texts. Since the idea of maps related to the SHJ appears surprisingly late it seems tempting to suggest that its map-like structure and properties were still recognised over a long period of time. A spatial layout of the WZSJ can be referred to as a textual cosmograph, which provides a process-oriented scheme, or a schemeprescription for determining the configuration of a spiritual landscape. Similar conclusions are drawn by Hwang Ming-Chorng as the result of his exploration of the “Outside the Seas” and “The Great Wilderness”. He argues that these parts of the SHJ were originally structured as cosmographs. 125 He believes, however, that these cos———
124 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 2005b. 125 Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996: 494–509 and 537–677, respectively). He defines
“Outside the Seas” as a “cosmograph for ‘alien-nations’”, ibid: 502–506, Fig. 6.14 on p. 798 (reproduced on Fig. 4a), and “The Great Wilderness” as a cosmograph which was a “core of shamanistic knowledge”, ibid: 666–677, Fig. 6.13 on p. 797 (reproduced on Fig. 4b), respectively.
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mographs were comprised of spatially arranged pictures, 126 which would make them resemble the Chu Silk Manuscript.127 A new strong argument in favour of such suggestions is an original text-cosmograph found among the Mawangdui manuscripts (tomb 3, closed 168 BC),128 entitled Wu ze you xing ढঞ( ݮڶBeings and things do have a form), recently preliminarily investigated by Chen Songchang ຫ࣪९ with an emphasis on its parallels with the cosmograph design.129 Another important similar case to be considered is the layout of Laozi ۔ according to the structure of a cosmograph, as described in the preface to the Laozi zhigui ۔ਐូ.130 Such tools in the form of textual layouts could have served (or be meant to serve) in certain “space-ordering” practices. Several possibilities and their interrelationship can be explored here with respect to the SHJ, such as shamanistic rituals, 131 spirit quests, 132 official “world-making” practices “revived” with the foundation of the empire, 133 and the origins of geomancy. 134 Each of these possibilities would be fruitful material for future investigation. ———
126 Hwang Ming-Chorng 1996: 496–498. 127 This resemblance, however, raises again the question of which type of writing
media allowed the incorporation of multiple illustrations into a text, and only silk seems to provide this possibility. If we accept the suggestion by Hwang Ming-Chorng that “Outside the Seas” and especially “The Great Wilderness” are much older layers of the SHJ than the WZSJ (Hwang Ming-Chorng 1996: 665), and that they circulated as separate texts before the SHJ on “bound rolls of bamboo slips” was compiled, they could only circulate once they had been written down on silk. No evidence of this is found in extant ancient Chinese sources, in contrast to the references to the early versions of the SHJ of bound rolls of bamboo slips. 128 For Mawangdui tombs, see footnote 2 in Lo, this volume. 129 Chen Songchang 2006. The design of the manuscript apparently emulates a cosmograph structure—it has a square frame highlighted by red colour and a circle is delineated inside of it. A line of text accompanies the square frame from the inside and the circle from the outside. The center of the manuscript is filled out by text also designed in a circle form (see Col.Pl. VII). 130 See footnote 83. Röllicke (2005: 144–166) argues that such “graphic representation” or tu-diagram of Laozi text would serve as a “handbook for prognostication and divination” (ibid: 163). In any case, this layout can also be referred to as a “textual cosmograph”. 131 Yuan Ke 1986: 231–240, Chang Kwang-chih 1994: esp. 22–24, Mathieu 1987, Hwang Ming-Chorng 1996: 666–677. 132 Harper 1985: 479. 133 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 1995: 88. For such rituals, see Bilsky (1975, vol. 2 [71]: 248–250). 134 In the bibliographical chapter of the Hanshu, which relies on the lost bibliography Qilüe compiled by Liu Xin, the editor of the SHJ, the latter is classified under the “Xingfa” (Methods of Forms) subsection, which seems to deal, first of all, with geomantic practices (Hanshu 1975: 1774–1775).
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hai: Commission mixte des oeuvres Franco-Chinoises, Office des publications. KUKHTINA, Elena K. 1982. “‘Shan’ hai tszin’: nekotorye problemy struktury i tipologii testa.” (‘Shan hai jing’: some problems of structure and typology of the text). 13 Nautchnaya Konferentziya “Obshchestvo i Gosudarstvo v Kitaie” (The 13th Scientific Conference “Society and State in China”), Abstracts of Papers, Vol. 1. Moscow: Nauka, pp. 120–130. LACKNER, Michael. 1990. “Die ‘Verplanung’ des Denkens am Beispiel der tu.” In: Lebenswelt und Weltanschauung in frühneuzeitlichen China, ed. Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 134–156. LAGERWEY, John. 2004. “Deux écrits taoïstes anciens.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 14: 139–171. LAWTON, Thomas, ed. 1991. New Perspectives on Chu Culture During the Eastern Zhou Period. Washington: Arthur M.Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), distributed by Princeton University Press. LEGGE, James, tr. 1865 [comprises original text]. The Chinese Classics. Vol. III, part 1 (Shoo King). Hongkong: At the Author’s – London: Trübner & Co. ——, tr. 1872 [comprises original text]. The Chinese Classics. Vol. V, part 1 (The Ch’un Ts’ew, with the Tso Chuen). Hongkong: Lane, Crawford & Co. – London: Trübner & Co. LEWIS, Mark Edward. 1990. Sanctioned Violence in Early China. New York: SUNY. ——. 2006. The Construction of Space in Early China. New York: SUNY. LI Ling ޕሿ. 1985. Changsha Zitanku Chuboshu yanjiu. ९ޥᐘᄑࢇઔߒ. Peking: Zhonghua shuju. ——. 1991. “Chuboshu yu ‘shitu’” ᄑࢇፖڤቹ. Jiang Han kaogu ۂዧײە 1991.1: 59–62. ——. 2000. Zhongguo fangshu kao խഏֱە. Peking: Renmin Zhongguo Chubanshe [revision of 1993]. LI Ling and Constance A. COOK. 1999. “Translation of the Chu Silk Manuscript.” In: Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China, ed. Constance A. Cook and John S. Major. Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 171–176. LI Xueqin ޕᖂႧ. 1994. Jianbo yiji yu xueshu shi ១ࢇ܊ᤄፖᖂە. Taibei: Shibao Wenhua Chuban ltd. LIN Yin ࣥձ. 1984. Zhouli jinzhu jinyi ࡌ៖վࣹվ. Guji xuandu congshu ៶ײ ᙇᦰហ series. Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe. LOEWE, Michael. 1978. “Man and Beast: The Hybrid in Early Chinese Art and Literature.” Numen 25.2: 97–117. ——. 1979. Ways to Paradise: the Chinese Quest for Immortality. London: Georges Allen & Unwin. ——. 1994. Divination, Mythology and Monarchy in Han China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LOEWE, Michael and Edward L. SHAUGHNESSY, eds. 1999. The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LU Liangzhi ᗝߜݳ. 1984. Zhongguo dituxue shi խഏچቹᖂ. Beijing: Cehui chubanshe. LU Sixian ຬ৸ᔃ. 1998. “Yi tianwen lifa wei zhuti de yuzhou kuangjia – ‘Shan hai jing’ 18 pian xintan.” ֚֮אᖟऄ᧯ऱࡶڙਮ А ՞௧ᆖ 18 ᒧᄅ൶ Neimenggu daxue xuebao (renwen shehui kexue ban) փ፞ײՕᖂᖂΰԳ֮ षᄎઝᖂठα5: 78–84. MAEDER, Eric W. 1992. “Some Observations on the Composition of the ‘Core Chapters’ of the Mozi.” Early China 17: 27–82. MAJOR, John S. 1973. Topography and Cosmology in Early Han Thought: Chapter Four of Huai-nan-tzu. Diss. Harvard University.
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——. 1984. “The Five Phases, Magic Squares and Schematic Cosmography.” In: Explorations in Early Chinese Cosmology, ed. by Henry Rosemont. Chico: Scholar Press, pp. 133–166. ——, tr. 1993. Heaven and Earth in Early Chinese Thought (Chapters Three, Four and Five of the Huai nan zi). Albany: State University of New York Press. MATHIEU, Rémi, tr. 1983. Etude sur la mythologie et l’ethnologie de la Chine Ancienne. Tome I: Traduction annotée du Shanhai jing. Tome II: Index du Shanhai jing. (Memoires de l’Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, Vol. 22). Paris: Collège de France – Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises. ——. 1987. “Chamanes et chamanisme en Chine ancienne.” L’Homme 27: 10–34. MASPERO, Henri. 1948–1951. “Le Ming-t’ang et la crise religieuse avant les Han.” Mélanges Chinois et Bouddhiques 9: 1–71. MENG Wentong ֮፞ຏ. 1962. “Lüelun Shanhaijing de xiezuo niandai ji qi chansheng diyu” ฃᓵ՞௧ᆖऱᐊࠡ֗זڣ܂ขچس. Zhonghua wenshi luncong խဎ֮ᓵហ 1: 43–70. MÜLLER, Claudius C. 1980. “Die Herausbildung der Gegensätze: Chinesen und Barbaren in der frühen Zeit (I. Jahrtausend v. Chr. bis 220 n. Chr).” In: China und die Fremden: 3000 Jahre Auseinandersetzung in Krieg und Frieden, ed. Wolfgang Bauer. München: Verlag C. H. Beck, pp. 43–76. NEEDHAM, Joseph and WANG Ling. 1959. 1959. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. III. Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. PANKENIER, David. 2004. “A Brief History of Beiji קᄕ (Northern Culmen), with an Excursus on the Origin of the Character di ০.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 124.2 (April–June): 211–236. QIAN Baocong ᙒᣪ⓫, ed. 1963. Suanjing shishu ጩᆖԼ (Ten Mathematical Classics), vol. 1. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. QU Wanli ࡹᆄߺ. 1964. “Lun Yugong zhucheng de shidai” ᓵછಥထګऱழז. Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan Lishi Yuyan yanjiusuo jikan խ؇ઔߒࢬࡱ ע/ Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica) 35: 53–86. REITER, Florian C. 1990. “Some Remarks on the Chinese Word T’u ‘Chart, Plan, Design’.” Oriens 32: 308–327. RICKETT, W. Allyn. 1985. Guan zi. Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China (a study and translation). – vol. 1. chapters I, 1 – XI, 34, and XX, 64 – XXI, 65–66. Princeton: Princeton University Press. RÖLLICKE, Hermann-Josef. 2005. Die Herrschaftsmystik des Laozi zhigui: Philologie und Exegese. Habilitation Thesis, University of Hamburg (publication in preparation). SCHIFFELER, John Wm. 1980. “Chinese Folk Medicine: A Study of the Shan-hai Ching.” Asian Folklore Studies 39.2: 41–83. SEIDEL, Anna. 1983. “Imperial Treasures and Taoist Sacraments.” In: Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R.A.Stein, ed. MichaelStrickmann, Vol. 2. Mélanges Chinois et Bouddiques 21: 291–371. SHATZMAN STEINHARDT, Nancy. 1999. Chinese Imperial City Planning, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press [repr. 1990]. Shiji ಖ[by Sima Qian ್ᔢ (145?–87 BC)]. 1972. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. SMITH, Richard J. 1996. Chinese Maps: Images of “All Under Heaven”. Hongkong – London: Oxford University Press. Songshu ݚ[by Shen Yue ާપ (441–513)]. 1983. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. SOOTHILL, William Edward. 1951. The Hall of Light: A Study of Early Chinese Kingship. London: Lutterworth Press. STERCKX, Roel. 1996. “‘Transcending Habitats’: Authority, Territory and the Animal Realm in Warring States and Early Imperial China.” Bulletin of the British Asso-
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ciation of Chinese Studies: 9–19. ——. 1998. “Debating the Strange: Records of Animal Anomalies in Early China.” Working Papers in Chinese Studies / Xueshu lunwen (Centre for Research in Chinese Studies, Department of Chinese Studies, The National University of Singapore) 1, 27 pages. ——. 2002. The Animal and the Daemon in Early China. Albany: SUNY. STRASSBERG, Richard. 2002. A Chinese Bestiary: Strange Creatures from the Guideways Throught Mountains and Seas. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press. SUH, Kyung Ho. 1993. A study of “Shan-hai-ching”: Ancient Worldviews under Transformation. Diss., Harvard Univ. TAMBIAH, Stanley J. 1985. Culture, Thought and Action: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge, M.A. – London: Harvard University Press. WANG Chengzu ิګ׆. [1982] 1988. Zhongguo dilixueshi: Xian Qin zhi Ming dai խഏچᖂΔ٣۟ࣔז. Peking: Shangwu yinshuguan. WANG Qianjin ޫছၞ. 1993. “Shike ‘Liujingtu’ zongkao” ࠥفքᆖቹጵە. Ziran kexueshi yanjiu ۞ྥઝᖂઔߒ 12.1: 83–90. WANG Yizhong א׆խ. 1934. “Shan hai jing tu yu zhi gong tu” ՞௧ᆖቹፖಥቹ Yu gong છಥ 1.3: 5–10. WANG Yong ׆. 1998. Zhongguo dilixue shi խഏچᖂ. Shanghai: Commercial Press [repr. 1938]. WATSON, Burton, tr. 1969. Records of the Historian: The Shih Chi of Ssu-ma Ch’ien. New York – London: Columbia University Press. ——, tr. 1989. The Tso Chuan. Selections from China’s Oldest Narrative History. New York: Columbia University Press. WU Hung [1989] 1992. The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ——. 1995. Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. YAN Ping et al. 1998. China in Ancient and Modern Maps. London: Sotheby’s Publications (Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd). YANSHINA, Elektra M., tr. 1977. Katalog gor i morei (Shan hai tszin) (Catalogue of Mountains and Seas (Shan hai jing)). Moscow: Nauka (GRVL). YEE, Cordell D.K. 1994. “Cartography in China” (with the exception of Chapter 8, see Henderson 1994) In: Harley and Woodward 1994, pp. 35–202, 228–234. YU Xixian Պݦᔃ, 1990. Zhongguo gudai dilixue shilüe խഏچזײᖂฃ. Shijiazhuang: Hebei kexue zhishu chubanshe. YUAN Ke ಒṘ. 1980. Shanhaijing jiao yi ՞௧ᆖீ. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe. ——. 1986. “Shanhaijing ‘gai gu zhi wushu’ shi tan” ՞௧ᆖ።ײհݥᇢ൶. In: Shanhaijing xintan ՞௧ᆖᄅ൶ , ed. Xu Nanzhou ஊতڠ, Duan Yu ྕ, and Li Yuanguo ޕഏ. Chengdu: Sichuan sheng shehui kexueyuan chubanshe, pp. 231–240.
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Fig. 1: John Major’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in the Shan hai jing ՞௧ᆖ. Reproduced from Major (1973: 99–100).
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Fig. 2: John Schiffeler’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in the Shan hai jing ՞௧ᆖ. Reproduced from Schiffeler (1980: 43).
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Fig. 3: Riccardo Fracasso’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in the Shan hai jing ՞௧ᆖ. Reproduced from Fracasso (1983, facing p. 660).
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Fig. 4a: Hwang Ming-Chorng’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in “Outside the Seas” (haiwai ௧؆). Reproduced from Hwang Ming-Chong (1996: 798).
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Fig. 4b: Hwang Ming-Chorng’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in “The Great Wilderness” (dahuang Օ). Reproduced from Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996: 797).
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Fig. 5a, b, c, d: Li Ling’s reconstruction of the representations of the world in the Shanhai jing ՞௧ᆖ: a/1) “Mountains” (shan ՞) – the Wuzang shanjing նፔ՞ᆖ; b/2) “Outside the Seas” (haiwai ௧؆) encompassing “Inside the Seas” (hainei ௧փ); c/3) “Inside the Seas” encompassing “Mountains”; d/4) “The Great Wilderness” (dahuang Օ ) encompassing “Inside the Seas”. Reproduced from Li Ling (2000: 138).
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Fig. 6a: Richard Strassberg’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in the Wuzang shanjing նፔ՞ᆖ. Reproduced from Strassberg (2002: 35).
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Fig. 6b: Richard Strassberg’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in “Outside the Seas” (haiwai ௧؆) and the four cardinally-oriented chapters of “Inside the Seas” (hainei ௧փ), juan 6–13. Reproduced from Strassberg (2002: 40).
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Fig. 6c: Richard Strassberg’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in “The Great Wilderness” (dahuang Օ) and the last chapter of “Inside the Seas” (hainei ௧փ), juan 14–18. Reproduced from Strassberg (2002: 41).
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Fig. 6d: Map of the Wuzang shanjing նፔ՞ᆖ reconstructed by Wang Chengzu (1988 [repr. 1982]: 19) redrawn and translated by Richard Strassberg. Reproduced from Strassberg (2002: 37).
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Fig. 7a: Suh Kyung Ho’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in the Wuzang shanjing նፔ՞ᆖ. Reproduced from Suh Kyung Ho (1993: 306).
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Fig. 7b: Suh Kyung Ho’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in “Outside the Seas” (haiwai ௧؆) and the four cardinally-oriented chapters of “Inside the Seas” (hainei ௧փ), juan 6–13. Reproduced from Suh Kyung Ho (1993: 307).
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Fig. 7c: Suh Kyung Ho’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in “The Great Wilderness” (dahuang Օ) and the last chapter of “Inside the Seas” (hainei ௧փ), juan 14–18. Reproduced from Suh Kyung Ho (1993: 308).
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Fig. 7d: Suh Kyung Ho’s reconstruction of the final representation of the world in the Shanhai jing ՞௧ᆖ (simplified 8b–c). Reproduced from Suh Kyung Ho (1993: 309).
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Fig. 8a, b, c: Dorofeeva-Lichtmann’s reconstruction of the representation of the world in the Shanhai jing ՞௧ᆖ as overlapping zones, according to three possible spatial models: concentric squares (9a), cruciform pattern (9b), 3x3 square grid (9c). Reproduced from Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (1995: 99).
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Fig. 9: Reconstructions of the layout of the “Youguan” ؔࡴ chapter of the Guanzi ጥ emulating the ground plan of the Dark Palace (Xuangong tu خ୰ቹ) [general outlines, for a detailed reconstruction, see Fig. 6 in Kalinowski, this volume]. a) Guo Moruo ພःૉ and Wen Yiduo ፊԫ( ڍ1956). b) Wang Meng-o ׆ኄᧉ (1966). c) Li Ling (1985). d) Hwang Ming-Chorng (1996). Reproduced from Hwang Ming-Chorng [1996: 727(a); 728(b–c), 729(d)].
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Fig. 10: The layout of the Wuzang shanjing Ѩ㞻ቅ㍧ and the “Outside the Seas” (haiwai ⍋), juan 1–9.
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Fig. 11a: Local spirits of the Wuzang shanjing նፔ՞ᆖ and the gods of the cardinal directions of “Outside the Seas” (haiwai ௧؆).
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Fig. 11b: Appearances of the local spirits of the Wuzang shanjing նፔ՞ᆖ.
MAPLESS MAPPING Title of juan
Name of the god
The cardinal direction South
„Southern Itinerary of Outside the Seas
Zhurong ఴᘜ
“Western Itinerary of Outside the Seas”
Rushou گಫ
West
“Northern Itinerary of Outside the Seas”
Yuqiang જᖅ
North
“Eastern Itinerary of Outside the Seas”
Goumang হ㡦
East
289 Appearance of the god Vehicle he uses beast’s body – human face rides in a chariot led by a pair of dragons has a snake in the left ear (as an earring) rides in a chariot led by a pair of dragons human face – bird’s body wears a pair of dark green snakes as earrings stands on a pair of dark green snakes bird’s body – human face rides in a chariot led by a pair of dragons
Fig. 11c: Appearances of the gods of the cardinal directions in the “Outside the Seas” (haiwai ௧؆).
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Fig. 12a: The Chu Silk Manuscript (Chu boshu ᄑࢇ). Reproduced from Barnard (1973, fig. 1).
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Fig. 12b: The outline of the “pictorial cosmograph” (tushi ቹ )ڤof the Chu Silk Manuscript, according to Li Ling (2000 [rev. 1993]: 111).
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Fig. 12c: Transcription of the Chu Silk Manuscript in its original layout by Li Ling. Reproduced from Lawton, ed. (1991: 180).
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Fig. 12d: Cosmograph-like representation of pictures of the Chu Silk Manuscript by Li Ling (2000 [rev. 1993]: 180).
Fig. 13: Cosmograph (shi ڤ, the liuren ք֙ type). After Kaogu 1978.5: 340, reproduced from Loewe and Shaughnessy (1999: 840).
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THE TABLES (BIAO) IN SIMA QIAN’S SHIJI: RHETORIC AND REMEMBRANCE Griet Vankeerberghen Sima Qian ್ᔢ has been credited not only with writing exhilarating historical prose, but also with setting the basic format for all subsequent dynastic histories by dividing his Shiji ಖ into five parts: the “Basic Annals” (benji ءધ), the “Tables” (biao ।), the Treatises (shu ), the “Hereditary Houses” (shijia ୮), and the “Biographies” (liezhuan ٨ႚ). Of these five parts, the “Hereditary Houses,” dealing with pre-imperial history, were discontinued in later dynastic histories. As for the Tables, the form was dropped in Hou Hanshu ৵ዧ only to be taken up again in Xin Tangshu ᄅା and subsequent dynastic histories. The Tables in Shiji have not often been the focus of study in their own right: scholars may draw upon individual tables to verify a name or a date, to make a table of their own, or to supplement or correct information found elsewhere in Shiji,1 but they tend to regard the Tables more as useful tools than as attractive “texts.” Mansvelt Beck, for example, writing on the divisions within the Dynastic Histories generally, states that “From a technical point of view the fourth part—called Tables—is superfluous, because all the dates in it—of appointments, enfeoffments, and other acts of state—should also be found in the three preceding parts.”2 This view, I will argue, does not do justice to the Tables in Shiji. Rather than being dull collections of data, I take the Tables (henceforth biao) to be filled with a strong, perhaps unsuspected, rhetorical power, and to contain strong authorial intent. A comparison with the Chunqiu ਞટ (the Annals) may clarify ——— 1 Exceptions are Loewe (2004), chap. 7 “The Tables of the Shiji and the Hanshu: Forms and Contents,” and chap. 8 “The Tables of the Shiji and the Hanshu: Two Faulty Passages;” Hardy (1993, 1999), and Ito (1994). 2 Mansvelt Beck 1990: 1. There are, however, several instances in which the tables, contra Mansvelt Beck, do include information not found elsewhere, see Loewe 2004: 251. Watson (1993) translates the prefaces to tables 3, 5, 6 and 7, but does not include the tables themselves in his translation. Édouard Chavannes (1967: 1–200) awards the tables a much fuller treatment: besides translating all available prefaces, he translates some of the content of the tables, and derives from them a number of tables and lists of his own.
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what I mean. Numerous times the Chunqiu has been described as a dry-as-dust chronicle, and, in origin, the text may have been just that. Still, even before the Western Han period, the Chunqiu fascinated scholars like no other work, and was seen as a text instilled by the great sage Confucius with hidden meanings and moral lessons that had to be carefully recovered. Sima Qian himself, in the preface to the second table, presents the Chunqiu as a text that, in a time of great chaos and decline, manages to recapture the essence of the greatness of the Zhou ࡌ. Although Sima Qian does not make the analogy explicit, we may read the biao in the manner that he reads the Chunqiu: as a series of texts/charts so constructed as to preserve something essential about the past that Sima Qian feels is on the verge of getting lost. I see Sima Qian’s biao as representing a double act of remembrance. First, the biao remember a great institution of the past: the institution whereby a ruler did not rule all the land himself, but doled out parts of it, on a hereditary basis, to members of his family, and to meritorious ministers. Although this institution had its problems (as, at times, the branches overwhelmed the root), it also created an image of China as a place where family relationships mattered, and where rulership was shared. The biao show, both with words and visually, how, in the second century BC, this system had lost its vitality. Second, they also remember the individuals who are listed in the various biao, especially the kings and marquises of the first century of the Han ዧ dynasty (202 BC–AD 220) who were swept up in this moribund system, and, more often than not, did not get a chance to make their mark. In total there are ten biao in Shiji: the first four treat pre-Han history; the last six deal with the first century of the Han dynasty. The titles of the tables suggest that the tables are of three different types: shibiao । (“generation tables”), yuebiao ִ। (“month tables”) and nianbiao ڣ। (“year tables”); these distinctions indicate whether the tables move forward in time by generation, by month, or by year.3 An alternative distinction, one not reflected in the titles of the biao, would distinguish between “horizontal” and “vertical” tables.4 In tables of the horizontal type, one follows what happened over time to the units listed at the very right hand side of the document (descendants of the Yellow Thearch and his seven sons for table 1, states for ———
3 Of these, tables 6 through 9 are not really year tables, as they move forward in time by reign periods, not by years. 4 I adopt this terminology from Loewe (2004: 210–214).
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tables 2–5, and great events and occupants of three important imperial offices in table 10) by moving leftwards through the table following set units of time (generations, months, or years). Tables of a vertical type (tables 6–9) list the relevant emperors’ reigns or reign periods on the right hand side of the document; at the top, from right to left, are the names of the various noble houses. They are vertical because one first focuses on a particular noble house, and then follows what happened to that house by moving the eye downward, over the reigns of successive emperors, or through successive reign periods of one emperor. Whereas the first four tables take us chronologically from the very beginning of Chinese history (here situated in the period of the Yellow Thearch) to the start of the Han dynasty, the last six tables all deal with the first century of the Han dynasty, recording what happened to different kingdoms and noble houses (tables 5–9), or providing a background to those regional histories by informing us about the power configurations at the imperial capital in Chang’an (table 10). Biao 10 is unique in that it carries no preface; the other tables all have prefaces of a length varying from 46 to 552 characters. To understand the tables, it is important to move back and forth between the prefaces and the tables themselves. For an overview of the biao we find in Shiji, see Fig. 1.
THE BIAO IN SHIJI AND THE “FUYANG YEAR TABLE” In 1977 a cache of bamboo strips was discovered in tomb 1 at Shuanggudui ᠨײഔ, Fuyang ॱၺ County, Anhui Province. Two hundred of these strips are classified as belonging to a nianbiao or year table. According to Hu Pingsheng ؓس, who studied the incomplete and badly damaged strips, the Fuyang Year Table would have recorded events between, roughly, the mid-ninth century and the end of the third century BC, covering, like tables 2 and 3 of Shiji, the history of the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods.5 Tomb 1 at Shuanggudui belonged to the second Noble of Ruyin ڿອ, ———
5 Hu Pingsheng [Porter, trans.] 1989: 2–6. Hu hypothesizes that there may not have been a strip for every one of those roughly 600 years, given that only 200 strips survive, and that only years in which important events occurred may have received a strip. If the format was the same of that of the horizontal tables in Shiji, more than one strip per year may have been necessary, but it is likely that the entries per year were less extensive than those we now find in Shiji.
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Xiahou Zao ঀ (posth. yi )ڎ, who died in 164 BC.6 Thus, the Fuyang Year Table must predate the biao in Shiji. I will make a few suggestions as to how the Fuyang Year Table can guide our understanding of the biao in Shiji. 1. A first point concerns the material on which the Fuyang Year Table was recorded, and the way this material was utilized: the document was written on bamboo strips with one column of text per strip, and bears horizontal markers that divide the document into different rows.7 Given the state in which the strips were found (the longest strip fragment being only 9.5 cm in length), it is impossible to reconstruct what the document as a whole must have looked like; however, aligning the rows in the proper manner must have presented a technical challenge.8 Shiji, it is generally assumed, was also originally written on bamboo strips. The biao in Shiji are even more complex than the Fuyang Year Table, as they contain many short explanatory passages, a feature not found on the surviving Fuyang strips.9 It is worth pausing to try to imagine how the biao, now invariably printed on paper, would have been represented on bamboo. Copyists must have faced problems of representation that did not exist for the other parts of the text. 2. Secondly, if the Fuyang Year Table is indeed a year-table like the ———
6 See Giele 1998–1999: 322–323. There is an entry for Xiahou Zao, who succeeded his father (ennobled in 201 BC for having been a loyal follower of Gaozu ల) in 171 BC, in table 6; Shiji 1959, 18/884. 7 Such markers are also found in other types of documents such as hemerological manuals (rishu ֲ). See, for example, the photos of the strips of rishu A found at Shuihudi (Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian 1990: 89–116). 8 So that the reader would know that King X listed in a particular year is, for example, the king of Chu ᄑ; the name “Chu” would have been indicated at the right hand side of the document. 9 We have no way of knowing to what extent the formatting of the biao in today’s printed versions of Shiji deviates from the original bamboo version. A comparison of Fuyang strip N002 and the corresponding lines in table 2 (a correspondence established by Hu Pingsheng)—which are supposed to deal with the year 502 BC—yields the following differences: 1. Whereas in Shiji King Zhao ਟ of Chu and Duke Xian of Zheng ᔤ are separated from one another by 5 more rows, on strip N002, they are only separated by a horizontal marker; 2. In Shiji we just find the number 14, as it was the fourteenth year of King Zhao’s reign, and the name of the king can be found 14 columns earlier, in the year his reign started; on strip N002, by contrast, both name and reign year are found (“King Zhao 14”), perhaps a way of avoiding confusion; 3. In the printed version in Shiji we find an entry of 12 characters (printed in 6 columns of 2 characters) in the slot for the 14th year of King Zhao of Chu that reads: “Zixi ۫ cried on behalf of the people. The people too cried. Lord Zhao ਟ of Cai ᓐ was afraid.” We find no trace of such an entry on strip N002, where we find just one column of characters; see Shiji (1959: 14/667) and Hu Pingsheng [Porter, trans.] (1989: 8).
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ones in Shiji, its mere existence tells us that Sima Qian did not “invent” the genre. This is somewhat contrary to the impression Sima Qian conveys in the prefaces. Although Sima Qian frequently mentions the sources that he used to draw up his biao,10 he also creates a strong sense of authorship where he uses the first person pronoun yu ܇in connection with verbs such as wei “to make”11 or biao “to draw up a table,”12 or when he uses an expression such as “I, Qian, carefully recorded…ᔢ᠃ಖ.”13 In the preface to the second table, he strongly criticizes the efforts of various groups of authors he regards as his predecessors. He presents table 2 as a kind of synopsis not only of the events of the period, but also of the two texts, the Chunqiu and the Guoyu ഏ, that dominate the historiography of the period. However, he claims that while his table truly presents the essence of the Chunqiu and offers a fully comprehensive view, his predecessors have all failed: the classicists (ruzhe ᕢृ) focus only on those fragments of the text that support the meaning they want to convey,14 traveling rhetoricians (chishuozhe ቍᎅृ) take too many liberties with the text, calendar makers (liren ᖵԳ) are only interested in sequences of dates, number people (shujia ᑇ୮) were obsessed with numinous cycles (shenyun 壀ሎ), and genealogists (pudie ᢜᘪ) focused exclusively on establishing family relationships.15 Since the Fuyang Year Table covers the same ground as the second table in Shiji, we must either assume that Sima Qian overstated his case and basically followed an already established format, or we must assume that he would have found the Fuyang Year Table as defective as the other categories of texts that he mentioned, subsuming it, perhaps, with those of the calendar makers or the genealogists. 3. If the Fuyang Year Table can place the presumed novelty of Sima Qian’s project into perspective, a comparison between the Fuyang Year Table and Sima Qian’s biao may, conversely, draw our attention to places where Sima Qian was truly innovative. Let us assume that the Fuyang Year Table was an effort to lay out clearly ——— 10 11 12 13 14
Shiji 1959: 13/488; 14/511; 15/687 Shiji 1959: 13/488. Shiji 1959: 15/687. Shiji 1959: 17/803 I take duan qi yi ឰࠡᆠ to be an abbreviated form of duan zhang qu yi ឰີ࠷ᆠ. For a comment on that practice, see Lewis (1999: 148). 15 Presenting the texts or views of others not necessarily as wrong but as onesided, and superseding these with a more comprehensive view, is a common trope in texts from the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.
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the very complicated chronology of the Chunqiu and Warring States periods, and that tables 2 and 3 of Shiji, despite Sima Qian’s claims of superiority, set out to do the same thing. Table 4, the table that lays out month by month the bewildering events marking the transition from Qin to Han (from 209 to 202 BC) must have had a similar motivation: to try to bring clarity to the interlocking narratives of the fall of Qin, the rise and fall of Xiang Yu ႈ壅, and the ultimately successful quest of Liu Bang Ꮵ߶ to become emperor. Sima Qian’s innovation lies, I believe, not so much in any single table, but in the fact that he extended the biao to cover the whole of Chinese history, including those periods in which the chronology of events was much more straightforward, and less in need of visual exposition. Table 1, the table that starts with the Yellow Thearch and ends with the disintegration of the Western Zhou order, has often been called the least successful of the biao, if only because moving through time from generation to generation does not allow for a very precise aligning of the columns.16 However, I would argue that the table is important just for being there, since it takes us from the beginnings of “Chinese” history to the period covered in table 2. It also tells a unique story of Chinese history: starting from the fiction that all the later thearchs (including Yao , Shun စ, and the founders of the Xia , Shang , and Zhou dynasties) were descendants of the Yellow Thearch, the biao equates history with genealogy, and presents the Chinese, in all their diversity, as members of a single family.17 Loewe offers the plausible hypothesis that the biao dealing with the Han period (especially tables 5–9) derive from records relating to the kingdoms and noble houses that were kept at the capital in Chang’an.18 I believe that Sima Qian included them in his book, not because he felt obliged to do so for the sake of objectivity and completeness, but because through them he could complete the story of Chinese history that had begun with the Yellow Thearch. The inability of kings and nobles to hold on to their lands in the first century of the Han dynasty, demonstrated in the biao, underscores the momen———
16 Loewe voices this opinion, and also gives an overview of how Table 1 was received by scholars in the past. See Loewe 2004: 215–217. 17 The states that would rise to importance in the Chunqiu and Warring States period are also shown to be part of the family (this includes the state of Qin!): they are either direct descendants or close allies of the Zhou ruling family. 18 Loewe 2004, chap. 8. In the preface to table 6, Sima Qian presents himself in the act of reading (du ᦰ) such records; see Shiji 1959: 18/877.
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tous changes that accompanied the advent and establishment of the new dynasty, and, presumably was an important reason why Sima Qian decided to tell the story of the past, not only in the biao, but in Shiji as a whole. 4. Itǀ Tokuo emphasizes how the biao periodize Chinese history in a unique way: a long foundational period from the Yellow Thearch to the mid-ninth century; the Chunqiu period in which the dissolving Zhou order is preserved for posterity in Confucius’ Chunqiu; the Warring States period characterized by the steady rise to power of Qin; a brief transitional period; and, finally, the very sudden elevation of the Liu family with the foundation of the Han dynasty. This periodization, indeed, differs greatly from what we find in the Basic Annals where events are recorded dynasty by dynasty, or emperor by emperor. Itǀ relates this unusual periodization to Sima Qian’s intention to convey the history of the “feudal system (fengjian zhidu ৬ࠫ৫).”19 Indeed, the biao draw our attention away from the center of power, located in the dynastic capitals, and give us a bird eye’s perspective on the whole Chinese realm, conceived not so much in territorial terms but as the home of the many descendants of the Yellow Thearch. However, the Fuyang Year Table, once more, may show us how Sima Qian’s periodization was not necessarily unique, as both adopt roughly the same divisions of time. Also, as the prefaces to the biao indicate, the periodization may have been driven not so much by insights into the longue durée of history but by where the sources available to Sima Qian drew the lines. In other words, different biao draw upon a different source base. 5. If the biao, as a genre, indeed lead our gaze away from the center of power to more outlying regions, and validate these as integral parts of China, it can be no accident that the Fuyang Year Table was found in the tomb of a noble in what was then the South of China. The noble may have valued his Year Table as a sort of affirmation that his family, endowed with a hereditary noble rank, was a meaningful part of the structure of power even if they did not reside in Chang’an.
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19 Ito 1994: 275–290. Ito emphasizes how Sima Qian uses the tables to criticize Emperor Wu; Fujita (1995) points out how Sima Qian, in other parts of Shiji, feels little inhibition in criticizing the emperor.
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VISUAL ASPECTS OF THE BIAO That the Chunqiu was a source of inspiration for Sima Qian as he drew up his tables is something that he himself makes abundantly clear in the prefaces. However, the comparison with the Chunqiu can also take us too far, and blind us to certain features that are unique to the biao. To put it succinctly, whereas the annalistic format—the format of the Chunqiu—depends (almost) entirely on written language, a biao contains written language too, but arranges it in a visually revealing way. Ying Shao ᚨᬐ (ca. 140 to ca. 204) defined the word biao as follows: “A biao not only records events, but also represents them visually ।ृᙕࠡࠃۖߠհ.”20 In Sima Qian’s prefaces to the biao, terminology related to vision is omnipresent. Terms such as biaojian ।ߠ “show with a table,”21 or statements indicating how the biao will be useful for future readers as, through them, they will be able to observe (languan ᥦᨠ or lan ᥦ) the various historical principles and patterns22 are significant. “Observing” suggests a nonlinguistic activity, unlike “reading” du ᦰ, the activity Sima Qian engages in when he peruses the sources that went into the biao.23 Let me clarify how the biao work visually by means of some examples. 1. In his preface to table 5 Sima Qian sketches verbally the history of the Liu Ꮵ kings during the first century of the Han dynasty. He describes how the Liu kings, over the course of less than a century, suffered a dramatic loss of both territory and autonomy; this reduction in the power of the kings greatly helped to strengthen the central power in Chang’an. The table itself illustrates that trend visually. A snapshot early in the century shows a relatively small number of kingdoms (10 in 195 BC).24 Compare this to, for example, the year 137 BC. Here the entire column is filled with names of kingdoms, 24 in all.25 Although the table does not indicate the size of each king’s territory or the actual power he exerted over it, it does show how, as the first century of Han rule advanced, the same space (whether on the bamboo page or in territorial terms) ——— 20 21 22 23
Shiji 1959: 13/487. Shiji 1959: 14/511. Shiji 1959: 15/687; 17/803; 18/878. Shiji 1959: 13/488; 14/509; 15/685; 16/759; 18/877; 19/977. It is not clear to me whether the taishigong ֜ֆ who does the reading is Sima Qian or his father. 24 Shiji 1959: 17/812–813. 25 Shiji 1959: 17/854.
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had to be shared by many more individuals (see Figs. 2 and 3). 2. Above I described the distinction between tables of a horizontal and those of a vertical type. Sima Qian chose the horizontal type, not only for all the tables that predate the Han, but also for table 5, the one dealing with the kings. The vertical type is used for tables 6–9, the tables dealing with the noble families. That Sima Qian chose to present table 5 in horizontal format is, I believe, highly significant. Through this format he presents the kingdoms as subordinate to the central power which is at the top of the page, while also suggesting that power is shared by the center and the various kings: the central line is presented as a primus inter pares, moving through time in the same fashion as the collateral lines. The model here is that of the family, and is presented as continuous with the past. The situation in tables 6–9 is very different: the noble houses appear much more as a function of the power that was concentrated in the imperial capital; we follow their respective fates not in years but according to rhythms established by power transitions in Chang’an. The model here is not that of the family, but one of bureaucratic hierarchy. It is significant that in the biao in Hanshu ዧ the kings are also represented according to the vertical format, presumably reflecting the great loss in autonomy that they suffered (see Fig. 4).26 3. Quite a bit of ink has flowed over the issue of the inverted script (daoshu ଙ) in table 10.27 Table 10 has four rows: row 1 recording, year by year, the great events, rows 2–4 the names of those who occupied the positions of chancellor (xiang ઌ), general (jiang ല), and imperial counsellor (yushi dafu ൗՕ֛). We find inverted script only in the first three rows: each time the text in inverted script relates to something that happened to the holder of a position in the row immediately below it. Overwhelmingly, the messages in inverted script record negative events: deaths, dismissals, and judicial indictments of the top three officials, a contrast with the great events recorded in the first row in regular script. According to Zhang Dake ്Օױ, the ultimate goal of the ——— 26 Hanshu 1962, 13 and 14. 27 Loewe states his belief that table 10 may not be in Sima Qian’s hand, mainly
because it features in Zhang Yan’s ്ஶ list of 10 lost chapters of Shiji. Table 10 also has quite a different focus than the other tables, casting its gaze on events and crucial office-holders in the capital rather than in the kingdoms and noble houses. See Loewe 2004: 242–248. My remarks on this table should therefore be read with some caution, as there is a good chance that the table varies from the one that Sima Qian himself drew up.
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table is to show that over the course of the dynasty “great events” became increasingly rare, whereas negative events followed each other with increasing frequency.28 I propose, in Zhang’s spirit, to look at the inverted script as a form of graphic marker, marking the intervals in which the high officials were in power, and indeed revealing that these intervals became shorter and shorter (see Fig. 5).
THE BIAO AS ACTS OF REMEMBRANCE There is yet another quality to the tables that makes them unique as a historiographical tool. Several times Sima Qian states in the prefaces to the biao that his tables lay things out “from beginning to end” (zhong shi ึࡨ or shi zhong ࡨึ).29 In this way, he is making a crucial distinction between the biao and regular, narrative historical prose (the kind of prose that he practices, for example, in the biographies). Narrative prose is by nature selective: invariably one has to choose a particular angle, or skip those facts that would clutter one’s story and make it incomprehensible. A table, on the other hand, forces one to list all the data that fit the topic, format, and chronological range one has committed to; one cannot leave out facts that are insignificant, unpleasant, or simply too repetitive. Because tables, by definition, strive for exhaustiveness we tend to see them as inherently less interesting than narrative prose. Under certain circumstances, however, the exhaustiveness of a table can also give it an extraordinary rhetorical force, and turn it into a tool that draws the reader’s attention from the general to the specific, and from there to large philosophical questions. This, I believe, is the case with the tables in Shiji. As discussed above, seen as a whole, the tables in Shiji document an irreversible historical transition that has taken place in recent history: from a period in which kings and nobles had a true share in power to one in which they were almost completely at the mercy of the emperor’s wishes and whims.30 The tables, however, do much more than simply record this transition, and also pay tribute to the individual lineages that make up each era. Let me clarify what I mean with an example. In the preface to table 6 Sima Qian states how at the ——— 28 Zhang 1986: 116–117. 29 Shiji 1959, 14/511; 15/686; 18/878; 19/977. 30 For an account of how this played itself out in the life of Liu An Ꮵڜ, King of
Huainan ত, see Vankeerberghen 2001, part 1.
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outset of the dynasty over one hundred men received a noble rank because of their extraordinary service. Only in five cases, he continues, were their descendants able to retain the noble status for more than one hundred years; “all the others,” he claims, “because of some infraction of the law, lost their lives and forfeited their domains 塒ઃ݄ऄሷࡎՋഏ.” In a sense, this is a very apt summary of the table that follows the preface. Nonetheless, the table itself adds substantially to the preface’s statements. Table 6 lays out, one by one, the fortunes of the 143 lineages that received a noble title thanks to a meritorious founding father: names of individual nobles are mentioned; in addition, the table states the reasons why a noble rank was conferred, taken away, or transferred to other hands, and situates all the events affecting a noble house in time. By listing these noble houses one by one, Sima Qian achieves a double goal. First, although unable to restore sacrifices to the founding fathers of the various noble lineages, he makes sure that later generations can at least retrieve their names and histories, and thus performs his own moral and religious duties toward them.31 Second, the sheer repetitiveness of the histories of these individual noble houses (from foundation to decline) raises profound questions about any individual family’s powers vis-à-vis the forces of history. Much more powerful than the generalized statement in the preface, the table helps us to recognize the humanity, not only of the founders of a noble house, but also of those who contributed to its decline. Sima Qian’s tables should not be read as a critique of the centralization that took place during the first century of Han rule. In fact, as the prefaces make all too clear, Sima Qian is quite able to see the dangers of a system in which collateral lineages acquire too much power. He is also very even-handed in awarding praise and blame for what happened: on the one hand, he faults the increasingly strict laws with which the central government tries to curtail the lords; on the other hand, he points out how the descendants of the founders of kingdoms and noble houses often lost their moral compass and became increasingly arrogant. It is apt, however, to see the tables themselves as a uniquely individualized account of the immense changes that Sima Qian observed during his lifetime. In them, he illustrates the admirable service noble houses—founded by a ruler’s relatives or his meritorious ministers—provided since the Yellow Thearch’s time, honors those Han nobles who despite their excellence were denied ——— 31 For a reading of Shiji as a religiously motivated text, see Nylan 1998–1999.
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their descendants’ enduring sacrificial devotion, and meditates on the limited ability individual families have in shaping their own fate.
REFERENCES CHAVANNES, Édouard. Les mémoires historiques the Se-ma Ts’ien. Vol. 3. Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1967 FUJITA, Katsuhisa ᢏضՆ. 1995. “Review of Itǀ Tokuo, Shiki jippyǀ ni miru Shiba Sen no rekishikan,” Kodai bunka ֏֮זײ47.10: 63–65. GIELE, Enno. 1998–1999. “Early Chinese Manuscripts: Including Addenda and Corrigenda to New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to the Reading of Inscriptions and Manuscripts.” Early China 23–24: 247–337. HARDY, Grant. 1999. Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian’s Conquest of History. New York: Columbia University Press. ——. 1993. “The Interpretive Function of Shih chi 14, ‘The Table by Years of the Twelve Feudal Lords.’ ” Journal of the American Oriental Society 113.3: 14– 24. Hanshu ዧ [by Ban Gu ఄࡐ]. 1962. 12 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua. HU, Pingsheng ؓ[ سtrans. by Deborah Porter]. 1989. “Some Notes on the Organization of the Han Dynasty Bamboo “Annals” found at Fuyang.” Early China 14: 1–23. ITƿ, Tokuo ْᢏ䄧ߊ. 1994. Shiki jippyǀ ni miru Shiba Sen no rekishikan ಖԼ।Բߠ坕್ᔢ圸䅙䕋. Tǀkyǀ: Hirakawa. LEWIS, Mark Edward. 1999. Writing and Authority in Early China. Albany: State University of New York Press. LOEWE, Michael. 2004. The Men Who Governed Han China: Companion to A Bibliographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods. Leiden: Brill. MANSVELT BECK, Burchard J. 1990. The Treatises of Later Han: Their Author, Sources, Contents and Place in Chinese Historiography. Leiden: Brill. NYLAN, Michael. 1998–1999. “Sima Qian: A True Historian?” Early China 23–24: 203–246. Shiji ಖ [by Sima Qian ್ᔢ]. 1959. 10 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua. Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian ጕॡچችێ១. 1990. [Ed. Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu ጕॡچችێ១ᖞ՛ิ]. Beijing: Wenwu. VANKEERBERGHEN, Griet. 2001. The Huainanzi and Liu An’s Claim to Moral Authority. Albany: State University of New York Press. WATSON, Burton, trans. 1993. Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty. Revised edition. 2 vols. Hong Kong and New York: Columbia University Press. ——, trans. 1993. Records of the Grand Historian: Qin Dynasty. Hong Kong and New York: Columbia University Press. ZHANG, Dake. ്Օױ1986. Shiji lunzan jishi ಖᓵᢥᙀᤩ. Xi’an: Shaanxi renmin.
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Fig. 1: An Overview of the biao in Shiji.
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Fig. 2: The 10 Kingdoms of 195–194 BC; from Table 5, Shiji 17/812–3.
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Fig. 3: The 24 Kingdoms of 137–136 BC; from Table 5, Shiji 17/854–5.
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Fig. 4: Noble Houses Created in Emperor Hui’s Time: Example of a Vertical Table; 19/978–
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Fig. 5: Inverted Script in Table 10; Shiji 22/1138-9.
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THE AVATAMSAKA–SÛTRA AS A “BODHI MANDALA TEXT”1 Hermann-Josef Röllicke Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953) begin with a quotation from the first book of St. Augustine’s Confessiones. Wittgenstein’s quotation starts from the middle of the following paragraph (italicized), indicating St. Augustine’s troubles with language learning during his childhood: Nonne ab infantia huc pergens veni in pueritiam? Vel potius ipsa in me venit et successit infantiae? Nec discessit illa: quo enim abiit? Et tamen iam non erat. Non enim eram infans, qui non farer, sed iam puer loquens eram. Et memini hoc, et unde loqui didiceram, post adverti. Non enim docebant me maiores homines praebentes mihi verba certo aliquo ordine doctrinae, sicut paulo post litteras, sed ipse mente, quam dedisti mihi, deus meus, cum gemitibus et vocibus variis et variis membrorum motibus edere vellem sensa cordis mei, ut voluntati pareretur, nec valerem quae volebam omnia nec quibus volebam omnibus. Prensabam memoria, cum ipsi appellabant rem aliquam et cum secundum eam vocem corpus ad aliquid movebant: videbam et tenebam hoc ab eis vocari rem illam, quod sonabant, cum eam vellent ostendere. Hoc autem eos velle ex motu corporis aperiebatur tamquam verbis naturalibus omnium gentium, quae fiunt vultu et nutu oculorum ceterorumque membrorum actu et sonitu vocis indicante affectionem animi in petendis, habendis, reiciendis fugiendisve rebus. Ita verba in variis sententiis locis suis posita et crebro audita quarum rerum signa essent paulatim colligebam measque iam voluntates edomito in eis signis ore per haec enuntiabam. Sic cum his, inter quos eram, voluntatum enuntiandarum signa communicavi et vitae humanae procellosam societatem altius ingressus sum pendens ex parentum auctoritate nutuque maiorum hominum.2 Haven’t I, from infancy following up here, come to boyhood? Or better, hasn’t it itself come unto me, succeeding infancy? And not has it broken off: where namely did it go away to? And yet, it was already not there any more. Indeed, not was I an infant any more, who wouldn’t speak, but already a boy, speaking, I was. And I remember this; and wherefrom I had learned speaking, I turned to later. Indeed, had not the elders taught me, offering me words according to a certain teaching or-
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1 For a short introduction to the same topic by the author, see Röllicke (1999). I am greatly indebted to Tony Howes, Heidelberg, for proof-reading and correcting the English draft version of this paper. 2 Latin text quoted from Bernhart (1987: 30–32).
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der, just like letters a little later, but I, through my own mind, which you gave me, my god, with sighs and varying voices and varying movements of the limbs I wanted to utter the senses of my heart, so that to volition way would be given, and neither was I strong enough for all that I wanted nor for all those for whom I wanted [it]. I grasped it through memory that they themselves stroke at some other kind of thing and that, according to its voice, they moved the body towards something: I saw and I kept with me this: that by them was voiced that thing itself, which they had sounded, since they had wanted to display it. But that they wanted this was disclosed out of the motion of the body, so to speak: out of natural words of all peoples, which come to be through countenance and winks of the eyes, through the acts of the other limbs, and through the sound of the voice, indicating the affection of the soul in demanding, possessing, rejecting, or fleeing from things. While in this way words were set to their places in varying sentences, and, gradually being heard of what things they were signs of, I steadily collected [them] together, and as my volitions had already been tamed to these signs, with my mouth through them I announced [my volitions]. So with those, among whom I stayed, signs of volitions to be announced I communicated, and into human life’s stormy society deeper ingress I had, depending on the authority of parents and the instruction of elderly people.
Wittgenstein comments on the italicized paragraph in the following way: In diesen Worten erhalten wir, so scheint es mir, ein bestimmtes Bild von dem Wesen der menschlichen Sprache. Nämlich dieses: Die Wörter der Sprache benennen Gegenstände—Sätze sind Verbindungen von solchen Benennungen.—In diesem Bild von der Sprache finden wir die Wurzeln der Idee: Jedes Wort hat eine Bedeutung. Diese Bedeutung ist dem Wort zugeordnet. Sie ist der Gegenstand, für welchen das Wort steht.3 In these words we obtain, it seems to me, a particular picture of the essence of human language. Namely this: The words of language name objects—sentences are connections of such namings.—In this picture of language we find the roots of the idea: Each word has a meaning. This meaning is attached to the word. It is the object for which the word stands.
Wittgenstein has probably somewhat misread St. Augustine’s description of a child’s language learning. First of all, what Wittgenstein calls “objects” are, in fact, res, “things”, in the Latin text, which is certainly not the same as an “object”. It is by no means necessarily a “thing” that is in need of a noun in occidental language use. Second, St. Augustine does not say that “each word has a meaning”. He says ——— 3 Wittgenstein 1971: 15.
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instead that words are rerum signa, “signs of things”. More precisely, these signs are signs of volitions of the soul, which means, that in St Augustine’s words res is not simply an external or physical “object”, but an action of the soul’s will (voluntas animae). The crucial event, in which people and things come into contact, is given in the Latin phrase …cum ipsi appellabant rem aliquam… Wittgenstein reads appellare to mean “to name, to call something this or that”. Although at first sight this is correct, the semantic core of appellare is the same as that of appellere (2nd conjugation). That core means first of all “knocking” or “striking at something”. Thus the act of appellare is at first not yet verbal at all. As soon as you “knock” or “strike” at something, it vibrates and makes a sound. You give it its voice. The same thing happens in man’s soul when the spirit turns to a thing and touches it. In St. Augustine’s text the voice (vox) is “sounded” (sonata) by someone who has moved their eyes and limbs towards that “thing”.4 The contiguity of people and “things” is much more like a dance in St. Augustine than like an act of labelling or ticketing objects, as Wittgenstein imagines it. The crucial point of that contiguity is not the invention of “meaning”, but the annunciation of the soul being moved by some event: “With sighs and varying voices and varying movements of the limbs I wanted to utter the senses of my heart,” he says. The movements of the heart are first of all speechless impulses of things. They are movements originating from the thingness of things themselves. That thingness is the mover of the human voice, because the voice is the immediate sign of the heart being moved. So appellare, “naming something”, is the consequence of appellere, “knocking at it”. The counterpart of St. Augustine’s philosophy of language as it is mirrored in the passage quoted here is not the ambiguity of language use or practice, as Wittgenstein thinks—St. Augustine calls this vitae humanae procellosa societas, “the stormy society of human life”—but the silence or untouchedness of the soul, or “heart”. So language seems to lead through yet another door: not only the one guiding us deeper and deeper into the stormy sea of society and communication and into the excitement of the soul, but one that leads into a silence, in which at the same time any kind of excitement is al——— 4 Behind this is certainly the text of Genesis 2,19, where Yahweh leads man to all the creatures he has made in order to see (sic) the “voice”, by which man would call each of them (loyiqro’). The way in which Jahweh creates everything by “naming” (wayyiqro’) differs markedly from the human way of “naming” all creatures.
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ready extinguished. As the Diamond-sûtra repeatedly says, this double structure of trained awareness is the very reason why the Buddha uses words at all and uses them justly and for good reasons. So we have to put the question: In what way is language adopted in Buddhist sûtras? Is it entirely for the sake of doctrine and “meaning”, as Wittgenstein would have it, or are there dimensions of a non-semantic kind and use of language? Heather Stoddard in her article on “Dynamic Structures in Buddhist Mandalas” quotes Alex Wayman as saying: In the case of a tantric text, it will always be a mistake for any reader to think that his proven intelligence (by university degrees and the like), or his proven intuition (by life experience and the like) will enable him to penetrate the meaning of a basic Buddhist tantra text, because the meaning is in the doing of it …5
In one way, this statement seems to sound very similar to what Wittgenstein had been up to, since according to Wayman the meaning of a tantric text “is in the doing of it”. But in another way, it leads us astray, since it still insists on the theory that texts fulfil their foremost duty in expressing a meaning. If we want to discover textual dimensions that have, for the sake of silence of the heart, broken the yoke of meanings, we have to ask, what help is there in the linguistic appearance of those texts themselves that guide us in a different direction? I should like to probe into this question in the case not of a tantric text, but in that of the Huayan jing ဎᣤᆖ [Avatamsaka-sûtra]. My thesis is that this sûtra is organized according to a certain mandala structure, and that it therefore cannot be simply read and commentated upon for the sake of its mere meaning or doctrinal and intellectual understanding. It has indeed to be loudly recited in its vast entirety and engrossment of time, and its own liturgical structure has to be ritually followed. Its enormous augmentation of societally organized time extinguishes the floating character of time.6 This is itself already part of its “doctrine”. Insofar as meditation follows the daĞabhûmika, the “Ten Grounds” or “Stages” of the Bodhisattva path, while meditation time has abandoned the floating character of physical time, it is nevertheless aware that there is still transition from one stage to another by jumps. The enigma of the century-long process and effort in the making of this sûtra lies first in the elaborate building of its own architectural time structure, or its music, and second in the irresistible ——— 5 Wayman 1973: 42; Stoddard 1999: 169–213, see p. 172, n. 23. 6 This is even more the case in the German and English translations.
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volatilization of coming and going in time in the heart of the listener. Compared with the older 60-scrolls text, the younger 80-scrolls text does not really add much to the Avatamsaka doctrine, but brings to mature perfection the architecture of the work in time and space. The Huayan jing is not a “text mandala” in the sense that a mandala form is laid out beforehand and inscribed with a text afterwards, as is the case for instance with the Tibetan Zung ‘khor mandala of the 9th century from Dunhuang (now in the British Museum, Stein-No. 18). It is equally not a “text mandala” in the sense that a mandala form must be deciphered according to the doctrines preached in a book, as must indeed be done in the case of two Avatamsaka mandalas from Dunhuang held by the Musée Guimet at Paris7 and the Shingon “Mandalas of the Two Worlds” held by the Kyôô Gokoku-ji (Tô-ji) at Kyôto: The Mandalas of the Two Worlds give concrete representation of the theories expounded in the Mahâvairocana-sûtra and the Vajrasekharasûtra, which are two of the three scriptures held most sacred by Esoteric Buddhists of the Shingon Sect.8
Taking a book as a mandala is also not the same as reciting a sûtra in front of a painted or sculptured mandala in expectation of miraculous changes accomplished during the mandala ritual. Although one could say that in a certain sense every mandala is a text, what I have in mind here is a text whose books, parts, and chapters were meant to be doctrinal and deserving masterly interpretation from the beginning, and which were successively transformed into a monumental word mandala in order to mark out the doctrine in a dimension of voice and sound which is not doctrinal any more. Painted and sculptured mandalas, sand mandalas (as in Tibetan Buddhism), and architectural mandalas have been richly and broadly studied. Mandalas are regularly differentiated according to the following types: karma-mandalas (using statues demarcating the ritual space), samaya-mandalas (original-vow mandalas, in which the deities are only hinted at by certain signs like circles and dots), and bija-mandalas (seed-mandalas, with all the sectors being upheld by Sanskrit syllable initials of the “true words”). But the idea of a “mandala text”—I use this term to differentiate from “text mandalas” like the Zung ‘khor—seems not to exist. This must have something to do with the supposition that a mandala is normally “a fixed material object”, ——— 7 See Vandier-Nicolas 1974. 8 Shunshô Manabe 1978: 8.
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as Stoddard puts it.9 A mandala text is no “fixed material object”, and thus the mandala in it is not simply a “meditation support”,10 as she says, but the time-space or space-time of meditation itself. In a certain sense, seed mandalas are text mandalas. The syllables therein appear as initials of words, i.e. of something already having language character. The question is: What is, for the sake of a philosophy of language, the difference and identity between the “seed” of the true word syllable and the fully expanded gigantic cosmos arrangement of the entire Huayan jingҏ ဎᣤᆖ? Although this sûtra is extremely long and time-consuming—it is one of the mahâ-vaipulyasutras—, it is not shoreless. It is because of its very mandala structure that it is never in danger of becoming chaotic, orderless, or shoreless. The order of this mandala is first of all an heroic attempt to tame masses of texts that were originally independent and not necessarily structured according to mandala rules. But this is at the furthermost extreme from any idea of an opening of seed syllables into the flourishing extensiveness of the sûtra’s syntactic compartments and corridors, of colloquial words, phrases, and sentences, in the same way as the colours and figures of a painted mandala can be regarded as phenomena of the seed syllables of their respective fields. A mandala, whether it is a sûtra or not, is always itself a ritual and never simply an “object” of worship or veneration.11 Therefore, mandalas are, as a rule, specialities and often secrets of those who are initiated into the ritual concerned. It is thus necessary to study each mandala singularly, although certain basic features of mandalas are shared by all of them. The question of who or what voyages through the mandala of the Huayan jing, has been authoritatively answered by the third patriarch of Huayan, Xianshou Fazang ᔃଈऄ៲ (643–712) in his Huayan youxin fajie jiҏ ဎᣤཾ֨ऄಖ. According to him, it is always the “heart”.12 To him, even Bodhisattvas are not “objects” of a venerating optic, but “hearts” that are opened and developed to Buddhahood. It is this “Bodhisattva heart”, whose attention is awakened to veneration at the sight of a Buddha or Bodhisattva figure on a temple altar. This is emphatically stressed in the “Fa puti xin” ࿇ဆ༼֨ chapter of the ———
9 Stoddard 1999: 173. 10 Ibid., p. 173. 11 For the veneration of sûtras—as is well known, a stronghold of the prajñâ-
pâramitâ tradition—as focuses of worship in place of Buddhas or Bodhisattvas in Mahâyâna communities see McMahan (1998: 249–274). 12 Fazang, Huayan youxin fajie jiҏ ဎᣤཾ֨ऄಖ, T. 1877, vol. 45.
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Huayan jing, to which Fazang has devoted a special commentary.13 Thus the time-space of the heart is also the time-space of the mandala. Meditation follows both an inward and an outward path, or, as Stoddard put it, a “centripetal” and a “centrifugal” direction. There are, as is well known, mandalas that spiral from inside to outside, and others, like that of candi Borobodur in Java, that spiral from outside to inside. But even if only one path is followed, it will simultaneously be complemented by the opposite movement. Strictly speaking, there is no difference in time between the period during which the adept walks the centripetal way, and the period during which he walks the centrifugal way, since the theology of the mandala always involves the simultaneousness of any time. If he walks along an inward mandala, he will recognize that the turn inside, which intensifies his concentration and makes his path wind tighter and tighter, is at the same time an opening of mind, a widening of space and a lifting up out of the “crawling” position endured during his stay in the lower corridors. The gradual closing of the horizontal ambitus means that, even as it becomes smaller, the circle is gradually lifted up. Even if a pilgrim circumambulates a sacred hill many times along the same path, he is still lifted along the axis of the mountain internally, or along the attracting power lines of its deity. In the mandala, reiteration never means a repetition. But manifold repetition along the same line is highly helpful to forget this line and thus enter into the mandala. In a way, the experience of a mandala realizes what Isabelle Robinet and others have described as the Daoist rite of chongxuan ૹخ, or “double mystery”, as Cheng Xuanying ګ خ (fl. 631–652) adopted it.14 Superficially, the way in and the way out follow each other in periods of life-time, are differentiated in liturgical movements, and will be executed in linear succession. But if the second is not the very fulfillment of the first, the first is an empty movement. Descriptions of mandalas as “objects” or “material supports” give the user an idea of the mandala as if it was an apriori construction, suggesting that the construction is already there before the meditator enters into meditation. It would then be a pre-performed laying-out, as in an invitation for a walk in a mirror cabinet or in a ghost train. But a mandala is, in fact, a particular “as–if structure” of a rite.15 In the ——— 13 Fazang, Huayan “Fa puti xin” zhangҏ ဎᣤ࿇ဆ༼֨ີ, T. 1878, vol. 45. 14 For an updated discussion of this, see Yu Shiyi (2000). 15 For a preliminary exposition of the concept of “as–if structures” of rites, see
Röllicke (1996: 415–426).
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Huayan jing, the mystery and the riddle of the “as–if structure” comes explicitly to the fore shortly before the end, when the Gandavyûhasûtra unveils that the whole voyage of Sudhana had happened without a single bodily movement. He had not left the fixed spot of his meditation seat at all. This is the precondition that enabled him to go on his voyage. The lotos seat locks the feet and obstructs the adept’s walking around, or his circumambulation of physical mountains and altars, whether the circumambulation in the manner of pradaksina, in the clockwise or “paternal” order, or of apradaksina, in the counterclockwise or “maternal” order. Thus the mandala of the Huayan jing as a whole is always the spot of the Buddha’s awakening, vyupaĞama in Sanskrit, Jimie daochang hui ഭᄰሐᄎ in Chinese, the place of “Silent Emptiness”, at the city of Gayâ in the country of Magadha. To the theravâdins, the name of that place had always been equivalent to nirvâna. And the exegetical tradition of the Chinese Huayan school has always taken the gathering there as the general assembly of all the assemblies which follow in the text of the sûtra. The Mahâ-Vairocana-sûtra has been regarded as the text from which East Asian Buddhist tradition as a whole extracted its fundamental notion of mandala. ĝubhâkarasimha (637–735) and the âcârya Yixing ԫ۩ॳ⿂ර (683–727),16 who in 725 translated this sûtra into Chinese, also wrote the first Chinese commentary on it, the Da Piluzhena chengfo jingshuҏ Օḛ ᗝᔟ ߷ګ۵ᆖ ง. 17 In that commentary they explain: ֛ደಁᢅृټፋႃ. վࠐڕאటኔפᐚႃڇԫ. ԯ۟Լპቺ ᑇܑཕٱᔚႽᘿྃ.18 ᜠ᎖Օֲ֨׆. ࠌԫ֊ฒسཏ॰ၞᔊ. ਢਚᎅደಁᢅՈ.19 Now a mandala is called an assemblage. Once truth and plenty, merit and virtue of the Tathâgatas are amassed at one single spot, the knowledge reaching out to all the multifariously different grains of dust of the ten worlds seals up the spokes of the perfectly rounded cakrawheel20 at the hub.
———
16 He is one of the “Five Patriarchs” of the Chinese “Secret Teaching” of Buddhism, mijiaoҏ യඒ. 17 T. 1796, vol. 39, p. 579 ff. 18 Reading fucou ᘿྃ in the sense of fucouҏ ᘿᙂ, “the spokes at the hub”, and thus “a place of concourse”. 19 T. 1796, p. 626:a. 20 Since mandala is often understood and translated as “the great wheel”, the Bodhisattva “Great Wheel”, Mahâcakra, is also called “Bodhisattva Mandala”. He accomplishes the mandala by taking the corresponding “original vow”—his original vow creates the mandala. He occupies the first seat in the southern quarter of the
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The heart king Great Sun (Mahâvairocana), as a pole-beam flanking the carriage, causes all the masses of living beings to advance quickly through the gate of one-and-all. This is the reason why we speak of a mandala.
The Samdhi-nirmocana-sûtra starts with a description of the Bhagavan dwelling in an immeasurably precious palace with uncountable Bodhisattvas seated around him. That space, the text says, is “well-apportioned into distinctive sections”, “limitless in reach”, and “an unimpeded mandala”. 21 It proves the validity of ĝubhâkarasimha’s and Yixing’s definiton. Introducing each of the assemblies in the Huayan jing—eight in the short text, and nine in the long text—, the sûtra stresses, with a sense of scenic, or theatrical, responsibility, that the central Buddha, Vairocana, changes his place without the slightest movement of his mind or body. He moves without a movement. So the path that the Buddha himself took from teaching to teaching during his lifetime is an ever unchanging path insofar as what he has to teach is the mere oneness of times and spaces. It is itself a mandala. In the 80-scrolls text the name of the first and basic assembly is not translated semantically, but phonetically, as alanruo fa puti changҏ ॳᥞૉऄဆ༼. The meaning of this is exactly the same: “Silent Emptiness” (aranâ – “fightlessness”), to which also belongs a particular samâdhi named after it. Glossing over the meaning of the name of the general assembly, the Zeng yi ahan jing ᏺԫॳܶᆖ states: ԫ֊۩ྤൄ, ڽڶؘृس, լؘسլڽ, ڼᄰ່ᑗ.22 Among all things in their frailty, void of any enduring disposition, those who are born, necessarily possess death, and those who are not born, necessarily do not die. If [both of] these are extinguished, this is to be taken as the highest of joys.
——— Garbha World Mandala of Secret Buddhism. His seed syllable is hûm. He has three pairs of arms and hands. Turning the palms of the upper pair of his hands outside and lifting them above his head, he carries the diamond cakra seal, jingang lunyinҏ ८ଶᔚ ٱ, the seal of the “wheel”, i.e. the seal of the mandala itself, in them. The iconography of this figure fits perfectly ĝubhâkarasimha’s use of language in the passage quoted here. 21 English translation from the Tibetan text by Powers (1995: 5). 22 ԫ֊۩ྤൄ corresponds to ԫ֊壆۩ྤൄ, sabbe sankhârâ aniccâ in Pali. This sentence marks the first of four “dharma seals” (Skr. dharma-uddâna, Chin. si fabenmoҏ ऄأء, or si youtannaҏ ᐡᚽ߷) preached by the Ekottara-âgamasûtra (Chinese version translated by Gautama Samghadeva in 397 under the title given, T. 125, vol. 2, pp. 549–830). For the line quoted see juan 23, p. 672:b. Uddana is a form of prajña (wisdom) that is upward-flowing and works like an escape hatch for the soul at the time of death; see Hayashima Osamu ڰ (1995: 378–383).
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It is necessary to lay out the path of the meditating heart in order to witness the extinction of the heart’s movements, of which birth is the most fundamental. Birth is a movement of the heart. Since meditation is a deep diving into different spheres, or grades, of samâdhi, a “mandala text” must be qualified as a verbal layout of samâdhi topology.
II. The Huayan jing as an architectural whole is a late achievement. Several of its books and parts had been circulated independently of any idea of making them cornerstones of a mahâvaipulya-sûtra, a “great and expansive” sûtra. This is especially true of the last chapter, comprising no less than one quarter of the whole book, the Gandavyûha-sûtra, which is estimated to have been written around 50 AD. It is also true for the tradition of the “Ten Stages”, or the “Ten Abodes of the Bodhisattva” tradition, which leads to a longer series of different texts. Zhiqianҏ ֭ᝐ, working early in the 3rd century AD, still under the Eastern Han regime, translated into Chinese a work called Dousha ೧[ ޥTushita] in one scroll as an independent piece of literature. This later became a textual brick of the famous “Rulai minghao” ټࠐڕᇆ chapter, “On the Name of the Tathâgata”,23 and of the “Rulai guangming jue” ࠐڕ٠ࣔᤚ chapter. He also translated a text called Pusa benye ဆ៳ءᄐ [The Root Exercise of the Bodhisattva]. This is an integral piece of text that was later incorporated into the “Jingxing” ἑ۩, “Procedures of Purification”, and “Shizhu” Լ۰, “The Ten Abodes”, chapters. These are only a few examples of the patchwork of independent texts that make up the Huayan jing.24 At the earliest on the 10th day of the 3rd month of the year 418 AD Buddhabhadra (359–429), staying at the Daochangsi ሐ ڝtemple at Yangzhou ཆڠ, started his translation of certain volumes of Sanskrit texts into the Da fang guang fo huayan jing Օֱᐖ ۵ဎᣤᆖ [Sûtra of the Glorification of the Vast, Regulating, and Omnipresent Buddha with Flowers]. This title already indicates one of the most basic meanings of the Buddhist use of the Vedic word man ———
23 There is a separate English translation of this sûtra by Cheng Chien (1993); German translation of this English translation by Bandini (1997). 24 A preliminary chart of independent early texts that were interwoven into different Huayan jing chapters is given in index volume 5 of the Taishô edition of the canon, p. 3.
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dala, in the words of Ulrich Mammitzsch: As arenas marking the benevolent descent of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, mandalas came to be known as splendidly adorned places decked with garlands of beautiful flowers. They were surrounded by an aura of overwhelming splendor which legitimized them as places of descent and attracted beings of lesser degree of spiritual advancement.25
Buddhabhadra finished his translation on the 28th day of the 12th month of the year 421. This book is regularly called the “old text”, or the “60-scrolls text”, comprising 34 chapters.26 It was another 278 years before the Avatamsaka mandala came to its numerical perfection. During the years 695w699 ĝikĞânanda (652–710) prepared a new translation under the same title, but adding five chapters of new text. His work, in 39 chapters, is known in general as the “new text”, or the “80-scrolls text”.27 With the completion of this text, the path of assemblies follows these stations: 1.) VyupaĞama – Jimie daochang huiҏ ഭᄰሐᄎ. Although this place is still the locale of historical record, it is radically separated and distanced from the world of ordinary men. From the beginning it is described in the way of pure lands, jingtu Ւ, embellished with the finest of jewels, a place where every single being exercises the tenstage Bodhisattva path. 2.) The first move to another assembly does not yet leave the horizontal plane, but switches to the puguang fatangҏ ཏ٠ऄഘ, the “Dharma Hall of All-Embracing Brightness”. This is a roofed pavilion at one of the sides of the Jimie daochang. In the dramatic scenery of the whole, it is the place from where the upward direction will next be taken. The assembly will ascend unhindered through the roof. After the voyage of assemblies has passed the first plus the following five vertically positioned heavens of desire, it will find itself back here for one more assembly in the short text and for two more in the long text. The general topography of the long text does not add another location. Its idea is not to create a different place or scenery, but to be able to count the assemblies up to nine instead of eight. The philosophy of the number nine is the attracting factor of the new redaction. 3.) It is from this place which the ascension by Buddha Vairocana of Mount Sumeru begins. Although Sumeru is the axial mountain of ——— 25 Mammitzsch 1991: 16. 26 T. 278, vol. 9. German translation by Doi Torakazu 1983 (vol. 1); 1981 (vol.2);
1982 (vol. 3); 1978 (vol. 4). 27 T. 279, vol. 10. English translation by Cleary 1984–1987.
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the universe, the ascension starts from a side building of the “Exercise Ground of Silent Emptiness”. We can probably assume that the side hall called “All-Embracing Brightness” is the beginning of a spiraling upward movement around the axis of the Avatamsaka mandala, and that the first move upward is no more than taking a few steps that lead from the flat ground of the grove to the height of the hall. From that hall Buddha Vairocana and his assembly introduce themselves to Indra’s palace, renli tiangongҏ ֚ܓݴ୰, the “Heavenly Palace of Indulgently Receiving Gains”. 4.) Next on the axis comes the “Heavenly Palace of King Yama” (Yemo tiangongҏ ࡙ᐰ֚୰). It is the third of six heavens of desire. Its name means a “good” or “healing proportion of time”, or a “Profitable Moment”. With the teachings at this place, the ascension of Mount Sumeru continues. 5.) Without mentioning Maitreya, the text leads the assembly next to the “Heavenly Palace of Tushita” (Doushuai tiangongҏ ೧֚୰), which is another grade upward. It is the fourth of the six heavens of desire, a heaven of great joys, sexual lust, vast stores of food and drink, and a good fill. Other texts differ from the Huayan jing, in that we are told that Tushita has an inner and an outer court. The inner court is the abode of fully awakened Bodhisattvas and the “Pure Land” of Bodhisattva Maitreya. Having listened to the Dharma for 4,000 Tushita years—one year here takes 400 years on the earth of men—, the Bodhisattva will be reborn among men under the longhuashuҏ ᚊဎᖫ, the “dragon-flower tree”, and awaken to complete Buddhahood there. The inner court is made up of a carré of 49 elementary courts. The Mile shangsheng jing ᚦ೬Ղسᆖ relates that these courts are palaces made of jewel dust. They are metamorphoses of light-rays that the Buddha himself had once sent out.28 In the secret tradition of Buddhism, mijiao യඒ, which starts its genealogy from Nâgârjuna and has the Chinese monk Huiguo ༡࣠ (746–805) as its decisive transmitter to Japan, Tushita appears in both mandalas, the Garbha World, and the Diamond World mandala. It is noteworthy that the Diamond World mandala in its Shingon version is also a mandala of nine sectors with Vairocana in the middle of it.29 This is congruent ———
28 T. 452, vol. 14, p. 419:a. 29 To the mandala of the Huayan jing, it is important that the Buddha at its centre
is the cosmic Buddha Vairocana of whom each and every being in the assembly is an embodiment. This is not only at the core of the doctrine of the book, it is also a prerequisite for the possibility of the all-pervasiveness of the mandala as such. The personnel of the Huayan jing is also categorically the same as that of the esoteric
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with the late Avatamsaka structure of nine assemblies, although the nomenclature of the sectors in the Diamond World mandala is entirely different. Tushita is normally situated in the north-west, and its seed syllable is tam. 6.) The next palace, one level higher, is Para-nirmita-vaĞa-vartin in Sanskrit, tahua zizai tiangong ֚ڇ۞֏ה୰ in Chinese. It is the sixth and last of the six heavens of desire. The lifespan of its inhabitants is 16,000 years, with one day of their life corresponding to 1,600 years of human life on earth. In the Garbhadhâtu mandala and in the Diamond World mandala it covers a field in the northeast. Its seed syllable is pam. The ascension of Mount Sumeru is an ascension of the heavens of desire. As we can read from the changing time proportions, whose numbers increase by jumps, the spaces must grow tighter and tighter. 7./8.) After having visited the last of the heavens of desire on the sixth level of ascension, the seventh (and also the eighth in the longer edition) returns to the side hall of Bodhgayâ. But this place is now no longer the same. The ten stages of Bodhisattvahood have been taught. The tenfold Bodhisattva-path has been completely demonstrated. The teaching of the irrevocable initial decision of the Bodhisattva has been heaved up from deep samâdhi. His “Ten Returns” are now clarified. His “Ten Grounds” have been laid out. His “Ten Clarifications” have been explained. His “Ten Endurings” have been analyzed. Unending heaps of tens and tens of equal sounding sentences and paragraphs have been accumulated. Every person who has endured the reading of the sûtra to this point feels the long walk through the seemingly limitless redundancies of vastly stretching corridors of text in his or her bones. Nobody leaves the audience in the same way he or she had entered it in the beginning. The listener becoming the crown witness of the text, the text changes him or her from hour to hour, from day to day, from month to month. The effect is very much like praying a rosary or a litany, or patiently and devotedly singing and speaking the prayers on a week-long pilgrimage. Nirvâna is always there, it has not changed its time and place. For the listener, the reiterative structure of hours and hours of almost identical textual bricks, with only very ——— mandalas of the Two Worlds. “Esoteric Buddhism” was first propagated and established in China around 700 AD or not much earlier. We may assume that the mandala rituals of that teaching in China belong to the 8th century. Legend has it that Huiguo was in possession of the painted mandalas of the Two Worlds which he entrusted to his pupil Kûkai or Kôbô Daishi (774–835), who finally transmitted them to Japan.
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small changes in each paragraph, lead to a dissolution of the question: What does it mean? How long did it take? Where did it happen? Who am I? All these questions are cooked away by the ascesis of the mandala. A text like this hums its listeners into meditation. Even if they had not decided to enter into it, as long as they listen to the text they are led deeper and deeper. After several hours, they have to decide how they would like to stand it physically, what kind of bodily posture fits best for listening silently for such a long time. The posture listeners have to assume will necessarily be a healthy and painless one. It will be such that they are led onto the trail of samâdhi more easily. The text is the sphere of samâdhi itself, provided that it is performed completely.30 9.) “Pilgrimage” is, indeed, the keyword for the last part of the sûtra. This takes place in the garden of crown prince Jeta, and performs the travels of the young boy Sudhana ever southward to the abodes of 53 teachers.
III. Of all the texts of East Asian Buddhist tradition that bear the words hua yan jing in their titles, the respective Sanskrit originals are missing. Neither is there any witness of the basic text of Buddhabhadra’s (359–429) shorter translation, finished in 421 AD, nor a corresponding Sanskrit document of ĝikĞânanda’s (652–710) longer text, which he translated during the years 695 to 699. The existence of the Tibetan version31 proves that a congruent Sanskrit original (or several originals) had existed and that the Chinese “translations” were not agglomerations on the translators’ own authority. The question is, however, what forced ĝikĞânanda to change the Buddhabhadra tradition, and what is the motive behind this? ĝikĞânanda’s text includes changes in two respects: (1) it adds five chapters: four in the first ———
30 From July to September, 1999, and continued from April to June, 2000, the complete German translation of the “Shorter Huayan jing” by Doi Torakazu was read to the public at the “Foyer” of the EKÔ Centre of Japanese Culture, Düsseldorf, Germany, subjecting the lecture to a simple rule: Every working day of the week from 18–19 h the text was delivered serially in a normal voice and tempo, abandoning any kind of talk or discussion before and after. From day to day it became clearer and clearer that for the mandala experience of this recitation the obvious weaknesses and shortcomings of the translation no longer played any role. 31 The Sans-rgyas phal-po-che zes-bya-ba sin-tu-rgyas-pachen-po’i mdo, Tôhoku University Catalogue No. 241.
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assembly, plus the “Shiding” Լࡳ, “Ten Determinations”, chapter on the trespass from the sixth to the seventh assembly; (2) and it reserves the “Shidi” Լ چchapter alone, of which a version of the famous DaĞabhûmika-sûtra [The Sûtra on the Ten Grounds of Bodhisattvahood] is the original, for the sixth assembly.32 In doing this, it cuts all the rest of the following chapters, i.e. former chapters 23 through 32, off from that assembly, making them the carrier of a separate, i.e. the seventh assembly, while the transmitted seventh and eighth assemblies thereby become the eighth and ninth assemblies. What is indeed intriguing here, is not so much the augmentation of the first assembly by four new chapters, because this only lengthens the same scenery in time, but the insertion of the DaĞabhûmika-sûtra as an independent Dharma assembly into the usual sequence of Vairocana’s congregations. To do this, the fifth of the new chapters, “Ten Determinations”, is endowed with a crucial role, in that it takes over the architectural part of the former DaĞabhûmika as the doctrinal opener of the tahua tiangong hui ֚֏ה୰ᄎ. No element of doctrine is added; the change is a change in structure alone. The Da zhidu lun Օཕ৫ᓵ describes the heaven of that palace congregation in the following way: ֚ڼኆ۞ۖ֏ࢬהୡᑗ, ਚߢڇ۞֏ה.33 This heaven settles [or ‘determines’] the changes taking place on beings of the other [heavens] as its own pleasure and joy; therefore it is called ‘tahua zizai’, giving itself its own [joyful] presence through [nothing but] the changes of the other heavens’ beings.
It is certainly correct to treat this definition as the underlying program of the transition from Tushita heaven to the supreme heaven of the “Clouds of the Dharma” after two more assemblies. I have deliberately translated duo ኆ in the lectio difficilior sense of duoding ኆࡳ here, “to settle,“ “to determine”, because the Chinese translator would have used a more formal and unstressed word than duo, like , if he had wished to say no more than “this heaven regards the changes taking place on others as its own pleasure and joy”. What the text seems to say instead is that the change of others is the only reason for the settlement and determination of these beings in the supreme world of the highest Dharma. It is their tenfold resolution which makes the realm of this heaven existent and sanctifies it. Their nirvâna is reachable at this very moment, it is irrevocable, and no relapse is possible ——— 32 For a translation of this sûtra see Honda (1968). 33 T. 1509, vol. 25, juan 9, p. 122:a.
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any more. What I am describing here is the beginning of the final movement of the third third of the whole sûtra.
IV. The alteration of the arrangement of the text took place some time between 421 AD and 695 AD, not regarding the question whether this change was stimulated by Indian or by Chinese developments. We have seen, that this change is not so much doctrinal, but structural. So the next question is: What is, between the middle of the 5th and the end of the 7th cent. AD, the motif of storeying up the old text from eight to nine levels and thereby making it a faultless mandala? The fourth patriarch of the Huayan school in China, Qingliang Chengguan 堚ළᑢᨠ (737–838), reacted euphorically to the new edition of the text, which had entered into circulation in 699. He wrote a treatise on the basis of the new numerical order of the sûtra, called the Xinyi Huayan jing qichu jiuhui song shi zhangҏ ᄅဎᣤᆖԮᄎቈᤩ ີ.34 The salient point of the augmentation lies at the transition from the sixth to the seventh assembly. The new text makes the whole arrangement coincidental with mandalas reigned by the number nine, with a clear difference of lay-out of the last three realms. It puts everything that follows after the teaching of the “Ten Stages of Bodhisattvahood” (in assembly no. 6), i.e. assemblies nos. 7 to 9, on a level beyond them. So the number nine for the arrangement of assemblies parallels the ascension in its grid of 1+5+3 congregations with the teaching of the “Ten Stages” and the realization of the world of the Dharma clouds, the completion and perfection of the dharmakâya, the omnipresent cosmic body of the Buddha. At the same time we have to consider carefully, that the ascending movement of assemblies nos. 7 to 9 is at the same time a descending movement. Not everything coincides with the “Ten Stages” concept. It is a descending movement in that the instruction of scenes brings us back to the puguang fatangҏ ཏ٠ऄഘ, the “Dharma Hall of AllEmbracing Brightness”, in the seventh and eighth assemblies of the new text. That hall had already set the scene for the second assembly at one side of vyupaĞama (jimie daochangҏ ഭᄰሐ), the “Abode for the Practice of Silent Emptiness”, in the country of Magadha. The ——— 34 T. 1738, vol. 36.
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ninth assembly is set in yet another of the most famous places visited by the historical Buddha, namely in a garden of crown-prince Jeta, son of king Prasenajit, of the kingdom of ĝravasti, called shiduo yuanlin ຓڍႼࣥ, “Garden of Fleeing the Multitude”. Congregation no. 3 had taken place at the palace of Indra, no. 4 at the palace of Yâma, no. 5 in Tushita Heaven, and no. 6 in Para-nirmita-vaĞa-vartin. The text instructs us that this return to human abodes is equal to an ascension along the axis of Mount Sumeru. In this way Buddha Vairocana turns out to be the true deity of that mountain. Thus, the Huayan jing, performing through a mandala grid, ritualizes the unification of the adept with that deity. It is therefore congruent with the program of ascending Mount Sumeru. Taking into consideration the topics of the chapters that cover assemblies nos. 7 to 9, we find, that in no. 7 the text aims at expounding the Tathâgata doctrine, including the famous chapter “Puxian xing” ཏᔃ۩, “On the Practices of Samantabhadra”, followed by the chapter “Rulai chuxian” נࠐڕ, “On the Appearance of the Tathâgata”. No. 8 consists of one chapter only, the “Li shijian” ҏᠦၴ, “Leaving the World”. And no. 9 is the summit chapter of the whole architecture, “Ru fajie” ҏԵऄ, “Entering the dharmadhâtu”, the “Realm of the Dharma”, comprising about one fourth of the entire textual volume of the Huayan jing. This is the well-known Gandavyûha-sûtra. All of these places, nos. 7 to 9, are no “worlds” any more, as had been those of the Heaven kings. The historical and topographical “worlds” Siddhartha had lived in as a Buddha are the very spots and places where awakening, bodhi, had come to pass. This is the crucial criterion, which already bestows these spaces with their mandala character, even if their particular grids cannot yet be perceived: Mandalas as places where bodhi manifested itself in tangible form evoked the memory of the particular spot—called bodhi-manda or bodhi-mandala—where Shâkyamuni had gained his enlightenment.35
The DaĞabhûmika-sûtra is a text that exercises the same ascension on ten doctrinally fixed stages as does the new text Huayan jing as a large mandala text during nine ascending assemblies. The first five stages are preparations; the sixth is on the Bodhisattva’s facing the immediate presence of the “twelve links of dependent origination” (pratîtyasamutpâda), i.e. his insight that they are all empty; and nos. 7 to 10 are on his entry into the dharmadhâtu, the Dharma realm. Thus, ———
35 Mammitzsch 1991: 17.
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the central event is the extinction of the Abhidharma exposition of pratîtyasamutpâda just in the sense of the Mûlamadhyamaka-kârikâs of Nâgârjuna. They begin with the following hymn: anirodham anutpâdam anucchedam ashâshvatam anekârtham anânârtham anâgamam anirgamam yah pratîtyasamutpâdam prapañcopashamam shivam deshayâm âsa sambuddhas tam vande vadatâm varam36
Kumâra Jîva’s translation runs like this: լٍسլᄰ, լൄٍլឰ, ҏլԫٍլฆ, լࠐٍլנ, ҏ౨ᎅਢڂᒴ, ᄰ壆ᚭᓵ, ҏݺᒝଈ៖۵, 壆ᎅխรԫ.37 ‘Not born and also not extinguished, Not ever-lasting and also not broken-off, Not one and also not different, Not come and also not gone’ – To him, who is able to preach this pratîtyasamutpâda And who benevolently extinguishes all playful discussions,38 I bow my head and venerate the Awakened One, The first [i.e. the best] among those, who have preached.
The last two of the ten stages are equivalent to the arrangement of the Huayan jing, in that they ponder on the adept’s imperturbability and his unification with the Tathâgata. When Dagmar Doko Waskönig tried to decipher the architecture of the Borobodur according to the DaĞabhûmika-sûtra, she had the problem that she needed nine layers of text equalling the nine-layered construction of Borobodur. 39 But unfortunately the “Ten Stages of Bodhisattvahood” comprise ten stages, i.e. one too many. We might say, that the “Ten Stages” concept fits the cross-section of the sixth assembly of the Huayan jing alone. It spirals upward from stage to stage, starting from the ground level of Heaven Para-nirmita-vaĞavartin, until it reaches the trespass to the worldlessness of the three highest realms. Not the DaĞabhûmika-sûtra, but the Huayan jing as a ——— 36 The lost Sanskrit text was first reconstructed by Louis de La Vallée-Poussin during the years 1903–1913 from Candrakîrti’s commentary to the Kârikâ (reprint Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1970); a revised edition on the basis of Nepalese manuscripts and the work of Guiseppe Tucci was done by J. W. de Jong (1977), followed by (1978); after that, several corrections were added by Akira Satô (1985). 37 T. 1564, Bd. 30, S. 1:b. 38 The Chinese xilun ᚭᓵ translates Sanskrit prapañca. Xi ᚭ means “play”, “joke”, “fun”, “amusement”, “theatre”, and “spectacle”. The original Sanskrit word means “unfolding” and “display” of imaginations, conceptions, and ideas. 39 Waskönig 1998: 14–19.
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whole coincides with the arrangement of Borobudur according to this particular criterion: In Borobodur, the trespass from levels six to seven changes the architectural feature completely. That change is just as crucial as it is in the Huayan jing. Insofar Waskönig is perfectly right: the “Ten Stages” are the key to that trespass. In Borobodur, there are five storeys of corridors. This, too, coincides with the Huayan jing arrangement of the new text. The first floor is extended unproportionally in comparison with the five following layers of angularly surrounding corridors, so that the sequence of layers amounts to a sum of 1+5+3. The formula is the same for the aggregation of assemblies in the new text Huayan jing. The last three levels of candi Borobodur are not angular any more. They are concentric terraces with a stûpa in the middle of the highest platform.40 There is still something beyond the Bodhisattva path which became crucial for the mijiao, “Esoteric Teaching”, lineage of Buddhist rituality. The teaching on “The Sea of Bodily Marks of the Tathâgata” in chapter 34 (in the 7th assembly of the new text) of the Huayan jing is a teaching for the accomplishment of the dharmakâya. In his Sokushin-jôbutsu-gi, probably written in 817/18, Kôbô Daishi Kûkai says—I quote from the German translation by Eihô Kawahara and C. Yûhô Jobst: Die Geheimnisse des Leibes umschreiben die Drei Geheimnisse des Dharma-kâya-Buddha. Sie sind selbst für das Auge der erwachten Buddhas kaum zu schauen, geschweige denn für die Bodhisattvas der zehn Stufen zu erspähen, daher die Benennung mit Geheimnis des Leibes.41 The mysteries of the body circumscribe the Three Secrets of the Dharma-kâya-Buddha. Even to the eye of the awakened Buddhas they are hard to see, how much less are they to be peered at by the Bodhisattvas of the ten stages—hence the naming: secrets of the body.
The “secrets of the body” are to be found not in the Huayan jing, but in the Mahâvairocana-sûtra,42 a text supposedly composed around the middle of the 7th century in Western India, and one of the basic ———
40 As is well known, scenes from the Gandavyûha are sculptured in relief along the lower corridors of candi Borobodur, but not pivoting its mandala, see Gómez and Woodward, eds. (1981) and Ryûshô Hikatas contributions to Indogaku bukkyôgaku kenkyû ٱ৫ᖂ۵ඒᖂઔߒ 8:1 (January 1960), p. 366, and to Nakano kyôju koki kinen ronbunshû խມඒײ࿕ಖ࢚ᓵ֮ႃ [Studies in Indology and Buddhology Presented in Honour of Professor Gishô Nakano on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday] (Koyasan University, 1960), pp. 1–50. 41 Eihô Kawahara, C. Yûhô Jobst (1992: 20). 42 T. 848, vol. 18, p. 21.
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texts of “Esoteric Buddhism”. But as we have already said earlier, the body of the adept in the Huayan jing goes through the same sublimation as soon as he transforms into Tathâgatahood, leaves the world behind, and enters dharmadhâtu. In 670 AD, Vajrabodhi, one of the central figures of „Esoteric Buddhism“ and an important exponent of the Mahâvairocana- and the VajraĞekhara-sûtras, was born in Kanci, South India. In 717, he arrived by ship at Sumatra and followed on from there to Java. We know that during his epoch these two texts were wide-spread. 43 Borobodur and many more candi were built on Java during the Buddhist Shailendra Dynasty (ca. 760–830).44 We might speculate that one of the motifs of rebuilding the architecture of the Huayan jing into the new edition was under the influence of “Esoteric Buddhism.” Its unfolding and sedimentation was a cosmopolitical phenomenon resulting in many works of art in the East and South East Asian oikumene. If we assume that candi Borobodur was built in the middle or at the end of the 8th century AD, this is not far from the time at which the new text of the Huayan jing was constructed. I do not say that immediate physical connections between the two can be documented. The iconography of Borobodur is in many respects extremely close to the Huayan jing, but in others it is quite obviously not. Besides that, we do not know what kind of ritual was performed at Borobodur. Since a mandala can only be finally understood, when its ritual is known, we are not in the position to draw further conclusions.
V. The earliest transmitted text of Huayan exegesis in the Chinese canon is Jizang’s ( ៲ٳ549–623) Huayan youyiҏ ဎᣤཾრ. 45 That text mainly expounds extremely elaborate consequences of the Madhyamika tetralemma (siju )for the understanding of the Huayan jing. But regarding our question, Jizang’s introduction is of special interest. He begins by relating a legend with the figure of Nâgârjuna at its centre, aiming at the insertion of his own Huayan exegesis into the Madhyamika tradition. Although it is not mentioned in the sûtras, he says, there is a “mutual heritage” (xiang chengҏ ઌࢭ) telling the ———
43 See Miksic 1991: 21. 44 Soekmono 1995: 205–248. 45 T. 1731, vol 35.
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following story.46 Nâgârjuna had an eloquent pupil exhorting him to being transformed “together with ĝakyamuni”. The master’s knowledge and virtue being like this, he was fit to become the new Buddha and not at all in a state to be regarded as a pupil of ĝakyamuni. This being the case, when he uttered certain words he restrained the sun and the moon. Above that, he made the laws, and garments that he newly prescribed for the main part coincide with those of old. Sitting in the “Water Cristal Building” (shuijing fangҏ ֽ 壄 ࢪ ), 47 he concentrated his thoughts on nothing but this. At that time, the Bodhisattva “Big Dragon” felt deeply sorrowed with him and brought him back to his Dragon Palace. There he showed him an immeasurable amount of sûtras of all the Buddhas of the three worlds, and he further showed him the sûtras of the seven Buddhas of the immediate past. At the Dragon Palace, during nine sessions of ten days each, Nâgârjuna read the tenfold layout of the country of Jambudvîpa, i.e. Southern India. The rest of the topics he was not able to go through any more. When Nâgârjuna had to leave the Dragon Palace, the Dragon King presented him with that single part of the sûtras. This is the reason, why we have received this sûtra on Jambudvîpa, i.e. the Huayan jing.48 This non-canonical mythical legend makes severel points clear. First, it tells Madhyamika adepts that the Huayan jing is a sûtra which was secretely and solitarily revealed to Nâgârjuna and is thus part of ———
46 Kumâra Jîva’s “biography” of Nâgârjuna, the Longshu pusa zhuanҏ ᚊᖫဆ៳ ႚ, which is nearly the only historical source at our hands, does not mention the following legend. It may have not yet been in existence at his time. 47 For the usual, but sometimes problematical identification of shuijing ֽ壄 with Skr. sphatikâ, Pali phalika, “crystal”, “glass”, or “pearl”, being one of the “Seven Precious Gems”, see Mayer (1991): 176, n. 807). In the present case the identification of shuijing with sphatikâ seems to be consonant because the shuijing fang must coincide with the yue gongdian ִ୰ᄥ in a legend related in the Xuanying yinyi خ ᚨଃᆠ (juan 2, 6, and 20), the Huiyuan yinyi ᐝଃᆠ (juan 1), and the Huilin yinyi ᐝྱଃᆠ (juan 4, and 41): Sphatikâ comes into existence in caves. After a thousand years, water drops crystallize into glassy pearls. In the heat of the western regions, secretion of water is rare. So watery pearls cannot emerge, and only a stony species is possible, whose essence is fire. The “Sun Palace” (ri gongdianҏ ֲ୰ᄥ) is built of the fiery species of pearls, while the “Moon Palace” (yue gongdianҏ ִ୰ᄥ) is built of the watery one. In Jizang’s reference it is said that Nâgârjuna’s words had “overcome” or “restrained the sun and the moon (ke riyueҏ ঝ ֲ ִ )”. As a consequence of this, he sat meditating in the shuijing fang, the “Water Essence Building”, which seems to me to be just the yue gongdian, the “Moon Palace” made of the water essence. That palace is situated in the near reach of the “Dragon Palace” (long gongҏ ᚊ୰) star constellation. The “Sphatikâ Palace” legend, which Jizang repeats, is certainly a post mortem myth in veneration of the Bodhisattva Nâgârjuna on the edge of being declared equal to Buddha ĝakyamuni himself. 48 T. 1731, vol 35, p. 1:a.
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the Madhyamika line of thought itself. Second, this book is a means to fulfill the wish of an unnamed “eloquent pupil”, who confronted his teacher with the task to transform a human being “together with ĝakyamuni”, i.e. to die and be reborn as ĝakyamuni himself. Third, this legend obviously preserves a ritual of reading the Huayan jing in the Madhyamika school. At the Dragon Palace, Nâgârjuna goes through nine periods of reading, each comprising ten days. This story is so amazing here, because at Jizang’s time the Huayan jing consisted of eight assemblies only, and the nine assemblies text was not yet existent. So there is foresight in the legend. But there is even more in the rest of Jizang’s introduction. He goes on to tell the reader that preaching, expounding, and arguing over the Huayan jing was not undertaken by “earlier masters”, but that it started only on mount Sheshan ᥊՞ close to the city of Nanjing. This is highly important contemporary information. Formerly, the monk Fadu ऄ৫ (437–500), who was a follower of Pure Land Buddhism, had built himself a hut there. After some time, he was allowed to construct a monastery at the same spot for the Pure Land order, which he named Qixiasi ཨដ“( ڝMonastery of the Perching Rosy Clouds”). Moreover, he became famous for donating a precious seated statue of Buddha Amitâbha for the same monastery.49 In 551, during the reign of emperor Liang Wudiҏ ඩࣳ০, a monk called Senglang ቖி arrived at the monastery. He continued Fadu’s Pure Land tradition, but he also subtly understood and expounded the Huayan jing, and he did that by means of sanlun Կᓵ, i.e. Madhyamika exegesis. Jizang says, that this “overwhelming master taught the [Pure Land] benefactors of the convent (Skr. dânapati, Chin. tanyueҏ ᚽ။)”. Starting by doing the ritual of „wisdom vyûha,“50 which I imagine must have been a sanctification ceremony using flowers and the like for ornamentation of the teaching space, and ending by leading his listeners into zhiguan ַᨠ, sitting quietly in deep contemplative ——— 49 See Liang Gaoseng zhuanҏ ඩቖႚ, T. 2059, vol. 50, juan 8. 50 Mammitzsch (1991: 23) says: “In the Sino-Japanese tradition of the Mahâ-
Vairocana-sûtra, a mandala is the sacred ground where Mahâvairocana reveals himself in concrete form. This mandala is both altar and palace: altar in the sense of providing a focus for veneration, ritual, and meditation; palace in the sense of providing the proper surroundings and elements for the splendor (vyûha) of this manifestation.” Jizang’s term “wisdom splendor” thus clearly marks a palace-like ritual or meditational sphere, not a discursive one devoid of liturgical sense. There are several criteria, that bring the Mahâ-Vairocana-sûtra, which is in a sense a handbook on mandala performance, together with the Huayan jing. The most important is, of course, their common central figure, Vairocana, as the omnipresent and allembodying deity of the cosmos.
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samâdhi, he always gave one single session expounding one single congregation of the sûtra. This shows that the demarcation lines between the assemblies—or the levelling of the corridors, galleries and terraces of its mandala—are extremely important for the way the sûtra was practiced. The ritual sessions were not simply nine on an equal line, but they were parabolic intensifications on the way of “transformation together with ĝakyamuni”, i.e. unification with the deity of the mandala, Buddha Vairocana. This transformation is, indeed, the topic of Jizang’s exploration, stressing that “transformation of the host” (hua zhu ֏ )was one of four major Pure Land “transformation” demands. Since the sûtra at that time had eight assemblies—not to forget: each of them with one and the same “host”—, the whole ritual of expounding and meditating the sûtra took eight sessions. Jizang does not tell us how many hours and days each session took at Qixiasi, but he cannot have related the Nâgârjuna legend a few lines before without drawing a conceptual connection to the master’s own reading of the same sûtra during nine sessions of ten days each. This is, then, a possible ritual time frame for the Avatamsaka mandala. With all of this, we have to keep in mind that the exegetical ritual in this case was a Pure Land enterprise. A Huayan school of its own right did not yet exist. So we have two results: First, there is an innate impetus in the Madhyamika legend of Nâgârjuna’s reading of the Huayan jing to discover nine instead of eight assemblies. Second, there is a Pure Land ingredient in making the vyûha, the “land of bliss”, the “Pure Land”, which is the mandala space of the Huayan jing itself, correspondent with a grid of nine fields. The importance of the number nine, instead of eight, for the lay-out of the Pure Land of Amitâbha has long been studied and is well-known.51 These events belong to the early 6th century. As we have seen, ĝikĞânanda, working during the last years of the 7th century, has isolated the “Ten Stages of Bodhisattvahood” and reserved that chapter alone for the crucial sixth assembly. Now Jizang states that exactly this text was among the most important topics of Pure Land practice at mount Sheshan. Therefore, a strong Pure Land tradition is reflected in ĝikĞânanda’s giving special weight to this text by entrusting a complete assembly to it. This would not be conspicuous if the next was simply ———
51 See ten Grotenhuis 1995. I am especially indebted to Jorinde Ebert, Würzburg and Vienna, for bringing this paper to my attention. See also ten Grotenhuis (1985) and (1983).
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read sequentially one after another, without bothering about time frames and liturgically relevant perikopes. But it is, indeed, as soon as the corridors of text deserve clear-cut portions of ritual time. In the new text, more time, and ideally a period of ten days, is reserved for the reading and exegesis of this chapter alone, while in the order of the old text this chapter is only one of eleven parts of one and the same session. The old text deprives the contemplation of the “Ten Stages” of its time-place, and it undervalues the ritual importance of that section. So ĝikĞânanda’s new text can be seen as a restoration of a certain Pure Land doctrinal tradition, and as an harmonization of the exegetical ritual, as it was inherited from the Qixiasi monastery, with the Nâgârjuna legend. The close connection of ritual and exegesis in this case is breathtaking. If we consider again Pure Land mandalas, the importance of the number nine for the lay-out of Amitâbhas realm is evident. Although Jizang’s discussion focusses only on the question of unity or difference of ĝakyamuni and Vairocana and on the consequences of one or the other for the Madhyamika tetralemma, the ritual field of exegesis as it must have been prepared on mount Sheshan is the vyûha, the Pure Land, of Amitâbha. It is identical with Jambudvîpa, i.e. Southern India, and India is China, and China is the Dragon Palace, and the Dragon Palace is any palace or heaven on the axis of mount Sumeru. The exegesis, and not only the reading, of the sûtra lies at the core of ritual practice, but it is not part of a public discourse, as we should suspect from our own academic textual experience today. As we learn from Jizang, listeners of the sûtra practiced zhiguan in it (“stopping and contemplating”). And since the ritual time and space are made perfectly congruent with the time and space structure of the sûtra, that contemplation is what the sûtra imparts structurally and not only doctrinally. What Senglang performed, was a zhiguan ritual, but the focus of that ritual was the exegesis of a sûtra. Since zhiguan rituals end with an act of extinction, a sûtra ritual necessarily ends with the liturgical “extinction” of the sûtra. In modern public academic discourse, we shall probably ask, what the meaning of a certain sentence, paragraph, chapter, or book is; but in an exegetical ritual of this kind the “meaning” is the mandala. The mandala, and therefore ritual, presence of the text has, in my view, much more to do with what St. Augustine called the “appellative”
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function of language. It knocks on something to learn its “sound”. The “sound” is the same as the “voice” we give it. The mandala is not the semantic, but the voice of each thing in its transformative relation to us (i.e. it “transforms” us), insofar as the mandala carries the language as well as the doctrine. In the case of the Huayan jing, the doctrine also carries the mandala, since in the mandala everything doctrinal can be finally extinguished. As Alex Wayman wrote, “the meaning is in the doing of it”. We now learn that “doing it” must necessarily mean “not doing it”. Therefore “meaning”, among others, will be “stopped” and, as if from a far distance, “contemplated” in its extinction.
REFERENCES BANDINI, Giovanni. 1997. Alles ist reiner Geist: Die Stufen der Erkenntnis und der erhabene Zustand der Buddhaschaft. Bern, München, Wien: O. W. Barth (German translation of the English translation by Cheng Chien 1993) BERNHART, Joseph. 1987. Augustinus Bekenntnisse: Lateinisch und Deutsch. Frankfurt/M.: Insel Taschenbuch. CHENG Chien. 1993. Manifestation of the Tathâgata: Buddhahood According to the Avatamsaka Sûtra. Boston: Wisdom Publications (German translation of this English translation by Bandini 1997). CLEARY, Thomas, tr. 1984-1987. The Flower Ornament Scripture. 3 vols. Boston & London: Shambala. DE JONG, J. W. 1978. “Textcritical Notes on the Prasannapadâ.” Indo-Iranian Journal 20.1/2 (April). ——, ed. 1977. Mûlamadhyamaka-kârikâ. Madras: Adyar. DE LA VALLEE-POUSSIN, Louis, ed. 1903-1913 (original edition). Mûlamadhyamakakârikâ. [repr. Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1970]. DOI Torakazu, tr. 1983 (vol. 1); 1981 (vol. 2); 1982 (vol. 3); 1978 (vol. 4). Das Kegon Sutra. 4 vols. Tôkyô: Doitsubun-Kegonkyô-Kankôkai. Ekottara-âgama-sûtra. Chinese version translated by Gautama Samghadeva in 397. T. 125, vol. 2, pp. 549–830. FAZANG. Huayan “Fa puti xin” zhang ဎᣤ࿇ဆ༼֨ີ. T. 1878, vol. 45. ——. Huayan youxin fajie ji ဎᣤཾ֨ऄಖ. T. 1877, vol. 45. GÓMEZ, Luis O., and Hiram W. WOODWARD, eds. 1981. Barabudur: History and Significance of a Buddhist Monument. Berkeley. HAYASHIMA Osamu ڰ. 1995. “On dharma-uddana in the Mahayanasutralamkara XVIII.80,8.” Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies 44.1: 378–383. HONDA, Megumu. 1968. “Annotated Translation of the Dasabhumika-Sutra.” Studies in South, East, and Central Asia, ed. by Denis Sinor. New Delhi. KAWAHARA Eihô and Christlieb Yûhô JOBST. 1992. Kûkai: Ausgewählte Schriften. München: Iudicium. Liang Gaoseng zhuan ඩቖႚ. T. 2059, vol. 50. MAMMITZSCH, Ulrich H. R. 1991. Evolution of the Garbhadhâtu Mandala. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan. MANABE Shunshô. 1978. “The Meaning of the Mandalas.” In: Eros and Cosmos in
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Mandala: The Mandalas of the Two Worlds at the Kyôô Gokoku-ji. Tôkyô: The Seibu Museum of Art. MAYER, Alexander L. 1991. Xuanzangs Leben und Werk, Teil 2, Cien-Biographie VII. Veröffentlichungen der Societas Uralo-Altaica. Ed. Annemarie von Gabain and Wolfgang Veenker. Vol. 34. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. MCMAHAN, David. 1998. “Orality, Writing and Authority in South Asian Buddhism: Visionary Literature and the Struggle for Legitimacy in the Mahâyâna.” History of Religions 37.3 (February): 249–274. MIKSIC, John. 1991. Borobodur: Das Pantheon Indonesiens. München: Prestel. Nakano kyôju koki kinen ronbunshû խມඒײ࿕ಖ࢚ᓵ֮ႃ [Studies in Indology and Buddhology Presented in Honour of Professor Gishô Nakano on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday]. 1960. Wakayama: Kôyasan University. POWERS, John. 1995. Wisdom of the Buddha: The Samdhinirmocana Sûtra. Berkeley, Cal.: Dharma Publishing. RÖLLICKE, Hermann-Josef. 1996. “Das ‘Als-ob’ der Riten-Erklärung Xunzis.” In: “Selbst-Erweisung": Der Ursprung des ziran-Gedankens in der chinesischen Philosophie des 4. und 3. Jhs. v. Chr. Europäische Hochschulschriften, Asiatische und Afrikanische Studien, vol. 51. Frankfurt/M. et. al.: Peter Lang, pp. 415–426. ——. 1999. “Das Textmandala des Avatamsaka-sûtra.” EKÔ-Blätter: Mitteilungen des EKO-Hauses der Japanischen Kultur 11 (Winter): 12–14. SASO, Michael. 1991. Homa Rites and Mandala Meditation in Tendai Buddhism. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan. SATÔ Akira. 1985. “Textcritical Remarks on the Mûlamadhyamakakârikâ as cited in the Prasannapadâ.” Indogaku Bukkyôgaku Kenkyû 33: 24–28. SNODGRASS, Adrian. 1997. The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan [repr. of 1988]. SOEKMONO, R. 1995. “Die Architektur der klassischen Zeit.” In: Versunkene Königreiche Indonesiens. Exhibition Catalogue, Roemer- und PelizaeusMuseum, Hildesheim, Germany. Ed. by Arne and Eva Eggebrecht. Mainz: von Zabern, pp. 205–248. STODDARD, Heather. 1999. “Dynamic Structures in Buddhist Mandalas: Apradaksina and Mystic Heat in the Mother Tantra Section of the Anuttarayoga Tantras.” Artibus Asiae LVIII.3/4: 169–213. TEN GROTENHUIS, Elizabeth. 1995. “Nine Places of Birth in Amida’s Western Pure Land.” Paper given at the Taniguchi Symposium, July 1995. ——. Elizabeth. 1983. “Rebirth of an Icon: The Taima Mandala in Medieval Japan.” Archives of Asian Art 36: 59–87. ——. Elizabeth. 1985. The Revival of the Taima Mandala in Medieval Japan. New York: Garland Publishing. VANDIER-NICOLAS, Nicole. 1974. Bannières et peintures de Touen-Houang conservées au Musée Guimet. Mission Paul Pelliot 14–15, avec le concours de Mme Gaulier et al., édité avec le concours de l’Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et de l’Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, sous la direction de Louis Hambis. Paris: Imprimerie nationale [Adrien-Maisonneuve]. WASKÖNIG, Dagmar Doko. 1998. “Der Borobodur: Ein einzigartiges Monument des Bodhisattva-Weges.” Lotusblätter 2: 14–19. WAYMAN, Alex. 1973. The Buddhist Tantras: Light on Indo-Tibetan Esoterism. New York. WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig. 1971. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag.
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YU Shiyi. 2000. Reading the Chuang-tzu in the T’ang Dynasty: The Commentary of Ch’eng Hsüan-ying (fl. 631–652). Asian Thought and Culture, vol. 39. New York et. al.: Peter Lang.
DIAGRAMS AS AN ARCHITECTURE BY MEANS OF WORDS: THE YANJI TU Michael Lackner According to Charles Sanders Peirce, iconic representation can be divided into two types: images and diagrams. “Images” are characterized by the fact that many aspects of the signified can be found in the signifiers themselves, whereas “diagrams” are restrained to selected structural aspects of the signified.1 No such distinction is possible for the traditional Chinese concept of tu ቹ and its practice which encompasses both: images and diagrams.2 Yet, during a certain period of time (roughly from the Mid-Song to the Yuan Dynasty), a general tendency towards increasing rationalisation in various fields produced a phenomenon which came very close to the second type of iconic representation, the genuine diagram in the sense of Peirce. The diagrams discussed in this paper almost exclusively deal with textual analysis and/or the interpretation of phrases from the Classics and the sayings and writings of the founders of Daxue ሐ ᖂ , the NeoConfucian school. Although the period that witnessed the appearance of diagrams as tools for the visualisation of textual analysis was rather short-lived, a considerable amount of these tools is present in works of the NeoConfucian school. This paper will mainly focus on Wang Bo’s ׆ਹ (1197–1274) Yanji tu ઔ༓ቹ (“Diagrams on the Fathoming of Initial Stages”),3 but I will also touch on a few other authors, such as Li Yuangang ޕցጼ (fl. ca. 1172, author of the Shengmen shiye tu ᆣ॰ ࠃᄐቹ), and Xu Qian ᝐ (1270–1337, author of the Du Sishu congshuo ᦰហᎅ, both BBCS ed.). Despite the fact that all of these authors and even some of their diagrams have been studied extensively,4 relatively few research has been dedicated to the formal aspects, interpretive strategies and implications of their diagrams.5 In ——— 1 2 3 4 5
May 1995. Reiter 1990. Cf. Cheng 1967. Cf. de Bary 1989: 32 and 59, Kalton 1988. Chan 1988a, Lackner 1990, Lackner 1992, Lackner 1996a, Lackner 1996b,
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this paper, I will therefore undertake, firstly, an inquiry into possible predecessors and models of the particular kind of tu I am dealing with here; secondly, a discussion of the possibilities diagrams offered for the interpretation of texts in contrast to linear argumentation; and, finally, some considerations on diagrams in comparative perspective.
I. MODELS AND INFLUENCES Visualizing a text by means of one or more diagrams means to organize the text in an unusual, non-linear way. Although there is a number of earlier examples of non-linear arrangements of texts in pre-Song China, none of these examples can compare to the degree of sophistication represented by a diagram by Wang Bo (Fig. 1a) whose interpretation will be given later. Suffice it here to say that this diagram attempts, on the one hand, to give a grammatical and pragmatic analysis of a passage from the Zhongyong խ (§27, Fig. 1b), and, on the other hand, a semantic interpretation. In order to achieve this objective, a concomittance of many different technical factors was necessary. I propose to proceed in an ascending order, starting from the most direct and finishing with the more remote and general models and influential factors.
a) Buddhist kewen One of the most influential and directly related models for tu as tools for textual analysis was the Buddhist kewen (ઝ֮ “exegetical texts”, used for teaching purposes; for an example see Fig. 2a); the diagram is organized according to stemmatic, i.e. arborescent principles with lines guiding the reader in various directions. In contrast to a merely linear reading, the kewen allows to illustrate the intertwining dependence of textual segments. Although most of the extant kewen come from a period much later than the Song (present example: Zhenjie ట ᎂ 1589; but see also Fig. 2b, a kewen ascribed to Zongmi ࡲയ [780– 841]), it is generally assumed that the first kewen was produced by Dao’an ሐ( ڜ4th century). Of greater interest in our context is the fact that the diagram Zhu Xi ڹᗋ (1130–1200) used to illustrate his ——— Lackner 2000.
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text “On humaneness” (ոᎅ Renshuo, Fig. 3) 6 to a certain extent follows the pattern of a Buddhist kewen, in particular by stressing parallelisms occurring in the text. There are, however, several important differences: firstly, the kewen does not reproduce the entire text, but rather gives the headings or numbers of paragraphs, whereas Zhu Xi presents the complete text; furthermore, key terms which occur repeatedly in the text (like ࿇ fa, “to arise/to be aroused”) are emphasized by their central graphic position. It is not surprising that Zhu Xi became important for later tu studies, as, according to the criteria of traditional scholarship, he combined the teachings of “meaning and pattern” (ᆠ yili) with those of “Images and numbers” (ွᑇ xiang shu). Only the latter school had indulged in the production of tu, whereas the proponents of the former (the Cheng brothers and Zhang Zai) had not produced any important tu.7
b) Stemmatic Genealogies The most important predecessor of stemmatic/arborescent diagrams, which, in the case illustrated above, visualize the arbor of speech, seems to have been the genealogical map with its ramifications. It is relatively easy to compare the hierarchical derivation of a family or a school (Fig. 4) to the one of a book (Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 for two alternative interpretations of the structure of the Zhongyong), an argument or a phrase. Just as the history of a school, speech is performed in time; but while families or schools exist synchronically, parallelism in language is always diachronic and can only be inferred by means of logic and interpretation. In consequence, we might say that although spatial representation of parallel phenomena is the same in genealogical and textually oriented diagrams, the background for the respective analytical tools is different. Let us note that the conventional format of a genealogical tree has in almost all cases a descending stemma. c) Memory and Meditation: The xinfa ֨ऄ It might seem commonplace to state that diagrams in general are characterized by a strong mnemonic element, and that one of their princi———
6 Cf. also Chan 1988b. 7 Chan 1988a: 360.
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pal functions consists in helping to memorize given facts or interpretations. We might also observe that all iconic representations are mental constructions and that an act of interpretation of reality is indispensable for their production. However, there is an—at least gradual, in terms of abstraction—difference between the representation of, let us say, the arrangement of objects and persons in a ritual assembly (Fig. 7) and the visualizing of competing interpretations of a passage from the Zhongyong (Fig. 8 and Fig. 9). This assumption becomes somewhat clearer when we look at the diagram Cunxin yaofa ֨ژऄ (“Essential Method for Relying on the Heart”) by Li Yuangang (Fig. 10): in this diagram, passages from the Zhongyong, Lunyu, and Mengzi are arranged according to something which seems to be a parallel order at first glance; when examining more thoroughly, we observe that there is only a very superficial parallel order which consecutively groups sentences and words around the centre. There is no intellegible reason, for instance, to cut the famous sentence xi nu ai le wei fa ৷ᑗآ࿇ (“when joy, anger, sorrow and happiness are not yet aroused”) into two segments—except for the number of characters. The sentence finishes only at the very bottom of the diagram: fa jie zhong jie ࿇ઃխ. (“when they are aroused, and all in their due measure, we call it the state of harmony”). The same holds true for an wei cun wang zhi ji ژٲڜՋհᎾ (“the transition between safety and danger, between existence and perdition”) below. On the contrary, there are reasons to assume that the principal message conveyed by the diagram lies in its graphical structure itself—the character for “centre”, zhong խ , which constitutes the “body” of the whole tu. Parallelism is here not a means to reveal the intrinsic parallelistic dimension of a text or a concept in linguistic terms, but a more or less decorative device for the demonstration that the crucial message of the sentences and words consists in the “centre” whereon the “heart” relies. The graphic form acts as a kind of revelation of the one interpretative concept behind all quoted passages. Consequently, the purpose of the diagram is to support meditation and memorization (in terms of a “Method of the heart”, xinfa) with the help of a miraculous graphic revelation. The interest of Li Yuangang, i.e. the object which has to be memorized, does not predominantly lie in textual analysis and exegetical understanding, but rather in seizing the “general meaning” (dayi Օᆠ) of the text. Once again, older examples for this kind of graphic representation can be found in the Buddhist tradition (see
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Fig. 11a for a sutra in the form of a pagoda).8 Even the predominantly analytical tu in the Yanji tu include a diagram which explicitly states that “the whole forms the character ‘attention/reverence’ (jing ᄃ; Nr. 9 in Li Huang’s “Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning”, see Fig. 11b.
d) The Twofold Character of Revelation: The Appeal to Authority In his preface to the Yanji tu, Wang Bo states that “only Saints and Worthies were able to be at the origin of the recently revived study of tu, only illuminated and sage men can have transmitted it.” He further quotes Hetu ࣾቹ, Luoshu ᆵ, Hongfan jiuchou ੋᒤᡱ (the “River Chart”, the “Luo-River Writing” and the “Nine Divisions in the Great Plan [i.e. the “Hongfan” ੋᒤ chapter of the Shujing ᆖ]”) as the founding documents of human culture. Relying on the age-old distinction between books ( shu, in our context: linear discourse) and tu (non-linear discourse), he states the priority or—at least—equality of tu as opposed to shu. 9 Chen Chun ຫෆ (1159– 1223), a famous disciple of Zhu Xi, said that “Master Zhou Dunyi received the Diagram of the Supreme Ultime directly from heaven.”10 This is in part an argument of authority, which brings tu in a close connection with a very specific form of revelation, namely, the appearance of cosmological knowledge with mystical connotations. However, besides the religious and magical connotations of revelation, Wang Bo’s preface invites us to take into consideration yet another kind of revelation, the intellectual one: “the meaning(fullness) of one single tu can not be exhausted by millions of words” and “the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate is prior to the Tongshu ຏ by master Zhou Dunyi”. In other words, the claim for the diagrams’ revelatory character is twofold: in terms of cultural history, the tu belong to the great revelations which unfold Truth to humankind; in terms of individual epistemic capacities, the tu facilitate the understanding of whatever object they may illustrate because of their comprehensive nature. Diagrammatic presentation of information was both more immediate and more economical than an account in prose. Already in the 12th century, the historian Zheng Qiao ᔤᖱ (1104– 1162), who was an outspoken enemy of magical interpretations of tu, ———
8 Cf. Lackner 1992: 155. 9 For a complete translation of this preface cf. Lackner 1990: 148. 10 Beixi ziyi קᄻڗᆠ 1986: 76.
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had established a “rationalistic” analogy between tu and shu: ቹЈཬढЈᆖЈွЈ۩ЈፋЈ᎘Јؐ Ј೯ढЈᒮЈЈᜢЈཋЈૹЈ׳ tu = plants = jing (classics) = images (xiang) = form/shape = condensation = light (as opposed to heavy) = left shu = animals = wei (apocrypha) = principle (li) = sounds = dissipation =heavy = right11
The fact that tu had played a considerable role in the formation of early Song thought certainly facilitated the amplification of this tool for didactic and analytical purposes. In a certain contrast to the Taiji tu ֜ᄕቹ, where the diagram was thought to be prior to the explanation, the didactic and analytical tu were themselves meant as explanations. In the words of Wing-tsit Chan: “The first [i.e. the Taijitu shuo ֜ᄕቹᎅ i.e. a written commentary] serves to explain a tu, not to illustrate a meaning by a tu.”12 We should also note that without the printing facilities of the epoch, the production as well as the circulation of these sometimes highly sophisticated tu would have been much more difficult.13
e) The Changes As Tu Par Excellence Except for the Hongfan jiuchou, all diagrams cited in Wang Bo’s preface (including the xiantian tu) stand in more or less close connection with the Yijing ࣐ᆖ, the Book of Changes. Interestingly enough, even after the decay of Neo-Confucian tu-practice, the visualization of relationships between the Book of Changes trigrams and hexagrams by means of tu was continued. The very structure of the Book of Changes is prone to graphic representation, since the lines structuring the trigrams and hexagrams are in themselves of a graphic nature. This fact has been realized by a large number of scholars in the 12th and 13th centuries. Consequently, Wang Bo’s Yanji tu comprises a considerable amount of diagrams concerning the Book of Changes; however, it is characteristic for his style that the overwhelming majority of these diagrams deal with sentences from the commentaries, not with the relationship between the hexagrams. One important con———
11 Tongzhi lüe ຏݳฃ, SBBY ed., 72/1a. 12 Chan 1988a: 360. 13 Cf. Drège 1991.
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sequence is the fact that in the Yanji tu stemmatic diagrams prevail over geometrical ones.
II. SELECTED DIAGRAMS: INTERPRETATION Unfortunately, it is still difficult to assess for which purposes the kind of tu we find in the work of Wang Bo or other authors was used. The use of designs in teaching seems to have been quite familiar to outstanding scholars: besides Zhu Xi, we observe that his eminent disciple Chen Chun towards the end of his life “made designs and spoke [to his disciples] but did not bother himself with writing.”14 The impression one gets when examining the tu by Wang Bo is indeed that they were produced for didactic purposes. However, this is not always the case: the tu by Xu Qian, for instance, reflect much more the process of an isolated intellectual attempt to cope with the inherent difficulties of a text (some sort of intellectual Selbstverständigung) than the preoccupations of a school teacher.15 It should be noted that, although the tu practice was rather widespread (we find similar tu for textual analysis in the Taoist canon, see Fig. 11c for an analytical diagram), there is a local tradition which was particularly strong in the production of language-related tu: The Lize ᣝᖻ Academy in Jinhua ८ဎ, where Zhu Xi had taught for some time; later on, Huang Gan ႓ი, his son in law, had transmitted his teachings to He Ji ۶ഗ (1188–1269) who was, in turn, to become the teacher of Wang Bo.16 In his preface to the Yanji tu, Wang Bo explicitly mentions his activity at Lize Academy as related to the creation of his work on tu. Another scholar who contributed important analytical tu was Xu Qian (1270–1337), a disciple of Jin Lüxiang ८ᐌ壁 (1232–1303) who himself had studied with Wang Bo as his teacher. Before attempting a detailed analysis of two diagrams, let me give a brief overview of some of the graphic specifities of the particular kind of diagrams in question. Besides the lines expressing interdependence or subordination of two or more compounds of words/expressions, there is the barred line which, in some cases, can represent negation (see Fig. 12 for the ——— 14 Gujin tushu jicheng ײվቹႃ ګ1970: 297/279, pp. 2–3. 15 Lackner 1996b; see also Liao 2005: 395–443. 16 Cf. Lackner 1990: 149, note 65 for a list of works containing diagrams in rela-
tion to the Lize Academy.
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Mencian idea that the Five Senses will never acquire knowledge if the disposition of the knowing person is impure). Similarly, lines constituting a rectangle can express the idea that the passages in question will not be continued: the respective branch is “dead”, without any further ramifications. Circles around certain words or expressions usually mean that these words/expressions repeatedly occur in the text and that they are, as it were, the point of intersection wherefrom parallel construction starts or whereto these constructions lead. In yet another use, circles simply stress the fact that we deal with key terms of the text (Fig. 13). In some cases, we find two opposed parts of one diagram expressing the relationship between topic and comment (Fig. 14, for the “Western Inscriptions” of Zhang Zai). Let us now turn to the interpretation of a diagram which is meant to visualize a passage from Xici zhuan ᢀႚ A2; the passage reads as follows (See Fig. 15a for the text; the translation is mine): “Therefore it is the order of the Changes where the Superior Man finds his rest and peace. It is the verbalizations of the lines where he finds his happiness and which he rolls [in his mind]. Therefore, when resting, the Superior Man observes the Images (of the Changes) and rolls the words [in his mind]. When moving, he observes the alternations and rolls [in his mind] the prognostications.”17 At the first glance, the diagram (Fig. 15b) reproduces only some key terms: we find the “Superior Man”, the words for “at rest” and “in motion”, “observing”, “Images”, “alternations”, “rolling [in the mind]”, and, finally, “verbalizations” and “prognostications”. All the other sentences (“looks once and decides”; “in the Changes, there are first images and only then verbalizations” [Eight Trigrams, Six Lines]; “in calculation, there is first alternation and only then then prognostications”; “examines whether the regulations are appropriate or not”; “examines whether there will be good or bad fortune”, “turns it back and forth untiringly”) have been introduced on the basis of Zhu Xi‘s commentaries to the Changes (Zhouyi benyi and Yixue qimeng). Since “observes” and “rolls [in his mind]” occur twice in the part of the text on which the diagram focuses, these words are surrounded by a circle. The recurrent parallelism in the passage is rendered by three bifurcations: the first after the “Superior Man” who, although not being named in any of the sentences (hence no circle around the word), is the subject of the whole passage. The rest proceeds in ac——— 17 The translation follows Peterson (1982: 96), with slight modifications.
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cordance with this same principle. The diagram makes syntactic subordination (in terms of Western grammar: subject – adverbial definition of state – verb – object – verb – object; the direction of reading starting from the right side) visible. Two observations can be made here: first, the diagram gives an unambiguous interpretation of the passage: along the lines of Zhu Xi’s comments, it may be said that the Changes encompass two dimensions which have to be regarded as two complements of a whole; divination (left side – activity [“moving”] – alternations of the lines – oracle = prognostications) and something we could call “world-view mediated by the Changes as a system” (right side – quietness [“resting”] – images – words = verbalizations). In the Yulei, Zhu Xi answers to a question concerning the meaning of our passage: “If one is not able to understand this [first sequence, images and words], how will divination be possible? This principle must always be understood, only then can one proceed to divination.”18 The illustration of the syntactic structure of the passage cannot be separated from the illustration of the message, i.e. the grammatical (or should we rather say “proto-grammatical”?) concern is inextricably linked with semantical interpretation. Secondly, with some effort, we may detect the shape of a human being illustrated by the diagram (“contemplating” as a head etc.); it is, of course, not certain whether this was intended. If this be the case, we were confronted with yet another connection (rare in the Yanji tu), namely between the iconic message destined for meditation, internalization, and memorizing, the message which “brings something to the point” (just as did the “centre” in Li Yuangang’s diagram) on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the textual analysis of a given passage. Let us now turn to a second example, the diagram illustrating par. 27 of the Zhongyong (for the text, see Fig. 1b) which reads: “How great is the Way of the Saint! [It] is overflowing, [it] sends forth and nourishes all things and rises up to the height of heaven. All-complete is its greatness! It embraces the three hundred rules of ceremony, and the three thousand rules of demeanour. It waits for the proper man, and then it is trodden. Hence it is said: Only by the perfect virtue can the perfect Way be crystallized. Therefore, the Superior Man honours his virtuous nature, and maintains inquiry and study, seeking to extend it to its breadth and greatness, so as to omit none of the more refined and subtle points which it embraces, and to raise it to its greatest height and clarity, so as to pursue the course of Zhong, the ——— 18 Zhuzi yulei ڹᣊ 1986: 47/1888.
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centre. He revives old knowledge, and is continually acquiring new. He exerts an honest, generous earnestness, in the esteem and practice of all propriety.”19 The diagram (Fig. 1a) looks like a scale at whose left and right sides further scales are engendered. In terms of subordination, the principal clause is “How great is the Way of the Saint” to which two subsequent sentences of the upper half of the diagram are subordinated: “[It] is overflowing” and “all-complete is the greatness”; these two, in turn, act as principal clauses to which again two respective sentences are subordinated. The parallel structure of the text is visually rendered by consecutive subordination of the first or the second half of the first part of the passage. Whereas the sentence “It waits for the proper man, and then it is trodden” is not illustrated, we find an inversion of the expressions “perfect virtue” and “Crystallized Way” which appear in a different order in the linear text. As for the lower half of the diagram, the sequence becomes somewhat more complicated, because the subordinated clauses which depend either on “honours virtuous nature” or “maintains inquiry and study” are not listed consecutively, but alternatingly: “breadth and greatness” belong to “virtuous nature”, but the sentence immediately following “breadth and greatness”, namely, “omits none of the more refined and subtle points which it embraces”, is listed below “inquiry and study”, and so forth.20 In the lower half of the diagram, an intertwining, alternating parallel rendering was chosen. While the illustration of parallelism is quite evident in the upper half of the diagram, its representation in the lower half is apparently the result of a previous interpretation which can only partly rely on syntactic evidence. The prerequisite necessary for a proper understanding of the diagram’s specifity is the commentary to the Four Books by Zhu Xi.21 Here Zhu Xi states that, for instance, “‘Perfect Virtue’ means the proper man, whereas the ‘Perfect Way’ is related to the two sentences above”; hence it is not surprising that we find the “Crystallized [perfect] Way” in the upper half of the diagram. The somewhat artificial symmetry of the diagram is the result of an act of interpretation. Moreover, in his commentary Zhu Xi ascribes “virtuous nature” to a ———
19 Translation by Legge (1967: 323). 20 According to this reading, Legge’s translation is rather misleading because of
the logical relationships it implies, for instance, “breadth and greatness so as to omit none of the more....”, or “to raise it to its greatest height and brillancy so as to pursue the course...”. Both Zhu Xi and Wang Bo would have rebuked this translation. 21 Sishu zhangju jizhu ີႃု 1983: 35f.
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field which he calls “the greatness of the body of the Way” (ሐ᧯հ Օ daoti zhi da) through “being founded on the heart” ( ֨ژcun xin); on the other hand, “inquiry and study” belong to “the details of the body of the Way” (ሐ᧯հา daoti zhi xi), because their purpose is the “extension of knowledge” (ીव zhi zhi). We find these latter two expressions at the bottom of the diagram. In the same commentary, Zhu Xi ascribes several of the subordinated expressions to either “virtuous nature” or “inquiry and study”, thus implying to proceed likewise with the remaining expressions. To follow the lines of Zhu Xi’s interpretation enables us therefore to account for certain irregularities in the diagram with regard to the linear discourse of the text (as the inversion of “Perfect Virtue” and the “Crystallized Way” or the alternate subordination of the last eight expressions); besides, we can also envision the conception behind the whole tu. First of all, we can roughly divide it into four parts, left and right, and top and bottom. The more important division for the tu (and for Zhu Xi) seems to be the one into left and right; it is not explicitly stated in the commentary, but all the more visible in the diagram, that “greatness of the body of the Way” and, consequently, “being founded on the heart” hold not only for the lower part, but also for the upper part of the diagram. Thus, the diagram shows that there is (in the upper half) a macrocosm (a “Crystallized Way”, ningdao ᕩሐ), divided into a cosmic (overflowing, nourishing sphere, rising up to the height of heaven) and a human (the rites and ceremonies) part; and (in the lower half) a microcosmic, merely human part (“Perfect Virtue”), divided into the forms in which “virtuous nature” is displayed, and the forms of “inquiry and study”. In an analogous way, the “ceremonies and rituals” of the upper part can be connected to the sphere of “inquiry and study”. Knowing the commentarial origins of the diagram’s arrangement has helped us considerably for understanding its composition; yet, we may still ask, with the words of Wang Bo, whether “the meaning of one single tu can be exhausted by millions of words”. Would a thorough examination of the diagram not have taught us the same interpretation, even without having read Zhu Xi’s commentary? A careful reading of the tu enables us without doubt to conceive even more of the core of an interpretation than reading its explicit, linear argumentation. The diagram is intelligible without additional verbal explanation.
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At the same time, the diagram constitutes an utterance sui generis: contrary to a linear text, it cannot be read aloud—it has become a merely visual experience. Accordingly, memorization will be effectuated by the eyes, not by the ears, a phenomenon which reminds us of the famous transformation of poems in the “Chinese Language Game”.22 True, the very existence of a diagram of textual analysis presupposes a high degree of familiarity with the original text; if one does not know the text by heart, any diagram of the kind I am discussing here will be useless. However, the exegesis through visual aids transcends all previous forms of exposition, representation and memorization. In any case, the diagram is unambiguous as far as exegesis is concerned. Various other visual renderings of Zhongyong 27 can be imagined. I have stated elsewhere that in case one has to choose between a semantic and a syntactic interpretation of a given text, the semantic concern is always stronger than the interest in the grammatical structure.23 The fact that textual analysis never proceeded in a way completely detached from meaning, i.e. that semantics was never separated from syntax, was perhaps the greatest obstacle for the birth of an explicit grammar; this is also true for tu. It seems interesting, however, that the most advanced grammatical analyses in Song and Yuan China were produced by means of diagrams rather than in explicit linear discourse. On the other hand, the imperative, unambiguous character of interpretations conveyed by diagrams was perhaps one of the reasons for the relatively early decay (except for belated phenomena like the “Ten diagrams on Sage Learning” by Li Huang [1501–1571]) 24 of the special kind of tu practice I have described here. We might say that it is the ambiguity of texts which asks for the continuous effort of interpretation. The exclusive exegetic character of the tu was an obstacle to interpretive liberty. We could of course ask whether there were at least some competing diagrams concerning the same textual passage; 25 however, these remained an exception and never became the rule.
——— 22 23 24 25
Herdan 1964: 29–35, Hart 1981. Lackner 1992: 145. Cf. Kalton 1988 Cf. Lackner 1996b.
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III. EUROPEAN PARALLELS From a comparative perspective, it can be said that the Chinese tu as tools for textual analysis are not a singular phenomenon; the use of diagrammatic illustrations to expound theoretical ideas was characteristic of the European Middle Ages (Evans 1980) as well. In Europe we find examples for both functions of this specific kind of illustration: diagrams were regarded as an aid to memory and as a tool for clarifying arguments. As in the Chinese case, the stemmatic type prevails over other possible types of visual aids (geometric, in China used for the illustration of the Changes, and emblematic which is not our topic here). A strong emphasis lies on the didactic aspect. We also find the idea that image and word represent parallel possibilities (pictura quasi scriptura); 26 that the image could serve as a short, compact way of reproducing the word. Contemplation of graphic representations was one stage in approaching the divine. Consequently, images were credited with the power of a mystical means of elevation to the Truth. This latter quality, which was never more than a cautious recognition of the mystical, however, was restricted to images rather than diagrams. More specifically, diagrams were used to visually analyse a topic into its parts and sub-parts (Fig. 16). Graphic means were employed for logical demonstration. Graphic arrangements were also employed to form words or images as an expression of the message of the entire text (Fig. 17);27 as is also the case for the Cunxin yaofa of Li Yuangang. The differences between the Chinese and the European diagrams must rather be measured in terms of quantitative proportions; the Chinese tu seem to prefer the interpretation of specific textual passages, while the content of European diagrams tends towards general concepts (for instance, the dissection of the ens reale, Fig. 16), like the “division of sciences” (arbor scientiae/turris sapientiae) or the “division of virtues” (scala virtutis). However, a closer examination of, for instance, the famous “Tree of Porphyry”, which set out the seemingly very general topic of the relationship between genera and species, shows that it originated as an illustration to commentaries of Porphyry’s Isagoge (late 3rd century AD; see Fig. 18), and was by no means separable from its textual basis. On the other hand, there is no ———
26 Cf. Esmeijer 1978. 27 Adler and Ernst 1987; for an overview cf. Jäger and Mazzoni 1988.
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precise and specific textual basis for the “Diagram for investigating classification” Jilei tu ᗨᣊቹ (Fig. 19 Yanji tu), which presents us with an all-pervading classification of the world according to the dissection of the Changes into Yin and Yang. Once again, the difference lies more in our willingness to perceive “cultural” distinctions than in the evidence of the facts.
REFERENCES ADLER, Jeremy and Ulrich ERNST. 1987. Text als Figur. Visuelle Poesie von der Antike bis zur Moderne. Wolfenbüttel: Acta humaniora VCH. Beixi ziyi קᄻڗᆠ [by Chen Chun ຫෆ (1159–1223)]. 1983. Peking: Zhonghua. CHAN Wing-tsit [Chen Rongjie]. 1988a. “Zhuzi zhi tujie” ڹհቹᇞ. In: Chan Wing-tsit, Zhuzi xin tansuo ڹᄅ൶ . Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng, pp. 360366. ——. 1988b. “Renshuo tu” ոᎅቹ. In: Chan Wing-tsit, Zhuzi xin tansuo ڹᄅ൶ . Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng, pp. 371–374. CHENG Yuanmin. 1967. “Yanjitu de zhucheng chuanbu he zhenwei deng wenti de tantao” ઔ༓ቹऱထګႚؒࡉటೕംᠲऱ൶ಘ. In: Kong Meng xuebao 13: 187–216. DE BARY, William Theodore. 1989. The Message of the Mind in Neo-Confucianism. New York: Columbia University Press. DREGE, Jean-Pierre. 1991. “La lecture et l’écriture en Chine et la xylographie.” Études chinoises 10.1–2: 77–111. ESMEIJER, Anna C. 1978. Divina Quaternitas. A Preliminary Study in the Method and Application of Visual Exegesis. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. EVANS, Michael. 1980. “The Geometry of the Mind.” Architectural Association Quarterly 12: 32–55. Gujin tushu jicheng ײվቹႃګ. 1970. Taipei: Taiwan Zhonghua shuju. HART, Sarah. 1981. Calembours visuels. Origines, Histoire et analyse des devinettes chinoises. Ph.D. diss., Paris. HERDAN, Gustav. 1964. The Structuralistic Approach to Chinese Grammar and Vocabulary. The Hague: Mouton & Co. JAGER, Georg, and Ira Diana MAZZONI. 1988. “Bibliographie zur Geschichte und Theorie von Text–Bild-Beziehungen.” In: Text und Bild, Bild und Text. DFGSymposium 1988, ed. Wolfgang Harms. Stuttgart: Metzler, pp. 475–508. KALTON, Michael. 1988. To Become a Sage. The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning by Yi T’oegye. New York: Columbia University Press. LACKNER, Michael. 1990. “Zur Verplanung des Denkens am Beispiel der t’u.” In: Lebenswelt und Weltanschauung im frühneuzeitlichen China, ed. Hellwig Schmidt-Glintzer. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, pp. 133–156 ——. 1992. “Argumentation par diagrammes: le ximing depuis Zhang Zai jusqu’au Yanjitu.” Extrême–Orient Extrême–Occident 14: 131–168. ——. 1996a: “Jesuit Memoria, Chinese Xinfa: Some Preliminary Remarks on the Organisation of Memory.” Western Humanistic Culture presented to China by Jesuit Missionaries, ed. in: Federico Masini. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, pp. 201–219. ——. 1996b. “La position d’une expression dans un texte: explorations diagrammatiques de la significatio.” Extrême–Orient Extrême–Occident 18: 35–49.
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——. 2000. “Was Millionen Wörter nicht sagen können: Diagramme zur Visualisierung klassischer Texte im China des 13. bis 14. Jahrhunderts.” Semiotik 22.2: 209–237. LANGLOIS, John D. 1974. Chin-hua Confucianism under the Mongols. Princeton: Princeton University Press. LEGGE, James, tr. 1967. Li Chi. Book of Rites. An Encyclopedia of Ancient ceremonial Usages, Religious Creeds, and Social Institutions. New York: University Books [reprint 1885]. LIAO Yunxian. 2005. Yuandai Lunyuxue kaoshu ցזᓵᖂە૪. Taibei: Xin wenfeng. MAY, Michael. 1995. “Diagrammatisches Denken: Zur Deutung logischer Diagramme als Vorstellungsschemata bei Lakoff und Peirce.” Zeitschrift für Semiotik 17: 285–305 PETERSON, Willard. 1982. “Making Connections: ‘Commentary on the Attached Verbalizations’ of the Book of Change.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42.1: 67–116. REITER, Florian. 1990. “Some Remarks on the Chinese Word T’u. Chart, Plan, Design.” Oriens 32: 308–327. Sishu zhangju jizhu ີႃု [by Zhu Xi ڹᗋ (1130–1200)]. 1983. Peking: Zhonghua. Tong zhi lüe ຏ[ ݳby Zheng Qiao ᔤᖱ (1104–1162)], SBBY edition. Zhuzi yulei ڹᣊ. 1986. Peking: Zhonghua.
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Fig. 1a: Diagram of “Doctrine of the Mean” Zhongyong խ, § 27. [Yanji tu 8b, 13th century].
Fig. 1b: Zhongyong խ, §27.
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Fig. 2a: Buddist kewen ઝ֮. [Zhenjie టᎂ, 1589].
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Fig. 2b: Buddist kewen ઝ֮ ascribed to Zongmi ࡲയ (780–841). [Yuanjue jing lüeshu B 15, 9th century?]
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Fig. 3: Diagram of the “On humaneness by Zhu Xi ڹᗋ (Renshuo tu ոᎅቹ). [Zhuzi yulei, 1233]
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Fig. 4: Diagram of the transmission of the “Book of Documents” (Shangshu/Shujing ࡸ/ᆖ). [Wujing tu B 2, 12th century]
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Fig. 5: One of two diagrams showing different interpretations of the structure of the Zhongyong խ (see Fig. 6 for the second diagram). [Yanji tu 7b–8a, 13th century]
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Fig. 6: A diagram showing a distinct interpretation of the structural arrangement of the Zhongyong խ (as compared to Fig. 5 above). [Yanji tu 7b–8a, 13th century]
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Fig. 7: Diagram of different arrangements of persons during a court ritual.. [Sanli tu, 13th century]
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Fig. 8: Diagram of the composition of the opening passage of the Zhongyong խ. [Yanji tu 9b, 13th century]
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Fig. 9: Alternative diagram depicting the structure of the Zhongyong խ in form of a table of contents. [Yanji tu 41a, 13th century], Cf. Figs. 5–6.
Fig. 10: Li Yuangang’s ޕցጼ diagram Cunxin yaofa ֨ژऄ# of different passages from Confucian Classics, arranged in the shape of the character “centre” (zhong խ). [Shengmen shiye tu ᆣ॰ࠃᄐቹ 5, 12th century]
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Fig. 11a: Buddhist sutra in the shape of a pagoda found at Dunhuang ཉᅇ. [Huang Yongwu, ed. Dunhuang baozang, 42/5410, 410 (7th century)]
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Fig. 11b: No. 9 of the “Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning (㎇䞯㕃☚; ᆣᖂԼቹ)” by Li Huang =( ✸ޕYi Hwang 㧊䢿, 1501–1570). [Yanji tu 3b, 13th century]
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Fig. 11c: Diagram elucidating Laozi ۔§42. [Daozang 0490, 13th century]
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Fig. 12: Diagram of Mengzi 7B:24. [Yanji tu 11b, 13th century]
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Fig. 13: Diagram of Zhongyong խ§20. [Yanji tu 9a, 13th century]
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Fig. 14: Diagram of “The Western Inscriptions” (Ximing ۫ Ꭾ ) by Zhang Zai (1020–1078). [Yanji tu 40b–41a, 13th century]
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Fig. 15a: Passage A2 from the “Great Commentary (on the Yijing)” (Yijing) Xici zhuan (࣐ᆖ)ᢀႚ.
Fig. 15b: Diagram visualizing the above passage A2 from the Xici zhuan ᢀႚ. [Yanji tu 21a, 13th century]
Fig. 16: Diagram of ens reale, manuscript (13th century). [Evans 1980]
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Fig. 17: Poem in the form of a pyramid. [Paschasius, Poesis artificiosa, 150 (17th century)]
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Fig. 18: The “Tree of Porphyry” as interpreted in medieval commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagoge (late 3rd century AD). [16th century AD]
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Fig. 19: “Diagram for investigating classification” Jilei tu ᗨᣊቹ. [Yanji tu 29b, 13th century]
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PART TWO PICTURING REALITY? TU AS TECHNICAL ILLUSTRATIONS
I. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MEDIUM
IMAGINING PRACTICE: SENSE AND SENSUALITY IN EARLY CHINESE MEDICAL ILLUSTRATION1 Vivienne Lo If we define medical imagery as any representation of the body that has a function in medical praxes, then we have but a handful of examples extant from the early imperial and mediaeval periods in China. Even the few images that survive from the Western Han tombs at Changsha Mawangdui ್׆ഔ (tomb closed ca. 168 BC),2 of the old Han kingdom of Chu ᄑ, and on the figurine excavated at Yongxing ةᘋ, Shuangbaoshan ᠨץ՞ (latest date 118 BC)3 in the south-west of China, do not easily translate into therapy—especially if we take medical practice in a limited way according to the interaction between a practitioner and their patient in the treatment of illness. Making sense of the images may demand a prior knowledge of a select corpus of written texts: with the help of the Mawangdui textual accounts and those from another tomb at Jiangling Zhangjiashan ۂର ്୮՞ (closed ca. 186 BC),4 as well as some contemporary accounts ———
1 This paper was written and researched while I was a fellow of the history department of SOAS, London University. I am very grateful for the generous research grant provided by the Wellcome Trust during that time. My thanks are also due to the countless scholars who gave me invaluable help and advice. In the preparation of this paper I am particularly indebted to Donald Harper, Roel Sterckx and John Moffet. Park 1995: 112–113. 2 The Mawangdui burial mound is located in the northeastern section of Changsha ९ޥ, Hunan, formerly the Western Han Kingdom of Changsha, and was excavated in the early 1970s. It contains three tombs. Tombs no. 1 and no. 2 belonged to the Marquis of Dai ⃬ঀ, Li Cang ܓ፧, and his wife (who was buried in tomb no. 1). Tomb no. 3, from which the manuscripts were excavated, was occupied by their son, who died in 168 B.C. at the age of about 30. For the excavation reports see Hunansheng bowuguan and Zhongguo kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo (1974: 39–48). Cf. Harper (1998) for a complete translation of all the medical manuscripts as well as a comprehensive and scholarly discussion of the manuscripts themselves and their circumstances. 3 Cf. Sichuan sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo (1996: 13–29) for the excavation report. 4 Judging by his mortuary goods, the owner of tomb 247 at the Jiangling, Zhangjiashan site in Hubei was probably not of status equivalent to the Lord and Lady of Dai, of Mawangdui, nor the owner of the Shuangbaoshan tomb. A register buried in the tomb records that the anonymous tomb owner was bingmian ఐ“( ܍absent from
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of practice,5 this paper begins by examining the figurine as a response to the body in illness and, specifically, as evidence in our understanding of the development of jiu ߁—moxibustion and cautery treatments. In contrast, mediaeval moxa-cautery loci charts discovered in the cache of manuscripts at Dunhuang, and in the Hama jing ᓚᝂᆖ (Toad canon) bring together simple textual instructions with practical illustration. 6 Together, image and text seem to demonstrate the transmission of knowledge in popular medical practice. The proximity of text and image in the latter cases may suggest a relatively direct relationship with practice, but we must be wary of searching for a simple healing function for those less obviously explicated images of the body. Recent scholarship demands that we pay attention to how changing sociopolitical realities impacted upon the construction of the early Chinese body, or how the theoretical priorities of astro-calendrical computations configured its surfaces, such as in the Mawangdui and Shuihudi drawings designed for foretelling the fortunes of a newborn baby.7 The latter are examples of the body as a passive repository of knowledge and experience. In addition, the following analysis, in the wake of those who are more interested in how the body itself participates in culture, offers another radically different approach, examining some of the same source material as an expression of sensory ——— court because of illness”) for a period taken from the first year of Hui Di (194 BC). But the two boxes found in the coffin room contained, after Mawangdui, the second richest cache of medical manuscripts recovered from the second century BC. The first description of the contents of the Zhangjiashan bamboo manuscripts appeared in 1985, followed by a transcript of Maishu ౧ published in 1989 and Yinshu ֧ in 1990. See Jiangling Zhangjiashan Hanjian zhengli xiaozu (1989: 72–74) (hereafter “Maishu shiwen”) and Zhangjiashan Hanjian zhengli zu (1990: 82–86) (hereafter “Yinshu shiwen”). As the binding thread that tied the slips had rotted away, the slips were scattered and confused and had to be reordered. Yinshu and Maishu are written in lishu ជ, Han clerical script, and each one is marked with a title on the back in the hand of a single scribe, probably in the process of cataloguing. But as the script pre-dates graphic standardisation, many terms remain unknown and positive identifications are often speculative. Some of the graphs were also mutilated to the extent that it is not possible to establish an accurate graph count. Three texts, however, are more complete editions of those texts that describe the mai also found at Mawangdui and can be used to restore lacunae in the latter. 5 In the course of this study I will also refer to the biographies of Chunyu Yi ⏇Ѣ ᛣ and of Bian Que ᠕卆 in Sima Qian’s Shiji 㿬 (The Grand Scribe’s records). Shiji, juan 105, 1959: 2785–2820. 6 The Dunhuang charts in question are S6168 and S6262, held in the British Library. A transcript of most of the medical manuscripts including copies of the charts is in Ma Jixing, Wang Shumin et al. (1998). 7 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 1985: 133, reproduced in Harper (1998: 372–373). See also Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian (1990: 89–141).
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experiences associated with both health and illness. Rather than mapping the body’s functionality some of these images portray and convey aesthetic knowledge where aesthetic refers to its earlier meaning of “things perceptible to the senses”.8 And it is this codification and instruction of the body’s sensual nature that is the main theme of this paper. Vivid images of the body can be found on the well known Mawangdui silk chart styled the Daoyin tu ᖄ֧ቹ “Guiding and Pulling Chart” (see Col.Pl. VIII) 9 at a form of medical gymnastics designed to rejuvenate aging and stiffening bodies and transform pain and discomfort. Daoyin tu sets out forty-four robed and semi-robed figures engaged in different exercises—some upright, some bending, with arms and legs stretched and contorted in different postures. Some of the diagrams have captions such as Long deng ᚊ࿆ (Dragon Ascending) and Yin xi tong ֧ᓃ࿀ (Pulling Knee Pain). Zhangjiashan Yinshu ֧ (The Pulling Book), a recently excavated manual describing similar exercises, provides further help to translate the images into action. From Yinshu we know that the art of daoyin was not simply a therapy for illness, but also a year’s health regimen in four parts that adjusted personal hygiene, grooming, exercise, diet, sleep and sexual behaviour to the changing qualities of the four seasons. Seven or more of the Daoyin tu captions and some twelve Yinshu exercises relate to movements associated with animals, and the last part of this paper will discuss how these animal images serve to convey a specialised form of knowledge. Far from representing carnal passions full of shame, such as the beasts of Christian gnosticism of the 1st to 3rd centuries AD, use of animal imagery in early Chinese self-cultivation served to measure and transform bodily passion into the essences for strengthening and prolonging life.10
———
8 I use aesthetic in contrast to anaesthetic in this earlier meaning rather than in the sense of “criticism of taste”. 9 The title was given by the editors of Mawangdui Hanmu boshu. See Tang Lan 㰁 in Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu, ed. (1979: 1–10). A photographic reproduction and transcription of the extant captions on the Daoyin tu can be found in Mawangdui Hanmu boshu (1985: 49–52). Ma Jixing (1992: 849–866) provides explanatory notes. See also Li Xueqin (1991: 7–9). 10 See Williams 1989: 129–147.
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THE MAI ౧ During this first section of this paper I will keep returning to a discussion of the phenomenon of the mai, what the term referred to and what it meant in practical medical terms. Until recently, the problem posed by the mai has been to reconcile apparently conflicting meanings of “blood vessel”, “channel” and “pulse “where contexts seem to demand different translations. Various solutions are proposed: Harper translates “vessel”, which draws out early association with the arteries and veins, Unschuld favours “conduit”, Sivin “tract”; I prefer a more neutral “channel”, which also embraces muscular and topographical elements of the concept that are evident in the early texts and images. 11 Kuriyama points out that the divisions of structure and function differentiated by the terms vessel and pulse may be an artefact of translation—of the inseparable development of anatomy and the theory of blood circulation in Western medical culture, beginning with the Greek experience. His challenge, then, is to give a positive account of the mai.12 Li Jianmin has begun to meet that challenge, maintaining that early concepts in mai theory do not simply organise observations of “empirical experience, but are attempts to inscribe the movement of the heavens onto the body, opening it out as “a field of temporal spaces”. 13 Simultaneously, and perhaps within the same social milieu, those involved in the theory and practice of selfcultivation used the concept of mai to explain the movement of qi and the experience of circulating the breath.14 If we simply assume that these mai were a primitive version of the mature jingluo ᆖ system of acupuncture, we will miss a great deal about the process and context within which they were conceived. How did the mai translate into medical practice? What were the processes linking the art of pulse taking to the instruction to apply cautery ———
11 See Harper 1998: 77–90. I prefer to follow the contemporary analogy with du េ “channel” or “canal” found in the Maishu ౧. See Jiangling Zhangjiashan Hanjian zhengli xiaozu 1989: 74. The translation “channel” also serves to emphasise the relationship of the mai to the superficial anatomical channels as defined by muscle and bone, as they were understood before the more elaborate theories of the jingluo and jingmai found in the Huangdi neijing ႓ ০ փ ᆖ (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon). Jingluo or jingmai has been variously translated as “conduit”, “meridian”, “circulation tract” etc. See Sivin (1987: 34, 122 n. 11) and Unschuld (1985: 75, 81– 83). 12 Kuriyama 1986: 211–212. 13 Li 2001: 107–140. 14 This was the subject of my Ph.D. thesis. See Lo 1999. See also Lo 2000: 15– 65.
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or needle to open the mai? What was the space of the body defined by the mai? Can we learn anything about therapy from medical illustration? Concentrating attention on the practical application of image and text will provide new insights to deepen our understanding of the development of this most fundamental concept in classical Chinese medicine. Shuangbaoshan, Mianyang ጿၺ, Sichuan Excavations during 1993 of a tomb at Shuangbaoshan, two man-made burial mounds in an area which is well known for its Han and Six Dynasty period tombs, yielded an artefact that adds yet another facet to the history of the concept of the mai (see Fig. 1).15 The tomb was shallow in comparison to the three at Mawangdui, but from its size and mortuary goods we can tell that the tomb owner was of high rank. The mortuary goods in the antechamber were arranged by theme. Most notable were the stable goods, chariots and cavalry, which include one hundred large lacquerware horses (74 cm high and 71 cm long). From these and the twenty chariots both single and double harnessed, the cavalry and the quivers, it would seem that the tomb owner held a significant position in the army. The tomb is also situated on the Shudao ᇋሐ the way between the kingdoms of Shu and Qin, site of many battles during the Warring States period and is likely to have been a military outpost of the Han court. Of the fifty lacquerware items recovered at Yongxing, Shuangbaoshan the form of the cups, jugs, plates and bowls closely resemble those found at Hubei, Jiangling Fenghuangshan ଅ೩՞ tomb 168. We can assume that the owners of these tombs along the course and hinterland of the Yangzi River shared a common burial culture. The red design on a black background is also similar to lacquerware found at Mawangdui, as are the motifs of paired birds and cloud configurations. But a lacquered wood carving of the human body, 28.1 cm high, is unique. It was wrapped in a red woven fabric and placed in the outer coffin compartment. The figurine, unusually, is naked and carved with some concern for anatomical accuracy. It bears nine red lacquer lines, which extend from the extremities to the head and one ———
15 I have discussed the figurine in detail in He and Lo (1996: 81–124). See also He (1994: 4) for the first description of the discovery of the figurine. A detailed discussion of the figurine can be found in He (1995: 116–120).
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which follows the mid-line of the posterior surface of the torso over the spine traversing the spine to the bridge of the nose. I have, elsewhere, compared and contrasted the anatomical pathways of the figurine to routes of the mai “channels” as they are described in four texts excavated from tombs at Zhangjiashan and Mawangdui, and closed at earlier dates in the Western Han period.16 The many inconsistencies described in that paper suggest that text and figurine may reflect different theoretical constructions of the body. In particular I have noted the absence of the Yin channels of the leg, and the addition of a medial posterior line that might resemble the most Yang channel known later as the dumai. The lines on the figurine differ in number and route to those described in the texts and although both clearly share a fundamental spatial awareness of the body, we should be cautious about attributing to them a common source. In this paper I will revisit the relationship between text and artefact, concentrating on their relationship to practice. We can think of the figurine as a visual aid to guide medical intervention, and this will be the first concern of this paper. But whether intervention is styled in relation to a model of breath cultivation, to contemporary theories of pathological physiology or simply patterns of symptoms is as yet unclear. Secondly, we must be wary of how the excitement of textual corroboration of the detail on the figurine can dominate our interpretation and blind us to the information offered to us simply by the mute presence and position of the figurine in the Han tomb. We should consider how the figure and the knowledge that it represents relate to or mediate older mortuary beliefs and practice. Was the inclusion of the figurine part of a project to mimic and sustain real life in the afterworld for the benefit of the deceased or was it self-consciously representational? In form and structure the figurine parallels the Chu interest with real human form, insomuch that it uniquely attempts to convey detail of superficial anatomy, but this is not a figure that we can say is a replica of the real world.
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16 He and Lo 1996: 93–105.
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SENSE Blood Vessels A first approach to interpreting the Shuangbaoshan figurine is to relate it to the structure and function of the mai as we understand it from both received and excavated texts. Zhangjiashan Maishu ౧ (The Channel Book) [hereafter Maishu] comprises 65 slips. Harper divides the manuscript into six core texts which he describes as “Ailment List”, “Eleven Vessels”, “Five Signs of Death”, “Care of the Body”, “Six Constituents” and “Vessels and Vapor. His titles indicate well the content of each text. I shall adopt his divisions, numbering the texts (1) – (6).17 Three of those texts identified by Harper are editions of texts also found in the Mawangdui medical manuscripts. Maishu (1) associates the mai “channels” with holding, or, at least, controlling the movement of blood. It is a lexicon of illnesses, which begins to give an elementary differential diagnosis. In the section on illnesses of the bowel it states: when the illness is...in the bowel – when there is pus and blood, and pain in the perineum, the spleen, the buttocks and lower abdomen, this is bowel flushing. When on eating it immediately comes out, this is diarrhoea. When blood comes out everywhere first, this is mai.18
Mai in this context is a technical name for an illness which is characterised by bleeding from the bowel. In Wushier bingfang նԼԲఐ ֱ, one of the Mawangdui medical texts, maizhe ౧ृ refers to a type of haemorrhoid.19 Given the common symptoms accompanying such haemorrhoids, the maizhe may also refer to a small blood vessel protruding from the anus, which will inevitably tend to bleed. Both these early illness names may then be understood to connect mai with blood or with blood vessels. Referring to the figurine we can see that, on the back of the hand, the forearm and at the lateral edge of the head there are patterns of lines, which obviously model the superficial arteries. The lines on the forearm, groin and neck clearly pass through areas where one could easily draw blood. They simultaneously pass through the places at the wrist, elbow, neck and temple where the pulses are most easily felt, ——— 17 Harper: 1998: 31. Ma Jixing establishes only five texts (Unpublished paper, Changsha 2001), while Gao, using a different schema, conflates the last three. See Gao 1992. 18 “Maishu shiwen”: 72. 19 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 1985: 53.
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but do not pass the deep pulses at the abdomen or the superficial pulse at the ankle. The figurine evidently demonstrates a knowledge about and concern for the superficial arteriovenous pathways in their simple spatial relationship to the places where one can detect the sensation of pulsation. (See Fig. 2).
IMAGE: PAIN AND MUSCULAR DEFINITION The eleven mai of Maishu and the editions of Zubi shiyi mai jiujing ߩᜩԼԫ౧߁ᆖ (Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Foot and Arm Channels) and Yinyang shiyimai jiujing ອၺԼԫ౧߁ᆖ (Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Yin and Yang Channels) of Mawangdui are not simply blood vessels. Like the figurine they have a more vertical arrangement running from limbs to torso and head. A theory, once advanced by Bridgman, is that the mai were not based upon a knowledge of blood vessels, but on routes of pain as it is transmitted around the body.20 Huangdi neijing lingshu [hereafter Lingshu] 13, the treatise entitled jingjin ᆖ, describes a map of the body that is similar to the jingmai of acupuncture theory, but which is also more focused on a somatography of the body defined by its muscular definition. Many features of Maishu and Yinshu also demonstrate an awareness of pain and muscular definition as the guiding structure of their architecture of the body.21 Well over half of the symptoms associated with the eleven mai described in Maishu (2), for example, are of pain or discomfort along the mai in question. The juxtaposition of Daoyin tu, chart of therapeutic gymnastics, with Yinyang shiyimai jiujing (see Col.Pl. IX), a channel text which does not mention cautery, suggests alternative physical therapy for disorders of the mai. With the added testimony of Yinshu, the Zhangjiashan daoyin manual, we can see that the type of illnesses treated with daoyin match closely those associated with each of the mai. Over 60% are pain and discomfort or motor problems associated with ——— 20 See Bridgman 1981: 10. During the centuries around the turn of the millennia in China, the widespread medical theorising about the physiology of the body, and in particular that leading up to the formation of ideas about the circulation of qi, could have taken in all of these ideas, even if at any one particular time or in one text they were not all assimilated to the concept of the mai itself. 21 See for example the following quote from “Maishu shiwen”: 74, “So bone pain is as if being hacked at, muscle pain is as if being bound, blood pain is as if saturated, channels pain is as if flowing, flesh pain is as if floating and when the qi is agitated there is chaos.”
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co-ordination of the limbs. Thus this early Western Han movement therapy, which we shall see is also a form of “inner alchemy”, was concerned with alleviating pain and discomfort and was related to a body organised around mai. Working solely from the figurine we can see that many of the lines follow the natural planes and valleys of the body. In particular the lines of the spine, the lower edge of the ribs, the lower jaw etc., mark muscle and bone boundaries on the body.22
INTERPRETATION: DIAGNOSIS In the channel texts the descriptions of the mai shang Ղ “rise” and xia Հ “fall”, ru Ե “enter” and chu “ נcome out”. Significantly, the channels tend to “come out” at the major points at which one can feel the pulse. On the one hand, the mai are like roads, which paradoxically, without moving, travel in certain directions, and on the other, they emerge from the body in the form of pulsation. While it is through the quality of pulsation at different points of the body that early medical practitioners determined which of the mai were in disorder, it seems that the mai were thought to move in a variety of different ways. Treatises in the later canonical medical compilations, such as Huangdi neijing suwen [hereafter Suwen] 4.14 and Lingshu 1.1 speak similarly of the shen 壀 “spirit” and jing 壄 “essence” moving through the guan ᣂ and ji ᄕ, strategic passes and junctures of the body, just as if they are discrete entities.23 We will see in the course of this paper that knowledge of the whereabouts of these entities is an important feature of the development and control of moxa-cautery practice. After each of the eleven descriptions of the mai in Maishu there is a list of symptoms that is introduced with the phrase shi dong ze bing ਢ೯ঞఐ “when it ‘moves’ then there will be illness”. The last section of Maishu elucidates the question of movement most clearly: ———
22 I have discussed the role of pain in the construction of the early Chinese medical body in Lo (1999: 191–210). 23 Suwen (juan 4, pian 14; SSBY vol. 204, fasc. 1, 5b) and Lingshu (juan 1, pian 1; SBBY vol. 205, fasc. 1, 1). Lingshu (juan 1, pian 3; SBBY vol. 205, fasc. 1, 8) also notes the difference between guan and ji in crude and sophisticated attention to the joints. It adds a distinction between zhengqi إ (“proper qi”) and xieqi ߵ (“deviant qi”), the former associated with guarding the shen 壀 (“spirit”) and the latter with ke ড় (unwelcome “guests”).
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VIVIENNE LO The way to examine the channel is to press it with the left ƑƑƑƑƑ; place the right hand directly on the ankle bone and palpate there. If the other channel is overflowing and this one alone is depleted then this controls the illness resides. If the other mai are slippery and this one alone is rough, then this is where the illness resides. If the other mai are quiet and this one alone moves (in agitation), then it generates illness. Now as for the certain movement in the mai ౧ࡐڶ೯ृ: the Lesser Yin of the Shin, the Great Yin and Lesser Yin of the Forearm are where the illness resides. If it becomes fast then there will be illness. This is how one discerns mai that have guo መ “excess”—as for the rest—carefully observe the excess on the relevant channel.24
The mai in this passage refers to the route of the channel and, simultaneously, to pulsation emanating from the channel. It is no coincidence that “certain movement” is on the three Yin channels that pass through the major pulses at the carotid, the ankle, the wrist and the femoral artery. If these pulses speed up it signifies a pathology on the relevant channel. Where dong contrasts with jing ᙩ “quiet”, the text implies a pathological speed of the pulse and we should understand “agitation”. This is followed by the observation that a fast pulse is related to illness. So mai that is in a pathological state moves in the temporal sense—it speeds up—while it also travels in a spatial sense around the body and out from a site beneath the surface of the body to the surface. Determining the condition of a channel being guo መ “in excess”, is the stated aim of diagnosis. Apart from causing excessive speed of the pulse on the given three Yin mai, guo reveals itself on the other channels through certain types of pathology, listed in relation to each channel. So this last passage from Maishu also defines the relationship between temporal and spatial agitation by matching symptomatology on the site of the channel with the excessive speed of the pulse. Chunyu Yi, the Western Han physician active around 154 B.C. whose professional life was set out in a biography by Sima Qian, records case histories that are roughly contemporary with Maishu.25 His pulse diagnosis is also concerned with detecting pulses that are in excess, but he adds many layers of complexity to interpreting the pulse in its relationship to the dynamic between Yin and Yang. For example if the Yin and Yang of one patient is bing ( ڢaligned in ———
24 This penultimate statement provides a clue to the practice. The channels that have pulses located along their route can be assessed by the quality of that pulse— those that don‘t, have to be assessed by the symptoms along the whole course of the channel. 25 See n. 5.
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some way), the prognosis is good, but if they jiao ٌ (cross, or encroach upon each in other in some way), then the condition is fatal.26 Whether this transgression is understood as the relative speed or movement of individual pulses, an invasion of the space of the channels, lesions or something more esoteric remains a fascinating mystery to me. Chunyu Yi also treats channels and pulses that are more closely linked to some concept of the liver, lung, spleen, heart and kidney and the qi (the fundamental stuff of life) of those viscera.27 He can detect certain syndromes and the exact position of symptoms from the relative speed, regularity, strength, size and movement of the pulse. The qualities that he feels are far more intricate than the four qualities recorded in the Maishu passage translated above. It is impossible to find a unitary concept of mai, one that is represented equally in the excavated texts and in the Shuangbaoshan figurine: not in the structure of the mai, be that a formalisation of the muscular body or the arteries, veins or the pulse, nor is it in a circulatory tract for the movement of a discrete entity such as mai, qi, shen “spirit” or jing “essence”.28 It may be safer to assume that the term ——— 26 Shiji, juan 105, 1959: 2800. 27 Qi (popularly rendered ch’i) is a complex and changing concept which defies
simple lineal histories. In the mid-Warring States references to qi tend to refer to atmospheric and environmental conditions, especially those moist vapours—clouds and mists—and, by analogy, to formless, clustering qualities that can be discerned with careful observation, like smoke, ghosts or the vibrant, martial aura of an army. By the mid fourth century qi often indicates the fundamental stuff in nature which both promotes and indicates vitality in the phenomenal world. It may enter the body in various ways—through the orifices and the skin—but its movement within the body is not formalised. Some historians translate qi as “vapour” and, in doing so, underline the amorphous watery qualities of steam and mist which are formative influences both in the early period and as an enduring feature of the concept. As qi begins to be applied to the phenomena of the inner body, the ideas, although never totally distinct from the early versions go through significant transformations. Rather than replacing the old meanings the range of meanings grow inclusively—a process that is continuous to the present day. I have not translated the term—and shall refrain from doing so because of the substantive changes that take place as qi itself begins to figure in the inner body. 28 Jing ㊒ is a term which is frequently found in medicine and self-cultivation in a triad with shen (“spirit”) and qi (see below). In sexual-cultivation jing may refer directly to semen. At other times , and when in combination with qi, it seems to refer to the finest quality of qi which is the universal vitality out of which things condense and into which they dissolve. Shen in Warring States literature such as Guanzi, Zhuangzi and the Zuozhuan, often designates spirits and divine entities that dwell outside the human body. Elsewhere shenming comes to mean characteristics of divine beings that allow them a spirit-like wisdom, a sharpness and clarity of perception rather than a mechanical or analytical intelligence. In Warring States and Early Imperial self-cultivation the shen began to refer to the spirit in-dwelling in the human body, conceived as an individual entity. The term continued to convey the qualities of a mysterious and radiant intelligence as represented in its earlier meaning.
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mai is flexible and has popular, technical and specialised usages, all of which come to bear on one another at different times. For diagnostic purposes, for example, the significant elements are knowledge of the relationship of the pulse to symptoms, and of the symptoms to the physical layout of the mai. The figurine may not be a representation of any of these individual elements, but we might adduce elements of all of these phenomena. Both texts and figurine, after all, share a common conceptual framework in the way they contour the body with their parallel structure of lines running from head to toe, and little evidence of pathways leading to the inner organs. Together they form a distinctive image that contrasts with the integrated system of jingluo fundamental to acupuncture theory.
ACTION: TREATMENT Can we know any more of the treatments that were applied to the mai? If a condition seemed to be fatal Chunyu Yi might avoid medical intervention. Where a patient’s prognosis was good his favoured therapy was pharmacological, although he also used stone needles and cautery. But these were not the only methods to treat the mai. Long ago, Epler (1980) explored a link between the origins of the jingluo system and blood vessels as well as bloodletting, as an associated therapy. He cited many examples from Suwen to suggest the importance of bloodletting in the formation of foundational acupuncture practice.29 A reading of Maishu (6) will reveal an instruction to qi mai “open the mai” and thus one immediate interpretation might be that this is confirmation of the practice of bloodletting in the earliest medical treatise associated with the mai.30 On close examination there is no further evidence to corroborate such a reading. In fact, this particular passage uniquely refers to opening the mai in order to correct a pathological movement of qi and concludes with a very practical description of how to lance abscesses. While the juxtaposition of lancing abscesses and moving qi suggests a rather random arrangement of practical interventions around a theme of the mai, there is no hint of bloodletting here. In fact, to understand the concept of mai in this text we look to ideas of qi and the cultivation of the inner body, already well developed in the Mawangdui and Zhangjiashan sexual and ———
29 Epler Jr. 1980: 337–67. 30 “Maishu shiwen”: 74.
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breath-cultivation literature which I will explore later in this paper.31 Chunyu Yi favours treating a particular symptom or syndrome with lancing stones from a number of different locations. On two occasions he pierces the body in three places in a single treatment. In case eleven he treats a condition of the foot by piercing the sole in three places and in case sixteen he treats rising heat and head pain with cold water and by piercing the Yangming channel in three places.32 Neither condition includes abscesses, or requires bloodletting. Nor are Chunyu Yi’s treatments applied to the type of named acupuncture locations that we know from the time of Huangdi neijing onwards. 33 They refer to a concept of the channels quite separate from that system, such as that we find on the figurine. Thus we have five possibilities for medical intervention aimed at the mai: herbs and mineral drugs, cautery, lancing stones for superficial surgery, bloodletting and normalising the movement of qi. From Yinshu we can also find evidence of daoyin and massage therapy as different methods of treating mai. But of all these methods evident in Maishu it is cautery that is the most clearly stated treatment, and we have to consider the possibility that the lines on the figurine were framed in order to establish related locations for moxa-cautery.
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31 See also Lo 2000: 15–65. 32 Shiji, juan 105, 1959: 2804, 2806. 33 Huangdi neijing is the work most famous for its exposition of classical acu-
moxa theories although to what extent its combined treatises reflect medical orthodoxy of the Han dynasty is questioned by Akahori Akira who compares the Huangdi neijing material with medical ideas in the work of the contemporary author Wang Chong. See Akahori (1982: 171–89). Huangdi neijing is a corpus now extant in three recensions, the Taisu (Great Basis), the Suwen (Basic Questions) and the Lingshu (Numinous Pivot). Each of these is a compilation of small texts dealing with separate topics which may reflect the thinking in a distinct medical lineage. It is thought that the earliest texts were set down during the first or at the earliest the second century BC. Collectively they represent the kind of debate through which classical medical concepts matured. In this respect they act as a convenient marker against which to assess the form and content of the excavated texts which form the source material for this paper. For an extended discussion of the development of medical theories in China based on a clarification of the formation of the Huangdi neijing see Yamada (1979: 67–89); for a reassessment of the origins of acumoxa see Unschuld (1985: 93– 99). Since the discovery of the excavated manuscripts, most medical historians now agree that an essential fusion of the technical and theoretical elements at the foundation of acumoxa therapy could not have happened much before the first two centuries B.C. See Sivin (1993: 196–215). The canons of acumoxa must also include Huangfu Mi’s Zhenjiu Jiayijing (A and B Canon of Acumoxa, Wu, Jin, 256–282 AD) and the Nanjing (Canon of Difficulties, 1st or 2nd century AD); translated in Unschuld (1986).
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FEATURES OF THE POPULAR PRACTICE OF CAUTERY It is difficult to ascertain the extent of cautery with mugwort (moxacautery) in Han times. Yamada gives good evidence that the development of moxa-cautery with mugwort was related to an earlier use of mugwort to ward off inauspicious elements and drive away demons. The people of Chu in particular wore mugwort dolls at their waist. He also describes the use of a related plant xiao ᘕ, as a form of incense to attract the gods, concluding that “mugwort must originally have been more than just a medicinal herb. Ai and xiao belong to the same mugwort genus, but one was used as incense to beckon the gods, whereas the other was used to drive away demons that caused illness.” These represent two contrasting approaches to ensuring that the body only played host to benign entities. Yamada raises the possibility that the channel system was discovered by those using moxacautery for “magical therapies” because “the routes or areas of illness” caused by gods of illness invading the body is highly compatible theoretically with the concept of the vessels (channels).34 The use of cautery is attested in literary analogies of the Warring States period: Zhuangzi puts the idea of “cauterising where there is no sickness” into Confucius’ mouth as an analogy for useless effort; Mengzi likens inadequate preparation in government to the futility of using insufficiently mature ai “ ۦmoxa punk” or “mugwort” to treat chronic illness; 35 in the Shiji biography Chunyu Yi also criticises other people for wrongly applying moxa-cautery to the channels. Jiu ߁ was also a technique to stimulate qi in self-cultivation. Tianxia zhidao tan describes how the gentleman who has over-indulged in sexual activity would “cauterise his body to bring forth his qi” in a programme which included taking special medicines and diet.36 After listing symptoms associated with each mai, Zubi shiyimai ———
34 Harper 1998: 244 and Yamada 1985a: 58–63. See also Yamada 1998: 66–78. Yamada compares the stages in one Wushier bingfang prescription for hernia which involve minor surgery, the applications of paste and alcohol and fumigation, to the stages in a ritual ceremony described in Liji. The fumigation, he believes, was intended to drive away the god of sickness and prevent it from entering the wound. Here we have a repetition of that theme where openings in the body, here a wound but elsewhere the orifices, are both vulnerable to malevolent activity as well as pivotal in methods to support and protect the body. 35 Zhuangzi (juan 9, pian 29; SBBY, vol. 176 fasc. 4, 21b). Mengzi (juan 7. 9; SBBY vol. 8, fasc. 3, 8). 36 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 1985: 164.
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jiujing recommends cautery.37 We can quite safely assume that cautery was applied to the symptoms themselves as well as to selected parts of the extended areas associated with the location of the symptom according to the framework of the mai. Since a majority of symptoms associated with the mai were pain and discomfort along its course we can easily understand the value of heat therapy. The lines on the figurine might then be a way of training the eye to pick out those planes of the body associated for the purpose of applying moxa. One Eastern Han bamboo slip from the archives of Jiaqu Defence Company Headquarters ⫻྄ظଢ records a case where the Commanding officer of a beacon unit along the line of defences in the north-west of China treated a soldier with moxa-cautery in two places on his back. This was a form of self-help medicine applied in the absence of more expert medical advice. Drugs had to be prescribed by a physician from the Commandant’s office on his rounds of the military outposts. Cauterising a number of moxa locations is reminiscent of Chunyu Yi’s treatments, although the officer did not work specifically on the channels. Private soldier attached to Dangqu Beacon Unit, Qu Fanzi ࡹᑕ (person’s name?), in the first month Ƒ day fell ill for four days, the office did not ƑƑƑƑ, three days later, Ƒ, Officer in Command of Wansui Beacon Unit, applied cautery to his back ƑƑ ҏin two places, after ƑƑ within several days the physician at the Commandant’s Office came, and he drank one dose of drug and disposed ƑƑ.38
One indication of the popularity of cautery is the existence of sources which tell of prohibitions, cautioning against needling and applying moxa-cautery to the parts of the body through which the spirits and souls of the human body hun Ꮢ, shen and qi passed in calendrical cycles.39 In a similar vein, medical texts excavated from a ———
37 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 1985: 3–6. Ma Jixing (1992: 9–10) notes that because Zubi jiujing and the other texts on the same manuscript are written in a script that is in between seal and clerical script, they are more accurately dated to the Qin period. 38 Xie Guihua, Li Junming, Zhu Guozhao 1987: 49.31, 49.13 and Fig. 22 and 23. See also Xie Guihua 2005: 97. 39 Lingshu 8 describes the relationship between the internal organs, emotion and other aspects of the human consciousness and entities that we might approximate to spirit and souls. See Lingshu 8, “Benshen” ء壀, 2. 152–153. The hun Ꮢ, and the po ᕗ, for example, are aspects of human being that scholarship has traditionally seen as separating at death and as the object of early funerary practice. In a recent article Brashier has shown that hun/po dualism is not at the foundation of Han burial practice and is more faithfully described as a scholastic convention. He suggests that the pair are more closely linked to medical states of anxiety and illness (Brashier 1996: 125–158). In Lingshu 8 the hun is said to reside in the blood, the po in the lungs. The
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tomb at Wuwei ࣳ (ca. 1st century AD) provide us with the earliest datable acupuncture treatment detailing the site of needle insertion and manipulation technique.40 Following this passage there is also a list of prohibitions which restrict cautery on specified parts of the body according to the age of the patient. The prohibitions set out in the Hama jing (see Fig. 3), a series of images of the human body marked with acupuncture points according to the waxing and waning of the moon, suggests that moxa-cautery should not be used on the right hand side during the day for fear of disturbing the Yang channels and driving the patient mad.41 The phases of the moon are emphasised by the emergence and disappearance of the toad and the hare, drawn upon its surface. In general qi was thought to travel on the Yang planes of the body in the days before and after the moon became full and on its Yin planes when the moon was darkest. One had to avoid applying moxa-cautery to the place that lodged the qi. When the moon was at its fullest it was also inadvisable to he yinyang, a euphemism for having sexual relations, least the woman suffer an attack of wind. It is not uncommon to find self-cultivation and moxacautery treatments contained in the same manuscripts. Hama jing chart and Wuwei text share moxa-cautery prohibitions related to the position of the shen within the body although the precise times and locations do not match (see Fig. 4). In the Hama jing the shen travels from the centre of the body below the navel, to the neck and shoulders, the head and then to the legs and down to the feet in eleven cycles of nine years. In contrast the Huangdi prohibitions related to the shen and hun from Wuwei prohibit moxa-cautery on the heart in the first year, on the abdomen in the second year, on the back in the third year, on the head in the fourth year, on the feet in the fifth year, on the hands in the sixth, the neck in the seventh, shoulders in the eighth, etc. Mediaeval texts such as Wang Tao’s Waitai biyao ؆ ፕ ఽ as well as three manuscripts from the Dunhuang cache (P2675 Xinji beiji jijing ᄅႃໂ৺߁ᆖ “Canon of Newly Collected Moxibustion (Remedies) For Use in Emergencies” [two scrolls] and S5737 Jiujing mingtang ߁ᆖࣔഘ “Moxibustion Canon Illuminated Hall”) contain similar calendrical treatises on the movement of shen ———
zhi “ݳwill” resides in the kidneys. The shen, originally a term for “spirit” entities external to the body—and, in the Lingshu, a somatisation of the qualities of brightness and spontaneous perception that the spirits represented (which I translate “spirit”) is said to reside in the mai “the channels”. Lingshu 8 “Benshen”, 2.152–153. 40 Zhang and Zhu, eds. 1996: 21–23. 41 Huangdi hama jing 1984: 2.
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and qi.42 The introduction to P2675 records the date of printing as the second year of the Xiantong reign period (861). The editor suggests that he is abridging the moxa-cautery techniques of a number of jia schools or teaching lineages in order to provide a practical medicine for those who live in outlying regions and can’t get hold of sophisticated drugs. These manuscripts are from the same vicinity as the administrative records from Jiaqu Defence Company Headquarters where we saw the commanding officer, in the absence of prescribed drugs, applying moxa-cautery to the back of one private soldier. Being in the same genre as the Wuwei texts, the Hama jing, and the moxa-cautery prohibitions of Waitai biyao, the texts seem to inform us, in different ways, about the concepts and procedures of a distinctive popular moxa-cautery tradition. No doubt these originate as part of the larger tradition of prohibition and selection of auspicious times. The existence of a tradition of prohibition associated with cautery corroborates the view that the techniques associated with cautery were many and varied. It seems that there was a perception that popular practice should be regulated according to more informed ideas about the relationship of the physiology of the body to the movement of the heavens. For concrete evidence of popular practice, rather than its restrictions, we have the Dunhuang moxa-cautery charts held at the British Library.43 A series of sketches of the posterior and anterior aspects of the human body illustrate the relationship between strategic anatomical locations and the treatment of specific symptoms and illnesses with moxa-cautery in a medical tradition of the mediaeval period (S6168 and S6262, see Col.Pl. X). They are the earliest extant moxacautery charts, pre-dating the Northern Song bronzes that lay out the acupuncture points, by some three or four centuries. Each diagram in S6168 and S6262 seems to mark between three and six locations on the body, by drawing a line from the location to the side of the figure where there is a short textual description. The text records the name of the location, detailed instructions explaining how to find it, illnesses it treats and the number of cauterisation to perform. On three of the diagrams this information is summarised in a paragraph at the side of the figure. Each paragraph begins with the phrase jiu X “cauterise X” where X is sometimes a specific ailment ———
42 Wang Tao ׆ះ: 1993: 779. 43 The charts and accompanying texts are reproduced in Ma Jixing, Wang
Shumin et al. (1998: 477–512). See also Lo (2005: 227–251).
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such as “cauterising floating wind in a person’s face”, “cauterising the five exhaustions and the seven harms/injuries” or “cauterising various human crazinesses” and at other times is the name of a specific location on the body and is followed by related symptoms. Each figurine represents a discrete package detailing how to recognise and treat a distinct disease, or collection of symptoms together with a guide to finding the location and how to perform the treatment. There are a number of unique features of the charts that deserve our attention: the moxa-cautery points are not systematically associated with channels, internal organs or with an elaborated system of correspondences; despite five anterior views very few locations are given on the parts of the body that had for a long time been associated with its Yin planes (anterior, inner, lower) and a significant number of locations are given which are not cited in earlier or later acumoxa literature. The particular combinations of text and image in the charts suggest a practical orientation, perhaps reflecting a tradition of moxa-cautery that was available to a lay readership rather than exclusive to professional physicians. A view of the charts as representative of a selftreatment tradition is also corroborated by the fact that the symptoms listed are similar to those treated in other self-cultivation traditions such as daoyin “leading and guiding” the tradition of therapeutic gymnastics and, to some extent, in sexual cultivation.
ACTION: SPACE Geomancy or the science of siting has a complex history in China with competing theories and is mainly concerned with the selection of a topological site with good influences for positioning ancestral tombs, houses or other enterprises.44 Western Han texts excavated at the Yinqueshan burial site in Shandong, confirm that Yin and Yang were fundamental to topographical considerations when initiating military intervention.45 Similarly the Mawangdui text known as the Taichan shu ઼ข (Book of the Generation of the Fetus) uses Yin ———
44 A general introduction to siting theories can be found in Bennet (1978: 1–26). 45 The Yinyang texts from the Yinqueshan burial site are invaluable for studying
some of the earliest extant work of Yinyang theorists who were concerned with philosophic and military texts. The military texts show an elaborate concern with Yin and Yang terrain and how to align military strategy auspiciously. See Yates 1994: 96–97.
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and Yang as an indication of where to bury the afterbirth to ensure good influences on a child throughout its lifetime.46 Bennet (1978), writing of the difference between intuitive or analytical siting techniques, notes that “the difference between siting techniques was probably in some ways analogous to the difference between medical practices”. The selection of one method for locating the source of an illness over another may well have been a matter of the social group to which the practitioner belonged and the social status of his clients.47 In fact the difference in early Chinese medical practices is to quite a large extent defined by how each one described the site of the illness and the time and location for auspicious intervention. In Lingshu 58 Qi Bo emphasises the importance of knowing exactly where the illness comes from: Qi Bo stated: “This also has its reason. When perverse (influences) flow (within) yet do not break out, this is because in the ‘inner intention’ (zhi )ݳthere is that which detests and that which envies. Blood and qi are chaotic within and the two qi attack each other. ‘The place where it comes from’ (qi suo cong lai zhe ࠡࢬൕࠐृ) is subtle, if you look you do not see it and if you listen you do not hear it, so it seems as if it were ghosts and spirits.” The Yellow Emperor said: “as for simply using spells, how could this be?” Qi Bo said: “as for the wu ݥof old, it is because they knew how to overcome the hundred illnesses: formerly they knew bing zhi suo cong sheng (ఐհࢬൕ‘ سthe place which generated the illnesses’) and could simply use spells.
When you know where the illness arises, the cure follows easily. On the face of it the Shuangbaoshan figurine looks like a map, but what kind of territory does it represent? Much detail on the figurine and in the excavated mai “channel” texts is significantly different. What the two sources share is a common structuring of bodily space along vertical lines that travel through torso and limbs. Yin and Yang, as they appear in the titles of each channel, are clearly evident in the division of superficial anatomical space. Yin is understood in its most basic sense of the softer, dark, inner, and lower aspects of the body (anterior, under the arms and legs) as opposed to the harder, light, and upper parts (posterior, superior and visible), which are Yang. There is evidence of more elaborate correspondences to Yin and Yang in Maishu (3), where the meaning is extended to take in heaven and earth and match it to inter———
46 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 1985:133–141. See also Li Jianmin 1994: 65.4, 725–830. 47 Bennet 1978: 4.
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nal pathology, but the references in Maishu (2) remain basically topographical. Yin and Yang representing divisions of time or phases are altogether missing from Maishu, apart from through the temporal implications of light and dark spaces. As they divided the body into hills and valleys of Yin and Yang and marked out the routes of the channels, the authors of Maishu created a landscape into which they could locate illness from the experience of discomfort or the discovery of pathology and lesion along the channel. Much Han medical material is similarly preoccupied with locating the site and depth of an illness. The biography of Chunyu Yi, for example, shows a constant concern with whether the illness has penetrated “inside” (nei փ) or to the “centre” (zhong խ) or whether it is generated in channel or organ. He frequently asks about bing suo zai ఐࢬ“ ڇthe whereabouts of the illness” and expects to know whether it is an illness of the “inner” or “outer” of the body, to what extent Yin has invaded Yang space, or vice versa, and where the illness is “seated” or “lodged” (ড় ke) in an organ, such as the heart or bladder. Equally, we have seen an elaborate tradition of moxa-cautery prohibition matching physical locations on the body with the passage of time, according to age or the phases of the moon. Motifs of time applied to the body are first seen in the Shuihudi hemerological texts and the Mawangdui Taichan shu (see Fig. 5), and it is in these earlier images that we first find the calendrical sequences that are developed in the Eastern Han Wuwei text, the Hama jing and finally in the Dunhuang cycles of “human spirit” (Գ壀 renshen) circulation. 48 The Taichan shu has two images side by side surrounded by partially extant Branch signs arranged in a way that indicates spring and summer, and autumn and winter, respectively. The child’s fortune is told according to where the Branch sign related to the date and season of their birth is located, with readings given in an associated text. Despite applying the notion of temporality and phase to the body, the Mawangdui and Shuihudi hemerological texts do not describe any form of “circulation”, such as we have seen in the later texts. But together with the more topographical divisions of Yin and Yang laid down in Maishu and Mawangdui channel texts (which inherently suggest the light and dark of day and night, winter and summer), by the end of the Western Han period the foundations are set for various ———
48 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu (1985: 133). Harper 1998: 372–384, Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian: 101.
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constructions of spatio-temporal movement within the body. When these concepts of circulation finally begin to mature they do so in quite distinctive ways, with different forms of measurement. In the past the apparently conflicting treatises on the circulation of qi have confounded those looking for a single line of development in the early period. Wuwei, Lingshu 15, Hama jing and the Dunhuang manuscripts posit the circulation of a bounded entity, such as shen and qi, that moves along a pre-defined course and at a regular speed. In contrast, more allegorical accounts envision the channels as a mirror of the waterways of China, exemplified in the “Jingshui” treatise of Lingshu 12. Finally, the very different concept of qi, emerging in the self-cultivation literature also owes much to the root metaphor of water in Chinese culture. These sources emphasise the more amorphous, unbounded qualities of qi: water with a source flows continuously; water flows along a course; water flows downward; water is soft and weak, it is yielding and uncontending; it takes any shape and is difficult to see. Here transformations of the body’s inner essences are guided by the breath, by physical and sexual education.49 The last section of this paper turns to a discussion of the latter subjects—the animation of the body in self-cultivation.
SENSUALITY The absence of texts specifically relating to the Shuangbaoshan figurine make it the most opaque of all the medical imagery considered in this paper. In fact we can only be certain of the fact that it was a map of the body considered important enough to be placed in the outer coffin compartment of the tomb—and, as a map, it gives its owner power to manipulate the territory of the body. Reading only from the image itself, without the benefit of any inner vision facilitated by the knowledge of text, the lines on the body tell us some of their own story. Significantly, the lines cluster and meet around the sense organs: three reach parts of the nose, ten come to an end at the eyes, four reach the mouth and six box the ears, while fourteen run to the hands (see Fig. 6). The lines must therefore relate their author’s ideas about vision, hearing, sight, taste and touch, and ———
49 Sarah Allan finds that many of the qualities attributed to water in Warring States philosophy apply to the early conception of qi in the body as described in different medical treatises, see Allan (1997: 35–54).
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are therefore likely to represent part of the human structure that bounds and mediates between the internal and external worlds. Is this then a sensory map of the body, rather than a model concerned with illness? I have noted the absence on the figurine of any Yin channels of the legs, as described in the excavated texts. We also do not find a representation of the renmai ո౧ [the channel which crosses the Yin, soft, anterior torso and is classically considered the most Yin of all channels], nor do the lines of the figurine seem to enter or represent the inner organs of the body, as they do in later theory. As we can see in the next quotation, Yin was a corollary of fatal pathology in the inner organs: In all cases the three Yin are the qi of earth and the channels of death. They decay the viscera and rot the bowels which controls the killing.50
The figurine, therefore, has little to do with Yin structures, or modelling the kind of serious illness associated with pathologies of Yin. In the absence of Yin “channels”, the figurine lacks the pathway to deterioration and decay and may be a model of perfect physiology, a plan for the movement of qi in breath cultivation, so well described in the Mawangdui and Zhangjiashan breath cultivation. In the selfcultivation literature we find a familiar code for successful practice, exemplified here in the condition of “spirit illumination” (shenming 壀 ࣔ) from the sexual cultivation literature from Mawangdui: if there is no orgasm in the first movement, the ears and eyes will become keen and bright, with the second the voice becomes clear, with the third the skin gleams, with the fourth the back and flanks are strengthened, with the fifth the buttocks and thighs become sturdy, with the sixth the waterways flow freely, with the seventh one becomes sturdy with strength, with the eighth the patterns of the skin shine, with the ninth one gets through to an illumination of thee spirit, with the tenth the body endures: these are called the ten movements.51
If we look again the figurine seems self-assured, comfortable in his sense of himself and his importance: unlike the servant figurines of Han tombs who tend to lower their eyes, he is as if looking out at a world that he owns (see Fig. 7). He has bright eyes and a steady gaze, his ears are keenly carved, his skin gleams with black lacquer and his ———
50 “Maishu shiwen”: 73–74. There is also an edition of this text among the Mawangdui medical texts which has been assigned the title of Yinyang sihou. See Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 1985: 21. 51 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 1985: 156.
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shoulders, back and flanks are square and strong (Col.Pl. XI) the patterns on his skin run freely from top to toe and he has indeed endured 2,000 years. To me this is a representation of the shenming. Beside the corpse such an image of perfection might aid physical immortality by ensuring the body’s invulnerability to pathological processes beyond the grave. So if this is the image of a healthy person, resplendent with freeflowing qi and acute sensory perception, can we know more of him? Images of robust and vigorous bodies are also on Daoyin tu where the exercises are made relatively explicit in a number of different ways. From the first text we learn that the basic prescription is that of a health regimen, seasonally adjusted. By the third text which is a treatise on the causes of illness and on measures for maintaining good health, we have been told that changes in the climate, social class, excessive emotion, diet, maintenance of body temperature, sleep, Yin, Yang and qi are all implicated in what amounts to a broad multifactorial attitude to the causation of illness. But no matter how the cause of illness is construed, Yinshu usually prescribes breath cultivation and guided therapeutic exercises to invigorate the whole or parts of the body. The exercises are the practical application of a medical philosophy that understands the maintenance of good health as dependent upon embodying movements of the external world. The images and culture of Daoyin tu and Yinshu must be understood in the context of a wider discourse of ideas about change and transformation in Early China. That there is an underlying principle of transformation at the foundation of the generation of all things is a common assumption in Warring States and Han philosophic literature. Observation of continuous movement and change in the natural environment is often cited as evidence. The sage, whether ruler, noble or physician, can achieve mastery through aligning his own behaviour with the patterns that reveal themselves. Zhuangzi 20 recommends shaking off earthly relationships and responsibility to move freely with the rhythms of the universe: without praises, without curses, now a dragon, now a snake, you transform together with the times,. And never consent to be one thing alone.52
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52 Translated in Graham (1989: 121).
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In the practice of medicine the sage practitioners apply principles learned from observation of change in the body: as for qi, it benefits the lower body and harms the upper; follows heat and distances coolness. So, the sages cool the head and warm the feet.53
Sagehood, comes with learning and practice. Like class it is manifest in particular forms of behaviour, and cultivation. Yinshu points out that a person’s class is also distinguished by the way that they get ill, and their knowledge and/or ability to cultivate good health: a common person is subject to elements beyond their control: the vicissitudes of their labour and the weather, but the “nobility” (guiren ၆Գ) do not harmonise their joys and passions, so either their Yin or Yang qi becomes too abundant. The way to harmony was to normalise the thermostatic environment through breath control: If they (nobility) are joyful then the Yang qi is in excess. If they are angry then the Yin qi is in excess. On account of this, if those that follow the Way are joyful then they quickly exhale (warm breath), and if they become angry they increasingly puff out (moist breath), in order to harmonise it.54
This deliberate concentration and directing of attention to the sensual body is a pervasive feature of daoyin. In Yinshu it is sometimes referred to as placing “intention” (yi რ) on a part of the body or an activity. Two occurrences of the term can be found in consecutive techniques related to incipient illness or illness as it first emerges. These examples show that the yi may be distracted or applied. Graham, discussing the Mohist Canons, attempts a definition of yi as, “forming an image of the object of attention”. Yinshu confirms the idea that yi involves the potential for concentrating attention, but the yi may also be distracted: Pulling incipient exhaustion illness. The intention is agitatedly set on pacing around, the body hurts more and more. At this moment you must treat it with the pull of the Eight Warps; quickly breathe out (dry breath) and quickly exhale (warm breath), pull Yin. Soak the space between the eyebrows in cold water for the time it takes to eat bowl of rice. Get rid of the water. With two hands hold two (two?) rush mats. Stroke between the eyebrows upwards and rock it up and down. Call out “hu hu” through the mouth. Do it altogether ten times and stop.55
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53 “Maishu shiwen”: 74. 54 “Yinshu shiwen”: 86. 55 “Yinshu shiwen”: 83.
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Resolving a distraction of the yi involves breath-cultivation to reduce heat and dryness, cooling and massaging the forehead. Yi may refer to concentrating attention on specific activities and parts of the body. It is located where it is placed. With Graham’s discussion in mind we can see how concentrating qi includes the ability to form an image (in the following case probably an image that embraces a visualisation of physical comfort), at that part of the body that is threatened by the incipient illness. The full potential of placing yi on areas of the body can be appreciated from the following technique for bowel illness: Incipient illness in the bowel. Invariably there will be swelling at the front. When there is swelling, apply the intention on the lesser abdomen and concentrate on puffing out (moist breath). Stop after one hundred times.56
This technique presents us with a complex interaction in the internal environment of the body; firstly it identifies the site of discomfort or illness, then the same sites become the location for concentrated attention, presumably achieved with increased awareness of that area of the body; then with measured manipulation of the breath function, perhaps even with the imagination of comfort through conscious projection of qi, after a prescribed time a sequence of therapeutic events unfolds of its own accord. Ailing from liao ⺰ƑƑ [liquor]. The prescription for pulling it: grasp a staff in the right hand, face a wall and do not breathe; with the left foot tread on the wall, resting when tired; likewise with the left hand grasp the staff, with right foot step on the wall, likewise rest when tired. When the qi of the head flows downwards, the foot will not be immobile (and numb), the head will not swell, and the nose will not be stuffed up.57
Many of Yinshu exercises mirror this process, including the one above, specified for an illness probably associated with drinking alcohol, where after a certain period of exercising the qi will begin to flow naturally and without further stimulus. The practitioner activates his intentional body into the multiplicity of bodies already linked and overlapping within this one process (the manifestation of his sick body, its pathology and its biological processes, the experience of the sick body and the imagination of a well ordered body, its idealised social identity, its social projection—the body that can be affected by controlled breathing—a body infused with qi). As far as intention ——— 56 “Yinshu shiwen”: 83. 57 “Yinshu shiwen”: 83; Gao Dalun, 1995: 122–123.
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activates the potential to influence the internal environment of the body it allows the practitioner to participate in his own resistance to the inevitable process of decline. This following excerpt is the outcome of a technique that includes both breath and sexual cultivation: Be careful, do not drink wine and eat the five flavours; put the qi in order with intent and the eye will be bright the ear keen, the skin will gleam, the one hundred mai will be full and the Yin will rise again. From this you will be able to stand for a long time, go a long way, and live for (ever).58
Together Daoyin tu and Yinshu provide a practical guide to daoyin through which practitioners can restore their health, treat illness and simultaneously affirm their natural membership of an elite group. Measured physical movement and the orientation of the senses, the training of intention, all come together in the pursuit of cultivation and refinement. The middle texts of Yinshu provide precise details of both daily practice and the treatment of specific illnesses. The second text, which is the main bulk of Yinshu, sets out forty-one set exercises. In the first part it describes and names exercises while in the second it aims at specific therapy. Thirty seven are perfectly preserved, whilst four are damaged. Many of the exercises are given titles, some which simply describe the exercise, usually naming the culminating posture in a sequence. Others liken the exercises to animal movements or attitudes. Another type of title refers to applying treatment to a specific illness, or part of the body. There are treatments both for pain in joints and muscles, such as knee pain or back pain, and for internal illnesses such as loose bowels, inguinal swellings or inner exhaustion. Where the treatment is directed to a specific part of the body it is probably meant to improve the function of that part, rather than to address a specific illness. Where modern Taijiquan manuals provide diagrams, photographs or even videos, Yinshu may have had charts like Daoyin tu to provide one more dimension to help the student. Without visual aids it is often impossible to understand how to interpret a textual account with the body. The power of the images as a mnemonic device is that they simultaneously convey whole body movement, its posturing, gestures, ———
58 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 1985: 147–148. I have accepted the rearrangement of the Shiwen slips proposed by Harper and Qiu Xigui. Taking the Mawangdui Hanmu boshu as the starting point the slips would then be ordered 51, 41, 40. Qiu Xigui 1992: 535. Donald Harper 1998: Translation: MSV1.A.14.
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attitudes and mood. Yet more powerful is the combination of image and caption, such as in Yinshu, where the brief line contextualises the image and gives it greater depth. Consider, for example the appeal to the imagination of animals in the context of Daoyin tu, Yinshu and more generally throughout the culture of daoyin. Where a particular posture is given the name of an animal there are immediate, commonly understood implications for the interpretation of that image with the body. But we cannot assume that we have grasped the full implications of the designation without questioning whether our understanding of a bear, monkey, crane or dragon is stunted by removal and distance. Yinshu mentions the Bear Ramble for being good for the muscles of the back (Col.Pl. XII). The image on Daoyin tu suggests a square ambling walk that might well ease the back, but perhaps the bear signifies more than lumbar strength. Roel Sterckx has written at length about the transformational powers of animals in Warring States and Han literature.59 He cites early references to exorcistic and ritual dances with animal skins which mirrored symbolically the potential for transformation in the animal world. In the passage of time, and with proper discipline adjusted according to the passing seasons, and the movements of nature an ordinary man might reinvent himself a noble or a sage. Observation of motion and change in the animal world constituted an important element in the development of the earliest calendars and therefore in shaping civilised human behaviour. Animals themselves were attributed the different qualities of the Yin Yang spatial and temporal cycles, allowing them universal features in the process of metamorphosis. Animals were not even limited to the boundaries of one form or construction of species: seasonal changes marked regular times for mice to transform into quails, or hawks to pigeons. The shedding of form was not just the prerogative of observably metamorphosing animals, such as the reptiles, but of many different beasts, some capable of spirit-like metamorphosis. Here are Harper’s (1998) translations of the titles of the Daoyin tu animal forms: The Crane, Dragon Ascending, Monkey Bawling to Pull Internal Hotness, Gibbon Bawling, Gibbon Shouting, Bear Ramble, Merlin.60 It is significant that only one of these, Monkey Bawling to Pull Internal Hotness (see Col.Pl. XIII), is immediately related to a ———
59 Sterckx 2002: 165–204. 60 Harper 1998: 310–316.
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physical disorder—the disorder in question being the plight of the noble who, we have seen, by virtue of his class, is committed to remedying unresolved emotional and thermostatic excess. If bawling like a monkey is the path to nobility, the transformational powers of the numinous animals, such as the dragon, birds and tiger, could channel a more magical efficacy into the body. We know that when Yinshu and Daoyin tu describe a dragon ascending they do so in the context that the dragon was known to be the embodiment of change. As Sterckx points out the expression longbian ᚊ᧢ (“to transform like a dragon”) also provided an epithet for sagehood, authority and encompassing virtue.61 Guanzi describes the dragon as a shen “spirit” itself, able to change its size rapidly and at will and to move between heaven and earth. The likening of the dragon changing its domain to the sage moving his habitat exposes the ‘local person for being parochial’. The movement for Dragon Ascending, here explained in Yinshu: Dragon Ascending. Bend the front knee, extending at the back. Interlock the two hands, hold the knee and look up.62
demonstrates the proud full chest of the dragon, but does not obviously tally with the Daoyin tu image of the same name (see Col.Pl. XIV) where the figure is standing with both arms raised above his head. As with the different witnesses to common texts excavated from Warring States and Han texts, it may be in vain to search for an imaginary original, so we should not assume one unified tradition of daoyin. Here both witnesses to the Dragon Ascending are expansive and rising movements, and it is in the imagination of dragons that we should look for similarity. While there are numerous bird forms in Yinshu, the titles do not match exactly the Daoyin tu captions. For birds, as well as dragons, their wings are the vehicle by which transformations through space and time occur. Moving between heaven and earth birds symbolise the transition through that liminal space where light turns to dark and distance disappears, and so it is logical that we should find that they feature significantly in the daily practice aimed at physical rejuvena-
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61 Sterckx 2002: 179. 62 The animal forms are all described in “Yinshu shiwen”: 82–83.
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tion. Here we find the rapid movements of a wild duck shaking the water out of its feathers: Wild Duck Bathing. Interlock the hands behind the back and shake the head.
—a movement which no doubt eases tension in the neck and head and changes the mood—and the familiar image of an owl with its head buried into its neck looking from side to side: The Owl (Shivers?). Interlock hands behind the back, shrink the neck and shake the head.
Here the gibbon supply flexes its body: Gibbon Hold. With the right hand hold the left foot. Raise the left hand, turning the back. Bend forward to left and right.
The tiger is more difficult to “see” but the movement is at the least a bold forward movement: Tiger Pull. Step one foot forward, raise one arm high and bend.
The graceful bowing of the deer is more readily understood: Prostrate Deer. Raise the two hands, turning the back and bend forward as far as possible.
As is the jumping frog: Leaping Frog. With hands parallel, wave them up and down to right and to left.
Such variations that exist between the nature of an exercise described in Yinshu and the movement in the Daoyin tu figure that both bear the same or similar titles serve to illustrate the diverse traditions of daoyin in the Western Han period. In the last text of Yinshu we have six animals cited in a regimen designed to tone and strengthen the body that amounts to a great celebration of the body and its relationship with the natural animal environment. Holding the breath is good for the coital sinew; (Praying Mantis?) is good for the constant channel; Snake Shake is good for the great brain; Wild Duck bathing is good for (illnesses?) of the head; Encircling Channels is good for the patterns of the skin and is good for the heels and head; Follow to the Side is good for the ear; Looking in a Yang direction is good for the eyes; look up by opening the mouth is good for the nose; roaring, but not emitting a sound is good for the mouth; stroking the heart and raising the chin is good for the throat and gullet; Owl
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The appeal to animal imagery is a device that daoyin shares with literature of the sexual arts where animal movements communicate sexual postures and rhythm. The following are called the shijie Լᆏ (“ten regulations”) in He yin yang or the shishi ԼႨ (“ten postures”) in Tianxia zhi dao tan: “One states: Tiger roaming. Two states: Cicada clinging. Three states: Inchworm. Four states: Waterdeer butting. Five states: Locust splayed. Six states: Gibbon squat. Seven states: Toad. Eight states: Hare bolting hither and thither. Nine states: Dragonfly. Ten states: Fish gobbling.”64 He yin yang does not detail individual movements that make up the animal postures. The activities are therefore codified and simultaneously restricted, demanding tuition by an expert. Later literature eventually provides an explanation for some of the postures. In contrast daoyin in Yinshu and Daoyin tu makes its codes and activities explicit: it is therefore more likely to be available to a wide group of people without the necessity of a professional intermediary to interpret and prescribe a course of action. Here is the Yinshu entry for the Inchworm as a daoyin exercise: Extend the lower leg curling the toe thirty times. This is called the Inch Worm.65
The inchworm or looper caterpillar, as other caterpillars, moves by stretching and contracting the length of its body in a curling motion. No instructions are given for the inchworm in He yin yang and Tianxia zhi dao tan, two of the sexual cultivation texts from Mawangdui, but it is easy to imagine how stretching and curling of the body can be adapted to sexual posture and movement. All these movements belong to a tradition of maintaining good ——— 63 “Yinshu shiwen”: 85–86. 64 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu 1985: 165. 65 “Yinshu shiwen”: 82.
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health and fitness but they can also be applied prescriptively, often in combinations that are repeated many times. Unfortunately the first example below has a series of lacuna over the symptom. [...] do Wild Duck Bathing thirty times and Tiger Looks Back thirty times. Lie down on the back again as before. Rest after twenty times. Get up again and sit tall (on the haunches). Do Wild Duck Bathing forty times and Tiger Looks Back forty times. Lie down again as before. Thirty times and rest. Then get up and do the Wild Duck Bathing fifty times, Tiger Looks Back fifty times and stop. Pulling back ache. Bear Ramble ten times. Forward (Grasps) ten times. With the feet apart lean forwards and backwards, touching the hands to the floor. Stop after ten times. Pulling lop-sided illness. If it’s on the [left] cheekbone, with the right hand hold the hair at the right temple and extend the left hand and pull it with the right hand; if it’s the right cheekbone pull it the same as the left. Do it altogether three times and stop. Do Follow to the Side ten times, Looking Yang ten times, Wild Duck Bathing ten times. Sit straight, loosen the hair and knock the heels three hundred times, Back Step three hundred times and rest.66
In the structure of Yinshu we first see a dialectic between exercises to preserve and enhance health and the treatment of disorder that finds a different balance in later centuries. Where self-cultivation is solitary practice and aims at perfecting the physiology of the body the records naturally generate a lyrical and animated body imagined through metaphor, not just a passive object upon which we construct realities. By appealing to the animal images the daoyin forms engage all the senses of the self cultivator, not just the visual, but through imagination, both movement and mood. In contrast as the body increasingly becomes the subject of professional observation it is, inevitably, silenced and contained within its visibly perceived boundaries, or other such boundaries that are amenable to the physician’s control.
CONCLUSION This paper began with a detailed consideration of the Shuangbaoshan figurine in its relationship to the concept of mai and associated medical practice. The fundamental principles expressed in the lines drawn on its body link the mai to those texts that are explicitly concerned with the early development of cautery, and to a lesser extent to petty ——— 66 “Yinshu shiwen”: 84.
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surgery, massage, pharmacotherapy and therapeutic exercises. It is also clear that the lines bear some relationship to empirical observations of the body, to a somatography of muscles and veins and to patterns of pain. But there are many perspectives from which we can begin to interpret its shape and form. By the end of the Han period astro-calendrical ordering of the body began to impact upon ideas of physiology, shaping the mai into Li Jianmin’s “a field of temporal spaces”—i.e. the physical space where heaven and earth pivot and the location for learned medical intervention. Reading from the figurine alone, without supporting text, we find significant information about early Chinese perceptions of the body, and the importance placed on developing and maintaining an acuity of the senses, even beyond the tomb. Like the bronze figure excavated from the Sanxingdui Կਣഔ tomb, whose enormous ears must surely have enabled its owner a deeper, more profound reception of external events, the figurine’s clearly defined and linked sense organs, its posture and texture suggest something more powerful and daemonic than a mere physician’s dummy. A training and ordering of the sensual body evident in both shape and pattern, link the figurine to the practice of self-cultivation as we know it from the texts and images of other Western Han tombs in the old kingdom of Chu. The most lively and attractive of these images are the figures of the Daoyin tu. At a glance the Daoyin tu charts a series of figures engaged in a daily exercise routine, stretching and relaxing their bodies. Yet part of the magic of this chart is due to the fact that we know it is more than that. With the more recently discovered Yinshu we can gain new insights into how the Daoyin tu images translated into action. Text and image have helped us to piece together the practice of daoyin. Building on the memories and emotions of the collective imagination the practitioner of daoyin could do more than just exercise his body, he could effortlessly transform himself, crossing the boundaries of class, of species, of Yin and Yang moving with the consummate ease of the dragon or the square, lumbering strength of the bear. Each figure emphasises an individual vitality: each character is unique in dress, expression, build and deportment. These are the guiren (“nobility”) in the pursuit of harmonising the Yin and Yang of their bodies, a balance evident in their moods, movement and emotion as well as the thermostatic environment of their bodies. Here, between image and text we find the body constructed most clearly as a location for social agency. In their every aspect, the figures assert
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their class and the freedom they gain from being able to master the physiological elements that ensure long life. They seem free from the tyranny of ghosts and demons, and are yet far from the silent, objectified bodies that are a trademark of later medical treatments of the body.
REFERENCES AKAHORI, Akira ߧଝਟ. 1982. “Go-kan shoki no igaku no ichi danmen” ৵ዧॣཚ᠔ ᖂ圸ԫឰ૿: Toyo no Kagaku to Gijutsu, Kyoto: Dohosha. ALLAN, Sarah. 1997. The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue. Albany: SUNY. BENNET, Steven J. 1978. “Patterns of the Sky and Earth: A Chinese Science of Applied Cosmology.” Chinese Science 3: 1–26. BRASHIER, Ken. 1996. “Han Thanatology and the Division of ‘Souls’.” Early China 21: 125–158. BRIDGMAN, Robert F. 1981. “Les fonctions physiologiques chez l’homme dans la Chine antique.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 3.1: 3–30. EPLER Jr., Dean. 1980. “Blood-letting in Early Chinese Medicine and its Relation to the Origin of Acupuncture.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 54: 337–367. GAO Dalun Օᓵ. 1992. Zhangjiashan Hanjian Maishu jiaoshi ്୮՞ዧ១౧ீ ᤩ. Chengdu: Chengdu chubanshe. ——. 1995. Zhangjiashan Hanjian [Yinshu] yanjiu ്୮՞ዧ១֧ઔߒ. Chengdu: Bashu shushe chuban faxing. GRAHAM, Angus. 1989. Chuang-tzu: the inner chapters. London: Mandala. HARPER, Donald J. 1998. Early Chinese Medical Literature. London: Kegan Paul International. HE Zhiguo ۶ݳഏ. 1994. “Woguo zuizao de renti jingmai qidiao” ݺഏ່ڰऱԳ᧯ ᆖ౧ዪᙡ. Zhongguo wenwubao 15 (April 17): 4. ——. 1995. “Xi Han renti jingmai qidiao kao” ۫ዧԳ᧯ᆖ౧ዪᙡە. Daziran tansuo 3: 116–120. HE Zhiguo and Vivienne LO. 1996. “The Channels: A Preliminary Examination of a Lacquered Figurine from the Western Han Period.” Early China 21: 81–124. Huangdi hama jing ႓০ဦᝂᆖ. 1984. Beijing: Zhongyi guji chubanshe. Hunansheng bowuguan and Zhongguo kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo. ྋতઊ໑ढ塢ፖ խഏઝᖂೃײەઔߒࢬ. 1974. “Changsha Mawangdui er, sanhao Hanmu fajue jianbao” ९׆್ޥഔԲΔԿᇆዧች࿇ൺ១. Wenwu 7: 39–48. Jiangling Zhangjiashan Hanjian zhengli xiaozu. ۂສ്୮՞ዧ១ᖞ՛ิ. 1989. “Jiangling Zhangjiashan Hanjian (Maishu) shiwen” ۂສ്୮՞ዧ១౧ᤩ֮. Wenwu 7: 72–74. KURIYAMA, Shigehisa. 1986. “Varieties of Haptic Experience. A Comparative Study of Greek and Chinese Pulse Diagnosis.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University: Massachusetts. LI Jianmin ޕ৬ا. 1994. Mawangdui Hanmu boshu yucang mai bao tu jian zheng ್ ׆ഔዧችࢇછ៲ୖઽቹጧဳ. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 65.4: 725–830. ——. 2001. Sisheng zhi yu سڽհ. Taibei: Academica Sinica, 2001. LI Xueqin ޕᖂႧ. 1991. “Yinshu yu Daoyin tu” ֧ፖᖄ֧ቹ. Wenwu tiandi 2: 7– 9.
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LO, Vivienne. 1998. “The Influence of yangsheng Culture on Early Chinese Medical Theory.” Ph.D. diss., London University. ——. 1990. “Tracking the Pain.” Sudhoffs Archiv: 191–210. ——. 2000. “Crossing the Inner Pass: A nei/wai Distinction in Early Chinese Medicine.” EASTM 17: pp.15–65. ——. 2005. “Quick and Easy Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Moxibustion Charts”. In: Mediaeval Chinese Medicine, eds. Vivienne Lo and Christopher Cullen. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, pp. 211–251. MA Jixing ್ᤉᘋ. 1992. Mawangdui guyishu kaoshi ್׆ഔײ᠔ᤩە. Hunan: Hunan kexue jishu. MA Jixing ್ᤉᘋ, WANG Shumin اි׆et al. 1998. Dunhuang yiyao wenxian jijiao ཉᅇ᠔ᢐ֮ᙀீ. Nanchang: Jiangsu guji. Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu ್׆ഔዧችࢇᖞ՛ิ, ed. 1979. Mawangdui Hanmu boshu Daoyin tu ್׆ഔዧችࢇᖄ֧ቹ. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, including an introductory article by Tang Lan ା ᥞ , “Shilun Mawangdui sanhao Hanmu chutu Daoyin tu” ᇢᓵ್׆ഔԿᇆዧችנՒᖄ֧ ቹ, pp. 1–10. Mawangdui Han mu boshu ್׆ഔዧችࢇ, vol. 4. 1985. [Ed. Mawangdui Han mu boshu zhengli xiaozu ್׆ഔዧችࢇᖞ՛ิ]. Beijing: Wenwu. QIU Xigui ᇗᙔڈ. 1990. “Mawangdui yishu shidu suoyi” ್׆ഔ᠔ᤩᦰጅᤜ. In: Gu wenzi lunji ڗ֮ײᓵႃ, ed. Qiu Xigui. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Shiji ಖ[by Sima Qian ್ᔢ]. 1959. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian ጕॡچችێ១. 1990. [Ed. Shuihudi Qinmu zhujian zhengli xiaozu ጕॡچችێ១ᖞ՛ิ]. Beijing: Wenwu. Sichuansheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo ՟ઊ֮ढײەઔߒࢬ. 1996. “Mianyang Yongxing Shuangbaoshan erhao Xi Hanmu guomu fajue jianbao.” Wenwu 10: 13–29. SIVIN, Nathan. 1993. “Huang ti nei ching.” In: Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, ed. Michael Loewe. Berkeley: Early China Special Monograph Series 2, pp. 196–215. STERCKX, Roel. 2002. The Animal and the Daemon in Early China. New York: SUNY. UNSCHULD, Paul U. 1985. Medicine in China: A History of Ideas. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——. 1986. Nan-Ching: The Classic of Difficult Issues. Berkeley: University of California Press. WANG Tao ׆ះ, Waitai biyao ؆ፕఽ (752?). The edition cited Gao Wenzhu ֮ᦷ ed. Waitai biayao fang. Beijing. Huaxia chubanshe, 1993. WILLIAMS, Michael A. 1989. “Divine Image – Prison of Flesh: Perceptions of the Body in Ancient Gnosticim.” In: Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part 1, ed. Michel Feher. Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi [Zone Books 3/1]. New York: The MIT Press, pp. 129–147. XIE Guihua ெक़, Li Junming ࣔ݁ޕand Zhu Guozhao ڹഏ੨. 1987. Juyan Hanjian shiwen hexiao ࡺዧ១ᤩ֮ீٽ. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe. ——. 2005. “Bamboo and Wooden Strips Scattered through the Ancient City and Beacon Sites of North-West China.” In: Mediaeval Chinese Medicine, eds. Vivienne Lo and Christopher Cullen. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, pp. 78–106. YAMADA Keiji ՞ضᐜࠝ. 1979. “The Formation of the Huang-ti Nei-ching.” Acta Asiatica 36: 67–89. —— ed. 1985. Shin hakken Chugoku kagakushi shiryo no kenkyu ᄅ࿇խഏઝᖂ ᇷற圸ઔߒ. Kyoto: Kyoto daigaku jinbun kagaku kenkyujo.
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——. 1998. The Origins of Acupuncture, Moxibustion and Decoction. Kyoto: International Research Centre for Japanese Studies. YATES, Robin. 1994. “The Yin-Yang texts from Yinqueshan.” Early China 19: 75– 144. ZHANG Yanchang ്࣑and Zhu Jianping, ڹ৬ؓeds. 1996. Wuwei Handai yijian yanjiu. ࣳዧז᠔១ઔߒ. Beijing: Yuanzineng chubanshe. ZHANGJIASHAN HANJIAN ZHENGLI ZU ്୮՞ዧ១ᖞิ. 1990. “Zhangjiashan Hanjian Yinshu shiwen” ്୮՞ዧ១֧ᤩ֮. Wenwu 10: 82–86.
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Fig. 1: Lacquer figurine from Shuangbaoshan ᠨץ՞ (latest date 118 BC). [Author’s collection, photograph with kind permission of He Zhiguo]
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Fig. 2: The system of channels on the lacquer figurine from Shuangbaoshan ᠨץ՞ (latest date 118 BC). Drawing.
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Fig. 3: The prohibitions chart of the Hama jing ᓚᝂᆖ (Toad Canon, ca. 10th century AD?). [Huangdi hama jing ႓০ဦᝂᆖ. 1984. Beijing: Zhongyi guji chubanshe.]
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Fig. 4: Moxa-cautery prohibitions related to the position of the shen 壀 spirit within the body. [Huangdi hama jing ႓০ဦᝂᆖ. 1984. Beijing: Zhongyi guji chubanshe.]
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Fig. 5: Renzi Գ diagram from a hemerological almanac on bamboo slips, Shuihudi ጕॡ( چlate 3rd century BC). Drawing.
Fig. 6: The head of the lacquer figurine from Shuangbaoshan ᠨץ՞ (latest date 118 BC). Drawing.
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Fig. 7: The head of the lacquer figurine from Shuangbaoshan ᠨץ՞ (latest date 118 BC). [Author’s collection, photograph with kind permission of He Zhiguo]
GEOMETRICAL DIAGRAMS IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE MATHEMATICS1 Alexei Volkov
INTRODUCTION Historians of Chinese mathematics often implicitly assume that the subject matter of the Chinese discipline identified as “geometry” was identical to its Western counterpart and therefore the Chinese mathematical texts dealt with the same geometrical objects as those found, for example, in the Elements of Euclid. However, several scholars have recently drawn attention to a number of peculiarities of the perception of geometrical objects in traditional China. Lih Ko-wei ޕഏ devoted a paper to the concept of angle in ancient China which, he argued, was rather different from that of Euclid. In his paper he quoted the opinions of modern Chinese scholars ranging from the statement of Qian Baocong ᙒᣪ⓫ that “[the ancient Chinese] did not know how to use angles … but may have had a general notion of them”, to the categorical claim of Liu Juncan Ꮵܩᛞ that “there was no general notion of angle in China, except that of the right angle”.2 The classical Greek definitions relative to the concept of angle are found in Book 1 of Euclid’s Elements (Definitions 8 and 9).3 These definitions explicitly refer to other geometrical concepts, such as that of line (in particular, a straight line) and of plane defined earlier in the treatise (Definitions 2, 4, and 7 of Book 1). The concept of angle thus was formalised simultaneously with a set of related geometrical ——— 1 Early versions of this paper were read at the International Conference “From Image to Action: The Dynamics of Visual Representation in Chinese Intellectual and Religious Culture” (Paris, September 2001) and at the International bi-Annual Conference of the Taiwanese Society of the History and Philosophy of Science (Taibei, March 2002). 2 Lih 1991: 6. 3 “A plane angle is the inclination to one another of two lines in a plane which meet one another and do not lie in a straight line, … and when the lines containing the angle are straight, the angle is called rectilineal” (Heath 1956: 176). Heath also mentions alternative definitions of the angle that existed in Greek tradition (176– 181).
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concepts, and therefore in order to investigate the discrepancies between the Chinese and Euclidean approaches to geometrical figures it would appear plausible to put under scrutiny the entire set of geometrical concepts. Such an investigation would provide a rational basis for reconstructing the ways in which “geometrical figures” were designed and used in traditional Chinese mathematics.4 This paper offers a preliminary discussion of geometrical diagrams found in Chinese mathematical treatises that may provide useful insights concerning the perception of geometrical figures in traditional Chinese mathematics.
DIAGRAMS IN CHINESE MATHEMATICS: THE STATE OF THE FIELD To my knowledge, there exist no publications in Western languages devoted specifically to mathematical diagrams in China except two recent papers by K.Chemla5 as well as her introduction and annotations to the translation of the Jiuzhang suanshu ີጩ (Computational procedures of nine categories).6 In her 1994 paper Chemla focuses on one particular aspect of Chinese mathematical diagrams, namely, on the use of colours in the commentaries of Liu Hui,7 while her paper of 2002 is devoted to the history of mathematical diagrams in the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties; however, in the latter article Chemla indiscriminately calls “diagrams” the objects belonging to two distinct (from the modern viewpoint) categories, namely, (1) the drawings featuring geometrical configurations, and (2) the numerical “tables”, that is, tabulated records of the results of computations performed with counting instruments. Her term “diagram” thus refers to all non-textual elements found in Chinese mathematical texts. ———
4 I.e., the mathematical tradition that existed in China prior to the introduction of Euclidean geometry by Jesuits in the early 17th century. 5 Chemla 1994, 2002. 6 Chemla and Guo 2004: 673–684. Western authors suggested various translations of the title of the treatise, for instance, Computational procedures in nine chapters, Nine chapters on mathematical art, etc. In Volkov 1986 I provided arguments against the interpretations of the word zhang ີ used in the title of the treatise in its modern sense (“chapter”) and suggested that the term jiuzhang ີ (dubbed here as “nine categories”) was related to a universal classification scheme (and, in this particular context, to a classification of mathematical methods). 7 Although Chemla’s paper is focused on the use of colours in the mathematical work of Liu Hui (fl. ca. 263), it contains important insights pertaining to the history of Chinese mathematical diagrams in general. Some relevant observations were also published in Chemla (1997, see esp. pp. 120–121, n. 57).
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In his 1987 book (slightly amended and published in English in 1997), J.-C. Martzloff mentioned some “material objects” represented by the “figures” which, he believes, were used in Chinese mathematics: […] another equally common approach involves the manipulation of material objects, like the pieces of jigsaw or a building kit, which take the place of planar or three-dimensional figures. […] If actual games (such as the game of tangrams) were involved, the pieces would be given in the beginning. But the same is not necessarily true in mathematics; often, the “metamanipulator” begins with a given object en bloc and forms judicious cuts, sections and fragmentations […].8
These phrases are apparently in slight logical contradiction to each other; moreover, no evidence (archaeological finds, for instance) of the existence of any actual planar or three-dimensional material objects was offered by Martzloff to support his hypothesis of the manipulations with material objects (which he nevertheless calls “common approach”) based on his interpretation of only one excerpt from the commentary of Liu Hui.9 The hypothesis of the representation of geometrical objects with the help of material objects was indirectly supported by K. Chemla. She noticed that the operations with the “diagrams” (tu ቹ) described in Liu Hui’s commentaries on the Jiuzhang suanshu and in Zhao Shuang’s ᎓෯ commentaries on the Zhoubi suanjing ࡌ㌣ጩᆖ (Computational treatise on the gnomon of the Zhou [dynasty]) give the impression that the objects were described as if they were material: Par ailleurs, si l’on considère les opérations que décrivent les commentateurs en général sur les tu, on est gagné par l’impression qu’il s’agit également d’objets matériels: formes découpées, dans du papier nous dit Liu Hui, coloriées, assemblées ou superposées, disséquées et réarrangées.
To support her hypothesis Chemla refers to Liu Hui’s commentary on problem 16 of chapter 9 of the Jiuzhang suanshu: Dans le commentaire au problème sur le cercle inscrit à un triangle rectangle (chapitre 9), on lit : « On peut tracer/peindre (hua) ceci sur un
———
8 Martzloff 1997: 276. 9 The excerpt Martzloff refers to (Problem 5 of Chapter 9 of the Jiuzhang su-
anshu) actually does not contain any supporting evidence for his claim: the page he refers to (SJSS 1963: 243) contains only three lines of the commentary of Liu Hui on the problem. These three lines do not mention any material objects; conversely, they describe a diagram and the mathematical formulas justified by the diagram.
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petit papier (zhi), découper (fencai) le (long des lignes) de rencontre droites et obliques (des zones de couleur pour les séparer les unes des autres)… ».10
Moreover, she suggests that the diagrams traditionally accompanying the Zhoubi suanjing and credited to the authorship of Zhao Shuang also confirm this hypothesis, since one can see in them representations of forms cut out of paper: Les figures attribuées par l’édition Song à Zhao Shuang concordent également avec cette hypothèse, puisqu’on peut y voir la représentation de formes découpées dans du papier quadrillé et superposées.
Finally, she conjectures that the visual auxiliaries the commentators referred to may have been, in all cases, flat material objects and solid blocks: La thèse, que je ne développerai pas ici, c’est donc que les auxiliaires visuels auxquels renvoient les commentateurs sont dans tous les cas des objets matériels aux dimensions standardisées —formes découpées dans un papier quadrillé pour le plan, blocs pour l’espace— et qu’ils font l’objet, dans le contexte des démonstrations que formulent les exégètes, des mêmes pratiques […].
This conjecture, Chemla believes, can explain the lack of the diagrams in the earliest extant (yet incomplete) printed edition of the Jiuzhang suanshu (1213) and certain discrepancies between the commentaries and the diagrams reproduced in the earliest printed edition of the Zhoubi suanjing, as well as the lack of diagrams in the earliest extant editions of other pre-Song mathematical treatises: C’est ainsi que je rends compte du fait que le commentaire des Neuf chapitres se soit transmis aussi bien sans les tu que sans les blocs ou les baguettes : tous ces objets appartenaient à l’environnement matériel de l’activité mathématique sans pour autant avoir été intégrés, sous aucune forme que ce soit, aux textes.11
This conjecture means that the flat paper models and the (probably wooden, as the radical of the character suggest) three-dimensional models referred to by Liu Hui as “chessmen” (qi ཪ) used to represent flat and solid geometrical figures, respectively, were transmitted together with the mathematical texts, but were not necessarily drawn in them. ——— 10 Chemla 2002: 5. It is important to stress, however, that Liu Hui in his commentary on Problem 16 mentioned by Chemla refers to a “diagram” (tu) before suggesting the “painting on a small piece of paper”, see SJSS 1963: 252. 11 Chemla 2002: 5.
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One can suggest, however, that Liu Hui’s mentions of coloured pieces of paper rather supports the hypothesis that the diagrams used in mathematical discourse were drawn on paper and not, for example, on a sand-board, as it was often the case in ancient Greece. If the diagrams indeed existed and were meant to accompany mathematical treatises, there are two possible ways in which they may have been transmitted: either they were inserted into the body of the text, or gathered together and published separately. The latter most probably was the case for the treatises prior to the end of the first millennium AD, while from the Song-Yuan period onwards the diagrams were inserted in the texts. Their disappearance from early treatises therefore may have been due to certain extraneous causes, such as the physical destruction or loss of the editions of the collections of diagrams or their official proscriptions that may have made impossible their wide reproduction and circulation.
DIAGRAMS IN THE CHINESE MATHEMATICAL TEXTS OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM AD
Distribution of geometrical diagrams in extant treatises on traditional Chinese mathematics is dramatically uneven: the number of diagrams accompanying the mathematical texts written during the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties is overwhelming while there is only one pre-Song treatise containing geometrical diagrams.12 This treatise, Zhoubi suanjing is devoted mainly to astronomical matters, yet contains several diagrams related to a discussion on mathematical issues in its opening section.13 The earliest available edition of the treatise is dated to the 13th century and one cannot be sure how faithfully it reproduced the diagrams, if any, of the earlier editions upon which it was based. However, the titles of several pre-Song mathematical texts listed in the dynastic histories Suishu ၹ (History of the Sui [dynasty]), Jiu Tangshu ៱ା (Old History of the Tang [dynasty]), Xin Tangshu ———
12 For the most ancient Chinese mathematical text, the recently unearthed Suanshu shu ጩᑇ (Writings on computational procedures with counting rods; no later than the early 2nd century BC), see SSS and the facsimile reproduction in ZHMZ: 83– 98; it does not contain diagrams. The extant mathematical treatises from Dunhuang (MSS Pelliot 2667, 3349, 2490, and Stein 930, 19, 5779, 4569, 663) do not contain geometrical diagrams either. 13 See SJSS 1963: 13–22; for translation of the mathematical fragments and reconstructions of the diagrams, see Gillon (1977), Cullen (1995, 1996); Chemla and Guo (2004: 695–701).
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ᄅା (New History of the Tang [dynasty]), and Songshi ݚ (History of the Song [dynasty]), as well as in the catalogue of the Imperial Japanese library Nihonkoku genzai sho mokuroku ֲءഏߠڇ ؾᙕ compiled in 875 do refer to mathematical and astronomical treatises the titles of which contain the word “diagram” (tu); these texts therefore may have originally contained geometrical diagrams.14 The list of the books reads as follows: 1. The Zhoubi tu ࡌ㌣ቹ (Diagrams of the Zhoubi [suanjing]), in 1 juan.15 The book is mentioned only in the astronomical/astrological section (tianwen ֚֮) of the Suishu. The compiler(s) is (are) not specified. 2. The Jiuzhang chongcha tu ີૹቹ (Diagrams of the Nine categories and of the Double Difference), in one juan, by Liu Hui. Mentioned in the Suishu,16 Jiu Tangshu,17 Xin Tangshu,18 but not listed in the Song shi and later histories. The Japanese catalogue instead mentions the treatise Jiuzhang tu ີቹ (Diagrams of the Nine Categories), in one juan;19 it is possible that the Japanese catalogue mentions the Chinese treatise with abridged title or that the treatise was a collection of the diagrams related exclusively to the Jiuzhang suanshu. 3. The Suishu mentions the book entitled Jiuzhang tuitu jingfa ີ ංቹᆖऄ (The methods of the treatise of development of diagrams of the Nine Categories (?)), in 1 juan, by one Zhang Jun ് . This treatise is not mentioned in other sources. Its title contains the term “development of diagrams” (which also can be understood as “deduction/inference of/on diagrams”); such term, to my knowledge, never occurred in mathematical texts. 4. The Liuzhang tu քີቹ (The diagrams of the Liuzhang [suanshu]), in 1 juan, the compiler(s) unspecified.20 This book is listed only in the Japanese catalogue and most probably was a collection ——— 14 One can argue that a treatise may have contained diagrams even though its title did not contain the term tu. However, the compilers of the bibliographical section of the Suishu in the case of one astronomical treatise provided a remark stating “[the treatise] contains diagrams” (nei you tu փڶቹ), while the title of the book did not contain the word tu (SS: 1018). This suggests that, at least as far as the books listed in the Suishu are concerned, the mathematical books without the word tu in their titles did not contain diagrams. 15 SS: 1018. 16 SS: 1025. 17 JTS: 2038. 18 XTS: 1546. 19 NGSM: 32b. 20 NGSM: 32b.
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of diagrams related to the treatise Liuzhang, is a mathematical treatise listed in several bibliographies in Korea and Japan but never mentioned in Chinese bibliographies. 5. The Sankai tu Կၲቹ (The diagrams of the Triple root extraction or The diagrams of three [types] of root extraction), in 1 juan, the compiler(s) unspecified. The treatise was listed only in the Japanese catalogue.21 Most likely it contained the diagrams related to the book entitled Sankai Կၲ mentioned in several Japanese sources. 6. The Haidao tu ௧ቹ (The diagrams of the [treatise] on Sea Island), in 1 juan, the compiler(s) unspecified. The treatise is mentioned only in the Japanese catalogue.22 Most probably the treatise contained the diagrams related to the Haidao suanjing by Liu Hui (fl. 263). 7. The Tiantu lishu ֚ቹᖟ (The calendrical procedures of the diagrams of the sky), in 1 juan, the compiler(s) unspecified. The treatise is mentioned only in the Suishu.23 Apparently, this treatise was a calendrical work. The same dynastic history reports one more calendar book containing diagrams, Sanwu li shuotu Կնᖟ ᎅቹ (Explanations and Diagrams of the ‘Three-Five’ Calendar), as missing.24 8. The Qishen suiri yongju tu 壀ᙟֲݝشቹ (Diagrams of the Boards to be Used [to predict the manifestations] of Energies and Spirits According to the Day), in 1 juan, the compiler(s) unspecified. The book is mentioned in the Songshi.25 This treatise was probably related to astrology rather than mathematics. Remarkably enough, all these treatises were only one juan long, that is, they were relatively short. None of them exists nowadays; however, one can make a number of conjectures concerning their contents. It can be suggested that the treatise Zhoubi tu probably was not an edition of the Zhoubi suanjing containing mathematical diagrams,26 but rather a collection of images of astronomical diagrams ——— 21 22 23 24 25 26
NGSM: 33a. NGSM: 33a. SS: 1023. SS: 1024. SSh: 4274. The reason for this conjecture is that the bibliographic entry does not contain any mention of Zhao Ying ᎓᚛ (aka Zhao Shuang ᎓෯ and Zhao Junqing ᎓ܩ ହ, dates unknown, probably late Han or 3rd c. AD), and of Zhen Luan ጉᩂ (fl. 560), the presumed authors of the mathematical diagrams in the earliest extant edition (Song).
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related to the cosmological theory Gaitian ።֚ explicated in the Zhoubi suanjing. 27 It also can be conjectured that the Jiuzhang chongcha tu was a collection of diagrams related to a version of the Jiuzhang suanshu published together with the diagrams taken from the original version of the Haidao suanjing (Computational Canon on Sea Island) by Liu Hui (fl. ca. 263).28 If this conjecture is correct, the diagrams referred to in the two treatises were not incorporated in the texts but circulated as a separate book credited to the authorship of Liu Hui. The hypothesis that the diagrams may have been published separately offers a possibility to explain why at some moment the diagrams of these and other treatises disappeared while the treatises themselves remained extant. Meanwhile, the titles of the treatises Liuzhang tu, Sankai tu, and Haidao tu suggest that compilations exclusively featuring the diagrams and accompanying mathematical treatises were rather common. One can suggest that the same practice existed even after the 7th century, when the Haidao suanjing was edited by Li Chunfeng and published as a separate book, yet it remains unknown whether the Haidao tu was a Chinese, a Korean, or a Japanese compilation. The title of treatise Jiuzhang tuitu jingfa, is somewhat difficult to interpret, even though several hypotheses concerning its contents can be suggested; it is not impossible that the title was distorted by later copyists.29
PROSCRIPTIONS AND CENSORSHIP There may have been serious reasons for not keeping books containing diagrams in private collections. The Tang Code (Tanglü ା৳) ———
27 The same source contains such items as Huntian tu ྖ֚ቹ (Diagram(s) of the Spherical Heaven) and Huntian tuji ྖ֚ቹಖ (Notes on the Diagram(s) of the Spherical Heaven) that may have contained cosmological diagrams related to the cosmological theory Huntian. 28 As the same bibliographical chapter of Suishu suggests, there existed a treatise entitled Jiuzhang chongcha ີૹ by Liu Hui, in 10 juan. According to the conventional interpretation, this was the original version of the Jiuzhang suanshu with Liu Hui’s commentaries together with the additional chapter (Chongcha) written by Liu Hui. Li Chunfeng and his collaborators edited these texts and published them in 656 as two distinct treatises: the Jiuzhang suanshu and the Haidao suanjing. 29 It is possible that the copyist mistook the character yuan Ⴝ (circle) for tu ቹ (diagram) and jing உ (diameter) for jing ᆖ (treatise). In this case the hypothetical original title of the treatise, Jiuzhang tui yuanjing fa ີංႽஉऄ (The development/inference of the method of a diameter of/and a circle, according to the Nine Categories), would make more sense mathematically.
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officially promulgated in 653 stated: 壆خွᕴढΖ֚֮ቹΖᨅΖԮឱᖟΖ֜ԫሼֆڤΖߏ୮ լڶΖሔृஈԲڣΖ Private households cannot possess any images of the Dark/Obscure (= the Heaven) and [related] instruments and objects; [the books on] the Celestial Patterns (= celestial bodies/constellations); the Diagram ቹ [= Hetu ࣾቹ] and the Scripture [= Luoshu Ꮐ/];30 the books of prophecies; the books on military art; the calendars of Seven Luminary Bodies; the [Divination Board] of the Great Unit and the [Divination] Board of the Duke of Thunder, [etc]. Those who do not obey will become subjects of forced labor for 2 years.31
In 739, an imperial edict proscribed all books related to divination (Yin-Yang and shushu ᑇ, i.e., numerology) except for divination on marriages and deaths. The proscription of astronomical and divination books became more specific during the Later Zhou dynasty (951–960). The Imperial edict of 953 mentioned four principal categories of the forbidden books: article 1 reiterated the Tang Code yet stated that the books and the instruments should be burnt; article 2 insisted that the scholars from the Astronomical Bureau (Sitian jian ֚) and the Forest of Brushes Academy (Hanlin ᘃࣥ) should not show to the staff of other departments the books and instruments they used; article 3 specified the allowed books on divination, and article 4 stated that the calendars were not allowed to be calculated by the population. This edict was included in the Code of the Later Zhou (Hou Zhou xingtong ৵ࡌ٩อ, or Da Zhou xingtong Օࡌ٩อ) in 958. The Code of the Song (Song xingtong ݚ٩อ), published in 963, followed the Tang Code and the Code of the Later Zhou, and the wording of the Tang Code about the proscribed books and instruments was kept intact. In an imperial edict of 972 this prohibition was reinforced and new items were added to the list; the edict focused exclusively on astronomy, calendar, and divination. In 977 a new edict proscribed the circulation of all books on astronomy/astrology (tianwen), physiognomy (xiangshu ઌ), and astrological calculations using the methods Liuren ք֙ and Dunjia ሜظ. All proscribed books were supposed to be sent to the authorities; those who did not comply would be decapitated. However, it is quite likely that ——— 30 It is not clear, however, whether the Hetu and Luoshu referred to their later numerological counterparts, the “magic cross” and “magic square”, respectively. 31 Tanglü ା৳, juan 9 “Zhizhi” ࠫ (Administrative regulations), Article 20 (110); see TLSY, vol. 2, p. 82.
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a relatively large number of books still circulated in the Empire since another edict (1004) stated that those who did not report on the books in their households would be put to death, while those who report to the authorities about the book-holders would be generously rewarded. However, the proscription was not specific enough, and the authorities and population might have had difficulties in identifying books as proscribed. A special commission of official scholars was working on more efficient edict, and in 1039 its project was submitted to the emperor and an index of the forbidden books was compiled.32 Given that keeping astronomical books, charts and diagrams in one’s private library was considered a serious criminal offence, and given that the authorities may have had difficulties in identifying proscribed books and punished the holders of any books containing suspicious diagrams, it would be reasonable to conjecture that a considerable number of mathematical books containing mathematical diagrams (and, in particular, the collections of diagrams published separately) may have been destroyed in the 7th–11th centuries together with astronomical books, either by their owners or by the governmental officers. If proven valid, this hypothesis could explain the quasitotal lack of diagrams in the extant mathematical books prior to the Song dynasty.
LIU HUI AND HIS DIAGRAMS The commentaries of Liu Hui on chapters 1, 4, and 9 of the Jiuzhang suanshu contain a number of explicit references to diagrams (tu), yet the only extant chapters (chapters 1–5) of the earliest extant edition of the Jiuzhang suanshu (1213) do not contain any of them. When were the diagrams removed from the text? The preface to Yang Hui’s ᄘᔕ Xiangjie Jiuzhang suanfa ᇡᇞີጩऄ (Detailed explanations of the Computational Methods of Nine Categories) by the Southern Song dynasty functionary and book collector Bao Huanzhi ᚁհ, reproduced in the collection Yijiatang congshu, suggests that chapters 6–9 of the Northern Song edition available to Bao contained no diagrams either.33 The story runs as follows: in 1200 Bao Huanzhi obtained an “old book from the [Northern Song] Capital Bian [= ——— 32 For more details see Volkov (2003). 33 XJS: 759 (5a–b of the Yijiatang edition). This text is published under the title
“A postface to the Jiuzhang suanshu by Bao Huanzhi” in Li Jimin’s critical edition of the classic (JZSSJ: 558–560). See also Chemla 2002: 4, n. 11.
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Kaifeng]” kept in the private collection of one Yang Zhongfu ᄘ࢘ ᎖, another Song state functionary working in the Astrological Bureau.34 The book was the 1084 block-print of the Jiuzhang suanshu. Bao Huanzhi quotes the phrase “࣫אΔᇞ᧯شቹ” from its preface by Liu Hui (I will discuss the meaning of this phrase below) and conjectures that the diagrams were still extant by the Tang dynasty (ࠡቹ۟ାྫ ;)ڇhowever, they were no longer found in the copy of 1084 he obtained. Does Bao’s testimony confirm that the diagrams of Liu Hui (if we assume that they ever existed)35 had been removed from all editions prior to the late 11th century? Such a conclusion would be premature for at least two reasons: firstly, Bao Huanzhi apparently assumed that the diagrams must have been incorporated in the text, while the sources cited above suggest that the diagrams may also have been published separately; secondly, as the story above suggests, certain old mathematical books were kept in private collections of scholars and thus may have escaped censorship; therefore one cannot claim that all editions of the Jiuzhang suanshu containing Liu Hui’s diagrams disappeared as early as the 11th or 13th century. The explicit references to diagrams (tu) in the commentary of Liu Hui on the Jiuzhang suanshu are listed in Table 1 below: Problem no.36 and references to descriptions of diagrams in the text37
Contents of the diagram, according to Coloured parts of the diagrams mentioned in the references found in Liu Hui’s com- Liu Hui’s commentary in the order in which mentaries they appear in the text
JZ 1.32 Q 103–104, GL 91 [Q 105, GL 93]38
A hexagon and a dodecagon inscribed in a circle of radius 1 chi
(No colours are specified)
———
34 Active in 1174–1207; for his biography see Chen (1992). 35 Bao apparently understood the word tu in the sense of “geometrical diagrams
drawn in the book” and not as material objects; this understanding, most probably, was shared by his contemporaries. 36 “JZ X.Y” means “Problem number Y, Chapter X, of the Jiuzhang suanshu” in the edition SJSS 1963; the order numbers in the edition SJSS 2001 may differ. 37 “Q x[–y]” or “GL x[–y]” mean “Page(s) x[–y] in the edition of Qian Baocong (SJSS 1963)” or “Guo Shuchun and Liu Dun (SJSS 2001)”, respectively. 38 This diagram is referred to as “the diagram of the field in the form of an arc” dealt with in JZ 1.36.
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JZ 1.36 Q 105, GL 93;39 Q 109, GL 95
A circle inscribed into a square; a dodecagon and a square inscribed into the circle.40
Red ڹ: ¼ of the difference between the circumscribed square and the inscribed dodecagon; Sky-blue ॹ: ¼ of the difference between the dodecagon and the inscribed square; Yellow ႓: ½ of the square inscribed into the dodecagon.
JZ 4.16 Q 150, GL 121– 122
A large square dissected by three horizontal and three vertical lines into three squares and four rectangles
Yellow ႓: two of three inner squares; Red ڹ: two rectangles adjacent to yellow squares; Sky-blue ॹ: two rectangles adjacent to red rectangles and to the second yellow square.
JZ 9.1–JZ 9.3 Unidentified diagram(s), probably, Q 241, GL 18541 featuring a right-angle triangle and used for a demonstration of the Pythagorean theorem; see below
Red ڹ: the square on the base (short side) of the right-angle triangle; Sky-blue ॹ: the square on the height of the right-angle triangle.
JZ 9.5 Q 243.1–2, GL 186
A diagram featuring squares of the base and height of right-angle triangle (the same as in JZ 9.1–3); at least two unidentified diagrams (probably, used in JZ 9.6); see below
Sky-blue ॹ: the L-shaped figure (“set-square”) inscribed into a square; White ػ: the square added to an L-shaped figure to form a larger square
JZ 9.11 Q 246–247, GL 188
A diagram featuring the square with Red ڹ: the rectangle of the area ab the side (a+b) composed of a central Yellow ႓: the small square of the area (b–a)2 square with the side (b–a) and four in the centre of the diagram rectangles with the sides a and b (for a right angle triangle with the base a, height b, and hypotenuse c)
JZ 9.12 Q 248, GL 193
A combination of two “square plus set-square” diagrams mentioned in JZ 9.5
Sky-blue ॹ: L-shaped figure Yellow ႓: the central square in the configuration
JZ 9.14 Q 250, GL 189
A diagram featuring the square of the sum of the base and height of rightangle triangle (a+c)2 with an added Lshaped “set-square” of the area b2
Red ڹ: the square on the hypotenuse or on the base of the right-angle triangle Yellow ႓: the square on the base or on the hypotenuse of the triangle Sky-blue ॹ: the L-shaped figure
JZ 9.15 Q 251–252, GL 189–190
A diagram of two identical right-angle Red ڹ: a right angle triangle tri-angles with inscribed squares; the Sky-blue ॹ: a right-angle triangle triangles are joined together and trans- Yellow ႓: the inscribed square formed into a rectangle (two diagrams?)
JZ 9.16 Q 252, GL 190
A diagram of two identical right-angle triangles with inscribed circles; the triangles are joined together to form a rectangle (two diagrams?)
Red ڹ: a right-angle triangle Sky-blue ॹ: a right angle triangle Yellow ႓: an isosceles right angle triangle, one half of the square on the radius of the circle
Table 1
———
39 The commentator refers here to the diagram from the problem JZ 1.36. No colours are mentioned. 40 The diagrams accompanying the problems JZ 1.32 and JZ 1.36 most probably were not the same, since in JZ 1.32 Liu Hui explicitly refers to the latter diagram as associated with the problem JZ 1.36. 41 Probably, also referred to in JZ 9.5 (Q 242, GL 186).
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There are only four colours used in the diagrams: white, sky-blue, vermillion-red, and yellow. In one case (JZ 4.16) Liu Hui also uses the cyclical characters (jia ظ, yi Ԭ, ...) taken in the meaning “first”, “second”, to differentiate the coloured surfaces he is referring to. A similar simultaneous use of the colours (mentioned in the commentary) and cyclical signs (inscribed into the figures shown in the diagram) is found in Zhao Shuang’s commentaries on the Zhoubi suanjing. Table 1 shows that the colours were not assigned to the parts of the diagrams by the commentator according to the order in which they appeared in the commentary (say, the first mentioned figure should always be red, the second, sky-blue, and so on). This fact suggests that the commentator referred to already coloured diagrams drawn before his commentary was composed.42 In other words, the way Liu Hui used colours when referring to the geometrical objects suggests that he either depicted the diagrams and coloured them himself (probably according to some unidentified rules), or wrote his commentary referring to the coloured diagrams already drawn by his precursors. The fact that the extant diagrams of the Zhoubi suanjing also contain elements associated with colours and marked with cyclical characters suggests that Liu Hui’s original diagrams were to a certain extent similar to the diagrams found in the Zhoubi suanjing.43 Chemla (1994) suggested a tentative interpretation of two colours (black and red) used by Liu Hui in a three-dimensional configuration in his commentary on problem JZ 5.15: the colours were related to the roles the coloured parts played in the demonstration of the correctness of the algorithm. Whether a similar interpretation could be applicable to all above-listed two-dimensional cases and to the four colours used by Liu Hui remained unexplored. For an alternative hypothesis concerning the role of colours in Liu Hui’s diagrams one can take into consideration the fact that all four colours featured in Table 1 had traditional cosmological connotations and were associated with the centre and three of the four cardinal points: Sky-blue corresponded to the East, Red to the South, White to the West, and Yellow to the Centre. The only colour left unmentioned in the diagrams, ———
42 Another hypothesis concerning the assigning of colours would be that Liu Hui kept one and the same colours for figures of the same type, say, yellow for squares, red for triangles, and so on. This hypothesis, however, must be rejected on the basis of the data presented in Table 1. 43 Chemla conjectured that the original diagrams of the Zhoubi suanjing, if they ever existed, may have been modified considerably under the Song (Chemla 2002: 5).
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black, corresponding to the North, was used in three-dimensional configurations described by Liu Hui in JZ 5.15. The four colours used in two-dimensional diagrams thus may have been referring to the relative positions of the coloured part of the diagrams as seen by the reader of the text; I will explore this hypothesis in a later publication.
PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM: THE USE OF DIAGRAMS Below I provide a partial translation of the first three problems of juan 9 of the Jiuzhang suanshu of which the commentaries contain explicit references to diagrams. The translated excerpt contains the only known early Chinese demonstration of the statement equivalent to the Pythagorean theorem. The discussion that follows offers some hints as to the way in which the geometrical objects may have been perceived and the diagrams may have been used by Liu Hui. Problems 1–3 of Chapter 9 of the Jiuzhang suanshu read as follows:44 վڶԿ֡Ζै֡Ζം༓۶Ζ₳ֳΖն֡Ζ Suppose that there is a hook, 3 chi, a thigh, 4 chi.45 Question: how large is the string? Answer: 5 chi. վڶն֡ΖԿ֡Ζംै༓۶Ζ₳ֳΖ֡Ζ Suppose that there is a string, 5 chi, a hook, 3 chi. Question: how large is the thigh? Answer: 4 chi. վैڶ֡Ζն֡Ζം༓۶Ζ₳ֳΖԿ֡Ζ Suppose that there is a thigh, 4 chi, a string, 5 chi. Question: how large is the hook? Answer: 3 chi. ै The hook-thigh…
———
44 When dealing with right-angled triangles, Chinese mathematicians used the terms gou ( )֍( lit. “hook”), gu ै (lit. “thigh bone”) and xian (lit. “string”) in referring to the smaller side, medium side, and the hypotenuse, respectively. In what follows I adopt the literal translations of the terms. A similar approach was recently employed by Raphals (2002). Chemla and Guo (2004) used the French terms “base”, “hauteur” and “hypoténuse”. 45 The text specifies only the lengths of the “thigh” and the “hook”; compare with the recent translation of Shen et al. (1999: 458–459) where the term “right-angled triangle” is systematically used even though is not found in the original text. This translation thus alters considerably the meaning of the text and misleadingly suggests that the configuration of the hook, the thigh and the string was perceived in the same way as the sides of the “right-angle triangle” in modern mathematics.
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૿ֳΖ९૿ֳैΖઌፖߡֳΖࠡैΖैࠡΖല אਜ࣍壆Ζਚ٣τࠡυθࠠιڼࠡߠאՈΖ Short side is called hook, long side is called thigh, [that which] connects [the sides] of the angle to each other is called string.46 The hook is shorter than its thigh; the thigh is shorter than its string. [This procedure] will be applied to all [various] ratios [of the sides];47 that is why [the treatise] provides this procedure beforehand in order to elucidate its origin.48 ֳΖΕै۞ٺଊΖۖڢၲֱೈհΖܛΖ … procedure reads: multiply the hook and the thigh by themselves, add [the results], extract square root, this [will be] the string. ۞ଊֱڹΖै۞ଊॹֱΖτվυθחιנԵઌᇖΖٺൕࠡ ᣊΖڂ༉ࠡ塒լฝ೯ՈΖֱګٽհᕨΖၲֱೈհΖܛՈΖ [When] “the hook is multiplied by itself,” it is the red square;49 [when] “the thigh is multiplied by itself,” it is the sky-blue square. Let the protruding and the intruding [parts] complete each other, and each [part] follows [the parts of?] its [own] category; 50 as for the remaining
———
46 Shen et al. (1999: 459) translated “the side opposite to the right angle is called the hypotenuse,” thus misleadingly suggesting that Liu Hui operates with the concept of “right angle”. The literal translation of Liu Hui’s phrase shows that the object he discussed, apparently, is not the Euclidian combination of three points connected by three segments of straight lines. Chemla and Guo (2004: 705) suggest “ce qui lie les coins l’un à l’autre est appelé « hypoténuse »”, that is, what is “connected” are the corners of a rectangle; see also Chemla and Guo (2004: 978, n. 5). 47 Liu Hui is most likely speaking about the procedure itself that can be applied to right-angle triangles with the sides having various ratios and not only the ratio 3:4:5. Shen et al. (1999: 459) suggest “They (the sides? – A.V.) apply in various problems in terms of rates of proportion.” The meaning of the expression “in terms of rates of proportions” remains unclear to me. Chemla and Guo (2004: 705) also believe that Liu Hui writes about the sides of the triangle and not of the procedure: “On s’apprête à les utiliser pour les appliquer à toutes les procédures (lü)…”; to justify this understanding they are obliged to interpret the standard mathematical term lü , “ratio”, as “procedure.” 48 Shen et al. (1999: 459) suggest instead: “Hence [I] mention them here so as to show the reader their origin,” as if Liu Hui refers to his philological elucidation of the terms he has provided. This translation omits the central word “procedure” and introduces a “reader”. Liu Hui’s message, however, is clear: he is explaining the mathematical rationale of the method that will be used later in the chapter. 49 This rendering is closer to Liu Hui’s original way to establish the correspondence between the operation (“multiply the hook by itself”) and the visual object (“red square”) than the translation by Shen et al. (1999: 459) “Let the square on the gou [= the hook] be red in colour”. The latter implies that Liu Hui from the outset refers to a given geometrical object (the square on the gou) and specifies its colour. 50 This phrase was translated by Shen et al. (1999: 459) as the following rather obscure prescription “Let the deficit and excess parts be mutually substituted into corresponding positions”, thus making one Chinese word bu (lit. “to mend”) mean “to be substituted” and introducing the word “positions” not found in the original text. Chemla and Guo (2004: 705) suggest: “l’on fait en sorte que ce qui sort et ce qui
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[parts], [they] are to be kept without movement.51 [Once the parts] are put together, the surface of the square on/of the string is accomplished; [if one] extracts the square root, this will be the string.52
I will interrupt the translation here in order to discuss the demonstration suggested by Liu Hui which is no more than a concise verbal formula referring to a missing diagram. The discussion below aims at elucidating the meaning of the former; however, the overall goal of the present discussion is to discern the most common aspects involved in representation of geometrical figures with diagrams.
COMPLETING THE RECTANGULAR AREAS: A SHORT HISTORY Liu Hui’s verbal formula “Let the protruding and the intruding [parts] complete each other” appears equivalent to the formula “mending the void with the excess” (yi ying bu xu אઆᇖဠ) found in his commentary on Chapters 1 and 5 of the treatise.53 The latter refers to the transformations of rectilinear figures (a triangle, a trapezium, and a prism) into rectangles or parallelepipeds performed in order to calculate the area or the volume of the given figure, respectively, yet the details of the transformation were not provided by the commentator. I will briefly introduce the procedure used by Liu Hui as well as by later authors.54 In order to find the area of a “field [having the form of] a ritual tablet gui” (guitian )ضڈ, that is, of an isosceles triangle, the procedure of Problem 26 of Chapter 1 stipulates to divide the “width” of the “field” and to multiply it by the “straight length”, that is, to multiply the half-base by the height. This operation is explained by Liu Hui as “mending the void with the excess”; however, no reference to a diagram is made. There are at least two possible geometrical inter——— entre se compensent l’un l’autre, que chacun se conforme à sa catégorie”. 51 Shen et al. (1999: 459) suggest “the other parts remained unchanged”, while the text mentions the movement of the parts (bu yi dong) and not their change. Chemla and Guo (2004: 705) translate “alors, sur la base du fait que l’on garde ceux (les parties, les morceaux) qui restent sans les bouger,…” thus suggesting that this phrase is logically connected to the final phrase of the excerpt. 52 For other translations, see Wagner (1985); Martzloff (1997: 296). 53 Chapter 1, problems 26 and 28 (SJSS 1963: 102, lns. 1, 8); Chapter 5, problem 1 (SJSS 1963: 160, ln. 2). 54 The reader will find more details on the procedure in Volkov (1985); Chemla and Guo (2004: 138, 768–769).
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pretations of the operation alluded to by Liu Hui shown in Figs. 1a and 1b.
Fig. 1a
Fig. 1b
In Fig. 1a, the triangle ABD is used to fill the “empty” space EBC, while in Fig. 1b AM = BM, BN = CN, and the triangles AMK and CNL are rotated about the points M and N to fill the “empty” spaces FMB and ENB, respectively. In both cases the triangle is transformed into a rectangle (BECD and FELK) and this transformation justifies the verbal formula “Area of the triangle = half-base times height”. Several remarks pertain here. First of all, the word “void” and the operation of “filling the void” make sense only if a certain frame of reference has been set, namely, if the resulting rectangle (BECD or FELK) was perceived by the reader in advance. That is, the reader is expected to be able to perceive the objects supposed to be obtained even before the operations were actually performed. Therefore, even if the reader was manipulating the pictures or material objects representing triangles and rectangles, the operations were performed with imaginary objects such as the empty area BCE in Fig. 1a which was to be “filled” with the part ABD. Euclidean-style mathematical text would have described the construction of the triangle BCE and proved that the triangles ABD and BCE have equal areas. The Chinese author assumes that the reader knows in advance that the “filling the void” would produce a rectangular shape, and describes a transformation of a given figure rather than proving some facts about a static figure. Under these circumstances diagrams might have become optional. This can explain the absence of explicit references to diagrams in the commentary of Liu Hui on Problem 26: his remark about “mending the void with the excess” may well have referred to the whole category of the transformations “restoring” a rectangle, and in
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this case it was not limited to the specific transformations presented with a diagram. However, the treatises of later authors discussed below did provide diagrams in similar situations. The second remark that can be made concerning the suggested transformations shown in Figs. 1a and 1b is that despite their seeming similarity these transformations differ dramatically. The transformation presented in Fig. 1a cannot provide a justification of the procedure of calculation of the area of a triangle in the general case, that is, it cannot be applied in the case where the triangle ABC is no longer isosceles. Conversely, the operation shown in Fig. 1b can be applied to any triangle with non-obtuse angles at the base. Moreover, the transformation shown in Fig. 1a requires the triangle ABD to be “lifted” from the plane to which the triangle belongs and to be turned about any side for 180 degrees in order to fit into the “empty” area BCE. The transformation of Fig.1b does not require such “lifting”: the triangles AMK and CNL can be turned about the points M and N and move into the positions BFM and BEN, respectively, without leaving the plane of the diagram. Which transformation was meant by Liu Hui? In Volkov (1985) I argued for the transformations shown in Fig. 1b on the basis of the analysis of Liu Hui’s commentary on other problems, particularly, on problem 15 of Chapter 5 of the Jiuzhang suanshu. In this latter commentary—translated and discussed in detail in Wagner (1979) and later in Chemla and Guo (2004)—Liu Hui, in order to calculate the volume of a pyramid of a special kind, suggests a transformation of the pyramid and specifically tests the feasibility of the transformation in the general case. The overall impression given by this part of Liu Hui’s commentary is that his main intention was to provide demonstrations valid in the general case while presenting them through particular examples. The decisive piece of evidence comes from another excerpt of Liu Hui’s commentary on the algorithm of Problem 26, Chapter 1: ֳΖתᐖאଊإൕΖ Procedure: halve the width [i.e., the base of the triangle], use it to multiply the upright length [i.e., the height]. תᐖृΖאઆᇖဠऴضՈΖٍإתױൕאଊᐖΖਊתᐖଊൕΖ ࠷אխؓհᑇΖਚᐖൕઌଊᗨޡΖ[…]Ζ “Halve the width” [means] to mend the void with the excess [in order] to produce a “straight field” [i.e., a rectangle]. It is also possible to halve the upright length and to multiply the width with it. Consider
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halving the width and multiplying it by the length. [This is done] in order to get the value of the “median level”. That is why [if] the [half-] width and the [upright] length multiply each other, [they] produce the [number of square] bu of the area. […].55
The commentary refers to two different procedures. Firstly, it contains a second formula for the area of a guitian (Area = half-height times base) which we shall discuss below. Secondly, it depicts an additional explanation of the formula provided in the treatise (Area = half-base times height). Liu Hui explicitly mentions the line MN in Fig. 1b in referring to it as the “median level”. This makes it highly probable that the configuration shown in Fig. 1b was indeed meant by the commentator. Interestingly enough, the terminology used in the text presumes a particular positioning of the discussed object vis-à-vis the reader. For instance, the very words “width” guang ᐖ (also “latitude”, the horizontal dimension of a flat figure, or that perpendicular to the direction of sight of the observer) and “length” zong ൕ/᜕ (also “longitude”, the vertical dimension of a flat figure, or that parallel to the line of sight) used in the problem suggest that the triangle is originally positioned in such a way that its base AC can be referred to as “horizontal” and its height BD as “vertical”. The commentary of Liu Hui is consistent with this positioning: the line MN is referred to by the term “median level” (zhongping խؓ) that contains the word “level” (ping ؓ) explicitly suggesting its horizontal position. The same phenomenon can be observed in other problems of the treatise and in other mathematical works: the names of the elements of each geometrical configuration are given under the assumption of a fixed and standard positioning of the object vis-à-vis the reader even when no explicit references to diagrams are found in the commentary. This suggests that either the reader was supposed to visualise the geometrical figures in certain “canonical” positions, or, more probably, that the text included the diagrams in such an obvious and straightforward way that there was no need for any particular references. The figures may have been incorporated within the lines, as in the 14th century Xiangming suanfa ᇡࣔጩऄ (Detailed explanations of counting methods) by An Zhizhai ַڜស (dates unknown), see Fig. 1c, or placed right above the corresponding paragraphs, as in the edition of the Suanxue qimeng ጩᖂඔ፞ (1299) by Zhu Shijie ڹໃ (Fig. 1d). ——— 55 SJSS 1963, p. 102, lns. 1–2.
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Fig. 1c: The Xiangming suanfa (ZLSJ, vol. 1, p. 1615). The reader can see the images of geometrical figures inserted in the lines of the text. No references to the figures are found in the text.
Fig. 1d: The Suanxue qimeng (1299) by Zhu Shijie (ZLSJ, vol. 1, p. 1338). The diagrams are inserted in the text and placed above the corresponding problems. No references to the diagrams are found in the text.
It would be appropriate to question whether the configurations shown in Figs. 1a and 1b can be found in other Chinese mathematical treatises. The answer is affirmative, yet the actual diagrams look
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slightly different. The earliest of them are, to my knowledge, found in Yang Hui’s Tianmu bilei chengchu jiefa ضఋֺᣊଊೈ൸ऄ (Fast methods of multiplication and division related to [various] categories of fields and [their] measures) of 1275 reprinted in Korea in 1433. The diagram of the guitian is reproduced in Fig. 2a, while diagram in Fig. 2b shows the transformation of the guitian into a rectangle identical to that reconstructed in Fig. 1a.
Fig. 2a: “Diagram of the field in the Fig. 2b: “Diagram of the half-width multiplying the upright length”57 form of a ritual tablet gui (guitian)”56
Two remarks can be made concerning the objects shown in Figs. 2a and 2b. First of all, the diagrams show both the original configuration (Fig. 2a) and the resulting configuration (Fig. 2b) of the transformation. Secondly, one immediately notices the presence of the “grid” composed of unit squares and covering the entire figure. Similar grids can be found in the most ancient extant diagrams from the Southern Song edition of the Zhoubi suanjing.58 However, not all diagrams, even in the book of Yang Hui, are drawn using this particular technique. The grid apparently allows “encoding” of the numerical parameters of the depicted objects; in our case the reader is apparently dealing with an isosceles triangle of base 12 and height 12.59 ——— 56 57 58 59
TBCJ, j.1: 8b (87 in Kodama’s edition). Ibid. See SKSL. However, the second diagram contains two captions inserted into its body; the one near the short side of the rectangle reads “half-width is 6 bu”, and the one near the long side, “upright length is 12 bu”.
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The transformation shown in the second diagram aims at building a rectangle from two parts of the triangle. The area of the rectangle is the number of the unit squares it contains, and the grid shows how all the incomplete unit squares in the triangle can be made complete with the suggested transformation. Even though this is not necessarily the transformation originally meant by Liu Hui, it certainly does fit into the rhetoric formula “to mend the void with the excess”. In this case the “void” is understood as the upper right-hand half of the rectangle 6 x 12 which can be “mended” with the left half of the original triangle. The question which remains open is whether Yang Hui had access to the same tradition of diagrammatic representation as did Liu Hui, or whether he reproduced an alternative (or more recent) tradition, probably aiming at reconstructing Liu Hui’s original diagrams; it is also possible that he was the author of the reconstruction himself. Which of these two scenarios took place remains unknown, yet even if it was the latter one, the reconstruction achieved by the early second millennium may have reflected a long-term tradition of the use of diagrams in this particular case. It may be relevant to consider the entire context in which the aforementioned diagrams appear. Yang Hui offers three methods of calculation of the area of a triangle and provides four diagrams, one for the original triangle and one for each of the transformations needed to justify the algorithms: ضڈԿऄΖ ᐖृתމאױޡΖתشᐖאଊإൕΖ ൕृתމאױޡΖתشൕאޡଊᐖΖ ᐖΕൕޡઃլृתމױΖشᐖΕൕઌଊΖתމΖ Three methods for the fields having the form of a ritual tablet gui: If the [amount] of bu of the width [i.e., the base of the triangle] can be halved, use the half-width to multiply the upright length; If the [amount] of bu of the length [i.e., the height of the triangle] can be halved, use the [amount of] the bu of the half-length to multiply the width; If neither the width nor the length can be halved, multiply the width and the length, and then halve [the product].
A problem follows: վضڈڶΖᐖԼԲޡΖൕԼԲޡΖംض༓۶Λ ₳ֳΖԮԼԲޡΖ
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Let us suppose that there is a field in the form of the ritual tablet gui. The width is 12 bu, the upright length is 12 bu. The question: how large is the field? Answer: 72 bu.60
The three algorithms precede the problem, while four diagrams 2a-d are placed after it. They thus occupy the position Liu Hui’s commentary occupied in his edition of the Jiuzhang suanshu, that of the justification of the algorithm. The first diagram is the picture of the original shape of the guitian (Fig. 2a), while the transformations shown in Figs. 2b, 2c, and 2d correspond to the first, the second and the third algorithm, respectively.
Fig. 2c
Fig. 2d
We may note that the second method (“use the [number of] the bu of the half-length to multiply the width”) was mentioned in Liu Hui’s commentary quoted above (“It is also possible to halve the upright length and to multiply it by the width”). The diagrammatic justification of the method presented in Fig. 2c has the same property as the reconstruction shown in Fig. 1b, namely, it remains valid even when the triangle is no longer isosceles. One can suggest that a similar justification may have been used by Liu Hui. The diagram shown in Fig. 2d differs from those shown in ———
60 TBCJ, j.1: 8a (87 in Kodama’s edition). The bu in the answer must be interpreted, in modern terms, as square bu. This way of expressing the areas was standard in Chinese mathematical texts.
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Fig. 2a-c: one may see it as coloured, even though the colours used here are black and white (if one considers white the parts which are not coloured). The colours mark two functionally different parts of the diagram: the black parts are to be removed from the “frame rectangle,” while the remaining white area is the one to be calculated. The justification of the algorithm Area = (base times height)/2 is based on the fact that the area of the white triangle in Fig. 2d is equal to the area of the black parts. This construction will provide a valid demonstration of the algorithm even when the white triangle is not isosceles. The treatise of Yang Hui also contains a configuration similar to that shown in Fig. 1b and featuring a right-angle triangle (Figs. 3a–d).
Fig. 3a: “Diagram of the hook and the Fig. 3b: “Diagram of the half-hook multithigh”. plying the thigh”.
Fig. 3c: “Diagram of the half-thigh multi- Fig. 3d: “Diagram of the hook and the plying the hook”. thigh multiplying each other and being halved”.
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Once again, Fig. 3a shows the initial stage of transformation, and Figs. 3b–c the final stages, while Fig. 3d shows a particular case of the product of the hook and the thigh. I draw the triangles shown in Figs. 3b and 3c, in Figs. 4a and 4b, respectively, in order to render more visible the transformation suggested by the diagram.61 In Fig. 4a the part CLN is turned counterclockwise about the vertex N to the position BEN and thus the rectangle BELD is formed. The Chinese diagram does not show the part CLN, most probably, because the original triangle has been shown in Fig. 3a. This construction justifies the algorithm presented with the verbal formula “Area = half-hook times height”. One can observe that the transformation suggested in Fig. 3b is similar to that shown in Fig. 1b. As for Fig. 3c, the transformation shown here is presented in Fig. 4b: the triangle BMN is turned about the vertex N clockwise in order to be placed in the position CKN and thus to complete the rectangle CDMK. The area of the rectangle is CD times CK, that is, the halfthigh (half-BD = MD) multiplied by CD (the “hook”).
Fig. 4a.
Fig. 4b.
As the reader has probably already noticed, Yang Hui (and most likely Liu Hui long before him as well) established an exact correspondence between the diagrams and the verbal formulas describing the algorithms. If the algorithm was, for instance, “Halve A and multiply the result by B”, thus corresponding to the modern formula (A/2)⋅B, the Chinese author followed the order of the operations prescribed by the algorithm and constructed the rectangle with the sides A/2 and B. If he had to provide a graphical representation of an ——— 61 For technical reasons Fig. 3c is rotated 90 degrees in Fig. 4b.
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equivalent formula, say, “Multiply A by half-B”, he would have built another object, the rectangle with the sides A and B/2. The formula (A⋅B)/2 led him to yet another geometrical configuration, that of the rectangle with the sides A and B dissected into two parts having equal areas. He did this although he was certainly aware that for any two numbers A and B, (A/2)⋅B is always equal to A⋅(B/2) as well as to (A⋅B)/2. I shall return to this point at the end of the paper when trying to draw some general conclusions concerning the role of geometrical diagrams in traditional Chinese mathematics.
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE DIAGRAM FOR PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM The references to the “red square” and “sky-blue square” suggest that the reader was supposed to have access to a coloured diagram (or diagrams) depicting geometrical transformations aimed at composing the “square on/of the string” from the parts of the squares on/of the hook and the thigh, using the technique of fragmentation of involved figures and composition of rectangular surfaces briefly mentioned by Liu Hui in the phrase “let the protruding outside and intruding inside complete/mend each other” (chu ru xiang bu נԵઌᇖ). It is quite possible that the diagram provided enough information on the transformation(s) involved, thus making extensive commentaries superfluous; this explains why in this particular case Liu Hui provides a very short commentary, even though he explicitly acknowledges the importance of the statement. Several reconstructions may be suggested for this diagram, for example, the one shown in Fig. 5.
Fig. 5: The area ACJNPE is blue, the area DGJNP is red.
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In Fig. 5 the triangle ABC rotates counterclockwise for 90° about the point A to become the triangle AEH, while the equal triangle BDG rotates clockwise for 90° about the point D to become DFE. This transformation demonstrates that the sum of the areas of the squares DGJF (hook squared) and AHJC (thigh squared) is equal to the area of the square ABDE (string squared). In the resulting figure ABDE the three “blue” parts (AHE, ABMH, NPE) remain interconnected, as do the two “red” parts (MFD and DFNP). This diagram is shown in Fig. 9.10 in the book by Shen et al. (1999: 461) and referred to as the reconstruction by B. Datta of the proof for the “Pythagorean theorem” in the ancient Indian mathematical treatise Sulbasutra.62 Shen and his co-authors are convinced that the diagram shown in Fig. 5 was not only devised in ancient India but was also used by Zhao Shuang (Zhao Junqing) in the third century AD for the same purpose and was lost later.63 The same diagram is suggested and argued for in Chemla and Guo (2004: 673–684). Other reconstructions of the diagram (or diagrams) referred to by Liu Hui in this problem are, theoretically, also possible; the description of the method is so short and obscure that it is impossible to know what exactly the original diagram(s) was or were. However, what is more important for the current exploration is to acknowledge that Liu Hui did refer to diagrams without actually describing them,64 and that in operating with the diagram(s) he used the technique of transformation of geometrical figures similar to that mentioned in his commentary on Chapter 1 of the treatise.
LIU HUI AND CONTEMPORANEOUS AUTHORS ON DIAGRAMS Liu Hui’s preface of the Jiuzhang suanshu contains the following phrase: ࣫אΔᇞ᧯شቹ
———
62 Shen et al refer to page 76 of Sen and Bag (1983), while the reference is rather due to an early work of Datta (1932). Bag reports that the statement was simply enunciated by the authors of the Sulbasutras Baudhayana, Apastamba and Katyayana, but “no proof of this theorem is given by Baudhayana and other Sulba writers, since it is beyond their tradition” (Bag 1979: 123–124). Bag mentions a number of geometrical reconstructions suggested by Western authors (Bag 1979: 125, nn. 1–5) along with that of Datta (1932: 152) without giving preference to any of them. 63 Shen et al. 1999: 462. 64 In this as in other cases it remains unclear whether Liu Hui was the author of the diagrams he referred to.
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[...I] “broke down/analyzed the structures” with words/statements, and dissected/explained figures/bodies using diagrams [...].65
The first part of this statement contains an allusion to Liu Hui’s own commentary which, in turn, refers to the Zhuangzi ๗,66 while the second part does not appear to contain any specific reference to philosophical literature. A naïve interpretation of the term “bodies” would suggest that Liu Hui meant plane or solid geometrical figures, while “diagrams” referred to the pictures of the “bodies” appended to the original text.67 The analysis below will elaborate on this interpretation.68 To understand Liu Hui’s statement concerning the “dissection of figures” one has to take into consideration all cases where Liu Hui makes use of the term ti ᧯ in his commentary. The most revealing of them is to be found in the commentary on Problem 32, Chapter 1, where Liu Hui discusses the configuration including a circle and an ———
65 SJSS 1963: 91. Compare with the translations of Chemla and Guo: “…si on recourt à des énoncés pour analyser les constitutions internes (li), si on se sert de figures (tu) pour disséquer des corps…” (2004 : 127); they also provide an alternative translation: “si, quand il se présente des constitutions internes (li) à disséquer, on recourt à des énoncés. Quand il se présente des corps (ti) à analyser, on se sert des figures (tu)…” (Chemla and Guo 2004: 754, n. 22). 66 Zhuangzi, chap. 3 “Yangsheng zhu” 塄( سZZJS, vol. 1, p. 119); for the translation, see, for example, (Watson 1968: 50–51). In his commentary on problem 18, chapter 8 of the Jiuzhang suanshu Liu Hui mentions the story about the cook Ding ԭ(SJSS 1963: 237) and deliberately changes the word jie ᆏ (“joints”, as Watson suggests) found in all extant versions of the Zhuangzi to li in order to draw a parallel between the skilful cook’s knife (that follows the structure of joints in the bodies of the oxen when cutting them and thus remains sharp) and the “numbers/computations” (shu ᑇ). The story of the cook Ding precedes a new method introduced by Liu Hui to solve simultaneous equations in several unknowns; this method, unlike the algorithm described in the treatise, takes into consideration the numerical coefficients of the solved simultaneous equations, that is, metaphorically, it also “follows the joints”. It is thus not impossible that originally the preface (which may have been modified later by copyists) was speaking of shu, numbers/numerical parameters, rather than ci , “words”: a careful choice of numerical parameters could indeed be instrumental when analyzing or explaining an algorithm. See also the discussion and references in Chemla and Guo (2004: 754, n. 22). 67 When commenting on the term tu in this phrase, Chemla and Guo suggest “Le terme de tu semble tenir lieu de l’emsemble des auxiliaires visuels dont Liu Hui peut se servir, comme les blocks…” (Chemla et Guo 2004: 754, n. 22). 68 Liu Hui does not claim explicitly that he authored the diagrams used to “dissect” the “bodies”, yet the entire context makes such a claim rather probable, and conventional scholarship unanimously credits him with the authorship of the diagrams he referred to. However, even if the version(s) of the treatise available to Liu Hui did not contain diagrams, one cannot be sure whether the diagrams were present in other contemporaneous versions of the text and lost later, or whether the compiler(s) of the treatise originally omitted diagrams (intentionally or for purely technical reasons).
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inscribed polygon in the context of his infinitesimal procedure of the calculation of the area of a circle. The polygon and the circle are said to “unite [their] bodies” (he ti )᧯ٽ.69 Modern translators of Liu Hui’s commentary rendered the word ti in this context in different ways: some of them simply did not translate it, some chose neutral “shape”,70 some decided to render it referring to the context (for example, “entire area [of the circle]”)71 or simply to adopt the vocabulary meaning of the involved terms (e.g., “substance of the disk”).72 Chemla proposed “constitutive being” in referring to the use of the pair ti ᧯ / yong شin the texts of Wang Bi, a neo-Taoist philosopher of the 3rd century AD. She writes: “Ti, sometimes translated as structure, could refer to the constitutive being, inasmuch as one gives its generation by a procedure. Yong would be its manifestation via the procedure.”73 This approach suggests that the he ti in question is not a mere acknowledgment of a “coincidence of the polygon and the circle” but a reference to a more subtle relationship between the two objects explicated via categories of contemporaneous philosophy. Accordingly, the above-mentioned authors suggested different renderings of the phrase he ti in Liu Hui’s commentary.74 However, the meaning of the ti in philosophical texts may vary; for instance, in the Zhuangzi the word ti refers to an entity composed of several parts perceived as different and at the same time constituting a unity.75 The discussion of the terms ti and yong in Liu Hui’s commentaries would lead us far beyond the scope of the present paper; the only conclusion one can draw is that the term ti in Liu’s preface does not simply mean “bodies” or “flat/solid figures”, but rather refers to a philosophical category employed in mathematical context, namely, to the investigated objects perceived as having some particular structure. This observation will allow us to suggest an interpretation of the term ——— 69 For a description of the procedure and of Liu Hui’s theoretical approach, see Volkov (1994). 70 Lam and Ang 1986. 71 Chen 1987: 21. Chen does not take into account the fact that other terms (mi ᕨ, ji ᗨ, in some cases shi ኔ) were systematically used to convey the concepts of area and surface in Liu Hui’s commentary and in other mathematical texts. 72 Martzloff 1997: 278. 73 Chemla 1996: 107, n. 39. 74 He 1983: 92; Lam and Ang 1986: 336; Li and Du 1987: 68; Martzloff 1997: 278; Chen 1987: 21; Chemla 1996: 79; Chemla and Guo 2004: 179, 772, n. 110. 75 In the Zhuangzi this relationship between the concepts of he (unity) and ti (body) is manifested, for example, in such statements as “They [= the Heaven and the Earth] join to become a body” (ZzY 48/19/6), he ze cheng ti ٽঞ᧯ګ, translation by B.Watson (1968: 198); see also the translation by Liou Kia-hway “Par leur union, ils forment le corps” (Liou 1969: 150).
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tu used in Liu Hui’s Preface, once we take into consideration the classification of tu made by the contemporaneous writer Yan Yanzhi ᠱ հ (384–456):76 ቹሉհრڶԿΖԫֳΖቹΖ࠳ွਢՈΖԲֳΖቹᢝΖڗᖂਢՈ ΖԿֳΖቹݮΖᢄਢՈΖ There are three [types] of intention/meaning carried by the diagrams: first is to depict principles, such are the symbols of hexagrams; second is to depict concepts, such is the teaching about [the structure of] characters; third is to depict [perceptible] forms, such is the [conventional] painting.77
This classification appears to embody a theoretical concept expressed as early as the Xici zhuan ᢀႚ: the symbolic representation of phenomena via hexagrams is closer to their original nature than verbal interpretations.78 Interestingly enough, in his Preface Liu Hui quotes the Xici zhuan and mentions the story of Bao Xi who invented the Eight Trigrams and used them to discern the properties of natural phenomena. The work of Liu Hui was, in his words, to analyze the aspects of Yin and Yang featured in the mathematical text in order to reveal the original intentions of its compilers. His abovequoted statement about “breaking/analysing the joints/principles (xi li) with words (ci)”79 and “dissecting/understanding (jie) the figures/bodies (ti) using diagrams (tu)” thus may have referred to two levels of interpretations mentioned in the traditional scheme: using verbal formulas and using images.80 The case of the phrase he ti discussed above suggests that ti in Liu’s discourse appears close to the li (“principles”, “structures”) mentioned by Yan Yanzhi, and that Liu Hui’s “explaining the ti with diagrams”, therefore, does not refer to a mere drawing geometrical figures, but rather to a visual representation of the “inner structure” of the investigated objects. In this case ———
76 As quoted in the Lidai minghua ji ᖵټזಖ (Notes on famous painters of [all] generations, 847) by Zhang Yanyuan ്৯ (b.ca. 810 – d.ca. 880). For more on Yan Yanzhi, see Acker 1979: XLVII. 77 LMJ: 2; see also Acker (1979: 64–5). Translation of Acker reads: “[The director of Imperial Banqueting Court Yen (Yen-chih) said that] the word t’u contains three concepts. The first is the representation of principles: the forms of the hexagrams (of the Book of Changes) are such. The second is the representation of concepts: the study of written characters has to do with this. The third is the representation of forms, and this is painting”. 78 Xici zhuan, A8: 38 ff. 79 Or “numerical parameters” if the text was corrupted; see above. 80 Or using numbers and images, if the text is corrupted and has to be emended as suggested above.
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one may question how close the diagrams used by Liu Hui were to their modern reconstructions.
CONCLUSIONS According to Euclidean geometry, genetically related to the Platonic philosophy of mathematics, graphical representation of geometrical objects were no more than imperfect images of ideal mathematical objects;81 for example, a configuration of three dots marked on a paper and connected to each other with a straightedge represented only an imperfect image of an ideal triangle, while the “true” vertices and edges of the triangle could not be depicted, since, according to Euclidean definitions, “dots” and “lines” were ideal objects without parts and widths, respectively. The modern way of dealing with mathematical diagrams is ultimately related to the theoretical foundations of the discipline laid down by the Greeks. The modern reader of mathematical texts is supposed to be aware from the outset of the differences between the mathematical objects, their models, and graphical representations of the models, as well as to be able to distinguish between facts concerning particular models (which can be checked empirically, say, with a ruler) and universally true statements that require a formal proof in the framework of an axiomatic system. However, the axiomatic method of structuring mathematical knowledge historically was only one option among many, and therefore pictures in non-axiomatic traditions might have been considered very differently as far as their role in mathematical discourse was concerned. This means that a modern historian of mathematics should investigate the theoretical premises of a given mathematical tradition in order to describe adequately the role played in this tradition by diagrams. This task may appear difficult in some cases, given that the ancient methods of interpretation of the diagrams remained unstated in the texts in both axiomatic and non-axiomatic mathematical traditions. Under these circumstances the only way to proceed would be to put under scrutiny even the slightest hints pertaining to the subject scattered through ancient mathematical texts, together with those found in sources belonging to more general context. Moreover, as with any graphical representation, mathematical dia———
81 Recent work of Netz (1999) would provide a necessary corrigendum for this oversimplified picture.
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grams found in pre-modern mathematical texts could not be exact “photographic” images of the mathematical objects (or their models), either in axiomatic or “non-axiomatic” context. A mathematical diagram always remained a drawing, that is, the result of a certain procedure of visual “encoding” understandable to the representatives of a particular tradition, and certainly to the readers of the mathematical texts; it thus needed to be “decoded” in the standard way prescribed by the professional community. The way of “encoding” was shaped by a number of implicit conventions adopted in a given cultural context, including the most general principles of drawing. Accordingly, the mathematical drawings from different traditions may have differed dramatically. Moreover, even within one mathematical tradition various “schools” may have existed, and within one “school” there might be differences due to the styles and principles adopted by individual mathematicians. The reconstruction of the way in which Chinese mathematical diagrams were designed and used therefore has to be carried out simultaneously with the analysis of the contemporaneous discourses concerning the ontological status of the mathematical objects. My cursory investigation into the tradition of diagrammatic representations in early traditional Chinese mathematics suggests that the earliest known diagrams of the early first millennium AD, those referred to by Liu Hui, were mainly focused on “depicting the structure”; more specifically they were focused on the representation of the general patterns of the transformations of the objects rather than the structure of the objects themselves. The resulting diagrams could be called “conceptual diagrams” and their main function was to provide descriptions of the geometrical transformations to be performed in order to justify mathematical algorithms. However, for various (and still unknown) reasons these diagrams had disappeared almost entirely by the end of the first millennium AD. The earliest extant printed diagrams found in the Song edition of the Zhoubi suanjing probably reflects at least one particular aspect of this tradition, namely, a close interrelationship between geometrical and algorithmic (or algebraic) considerations expressed in the form of “grid diagrams.” The Song edition of the Zhoubi suanjing, however, did not transmit precisely the original diagrams, as their analysis by modern scholars demonstrates; apparently, the ways in which the pictures in mathematical books were interpreted also changed considerably, and this change accounts for their distortion in subsequent editions. The later tradition
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of mathematical diagrams in China splits into several strands: it appears that Yang Hui attempted to perpetuate the original approaches to diagrams, in particular, discerning the initial and the final stage of transformations and thus once again representing the transformation of figures rather then figures themselves, while other authors did not follow this tradition and used diagrams in their writings in different ways.82 This and other cases may suggest that by the Yuan dynasty the “conceptual diagrams” of the forefathers of Chinese mathematical tradition of the early first millennium AD gradually gave way to a tradition of “naïve” representation of geometrical objects of which the examples can be found in the Ming dynasty books on “popular mathematics”. REFERENCES Sources in Asian Languages JTS – Jiu Tangshu ៱ା. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. JZSSJ – Li Jimin ޕᤉၰ , ed. Jiuzhang suanshu jiaozheng ີጩீᢞ. Xi’an: Shaanxi kexue jishu chubanshe, 1993. NGSM – Fujiwara Sukeyo ᢏ۸. Nihonkoku genzai sho mokuroku ֲءഏߠڇ ؾᙕ. Baibucongshu jicheng ۍຝហႃګ, the Guyi congshu ײၝហ series, vol. 18. [Taibei]: Yi wen yin shu guan, 1966. SJSS 1963 – Qian Baocong ᙒᣪ⓫, ed. Suanjing shishu ጩᆖԼ. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1963. SJSS 2001 – Guo Shuchun ພਞ, Liu Dun Ꮵၬ, eds. Suanjing shishu ጩᆖԼ. Taibei: Jiuzhang chubanshe, 2001. SKSL – Song ke suanjing liu zhong ࠥݚጩᆖքጟ. Beijing: Wenwu, 1980. SS – Suishu ၹ. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1973. SSh – Songshi ݚ. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1977. SSS – Peng Hao ༙௯. Zhangjiashan Hanjian “Suanshu shu” zhushi ്୮՞ዧ១ጩ ᑇࣹᤩ. Beijing: Kexue, 2001. TBCJ – Yang Hui ᄘᔕ. Tianmu bilei chengchu jiefa ضఋֺᣊଊೈ൸ऄ. In: Jnjgoseiki-no Chǀsen kan dǀkatsujiban snjgakusho Լնધ圸ཛធעᎭڗठ䀀䝤 , ed. Kodama Akihito ࠝࣔدԳ. Tokyo: private publication of Kodama Akihito, 1966. TLSY – Tanglü shuyi ା৳งᤜ. Taibei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1956. XJS – Yang Hui ᄘᔕ. Xiangjie Jiuzhang suanfa ᇡᇞີጩऄ. In: ZLSJ, vol. 1, pp. 756–833. XTS – Xin Tangshu ᄅା. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. LMJ – Zhang Yanyuan ്৯. Lidai minghua ji ᖵټזಖ. Beijing: Renmin meishu, 1983. ZHMZ – Zhangjiashan Hanmu zhujian (247 hao mu) ്୮՞ዧችێ១(ԲԮᇆ ች), ed. Zhangjiashan 247 hao mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu ്୮՞ԲԮᇆዧች ێ១ᖞ՛ิ. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2001. ZLSJ – Tian Yinong ضԫል, ed. Zhongguo lidai suanxue jicheng խഏᖵזጩᖂႃ
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82 See Volkov 1997.
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ګ. Jinan: Shandong renmin chubanshe, 1994. ZZJS – Guo Qingfan ພᐜᢋ, Wang Xiaoyu ູݕ׆, eds. Zhuangzi jishi ๗ႃᤩ. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961. ZzY – Zhuangzi yinde ๗֧. Yenching-Harward Index Series, 20. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956.
Secondary works of modern authors ACKER, William R.B. 1979. Some T’ang and Pre-T’ang Texts on Chinese Painting. Westport: Hyperion Press. BAG, Amulya Kumar. 1979. Mathematics in Ancient and Medieval India. Varanasi and Delhi: Chaukhambha Orientalia (Chaukhambha Oriental Research Studies 16). CHEMLA, Karine. 1994. “De la signification mathématique de marqueurs de couleurs dans le commentaire de Liu Hui.” Cahiers de linguistique – Asie Orientale 23: 61–76. ——. 1996. “Relations between Procedure and Demonstration. Measuring the Circle in the Nine Chapters on Mathematical Procedures and their Commentary by Liu Hui (3rd century).” In: History of Mathematics and Education: Ideas and Experiences, ed. H.N. Jahnke, Michael Otte, Norbert Knoche, William Aspray. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 69–112. ——. 1997. “Qu’est-ce qu’un problème dans la tradition mathématique de la Chine ancienne? Quelques indices glanés dans les commentaires rédigés entre le IIIe et VIIe siècles au classique Han Les neufs chapitres sur les procédures mathématiques.” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 19: 91–126. ——. 2002. “Variété des modes d’utilisation des tu dans les textes mathématiques des Song et des Yuan.” Paper delivered at the European and North American Exchanges in East Asian Studies Conference From Image to Action: The Dynamics of Visual Representation in Chinese Intellectual and Religious Culture, Paris, September 2001. Retrieved December 17, 2002, from http://hal.ccsd.cnrs.fr/. CHEMLA, Karine, and GUO Shuchun. 2004. Les neuf chapitres. Le classique mathématiques de la Chine ancienne et ses commentaires. Paris: Dunod. CHEN Cheng-Yih. 1987. “A Comparative Study of Early Chinese and Greek Work on the Concept of Limit.” In: Science and Technology in Chinese Civilization, ed. Cheng-Yih Chen. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., pp. 3–52. CHEN Jiujin ຫՆ८. 1992. “Yang Zhongfu ᄘ࢘᎖” [a bibliographical entry]. In: Zhongguo gudai kexuejia chuanji խഏזײઝᖂ୮ႚಖ, ed. Du Shiran فޙ ྥ. Beijing: Kexue, vol. 1, pp. 604–605. CULLEN, Christopher. 1995. “How Can We Do the Comparative History of Mathematics? Proof in Liu Hui and the Zhou Bi.” Philosophy and the History of Science: a Taiwanese Journal, 4.1: 59–94. ——. 1996. Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient China: the Zhou bi suan jing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DATTA, Bibhutibhushan. 1932. The Science of Sulba: A Study in Early Hindu Geometry. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press. GILLON, Brendan S. 1977. “Introduction, Translation, and Discussion of Chao ChünCh’ing’s ‘Notes to the Diagrams of Short Legs and Long Legs and of Squares and Circles’.” Historia mathematica 4: 253–293. HE Shaogeng. 1983. “Method for Determining Segment Areas and Evaluation of pi.” In: Ancient China’s Technology and Science, compiled by the Institute of the
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History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Ancient China’s Technology and Science. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, pp. 90–98. HEATH, Thomas L. 1956. The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements. Vol. 1. New York: Dover. LAM Lay-Yong and Ang Tian-Se. 1986. “Circle Measurements in Ancient China.” Historia Mathematica 13.4: 325–340. LI Yan and DU Shiran. 1987. Chinese Mathematics. A Concise History. (Tr. by John N.Crossley and Anthony W.-C. Lun). Oxford: Clarendon Press. LIH Ko-wei ޕഏ. 1991. “Zhongguo gudai dui juedu de renshi խഏזײኙߡ৫ ऱᎁᢝ.” In: Shuxue shi yanjiu wenji ᑇᖂઔߒ֮ႃ, ed. Li Di ޕ૭. Vol. 2. Huhhot/Taibei: Neimenggu daxue chubanshe and Jiuzhang chubanche, pp. 6–14. LIOU Kia-hway. 1969. Tchouang-tseu, Oeuvre complete. Paris: Gallimard and Unesco. MARTZLOFF, Jean-Claude. 1997. A History of Chinese Mathematics. Berlin etc.: Springer. NETZ, Reviel. 1999. The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A Study in Cognitive History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. RAFALS, Lisa. 2002. “A ‘Chinese Eratosthenes’ Reconsidered: Chinese and Greek Calculations and Categories.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 19: 10–60. SEN, Samarendra Nath, and Amulya Kumar BAG. 1983. Sulbasutras of Baudhayana, Apastamba, Katyakana and Manava with Text, English Translation and Commentary. New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy. SHEN KANGSHEN, John N. Crossley and Anthony W.-C. LUN. 1999. The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. Companion and Commentary. Oxford etc.: Oxford University Press, and Beijing: Science Press. VOLKOV, Aleksei [=Alexei]. 1985. “O vychislenii ploshchadeï v drevnem Kitae” (On the calculation of areas in ancient China). Istoriko-matematicheskie issledovaniya (Studies in History of Mathematics, Moscow) 29: 28–43. ——. 1986. “O nazvanii odnogo drevnekitaïskogo matematicheskogo traktata” (On the title of one ancient Chinese mathematical treatise). In: Istoriya i kul’tura Vostochnoï i Yugo-Vostochnoï Azii (History and culture of East- and South-East Asia), ed. Sergeï V.Volkov. Moscow: Nauka. Part 1: 193–199. ——. 1994. “Calculation of pi in Ancient China: from Liu Hui to Zu Chongzhi.” Historia Scientiarum 4.2: 139–157. ——. 1997. “The Mathematical Work of Zhao Youqin: Remote Surveying and the Computation of π.” Taiwanese Journal for Philosophy and History of Science 8: 129–189. ——. 2003. “‘Public Understanding of Science’ in Historical Perspective: The Case of Mathematical Sciences in Traditional China.” Proceedings of the 2002 Conference on the History of Science and of Sino-Australian Symposium The Public Understanding of Science, Technology and Medicine (Taibei-Hsinchu, Taiwan, April 2002), Taibei: Academia Sinica, and Hsinchu: Tsinghua University, pp. 191–213. WAGNER, Donald Blackmore. 1979. “An Early Chinese Derivation of the Volume of a Pyramid: Liu Hui, Third Century A.D.” Historia Mathematica 6: 164–188. ——. 1985. “A Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem by Liu Hui (third century AD).” Historia Mathematica 12: 71–73. WATSON, Burton, tr. 1968. The Complete Works of Chuang tzu. New York: Columbia University Press.
WOODCUT ILLUSTRATION: A GENERAL OUTLINE∗ Michela Bussotti The details of Fig. 1 below are taken from wood-cuts of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644):
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∗ The author wishes to express her thanks to Georges Métailié for reading this contribution and for his valuable suggestions, to Clare Perkins and Francesca Bray for revising the English.
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These prints illustrate literary works: two different editions of the play Xixiang ji ۫༖ಖ (Figs. 1a/1c) and an anthology of exemplary short stories, the Yangzheng tujie 塄إቹᇞ (Figs. 1d, 1e).1 The last examples (Figs. 1d, 1e) are interesting not only because they show the refinement of the geometrical motifs and the regular designs adopted by Huizhou blockcarvers during the Wanli reign (1573–1620) but also because, as the title of the book says, the illustrations are tu ቹ. As has already been noted, many pictures in books printed in the region of Jiangnan ۂত at the end of the Ming dynasty have no functional value.2 The level of artistic achievement, influence of painting and narrative representation are very advanced. These illustrations are often presented as xiang ቝ or hua , and these two terms appear in some book titles, in titles of pictorial al———
1 These details could be reproduced more clearly if they were taken from the original document, but this was not possible. Indeed, they are imperfect reproductions of reproductions. They are: Fig. 1a, detail of natural setting from Xinkan qimiao quanxiang zhushi Xixiang ji (1954); Figs. 1b, 1c, embroidered flags and Yingying’s ᦉᦉ garments in Yuanben chuxiang bei Xixiang ji (s.d., 1927 ?); Figs. 1d, 1e, screen decorations and vegetables from Yangzheng tujie (2000). 2 This idea was expressed by some participants at the congress From Image to Action, Paris, 3–5 September 2001. During this congress, various kinds of tu were analysed, showing the multiplicity of meaning of the term tu and of the forms of tu, at different periods or in different fields of inquiry. This confirmed the close association between tu and zi ڗ, their religious or intellectual signification as in the case, for example, of talismans and diagrams, or the utilitarian value of this kind of image in printed books.
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bums (huapu ᢜ ) or titles of fully illustrated tales and plays (quanxiang ٤ቝ/ઌ). In the case of anthologies of instructive anecdotes or exemplary bibliographies, the images are very similar in style, quality, arrangement, etc. to some coeval illustrations of tales, plays, etc. Meanwhile, they are defined as tu rather than xiang or hua in this anthology (Figs. 1d, 1e) and also in numerous illustrated editions of Lienü zhuan ٨Ֆႚ:3 wood-cuts illustrating a story, showing artistic merit, 4 with aesthetic pretensions and ornamental value are still considered tu, thanks to the pedagogical and moralistic meaning of the text, which charges the figurative representation with a particular functional value. Concerning the two illustrated Xixiang ji editions, late 15th century detail (Fig. 1a) gives evidence of the attention addressed to the natural world in Chinese illustrations, even in works where the subject of the representation does not necessarily require a landscape. The other details (Figs. 1b, 1c) are clear proof of the level of technical achievement of blockcarvers and print-makers in the large towns of the Jiangnan area circa 1600 AD. Moreover, Fig. 1a comes from a celebrated edition with pictures following each other above the text (shangtu xiawen ՂቹՀ֮): in this format one single image can be spread along many pages. Otherwise, when a double page illustration is visible in full at once—as for the Xixiang ji represented by details of Figs. 1b, 1c—the image has been printed on two half pages, made consecutive after binding. In both cases, the “creators” of such de luxe editions probably planned the association of drawings and texts, the division of an image and the arrangement of its parts on the wood-blocks. Before the widespread distribution of their images of the famous play5 ———
3 The biographical anthology Histories of Women is cited as including poems and images (Lienü zhuan song tu ٨Ֆႚቈቹ) in Hanshu Yiwenzhi, juan 30 (1962, vol. 6: 1727). Tu are discussed in prefaces included in illustrated editions, especially those which include illustrations attributed to the painter Gu Kaizhi ჱհ (344–406 ca.). However, the title of an enlarged version of the anthology printed by a commercial book-shop in Nanjing in 1587 includes the characters quanxiang to announce that the edition is “completely illustrated”. 4 The illustrations of Yangzheng tujie are attributed to the painter Ding Yunpeng ԭႆᣛ (1547–1628). 5 Xixiang ji was already well-known to most of the buyers of these printed items. Indeed, on the one hand, the multiple series of illustrations contributed to a wider distribution of the play and, on the other, the informative role of single prints was reduced. They were not used to help understanding of a new subject, but to confirm an already well-known literary theme and visual representation, adding well-known and “reassuring” elements to certain innovations, which could be attractive for the target buyers.
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as printed copies, people were obliged to think about these wood-cuts6 and to work out the best way to translate visual representations from one medium to another, with an efficacious graphic “language”. Even if there is no proof, it seems pertinent to imagine that illustrators were obliged to carry out practical trials, for example to obtain the right association of colours in prints at the end of the Ming dynasty (Col.Pl. XV). They not only printed in colours using one single block, the same block already used for black and white prints—as in the case of Chengshi moyuan ࿓ּᕠ (Col.Pl. XV.1), an album of ink design models printed in South Anhui in the wanli period—but they also developed an extremely laborious technique for coloured prints using several wood-blocks.7 They printed illustrations or texts using blocks with line drawing (respectively Col.Pl. XV.2 and Col.Pl. XV.3). For images, they also used stippling (Col.Pl. XV.4) and flat coloured surfaces. Thanks to this last method, Hu Zhengyan ߢإbecame one of the most famous publishers of ancient China. In his Shizhuzhai shuhua pu Լ ێស ᢜ (1619–1633, Col.Pl. XV.5), he used graduations of colour, without contours, which produced efficacious painting effects. In another of his albums showing decorations for writing paper or poem paper (the Shizhuzhai jianpu Լێសጧᢜ, 1644–1645), there are also admirable uncoloured and embossed designs (gonghua क़). The books from which these details (Col.Pl. XV) are taken are all famous and beautiful: 8 one of them (Col.Pl. XV.5) is directly concerned with painting, the others have all been influenced by this art and show literati ambitions. They are often presented as ———
6 On western engraving as a form of artistic expression implying projects and considerations, see Rodari (1996: 11). 7 Descriptions of the multicolour printing process (taoban ठ and douban 塐ࣨ, assembled blocks) are numerous: see for example Feng Pengsheng (1999: 50, 133, “modern printing method”), or Tsien (1985: 277–280). “Multicolour wood-block printing was produced by a set of separate blocks, each of which was registered in position and printed in succession…The number of blocks in a set varies from few to several dozen or more, depending upon the variety of colours and tones printed” (ibid: 277). 8 The details are: Col.Pl. XV.1, Chengshi moyuan and Col.Pl. XV.2, Luoxuan biangu jianpu ᧠ನ᧢ײጧᢜ (1626), see Feng Pengsheng (1999: fig. 158 and 253); Col.Pl. XV.4, Hushan shenggai ྋ՞ᄗ printed between 1620–1640 (the only existing copy is in Paris), and Col.Pl. XV.3, a detail of a multicolour page from an annotated Chuci ᄑ edition (kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale of France), both are reproduced in Cohen and Monnet (1992: 149, 152–153); Col.Pl. XV.5, Shizhu zhai shuhua pu, see Luo Shubao and Zhongguo yinshua bowuguan (1998: 83); Col.Pl. XV.6, album of Xixiang ji, kept in Köln, reproduced by Dittrich ed. (1977).
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masterpieces which, of course, cannot be numerous. Indeed they are rare examples, the “exceptions”—perhaps we should say the “accidents”—in an output of wood-cuts which were often less carefully produced and nearly always in black and white. In China (as in the West) the simple traditional technique of woodcutting requires blocks of hard wood, often the wood of fruit trees, for example pear. 9 According to the Chinese tradition, the (often rectangular) wood-blocks are soaked in water over a period of days, or, to save time, boiled, left to dry, spread with vegetable oil and polished. Once it is ready, the block is spread with rice paste, and a fine sheet of paper bearing the text or/and design is laid on it, written side down. When the paste has dried, the upper paper layer is rubbed off and the mirror image or the text looks as if it were inscribed directly on the wood. The block is then ready to be cut with different kind of tools: cutting knifes, gouges and double-edged chisels.10 This description is not very different from some descriptions of European woodcut methods, 11 even if some differences do exist between the two traditions. In Europe the thickness of the wood was often determined by the simultaneous use of blocks and movable type, and the drawings, sometimes by well-known artists, could also be directly traced onto the wood-blocks (for the so-called ‘facsimile’ cuts). Moreover, even if the two terms are often indiscriminately employed, wood-cutting should not be confused with Western, more recent wood-engraving. At the beginning of the printing era, Chinese and Europeans both used blocks of wood cut with the grain, and then worked on these straight wood grain surfaces using knives and gouges. But in Europe, “in the course of the first half of the sixteenth century [...] informational pressure on the wood-cut illustration [...] became notable. [...] By the 1550s the wood-cut had reached the limit of minuteness of work beyond which it could not go so long as there was no change in the techniques of paper-making and inking the blocks.”12 Metal plates were soon preferred for engraving and etching, even if they wore out faster than wood-blocks and their printing process was quite expen———
9 In ancient Italian descriptions, woods such as pear, cherry, citrus and boxwood are listed; see Gariazzo (s.d.: 228). The Chinese particularly liked to use pear (li ර), but also jujube (zao འ), catalpa (zi ඬ), ginkgo (yinxing Ꭼ)ޖ, boxwood (huangyang ႓ᄘ), etc. See Tsien, 1985: 196. 10 Ibid: 196–197. The operation is repeated on the other side of the block, so each block can be used to print 2 leafs (generally 4 pages). On printing techniques see also the same author’s “Technical Aspects of Chinese Printing”, in Edgren (1984: 16–25). 11 Gariazzo, s.d.: 229–230. 12 Ivins 1992: 47.
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sive. This does not mean that wood-cuts disappeared altogether (they were still used for chapbooks and prints), but that these “crude” prints were excluded from ambitious editorial programs for more than two centuries. Finally Europeans come back to wood-blocks and, since then, the blocks have been cut across the grain13 and engraved with tools for metal-engraving. Wood-engraving could produce finer and closer lines than before, and these blocks could yield a very great number of prints. Indeed during the nineteenth century this technique became the most widespread for illustrated and cheap Western publications, 14 it was no longer similar to the Chinese wood-cut method. Even if specialists have turned their attention more often to woodcutting and blockcarvers (some of them being well-known artisans in their time), the importance of accuracy for obtaining a good print should not to be forgotten. Some obvious differences exist between Chinese and European printing methods, because printing presses were not used in Eastern countries.15 For traditional black and white prints, the Chinese use round brushes to ink the wood-block, lay a sheet of paper on it and brush the upper side with a rubbing pad. Good quality paper is smooth, very soft and thin. In the traditional papermaking mould, the strips of the screen leave light traces on paper. These marks, that almost always appear horizontally marked on each sheet, are of little consequence to the quality of the prints.16 Meanwhile, the more the relief lines on the wood-block are complex, numerous and close to each other, the more difficult it is to achieve regular distribution of the ink on the block. The consequence can be overcharged dark lines or sections that are too light on the printed paper. Lastly, it is indispensable to apply uniform pressure to obtain good prints. The same kind of problems also existed for printing Western ———
13 This invention is attributed to the Englishman Thomas Bewick, in the 1770s. Boxwood was preferred for these engravings (Gariazzo, s.d.: 235) and blocks could be composed of hard small pieces assembled like a mosaic; see Salomon (1986: 23). 14 Ivins 1992: 106–108, 175. 15 In fact, it seems that most primitive European wood-cuts were rubbings from wood-blocks and probably the earliest engravings were also printed by some method of rubbing or burnishing (ibid: 24–26). 16 When the marks of a European traditional paper (thicker than Chinese) are larger than the lines cut on the wood-block, the tops of the marks on relief take more ink than the furrows: the consequence is parallel stripes all over the print surface corresponding to the paper texture. To avoid this problem, in the eighteenth century T. Bewick (see note n. 13) used soft “Chinese paper” to print his engraved blocks.
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wood-blocks which, until two centuries ago, were inked using large stuffed balls (and not using rollers). Editors and authors seem to have been conscious of the difficulty and importance of printing methods: in 1542, when the cut wood-blocks of De humani corporis fabrica were sent from Italy to Basel to be printed, Andreas Vesalius (1514– 1564) wrote a letter urging the editor to not damage the blocks, to use good paper and to obtain visible detail even in the darkest sections of the plates.17 Concerning this monumental work, Western specialists call attention to its “modern” way of spreading information about the human body, using text and images together, reproduced in great numbers by printing. More generally, fascination for dissection studies and the passion for the engraving of blocks have often been associated in Europe, and this relationship is shown clearly by other black and white illustrations, or by later colour prints.18 Botany is another descriptive science where the first printed distribution in Europe produced many wood-cut illustrations, which are very different in technical quality and information value. Otto von Brunfels (1464–1535) issued the Herbarum vivae eicones (Strassburg, 1530–1536) with widely appreciated wood-cuts by Hans Weiditz, that provide an extremely lifelike “portrait” of particular plants. A few years later Leonard Fuchs (1501–1566) brought “the botanical textbook—as we would recognise it—into existence,”19 thanks to his De Stirpium Historia (Basel, 1542). The illustrations include linear outlines, botanical detail and hand coloured surfaces. Unlike Brunfels’ work, this book offers schematic representations of generic forms, excluding shading and specific characteristics of individuals. It is not necessary to be a specialist to notice the differences between these two series of images and the careless wood-cuts of Pseudo-Apuleius (ca. 1480), or those of the English Grete Herbal (1526), that are the result of many years of successive copies of the handsome images printed at Mainz in 1485 for the Gart der Gesundheit.20 Obviously, this last problem—the distortion of visual representa———
17 Letter written by Vesalius to the printer Johannes Oporinus in summer 1542. The book was published in Basel during the following year. See Muraro and Rosand 1976: 123. 18 Rodari (1996: 12 and following pages). See also infra, Col.Pl. XVI.1 and note n. 47. 19 To obtain such an important result L. Fuchs used the drawings of Albert Mayer, copied on blocks by Heinrich Fullmaurer and cut by Hans Rudolph Speckle. See Ford 1992: 91. 20 Ibid: 88–93; Ivins 1992: 33–46. The Pseudo-Apuleius reproduces the illustrations of a 9th century manuscript.
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tion by copies that become more and more distant from the original pattern—is common also in ancient Chinese illustrated books. Catalogues of objects, for example precious objects for collectors, are publications where carefully produced illustrations can be more clear and more helpful than long and complicated descriptions. Books of this kind use reproductions (prints in the past and photos in modern times) as an informational element. In the case of antiquities, works such as Kaogu tu ײەቹ or Xuanhe bogu tu ࡉ໑ײቹ have often been published from the Song (960–1279) dynasty to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). In this case, reprints have often been made by using newly cut blocks. This may be motivated by editorial programmes and choices, but it is also simply decided by the life span of blocks, which may be lost, worn out or damaged, for example by being kept in a place unsuitable for wood. The illustrations of the catalogues of antiquities, as has already been pointed out,21 are not wood-cuts which reproduce pictures drawn from observation of the original ancient bronzes, but they are new illustrations which copy older ones. In this case, distortion is inevitable. In other catalogues, it should also be noted that a single motif may be used many times: sometimes it appears on different pages of a single book to illustrate various items,22 sometimes it is used to represent the same objet in various books concerning a common subject, as in the case of some ink designs of Chengshi moyuan and his contemporary Fangshi mopu ֱּᕠᢜ, another catalogue published in Huizhou ᚧ ڠat the end of the Ming dynasty. Finally, the same drawing, perhaps slightly modified, can be distributed in various works of a different nature,23 because of the process of copy, reproduction and falsifying, typical of the printing process. A new edition of an already published work can be made as similar as possible to the original. But, on the other hand, a publisher can decide to print a book with corrections and appendices, new critical apparatus and, perhaps, a rich set of new illustrations. This choice can be motivated by the high ambitions and active engagement of the amateur-publishers or by the laws of the book market, urging private ———
21 See for example Poor (1965: 39) and Rawson (1992: 78–79). 22 The use of the same design, and even of the same wood-block, for different
illustrations is a fairly frequent procedure in ancient printed illustrated books. In Europe, for example, see the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, where a single wood-cut depicts different towns; see Eisenstein (1991: 81). This practice is continued in later books, in the East and in the West, especially for low cost publications. 23 Bussotti 1998: 128–129.
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commercial book-shops to renew their titles and to be ahead of their competitors. For example the Bencao gangmu ء౻ጼ ؾby Li Shizhen ޕழੴ (1518–1593) was first published in Jinling ८ສ in 1596 with very crude wood-cuts; forty-four years later it was published in Hangzhou with better illustrations: 24 this case seems typical of the private publishing at the end of the Ming dynasty, concerning not only useful works such as materia medica, but also literary illustrated books for leisure. The multiplication of fine illustrated editions, the use of new or renewed images to publish a book twice or more in a few years and the progressively greater influence of painting on the graphic arts are all well-known phenomena during the fifty years preceding the Manchu invasion. Other botanical prints of the same period are valued for their realism and representation of details (Fig. 2a). 25 Looking back on the rich and varied history of bencao ء౻ illustration,26 the finest prints (Fig. 2b) are in a treatise on wild food plants to eat during emergencies,27 whose 1525 edition is coeval with the European herbals quoted before. Other books show whole plants or branches with fruit, sometimes on the same page (Fig. 2c), as in the case of the oldest Chongxiu zhenghe jingshi zhenglei beiyong bencao ૹଥਙࡉᆖᢞᣊໂءش ౻ by Zhang Cunhui ്ژ༡, printed in Pingyang ؓၺ in 1249.28 This ancient surviving original publication did not use a regular and ———
24 Métailié, “Representation of plants: engravings and paintings”, From Image to Action, Paris, 3–5 September 2001, and this volume, pp. 487ff. 25 The Bencao yuanshi ء౻ࡨ (1612) by Li Zhongli ޕխم, is said to be the first botanical book representing particular parts of plants as well as the whole (see Needham et.al: 1986, 323, and fig. 67: pipa ࣣ, Eriobotrya japonica), even if not in a systematic way. For a presentation of this book, see Haudricourt and Métailié (1994: especially 396–400). 26 Of the two descriptive natural sciences—botany and anatomy—important in European wood-cut illustrated books, botany had occupied a very important place in Chinese illustrations since the Song dynasty (960–1279); see Needham et al. (1986: 278–355) and Métailié, this volume. 27 See the example of the pot marigold (Calendula sp., jinzhaner hua ८ᅨࠝဎ, Fig. 2b) with a half leaf bent down (a life-like “portrait” of a real plant or a design limited by the frame of the page?) in the 1525 edition of Zhu Xiao (1360–1425), Jiuhuang bencao (1959, vol. 1: 44a). 28 The 1249 book is counted among the new editions produced since the Jingshi zhenglei beiji bencao ᆖᢞᣊໂ৺ء౻ by Tang Shenwei ାშპ, first published around 1080–1090. The details of Fig. 2 are from the facsimile edition (1975) in juan 13: 11, Fig. 2c, binglang ឳᄏʳ(Areca catechu L.); juan 10: 4, Fig. 2d, [chuan]wutou [ ՟]ᙰ (Aconitum carmichaeli Debx.); juan 4: 12, Fig. 2e; juan 30: 19, Fig. 2f, Taizhou tianshou gen ֚ڠኂҏҞҗ; juan 23: 13, Fig. 2g, jishi फ़ኔ (ling ဏ, Trapa bispinosa Rox.); juan 9: 16, Fig. 2h, see note n. 30. See also Jiangsu xinyi xueyuan ed. (1977).
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repetitive—and so standardised and “economic”—pagination, and it presents a lot of images of different size, arranged in different ways with the text, changing from page to page, with a kind of freedom that sometimes suggests hand illustrated scrolls to the observer who draws back from the printed page frame (the lines of the frame break the continuity of pictures and words, and separate illustrations of different kinds). I shall not dwell here on the aesthetic and scientific merit of this illustrated work (Fig. 2d), or on the well-known scenes representing salt extraction, where details such as that of a recalcitrant donkey (Fig. 2e) escape from the informative function and give an illustrative and anecdotal dimension to the image. If one considers that efficacious scientific illustrations should represent generalised or theoretical generic forms, 29 some of these botanical illustrations are good and others are bad; such a judgement can apply not only between separate works, but even between one page and another in the same book. The “scientific” quality of the illustrations depends not only on the technical ability of the blockcarvers, but also on the ability of the craftsmen, most likely (a team of) specialists, who trace the strokes that are suitable for cutting. The mistakes to be avoided include not only distortion of the model introduced during copying (as already mentioned in catalogues of antiquities), but also the rationalisation that, even unconsciously, adjusts natural forms to become regular (Fig. 2f) and symmetrical shapes, as on the decorative water-chestnut shown in Fig. 2g, and the blockcarvers’ conventional practices or the use of drawing stylised patterns, sometimes connected with pictorial tradition (Fig. 2h).30 From the utilitarian and didactic point of view, we should not underestimate the efficacity of these black and white botanical illustrations compared to pictorial prints (as those of Shizhu zhai shuhua pu): good graphic representations (Figs. 2b, 2d) can give more selective information about plants than other images that may better suggest a sense of life. ———
29 Ivins (1992: 40–44): see the case of De Stirpium Historia (1542) quoted above. 30 This kind of triangular foliage or lobate conventional leaf is impossible to iden-
tify. They were already used in Song paintings as an archaistic motif Glum (1982: 29, 30). In the detail in Fig. 2h, we can see foliage used in the representation of the Guangzhou Ferula assafoetida L. (Guangzhou awei ᐖ ॳ ڠᠿ ). A very similar design is used to illustrate the leaves of the Populus davidiana Dode (baiyang ػᄘ): see the facsimile edition (1975, juan 14: 20b). These kinds of motifs are omnipresent in later printed illustrations where conventional landscapes became the environment for figurative scenes.
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Fig. 2b
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Fig. 2d
Fig. 2c
Fig. 2e
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Fig. 2h
Most of the Chinese illustrated books dating from around 1600 quoted here mention not only the name of the publisher, but also the names of the blockcarvers and, sometimes, those of the illustrators and painters. 31 If the fake signatures introduced by unscrupulous publishers are excluded, the painters are not very numerous. They did not cut blocks.32 They are mostly mentioned as authors of creative prints, such as landscapes or figurative images inspired from literature, even if some of them also participated in reproductions and informative works such as the catalogues of inks and antiquities by Ding Yunpeng quoted above. Some wood-cuts bear the signatures of draughtsmen who are remembered exclusively for their graphic production, who can be considered as illustrators. As matter of fact, ———
31 In fact, the names of well-known painters and illustrators can be found in earlier works, but at the end of the Ming dynasty they were particularly involved in printed production. Apart from Ding Yunpeng, there is also Chen Hongshou ຫੋፅ (1598–1652), Xiao Yuncong ᘕႆൕ (1596–1673), Wu Tingyu ݪܦ壅, Wang Geng ޫౙ, etc. See Bussotti 2001: 259–265. 32 In Imperial China, according to the information at hand, artists did not produce wood-cuts by themselves. In the West this practice is known, but in reality blocks were more often cut by professional artisans.
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this special category is rather difficult to define, because both minor painters and blockcarvers specialising in illustration could have drawn designs for reproduction. But sometimes a special role is evident, for example in portraits of the heroes of plays, figuring in books where the signatures of blockcarvers are included, where it is also mentioned that someone has copied the painting of a famous artist.33 This kind of statement conforms to the old tradition of copying earlier masters’ works. But, as regards the technical methods of printed reproduction, especially when the copyist’s name is also known as the name of a creator of designs for his own wood-cut illustrations,34 we can argue that this person has worked to transform painting into graphic art, choosing the elements to be kept, to be rejected or to be modified according to the new medium and its implements (wood and knives in the place of paper or silk and brushes).35 Illustrators or blockcarvers, whether famous or unknown, had to think how to “translate” hand-made images onto wood-blocks to obtain a large number of similar printed copies of the models. Often blockcarvers were preoccupied with producing linear markings, geometrical or ornamental patterns (Fig. 1b, 1c), or by trying to reproduce different brush strokes, especially to imitate paintings of rocks (Fig. 3a). Obviously, according to the Chinese tradition of painting,36 they did not need to find a solution to transfer shading with a complex systems of lines,37 a problem that occupied European engravers dur———
33 This is the case of another portrait of Yingying from a Wanli edition of the play (see above, note n. 1) including the name of a famous artist Tang Yin ାഫ (1470–1523) as the portrait-painter, and the name of a later painter, Wang Geng, less well-known and active as an illustrator or as a copyist, see Bussotti (2001: 229, 361, 374, fig. 140 and 110). 34 This is the case of Wang Geng (quoted in notes n. 31, 33), who illustrated Zuoyin xiansheng jingding jiejing yipu ݄ឆ٣س壄ࡳ൸உেᢜ and Renjing yangqiu Գᢴၺટ, published by Wang Tingna ޫݪ (1550–1620 ca). 35 Note that specialists of Western scientific illustrations laid stress on the role of Fullmaurer in the success of De Stirpium Historia (see above, note n. 19) explaining that the achievement of this illustrated edition is based on his intervention, seen as a kind of “translation” between the models of the painter and the final works of the blockcarver. Evidently, this kind of comparison must be made with an awareness of the differences between European and Chinese publications, their subjects utilities and target readers. 36 The baimiao ػ༴ painting tradition, using ink linear outline drawings, was especially convenient as a “translation” from its original medium to the cut blocks. 37 But we can observe a few examples of shading in Chinese prints based on Western models, for example to show the volume of pyramids and spheres in some illustrations of Qiqi tushuo ࡛ᕴቹᎅ by Wang Zheng ׆ᐛ in a late edition of 1830 kept in the library of Institute for the History of Natural Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The first edition of Qiqi tushuo was published in the Chongzhen period,
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ing the first half of the XVIth century. Neither did they use different reticulates to try to express different colours in monochrome prints. Sometimes they used plain surfaces of wood-block inked in black to give the idea of a coloured surface, in the same way that they would be used to imitate monochrome ink painting: we can see these two cases (Fig. 3b, 3c) in albums reproducing paintings printed in Hangzhou at the end of Ming dynasty. 38 The same technique is used in some botanical descriptions: wood-block surfaces with lines cut in depth, that produce white lines on a dark background at printing, are used not only to show sections of the text (Fig. 3e), but also to represent parts of the plants and the veins of their foliage (Fig. 3f).39 This kind of wood-cut was much appreciated by Albrecht von Haller in 1771 who, in his praise of a later edition of Daguan bencao Օᨠء౻, remarked: “Sunt enim, in quibus nervos albos nigro folio sculptor accurate expressit... .”40 If Chinese blockcarvers did not accord much importance to suggesting colours in a black and white production, when they did, the value and density of the colour were not necessary exchanged.41 In an earlier bencao of 1249, black surfaces are only used to represent the skin and fur of certain animals (Fig. 3d), but in later herbals (Fig. 3f) and painting albums (Fig. 3c),42 the black sur——— 1628–1644. The book, including a preface by Wang Zheng dated of year tianqi 7 (1627), was written by Wang Zheng in association with the Jesuit Johann Schreck (Terrentius, Deng Yuhan ᔥ ࠤد1576–1630). See also a recent article on “The Evolution of the Editions of A record of the Best Illustrations and Descriptions of Extraordinary Devices of the Far West and Illustrations and Descriptions of Extraordinary Devices of the Far West” published in The Chinese Journal for the History of Science and Technology by Zhang Baichun et al. (2006). 38 The Tang Jieyuan fang gujin huapu ାᇞցײվᢜ from Qinghui zhai 堚 ᢄស was included in Jiyazhai huapu, completed in Hangzhou during the tianqi period (1621–1627). For the details (Figs. 3a, 3b), (1981: 17a, 21a). 39 The detail of Fig. 3f is from a book published in 1622 in Xin’an ᄅڜ: Bao Shan (1936, juanzhong: 32b). See also Zhu Xiao (1959, vol. 4: 47b), detail of Fig. 3e. 40 See Needham et al. (1986: 296–297, fig. 60). In the opinion of these authors it is not possible to identify the book which von Haller mentions, but according to G. Métailié it is the Herbal of the Daguan era (Daguan bencao). This work, whose complete title is Daguan Jingshi zhenglei beiji bencao, was first published in 1108, based on Tang Shenwei’s bencao; see above, note n. 28. 41 In Europe, engraving on wood or metal to reproduce shadows and colours in black and white necessarily confused the value and density of colours. This system used close-cut lines to represent a dark colour, and that did not permit the representation of a dense bright colour or a dark diluted one. See Pastoureau, 1996: 92. 42 The Gushi huapu by Gu Bing (1983) was printed in Hangzhou around 1603. The detail of Fig. 3c is also reproduced by Feng Pengsheng (1999: fig. 154). See also Chongxiu zhenghe jingshi zhenglei beiyong bencao (1975, juan 16: 7b) for the detail of Fig. 3d.
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faces of leaves can indicate a dense vivid green, and not necessarily a dark colour.
Fig. 3a
Fig. 3b
Fig. 3c
Fig. 3d
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In spite of certain limitations due to the technical medium of woodcutting, a huge quantity and variety of books were illustrated in China. The editorial, and sometimes the artistic, achievements involved in these productions have often been celebrated, especially in the cases of the religious images created during the first centuries after the invention of printing, and the fully illustrated literary works dating from the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries. Where technical and scientific prints are concerned, however, the judgements are often more restrained, at least from the Western point of view. This is obviously the consequence of a (conscious or unconscious) comparison with the role that illustration played in the development of science and technology in the West. For this reason, European printed illustrations have been and still are very often much appreciated: the application of a technical procedure—print—allowed the spread of visual messages—images—repeated exactly, and it was not important if the images (such as numbers, symbols, names and words) were not all, or completely, correct. Printed reproduction offered a larger and larger number of people many examples to juxtapose, compare and confront with each other, and so, through the comparison of printed materials, the original inaccuracy was reduced.43 By recalling these positive propositions about Western printing and prints, it is not my intention to reformulate the question about the possible gap in scientific and technical studies between Europe and China in modern times—too big a question, at least for those who still admit that this kind comparison makes sense. Nor will I try to answer why Chinese printed tu in technical or scientific books more often “illustrate a text” or “evoke a painting or older picture”, than empirically “describe” phenomena, objects or beings.44 We may note in passing that in late imperial China “Art” had long been separated from “arts and crafts”, and that Chinese intellectuals were less inclined to seek manual and empirical experience than were Europeans at the time of the development of printing—when the separation between sciences and art had yet to be formalised. To persist in this vein of analysis, however, we would need to elaborate a much more ambitious reflection on Chinese cultural history than this brief technical sketch allows, if only because—like any kind of printed material—printed tu, whether on sin———
43 Eisenstein 1991: 242–246. 44 But some counterexamples exist, as in the case of herbals like the Bencao
yuanshi (1612) or the Zhiwu mingshi tukao ( ཬ ढ ټኔ ቹ ە, 1848), quoted by Métailié, this volume, p. 491 and pp. 489, 491ff.
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gle sheets or included in books, are evidence of a complex cultural system. As we have shown, it is obvious that technical reasons alone provide too simple an explanation of the different ways in which Chinese prints depicting natural phenomena evolved. If the wood-cut was a good enough medium to permit the flowering of Western printed illustrations (for example in the botanical books already quoted), why should it have been different for Chinese prints? The Oriental black and white wood-cut method is relatively simple, but these monochrome prints still allow representation of the finest details, sometimes with very minute drawings (Figs. 1b, 1c). As explained earlier with reference to the finest illustrated literary publications of the Ming dynasty, images could be cut on different portions of the blocks (whole surface, half, upper part), and they could also be variously arranged with the text in a single work, as in the Chongxiu zhenghe jingshi zhenglei beiyong bencao. Again, technical weaknesses or artisans’ ignorance are not the reasons for the numerous scientific and technical works where illustrations are followed by explanations printed on the same page, a choice determined by graphics and arrangement which, after binding, excludes face to face presentation of image and text: this lay-out reduces the functional value of the tu.45 Finally, as the details of coloured prints testify (see Col.Pl. XV), during the seventeenth century skilful printers—such as Min Qiji ၰ Ꮨ֗ who produced an album of prints where flat surfaces and linear drawings are associated and printed in colour (Col.Pl. XV.6)46—could certainly have produced coloured scientific plates comparable to the coeval European wood-blocks representing human organs (Col.Pl. XVI.1),47 but they did not do so. During the next century, thanks to ———
45 In this case we can also find counterexamples, such as a few pages in chapter 3 of Sancai tuhui Կթቹᄎ (1609); see Wang Qi and Wang Siyi (1988, vol. 1: 63–65). But in general, publishers seem to have been less committed to facilitating an instructive reading of the dual informative message than to allowing the aesthetic contemplation of a double page illustration. In fact, in a traditional book bound with wrapped-back binding (baobeizhuang ץહᇘ) or thread binding (xianzhuang ᒵᇘ), they would have had to follow the same procedure to make either both halves of a double page illustration, or a single page illustration followed by explanatory text, visible at the same time (see also above, presentation of Xixiang ji, Figs. 1b and 1c). 46 During the chongzhen period, Min Qiji produced a wonderful album on Xixiang ji (Col.Pl. XV.6). The only known surviving copy is kept in Köln; see above, note n. 8. 47 For these anatomical illustrations and older examples of European multi-block wood-cuts, see Préaud (1996: 33–37, especially fig. 31). This print (Col.Pl. XVI.1) represents the human liver. Three blocks were used: for light red, dark red and black.
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technical development, Western anatomical representations were heavily dependent on coloured etchings and metal engravings, just as two centuries before they had depended on black and white woodcuts. Chinese printing tradition did not lead to a comparable engagement with the sciences in general or with anatomy in particular, 48 and furthermore restricted application of colours in representation of the human body. The skilful private book-printers (and sellers) of Jiangnan at the end of the Ming dynasty avoided colouring even in those images where the intrinsic potential of colour for representing human flesh could be exploited, as for example in illustrated erotic literature.49 However, Chinese publishers understood perfectly the potential of using colours to classify and distinguish50 and they exploited it in typically literati ways, for example for annotated editions with commentary apparatus (Col.Pl. XV.3). Finally, we must remember that despite the antiquity of the Chinese tradition of books and printing, no description of woodblockcarving was written until quite recently,51 and printers did not transmit their techniques using illustrated publications. In fact images showing printing activities are quite rare52 and often include “staged” ——— It is included, with other three illustrations, in a book by G. Aselli, printed in Milan, Italy, in 1627. 48 Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), the most famous painter-scientist, dissected numerous corpses and transmitted his anatomical knowledge by images that were more efficacious for learning than written description or isolated experiments; see Recupero (1966: 537–539). The important role of anatomy in European representation transcended the bounds of scientific illustration. See the naked bodies in a martial arts text such as the Trattato di Scientia d’arme con un Dialogo di filosofia di Camillo Agrippa Milanese (1553), so completely different from the welldressed men represented in the tu of Gengyu shengji ౙ塒ໍ(!ݾ1621), which are in fact very similar to the figures in illustrations of literary works of the same period, see Bussotti (2001: 330, fig. 33 and 34). In fact Western representations are “obsessed with the human figure”, in the judgement of Cahill (1993: 2). 49 In his description of erotic prints, Robert H. van Gulik (1951: 167, 175–201) explains the fact that these prints do not present coloured surfaces but linear coloured drawings as a method to avoid vulgarity. In general, linear drawings are more abstract; the result is less realistic, but they assist in a better reading of the individual elements of the design. 50 On colorimetric analysis and pedagogic use of colour for visual description and classification in Europe, see Pastoureau (1996: 92). 51 See Lu Qian (1959, vol. 4: 628–636) and Drège (1997: 85–93). On the movable wooden type produced at the palace Wuying dian ࣳᄥ, we have the Qing dynasty description by Jin Jian ८១ (d. 1794), see Tsien (1985: 209). 52 See the 18th century images in the work of Jin Jian (cited in the previous note) or a wood-cut from an undated edition of Yinzhi wen tushuo ອ㕣֮ቹᎅ, all reproduced by Tsien (1985: fig. 1143, 1234) and Luo Shubao (1998: 56, 112). In the West, the first illustrated accounts of crafts and art are coeval with the spread of printing,
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figures. Indeed Chinese technological illustrations in general lack precision in the visual description of objects or proceedings and offer an outline that would be insufficient for formative training.53 Although their scientific and technical wood-cuts seldom meet Western standards, China is incontestably the most ancient printing culture in the world, and xylography proved a most effective procedure for printing countless books and single prints of every kind and subject, remaining in use for over a millennium, through till modern times. 54 As suggested in other articles in this volume, functional illustrations were almost invariably associated with corresponding texts, and presented in woodblock publications—differing in print quality, period, place and conditions of publication (commercial book-shops, bibliophiles, private publishers or official departments), and in their authors, target readers and use. This variety in intention, execution and distribution requires us to study functional illustrations case by case. Such images usually “describe the world” in monochrome prints with linear drawing, unconcerned with perspective, proportions and the mathematical laws which are at the base of Western realistic representations, 55 because “ resemblance to the object was not the goal”. 56 Obviously this fact cannot imply any kind of ——— and very old wood-cuts show a printing press (Dance of Death, Lyons, 1499, reproduced by Ivins 1992: 26). An illustrated description of the tools and techniques of etching and engraving was published by A. Bosse in 1645, and a type case and typesetting desk are illustrated in J. Moxon, Mechanick Exercices...Applied to the Art of Printing, of 1683. In the same way, papermaking is represented in a German woodcut of third quarter of the 17th century, while descriptions of paper and ink production are included in late Ming dynasty illustrated editions (Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ and Mopu ᕠᢜ), which is a very late editorial choice if compared with the long history of Chinese paper and ink. 53 On this subject, see Golas (2001: 43–58). 54 Bussotti 2001: 374–391. 55 Early illustrated printed books, such as De Artificiali P[er]spectiva by Johannes Peregrinus (1435 ?–1523), first printed at Toul in 1505 and reprinted 8 times in France and Germany between 1505 and 1535 (see Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers 2002: 246, n°57), testify to an interest in these subjects that was coeval with the spread of technical and scientific wood-cuts and had an influence on illustration. Western perspective is not the subject of this brief presentation, but we must not forget the extent to which perspective influenced artistic and scientific illustration: it was used not only in painting but also in all plane representations for science and techniques, such as astronomy, architecture, geography, etc. On the other hand, botany and anatomy benefited from the efforts of people who were looking at the world and studying different ways to represent it in a manner to match the human vision of it. 56 See Cahill (1993: 72 and other passages, especially in ch. 1 and 3): Cahill discusses various western influences on Chinese painting during the seventeenth cen-
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judgement, for illustrative wood-cuts any more than for painting. It did not prevent Chinese illustrations being numerous and various, of very high quality and often very efficacious [Fig. 2a/e, Fig. 3f], and not only from the artistic point of view. After all, no-one would dare to cast doubt on the visual efficiency of the image of the rhinoceros by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), in which Western interests and visual language are perfectly matched. The drawing is still appreciated not only as a masterpiece of graphic art but also as a descriptive zoological illustration. Even though the master never saw the animal his image was spread all over the world by a great number of prints (Col.Pl. XVI.2), sometimes not conforming very closely to the model.57 But the vivid and realistic representation did not prevent the visual message being scientifically wrong—Dürer drew the animal with one horn too many, and other Western prints could prove equally useless for practical application.58
REFERENCES BAO Shan 入ቅ. 1936 (1st ed. 1622). Yecai bolu 䞢㦰म䣘. In: Sibu congkan sanbian. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 3 vols. BUSSOTTI, Michela. 2001. “L’édition traditionnelle chinoise et l’introduction des techniques occidentales (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles).” In: Les mutations du livre et de l’édition du XVIIIe siècle à l’an 2000, ed. Jacques Michon and Jean-Yves Mollier. Québec: Presses de l’université Laval/Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 374–391. ——. 2001. Gravures de Hui. Paris: EFEO. ——. 1998. “Livres d’encres. À propos de deux albums illustrés et d’autres ouvrages sur les encres chinoises de la fin du XVIe siècle.” Nouvelle Revue du XVIe siècle 16.1: 117–142. CAHILL, James. 1993. The Compelling Image. Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting. Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. [repr. 1982]. COHEN, Monique and MONNET, Nathalie. 1992. Impressions de Chine. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale.
——— tury, and the adaptation of these foreign elements to the different interests and values of Chinese pictorial representation of reality. 57 The 1515 drawing was reproduced using a wood-cut by William Jannsen after 1620 (Col.Pl. XVI.2); see Ford 1992: 56, 69–71. The fact that A. Dürer created artistic works and did not invent “scientific illustration” (see Haudricourt and Métailié 1994: 411–412, quoting the ideas of Toresella and Battini 1988: 64–78), did not prevent the images which he made from being copied in different reproductions and printed in publications of different nature right up to the present. 58 Ford (1992: 149, a figure from Armonia Astronomica & Geometrica, 1622), presents a wood-cut representing an armillary sphere, explaining that this kind of illustration can be used as functional guide for a reader, but it is not accurate enough to construct a copy from this model.
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CONSERVATOIRE NATIONAL DES ARTS ET MÉTIERS (Paris). 2002. Les [trois] révolutions du livre. [Catalogue de l’exposition du Musée des Arts et Métiers]. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. DITTRICH, Edith, ed. 1977. Das Westzimmer. Hsi-hsiang chi Chinesische Farbholzschnitte von Min Ch’i-chi, 1640. Köln: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst der Stadt. DRÈGE, Jean-Pierre. 1997. “Poirier et jujubier: la technique de la xylographie en Chine.” In: Le livre et l’historien. Etudes offertes en l’honneur du professeur Henri-Jean Martin, eds. F. Barbier, A. Parent-Charon, F. Dupuigrenet Desroussilles et al. Paris – Genève: E.P.H.E. and Droz, pp. 85–93. EISENSTEIN, Elizabeth L. 1991. La révolution de l’imprimé dans l’Europe des premiers temps modernes. Paris: Editions de la Découverte. FENG Pengsheng ႑ᣛس. 1999. Zhongguo muban shuiyin gaishuo խഏֵֽࣨٱᄗ ᎅ. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. FORD, Brian J. 1992. Images of Science, A History of Scientific Illustration. London: The British Library. GARIAZZO, Pier Antonio. La stampa incisa. S.d. Torino-Genova: S. Lattes & C. Editori. GLUM, Peter. 1982. “The Evolution in the Representation of the Foliage of Deciduous Trees in Chinese Painting from the Tang through the Yuan.” Arts Asiatiques 37: 28–37. GOLAS, Peter. 2001. “Technological Illustration in China: A Post-Needham Perspective.” In: Proceedings of XXth International Congress of History of Science. Turnhout: Brepols uitegevers, pp. 43–58. GU Bing 主⚇. 1983. Gushi huapu 主⇣⬿䄰 (ca. 1603), facs. repr., Beijing, Wenwu chubanshe. GULIK, Robert H. van. 1951. Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period, with an Essay on Chinese Sex Life from the Han to the Ch’ing Dynasty, BC 206 AD 1644. Tokyo: privately published. Hanshu Yiwenzhi, juan 30, ዧᢌ֮ݳ. 1962. Beijing, Zhonghua shuju, vol. 6. HAUDRICOURT, André-Georges, and Georges MÉTAILIÉ. 1994. “De l’illustration botanique en Chine.” Etudes Chinoises 13.1–2: 381–416. IVINS, William M. 1992. Prints and Visual Communication. Cambridge (Mass.) and London: The MIT Press. Jiyazhai huapu 䲚䲙唟⬿䄰. 1981 (ca. 1621–1627), facs. repr. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe. JIANGSU XINYI XUEYUAN ∳㯛ᮄ䝿ᅌ䰶, ed. 1977. Zhongyao da cidian Ё㮹䖁. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2 vols. LU Qian ⲻࠡ. ҏShulin biehua ᵫ߹䁅. 1959. In: Zhongguo xiandai chuban shiliao Ё⧒ҷߎ⠜᭭, ed. Zhang Jinglu ᔉ䴰ᓀ. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, vol. 4: 628–636. LUO Shubao 㕙ᇊ and ZHONGGUO YINSHUA BOWUGUAN Ёॄࠋम⠽仼. 1998. Zhongguo gudai yinshua shi tuce Ё স ҷ ॄ ࠋ ೪ ݞ. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe/Hong Kong: Xianggang chengshi daxue chubanshe. MURARO, Michelangelo, and David ROSAND. 1976. Tiziano e la silografia veneziana del cinquecento. Venezia: Neri Pozza Editore. POOR, Robert. 1965. “Notes on the Song Dynasty Archaeological Catalogues.” Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America 19: 33–44. PRÉAUD, Maxime. 1996. “Du coloriage à l’impression en couleurs.” In: Anatomie de la couleur. L’invention de l’estampe en couleurs, ed. Florian Rodari. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France/Lausanne: Musée Olympique: 18–49.
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RAWSON, Jessica. 1992. “Jades and Bronzes for Ritual: The Afterlife of Jades and Bronzes.” In: The British Museum Book of Chinese Art. London: British Museum Press, pp. 78–79. RECUPERO, Jacopo, ed. 1966. Leonardo. Scritti. Roma: Editrice di Cultura. RODARi, Florian, ed. 1996. Anatomie de la couleur. L’invention de l’estampe en couleurs. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France/Lausanne: Musée Olympique. SALOMON, Ferdinando. 1986. Il conoscitore di stampe. Torino: Umberto Allemandi & C. [repr. in 1999]. TANG Shenwei ᜢᖂ. 1975 (1st ed. ca. 1080–1090). Chongxiu zhenghe jingshi zhenglei beiyong bencao 䞡ׂᬓ㍧䄝串⫼٭ᴀ㤝. facs. repr. of 1249 ed. Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe. TORESELLA, Sergio, and Marisa BATTINI. 1988. “Gli erbari a impressione e l’origine del disegno scientifico.” Le Scienze 239: 64–78. TSIEN Tsuen-Hsuin. 1984. “Technical Aspects of Chinese Printing.” In: Chinese Rare Books in American Collections, ed. Soren Edgren. New York: China Institute on America, China House Gallery, pp. 16–25. ——. 1985. “Paper and Printing (Part 1).” In: Science and Civilisation in China, ed. Joseph Needham. Vol. V. Chemistry and Chemical Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WANG Qi ⥟ഏ and WANG Siyi ⥟ᗱ㕽. 1988 (1st ed. 1609). Sancai tuhui ϝᠡ೪᳗. facs. repr. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe. Xinkan qimiao quanxiang zhushi Xixiang ji ᄅݎ࡛ע٤ઌုᤩ۫༖ಖ. 1954 (1498). Facsimile edition. In: Guben xiqu congkan chuji ءײᚭڴហॣעႃ. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan. Yangzheng tujie 仞ℷ೪㾷. 2000 (ca. 1594). Facs. repr. Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe. Yuanben chuxiang bei Xixiang ji ܗᴀߎⳌ࣫㽓ᒖ㿬. 1927? (ca. 1610). Modern edition s.d. In: Qianqiu jueyan tulu ग⾟㌩䈨೪䣘 in Mao Xihe lunding Xixiang ji wujuan ↯㽓⊇䂪ᅮ㽓ᒖ㿬Ѩो. Songfenshi 䁺㢀ᅸ. ZHANG Baichun ᓴᶣ, TIAN Miao ⬄⏐, LIU Qiang ߬㬋. 2006. “Yuanxi qiqi tushuo luzui yu Xinzhi zhuqi tushuo banben zhi liubian” 䖰㽓༛఼䇈ᔩ᳔Ϣᮄ ࠊ䇌఼䇈⠜ᴀП⌕ব. Zhongguo keji shi zazhi 27.2 (June): 115–137. ZHU Xiao ᴅ. 1959 (1st ed. ca. 1406). Jiuhuang bencao ᬥ㤦ᴀ㤝. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 4 vols.
II. TEXT AND IMAGE IN THE ERA OF PRINT-CULTURE
THE REPRESENTATION OF PLANTS: ENGRAVINGS AND PAINTINGS1 Georges Métailié We may take for granted that Chinese painters of the past were able to represent natural objects accurately from a modern point of view; Song dynasty paintings of plants and animals (Fig. 1) attest to that. Yet figures found in texts on medicinal products (bencao ء౻) of the same period appear to be less precise. For instance, the pictures of the wutong න tree [Chinese parasol, Firmiana simplex (L.) Wight] under the entry tongye ᆺ “leaves of tong trees” in the two still extant Song-period editions (1108 and 1249) of the Zhenglei bencao ᢞᣊء౻ by Tang Shengwei ାშპ are rather approximate and, in particular, do not take into account the very typical fruit (Fig. 2). This can however be considered logical, since in this case the materia medica is the leaf of the tree. Considering this I would say that paintings of plants are generally more precise than the pictures found in technical books like bencao or agricultural texts. The printed pictures of the first edition (1596) of Li Shizhen’s ޕழੴ famous Bencao gangmu ء౻≚( ؾClassification of the materia medica) offer strong supporting evidence for this point of view. The implicit questions that spurred the following reflections on the differences between the representations of plants in paintings and in woodblock engravings in printed books can be formulated as follows: Firstly: Are there technical reasons to explain the fact that paintings of plants are basically different from printed pictures of plants in technical books? Secondly: What is the purpose of pictures in technical texts on plants? One possible answer to the first question, namely that the technique of wood-block printing does not permit very precise images, has to be eliminated at once. A single look at the woodcuts of flowers in the Herbarum Vivae Eicones (1530–1532) by Otto Brunfels (?– 1534) demonstrates the contrary.2 Once we admit the possibility of ——— 1 I would like to thank Francesca Bray for her contribution towards finding les mots justes in English. 2 See for instance the pasque flower, in Blunt and Raphael (?1979: 121) or Arber
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precision in both genres, we see that several other factors lie behind the differences. Paintings in China differ from printed wood-blocks in techniques (paintings use brush and colours); in material context (paintings usually consist of one scroll, often containing several pictures in a row); in purpose (for paintings the purpose is always aesthetic but also symbolic,3 with clichés, like “flowers of the four seasons”, “flowers and fruits”, “vegetables”, “the friends of the cold season”, “the three hermits”, etc.). But perhaps the most significant difference stems from the fact that, within this conventional context, painters seem to have been able to select the plants that they were going to paint from a limited number, at most about two hundred, generally far fewer, all with a symbolic value.4 These plants, most of them ornamentals, could easily be observed directly, very often in gardens. There were also treatises on the painting of plants, in which the most appreciated (including mei ම – Japanese apricot, lan ᥞ – cymbidium orchid, ju ဘ – chrysanthemum, and mudan ߃կ – tree peony) were discussed at length. In the case of technical books things were quite different. For a start the illustrators—whether artists, craftsmen or scholars—had to draw sometimes as many as several hundred plants.5 Since their drawings were going to be used to carve block prints, they had to draw the lines of the parts of the plants very clearly. If plants were associated on a same page, the arrangement followed a rationale linked to the subject of the book and to the inherent classification followed by the author for whom they were working. And finally, many of the plants illustrated in technical works, especially in bencao, grew in the wild, or in far away places, and were known only from the dried parts (leaves, barks, roots, fruits, etc.) that were used as drugs, and from what had previously been written about them. In this case, when the real plants were not at hand, the draughtsmen were often most likely to turn for their principal reference not to “The Book of Nature”, or to plants in a garden, but to earlier pictures or textual information. In all the various editions of the Bencao gangmu, almonds, the fruits of a tree which Li Shizhen calls badanxing ֣ޖ؟, “badan apricot”—badan being a loan-word borrowed to the Persian ——— (1938: 53–57). 3 See de Carle Sowerby 1940: 133. 4 On the meaning of plants in Chinese art, cf. Gyllenswärd (1965), Tse Bartholomew (1980, 1985). 5 The Bencao gangmu (1596) by Li Shizhen, has 1096 names of plants as entries, the Zhiwu mingshi tukao (1848) by Wu Qijun some 1732.
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bƗdƗm6—are represented like those of the apricot tree. In the case of maize (Indian corn) in the Bencao gangmu we find proof of both attitudes. The plant is properly described by Li Shizhen (presumably following “The Book of Nature”), but in the first edition the picture, though obviously drawn following Li Shizhen’s correct description, is wrong.7 All the images of maize in later bencao or agricultural books, like the great imperially sponsored agricultural encyclopaedia Shoushi tongkao ழຏ ەcompiled under the authority of E’ertai ၠዿ and presented to the throne in 1742, were inspired by this first illustration, in which the position of the male inflorescence and one female spike were inverted, a single ear standing on the top of the stalk. In most of the later bencao books this picture was “amended” by the suppression of the tassel, making the representation even worse. Only in 1885 did a new edition of the Bencao gangmu provide a correct image which was almost the same as the one in Wu Qijun’s ࠡܦᛕ Zhiwu mingshi tukao ཬढټኔቹ( ەResearch of images and reality of names of plants) of 1848,8 a work with a new approach to picturing plants, which I discuss further below. We may suppose, however, that such pictures were first and foremost a tool to help the reader recognise the plants that the text was dealing with. The first evidence I shall offer in support of this hypothesis is the structure of these illustrated books. The following examples are drawn from publications of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Bearing in mind the comparison suggested by Zheng Qiao ᔤᖱ (1104e1162),9 who likened the formal relationship between texts and images in a book to that between warp and weft in a textile, we can distinguish two different types of composition: 1/ Books with texts and pictures clearly separated. 1.1 All the pictures placed before the text: Peihua aojue lu ഛक़ ᙕ (ca. 1640), by Sun Zhibo ୪व ;܄Huajing क़ᢴ (1688, secondary edition), by Chen Haozi ຫ∻;10 Ben cao huijian ء౻Ⴊᱪ (1777), by Gu Yuanjiao ցٌ; or after the text: Bencao gangmu (1596) by Li Shizhen. ——— 6 7 8 9
Laufer, 1967: 406. Rudolph 1966: 107. Haudricourt and Métailié 1994, pp. 405, 407. In the essay, Tupu lüe ቹᢜฃ (A brief account of illustrated treatises), juan ࠴ 72 of the Tongzhi ຏ( ݳHistorical collections) in about 1150. 10 This edition, although dated 1688 like the 1st edition (see 1.2), is not identical with the latter, comprising only one quarter of the original illustrations.
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1.2 Pictures of the plants mentioned in a juan ࠴ (chapter) placed at the beginning of the juan, before the text: Bencao gangmu (1603: Jiangxi edition), by Li Shizhen; Bencao huiyan ء౻Ⴊߢ (1624), by Ni Zhumo ଧ ;᠂ڹHuajing (1688, 1st edition), by Chen Haozi. 1.3 Picture of a single plant placed on the first page (right side) of a sheet, with the text about the plant following on the second page (left side of the sheet):11 Sancai tuhui Կթቹ ᢄ (1609), by Wang Qi ݆׆and Wang Siyi ׆৸ᆠ; Zhiwu min shi tu kao (1848), by Wu Qijun; Yecai bolu ມလ໑ᙕ (1622), by Bao Shan ᚁ՞. 1.4 Picture on the second page of a sheet, following the text about the plant which is on the previous page: Jiuhuang bencao එء౻ (1406), by Zhu Xiao ڹ㒺; Yecai bolu (1622), by Bao Shan, in Siku quanshu ٤ (1782). 1.5 Picture of one plant on a page followed, often on the same page, by the text or its beginning: Bencao pinhui jingyao ء ౻ნ壄 (1505), under the editorship of Liu Wentai Ꮵ ֮; Bencao mengquan ء౻፞┱ (1565), by Chen Jiamo ຫቯ᠂; Gujin tushu jicheng ײվቹႃ( ګ1725), compiled by Chen Menglei ຫኄሼ, Jiang Tingxi ᓏݪᙔ and others. 1.6 Picture of one plant on a full page at the end of a small chapter devoted to this plant: Tongyi lu ຏ ᢌ ᙕ (1807: “Shicao xiaoji” ᤩ౻՛ಖ – “Shipeng” ᤩᓒ, 5b), by Cheng Yaotian ࿓䵏ض. 2/ Books with pictures and texts clearly interrelated by association on the same page, or with explicit references in the text to images included in it. 2.1. Every page looks like a framed picture with a drawing and some text. o In the upper half there is a poetic evocation—in no ———
11 In Chinese woodblock printing one wooden block, or printed leaf, corresponds to two pages. In the case described here, illustration and text are both carved side by side onto a single block. However, because the leaf printed from the single block is subsequently folded in two down the middle for binding, when the bound book is opened, the two printed pages which were side by side when the leaf was flat can no longer be seen together; the reader must turn the page to see both picture and text (as in cases 1.3 and 1.4).
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more that eighty characters—of the plant represented in the lower half of the page. On the left side of the picture of the plant two rows of characters give information on when and how to collect the edible part of the plant: Rucao bian ಀ౻ᒳ (1582, printed around 1600), by Zhou Lüjing ࡌᐌ壃. o
A short text beside the picture explains how it illustrates information provided in the text: Tongyi lu (1807: “Jiugu kao” ᒜ“ – ەTu sigu ji” ቹᒜಖ, 3b, 4a, 5a; “Shicao xiaoji” – “Shili” ᤩ㏛, 8a,b; 9a), by Cheng Yaotian.
2.2. The picture of the part of a plant used as materia medica occupies the space of a few columns in a page. Within this framed space, short commentaries above, beside and under the picture give information on the classification and morphology of the materia medica: Bencao yuanshi ء౻ࡨ (1612), by Li Zhongli ޕխم. 2.3. A small picture appears in the text as an illustration of what has just been explained: Tong yi lu (1807: “Shicao xiaoji” – “Muxu” ૐᓔ, 5b), by Cheng Yaotian. From this categorisation we realise that, with the exception of the works in which all the images are put together at the beginning or at the end of a long chapter, or of the whole text (1.1 and 1.2), there is a relationship of proximity between texts and pictures. However, in the great majority of texts, there are no explicit textual references to the pictures, as if their mere presence was enough. Generally each author keeps to the same structural model all through the book. The one exception is Cheng Yaotian (1725-1814), who uses different possibilities depending on what he wants to demonstrate. The best example of long descriptive texts without any reference to the illustrations is the Bencao gangmu, but generally when descriptions coexist with pictures within a text, they are brief or very concise. Considering that generally no reference is made in the texts to the pictures, one may wonder what kind of relationship there actually is between text and image. This is another way of asking our earlier question on the role of illustrations in technical books on plants. Two cases will be analysed to give a tentative answer to the question, the case of the wutong [Firmiana simplex (L.) Wight.; Chinese parasol
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tree] and the case of the lamei ᥣම [Chimonanthus praecox (L.) Link; a Wintersweet].
THE CASE OF THE WUTONG [FIRMIANA SIMPLEX (L.) WIGHT.]; CHINESE PARASOL TREE At first glance the picture of a wutong tree in the first edition (1596) of the Bencao gangmu (juan 35) seems rather crude (Fig. 3). Looking more carefully, we see six ovoid objects, with small circles round the sides, at the end of some of the branches, quite different from the leaves. They may be fruits or flowers. Anyway, for someone who has never seen the tree, it is almost impossible to recognise it using nothing but this picture. Probably Li Shizhen did not intend to add pictures to his text; I myself believe that he never saw the set of pictures which made up the two last juan of the first edition of his book, under the title Bencao gangmu futu ء౻≚ॵؾቹ (Added pictures to the Bencao gangmu). They were collected by one of his sons, Li Jianzhong ޕ৬խ, drawn by another, Li Jianyuan ޕ৬ց, and carved by a grandson, Li Shuzong ޕᖫࡲ.12 Now let us turn to the description of the wutong given by Li Shizhen13 and let us also consider the figure of the same tree in a modern flora (Fig. 4):14 Wutong are found everywhere. The tree is similar to the paulownia (tong ) with a deep green smooth bark. Its wood grows straight; it is without nodes, with a smooth grain but a tight nature. The leaves are like paulownia leaves but smaller, glossy, with sharp extremities. The flowers have thin anthers, they fall down like scum. The pods are about three inches long, formed by five joined strips. When old, they split open and look like winnowing-baskets. They are called ‘long bagcalyces’ tuo15 e 䅐ၠ. The seeds are basted onto them, five or six at most, two or three at least. The seeds are as big as pepper-corns, with a wrinkled skin.
If we turn back to the picture in the Bencao gangmu, considering its quality compared to the written description, one wonders whether it was not drawn based upon the text rather than from direct observa——— 12 13 14 15
See Miyashita 1979, Haudricourt and Métailié 1994. See Li Shizhen 1975–1981: 1999. Anon 1972, vol. 2: 823. This is a bag open at both ends, carried wrapped around the waist, usually used to hold a staple food.
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tion. Yet, crude as it is, it seems to me that once the text is memorised and associated with the picture, the picture can serve to tickle the memory even if it is not a true representation of the real wutong tree.16 Quite the opposite is true of another bencao book, the Bencao huiyan (1624) by Ni Zhumo (Fig. 5). It does not give any description of the tree, and the picture, even with the detail of the leaf, is less informative than the one in the Bencao gangmu. In this case, the picture seems to be purely rhetorical, and the text has only pharmacological content. In the Rucao bian (1582; printed around 1600) by Zhou Lüjing (Fig. 6), and the Zhiwu mingshi tukao (1848) by Wu Qijun (Fig. 7), the texts do not give any morphological detail. On the other hand the pictures are quite realistic, in fact they are good enough to allow the reader to pick the tree out from other species. The first book belongs to what Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen called the “esculentist movement”. 17 It was intended to help to relieve hunger or, more probably, as a manual for adepts of an elegant rustic life. It was published in Jinling ८ສ (modern Nanking) during the Wanli era (15731619), by the Jingshan shulin ౸՞ࣥ printing house.18 If its purpose is apparently technical, the layout of every page with a picture accompanied by two texts suggests the image of a framed printed painting rather than that of a technical picture. However, the text in the upper part evokes, in poetic mode, the quality of the wutong’s seeds, and the short text on the left side of the picture indicates how to eat them. The quality of the picture is sufficient for even someone who does not know the plant by name to recognise it. The first two chapters, juan, of the book are laid out in the same format, one perfectly appropriate to its purpose. The illustrative format also matches the purpose of the work in the Zhiwu mingshi tukao. This book is the first one in Chinese history entirely devoted to plants as such. Its author, Wu Qijun,19 a high official and a scholar of the kaozheng ەᢞ school, was very concerned about pictures, as indicated by the title of the book. He is the first, as ——— 16 We have found other similar cases in the Bencao gangmu, see Haudricourt and Métailié (1994: 394–396). 17 The authors who have written texts on the consumption of wild vegetables are qualified in this way by Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen who consider their texts as composed in a purely altruist perspective to relieve people from hunger (Needham and Lu, 1986b: 328–355). However wild plants could also be chosen to prepare an elaborated cuisine by hermits or scholars in an aesthetic perspective (Sabban 1997). 18 Wang 1983: 418. 19 On Wu’s life, see Bretschneider (1881: 73–74) and Zhang (1991: 1–20).
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far as I know, to have given an accurate picture of the maize plant,20 which had been introduced three centuries earlier. Besides plants that were already known, for which Wu Qijun gave good pictures, he also reproduced some crude drawings of plants, copied from ancient books, that he was unable to identify, but which he included to provide reference material for the reader so as to facilitate further research. But what is most original in Wu Qijun’s approach is that he provides illustrations and descriptions for the many plants he encountered during his travels which were not previously known in the written records. In this case, since no “classical” names existed, he chose to give the newly introduced plants the names which had been indicated to him by local people. Where he could not obtain even a vernacular name, he gave an illustration and a description but labelled the plant “without name”, wuming ྤټ, presumably a temporary expedient until the “real” name could be found, thanks to the details he gave, by consulting an ancient document or inquiring among people from the countryside. Comparing Wu Qijun’s illustration of the wutong (Fig. 7) to a photograph of a detail of the wutong tree growing in the School of Botany at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris (Fig. 8), one realises that his quite informal picture is very illuminating. It is done in the same spirit as illustrations in modern botanical books. Only the pertinent features are described, not the whole tree; leaves, flowers and fruits are very accurately portrayed. Nevertheless the book is not a modern flora, that is to say, it does not give any key within a taxonomic system that would allow someone looking at the plant itself to find its proper botanical name. However, once they have looked at and memorised the picture, anyone looking at a wutong tree, whether in blossom or bearing fruits, will immediately be able to associate the image in the book with what they see before them. The leaves alone can be a rather good indicator. Looking in contrast at the paintings of wutong by an unknown artist of the Song period, (Fig. 1) or of the Ming artist Lan Ying ៴21 and the engraving of the Rucao bian by Zhou Lüjing (Fig. 6), one realises how very evocative they are too, though in a different way. In the case of the wutong tree, an artistic painting, the printed image in the Rucao bian and the technical pictures in the Zhiwu mingshi ———
20 Haudricourt and Métailié 1994: 405, Fig. 21. 21 I thank Cedric Laurent who communicated this information to me. One repro-
duction can be seen in Qin Xiaoyi, ed. (1992: 221).
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tukao all provide the same result, a proper representation. All differ from the Bencao gangmu where, in fact, it is the text which gives the best picture of the plant. Probably this seemed obvious to the scholars responsible for the 1640 and 1885 editions of the book, both of which had partially new iconography. Although for his 1885 edition Zhang Shaotang ്ฯཞ borrowed heavily from Wu Qijun’s pictures of plants, in the case of the wutong he chose to keep the very approximate picture from the 1640 edition. From the foregoing examples we may conclude that the situation is in no way uniform. There is an inverse ratio between quality of textual description and visual representation in the Bencao gangmu on the one hand, where the information about morphology is to be found in the text, and in the Rucao bian and the Zhiwu mingshi tukao on the other hand, where there is a good visual representation with almost no description. The text accompanying the picture in the latter simply gives the terms used for the wutong in the 3rd century BC encyclopedic text Erya, and adds “in Spring opens delicate flowers, gives fruits called ‘long bag’ tuo 䅐.” There is no description and only a very approximate representation in the Bencao huiyan. Compared to the pictures of the fruits in the Rucao bian and the Zhiwu mingshi tukao, the Song and Ming paintings seem to bring something more, emphasising the elegant curve of the twig bearing the follicles, these singular fruits of the wutong tree.
THE CASE OF THE WINTERSWEET, LAMEI [CHIMONANTHUS PRAECOX (L.) LINK = MERATIA PRAECOX RHED. ET WILS.]. The case of the wintersweet, lamei, is interesting because this small tree with very fragrant, winter-blooming flowers is well known and appreciated as a widely cultivated ornamental. Though linked by name with the Japanese apricot mei, it is, however, quite distinct from a botanical point of view, each plant belonging to a different family, the Rosaceae for the mei, and the Calycanthaceae for the lamei. Fan Chengda ᒤګՕ (1126-1193) in his Meipu මᢜ (1186) (Treatise on Japanese apricot) writes: … the lamei basically does not belong to the category of the mei ‘Japanese apricot’. It is called lamei ‘waxy Japanese apricot’ because [it blossoms] at the same time as the Japanese apricot, their perfumes are close to each other, and its colour is similar to the colour of a honeycomb.
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Almost nothing of the plant can be recognised by looking at the picture in the first edition of the Bencao gangmu (Fig. 9a). The same is true for the six following editions. In 1640 a new edition appeared in Wulin ࣳࣥ (Hangzhou) with a good number of quite different pictures (Fig. 9b). Known as the Qian edition, from the name of the editor Qian Weiqi ᙒᓉದ,22 the quality of its iconography made this new edition the reference for most of the new printings of the book up to the end of the nineteenth century. The names of the man who did the drawings (hui ᢄ), Lu Zhe ຬ㹝, and of the carver of the block prints, Xiang Nanzhou ႈতڠ, are printed beside the first two pictures in the book; Xiang Nanzhou is well-known for his engravings of illustrations by famous painters in literary books.23 This edition of the Bencao gangmu is the one chosen for reproduction in the Siku quanshu. The image which illustrates the entry lamei, wintersweet, represents some pretty flowers with many petals, on four leafless twigs. Even if the corollas are different, it reminds us of representations of mei flowers. One leaf is partly visible. This single leaf contributes to the verisimilitude of the picture, because when the lamei tree blossoms in winter, although it does not put out new leaves, it may still bear some remaining ones. But the upward-pointing position of the flowers seems strange and unnatural. When the tree grows outside, all the flowers—which blossom in full winter—open downwards, which prevents snow from covering and filling them. I would say that if this drawing has been made observing real flowers, these flowers were on a carefully tamed ornamental tree in very protected surroundings. Turning now to the text by Li Shizhen, we find that it contains minimal information: “the lamei is a small tree with compact branches and pointed leaves. There are three kinds (…) The fruit is like a bell hanging down, sharp, one inch long, the seeds are inside”. Given the emphasis on the fruits in the text, one might find it curious that they are precisely the part of the tree that the illustration leaves out. Li Shizhen has borrowed a lot from Fan Chengda’s text, but he omits to quote the sentence where Fan Chengda says that although the deep perfume of the lamei is far stronger than that of the Japanese apricot mei, it has not inspired as many poems because it has a bushy and rather inelegant habit—a statement contradicted by the rendering in Fig. 9a where the bushy aspect is totally absent. This may also ———
22 See Xie 1985: 146. 23 P.c. Michela Bussotti.
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explain why instead of drawing a picture of the whole plant, as in the first edition of the Bencao gangmu, the aesthetic concerns of the author of the new picture led him to choose the blossoming end of a small branch of a well pruned ornamental reminiscent of the form of the Japanese apricot, mei. In 1622, a few years before the publication of the new set of illustrations of the Bencao gangmu, a book titled Yecai bolu (Extensive notes on wild vegetables) was completed by another member of the esculentist movement, the hermit monk Bao Shan. Here we find a picture (Fig. 10) illustrating an entry called lamei hua ᥣමक़ (lamei flower) because for the author the edible part of this tree is in fact the flower, which is eaten boiled and seasoned with oil and salt. When we compare this picture with the previous image from the 1640 edition of the Bencao gangmu, the flowers appear to be very different. Considering the fact that the Yecai bo lu is concerned with wild rather than garden plants, and bearing in mind that Li Shizhen, following Fan Chengda, mentions three kinds of lamei, two of which are grafts, one might think that this illustration shows the one which “grows from seeds without having been grafted.” The orientation of all the flowers facing downwards, and the dense branching, confirm that the picture was drawn from observation of a model which was a plant growing unprotected from winter weather. The Bencao huiyan (1624) shows a picture (Fig. 11) of a quality comparable to the one in the first edition of the Bencao gangmu, where it is impossible to identify the plant. In the Shizhuzhai shuhua pu Լێសᢜ (Album of calligraphies and paintings of the Ten Bamboos Studio) published in Nanking in 1633 by Hu Zhengyan ߢإ, there is a picture of a branch of a flowering wintersweet intermingled with a small bamboo (Col.Pl. XVII). One may assume that the ultimate goal of this piece of art is not botanical accuracy. Nevertheless, this printing shows three typical features of the wintersweet, the cup-like shape of the flowers, their yellow colour and their hanging habit. In this respect, even if it is first and foremost an artistic work, this picture provides interesting information for a botanist. One of the 41 pictures of plants at the beginning of the Peihua aojue lu (Marvellous secrets for cultivating flowers, 1640), by Sun Zhibo, also represents a flowering branch of wintersweet (Fig. 12). It is different from the other pictures, and wrong as far as the shapes of the flowers and leaves are concerned, but it does show one typical feature of the wintersweet’s flowers: a purple spot at the base of what looks like the
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petals. The 1688 edition of the Huajing (Mirror of flowers) by Chen Haozi copies the picture by Lu Zhe on the same page as other pictures from the 1640 edition of the Bencao gangmu, by the same draftsman, but associated in a different way (Fig. 13). The wintersweet is just under the Japanese apricot. Here the possible influence of the second as a model for representing the first seems obvious. The image in the Zhiwu mingshi tukao (1848) is different from all the previous ones but does not bring more botanical information than the one by Lu Zhe (Fig. 14). In the last edition of the Bencao gangmu (1885) it is still the work of Lu Zhe which is used (Fig. 9c). Two streams can be distinguished among the various representations of wintersweet, one realistic and one aesthetic. Only two pictures (in Yecai bolu and Shizhuzhai) give a very realistic feeling of what a wintersweet looks like when in full blossom. The majority of the other pictures are purely conventional, much less representative of the reality of the plant. In fact, even if the perianths of the flowers differ from the corollas of mei in most of the pictures, the shape of the branches reminds us more of the Japanese apricot than the wintersweet. A comparison between the picture of the same species, Chimonanthus praecox, in the second edition (1635) of the Yecai bolu (Fig. 10) and in a more recent edition (Fig. 15) offers good proof of this stereotyped production: in the modern edition, even the flowers of the wintersweet have become flowers of the Japanese apricot!24
*
*
*
Reflecting on the various images of the wutong and of the wintersweet, it is not possible to say that paintings of plants are systematically more precise than pictures in technical books. But it is possible to conclude that paintings can give a deeper feeling of a living plant. Pictures engraved in technical books are generally more static. Some of them are just reproductions of former pictures, others, on the contrary, provide satisfactory information about the general features of a plant or about some of its characteristics. However, the evolution in quality of the majority of the engravings of plants in the Bencao gangmu between the 1596 and 1885 editions provides a convincing example of the capacity for emending the printed images in Chinese ———
24 On stereotyped mass-production in art, see Ledderose (2000).
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technical books, even where the same techniques were used over centuries.25 It is remarkable that a comparison of plant motifs painted on Chinese porcelain of the Ming and Qing periods with the much later images of plants in the 1885 edition of the Bencao gangmu reveals a great similarity, and has allowed Regina Krahl (1987) to give proper botanical identifications. I would like to end with an open question. The comparison of paintings with engravings of plants in China is limited to some hundred (not more that 130) different species and varieties of items, most of them cultivated for ornamental purposes. As Zou Yigui ምԫெ wrote in his Xiaoshan huapu ՛ ՞ ᢜ (Painting treatise by Xiaoshan, 1740: 6b), “all the flowers which enter a painting come from a horticultural taming”. Otherwise, he says, they look too ordinary. Indeed among the 120 plants which he cites in his book there is only one wild one—and at that one which is typically anthropogenic, namely the dandelion. As pointed out by many authors, all the paintings of plants in China have an allusive purpose. There is almost certainly nothing in the history of Chinese painting to compare to “The large piece of turf” that Albrecht Dürer painted in 1503,26 and almost nothing from wild life per se entered any Chinese paintings. On the other hand, artists illustrating books on plants also had to draw a great number of wild plants. The Zhiwu mingshi tukao is the best example of the success of such an enterprise, containing pictures that combine botanical accuracy and aesthetic value. Nothing equivalent seems to exist as far as painting is concerned. Such a common and widespread weed as shepherd’s purse, so accurately and elegantly represented in the Yecai bolu (Fig. 16),27 was probably never taken as a model by any Chinese painter specialising in plants. Since only plants with an aesthetic, symbolic, or moral purpose were considered as suitable subjects by Chinese painters of plants, the reality of plants was probably not of the same kind for them as for Western painters. This is perhaps the reason why Zou Yigui, who had seen western works done by Jesuit painters, considered that while their authors might be really skilful craftsmen who could reproduce precisely what they saw, they were not real artists.28 Maybe the key point of difference lies precisely in this capacity to reconstruct what a flower is. In the intro——— 25 26 27 28
See Bussotti, this volume. Koreny, 1985: 179. J.1/60b. P.c. Michèle Pirazzoli-Ts’ertsevens.
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ductory essay of his treatise Xiaoshan huapu, just quoted (1740: 6b), Zou Yigui went on to state that it was necessary completely to dominate the flower which was going to be used as a model, because by “staking, bending, twisting, hurting, one suppresses all the spirit of the flower itself, which then adopts the expression that we wish to give it”.
REFERENCES ANON. 1972–1976. Zhongguo gaodeng zhiwu tujian խഏཬढቹᦹ, 5 vols. Beijing: Kexue chubanshe. ——. 1985. Li Shizhen yanjiu lunwen ji ޕழੴઔߒᓵ֮ႃ. [Wuhan]: Hubei kexue jishu chubanshe. ARBER, Agnes. 1938. Herbals. Their Origin and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BAO Shan ᚁ՞. 1922 (1st ed. 1622). Yecai bolu ມလ໑ᙕ. Beijing: Xinxuehui chubanshe. ——. 1996 (1st ed. 1622). Yecai bolu ມလ໑ᙕ. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 3 vols. [Facsimile of the Tao Feng Lou ຯଅᑔ edition of 1635]. BLUNT, Wilfrid, and Sandra RAPHAEL. ?1979. The Illustrated Herbal. London: Frances Lincoln – Weidenfeld & Nicolson. BRETSCHNEIDER, Emil V. 1881. “Botanicon Sinicum.” Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (New series) 16.1: 18–230. [Repr. Nedeln/Liechenstein: Kraus Reprint Ltd., 1967]. CHEMLA, Karine, Francesca BRAY, FU Daiwie, HUANG Yi-Long and Georges MÉTAILIÉ, eds. 2001. “La scienza in Cina.” In: Enciclopedia Italiana, Storia della Scienza, ed. Sandro Petruccioli, vol. II. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, pp. 1–608. CHEN Haozi ຫ∻. 1962 (1st ed. 1688). Huajing क़ᢴ. Beijing: Nongye chubanshe. CHEN Jiamo ຫቯ᠂. 1988 (1st ed. 1565). Bencao meng quan ء౻፞┱. Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe. CHEN Junyu ຫঊ༭, Cheng Xuke ࿓㻿Ṙ. 1990. Zhongguo huajing խഏक़ᆖ – China Floral Encyclopaedia. Shanghai: Wenhua chubanshe. CHEN Menglei ຫኄሼ, JIANG Tingxi ᓏݪᙔ et al., ed. 1999 (1st ed. 1725). Guji tushu jicheng.’Caomu dian’ ײվቹႃګ. ౻ֵࠢ, 2 vols. Shanghai: Wenyi chubanshe. CHENG Yaotian ࿓䅾ض. 1807. Tongyi lu ຏᢌᙕ. Shexian. CHENG, François. 2000. D’où jaillit le chant. Paris: Phébus. DE CARLE SOWERBY, Arthur. 1940. Nature in Chinese Art. New York: The John Day Company. DREGE, Jean-Pierre. 2001. “Produzione, circulazione e gestione dei testi.” In: Karine Chemla et al. 2001, pp. 470–475. E’ERTAI ၠዿ, ed., presented to the throne 1742. Shoushi tongkao ழຏە. FAN Chengda ૃګՕ. 1993 (1st ed. 1186). Meipu මᢜ. In: Shenghuo yu bowu congshu سፖ໑ढហ, 2 vols, pp. 1–3. Shanghai guji chubanshe. GROTE, Ludwig. 1965. Albrecht Dürer: biographisch-kritische Studie. Genève: Skira. GU Yuanjiao ցٌ. 1994 (1st ed. 1777). Bencao hui jian ء౻Ⴊ亍. In: Lidai bencao jinghua congshu ᖵءז౻壄ဎហ, ed. Zhu Danian ڹՕڣᙇᒳ, 8 vols. Shanghai: Shanghai zhongyiyao daxue chubanshe.
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HAUDRICOURT, André-Georges and Georges MÉTAILIÉ. 1994. “De l’illustration botanique en Chine.” Etudes chinoises 13.1–2: 381–416. Chinese translation: “Lun Zhongguode zhiwu tu” ᓵխഏऱཬढቹ, in: Faguo hanxue ऄഏዧᖂ , ed. Denis Lombard and Li Xueqin. Beijing: Qinghua daxue chubanshe, 1996, pp. 222–249 (translated by He Ping et Hua Zi). HU Zhengyan ߢإ. 1633. Shizhuzhai shuhua pu Լێស ᢜ. Nanjing. Modern Reproduction of the Pictures with a Translation of the Poems: REUBI, François. 1996. Le Studio des dix bambous. Genève: Albert Skira. GYLLENSVÄRD, Bo. 1965. “A Botanical Excursion in the Kepe Collection.” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 37: 18–34. KORENY, Fritz. 1985. Albrecht Dürer and the Animal and Plant Studies of the Renaissance. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. KRAHL, Regina. 1987. “Plant Motifs of Chinese Porcelain. Examples from the Topkapi Saray Identified through the Bencao Gangmu.” Part I, Orientations (May): 52–65; Part II, Orientations (June): 24–37. LAUFER, Berthold. 1967. Sino-Iranica. Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran. Taipei: Ch’eng-Wen Publishing Company. [Originally published in: Publication 201, Anthropological Series, 15.3 (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History), 1919, pp. 185–630]. LAWRENCE, George H.M. 1951. Taxonomy of Vascular Plants. New York: The Macmillan Company. LEDDEROSE, Lothar. 2000. Ten Thousand Things. Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art. Princeton: Princeton University. LI Shizhen ޕழੴ. 1975–1981 (1st ed. 1596). Bencao gangmu ء౻≚ؾ. Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe. 4 vols. LI Zhongli ޕխم.1999 (1st ed. 1612). Bencao yuanshi ء౻ࡨ. Beijing: Zhongyi guji chubanshe, 5 vols. [This modern edition is a facsimile of an edition of the end of the 19th century titled Tuzhu Bencao yuanshi ቹࣹء౻ࡨ]. LIU Wentai Ꮵ֮, ed. 1982 (1st manuscript completed in 1505). Bencao pinhui jingyao ء౻ნ壄. Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe. MÉTAILIÉ, Georges. 1994. “A propos du sexe des fleurs: le cas des ‘rui’.” Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 23: 223–230. ——. 1995. “Note à propos de citations implicites dans les textes techniques.” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 17: 131–139. MIYASHITA, Saburo ୰ՀԿ. 1979. “Honzǀ no zu ni tsuite ء౻圸ቹ圵圮圎地.” In: Anon. Honzǀ komoku fuzu ء౻≚ॵؾቹ. Tǀkyǀ: Shunyǀdǀ, pp. 1–16. NEEDHAM, Joseph and Lu Gwei-djen. 1986a. “The Esculentist Mouvement in Medieval Chinese Botany: Studies on Wild (Emergency) Food Plants.” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 1986 (84–85): 225–248. ——. 1986b. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. VI, part 1. Botany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. NI Zhumo ଧ᠂ڹ. 1997 (1st ed. 1624). Bencao huiyan. ء౻ნߢ, 12 vols. Beijing: Zhongyi guji chubanshe. POPE, John Alexander. 1970. Fourteenth-Century Blue-and-White: A Group of Chinese Porcelains in the Topkapu Sarayi Müzesi, Istanbul. Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Papers 2.1 [repr. 1952]. QIN Xiaoyi ݕᏚ . 1992. Gugong shu hua tu lu, vol. 9. ਚ୰ቹᙕร ם.Taibei: Guoli gugong bowuguan. RUDOLPH, Richard C. 1966. “Illustrated Botanical Works in China and Japan.” In: Bibliography and Natural History, ed. Thomas R. Buckman. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Library, pp. 103–120. SABBAN, Françoise. 1997. “La diète parfaite d’un lettré retiré sous les Song du Sud.” Etudes Chinoises 16.1: 7–57.
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SUN Zhibo ୪व܄. ca. 1640. Peihua aojue lu. Juan huan guan zangban. TANG Shenwei ାშპ. Zhenglei bencao ਙᣊء౻. 1970. Jingshi zhenglei Daguan bencao ᆖਙᣊՕᨠء౻. Tokyo: Hirokawa shoten [Facsimile of the 1108 edition]. ——. Zhenglei bencao ਙᣊء౻. 1957. Chongxiu zhenghe jing shi zhenglei beiyong bencao ਙࡉᆖᢞᣊໂءش౻. Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe [Facsimile of the 1249 edition). TSE BARTHOLOMEW, Therese. 1980. “Examples of Botanical Motives in Chinese Art.” Apollo: 48–54. ——. 1985. The Hundred Flowers: Botanical Motifs in Chinese Art. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. ——. 1985. “Botanical Puns in Chinese Art from the Collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.” Orientations: 18–34. WANG Chongmin اૹ׆. 1983. Zhongguo shanben shu tiyao խഏء༼. Shanghai: Guji chubanshe. WANG Qi ݆׆and WANG Siyi ׆৸ᆠ. 1988 (1st ed. 1609). Sancai tuhui.Կթቹᄎ, 3 vols. Shanghai: Guji chubanshe. WU Qijun ࠡܦᛕ. 1974 (1st ed. 1848). Zhiwu mingshi tukao. ཬढټኔቹە, 2 vols Taibei: Shijie shuju. XIE Zongwan ࡲᩉ. “Bencao gangmu tubande kaocha.” ౻ؾ≚ءቹठەኘ. In: Anon. 1985, pp. 145–199. ZHANG Lüpeng et al. ed. ്ᐌᣛᒳ. 1991. Wu Qijun yanjiu ࠡܦᛕઔߒ. Zhengzhou : Zhong zhou guji chubanshe. ZHENG Qiao ᔤᖱ. 1902 (ca. 1150). Tupu lüe ቹᢜฃ, juan 72, in: Tong zhi ຏݳ. Shanghai: Hongbao shuju. ZHOU Lüjing ࡌᐌ壃. 1991 (1st ed. 1582). Rucao bian ಀ౻ᒳ. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. ZHU Xiao ڹ㒺 . 1959 (1st ed. 1406). Jiu huang bencao. එء౻. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju. [Facsimile of 1525 edition].
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Fig. 1: Anonymous, Song dynasty, 13th century. Source: Shanghai Museum (Cheng 2000: 59).
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2a
2b
Fig. 2: A wutong න tree in the two extant printed editions of the Zhenglei bencao ᢞᣊء౻ by Tang Shengwei ାშპ. a) Tang (1970: 398), a 1108 edition b) Tang (1957: 349), a 1249 edition The difference with Fig. 1 is appreciable. It is impossible, for a botanist to give any precise identification from these two very approximate pictures which contain no specific features such as the fruit in Fig. 1.
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3a
3b
3c
Fig. 3: These representations of a wutong න tree from the three distinct editions of the pictures of Bencao gangmu ء౻ጼ ؾby Li Shizhen ޕழੴ. a) Jinling ८ສ edition, 1596. b) Qian Weiqi ᙒᓉದ edition, 1640. c) Zhang Shaotang ്ฯཞ edition, 1885. The characteristic features of the fruits can be seen in the three pictures.
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Fig. 4: The illustration given in the modern flora Zhongguo gaodeng zhiwu tujian խഏཬढቹᦹ (Anon. 1972, vol. 2, p. 823) for the wutong න tree [Firmiana simplex (L.) Wight. Formerly, Sterculia platanifolia L.].
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Fig. 5: In this picture of a wutong න tree, in the Bencao huiyan ء౻Ⴊߢ(1624) by Ni Zhumo ଧ᠂ڹ, the characteristic fruits of the tree—though shown for some of the other trees on the same page—are not represented. However, comparing this depiction with Fig. 2 and Fig. 3b,c, we might deduce that there was a convention regarding the shape of the wutong leaves which, with their schematic tirangular outline, could serve as an alternative characteristic feature of the tree.
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Fig. 6: Rucao bian ಀ౻ᒳ (1582, printed around 1600), by Zhou Lüjing ࡌᐌ壃.
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Fig. 7: Zhiwu ming shi tu kao ཬढټኔቹ(ە1848) by Wu Qijun ࠡܦᛕ.
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Fig. 8: A branch with fruits and leaves of the wutong tree growing in the School of Botany in the National Museum of Natural History, Paris. (Photograph: Georges Métailié).
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Fig. 9a: Lamei ᥣම, wintersweet, [Chimonanthus praecox (L.) Link], Bencao gangmu ء౻ጼ ؾby Li Shizhen ޕழੴ (1596 edition).
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Fig. 9b: Lamei ᥣම, wintersweet, [Chimonanthus praecox (L.) Link], Bencao gangmu ء౻ጼ ؾby Li Shizhen ޕழੴ (1640 edition).
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Fig. 9c: Lamei ᥣම, wintersweet, [Chimonanthus praecox (L.) Link], Bencao gangmu ء౻ጼ ؾby Li Shizhen ޕழੴ (1885 edition).
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Fig. 10: Lamei ᥣම, wintersweet, [Chimonanthus praecox (L.) Link], Yecai bolu ມလ໑ᙕ by Bao Shan ᚁ՞ (1635 edition). There is a striking difference with the two previous engravings. Here the branches seem to grow freely, without any taming, and the flowers have all their natural downward-facing position.
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Fig. 11: Lamei ᥣම, wintersweet, [Chimonanthus praecox (L.) Link], Bencao huiyan ء౻Ⴊߢ (1624) by Ni Zhumo ଧ᠂ڹ. The fruits visible on the picture bear little likeness to the real ones which, as Li Shizhen ޕழੴ wrote “are sharp, like a bell hanging down”.
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Fig. 12: Lamei ᥣම, wintersweet, [Chimonanthus praecox (L.) Link], Peihua aojue lu ഛक़ᙕ (ca. 1640) by Sun Zhibo ୪व܄. All the other pictures of wintersweet flowers show the “numerous imbricated showy tepals, undifferentiated into sepals and petals, borne on the outer rim of a thickened cuplike receptacle” (Lawrence 1951: 507). Here the flowers look more like Japanese apricot mei ම, but with seven petals instead of five and no stamens visible.
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Fig. 13: In this edition (1688) of Chen Haozi’s ຫ∻ Huajing क़ᢴ, the juxtaposition of the two pictures for mei ම (top) and lamei ᥣම (bottom) allow us to appreciate the morphological differences of the flowers, but show an obvious shared conventional mis-en-scène of the flowers on branches.
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Fig. 14: Lamei ᥣම, wintersweet, [Chimonanthus praecox (L.) Link], Zhiwu ming shi tu kao ཬढټኔቹ(ە1848) by Wu Qijun ࠡܦᛕ.
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Fig. 15: In this 1922 new edition of the Yecai bolu ມလ໑ᙕ (1622) by Bao Shan ᚁ՞, the flowers of wintersweet lamei ᥣම have simply been represented as flowers of Japanese apricot mei ම. Compare this with the more reliable representation on Fig. 10, from a previous edition (1635) of the same book.
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Fig. 16: In this engraving of a shepherd’s purse chuntacai ਞᔏလ (Capsella bursapastoris L.), the proper rendering of the small silicles, peculiar to this species, allow an easy identification of the real plant.
AGRICULTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS: BLUEPRINT OR ICON? Francesca Bray Although the earliest Chinese technical writing on farming dates back at least as far as the late Warring States and visual depictions of farming tasks and tools proliferated from the Han period, agricultural illustration—the deliberate pairing of agricultural text with images or graphics—seems to have begun no earlier than the Song dynasty. One work produced at the beginning of the Southern Song, Lou Chou (or Shou)’s ᑔ㙭1 Gengzhi tu ౙ៣ቹ (Ploughing and weaving illustrated), and another produced in the mid-Yuan, Wang Zhen’s ׆ᄙ Nongshu ል (Treatise on agriculture), launched the two predominant Chinese traditions of agricultural illustration. The Gengzhi tu, presented by Lou Chou to the emperor in 1145, was originally designed as an album, a common artistic medium of the period consisting of a sequence of paintings on silk, each paired with a poem. It was subsequently reproduced in a range of media, including stone carvings, woodblock prints, and painted porcelain. Wang Zhen’s Nongshu of 1313 was in many respects a conventional, text-based agronomic treatise. However it contains a long section entitled Nongqi tupu ልᕴቹᢜ (Illustrated register of farming tools) which was a complete innovation: for each item of equipment a drawing, deliberately technical in style, completes the prose explanation. The work was clearly designed specifically for the medium of woodblock printing, and subsequent reproductions or adaptations were all in that same medium. Wang Zhen intended his visual-verbal depictions of technical devices to serve as the equivalent of blueprints, allowing officials to introduce more advanced technology to backward regions. Lou Chou’s work was intended to convey messages that were social and moral as much as technical: a primary concern was to foster a proper respect for the role that farming families played in sustaining the social order. Although in several cases Lou Chou’s very detailed paint———
1 Lou’s given name can be pronounced either Chou or Shou; earlier scholars have usually preferred Shou (e.g. Kuhn 1976), but Chou seems now to be standard among historians in China (e.g. Wang 1995).’
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ings show more technical detail than the more schematic renderings of Wang Zhen’s Register, his more artistic choice of medium and style produced pictures that were closer to genre scenes than to blueprints. From the perspective of how knowledge and governance are organised in the modern world, it might well appear that these two experiments with the visual rendering of technical knowledge should be treated as distinct endeavours. Yet despite their differences in conception and execution, the Gengzhi tu and the Nongshu shared a common goal. Both were both intended to serve the overarching pedagogical purpose of “promoting farming”, quannong ᣠል, a primary responsibility for anyone involved in imperial government. Exactly what place did technical illustration play in this project?
THE GENGZHI TU AND ITS TRADITION: ICONS OF THE IMPERIAL ORDER
The Southern Song scholar Zheng Qiao ᔤᖱ (1104–1162) completed his Tongzhi ຏ( ݳHistorical collections) in about 1150. The work contains a famous essay, the Tupu lüe ቹᢜฃ (A brief account of the graphic arts), in which Zheng analyses the relations between text and image and the role of each in conveying knowledge. At the time that Zheng was writing, the popularisation of woodblock printing had opened up new opportunities for writers on cosmology, mathematics, materia medica, building and other technical subjects to develop richer forms of communication through the use of diagrams, charts and illustrations. Zheng’s essay refers to several of these fields, but not to agriculture. In his recent study of the history of agricultural illustration in China, Zhang Zhongge takes this omission to mean that no agricultural illustrations had yet been produced,2 and certainly we have no evidence to suggest that the agricultural writers of Zheng Qiao’s time, Chen Fu ຫᑆ for example, had begun to use illustrations to convey their ideas.3 But officials and emperors, it seems, were more adventurous. The notion of using images of farming for pedagogical purposes, whether or not paired with text, seems to have emerged during the later Song, and to have done so in the context of ———
2 Zhang 1995: 1. 3 Chen Fu was the author of a short work on Southern rice farming, entitled
Nongshu (Agricultural treatise) and prefaced 1149 (see below).
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government. “Promoting agriculture” (quannong ᣠል) was one of the principal responsibilities of government in imperial China. All Chinese emperors and administrators spoke freely of their devotion to this cause, but the Northern Song emperors and their civil servants were unequalled in the scope and coordination of their practical efforts to help farmers and increase agricultural production. Dykes and irrigation works were built, marshes converted to farmland, seeds of improved varieties imported and distributed, and instruction was provided through local magistrates’ offices in improved methods of crop rotation, sowing and fertilisation. 4 In 1012, under the emperor Zhenzong, quickripening rices from Champa were introduced to the Yangzi Delta along with detailed instructions for their cultivation, such as those reproduced in the Song huiyao gao ݚᄎᒚ (Drafts for the administrative statutes of the Song dynasty).5 Printing played an important role in the official circulation of technical information: both the sixthcentury agricultural treatise Qimin yaoshu Ꮨا (Essential techniques for the common people) and the eighth-century farming calendar Sishi zuanyao ழᤊ (Collected essentials for the four seasons) were printed and distributed to local magistrates by the imperial printing office in 1020,6 and descriptions of new crops and improved techniques were circulated to and through magistrates’ offices on printed handouts. However these printed texts do not seem to have been illustrated in any way. Another strategy for promoting agriculture and sericulture, also apparently initiated in the Northern Song, was to adorn the walls of palaces, prefectural offices or other public buildings with images of farming activities. Writing about a century later, the scholar Wang Yinglin ׆ᚨ᧵ noted that “the first pictures of peasant households engaged in farming and weaving appeared on the walls of the Yanchun Pavilion ਞᎹ [part of the Imperial compound] during the ———
4 See e.g. Golas 1980. The measures also included financial aid. As Chief Minister, Wang Anshi (1021–86) introduced a series of “New Economic Policies” (xinfa ᄅ ऄ) (1068–85), including the “Green Shoots Policy” (qingmiaofa ॹ્ऄ), designed to help small farmers by providing low-rate loans and giving tax breaks on newly opened land or agricultural equipment (Golas 1980: 311). 5 See Bray (1984: 492 fn. c) for details of the instructions. Within a century Champa rices were said largely to have replaced traditional round-grain, long-season rices in much of the region, in part because they could be used in a double-cropping alternation with winter wheat (Amano 1979: 106; Ping-ti Ho 1956). 6 Commercial printed editions of both works had been available at least since 996 (Hu Daojing 1985: 46).
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Baoyuan reign-period (1038–1040) of Emperor Renzong”.7 The artists who produced these murals must have been humble artisan painters, for if the images had been designed by a scholar-official his name would certainly have been recorded. Since the Yanchun Pavilion murals were located in the imperial palace they were obviously not intended to instruct farmers directly in improved techniques. At one level their role was certainly iconic: commissioning paintings of the production of grain and silk for the palace represented imperial recognition of the importance of these activities. But they may also have been intended to introduce the women of the court to sericultural skills. Gaozong (r. 1127–1163), the first emperor of the Southern Song, referred to the Yanchun Pavilion murals as a precedent when he declared that “rearing silkworms should be done in the imperial palace, so that all will know the hardships of farm work”.8 The Yanchun Pavilion paintings must have depicted practices typical of North China, since at that time the northern plains were still both the political and the economic heartlands of the empire. With the loss of the northern provinces to the Tatars in 1126, the grainlands of the Yellow River plains and the main silk-producing region of Shandong were both lost to the Song state. Sericulture had been practised in the Lower Yangzi for some centuries, but techniques and equipment only started to catch up with the advanced methods of Shandong and Sichuan in the eleventh and twelfth century.9 The rice-fields of Jiangnan were fertile, but with the loss of the north they were required to feed a population swollen by refugees. Immediately after his accession to the throne, the first Southern Song emperor Gaozong issued an edict calling on the people to return to the land; as just mentioned, he also declared that sericulture should be practised at court. It is in this political context that Lou Chou ᑔ㙭 (1090–1162) produced his paintings and poems, completed six or seven years after the fall of the North.10 Lou Chou was a native of what is now Zhejiang province. He came from a distinguished family in the Ningbo region, and followed his father into official service. In the course of his life ——— 7 Kunxue jiwen ܺᖂધⓚ (Study notes), quoted Wang (1995: Preface, 1). 8 Quoted Wang (1995: 33, 35). Three attempts were also made to revive the leg-
endary court sacrifices to the Silkworm deity during the Song dynasty, in 1111 before the fall of the Northern Song, and in 1132 and 1145 just after the court had been established in Hangzhou, but all failed (Kuhn 1988: 255–256). 9 See Kuhn 1987: 163–173. 10 Key works on Lou Chou and on the Gengzhi tu include Franke (1913), Pelliot (1913), Kuhn (1976), Watabe (1986) and Wang (1995).
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he had appointments all over China, with postings at the capital and as far south as Guangzhou, but in the early 1130s he was magistrate of Yuqian Պᑨ County, in the heart of the Jiangnan region where rice farming techniques were most advanced.11 It was in Yuqian, in 1132– 1134, that Lou Chou completed the Gengzhi tu, a set of 45 paintings showing the main tasks of rice-farming and sericulture, each inscribed with a poem of the author’s own composition. The Gengzhi tu was presented to the emperor in 1153 or 1154.12 In his introduction to the first printed edition, Lou Chou’s nephew Lou Yue ᑔᨤ writes: Bofu ( ׀܄Lou Chou) was genuinely concerned with the common people’s lives. He felt deep sympathy for the hard toil of farmers and women weavers, and investigated every aspect of their tasks for his two series of pictures on ploughing [rice-farming] and weaving [sericulture]. For farming he depicts every step from soaking the seeds to storing the grain in the granary, twenty-one steps in all; for sericulture there are twenty-four steps, from washing the eggs to tailoring the cloth. Each step is illustrated with a picture accompanied by an eight-line, five-character poem. All the tasks of farming and sericulture are minutely and clearly portrayed. Although local practices vary in their details, all the main principles are correctly set out here, as everyone who sees it will recognise. Soon after the work was completed, an imperial envoy on his tour of inspection gave a report of it to the emperor who, on the advice of his trusted ministers, summoned Lou Chou for an audience. The paintings thus came to court. The emperor praised and rewarded Lou, and gave orders for the scenes to be painted on the screen of the Inner Court, with Lou Chou’s name on them.13
Lou Chou’s innovation was to bring together technical pictures and poems on agriculture and sericulture, apparently for the first time. It was a long-standing custom for scholar artists to inscribe their paintings with poems—calligraphy, poetry and painting were considered part of the same creative process. One common form of composition was the album, containing a sequence of poems and paintings on a single theme. Most albums were intended for display to other members of the elite: the poems were sophisticated and the calligraphy cursive. Yet in their simpler forms, images and poems were both considered effective media for conveying knowledge to the uneducated (peasants, women or children). As Zheng Qiao put it in ———
11 Yuqian is the modern Lin’an county in Zhejiang province; it lies about 40 km west of Hangzhou, up the Qiantang River. 12 Watabe 1986: 4–5, Wang 1995: 33 ff. 13 Gongkui ji ⚄ސႃ (Collected works of Gongkui), quoted Wang (1995: 33, 36).
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his essay, unlike text an image was easily apprehended and conveyed the essentials (yao ) at a glance.14 Rhyme and rhythm rendered the simpler ballad forms of poetry more memorable than prose. Several distinguished Song statesmen-scholars had written poems in ballad style to disseminate such useful information to the uneducated as moral precepts or basic medical prescriptions for common ailments. The statesman Wang Anshi فڜ׆, notable for his farm policies, had written a set of fifteen short ballads on farm tools. Meanwhile, various elite artists during the Song enjoyed depicting scenes from popular life in the city or the country, and their works often included detailed depictions of technical artefacts like water-mills or boats, or of technical processes like spinning hemp or silk.15 But Lou Chou seems to have been the first person to put technical pictures and poems together into what was essentially an album. Should we conclude that what Lou Chou had in mind in designing the Gengzhi tu was a work that could be used to communicate at both elite and public level? Lou Yue claims that “the pictures were so vivid, and the poems so expressive, that at court and through the country they were passed around and learned by heart”.16 The Yuan writer Yu Ji ᇄႃ (1272– 1348) says: In the previous dynasty [i.e. the Song] pictures of farming and sericulture (gengzhi tu ౙ៣ቹ) were painted on both the east and west walls of the entrances to district and prefectural offices for the common people to gaze upon, though now they are very rare.17
There is some ambiguity in this last statement, where the term gengzhi tu could refer either to copies of, or works directly inspired by, Lou Chou’s series, or to other depictions of farming and sericulture. Should we presume that the murals of “sericulture and wheat” (canmai tu ᨀຽቹ) that the Yuan emperor Yingzong ordered for his palace in 1322 were inspired by Lou Chou’s work but adapted to northern conditions, or should we think of Lou Chou’s Gengzhi tu as one particularly sophisticated contribution to a broader tradition of civic representations of farming? There is doubtless some exaggeration to Lou Yue’s statement, which suggests that Lou Chou’s work soon became known in every ——— 14 Tupu lüe, quoted Zhang (1995: 1). 15 For examples of paintings of mills and textile processes, see Kuhn (1987: ch.
3).
16 Gongkui ji ⚄ސႃ, quoted Wang (1995: Preface, 1). 17 Daoyuan xuegulu ሐႼᖂײᙕ, (Daoyuan’s notes on antiquity), quoted Wa-
tabe (1986: 3) and Zhang (1995: Preface, 1).’’
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corner of the realm. But even though none of the earliest versions has survived, the work did quickly achieve wide diffusion, and it does seem very soon to have entered the cultural repertory as the way to depict rural livelihoods. Lou Chou made a copy of the Gengzhi tu for himself and presented the original to the emperor in 1153 or 1154, by which time he had been transferred to Yangzhou.18 The palace fresco was copied from Lou’s original, and it seems that two artists, Liang Kai ᆓᄒ and Liu Songnian Ꮵ࣪ڣ, both painted copies in the 1190s. Lou Chou kept the copy he himself had made, and it was used by his grandsons Lou Hong ᑔੋ and Lou Shen ᑔ for an engraving on stone in 1210. Some time in the 1220’s, according to Lou Chou’s great-grandson Lou Shao ᑔޟ, Wang Gang ޫ≚, the prefect of Shaoxing, had the first woodblock engravings made of Lou Shou’s own copy, in order, he said, to show people who were well-fed and warmly clothed where these comforts came from. This printed edition seems to have circulated quite widely in the late Song; in 1237 Lou Shao wrote the preface to a new edition.19 Neither the original scrolls nor the direct copies in the palace or engraved on stone by Lou Chou’s grandsons have survived. It is believed that a scroll of sericultural scenes, now in the Heilongjiang Provincial Museum, is a Song copy made directly from the original scroll that Lou Chou presented to the emperor by the Imperial Art Academy. Fragments of Liang Kai’s copy (also depicting sericultural scenes) are now in the Cleveland Museum. In the early years of the Yuan dynasty, the scholar-painter Cheng Qi ࿓⑻ also painted a version, based apparently on Wang Gang’s woodblock version (which in turn was based on the copy Lou Chou himself had made and kept). This version is now in the Freer Gallery in Washington (see Col.Pl. XVIII).20 During the early Ming dynasty, Wang Gang’s woodblock version was reproduced in the Yongle dadian ةᑗ Օ ࠢ (Yongle encyclopedia) of 1407, and reissued by an official named Song Zonglu ݚ ࡲᕙ in 1462.21 The latter version was extremely influential because copies found their way to Japan and Korea, where they inspired many local variants, including a version by the famous genre painter Kim Hongdo ८ ؖሐ (1745–?), preserved in the National Museum in ——— 18 19 20 21
Watabe 1986: 5. Ibid: 6–7. Ibid: Table 3, p.16; Wang 1995: 37. This edition of the Gengzhi tu is the one reproduced in Franke 1913, along with the version published in the Shoushi tongkao of 1742 (see below).
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Seoul.22 Song Zonglu’s woodblock Gengzhi tu also provided the model for a considerably reworked version that figures at the beginning of the Bianmin tuzuan ঁاቹᤊ (Illustrated collection for the convenience of ordinary people), a household handbook whose author is said to have been called Guang Fan ㋗⺥. Like many other popular household manuals, the Bianmin tuzuan contains basic practical instructions on farming, textile production and building procedures; advice on divination and ritual; tips for household maintenance; recipes for dishes and medical prescriptions. The earliest edition of the Bianmin tuzuan, dated 1502, has been lost; the illustrations to the surviving Jiajing edition of 1544 are quite rough, but those to the Wanli edition of 1593 are considered “exquisite”.23 Under the title Nongwu zhi tu ል೭հቹ (Pictures of farming tasks) and Nühong zhi tu Ֆદհቹ (Pictures of women’s work), the author offers us fifteen scenes of rice-farming and sixteen of sericulture, accompanied by a set of four-line seven-character poems which he tells us he composed in the southern dialect used by local farmers.24 The printing industry expanded rapidly in the mid-Ming, bringing book prices down and supporting an explosion of popular publications, among which such household handbooks figured prominently. Publishers of the period added illustrations to all kinds of books to help sales, and the Gengzhi tu illustrations appear to have been considered apt for works aimed at land-owning households. Another popular household manual of 1607, the Bianyong xuehai qunyu ঁشᖂ௧ᆢ( دSeas of knowledge and mines of jade: encyclopedia for convenient use) contains similar woodblock pictures and identical poems to the Bianmin tuzuan, though in several cases poem and picture are combined differently.25 A new version of the Bianmin tuzuan, published by Kanǀ Einǀ ੭ມ ةin Japan in 1676, served as the inspiration for the various distinctively Japanese illustrations of farming and textile work included at the beginning of the farming or household manuals which proliferated during the Edo period.26 The Gengzhi tu series gained its greatest official prestige during ——— 22 Watabe 1986: 18–20 on Korea, 20–28 on Japan. 23 Wang 1995: 66; these are the pictures reproduced in the modern edition of
1959 by Shi Shenghan and Kang Chengyi, though the text is the Jiajing edition. 24 Bianmin tuzuan: 1. 25 Kuhn 1976 reproduces this series in its entirety; Kuhn (1976: 344–349) and Watabe (1986: 13) both provide tables comparing the contents of various Gengzhi tu series. 26 Two fine examples are illustrated by Watabe (1986: figs. 33 a–o; 34 a–k).
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the Qing dynasty, when no fewer than three emperors, Kangxi (r. 1662–1722), Yongzheng (r. 1723–35) and Qianlong (r. 1736–96), commissioned new painted versions or stone carvings, composed additional sets of poems to accompany the pictures and had the new versions printed in woodblock format by the imperial printing house. As foreign rulers the Qing emperors were especially anxious to show themselves to be good Confucians and ardent supports of the Chinese moral order, committed to promoting agriculture (quannong). Patronage of the Gengzhi tu was an ideal instrument for this ideological task. The Kangxi emperor commissioned Jiao Bingzhen ྡྷऺૣ, a court artist, to paint a version of the Gengzhi tu using Western perspective. Jiao presented his completed work, consisting of two sets of 23 scenes, to the emperor in 1696. Kangxi was delighted with it, and wrote a preface in which he reminded his readers of the hardships suffered by the common people in order to produce the grain and cloth they took for granted. He inscribed each picture with his own seven-character four-line poems, then had the work “engraved, printed and distributed among his subjects”. The engraver who produced the woodblocks was Zhu Gui ڈڹ.27 The images were also included in the compilation of agricultural knowledge entitled Shoushi tongkao ழຏ( ەWorks and days), commissioned by the Qianlong emperor and completed in 1742. Finally, Jiao Bingzhen’s images were introduced to Japan in the early nineteenth century, and served as a stimulus for many local versions.28 The Qianlong emperor also acquired Cheng Qi’s paintings, dating from the Yuan dynasty and based directly on Lou Chou’s original. He was so fond of them that he wrote his own poems in running script next to Lou Chou’s, using the same rhymes. In 1769 he had the Imperial Art Academy make line copies of Cheng Qi’s paintings. The drawings, together with the emperor’s poems, were carved on stone slabs and kept in the Yuanmingyuan; half of them were destroyed in 1860 when Anglo-French forces burned the Summer Palace, but twenty-three survived, twelve of farming, eight of sericulture, and three “eroded beyond recognition”. They are now in the China Historical Museum.29 Another version on a single giant stela of Kunlun ———
27 Wang 1995: 79–80; Kuhn 1976: 339; Kangxi’s poems are given in Wang (1995: 200–201).’ 28 Watabe 1986: 20–28. 29 Wang 1995: 128. Rubbings of the complete series were published by Pelliot in 1913; see also Wang (1995: 133–148).
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stone, 2m high, 1m wide and 0.7m thick, was set up in the quarter of Beijing where the imperial silk factories were located; it has survived to the present day. According to Wang Chaosheng and his colleagues, this stela was erected no later than 1753.30 Lou Chou’s Gengzhi tu was not only prized by officials and incorporated into accessible handbooks. Its imagery quickly entered the craftsman’s repertory of popular scenes. The earliest surviving example of the use of the Gengzhi tu as a decorative motif is a round fan, dating from some time in the late Song, which shows all the tasks of rice-farming set out in a single landscape.31 Later, scenes from the Gengzhi tu were used to decorate ceramics and lacquer screens, including works intended for the European export market, and they also figured in woodblock New Year prints.32 Often, as with the Song fan, several tasks shown individually in Lou Chou’s paintings are grouped together in a single scene or landscape in these other media, as they are also in various Korean and Japanese paintings on the theme, many of which depict local tools, costumes, crops and divisions of labour.33 A painted wall-paper in an Austrian castle, that was probably originally installed in Halbturn Castle in the mid-eighteenth century either by Charles VI or by his daughter Maria Teresa, shows a number of scenes of rice-farming and sericulture that closely resemble the 1696 version of the Gengzhi tu. The scenes are intermingled with scenes of ———
30 Watabe 1986: 10–11; Wang 1995: 126–29; 209–212. On the stela, see Wang (1995: 129ff.). 31 Watabe 1986: Fig. 4; the fan is in the Beijing Palace collection. 32 Franke illustrates several pieces from German collections of the period. They include three fine porcelain plates from the Kangxi period, each showing a single scene from the rice-farming series, and two vases, also Kangxi, one showing various rice-farming scenes scattered across a single landscape, the other showing a sericultural scene (Franke 1913, plates I, II and III, facing pp. 80, 88 and 96). Watabe (1986: 17–18; figs. 19, 20) discusses three of the same pieces, and also shows a late Qing New Year print from Suzhou modelled on Jiao Bingzhen’s painting (fig. 21). Watabe also includes several examples of Japanese screens based on versions of the Gengzhi tu. A Chinese twelve–panel “Coromandel” lacquer screen from about 1700, showing a rural landscape containing scenes from the Gengzhi tu on one side, and a busy prefect’s court on the other, was offered for sale in 2003 by a London antique dealer (Marchant 2003: 64–75).’’’ 33 For example the Korean two-panel painting of men and women in Korean dress going about “the happy tasks of farming families” shown by Watabe (1986: fig.24). A Japanese woodblock version from the late seventeenth-century shows women transplanting and weeding the rice (Nǀgyǀ zensho ልᄐ٤: 1/2b). Although women did participate in such tasks in some parts of southern China, the conventional Chinese view was that all field tasks were men’s work, and that women’s work was confined to the home. When women are shown in the farming section of Chinese versions of the Gengzhi tu, they are bringing baskets of food and drink to the men working in the fields.’’
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tea cultivation and pottery production; the general effect is very picturesque, but only a few of the stages depicted in the Gengzhi tu are shown, and the painters have omitted such key technical details as the cog-wheel of the chain-pump.34 In 1978 yet another popular variant on the Gengzhi tu was discovered, this time depicting rice-farming together with cotton production. Twenty scenes of farming and weaving, engraved entaglio on four slabs of green stone 2m long by 30cm wide, were discovered in the walls of an arch-gateway in a farmhouse in Bo’ai ໑ფ County, Henan Province. Ten show rice farming, ten cotton production. In one scene of bringing home the grain, a peasant is shown pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with two sacks of grain; one is marked “Guangxu year 8” (1882), suggesting that this is when the series was carved. The scenes clearly reflect local practice. There is no sign of the iron-toothed harrow, always used after ploughing in Jiangnan, and the artist shows threshing with a roller instead of flails. The scenes of cotton cultivation, which we might expect to have been modelled on the Mianhua tu क़ቹ (Pictures of cotton, a late eighteenth-century derivant of the Gengzhi tu discussed below), are in fact completely different both in the scenes portrayed and in the design.35 Today there are still some sixty editions and variants of the Gengzhi tu in existence throughout East Asia. What accounts for its longlasting popularity in late imperial China, Korea and Japan? It is often presumed by historians of technology that the work was intended to provide advanced technical knowledge that could be used to improve agricultural and textile practices. Certainly it was produced at a time when state officials were putting great energy into such development efforts. And certainly Lou Chou’s elegant pictures depict in vivid detail the practices of growing rice and of making silk that were typical of one of China’s technically most advanced regions. Yet the images of equipment are often incomplete from the point of view of anyone trying to reproduce their structure: instead of focusing on the tools and machines, or even on the hands of the workers, the artist often chooses to foreground rustic landscapes of willows and waterways. He dwells affectionately on thatched cottages and distant mountains, an old man looking on from the bank of the rice-field, a toddler playing with a dog in front of the silk-reeling machine, one woman suckling her infant and another sewing as they sit in front of ———
34 Berger, Métailié and Watabe 1996: 102. 35 Wang 1995: 159–160; 165 fig. 9.
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the stands holding the silkworm trays. In Lou Chou’s pictures the loom is half-hidden behind a wall, the plough is buried in the mud. His ballad-like poems emphasise mood and moral more than technical precision (Fig. 1): A clear frosty day When a strong wind tears the leaves from the trees Is best for threshing. The irregular beat of the flails rings out, The brown hens peck at the fallen grain While the crows chatter gleefully. Back home the farmers shake off the dirt and dust, And in their cottages these nights they burn the stalks of the grain.36
Clearly Lou Chou intended his pairing of poems and images as a powerful medium for conveying an important message. Perhaps he chose the form so it should be accessible to humble and uneducated people as well as officials and scholars. But what exactly was the message? The Gengzhi tu depicts scenes of production, but although it does contain many telling technical details, taken in conjunction with the poems I would argue that it is as much the production of social harmony and political order that is at stake as material production. When Lou Chou painted the Gengzhi tu, the Chinese state had just suffered a cataclysmic defeat. The imperial state had lost its traditional economic base in the northern plains, and now had to recognise its dependence on the rice regions of the south. In fact the contribution of the south to the national exchequer had been increasing steadily for three hundred years, but this growing importance had gone unmarked in the technical literature: all the classic farming treatises concentrated on the dryland farming systems of the north. Furthermore it had been common to underrate the skills and hard work of southern farmers: the south was commonly referred to as “the land of rice and fish”, implying that it was such a naturally productive region that bounteous harvests sprang up unaided. The Gengzhi tu was the first work to celebrate the indispensable role of the irrigated Jiangnan landscape in supporting the imperial order, and to show the skills, hard work and the technical sophistication that made this contribution possible. Together Lou Chou’s pictures and poems insist upon the daily toil that went into making the land yield such riches; they movingly portray the sweat, dedication and sacrifice that went into producing the rice ———
36 Trs. Bray 1984: 357.
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and silk with which the peasants paid their taxes. They also emphasize the complexity and sophistication of the processes involved, but frequently as an object of marvel and admiration rather than a process to be explained. In the poem on the drawloom, for example, Lou Chou writes: “hand and mind work in obscure resonance, before the eyes a colourful pattern grows”.37 Lou Chou’s images emphasise working skills and bodies in motion, sometimes showing several stages of one basic process (winnowing and sifting the grain, for example).38 One Korean version of the reaping scene actually shows the details of a tool in action. The sickle has a long wooden hook at the back of the haft, slightly below the blade, and the reaping takes place in three steps: first the reaper uses the hook to gather a bundle of rice-stems into his left hand; then he reverses the sickle to cut the bundle with the metal blade; finally he lays the bundle on the ground, to be collected into a sheaf (Fig. 2).39 More than the precise details of technical action, however, I would say that the Gengzhi tu pictures and poems were intended to emphasise toil and effort, and that later versions share this concern. In the scene of irrigating the growing crops, Cheng Qi’s copy of Lou Chou’s painting shows a team of men working a chain-pump in the foreground, and a man using the slow and old-fashioned bucket on a sweep in the background (Col.Pl. XVIII). Lou’s poem praises the advantages of the chain-pump, which he describes as so efficient that it allows the irrigation team to return home before sunset. By the midMing, however, Guang Fan’s poem on the same chain-pump laments “Sore legs, aching back, busy day and night.”40 Two centuries later, Jiao Bingzhen does not foreground the chain-pump, although—or more likely because—it was the most common irrigation device in ——— 37 See Wang 1995: 191, Mohua ᡙक़. 38 As do the illustrations to the late Ming work on crafts and production, Song
Yingxing’s Tiangong kaiwu of 1637; see Peter Golas, this volume.’ 39 ’My thanks to François Sigaut for providing me with a photocopy of this version of the Gengzhi tu, which he encountered in a Japanese collection, and for pointing out that the reaping picture shows the various steps of cutting the rice in sequence. The version in question, entitled Nongjia fengsu tu ልᒛଅঋቹ, is Korean (Watabe Takeshi, pers. comm. via Charlotte von Verschuer, 2003). Though it is quite common around East and Southeast Asia, I have never seen the hooked sickle depicted in any other premodern East Asian agricultural works or pictures. All the other versions of the Gengzhi tu, whether Chinese, Japanese or Korean, show simple sickles with small metal blades set at the top of a straight wooden shaft. Wang Zhen’s Nongqi tupu shows a variety of sickles, billhooks and a scythe, but no sickles of this type. 40 ’Bianmin tuzuan 10. The illustration is closely modelled on the Cheng Qi version except that it omits the swape and bucket and shows only the chain-pump.
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South China. Instead Jiao shows us a scene of fields around a lake, with a chain-pump at work half visible behind a tree; in the foreground a man is lifting water into a field with an old-fashioned bucket on a sweep (Fig. 3). Wang Chaosheng believes Jiao’s picture corresponds to irrigation practices in northern China (he apparently hasn’t noticed the pump in the background). 41 I see the prominence Jiao gives to the slow and clumsy sweep as a metaphor for the many tedious hours of hard work needed to water the crops whatever instrument is used. Lou Chou’s paintings evoked the village roots of imperial wealth and power; his poems, echoed in the later prefaces by Wang Gang and Kangxi, reminded the ruling class that these goods were produced at a cost and should not be abused. For officials, the Gengzhi tu depicted an ideal social contract in which the peasantry toiled to produce the rice and silk upon which the imperial government depended, and the emperor and his officials beholding the scrolls, or the landlords reading the books portraying these scenes, were reminded that they should be grateful for the sacrifices entailed and devote themselves to promoting the welfare of the people, or of their tenants. From the perspective of imperial rule, quannong, “promoting agriculture”, was both a material and an ideological or cosmic endeavour. The original Gengzhi tu certainly combined both dimensions, offering technical observation as well as charming scenes of rural life. But its greatest success was as an icon celebrating a fruitful social harmony. In pairing rice-farming and sericulture, the production of food and of clothes, the work underlined the essential complementarity between male and female work. The interdependence of generations is also a key theme: mature adults are shown at work, while old people look on or help out by minding the children (Fig. 4). The central theme of families working together to achieve abundance is certainly one reason why the scenes of the Gengzhi tu were so popular as decorative motifs in the late Ming and Qing: they ranked with vignettes of a son’s success in the imperial examinations, or depictions of rosycheeked children at play, as auspicious images of happiness, virtue and harmony. When the Qing emperors took the Gengzhi tu up with such enthusiasm, it must surely have been for its iconic rather than its technical value. Certainly there were few dramatic transformations in ricefarming equipment between the Song and the Qing, but there had ——— 41 Wang 1995: 77.
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been several significant technical improvements in farming practice, notably in irrigation, and in fertilising materials and methods. Yet the new versions of the Gengzhi tu commissioned by the Qing emperors reflect nothing of this, either in the scenes shown or in the poems. The late Ming Bianmin tuzuan version, which was intended for landowners rather than courtiers, refers in one poem to the use of beancake for fertiliser, which by that time was a routine practice. But no mention of the new commercial fertilisers is made in any of the new poems written by the Qing emperors. 42 However, while Song and Yuan versions ended the rice-farming sequence with the filling of the granary, the version that Jiao Bingzhen produced for the Kangxi emperor adds a new scene: a solemn thanksgiving ceremony at the family altar.43 This is by no means the only example of Qing rulers favouring symbolic over material instrumentality. Some fifty years later, the huge compendium Shoushi tongkao commissioned by the Qianlong emperor would devote more space to rituals and to “auspicious grains” (jiahe ቯ )كthan to commercial crops or flood control.44
WANG ZHEN’S REGISTER: WOODBLOCK PRINTING AND THE PAIRING OF PROSE AND IMAGE
By the time that Wang Zhen composed his Nongshu (Agricultural treatise) at the beginning of the fourteenth century, woodblock printing was highly developed, and Wang took full advantage of the opportunities this medium offered for expressing knowledge not only through written text, but also through diagrams and illustrations. Wang Zhen’s linking of text and graphic follows a completely different logic from that of Lou Chou, offering an early example of what we understand today by technical illustration. Wang Zhen’s Nongshu consists of three sections, one (Nongsang tongjue ልௌຏ) consisting of general instructions on farming and textile methods, one (Baigu pu pu ۍᒜᢜ) on “the hundred crops”, ——— 42 Bianmin tuzuan: 6; Wang 1995: 200–201; 205; 209. 43 The Bianmin tuzuan had added a picture of a riotous harvest feast with
drunken tricks, dancing and much vomiting; though the festive table is set before the landlord’s family altar, only the very edge of the altar is visible; Bianmin tuzuan: 16. 44 ’Bray 1984: 72–74. Ears of grain that were especially large or formed in curious and auspicious shapes were believed to be a sign of Heaven’s favour, and they were supposed to be taken to the local magistrate who would send them to the Emperor.
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and one (Nongqi tupu, Illustrated register of farming tools) on tools, equipment and machinery. Wang Zhen dated his preface to the Nongshu in 1313, and it seems that two woodblock editions may have been printed during the Yuan dynasty, one at that date (missing the section on crops) and another (including all three sections) a few years later. Unfortunately neither has survived. The numerous later editions fall into two main lineages. One derives from the version published in the Yongle dadian (Yongle encyclopedia) of 1407, possibly based on a manuscript copy; although no copy of the Yongle edition has survived to the present, it was reproduced in the imperial collection Siku quanshu ٤ of 1782. Another derives from a woodblock edition of 1530 (during the Jiajing reign period), published by the provincial governor of Shandong from an engraving of a manuscript version.45 In the bibliographical introduction to his critical edition of the Nongshu, Wang Yuhu explains the principal textual differences between the two lineages, which are significant in terms of the ordering of sections and the number of juan, but otherwise rather minor. Wang notes that the illustrations to the Jiajing edition of 1530 give more prominence to the implements or equipment, which are often simply presented without any background, while the Siku quanshu edition tends to present them in a more elaborate setting, with more emphasis on human figures. Wang believes this may reflect aesthetic preferences of the period: he thinks it is unlikely that this difference was present in the original Yongle edition. In any case, while Wang takes the Siku quanshu text as the basis for his critical edition, he gives preference to the Jiajing edition illustrations of 1530.46 In some respects the Nongshu is a conventional farming treatise. Like earlier writers on agriculture, Wang Zhen quotes extensively from earlier and contemporary works, philological, historical, literary and philosophical as well as technical. Like Lou Chou, he acknowledges the importance of the ritual, symbolic and atmospheric elements of farming. He begins his work conventionally with reflections on nongben ል“( ءfarming is the base”), and on the legendary antecedents of China’s agrarian economy. The farming sections of the Nongshu are preceded by a depiction of the emperor ploughing the first ritual furrow of spring (Fig. 5), while the textile sections show ———
45 For a critical analysis of the Nongshu editions see Wang Yuhu’s study, written in 1966 and included at the beginning of his annotated edition of the treatise (Wang Yuhu 1981: 3, 5).’ 46 Wang Yuhu 1981: 9–10; foreword 1–2.’
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the empress and her ladies sacrificing to the Silkworm Deity. And a charming disquisition on the value to farmers of the water buffalo includes an allusion to the haunting tones of the herdboy’s flute (Fig. 6). Moreover Wang like Lou Chou uses poetry, concluding almost every entry in his Register with a few verses by himself or by other poets who had written on farming topics, among them Wang Anshi and Lou Chou. Wang Zhen’s Nongshu is, however, an innovation in two key respects. Earlier agronomists like Jia Sixie ᇸ৸Ꮸ, the sixth-century author of the Qimin yaoshu (Essential techniques for the common people) or Chen Fu, the Song agronomist whose pioneering short treatise on Jiangnan rice and silk production (also entitled Nongshu) appeared in 1149, just after the Gengzhi tu was completed, had developed sophisticated technical styles for describing hitherto undescribed farming techniques verbally.47 But although they advocate the use of a wide range of tools and equipment, and explain under which circumstances of season, soil type, weather conditions or growth cycle one type of hoe or harrow rather than another should be used, they appear to take it for granted that their readers will know what all these tools are. Wang Zhen is the first author to highlight the construction of tools and machinery. He is also the first to integrate technical drawings and diagrams with text. Lou Chou’s ballads and genre scenes were paired, certainly, but each made sense independently. Sometimes the pictures were copied without the poems, or one set of poems was replaced by another; the poems themselves also circulated independently of the images, in literary collections or as quotations. But Wang Zhen intended text and image to hold together like a fabric: closely and precisely interwoven, strong together though useless apart. “The images are the warp threads and the words the weft”, as Zheng Qiao put it in his essay.48 Wang Zhen’s pioneering marriage of illustration and explanation constituted a wholly new agronomic rubric: the systematic technical description of field types and of farming equipment. A major section of his treatise, a total of 12 out of 22 juan in the Siku quanshu edition, or 20 out of 36 in the Jiajing edition, pairs illustrations and text to describe varieties of field types, farming implements and equipment, ———
47 On the contents and styles of these two works see f or example Bray (1984: 55–59), and Bray (2001 a,b). 48 Tupu lüe, quoted Zhang Zhongge (1995: 1).
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ranging in complexity from water-mills to sandals, from harrows to spinning-wheels. The Nongqi tupu (Illustrated register of agricultural implements) is a superb account of the tools and machines which fed and clothed China. It contains altogether 261 entries, each of which pairs a line drawing of agricultural or textile equipment with text detailing the parts of the tool or machine and their dimensions, how they fit together, and how the tool was used. What impelled Wang Zhen to develop this new approach to the transmission of knowledge? Wang Zhen was a native of Shandong, and served many years as an official in Anhui and Jiangxi. He was thus acquainted with both the dryland farming systems of the north and the irrigated rice farming of the south. His purpose in composing the Illustrated register was not simply to provide an inventory of the most common farm equipment. Wang’s pairing of text and graphics was intended to provide the equivalent of a blueprint, allowing the reader (a fellow official) to reconstruct the equipment (with the help of a skilled carpenter). His hope was that officials would make use of the work to introduce more advanced technology to backward regions, and to disseminate various items of labour-saving or helpful equipment to areas where they were unknown. In the opening section of Wang Zhen’s work, the Nongsang tongjue, this motif occurs again and again. For instance in the chapter on harrowing (balao ౚ໎) he quotes a passage from the northern work Qimin yaoshu, which advocates using a ta ᖓ (an improvised harrow consisting of a bush or a bunch of branches weighted down with stones) in order to cover the newly sown grain: Southerners are not familiar with this implement. Southern practices are different from the north, so they do not know the advantages of using the ta. And even in the north, the region is so vast that there are differences there too. Some areas use the ba ౚ harrow [a harrow with long metal tines] but don’t know the lao ໎ harrow [a harrow consisting of a light hurdle of woven branches], others use the lao but don’t know the ba, and even in the north some do not know the ta. (For the ba, lao and ta, see also the section Nongqi pu.) Now I am including all of them here, so that northern and southern knowledge can be exchanged, and people can use whatever is most suitable.49
And indeed the various types of harrow are all meticulously illustrated and described in the corresponding Nongqi tupu section.50 Here is one labour-saving device which Wang Zhen included in ——— 49 Nongshu: 27. 50 Ibid: 205–207.
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the Register in the hope that it would be widely disseminated: The yuntang ౘᛯ (“weeding oar”) is a new invention from Jiangnan. It is shaped like a wooden patten, a foot or so long and roughly three inches broad, spiked underneath with a dozen or so nails in rows. There is a crossbar on top through which the bamboo handle, five feet or so long, is fixed. At weeding time the farmer stirs together the mud and weeds between the rows of grain so that the weeds are buried in the mud and the field is both cleaned and tilled ... In the provinces to the east of the Yangzi I have seen farmers weeding their fields by hand, crawling between the crops on their hands and knees with the sun roasting their backs and the mud soaking their limbs, a truly pitiable sight ... so I have described the yuntang here in the hope that philanthropists may disseminate its use.51
Alas, perhaps because the yuntang was confined at that point to one small region, this passage where Wang clearly states his intention of producing the kind of knowledge that will support technology transfer is also one of the cases where the illustrators of both the Jiajing and the Siku edition, if not perhaps of the lost Yuan edition, failed to match the written description. The tool is, however, correctly illustrated both in the Nongqi ልᕴ section of Xu Guangqi’s ஊ٠ඔ Nongzheng quanshu ል ਙ ٤ (Complete treatise on agricultural administration) of 1639 (see below), and in the corresponding scene in the Bianmin tuzuan (Fig. 7).52 Another case where Wang Zhen’s illustrator fails to render a piece of rather simple equipment adequately is the cradled scythe used in some northern areas for harvesting wheat and barley; here again, Wang Zhen hoped that this laboursaving device could be introduced into other regions, and used to harvest other cereals.53 More commonly, however, text and illustration are complementary and sufficiently complete to permit construction and correct use, at least in the case of the simpler implements. Here for example is Wang’s account of the square flat harrow ba: The length of the cross-bars should be five feet, the width four inches, the two beams should be five inches or more apart ... Each is pierced with square holes in which are set wooden teeth six inches or more long. At each end of the cross-bar is a wooden beam about three feet long, curved slightly upwards at the front end and pieced by a wooden
———
51 Ibid: 233, translated and italics added by F. Bray. 52 Nongzheng quanshu: 549; Bianmin tuzuan: 8. 53 Nongshu: 363–368. According to early twentieth-century observers, notably
Amano Motonosuke, the cradled scythe was still in quite common use in the North China plains, but was to be found nowhere else. On the various sources documenting this harvesting device see Bray 1984: 341.
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In this case the illustration matches perfectly (Fig. 8). For most of the more complex constructions, including textile equipment and mills, text and illustration complement each other well enough to serve as a reasonable blueprint, an accurate enough guide to allow an experienced carpenter or builder to produce a working version—they are “schematic representations of a technological principle”. 55 “This pump involves many joints, but if you have a carpenter, it can easily be made,” says Wang Zhen at the end of his description of the chainpump (fanche).56 Though unprecedented in agronomy, the Nongqi tupu was not a complete innovation. The writing method (naming components, giving their dimensions and describing how they connect) follows the pattern of two short earlier works, Lu Guimeng’s ຬᚋኄ Leisijing ۗ ฿ᆖ (Classic of the plough) of ca. 880, or Qin Guan’s ᨠ Canshu ᨀ (Treatise on sericulture) of ca. 1090, both of which Wang quotes.57 The concept of linking technical text and picture has precedents in Song works like the Yingzao fashi ᛜທऄ( ڤModels and methods for building), a guide to the elements and modules of public building compiled by Li Jie ޕᎂ at the end of the eleventh century, and the Kaogongji jie ەՠಖᇞ (Artificer’s record explained), a work completed ca. 1235 by the scholar Lin Xiyi ࣥݦၝ.58 A comparison with the illustrative style of the Gengzhi tu highlights the visual choices Wang Zhen has made. The Gengzhi tu shows farming tasks as part of a landscape; often the operative parts of plough or harrow are invisible. In the 1530 illustrations to Wang Zhen’s Register the components of the implements are all visible. Often the implement or machine stands alone, and where persons or animals are included it is to demonstrate its operation (Fig. 9). Only in the case of field types is the surrounding landscape shown, with ——— 54 55 56 57
Nongshu: 205. Kuhn 1977: 144. Nongshu: 326. Wang Zhen quotes at length both the Leisi jing description of the plough: Nongshu 200–201, and the Canshu description of the silk-reeling frame: ibid 388– 440. Lu Guimeng starts the Leisi jing by explaining that he had been completely ignorant of the construction of the plough until one day he asked a farmer to tell him what the different parts were called see Thilo (1980); Bray (1984: 181–182). 58 Lin attempts to interpret the notoriously cryptic Kaogongji (Artificer’s record), a section from the Zhouli (Rituals of the state of Zhou) which may date back to the Warring States period. Lin Xiyi’s illustration of his reconstruction of the Zhou plough, leisi, is shown in Bray (1984: 145–146).
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small figures hurrying along the bunds and cottages tucked behind a clump of bamboos (Fig. 10). The illustrations of silk processing and weaving, however, not only show the women working the machines but also, in several cases, add some non-functional scenery; the similarity of the representations to those in the early versions of the Gengzhi tu suggests that where there were visual precedents, Wang Zhen’s woodblock carvers resorted to their use.59 This is also true for instance of the scene of storing grain, where the Jiajing illustration of the scene is an almost exact copy of the Gengzhi tu version (Fig. 11).60 As already mentioned, even though his illustrations of equipment owe almost nothing to the pictures in the Gengzhi tu, Wang Zhen does quote from Lou Chou’s poems, for example Lou’s poem on flailing the grain, translated above, which Wang Zhen includes after his technical description of the flail. Wang Zhen says that the flail is used all through the south, but seldom in the north, and he advocates its adoption as an easy way of husking any grain. Describing “its construction” (qi zhi ࠡࠫ), he says: “Four thin wooden sticks are used, bound together with rawhide; the bundle should be about 3 feet long and four inches wide. Sometimes a single heavy stick is used. Both kinds have a long wooden handle, the top of which is pierced to take a spindle, allowing the flail to spin round as it is lifted to strike the grain.”61 How did Wang Zhen devise his particular method of visually and verbally inscribing technical knowledge? Unfortunately he himself does not tell us. Jia Sixie, the sixth-century author of the Qimin yaoshu, tells us in his preface that he consulted other farmers; the seventeenth-century agronomist Xu Guangqi (discussed below) questioned peasants relentlessly about technical details, taking copious notes all the while; both were enthusiastic experimenters. 62 As to Wang Zhen’s procedures, we may infer them both from his treatise and from the preface which he asked his friend and fellow prefect Dai ———
59 E.g. the depictions of silk reels and looms, Nongshu: 404–407. The illustrations of cotton reeling equipment (417–419), which was relatively new to China when Wang Zhen composed his work, appear to have given the artist far more trouble: they are angular and awkward, unlike the fluid lines and easy postures of the sericultural pictures.’ 60 Compare Nongshu: 290 and Franke 1313: Figure I, 21. 61 Nongshu: 253–254. Though Wang’s explanation is very clear, his illustration is not nearly as useful as Lou Chou’s. 62 Qimin yaoshu: 0.12; on Xu Guangqi’s techniques for interviewing farmers, see Shi Shenghan’s introduction to his edition of the Nongzheng quanshu: 4.
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Biaoyuan ᚮ।ց to write for the Nongshu. Dai writes that he first heard about Wang Zhen when he was prefect of Jingde ඞᐚ in Anhui: I asked him about his methods. Each year he instructed the common people in a certain number of elements of farming and textile production. He thus transmitted to them all the methods (fang ֱ) of growing and harvesting fibre crops and grain. He also made drawings (tuhua ቹ ) of all the varieties of hoes, drills, harrows, and other miscellaneous implements, and had the common people make them (shi min wei zhi ࠌ اհ). At first the common people said: “But this is our trade, we have done this for generations. Why should we need instruction?” The administrators in other prefectures all ridiculed him, considering this was really not part of his job: a good official, a wise administrator, would know all this without asking, and if he did ask, he would not claim it as an achievement. But Boshan ܄ [Wang Zhen] continued for three years, and before he was transferred to his next post the common people of Jingde had come to rely on him and were singing his praises. Boshan not only instructed them in the methods (fang ֱ) and implements (qi ᕴ) of farming, he also was able to do so in such an unintrusive and peaceable way that they improved daily and with docile hearts.63
Following the Confucian ideal of government which presumed that knowledge passed down from the government to the people, Dai suggests that Wang Zhen taught the local peasants much, and they taught him nothing. Wise rulers of yore had taught the people to build houses, to make clothes, to cook food, to grow millet; naturally, then, wise magistrates of the Yuan dynasty taught the local people how to make a chain-pump or a flail rather than the other way around. But how did Wang Zhen come by this technical knowledge? It seems likely that Dai Biaoyuan is conflating a process of give and take of knowledge into a one-way flow. Presumably, wherever Wang Zhen was posted he made a point not only of sketching the local tools and equipment and noting their construction, but also of asking the local craftsmen to take the implements apart and put them together again so that he could be sure he understood well enough to make, in Dieter Kuhn’s terms, “a schematic representation of a technological principle”. Perhaps he also tried to persuade people to try building and using equipment they were unfamiliar with, or to make improved versions of known tools (as Dai’s account suggests), but if so, Wang himself does not tell us of his successes, only of his hopes. There is ———
63 Wang Boshan nongshu xu (Preface to Wang Boshan’s Agricultural treatise), appended in Wang Yuhu’s edition to the main text, Nongshu: 445.’
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no doubt that new methods and new equipment did spread from one region to another through the late imperial period, but it is not clear that Wang Zhen’s Register, brilliant innovation though it was, actually played any direct role in promoting specific cases of technological transfer. Yet Wang Zhen’s paired texts and images, like Lou Chou’s, were widely diffused. Apart from the many later editions of the Nongshu itself, the whole of Wang Zhen’s Register (the Jiajing version) was included in two important later works on agronomy, the Nongzheng quanshu (Complete treatise on agricultural administration) of 1639, by the late Ming statesman-polymath Xu Guangqi, and the imperial compilation Shoushi tongkao (Works and days) of 1742.64 Numerous entries from the Register were incorporated into Wang Qi’s ݆׆ influential Sancai tuhui Կ թ ቹ ᄎ (Illustrated encyclopedia of Heaven, Earth and Man) of 1609, and the illustrations thus entered common currency as emblematic representations of well-known everyday objects like ploughs, hoes or looms. The Sancai tuhui seems to have included few or no original illustrations, instead incorporating images drawn from quite a wide range of illustrated technical works. As far as farming and textiles are concerned, the Sancai tuhui seems to have taken the Nongshu as its only source. Though it does include one or two scenes or motifs found originally in the Gengzhi tu, they are the versions found in the Jiajing edition of the Nongshu.65 The Nongshu never equalled the Gengzhi tu in its impact on Korean or Japanese farm treatises or rural iconography, yet a number of the Nongshu illustrations did find their way to Japan via the Sancai tuhui. The Shinzoku kibun 堚ঋધⓚ (Recorded accounts of Chinese customs), for instance, an account of everyday life, customs and beliefs compiled on the order of the Governor of Nagasaki in 1800, drew heavily on the Sancai tuhui and included a number of its illustrations of farming equipment and textile production.66 ———
64 As mentioned earlier, the Gengzhi tu was also included in the Shoushi tongkao. 65 Nongshu depictions of silkworm sheds and of the imperial ceremonies con-
cerning sericulture, and of granaries, stables and farm buildings, are included in the Sancai tuhui section on “Palaces and buildings” (vol. 3: 1017–25); pictures of textile equipment, irrigation devices and mills, and agricultural tools are included in the section on “Useful devices” (vol. 3: 1257–33). The scene of storing grain (vol. 3: 1020) is one example of an indirect borrowing, through the Nongshu, from the Gengzhi tu. 66 See Shinzoku kibun 197–213; on how the work was produced, see Yabuuchi (1953) and Bray (1997: 65–67).
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TAKING THINGS FURTHER? Both the Gengzhi tu and the Register were creative innovations in the verbal-visual depiction of technical activities. But were these innovative impulses carried any further? Let us first consider the case of Xu Guangqi ஊ٠ඔ (1562–1633). Xu, a critical and creative polymath, is best known by historians for his conversion to Christianity, his efforts to reform the late Ming state, and his collaboration with Jesuit scholars on the introduction of European mathematics, astronomy and other sciences. 67 In the domain of his commitment to “promoting agriculture”, however, Xu was thoroughly traditional. He believed that agriculture was the basis of the social order, and devoted himself throughout his life to agricultural research as the basis for improvements and reforms which he hoped would help restore the regime to health and strength. The body of research and writings which Xu had worked on from his early years as a Hanlin scholar until his death was posthumously edited and published in 1639, under the title Nongzheng quanshu ልਙ٤ (Complete treatise on agricultural administration), by a group of young officials who believed that this was Xu’s most important contribution to knowledge.68 Xu’s research on agriculture was innovative in several respects: he used historical records to analyse natural patterns, for instance, in his work on how to predict locust swarms; he experimented with the introduction of plants from one climatic zone to another, as in the case of the sweet potato, which he successfully persuaded farmers in the Yangzi region to adopt. Unlike many agronomic authors who were content simply to quote from earlier authorities, Xu Guangqi was nothing if not critical. He spent considerable time and effort himself experimenting and testing farming methods, documenting regional practices and discussing them with farmers. He was a hands-on man who felt entitled to remark with some asperity that Wang Zhen was a better poet than he was a farmer.69 Nevertheless, when it comes to the description of equipment, Xu includes Wang’s Register almost in its entirety in his own treatise, although it is re-ordered and broken ———
67 Jami et al. 2001. 68 Bray and Métailié 2001. 69 Nongzheng quanshu, 1843 Palace edition, 5/19a, cited in Yabuuchi (1953) and
Bray (1984: 63).
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up into separate sections.70 In terms of changes to Wang’s original, Xu drops all the poems, adds later materials on the same topic, and appends his own comments. In the section on various types of water-raising equipment, for example, Xu adds notes on which are more suitable for particular speeds or depths of water flow.71 The illustrations are closely based on those in the Jiajing edition of Wang Zhen’s Nongshu, though more roughly drawn, so that sometimes the technical features are less easy to understand. Some of Wang Zhen’s originals are omitted, and some have undergone minor but intriguing modifications, as in the picture of the chain-pump which shows one of the two men reading a book as he pedals (Fig. 12).72 Some new illustrations are added in Xu’s treatise, notably the diagrams of Archimedes’ screw and other Western pumping devices to which Xu had been introduced by his Jesuit colleagues, and the drawings of plants in the long final section on famine foods.73 There had been some significant technical changes and improvements between Wang Zhen’s lifetime and Xu Guangqi’s, for example to cotton spinning and silk-reeling equipment, and Xu’s text mentions a number of such technical developments, but unfortunately none are reflected in the illustrations.74 ———
70 The Nongzheng quanshu was edited from Xu’s voluminous drafts and notes by a team of devoted young admirers who set to work soon after his death in 1633, and published the work in 1639. They saw it as a primary duty to remain faithful to Xu’s intentions, and later scholars have shown that they made almost no substantive changes to the information and opinions expressed in Xu’s manuscripts. The work by Chinese scholars on this issue is summarised in Bray and Métailié (2001).’ 71 See for example Xu’s detailed remarks on the suitable conditions for installing a noria (tongche ߫ ) rather than some kind of chain-pump for raising water; Nongzheng quanshu: 425. 72 E.g. Wang Zhen’s illustration of the silk-reeling machine is referred to in Xu’s text but not included; Nongzheng quanshu: 861, 878. In the illustration of the chainpump the axle which drives the pump is severely distorted, though the artist lovingly details one man’s book and the other’s parasol; Nongzheng quanshu: 423. The relative crudeness of the illustrations is no doubt due to the haste with which the editors pushed through publication of the work; modern scholars have remarked that the carving of the blocks for both text and illustrations was far from perfect (Liang 1963: 105–106).’’ 73 Juan 19 and 20 of the Nongzheng quanshu are devoted to Taixi shuifa ֽ۫ ऄ(Western irrigation methods). Juan 43–60 describe and illustrate edible plants that can be used as famine foods; this whole section is based on the earlier treatise, Jiuhuang bencao එء౻ʳ (Inventory of plants for use in famines) by the Ming prince Zhu Xiao ڹ㒺, completed in 1406 and reprinted several times in the later Ming.’’ 74 As the modern commentator Shi Shenghan forlornly remarks, e.g. on Nongzheng quanshu: 878. The shift that took place through the later Ming and the Qing, from domestic to workshop or even industrial production of textiles, triggered a number of technical changes. For one important technical advance in silk-reeling, the
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Let us now consider Song Yingxing’s ݚᚨਣ wonderful book on crafts and manufactures, the Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ (The exploitation of the works of nature), a work renowned for its originality. It is probable that the illustrations for the original edition of 1637 were produced in several workshops, or at any rate by more than one woodblock artist.75 Most of the pictures of farming tasks, irrigation equipment, food processing and textile production were original in conception, and quite different from all the well-known earlier representations in the tradition of the Gengzhi tu or the Nongshu. Nor does it seem likely that most of these quirky drawings, full of vitality, were copied from other existing pictures (Fig. 13). Whatever the accuracy of their technical details, or the degree to which they corresponded to Song’s text,76 this originality in itself is quite astonishing for the period. However a few of the 1637 drawings are more typical of the common illustrative practices of the period in that they seem to be crude and hasty copies of Nongshu pictures. 77 Could they be the product of a different workshop from those which generated entirely new images of technical processes? It is also notable that when Chen Menglei ຫኄሼ selected excerpts from the Tiangong kaiwu to include in his Gujin tushu jicheng ײվቹႃ( ګIllustrated compendium of texts and pictures, ancient and modern) of 1725, he added a set of new and stylistically more elaborate woodblock illustrations. Here we find that most of the farming, irrigation and textile scenes are not original but are close copies from either the Gengzhi tu or the Register.78 The illustrations of irrigation devices in the 1637 edition of Tiangong kaiwu are five in number, showing the noria (tongche ߫), the ox-powered and two-man-powered chain-pumps (niuche ׄ߫, tache ᔏ߫), a chain-pump operated by hand by a single person (bache ࢸ ߫), and the well-sweep (jiegao ே⦫).79 Song’s text on irrigation is ——— “complete” silk-reeling frame, see Kuhn (1988: 390–400).’ 75 See Golas, this volume. 76 See the papers on the Tiangong Kaiwu by Golas and Wagner, this volume. 77 By the late Ming there was a craze for illustrations, but the repertory that artists or publishers drew on was surprisingly small (Hegel 1998). Illustrations circulated between genres: a virtuous woman serving medicine to her mother-in-law could easily be redrawn to show a lovelorn girl reading a letter from her suitor (Carlitz 1991; Raphals 1998). Prefacing the ’Bianmin tuzuan with an adapted Gengzhi tu was both a tribute to the virtues of rural activity, and a way of attracting purchasers. 78 See for example the 1936 Commercial Press edition from the Guoxue jiben congshu jianbian series (Song Yingxing 1936), and the English translation (Sun and Sun 1966), which include both sets of illustrations. 79 The Qing version has illustrations of an elevated noria, a tank, a coffer-dam
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very brief, just a few columns; he names the five types of equipment at the beginning, states that each is illustrated, then concentrates in particular on the inputs of labour that each type of equipment requires to water a given acreage.80 Of the set of five Ming woodblocks only one is recognisably a copy, namely the two-man chain-pump, which is a very crude rendering of the Nongshu drawing; though the axlemechanism is clearer than in the Nongzheng quanshu rendering, the chain itself is so roughly drawn as to be meaningless. The bache, on the other hand, is presented here for the first time, and drawing and text taken together make it perfectly plain how this ingenious and convenient device worked. It is a portable device, says Song, ideal for ponds or channels too shallow for a chain-pump. The illustration shows a wheel, mounted vertically on a stand, with a cranked handle attached to either side of the hub; the text tells us that a single person works the pump, pulling each crank back in rapid alternation. Song does not describe the bache as being new, but it was the kind of machine that would serve well where farms and fields were small, and water and labour resources scarce, as they increasingly were in the fertile lower Yangzi by the end of the Ming (Fig. 14).81 Another interesting original twist in the Ming illustrations of the Tiangong kaiwu occurs in the sections on textile production. Here the woodblock artists show a significant shift from the traditional gender division of labour, not mentioned specifically in Song’s text but prominent in other written sources of the period. Several pictures show men at work where earlier illustrations had always showed women (Fig. 15). Though the Tiangong kaiwu still shows women raising silk-worms, it shows men reeling and twisting yarn, mounting the loom and weaving the cloth—an accurate reflection of the silk industry of the late Ming, which was now largely based in urban workshops which depended on male wage-labourers. This change was certainly not reflected in the woodblock illustrations of textile production in the Nongzheng quanshu, published just two years later, also in Jiangnan.82 ——— and a chain-pump driven by a water-mill, none of which are described in the text (Sun and Sun 1966: 15–18).’ 80 Song Yingxing 1936: 4–5; Yabuuchi 1969: 26-30. 81 In fact the Register includes an entry on a similar device called the guache ࠪ ߫ʳ (“slicing pump”, so called, says Wang Zhen, because the vanes of the wheel slice up the water), which closely resembles the bache except that it is mechanically less efficient, being worked with a single crank on one side of the axle (Nongshu 336).’’ 82 Yabuuchi 1969: 64–71; Nongzheng quanshu: 946–949. On changes in the gender division of labour in the textile industry see Bray (1997: 226–237).
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Let me give one final example of how a later author adapted the textual and illustrative traditions founded by Lou Chou and Wang Zhen. Fang Guancheng ֱᨠࢭ, who served as Governor-General of Zhili (present-day Hebei) for twenty years during Qianlong’s reign, decided to take the Gengzhi tu as the model for a work he called the Mianhua tu क़ቹ (Pictures of cotton). Fang designed the work to promote and disseminate more advanced techniques of cotton growing and processing in the province for which he was responsible. He gave orders for a set of 16 paintings to be made showing every stage of cotton cloth production, from sowing the seed and irrigating the field to weaving and dying the cloth, and he composed a set of fourline seven-character poems to go with them. The illustrations to the Mianhua tu closely follow the style of the Gengzhi tu, that is to say, they are genre scenes that include technical details. A number of the specific depictions of technical processes were adapted from precedents in either the Gengzhi tu or the Register. The picturing of sizing the warp for cotton weaving, for example, apart from showing a woman brushing starch onto the threads, is almost identical in every detail to Jiao Bingzhen’s rendering of setting up the warp for silk weaving.83 But there are also some completely new scenes, among them two pictures of women thinning the shoots and picking the cotton bolls. 84 In so far as communicating precise technical information is concerned, however, the big step forward that Fang Guangcheng makes by comparison with the Gengzhi tu is to supplement the poems with prose passages giving detailed technical advice, including a discussion of the techniques best adapted to the soil and climate of Zhili.85 The picture of “Pinching back” (zhejian ኴ )ڞshows five women at work in a field, pinching out the top shoots on each branch to make the plants bush out (Fig. 16). The prose explanation says that the plants should be pinched back once they are one or two feet tall. The top of the central stem should be pinched off, and so should the ends of any branches over one and a half feet long, in order to get at least fifteen or sixteen, and ideally up to 30 bolls. This work, Fang explains, should be done in fine weather, not in rain, ———
83 Compare Wang 1995: figure 13, p. 157 (the Mianhua tu scene) with figure 19, p. 94 (Jiao Bengzhen’s image). 84 Wang 1995: figures 4 and 5, pp. 152–153. 85 Dieter Kuhn characterises Fang’s technical explanations as “mirror[ing] the interest and the soundly based understanding of the governor-general in such matters of daily life”, but notes that Fang had “a tendency to idealise the economic conditions of cotton growing peasants” (Kuhn 1988: 196, 198).
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and the best time is the end of the hot season.86 Fang Guancheng presented his completed album to the Qianlong emperor in 1765. Not surprisingly, as an enthusiastic sponsor of other works promoting agriculture and agrarian values, Qianlong was delighted with the album and wrote another set of poems himself to go with the pictures. Fang had a copy carved on stone blocks, which was used to make rubbings of the Mianhua tu for circulation (the stone version is now in the Hebei Provincial Museum), and woodblocks were also carved soon after the presentation to the Qianlong emperor.87 In 1808 the Jiaqing emperor added yet another set of poems, and the complete set was compiled and carved on wooden blocks for printing under the direction of a court official, Dong Gao ᇀᎆ, who was also a noted scholar and artist. This printed version of the work was entitled Shouyi guangxun ۪ᐖಝ (Expanded instructions on producing clothing).88 The work was published again in Japan in the 1930s, and it seems that the Mianhua tu circulated quite widely in the two countries.89 But although Fang attempted to increase the pedagogical power of his work by adding detailed—and sound—technical advice in prose to supplement the illustrations and poems, it is hard to say whether the principal appeal of the Mianhua tu was as a source of technical knowledge or as an imperially endorsed work of quannong.
CONCLUDING REMARKS The popularisation of woodblock printing in the Song opened up new possibilities for inscribing and disseminating technical information, most notably new opportunities for illustration. The unique characteristics and possibilities of woodblock printing played a key role in the development and dissemination of agricultural knowledge in China, and woodblock illustration was among the pedagogical tools developed in these early centuries of print culture. Wang Zhen clearly designed his treatise, and in particular the Register, as a work to be printed, with text and image inseparably paired. Wang Zhen’s mar———
86 Wang 1995: 121 fig. 4, 111, 113. 87 Kuhn 1988: 196; Qianlong’s poems are given in full by Wang 1995: 216, fol-
lowed by Fang’s on page 217. 88 Jiaqing’s poems are given by Wang (1995: 218–219); see Wang (1995: 111– 125) for the Qianlong text and illustrations, and ibid (149–158) for the Jiaqing version. 89 Wang (1995: 113).
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riage of text and image was designed to convey material details simply and with clarity, and his descriptions were intended as blueprints, documents that could be used to construct an unfamiliar piece of machinery or equipment. To that extent, Wang Zhen was engaged in what today we would call technical drawing. Lou Chou’s poems provided rather little in the way of hard technical information, and his paintings were scenes not diagrams, though they depicted the advanced methods of Jiangnan in considerable and accurate detail. The Gengzhi tu was considered by the ruling class of the time to have considerable pedagogic value, and it was therefore very soon translated into woodblock versions for convenient dissemination. From the beginning, its pedagogical content was seen as twofold. First the combined poems and images were thought of as technical descriptions that could circulate images of sophisticated Jiangnan rice-farming and silk-producing methods to less advanced regions. But secondly, they were also valued because they so vividly crystallised iconic scenes of an idealised rural landscape, and of the social and political order that such a landscape was supposed to sustain. In early modern Europe technical drawing soon developed into a catalyst of invention. As Peter Golas puts it, people learned to think, to imagine new devices, through the process of drawing. Yet in late imperial China one could argue that illustration often played a conservative or even an archaicising role. Even Wang Zhen recorded only what was already in existence; he did not develop or invent new machines in the workshop, nor did he, or the artists hired to execute the woodblocks for his work, doodle ingenious new devices on paper. Still more noteworthy is the fact that although the illustrations to Wang Zhen’s Register were widely known and frequently reproduced in late Ming and Qing China, most later agronomists were content simply to have their woodblock artists copy the entries rather than to amend or build upon them. Xu Guangqi added many observations and qualifications to Wang’s entries – but all were expressed in verbal, not visual, form. It is true that mechanical innovations in late imperial China were rather few in number, but there were some. However the only one for which I have been able to find an illustration is the new hand-pump shown in the Tiangong kaiwu. Furthermore we see no attempts in any later agricultural works to develop Wang Zhen’s illustrative techniques into more sophisticated forms. Indeed the majority of later agricultural writers felt no need to illustrate their texts, but found it sufficient simply to translate new or improved technical pro-
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cedures into words.90 We do find visual innovation—or at least original additions to the existing repertory of technical scenes—in the Tiangong kaiwu and in the Mianhua tu. In many cases Song Yingxing’s woodblock artists produced completely new visual renderings of equipment rather than simply copying earlier versions. And although Fang Guancheng drew heavily on the Gengzhi tu for his images, several were quite new. They were, however, genre scenes in the Gengzhi tu style, and when Fang wished to give technically precise instructions he inserted a passage in prose. Surveying late imperial agricultural works in general, we find no other attempts to build upon or to improve the methods of technical illustration. Instead, the practice of simply copying earlier pictures usually prevailed, and in the process, many technical depictions became less rather than more accurate. This is of little importance if the depictions are valued primarily as symbols. Given their prominent moral content and their selfconsciously artistic form of expression, it is easy to understand how the images and poems of the Gengzhi tu quickly acquired iconic status as timeless representations of an idealised order. When Lou Chou produced the Gengzhi tu the techniques he portrayed were among the most advanced in the country. But six hundred years later, the Qing emperors valued them not for any novel technical content but rather for their moral force and purity. The Gengzhi tu images of rural life were not originally designed in the medium of print, yet printing and analogous forms of reproduction played a key role in enhancing the reach and power of these icons. The boundaries between different inscriptive media, and different genres of communication, were very fluid, and although woodblock printing played an important role in early modern China as a medium for the mass circulation of new information, it also served to consolidate traditions. The Gengzhi tu, and later the Mianhua tu, began as paintings on silk, paired with calligraphed poems. In other words they were executed in the genre of the album, usually a rather intimate medium of communication between educated friends or colleagues. However the technique of transcribing such artistic works into stone carvings, from which rubbings could be made, was an ancient one, and by the Song woodblock printing was also being routinely used to transcribe paintings and calligraphy for a wider audi———
90 See for example the various improvements in fertilising materials and methods and in the micro-management of irrigation discussed in Li (1998) and Shiba (1998).
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ence. In its printed forms the Gengzhi tu quickly achieved wide circulation, and its scenes of farming and weaving soon became part of a visual repertory that was drawn upon by artists at every level of society when they wished to show typical scenes of rural life. It is interesting that several woodblock graphics from Wang Zhen’s much more utilitarian Nongshu acquired similar iconic status as representations not of technology but of lifestyle, through their incorporation into popular illustrated encyclopedias like the Sancai tuhui. The ruling classes of late imperial China never abandoned their efforts to “promote agriculture”. Yet one of their favourite vehicles for such campaigns, right into the nineteenth century, was Lou Chou’s Gengzhi tu, with a new set of poems added by the reigning emperor, and perhaps a dash of Western perspective or a couple of new scenes. Wang Zhen’s Register offered much more innovative visual possibilities, but they were taken no further. When it came to practical, technical matters like farming, it seems that those educated Chinese who recorded changes or improvements were satisfied with the power of words to convey material processes, and felt no need or desire to resort to graphics.
REFERENCES AMANO Motonosuke ֚ມցհܗ. 1979. Chnjgoku nǀgyǀshi kenkynj խഏልᄐઔ ߒ, 2nd expanded edition (1st ed. 1962). Tǀkyǀ: Rynjkei Press. BERGER, Günther, Georges METAILIE and Takeshi WATABE. 1996. “Une chinoiserie insolite: étude d’un papier peint chinois.” Arts Asiatiques 51: 96–116. Bianmin tuzuan ঁاቹᤊ, 1st ed. 1502, attr. Guang Fan ㋗⺥. Modern annotated edition with facsimile of 1593 woodblock illustrations, ed. Shi Shenghan فᜢ ዧ and Kang Chengyi ൈᦜګ, MS completed 1959 [repr. Beijing: Agriculture Press, 1982]. BRAY, Francesca. 1984. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. VI, part 2. Agriculture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. 1986. The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies. Oxford: Blackwell [repr. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994]. ——. 1997. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——. 2001a. “Technique essenziale per il populo.” In: Chemla et al. 2001, pp. 208– 219. ——. 2001b. “L’agricoltora.” In: Chemla et al. 2001, pp. 501–511. BRAY, Francesca and Georges MÉTAILIÉ. 2001. “Who Was the Author of the Nongzheng quanshu?” In: Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: the Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), ed. Catherine Jami, Peter Engelfriet and Gregory Blue. Leiden: Brill, pp. 322–359. CARLITZ, Katherine. 1991. “The Social Uses of Female Virtue in Late Ming Editions of LienĘ zhuan.” Late Imperial China 12.2: 117–152.
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CHEMLA, Karine, Francesca BRAY, FU Daiwie, HUANG Yi-Long and Georges MÉTAILIÉ, eds. 2001. “La scienza in Cina.” In: Enciclopedia Italiana, Storia della Scienza, ed. Sandro Petruccioli, vol. II. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, pp. 1–608. ELVIN, Mark and LIU Ts’ui-jung, eds. 1998. Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. FRANKE, Otto. 1913. Keng Tschi T’u: Ackerbau und Seidengewinnung in China. Hamburg: L. Friederichsen & Co. Gengzhi tu ౙ៣ቹ, Lou Chou ᑔ㙭, ca. 1145; reproduced in Franke (1913) and Pelliot (1913). GOLAS, Peter. 1980. “Rural China in the Song.” Journal of Asian Studies 39.2: 291– 325. HEGEL, Robert E. 1998. Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. HO, Ping-ti. 1956. “Early Ripening Rice in Chinese History.” Economic History Review 9.2: 200–218. HU Daojing ሐᙩ. 1985. Nongshu, nongshi lunji ልΠልᓵႃ. Beijing: Nongye chubanshe. KUHN, Dieter. 1976. “Die Darstellung des Keng-chih-t’u.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 126.2: 336–367. ——. 1977. “Marginalie zu einigen Illustrationen im Nung-shu ል des Wang Chen ׆ᄙ.” In: Zur Kunstgeschichte Asiens; 50 Jahre Lehre und Forschung an der Universität Köln. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, pp. 143–152. ——. 1987. Die Song-Dynastie (960 bis 1279): eine neue Gesellschaft im Spiegel ihrer Kultur. Weinheim: Acta Humaniorum VCH. ——. 1988. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. V, part 9. Textile Technology, Part I: Spinning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LI Bozhong. 1998. “Changes in Climate, Land and Human Efforts: the Production of Wet-field Rice in Jiangnan during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.” In: Elvin and Liu 1998, pp. 447–486. LIANG Jiamian ᆓ୮ঠ. 1963. “Nongzheng quanshu zhuanshu guocheng ji ruogan youguan wenti de tantao ልਙ٤በመ࿓֗ૉեڶᣂംᠲऱ൶ಘ.” In: Xu Guangqi jinian lunwen ஊ٠ඔધ࢚ᓵ֮ , ed. Zhongguo kexueyuan Ziranshi shi խഏઝᖂೃ۞ྥ. Shanghai: Shanghai Zhonghua shuju, pp. 78–109. MARCHANT, S., & SON. 2003. Recent Acquisitions 2003. 120 Kensington Church Street, London. Mianhua tu क़ቹ by Fang Guancheng ֱᨠࢭ, presented to the Qianlong emperor in 1765 [repr. in Shouyi guangxun ۪ᐖಝ]. Nǀgyǀ zensho ልᄐ٤ by Miyazaki Yasusada ୰സૣڜ, Edo, preface 1697. Nongshu ል by Chen Fu ຫᑆ, preface 1149. [repr. Beijing: Zhonghua Editions, 1956]. Nongshu ል by Wang Zhen ׆ᄙ, preface 1313. The edition cited here is Wang Yuhu 1981. Nongzheng quanshu ልਙ٤ by Xu Guangqi ஊ٠ඔ, ed. Chen Zilong ຫᚊ et al., 1639. The edition cited is Shi Shenghan 1979. PAN Jixing ᑰٳਣ. 1988. Tiangong kaiwu daodu ֚ՠၲढᖄᦰ. Chengdu: Bashu. PELLIOT, Paul. 1913. A propos du ‘Keng Tche T’ou’. Paris: Leroux, pour l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Qimin yaoshu Ꮨا by Jia Sixie ᇸ৸Ꮸ, ca. 635; the edition cited is Shi Shenghan 1957. RAPHALS, Lisa. 1998. Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China. Albany: SUNY Press. Sancai tuhui Կթቹᄎ by Wang Qi ݆׆, pref. 1609; facsimile edition, Taipei,
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Chengwen Press, 1970, 10 vols. SHI Shenghan فᜢዧ, ed. 1957. Qimin yaoshu jinshi Ꮨاվᤩ. Beijing: Kexue Press, 4 vols. ——. ed. 1979. Nongzheng quanshu ልਙ٤. Shanghai: Guji Press, 3 vols. SHIBA Yoshinobu. 1998. “Environment versus Water Control: the Case of the Southern Hangzhou Bay Area from the Mid-Tang through the Qing.” In: Elvin and Liu 1998, pp. 135–164. Shinzoku kibun 堚ঋધⓚ commissioned by Nakagawa Tadahide խ՟࢘, Nagasaki, 1800; facsimile edition. Taipei: Tali Press, 1983. Shouyi guangxun ۪ᐖಝ, woodblock edition of Mianhua tu, with additional poems and comments, produced under the direction of Dong Gao ᇀᎆ and presented to the Jiaqing emperor in 1808; facsimile edition Zhongguo gudai banhua congkan խഏזײठហע, vol. 4, Beijing: Zhonghua Press, 1960. Shoushi tongkao ழຏ ە, comp. E’ertai ၠዿ, presented to the throne 1742. SONG Yingxing ݚᚨਣ. 1936. Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ. Shanghai: Commercial Press, Guoxue jiben congshu jianbian ഏᖂഗءហ១ᒳ series. SUN, E-Tu Zen and Shiou-Chuan SUN, tr. 1966. T’ien-kung k’ai-wu: Chinese technology in the seventeenth century. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. THILO, Thomas. 1980. “Die Schrift vom Pflug (Leisijing) und das Verhältnis ihres Verfassers Lu Guimeng zur Landwirtschaft.” Altorientalische Forschungen 7. Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ by Song Yingxing ݚᚨਣ, 1st ed. 1637; editions referred to here are Song Yingxing 1936, Yabuuchi 1969, Pan Jixing 1988, and the English translation by Sun and Sun 1966. WANG Chaosheng ׆ᑪ س,ed. 1995. Zhongguo gudai gengzhi tu խഏזײౙ៣ቹ. Beijing: China Agriculture Press. WANG Yuhu ׆ᄦᅔ , ed. 1981 (manuscript completed 1966). Wang Zhen Nongshu ׆ᄙል . Beijing: Nongye Press. WATABE Takeshi ྀຝࣳ. 1986. “Chnjgoku nǀsho Kǀshikido no rynjden to sono eikyǀ ni tsuite խ㧺ል<ౙ៣ቹ>圸ੌႚ圲圧圸ᐙ圵圮圎地.” Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Tokai University, 46, pp. 1–37. YABUUCHI Kiyoshi 傉㡕堚ᒳ, ed. 1953. Tenkǀ kaibutsu no kenkynj ֚ՠၲढ圸ઔߒ. Tǀkyǀ: Kǀseisha. ——. 1969. Tenkǀ kaibutsu ֚ՠၲढ. (Tiangong kaiwu). Tǀkyǀ: Heibonsha. ZHANG Zhongge ്٘ᆼ. 1995. “Zhongguo gudai gengzhi tu xu <խഏזײౙ៣ቹ> ݧ.” In: Wang Chaosheng 1995, pp. 1–4.
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Fig. 1: Threshing scene, Gengzhi tu, 1742 version; Franke 1913, Fig. I,17.
Fig. 2: Reaping scene, Gengzhi tu, eighteenth-century Korean edition.
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Fig. 3: Irrigating the fields, Gengzhi tu, 1742 woodblock version based on Jiao Bingzhen’s painting of 1696; Franke 1913, Fig. I,14.
Fig. 4: Weaving silk cloth on a drawloom, Gengzhi tu, 1742 version; Franke 1913, Fig. II, 21. Note the old woman in the foreground minding a small boy.
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Fig. 5: The emperor ploughs the first furrow of spring; Wang Zhen, Nongshu, 176.
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Fig. 6: A herdboy plays his flute, sitting on the back of a water buffalo; Wang Zhen, Nongshu, 262.
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(b)
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(c)
Fig. 7: (a) “Weeding oar”, yuntang, as illustrated in Wang Zhen, Nongshu, 233 (the Jiajing illustration). The picture of a simple rake fails to match Wang’s textual description of a hinged rake. However a good visual match is found in the Nongzheng quanshu, 549, although here the caption mistakenly reads “weeding claws”, yunzhao ౘֿ (b). The Bianmin tuzuan illustration of weeding the ricefield, tangtian ᛯ( ضc), shows these hinged weeding-rakes in action, Bianmin tuzuan 1/8.
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Fig. 8: A square harrow, above, and a V-shaped harrow, below; Wang Zhen, Nongshu, 205.
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Fig. 9: This illustration from Wang Zhen’s Nongshu shows two silk reeling frames. The depiction of the southern frame, above, shows a woman drawing strands of silk from the cocoons floating in a pan of hot water, and a boy stoking the stove that warms the water. The depiction of the more complex northern frame, below, includes framed captions giving the common and variant names for the different components of the frame; Nongshu, 389.
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Fig. 10: A poldered field, weitian ;ضNongshu, 187.
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(a)
(b) Fig. 11: Storing the rice in the barn, as shown (a) in the Gengzhi tu; Franke 1913, Fig. I, 21; and (b) in Wang Zhen’s Nongshu, 290.
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Fig. 12: Chain-pump, Nongzheng quanshu, 423.
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Fig. 13: Sowing wheat or barley, southern-style, Tiangong kaiwu, Sun and Sun 1966, Fig. 1–17, 28. This technique of sprinkling the seed by hand and pressing it into the soil with the bare feet is not illustrated in any other work.
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(a)
(b)
Fig. 14: (a) Hand-operated chain-pump, bache ࢸ߫; Tiangong kaiwu, Sun and Sun 1966, Fig. 1–12, 21. (b) “Slicing pump”, guache ࠪ߫; Nongshu, 336.
Fig. 15: Drawloom operated by a man; Tiangong kaiwu, Sun and Sun Fig. 2–13, 55. This illustration was produced just a few decades before Jiao Bingzhen’s more conventional reprise of the Gengzhi tu depiction of the drawloom (see Fig. 4), which shows a woman operating the loom.
AGRICULTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 16: Pinching back the cotton, zhejian ኴ ;ڞShouyi guangxun woodblock version of the Mianhua tu, 1/11b–12a.
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“LIKE OBTAINING A GREAT TREASURE”: THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN SONG YINGXING’S THE EXPLOITATION OF THE WORKS OF NATURE Peter J. Golas The Tiangong kaiwu, whose title is perhaps best captured in English as “The Exploitation of the Works of Nature”, is unique among Chinese writings on technology before the twentieth century.1 When it appeared in 1637, only seven years before the fall of the Ming dynasty, it represented an effort by its author, Song Yingxing, to accomplish something never previously attempted: a compendium that would describe most of China’s productive technology, including agriculture, textiles, ceramics, metallurgy, papermaking, weapons, deep drilling, shipbuilding, vehicle manufacture, forging and casting.2 Its textual descriptions as well as its profuse illustrations—122 line drawings in the original edition—provide much of the information on which our knowledge of traditional Chinese technology rests.3 Despite the richness and importance of the Tiangong kaiwu (hereafter, TGKW), it is only in recent times that scholars have begun to go beyond mining it for information on particular technologies to assessing it in its totality and in the context of its times. Even now, by far most of this work has been done by a single Chinese scholar, Pan Jixing. Pan has explored, among many other topics, Song’s overall ———
1 The translation is that of Joseph Needham, who uses it throughout the volumes of Science and Civilisation in China. Craig Clunas’ translation, “Heaven’s Craft in the Creation of Things”, misses Song’s crucial point that it is the joint activity of Heaven and humans that creates all useful things; Craig Clunas (1991: 166). The meaning of the title is well discussed in Saigusa (1943: 18–21). 2 By one count, the book deals with over thirty different technologies; Pan (1990: 457). All the more surprising, then, are important technologies that are omitted such as printing, irrigation engineering, architecture and building construction, and the growing and processing of tea. Moreover, the range of practices within a given technology often goes unmentioned. For example, Jacques Gernet (1996: 426) points out that, at the end of the 16th century, 30 paper factories in Jiangxi employed 50,000 workers; this contrasts strikingly with the picture of small workshop production that emerges from the TGKW (juan 13). 3 This is especially true both because traditional Chinese technology had largely reached its maturity by the early 17th century and because no other author before the twentieth century ever again attempted a technological compendium of such scope.
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view of technology and its place in human life. He has not only shown how this outlook coloured the approach of the TGKW to technology but has also made us aware that Song’s work represents the most explicit and sophisticated philosophical consideration of technology to appear in China before the 20th century.4 Regrettably, this paper can only touch on Song’s philosophical ideas insofar as they help us to understand more fully our main concern, the TGKW’s illustrations.5 These illustrations, like Song’s book ———
4 In four volumes published between 1988 and 1993, Pan has drawn on the best previous scholarship—especially that of the Japanese scholars Saigusa Hiroto (1943, The Tiangong kaiwu of Song Yingxing) and Yabu’uchi Kiyoshi and his collaborators (Yabu’uchi (1953), Researches on the Tiangong kaiwu)—as well as his own extensive research to bring the study of this work and its author to a new depth and sophistication. Though I will have cause more than once to disagree with Pan, my study of the TGKW is heavily indebted to this body of research. His four volumes are: Pan Jixing (1988), A Guide to Reading the Tiangong kaiwu. This work consists of six short chapters of introductory material focusing on the background and significance of the TGKW as well as certain of its characteristics that a reader should keep in mind, followed by reading selections (using, however, modern simplified characters instead of the original forms in which it was written) with extensive reading notes and translations of selections into modern Chinese. It also includes 28 illustrations from the original edition. Pan Jixing (1989), An Annotated Edition of the Tiangong kaiwu and Accompanying Studies. This work covers much of the same introductory material as in Pan (1988), but in considerably greater detail. There is also an extremely useful study of the various editions of the work from 1637 to 1976 as well as a detailed investigation of earlier writings on which Song drew for much of his information. Pan then reproduces the entire text (again, and unfortunately, in simplified characters) but with its chapters, which appear in what often seems a rather haphazard order in the original edition, rearranged in such a way as to group together related technologies. The text is extensively annotated [sometimes overlapping the annotations in Pan (1988)]; there is no translation. The book closes with a bibliography (arranged in chronological order!) and a conversion of weights and measures from Song’s time to modern Chinese weights and measures. Pan Jixing (1990), A Critical Biography of Song Yingxing. This massive (681 pp.) biography of Song covers every aspect of his life, thought and works. The four chapters (223 pp.) on his political, economic, philosophical, scientific and technological thought are especially useful. There is a brief index. Pan Jixing (1993), An Annotated Translation of the Tiangong kaiwu. This work presents a complete translation of the text as reordered in Pan (1989). There is also a complete (but reordered) listing of all the illustrations from the original edition, identified not by the original captions but by translations or paraphrases of them. There is an index. Mention should also be made here of the complete English translation by E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-Chuan Sun (1966). This work was a major achievement at the time of its publication. Much has been learned, however, in the intervening four decades and a new translation, fully annotated, is much needed. Another English translation, Li Ch’iao-ping et al. (1980), cannot be recommended except perhaps if used conjunction with the Sun’s’ translation. 5 Here too we are indebted to Pan, aided by much solid work in Japan by Saigusa Hiroto; see Saigusa (1943: 43–87), for examining in detail the various editions of this work and clarifying much of the formerly murky history of those illustrations. In this paper, I shall also be drawing in a preliminary fashion on some very recent work
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itself, are unique in the range of technologies portrayed. For that reason alone, they occupy an extremely important place in the history of Chinese illustrations of technology. But they are even more useful because, for every one of the illustrations of the original edition, we have at least one later illustration, typically a copy, of the same subject. Often the differences between the earlier and later illustrations are relatively minor. Sometimes, however, they are considerable, both in content and in quality. Isolating and trying to account for these differences can tell us a great deal about the capacities and the limitations of Chinese illustration of technology from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Before turning to the illustrations themselves, however, it is worth taking a moment to delineate the contours of early 17th century China. Song Yingxing was, of course, very much a product of the world in which he lived. More important, however, is the extent to which the TGKW, with its illustrations, is a unique work, unlike anything produced in pre-20th century China. Inevitably we are led to ask how far the special conditions of late Ming China encouraged this unique achievement.
SONG YINGXING’S WORLD The world in which Song Yingxing grew up and spent most of his adult life coincided with the last half-century of the Ming dynasty. From one perspective, it was a period marked by a series of crises that ultimately led to the collapse of the dynasty in 1644. Since at least the 1590’s, the government in Beijing had been financially crippled by a free-spending court and imperial nobility, as well as a bloated military. Its effectiveness was further undercut by pervasive corruption and bitter factional infighting among its officials as well as abusive manipulation of government policies and institutions by powerful eunuchs. Yet all of this was happening in a period of great economic prosperity and luxurious living for many in the cities who benefited from a great influx of new world silver brought to China to pay for the ——— dealing with the visual culture of the Ming; while barely touching on technological representations, it is nevertheless very helpful in alerting us to ways in which the TGKW’s illustrations were very clearly influenced by important Ming developments in the milieu of book illustration and production, as well as artistic practice. I have found especially useful the work of Robert E. Hegel and Craig Clunas, as will become obvious from a number of references to them below.
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silks, porcelains and other luxury goods that had captured the fancy of wealthy Europeans.6 Much of the countryside, on the other hand, was sunk in depression with farmers suffering the dual depredations of rich landlords and high taxes as well as having to cope with a period of particularly capricious weather conditions.7 Finally there were the repeated threats posed by internal rebellion,8 together with the everpresent shadow of growing Manchu military power on the northern borders.9 Born into a family with a tradition of government service but now in reduced circumstances,10 Song in his turn spent long years studying for the government examinations that opened the way to an official career. 11 His studies may have been facilitated by what appears to have been a photographic memory.12 Nonetheless, Song failed in five attempts to pass the highest level exams that alone could open the way to high office.13 Condemned at best to a mediocre career in low level ——— 6 Mote and Twitchett 1988: 587–588. 7 Mote and Twitchett 1988: 589–590. 8 Even as Song was finishing his TGKW, rebel leaders were forging more unified
command structures that would enable them in a mere three or four years to take over control of whole provinces; Gernet (1996: 434). See also the very useful maps in Mote and Twitchett (1988: 624–625). 9 Song of course could not benefit from our hindsight. Even with all the problems the country faced (and Song, because of his extensive travels, was in a position to have witnessed many of them first-hand), he could hardly have imagined that China was on the verge of being taken over by the Manchus? After all, how could even the superb Manchu army, with well under 200,000 troops, take over the great Chinese empire with its population of perhaps 250 million? [For a critical assessment of the most up-to-date estimates of Ming population figures, see Mote (1999: 743–745)]. Moreover, the Ming government had already proved its resilience by surviving a similar period of crisis in the late 15th and early 16th centuries; Atwell (2002: 83– 113, esp. 100–101, fn. 19). 10 Sun and Sun 1966: vii; Hummel 1944, Vol. 2: 690; Pan 1990: 66 ff.; Cullen 1990: 295–318, 299. 11 This preparation focused almost entirely on Confucian teachings, among them the necessity of good, moral government for the existence of a decent society. Song, like so many others, developed a keen sense of responsibility to contribute, ideally as an official, to improving the world around him so that it could function as far as possible according to Confucian principles. For an eloquent and admiring revaluation of the idealism that continued strong among scholar-officials even in the dark years preceding the Ming collapse, see Mote (1999: 737–738). 12 Pan 1990: 232. 13 This was also the fate of his elder brother, despite the fact that they had both done very well in passing the second level provincial exams in 1615: Song had been ranked 3rd and his brother 6th. They took the exams in the capital in 1616, 1619, 1623, 1627 and, for the last time, in 1631 when by Chinese reckoning Song was already 45 and his brother 54. Pan (1988: 9–10). It is also possible that the death of his father in 1630 and of his mother in 1632 eased any sense of filial obligation that might have kept Song sitting for the examinations. [For a detailed discussion of the 1616 jinshi examination, including the questions asked and possible reasons why
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posts, he apparently decided to follow the precedent of so many earlier officials who, despite undistinguished political careers, had won renown and respect as thinkers and writers.14 This choice must have been all the more attractive because Song lived in a culture thoroughly pervaded by printed books and one that offered unprecedented opportunities for writers to earn money from their books. There had been an explosion of woodblock printing in the course of the Ming dynasty. The decreasing cost of books,15 rising literacy rates, the demand for books by those preparing for the official examinations, widespread reading for entertainment and general information, and a considerable interest in various kinds of religious texts had led to a dramatic growth in the market for books.16 But if 17th century China was a world of print, it was also a “world of images”, 17 and many of these images were book illustrations of various kinds.18 At one end of the spectrum were found books with increasingly refined and complex illustrations. 19 At the other end, many publishers sought to hold down production costs by minimising what they spent on illustrations.20 The growing numbers and mobility21 of woodblock carvers with varying levels of skill but all capable of transferring textual and visual materials to woodblocks for printing22 offered many options for cost-cutting.23 The result, as one might ——— Song’s answers were unsatisfactory, see Pan (1990: 131–133)]. 14 Indeed, most of his more than ten works (dealing with scientific and technological topics, politics and society, history and literary creativity, as well as his own literary essays and poems) were composed in the years from 1634 to 1638 when he served in a low-ranking and clearly not very demanding position as an education official in Fenyi, Jiangxi. Even more striking, the five of his works that survive were all written or completed in 1636–1637. Pan (1988: 10); Pan (1990: 234–235, 274 and all of Chap. 6). 15 By the middle of the 16th century, the cost of printing books had dropped to one-tenth of what it had been two or three centuries earlier. Brook (1988: 177–196, 181, fn. 10). Especially by the time in which Song lived, illustrated books were a large part of that explosion; Clunas (1991, 52); Hegel (1998: 5). 16 Mote and Twitchet 1988: 636–637, 649, 927; Sakai 1970: 331–362, 331–339. 17 Clunas 1997a: 177. 18 In a highly competitive market, illustrations could greatly increase a book’s market appeal; Clunas (1997b: 32–33). 19 Hegel 1998: 110. 20 Hegel 1998: 289. 21 Clunas 1991: 14. 22 The skills of woodblock carvers varied considerably. Hegel notes that we seldom have the names of engravers of text recorded despite the fact that those who cut illustrations on woodblocks frequently signed their work. (In no other area of Chinese craft production have the names of so many craftsmen who actually did the work survived.) He concludes that there was a considerable gap in status by the early 16th century “between the few expert carvers recognized for their skill in transferring
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expect, was often books of poor quality.24 We shall return shortly to the question of what part of this flourishing market for books Song might have had in mind when writing the TGKW. But we must take care not to jump to the conclusion that Song wrote the TGKW only or even mainly as a way for him to make his reputation and perhaps earn some income. That would ignore major shifts occurring in the intellectual environment of the literati at this time. Partly as a response to the problems China was facing (as well as a reaction by some literati against the teachings of Wang Yangming), there was a new emphasis on what might be characterized as a greater practical-mindedness, together with a stress on concrete accomplishments whether as an official or in a private capacity. The new attitudes ranged from a greater emphasis on philanthropic activities25 to a new willingness to accept the legitimacy of profit-taking by merchants26 to a growing interest in scientific and technological learning that had practical application.27 It is this last trend that no one exemplified better than Song Yingxing.
THE TIANGONG KAIWU ILLUSTRATIONS The TGKW illustrations, along with Song’s text, have provided so much information for historians of Chinese technology that it may seem a bit ungracious to register disappointment at their limitations. Even from the perspective of artistic technique, despite their rather primitive execution, they often have much to recommend them as illustrations of technology. For example, the inclusion of a minimum of architectural and landscape elements served to place the focus very strongly on the technological process being portrayed. We can see this ——— pictures to a wooden plank and those innumerable nameless crafts workers who gouged out blocks for printing the written text.” Hegel (1998, 109–110; see also 192, 200, 289). I suspect there was largely the same kind of skill-based gap within the ranks of each of the two groups, if indeed there were two well-defined groups. There also seems to be little or no evidence to preclude the possibility of significant numbers of carvers who could and did alternate between carving text and illustrations. 23 For other ways of cutting printing costs (paying lower wages, curtailing proofreading, etc.), see Hegel (1997: 136–137). 24 For a scathing criticism from the mid-16th century scholar and connoisseur, Lang Ying ᅛ, of the general quality of books being produced in his time, see Clunas (1997b: 32–33). 25 Gernet 1984 : 33–34. 26 Brook 1995: 79–97, esp. 84. 27 Gernet 1996: 441–446; Pan 1989: 92, 102–103; Gernet 1984: 32–33.
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by comparing a typical illustration, here a weaver, (Fig. 1)28 with a rather untypical one (Fig. 2a)29 of a man ginning cotton where the banana tree certainly adds to the aesthetic effect but, at the same time, somewhat subordinates the cotton ginning by moving it deeper into the picture and therefore farther away from the viewer. This tendency for the technical process to get lost is even more striking in the version of the same scene given in the 1927 Tao edition (Fig. 2b).30 Another effective technique found in many of the illustrations was to make the activity pictured fill the entire picture area (Fig. 3), 31 thereby giving many of the illustrations an immediacy that is inevitably diluted by the adding of extraneous elements (Fig. 4).32 Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that the original illustrations of 1637 have sometimes enjoyed excessive praise. E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-chuan Sun, in the preface to their English translation, extol the original illustrations for their “simplicity and clarity” and dismiss the clear superiority of many later versions as “perhaps to some eyes more pleasing”. More explicitly, they also incorrectly claim that the later illustrations “add nothing to the technical subjects being illustrated.”33 While it is true that the later illustrations do tend to add aesthetic rather than technological detail, this is by no means always the case. Figs. 5a and 5b represent the same papermaking scene from, respectively, the original edition and the 1927 Tao edition. 34 The scene shows the papermaker flipping the screen on which the pulp has been collected in order to add a sheet of paper to the stack of sheets waiting for pressing to remove the excess liquid. The original deals with the pressing only by including in the foreground barely identifiable implements used in the pressing process. By contrast the Tao illustration makes very clear what those objects were and how they were used by including in the middle ground a stack of paper undergoing pressing. We also realize that the implements in the ——— 28 Sun and Sun 1966: 57, Fig. 2–14. 29 Sun and Sun 1966: 61, Fig. 2–15. 30 Dong 1962: 231. (For the convenience of readers of English, I have provided
references for the original illustrations to the easily available translation by the Sun’s, which includes all the original illustrations. The Dong Wen volume is a widely available edition that reproduces all the illustrations of the 1927 Tao edition which substituted later illustrations for all the illustrations of the original edition while also adding 33 illustrations (most of which are included in the Sun’s’ volume) with no counterparts in the original edition; see Appendix 1, pp. 594–597 below. 31 Sun and Sun 1966: 51, Fig. 2–9. 32 Sun and Sun 1966: 52, Fig. 2–10. 33 Sun and Sun 1966: x. 34 Sun and Sun 1966: 226, Fig. 13–3; Dong 1962: 231.
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foreground (including the rock omitted in the original) will be used on the stack that the papermaker is in the process of assembling. Pan Jixing also thinks highly of the original illustrations, pointing even to what he sees as a feeling of three-dimensionality.35 In fact, a better case can be made for the flatness they typically display. Figs. 6a and 6b illustrate the glazing of bricks and tiles.36 In the later, Tao illustration, both the shape of the kiln as well as the placement of the bricks and tiles, not to mention all of the scenery, convey a much more effective sense of three-dimensionality than one sees in the original drawing.37 Saigusa Hiroto, who judges the TGKW illustrations by the standard of the accuracy with which they show how the machines portrayed were built and how they worked, is perhaps only a bit too harsh when he rates them a “failure” (rakudai ᆵร, the Japanese word commonly used to indicate a student’s failure to pass an examination).38 It was a similar negative assessment that led Tao Xiang to replace all of the “original” illustrations in his 1927 edition.39 To gain a sense of the strengths and weaknesses especially of those TGKW illustrations that depict machines of at least modest complexity, we can turn to Song’s illustration and the later 1927 version of a vertical two-roller mill for crushing sugarcane (Figs. 7a and 7b)40. As an illustration pure and simple, it is quite typical of many TGKW illustrations and therefore gives us a good general impression of those illustrations. Equally important, however, is that it accompanies a quite detailed description of the mill in the text. Indeed, Christian Daniels feels that a reading of the text supplemented by reference to ———
35 Pan 1988: 98. 36 Sun and Sun 1966: 140, Fig. 7–3; Dong 1962: 145. 37 For another example: compare Sun and Sun (1966: 20, Fig. 1.11) with Dong
(1962: 25). Note that Needham, while identifying this as the best Chinese illustration of the square-paddle chain pump, provides not the original illustration, as indicated in the caption, but rather the illustration from the 1927 Tao edition. Needham (1965: 339 and 340, Fig. 579). This is true for many of the TGKW illustrations included in this volume of Science and Civilisation in China. 38 Saigusa 1943: 64. 39 Actually, Tao did not have access to the original illustrations but only those of the second edition which, however, are for the most part identical to those of the first edition. He presumably agreed with the characterization of the illustrations by Ding Wenjiang as “crude and sketchy” (culie jianlüe ษ٭១ฃ); TGKW (postface, 1). It is worth noting that, in Chinese illustrations of technical objects and processes, there is no consistent trend toward better quality in later versions. The later illustrations may be better, as is generally true in this case, or worse, as for example in the case of the 1530 and 1774 editions of Wang Zhen’s Nongshu; Kuhn (1977: 143–52, 144). 40 Sun and Sun 1966: 127, Fig. 6–1; TGKW :132–3.
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the illustration would provide the necessary information to construct the mill. Now Daniels does not deal specifically with the question of who would be doing the constructing. This is important. One could make a case that the artisans engaged in the task would have at their disposal quite an inventory of techniques and experience. At the same time, they would probably be incapable of reading the text of the TGKW and would be highly unlikely to get much in the way of new information from the illustration alone. Nevertheless, Daniels is undoubtedly right in pointing out that the completeness of the information in this case is untypical in traditional Chinese works on technology. 41 It certainly provides a good deal of useful, in some cases even unique, information for those of us who are not traditional Chinese craftsmen. Song begins his account of the mill by giving the dimensions of the boards that serve as the roof and base of the framework that holds the two rollers.42 The length of the supporting posts is not given here but must be deduced from the information later provided on the height of the rollers. More of a problem if we had only the text is the phrase describing the joining of the horizontal boards with the vertical supports: liang tou zuo yan an zhu ࠟᙰᨼณڜਪ.43 Sucheta Mazumdar catches the essential ambiguity of the phrase by translating it: “Drill holes at the two ends of the boards to accommodate the supporting posts.”44 The classical Chinese text, which commonly does not distinguish singular and plural, leaves vague here how many holes and therefore how many posts there are at each end. The illustrator seems to provide this missing but essential information: one post at each end.45 The posts are to be sunk two or three feet into the ground to ——— 41 Daniels 1996: 328. 42 The boards should be five chi ֡ (1.6 m or about 5 ft) long, two chi (64 cm)
wide, and 5 cun ՚ (16 cm) thick. 43 Song Yingxing 1959. shang, 76a. 44 Mazumdar 1998: 140–141. The Suns translate “At the ends of each board holes are bored…” (Sun and Sun 1966: 126) and Daniels chooses “Holes are bored at the end of each board…” (Daniels 1996: 327). Both of these translations seem to carry a faint suggestion that more than one hole is drilled at each end, but basically they quite properly preserve the ambiguity of the Chinese text. 45 There still remains, however, a bit of a question. The later Tao illustration (Fig. 7b) has four posts instead of two; one wonders if only two posts might have provided an insufficiently stable frame. Or was the Tao artist influenced by the commonly found mills with stone rollers where stability may have been an even greater problem. Alternatively, it is conceivable that the artist who drew the original illustration pictured only two posts because he was incapable of handling a perspective that would show four posts. The case for two posts is reinforced, however, by a 1763 illustration that we owe to “the irascible, eccentric [Japanese] polymath,” Hiraga
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provide stability (shi an wen bu yao ࠌڜլᄀ).46 Song then turns to the rollers and their mounting. Two holes are to be made in the “center” of the upper board to receive the rollers.47 (The mounting on the bottom board is not discussed until the end of the description.) Song notes that the rollers are to be made of very hard wood but does not suggest what varieties are best. One of the rollers is to be three chi (96 cm) in length, the other four and one-half chi (1.44 m). Ideally, their circumference should be seven chi (2.24 m). 48 But here a problem arises. A roller with a circumference of seven chi would have a diameter of 2.23 chi. The combined diameters of the two rollers, then, would be just under four and one-half chi. If the upper board is only 5 chi long, that would leave only one-half of a chi (32 cm) for mounting the supporting posts and for the top board overhang that seems to have been a common feature of these mills.49 Clearly not enough. This reminds us that we should not assume the accuracy even of figures that give the appearance of being quite precise. Song was probably more comfortable with approximations than we tend to be.50 Song then explains that a fifteen chi (4.80 m) curved sweep (lit. a “plough pole” lidan ᖜ) is attached to the longer roller where it ———
Gennai ؓ၅ᄭփ, who was also one of the first emulators of western drawing techniques in Japan (Fig. 7c). (Morris-Suzuki 1991: 89 and Daniels 1996: 311, Fig. 79.) Hiraga based his illustration on the original TGKW illustration but his modifications suggest he was personally familiar with this kind of mill. Thus, it is especially interesting that his mill also has only two supporting posts. Nineteenth and early twentieth century photographs also show the mill with just two posts; Daniels (1996: 329, Figs. 90a and 90b). The more elaborate version of the mill as shown in the Tao edition may well have been constructed from time to time, but it would appear that it was the simpler and cheaper two-post version that dominated in Chinese sugarcane crushing. 46 Song 1959: shang, 76a. 47 None of the English translations are clear on the meaning of “center” here. It could mean roughly in the middle section of the board but Zhong Guangyan is perhaps correct in suggesting that it means along the center line; Zhong Guangyan (1978: 168). 48 Daniels suggests that the text here [zhou mu da qi chi wei fang miao ၗֵՕԮ ֱ֡)ݎ, which he translates “It would be best to have the rollers measuring…” indicates “that this was a recently perfected invention in which there had been some experimentation on the dimensions of the components.” Daniels (1996: 308)] If true, this may help to explain why the dimensions given for the various parts of the mill do not quite work. 49 See Fig. 7a; Hommel (1969: 113, Fig. 179); and Daniels (1996: 329, Figs. 90a and 90b). 50 It is unfortunate that we totally lack precise information on exactly how Song collected and recorded his data. Did he rely primarily or even entirely on his superb memory? Did he himself make on-site or later drawings?
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protrudes above the upper board; to this sweep is harnessed an ox to power the rollers. Only the illustration gives at least some idea of how the sweep was attached to the roller though there is no basis in the text for the artist’s probably justified decision to make the protruding end narrower in diameter than the roller.51 The illustration also shows the mill being powered by a single ox though the singular/plural ambiguity again in the text would allow for one or more oxen. On the gearing that connected the ox-powered roller with the slave roller, Song’s description is rather opaque. Daniels’ translation is: “Intermeshing male and female cogs are carved on the sides of both rollers. The part where the cogs interlock is straight and round, they must be rounded to interlock.” (chou shang zuo chi fen pei ci xiong; qi he feng chu xu zhi er yuan yuan er feng he ࢼՂᨼᕡ։Ꮏႂ; ࠡٽ ᜓႊऴۖႽႽۖᜓ )ٽThe Chinese word “teeth” (chi ᕡ), used in connection with machinery, has all the ambiguity of the English “cog”: handy for translation but not able by itself to convey a very clear picture of just what kind of gearing was involved. The problem is compounded here by the statement that the place/part (chu ) where they mesh must be straight and round.52 Only the illustration gives a clue to what might be meant: longish cog gears placed on a slant (no hint of this in the text) which must be straight along their length but rounded on their outer edges so as to ensure a smooth intermeshing.53 Moving on to the crushing of the sugarcane, Song points out that the mill works on the same principle as the cotton gin. He tells us that the “duck’s bill” (ya zui ᚅᏯ), clearly labelled on the illustration, is used to guide the feeding of the bagasse (crushed cane) from the first crushing to the roller for a second (and presumably also the third) ———
51 Hiraga (Fig. 7c) follows that original illustration here; one can assume then that this construction was used in Japan. A very similar looking nineteenth century mill from the Philippines also appears to show narrowing of the protruding part of the roller, but certainly not to the same degree as the TGKW and Hiraga illustrations; Daniels (1996: 329, Fig. 90a). 52 Mazumdar (1998) elides this difficulty by translating: “they [the cogs] must be directly placed so as to fit together and mesh when turned.” It is hard to know just what “directly” means here. On the other hand, it does suggest a modification of Daniels‘ translation by taking the second yuan as a verb meaning “to turn round”; one would then have: “The part where the cogs interlock is straight and round; when [the rollers] turn round, [the cogs] intermesh.” The Sun’s (1966: 126) offer more of a paraphrase than a translation: “The surfaces of both rollers are deeply corrugated or cogged; the cogs of one roll[er] fit into the grooves between cogs of the other.” 53 It is not clear what mechanical advantage was thought to be gained from slanted as opposed to vertical cogs; there are many examples of mills that did use vertical cogs.
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crushing. Without the illustration, it would be difficult to understand, as the text says, how the “duck’s bill” could be mounted on the rollers (chou shang ࢼՂ) and, indeed, the illustration shows that this was a mistake and that it was actually suspended from the upper board of the millframe.54 The main purpose of the duck’s bill was apparently to prevent the man feeding the cane from getting his hands caught in the rollers; in the second and third crushings the cane would have lost much of its stiffness, tempting the feeder to get his hands closer to the rollers and thus increasing the possibility of an accident.55 The description of the sugarcane mill closes with the baseboard of the frame. Here Song tells us that shallow footings (not more than one and one-half cun or 4.8 cm deep so that they do not pierce through the board and make impossible the collecting of the juice) are gouged out for the rollers.56 We are also told that iron “ingots” tieding ᥳᙍ are fitted securely in the middle of the choujiao ࢼᆬ ҏto facilitate rotation. The Sun’s, Daniels and Mazumdar all take this term to mean the foot or bottom of the rollers. However, given the shape of an ingot and the possibilities for achieving a good, durable insert, I am inclined to interpret the term to mean not the feet of the rollers but rather their “footings” into which some kind of iron block or plate was fitted. Or perhaps the bottom of the roller was fitted with some kind of iron ferrule which rotated on a slab inserted in the footing. Of course, a detail drawing could have cleared this question up in a moment but such drawings are rarely found in Chinese illustrations of machines, and never in the TGKW.57 ———
54 Interestingly, Daniels (1996: 328) omits this phrase from his translation, which ordinarily follows the original very closely. The Suns translate: “The residue is fed into the crusher again through the receiving hole on the rollers…”; Sun and Sun (1966: 126). 55 Mazumdar (1998: 141 and 144). I do not understand Mazumdar’s interpretation that the “duck bill,” suspended by a cord or rope (all of the illustrations agree on this), could have “operated as a pressure feeder and compressor for the cane”(141). Interestingly, the two illustrations of a sugarcane mill in Hommel (1969: 113–4, Figs. 170 and 171) give no indication of a “duck’s bill”. It is also absent on a three-roller Japanese mill from the 18th century; Daniels (1996: 341, Fig. 94). 56 Daniels‘ translation suggests just one “hole” for the two rollers, but surely individual sockets would hold the rollers more firmly. Mazumdar, the Sun’s and Zhang Kuangyan all interpret it this way. But neither the text nor the illustration helps us resolve this question. Moreover, this suggests the further question of how the rollers were adjusted when, for example, they got out of line, which surely happened with wear and tear over time. The text and illustration are entirely silent on this point. 57 The great exception to the lack of detailed drawings is the assembly or subassembly and the component parts drawings in the eleventh century “New Armillary Sphere and Celestial Globe System Essentials”; see Golas (1999: 29–63, esp. 40–9). Otherwise, Chinese drawings of technology contrast strikingly with much of the
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Even this description and illustration of what is by no means an especially complicated machine, then, suffers from a surprising number of problems: inconsistency in what dimensions are included (none given for the supporting posts) or in the dimensions taken as a whole (length of the upper horizontal frame board); omission sometimes of even basic information that is only partly compensated for by the illustration (ambiguity as to the number of supporting posts); less than clear description or picturing of linkages (the gearing that connected the two rollers); omission in the text of information sometimes provided more or less clearly in the illustration (attachment of the sweep to the roller), sometimes not (the way the iron “ingots” were used in the footings of the rollers); inconsistencies between what is said in the text and what is illustrated (the mounting of the “duck’s bill”).58 Other illustrations in the TGKW reveal problems with the illustrations that do not appear, or do not appear significantly here. We noted above in the illustration of the glazing of bricks and tiles (p. 576) the meager success of the artist in conveying three-dimensionality in the shapes of objects. In part this was a reflection of the rarity with which Chinese illustrators made any effort to suggest surface or mass by hatching or modelling strokes or shading.59 Placing objects so as to create a convincing perspective in any scenes of some depth was also very difficult for the artist(s) of the original illustrations. For the most part, the lack of three-dimensionality or of a coherent perspective did not ——— technological drawing in medieval Europe which displays a clear preference for picturing details rather than complete machines; Hall 1982: 153. 58 For examples of other cases where the illustrations do not correspond with what is said in the text, see Sun and Sun (1966: 260 and 263) (measuring the pull of a bow: the position of the bow is reversed and a weight is substituted for the bowmaker’s foot) and ibid. 224 and 224 (steeping bamboo to be made into paper: no provision is shown for a constant supply of water and the whole scene is moved from the mountains into a courtyard). Sometimes the illustration clearly corrects the text; see ibid. (56 and 57; 71, n. 10) (the weaver is shown using a waist strap instead of a strap “placed under the seat”). Donald Wagner elsewhere in this volume (pp. 615– 632) carefully examines the descriptions and illustrations in the TGKW dealing with iron production and concludes that, while both the verbal descriptions and the illustrations tend in themselves to be accurate portrayals of one or another process of iron production, the illustrations do not always reflect accurately what is said in the text . 59 Hegel (1998: 314) notes that this reliance exclusively on outlines to portray subjects contrasted with paintings that usually gave at least some suggestion of surface and texture, and therefore a certain sense of depth not present in a pure line drawing. He suggests that Europeans, when they adopted woodblock printing, incorporated more grain into the illustrations and that this in turn led them to substitute quite quickly engravings for woodblock prints because the engravings made possible “greater illusion of depth and texture.”
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of themselves make an illustration incomprehensible.60 But they did make it harder to read and discouraged careful reading.61 Moreover, lack of a clear rendering of perspective became an increasingly serious problem the more complex machines became. One seldom confronts this problem in the TGKW however: apart from a few illustrations of machines (especially looms) involved in cloth production, illustrations of complex machinery are largely absent.62
WHY THESE ILLUSTRATIONS? We could account much better for the limitations of the TGKW illustrations if we could answer a number of questions about the actual production of Song’s book. For example, we do not know the source or sources of the illustrations from which the carvers worked. Significant stylistic differences are to be found in the original illustrations and they sometimes strongly invite the conclusion that a certain group of illustrations and maybe only those illustrations were done by a single artist.63 Considering also that the book contained over 120 ———
60 A nice example is the illustration in the Aubo tu which is drawn in linear perspective but where the assembled pan is drawn in plan. The important point is that, in this case, a consistent scale is maintained for both views. Vogel (1999 (?): 8); Yoshida (1993: 233). For another example of effective use of mixed perspective, see Sun and Sun (1966: 25, Fig. 1–14) and the discussion of it in Golas (2003: 32). 61 Compare, for example, the original illustration of water-powered trip hammers for polishing rice (Sun and Sun 1966: 93, Fig. 4–12) and the much better Tao edition version (TGKW, 88). 62 For a particularly good example of how the lack of a clear handling of perspective could render the drawing of a complex machine very hard to interpret, compare the two illustrations (by Villard de Honnecourt, 13th century and Jacques Besson, 16th century) of a water-powered up-and-down sawmill; Ferguson (1992: 78–9). Interestingly, in the TGKW, an illustration of a complex drawloom handles the perspective problem quite well, indeed about as well as one ever finds in Ming or Qing drawings. Such, in any case would seem to be the conclusion to be drawn from the fact that the illustrator of the Tao 20th century version contented himself with producing a very close copy; compare Sun and Sun (1966: 55, Fig. 2–13) with TGKW (62–3). 63 Even if all of the illustrations were stylistically more consistent, this would not rule ot participation by a number of artists since there were at this time well defined schools or regional styles of illustration with their characteristic techniques, motifs etc. that made illustrations by various members of the school very similar. Hegel (1998: 196). Indeed, Hegel’s description of the Jinling school of book illustration, centered on Nanjing, with its “naive, archaic” style, its elongated faces and its animated living figures, both human and animal (Hegel 1998: 233, 237), reads as quite a good listing of characteristics found in many of the TGKW illustrations. (One need only glance at a number of the farming illustrations to see that the artists sometimes have given the animals as much character as the human figures; e.g., Sun and Sun
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illustrations and that its printing was something of a rush job (see below), it seems highly likely that several if not many artists were engaged in making the drawings.64 The cost of these artists may well have been an important consideration. This was a period when good professional painters enjoyed considerable prestige65 and presumably were able to command a commensurate compensation when producing book illustrations. If so, money could be saved by hiring less competent artists and the designs would suffer accordingly.66 Another possible hypothesis, however, is that only some of the illustrations were original drawings (by Song or by someone else) while others were direct copies or revised versions of illustrations already in existence. Pan Jixing also makes the interesting suggestion (without providing any evidence) that the “true-to-life” illustrations of the TGKW might have been produced relying on sketches Song made during his extensive travels.67 On the other hand, Wagner also introduces the possibility that some mistakes in the illustrations may have resulted from Song’s misinterpretation of an unillustrated text that he relied on for a given technology.68 If this was the case, Song’s own abilities as a draftsman as well as his ideas of what constituted a good illustration might be a crucial factor in helping account for both the strengths and the limitations of the illustrations. A careful stylistic analysis of all the illustrations, beyond the scope of this paper, might turn up fresh evidence to help answer these questions. In addition to the costs of illustrators and carvers, many other questions surround the economics of printing the book. Altogether, how much did the printing cost? How many copies were printed?69 What ——— (1966: 5, 7,19, 26, 27 etc.) 64 In one striking example of this kind of collaboration, a set of 200 illustrations for an edition of the novel Jin Ping Mei included twenty-seven illustrations signed by five different illustrators (carvers?); Hegel (1998: 193, 196). One can only presume that many artists and artisans worked on the remaining 173 illustrations, perhaps sometimes with even two or more artists collaborating on the same illustration; Hegel (1998: 255). 65 Hegel 1998: 281. 66 Similarly, highly skilled carvers of illustrations enjoyed especially high prestige in the late Ming (Hegel 1998: 109–10, 192); there might have been great temptation to save money here too. 67 Pan 1988: 53. 68 See p. 623 below. Wagner is probably right in suggesting the Song could hardly have seen personally all the technologies he describes; p. 617. 69 Editions could run as few as 100 copies or as many as twenty-five thousand or more copies; Sakakida Rawski (1979: 120); Hegel (1998: 126). All we can say for sure about the first edition of the TGKW is that it was large enough so that significant deterioration of the blocks could occur during its one or more print runs; see fn. 109 below.
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did the book sell for? Overall, just how important were cost considerations? Though we cannot at present answer these questions, they must be kept in mind as possibly having had a significant effect on the quality of the book and its illustrations. It is also far from easy to determine just what Song wanted from his illustrations, at least beyond his comment in the preface that they would be highly appreciated by the elite audience for whom he was supposedly writing.70 Indeed, the question of the audience for whom the book was intended, almost certainly relevant for understanding the character of the illustrations, is far from easy to answer. Given what Song says in his preface, together with the abstruse writing style and his many philosophical comments, it seems fairly clear that he was writing in the first instance for people like himself, i.e., the highly educated elite with, for whatever reasons, some interest in technological subjects.71 Some elements of the illustrations, even those that in our view appear perhaps “inappropriate” (more on this later), may be there to please this audience. On the other hand, there is considerable evidence suggesting that Song also had a broader audience in mind. This was an audience much less erudite than the elite and so it is probably of some relevance that Song rarely quotes from or even refers to earlier writings on the topics he discusses.72 This broader audience would also have been much closer to the actual production ———
70 The Sun’s’ statement that the “simplicity and clarity” of the original illustrations “would have been approved …by an author whose main concern was didactic rather than aesthetic” (Sun and Sun 1966: x) is not terribly informative; it errs I think in making “didactic” and “aesthetic” concerns mutually exclusive. In other words, there is no reason why Song might not have had both aesthetic and didactic goals for his illustrations and indeed good reasons why he might well have wanted the illustrations to be both informative and attractive. 71 I would therefore qualify the assessment of Mote and Twitchett (1998: 4) that the TGKW is “altogether practical in its focus.” Overwhelmingly practical to be sure, but Song was also quite concerned to place technology in a larger philosophical context, as is apparent in the brief essays that introduce each juan. On the other hand, it is worth recalling Clunas’ suggestive division of the elite into two groups, one so rich that they did not have to know anything about where their wealth came from, and those less rich who might take something of a direct role in the production of that wealth; Clunas (1991: 46). Song’s reference in his preface to “scions of noble houses and … imperial princes” (Sun and Sun 1966: xiii) suggests the first group, but he likely had both groups in mind. Yet, it is remarkable given this focus that none of the over ten works Song wrote would have been of any particular use to people studying for the civil service examinations (Pan 1990: 273). This, together with Song’s explicit comment to the same effect in regard to the TGKW, suggests that Song may have derived satisfaction from being something of a maverick. 72 Christopher Cullen comments that this would have been regarded by highly educated readers an “an odd and unscholarly way to write”; Cullen (1990: 298, fn. 11).
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of goods than most of the elite. Although almost surely not written by Song, there is an advertisement (Fig. 8) that appears on the title or cover page73 from the second printing of the revised second edition of Song’s work (which seems to have appeared while he was still alive). It claims that the book contains “all kinds of money-making and everuseful professional secrets and essential instructions on agriculture, weaving, manufacture, mining and working of metals and treasures.” 74 This certainly seems aimed at an audience with practical reasons for reading the book.75 This could include merchants, artisans and craftspeople, and even farmers, many more of whom were now literate and buying books. Concern for this audience is also suggested by the resolutely practical, down-to-earth thrust of most of the book. For example, the topics Song regularly discussed about any given technology included raw materials, areas of production, the technical processes involved, essential operations, equipment used, consumption of raw and processed materials, consumption of energy, products and rate of production, special characteristics of the products and their uses. Readers keenly interested in this information would presumably care less about the aesthetic qualities of the illustrations. But they would no doubt have very much appreciated the punctuation that was added to the second edition of the work, published between 1650 and 1680.76 This makes one wonder whether the book, once published, might not have had a greater appeal for this broader audience than Song had anticipated. Regardless of the audience for whom he meant his book, Song brought to his writing a personal perspective on technology that was clearly reflected in the illustrations. At the heart of this perspective was the idea that technology involved human beings employing their skills to make useful the resources provided by nature.77 This gives us a clue to the reason behind the striking contrast between the illustrations of Song‘s book and those, for example, of Wang Zhen’s early 14th century Nongshu (Agricultural Treatise). The great majority of illustrations in the Nongshu picture individual tools and machines ———
73 Clunas (1997b: 192, n. 33). 74 Pan 1989: 143, Fig. 1–9A; Yang 1954: 311. The translation is L.S. Yang’s. 75 Note that this advertisement need not have been aimed only at potential read-
ers. It could also have been meant to appeal to book merchants who visited printing shops to purchase books that they would take to other areas to sell. Brokaw 1996: 73– 74. 76 See Appendix below, no. 2. 77 This resonates with the neo-Confucian idea of “man as the co-creator rather than …merely a creature of the universe”; Fong (1992: 75–76).
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with nothing else in the picture. Only occasionally do we see people actually using the tools or operating machines. These are indeed “technical illustrations.” 78 Dramatically different are the TGKW illustrations, nearly every one of which contains one or more figures doing something productive. 79 That often involves the use of tools and machines but the primary emphasis is nearly always on the process, not on the material means used to carry it out.80 The illustrations of the TGKW that show tools and machines (there are many that do not) should be viewed mainly as attempts to portray the use of technology by humans. This is not a view likely to encourage consistent emphasis on precise construction details of the tools and machines though the inclusion of the human figures does have the unintended advantage of providing at least an approximate scale to which the other objects in the illustration tend to conform rather well.81 Song not only stressed the crucial role of human participation in technology but also believed that technology’s primary purpose was to make people’s lives better. He thus felt no compulsion to describe and/or illustrate all the technology with which he was familiar. For the most part he gives information only on the best and/or standard practices in current, useful technologies.82 For those technologies, how——— 78 Even here, especially in illustrations dealing with relatively complex machines, it is well to keep in mind Dieter Kuhn’s contention that the illustrations of the Nongshu should be seen as “schematic representations of a technological principle”; Kuhn (1977: 144). 79 The illustrations include a total of 278 human figures, or an average of more than two per illustration; Pan (1993: 320–324). 80 These tools and machines themselves were, of course, mainly the product of skilled craftsmen. Moreover, being relatively simple, they relied greatly on the skills of farmers, weavers etc. in order to work effectively. Since the primary importance of these human skills in the production process was universally emphasized, there was less of a tendency for people to become infatuated with machines per se, quite the opposite of the attitude that developed in Europe and is so nicely reflected, for example, in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Moreover, even among scientifically or technically oriented intellectuals like Song, their writings still tended to be motivated more by moral, patriotic and humanitarian considerations than by the intellectual fascinations of, say, mechanics or hydrology. Thus, for nearly all its readers, the TGKW would have been judged mainly by how well text and illustrations together generated in a pleasing way a feeling for what a given production process was like, rather than for the clarity and accuracy with which the technologies were described. 81 Just as Chinese mapmakers found no pressing need to draw maps to scale since geographical details, including distances, could be included in the text accompanying the maps, the TGKW also reserves information on dimensions for the text, thus precluding the need for any precise or consistent scale in the illustrations. See Harley and Woodward (1994: 29) and Smith (1998: 95). 82 He chooses for example not to discuss the making of so-called “Japanese” satin which was falling out of favor because it was not durable and soiled easily: “Nowadays it is reported as of little value by both Chinese and foreigners. Since it will
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ever, he often provides considerable useful information, more than likely in the hope that his book would help spread up-to-date technologies to areas where they were not (yet) in use. 83 That his illustrations often failed to measure up to the fullness of the textual discussion may in part be accounted for by a confidence on Song’s part that his text would convey most of the relevant information with sufficient clarity. Rather than being disconcerted by mistaken or incomplete portrayals of the technology in the illustrations, he was probably satisfied when the illustrations generally succeeded in providing essential information that he understood could not be conveyed by the text alone. 84 Such an interpretation seems consistent with the description and illustration of the sugarcane-crushing mill we looked at earlier. At that time, we raised a caveat concerning Daniels’ contention that the text and illustration together would make it possible to construct this machine, wondering who would be constructing the mill and just how they might be able to benefit from Song’s discussion and illustration. We can now at least suggest a reasonable hypothesis about how the TGKW could have been used in a very practical way. One can imagine an official posted to a sugarcane producing area that did not yet know of this kind of mill. Having his own copy of the TGKW, he could show the illustration to some sugarcane producers and explain on the basis of the text how it was built.85 Any construction of an experimental mill would be done by experienced artisans who would be able to combine the information in the TGKW text and illustration with their own experience to produce a version that would stand a good chance of operating effectively.86 The quality as well as the quantity of the illustrations may also ——— become an unwanted commodity in the future, there is no need to note down the method by which this satin is woven.” Sun and Sun (1966: 60). This, again, is a reflection of Song’s relatively limited interest in technology as an object of intellectual investigation for its own sake, an attitude that may have contributed to a certain lack of concern with precision and accuracy in his illustrations. 83 The concern to increase production by spreading improved technological practices, especially in agriculture, was already widespread among officials in the Song period; Golas (1980: 310). 84 “Satisfied” may be insufficiently strong to convey the attitude of pride implied by his characterization of the illustrations as things of “great value.” Still, we do not know whether this was his genuine assessment or whether it was an effort by Song to promote sales of the book. 85 For examples of this kind of use of illustrated books, see Wang Chaosheng (1995: 170, 179–81). 86 In Ming China, no less than in medieval Europe, much of the knowledge of artisans was simply incapable of being expressed in either writing or illustrations; see Hall (1982: 155).
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have been influenced by the expectations of the marketplace for books. Presumably, like most authors in this flourishing publishing culture, Song wanted his book to sell well. These hopes may also have been reinforced by his far from comfortable financial situation.87 Illustrations, even not very good ones, could be a great help here.88 Relatively low quality illustrations were very common in late Ming publishing, not only in cheap works of fiction but also in works such as practical encyclopedias that in many ways were comparable to the TGKW. Just the fact of having illustrations and an abundance of them might for many readers be more important than their intrinsic quality.89 That would probably be less true for the highly educated elite whom we have identified as Song’s main audience. Regardless of the value they might assign to printed illustrations, they were presumably much more accustomed to quality illustrations.90 As suggested above, it might have been a more or less conscious decision to appeal to elite tastes that led to some of the “anomalies” in the TGKW illustrations such as the inclusion of landscape screens (Fig. 9)91 in working areas like a tin-smelting workshop where one would hardly expect to find such an elaborate piece of decorative art; or having craftsmen, here making an anchor (Fig. 10), 92 dressed in clothes seemingly inappropriate for their work and above their station. On the other hand, we have to allow also for the possibility that such anomalies were partly the result of the considerable standardization that printing had promoted in the making of images of all kinds, many of which became increasingly stereotyped.93 ——— 87 Pan 1988: 10–11. 88 Correspondingly, a lack of illustrations might well hinder sales of the book
especially to that broader audience of merchants and craftsmen. Hegel 1998: 289; Clunas 1997b: 35. 89 Hegel 1997: 289. 90 For the attitude of the elite toward illustrations in books (if indeed one can speak of a single elite with clearly definable tastes), see Clunas (1997b: 40). This is a matter that has only begun to attract serious study: for the difficulty of teasing out firm conclusions on the basis of the evidence that has so far been unearthed, see Clunas (1997b: 33–37). See also Hegel (1998: 133, 164, 201, 204, 253; 257–258 and 270) who tends to attribute to late Ming elite readers a higher appreciation of book illustrations than Clunas, arguing that “there was no necessary distinction in the perceived aesthetic value—or of the essential artistic features—of literati painting and of the more refined of the commercial arts, including fine woodblock printing.” (253). 91 Sun and Sun 1966: 255, Fig. 14–13 (smelting tin ore with the addition of lead). 92 Sun and Sun 1966: 191, Fig. 10–2. 93 We have already raised the possibility (see fn. 63 above) that at least some of the artists who drew the TGKW illustrations belonged to a more-or-less well defined Jinling “school” of book illustration. Such schools had existed for centuries in China.
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One final circumstance must have accounted for at least some of the shortcomings of the TGKW and its illustrations: the considerable carelessness surrounding the printing of the book, quite possibly out of a desire to get it done as quickly as possible. One sees the results in the more than four hundred mistaken characters in the text;94 in the misplacing of some of the illustrations;95 and perhaps also in the ultimate arrangement of the chapters that may not have been what Song originally had in mind.96 There can be little question that Song was very busy at this time. In addition to his responsibilities at the county school, he completed six writing projects in 1636–1637.97 Moreover, not only the TGKW but also a book the previous year were printed with the help of an old friend, Tu Zhaokui ῥฯ❞, who had gone on to a successful official career and was back in his home area only for about two years during the mourning period following the death of his mother.98 Song almost certainly wanted to have the printing completed before Tu left for his next post. Then there were also the family financial considerations already mentioned and which may also have encouraged getting the book out as quickly as possible. In any case, it seems quite possible that a very busy Song Yingxing personally exercised relatively little supervision and control over the details of preparing the book for ——— In the Ming, their members increasingly had access to printed manuals or pattern books that showed them exactly how to portray objects, people, scenes etc.; Clunas (1997a: 177, 191); Clunas (1997b: 51, 136–138). For a fascinating look at what has often been considered as the first of these manuals, see Bickford (1993: 169–226 and Figs. 1–5). By late Ming, the method for learning how to draw and paint in China was already well on its way to the situation described for later centuries by Michael Sullivan: “Every Chinese painter for the last 300 years has learned from one of the handbooks of style and technique”; cited in Hegel (1997: 438, n. 48). 94 That works out to an average of between one and two mistakes every page. These were presumably mainly made by the scribe(s) who wrote out the text that was used for the carving. But it is not inconceivable that many were slips made by Song himself. Insofar as the latter is true, one wonders how far they may have resulted out of a carelessness that came from having too good a memory? That may be too harsh, however. After all, Song complains in his preface that he lacked funds to purchase “rare artifacts” that he would have liked to study carefully in connection with writing the book (Sun and Sun 1966: xiv). He may also have lacked sufficient funds to have in his own library and therefore easily accessible for checking many of the books on which he was drawing. We do not know anything of the holdings of the library at Fenyi, where he was serving at this time. (Cullen 1990: 298) In any case, the key point is that the mistakes were able to pass through though they would have been easy to correct even after the blocks had been carved; see Golas (2003: 39). 95 Pan 1990: 247. 96 See above, fn. 4. 97 Pan 1988: 65–6; Pan 1990: 247. 98 Pan 1990: 194–195.
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printing.99
CONCLUDING REMARKS We have avoided above any extensive comparison of the TGKW illustrations with illustrations of technology appearing in other Chinese works. This has helped keep an already long paper from taxing its readers still further. There is also the problem that, with some notable exceptions,100 very little research has been done on the technical aspects of Ming and Qing illustrations of technology. We certainly have nothing in the way of a synthetic overview similar, for example, to Hegel’s brilliant study of the illustrations appearing in Ming and Qing printed works of fiction. Nevertheless, it may be of use in closing to attempt on the basis mainly of the TGKW illustrations to suggest some broader implications about how the Chinese portrayed technology that I am reasonably confident would be borne out by a careful examination of the whole corpus of Ming and Qing technology drawings. Historians of Chinese painting are in agreement that Chinese painting underwent a major shift in direction beginning around the southern Song. That change included, especially for painting generally judged to be of the best quality, a growing prejudice against the inclusion of accurate and detailed visual information. As James Cahill remarks, while Chinese painting in the period from Han to Song shows a “gradual, cumulative mastery of the artist’s means of description and expression”, by the early southern Song it “had progressed as far in the direction of descriptive realism as it was ever to go and, on the whole, afterward could only move away from realism...”101 Now that formulation somewhat begs what Michael Sullivan has rightly called “one of the most fascinating questions in the study of ———
99 Easily noticeable discrepancies between text and illustrations may sometimes derive from Song’s failures of oversight. A possible example is the illustration of the first soaking of bamboo in the papermaking process (Sun and Sun 1966: 222). The scene is set in a courtyard while the text explicitly says that this is done in the mountains where the bamboo is cut. Also, though the text emphasizes that the soaking is done in running water, the illustration has only a vat with no indication of an inflow or outflow of water. Both of these mistakes are corrected in the 1927 edition version of this illustration; see TGKW: 228. 100 I have in mind, for example, the work of Needham and Edgerton discussing Chinese and Western technical illustrations in the early 17th century; Needham (1965: 211 ff.); Edgerton, Jr. (1985: 168–97). 101 Cahill 1982: 4–5.
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Chinese art.”102 What caused so much of Chinese painting after the Song to move away from realism and specificity toward a dominant emphasis on suggestion, impressionism and expressivity? Why did so many Chinese painters come to downplay standards of professionalism and instead esteem amateurism? As with all big questions, this one has no single answer. It could be that artists came to feel a certain exhaustion of the vocabulary of realism, that this was an approach that could be taken no further. Social changes, including the rise of scholar-painters who succeeded in imposing an “amateur ideal” as the standard for fine painting, undoubtedly played an important role. New philosophical developments intersected with aesthetic values, giving rise to a conception of the function of painting claiming that a true portrayal of the material world consisted in capturing the essences that united objects rather than in portraying objects in all their detailed individuality.103 Whatever its causes, this dramatic reorientation strongly affected not only Chinese painting but also all forms of illustration including illustrations of technology. Good technical illustration strongly emphasizes the comprehension that comes from attention to accuracy, precision and detail. Moreover, it is not an easy thing to transfer effectively one’s visual image of a complex three-dimensional machine to a two-dimensional surface. Generations of artists in late medieval and Renaissance Europe recognized this challenge and were constantly on the alert for techniques that would produce illustrations of greater accuracy and verisimilitude. In China, there was little to motivate artists to move in this direction, and much to discourage them from it.104 The result, I would argue, was that China produced a body of technical illustrations that not only showed very limited success in picturing technology of any complexity but—and this is at least ———
102 Sullivan 1979: 71. 103 On this last point, see especially Hegel (1998: 319–320). For a sampling of
views on the overall question, see: Sullivan (1979: 71–74); Cahill (1982: 45); Cahill (1994: 5–7); Bush (1971: esp. Chap. 1); Maeda (1985–1986: 385–397). 104 Of course, we do not want to fall into the error of associating technological progress exclusively with mechanical inventions, as historians especially of agricultural technology such as Francesca Bray are properly at pains to remind us; Bray (2000: 159). But it was the challenge of portraying complex machinery that potentially offered the greatest stimulus to better technological representations. It is therefore important to realize that complex machines were almost as rare in Song Yingxing’s China as they were in 13th century Europe where, according to Arnold Pacey (1992: 55), a silk twisting machine was “the only really complex industrial mechanism.”
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equally important—also acted as a major impediment to technological creativity in late imperial China. A considerable body of scholarship from the last several decades has made a strong case that images play a much greater role of our thinking processes than was once recognized. In other words, visual thinking, the manipulation of images, can, according to these studies, often be as important or even more important than verbal thinking, the manipulation of words. Originally, it was scholars interested in the psychology of art who pioneered these investigations.105 But the case can be made equally well for thinking about technology. Eugene Ferguson, in his remarkable study Engineering and the Mind’s Eye, states the argument concisely and clearly: “Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; therefore they are dealt with in the mind by a visual, non-verbal process.…It has been non-verbal thinking, by and large, that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details of our material surroundings.”106 When one realizes, however, that the images we carry in our minds, whether or not we use them to think with, are all experiencebased (derived from sense impressions, mainly from our eyes but also from our ears, nose, fingers etc.), it becomes clear that different sets of experiences will lead to very different sets of mental images. In the case of technology, a repertoire of images strongly influenced by a world of illustrations that underplayed precision and attention to detail could do little to encourage that increasingly precise kind of technological thinking that alone could promote technological advance once machines had reached a certain level of complexity. This helps us to understand a phenomenon that I raised in an earlier paper without fully recognizing its significance. I noted that I had never come across any evidence of a pre-20th century Chinese using drawings to think through a mechanical or any kind of technological idea.107 We have here, I think, at least part of the reason why this practice seems to have been absent in China. The mental images that Chinese artists had accumulated of what constituted a proper illustration of a technological subject simply did not, at least in most cases, ———
105 I am thinking in particular of E. H. Gombrich, Rudolph Arnheim and William M. Ivins, Jr. 106 Ferguson 1993: xi. This book is the fuller development of ideas first presented much earlier in the author’s pathbreaking article, “The Mind’s Eye: Nonverbal Thought in Technology” (1977). 107 Golas 2001: 58.
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rise to a degree of realism that would invite using them for thinking about technological questions.
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APPENDIX: THE EDITIONS OF THE TIANGONG KAIWU AND THEIR ILLUSTRATIONS108
1. The first edition of the TGKW, sponsored by Song Yingxing’s friend, Tu Zhaokui ῥँ❞ was printed in 1637.109 It was divided in to three ce (volumes) and eighteen juan (chapters), and included 122 illustrations.110 2. The book apparently met with an enthusiastic reception. Already by the fall of the Ming in 1644, a Fujian printer by the name of Yang Suqing ᄘైହ had arranged the carving of blocks for a second edition. These had apparently been completed, including corrections of more than four hundred mistaken characters of the first edition,111 but the printing was delayed by the disorder that accompanied the collapse of the Ming.112 Some time in the years 1650 to 1680, after the recarved blocks had been altered to remove references to the Chongzhen reign period (1628–1644), characterizations of the Ming dynasty as, for example, “our dynasty”, and some but not all of the unflattering references to the Manchus and other non-Chinese peoples, the second edition was printed.113 According to Pan, there were ———
108 See the accompanying “Table of the Editions and Reprints of the Tiangong kaiwu.” Much of the following account is drawn from Pan Jixing’s detailed studies of the various editions of the TGKW. These results are presented in Pan (1989: 136– 171), which discusses all the editions down to 1984; note especially the convenient chart on pp.169–71. A slightly revised version, carrying the story down to 1990, appears in Pan (1990: 607–638). Also useful, especially for some discussion of the illustrations in the various editions, is Saigusa (1943: 43–87). 109 Because of Tu’s sponsorship, Pan Jixing refers to this as the “Tu” edition. Three copies are known to have survived; they are held by the Beijing Library, the Seikadô Bunko in Tokyo and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The Beijing Library copy was used for the excellent 1959 Zhonghua shuju (Shanghai) photo offset reprint. Unfortunately, however, the Beijing Library copy is the least good of the three surviving versions, having apparently been pulled relatively late in the print run when some of the blocks were beginning to show wear or damage from repeated use. The Seikadô Bunko copy, which I have not personally examined, seems from reproduced illustrations to be the best, presumably coming therefore from early in the print run. The quality of the Bibliothèque Nationale copy seems to be intermediate between the Beijing and Seikadô versions. 110 Pan 1993: 320–324. 111 Pan 1989: 138. 112 This edition has often been considered to be a Ming edition; Girmond (1993: 19); Pan (1989: 144–145). Some earlier scholars such as Bretschneider have even regarded it as the original edition; Pan (1989: 138). 113 Pan 1989: 142 (illustration), 145 (references to the Manchus) and 146. Pan‘s discussion of the removal of Ming references in the recarved blocks of Yang Suqing is not as clear as one might wish. The one illustration he provides (p. 142) shows the “da Ming chao” Օࣔཛҏ of the Yang edition replacing the “wo chao” ݺཛ in the original edition. In this case (because of the extra character?), the entire block has
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also some changes made to the illustrations in this edition, but he is not clear on how frequent or extensive those changes were.114 This edition also added traditional style punctuation.115 3. The next edition of the TGKW, effectively the third, did not appear until 1771, in Osaka, Japan.116 The text of this third Sugotô ဋسჀ ҏedition resulted from a careful collation of good copies of the first and second editions by Eda Masuhide ضۂ墿ҏҏ who also added the markings used in Japan to give Japanese readers clues for translating classical Chinese into Japanese. 117 The illustrations included were those of the original 1637 edition. This edition was reprinted in Japan in 1830 without changes except for publishing information added at the end. 4. Not until 1927 was another new edition of the TGKW produced, this one by Tao Xiang ຯྉҏҏ who used the third edition collated with the second edition for the main text but added a new set of 162 illustrations either drawn from later Qing works such as the Gujin tushu jicheng ײվቹႃ ګor even newly drawn in the early 20th century.118 This edition also included a biography of Song Yingxing and a postface, both written by Ding Wenjiang ԭ ֮ ( ۂV.K. Ting).119 It was reprinted in 1929 with a new postface by Ding and ——— been recarved to accomodate the change; since three characters replace two, the following line divisions are one character different from the original edition. Pan provides no example of what those changes involving the carving of new characters and their replacement of the original characters in the original block looked like. 114 Pan 1989: 145. Saigusa Hiroto had access to the Mito Shôkôkan version before it was destroyed (see following note); he reproduces and discusses two of its illustrations in Saigusa (1943: 66–68). 115 Four versions of this second edition survived into this century. One, held by the Mito Shôkôkan ֽ֪ኦە塢 in Kyûshû, was destroyed in World War II. The remaining copies are at the Beijing Library, Academia Sinica in Taiwan and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. According to Pan (1989: 144), the Beijing Library and Academia Sinica copies are identical except for their “title pages”. The Bibliothèque Nationale copy is the only copy I have been able to examine personally; the title page appears to be identical with that of the Academia Sinica copy. For this edition, see Yang (1954: fn. 73 above). 116 Pan (1989: 147–150); Pan (1990: 615–620). 117 These marks are of two kinds: okurigana to give Japanese declension suffixes regularly used in combination with the Chinese characters, and kaeriten to indicate the corresponding word order in Japanese. 118 Pan 1989: 150–153; Zhao 1997: 94; Sun and Sun 1966: x. For some further works from which the illustrations came, see Pan (1989: 150). 119 The preface in handwritten characters from the second edition is also included under the mistaken assumption that this was Song Yingxing’s calligraphy; Pan 1989: 153. The fascinating story of how this edition came into being is nicely told by Ding Wenjiang (V. K. Ting) in the postface at the very end of TGKW.
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again in 1983 (by the Guang wen shuju ᐖ֮ݝҏҏ in Taibei) with the illustrations printed in red ink. Though this Tao edition has been much criticized, especially for its newly-drawn and therefore inauthentic illustrations, it did serve to draw widespread attention to the importance of Song’s work and to pave the way for what, by comparison with the preceding four centuries, became of flood of new editions and printings. These include: 5. A 1930 photo-offset edition in 9 ce by the Huatong shuju ဎຏݝ in Shanghai and based on the third (Sugotô) edition but omitting punctuation and the markings for assisting Japanese reader. 6. A 1933, a Commercial Press (Shanghai) typeset, punctuated edition based on the text of the third (Sugotô) edition but with illustrations both from that edition (i.e., effectively those of the original edition) and from the 1927 Tao edition. It was included in the Basic Sinological Series (Guoxue jiben congshu ഏᖂഗءហҏ) and, in a slightly larger format, in the Wan you wenku ᆄ֮ڶҏ collectanea. 7. A 1936, Shijie shuju ݝҏ(World Press) typeset edition with modern punctuation. The text derived from a careful character-bycharacter comparison by Dong Wen ᇀ֮ of the third, Sugotô edition and the Tao Xiang edition of nine years earlier. Differences were clearly indicated, and either one of the two versions was chosen as correct or, sometimes, an emendation was made that rejected both versions. The illustrations were those of the Tao edition. Also included were a preface by Dong Wen, a short biography of Song Yingxing, and the 1928 postface by Ding Wenjing (V. K. Ting) from the 1929 Tao edition reprint. This version came to be widely used especially after it was reprinted in Taibei in 1962 under the title Jiaozheng Tiangong kaiwu in the Zhonghua xueshu mingzhu congshu խဎᖂ ټထហ collection. It was reprinted once again in 1981.120 8. A 1943 Juichigumi shuppanbu Լԫิנठຝ (Tokyo) new photooffset edition in three thousand copies of the early Qing second edition but including the pronunciation and text order marks for Japanese readers. It was carefully edited by Saigusa Hiroto Կࣤ໑ଃҏҏ and included Saigusa’s studies of various aspects of the TGKW including its place and significance in the historiography of Chinese technology, its editions, the translation of its technical terms and its influence on Japanese technology. A detailed table (pp. 119–37) indicated ——— 120 Pan 1989: 155.
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discrepancies in the texts of the original edition, one version of the second edition, the third 1771 Osaka edition and the 1927 Tao edition. Also included was a short discussion of Song Yingxing. 9. In 1952, the pre-eminent post-World War II Japanese scholar of the history of Chinese science and technology, Yabu’uchi Kiyoshi ᓈփ 堚ҏ, together with his collaborators at the Jimbun kagaku kenkyûjôҏҏ Գ ֮ઝᖂઔߒҏ of Kyôto University, produced the first translation of the entire TGKW into a foreign language, with copious annotations. They selected as their basic text the first edition but included modifications based on collation with the second edition, the Tao Xiang edition of 1927 and the 1936 Shijie shuju edition. The illustrations are those of the first edition, thus making these illustrations for the first time widely available. A 1969 revision (with many later reprints) as a volume of the Heibonsha ؓՅष Tôyô Bunko ֮ࣟҏҏ series includes numerous changes and additions in both the translation and in the notes; this version should therefore be used rather than the 1952 original. Unfortunately, it does not include the Chinese text or the studies by the individual contributors for the 1952 volume. (The 16th reprint in 1984 includes an addendum in which Yabu’uchi introduces some further materials on Song Yingxing’s life and makes some corrections in the explanatory notes.)121 Finally, special attention is due the reprint by the Zhonghua shuju of the copy of the first edition that had come into the possession of the Beijing Library in 1951. The publishers’ intent was to make this photolithographic reprint as close a reproduction of the original as possible. The effort resulted in a near-perfect copy of the original in both text and format, causing Pan Jixing to remark that reading this reprint is comparable to looking at the original itself.122
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121 Pan 1989: 161–162. 122 Pan 1989: 159. But not the best original version; see fn. 109 above. (Laufer
and Hegel have both stressed the unique visual experience of encountering early editions in the original; see Laufer (1909: 26–7, fn.2) and Hegel (1998: 3–5).)
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REFERENCES ATWELL, William S. 2002. “Time, Money, and the Weather: Ming China and the ‘Great Depression’ of the Mid-Fifteenth Century.” The Journal of Asian Studies 61.1 (February): 83–113. BICKFORD, Maggie. 1993. “Stirring the Pot of State: The Sung Picture-Book Mei-Hua Hsi-Shen P’u and Its Implications for Yüan Scholar-Painting.” Asia Major (Third Series) 6.2: 169–226. BRAY, Francesca. 2000. Review of Sucheta Mazumdar, Sugar and Society in China:Peasants, Technology, and the World Market, China Review International 7.1: 155–160. BROKAW, Cynthia J. 1996. “Commercial Publishing in Late Imperial China: The Zou and Ma Family Businesses of Sibao, Fujian.” Late Imperial China 17.1 (June): 49–92. BROOK, Timothy. 1995. “Weber, Mencius, and the History of Chinese Capitalism.” Asian Perspective 19.1: 79–97. ——. 1988. “Censorship in Eighteenth-Century China: A View from the Book Trade.” Canadian Journal of History 23.2 (August): 177–196. BUSH, Susan. 1971. The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037–1101) to Tung Ch‘i-ch‘ang (1555–1636. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. CAHILL, James. 1982. The Distant Mountains; Chinese Painting of the Late Ming Dynasty, 1570–1644. New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill. ——. 1994. The Painter’s Practice; How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China. New York: Columbia University Press. CLUNAS, Craig. 1997a. Art in China. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ——. 1997b. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——. 1991. Superfluous Things; Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China. Cambridge: Polity Press. CULLEN, Christopher. 1990. “The Science/Technology Interface in SeventeenthCentury China: Song Yingxing ݚᚨਣ on Qi and the Wu Xing ն۩.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 53.2: 295–318. DANIELS, Christian. 1996. Part 3: Agro-Industries: Sugarcane Technology. Forestry. Agro-industries: Sugarcane technology. In: Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. VI. Biology, Agriculture and Medicine, ed. Joseph Needham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–539. DONG Wen ᇀ֮,ҏ ed. 1962. Jiaozheng Tiangong kaiwu ீ֚إՠၲढ. Taibei: Shijie. EDGERTON, Samuel Y. Jr. 1985. “The Renaissance Development of Scientific Illustration.” In: Science and the Arts in the Renaissance, eds. John W. Shirley and F. David Hoeniger. Washington, D.C.: The Folger Shakespeare Library (Associated University Presses), pp. 168–197. FERGUSON, Eugene S. 1977. “The Mind’s Eye: Nonverbal Thought in Technology.” Science 197 (August 26): 827–836. ——. 1992. Engineering and the Mind’s Eye. Cambridge: MIT Press. FONG, Wen C. 1992. Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8th to 14th Century. New Haven: Yale University Press. GERNET, Jacques. 1996. A History of Chinese Civilization. Tr. J. R. Foster and Charles Hartman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [2nd ed.] ——. 1984. “La société chinoise a la fin des Ming.” Recherches de science religieuse 72.1: 27–36. GIRMOND, Sybille. 1993. “Chinesische Bilderalben zur Papierherstellung; Historische und stilistische Entwicklung der Illustrationen von Produktionsprozessen in China von den Anfängen bis ins 19. Jahrhundert.” In: Chinesische Bambuspapierherstellung; Ein Bilderalbum aus dem 18. Jahrhundert, eds. Wolfgang
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Schlieder, Pan Jixing and Sybille Girmond. Berlin: Academie Verlag, pp.18–38. GOLAS, Peter J. 1980. “Rural China in the Song.” The Journal of Asian Studies 39.2 (February): 291–325. ——. 2003. “Technical Representation in China: Tools and Techniques of the Trade.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 20 : 11–44. ——. 1999. “The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China; The Xin Yi Xiang Fa Yao and its Antecedents.” History of Technology 21: 29–63. ——. 2001. “Technological Illustration in China; a post-Needham Perspective.” In: Science and technology in East Asia; the Legacy of Joseph Needham, eds. Alain Arrault and Catherine Jami. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, pp. 43–58. HALL, Bert S. 1982. “Production et diffusion de certain traités de techniques au moyen âge.” In: Cahiers d‘études médiévales 7; Les arts mécaniques au moyen âge, eds. G. H. Allard and S. Lusignan. Montreal: Bellarmin, pp. 146–170. HARLEY, J. B. and Woodward, David, eds. 1994. The History of Cartography. Vol. II, Book 2. Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. HEGEL, Robert E. 1998. Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. HOMMEL, Rudolf P. 1969. China at Work. Cambridge: The MIT Press. HUMMEL, Arthur W., ed. 1944. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period. 2 vols. Washington: United States Government Printing Office, Vol. 2. KUHN, Dieter. 1977. “Marginalie zu einigen Illustrationen im Nung-shu ል des Wang Zhen ׆ጜ.” In: Zur Kunstgeschichte Asiens; 50 Jahre Lehre und Forschung an der Universität Köln. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, pp. 143–152. LAUFER, Berthold. 1909. Chinese Pottery of the Han Dynasty. Leiden: E. J. Brill, [repr. Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1962]. Li, Ch’iao-ping et al. 1980. Tien-Kung-Kai-wu; Exploitation of the Work of Nature (Chinese Agriculture and Technology in the XVII Century by Sung Ying-sing). Taipei: China Academy. MAEDA, Robert J. 1985–1986. “Spacial Enclosures: the Idea of Interior Space in Chinese Painting.” Oriental Art 3 (Winter): 385–387. MAZUMDAR, Sucheta. 2000. “Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology, and the World Market.” China Review International 7.1 (Spring): 155–160. ——. 1998. Sugar and Society in China; Peasants, Technology, and the World Market. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (Harvard University East Asia Center). MORRIS-SUZUKI, Tessa. 1991. “Concepts of Nature and Technology.” East Asian History (Canberra) 1: 81–97. MOTE, Frederick W. 1999. Imperial China, 900–1800. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. MOTE, Frederick W. and Denis TWITCHETT, eds. 1988. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——, eds. 1998. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 8: The Ming Dynasty, 1368– 1644, Part 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. NEEDHAM, Joseph. 1965. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 4: Physics and Physical Technology. Part 2: Mechanical Engineering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. PACEY, Arnold. 1992. The Maze of Ingenuity; Ideas and Idealism in the Development of Technology. Cambridge: MIT Press. PAN, Jixing ᑰٳਣ. 1990. Song Yingxing ping zhuan ݚᚨਣေႚ. Nanjing: Nanjing Daxue Chubanshe. ——. 1988. Tiangong kaiwu daodu ֚ՠၲढᖄᦰ. Chengdu: Ba Shu Shushe. ——. 1989. Tiangong kaiwu jiao zhu ji yanjiu ֚ՠၲढீࣹ֗ઔߒ. Chengdu: Ba Shu Shushe.
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——. 1993. Tiangong kaiwu yi zhu ֚ՠၲढࣹ. Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe. SAIGUSA Hiroto Կࣤ໑ଃҏ, ed. 1943. Tenkô kaibutsu ֚ՠၲढ. Tokyo: Juichigumi shuppanbu. SAKAI, Tadao. 1970. “Confucianism and Popular Educational Works”. In: Self and Society in Ming Thought, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 331–362. SAKAKIDA RAWSKI, Evelyn. 1979. Education and Popular Literacy in Ch’ing China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. SMITH, Richard J. 1998. “Mapping China’s World: Cultural Cartography in Late Imperial Times”. In: Landscape, Culture and Power in Chinese Society, ed. Wen–hsin Yeh. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, pp. 52–109. SONG Yingxing ݚᚨਣ. 1959. Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ. Shanghai: Shangwu shuju. SULLIVAN, Michael. 1979. Symbols of Eternity; the Art of Landscape Painting in China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. SUN, E-tu Zen and Sun, Shiou-Chuan, trs. 1966. T’ien-kung k’ai-wu; Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century. University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press. VOGEL, Hans Ulrich. 1999. “Diagrams and Illustrations.” Unpublished ms. WANG Chaosheng ׆ᑪس. 1995. Zhongguo gudai geng zhi tu խഏזײౙ៣ቹ. Beijing (?): Zhongguo nongye chubanshe, pp. 179–181. YABU’UCHI, Kiyosh i ᓈփ堚ҏ.1953. Tenkô kaibutsu no kenkyû ֚ՠၲढ圸ઔߒ. Tokyo: Kôsei. YANG, L. S. 1954. Review of Yabu’uchi Kiyoshi, Tenkô kaibutsu no kenkyû (Tokyo: Kôsei, 1953). Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 17: 307–16. YOSHIDA, Tora. 1993. Salt Production Techniques in Ancient China; the Aobo Tu. Tr. and rev. by Hans Ulrich Vogel. Leiden: E. J. Brill. ZHAO Qingzhi ᎓ᐜ॒.1997. “Li shi zhu yi Tiangong kaiwu shimo” ֚‘ּࣹޕՠ ၲ’ढࡨأ. Zhongguo keji shiliao 3: 90–104. ZHONG Guangyan ᐖߢ, ed. and tr. 1978. Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ. Hong Kong: Zhonghua Shuju.
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Fig. 1: Small loom with waist strap.
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Fig. 2a: Ginning cotton.
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Fig. 2b: Ginning cotton (1927 version of Fig. 2a).
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Fig. 3: Spooling silk.
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Fig. 4: Spinning wheel for twisting silk threads into yarn.
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Fig. 5a: Papermaking.
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Fig. 5b: Papermaking (1927 version of Fig. 5a).
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Fig. 6a: Glazing of bricks and tiles.
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Fig. 6b: Glazing of bricks and tiles (1927 version of Fig. 6a).
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Fig. 7a: Two-roller mill for crushing sugarcane.
Fig. 7b: Two-roller mill for crushing sugarcane (1927 version of Fig. 7a).
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Fig. 8: Advertisement (two lines in the upper center) for the second edition of the TKKW.
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Fig. 9: Smelting tin.
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Fig. 10: Thirteen workers engaged in making an anchor.
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Table 1: Table of the Editions and Reprints of the Tiangong kaiwu.
SONG YINGXING’S ILLUSTRATIONS OF IRON PRODUCTION1 Donald B. Wagner2 This extract from a longer article is intended as an addendum to Peter Golas’s contribution,3 in which he gives a critical and erudite discussion of numerous issues raised by the illustrations in Song Yingxing’s ݚᚨਣ Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ. I consider only the description of iron production, and only the illustrations in the 1637 edition. Much research is needed to identify the sources of the Tiangong kaiwu. Some of Song Yingxing’s descriptions may be eyewitness accounts, but it seems impossible that he could have seen all of the technologies he describes. The range of the book is simply too broad for one man’s personal observation. In particular, we do not know how much control Song Yingxing had over the illustrations in his book. For all we know his publisher may have supplied all of the illustrations, and Song may have been deeply unhappy at the result—I hasten to add that I do not consider this the most likely possibility, but many academic authors’ experience with commercial publishers suggests it. If we are to use the Tiangong kaiwu as a source for Ming technologies it will be important to come as close to an answer to this question as possible—it matters a great deal where the information in Song Yingxing’s book comes from. In the following I take up three passages in his description of iron production and attempt to show that in these cases (1) his text is accurate; (2) the illustrations are accurate; but (3) the illustrations do not always show the same technologies as the text.4
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1 Extracted from Wagner 2006. 2 Donald B. Wagner is an independent scholar, formerly Senior Lecturer in Chi-
nese at the University of Copenhagen. 3 Golas, this volume. 4 For the whole context in which these passages appear see e.g. the translation by Sun and Sun (1966: 248–251).
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WASHING IRONSAND Song Yingxing describes two types of iron ore, dingtie ᙍᥳ and shatie ઓᥳ, literally “lump iron” and “sand iron”. Both are found close to the surface and do not require deep mining. “Lump iron” is probably what in English is generally called bog iron. “Sand iron” is ironsand (or black sand). Ironsand is small grains of magnetite (Fe3O4), and is found in small quantities in sand in rivers that flow out of granite mountains. The greater part of the sand is of course quartz. Magnetite is heavier than quartz, so it can become concentrated at certain places in rivers. This is, generally speaking, where the current suddenly slows, for example where a river widens or at the outside of a turn in the river. This naturally concentrated ironsand can contain up to about 7 percent magnetite. “Washing” the ironsand can improve this to as much as 95 percent. Fig. 1, a photograph taken in Henan around 1917, shows how the “washing” of ironsand was traditionally done.5 A sluice was built, in this case 1.6 m long and with side-boards 10 cm high. River sand was shoveled onto the sluice and running water was led over it while workers stirred it with forks. The result was that most of the quartz sand was carried away by the water and most of the magnetite remained behind. After a brief discussion of “lump iron” Song Yingxing describes ironsand as follows:6 ՅઓᥳԫࢹՒᓂܛࠡࠐ࠷ݮෟੑԵᄾᅂ᠗֏հ৵ፖᙍᥳྤԲ Ո Sand iron: When the surface earth is cleared away it is revealed.7 They take it and wash it, charge it into the furnace, and smelt it. After melting it is exactly the same as ‘lump iron’.
This is correct as far as it goes, but his illustration (Fig. 2) shows panning in still water where we should expect to see sluicing in running water. It is clear that the illustrator had seen what he depicts, for the implement in the illustration is an accurate depiction of the boji ጦ traditionally used in concentrating minerals from sand. Peter Golas (1999: 244, fig. 31) photographed one in use in Guangxi in ——— 5 For details see Wagner (1985: 8–9, 12–13, 28–32). 6 1637 ed., xia Հ: 15b. 7 Rich ironsand lodes would often be found buried under a thin layer of earth be-
cause of the way rivers shift their course.
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1994. But it is doubtful that this method would have been used in washing ironsand. Panning is an appropriate method for extracting rare or valuable minerals from sand, but ironsand is plentiful in mountainous regions. Extracting magnetite from sand by this labour-intensive method would have meant that very little magnetite was lost; but overall, considering labour input per quantity of magnetite delivered to the furnace, panning would have been far less efficient than sluicing. Therefore it seems likely that Song Yingxing, or his illustrator, had seen the washing of gold or some other valuable mineral, and believed, probably incorrectly, that the same method was used in washing ironsand.
THE BLAST FURNACE Further on in the same chapter Song Yingxing describes the blast furnace used in smelting the iron ore. His description begins:8 ࠡڍເ՞لհࢨٯֵ؎ش Most furnaces are made in a pit at the side of a hill; but some are enclosed by a framework of heavy timbers.
Both of these ways of constructing a blast furnace were common in China. The second was still being used in the 20th century, as can be seen in Figs. 3–4, from the Great Leap Forward of 1958–1959. The inner shaft is of firebrick or stone, the outer framework is of wood, and the space between is filled with tamped earth (hangtu ᩵Ւ). More mystifying is the blast furnace constructed “in a pit at the side of a hill”. Translators and commentators have generally not been able to deal with this, 9 but the mystery was recently solved by Li Xiaoping (1995). This type of blast furnace was common in the Song and Yuan periods.10 Fig. 5 shows two blast furnaces dated to the 12th century excavated in Heilongjiang, and Fig. 6 shows a diagram of the one on the left. The shaft of the furnace was simply dug into a hillside, lined with stones and fireclay, fitted with holes for blast and tapping, and used as a blast furnace. So Song Yingxing’s description of the two types of blast furnace is ———
8 1637 ed., xia Հ: 16a. 9 But note Ledebur (1885: 192). 10 For details see Wagner (2001: 42–50).
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accurate. The illustration which accompanies his text, the right side of Fig. 7, shows however a completely different type of furnace. It is not dug into a hill, nor does it have a wooden framework. This type of blast furnace is also well known; it is seen in Fig. 8, photographed somewhere in central China about 1910. Thus it seems that Song Yingxing here used a different source for his illustration than he used for his text.
CONVERTING CAST IRON TO WROUGHT IRON The product of the blast furnace is cast iron, containing typically 3–4 percent carbon. If what is needed is wrought iron, with 0–0.2 percent carbon, a second process is required. A well-known traditional Chinese process for converting cast iron to wrought iron is shown in Fig. 9, photographed in Shanxi in 1958.11 The fuel (most often charcoal) burns at a very high temperature (perhaps 1200–1400°C) in a small well-insulated hollow in the ground. Pieces of cast iron are charged into this combustion chamber, and a strong blast of air (from some sort of bellows or blowing engine, not seen in the photograph) keeps combustion going and the temperature up. The worker stirs the mixture of fuel and cast iron with an iron rod and, if he is skilled at his work, most of the carbon burns out of the iron while not too much of the iron burns. Variations of this process, generally called chao च, “stir-frying”, have traditionally been used all over China, and seem also to have been used as early as the Han period (Wagner 2001: 80–84). It is similar to the processes called in English fining and puddling. When Song Yingxing comes to the conversion of cast iron to wrought iron, however, he describes a very different process, one which is very difficult to explain technically. His illustration is the left side of Fig. 7, and in this case the illustration and the text fit together very well: ૉທᑵᥳঞسᥳੌנழઌຑᑇ֡փ܅Հᑇ՚ᗰԫֱჀᛥࣂհࠡ ᥳੌԵჀփᑇԳֵཫඈمᛥՂ٣ۆאᑪࣽஸ้ᗴาᢅ᤺ڕ ԫԳఏ֫ᐼ ฒԳཫఏ᧓ܛழचګᑵᥳࠡཫޢचԫڻᗈމԲ Կ՚٦شঞԾޓհचመ࿑ܐհழࢨڶ༉ჀփඛቤֱګჇृࢨ༼ڶ נཀංؚႽ৵ຄृૉោၺ壆լवڼנՈ If they are making wrought iron then when the cast iron flows out it is
———
11 For details see Wagner (1985: 8–9, 12–13, 28–32; 1997: 21–25, 41–43).
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led into a rectangular hearth [tang Ⴠ, lit., ‘pool, basin’] which is constructed a few chi [feet] away and a few cun [inches] lower, up against a short wall. While the iron flows into the hearth, several persons holding willow poles stand in a row on the wall. Earlier they have taken wuchaoni ۆᑪࣽ [some sort of earth, see below] and dried and sieved it so that it is as fine as flour. One of the men quickly spreads this while the others quickly stir with the willow poles and [the iron] is immediately fined into wrought iron. The willow poles burn down two or three cun [inches] each time fining is done, and after they have been used twice they are replaced. After fining, when the iron has cooled slightly, some [ironworks] [merely] chop the iron in the hearth into square pieces; others lift [these] out [while still hot] and hammer them into round bars before marketing. Such ironworks as those in Liuyang ោၺ do not know how to produce these.
The description and illustration are so precise that there is no real doubt that Song Yingxing, or the author of his source, had seen something very like this process. But it is very difficult to explain. Anyone who has worked with molten cast iron, as I have, will immediately object that the cast iron from the blast furnace, flowing into such a large open hearth, without thermal insulation, fuel, or any sort of air blast, will solidify before any significant amount of carbon has been removed. Most translators and commentators seem unaware of this objection. They explain the passage and illustration in terms of modern open-hearth steelmaking processes, and state that the curious wuchaoni would contain iron oxide, FeO, to help remove carbon by the reaction FeO + C = Fe + CO, but this would not solve the problem. The only commentator, as far as I know, who has been aware of the problem was one of the first, the German metallurgist Adolph Ledebur, more than a century ago, and he also proposed a solution. A Japanese friend had shown him a copy of Tiangong kaiwu and translated the metallurgical sections for him. In his article about it he suggests that the wuchaoni spread on the iron contained saltpetre (potassium nitrate, KNO3). Saltpetre is a powerful oxidizing agent (this is its function in gunpowder), and might very well be able to accelerate the oxidization of the carbon in the iron sufficiently to keep the temperature up until the carbon is exhausted and the cast iron has been
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converted to wrought iron. Ledebur adds: “That a quick conversion of pig iron to wrought iron can be effected by the use of saltpetre was demonstrated two decades ago by the Heaton process.”12 Wuchaoni ۆᑪࣽ means (or can mean) something like “filthy wet loam”, and the label in the illustration has the variant chaonihui ᑪࣽ ۊ, “wet loam and ashes”. In pre-modern China and Europe saltpetre was manufactured in “nitre beds”, in which the raw materials were dung, earth, urine, and wood ashes (Williams 1975; Needham 1980: 188 ff.). In China, nitre beds were described as so foul-smelling that birds would not fly over them. In the nitre bed fermentation produces calcium nitrate, and treating a solution of this with ashes gives potassium nitrate and a precipitate of calcium carbonate.13 Without enough information to go into detail it seems possible that the terms “filthy wet loam” and “wet loam and ashes” describe something like such a nitre bed. Gunpowder requires very pure saltpetre, but perhaps, in the fining process described by Song Yingxing, some much less pure product, containing small but significant amounts of saltpetre and calcium carbonate, might have been useful.
*
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What is the relationship between author and illustrator in this case? The illustration fits the text in almost every detail, so that one definite possibility is that the illustrator simply followed the text without having seen anything himself. One detail tends to contradict this hypothesis: the label chaonihui, “wet loam and ashes”, where the text has wuchaoni, “filthy wet loam”. This might imply that the illustrator had some information about the process without reference to the author; for example he might have heard the term in conversation with the workers. This is not, of course, the only possibility: the text and illustrations were no doubt prepared at different times, and Song Yingxing might on the two occasions have chosen differently among the terms ———
12 Ledebur 1885: 192, fn. Several uses of saltpetre in puddling, including the Heaton process, are described briefly by Wedding (1874: 264–265). 13 Alan Williams describes his experiments with this process as follows: “A mixture of dung and earth was set up in a pile and urinated on daily for several months. Ammonia (from urea) is oxidised by the air with the aid of various bacteria to form nitrates. Extraction with boiling water yields a very dilute solution of calcium nitrate, which may be treated with wood-ash (containing potassium carbonate) to form potassium nitrate” (2003: 864, fn. 22).
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he knew for this substance, whether from first-hand experience or from written sources. One point which suggests that Song Yingxing relied on written sources is the curious wall mentioned in the text and seen in the illustration. The text states unambiguously that the workers stand on this wall, but why should they do this? If on the other hand they stood behind a light waist-high wall it would provide some protection from flying sparks and intense radiant heat from the hearth. I suggest as one possibility that Song Yingxing here misunderstood a written source which mentioned such a protective wall, and the illustrator blindly followed Song Yingxing’s text.
CONCLUDING REMARKS The Tiangong kaiwu is one of the most interesting books in the history of technology world-wide. What were Song Yingxing’s sources? One or two seem to be known,14 and extensive study will no doubt reveal more. The above consideration of a few passages suggests that he generally used reliable sources, but may not always have understood them correctly. The sources for the illustrations, and the relation between illustrations and text, is another matter which will require much future research.
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Many thanks to Martina Siebert and Alan Williams for important comments and corrections.
REFERENCES ALLEY, Rewi. 1961a. China’s Hinterland—in the Leap Forward. Peking: New World Press. ——. 1961b. Together they Learnt How to Make Iron and Steel. Some Early Types of Furnaces Used in 1958–9, in China. An unpublished album of 299 photographs; this and most of the original negatives are in the collection of the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge.
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14 For example he seems to have read Shen Gua’s ާਔ description of a steelmaking process: compare Tiangong kaiwu, 1637 ed., xia Հ: 17a with Mengxi bitan ኄᄻᓫ, 3 (Hu Daojing 1962: 135, §56).
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GOLAS, Peter J. 1999. “Mining (Part 13).” In: Science and Civilisation in China, ed. Joseph Needham. Vol. V. Chemistry and Chemical Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HU Daojing ሐ ᙩ , ed. 1962. Mengxi bitan jiaozheng ኄ ᄻ ᓫ ீ ᢞ . 2 vols..Zhonghua Shuju; facs. repr., Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1987. LEDEBUR, Adolf. 1885. “Ein altchinesisches Handbuch der Gewerbekunde.” Annalen für Gewerbe und Bauwesen (Berlin: F. C. Glaser) 16: 191–193 + Blatt 2–3. LI Xiaoping ޕ՛ؓ. 1995. “Xinyu gudai yetie kaoxi ᄅזײ܇升࣫ەΖ.” Nanfang wenwu তֱ֮ढ 1995.3: 108–111. LUX, F. 1912. “Koksherstellung und Hochofenbetrieb im Innern Chinas.” Stahl und Eisen 22.34: 1404–1407. NEEDHAM, Joseph. 1980. “Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Apparatus, Theories and Gifts (Part 4).” In: Science and Civilisation in China, ed. Joseph Needham. Vol. V. Chemistry and Chemical Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SONG Yingxing ݚᚨਣ. Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ. Facs. repr. of 1637 ed., together with three other titles, Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1988 (Zhongguo gudai banhua congkan խഏזײठហ ע3). SUN, E-tu Zen and Shiou-chuan SUN, tr. 1966. T’ien-kung k’ai-wu: Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century. University Park & London: Pennsylvania State University Press. TEGENGREN, Felix Reinhold. 1923. The Iron Ores and Iron Industry of China: Including a Summary of the Iron Situation of the Circum-Pacific Region. Peking: Geological Survey of China, Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. Part I 1921–23, part II 1923–24. English text and abridged Chinese translation by Xie Jiarong ୮ዊ. Chinese title: Zhongguo tiekuang zhi խഏᥳ, by Ding Gelan ԭᥞ (Dizhi zhuanbao, A.2 چᔆറظጟรԲᇆ). Xerographic repr. available from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich., order no. OP 12715. WAGNER, Donald B. 1985. Dabieshan: Traditional Chinese Iron-Production Techniques Practised in Southern Henan in the Twentieth Century. London & Malmö: Curzon Press. ——. 1997. The Traditional Chinese Iron Industry and its Modern Fate. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. ——. 2001. “Blast Furnaces in Song–Yuan China.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 18: 41–74. Repr. as “Chinese Blast Furnaces from the 10th to the 14th Century”, Historical Metallurgy: Journal of the Historical Metallurgy Society 37.1 (2003): 25–37. ——. 2006. “Iron Production in Three Ming Texts: Tie ye zhi, Guangdong xinyu, and Tian gong kai wu.” In: Studies on Ancient Chinese Scientific and Technical Texts (Proceedings of the 3rd ISACBRST, March 31 – April 3, 2003, Tübingen, Germany), ed. Hans-Ulrich Vogel, Christine Moll-Murata and Gao Xuan, pp. 173–188. WANG Yongxiang ة׆壁. 1965. “Heilongjiang Acheng xian Xiaoling diqu Jin-dai yetie yizhi ႕囅ৄॳۂ䦜՛᰿چ㡢८ז升劣ܿ”, Kaogu ײە1965.3: 124 + 30 + plates 6–7. WEDDING, Hermann. 1874. Ausführliches Handbuch der Eisenhüttenkunde: Gewinnung des Roheisens und Darstellung des Schmiedenbaren Eisens in praktischer und Theoretischer Beziehung. Dritte Abtheilung: Darstellung des Schmiedbaren Eisens. Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, Braunschweig. (Die Metallurgie: Gewinnung und Verarbeitung der Metalle und ihrer Legirungen, in praktischer und theoretischer, besonders chemischer Beziehung. Von John Percy, übertragen und bearbeitet von F. Knapp, Hermann Wedding, und C. Rammelsberg. Autorisirte deutsche Ausgabe unter directer Mitwirkung des englischen Verfassers. Bd.
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2, Abth. 3). WILLIAMS, Alan. 1975. “The Production of Saltpetre in the Middle Ages.” Ambix 22.2: 125–133. ——. 2003. The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Leiden/Boston: Brill. YANG Kuan 䰕䪩.1982. Zhongguo gudai yetie jishu fazhan shi խ㧺זײ升ݾ㢜䦡 ୶. Shanghai: Renmin Chubanshe.
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Fig. 1: Ironsand sluicing at Lijiazhai ޕ୮ንin Xinyang ॾၺ, Henan, photographed by E. T. Nyström about 1917 (reproduced from Tegengren 1923–24, vol. 1, plate 16).
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Fig. 2: “Washing ironsand”, illustration in Tiangong kaiwu (reproduced from 1637 ed., xia Հ: 18a).
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Fig. 3: Blast furnaces in western Hunan, 1958, photographed by Rewi Alley (1961b, no. 10). Cf. Fig. 4.
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Fig. 4: Diagram of a blast furnace in Sichuan, ca. 1958, reproduced from Yang Kuan 1982: 185, fig. 47. Cf. Fig. 3.
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Fig. 5: Photograph of blast furnaces no. 5 (left) and 6 (right) at Dongchuan 䢕՟ in Acheng ॳৄ County, Heilongjiang, reproduced from Wang Yongxiang 1965, pl. 7.1. Cf. Fig. 6.
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Fig. 6: Diagram of blast furnace no. 5 at Dongchuan 䢕՟ in Acheng ॳৄ County, Heilongjiang, reproduced from Wang Yongxiang 1965: 128. Cf. Fig. 5 (left).
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Fig. 7: “Furnaces for refining cast and wrought iron”, illustration in Tiangong kaiwu (reproduced from 1637 ed., xia Հ: 18b–19a).
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Fig. 8: An ironworks in central China (either Jiangxi or Hunan), photographed ca. 1910. Reproduced from Lux 1912: 1407, fig. 5.
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Fig. 9: Operation of a traditional type of fining hearth in Shanxi (Alley 1961a).
III. WESTERN INFLUENCES AND THEIR USES
THE BODY REVEALED: THE CONTRIBUTION OF FORENSIC MEDICINE TO KNOWLEDGE AND REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SKELETON IN CHINA Catherine Despeux In Chinese art, representations of the body are rare and discreet.1 The body of the subjects is unobtrusive, covered by costumes whose drapery and movement suggest personality portrayed in a dynamic state, animated by breath rather than by muscle and bone. Outside the domain of art, the few visual representations of the body which have survived come mainly from four sources: Taoism; the art of divination by examination of the body; traditional medicine; and forensic medicine. Each of these specialities concentrated on a particular aspect of the body. Taoism developed a system of symbolic description in the form of a spatio-temporal field of mutations and connections with the exterior.2 The outline of the body is blurred and the internal elements, which are rarely illustrated, are represented by written descriptions of, for example, the organs and their corresponding divinities, or using metaphorical imagery such as the tiger and the dragon to symbolize the liver and the lungs, or by symbolic figuration. The study of physiognomy concentrates on topographical description of different areas of the body, on certain bones and their relationship with events in social life: the most frequently illustrated was the head and more particularly the face, seen as a microcosm in itself and a mirror of all internal and external phenomena. This attention to the features greatly influenced portrait painting in China, and it was often not limited only to the face of the subject. In medicine, descriptions and representations did not go much beyond a study of the viscera and the circulation of the humours and energies along the meridians (see Fig. 1). These few representations are summary in that they often omit the limbs, even the head, and simply show an oval contour enclosing the organs. Even the introduction into China of notions of ———
1 See Hay 1994: 42–77. 2 See Despeux 2005: 9–52.
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Western anatomy had little influence on these illustrations, which remained imprecise and have nothing in common with the detail of Leonardo da Vinci’s representations.3 In forensic medicine, because corpses were often in an advanced state of decomposition, autopsy experts took advantage of the fact that the core of the body was accessible and specialized in descriptions and representations of the skeleton which accompanied the written commentaries in the reference book on forensic medicine: the Xiyuan lu ੑବᙕ (Annals of the reparation of injustices) written in 1247.4 In China knowledge of the human body benefited from autopsy and dissection, even though neither of these practices were as important as in the West. It is now considered that the medical descriptions of the body in the Huangdi neijing ႓০փᆖ (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine) were largely based on dissections. One of the chapters in this work makes an explicit reference to dissection, “on a man measuring eight feet whose body is covered by flesh and skin, one can make external measurements, and on a cadaver, one can make dissections in order to examine the interior.”5 It is probable that these dissections were carried out in the year 16 of the reign of Wang Mang ׆๔.6 When his troops captured the prince Sun Qing ୪ହ and his army,7 Wang Mang used this opportunity for ordering the palace doctor Shang Fang ࡸֱ to carry out dissections on the prisonners. Dissection was an important element in the development of knowledge about the body and its visual representations, becoming more so at the end of the Ming dynasty in the sixteenth century, and then under the Qing dynasty.8 However, dissection was generally carried out less frequently and at a later period than in the West, where, after the Hellenic period, from the beginning of the fourteenth century the practises of dissection and autopsy developed when the professors of medicine at Bologna introduced dissection of cadavers as part of the ———
3 See Kuriyama Shigehisa 1999. 4 English translation by McKnight (1981). On forensic medicine, see Needham
and Lu Guei-djen (1988, 32: 357–400). 5 Lingshu, juan 3, ch. 12, p. 34. 6 Dissection reported in the Hanshu ዧ, juan 99, 1975: 4145. 7 See the article on dissections by Yamada Keiji (199l). 8 At the end of the Ming dynasty, Sun Yikui ୪ԫ (1522–l619) reported that as an army doctor he carried out dissections on criminals (see his Yizhi xuyu ᠔ڱፃ塒, juan l, p. 14b). Qian Lei ᙒሼ also carried out dissections which he used for the drawings included in the Renjing jing Գᢴᆖ (Book on the human mirror) (1557). Later Wang Qingren ׆堚ٚ (l768–1831) also performed dissections, see his Yilin gaicuo ᠔ࣥޏᙑ (Corrections of the doctor’s errors).
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anatomy course.9 Dissection became more common in the sixteenth century in Italy, with the Padua school and Vesalius, as a result of reflection on fourteenth century anatomy and the contradictions existing between the writings of Galen and observations made during dissection and autopsy.10 Apart from the fact that dissection was less frequent in China, it was practised in a completely different manner and in another context. It was not used as in the West where the flesh was incised in order to gradually gain access to the different layers of the body, from the surface to the depths, and to make separate representations of the different systems of muscles, nerves, organs and bones. In Chinese medicine, the body was seen as a microcosm in the image of the macrocosm, a genuine time-space element functioning in the same way as the universe and in accordance with it. This little world was also conceived as a state organized according to the ideals of Chinese society, the organs being compared to institutions, each with its particular function.11 The different elements of the body were considered in relation to each other and within systems of correlation, the principal system being that of the five agents (wuxing ն۩). In this context, the bones are seen in relation to the kidneys, the reproductive organs, North and winter. From a functional point of view, the bones were merely a secondary element of the kidney, and could be strengthened simply by improving the functions of the kidney. The visual appearance of the parts of the body was a minor consideration in the practice of traditional medicine; as the internal elements of the body were part of the network of correlations, it was sufficient to deduce the interior functioning of the body from signs observed externally. In diagnosis, observing the colour of the skin on the body, and particularly on the face, listening to sounds, palpation and importantly taking the pulse were used to ascertain the state of interior organs without, it was thought, the necessity of entering the body. Diagnosis and treatment were based on vision but also on other senses than vision, and the importance of hearing, touching and smelling is to be noted. Also, until recently, treatment was carried out on a clothed patient, while the clever doctor took the pulse of the members of the imperial family, especially the women, through a curtain which hid the body from view. So, on the body covered in skin it was essen———
9 See Park 1995: 114 10 See Grmek 1997: 7. 11 On these representations of the body, see Despeux (1996).
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tially in the context of acupuncture that bones were a consideration: the presence of the bones allowed for an easier localization of the acupuncture points. It should be remarked that in the context of traditional medicine, knowledge concerning bones was always connected with acupuncture. Fundamental texts giving scanty information on the skeleton are contained in two chapters of the Huangdi neijing12 concerning the measurement and the interstices of the bones. The successive commentaries13 on these texts present the evolution of knowledge on the matter from the Han dynasty to the Song dynasty. Even the Shengji zonglu ᆣᛎ᜔ᙕ (Encyclopedia of imperial cures) (1117) which shows notable progress in the knowledge of the skeleton, presents it according to acupuncture techniques.14 The two chapters of the Huangdi neijing contain maps of the body with the names of the bones, which are likewise mentioned essentially as an aid to measurement. One of the earliest of these diagrams is the “Yangren chicun zhi tu” ٛԳ֡՚ቹ from the Shisi jing fahui Լᆖ࿇ཀ (Development on the fourteen meridians, 1341) by Hua Shou ᄶኂ and was used in many works on medicine (see Fig. 2).15 In this case the drawings record the reference marks represented by different bones from the outside of the body. The illustration aims for efficiency in the situation where the doctor is treating a body of living flesh and, in ———
12 Chapter XIV “Bone measurements” (Gudu pian ৫ᒧ) in the Lingshu ᨋᑐ (Pivot of the Spirits), and chapter LX “Interstices of the bones” (Gukong lun ़ᓵ) in the Suwen ైം (Simple Questions). 13 Chapter XIV of the Lingshu is used in the Zhenjiu jiayi jing ಾ߁ظԬᆖ by Huangfu Mi ߉ (p. 265), juan 2, ch. 7. It is also used in the Huangdi neijing taisu ႓০փᆖ֜ై by Yang Shangshan ᄘՂ (666–683), juan 13, p. 228. Chapter LX of the Suwen is also used in the Huangdi neijing taisu, juan 8, p. 197. 14 In fact, despite a re-edition in 1161–1189, this work was only diffused within the palace to begin with. It is not quoted in the catalogue by Chao Gongwu ֆࣳ in the mid-thirteenth century, nor in that by Chen Zhensun _ຫ୪_ (late thirteenth century), and was not really distributed widely until the Yuan dynasty when it became one of the textbooks for the imperial academy of medicine (see Ratchevski 1937: 49): in l300 the order was given to offices of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to print and distribute it throughout the empire. While using the classical data from the chapters on bones from the Huangdi neijing, the encyclopedia (in the section on acupuncture in juan 291 to 294) mentions a much greater number of bones and discusses for the first time the composition of the bones, making a distinction between those which contain marrow and those which do not, or those which contain secretions and the others, differentiating between bone itself and cartilege without using a specific term for the latter. 15 See Shisi jing fahui Լᆖ࿇ཀ, p. 1 and 2. They are also used in the Zhenjiu dacheng ಾ߁Օ( ګjuan 4, p. 96), the Tongren shuxue zhenjiu tujing ᎭԳᙁلಾ߁ ቹᆖ from the Zhengtong dynastic era (1443), the Leijing tuyi ᣊᆖቹᜠ by Zhang Jingyue ്ནᚣ, the Sancai tuhui Կթቹᄎ by Wang Qi ׆ઙ et al., the Wuying dian ࣳᄥ in 1731 illustrations and the Yixue yuanshi (1688–1692).
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order to place the needles, must know the proportions of different parts of the body, and make his judgements in relation to protuberances of the bones. Illustration of the body in Chinese medicine is thus limited to the organs and circulation of energy: there is no trace of the skeleton, apart from one tardy exception, made by a doctor who had been under Western influence. This was Zhang Jingyue ്ནᚣ (1563-1640), who, in his Leijing tuyi ᣊᆖቹᜠ (Annexes to the illustrated Canon [of medicine]) (1624) provides drawings of different parts of the body (lower limbs, upper limbs, head and torso). The courses of the meridians and the skeleton are represented inside the contour (see Fig. 1). They are still in brief diagram form and crudely drawn with important omissions, i.e. the bones of the head and the pelvis are completely lacking. It is thus forensic medicine which provides the earliest known representations of the skeleton in China and also makes a great contribution to the progress of knowledge about the skeleton. Doctors made use of both these aspects from the end of the Ming dynasty onwards. Examining bones proved to be of prime importance during autopsy in order to find traces of wounds (fracture, damage, stasis of the blood or change in colour of the bone), of death by strangling, signs of poisoning and also it was through such examination that attempts were made to determine the sex of the deceased. This is why this type of examination of the bones is the subject of two chapters in the work considered to be the earliest important essay on forensic medicine, the Xiyuan jilu published in 1247,16 whereas in contrast there is an almost complete absence of information about the organs of the body; the examination of the body was limited to that of the different external parts, the orifices, and the bones and had an essentially legal function: washing out injustices and above all determining the cause of death. The enumeration of the bones given in this work corresponds with that dictated by the expert when he was examining the body to make sure no bones were missing. It starts at the upper limbs with the nails, which the Chinese consider as bone, as they do the teeth. It ascends to the shoulder blade and the collar bone, continues with the neck, the skull and the face, descending via the spine, the ribs, the base of the back and the pelvis, and lastly the lower limbs. The names ———
16 Chapter XVII titled “Examination of bones” gives a brief general description, chapter XVIII titled “On the examination of bones, vessels and vital points” is much more detailed.
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of the bones catalogued here only correspond in part with those in the Huangdi neijing and the Shengji zonglu and thus present differences with medical sources. However, they are those which were to be used during the following centuries by the ostensor (wuzuo ᭝)܂17 during autopsy, and were commented and even criticized. Autopsy had been practised in China at least since the Qin dynasty, but it was only from the Song dynasty onwards that it became the work of an “autopsy expert”, the ostensor. His role was to fill in a death certificate specifying which parts of the body were damaged and giving the main results of his examination. Engravings of front and back views were included in the legal file. They were distributed for the first time in 1211 on the suggestion of a Jiangxi judge, Xu Sidao ஊۿሐ, and were first of all printed and distributed in Hunan and Guangxi provinces.18 They were then corrected by the Ministry of Punishments who distributed them by various channels. 19 Some time later in the Code of the Yuan dynasty an edict was proclaimed which fixed the models for the engravings20 which the autopsy experts used; as fraud and negligent examinations were becoming more frequent, it was necessary to establish a strict code of practice. This model for the engravings was also used during the Qing dynasty, when the Office of the Code of the Ministry of Justice edited an official recension of the Xiyuan lu, the Lüli guan jiaozheng Xiyuan lu ৳ ࠏ塢ீإੑବᙕ (Annals of the reparation of injustices rectified by the Office of the Code).21 The knowledge of these ostensors was generally rudimentary, although some of them did develop real competence. It is not known what their training was, apart from the fact that the Xiyuan lu and the ———
17 The earliest use of the term wuzuo ᭝ ܂appears in Yutang xianhua دഘၳᇩ (948–950); see Jia Jingtao (1996: 59). 18 See the Jianyan zhengbei renxing tu ᛀ᧭إહԳݮቹ by Xu Sidao ஊۿሐ. The models are described during the Southern Song dynasty in the Qingyuan tiaofa shilei ᐜցයऄࠃᣊ. This work does not give any earlier representations of the corpse. It was preceded by the Jianyan gemu ᛀ᧭ ؾby Zheng Guangshang ᔤ٠ ; see Jia Jingtao (1983: 7). 19 See Jia Jingtao 1996: 63. 20 One model for these engravings dates from l304 and is preserved in the Yuandian zhang ցࠢີ (The compendium of statuts and substatuts of the Yuan dynasty ), juan 43, chapter “Ministry of justice,” part 5 on murder, ed. 1322 by Shan Jiaben. 21 This circulated in various independent versions, but was also published as an appendix to the Qing Code (Da Qing lüli Օ堚৳ࠏ) in 1740. The engravings of the cadaver are included, accompanied by notes similar to those in the Yuandian zhang, with few variations. They are also used in various later and more complete versions with commentaries of the Xiyuan jilu, such as the Xiyuan lu jizheng ੑବᙕႃᢞ (1796) and the Xiyuan lu xiangyi ੑବᙕᇡᆠ (1827).
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existing commentaries formed the basis of their knowledge. Although reports were in theory supposed to be returned as rapidly as possible, it appears that, in practice, as officers and civil servants let affairs drag on, the examination was often carried out on a corpse in such an advanced stage of decomposition that once the skin had been removed all that remained were a few organs and often only some broken bones,22 so that statements concerning the skeleton made up the greater part of the notes written on the engravings by the experts. It then became evident that these engravings were no longer sufficient but they became the basis for the development of new science concerning the skeleton which was later used as teaching material for ostensors and doctors. These new engravings of the skeleton, from having been used as plain official documents, became more complete as illustrations of the corpse in order to show the results of the autopsy examination of bones.
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SKELETON IN 1770 Recognition by the judges of fraudulent autopsies or negligence on the part of experts led the Qing government to take steps towards editing a new official document in order to limit judicial error. On the 19th day of the 5th month of year 35 of the Qianlong dynastic era, an edict was published, ordering the Ministry of Punishments to make model engravings for the examination of bones and to distribute them in the provinces.23 This document consisted of two texts entitled Jiangu ge ᛀ (Form for the autopsy of bones) and Jiangu tu ᛀ ቹ (Engravings for the autopsy of bones). It was probably the Hall of Military Inflorescence (Wuying dian ࣳᄥ) in the Imperial Palace which carried out the printing of these engravings. This department, which housed the imperial printing works, had already printed four engravings in 1731 showing the acupuncture meridians, one of which also showed the viscera,24 and in 1742 the Yizong jinjian ᠔ࡲ८ᦹ (Bronze mirror of medicine), a medical encyclopedia produced by the Imperial Academy of Medicine, which is often mentioned in the Qing dynasty commentaries of the Xiyuan lu. ——— 22 See Ratchnevski 1937: 223, 225. 23 See Chongkan buzhu Xiyuan lu jizheng ૹעᇖࣹੑବᙕႃᢞ, juan 5, p. 15a–
19b.
24 These engravings are preserved in the Zhongyi yanjiu yuan խ᠔ઔߒೃ in Peking and measure 85.8 cm by 14.5 cm.
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A provincial judge from Anhui, a certain Zeng Fu ᏺ壂, was the initiator of this project. He had observed that corpses decomposed rapidly and that reports were often falsified. He sent a report to the Emperor requesting that standard diagrams of the skeleton be distributed with the official judicial documents to limit fraud. It seems that the judge himself was given the responsibility of preparing the diagrams and the written description of the skeleton, a job which he carried out with a team of assistants: In the 35th year of the dynastic era Qianlong, the provincial judge of Anhui was requested by Imperial Order to publish normative diagrams for the autopsy of bones as an annex to the Xiyuan lu.... But these diagrams were not the work of one single person, and as each member of the team was affiliated to a particular master, there was divergence of opinion on certain points.25
Establishing a standard turned out to be all the more necessary because during the five centuries which had passed since the writing of the Xiyuan lu, knowledge concerning the skeleton had developed to a certain degree both in the texts on forensic medicine and in those of traditional medicine. The commentaries and captions accompanying the 1770 diagrams include eleven new terms compared to the Xiyuan lu, bringing greater precision to the naming of the bones of the face, shoulder, fingers and the joints of the feet and hands. The notes concerning the differences between the skeleton of a man and a woman are also more detailed. This new models included two engravings of a recumbent skeleton, one a front view and one a back view; accompanied by a description and check-list of the bones, where the magistrates were to indicate with red ink the traumas or other signs they had observed. The earliest known copy is the one published in a commentary on the Xiyuan lu by Wang Youhuai ׆Ծዒ (1796) (Fig. 3).26 The bones are crudely drawn, separated one from the other in the manner of a reconstitution of the bones found on site. The captions are written inside the larger bones or next to the smaller ones. They are connected to the bone itself by a line. There are small white circles at certain points which according to later commentaries seem to indicate the vital fatal points or non-fatal points. In this standard two types of diagram can ——— 25 Preface to the Xiyuan lu jie ੑବᙕᇞ (1832), juan 6c, p. 2a. 26 Xiyuan lu jizheng ੑବᙕႃᢞ. I consulted the IHEC edition, a new printing
by the yamen in 1813, with a preface by Wang Youhuai dated 1786, and a preface by Li Guanlan ޕᨠᣴ dated 1796. The two engravings are to be found after these prefaces, while the text concerning the Standard is to be found at the beginning of the first juan, p 2a–6b.
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be distinguished. The first, that of the 1796 version,27 represents a small stocky, skeleton, crudely drawn. The bones of the limbs are shown by oval shapes of varying widths, the ribs are uniformly lined up on each side, and the bones of the pelvis seem to be part of the lower limbs (Fig. 3). The general lack of precision is clearly reminiscent of medieval representations of the skeleton, such as that on the engraving of the “Dance of Death” dating from 1493 (Fig. 4).28 The second type of representation in the Xiyuan lu xiangyi ੑବᙕᇡᆠ (1854) (Fig. 5) is used again in the Xiyuan lu yizheng ੑବᙕᆠإ (1891); it shows slimmer limbs with the joints drawn more clearly. The bones of the thorax are divided into two sections: four upper ribs above the end of the sternum and the lower ribs which are almost joined to those above and which are wider apart at the ends. The bones of the pelvis are much more clearly represented; they are larger in width than in height and are shown to tilt sideways. The vertebrae are also drawn more clearly, and the complete skeleton is more in proportion. These engravings of the skeleton are used again in the nineteenth century in two medical works on traumatology.29 Indeed from the late Ming dynasty onwards, contact between forensic medicine and doctors became progressively closer. For example, doctor Sun Yikui ୪ ԫ (1522-1619) used the chapter on the examination of bones from the Xiyuan lu in his Yizhi xuyu ᠔ڱፃ塒,30 while the Qing dynasty commentaries on the Xiyuan lu quoted more and more medical sources. A clearer knowledge of the skeleton and bones was beginning to interest not only the medical world, but also certain men of letters who frequented missionaries, Jesuits or doctors. This was the case of Shen Tong ާݭ,31 author of a short treatise entitled Shigu ᤩ (An Explanation of the Skeleton) (written between 1736 and 1782), who was a friend of an admired doctor of the period, Xu ———
27 It is used in an almost identical fashion in the commentaries in the Jianyan hecan (1829), Chongkan buzhu Xiyuanlu jizheng, juan 6b, p. 1a–b, and in the Chongkan buzhu jizheng (1874) juan 1, p. 15a–b. 28 See Laneyrie-Dagen (1997: 208): a wood engraving preserved at the Mazarine Library Imago mortis by Michael Wolgemut; or also the wood engraving Liber cronicarum. Opus de temporibus mundi, Nuremberg 1493, in L‘Homme et la mort (1985: 61). 29 The Shangke huizuan ႞ઝნᤊ by Hu Tingguang ݪ٠ (1815 preface) and the Shangke buyao ႞ઝᇖ by Qian Xiuchang ᙒߐ࣑ (1808 author’s preface), juan 1, p. 31 and 32. 30 Yizhi xuyu 1983, juan 2, p. 90. 31 Shen Tong, social name Guanyun গႆ and assumed name Guotang ࣠ഘ, came from Wujiang in present-day Jiangsu.
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Dachun ஊՕ⛵. But it must be remembered that forensic medicine was the driving force behind the development of description, representation and knowledge about the skeleton from the eighteenth century onwards. The 1770 standard was soon to be criticized. It was the subject of written commentaries which listed and rectified errors, and added new sketches. The divergence between the text and the representation continued to grow. This was why, after the introduction of this standard at the end of the eighteenth century, a large number of commentaries of the Xiyuan jilu were published in the nineteenth century. These commentaries were written by muyou ኟሏ, specialized secretaries or judges. Working in close relationship with the wuzuo, they were able to quote a great number of their observations and criticisms. Linked to this fact, since the beginning of the seventeenth century, special attention was devoted to the amelioration of the training of these wuzuo.32 They used all the 1770 engravings, criticizing them and providing more precise descriptions of the skeleton, which were based on observations by the ostensor,33 and also on philological and terminological research in early writings and medical texts. But it was only during the second half of the nineteenth century that new drawings of the skeleton appeared.
NEW REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SKELETON (LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY) In the mid-nineteenth century, the divergence between the 1770 standard illustrations and the observations by the ostensor became so great that it was no longer possible to use the standard illustrations. At this point the judge Xu Lian ⯟ boldly accompanied his criticisms, based on his own experience, with new corrected engravings of the skeleton front and back, but also with drawings of single bones. He was the author of the Xiyuan lu xiangyi. Although the preface to this work is dated 1854, the earliest known editions date from 1876; they come from Hubei, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Guizhou and Peking, ———
32 On this topic see Will (2007). 33 After the Jizheng in 1796, the principal commentaries were the Jianyan hecan
of 1829; the Xiyuan lu jie of 1832; the Chongkan buzhu Xiyuan lu jizheng of 1874, which is a reedition of the Buzhu Xiyuanlu jizheng by Ruan Qixin of 1832, which in turn was an amplified edition of the Jizheng of 1796; the Xiyuan lu xianyi of 1854; and the Xiyuan lu yizheng of 1891, see Will (2007), and Jia Jingtao (1996).
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proving extensive distribution. It is true that the distribution of works became much easier in the second half of the nineteenth century when several provinces had established offices in charge of printing illustrated books (guan shuju ࡴ)ݝ.34 According to Xu Lian, when he came upon an interesting case, he took a professional draughtsman (hua jiang 䶰ٰ) with him to draw the skeleton.35 This is how he presents these engravings: I, Xu Lian, while I was a civil servant in the region to the west of mount (Taiheng) (Shandong), when carrying out autopsies each time I encountered a case of prime importance, I always took draughtsmen with me so that they could faithfully reproduce in drawing the bones of the body under examination, and then they constantly corrected their drawings until they were perfect.36
Xu Lian showed a relatively new attitude, which was real preoccupation with faithful reproduction. He was also aware of the importance of the quality of the drawing and the visual representation. Also, while preserving the drawings of the 1770 Standard, Xu Lian added to his commentary, the Xiyuanlu xiangyi, two new engravings of the skeleton which he describes as a “modern formulation” (xianni ᚵ) (Fig. 6). The bones are no longer represented by shapeless segments, but according to a refined form where the length of the bone and its thicker extremities are clearly differentiated. The bones are also connected to each other: this is no longer a representation of the bones of the skeleton laid out for autopsy, but a rendering of a complete skeleton which tends towards a faithful rendering of reality. It can also be remarked that there is a hint of perspective in the drawing: for example, in the engraving of the front view skeleton, the pelvis is shown in perspective, showing the sacrum at the back, and the bones of the limbs are drawn so as to give slight depth to the drawing. The proportions of the different parts of the body, although far from correct, are much improved. Xu Lian’s preoccupation with precision is also shown in his reflection on the causes of the errors in the previous engravings. He noticed that when several names are given to different parts of one bone, if the names are written inside the contour of the bone, the reader could think that each name indicated a different bone. He therefore decided not to mark the names of the bones on the engravings, in case the ———
34 The first of these offices was created between 1862 and 1876, and printing was particularly prolific during the Guangxu dynastic era (1875–1908). 35 See Zhong Xu (History of Forensic Medicine in China) 1956: 501. 36 Xiyuan lu xiangyi, juan 1, p. 50a.
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ostensor made this sort of mistake. Xu Lian’s wish to limit error and to deliver exact information in accordance with the observations made during many autopsies also led him to make drawings of single bones. He says: The drawing of the whole skeleton must be contained on one sheet of paper; but it is difficult to have a complete view of the skeleton at a glance. This is why, as well (as the two engravings), I have ordered drawings of each bone separately and added a commentary to each one.37
There are seventeen engravings of single bones included with his commentary: the bones of the skull and face, the scapular girdle, sternum, ribs front and back, spine, sacrum, coccyx, the bones of the pelvis from front and back, and the lower limbs from front and back. The second series of engravings corrected in the nineteenth century is found in the Xiyuan lu yizheng,38 a commentary on the Xiyuan lu written by Gangyi ଶᑞ (1891),39 a Manchu belonging to the Green Banner, who was director of the Ministry of Justice and judiciary commissioner in several provinces. He recognised that Xu Lian’s engravings of the skeleton were an improvement compared to the 1770 Standard, but he considered they were still too incorrect, and wished to preserve only four tenths of them. He ordered a “new model” (xinmo ᄅᐲ), which shows immediate resemblance to Western engravings of the period (Fig. 7). Unfortunately Gangyi was less precise than Xu Lian concerning the circumstances in which the drawings were made. It is probable, as with Xu Lian’s engravings, that the artists who drew the illustrations for Gangyi will remain for ever anonymous. These engravings are the first representations of the skeleton to include shading to give an impression of volume. This is an obvious influence of the perspective techniques used in Western drawing and painting. It is common knowledge that when Western art was first introduced into China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was little interest shown in these novelties, and there were many people who were reticent concerning the use of shading and perspec———
37 Ibid, juan 1, p. 50b. 38 According to the postscript, the work was written while Gangyi was inspector
in the province of Jiangsu between 1888 and 1892 and was published for the first time in this province. A second edition appeared when he was Governer of Guangdong, under the supervision of Wang Bing’en ऺ׆ who made some corrections, see Jia Jingtao (1994: 196). 39 See his biography in the Qingshi gao 堚ᒚ (Draft History of the Qing) by Zhao Erxun ᎓ዿ༎, juan 465, pp. 12751–12752.
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tive in drawing.40 One can see here how perspective was timidly introduced in Xu Lian’s drawings and then permanently but still with uncertainty in those of Gangyi’s commentary. On these engravings, the skeleton is no longer lying flat; it is upright and represented as if in movement, suggested by the position of the arms which are no longer parallel with the body, and the standing position is accentuated by a slight tilting of the pelvis. The connection between the movements of the body and the joints, which had been observed in the West from the sixteenth century onwards through the influence of the mechanist conception of the body, only appeared in China at the end of the nineteenth century. In this representation, the skeleton has acquired volume and has been westernized, shedding its empty and pneumatic character. Even though Wang Ang ( ࣓׆1615–?), a highly considered physician, declared in the seventeenth century that the superiority of Chinese medicine lay in the comprehension of the transformation of breaths and the superiority of Western medicine was to be found in the science of anatomy, China was to wait until the dawn of the nineteenth century to be sufficiently convinced by Western anatomy to integrate elements of its science into the Chinese pool of knowledge. Gangyi’s commentary also includes drawings of single bones, which can be found, in almost identical form, in several later medical works on the body.41 The representation of the bones, which is much more precise, includes the crests and the hollows of the bones, and the bone surfaces which form the joints, these surfaces being inscribed with captions (Fig. 8), but it does not go as far as to describe each tiny bump or hole: they are still far from the precision of Western descriptions.
The Dismembered Skeleton How many bones made up the skeleton? Under the influence of the cosmological conception of the body, tradition had retained the number of 365, corresponding to the 365 degrees of the sidereal year. In ———
40 See Delahaye 1993: 244. 41 See the Yiyi neijing tushuo ᠔რփནቹᎅ (Explications on the illustrations of
the internal body according to medicine) (1896) by Xu Tingzuo ஊݪశ, the Zhengu pian buzheng ်ᒧᇖᢞ (1913) and the Zhong xi guge bianzheng խ۫إ by Liu Tingzhen Ꮵݪᄙ (1913), the latter saying clearly that the medical writings that he had consulted were full of mistakes concerning the skeleton and that only the commentaries of the Xiyuan lu give a clear description, comparable to Western data.
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one of the most frequently cited passages of the Huangdi neijing concerning the correlation between the body and the universe it says: In the image of the spherical heavens, the head is spherical; in the image of the square earth, the feet are square... As the year has 360 days, the human body has 360 sections (jie 㷼).42
Several passages of this canon of medicine take up the correspondence between the number of sections of the body and the degrees of the sidereal revolution, sometimes 360, 43 sometimes 365 44 or even 36645 according to another Han source: the Huainan zi ত. The commentaries of the Huangdi neijing are not all agreed that the term jie describes the bones, some of them prefer to interpret the term as meaning the points of communication between the body and the exterior surroundings. 46 It is, however, the number 365 which is used again in the Xiyuan lu47 for the number of bones, and it only becomes a matter for discussion much later. It is evident that this number, as with acupuncture points, is above all symbolic and did not correspond to the number of bones which were counted and listed. On the representations of the 1770 Standard, I have listed 180 bones, i.e. half the symbolic number. It was first of all in the Xiyuan lu jie ੑବᙕᇞ (1832) which showed that the Standard only listed 155 bones,48 then in the Zhongxi guge bianzheng խ۫( إ1913), that the number 365 was denounced as fictitious and as not corresponding at all with the real number of 205 or 206 bones listed by Western medicine. The number 155 or 180 in the Standard is not very far from that of 205 or 206 bones listed in Western medicine. The Chinese had relatively precise knowledge of the skeleton compared to that in the West at the same period. A comparison of their data with Western data shows that the difference in the number of bones of the skeleton comes mainly from a lack of knowledge about certain cartilaginous bones or about very tiny bones like those of the ear and from the divisions of certain bones. ———
42 See Lingshu ᨋᑐ, juan 10, ch. 71, p. 104. There is a slight contradiction here in the text which gives one number for the degrees in the sidereal year and another for the number of sections. 43 See Lingshu, juan 10, ch. 71, p. 104. 44 See Suwen, juan 3, ch. 9, p. 51; juan 17, ch. 62, p. 305. 45 See Huainan zi ত, juan 7, p. 100. 46 Wang Bing says in his commentary that “the term jie does not mean the ‘sections of the bones’ (gujie), but the places where the spirits and the breaths enter and exit” (Suwen, juan 17, ch. 62, p. 305). 47 Xiyuan lu, ch. XVII, art. 1. 48 See Xiyuan lu jie, juan 6c, p. 26a.
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The errors in the descriptions are due to several factors. The first of these is represented by the conditions of observation. For doctors, the relatively unimportant role of the skeleton in their practice had not driven them to delve into the depths of the body during dissection; their interest was focused on the organs. The bones were therefore considered in relation to acupuncture and inspected mainly by palpation or by observation of the body when covered by skin. The practice of locating the bones by their protuberances led to several names being given to the same bone, as for example with the collar bone. The observation of the body by autopsy experts often took place on a corpse in an advanced stage of decomposition, where the softer cartilaginous bones had already rotted away. A second factor was the absence of drawings. A science which was originally correct may, because of the absence of diagrams, have suffered from mistaken interpretations of the texts (this was the case for example with the sternum), along with distortions in oral transmission by the master, as certain masters were more knowledgeable than others. A third no less important factor is the conception of the body and the correlations with cosmology which may have led specialists to interpret the skeleton according to these premises. These various errors were to be corrected in the different commentaries of the Xiyuan lu, and in the later different versions of the representations of the skeleton. As Yao Deyu ᐚᘵ, author of the Xiyuan lu jie, remarked, the ostensors had at their disposition (even if one only considers the Xiyuan lu itself) several texts giving contradictory information about the skeleton. How could they find their way in all this? Even if the aim of the 1770 Standard was to rectify all the errors and to standardize the science, it only added to the confusion, whence the appearance of the numerous commentaries in the nineteenth century. These commentaries corrected information in the light of the experience of the ostensor and with the help of precise descriptions of autopsy cases, giving the date, the name of the victim, the place and many other details to support the discussions. This resulted in a new tendency towards the development of the science and of the representations of the skeleton. The argumentation was aimed mainly at distinguishing between detail which was due to a morphological particularity and elements which were general and standard. Here are some representative examples of how the bones were apprehended and the role that graphic representation did or did not play.
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The scapular girdle The scapular girdle, which is one single bone, is a good illustration of erroneous description resulting from the conditions of observation: either by palpation, or during autopsy on a skeleton where certain fragile bones like this one may have already been broken. This was how different names were given to different parts of the clavicle. The Xiyuan lu gives the following description of the scapular girdle: The acromion (jianyu gu ॊજ) is to be found above the humerus. In front of the acromion is the internal part of the clavicle (hengyu gu ᖩ જ). In front of this is the clavicle (pigu ྴ), the hollow part in the middle of the clavicle is called ‘the basin’ (quepen ઇ). Above the basin is the neck, in front of the neck is the throat (sanghou ௌ). [Fig. 5]
On the drawing of the Standard for autopsy of bones, the term pigu is written on the back view of the skeleton as synonymous with pipagu ྴྵ, term which indicated the shoulderblade (Fig. 6).49 The different terms marked close to the clavicular girdle are hengyu gu (indicating the head of the humerus), fanchi gu 堩ೲ (spoon) to indicate the inside part of the shoulderblade, quepen gu, which from the drawing indicates the middle part of the clavicle, and above, the jianjing yigu ॊմᜦ which would be the posterior section of the clavicular girdle. The sternum (guizi gu ᚋ and xinkan gu ݂֨) The sternum is an example of error perpetuated by lack of visual representation. The oldest texts give a summary but correct description of three parts, one above the other in the vertical plane, which came to be interpreted as parallel and vertical. Re-establishing the truth was made more difficult by the fact that the sternum breaks easily and includes a cartilaginous part, which led to problems of observation during difficult autopsies. It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that a correct visual representation of this bone was produced. According to modern Western anatomy, the sternum has three parts: the handle or manubrium, the body, and xyphoid appendix ———
49 From the line which connects the caption to the standard drawing, this would be the first neck vertebra. The drawing is corrected on the Xiyuan lu xiangyi by Xu Lian, where it is clear that it is the shoulderblade.
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(concave), this last part being cartilaginous. In the Xiyuan lu, these three parts were considered to be three different bones.The Lüliguan Xiyuan lu jizheng from 1694 says: Guizi gu (bone in the shape of a tortoise shell) indicates three bones in the front of the thorax which are lined up from right to left.”50 But on the drawings which accompany the Standard for the autopsy of bones the upper part of the sternum is only represented by a circle, or not at all, while the xyphoid appendix is represented in the shape of an “eye” with the name of xinkan gu “bone of the epigastric depression.”51 This account is criticized in the Xiyuan lu jie of 1832: “have seen that, below the throat, there is a bone in the shape of a tortoise shell, with to the right and to the left three projections connected respectively to the clavicle, and to the first and second ribs. In its lower part, this bone is connected to the bone of concave shape in epigastric region. Therefore there are not three bones. When I myself made notes on the ‘Chapter on the measuring of bones’ [in the Leijing tuyi], I simply wrote ‘in front of the thorax, there are three transversal bones’ and then I added ‘to the right and to the left’. The drawing which accompanies this chapter includes six horizontal bones. I consulted the Yizong jinjian and I saw that the xinkan gu was a straight bone, vertical and long like a sword, going from the throat to the level of the heart and attached in upper part to the third and seventh ribs. In consequence, when the Yanggu pian (of the Xiyuan jilu) says that this bone is as big as a coin, it is in fact describing the bone situated below the xinkan gu and which is called the ruangu ຌ ‘the soft bone’; but when we examine corpses, this bone is usually already rotten.52
It is easy to see how the errors arose. They are firstly textual, then graphic. In the case of the Leijing tuyi, probably the drawings were not based on a minute observation of a corpse, but made from the texts which described the bones. The three bones (or three parts of the bone according to Western critera) were placed vertically parallel and not below each other. The absence of standards led to some calling guizi gu what the Yizong jinjian calls for example xinkan gu, and this source is the only one that mentions the ruangu, which was probably a common name for xinkan gu. The text in the previous paragraph makes it possible to determine which notes were made from observation of the corpse and which were made from a medical source text. One can see the degree to which forensic medicine and the practice of autopsy made knowledge of the skeleton more precise. Traditional transmission of knowledge from master to pupil was completed with personal observation. ———
50 Chongkan buzhu Xiyuan lu jizheng, juan 6b, p. 7b. 51 Ibid, juan 6a, p. 2a. 52 Xiyuan lu jie, juan 6c, p. 17b.
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The spinal column The descriptions of the spinal column are an example of the separating and counting of the number of vertebrae according to Chinese cosmological conceptions, which privileged, in several versions, the number 24 by analogy with the 24 solar periods of a year in the traditional Chinese calendar. In the West, until recently, 34 vertebrae were listed, which is the number also given in the translation into Chinese of a nineteenthcentury treatise on anatomy: the Taixi renshen tushuo ۫Գߪቹᎅ (Explications of the illustrations of the human body by Westerners), which gave 7 cervicals, 12 dorsals, 5 lumbars, 6 sacrals and 4 coccygeals.53 At the present time in the West the spinal column is divided into two parts: the mobile section made up of independent vertebrae, 7 cervicals, 12 thoracics, 5 lumbars making 24 in all and the fixed column made up of false vertebrae fused together in the adult in the form of two bones; the sacrum and the coccyx. In fact, this classification corresponded implicitly with that made in China where the spinal column with 21 to 24 vertebrae was distinguished from one or two bones corresponding to the sacrum and the coccyx. The earliest record in China of the number of vertebrae gives the number as 21. 54 From the Tang dynasty onwards, along with the number of 21 suggested by Yang Xuancao ᄘخᖙ, continuing the tradition of Hua Tuo ဎॲ and Bian Que ਇᣙ,55 and which persisted until the Qing56 dynasty, we also find the numbers 24, or 24 for tall individuals and 22 for small people.57 However, it is the number 24 which is used progressively more often, while being divided differently among the different vertebrae. It says in the Xiyuan lu: “From the nape of the neck to the lumbar region, there are 24 vertebrae, be———
53 See Taixi renshen tushuo, juan l, p. 2b–3a, with the note that the Huandi neijing counts 24 vertebrae. 54 See Suwen, juan 15, ch. 59, p. 276. 55 The number given in the Huangdi mingtang jing ႓০ࣔഘᆖ by Yang Xuancao ᄘخᖙ, according to a fragment preserved in the Ishinpô (984), juan 2, p. 40a. 56 In the Gujin yitong ײվ᠔อ by Xu Chunfu ஊ⛵߉ (mid sixteenth century), 21 vertebrae are counted: 7 superior, 7 median, 7 inferior (see Gujin tushu jicheng ײ վቹႃ ګby Chen Menglei, juan 110, p. 436); the Yizong jinjian (1742) counts 21 vertebrae for the back and 3 for the nape of the neck. The Leijing tuyi says: “The bones of the spinal column are 24 in number; nowadays 21 are counted, for the three vertebrae of the nape of the neck are not counted.” The same division is made by Li Jie ޕᑥ in his Shenjing tongkao ߪᆖຏ( ەGeneral examination of the body), (see Gujin tushu jicheng, juan 110, p. 443). 57 Ibid, p. 40a.
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low which there is a big vertebra;” or again: “The bones of the nape of the neck and the dorsal region each have twelve sections.”58 But the 1770 Standard enumerates cinq cervicals, a pyriform bone, six superior dorsals, and seven inferior dorsal sections, then five lumbar sections, excluding the sacrum and the coccyx, in correspondence with the Xiyuan lu. The information in the drawings of the spinal column differs from the Standard text. They show only 22 circles, although the captions mention five cervicals, six superior dorsals, seven inferior dorsals and five lumbars (Fig. 3). However, the modern engraving of the Xiyuan lu xiangyi includes 23 elements represented not by circles but by trapeziums piled one on top of the other, the 24th probably being the first vertebra of the nape of the neck (Fig. 8). One of the most frequent questions in the Qing commentaries is whether the large vertebra at the base of the skull should be counted as one of the 24 or not. The piling up of the vertebrae and the shape of the apophyses becomes more precise, and there is a clear distinction between the first cervical vertebra (doubtless the atlas and the axis) then ten upper dorsals, seven lower dorsals and six lumbars. This same division of the vertebrae is used again in the Xiyuan lu yizheng, but with a completely westernized style of drawing, similar on all accounts to a 1949 Western anatomy textbook: the spinal column is shown from the side, with its curves, and the only difference is the addition of shading to show volume (Fig. 8). The division and description of the sacrum and the coccyx have varied at different periods. Unlike the scapular girdle, which in China was divided into several parts, the sacrum and coccyx which are in reality two separate bones have often been considered as one single element. The terms used to describe them have changed over the years. The best discussion on the subject is that in the Xiyuan lu jie, reporting on the chapter concerning “Rational procedures of acupuncture and moxa” (Jiuci xinfa ߁ࠨᄅऄ) in the Yizong jinjian: “The sacrum [+coccyx] (kaogu ᩹) has five sections. The four upper sections have four holes to left and right. The bone has a curved concave shape in the centre like a tile, it is wide in its upper part and narrower in its lower part. The end, which is still smaller, like the side roots of ginseng, is called weilü ݠᔸ, tiduan ᧯ᮞ, quegu o qionggu ᒡ [coccyx]. It is situated behind the anus. Its higher outer part has the shape of a horseshoe. It is attached to the upper end ——— 58 Xiyuan jilu, ch. XVII.
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of the two femurs. Its common name is kuagu ౫ [sacrum+coccyx]. This description shows that what is now called fanggu ֱ [sacrum] was [formerly] the weidi gu ܅ݠ [sacrum+coccyx], and what is nowadays called weitigu [coccyx] is only the last section of what used to be called weiti gu [sacrum+coccyx]. These two bones are sometimes considered separate, sometimes as a single bone, because in the beginning it was not considered necessary to separate them. I have based my opinion on the observation of numerous cases: under the 24 cervical, dorsal and lumbar vertebrae is the fanggu [sacrum] which has eight holes; below it is the weiqu gu ݠ [coccyx] which has neither holes nor marrow. [My observations] do not therefore correspond with the map of the skeleton which is currently in circulation. In fact, the engravings which accompany the Standard for autopsy of the skeleton include two separate drawings of the fanggu and the weiqu gu. The bone with holes is called fanggu while on the Standard the bone with holes is part of the weiqu gu (Fig. 9). So there is divergence here.”59 In this case, the drawing differs from the written description and is more faithful to reality.
Male or female skeleton? It was only from the Song dynasty onwards that the difference between the skeleton of a man and that of a woman was verified. This is shown in the Shengji zonglu where an inferior number of bones is given for a woman (360 instead of 365). It was again within the framework of forensic medicine that other differences became obvious during the practice of the science. Indeed it was a fundamental necessity in autopsy for the ostensor to be able to identify the sex of the victim, and the skeleton was usually the only element available for examination. The Xiyuan lu lists the differences between the skeleton of a man and a woman in five of the fifteen articles in the chapter on the “Examination of bones” which is presented as a sort of checklist for the expert. Using this he could examine the principal points of the skeleton which might lead to confusion and the show differences between the skeleton of a man and a woman. The necessity of determining the sex of the victim was one of the arguments given by judges who demanded that standard engravings be established for the skeleton in 1770. As coroners had ——— 59 Xiyuan lu jie, juan 6c, p. 15a and 24a–b.
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noticed that the engravings which served as documents for autopsy only mentioned one difference between the skeleton of the two sexes, while in the practice of their work they had observed many others, it became imperative to print standard engravings of the skeleton. The differences, however, were not so great as to necessitate two different and distinct representations. The new engravings only showed a man’s skeleton, and the particularities of the female skeleton were mentioned in the text. As for the bones, the difference between man and woman mentioned in the Xiyuan lu is the following: “The man’s bones are white, the woman’s bones are red.” An additional note gives the precision: “in a living woman, the blood flows from her bones like a river, that is why they are black, but it is necessary to carry out a careful examination to make sure that the blackness of bones has not been produced by absorbing toxic remedies.”60 The Xiyuan lu is, as far as I know, the first work to make this distinction of colour of the bones. However surprising it may seem, this distinction can be explained by conceptions concerning physiology in traditional medicine. According to these conceptions, the differentiation in the sex of a child takes place immediately on conception. When, during fertilization, the yin blood of the mother arrives first and is penetrated by the seminal fluid of the father, the embryo child will be male; if the seminal fluid arrives first and the yin blood mixes with it the embryo will be feminine. 61 The basis of the man’s vital energy comes from the white seminal fluid of his father, which is considered in Chinese medical physiology as being the same substance as bone marrow and brain. The vital energy of the woman comes from the [menstrual] blood of the mother. From the point of view of physiology as expressed by medical texts, this is the main difference between man and woman, which led ostensors to see a difference in colour of the bones of a skeleton. This colour distinction was of course criticized by the ostensors who found no evidence of it during their examinations. It is not used on the 1770 Standard for the autopsy of the skeleton. The other differences between the skeleton of a man and a woman which were listed are not, as in the West, mainly morphological, but are differences of number. In this area, the main distinction was already recorded in the Shengji zonglu (1117):62 a smaller number of ——— 60 Xiyuan jilu jiaoyi, edited by Yang Fengkun, ch. XVII, art. 2, p. 42. 61 See Chushi yishu ፻ּ᠔ by Chu Cheng ፻ᑢ, ed. Shuofu, 74. 14b. and
Furth 1986. 62 According to this source, a woman has five bones less than a man, which
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bones in a woman’s skeleton. There is the same distinction concerning the bones of the skull: The skull of a man, from the sinciput to the occiput, is made up of eight bones63 (a man from Caizhou64 had nine65). The occiput has a horizontal suture and a vertical suture extending to the lower rear hairline. The woman’s skull only has six bones: the occiput has a horizontal suture but no vertical suture.66
Such is the text of the Xiyuan lu. The 1770 standard also uses this distinction and adds the fact that “the bone of the crown of the head has a suture in the shape of a trident for a man and in the shape of a cross for a woman.”67 This point is contested by several ostensors.68 The Shengji zonglu does not give a general number of skull bones for the man and the woman, but does mention the fact that the woman does not have the protuberant bone on the crown of the head (dingwei gu). The examination of the skull was also used in the West to determine the sex of the skeleton, but the criteria used depend on morphology and not on the number of bones; for example the differences concerning the ridge above the eye socket, the mastoid process, the dimensions of the palate, the characteristics of the mandibles. These criteria are only valid for a person past the age of puberty, and are not sufficient on their own as proof. They are very different characteristics from those used by the Chinese experts who focused their attention on the number of bones (eight for the man and six for the woman) and not on morphology or measurement of the bones. The attention given to the number of bones stemmed from conceptions linked to the notions of yin and yang; in the Book of Change, the numbers are respectively 9 (or 8) for yang and 6 (or 7) for yin. The number of ribs is also different for a man and for a woman: ——— makes for the number of 360, corresponding to the number of degrees in the year. See Shengji zonglu, juan 191, p. 1b–3a. 63 According to Western medecine, the skull is made up of eight bones and three pairs of ossicles in the region of the ear. It is this number of eight bones which is given in the translation into Chinese by Schreck of the Renshen shuogai, p. 1. 64 The present day sub-prefecture of Runan in the province of Henan. 65 Contemporary Western anatomy lists eight constant bones in the skull, but makes a distinction between constant bones and supernumerary bones, the latter being inconstant ossicles, including the sutural bones situated in the skull, for example the lambdatic bone. (See Kamina 1990: 57). 66 Xiyuan jilu jiaoyi, ch. XVIII, art. 3, p. 42. 67 This affirmation is taken from the Yizong jinjian, juan 88, p. 1 [779]. 68 The author of the Xiyuan lu jie (1832) says that according to his own experience the sinciput of a woman can also have a vertical suture while the same bone on a man can be devoid of a vertical suture; for him these differences are not connected with the sex of the person.
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To the right and to the left the number of ribs is twelve, with eight long ribs and four short ribs. The woman has fourteen ribs on each side.69
This figure of 14, i.e. twice seven, seven being the number attested in the Huangdi neijing as corresponding to the woman, was contested by the ostensors. But the difference in number was seen as so much more important than the morphological differences that the latter, when they existed, such as larger bony protuberances in the man’s skeleton, were interpreted by number and considered as bones present in a man and absent in a woman: The bones of the arms and the legs are two in number for each limb. The man also has a protuberant bone of the arm (bigu ㌣) on the left and right wrists, and on the external side of the ankle. These do not exist in the woman.70
The Shengji zonglu (1117) makes the same remark, listing among the bones lacking in the woman the protuberant bone on the crown of the head (dingwei gu ື), the motility bone on the left (donggu ೯ ), the guarding bone on the right (penggu ) and the first step bone (chubu gu ॣޡ) on the right and on the left; these three last terms probably being the names of the malleolus bones of the wrists and ankles. These bony protuberances are not mentioned in the captions of the 1770 Standard, and the differences listed were probably not precise enough to justify making a separate engraving for the skeleton of a woman at that date. However, the experts did note morphological differences concerning the coccyx and the pelvis, and some of these differences gave rise to different drawings, but not until the late nineteenth century, when the representations of the skeleton were no longer only official documents but also an aid for science and were accompanied by drawings of single bones. This is a present-day description of the coccyx: The coccyx is a single median and symetrical triangular lower tipped bone, concave towards the front; divided into two parts: the upper part, due to the fusion of two vertebrae, shows two vertical prolongations, the short cornuae of the coccyx are opposite the horns of the sacrum. Also the sides are prolonged by a lateral cornua. The lower part is due to the fusion of three vertebrae.
The Xiyuan lu gave the following description: The coccyx has the shape of a pig’s kidney and is curved at the base. In
———
69 Xiyuan jilu jiaoyi, ch. XVII, art. 10, p. 43. 70 Ibid, art. 12, p. 43.
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CATHERINE DESPEUX the man, the joint with the spinal column is concave with on each side a fine point like that of a water chestnut, and it has nine orifices on the periphery. In the woman, this joint is flat, with six orifices on the periphery.71
This difference in the number of holes is chosen according to Chinese numerical symbolism, nine being the maximal yang number and six that of the maximal yin number. This distinction is contested by the majority of the Qing dynasty commentaries. The Xiyuan lu jie criticizes the 1770 standard and says that the coccyx is situated below the sacrum (fanggu) and has neither holes nor marrow; the author of this commentary also adds that when he read the Yizong jinjian he was no longer in any doubt because the description corresponded with his own observations. 72 Xu Lian, the author of the Xiyuan lu xiangyi, also challenges these differences between the skeleton of the man and the woman. He says that he had several opportunities to examine skeletons of both sexes at the same time and was able to make detailed comparisons, allowing him to understand the errors of his predecessors who had confused a morphological difference according to the sex of the corpse with a morphological difference from one individual to another. Included in his drawings of single bones are two types of coccyx, one with a flat upper part and the other with cornuae, but with no holes; the text adds the explanation that this concerns morphological differences and that it is not possible to use these critera to distinguish between the sexes (Fig. 9).73 The Xiyuan lu yizheng also denies that these differences are significant as far as the sex of the individual is concerned, and the author is satisfied with a drawing of a single coccyx (Fig. 9). The most significant morphological difference for Western medicine is the only one which gave rise, latterly, to a different drawing for the man and woman, and this difference is not mentioned in the Xiyuan lu. This concerns the bones of the pelvis and appears in the Xiyuan lu yizheng, indicating that the median cavity is narrower in the man and wider in the woman (Fig. l0). This corresponds to the present criterion used in anatomy and forensic medicine to determine sex and underlines, if this were necessary, the degree of Western influence on the anatomical drawings and science of Gangyi. Until relatively recently, the criteria of Western forensic medicine varied little from those of Chinese legal experts; they observed the pelvis, the ——— 71 Ibid, art. 13, p. 43. 72 Xiyuanlu jie, juan 6c, p. 24b. 73 See Xiyuan lu xiangyi, juan 1, p. 61.
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sternum, the skull and the long bones. They considered that, in 90% of cases, the examination of the pelvis was sufficient to determine the sex, as the sub-pubic angle, which is now known as the “ischiumpubis index” angle, varies greatly according to sex. It was the main criterion used until recently during autopsy. Concerning the pelvic bones, one of the questions most frequently discussed in the nineteenth-century commentaries of the Xiyuan lu was that of the putative existence of an extra bone in the female skeleton: “the secret bone of modesty” (xiubi gu ฺఽ). The earliest mention of this bone appears in the list of differences in the Standard between the skeleton of the man and the woman,74 saying: As well as the ‘birth passage’ (the vaginal passage) the woman has a bone called ‘the secret bone of modesty’: a wound at this place is deadly.
The origin of the existence of this bone comes in fact from a misunderstanding. In chapter IX of the Xiyuan lu it says that “when an expert examines the corspe of a woman he must not shirk through modesty” (fan yan furen, bu ke xiubi Յ᧭ഡԳլฺױᝩ).75 And in a commentary, the Xiyuan lubu by Wang Mingde ࣔ׆ᐚ, the author tells the following story. Towards the end of his life a man decided to become a monk. According to him, one should not examine the skeleton of a woman at the secret place of modesty, because as this part of the body is naturally bluish in colour one might wrongly think that there had been a wound.76 The monk does not speak of a bone, but of the secret place; he probably wished to indicate the pubic symphysis, and added this passage after the paragraph on mortal wounds inflicted by kicking.77 It is from then onwards that a modesty bone would have been included in the Standard and that the error was perpetuated. As soon as this bone was inscribed in the official list of parts to be examined it caused problems for the men of the art. Less than twenty years after the official publication of the Standard, Wang Youhuai in his Xiyuan lu jizheng (1796) takes up the assertion, but afterwards mentions in an appendix the case of an autopsy, when he was not able to locate the bone: In the 39th year of the dynastic era Qianlong (1774) in the subprefecture of Qingyuan ᐜց in Zhejiang province, during the autopsy on a
———
74 See Xiyuan lu xiangyi, p. 74, 75, 76. 75 Xiyuan jilu jiaoyi, p. 32. 76 This argument was taken up again in the Xiyuan lu xiangyi, where it is quoted
from the Jianyan hecan by Lang Tingsi (1829). 77 Story told in the Xiyuan lu jie, juan 6c, p. 21a.
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Yao Deyu, the author of Xiyuan lu jie, denied the existence of such a bone. He not only admits to never having found one on any of the skeletons of women that he examined, but also that when he asked colleagues they all confirmed that they had never found one either. He also quotes a retired expert in autopsy who justifies the impossibility of a woman having such a bone; according to him, when a woman gives birth the pubic symphysis (jiagu ਮ) widens and if the woman had a modesty bone in that place she would not be able to give birth.79 The same mechanism of the bones parting is taken up again in the Xiyuan lu xiangyi (1886) which, in a caption to the drawing of the pelvic bones, simply says that “this meeting point in the woman is what is called an alternate bone: it parts during birth and is joined together at other times (Fig. 10).”
Western influence Western knowledge of anatomy was introduced to the Imperial Palace from the seventeenth century onwards, and it is interesting to study the role it played in the development of science in China and its influence on the representations of the skeleton. The Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722) was fascinated by Western medicine, particularly after he was cured of malarial fever in 1692 by missionaries. He then established a bureau for the study of Western medicine in the palace. The first works on anatomy to be introduced were Theatro anatomico by Gaspard Bauhin (1560-1624) published in Frankfurt in 1605, Anatome corporis humani by Valverde published in Venice in 1607, Œuvres d’Ambroise Paré (1561)80 etc. This shows that the principal contemporary works on anatomy were taken to China by Jesuits and missionaries. One of these works was translated into Chinese by Johann Schreck (1576-1630). This missionary came from Konstanz in Switzerland and left Lisbon by ship in 1618 with Nicolas Trigault (1577-1682) and Jacobus Rho (1593-1638). He landed in Macao in ———
78 Chongkan buzhu Xiyuan lu jizheng, juan 1, p. 41a. 79 Xiyuan lu jie, juan 6c, p. 21a. 80 These works were listed by Fan Xingzhun in the library of the Catholic church
in the north of Peking in 1943; no-one knows what became of the books. See Ma Boying 1993: 314–315.
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1621 and as soon as he arrived he began practising medicine. He took with him a work on the human body which was probably Theatro anatomico by Gaspard Bauhin, 81 or the book of Ambroise Paré, 82 which he is thought to have translated into Chinese with the title Renshen shuogai Գߪᎅᄗ (General presentation of the human body) in two juan, and the first section concerns the skeleton.83 This translation was probably made in the house of a certain Li Zhizao ޕհᤏ, who was Grand Chamberlain at Wulin (present day Hangzhou) at the time. It was completed and edited with the title Taixi renshen shuogai ۫Գߪᎅᄗ by Bi Gongchen ฅ߭84 who met Adam Schall in the capital in 1634. Schall showed him a series of detailed anatomical engravings which were probably those of Gaspard Bauhin. Chinese scholars who were in contact with Westerners were also very interested in anatomy and had access to these anatomical works. For example Fang Yizhi ֱאཕ (1611-1671) in his Wuli xiaoshi ढ՛ᢝ (Brief knowledge of things) reserves several lines for a description of the skeleton, inspired by Western science. 85 Xu Guangxi ஊ٠ඔ (1562-1633) was a scholar who was interested in the sciences and who had many contacts with Jesuits and missionaries. He regretted that the translation by Schreck had not been finished, and having obtained a permission from the Imperial Palace he asked Jacobus Rho (Luo Yagu ᢅႁߣ) (who arrived in China in 1621 and died there in 1638) and Longobardo (Long Huamin ᚊဎ )ا86 to complete the translation. The enlarged work was published under the title Yuanxi renshen tushuo ۫Գߪቹᎅ (Illustrated explanation of the human body, according to the distant West). This was sufficiently well known for Liu Jizhuang (1648-1695) to say that he had seen and read it.87 This text includes two illustrations of the skeleton. The first, a ———
81 See Zhao Pushan 1983: 251. In a letter dated 22nd April 1622 Schreck says that Jean Adam Schall (1591–1666), who arrived in China in 1622, owned a book on anatomy by Gaspard Bauhin (1560–1624). 82 Cf. Standaert 1999: 9–33. 83 The other sections describe the muscles, tendons, skin, vessels, veins etc. 84 An important high-ranking official in the late Ming dynasty, who obtained the grade of doctor (jinshi _ၞՓ) in the Wanli dynastic era (1573–1620). 85 Wuli xiaoshi ढ՛ᢝ, juan 3, p. 74. 86 A manuscript of this work from the time of Kangxi was given by Fan Xingshun to the Research Institute for Traditional Medecine where it can be consulted. 87 In his Guangyang zaji ᐖၺᠧಖ (Miscellanea of Guangyang), Liu Jizhuang says that he “saw in the Taixi renshen zhishuo that if a woman became a man it was in fact due to a prolapsus of the internal organs and that a man had never been seen to become a woman” (juan 2, p. 62).
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front view, shows a skeleton whose right lower arm is resting on a stick, the second, a three quarters back view, shows a skeleton slightly bending, leaning on a stick held in the left hand and with the left lower limb bent slightly upwards (Fig. 11). It has hair, is almost fleshy and may evoke some Western illustrations of skeletons with hair that seem to be partly covered with skin (Fig. 12).88 The aesthetic considerations and the precision are very inferior to the known Western representations of the same period. Theatro anatomico by Bauhin includes in book IV a skeleton shown front view leaning its right arm on a pickaxe, with the left arm slightly lifted, and an engraving of a skeleton three-quarters view, bent over and leaning on a scythe held in both hands, the body curved towards the left (Fig. 13).89 The body position is the only point of resemblance with the drawings in the Renshen tushuo; these positions are copied from the representations by Vesalius,90 which were used as models, and which were later used in Diderot’s Encyclopedia, but using a mirror image of the position of the front view skeleton (see Fig. 14).91 It should not be forgotten that the first illustrated works on anatomy in the West were crudely produced and naive in aspect.92 In this domain, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a turning point, particularly at the school of anatomy in Padua where, as Bi Gongchen remarked in his preface to the translation by Schreck of the Renshen shuo gai, the cadavers used were those of prisoners who had been sentenced to death or of the lower classes.93 Not long after William Harvey introduced the foundations of Paduan anatomy to England early in the seventeenth century, Thomas Willis led a group of physiologists at the University of Oxford and “used for dissection the corpses of executed criminals and patients of the lower classes. In the former case, these were persons condemned to death and the Crown ceded the remains to barber-surgeons for dissection. From the time of Vesalius onwards, such corpses made the study of anatomy94 possible.” It is to be noted that from the publication of Andreas Vesalius’ ———
88 See Laneyrie-Dagen 1997: 208. 89 The same representation features in Ambroise Paré’s Anatomy. 90 See Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, 1543, Paris, Library of the
Old Faculty of Medecine. 91 Diderot and d‘Alembert, L’encyclopédie, pl. 1 and 2. 92 See Grmek 1997: 10–11. 93 See Ming Qing jian Yesuhui shi yizhu tiyao ࣔ堚ၴળᗫᄎՓထ༼ (On the translations of the missionaries of the Company of Jesus) by Xu Zongze ஊࡲᖻ, juan 7, p. 304. 94 See Risse 1997: 177–198.
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De humani corporis fabrica in 1543 the skeleton was the mark of modern texts and illustrations in the West. In China of course, early knowledge of Western anatomy spread slowly, but its development was followed closely in the Imperial Palace, at the beginning of the seventeenth century or later through the interest of Emperor Kangxi (r. 1661-1722) who actively encouraged western medicine and who requested Father Parennin (who arrived in China in 1659 and died in 1688) to translate into Manchu the book on anatomy by the Frenchman Pierre (Pili) (probably Pierre Dionis).95 According to Saunders’ research, the engravings for this anatomy in Manchu were probably copied from those of Valverde, Thomas Bartholin, Julius Casserius, Dionis, etc. 96 However, there were hardly any written indications on the skeleton in this anatomical study in Manchu, except in the representations of the spinal column, the skull bones, the two top vertebrae (axis and atlas), the temporal and middle ear bones and the sternum.97 The preoccupation with detail, the precision and realism which suffused Western representations of the body in general and the skeleton in particular captured the attention of Chinese officials in the seventeenth century. It is true that there was a great difference with Chinese illustrations. However, the context was also very different. On the one hand, in the West, the skeleton had become an allegory for death, sometimes represented with a scythe, for cutting short the life of human beings, sometimes with a pickaxe. The skeleton was personified and animated. This was related to one of the aspects of anatomy which had interested scholars in the West since the sixteenth century: the dynamics of the body and the representation of the movement of the muscles, bones and their joints.98 On the other hand, in China, the engravings of the skeleton were valid legal documents and used for notes rather than as a faithful representation of an anatomical reality of the bones. On one hand, Life in the movement of bones joined and articulated together, and on the other hand, a rotting and dismembered corpse, until in the nineteenth century the Chinese ——— 95 See Zhang Cheng riji ്ᇨֲಖ. 96 See Saunders 1971. 97 This work was never published. Three manuscript copies were made and dis-
tributed. There is a copy at the library of the Royal Academy in France, one in Denmark at the Royal Library in Copenhagen, and a facsimile is available at the Library of the IHEC in Paris. See also Saunders and Francis Lee (1971) The Manchu Anatomy. The vertebrae are represented respectively on p. 40, 42, 58, 60, 64, 72, 74 and 78 of the latter work. 98 See Laneyrie-Dagen 1997: 208.
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skeleton also came to life. Although the Western influence is undeniable, the engravings by Xu Lian and Gangyi (1892) are different from Western anatomical representations. Comparison shows this clearly; the crude Chinese draughtsmanship and the realism of the Western illustration, with a landscape as background and the relief of the bones suggested by shading. The position Gangyi’s skeleton (Fig. 7) is neither that of Vesalius’ engravings nor of Gaspard Bauhin’s (Fig. 13) or Paré’s illustrations. Either his Western model has not yet been traced, or Gangyi’s engravings are imitations rather than copies.
CONCLUSION The representations of the body that have been examined here in a Chinese medical context are limited to the external contour of the body, the skeleton or the contour of the different organs within the torso. The Western type of representation corresponding to a dissection of an internal part of the body99 is unknown in China, apart from the drawings in the Manchu anatomy which were based on Western engravings. The skeleton was the domain of the ostensor’s constant observation. Men of other professions rarely came into contact with skeletons. In France for example, in the Middle Ages, through the practice of dismembering, other people also worked with bones, to carry out the so-called Teutonic custom of burying different parts of a royal personage in different places to create religious sites, as in the case of relics of the saints. Unlike other cultures there was not a systematic need to preserve the corpse in its entirety in one place.100 In China, the belief that the body should remain intact after death and that sensitive souls (po ᕗ) stayed near the corpse after death limited similar practices and also that of dissection which supposedly troubled the dead person. Dissection was reserved for criminals and sometimes in forensic medicine for the victims when it was a question of washing out injustice. Moreover, although on several occasions progress in the knowledge of the body was made through dissection, this was only superficial and did not engender any illustration of the skeleton in a medical context. The knowledge of the skeleton in China was generally fairly cor———
99 Ibid, p. 193. 100 See Park 1995: 112–113.
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rect; all the main bones had been listed. The source of error came from the divisions of the bones because firstly, the transmission of knowledge was carried out by texts without illustration and by masters who had not seen skeletons for themselves, and secondly because the skeleton was observed from the outside of the body, which meant that a protuberance could be mistaken for a separate bone. Although the distinction between marrow bones and cartilage was mentioned in the Shengji zonglu, they continued to be confused until a later date. But more strikingly, the bones themselves in their form and substance were not listed in a detailed fashion as in the West. These differences can be noted in the Renshen tushuo (ca. 1630). As Bi Gongchen says in his preface, the description of the bones is brief, twelve pages or so, and does not mention the detail of protuberances, angles, holes and ridges of the bones. Until 1891 drawings remained crude. However, judging by the Song-dynasty painting by Li Song ( ുޕca. 1190-1230), entitled Kulou huanxi tu ᕒᦄ֤ᚭቹ (A Magic Performance of Skeletons), which depicts a puppet-master playing with skeleton marionettes (Col.Pl. XIX),101 this was not for want of competence on the part of the artists, who were perfectly capable of realistic reproduction. Lastly, in the West the skeleton was an allegory of death. One could have imagined a similar representation in China under the influence of Buddhism which cultivated the idea of impermanence by meditation exercises around death and the skeleton. There is an 1880s illustration 102 in Japan of such a meditation on the skeleton, but would seem that nothing similar can be found in China. It is in fact in the Taoist context that such an allegorical use of the skeleton developed, first in stories of Zhuangzi’s relation to skulls or skeletons in his discussions of death, and later in the Quanzhen school, where the skeleton serves as an allegory of impermanence in the representation of a man controlled by his desires who is at once alive and dead. Professor Idema has shown in an interesting article that the painting of Li Song is to be interpreted in this context, and that skeletons were a popular subject in painting during the Song and Yuan.103 This type of accurate depiction of the skeleton did not appear in the circles of doctors or of forensic medicine, where the goal was not so much pictorial ———
101 Collection of the Palace Museum in Peking; reproduced in Wu Zhefu ֛ୃܦ, Zhonghua wuqian nian wenwu jikan, “Songhua pian”, Part IV, Taipei, 1986, p. 26, ill. no. 24. 102 See Lachaud 1998: 173. 103 See Idema 1993: 191–215.
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as diagrammatic representation. In China the representation of the body did not spill over from the technical field into art as it did in the West, where images of the naked body came to reflect the power and the glory of the human person.
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REFERENCES BAUHIN, Gaspard. 1605. Vivae imagines partium corporis humani, aeneis formis expressae, et ex “Theatro anatomico”, livre IV. CAMPS, F-E and J-F. CAMERON. 1971. Practical Forensic Medicine. London: Hutchinson. [Based on a 1956 edition]. Cao Xiaozhong ඦ ࢘ݕet al. Shengji zonglu ᆣᛎ᜔ᙕ (1117). Reed. Taibei: Huagang chuban youxian gongsi, 1978. CHU Cheng ፻ᑢ, Chushi yishu ፻ּ᠔, ed. Shuofu ᎅ. CLARK, Michael, and Catherine Crawford, eds. 1954. Legal Medicine in History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DELAHAYE, Hubert. 1993. “Du peu d’effet de la peinture occidentale en Chine aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles.” In: L’Europe en Chine, eds. Jami Catherine and Hubert Delahaye. Paris: De Boccard, pp. 241-252. DENG Yuhan ᔥ( ࠤدJohann Schreck, Terrenz) and Bi Gongchen ฅ߭. Renshen shuogai Գߪᎅᄗ, manuscript in the Library of the Zhongyi yanjiuyuan. DESPEUX, Catherine. 1996. “Le corps, champ spatio-temporel, souche d’identité.”L’homme 137: 87-118. ——. 2005. “Visual Representations of the Body in Chinese Medical and Daoist Texts from the Song to the Qing Period (tenth to nineteenth Century).” Asian Medicine 1: 9-52. DIDEROT and D’ALEMBERT. 1994. L’encyclopédie. Anatomie. Reprint Paris: Interlivres. FAN Xingzhun ૃ۩ᄷ. 1943. Ming ji xiyang chuanruzhi yixue ࣔ֗۫ႚԵհ᠔ᖂ . Beijing: Zhonghua yishi xuehui chuban. FANG Yizhi ֱאཕ. Wuli xiaoshi ढ՛ᢝ. In: Wanyou wenku ᆄ֮ڶ, ed. Wang Yunwu ׆ႆն. FREHER, Michel, Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi, eds. 1989. Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part. 1, New York: Zone Books (distr. by MIT Press, Cambridge Mass.-London). GANGYI ଶᑞ. 1891. Xiyuan lu yizheng ੑବᙕᆠإ. New edition of the Guangdong Governor (Guandong fushu chongkan ᐖࣟᐿᆟૹ)ע. GREMK, Mirko D., ed. 1997. Histoire de la pensée médicale en Occident, tome 2: De la renaissance aux lumières. Paris: Seuil. Hanshu ዧ [by Ban Gu ఄ ࡐ (AD 32-92)]. Modern edition 1975. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. HAY, John. 1994. “The Body Invisible in Chinese Art?” In: Body, Subject and Power in China, eds. Zito, Angela and Tani E. Barlow. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 42-77. HU Tingguang ݪ٠. 1962. Shangke huizuan ႞ઝნᤊ. Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe. HUA Shou ᄶኂ. 1961. Jiaozhu guben Shisi jing fahui ீࣹءײԼᆖ࿇ཀ. Modern edition, Daozang jinghua ሐ៲壄ဎ 6-6. Taibei: Ziyou chubanshe. Huainan zi zhushi তࣹᤩ (Annotated edition of Huainan zi). Modern edition 1973. Taibei: Hualian chubanshe. Huangdi neijing Suwen Lingshu ႓০փᆖైംᨋ. Modern edition 1973. Taibei: Xuanfeng chubanshe. HUANGFU Mi ߉. Zhenjiu jiayi jing ಾ߁ظԬᆖ. Modern edition Shandong zhongyi xueyuan, 1980. Zhenjiu jiayi jing jiaoshi ಾ߁ظԬᆖீᤩ. Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe. JIA Jingtao ᇸᙩᛑ. 1983. “Liangbu zhongyaode fa yixue wenxian Yanshi gemu yu jie’an shi de faxian” ࠟຝૹऱऄ᠔ᖂ֮᧭ৡؾፖூڤऱ࿇. Fayi
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tongxun ऄ᠔ຏಛ 4.1: 7. ——. 1996. “Zhongguo fayixue shi yanjiu liushi nian” խഏऄ᠔ᖂઔߒքԼڣ. Zhonghua yishi zazhi խဎ᠔ᠧ 26.4: 231-237. KURIYAMA, Shigesa. 1999. The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. New York: Zone Books. L’homme & la mort. Danses macabres de Dürer à Dali. 1985. Paris: Goethe Institut, collections de l’université de Düsseldorf. LACHAUD, François. 1998. “Tai Dokuro [Face au crâne] de Kôda Rohan: un miroir moderne de l’impermanence.” In: Japon Pluriel 2. Le Mas de Vert: Philippe Picquier, pp. 168-190. LANEYRIE-DAGEN, Nadeije. 1997. L’invention du corps. Paris: Flammarion. LI Jie ޕᑥ. Shenjing tongkao ߪᆖຏە. Modern edition: Beijing: Zhongyi guji chubanshe, 1993. Lingshu ᨋ, see Huangdi neijing Suwen Lingshu. LIU Jizhuang Ꮵᤉ๗. Guangyang zaji ᐖၺᠧಖ. Congshu jicheng edition. LIU Tingzhen Ꮵݪᄙ. 1913. Zhongxi guge bianzheng խ۫إ. In: Xinding liuyi guan congshu ᄅࡳք塢ហ, medicine section. LUO Yagu ᢅႁߣ (Rho Jacobus), Long Huanmin ᚊဎ( اLongobardi), Deng Yuhan ᔥ( ࠤدSchreck). Yuanxi renshen tushuo ۫Գߪቹᎅ. Manuscript of the Kangxi era (1662-1723), in the library of Zhongyi yanjiu yuan, Beijing. MA Boying ್܄, Gao Xi ඥ, Hong Zhongli ੋխم. 1993. Zhongwai yixue wenhua jiaoliu shi խ؆᠔ᖂ֮֏ٌੌઔߒ. Shanghai: Wenhui chubanshe. MA Jixing ್ ᤉ ᘋ . 1957. “Songdaide renti jiepo tu” ז ݚԳ ᧯ ᇞ ଳ ቹ . ISTC, 8.2:125. MACE, Mieko. 1994. “L’anatomie occidentale et l’expérience clinique dans la médecine japonaise du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle.” In: Nombres, astres, plantes et viscères, eds. Isabelle Ang and Pierre-Étienne Will. Paris: Mémoires de l’IHEC, vol. XXXV, pp. 135-176. MCKNIGHT, Brian E. tr. 1981. Sung Tz’u. The Washing away of Wrongs. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies. NEEDHAM, Joseph and LU Guei-djen. 1988. “A History of Forensic Medicine in China.” Medical History 32: 357-400. KAMINA, Pierre. 1990. Anatomie humaine. Paris: Maloine. O’NEILL, Y.V. and G.F. CHAN. 1976. “A Chinese Coroner’s Manual and the Evolution of Anatomy.” Journal of History of Medicine 31.1: 3. PARK, Katharine. 1995. “The Life of the Corpse: Division and Dissection in Late Medieval Europe.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50.1: 111-132. POLSON, John Cyril. 1955. The Essentials of Forensic Medicine. London: English Universities Press Limited. QIAN Lei ᙒሼ. 1592. Renjing jing Գᢴᆖ. QIAN Xiuchang ᙒߐ࣑. 1809. Shangke buyao ႞ઝᇖ. Preface of 1808 by the author and preface of 1809 by Tie’an ᥳတ. Modern edition of 1986. Pékin: Zhongguo shudian. RATCHNEVSKY, Paul. 1937. Un code des Yuan. Paris: IHEC, vol IV; diffuseur Librairie Ernest Leroux. RISSE, Guenter B. 1997. “La synthèse entre l’anatomie et la clinique.” In Histoire de la pensée médicale, ed. Mirko Grmek, tome 2, pp. 177-198. SAUNDERS, John B. and Francis LEE. 1971. The Manchu Anatomy and its Historical Origin. Taipei: Li Ming Cultural Enterprise Co. SAVAGE-SMITH, E. 1995. “Attitudes toward Dissection in Medieval Islam.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50.1: 67-110. SHEN Tong ާݭ. 1843. Shigu ᤩ. In: Xiyuan lu xiangyi ੑବᙕᇡᆠ, juan 1. Also
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in Zhaodai congshu ਟזហ, jiji bu աႃᇖ. SINGER, C.A. 1957. A Short History of Anatomy and Physiology from the Greeks to Harvey. New York: Dover. STANDAERT, Nicolas. 1999. “A Chinese Translation of Ambroise Paré’s Anatomy.” Sino-western Cultural Relations Journal 21: 9-33. SUN Yikui ୪ԫ. 1983. Yizhi xuyu ᠔ڱፃ塒;. Modern edition annotated by Ding Guangdi ԭ٠૭. Jiangsu kexue jishu chubanshe. Taixi renshen tushuo ۫Գߪቹᎅ. Manuscript. TONG Lian ࿙კ et al. 1864 ou 1874. Chongkan buzhu Xiyuan lu jizheng ૹעᇖࣹ ੑବᙕႃᢞ; prefaces by Ruan Qixin ࠡᄅ (1807), Wang Youhuai ׆Ծዒ (1796), Li Guanlan ޕᨠᥞ (1797), Ruan Qixin ࠡᄅ(1832), Qi Gong ઙಥ (1832), Zhang Xifan ്ᙔᘓ (1837). Reedition of the Buzhu Xiyuan lu jizheng, a version of the Jizheng developed by Ruan Qixin; first edition of 1832. VESALIUS Andreas (VESALE, André). 1543. De humani corporis fabrica libri septem. Basileae: ex officina Johannis Oporini. VON STADEN, Henri. 1995. “Anatomy as Rhetoric: Galen on Dissection and Persuasion.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50.1: 47-66. WANG Honghan ݛ׆ᘃ. Modern edition 1989. Yixue yuanshi ᠔ᖂࡨ. Shanghai: Shanghai kexue jishu chubanshe. WANG Qi ׆ઙ and WANG Siyi ׆৸ᆠ. 1988. (Preface of 1609). Sancai tuhui Կթ ቹᄎ. [facs. repr.] Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe. WANG Qingren ׆堚ٚ. Modern edition 1999. Yilin gaicuo ᠔ࣥޏᙑ. Beijing: Zhongyi guji chubanshe. WANG Weiyi ׆൫ԫ. 1987 (1442). Tongren shuxue zhenjiu tujing ᎭԳᙁلಾ߁ቹ ᆖ. Beijing: Zhonghua shudian. WANG Youhuai ׆Ծዒ et al. 1796. Xiyuan lu jizheng ੑବᙕႃᢞ. Edition of 1874 Chongkan buzhu Xiyuan lu jizheng ૹעᇖࣹੑବᙕႃᢞ. WILL, Pierre-Étienne. Official Handbooks and Anthologies of Imperial China: A Descriptive and Critical Bibliography. To be published. ——. 2007. “Developing Forensic Knowledge through Cases in the Qing Dynasty”. In: Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History, eds. Charlotte Furth, Hsiung Pingchen and Judith Zeitlin. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press. WU Qian ܦᝐ. 1742. Yizong jinjian ᠔ࡲ८ᦹ. Ed. Siku quanshu. WU Zhefu ֛ୃܦ. 1986. Zhonghua wuqian nian wenwu jikan խဎնՏ֮ڣढႃע . Songhua pian, IV. Taipei: Zhonghua wuqian nian wenwu jikan bianji weiyuanhui խဎնՏ֮ڣढႃעᒳᙀࡡᄎ. XU Lian ⯟. 1854. Xiyuan lu xiangyi ੑବᙕᇡᆠ, preface of 1854. Reedited in 1890. XU Tingzuo ஊݪశ. Yiyi neijing tushuo ᠔რփནቹᎅ. 1896. XU Zongze ஊࡲᖻ. 1989 (1949). Ming Qing jian yesu huishi yizhu tiyao ࣔ堚ၴળ ᗫᄎՓထ༼ Yesuhui chuangli sibai nian jinian 1540-1940. [facs. repr.] Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. YAMADA Keiji ՞ضᐜࠝ. 1991. “Hakkô ha keirykaibogaku jintai keisoku shisô” ܄ ૠၦᇞଳᖂԳ᧯ૠྒྷ৸უ. In: Chûgoku kotai kagaku shi ron zokuhen խ ഏזײઝᖂᓵᥛᒳ, eds. Yamada Keiji ՞ضᐜࠝ and Tanaka Tan ضխ. Kyôtô: Kyôtô daigaku Jinbunkagaku kenkyûsho, pp. 427-493. YANG Fengkun ᄘ࡚ྺ.1982. Xiyuan jilu jiaoyi ੑବᙕீ; annotated edition of Song Ci ݚს. Nanjing: Qunzhong chubanshe. YANG Jizhou ᄘᤉ. 1601. Modern edition 1973. Zhenjiu dacheng ಾ߁Օګ. Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe. YANG Shangshan ᄘՂ. Modern edition 1981. Huangdi neijing taisu ႓০փᆖ֜ ై. Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe.
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YAO Deyu ᐚᘵ 1832. Xiyuan lu jie ੑବᙕᇞ. In: Chongkan buzhu Xiyuanlu jizheng, juan 6c, ed. Yao Shouchun tang ኂਞഘ. Suzhou. YU Zhengwen إᴈ. 1836. Modern edition 2001. Guisi leigao ંգᣊᒚ. Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe. Yuandian zhang ցࠢີ 1322. Ed. Shanjia ben, in Songfenshi congkan ख़ហע. Yutang xianhua دഘ ၳ ᇩ by Fan Zi ૃᇷ (Five Dynasties) ed. Shuofu ᎅ (Wanyuan shanben ࡷࡡ՞ഘء, 48). ZHANG Jingyue ്ནᚣ. 1985. Leijing tuyi ᣊᆖቹᜠ. facs. repr. Ming edition Jinchangtong Yongquan keben. Beijing: Renmin weisheng chubanshe. ZHAO Erxun ᎓ዿ༎. 1977 (1927). Qing shigao 堚ᒚ. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. ZHENG Zhenduo ᔤᔼ, Zheng Heng and Xu Bangda, eds. 1959. Songren huace ݚ Գם, vol. 58. Beijing: Zhongguo gudian yishu chubanshe. ZHONG Xu ٘. 1956. “Zhongguo fayi xueshi” խഏऄ᠔ᖂ. Zhongyi zazhi խ᠔ ᠧ ݳ8: 501.
Fig. 1: Representation of the acupunture meridians, bones of the upper limbs and of the thorax. From the Leijing tuyi ᣊᆖቹᜠ (1624), juan 3, p. 103, 104.
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Fig. 2: Drawing of the position of the bones in the body. From the Yixue yuanshi ᠔ᖂࡨ (1688-1692), juan 3, pp. 219–220.
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Fig. 3: 1770 Standard for the representation of the skeleton front and back. From the Xiyuan lu jizheng ੑବᙕႃ ᢞ by Wang Youhuai ׆Ծዒ (1796).
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Fig. 4: Dance of the skeleton, 1493. Wood engraving. Illustration from the book by Hartmann Schedel Liber cronicarum. Opus de temporibus mundi, Nüremberg, 1493. From Man and Death. Danses macabres from Dürer to Dali, p. 61.
Fig. 5: 1770 Standard for the skeleton front and back. From the Xiyuan lu xiangyi ੑବᙕᇡᆠ (1854), juan l, p. 48a–b.
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Fig. 6: Corrected drawings of the skeleton front and back. From the Xiyuan lu xiangyi ੑବᙕᇡᆠ (1854), juan l, p. 50a–b.
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Fig. 7: New illustration model of the skeleton front and back. From the Xiyuan lu yizheng ੑବᙕᆠ( إ1891), juan l, p. 83a–b.
Fig. 8: Illustrations of the spinal column: a) Manchu Anatomy (before 1688); b) Xiyuan lu xiangyi ੑବᙕᇡᆠ (1854); c) Xiyuan lu yizheng ੑବᙕᆠ( إ1891); d) Anatomy textbook (French) (1946).
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Fig. 9: Illustrations of the coccyx and of the sacrum: Top left: coccyx from the Xiyuan lu xiangyi ੑବᙕᇡᆠ, (1854), juan 1, p. 61a. Bottom left: coccyx from the Xiyuan lu yizheng ੑବᙕᆠ( إ1891), juan 1, p. 60b. Top right: sacrum from Xiyuan lu xiangyi xiangyi ੑବᙕᇡᆠ, (1854), juan 1, p. 60a. Bottom right: sacrum from the Xiyuan lu yizheng ੑବᙕᆠإ, (1891), juan 1, p. 60b.
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Fig. 10: Pelvic bones of a man and a woman. From the Xiyuan lu yizheng ੑବᙕᆠإ, (1891), juan 1, p. 96.
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Fig. 11: Illustrations of the skeleton front and diagonal. From the Renshen tushuo Գߪቹᎅ (ca. 1630).
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Fig. 12: Death and the Bishop (1541). Print from a series of eight etchings: Power and Death. From Man and Death. Danses macabres from Dürer to Dali, p. 67.
Fig. 13: Illustration of the skeleton front and diagonal. From Theatro anatomico by Gaspard Bauhin (1605), book IV, p. 243 - 245.
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Fig. 14: Illustration of the skeleton, front view. From the “Anatomy section” of Diderot’s Encyclopedia (1766).
NEW MAPS FOR THE MODERNIZING STATE: WESTERN CARTOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE AND ITS APPLICATION IN 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY CHINA Iwo Amelung Research on the history of Chinese cartography has made rapid progress during recent years. In a simplified way, different approaches and main areas of interest can be classified in the following manner: 1. Invention, development and application of surveying and map-making techniques are mainly viewed and evaluated in terms of ‘modernity’ and ‘science’. This is the classical “Needham approach”, which itself is an echo of Chinese works on cartography and exerts considerable influence on research on cartography done in China.1 2. A reaction to the Needham approach, which on the one hand rejects some of Needham’s assertions and on the other hand tries to highlight cultural factors that need to be taken into account when studying Chinese cartography. It is best represented by Cordell Yee in his contributions to The History of Cartography.2 3. Using maps as source for research into the Chinese worldview and its changes especially under Western influence, as has been done by Richard Smith.3 4. The application of new theories of map-making which highlights notions of space, political power, the relationship of men and nature in reading maps, the construction of “knowledge-spaces” and especially view the use of maps as tools of the empire and colonial dominance.4 All these approaches, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, have greatly benefited from the better availability of sources, the ———
1 Cf. Needham (1959: 497–590); early Chinese works on the history of cartography in China, on which Needham drew heavily, include Wang Yong (1938, 1953). 2 Cf. Yee 1994a, 1994b, 1994c, 1994d, 1994e. 3 Cf. Smith 1996. 4 Cf. for example Hostetler (2001), Millward (1999) and Perdue (1998).
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compilation of better bibliographies5 and especially from the publication of cartographic and geographic sources during the last ten years.6 There are, however, still large areas of Chinese cartography which remain largely unresearched. To some extent this may be due to certain restraints (or rather ‘areas of non-interest’) which the application of the approaches outlined above exerts on the choice of the material analyzed. In this paper, I will try to shed some light on one of the areas which to my knowledge up to now has not been subjected to the close scrutiny it deserves: The transition from ‘traditional’ Chinese cartography to ‘modern’ surveying and mapping, which took place during the second half of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century. By employing the term ‘modern’ here, I do not intend to construct a dichotomy between ‘modern’ and ‘backward’, but merely intend to denote that kind of maps which in Europe and the West was considered as an indispensable ingredient for the development of the modern nation state and as a necessity for ruling and administrative needs at home and abroad.7 The function attributed to maps and the standards of accuracy applied to them had, of course, slowly evolved in the West as well, culminating in the unattainable goals of cartographic perfection (the map is the land) and the construction of a totalizing knowledge archive. While historians of Western cartography in recent years have been successful in “deconstructing the map”8 and made clear the hubris implicit to ideas of mapping and surveying especially in the 19th century, there is little doubt that Chinese reformers and modernizers, once they had realized the real or supposed importance of exact maps for the powerful Western nation state, strove hard to obtain them for China as well. Without trying to address the question, to what extent such an approach—visible in many other areas as well—constituted “self-colonialization”,9 it seems important to point out that the developments in China certainly differed from those in colonialized countries such as India where the colonial ——— 5 Cf. especially Beijing tushuguan shanben tezang bu yutuzu (1997). 6 Cf. for example Cao Wanru et al. (1997), Ancient Map Research Team of the
Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping (1998), and Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’anguan (2001). 7 Cf. for example Turnbull (1996: 16). Turnbull also draws attention to the fact that “modern cartography” substituted the so-called “literary mode” of geographical information since the late Middle Ages. Given the close relation of illustration and explanation in Chinese tradition, it might be useful to look more closely into the question to what extent and when a similar transition took place in China. 8 Cf. Harley 1989. 9 Cf. Chen 2002: 6–7.
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rulers considered maps as indispensable not only as instrument for their colonial rule but also as important device for the spatial construction of the territories ruled.10 In China, in contrast, in the last instance it were the Chinese themselves who desperately wanted these new and “better” maps. Within the brief period of some dozen years this process reduced ‘traditional’ Chinese maps, which were ubiquitous until the early years of the 20th century, to objects of mere historical or museal value. Due to the still great bibliographical obstacles and even more to the difficulties of obtaining a sufficient number of sources,11 my approach is rather descriptive and pedestrian and I merely will be able to outline a path along which future research could proceed.
THE JESUIT “LEGACY” Joseph Needham’s narrative about the development of Chinese cartography ends with the Kangxi and Qianlong surveys of the 18th century. He presents these surveys as basically Chinese enterprises undertaken with the help of a number of Jesuit missionaries and as something like the cumulative point of Chinese cartography. “Once again [China] was ahead of all other countries in the World”.12 Even if we leave aside the point made by Cordell Yee and many others to which extent these enterprises can be considered as “Chinese”, 13 Needham’s description is over-simplified and misleading. It is of great importance to be aware that at the same time when these surveys were carried out and the resulting maps were printed, a large number of maps in ‘traditional’ Chinese style were prepared and published and that the Jesuit maps failed to exert significant influence on Chinese mapmaking for the next more than hundred years. This becomes evident if one browses through the maps included into local gazetteers (fangzhi ֱ )ݳof the times and can be ascertained by looking into most manuscript maps, even the ones forwarded to the Emperor, prior to the very late 19th century. The well-known Guangyu tu ᐖᝨቹ (Enlargement of the Terrestrial Map) of Luo Hongxian ᢅੋ ———
10 Cf. Edney 1997. 11 It is important to keep in mind that the larger part of the maps produced during
this period were manuscript maps which today, if preserved at all, are scattered in libraries and archives in China and all over the world. 12 Needham 1959: 586. 13 Cf. for example Yee (1994e: 185).
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٣ (1504–1564), originating from the Ming, was reprinted almost unchanged as late as 1799 and probably was the most popular map available in China up to this time. A possible reason for this perplexing lack of influence was that the maps which had been compiled on the basis of the Kangxi and the Qianlong surveys were kept secret and hardly available outside the Imperial palace. This actually was true for the gigantic (about 13m to 14m), and detailed, manuscript map of Beijing, which supposedly was based on surveying as well and had been compiled with the help of the Jesuit Castiglione (Lang Shining ኑ 1688–1766) in 1750.14 But even those scholars who had access to the Kangxi and Qianlong maps did not make the best use of it. A case in point is Li Zhaoluo’s ޕ٢ (1760–1841) Huangchao yitong quantu ཛԫٵᝨچ٤ቹ (Complete map of the unified Qing empire), which was printed in 1832 from woodblocks (see Col.Pl. XX). Li claims that he had seen the Qianlong maps, but already a cursory perusal shows clearly that it was inferior to them. While, of course, wooden blocks were less than ideal a medium for printing maps, the map had other defects as well. Most striking is the fact that Li Zhaoluo not only applied the system of latitudes and longitudes that was based on the Jesuit maps but employed the traditional rectangular grid as well. Li explains in his preface: The base map adopts the celestial longitude and latitude, with one degree representing 100 km on the ground. However, as the parallels are straight but the meridians slant toward the north pole, they cannot be used to measure distance conveniently and accurately [...] Now the grid system is also adopted on the map, with each side of the squares representing 50 km, so that the distance can be easily measured. The parallels and meridians are rendered in dotted lines so as to facilitate astronomical observations. The latitude difference is half a degree, which represents 50 km on the ground.15
It seems as if Li had somehow misunderstood some basic principles of surveying and cartography, since of course the meridians were not in the first place represented on the map for facilitating astronomical observation but rather as a result of the latter—a point, of course, which holds true for the latitudes as well. Moreover, the original maps had of course employed a projection, and superimposing a rectangular grid which supposedly represented a uniform distance would ———
14 On this map cf. for example Naquin (2000: 456). Numerous illustrations in her book are drawn from this map. 15 Li Zhaoluo 1832, preface.
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render either the projection or the representation of distances useless, since, if a projection is employed, the further one moves away from the prime meridian (in this case Beijing), the more oblique the meridians becomes, so that the grid cannot be used for representing actual distances any longer. Li Zhaoluo’s map, however, was not the only such map. The same was true for an even more influential map, namely the Huangchao zhongwai yitong yutu ཛխ؆ԫอᝨቹ (Map of the Qing Empire and Neighbouring Regions), which was also based on the Kangxi and Qianlong maps. The compilation of this map, which is commonly known as Da Qing yitong tu Օ堚ԫอቹ and which saw several prints and reprints, had been started by Hu Linyi ࣥᜠ (1812–1861) and was completed under the direction of Yan Shusen ᣤᖫཤ (d. 1874) in 1863. As Li Zhaoluo’s map it superimposes a rectangular grid on the latitudes and longitudes and thus testifies that the principle of projection was insufficiently understood (see Fig. 1). Similar to Li Zhaoluo’s map it normally was printed as woodcut; however, in contrast to the maps it was based on, it was widely available and thus became the basis for a large number of other maps.16 We should note here that some scholars saw the problems brought about by such an approach, and Feng Guifen ႑ெख़ (1809–1874) as well as Chen Li ຫᖽ (1810–1882) pointed out that Li Zhaoluo’s application of a rectangular grid was incorrect.17 The arrival of Jesuit surveying techniques and cartography in China was, of course, combined with the introduction of Western knowledge useful for mapping and surveying. Matteo Ricci’s world maps, for example, for the first time introduced the concept of projection to China. More important, however, was the large amount of mathematical and astronomical knowledge that Jesuit missionaries brought to China, some of it of high relevance for surveying and mapping. This included geometrical and trigonometric knowledge, as for example introduced in the Jihe yuanben ༓۶( ءEuclid’s Elements) and the Dace Օྒྷ (The great measuring)18 as well as knowledge directly related to surveying, as for example introduced in Ferdinand Verbiest’s (Nan Huairen তᡖո 1623–1688) Xinzhi lingtai yixiang zhi ᄅ፹ᨋፕᏚွ( ݳAccount on the new sets of observatory ———
16 According to Ge Jianxiong (1998: 146), it was the most popular map in China prior to the establishment of modern printing presses. . 17 Cf. Feng Guifen 1986: 315 and Chen Li 1986: 323. 18 Cf. Bai Shangshu 1963.
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instruments).19 Some of the terms for instruments employed for surveying, as for example jixianyi ધૻᏚ for ‘sextant’ and xiangxianyi ွૻᏚ for ‘quadrant’, first appear in Jesuit writings from this time.20 As is well known, the Lingtai yixiang zhi gives numerous illustrations of instruments, as for example of the theodolite, and introduces principles of leveling as well (see Figs. 2 and 3). While the new mathematical techniques introduced by the Jesuits met with an enthusiastic response by Chinese mathematicians like Mei Wending ම ֮ ቓ (1633–1721) and Dai Zhen ᚮ ᔼ (1724– 1777)21, little is known on the question whether and how this knowledge was applied for surveying and mapping. The above-mentioned critique by Feng Guifen and Chen Li testifies, of course, that the cartographic and surveying knowledge provided by the Jesuits could be put to good use. This is demonstrated by a map of the Guangdong scholar Zou Boqi ም( ࡛܄1819–1869) as well, who, apparently on the basis of Li Zhaoluo’s map, compiled his Huangyu quantu ᝨ٤ቹ (Complete map of the Empire), completed in 1844, which was one of the very few—if not the only—map produced by Chinese during the first half of the 19th century which correctly applied a projection without mixing it with a rectangular grid (see Figs. 4 and 5). It was, however, only an individual effort and failed to exert any actual influence. Moreover, it was not published until 1874.22 What was especially lacking was surveying on a nation-wide scale—there was no follow-up effort to the efforts of the Jesuits prior to the 1890s. This stands in a glaring contract to the surveying and mapping practices in the West (and its colonies) where the constantly improved maps were to a very large degree the result of continuity in surveying and especially the efforts to span an ever tighter and more accurate cartographic net over the territories ruled, which soon lead to the establishment of permanent institutions dealing with surveying and map-making. While, of course, surveying in a country as vast as China is not an easy task, we may note that even the number of smallscale efforts was limited at best. It is thus certainly not by accident that some more far-sighted officials and scholars like the above-mentioned Feng Guifen in his well-known Jiaobinlu kangyi ீᯈᗝݼᤜ ——— 19 20 21 22
Cf. Verbiest 1674. On Jesuit astronomical instruments see Zhang Baichun (2000). Cf. for example Li Yan (1998: 192–254). Cf. Zou Boqi 1874. For a short description of this map see Wang Qianjin (1997).
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(Protests from the Jiaobin-Studio) desperately demanded better and more exact maps.23 Two small-scale efforts were carried out in the 60s of the 19th century in the Jiangnan-area, related to the post-Taiping restoration. Surveying of five prefectures in Jiangsu, which resulted in a map published in 1868, probably was a direct response to Feng Guifen’s call for better maps. Although highly acclaimed by some, from a modern perspective the superiority of the resulting maps is hard to see.24 More important for the modernization of cartography in China was the surveying and compilation of a map with longitudes and latitudes of the coastal areas of Zhejiang, which was initiated by the central government. In the district of Yuyao 塒 the task was commissioned to Huang Binghou ႓ᵳ—a sixth generation descendant of Huang Zongxi ႓ࡲᘂ (1610–1695) and well-known mathematician. Huang finished his task in six months, and his map was highly acclaimed.25 When working on the project, he found time to compile a short book on surveying.26 His Cedi zhiyao ྒྷݳچ (Essentials of land surveying) was first published in 1867 and largely based on works on trigonometry and surveying, which had been compiled by Jesuit missionaries or under Jesuit influence. Written in a clear style it can be considered as a down-to-earth introduction to some basic techniques of surveying and mapping, which became—as we will see later—influential during the last years of the century.
THE NEED FOR NEW MAPS New maps depicting the world outside became an urgent necessity during and after the Opium War in 1839–1842. Since there is ample research on this topic, I will not address it here.27 It is clear, however, that—as already hinted above—more and more scholars and officials considered better maps necessary for “internal” needs as well. This awareness, however, seems to have needed an external stimulus. Most ———
23 See Feng Guifen’s ႑ெख़ “Hui ditu yi” ᢄچቹᤜ (On drawing maps), “Jun fushui yi” ݁ᓿ࿔ᤜ (On equalizing taxes), “Ji hanliao yi” ᒝޒᑤᤜ (On fighting draughts and inundations), “Xing shuili yi” ᘋֽܓᤜ (On building up irrigation) and “Gai hedao yi” ࣾޏሐᤜ (On changing the course of the Yellow River), all in Feng Guifen (1998: 105–117). All these essays actually were designed to prove the necessity of better maps. 24 Cf. Shen Shandeng and Li Fengbao 1868. 25 Unfortunately, I have not been able to peruse this map up to now. 26 Cf. Zhou Binglin 1899, j. 23 (“Liezhuan” 16). 27 Cf. for example Drake 1975, Leonard 1984.
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calls for better maps, which I am aware of are somehow related either to texts directly translated from Western sources or came from authors who had been directly or indirectly exposed to Western maps. Even in areas where one would expect the existence of sufficient exact and reliable maps—like for example hydraulic engineering28— the awareness that better maps could help a great deal obviously only awoke when concrete examples of better maps had come to the attention of the officials in question. If one is in the possession of maps, one will be able to know where to dig canals and where to construct dikes. The elevation of the landscape will be known and even without leaving his house one will have a basic idea where the water should be stored and where to discharge it. This is the first benefit. If one wants to undertake a building project on a large scale, which requires a lot of labor, one needs to explore the public opinion. When the best [option] is determined one has to follow it. However, even then one has to fear that different opinions will prevail and large debates erupt. But if one has a map one can use it to prove every single point of one’s opinion and will not have to relay own empty talk. This is the second benefit. [...] When maps were drawn in the past, the method of drawing the distances according to the grid was not known. Therefore the maps and the real face of the country did not match, one would only get a general idea. Today the grid-method is employed but the scale is too small and the surveying is done carelessly. The smaller streams and the branch streams are not marked sufficiently clear. Moreover, the elevation of the landscape and the direction of the current [of the River] and where it is blocked are very hard to know from the maps. The one who seeks truth from facts will employ very careful surveying methods and establish clear-cut standards.29
Such a statement at the first glance seems to be nothing more than a “down-to-earth” approach outlining the usefulness of good maps for the purpose of flood-control. As far as I can see, however, such statements were rare prior to the 80s of the 19th century. Moreover, this passage was part of a prize-winning essay submitted to the Gezhi shuyuan ીೃ (Shanghai polytechnic), one of the first institutions, which aimed at introducing Western knowledge in a rather systematic fashion. Zhao Yuanyi ᎓ց墿 (1840–1902), the author of ——— 28 For a discussion of the use of maps for the control of the Yellow River, see Amelung (2000: 250–263). 29 Cf. Zhao Yuanyi ᎓ց墿 .(1887) “Shui han zaihuang pingshi ruhe yubei linshi ruhe bujiu lun” ֽ߀ޒؓழڕ۶ቃໂᜯழڕ۶ᇖඑᓵ (On the question of how to prepare for inundations and droughts in normal times and how to prepare relief measures) in: Xu Yuying (1897: 28a–31b).
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this essay, who was a well known physician and translator had cotranslated one of the first Western works on military surveying into Chinese and thus clearly was in close contact with Western knowledge on surveying and map-making. Already in 1870 there were officials who made a strong point of including surveying and mapping into the education at institutions where Western knowledge was taught. In a report to Zeng Guofan མ ഏᢋ (1811–1872), the managers of the Jiangnan arsenal demanded that modern techniques of determining the longitude, e.g. making use of a chronometer and tables, should be included into the curriculum of the Guangfangyanguan ᐖֱߢ塢 (Foreign Languages College) in Shanghai. In respect to maps they remarked that many maps that had been compiled during recent years, as for example Hu Wei’s ྍ (1633–1714) Yugong zhuizhi છ ಥ ᙗ ਐ (Thorough guide to the Yugong), were mainly addressed to historical needs but were of little practical use. For this reason all efforts should be made to use the surveying methods proposed by Feng Guifen and Western surveying instruments should be employed. Moreover, it was imperative to collect all Western maps of China which were available and to translate them into Chinese. This proposal was endorsed by Zeng Guofan.30 When in 1889 Wu Dacheng ܦՕⰗ (1835–1902), as director-general of the River-administration, proposed to compile a new map of the Yellow River based on surveying, he not only pointed out that there was an insufficient number of men trained in these techniques in China but noted as well: Coastal defense, the control of the Changjiang and the control of the Yellow River are all impossible without maps, and when the maps are not correct, then this is enough to mess up all efforts. [...] During the last dozens of years the science of maps (yutu zhi xue ᝨቹհᖂ) in all Western countries was constantly refined. The accuracy of Western methods of surveying and mapping was employed for compiling maps of the sea-routes and the Changjiang, only for the Yellow River there is no general map and there is no good atlas.31
The maps of the sea-routes and the Changjiang, to which Wu Dacheng alludes here, were by no means autochthonous Chinese productions but maps compiled by the British admiralty, which of course was well aware of the usefulness of such maps. These maps then were translated into Chinese and published at the Jiangnan-Arsenal in the ——— 30 “Zongban jiqi zhizaoju Feng, Zheng shang dufuxian bing”, pp. 220–235. 31 Cf. Li Hongzhang et al. 1890.
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1870s.32 Direct exposure to Western maps for Chinese during the second half of the 19th century thus not only could result in a drastically changed world-view but also contributed greatly to convince Chinese officials and mapmakers of the “power of maps” in respect to practical application. Of similar importance, of course, is the fact that since the 1850s a rather large number of works dealing with surveying and mapping was consecutively translated into Chinese. Already in 1859, Tan tian ᓫ֚ (“On the heavens”) not only introduced important surveying instruments but also in juan 4 provided a complete rundown of all methods which were available in order to determine the longitude.33 On top of this it introduced different surveying techniques and different types of projections. More influential, however, since related more closely to official sponsored modernization efforts in China were the translations done and published at the JiangnanArsenal, such as John Fryer’s (Fu Lanya ແᥞႁ 1839–1929) and Zhao Yuanyi’s translation of Auguste F. Lendy, A Practical Course of Military Surveying published as Xingjun cehui ۩૨ྒྷᢄ in 1873, Hughes, Mathematical Geography translated by Carl Kreyer (Jin Kaili ८ᄒ) and Wang Dejun ׆ᐚ݁ as Huidi fayuan ᢄچऄ and published in 1875 and Edward C. Frome, Outline of the Method of Conducting a Trigonometrical Survey, 3rd. edition London 1862, translated by Fryer and Xu Shou ஊኂ (1818Ω1884) and published as Cedi huitu ྒྷچᢄቹ at the Shanghai Arsenal in 1876. All these translations saw several re-editions and reprints and were included into important collections on “Western knowledge” around the turn of the century.34 Formal education in “modern” surveying techniques and mapping in China seems to have started in 1866 at the Fuzhou Arsenal and was gradually extended to a larger number of institutions, especially schools related to military needs.35 We do not know anything, however, about concrete surveying and cartographical practice or about maps produced there.
——— 32 33 34 35
Cf. Hydrographic Office, ed. 1874, Great Britain Board of Admiralty 1874. Cf. Herschel 1859. Such as for example Xu Xixue dacheng, cf. Sun Jian’ai (1897). Cf. Zhongguo cehui shi bianji weiyuanhui 1995: 105.
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ZOU DAIJUN AND MODERN MAPS As briefly outlined above, one major stimulus for the demand for new maps in China itself was the fact that some scholars and officials had been exposed to foreign compiled maps of China itself. Chinese who left China had even more opportunities to become acquainted with the results of foreign—mostly Western—surveying and mapmaking. It is therefore not surprising that Chinese diplomats, as for example Xue Fucheng 壂( ګ1838–1894), were particular critical about Chinese traditional maps. In an entry for 1891 in his famous Chushi Ying Fa Yi Bi siguo riji ࠌנऄᆠֺഏֲಖ (Diary of my diplomatic mission to the four states England, France, Italy and Belgium) he remarks: In respect to the subject of geography China is strong in exploring the past and weak in knowing the present. It is exact in depicting the central plains and superficial in representing the areas beyond the frontiers. In respect to drawing maps it is accustomed to the method of applying a grid in order to measure distances. If one forces something round into a grid, the longer distances will not fit [with reality].36
Visiting foreign countries not only could help to gain a better understanding of the shortcomings of the Chinese map-making business but could be used as an opportunity to collect maps and works on surveying and cartography. Just this was done by Zou Daijun ም זၫ (1854–1908), a comparatively unknown but, in respect to the modernization of Chinese cartography, extremely influential scholar. Zou grew up in a family of scholar-officials interested in geography and cartography. He was highly respected by reform-minded officials and scholars in the late Qing and had accompanied the minister to England and Russia between 1886 and 1889. During this journey he not only composed a diary of his trip which is full of geographical details but displayed a great interest in maps available in Europe and mapping techniques employed in the countries he visited. He collected a large number of maps and information on mapping, which he brought back to China. On his return he engaged in various enterprises related to mapping and surveying in Hubei and Hunan and for example composed a lengthy report to the “Office for compiling the Statutes”, in which he gave an outline of his views on surveying and mapping, which, according to him, was based on his own experience in the ——— 36 Xue Fucheng 1985: 237.
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West. In Hubei he also became a member of the Nanxuehui তᖂᄎ and in 1895 he founded China’s first Association of Geography (Yudi xuehui ᝨچᖂᄎ): The mapping offices of the English Board of the Admiralty and the Board of War were founded more than two hundred years ago; there was no interruption in their efforts. Other countries emulated that. In this way they acquired knowledge of the power and the strength of the others on the five continents.37
Zou’s Association of Geography was in the first place dedicated to collecting, translating and publishing foreign maps (of foreign countries as well as of China). Since he needed money for his venture, he tried to raise funds by selling shares for the maps, which were to be printed lithographically on solid Western paper. While there is little information about how successful this venture was, we know that maps of Siberia and Central Asia were published already in 1897. The fact that Zou’s “Statute for raising shared capital for translating and printing Western language maps” (Yiyin xiwen ditu zhaogu zhangcheng چ֮۫ٱቹࢵैີ࿓) was first published in the first issue of Shiwubao ழ೭ clearly shows that exact maps were high priority for Chinese reformers at that time.38 Although this venture seems to have been fairly successful,39 Zou Daijun and the Yudi shehui (which changed its name several times during the few years of its existence) did not succeed in realizing all their plans. Zou’s efforts, however, had a great impact on Chinese cartography, especially through his Zhongwai yudi quantu խ؆ᝨچ٤ቹ (Complete maps of the territories of China and the foreign countries) published in 1903, 40 which was used at the Imperial University in Beijing and served as a basis for a great number of maps published in textbooks and atlases during the very late Qing and the early Republican era (see Col.Pl. XXI).41 In this atlas Zou succeeded in unifying the different scales of the maps which he had used as a basis, and his maps were certainly superior to all maps published in China up to this time. Even Zou, however, who had ample theoretical knowledge and practical experience in surveying, was not able to go beyond the material ———
37 Quoted from: Zhang Ping 1991. 38 Cf. Zou Daijun et al. 1896. 39 I found a copy of the statute which shows that at least 165 shares of 50 yuan
each were sold—probably many more. 40 Cf. Zou Daijun 1903. 41 Cf. for example Yudi xuehui 1908.
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he used as a basis for his own map. His main source still was Hu Linyi’s above-mentioned Da Qing yitong tu, which, however, he tried to supplement with information gathered from maps based on actual surveying.42 To these surveying efforts we will turn now.
THE YELLOW RIVER MAP OF 1889 In the sections above, I have tried to outline, how more and more knowledge on mapping and surveying became available to scholars and officials interested in the field since the 50s of the 19th century. The question I want to take up now is how this knowledge was translated into “cartographic practice”. One of the areas where the need for exact maps was perceived as particularly urgent was hydraulic engineering along the Yellow River. On the one hand this was due to the fact that officials, as outlined above, had been exposed to Western maps and had become convinced that such maps could be advantageous for river control. On the other hand this was surely related to the shift of the Yellow River in 1855. The new course of the Yellow River, which now flew through the Western part of Shandong into the Bohai-Sea, was more or less unmapped. Wu Dacheng was appointed director-general of the Yellow River administration in 1888 in order to engineer a major break of the River near Zhengzhou. Contrary to expectations, Wu, who was a friend of Feng Guifen’s, managed to repair the break in a surprisingly efficient way. As mentioned above, he decided to use his achievement to pressure the grateful court into financing the compilation of a map of the course of the Yellow River in Henan, Zhili and Shandong based on actual surveying using “new methods”. The resulting map, which was delivered to the throne and printed (lithographically) in 1890, was the first map covering a larger area for that surveying was done by Chinese using Western methods. Unfortunately, we are not well-informed about how the actual surveying was carried out. However, the available material offers some insights into the problems such an undertaking posed. The main problem seems to have been the personnel. Wu Dacheng, whose office was located in Henan, stated that there were not enough men wellversed in Western surveying techniques in Henan. According to the preface of the map, the problem was solved by transferring to the River more than 20 commissioners and students from the Arsenals in ——— 42 Cf. Zou Daijun’s preface in: Zou Daijun 1903.
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Fuzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin, as well as from the provincial mapping office of Guangdong (where Wu had served as governor before being appointed director-general). Not all of the persons working on the survey, however, had received an education in surveying or mapping. The well-known writer Liu E Ꮵ㖅 (1857–1909), who served as supervisor (tidiao ༼ᓳ) for surveying and mapping in Shandong, had some experience in river-engineering and some interest in historical geography, but—at least according to the available biographical material—had never received any education in mapping and surveying. The survey of the course of the river with a length of more than 1.200 kilometers was completed within the surprisingly short time of one year. The map had a scale of 1:36.000 and in its printed version was distributed on more than 150 sheets (see Fig. 6). Beijing was employed as prime meridian, but it remains uncertain whether or to what extent actual measuring of control-points for determining the longitude was carried out. While the parallels on the map are fairly correct, the longitude of some places could differ as much as 20’ from the actual value, which means about 30 kilometers at the latitude in question. This means that the accuracy of the map in respect to longitudes was poorer than the results from the Jesuit surveys. It is clear, however, that the measurements were not considered entirely correct even by the compilers of the map themselves, who pointed out that “the instruments were not sufficiently refined”.43 Some of the inaccuracies in respect to longitude may have been due to the decision to employ a grid and a projection—as pointed out by two mutually exclusive approaches—which are found on this map as well. While the Yellow River is mapped fairly carefully and in much more detail than on all previous maps, towns and villages are only represented as symbols, which suggests that at least in this respect no actual surveying was carried out.44 While this map probably was the first Chinese map employing “caterpillar”-symbols for depicting mountains, the lack of absolute values for indicating the elevation of the landscape was a serious deficit especially for river-control purposes. Despite these shortcomings, there can be no doubt that this map was the best map of the Yellow River available up to that time and actually remained the best map well into the Republican era.
———
43 Cf. Li Hongzhang et al. 1890, preface. 44 Cf. Li Fengqi 1983.
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THE HUIDIANGUAN SURVEY While the completion of the Yellow River map marked the first instance of the compilation of a large-scale map based on actual survey since the Qianlong era, another large-scale surveying and mapping effort was already under way. As early as during the Tongzhi reign it had been suggested to compile new statutes (huidian ᄎࠢ) of the Qing empire. Such statutes customarily contained illustrations (tu ቹ) including maps of all areas of the Empire. The actual work on the compilation of the statutes only began in 1886 with the establishment of the “Office for the Compilation of the Statutes” (Huidianguan ᄎ ࠢ塢), which stuck to the original plan of including illustrations and maps. In 1889 the Huidianguan issued a first circular to the provinces demanding the completion of maps of the entire province, the prefectures and every single district within one year. It was only in the next year, when the first maps were handed in that the Huidianguan realized that these were neither very exact nor by any means standardized. In consequence, the Huidianguan established a new office, the Huatuchu ቹ (Office for the Preparation of Illustrations), which was exclusively devoted to the supervision of the compilation of the maps to be included into the statutes. In 1891 this office issued a second circular to the provinces which was much more specific. In part this circular demanded that: 1. All maps should employ a northern direction, a provision that obviously had a rather strong impact—almost all maps compiled afterwards did employ a northern direction—we can thus speak of a rather effective measure of standardization. 2. The maps were to be drawn to a grid. For the provinces the border of each square should equal a distance of 100 li, for the prefectures one of 50 li and for the districts one of 10 li. Every square on the maps should have a length of 7,2 fen. While all provinces retained the original proportion of 1:10 from provinces to districts, the promulgations in respect to scale were not respected in all cases so that the scale of the actual maps varied from 1:200.000 to 1:300.000. 3. The symbols to be used on the maps were standardized. 4. The format of the explanations (shuo ᎅ) on the maps was fixed. 5. It stipulated that the maps should be based on “actual measure-
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ments” of latitude and longitude and the shape of the landscape (dixing )ݮچand it postulated that at least the provincial maps were to employ a conical projection (yuantu touying Ⴝංދᐙ).45 Given the widespread sluggishness or even resistance with which many provinces during the very late Qing responded to demands of the central government, it is surprising how actively the provinces reacted to these circulars. This suggests that the provinces not only saw the benefit of such maps for the projected statutes (and, by extension, for the state) but also expected to benefit from better and more exact maps themselves. We may assume that this fact was related to the increasing awareness of the usefulness of maps outlined in many texts on “Western knowledge”. The provinces typically established special offices (ju )ݝfor carrying out this work. These offices (or bureaus) often were related to the so-called “reconstruction bureaus” (shanhouju ৵ )ݝwhich had become widespread after the end of the Taiping rebellion. These mapping offices, called Yutu Zongju ᝨ ቹ᜔( ݝGeneral Office for Mapping) or the like, at their height were staffed with 30 to 40 persons for executing the survey and preparing the maps. Costs for one province amounted to 20.000 to 30.000 taels. There can be not doubt that this surveying and mapping project constituted a major boon for the fledgling “modern cartographic trade” in China. We can easily see this considering the large number of publications related to this project. In most provinces “statutes” (zhangcheng ີ࿓) were compiled, which on the one hand aimed at organizing the work to be carried out, on the other hand providing the personal doing the actual surveying work with basic instruction (see Fig. 7). Since modern methods were to be employed, these statutes had to come to terms with new literature on surveying and digest it into easily understandable and practicable advice. Except for the works translated by the Jiangnan Arsenal, one important source was the above-mentioned Cedi zhiyao, which had been compiled by Huang Binghou was for example partially copied into the statute for Zhejiang province 46 and appears in a book compiled in connection with the surveying efforts in Guizhou province, as well. 47 Huang Binghou himself worked as a consultant within the scope of the surveying efforts in Zhejiang but did not live to see its results. This shows, however, that the project provided job opportunities for Chi——— 45 Cf. Gao Jun 1962. 46 Cf. Xu Yingrong and Zong Yuanhan 1890. 47 Cf. Wu Xizhao 1891.
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nese scholars who were experienced or interested in surveying and cartography. The whole project was thus to a certain degree instrumental in building up a professional group for this new field, something which had not happened during and after the surveys of the Kangxi and Qianlong periods. On a practical note, however, the whole project faced tremendous difficulties. No province was able to meet the original deadline of one year. As Zhang Zhidong ്հ (1837–1909) put it in a memorial to the throne: In the districts there are very few scholars who are familiar with the science of mapping (yudi zhi xue ᝨچհᖂ). On top, there are no measuring instruments. For this reason we cannot complete the task in one moment.48
As in the case of the Yellow River survey some provinces tried to hire staff competent in surveying and measuring from other provinces which were more advanced in surveying and cartographical education.49 Surveying instruments had to be bought in Shanghai or more often than not manufactured in the provinces themselves. This, of course, was a major problem since experience on how to produce modern surveying instruments did not exist. Probably the most striking aspect of this major surveying and mapping effort was that it took place completely without the aid of foreign experts.50 This may have been due to the fact that the enterprise to some extent was viewed as “traditional” because the maps were to be included into the Huidian. On the other hand we may assume that the officials in charge realized the value of the data obtained and thus chose to exclude foreigners from participation.51 Foreigners, however, ———
48 Memorial by Zhang Zhidong GX17/12/20, in: Zhang Zhidong 1968, j. 31, pp. 12b–16b (Vol. 1, pp. 603–605). 49 The province of Anhui, for example, hired some of its cartographic staff from Hubei, cf. Furun (1896), preface. 50 It is interesting to note that the situation in Siam was entirely different. Mapping efforts in Siam to a very large extent were a reaction to the British and French efforts to map Burma, Laos and Vietnam. The first map of Siam, however, which was compiled during the 80s of the 19th century, was the outcome of a cooperation between Britain, France and Siam, cf. Winichakul (1988: 306). 51 The Huidianguan survey certainly would deserve more thorough research. A careful perusal of the published results should already lead to valuable documents. I checked the archives of the Huidianguan in the first Historical Archives in Beijing but was only able to retrieve very few material related to mapping and surveying. It seems quite clear, however, that much more cartographical material related to the Huidianguan survey is preserved in the First Archives. Unfortunately, access to this material is usually denied to foreign researchers.
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still responded to it. John Fryer, for example, published a lengthy article on surveying instruments in his Gezhi huibian ીნᒳ (The Chinese Scientific Magazine) in 1892. Of course, Fryer was not completely disinterested because advertisements for scientific instruments—naturally including surveying instruments—constituted the financial backbone of his publication (see Fig. 8). But it seems that Fryer intended to provide advice, as well. He attached a memorandum by Zou Daijun to the Huidianguan to his article, in which Zou outlined surveying practices in several Western countries52 and the surveying statute of Hubei province, which most likely was compiled with the help of Zou Daijun, as well. While Fryer’s description of the instruments to be used for surveying did not go much beyond earlier translated publications, his evaluation of surveying and mapping practice in China is still of interest. Since Fryer did not want to alienate his Chinese readers, he first carefully listed the classical Chinese sources testifying to the importance of maps and the accomplishments of Chinese cartography. The superiority of Western cartography was not due to the fact that “Chinese were not as intelligent as Westerners” but rather to the four following points: 1. The trade of surveying and mapping in China was not as specialized as in the West. Chinese scholars were not interested in surveying and mapping. Even though there were some men who were acquainted with the basic techniques, their number was far too small. Moreover, it was not enough to offer some training in surveying and employ these persons on a short-time basis, since in this way they did not have the opportunity to gather knowledge about the actual problems. 2. The Chinese instruments were not as refined as the Western ones. 3. The methods employed for measuring were not as detailed as the methods employed in the West. Fryer especially pointed out that for surveying purposes trigonometry (sanjiao fa Կߡऄ) was preferable to the Chinese gougu ֍ै method, since it was possible to calculate distances if one knew the length of one part of a triangle and two angles, which according to him was much easier than to determine two parts of a rectangular triangle as required for measuring with help of the gougu method. 4. The time available for surveying and mapping campaigns in the ——— 52 Cf. Zou Daijun 1892.
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West was considerably longer than in China.53 Maps of the provinces began to reach the Huidianguan in 1894 (see Col.Pl. XXII). Most provinces used the opportunity to publish their results as independent provincial atlases or maps themselves. In spite of the standardization efforts of the Huidianguan the quality of the maps compiled in the provinces varied considerably. Some of the maps which in no way met the standards promulgated by the Huidianguan were rejected. Contrary to the promulgations of the Huidianguan, by no means all results were based on actual measurement. Determination of control points obviously more often than not was not done by measuring longitude and latitude by astronomical means but by drawing on the maps compiled during the Kangxi reign. Especially mountainous areas—for example in Yunnan—proved to be a challenge that was not met by all surveyors. As the introduction to the Yunnan maps states: Mapping distances on the grid on the basis of real measuring could not be employed due to the large number of mountains. As to the topographical situation of the localities we could only make use of the maps forwarded by the single localities, consult the prefectural maps included in the Daoguang edition of the provincial gazetteer and the complete maps of the Empire compiled by Li Zhaoluo and Hu Linyi. Using a ruler, we made a careful calculation.54
It goes without saying that such a “survey” could not but result in serious mistakes, especially given the fact that the maps by Li Zhaoluo and Hu Linyi were nothing more than not particular accurate, watered-down versions of the Kangxi and Qianlong maps. Especially when examining the atlases published by the provinces themselves, it becomes quite clear that the whole surveying effort still resulted in a certain sort of “hybridity”. While at least partially based on modern surveying techniques, the Chinese tradition was still quite alive— many of the provincial atlases, for example, still employed old cartographic symbols (i.e. uniform three-dimensional representations of mountains which do not give any information of the height of the mountains in question) for depicting mountains etc.55 Great difficulties were posed by the demand of the Huatuchu to forward provincial maps which employed a conical projection. Most provinces stuck to ———
53 Cf. John Fryer 1892. 54 Quoted from Gao Jun 1962: 302. 55 Cf. Zong Yuanhan 1894.
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the time-honored practice to draw maps with a rectangular grid. In some provinces latitude and longitude were marked on the edge of the map or represented by dotted lines (see Col.Pl. XXIII), and one province went so far as to use the rectangular grid as frame for its projection. The only province which really tried to employ a projection was Guangdong, however, at the same time, forwarding a provincial map with the traditional rectangular grid (see Col.Pl. XXIV).56 But there were other problems as well. The surveying and mapping statute for Hubei, for example, demanded that in every of the 68 districts of the province five control points should be determined by astronomical means and that the lines between these points were to be used as baselines for triangulation. 57 Such an approach certainly would have been viewed as rather unorthodox by Western surveying and mapping practice: One of the reasons for carrying out surveys based on triangulation was that it was much more accurate than surveys mainly based on astronomical observation. Basing a triangulated survey to such an extent on astronomical observation would cancel out one of the major advantages of triangulation, namely that the whole system which was framed by the triangulation could be rather effortlessly shifted to its correct location within the framework of latitudes and longitudes if the values for the control-point, which was based on astronomical observation, should be corrected by more accurate measurements.58 Proceeding according to the provisions of the Hubei statute would make this impossible. Moreover, the statute does not detail how the different surveying results were to be related to each other and how in this case it could be dealt with inaccuracies caused by contradicting astronomical observation, which without doubt must have occurred. This statute, however, was still much more sophisticated than the one for Zhejiang, which completely fails to explain how the results of the survey in the different locations of the province should be related to each other and actually suggests that the determination of latitude and longitude should be carried out on the basis of the maps by Li Zhaoluo and Hu Linyi. These observations, as well as the perusal of the actual maps, make quite clear that the Huidianguan survey, although surely more systematic and in terms of cartographic “modernity” more advanced than prior Chinese surveying efforts, certainly cannot be compared with late 19th century sur———
56 Cf. Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’anguan 2001: 96–99, 103–106. 57 Cf. “Xinxiu huidian Hubei cehui yudi tu zhangcheng” 1892. 58 Cf. Edney (1997: 106–107) for India.
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veying efforts, as for example in India. It surely fell short of the goals of Western empiricist scientism and failed to “create a perfect geographic panopticon.”59 The exactness of the geographic archive still was determined in the office by means of what Edney has called “encyclopedic map compilation”60 and had not shifted, as it did in the West, to the field where the “cartographic truth” rested with the to a certain extent “mechanic” measurement results of the surveyor. This difference was not lost to Chinese scholars at that time. Liang Qichao ඩඔ၌ (1873–1929) for example remarked in 1896: There is not one good map of China. The map compiled by Hu Linyi is considered as being the best, however, it contains so many mistakes, that these cannot be counted. Recently, for the Statutes (huidian) which are to be newly compiled every province has dispatched specialized officers in order to conduct a survey. Since these, however, often copy from old maps; these [new maps] cannot be very accurate. For this reason it is imperative that everybody who wants to peruse maps use the ones translated from Western languages.61
MAPPING AND SURVEYING DURING THE LAST YEARS OF THE QING Surveying and mapping of course was of high importance for military needs. As outlined above, already during the 70s of the 19th century translations addressed to meet military needs were published and modern cartographic and surveying education was first introduced at various institutions related to China’s military establishment. Predictably, this tendency accelerated in accord with the efforts of modernizing the Chinese military. All military schools offered courses in trigonometry, surveying and map-making, which in some cases were taught by foreign instructors. We do not know much about how concrete educational practice looked like and which textbooks were used in the years prior to the turn of the century. At the Shuishi xuetang ֽ ஃᖂഘ (Naval college) in Tianjin, students were required to draw sea maps during each year of their education. The statute, which lists the requirements of the students, still notes that there “is no study of cartography in China” and that education therefore needed to rely on English teaching material. 62 Already in 1897 a first school specifi——— 59 60 61 62
Edney 1997: 113. Edney 1997: 104. Liang Qichao 1896: 6a. Cf. “Beiyang haijun zhangcheng zhaokao xuesheng li” 1983.
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cally dedicated to mapping and surveying was established in Tianjin, and until 1911 three more schools, operated by the central government, came into being. Military authorities in almost all provinces established special schools teaching surveying and mapping techniques. On top of this, institutions related to railway construction and mining as well as newly founded police institutions established courses in surveying and mapping techniques, 63 and between 1904 and the end of the empire in 1911 about 100 students studied surveying and measuring abroad.64 This shows quite clearly that during the last years of the Qing there was a rapid buildup of surveying and mapping and a very conscious effort to solve the problem of trained personnel, which had greatly hampered the Hudianguan effort. This, of course, was reflected in the available literature, as well. Since the beginning of the 20th century most textbooks on geography contained sections on basic surveying techniques, mapping and projections.65 Anthologies of what at that time still was called “New Learning” (xinxue) or “Western Learning” (xixue) normally contained extensive parts on surveying and mapping,66 and a rather large number of specialized textbooks was published (see Fig. 9).67 Different to textbooks on geography and most other scientific textbooks, it seems as if Japanese influence was limited. This may have been partially due to the Huidianguan effort, which had resulted—as outlined above—in a rather large number of publications that had already digested knowledge on surveying and cartography.68 The degree of change, which had taken place by 1908, becomes obvious if one examines the Imperially approved Statue for Survey of the Ministry of the Army (Lujunbu zouding cehui zhangcheng ຬ૨ຝ ࡳྒྷᢄີ࿓). This statute called for the determination of permanent trigonometric points with a distance of no more than two kilome——— 63 First efforts of large-scale city-mapping with modern methods were undertaken during the very late Qing as well. There is hardly any research on this topic. For a very brief introduction to the situation in Beijing see Wang Jun, Zhou Rong, Wu Jianfeng (2001). Even such maps could, however, have a certain degree of hybridity. For a beautiful example from Nanjing which is clearly based on a careful survey but still employs some three-dimensional pictorial elements see Cao Wanru et al. (1997, plate 131). 64 Cf. Zhongguo cehui shi bianji weiyuanhui 1995: 210–213. 65 Cf. for example Luo Runan (1909). 66 Cf. for example “Xiyi tongkao” (1902) which contains eight juan on surveying and mapping. 67 Cf. for example Zhang Yaoxun (1907) and Fu Zaitian, Jing Shangxiong (1909). 68 On the introduction of Western geographical knowledge into China during the late Qing period see Zou Zhenhuan (2000) and Guo Shuanglin (2000).
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ters of each other, postulated that height points should be determined, 69 called for a standardization of surveying and measuring instruments etc.70 Since the late 90s of the 19th century, we can find a number of maps covering smaller areas with quite “modern” appearance.71 Such maps mainly related to modernizing ventures as railways, mining, military and police. 72 Maps with a scale of 1:25.000 were compiled in 1905 in order to provide sufficient geographical information for large-scale war-games near Hejian in Zhili. 73 In 1906 the “School for military surveying” in Beijing announced its plan to combine teaching and cartographical practice by compiling topographical maps of the whole of China based on surveying in a scale of 1:25.000.74 Although this ambitious plan only could be accomplished in the 30s of the 20th century, it shows to what extent China tried to modernize its surveying and cartographic efforts. Of similar importance, without doubt, was the growing cartographic literacy, which certainly was a product of the changes in the education system and the inclusion of geographical courses into basic and higher education. As pointed out above, in this respect the efforts of Zou Daijun were of particular relevance and the atlases published by him and his Geographical Association became quite popular. One important prerequisite for this was the spreading of more advanced printing techniques as copper engraving and, in particular, lithography. In this way Chinese of all walks of life became interested in modern maps. The fact that the Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan ೭ٱ塢), which always was quite sensitive to new business opportunities, published a very modern looking atlas in 1905 cer———
69 Since no standard sea-level had been determined, all provinces used their own standards. This lead to major problems during the Republican era, cf. Chen Zhengxiang (1979: 54). 70 Cf. Liu Jinzao 1936, j. 241, kao 9853–9854. 71 The most striking example is a manuscript map of Mineral Resources in Chengde prefecture dating from 1896, which not only employs longitudes on the basis of Greenwich as prime meridian but also employs contours for geomorphologic features—up to now the earliest Chinese map with employing contours discovered, cf. Chengde fushu jin yin mei tie deng kuang quantu. 72 Cf. for example “Pingxiangxian Xiangdongzhen Xiashankou dixing jieduan tu” ဉၢᗼྉࣟ՞Ցݮچኲቹ (Topographic cross-section map of Xianshankou of Xingdong town, Pingxiang county), from about 1905, which employs contouring as well, in Cao Wanru et al. 1997, plate 116. Note that the map does not yet employ the modern term for “contour line” denggaoxian, see also “Map of Zhili Province”, in: Ancient Map Research Team of Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping (1998: 268–269). 73 Cf. Beiyang lujun canmouchu 1905. 74 Tang Xiren, Yan Wenheng 2000: 443.
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tainly was no accident (see Col.Pl. XXV).75 The modern citizen was expected to be able to understand maps and use them competently whenever the need arose. When Lu Xun ᕙ߰ (1881–1936) studied in Japan, he came across a confidential map of Chinese mineral resources compiled by the Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources under the Japanese Ministry of Commerce. Together with a companion he managed to copy it. Printed in enlarged form from copperplates, it was distributed in major Chinese cities in 1906. Considered as a landmark in Chinese geological mapping—and probably rightly so—I mention this map here in the first place for its telling title: Map of Chinese mineral resources—a must for the citizen ([Guomin bixie] Zhongguo kuangchan quantu [ഏؘا᥋] խഏᢶ٤ቹ).76 All these surveying and mapping efforts—Chinese ones as well as the Western ones—, which subsequently became known to the Chinese, resulted in a much denser and much more reliable database for Chinas geographical archive. This is true especially for measurements for latitude and longitude which in due time were carried out for every major location in China and thus allowed the spanning of an ever tighter cartographic net over all of China. Very skilled cartographers were able to draw from these data and engage in encyclopedic cartography resulting in maps and atlases which definitely fixed China’s image on the maps.77 The ultimate symbol of cartographic modernity—a map based on a triangulated survey of the whole country—had to wait, however, until the 30s of the 20th century.78
WESTERN KNOWLEDGE AND THE CHINESE CARTOGRAPHIC TRADITION
In this paper I have deliberately focused on those events and developments of Chinese cartography which I consider as particularly relevant for the emergence of “modern Chinese cartography”, namely the ——— 75 Cf. Shangwu yinshuguan 1905. 76 Cf. Gu Lang and Zhou Shuren 1906. 77 On the importance of ‘modern’ maps for shaping the ‘geo-body’ of a nation
see Winichakul (1988). 78 The triangulation of Xinjiang and Tibet only was accomplished during the 50s of the 20th century. However, in 1934 Ding Wenjiang ԭ֮( ۂ1887–1936) and others managed to obtain maps which were compiled on the basis of triangulation from different departments of the army—which had been classified up to that time— and compiled the New map of the Chinese republic, which was the most accurate and best quality map at that time. Cf. Zhang Xiaohong and Wang Jun (unpublished manuscript).
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reception of Western knowledge during the era of the Jesuit mission and then again since the middle of the 19th century. To some extent this paper, however, relates to “traditional Chinese cartography” in a wider sense. As I have stated at the beginning, the “Needham approach” to Chinese cartography has been seriously questioned by recent scholarship. The yardstick of “modernity” and “science” is now considered by many as not particular useful for explaining traditional Chinese cartography. It is, nevertheless, interesting to briefly pursue the question how this dominant epistemological approach came into being. Some recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that the process of reception of Western knowledge in late Imperial China was accompanied by a twofold process of translation, namely an intercultural process of translation which was responsible for coining the terminology which was needed in the field and an intracultural process of translation when the newly coined Europeanized lexicon was used for explaining ancient Chinese texts.79 While this second process is particular striking in those disciplines and areas which were largely absent in traditional Chinese discourse, like for example in the cases of logic and mechanics,80 we can observe it in respect to Chinese cartography, as well. I actually would suggest that it was exactly this process which laid the foundation for the dominant approach for analyzing traditional Chinese surveying and cartographic artifacts. As in other cases, the reception of new knowledge and its application on the Chinese tradition took place almost simultaneously, although, of course, the explanations offered in general became much more sophisticated in due time. Drawing attention to precedence of antiquity was an extremely widespread practice in China of the imperial era. This, of course, was true for surveying and mapping enterprises as well, and almost all works on cartography or maps themselves make reference to the alleged importance of maps for the administration of the Zhou. With the coming of Western surveying and cartographic knowledge to China it became common to establish parallels between the Chinese surveying and cartographic tradition and the new knowledge from the West. Already Xu Guangqi ஊ٠ඔ (1562–1633) drew a connection between Western trigonometry, which was imparted to China by Jesuit missionaries, and the Chinese gougu ֍ै method as treated in classical works like the Zhoubi suanjing ࡌ㌣ጩᆖ (Arithmetical ———
79 Cf. Kurtz 2003. 80 Cf. Amelung 2001.
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Classic of the Zhou Gnomon) and the Jiuzhang suanshu ີጩ (Nine chapters of arithmetical arts).81 This topic was later taken up and appeared in numerous works during the late Qing82 and to a certain extent became part of the ubiquitous discourse of the “Chinese origin of Western knowledge” (Xixue zhongyuan ۫ᖂխᄭ).83 Even more important, however, were the references to Pei Xiu’s ፶ߐ now famous ‘six principles’ (liu ti ք᧯) of mapping. These are, of course, recorded in the Jinshu வ (History of the Jin-Dynasty) and were widely known, but the “scientific principles” employed by him (which are arguably less clear than Needham thinks) only were recognized as being “scientific” when Chinese cartographers who had been exposed to Western surveying and mapping knowledge postulated similarities between Pei Xiu’s principles and ideas visible on Western maps, which of course would suggest that “modern” mapping techniques had existed in China for a long time and maybe even had been the basis for the development of Western cartography. At the height of the Huidianguan mapping effort in 1891 the Shanghai Polytechnic, which was devoted to the dissemination of Western sciences, in its examination essay scheme asked two questions which related modern surveying and mapping to the Chinese tradition. One of the questions was “Describe the similarity between the Zoubi suanjing and the Western methods of determining curves and straight lines by trigonometry”, the other was “Explain that the Western methods of surveying and mapping are the same as Pei Xiu’s six principles”.84 Some of the prize-winning essays were written by scholars who were interested or even had experience in modern surveying and mapping techniques. 85 One of the essays was even included into one of the prestigious and widely read sequels to the Essays on statecraft (Jingshi wenbian ᆖ֮ᒳ) published in 1898. Examining some of these essays, one cannot help thinking of a Needham avant la lettre explaining Pei Xiu’s cryptic text. The reading of these scholars, how——— 81 Cf. Xu Guangqi 1993: 21–23. 82 Cf. Engelfriet 1998: 407–415. Actually, in some bilingual dictionaries of the
late Qing gougu was used as the Chinese equivalent to ‘trigonometry’; see for example Yen (1910). In the Beiyang xuetang prior to the turn of the century trigonometry apparently was referred to as sanjiao gougu. 83 Cf. Quan Hansheng 1935. 84 Cf. “Zhoubi jing yu xifang pinghu sanjiao xiangjin shuo” ࡌ㌣ᆖᝨֱ۫ؓ Կߡઌ२ᎅ and “Xifa celiang huitu ji Pei Xiu zhi tu liuti jie” ۫ऄྒྷၦᢄቹܛ፶ߐ ࠫቹք᧯ᇞ, in: Xu Yuying (1897, spring 1891). 85 Such as Zhu Zhengyuan إڹց who had taken part in the compilation of a map of the coastal areas of Zhejiang and the brothers Ye Han ᆺᡤ and Ye Lan ᆺᣴ, who wrote an introduction to Western cartographic questions.
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ever, was not necessarily exactly similar to Needham’s. While Needham, who was quite fond of the rectangular grid, went to considerable lengths to explain that the principle of zhun wang ᄷඨ means to arrange a map according to the rectangular grid, one of the essayists holds that zhun wang means nothing else than measuring longitude and latitude,86 while another likens it to the method of determining the baseline for conducting a triangulation.87 Here, I certainly do not wish to pretend being able to solve the problem what Pei Xiu may have meant,88 but rather want to draw attention to the point that the modernization of surveying and mapping in China not only was responsible for creating maps of a completely new style but also helped to establish a discourse on the history of Chinese cartography, which to some extent keeps its validity even today.
CONCLUSION In this paper I have tried to outline some aspects of the modernization of surveying and mapping techniques and institutions during the last 60 years of the Qing dynasty. I have shown that large scale surveying and mapping projects by employing modern techniques in China after the completion of the Qianlong surveys only started in the 80s of the 19th century with the Yellow River survey and the Huidianguan survey initiated in 1886, but not completed before about 1894/95. These surveys developed to a large extent on the basis of an awareness of the superiority of maps used by foreigners in China and translations mainly done at the Jiangnan-Arsenal in Shanghai. Combined with material compiled in course of the Huidianguan survey these translations remained influential until the very end of the Qing. Although the results—i.e. the maps resulting from this survey—cannot be called an unqualified success, the reasons for this are to a certain extent similar to the problems encountered in Europe some 150 years earlier: The lack of men sufficiently trained in surveying and mapping, the difficulties in producing or obtaining reliable instruments, and, of course, the lack of sufficient funds. On top of this the Huidianguan ———
86 Cf. Zhu Zhengyuan 1898; for Joseph Needham, cf. Needham 1959: 539. 87 Cf. Ye Lan in Xu Yuying 1897: 10a. 88 There are at least two more explanations. The eminent historian of cartography
Cao Wanru holds that it means to employ a water level when measuring directions, cf. Cao Wanru (1983: 253), while Cordell Yee explains it as “regulated view”, which in his opinion “has to do with directional orientation”, cf. Yee (1994d: 110).
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survey was accomplished under considerable time pressure, a fact that surely influenced the results as well. It is important to keep in mind that the Huidianguan survey, although the directives of the Central government called for triangulation, still to a very large extent represents the so-called “encyclopedic approach to cartography”, since comparing and arranging diverse and surely from time to time contradictory data which came in from the provinces still took precedence over the “mechanic” and thus supposedly “value-free” surveying in the field. Although the surveys of the late 19th century did not immediately result in the establishment of permanent institutions for surveying and mapping, they did at least pave the way for establishing “modern” surveying and mapping institutions—a process which in China began shortly after the turn of the century and was mainly related to military and engineering needs. Such a continuity of developments prior to the turn of the century and the developments later made surveying and cartography to some extent different to almost all other areas of the sciences and humanities, where Japanese influence quickly became dominant and resulted in a complete “paradigm shift” in the early years of the 20th century.89 I do not see, however, a great degree of continuity between the “early modern” mapping efforts of the 18th century and surveying and mapping practice in the late 19th century. While the Kangxi and Qianlong maps were used, when available, the formidable theoretical and practical knowledge contained in the translations and works of the Jesuits and their collaborators did not play an important role. There was a sort of indirect influence since men like Zou Boqi and Huang Binghou were aware of some of the works compiled by Jesuits or under Jesuit influence. It is interesting to note that neither Zou nor Huang were real specialists in cartography but rather mathematicians with an interest in astronomy. One may speculate what role such men—as well as others like Li Shanlan who, except for his interest in mathematics, was well-versed in theoretical mechanics and was aware as well of the Jesuit’s writings as of translated works since the 50s of the 19th century90—could have played as an interface between Chinese scientific tradition, Jesuit translations and “modern science” ——— 89 As hinted above, probably the best method to prove this continuity would be to look more carefully into the terminology employed, which was stabilized much earlier than in almost all other fields of “modern” scientific inquiry. There is, however, up to now no systematic research on this question. 90 On Li Shanlan’s interest in mechanics, see Amelung (2001).
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coming to China since the middle of the 19th century, had the Chinese government more wholeheartedly decided on modernization. On the whole, however, one could even go so far and assign a negative role to Jesuit cartography, since the two most important maps of China in the 19th century were both based on the Jesuit’s maps without a proper understanding of the principles employed. If we accept the notion of “early modern” as an description of the Kangxi and Qianlong surveys91 and describe the surveying and mapping efforts since the late 19th century as “modern” in the sense outlined above, we would have to describe a rather “interrupted” road to modernity. While such a notion certainly has some appeal and may be usefully applied to analyze 18th and 19th century developments in Chinese history, it still supposes a kind of teleological development. But it may well be that in the case of the reception of Western sciences and technology it were precisely the “fault lines” which exerted the most important influence on subsequent developments. A more detailed study on the reception of Western surveying and mapping techniques in late Imperial China would certainly help to obtain a better understanding of this problem.
REFERENCES AMELUNG, Iwo. 2000. Der Gelbe Fluß in Shandong (1851–1911). Überschwemmungskatastrophen und ihre Bewältigung im China der späten Qing-Zeit. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ——. 2001. “Weights and Forces: The Reception of Western Mechanics in Late Imperial China”. In: New Terms for New Ideas. Western Knowledge and Lexical Change in Late Imperial China, ed. Michael Lackner, Iwo Amelung and Joachim Kurtz. Leiden: Brill, pp. 197–232. ANCIENT MAP RESEARCH TEAM OF CHINESE ACADEMY OF SURVEYING AND MAPPING, comp. 1998. China in Ancient and Modern Maps, London: Philip Wilson Limited. BAI Shangshu ࡸػஏ. 1963. “Jieshao woguo diyi bu sanjiaoxue—Dace” տฯݺഏ รԫຝԿߡᖂАՕྒྷ. Shuxue tongbao 2: 48–52. BEIJING TUSHUGUAN SHANBEN TEZANG BU YUTUZU ࠇקቹ塢ء៲ຝᝨቹิ, comp. 1997. Yutu yaolu. Beijing tushuguan zang 6827 zhong zhongwai wengu jiu ditu mulu ᝨቹᱏΖࠇקቹ塢៲ 6827 ጟխ؆֮چ៱ײቹؾᙕ. Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe. “Beiyang haijun zhangcheng zhaokao xuesheng li”. 1983. ק௧૨ີ࿓ࢵەᖂࠏس. In: Zhu Youhan 1983, pp. 508–513. Beiyang lujun canmouchu קሁ૨ᘩ. 1905. Hejian fujin qiucao tu ࣾၴॵ२ ટᖙቹ.
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91 Hostetler 2001: 1–3.
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CAO Wanru ඦഠڕ. 1983. “Zhongguo gudai ditu huizhi de lilun he fangfa chutan” խഏچזײቹᢄ፹ऱᓵࡉֱऄॣᓫ. Ziran kexueshi yanjiu 1983.2: 246–257. CAO Wanru et al. ඦഠڕ, comp. 1997. Zhongguo gudai dituji. Qingdai խഏזײ چቹႃ堚ז. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe. CHEN Li ຫᖽ. 1986. “Zou Tefu ditu xu” ም֛چቹݧ. In: Tan Qixiang 1986, p. 323. CHEN, Xiaomei. 2002. Occidentalism. A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China, Lanham: Rowman&Littlefield. CHEN Zhengxiang ຫإ壁. 1979. Zhongguo dituxue shi խഏچቹᖂ. Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan. Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan) ೭ٱ塢, comp. 1905. Da Qing diguo quantu Օ堚০ഏ٤ቹ. Shanghai: Commercial Press. DRAKE, Fred W. 1975. China Charts the World. Hsü Chi-yü and his Geography of 1848 (Harvard East Asian Monographs 64), Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press. EDNEY, Matthew H. 1997. Mapping an Empire. The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843, Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. ENGELFRIET, Peter. 1998. Euclid in China. The Genesis of the First Chinese Translation of Euclid’s Elements Books 1–VI (Jihe yuanben; Beijing 1607) and its Reception up to 1723. Leiden: Brill. FENG Guifen ႑ெख़. 1986. “Ba Wujin Li shi ‘Yudi tu’ hou” ၐࣳၞּޕᝨچቹ৵. In: Tan Qixiang 1986, p. 315. ——. 1998. Jiaobinlu kangyi ீᯈᗝݼᤜ . Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe. FROME, Edward C. 1876. Cedi huitu ྒྷچᢄቹ (Outline of the Method of Conducting a Trigonometrical Survey), tr. by John Fryer and Xu Shou ஊኂ, Shanghai: Jiangnan zhizaoju. FRYER, John (Fu Lanya ແᥞႁ). 1892. “Cehuiqi tushuo”. ྒྷᢄᕴቹᎅ. Gezhi huibian Spring 1892: 2–38. FU Zaitian ແ ضڇand Jing Shangxiong ནࡸႂ. 1909. Cehuixue ྒྷᢄᖂ, Beijyang lujunbu bianyiju. FURUN 壂ᑮ, comp. 1896. Jiangnan Anhui quantu ۂতڜᚧ٤ቹ. [s.l.] GAO Jun ঊ. 1962. “Ming Qing liangdai quanguo he shengqu dituji bianzhi gaikuang” ࣔ堚ࠟז٤ഏࡉઊچቹႃᒳࠫᄗउ. Cehui xuebao (Acta Geodetica et Cartographica Sinica) 5.4: 289–306. GE Jianxiong ᆼᏦႂ. 1998. Zhongguo gudai de ditu cehui խഏזײऱچቹྒྷᢄ. Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan. GREAT BRITAIN BOARD OF ADMIRALITY. 1874. Changjiang tushuo ९ۂቹᎅ (Annotated Map of the Changjiang), tr. by John Fryer and Wang Dejun ׆ᐚ݁. Shanghai: Jiangnan zhizaoju. GU Lang and Zhou Shuren ࡌԳ, comp. 1906. (Guomin bi xie) Zhongguo kuangwu quantu ΰഏؘا᥋αխഏႣ٤ቹ. Shanghai. GUO Shuanglin ພᠨࣥ. 2000. Xichao jidang xia de wan Qing dilixue ۫ᑪᖿᘒՀऱ ඡ堚چᖂ. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. HARLEY, J.B. 1989. “Deconstructing the Map.” Cartographica 26.2: 1–20. HARLEY, J.B. and David WOODWARD, eds. 1994. The History of Cartography, Vol. 2, Book. 2: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies.Chicago – London: University of Chicago Press. HERSCHEL, John F. 1859. Tan tian ᓫ֚ (An outline of astronomy), tr. by Alexander Wylie and Li Shanlan ޕᥞ. Shanghai: Mohai shuguan. HOSTETLER, Laura. 2001. Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. HU Linyi ࣥᜠ and YAN Shusen ᣤᖫཤ, comp. 1863. Huangchao zhongwai yitong yutu ཛխ؆ԫอᝨቹ.
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ZHONGGUO DIYI LISHI DANGANGUAN խഏรԫᖵᚾூ塢, ed. 2001. Aomen lishi ditu jingxuan ᖾ॰ᖵچቹ壄ᙇ. Beijing: Huawen chubanshe. ZHOU Binglin ࡌ᧵, comp. 1899. Yuyao xianzhi 塒ᗼݳ. ZHU Youhan ڶڹ㝧, ed. 1983. Zhongguo jindai xuezhi ziliao խഏ२זᖂࠫற. Vol. 1, part 1. Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue chubanshe. ZHU Zhengyuan إڹց. 1898. “Xi fa celiang huitu ji Jin Pei Xiu zhitu liutu jie” ۫ ऄྒྷၦᢄቹܛ८፶ߐࠫቹք᧯ᇞ. In: Huangchao jingshi wen sanbian ཛᆖ ֮Կᒳ, ed. Chen Zhongyi ຫ࢘ଘ. Baowen shuju, j. 9, pp. 1aΩ3a. ZONG Yuanhan ࡲᄭᡤ, ed. 1894. Zhejiang quansheng yutu bing shuiludao liji ௨ۂ ٤ઊᝨቹࠀֽຬሐߺಖ. Zhejiang guanshuju. “Zongban jiqi zhizaoju Feng, Zheng shang dufuxian bing” (3.4.1870) ᜔ᖲᕴݝ፹ ທݝ႑ΔᔤՂᅮᐿᖆᆊ. In: Zhu Youhan, ed. 1983, pp. 220–235. ZOU Boqi ም࡛܄. 1874. Huangyu quantu ᝨ٤ቹ. ZOU Daijun ምזၫ. 1892. “Shang Huidianguan cehui yutu shu” Ղᄎࠢ塢ྒྷᢄᝨቹ . Gezhi Huibian (Spring): 30–34. ZOU Daijun ምזၫ et al., 1896. Yiyin xiwen ditu zhaogu zhangcheng چ֮۫ٱቹ ࢵैີ࿓. Shiwubao ழ೭ Guangxu 22/7/1. ZOU Daijun ምזၫ. 1903. Zhongwai yudi quantu խ؆ᝨچ٤ቹ. Wuhan: Hubei yudi xuehui. ZOU Zhenhuan ምᛩ. 2000. Wan Qing xifang dilixue zai Zhongguo ඡ堚ֱ۫چ ᖂڇխഏ. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe.
Fig. 1: Page of Hu Linyi 1863. Note the dotted lines superimposed on the rectangular grid representing latitudes and longitudes. Longitude is indicated at the upper margin of the map, the prime meridian runs through Peking.
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Fig. 2: Surveying instruments in Verbiest 1674. Upper right side shows a theodolite.
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Fig. 3: Verbiest 1674. Illustration shows leveling technique.
[Fig. 4: Zou Boqi 1874. General map. Note the projection.
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Fig. 5: Zou Boqi 1874, detail: Map shows the Bohai-Sea. Parallels are marked on the right side of the maps, meridians on the lower margin of the map. Prime meridian runs through Beijing.
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Fig. 6: Page of Li Hongzhang et al. 1890. Note the caterpillar relief employed for showing mountains. Arrows in the river show the direction and speed of current. Latitude and longitude are marked on the margin of the map only.
Fig. 7: Page from Xu Yingrong and Zong Yuanhan 1890. Gives instructions on how to carry out surveying and map-drawing in the province of Zhejiang.
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Fig. 8: Advertisement for surveying instruments (theodolite) from Fryer’s Gezhi huibian 1892.
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Fig. 9: Page from Zhang Yaoxun 1907. Textbook for surveying and mapping employed at military schools. Page shows Forbidden city and Coal hill as example of how to employ modern surveying techniques.
INDEX acupuncture 25, 28, 29, 41, 43, 46, 60, 64, 386, 390, 394–395, 398–399, 638, 641, 648–649 advertisements 702 algorithm 19, 249, 252, 437, 442, 446– 447, 449–452 Alley, Rewi 626, 632 An Zhizhai ַڜស 443 anatomy 5, 54, 387, 390, 469, 479–480, 636–637, 647, 650–664 ancestral temple 112 animals 174, 236, 242, 346, 386, 409– 413, 475, 487, 540, 582 Anyang ڜၺ 83, 90–91, 93, 100 apocrypha (chenwei ᨅᒮ) 15, 38, 117; see also wei (weft-text/apocrypha) arc 435 Arnheim, Rudolph 592 Association of Geography, see Yudi xuehui 696 astrology 15, 17, 21–22, 152–153, 170, 174–175, 243, 431, 433; see also tianwen ֚֮ – Astrological Bureau 435 astronomy, astronomical 2, 6, 31, 33, 51, 56, 141, 143, 169, 194, 196, 199, 224, 243, 245, 429–431, 433–434, 480, 544, 688–690, 703–704, 712; see also tianwen ֚֮ – Astronomical Bureau, see Sitian jian 433 – knowledge 689 – observation 688, 704 autopsy 53, 636–660 axiomatic system 455 Ba nian xiangbang Lu Buwei ji Զڣઌ ߶ܨլଁ༰ 112 baimiao ػ༴ 474 banner (fan ᐑΔ) 170, 172–173, 175, 177–181, 184, 186; see also tokens Bao Huanzhi ᚁհ 435 Bao Shan ᚁ՞ 475, 490, 497, 514, 519 Bao Xi ץᘂ 454
Bartholin, Thomas 663 base (of a right-angle triangle), see gou Basic Annals (benji ءધ) 200, 295, 301 Bauhin, Gaspar 660, 661, 662, 664, 683 Beijing ࠇק31, 141, 420, 421, 530, 571, 594–595, 597, 686, 688–689, 696, 698, 701, 706–707, 722 – Beijing Library 594–595, 597 bencao ء౻ 53, 469, 475, 478, 487– 493, 505, 507, 511–515, 545; see also Bencao gangmu; Bencao yuanshi; Chongxiu zhenghe jingshi zhenglei beiyong bencao; Daguan bencao; Jingshi zhenglei beiji bencao; Jiuhuang bencao; Zhenglei bencao Bencao gangmu ء౻ጼ ؾ29, 469, 487–499, 505, 511–513; see also bencao Bencao yuanshi ء౻ࡨ 469, 477, 491; see also bencao Besson, Jacques 582 Bi Gongchen ฅ߭ 661, 662, 665 Bi Yuan ฅީ 218, 228, 229, 230, 233– 236, 252, 253, 259 Bian Que ਇᣙ 384, 652 Bianmin tuzuan ঁاቹᤊ 528, 533, 535, 539, 546, 559 biao । ‘‘tables’’ 6, 24, 36, 50, 54, 55, 295–311; see also tables – horizontal tables 296–298, 303 – vertical tables 296–297, 303, 310 – nianbiao ڣ। (‘‘year tables’’) 296, 297 – Fuyang Year Table 297–299, 301 – shibiao । (‘‘generation tables’’) 296 – yuebiao ִ। (‘‘month tables’’) 296 biao-‘‘Indicators’’/‘‘Indications’’ 172, 231, 237 Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris) 464, 594–595 Biographies (liezhuan ٨ႚ) 3, 29, 98, 200, 295; see also Lienü zhuan blast furnace 617–619, 627–629
728
INDEX
boji ጦ 616 bones 14, 53, 54, 83–84, 86, 95, 139, 144, 325, 635, 637–672, 680; see also oracle-bones Book of Changes 16–17, 35, 56, 101, 140, 346, 454, 656; see also Yijing, Zhouyi breath cultivation 388, 395, 404–405, 407 Bretschneider, Emil 493, 594 British admiralty 693 bronze inscriptions 13–15, 83, 110–111, 113, 114, 124 Brunfels, Otto 467, 487 bu ( ޡa unit of measurement of length) 257, 443, 445–447 Buddha 316, 318, 320–324, 326, 328– 329, 330–331, 333–336 Buddhism and Buddhist uses of tu; see also ‘‘mandalas’’ 22–23, 316–321, 323–326, 333, 336, 665 calendar 15, 22, 25, 139, 142–144, 148, 150–151, 299, 431, 433, 523, 652 – calendary tablet 151 – Wufeng sannian նᏕԿ ڣ143 see also shen 壀 ‘‘spirit’’: shensha 壀 ᅉ (calendary spirits) capital (du ຟ) 21, 28, 31, 39, 88, 90, 116, 256, 297, 300, 303, 525, 572, 661, 696 carbon 618–619 cardinal points 223, 240, 244–245, 437 cartography 5–7, 9, 33, 50, 64, 70, 218– 221, 226, 228–230, 683–726; see also ‘‘maps’’ – cartographic literacy 707 Casserius, Julius 663 Castiglione 688 cauldrons (ding ቓ) 112, 145, 231, 233– 235, 259; see also bronze inscriptions – Nine Cauldrons (Jiuding ቓ) 233–234, 236, 259 – Xia Cauldrons (Xia ding ቓ) 231 Cedi huitu ྒྷچᢄቹ 694 Cedi zhiyao ྒྷݳچ 691, 700 celestial patterns 27, 433; see also tianwen Central Asia 696 Chan, Wing-tsit 341, 343, 346 Chang’an ൄ ڜ21, 297, 300–303 Changjiang 693
channel/vessel (mai ౧) 41, 61, 384, 386–415, 419 chao च 618 chaonihui ᑪࣽ ۊ620 Chavannes, Édouard 6–8, 229–232, 250–251, 260, 295 Chen Chun ຫෆ 345, 347 Chen Hongshou ຫੋፅ 473 Chen Li ຫᖽ 689–690 Chengshi moyuan ࿓ּᕠ 464, 468 chenwei ᨅᒮ, see apocrypha, wei (wefttext) chi ֡ (a unit of measurement of length) 197, 435, 438, 577–579, 619, 638 chi ᕡ ‘‘teeth’’ 539, 579, 639 ‘‘Chinese origin of Western knowledge’’ (Xixue zhongyuan ۫ᖂխᄭ) 710 Chinese parasol tree, see wutong Chinese Scientific Magazine, see Gezhi huibian Chinese worldview 683 Chongxiu zhenghe jingshi zhenglei beiyong bencao ૹଥਙࡉᆖᢞᣊໂش ء౻ 469, 475, 478; see also bencao choujiao ࢼᆬ ‘‘footing’’ 580–581 Christian gnosticism 385 Chu ᄑ 18, 144, 196, 229, 232, 237, 242–250, 259, 261–262, 290–293, 298, 383, 388, 396, 414 Chu Silk Manuscript (Chubo shu ᄑࢇ) 18, 196, 232, 237, 242–250, 259, 261– 262, 290–293 Chuci ᄑ 464 Chunqiu ਞટ (Annals) 15, 172–173, 177, 179, 186, 196, 295–296, 299–302 Chunyu Yi ෆՊრ 384, 392–397, 402 Chushi Ying Fa Yi Bi siguo riji ࠌנ ऄᆠֺഏֲಖ 695 cloth 39, 58, 113, 178, 180, 525, 529, 547–548, 556, 582 coccyx 646, 652–654, 657, 658, 679 Code of the Later Zhou (Da Zhou xingtong Օࡌ٩อ) 433 Code of the Song (Song xingtong ݚ٩อ) 433 colours/colors 49, 195, 197, 318, 426– 427, 429, 435–439, 448, 450, 464, 467, 475, 478–479, 488, 495, 497 configuration 18, 23, 36, 151–152, 227, 250, 261, 426, 437–438, 443–445, 448, 450, 452, 455 – three-dimensional 15, 25, 28, 42, 62,
INDEX 64, 195, 427–428, 437–438, 576, 581, 591, 703, 706 Confucius (Kongzi ֞) 35, 118–119, 199, 253, 296, 301 constitutive being, see ti 453, 454 contract (quan ࠦ) 111, 179–180, 534, 690 ‘‘cord-hook’’ diagram/pattern (shenggou ᢃራ) 18, 138, 171, 176–177, 186; see also TLV pattern, liubo – ‘‘four hooks’’ (sigou ራ) 138, 141, 144–146, 157, 171, 176–177, 186, 244; see also gou – ‘‘two cords’’ (ersheng Բᢃ) 138, 145 coroners’ charts 1, 41, 59, 641, 644, 649, 654 corpse 54, 59, 405, 636, 640–642, 649, 651, 658, 663–664 cosmogram 15, 18, 36–37, 40–41, 44, 56, 65–66, 152, 221, 227, 241, 260; see also ‘‘global’’ scheme cosmograph (shi )ڤ18, 36, 64, 194, 206, 245–249, 261–262, 294, 433; see also divination board – ‘‘pictorial cosmograph’’ (tushi ቹ )ڤ47, 246, 248–249, 291 – cosmograph design (shitu ڤቹ) 194–196, 199, 246, – textual cosmograph 262 cosmology 2, 8–9, 16–17, 37, 49, 55–56, 65, 72, 110, 113–114, 116, 140, 143, 147, 151, 153, 170–172, 174, 196, 198–199, 218, 224, 244, 345, 432, 437, 522, 647, 649, 652 – cosmological function 110 cotton gin 575, 579 criminal 5, 59, 434 Cun xin ֨ژ344, 351, 366 cyclical characters 437 Dace Օྒྷ (The great measuring) 689 Daci’en Օს (monastery) 115 Daguan bencao Օᨠء౻ 475; see also bencao Dai Zhen ᚮᔼ 38, 690 Dantu կஈ 112 Dao’an ሐ ڜ342 Daoism 2 Daoist religion 181, 183, 185 Daoti zhi da ሐ᧯հՕ 351 Daoti zhi xi ሐ᧯հา 351
729
daoyin ᖄ֧ 60, 385, 390, 395, 400, 406, 409–414 Daoyin tu ᖄ֧ቹ 24, 25, 46, 385, 390, 405, 408–414 Daozang (Taoist Canon) ሐፔ 232, 347 Da-Tang xiyu ji Օା۫ಖ 115 Datta, Bibhutibhushan 451 Daxinzhuang Օ߬๗ 93–94 De Artificiali P[er]spectiva 480 De humani corporis fabrica 467, 662– 663 De Stirpium Historia 467, 470, 474 de ᐚ (‘‘Virtue’’) 119, 143–146, 320, 349–351 definitions, Euclidean 425, 455 demonstration 19, 43, 186, 253, 344, 353, 436–438, 442, 448 demonstrative 126 Deng Yuhan ᔥࠤد, see Schreck deng , see division design 6, 11, 15–16, 21, 45, 47, 57, 61– 62, 66, 68–69, 71–72, 109, 118, 142– 143, 148, 152, 169, 171, 180, 184, 186, 195–196, 199, 246, 256, 262, 387, 464–465, 468–469, 479, 531; see also cosmograph: cosmograph design detail drawing 580 diagnosis 389, 391, 392, 637 diagram (tu ቹ) 2, 7–8, 11, 13–16, 18– 19, 23, 30, 34–61, 65–66, 69, 109, 169, 171–176, 186, 232, 341, 346, 426–455, 522, 535, 537, 550, 638, 642; see also tu, ‘‘graphic representation’’, ‘‘cordhook’’ diagram/TLV pattern, representations: diagrammatic representation – grid diagram 456; see also grid – mathematical 1, 41, 43, 65 – two-dimensional 15, 65, 438 dialect 124, 528 Diderot, Denis 662 dili چ, see ‘‘terrestrial organisation’’, ‘‘territorial patterning’’ dimensions 4, 7–9, 57, 63, 218, 254, 316–317, 344, 349, 427–428, 534, 538, 540, 577–578, 581, 586, 656 Ding Yunpeng ԭႆᣛ 463, 473 dingtie ᙍᥳ 616 Dionis, Pierre 663 dissection 54, 353–354, 452, 467, 636– 637, 649, 662, 664 divination 2, 4, 6, 14–15, 17, 18, 22–23, 25, 27, 64, 83–85, 87–88, 90, 95, 98–
730
INDEX
99, 101, 128, 139, 153, 169–170, 173, 175–176, 194, 243, 245, 262, 349, 433, 528, 635 – divination board (shi )ڤ18, 64, 194, 206, 245–249, 261–262, 291, 293–294, 433; see also cosmograph – on marriages and deaths 433 divine revelation 35 division (deng ) 17, 39, 109, 120, 139, 143, 147, 173–175, 225–226, 235, 240, 250–251, 259, 351, 446 Dong Wen ᇀ֮ 575, 596 douban 塐ࣨ 464, see multicolour printing drawloom 533, 556, 566, 582 Du Sishu congshuo ᦰហᎅ 341 Dürer, Albrecht 481, 499, 674, 682 Dunhuang (manuscripts) 21, 22, 25, 101, 139, 140, 143, 147, 151–152, 159–160, 165, 317, 367, 384, 398–399, 403, 429 see also calendar, Wufeng sannian dunjia ሜظ, see sanshi dynastic histories 24–26, 229–230, 295, 429, 431, Eda Masuhide ضۂ墿 595 Edgerton, Samuel Y., Jr. 1, 5, 52, 68–69, 590 Eight Trigrams (bagua Զ࠳) 348, 454 elevation 22, 301, 353, 692, 698 engineering 12, 31, 51, 569, 692, 697– 698, 712 Engineering and the Mind’s Eye 592 England 662, 695 Erlitou Բߺᙰ 85–88 errors 170, 185, 636, 644–645, 649, 651, 658 Erya ዿႁ 119, 495 etymology 110, 178 Euclid 425–426, 439, 441, 455 Euclid’s Elements 425, 689; see also Jihe yuanben Fang Yizhi ֱאཕ 661 Fangshi mopu ֱּᕠᢜ 468 fangshu ֱ 116, see specialist technical knowledge fanqie ֘֊ 120 Fanxin tu ᐑॾቹ (Diagrams of banner tokens), manuscript, Mawangdui 170– 186; see also tokens, banner Feng Guifen ႑ெख़ 689–691, 693, 697
Ferguson, Eugene 582, 592 fermentation 620 figurine 42, 383–423 – lacquer 25, 42, 64, 421, 424–425 fining 618–620, 630, 632 firebrick 617 fireclay 617 flood control 535 Forest of Brushes Academy 433; see also Hanlin Frome, Edward C. 694 Fryer, John 694, 702–703 Fuchs, Leonard 467 funerary park 15, 118; see also mausoleum, Mausoleum Plan, Zhaoyu tu, bronze inscriptions Fuyang ॱၺ 297–299, 301 Fuyang Year Table, see biao Gaitian ።֚, an astronomical theory 432; see also astronomy Galen 637 Gangyi ଶᑞ 646–647, 658, 664 Ganlu Zishu եᆂڗ 114 Gaozong ࡲ 115, 524 Gart der Gesundheit 467 gearing 579, 581 genealogies 8, 36 Gengyu shengji ౙ塒ໍ ݾ479 Gengzhi tu ౙ៣ቹ 28, 32, 48, 58, 69, 521–567 genshan ۤ՞ ‘‘Mount Gen’’ 150, 153, 168 geography 2, 55, 218, 224, 228–230, 234, 258, 480, 686, 694–696, 698, 705–708 geomancy 2, 6, 25, 27, 30, 36, 41, 262 geomantic compass 36 geometry 43, 49, 57, 71, 347, 353, 425– 459, 462, 474, 481, 689 – Euclidean 426, 441, 455 – geometrical figures/objects 43, 425–429, 437–440, 444–445, 451, 454–458 – yi ying bu xu אઆᇖဠ ‘‘mending void with excess’’ (geometric transformation) 19, 42, 440, 442 gewu ढ (the investigation of phenomena) 38 Gezhi huibian ીნᒳ 702, 725 ‘‘global scheme’’ 228; see also cosmogram
INDEX gold 117, 208, 617 Gombrich, E. H. 592 gonghua क़ 464; see also designs gou ( )֍( lit. ‘‘hook’’), the base of a right-angle triangle 436–450; see also geometry gougu ֍ै (method of calculation) 702, 709–710 Graham, Angus 405, 407 grammar 10, 349, 352 ‘‘graphic representation’’, ‘‘graphically represent’’ (tu) 2, 4, 6, 10, 13, 22, 25, 39, 41, 64, 66-67, 69-70, 72–73, 99, 178, 224, 229, 231–232, 234, 246, 260, 344, 346, 353, 464, 470, 535, 649; see also tu, diagram, representations grave chamber 117 Great Leap Forward 617 ‘‘Great Wilderness’’ (Dahuang Օ) 223–227, 235, 240, 261–262, 274–275, 278, 282 Greece, Greeks 386, 394, 425, 429, 455 Grete Herbal 467 grid 33, 36, 39, 50, 101, 143, 144, 177, 186, 227, 234, 284, 328–329, 335, 445–446, 456, 688–690, 692, 695, 698–699, 703–704, 711, 718 – rectangular 101, 688–690, 704, 711, 718; see also diagram: grid diagram Gu Bing 475 Gu Kaizhi ჱհ 463 Gu Yewang ມ ׆120 gu ै (lit. ‘‘thigh bone’’), the height of a right-angle triangle 438–439, 448–451; see also geometry gua ࠳, see hexagrams, eight trigrams guang ᐖ (width, the shorter side of a rectangle) 142, 440, 442, 443, 445, 446, 447, 455; see also geometry Guangyun ᐖᣉ 114, 120 Guanzi ጥ 18, 20, 141, 161, 182, 196, 234, 239, 285, 393, 410 guiren ၆Գ (‘‘nobility’’) 406, 414, 571 Gujin tushu jicheng ײվቹႃ ګ30, 56, 68, 70, 347, 490, 546, 595, 652 gunpowder 619, 620 Guo Moruo ພःૉ 112, 139, 196, 239, 285 Guo Pu ພᗖ 232–233, 235, 237, 250 Guodian ພࢋ 118, 184 Guofeng ഏଅ 253 Guoyu ഏ 20, 299
731
Gushi huapu ּᢜ 475 Haidao suanjing ௧ጩᆖ 431, 432 Haidao tu ௧ቹ 431, 432 Haijing ௧ᆖ 217–218, 220, 223, 237, 252 Hama jing ဦᝂᆖ 25, 384, 398–399, 402–403, 420–421 Hanfeizi ឌॺ 20, 232 hangtu ᩵Ւ 617 Hangzhou 47, 469, 475, 496, 524–525, 644, 661 Hanlin ᘃࣥ 52, 433, 544 Hanshu ዧ 15, 184, 228, 233, 235, 237, 252, 254, 262, 295, 303, 463, 636 Hao Yixing ಸᦜ۩ 217, 254 Harvey, William 662 He Ji ۶ഗ 347 hearing 1, 405, 637 Hefang yilan ࣾԫᥦ 32, 51 hekou ٽՑ, see rounded 120 hemerology 4, 147 Herbarum vivae eicones 467 hetu ࣾቹ (Yellow River Chart) 16, 35– 37, 41, 56–57, 109–110, 120, 433 hexagrams (gua ࠳) 16, 35, 41, 140, 170, 174, 346, 435, 454 historiographical narratives 110 hook, see gou, ‘‘cord-hook’’ diagram/pattern, TLV pattern Hou Hanshu ৵ዧ 254–255, 295 Hu Linyi ࣥᜠ 689, 697, 703–705, 718 Hu Pingsheng ؓ س297–298 Hu Wei ྍ 693 Hu Zhengyan ߢإ464, 497 hua (picture, painting) 2–3, 11, 19, 27–28, 48–49, 57, 59, 64, 69, 70–71, 112–113, 120, 232, 256, 462–463, 699 Hua Shou ᄶኂ 638 Hua Tuo ဎॲ 652 Huainanzi ত 138, 171, 182, 196, 224, 648 Huang Binghou ႓ᵳ 691, 700, 712 Huang Gan ႓ი 347 Huang Zongxi ႓ࡲᘂ 691 Huangdi neijing ০փஉ 386, 395, 636, 638, 640, 648, 652, 657 Huangdi neijing lingshu/Lingshu ০փ உᨋ 390–391, 395, 397–398, 403 Huangdi neijing suwen/Suwen 391, 394–395, 638, 648, 652
732
INDEX
Huidi fayuan ᢄچऄ 694 Huidianguan ᄎࠢ塢 (Office for Compiling the Statutes) 699, 701, 702, 703, 706, 710–712 Huizhou 462, 468 human skills 586 Huntian tu ྖ֚ቹ 432 Huntian tuji ྖ֚ቹಖ 432 Hushan shenggai ྋ՞ᄗ 464 hybrids, hybridity 41, 236, 242, 703, 706 hydraulics 6, 31–32, 51–52; see also Hefang yilan icon, iconicity 2, 49, 521–522, 534, 551 ideal organisation of terrestrial space 218 illustrations – anatomical 478 – scientific 470, 474, 477–481 – technical, see tu 1, 4, 34, 40, 49, 66–69, 586, 590–591 illustrative media – engraving 29, 53, 61, 66, 68, 139, 464–467, 469, 475, 479–480, 487, 494, 496, 498, 514, 520, 527, 536, 581, 640–647, 653–655, 657, 661– 664, 674 – copper engraving 707 – metal engraving 466, 479 – wood engraving 465–466, 643, 674, – murals 22, 28, 42, 64, 192, 524, 526 – painting 2–3, 11, 22, 48–49, 57–58, 61, 64, 66–67, 428, 454, 462, 464, 469–470, 474–475, 477, 480–481, 487–488, 493–495, 497–499, 521, 524–526, 529–530, 533–534, 548, 550–551, 556, 581, 588, 590–591, 635, 646, 665 – woodblock, wood-block 2–3, 11, 22, 25–26, 28–29, 34, 42–43, 45, 52–53, 62–63, 65–70, 463, 464––468, 474– 475, 478–479, 480, 487–488, 490, 521–522, 527–530, 535–536, 541, 546–547, 549–552, 556–567, 573, 581, 588 – (block)carvers 26, 45, 52, 66, 69, 462–463, 466, 470, 473–475, 496, 541, 573–574, 582–583 – printing 2, 25–29, 34, 42–43, 63– 66, 69, 232, 250, 346, 464–468,
475, 477, 479–480, 487, 490, 493, 497, 521–523, 528–529, 535, 549, 551, 569, 573–574, 581, 583, 585, 588–590, 594, 641–642, 645, 688–689, 696, 707 India 115, 328, 331–333, 336, 451, 686, 704–705 ‘‘Inside the Seas’’ (hainei ௧փ) 223– 227, 235, 240, 270–272, 275, 277–278, 281–284 Institute of Snjtra translation, see yijingyuan ᆖೃ 115 inverted script (daoshu ଙ) 303–304, 311 iron and iron ores 68, 531, 580–581, 615–621, 624–625, 630 Isagoge 353, 376 Italy 467, 479, 637, 695 Itǀ Tokuo ْᢏ䄧ߊ 295, 301 Jambudvîpa 219, 228, 333, 336 Japan 57, 70, 324–325, 334, 430–431, 527–531, 533, 543, 549, 570, 578–579, 580, 595–597, 665, 708,712 Japanese apricot, see mei Jesuits 33, 51, 54, 69, 426, 643, 660, 660, 690, 712 Jiangling ۂສ 383–384, 386, 387 Jiangnan arsenal 693–694, 700, 711 Jiao Bingzhen ྡྷऺૣ 69, 529–530, 533, 535, 548, 556, 566 Jiaobinlu kangyi ீᯈᗝݼᤜ 690 Jihe yuanben ༓۶ ء689 Jilei tu ᗨᣊቹ 354, 377 Jin Jian ८១ 479 Jin Lüxiang ८ᐌ壁 347 Jin Ping Mei ८ම 583 jing உ – ‘‘diameter’’ 197, 432–433 – ‘‘pedestrian route’’ 257 jing 壄 ‘‘essence’’ 333, 385, 391, 393, 403, 474, 490 jing ᆖ warp; classic, book, canon, sûtra 19, 23, 39, 234, 253–259, 316–321, 329–332, 335–337, 346, 432 – jing–wei ᆖᒮ relationship 39, 256; see also wei (weft, weft-text) jingluo ᆖ acupuncture system 386, 394 Jingdian Shiwen ᆖࠢᤩ֮ 123 Jingshi wenbian ᆖ֮ᒳ 710 Jingshi zhenglei beiji bencao ᆖᢞᣊ
INDEX ໂ৺ء౻ 469, 475; see also bencao Jinling ८ສ school of book illustration 469, 493, 505, 582, 588 Jinshu வ 710 jiu ߁ (moxibustion, moxa-cautery) 25, 29, 384, 390–391, 395–400, 402, 638, 641, 653 Jiu Tangshu ៱ା 429–430 jiugong ୰ ‘‘Nine Palaces’’ (method of astrological calculation) 18, 146, 147, 152, 164, 195, 206–207, 245; see also sanshi Jiuhuang bencao එء౻ 53, 469, 490, 545; see also bencao Jiujing mingtang ߁ᆖࣔഘ 398 Jiuzhang chongcha ີૹ 432 Jiuzhang chongcha tu ີૹቹ 430, 432 Jiuzhang suanshu ີጩ 23, 35, 42, 426–428, 430, 432, 434–435, 438, 442, 447, 451–452, 710 Jiuzhang tu ີቹ 430, 432 Jiuzhang tui yuanjing fa ີංႽஉऄ 433 Jiuzhang tuitu jingfa ີංቹᆖऄ 430, 432 jixianyi ધૻᏚ (sextant) 690 Junguo zhi ಷഏ ݳ254 Kangxi ൈዺ 30, 58, 69, 529–530, 534– 535, 660–661, 663, 687–689, 701, 703, 712–713 Kaogong ji ەՠಖ 38, 256, 540 Kaogongji jie ەՠಖᇞ 38, 540 Kaogu tu ײەቹ 468 kaozheng ەᢞ ‘‘evidential enquiry’’ 37, 55, 493 Karlgren, Claes Bernhard 121, 224 Katyayana 451 knowledge-space 683 Korea 219, 431, 445, 527–528, 530–531, 533, 543, 555 Kreyer, Carl 694 lamei ᥣම (Wintersweet, Chimonanthus praecox) 492, 495–497, 511–519 Laozi zhigui ۔ਐូ 245, 262 latitude 443, 688–689, 691, 698, 700, 703–704, 708, 711, 718, 723 Laufer, Berthold 489, 597 Leonardo da Vinci 479, 586, 636 lexicographer (zixue ڗᖂ) 115, 120
733
Li Chunfeng ޕෆଅ 432 Li Huang ✸ޕ345, 352, 368 Li Jimin ޕᤉၰ 434 Li Shanlan ޕᥞ 712 Li Shizhen ޕழੴ 29, 61, 469, 487–490, 492, 496–497, 505, 511–513, 515 Li Xiaoping ޕ՛ؓ 617 Li Yuangang ޕցጼ 341, 344, 349, 353, 366 Li Zhaoluo ޕ٢ 688–690, 703, 704 Li Zhizao ޕհᤏ 661 Li Zhongli ޕխ م469, 491 Liang Qichao ඩඔ၌ 705 Lidai minghua ji ᖵټזಖ 454 lidan ᖜ ‘‘plough pole’’ 578 Lienü zhuan ٨Ֆႚ 463; see also Biographies Lih Ko-wei ޕഏ 425 Liji ៖ಖ 38, 193, 196, 239, 396 Lijiazhai ޕ୮ን 624 Lingshu, see Huandi neijing lingshu linkages 581 Liou Kia-hway 453 Liri ᠦֲ ‘‘Day of Separation’’ 150 literacy 110, 573 lithography 696–697, 707 Liu Bang Ꮵ߶ (Gaozu ల) 298, 300 Liu Dun Ꮵၬ 435 Liu E Ꮵ㖅 698 Liu Hui Ꮵᚧ 19, 23, 35, 36, 42, 426– 456 Liu Jizhuang Ꮵᤉ๗ 661 Liu Juncan Ꮵܩᛞ 425 Liu Xi Ꮵዺ 122 Liu Xiang Ꮵ ٻ233 Liu Xin Ꮵ✛ 231, 233, 235–237, 250– 252, 262 liubo ք໑ game 18, 148–149, 152, 166, 171; see also ‘‘cord-hook’’ diagram/pattern, TLV pattern liuren ք֙, see sanshi Liuzhang tu քີቹ 430–432 Lize ᣝᖻ Academy 347 local gazetteers 21, 50, 687 location by position 153, see wei ۯ longitude 443, 688–689, 691, 693, 698, 700, 703–704, 707, 711, 718, 723 Longobardo, Nicolo 661 Longshan ᚊ՞ 85 Lou Chou or Shou ᑔ㙭 32, 58, 521– 552 Lu bang dahan ᕙ߶Օޒ, manuscript,
734
INDEX
the Shanghai museum bamboo slips collection 119 Lu Xun ᕙ߰ 708 Lu Zhe ຬ㹝 496, 498 Lujunbu zouding Cehui zhangcheng ຬ ૨ຝࡳྒྷᢄີ࿓ 706 Lunheng ᓵᘝ 97, 231 Lunyu ᓵ 344 Luo Hongxian ᢅੋ٣ 3, 33, 46, 50, 60, 687 Luoshu ᆵ (Luo River Writing) 16, 23, 37, 56, 57, 109, 345, 433 Luoxuan biangu jianpu ᧠ನ᧢ײጧᢜ 464 Lüshi chunqiu ּܨਞટ 172–173, 177, 179, 186, 196 magic 1–2, 7, 15, 17, 29, 37, 65, 89, 226, 247, 396, 410, 414, 433 magnetite 616–617 Maishu ౧ 384, 386, 389–396, 401– 402, 404 mai ౧, see channel/vessel Manchu 32, 469, 572, 594, 646, 663– 664, 678 mandalas 8, 23, 44, 313, 316–329, 331– 332, 334–337 mantic 4, 15, 17, 72, 84, 88, 93, 97–101, 117, 144, 146–147, 150, 152–153, 170, 174 Maoshi ֻᇣ 119 Maps, see also cartography – [Guomin bixie] Zhongguo Kuangchan quantu [ഏؘا᥋] խ ഏᢶ٤ቹ (Map of Chinese mineral resources—a must for the citizen) 708 – ‘‘encyclopedic map compilation’’ 705 – celestial maps (including star-charts) 20, 21, 27 – direction (of maps) 4, 18, 140, 146, 193, 195, 207, 217, 238–239, 241, 244–245, 252, 256, 258, 260, 287, 289, 319, 699, 711, 723 – Guangyu tu ᐖᝨቹ (Enlargement of the Terrestrial Map) 33, 50, 687 – Huangchao yitong quantu ཛԫٵ ᝨچ٤ቹ (Complete map of the unified Qing empire) 688 – Huangchao zhongwai yitong yutu ཛխ؆ԫอᝨቹ (Map of the Qing
Empire and Neighbouring Regions) 689 – Huangyu quantu ᝨ٤ቹ (Complete map of the Empire) 690 – Huayi tu ဎڎቹ (Map of Chinese and barbarian [territories]) 219, 229, 260 – Liujing tu քᆖቹ (Maps related to the Six Classics) 229 – map studies 9 – Sihai huayi zongtu ௧ဎ᜔ڎቹ (General map of Chinese and barbarian [territories] within the Four [cardinally-oriented] Seas) 219 – terrestrial (including ditu) 6, 20–21, 50, 217–219, 221, 223, 225, 228, 234, 238, 241, 245, 249–250, 258– 260, 687 – Yu dao shanchuan zhi tu છᖄ՞՟ հቹ (Map of Yu’s delineating [itineraries through] mountains and rivers) 229, 260 – Yuji tu છᇾቹ (Map of Yu’s footprints) 229 – Yugong jiuzhou qiangjie tu છಥ ڠᖅቹ (Map of boundaries of the Nine Provinces, according to the ‘Yu gong’) 229, 260 – Zhongwai yudi quantu խ؆ᝨچ٤ ቹ (Complete maps of the territories of China and the foreign countries) 696 materia medica 27, 39, 43, 469, 487, 491, 522; see also bencao mathematics 2, 7, 12, 23, 33, 37, 42, 51, 425–427, 429, 431, 438, 450, 455–457, 522, 544, 712 – ‘‘popular mathematics’’ 457 mausoleum 16, 117, 119, 195–196, 208 Mausoleum Plan, see Zhaoyu tu 195, 208, 240, 261; see also mausoleum, funerary park, bronze inscriptions Mawangdui ್׆ഔ 17, 21, 24, 113, 115, 117–118, 143, 151–152, 163–164, 169–171, 173–174, 179, 182–186, 243, 262, 383–385, 387–390, 394, 396, 397, 400–402, 404, 408, 412 Mayer, Albert 467 Mayer, Alexander 240, 335 measurement 29, 46, 117, 123, 195, 197, 403, 636, 638, 656, 670, 698, 703–705,
INDEX 708 medicine 2, 11–12, 27, 47, 54, 60, 387, 393, 396–397, 399, 406, 546, 635–639, 641–643, 644, 647–648, 655, 658, 660 – Chinese 387, 637, 639, 647 – forensic 635–636, 639, 642–643, 651, 654, 658, 664–665 – western 647–648, 660–664 – medical gymnastics 385 meditation 316, 318–320, 322, 326, 334, 343–344, 349, 665 mei ම (Japanese apricot) 488, 492, 495– 498, 516–517, 519, 707 Mei situ Yi gui 㯓ஈጊジ 116, 119; see also bronze inscriptions Mei Wending ම֮ቓ 56, 690 memory 7, 34, 44–45, 194, 313–314, 329, 343–344, 349, 352–353, 493–494, 572, 578, 589 Mengxi bitan ኄᄻᓫ 621 Mengzi (Mencius) 15, 194, 344, 370, 396 meridian 33, 386, 688–689, 698, 707, 718, 722 metaphor 46, 49, 60–61, 121, 128–129, 403, 413, 534 meteoromancy 169 Mianhua tu क़ቹ 531, 548–549, 551, 567 Min Qiji ၰᏘ֗ 478 Minggui xia ࣔՀ 257 Mingtang ࣔഘ (Luminous Hall, Hall of Light, Bright Hall) 15, 16, 34, 49, 57, 191, 193–199, 202, 204, 239, 398, 652 mingwu ټढ 38 mining 569, 585, 616, 706–707 modernity 704, 708–709, 713 Mohist Canons 406 Mopu ᕠᢜ 468, 480 ‘‘Mountains’’ (Shan ՞) 223–227, 236, 238 movement 18–19, 60, 144–145, 147– 149, 151–153, 197, 199, 245–246, 315, 319–322, 324, 328, 385–386, 389, 391–395, 398–399, 403–405, 408, 410–414, 440, 647, 663 moxibustion, moxa-cautery, see jiu ߁ 25, 29, 384, 391, 395–397, 398–400, 402, 653 Mozi ᕠ 257 multicolour printing 464 – douban 塐ࣨ 464
735
– taoban ठ 464 mural paintings, murals 22, 28, 42, 64, 112, 192, 524, 526 myth-construction 110 Needham, Joseph 6, 8, 27–28, 43, 219, 224, 229–231, 260, 469, 475, 493, 569, 576, 590, 620, 636, 685, 687, 709–711 needles 387, 394, 397–398, 639 Nihonkoku genzai sho mokuroku ֲءഏ ߠڇؾᙕ 430 ‘‘Nine Provinces’’ (Jiuzhou )ڠ17, 124, 229, 234, 256, 261 nitre bed 620 Nongqi tupu ልᕴቹᢜ 40, 521, 533, 536, 538–540; see also tupu Nongshu ል 40, 43, 52, 59, 63, 67, 71, 521–522, 535–563, 566, 576, 585–586 Nongzheng quanshu ልਙ٤ 52, 71, 539, 541, 543–545, 547, 559, 564 non-linear representations 150, 194–195, 243, 248, 252, 342, 345 numbers/computations, see shu 4, 197, 241–243, 252, 323, 325, 328, 336, 343, 435, 443, 446–447, 450, 452, 454, 464, 477, 638, 648, 652, 654–658 numeracy 110 Nuremberg Chronicle 468 observation 33, 51, 53, 58, 60, 63, 66, 67, 71–72, 114, 126, 169, 172, 175– 176, 386, 392–393, 405–406, 409, 413, 453, 468, 497, 534, 550, 615, 637, 644, 646, 649–651, 654, 658, 664, 688, 704 open-hearth steelmaking 619 Opium War 33, 691 oracle bones/inscriptions 14, 83–101, 137–138, 247 organs 54, 394, 397, 400, 403–404, 414, 478, 635, 637, 639, 641, 649, 661, 664 orgasm 404 ostensor 53–54, 640–641, 644, 646, 649, 654–657, 664 ‘‘Outside the Seas’’ (Haiwai ௧؆) 223– 227, 235, 238, 260–262, 273, 275, 277, 281, 286–287, 289 pagoda 345, 367 painters, professional painters 48–49, 56, 66, 71, 454, 463, 473–474, 479, 487– 488, 496, 499, 524, 527, 531, 583, 589, 591
736
INDEX
Pan Jixing ᑰٳਣ 569–570, 576, 583, 594, 597 Pan Jixun ᑰࡱ 31–32, 51 panning 616–617 papermaking 465–466, 480, 569, 575, 590, 606–607 parallelism 343–344, 348, 350 Paré, Ambroise 660–662, 664 Pei Xiu ፶ߐ 710 Peirce, Charles Sanders 341 pelvis 639, 643, 645–647, 657–658 perspective 52–53, 69, 529, 552, 581– 582, 645–647 phonetic loan 114 phonology, Old Chinese 110 physiognomy 6, 45, 172, 433, 635 see xiangshu plants 38–40, 43, 53, 63, 174, 346, 467, 469–470, 475, 487–520, 544–545, 548 – paintings of 43, 467, 469–470, 475, 487–488, 494–495, 497–499 Platonic philosophy 455 poetry 27, 38, 61, 525–526, 537 political legitimacy 110 polyphonic 115, 122 Porphyry 353, 376 printing, printed books 2, 25–29, 34, 42, 43, 63–66, 69, 177, 232, 248, 250, 346, 399, 462, 464–468, 475, 477, 479–480, 487, 490, 493, 496–497, 521–523, 528–529, 535, 549, 551, 569, 573–574, 581, 583, 585, 588–590, 594, 596, 641–642, 645, 688–689, 696, 707 (see also illustrative media, multicolour printing) ‘‘process-oriented’’ scheme 5, 148, 152, 219, 221, 223, 226–227, 234, 238–242, 244, 249–251, 260–261, 277, 281 prognostic 117 projection 688–690, 694, 698, 700, 703– 704, 706, 721 Pseudo-Apuleius 467 puddling 618, 620 pulse (medicine) 60–61, 386, 389–394, 637 punctuation 585, 595–596 pyro-osteomantic, pyro-osteomancy 83– 84, 86–88, 94, 97–101 Pythagorean theorem 436, 438, 450–451; see also geometry qi 386, 390–391, 393–399, 401, 403–
408, 412, Qian Baocong ᙒᣪ⓫ 425, 435 Qianlong ၼ 529, 535, 548–549, 641– 642, 659, 687–689, 699, 701, 703, 711–713 Qilüe Ԯฃ 233, 235, 262 Qinghui zhai 堚ᢄស 475 Qiqi tushuo ࡛ᕴቹᎅ 68, 474 Qishen suiri yongju tu 壀ᙟֲݝشቹ 431 quannong ᣠል (promoting farming) 522–523, 529, 534, 549 railways 707 Renjing yangqiu Գᢴၺટ 474 Renshuo ոᎅ 343, 359 renzi Գ (‘‘human being character’’ diagram) 237, 243, 422 representations 5, 13, 14, 32, 38, 40–41, 42, 53–54, 59–60, 66–67, 71, 109, 116, 138–139, 142–143, 153, 193, 224, 226–227, 230, 232–233, 235, 247, 252, 259–260, 275, 344, 428, 456, 467, 479–480, 487, 496, 498, 505, 526, 540–541, 543, 546, 551–552, 571, 586, 591, 635, 637, 639–640, 643–644, 646, 648–649, 655, 657, 660, 662–664, 703 – diagrammatic 4–5, 25, 51, 66, 72, 200, 232, 353, 447–448, 457, 666 – realistic 480 see also ‘‘graphic representations’’, visual representations revelation 344, 345 rhyme 109, 115, 120, Ricci, Matteo 689 root, lexical 109–110, 122, 125–128, Rucao bian ಀ౻ᒳ 491, 493–495, 508 runyue ၱִ (intercalary first month) 142 Russia 695 sacrum 645–646, 652–654, 657–658, 679 Saigusa Hiroto Կࣤ໑ଃ 570, 576, 595–596 saltpetre 619–620 Sancai tuhui Կթቹᄎ 30, 40, 47, 54, 63, 70, 478, 490, 543, 552, 638 sand-board 429 Sankai Կၲ (Triple root extraction, or Three types of root extraction) 431 Sankai tu Կၲቹ 431–432
INDEX Sanshi pan ཋּᒌ 111; see also bronze incriptions sanshi Կ‘‘ ڤThree Models’’ (methods of astrological calculation) 152 – dunjia ሜ ظ152, 433 – liuren ք֙ 152, 245, 294, 433 – Taiyi ֜ԫ 152, 184–185, 245, 247, 433 Sanwu li shuotu Կնᖟᎅቹ 431 scale 31, 34, 51, 229, 240, 350, 582, 586, 690, 692, 696, 698–699, 706–707, 711 scapular girdle 646, 650, 653 Schall, Adam 661 Schreck, Johann (also Terrentius, Deng Yuhan ᔥ )ࠤد475, 656, 660–662 science 1, 4–5, 7–12, 31, 37, 51–52, 59, 61, 71–73, 114, 120, 228–229, 239, 353, 400, 425, 467, 469, 474–475, 477, 479–480, 544, 569, 576, 597, 641, 647, 649, 654, 657–658, 660–661, 683, 693, 701, 709–710, 712, see also illustrations: scientific illustrations seal inscriptions 118 self-cultivation 46–48, 60, 72, 385–386, 393, 396, 398, 400, 403, 413–414 sensuality 59–61, 383, 385, 403, 406, 414, 424 sericulture, see textile production 58, 523–526, 528–530, 534, 540, 543 set-square 436 sexagenary cycle 137–145, 147, 150– 153, 158 – ten stems, shigan Լե 137–138, 146, 153, 156 – twelve branches, shier zhi ԼԲ֭ 137–138, 141, 153, 156 sexagenary decade (xun )ڲ139, 144, 149 sexual cultivation 393, 402, 404, 408, 412 shading 69, 467, 474, 581, 646, 653, 664 Shanfu Shan ding ᘇ֛՞ቓ 112; see also bronze inscriptions Shang 14, 83–84, 88–91, 93–97, 99– 100, 111, 114, 116, 120, 124, 137–139, 151, 178, 193, 218, 224, 227, 300 Shangshu ࡸ 114, 180, 224, 360, 689 Shanhai jing ՞௧ᆖ 19, 23, 62, 65, 199, 217–262, 270–289 Shanjing ՞ᆖ 217–218, 220, 222, 226, 233–235, 237, 240, 242, 248–249, 251–255, 258–262, 270–272, 275–276,
737
280–285, 287–289; see also Wuzang shanjing նፔ՞ᆖ Shen Gua ާਔ 621 Shen Tong ާ ݭ643 Shen Yue ާપ 250 shen 壀 ‘‘spirit’’ 25, 183, 218, 232, 236– 237, 241–246, 248–249, 257, 260–262, 287–293, 315, 391, 393, 397–398, 401–404, 409–410, 421, 648 – renshen Գ壀 (‘‘human spirit’’) 404 – shenming 壀ࣔ (‘‘spirit illumination’’) 393, 404–405 – shensha 壀ᅉ (calendar spirits) 144, 152 – ‘‘spiritual landscape’’ 218, 248–249, 261 Shengmen shiye tu ᆣ॰ࠃᄐቹ 341, 366 Shiji ಖ 6, 24, 54, 65, 98, 122, 184, 200, 228, 295–313, 384, 393, 395–396 shijia ୮ (Hereditary houses) 295 Shijing ᇣᆖ, see also Maoshi 38, 255 Shiming ᤩ ټ122 Shiwubao ழ೭ 696 shixue ኔᖂ (concrete or practical studies) 40, 50–52, 55, 57 Shizhu zhai jian pu Լێសጧᢜ 464 Shizhu zhai shuhua pu Լێសᢜ 464, 470, 497–498 shu ᑇ 4, 299, 343 see also numbers/ computations shu 1, 39, 40, 49, 62, 109, 179–180, 234, 247, 295, 298, 303, 345–346, 433 see also text or written explanation Shuangbaoshan ᠨץ՞ 25, 383, 387, 389, 393, 401, 403, 413, 418–419, 422–423 Shuanggudui ᠨײഔ 297 Shudao ᇋሐ 387 Shuihudi ጕॡ چ125, 141, 150, 168, 181–183, 185, 237, 243, 298, 384, 402, 422 Shujing ᆖ 224, 255, 345, 360; see also Shangshu Shun စ 300 shuo (the month’s first day) 142; see also calendar shuo ᎅ (written explanation, ‘‘elucidations’’) 36, 40, 45, 55, 119, 233, 235, 257, 259, 261, 299, 346, 359, 699, 710 Shuogua ᎅ࠳ 257
738
INDEX
Shuowen jiezi ᎅ֮ᇞ ڗ19, 119, 178– 181, 257 shushu ᑇ (occult arts or art of numbers) 4, 99, 433 signs 17, 22, 24, 30, 53, 169, 171–176, 178, 181–182, 186, 191, 196–198, 314–315, 317, 389, 402, 437, 637, 639, 642 – system of 169, 171, 173–176 – universality of 186 Siku quanshu ٤ 32, 99, 180, 490, 496, 536–537 silk 5, 21, 58, 62, 67, 113, 117–118, 169–170, 173, 176, 178, 180–181, 184–185, 232, 237, 243, 248–252, 259, 262, 385, 474, 521, 524, 526, 530–531, 533–534, 537, 540–541, 545–548, 550–551, 556, 561, 572, 591, 604–605; see also textile production Sima Qian ್ᔢ 24, 36, 54, 192, 198, 200, 228, 295–296, 299–305, 384, 392 siniform writing systems 121 Sino-Tibetan 122, 124, 127–128 Sishi nian shangjunshou Qi ge ԼڣՂ ಷښದ֩ 112 Sitian jian ֚, Astronomical Bureau 433 situ ஈ 124 skeleton 53, 151, 635–684 – female (or man and woman) 642, 654, 655, 656, 657, 659 – male 642, 654, 655, 657 skull 639, 646, 653, 656, 659, 663, 665 sluicing 616, 617, 624 Songshi ݚ430, 431 Song xingtong ݚ٩อ 433 Song Yingxing ݚᚨਣ 30, 53, 58, 67, 71, 533, 546, 547, 551, 569–614, 615– 632 spatial cognition 129 spatial designs, spatial layout 138, 143, 152, 153, 193, 195, 196, 219, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244, 246, 247, 248, 249, 252, 253, 259, 261; see also wei ۯ specialist technical knowledge 116; see fangshu ֱ spinal column 652, 653, 658, 663, 678 ‘‘spiritual landscape’’, see shen square root 439, 440 standard (norm) 25, 27, 32, 43, 53, 57, 69, 115, 126, 143, 198, 217, 236, 253, 439, 443, 447, 456, 521, 586, 591, 642,
644, 645, 646, 648, 649, 650, 651, 653, 654, 655, 656, 657, 658, 659, 673, 675, 692, 699, 703, 707 stemmatic 36, 342, 343, 347, 353 sternum 643, 646, 649, 650, 651, 659, 663 Suanshu shu ጩᑇ 429 Suanxue qimeng ጩᖂඔ፞ 443, 444 sugarcane mill 576–587, 610 Suishu ၹ 429, 430, 431, 432 Sulbasutra 451 Sun Qing ୪ହ 636 Sun, E-tu Zen and Sun, Shiou-Chuan 546, 547, 565, 566, 570, 572, 575, 576, 577, 579, 580, 581, 582, 584, 587, 588, 589, 590, 595, 615 Sun Yikui ୪ԫ 636, 643 surveying 685–726 – instruments 693, 694, 701, 702, 719, 725 Suwen, see Huangdi neijing suwen syntax, syntactic 111, 126, 129, 318, 349, 350, 352 tables 6, 11, 24, 25, 28, 32, 42, 43, 48, 53, 54–55, 72, 120, 139, 142, 144–145, 151, 158, 162–163, 177, 535, 693; see also biao Taichan shu ઼ข 400 Taiji tu ֜ᄕቹ 346 Taisui ֜ᄣ, the ‘‘Great Year’’ 144, 184 Taiyi ֜ԫ, ԫ, ֜Ԭ, Ԭ, Օԫ (Grand One), see sanshi Taiyin ֜ອ, the ‘‘Great Yin’’ 144–145, 392 talisman ฤ (fu) 170, 178, 181–185, 189 – paired talisman 182–183, 185 – Taiyi talisman 184–185 – Yu’s talisman 181, 183, 185 Tantian ᓫ֚ (‘‘On the heavens’’) 694 Tang Jieyuan fang gujin huapu ାᇞց ײվᢜ 475 Tanglü ା৳, The Tang Code 23, 432 Tang Shengwei ାშპ 469, 475, 487, 504 Tang Yin ାഫ 474 Tao Xiang 576, 595–597 taoban ठ 464ҏ; see multicolour printing technical drawing 4, 26, 43, 52, 61, 537, 550 technical illustrations 4, 34, 40, 52, 66–
INDEX 69, 488, 492–499, 522, 535, 551, 586, 590–591; see illustrations, tu technology transfer 539 Terrentius, see Schreck 475 ‘‘terrestrial organisation’’ (dili چ) 228–229 ‘‘territorial patterning’’ (dili چ) 114 textbooks 638, 653, 678, 696, 705–706, 726 textile production and equipment 526, 528, 535, 538, 540, 543–544, 546–547, 556, 566, 601 see also drawloom textual analysis 341–342, 344, 347, 349, 352–353 textual layout (non-linear) 23, 24, 141, 151, 161–162, 194–197, 208, 219, 238–253, 259–262, 285–286, 292, 296–297, 302–304, 308–311, 316–318, 342–354, 356–377 three-dimensionality 15, 25, 28, 42, 62, 64, 576, 581, 591 ti ᧯, 452–454, 710; see also constitutive being Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ 30, 53, 58– 59, 63, 67–68, 71, 480, 533, 546–547, 550–551, 565–566, 569–614, 615–632 Tianmu bilei chengchu jiefa ضఋֺᣊଊ ೈ൸ऄ 445 Tiantu lishu ֚ቹᖟ 431 Tianwen tu ֚֮ቹ 169–177, 180–181, 186 tianwen ֚֮ 138, 169, 243, 430, 433; see also astrology, astronomy, celestial patterns Tianxia ֚Հ (‘‘Under-heaven’’) 124, 219, 254–255, 260, 396, 412 tieding ᥳᙍ ‘‘ingots’’ 580–581 tin-smelting 588 TLV pattern 171, 148, 244; see also ‘‘cord-hook’’ diagram/pattern, liubo token ᜳ (fu) 14, 17, 120, 170, 172–173, 177–183, 185–186 – banner (fan ᐑ) 170, 172–173, 175, 177–178, 180, 184 – bipartite 178–183, 185 – ແܑ fubie 179–180, 185 – ᔆᕪ zhiji 179–180, 184 tombs 13, 15, 17, 21–22, 25, 65, 98, 113, 192, 195, 198–199, 209, 262, 297, 301, 383, 387–388, 398, 400, 403–404, 414 Tongshu ຏ 345 topography 20, 22, 40, 113, 119, 323,
739
707 transcription 109, 111, 120–124, 169, 229, 240, 242, 244, 292, 385 transformations 16, 37, 41–42, 192, 197, 393, 403, 405, 409, 440–442, 445–447, 449–451, 456–457, 534 translations 19, 58, 68, 111–112, 115– 117, 217, 226, 231, 238, 240, 246, 248, 253, 257–258, 316, 322–323, 326–327, 330–331, 383, 386, 408–409, 426, 429, 438–440, 452–454, 570, 577–578, 662, 694, 705, 711–712 Trattato di Scientia d’arme con un dialogo di filosofia di Camillo Agrippa Milanese 479 traumatology 643 treatises 1, 26–27, 29, 39, 40, 42, 49, 51–52, 58, 60–62, 64, 67, 224–233, 234, 239, 252, 257, 261, 295, 391, 394–395, 398, 403, 405, 425–426, 428–432, 439–440, 442–444, 448, 451–452, 488, 532, 536, 543; see also shu triangulation 704, 708, 711–712 Trigault, Nicolas 660 trigonometry 689, 691, 702, 705, 709– 710 trip hammers, water-powered 582 Tu Zhaokui ῥฯ❞ 589, 594 tu ቹ (all forms of graphic representations that encoded technical knowledge: diagrams, schemes, charts, maps, drawing, pictures, non-linear textual layouts, in some cases tables) 1–73, 84, 109–129, 138, 147, 150, 169, 171–174, 176, 178, 186, 193–197, 199, 230, 232, 234, 246, 260–262, 341–345, 351–354, 427, 430, 432, 435, 452, 454, 462–463, 477–479; see also diagram, graphic representation, illustrations, ‘‘cordhook’’ diagram/TLV pattern, cosmograph, cosmogram/‘‘global scheme’’, maps, coroners’ charts, tables, textual layout (non-linear), mandalas – lay-out (tu-layout) 13–16, 18, 24– 25, 27, 62, 84, 101, 109–110, 112– 113, 118, 120, 123, 128, 138–139, 141, 143, 145–146, 150–153, 162, 168, 171, 197, 219, 238–253, 259– 262, 285–286, 292, 323, 335, 394, 493 – Tupu lüe ቹᢜฃ 1, 38–39, 489, 522,
740
INDEX
526, 537 – tupu ቹᢜ illustrated registers 1, 38–40, 53, 62–63; see also Nongshu tupu – Tushu bian ቹᒳ 219 – tu–text relationship 1, 3, 20, 24–25, 34, 38, 41–42, 45, 63, 68, 246–247, 1, 20, 25, 34–35, 45, 68, 171, 173– 174, 247, 295, 345–346, 383–385, 443, 449–450, 454, 489–491, 462– 463, 477, 521–522, 546, 549–551, 592, 615–621, 636, 638, 699; see also shu , shuo ᎅ – tuzan ቹᨬ ‘‘appraisals of graphic representations’’ 232; see also Cedi huitu, Daoyin tu, Fanxin tu, Gengzhi tu, Haidao tu, Huntian tu, Jilei tu, Jiuzhang chongcha tu, Jiuzhang tu, Kaogu tu, Liuzhang tu, Mianhua tu, Qishen suiri yongju tu, Sankai tu, Sanwu li shuotu, Shengmen shiye tu, Taiji tu, Tianwen tu, Xuangong tu, Xuanhe bogu tu, Yanji tu, Zhaoyu tu, Zhoubi tu tugong youri Ւֆሏֲ (‘‘daily transfer of the God of the Soil’’) 147 tumuli 118 universals 129 Verbiest, Ferdinand 689–690, 719–720 vertex 449 Vesalius, Andreas 467, 637, 662 Villard de Honnecourt 582 vision 46, 72, 172, 192, 196, 302, 403, 480, 637 visual 7, 10–11, 24, 28, 33, 41–42, 44– 46, 48–49, 52, 55, 60, 63–64, 66, 73, 84, 90, 94, 96, 148, 169, 178, 180, 185, 191, 194, 198–199, 241, 296, 300, 302, 352–353, 388, 408, 413, 428, 439, 455–456, 477, 479–481, 521–522, 540–541, 544, 550–552, 559, 571, 573, 590–592, 597, 637, 645, 650 – categories (see also hua , tu ቹ, xiang ွ) 2, 11 – cultures 7, 10–11, 64, 73, 191, 571 – representation 12, 83, 116, 174, 231, 236, 425, 454, 463–464, 467, 495, 635–636, 645, 650 visualization, visualize 42, 113, 195, 341, 343–344, 346, 348, 352, 407, 443
void 19, 42, 321, 440–442, 446 von Haller, Albrecht 475 Waitai Biyao ؆ፕఽ 398–399 Wang Anshi فڜ׆523, 526, 537 Wang Bi ༘׆453 Wang Bo ׆ਹ 35, 341–342, 345–347, 350–351 Wang Chong ޫ ך97, 231, 397 Wang Dejun ׆ᐚ݁ 694 Wang Geng ޫౙ 473–474 Wang Mang ׆๔ 101, 191–192, 195, 199, 214, 636 Wang Mingde ࣔ׆ᐚ 659 Wang Qi ݆׆30, 40, 478, 490, 543, 638 Wang Siyi ׆৸ᆠ 478, 490 Wang Tao ׆ះ 398–399 Wang Tingna ޫݪ 474 Wang Yangming ׆ၺࣔ 574 Wang Youhuai ׆Ծዒ 642, 659, 673 Wang Zhen ׆ᄙ 40, 43, 52, 59, 63, 66– 68, 521–522, 533, 535–543, 545, 547– 550, 552, 557–567, 576, 585 Wang Zheng ׆ᐛ 68, 474–475 wei ‘‘( ۯposition’’) 4, 8, 13, 15, 42, 46, 56, 60, 64, 84–85, 88, 90–93, 96–98, 100–101, 109–110, 116, 125–127, 137–138, 144–146, 148, 150, 152–153, 170, 193, 195–196, 207, 224, 227–228, 230, 238–239, 241, 244–245, 247, 250, 255, 303, 319, 343, 388, 393, 398, 400, 421, 438–439, 442–443, 447, 449, 464, 489, 496, 514, 572–573, 581, 647, 662, 664, 672 wei ᒮ (weft-text/apocrypha) 39, 186, 256, 346; see also apocrypha, jing-wei relationship Wei li zhi dao ٴհሐ (The way of the [good] administrator) 141 Wende ֮ᐚ 115 Wenxuan ֮ᙇ 231 Western learning 37 word-family 110, 120–121, 125, 127 wu ढ ‘‘beings and things’’ 38, 180, 182, 262, 346, 433 Wu Dacheng ܦՕⰗ 693, 697 Wu Ding ࣳԭ 91–92, 100 Wu Qijun ࠡܦᛕ 488–490, 493, 494– 495, 509, 518 Wu Tingyu ݪܦ壅 473 Wu Yue Chunqiu ܦ။ਞટ 231
INDEX wuchaoni ۆᑪࣽ 618–620 wufang նֱ (‘‘five sectors’’) 18, 138, 141, 146 Wunian xiangbang Lu Buwei ji նڣઌ ߶ܨլଁ༰ 112 wutong න (Chinese parasol tree, Firmiana simplex) 487, 491–495, 498, 504–510 wuxing ն۩ (‘‘five agents’’) 16, 18, 140, 146–147, 152, 171, 637 Wuying dian ࣳᄥ (Hall of Military Inflorescence) 479, 638, 641 Wuzang shanjing նፔ՞ᆖ 217, 233, 240, 275–276, 279–280, 286–288 Xia 231, 300 Xiahou Zao ঀ 298 xian (lit. ‘‘string’’, hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle) 438–440, 450– 451 xiang ွ (image, icon, symbol, figurative representation) 2, 3, 27, 35, 64, 110, 174, 231, 343, 346, 462–463 Xiang Nanzhou ႈত ڠ496 Xiang Yu ႈ壅 300 Xiangjie Jiuzhang suanfa ᇡᇞີጩऄ 434 Xiangming suanfa ᇡࣔጩऄ 443–444 xiangsheng ઌ (‘‘mutual domination’’) 145 xiangshu ઌ 433; see physiognomy xiangshu ွᑇ 343 xiangxianyi ွૻᏚ (quadrant) 690 Xiao Yuncong ᘕႆൕ 473 Xiaoshan hua pu ՛՞ᢜ 499 Xici zhuan ᢀႚ 17, 35, 348, 373, 454 Xie Zhuang ๗ 250 xiesheng ᘫᜢ, homophonophoric 121 Xijing zaji ۫ࠇᠧಖ 149 Ximing ۫Ꭾ 372 Xin Tangshu ᄅା 295, 429 Xin yi xiang fa yao ᄅᏚွ࿇ 66 Xinfa ֨ऄ (‘‘method of the heart’’) 318, 344 Xingde ݮᐚ (Punishment and Virtue), manuscript, Mawangdui 143, 146– 147, 163, 164 xingde riyou ݮᐚֲሏ ‘‘daily transfer of Punishment and Virtue’’ 146 Xingfa ݮऄ (Methods of Forms) 235, 262 Xingjun cehui ۩૨ྒྷᢄ 694
741
xingnian ۩‘‘ ڣannual motion’’ 140 Xinji beiji jijing ᄅႃໂ৺߁ᆖ 398 Xinzhi lingtai yixiang zhi ᄅ፹ᨋፕᏚွ ݳ689 Xixiang ji ۫༖ಖ 462, 463, 464, 478 Xu Chunfu ஊ⛵߉ 652 Xu Dachun ஊՕ⛵ 644 Xu Guangqi ஊ٠ඔ 51, 52, 539, 541, 543, 544, 545, 550, 661, 709, 710 Xu Kai ஊㅥ 257 Xu Lian ⯟ 53, 644, 645, 646, 647, 650, 658, 664 Xu Qian ᝐ 341, 347 Xu Shen შ 178 Xu Shou ஊኂ 694 Xu Sidao ஊۿሐ 640 Xuangong tu خ୰ቹ 18, 141, 161, 196, 239, 285 Xuanhe bogu tu ࡉ໑ײቹ 468 Xuanying خᚨ 115, 319, 333 Xuanzang خ 115 Xue Fucheng 壂 ګ695 Xuhui ding 䦝ቓ 112; see also bronze inscriptions ya ႁ elegantiae 119 ya zui ᚅᏯ 579 Yabu’uchi Kiyoshi ᓈփ堚 570, 597 Yan Shusen ᣤᖫཤ 689 Yan Xuansun 咭خ୪ 114 yang ၺ 98–99, 194, 197, 388, 390, 392, 398, 400–402, 405–406, 409, 414, 656, 658, 661 Yang Hui ᄘᔕ 434, 445–446, 448–449, 457 Yang Shen ᄘშ 234 Yang Suqing ᄘైହ 594 Yang Xuancao ᄘخᖙ 652 Yang Zhongfu ᄘ࢘᎖ 435 Yangzheng tujie 塄إቹᇞ 462–463 Yanji tu ઔ༓ቹ 48, 341, 345–347, 349, 354, 356, 361–362, 364–365, 368, 370–373, 377 Yao 300 Yao Deyu ᐚᘵ 649, 660 Yecai bolu ມလ໑ᙕ 490, 497–499, 514, 519 Yellow River 9, 16, 23, 31–32, 51, 65, 85–86, 218, 220, 227, 241, 524, 691– 693, 697–699, 701, 711 Yellow Thearch/Emperor (Huangdi ႓০) 296, 300–301, 305, 398, 401, 636, 638,
742
INDEX
640, 648, 652, 657; see also Huangdi neijing, Huangdi neijing Lingshu, Huangdi neijing Suwen yi რ ‘‘intention/meaning’’ 119, 406–408, 454’’ Yi hou Ze gui ࡵঀ䩫ジ 111; see also bronze inscriptions Yijing ࣐ᆖ, see also Zhouyi, the Book of Changes 35, 37, 255, 346, 373 yijingyuan ᆖೃ, see Institute of Snjtra translation 115 Yili ᆠ ‘‘meaning and pattern’’ 343 Yin 14, 150, 158 yin ອ 145, 388, 392, 398, 400–401, 404, 406, 408, 655, 658; see also taiyin, yin and yang yin and yang ອၺ 98–99, 101, 143, 171, 194, 197–198, 354, 390, 392, 400–402, 405–406, 409, 412, 414, 454, 656; see also yin, yang Ying Shao ᚨᬐ 302 Yingzao fashi ᛜທऄ ڤ43, 540 Yinshu ֧ 384–385, 390, 395, 405– 414 Yinwan ձ, see also calendar 98, 142–143, 148–149, 151, 162, 166–167, 244 Yinzhi wen tushuo ອ㕣֮ቹᎅ 479 Yiqie jing yinyi ԫ֊ᆖଃᆠ 115 Yiyin xiwen ditu zhaogu zhangcheng چ֮۫ٱቹࢵैີ࿓ 696 yong ش, manifestation of ti ᧯, constitutive being 435, 452–454 Yongle dadian ةᑗՕࠢ 527, 536 Yu છ 18–19, 37, 181, 183, 185, 224, 229, 231, 233, 235–236, 254, 256 Yu bu છ( ޡpace of Yu) 37, 181 Yu cang mai bao tufa છ៲ᎍઽቹऄ 117 Yuanyan yuannian ցցڣ (calendrical table) 142, 162 Yudi xuehui ᝨچᖂᄎ 696 Yugong છಥ 224, 229, 260, 693 Yupian دᒧ 120 Za liao fang ᠧ᛭ֱ 117 Zeng Fu ᏺ壂 642 Zeng Guofan མഏᢋ 693 Zhang Cunhui ്ژ༡ 469 Zhang Dake ്Օ ױ303 Zhang Jingyue ്ནᚣ 638–639 Zhang Jun ്ទ 232–233, 235
Zhang Yanyuan ്৯ 49, 454 Zhang Zai ്ሉ 343, 348, 372 Zhang Zhidong ്հ 701 Zhao ᎓ 20, 118 Zhao Junqing ᎓ܩହ 431, 437, 451; see Zhao Shuang Zhao Shuang ᎓෯ 427–428, 431, 437, 451 Zhao Ying ᎓᚛ 431; see Zhao Shuang Zhao Yuanyi ᎓ց墿 692, 694 Zhaoyu tu (Mausoleum Plan, Design of the Mausoleum District) ٢ቹ 15, 117, 195, 208, 240; see also mausoleum, Mausoleum Plan, funerary park, bronze inscriptions Zhen Luan ጉᩂ 431 Zheng Qiao ᔤᖱ 1, 2, 27, 39–40, 62, 345, 489, 522, 525, 537 Zheng Xuan ᔤ خ118, 179–181 Zhenglei bencao ᢞᣊء౻ 487, 504; see also bencao Zhengshi zhi chang ਙࠃհൄ (Constant [rules] in the practice of administration) 141, 162 zhengyue ( ִإinitial month) 112, 142 Zhi zhi ીव 351 Zhifang shi ֱּ 224, 261 Zhiwu mingshi tukao ཬढټ䖐ቹە 477, 488–489, 493–495, 498–499, 509, 518 zhongping խؓ (median level) 443; see also geometry Zhongshan խ՞ 15–16, 19, 117–119, 121, 195–196, 208, 222 Zhongyong խ 342–344, 349, 352, 356, 361–362, 364–365, 371 Zhou ࡌ 13–14, 20, 38, 94–97, 99–101, 111–114, 116–120, 124, 127, 171, 179, 191–194, 196, 224, 253, 256, 296, 300–301, 427, 433, 540, 709–710 Zhou Dunyi ࡌཉᙲ 35, 44, 345 Zhou Lüjing ࡌᐌ壃 491, 493–494, 508 Zhoubi suanjing ࡌ㌣ጩᆖ 224, 427– 429, 431–432, 437, 445, 456, 709 Zhoubi tu ࡌ㌣ቹ (Diagrams of the Zhoubi [suanjing]) 224, 427–431, 437, 446, 457, 709–710 Zhouli ࡌ៖ 20–21, 38–39, 98, 118, 123–124, 126, 179–180, 224, 234, 256, 260, 540 Zhouyi ࡌ࣐ 170–172, 174, 348; see also Yijing
INDEX Zhu Shijie ڹໃ 443–444 Zhu Xi ڹᗋ 36, 44, 47, 342–343, 345, 347–349, 350–351, 359 Zhu Xiao ⹍ڹ53, 469, 475, 490, 545 Zhuangzi ๗ 393, 396, 405, 452–453 Zhuzi yulei ڹᣊ 349, 359 zixue ڗᖂ, see lexicographer zones (fu ࣚ) 94, 220–221, 223–228, 284 – ‘‘Five zones’’ (Wufu նࣚ) 224 – ‘‘Nine zones’’ (Jiufu ࣚ) 224 zong ൕ/᜕ (lit. longitudal dimension, the length of a rectangle) 443; see also
743
geometry Zongmi ࡲയ 342, 358 Zou Boqi ም ࡛܄690, 712, 721–722 Zou Daijun ምזၫ 695–697, 702, 707 Zou Yigui ምԫெ 499–500 Zubi shiyi mai jiu jing ߩᜩԼԫ౧߁ᆖ 390 Zuo Si ؐ৸ 231–232 Zuoyin xiansheng jingding jiejing yipu ݄ឆ٣س壄ࡳ൸உেᢜ 474 Zuozhuan ؐႚ 15, 138, 231, 233–234, 236, 256, 393
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Col.Pl. I: Tianwen tu drawings (author’s line drawings).
747
748
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Col.Pl. II: Fanxin tu drawings (author’s line drawings).
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749
Col.Pl. III: Copy of a painting of lunar logde asterisms found on the ceiling of a Former Han tomb at Xi’an. In the ring at the edge of the picture is depicted the sequence of the twenty -eight lunar lodges in order (commencing at the lower right and moving counterclockwise). Diameter of the inner circle: ca. 2,5 m. Reproduced from Chen Meidong (1996: pl. 3).
750
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Col.Pl. IV: Liubo board. Stone, 44,9x40,1 cm. Zhongshan kingdom, late fourth century BC. For the TLV or “cord hook”-pattern of the Liubo board, see Fig. 13 in Kalinowski, this volume. Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics.
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751
Col.Pl. V: Ceiling of Jinguyuan tomb at Luoyang, the Xin dynasty, early first century AD. Photograph by author.
752
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Col.Pl. VI: Tianxia tu ֚Հቹ (“Map of Underheaven”, the so-called “wheel map”). Reproduced from Harley and Woodward, eds. (1994, colour plate 16).
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753
Col.Pl. VII: The Wu ze you xing ढঞ ݮڶmanuscript. Mawangdui, tomb 3 (closed ca. 168 BC). Reproduced from Wenwu 1996.6, colour plate on the back side of the front part of the cover.
Col.Pl. VIII: Daoyin tu ᖄ֧ቹ (Guiding and Pulling Chart), Mawangdui ್׆ഔʿ tomb 3 (closed 168 BC). Silk. [Digital image of reconstruction, copyright Wellcome Library, Medphoto collection L0036007]
754 COLOUR PLATES
Col.Pl. IX: The juxtaposition of Daoyin tu ᖄ֧ቹ (Guiding and Pulling Chart) with Yinyang shiyimai jiujing ອ ၺ Լ ԫ ౧ ߁ ᆖ (Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Yin and Yang Channels), Mawangdui ್׆ਔ, tomb 3 (closed 168 BC). Silk.
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755
(a) (b) Col.Pl. X: Dunhuang moxa-cautery charts (mid. 9th century AD). [Copyright The British Library, a): Or. 8210/S.6168 and b): Or. 8210/S.6262].
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757
Col.Pl. XI: The posterior view of the lacquer figurine from Shuangbaoshan ᠨץ՞ (latest date 118 BC). Author’s collection, photograph with kind permission of He Zhiguo.
758
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Col.Pl. XII: “Bear Ramble”, fragment from the Daoyin tu ᖄ֧ቹ (Guiding and Pulling Chart), Mawangdui, tomb 3 (closed 168 BC). Silk. [Digital image of original, copyright Wellcome Library, Medphoto collection L0040263]
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759
Col.Pl. XIII: “Monkey Bawling to Pull Internal Hotness”, fragment from the Daoyin tu ᖄ֧ቹ (Guiding and Pulling Chart), Mawangdui, tomb 3 (closed 168 BC). Silk. [Digital image of original, copyright Wellcome Library, Medphoto collection L0040263]
760
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Col.Pl. XIV: “Dragon Ascending”, fragment from the Daoyin tu ᖄ֧ቹ (Guiding and Pulling Chart), Mawangdui, tomb 3 (closed 168 BC). Silk.
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Col.Pl. XV.1
Col.Pl. XV.2
Col.Pl. XV.3
Col.Pl. XV.4
761
762
Col.Pl. XV.5
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Col.Pl. XV.6
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Col.Pl. XVI.1
Col.Pl. XVI.2
763
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Col.Pl. XVII: Lamei ᥣસ, wintersweet, [Chimonanthus praecox (L.) Link] and bamboo, Shizhuzhai shuhua pu Լێសᢜ (1633) by Hu Zhengyan ߢإ.
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765
Col.Pl. XVIII: Irrigating the fields; Gengzhi tu, Yuan dynasty copy by Cheng Qi. Freer/Sackler collection, Washington D.C., with permission.
766
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Col.Pl. XIX: “A Magic Performance of Skeletons”, by Li Song (ca. 1190–1230), in Views from childhood.
Col.Pl. XX: Page of Li Zhaoluo 1832. Note the rectangular grid and the superimposed red lines indicating latitudes and longitudes.
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767
768
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Col.Pl. XXI: Page from Zou Daijun 1903. First Chinese map which employs different coloring for the provinces.
Col.Pl. XXII: Complete Map of China on the basis of the Huidianguan survey.
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769
Col.Pl. XXIII: Result of Huidianguan survey. General map in Provincial Atlas of Jiangsu. Note the Grid and the dotted lines denoting the meridians.
770 COLOUR PLATES
Col.Pl. XXIV: Result of Huidianguan survey. General map of Guangdong province. Note that the map employs a graticule of parallels and meridians and does not have a rectangular grid. Primemeridian runs through Beijing.
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771
772
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Col.Pl. XXV: Page from Shangwu yingshuguan 1905. Employs a double system of longitudes. One based on Greenwich (marked on the margin of the map only), a second system with the prime-meridian running through Beijing, which is used for the graticule.