Xun Xu and the politics of precision in third-century AD China

Sinica Leidensia Edited by

Barend J. ter Haar Maghiel van Crevel In co-operation with

P.K. Bol, D.R. Knechtges, E.S. Rawski, WL. Idema, H.T. Zurndorfer

VOLUME 95

Xun Xu and the Politics of Precision in Third-Century AD China

By

Howard L. Goodman

BRILL

LEIDEN. BOSTON 2010

On the cover: The author's own cover design shows a third-century figurine of a di-flute player (adapted from Wu Zhao, Zhuixian shiqu de yinyue zongji; cited Figure 9, p. 227). We can imagine this as Lie He, the flute expert and ensemble leader from whom Xun Xu gained technical knowledge. Yet Xun also remeasured and refashioned Lie's way of making flutes and playing modal music by imposing his ideal of Zhou standards. (The E. Zhou bronze rule is adapted from photograph supplied by Nanjing University; cited Figure 4, p. 176.) This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Goodman, Howard L. Xun Xu and the politics of precision in third-century AD China / by Howard L. Goodman. p. cm. - (Sinica leidensia, ISSN 0169-9563; v. 95) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-18337-7 (hardback: alk. paper) 1. Xun, Xu, d. 289. 2. Historians-China-Biography. 3. Scholars-China-Biography. 4. China-Intellectuallife-221 B.C.-960 A.D. 5. China-Politics and government-220-589. 6. China-History-Chin dynasty, 265-419. 7. China-History-Three kingdoms, 220-265. I. Title. II. Series. DS748.44.x86G662010 931.0072'02-dc22 [B]

2009053995

ISSN 0169-9563 ISBN 978 90 04 183377 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NY, 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.

DEDICATION

To the spirit of learning and antiquity imparted by my father Mortimer Goodman (I9I7-I98I), and the support toward that of my mother Sophia. Also to the spirit ofsino logy imparted by Hellmut Wilhelm, Frederick W Mote, and Denis Twitchett, as well as their unforgotten friendship and that of their families.

CONTENTS

Dedication ..............................................................................

v

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables.... ...... .............. ......................

xi

INTRODUCTION: THE ZHENGSHENG JFJ~ MODE ...................... ..

Showing Up in Shishuo xi nyu ............................................ .. Biography Large and Small ................................................. A More Real Xuan .............................................................

1.

5 12

Directions Toward a More Real Xuanxue ...............................

17

Conclusions, Findings, and Suggestions .............. .................

22

Xun Xu's Use of Zhou Antiquity........ .................. .............. Politics of Precision ............. "........................................... Archeology, Historiography, and the History of Sciences and Technologies ........................................................ The Earliest Sources for Xun Xu's Life................................

22

25 27

The Seven Chapters and Acknowledgments ...... ...................

29

THE XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG .................................

35

Commemorating Kin and Supporting Learning: Yingchuan to about 212 AD ............ .................... ............. The Lay of the Land ...................................................... Xun Leadership In and Around Yingyin ............................ The "Commemorative Tablet 1Ml for Prefect of Palace Writers Xun Yu" ........................................................................ Xun Yijing Scholarship.....................................................

The Xuns in Luoyang to about 282: Sorting Out Zhengshi Styles and Establishing Jin Imperial Ties ...... .................... Xun Can, a Prototype of the Zhengshi-era Mavericks ........... Xun Yi and the Traditional Path Followed by Can's Older Siblings .... ...... .... ..... ................ ..... ................ ..... The Impact of Xun Scholarship in Luoyang ......................... Xun Musicologists and Legists ........................................... Xun Xu's Foothold onto a New Career ................................ Xun-Family Pathos in an Entombed Epitaph of 295 AD ........

"Commemoration for Xun Yue ofYingchuan Yingyin, Jin-[EraJ Late Gentleman-in-Attendance of the Palace Wri ters" ...............................................................

23

38 40 43 50

52 57 59

62 65 69

72 75

78

viii

CONTENTS

Xun Wives and Daughters................................................ Material and Evocative Aspects of Xun Burials....................

Memory and Counter-Memory........................................... 2.

XUN xu'S FIRST POSTS, CA.

3.

AESTHETICS AND PRECISION IN COURT RITUAL SONGS, CA. 266-272 ....................................................................... .

80 82 84

248-265 ................................. The Political Taint of Cao Shuang's Regime, 240- 249 ..........

91 94 Former Cao-Wei Men as Ethically Correct Jin Stalwarts ........ 100 The Cooperative Exegete ..................................................... 103 Factions........................................................................... 107 Anti-Xun Xu Roots in the Wu War Factionalism ................. 109 The Tone ofXun Xu's Early Career ..................................... I I I Factions as Cooperative Struggle ......................................... lI8

Wealth and Collecting; Design and Construction .............. .. A Coterie of Lyric-Writers for Court Music ........................ ..

121 12 3 12 5

Higher and Lower Music; Court Music and Party Music ...... ..

12 7

A Lyric-Writing Competition ............................................. .

1 33

The Song-Writers as Political Actors .................................. . Competing Lyrics for the Dance-Song Performances ............ .

1 36

140 A Turn toward an Aesthetic of Precision .............................. . 1 50 The Aesthetic and Philosophic Thrust of Xun's Lyrics............ 153 Who Was the Xun Balladeer? ............................................. 155 4.

COMMANDEERING STAFF AND PROCLAIMING PRECISION,

273-274 ........................................................................ High-Stepping into Bureaus and Imperial Holdings.. ...........

CA.

161 163

Problems in the Bureaucratic Structure of the Palace Writers Office ..... ..... ................... ....... ...... ...... ............. An Archival Project with Zhang Hua ........................ ..........

164 168 The Wider World of Metrology.............. .......... .......... ......... 171 Xun Xu's Metrology ..................................... ~...................... 175 Xun Xu the Hypersentient "Metrosophist" ........ .................. 177 Xun Chuo, Writing For and About Family.................. ........ 179 The Earliest Descriptions of the Process behind Xun's Metrology.......... ........ ............. ....... ....... ..............

The Inner Story ofXun's Metrology..................................... The Antiquarian Flurry.................. ...... .......................... ..... Xun Xu's 274 AD Colophon Stating Seven Old Devices as Metrological Witnesses ................................................. Tracing Ghosts of the Official Bronze Foot-Rule ofJin .........

180 183 187

191 194 Li Chunfeng's Antiquarian Jury.......... ................ ................ 197 Li Chunfeng Throws Solvent on Legend and Evidence.......... 203

CONTENTS

ix

Ritual Mensuration, Music, and Early Sciences....... ....... ...... 207 The Prisca Zhou ............................................................. 208 Habits of Science in the Third Century: Status, Sites, Techniques .................................................................

5.

274-277 .................................. Problems of Pipes and Pitches .................. .............. ...... .......

Xun Xu's Flutes Versus Lie He's Mode...... .............. ............. Songshu's Bundle of Documents On Xun Xu's Musicology.....

215 217 217 225 228 228

Annotated Translation of Xun Xu's Memorial of 274 AD and Xun's Dialog with Lie He ........................................

232

Songshu Part 17: Xun Xu's Flute Temperament and the Impact of New Modes.................. .............. .......... ..........

256

A MARTINET OF MELODY, CA.

Flutes, Regulated Pitch, and Musical Scales ........ ............ ..... Xun Xu's Regulators and Di-Flutes .. ...... ............................

The Pitch Distortions That Xun Xu's New Flute Indirectly Attempted to Solve .... ................ ........ .................... ...... The Modal Variety That Xun Xu Attempted to Thwart .........

Proto-Sage Versus Martinet .......... .............. .......... .......... ..... Ruan Xian's Complaint: The Flutes Are Shrill and Laden with Grief......................................................... Ruan Xian in Mundane Terms.......................................... The Ruan Xian and Shan Tao Legends as Framed by Western Jin Politics......................................................

6.

212

277-284.. Policies That Shooed Off the Princes and Promoted the Rank-and- File ................................................................ A New Day: Victory Celebrations ............ .......... ................. First Reactions to the Ji Tomb ............................................. A NEW DAY, NEW ANTIQUITIES, NEW FACTIONS, CA.

259 263 265 266 269 272 279

281 286 290 Antiquities Emerge as Victory Is Celebrated........................ 292 Translation of the"Mu Tianzi Zhuan" Preface by Xun Xu's Official Team, Written 282-83 ........................... The Team Members ........................................................

295 301

The Ji-Tomb Texts Are Folded into Ongoing Work on the Jin Palace Classics Register Uin Zhongjing Bu) .............. 305 The Rest of the World Weighs In .. .............. ............ ............ 312 Calligraphy and Access .................................................... 313 The Zhang Hua Ambit .......................... ........ ...... ............ 320 Xun Xu and Zhang Hua as Forces in the Jin Offices for Historiography.. .......... .............. .......... .......... 325 Changes in Methods of Historiography.. .................. ...... ..... 334 Chronology as Theory and Practice .................................... 334 Xun Xu's Attempt to Impose a Zhou Chronology in the "First" Annals Edition .... ........ ............ ............ .........

336

x

CONTENTS

The Use of Shiji, and Several Candidates for the "Other" Annals Edition .............................................................

7.

A Foot-Rule Bubbles Up as Attacks on Xun Xu Begin ..........

338 346

"THEy'VE STOLEN MY PHOENIX POOL", 284-89 AND BEYOND ... Zhi Yu's Ambit and a New Anti-Xunism .... ..... ....... ... ... ........

351 352

Zhi Yu's and Wang Jie's Ideas about the Historiographical Value of Commentaries ................................................. Xun Xu in a Time of Anti-Xunism .....................................

353 362 365 367

Assessments in 286 of Hua Qiao's History of Later Han .... ..... Xun Xu's Demotion and Demise. ... ..... ..... ......... ....... ..... ...... The Post-Xun Xu Resumption of the Debate about Where to Begin the Jin Dynasty...................................... 370 Prisca Antiqua: The Spirit of Western Jin Scholarship and Letters ...................................................................... 374 The Primordial as Contactable .... .... ..... ....... .......... .... ........ 375 The Personal as Contactable . ... ..................... ........... ......... 378 Bibliography...........................................................................

383

Index ...................................................................................... 397

LIST Of' MAPS, HGURES, AND TABLES

Map. Details ofYingchuan Commandery and the Luoyang Area ............................................................. facing

35

List

Items ofXun-Family Intellectual Culture .........................

88

Seven Generations ofXuns (with Notes) ......................

44

Figure 2. Trajectories ofXun-Family Skills .................................. Figure 3. Xun Xu: Associations, Antagonisms, Influences ............

54 74

Figure 4. An Eastern Zhou Bronze chi ........................................

176

I.

Figure

I.

Figure 5. Ruan Yuan's Depiction of Gao Ruona's "Former Jin chi".. 195 Figure 6A. Twelve Pitch-standards (ps), or Lulu 1~ g................ 221 Figure 6B. Order of Computational Steps to Produce the Twelve Lulu........ ............ .... ...... ........... ........ ......................... 221 Figure 6C. Two Heptatonic Chinese Scales, With Notes Correlated to the Twelve Lulu ............................................... 221 Figure 6D. The Zhengsheng Scale Mapped to the Piano's Whi te Keys .......................................................................... 224 Figure 7. Fragments of Late-Warring States Bamboo Pitch-pipes. ........... ..... .... .......... .... ........ .................. .............. 226 Figure 8. Two Bamboo Transverse Flutes ..................................... 226

if, Player ......................

227

Figure loA. One of Several Extant Tang-era chiba RJ\. .... ...........

228

Figure 9. Figurine of Long-Flute, or Di

Figure loB. Layout of Di Finger Holes ............................... ........ 265 Figure II. Ruan Xian and His Lute; Shan Tao and His Drinking Gourd ................................................................... 272 Table I. Thirteen Men in Xun Xu's Ambit Who Were Mature during the Cao Shuang Years ................................................ 96 Table 2. Found-Objects Relevant to Xun's Metrology and Musicology........ ....... ......... ....... ................ .... ................. 188 Table 3. Xun Xu's Metrological and Musicological Creations ....... 191 Table 4. Five of Li Chunfeng's Fifteen Categories: Selected for Relevance to Xun Xu ............................................................ 199 Table 5. Xun Xu's and Zhang Hua's Influence in Western Jin Historiography Offices ................... ..... ............... 326

INTRODUCTION

THE ZHENGSHENG JI5t MODE Those who probe and search the dark depths have been doing so ever since Wang rBi} and He rYan} {JJF )j<:I~ln~Hi:I=EM!:),:lllit. Those who according to their times revise institutions are in the spirit of Xun and Yue 1~111~;1~1Ii~1'lj~~zJUl. I

SHOWING UP IN SHISHUO XINYU

In the above passage from the fifth-century Shishuo xi nyu t!t~J]JT~fr, Xun Xu lfh (d. 289) shows up as just a flicker in the eye of compilers and commentators long after his time. It is a truism that myth and fact, or legend and historiographical narrative, intersect and approach each other through different ways of telling and writing. They seem different by their social contexts and the contexts of their authors and "tellers," but they both can inspire a common pride of place and culture, and they can carry warnings. Throughout my seven chapters, besides material that is technical and prosaic concerning Xun's outrageous influence at the imperial court and vast intellectual achievements, I offer in addition a reflection on him that reveals a troubled legend. To Shishuo xi nyu readers, "Yue ~" in the above epigraph was a surname, but finding a specific Yue was not easy. To complicate things, readers would also recall that "Xun" and "music ~" fit together: Shishuo xinyu's chapter 20 on "Technical Understanding,"2 as well as technical treatises and an evolving historiography, all pointed to Xun's life as devoted to precision, and his corrected musical scale was criticized by one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, giving Xun something of an infamous tinge. Thus Xun Xu's legend was encountering difficulty very early in its career.

m

SSXYjj no. 2.99, pp. II9-20. Cf. Richard Mather's trans., SSHYIMather, p. 75. anecdotes about Xun lead off the Shishuo chapter, in which he is both scolded and cast as weird for his powers of perception; see SSHYIMather nos. 20.1-2, pp. 35759. Xun Xu's appearance in Shishuo is treated in detail in chap. 5. 1

2 Two

2

INTRODUCTION

We return to the difficulty of the epigraph. "Xun" may refer to both Xun and his older kinsman Xun Yi ~Ji (d. 274), both court-commissioned scholars who worked on institutional texts. "Yue" can only be guessed at: a literatus named Yue Guang ~. (d. perhaps 304), but not associated with the Xuns and not a shaper of court institutions. 3 Yue was known as a qingtan ~~~jfc type of wit. He lived later than both Xuns and had nothing to do with their political faction; he did once take sides in 298, when the court overturned the late Xun Xu's opinion concerning Jin historiography.4 How, then, do the two surnames function in parallel with those of Wang and He? The quip purports to come from the mouth of a former northern military leader Zhang Tianxi ~JjJ (ca. 344-404), now in the southern capital. He had just been asked by a certain unidentifiable party to assess for young southerners the worth of those many literati who had come from the north over the course of perhaps seventy-five years. The general does not take one side or the other. Diplomatically, he judges contemporary qingtan scholars of the xuan K, or "mystery" -the more common description applied to those leisurely, free and independent souls-as stemming from two Wei-era paragons who many blamed for the Wei's demise. But what does one do with Zhang's reference, next, to men who took care of rites and codesresearchers into realities, not into the dark depths? Did Zhang disapprove of both camps, or neither, or only one? The popular choice would have been Wang and He, since in Shishuo xinyu and many other belles lettres, those two were often made to seem so ethereal as to be precursors of the divine, philosophical monks of Jiangnan. 5 For the Xun-Yue part of the anecdote, it is odd that "Yue ~" comes right after "Xun 1fJ ," since the "spirit" of Xun Xu's "institutional revisions" was in fact musicological. 6 IfYue Guang was the person meant,

*7(

3 Mather, ibid., p. 6Il. The earliest commentary by Liu Jun ~~ul3Z (462-521) emphasizes that it was "laws and norms tld/JU" for which the name Xun was known, but not the name Yue; the commentary does not speculate on which Yue this was. 4 On his wit, see jS 35, p. 1°42; and 36, p. 1067; on the historiography debate, see 40, p. Il74. In the context of that debate Yue is referred to as Palace Attendant N1'I/I, a post often associated with historiography (see chap. 7, sect. "The Post-Xun Xu Resumption of the Debate about Where to Begin the Jin Dynasty"). 5 For an example of sighing apptoval of Wang-He in Shishuo, see SSHYIMather no. 8.51, p. 226; in different form in jS 36, p. 1067. Shishuo items of this type are used extensively in the discussion by Hou Wailu 1~)!/'J)Ki' et al., Zhongguo sixiang tongshi 1/t[DX! J(tU~lilll'sl:: (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1957) 3, pp. 75-79. 6 My book uses this word without reference to the terminology and methods of modern musicologists. In the period 200-1800, certain Chinese scholars were at various times

INTRODUCTION

3

then why would Zhang equate or contrast two famous associates, Wang and He, with two men who had never met and had little in common intellectually? One solution to the imbalance in the parallelism is that Xun and Yue signify conservative Confucianism: there is a Shi. shuo anecdote in which Yue counseled young men not to rebel against social etiquette as had Ruan Ji ~;f.~ (210-263) and the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. He said that "In the Moral Teaching itself there are also enjoyable places."7 But General Zhang's quip is not a syllogism in which Wang-He liberation qua libertinism becomes trumped by solid Confucian text men. First of all, to be featured in Shishuo xi nyu meant that the persona gives lessons on developing an insouciant sociability and on imbibing culture in a pleasureful way, but more importantly on avoiding anxiety through proper metaphysical knowledge. It is Zhang Tianxi who enters the focus; he will supply the model of insouciant sociability. Zhang wants his interlocutor to know that great men of the past may be divided into two cyclically arising camps, just as his own life had been subject to the two primal forces yin and yang, for which he mentions the Yijing. Both camps are equal in moral essence, and all that is required is to ride out the cycles of intellectual fashion, never getting too involved with one. Qingtan and court Confucianism were these cyclical camps to be endured without obsession. Thus what we have from Zhang is a balanced warning. The first part of the warning is that qingtan / xuanxue K scholars should not be obsessed by their reveries and obscure research. For the second part, we should keep in mind that Xun Xu's musicology works well in the background, giving us obsessive musicology added to Yue's moralism. The lesson here is that scholars of ritual too should not obsess. My book is a biography of an obsessed scholar, Xun Xu. The title's phrase "and the politics of precision" indicates that Xun Xu's life, year-

*

tasked by the court, or they independently developed an interest in harmonics and absolute pitch, and in court songs and performances. Their arguments often drew upon the early classics and special guides, only a small part of which has remained. Most scholars who pursued music would not have been considered special technical advisers, as experts in astrology and shushu !J&i;fJ: arts often were. By Han and in Xun Xu's time, as we see in chaps. 4 and 5, a classicist music expert was clearly distinguishable from low-ranked music experts serving in palace music offices; yet I prefer to call them both "musicologists," although Xun in. particular would still have been considered a generalist scholar. By Sui and Tang, musicology began to be seen as a relatively technical and specialist study benefiting the state, as were the arts of mathematics, calligraphy, and law. SSHYIMather no. 1.23, p. 12.

4

INTRODUCTION

by-year, is embedded in political activity of a certain kind. My chapters consistently reveal factional entanglements, debates on policy, and personal struggles; yet the focus is on the details of his efforts to measure, correct, and restructure-sometimes as concerns texts and words and history, and sometimes as concerns physical objects and sounds. My interpretation of politics reveals more than the presence of friction over dynastic succession and state policy; it is also about the politics of a certain criticism that was becoming sensitive to ideals of personality and to scholars' literary styles and activities as collectors (of texts, art, music, and calligraphy). I will try to answer the question: why in such a context was precision often a difficult aesthetic to accept? These new ideals and styles are in fact glimpsed for the first time in the 260s through 310S among Xun Xu's peers. But those peers, who I believe were the early fashioners of the Shishuo xinyu critique, would soon demote Xun Xu, and along with such demotion came fewer chances at literary commemoration. Just as he was handled in Shishuo, so too the historical facts on Xun Xu are broken up and inconsistent; furthermore they are influenced by later editing, which tended to split Xun into two-a legendary factionalist and a legendary technical wizard whose inventions were fenced off inside specialist treatises. How might we today create a large, interpretive view of this thirdcentury figure? How do we get a "modern" biography in all the good senses of the word "modern"? I do not want to present merely an ancient Chinese type of social biography called "accounts of conduct 17 AA." I want to range through information that is found around, before, and after Xun in order to comment meaningfully on his life and on the way people of his time received him. Going in the opposite direction, we also need small details. As a result we must know all of Xun Xu's peers, and we must bore into each of Xun's technical investigations, explicate them, and deduce personal and social motivations. We would like to know as much as he himself knew in each subject, and deduce how he received and developed skills. Of considerable interest would be to deduce a principle inherent in his skills. Was a genius of his day expected to have different systems for ordering a variety of arts? Or did one system hold them all together? My Introduction goes into these problems of large and small, and of interpretive texture; it also provides details about the book's structure. Below, the first section takes up the genre of biography-not on a theoretical level, but at the level of how it can even work given limited extant material concerning a poorly narrated and understood pe-

INTRODUCTION

5

riod of history. The next section has to do with an interpretive theme that I believe helps build up a "large view." It involves the so-called xuanxue trend (or, as it is unfelicitously translated, "mystery school") of the period 220-290. Loooking ahead, Chapter One will argue that the pre-Zhengshi IE ft#i, and later the actual Zhengshi, spirit of xuanxue philosophy and debate of the Zhengshi reign period (240-49) had an indirect impact on Xun Xu, therefore the Introduction discusses modern scholarship's treatment of that "spirit" and how a bit of reform in our categories can bring out a better level of interpretation. In my opinion, the backdrop of early xuanxue, which is highly specific socially, relating to just a few dozen people and a handful of coteries, also contains seeds of historicist emotion that Chinese writers of 250-400 AD used to recast values about the past, the state, and the self. The third section previews the book's major conclusions and themes. After that comes a note on the types of source material that constitute the Xun Xu biography. Finally, I sketch the seven chapters, mentioning each one's chronological high points, any previously published version, and acknowledging the help I received.

BIOGRAPHY LARGE AND SMALL

As others have said about their book projects, it came out of, if not exactly a footnote, then a row in a table. In about 2004 I hauled out an old seminar paper from graduate school days in order to update it for possible publication. The paper had attempted to say something about systematic skills and numerate ideas in Yijing commentaries of late-Han and Wei in the context of the history of sciences. 8 I decided to widen that by including practitioners of calendars, musicology, astronomy/astrology, healing, and various mantic arts, and to account for regional differences. It then began to look as if I would write a book on the situation of precision from about 170 to 300 AD. I reviewed findings from my dissertation and was reminded of the two or three Yingchuan Xuns who were involved with Yijing; but another Xun came up as an expert in ritual music-Xun Xu.

8 This was titled "Wang Pi's (226-49 AD) Book of Changes: A Case Study in China's Derailment of Her Calculation Arts," presented at Princeton U niversi ty, History of Science Colloquium, May, 1984; the title contains a proposition I no longer support. The draft for the paper contained tabulations and listings of various experts in numerate skills, divination, and Yijing.

6

INTRODUCTION

I wondered if Xun Xu would go into my table, which categorized technical "thought" into, for example, musicology, calendars, and divilution; also whether numerate ideas and computation were involved; and if such arts showed up in the person's Yijing or other classicist writing, or as discussion among peers. In order to include Xun Xu I had to be confident that he had actually done such things as compute, measure, or design via images or numbers or models; that is, not just general remarks about the hallowed social role of music and nothing else. Needham's Science and Civilisation in China and Mather's translation of the major Xun Xu anecdote in Shishuo showed me that the facts of Xun's technical doings were not yet understood. That project has since been reconceived as an article, which may see light in a year or two. But I did quickly determine that Xun Xu was a systematic musicologist (among his several research areas). I did not stop at the surface facts that said Xun examined old objects like ancient bell-sets to determine the proper pitch. I wanted to know which bells those were (if in fact bells), if the evidence was reliable, and what he said and did musicologically? I had to piece together both small, troubling bits and long source-passages of nearly incomprehensible technical jargon. After false starts, and the importuning of various readers, I decided to construct the whole life just as it played out chronologically. Working on and off for over four years, I have discovered that Xun's life moved from techne to techne, each one contributing to his persona and helping to build a dramatic career arc. Here I want to remark on the nature of intellectual biographies. It seems obvious that whatever the major literate culture, the relatively early eras, with their specific types of thought and materials, are more difficult for us. Historians have to train, even strain, to "hear" the intent of lives from before, let us say, the eighteenth century; and thirdcentury lives become more "foreign" than those even of the eighth. It is one reason why we tend to indicate such differences with era-names, like "early medieval." Furthermore, historians can sometimes alter their very methods of "hearing." In some sense, perhaps a positivist one, the craft has got better recently. Thus to organize a biography of a renowned third-century Chinese official by modeling on similar biographies written by pre-193° Chinese scholars, or by Western sinologists who did not go past the traditional formats, would obscure far more than clarify. Much has changed since about 1980: Western historians are now linguistically agile and have even influenced the way Chinese scholars themselves, who suffered enormous institutional setbacks

INTRODUCTION

7

from about 1930-80, go about the craft, and, finally, Western scholars have benefited immensely from recent Chinese developments. Studies of post-I800 China are extensive and illuminating-and at the level of the best social, intellectual, and cultural history worldwide. Biographies of figures from 1800 to today abound and are rich in material and interpretation; and studies of 1600-1800 China are catching up. For early, especially early-medieval, China, however, intellectual biographies do not abound, and even general scholarship-for example, intertextual translations with full apparatus, concordances, thematic studies-has not risen so swiftly. Yet it has improved since the mid-I98os. Typical of the improvement is the work on literature, literary genres, and brief biographies and chronologies of Chinese poets of the 50-500 AD period. 9 With the rapid growth and changes in Chinese universities have come new, or updated, chronological compendia, such as Lu Kanru's Zhonggu wenxue xinian (also the earlier work of Liu Rulin, Han fin xueshu biannian).IO We also are getting, especially from Chinese scholars, vertical chronologies (nianpu 4~), continuing a fundamental form of biographical organization in traditional Chinese letters; increasingly these are becoming interpretive. 11 Prosopographies are on the rise, notably a strong showing from literary specialists in the West. 12 If we move beyond the fertile field of literature, we see that Buddhist studies beginning even as early as the I950S and 60S in the West, brought out useful biographies relative to pre-600 China, as well as thematic and even genre studies, to borrow that term from 9 We have full, annotated collections of verse that update older examples of this type (see Lu Qinli, as cited in this book's Bibliography). For genre studies, the following broke new ground: Gong Kechang, Studies on the Han Fu, trans. David Knechtges et al. (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1997); Dominik Declercq, Writing Against the State: Political Rhetorics in Third and Fourth Century China (Leiden: Brill, 1998); and Mark Laurent Asselin, '''A Significant Season.' Literature in a Time of Endings: Cai Yang and a Few Contemporaries," Ph.D. diss. (Seattle: University of Washington , 1997). For excellent short biographies, see those included in David R. Knechtges Wenxuan translation series from Princeton Press, and in the Indiana Companion volumes as well. III For full citations, see Bibliography. Liu's catchment was broader than Lu's, taking in technical innovators, monk-philosophers, historians, classicists, and so on. See also Cao Daoheng wn]:~j and Shen Yucheng tt3i.)V(;, Zhonggu wenxue shiliao congkao I'll Ilt')C~~~-lfi~:OlJ' (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2003). II Just a brief sample, on the Caos: Zhang Keli 1lfljJ;f\~t San Cao nianpu:~:::Wt{FIW§ (Jinan: Qi Lu shushe, 1983); idem, "Cao Pi" W{2f~, in Mou Shijin tj~·LIl~, ed.-in-chief, Zhongguo gudai wenlunjia pingzhuan 1111j.!xlllI1~XIThij~(~jjli.1w. (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1988), pp. 145-59. 12 Another mere sampling: C. M. Lai, "River and Ocean: The Third Century Verse of Pan Yue and Lu Ji," Ph.D. diss. (University of Washington, 1990); Cynthia Chen-

8

INTRODUCTION

literature. Buddhology tends to branch off, sometimes staying technical and outside of social history, but good biography in that field remains paramount. Many early Buddhists were non-Han from areas far to the west, approaching China and its systems of belief from an outside angle. Moreover, early Buddhist letters developed formats of biography that were based on older Chinese models that obscured matters of belief and conversion-matters that a modern biographer finds compelling and in need of interpretation. 13 My idea of a good, large-scale and interpretive biography is Donald Holzman's Poetry and Politics, a study of Ruan Ji published in 1976 by Cambridge. It was written before the just-mentioned rise in literary studies. Holzman's task was difficult, especially because of the dearth of previous large-scale biographical attempts, even though figures like Ruan and his peers have been extremely popular among critics and writers in China since 300 AD. Neither Holzman's Preface nor Introduction alludes to a research-defining previous shoulder on which to stand. His bibliography shows a good number of journal articles from the late I930S to 60S that treated Ruan's specific poems or genres, and a few short articles that may be about aspects of his life. The only clear indication of giant shoulders, and mentioned as a scholarly guide in Holzman's Preface, is Yoshikawa Kojiro's II {j( ~~ "Gen Seki den" 1Jt~~1-', which is in fact not all that long. (I have not examined it in order to say exactly how Holzman took off from Yoshikawa's points of view and findings.) Since Holzman, there has not been a biographical

u)

nault, "Lofty Gates or Solitary Impoverishment: Xie Family Members of the Southern Dynasties," TP 85 (1999); and David Knechtges, "Sweet-peel Orange or Southern Gold: Regional Identity in Western Jin Literature," in Paul Kroll and David Knechtges, eds., Studies in Early Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History (Provo, Utah: The T'ang Studies Society, 20 °3), pp. 27-79. 13 A model of Buddhist biography is Leon Hurvitz, Chih-i (538-591): An Introduction to the Life and Ideas of a Chinese Buddhist Monk, Melanges chinois et bouddhiques 12 (Brussels, 1963); E. Zurcher has always furthered the social context of the Buddhist figures he treats. This is brought out in the foreword by Stephen F. Teiser to the new edition of Zurcher's The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden: Brill, 2007); see also several of Zurcher's articles from the 1990S; other advances in social context have been Victor Mair, Tang Transformation Texts: A Study of the Buddhist Contribution to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 28 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. P., 1989); and Daniel Boucher, "Dharmaralq;a and the Transmission of Buddhism to China," AM 19.1-2 (2006), pp. 13-37. A model study of a Buddhist philosophical "genre" and how it revealed its practitioners' minds, is Richard Robinson, Early Alddhyamika in India and China (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967). Much new work is proceeding on language, genres, and even how remains of oral exegesis are found in early Chinese sutra translations, and I can only briefly mention the scholars Paul Harrison, Funayama Toru, and Ming-Wood Liu.

INTRODUCTION

9

approach at the same level. Holzman looked at clusters of years in the life-span of Ruan, took stock of his family and local and court connections, as well as Ruan's location and social links at various times, then determined what pieces of prose and/or poetry seemed to represent an intellectual problem confronting Ruan, or a critical face that Ruan could erect for the public. Holzman plumbed deeply into the defining spaces of genres and how they fit those problems and those faces in order to give us Ruan Ji's trajectory of emotion and brooding about society. That Holzman's biography occupies a lonely place may come as a surprise. 14 In fact, the "large view" biography for early-medieval Chinese history still languishes. Even the late-Han end of the spectrum, which is generally more advanced than, for example, Northern Dynasties literature, still awaits deep, richly textured studies of key personalities, for example, a study of Zheng Xuan l~~ (d. 200) that would place him inside family and teachers and into locales, also analyze his fields of expertise and explain the reception of Zheng-ism down to the end of Western Jin. With such a study we would gain an enormous foothold onto a time period that we do not yet feel totally comfortable in. I could name a dozen others yet undone: e.g., Wang Lang ~~ (d. 228) and his son Su (195-256), encompassing numerous inner-court leaders with whom they dealt; Du Yu's :f±Ji (d. 284) polymath family; and the world of Zhang Hua (232-300), taking in his proteges Shu Xi 3Rt[ (ca. 263-ca. 302) and Zhi Yu ~~ (b. ca. 250, d. 3II). We also need thematic studies of court institutions. Large advances will also come as early-medieval China's art and material culture are developed, bringing treatments of aesthetics, mentalite, and criticism. 15 That said, the small view of a person's life and mind must not be overlooked: God still resides in the details. A modern example, even 14 There are a few attempts: e.g., Ronald C. Miao's still useful Early Medieval Chinese Poetry: The Life and Verse of Wang Ts'an (A.D. I77-2I7) (Wiesbaden: Steiner

Verlag, 1982), with his chapter "The Life of Wang Ts'an"; for translation of the standard-history biography of Wang Su, see R. P. Kramers, K'ung Tzu Chia Yu, The School Sayings of Confucius: Introduction, Translation of Sections I-IO, with Critical Notes (Leiden: Brill, 1950); and in the same way a biography ofFu Xuan, in Jordan D. Paper, The Fu-tzu: A Post-Han Confucian Text, Monographies du T'oung pao 13 (Leiden: Brill, 1987). A new full-scale biography is J. Michael Farmer's, The Talent of Shu: Qiao Zhou and the Intellectual World of Early Medieval Sichuan (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY, 2007). None of these examples constructs a life using the level of social interpretation achieved by Holzman. 15 See Audrey Spiro's engrossing Contemplating the Ancients: Aesthetic and Social Issues in Early Chinese Portraiture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

10

INTRODUCTION

if outlandish, helps make my point. If we want to know about the life of a modern artist-critic like Robert Crumb, and his brilliant cartoons of the San Francisco "flower power" years, then we can appreciate the kind of detail found in the 1995 film biography Crumb, by Terry Zwigoff We listen to Crumb and his peers talk about line-drawing, sex as imagery and reality, comics as art-form and marketplace, as the years progress from Crumb's youth to 1995. Crumb's drawings are thrown into huge scale on-screen so that our minds wander in delight as we attempt our own critiques. Any life-story of an engaging, or simply shocking, thinker provides an opportunity for such grand views of small things. My biography of Xun Xu takes in literary details; Chapter Three bears this out with a detailed analysis of Xun's prosodic rhythm in verse. But this is only a part: the biography is also rooted in the history of thought and ideology (which I would define as politically or socially constructed ideas meant to manipulate sectors of a population or just the political public), as well as the history of sciences and technologies. Leading figures of Chinese thought from that large century comprising 170-315, or even the wider 100-500 AD period, have only garnered a small handful of modern-style biographies (discounting some that merely repeat the pre-1900 xingzhuang form). I mentioned, above, the lack of intellectual biographies of late-Han men like Zheng Xuan. Scholarship has yet to define even the terms of discourse for the "small views": what was "thought" in that period (does it include belles lettres)? How can we align an argument between two writers on even one topic? What was philosophy? We remain unsure about the terms of guwen ("ancient text" classicism); and we are not yet sufficiently aligning religious needs and forms (like Daoist activities and writings, mortuary iconographies, filial observances) with individual lives. I am not arguing that all of this must eventually be made orderly: there will always be loose ends and ample debate, but biographies will make extremely useful paths through all of it, and will promote clarity.16 Once we focus on the details ofXun Xu's technologies, it makes demands of the reader. The details are not easily depicted, as are works of portraiture and calligraphy; in fact, even though Xun was accomplished in those two arts, we have no examples. What we do have are ]() Inroads into the small-scale approach ro the history of thought exist: I have mentioned Declercq and Asselin, above (n. 9), and Robinson (n. 13); see also Robert G. Henricks, Philosophy and Argumentation in Third-Century China: The Essays of Hsi K'ang (Princeton: Princeton U. p', 1983); and I discuss Wang Baoxuan, below.

INTRODUCTION

11

his measurements, his research approach to ritual constructions and devices, his reactionary aesthetics of prosody and musical scales, and his attempts at archeological retrieval and interpretation. More than anything, his life is a "science life." Biographies of scientifically oriented minds in the 200-600 AD period of China are practically nil. Studies of sciences and technical thought generally are better for the much earlier Qin-Han period,17 but as for biographies, that latter period also is lacking, although there is enough material to build up the lives of far-ranging geniuses who devoted their careers to mathematical and numerological, as well as mechanical, systems-men like Jing Fang fJf:m (d. 37 BC), Yang Xiong m;t1[ (53 BC-I8 AD), and Zhang Heng *1~J (78-139 AD).lS Thus to gain perspective, I have looked to the literature on Western medieval and premodern sciences, and would hope in the present biography to have reached even half way to the level achieved in Anthony Grafton's tour de force study of the technical exegetical revolution set in play by Joseph Scaliger. The latter work fulfills the goals of an intellectual biography that can be both large and interpretive, yet built upon episodes of personal, technical controversy. In pre-I750 Europe, as in Xun Xu's world, such technics were not professionalized, but are to be seen as innovations in scholarly method 17 On an early-Tang monk-polymath, see Chen Jinhua's Ph ilosopher, Practitioner, Politician: The Many Lives of Fazang (643-7I2j Sinica Leidensia 75 (Leiden: Brill,

2oo7)-not social history per se. (The Tang remains fertile ground for research into the social and political bases of technology, science, and ritual studies.) The third-c. mathematician Liu Hui ~tl1~& leaves no traces of his life, but see He Peng Yoke's entry in vol. 8 of Charles Coulston Gillispie, editor-in-chief, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Scribner, 1973), pp. 418-25. On Qin-Han sciences, see Nathan Sivin, "Cosmos and Computation in Early Chinese Mathematical Astronomy," TP 55.1-3 (1969); G. E. R. Lloyd and Nathan Sivin, The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece (New Haven: Yale U. P., 2002); Christopher Cullen, Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient China: The Zhou bi suan jing (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1996); and for biography per se, we have the life of a court technocrat: Derk Bodde,

China's First Unifier: A Study of the Ch'in Dynasty as Seen in the Life of Li Ssu, 28o?-208 B. C. (1938; rpt. Hong Kong: Hong Kong U. P., 1967). 18 Jing's life and works were discussed in detail by the late Jack Dull, "A Historical Introduction to the Apocryphal (ch'an-wei) Texts of the Han Dynasty," Ph.D. diss. (University of Washington, 1966); it is a starting point for a large study of Jing. Yang has been studied in the context of philosophy: see Michael Nylan and Nathan Sivin, "The First Neo-Confucianism: An Introduction to the 'Canon of Supreme Mystery' (T'ai hsuan ching, ca. 4 B.C.)," in Sivin, Medicine, Philosophy, and Religion in Ancient China: Researches and Reflections, Variorum Collected Studies series (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), but Yang still requires a history-of-science approach as part of an intellectual biography. The near future will bring a technology- and literature-oriented life of Zhang Heng in the form of a University of Washington Ph.D. dissertation.

12

INTRODUCTION

and outlook. Also I note Grafton's social-historical study of Girolamo Cardano, which holds the chief character up to a warm light to reveal family influence on his astrological training. 19 Ultimately, my biography of Xun Xu has no direct models in early China studies, but the chapters utilize and cite modern technical researchers who have toiled brilliantly in the small details. For example, I draw on scholars in the history of late-second and thirdcentury yuefu ~M poetry; historians of technologies who fleshed out details of Xun's metrology; and the several leading Chinese researchers in early Chinese musicology writing since the 1950S about Xun Xu's flute temperamentology. All have provided keys to my life ofXun Xu, yet no one brought it all together in one format, or has narrated career, emotions, and developments. I ultimately think back to Donald Holzman's task. 20

A

MORE REAL XUAN

I wish to use tight, small views to make a larger, interpretive biography. For this, Holzman showed the significance of literary studies-writers' ideas, lives, and genres. But we cannot attempt exactly that kind of study of Xun Xu, since he leaves no classical commentaries or belles lettres that reveal these things. I do examine his poetry, but it was written almost entirely for court ritual occasions, hardly personal and not even a genre that excited later poets and critics. In Chapter Five I examine a prose text that was in fact personally revealing, even a bit emotional. But that piece (a dialog with an old flute master who supplied Xun the keys to understanding a music problem) does not connect Xun to wider social and critical opinions. To build the biography, I weave into those technical moments the vicissitudes of faction, criticism, and politics. But even politics can seem ephemeral. Therefore, to ground Xun Xu, I turn now to the spirit of xuanxue, even though Xun's 19 Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford U. P., 1983-1993); idem, Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. P., 1999), esp. pp. 71-72; also excellent is Tamsyn Barton's study of the life of Galen, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomies, and Medicine under the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). We have ample products of the last seventy-five years in these fields-apparatuses, translations, monographs and compendia; so it will not pay to make a summary bibliography here. 20 For a biographical tribute to the biographer Holzman himself, see Kroll and Knechtges, eds., Studies in Early Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History, pp. xxv-xxix.

INTRODUCTION

13

work had no trace of the motifs found in the famous "Zhengshi timbre JI~E1z iff" (a phrase that I comment on later). His work was positivist: he corrected and reconstructed received templates. His mind proceeded outside of xuanxue ideals and styles, even though his life was coterminous with xuanxue paragons like Zhong Hui ~fr (with whom he was close), Xiahou Xuan 1*~, He Yan 1PJ~, and Wang Bi .r.SBS. There is a solution that keeps this from being the kind of musings in "negative history" that ask why a certain phenomenon never became part of some other one, or why no influence from a certain source can be detected. It is that some ofXun Xu's extended-family mentors were directly involved in the pre-Zhengshi (that is, the pre-240) formation of the new timbre of philosophical Luoyang, as Chapter One establishes. This xuanxue connection becomes a valuable way to place Xun Xu's reactionary values and his aesthetics of precision directly into the famous Zhengshi period in which he lived as a young man. This is not the place to try to explain what xuanxue was, and why it developed the way it did starting before the Zhengshi reign-period. Such questions are fascinating, much like those concerning lixue ~ and daoxue in Song times, and have received treatments in the past, beginning most importantly with early-Qing writers and then revisions in the I930S and I940s. Below, I summarize briefly the most persuasive of the positions, while staking out my own suggestions for a path along which to define and describe xuanxue more clearly. Something definitely happened starting around 220 AD among a handful of bright thinkers. Unlike guwen denial theories in recent scholarship, there is no attempt to "deny" xuanxue. We agree that a certain new timbre, or voice iff, took hold. The movement, per se, has been periodized by early scholars: I) 240-49, literati qingtan centered around the court leader Cao Shuang 2) 250-65, the lifestyles and philosophy of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove; 3) 265-316, courtiers of Western Jin; and 4) 316-420, a Buddhist revival of qingtan in the circles of the displaced elite in the South. 21 To this I propose adding the "pre-Zhengshi" period of 220-39, in Luoyang. The periodization shows general changes that must be considered. But

trx

21 Richard Mather, "Chinese Letters and Scholarship in the Third and Fourth Centuries: The Wen-hsueh p'ien of the Shih-shuo Hsin-yu," JAOS 84.4 (1964), pp. 349-50, citing Miyazaki, "Seidan" rfH~, Shirin 31 (1946). Periodization according to type, and indirectly chronological, was already asserted in the 1930S by Fan Shoukang 1MtH;k, Wei jin zhi qingtan ~l'=tzrr~jj'~ (Shanghai, 1936), p. 5, who broke the phenomenon into 1. the mingli i1JW group of Zhong Hui et al.; 2. the xuanlun ~·mfu group of Wang and

14

INTRODUCTION

a caution has to be stated: life among the elite and subelite was big; there were far more thinking individuals, self-conscious groups, and bold actions than just the famous few, or even the famous hundred or so in Shishuo. Moreover, we must not stop at a mere characterization of the enlarged century from 170-315 as having been one of breakdown, escape, liberation, and transformation. There were people building bridges, mapping, noting down travels, doing mathematics, carving on stone, organizing devotional cults, playing music, and correcting rites. We must learn about those before xuanxue can mature with new research and theories. There have been in my estimation five broad areas in which recent scholars have framed xuanxue. I find several of them particularly interesting, but also either fairly un resolvable until we get more interpretations of material, intellectual, and religious culture, or else are weakly defined and only formative. Ultimately, two other areas I think do offer room for fruitful exploration. First, let me review the interesting but less fruitful explanations of xuanxue. One deals with social theory (though often not defined as such), and the other with a method I would call internal history of philosophy. A certain social mechanism was used to explain the actions of some literati and social leaders after about 170 AD: namely, social disorder causes mental escapism. The end of Han was so disastrous that any who wrote and thought, and served the state, would have given up hope. They turned inward, or sought social hiding places. This has been around for centuries in Chinese critical literature, especially as a trope to criticize the escapists themselves. Taking in earlier Chinese frameworks while working out the problem even more elegantly, Etienne Balazs, writing in French in the late 1940S (later translated and edited), thought that literati at the end of Han exerted real "mental effort" to survive, and did so by consciously working to synthesize political philosophies in order to invest themselves somehow in a coming social order.22 In order to bring the social mechanism to bear directly on xuanxue, Balazs wrote another article, which charted three genHe; and 3. the kuangda IVRI~ group of Ruan Ji and Xi Kang. This kind of breakdown derived from earlier criticism; it remained popular in later generations of Chinese writers on the subject, from Fung Yulan to Chen Yinke. (It is doubtful that Miyazaki's writings were being read in China from 1937-60.) 22 Etienne Balazs, "Political Philosophy and Social Crisis at the End of the Han Dynasty," idem, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy: Variations on a Theme, ed. Arthur Wright and trans. Mary Wright (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1964), pp. 195-200.

INTRODUCTION

15

erations of xuanxue-ists, beginning with those who, reacting against Eastern Han chaos, created a "great wave of nihilism" (e.g., He Yan), followed by a generation of reactive libertines trying to work out religious answers, then a generation that experimented with utopian anarchy.23 Fung Yu-Ian stands out clearly as the most creative theorist of xuanxue in the framework of the history of philosophy. As in many traditions of narrative history, a template (announced or not) hovers above; it dictates where the numerous and unresolved res gestae are all headed. Fung's history of thought in this way is teleologica1. 24 Ideas in early China can be seen moving from era to era, developing logically (however way that is defined) and/or as structural branchings. Fung characterizes the period 50-150 AD that preceded that of xuanxue to be one of "apocrypha and prognostic texts." The third-century xuanxue reaction is then called a revival of Daoism. The keystone of the revival was to revamp the previous era, that is, the ancient Yijing and its Ten Wings commentaries, Laozi, and Zhuangzi in order to restore Confucianism to its pristine place, which had become tarnished. Those earlier, reified yin-yang arts and revelations had to give way to rational ontology, which teleologically made even further sense because of the sophisticated development that such ontology would experience seven centuries later with the writings of Song daoxue and lixue thinkers.25 Ultimately, our popular notion of a certain kind of third-century "neoDaoism" has come from Fung's interpretive gambit. But it is a gambit that does not altogether satisfy when it must explain such "neo-Daoist" topics as (to state Fung's categories) "self-transformation" and "the perfect man."26 I do not think an internalist history of philosophy can stand up until such time as international sinology can interpret 23 Balazs, "Nihilist Revolt or Mystical Escapism: Currents of Thought in China during the Third Century A.D.," in Wright and Wright, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy. In a study of intellectual trends mostly after 315 AD, Charles Holcombe, In the

Shadow of the Han: Literati Thought and Society at the Beginning of the Southern Dynasties (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994), favors the study of mentales: "Ideas and beliefs are real historical forces .... " (p. 19). He sees scholars who fled south after the fall of Luoyang as needing to recall, reinvent, and imagine what had existed at the fallen court in order to mount a displaced, new version. I reject merely one level of this argument: not so many things, customs, and ideas were lost, per se, so as to require reinvention; and in fact a lot of intellectual energy went into holding onto, yet revising saved genres and styles. 24 Fung Yu-Ian, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde (rpt. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1953), vol. 2. 25 See ibid., esp. pp. 173-75, and 186-87. 26 In The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy, trans. E. R. Hughes (London: Kegan, Paul,

16

INTRODUCTION

better the thought patterns in late-Han through Western Jin classicism, the essentials of quasi-Mahayana (or Sarvastivada) Buddhist activities, and the shapes and moods of China's (in fact South and East Asia's) mortuary and local! domestic religions that began far back in prehistory. Patterns in classicism are being addressed in current work. Although the area is far from achieving solid shape, it may achieve it in the next decades. This approach concerns the literary insights of the third century that reformed commentarial practice and altered what was considered canonic. In the I930S and 40S Tang Yongtong 1~ ffl1¥ made the most significant inroad, going far beyond the traditional "history of Chinese classical learning" model typified by Pi Xirui El ~~JJffij (18501908). Tang carefully staked out coteries and regions that spawned xuanxue (the principal one being the gathering of scholars in Jingzhou fflJ j'l'l in the 1905 to 208, and the influence upon them of Shu Jij scholars). More important was his deep interest in a variety of evidences and problems dealing with the direct transmission via such coteries of cultural artifacts like newly written commentaries and master-disciple traditions (e.g, Song Zhong's *J~\ teaching of Taixuan 7:c--¥; at Jingzhou); Tang showed such artifacts as subjected to new philological and commentarial methods, for example, Wang Bi's distribution of older, guwen, commentaries and Daoist passages directly following the relevant lines in the Confucian classics. Tang called the new hermeneutics of the third century an "Aufk/drung," and he hinted that such "enlightenment" (like fundamentalist movements in Buddhism and Christianity) was a release from Han-era linguistic practices that had obscured the religious depths of the classics. 27 Another sort of approach to classicism is the engaging, theoretical book by John Makeham that treats 1947), p. 130, Fung explains the trajectory more clearly, indeed in Platonic terms: people of the Wei and Jin era " ... came to have a much more discerning recognition of what transcends shapes and features .... " "They were convinced that a philosophy of the transcendent enabled men to 'reach the sphere of the abstract' .... " In Rudolf Wagner's opinion (Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang Bi's Scholarly Exploration of the Dark [X!tanxue) [Albany: SUNY, 2003], pp. 5-6), Fung was pessimistic (indeed negative) about Chinese history: it went from halcyon originality to being stuck in centuries of scholasticism. In a more nuanced interpretation of the work of Tang Yongtong, Pi Xirui, and Fung, Hans van Ess earlier explained that agendas in modern China of the 1920S through 1970S prompted writers to engage Western thought to their own purposes; see "The Old Text-New Text Controversy: Has the 20th Century Got It Wrong," TP 80 (1994), esp. pp. 156-59. 27 T'ang Yung-t'ung, "Wang Pi's New Interpretation of the I Ching and Lun Yii," trans. Walter Liebenthal, HJAS ro.1 (1947), p. 134; Tang's original Chinese version is

INTRODUCTION

17

the commentarial literature on just one Confucian classic, going all the way from the xuanxue era to Song. Fung Yu-Ian saw the developmental connection between the two eras, but Makeham's work is not teleological in this way; it interprets a commentarial work as a writing, whose language and form yield its own philosophy. Makeham's aim is not to explain xuanxue, although he does offer an intriguing interpretation of He Yan's level of xuanxue-ism that one may find in, or read into, the sparse form of He's commentary to Lunyu. 28

Directions toward a More Real Xuanxue Two other ways of getting at xuanxue are full of potential; and they relate to each other. One of them gratifyingly enough sees the phenomenon as social in the sense of a linguistic and dialogic froth that erupted in actual places among self-conscious, politically mature groups; it has also to do with material culture and the pleasure found in social rpt. in idem, Wei jin xuanxue lungao ~f'f~-~'f®Jfi% (Beijing: 1957). Tang's convincing handling of the history of coteries that transmitted Aufklarung from Shu to Jingzhou and then to Cao-led Luoyang is carried a step further by Wagner, in his Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy, which defines seven "circles" of thinkers since Eastern Han who sought ultimate meaning (pp. 44-45). Wagner stakes his project in the idea of hermeneuticism. This is quite fruitful, but I would prefer to have explained first what a "systematic exegesis" is (what product, qua system, came out of that so-called hermeneutical breakthrough). Our field sorely needs a history of systematic thought in contexts of early arts and technical apparatuses from late Han through Tang, and I believe that Han-Tang exegetical methods make a field for such a study. But hermeneutics should in my opinion be discussed historically as changes in historiography and theology, and especially transitions from theology to scholasticism, purposefully using those Western terms, which reveal ancient roots going back to the first Greco-Roman Homer studies and to Origen and Augustine, for example. Thus xuanxue, daoxue, and even kaozheng ought not to be framed as simply hermeneutics under Chinese names, arguably one implication of Wagner's project, but built on their own Chinese roots. An off-the-beatenpath hermeneuticist type was a Russian diplomat in China, A. A. Petrov, Van Bi iz istorii kitaiskoi filosofii (Moscow: Akademia nauk, 1936; see review by Arthur Wright, HjAS ro.1 [1947], pp. 75-88). Petrov saw Wang Bi as a ruling-class exponent whose "Zhou Yi lueli )Dj,0jlll~1Yf' provides a key to his Zhouyi and Laozi, namely, the belief in a mystical sort of tyrrany-the unitary that controls the many. Edward Shaughnessy insightfully reviews new studies of the history of commentaries, and ventures a political interpretation of Wang Bi's Zhouyi that is similar; "Commentary, Philosophy, and Translation: Reading Wang Bi's Commentary to the Yi jing in a New Way," Early China 22 (1997), esp. pp. 240-41 (he cites Wright's review of Petrov at his n. 7, although Shaughnessy's interpretation is original and of a vastly higher order than Petrov's naive one). 28 John Makeham, Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. p', 2004). He finds very little xuanxue there, but also finds very little form there: He Yan seems to have thought of commentary on a Confucian work as a way to imitate Confucius' own "I transmit, but don't create" ethos.

18

INTRODUCTION

activity. The other way discusses how ranking of men for state offices related to a more daring sort of ranking that involved ancient and primordial sages. That in turn connected with a new historicism of revelatory, ritualized political cycles (the legendic mandate cycles-part of what Fung had identified as the age of "apocrypha and prognostic texts"), and with religious and humanistic values that transcended all of it. Such approaches move us beyond the limitation brought by treating xuan only through records of thought and discussion that used obscurantist logic in a whole variety of topics or used linguistic codes that are supposed to have pointed to a reality beyond language and dualism, thus a sort of proto-madhyamika. Hou Wailu's 1* )11,111 1950S history of Chinese thought is a fine argument in the "froth" model. His volume 3, chapter 3, titled "The Zhengshi Timbre and the Origins of xuanxue," poses the idea that xuanxue came at a time when the writing down of one's classicist notions or textual interpretations was not as consistently pursued or idealized as it had been earlier, and that this helped to define the new "timbre," which then can be seen as a kind of vocalness (a third-century glasnost'). Debates were moved along through "logic games II ~"; and to impart a vision of a roiling time of meetings and discursive contests, Hou's compilation offers terms for the styles of competition as well as social commentary on the need to "vanquish."29 This is a history of thought whose program is emic, and thus more successful than Fung's. Having noted, above, that we lack much in our studies of early-medieval Chinese history, I can mention yet another opportunity for future research: a prosopographical study of interlinked groups in the early xuanxue period that compares them to a later (post-300) grouping, analyzing fully their logic games and the way the contests cut across "class" lines and regional snobbery, as well as the political implications. 3D Hou provides another helpful clue: he opens up his whole discussion with an extract from the Ming-Qing writer Gu Yanwu Jimi.k ft\, who wrote: "The vivaciousness of the famous literati of the Zhengshi reign-era flourished in the Luoyang area."3! This is important; it leads us to members of Cao-Wei leadership families who floated into Luoyang after 220, had mansions built, passed around and Hou, Zhongguo sixiang tongshi 3, pp. 74-76. I myself have a draft on that topic which may see the light of day; it looks at the way Guan Lu's 1~f'li~ (210-256) logical gaming functioned to keep his career afloat; Guan is noticed by Hou, ibid., p. 78. 31 Hou, Zhongguo sixiang tongshi 3, p. 74, citing Gu's Rizhi Itt H jllili.iR, j. 13. 29

30

INTRODUCTION

19

admired art, books, music, and (shades of R. Crumb) even drugs. My Chapters One and Two site the world of Xun Xu in Luoyang and explore that significance. It was there that this former Cao Shuang courtier was propelled into leadership after the Simas took control. It was to Luoyang that Xun's older cousins (all sons ofXun Yu mE!&;) brought Xun learning to help the Simas recast court policy and institutions, and where at least one Xun rose to fame as a xuanxue devotee. In the last twenty years, scholarship has paid attention to xuanxue as a time of ideals that focused on primordial antiquity. We can draw from this a picture of changes in historical attitudes and of the exploration of a religious value of self (specifically as would be perceived by bien pensant literati). Those explorers were hoping to anoint themselves as recipients of primordial, canonized knowledge (the pure, political genius of, for example, Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor .'i¥f, and Shen Nong f$ JI, the Divine Husbandman). Balazs, as mentioned, talked of a trend toward literary utopias, and such an interpretation, without mentioning Balazs, reached a sophisticated degree in a wholly different way in 1987 through Wang Baoxuan £1~itE~ .32 His introductory sections are where the keys to the social history of xuanxue lie. Although I can think of a handful of great scholars who controlled this large body of fragmentary evidence, none has used it to make Wang's sort of conclusion about a specific political-ideological rallying call for both pre-Zhengshi and Zhengshi xuanxue. There is not the space here to review the book, but I might add that an edited English translation would be a contribution to students of early China. I focus only on what I believe is its major point about the social and intellectual origins of xuanxue. On the social side, his view is that the WeiJin intellectuals concerned with xuanxue developed from literary~;t officials whose status and numbers began to rise late in Western Han, and who always represented a potential political threat to the military families who formed controlling factions. Cao Cao's llH* call to judge officials by talent later opened up new doors and closed off some of those factions. That is not new territory (although the explanation moves along well). The intellectual history interpretation is pertinent: it was specifically Cao Pi's "return to primordial antiquity, or Jugu Nr:Ii ," as an ideological agenda for his new dynasty that allowed the relatively wide category of literary men, qua potential officials, 32 See his Zhengshi xuanxue TE:!!f:r£,-&]J (Jinan: Qi Lu shushe, 1987), which was utilized heavily by Wagner, Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy, and mentioned in Shaughnessy's article ("Commentary, Philosophy, and Translation").

20

INTRODUCTION

to morph into an elite track-the Zhengshi star-officials, so to speak (mingshi 15 ±), men who saw themselves as recipients of that primordial, transcendent wisdom. The Cao Pi formula for legitimation took previous formulas to a new purpose. We can call those older ones a typology of creative saints whose work was carried out inside the broad, humane culture. Cao's thinking, still typological, was staked to godlike eremites, not to those like Yao or the Duke of Zhou, who worked out governance. It also appealed to, while carefully denying, revelatory texts-the so-called apocrypha, which placed Confucius into a flattened historical landscape as a supreme typological figure. Thus, in an environment open to Huang Di and Laozi (even more pointedly, to Zhuangzi), a "sage" Confucius was necessary for the potential of actually creating a xuanxue government and thus he claimed a new role. 33 Wang Baoxuan's insight hopefully will inspire studies that bring xuanxue into a cross-cultural study of historicism and memory, hermeneutics, and the role of counter-history. In fact, the Zhengshi logic games, drug-taking, and anti-social acts were loose elements of a counter-history with nostalgiac loyalties to Cao Pi and his son, the last of the strong rulers of the Wei dynasty. The participants were, despite occasional appeals to ataraxy, emotionally involved in sweeping away the core of the literary and moral culture that had failed the Han and was also threatening to define the agenda of the rising Sima bloc in the 240s. But counter-historical corrections did not easily emerge through annalistic or biographical writings, thus the stage on which the counter-culture (in a sense an informal counter-history) proceeded was the discussion salons and the Wang-He approach to the classics, with a general focus on primordial heroes and Confucius. We might end this small excursion into the "more real" xuanxue by emphasizing our need to expand the scope. If we can agree that we do not always need to find xuan-like topics (such as categorized by Fung and Makeham) and words,34 or only study the commentaries written on Yijing, Laozi, and Zhuangzi, then we can move to a study, for ex33 See Wang, Zhengshi xuanxue, pp. 47, 54 (re. the political background); 69-71 (on Cao Pi's fugu). Wang states: "The dynastic accession needed something transformative, and that would require a model; and in such a time period typified by 'adherance to Heaven and modeling antiquity," such models all needed to search directly inside deep antiquity" (p. 72); see also 128. 34 There was no sustained philosophical discussion of "xuan," ipsum verbum, in the third century. About two or three scholars were known to have studied the Han-era Taixuan (Zhang Heng wrote "Si xuan fu" Jttt£:J1lit in the 130s), and some commented on specific lines of Laozi or, later in Jin times, on passages of Zhuangzi concerning "xuan. "

INTRODUCTION

21

ample, of the apocrypha. How might we have a discussion of them in the context of the history of pseudepigrapha, writing genres, and forgeries?35 How might the latter figure into a discussion of counterhistories in early China? Consider too the "figures" of an earlier age of analogic thinking about history, for example, the yin-yang correlations with the Five Processes, Eight Trigrams, and Triple Concordance =: iI. We might learn from Western studies of figurism and typology, which look back to as early as Clement, Augustine, and the "Book of Creatures." We have generally assumed, via Fung, that after 220 the new xuanxue intellectual in China (descendant in some way of the guwen intellectual) had rejected and replaced figures and symbols. I do not see it that way; it seems more likely that it was the venues and registers that merely shifted, without discarding the object. Kun :1:$ the female, the earth, the receptive became the There-is-not ~, and even the latter did not remain for long as a decontextual symbol per se, given the developments in Buddhist shastra and Daoist revelatory cults. I wish to stress that if we are broadening the notion of xuanxue, then we should consider that outside of interesting arguments about its beginnings in Han times, with the writings of Yang Xiong and Wang Chong, the "froth," as I have called it, may have its real roots in the "Huangchu _fJ]" reign of Cao Pi (r. 220-226), with the promotion of deepest antiquity and the deft employment of political oracles and Zhuangzi motifs. This entire pre-Zhengshi aspect is brought out well by Wang Baoxuan. Across the whole arc from 200 to 350 we must be aware of mathematical, divinatory, and computative skills, and of how people mentioned private guide books and private arts. Studies of arts and technics, like the present one concerning Xun Xu, will illuminate that part ofaxuanxue mentale that treated exacting knowledge and precision as so obscure that they were attractive, but also as so obsessive as to be disturbing. Along with texts as cultural artifacts, we ought to consider, as did Rudolph Wagner more than thirty years ago (and Lu Xun before him), the intricacies of material culture-such things as drug-ingestion, connoisseurship, and painting.36 We need to have intellectual and social scansions of a hundred names, not just those of Wang Bi and He Yan. In this regard, I should mention the 35 See the enlightening discussion in Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions ofJewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 74-87. 36 See Wagner, "Lebenstil und Drogen im chinesischen Mittelalter," TP 59 (1973), PP·79-I 7 8.

22

INTRODUCTION

heuristic value of the sociology of knowledge, one example of which would be the work of Randall Collins. 37

CONCLUSIONS, FINDINGS, AND SUGGESTIONS

In what follows I theorize about an organizing principle found in Xun Xu's life of technical, ritual scholarship. I state several suggestions and implications for future research and research methods. Readers may find a concise statement of this type almost required in prizing open the findings of each of my chapters, with their technical descriptions. It is important to establish those findings first, as a guide.

Xun Xu s Use of Zhou Antiquity Xun Xu inherited basic literary skill and was groomed by his extended family, but he seems to have taken up further arts and skills after the age of about forty-three or forty-four. An overarching principle guided his arts: it may be thought of as a "prisca Zhou" -that chimera of venerated antiquity that classicists found in Zhou ritual ideals (see Chapter Four). The term borrows from the Western prisca theologia, a notion among Protestant scholars, 1500-1750, that a hallowed, ancient form of Judeo-Christian theology would unify the modern world into a single liturgical community. Notable European adherants undertook antiquarian travels to the Holy Lands to measure Biblical sites and distances, learning purported Biblical languages and converting terms and numbers in order to recapture theological truths. We see some of these activities in Xun's third-century Chinese endeavors, although his world of ritual was much different from that of Reformation Europe. I do not stress nor insist on the term "prisca," yet I believe it furthers my argument because as a heuristic it points to cross-cultural comparative history. One may instead read this as Xun's "Zhou ideal," or a "Zhoustyle court ideology." Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. P., 1998). Collins makes naive mistakes in his understanding of pre-Buddhist China and the xuanxue social ambits (e.g., pp. 166, 170, esp. fig. 4.4, and 172), but that would not deny the worth of his endeavor. He sees "Intellectuallife ... first of all [as] conflict and disagreement" (p. I). "Intellectuals are people who produce decontextualized ideas" (p. 19); and their actions occur in an elevated realm consisting of "cultural capital," "interaction rituals," and "emotional energy." He presents a demographic rule of thumb for how major philosophical breakthroughs ebbed and flowed in traditional philosophy worldwide: a group was usually limited to a small number of adherants or challengers to masters. These ideas can be put to use in taking up Hou Wailu's social froth that typified debate coteries and the impulse to "win."

INTRODUCTION

23

To every aspect of his scholarship-physical dimensions, lyric forms, pitch and harmonics, and universal chronological systemsXun applied what he deduced were Zhou standards. He did that without leaving a statement (none that we know) explaining how the Zhou principle may have had implications for his faction and their politics, or for Sima power. The closest we have are several passages in a nonpolitical prose piece that praise the Zhou manner of determining musical harmonics and the cultural importance of that, but not moving much past the specific setting of musicology (see Chapter Five). The chapters show that for court lyrics Xun Xu returned to the Zhou-era tetrameter shi ~~, but one example of his lyric shows that inside the tetric squareness he inserted a prosodic element that reflected structural shapes that may have been inspired by aural and visual shapes of the actual music performances. Perhaps because of this and certainly for other reasons, many have considered Xun a leading thirdcentury editor and promoter of yue/u lyrics, those post-19° AD songs of nostalgia, loss, and personal events; I disagree, seeing Xun as simply reforming what he saw as incorrect musical values inherited from the Wei dynasty. He also reconstructed the Zhou-era foot-rule to create an official "new fin" Zhou-based measure, or chi ,R., which helped him establish a reformed pitch-standard set, or the twelve litlit 1f g based on his Zhou dimensions, and, connected with this, he rearranged the diflute finger-holes to restore an accurate Zhengsheng IE!! scale (seen as a Zhou-era standard) per those lit lit. He commented on his preference for his regulated Zhengsheng scale over new types. Having been ordered to create a team to repair the damaged texts found in a plundered Warring States tomb, he introduced Zhou regnal dates in ganzhi T 3t terms to imply that Zhou political hierarchy had held sway over an ancient Wei-state locale. In short, Xun Xu proved his Sima dynasts legitimate with a universalistic prisca Zhou and provided a tinge of counter-history by reflecting upon the Warring States Wei and Jin.

*

Politics

0/ Precision

The politics surrounding Xun Xu centered on factionalism. The biography shows that any study of Western Jin must respect the watershed status of the Wu War and the war factions. Before the war, factionalism was centered around uncertainty in Sima family succession and any ability to control heirs-apparent. As plans for an invasion of Wu :!R: developed from 277-79, Xun Xu's succession faction (the Jia Jf -Xun faction) resented such planning outside their purview, and their war

m

24

INTRODUCTION

policy made for emotionally charged antagonism toward the pro-war Zhang Hua faction. My study shows that when the war was quickly completed, both factions changed into a Zhang-Xun struggle over scholarly affairs (mostly concerning problems of the 280 archeological discovery); and this struggle played out in the shifting personnel and structures of the two primary historiographical offices-the Bishu ;f~\iI (Imperial Library) and Zhongshu i=f (Palace Writers), which were thought of as offices to be held by the throne's most intimate, and therefore powerful, advisers. Precision at times involves aesthetics. Without stating so directly, Xun's aesthetics followed the Zhou for the regularity it provided in a variety of technics. Thus, prisca Zhou was not just theory, but a technique for sound, harmony, and shape. On another level, Xun's Zhou ran counter to the Cao Pi-inspired "return to primordial antiquity," which eschewed the analyses and tinkerings required for resetting Confucian institutions. Xun's vision could remind people of the stringent ordering undertaken by Li Si $-J1JT during Qin times or that of Wang Mang ±#f. Had there been any intellectual attempts at utopian imagery or thought in Xun's time-period (and it appears not), Xun Xu's stringent prisca Zhou would have been a formidable barrier. Stringency in the Zhou ideal bordered on obsession. To capture this, my sense of a politics of precision touches on Xun Xu's critical reception. We have clear evidence for two types of criticism. The first was the objection to the new Xun musical tunings as lodged by Ruan Xian mJ0(;. Chapter Four shows that Xun's position versus Ruan was defended on technical grounds early in the Tang. But, in a suggestive vein, Ruan's very role leads us to view Confucian obsession as having become a target of the southern style of daoistic,38 Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove criticism of the old world of stiff, failed bureaucrats. Xun Xu was just this type of negative model: his (literally) square aesthetics, total articulation of precision, resistance to new music modes, and then his fall from power, may have lurked in the background of a developing Seven Sages iconography, one that eschewed unsociability 38 In this book I use "daoistic" (perhaps a neologism) to suggest that someone's ideas, without relation to any Daoist movement or practices, reflected or indirectly touched on linguistically charged terms or cosmologies from such texts as Laozi, Zhuangzi, or Huainanzi, or they reflected on troubled careers, death, or life in personal ways; this word is preferred over "neo-Daoist"; see Howard L. Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths, 100-300 AD: The Tung-kuan, Taoist Dissenters, and Technical Skills," AM 18.1 (2005), pp.122- 24·

INTRODUCTION

25

and obsession with state institutions in favor of a Cao-inspired intimacy and a certain informality and clever sangfroid in statecraft. The second type of criticism involved Xun Xu's skills as antiquarian editor and historiographer; I touch on that, below. Other suggestions that I offer have to do with social history. My study of the Xun extended family shows that their culture of burial, mourning, and commemoration, both the social nature of funerals and funeral appurtenances, as well as epitaph texts, was linked directly to place. Yingchuan was the site of their traditional family tombgrounds, but the move of many leading Xuns to Luoyang in about the mid-220s brought new funeral actions and imperially-sponsored funeral support. In 295, a motive for such imperial support was the massive storms and flooding that occurred in the Central Plain, causing damage to the Xun-family tomb-ground and the burial of a certain Xun in the Mang Hills. The move to Luoyang also affected the family's standing as scholars. They gained roles in several Luoyang coteries involving Yijing; also, the Xun-family expertise in law and music that they had nurtured for at least fifty years in Yingchuan helped gain Xun Yi and Xun Xu appointments to Sima-court ritual projects. In the subsequent years, it seems that Xun Xu was able to manipulate various low-level bureaus in order to have their personnel take part in his antiquarian researches into ritual. In addition, when put in charge of interpreting the famous Ji Tomb found-texts in 280, Xun offered patronage to ancient calligraphy experts, who received privileged access to the found-texts. These bureaucratic and scholarly uses of people and offices can reflect social history just as clearly as local provincial funerals and shifts of residence to Luoyang can.

Archeology, Historiography, and the History of Sciences and Technologies The biography of Xun Xu makes findings in several discrete areas of scholarship. I have found that Xun Xu was at the forefront of a type of antiquarianism that had archeological features even ten years before the Ji Tomb, which scholarship generally considers the critical event of archeology in early China. In my view, well before this moment scholars inclined to the use of antiquities in their classicist writings were aware of the availability of found-objects, the storage of such objects, and perhaps even a certain market. Xun Xu's investigations into the Zhou "foot" involved sending out minions to retrieve relevant old devices (scoops, bells, foot-rules, coins). He himself was involved with

26

INTRODUCTION

opening up court storage areas, and there he found Wei-era court music devices. Xun and his consultants furthermore applied a fascinating system of measuring found-objects and their aural patterns, in determining Zhou metrological and harmonic standards. Historiography seems to have been the last area, spanning 280-87, in which Xun Xu attempted to assert new views. He is recorded as arguing in favor of pushing the formal "beginnings" of the Sima-Jin into the Zhengshi era. For that he was criticized twice, once posthumously. After the Ji Tomb's ancient annals were found, Xun pursued the techniques of chronology, and, as mentioned above, applied Zhou chronological markers to the most important of the found-texts, the Bamboo Annals ftiffo.l"c4. I pinpoint a turn of mind that emerged in the Zhang faction's denunciation ofXun Xu's use of chronology and poor quality of editing the Annals. This is connected to contemporary ideas about the proper use and best types of commentaries that could aid in reading histories and institutional texts. Zhi Yu would point out that such discernment was lacking in Xun-family scholarship. As an actor inside a broad history of science (broad in the sense of including the social side), Xun Xu provides fascinating details for modern historians. First, he crossed back and forth over that fluid line separating artisan and scholar. He clearly associated with artisans (metal casters, perhaps mathematicians, flute makers) and he himself possessed skills in portraiture and design, and there is mention of such practices in moments when casting and template-making were pursued in completing. a project. My finding in the area of metrology is that Xun Xu went about it in just this sense of a practice, even a modern sort of practice that typifies our hard sciences: court institutions were used to create a staff, a program was followed in research and determinations, and evidence was collected and disposed also in the context of the court, with its repositories and need for bureaucratic paperwork. In my discussion of a "more real xuan" I lodged opinions about various directions that the study of post-Han letters and classicism might go in the near future. Clearly we need several deep biographies, well constructed prosopographies, and attention to technical details, even of such things as prosody. As a general conclusion, I will add that current scholarship will profit by connecting the tissue of xuanxue with the scrim that backgrounds the emerging Western Jin literary and cultural criticism. If Xun Xu was scorned for not being part of the new paradigm but merely holding to his Zhou line, then that shows us that we must examine the art, material culture, and literary sense of an-

27

INTRODUCTION

tiquity that developed from about 230 to 290, then redeveloped from 320 or so to 450 and later. We also need a history of historiography, a history of classicism (tracking changes in guwen critiques and assumptions), and technologies and arts as applied to production and local society. The need for political narratives is not as acute, although the culture of military institutions is, and should be approached. Finally, in shaping literary styles as they evolved through xuanxue and toward the intimacy of yue/u and the poetics of personality, we must refer always to the political scene, the factions and struggles, and their impact upon non-elite and local and border areas. Moreover, Buddhist and Daoist developments, which do not come into the life ofXun Xu (with perhaps one curious exception), should be seen as the sort of post-xuanxue creativity that Tang Yongtong deeply understood them to be.

The Earliest Sources for Xun Xu s Life Besides relying on formal court records and institutional compendia, a number of which existed at least down through the fifth and sixth centuries,39 standard histories like Hou Hanshu 1&tlif andJinshu relied on family-preserved biezhuan )5U l' and jiazhuan l' (both hagio-biographies) to write their generic "liezhuan )1U 1'" (categorized biographies). A number ofYingchuan Xuns were in fact covered in this way in the earliest writings. Since most biezhuanljiazhuan oflate-Han to Sui are now nonextant, it is through the standard histories that we know of court memorials, quips, and letters; such genres also found a home in collections of anecdotes and bons mots. Jinshu, more than other medieval histories, included numerous free-standing poems, /u, and other prose by its biographical subjects,40 but this does not help us in the case of the Xuns. In Chapters Two and Four especially (and scattered in other places), I analyze and criticize the handling ofXun's life by the writers of his Jinshu biography, and I have been able to bring out something of their approaches to the material. Two other types of source material come into play. One is technical writing, as in the case of Xun Xu's sophisticated musicology. Such writings sometimes were copied into standard-history treatises, and sometimes only survived as part of a wenji -X~, if at all. 41 The other

*

See SS 33 ("Jingji zhi" B), p. 96{See Howard L. Goodman, "Jinshu," forthcoming in Albert Dien et al., eds., working title: A Six Dynasties Sourcebook. 41 See Howard L. Goodman, in ibid., for essays on the nature of several important reconstructed wenji of this period. On the way Xun Xu's guide to flute scales, "Di Iii 39

4(l

28

INTRODUCTION

is commemorative literature. Timothy Davis has shown how we now have many more examples than those known even in medieval China thanks to post-195° archeology. Beginning around the end of Eastern Han, publicly displayed eulogies gave way to entombed, to a large degree hidden, commemorations, with repeated proscriptions against ostentatious tomb decor and memorials, especially that of 278.42 When hidden tomb texts later on emerged to become a genre due to new literati interests, and as they were collected and appreciated, commemorative language took on new uses and shapes. The Xun tomb-text analyzed in Chapter One is remarkable both for what is naively intimate and private and how it comports with the world just outside the tomb door. Basically, we have five principal early biezhuanljiazhuan that dealt with the Xuns, all of which, plus other works from about 350-500, formed parts of Xun Xu's Jinshu biography: I) "Xunshi jiazhuan if": a multi-generational Xun-family record compiled by Xun Bozi 1ST (378-438).43 Several Xuns were the subjects of biezhuan; nos. 2 and 3, below, were probably written by other Xuns and/or their students close to the times of their subjects, and may have been sections of "Xunshi jiazhuan." 2) "Xun Yu m~ biezhuan";44 3) "Xun Xu ~b biezhuan."45 A relevant biezhuan was written by a non-Xun whose father was acquainted with Xun Xu. This was:

m]3::*

m

m

t-gi1*," was saved probably at first in Xun-family papers, and later compiled in Songshu, see chap. 5, below; also Howard L. Goodman and Y. Edmund Lien, ''A Third Century AD Chinese System of Di- Flute Temperament: Matching Ancient Pitch-Standards and Confronting Modal Practice," The Galpin Society journal 62 (April, 2009), p. 7. 42 See Timothy M. Davis, "Potent Stone: Entombed Epigraphy and Memorial Culture in Early Medieval China," Ph.D. diss. (New York: Columbia University, 2008), pp. 23 2-73. 43 See attribution in Chuxue ji {)H1J:l1t (Beijing: Zhonghua) 17 CA~IS, 21: 4), p. 421; 18 (A;1IS, i~ 4), p. 440. Passages are preserved in a few quotations in TPYL and other florilegia. See Rafe de Crespigny, The Records of the Three Kingdoms, Occasional Paper 9 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1970), p. 62. The work is mentioned once in jS 34, p. 1024. For details of discrepancies reo attribution as discussed in Tang and post-Tang sources, see SGZjj 10, p. 17b [j19]. Xun Bozi's biography in SgS 60, pp. 1627-29, states that he worked on a "Jinshu" (as did Xun Xu's grandson, Xun Chuo; see my List I, appended to chap. I); it is my own contention that Bozi was the compiler as well of "Xun shi lu"; also see List 1. 44 De Crespigny, Records, p. 62. 45 SGZ 10, p. 321, cit. "Wei liieh"; also TPYL's "Yin shu mu" ') I~~ EI (p. lob) and j. 130, subsection" R'l."

29

INTRODUCTION 4)

"Xun Can m~ biezhuan" (by He Shao 1PIN)] d.

302).46

Finally, there is: 5) Zhang Fan 5tHI (Jin era), who wrote a history of Han titled "Han ji" ~lffB, originally 30 juan. 47 Passages are preserved throughout Pei Songzhi's SGZ commentary. In it we find biographical notices for many Xuns; it is easy to assume that he borrowed his facts from nos. 1-4.

THE SEVEN CHAPTERS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My chapters move through Xun Xu's life chronologically, with something of an exception in Chapters One and Two. One is a historical preliminary to Xun's career; and Two, while in fact offering the opening years of his career, also provides two nonchronological discussions on themes relevant to the study as a whole. At the beginning of each chapter I propose one musical note from the seven scale-steps of the Zhengsheng scale, a mode typical of musical practice beginning just before Xun Xu's time. The epigraph for each chapter characterizes that scale-step, which in turn becomes a metaphor for the particular part of Xun's life. I am happy to acknowledge an overall debt to David R. Knechtges. His sociable way of scholarly interaction, willingness to answer questions in detail, and dedication to craft made the book possible. Nathan Sivin read an early, unformed, draft and guided it to a new shape. Thanks is due to Chris Dakin, Suffolk University, for help with research tools. I was inspired to pursue such a long-term project thanks to my wife Anita Chummee, who understood that I needed a gentle, quiet home. Other debts are expressed, below, in the relevant sections. • Chapter One, Gong: "The Xuns of Yingyin and Luoyang" This is an exploration of the social history of an early-medieval extended family in China-the Xuns. I have published an article titled "Sites of Recognition: Burial, Mourning, and Commemoration in the Xuns ofYingchuan, 140-305 AD," Early Medieval China 15 (2009), in which I use some material never before analyzed in a monograph, in

46 De Crespigny, Records, p. 62; cited in SGZ 10, pp. 319-20; also cited in He's biog. inJS 33, p. 999· 47 See de Crespigny, Records, p. 57.

30

INTRODUCTION

one case an archeologically retrieved text from a Xun tomb. Chapter One draws in a minor way from the article, but is otherwise quite different: it weaves into the theme of an extended family's burial and death commemoration their intellectual tracks as well (pedagogical influences, types of texts, types of arts). I must thank Miranda Brown for numerous pointers on developing commemorative evidence. I presented my arguments in a talk titled "Trauma, Counter-Culture and Fall: The End of the Line for the Great Hsiin Family, and Their 295 AD Stele," delivered at the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Sept. 14, 2007. The opportunity was made possible by Kevin Chang and Director Wang Fansen. The spirited discussion encouraged me to hone my argument. Drafts of this chapter were read and criticized by Michael Puett and David Knechtges, the latter providing valuable corrections to my translations. • Chapter Two, Shang: "Xun Xu's First Posts, ca. 248-265" This chapter builds on the previous chapter's exploration of family, urbanity, and political influence as the means by which Xun Xu confidently entered into service. I start with an essay on what it meant to have been a courtier under a "bad last" regime, which for the WeiJin transition I call the "Cao Shuang taint." Any taint, which I see as having been neither automatic nor severe when occurring, was ameliorated in the process ofXun's becoming a "cooperative exegete." The chapter also provides an introduction to the factionalism that determined much ofXun Xu's entire career. • Chapter Three, Jue: "Aesthetics and Precision in Court Ritual Songs, ca. 266-272" While in 264-66 Xun Xu was rather subserviant in court scholarly projects, he would now assert himself in lyric and music. Some of the material in this chapter was published as "A History of Court Lyrics in China during Wei-Chin Times," AM 19.1-2 (2006), pp. 57-109. The anonymous reviews helped me refine my deductions, and I offer thanks indeed. The chapter uses a small amount of the material and conclusions from the article, but revises the translations and goes into much new territory concerning Xun Xu's prosodic constructions. It offers new suggestions about any role Xun Xu may have played in the emergence of the yue/u genre of poetry. I thank Nicholas Morrow Williams, an advanced Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington, for help concerning prosody.

INTRODUCTION

31

., Chapter Four, Bianzhi: "Commandeering Staff and Proclaiming Precision, ca. 273-274" Xun Xu began to utilize offices under his direct purview (as headof the Palace Writers) and some indirectly so. I start with an essay on the special facts behind the Palace Writers and the Imperial Library, facts that are a key to Xun's struggle with Zhang Hua and are pursued again in Chapter Six. One ofXun's large projects was to catalog the Imperial Library. I investigate Xun's and his staff's use of antiquarian discoveries to revise the ritual "foot," or R, a key technical step required before any reform of ritual pitch. I must thank Dr. Chou Min-chih, formerly the Director of the East Asian Library, University of Washington. He looked through the long passage ofLi Chunfeng and helped me to improve my translation (as well as my translations of several sections of Xun Xu's jinshu biography) . ., Chapter Five, Zhi: "A Martinet of Melody, ca. 274-77" Xun Xu moved directly from metrology to music performance. He instituted a new pitch for the court ensembles and researched newly found devices that indicated a problem with the way court flutes were built. The result was his method of making flutes that delivered a better-tuned Zhengsheng scale. The chapter draws on two previous articles. The first made broad suggestions about the aesthetics of any music that may be associated with yuefu, as well as actual evidence of contact that Xun Xu had with instrumentalists; see "Tintinnabulations of Bells: Scoring-Prosody in Third-Century China and Its Relationship to Yueh-fu Party Music," JAOS 126.1 (2006), pp. 27-49. Subsequently my translations in the latter article were refined and expanded, and much new material added, for an article published with a coauthor, Y. Edmund Lien (currently an advanced Ph.D. candidate, University of Washington); see "A Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Temperament: Matching Ancient Pitch-Standards and Confronting Modal Practice," The Galpin Society journal 62 (April, 2009), pp. 3-24. The anonymous reviewer provided leads that were happily utilized; and the sensitive cooperation of the editor, Michael Fleming, was critical. Lien's knowledge of math and his ability to comprehend and criticize musicological experiments of the I980s in China concerning Xun Xu's deduced pitches, as well as produce trenchant readings of obscure passages in Songshu were vital to the project. Chapter Five uses several previously published translation passages, but finishes the entire Xun Xu document on improving court flutes and adds

32

INTRODUCTION

a deep level of commentary. It also raises another topic, namely, the manner in which Xun's new music was criticized by Ruan Xian, a wellknown musical scholar in Xun's own lifetime. I wish to thank Lothar von Falkenhausen for reading a very early draft of Xun's musicology and supplying needed corrections. lowe a debt of gratitude to Yang Yuanzheng and to Professor Chan Hing Yen of the University of Hong Kong, Music Department, for inviting me to present a talk titled "Xun Xu's Transposing Flutes" at a Research Colloquium, September 19, 2007. There I had the good fortune of meeting Kwok Wai Ng, whose new Ph.D. on Tang modes as well as his personal communications helped me enormously. Last but by no means least, I am deeply grateful for the personal consultations provided by Prof. Alan Thrasher, emeritus, of the Music Department of the University of British Columbia. • Chapter Six:, Yu: ''A New Day, New Antiquities, New Factions, ca. 277-284 Here I deal with the shape of politics after the Wu War of 280, as well as Xun Xu's role in a famous archeological find of 279-80, the Ji Tomb discovery. We learn about the scholarly apparatus that Xun erected for restoring, transcribing, and editing the found texts. The factional politics after the war was shaped by others' views of the texts and an attack on Xun's editing by Zhang Hua's circle. David Knechtges provided valuable help translating Xun Xu's celebration poem. Sincere appreciation is expressed to Edward L. Shaughnessy for reading both an early version of the whole Xun Xu study and this chapter near its final stage. Additionally, I thank David Nivison, emeritus professor of Stanford University, and Shao Dongfang, Director, East Asia Library, Stanford University, for inviting me to a meeting titled "The Riddle of an Ancient Book, the Zhushu Jinian (Bamboo Annals): The Debated Authenticity of Its Texts, and Chronologies Therein," held at the East Asia Library, Stanford University, May 23-24, 2009. I chaired the afternoon session on the 23d. The flow of discussion about new avenues of research into ancient chronology greatly benefited this chapter. • Chapter Seven, Biangong: '''They've Stolen My Phoenix Pool,' 284-289 and Beyond" Here, I document the actors involved in anti-Xun criticism and its historiographical aspects. Criticism targeted not just Xun but the scholarship of his elder, Xun Yi. The fact that post-283 anti-Xunism, as I term it, involved historiography enriches our picture of Western Jin

INTRODUCTION

33

scholarship. Xun's exegetical counter-history (his insertion of Zhou regnal dates) was blunt and ideological, and fed into the negative reception of his projects. After over twenty years as head of a complex of offices that were the chief sites of historiographical work, Xun was apparently blocked by about 282-83 and officially "promoted out" in 287. Removal from his scholarly seat affected him deeply; and he died in 289. My concluding thoughts return to Xun Xu's prisca Zhou. The latter, although not referred to thus, was what the new style of scholarship and scholarly society after the 280s disliked most about him. I give examples of how literary visionaries and critics like Shu Xi, Zhi Yu, and Fu Xuan (all having roles in Xun Xu's world) kept alive xuanxue style ideals of pre-Zhou antiquity, of enlightened sages and enlightened selves. Their ways of friendship, intimacy, and noncommital and unobsessive politics, was what I call a prisca antiqua, or "venerated primordial antiquity," \yhich was more flexible and tolerant than Xun's prisca Zhou. Inspiration for their new style of critique and their own solidity as an intellectual group was provided by Zhang Hua, the consummate anti-Xun thinker.

Qingzhou

Hongnong

Jingzhou Nanyang

Kuaiji

approx 30 km

,

Site of Jin Wudi (Sima Yan) maus. area II~I~I~; 23 discovered tomb sites, 1982-83 .

.!

Site of Jin Wendi (Sima Zhao) maus. arca *IWA;~; 5 discovered tomb sites, 1982-83.

Map. Details ofYingchuan Commandery and the Luoyang Area Place names and approx. locations reflect 2d-3d c. situation. Luo R. near Yanshi reflects modern channel; farther south in Han-Jin era.

CHAPTER ONE

THE XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG Gong ;,iL The Base: Challenges in the career steps of one man-Xun Xu-may be seen as a gamut, much like the gamut of the Chinese sevennote scale. The gong note is where Chinese music considers home base to be, a base that stabilizes the ear, even if accompaniment and modal shifts impinge and draw us away. Gong means a set of large domestic rooms; it is the base of an entire family, whose members depart and return.

The scope of this book is the life ofXun Xu WJ (b. ca. 220; d. 289)his web of relations, his career steps and turns, and his apparent motivations and scholarly agenda. As chapters unfold, we also observe his "reception history," that is, how others in his own time judged him. My Introduction discussed the problems involved in such a biography and my general approach. The task of this chapter is to provide a miseen-scene that casts light on Xun Xu's role in a large, extended family. It moves through decades and many people's lives; this contrasts with later chapters, which move forward chronologically through separate, short periods of just the one life. Emerging from the scenes will be the footing that Xun Xu used to begin his second career around 250 AD, when he was already about thirty years old. This fills a void in our sources, which have almost nothing on Xun's life before that moment. I pursue two questions. First: "How did the Xun extended family over many generations up through Xun Xu's time rear its potentialleaders? What were the cultural elements of their social breeding? The second question is: "What did the important communal actions look like; did such acts have political or intellectual contexts"? To get at these matters, the chapter goes back to the earliest Xuns. Our sources mostly will be writings outside of the standard-histories, especially texts retrieved from inscribed, entombed epitaphs, plus numerous small bits of linkage that help us reconstruct relationships and groups. We look at a few passages from the standard biographies, but

36

CHAPTER ONE

since this is all pre- and early-Xun Xu, we will not be turning to his own }inshu 1¥". biography. There are other ways this could be done. One can array on a timeline and a map all Xun-family imperial benefices (titles as earls, marquises, and the like) overlaid against their official posts; or the same for all Xuns who led self-defense or court-appointed forces; or all known marriage links. As one modern scholar did, we could interpret the family's only surviving commentary to a Confucian classic. Such mappings would be best if horizontal, taking in other families and making use of statistical reasoning about the movements of people and social interpretations of implicit hierarchies. Some of that work has begun for early-medieval China. I I propose, however, that we learn about the Xun family through just two avenues of breeding and communal action for which I have brought together useful evidence. One avenue consists of Xun-family written commemorations of their deceased and actions concerning burial and obsequies; the other is the family's intellectual self-strengthening and internal traditions of skills. Several modern scholars have used commemorative acts and text inscriptions concerning 300-1000 AD families (see remarks, below), but their research touches little on the period 100 to 300 AD. By searching through recent catalogs of inscriptions I have discovered evidence on the pre-350 Xuns that can be shaped and given meaning. 2 For the other avenue I identify among the Xuns a number of products (writings, court opinions, the teaching and inculcating of skills); and these, as expected, often became levers for entry into state careers, and allow discussion of Xun-family influence in Luoyang. The chapter's mise-en-scene shows people moving around, stopping to honor fallen martyrs and notable leaders, while at the same I See Mao Hanguang -fdffO'c;, Zhongguo zhonggu shehui shilun IjqDxlllllll-1J~ sQ,'i6iJ (Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye, 1988); idem, "The Evolution in the Nature of the Medieval Genteel Families," in Albert Dien, ed., State and Society in Early Medieval China (Stanford: Stanford U. P., 1990), pp. 73-109; Dusanka Miscevic, "Oligarchy or Social Mobility: A Study of the Great Clans in Early Medieval China," Ph.D. diss. (Columbia University, 1992); Yano Chikara, Gi Shin hyakkan seikei hyo ~tfj'Y'i"jrlll:**, rev. edn. (Nagasaki: Nagasaki daigaku shigakkai, 1971); Dennis Grafflin, "Reinventing China: Pseudo bureaucracy in the Early Southern Dynasties," in Dien, ed., State and Society, pp. 139-70, summarizing findings from his Ph.D. 2 An excellent social survey of Han-era commemorative texts is Miranda Brown's The Politics of Mourning in Early China (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY, 2007). I benefited greatly from her method and the generous help she provided via emails, so that I could learn about researching commemorative texts.

XUNS OF Y1NGY1N AND LUOYANG

37

time promoting pedagogy, scholarly fame, and skills that led to court power. It does not develop a single story, but is a series of scenarios through which we can imagine and reason out a background to Xun Xu's career-his "breeding" inside a large and self-inventing family. We get glimpses of places in Yingchuan, the new intellectual trends in Luoyang, and even a mausoleum area east of Luoyang. As leading families arrived in Luoyang, certain aspects of scholarly life there-the literary topics, private writings and books, even art objects-would depend on their earlier provincial achievements. In this respect, Yingchuan itself proved to be just as important to Luoyang as the latter was to newly arrived provincials. The chapter has four sections. The first sketches out early Xun origins in Yingyin ~JH~, a town in Yingchuan :i}J¥!)11 commandery, and their actions down to about 212. The map, above, sites the names of places in and around Yingchuan that are mentioned throughout the entire book, and it conveys some sense of the topography and routes between Yingchuan and Luoyang. In addition, I provide a family tree; see Figure 1. Previous scholars have constructed trees or lists of all Xun members, but Figure I is the most complete for Xuns to about 325 AD (see the notes to Figure I). We can sense the family's large size; and as this section narrates episodes of local history and family commemoration and learning, we see how internal groupings of the family operated and how the family associated with others for self-defense in a time of factional violence. In this time period, the Xuns made great show of burial affairs and commemorative language; and we see their first intellectual specialty taking root. The next section begins around the year 220, when some Xuns moved to Luoyang. There, a cultural shift among scholars would touch the Xuns, and friction arose in the family. It was a time when one particular Xun, Xun Can ~, who helped initiate what would later become the Zhengshi-style of xuanxue 12: ¥ logic (see my Introduction) and figured in popular debate circles, veered away from the family's conservative ideas. Can's philosophies and attitudes were counterbalanced by those of his brother, Xun Yi ~j, who pursued traditional learning and mourning proprieties, partly by means of which he advanced the family politically. In Luoyang we see new specialties and the role played by elder Xuns in creating a foothold that Xun Xu used for his career path. I offer another graphic, Figure 2. This shows the trajectories taken by Xun-family skills, going from one teacher/expert to another over time; it also indicates Xun involvement in the xuanxue

38

CHAPTER ONE

trends, just mentioned. List I, "Items of Xun-Family Intellectual Culture" (appended to the chapter), categorizes all known written products of the Xuns up to about 325, as well as expertise and collective work concerning debate topics, commentaries, and compendia. The third section examines a 295 AD entombed epitaph that provides a human story about one particular Xun family who lived probably for some period in Luoyang when Xun Xu and others did. A concluding section discusses the Xun family's self-fashioning, shifts of venue, and experiments with new genres and skills in the Luoyang culture after 220 as an overall reaction to many decades of confusion. The reaction may be viewed as a form of psychological push-back arising in such contexts.

COMMEMORATING KIN AND SUPPORTING LEARNING: YINGCHUAN TO ABOUT 212 AD

Studies beginning in the 1940S began to pursue questions concerning early China's social organization, especially concerning the great clans. By the mid-1970s a few scholars had looked into vertical histories of single families whose roots ranged from late Han (or before) through the end ofTang. 3 The Xuns in fact were treated (I mention such works, below), and I have utilized those findings. But for the present purposes, very recent scholarship on geographic patterns among officeholding elite, studies of epitaph and stele inscriptions, and of burial patterns have been the most useful. These have captured province -capital peregrination, commemoration texts, and material culture, applying political and intellectual backdrops. Usually the subjects are of later times than our second- and third-century Xuns, although the latter are touched upon briefly. 4 3

Moriya Mitsuo

fu ko

Rikucho monbatsu no ichi kenkyft: Taigen Oshi kei-

/~jlYJI"]I{~O)--·{iJr)'UcJJJLl~.E\;*ff'i~~

(Tokyo: Nihon shuppan kyodo, 1951); Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Aristocratic Families of Early Imperial China: A Case Study of the Po-ling Ts'ui Family (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1978); Yano Chikara, 9dJfft ;fY~ Monbatsu shakai seiritsushi 1"]I?~J~+1Wn!tv:5t (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1976); and David Johnson, "The Last Years of a Great Clan, The Li Family of Chao Chiin in Late T'ang and Early Sung," HJAS 37.1 (1977). 4 Nicolas Tackett, "The Transformation of Medieval Chinese Elites (850-1000 C.E.)," Ph.D. diss. (Columbia University, 2006) (ably summarized in idem, "Great Clansmen, Bureaucrats, and Local Magnates: The Structure and Circulation of the Elite in LateTang China," AM 21.2 [2008], pp. 101-52); Wa Ye, "Mortuary Practice in Medieval China: A Study of the Xingyuan Tang Cemetery," Ph.D. diss. (University of Califor-

XUNS OF Y1NGY1N AND LUOYANG

39

One precedent of a deep treatment of the Xun family is Chen Ch'iyun's articles and books that gave us two or three Eastern Han Xuns in the context of classicism and classicist "schools." He fleshed out details concerning their writings on historiography and the Yijing, for which Xun Shuang m~ (128-19° AD) became famous. Chen's project was limited to a conception of classicism that is formalistic (Confucianism as a reified realm of thought) and political, and it was successful to some degree as a history of thought. 5 Along the way, he gave something of the lay of the land but it was piecemeal and without the benefit of the scholarly turn in the late-198os towards local cultures and archeology. We have also benefited from Niwa Taiko's fl~~ 1970 essay on the Xuns, which focused mostly on moment-to-moment political power-particularly Xun roles in the pro-Cao Cao factions. 6 In 1987 Liu Jingfu ;~ I'i"¥~ examined the family, but the framework was not exploratory, being guided by a "rise and fall" model; it provided useful lists of marriage connections and official titles for the family tree. 7 My own approach is to focus on social acts for which we have excellent evidence and to see how that created a foothold for the career of just one Xun-Xun Xu. I have taken cues from Chen's integration of local affairs into a "life story"; and Niwa's focus on factions is worth extending well past Cao Cao's era, since these alignments all changed. Thus in the following chapters, as we explore the time period of Western Jin (266-315), much will be made of those themes. To begin, let us view the lay of the land.

nia, Los Angeles, 2005); and Timothy M. Davis, "Potent Stone: Entombed Epigraphy and Memorial Culture in Early Medieval China," Ph.D. (Columbia University, 2008), who touches on the Xuns and analyzes a small part of the memorial text that I examine later in this chapter. S Chen, Hsun Yueh (A.D. I48-209): The Life and Reflections of an Early Medieval Confucian (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1975); idem, "A Confucian Magnate's Idea of Political Violence: Hsiin Shuang's (128-19° A.D.) Interpretation of the Book of Changes," TP 54.1-3 (1968). See Howard L. Goodman, "Sites of Recognition: Burial, Mourning, and Commemoration in the Xun Family ofYingchuan, 140-305 AD," Early Medieval China 15 (2009), for thoughts on methodology. (, Niwa Taiko -jIJ.sFJicctr, "Gi Shin jidai no meizoku: Junshi no hitobito ni tsuite" ~ f"fII~:1-~0)16JK 1~jt\;O)A)z ~LJ\; \l, in Chugoku chuseishi kenkyukai 'IrjD~I'I"LU:5t:1iJr-3~'W'I, ed., Chugoku chttseishi kenkyu: Rikucho Zui To no shakai to bunka 'IrjJ1gI'I'!±l:)Q1iJr~h: j\jIYJI~'jJfIJO)H:-wr tx1t (Tokyo: Tokai daigaku shuppansha, 1970). 7 Liu Jingfu "Yingchuan Xun shi yanjiu: Wei Jin Nanbei chao shizu men fa ge' an yan j iu zhi yi" JFl'IJ II i'U ~{iJl: 9'E, ~ft r-*J :ltliVJ fC; 7J7;( I"j 11~J{Ji'i1 ~1iJf9'EZ---, Xihua shifan daxue xuebao[lfll'gmlillr[:JJ~U'Jl,fl~ (Zhexue shehui kexue pan) 1987.3, pp. 50-63.

40

CHAPTER ONE

The Lay of the Land The Xun extended family had beginnings during Eastern Han times in a small place called Yingyin; it fell within the administrative territory of Yingchuan commandery southeast of Luoyang (see the map provided, above, and the inset portion for Yingyin and other places). A gravesite just north of Yingyin since perhaps the mid-loos served at least one of the two main branches of Xuns (one descending from Xun Shu iR and one from his elder brother Xun "?"; see Figure 1). There were branches that inhabited other locales, such as Changshe itT± (some 25 km north ofYingyin).8 In Yingyin the Xun Shu branch maintained a villa, as mentioned in an early source. Many elite families relied on lands and manors, and on their economic control over dependent workers. They owned productive estates, including fields, orchards, and gardens, as well as tombs and shrines. Such provincial "strong clans," or "haozu ~ n!i:," furthermore established political influence and connections in relation to the local heads appointed by the central court, and their intra- and inter-familial ties helped to accomplish defensive measures whenever needed. Families' defense capabilities helped fend off the harsh thrusts that came from the imperial Eastern Han court, which from about 150 onward was increasingly in disarray, tending to violent coups and chaos. The Xuns were devoted to their home region, but also were strongly in the ambit of nearby families like the Yingchuan Chens ~lV II ~t and Zhongs {EI, and farther ones like the Yangs of Hongnong ~LRl and the Donghai Wangs *{~±. The main part of the map shows that Yingchuan was a nexus facilitating travel and economic interplay among the following areas: the imperial capital Luoyang (part of Henan), commanderies within Xu province, and commanderies farther south (like Runan 1~r¥f and Nanyang ~JJJ) that bordered on the Chu region of south-central China. Imperial power impacted Yingchuan, sometimes stemming from agents of the eunuch faction at court, and sometimes from the shifting back and forth among generals who leveraged local resources and materiel during civil warfare. Mili-

m

1*

8 See a memorial text for an unknown Eastern Han Xun from Changshe; collected under the title "Han shangshu zuopuyi Xungong bei" 1~ljID~JA:1*MiLU0{iVf!' in Chen Si I\!-IULl}, (Song era), Baoke congbian 1~t~~:m:t.*~1, j. 5, shang, p. 5a. The continuing role played by Changshe is seen later, at the beginning of Eastern Jin, when Xun Zu led hundreds of Xuns out of Changshe to migrate southward; see Niwa, "Junshi no hitobito," p. 193.

m

XUNS OF Y1NGY1N AND LUOYANG

41

tary leaders throughout the late-180s and into the early 200S fought numerous times throughout the Xuzhou-Yuzhou area. To get to Yingyin today (its putative location), you might ride along narrow highways and roads in a barely roadworthy motor-coach, going eastward out of sprawling Luoyang. You will follow close by the Luo-Yi River system past modern Yanshi 1118ffi (roughly 20-25 km east of the Eastern Han capital sites) with its Shang-dynasty Erlitou remains just southwest of it. Approaching the Gongxian jt!j administrative area, you go south across the Yi. Staying with the flat of the river flood-plain for a while, you pass through the tourist site centered around Shaolin Temple 0"**~ and its nearby flashy martialarts schools. Then climbing steeply, steering through the pass west of Mount Song ill (on whose peak Tang Empress Wu had a gold prayer placard deposited in the year 700), you descend into gnarled, poor coal country, centered around modern Dengfeng ~it (about halfway between the ancient site of Yangcheng ~~t~ and Mount Song). After a couple hours more on the stumbling coach, modern Yuxian ~!j will indicate roughly the location of the Han-era administrative city of Yingchuan proper, and Yingyin would have been about 10-20 km southeast of there. South of Dengfeng the way turns rough, with many beat-up patches of road. In the hovering coal dust in September, people gather and shuck corn for drying on their courtyards and roofs. Now, along the Yin River, you have entered the Huai River watershed, with streams flowing southward. In early times a trip from Yingyin back up the low, but sharp, mountain roads northward to the capital would have been something like two or three days by horse cart. It is possible that the routes were less difficult then, since modern mining has scived the valley walls. The air in late-Han times, not like today's, was fresh, unless one came upon rotting corpses. Such did happen in late-Han times, especially as the imperial capital at Luoyang was ravaged in 190, and criss-crossing routes took refugees into hillsides where families regrouped and defended. Death could be chaotic: at times roads and fields in Yingchuan and surrounding commanderies were strewn with killed or starved bodies. East of Luoyang, in the area of the Mang Hills ill, many important families associated with Luoyang developed their own cemeteries over centuries. The known ones are mostly of Tang date. Local stories still speak of famous interments like that of Du Yu t±fJ! (a contemporary of Xun Xu) and his distant descendant the poet Du Fu 1±ffi. A sixteenth-century Yanshi gazetteer, and other belles-lettres records,

42

CHAPTER ONE

mention these burials and the famous grave area. 9 Here, near a place called Fenzhuang J~m: (literally, "burial lands") , Xun Yue's -ffi (Figure 1; Wei III/Jin I generation) imperially sponsored tomb (which we focus on at the end of this chapter) was discovered in 1917. Also in this vicinity in 1982-83 C.A.S.S. archeologists located two Jin imperial burial sites (ling ~~) tucked into the foot of a peak in the Mang Hills; these are the Junyang ling u!& r~ ~~ of Sima Yan J~ ~ (Wudi) and Chongyang ling:* ~lil~~ of Sima Zhao Pj J~ SR (Wendi) (see Map). The former is now given over to farm plots. to The Luo and Yi Rivers are typical flood plains, prone to overflow in summer, as recorded especially in Tang works, but at least there was some protection for the cemeteries, which tended to follow the rise of the Mang Hills up and away from potential flooding. In late-Han times and no doubt continuing later, roads carried traffic from Luoyang eastward to Yanshi, Gongxian, and beyond, and from Luoyang northwest to the Guanzhong area; such roads more or less paralleled what are today's main highway. Man-made shipping canals handled traffic from Luoyang southward, connecting with the Luo River. Beginning in Jin and continuing for centuries, families frequently returned their dead to this area if the kin died far away, and river and canal traffic probably bore some of the coffin-shipments. 11 In the 100S Yingchuan and other locales were retreats for wellknown scholar-officials who had left office during the eunuch domination of the Eastern Han court. Around the 120S to 130S Xun Shu first developed resources for his line of the clan, and he was no doubt a formidable local leader. Yingchuan was frequently characterized as a place of social and political troubles and trouble-makers.12 9 Ye, "Mortuary Practice," pp. 41-43; numerous Luoyang tomb texts are from Western Jin; e.g., Zhao Wanli jill~~"'; Ell., Han Wei Nanbeichao muzhi jishi i~UW,j¥J~trlY~f.ii~~tI~ fNfi (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1956) j. 1. 10 Ibid., p. 45; see Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo Luoyang Han Wei gucheng gongzuo dui 'lqjjgltl:wnr"H~"t'G~ii'7Vlj'EF~1f:l-1~)JiV'i~,JI'M;[fl:I~(, "Xi Jin diling kancha ji"r)tif'fi'?i!il%'tI;VJ~~fic, Kaogu 1984.12, pp. I096-II07; summarized in Albert Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization (New Haven: Yale U. P., 2007), pp. 166-69. II Ye, "Mortuary Practice," pp. 48 ff. On late-Han and Six Dynasties Luoyang, see Wang Zhongshu, Han Civilization, trans. K. C. Chang et al. (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1982), chap. 2. 12 Chen, Life and Reflections, pp. 23-24. Characterizations of locales were popular in prose. During Han, letters and boasting among friends often played on local pride. E.g., Runan, from where the famous scholar Ying Shao JJU]fJJ and his clan hailed, was known to produce impetuous and resolute natives much involved in national events; see Michael Nylan, "Ying Shao's 'Feng Su Tong Yi': An Exploration of Problems in Han

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

43

Shiji 5E ~B (ca. 90 Be) described the area this way: "In Yingchuan there were many powerful families ... so it was difficult to govern .... Earlier, when Zhao Guanghan had been Grand Administrator, he had worried that due to custom the families formed numerous political cliques .... " Later sources, too, would refer to people there as violent and extravagant. 13 Chen Ch'i-yun's sketch ofYingchuan discussed its being a place of unruly local magnates. [4 We have no evidence, however, that any Xuns were unruly in negative ways. More important from the Xun viewpoint was that Yingchuan's roads and terrain could be used for self-defense. Xun Leadership In and Around Yingyin Xun Shu was paterfamilias of the bigger of the two main lines ofXuns. He was born in 83 AD and developed a well-known estate just outside Yingyin, peopling it with a host of children. His elder brother's descendants were well-known anti-eunuch resisters, but this brother's name was never mentioned in the sources (see Figure I, Xun "?"). Shu served the court but almost entirely locally (he had one appointment in Runan), and gained a reputation for outspokenness. A popular anecdote told how the family was visited at their villa by the much younger Chen Shi ~JR~ (b. 104) and his family (see Figure 2), who hailed from Xu and who were polymathic types, known for skills in astronomy, law, seal-carving and calligraphy, and personnel logistics. Xun Shu was highly respected by other young Yingchuanmen as well, as we soon see. Xun Shu brought the much younger Chen Shi close to the family so as to use his pedagogical influence on his sons (who were nearer to Chen Shi's age than was Xun Shu). Chen Shi was a well-established Yingchuan teacher with a specialty in Western Han Jing Fang's EJ: Yijing ~ ~~ system. A very early source verifies that his Yingchuan students included both Xun Shuang (see below) and the latter's long-time

m

Dynasty Political, Philosophical, and Social Unity," Ph.D. diss. (Princeton University, 1982), vol. 1., pp. 29-31. And Shanyang LLiIl),}j, the family seat of Wang Bi's ~E.5M (226249) elders, was once typified by Ruan Ji as a place" ... low and heavy with cold yin .

.. .That is why the people are obstinate and insincere blockheads"; trans. Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics: The Life and Works ofJuan Chi A.D. 2IO-263 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1976), pp. 35-36. 13 Trans. Mark Edward Lewis, The Construction of Space in Early China (Albany: SUNY, 2006), p. 213, quoting Shiji 129, pp. 3269-70; on later remarks, Lewis, ibid., p. 221, and n. 126 on p. 401. 14 Chen, "Magnate's Idea," p. 7 8 .

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I) X. Yi (Wei II) was the sixth son ofX. Yu: jS 39, p. II50. 2) DeC/BD, p. 925, offers a biog. of "Xun Fei 5~)(: [sic]," saying he was a son of X. Shuang. No such datum exists; probably a confusion with X. Fei (below). 3) DeC/BD, p. 926, has "~" (Han-Wei 1) as son ofX. Shuang, but this should be written 4) X. Yan (Han-Wei I) was Yu's "third elder bro."; and Qian was his "fourth elder bro." This implies that there were two undocumented sons of Yu (SGZ IO, p. 3I6, cit. "Xunshi jiazhuan"; see also jSjZ 38, p. IOb [799]). 5) Ch'en Ch'i-yun and de Crespigny propose dates for X. Shu (E. Han I) that contradict HHS datum; see Goodman, "Sites of Recognition," which goes into this problem. 6) I follow jSjZ 54, pp. 22 a-b , in identifying "W-r" with "{Jr," the characters being confused (Wei II). 7) I have identified additional Xun women (e.g., wife of Guanqiu Dian, wife of Taiyuan Wang Chen; daughters ofX. Yue 8) X. Shu's line is situated left of his unnamed brother's since sources suggest latter was older; Yano, Gi Shin, p. 99. 9) A persistent confusion clouds X. Yun (Wei II) and X. Hui (Jin II). The problem stems from a garbled datum in SGZ IO, p. 3I6, cit. "Xunshi jiazhuan," the earliest source. It says that X. Yun (Zhonghua editorial parentheses signify that and were confused in earlier edns.) worked with Jia Chong to "correct the pitch-standards and he also wrote a commentary to Yijing " But SGZjj IO, p. I8a [3I9] cites kaozheng critics to the effect that the words are miswritten, and this should be "Hui

"*."

corrected Jin law codes :ntt~E1tf"1~:t" and not the music pitch-standards. The music aspect of SGZ IO is certainly wrong, since Jia Chong was not known for musicology. Jia was ordered to revise the law codes during early Jin, as carried in Jia's biog. US 40, p. II67), which says this was with assistance of X. Hui (not Yun); but neither jS Treat. on Laws nor Treat. on Rites mentions Hui, and the jiaokanji US 40, p. II82) discusses evidence that Hui was not part of the law program. Finally, SGZJj IO, p. I8a, cites evidence that Hui was the one to have collected and edited X. Shuang's Yijing, not Yun. Finally, 55 ("Jingji zhi A"), p. 909 (comm. sect.) mentions Hui's "zhu" to Yijing in IO j.: "lost". But it is not clear this is a Yingchuan Xun (his title in 55 is a Wei title and not parallel to that given otherwise for X. Hui, who seems to be a Jin-era Xun). In sum, X. Yun did not have musicological knowledge, and may not have helped Jia Chong draw up Jin-dynasty laws; thus Jia's biog. is most likely wrong. Its list of rites correctors under Jin Wudi's program is not consistent with other sources. Further, Yun's supposedly having compiled an "Yi jijie" is confused with the work of a certain X. Hui who wrote on Yijing. We know that aX. Hui was a grand-nephew (or cousin several times removed) ofX. Hong (X. Yu's nephew). There remains a slight posesp. because the two names are graphically close, that there was only one person - call him X. Yun/Hui. But given other data here, we ought to call him X. Yun, who compiled Shuang's Yijing. If two, then both may have edited Shuang's work. IO) X. Xu's (Wei/Jin I) biog. US 39.II57) states that he had IO sons. There are no other data to evidence any but the four sons and one daughter given here. (Neither Yano nor Liu ["Yingchuan Xunshi"] take notice.)

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46

CHAPTER ONE

friend and self-defense ally Han Rong wilri~. We begin now to see the teaching of skills, and right away we are given an inter-family feature, not an inner-family one. Some recent scholarship has opined that Xun Shu represented a type of local magnate not particularly interested in or skilled in classical knowledge. But I see him as a man of significant culture and learning. He did not serve in metropolitan offices, and in fact died well before the the I70s-80s flourishing of new skills in classicism that became promoted at the Dongguan *iI archive in the Han palace. Thus he never knew famous Dongguan scholars like Ma Rong )~ilri~ (79-I66), Zheng Xuan ~~~ (127-200), and Cai Yong ~ ~ (I33-I92). But he provided an excellent teacher for his sons and ample opportunities for them to learn. The late-I40s were a time of relative peace before the Liang-family ~ demoralization of the Eastern Han court, and the subsequent traumas of the eunuch-instigated danggu !J!!I persecutions and proscriptions (I66-67 and I69 AD) that were aimed at "pure stream ~1t~JTE," anti-eunuch, scholars like those just mentioned. Xun Shu became a focus around whom others coalesced, as society and politics rapidly changed. Such coalescence occurred at funerals. Xun Shu, along with Chen Shi, Li Ying *Jt (d. I69), and Du Mi ti@i (d. I69), all Yingchuan men, jointly contributed to erecting a stele eulogy iL ii!lf! z;l for Han Shao wt'fB who hailed from nearby Yingchuan, Wuyang ~Jj} (he was Han Rong's father). It is perhaps datable to just before Xun Shu's death-thus I45-49, but we have no text. 15 Later, the Hans would lead more than a I,OOO of their clan "families" in escaping the destruction going on in Yingchuan during Dong Zhuo's j[ (d. I92) terror; they fled north to a mountain near Mixian @i!j, northeast of Yang cheng. We can infer that such families included retainers and villa-workers, but even so, the Hans themselves were a populous, multi-branched family. 16 In about I89, Han Rong was involved in leading Yingchuan troops during the power vacuum just before Dong Zhuo entered Luoyang. He was quite well known to Xun Shu's son Shuang, since he, Shuang, and others were sought by Dong to participate in the latter's regime. 17

n

15 HHS 62, p. 2063, biography of Han Shao. See deC/ED, p. 300; also Brown, Politics of Mourning, p. 87. There is a problem about the date of this event and the consequent

implications for Xun Shu's own dates and Han Shao's identity (the sources confuse Han's and his son's cognomens); see Goodman, "Sites of Recognition," p. 60, n. 36. 16 HHS 7 0 , p. 2281. See T'ung-tsu Hsu, Han Social Structure, ed. Jack L. Dull (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), pp. 318-19. 17 The others were Zheng Xuan and Shentu Pan 1!1)W;'-1@ (deC/ED, p. 734); the latter

XUNS OF Y1NGY1N AND LUOYANG

47

At the time ofXun Shu's death in 149, "Li Ying was already a Master of Writing and sent in a memorial proposing that mourning for Shu be conducted as for a teacher," a feeling that resonates with what we just learned of Li's relationship with Xun Shu. Further, "in two counties people established shrines =!~ §'~iLf~ ."IS We can only guess about the life of Xun Shu's third son, ling Y:~, who died perhaps around 165-70: there is no notice of him in historiographical sources. But we have one nugget, a bit of commemorative prose upon ling's death, first lauding his secluded and "diligent studies," then mentioning that Yingyin and Yingchuan notables attended his funeral, at which a large group presented a dirge. The small scenario indicates the importance of commemoration in bringing the elite together, and we can guess that the Xun-family's Yingyin cemetery was the site for it. We get the sense that ling and his father were cut from the same cloth and drew the same level of respect from young associates and local Yingchuan officials. Even though in the late-1 60S trauma was beginning to unfold in Yingchuan, still an eremitic sort of scholar like Xun ling attracted admirers. It was a time when the Han court was making lists of arrestees and imprisoning and murdering literati-officials who opposed the eunuchs. Two offspring ofXun Shu's elder brother (Xun "?"), namely, Xun Yu ~ and Tan entered government around 166-67. They engaged in anti-eunuch activities,19 leading to Tan's dismissal in 169 and Yu's death in prison probably that year, during the second wave of Great Proscription (danggu) arrests. 20 Another Xun to be affected by political oppression was Xun Shuang. He became well known as something of a danggu survivor/martyr, due to his hiding out for ten years aided only by his nephew Xun Yue t5il:. 21 Chen Ch'i-yun's 1968 article on the ideological implications of Shuang's Yijing interpretation remains a solid analysis and reveals a classicist work imbued with the heated politics of the Han court. Unfortunately we know only very little of Shuang's life and positions in government. He was recommended as "utmost filial" (zhixiao ~$:)

was the only one who did not respond. HHS 53, p. 1754, says that only Shentu survived the Dong Zhuo chaos. 18 HHS 62, p. 20 49. 19 Chen, Life and Reflections, p. 27. 20 Chen, "Magnate's Idea," p. 81; deCIBD, p. 928, says that he was "killed" after 169. 21 In this chapter, mention ofXun "Yue" without the corresponding Chinese character is this person; all mentions of the other Xun Yue will state the character/If, except where obvious by immediate context.

48

CHAPTER ONE

in 166,22 and subsequently appointed Palace Gentleman (langzhong ~~ ~), taking that opportunity to submit a stern memorial to the throne about recent political dangers. He left that first Luoyang post in 167 for unknown reasons. 23 When Xun Shuang's former teacher Chen Shi died in 186, Shuang participated in a massive display of mourning, more than likely in nearby Xu ,the Chens' locale. Chen Shi had been a mentor and friend of numerous families, as we saw in regard to the Xuns. A commemorative stele was composed by the famous literatus Cai Yong, and a section of it mentions Xun Shuang's being in mourning garb and the way he and, once again, Han Rong, among hundreds of others, installed the tablet. 24 "Setting a spirit tablet" while garbed in solemn mourning was an intense and intimate duty, which shows that Xun Shuang acted in conformity to his high reputation as a scholarly critic on matters of public, in some sense, official mourning. But upon his own death, Shuang unfortunately did not receive observances for quite a while. Although when he was alive he had managed to stay either locally out of the way in Yingchuan or in hiding, and was forced only for a brief moment to serve Dong Zhuo, Shuang's death in 190 occurred as families and estates in Luoyang and Yingchuan were threatened and people fled. Eventually, observances for Shuang were provided thanks to his powerful nephew Xun Yu II!, acting in about 196 or a bit after. At that time the Han boy-Emperor Xian 1*$ was established at Xu. At the new court Cao Cao lft* (155-220) had made Xun Yu acting Prefect of Palace Writers, and Yu was no doubt busy with affairs of state and even military dangers. He managed to have his men take the body of a loyal friend of his uncle, the anti-Dong martyr He Yong 1PT~N (d. ca. 191-92), to the Yingyin graveyard to be buried next to Shuang (already present there perhaps in a temporary burial, but not yet honored). Thus, after a career noted for strong positions on such rituals, Xun Shuang finally received his own obsequies. 25 In all, his grave and corpse in Yingyin must have lain in commemorative limbo for about six years. Chen, Life and Reflections, p. 27. HHS 62, p. 2056; Chen, Life and Reflections, p. 27, says it was to mourn for his father, but the latter had died nearly 20 years previously; this problem is analyzed in Goodman, "Sites of Recognition" (see n. 15, above). 24 Stele translated in Mark Laurent Asselin, '''A Significant Season.' Literature in a Time of Endings: Cai Yang and a Few Contemporaries," Ph.D. diss. (Seattle: University of Washington, 1997), p. 56I. 25 SGZ IO, p. 322, zhu, cit. "Han mo mingshi lu"; see also HHS 67, p. 2218, almost 22

23

XUNS OF Y1NGY1N AND LUOYANG

49

Xun Yue (d. 209) was another of Xun Shuang's nephews (son of Jian, the eldest of Shuang's brothers). Of all the cousins (the sons of Shuang and his seven brothers), he was the most devoted to their uncle Shuang. He furthered Shuang's scholarship, especially the Yijing commentary, and in this way developed his own scholarly career; he also found an ear among Han-restorationists, and exerted influence at the Han court at Xu. As with his uncle, earlier he had been forced to be on the run, hiding on several occasions to avoid danggu arrest and the military collapse of his home region. I have discovered no opinions or prose by or about Yue concerning mourning or tomb commemoration. Xun Yu, however, does have a significant memorial text, to which we now turn. Yu, the donor of family graveyard space for his uncle's fallen friend, earlier had left Luoyang in 189 to organize military men in Yingchuan to form the anti-Dong campaign. But he did not get enough support and he and fellow Xuns vacated Yingchuan before the Dong holocaust. Thus they fled east to join with a major contender of Cao Cao named Han Fu ~D (d. 191), whom Dong had made head of Ji province in 189 (the northern area, more or less, of modern Hebei, where Yuan Shao's stronghold at Ye was located). After Dong Zhuo was eliminated in 191, Han sought unsuccessfully to outmaneuver Yuan Shao, but then folded his operations into Yuan's, thus changing the configuration of power. Xun Yu briefly supported Yuan, but he and other Xuns sought out and established a Cao Cao alliance in 191. In 192, Xun Yu was made Major of the Eastern Campaign by Cao Cao, and early in 194 Cao dispatched him to command Juancheng §li~~ (in Jiyin ~~, Shandong) and attack Tao Qian ~lli]~. Yu's military actions caused him to witness widespread devastation and famine around 193-94 in the areas of Langya :Ef!~~ and Donghai *14tJ, and he advised Cao Cao to shift strategies. 26 In 196, he was again in Xu, attending to the new court, as we saw, above. In 212, Cao Cao pursued consensus among his advisers about his plan to have the Han puppet-emperor

a

verbatim; cf. de C/BD , p. 319. He Yong was martyred after Shuang's death; Shuang apparently had not experienced suffering or imprisonment. He Yong hailed from a Nanyang family and had once been well known in Luoyang, where he studied as a youth and associated with the famous "pure stream" court critic Guo Tai !fIISgt (127-69), and was friendly with Xun Yu in their younger days. Because He had allied with Chen Fan 1U!'lf (d. 168, while storming the Han palace in hopes of defeating the eunuchs), Li Ying, and other anti-eunuch partisans he had to change his name and hide out in Runan; he helped to create a network for danggu escapees. 26 HHS 7 0 , pp. 2280-83; also ZZTj 61, pp. 1950-5 2 .

50

CHAPTER ONE

grant him higher noble titles. Xun Yu was not immediately in favor, and on campaign with the now highly suspicious Cao, he died either as a Cao-pressured suicide, or else from illness: the sources conflict. 27 A formal commemoration of Xun Yu was written upon his death in 2I2, or perhaps a bit later. It shows us that Xun statuses were rising with Cao control and governance. 28 A sign of status is seen in the text's being written by a belles-Iettrist and calligrapher well known for eulogies. Unlike their compatriots the Chens and the Hongnong Yangs, in the previous century the Xuns had not hired or asked Cai Yong to eulogize for them,29 perhaps an indication of how literary styles and affectations went into the makeup of elite status. Perhaps because Xun Yu had been at the head of a X un bloc in a Cao polity, a fine writer and calligrapher was hired, someone to parallel the earlier Cai Yong style. This is the only commemorative text to have survived from this period of the Xun family. Above, we have considered actions showing funeral style, burial help, and policy opinions-no verbal chantings over Xun bodies, but Xu's commemoration, below, may have been just such a text. The commemoration for Xun Yu was composed by Pan Xu 11 mJ, who died in 2I5; thus it cannot have been written after 2I5. Pan was one of the most sought after calligraphers of his day, so it is likely he brushed it, and the latter transferred to stone by artisans. It should be noted as well that in 2I3 Pan composed the speeches and communiques of Cao Cao when the latter accepted the title of duke of Wei from the Han emperor; and other Pans were cited for writing expertise. 30 The extant text reads as follows: 3l

The ((Commemorative Tablet 1i!li! for Prefect of Palace Writers Xun Yu" As for his virtuous [conduct], he focused on loyalty and tread in faithfulness. He was filial [to parents] and a friend [to brethren]; he was mel27 See Paul William Kroll, "Portraits ofTs'ao Ts'ao: Literary Studies on the Man and the Myth," Ph.D. diss. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, I976), pp. I87-89. 28 See Liu, "Yingchuan Xunshi," p. 52. 29 See K. E. Brashier, "Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Stelae," in Martin Kern, ed., Text and Ritual in Early China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), p. 280, n. 85, cit. Li shi 4B}Lf'~i (SBCK), j. 7; Brown, Politics of Mourning, pp. 90, lO6-8. 30 See Howard L. Goodman, Ts'ao P'i Transcendent: The Political Culture of Dynasty-Founding in China at the End of the Han (Seattle: Scripta Serica, I998), pp. 67-68; also David R. Knechtges, "Court Culture in the Late Eastern Han: The Case of the Hongdu Gate School," in Alan Chan and Lo Yuet-keung, eds., Interpretation and Literature in Early Medieval China (SUNY, 2OlO), forthcoming. 31 QHHW 87, p. 5b, quoting Yiwen leiju 48, sect, "Zhiguan ~iJltTJ," pt. 4 (1i~!); also

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

51

low and kind. High-mindedness and sincerity he affirmed at his core; and gentility and excellence he displayed on his exterior. He was incorrupt and cautious in his own responsibilities, and was was kind and tolerant in considering other people. In his conduct he left no traces; in his uttered statements there were no wasted words. 32 In receiving advice he did not have a reverential or insulting attitude. In gauging circumstances he had a calm and placid nature. With his entire being he trod the proper Way; he was diligent in the proprieties and cultivated virtue. While delving into matter after matter, he did not say that it was his own achievement. Thus, later he taught with the kenning of [his] "harmonious recesses"; and he maintained [himself] by being "persevering and firm.,,33 Just as a channel, flowing from the sources of a broad river, he was inexhaustible. He was solidly planted, and stood tall like Mount Hua. Thus, he was able to say something and it was established; he practiced something and it was accomplished. His status was neither vaunted nor low. How upright was his nature! Tangled cords he unraveled, and neglected proprieties he restored to norms. Then, the state's business became ordered; and "the king's plans were true and sincere.,,34 "We announce that he has achieved his work" ;35 we have waited for him for ten thousand years.

Pan Xu's text imparts the sense that Xun Yu guided Cao Cao via a mysterious subtlety, but of course this is the rhetoric of commemoration. It is not necessarily an accurate description ofYu's style of court leadership, but it shows the direction that the Xun family wanted to pursue in building Yu's character. Toward the end, the text reaches a turn, spelling out who the savior was who "ordered the state's business" and served Cao Cao's excellent "plans." It was Xun, not the king and protector of the Han throne Cao Cao. And like the passage from Shujing that is alluded to, Xun becomes Yugong of ten thousand years Ye Chengyi :t\HII!~Jt Han Wei shike wenxue kaoshi iltt!l(J,1:1"i
52

CHAPTER ONE

ago, roaming the realm and setting out boundaries; quelling rebels for his lord. Cao Cao (d. 220) was still alive and the ruler of Central Plains China. It is not hard to see the eulogy as moderately pro-Cao; in fact the Xuns continued to be invested in the Caos through marriage. Yet, although recognizing the positive feelings here, we are not committed to a black-and-white view of how the political public (including Xun men) continued for decades to perceive the Caos. That was flexible. It does make us wonder, too, about the Xuns' take on contemporary historiography that was beginning to shape images of the Cao era, specifically how Xun Yu looked in the eyes of historians and other scholars. Images of the Xuns related in great part to their style of scholarship, and Shuang, Yue, and Yu were recipients of a distinctive family learning. What shape and directions did that follow, and how did it enhance their standing in the Cao world, or the scholarly world? The seven generations of Xuns that we examine here produced only two writers of classical commentary (mainly on Yijing), several Yijing debaters, a Han-court historiographer, the well-known court ritual lyrics of Xun Xu, and a very small output in shi ~~ poetry. Yet even in the period up to 212 we can talk of a certain shape to Xun-family scholarship-a Xun-Chen interfamily milieu in Yingchuan that fostered a specialty in Han Yijing traditions.

Xun Yijing Scholarship The earliest Xun-family scholarly skill as directed by Xun Shu started during a time of relative stability in court-province politics, from the 130S until the late-16os in Yingchuan. We have no record at all of any policy memos, letters, or commentaries by Shu, but as discussed earlier, he utilized the Chen family as teachers. Xun Shuang received the Chens' specialty in Jing Fang's "rising and falling lines," a mantically charged system of the Yijing. Nearly all well-educated Chinese of that time studied some or all of the classics, so by "specialty" I mean writing an interpretation or oral-written guide based on those of a venerated teacher, or even merely possessing the teacher's written text (perhaps with notations). Shuang's Yijing and his political positions are reliably accounted in Chen Ch'i-yun's article (previously mentioned), which showed it to be an anti-eunuch, anti-empress-family political whitepaper. Following the Jing Fang method, Shuang's commentary used the mutating structures of hexagrams in order to make interpretations of the classic's line phrases and judgments that warned about baleful

53

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

yin conditions at court. It was a politically volatile Yijing, representing the "pure stream" of resisters. Xun Shuang wrote commentaries on several of the classics (see List I appended). But only his Yijing remains in significant fragments, thus we ought to ask about its genesis. A sentence in Hou Hanshu 1it summarizes the flow of early Yijing "schools" down into late Han times. The passage does not actually use the word "school but such words as "impart to 1~," "receive a master's text or teaching, i.e., his 1~," "compose/create 11=: ," and make a "commentary," which at that time most likely was a free-standing work to be read as an accompaniment. The picture is one of antiquarian pursuits such as working on old books and reading at home-not of students going to an academy and sitting below the teacher's platform, whether in the provinces or the capital. The same passage says that Shuang "composed 11=:" (which here meant "arranged, compiled") Fei Zhi's Jrll (ca. 50 Be-ca. 10 AD) "textual tradition of the Yi £1~."36 To my knowledge, however, no modern scholar has perceived the deeper Xun Shuang connection to Jing Fang, namely the link to the former teacher of Chen Shi, a well-known scholar named Fan Ying ~~ (d. after 130). Fan was aJing Fang specialist and diviner; and he taught Chen Shi in the early 120S. 37 We know that the latter taught Xun Shuang,38 but nowhere is it stated what he taught him. Yet, Shuang's specific traits-Jing Fang's Yijing and prognostic techniques-are not mere coincidence. This is illustrated graphically in Figure 2, below (the grey vectors). Shuang must have got these specialties indirectly from Fan Ying, via Chen Shi; in fact discussion of technical aspects of Yijing trigrams even crops up in other Xuns, as we see in the subsequent section. Chen Ch'i-yun, basing himself on the title of a work by Shuang-"Bian chan" ~¥~ (see List 1),39 implied that Shuang did not approve of prognostic texts. But I see that title as meaning ''Analysis (or, Determination) of Prognostic Texts," indicating serious engagment with the mantic Yijing. Ultimately, I perceive two elements in Xun Shuang's Yijing: he derived his text from Fei Zhi's new textual arrangement that promoted the Ten

*,"

HHS 79A ("Rulin zhuan"), p. 2554. See Howard L. Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths, 100-300 AD: The Tung-kuan, Taoist Dissenters, and Technical Skills," AM 18.1 (2005), p. 156, n. 164. 38 See SGZ II, p. 355, cit. "Xianxian xingzhuang"; and deC/ED, p. 927. 39 Chen ("Magnate's Idea" p. 73) translates the title of Shuang's writing on the apocrypha as "Criticism on Prognostic Writing." Gao Huaimin'sll'fj'I}fHI!;, Liang Han Yixue shi H~19L~j~,5t: (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshu guan, 1970), pp. 188-99, makes no remark about Xun Shuang's teachers. 36

37

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XUNS OF Y1NGY1N AND LUOYANG

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Wings to primary exegetical status, and he also made Yijing interpretations by means of ling Fang's by then classic model of correlative sciences-essentially a set of prognostic arts. During Shuang's own lifetime he was, as mentioned, aided by his nephew Xun Yue. Yue lauded the Shuang commentary in the preface of his major historiographical work Hanji {l~2, saying that his uncle's work used the anonymous, older "Ten Wings" as the basis of interpretation, which no doubt refers to the Fei Zhi format. He also claimed that Shuang's commentary became well known and studied in much of central China perhaps just after Shuang's death, owing to his fame and near-martyrdom. 40 Both the Ten Wings and ling Fang's arts emphasized symmetrical relationships between upper and lower trigrams, based on the qualities of their lines. These two early Yijing methods were the basis of Shuang's teaching. The revival of the Ten Wings later cropped up in the work of Zheng Xuan and found completion in Wang Bi ± 5B5 (226-249), fifty years after Shuang's death. 4 ! We shall learn in the following section that the Xuns intersected Wang Bi and his Yijing discussions during the 240s, and thus we ought to keep in mind just how influential the Xun family was in the overall revival of the Ten Wings. Yue wrote in traditional genres of historiography, genres that Shuang had taken up as well. Xun Yue thus seems to have acted filially as if an adopted son, since his own father had died when he was about twelve. In the 150S and up to 167 (the first wave of danggu persecutions), Yue avoided service and remained safe in Yingchuan. He secluded himself using a pretext of illness and was sustained by his cousin Xun Yu. Legend says, even if only a kernel is true, that just as Shuang had done in his youth, so also did Xun Yue go to rich households in Yingchuan looking for books to memorize. Chen Ch'i-yun is right to say that this shows the family's concerted turn toward scholarship, not their actual poverty. From about 184 to 196 Yue and his cousin Yu strived to save the family and establish alliances. Apparently, Xun Yue accompanied Xun Shuang to Luoyang in 190 and survived two difficult years of secret plotting under Dong Zhuo's rule. In 196, Yue assumed a large role at the Cao-led court at Xu. He was part of a group of inner-court advisers, with access to the small and politically powerless, but still morally legitimate, Han court. 42 As a court leader, he was instrumental in Chen, "Magnate's Idea," p. 74. See Gao, Liang Han Yixue. 42 For these remarks on the Xuns, see Chen, Life and Reflections, pp. 46, 66-68, 70. On Shuang's secret anti-Dong activities, see SGZjj 10, pp. 28b-29a [324-325]. 4[)

41

56

CHAPTER ONE

recruiting other prominent scholars, e.g., Yingchuan Zhong You {I:.f¥'* (whose daughter married Xun Xu's father), Yingchuan Du Xi ;t±tJI (d. i~ (I79-25I), and Kong Rong JLm-~ (I53-208). He ca. 232), Sima Yi was Inspector of the Imperial Library from I97-98 to his death in 208, even though the "library" was but a fragment of what it had been in Luoyang before I90.43 This would be the position attained later by Xun Xu in a more stable time. All in all, Xun Yue was a founding member of the state's high-level consultative offices that evolved into the advisorial core of the Cao-Wei dynasty.44 By roughly 203-04, conservative hopes for a Han restoration were ending, and in this climate Yue submitted the pro-Han historical work titled Shenjian $ to Han Xiandi's court in 205. Figure 2 shows that musical skill (the black-colored vectors) was given from Xun Yi (whom I discuss later on) to Xun Xu. But it seems that Xun Yue even earlier had an interest in music. It was a generalist knowledge of that subject, not technically oriented musicology. In one passage of Shenjian he uses a remark in Zuozhuan in order to deride mere display of solicitude as not being Ii ;fjl, or properly ceremonial; in parallel, he derides ensembles of strings and songs as not being truly Jue ~ (that is, 3Ji~, or "high-music") when the context was mourning: ~::§-5~1W\RJ:~~~~ill; further, "Li requires no more than respectfulness; Jue no more than harmoniousness ~::§-~Qffij8*."45 Xun Yue is warning about mindlessness and over-decoration in music. It may have been a precursor to the next twenty or twenty-five years of musical criticism at the Cao courts, when such matters continued to be debated. 46 Any research at that time involving ritual musicology had to wait for a court that could supply the right materials for pitch tests and bell-casting. Such materials did not exist in mens' homes in the provinces. 47

Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths," pp. 141-42. Chen, Life and Reflections, pp. 78-80. He would have been competing with two men who rose from within the Palace Writers office to become very powerful innercourt advisers to Cao Cao and Cao's successors; see chap. 4, section "Problems in the Bureaucratic Structure of the Palace Writers Office." 45 See Shenjian (SBCK edn.) 4, p. lIb; at 4, pp. I2b-13a, he defines this harmony as occurring when using the four traditional notes of the scale: ";Ii1;p,?[fr~1N&/j:;:I'lJ, lJ,tM"j;JI'~l: 43

44

m~;:Ctll)IW:." 46 See Howard L. Goodman, ''A History of Court Lyrics in China during Wei-Chin Times," AM 19.1-2 (2006), pp. 78-89. 47 However, early in Han we know that on at least one occasion pitch-regulators were placed in provincial tombs (the Mawang dui finds); see Howard L. Goodman and Y. Ed-

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

57

The preceding has shown that Yingyin, where Xun Shu was a formidable leader, was a place of Xun wealth and status. In peaceful times, learning developed; and the Yijing, especially a popular Han specialty emphasizing the arts of changing trigram lines and of yin-yang correlativism, entered into the family's skill-set. But by the mid-16os, books, learning, and writing were impacted negatively, under political pressure and violence. In such a time of trauma, Xun Shuang became the one Xun to turn Yijing knowledge into a commentary with political messages. The times also affected Xun acts of commemorating the dead: while large funerary gatherings and stele texts had been the cultural way in Yingchuan, later on Xuns would have to expend resources to get Shuang honored after death and his friend given a place in the Xun-family cemetery. The earliest Xuns tended to remain in Yingchuan, returning there after the worst of civil strife ended in about 192; at the Han capital in Xu, men like Yue and Yu took part in the Cao-Ied government. The commemorative text on the death of Xun Yu showed the esteem given to that service, although behind the lines there had to have been unspoken thoughts concerning the depth of Xun-family loyalty to the Caos. Luoyang came to playa deeper role in Xun careers, as seen in the following section. Along with demonstrations by elite scholars of their new counter-cultural values came shocking ways to express intimacy in mourning, and new ways were developed for obtaining scholarly credentials. But the capital and its provinces, like Yingchuan, remained intertwined. The Xuns and a number of highly trained families brought their locally-produced commentaries, skills, and compendia to Luoyang, and these enabled the Sima court. In turn, Luoyang benefited individual careers.

THE XUNS IN LUOYANG TO ABOUT 282: SORTING OUT ZHENGSHI STYLES AND ESTABLISHING JIN IMPERIAL TIES

The death ofXun Yu marked an enormous change in the political position of the Xun family. As mentioned, there was suspicion that Cao Cao had engineered Yu's death. The upshot was that as Cao power congealed and pointed toward a new polity, the Xuns were not quite their

mund Lien, "A Third Century AD Chinese System of Di- Flute Temperament: Matching Ancient Pitch-Standards and Confronting Modal Practice," The Galpin Society Journal 62 (April, 2009), p. 5 (and n. 6 there).

58

CHAPTER ONE

sterling supporters as they once had been. Although marriage ties with the Caos continued (see Xun Yun and Can in the Wei II generation, Figure I), conscious decisions were being made to ally with the Simas. Furthermore, after Xun Yue completed his historiography, Xun-family scholarship waned if only temporarily, to be restarted in Luoyang in an atmosphere of experimentation. Prominent Xuns left Yingyin for there beginning perhaps as early as the 220S. Several Xuns led areas of scholarly culture, although a significant rift is seen in which a xuanxuestyle Xun, namely, Xun Can, confronted family members. Moreover, evidence of the Xuns' commemorative culture indicates that in these Luoyang years family mourning and burial went through a change as well, influenced by the high political status of certain Xuns and imperial intervention. From about 220 to 290, intellectual life in Luoyang and environs achieved a notoriety perhaps unparalleled by any other short period in China's past. Much has been said about new types of classical learning, social stances, experimentive philosophies, and the like. The Xuns in Luoyang had to deal with factional leaders, warriors, music experts, intellectual escapees, and poets and lyricists. During these decades, for example, Wang Bi and Zhong Hui ~lir (225-264; Zhong You's youngest son) lived in Luoyang and interacted; so did He Yan iff[ ~ (d. 249), Guan Lu ff'~ (210-256), and Pei Hui *1W& (fl. 230-250).48 Several Xuns interacted significantly with such xuanxue coteries. From the 250S, after firming up their power, the Simas began legitimizing their own potential dynasty. Thus they reached out to scholars everywhere. Some refused or obscured their location or motives, based on bitter reactions to the previous decades;49 and some, like Xun Yi and Xun Xu, accepted the call. The following deals mostly with several brothers-sons of Xun Yu, whose eulogy we examined. One of them, Xun Can, was a crucial xuanxue innovator. There were three short bursts in the social history of xuanxue from 226 to 250, and Can was at the forefront of the pre-Zhengshi phase from 226-39, during the Cao-Wei dynasty. But his thinking impacted more than just the debate ongoing since Eastern Han times about the role of sages in contemporary men's 48 The Introduction mentioned ways of viewing the new thought of the time; the roles of those mentioned here are summarized well in Wang BaoxuanutjU%, Zhengshi xuanxueI[jf=r2?,·,~: (Jinan: Qi Lu shushe, 1987). 49 For a scholar's refusal in the context of these Sima calis, see Dominik Declercq, Writing Against the State: Political Rhetorics in Third and Fourth Century China (Leiden: Brill, 1998), chap. 5.

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

59

lives or the role of the Yijing in comprehending reality, he also shook up normally unquestioned matters of family loyalty and propriety.

Xun Can, a Prototype of the Zhengshi-Era Mavericks Xun Can achieved fame and influence beginning around the late 220S and died sometime around 235-36.50 Like his elder brother Yun (see Figure r), he married a Cao woman, in this case Cao Hong's (d. 232) beautiful daughter. 51 Also like Yun, Can died young, at age twenty-eight, shortly after losing his wife, with whom he was said to have been deeply in love and in fact with whom he frequently "stayed in camera enjoying entertainment ?ffMIi$l~!tK, $mlJ(~."52 Although well known to the powerful, there is no mention of his having held posts in government. He is said to have "arrived at the capital" of Luoyang and then begun conversations and a friendship with the (eventually) anti-Cao Shuang scholar Fu Gu 1-i~~ (ca. 2°5-255); he was equally known to Pei Hui, He Yan, and Xiahou Xuan ~ 1*~ (d. 254)-all comprising a famous xuanxue coterie of the period 240-55 (Figure 2). The latter three in fact once asked Can to intercede for them in getting his friend Fu Gu to pay them a visit. 53 First, let us consider an aspect ofXun Can normally not considered, but in a study of the Xun family it is of great interest. This was his

wm

50 On Can, all information is in two sources: SGZ IO, pp. 319-20, cit. He Shao's "Xun Can biezhuan," and in Shishuo xinyu nos. 7.3 and 35.2 (see SSHY/Mather, pp. 197-98, 485-86, respectively). There are no data to anchor his birth year, but Mather, ibid., p. 532, says he lived ca. 212-40. He was the youngest ofXun Yu's six sons (see jS 39, p. II50), and thus probably born a few years after Xun Yi (b. 205), his immediate elder. Since Yu (d. 212) seems to have been siring late in life and produced a daughter probably after Can, I deduce Can's birth year as 207-8; to that is added the explicitly stated 28-yr. lifespan. 51 Hong, a particularly rich Cao, had been disfavored by Cao Pi and in 226 was held for execution, then saved by Cao Pi's mother. Later, after Pi's death, his status was resuscitated under Cao Rui, the second Wei emperor; see Goodman, Ts'ao P'i Transcendent, pp. 51, 2IO. 52 Shishuo (sect. ";%.X;j;J~") no. 35.2; SSHY/Mather, p. 485, translates the SGZ passages on Can's falling in love with the Cao lady, and her illness and death. 53 Can and Fu Gu had to have their relationship patched up by Pei Hui; SGZ 10, p. 320, cit. He Shao's "Xun Canbiezhuan." On the influence of those just mentioned, see Wang, Zhengshi xuanxue, pp. II1-I2; also Chen Yinke I~Ulnj3-, "Shu Shishuo xinyu Wenxue lei, Zhong Hui zhuan Siben lun shibi tiaohou" ~lfltl:~HfI'1f1I'x~!ygMKlIWtjJ~ILqJtI: TI6tr~f=r~I~1~1&, in idem, Chen Yinke xiansheng wenshi lunji IW]iQ'11'17t;~Ic:XjQWiJ~~ (Hong Kong: Wenwen chubanshe, 1977) I, pp. 1-7; and Rudolf Wagner, Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China (Albany: SUNY, 2003), pp. 44-50. See their biographies in the appendix to SSHY/Mather. (Note that "1JJ]:MJ[" is rendered "Fu Jia" by A. Fang, in TCTC/Fang I, p. 537.)

60

CHAPTER ONE

pointed judgment contrasting his and his siblings' late father Yu with their late third-cousin Xun You 1fj 1~ (157-214). (The latter had been roughly the same age as Xun Yu, even though You was in Xun Can's generation; see Figure 1.) In about the late-220s or early 230S, Xun Can "proposed" (the verb is fun ~, "to discourse about or examine relative merits") that his father Xun Yu had not been as brilliant as You, who he said should receive particular admiration. Yu had been "guided by highest virtues and led a strict and orderly life, following the norms so as to accord with events and matters !I!Jl1~ lJ,JIIJi tm." Xun You, however, had been "unconcerned with externals-a completely cautious and secluded man /G'{~)7Hf, '~* § Ji5rmB." If we try to fathom Can's mind, Xun You acted as the appealing model of a mystery adept. Yu was politically active and willing to mold affairs by following norms; You, in contrast was above petty norms. The social subtext is that Can was willfully switching fathers. This infuriated Can's brothers ?g. After all, their father had been a top political figure. Why should his Confucian accommodation to the needs of governing, in fact his martyrdom, now be trumped by Zhengshi tropes about who and what was sagely? We might pay attention to the words of the Xun family acquaintance who recorded this episode (whom I discuss briefly, below); he said the brothers were "debators who used classicist-exegete arts lJ, 1{¥H*j~~" in contrast to Can, whose "only preference was discoursing the Dao ~~fam."54 The episode shows us that aside from sheer philosophy, Can was also provocative. This was a time when salient talk in group gatherings was far more popular than writing down classicist interpretations or thoughts on other serious topics. Such talkers had meetings and arguments that typified the age;55 they relished notoriety, which 54 SGZ 10, pp. 320, cit. He Shao's "Xun Can biezhuan"; treated in Howard Lazar Goodman, "Exegetes and Exegeses of the Book of Changes in the Third Century AD: Historical and Scholastic Contexts for Wang Bi," Ph.D. diss. (Princeton University, 1985), pp. 39-40. Xun Can may have been drawing on well-known quips about the two Xun ancestors, especially one made ostensibly by Cao Cao that was first carried by Pei Songzhi, quoting from the 3d-c. Fuzi 1#]:+ (see SGZ, zhu 10, p. 325). The Fuzi context is about posthumous praise that both Xuns received from their contemporaries-Yu praised for jen (associativeness, human-bonding), and Yu for zhi (knowledge, skill). We see it again in Xun Xu's biography,]S 39, p. Il57, contexted differently. When ZZT] 67, p. 2133, uses the remark, it is under a Han date of 214 AD, suggesting that we accept it as having been originally spoken by Cao Cao. 55 On the role of "talk" see Wang, Zhengshi xuanxue, p. Il7; also a major point in the description of a Zhengshi "timbre(~f' by Hou Wailu K)!H)~ et al., eds., Zhongguo sixiang tongshi 'CI'I~~I}ft',jjlU1l~ (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1957), vol. 3, pp. 74-94.

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

61

they used to serve their own subculture. Moreover, the later Zhengshi style in Luoyang and elsewhere would be influenced mightily by Cao Pi's leadership in arts, thought, and political philosophy in the 220S. Thus, political loyalties enter the equation: in this case we have a Caowed man, Xun Can, casting aspersions on a father who may have been forced into suicide by Cao Cao. Can's position about Yu and You had a factional illogic perhaps intended to aggravate factional "players." Xun Can let his ideas about women and love become public, and these were captured by his contemporary biographer, effecting a strange picture of a counter-culture guru, as it were. In the relevant anecdote Can states to his friends his overall idea that physical beauty mattered far more than a woman's talents and helpfulness. His ardor and passion for his wife became great (as mentioned), and when she died, before her body was encoffined, Fu Gu came to visit Xun, finding the latter spiritually shattered, yet not mourning by merely crying. Fu reminds him of his principles about women, and that since it was all about physical beauty he should not take it so hard. Xun Can responds that his wife had not even been of the most seductive type, but he is sure he will never find another like her. Shishuo xinyu even mentions that others, like Pei Hui, criticized Can's self-indulgent and totalistic mourning;56 it was a type of mourning that was considered unfilial and disorderly. Yet, Can continued his seeming self-abuse and died from it. Xun Can's social provocations were, in my opinion, both real and of a kind with his philosophical points, which we come to shortly. That is, he displayed insouciance toward norms of filial piety and family propriety. He offended his siblings about their father, and upon his wife's death (notably, a Cao lady's death) he carried on about his own state of mind while her body was not encoffined-still exposed. The man may have seemed to others to be selfish and ostentatious. He cavalierly jabbed not just at his own family but at the Caos, while they were the ruling dynasts. Later, Xun Can's own death inspired only a private, small ceremony: "Can was unceremonious and aristocratic, and had no concourse with ordinarly people. Those with whom he did associate were the outstanding and great of the entire age. On the evening of his burial there 56 SSHYIMather, p. 4 85; Can said that his wife was not so beautiful that her looks could "bring down a state"; this was a well-known trope from the biography of Han Wudi's consort Lady Li, about whom a popular saying was: "One look and she topples a [great] man's city-wall; another look and she topples his state"; Hanshu 97A, pp. 395I ff.

62

CHAPTER ONE

were no more than ten or so who attendanded the ceremony-all chosen from among famous gentlemen of his own age who had known him well. When they mourned him it moved even passers-by."57 It is not too suggestive to assume that those "famous gentlemen" were bien pensant proto-Zhengshi types, like Can. Further, that they numbered few may show how much his own Xun kin had rejected him. As a well-known and well-off Luoyang figure, Xun Can probably was buried in that city, although we cannot know for sure. We have evidence of other Xun burials and epitaphs for this time period. One of them was for Xun Mao ~51 (d. 267; see Figure I, where, lacking dates, he floats between the two main lineages and between Wei II and Wei III). With Mao, I see clues of yet another Xun who was in at least some small way considered a Zhengshi-style sage: "His official associates [mourned] as if for a parent and set upright a stele for him. Its preface said: 'We look toward him as toward the sun and moon; we respect him as a divine spirit; we love him as our father and mother and rejoice in him as in the timely rainfall.'" This text mentions also that the Jin emperor sent eulogies. 58 The fact of a vertical, exposed stele is significant, indicating quite possibly that Mao was buried in Yingyin or some other locale (perhaps Taiyuan, where he had been serving as Prefect), but not in Luoyang. At this time such display was not readily undertaken because there had been several Wei-era bans of ostentatious tombs, and Jin Wudi himself would do likewise eleven years after this. 59 But such bans could not be thoroughly, if at all, enforced outside the capital.

Xun Yi and the Traditional Path Followed by Cans Older Siblings Several years after the rebel Xun Can's death, we see the Xuns emerging as Sima men, with no mention of any other Zhengshi-type provocative outbursts, although the Xuns would not be finished as leaders in high-level philosophical groups, as we see. As we picture the way the Xun family commemorated kin and learned from kin, Xun Yi iO:s¥J! (205-274), the sixth of Xun Yu's seven sons, stands out in stark contrast to his younger brother Can. In the early part of the Cao-led Wei Trans. SSHYIMather, pp. 485-86. TPYL 268 ("Zhiguan" 66), quoting "Xunshi jiazhuan" i'lj~\;~(fW; and Beitang shuchao 35 and 78. 59 Davis, "Potent Stone," pp. 236-40. Another Xun, Xun Shao i'U~j:{ (194-244; the son ofYan ih and nephew ofXun Yu) received an epitaph text in stone; SGZ 10, p. 316, cit. "Xunshi jiazhuan." 57

58

XUNS OF Y1NGY1N AND LUOYANG

63

dynasty, sometime around 226-27, based on his father's reputation he had been made Gentleman of the Palace,60 a position going back to Han practice that afforded a chance for young elites to be associated with court offices before receiving substantive appointiment. In the 240s, when the Cao court was led by Cao Shuang l'r~, Xun Yi exhibited overt anti-Cao Shuang politics by interceding to spare the life of the famous Cao Shuang-baiter Fu Gu-himself a former associate of Xun Can, as we saw. (Chapter Two sorts out the anti- from the proCao Shuang courtiers in order to shed light on how factional power became realigned after Cao Shuang's demise and where Xun Xu and his associates fit.) After the Cao Shuang period, Xun Yi received praise from Sima Yi and was given higher posts, such as Palace Attendant and lecturer on the classics for the young Wei Emperor Cao Mao (241-60) in the 250S. He gained the honorary title of Marquis Within the Passes and became a confidant of Sima Shi P] J~ gffi, who sent Yi to learn about pro- and anti-Sima attitudes outside of Luoyang. Yi eventually earned merit for his role in helping to stop Guanqiu Jian's ffi li1%t revolt in 255,61 thereupon becoming Wansui Village Marquis ~~~N~. He soon was promoted due to a vacancy after the death of his nephew-by-marriage from the Chen family, and by about 264-65 he had risen to Minister of Works and to Township Marquis. When the Simas called for scholars to help found the dynasty, Yi stepped forward; he not only entered into Luoyang factions but also took a leading role in commissioned scholarship, as discussed, below. Xun Yi also assumed a high place in the culture of mourning. Like Xun Shuang before him, he promoted (by his own actions) classicist norms for officials to follow in attending their dying parents or mourning them. We read that in the early 260s, before the Jin founding, " ... when [Xun] Yi was already old [himself], he was assiduous in providing care for his parents. 62 He was thoroughly filial and helpful. In mourning for his mother he quit office and became self-destructive to the point of physical damage. People everywhere praised [his actions]." But his actions were considered by Sima Zhao to be overly demonstrative. Mourning styles and their levels of display and seriousjSjZ 39, p. rob. TC TC/Fa ng, pp. 19 0 -9 6, 20 3- 2 3. 62 jS 39, p. II51, possibly referring to his mother, who I deduce was roughly eighty6U

61

eight; see Goodman, "Sites of Recognition," p. 74, n. 80. For Shuang's exhortations in favor of classical three-year mourning, see ibid., p. 64.

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CHAPTER ONE

ness were a fixture in Chinese political life. Discussions about a man's commitment to serve aged parents and mourn at their deaths were as important as today's behind-the-scenes vetting and focus-group political reportage: anything off-the-mark in terms of family responsibilities might taint a political career. When Xun Yi died about ten years later times had already changed. He had become a venerated scholar of the Jin, thus fit to receive imperial mourning and edicts of condolence from the Jin Emperor Wu. The emperor's edicts granted burial gifts, as well as the posthumous name "Serene »l." He mentioned as well that the departed Xun Yi had "never been overly concerned with his private household, and did not dwell in a regular lodging. His simple aspirations became even more evident after his passing. Would that [We] gift the family 200 ten-thousands in cash and have a building erected."63 Much of this is the sort of rhetoric connected with the centuries-old topic of "frugal burial"; but it was also a real social stricture. Historians have discussed various announcements (both private and imperial) urging frugal burial and tomb display that began late in Han and were later emphasized by the Caos and Simas. This movement toward frugal tombs affected Luoyang burials of this era, as seen in the relatively plain tombs discovered by modern archeology.64 But if the rhetoric of poverty (Yi's possessing no regular house) is an exaggeration, and I think so, then what sort of building was paid for by the emperor's cash? It seems logical that Xun Yi was buried in the Luoyang area, although there is no evidence of it. If so, the emperor's gesture may have been to aid the construction of the tomb itself. If buried in Yingyin, then perhaps the "building erected" was a memorial shrine in Luoyang that the family could utilize for ceremonies. A couple of years after his death, the emperor listed twelve deceased ministers, including Yi, and ordered their merits entered in the office of the Grand Master of Ceremonies and feasts given for their spirit-doubles in the Temple of Purity ~~ [email protected] 63 64

jS 39, p. lISI. Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization, pp. 163-70 (and the references in his notes);

newly discovered tombs of Cao-associated persons support the idea of frugality. 6S "Qingmiao" is a top os in ancient imperial sacrifices and ceremonials. See the Shijing Elegantia "Qingmiao," Ode 266. Both the ode itself (beginning "Oh, august is the Pure Temple") (Karlgren, Book of Odes, p. 239) and the wording of the traditional Shi preface (where we see "Qingmiao is the sacrifice to Wenwang") imply that it was a site within the royal temple complex; see also Sima Xiangru's "Shanglin" fu: "Transmitting the doctrine of the Changes,! He releases the strange beasts,! Ascends the Luminous Hall,! Sits in the Pure Temple"; W'X 2, pp. III-H.

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

65

The Impact ofXun Scholarship in Luoyang For the Xun family, Luoyang meant that their Yijing could function as a debate topic outside the confines of written exegeses in the older Han way. The era promoted intellectual confrontation through coteries, belles lettres, and debating. We can see graphically how this involved the Xuns by again looking at the light-grey lines of Figure 2. The Xuns' Yijing expertise begins primarily in the last decades of Eastern Han in the vector emerging from Xun Shuang's teacher Chen Shi. The honing of a X un-family written text on Yijing then goes from Xun Shuang to his nephew Yue. The latter apparently did not write on the classic, but he knew and supported his uncle's text. Any written Yijing work jumps down several generations to Xun Hui, a descendant of Yue's cousin Yu. (I do not claim that for a long while there was no Xun who wrote about the classic, but there is simply no evidence of it, with the dubious exception of Xun Yun; see my Notes to Figure 1.) From this we can deduce that the Shuang text was passed from Yue to Hui. But something more important was happening in Luoyang from about 235 to 265. Non-commentarial discussion of the classics like Yijing, but also the ancient Daoist masterpieces, took hold; and the experimental atmosphere provided the Xuns new opportunities. Their mastery of Yijing techniques such as rising and falling line correspondences brought Xun Can, Xun Yi, and Xun Rong WJ~ (their first-cousin onceremoved) into wider scholarly contacts-cliques that defined Cao-Wei and Western Jin intellectual trends. Up until recently, modern historians did not give the Xuns a significant place in these trends: Wang Baoxuan's I1~1t£t study is an exception, singling out Xun Can. What I show next will supplement his picture considerably. We will establish more concretely the Xuns' relationship to Zhengshi discussion and literary groups, denoted as the three rectangles in Figure 2. At the same time, we can make out the beginnings of two additional Xun-family specialties that by 265 would surpass their involvement in Yijing. Xun Can, besides having been a provocateur, was a philosopher. The thinkers seen in the three groups of discoursers in Figure 2 (the three rectangles) all lived longer than Can and were among the couple dozen stars of the xuanxue shift in philosophic approaches that involved several topics. One topic concerned a certain dualism, that is, reality's being of two sides of truth-a creatively negative There-is-not and a constructivist There-is; furthermore, knowledge of reality had two modes-linguistic inventions that employed agreed upon signs and rhetorical devices (in some sense a type of obscurantism), versus words

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and signs in their normatively analyzable and definable frames. The xuanxue mystery innovators-we might call them mysteriosophistswere on the left sides of those equations, working on startling ideas. Xun Can was a prototype for the entire xuanxue movement that occurred after his death. He went deeply into the dualism and became disposed favorably to the negative (there-is-not) aspect and to transcendent epistemology. His is an excellent example of the new daoistic philosophy (I hesitate to use the misleading "neo-Daoist"). 66 In the source biography devoted to him, he is said to have rejected any positivist or linguistically graspable essence, or There-is truth, that lay behind the texts of the primal sages, specifically Yijing. An elder brother, Xun Wu 1*, one of his oppositional Confucianist siblings, stood for the positivist There-is. Can argued that the "subtleness of the order (or pattern) f]LzA~j" as presented in the Yijing's "Great Treatise" (one of the Wings, which were featured in Xun Shuang's Yijing) was the ultimate truth but a truth so pure that its essence was not to be attained by linguistic thought. His arguments were perhaps circular, stopping just below the level of the sages who had created the system of the Yijing and its Great Treatise: in Can's view, these sages would not have been able to transcend their own semantic pointers. Wang Baoxuan adds an insight; it is that Xun Can suggests that he himself and his crowd, men coming after the sages, aimed at self-divinization: by intuiting the ineffability of the Yijing system they were the ones who could attain to the level of sages, among whom was included Confucius. 67 For Wang, all of this represents the first radical ontology of the period, and his careful reconstruction of the timing of the discoursers-from Xun Can to Xiahou, to He Van, then to Wang Bi-backs up his conclusions. I believe that the extent to which several Xuns were involved in the new society of discourse-the private meetings on philosophy and challenges to politics and etiquette-was significant. The three boxedoff coteries shown in Figure 2 describe the areas of Xun involvement. First chronologically was the coterie in which Xun Can talked and gained admirers; we have already discussed it. Next is Xun Vi's associations with three of the cleverest daoistic thinkers of the day. Sometime in the period 240-48 he worked with He Van and others to compile a groundbreaking edition of Lunyu. Recent studies have analyzed He's

See Introduction, n. 38, for an explanation of my use of "daoistic." See Goodman, "Exegetes," p. 319; also Wang, Zhengshi xuanxue, p. echoed by Wagner, Language, Ontology, and Politics, pp. 44-45. 66

67

II2,

which is

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

67

opinions about the nature of the Lunyu. 68 But there is no record ofYi's ideas about Lunyu or about the function of commentary. Our concern, however, is with family history and social contexts, so it seems fair at least to deduce that Xun Yi had dealings with He Yan and afforded He his direct cooperation in the Lunyu project. Also, in the early 250S Xun Yi worked on Wei historiography with Ruan Ji lJC~i (210-263). At about the same time, drawing upon his ancestor Xun Shuang's Yijing trigram symbolism, he argued about a technical matter of trigram structure with Zhong Hui (this concerned whether overlapped trigrams were part of the system of changes). These links describe if not a real group of four scholars that met and worked together in a bureau or a scholarly commission, then a virtual group who as influential elites had mutual knowledge and indirect contact. Xun Yi was, so to speak, a "free radical" moving out of the Cao Shuang clique (in which He Yan met his demise), then into the Sima world just before Western Jin, when his intellect engaged with that of the much younger Zhong. No doubt a marriage connection came into play, since Zhong's older sister had married Xun Xu's father. 69 It seems to me that Xun Yi would have been neither pro-There-is-not nor pro-linguistic transcendence; he would have been on the right side of the equation-the constructive There-is that would ally him with his brothers in opposing Can. This is in some sense confirmed retrospectively, since in around 269-70 Yi would become an active factionalist and a scholar of court ritual and musicology: such activities required commitment to verbal norms and real things. The third Xun-family coterie, coming after those of Xun Can and Xun Yi, involved Xun Rong Jt Unlike Yi's milieu, for this one we have concrete evidence of an actual group. In discussing Yijing, Rong interacted with Wang Bi and Zhong Hui (noting once again the inlaw connection). The three Yijing discoursers-Xun Rong, Wang, and Zhong-were born around the same time. All we know from the 68 John Makeham, Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), pp. 26-29. Also, in a more general vein, Daniel K. Gardner, Zhu Xi's Reading of the Analects: Canon, Commentary, and the Classical Tradition (New York: Columbia U. P., 2003), introduction. On the view that the He Yan-led collected commentaries to Lunyu

probably did involve the work of the associated editors and not just He alone, see Wang,

Zhengshi xuanxue, p. 134; and a clear discussion of that is in Makeham. 69

On Hui's associations with men of both higher and lower generations, see Howard

L. Goodman, "The Calligrapher Chung Yu (ca. 163-23°) and the Demographics of a Myth," JAOS II4.4 (1994), p. 564.

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CHAPTER ONE

source material is that Rong disagreed strenuously with Wang Bi's theory about the meaning of the Great Treatise arithmology that was based on the number "fifty" (a metaphor for the sum total of heaven's and earth's numbers).7o Frustrating is the lack of detail concerning the philosophic interplay among Xun Rong's Yijing coterie: what did they discuss, other than the famous quip from Wang Bi, poking fun at Xun Rong?71 How did they discuss? We simply do not know, nor do we know anything else about Rong's life. The only primary source that marked the existence of Xun Can's and Xun Rong's coteries is He Shao's {6J fl] (d. 302) two biographies, one devoted to Xun Can and one to Wang Bi. He Shao was the son of a much-honored stalwart of the founding Jin who was well known to Xun Yi, thus Shao was in a position to have learned about these Xun men, and I do not discount his descriptions as mere political ideology. Modern critics have pointed out He's possible pro-Sima motives for painting Xun Can and Wang Bi as social misfits. 72 Yet, it seems to me that to whatever level that is so, still He Shao in the 270S to 290S (we do not know when he wrote) may also have been trying through the two biographies to create a hagiographic frame by which men of Western Jin times could grasp the passing of an era that they all remembered. His two set-pieces offered a take on the emotions behind the Zhengshi spirit of xuanxue, depicting Luoyang gadflies who challenged both people and norms, and died young. This was the kind of hagiography that in the coming decades would turn He Yan, Wang Bi, and the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove into Zhengshi avatars who stood for intimacy and newness. With this in mind, we see that the remarks about Xun Can, while positing negative comments (much like our day, when members of Cambridge colleges feel compelled to raise uncomfortable episodes in their biographies of deceased fellow professors), nonetheless offered positive reflections on the intellectual world inhabited by a member of the Xun family, a world still known to He Shao. Xun Can was the 70 See Goodman, "Exegetes," p. 295; cf. Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde (rpt. Princeton: Princeton U. p', 1952) 2, p. 182. 71 They are mentioned in SGZ 10, p. 316; the quip is translated by Bodde in Fung, History of Chinese Philosophy 2, p. 188. 72 See Rong Zhaozu f:t=~l'Hll, "Shu Wang Bi He Yan de sixiang" k£[I]I'i~M01:·I'l~}JMJ), Guoli Zhongshan daxue lishi xue yanjiusuo zhoukan Itixl\J:'I-'lU.k,l'P'l~5l:,I'}HiJr~J'ENI·J,t,HiJ 1.8-9 (1927), 2 parts. The case of Wang Bi seems to me more difficult, since in his extended family there were anti-Cao moments (as well as pro), and his death was agonized over by Sima Shi; see Goodman, "Exegetes," pp. 124, 131-33.

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

69

only Xun to have helped form the xuanxue "movement," although Yi and Rong had moments of interaction with smart talkers and theorizers. One might say that in any family individual members' paths may look unlike the paths of others; or that in one scholar's oeuvre and utterances there could be contradictory notions. 73 It is possible too that the Xun family in Luoyang, attracted for a while to provocative and sometimes rebellious groups, righted itself out of a sense of older duty and then surged ahead as conservative systems-builders. Both interpretations are correct in part: we know of other families who knew and appreciated men like Xun Can and Wang Bi but who were politically and socially staid, for example the Simas themselves. 74 The picture given, above, of a family that had showed an open rift among siblings, a rift having to do with the young Can's wholly different, and perhaps even haughty, way of assessing loved ones and even the Yijing, does lend credence to the notion that later Xuns may have desired to "right" themselves. My unfolding ofXun Xu's life will come into contact several times with this very question: in my view it was possible to be too right, that is, to become ensnared in the There-is. This played into criticisms lodged against the aggrandizing and systems-building Xun Xu by several of his peers, who preferred the promise of a calm and intimate age that they saw in the Zhengshi spirit.

Xun Musicologists and Legists Two other skills overtook Yijing in the Xuns' world of learning. I am unsure how musicology came into the family. Above, I mentioned Xun Yue's thoughts on music decades earlier, but the probable source was Xun Yi. (See this depicted in Figure 2, the dark black lines.) As I have mentioned in previous articles, music had numerous niches and roles in Chinese society both before and after the Zhengshi years. Wang Bi himself came from a highly musical family that had inherited the books and papers of Cai Yong (a renowned musician). As He 73 See Makeham, Transmitters and Creators, p. 47, discussing He Yan's commitment or not to xuanxue. 74JS 2 (biography of Sima Shi), p. 25; also Shi's emotional grief upon hearing of Bi's death; SGZ 28, zhu, cit. He Shao's biography of Wang Bi, p. 796. There are numerous examples of Western Jin men who pleaded with certain Zhengshi-style rebels to stop their behavior and come around; see Audrey Spiro, Contemplating the Ancients: Aesthetic and Social Issues in Early Chinese Portraiture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 76-85, who touches on one or two of those, and points out the degree to which men's actions in society were often seen by contemporaries to be founded on their own choices.

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Shao's biography of Wang Bi shows, Wang professed skill in music and entertained people at parties with his knowledge of harmonics and/ or performing. 75 The Xuns began to study the court's high-music at some unknown time, and by "high-music" I mean the classically based chant-ballets. This occurred while many of their peers pursued private performance on the qin ~ or the pipa F~§, or collected popular lyrics associated with ensembles and entertainment. A further chapter will uncover the process ofXun Xu's first involvement in court music, but here we might anticipate by introducing the skeletal outline: Yi was appointed in about 269 to work on Western Jin music including the complex chant-ballets. If he was learning the required technics only at this point in time, then his associates Pei Xiu and Ying Zhen in the rites project (see Figure 2) may have been influences, given their musical interests. 76 It is more likely, though, that Xun Yi already possessed skill in lyrics and ensemble or solo performance: it would have been too difficult to start this only late in life. What is more crucial, as Chapter Three brings out, Yi seems to have influenced his young relative Xun Xu in musicology. In about 273, a year before Yi's death, Xu is said to have taken over court music, including the same productions started earlier by Yi. Soon after that, Xun Xu took up the problem of a lack of precision in the line-lengths of court lyrics. Then, in about 273-74, he began to search in the storerooms of music offices and discovered Wei-dynasty music instruments and pitch regulators. This launched him on a program to measure and compare old metrological standards in order to prove that the Wei music offices had been using the wrong length for their ritual tuners, the Lii if, and consequently for the orchestra. Musicology demanded thinking about the "there-is": Xun Xu was reforming and rebuilding the symbol-system of a historical legacy of standards and methods. Such constructivist work shows up also in those Xuns who achieved renown as legists, that is, experts in court legal policy and compendia. No other scholarship has pointed out the development of this Xun skill, but aided by Figure 2 and List I we can piece it together. Xun Yu and Xun You may have been the first Xuns in this area. In about 196, under Cao Cao's leadership, Xun Yu entered into a debate about restoring corporal punishment that had begun in the previous decade with Cui Shi Zheng Xuan, and 75 76

Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths'," appendix, esp. p. 17 2 • See Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics," p. 64, and n. I6.

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

71

others. Xun Yu "broadly investigated the [code] of the hundred offices, and brought up again a plan to extend them, but Privy Treasurer Kong Rong made a criticism ... " that emphasized leniency.77 We know that Xun You compiled a work on Wei official codes titled "Wei guan yi" ~ '§ 1~ (List I); although its title is the only available fact, we can speculate that it came a bit later than Yu's legal debate since it deals with Wei, and also it probably was not about corporal punishment but about official ranks, appointments, procedures, and the like. It is no coincidence that a leader in a major Wei penal code revision was another Xun. This was Xun Shen ~, an elder brother of Xun Yi and Xun Can. He was a legal expert during the reign of Wei Mingdi SJJ W (227-240) and worked with leading scholars like Chen Qun ~ ;j5f, Yu Yi J9i~, and Liu Shao ;Hj~ to compile 18 pian of Wei law, and nearly 200 pian on similar topics (his works are given in List 1).78 After Guanqiu Jian's revolt in 255, Xun Yi argued via the codes to defend his female cousin, the wife of Guanqiu's son Dian 1BJ, when she became subject to execution (see Figure I, just below Xun Yue; her name and generational level not known). Yi's connection to Sima Shi em (208255) led to her release by means of a post facto divorce from Dian. 79 Ten years later, both Yi and Xu were chosen to become part of the Jin scholarly commisions to research and revise institutions, serving as legists. We must assume that by the time they arrived in Luoyang the Xuns had preserved their kinsmen's written opinions and pre-Jin compilations of law; and that they collated and reused them when called upon in a state capacity. Such private writings could form the bases for official treatises and become parts of dynastic histories. Thus, a family's specialty was in some sense a national treasure. Because court scholarship had been interrupted from about 190 to 220, and relatively weak from 240 to the early 260s, Yingchuan private letters helped to restart court scholarship in Luoyang. When the Sima court offered acSGZ 21 (biography of Liu Shao), p. 618: "After Mingdi acceded ... [LiuJ was appointed Chief Commandant of Cavalry and together with Gentleman Consultant Yu Yi )!*[~'t , Xun Shen, and others corrected the statutes and commands; they compiled an I8-pian 'New Code' and wrote a 'Discourse on the Summary of the Codes'" (see List I), IS 30 ("Xingfa"), p. 921; also mentioned by Xun Xu in a memorial (jS 39, p. II56). The debate raged again during the Zhengshi era (240S), without resolution; see IS 30, p. 926, which laments that the opinions were not recorded. 78 Much detail on the structure of their new Wei laws is given in IS 30 ("Xingfa"), pp. 923-26. See Cheng Shude ;fij~;f.&Jf,rt,Jiuchao lukao JviYH;II:5l.j (Shanghai: Shanghai shangwu yinshu guan, 1955); but the IS treatise still needs a comprehensive study. 79 IS 30 , p. 926.

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cess to old archives and storerooms, Xun Yi and Xu responded by taking up such projects as rites, metrology, and musicology in order both to pursue technical correctness, per se, but also to bring heft to their roles as factional leaders. At this time, various of their peers possessed weightier noble and official titles, and others had already fashioned reputations as xuanxue-style sages or Western Jin poets involved in a new sort of intimacy of imagination and emotion. so

Xun Xu's Foothold onto a New Career The section after this probes another Xun whose burial in 295 was, like that of Xun Yi, wrapped in imperial sympathy. This man, Xun Yue tEr, was another of the mainline, intellectually and politically "Confucianist," Xuns. His time period covers events that brought severe challenges to Xun scholarship. It makes sense, therefore, to sum up now the Xun family that I have treated in the preceding so that we can show the foothold that propelled Xun Xu to high positions in about 250 AD. XU and his elder, Yi, both served under the Wei dynasty at a moment when the Cao ruler was a young and powerless new emperor and court control was under Cao Shuang, a man who was vilified and after extermination in 249 instantly became notorious. The next chapter of my book will open up on what I treat as a political conundrum and practical problem: how did scholar-officials like the Xuns handle themselves in the last years under Cao Shuang and how did they manipulate networks and reputations in order either to avoid Sima service or to remain unscathed? It was for Xun Xu a new beginning, a moment when he could utilize his advantages so as to make the next part of his official career an advance, both hierarchically and in tellectually. Right now, we treat what the standard-history biography of Xun Xu does not-the Xun-family's effect on the youth who emerged into prominence suddenly, under the Simas in about 255-60. It is quite clear that the Xuns were solidly committed to their locale and their home villa until Xun Yu's death in 212, and probably even afterward. The Xuns established their own local power, as well as agile groupings that opposed Han-court eunuch and empress factions. They were more or less pro-Han, but served Cao Cao energetically. The Xun family earned military merit, displayed proper, ancient, mourning, scholarly seriousness, and martyrological image. They maintained strong so

See Niwa's major point about the self-fashioning of the Xuns in "Junshi no hitobito."

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

73

ties to other Yingchuan families like the Chens. Years later, Xun Yi would ride Chen coattails in order to advance in officialdom in the first several years of the Wei, and again in the 250S, when Yi helped Sima Zhao hold power in and around Luoyang. Xun Xu was born sometime around 220, since his second son Pan would be born in 245 and there were apparently two sons before Pan. He was orphaned at a young age and raised by the Zhong family, his maternal relations. (Figure 3, below, gives an idea of how families like the Zhongs fit among other Xun Xu influences.) Serving under Cao Shuang around 247-49, Xu was already in his late twenties, yet we know nothing significant concerning his childhood other than being orphaned and having a good scholarly mind (a ubiquitous trope in biographies). We can fill that gap by focusing directly on the seven sons of Xun Yu, all of the same generation as Xun Xu's late father. We should assume that Xu's maternal adoptive parents (the Zhongs) supplied only part of the upbringing, and that these sons of Yu were equally important as mentors. Thus, in Figure 3 the line of influence from Xun Yi to Xun Xu implies the strong influence as well of Xun Can, Xun Shen, and the other siblings ofXun Yi. The brothers' lives reveal a transition to Luoyang, access to power, tension among them, continuing intermarriage with Yingchuan families and with the Caos, and, most significantly the emergence of law and musicology. Three of the brothers died young (Wu, Shen, and Can). We know nothing of two others (not even their names), but we do know about Xun Yi. He rose highest of all of them in the eyes of the Jin court. Part of the reason for that, besides his high-minded manner of mourning and his scholarship, was purely factional: he had opposed Cao Shuang's machinations in 249, blocking the execution of Fu Gu. Clearly, by this date Xun Yi was a friend of the Simas, and in the ensuing several years was already a confidant of Sima Yi and Sima Shi. He gave the latter significant military counsel. Thus the man that seemingly gave to Xun Xu a skill in musicology, or at least provided some tools for that and passed to him the unfinished job of reforming ritual performances, was, or I deduce he was, a political mentor and facilitator. By 249 Xu was just a cadet, namely, a Palace Writer Gentleman-for-All-Matters, and afterward the first career step brought him a minor military position and a local prefecture. More about this comes in the next chapter, but here it is crucial to state that the elder Xun Yi's anti-Cao stance and subsequent military merit with the Simas were strong leverage to help Xun Xu escape the taint of having served

Figure 3. Xun Xu: Associations, Antagonisms, and Influences (exerted and received)

"-l

*"

W. Jin Court Scholarly Elite and Factionalists Officials In, or Linked to, Palace Writers and Imp. Library Bureaus

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XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

75

Cao Shuang. My sense is that the stature of Xun Yi and his siblings provided the so-called foothold for Xun Xu to take his place among the Simas in 250-55. By 264-65 Yi achieved a raise in noble rank, and both he and Xu were given roles in the Simas' exegetical projects to reform court institutions and rites. By the time Xun Xu first emerged as a brilliant expert in all manner of precision, around 269, he already had a mansion, was purchasing and collecting for aesthetics, and was renowned for calligraphy and antiquarian concerns (details of which come in Chapter Three). But it was in those twenty-five years from about 230 to 255 that the old Eastern Han Xun reputation and the brilliance of the seven sons of Xun Yu helped foster the orphan youngster Xu.

XUN-FAMILY PATHOS IN AN ENTOMBED EPITAPH OF 295 AD

Ninety years ago a remarkable piece of Xun-family textual and material evidence was discovered east of Luoyang. The discovery was of a stone epitaph that had been entombed along with a Western Jin Xun man, his wife, and son. The man was first to be buried, in 295, followed some years later by the others, when the stone received further inscriptions in order to commemorate those newly laid into the same tomb. This section looks at the text and the tomb, and their wider contexts, to see a picture of stressful times for the extended family. Xun Xu's influence as scholar and factionalist began to decline in the 280s, and soon after that the Jin court was embroiled in violent factions that led to ruin and war. Xun Yue's ffi (246-295; Figure I, Wei Ill/Jin 1) life is un remarked in the histories. The tomb text is almost the only evidence of his existence. Xun Yue descended from Xun Tan, who with his brother Yu ~ had suffered in the first wave of Han-court factional unrest in the I60s. Yue was a second-cousin twice-removed of Xun Yu ]$;; and he was a fourth-cousin of Xun Xu, although born much later. Xun Yue and his wife Lady Liu, a woman of the Donglai Liu JI~Jl~;U family and five years his junior, can be placed at least partly in Luoyang during their lives. Despite an age difference between fourth-cousins Xu and Yue, we have to assume that the families were if nothing else, at least aware of each other. It would appear that Yue did not take up scholarship (his name is absent from List I). The only known fact about his father is that he was once a Grand Administrator of Leping ~.:5f. Yue

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served at medium levels of the state, becoming toward the end of his life chiefly a military official. How did a man without literary cachet or high office, and apparently without having inherited his father's noble title, come to be honored by the Jin Emperor Hui ~w and receive an imperial adjunct-burial aside Sima Zhao's royal tombs east of the capital? We must work our way toward the answers by reading portions of the epitaph text. We can do this thanks to its discovery in I9I7 during a florid period of tomb-robbing and tomb-item sell-offs in a wide area ranging from just west of Luoyang eastward to the Yanshi and Gongxian areas, then up into the Mang Hills. Tomb figurines had already been emerging due to construction of the Longhai Railroad, and they came to the attention of the famous scholar Luo Zhenyu m1~3I. (I866-I940) in his visits to Beijing antique shops. With information from a dealer, Luo pinpointed locales, and he and others made intensive searches for a number of years. In I9I7, a local farmer, Liu Defa ~Hj~ from Fenzhuang hamlet ~m:, encountered a tomb while excavating for a well near the hamlet of Pantun ni~ (just southeast of Fenzhuang; something like I.3 km north of the rail line and several km northwest of Du Fu's purported gravesite, which is currently marked for tourists). Because of the heated market, word quickly spread. The unearthed epitaph stone was ink-xylographed by a local teacher, but then somehow came under control of a nearby strongman who then purportedly lost the stone to robbers.sl Luo obtained a rubbing, and placed it into his published studies. S2 Both the front and back main faces of the epitaph were inscribed in 295; and the left-edge text seems to have been written in a different carver's hand the year Xun Yue's wife Lady Liu ~U died, in 304. I

81 Ye, "Mortuary Practice," p. 41 (as well as previous Luoyang archeologists like Guo Yutang -'iIIS~li.'~n, says it was found in 1918. The more exact details of its discovery (including someone's memory of the size of the tomb itself, before becoming submerged by the well water) were reconstructed by C.A.S.S. archeologists in 1982-83, who interviewed families in the area; see Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan, "Xi Jin diling," pp. 1096-97. 82 See Luo Zhenyu, "Mang Luo zhongmu yiwen" sanbian,j. 5, in Luo's Luoshi zhongmu yiwen t11\[\;~U;li;i!ll::5c; printed in Yan Gengwang fl\'~~0IJrL ed., Shike shiliao congshu ;C~'·~U9:f. tf(lft:; (Taipei: Yiwen yinshu guan, 1966), ser. 1, vol. 14 (set in an archaizing typeface). Notes and description in Zhao Wanli JlTIIJ~'IL Han Wei Nanbeichao muzhi jishi 1lHJl!lh;IU:yJf,~iG;:!;I~~'r (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1956) j. 1, pp. 3-4. Modern punctuated text in Zhao Chao ,mMi, Han Wei Nanbei chao muzhi huibian i~~ ~HJ~IUYJli~J~dltt.~~J (Tianjin: Tianjin guji chubanshe, 1992), pp. 6-7.

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

77

have translated all parts of the stone in full elsewhere, therefore we shall look at the main, front side. 83 We are dealing with eulogistic language, but that language does provide information about the conditions of the intended burial, the temporary burial, and then Yue's final imperial burial. First, though, I summarize the main reverse side, which, unlike the front side, acts as a xingzhuang 1-TJ:/X, a record ofYue's service. From the reverse side we learn that Yue's ffi style-name was Yubo ~1B, born February II, 246, in the official lodgings at Qiao ~ commandery. These were, it seems, the official quarters of his father Xin Sjf (ennobled as Leping Lord). Early, Yue had served briefly in the Yingchuan Bureau of Merit (probably through a local Yingchuan recommender) and then was nominated as "Filial." He served, perhaps in the early 280s, under the Minister over the Masses and in a sub bureau of the Bureau of Cultivated Land in Xuzhou, before becoming a Palace Attendant and member of the Suite of the Heir-Apparent. We can deduce that being from a great family, it was clear that he was headed toward palace positions in his middle age. Yet he suffered a sudden illness and left office in August of 286. But only several days after his illness struck he was again appointed as Palace Attendant. The latter position, as discussed in Chapter Four, was often (but not exclusively) given to scholars and historiographers. It is worth making the suggestion here that the sick Yue was given a sinecure thanks to Xun Xu, who was still the Inspector of Palace Writers although struggling at this time to retain his grasp on that office. Three years transpired before Yue's next position, as Major of the Garrison Cavalry of the Prince of Shiping ~tI+ Sima Wei P]}~Bf;. Thus around the time that Xun Xu passed away, Yue was again outside of Luoyang in a military position. In middle age Xun Yue was living through a troubling period for the Xun family. Xun Xu, their highest political representative, died in December of 289 and even prior to that his reputation became marred, as we see in the last several chapters. Thus, after about 285 Xun Yue's expectations of noble title and comfortable literary posts in the capital must have become diminished, even though Wudi, who had supported Xun Xu's work, still reigned. Let us continue summarizing the rear side. In 290, in the last months of the ailing Wudi, Xun Yue was placed into an even higher 83 See Goodman, "Sites of Recognition"; there I comment on textual matters, chronological problems, differences in interpretation between myself and Davis, "Potent Stone," pp. 141-43, who translated a small part of the epitaph.

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military post, a generalship, once again by Sima Wei. After Huidi came to the throne Yue was chosen as General Who Commands the South. This military pattern continued until the spring of 294, with appointment as Gentleman in Attendance of the Palace Writers, a nominally, yet often actual, literary position; but with Xun Xu gone, Yue probably could not move up to the prestigious Drafter, Assistant, or Inspector in that bureau. Yue became ill sometime before he died on August 5, 295. On that date, we assume that his body was taken to the Yingyin family seat to be prepared for burial. But, as the epitaph informs us, a torrential rain occurred there only four days after his death, and as a result the old Xun tombs were damaged by floods. Now we read the full text of the main front surface, which documents aspects of Xun-family mortuary and commemorative culture (the Chinese text given at the end is from the compilation of inscriptional sources by Zhao Chao MlJl1t) :84

"Commemoration for Xun Yue ofYingchuan Yingyin, fin-fEral Late Gentleman-in-Attendance of the Palace Writers" Lord [Xun] grew gravely ill and died in the yimao year, bingshen 8th day of the new-moon yichou, 7th month, of the fifth year of the Yuankang [reign] (August 5, 295). The Lord was the second son of ([Prefect] Xun Xin BJT) the Leping Lord. 85 At the time he was 50 nian. The [graves of the] ancestors of former generations were solemnly buried in the northern part ofYingyin county, Yingchuan. [But] in this year (i.e, Yuankang 5), on the 12th day of the 7th month (that is, August 9, four days after Xun's death), a heavy rain surpassed all norms. The old tombs were soaked underneath, and those that were destroyed through collapse were many.86 The emperor (Huidi) issued an edict to eulogize and mourn; he grieved for the straitened situation of the family. The imperial grant was a gravesite of one qing and 150,000 cash in order to supply burial needs. Therefore, [Yue's coffin] was solemnly sited separately [from his 84 See n. 82, above. Once again, I delete here some of the minor textual problems that I note in my full translation of the epitaph in Goodman, "Sites of Recognition." 85 See Figure I; Xin was a first-cousin of the famous Cao-ally Xun You 11:l1:. I follow JSJZ 54, p. 22b, which suspects that Xin and a certain Xun Xin (written tJl"), were one and same person. 86 Davis, "Potent Stone," p. 140, introduces the Xun tomb, saying that only Xun Yue's tomb had been destroyed; but the text does not indicate that before the rains Yue had even been buried, only that he had died. Ibid. p. 141: " ... the old tomb filled with water, and the damage from its collapse was significant." The text's grammar supports the notion that many old tombs were damaged: "Jj)j:l:»tW" is a nominalized verb-phrase, not the abstract noun "damage." "Jiumu" is found in numerous epitaphs that Davis analyzes in his study; it means "ancestral cemetery" (e.g., pp. 125-26, 152); the sense in Xun Yue's case is the same.

79

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

kinsmen's] in the eastern [part] of Luoyang county, Honan, adding it to the right of the tumulus road of Jin Wendi (Sima Zhao, d. 265). In that year, the wuwu, new-moon roth month, the gengchen <23d> day (November 17, 295), [Xun Yue -ffi] was buried [there]. We have inscribed the edict texts as follows: An edict: "We deeply mourn the unfortunate loss of Gentleman in Attendance of the Palace Writers Xun Yue. His embodied capacity was broad and unassuming; his knowledge was complete. Unfortunately he has died; we deeply grieve for him. The donation of roo,ooo cash is to provide for mourning matters." An edict: "Former Gentleman in Attendance of the Palace Writers Xun Yue was loyal and upright, staunch and careful. It is the early death of [a man so] talented and resolved that We grieve and are sad about. We have heard that the family dwells in straitened circumstances and has no resources for the mourning and burial. [Xun's] virtuous purity came this far! So he can be eulogized and grieved! The old tombs were overcome with flood-water. (In Yingyin) their intention 87 was for a here-lies-below temporary burial. 88 [But Our] grant of one qing ofland and 150,000 cash will provide for [a proper] interment." The emperor heard that Gentleman in Attendance of the Palace Writers Xun Yue died. He sent a nuncio, Dai Xuan,89 to carry out mourning. The emperor sent nuncio Dai Xuan to make sacrificial meat-offerings, and to set out goods for an altar to Former Gentleman in Attendance of the Palace Writers Xun Yue. Oh, Deceased [Spirit], enjoy these offerings! ~ )L )}R ~H jl::: -t)~

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87 Davis, "Potent Stone," p. 142, translates, "since his former tomb has met with [the calamity of] water, I desire here to grant authority for [re-] burial." 88 My way of phrasing "llt I'·" sees it as a metonymic usage, as if the emperor were saying, "The Xuns were even about to make a wretched cixia type of temporary burial in Yingyin"; explained further in Goodman, "Sites of Recognition," p. 79, n. I02. 89 I have found no other information on this person.

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Xun Wives and Daughters Xun Yue's -ffi Lady Liu was the daughter of Donglai Liu Yi ~U~, himself a well-known close adviser to Jin Wudi. 9u She bore three daughters and a son, the latter being second in the overall birth order. The main rear of the stone records her career, just as it had for her husband. We read it as follows: Lady Liu is forty-five nian;91 she is the daughter of Donglai Liu Zhongxiong (Liu Yi).92 She bore a daughter Rou, styled Huiyin fwJz fi ("Excellent Listening/Devotion"),93 who was married at age twenty nian to Shi Shuzu of Leling. 94 The next child was a son named Yin, styled Minghe P,~lIi,~ ("Stork Crying to Its Young").95 At nineteen nian he took as wife the daughter of Langya Wang Shiwei (Wang Chen .:=£.1*).96 Her next child was a daughter He, styled "Shaoyin" ("Music of the Shao Dance").97 At seventeen nian she went to be the wife of Chen Jingzu of Yingchuan,98 Xuchang, ... 99 The next daughter was Gong, styled Huiyin ("Sweet Tones").IUO At fourteen nian she [was promised] to go as wife

See biography IS 45, pp. 1271 ff; see Yano, Gi Shin, p. 190. The verb seems to be present tense; she was still alive to bury her husband in 295 and is being discussed as a family mourner/donor, not as a deceased, which will occur nine years later in the side inscription. 92 See biography IS 45, pp. 1271 ff; see Yano, Gi Shin, p. 190. He was a stalwart ofWudi. 93 See Shijing, sect. Daya, Mao 240: "Si Qi }JJ,J~F" (SBCK edn.) j. 16, p. IIa, where the phrase is " ... llij~q*ff:r'; the commentary states that Taisi "continued to conduct their excellent instructions *Y"HjJQ':f-QJ:9." Karlgren, Book of Odes, pp. 192, has" .... carried on their fine fame." As Xun Yue's daughter's name, the meaning is not so much musical as it is about obediance. But set in the context of the other three names, as we see, the concrete feeling of hearing and memorizing out of obediance remains strong. This is supported by Zuo Fen's dirge on the death of Empress Yang, which uses" huiyin" while referring to the same Ode, the context being one of the good model of obediance seen in women figures of high antiquity; IS 31, p. 958. 94 There is a possibility that this was one of the Shis of Leling (in the Shandong area), who in about the 270s-80s had style-names in this pattern; see Yano, Gi Shin, p. II3. 95 For this phrase, see Yijing, hexagram 61, "Inner Truth," line 2, "A crane calling in the shade. / Its young answers it"; WIB, p. 237. 96 SeeIS 33, p. 991; Yano, Gi Shin, p. 19. Wang Chen's father Lan 'j,~f lived 206-78. If Wang Chen was born ca. 230-35, then his daughter may have been born ca. 255-65. 97 On Lunyu's mention of "Shao Dance" see Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics," p. 68, n. 26. 98 I can find no indication of a Yingchuan Chen with this name; it may have been a small branch of the famous Yingchuan Chens. 99 The meaning of three words, "~-: EJ ~11f," eludes me; see remarks in Goodman, "Sites of Recognition," p. 81, n. 120. lOll There are no ancient referents for "liLtI~~"; but see Wenxuan (photorpt. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1977) 19, p. IIa, for Song Yu's 51~k fu "On Erotic Love," for "JJ:{fJ-JIlt" in a somewhat languorous context. It is used also in Lu Ji's "ll'i5Ii!,tjJi~," ibid. 24, p. 22b, for which the Li Shan commentary refers back to Song's fu. 90 91

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

81

± It .101 When she was [eventually] received there it was already late [in her life], and the two daughters she bore did not survive. l02 :J~A~L "I-:IIII-h, yfCA~~U{IIIMLzy:. )~I,J;(*, II', Jilii ~~ I~ :t~I- DI {Ii.. '(j( )~I, 30 Il;\ft, 'j'. 11}.~!i 1tl~, {r-:I-) L. ~ Jl~ 1l1)~Ftil, , if ···1- -t;, JJili 14U ) II i~!F til I~ iJx {II.-: E~-I ~11}, '(j( Y-,- Jj~ , IlL!, :@lIjL\ J~.lt +£J ~L )i[i tlll~J:. I~ ~t:_- - !J.: W;F~j . to Hongnong Yang Shiyan

Her death, nearly nine years afterward, and reference to her burial as "supplemental" were recorded on the left edge of the epitaph stone, in what Timothy Davis demonstrates was a different carver's hand. 103 The latter text states that she died May 6, 304, at the Luoyang official quarters of the Minister over the Masses and was encoffined two days later in the same tomb as her husband. Finally, it remarks that in "that year many incidents occurred." It is a phrase loaded with significance, since the time was exactly during the Rebellion of the Eight Princes ca. 300-315, when men like her late husband and even one of her sons-inlaw, as well as other Xun men and hundreds more of the administrative elite, were forced to take sides and serve in battles, as the princes fought to install various nominees as emperor. If the wife's death was not enough hardship, it seems that in addition their only son died at the same time, implying the scourge of epidemic, or perhaps death in the factional violence. We read the right edge of the stone, carved later by the same hand that incised the leftedge: [Xun] Yin,104 Left Intendant of the Bureau of the West in the office of Minister over the Masses, died at the same time as the Lady [Uu] (or "together with his own wife"?). [His] male child is Qiong: eight nian; he is styled Huasun.105 {5E1r:l7[i1f~H%ttllj(:z.~. ~J·gJ3:I, if}\, '~J'.~II~;t'*.

JOlOn a problem surrounding this style-name, see Goodman, "Sites of Recognition," p. 82, n. 122. I deduced that the man was Yang Mao ~ (zi Shiyan j::)~; d. 3II during the sack of Luoyang); he was the second son of Yang Zhun ~If. (fl. ca. 300, d. young); see Yano, Gi Shin, p. 172; and SSHYIMather, pp. 601, 603. There is no corroboration for a Hongnong Yang man named Yang Shichan, as given in Zhao Chao's text. 102 My translation punctuates differently from that given in Zhao's Chinese text. My understanding is that after she had been promised to Yang, she then only much later presented herself "HfI~:rifu"; the text would be hinting that women past a certain age might be vulnerable to bearing weak infants. 103 See Davis, "Potent Stone," p. 143. 104 Beijing and Taipei rubbings give the name "Yin" as do transcriptions by Lo ("Mang Lo," p. 2a) and Ma Heng }!lDlljJj (Fan Jiang zhai Jinshi conggao );UI~HM1It1j-:ftH% [Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977] 5, p. 187). Yet, Zhao, Han Wei, prints an empty box, perhaps a typo. The text carries a peculiar syntagm ("fI17C f p:"). On Xun Yin, seejS 54, p. 1482; also SSXYjj no. 25.9, p. 593; the 5th-C. commentary indicates that Yin died young. lOS My use of present tense indicates that Yin's son was alive at the time.

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Material and Evocative Aspects of Xun Burials My commentary to the tomb text, above, has shown that I differ from Timothy Davis on the actual scenario that took place in 295. What happened from 295-304 was a three-step burial process. First was a short "temporary burial" in Yingyin (broadly considered a zuzang Jj!k ~, or clan cemetery burial),106 temporary because the Xun cemetery was damaged. Later, with the edict of imperial sponsorship, a simple coffin "transfer" occurred probably after a wait for tomb construction to be completed at the imperial site. The result, a bit over three months after his death, was an "accompaniment burial," an act that archeology terms peizang ~¥t ~, at the Chongyangling complex that housed Sima Zhao and his consorts and friends. Finally, third, came Lady Liu's and Xun Yin's ~~I "joint burial -fr~" at Chongyangling nine years later. (If"fUx," above, means "together with his own wife," then there may have been a fourth party-Xun Yin's wife.) The Xun-family tomb in Sima Zhao's mausoleum area would have been of modest quality and display-a square brick main chamber, and a short passage to a second room or rooms. Cross-hatched brick floors and walls most likely were used, since this was a rather highlevel tomb and money may have been available for such quality. We can also deduce that there were no extremely valuable goods or figurines. Sima Zhao's Chongyangling was only about thirty years old at the time Xun Yue ffi was brought there, and the latter's tomb was prohibited from being more elaborate than those of Wendi and his mortuary partners, which the 1982-83 reports indicate were of modest construction. 107 In the 200-300 period it seems that recognition of women and children was gaining a place in Chinese commemorative texts and actions. Other Luoyang-area tombs bear witness to this. 108 Thus our Xun Yue rear-text gave touching information about Lady Liu's natal family and her age at the time of her husband's death. Next we get the order of birth of her four children, a gesture to her career as mother. Each daughter's age upon leaving for a husband's house is stated, with the name of the husband. We read a bit of narrative about one daughter's hardship-her children who died probably as infants before 295, when that portion of the tablet was inscribed. It would have carried a sad See Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization, p. 83. Ibid. lOS See Davis, "Potent Stone," pp. 69-72: a tomb discovered near Luoyang in 1925 (that of Cheng Huang JviJ"b; d. 291) was in fact authored by Cheng's sister-in-law (there were other female epitaph writers near Luoyang; see Davis, p. 73, n. 144, and pp. 123-26). 10(, 107

XUNS OF Y1NGY1N AND LUOYANG

83

message for later Xuns, because it was in Luoyang that the husband of one of their daughters, Yang Mao, would die in 311. It is difficult to understand exactly why Xun Yue's body was called up to the Mang Hills to keep Sima Zhao company. But I believe it was more "material" than we might otherwise think. The rains that struck Yingyin and forced burial far away were part of a well-evidenced natural disaster. Hail storms occurred in several Central Plains locales in fall-winter of 292-93. Then in the same year as Xun's death (not specifying a month or season), we learn that six provinces (everwhere except the west and northwest) experienced "great floods 7c7j(,"I09 and Huidi sent out officials to open stores and institute relief. Huidi would have learned about disaster response from his father, since the same kind of storm in north China occurred in early fall of 269 ("the waters of the Luo merged with the Yi river"), prompting Wudi to open stores and provide assistance. llo Now twenty-five years later, in 295, Huidi acted quickly after Xun Yue's death in August, choosing to give money and to secure a site for the newly deceased Xun Yue and free him from an ugly, temporary grave in a ruined Yingyin. The extended family was without Xun Xu's great influence and now bore this additional bad luck. It is not improbable that their resources were indeed challenged, otherwise they would have kept Yue in temporary burial in Yingyin for quite some time, and eventually fixed up the family cemetery. One assumes that all the older ruined Xun coffins were left in the lurch, spelling a real decline for the extended family. In sum, I believe that Xun Yue's family were well known to Huidi, especially due to the Xun family's wider influence, and that Huidi empathized with the problem of the Yingyin natural disaster. Huidi was not fully competent (or at least was an unconfident naif) and was controlled by his wife Jia Nanfeng Jfl¥f ma, so there is some possibility that the donation of money and land was her action, done out of respect for Xun Xu's life spent supporting her father Jia Chong and defending her own position as consort to the heir-apparent (later Emperor Hui). Moreover, if it was Nanfeng, her esteem for Xun Yue would have had to trump any enmity toward the man Yue had served for several years, namely Sima Wei. Nanfeng had had him killed in July of 291, ostensibly for plotting against her. 11 I Xun Yue survived all that, yet in his 109 jS 4, pp. 92-93. Widespread floods ca. 285-86 are also mentioned as affecting Luoyang (IS 39 [biog. Xun Xu], p. II56). IllljS 3, p. 57. III ZZTj 82, pp. 26IO-II.

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life he experienced much illness and had moved about in military service. Although we must usually suspect eulogistic remarks about a deceased's impoverishment, I think we must maintain the possibility that Xun Yue and his family were actually needy at this moment. To Huidi, or Nanfeng, all of this plus Yue's difficult career, may have spelled sadness and hard times if not for just one branch of the Xuns, then possibly for a once strong extended family that could no longer help the Simas, or Jia Nanfeng. Then, with their wait for tomb construction and a coffin shipment, the Xuns' trauma only increased.

MEMORY AND COUNTER-MEMORY

The Xuns, as a late-Eastern Han family, were not very different from others. But I have nonetheless pursued details that, I believe, will further our understanding of life among the Central Plains elite of the second and third centuries. Some of those details do not shift our paradigm: for example, finding out that Xun sibling cohorts could be quite large, or that the family developed their local connections in Yingchuan and were multi-branched. But through the patterns emerging from the details we have got closer to answering the questions with which we started: how did the Xuns instill solidarity and breeding, and what communal acts contributed to that? We learned that the Xuns grew to importance during mid-Eastern Han in a town named Yingyin, southeast of the commandery seat of Yingchuan, and there may have been subbranches in nearby locales. The major Xun Shu branch, about whom the records disclose the most, had a villa and an old family graveyard, or tomb area. Members helped each other when forced to flee or hide in the face of oppression by Luoyang factions; the family also formed military types of response to help their members and other locals flee or join with stronger forces. Even after the destruction visited on the area in the 180s-90s, there is reason to deduce that some Xuns may have continued on in Yingyin. The family also seems to have continued using their cemetery, which was once offered as a place to bury a fallen ally of the Xuns in 196, and was poised to provide a tomb for Xun Yue -ffi as late as 295. We examined a variety of items demonstrating the family's commemorative acts that were part of the process of death and entombment. These showed further aspects of Yingchuan alliances, for example, Xun Shu's banding with Ou Mi and Li Ying to establish a stele, and his son's receipt of posthumous praise from Yingchuan officials.

XUNS OF Y1NGY1N AND LUOYANG

85

Another form of communal action involved learning. Yingyin and Yingchuan provided a local base for that, uniting the Xuns with other families, such as the Yingchuan Chens, who were their tutors in the 140s. With Xun Shuang, the classic Yijing rose as a family specialty. Later Xuns continued to draw on it, no doubt using a variety of private Xun documents. Xun Yue 'I)l professed his uncle's commentary and was the only example of an interfamilial "school"; yet I made a case for something similar, namely, the passing down of legal skills, and finally Xun Xu's having been introduced to court music by his kinsman Xun Yi. Yijing and legal expertise, and for Xun Xu musicology, all brought new prestige in Luoyang. Luoyang was a turning point. There, new styles of scholarship and scholarly fame involved the Xuns. We learned of several sons ofXun Yu who engaged in debate coteries and occasionally exhibited something of the Zhengshi-era spirit of philosophy and counter-culture. I concluded that these sons, especially Xun Yi, were key figures in Xun Xu's gaining a foothold in 250 when many scholars' court careers were being negotiated. Again, Figure 3 helps us see the inclusive nature ofXun Xu's political and intellectual worlds. At the very beginning of his postCao career in 250 the most direct influences had already come from the Zhong maternal family who raised him, from the elder Xun Yi, and from the Chen family indirectly. By 269-70 Xun Xu was participating in court scholarship; this is seen in the left-most area of the figuremen of the Jin court elite who argued with him or joined with him in scholarly projects or in factions down to the mid-280s. Xu's precision reforms in metrology and musicology were aided by contacts with lowranked technicians (the musicians in the right-most area), and then by 280-83 his career shifted to paleo logical reconstruction of texts, involving deep interaction with officials in the Imperial Library and the Palace Writers. Xun Xu's career did not resemble those of Xun Yi and Xun Yue ffi, but was interleaved and subject to changing projects, and vulnerable to criticism based both on politics and scholarly disagreement. The shape and quality of his career reveals something dynamic about Western Jin life and about the Xun family's self-fashioning. Having taken into consideration two paths of family culture-commemorative and funeral culture, on the one hand, and learning and skills, on the other-we can throw additional light on the Xun family, perhaps also on the wider society. The obvious way of relating the two paths is, as in all traditional civilizations, to think of scholarship as a filial act, often in recognition of one's deceased elders. In the Luoyang

86

CHAPTER ONE

philosophy circles, men like Xun Rong, Can, and Yi were, no doubt, proud to represent fifty years of a family Yijing specialty. There is, however, another way to look at the self-fashioning Xuns, one that asks us to imagine both the honoring of kin and the learning from kin as communa1, psychological "work." Such work involves speaking to and about, as well as installing, one's dead kin in order to make a strong, permanent story of the family mentors and martyr-heros. People also "worked" together to gain skills, change locations, and experiment with attitudes and styles. In all the major literate civilizations, death wove its way into daily life and into higher speculations about nature and spirits. 112 Commemorations made in a proper manner, with high-minded tools of speech and display, helped rebuild the personas and images of those mentors and martyrs of a time of stress and violence. In this way, trauma could engender counter-memories, which, given time and literary tools, emerged as counter-cultural actions and counter-histories. Some counter-histories go so far as to efface an "other," but this is not what we are dealing with here, in the post-civil-war Xun family. The Xuns were countering so as to smooth out the warts and wrinkles of immediate events. The offer of their Yingyin cemetery and their promotion of mourning for other Yingchuan families are examples. The commemorations that we examined at length-Xun Yu's and Xun Yue's did the same. Career self-fashioning per se can be a type of cultural countering, since so much of early China's culture of the "self" was about approaching and gaining merit and employment from the state. When the Xuns entered Luoyang and exerted influence, we saw Xun Can trying to lead his brothers into a new view of their deceased elders, and a new view of the classics that had held a high place in Xun pedagogy, especially the Yijing. Also, the relatively more conservative Xun Yi associated with scholars otherwise famous for countering the older classicism. The novelties developing in Luoyang were not invented by the Xuns, but were a wider trend, known in many of its aspects as "pure talk" and "xuanxue"; the trend influenced leading Luoyang men because it offered answers to the trauma of political collapse and career collapse that had begun in the second century and spiraled out of control in the 180s and 90S.

112 Jan Assmann emphasized mortuary culture as the root of all culture in early societies; Assmann, Death and Salvation in Early Egypt, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell U. P., 2006), [Introduction] "Death and Culture."

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

87

I would like to suggest that even the choice of musicology as a vehicle ofXun-family court leadership had countering aspects. Xuns did not learn music skills in order to escape mundane anxieties (an image that we often get-with some truth-of early-medieval scholars who poetized, painted, and drank). But just the opposite: Xun musicology was pushing back against xuanxue. This may sound odd on the face of it, but for Xun Xu, musicology would become a world of standards and measures that had run amok and demanded straightening. While many of his peers played for private entertainment or collected and recited entertainment lyrics, he would force musical scales into strictures, and edit loose court lyrics into four-word strophes. It was anti-xuanxue. Xun's contention that Cao courts had played the wrong notes would smear a picture of the Caos that many xuanxue adepts preferred-the Caos as supporters of new ensembles, new venues for light music, and writers of emotionally charged and informal lyrics. The Xuns were at the head of a wave of counter counter-culture, representing a new counter-memory. This grew stronger as the Western Jin court realized increasingly that order had to be kept both among their own princes and among scholars at large, to allow for dynastic survival. And order did not always have to be harshly impressed; it was often chosen as a motive by talented scholars who sought answers to lingering problems in the classics or to all sorts of style drift. In this sense, we can think of, for example, Du Yu, who pursued computational calendrics to establish the facts of the Zuozhuan narratives; Zhi Yu , one of the first to summarize literary trends of his time by promoting orthodox precedents; and Pei Wei ~w]{ (267-300), who trenchantly attacked the "There-is-not." When a literate, and self-critical and self-inventing, civilization such as China moves ahead, along some conception of progress, it must deal with all sorts of trauma. Trauma forces members of a community to solve historical puzzles or knots contained in its legends. Jan Assmann has helped us to perceive this process by explaining the emergence of an ancient Egyptian religion by means of counter-histories propounded for centuries, even into post-Enlightenment Europe. 113 113 See Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. P., 1997). The idea of trauma has been applied to the emotional and philosophical reactions of Chinese writers to the violence that occurred in the Ming-Qing transition; see Wilt Idema, Wai-Yee Li, and Ellen Widmer, eds., Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), esp. Li's "Introduction," which discusses "remnant subjects" (survi-

88

CHAPTER ONE

This is valuable for considering early China, and it seems to me that a commanding study of Han-Wei-Jin culture waits to be done. It would frame the psychological work, peregrinations, rewritings, and selffashioning of families and individuals from 100 to 350 AD in terms of trauma and counter-memory, as they wrote about themselves and the end of Han. A whole generation of Western Jin elite were descendants of this psychological work; they engaged in counter-memory and counter-culture (220-60), and subsequently even a counter counterculture. But they succumbed to yet another bloodbath and political ruin from the 290S to the early 300s. This trauma in turn inspired further creative work in the fourth century, with its, using Wai-Yee Li's term, "nostalgia for a lost world."

List I. Items ofXun-Family Intellectual Culture For a list and brief attributions reo X. Shuang's and Xu's writings, see Liul Biannian 6, pp. 1516; 7, pp. 152-53. For several part I items, see Ch'en, "Confucian Magnate," n. 2, pp. 73-74; and Goodman, "Exegetes," vol. 2, pp. 441-42 (and n. 9 on pp. 447-48). For several reo parts 2 and 5, see de Crespigny, Recmds.

JTS

0=

jiu Tangshu; X. Xun; com. 0=

0=

commentary.

Other abbreviations, see Bibliography.

PART I: STUDIES, SKILLS, AND WRITINGS RE. CONFUCIAN CLASSICS

Chunqiu

X. Shuang wrote "da" sect. of 5-). "Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan wen da" ("wen" sect. by Xu Qin 1~3fX) (5531.931, com.). Also, an anedcote mentions X. Yue's studying Chunqiu.

Yijing

• X. Shuang com. (11).: 55.909); compo and transmitted as "J,laJ01t," probably by X. Yun (weak evidence says by X. Hui; see note 9 to Fig. 1). • X. Shuang's written work "~Wf,1IX"; nonextant. • X. Can (debate reo epistemology), X. Yi (debate reo trigrams), X. Rong (debate reo number theory; possibly also a writing).

Iunyu

X. Yi (one of several commentators; headed by He Yan).

Shujing

x. Shuang com.; nonextant.

Shijing

X. Shuang com.; nonextant.

Ii

X. Shuang com.; nonextant. Fragments collected in Ma, Yuhan shanfang jiyishu, "Jing" sect., "Li" subsect. (vol. 1201.663-64).

vors cut-off or isolated in a number of ways, who dealt with past traumas in the form of "nostalgia for a lost world"; pp. 65-68).

89

XUNS OF YINGYIN AND LUOYANG

X. Xu: 2 com's.; nonextant (see discussion of authorial confusion in 55 32.950; X. Xu's work named j;JW~:r.~~~1i1~ffJ{(O, 1 j., in JTS 46.1980 perhaps is same or related). Com's. written by Liu-Song-era X. Chang 7}!.! (close kinsman ofX. Bozi, mentioned below).

Xiaojing

PART 2: STUDIES, SKILLS, AND WRITINGS RE. HISTORY, RITES, LAW

"Han )'u"

X. Shuang; nonextant.

Hanji, Shenjian

X. Yue; parts extant.

"Wei shu"

X. Yi (w. Ruan Ji et al.); nonextant.

"Weiguanyi"

X. Yu (1 j.) (5533.968); nonextant.

1i!lJ,'iW1~~

Wei law, ad- X. Shen (assisted in 18-pian compilation; SGZ21.618; details injS min. codes 30.923-26). X. Yi, X. Xu et al. produced various compendia (IS 30.927: see "Jin Baiguan biao," "Jin zayi," "Jin xinli," below).

Jin law/admin. code

"Jin Houlue" X. Chuo (frags. cited in com .. to SSXY and TPYL; also called "Jin Houshu" injS 39.1158). ttf£'t1ll1'l X. Chuo; local history, often cited as ~~VLj'I'1 (a sect. of the larger work; see de Crespigny, Records, 62. DeC/BD, 927, says author oOVd'H was one X. Wei of another Xun family).

Jiuzhou ji

fLHIFfG

"Jin baiguan X. Chuo; 6 j. (5533.968, "Qilu" com.). Liao, Liangjin shibu yiji kao, p. biao zhu" 221, says Chuo's "zhu" based on X. Xu's memorial "Sheng li yi" 1f1~iJt y'Hfi11'*H: but I disagree; no real evidence exists.

'lin shu"r'11lf

X. Bozi ffj11~I-T (378-438, not shown in Fig. 1); see SgS 60.1627; nonextant.

"Jin zayi"

X. Yi et al. (10 j., 5533.973 (w/o attrib.);jTS 46.2008 attrib. to Probably administrative code; nonextant.

jljfff;ft:rn~

"x. Yi."

X. Yi et al. Title not in 55 orjTS;jS 19.581 says 165 pian contained by one j.; Bu jinshu yiwen zhi 2.20a, seems to err stating it was" 160 j."; nonextant. Ca. 317, X. Song et al. corrected E. Jin rites and protocols "51:: Icllguli1J,l1J.1~", probably reference to X. Yi's earlier work; jS 75.1976.

"Jin xinli" T&i7fr1!~

':~~ fa ,~[an]" X. Yi; JTS 46.1983 (3 j.); corroborating anecdote injS 20 "Li zhi" B, jil;Tl ft~ [i~q]

645.

PART

3: STUDIES, SKILLS, AND WRITINGS RE. ARTS AND TECHNICS

Military strategies

X. Yu (purportedy compiled late in life, but destroyed it; SGZ 10.317, cit. "X. Yu biezhuan").

Musicology

• X. Yi, X. Xu both worked on court ensemble and ballets. • X. Xu technical ideas reo line-lengths of lyrics; partly extant. • X. Xu's "Dilti" (flute scale-temperament); carried untitled in SgS; later preserved freestanding, gaining Ming-Qing commentaries.

CHAPTER ONE

90 Belle-Iettre criticism

• X. Xu ("Wenzhang xulu" 33.991); fragments quoted.

also called ffiIHJt:y':J~~~(~~ 10 j. (SS " 5 j. (SS 35.1084); nonextant.

• X. Chuo (Xu's grandson) Antiquities, metrology

x. Xu corrected metrology, devised system of archiving and cataloging

Portraiture

X. Xu made depictions of "lienil" ("model women"); other portraits. None extant through copies.

Calligraphy

X. Xu supervised calligraphy in Imperial Library and transcription of ancient graphs of Ji Tomb texts.

imperial collection, analyzed ancient documents and objects.

PART

Court lyrics

4:

LYRICS, POETRY

X. Xu's ttifJ!!\t;;~Hrxli4l (10 j.),!"f::!Xi'i;ljo (18 j.), both listed SS 35.1085; also jc~~ffiWHrxfiltl (3 j.) in ITS 47.2080; texts mostly extant in SgS and "X. Xu wenji" (below).

Poetry/yuefu • X. Xu, frag. of l/u; and fragment of imperial feasting poem (Lu/Shi, under Jinshi 2.592). • X. Zu, "Qi'ai shi" -G-0:fi!j' (fragment in LulShi, Jinshi 11.855) PART

5:

COLLECTANEA, COMPILATIONS

"Xinshu"

X. Shuang, orig. 100+ pian, but little surviving.

Various wenji X~~

• X. Shuang (SS 35.1058: 1 j.; claims Liang era was 3 j. plus "lu" 1 j.); nonextant. • X. Yu; no record in SS or ITS. Recompiled in HWLC (43 items). • X. Yue; no record in SS, etc.; in HWLC,j. 17 (45 items). • X. Xu (3 j. plus "lu" 1 j.: "lost"; see SS 35.1061, com .. sect.); ITS 47.2058 states "20 j." Recompiled (16 items) in HWLC,j. 38 (14 prose and 20 verse items). • X. Zu (Fig. 1, Jin II); 3 j. plus "lu" 1 j. (SS 35.1064); nonextant. • X. Sui (Fig. 1, Jin III); 2j. plus "lu" 1 j. (SS 35.1065); nonextant. • X. Song (Fig. 1, Jin III); 1 j. (SS 35.1065); nonextant. eX. Kai (Fig. I,Jin III); Ij. (SS35.1065); nonextant.

"Xunshi jiazhuan"

X. Bozi (see above). Xun-family biog. anecdotes (not in SS; but see ITS 46.2012: "10 j."); passages extant.

i'j'Jf\:;~(1w

"Xunshi lu"

Compo by a Xun probably after X. Xu's time; contained titles and lines of

1'Ua~

yuefo and other lyrics; numerous quotations in 5th-c. Wang Sengqian's 11~nj!: "Yanyue jilu ~:~tj[~l)f' and requoted in YFSJ Some modern scholars think it was by X. Xu, but my own argument against this is in chap. 3. X. Xu (SS 33.991, in 14j.); but 32.906 claims that orig. had almost 30,000 j.; variant titles in later catalogs, e.g., ITS 46.2011); quotations extant (see chap. 6).

CHAPTER T\'{10

XUN XU'S FIRST POSTS, CA. 248-265

Shang IN: The Harmonious Step Moving away from gong is made comfortable by the harmonious and harmonic shang note. In modes and melodies, shang forms unoffending chords; it cooperates with other notes, like zhi and yu. Harmonics masters knew that the circle-offifths derivation, based on gong as "9, " resulted in the pleasing whole number "8" for shang. Xun Xu began his career under the jin by fitting in with the new regime and cooperating in court projects.

We know next to nothing about Xun Xu's childhood and youth. But from the previous chapter we do know that his family was used to power-power that had first been local, then on the move defensively, next serving Cao Cao's court at Xu, and finally the Simas in Luoyang. The Xuns offered important political service to the Cao-Wei dynasty, even if the fate of Xun Yu at the hands of Cao Cao had weakened Xun loyalties to that family. Cao Cao's heirs began to rebuild Luoyang palaces and state offices in the 220S, so by the mid-230s such Xun men as Xun Can and Xun Yi began residing there, and the young orphan Xun Xu relied on them, as well as on in-laws, for political grooming and entree. His biography states: Xun Xu was styled Gongceng 0 I~". He was a Yingchuan lEflJ II, Yingyin %I~lI~, man, and the great-grandson ofXun Shuang~, an [Eastern Handynasty] Minister of Works. His grandfather was Xun Fei who was a Colonel of Archers Who Shoot by Sound. His father Xi In died when Xu was young, and Xu had to rely on his maternal uncle (of the Zhong family illill). He was precocious and matured early. When he was only a bit over nine, he was able to compose texts. His maternal great-uncle Zhong You illrlHJl,~ (the father of Zhong Huii see below), a Grand Tutor under the Wei, said: "This boy will be the match of his great-grandfather." In fact, when [Xu] grew older, he went on to become broadly learned and made his mark in government affairs. 1

1

jS 39, p. II52. TPYL 385, pp. 7b-8a, cit. "Xunshi jiazhuan," writes: "When he was

92

CHAPTER TWO

Only toward the end of Cao power late in the 240S do we begin to learn of Xun's state positions that launched his career. If he was born in 220, or even a bit later, then we may be missing, at most, records of a minor cadet office from about 237-244. One aspect of the years of waning Cao power concerns how scholars who were remaking themselves would steer through a certain political conundrum. Dozens of scholar-officials of the last years of the Cao-Wei dynasty, including Xun's second-cousin once-removed Xun Yi, faced a challenge. In 238, just before the Wei Emperor Ming died (Cao Rui Wtx, 206-239; r. Mingdi SA *,227-239), an order was made to ensure that Sima Yi PJJ~l!& (179-251) and Cao Shuang W~ (d. 249) would oversee the court of the child Emperor Cao Fang (3'f, 231-74; deposed 254). When Fang came to the throne in 240, advisers determined that the regency should assume the reign-name "Zhengshi IT -/rL\" or "C orrect B ··"2 ;AI=!, eg1l1n1l1g. The Zhengshi regency pitted Sima Yi and his kinsmen and supporters on one side, and Cao Shuang and his on the other. Even as early as 226, with the death of Wei Emperor Wen (Cao Pi W/G, 187-226; r. Wendi X 220-226), Sima Yi had begun to be active militarily, aiding the dynasty with temporary victories against the southern kingdom of Wu, and in 238 he accomplished a speedy defeat of Gongsun Yuan 0J%dJ#! (d. 238) in the northeast (today's southern Manchurian area). Cao Shuang's faction was brazen and effected policies to increase central wealth and their access to it; yet they lacked the military ability of their forbears and were eliminated by the Sima faction ten years later. 3 The Cao clique would become excoriated in literature as immoral-if not the "bad last emperor," then the first bad Cao. Young officials, Xun Xu and his kin among them, had to consider whose side they were, or had been, on. Who might be tainted by association? In cultural and ritual matters earlier, Cao Pi had asserted his own style of music, literature, and court formulations. He also reached out to allay and recognize specific leading families, as well as non-Chinese leaders and western religious sects; and Mingdi continued at least

w,

twelve nian he could understand Chunqiu and compose text"; following this passage, TPYL cites the above source to the effect that Xun Shuang had had those same skills, and was also praised by a great polymath of his day. 2 On Cao Fang's new reign, see SGZ 4, p. II9; TCTC/Fang I, pp. 622, item 24, and the note on p. 634. 3 See a detailed study of the people who composed Cao's bloc and a political interpretation ofCao Shuang's rise and failures, in MengXiangcaii-~:f~:;j', "Lun Cao Shuang zhi bai" Tmijl;W~zJ&, Shixue yuekan )l:)'tJIHIJ (2004.8), pp. 20-24.

XUN

xu's

FIRST POSTS

93

some of these programs. 4 The ten-year span 240-249 would become remembered throughout Chinese history, however, mostly for developments in thought and social critique, and for artistic voices. It was a time of experimentation in public and private circles, and in thinking about both the self (that is, the possibilities of self-cultivation and sage-identity) and the state. Some of the new behavior rankled those in the political public. Sima Yi and his sons Shi em (208-255) and Zhao a-B (211-65) were concerned not only to block Cao-family access to further power, but also to impeach them for imperious management and wastefulness,s as well as for their unwarranted reforms of the ritual system: thus the violent purge of 249. Cao Shuang and several dozen of his followers and aides, as well as hundreds of their relations, were executed. 6 The Sima family had broken with the "Correct Beginning," and moved toward establishing their own dynasty. That occurred with Sima Zhao's son Sima Yan PJJ~~ (r. Wudi ftf:W, 266-290), who in 266 founded the Jin. 7 After the purge of Cao Shuang, the glorious sounding "Correct Beginning" would have to be changed. Yet the phrase kept resonating everywhere. Let us reflect on it. An interesting, internal Realpolitik implication of the phrase "zhengshi" is that certain pro-Cao advisers in 239 hoped that the imminent 240-49 regency would be a "political correction," that is, a brake on Cao Yu's Wf power and/or Sima Yi's power. 8 The phrase also simply referred to a computation of the court 4 See Rafe de Crespigny, "The Three Kingdoms and Western Jin: A History of China in the 3rd Century AD," in two parts, East Asian History I and 2 (1991). For Cao Pi's assertion of new rituals, see Howard L. Goodman, Ts'ao P'i Transcendent: The Political Culture of Dynasty-Founding in China at the End of the Han (Seattle: Scripta Serica, 1998), chap. 10; also Wu Hong "Han Ming, Wei Wen de lizhi gaige yu Handai huaxiang yishu zhi shengshuai" {ll~Hll[5zJI~t:w.fIJUr)l:i!j~:giH~1tTIUH~z"~~,Jiuzhou xuekan jLj+I~,+iJ 3.2 (June 1989), pp. 31-44, on changes in Cao imperial funerary culture. For the way the Celestial Master Daoists were given dispensations, and their invited migration to Ye and roles at the Mingdi court, see Howard L. Goodman, "Celestial Master Taoism and the Founding of the Ts'ao-Wei Dynasty: The Li Fu Document," AM 7.1 (1994), pp. 5-33· 5 See Tang Zhangru HBH~JWi, "Wei Jin zhi Tang guanfu zuochang ji guanfu gongcheng de gongjiang" ~f"t3'~.JflntuHfl:~:&'§rJW~[.f!,~I'I<]l:IH, in idem, Wei jin Nanbeichao shi luncong xubian ~1*~~tjIVJseTIfiIJ~t.il~It.;1~j (Beijing: Xinzhi sanlian, 1978), pp. 30-32. 6 De Crespigny, "Three Kingdoms," part I; Wang Zhongluo .::F{'111j\', Wei jin Nanbeichao shi ~Wil'~J;ltjlYJ5t (Shanghai: Renmin chuban she, 1979) I, p. 135. 7 Carl Leban, "The Accession of Ssu-ma Yen, A.D. 265: Legitimation by Ritual Replication," unpub. paper, in vol. I of Jack Dull, ed., "Legitimation of Chinese Imperial Regimes," papers from Asilomar Conference (Seattle: typescript, 1975). 8 On Cao Yu's being blocked from power, see TCTC/Fang I, pp. 582-83, 610-15; and deC/ED, pp. 49-50. Yu's son became the weak, last ruler of Wei in 260.

94

CHAPTER TWO

astronomers that was needed to set the beginning moment of the New Year, thus a "technically correct calendric beginning." But few historians have mentioned the fact that musicologists had been debating in the late-230s how to rename and reuse earlier court musics. One problem had concerned the Han-era piece named "Anshi ~ttt" ("Settling [Our] World"); and in early-Wei it was retooled to honor Cao Cao under the title "Wu shi i\~J€l" ("Martial Beginning"). Around December of 239, the name was changed again, to become "Correct Beginning Music IE~€l~."9 Rites and music were the core of traditional Chinese court propriety, thus there is good reason to suspect that such a namechange in 240 shows the Wei court's attempt to resolve complicated problems of legitimacy through the term "zhengshi." In 249, after the purge, Xun Xu and many like him wanted to become free of the Cao taint, and to shuck off undesirable zhengshi notions. How could they purify themselves? As we see in following chapters, Xun did this over the years by challenging the very core of the Wei ritual system. He would negate the Wei philosophically by showing, through rigorous antiquarian research, that Cao Cao's styles, especially his music and its basis in Eastern Han harmonics, were incorrect and illegitimate. Xun Xu's career signature-that of a pro-Jin technician promoting values embedded in an ideal Zhou-was emerging.

THE POLITICAL TAINT OF CAO SHUANG'S REGIME, 240-249

Xun Xu needed to make a transition from Cao Shuang to Sima Yan. Both he and Xun Yi had played roles of different sorts under Cao Shuang's court. Questions about how one ought to emerge from what was perceived as Cao's immoral circle and then, later on, how to explain those associations remained important through the 260s. In fact, centuries later the compilers of Jinshu seem to have desired a certain equanimity in their editorial structure: they did not arrange stories and biographies so as to show a bias vis-a-vis the Sima-Cao question. The Tang compilers kept Cao-era loyalties and actions open and available for perusal. Jinshu was a compilation under command of the Tang Emperor Taizong, and its final product was meant to be glanced at, or even thoroughly read, by him. 10 A thoughtful reading 9 See Howard L. Goodman, "A History of Court Lyrics in China during Wei-Chin Times," AM 19.1-2 (2006), pp. 79 and 82, n. 67. III For Tang scholarly approaches to }inshu and surrounding politics, see Anthony

XUN

xu's

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95

of Jinshu would push past the opaque parts and see a political tolerance as reflected in the way the Simas had utilized ex-Cao courtiers. Many stalwarts of the founding Jin generation (with biographies clustered mostly in Jinshu's juan 39-43) began their careers under the Jin as neutral toward, and in some cases participants in, the previous Cao Shuang court. They did not all have to be martyrs in their time. This is a matter that I return to later in the chapter. David R. Knechtges has touched insightfully on the question of post-Cao Shuang politics in his study ofYing Qu's ff1!JJI( (190-252) literary works. As we soon see, the process of finding and employing a good bevy of court scholars began about two years before Sima Yan's accession to the throne as Jin Wudi. Ying, while not directly in Xun Xu's ambit and thus not given a place in Table I, below, provides a defining case. Knechtges states: Although Ying Qu was a prominent member of the so-called Cao Shuang clique, he may not have been as ardent a supporter of Cao Shuang as He Yan and others. Thus, when Sima Yi staged a coup against Cao Shuang in 249, He Yan ... [and others] were all put to death. Ying Qu was not punished or even dismissed from office. .,. If Ying had been an enthusiatic supporter of Cao Shuang, he would hardly have been honored ... [by posthumous titles in 252] so soon after the bloody palace coup .... tt This reminds us that a certain public scrutiny was cast upon Cao-Wei officials who from about 255-265, singly or in clusters, were lobbying the Simas. Knechtges' term "ardent" is particularly keen. Well-known former Wei scholars had to sort themselves out as much by their public attitudes as by their abilities. Of those who were adults, especially officials, during the Cao Shuang years, many would have had to leap hurdles and touch up their reputations in order to establish new bona fides. I propose to call this whole matter the "Cao Shuang taint." One way to look at "ardor," and how any taint, however serious or light, carried over through time, is to analyze careers. Table I presents thirteen renowned individuals who served the Western Jin court. They appeared in the world ofXun Xu in a range of ways. Figure 3, in Chapter One, displayed all groupings of people who interacted with Bruce Fairbank, "Ssu-ma I (I79-251): Wei Statesman and Chin Founder, An Historiographical Inquiry," Ph.D. diss. (Seattle: University of Washington, 1994); also Howard L. Goodman, "Jinshu"; article in Albert Dien et al., eds., Six Dynasties Sourcebook (working title; forthcoming). 11 See David R. Knechtges, "The Problem with Anthologies: The Case of the Writings ofYing Qu (190-252)," AM 23.1 (2010), forthcoming.

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Table 1. Thirteen Men in Xun Xu's Ambit Who Were Mature during the Cao Shuang Years Under Name, minus signs (-) indicate negative stance toward Cao Shuang; zeros neutrality (or no evidence); plusses (+) support of, or service under, Cao Shuang. Under Birth and Death, normal type is for estimated dates, bold for evidenced dates. SM = Sima

CS = Cao Shuang B

NAME

D

SERVICE

OTHER

NOTES RE.

REFUSED,

POST- 2 49

jJNSHU

UNDER

POSTS

THE CS

RETREATED,

EMERGENCE

SOURCE

CS

IN WEI

YEARS

OPPOSED CS

{ilJ I{l~i

199

27 8

see->

Avoided service

lUNlif -

20 5

28 3

First post late in life

Hid during CS years

f!iVJWi -

~(:·:fili

220

-

221

291

Like father, held high see-> Wei offices

No commitment to a coterie; praised by the anti-CS Fu Jia

Along with Refused to his friend serve CS, Wang Chen unlike Wang (below) sought byCS

278

Offered service to SM's; antiRuan Ji. Rose 33.995 high; titles in Wei andJin "Bamboo Sage"; rose high in Jin, 43.1223 when he first rec'd noble title Had titles both in Wei and Jin; 36.1055 rose to high office in Jin Important mil. adviser to Jin Wudi; first received noble title in Jin

34.101314

shizhong i!fjllJ~

-

Served Jin as Supported the early as 250s; 39.1150 anti-CS Fu Gu rose high; titles in Wei and Jin

(palace scholar) He Yan's circle; SM stalwart

20 5

274

~I\~III 0

210

HeYan 274 ? see-> circle

M~'

0

21 7

27 8

Gansu family

1~Jt

0

21 7

282

Apparently served SM's

0

No info reo immed. post249 service; 33.992 first rec'd noble title in Jin No info reo immed. post249 service. Noted scholar 47.1317 and writer (musician) during Jin, when first rec'd noble title Helped in coup that murdered Cao Mao 40.1165 (260); rose very high; titles in Wei andJin

XUN

NAME

B

220-

D

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SERVICE

OTHER

NOTES RE.

REFUSED,

POST- 2 49

jlNSHU

UNDER

POSTS

THE CS

RETREATED,

EMERGENCE

SOURCE

CS

IN WEI

YEARS

OPPOSED CS

{:OJf.it

0

ifJfl~i

0

222

284

i]Jh)]

++

220

zhong.fhu 28 9 tongshi f(tng

I~?JL ++

222

zhongshu 267 menxia shifang

~%++ 224

huangmen 271 shifang

30

xu's

286

taishou; shizhong; bubing duwei

no info

Father out of favor with SMYi

No info reo immed. post249 service; never rec'd noble title Rose high in Jin; titles in Wei andJin Led others in CS circle to attend CS funeral in 249 Fired as ex-CS official; later helped in coup that murdered Cao Mao (260); rose very high; titles in Wei andJin Fired as ex-CS official; titles in Wei andJin

39.116263

34.1025

39.1152

39.1143

35.1038

Xun Xu both directly and indirectly. The group in Table I is different to the extent that I have selected only those of the age to have served during Cao Shuang's time. Some were directly and frequently involved with Xun (for example, his kinsman Xun Yi, Fu Xuan, Jia Chong, and Feng Dan), but others not so directly. It is of course no coincidence that Xun Xu and those just named, except Fu, would form the core of the principal political faction during Western Jin. Eight men in Table I, including Xun Xu himself, ranged from neutral (0) to positive (+) in their commitment to or support of Cao Shuang. "Positive" is of course something determined subjectively; but it is easy to see that the three in the ++ category (pro-Cao Shuang "ardor") had cadet appointments under Cao Shuang. They were from families with titles and high position. As members of Cao Shuang's suite, perhaps there was mutual contact among them. Notably, all became successful during Jin. Two at first were cashiered but that seems to have been a token action. Xun Yi, although a mentor in Xun Xu's career, had no appointment under Cao Shuang and in fact was somewhat on the anti-Cao Shuang side.

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Xun XU'S Jinshu biography states: [Xun Xu] served the Wei, and was appointed to the retinue of Generalissimo Cao Shuangl,llr:%. He was promoted as Palace Writer Gentleman-for-All-Matters. When Shuang was executed (in 249), [Shuang's] clique and former proteges did not dare to go [to the funeral]. Xun Xu was the only one to do so, and the crowd then followed his lead. He was appointed Prefect of Anyang 'Ji: Il?tb, with concomitant promotion as Attendant Gentleman-of-Household of the Agile Cavalry. [In Anyang] his sincere caring was remembered, and his Anyang students made an altar [to him]. 12 He was transferred to become Director under the Commandant of Justice, and participated in the military decisions of Generalissimo [Jin] Wendi (Sima Zhao). He was ennobled to the level of guannei hou, and promoted to Attendant Gentleman-of-Household, with duties as Intendant of Secretaries.

Xun Xu must have waited for a while after the purge of 249 and the funeral, before offering himself to Sima Zhao and Sima Shi. Despite Xun's public pro-Cao Shuang ardor, the Simas gave him a post in Anyang, probably the small town due south of Yingchuan at the southern border of Runan, on the Huai River.13 Xun Yi was not ardent; he was indirectly a political participant of the Cao courts, mostly through scholarship, not policy or military affairs. He became linked historically with the famous Cao Shuang partisan He Yan because of their joint Lunyu commentary and was known in several important intellectual circles (as noted in Chapter One; also see Figure 2). Table I shows that Yi had been a friend of the anti-Cao Shuang Fu Gu 1w~pj (205-ca. 255), and further, just after the Cao Shuang years, he was actively contributing to Sima Zhao's military strategy. He may be seen as having leaned toward the negative edge of "neutral." This is an example of tacking into the wind-a man active in somewhat opposing political paths but in a way that only strengthened his career. His age may have contributed, having built support-systems and networks during the Cao years, while Xun Xu and Pei, both considerably younger, had fewer resources of that type and could only show service and loyalty to Cao Shuang. 12 See Beitang shuchao -lu:nlCf1!J> (n.p.: Nanhai kongshi sanshi you san wan quan tang edn., 1888) 78, p. 7a, quoting Zang Rongxu's ljl~~*tI· "Jin shu." 13 Another possibility is the "Anyang" that during both Wei and Jin times was roughly in the area of modern Anyang, about 120 mi. northeast of Yingchuan. But I deduce Runan, since this was close to Yingchuan and a place of origin for many scholar-officials who came into contact with Yingchuan men. (I rule out the possibility that this was the Anyang that in Wei times was far in the west, on the Han R. in Weixing commandery.)

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Now we move to negative ardor, that is, the four who expressed succinct anti-Cao Shuang attitudes. We see actions like hiding and avoiding, or positive contact with Cao Shuang's enemy Fu Gu. One naturally expects that they would rise high during Jin and that is in fact the case. Of further interest is that two of them received noble rank for the first time in Jin, and it is worth speculating that it was due to their demonstrating a righteous attitude in the 240s. Perhaps more important is the fact that the five men most negative toward Cao Shuang (adding in Xun Yi) were born earlier than most in Table I: the most pro-Cao Shuang men were generally younger. They tended to serve directly under Cao Shuang, then, with the exception of Xun Xu, received minor castigation. The older men avoided or denounced Cao Shuang. But in either case career success was achieved in Western Jin under the Simas. Finally, we note the examples of Jia Chong and Wang Chen. As mentioned, Wang was cashiered after the 249 purge, a sign that he was considered an ardent pro-Shuangist but not so much as to be executed. Both he and Jia (who was Cao Shuang-neutral) later went on to play key roles in the violent putsch against Cao Mao (241-260; r. 254-60 as Gaogui xiang gong ~ :.JRI)0 ) in 260. 14 There is some logic in assuming that Jia and Wang put themselves into those roles as Sima executioners simply to remove their own taint, but we should not assume it. In fact, their being from powerful and often ennobled Han-Wei families may mean that their censure was a show-piece: they had been deemed by the Simas as up-and-coming dynastic supporters, thus needed slight punishment at the outset. In sum, the table simply shows many people of high status whose careers turned out well after 249 despite complications of taint. Knechtges' suggestion about pro-Cao ardor thus can be refined because for those among our thirteen who were pro-Cao, their "Post-249 Emergence" seems not to have presented problems. But Knechtges' point should be retained for heuristic reasons: we should keep ardor and (using my term) taint in mind whenever, for lack of evidence, we have to deduce things about men who served in the 240s, especially when the person became not merely honored with titles later, but developed into a first-rate mind or specific innovator under a new regime. Literary men, and leading scholars generally, of Western Jin. were conscious of each others' bona fides, and such awareness covered [4 Wang was rewarded for this with a fief and governorship ofYuzhou. Jia ordered the violent confrontation with Cao Mao; see TCTC/Pang 2, pp. 335-37.

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a spectrum that was broader than merely the Cao Shuang regime. A man's roles during the important decades of cultural experiments and literary intimacy in Cao-Ied coteries, including Cao Shuang's own support of He Yan and others, would figure into the reassessment. During Western Jin, under rather a hard-line court, a scholar's style would be pondered for any Cao-style literary cachet, not merely if the person had served obsequiously under Cao Shuang. The critique played out not just through specific Caos, but also through proxies like the later so-called Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, and any number of poets, musicians, and evaluators of men. Thus a larger issue, more than the political one of the fallen Cao Shuang, was who, having experienced the last of the powerful Caos, represented certain values that had emerged during Cao leadership.

Former Cao- Wei Men as Ethically Correct Jin Stalwarts The Simas would not have helped themselves by placing a Cao Shuang taint onto center-stage. They needed instead to foster cooperation among well-known, but politically complicated, scholars. From about 255 to 270, as Xun Yi's career was peaking and that of his younger kinsman, Xun Xu, was emerging, the usurping Simas were in a liminal period. They had to maintain control after bloody purges and survive dynasty-threatening rebellions, then form a court that would appeal to critics and advisers. Censure of Cao Shuang collaborators occurred (namely, the cases of Pei Xiu and Wang Chen), but it was not an objective. Censure could take place in the background, unstated, and could spread out in a variety of directions including casual conversations. The first Jin Emperor Sima Yan is known to have thought about political taint of a more general nature; one case concerned his thoughts of comparison with the notorious last Eastern Han rulers.15 Other ways to gather a new court were being pursued, and other values and court relationships could be more easily established, in order to attract scions of late-Eastern Han and Wei families who possessed talent. One way to group and keep them was to honor a certain type that might be called "Former Wei Loyalists of Deferent and Pious Com15 Sometime after 280, Wudi questioned Liu Yi ~tl~ about which Eastern Han emperor he should be compared with, and was shocked when Liu said it was the two muchdenounced emperors Huan and Ling. (Liu relied on the respect that emperors often were known to show toward the blunt utterances of upright ministers like himself.) See jS 45, p. 1272. (Liu was the father-in-law ofXun YueI7}; see chap. 1.)

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portment." This is what Sima Yan seems to have done, although not with any such name for them, when he took the throne. Among those variously honored around 266 were five in particular-He Ceng and son Shao WJ, Zheng Chong, Xun Yi, and Yang Hu. All except He's son are present in Table 1. Xun Yi and Zheng in particular showed that the Simas were recognizing committed scholars who had created good out of a bad situation-the two had contributed their talents to a brilliant man in the 240S (He Yan) while staying clear of Cao Shuang. At the same time, all the honorees openly displayed a certain humble reluctance to accept noble titles when offered by Sima Yan. They were advertising the higher principle of dynastic loyalty, something that could not be casually switched. They acted as models of upright men who held onto Wei loyalty for some time (however short, and however much for display) and could do so concurrently with a certain humility. But last, and more important perhaps, anecdotes about the Hes, Yang, and Xun Yi emphasize their filial piety surrounding parental mourning, an important index of orthodoxy. 16 These deferent former Wei loyalists, therefore, helped advertise Sima Yan's keen eye for filial piety and political loyalty, two attitudes that were linked throughout much of Chinese history. Logically, a Wang Chen or Jia Chong (aides in the murder of the last Cao ruler in 260) could not be in this group. Chapter One showed that the Xun extended family were well known for mourning, and moreover they sponsored and received funerary services and texts. The Xuns, then, were perceived for quite some time as one of the several dozen upper-elite families who set trends and contributed to such social action. For example, in 244, as Xun Xu was serving Cao Shuang, a second-cousin once-removed named Xun Shao %B (194-244; see Figure 1, Wei II generation), received a commemorative epitaph the extant fragment of which lists his posts and death date. 17 In 267 Xun Mao ~jG (see Figure 1) received a memorial that is more prolix. Besides being lauded as a humane and cherished local official, he was praised for such service by Jin Wudi, mourned "as if for a parent," and "loved as a father and mother." Further, around 260 Xun Yi had 16 See esp. IS 33, pp. 992, 997; 34, p. IOI{. Rong Zhaozu "Shu Wang Bi He Yan de sixiang" J£Tjli51ilJ~n/Hl:!,~jjt, Guoli Zhongshan daxue lishi xue yanjiusuo zhoukan IIl~j\/~IIILLJ:*)1Jd~5E~~'1iJry·aif).'dFlJ I.8-9 (1927), noticed in addition the close ties between the Hes and Sima Yan. He Shao's own biography is at IS 33, pp. 998-99; see the remark that Shao was the same age as Sima Yan and a close companion. 17 See SGZ IO, p. 316; for the epitaph, see Ye Chengyi ~fll\~~, Han Wei shike wenxue kaoshi ?~~.:r::i·~UYJfl,j\HW (Taipei: Xinwen feng, 1997) 3, p. 886.

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demonstrated the much-practiced formula of quitting office to grieve for one's mother and he mourned in extremis. Later, Yi's own death in 274 garnered yet more recognition: the mourning was at least partly organized and supported by Jin Wudi and his son. 18 All of this made Xun Yi in particular a person to be considered by the new dynasty as, once again using my own phrase, a "Former Wei Loyalist of Deferent and Pious Comportment." Xun Xu had been an ardent Cao Shuang official, yet did not undergo any later "cleansing" and in fact was not dismissed from office. He went from Cao Shuang taint directly to high status and participation in important early-Jin court projects, as we see in the following section. Why is that? First of all, by about 260 his family became solidified as Sima military aides through Xun Yi's actions, although their military assets were not nearly as important as those of, for example, Zhong Hui ~tr (225-264), Jia Chong, and Yang Hu. Xun Yi's posts in the 250S involving troops and field support were coattails upon which his younger kinsman Xu-not involved in such affairs-could ride. Second, the Xun family by this time were joined in marriage to two highly regarded Yingchuan families-the Zhongs and Chens. Elite families noticed marriage alliances and recorded them in gossip and in discussions about dynastic access and loyalty. After about 250, if the Xuns needed to balance out their marriage links to the Caos, then their ties to the Zhongs and Chens would have provided that. Finally, it was not only the Xun-family's repute as a leading Yingchuan clan nor the military services of Xun Yi that provided Xun Xu a foothold and impetus. An important leverage to power after 250 was the family's skills and even their piousness. Xun men had carried forward a century of education, and their in-law allies the Zhongs and Chens also fostered well-known styles of family education, as gone into in detail in Chapter One. Such men were familiar with institutional texts and logistics, and they had access as well to a variety of technical experts and artisans (as we shall see in Chapters Four and Five). An attractive proposition for them and their peers was that they themselves, not merely the low-placed technicians, might determine the calendar, interpret celestial events, and create court music, not to mention continue the more traditional tasks of writing treatises and histories. l~ The commemorations and mourning practices concerning Xun Mao and Yi were discussed in chap. I.

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THE COOPERATIVE EXEGETE

Although having attended Cao Shuang's funeral in 249, Xun Xu moved smoothly ahead under the Simas and was rewarded with a post in Anyang as Prefect. With success there, Sima Zhao granted him the relatively low noble rank of guannei hou probably in the late-250s and a promotion in the palace services with duties more than likely involving documents. 19 Possibly, Xun Xu rose in the state hierarchy due to expressions and actions of loyalty and his accomplishment in Anyang. But the rise also must be attributable to advantages that the Xun-family developed during Eastern Han-namely, their skills. Now, from about 260-66, Xun Xu in his forties showed a cooperative and deferent political stance, something that may have helped place him on a path toward court commissions. From 260-62, Xun Xu gained reputation as a face-to-face remonstrator with Sima Zhao, calling for restraint in the use of violence. In June of 260, when the nominal Wei Emperor Cao Mao made a last stand to renew his power, Sima Zhao wanted to exterminate the family of the gate-keeper who had prevented a younger Sima kinsman from gaining access to the palace to help put down Cao's uprising. Xun successfully remonstrated with the elder Sima not to punish the man too harshly, nor merely from anger. The compiler ofXun's Jinshu biography informs us also that two years later he remonstrated successfully with Sima Zhao to prevent sending an assassin to murder the Shu ruler.20 More critical to Xun Xu's political survival was the Zhong Hui problem, that is, the Xuns' ties to a great, national rebel and would-be dynast. Xun had to protect himself against incrimination when his maternal uncle (but generational coeval) Zhong Hui planned a rebellion in 263 that was to take place in Shu during the Wei court's expedition to eliminate the Shu threat. 21 The Sima leaders were suspicious about Zhong even before he left for Shu. Xun Xu urged them not to trust Zhong and recommended sending Wei Guan (Table I) as military inspector to Shu to watch over Zhong. Sima Zhao turned down

19

20

This post, Intendant of Secretaries 1J~irj~'i~, is not covered in jS 24, "Zhiguan zhi." jS 39, p. II52. See TCTC/Fang 2, pp. 335-36, 382, for narratives of these two events.

The sources do not provide an anchor for dating Xun's advice against assassination; Achilles Fang criticized ZZTJs suggestion of the date 262; but considering the wealth of sources available in Song times, I would accept 262. 21 Ibid., pp. 454-60.

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proposals to have Xun dismissed and banished because of his intimate ties to the Zhongs. Even the Jin stalwart Yang Hu (Table I) had not only steered clear of Cao Shuang but also of Zhong Hui in order to remain neutral. Thus to handle Xun Xu, Sima Zhao simply kept him close by, having "Xun ride around in his entourage, treating him as he always had."22 Thus it would seem that while on the one hand XunZhong intermarriage had become problematic, on the other hand, the relationship was politically useful to the Simas. Xun's advice in favor of Wei Guan was thereby taken seriously, and, although it is not stated in Xun Xu's biography, Sima Zhao's holding him close was a form of hostage-taking in order to guarantee Zhong Hui's loyalty, for Zhong Hui had no direct male heirs.23 By discussing taints and problematic politics, I wish to emphasize the way faction-building and small groupings, sometimes calling them coteries, could be flexible and unpredictable. Men could move through the Caos, skirt third-party trouble, and stay within the Sima ambit. Neither the Yangs nor Xuns could be sure what to do with the rebel Zhong Hui; but both families became protected and nurtured by Sima leaders. In the end, two political aspects were key: intermarriage with the Simas and contributions to Sima undertakings. In the latter case it would be Yang Hu's war logistics in the late 270s, which facilitated the invasion ofWu, and Xun Yi's and Xu's new rites. Officials did not intermarry and contribute their talents all as one sort of solid proSima faction, but instead chose sides in factions and sub factions that occasionally cut into families and across family-alliances. After Zhong's rebellion was stymied, Xun, Pei Xiu, Wang Chen, and Yang Hu became the leading clique in control of state affairs under the soon-to-be dynasts: [Subsequently], Sima Zhao was made Prince ofJin (May 2, 264), and he appointed Xun Xu Palace Attendant 1~~J: III, enfeoffing him as Viscount of Anyang, with a domain of 1,000 household units. When [Sima Yan] accepted the abdication [of the Wei ruler] (February 4,266 AD), [Xun's] fief was changed (on February 9, along with numerous others) to Commandery Duke of Jibei ¥J~::It1JI)0. Xun Xu deferred, however, because

22jS 39 (biography ofXun Xu), p. II53. 23 On Yang Hu's deflection of Zhong Hui, see Dominik Declercq, Writing Against the State: Political Rhetorics in Third and Fourth Century China (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p. 218. On Zhong's lack of heirs and the Simas' use of his adopted sons as hostages, see Howard L. Goodman, "The Calligrapher Chung Yu (ca. 163-23°) and the Demographics of a Myth," JAOS II4.4 (1994)," p. 563.

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of Yang Hu (who had also declined rewards). Thereupon, he firmly declined, so as to remain marquis. 24

Xun Xu was now fully cooperating with the "Former Wei Loyalists of Deferent and Pious Comportment." Yang Hu, and even Sima You PJ J!~1~ (248-283), showed such deference publicly through refusals to accept fief responsibilities. 25 Xun was sorting out his loyaltiesdynasty coming before in-laws. It is probably not a coincidence, then, that at this point he was called upon to serve as an assistant in a large exegetical program of 264. It will help to discuss briefly the Simas' development of the exegetical programs. Even as early as about 262-63, despite unresolved rebellions and Wei-dynasty challenges at various levels, the aging Sima Zhao and his advisers were beginning the process that would result in their own potential court-sponsored text collations and revisions of Han and Wei ritual, legal, and other codes. To help achieve an imperial style, they made attempts to call up dozens of talented scholars.26 Such court programs were expected not only of newly installed emperors, but in this time in China they were undertaken even by would-be dynastic and local leaders who might gather masters of various skills in order to establish a well articulated legitimacy. 27 As dynasty-founding loomed, Sima Zhao, having just installed himself as Prince of Jin, held discussions in June of 264 about restoring the ancient Zhou no biliary system of "Five Ranks," a policy that would draw a lot of attention and criticism, and would take effect later, in February, 266. 28 He next ordered Jia Chong to lead a team of four24 IS 39, p. II53; Yang's declination is mentioned in his own biography, j. 34, p. 1014. The larger decree is quoted in Wudi's annals: IS 3, p. 52 (see TeTe/Fang 2, p. 517). There Xun's reward is called simply "duke O," not "commandery duke." 25 Sima You refused to take administrative control of his fief as ordered in February, and insisted that official appointments there be commanded by the throne, not by him; see his memorial in TeTe/Fang 2, p. 518. 26 See Declercq, Writing Against the State, p. 181; also his chap. 4, for Huangfu Mi's reaction to attempts at recruiting scholars in the early 260s. 27 This had been the case under Liu Biao ~U* (d. 208), who gathered men at the southern city of Wan beginning roughly in 195, and who remained a model in men's minds as a patron of free-lance court-oriented scholars; see Yoshikawa Tadao, "Scholarship in Jingzhou at the End of the Later Han Dynasty," Acta Asiatica 60 (1991), pp. 1-24. 28 Liu/Biannian 7, p. 60; de Crespigny, "Three Kingdoms" 2, p. 145, n. 6, remarks that the five-rank (wudeng) system of subordinate nobility was based upon the supposed system of Zhou times. For the edict giving new titles, see IS 3, p. 52; ZZTI79, pp. 2492-93; TeTe/Fang 2, pp. 463 (264 A.D.), 506, 517. An analysis of the rankings, based on Miyazaki's criteria, is given in Dennis Grafflin, "Reinventing China: Pseudobureaucracy in the Early Southern Dynasties," in Albert E. Dien, ed., State and Society in

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**

teen to correct the laws, this including scholars like Xun Xu and his elder kinsman Yi, Zhang Hua (232-300), Chenggong Sui M0r.£ (232-273), and Du Yu :tifffiI (222-284), and did not get completed until 268. 29 In addition, around this time Pei Xiu was ordered to review bureaucratic regulations, and Xun Yi led a team for compiling Jin's "New Rites ~JTtI."30 The latter team alone produced a document of 615 pian (sets of scrolls; see also List I). In 264 Zhang Hua was named a Gentleman in the Palace Writers (a relatively low rank there); and when the dynasty was founded in 266 he was made merely Gentleman at the Yellow Gate, in my view not really a promotion, and lower in stature than the post of Prefect 4- of Palace Writers awarded Xun (as we see in Chapter Three). In 266 both men were in junior, cooperative posts, but Zhang's may be seen as lower than Xun's. He would become an associate of Xun Xu on some of these early court projects. In January, 266, just several weeks before his enthronement, Sima Yan issued a decree that the Just and Impartial reviewers of office candidates in the commanderies recommend "hidden talents" in six categories. It is interesting to note that in these categories we find values like filial piety, familial and political loyalty, and even avid scholarship, showing once again the same sort of need to promote ethical correctness and probity. Another call for talent occurred in 269, several years into the new dynasty; and in that year Palace Examinations were given to a group of seventeen candidates. 3 ! In short, by 265-66, both Xun Xu and Xun Yi had been skimmed off into the Simas' braintrust, and they were given seats in a rarefied world of exegetical committees that worked on ritual aspects of the dynastic house and the state bureaucracy.

Early Medieval China (Stanford: Stanford U. P., 1990), pp. 139-70, see esp. 150. 29 IS 30 ("Xingfa zhi") , p. 927; Jia Chong's biography US 40, p. n67) states the edict, with a slightly different list of scholars (and with other compilational problems). We also know that Du Yu "acted in concert with Jia Chong and others to fix the statutes and commands; and when those were finished, Yu made a commentary to them l.i~~ ZUfl1f"; IS 34, p. 1026. 3(1 LiulBiannian 7, p. 60, assembles sources on the structure of the program. Xun Yi's team (see also IS 19, "Li zhi" A, p. 581; SgS 14, "Li zhi" A, p. 327) included Yang Hu and Ying Zhen JfQ(tbi (son ofYing Qu). Further details ofXun Yi's "New Rites" are g~eninchap.7,bclo~ 31 Declercq, Writing Against the State, pp. 184-85, discusses both these Sima attempts to reach out to scholars (and cites the rclevant sources); on the examination, see also ibid., pp. 221-23.

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FACTIONS

One outcome ofXun Xu's having risen into a leadership coterie was his ability to act boldly, and he did so in another way, through factionalism-namely, the famous Jia-Xun faction's interference with internal Sima family matters. While a coterie at that time in China could be ad hoc and unified by something positive, and in the context of the court often involving a literary or ritual project, a faction possessed a more intense group bond and group reaction to events and ideas. Both types of association relied on loyalties and personal similarities, but a faction, in my view, took on tactical postures to protect itself as a coterie; members carried forward an overarching agenda position and by doing so perceived themselves as operating a front (in the military sense), constantly assessing their opponents' positions and responding as needed, even to regroup or break up. Let us move out of chronology in order to sketch Xun Xu's careerdefining faction. While its agenda would resolve completely only in the late-290s and earlY-300s, after Xun's time, its roots were here in the 260s, with the building of court coteries. Xun Xu's and Yi's specific, initial, motive for aligning with Jia Chong over Sima family affairs we shall never know. It is clear that Jia Chong was unusually close to Sima Yan and that the law-code commission under Jia's leadership brought the Xuns into his circle. Ultimately, we can deduce that Jia's incipient faction desired to make and maintain plans for cementing power inside a dynasty whose policies needed repair if it was to remain for the duration. The faction pursued two problems: one concerned the logic of Sima dynastic succession, specifically how to deal with the situation of the mentally challenged heir-apparent Sima Zhong J~~ (260307; appointed heir 267; r. Huidi ~W, 290-307) and the role taken in it by his wife Lady Jia, Jia Chong's daughter Nanfeng (257-300); the other concerned the policy about invading Wu. As Jia prepared to head out from Luoyang in order to lead military defenses in the winter of 271-72, his chief followers Xun Xu and Feng Dan decided to insure the Jia-Xun faction's strength, and they convinced Wudi to have Jia's daughter installed as consort to the heirapparent Zhong. 32 The latter was Sima Yan's second son;33 and Jia's

mm

32 ZZTj 79, p. 2518; in about December, 271, Jia prepared to oversee garrison troops, and his political coterie began to worry lest they be caught in a vacuum. Earlier that year, Jia, Xun Yi, Xun Xu, and Feng Dan had already been currying favor with Wudi, and this began to elicit criticism (ibid.). 33 See Anna Straughair, Chang Hua: A Statesman-Poet of the Western Chin Dynasty,

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daughter Nanfeng was born of Jia's third wife the Lady nee Guo ¥~, who frequently struggled against the aging Sima Yan's primary consort nee Yang t~. Because Lady Yang supported a more competent Sima as successor, namely, Sima Yan's younger brother You 111<.: (248-283), Nanfeng increasingly took venal actions to increase the chances of her husband Zhong, at a much later point even murdering the Yang family, and, in 300, dispatching as well Sima You, along with dozens of his supporters. But in 255 Sima You was made heir to Sima Shi's princeship just before Shi died; and he was ennobled as Wuyang ~ ~~ Duke. Even up to the very last months before Sima Zhao's death and Yan's accession as emperor, Zhao had considered You the proper heir to Jin titles and leadership. Arguing against this, and for Sima Yan, were He Ceng, Pei Xiu, and Shan Tao (Table 1).34 Using hindsight, we see another sort of taint forming around Xun Xu from 272 until his death in 289. This taint would be reinforced posthumously, as the Jia-Guo versus Yang violence raged; but from 271 to 289 no one could quash Xun's (and Jia's) factional agenda. Perhaps the only chastisement came from Emperor Wu himself. In a passage of the Jinshu biography ofXun Xu that follows the above incident of 271-72, when Xun and Feng succeeded in establishing Nanfeng, we read: At this time he (Xun) was detested by all the upright men, and he received a lot of ridicule for toadying [to the distaff side]. It would be some time !A.z before his status was advanced to that of Imperial Household Grandee (occurring indeed only in 282).35

In general the emperor wavered concerning the situation of Sima Zhong's continuing as heir. But at this moment, he blocked Xun's advancement up the ladder of honorific posts, seemingly desiring to punish Xun Xu. Household Grandee belonged on a separate track of appointments for the highest officials that reflected intimate standing with the imperial family; and Xun would receive it only about a decade later, although he was de facto a close advisor. Occasional Paper 15 (Canberra: Australian National University, Faculty of Asian Studies, 1973), p. 44, and n. 62, for anecdotes that depict Sima Zhong's intellect as puerile. He was always manipulated by his consort, Nanfeng (Lady Jia). An excellent summary of early Western Jin politics is given in Declercq, Writing Against the State, pp. 127-30. 34 TCTC/Fang 2, pp. 499-5 00 . 35 jS 39, p. II53. A more detailed description of Xun Xu's insinuating himself into the heir-apparent's dynastic status, and the collusion with Jia, are given in jS 40 (biography of Jia Chong), p. II68. De Crespigny, "Three Kingdoms" 2, pp. 152-54, provides a summary of the succession and internecine struggles. Zhang Hua's role is covered in Straughair, Chang Hua, pp. 39-50.

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Anti-Xun Xu Roots in the Wu i.Vtzr Factionalism Influence in Sima succession matters and the strategic marriage links between the Jias and the Simas were the defining agenda of the JiaXun faction. The overall progress of the faction's aims actually went smoothly until the imbroglio over the Wu War and the subsequent complications arising directly from the marriage links. As an agenda item, opposition to the Wu War was a corollary of the first. The traditional sources offer nothing in the way of a statement of purpose or an analysis of policy principles from any of the Jia men. Therefore, we must make suppositions about why actions were taken, and we must be cautious, since factions were not all alike, and they could be illogical, so to speak, with examples of cooperation between nominal factional enemies. An obvious angle to pursue in order to establish the Wu War agenda concerns the enmity toward Xun Xu of one particular person, Zhang Hua. To Xun Xu, Zhang Hua might have seemed an outsider with lucky access to mentors and with military merit that gave him direct influence over the emperor. 36 Zhang became embroiled, as did several important officials, in the Wu War policy, and he was a key member of the anti-Jia faction. The Jia faction-once again, chiefly Jia Chong, Xun Yi and Xu, and Feng Dan-solidly opposed invading Wu, based mainly on the way that the plans for an invasion had developed outside of their own purview. There is reason to suggest that this was more than sheer spite, but that those who directly planned and executed the takeover ofWu might come into enormous power and wealth. Plans about an Wu invasion had begun as early as 269, when Yang Hu was appointed regional military overseer of Jingzhou, where he gradually developed agricultural and riverine resources. 37 He approached Emperor Wu secretly about making the invasion, an action that many had thought should have been taken right after the defeat of Shu in 264. Other officials subsequently learned of Yang Hu's spe-

36 As stated, in order to give an overview of Jin factionalism, we must break with chronology; I refer the reader to a biographical introduction to Zhang that is given in the next chapter. 37 Yang's biography is at]S 34, pp. I013-25; his career rise covered in Declercq, Writing Against the State, pp. 218-20. For opposition in 272, see ZZT] 79, p. 2529; 80, p. 2545, for opposition in 276; 80, p. 2558, for opposition when logistics were underway at end of 279. See Yu Zhaowei:r~U~lil;, "Xi Jin dangzheng yu fa Wu zhanzheng zhi guanxi lunlue"I)~iT~t},€:'fi·giJ{:lG3~f{&1'I·zl~fH~ffifulll~, Xuchang shifan xuebao ~lh'~HlHjjrrB~'~K 21.1 (2002), pp. 37-40; also Straughair, Chang Hua, pp. 28-29.

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cial policy-pleading, and by the winter of 272 Yang was feeling the opposition of Jia's men. Before Yang died in 278, he assigned leadership of the Wu War planning to Zhang Hua, who carried it forward with strong logistical and financial policies. When the armies were sent out, Xun and Jia Chong stridently expressed opposition, in part due to the gloomy military judgments delivered by Du Yu, who was in the field. Jia, who could not avoid being appointed as a field commander himself, memorialized that Zhang Hua be executed. But the war began to go well, and was finished successfully in May of 280. 38 This led to Zhang's sharp rise in power. The Jia faction was, however, strong enough to have Zhang posted far from Luoyang from the beginning of 282 down to 285. Zhang's biography in Jinshu states: As his fame grew, he [Zhang Hua] had expectation of becoming Prime Minister. However, Xun Xu hated Hua bitterly, relying on his own noble background, and trusting in the Emperor's favour. Each time he waited on the Emperor, he tried to alienate him from Hua, trying to arrange that the latter should be sent out to a frontier garrison. On one occasion, the Emperor asked Hua who should be entrusted with the control of the affairs of state after his death, and Hua replied: "Prince You of Qi f6f~F_ ilJ Kl,jii)[ is both the most enlightened in virtue, and the closest to you in relationship."39 This, however, was not what the Emperor had had in mind, and although only this small offence had been committed, the Emperor took heed of the suggestion which had been made to him. He sent [Zhang] Hua out as Military Governor ofYu circuit .... 40

Ad hominem dislike between the two men seems to have had some basis in noble ranks (if we follow the clue in the above passage). In fact, the histories show that before Zhang Hua his family did not have titles, and Hua would gain his first only in 267 (a low-ranked guannei hou) and a higher, rank-one, marquis ate only in 280. There were thus real disparities between the constantly ennobled Xuns and the new Zhangs. Xun's position in the above case, concerning Sima Zhong, won the day with the emperor. Zhang, however, rebounded after his exile. Yet his youthful rise and brilliance incited other jealousies, and 38 For Xun's opposition, see jS 39, p. II54; for Jia's, Straughair, Chang Hua, p. 29. On the war's ending, see De Crespigny, "Three Kingdoms" 2, p. 145; and on Jin-court military strategy, see J. W Killegrew, "The Reunification of China in AD 280: Jin's Conquest of Eastern Wu," Early Medieval China 9 (2003). 39 Zhang's supporting You once again shows that factions could be complex, since You was married to one of Jia Chong's two daughters from Jia's marriage to Lady Li 1':; jS 40 (biography of Jia Chong), p. II7!. 40jS 36, p. 1070 ; trans. Straughair, Chang Hua, pp. }o-31, with spelling changes for Pinyin. See also ZZTj 81, p. 2579, dated to before the 3d lunar month of 282.

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despite his tacking carefully into the political winds during the dangerous 290S, he would be executed in 300. Xun would begin to receive attacks of a rather more scholarly nature early in the mid-280s, as we see in Chapters Five through Seven, and these continued even after his death. A leader in those criticisms would, not surprisingly, be Zhang. Feng Dan {'1l§ tt (d. 286/87; see Table I) was another principal Jia factionalist. 41 His father Yuan had been Grand Administrator of Jijun (where the famous cache of ancient texts would be discovered; Chapter Six). Dan was learned in classics and histories, and was conversant with "affairs of Wei and Jin [history] ."42 Feng received relatively stepwise official appointments, rising to the level of Weijun ft!~ Grand Administrator, and from then on he served almost solely in military offices, rising to Colonel of Foot-soldiers. He also received numerous special favors from Jin Emperor Wu and was particularly close with Jia Chong and Xun Xu. He worked with them to get Lady Jia Nanfeng made the consort of Sima Zhong, to oppose Sima You, and to stop a plan to depose Nanfeng. He oversaw a commandery close to the border with Wu during the Wu invasion, but remained factionally opposed to the war and to Zhang Hua. 43

THE TONE OF XUN xu'S EARLY CAREER

This chapter's opening epigraph framed the beginning of Xun Xu's career in terms of the second step in the seven-note gamut, namely, the "harmonious step." To be harmonious in political terms meant to cooperate with peers in groups, coteries, and bureaus. Such an attitude brought positive results for Xun Xu, a young and talented man in Luoyang. Below the surface, however, existed aspects of a scholarly personality that attracted contention. In this section we shall look at a historian in the 600s who, writing about Xun Xu, carefully framed those contentions. The fullest account of Xun Xu's life is the biography found in jinshu (History ofthe jin Dynasty), one of many standard-history products of the Tang court. I have quoted it several times, above. It is basically an assemblage of extant snippets from historical accounts still available

41 Biography atIS 39, pp. II62-63; his death was probably of natural causes; his brother Hui was elder, thus I deduce Dan's birth at around 220-30. 42 E.g., IS 36, p. 1071, where Feng discusses the roots of Zhong Hui's treachery. 43 On the points made about Feng, see IS 38, p. IIH, II38; 39, p. IIS7, II62.

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in the 600s, including Xun's family biography, and Xun's own wenji }( ~, an oeuvre filled with memorials, court ritual lyrics, and technical proposals. Chronology was a basic function of China's standard-history biographies; but another was didactic judgment. The early-Tang historian would make a didactic judgment of Xu as someone who was both too brilliant and too agenda-driven, and in that way harmed his family's reputation. The prose in which we find this judgment arranges isolated facts from Xun's life and relies as well on several myths. One such myth implied that Xun Xu possessed a suspicious, savant-like nature that would later be criticized by a seemingly pure spirit, a descendant of the famous Ruan Ji, a topic that is explored in Chapter Five. Such my thopoeia reveals the way that the Zhengshi era per se could act as the warp upon which writers and quippers wove a texture of rebels and mystics, of resisters against power and upholders of factions. Tang-era redactors not only interpreted myths as they redeployed them, but they also explained Jin events in a way that made sense to, and appealed to, the Tang court. They understood clearly that the courtiers of the 240S and 250S were dangerous people, having helped the Simas commit duplicity in order to subvert a legitimate dynasty-the Wei. All of this was complicated enough, but by 300 ad the Simas had let their own dynasty slip into violence. Over 300 years later, Tang writers had to explain the talents, as well as ethical and intellectual passions, of all these Jin ministers, for if their lives were framed properly, even dramatically, they could stand for the sort of timeless dynastic resource that the Tang rulers themselves needed, namely, brilliant advisers who could explain history and restore rituals. 44 Let us try to identify the voice that judged Xun Xu. In order to write Jinshu, early-Tang scholars had at their disposal at least fourteen versions of Jin annals with important biographies, among many other items. However, Tang Taizong did not consider them worthy to stand on their own; he decreed in 646 that a new Jin history be compiled. The task was given to Fang Xuanling m~~ (578-648), but in fact others had important tasks in the compilation, and Tang Taizong himself wrote four biographical judgments. Pre-Tang materials for writing Wei and Jin history during Tang had begun to take form early in Western Jin. For example: in 266 Xun Xu (as we see in the next chap44 See Howard Wechsler's powerful study of early-Tang struggles to reform rites in the process of glossing the founding of Tang in nonviolent terms; Offerings ofJade and Silk: Ritual and Symbol in the Legitimation of the T'ang Dynasty (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1985).

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ter) received an appointment that likely carried the task of compiling a Basic Annals for the recently deceased Jin Wendi (Sima Zhao), and there are many references in later catalogs to other court annals of that type; in the 280s Zhang Hua collected and edited raw drafts of Jin palace acts and affairs;45 and another person known quite well to Xun, namely, Fu Xuan (see Table I), worked on Cao-Wei history probably as early as the late-250s,46 as had Xun Yi. In the 290S, just after Xun Xu's death, Gentleman Drafter Shu Xi (ca. 260-300), a protege of Zhang Hua, compiled Jin dynastic annals and treatises, all of which disappeared after the fall of Western Jin. 47 Xun Xu's grandson Chuo r,~ (ca. early 300s) wrote anecdotes and narratives ofJin events (see List I), and from extant quotations of it we learn salient facts about Xun XU. 48 A great number of these materials, plus collections of scholars' private writings and ancillary materials such as treatises and biographies, were extant and available either whole or in part early in Tang. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing exactly who compiled the official Tang-court Jinshu biography of Xun Xu. There is a strong possibility that the writer, or at least the final editor, of it was Xu Jingzong ;§fil]!£* (592-672), who seems to have been Fang Xuanling's dayto-day leader in the Jinshu project. 49 The biography of Xun Xu is a

*tg

45 "Jin historiographical documents, including regulations for ceremonials and rites, all were taken in hand [by Zhang]; he made a great number of additions and deletions; all the imperial edicts of that time were put into order [by him]"; jS 36, p. 1070. Cf. trans. of Straughair, Chang Hua, p. 30, who mistakenly sees "jIIf 5t" as referring to an "Official History of the Jin." There is no such title (among many) attributed to Zhang given in Ding Guojun Tm£llli;g, Bu jinshu yiwen zhi 11IJlMf~f~~Jtj'~; (Xuxiu SKQS, vol. 914); see also Liao Jilang &i~,:&~, Liang jin shibu yiji kaoiA/AiI"t5tftr\jJMJtN~ (Taipei: Jiaxin shuini, 1970). For analysis of the history of Zhang Hua's "collected letters," which survived through Tang, see Howard L. Goodman, "Zhang Hua wenji," article in Albert Dien et al., eds., Six Dynasties Sourcebook. 46 Jordan Paper, Fu-tzu, A Post-Han Confucian Text, T'oung Pao Monograph series 13 (Leiden: Brill, 1987), p. 71. 47 On Shu's writings, seejS 51, p. 1434; also LiulBiannian 7, pp. 207-8; and Howard L. Goodman, "Shu Xi wenji," article in Dien et al., eds., Six Dynasties Sourcebook. On Shu's Jin historiography, see Fairbank, "Ssu-ma 1," p. 82. 48 jS 39, p. II58; we know little else but that he took up service at court under the non-Chinese conqueror Shi Le. His work (or perhaps his jointly-authored work) was titled jin houshul~t1&TIw.~ of 15 pian (also titledB"-1&1II~); Suishu's "Bibliographic Treatise" (SS 33, p. 968) records a technical treatise of Xun Chuo titled "Annotated Tables of the Hundred Officials." 49 See Fairbank, "Ssu-ma I," pp. 259-60. Also, Xu wrote a biographical collection titled "Wenguan cilin wenren zhuan x~!1r;Wui*xA 1W" (100 juan; see jiu Tangshu lllfJflf :tIT: [Zhonghua edn.] 46, p. 2004), and such interest in biographies ofliterary men lends weight to the surmise that Xu was writer/editor of the jinshu biographies.

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competent if not totally satisfYing compilation the formulaic nature of which suited expectations of trope and essentialism. It may, however, be faulted on two grounds: it sometimes darts around precariously, proffering myths from earlier sources, compilations like Shishuo xinyu ttt~UfJT~:g., without weaving them intelligently into the surrounding narrative of Xun's life. Furthermore, it gives only faint mention of the most compelling aspects of Xun's career-his material creations, aesthetics, and historiographic theories and antiquarian activities. Any thorough study of Xun's life must therefore use other sources, such as the treatises on music and harmonics found in Shen Yue's Songshu (itself a compilation of much earlier drafts) and the treatises on those same subjects that were compiled later (discussed in Chapter Four). In general, the Jinshu biography, perhaps compiled by Xu Jingzong and possibly looked over by Fang Xuanling or by his aide Linghu Defen 4-5JJl1j*, sees Xun as the scion of a powerful family whose legacy he abused, thus bringing misfortune. Further, Xun is depicted as a creature of the family of the empress who brought the Jin to ruin. In part, we must assume that the writer or writers took their cue from Tang Taizong's own "imperial statement" at the end of the Annals of Jin Wudi, which glossed Xun Xu's reputation as that of a "wicked inveigler ~~."50 Yet compared to biographies of others in his peergroup, Xun's biography is not harsh. The closing remark states: Xu managed the critical, secret affairs [of the dynasty] for a long while; he was [a man of] talent and concepts who fathomed the subtle instructions of his rulers. He never offended the dignity of his ruler nor was contrary or contentious. Thus it was that from beginning to end he could maintain the wholeness of his favors and rewards. 51 In fact Xun Xu struggled mightily with others and did not "maintain the wholeness of his favors and rewards." A kind word was desired, but since Taizong and others characterized the Xuns as dangerous connivers, it had to be back-handed praise-a zealous factionalist who managed not to get murdered. If Fang Xuanling did not compile Xun's biography, he may otherwise have produced the "judgment 51:. B" appended to the whole group of biographies that formed juan 39, where Xun's biography is found. We ought to ask if Fang, or Xu Jingzong, was aware of the way in which drafts of technical "Treatises" were portraying Xun, since it is in those that we find out so much about him. Was there any sort of 50 51

IS 3, p. 82. IS 39, p. II57.

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committee interaction among the Tang compilers-with those working on biographies and those specializing in the treatises and tables comprising separate groups? The answer cannot be worked out without further, separate, study. But one of those responsible for treatises, namely, Li Chunfeng r-¥oo' (602-670), entered elsewhere a judgment ofXun Xu that was entirely positive, and for entirely different reasons from the political biographies. As shown in Chapter Four, Li wrote on computational astronomy, metrology, and harmonics for both the Suishu ~l. andJinshu standard-history projects. He saw Xun Xu through the lens of specialization, and analyzed Xun's metrological and other achievements accordingly, along the way dispelling the inaccuracies of Xun-oriented myths that typified the biography. Perhaps, then, Tang historiographical projects were marked off by low, if not impenetrable, scholarly fences that distributed work by specialty. We would thus call Fang Xuanling one of the essentially political commentators. With these distinctions in mind, I translate the summary judgment on Xun Xu and Xun Yi to which I earlier alluded. With some basis, we can assume that the authorial voice is that of Fang, who sought to guide the mind of a reader who has just finished the biography written by Xu Jingzong: 52 Gongceng 01~Iil (i.e., Xun Xu) was the grandson of [Xun] Ziming IljJ; and [his relative Yi ~1'i, styled] Jingqian J}ti,lf, was the son of [Xun] Wenruo .53 They padded the resplendent halls [of rulers], looking down haughtily; they straightened out the lax cart-tracks [of state]' galloping far. They had reverence and respect sufficient to honor their loved ones, and circumspection and caution enough to serve [their] lords. They engraved [for all to know] the former institutes of the Duke of Zhou ~II:~ 0, and they adopted the laws left by Chancellor Xiao nltftl1 54 Yet, they jS 39, p. u63. Xun Ziming was the style ofXun Shuang i'jj~ (128-190), Xun Xu's great-grandfather. Wenruo was the style ofXun Yu D~ (163-212). On these Xuns, see chap. 1. 54 The allusion first sets up Zhougong (via parallelism) as the original, ancient supplier of proper etiquettes and rituals. In 264, Xun Yi and Xun Xu both contributed to the exegetical program to correct laws and rites. Thus the biography would be analogizing Xun Yi to Zhougong, and Xun Xu to "Chancellor Xiao." Xun Xu once memorialized concerning the proper duties of bureaucracy, referring positively to Chancellor Xiao (IS 39, p. U55; discussed in chap. 6). Xiao He f:ll,:fa" was a key logistical aide-de-camp of Han Gaozu throughout the civil wars surrounding the founding of Han (biography in Michael Loewe, A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods (22I Be-AD 24) [Leiden: Brill, 2000], pp. 603-5). Xiao was made Chancellor of a principality and was treated with great dignity by Han Gaozu. When Gaozu promulgated the famous "Three-Article Code," and there was still uncertainty about the new Han insti52

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aided a [Dan] Zhu [H] and a [Shang] Jun [WH] :Mj in order to provide seconds (assistants) for the supreme one [i.e., the emperor];55 and they incited a Bao and a Yan Ifi ,! in order to provide a companion for zhen [the elder son] (meaning the heir-apparent). 56 Although ruination and renovation have places [in cycles], and flourish and decline are not constants, if we look [for the answers] in human affairs, then we have none other than the exertions of the two Xuns. [But] when going as far as a measure of grain and whipping up slogans :i\}J~4~1~~li~frL and by high-stepping into places and creating a hub-bub Nlltrll!.n\Uii]<., [Xun] Xu's storied misfortunes reached an extreme.

On the surface, reasons for a negative judgment are not logical or obvious. First of all, the two Xuns supplied much-needed ritual improvements for the young dynasty. Xun Yi in fact was lauded by the Jinshu compilers in the preface to the "Biographies of Scholars" 1$ Upon characterizing Xun Xu, things become opaque. What is the "measure of grain"? It probably does not refer to Liu Chang IU~, the king of Huainan and a political thorn in the side of his brother Han Emperor Wen; a poem about Chang said "You can spin from one chi of cloth and pound with one dou of grain, but when there are two brothers [i.e., the emperor and his brother] there is not enough room to live together."58 There is no apparent connection except an indirect one-Xun Xu's having been a sort of twin "emperor" to Jin Wudi. "High-stepping," the next image, is perhaps the "climbing into our homestead" of the Shi ~:tj: classic, where the narrator is afraid of what people will say about an intrusive lover who tends to stir things up by pursuing his girl into her village and over her house walls. 59 Just for the sheer image of Xun as a trouble-maker, it is believable.

**.57

unions, " ... Chancellor Xiao He collated the Qin laws, bringing the appropriate [items in it] to bear on his times; and he created a Nine-article Code of Law"; HS 23 ("Xingfa zhi"), p. 1096; biography in HS 39, pp. 2005-10. 55 These two were, respectively, the sons ofYao and Shun, sons unworthy of receiving the throne; described in Shiji "Wudi benji." 56 This probably refers to the negative effects of female power at court, esp. two anecdotes from HS 85, pp. 3443-44- One concerns the Zhou ruling house, and the introduction into it of the Lady Bao Si JlfllCL, who, it is said, indirectly caused defeat at the hands of the Quan Rong. Next is the woman Yan, who induced an eclipse as a warning of her baleful influence. The allusion to Jin times, of course, is to Lady Nanfeng (daughter of Jia Chong) (supported by Xun Xu), who eventually began a cycle of violence that debilitated the Jin dynasty. 57 See IS 91, p. 2346. 58 On Liu Chang, see HS 44, p. 2144; Loewe, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 271-73; the poem is carried in Lu/Shi (Hanshi 3), p. 120. 59 See Mao 76: "Jiang Zhongzi" ~I~+I' J-; Arthur Waley, trans., The Book of Songs, ed. Joseph Roe Allen (N.Y.C.: Grove Press, 1996), p. 65.

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But those are merely at the surface. The writer (again hypothetically Fang) chose words with aplomb, and he kept the tone high and monitory to the point of obscurity. So we ought to dig deeper. These allusions in fact show that the author understood details of Xun Xu's technical world. It is likely that "measure of grain" refers to Xun's researches that established new metrological standards, an act of ritual measure that historians since the Han often glossed simplistically by reference to the ancient method of counting out millet grains to establish standard lengths and volumes. Fang used this trope even though Xun did not rely chiefly on the "grain measuring" method, but on measurements taken of ancient metric devices. "Chanting ~*" can be read as the controversy and resultant criticism concerning Xun's reforms of court ensemble music, which involved songs. "High-stepping into places" may refer to Xun's peers becoming annoyed by his commandeering offices that were not in his official purview, or the archeological projects in which Xun sent assistants into locales to bring back ancient objects for research. (We find out about songs and antiquarian exertions over metrology in Chapters Three and Four.) In fact, the word ~, when read in its variant form Jii[, has been used as a gloss for ~, an ancient unit of volume; and the word JI!. is the well-known ancient term for a "league."6o It is thus possible to read the above in a far more sly fashion, as "made volumes into leagues." That would stretch words; thus more plausible would be: "advanced the normal lengths." But Xun, as we see in Chapter Four, decreased them! Some have believed that Fang Xuanling wrote a commentary on the ancient Guanzi >g.y, an essentially pre-Han work that delves into all manner of technical thought, including in one place some specifics of metrology. Such a commentary is extant and ascribed to Fang. If he in fact was a Guanzi commentator, then he was not just a bystander to the world of technics and arts, but a dedicated transmitter. 61 This complicates in a most interesting way the question about intellectual fences among the early-Tang editors. Polymathic pursuits would have 60 Qiu Guangming n::7'tIVj and Long Yangping Ilffi;fJli~li., Zhongguo kexue jishu shi: Duliangheng juan I=lq~JlI~4~,:f;Hfj.5t'., )JtTI!:1[QJ~ (Beijing: Kexue chuban she, 2001), pp. 70-71, 81-84. 61 See Guanzi 1rr~f- I (sect. "Chengma" *Ji!{j) (SBCK edn.), pp. 17b-18a, on metrological terminology; discussed briefly in Qiu and Long, Zhongguo kexue jishu shi, p. 17. For scholars' having rejected Fang as the actual author and ascription to another Tang scholar, see W Allyn Rickett, in Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographic Guide (Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1993), p. 249.

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brought Tang scholars like Li, Xu, Fang, and others into common territory. Ultimately, the question ofXun Xu's high-stepping and causing controversy over metrology and harmonics is a real one. What did he do, and how far did he go? These matters will come out in due course. At this point, we can say that here the authorial voice of Fang, better, "Fang/Xu," wrote for skilled readers, and thus chose deflected phrases to judge a man famous for his devotion to precision. An unskilled reader would think that Xun was simply a harsh policy adviser who had stirred up resentment in locales over such things as tax-grain quotas and thus caused angry outcries. That would be a mistake.

FACTIONS AS COOPERATIVE STRUGGLE

This chapter has paid particular attention to several ways by which the political landscape of the 240S through 250S affected careers in Luoyang. We have positioned Xun Xu there by means of his and others' places in dusters and factions. Crucial was our listening for the political tone of the late-240s, a time that culminated in political murders. After 249 came a taint that could adhere to those who had been on the Cao side-the losing side (and the Sima dynasts in addition were tainted from having won). I suggested, however, that there was room for choice and development. That is in part because because many of the Wei-neutral and at least mildly pro-Jin types wished to move past the Wei's final image. The reign-name "Correct (or, Corrected) Beginning" helped accomplish this forward motion, and it was based at least in part on musicologists' debates. Xun and the men who would be associated most with him seem to have been part of a slightly younger cohort of late-Wei courtiers who, in contrast to an older and warier cohort, were more accommodating to power. Men like Xun Xu seem to have worn complicated political hats: they did not hide from Cao Shuang service but at the same time were becoming pro-Sima and tired of the Wei's tinkering with various kernels of legitimacy. Drawing on a useful phrase of David Knechtges, a scholar with a sensitive approach to medieval Chinese lives and ideas, I wondered whether and how the Simas may have been curious to identify and perhaps even villify anyone who had served Cao Shuang. Knechtges' key word was "ardent," and my own contribution to that metaphor is to say that "ardor" had several sides to it. I agree that from 249 to 265 the Simas would have been sure to demote or execute direct military supporters of any Cao attempt to storm back into the palace,

XUN

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as it were. In fact, they did eliminate hundreds in the purge of 249. But ifXun Xu's relatively young cohort (Table r) were relatively ardent in accommodating Cao Shuang, they nonetheless also demonstrated attitudes amenable to the Simas. In fact, my discussion proceeded to other groupings, like those whom I termed "Former Wei Loyalists of Deferent and Pious Comportment." They were singled out in 266 by Jin Emperor Wu as moral court leaders, and they included Xun Xu's kinsman Xun Yi. Wudi was seeking a different sort of ardor, namely filial reputation and nominal displays of loyalty to the Wei. Filial devotion plugs directly into the theme of Chapter One, where Xun Yi is seen gaining a solid place for himself as a mourner. A person's earlier support of the Wei could mean things other than military action. In short, the two Xuns, Xu and Yi, were cooperative during the Wei, were not overtly military until the 250S when Xun Yi made contributions to Sima strategy, and they were a family that possessed skill and learning in the court rituals. This made them able to mitigate any Cao Shuang taint and be seen as exuding the right kind of ardor. Thus they could segue into court literary posts that the Simas were highly concerned to fill. Several calls were put out and intellectual examinations held, but the Xuns would not have to submit to such vetting, since they were at the top tier of Sima loyalists. Both immediately found themselves in committees tasked, under the guidance of Jia Chong, with reviewing and correcting aspects of legal policy and administrative and criminal codes. Xun Xu's very first post-249 position was as Prefect serving outside of Luoyang, probably in the near south. He made a great impression there on local students. But what is more important in this moment is to see that the cooperative scholar would already be receiving enmity and gearing up as a factionalist. My narrative stepped out of chronological flow to show how the two great policy struggles of the 270s-80s may have had ad hominem roots already in the mid-260s. One of the most important things to take from the consideration of factions is that they were malleable and could be paradoxical. For example, the Jia-Xun faction did not oppose the war per se as much as they opposed the secretiveness of the dealings of Yang Hu and Zhang Hua: the potential of wealth to whoever led the invasion may have been a factor. In fact, the Wu War men were not as enduring and collusive a faction as were Jia's men; at the close of the war they did not remain a policy bloc and did not even reap advancements. They melted apart and took shape as a different faction with different agendas, as

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discussed in Chapter Six. Finally, the emperor, who was in charge of (or at least had to give imprimatur to) the important commissions to establish new rites and policies, may not have felt the implications nor seen the lineaments of factions in the same way that his leading officials did. Therefore, despite enmities, such as that between Xun Xu and Zhang Hua, based on social status or perhaps raw loathing, and despite the oppositional stances that emerged when the heir-apparent affair developed, the emperor still placed Xun and Zhang on several commissions early in the 270s. Factions sometimes did not matter, but also sometimes they functioned more as wedges (with specific moments or policies breaking people apart according to loyalty networks) than as straight up-and-down oppositional fronts. 62 When court politics were strained, factions could, in a certain way, become vehicles for getting things done. The Tang editor of the seventh-century Jinshu forged another sort of tone concerning Xun Xu's life. The obscure way in which Xun was condemned may show us something about the way biographical truths tended to have multiple facets requiring multiple readings and outside sources. We noticed the editor's masking ofXun Xu's achievements in metrology and harmonics. This prompts us to ask about the place and the role of technical matters in the context of scholarship-especially court scholarship. Why would Xun Xu the cooperative exegete and calculating factionalist devote the next ten or twelve years to archeology, metrics, and the reform of the flute's scale-notes? First of all, as we soon see, those areas of study helped Xun Xu to establish his deep loyalty to the Simas by dismantling Wei ritual legitimacy in a bold, scientific manner. But also, Xun increasingly devoted energy to small scholarly and research teams. Through his court commissions he saw the usefulness of such teams as well as workshop artisans, the lowest of all court officials. As we move forward into Xun Xu's projects, we must keep in mind this expanded meaning of "faction," and come to see precision per se as an object of quarrel in the same way that dynastic succession and war policies could be.

62

This flexibility in factionalism is brought out in Yu, "Xi Jin dangzheng."

CHAPTER THREE

AESTHETICS AND PRECISION IN COURT RITUAL SONGS, CA. 266-272 Jue if]: The Turn The third step in the Chinese gamut, another whole step, is a "turn" - the jue note. It gives our ears the "major third" interval from gong. In early China's circle-of-fifths, the major third's length is assigned the fraction 7.III, whereas gong, shang, and zhi, have whole numbers. Numeric ratios begin to clash with the physics ofactual musical instruments. A musicologist in early China would know that beyond jue lay not just hard-toproduce notes, but a world of competing modes. For Xun Xu, the "turn" turned out to be a time of complexity and competition.

These several years were a turning point during which Xun Xu's career went in a new direction. He challenged his peers intellectually and experienced forward motion. He gained appointments to reform the court's music, starting with lyrics for ritual songs. We see for the first time his overarching principle as a reformer intent on a fundamentalist Zhou restoration, which on several occasions in China's past had served as an ideological frame in attempts to unify and shape the realm. A Zhou restoration, according to the most trenchant model, that of Wang Mang's (r. 9-23 AD) court, involved nominal and real changes in noble grants, official hierarchies, administrative and penal code, the calendar, architectural standards and shapes, and ritual song-texts and musical scales. As this book progresses, we shall see that Xun Xu directed many of these areas for the Jin court. Back in 260, Xun Xu had recently emerged, like many others, from associations with the Wei-dynasty court of Cao Shuang. He was already advising Sima Zhao and in addition was building a reputation outside Luoyang as a leader oflocal officials and students; he was made Intendant of Secretaries at court, with a minor noble title. After his inlaw Zhong Hui failed in his rebellion in Shu, and after Sima Zhao was made Prince ofJin, both in 264, Xun was appointed Palace Attendant. His posts were moving along on the scholar-adviser track of official-

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dom, as opposed to the military track, and they were directly inside the palace archival and historiographical offices. Part of the relatively quick rise was due to his kinsman Xun Yi's solid place among the Simas. But Xun Xu himself was politic: he had imitated Yang Hu's gesture by turning down a noble title, and was eventually placed into the activities of a new court, becoming a scholar in the law committee. Xun's family had not been famous for any intertextual weaving, as it were, or for reshaping canons, that is, there was no Xun who synthesized Daoist and Confucian traditions by means of cosmological insights. There was one Yijing political moralist back in the late 100S and Yijing debaters closer to Xun Xu's day. Furthermore, not even in the early days at their Yingyin manor had Xuns attained literary leadership or forged a poetic voice in the new, more intimate styles. It is no surprise, then, that Xun Xu generally did not meet in soirees or exchange poems and quips (with one brief exception), nor was he particularly known in history as a commentator on the Confucian classics. He is known to have authored a work on the Classic ofFilial Piety, but no part of it remains. These were exceptional times for writers of classical commentaries, and in fact quite a few of the great examples from Wei-Jin times went on to be honored in subsequent centuries. Nevertheless, a scholar in the Jin era contributing to court ritual studies did not have to be, nor need to be, renowned as a classical commentator. The court program to gather scholars and revise rites offered places to Xun Xu and Xun Yi. The latter worked on the rites fl, which may have included aspects of court music. Xu was placed into the law codification project, a field in which the Xun family stood out (see Figure 2, Chapter One).l Several days after Sima Yan's imperial accession in February of 266, Xun Xu and Xun Yi were among a group of Sima boon-companions, including Yang Hu $tr't (221-278) and Pei Xiu ~* (224-271), who were promoted and enfeoffed. This coterie assumed control of state affairs at the outset of the dynasty.2 In Chapter Two we saw that upon accession, Xun Xu had been made Palace Attendant and he punctiliously declined a noble title. We pick up the Jinshu biographyexactly at that point:

I The entire Xun-family involvement in legal policy and compilations since the end of Eastern Han was discussed in chap. I, sect. "Xun Musicologists and Legists." 2 See jS 40, p. nGG; and 43, p. 1224: Pei was lauded and supported in this new status by Shan Tao.

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[Xun] was appointed as Inspector of Palace Writers, additionally [appointed] )jll Palace Attendant and Intendant Drafter 0'I~J1H1: [for historiography]. 3 Together with Jia Chong (217-282), he brought order to the regulations and commands (i.e., the system of adminstrative and criminal codes).4

The new posts in 266 were honors but not sinecures: young scholars worked hard. Furthermore they did their work at specific palace locations. Beginning at this point Xun Xu would focus on the physical surroundings of the Jin offices. The writing offices, where court annals and diaries, and old records pertaining to office ranks and codes, were being edited became his springboard to the Imperial Library, which in turn was a rich trove of texts, objects, and trained underlings.

WEALTH AND COLLECTING; DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION

It would seem that already by 266, Xun Xu's family had a mansion in Luoyang, and Xun indulged in pleasureful objects. If a passage in Luoyang qielan ji y~~ffiJ1nu :I~D (completed 547 AD) is to be believed, and there is positive reason to accept it, precious items were found perhaps sometime in the late 400S or early 50 os at a residence roughly two or three kilometers southwest of the Changhe Main Gate of the imperial inner city of Luoyang. Luoyang qielan ji expands upon a legend that claimed that the luxuries had once belonged to Xun Xu and that the site had been Xun's mansion before it was converted to a structure housing Guangming Jt SjJ Monastery. One of the objects was a set of two bodhisattvas mounted on a stand, with an inscription naming Xun as the owner; it purportedly read: "Made for Inspector of Palace Writers Xun Xu ... on the fifteenth day of the fifth month in the second year of the Taishi period (July 4, 266)."5 Remarkably, the year conforms to that in the above Jinshu passage. It makes the "outer story"

3 See Xun Xu's biography,fS 39, p. II53. "Drafter" could refer to Xun's responsibility to compile "diaries of activity and repose"; Beitang shuchao ~tllt~Fg;y (n. p.: Nanhai kongshi sanshi you san wan quan tang edn., 1888) 57, p. 2a, cit. Wang Yin's "Jinshu," claims that Xun was commissioned in this post to compile the benji of Sima Zhao (Wendi). 4 LiulBiannian 7, p. 60, claims Jia's exegetical project to adjust the legal code was initiated earlier, in 264, but we know that it was not completed until about 268. List I (part 2) indicates that Xun Yi was producing compilations on both ritual and administrative code (see especially "Jin xinli" and "Jin zayi"). 5 Luoyang qielan ji (SBBY edn.) I, pp. 9b-IOa; trans. Wang Yi-t'ung, A Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Lo- Yang, by Yang Hsuan-chih (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1984), pp. 55-56; the 6th-c. plan of Luoyang is Wang's map I, p. 14. Standard chrono-

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about Xun's mansion and artworks indeed quite believable: one wonders if the statue and colophon were dedicated to the day on which he achieved his career milestone. Stories like this grew up in the following centuries. Shishuo xinyu, juan 21 ("Skill and Art"), says that Xun Xu was a collector of valuable artifacts, a type of material pleasure that complements the story of the statue. We learn about a personal struggle between two haughty families: an extremely valuable sword of Xun Xu was illegitimately obtained by his in-law uncle Zhong Hui. In order to avenge himself of the loss sustained by such a trick, Xun, " ... who was a very skillful painter, went in secretly (to the nearly finished Zhong mansion, which was not yet occupied) and painted the walls of the Zhongs' gatehouse with a portrait of their late father, Zhong You, his clothes, cap, and features just as they were while he was alive." The portrait affected the Zhongs deeply, especially because of its accuracy. 6 We would be right to suspect the high drama given in a story about revenge by portraiture. But aside from legend and fiction, as with many anecdotes we are helped by the numerous documentary kernels of truth. It seems that Xun Xu was in fact an appreciable, maybe excellent, craft-painter. The Tang-era history of painting and portraiture Lidai minghua ji Hl1~~ :&i1c. corroborates it. We read a remark on Xun's renown and his place among the few greats of Jin times, and his inhabiting the topmost category of skill, or ®. Quoting a Qidynasty text, it says of Xun and another top-category painter, Zhang Mo*~: Their attitude and style were of utmost excellence and participated with the gods. [As artists] they only selected essence and living spirit, leaving behind the [mere] skeletal outlines. If we are restricted to [the way they] gave shapes to things, then [their] fine essences are not visible. But if we choose from outside the realm of imagined shapes, then [we see that they] had become disinterested in lavishness. This can be called subtle logical tables would disagree with the translation "June 24"; thus I correct to "July 4." The same story, condensed (perhaps quoting another tradition), appears in Fozu tongji {VllfIHf~j,lc (13th c.) 36, and in other florilegia. Wang, ibid., pp. xiii-xv, notes that Luoyang qielan ji was occasionally used as a source by such compilers as Yan Kejun Ilt~liJM], and frequently archeologists and art historians rely on it. Certain aspects of the Xun Xu anecdote we might reject, e.g., the holy lights and the statue's coming to life. (Alexander Soper, Literary Evidence for Early Buddhist Art in China [Ascona: Artibus Asiae, 1959], p. 7, rejects the truth of the anecdote entirely, but for reasons I find not too convincing.) (, SSHYIMather, p. 365. On Xun-Zhong relations, see Howard L. Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths, IOo-300 AD: The Tung-kuan, Taoist Dissenters, and Technical Skills," AM 18.1 (2005), pp. 151-53.

AESTHETICS AND PRECISION IN SONGS

excellence. H~ *,U *~~.

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125

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Lidai minghua ji mentions two of Xun Xu's disciples, but we cannot trace them historically, although one of them is said to have made a portrait of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove;8 it also mentions that Xun painted pictures of "Exemplary Women 37U -J;:. ," a well-worked genre of moral tales, hagiography, and pictorial art that was popular throughout the Eastern Han, and apparently into Jin times. 9 Statues, portraiture, swords, and mansions: these become meaningful in our study of a Jin scholar, especially since Xun now, during the turn in his career, began to consult with technicians and artisans. One assumes that high officials' rewards and other access to wealth increased under Sima rule. But Xun's art and collecting were not only about ostentation. With hindsight we can see that he was developing a deep level of skill in materials and design that would help him in the reform of ritual devices and programs. It was the kind of intellectual pursuit that had flourished in late-Eastern Han, when antiquarianism and arts formed a new type of polymathy, as seen in a number of Dongguan court scholars from about 100-190.

*H

A

COTERIE OF LYRIC-WRITERS FOR COURT MUSIC

In about 269-270, after several years spent in the law committee, Xun Xu was moved to court music, but only unofficially. His post remained 7 Zhang Yanyuan ~l~)~Jlli, Lidai ming hua ji (SKQS edn.) 5, pp. Ib-2a, quoting Xie He's f~i#JJ; "Gu hua pinlu" i,'IUo'd0R; cf. William R. B. Acker, trans. and annot., Some T'ang and Pre- T'ang Texts on Chinese Painting (Leiden: E.]. Brill, 1954-74)' vol. 2, pp. 28-30. Acker is correct I believe to suggest that "skeletal outlines" concerns the technique of "bone configuration" in painting, not calligraphic line. I will not attempt to rationalize the differences between Acker's and my translation, mainly because of variations in our different source editions. 8 Lidai ming hua ji 2, p. la, names the students: Wang Wei ].:11.::\[ and Shi Daoshi 5t also Acker, T'ang and Pre- T'ang Texts, vol. 2, pp. 82-83. On Shi's pictures of Xi Kang et al., see Audrey Spiro, Contemplating the Ancients: Aesthetic and Social Isuues in Early Chinese Portraiture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 66. 9 Xun's paintings were versions of Exemplary Women: "Da lienii tu" *3it9:-1i~1I and "Xiao /J\ lienii tu"; see Pan Tianshou 7f1l::J(~, Zhongguo huihua shi '=lqDgI~It51: (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1936), p. 29. Acker, Some Tang and Pre-Tang Texts, vol. 2, p. 38, and n. 9 on p. 30, discusses why Xun's paintings were called "large" and "smalL" and suggests that Exemplary Women stories expanded in Eastern Han, and their illustrated, captioned versions were these "large versions." List 1, part 1, shows a Xun Xu work titled (in Jiu Tangshu r~'f)f1fin "Jiang Xiaojing jijie" 111\J2bt*,!ll.~ff!i('; this could have been a narrative to accompany his filial portraits. Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, Artisans in Early Im-

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within the Palace Writers office; and there is no record of his moving over to, or receiving an ad hoc appointment from, the music bureau. Getting called into musicological work probably was influenced by the fact that his elder Xun Yi received a commission at the same time to "correct the music" for the two ballets "Zhengde " and "Dayu f~."lO Based on the language used by Jinshu in recording this very datum (namely, Xun Yi "corrected the music," not the lyrics) and because Shen Yue's 1jc~ (441-513) "Treatise on Music" in Songshu (completed a bit after 500), our best and earliest source for Wei-Jin court music, does not mention Yi concerning any lyrics whatsoever, we can reasonably deduce that Yi's expertise concerned performative aspects like tuning and ensemble work. This occurred in something like the last twelve or eighteen months of Yi's life. He may have been physically or mentally weakened, because in 273 Xun Xu would be ordered to take over both ballets as well as the orchestra: ii

*

In 273, Xun Xu followed [music] codifications and took charge of the musical presentations )V-;I~, JlJ)J~~U"~II~~~I:. He had Guo Qiong *15 l~, Song Shi /I(iiit and others, make the ballets ;Qi~* "ZhengdeilJ!~" ("Just Potency") and "Dayu ~A:J%(' ("[The Era of] Great Contentment"), yet Xun Xu, Fu Xuan {JJ]:g" (217-278) and Zhang Hua (232-300) in addition each made chants and poems for (or, "on") these ballets7r itt Jlt ~Jn ~lr ij,~: .

It would seem that Xun Yi, possibly the Jin court's first expert in tuning and performance, in his last months of life imparted the relevant arts to his younger cousin simply to ensure completion of the job, and the two specific musical numbers that Yi was working on came under Xu's supervision. The later music commission in 273 thus would not happen randomly. Xun Xu's commission to look into lyrics in 269 came from the Masters of Writing; we read about it once again in Shen's Songshu treatise: In 269/70, the office of the Masters of Writing memorialized, [instructing] that Grand Tutor Fu Xuan, Inspector of Palace Writers Xun Xu, and Gentleman of the Yellow Gate Zhang Hua each create chants and po-

perial China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), pp. 163-66, discusses the pictorial element of the genre called "paintings of exemplars," arguing that in Western Han Liu Xiang (79-8 BC) clearly intended that portraits accompany his "moral handbook" of "Exemplary Women." 10 IS 39, p. 1151. SgS was no doubt utilized to write the IS passage (see following n.). II SgS 19 ("Yue" A), p. 539. Here is another example of distinguishing between making ballets and writing lyrics.

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ems for use at New Year Morning [events] IF. the Clustered Officials' Processional Rites and the music at Drinking and Dining for Princes' and Dukes' Birthday Salutations of Longevity ]~ 01~ 'fj!,np=y n2,iJ ~~. An edict also directed Gentleman of Palace Writers Chenggong Sui )JX;0t.~ (231-73) to create [such lyrics] as well. 12

The rest of the passage contains evidence concerning Xun Xu's Zhou fundamentalist reforms, but it will be taken up only later in this chapter. First, I set out information that will allow us to appreciate the court musicological background of the Jin's ordering new lyrics in 269-70.

Higher and Lower Music; Court Music and Party Music First of all, what kinds of lyric were requested? Officialdom's New Year's Day was in particular known for the intensity of celebration as far back as Qin and Han times. It was one of several New Year festivities in early China; others were oriented, for example, to the bureaucratic record-keeping New Year, and there was the common people's "La" New Year. The court celebration was based on the civil calendar and involved an exact ringing-in of that special moment, sometime in our Western late-January or February, by means of the clepsydra, with carefully staged audiences of hundreds and thousands of officials, and with greetings and presentations for the high ministers and nobles. The emperor was hailed, and there were round after round of ritual toasts and tastings. In all of this, music was crucial. 13 Several lines from Zhang Heng's 5&1!tr (78-139) "Eastern Metropolis Rhapsody," written in the early IOOS AD, pertain to the Eastern Han court's New Year festivities in Luoyang. They show a keen sense of the overall aesthetic-grand stagings, using the most solemn and large of all the orchestral sounds: As the nine guests enter one after another, The herald assigns them to their places, The notched bell-frames are assembled; The bells and drums are set up. The General of the Gentlemen guards the stairway; The tiger-guards stand with halberds crossed. Dragon-chargers and carriages fill the court; Cloud-banners brush the rainbows. 12 SgS 19 ("Yue" A), p. 539. For both Songshu extracts here, see Howard L. Goodman, "A History of Court Lyrics in China during Wei-Chin Times," AM 19.1-2 (2006)," pp. 91 and 89, respectively. 13 See Derk Bodde, Festivals in Classical China: New Year and Other Annual Observances during the Han Dynasty, 206 Be-AD 220 (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1975), p. 140; Bodde translates a portion of Hou Hanshu's "Treatise on Rites (Lizhi)."

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On the triple dawn of the Xia Annuary, With courtyard torches blazing brightly, They strike the great bell, Beat the divine drum. The noise reverberates in all directions, Clattering and clanging, rumbling and rattling, Like speeding lightning, rolling thunder, Or a violent wind blowing up a storm. 14

Zhang Heng's scenario of over a century earlier is prescient for the third century. We should retain the picture of overpowering spectacle as we examine the ballet lyrics by Xun Xu and his peers, below. Another context for the Jin court's new lyrics concerns the historiographic sources for and the history of court musicology before 269. I have gone into Shen Yue's "Treatise on Music" on another occasion and showed something of its history, sources, and unusual aspects of editing. 15 It serves as our only solid and detailed source for understanding Jin court music. Xun's Jinshu biography is of no use in this regard, stating only the following: "It was both his management of musical services and correcting of the pitch-regulators that were widely put into practice in his time."16 As discussed in Chapter Two, the Tang Jinshu biographical compilers preferred to leave technical data to their colleagues who were in charge of treatises. But even in Jinshu's "Treatise on Music" (whose author we do not know), often portions of material lifted from Shen Yue became pared down, adding nothing to parallel passages in Li Chunfeng's Suishu and Jinshu treatises on "Harmonic Systems." Shen Yue's "Treatise on Music" provides a pastiche synopsis of the history of court music from its earliest times, with names and quoted ideas of music scholars and technicians. For Jin times, he goes from a simple mention of the 269 lyric committee to a musicological rift involving Xun Xu and Zhang Hua over prosody and line-length. When we eventually arrive at it, later, we see that Xun, Zhang, and Fu engaged in what amounted to a court competition to provide the new chants and poems for the Jin dance spectacles. A salient feature of China's court music and elite music from about 170 to 300 AD is the strong interest of scholars, music artisans, and scholar-artisans in a certain musical breakthrough that to some exTrans. David R. Knechtges, in j;17X I, p. 265. Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics," pp. 65-66. I6J5 39, p. II53.

14 IS

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tent we may place under the rubric of "yuefu entertainment music." From evidences in literary writing starting in the mid-second century, it seems that urbane, professional entertainments gained favor in the highest circles of court advisers, at military lodges and camps, and in both palace and non-royal residences. Under Cao Cao 111* (155-220) and his sons and retainers, this boomed in the 1905 and 200S, and in the Southern Dynasties the associated lyrics achieved a classicist spin, as scholars compiled and made this effervescent music of the recent past into a "classical" past. The loose category name they chose for the lyric texts, "yuefu ~Jff ," pointed simultaneously to a court function (the actual name of a Western Han music office) and the imperialist ethnographic ideal about gathering knowledge of the farflung common people. In the process, scholars brought sophistication and new categories to transcriptions of popular song lyrics and descriptions of performances. Genre names that matured in later periods, for instance "xianghe f§7¥Q" (ensemble music), give us clues about performance.!7 The sheer novelty of it all was part of the appeal, and it inspired explorations into the emotions of frustration, nostalgia, escape, and bitterness, as well as sensuality. Much of the new music appealed because of foreignness (southern and western musics were extremely popular), and also because of the de-linking from staid traditions of court ritual music, with its lugubrious bells and complex systems that required specialists. Of course, for us the distinctions between yuefu music and court high-music are not pat ones, nor are they often given analysis.!8 For example, it was not immediately apparent to scholar-musicians or to scholars who professed expertise in music whether a new or revised set of songs and their instrumentation for a court "side-room" might represent an intrusion of party music or simply a more ornate version of a high-music piece. (Once again, I use "high-music" broadly to point not simply to what was termedyayue ~~, but to the numerous ideas and debates over exactly which of the court ritual pieces should be kept solemn and undecorated and which, by their venues and ritual contexts, might be liable to decoration and "lighter" treatment.) If the former, was it "Zheng," that is, corrupt, music? If so, then how should 17 This is explored in Howard L. Goodman, "Tintinnabulations of Bells: ScoringProsody in Third-Century China and Its Relationship to Yueh-fu Party Music," JAOS 126.1 (2006). 18 But see Zheng Zuxiang ~~Ilfll:@, "Xunshi lu kao" l~UK@5t;lJ', Yuefu xue tJ;~}H&f1' I (2006), pp. 21-22.

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the lyrics and instrumentation be retooled to reflect imperial grandeur? Could that be solved by renaming the old ritual lyrics? And why were some scholars even suggesting that "music of Zheng" was not all that bad but perhaps even "exquisite"?19 Another question to ask is to what extent did the yuefu breakthrough affect performance characteristics? Through centuries of Korean and Japanese court-music preservation, we know vaguely what Tang-era court music was like, and we have performance tablatures for qin ~ music that date back as far as the seventh century. But concerning the movements, sights, rhythms, and harmonies of pre-Tang yuefu party music-the new soiree and court entertainments-we can only guess. As music experts, Xun Xu and his colleagues lived exactly in that evolutionary, in some ways revolutionary, time; and their work for the Jin court was meant to answer some of these questions. Shen's history of music showed that a chief task of courts was a literary and even philosophical one. Scholars needed to address a conservative aspect of high-music, which was the linguistic reasoning behind periodic renaming of the associated lyrics and dance-programs. Renaming was important for reasons internal to the Chinese dynastic system: the fall of a dynasty did not necessarily call for, or come on the heels of, a cultural upheaval. New courts did not always desire simply to invert what had come before in the ritual order.20 Another aspect is that bureaucrats of a new dynasty felt pressure to get things done in a timely fashion. It was not politic to delay setting up the new ritual disposition. That is why the Wei court became agitated about undone musical chores beginning around 235-37, after Mingdi ~ W (Cao Rui ~m; 206-239; r. 227-239) was on the throne for nearly ten years-far too long for such delay. A debate started that would last for at least two or three years, and there is some evidence that it went on until 240 or so. The debaters agreed that a good start had been made by renaming items in order to suit Cao Cao's spirit: his musical tribute was called "Martial Beginning," something that took its chief elements from the Han. Then advisers became bogged down with nominal problems surrounding the current emperor's (Mingdi's) musical system, and the result was a proposal that names should now reflect a smoothing out and an indusiveness-"elegant and martial" and "grand equalization." In 19 Xi Kang commented thus; see Robert G. Henricks, Philosophy and Argumentation in Third-Century China: The Essays of Hsi K'ang (Princeton: Princeton U. P.,

19 83), p. 10 5. 20 See Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics," pp. 67-68 .

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Chapter Two, I already discussed what was apparently the product of these discussions in the specific case of the phrase "Zhengshi, or Correct Beginning j£~~ ."21 At the end of Wei Mingdi's reign, and most likely also just after his death, discussions touched on venues and instrumentation, including the role of the palace women and their temples, and the role of the bell-chimes in the most solemn ritual sites. The senior adviser Wang Su (195-256) seems (at least through Shen Yue's Songshu editing) to have had the final word. His concerns were that the high-music, which involved the ancestral temples and their installed bell-chimes, be complete and authentic-nothing deleted; but at the same time it should not be overly ornate, this being perhaps a reference to the brash and sophisticated seven-note scale. He did, however, advise the inclusion of feasting music as part of high-music since it had classical precedents; he also emphasized the important role of classically attested foreign musics for political reasons. Wang Su, himself a writer of court lyrics, appears conservative about musical proprieties (proper bells for proper imperial temples) but at the same time favored variety, which could invite yuefu music in. In the end, the discussions under Mingdi must remain to a large extent mere verbiage: no evidence survives that indicates that his court actuated the reforms. Shen's narrative implies that a hiatus occurred at this point: nothing rose to his notice concerning high-music (nor even the lighter high-music) at Wei courts until the fall of that dynasty. In fact, Wang Su and the old-guard advisers did not fare well under Cao Shuang in the late 240s: many, including Wang, retreated or were sent out of inner-court circles; then the Cao circle were executed in 249. Wang Su died in 256 without any sons of a scholarly enough bent to carry forward his deep concerns for court propriety, with a full remounting of music. But, of course, another reason for a lull in court music was that it was under Mingdi's reign that the burgeoning yuefu and soiree music was attaining a role at court. In short, much of the action was elsewhere, as discussed next. Aside from nominalist, classicist concerns about names and proper venues and roles for the ancient bells, various kinds of party music were keeping up a strong beat. Snippets of evidence show that private soirees and royal music had thrived and received tremendous impe21 Ibid., p. 82, n. 67, where the problem of denoting the critical year 240 is discussed.

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tus from Cao Cao's offspring emperors and their acquaintances and artisan guests. In the early 220S, the first Wei Emperor Cao Pi (187-226; r. Wendi X$, 220-226), downgraded the old Eastern Han bell-master and ensemble leader who had served his father Cao Cao, and Pi promoted party music in royal venues and the talented artisan musicians who supplied it. Cao Pi's writings provide many examples of his own thoughts about musical aesthetics and entertainments. His son, the Emperor Ming, just discussed, is known to have encouraged specific groups of musicians and promoted soirees for his entourage in palace venues and in lodges where he spent nights, perhaps purely for fun, or for imperial business, such as to inaugurate military campaigns. This overall picture comes from various remarks scattered in Shen Vue's work. 22 We also come to understand how court scholars may have thought about musical registers and venues, distinguishing the high from the low (or, light). The Eastern Han court had constantly modified, blended, and split feasting songs; some were called tunes !±8 and some classical verse ~~. In addition, the Han music offices had possessed thirteen tunes !±8, which were reused over the decades: "[Music scholars] of the Wei house and the Jin-era Xun Xu and Fu Xuan all made chants and lyric pieces iff [based on those thirteen] ."23 The Wei had also established a repertoire of four songs, but there was disagreement about which of those were of high-register solemnity. A curiously pasted passage, one that seems to be the words of a Weiera court musicologist who had revamped three of those four highmusic pieces, reads: There had been the Grand Convocations at Lunar New Year's day, the Grand Commandant's Presentation of the Jade Disk, and the Clustered Officials' Processional Rites 1j"f~, which were [works of] the gentleman-composers fr:l'I" of the Eastern Chamber high-music. [But] today (assuming this is the voice of the Wei scholar) we term these the musical performances for the Processional Rites tunes 1111, and they are performed in the Guxian Chamber ~i'i1Ydl'i (a palace side-room with a chime-set based on the guxian pitch-standard). Because [the tune] "Luming" )tgl~l~~ was originally in the spirit of banquet music, it is not proper for court sacrifices. This was an error of earlier times. 24

22

For these points, see Goodman, "Tintinnabulations," pp. 34-35.

23SgS 19 ("Yue" A), p. 539; trans. Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics," pp. 87-88, but here revised. 24SgS 19 ("Yue" A), p. 539; trans. Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics," p. 88, here revised.

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The pressure from popular music can be felt here, as scholars dealt with categorizing handed-down songs and lyrics as lighter high-music, and assigning them appropriate ritual venues. Shen Yue aligned his documents in this part of his treatise specifically so as to narrate a history of music and lyrics. Thus, we picture the Jin as a time when the boundaries between light and high were weakening, and certain older music spectacles had shifted venues, especially during Wei. "Luming" ("Cry of the Deer") was one example of a piece that was moved from a sacrificial to a side-room venue. Shen Yue's exposition finally delivers us to the beginning point of Western Jin musical developments. He switches the terms of discussion from court "chants ~" to court "tunes B±I" and "lyric pieces r,ij¥," focusing on how the lighter court music was given proper venues and instrumentation (rooms where specific festivities occurred, or where pitch-standard tunings were dictated by the smaller, military style bellchimes). Proper venues were in fact a widely perceived matter of form and etiquette. From a source other than Shen's we learn that around 275 a scholar-official (someone who in fact was indirectly connected to Xun Xu's extended family) spied an ensemble group trying to enter the Jin heir-apparent's palaces. Sensitive to potential disrespect, he stopped them outside the gate. He then reprimanded those who were supposed to be responsible guides of the heir-apparent, but the emperor (Wudi) eventually pardoned them all; and later the musicians could enter the palaces. 25 It was not easy to stop popular music.

A

LYRIC-WRITING COMPETITION

We come now to Shen Yue's narrative of Western Jin's reform of court ritual lyrics. Earlier, I quoted a passage of his "Treatise on Music" that mentioned Xun Xu and several colleagues' having received commission in 269/70 to make new chants and verses for feasting and other non-solemn music. Now we continue that passage. Zhang Hua memorialized: "The poems for salutations [to the emperor] and feasting during Wei and the [poems] that the Han house placed broadly into use had versetexts of uneven lengths; not all of them matched up with ancient [songs]. In general, however, one follows (or, "Han-Wei musicians followed") the

25

SeeJS 45, p.

1272,

biography ofLiu Yi ~U~~: "J;Lkf'IW, !5xliJI:jl~-AJldlH"], ~J~~/1;;iljt fJWf.1',j,A." On Liu, see chap. 2, n. 15.

JI:zJ}~I"J7'I" 0~0J1~Hr)JWl. m{~;1I:Z,

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cadences (the performance stop-start points) of vocalizers and stringplayers. The original gives us something to follow and conform to, such that our performance masters and pitch experts can make music. [It is suggested now that] we make regulated songs as [new] models to be used; all in all, it is not something that [we] shallow [moderns] can change. We have come through two dynasties (the Han and the Wei) and three capitals (that is, the three courts set up by Cao Cao: in Xu in and Ye ~m~, and after about 220 in Luoyang); we have succeeded upon them and these things have not changed. Although the poems and stanzas are worded in different ways now, and things come and go in their season, when it comes to the interplay of rhyme and song-pauses, these are all bound to the old [way]; and this has its reasons. Therefore, in each and every case [the lyrics] should stem from the extant products. We dare not change [things]." Xun Xu then said "In Wei times, the [court] chants and poems were of two-, three-, four-, and five-word [lines]; they were not of a category with ancient poetryiLI·,'i~Y." [Xun] inquired of the [Wei-dynasty] General of Gentlemen of Household's Director of Pitch-Standards HHElt Chen Qi (or Hang) Il!;I~frfJ (JYJiI),26 who said: "[The performances formerly were] covered by the bell and sounding-stone [accompaniments], and it was not necessary that they all matched." Therefore, Xun Xu composed Jin chants, and all were four-word [lines]. Only the poem for the salutations [to the emperor] made by the princes and dukes was composed in threeand five-word [lines]. With this, thus Zhang Hua and Xun Xu clearly understood that they had different interpretations. 27 Zhang Hua's assumption was that the original Han-Wei songs comprised the strongest examples of their type, and that they should act as models. Zhang was against making changes, even if some others might be objecting that their irregular lengths were a problem. Zhang furthermore seems not to have been interested in taking the Wei court (notionally the "bad last" dynasty) to task. He knew his history and was an antiquarian and textual compiler. 28 In some respects, he may have been merely exhibiting a curator's sense of preservation and a historian's wish to retain what had come before, with contents relating to the tribulations of dynasties that had to move through three capital cities. Xun Xu was one of those who Zhang Hua implied had considered Wei-era irregular lines a problem and wanted "regulated songs as [new]

26 For the identification of Chen as a Wei musician, see Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics," p. 91. 27 SgS 19 ("Yue" A), p. 539; see trans. Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics," pp. 8891, here revised. 28 See his biography, IS 36, pp. 10 74-75.

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models." Zhang's memorial was in part a rebuttal. To answer Zhang, Xun took up the entire matter of irregular lines as an antiquarian matter, just as Zhang had done. Suggesting that he agrees with Zhang that the ancient forms are the purest of ideals, he proceeds to apply a musical and aesthetic test in order to see if the Han and Wei court lyrics were "listenable." He interviewed an external party, an older music artisan who was able to verifY actual Wei practices. This person was a former music official under Wei named Chen Qi. Chen's logic runs like this: "No, in Wei it did not work; the music was ruined by the not easily controlled bells, and so line-lengths did not even matter." We might say that Xun's view hinged on the concrete, that is, upon performance values. In his mind, ensemble and tonality had been ruined during Wei, and everything, including line-lengths, ought to be corrected. Shen's narration implies that Xun won the day, thereafter showing lyricists how to return to the formulations of antiquity, that is, the four-syllable lines, something akin to the ancient poems (gushi iI~:iJ) of the Classic of Poetry itself. There is even a Wei-Jin political context here, since Xun's move erased the Han and Wei-the opposite stance of Zhang Hua, who trusted Han-Wei predecessors. Aspects of musical aesthetics are woven into all this. Chen Qi may have indicated that Wei performers had never cared about, or had been unaware or unprepared for, problems of instrumentation. Bell and stone chimes by nature were undamped, fixed in pitch, and the larger bells were relatively noisy; they could intrude on unregulated lyrics-at least those not made to comport exactly with the music's tempo and divisions. Does this mean that Xun himself was learning about tricks of music scoring-that some instruments and their melodic speed and natural phrasings could drown out rhythmically weak lyrics? And did he gain this knowledge in part through Chen? We may speculate "yes" on both counts. 29 What is clear, though, is that Xun Xu was by this time becoming critical of Wei musicology, its very correctness, and was deciding how to revamp it and thereby give Jin music a truly "correct beginning." A tension in values about literary genres emerges: modernist (Zhang) versus fundamentalist (Xun). But this is not a simple paradigm, for we can also say that it was caution versus activism, and in terms of actual didactic history it can be seen as ethical and ameliorative (Zhang's position) versus technical and callous (Xun's). Xun, like 29

Goodman, "Tintinnabulations," p. 32 .

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Zhang, valued Zhou antiquity, but he wanted to drill directly back to it via techniques that he was just then beginning to marshal in order to effect Zhou-like precision. Xun Xu and Zhang Hua, along with Fu and Chenggong, did in fact compose a large number of song lyrics for the Jin court, a substantial portion of which was saved through Shen Yue's archival work and by later compilers. Toward the end of this chapter, we see that, as Xun had proposed, his lyrics were frequently framed in even, four-word lines. 3D Prior to that, however, we ought to look closely at who Zhang and the others were. Where did they stand politically, and factionally, in Luoyang?

The Song- Writers as Political Actors Of Xun Xu's several music associates, it was Zhang Hua (whom we met in Chapter Two) who interacted with Xun most of all in factional politics. Zhang is described as coming from a poor family and orphaned early; the sources indicate that no one in his extended family had received noble title during Wei. While still young, Zhang showed great literary talent, studying among other things tuwei *¥ ("charts and weft-texts"), astrology, and fengshui. He was one of the new style of polymath, possessing even a talent for spatial and mechanical arrays, and was known to have memorized the plan of all the Luoyang palace gates and could sketch them and discuss them on demand, in great detail. 31 His youthful literary creation "Fu on the Wren" i~~~ Pit (written around 254) is said to have been highly praised by Ruan Ji,32 and the Ruan connection facilitated Zhang's appointment as Erudit in the office of Grand Master of Ceremonies in 255. Subsequently, he was made Gentleman of the Palace Writers, Chief Clerk, and Imperial Secretary. Upon the founding of the Jin dynasty in 266 he was made

The lyrics are found in SgS 20 ("Yue" B), pp. 583-90; YFSj 13 (section "Yanshe geci HWLC 38, pp. I3b-I9a. 31 His biography injS 36, pp. 1068-77, trans. (except his "Rhapsody on the Wren") in Anna Straughair, Chang Hua: A Statesman-Poet of the Western Chin Dynasty, Occasional Paper 15 (Canberra: Australian National University, Faculty of Asian Studies, 1973); see pp. 25-28, for summary of his early life and talents. 32 The text is in HWLC 40, pp. Ia-2a; Straughair, Chang Hua, p. 27, finds it difficult to believe that Ruan would praise anyone for aspiring to high office. But Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics: The Life and Works ofjuan Chi A.D. 2IO-263 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1976), pp. 260-61, n. 44, shows that despite critics who disbelieved the encounter, there was a strong connection between the families, allowing us to accept the anecdote. 30

;j!!~~;J·HJXil4,(:" part I); and

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Gentleman of the Yellow Gate, and ennobled as guannei hou. By 271, he was Prefect of the Palace Writers, a post that placed him into a peer relationship with Xun Xu, whose post, Inspector, was often considered parallel with that of Prefect. 33 Zhang's first court exegetical role was, along with Xun Xu, in projects supervised by Jia Chong. It was a relatively unstressful time at court-before the machinations of the Jia-Xun faction took hold. Zhang right away offered a controversial proposal; he wanted the court to make known the categories of capital crime by posting them throughout the empire. According to Michael Farmer, the proposal indicates that Zhang was beginning his career with friction against the incipient Jia faction. 34 Zhang and Jia from this point forward would become enemies over the Wu War; in 280, while that war was not going well, Xun Xu and Jia would memorialize to have Zhang executed by cutting him in half!3s Zhang thus remained a deep factional enemy of Xun Xu, who, as recounted in Chapter Two, in about 282 had him banished from Luoyang until 285.36 It is important, though, to keep in mind that here, early in the 270s, the full force of factionalism was not yet in play. Zhang started out in favor of the family of Wudi's Empress Yang and urged that she be allowed to live as a retired empress (but ultimately she would be murdered). After about mid-291 Zhang became pro-Jia Nanfeng. He was allowed to handle many governmental matters under the increasingly cruel reign of Nanfeng, but in May, 300, the latter's plots faltered, and Sima Lun PJ J~1~ (d. 301) deposed the whole Jia regime, killing her and Zhang Hua, along with many others including literary leaders. Factional disputes were not only matters of petty pride and bitterness over bureaucratic maneuvers or imperial favor, but could be bloody campaigns of extermination, each side believing that its own notion of how the Sima house should stay in power was the only correct one. The rift between Zhang Hua and Xun Xu in 269-70 over a specialized matter of court lyric seems small compared

33 This hierarchical problem was important and caused stress between Xun Xu and both Zhang and He Qiao; see chap. 4, sect. "Problems in the Bureaucratic Structure of the Palace Writers Office." 34 JS 30, p. 931. See Farmer, "On the Composition of Zhang Hua's 'Niishi zhen,'" Early Medieval China IO-1I.I (2004), pp. 164. 35 JS 36, p. I070; 40, p. n69. 36JS 36,P' I070. See Farmer, "Composition of Zhang Hua's 'Niishi zhen,'" pp. 164-65.

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to the later ruptures. Add to this a certain bitterness that we might speculate derived from jealousy and status differences. Like Zhang Hua's family, Fu Xuan's (from Beidi ~tJtlL, in the Gansu-Shensi area) were not among the Eastern Han metropolitan elite, but there is evidence that some Fus of Beidi had garnered noble titles during Wei. Fu was a well-regarded generalist scholar, yet also an expert in music and the design of instruments. 37 He also made a mark as policy adviser in the 250S, with ideas based in certain kinds of systematic analysis, such as proposals to calculate ratios of non-agricultural versus agricultural portions of the population and to create a categorized census for developing percentiles in taxing agriculture. 38 In addition, he was a historiographer-one of several who were drafting Wei histories. Being slightly older than Xun and Zhang (perhaps further along in his career track), in 266 Fu Xuan was made Chief Commandant of Attendant Cavalry, later Palace Attendant, and Palace Assistant Secretary. Later, by 269, his appointments were becoming high in status: Grand Coachman and Grand Tutor, then in 270 Colonel Director of Retainers. He was cashiered in 278 for becoming angry about a lack of respect displayed to him during mourning rites for the Empress-dowager Xian and he died that year. He had never fallen out or come to an intellectual impasse with Xun Xu, as Zhang did. Another person mentioned in the 269-70 document, above, was Chenggong Sui. He was a native of Dong commandery, about 150-200 kilometers northeast of Yingchuan; there is no record of any Chenggong having received noble rank. Chenggong was well-known in his own day as a scholar and a poet,39 and had also been appointed

'x

*

See Yang Yinliu ~rl~jlfj~, Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigang r:1'1i1\\11'1·1-VI~··~!£;fr.1j (Beijing: Renmin yinyue chubanshe, 1980), pp. 130-31, where Fu's preface to "Fu on the Pipa" is discussed for its accurate descriptions of the old-style Han pipa. See also, L. E. R. Picken, "The Origin of the Short Lute," The Galpin Society journal 8 (1955); and Kishibe Shigeru J~':J~)]'!zh;{i!, "Biwa no engen" f~i1l:0)1)j:11JJi(' in Taya ongaku gakkai, eds., Todai no gakki )m1-~O)f!;~r,N: (Tokyo, 1979), pp. 120-21. The section on music in Fu's poorly transmitted Fuzi contains virtually nothing on music qua music, only generalities; see Jordan D. Paper, The Fu-tzu: A Post-Han Confucian Text, Monographies du T'oung Pao 13 (Leiden: Brill, I9 87), pp. 58-59. 38 Biography injS 47, pp. I317-32; trans. in full, Paper, Fu-tzu; see esp. pp. 74-80, for early life and these memorials. All rhapsodies, poems, and memorials, are in HWLC 39. 39 Biography jS 92, pp. 237I-75; see the biography given in WX 3, pp. 374-75. Chenggong was widely respected for poetry, and many works were preserved; see HWLC 52, and analysis of his surving wenji in Howard L. Goodman, "Chenggong Sui wenji," in Albert Dien et al., eds., Six Dynasties Sourcebook (working title), forthcoming.

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along with Xun Xu to assist Jia Chong's committee to revamp the law codes in 264-65.40 It would seem that several in Jia's law group were also musical scholars, especially lyric and fu ~~ writers (below, more is said of Ying Zhen and Pei Xiu). Chenggong became a protege of Zhang Hua, who had recommended him for Grand Master of Ceremonies in 255, even though they were nearly the same age and both quite young. Chenggong did not receive that post, only the status of Erudit. 4! But he eventually rose to positions as Gentleman in the Imperial Library and Gentleman Palace Writer. Chenggong Sui " ... appreciated (or, was good at) the musical pitchstandards ~f ~ 1~" and knew quite a bit about music instruments, having written rhapsodies on both the pipa and qin. His most famous fu piece, "Rhapsody on Whistling" 1111lU~, concerns an art that caught the imaginations of a number of early musicologists and eremitic types, like the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. It indicates that the author, like many specialists in lyric and music, had a basic knowledge of the technical matters of the pentatonic scale and the relationship of "notes" to the "pitch-standards." But toward the end of the rhapsody comes a far more interesting aspect: "Emit the zhi note, and at the peak of winter it becomes hot and humid; / Release the yu note, and severe frost withers things in summer; / ... The tones and harmonies are not constant, / The tunes have no fixed measure."42 This sentiment derides the positivist value of measuring and computing. Not surprisingly, many of Chenggong's literary notions and inspirations were lyrically eremitic and daoistic. 43 His view about the pointlessness 40

IS 92, p.

2375.

LiulBiannian 7, pp. 61-62, probably errs in the chronology of Chenggong's life; it quotes (cit. TPYL 632) a missive of Zhang Hua recommending Chenggong, referring to Chenggong's age, appearance and character. LiulBiannian dates it to 265, but the 41

letter says that Chenggong " ... is 25 [i.e., 24] and his cognomen is Zian, ... etc." Thus, it must have been 255, as W'X 3, p. 374, states as well. 42 Trans. David R. Knechtges, in W'X 3, p. 323; see also the trans. of Douglass A. White, in Victor Mair, ed., The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (N.Y.C.: Columbia U. P., 1994), pp. 429-34. 43 See E. D. Edwards, "'Principles of Whistling': Xiao zhi Anonymous," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 20.1-3 (1957), pp. 217-29, on an eighthc. treatise; and Fan Ziye mTM~, "Lun xiao, juexiang de Zhongguo yayue" riifu1ml:t, #,@II!iU !~I~II:'ihl\13;(Ett;t Qiu shi xuekan 5JtiJl::&ji,+U 3 (1997), pp. 74-77. Holzman, Poetry and Politics, pp. 149-51, 187, noticed the connection between Ruan Ji's quietism and the mountainman whistler Sun Deng; also Howard Lazar Goodman, "Exegetes and Exegeses of the Book of Changes in the Third Century AD: Historical and Scholastic Contexts for Wang Pi," Ph.D. diss. (Princeton: Princeton University, 1985), pp. II2-I4, for mountain retreats and music affecting the Seven Sages who wrote on Yijing &H~t David

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of setting the pitches was exactly the opposite of Xun Xu's program to research, test, and measure them.

Competing Lyrics for the Dance-Song Performances Why did Shen Yue inform us that Xun, Zhang, and Fu each wrote his own lyrics for (or about) the "Zhengde lEii" and "Dayu *J~" musical performances? As mentioned, Shen's "Treatise on Music" in part was sketching a history of court music, and thus Shen wanted to illuminate musicological problems over time and to record seriatim the successes and failures of courts. Under this paradigm, he saw Jin courtiers as anxious to resolve the lapses and tensions that they had inherited. One tension, that expressed between Zhang and Xun, must be seen as not just ad hominem or factional. Xun the Zhou fundamentalist undoubtedly made waves. Zhang Hua probably was seen by many as a more talented literary figure. He and many writers of his type were becoming established as poets and thinkers. Given this, it is possible to suggest that competition was in the background. Perhaps alternative lyrics were the goal-to be presented for adjudication by the emperor. Following is my translation ofXun Xu's lyrics for "Zhengde" ("Just Potency"), a choreographed ritual spectacle. 44 Following it, I compare Xun's with selected lines of Zhang Hua's and Fu Xuan's versions. Xun Xu's consists of twelve couplets of four-word lines. Realizing that Xun R. Knechtges, W'X 3, p. 315, connects whistling to Daoist exercises. Chenggong also wrote a rhapsody on "the world" ("jdU!.JIIi\") that lauds naturalness, emptiness, etc.; see jS 9 2, pp. 2373-74. 44 From two places in Guoyu [DJ\[iflf, we can derive a definition of "zhengde." First, we read about the social contribution of the twelve fa pitch-standards: "They regulated (music) with three, balanced it with six, and perfected it with twelve .. ,. Six assumes the color of the middle; thus it is called huangzhong . ... It is the means by which to propagate and nourish the six vital breaths and nine virtues"; Guoyu ("Speeches of Zhou") (SBCK) 3, pp. 2a-b," trans. James Hart, "The Discussion of the Wuyi Bells in the Guoyu," Monumenta Serica 29 (1970-71), esp. p. 415. Wei Zhao's third-c. AD commentary, written shortly (perhaps ten years) before these Western Jin court lyrics, explained: "The six breaths (that is, energic forces) are yin, yang, wind, rain, dark, and light. The nine potentialities are the potentialities of the nine merits: water, fire, metal, wood, grains, just power, gainful use, and broad productivity." 7\*~: I~?, [Wi, J!l1L, Wi, lIi~, I~J ttJ.,. JL1#If;, JLJ]]:2-iffi,\: /K, 1<, iIi:, ;1(, :::1:, ~J[, JEt,£\, :fUJI], jlJi!:I::=.. (Note the varying contexts for )j'~t and iit£;: I believe the contrast is between the cosmological and meteorological versus the earthly and human.) Next, Guoyu 17 ("Speeches of Chu," shang) discusses "ming" (understanding, wisdom): I~] LL~ i#If; l.uAC~.'b!t Wei's commentary says: "Zhengde refers to being unself-minded about those things that are cherished I IJ";'\ , :jW/j~fL\J1Hff~." Thus, in 273 AD, "Zhengde" could be describing a ruler (Jin Wudi) who is powerful and rich, yet establishes a regime that is fair and helpful to the commonweal.

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and Zhang disagreed about how to resolve the irregular lyrics that had been handed down to them, we should look at Xun's version and how he handled line-length. As we see, working along with with the squareness of his tetrameter form are what appears ironically enough to be hidden irregular rhythms. Xun Xu's "Choreographed Chant for Jin's 'Just Potency"'45 lA

IB 2A

2B

Men's patterns unfurl as models; )\.)(IJiJW Flourishing potency "has [such] ampleness." {}~{J&\1f !{j:4() For our notes, we string out a chant, il\f ~ 1« itJ]c47 For our dance, we show [martial] deeds. ~JI~ ~~<.J)]48

3A "Shields and axes,"49 "brandished and t1ashing."=f· )i];x;?]iffJIPo

3B With the cadence, we sheng-pipe, we yong-ring. ~'i'j ~~f~m 45 SgS 20 ("Yue" B), p. 587; also YFSj 52 ("Wuqu geci" ~mIJlH)rX~n, which gives no important comments. 46 Shangshu (r'UfJt "Qin shi"; see Karlgren, "The Book of Documents," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 22 (1950), p. 81; also Liji tJ,j'Hf~, section "Daxue": Jt~1I1=f{f;l~. I employ quotation marks only around phrases, like this one, that are precedented in the Han-era Five Classics. 47 I find no precedent for yiyong, and see it as meaning "to chant a line of words." Xun may be its originater: later both Lu Ji and his brother would use it; e.g., Lu Yun's l~l5.*: "Shengde Eulogy i~*r!&\Z~~I": "What the poems and songs chant forth, and what the bells and stones drum up f~~iHfX;~Jl}T*~jHII;}.], ~1'=TzJfI'JltrfffiJ"; QjW I03, p. nb. 48 Bohu tong I:'::IJJE:UTI, section 6 "Li yue": BIX1~l"tE~LI:., ~Ilj:;tftI1r(F{jlJ? RrX*,'~(f,4\, ~m~' ~~TIj]], )(-'l=rJ::1}~\1nnf§t~x 21, p. 8a. The phrase is also used by Xun in his song no. IO, "Jiyan R){;J[," of his twelve "Banquet Accompaniment Songs for the Side-Rooms" (see SgS 20 ["Yue" B], p. 586), translated below. 49 Liji, section "Wenwang shizi": *~jE~~)ff)il;\1;, ffHFtt, 1ffJLj~r; D. C. Lau, gen. ed., A Concordance of the Liji, ICS Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series (Hong Kong: Shangwu, 1992), p. 57. See Walter Kaufmann, Musical References in the Chinese Classics, Detroit Monographs in Musicology 5 (Detroit: Information Coordinators, Inc., 1976), ref. no. III, p. 178: "The Masters of the Dances: These men teach the dances of the weapons"); ibid., p. 51-52, citing the same Liji section: "The use of shields and spears was taught in spring and summer. ... The use of feathers and the yue in autumn and winter in the Eastern College." 50 Yijing (section "Wenyan") (Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series edn., Supplement IO), p. 2: "The six lines come forth and show clear 1111111 (some edns. write Wtlf for 11]1)." Cf. WIB, p. 378: "The six individual lines open up and unfold the thought." I translate to show the martial context. The phrase is also used by Xun in song

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4A "Feathers and flutes"51 in billowing groups: )J~ 1Wjilll'i 4B Clear announcements command the foot-steps. ~JH '&1: ~ It'vt 5A Setting out [our] beautiful grace, fulfilling [our] goodness, 5B Fully harmonious, the times are at peace. felt»II,)' 8 52 6A Shining bright 53 -these insignia! i~f~jJ~ll'~j~ 6B [Our] radiance penetrates the "myriad states." Yt'f,u.~·)V4 7A The myriad states-"[such] vast importance," 19.~Jr)1'(:1'(:55 7B They ride along the Way of Jin! JJ'C:JJ(;Wfili 8A [We] partner Heaven, effecting spirit-presence;~~L*fl:Jy: 8B The authentic command-enjoins [us] to create! 1}

)cniJ iu

9A The on-high transforms-it is like winds; 1·.1t~IIJ!]l 9B The folk below respond-it is like grasses. t~JfQ(~III'ij(56 IOA SO magnificent, so perfect, fWfW}.lLU.lL\ lOB Forming in the "arrayed many." J~ Jj:~r.jjjt 57 no. 6, "Yiyu ~(,J.gijk," of his twelve "Banquet Accompaniment Songs for the Side-Rooms" (see SgS 20 ["Yue" B], p. 585). 51 SgS 19 ("Yue" A), p. 540, says that the Jin (implying perhaps around 273-75) "". changed the Wei's 'Zhaowu 1I11:!E~ Ballet' to be called 'Xuanwu 'l~r.fr.~ Ballet,' and 'Yuyue )J5J~& Ballet' became 'Xuanwen Ballet.'" We have Fu Xuan's lyrics to a "Feathers and Flutes Ballet" (SgS 20 ["Yue" B], p. 573). It seems that Xun's diction here is generic, without referring to those ballets. For "feathers and Jue flutes," see n. 49, above. 52 In Shangshu, section "Yaodian," we read: "1'HtllnIVj,lfrHIJ~UI5, ~gt~h~~II~;Wi"; Kong's commentary says that IIHili means ")1J'II." The phrase is the title ofXun's song no. n, "Shiyong IIHM.," of his twelve "Banquet Accompaniment Songs for the Side-Rooms" (see SgS 20 ["Yue" B], p. 586); and is the last phrase of the his song, no. IO (see below). In the 230S-50S, it appears in Wang Su's "Eulogy for the Imperial Temple"; QSGW 23, pp. na-b (see the line "~gjl;II~·:~m"). For a later usage, see Zhang Xie's ~l~lhJl "-tlfiJ": "". j\i:'jIlH~t ititfbJSr~r'; QlW85, p. nb; also carried in his biography,]S 55. 53 The phrase is used by Xun in his song no. 5, "Liewen ??~tx:," of his twelve "Banquet Accompaniment Songs for the Side-Rooms"; SgS 20 ("Yue" B), p. 585. 54 This phrase is seen often in the traditional Five Classics; e.g., Yijing, hexagram 7, Ten Wings "Image Commentary" to line 2: "He has the welfare of all countries at heart" (trans. WIB, p. 423). 55 A common expression in classics and early letters; perhaps Shu, section "Yixun" is close: ;J;jHlcf.fUi0; Legge, The Chinese Classics 3, The Shoo King (rpt. Hong Kong U. P., 1960), p. 198: "Sacred counsels of vast importance, admirable words forciby displayed." The phrase is used by Xun at the beginning of his song no. 7, "Longhua IWe 1t," the "Banquet Accompaniment Songs"; see SgS 20 ("Yue" B), p. 585. 56 The line's overall notion of response to culture (common in political philosophy) is expressed in different form by Xun in song no. 9, "Yiyi ~~.~~.," of his twelve "Banquet Accompaniment Songs for the Side-Rooms"; SgS 20 ("Yue" B), p. 586, and song no. IO (see below). 57 See Liji, section "Yueji" (pointing out music's material force qi 1~( vis-a-vis its wen): J:J\l111JfHrpt~1~tjifH5k, ~Z}(~ "Les inclinations du corps ou de la tete, la disposition des musiciens ou des pantomimes ranges dans un espace defini, la lenteur ou la rapidite des mouvements forment comme Ie decor des concerts de musique"; trans. Seraphim Couvreur, Li Ki, ou, Memoires sur les bienseances et les ceremonies, Cathasia, Serie Culturelle des

ret

AESTHETICS AND PRECISION IN SONGS IIA IIB I2A I2B

143

Pattern and might are side-by-side; xi~::hW Praisegiving flOWS 58 to all four quarters. )~'1;tE ILg:« Being without strife 59-it is surely glory; 1HOilE#.flJ(;{ Eternal generations-thus we continue! ).KILi: hU;li

One reason why the poetry of court spectacles and feasts has not been treated fully as a genre is because the ideas are sheer political propaganda. But in terms of prosodic rhythm something quite unusual is going on here. If we rely on Ting Pang-hsin's system of reconstructing end-rhymes of the Wei-Jin period,60 we see a distinct pattern, and then some less pronounced, but intriguing, ones. Clear as a bell is the way the B-lines are arrayed. The first six (IB to 6B) end in "-ung"; and the second six (7-12) end in "-au". 61 It leads us to two questions: why the change from "ung" to "ao", from a closed sound-complex to an open one; and what are the A-lines doing? For the first question, there is a possibility that Xun Xu wanted to mark off a change in intent and imagery. In lines 1-6, one is struck by his internal references to the materials and devices of performance. First comes an "unfurling" (banners?) and "ampleness." The lyrics weave together the movements and coordinations of dancers and musicians. Specifics abound: "singing," "brandished shields and axes," "feathers and flutes," and the dancers' footsteps. The singers are possibly on a platform, intoning virtue; and below are martial images Hautes Etudes de Tien-Tsin (Paris: n.d.), vol. 2, part I, p. 59. Zheng Xuan's comment clearly indicates the way the numerous dancers were staged (K~j, I\Wlltm1t'z{lJ:ill. ~~, :It )!1'f8't.D~t!1,). Here, Xun uses the phrase in a political sense, not a choreographical one. 58 Zhong Hui (d. 264) used this in a piece titled "Yi Shu jiang lis hi min shi" ftilijll~J:'E ::I::F.'df&: "ooJ!IjHfIII:TIi~O,-, J~tlOkMJ "oo. Thus our blessings are the same as that of ancients, and praisegiving reaches down to our progeny"; QSGW 25 (Wei 25), p. 4a. 59 The phrase was used in an alternative way ("1!!€J@HfLA") in Xun's song no. 8, "Zhenlu " of his twelve "Banquet Accompaniment Songs for the Side-Rooms"; SgS 20 ("Yue" B), p. 585. 60 See Ting Pang-hsin, Chinese Phonology 0/ the Wei-Chin Period: Reconstruction o/the Finals as Reflected in Poetry, Special Publications 65 (Taipei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 1975). With any reconstructive system there are certain problems; I am not equipped to enter into the debates among historical linguists, but I am confident that Ting's system can support my deductions, especially since some aspects, e.g., nasal endings, had remarkable continuity from ancient to Tang times, and thus we can speak of half-rhyming (auslaut alliteration, as in "-ong/-ing"), Alex Schuessler's new work (published too late for incorporating here), Minimal Old Chinese and Later Han Chinese (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), will impact the field and produce new attempts to demonstrate Wei-Jin rhymes. 61 See Ting, Chinese Phonology, pp. II8 and 74, respectively. The six "-ao" rhymes mix two categories of "ao", in other words a cross-rhyme.

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shown by dancers. It ends with "bright" "insignia" and an imperious Jin boast. We think back to Zhang Heng's rhapsody on the Eastern Capital, quoted earlier. Xun's work resembles it in tone-nothing short of a rhapsodic tableau vivante; we can imagine troupes of choreographed singers, as well as hundreds involved in presenting banners and emblems, pictures, narratives, and movement. All of this makes us wonder if the lyrics may have been about the balletic spectacle, rather than actually sung during its production. 62 Yet for lines 7-12 Xun's thoughts become focused on the Jin's connection with heaven, its authorizing mandate ("authentic command"), and the resultant ability to effect political cooperation across territories and far-flung areas. Several of Xun Xu's terms in lines 1-6 match those in "Jiyan," one of his "Banquet Accompaniment Songs for the Side-Rooms" also collected in Shen's "Treatise on Music" (the second juan). "Jiyan" ("We Have Feasted") sounds so similar that it may have been a sister piece, and thus I translate it here: "We Have Feasted" ~l

*

From "Banquet Accompaniment Songs for the Side-Rooms," 10; italicized words 63 reflect parallels with "Just Potency"; line 3 is from Shi, Mao 209.

We have feasted and are gladdened; Those myriad states now in hand. "Rites all accomplished"; [All] things are ample. Brightly, flaring lights at court; Ringing out, the drums and bells. Sheng (mouth-organ) and stones chanting [our] virtue; The myriad dancers showing [our] deeds. All eight timbres: successfully in tune; Styles change, and cultures follow. It is music blended so well; In every detail: the times are at peace.

Here again: the play within the play-a poem that describes the feasting entertainment per se. As in "Just Potency" we have singers, danc62 Judith Zeitlin looks at the way Chinese stage productions of the later imperial period made internal references to musicians, performance, music technics, etc. She highlights such internal snapshots as "plays within plays"; " ... those embedded moments when theater self-consciously reveals itself as theater." See idem, "Music and Performance in Hong Sheng's Palace of Lasting Life," in Wilt Idema, Wai-Yee Li, and Ellen Widmer, eds., Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), p. 456. I see something of this nature in these 3d-C. court lyrics. 63 SgS 20 ("Yue" B), p. 586. Also given in YFSj 13 (section ";'H€M::rx," part I).

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ers, percussions; furthermore, a main concern is to celebrate blending, after the outlying states have been taken into the fold and their culture shown off in the imperial capital through new sorts of music. Line 10 of "We Have Feasted" may be Xun's own coinage and a clue to his feelings about how his musical reforms (line 9: "All eight timbres: successfully in tune") were impacted by new musical styles entering Luoyang. We return to our second question, about any role being played by the A-lines. I have suggested that we have a two-part poem as defined by a change in overall intent after line 6. Furthermore, all B-lines, whether in the first or second half of the poem, seem like musical "upbeats." That is, no matter what the A-line final word sounded like (see the full scansion, just below), we may have remnants here of a pendular sort of motion, with B-line up-beats reflecting an ostinato in the ensemble-chant-like and sacred. The A-lines have no regular rhyme pattern. 64 But in one critical place Xun Xu seems to use the A-lines to buckle the changeover in the B-lines. I say this because the end-rhymes of 5A, 6A, 7A, and 8A, using Ting's reconstruction, are "-an -ang -ang -ang." Remarkably, 6B ends with the phrase ''It:-f~ (myriad states)" and 7A begins with it. When we put everything together, we have the following, which shows a counter-rhythm being set up by those four specific couplets that span the two larger parts and are pinned tightly by ''It:-f~'': 7A/B) JrS ANG I AU lA/B) :::Jkl UNG 8A/B) ANGI AU 2A/B) engl UNG 9A/B) ongl AU 3A/B) :::Ji/ UNG IOAh) i:::Jn(?)651 AU 4A/B) adl UNG 5A/B) ANI

6AI B)

UNG

AN G I Ir--~~~-;:;-'-:.rS-U-N-'GI

IIAI B) akl

AU

12A/B) atl

AU

This strongly suggests that the rhythm here floated like a musical hemiola: it could be parsed either into two parts (emphasized by the double utterance of "wanbang") or simultaneously into three (that is, lines 1-4, 5-8, 9-12). The range of ideas in the lines generally (perhaps vaguely) sustains either sort of parsing. More likely, in my view, is that lines 5-8 were a bridge portion in the music, where a tonal (perhaps 64 There is a possible medial (vowel) rhyme in IAhA (namely -gk/-eng); and an example of entering-tone end-rhyme with IIAIr2A. 65 I have not been able to locate the specific word ~li\ in Ting's system; thus it is a deduction.

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"key") or timbral difference sounded through, or the lines reflected a middle portion of the dance program. Finally, linguistic reconstructions being what they are, all interpretations are tentative. There is even the chance that, given dialectical flexibility, Xun's poem is closer to a straight AlB rhyme than we can detect at present. What emerges, though, is Xun's richness of imagery, and the complexity of his endrhymes, coming in such ideological court lyrics. Future research will bring out more of this genre and delve into the possible musical values, or at least sheer rhythms, implied in extant texts. Musical values can alter the way we categorize poetry of this type. The words for both "Zhengde" and "Jiyan" can be thought of as a light type of court ritual lyric, and in fact the great collector of yuefu in the Song era, Guo Maoqian ~~1lt1., did not place them in his first category of yuefu, namely "Lyrics for the Imperial Shrines x~)lj!)HrX~"-a venue that I believe marks it as solemn, high-music-but in categories of feasting and dance. Given this fact, I do not think that even with the strides recently in scholarship on yuefu we are prepared to say what the actual music of Shen's and Guo's categories was like. Did Guo think of lyrics for the imperial temples as the only kind of solemn "high" music, that is, the one category in his compilation that was reserved for conservative music, which was often bound by admonitions against over-decoration and was perhaps even slower in tempo? Or as simply any lyrics that were outside the category of the "ancient poems"? Part of my argument thus far has been that through Shen Yue especially we can sense the history of musicological debates, and that the face-off between Xun Xu and Zhang Hua was part of that. Not only were they deciding if Han-Wei lyrics were musically viable and re-usable, but they were concerned with the question, put rather bluntly, "how merry should court feasts and celebrations be"? Should there be some place in them for self-control? Xun's "Zhengde" lyrics have shown us that after celebrating a musical tableau vivante, the words become in the entire second half (alternatively, in the middle four lines), a paean to the founders of Jin. Xun bent his words toward the ears of the Simas and the court: the whole idea is that of the greatness of the dynasty. Flourishes announce those values. For example, the phrase "myriad states ... ride along the Way of Jin" is placed dramatically as the very first occasion (7B) of using "-au'" in the up-beats, and a very political "Dao" announces this shift in rhyme. The "Jiyan" lyric is different: it is meant for pleasure alone;

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thus I am tempted to say that it is lighter in register than "Zhengde," although, as I have mentioned, we are very far from establishing such things. Both imperial confidence and observation of beauty, however, could be found in court music. At this point we turn to the alternative "Zhengde" lyrics proffered by colleagues. Fu Xuan's is a bit shorter (only five couplets of fourword lines), and briefly scanning the tonal reconstruction per Ting Pang-hsin, its rhyme scheme is "i;"}n/;"}k, ang/;"}k, eng/;"}k, eng/au, a/au". Like Xun Xu, Fu has buried a code for us in the middle of the poem: the end-rhymes of his 3A and 3B are (-eng) and ij (-;"}k), after which comes a shift to -au. The name "Zhengde" thus heralds Fu's B-line shift to "-au". Even though Fu makes no complex bracketing of several lines within the whole form, as Xun did, he nonetheless included this prosodic emphasis on ideology-the Zhengde morality of Jin. Fu's words are in other ways decidedly more power-oriented in lauding the Jin; the opening lines read: "Heaven has mandated the bearers of Jin , [whose] radiance aids the myriad states II. Magnificent and sagely august! Decor and might xit\ are now the models. In heaven this is what is correct; on earth it completes [our] virtue." There are no mentions of the details of performance, and the final tone is somewhat philosophical: "We set out the saintly teachings t: it (the governance of the sage ancestors) and arrive to the Middle Way ~ llt"66 This "Way" is more broadly moralistic than Xun's political "way." Zhang Hua's work is the same length as Xun's-twelve couplets, also in four-word lines. 67 It does not appear that Zhang encodes any rhyme or rhythm puzzle. His first six B-lines are all "-ang", and the final six are "eng" without an A-line crossover, but the line 7-12 endrhymes seem generally to be half-rhyme alliterations with the B-lines. As in the others' pieces, Zhang has the requisite mention of "Jin" by name (it is the end-word for line 3A, whereas Xun's was not an endword). Like Xun, Zhang brings in musical terms of art: "The metal [bells] and [sounding] stones are lodged in the suspension [racks]. The myriad dances (or dancers) are in the [court] halls. [Music and dance] manifest images and express blessings; the harmonized tones are covered (accompanied) by music." 66 SgS 20 ("Yue" B), p. 582. Xun used this same phrase in his "Dayu Ballet"; ibid., p. 587. (I wonder if the five couplets represent the entirety of Fu's poem.) 67

SgS

20

("Yue" B), p. 59 0 .

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Next in Zhang's text comes a reference to names of ancient songs, or perhaps names of performances,68 and then: "United together, they (the dancers?) enter, and then retreatingly they yield; the transformations are gradual, without form." But why "without form"? This leads us to literary register, and the main difference between Zhang Hua and Xun Xu. Zhang's "Zhengde" lyric ends, as does Fu's, with a philosophical thrust, in Zhang's case referring to a daoistic "gloomy dark ~ "69 Zhang views the dancing as shifting and formless-perhaps in parallel with the spirit world. On the other hand, Xun's references to dancing, above, were concrete and joyful. Zhang Hua's other writings show similar tactics. His "Admonitions of the Female Scribe" -j;; 5t:~ (ca. 290) refers to "dark" and "mystery" as somehow equated with formlessness and soundlessness. "Do not speak of the dark and indistinct, for numinous beings watch without form'! Do not speak of the mysterious and quiet, for spirits listen without sound."70 Zhang seems to be saying "don't get trapped trying to understand the dark and still, but simply practice non-knowing, the way spirits and numens do." It is relativistic epistemology at its most ambitious: true knowing is gained through mysterious non-knowledge. In this way, Zhang, as well as his disciple Chenggong Sui (who wrote side-room and feasting lyrics, but apparently not a version of "Zhengde") were the kernel of a daoistic cluster at court, and they were not averse to reflecting the philosophical ideals of Zhengshi-era xuanxue. They displayed an intellectual commitment to the "creative Thereis-not" that I mentioned in Chapter One, while also pursuing scholarly projects in the nuts-and-bolts realm of the There-is. 71 For Zhang Hua, the dark and the still could have acted as a brake on musical self-indulgence, much as Xun Xu's similar check was to revert to words that praised the Jin's might. Xun generally exhibits no 68 See Liishi chunqiu (section "Guyue"), for the music called "Six Flowers /\~"; John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel, The Annals of Lii Buwei: A Complete Translation and Study (Stanford: Stanford U. P., 2000), pp. 148,150. 69 See Huainan zi :1fi:I'Mr (SBCK edn.), section "i~tLL!fVIl," j. 16, p. 1a: ''It!t.J~i~1:1·, HI·~.J, "iItr:I.illrrIT::lI:jilli.l1," where this phrase operates as a metalinguistic gloss: it "can evoke the Dao but it is not the Dao." 70 Trans. Farmer, "Composition of Zhang Hua's 'Ni.ishi zhen,))' p. 174; see Wenxuan (SBCK edn) 56, p. 3a. I have changed Farmer's seemingly incorrect "pneuma" (for to "numinous beings." 71 Zhang also paints a picture of Daoist reclusion and mystery in his poem for Zhi Yu tided "llmJfH'I'YlfiWi"; in it Zhi is depicted as a sage embedded in a forested hill, "quiet and solitary, nourishing the mysterious void"; trans. Straughair, Chang Hua, p. 91.

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traces of daoistic thinking. He is all about politics and correctness. It is possible that he was simply not interested in any Daoist fillip, perhaps because the learning he received from his family did not emphasize poetry, escape and brooding, or even belles lettres themselves, but only serious prose like historiography and Yijing theoretics. We can, however, now understand why it is that Xun Xu eventually was seen by the emperor as his one and only leader of all things imperially musical. It was not a moment in China for emperors to emulate the Yellow Emperor, Yao, or Laozi, or to contemplate the dark. That had been the idea promoted by Cao Pi, for his failed Wei dynasty. The wording of Shen Yue's document covering the Jin lyric-writers carries no indication that the court, specifically the Masters of Writing, stipulated that the three scholars (or four, if we are not limited to "Zhengde") submit lyrics for judging and that someone would be the winner. Instead, we must think more generally about China's literary world, which was (and still is) known for competitions in the context of literary games. It is possible that they agreed to test themselves in a spirit of bravado. In fact, when Xun Xu was younger he was once "commanded rfP" by Zhong Hui, his young in-law, to write something in competition. Zhong wrote: "I have planted a grape vine in front of my hall; I delight in it and rhapsodize about it. I have told Xun Xu to write [a piece] along with [me]." There is preserved a single line of Xun's response, coming either from the preface or the body of a "Rhapsody on the Grape" lifJ~~.72 Winning was equivocal and its process could be delayed. Xun Xu as a lyricist may have eventually been viewed as second-tier, compared to the more literary and daoistic Zhang and Chenggong. In the following section I argue that Xun, despite a traditional opinion, did not write light song lyrics for private entertainment, but at most may have simply listed some titles, and these were incorporated into a much later Xun's yuefu compendium. I believe that the general social profile of the early Xuns played a role: up until perhaps the beginning of the fifth century they would not have been perceived as poets and musicians, although acutely perceived as experts in systematics and technical areas. The winners of the Zhengde contest may simply have been the two more "literary" scholars-Zhang and Fu, who in the coming Zhong's phrase is at QSGW 25 (Wei 25), p. 2a (cit. TPYL 972), "~rl~WJJ~": *fJlOrIFiLY ~lrmjJ~;t., 1fIl1;u\Wr{:+fl:; the Xun remnant is at HWLC 38, p. la. On Zhong and Hui as competitors, see n. 6, above. 72

Y-'JitTjiJ,

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centuries fared extremely well with critics. For example, Liu Xie's IU~! Wenxin diaolong X{j\jt,J1E~~ considered these two as the first musicianwriters to attempt to correct the poor state of lyrics brought on by the Caos. Further in his essay, Liu specifically pointed to Xun Xu as the corrupter of the beautiful tunings created for Cao Cao by Du Kui t± ~ (an important theme of the next chapter). 73 Liu was merely part of a critical wave against Xun, in part helping to deny the latter's contributions as a literary writer. The findings of this chapter, if correct, show something different. Xun invented fascinating prosodic constructions; thus such reviews as Liu Xie's, and even today's views, ofXun must be revised. He was capable of remarkable subtlety, even irony, since while having insisted on even, four-word lines, he proceeded to make them irregular through prosody. It may be that as a daoistic turn, per se, Xun's hidden rhythmic pulse was far more subtle than Zhang's mention of formlessness. The following century and a half was chaotic. The Jin would succumb to violent politics, and in the 320S the court fled to those southern zones that had once been conquered with great fanfare in 280. Ensconced in the south, musically inclined scholars would be united with the flavorful songs, modes, and prosodies that had captured their imaginations since Han times. They could find bountiful material to help them return to topics related to court music. In fact, in the early 420S, under Liu-Song emperors Wu and Wen, discussions arose again concerning court music, venues, and lyrics. Officials received permission to set up large teams of lyric writers, and one result was that they" ... changed 'Zhengde Ballet' to become 'Former Ballet' §fJ~; and 'Dayu Ballet' became 'Latter Ballet' 1&~."74 We can only speculate about the semantic politics or the political semantics behind such a change.

A

TURN TOWARD AN AESTHETIC OF PRECISION

This chapter has used several sources in order to frame a turn in Xun Xu's life. Lacking specific evidence to explain why Xun was first called on to act as a music expert in 269-70, I have applied a social explanation using available clues. I pointed to evidence that his kinsman Xun Yi was considered by the court as appropriately skilled to restore music Vincent Shih, trans. and annot., The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, by Litt Hsieh (Taipei: Chung Hwa Book Co., 1970), pp. 55-56. 74SgS 19 ("Yue" A), p. 541.

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performance, and that when Yi died Xun Xu, already associated with an exegetical committee staffed with musically minded scholars, was thrust into the world of court music. Xun Xu's actual government post was a literary one, the Prefect of the Palace Writers, with specific duties as Drafter of historiography. For an antiquarian like Xun, the offic'e provided access to inner-palace rooms with archives of texts and objects. In the palace were hundreds of lowly service offices, and for music alone there were dozens and dozens of artisans and technical specialists, many fulfilling their family traditions that dated back a century or more. Being well heeled and the owner of property and collections, Xun Xu could pursue design and painting, and he apparently was gaining familiarity with the arts of metal working through his love of swords and statuary. Bureaucratic assignments were critical for Xun's career. We observed in previous chapters, and in this one as well, how Xun-family skills came to bear at the new Jin court, which was continually calling for scholars to take up learning in large court projects. Xun Yi was the first Xun known to have understood musicological problems beyond mere high-sounding verbiage about the yin and yang of music. Figure 2 (Chapter One) shows a mere implication of musical influences upon Yi that may have come from his law-committee peers Ying Zhen JJlti (d. 269) and Pei Xiu, both writers of tetrameter and pentameter shi. 75 From that point diffusion went from Xun Yi to Xun Xu. When we think of this kind of diffusion of skill, we must take into account people's own designs. In early China, scholars probably did not conceive of service to the dynasty as some odious march through a grey bureaucracy. There were challenges that if solved could bring personal and public rewards. Thus, it is probable that in these several years Xun Xu pursued a path partly of his own shaping. He had already spent about fifteen years seeking Sima recognition by means of expected gestures and cooperation. Now coming into his own as a man of over forty, he was displaying his stamp on scholarship. Students of Chinese history should understand why this chapter delved into the earlier musicological debates that formed a backdrop to Western Jin court musicology and music values. Increasingly, we realize that no intellectual moment just pops up without context and 75 See Lui Shi (Jinshi 2) pp. 579-83; for the larger shi output of Ying's father J}~, see ibid., Weishi 8, p. 468 ff. On the nature ofYing Qu's poetry, see David R. Knechtges, "The Problem with Anthologies: The Case of the Writings ofYing Qu (I90-252)," AM 23.I (lOW), forthcoming.

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baggage, but that it will have deeper roots. This is especially true of the rites and other such legitimizing constructions. Early China's scholars understood that formidable talents prior to them had worked through the same topics. Shen Yue's treatise, compiled just around the turn of the sixth century and based on older documents, supplied a narrative of the court's music discussions from Han to lin, which were responses to several challenges. First was to repair political disruptions: rebellions and collapses of power caused previous text- and performancebased music to be interrupted or lost to posterity. Second, traditions had to be clarified and corrections made. The mundane apect of this was merely the editorial work. There was bureaucratic pressure to get music put on its right ritual track: it was not cosmically (and therefore politically) appropriate for a new dynasty to remain disordered. Older music names needed to be sorted out for their new messages, and decisions made about traditional venues vis-a-vis new tunes. The latter sorting reflected a musical shift from about 170 to 235 AD (and onward). That was the trend toward emotionally engaging and differently sophisticated entertainment music, which was realigning scholars' tastes. Xun Xu, Zhang Hua, and the others responded to a normative court concern-to resume the specific musical topics discussed only thirty years earlier during Wei, in debates led by the great Wang Suo Those topics remained important for the lin house, as scholars were being enticed into court service. Not just Xun Xu, but several in his time were developing a knowledge of music by reading the same small body of documents. Thus, Xun, Zhang Hua, Fu Xuan, and even Chen Shou, the up-and-coming historian of Three Kingdoms events, while if not producing independent narratives of music history, were making their thoughts known on music subjects. 76 The Zhang-Xun debate on line-lengths and prosody produced newly regularized lyrics. Zhang Hua opposed changing Han-Wei lyrics, even if they possessed a difficult rhythmic structure. Xun Xu, however, considered the older lyrics defunct. His proposal was radical for two reasons. One was that he wished to return to the Zhou and take as model the Book of Poetry's four-word form. But also, Xun employed a powerful antiquarian rhetoric. He thought it germane to call on an

76 Chap. 6 (sect. "Xun Xu and Zhang Hua as Forces in the Jin Offices for Historiography") discusses Chen's conflict with Xun as possibly having to do with perceptions of Wei-dynasty music.

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old technician, a witness to the music at Wei courts. We note that Xun somehow knew about, or just stumbled upon, this individual, someone named Chen Qi. Chen informed Xun that in Wei, the overall musical balance had been poor, giving Xun Xu the "proof" that he needed to go ahead with his archaizing reform.

The Aesthetic and Philosophic Thrust of Xuns Lyrics Xun's aesthetics were imbedded in xuanxue. As discussed in Chapter One, the xuanxue critique my be split along two lines-daoistically inclined critics of strained Confucian learning and of power-seekers, on the one hand, versus, on the other, positivist scholars like Xuncorrectors, thus proponents, of court power through the intricate facts of codes and ritual. To others in the period 269-72, Xun would clearly have represented the positivist way. His lyrics proudly modeled the four-square Zhou ritual songs and upheld the Jin. They were not produced, pace the other type, from a quest to reveal and shape the private and imaginative spaces found in effaced careers and in bien pensant discussions. Zhang Hua's and Fu Xuan's lyrics for "Just Potency" tended to invoke some of that daoistic, some might say "philosophically Daoist," dualism of knowing, a dualism that affected language, words, and categories. Those two scholar-poets invoked an image of the court's spectacles as having legitimacy through void and transcendence. Fu thought of a mysterious governance of sage ancestors Kit that led to the Middle Way rft Zhang saw dances as "transforming bit-by-bit ... without form." Scholars of Western Jin took seriously the xuanxue of Wei times, yet were more guarded about where and how to present their truculent feelings. The political transition into Jin had proved hard for xuanxue proponents, and one of the most famous, who would not have fared easily had he lived, was Ruan Ji 51;~~ (210-263). We pause to consider his thoughts on music (whether court or private music), anticipating the fact that his nephew, a well-known musical expert, would soon playa defining role in Xun Xu's court career. 77 In roughly the 250S Ruan Ji had posited that high-music, with its need for exact tuning and awareness of harmony, was part of a cosmic whole. For Ruan, Confucian ritual skills were needed, but they were subsumed in a Daoist (not merely daoistic) naturalness that defined itself through social and cosmic completeness. Ruan's "Essay on Music" at one place states:

m.

77

This is taken up in chap. 5.

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... when the musical scale is well tuned 1~P: ,1/1,IKb, the yin and the yang will be harmonious til; when the instruments are in tune, all beings will remain true to their species. Men and women will not change their places; the sovereign and his ministers will not infringe upon one another's position .... The male and female principles of the universe move easily and simply; refined music, too, is uncomplicated; the Way and its Virtue are level and plain: the five notes of music, too, are insipid /j~ 1J7f( •••• it is insipid, and so all beings are naturally joyous. Daily they grow in unconscious goodness and achieve their moral transformation; ... This is the natural Way."78

Ruan is saying that the work of producing an exact harmonic relationship, that is, ordering the twelve pitch-standards and the five, or seven, scale notes, will have two great benefits. First, all sentient beings will return to true authenticity (there will be no category slippage) and social statuses will attain stability. Second, assuming that to construct these correct pitches so that tunes can exist and be played is a necessary task, then if music is unadorned and without the distraction of a chief or controlling element all beings will attain an "unconsciousness JJt1t ffij:::f § ~n." This reminds one of Chenggong Sui, whose paean to mystical out-of-tuneness we learned about, above. An important idea among sophisticated literary men since about 220 was, as I argued in Chapter One concerning Xun Can, the creatively negative There-isnot, as against the constricting, positivist There-is. Ruan Ji bridged this gap; he was a marvelous mediator of things Confucian against a fabric of things daoistic. He admired the benefits of harmonic computations and order but insisted on their mystical sublimation. Many in Xun Xu's time were influenced by Ruan. Many also were influenced by the primordial, Yellow Emperor Daoism that Cao Pi had signaled in 220 upon taking the throne of the new Wei dynasty. The aesthetics of poetry and music were intensely political. In whatever form that took (verse, harmonics, performance), a Western Jin poetlyricist might easily have been critiqued against Ruan Ji or the Caos. Therefore, if seen as anathema to such trends, or counter to the new poetry, the works of such a scholar would stand athwart something larger-the new thinking of the times, when a fresh beginning was sought to overcome a battered culture of 190 to 220. The new thinking had to do with relaxation, disengagement, and intimacy. The Seven Sages, including Ruan Ji, and those known to Xun Xu like Ruan Xi an m~ and Shan Tao ill 11, were the fulfillment of all that. Xun Xu was

78

Trans. Holzman, Poetry and Politics, p. 89.

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not; he was on the "positivist There-is" side, the non-daoistic side of Ruan Ji's equation that indicated the necessity of making systems. Xun did not entertain the other part, the wholeness of the natural Way of music. For aestheticians and scholarly critics, Xun would not measure up to the Seven Sages, who brought to music, aesthetics, and even court duties a certain weary and sophisticated charm. This chapter has dealt with musical lyrics, so it is fitting to end there, and in doing we circle back to this question of aesthetics, since court ritual lyrics, those being of a relatively, although not entirely, solemn and four-square nature, were evolving under the impetus of yuefu music and songs. Since Shen Yue in the sixth century, and continuing down to today, a line of thinking sees Xun Xu as having been an important developer of yuefu, concerning both song lyrics and ensemble direction; he is thought to have been chiefly responsible for collecting and carrying forward numerous ballads of theCao rulers. In remaining chapters, I show that Xun was quite the opposite-a reformer of court arts and standards who was dedicated to the notion that the Wei, in particular Cao Cao, had been ritually incorrect and illegitimate (even if legitimate in terms of having held the dynastic mandate, or tianming :7($). With this contradiction hanging in the balance, we should ask the following: Were Xun's lyrics for the Jin court (just about the only context and genre for his verse writing) yuefu? What prompted Shen Yue to depict Xun as a yuefu leader? Did Xun compile "Xunshi lu" ~~ ("Xun [Xu's ?] Poetry Notes"), which through sixth-century quotations we know dealt with yuefu? All of this helps us to round out a chapter, and a chronological part of Xun's career, devoted to critical problems and creative achievements in rhymed song.

m

Who Wtls the Xun Balladeer? From Xun Xu's death to about 450, several Xun-family literati became known as poets, poetry critics, and aficionados of musical entertainment. Pertinent details of this development have not been brought out in past scholarship; and what I offer here is suggestive, but worthy of further research. Xun Xu seems to have been the first to write biographical-critical pieces on literati and their works, treating past and contemporary Jin writers, and even touching on poetry. The title in question was "Wenzhang xulu" X~*0Z~~ (List I, part 3), to be discussed in Chapter Six. 79 Poetic criticism was taken up as well by his grandson Xun Chuo, 79

See Chen J un I~ut "Xi Jin Xun 'Lu' yu Han Wei yuefu"lJ[jl'rl'fjili*gi111H~~~Hl Yuefu

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who wrote on renowned pentameter poets. In neither case do we see works dealing necessarily with yuefu poets or collectors of yuefu. In my List I, under Lyrics and Poetry, we see that Xun Xu's poetic oeuvre other than his court ritual lyrics is fragmentary, and the only other Xun poetry, by Xun Zu ~J3. (d. 322), also is a mere fragment. Generally, however, numerous Xun literary wenji survived and were noted in Suishu (List I, part 5). Having ascertained that Xuns were collecting writings and that those probably included lyric and poetry, the Xun who I deduce was most involved with yuefu collecting was Xun Bozi 10 18 (378-438), who edited the "family biography" called "Xunshi jiazhuan." He also contributed to developments in historiography (see his "Jinshu"; List I, part 3). What makes Xun Bozi of interest is that his Songshu biography claims that Bozi became perceived as a pursuer of light entertainments, that he " ... was widely learned, but mostly made [stage/dance] entertainments ~'J; and traveled around in the back lanes. For this, he missed the high-road (that is, was not considered a real classicist)."8o Seeking out music and song, even writing them, had by now clearly gripped a Xun, and the Xun in question was also devoted to compiling records of his ancestors. I believe we have the key yuefu ballad collector among the Xuns; but we must continue, in order to see how it is that such a balladeer was thought instead to have been Xun Xu. The earliest source for Xun Xu as a participant in popular music was Shen Yue's ca. 500 "Treatise on Music" (discussed above). We have seen that Shen included dozens of Jin court ceremonial lyrics, such as "Just Potency," and the New Year and Side-Room lyrics. But in his "Treatise on Music" Shen also transcribed various yuefu pieces under tune categories and placed Xun into that whole mix, stating that numerous tunes, chiefly the Cao ballads, were "worked on t~" by Xun Xu and thereafter became widespread. 81 He also mentions that a circle of musicians associated with the flute master Lie He 37U fQ at Wei Mingdi's court in the 230S helped to establish instrumental ensembles. Yet readers of another part of Shen's history, namely the "Treatise on Harmonic and Celestial Systems" ("Lilli zhi" if Mit), would understand that Xun Xu's involvement with that musical group occurred forty years after Wei Mingdi and concerned only Xun's project to dexue ~~JF01J, 2 (2007), p. 72, noting the earlier scholarship of Lu Xun. so SgS 60, p. 162 7. 81 SgS 21, p. 608. See Goodman, "Tintinnabulations," p. 34, esp. n. 21.

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sign flutes using the twelve lalii g pitch-standards. (See Figure 3, Chapter One, for Lie and his group of instrumentalists.) I have gone into these men in a previously published article;82 of importance now is that Lie was said to have been a well-known exponent of southern (Wu) dancing-girl suites or entertainments. In my interpretation, it was only in the early 270S that Xun borrowed ideas from the yuefu music master Lie He, and only for purposes of creating Zhou-regulated scales for flutes and getting Lie to admire them. (This matter is discussed in detail in Chapter Five.) Xun's involvement with Lie's players seemingly had nothing to do with private or even with Cao-court entertainment music. It is important to recognize the role of ensemble accompanists in the larger, musical world of yuefu. Recent scholars, such as Zheng Zuxiang I~fll~ and Yang Ming t~B)j, have done just that. 83 Although we know next to nothing about the tunes of 190-450 AD, we are beginning to recognize their general types and developments. But we can easily infer too much about the kind of music, especially flute music, that Xun Xu was developing at the Jin court. Xun's relationship with the Lie group was one of a scholar and high-official demonstrating corrections to low-ranked artisans. His mission was to educate them about the liilii pitches of Zhou provenance; it was not to learn the popular hits from Wu that Lie was famous for, nor was it to rehearse Cao-family ballads that narrated the long-ago days when the Caos fought throughout the Central Plain. The Xun family had in fact shifted loyalties away from the Caos in great part after the death of Xun Yu in 212. Moreover, as we see in Chapter Five, because they formed a traditional Zhengsheng mode, Xun Xu's adjusted flute-scales blocked the novel accompaniments and decorative aspects of what I am terming "light music," which musicians like Lie represented. In this way Xun was correcting, not supporting, those paragons of music, the Caos. Based greatly on the work of Wang Yunxi .£JiJ¥!t today's scholars Zheng and Yang (just mentioned), and others, reflect Shen Yue's interpretation-that Xun Xu wrote or transformed the entertaining yuefu

82 SgS 21, p. 603. See Goodman, "Tintinnabulations," pp. 35, 40-42, which discusses recent scholarship that touches on Xun Xu and yuefu. 83 On the changing audience for instrumental music and ballads before and during Shen Yue's time, see Yang Ming, "Yuefu shiji xianghe geci tijie shidu" t;;~)Hfj~j:#HtlfIIHrX ~(:JllifO!(*~ii[¥L Guji zhengli yanjiu xuekan -I t ,-a!j"iJfi2fJ1i!{vf§V'fl1,Flj 2006.5, p. 7; also Zheng Zuxiang, "Xunshi lu kao" itUf\;~~-, Yuefu xue :fiI~)HLtt, I (2006), p. 22, who discusses Xun's contact with Lie and the yuefu musicians.

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ballads; they also believe that he wrote/compiled the work "Xunshi lu." The first person known to have used "Xunshi Iu" was Wang Sengqian I 1~ ~ (fl. 480s-90s), who wrote a piece called "Yanyue jilu" ~ ~15t~~. Fragments of Wang's quotations of "Xunshi lu" exist thanks to their being summarized in the sixth-century Zhi Jiang's i§I Gujin yuelu il4-~f*. I believe Yang Ming is right, when he demonstrates that Shen Yue most likely had before him some type of original version of "Xunshi lu," and not necessarily Wang's quotations from it. 84 But so far, no scholar has demonstrated satisfactorily, despite Chen Jun ~t~ and others, that anyone from the fifth through twelfth centuries understood "Xunshi lu" as meaning "Xun Xu lu." It is just as easy to assume that Shen Yue, with a "Xunshi Iu" in front of him, understood that its authorship was uncertain, or that he and everyone else knew it was compiled by Xun Bozi. Xun Xu becomes placed in the Cao-Wei ambit by Shen, but Shen too may have overstrained what was conveyed in the record about Xun Xu's involvement with Lie He. Moreover, the actual pre-480s work "Xunshi lu," with its mentions of Cao ballads, may have reflected the compilatory work of any Xun after Xu's day. The work was mentioned nowhere in the dynastic and private book lists on which we rely so heavily; and this may reflect the sheer fact that Xun Bozi, my candidate for its compiler, had trouble being recognized as a serious scholar-and yuefu editing had by that time become a classizing genre. 85 By the twelfth century, Yuefu shiji ~m~~* would layout categories of yuefu that organized the field down into premodern and modern times. The kinds of court ceremonial song that the Western Jin court writers Xun, Zhang, and Fu wrote were placed into the seventh category, sandwiched in among yuefu categories like "qingshang ~~ rm" modal music and "xianghe 1§5f~" ensemble music. I accept what Hans Frankel did to clarify such categorization, namely separate Yuefu shiji's high-music categories (the "hymns") from its balladic categories,86 but still more work must be applied to this problem. First, we will have to see if interpretations about internal rhythm, such as the above concerning "Chant for Jin's 'Just Potency,'" are meaningful in the larger discussions of the yuefu genre. It will require general research into Jin Yang, "Yuefu shiji," p. 4. See Stephen Owen, The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006). 86 See Hans H. Frankel, "Yiieh-fu Poetry," in Cyril Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 70-72. 84 85

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lyrics, especially court lyrics. IfXun Xu's cross-bracketed rhythm (the hemiola) is part of larger patterns among Western Jin poets, then some thought would have to be given toward the question: was this interesting rhythm in a court lyric enough to have caused third- through thirteenth-century critics to think ofXun's court lyrics as yuefu? What would that say about the definition of yuefu itself? For the time being, I hold that Xun's court lyrics ought not to be considered yuefu and that Shen Yue's coupling ofXun Xu with Cao-family yuefu was Shen's error. Court ceremonial pieces were apparen tly all that Xun wrote, except for a shi poem lauding Jin Wudi (translated in Chapter Six). These pieces were saved under collective titles; and these are what became listed in the early-imperial book-catalogs (noted in List I, part 4). I disagree with Chen's and Zheng's attempts to see those titles as referring instead to Han-Wei and Jin yuefu lyrics. 87 What could be more Daoist than the collecting of ditties, ballads, and personal lyrics right off the streets, or roaming with romantic generals? Even early Daoism, as seen in the arcane Taiping jing and Huainanzi) emphasized the collecting and circulating of all texts so as to gather complete knowledge. Scholars treading lanes and alleys for tunes, even if they hoped to serve the state by doing so, would seem jaunty and unorthodox. The compiler of "Xunshi lu" (was it Xun Bozi?) and scholars like him were fulfilling the old promise of Western Han times, when government music collecting became a serious court endeavor the aim of which was to fathom the hearts of the people. Xun Xu's scholarly horizons were too obsessively precise in ritual for such political uses of popular ideas. He wished to edit and form the culture so as to have lyrics, feet-and-inches, pitches, scales, and modal variation all conform to Zhou ideals and thus to legitimize the Jin. Xun Xu was not the Xun balladeer.

87

Chen, "Xi Jin Xun CLu,'" pp. 73, 77-79; Zheng, "Xunshi Iu kao," p. 15.

CHAPTER POUR COMMANDEE~NGSTAFFAND

PROCLAIMING PRECISION, CA. 273-274 Bianzhi ~1H:&: A High Step The gamut has left the turn, and is at the fourth, the bianzhi step in early China's seven-note Zhengsheng, or "standard," mode-scale. Played against gong, bianzhi is higher than a perfect fourth, producing the tritone that is a feature of the Zhengsheng mode. In Chinese music, unlike the West's, the fourth step was not a strong element, not a cadencing note. In certain nonstandard modes there was uncertainty about its exact relationship with neighboring notes. The high step could inspire questions about where the actual ''standard'' lay in the overall scheme, mode, or ritual. Leaving behind lyrics, Xun Xu stepped forcefully into antiquarian research.

After lyric writing Xun Xu entered another world of technical detailthe court orchestra and problems of sound. In early China, prior to musicology came metrology, thus he set up programs to find, measure, and analyze relevant objects in metrology. He contacted lower officials and staffs, including workshop artisans. In this manner Xun Xu pursued precision to an extraordinary level, causing a much larger impact than his skilled relative Xun Yi or other contemporaries had. In Chapter Two, we looked at the "judgment" section of Xun Xu's Jinshu 1lfil biography, and its nearly opaque implication about actions that had brought ruin to Xun's and his family's reputations. This happened, the judgment said, because he " ... measured grains so that it whipped up slogans ~~" and "high-stepped through locales EiW.m (or, 'advanced the Ii ') so as to have created a hub-bub majJe" My claim was that such synecdoches were references to metrology and musicology. This chapter will demonstrate the claim in full, and examine early assessments of Xun that were, unlike the Jinshu judgment, direct and concrete. Technocratic high-stepping could earn real criticism.

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Xun XU'S career was notorious in great part because of his antiquarian quests. In fact, during the period from 272 to 283 there occurred something like an antiquarian flurry that was spearheaded by Xun. Modern conceptions of early China's approaches to archeology focus on a certain defining event of 280-81, namely, the discovery of the plundered Ji Tomb in which Xun Xu took a major role as curator and paleographer. I Yet precisely what that role was has never been examined. Here, by tracing out details of Xun's pre-280 metrology, we approach a much fuller understanding. The goodly amount of pre-280 objects pursued and studied during the antiquarian flurry, as shown in this chapter's Table 2, is meaningful and throws the Ji Tomb into a new light. We can begin to talk of Western Jin as a time of maturation in early Chinese archeology and historiography. One wonders, though, if a confirmation bias affected the various Tang-era compilers of Jinshu. We know that at least one of them, Li Chunfeng :$1*JIiR (602-670), had found-objects in mind for his study of arts and technologies. Toward the end of this chapter, I present Li's favorable judgment ofXun, which was based on Li's direct and indirect use of material evidence. Li was not responsible for Jinshu annals and biographies, but wrote histories of harmonics and astronomy for both Suishu and Jinshu. We can hypothesize that he discussed with other scholars in the Tang historiography projects his findings concerning pre-Tang antiquities and their role in metrology. Perhaps those Tang compilers and writers were inspired to notice and write about 500-year-old episodes of antiquarianism. Be that as it may, the whole matter of Tang historiographers' technical and scientific learning would make a valuable separate study. Metrology and its physical settings have a worldwide history as old as both Sumer and the Shang. In any literate civilization before the era of Galileo there was nothing more likely to receive numerical and empirical analysis than luni-solar paths, vibratory harmonics, statics and pneumatics, and the transfer and maintenance of metric standards. For these reasons I briefly frame the background of metrology. After that, I look at the way Xun Xu perceived truth through metrology, as it were. To do this I glean from early documents hints at Xun's steps and techniques of analysis. The fact that Chinese scholar-officials of about

I A general summary of that event, set against a study of archeology as practiced in today's China, is found in Edward L. Shaughnessy, Rewriting Early Chinese Texts (Albany: SUNY, 2006), pp. 131 ff.

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IOO-300 AD knew of and participated in such arts, along with their general connection to archeology, historiography, and institutions, can be of some interest to historians in general, and more specially to the history of premodern sciences on a worldwide basis.

HIGH-STEPPING INTO BUREAUS AND IMPERIAL HOLDINGS

For these two years, 273 and 274, there is no way to chronologize Xun Xu's career exactly; from the body of evidence we get few dates. But several hints show this period as specifically containing technical research and the desire to establish a ritual metrology for the Jin. Metrology was not a well-circumscribed "field" for a scholar, or any kind of professional career. That sort of professionalization did not occur in China until Tang times,2 and only in a narrow sense. By 272, Xun Xu had already gained control of certain musical programs, but, as mentioned in Chapter Three, this did not happen through a transfer of, or addition to, his positions in the bureaucracy. A post in the music bureaus would normatively have come under the aegis of the Grand Master of Ceremonies 1lt. 3 Musicology was only recently a Xunfamily specialty, but an office under Grand Master of Ceremonies was not an appropriate post for leading families like the Xuns, or any of the numerous scholars interested in music and antiquities. The post of Grand Master itself was, however, respected and involved overseeing a spectrum of ritual knowledge, not just music. It was usually occupied by scholars who understood numerous skill areas like architecture, calendar computation, and shushu ~1*j arts. A famous Grand Master in the recent past had been Wang Lang ~~ (d. 228), who gave erudite advice to Cao Pi W/G about the veracity of the claims of political oracle texts that predicted the way the Han would end and Cao Pi become a new dynast. 4

"*

2 See Howard L. Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths, 100-300 AD: The Tung-kuan, Taoist Dissenters, and Technical Skills," AM I8.I (2005), pp. I60-6r. 3 SeeJS 24 ("Zhiguan"), pp. 735-36. This was one of the Nine Ministers. Under the Grand Master, among many other positions, we see a xielii xiaoweil%Millt~);iH (Colonel of Harmonies). "Further, the office oversaw the many taixue boshi je,I~W}J:: (Academy Erudits), Libationer and Grand Astrologer (taishi A~), Grand Ancestral Temple (taimiao jeN9j), Grand Musician (taiyue A~~), Drummers and Pipers (guchui !!flrl1() ... ." 4 On Wang's political career, see deC/ED, p. 823, and for scholarly career, see Howard L. Goodman, Ts'ao P'i Transcendent: The Political Culture of Dynasty-Founding in China at the End of the Han (Seattle and Surrey, England: Scripta Serica and Curzon, I998), pp. I56-6I, and idem, "The Orphan Ts'ao P'i, His Odd Poem, and Its Historio-

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But certain scholars might have wanted a court assignment in musicology for other reasons. It could provide access to documents, devices, and guides. Many of the musically inclined pursued entertainment at private occasions for pleasure and sociability, and some wrote about music philosophically. Yet for some, any device or guide could help in mastering the daunting range of technics demanded by court musicology. One had to know the physical lengths and volumes that texts and objects had traditionally posited for the required pitch-pipe lengths (or in a few cases, string-lengths). There would possibly be several mathematical operations for correctly determining lengths of cylindrical aerophones so as to produce actual notes corresponding to the twelve classical Chinese pitch-standards called lulu g. By Wang Mang's time we know that many of these device were of cast metal. 5 Additionally, musicology involved pitch and tuning accuracy, and construction of performance instruments. Much of the generally material and metrological work was handled by low officials. Xun Xu sought out such officials, but he himself was skilled, at various levels, over the whole range. We might recall from Chapter Three that he was a wellknown portraitist and calligrapher, and probably conversant with the metal-casting arts. In his musical activities, we will eventually see that he actively communicated designs and specifications to ateliers.

1*

Problems in the Bureaucratic Structure of the Palace Writers Office An undated memorial (not given in Jinshu) indicates that by 272-73, Xun Xu may have felt overworked. In it, he expresses anxiety about the use of his talents after receiving pressure from a court source (perhaps originating from the emperor and transmitted through the Masters of Writing) to take up projects in two busy bureaus-that is, besides a certain ongoing project in the Imperial Library archives there were duties in musicology. The small memorial was collected by later compilers and given the name "Memorial Declining Duties in Music" ~~lJ*.6

graphic Frame," AM 22.1 (2009), pp. 79-104. One did not have to be Grand Master to offer the court ritualistic mantic interpretations; see Gaotang Long 1~!j:':;lJ~ (d. 237), whose polymathic skills were applied in policy warnings to Wei emperors (Goodman, Ts'ao P'i Transcendent, pp. 179-91); Gaotang's biography is at SGZ 25; see deC/ED, p. 246. 5 I have examined archeological reports of examples of Iii pitch-regulator pipes in Howard L. Goodman and Y. Edmund Lien, "A Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Temperament: Matching Ancient Pitch-Standards and Confronting Modal Practice," The Galpin Society Journal 62 (2009), pp. 4-6 (esp. n. 6). (, See Eeitang shuchao ~t1ict~Hy (n.p.: Nanhai kongshi sanshi you san wan quan tang edn., 1888) 101, p. 3a; verbatim in HWLC 38, p. 5b.

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Your servant has duties both as Drafter and as responsible for 7 [matters related to] the Imperial Library. Currently I am double checking for mistakes in a book-compilation of over 100,000 scrolls ;g:; I cannot suddenly be given a concurrent task in another bureau. It would result in lapses.

Needless to say, he was not accommodated: his career thereafter was filled by work in both projects. The previous chapter showed that in 266 Xun had been made Inspector of Palace Writers, with added duties as Palace Attendant and responsibilities as intendant Drafter for Jin historiography. His actual inspectorate of the Imperial Library would come only later, in 274 (see below). Thus the above memorial, because it does not explicitly mention a specific appointment in the Library, acts as evidence for the curious twists in the state bureaucracy that involved the Palace Writers and the Library. The problem is crucial for understanding the shape of Xun Xu's career and the extent of his overall self-fashioning and "high-stepping," so it will pay to examine it here. A special history of the various literary offices from Han through the Southern Dynasties ought to be written. It would pick apart the strands of scholar-official appointments and recast the whole picture of scholarly institutions, using private belles lettres and court documents to frame the way men envisioned their careers and what they thought of the differences in career tracks, such as literary vis-a-vis military.8 If we look merely at the Imperial Library (Bishu fd}if), we see that, as with all other offices, it possessed hallowed Zhou names and hierarchies,9 but nevertheless, from the 220S down to 291 it would not maintain a consistent, independent status and was folded into the 7 JSJZ 39, p. 15a, takes "~II" to mean "appointed as Inspector of.... " My translation does not agree with that. I believe that the Jinshu commentators did not recognize the problem of the Imperial Library that is revealed in this section. 8This is pursued inside broader literary goals by Dominik Declercq, Writing Against the State: Political Rhetorics in. Third and Fourth Century China (Leiden: Brill, 199 8). 9 SgS 40, p. 12 46, describes the bishu jian in terms of Zhou ideals, as expressed in Zhou guan's section on "External Scribes [waishi]"; on this, see Anthony Bruce Fairbank, "Ssu-ma I (179-251): Wei Statesman and Chin Founder, An Historiographical Inquiry," Ph.D. diss. (Seattle: University of Washington, 1994), p. 42, who also suggests that the Bishu's main charge was in the area of archives, and it was not specifically for creating historiographical documents, which would have been under the aegis of the zhongshu ling. However, my view, in what follows, leans toward the opinion that there never really was a clear distinction: the Bishu organizationally was virtually the same as the Zhongshu, and historiographical activities went on most often as ad hominem appointments without reference to the appointee's hierarchic subjugation.

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Palace Writers. Another problem is that the top two positions in the Palace Writers had at some point become dual in function-its head and assistant-head were considered peers. (These offices are analyzed further in Chapter Six; especially Table 5.) In an article published several years ago, I investigated one of those strands of scholar-officialdom as relates to appointments in archival bureaus. I showed that already in the late 230S, the person who, following after his father Wang Lang (mentioned above), was in charge of court scholarship-that is, Wang SU ±JI (I95-256)-was moved to address the court fervently on the topic of ensuring that the Library become viewed as a true "Santai ~ "office, with status like those of the Masters of Writing and Nine Ministers. To Wang, the Library's chores were traditionally close to those of the defunct Eastern Observatory *JJ[ archive of Eastern Han, that is, historiography, archives, and a central collection point for incoming documents from outside officials. Further, Wang Su wanted it to be completely separate from the Palace Writers office, thus reversing the decision that, as he noted, had "split the Library and converted it to the Palace Writers"; the latter occurred over ten years previously under Cao Pi (as Wei Wendi) .10 Furthermore, we have solid evidence for deducing why in 220 Cao Pi made such a change, shifting the left and right assistants in the Library-Liu Fang ~U:D)( (d. 250) and Sun Zi 1*~ (d. 25I)-to become instead Inspector (jian Id:) and Prefect (ling 4-), or head and assistanthead, respectively, of a reconfigured Palace Writers. 11 Both Liu and Sun were respected by Cao Pi's father Cao Cao for having persuaded III On Wang Su, see Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths," pp. I38-4I; there I discussed what Wang possibly meant by "santai." Later sources bear out Wang Su's remark about Wei Wendi in slightly different terms; see the following note. II IS 24 ("Zhiguan zhi"), p. 734 (derived from early documents, such as Liu Fang's biography in SGZ 14, p. 456 [portions translated in TCTC/Fang I, pp. 607-I5]): "[In about 2I3 Cao Cao] had set up a Bishu ling f~'llt4-, who supervised the business of memorials under the Masters of Writing. [In the early 220S] Wei Wendi changed V)i: this to the Zhongshu 'l'j'W, with ajian and a ling at its head. He made the Bishu Assistant of the Left Liu Fang into the Zhongshu jian, and the Right Assistant Sun Zi became the ling. The jian and ling [structure] generally began here with this. Jin continued it, and also created a single official [under them]." On Liu and Sun, see deC/BD, pp. 503, 779, and the sources indicated. A detailed study of the Palace Writers in Wei times and its surpassing the Masters of Writing (Shangshu) in influence in that time period was made by Chen Qiyun l*mlCJl~, "Cao Wei shidai zhongshu, shangshu er sheng de quanshi" Wl~II~:1-~'I'TiH'Uj~~:-·.~II~I/J*f~f~\', in idem, Han Wei Liuchao wenhua, shehui, zhidu ~YS1i!lJ,j\l:yJ)(1t, lIWJ1[ (Taipei: Xinwen feng, I997), pp. 233-4I; based on SGZ, he believes (p. 234) that Liu Fang was Bishu ling directly before becoming Zhongshujian, not ''Assistant of the Left k."!R," as stated in IS 24.

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local leaders to ally with him in the 1905. They began their careers as literary men, supplying military strategies and texts for edicts. Sun had been a student at the Imperial Academy probably around 215-20 and was noticed favorably by Xun Yu early in the 200S. Cao Cao appointed them both to his precursor Imperial Library in 213, thus setting them up to be leaders of archives and historiography for the imminent Wei dynasty. However, Cao Pi, upon his accession as the first Wei emperor, unraveled many of his father's choices of ritual and scholarly leadership. Cao Pi's moving them to a newly formulated office took them out of a Cao Cao sphere of influence that had grown up in the Library since 213. In my opinion, had Cao Pi lived longer, he would have refashioned the Imperial Library to his own tastes and staffed it with literary men of the type he knew and patronized heavily.12 After Pi's death, both Liu and Sun continued as close advisers to the Wei throne under Cao Rui (206-239; r. Mingdi fffl 227-239). More will be said about them in Chapter Seven, but for now it is important to know that the early sources depict the two men as dual, ex officio leaders of the Cao inner circle; they manipulated matters of succession and invited enmity from Cao nobles and their associates, especially after the late 230S. Although Liu and Sun had caused grumblings, their dual Palace Writers arrangement was recalled and thought desirable by the new Jin dynasts. Thus, in about 266-67 Jin Wudi, perhaps under Xun Yi's or Xun Xu's advice, reaffirmed the earlier Cao Pi arrangement and ordered that the Imperial Library "be included in with the Zhongshu, [but] the Library's Drafter personnel not disestablished."!3 The specific attention paid to the disposition of Drafters may mean that historiographic projects, looming important in the mind of the brand-new dynast, were being given a niche of their own, and that the court would act as Eastern Han had done, that is, order specific people ad hoc into specific tasks concerning the compilation of annals and biographies. Yet Wudi's edict also meant that he wanted an inner-court duo (the jian and the ling) to streamline the input of advisers and policy criticism, as had been the case during Wei only thirty years previously. This sheds a clearer light on Xun Xu's 266 appointment as head of the 12 See Goodman, Ts'ao P'i Transcendent, chapter 10; my discussion there had not noticed the Bishu affair as a possible aspect of the Cao Pi reforms. Chen, "Cao Wei shidai zhongshu," pp. 236-37, demonstrates that only under Cao Pi did Liu and Sun begin to have true political power. I do not think that would detract from my suggestion of Cao Pi's desiring to invalidate Cao Cao's state and its rites. 13JS 24, p. 735; confirmed SgS 40, p. 1246.

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Palace Writers, qua Drafter. It was probably the emperor's or Xun Xu's own plan that the Jin duo would be Xun and, potentially, Zhang Hua. But such a duo would never work, as subsequent chapters show. A curious fact about the Library is that all the time during which Xun Xu was in control of the Library, or at least the projects created for it, from his complaint about the burden of a large Library project (the above memorial) to his appointment as Library Inspector in 274 (which we look at next), and even until his promotion out of the Library in 287, the Imperial Library officially did not exist as an independent bureau. It was a real place containing activities, but its administrative function had to be "reinstituted" by Wudi's successor Huidi i! as late as April 10, 291. 14 We see that Zhang Hua had entered the Palace Writers around 264-65, at a level below that of head, namely as lang, or Gentleman (see Chapter Six, Table 5). Moreover, from the time of Wang Su's complaint in the 230S about keeping the Library independent of the Writers, there were very few appointments of a Prefect (ling), and none from about the 250S until Zhang Hua attained it in 271. I argue in more detail in Chapter Six that the dual-leadership aspect of the Palace Writers that Liu and Sun had established in Wei times did not work in Western Jin. I hypothesize that Xun Xu kept Zhang Hua from being prefect until 271, then took advantage of the war to tryout a possible dual leadership with He Qiao (from Xun's view, a political compromise)'. From that point to Xun's removal in 287, there was little in the way of Palace Writer leadership until Zhang Hua became Inspector in 291 and the office became delinked from the Library.

*

An Archival Project with Zhang Hua With the relevant background, we return to Xun Xu's chronology and can easily see political problems in what occurred next, namely an imperial decree of 273 or early 274 that placed Zhang Hua and Xun Xu, the potential but ill-conceived "duo," into a project to organize the Palace archives. We have already seen that Xun was trying to be excused from leading a certain reform in musicology. He was concurrently "responsible for ~Q" the Library-not an appointment but an ad hoc project there. We read in Jinshu: 15 14]S 4, p. 90; and 24, p. 735; confirmed SgS 40, p. 1246. See also Fairbank, "Ssu-ma 1," p. 76; on p. 62, Fairbank astutely noticed this bureaucratic quirk concerning Xun's

appointment in 27415]S 39, p. II54. LiulBiannian 7, p. 87, dates the appointment to 273.

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Soon Xun Xu was appointed Inspector of the Imperial Library and, with Prefect of Palace Writers Zhang Hua, he brought order to [the palace] documents based on Liu Xiang's Bielu }:JU ili:§t Further, Erudits in documents were set up and students were appointed; they practiced according to the [calligraphy] model of Zhong [You] (~r]1:iJl,~ ca. 163-220) and Hu [Zhao] (i'iJHIB 162-250) ,Jl;j:!YJ{. !¥J£T1Hjj1t]l:, ,'iJj ttr:L~· .16

Analytically, Zhang Hua's grade was below that of Xun, but Zhang was considered a literatus of high potential and had already argued against Xun Xu in the group that revised court lyrics (Chapter Three). We have just discussed the Wei-era model of dual inner-court advisors, and how Xun Xu and Zhang Hua may have been perceived as such a team for Jin. But anecdotes and records of both men do not give further remarks about the above archival project, even though both possessed skills in documents and archives. Those familiar with the history of catalogs in early China may wonder if it was the project in which Xun Xu established the "four parts 12] ff~" for archival holdings or if the above is a reference to his transcribing and cataloging the Ji Tomb texts. 17 It would seem the former; and the 273-74 remark shows only Xun's (and Zhang's) first attempt at a system, basing themselves on a Han-era template. The Jin four-part cataloging system was 16 This text seems partly based on Wang Yin's "Jinshu" (early 4th-c.), which says that what they "brought order to" was a "strewn confusion ~g~Jm~INi?
*

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fully realized later, beginning around 281, during the retrieval of the Ji Tomb texts (discussed in Chapter Six). The "ordering" of the Library was something both generic and concrete. As a generic move, it was simply an expected dynastic task. New dynasts often included it in their agendas. Having inherited or taken a palace, leaders appointed scholars to search through and organize the holdings, expecting to find interesting manuals, charts, and objects in those stores. For example, in 262, when Sun Xiu came to the throne in the state ofWu, he appointed a scholar to be Gentleman of Palace Writers and Libationer Erudit, with the imperial command that he "rely on the actions taken by Liu Xiang of old, in order to examine and set right the mass of writings." He also ordered this official to discourse for him on "daoist arts."18 Xun Xu was thus leading a normal project related to scholarship. The concrete aspect was Xun's insisting on a methodology for his clerks to use in notating and transcribing: they would study the calligraphy of two famous scholars of the past, "Zhong and Hu." The Zhongs were the close in-laws ofXun Xu, mentioned in Chapter One; they had adopted the orphan Xun Xu, but Xun had to disassociate from them politically in 263-64, when Zhong Hui rebelled. The elder Zhong You, whose daughter was Xun Xu's mother, had been renowned for his calligraphy, earning a reputation that grew mightily after his death; Zhong became known as the first important exponent of "running script" -the swashy, connective calligraphy that developed after antique "clerical script." The Zhong family were, as was Xun Xu with his training of transcribers, purposeful about teaching. Portions of Zhong Hui's essay lauding his mother's teaching of the classics were saved in the commentary to Sanguo zhi; they enunciate an exacting classicist curricul um. 19 "Hu" refers to Hu Zhao i!l)l StL a calligrapher of the Eastern Han court in the 180s who composed on media known as "foot-length tablets RJIi ," and possibly (although only inferred from the source) he mastered a type of script known as niao zhuan J~~ ("bird seal-

t*1*

See LiulBiannian 7, p. 50. This tribute to Mother Zhong has been treated in Richard Mather, "The Controversy over Conformity and Naturalness during the Six Dynasties," History of Religions 9.2-3 (1969-70), pp. 166-67; and Howard Lazar Goodman, "Exegetes and Exegeses of the Book of Changes in the Third Century AD: Historical and Scholastic Contexts for Wang Bi," Ph.D. diss. (Princeton University, 1985), pp. 50-54; see idem, "Calligrapher Chung Yu," on the history of the Zhongs. 18 19

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script"), a decorative format used on pennants and tallies. 20 His contemporaries lauded his work as a model of the official writing style. He was an eremitic scholar who refused service around 200-210 during military strife; instead he stayed in his local village as a leader, and was highly praised as a potential official by Zhong Yu ~fii (d. 263; one of Zhong You's sons) and Xun Yi during the Zhengshi era (240-49). Hu's "bird seal-script" calligraphy hints that Xun Xu, directing projects in the Library archives, was gaining familiarity from an expert in ancient calligraphy whose works were known to the Xun family. Such concerns about this antiquarian skill grew larger in 280, as did the cataloging project itself, once the texts of the Ji Tomb came under his purview. But now it is clear that Xun's goals for the Library in the 270S were already leaning toward antiquarian study and methods.

THE WIDER WORLD OF METROLOGY

Calligraphic modeling and archival categories point us toward precision as a political and intellectual goal. Xun's next step in fact was to master metrology. We divert briefly, to build the early Chinese and worldwide technical contexts for it. David Keightley has gathered the early-Chinese sources of metrology (its terms and concepts) and the secondary literature in his investigation of a certain linear unit-measure in neolithic craft work that was used in objects called cong-tubes His work informs us that the later Chinese concept of a chi R (the "foot-rule") and its decimal unit, the cun -t, evolved from artisan reliance on hand-parts for standards: a finger-width, a thumb and littlefinger stretch, spans of splayed fingers, and so forth. The word cun was in fact derived from semantemes related to "finger's width" and chi from "palm" or "span."21 There occurred, later on, a much different metric basis, namely the Han-era approach described in Ban Gu's 3)1 11m (32-92) writings, in which the chi was expressed as the length derived from ninety black millet grains placed side-to-side, 1,200 of them becoming in turn the capacity measure for the huangzhong :iJj bell's associated pitch-pipe. 22 But perhaps outside of rarefied court harmon-

f*.

20 See HS 30, p. 1722, n. 7, Yan Shigu's commentary (as cited in Knechtges, "Court Culture in the Late Eastern Han"); also Hu's biography SGZ II, p. 362. 21 David N. Keightley, "A Measure of Man in Early China: In Search of the Neolithic Inch," Chinese Science 12 (1995), pp. 28-29. 22 Keightley, "Measure of Man," p. 30. See also Hans Ulrich Vogel, "Aspects of Metrosophy and Metrology during the Han Period," Extreme-Orient, Extreme-Occident

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ics, Ban's seed method (actually, a metrosophical conceit from before Ban's time) was irrelevant in everyday usage. Ancient Chinese measure contains parallels with that of the ancient West, but differs in that in China the sort of "disembodiment" just mentioned came very early. This was reflected both in China's quite early mention of measure-units derived from grains, but more so because physical standard devices could be made and disseminated via the highly centralized state and realm. 23 This chapter will discuss mostly linear standards, for their pertinence to Xun XU;24 also, as evidence from Egypt shows, capacity and weight standards more easily involved nonanthropomorphic bases. Western standards also stemmed from body-units, particularly the "great-span," the finger, palm, forearm, and relations among those, something we recognize in prehistoric China as well. The Egyptian royal cubit consisted of 7 palms (= 28 digits); in the Amenophis I period (1500S BC) a measure-standard indicates that a cubit consisted of 4 digits. Sumerians give us remains of an image of a king demonstrating 16 fingers as the standard for construction (the Sumerian "su-si," or cubit of 26.45 em); and other Sumerian images show similar architectural standards. 25 Roman linear measure adopted the Egyptian remen via ancient Greeks, who, especially as seen in Polyclitus, had distinct notions of the human body as template. There was much variation in Greco-Roman standards, but a mean figure for the Roman pes was 29.6 em, and it was divided into 16 digiti (Gk. daktyloi) and 12 unciae (or, inches, thumbs), and 4 palmi. Longer units therein were given in 5s, lOS and 12S, which seem to have agreed with Roman architectural practices for adapting patterns by "squaring" in order to find an appropriate module; this resulted in interesting ratios based on the numerators 17 and 12. 26 16 (1994), pp. 137-38. Nonanthropic bases for standard-units appeared even earlier, as seen in a variety of texts, esp. Huainan zi 1!f:I'rf::T; see Qiu Guangming Ji)'C;IYJ and Long Yangping IlilIfJ5pr:, Zhongguo kexue jishu shi: Duliangheng juan r'="jjJllfil.,~,ttWJ 92, J]jj]: 1iMI;g (Beijing: Kexue chuban she, 2001), pp. 41 ff. 23 The term "dis embodiment" comes from Robert Tavernor, Smoot's Ear: The Measure of Humanity (New Haven: Yale U. P., 2007), pp. 45-47. 24 On weights in early China, see Griet Venkeerberghen, "Choosing Balance: Weighing (quan) as a Metaphor for Action in Early Chinese Texts," Early China 30 (200506), pp. 47-89. 25 F. G. Skinner, Weights and Measures: Their Ancient Origins and Their Development in Great Britain up to AD I855 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1967), pp. 4-5, 20, 35· 26 Skinner, Weights and Measures, p. 67; also see Peter Kidson, "A Metrological Investigation," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990), pp. 71-97; and

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Cultural transmission via Arabic linear-standards impacted Europe in the late 700s; this was the Hashimi cubit of 64.9 em, which was introduced to Charlemagne's court. Later it was halved to become the pied du roi of 32.48 em in France down to premodern times. But later in Europe there was a variety of distinct textile measures (the "ell" and "pic"). In Saxon England, land measure-units became primary to architectural measure. They descended from the Northern Foot (about 33.4 em), what the Romans found extant in their Frankish and British lands. Its internal mathematical relationships yielded long forms of area measure, e.g., rood (land rod) and furrow (furlong). By Norman times, there were distinct separations between building standards and the older land measure. 27 As with China, Europe produced a fundamental grain-unit-the barley-corn mensuration enacted under Edward I in 1305, much later than the similar Chinese concept. Edward proclaimed that "three grains of barley dry and round make an inch; 12 in. make a foot," and so forth, all the way up to rods and acres. 28 This rationalization was part of an attempt to resolve political differences between, for example, Saxon and English landholders, even though a difference would remain between land and textile measure. The barley idea, which became the theoretical English inch, in Skinner's opinion " ... looks suspiciously like an attempt to make the new inch and foot appear to be the same as the Saxon measure .... "29 In any event, the barley-corn unit closely corresponded to the thumb/inch of the Northern Foot. In modern times, the French disembodied their system of linear measure, as seen in the early 1790S with the heroic physical measure of a longitudinal sector of Europe. The U.S. joined the cause, with the American Metrolological Society's program in 1873 to rationalize weights, measures, and currency. One result was the successful time-zone scheme of the 1880s, using the time coordination that was set up among extensive rail networks. 30 Three points may be taken from this little survey. First, we must not overlook the fact that different craft spheres promoted their own Tavernor, Smoot's Ear, pp. 20-23, on Polyclitus and the "squaring" technique as module. Tavernor also discusses evidence showing that Greek and Roman standards were not uniform across disparate regions. 27 Skinner, Weights and Measures, pp. 40, 44, 93. 28 Skinner, Weights and Measures, p. 94. 29 Skinner, Weights and Measures, p. 95. 30 Peter Galison, Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires o/Time (N.Y.C.: W. W. Norton, 20°3), p. II3.

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standards-architecture, field measure, handicraft, coinage, and textiles. 31 Crafts and markets stubbornly held to their own usages, a phenomenon true also in China, despite its ability to establish official standards. China, however, is unlike the West in that metrology was deeply ritualized at the court; it was centered importantly on demands to maintain and correct standards in musicology (as well as in other craft and ritual concerns). From Han onward, this had little effect outside the rarefied use of the ritual pitch-pipes in the temples and ritual sites of the dynastic family, but it was of broader intellectual importance. The second point is Robert Tavernor's "disembodiment."32 The latter could mean two things-arguments in metrology that appealed to natural philosophy and numerologies, and the ability of craft industries to create and duplicate devices to promulgate their standards. A scholar or craftsman not happy with fingers and palms might not have been able to measure a loo-mile section of longitude and relate that to a ratio applied to the earth's sphere or to the geometry of the cosmos, but he could certainly insist on a convincing numerological or metaphysical ratio. This is just the kind of reasoning seen in Ban Gu's prologue to metrology in Han shu, which Hans Ulrich Vogel sees as an example of "metrosophy."33 Also, an early thinker could lay down an arbitrary, new, matrix of master-devices, without explaining their derivation. But, as we soon see, like the modern French and Americans, early-imperial China desired something more than personal fiat for determining standards. In the case ofXun Xu, we see that a higher appeal was made to the pristinity of the Zhou, as a sort of remedy to court confusion. The third, and final, point concerns political contexts. Whether Egypt and Sumer, or pre-Han and post-Han China, we are dealing with theocratic states, where politics and aesthetics were carried forward in rituals of ratio, measure, and order. The Sumerian kings and Roman and Chinese emperors all desired to imprint themselves, in some sense as gods and in some sense as sages, and opportunities abounded for all sorts of cultural display. Advisers had to be wary at all times when counseling the emperor, cum mensural standard creator, in order not to run afoul of competing contexts-such things as taxation formulas and the overseers or owners of subdomains, 31 Kidson, "Metrological Investigation," pp. 72, 90, discusses commerial and economic spheres as commanding their own standards in early Europe, and the international impact of architects' and craftsmen's practices. 32 See n. 23, above. 33 Vogel, "Aspects of Metrosophy," pp. 13 6-4°.

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currency and markets, and court material production. Metaphysics and appeals to so-called true standards might collide with practical needs. In the case of Xun Xu in third-century China, the emperor's pleasure at a new Zhou-authorized, correct standard would ultimately not prevent critics from voicing displeasure at how those linear standards sounded, that is, when the court orchestra was forced to play on the pitch-adjusted instruments. Moreover, the complaints had nuanced roots in policy factions.

XUN xu'S METROLOGY

At this point, let us move back to ancient China to set the stage for Xun Xu. We come to know early Chinese mens ural standards relatively well only by Western Zhou times (ca. 1050-770 BC). Upon conquering the Shang state and its royal house, the Zhou took over many of its artisans, and standardization became one of the main pursuits in these shops. From the late-Warring States Zhouli JWB fl, and its added section "Kaogong ji" 34 we glean an idealized picture of the organization of the ateliers, and their emphases on the building arts and surveying, and on metal, wood, and leather crafts. We get no discussion, though, of the bases for mensuration-what the chi actually was. We do have a bit more data about pre-Zhou and Zhou capacity standards from bronze inscriptions. The situation is made more complex by the mere fact of the numerous ducal establishments, which held to varying local standards even when expressed in similar terminology. One of the most important developments, in addition to all this, was the flourishing of coinage and trade, with their own special requirements for equivalence and order. We should distinguish between what Xun Xu and others thought of as the pure Zhou standard and what the archeology of 1920 to today thinks. We are dealing both with truths taken from the ground and truths constructed verbally over centuries. Early Chinese scholars often referred to antiquarian objects based on devices at hand as well as notions in their heads. Devices found in the ground indeed give us a certain positive take on the Eastern Zhou linear standard in particular. A primary piece of evidence is a cast bronze standard-rule, or chi, held at the Nanjing University, Department of History. It was originally obtained from a Luoyang-area tomb and given to John Ferguson 34

Qiu and Long, Duliang, pp. 90 -93.

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in China in the early 1930S. It was subsequently verified as of Eastern Zhou provenance by a number of scholars. It is 23.1 cm in total, and shows 10 cun divisions along one edge. It fits into the generally agreed upon mean length of 23 to 23.1 cm. for other discovered Zhou standard-rules. 35 See Figure 4, below. We can thus say that the Zhou 23.1 cm standard is certified by archeology; but nowhere in traditional Chinese records before Li Chunfeng does anyone explain the standard by cross-referencing either "embodied" (e.g., fingers) or disembodied bases (gnomon shadows, seeds) and reviewing other objects as evidence. Any post-Zhou Chinese scholar wishing to reclaim the Zhou standard had several routes-ancient linear standards as expressed textually, mathematical techniques for converting and reexpressing values from length to volume and vice versa, and datable benchmark objects. Xun Xu read classics (and cited especially Zhouli and Guoyu); he made numeric conversions; and he collected and dated old objects. His creation for the Western Jin court was a foot-rule determined in those ways to be a Zhou chi. Based on Xun's new standard, the court metalwork shop created a bronze chi that carried Xun's own colophon-inscription. Xun Xu also established lengths for a set of twelve la if, that is, pitch-pipes that represented the twelve lala. Xun's actions may be seen as a ritualized search for an ancient, or Zhou, truth. It is not necessary that "Zhou" meant for Xun "made during Zhou." It could easily have meant that a post-Zhou person made it, yet it was considered by Xun to have represented a Zhou value. ~

Figure 4. An Eastern Zhou Bronze chi (possibly partial)

Discovered around 1930, later becoming part ofNanjing University's antiquities collection. After "Nanjing daxue kaogu yu yishu bowuguan" 13(JJ;U(~,JjI~t·~IQ'lilHjil'ltjlq0Jil1'i, p. 30. This digital image was made available with the generous help of Prof. Zhou Xian Jl'iB\s, Dean of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Nanjing University. (It seems that the above-cited work is a privately printed publication.) 35 See John C. Ferguson, "Chinese Foot Measure," Monumenta Serica 6 (1941), pp. 357-82. Qiu and Long, Duliang, pp. 156-57, treat this device as primary evidence. See also Keightley, "Measure of Man," pp. 32-33, and Guo Zhengzhong VISlr)cL~, San zhi shisi shiji Zhonggu0 de quanheng duliang :~~I·I}4tH:%c'I'I~~IIYJfi\/f1*JJJtm: (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 1993), pp. 230-33.

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Above, we learned what modern archeology thinks a typical Eastern Zhou chi val ue was, and we should now consider the same for Qin, Han, and Eastern Han chi. Discovered standard-rules of Qin and Western Han in general continued to observe the 23.1 em Zhou value. 36 Wang Mang's dynasty produced changes in infrastructure and artisanal standards, and its archeological remains are confusing and scarce. But based mainly on examples of survey gnomons and calipers, although those show some variances, it is still fairly certain that while not always exactly 23.1, still the Zhou standard was roughly observed, and that fact itself reflects Wang Mang's famous devotion to Zhou rites. 37 Eastern Han continued with the Zhou standard of 23.1, but only for a while. Based chiefly on evidence from third-century Liu Hui's IU 1f~ observations recorded in his mathematical commentary, as well as on Xun Xu's own well-known Jin standard (and its evidential bases), there occurred a distinct lengthening in the official linear standard at some point in Eastern Han. 38 This is a crucial fact because Xun Xu considered the lengthening to have been a deterioration of what I term his prisca Zhou. Xun believed that prior bureaucracies had failed to uphold venerated Zhou ritual values. He addressed its effects chiefly in terms of the pitch-pipes and consequently the imperial bells and ensemble music, and deduced that the Cao-Wei standards were by and large a continuation not of the pure Zhou standard, but of the lengthened Eastern Han standard. We return to this, and to prisca Zhou, later.

Xun Xu the Hypersentient "Metrosophist" Xun Xu's Jinshu biography gives no explanation of his technical findings. In part this was because one of the functions of a standard history was to offer a quick, in some instances entertaining, way to learn about officials-their personas, roles in society, and loyalties and networks. Xun's biographer considered how the biography would be read and criticized by Tang peers as well as by the emperor and his circle. Therefore he included two legends that explained Xun Xu's having become both a metric and music expert. The editorial conceit was that this descendant of a famous Eastern Han family, a man known for learning and imperial counsel, must have possessed a quasi-magical talent, 36 Qiu and Long, Duiiang, p. 199, lists 13 items found 1973-85; mean length is decidely between 23-23.2 cm. 37 Qiu and Long, Duiiang, pp. 202-5. 38 Qiu and Long, Duiiang, pp. 211, 272. A summary of Liu Hui's mathematics is in Ho Peng Yoke, "Liu Hui," in C. Gillespie et al., Dictionary of Scientific Biography (N.Y.C.: Scribner's Sons, 1973) 8, pp. 418-25.

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or genius. Thus a certain spirit-like sensitivity became a covering for mundane technical practice. Only one of the legends will concern us, since it is about tonal acuity (another has Xun display a genius for tasting/ smelling a subtle aspect about the rice he was served). It seems that Xun was traveling in Zhao (not corroborated by any other datum) and there heard an unusual tone from a cowbell. Later, after gaining control of the Jin's court music he recalled that specific tone and how it might help him to establish the correct twelve pitches. Subsequently, he ordered that the bell be found. People sent in cow-bells, one of which was the desired tonal match. This incident enabled Xun to complete his tunings: "As a result, he obtained the harmonizing note *1~ ~~~ ."39 Although we are right not to accept this without other evidence, we can note that the mention of people aiding the Imperial Library by sending in old objects matches my description of this time as having been one of high antiquarian interest. Later, Tang readers could either laugh by imagining Jing Fang-like or Li Si-like scholars bent over their books and old bells, or they could be awed by musicological geniuses who could work merely by ear. 40 However, technocrats in fact did not rely on quasi-magical talents. It was rather more mundane: in about 273, Xun Xu began to seek out objects to correct historical mistakes in metrology; he consulted with artisan-technicians and used established institutions and lowly officials in the process. With his wide access to both the Imperial Library 39 jS 39, p. II53. The narrative probably stemmed from Wang Yin's J:i1 (fl. ca. 320) "Jin shu"; see TPYL 338, sect. "BingR, part 69, on bells; carried later in SgS II ("Lilli" A), p. 219; andjS 16, "Uili" A, pp. 490-91. 40 The cow-bell story lived on. See Zhang Zhuo's ~lH~~ (9th c.) essay "A~~~ljXtJ~m~ fllJ- ji 111 y~( II~;/j;; *1~111lf!;~~: -=F.:5'f1-~/j::;*j:i!Y!tW iWj i3j( l\'~ 11~J ~i1*-g(*r'1tii~ ~ l])}tY..JfQ\ 1l1.£1 ytl:," which carries an appeal from the Music Offices to make sweeping reforms in ritual song lyrics; Quan Tang wen ~,::)jlfX (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1983) 174, pp. 5b-6a [1771-72]. At one point we read, "[The Yellow Emperor] ordered Ling Lun to seek out harmonious tones. For elegance and blending, there were [Du] Kui's bells. And [Jin Wudi] commanded Xun Xu to tune the pitches and he proceeded to do this with a cow-bell TIiJ10-1rfumni-J"i1'>J, ~;mfr ~M1!:; {H'iJl'I)JL),;Wtl,iW:, i'=lfir~!I-·1i9l." Moving down a couple centuries, we have a phrase in a fu ofSu Shi jlf\UIli\ (I036-II01): "[Xun Xu once] proclaimed that 'Do and Re Are Successfully Harmonized!', and the [notes] all followed. We shouldn't regret the minister ofJin. For alas! The Zhao [cow-] bell really did hit the do and re notes dead on. WI') "I~;Ii'H-0i-<5'~> ;'i~T'I(fJI'-I~, 1!!H!klf:#l;i. 1\!1yll'f, ,Wj~nnl,cl';ii';Il}j"; see Kong Fanli +UL1J1!l, comp., Su Shi wenji f.l!;1z l lli\xt/t (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986) I, p. 24, n. 14 ("}'t' being my emendation). Cyril Drummond Le Gros Clark, The Prose-Poetry of Su Tung-p'o: Being Translations into English of the [Ful, with Introductory Essays, Notes, and Commentaries (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, Ltd., 1935), p. 68, n. 39, did not see the allusion to Xun Xu.

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and to the complex mechanisms and personnel of court music, Xun began to detect that things were a bit off in the world of music as inherited from the Wei.

Xun Chuo) Writing For and About Family Xun Chuo 1lH~ (fl. early 300s; see Figure I, Jin III), wrote what may be the first description of his grandfather Xun Xu's reforms in these areas. Chuo easily would have been in possession of unique family writings; and sometime in the early 300S he compiled a work titled "Later Summaries of Jin [Affairs]" ("Jin hou lue" s"1~m~). The passage that concerns us makes four points: 41 r) His grandfather was ordered by Emperor Wu "to base himself on codified regulations and to set the bell pitch-pipes ~~~{IJUJE1fli'l1:lt." 2) Then Xun Xu had a set of bronze tubal pitch-pipes made. 3) He sent out a team to search for objects, finding several Zhouera pipes (part of a set?) and a set of Han-era bells that proved his new regulators correct. 4) It concludes by claiming that Ou Kui fj:~ had, after all, been" ... unable to check [his system] against [traditional] regulations and rites )j:;:~~~'~JQf\!Y., and he merely relied on the notes of strings and pipes of his time, as well as the chi and cun of his time, in order to make [his system] 1;&:·:fll~:*,%rr£fZ}1'f, 1I~:zJ~ 'JlffJfiJUZ. It was very far off from metric standards [given in the] rites." Ou Kui t±~ (d. ca. 225) was widely considered to have been an excellent bell-caster and able director of court high-music for Cao Cao in the I90S to about 220. Chen Shou's ~t. (233-297) Sanguo zhi ~ ~ biography of Ou paints a portrait of a learned musicologist dedicated to conservative aspects of court music, someone also opposed to the lighter entertainments that Cao Cao's sons increasingly sought. Ou became a political casualty in the transition of court styles from Cao Cao to Cao Pi, when musical solemnity seemingly was watered down. 42 It is of signal importance that Chuo has emphasized that Ou Kui was not a scholar, but merely an empirical craftsman blocked from, or intellectually unable to use, the written specifications on music and pitch-pipes. This was exactly his grandfather Xun Xu's posi-

=

Xun Chuo's passage is preserved in a quotation found in the commentary to ShixinyuUit~UffI'M[' (see SSXYjj, p. 530; cf. trans. in SSHYIMather, p. 358). 42 I have translated the biography in full; see Howard L. Goodman, "A History of Court Lyrics in China during Wei-Chin Times," AM 19.1-2 (2006), pp. 69-76 (the Chinese text is at SGZ 29, "Biographies of Fangji J:d1 [Men of Methods and Skills]," pp.806-7)· 41

shuo

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tion about Du and Cao-Wei court music. Xun Xu had been following Chen's historiographic career in Luoyang with keen interest and at one point (not datable) was displeased with Chen's "Records of the State of Wei ftiit." As odd as it may seem, it may be have been the specific matter of how to narrate the history of Wei court music that caused such dislike. It helps us to understand why so much importance was attached to the anti-Du Kui position that Xun Xu developed in the process of making reforms in metrology. 43

The Earliest Descriptions of the Process behind Xun's Metrology Aside from Xun Chuo, we also have Gan Bao's (fl. ca. 300-25) mention of Xun's critique of Wei-era metrics and harmonics. 44 Gan hinted at the steps by which Xun Xu had acted: When Xun Xu began making the Zhengde and Dayu ballet [music], he used the liilii system created by Wei [-era] Du Kui to compare with the [standards of the Jin's] Imperial Music offices and the Eight Timbres (that is, the different instrumental sections of the court orchestra), and there was no agreement. [He thus knew that because from Hou Han to Wei the metric]45 standard had increased since antiquity by over four hundredths, and because Du had relied on this, therefore [Du's system] had missed the pitches. At this point, [Xun et al.]46 followed [specifications given in] Zhou Ii 47 in order to heap up [millet] grains until they filled a volume-measure. By measuring ancient devices he made matches with [the numbers given on] their original inscriptions )Jf'&J~ut~~m1BI~!J,J@1:F[-jN:, !J, J1tIJI"~t 1'D:7»*itJ. Subsequently, he (they) made this into a model and employed it in the Suburban and [Imperial] Temples ~!J,t.i0jt, njZ3(I~Nm.

43 Li Chunfeng would judge Du Kui just as Chen Shou did: a text-learned, cultured musicologist; seejS 16, "Lilli" A, p. 474. See chap. 6 for further discussion ofXun Xu's dislike of Chen's historiography. 44 Gan's jinjifft"~G; quoted in SSXYjj, p. 530; cf.. trans. SSHYIMather, p. 358. Version in SgS II ("Lilli" A), p. 219, and short summaries of portions in jS 16, p. 490; and jS 22, p. 692. 45 I insert this phrase because of its parallel place in the SgS version, below. 46 Other versions, e.g., jS 16 ("Hili A"), p. 490, and SgS version, below, explain that Xun used a music-office official named Liu Gong &IUk 47 See Zhouli JWJ;f~~ 6 (considered a late-Warring States text) (sect. Tnt ;jdl'l,l", subsect. "Da siyue" *I~J~; SSJZS edn., j. 22), pp. lOa-lIb, specifically the numerically oriented comments of Zheng Xuan. There were other ancient texts on dimensional relationships among the twelve Iii; see Guoyu (sect. Zhouyu, xia), once again the later comentary of third-Co Wei Zhao; see James Hart, "The Discussion of the Wuyi Bells in the Guoyu," Monumenta Serica 29 (1970-71), esp. pp. 403-5; also discussion of Kenneth DeWoskin, A Song for One or Two: Music and the Concept ofArt in Early China (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1982), pp. 64-65. Xun's research may also have taken him to HS ("Lilli zhi"), and the metrological precision of its Wei-Jin commentator Meng Kang~{);JL

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Unlike Xun Chuo, this makes no mention of a commission by Jin Emperor Wu. Perhaps there had not been one: a survey of Jin Wudi's prose, as collated by Yan Kejun Jl:PJ±5j in Quan fin wen produces several imperial opinions about music performance, but no specific commission. 48 In summary, Gan has provided a narrative order to Xun Xu's reform: 49 I) he obtained knowledge of the "pitch-standard [system] of Du Kui" and used it to test the Jin court's inherent pitch-standard system; 2) he deduced that standards had changed since early Eastern Han and had caused Du to be wrong; 3) he assessed the volumes of "ancient" metric devices (how ancient, we are not told); 4) he found that their claims of volume measure were correct, we may assume according to his specific assumption about correct capacity standards; and 5) based on that fact, he somehow derived a model :rt for creating something that could be employed in the solemn court venues of the Jin. The question remains: what was that "model"; how was it derived; and what was "employed" in the court's offices? Despite having been aware of the famous Xun Xu and his technical achievements, Gan Bao has left out things. If we had nothing other than Gan's description, we would not be able to make the process of metric and musical discovery come alive. To do so, we turn to the work of a scholar from a famous literary family almost a century later. He creates a denser and more interesting picture. The writer is He Chengtian 1l3JJR3( (370-447), a Liu-Song official who produced annals and biographies for the court. He had been commissioned to write a "Songshu" *if in 433,50 and for that purpose he compiled a "Treatise on Harmonic and Celestial Systems" ffMit that, 48 See QjW 2, p. 4b, edict titled "LEJ=L1fN~F:~1," complaining about lack of musical preparations; and 5, p. 2b, "l1!t/f::;:!lWH~;!URr' (late in 275), prescribing how long various grades of officials must cease music performance in their mourning periods. Mourning as a reason for proscribing bells and sounding stones is encountered in various classical texts; Lothar von Falkenhausen, Suspended Music: Chime-Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 30. 49 A roughly contemporary, somewhat parallel, overview ofXun's metrology was given in Wang Yin's "Jinshu" (TPYL 16, p. 3a [80]); it mentions Xun Xu's reliance on a technician named Liu Gong ~tl~j~, whom we notice, further down. Otherwise, Wang's passage greatly parallels Gan's. 50 Richard Mather, The Poet Shen Yueh (44I-5I3): The Reticent Marquis (Princeton: Princeton U. p', 1988), p. 26; Yang Jialuo's t}j}~<:jh11- preface to Xin jiaoben Songshu

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sometime after 488, Shen Yue incorporated into his official Songshu In 438, He was appointed to the Liu-Song Emperor Wen's new academy as history instructor, and about this time engaged in Confucian polemic against Buddhist philosophers. He was the most sophisticated mathematical astronomer of his day, and established a new calendar for the court in 445. It is unlikely that Shen Yue heavily edited the work of He, except to splice in various relevant items. Thus, in He Chengtian's text dating to only about I40 years after Xun Xu's death, we read the following: 51 Xun Xu used the pitch-standards Tit i,ll that Du Kui had created 52 to compare methodically with [the notes of] the Imperial Music Office, the Squad-Dancers, and [the Drumming and Piping Ensemble] of the Eight Instrumental Timbres *J&*Q/((tJ;~, , Jlll!X}\{'( 53 When set against [Du's] standards, they were jarring and askew JJ~TIt:~iTli1EIIII:. [This is when Xu] first came to know ftf,~11 that from Hou Han to Wei the chi-unit )\2.11 in relation to ancient times had gradually increased by over four hundredths; and that Kui had relied [on this] for his lalii system 1:tcKibT~It: if-II; as a result [Du Kui's music] came out dissonant. Thereupon, [Xun Xu] enlisted the aid of Assistant Gentleman Drafter Liu Gong )JllIHk*Kflc:QIS~U2j~ to take Zhou li as a basis, and they proceeded to heap millet seeds [to establish volume-] measures. [Xun] used these to cast new pitch-pipe regulators 1tU,IBf~19i;flHJ~J@1~, lJji#tJfiiH:It:. When they were completed, [Xun] sent a group of people searching for ancient vessels (or, devices) LtIJjx,g*):RILI·~I~. They found a Zhou-era jade pitchregulator, which did not vary even by a fine [degree] when measured [against his own]. Furthermore, he had [his] regulators tested by sounding them [in the presence of] old bells from the Han era. They [all] responded without being struck. ... 54 lin Wudi considered that Xun Xu's lu suoyin if~lt~*71~Til~t5Kijl (Taipei: Dingwen shuju, 1975), p. I, says he was commissioned in 439. For analysis of his reconstructed wenji in HWLC, see Howard L. Goodman, s. v. "He Chengtian wenji," in Albert Dien et aI., eds., Six Dynasties Sourcebook (working title; forthcoming). 51 SgS II ("Liili" A), p. 219; condensed version in]S 16 ("Liili" A), p. 490. 52 Here SgS may have borrowed a passage of Wang Yin's version (see above, n. 49). 53 See]S 24 ("Zhiguan"), pp. 735-36, which places Taiyue and Guchui as offices under the Taichang; it does not mention the Zongzhang office. Ancient references, esp. Liji sect. "Yueling," speak of zongzhang ("Forms and Displays") as a room in a sacred hall. Zheng Xuan comments: "The west hall of the large mausoleum temple, siding along the south [wall]." It was also said to be another expression for "Hall of Light (Mingtang)." The annals of Emperor Xian of Eastern Han (HHS 9, p. 383) refers to it as an office in charge of the dancers in eight squads who were used at a ceremony to welcome the winter solstice at the northern suburban sacrifice (the Li Xian commentary says "It was the name of a music office"). In Wei it was a name for a building as well: "Lodge of Formation Displays": SGZ 3, Wei, ''Annals of Mingdi," p. 104. 54 The ellipsis represents the text's inclusion of anecdotes about Ruan Xian (discussed below).

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regulators matched the devices of Zhou and Han times, so thereupon disseminated them for use. The key points in He's description can fill in Gan's earlier gaps, and it is not surprising, since we are now reading the notes and summaries of a skilled harmonics expert and mathematician. The points are: r) Xun Xu had got hold of Du Kui's pitch-pipe regulators and compared their pitches with those produced by Jin instruments at his disposal. The pitch-frequency of Du's Huangzhong (namely, the very first of the twelve lit) was determined as low in absolute terms; note that the argument is not specifically about Du's spacing of the twelve lit inside an octave. 2) Xun deduced that Du had been using the Eastern Han chi and that the latter was slightly more than .04 of a chi (that is, 4 fen) longer than a so-called Zhou chi. 3) Xun got help from a technician, who perhaps was, judging by his official title, an underling in the Imperial Library or Palace Writers. They established volume specifications based on classical ideals, by means of which they created a new set of twelve lit. 4) A group was sent to recover ancient objects, and they obtained a Zhou pitch-pipe that was the same length (not necessarily pitch) as Xun Xu's; and they got Han bells, which responded to Xun Xu's new pitch-pipe set via sonic comparison. 5) The Jin emperor, pleased that ancient values had been recaptured, made Xun's system official.

THE INNER STORY OF XUN'S METROLOGY

The process is now clearer, but certain points remain. First is the question of where Xun got old Du Kui devices and what exactly were the instruments of the Jin Imperial Music Office? Xun was already dealing with a mountain of old documents in his cataloging chores, and so may have been examining store-rooms. The fact that Xun and Zhang Hua had "brought order to [the palace] documents" in about 273 suggests that they would have been looking for unlisted items. Chapter Five has evidence of such activity in about 274, after these efforts in metrology, when Xun Xu and Zhang would find musicological devices in storerooms. I believe that the Du Kui pitch-pipes referred to in both Gan Bao and He Chengtian's passages were Wei-era devices that palace music offices had been preserving since the 220S. When brought out of storage, anyone of them, most likely the Huangzhong pipe, could have been played against the Huangzhong of some other instrument to

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detect any difference. 55 A final, important, point from the preceding is whether anyone else in early China verified whether Xun was right about a change in the Zhou linear standard having occurred in Eastern Han, and if so, when in Eastern Han and why? The same question holds, when addressed to modern archeology as well. Let us build a deeper context for the procedures that Xun Xu used. Xun would have had to know if his chosen benchmark pitch (his preferred Huangzhong note, for example) was in fact correct for Zhou values. Both Gan and He emphasized that Xun had analyzed Du's lulu system, which I take to mean not written numbers or diagrams but a set of Du's twelve pitch-pipes built to corroborate the bells' pitches. Xun Xu would have wanted to know if Du's notes were Zhou in value. To do that, Xun seems to have tested Du's pitch-pipes using palace musical devices apparently ofEastern Han provenance, since He Chengtian says that this was when Xun Xu "first came to know that from Hou Han to Wei" the linear unit had lengthened. Xun Xu would not stop there, but proceeded to make a research judgment about what in fact constituted a true Zhou lineal foot. At about this very same time Xun assembled a team in the Palace Writers bureau that gathered and analyzed ancient metric-bearing objects. Table 4 (item IC), below, shows that the resultant new Jin standard, the one that later scholars including Li Chunfeng would call "Former Jin chi ~mr R," or "New Jin chi," was determined and cast in metal by that team, with a colophon, in 274. The colophon, as we soon see, in fact will claim that one of the seven analyzed objects was a cast-bronze chi of an Eastern Han reign date under Emperor Guangwu. Xun Xu was collecting quite a few objects, not just from the Jin depositories but from all over, and many would have been vessels and devices that stated, via an inscription, their mensural specifications. The colophon will also mention three Wang Mang-era objects, (see Table 2, items 8-10), and an "ancient" coin. Thus, Xun's team seems to have pinpointed a small piece of time, that is, Xin-dynasty through Eastern Han Guangwu as critical in comparing with Zhou values, and rationalized this collection of seven objects in a sort of statistical way that 55 Detection occurs in this way: two lit pitched ostensibly at Huangzhong but from different sets were blown simultaneously, the two notes held and sustained; if they differed very slightly one would hear the whisper-like beating against each other of the differing sinodic wave-forms. If expanding the test to include other tubes, the more the difference grew, a distinct speeding up of the beating could be detected. It is probable that such palpable phenomena were known and utilized in early China.

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pointed to the correctness of his own findings-in our own terms this seems like merely one part of a non-blind study. Finally, Xun Xu had mathematical tools: numerate expressions in classics and histories like Zhouli, its commentaries, and in Hanshu and mathematical texts. 56 Zhouli would have given Xun a basis for saying whether anyone of their vessels used for comparing was of a verifiably Zhou dimension or not. Hanshu in particular offers a whole gambit of metrics as terms of standardization, and its text would have been seen as reliable. But both those earlier texts spoke in terms merely of chi and other common units, which leaves any investigator the chore of determining how long physically was the chi of Zhou. Mathematics could help, especially by converting from capacity expression to an expression for length. It so happens that the quasi-algorithm for doing such an operation was created in about 263 by Liu Hui ~HI, who left us a mathematical commentary that Li Chunfeng in the Tang would include in his famous mathematical compilation. Liu Hui compared a Wei grain':'scoop with a Wang Mang-era one. Using a version of pi 7[, he determined that the Wei linear standard was longer than that of the Wang Mang era. 57 Ultimately, however, we have no way of knowing if that is what Xun Xu and his assistant did, or knew about, or if he had even read Liu Hui's mathematics. There were no doubt court vessels available (both Gan and He mention them). We are not told what they were: the chief candidates are bells, grain scoops, and court ceremonial dishes. The latter two were frequently marked with capacity specifications, 58 but bells were usually only marked with pitchstandard names: their shapes (almond-shape in cross-section) were not calculable at this time in the history of Chinese mathematics. That fact makes it unlikely that the evidence of Du Kui's "system" was a beUset, but instead a pitch-pipe set. Gan and He agree that Xun and his assistant(s) had poured grains into old scoops to obtain a type of portable measure-comparison. Only Gan mentions that the examination included Xun's checking to see if he could establish matches between objects by using the numbers stated on vessels' inscriptions in order to perform a mathematical computation. This helps us to deduce that Xun was doing more than just determing that a heap of seeds X defined vessel Y. See n. 47, above. See Qiu and Long, Du liang, p. 268, who layout Liu Hui's mathematics clearly. 58 In the 280s, the Jin workshops produced new capacity measures; see Guo, San zhi shisi shiji, pp. 325-27. 56

57

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Retrospective testing was crucial. We learned in He's passage that Xun tested his new Iii pitch-pipes. The passage also confirms Xun Chuo's claim about a team of antiquarian gatherers, so to speak. But Xun's team made sure to derive some sort of volumetric and/or linear metric benchmark before even making the set of Iii (or just one Iii). We can infer from the fact of searchers being sent out that the rationale was to find items to verify what had just been created. My collation of data (Table 2) indicates that nos. I and 3 there might be items that were obtained by this specific mission. Was there a Xun Xu methodology of measure, comparison, and analysis? Thus far we know that a set of pitch-pipes made by Ou Kui in the 220S was retrieved, and in order to see its "system" Xun's team assembled old objects for comparison. These latter were extant musical instruments held in the music offices and old devices like Wang Mang-era and early Eastern Han court vessels. We cannot know if steps 2 and 3, above (points from both Gan and He), occurred in that order, but somehow Xun and his technicians deduced a change in linear standards at some point after Eastern Han Guangwu. I discussed sonic tests and mathematical operations to gain length standards from capacity standards, but also Xun may have derived a new liilii system by means of something that workshop ateliers going back to antiquity have used without need of mathematics, that is, modules and scale-sticks (later in the West we would call the latter a metal or wood "Werkzoll," or, in a different context, a "story pole"). 59 A Jin-court atelier could have taken one or more lengths that Xun Xu declared were part of an older "system"; and then made a scale-stick based on those that showed all twelve pitch-pipe lengths. Or he might have had access to such a scale-stick preserved from an earlier date, and used it to "transfer" the gradated twelve over to Xun Xu's new system, whose chi determinant differed by only a tiny amount. By this point, Xun Xu has created a new set of Iii pipes with supposedly correct, Zhou lengths. We have sketched out possible methodologies that a metrologist of this time might have used. Only one method, namely the finding, measuring, and comparing of other, "older," objects can be established with certainty as Xun's, and the others must remain suggestive. His team of helpers seems to have gathered items in the palace stores (and we see in Chapter Five that such finds oc59 On modules, see Stephen Birkett and William Jurgenson, "Why Didn't Historical Makers Need Drawings," 2 parts, The Galpin Society Journal (2001, 2002).

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curred again) and from outside. A certain collection of seven, which we analyze in the next section, was written down in the colophon to Xun's new foot-rule. Table 2 shows that items from before 280, including the seven, yielded ones dated Zhou, "ancient," Han, Wang Mang, early Eastern Han, and ones without mention of date provenance. (See Table 2, nos. 1, la, 3, 6-12.) Some or all of these were used to doublecheck Xun's new foot-rule and new lit pitch-pipes. Xun Xu marshaled a staff, apparently one or more members in his Library office, including a certain Liu Gong, and maybe some from the music bureaus. Xun ultimately deduced a metrological error of the Wei, specifically as committed by Cao Cao's music-master Du Kui. The error was that Du's metric standard was longer than that of the ancient Zhou by .04 chi. Xun wanted to reestablish a formal Zhou aesthetic of precision, and not rely on mistaken Eastern Han and Wei notions. The idea that the whole period from about 100 to exactly 273 AD had been ritually incorrect was becoming clear to him. 60 We turn next to the matter of just how Xun determined his preferred Zhou length and how both early and modern archeology in China helps us to understand more about that Eastern Han moment that had misled Du Kui, and thus all of ritual music until Xun Xu.

THE ANTIQUARIAN FLURRY

To see how Xun Xu made his determination, we look at a list of items, Table 2 (following page), in which Xun Xu had an interest. I do not intend any kind of statistical facts. To derive the items, I gathered those mentioned and analyzed during the Tang by Li Chunfeng, plus those mentioned in Songshu (discussed in Chapter Five), and others that I encountered in reading.

60 On Xun's harmonics, see Wu Nanxun, §~lfn'ljt Liixue huitong {clt&}~tWJlJl (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1964), p. 123; also Yang Yinliu +J)}T!ill?iL Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao Ilqill1II!I·1-~ltff!;~512t/.~ (Beijing: Renmin yinyue chub an she, 1980) I, pp. 166-72. Western sinologists looking at mentions ofXun's regulators have included Maurice Courant, "Chine et Coree," in A. Lavignac and L. de la Laurencie, gen. eds., Encyclopedie de fa musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1931) I, p. 81. pp. 80-81; Vincent Shih, who got the gist ofXun's findings in a single footnote (Shih, trans. and annot., The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, by Lilt Hsieh [Taipei. Chung Hwa Book Co., 1970], p. 60, n. 26); ]. Needham and K. Robinson, SCC, vol. 4, part I (1962), Physics, pp. 185-86. Also,SSHYIMather, p. 359.

188 Table

CHAPTER FOUR 2.

Found-Objects Relevant to Xun's Metrology and Musicology

"Date" highly deductive, except well-dated items 2, 4, 13, 14, 15. A few cases may duplicate a reliable item. Under "Item," bold shows the most dearly attested and reliable ones. Under "Provenance," items related to Li Chunfeng's Suishu list (Table 4) are in bold. -- means no datum stated in the source; X. = Xun; ane. = ancient; reg. ITEM

ERA

TYPE

pitch-reg. Zhou

la

pitch-reg.

2

pitch-reg. Zhou

set of cast bells set of cast 3a bells bells, 3b stones 4 bells, stones 5 pitch(=14?) reg's.

3

Han Han

Ji Tomb discovery X. Xu's search team "someone" found

DATE

PROVENANCE & DETAILS

Zhou CaoWei

7

pitch-reg.--

8

survey device survey device grain measure

9-23? 9-23

11

coin

"ane."

12

foot-rule

25-55

--

SOURCES

Jin Hou lueh (SSXY/J, 530); SgS 11.219 Wang Yin, Jinshu (TPYL 16.3a) jade; found in "Ji command- 5516.395-7, 280 ery tomb". Table 4, # lE. 403 X. Chuo (ibid.); ca. 272- found in abandoned stores; 50S 11.219 78 probably complete set. -"in a principality" JS 16.490

280

in "Ji-commandery tomb"; also Table 4, # IE. 272-73? Manufactured ca. 220-225 by Du Kui. Perhaps only 3 (thus same as #14 below?)

X. Xu's internal 272-73? jade; a ~6i:)l reg.; described archive search, in "X.'s 274 AD Colophon" or other search (see Tbl. 3, item 4). ditto jade; a /J\lflll reg. (provenance same as #6). ditto bronze; "Western Capital" type (see #6) ditto bronze; "Jincuo%,:jfrtti" type (see #6) ditto bronze; (see #6); Table 4, #IAfor Wang Mang provenance. ditto As #6, but this one lacks description ditto bronze; (see #6); Table 4, #IB.

Wang Yin (ibid.) 5516.490 Implied in Wang Yin (ibid.); SgS 11.212;]5 16.490. JS 16.403

ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto

X. Xu's internal SgS 11.212; testi274 22 di-flute reg's.; probably archive search; (perhaps bronze, no finger-holes; mony of Lie gives flutes of Lie provenance. 272-73) varied lengths; inscriptions He's design naming their lengths. 14 three ca. ditto; ditto 3 cast-bronze, tubal reg's. for SgS 11.212 220s bells; they "matched system of Lie He's design (=5?) pitchreg's. Du Kui." Maybe these same as the "set" implied in #5. 15 foot-rule "ane," found: arch' ct ca. 283 found during Luoyang flood, JS 51.1425 ChenXie or construction, project found: farmer; ca. 274- JS 16 and SSHY say "jade" 16 foot-rule ane. ; SgS 11.219; Fu Chang, Jin (butJS 16 JS16 78? and SgS11,JS16,andFu says too implies found zhugongzan Chang say "bronze"; found decayed by partisans of "after Ruan Xian died"; JS 16 (in SSXYJJ, 530); Ruan) says found in Shiping (perJS 16.491 haps where Ruan died). JS22.693 See Table 4, # 2A and 4A. 13

22 pitch- ca. reg's. 230s

Ji Tomb discovery

regulator

ca. 272- jade; X. Chuo (see "Sources") says "several." SgS version 78 says "jade chi." jade; found in "old tomb."

found in "old tomb"

pitch-reg.--

10

X. Xu's search team

"anc."

6

9

FINDERS

=

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Of all nineteen items (including the three variants), fourteen (in bold in the left column) are the most reliable by their textual specifics and through their relationships to Li Chunfeng's list in Table 4. Of those, the best are in two groups: numbers 6-12, namely the seven items described in Xun's "Former Jin chi Colophon" (translated below); and 13-14, which were metal and bamboo aerophones found in 274, and mentioned in Songshu. Li Chunfeng elsewhere stated, in agreement with the early commentators already seen, above, that Xun and his assistants did make a set of cast-metal pitch-pipes based on his new standards. 61 Some items come from Li Chunfeng's Suishu, "Treatise on Harmonic and Celestial Systems." There he posited Fifteen Categories of metric devices that he used in his history of metrology; they have been studied in modern times. 62 Items I, 3, I3, I4, and I5 do not receive a place in Li's list, but their literary sources are solid (I and 3, e.g., are both reported in the early memoir by Xun Chuo). Items 6-I2 are embedded in Li's quotation of the Xun Xu colophon as given in Li's Treatise. 63 I believe that I and 3 were pitch-regulators found somewhere outside of the palace precincts via reports heard, and then gathered by Xun's searchers beginning ca. 273. No. I6 is quite puzzling, and will be taken up toward the end of the chapter. Li's claim about Ji Tomb items (2 and 4) is of great interest. Only one scholar involved with the Ji Tomb from 280 to 3IO confirmed anything about bronze objects (but did not state "bells" or "stones"),64 and there is no mention of them at all by Xun Xu. Xun may not have wanted to continue analyzing found-objects past 274. Surely, he would have given details of his testing any Ji Tomb bells (see passage, below); if they existed and had been available, it would have forced Xun to reopen the entire methodology that he had neatly completed by 274. The "Treatise on Music" inJinshu (seemingly not one ofLi Chunfeng's treatises) tells us that Xun's son Fan (245-3I3; see Figure I, Jin II generation) was ordered at a tenuous political moment to complete his father's work to restore the bells and chime-stones:

m

I5 16, p.

49 0 . Li's categories are at 55 16, pp. 402-8. See Ma Heng J~~:fiHJ: "Suishu Liili zhi shiwu deng chi" IVr'j~~~{Il:JiWjtL(l·cW(G)\. ("The Fifteen Different Classes of Measures as Given in the Lii Li Chih of the Sui Dynasty History"), accompanying translation by John C. Ferguson (Beiping, 1932, privately printed). I thank Matt Bilder, of the Harvard-Yenching Library for supplying a scanned copy. See also Qiu and Long, Du liang, pp. 305-17. 63 55 16, p. 4 0 3. M For this, see Shaughnessy Rewriting Early Chinese Texts, p. 134, n. 9. 61

62

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When Xun Xu created two choreographed [musical spectacles] with his new pitch-pipes, he further was restoring the correct bell pitches. But at that time he died without finishing his work. In 302 AD the court ordered his son Fan 1m to redo the metal [casting] and the chime-stones for use in the suburban sacrificial temples. But shortly thereafter came the disastrous fall [of Luoyang], and there are no records of the project. 65

But in addition, Li Chunfeng himself claimed that Ji Tomb bells and stones, specifically, were tested against Xun's regulators as a confirmation of Zhou standards. 66 Such tests would have to have been after 283, allowing time for Xun Xu to have finished the bulk of work on the Ji Tomb bamboo-slip texts. Ultimately, Xun Xu's making and testing of bell-chimes in an antiquarian program is not solidly attested. But Xun Fan probably did start that work officially in 302. Xun Fan's own son Sui ~ (d. 325+; see Figure I, Jin III generation) was also said to have been an expert in music harmonics, or perhaps simply performance ("fmif~").67 But there is no evidence that he undertook tests or constructions. Item 15, also not mentioned by Li, came to light possibly due to Xun Xu's patronage of its discoverer, the Luoyang builder Chen Xie ~t ~,~, who discovered an old standard-rule chi around 283-84 while repairing after a flood. 68 The object was mentioned by others, but was not (as far we know) analyzed or measured systematically, nor did it remain extant for Li's use in Tang times. Table 3, below, shows four products that came from Xun Xu's work in metrology and its linked field-musicology. Three of them were devices, and one a text on a device (the aforementioned colophon). Xun and his assistants produced item I first, before turning to item 2, since the new di-flutes were made solely for the purpose of expressing Xun's new lulu pitches. It is not so easy to say when no. 3 was made, but logic suggests even before no. 1. Work on the new chi, including measure and analysis of objects, took perhaps twelve or sixteen months, and the results (before metal clones were produced and sent to departments) may have been announced prior to making no. 1. Items 3 and 4 are reliable as physical objects extant up until at least Li Chunfeng's time and probably beyond. NO.3 is provenanced by Li and given below in Table 4, where I deduce that a replica or the original was in the hands of 65J5 22 "Yue zhi" A, p. 693; and Xun Fan's biography, 39, p. II58. 66J5 16, "Lilli" A, p. 490. 67 J5 39, p. II58. 68

See the last sect. of chap. 6 for an explanation of this incident.

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Zu Chongzhi fB~rp;C (429-500). In Jinshu Li says that the device had been called "the ancient chi 15 R," but that name is equated by Li with "New Rule ~JT R," which was a nickname for Xun's "Former Jin chi."69 The confusion can be solved: Xun's "new" chi was of an "ancient" type. Table 3. Xun Xu's Metrological and Musicological Creations ITEM

TYPE

DATE

1

set of 12 pitch reg's.

ca. 272-74

2

set of 12 di-Butes

274-75

3

standard274 rule (work perhaps ("Former Jin occurring chi") 273-74)

4

colophon to item 3

Xun XU's 274 Witnesses

AD

274

DETAILS

SOURCES

cast-metal (bronze?) tubes

X. Chuo (ibid., see table 2); SgS 11.219; Gan Bao,Jinji (SSXY]], 530);]S 16.490

bamboo; each scaled via 6 holes; meant for performance.

SgS 11.219

cast-metal (bronze?); created with Wang Yin (ibid.); jS 16, "Hili" A.490; SS aid of technician Liu Gong; was based on old text or tables giving 16.403 specs for Du Kui's metric standard. 111is became Li Chunfeng's crucial item 1C in Table 4. inscription cast on Xun's standard- SS 16.403 rule; written by him or office; states 7 objects used to determine #3.

Colophon Stating Seven Old Devices as Metrological

Let us return to Xun Xu's cast-metal "Former Jin chi" (Table 3, item 3). It was a famous device, one that all subsequent metrological scholars in China would recognize as the established chi of the realm until changes took hold during Eastern Jin and the Southern Dynasties. The "Former Jin chi" rose to the status of the primary witness used by Li Chunfeng in his Suishu List of 15 Categories (see Table 4, item IC). What is important is the fact that the device had an inscriptional colophon (Table 3, item 4). Li quoted what might be its full text in his Suishu treatise and gave a shorter version in Jinshu. 70 He also cited its source, namely, "Apocryphon on Bell Regulation" ("Zhong Iii wei" (@IH-f~$) by Liang Wudi (r. 502-50) and his advisers. This and several other extracts from "Zhong Iii wei" in Li Chunfeng's Suishu treatise comprise the only known passages. 71 I translate the colophon text from Suishu, including Li's comments at the end: 69 70

j5 16, "Lilli" A, p. 49 0 .

5516, p. 403, andj5 16, "Lilli" A, pp. 490-91, respectively. Also collated in Ma Cuohan ).l~I~gji:~m (1794-1857), Yuhan shan/ang jiyishu ];.I!JSLLi J7~qlmf.1*fJIT: (Changsha, 1888 edn.), j. 31, r.tl~#~;a, ~~~J'I. 71

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Liang Wu's "Zhongli.i wei" says, "The bronze chi handed down by Zu Chongzhi fll.i"1'2:.72 has an inscription reading": Jin [dynasty]; tenth year of Taishi (274 AD). The Palace Writers have examined ancient devices, and we have calculated f3H:y: the modern-day 9 (i.e., Du Kui's time) standard-rule. It was four and a half hundredths [too] long. There were seven examples [used for our] examination of ancient standards: one was named 'Jade [pipe] regulator for the guxian ~lli1)t [pitch-standard note]' ;74 two was named 'Jade regulator for the xiaolu IJ\ i", [pitch-standard note]'/5 three was named 'Western Capital bronze surveying gnomon ' four was named 'Metal cuo surveying gnomon ~!lII'it4Ui;h'/6 five was a bronze SCOOp;77 six was an ancient coin; and seven a bronze standard-rule [dated] Jianwu reign-period (25-56 AD, Emperor Guangwu of Eastern Han).78 The guxian [regulator] was [one] sub-subdivision long/ 9 and the Western Capital surveying gnomon was [one] subsubdivision short. The remaining examples matched this [our new] standard-rule chi. ["Zhongli.i wei" also states:] "The inscription has 82 characters.,,8o 72 Zu was a noted mathematician of his time who contributed commentaries to more than one earlier math text; see Donald Blackmore Wagner, "Doubts concerning the Attribution of Lui [sic] Hui's Commentary on the Jiuzhang suanshu," Acta Orientalia 39 (1978), pp. 2II-12, on Zu's skills and writings. Zu's bronze rule is in Li's list (table 4, item 10). 73 I am not sure if each object had a name originally inscribed, or if "yue" means "the staff called it .... " 74 The traditional name of the 5th of the 12 litli;. One may speculate that this device is in fact that called "Zhou rule found by farmer" in Li's list of 15 evidences (table 4, item 2A). 75 An alternative name for 'I'li'" the 12th of the 12 lidit. 76 The four types of Wang Mang coinage were: daquan*~J;l, cuodao illIDJ, huobu idf /(Ii, and huoquan l~~JL It is not clear why a siting gnomon would be named a cuo type. It may refer to the style of calligraphy developed in the Han period for inscriptions and used for Wang Mang-era coinage. 77 This object is listed as one of Li's evidences for ancient Zhou mens ural standards; see table 4 as item lA. 78 This object is listed as one of Li's evidences for ancient Zhou mensural standards; see table 4 as item lB. 79 In HH5, pp. 302 ff., reo Jing Fang's theoretical 60 litlit, 1)\~~fl( and 1Y&~J~ are the smallest of the units of measure used to prescribe dimensions. They are not, however, used to express dimensions of the;1j~ regulators (string tuners), which are also given for each note. Sometimes the word j," appears instead of 1)~; and sometimes Yfll and ~~ can appear without either of the former two preceding; e.g. "/j\)})LYYflL" "/j\)}JUJ~J," or "/j\

5}-t1)l&~~ ." 80 The text of the inscription has 80 words, even though this small-character passage (probably added by Li Chunfeng) states that it has (or had?) 82 words (see "Jiaokan ji" no. 5: 55, p. 413). Ma Guohan's version considers the remark about the text's length to be part of "Zhonglii wei." This has some merit, since other sections of "Zhonglii wei" show that the Liang-dynasty team had criticized and examined dozens of devices using comments of this type. Thus, I treat it as part of "Zhonglii wei."

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(Li's comments begin:) "This standard-rule" [means] Xu's "new" foot-rule ijijj-j\'; "modern-day foot-rule" 9)\. refers to that of Du KuL The two men Lei Cizong 'rrnXjJ~81 and He Yin 1Iu'JF1L 82 wrote "Depictions of Bell Regulators" I!~:il, and the text that it carries on Xun Xu's comparisons of ancient foot-rules is the same as this inscription. However, Xiao Ji )1111'",,83 was mistaken in his "Registers of Music Performance" ~~;'ilt when he claimed that the Liang court had examined the seven items. Today, we shall take this foot-rule as a basis and compare it with foot-rule examples from many dynasties.

The head phrase, giving date and venue, is that of an official colophon, written no doubt under Xun's supervision in 274. He had been Inspector of Palace Writers since 266, and at some point in 273 or 274, as we saw earlier in the chapter, was made Inspector of the Imperial Library as well. Xun's team apparently examined seven items, and those are laid out in Table 2 in the same order as given above, in the colophon. They are a mixture mostly of ancient-but-not-dated items and Wang Mang-era items. The well-provenanced bronze chi (Table 2, item 12) might be considered the star witness in Xun's research. All in all, Xun Xu's Palace Writers show pride in having found and analyzed items. The tone is one of retrospective testing, or confirmation bias, as discussed earlier: in other words, they seem to say that of seven reliably ancient items, only two were even a bit off of Xun Xu's new standard. None is provenanced "Zhou," but on the other hand none is from the metrologically tricky late-Eastern Han or Wei periods. Li Chunfeng's note brings a needed dimension. He helps us to understand the various names that previous antiquarians gave to conflicting chi. He mentions that "new" referred to the "Former Jin chi" of Xun Xu, but more important, he shows us that a transcription of the colophon made in the fifth century was correct (" ... is the same as 81 Lei was a disciple of the famous Buddhist Hui Yuan and scholar of the classics. He remained a hermit, without taking court appointment; and he established a seat of learning on Bell Mt.; biography in SgS 93, and Nanshi 75. 82 He (fl. 4 80-5 00) specialized in commentaries to Yijing kM~~, Maoshi, and Liji. He spent time on Bell Mt. as well, and after serving briefly under Qi Wudi he hid in Kuaiji. 83 Xiao (d. ca. 6IOS) was the grandson of Liang Wudi's elder brother Xiao Yi, and he lived to serve under Sui Yangdi, gaining renown as diviner and expert in shushu arts. He is the author of Witxing dayi 3J~:fj·:k'1Jf.. (ca. 590-600); trans. Marc Kalinowski, Cosmofogie et divination dans fa Chine ancienne: Le compendium des cinq agents (Witxing dayi, VIe siecfe) , Publications de l'Ecole Fran<;:aise d'Extreme-Orient I66 (Paris: EFEO, I99I). His other writings included such titles as "Metals and Oceans (or, Ocean of Metal)" 1IL 11;):, "Essential Records of Physiognomy Classics" "Classic on Mansions" ~-B r.~f~, Classic on Burials" "Recipes for Nourishing Life for Emperors and Kings" ,'iii etc.; biography in SS 78, pp. I774-77.

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this ... "). This may mean that Li had the actual "Former Jin chi," or a rubbing of it and/or its colophon, at hand. He criticizes the early-seventh-century Xiao Ji for saying that the Liang court had in their possession all seven of Xun's witnesses. We cannot say how Li knew that they had not "examined" them (a negative datum). Li finally tells us that the Xun device will be his base for making all metrological comparisons. One goal of the following sections is to say why Xun's standard was thought later to be the benchmark. First, however, we see what modern archeology tells us about Xun's "Former Jin chi" and about the mensural transition that occurred in Eastern Han.

Tracing Ghosts of the Official Bronze Foot-Rule ofJin Throughout the 1930S, the technologically-minded antiquarian and art-collector John C. Ferguson (1866-1945) toiled among old objects in China, mostly inscribed bronzes and paintings. Canadian born, he had gone to China originally as a Methodist missionary. Helped by the influence brought by his newspapers and other publications, he became involved in imperial and postimperial governments, as well as in business dealings, maintaining all the while friendships with Chinese scholars and art connoisseurs. We know of him chiefly as the author of books on Chinese art, but in fact, he branched out at one point into metrology, especially where it concerned old mensural devices with inscriptions, specifically the very one pictured in Figure 4. 84 Ferguson made a careful study, including a complete translation, of a particular work of Ma Heng J~1~ because, I assume, it helped Ferguson to date the aforementioned chi. 85 Ma was interested in verifying aspects of the reliability of the very first one of Li Chunfeng's Fifteen Categories for Metrology. He started with the writings of the Northern Song antiquarian Gao Ruona ~:€f~i*J (fl. ca. 1049-54), who had physically reconstructed Li's devices. Gao used as his benchmark several Wang Mang-era coins that he possessed, at least those that agreed in size and description with certain historical mentions. Gao deduced their provenance and their correlation with Wang Mang-era linear standards by comparing them with an extant Liu Xin rUI'fj( (46 BC-23 AD) vessel. The latter was essentially a Wang Mang device whose linear depth (in chi) was quoted in the mathematical commentary ofLiu Hui in 263 AD (see above). It is mentioned both by Xun Xu (Table 2, B4 Ferguson contributed to such journals as North Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Parnassus, Monumenta Serica. On metrology, see his "Chinese Foot Measure."

85

See Ma's work cited above, n. 62.

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item 10), and was as one of the major witnesses for a "Zhou-derived" chi in Li Chunfeng's "Categories." Gao's reconstruction of the fifteen category types was approved by the Song court and preserved in the offices of the Taichang (Grand Master of Ceremonies). Ma Heng further pointed out that Wang Guowei ~fi:t (I877-I927) once wrote that a rubbing of the inscription on Gao's reconstructed Xun Xu "Former Jin chi," was pictured in a compendium of Ruan Yuan j[; (I764-I848), and in others' works as well. 86 Ma could show that such illustrations were not depictions of the original Xun Xu chi-long lost, but instead conveyed Gao's Song-era version, with Gao's explanatory text. Today, therefore, we have via Ruan Yuan a way to view a Song-era approach to a third-century standard-rule. It is a hazy footprint ofXun Xu's work. Figure 5 shows Gao's reconstruction as given in Ruan's boole Ma Heng also studied an image of a Liu Xin "jialiang grain measure" found in a work titled Xiqing gujian E9 ~rtlifi.87 Through it, he verified Gao Ruona's reconstructions, showing that they had been accurately based on the chi of the Wang Mangl Liu Xin type, which by deduction should match all the "Zhou-derived" Figure 5. Ruan Yuan's Depiction of Gao Ruona's (Song witnesses of the first era) Reconstructed "Former Jin chi" of Li's Fifteen CategoFrom Ruan Yuan I~h;j[;, Jigu zhai zhongding yiqi kuanzhi f'!!fiJI3)iW~~glll\~t#~)}j(tf& (n.p., ca. 18°4-1912; 10 j.) 10, pp. ries, including Xun Xu's 19a-20a. The illustration shows Gao's colophon on left. "Former Jin chi." Ma located the actual jialiang vessel in a Beiping palace in I924 (the Kunning Palace :1:$$'8).88 He

m

86 See Wang Guowei, Guantang jilin W~l:fjl:.*i* (rpt. Taipei: Yiwan yinshu guan, 1958) 15, p. 13 b. 87 I have so far been unable to locate this work. 88 If Ma is right, this would be the vessel given a long analysis by Li Chunfeng at the end of his List of Fifteen Categories; see 55 16, pp. 408-10.

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checked it with his own mensural benchmark, which provided confirmation that the device in the Kunning Palace was the very same Wang Mang-Liu Xin jialiang vessel. Before taking on the task of analyzing the early-Tang approach to metrology and Xun Xu's role in it, we must summarize. Despite legends depicting Xun's strange sensory powers, in fact he reformed metrology through a method that involved dating old objects, measuring and analyzing them, and probably using computations. The method seems connected to a heightened, Xun-inspired antiquarianism that occurred even before the Ji Tomb discovery. Our overall picture derives from a variety of textual sources and even ghosts of his foot-rule that haunt us through the sleuthing of Song and modern archeologists. But the best evidence is a surviving quotation ofXun Xu's own colophon. We also learned what modern archeology says about Zhou, Qin, and Han standards. We should bring that survey forward now. For the Three Kingdoms (ca. 200-265), based on a pool of eight objects (from the Wei, Shu, and Wu areas), we get two mean lengths-23.8 and 24.2 cm. (Two of the three Wu devices are quite long-24.2 and 25 cm.) We recall that Xun Xu deduced that Du Kui's Wei-court standard (in modern terms 24-1857 cm) had been longer than the Zhou ideal. Since the Wei era provides two (perhaps three) found-devices that are 23.8 and three that are about 24-2, it confirms Xun's opinion. 89 Ironically, Xun Xu's prisca Zhou foot-rule did not impact popular usage, at least judging by what archeology shows us. For Eastern Jin general agreement among roughly five witnesses gives a mean range of 24-15 to 24.5 cm. This elongation remains when pooling the Eastern Jin and Sixteen Kingdoms examples. 90 It seems that Xun's standards did not flow into the practices of palace clothiers, coin casters, and other craftsmen who did not share the need for a prisca Zhou reform. The foot-rule as a metrological "overseer" did however remain a mainstay of court rites and even noncourt liturgies. 91 Furthermore, Xun's work provides insight into early technologies and scientific methods, something that Li Chunfeng was first to notice, as we see next. 89 See Qiu and Long, Duiiang, p. 272; for analysis of some of these witnesses, with photos, see Qiu Guangmingfi:)'6lij~, gen. ed., Zhongguo iidai duiiangheng kao rl'IDJ;l1r~ 1~)JtJJd:1%:Jj· (Beijing: Kexue chuban she, 1992), pp. 60-6r. 90 Qiu and Long, Duiiang, p. 277; Qiu, Zhongguo iidai duiiangheng kao, pp. 62-64. 91 Arts of the "foot-rule" figured in secret Daoist rites; see Patrice Fava, "Les outiles du geomancien," in Frederic Edelmann, ed., Dans ia ville chinoise: Regards sur ies mutations d'un empire (Paris and Barcelona: Editions Actar, 2008), pp. 177-83, for discussion of magic foot-rules in Iu Ban jing ~:'inj{ffl~ (Ming-era).

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LI CHUNFENG'S ANTIQUARIAN JURY

Early in Tang, Li Chunfeng spoke about ideals in metrology in his Jinshu treatise and he renarrated the Shangshu story of the Yellow Emperor's music-master Ling Lun 14-1mr. What interests us is how the discussion broadens to take in the value inherent in various media, for example, bamboo's cylindrical evenness for accuracy, and the way the twelve pipes reflected patterns of bird songs. Li remarks on history's first jade regulators. Jade pitch-pipes went back to the time of Shun, and an apparent example of one such was discovered early in Eastern Han.92 Li did not have a Luddite desire to revert to bamboo and birds as bases. Instead, drawing on Ban Gu's Hanshu, he outlined the historical development of media: it began with primeval bamboo, then jade, and finally that joy of metrologists-the cast-metal bells and pipes of Zhou and, more importantly, the bronze vessels and rule-standards of Wang Mang's court. Li continues: 93

*

Under [Eastern] Han Emperor Zhang (76-88 AD), a scholar Xi Jing Y1L' from Lingling ~I~ found a white jade tube-regulator I~Lld:fM underneath the Lingdao Shrine to Shun M-N-mg,ij'trij. 94 Moreover, in 280 under Jin Wudi, robbers in Ji commandery brought to light the Six States tomb of King Xiang of Wei, where there was also found a jade regulator. For the ancients jade was used to make pitch-pipe [regulators]. Those who used jade selected for the articulation and lustre Nf,f¥r~~ of the body of the jade. Yet, in Han, in the time of Emperor Ping, Wang Mang used bronze-alloy to make [the regulators]. As for bronze, its name emerges innately: the way it "alloys/unifies" (iliV~ ~ If=tj) everything in the world is by evening out customs fiJd~Alf0*-r-, ;IJ'LfJIUl1:/iill. As a material, it is of a high essence: not changing in segmentation either from dryness and moisture, or from cold and heat. It has a steady reliability, much like the deportment of gentlemen scholars. Thus [people] used [bronze]. k:A ]5,~', Jt'£ Jt jJl!ll1f J~lt ~~~ ill. Tm ~l ii'~; II~J:, ]~?~ x. k:A ili11~ 1.%; ilill~:it-, 1~11:1-t!1, [!IT

:r,

z.

k:A IPJ X T-, 7flt JIUl1:t~ ill. 1:.0 ~ 3:~ fi], 7F %~ 1* ¥Ilf Yl~~' 8)( flj, :fr ?!~ fer 1~' ,

zn", ,,!)(PICJ

92 Li may have got the anecdote from Fengsu tongi )ffil{:f:t:U.ll~~ 6 (sect. "Guan (Ie Fong Sou T'ong Yi [Peking: Centre Franco-chinois d'Etudes Sinologiques, 1943]), p. 45. Just several decades before Li Chunfeng's time, Kong Yingda tL;flti~ (574-648) wrote an excursus on music fundamentals, citing a similar Shun jade-tube anecdote (Chunqiu zhengyi +n*lr~~ [SBBY edn.] 49, p. 9a, for Shaogong 20, 12th mo.). Li Chunfeng, like other early-Tang scholars, would have been quite familiar with Kong's writings. 93 IS 16, "Lilli" A, p. 474-75. This parallels HS 2IA ("Lilli" rA), p. 972, but adds words that give a more historical narration. 94 There is no record of Xi Jing in Hou Hanshu; the earliest locus of this event seems to be Shuowen jiezi (see l"JtJtffWj'.'.Il [n.p., n.d.], bian 5A (sect. 111', s. v. rr:o, p. 215.

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Li Chunfeng conceived his Jinshu and Suishu treatises on Harmonic and Celestial Systems, especially the sections on metrology, as surveys of found-objects. Antiquities guided his judgments. He had textual descriptions, perhaps also images, and surely many actual objects. My previous sections have pointed out Li's "Fifteen Categories of Metrological Evidence." They formed a jury of witnesses coming over 400 years after Xun Xu's seven witnesses in his colophon text. In the following Table 4,95 I give five of the categories that are the most relevant to Xun Xu's "Former Jin chi." Clearly, Li Chunfeng accepted the Xun premise that idealized a Zhou value (see Table 4, Category One). Not even Xun Xu had remarked in clear terms just exactly how it was that his new chi was a Zhou chi. It would be established only after Li's witnesses could survey the opinions of Southern Dynasties antiquarians. Each category contains one or more witnesses, that is, actual or deduced examples that Li judges relevant for metrology. Category One he calls "Zhou chi," and it contains four objects, with a fifth one (IE) inferred from his explanation of references to Ji Tomb pitch devices (which are by definition metrological devices). The category itself, especially item IC (the "Former Jin chi"), is the baseline to which all the other fourteen categories are measured as matching or not, thus all witnesses under "I" (even the spurious IE) are Zhou-type foot-rules. Ma Heng, writing in our time but before the numerous finds of the 1950S-1990S, says the items in Category One are 23.1 cm (he does not remark though on IE).96 It is possible that Li chose the Xun Xu chi as a baseline in part because Li had the object to hand, or its replica, or a drawing handed down via Zu Chongzhi. On the matter of IE, Li Chunfeng used two evidential bases for claiming that musicological devices were found in the Ji Tomb. First, he paraphrases ("m:e--E-") a passage from a writing titled "Records of Pitch-Standards" iflfW by a Sui expert named Mao Shuang .::§ ~ (his dates and career are otherwise unknown). Mao claimed that "In Liang Wudi's time (r. 502-50), [the court] still possessed the Ji Tomb jade regulator pitch-pipe; in Song Prince Zangwu's time (473-77) it had been drilled out to make a transverse-blown [flute]. But the overall shape is extant, including length and girth."97 Second, Li cites a pas9S The Fifteen Categories are named and numbered as in Li's Suishu 16, "Lilli" A, sub sect. "Examination of Linear Units WfJSL" pp. 402-8. % Ma, "Suishu lillizhi," p. 12. Keightley, "Measure of Man," p. 32-33, says that the Zhou cun was approx. 23 mm (2.3 cm), and thus any IO-Cttn chi was 23 cm. 97 SS 16, "Lilli" A, pp. 395-97. Mao's role as Sui court technician is given details in

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Table 4. Five of Li Chunfeng's Fifteen Categories: Selected for Relevance to Xun Xu LI'S

U'S

LI'S EVIDENCE/LITERARY

PHYSICAL EXISTENCE (OR

LENGTH

NO.

CATEGORY

SOURCE FOR SPECIFIC

NOT) OF WITNESSES

COMPARED

NAME

WITNESSES OF CATEGORY

1A) Wang Mang era bronze scoop for grainmeasure; HS. 1B) bronze rule, 25-56 AD 1C) X. Xu's pitch-pipe chi

"Zhou chi

}j!fjR" These Zhou standards were basis for X.'s 1C, the "Former Jin chi," Li's baseline for Nanbei and Sui metrology. A

2

5

6

R,

and ~JTR)

10) Liang Wudi et aI. "Zhong Iii wei" ~llH#.*ljt mentions Zu Chongzhi's /jjmq:l~ (429-500) bronze rule.1l IE) Xu Guang's and Wang Yin's "Jinshu" compilations: Ji Tomb contained Zhou-era jade regulator and bell and stone chimes.

1A) perhaps extant in 260s; seen by Wei-era Liu Hui; also verified and deemed extant in 1912 by Ma Heng's research;c mentioned in X. Xu Colophon 1B) also Table 2 (item 10) 1C) X. Xu's new standard (= Jin Fonner chi), and colophon; Li refers either to original object or its replica as perhaps used by Zu Chongzhi (see 10). 10) Zu's rule (same value as 1C) perhaps extant ca. 502-20, when measured and colophon transcribed in "Zhong Iii wei."

2A) farmer's find; purportedly used by X. Xu to test instruments; perhaps extant via Liang (see 2B, below). 2B) Li compares Liang Template chi with Zu's chi (10), stating: "nearly same"

4A) "Jin zhugong zan"; bronze chi discovered in Shiping ~ElZP:. 4B) Xiao Ji's JIB (d. ca. 610s) "Yuepu" ~~, discussion of jade regulator found in late-1st c. AD (= Han officialdom's rule).

4A) see Table 2, item 16. 4B) the only corroboration for this chi's later existence is Xiao's claim that its standard equaled that of 4A.

"Wei-era chi ~R"

Liu Hui's "Jiuzhang suanshu" commentary deduces Liu Xin's standard was .045 shorter than Wei's.D

No evidence that an actual Wei chi ever extant, other than X. Xu's having deduced its length value.

"Later Jin chi

Xiao's "Yue pu" states: "It (the chi) was used after the Jin crossed the River."

Eastern Jin standard chi. No physical evidence, but was a commonly used standard in nonritual contexts.

"Jade chi [found by] Jin-era farmer

"Han officialdom [bronze] chi

Y~'BR"

:g
1C = l.0 The benchmark unit

IE) see Table 2 (la); Zhou objects from Ji Tomb that verified 1C.

2A) SSXY; see Table 2 (item 16); this says Zhouera, jade chi. 2B) "Liang Template chi" ~ttR created for music reforms ca. 502-20 (see "Zhong Iii wei")

f:?i-BJ~J.s:R"

4

t*R, 274 AD (a.k.a. U'-lifJ

WITH #IC

2B = 1.007 "Nearly the same

3li[WJ"

4A= l.0307

5= l.047

6= l.062

A Li Chunfeng also states elsewhere US 16, p. 491) that when the Jin was forced south, Xun's "new" standard (= Jin Former chi) did not find acceptance, and a second Jin standard came into existence. B See the relevant passage of "Zhong Iii wei" (above). c Ma, "Suishu liilizhi"; also Wagner, "Attribution," pp. 203-5, but arguing that Liu Hui most likely did not see the device. The measuring vessel is mentioned briefly at HS, p. 967. Liu Hui's treatise discusses its dimensions and its inscription and refers to it as developed (created by) Liu Xin. D See Wagner, "Attribution," pp. 200-1.

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sage he claims was carried in several "Jinshu" histories written before Tang, namely, that when "robbers at Jijun made public the tumulus of King Xiang of Wei, [the authorities] got an ancient Zhou-era jade pitch-regulator and [a set of] bells and lithophones."98 Our extant passage of Wang Yin's "Jinshu" does not, however, say "Ji Tomb," but "old tomb." I have not found any pertinent item in the known passages of Xu Guang's "Jin ji "99 We move to Li Chunfeng's Category Two-a "jade chi found by a Jin-era farmer" (this being a story from Shishuo xinyu). There is confusion regarding exactly what object 2A was since it was so similar to 4A. But was it jade or bronze? Was it found in Shiping or not? Li's objective is to show that 2A was eventually scrutinized by the Liang court, but it would have been clearer ifLi had tided the category "Liang Template chi," Li's particular name for 2B; 100 that is because the "template chi" was a better provenanced item than 2A. A passage from the Liangcourt's "Zhong Iii wei" says: "Costume shops have followed their predecessors and handed down traditions. There is a Zhou-era bronze chi of one species [from a set]' as well as eight species of an ancient jade pitch-pipe regulator set. [Experts] investigated the clothiers' Zhou [bronze] rule; [the Marquis of] Donghun 101 had used it for displaying credentials, but the chi [itself] is now no longer extant." 102 Although gone by the time of that writing, it seems that officials retained a description perhaps giving its specifications. They determined that the surviving device, the jade regulator, was only a miniscule amount longer than Zu's purported "Jin Former Rule," which they surely possessed. They also claim that the latter was about the same as the "New chi," namely Xun Xu's "Former Jin chi." Li seems to elide a possibly

*

Derk Bodde, "The Chinese Cosmic Magic Known as 'Watching for Ethers,'" idem, Essays on Chinese Civilization (Princeton: Princeton U. p', 1981), pp. 22-23, and p. 24, reo the reboring of the the Ji Tomb pitch-pipe. 98 5516, p. 4 0 3. 99 Xu's biography is in SgS 55, pp. 1548-49; trans. in Scott Galer, "Sounds and Meanings: Early Chinese Historical Exegesis and Xu Guang's Shiji yinyi," Ph.D. diss. (University of Wisconsin, 2003). Li repeats this claim about the Ji Tomb at jS 16, "Hili" A, p. 475. 100 The name refers to Liang Emperor Wu's reform of all metrological and musicological standards, apparently using the "Former Jin chi" ofXun Xu. The episode has been little studied in sinology but to some extent in Japanese musicology; see Shiba Sukehiro's zHi:3}~ essay on the Liang system of twelve di-flutes, in Hayashi Kenzo t*m~~=--· et aI., Shosoin no gakki 1[:(Jjlt~O)~~J{~ (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1967), pp. 203 ff. WI He was Xiao Baojuan Jil!l']i~-&, a son of the Qi Emperor Ming; he was in power from 499-500 and said to have been responsible for large building programs. 102 5516, p. 4 0 3.

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Zhou-era "jade chi" (via Shishuo) with the more believable "old jade regulator" of the Liang clothiers, both of which the Liang court tested as being the same length as the clothiers' "Zhou bronze chi" and Xun Xu's "Jin Former Rule." I believe Li erred when quoting "Zhonglii wei," and the clothier's chi should be "jade," not "bronze." Otherwise, these witnesses may not agree mutually. Ma Heng says that 2B was 23.261 em, which he got by multiplying 23.1 by Li's .007. 103 Li Chunfeng's Category Four is the "Han Officialdom" standard, with two items. For item 4A, Li quotes Fu Chang's 1f~ (early 300s) "Jin zhugong zan" ~ ~tf0-., now only found quoted in the commentary to Shishuo xinyu. It differs in wording only slightly from a similar anecdote in the main text of Shishuo. 104 Li adds to this incident the fact that the "ancient bronze rule" was found in Shiping, which is perhaps what Li's own text may have stated, but in fact is quite strongly implied in "Jin zhugong zan." Now we turn briefly to the problem of confusion between the Category Four and Two witnesses. Ifboth 2A and 4A were found in Shiping, they strike one as a repeated report. Li, however, thinks that Fu's remark and the main Shishuo text's remark yield two devices, probably because of the stated differences in their material. For 4B, Li cites the anecdote about the discovery at the Shun Shrine, which he elsewhere gave in fuller form (translated just above). But now Li prefers to cite Xiao Ji's description of it. Xiao, the eminent cataloger of Daoist cosmology and omenology, is quoted as saying that "The unit-measures (of the Shun-shrine jade regulator) make up this chi lt~ljtR."105 The word "this" is difficult, but surely he must be saying that "this chi," some replica or image of that found under the shrine, was "Han Officialdom's chi." Why, however, did Li, in his other, fuller discussion, context the Shun Shrine device as so decidedly prehistoric? As we saw, he quoted tradition to the effect that the jade regulator was made long-ago in Shun's time and now was found under a Shun Shrine. Was it a primordial jade regulator, or just a Han one made before 76 AD and dedicated to the spirit of Shun, a great patron of precision? There can only be one answer. It is that no matter when that Shunshrine object was made, it was nonetheless long compared to the pure, [03

Ma, "Suishu liilizhi," p.

12.

[0455XYjj, p. 53 0 (trans. 55HYIMather, p. 358); variant quoted TPYL 16, p. 3a [80]. For the version in the main text of 5hishuo, see 55XYjj, p. 530; trans. 55HYIMather, p. 357; variant TPYL 565, p. 4a [2552]. [

05

55 26, p. 40 4.

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Zhou chi. When found in 76-88 AD, Han officials were moved to take it as true and real, some insisting on its pre-Shang provenance. We now can deduce that the Shun device did become officialized, and that it was perceived by Xiao Ji and then Li Chunfeng to have been the same generic mensuration as the bronze standard-rule found in Shiping. The Eastern Han elongation of the Zhou chi standard thus came after about 100 AD, assuming it took 10-20 years for the Shun regulator to become the de facto standard, or for the Han emperor to have declared it de jure. Li Chunfeng measures it as .0307 longer than Xun's "Former Jin chi." Ma Heng says it was 23.809 cm, again multiplying by Li's factor. 106 Another support for Eastern Han as the time of the elongation is found in a phrase in Mao Shuang's treatise (via Li's precis): "In Hou Han the standard rule became slightly longer."107 Also, Li's Category Eleven (not analyzed here), demonstrates that the length of late-Eastern Han Cai Yong's flute was based on a very long chi. lOB The Wei took over Eastern Han's elongated chi. Thus Li's Category Five is "Wei chi," saying that it is what Du Kui had used for his regulators. 109 It is a conceptual category, not a material Wei-era device that Li could hold in his hand. Li offers only the deduction by Liu Hui, who determined that his own Wei dynasty used a standard .045 longer than the Zhou standards of Wang Mang (as discussed earlier). It was already known that Du Kui in the early 220S had borrowed the common Eastern Han standard without trying to analyze or reform it. It is curious that Li claims the Wei standard rule was 1.047 of Xun's chi (that is, .047 chi longer), yet Liu Hui's conversion yielded 1.045. Ma Heng states the Wei chi as 24. 18 5 cm. 110 Oddly enough, for Category Six, the "Latter Jin chi," Li lists no device, citing only Xiao Ji to the effect that in Eastern Jin times this was the standard. Ma Heng describes the "Latter Jin chi" as 24.53 2 cm. 111 Once again, it implies that Li spoke conceptually, not from passeddown illustrations or descriptions. Yet, there remains a puzzle, since 106

Ma, "Suishu liilizhi," p. 13.

107

SS 16, p. 395.

10S To determine that Mao was referring to Cai Yong's flute, Li used a remark by Zu Xiaosun fll~:{~ (d. ca. 620; apparently no relation to Zu Chongzhi). He was a music and computational specialist; appointed by Niu Hong to serve in the Sui coutt as Gentleman Director of Harmonics; then under Tang Gaozu was Gentleman Drafter, working on music reforms; biography in Jiu Tangshu ~~JijJfh[: (Zhonghua shuju edn.) 79. 109 See also Qiu, Zhongguo lidai duliangheng kao, p. 60. 110 Ma, "Suishu liilizhi," p. 13. 111 Ma, "Suishu liilizhi," p. 13.

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the phrase "In actuality in comparison with the "Former Jin chi t~ used here, and it is the same as used for thirteen of the Fifteen Categories. Only One and Five drop the adverb "in actuality." Ma observed that Li Chunfeng " ... must have had the actual objects before him,"112 but one wonders if Li has signaled those categories for which he had no access to a real object, or to a rubbing or sketch. Two main points emerge from Li Chunfeng's "List of Fifteen Categories of Metrological Evidence." One is that Xun Xu had evidence for condemning Du Kui of Wei, and by doing so he succeeded in restoring a pure Zhou chi. Eastern Han officials had been overly affected by the Shun Shrine episode, and thus around 90-100 AD they failed to think about the implications of the change and the impact on building, taxation, surveys, and the all-important pitch-pipes. The second point is the gradual creep in length from Xiao Ji's "Han officialdom chi" to the incompetent Wei chi, thence to even more elongation in Eastern Jin (Table 4, right column). Ultimately, Li accepted such changes, making sure merely to record them, and he lauded technical achievements that helped further metrological stability (especially the materials used in standard-bearing devices and the use of mathematics). We see this opinion in his "judgment ofXun Xu," which follows.

-If R ... " is

Li Chunfeng Throws Solvent on Legend and Evidence Li Chunfeng, an accomplished mathematician, gathered and commented on early works dealing with the mathematical steps for solving unknowns and determining areas and volumes; he also established one of the Tang's major computed ephemerides. '13 He corrected models of physical astronomy, especially the theoretic location of the ecliptic; and the Tang court had his plans turned into a cast-bronze device in 633 AD. In 641 he was made Erudit in the office of Grand Master of Ceremonies. Soon after, he was transferred back to the astronomy office, where he compiled the Treatises on Astronomy J(X, Harmonic and Celestial Systems ffM, and Five Processes lifT (that is, uranoman tics and other kinds of omenology) for both Jinshu and a draft titled "Wudai shi zhi" li1-tst:. .114 The latter contained treatises intended to be included in histories of the Southern Dynasties and was Ma, "Suishu liilizhi," p. 16. See his Suanjing shishu Qian Baocong ili~11rJ}j~, annot. (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1963). See remarks on Li in Denis Twitchett, The Writing of Official History under the Tang (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1992), p. 10; and Lien-sheng Yang, "Notes on the Economic History of the Chin Dynasty," HJAS 9.2 (1946), p. III. 114 See his biography, Jiu Tangshu 79, p. 2718, which also gives a detailed description 112 113

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compiled from about 641 to 656, then attached to Suishu later. It is fairly certain that Li wrote the "Treatise on Harmonic and Celestial Systems" for Suishu before that of Jinshu 115 The Suishu's "List of Fifteen Categories," with dozens of cited sources, is relatively richer: for example, mathematical commentaries from Wei to Sui, Xun Xu's edition of the Bamboo Annals, technical treatises like that of the Liang court, a record of a Northern Zhou court debate (ca. 578-79) on metrology that involved Niu Hong 5L (545-610), and many others. 116 But it was not in his Suishu treatise that we find Li's most acute evaluation of Xun Xu. That is found in the Jinshu treatise. Li had a very short window for finishing the two treatises. The Suishu annals and biographies were finished in 636, but the treatises, done as part of "Wudai shi zhi," came slightly later. Li Chunfeng's Jinshu treatises were finished by 644. It appears, then, that his "List of Fifteen Categories" in Suishu was drawn up before that, in about 641-44. We can deduce priority because of the way the Suishu categories, like research reports, are then summarized in the Jinshu treatise in order to establish forums for other sorts of discussion. An example of this sort of forum was when Li discussed the attack on Xun Xu's standards that Ruan Ji's nephew Ruan Xian mfiiJt (fl. roughly 250-80) made perhaps around 275-78; the story was available to Li in two anecdotes,lI7 and even provided Li two metrological witnesses (Table 4, Categories Two and Four). Ruan Xian had criticized not just metrology but also Xun's retuned flutes. Ruan complained that the notes were too high because Xun's linear standard was too short. Now writing in Jinshu, Li believes that the Shiping problem is important to metrology, and that it can show how good a technician Xun Xu had been, after all. When we read the entire judgment we sense a subtext implying that Ruan Xi an's friends may have created a project merely to prove Xun Xu wrong, a project involving digging around in Shiping to find evidence. The judgment of Xun Xu is as follows: I18 Xun Xu created new [cast] pitch-regulators for bells; they were in tune with ancient instruments ;li.lUJilI·{~tfjJI!:, 9iJTli·H,~,'ff~li15J. People at the time reof Li's armillary, which seems to have had three rotating, nested spheres. 115 See the similar opinion of Wagner, "Attribution," p. 201. 116 On the Suishu technical treatises and the formation ofjinshu, see David McMullen, State and Scholars in T'ang China (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1988), pp. 16670, and his n. 29. See also Shen Dong it~, "Suidai Kaihuang yueyi yanjiu" IlfHtlJ:H\~: t!;~,'ij~1Uf7'~, Xin shixue ~fifi')l:,\}1, 4.1 (1993), pp. 1-42. 117 See n. 10 4, above. Ruan Xian is discussed in detail in chap. 5. 118 jS 16, "Lilli" A, p. 491.

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marked about their preciseness. It was only Cavalier Gentleman-in-Attendance Ruan Xian of Chenliu who ridiculed tWt its pitches as being too high. [He held that] "A high pitch connotes grief. 'The music of a dying state is sad and full oflonging, and its people are full of misery.' Today if the pitches are not agreeable and refined 9JIW/1~f1 ~{Ii, I'm afraid they are not the centrally harmonious pitches of a virtuous [government]. [The sharping] must be caused by a difference in length between ancient and modern standard-rules." 119 At some point in time [Ruan] Xian grew ill and died. Because Xun's [new] pitch-regulators {;It matched those of Zhou and Han, [Jin] Wudi had them disseminated for use [in all the offices]. Later, a Shiping ~f,C,l;' [person/persons], in digging up the ground, obtained an ancient [cast] bronze standard-rule )(; it had weathered many years and was on the verge of decay, and thus no one knew in what dynasty it was produced. A result [of tests] was that Xu's standard-rule was [determined to be] over-long by four-hundredths. People at that time conceded to [Ruan] Xian's marvelousness, yet none of them was able to solve the [real] meaning of [what they had found at Shiping]. [Your] historiographer-servant makes a judgment. [Xun] Xu is removed [from us] by a thousand lifetimes; and he computed the specifications of hundreds of ruling courts Jlter 1-~;z_rl~·. [His] lineal measure and his computations were apt }j[:WJ~5E'f~L [his] sonorities were consonant and also tallied [with his computations]. It might be said that these were exactijJfi\~-l;J]W(; they were credible and had proofs {2n(Jj:fH~tI1. But people of [his] time lacked knowledge HUll;]' A~lff&' and based [their opinions] on one single standard-rule that could not be provenanced. They were careless about two [other] devices, of Zhou and Hanera dates, which have been judged as matching exactly. How could they have been so mistaken! Shishuo says (here Li shifts to the similar anecdote in the main text of Shishuo): "There was a farmer who found a Zhou-era jade standard-rule in the ground in his fields; it [eventually would] become the corrected standard-rule everywhere in the realm. Xun examined it to compare it against the metal, stone, string, and and bamboo [instruments] that he had produced. They were all comparatively shorter by one grain." Also, in Han Zhangdi's times (r. 76-88 AD), the scholar-scribe Xi ling from Lingling had found a jade pitch-regulator underneath the Lingdao Shrine to Shun J}~ytmtifT-f:rF-{~' ]s'{~lt (an anecdote that Li drew on elsewhere, see above), and it was measured as that of a standard-rule. [Officials] handed it down over time and called it the "Han officialdom chi." It was used in comparison with Xun Xu's "New chi," the latter be119 Except for the sentence placed in angle brackets, Li uses Ruan's discourse as quoted by Fu Chang; see Mather's trans. of that (see n. 104, above); the long internal quotation alludes to the Yueji sect. of Liji. In a summary of this standoff, SgS II ("Liili" A), p. 219, uses the same locution "ridiculed," but does not say that Ruan was the "only" one.

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ing shorter by .04. The Han Officialdom Chi turned out to match the length of the Shiping chi. Further, the tuning [pi tch-]regulator standard-rule that Du Kui [of Wei] used, when compared with Xu's New Rule was 1.047. In the fourth year of Jingyuan [of the Wei] (263), Liu Hui ~Ht& wrote in his commentary to Jiuzhang that the standard-rule [underlying the volume of] the Wang Mang-era hu-vessel was .955 weaker ~~ (that is, shorter) than the Wei-era standard-rule. It was this by which Xun Xu said that the [so-called] present-day standard-rule (viz. Du Kui's Wei standard) was more than 4.5 hundredths long .... (Li here mentions two examples from his List of Fifteen Categories in Suishu that demonstrate the relengthening of the standard after the fall of Western Jin). Xun Xu's New Chi was explicitly for tuning the musical pitches. When it came to the populace, it was not very wide-spread, and therefore both of ... [the two post-Western Jin examples] were, along with the Wei standard-rule, generally used as baselines.

This is a fascinating judgment of one skilled technocrat about another. Li has trounced Xun's assertive contemporary critic, Ruan Xian: it was not just Ruan, but "people of his time [who] lacked knowledge." The picture is that of a devoted scholar, Xun, whose "measure and computations were exact," but who was beset by ignorant followers of Ruan who (if we are not suspicious of a conspiracy) happened upon a Shiping farmer's objet trouve that measured longer than Xun's official "New chi." They were blind to the fact, though, that things plucked from the ground might be wrong sui generis-that the discovered chi used to argue against Xun's precision was in fact a witness to late Eastern Han ritual confusion, not to Xun's confusion. In the 640S Li Chunfeng gave back to history the Xun Xu who was a skilled reseacher. Of course, 350 years after Xun's death the intellectual climate was vastly different. At certain times the Tang state installed technical arts and examinations as part of their official schools, and in Chang' an, non-Chinese monk-translators and Chinese scholars were making advances in astronomy and mathematics. However, the ancient Chinese art of metrology suffered the kind of discontinuity that the art suffered everywhere. In other words, Li's final remark about the relengthening of the standard ought not to seem contradictory: it merely recognizes the way commerce and mundane technologies remain aloof from, and occasionally trump, the specialized technologies conceived within court rituals.

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RITUAL MENSURATION, MUSIC, AND EARLY SCIENCES

Eastern Jin recidivation back to an elongated Eastern Han-Wei chi shows merely one kind of metrological disjunction. I already mentioned others: the different standards used in coinage, building, and manufactures; and the impact of political problems and policies regarding resurveying land for registration and taxation. In Western Jin, as with previous dynasties, metrology and musicology were linked; the two formed one ritual process, and, along with astronomy, it asked more from court scholars than any other ritual, requiring several recondite skills. Let us step back a bit from the details that emerged in these two years of Xun Xu's career in order to consider motives. For what reasons did the Jin emperor embrace Xun Xu's metrological project, giving him titles, commissions, access to staff and depositories, and adopting Xun's product as official? We should keep in mind that the product was an overall shrinkage of magnitudes, a correction based on Xun's antiquarian judgment that pure Zhou standards had been egregiously elongated during late Eastern Han and Wei. We must remember that there was no profession of metrologists, with self-sustaining, dialogic groupings and generations of problemsolvers cashing in their intellectual capital. Nor can international politics have come to bear. Third-century China, unlike the harried world of conquest and cultural interpenetration in the eastern and western post-Roman worlds, including medieval England, did not have to sort out metrological keys in the economies of foreign small-holders: there was simply no such concern in China's dealings with Xianbei and Jie invaders in northern and western areas, nor with Koguryo in the northeast. Architectural and craft-related motives to accommodate and adjust mensural standards were an important phenomenon early in Western history. Yet, although we are beginning to know more and more about architecture and craft industries, we cannot identify a link, if any, between the rather sophisticated, known mathematical techniques, on the one hand, and the use of architects' or builders' modules, on the other. Our important source of Jin economic policies, the "Treatise on Food and Money" in Jinshu, provides no clear evidence of whether or how land was surveyed and figures registered in documents, especially for the 264-66 period, when the Simas meted out domains to their dynastic supporters and family members. The Treatise does show that the early years of Jin were an economic turning point, and that

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the tone of the new court encouraged economic cooperation and projects at the local level (clearing, planting, irrigation) to allay negative conditions that had developed since the 230s.120 In short, it would be fruitless to posit any sort of motive by Jin Wudi and his advisers to use Xun's metric shrinkage to reduce outgoing and increase incoming goods and lands. That would have necessitated mixed standards of accounting and cast the dynasty in an evil and usurious light. There is no evidence, either, that Xun Xu was interested in land-tax, head-tax, and other economic policies, despite the vague implications in his biography (see Chapter Two). Nor does the "Treatise on Food and Money" even mention the 274 change of the chi.

The Prisca Zhou This litany of negative conditions brings us to what I believe was the motive for Xun's actions, namely, the internal problems of rituals centered around metrology and musicology. Xun Xu was someone who, besides involvement with political factions, was totally devoted to Confucian court rites. In his case it was the determination of lengths of pitch-regulators for correcting music. After all, correctness is a chief aspect of rites generally. Metrology, the a priori of musical rites all through Chinese history, makes us ask "What does correct mean" in physical and philosophical terms? What did it mean specifically in 274 AD? Chapter Three dealt with Xun's and his peers' reform, at least in part, of the structure of the court's lyrics. There we looked at aesthetics, something that we must not lose sight of. Historians of early China like Martin Kern have opened this up as a larger category-not just involving musical ensembles with choreography and song, but recitations and chants of all types, which made performance a recurrent activity. But, for any interpretation of the aesthetics, the arrangements of players, venues, and modes and melodies, we are more successful the further we are past about 900 AD, when the sources for scales and notation begin to emerge. For China's Period of Disunion and the Sui-Tang, scholars have examined music by focusing on its growing bureaucratic structures-its instruments and troupes. For even later periods, we have had a fruitful spate of descriptions of Song through Ming court music as organizations of shape and as institutional responses to imperial demands and the interplay of those demands with a range of state policies. 120

Yang, "Notes on the Economic History of the Chin Dynasty," pp. 158 ff.

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For court musicology I wish simply to call attention to the unique role from late-Eastern Han to SuilearlyTang of the correctness of both sheer physical standards and absolute pitch. Others have touched on this concerning pre-Han and Han times. Kenneth DeWoskin's writings from the I980s are still valid, and are informed by his learned handling of the texts, coupled with an eye toward performance practice. He recognized the importance of court tonal precision, proposing at one point that many Warring States through Han textual arguments reveal a centuries-old, disjointed search for a lost, ritual standard that was thought recoverable: "Once the yellow-bell [Huangzhong 9=t] pitch was known, the others could be generated by careful division on a string tuner. The degree of confidence about the accuracy of the yellow-bell varied ... Certification or recovery of the yellow-bell pitch was an issue of imperial concern during the Han and the source of vigorous debate and discussion at court."121 Absolute pitch for early China, and even through the whole imperial period, was laden with cosmic significance. The foundation pitches of a correct set of lit (epitomized by the "Huangzhong note") and the notes played in court performances were part of the court's religious system. A metric-musical correction was just as important as determining schedules and protocols for the dynastic family's ancestral devotions, the arrays and symbology of uniforms, and the public displays of ritual plowing and astronomic observances. Any courtier might have mastered classics that gave numerical lengths for correct pitch, and may have had a set of pipes created. But what might he say they represented? Ideally, a dynasty's rites had meaning. Were the new pitch and the performances an arbitrary invention? Were they a useful and well-argued continuation of a previous dynasty's musicology? Or a correction of it, and how so? In Western Jin, that courtier was Xun Xu. Despite the fact that numerous scholars were interested in and took part in music, he seems to be the only one to have plumbed harmonics to the depth of a science121 De Woskin, Songfor One or Two, p. 46; and p. 61: "Only bamboo that was precisely even :l4J ... would make tubes capable of the true pitch." See idem, "Early Chinese Music and the Origins of Aesthetic Terminology," in Susan Bush and Christian Murck, eds., Theories of the Arts in China (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1983), pp. 195-96: "Pitch-pipe technology, which was employed in the grand search for more precision for the Han standard Huangzhong note, was also put to experimental use in the measurement of cosmic qi ... ." I believe that ritual use of string-tuners ceased in and around 193, with the death of Cai Yong, and pitch-regulator tubes and performance flutes were preeminent in the area of absolute pitch; see Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths," pp. 132-37; and Goodman and Lien, "Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Temperament."

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based technology as it had been in previous centuries. The result was his perception of Zhou values and concrete measures as-to invoke an analogy with seventeenth-century Europe-a prisca theologia. My introduction introduced the neologism "prisca Zhou," to suggest, as with prisca theologia, arguments or complexes of ideas claiming that an emulation of, or return to, venerated ancient systems might correct current social or religious fractures. Xun thus was touching on large political questions. For example, "Exactly why was the Cao-Wei dynasty tainted and the Jin great"? The authority to which notions of "early" or "antique" appealed was that of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius, in general the creators of ideal ritual programs of an era that had been set out in canonic passages and found even in material relics. Xun Xu shows us that wholesale reform of court ritual was an ongoing debate ever since the drastic changes and questions brought on by the Wei, especially the personal preferences of the Cao rulers themselves. Xun Xu represents, then, a successful, positivist pleader in a larger ritual context. He had argued consistently for Zhou aesthetics, first his four-word shi ~:;If -style of lyric (discussed in the previous chapter), and now his Zhou chi-a further correction of Cao errors. The only danger would be that historical examples of "prisca Zhou" revisions could arouse images of Wang Mang-images uniformly held in a bad light. We might return again to absolute pitch, and make another comparison with the West by considering organized court systems and liturgical systems of music. There were hymns in very early (100-300 AD) Jewish and Christian worship, but at the same time musical instruments were scorned for their ornateness and lewdness. Even with plainchant and then the Gregorian chant of the tenth and eleventh centuries, there was no particular urge to obtain a preferred, antique/ sacred metrology and link it to sacred devices that could display pitch and harmonics. (One must, of course, assume that in a given locale pitch could be remembered by ear, over years of exposure.) It was not until Renaissance antiquarians that such investigations arose outside of Church writing; they were, however, aimed differently from the ritual pursuits of Chinese courts. The great synthesizer of the history of musicology Michael Pretorius (1571-1621) began his work with a refreshing, protestant celebration of the meager evidence of Old Testament sacred music, mentioning instruments sanctioned by Moses and those used in David's Temple in Jerusalem, bringing in Greek and Roman authorities as well. But he jumped directly forward to a

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much later "pagan world," where the pitch of organ pipes in cathedrals was concerned with accommodating ensemble adjustments, that is, the difference in the ranges of instrumentalists vis-a-vis vocalists. 122 The Church's (both Western and Eastern) centers of canonic music performance preserved unaccompanied chant, with pitch-memory helped in some locales by small duct-flues as pitch-regulators. Then, finally came the great organ ranks beginning in the late 1300s, but whose pitch problems were, again, mainly about relative pitch. 123 Unlike China's ritual arts and techne, the early Church was not interested in a search for Christ's (or Paul's, or even Gregory 1's) exact pitch for psalmody, whether through some vaguely reconstructable pipe, trumpet, or string-length, or, more abstractly, a radical reading of scripture that might point to specifications of magnitudes. There was no part of the liturgy that required ritually accurate pitch devices. China's quest was unique in this way. Bell Yong, in the introduction to a volume focused on later imperial China, reminds us about the political importance of the "prescribed" absolute pitch, and about its technical priority.124 This is an important observation. I urge only that "technical" not stop there but reach out toward a history of aesthetic and historicist argumentation. Joseph Lam has provided a tour-de-force of Northern Song musicology that goes quite far in recognizing the impact of ritual. We learn that in that dynasty a policy crisis arose concerning confusion over the metrological underpinnings of the twelve lulu, and that one of the most clever of several solutions was to measure the emperor's four-finger span. Clearly those involved understood both the disembodied and embodied nature of a thousand years of Chinese metrology, and even recognized the 122 De organographia: Parts 1 and II, trans. and ed. David Z. Crookes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 3-4. 123 See Ellis's essay reprinted in Alexander J. Ellis and A. Mendel, Studies in the History ofMusical Pitch: Monographs by Alexander]. Ellis and Arthur Mendel (Amsterdam: Frits Knuf, 1968), p. 23. He agrees with Praetorius that some early churches had primitive bellow-pipes that functioned as tuners. Then he moves to his first witness: the 1361 (restored, 1495) organ in Halberstadt. The most durable and portable Western pitch-regulator, the tuning fork, was invented only in about I7II, and before that the organ flue-pipes carried the sense of pitch (or, Ton); in fact pitch-standard terms were taken from the names of the pipe-lengths, and those pitches varied across Europe; Arthur Mendel, "Pitch in Western Music since 1500: A Reexamination," Acta Musicologica 50.1-2 (1978), pp. 1-93, esp. p. 12. 124 Yong's Introduction, in Bell Yong, Evelyn S. Rawski, and Rubie S. Watson, eds., Harmony and Counterpoint: Ritual Music in Chinese Context (Stanford: Stanford U. p., 1996), p. 23.

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technical level ofXun XU. l25 This shows that we must become attuned to reactions to the rites of metrology-musicology and other arts; we must be able to distinguish the technically dedicated and convinced from those who thought such activities to be cynical run-throughs of useless struggles over numbers, something that Ruan Ji in the third century was thinking about.

Habits of Science in the Third Century: Status, Sites, Techniques This chapter has provided examples of the way ritual metrology took on a variety of techniques: physical examination, measure, comparison, numerical expressions, and constructions. Along the way, institutional structures and staffs were utilized. All of this says something about the nature of early sciences in China. Anthony Barbieri-Low has written about early Chinese artisans and "the new type of artisan ... primarily scholar-officials [with] amateur vocations as painters and skilled inventors."l26 This shows that much of the early sciences (both East and West) generally involved building and making, not only glossing and writing. In the concluding paragraphs I will take up several of Barbieri-Low's points. First, the metrological work of Xun Xu is an important example of the fluidity of the social distinction between artisan and scholar, distinctions that were becoming thinner from late Eastern Han onward. We have examples of learned members of the administrative elite who practiced artisanal skill-Shentu Pan (d. ca. 194) the lacquerer and Master Guo the smith (d. 179). Both held minor posts and communicated with their scholar-official peers despite renown as erstwhile craftsmen. The world of the Dongguan *1] from about 100-180 brings even better examples, like those of Zhang Heng and Cai Yong. l27 Chapter Three showed that Xun was well known as a portraitist and calligrapher, and there I suggested that he had contacts with designers and casters. The years 273-74 actually show him as a powerful court 125 Joseph S. C. Lam, "Huizong's Dashengyue, a Musical Performance of Emperorship and Officialdom," in Maggie Bickford and Patricia Buckley Ebrey, eds., Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China: The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. P., 2006). See also Yang, Zhongguo gudai yinyue I, p. 389. On Su Shi's ftt references to Xun, see n. 40, above. 126 Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, Artisans in Early Imperial China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), p. 20I. 127 Shentu Pan 111}g~!Ifi (deC/ED, p. 734) and Guo served in local offices during civil unrest; both are mentioned in Barbieri-Low, Artisans, p. 62, and Cai and Zhang are treated, pp. 20I-II. See also Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths," on the history of the Dongguan, and a different sort of discussion of Zhang and CaL

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scholar of the Cai Yong type: skilled in design and familiar with builders and makers, yet also a classicist descended from a leading family of court scholars. His work in metrology gives no evidence that he entered a court metal workshop, a shang/ang reu 1f, in order to create his "New [Former] Jin chi." But his supervision was ubiquitous, especially in preparation for that chi: he manipulated retrieved objects, analyzed their utilities, measured and compared various witnesses of early comparables, and perhaps drew patterns. We saw two other names associated with metrology, besides that of Xun Xu. If Xun was the one of highest status to possess artisanal skills, then Liu Gong must be thought of as only slightly lower, since Liu appears to have been in a post with connections to the Imperial Library and Palace Writers. (See above, the section "The Earliest Descriptions of the Process behind Xun's Metrology".) Liu contributed analyses of found-objects and perhaps numerical thinking about classical lit dimensions. He also knew how to cooperate in trials whereby portable capacity standards were taken (the seed pour) and used to measure vessels. Also, we have Du Kui. This presents a special case, because it was precisely on Du's position along the scholar-artisan continuum that Xun judged. Du's being an artisan or not may have been as, or more, important than his being right or wrong about following the Eastern Han chi. It shows that Xun Xu himself, although expert in certain arts appropriate to his offices, would not have considered himself an artisan, as he considered Du to have been. For practicing metrology, Xun Xu also availed himself of staffs and official sites. The remarks by Xun Chuo, Gan Bao, and He Chengtian showed us that Xun apparently had set up ex officio an antiquarian retrieval and examination project. Of course, such projects did not exist in early China's bureaucratic apparatus per se, but, as the roles of Gentlemen Collator and Drafter in the Eastern Han Dongguan have shown us, in Western Jin antiquarian research could certainly have been present ad hoc. Xun had been going through places where he expected to find court musicological devices. These sites may have been under Xun's purview as head of Palace Writers and, later, head of the Imperial Library. In addition, he seems to have ordered men to convey back to him found-objects from outside the palace, but the details of that are not extant. If merely messengers or extractors of objects from sites or homes, then they surely would have been low-level officials. One may speculate that they were from music and artisan offices, and Xun made them into something like a team.

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Discussion of appropriation and places raises the idea of where Xun operated. In my view we have several candidates: I) official Jin depositories and archives, both inside and outside the palace; 2) places inside the Library, where classical texts could be taken out and read; 3) court workshops in order to discuss patterns or final products; and, finally, 4) Xun Xu's own mansion, where it is easy to imagine his conducting certain kinds of work and discussion. When the new metric standard for the court was produced, with its colophon about the witnesses used, we must think about the ateliers in the metal casting workshop; and one may speculate that those artisans also made the twelve tubal pitch-regulators, the Lii that Xun reformed to reflect proper Zhou specifications. Finally, what sort of techniques came into play in the development of a court ritual technology, qua early science? Although mostly speculative, I believe there is fuel for future research. One aspect concerns how Xun Xu and his staff, especially the technical helper Liu Gong, went about the order of work. I questioned which step in the metrological program was prior to which other, or if some steps were elided or not present. Perhaps Xun deduced Du Kui's Wei-era metrology simply by measuring a tube-shaped tuner, or making deductions about it based on Han metrological commentaries to ZhouLi. I reasoned that the passages we looked at show retrospective testing, or confirmation bias: first Xun Xu created a pattern of pitch-pipe lengths, perhaps concurrently with his new standard-rule that shortened Du Kui's back to a correct magnitude. Then came the antiquarian flurry, when Han and Wei evidences were sought out to verify what Xun's team had done. Verifying meant to find the right authorities. I also speculated about the role of the craft techniques of "transfer" and module, or pattern-making,128 which does in fact arise more clearly in Chapter Five. Mere hints at a relatively formal structure for a research program take us into territory that is on the edges of that covered by both Barbieri-Low and Hans Ulrich Vogel. Vogel in particular offers a fascinating view of metrology as something cosmological, that is, a profoundly philosophical endeavor, as shown through such writings as Hanshu. But we ought to be willing to go another step. At least in Western Jin times, metrology, now so heavily for~ed by such things as antiquarian pursuits, experimentive collecting, manipulation of objects, and analysis, comes to look more like the Renaissance musicology of Pretorius than the writings of Ban Gu on the metaphysics of mensuration. 12~ Barbieri-Low, Artisans, pp. 91-9 2 .

CHAPTER FIVE

A MARTINET OF MELODY, CA. 274-277

Zhi iN!\(: Verification Melody, both East and West, finds strong support at the fifth step of the scale-zhi. It is the octave's harmonic golden mean, and a starting point for parallel accompaniment to the melody. In Western music, the fifth step was a hinge for polyphony and cadence. Somewhat differently for the Chinese gamut, zhi provided a window onto a unique East Asian sense of melody because it hinted at more than one mode, at bitonality, or a melody's moving in another direction. Zhi verifies through variety, and so Xun Xu researched deeply to address that variety.

By 274 Xun Xu had reformed the ritual metrics. Yet, the research process behind his Jin standard-rule R (what would be called the "Former Jin chi" and occasionally "New Jin chi") was intrinsically linked to the creation of a correct Huangzhong i.I pitch-pipe. The latter, after extrapolating to all twelve [alu {t g pitch-standards, produced a slight, overall shift upward in the sound of the court music. In these ways, Xun Xu was becoming entrenched in musicology, which was evolving into yet another Xun-family court expertise, and Xun Xu pursued it not entirely as a matter of aesthetics and philosophy, but also as an "engineering" program. The implications of that modern term are worth considering in this chapter, as we encounter Xun's approach to design, patterns and templates, prototype constructions, and testing. With changes in sound we are dealing with the actual musical values of the Jin ensemble, specifically in relation to a certain instrument-the di-flute W. To regulate the court's music in accordance with a new Huangzhong pitch was relatively more complex for these performance flutes, due to the need to site correctly the finger-holes. Xun examined the flute's seven-note scale and decided that the notes should be made to comply with his corrected lulu pitches. He even asserted that di-flutes of varying sizes should all have their scales regulated to the same lulu, and in doing so he confronted problems in-

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herent in modal complexity. In fact pitch, scales, and modes do affect aesthetic judgments, and Xun's decisions about modes became crucial aesthetic ones. The chapter begins by laying out the terms and techniques of music and music theory that were basic in Xun Xu's time. After the review of terms comes a brief historical background of pitch-pipes and performance flutes-the distinction between them and the development of di-flutes to Xun's time. Following that is a complete translation of a detailed transcription in Songshu ofXun Xu's discovery and analysis of old musicological devices. It tells us that Xun's analysis was aided by an elderly di-flute expert named Lie He 37U fU, whose replies to Xun's questions inform us about Han- and post-Han-era concepts of modes and about the problems arising from combined ensembles. Subsequently, I discuss Xun's seminal work in temperamentology, found at the end of the Songshu passage. Temperamentology means the arts of adjusting the pitches produced by the scale notes of actual performance instruments; this is different from the theoretical work of classical harmonics. His work, called "Xun Xu's di System" IWh'EiHf in many later references, is a construction guide for the locations of finger-holes that will result in correctly tuned scales. Here again, Xun's fertile research implied a prisca Zhou agenda-the court's benefiting from rites that were venerated and in some sense timeless. Xun in this case insisted on the orthodox Zhou musical mode-the Zhengsheng mode-over various contemporary alternatives. The concluding section focuses on an objection against Xun Xu's musicology lodged by Ruan Xian ~~, who figured in Chapter Four. Via family mentors in Luoyang, Xun Xu had real connections with the xuanxue culture, and thus we gain insight by considering how "future" Sages of the Bamboo Grove like Ruan and Shan Tao ill actually figured in Xun Xu's life and political career. When Ruan and Shan did become hagiographic personas in the following century, Xun Xu's own persona did not. Of course, not everyone enters into the pantheon of an age, but the graceful, easy-going Sages, models of social and political leadership after Jin fled across the river, owed at least part of their iconic status to episodes of strident politics that had occurred in the last years of Western Jin. The Seven Sages had paid a certain sort of dues by having bested and transcended the old guard-the non-xuanxue Confucian ritualists and obsessive martinets like Xun Xu.

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PROBLEMS OF PIPES AND PITCHES

In preindustrial times, before exquisite mathematical operations and fine machining, finger-hole flutes could be notorious for squawking out of tune. Laurence Picken once made a telling remark about early East Asian flutes in connection with a traditional Japanese Gion Matsuri 1~ III ~ festival that he observed. Each float carries a minimum of six flute-players, some of which mimic the melody at a distance approaching a semitone or ninth from the others ... [T]he scaling of such flutes ... is neither standard, nor rational (in a technical sense); and their use in the hands of the performers results in great variability of the perceived pitch, even of notes that might be regarded as "the same."l

As we soon see, Lie He, from a family tradition of flute masters, knew much about the problems of the untamed flute. Xun Xu's engagement with Lie caused Xun to be aware in his own way of the same phenomenon, and ultimately he believed that with certain corrections the flute's pitch stability and regulation could be solved. Xun Xu poured energy into the project and called on artisans, technical experts, and the palace workshops. He and Lie He understood the practicalities of workshop methods and how those might be applied to the making of a musical device.

Flutes, Regulated Pitch, and Musical Scales In pondering the terms of early Chinese music, some may think of them as another system of arcane terms and self-referential matrices, like various Yijing systems, better left to the few who devote research to them. Again like the Yijing culture, early music opens up broadly: traditional Chinese scholars could skate easily from gong '§ to the "Great Treatise" ~ ~ commentary, and from there to Zuozhuan anecdotes of court ethics, and to tonal prosody and even shushu '111j arts. For post-6oo Chinese music, some modern research has specialized in performance techniques and harmonic theory, but rarely has anyone traced pre-Tang music into the dense web of aesthetics, theory, acoustical design, and mathematics. Thus this chapter will require a guide. Early Chinese musical theory, especially the twelve lulu and their reformations over centuries, as well as the arts of pre-Han bells and bellmaking, have advanced over the last fifty or more years, resulting in I Laurence E. R. Picken and Noel Nickson, with Nicholas Gray, Okamoto Miyoko, Robert Walker, Music from the Tang Court, 7: Some Ancient Connections Explored (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2000), p. 66.

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excellent overviews. 2 The goal, therefore, of my guide is to present in a relatively simplified way the notions that any scholar-musicologist of Xun Xu's time would have taken as assumptions. After it, we turn to the di-flute itself, through history and archeology. Four concepts in the area of musicological assumptions seem to stand out. r) the system of twelve pitch-standards (lulu TIl: 1'"1, )-derived from Eastern Zhou-era practice and texts; 2) the physical regulators (often aerophones after Qin times, but occasionally strings or cast bells) that were mostly called lu 14I; they ritually identified and produced the theoretic pitches of the standards; 3) the Chinese musical scales for performance-since the Eastern Han often having seven notes (a scale-note generically was called a yinff or sheng Jlif, sometimes diao ifNJ); 4) modes, which were not conceived of distinctly as a musicological subject in Chinese musicology much before the late-sixth century. Modes are only subtly distinguished from "scales." They were used theoretically to transform the basic DO-RE- MI of 2 The discussions in SCC 4.1, esp. pp. 135-37, 165-82, are useful for a rudimentary background (especially the ancient textual sources); otherwise it has been outdated by those mentioned below. For music in the Chinese classics, there is Walter Kaufmann, Musical References in the Chinese Classics, Detroit Monographs in Musicology 5 (Detroit: Information Coordinators, Inc., 1976). Good historical overviews were made by leaders of the previous generation of musicologists; see Zhang Shibin (Cheung Sai-bung) ~lHU:*1;, Zhongguo yinyue shilun shugao "I'iilJ!l,';:d;;~st:j'f6tr;l:ff~'ij (Hong Kong: Youlian shubao faxing gongsi, 1974) in 2 vols., and Yang Yinliu ;fJ)JT1fijli'i~, Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao l'I='ilI£I,Jd~IJ·r;;~512fi% (Beijing: Renmin yinyue chubanshe, 1980), also in 2 vols. Chen Yingshi IW)JQ~lh\' of the Shanghai Academy of Music has given a short overview in "Theory and Notation in China," trans. Christopher Evans, in Robert C. Provine, Yoshiko Tokumaru, and J. L. Witzleben, eds., East Asia: China, japan, and Korea, vol. 7 of The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. II5-26. A useful textual aid is that of Qiu Qiongsunll:l1i~, Lidai yuezhi luzhi jiaoshi ffiH~~~i1:;11!:T~;NfI!1± (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1964). Robert Bagley, "The Prehistory of Chinese Music Theory," Proceedings of the British Academy 131 (2005), pp. 41-90, provides what I believe to be the most accessible and intellectually fascinating approach to the fundamentals of ancient Chinese music in the light of archeology. See also the commanding study of Lothar von Falkenhausen, Suspended Music: ChimeBells in the Culture of Bronze Age China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Mathematical explanations are found in Wu Nanxun ~~13:gR~, Liixue huitong iW: 891'rurilll (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1964). Recently a coauthor and I have presented the theoretic fundamentals of Han-Wei-Jin Chinese music as a preliminary to our findings: see Howard L. Goodman and Y. Edmund Lien, ''A Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Temperament: Matching Ancient Pitch-Standards and Confronting Modal Practice," The Galpin Society journal 62 (April, 2009), especially figs. 1A-c' which are adapted for the present book as figs. 6A-D.

MARTINET OF MELODY

219

scales into a matrix of harmonic and transpositional "keys." Early texts from pre-Han to Wei-Jin times often hint at such relationships, but without a technical term; or sometimes words like diao 11).'6, yunl~')J, or jun/yun :l:6J were loosely employed. It was the last one that became a term of art for complex modal theory after the eighth century. For the purposes of this chapter, I leave asid~ the world of song tunes and melodies, which were intimately related to scales and modes: because of the close link with poetics, music aesthetics, and social aspects of performance, it would constitute a fifth category. Although, as this chapter shows, we know specifics of pre-7oo AD scales, history does not know much about the notes of actual tunes.

It should be emphasized that the twelve lulu pitch-standards (number I, above) were not the same as regulator devices lu (2) or scalenotes yin/sheng (3). Furthermore, pitch-standards and scale-notes had their own naming systems for arrayed steps, but each system arose in its own historical context, developing its own terms and functions. Another potential confusion may occur because the noun 1$ for physical "regulators" is the same as used in the it g "theoretical system." To sum up, the pitch-standards may be imagined as a matrix of twelve, well-distributed points in mathematical or sonic space, much like the West's twelve tones; and a scale's steps were a certain path that occupied only several of the twelve steps, like the West's "major scale," which only lights on seven of the twelve tones. In late-Zhou times the pitch-standards were physically displayed by a court as part of its aesthetic ideology, qua legitimacy: they showed cosmic symmetry (skill in natural philosophy), as well as command of materials (the expensive cast bells). The standards in the earliest times were produced very much by trial and error, but by late-Zhou and Han, the arts of computing and mathematics figured heavily. Scales (mostly of five notenames until Eastern Han times) were for creating melodies. As with the lulu, their structures and names gained universal usage, and this allowed a variety of musics and techniques to mix and evolve across regions and times.

The Pitch-Standards, lulu it g As in most world systems of arrayed, theoretical pitches, China's twelve pitch-standards fit within an octave (an octave is explained simplistically as the sonic distance from one note on a keyboard to the next one of the same name). The distinguishing of twelve points within any octave is a natural aural-vibratory and mathematical conclusion, and it was perceived in several ancient cultures. Vibrating bodies like I.

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strings (chordophones) or air-columns (aerophones) produce a tone structure in which the octave is prominent (one perceives the octave in that structure wherever the wave-form is halved, thus doubling the fundamental pitch). Music masters worldwide saw the octave as a primary structure and sought through both trial and error and computation to establish pitch-standard divisions inside it (often producing twelve). These were laid out with a sense of evenness, not the earlymodern West's "equal tempering," but simply good spacing as defined by historical context. In China since Zhou times, the standards had names that, although varied in textual and inscriptional evidence, were mostly stable; in addition, the standards became termed as numbers, some fractional. Figure 6A (in which "PS" is "pitch-standard") gives the names and their order when placed in the octave. The numbers decrease incrementally because as lengths of sounding-pipes get shorter, the resultant pitches become higher. The first length, Huangzhong, was set at 9 cun ,:]-, a choice that was strictly traditional and numerological, and it could generate whole numbers when multiplied by certain fractions. With Huangzhong given, how then was each of the eleven remaining standards determined? They were computed through a Pythagorean-style cycle-of-fifths that in Chinese sources is termed "san/en sunyi /a ~ 5J'-tJti5:a" ("[The Method of] Adding and Subtracting in Thirds"); see Figure 6B. With Huangzhong as base, one multiplies its length (9 cun, or nine-tenths of a chi R) by 2/3. Two-thirds was used because 2/3 the length of a string or aerophone produces the so-called perfect fifth-another of those strong overtones carried along with any steady base-tone. The result is Step I, with a value of "6 cun." It is shown as an "up arrow" from the Base because a 6-cun pitch is higher than that of 9 cun. The next step is to multiply 6 by 4/3 (which is merely a doubling of the perfect fifth). Scholars desired to keep the twelve standards bound to one octave, on one string length or flute length. This multiplication (4/3 times 6) gives 8 cun. Alternating between 213 and 4/3 (the up and down arrows) allows for that, requiring only one double-jump to keep from going outside the octave-Steps 6 to 7. Next, 8 times 2/3 gives 5.333 cun, and so on through Step II. Looking back at Figure 6A, why was "6" called PS:8? After all, it is the first value computed from PS:I-the "Huangzhong" pitchstandard. Why not name it PS:2? As in a puzzle, one realizes that "6" later on will be too high in pitch to come immediately after Huangzhong, because future multiplications will give values like 8.428 (that

221

MARTINET OF MELODY PS: 1

PS:2

PS:3

PS:4

PS:5

PS:6

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PS:8

PS:9

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Figure 6A. The Twelve Pitch-standards (PS), or Lulu j:4t,i;::t'J Spaced "Evenly" in an Octave Traditional names in row PS=Pitch-Standard

2.

Traditional lengths (in run units), bottom row.

Figure 6B. The Order of Computational Steps to Produce the Twelve Liilu 1$8 From the base Huangzhong, multiply by 2/3 (= up in pitch, because the value is less, and will produce shorter pipe); multiply that result by 4/3 (= down in pitch). Continue alternating thus, the exception from Step 6 to 7. Lengths (run units) in bottom row. PS= Pitch-Standard

PS:

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9

10

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Figure 6C: Two Heptatonic Chinese Scales, With Notes Correlated to the Twelve Lulit Uppermost scale that starts on DO at Huangzhong is a Zhengsheng TE!Jl¥: scale. Lower scale that starts on a DO at Zhengsheng's SOL position is a Xiazhi riH& scale (i.e., the gong note "keyed" to Linzhong PS:8). At the end, its scale-steps continue past MI by going back down to Huangzhong for the purposes of this diagram. In practice, on a specific flute, the scale pitches may break downward at some other point.

is, when 6.321 is multiplied by 413) and 7.llI, etc., which must all be inserted in their places to produce twelve standards seriatim. Therefore the first "Step" turns out to be the eighth "pitch-standard" in the sequence. Once reviewing Figure 6B, simply put it aside; it is only here to show the theory of the computational steps. Chinese musicologists

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always thought (and still think) of the twelve litlu in their final order, as in Figure 6A.

Regulators, lit if In China beginning at an early point in Zhou times, pitch-standard names and later sometimes their lineal dimensions were applied to real devices. These are not nearly as well understood as the ancient sanfen sunyi computing process, which is given, for example, in Huainanzi ?ti¥f -T and Shiji 5t: ~c; but archeology has found a variety of lit-regulators mostly from tombs. We have extant examples of ancient stones (finely crafted lithophones) whose pitches correlated theoretically to the tuning system of their associated bell-chime set. In the most complex example of these, a variety of scale-modes could be accommodated, implying that the bells could play in different modes. As regulators, such stones were not "played" in performance, as were the bells. We also have examples of ancient bamboo aerophones as regulators for zithers (in one case) or other aerophones (a reed-organ), or just for aesthetic display. Moreover, in the Han era courts made a series of tubes corresponding to pitch-standard lengths and planted them in the earth (a practice revived later only rarely). This was the ritual of "watching the ethers," or houqi i,*m. It was thought that qi m (in this context perhaps rendered as "geo-pneumatic force") at a specific period of the year would build up inside the tube-length that corresponded with that period; then ash placed inside the tube would fly out at that time and be observed. Also during Han (again, revived in later times) there were efforts to make string-regulators and cast-metal tubal regulators. 3 All such lit basically (except for the ritual of houqi) 2.

3 On a pre-Han lithophone set that may have been used to indicate modes, see Bagley, "Prehistory of Chinese Music Theory," pp. 41-90. On pre-Han and Han tubal regulators, see Li Chunyi ;;'i{#.\'~-', Zhongguo shanggu chutu yueqi zonglun rIIWJLI:iITII\I:tJ;!t('~ ~I~!jfrrtr (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1996), pp. 359-69; but there is disagreement on the most complete example-a set of twelve, tuned bamboo tubes that perhaps regulated a hand-held reed-organ; these were from the ca. 170 Be Mawangdui tomb (was the set for tuning, or a symbolic gesture to the departed? Was it tuned to a court-authorized system or to some other?). See Chen Zhengsheng IIQLIE/:!:., "Dui Mawangdui yihao Hanmu chutu liiguan yingzuo jin yibu yanjiu"~N)i!§EJll~'~JR tYU·~~ III J:1.'lt {I~; IfQW!: jili..... !J;·1iJf ~'E, jiaoxiang, Xi'an yinyue xueyuan xuebao PH:£('li~f·~·l}I"t~X¥(~'I~ (1990.2); also Robert T. Mok, ''Ancient Musical Instruments Unearthed in 1972 from the Number One Han Tomb at MaWang Dui, Changsha: Translation and Commentary of Chinese Reports," Asian Music 10.1 (1978), pp. 39-88. On a first-century cast-bronze tubal regulator (from a court set of twelve), see Li, ibid., pp. 382-83; also see Falkenhausen, Suspended Music, pp. 310-14. On houqi, see Derk Bodde, "The Chinese Cosmic Magic Known as 'Watching for Ethers,'" in idem, Essays on Chinese Civilization (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1981).

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223

were intended to sound the classical pitch-standard system. There were various ways of regulating a court's sonic space: going through the sanfen sunyi method, then applying the resultant numbers in terms of the accepted chi length (which consisted of ten cun) and then make the set of twelve lit; transferring over directly from a physical template of at least one lit aerophone or string (bells were not mathematically or graphically easy to transfer); or empirically deriving a new lit by listening for sonic cross-beats against another pitch device until one's new tube length was the right length (easily done with aerophones, as opposed to chordophones or bells).

3-4. Scales and Modes NftJ, f$), ±~ These two aspects of early musicology may be taken up together, and in fact are often seen as related theoretically. Figure 6C presents two versions of the heptatonic scale, which used the seven note names: gong, shang, jue, bianzhi, zhi, yu, biangong. The well-known, five-note (pentatonic) scale used only the gong, shang, jue, zhi, and yu notes. The seven-note scale is not clearly attested in actual music making until the Han. 4 For Chinese scales, one may think of the names as something equivalent to our Western DO-RE-MI solmization terms. Thus for purposes of demonstration we may spell out the older five-note scale as: DO-gong, RE-shang, MI-jue, SOL-zhi, and LA-yu, which can be played on the piano white-keys as C, D, E, G, A (however, early Chinese scale intervals, that is, the major seconds and minor thirds, etc., would not be exactly equivalent to modern Western ones). As in Western harmony, the DO can start on any of the twelve pitchstandards. Thus, the scale note-names were a movable template, and whenever the gong was relocated to start elsewhere than Huangzhong (e.g., on Taicu), the combination of scale-name and pitch-standard name (e.g, gong on Taicu) began to take on the sense of a mode species (an exactly transposable matrix of scales), or in some contexts a key. In the seven-note scale the "altered ~" SOL (bianzhi; bian meaning "altered, shifted") and "altered DO" meant that an older note-name from the five-note scale was being adapted rather than inventing a new name-like our saying RE-flat, instead of making up a new word like "DRE". Figure 6D, following page, shows all seven of the traditional Zhengsheng scale's notes as mapped to the piano beginning on 4 There is reference in Guoyu lli£IWh (sect. "Zhouyu" j,13r¥1f-; written ca. 430S Be) to a certain "seven la," but any relation to a scale is made only by the 3d-c. AD commentator; see below, n. 30.

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F-natural. It can begin on any note at all as long as the intervals remain the same; but it so happens that beginning on F precludes the piano's black keys. It seems that in the real world of performance Chinese modes were noticed for the first time in any detail in Xun Xu's writings; and after him the topic gradually evolved into complex theory. Scales as modes had different uses and contexts. First, a mode was just a name for a scale around which a popular melody cohered. It is as if "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" is named "Major Scale" instead. Further, modes related to instrumental practices. One important example was "shang" in its role as the "Clear ~f-!f shang" ("Qingshang") modegong shang jnc bian- zhi yn bianzhi gong scale. It might have indicated that the Figure 6 D. The Seven-Note mode was entirely in a "high" (clear) Zhengsheng Scale Mapped to part of the instrument, without the the Piano's White Keys player's needing to jump down an ocThe seven Zhengsheng notes are somewhat close to, but do tave to find the next note (an ugly, or not match exactly, our modern "muddy ~;] ," action). Also there was a equal-tempered half- and need to define a particular five- or sevwhole-step intervals. en-note scale not by where it starts and ends, but by the variation of intervals. Do you play C, 0, F, G, A? or C, 0, E, F-sharp, A? When accompanied by words, did an intervalic shape constitute a tune? Or just a modal variation on the Zhengsheng or other scale? The question of a variant that may be considered a "new" mode comes up with the way the Xiazhi Ti~ mode in Xun's time presented a choice in its fourth, or Altered-SOL, step, when played on fixed-pitch instruments. Why did any court flutist need pitch-standards? Could he not sim-' ply state that his note was a gong, or zhi, or biangong? Or could he refer to his "hole I," or "hole 3" and the like? Yes, but this sort of practice was clumsy, and it would fall apart when the pitch of "gong" became uncertain among various instruments. Once a variety of modes existed that all used seven scale-notes, then if musicians had to play together, for example four-finger flutes playing with six-finger ones, or with 25-string zithers, physical and intellectual problems would need sorting out. A flute built for a Zhengsheng scale could not automatically produce all the notes producable by a Xiazhi flute, or by a vocalist. Systems had to be practiced and theorized, both in terms of the

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225

instruments and ultimately the arrayed mode-species. Theoretically there are twelve mode-species of a Zhengsheng scale if gong is made to start on everyone of the twelve unique pitch-standards. That becomes eighty-four when each of the twelve is cycled through the other six Zhengsheng scale-steps (shang, jue, etc.). All of this points to modulation and accompaniment, as well as to Western-style keys. Moreover, aesthetic and historic values had to be considered, as we soon see with Xun Xu's flute system.

Xun Xu's Regulators and Di-Flutes Chapter Four informed us that along with his new metrological standard-rule, Xun Xu perhaps concurrently devised a set of pitch-regulators (he had used his new Zhou length for the chi" ... to cast new pitch-pipe regulators ll~JT1~"). In around 273-74, his metrology and harmonics were overlapping, but it is easy to conclude, based on the following translation, that the pitch-regulators were finished before work started on the di-flutes. There being no discussion of their appearance, we must surmise that Xun's new lii-regulators were, like ones for the Han court, cast-bronze; they were single-fundamental tubes (that is, without finger-holes), perhaps open at both ends. 5 It is important to state that any set of twelve lii in early China would not play perfectly evenly-spaced pitches, and ears of that time (probably up until the twentieth century) did not think about such intervalic equality, nor would think that equally spaced pitches were wonderful or useful if somehow made available to them. Later, we touch on this problem, as it related to Xun Xu's attempt at the new scales for flutes. As with lii-regulators, when Xun Xu began to revamp the six-hole di, he was dealing with a well-known device. The di-flute was a bamboo flute usually of six-holes for making melodies that were framed by scales, or scale-modes. Generically, the di was a very old instrument, as were a number of other aerophones in ancient and prehistoric China. Archeology has revealed various pre-IOOO BC flutes, basically either small gourd-like vessels or bones that were made into aerophones. A neolithic example of the latter is transverse and has seven finger-holes; and a roughly fourth-century BC example, in bamboo (Figure 7, below), has names of tuning standards written on it, thus a pitch-reg5 Op~n at both ends and without an air-column notch would have made it hard to sound a fundamental; an open tube can be stopped on one end by hand-easier to play yet sounding an octave lower. Xun's mention of Wang Mang-era court devices for metrology (chap. 4, table 2, nos. 8-10) argues for his using bronze for his own lii.

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ulator of some type. Figure 8 shows early-Warring States transverse, five-hole bamboo flutes closed at least on one end; these are considered to have been so-called chi m-flutes. Also we know of a transverse, open-ended bamboo di with seven finger-holes that dates to about 170 BC. 6 By Han times transverse flutes were often called hengchui ;ti PJz ("blown held level") or hengdi ;tim. In Han commentaries and writings we see increasing mention of di and other-named flutes that were vertically held, with finger-holes, presumably possessing a short notch to produce the air-column. During Han, the vertical di underwent changes Figure 7. Fragments of Late-Warring States (4th largely as a result of imporc. BC) Bamboo Pitch-pipes tation of flute practice and Excavated in Hubei, 1986. The word ding Ii tunes from Central Asian indicates the function of a regulator. After peoples in areas touchLothar von Falkenhausen, Suspended Music: Chime-Bells in the Culture ofBronze Age China ing northern and west(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), ern China; and as a result p. 288 (fig. 140). we hear of the "long-di -ft

133 ," which came about after being fitted with extra finger holes. The long-di was already popular before Xun Xu's time as a melodic feature of noncourt entertainment, and could play the heptatonic scale. A discovered statu-

Figure 8. Two Bamboo Transverse Flutes Bearing 5 holes, presumed to be a chi fif!.. Part of cache of instruments from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (d. 433 BC). Top piece is 29.3 cm; bottom is 30.2 cm. After Hubei sheng bowuguan, ed., Hubei sheng bowuguan ~~ut*ll\j]qW~rr (Beijing: Wenwu chuban she, 1994), pI. II3.

(, Li, Zhongguo shanggu, pp. 359-68. 7 Alan R. Thrasher, "Xiao", in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, eds., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d edn. (London: Macmillan, 2001) 27, p. 614; and Li, Zhongguo shanggu, p. 368.

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ette of a long-di player from roughly Xun Xu's era is shown in Figure 9, below. Confusingly, during Tang times (618-907), the name di changed referents. The vertically blown, four- or six-hole long-di became known, with minor differences in construction, as a chiba RJ\, or shakuhachi in Japanese. The name reflects the fact that the flute was based on the classical length-specification for the Huangzhong pitch-standard, that is, 9 cun, which can be expressed as 0.9 chi. "Chiba" means, then, that a "long-di" had been created by doubling the quite short" .9" to be "1.8"-suitable for siting out the holes for a scale. Naturally not all chiba were the same or even exactly 1.8 chi, and the chi length changed over time, as we saw in Chapter Four. Moreover, the name "di" was recycled to become used for certain transverse flutes, and by about the twelfth century the word "xiao became used for the vertical bamboo flute. In Xun Xu's day, though, we are speaking of an open-ended, vertical bamboo flute that played the pentatonic and heptatonic scales. We can get a better visual reality of the generic long-di from preserved Tang examples. During Tang, high-ranking Japanese visitors to China were given gifts by the court. The Shosoin Museum JEi3~3t complex in Nara, Japan, originally part of the ancient Todaiji Shrine area, has preserved eight examples of eighth-century Chinese court flutes. These eight chibal shakuhachi are variously of stone, ivory, jade, and bamboo, averaging between 34-44 em long, and with 5 finger-holes and I thumbhole, totaling 6. Photographs and material and tonal measurements were made in the 1960s; see one of the bamboo examples in Figure loA, next page. Those analy-

Figure 9. Figurine of Long-Flute, or di Ii.!, Player Shu-Han period (ca. 220-65 AD); tomb M5, Sichuan, Zhong xian. After Wu Zhao :!¥~~V, Zhuixun shiqu de yinyue zongji ili~l;t/1[:l~I'I~ 1,"(~~JfvtM1)i (Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 1999), pI. 10.9, p. 130.

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ses may indicate that the chibalshakuhachi of this Tang type was fairly close in overall structure and scaling to Xun Xu's di. The Sh6s6in chiba consist of a bit more than three sections of straight-core bamboo, each section about I2 cm in length. The finger-holes are ellipses the long axes of which are about I cm. 8 XUN

xu's

FLUTES VERSUS LIE HE'S MODE

In 274, Xun Xu and Zhang Hua were looking for antiquities in palace storage areas. The two scholars were already uncomfortable partners in court projects, as we saw in previous chapters. It is safe to conclude that they were searching for items that would help them with Jin's ritual music, because these storage areas in fact produced music devices. The objects became the focus of Xun Xu's interest, and he called upon scholar-officials and musicbureau technicians to aid in resolving questions about the objects. It should be noted that after mention of Zhang Hua concerning their discovery, Zhang's name is never more associated with the project, neither in the following documents nor in later synthetic statements about it. Songshu s Bundle of Documents on Xun Xus Musicology The nature of the objects found and the subsequent activities that I term a "research program" are described in detail in several documents most of which may be attributed to Xun Xu. The oldest recension of these documents is Shen Yue's tt f,0 (441-513) "Treatise on Harmonic and Celestial Figure IOA. One of Several Extant Tang-era chiba RJ\ (shakuhachi) Left is dorsal thumb-hole; right, the five finger-holes. Preserved at the Shosoin, Nara, Japan. After Hayashi Kenzo **IUtc-:: et al., Shosoin no gakki JE~!lJ-'6O)~r.~ (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1967), pH. 133-34. 8 The Shosoin examples are discussed and documented in Goodman and Lien, "Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Temperament," pp. 6-7. A separate line of research is needed to compare the actual finger-hole spacings and pitches of the these chiba with the deduced ones expressed by Xun Xu/Lie He; it would allow a judgment as to how similar the deduced Xun flutes and the much later Shosoin flutes really are.

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Systems."9 This Songshu treatise was compiled from numerous materials (including an earlier scholar's draft) around the year 500 and placed retroactively into Shen's 488 AD court-commissioned History of the Song Dynasty (Le., Songshu). There is clear evidence that the abovementioned earlier draft was by the noted mathematician, calendarist, and musicologist He Chengtian far (370-447), someone not too far separated in time from the world of Xun Xu, and conceivably able to see many more documents than existed later. 10 In a section of Shen's Treatise that narrates chronologically the history of pitch correction, Shen gives several text passages related to Xun's research. These are not announced under separate titles, and thus the voices of Shen Yue or He Chengtian, when and if present, are hard to pick out. Before reading through the documents, I describe what seem to have been the primary texts articulating Xun Xu's discovery and his new flute construction. We notice five types of discourse out of which emerge four separate documents and a nonextant illustration. The four resultant documents remained free-standing texts probably until the Tang. o court memorial, which announces itself; its writer is Xun Xu "and others," one of whom possibly was Zhang Hua. Its language is a basic literary style used for memorials, except that it quotes one passage of the "Xun-Lie Dialog" (described below) that I see as a separate document and of a different textual register. The memorial per se was transcribed into Ming and Qing reconstructions of pre-Tang collected writings, or wenji x1JlJi:; it is the opening part of item no. 2 of Xun Xu's wenji in Han Wei Liuchao baisanjia ji il~jJJ,/\!lYri'C( =" that goes on to include the "dialog."11 • technical dialog; essentially a dialog spoken between Xun and Lie He. Its language is relatively colloquial. Han Wei Liuchao baisanjia ji titled it "Tiaodie wen Lie He zhulii yizhuang zou" {~J~ll\J 9 See SgS II ("Lilli" A), pp. 212-19, nearly verbatim in IS 16 ("Lilli" A), pp. 480-83, differing only by several classical quotations coming at the end. Portions are in TPYL 16, pp. 3a-b [80]; and 580, p. 3a [2618]. 10 He Chengtian created a theory of equal temperament; see Yang, Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao, pp. 165-66; and Chen Yingshi 1~!}f~Wt "Shier pingjun lil de xianqu, He Chengtian xinlil" -1-"-=~sILM:ji~lll~J'~7Ul~L {IiJ)t7Cfffl"i,/t, Yuefu xinsheng tiI~J1~ngrll~ UJLI~c,~i"~ ~dl)~l}I,¥~) 1985.2, pp. 44-47. The history of the compilation and acceptance of Songshu, particularly this treatise, has been explained in Howard L. Goodman, ''A History of Court Lyrics in China during Wei-Chin Times," AM 19.1-2 (2006), pp. 65-66. See also Richard Mather, The Poet Shen Yile (44I-5I3): The Reticent Marquis (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1988), p. 26. I I HWLC 38, pp. la-5a; see also QjW 31, pp. 5b- 6a, which treats the memorial per se as a separate text.

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)iU5fIIf:t¥r1~ln~UIJ~# ("Memorial about the Transcription of a Dialog with [Flute Master] Lie He on the Intended Structure for All the Regulated Pitches." In Songshu it is not specially announced. • construction guide; a method for building a tempered di-flute scale, that is, siting the locations for the finger-holes so as to produce correctly tuned scales. The language is entirely technical concerning procedure, marking, and measuring. Ming and Qing musicologists often referred to this guide as "Xun Xu dilii" 1!1]\'U1 1'LY1cP:; it was not collected in Han Wei Liuchao baisanjia ji or in Quan fin wen ~lll(-)C Dispersed throughout is a small-character commentary, authorship of which raises a separate question. • a nonextant graphic illustration; related to the "guide." It seems to have been a depiction of a flute indicating the finger-holes and specifications of some kind; probably produced or supervised by the graphically talented Xun. • bridging/synthesizing phrases; items probably added by the earliest compiler of Xun Xu's "dialog" (namely, He Chengtian), but in some instances by Shen Yue or Xun Xu. The bridge phrases are seen throughout parts 1-16 (part 17 seems not to contain them), and often are in the form of classical quotations.

I have artificially numbered the entire Songshu passage into seventeen "parts" by which I structure my translation. The following preview of the seventeen parts shows where the above genres of discourse and the once free-standing documents fit into the whole.

Parts I-2: Songshu's synthetic description ofXun's discovery of items in the storerooms. Except for one quotation from the "dialog," these are all Shen's own "bridge phrases." Parts 3-7: "Memorial Dated 274." It begins "In 274 ... ," describing Xun's et al. discovery of the objects, down to just before "~PI." It would seem that the latter approval referred specifically to Xun's request about the disposition of the found objects and that his improved flutes be installed as standard. The memorial also contains one passage from the "dialog," which intrusion leads one to believe that the dialog was excerpted and distributed by Shen Yue into the various parts of his entire passage. Because at the end of the memorial (Parts 6-7) Xun Xu describes his team's final understanding of the aero phones and his decisions that only several should be preserved, we should assume that the memorial to the court was written after all the research was done,

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the interviews with Lie He (Parts 1-14) completed, and the Xun's new flutes designed. Parts 2-I4: "Xun-Lie Dialog" (as later named: "Tiaodie wen Lie He ... "). This document seems to have been broken up and redistributed, as mentioned. It uses what seems to me to have been colloquial speech. Xun Xu often questions Lie directly, and/or refers to something that Lie (or Xun himself) has done or said on a topic, imparting the character of a faithfully transcribed deposition. Parts I5-I6: Bridge passages synthesizing a history of tuning and the impact of flutes. Some phrases sound clearly as if uttered by Xun; but some possibly by Shen and/or He. It quotes twice from the classics. Part I7: "Di Construction Guide" (or "Xun Xu di Iii"). I do not translate this document, but instead synthesize its points in a subsequent section. Authorship more than likely is a conflation of Xun and Lie. It demonstrates how to construct a full set of twelve 6-hole (7-note) flutes, and also is a guide to solving a problem that arises when playing an accompaniment mode on the perfect fifth, or zhi, of the scale. The small-character commentary refers to actual functions and devices mentioned in the main text (e.g., "the above describes ... ," "the black dots"); there are two references to a Guoyu, "Zhouyu" mJ ,passage on the twelve pitch-standards; and comments about finger-hole and fingering idiosyncracies. The commentary's diction and language suggest that the author was a music technician (one who could quote the classics), especially because of such references as fingering techniques and the qin's aliquot-markers as a model for defining a certain notelike luthiers' shop-talk. A certain phrase from Part 15 (as noted there) is quoted in the Suishu biography of Niu Hong 5L\ (545-610). The Suishu author mentions Shen Yue with the implication that Shen was the source of the phrase. This is one indication that scholars in the sixth and seventh centuries perceived Shen's voice in what I call the bridging material, especially the opening narrative of Parts 1-2 and the overview in Parts 15-16. We also know that whenever the text says "I [Xun] note ... ", the word used is "an ~." "An" is hardly used, if at all, by Shen in his Songshu to introduce his own overview judgments, but only when he introduces an external authority. For his own voice, Shen tends to state

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"your servant Shen notes." Thus we have confidence in assigning to Xun Xu authorship of the discrete "memorial," the "dialog," and only possibly the large-character part of the "construction guide." The "memorial" probably was first written down by Xun or his staff members, or even his sons. As an official document, it would have got copied before 310 into one of the early compilations of Jin court chronicles and other documents (compilations mentioned in Sui and Tang imperial catalogs). From there we can deduce that it went into "Xun Xu ji" 115rsh* (Xun's collected writings compiled at some time between Xun's day and roughly 450), or into Xun Bozi's 115 113 -=f (378438) "Xunshi jiazhuan" 115 K* 1:1, 12 if the latter carried Xun scholars' prose items in addition to biographical anecdotes. It is possible that similar routes of transmission applied in the cases of the "dialog" and "construction guide," even though in Songshu the former became broken up and probably much excerpted. He Chengtian and Xun Bozi were known to each other, giving us added confidence to say that the dialog and guide had been faithfully preserved to the point where they entered the great technician He's "Treatise on Harmonic and Celestial Systems." 13 Reading through the dialog, we get passages that start with Y-, but they do not give the sense so much of "and further" or "so next. .. ," as much as "we have seen at another place that ... ," suggesting that Shen Yue (or He, earlier) leafed through a long and difficult verbatim transcription and rearranged passages as they saw fit. The "guide," on the other hand, seems integral in form, missing only what I believe should have been the graphic of the flute finger-holes.

Annotated Translation of Xun Xu's Memorial of 274 log with Lie He Part

I

(begins near the end of page

212,

Songshu j.

AD

and Xun's Dia-

II)

In 274, the Inspector of Palace Writers Xun Xu and the Prefect of Palace Writers Zhang Hua 14 produced from the Imperial Stores twenty-

12 On Xun's collected writings and a relationship with the family collection, see chap. list I; its reconstruction and published versions are discussed in Howard L. Goodman, "Xun Xu wenji," article in Albert Dien et aI., eds., Six Dynasties Sourcebook (working title; forthcoming). 13 He Chengtian was mocked by Xun Bozi ("you wet-nurse!") when both men were too old to gain advances in the bureaucracy; but He's biography tells us that he did advance after suffering Xun's derision; SgS 64, p. 1704. 14 The TPYL 16 version starts exactly here, after Zhang Hua's name, and contexts it as belonging to the memorial written by Xun Xu that in the SgS text begins further down (see Part 3).

I,

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five bronze, bamboo[-shaped] pitch-regulators ili1'1h{qL_~·.-I-·~/dJ..15 They enlisted the aid of Gentleman in the Music Offices Liu Xiu ~U:Jij, and others, to examine and test [them]. Three of [the regulators] matched the pitch-standard model H!:1L' [that had been developed by] Du Kui t!: (fl. ca. 180-225) and Zuo Yannian /i::Jl!)I~ (fl. 220-40).16 As for the twenty-two others, by noticing the regulators' inscribed lineal dimensions 1JUti~WJ){J, [Xun and the others knew] those were pitch-regulators for di-flutes.

Xun and Zhang apparently had found a cache of Wei-era music bureau items in a palace storage area (I suspect the Privy Treasury buildings, specifically the Music Bureau's East Side-Room, as seen in Part 8, below). The items (listed in Chapter Four, Table 2, nos. 13, 14) had been 15 Maurice Courant, "Chine et Coree," in A. Lavignac and L. de la Laurencie, gen. eds., Encyclopedie de la musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1931) I, p. 81., trans.: " ... took out of the imperial stores twenty-five Iii, some ~ copper and the others bamboo (fit tirer des magasins impiriaux vingt-cinq lyu, les uns en cuivre, les autres en bambou)." Yet neither Ji Liankangll(~9M/L, Wei jin Nanbei chao yinyue shiliao Ji!U1tTFrJ;IUlYJf~~t;;t'5tf4 (Shanghai: Wenyi chubanshe, 1982), p. 13, nor Wang ZichuE>}'-t)J, Xun Xu dilii yanjiu i'i'JwJl'fcHIt1iJr9'E (Beijing: Renmin yinyue chuban she, 1995), p. 137, n. 2, is quite so certain about which were metal. Zhongwen dacidian defines ~IWr as "a name for regulators " citing this SgS passage and a poem by Pei Du ~X! (Tang era); see "Song Liu shi" J2i~tlfi!j: /j~lliMYH&~, {nllWn~L~~·. 'Ifn~: 1)~I:@l;y.l!;, ~lUII*l~'f~t Quan Tang shi :.tJ'::Jflf~4i 335 [Beijing: Zhonghua, 1996], vol. 10, p. 3757). To support the idea of bamboo-shaped cast-metal objects, we have an example of Western Han cast-metal in the shape of bamboo. It is a pedestal for a censer that shows five bamboo joints and is about 43 cm total. (See Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, Artisans in Early Imperial China [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007], fig. p, p. 183.) Certainly, artisans knew how to make cast-metal bamboo-shaped tubes, although I know of no recognized example of one that functioned as an aerophone. It is possible to see a certain extant bronze tube (ca. 1st-C. BC; about 26 cm) as resembling a length of bamboo; it has been interpreted as "chariot decor" (see The Chinese Exhibition: A

Pictorial Record of the Exhibition ofArchaeological Finds of the People's RepubliC of China [Kansas City: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1975], pI. 203). But it may have originally been cast to imitate bamboo and then used for another purpose. The very high level of regard for ritual devices of this type is seen in an episode in the life of Kibi no Makibin1f1J1Mn~ (695?-775), a young Japanese elite who was sent twice to Chang'an (717-34 and 752-53) to acquire Chinese learning (his life summarized in P. A. Herbert, japanese Embassies and Students in Tang China, Occasional Papers 4 [University of Western Australia, Centre for East Asian Studies, I978?]). Among the Tang court's gifts to him (besides texts) were an iron standard-rule used as an annulus (a gnomon that marked shadow travel), and "a number of cast copper tubal tuners ~'H'II~r---f:fI)"; see Miyata Toshihiko 'l~nI3{3Z)~, Kibi no Makibi 'Ilf{{ln~H1IJ (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1961), p. 33, quoting Shoku Nihongi #1)11] *~C. 16 On Du as bell-caster, see Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics," pp. 69-76. Zuo Yannian participated in musicological debates at Wei Mingdi's court, and seems to have been a lyric composer; he also may have been a disciple of Du at an earlier time (ibid., p. 75, esp. n. 53). There is no mention in the record of his ever having created pitchstandards for a bell-chime or other instruments, but it is certainly possible that any disciple of bell-master Du possessed these arts.

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in use only twenty to forty years previously under the Wei. Xun and the others easily deduced a Wei provenance, and, as will emerge below, they also knew where to locate technicians of Wei times, and others, to help understand the items. With only slight clues, we must use the wider context of the Songshu documents to deduce what the objects were exactly. All the items were probably found in a jumble (see Part 6, below: "we carefully arranged all the pitch-regulators"). All appeared to Xun at first to have been pitch-regulators 1-', that is, a type of tuner, not performance flutes. Some scholars, as discussed in my notes to this part, have translated: "both metal and bamboo regulators," which is reasonable. But Xun did call in technicians to "examine" the items. This suggests to me that although Xun saw twenty-five pitch-pipes all of metal and all shaped like bamboo, he noticed something puzzling. Three of them clearly were bell-regulators and were made by Wei-era Du KuL They probably carried their lulu names embossed on the side. But for twenty-two of them an odd naming system was used. As would emerge, in fact they were aerophones used by pre-Jin court musicians in preparing for performance. Xun Xu seems never to have seen such designs, nor would he have known of such things as the Western Han-era bamboo regulators of southern China, which in modern times were found entombed at MawangduLI7 For him, tubal regulators called lu were straight, cast-metal cylinders named by their lulu names. To solve these problems, Xun enlisted help from a music technician named Liu Xiu and, significantly, also the flute-master Lie He (see discussion under Part 2). Xun dated and contexted the three bellregulator tubes not just by their relatively familiar style, but also by having Liu make tests, possibly physical comparison of their lengths with the lengths of a Wei-era foot-rule or with another, less-decorative, set of Wei tubal regulators (or sketches of same). The three apparently matched Wei standards that had been created by Du and Zuo (one of Du's disciples) in about 222-25, when Du had corrected pitch-standards for a bell-set for Cao Cao. 18 The text in Part I says three of the regulators "matched the model" of Du and Zuo; it does not say "matched the See n. 3, above. Ruan Yuan's IFcJcjigu zhai zhongding yiqi kuanzhi f1!illn*F~Ulj'I~*~~;;~jj,lt (n.p., ca. 1804-1912), j. IO, p. 1Gb, gives a five-word inscription purported to be from a Huangzhong bell of about 227-29, during Cao Pi's reign. Ruan explains that various collectors had suggested that it was Du's bell, but that it probably was Chai Yu's, a bell-making competitor of Du; see Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics" pp. 72-73. 17

18

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bells." I do not believe that the existence of Cao Cao's whole bell-set in 274 would have been glossed over by the wording of these documents, but would have constituted important antiquarian evidence and duly noted. One may take ''fa ?'!" in this passage to mean a set of Wei-era templates showing tubes and their lineal specifications. Now Xun Xu turned to the twenty-two other aerophones. If used for playing tunes it was odd that they were of cast-metal. But instead they may have been prototypes for making various types of flutes. The objects did not state lulu names, but lengths given in chi and cun. Xun may have thought that in their day they were for determining that the fundamental note of a new flute was based on a verifiable length-standard, or that they verified the pitches of the four, or six, finger-holes of a flute prototype being developed by a court workshop. Xun Xu began to question Lie He, formerly an official Wei musician, and through Lie's reflections on Han-Wei flute practice he gained a picture of preJin attempts to solve flute problems. The Wei-era musicians had got in a muddle about the right notes to play when other instruments were leading large ensembles. Part

2

[Xun Xu et al.] inquired of Gentleman of the Palace for Harmonics Lie He 3iU IFII, who humbly submitted ~~(: [the following]: 19 "Formerly, under Wei Mingdi, I was ordered to be in charge of di-flute music Jf\~11j ~; in doing so I made these pitch-regulators. [My] idea was to have students stay in separate quarters in order to vocalize and deliberate;20 they relied on these regulated scales 1&lItAltr~~. (Page 213 of Songshu begins here.) When there was combined music in the imperial city, they simply remembered the names of these [regulator] lengths, and thus in all cases, whether zithers, flutes, or singers, [their musics] would be evenly matched T=c~q~}J:1]i'l. When a vocalist's music was a low 'fftu [mode], we used long flutes, which were [these] longer [length-named] regulators J=llL~1'(fL~1~lt. When the vocalist's music was a high [mode], we used short flutes, which were [these] shorter regulators. If any of the notes 21 of the zithers and singers stretched beyond the normal for higher and 19 This ci can simply mean "to state, or announce," yet it may imply "deferently so." Ling Tingkan &JIJI~~ (1757-1809), "Jin Taishi dilti kuangmiu"f~~~~f:,1'rcHKI":I~gfr~ ("Mistakes in the Di Flute System of the Taishi Reign-period ofJin"), printed in Xuxiu SKQS (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2002), vol. II5, p. Ga, notes that the word indicates Lie's low status, which caused him to answer in self-deprecating ways. 20 The method of disciplined training for pitch recognition is somewhat similar to the Eastern Han court's pitch experiment with a music-artisan boy, as described in Hou Hanshu; see Howard L. Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths, 100-300 AD: The Tung-kuan, Taoist Dissenters, and Technical Skills," AM 18.1 (2005), pp. 134-35. 21 The word diao ranges in meaning from "a note's pitch" to "tuning a note or instru-

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lower [modes] iO.'dYlQ1,!n1iUL1!jU, and we could not rely on di-flute lengths so as to name them, then [the performance] could not be managed."

Lie's stated office title conforms to Wei usage, not to Jin, when the name of the office was changed. 22 Of real interest is the fact that this is not the first time Xun Xu sought the advice of old Wei-court musicians, the first being Chen Qi (see Chapter Three). Lie, who mentions that he served under Wei Mingdi, was now at least about sixty-two, but more likely about seventy. Although he had served the Wei, he was mentioned in Fu Xuan's third-century compendium Fuzi 1.w-=f as having been a skilled di performer of southern music, which strongly implies non-court entertainment music. 23 Thus, Lie seems to have been an exponent of yuefu popular music, which, as discussed in Chapter Three, was the core of musical and lyrical experimentation that began in the I90S with impetus from the Caos. From this and from what transpires next, it is clear that Lie was an expert in aspects of di scales and constructions, how the di were played in entertainment ensembles, and their use and techniques in court music. If he in fact was an excellent performer of southern yuefu styles and had brought those to the Cao courts, then we can understand that music from the south had to be reviewed to determine if it fit into northern ensembles, especially when different scales and instruments were involved. Lie He's report described music practices at court in his own day, but more important is that it clarified for Xun Xu how the twentytwo unusual aerophones functioned. Apparently the Wei court had ordered an improvement in flute performance. The problem had been either that flutists were playing out of tune with each other or, more than likely, out of tune vis-a-vis the singers and zitherists, who were ensemble leaders. Lie was a noted performer of southern songs, so knew many different modes and tunings that had come to Luoyang. ment," as well as "a scale" or "tune." See diao as "note pitch" in Zhuangzi 24 ("Xu wu gui" 1~1!\~!l). There a certain Lu Ru put two zithers in separate locations, and when he "struck the gong note on one lute, the gong on the other lute sounded; when he struck the jue note, the other jue sounded-the pitch of the two instruments was in perfect accord." The passage goes on to demonstrate a certain mystical quality to in-tuneness. See Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (N.Y.C.: Columbia U. P., 1968), pp. 267- 68 . 22 See Goodman, "Wei-Chin Court Lyrics," p. 91, n. 85. 23 Ling Tingkan, "Jin Taishi dilti kuangmiu," p. 4a, mentions Lie's old age, and p. 1a refers to TPYL (see 518, p. 2b), which quotes Fuzi to the effect that: "Lie He was skilled at blowing the di-flute; and as to 'Songs of Wu Beauties,' he could not be improved upon )iU*II~itii:l!Xl~Jt 3~~II;!Zn~, 1!!~lJ,JJII\tI.,." One supposes that this was a dance entertainment set to yuefu ensemble music.

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If the twenty-two were all cast-metal, then it might be deduced that they were one-note regulators (that is, without finger-holes) made to endure and show off Wei-court achievements. It is possible, too, that they each had six finger holes and played what Lie had perceived as a certain tune or mode introduced by string players and vocalists. It strikes us as curious that there would have been twenty-two. Were there that many competing tunes, or modes (accompaniment transpositions, or scale patterns that were not yet tunes)? I do not think so, but instead the scenario makes more sense if the twenty-two were regulators made to blow different notes of one mode, the context being pedagogical, as emerges below. Also, in Part 7, below, Xun Xu will state that of the twenty-two only those representing two specific modes were to be preserved, in other words, he had been dealing with a jumble of pipes representing only a few modes. In Parts 8 and 13, we learn that Lie Had made at least three different-length regulator flutes: 5+ chi, 3. 2 chi, and 2.9 chi. In the end, two puzzles must remain unsolved: were the twentytwo aerophones metal (one-note regulators) or bamboo (seven-note performance instruments), and did either Lie or Xun (or both) actually want to design one flute that could play the notes of two or more modes? We shall continue the general discussion by assuming that the twenty-two discovered instruments represented single-note regulators. Further, they were metal for physical durability and for constancy of pitch while training musicians over a long period of time. Casting a smooth tube would not have been difficult for the palace atelier, nor, as possibly in this case, a cast-metal design making the tube look like a bamboo length. Lie's underlings in Wei times had gone on a practice retreat. There Lie would, it seems, have blown a note on a metal tube named "X chi, x cun," and the flute-troupe memorized that specific "X chi, x cun" note. It implies that there were more notes belonging to the aerophone set named "X chi, x cun." Lie's aerophones did not use the classical twelve lulu lengths nor did they function "across different keys," as it were, so as to keep all flutists playing the same notes, as in today's orchestra, when it is mandatory that a piccolo's F-natural sound the same equal-tempered F-natural as an alto flute, or a clarinet, and so on. Lie had not been concerned with theoretic aspects but with practical ones, and for that reason also may not have wanted the actual names of the new tunes, some with dialectal differences, to confuse his players. The latter practiced merely "singing" the new modes thus engraining notes

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in their memories, and then later would replicate the new information on their own (bamboo?) flutes marked with "X chi, x cun," and so on. The word "deliberating" in Part 2 may refer to discussions about when to choose a scale represented by a length X aerophone, or not choose it, as would happen at the combined court concerts. Lie He's reference to "higher and lower" music I believe concerned shifts that were required because of the nature of the ranges of groups of singers or of other instruments (for instance, the keyable tunings of the zithers). This is the kind of phenomenon that in premodern German organ-chapels was called Kammerton or Chorton "pitch," and concerned the need to choose a keyboard scale, or in fact to redesign organ flues so as to coordinate with the registers and qualities of accompanying singers and instrumentalists. The qing ~w zhuo {i] problem for Lie's flutists was either that the ensemble leaders (singers and zithers) demanded everyone playa known tune keyed to a different pitch-standard, or the tunes they requested required the flutes to shift octaves up or down in order to find the notes. To Lie, the situation would become musical chaos when there was too much transposition or such octave shifting: "the performance could not be managed." It was made more intense by the fact that the flutists before Jin times were not considered as the court music's leading voices, as were the vocalists and strings. And for some, flutes were thought of as merely expressing the melodies of new southern entertainments, thus secondary or decorative. According to Lie He, this sort of offset in pitch-range-Flote-Ton versus Stimme-Ton, as it were-is what happened in court combined music. For example, a combined ensemble may have needed to perf form a tune that revolved around the most common orthodox mode of all in that time, the Zhengsheng mode. (We learn about this mode, below; see Figures 6C-D). If it was a complex suite, vocalists might have signaled a change, a new part or movement; to do that they may have cadenced for example on the "yu" step in the mode (a so-called major6th from the gong), eliciting at least for a moment the rich harmonies that parallel sixths bring about. Vocalists could easily shift; they could find any ornament note. The problem for Lie was that the flutes on occasion could not find a needed scale-note if they were ranging outside the limits of that particular finger-hole system: using a Western analogy, how might a keyboard playa clarinet's F, G, A, B-flat, if the keyboard was built without the black keys? This problem is true of most early instruments, worldwide. In early China, if the ensemble played

/

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in a court venue with an installed bell-chime set, then the bells, especially double-strike bells,24 could supply all the needed notes as guides, but accompanying players would occasionally have to strain to match the bells. The flutists would have had the hardest time of any instrumentalist. But two things were to their advantage: they were adept at half-holing or cross-fingering to produce notes not found at a regular finger-hole (a technique known in Wei and Jin, as we see later on); and new bamboo flutes could be made to different lengths and hole-arrays very cheaply and quickly. Thus, the "X chi, x cun" style of naming the twenty-two aerophones could have been markings made by the workshop to show which seven tubes so marked were of one mode, or tune, and then which seven marked "y chi, y cun" were for another mode. Part 3 (Text of the memorial begins.) Xun and others memorialized: "In previous times, former rulers' musical creations shook the winds (that is, took elements from popular "airs," "songs") and stirred the commonplace. (In ritual temples and spaces) they feasted the spirits and gave sustenance to worthies. They made sure to coordinate the [twelve Iii/it] pitch-standards' blending, and by doing so they gave meter to the uses of the Eight Timbres £\I%M~P: Ir~1 Zfll, ~ ~I'j J\ fl- Z)T] .25 For this reason, in the Suburban Sacrifices and court feasts they used [the lit and the Eight Timbres] and it was well established !(=T1ljU; they gave vocal performances and variety pieces and the high and low pitches were appropriate. This is why [Liji] says: 'The Five [pentatonic] Notes and the Twelve Pitch-standards circulate around each other, acting as gong ;~r26: It is something that can be known via the classics and documents."

mz

24 It is hard to imagine, however, that bell ringers continued for centuries their analytically, often merely theoretical, strike-point variations as seen in the late-Warring States Marquis Yi bells. That seems to have represented a great musicological possibility, rather than an easily replicatable method. See in general, Falkenhausen, Suspended Music. 25 Bayin is a traditional phrase to refer to the eight different types of musical devices that made up the court orchestra: silk, bamboo, metal, etc. Yang Jialuo, Xin jiaoben Songshu fit suoyin }ffl"t50ts:*ifl;(J*iJ 1(Taipei: Dingwen shuju, 1975), p. 222, prefers editions that have r=I=1 instead of )11; this would be read as "coordinate their balance? correctness?" I believe that the parallelism contrasts the relatively analytic "til" (good spacing of the twelve lUlu) to practical "application FIr' (of the various instruments). 26 The Liji 's t:,£,~c larger phrase (from sect. "Liyun") deals with all kinds of ritual cyclings: "3:I~ ~t\ {II "I'=~l~; ;l!iHI:I1.~!/PK ill. ~L1)!*/\ t"+~~ f;t :t~HI=1 X~f,£[ -1£. ~li ~ 7\ i'j'l>I-.:-~~.;;&jjif fl§ 1.~ i'tJ-tE,." See D. C. Lau, gen. ed., A Concordance of the Liji, ICS Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series (Hong Kong: Shangwu, 1992), p. 62, ll. 18-19. The condensed literary language is actually referring to the full theoretical potential of the five scale-steps (gong, shang,jue, zhi, yu), if each one is played in 12 separate lulu, equaling 60 species. For the useful layout of this as a matrix, see Kwok Wai Ng, "The Modes of Togaku from Tang-Period China to Modern Japan: Focusing on the oshikicho, banshikicho and hyojo Modal Categories," Ph.D. diss. (University of Sydney, 2007), pp. 51-56.

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The "other" memorializers most likely included Zhang Hua; perhaps Liu Xiu and Liu's underlings had their names attached as well, but if so those would be written below the names of the high-ranked Xun (and Zhang). The memorial takes up classical ideas of musical purity. Xun starts by referring to a mythical sort of high-music that melded archaic values of the "elegantiae" with those of mundane music. This will turn out to be important in defining Xun's aesthetics. Xun's phrase "JfLZ.1HIJu" may allude to the Yijing ("Xici," part A).27 Xun believes that ancient C01.uts knew how to use the lyrics of the countryside and the wards to create new music for the imperial temples and side-rooms. 28 But of course the ancients also made sure to keep fresh, new music appropriately constrained through the traditional harmonic system. Xun ends by citing Liji, which talks of music in relation to color, taste, etc., as a naturally consonant system because it defines a set of interlocking categories. The phrase mf§~,§ often is used to mean "mathematical calculations (the sanfen sunyi fa) that establish the set of twelve pitch-standards." But we should not overlook the performance aesthetics contained in the phrase, namely, to move between keys or cycle through modes. Part 4 (Text of the memorial continues.) "According to [Lie] He's answers, the lengths of [his] di-flutes were [determined] without any visual schemata 1H~rfi''%d!iJ. They were made purely instinctively, not based on musical regulation >f,z);;J:llljf", 7F-1J 1II1 JJt. 29 When [we] examined [the discovered regulators] vis-a-vis [the new Jin] correct regulatorsLLA4!:, none corresponded; and when we played their scales IIXJP1~:l:S:J ,30 most were not in tune ~/1--:,Wh/j-." 27 See Zhouyi yinde Nug;:Jlil'J; Harvard-Yenching Sinol. Index. Ser., Suppl. 10, p. 43, rt.; the sentence there reads: "M IMJliziiWzrk" ("What is established in usage they called a pattern"; trans. WIB, p. 318). 28 See Martin Kern, "The Poetry of Han Historiography," Early Medieval China lLI (2004), pp. 33-36, for evidence in Hanshu attesting the collecting of popular airs by government musicians: "Airs ... presented to the music master who arranged them according to the musical standard pitches ... " (p. 34); and the phrase in Liji (sect. "Wang zhi") "lJrl~i~~)!1R." Also see David R. Knechtges, "The Emperor and Literature: Emperor Wu of the Han," in Frederick Brandauer and Zhunjie Huang, Imperial Rulership and Cultural Change in Traditional China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), pp. 7 2 -73. 29 The baihua translation in Ji, Wei lin Nanbei chao yinyue shiliao, p. 13, says: "They made them according to their own notion and did not follow regular harmonic degrees." In Part 12, I note comments by the Qing-era musicological scholar Ling Tingkan, who saw Xun's ":>t.<." in the sense of "to make a ratio," a technical meaning known before Tang; see 55 II, pp. 387-88. 30 In Part 2, Lie used "junlyun :0]" simply to mean "evenly," but it also could mean "evenly divided upl a measured allotment"; and in the word-family we also have yun ~J

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This part of the documents gives us Xun Xu's overall assessment of Lie He's Wei-era project, which he had already analyzed and utilized (on the timing of the parts of the different documents, see above, under "Songshu's Bundle of Documents on Xun Xu's Musicology"). Xun states bluntly that Lie's methods were basically untechnical in that they lacked a graphic model and did not measure when determining their flute lengths. Another way of translating this phrase is the flutes " ... were [determined] without thinking of models." Xun, having already had experience with craftsmen and artisans, may have assumed that a good design for flute-sets would require templates with notations-drawings that could be reproportioned. He was beginning to conceive how he could mark off a flute's sequence of holes in compliance with some external scaling, possibly expressed by means of a scaling-stick. Moreover, we should consider how Xu's team examined. We ("well-spaced, distributed") and ~~ ("standard weight"). Implied in the word-family also is "to tune to, or match exactly" a pitch; this has been seen to bring in the semanteme "tuning device" or "regulator." Kenneth DeWoskin, A Song for One or Two: Music and the Concept ofArt in Early China [Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1982], p. 47, calls :Mj in some contexts "string tuner," cognate with iqI~, as does Needham/Robinson in SCC 4.1, pp. 213, 219). But the "pitch-regulator" sense of junlyun would be taken over by the noun i~ll in music writing after early Han. Falkenhausen, Suspended Music, pp. 313-14, calls HJ "uniform standard," probably correct for pre-Han usages regarding bell-chime temperament. Wang, Xun Xu dilu, p. 138, n. 10, says that this 1fH] is to be read "Jr~U!ffil," and means: "toneltonality " and has a "definite relationship with a group of tones (a type of which was the 7-note [scale])." Wang is right, and in this Xun memorial we have perhaps the first instance of shengyun
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get the sense of their systematic approach to evidence. The phrasing implies that his team had first examined the regulators without blowing them (see Part I), simply correlating their linear dimensions with extant templates. But now, they blow the notes against the twelve Iii, as well as listening for good note spacings by ear. Xun thus has used a rhetoric of proof in establishing to the court the worth of his own project. In Part 2, in the Xun-Lie Dialog, Lie used the word "±5]" merely as the adverb "evenly." In this part, however, the word 5f±5] clearly means "scale," literally "note distribution." Of course it is not a reference to the theoretical keyed modal species that developed beginning in late-Tang and Song times, and then in Japan. 31 Instead, the mention of "scale" this early, in the 270s, was a semantic blending with the concept of "song-tune." Part 5 (Text of the memorial continues.) "[Lie He] has submitted [an explanation]: 'When our teachers handed down flute [techniques], they merely distinguished high and low notes, and directly from that they lengthened or shortened. 32 Artisans cut and fashioned [flutes], but as was the old [way], they did not use pitchregulators.'33 This was to make di-flutes without any method. Further, in [Lie] He's34 describing the di-flute and making regulators, he also tasked qin and se [players] and singers, and he followed them as the standard. This was not a way to investigate antiquity and honor the sages, nor to provide a system for later generations."

In this passage, Xun further assesses Lie's techniques. Lie's teachers and their flute makers had had an older system of coordinating flute lengths to the relative highness or lowness of the pitches in an ensemble, not to pitch-regulators tuned to liilii pitches. Then Xun remarks that Lie's method had tainted subsequent ensemble music by having the all too variable strings and voices be the guides. Xun saw 31 See Rulan Chao Pian, Song Dynasty Musical Sources and Their Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. p', 1967), and Ng, "Modes of Togaku." 32 Ji, Wei jin Nanbei chao yinyue shiliao, p. 14, and Wang, Xun Xu dilii, p. 138, n. II, read the phrase in just this way. There is a possibility, however, that the word "-'fe' may have bee~ read as fl'e and the meaning thus" ... and they assigned a value as longer or shorter. 33 I follow the SgS punctuation, which implies that Lie's statement ends right here. It mal<:es good sense, since what follows is a judgment of Lie and a reference to his techniques. Lie is just an interviewee: the principal voice that judges flute making and flute music is Xun's. 34 Yang Jialuo, following the jS 16 version, substitutes I'll for the seemingly incorrect variant 9ill.

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Lie's method as internally relativistic and complex, thus subject to great error. Part 6 (Text of the memorial continues.) "[Therefore] we carefully arranged all the pitch-regulators and asked [Lie] He about his intention for their layout, as [submitted] below Ill] fmSJ~)IA~IIl:r:.35 If we were to rely on canonized specifications and make twelve individual di-flute templates by using the twelve lit pitch-standards (or, twelve tubal regulators), then the scales would blend and the instruments used to great advantage. When [musicians] discuss and practice [they] must match with the [system of six regular] pitchstandards and [six non regular] pitch-standards ,I,=" (that is, the twelve semi-tone standards generically called a 1~lt b l, system). Won't this [benefit] even more the banquets and feasting of the myriad states and the performances at the [clan] temple and [ritual] halls? Although [the ancient musicologists] Ling [Lun] and Kui are vast epochs separated from us, and [their] utmost sonorities are difficult to fathom, even so it would behoove us to follow the methods of yesteryear in order to seek out innermost truths; and to agree with the classics and ritual canons in order to have a system that is detailed.

1*

At this point, the actual flutes were not yet built. Xun Xu explains that first he had to sort out the twenty-two metal aerophones to deduce what Lie and his flute bureau had been trying to do. Although misunderstood by commentators, I believe "~O ft" refers to the "construction guide" of Part 17. The phrase is just a verbal device to show a certain order in the documentation; coming inside the memorial, it alerts the court to the very existence of a technical appendix. (This construction guide is explained below, "Songshu Part Ii'.) Xun gives the first strong signal that he intends to redesign flutes to correspond with the traditional pitch-standards. He finishes with a peroration on the benefit of having newly corrected flutes. The "methods of yesteryear" are, as seen in context, below, the ancient description of the twelve pitch-standards that was known since before Han times. Part 7 (Text of the memorial concludes.) "If [the court] permits implementation, I request that di-flute artisans select bamboo for construction, and submit [their creation] to the Imperial Grand Musician and the Music Bureau to be put into general use. 35 Ji, Wei jin Nanbei chao yinyue shiliao, p. 14, reads the phrase: "We paid particular attention to sorting out and depicting each regulator, and quizzed Lie He about his notions as indicated above /I\jIYj)iU;fIII'I~A;'L't0,~lllgiJ." But the original surely means "as per what follows below," not what was written "above," unless one imagines a scribal error that corrupted "~II{iiJ" (" ... asked Lie what his intention of their layout was like.") Neither Ling, "Kuangmiu," nor Wang Zichu, Xun Xu dilu, comments on the phrase.

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[We] give our opinion: the Du Kui and Zuo Yannian pitch-regulators are to be preserved. One each from the "Zhengsheng lUblf" [set] and the "Xiazhil~·1H&" [set] of the di-flute regulators from the Imperial Stores should get colophon inscriptions with the surnames and given-names of their makers; and any remaining [sets] should not be put into use, but returned to the Imperial Stores for destruction." (End of memorial) [Xun's] memorial was approved.

After making the claim in Part 6 that flutes ought to be tuned to the pitch-standards, now Xun Xu sets up a team among the court's ateliers for the purpose of constructing such a device. Next he announces to the court what the twenty-five found-objects were. Xun considered that the three regulators for the Wei-court bells had a special function and thus should be preserved, indicating that the objects were not part of the current project to make regulated flutes, but that they might be used for musicological research later. It is clear that Xun and his team succeeded in sorting out the other twenty-two. With Lie's comments as a guide, they had determined that some of them were in the Zhengsheng mode and some in the Xiazhi mode (see Figure 6C). If the colophon for Xun's new "footrule" of only several months previously (discussed in Chapter Four) is any indication of his style of antiquarianism, then Xun's new labels for these two sets would probably have included the words "Zhengsheng" or "Xiazhi," then mention of the evidence used to determine those names, and finally Lie He's name. Such labels would help anyone in the future who sought to look over Xun Xu's work, and because, as we see in Part 9, Lie had made a serious error in his "X chi, x cun" aerophone that was for the Xiazhi mode, having his name on that illdesigned instrument would show the ignorance of musicologists before Jin times. The word "zhengsheng" was known in antiquity in philosophical contexts about musical propriety, meaning more or less "correct music," or, in a more technical sense, "the orthodox scale."36 For "xiazhi" the translation might be "Lowered-SOL Scale," meaning that one starts it at the SOL step below Zhengsheng's DO step. Evidence exists 36 As a notion of socially "proper music," and thus a sign of good governance, it first occurred in the pre-Han philosopher Xunzi's essay "On Music"; and was echoed inlater sources, e.g., Shiji 4, p. 121, and 24, p. 1210. The 1st-C. AD Hanshu refers to Zhengsheng in a more technical context meaning that there are no "tiny parts" of scales, only the five pure notes of the pentatonic scale; see 2IA ("Lilli" 1A), p. 962 (and the 3d c. AD note on p. 963). Musical thinkers frequently expressed dismay at seven-note scales for being overly sophisticated.

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of the popularity ofaXiazhi accompaniment mode around this time, and this began a development that resulted in the mode's becoming theoretically established in later musicology.37 We recall that Lie had made his metal regulators inscribed not with mode or pitch-standard names, but merely lengths. Thus, Xun and his team determined that those "X chi, x CUrl," etc. regulators represented specific modes of accompaniment or scale-patterns for new tunes. Any other regulators among the twenty-two may have expressing other modes thought unorthodox and deplorable (an attitude that is made clearer, below, in the section "Modal Variety That Xun Xu Attempted to Thwart"), and Xun had them eliminated from Jin consciousness. As before, in Part 4, the memorial is an advertisement to the court and Jin Wudi of the successful completion of his research project, which took something like two years. The major results concerned ritual precision and standards. Part 8 [Xun] Xu further questioned [Lie] He: "Can we or can we not make twelve di-flutes that match the twelve pitch-regulators ielt, and make each finger-hole follow a pitch-regulator, then as a result of that [use them] to play music? rtil£I'J ~/,1?g~~/f~" [Lie] He submitted his opinion that: "The Music Bureau East Side-Room's long di-flute [whose scale is in] "Zhengsheng jI~" had been 4.2 chi (approx. 100 em). Let us say that we also choose the Xiazhi notes ~'~ijl:f~IJ-Xj::t:F1:i&~Jt. According to [our former] method, for lower notes [of a mode] the di-flute ought to be longer JJ~rl~~if~u:#1'tl'MjrL~; we figured its length, which turned out to be a bit over 5 chi (about 120 em). Formerly, I made one but it could not be played. Although we did not adjust all the [finger-] holes, I would imagine that we would not have been able to get a definite hole-topitch-standard correspondence."

This is a juncture in the SOrlgshu document at which Xun's and Lie's dialog begins to concentrate on a common goal-to have a flute's scale become regulated so that one flute, or a set of flutes, might playa variety of modes, and thus improve music-making. Xun's notion about a perfect scale, one that matched the pitch-standards, had already been made clear. He thought that flutes by their nature could become the musical leaders in ensembles, as well as the regulators of correct pitches and scale-steps. He would only have to ar37 For evidence of its popularity in the second century, see "On the Long di" by Ma Rong (d. 166 AD); WX 3, pp. 270-71. For a summary of the emergence ofXiazhi and then the reassertion of "Zhengsheng" in Six Dynasties and Tang music, see Ng, "Modes of Togaku, "pp. 65-75, esp. table 2.21 on p. 75.

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range the finger-holes so that their notes exactly corresponded to the twelve pitch-standard lulu. Lie now helps him out, pointing out how he had experimented with the older, Wei-era, long-di that existed in one of the palace venues, an East Side-Room, which we can speculate had been a Wei-era room for a certain type of music, perhaps even the site that had held the twenty-five regulators. Today's musicologists agree that Zhengsheng's intervals are roughly comparable to the piano's scale starting on F-natural (Figure 6D). It was considered to be an "orthodox" mode, yet why did Lie suggest "also choosing the Xiazhi notes"? I believe that the phrase does not actually mean "choose" but instead "to cover," a normal part of musical activity. We need to divert briefly to see how that reading is possible. Recently Kwok Wai Ng has studied texts that give hints about the pre-Tang history of the modes that eventually were used in Japanese Togaku ensembles; he stretches his examination back into the formative period in China before Japanese musicians began to learn Chang'an court music in the 700s. Ng turns to the biography of Niu Hong in Suishu, which relates court discussions of musical values and tonal relationships. In one passage, Niu in fact refers to Xun Xu. First, however, Niu responded to the throne by explaining why the Jing Fang J?: m-style of computing sixty lu was never actually used. I give the last part of his court declaration, using Ng's translation: In modern performance practice, when huang zhong is designated as the pitch of gong to form a huang zhong zhi gong mode, it is common for musicians to use lin zhong rather than huang zhong as the tonic. This is different from traditional practice. Xun Xu, a Nei shu jian of the Jin court, created a total of twelve flutes and tuned them by shifting the keys of each modal species. [For the flute of huang zhong], the tonic of the zheng sheng diao scale is huang zhong; the tonic of the xia zhi diao scale is lin zhong and the tonic of the qing jue diao scale is gu xian. For the flute of dalu, the tonic of the zheng sheng diao scale is da lu and the tonic of the xia zhi diao scale is yi ze, and so on for the other flutes. The way of using lin zhong [as the tonic of the huang zhong zhi gong mode] in fact follows the theory of Xun Xu's xia zhi diao scale. It is unacceptable to use the xia zhi diao but not the zheng sheng diao. This must therefore be corrected. 38

Niu is suggesting that around Xun Xu's time a common musical practice had been to play on the fifth of the scale. It is easy to see that 38 Ng, "Modes of Togaku, " pp. 64-6 5. I have altered the translation only to delete references to Japanese readings and to his tables; original text in 55 49, p. 1308. The life ofNiu deserves a deep study linking him with a host of musicologists and rites experts who served the Northern Zhou and Sui courts.

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Xun's flute temperament was more than a thought experiment about a potential for seventy-two mode-species. It was also about real musical practices. Ensemble musicians were beginning to categorize tunes by names of modes, and to use mode names as a tool for having groups play in agreement, especially since musicians would come from outside the palace, or outside the region. They needed to understand the shape of the song-texts, the alternative names, and ways to add instrumental interest and sophistication. This was touched on in Chapter Three, when Xun Xu argued with Zhang Hua over scoring prosody, and another elderly technician from the former Wei court, Chen Qi, stated that lyric line-lengths (four-word, five-word, etc.) were not workable with the bell accompaniment. A commentary to Guoyu II written in Xun Xu's day touches on the techniques of decoration and accompaniment, and we turn to it now. We notice that Lie He used the word above in Part 8. The mundane reading would be the adverbial "also / once again." But since there is a strong aspect of verbatim quotation here, why would Lie say "we now also / once again choose the Xiazhi notes"? However, by allowing fu to be read as a technical term, we get the musical practice of "doubling, going along with," in a certain way related to the wordfamily member "{S[, to cover over." This reflects more concretely what Niu Hong referred to in his memorial to the Sui court-a transposed line played parallel to the same line in Zhengsheng. The reference to covering technique in the text of Guoyu (the section "Zhouyu" fi¥J ,"Speeches of Zhou") is expanded in the thirdcentury AD commentary by Wei Zhao SB. The "Zhouyu" portion is probably the oldest of the Guoyu sections, and dates to the 430S Be. 39 It gives one of the most important pre-Han discussions on the nature of music, and this was discussed in the I970S by James Hart. We move directly to the point via one short phrase: " ... King (Jing) was going to cast (a set of) wuyi (bells), and make for it a great lin bell ±~~liH~ ~t, ffij~::t*1*."40 Hart convincingly explains, based on the context and on traditional Chinese harmonics, that this means that the king was interested in making a whole set of bells with a tuning based on

"m,"

39 See Guoyu (SBCK edn.) "sect. Zhouyu," xia, j. 3, p. 15b; also Chang I-jen et al., "Kuo yil," in Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographic Guide, Early China Special Monograph Series 2 (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China and Institute of East Asian Studies, 1993), esp. pp. 264-65. Musical knowledge in Guoyu and its 3d-C. AD commentary is also discussed in n. 30, above. 40 Hart, "Wuyi Bells," p. 407. See also Ng, "Modes of Togaku, " pp. 48-49, and 74-

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the Wuyi pitch-standard, and, following Wei's commentary, that the "great Lin was its cover," to be cast at the Linzhong pitch-standard below, rather than above, Wuyi. It was thus large, "creating imbalance and confusion in the music."41 In the "Zhouyu" text, advisers to the king argue against going to the effort of making such a huge accompaniment bell on a variety of grounds, both economic and musicological. One adviser mentions that" '" bells do no more than initiate music. If a wuyi has a lin, the ear will not perceive the music. xit/fi&llJJru . ;;g:~~t!ffi%, El= 3t :&.-~." Another adviser talks not of a key "having" its partner as doubling, but of "preferring" and "following": "I have heard it said that the qin ~ and se Z0 prefer gong Jiij ,that the bells prefer yu, that the stones prefer jue, and that the gourd and bamboo instruments are regulated by whatever is most useful." Later this same adviser would say that unlike all the timbres that have their "preferred" accompaniment, "leather and wood have just one note." The voice that explicitly proffered the word "cover" was that of Guoyu commentator Wei Zhao, a contemporary ofXun Xu who was an important music expert in the southern state ofWu but unfortunately executed in 273 amid political intrigue. 42 Wei derived his opinion from the Guoyu commentary of the well-known Jia Kui (30-101 AD): Palace Server Jia [Kui] says: Wuyi is the name of a bell; it is the musical note wuyi. Great lin is the cover of wuyi. (The king would) make a wuyi [bell] and make a great lin [bell] to cover it .... [1, Wei] Zhao say that since (the text) later says, "The high note is suppressed, and the low one is excessive," and again, "The music heard is distorted and distant" - since it is thus, then when Jia says that there is cover for the wuyi, he is accurate. '=1='';;-: "1!\~~~-, ~r:~, 1=lt'=I='M~~J-tl1. );Aij\, 1n~~~-zJi-tl1. 11: 1!\~~t l,~~j(*ij\~!riz .... 11{=ifill~:f I~i "*lJlfqJjcl~," )(1] "frl~:~~JJR," YIIJl:t J~iJ1!;lrf~(1!\~~;J:{n~, JlLL&~.43

In short, the advisers of a king of Zhou in pre-Han times, as well as Jia Kui, then Wei Zhao and Xun Xu of post-Han times, show that early in Chinese history people debated about the timbral color that was applied to the surface of music. Musicologists and scholars actually discussed the "scoring" of musical sound and they offered classicist explanations. As with other aspects of traditional Chinese music, sophisHart, "Wuyi Bells," p. 4 0 5. See Liul Biannian 7, p. 94. Wei was an expert in harmonics; he also wrote 12 guchui court lyrics (Lui Shi, Weishi 12, pp. 543-47). On Wei's commentarial style, see Scott Galer, "Sounds and Meanings: Early Chinese Historical Exegesis and Xu Guang's Shiji yinyi," Ph.D. diss. (University of Wisconsin, 2003), pp. 56-60. 43 Hart, "Wuyi Bells," p. 404, slightly altered. 41

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tication in pitch and rhythm was often thought of as too ornate. That is why Chen Qi (Chapter Three) thought that a bell "covering" had confused the lyrics, and why the pre-Han Zhou king's advisers thought of accompaniment "cover" as unmusical, or unharmonious. Here in Part 8, Lie He has referred Xun to a standard covering technique-the Zhengsheng mode's being accompanied by a musical line at distance of a perfect-fifth (or fourth). He explains that in his day he had tried building such a Xiazhi accompaniment flute; and thus he multiplied the 4.2 chi flute by 4/3, using the traditional sanfen sunyi algorithm (discussed above). And 413 times 4.2 is 5.586 chi, just as he said: "a bit over 5 chi." If Lie had not carefully adjusted his extra-long flute (120 em are about 47 inches) for interior diameter, then it is easy to see why he said that is was unplayable; the holes were too far apart and the air pressure perhaps too wealc 44 Part 9 (Page

214

of Songshu begins.)

I [Xun Xu] note that the scale of the Imperial Music Bureau's 4.2-chi "Zhengsheng" di-flute is correlated to Ruibin. Using the cycle of fifths for the twelve pitch-standards N I' -''{=ll::iliit~{~lt~g'i;L we can compute the finger-holes for the "Xiazhi" [accompanying mode, whose gong] corresponds to the pitch-standard DaHL A Dalu di-flute's length would be a little over 2.6 chi. One does not lengthen to over five chi.

Lie He had just stated in Part 8 that he had taken the 4.2-chi Ruibin flute and made it longer by going down a fourth to the Dalu pitchstandard, that is making the Ruibin flute longer. Now, in Part 9, Xun corrects him by going up a fifth from Ruibin's gong note. Xun's result is still a Xiazhi variant because going up a fifth is, harmonically speaking, the same as going down a fourth: one lands at Dalu in either case, and the choice merely is between the higher or lower Dalu. Lengths of finger-hole flutes are not simply equivalent to their assigned pitch-standard numbers (those given in Figure 6A). Instead their lengths are determined by the flute's ''jue'' note (the whole tube with all six holes stopped; see Figure loB, in the next section). Since a perfect-fourth down from Ruibin is pitch-standard 2, or Dalu, then starting at Dalu as the gong note, the jue will be pitch-standard 6 (Zhonglu), which was classically pegged at 6.659 cun. The final piece of this puzzle is that the classical pitch-standard lengths must be multi-

44 The Qing-era Ling Tingkan defended Lie: because Xiazhi is a low-register 1i'~ mode, thus saying it would have been a flute of a bit over 5 chi was musically correct; Ling, "Kuangmiu," pp. 5a-b.

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plied by four to get tubes long enough to play di-flute music, thus here we get 26.636 cun, which is close to what Xun states as "2.6 chi." Xun Xu was thinking about what this procedure may have meant in any potential scheme for making a flute's six finger-holes accurately spaced and accurately tuned to the pitch-standard pitches. The longer a flute is, the harder it is for the human hand to manipulate the fingerholes and for the mouth to produce well-formed tones. In recalibrating the holes one had to have a procedure that guaranteed that a hole would not be sited out of range. This thinking on Xun's part, what I consider a type of premodern engineering, emerges clearly in Part 17 of the Songshu document. PartIO [Xun Xu] then ordered Liu Xiu and Deng Hao 1f1~)~ of the Music Bureau, and others, to make a Dalu di-flute according to the pitch-standards and show it to [Lie] He. Then they blew seven regulators and tested [the flute's holes] one hole at a time; the notes all corresponded. Once that was done, he ordered Hao Sheng ~;IVJ:. to play the zheng, and Song Tong IrU to blow the di-flute for the the various songs in [the styles of] zayin (zither tunes) and xianghe ("ensemble music") ff;!t iSI ' tl=lfll;'f~·rll1. [Lie] He at that point stated: "Ever since my father and grandfather in Han times, the di-flute arts were handed down person to person, and we did not understand any method like this. Yet now, the scale notes match the pitch-standards; truly it is not something we ever attained." Hao Sheng, Lu Ji Zhong Zheng 11114~, and Zhu Xia all agreed with [Lie] He.

*

*

Parts 8-10 demonstrate in detail the way that Xun Xu conceived of court music harmonics and ensemble accuracy. The accuracy would occur automatically if the flutes' finger-hole spacings would make the seven notes of their scale all agree in pitch with the regulated notes played on the corresponding pitch-pipes that Xun had already researched and corrected. As in the case of lyrics for court rituals and of court ritual metrology, the orchestra would enter into Xun Xu's prisca Zhou system as another ritual element. Xun offers two tests: one was to check the new Dalu flute's notes against the pitch-standard regulators and the other was to try it in ensembles. These are different types of test, one being vertical in terms of truth (placing an instrument hierarchically below an official regulator in order to be judged) and the other horizontal (agreement in concerted play with instruments that mayor may not have been tested this way). The horizontal test was the more practical one: musicians concerned about ensemble, combined performances, and new styles

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would be happy to achieve collective intonation, regardless of vertical correctness in terms of an absolute pitch. Elsewhere in his "Treatise on Music," Shen Yue mentions almost exactly the same group of players in their role in "creating much new music" during Wei and Jin. Lie He appears, along with a certain Song Shi *til, who led the rhythm, Chen Zuo leading the "Qingshang" songs, Hao Suo as zitherist, and Zhu Sheng *~ as pipa FS§: master. 45 One wonders if Hao Sheng and Hao Suo are the same person, and if in fact several names (Hao, Song, and Zhu) have become jumbled, as they emerged from some unknown primary sources to arrive at Shen's edited treatise. There is, however, fascinating evidence that Xun Xu had been using Song Shi to create music for court performances in the previous year. 46 It seems that we can isolate Liu Xiu and Deng Hao as technical men under Xun's command; they would have been pitch testers (with low-ranked posts in music offices), and the others seem to have been Lie's performance associates.

*'

Part

II

[Xun Xu] further asked [Lie] He: "Each di-flute has six holes, and then there is the seventh, which is the hollow of the whole body (that is, the pipe's fundamental). Can you state all of the gong-shang-jue-zhi note names or not? Are the finger-holes tuned scale-wise, or not? And how do you verify it?" [Lie] He submitted the opinion that: "My former teachers handed down a tradition: as far as playing di-flutes was concerned, they simply discussed amongst each other in terms of creating a tune; they would raise certain fingers for a certain tune. At that time they did not know that the seven holes precisely corresponded to whatever notes. But in the case of making di-flutes, they would rely on the di-flute atelier in the Palace Workshop; they relied on older schema to create [new di finger-hole scales]. They simply played on [the new di] and picked out the [best] sounding ones II).~~·. At that time, they did not re-check all the holes to see if each was tuned or not."

Xun Xu now wants to prove his assumptions by interrogating Lie's technical points. Xun wanted to make sure that Lie represented the old, benighted method, and thus Lie is careful to couch his narrative of the early days of flute technology. He twice refers to "at that time," in other words, at an older stage of knowledge. Such an attitude would have been appropriately humble in front of a superior. 45 SgS 19, p. 559. On these men and "Zaqu [yin]" and "Xianghe," see Charles Egan, "Reconsidering the Role of Folk Songs in Pre-T'ang Yueh-fu Development," TP 86.1-3 (2000)," pp. 49, 73· 46 SgS 19 ("Yue" A), p. 539.

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Lie's version of early flute-making claims that makers, when told to produce a different flute, e.g., lower (to accommodate a certain tune, or the pitch-key of a palace room with a bell-set), usually had older finger-hole templates to work from. But also they used trialand-error. They knew that scale-marks drawn on an old pattern were only approximate, but they could derive distances between holes of a new flute-length by recalibrating existing distances perhaps by using the tenths-units on a standard-rule. Once having sited new holes, a flute prototype for testing could be made quickly and inexpensively, requiring just several cuts, several drills, cleaning the core, and knifing out a blowing notch. By further empirical testing they arrived at a model whose finger-holes produced a pleasing voice and instinctively sounded in tune to the required scale. PartI2 I [Xun Xu] note that according to Zhouli, for modal tunes, the metal and stone (the bells and lithophones) must have fixed notes ~P(jf~!,'D,~ ~~itr:-1'I", 1T"J£1::)1ft. 47 For this reason the casters of bells and makers of lithophones made sure first to follow pitch-regulators to tune them. Only after that were [their products] installed as the suspended [-music] in side-rooms. When they created a musical performance, all notes [of the ensemble instruments] took their scale-pitches from the bells and lithophones. That is what made them correspond with the [twelve] pitch-standards. Now in the case of feasts and banquets on the upperplatforms of palaces and gathering halls, there are no bells and lithophones of the side-room suspended-music. Since di-flutes have fixed tunings, the string-players and vocalists all have followed the di-flutes to be correct. For this [reason], they treat di-flutes as if they were bell and lithophone [regulators]. Thus we must make them agree with the liilii [pitch-standards]. As [Lie] He [previously] has responded, they made [instruments] by ad hoc preference. They proportionally shortened [a flute] by cun [units] )%.~G~ . The seven finger-hole notes were tuned, but they did not know to which pitch-standards they all corresponded: as to their being a tuned scale or not, there was no way to check. By merely choosing the [best] voices on the bamboo, it was to construct without a method. [Xun Xu et al.] specially enlisted 48 Gentlemen Liu Xiu ~~ Deng Hao

*,

47 This may refer to Zhouli JTI,Hl~%! (sect. "Diantong"): "FL%:r,~~,\':, ~.J-I"+r~=:"1'lt:t.1ZA&JX, l2J,·1·1r--.::J~;{.';~2...fNIit Zhouli zhushu JfiH~!r:HXt 23, p. 22a. Edouard Biot, Ie Tcheouli, ou

Rites des Tcheou, Tome II, p. 32: "En general, pour faire Ies instruments de musique, il regIe leurs dimensions par les douze tons primitifs Liu. Il regIe leur juste proportion de poids, par les douze sons enumeres plus haut." 48 I follow Yang Jialuo's substitution of j~for jIWL, per jS 16, but not his addition after i~ o~ 1-, ,;s per Yan Kejun: :he logic is better served with bu ItIS treated verbally as "enlIst, or make a team-unit.

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1l1~9~, Wang YanJJ!J-'fl, Wei Shao ~Jr!,{il), and others to participate with the di-flute artisans 1'i"i I"" in making [new] di-flutes. The artisans made the form, and the pitch-standard [tester] set the notes. As a result, the form of the device was regularized, and the ordering of note intervals was harmonious.

With an appeal to the early-Han classic a part of which described ideal, presumably Zhou-era, music offices and procedures, Xun makes a broad claim about the evolution of court flutes. At first, instrumentalists were inferior to the bells and lithophones, those great tuning/ performing devices of antiquity. But now, in Han and post-Han times, the palace rooms do not all have bell-sets, and so players have been looking to the flutes (as Lie hinted concerning Wei practice). Flutes have come to be treated as if they were the bell-chimes of old, that is, the ensemble leaders, or at least regulators. 49 Xun Xu has already established that Lie had had little cognizance of the traditional computations needed for deriving the twelve pitchstandards, nor even how to avail himself of their utility. Now, Xun summarily judges the technical problem with Lie's (and his forbears') construction technique. Xun makes the distinction between empirical calibration and computing a specification from scratch. He uses the term "Iii .$ ," in this context being an indication that Lie's flute makers had transferred finger-hole ratios to a proposed new model by simply reducing the spacings by a specific benchmark-the length of a cun (Iho chi). They would have done so by first measuring the spacings of the model flute, then making a small scale-stick that reflected each space reduced by a cun-standard, traditional workshop technique. The close of this part shows even stronger evidence for thinking, as mentioned above, that duties for this work were divided among different types of court employee. Here Liu and Deng are mentioned again, along with two others. But they were told to "participate" with the flute ateliers only to the extent of testing. The workshop artisans used old forms, made new forms, cut and drilled bamboo; and Xun's men from the Music Bureau made sure to pick a prototype that had the correct pitch-standard scale, as blown. Part I3 [Xun] Xu also questioned [Lie] He: "If you did not know the idea of the plus the six-lit J@J (that is, the yang and the yin series that made up the twelve lit), then for playing in higher and lower runings, as scale-

six-lit

49 Without reference to this post-Han viewpoint, Lothar von Falkenhausen discussed such a role for flutes as emerging before Han times; Suspended Music, p. 314.

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notes go up and down, how would you name them?" [Lie] He submitted [the opinion] that: "Whenever there was a combined-ensemble performance, we followed the vocalists' high and low [modes, or keys] by using long or short di-flutes. Suppose that they called for lower music: we employed the 3.2-chi di-flute, and accordingly said, 'this is the '3.2-chi mode.' For higher music, we would use (page 215 of Songshu begins) a 2.9-chi di-flute, and we would say 'this is the 2.9-chi mode.' Han passed this down to Wei, and the practice has always been like this."

Lie remarks that in ensemble practice of late-Han and Wei times the flutists were not always the leaders of court music; they apparently did not always set the tunes, but would merely adjust to tunes. Also, it may have been the case that no instrumental group, not vocalists or zitherists, referred to their notes and mode-names by the pitch-standard names (otherwise, the flutists could have accommodated to it). The onus was on the flutes, who had to figure out how the singers, for example, might have intended to change modes. Here again, Lie He's old method of length-names for flutes that could play various modes suited the times, and music got along to some degree, if not perfectly. In fact, we might assume that it was an improvement over what had preceded in late-Han times, with perhaps some squawking flutes, as described by Picken in a different context (above). Part 14 I [Xun Xu] note that according to Zhou Ii, [the ancients] performed six [archaic types of] music. They played in Huangzhong, then (or, "and") they sang PJX in Dalu. They played in Taicu; they sang in Yingzhong. 50 They used their understanding of the [system of] of the six-Iii ;fql and six-Iii II~ to note down the high and low [modes] of singers and instruments. But the way [Lie] He named [them as] "2-chi" or "3-chi" [di-flutes] , though this was used in Han and Wei, it was unsophisticated and was not codified [through predecents]. Gentlemen Liu Xiu, Deng Hao, and others, made a di-flute according to the pitch-standard [system]. In the case of the 3.2-chi flute [that Lie had referred to], it corresponds to the Wuyi pitch-standard. When we ought to use the long di-flute, the director '(}l:3!;~::lf' [now] says "We request performance in Wuyi." Zhouyu says, "Wuyi is to publicize 50 The Zhouli context (see Zhouli zhushu 22, sect. "Dasi yue," p. I2b), to which this seems to refer, concerns the six ancient ritual music performances (that included dance) (also see Wang, Xun Xu dilu, p. I39, n. 29). Centuries of commentary on this passage of Zhouli, from Han to Ming, discuss the order, type, and numbers of different pitchstandard modes called for. It is difficult to tell exactly what Xun had in mind in this phrase: it is hard to imagine simultaneous play in one mode with singing only a half-step away, and the half-step aspect per se may be unimportant. See the detailed review of the Zhouli passage in Y. Edmund Lien, "Shen Guo's Explication of the "Da si yue" in the Zhou Ii," unpub. paper. I am grateful to Dr. Lien for making this available.

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the worthy virtues of the philosophers and to show people the proper rules."sl The 2.844-chi [di-flute] (Lie referred to it, above, as 2.9) corresponds to the Huangzhong pitch-standard. When we need the short di-flute, the director [now] says "We request performance in Huangzhong." Zhouyu says, "Huangzhong is for propagating and nourishing the Six Vital Breaths and the Nine Virtues.,,52 If in this way we model after the ideas of [the ancient] singing performers, and we match with the [relevant] classics and rites and look into old canons, then our creations will be correct. 53

The notion here is that the ancients had been careful to get their pitch-standard keys, or modes, correct. The self-congratulation provides a bit of insight into musical practice, since we are told that the Jin court's flutists worked with a "director." This was the figure who announced a change in mode, or section of a suite. He most likely did not demonstrate a tempo, as we know that there were skilled beatkeepers (playing wood clappers) for that task. Xun's figure 2.844 chi for a Huangzhong pitch-standard flute is derived, as explained above in Part 9, by taking thejue (or MI) scale-step in Huangzhong, which is Guxian (classically denoted as 7.III cun, or .7II chi), and multiplying by 4, for flute-engineering purposes. Part

I)

[The Book oj] Documents says: "I want to hear the six pitch-pipes, the five notes, the sounds of the eight kinds of instruments, and [the seven primary tones] .... "54 Zhouli records the six lit and the six tong IBJ. 55 Liji says: "The Five [pentatonic] Notes and the Twelve Pitch-standards circulate around each other, acting as gong :li:*I~lt0'I~W." Liu Xin WUi'IX and Ban Gu JilHlli'1 compiled Treatises on Harmonic and Celestial Systems and [were the next to] set down in writing the twelve pitch-standards. It was only ling Fang who first created sixty pitch-standards, but by the time of Zhangdi , that system was lost. Although Cai Yong 5JJ% § traced back the explanations [of ling], he said: "At present, there is Based on trans. of Hart, "Wuyi Bells," p. 415. Based on trans. of Hart, "W'ityi Bells," p. 415. 53 The versions as supplied both in the reconstructed Xun Xu ji (HWLC) and QjW end the document at this point. 54 Trans. B. Karlgren, "The Book of Documents," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 22 (1950), (sect. "Yiji" :6H~), pp. IO-II, who uses an alternative textual reading "--t~f=1filk~" for the last three characters, whereas the reading in SgS is ";(f ifila". It should not be asserted that a writer in pre-Warring States China discoursed on the so-called seven-note scale. The "primary tones" in Karlgren's reading may have been seven types of song, but the question remains open to debate. 55 See n. 30 , above, for the term tong in another early musical context; also Hart, "Wuyi Bells," pp. 395-401. 51

52

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no way to create it." And according to ancient documents as well as to the usage among contemporary musicians, the sixty pitch standards are not applied in musical performance.

This part is a summary of what may be called the history of the search by musicologists for a pitch-standard system that could be replicated and relied on for pitch continuity over time. An implication is that Xun Xun's creative achievement was something that the great technicians Liu, Ban, and Cai could not accomplish, namely a pitch-regulating device that was long-lasting and replicatable. Part 16 Carefully following documentary records, and using the [traditional] method of "Five [pentatonic] Notes and the Twelve Pitch-standards circulating around each other, acting as gong," I have created a pictureschema of twelve flutes, and I have recorded notes at the side of the diagram, as [may be seen] separately. Studying the diagram is not as good as seeing the di-flute's actual finger-holes .56 Thus, I have reconstructed a Ruibin [-keyed] flute with a hidden (literally, crouching) hole. The construction of it is as follows.

My translation of this part deduces the voice as Xun Xu's, speaking directly in the first-person. However, Shen's voice is plausible, especially the phrase "not as good as seeing the di-flute's actual finger-holes ." It sounds very much like an editor's explanation of why he has supplied a device for the reader to help in understanding the preceding. But that would also put the authorship of the "construction guide" into confusion, since Part 17, the "construction guide" would become Shen's own piece, an unlikely conclusion. That Part 16 is Xun's voice (if aided by his technicians) is supported by the phrase concerning a "hidden (crouching) hole," a highly technical notion about the particulars of flute practice. That term is explained in the following section. Finally, he has announced that the Ruibin-keyed flute that he and Lie already analyzed (Parts 9-10) would be the type for creating a lulu-corrected system of finger-holes. SONGSHU PART 17: XUN

xu's

FLUTE TEMPERAMENT

AND THE IMPACT OF NEW MODES

The final text of the Songshu bundle is Xun's construction guide. 57 As a technical guide it accomplishes four things: r) it shows how to site the 5(, This follows IS version: "l'(YZfL, or "the flute's finger-holes"; however SgS reads "1"t'j;:2: {", logical enough. 57 See SgS II ("Liili" A), last paragraph of p. 215 through the first 4 lines of p. 219;

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six finger-holes (including the dorsal thumb-hole) by a certain measuring algorithm, so that the seven notes of a Zhengsheng scale starting on Huangzhong might match the corresponding pitch-standards; 2) it transfers that system over to the Xiazhi and Qingjue scales, both presenting problems, as we shall see; 3) in the above systems, it reveals in technical language the limitations of the di-flute's range and the conflicts in potential finger-hole sites among the three scales (recall my above analogy of a piano that wishes to playa certain scale in F, but is hampered by the lack of any black keys); and finally 4) it extrapolates the system over to a potential twelve-flute set, each flute's first scalestep (gong) starting on a different pitch-standard, however it proposes only considering the Zhengsheng and Xiazhi scales, not the Qingjue, which in fact Xun Xu rejects. The guide's small-character running commentary is critical, because for the two major processes (see points I and 2 in the previous paragraph), the main text alone does nothing: for example, it says that gong is the first note of the Zhengsheng scale and one derives the zhi step from it. That is quite bare, and it is only in the commentary that we learn exactly how to site the gong and zhi holes, and any problems arising. This sort of division of labor goes on throughout, except for the last portion concerning the eleven other flutes in a potential set of twelve. There, the small-character commentary consists, oddly enough, almost entirely of quotations from Guoyu, section "Zhouyu," the passage already cited, above. It is certain that the small-character commentary existed at an early point. It was already in the first printings of Songshu (printings that go back to Song and Yuan times), but there is no doubt that it goes back further, perhaps to the work of He Chengtian, but more likely the technicians in the ambits of Xun Xu and Lie He, if not Xun and/or Lie themselves. The Western Jin court, we must remember, fell apart in the 290S through about 310, with great loss of texts and items while the Sima rulers recomposed the dynasty in Jiankang. We do not, either through Shen Yue or compilers of ritual compendia in Tang and later, learn of any expert in harmonics or in performance problems like pitch and scoring after Xun and Lie until He Chengtian himself, whose mature career lasted from about 400 to his death in 447. But there is no evidence that He Chengtian was interested in flutes in an expert way. Xun would not, in my opinion, have known of such technical matters as half-holing and cross-fingeralso in jS 16, pp. 483-86.

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ing; thus he developed the consultations and advice given by Lie and his staff, and used the technical information for his own purposes, making sure to retain it. Provisionally, we can say that the main text of the Guide was Xun's, a deduction partially corroborated by the fact that he referred to the Guide in Part 6 of his memorial and to its associated model (or picture of a model) in Part 16. Then Xun, or someone responsible for collecting and transcribing his papers in the period 289-438 (the years between Xun Xu's and Xun Bozi's deaths; see above, under the section "Songshu's Bundle of Documents on Xun Xu's Musicology"), attached the commentary part-by-part, unless it was already distributed at the time the Guide was created by Xun Xu. The Guide and Commentary are unique and important documents of early Chinese science. They show a scholarly mind fixed on a notion of a Zhou computative and manufacturing technique (the sanfen sunyi method), yet a mind that developed an internally consistent mathematical way to use that method for a template that could yield a set of construction lengths and, if we extrapolate further, pitches. In all of post-Qin letters there are very few examples of a scholar-technocrat who left thorough data and a guide that were transmitted into the standard-history treatises or preseved otherwise, and thus became extant to today. Yang Xiong's t~t;1E (53 BC-18 AD) Taixuan A3?: system is one, but as an oracle technique based upon a numerate metaphysics it falls outside my category, which is about data for determining or explaining physical or arithmetical functions, or for making a device to do the latter or to do some kind of work. A considerable number of analysts and builders existed in Han-Jin China: for example, Zhang Heng *1!ftr (78-139 AD) and Cai Yong ~ (133-192); and later, Ma Jun J~~~ (fl. 230S-40s, who made a mobile compass and automatons), Liu Hui ;U1~~ (fl. 250s-60s), Pei Xiu ~~ (224-271: cartographical grid techniques), and Huangfu Mi ~ ffi~ (215-282; medical theory and therapy systems). But except for Liu Hui's mathematics (saved in Li Chunfeng's work), only occasional statements survive. 58 In a recent article Y. Edmund Lien and I translated a significant portion of Part 17-Xun Xu's Guide; in addition, all of Xun's expressed and implied systems were explained. 59 I shall not repeat the translation, but 58 On Ma and Pei, see SCC 4 and 3. From Huangfu's own hand there seems to have been medical guides, but they do not survive in full and his role is not completely certain; see Dominik Declercq, Writing Against the State: Political Rhetorics in Third and Fourth Century China (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p. 167 (especially note 30) and 168. 59 Goodman and Lien, "Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Tempera-

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instead summarize aspects of the Guide that allow us to see how Xun turned to his notion of a prisca Zhou, as well as his engagement with, and judgments concerning, the variety of musical modes at his and Lie He's disposal. During Qing, musicologists examined the Guide carefully, and wrote commentaries that placed Xun Xu in the long history of theoretical harmonics and the narrow area of fingering techniques. 6o But placing him there will not be as meaningful as contexting his achievement through a physical, acoustical reconstruction. Ever since the pioneering work of Yang Yinliu t~ ~i:u in the area of the presumed actual pitches of pre-Tang theorists like He Chengtian,61 scholars in China have opened up research into historical scales and pitch-standards. Beginning in the 1960s in Japan, and in China since the 80S with the work of Wang Zichu I -=f1JJ, it has continued through statistical surveys of possible pitches of early instruments. 62 An important aspect of reconstruction has to do with pitch distortions. Xun Xu's Guide turns out to be a critical piece of evidence for three kinds of distortion, thus I comment on those now.

The Pitch Distortions That Xun Xu's New Flute Indirectly Attempted to Solve The first distortion concerns the classical mathematics of the twelve lii)-a pitch-standards, that is, the very nature of the sanfen sunyi algorithm. When we realize that it is a Pythagorean type of procedure, it alerts us to the fact that Western classicists for 200 years have written about problems in Greek harmonics engendered by that very algorithm: when reaching its last step the result is not equally spaced halfsteps, nor is an exact octave on the fundamental achieved. This is a paradox concerning the way number systems relate to physical systems. It is akin to Xeno's Paradox: one is never exactly there. Xun Xu did not leave any comment about this because, as mentioned earlier, it was not perceived as a problem. For early Chinese experts in ritual music, the ment," pp. 13-20. The bulk of translation of the Guide was done by Lien. 60 For example, Xu Yangyuan i~Ofl))]l, "Xun Xu dilti tuzhu i't]IWJ1'l'Hltlr~tltL" vol. 41 of Mu xi xuan congshu *JiW·llfF~1$ (also in Meishu congshu chuji, ji 4, vols. 13-16); and Chen Li ~*~~, Shenglii tongkao 'lw::rIU.lli::.lJ (Xuxiu SKQS edn.; Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995; vol. n6), j. 3. 61 See Yang, Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao I, pp. 164-66. 62 I have mentioned the Shosoin research; see Hayashi Kenzo {ijq'at::., Shosoin gakki no kenkyu iE:@'"I~M;~#tfO)liH~fE (Tokyo, 1964), pp. 58-62; in China the main exponent has been Wang, in Xun Xu dilii.

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"Zhou values" for the pitch-standards, as expressed in the classical, computed numbers of the pitch-standards, were simply correct per se. Any aerophone reflecting those lengths was also correct, despite the fact that Xun's preliminary set of twelve Iii pitches, as deduced from our knowledge of the length of the "Former Jin chi," deviates increasingly from the twelve Western equal-temperament half-steps, especially in Iii pitches 7-12.63 This is merely to say that the ancient Chinese steps were not terribly even from our modern Western sense of "even," although premodern Western half-steps also had such unevenness. Yet, we shall dismiss that problem, since I am assuming that the early Chinese sense of correctness must have correlated to whatever centuries-old pitches the san/en sunyi method produced (for musicians with no connections to the court, the pitch-standards may have exerted only slight influence). The only impact that the sanfen sunyi distortion had may relate precisely to our study of Xun Xu's flutes, since as he arranged their holes, the mathematical deviation was compounded by other distortions that we now address, namely, "aerophone end-correction" and its corollary, "side-hole, or, finger-hole, end-effect." All instruments express distortions in pitch. When an actual waveform (a note's complex of differently audible wave-parts) is measured against the instrument's pitch as computed through physical dimensions, there are differences due to the physics of both production (stiffness of strings, or a tube's being open or closed, or a bell's odd shape) and of medium (temperature, how the wave-form first meets the air around it and then moves). Any flute plays finger-hole notes that are just a bit off from the pitch predicted by calculating the length of the hole from the mouth-end and the flute's internal diameter. 64 Another way to express this is that any wave-form thus produced will be longer than the actual length. The flute maker must adjust the sites of the holes if his goal is to match some external pitch-standard. 63 See the revealing tables I and 2 conceived by Lien, in Goodman and Lien, "Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Temperament," p. 15. Table I shows these deviations in cents from ET pitch, going from China's pitch-standards seven to twelve: -21, -38, -32, -49, -45, -62. 64 Any opened, blown finger-hole is thus to be considered per se a distinct flute. The two parameters mentioned here are a crude set of criteria; one must factor also the diameter of the finger-hole, moisture, etc. See Goodman and Lien, "Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Temperament," pp. 13-15; the basic physics are described fully in generalist terms in Murray Campbell and Clive Greated, The Musician's Guide to Acoustics (London: Dent, 1987).

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For early China this matter attains particular historical importance because Xun Xu's flute scale is so fully documented. Scholars have argued that Xun Xu's di design factored in side-hole adjustment. 65 But in Goodman and Lien, we argued that this is something of a chimera, although there was some sort of adjustment-as well as a system for it. A crucial and express task in Xun Xu's Guide was to inform the palace flute workshop where to put the six holes so that corroboration with the pitch-standards was achieved, as he had fervently preached in the dialog with Lie He, translated above. We have analyzed Xun's procedure in the Guide as comprising Eight Steps, and the vital details of all that are contained almost exclusively in the commentarial passages. The first of the Eight Steps is not too technical: there Xun lays out the names of the seven Zhengsheng scale-steps and to which hole numbers and pitch-standards they correspond for his present case-namely, a 28.44 cun flute whose first scale-note, gong, was keyed to Huangzhong (pitch-standard I) and the fundamental note (all holes closed) was jue (corresponding to the Guxian pitch-standard). Then comes a crucial move in Step 2. Xun must physically situate that very first finger-hole, or gong. To do that he establishes a constant number that in fact may be considered a workshop module. Despite his simplex statement for this step about adding Huangzhong's value (9 cun) to Guxian's (7.Ill), the actual measured pitch (based on modern deductions about the flute's diameter) shows that he in essence has doubled the Huangzhong number and subtracted from that 1.889 cun, which latter number, not coincidentally, is 9 minus 7.ll1. The result is I6.llI cun distance from the mouth to the first hole, gong. The doubling is required because the pipe's length was determined by Xun in Step I, and that length can accommodate "9" only by converting down one octave (= 18, that is, a chiba). Every remaining note of the scale is derived by measuring from the previous hole either up or down by the length of the next desired pitch-standard note as multiplied by 2 or 4 (depending on the hole's situation relative to the end of the flute), and furthermore as adjusted by 1.889 cun. This module as a constant adjustment of a series of holes on a tubal aerophone is not scientifically valid, since accurate side-hole end-effect adjustments are not constant but unique in each case. Yet, Lien and I discovered that it is a workably close approximation to the values of the actual side-hole adjustments 65 Yang Yinliu ;fJbJl~jll'iL Zhongguo yinyue shigang Icl"llgll¥f'~~~~'Yu (orig. 1953; rpt. Taibei: Yueyun chubanshe, fourth printing 2004), pp. 155-60; Wu, Lit xue hui tong, pp.

126-3 0 .

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needed to obtain something like Xun's pitch-standard pitches, keeping within a moderate range. 66 If we compare his flute's supposed Zhengsheng scale-notes with their corresponding pitch-standards (nos. I, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12)-standards that Xun had already set, we find that his flute notes ranged from about 9% to 16% off target, with the deviation growing larger especially in the zhi, yu, and biangong notes (pitchstandards 8, 10, 12).67 We have no evidence of Xun's tempering his flute further based on sonic beat-tests; and in fact in the dialog with Lie, previously, the scenario was one of elation that everything had come out so perfectly! There is really very little way to tell how a di-flute's notes will sound each time they are blown. Players are always adjusting their fingers and lips. In sum, it seems that Xun Xu worked out a module with actual ease of construction in mind, and he thought of this module as a Zhou method. Like many traditional craft modules, it did not really involve an artisan's use of mathematics as much as it did manipulation either of compasses and try-squares, or, in this case, by ticking off "1.889 cun." Xun, perhaps with the help of the flute atelier, discovered by some means the 1.889 value, which then could have been transferred by means of a tiny metal or wood stick. With that, the makers could proceed to site the finger-holes going upward and downward in the fundamental san/en sunyi method of determining the twelve lit. It was perhaps sheer luck that the number worked well with the diameter of his flute. This is one reason to believe that Xun was thinking primarily of invoking the Zhou through a discovery of a flute-maker's module and its resultant general pitch congruence. It may seem to us to resemble a certain thinking about end-correction adjustment. But a specific approach to the latter in my opinion must involve numerate, scientific procedures that utilize diameter, length, and air-column pressure as functions. This to the best of my knowledge first occurred in world history in even a crude fashion only with al-FarabI (872-95°), a Persian-born Turk who practiced neo-Platonic philosophy and medicine in Baghdad. 68 66 For a full translation of the Eight Steps, and complete analysis of the implicit module, see Goodman and Lien, "Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Temperament," pp. 16-20, and data in tables 3 and 4. 67 We did not compute this comparison in our article, but it is determined by taking the seven needed Hertz frequencies in table 2 and comparing with Hertz frequencies in row 4 of table 4, making sure to double (to accommodate the octave shift) as required. 68 See Goodman and Lien, "Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Temperament," pp. 20-21.

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The Modal Variety That Xun Xu Attempted to Thwart Finally, we have the third kind of distortion. This occurs when two or more different modes must be accommodated by the same instrument or among different instruments. Such alternative modes existed in Western Jin times, and Xun Xu expressed a Zhou fundamentalist attitude toward them, as he did when he considered the problems inherent in irregular verse-meter found in lyrics. Xun's attitude is an important episode in the history of music aesthetics, and was remarked on by Yang Yinliu but it has never been fully reasoned out until now. 69 Xun Xu's prisca Zhou concerning modes emerges when we recall that Lie He had posed a scenario in which music with its base in the Zhengsheng scale might also be played, or accompanied, in the Xiazhi scale (see Part 8 of the translation and my comments). With this, scales shade into modes and into performance decoration as well, or even new tunes. To play Xiazhi on a di-flute built for a Zhengsheng scale required a decision about what to do at Xiazhi's bianzhi step (its altered-SOL). This equaled the Zhengsheng flute's DO, or gong (corresponding to pitch-standard I, or Huangzhong). But to play that Huangzhong hole would not reproduce the expected tritone, the interval that occurs going from gong (DO) to bianzhi (altered-SOL) in any scale, instead it would sound like a doubly altered SOL, that is, what we would call FA natural, as if the scale had arrived at TI-flat (or, B-flat) and not TI-natural (for these relationships, see the layout in Figure 6D). To sound just like a Zhengsheng scale, Xiazhi needed pitch-standard 2, which did not exist on a Zhengsheng flute. The question for musicians at that time would have been: "In Xiazhi, do we playa new interval (the note "doubly-altered SOL," or FA) for which we use the existing hole meant for pitch-standard I, thus implying a different mode with a different characteristic, or do we produce a scale that is an exact replica of the intervals in the Zhengsheng scale, and thus have to drill a new hole for pitch-standard 2 or by some other means create the pitch that correlates with the pitch-standard 2 hole"? So far, I have not translated anything from the small-character commentary in the Guide that dealt with siting the finger-holes for the Xiazhi mode, but will do so now. The salient passage about a clash of flute-holes follows: 69 Yang, Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao, p. 169. The discussion down to the end of this section is adapted from Goodman and Lien, "Third Century AD Chinese System of Di-Flute Temperament," pp. 21-23.

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But the Huangzhong flute [playing the Zhengsheng mode] has no sound that corresponds to pitch-standard 2 (i.e., no finger-hole specifically for it). Thus, Huangzhong (i.e., Zhengsheng's DO) is borrowed to be the altered-SOL note [for Xiazhi]. The method of borrowing is the following: when the altered-SOL note is called for, the three finger-holes for pitch-standard I, pitch-standard 3, and pitch-standard 12 are all left open. Since the pitch-standard I [note] is lower and the pitch-standard 3 [note] is higher, the pitch-standard 2 pitch falls in between the two; when all three finger-holes are left open and slightly tempered 1H~it-·: fLl(IJ1J'&1iWiiz, the sound of altered-SOL in Dalli (pitch-standard 2) is obtained. 70

Xun Xu has described the Xiazhi mode as not using the normal and available gong hole. He has decided to create the required pitch by some technological means, but it does not involve drilling a new hole. Instead, when played on a Zhengsheng flute, the Xiazhi note bianzhi, or altered-SOL-forming that expected tritone-needed a "mutated" note based on the gong finger-hole of the Zhengsheng-scale flute (see Figure loB). Xun, or perhaps Lie He, suggested a type of cross-fingering or half-holing (seemingly both) to get that higher version (in Figure loB, note that the three holes for PS:12, :1, and :3 are near each other, 3 being on the dorsal side, that is the thumb-hole). By combining open holes but damping them slightly, the required pitch-standard 2 note is heard. This operation is, in my opinion, the "crouching hole" image with which Xun ended Part 16 of the previous document. Xun envisioned the Xiazhi mode, or scale, as a cloned version of the Zhengsheng scale intervals, not a new mode per se. It required the flutist's use of fingering techniques to create the expected bianzhi out of thin air. In fact, his inclination to fend off nonstandard modes is seen in another passage from the small-character commentary. He remarks about the third mode to be played on his Zhengsheng flute, the "Clear Jue, or Qingjue" mode: to wit, most of its notes were simply incorrect in his view. For its DO note, he says: "One blows it hard to bring the sound one octave higher, therefore it is referred to as the 'clear jue'. This is only used for tunes of informal poems and folk ballads and inappropriate for the court music." Then, four more of Qingjue's seven notes he judges as simply "not the right pitch."7! For Xun Xu, Xiazhi needed taming to sound like Zhengsheng, and Qingjue simply had to be rejected. Xun was just the type of ritualist to do such taming and rejecting. He had already twisted tetrameter lines 70 71

SgS SgS

II,

pp. 216-17.

II,

p. 217.

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into new rhythms, had marshaled dozens of old metrological devices to urge them to verifY his new chi, and now the martinet of melody could contort at least one new style of mode. The obsession with rites, and the particular Zhou signature for them, had led Xun to seize on the di-flute as a suitable vehicle for making a technical point and illuminating Jin legitimacy as well. PerHole Naille Hepl. Pilch-Sid. Scale-Note haps actually having taken over Lie He's own, pre-Jin, achievements in furthering I's:] Th RE the role of the di-flute in ensemble music, Xun Xu envisioned how this handy, portable, and easily constructed instruO~~____~AL~T~.D~o~_r~'s:~]7 ment would serve the prisca Zhou. Xun's ____ ____ new obsession was a far cry from that of Western Han Jing Fang, who knitted into one skein the lala, Yijing trigram systems, houqi regulations of the calenFiliI M1 PS:5 dar, and Five Phases theoretics in order to regulate the throne through prognosFigure loB. Layout of Di Finger Holes tication. The Sima emperor seems not to "Th" is dorsal thumb hole; have desired diviners; what he enjoyed "Fnd" is the fundamental were Xun Xu's antiquarian testing, engi(all 6 holes dosed). neering, and skillful use of technicians. Precision through Zhou forms thus countered both the shushu arts and the experimentation in lifestyle and literary emotion that had erupted in the Cao years of the Wei dynasty. ~

O~~

~LA~

~I'S'~IO,

PROTO-SAGE VERSUS MARTINET

Sometime around 275-77, Xun's pitch adjustments and flutes drew criticism. Criticism was not new for Xun; Zhang Hua had disagreed over scoring prosody (Chapter Three) around 269-70, before Zhang had established himself in the hardened pro-War faction. Sometime after Xun Xu completed the Zhou standard-rule, he was challenged by Ruan Xian, an incident examined in Chapter Four. Ruan did not stop at metrological criticism, but as the two subjects were closely linked, so he also denounced Xun's music. In this section, we learn about Ruan Xian in historical terms, seeking details about his life and work that enlarge our picture of the

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confrontation with Xun Xu. Ruan Xian was nothing like the sort of technical interlocutors seen above. Ruan was the opposite-a descendant of a highly regarded scholarly family who had carved out a niche in the Jin state offices. He was not part of the early-Jin commissions to' work on law, music, noble rewards, and rites that included Jia Chong, Pei Xiu, and the Xuns. Ruan spoke from a higher platform. Perhaps because of his blood tie to the noble and tragic Ruan Ji, Ruan Xian was beginning to make an impression on contemporaries that would become deep and lasting. In 275-77 Ruan was not yet a so-called Sage of the Bamboo Grove, that famous grouping of seven that emerged in literature and arts only in the next century, but the mundane facts about him help us understand real-life associations that affected him. My discussion has two parts: first I frame historically Ruan's confrontation with Xun Xu; the second is an imaginative framing ofXun Xu against the evolving Seven Sages. Legends (legenda: "things to be read") involve hundreds of rewriters of memory and culture, and transcendent personalities arise to fit where needed. A musical martinet like Xun added a true-to-life counterweight.

Ruan Xian's Complaint: The Flutes Are Shrill and Laden with Grief The Introduction of my book opened by showing how Xun Xu appeared in anecdotes that were burnished by the legendizing of Shishuo xinyu. The anecdotes developed in a time of national flashback, beginning in Eastern Jin with new group hagiographies, tales of skill and art, models of behavior, and exciting bons mots. Chapter Three looked at one Xun legend in section 21 of Shishuo xinyu, called "Skill and Art," in which he is lauded as a portraitist. Chapter Four, in the section titled "Xun Xu the Hypersentient Metrosophist," discussed the cowbell story transmitted in Wang Yin's early-fourth-century "Jinshu" Another legend from Shishuo involved Xun's superhuman sense of taste. 72 Now we return to the Shishuo anecdote in which Ruan Xian successfully challenged Xun Xu's findings in metrology, a legend that Li Chunfeng debunked early in Tang (Chapter Four, "Li Chunfeng Throws Solvent on Legend and Evidence"). Here we focus only on Ruan's criticism of the music. Liu Yiqing's ;U ~~ (402-444) section 20 of Shishuo xinyu, titled "Technical Understanding" qfjiRIf., adds

72

SSHY no.

20.2

(in "Technical Understanding"); SSHYIMather, p. 359.

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judgments about the personalities involved: Xun is not just a martinet, but one who is disturbingly intuitive-almost an idiot savant. With Richard Mather's translation at our disposal, we need only identify the pertinent points: 73 I) "Contemporary critics" said that Xun Xu's skill in music was an "automatic understanding IIJ:;,~~iWJ Z 17*J fij!p" (suggesting closed-off and mysterious).74 In deploying the phrase, Liu Yiqing is setting up two personality types, Xun's being the negative one. 2) At a "New Year's ceremonial in the palace halls where music was performed JJ&}E1l~it"75 Xun "himself claimed that 'DO (lit. gong) and RE (shang) are successfully tuned! 1"~1 < j'v.~ > T;ni}j}';!:tWr.'" Here, I use the wording of the Taiping yulan version to bring out Xun Xu's hubris; Mather has "he personally tuned the kungs and shangs ... so that none was out of tune."76 3) Certain critics, presumably supporters of Ruan Xian's musical opinion, claimed that Ruan had a "spirit understanding."77 Liu pursues the parallelism he already began, now balancing Xun's I,!f.J fijip with Ruan's trl1fijfp. 4) At the public performances, Ruan's own convictions made him think poorly of Xun's music, but he said nothing. With the Taiping yulan variant, Ruan seems distinctly more noble than Xun, 73 See SSXYII, p. 530; trans. SSHY/Mathe1~ p. 357. Main features, including the unflattering portrait ofXun, are repeated in IS 22 "Yue zhi" A, p. 693. A variant "SSHY' text is quoted in TPYL 565, p. 4a [2552]. 74 For "If*~ffli(''' Mather says "intuitive." "An" has several semantic directions, including "intuitive," but also "hooded and ulterior" and something like "shallowly brilliant." IS 16A, p. 490, uses an in the sense of "automatically"; and clearly to mean "dumb, or shallow"; see IS 39, p. II57. Also IS 22 "Yue zhi" A, p. 693, carries this sense when restating this very anecdote. 75 The TPYL variant has JRll:Jliflc:Vq:j:rr ("[someone] created four-finger [instrumental pieces]"; perhaps referring to tunes played on pipa, but that is a mere guess. 76 TPYL's I~] fiW (also used in IS 22, "Yue zhi" A, p. 693), takes the place of SSHYs 1"liOia. A locus classicus for .!/t!:fil"r is Shangshu ~'f]:f1Jr~ (sect. "Shundian"): "(When) the eight (kinds of) sounds ... can be harmonized ];'t!:flkY and not encroach upon each other, Spirits and men will be brought into harmony"; trans. Karlgren, "Book of Documents," p. 7. Xi Kang's famous essay on music cites the phrase as well; see Robert G. Henricks,

Philosophy and Argumentation in Third-Century China: The Essays of Hsi K'ang (Princeton: Princeton U. p', 1983), p. 8+ In the sixth century, Suishu's opening, metaphysical claim in "Treatise on Music," 55 14, p. 285, states: "We speak of tones/notes ~J: they are rooted in the Great Beginning but come out from men's heart/minds. According to [the various categories of] real things, sympathies are stirred and distributed into the stuff of forms. When the stuff of forms becomes activated, it is harmonized into the [array of] pitch-standards. Gong and Shang are successfully tuned ~~];H;ij'~fi~Y, and we nalne it 'music.'" 77 The TPYL text has 1J~J'lj6um~2., where SSHYhas only 1J~'f,iI~J. Mather's translation (" ... and his contemporaries claimed ... ") suggests that Ruan had his own partisans.

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since he controlled his mouth, being careful not to say anything; the Shishuo version amplifies Xun's dark qualities-he even knew the words intended by Ruan's silence. 78 5) Xun resented the silent disapproval (was "mentally jealous") and demoted Ruan to Grand Administrator of Shiping ~t,\F;' (in modern Shensi; then some couple dozen kilometers west of Yongzhou; or Charig' an). The variant text, being somewhat pro-Ruan, says that "[Xun] summoned Ruan back south [to the capital] 1'/)( IVl:I'hli," showing Xun's capitulation. The anecdote then continues with the Shiping affair about the "discovery" of an ancient foot-rule that proved Ruan Xian's "divine knowledge," the episode treated in Chapter Four. Ruan, according to his supporters, had brilliantly perceived a problem with Xun Xu's new metrics and consequently knew that the new flutes, which expressed Xun's pitch-standards, were wrong. What is new here is persona: the troublesome Xun Xu naturally bows to the sublime Ruan. An earlier text found in Fu Chang's 1~~ "Jin zhugong zan" 0~ ("Eulogies of the Archons of Jin"), from about the early 300S/9 frames the incident blandly, but with new details. r) Ruan Xian complained that Xun's sounds were too high because the new metrics varied from those of antiquity. A variant of Fu's anecdote is a bit more sympathetic to Xun Xu. 80 2) Ruan's philosophical remark on the new tuning system held that "a high pitch connotes grief." (He refers to Liji's '''The music of a dying state is sad and full of longing ... ," which Li Chunfeng also quoted in his review of the incident.) Furthermore, Ruan offered a type of proof: extant ancient bells and sounding stones matched Du Kui's pitch-standards and did not match Xun's.81 Thus, Du Kui's system should not have been changed. 3) After banishment to Shiping, Ruan died (presumably there). 78 In TPYL Xun is made into the perceiver ofthe denigration: "Xun in his heart thought that (i.e., intuited) Ruan's conception [about music] would logically [cause Ruan] to claim that [the music] was out of tune." TPYL also suggests that Ruan was the nobler person: " ... although Ruan's mouth, even from the very beginning, [uttered] no words of protest." SSHYis quite different: " ... it was because Ruan never spoke a word to Xun that [Xun] understood [how much] he resented him"; cf. Mather's translation. 79 Fu Chang, quoted in the Shishuo commentary; see SSXY]], p. 530 (trans. SSHY/ Mather, p. 358). so TPYL 16, p. 3a [80], has Ruan "stepping forward right away to dissent III"H~m" against Xun's pitches, and uses phrases to make Xun seem quite skillful, and perhaps really the better musicologist. Sl Mather's translation suffers from an accidental elliptical sentence. Mather is undoubtedly correct that the reference here is not to actual bells that Du had made, but the bell pitch-standards.

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Fu Chang's version ends, as did Shishuo, with the dubious foot-rule discovery in Shiping. Fu is not concerned with the battle of personas: his is just a plain report about court musicological troubles. Furthermore, Ruan does not rise to the level of hero, the one whose philosophy of music is meant to save the state. Fu hedges the technical question by hinting that Xun Xu had actually been right about the litlit system.

Ruan Xian in Mundane Terms There is evidence about the extended family of Ruans, and it has been put to use in Donald Holzman's commanding study of Ruan Ji llfC*"i (210-263), the uncle of Ruan Xian. In Eastern Han the family had been a solid example of the administrative elite. Ruan Ji's own father was Ruan Yu IJGJ~, a noted scholar-one of the literary Jian'an Masters Jt3'C-tr, and a loyal aide to Cao Cao. He had been a pupil of Cai Yong and was, like Cai, a renowned zitherist. Musical skills filtered down for several generations of Ruans. As Holzman showed,82 one cannot put Ruan Ji and his ilk into an easy category; at times they waxed poetic about power and service, at other times hid from it in anguish or simply avoided power-brokers through drunkenness and insousiance. 83 Sometime in the 250S, Ruan Ji had been associated with Xun Xu's kinsman and mentor Xun Yi iU~j in a multi-scholar project to compile Wei history, as we noted in Chapter One. 84 Both Ji and his son Hun 1JG~i!I (fl. 260-85) wrote essays and exegeses on Yijing topics. Music and Yijingwere coalescing already for some time as a new blend of interests that fed into the early fashions in xuanxue philosophies and debates. But in any event, Ji discouraged Hun from following him in a career of eccentricity, while his nephew Xi an did follow him. 85 Ruan Xi an's bare Jinshu biography mentions his highest post (Gentleman Attendant of the Cavalry), his purported penury as a "poor Ruan" (with the implication that he and Ruan Ji actually pushed their own branch of the family into poverty), and his musical skill in har82 Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics: The Life and Works o/juan Chi A.D. 2IO263 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1976), where Ruan Xian does not figure much. See Mather's biographies of Ruan Xian and his sons; SSHYIMather, pp. 538-39. All facts, below, on Xi an's life are given in his limited biography in jS 49, pp. 1362-63, unless otherwise noted. (TPYL 583, p. 3a, cites some of the same phrases, taking them from an early "Biographies of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove" 11·l*-t;i~1W.) 83 Ruan narrowly avoided serious trouble by evading the visits of Zhong Hui; Holzman, Poetry and Politics, p. 59, also p. 98. 84 Also, see Holzman, Poetry and Politics, pp. 52-53. 85 On Ji's Yijing .0jr.g~, see ibid., pp. 93-99; also jS 49, p. 1362, and S5 32, p. 910; for Ruan Hun's, see Zhu Yizun *Jj1(,~~~, jingyi kao r.~1~'-f'~~ II, p. 2a.

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monics and performance on the pipa. From other sources we learn about Ruan Xian's having made lyrics for the qin .86 Ruan's interest in the pipa included a new style of construction for it; this gained him fame in following centuries. 87 We cannot tell for sure when Ruan Xian was born (or even when he died); but his birth seems to have occurred around 235. It also seems that he started a family only late in life. 88 His biography mentions that he frequently associated with Ruan Ji and kept out of public life, interested mainly in playing music at family parties. As mentioned, he authored lyrics for instrumental melodies. He also wrote classicist works, including one on the Yijing-his "Essay in Answer to Doubts Raised about the Zhou Changes" JWJ~i~~~.89 As a young man, he was so handsome that he inspired sighs from other men, seemingly in contexts of recommendations to office. 9 (J He was recommended to the Jin court by Shan Tao ill (2°5-283), who likewise became famous as YFSj 60, sect. ":~.FilI11~fJ.:i~j'(:, 4" mentions that the qin piece "Sanxia liuquan ge ~=-:u~ :JlZP:l~~I, was actually written by Ruan (citing "Qinji" ~t 4i~). Ruan Xi an also seems to have left a collection of writings, not extant today: "Ruan Xian ji," in Ijuan (see Songshi ;;j~st 203 ["Yiwen zhi" 2], p. 5332). 87 Xin Tangshu iIYi')jif{lf 200 (biog. Yuan Xingchong }L:h'~'II), p. 569: "Someone once broke into an old tomb and got a cast-bronze device resembling a pipa; its body was a regular circle [in shape]. No one could distinguish [its category] A.~figWY:. Xingchong said, 'This is the [music] instrument that Ruan Xian made.' He ordered [artisans] to change it into wood, and had it strung tlil h) l.),~(, tL,c. Its tones were clear and elegant JPlif.3,£~1Ii, and the musicians thereupon called it a "Ruan Xian." TPYL 612, p. loa, cites this via "Guochao zhuanji" l~xPlYHW.iYC. On the "Ruan Xian pipa,"see Yang, Zhongguo gudai yinyue shigao I, p. 131. 88 I find no references to Ruan's birth or death dates; also, Xu Jian nH~ (Qinshi chubian 2j:.'i!. {<}J#~~J [Beijing: Renmin yinyue chuban she, 1982], p. 25) states that Ruan's dates are unknown. Richard Mather (SSHYIMather, p. 539) claims 234-305 AD; and Audrey Spiro, Contemplating the Ancients: Aesthetic and Social Issues in Early Chinese Portraiture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 255, says "230-81," but without giving a source. Ruan Xian was the son ofRuan Ji's older brother, who was born around 200-205. It does in fact suggest that Xian was born ca. 230-35. Xi an's son Ruan Zhan 1lf.1f is known to have died at about age thirty ca. 310; SSHYIMather, p. 538. His first son, Fu seems to have been born (apparently to Xian's Xiongnu wife/consort) ca. 278 and died ca. 325-330. Thus Ruan Xian was siring sons in the years around 280. Since his jS biog. says that after being exiled to Shiping he died of old age, it may indicate that the biographer considered that Ruan had started a new, more secure career with his Xiongnu wife in Shiping; and two sons were born there to the roughly 45-yr.-old Ruan. 89 Supposedly this had two juan; listed injingyi kao II, p. Ib, citing the "Treatise on Literature," ofjiu Tangshu ~lt)M:rlf. There is some evidence that Ruan wrote a commentary to a version of the ancient "Sanfen" ")1t see Liao Jilang )WJ I'YWs, Liang jin shibu yiji kao 1+'Ht'~ltIS)Jit$N;.\j' (Taipei: Jiaxin shuini, 1970), pp. 1-4. 90 A famous intellectual, Guo Yi ¥1~Yi' from Taiyuan, was so smitten at an unconscious level that he couldn't help sighing J;l!,JriliA}rW, /f~1~11AXJi0 (see Ruan Xian's biography). 86

1/rUjZHfx" attributed to Li Jilan

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one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. Shan eventually became a political protege of Xun Xu, a fact to which we return. 91 After Shan recommended Ruan, the latter was considered too drunken and unreliable for a post, and he was passed over. These brief points sketch out the life of a certain style of counter-culture youth, as it were. Ruan's earlier years were not taken up with family duties. Politically, he would have reacted, like everyone else, to the tragic treatment of Xi Kang and to the troubled career of his uncle Ruan Ji, who had been pressured to help the Jin court but who avoided the Simas and any faction. We can sense that it was through his challenge to a musical competitor-Xun Xu-that Ruan Xian showed dissatisfaction with Sima power. After being banished to Shiping by the powerful Xun, he then started life anew, eventually dying of old age there. The Jinshu editors had the impression that interaction between the two music experts Ruan and Xun did occur, perhaps regularly ("ifJ \§,JJ4ijWfiD(;~~1t").92 There is no way to know if that was just supposition or if they had other sources, but it does increase our confidence in seeing a confrontation sometime around 275-78 in relation to the court orchestra. The other social data just mentioned-Ruan Ji's scholarly work with Xun Yi and both Ruans' link to Shan Taoalso support this. The Shishuo anecdote presented a time and place, as well as motives for an actual political and intellectual conflict, namely, Xun Xu's rehearsing an ensemble in the Luoyang palace in preparation for a large, ritual celebration. This comports nicely with all other facts about Xun's role in such musical spectacles: he wrote lyrics and noted all sort of staging aspects, and he associated with important Wei-Jin instrumentalists in order to gather technical information. We may peer even more carefully inside the anecdote: Ruan Xian, probably among dozens of other musically inclined scholars, had been watching and listening to Xun's direction of the spectacle. At some point then, or even after the occasion, he uttered critical thoughts about Xun's new sound of music. He may, moreover, have been irked by Xun's self-aggrandizing statement that "DO and RE are successfully tuned." Ruan had the skill to approach critically the metrology behind Xun's work and could determine that it was wrong, and this propelled him to his final argument: Xun's higher pitch was a travesty of musi91 IS 39, p. II56; also Ruan Xian's biography, IS 49, p. 1363. Shan's recommendation of Ruan said that he was incorruptible, honest, desirous of nothing; SSXYII no. 8.12 (SSHYIMather, p. 213). 92 IS 49, p. 1363.

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cal intonation and ideology. The attack probably was not factional, since there is nothing to connect Ruan directly to a faction. The only possible political wedge against Xun Xu was that the Ruans had long been Cao supporters, and the Xuns had lost their last pro-Cao member when the xuanxue philosopher-debator Xun Can died decades earlier. Ultimately, Ruan's challenge is rather like the xuanxue debates that were typical of Luoyang since the 230S. Ruan had the self-confidence of a qingtan scholar challenging others' errors. Unfortunately, he met with the kind of factional vengeance that typified Xun Xu and the Western Jin court.

The Ruan Xian and Shan Tao Legends as Framed by Western Jin Politics Ruan later accrued a larger-than-life portrait. The poet Yan Yanzhi ~ Rz (384-456) wrote a set of poems on the Seven Sages one of which lauded Ruan Xian: he was a "lofty vessel -"appreciated by men everywhere ~ (or, 1:A)~" for his sincerity. He was skilled at the fine ways of court music, but did not accept office and kept to his own way.93 He could even be adored, as we saw above. A source quoted

Figure II. Ruan Xian and His Lute (left); Shan Tao and His Drinking Gourd (right) Two details of rubbings taken of the stamped-brick line drawings; tomb excavated at Xishanqiao, Nanjing. After James C. Y. Watt, China: Dawn ofa Golden Age, 200-750 AD (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Yale University Press, 2004), pI. II3. 93

For Yan's lines, see Lu/Shi (Songshi 5), vol.

2,

pp. 1235-36; Spiro, Contemplating

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in Taiping yulan said: "Although Ruan Xian was skilled at music, his nature was free-flowing and he was incapable of the high and acute; therefore, he could only be fond of the languorous ~mX;.1Ilff~1f~, '/'illJ1fHJlL /f §~~~{:J], i!lj[ J~.t*t.lA ~f 1:1=."94 Ruan it seems was thought of as the kind of person who simply did not indulge in anything sharp, whether harsh social confrontation or Xun Xu's high-pitched music. Remarks like Yan's (Ruan's languid disposition) and Liu Yiqing's (his "spirit understanding") were key praises: they hit just the right note of the new Jiankang timbre that catapulted the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove into iconic roles. We can sense those roles directly because of the discoveries in 1960 of tomb-wall portraits of the Sages in the Nanjing region, which subsumes the old Jiankang / Jianye area. But for the Eastern Jin elite who created family tombs, it was more than fanciful evocation of some famous unrelated men. The stampedbrick line-drawings, dating to about the last decades of the 400s, herald an iconic use of the Wei-Jin Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove in which their individual postures, robes, implements and expressions were much replicated. They were, as Audrey Spiro has convincingly argued, introduced into the emotional world of mortuary remembrance across wide regions, dispensing a new model of high-mindedness and suaveness for those capable of interpreting the subtle messages. In some sense the Sages were a model of what real friends of a discerning elite should be like:

rm

Profound, serene, imperturbably untrammeled: who could aspire to be a cultivated gentleman ... ? And who but only another civilized gentleman could have the perspicacity and experience to recognize such a one when he met him? The new portrait was, indeed, not for every man. It was art for the elite and meant to exclude. 95

Such friends, having floated in from an earlier, romantic yet martyrological, time, would possess the highest social instincts and graces. They would have handled conflict with men like Xun Xu by transcending it. Spiro spends time with the picture of each of the Seven Sages. Ruan's picture (see Figure II, left detail) shows a man absorbed in his

the Ancients, pp. 93-94. Yan was once told by a friend that the latter's posting in exile to a place called Shian ~f:l1Z was ironically parallel to Ruan Xian's banishment to Shiping by Xun Xu; see SgS 73, p. 1892. 94 TPYL 665 (sect. "Dao Jill"), in a long passage on precision knowledge, especially metrology, p. 5b, citing "Tao Yinju" I%ill~h'f, a work that I am unable to identify. 95 Spiro, Contemplating the Ancients, p. 10 5.

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lute, under a tree, the same kind of tree that marked off each sitting Sage. Across the chamber room, and across from Ruan, was Shan Tao, another Sage, but about thirty years Ruan's senior. It is quite significant, in my view, that a trustworthy datum shows Shan's once having recommended Ruan for office, using expressions that described Ruan's transcendent personality: "The myriad things of the world cannot budge him."96 Yet Shan knew that Ruan Xian would be rejected by the emperor because of Ruan's reputation for loose social etiquette; Shan's spin on Ruan emphasized that Ruan was not wicked but merely above it all, in an unfrivolous way. Shan Tao consistently attempted to place other members of his own ambit into office, namely Xi Kang and Ruan Ji, as well as Xi's son-who would not become a member of the Seven Sages. Why would Shan Tao himself have entered the famous special group? Everything we know of him shows a busy Confucian: a dedicated office-holder at the highest levels, someone who, having attained old age, was not even allowed to retire until his last, because his work in the bureaucracy was relentless and always correct. Shan's family had received no noble titles in Wei or Jin, until Shan Tao himself-the first to do so. However, he was sought out and cherished by the Sima family; when Wudi took the throne, Shan's title was bumped up a step, and he eventually received high offices. He garnered high praise from the throne for his displays of mourning for his mother. His chief, and most remembered, duties were squarely in the Personnel Bureau, dealing from 272-79 with numerous complex recommendations to office. Xi Kang held him close, although stridently disagreeing with Shan about the worth of any state position. In May of 282, Xun Xu recommended Shan to the archon status of Minister Over the Masses (situ P] iii), Shan's crowning position, coming just before his death. 97 His portrait on the Nanjing tomb wall (see Figure II, right detail) presents a contradiction: not a manager of state offices hunched over documents, but a wine tippler fittingly slack and unhurried. He gazes

%

IS 49 ("Biography of Ruan Xi an") , p. 1362; also SSHYIMather, p. 213 (item 8.12).

We know of some, perhaps unfounded, reports that Shan was related to the Simas. On his service in Personnel, see SSHYIMather, p. 84 (item 3.7). The intensity of his friendship with Xi and Ruan is treated in anecdote 19.11. Spiro, Contemplating the Ancients, pp. 81-83, deals briefly with Shan's life. I disagree on a minor point, the translation of situ as "director of instruction." In Han and in early Jin that office seems not to have dealt with education programs and institutions. Its duties were relatively vague: like the other archonships, it simply brought the privilege of a large staff and having 97

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calmly at his cup, pulling the robe on his drinking arm back a bit. Some stories of Shan show his possessing an unusual, intuitive brilliance: he knew Lao-Zhuang texts and ideas of without having studied; he had on-the-spot brilliant insights about military preparedness; he easily held forth on the personal quirks and marks of his special friends-their clothing, posture, drink, desires. 98 Gu Kaizhi J@:tW:Z a century later thought that Shan had entered the Way; and Gu's saying so means that Shan was transforming from a man with a mere "account of conduct" to a sage who projects both a mental and a visual image. 99 I propose that these worshipful feelings toward Ruan and Shan can be looked at in a new way, namely in terms of the ugly realities of the Western Jin court. That is, behind the visual styles depicting the lounging and loosely draped Seven Sages, as inscribed on Nanjing bricks, were, at least in the cases of Ruan and Shan, men who had been in the pits of political struggle. The case of Ruan Xian has been stated, and I will only sum him up in the following way. As a Southern Dynasties visitor in the Nanjing tomb stopped to observe Ruan's sitting and casually playing his pipa, he or she may have known of the real events in his life. The portrait shows music being performed, therefore the important back-story was Ruan's truth-telling to power about the disturbing change in Jin music. Ruan had summoned metrological and classicist evidence against Xun Xu and was then banished. Furthermore, since our imagined fifth-century viewer was not as skilled in metrology as Li Chunfeng early in Tang, he would not know that Xun Xu turned out to be technically correct. But if he did know some history, then he knew that at least the languorous, shrillness-loathing Ruan, unbudged by the myriad things of the world, had survived the conflict. We move to Ruan's mentor, Shan Tao. Once again we put our fifthcentury person into the tomb as vi~wer-the person who knows details of Western Jin men whose sons and nephews fled to Nanjing after 3II AD. Our viewer would have known that the rather prissy-looking Shan, sitting a bit ramrod, is actually pondering when is the right time to stop drinking (unlike the continual tipplers Ruan Ji and Ruan Xian). Even in drinking, as his Jinshu biography points out, Shan Tao was famous for restraint: he could not even be tricked into downing more communication and consultation with the throne. 98 SSXY nos. 7.4 and 8.21. 99 Spiro, Contemplating the Ancients, p. 95, citing SSXY no. 8.10, commentary.

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than eight dou at a sitting. 100 But just because Shan was calm, an image emphasized in portraiture a century later, it did not mean he was naive to politics and factions. When Cao Shuang's clique was in power in the 240s, Shan purposefully stayed out of sight, and thus only started state service late in life (see Chapter Two, Table I). Furthermore, in a reliable datum from Fu Chang's "Jin zhugong zan" (a work mentioned, above), he is portrayed in a dust-up with Jia Chong, the leader of the most entrenched faction of the 270s. Shan did not approve ofJia's man being placed alongside himself in the Personnel Bureau and so he resigned. lol Thus, we have in Shan Tao a remarkable Western Jin official. He cleverly steered clear of Cao Shuang when he was young, and then during Jin became famous for busy, yet sagely, advice on state offices, while striving to get his two-fisted drinking companions into office. He seems generally to have been associated with anti-Jia-Xun men, yet was not punished for any reason by either Jia or Xun. In fact, Xun Xu reached out to him in 283, although the reasons for that are not clear. In third- and fourth-century social criticism in China, there seems to have been different levels of elitedom and of sagehood, and thus we ought to consider when elite means the truly elite. For example, a xuanxue propounder could analyze the words of Confucius and/or Laozi and Zhuangzi; or he could be a recluse who sought no images, no words, and, if pressed, only the company of the Yellow Emperor's spirit. In the same way, for rites-propounders there were the old-guard Confucian policy fighters, men devoted to their own findings in ritual correctness and devoted to networks of equally positivist, policy types. Xun Xu was one of those. But Shan Tao was the truly elite Confucianist: he was in the thick of it yet never caught in a social or political vise. Unlike Xun Xu, Shan floated through factions and vengeful policies unentangled. He and Ruan Xian entered the "true elite" in part for having brushed unperturbedly against dangerous politics, the sort of equanimity that General Zhang Tianxi had prescribed for any scholar-official. 102 Xun Xu was of course an elite: he descended from a family used to Confucianist office-holding. But by the fifth century, he would not be thought of as among the truly elite. I see Xun and men of his ilk and faction as the stuff-the tuffa-inside the inscribed brick. They are a jS 43 ("Biography of Shan Tao"), p. 1228. SSXY no. 3.7; see SSHYIMather, p. 84. 102 See the opening pages of my Introduction. !(IO

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needed ballast to the numerous anecdotes of fine poetics, brushwork, and qin-playing. Such an interpretation may in the future add to the type of study that Audrey Spiro has executed so well. Spiro mentions that despite several examples of contentious critiques of the Seven Sages in the third through fifth centuries that offered mental images of them ranging from dirty layabouts to smashers of civilization, the Nanjing brick etchings can seem rather one-dimensional. 103 Future contextual studies of Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties graven and brushed portraits may be able to supplement the poetry of imagination and the prose of ranking and anthologizing by calling on the century-old, even two-century-old, details of political and intellectual struggles. This will bring clarity to the broader perspective-the regroupings, counter-histories, and counter-cultures that defined the long development of the worlds of Southern Dynasties intellectuals.

103

Spiro, Contemplating the Ancients, pp. 9 2 -

102.

CHAPTER SIX

A NEW DAY, NEW ANTIQUITIES, NEW FACTIONS, CA. 277-284 Yu ~i)J: Reaching A description ofthe ancient five scale-notes in Jinshu says that following zhif';t which stands for a pause in affairsij!: after a high point, yu )j)J represents the "ten-thousand things'lhl'b qPj reaching abundance" then giving way to relaxation. Yu makes people "respectful and appreciative of ritual. "I Xun Xu was not a melodist, nor a Daoist ofthe lanes and hills collecting ballads, so he may not have paused to drink in the metaphysical beauty of it all. He did, however, believe in ritual and law, especially as ideals of perfection that guided his work, work that reached outward through laborious and frenetic investigations.

Xun Xu had devoted the previous several years to research and innovation in order to reform the ritual lulu and thus regularize the pitches and scale intervals used in performances. As we saw, around 275-77 his new sound of court music was punctuated by criticism from Ruan Xian and his supporters. Yet, the tete-a.-tete could not dampen Xun's political stature: he remained a prominent thinker and factionalist. In fact, on September 25, 275, the emperor honored him and about nine others, including Sima princes and officials who had been the chief supports of the dynasty § since its inception. The context is not given, thus we cannot tell if Xun was being recognized for musicology. Some of the honorees were recently deceased, for example, Sima Ziwen 'Bj J~ T X and several whom we have met like Xun Yi, Pei Xiu, and Wang Chen. Among the living honorees were Xun Xu, Jia Chong, Yang Hu, He Ceng (see Chapter Two, Table I), and the prince who many (but not Xun and Jia) thought would be a better heir-apparent-namely, Sima You 'Bj J~111z.: (248-83). All of them, regardless of factional disparities or personal grudges, were "grouped for announced

1tc-mnn

I

IS 22 ("Yue" A),

p. 677.

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sacrifices '&37UM-ii1~": on occasion they would be honored at dynastic rituals. 2 The period from 277 to the end of 279 was for Xun simply a continuation of fifteen years of leadership in court policy. This chapter looks first at two policy opinions voiced just before the Wu War. Then, in mid-28I, about a year after the war concluded, we encounter Xun's poetic lauding of victory, a smart tactic by a former anti-war partisan. Just as the Xuns and other social and political leaders had emerged from their Cao-Wei commitments after 249 AD, now both the prowar faction and the anti-war Jia-Xun faction had to change: soon their leadership and motivations would begin to shift. The victory constituted a new day for leading courtiers. But to an even larger degree, it was a new day in scholarship thanks to the discovery of ancient texts and objects in a plundered late-Warring States tomb-the Ji Tomb rJi ~ (literally, "Ji tumulus"). I translate an extant writing by Xun that describes the approach to the Ji Tomb texts taken by his team in the Imperial Library. As usual, Xun concentrated on materials and appearances, and their technical and even craft significance; he used certain skilled court personnel for this work, reminding us of earlier antiquarian searches and his use of personnel in those cases. Their task was enlarged by a decision to elide the work on Ji Tomb texts with the earlier project to catalog the entire palace library. Subsequently the chapter shifts to individuals, nexuses, and factions that impacted politics, in some sense the politics of scholarship and knowledge. In modern times, experts in ancient chronology and history have revived Ming-Qing "Ji Tomb studies" with new interpretations of the nature of the Ji Tomb texts. In this chapter I am only interested in the Western Jin scholars themselves, men who in the 280s-90s curated the bamboo slips or worked on transcriptions, and the roles played by careers and personalities. The first study to look at the scholars was by Zhu Xizu *$f£l. (working in the I930s-40s), followed by Edward L. Shaughnessy (beginning with articles in the mid80S and a chapter of his recent book). In addition, the mainland China scholar Cao Shujie has remarked on this topic. (I cite these works as they arise.) Zhu briefly raised the matter of how calligraphy expertise affected not just Xun's group, but numerous others who got to see the bamboo slips or the transcriptions; Shaughnessy opened up a fertile line of reasoning about the impact of political factions. I 2

jS 3 ("Wudi ji"), p. 65.

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take this further by examining how the Imperial Library and the Palace Writers functioned as centers of historiography and underwent a shift away from Xun Xu's leadership. The shift occurred formally only in 287, but even by 283 criticism of Xun had become severe. The criticism was leveled at what would be Xun's last foray into a demanding skill-paleography-based chronology. As he had done for roughly twelve years when he compressed court ritual into a notion of Zhouera precision and systems-the prisca Zhou-so too in the early 280s did he press chronology into a Zhou framework.

POLICIES THAT SHOOED OFF THE PRINCES AND PROMOTED THE RANK-AND-FILE

Modern scholarship has discussed the Jin dynasty's reform of the noble ranks (the Five-Ranks system) and the enfeoffment of the Sima princes that occurred in February of 266 (discussed in Chapter Two). Like many aspects of economic and state institutions of Jin, the records are scanty. What is little discussed is that in 277 that eleven-year-old dispensation had to be reasserted due to the fact that the princes, having wealth and military powers, were for the most part unwilling to leave Luoyang. Xun Xu and a swing-member of the Jia-Xun faction, the influential Yang Yao t~ljt (d. ca. 300), surveyed the situation of the princes in 277. They felt that Sima You, who in 266 had objected to and resisted the new organization of princely domains, was too well liked in Luoyang and could present a serious problem in the future for their own, current, heir-apparent Sima Zhong. They proposed reconsidering the original enfeoffment plan of 266 that had been presented by Pei Xiu (d. 271), who, not coincidentally, was skilled at geography and cartography,. thus allowing one to deduce that he had arranged the princely domains with strategic geography in mind. 3 Xun and Yang actually referred to defense matters, while also acting for their faction's concerns, which per se might have stirred up conflict.

3 See Pei's biography, IS 35, p. 1038, which gives no other details of the plan but that "cavalry officers and higher officials, more than 600 men, were enfeoffed"; see also TeTe/Pang 2, p. 463. Xun, in one of the few saved passages of his "Wenzhang Xulu," also states that Pei invented the policy and was a cartographer as well; see SGZ 23 zhu, p. 673. His cartography is discussed in see 3, pp. 538-41; see Pei's extant preface to his "Diyu tu" ttl.rll'xll8i1 in QjW 33.

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Yang Yao was a younger brother of Yang Jun »J3t (d. 300); the family were distaff relations of the throne through Empress Yang ofWudi. Interestingly, Yao several times in his career requested that his noble titles and offices be removed for reasons that varied-sometimes for keeping harmony in his own family and sometimes because of outside pressure against the Yangs. He made a sharp break from his family's expected position on dynastic succession by aligning with the Jia group, acting several times in concert with or being promoted by Xun Xu. He made his voice known at times in favor of Jia's daughter, Jia Nanfeng, when her character was questioned, and at times he spoke forcefully against Sima You. 4 His partnering with Xun in 277 to try to remove You from Luoyang fits the overall picture. Xun and Yang, in promoting the removal of the princes from Luoyang, were speaking implicitly as Jia-Xun factionalists whose agenda favored keeping Sima Zhong as heir-apparent under the control of his consort Nanfeng, and pushing away Sima You. The two men stated: Anciently, they established nobles in order to screen off and defend the royal house. Today, Wu has not been punished and the territories have great tasks. Yet since the princes act as military leaders and are regional military commanders (dudu) in their domains, each is arrogant in relation to his own jurisdiction, and in this we have a deeply improper situation. Further, there are collateral kin who are generals in the border areas: the situation is that distaff powers [are in place] while the princes are all in the capital. It is not how we define national defense, nor a way to secure the dynasty for the future. 5

4 Yang's biography, jS 40, p. II80, says that he wished to divest titles because his brother (who lived in the former mansion of Cao Shuang) was richer, and thus he himself could never advance; but we learn also oflater criticism over the fact that Yangs occupied all three archonships US 27, p. 804, dated 287). On Yang Yao's antipathy toward Sima You, see ZZTj 8r, p. 2581. 5 jS 24 ("Zhiguan zhi"), p. 744. A much longer and different speech is recorded in Xun's biography (IS 39, p. II54; also in HWLC 38). The memorial is implicitly by Xun Xu alone. There the ideas are that the 266 arrangement is not working, but any large rearrangement should be done cautiously: any new situation should give power of appointment to local officials, bur old territories should not be divided and redistributed. He warns the court that such redistributions would bring enmity. It is a more equivocal and thoughtful policy stance, perhaps a reflection on it made later in life, but on the other hand, it might have been inspired by later proposals to tinker with the Five-Ranks policy and further cut up lands, proposals that in Xun's mind needed to be stopped. We have, however, no other evidence of the 277 policy or any later refinements. ZZTj 80, p. 2546, records the event and edits the memorial, ascribing it however to "Yang and others"; Hu Sanxing's commentary says that the lengthy wording in Xun's biography is not credible, although I do not yet understand Hu's reasons.

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Probably in response, in autumn of 277 Jin Wudi issued an edict spelling out domain categories for princes (small to large, plus categories for marquisates). The language was tough, providing for the posting of guards in the domains of those princes who did not take up residential duties, and so finally the princes went out from Luoyang, however reluctantly. Sima You resisted as he had done in 266, but soon, in 280 after the Wu War concluded, and helped by statements like that ofXun and Yang, he went to his domain. 6 In 279 Xun Xu rose to counsel the dynasty on another policy matter. Xun's speech in this case was a response to opinions of Fu Xian 1w~ (239-294) to trim the bureaucratic rolls. There had been talk of reducing officialdom and getting the untalented weeded out even late in Wei times, when the Wei was under Sima control in the 250S. At that time, a certain official humbly declared himself to be one of those untalented who were accused and marked for removal in order to streamline government. Thus he left the court, making his colleagues feel ashamed. 7 That is not an example of a systematic program of reductions, but we get closer to that in 264 and 266, when policies were instituted whereby officials of the agricultural bureaus in charge of agricultural colonies were folded into local government posts, "in order to equalize government laborers ~±8IEJ[19:," and farmers from defeated Shu (this just after the rebellion there of Zhong Hui) were enticed with provisions and tax waivers.8 To gain context for Xun Xu's 279 statement on the bureaucracy, we need to linger for a moment more in 266. It was in that year that Fu Xian's father, Fu Xuan, whom we encountered in Chapter Three as one of Xun Xu's group who revised court lyrics, had been made the first censor of the newly proclaimed Jin. He memorialized to Wudi that consideration and appointments should be given to the many loyal "literary officials" who desired to voice their serious concerns; he noted that large numbers of the "inane and despicable are not yet removed."9 6 Ibid.; Wudi's benji US 3, pp. 67-68) lists fifteen Simas given new princely statuses in autumn of 277, but no other details. It would seem thatJS "Zhiguan zhi" is the only remaining source of details; also carried in TD 31, pp. 859-69. 7 This was Wei Shu ~*{IFr (209-90); seeJS 41, pp. n84, n86; this anecdote and another story of self-demotion are narrated in ZZTJ; see TeTe/Fang 2, pp. 406, 428. 8 See an edict of the last emperor of Wei, Cao Mao, after naming Sima Yan as heir to the noble titles of the state ofJin; SGZ 4, p. 154 (TeTe/Fang 2, p. 468). See William Crowell, "Government Land Policies and Systems in Early Imperial China," Ph.D. diss. (Seattle: University of Washington, 1979), pp. 183-84. 9 TeTe/Fang 2, pp. 50 7-8.

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Thus, there was mounting pressure in the months of Wei-Jin transition to trim and rearrange a state system that faced fiscal and military crises: one costly rebellion was finished, and there was discussion already mounting about an invasion of Wu. We turn to Xun's voice in 279, as he responded to Fu Xian's policy. Fu's father had died about a year previously, and Xi an's statements as carried in Zizhi tongjian resembled his father's well-known style of statecraft, that is, he focused on numbers and statistical reasoning. Xian pointed out that the population was only a tenth that of Han times (presumably at its height), yet the regional military commanders had greatly increased, and the numbers of provincial inspectors had doubled from the ancient nine. Fu Xian went on to say that local administrations were increasing and the Sima Five-Degrees no biliary system was not working. The answer in his view was to shift personnel over to duties in the agriculture bureaus. 1o A policy debate ensued. The proponents are not mentioned by name, but seemingly they included Fu. They argued for halving the number of personnel in local administrations as part of that shift to agriculture. Xun Xu's long memorial on the matter is structured as a sort of philosophical lemma, the kind that was popular in earlier times, showing indirectly a bit of influence from xuanxue argumentation. l ! It posed a transcendent essential that would have worked equally well in a treatise on characterology, namely, a preferred, if somewhat mystical, plane of governance called "clear mindedness ~~ Ie}"; the latter produces laws that, once set up, are innately equanimious. The tone reminds us of Liu Shao's Renwu zhi )\. ttn;t (Treatise on [Types oj] People) of the 230S, or the disquisitions of Xi Kang, Wang Bi, and others, concerning governance and sages. Xun, rather more historically minded, refers to the famous advisers Xiao He .1PI (d. 193 BC) and Cao Shen WW (d. 190 BC) of Western Han, whose sageliness, Xun tells us, inspired the folk ditty "Hua yi" ¥)c.~:ZJf'lC which praised the polity under Han Wendi. !2 It is no coincidence that Cao Shen was famous for having become an aloof, laissez faire institutional leader after 10 ZZT] 80, pp. 2559-60 . Hu's commentary contains fascinating details of population and local administrative structure. On Fu Xu an's intense use of statistical reasoning for logistics, see Jordan D. Paper, The Fu-tzu: A Post-Han Confucian Text, Monographies du Toung pao 13 (Leiden: Brill, 1987), pp. 76-80. 11 ]S 39, pp. II54-56; also carried in HWLC 38, pp. 7b-9b, titled as Xun's "Sheng Ii yi" *1SC:f~l The memorial is summarized in Nan Qi shu I'(HYfHJ (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1972) 16 ("Baiguan"), p. 3II. 12 For the ditty, see Lu/Shi, Hanshi 3, p. II9.

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the Han civil wars were over and that Xun Xu here focuses on a "clear minded" purity that operates in the background. But because there had to be a program in the mundane world for implementing clearmindedness, Xun's schema recommended the following: to reduce personnel 5E is not as good as reducing offices , and the latter is not as good as reducing affairs ~"$, an action he terms "foremost" 1), ~1G. This all sounds like a muscular type of daoistic politics, and, for someone like Xun Xu, for whom we find no other evidence of interest in such notions, it is unusual. In the policy position, Xun snipes at Wei-dynasty attempts of the 240S to reduce personnel. In the shorter, Zizhi tongjian version it is clear that Xun cautions once again against any large-scale and hurried program of bureaucratic reductions, pointing to the harm it might bring to both the writing and military offices, whose tasks would become blurred and hard to carry out fL:xTz5EI§'{~Jt~, f&<}(:IE\:;~ ~~~,x*, J~@/fI§J, /fPJ1),~f~;Jiliz.13 The more extensive version is carried in Xun Xu's biography, at the end of which the Tang compiler says that the memorial is simply an epitome ofXun's writing. This is a good example of what I pointed out at the end of Chapter Two concerning the attentive literary eye that oversaw the editing of Jinshu But what the Jinshu editors were not interested in is what interests us most. That is, the esprit de corps in Xun Xu's official position. As we have seen, from about 270-78 he conducted interviews, gathered teams, and researched, all the time drawing on low-grade personnel in hidden-away palace offices. Xun was an enthusiastic shaper of work-groups and user of artisans and technicians. Here, the stance against any wholesale reduction of personnel rings true to that pattern; the memorial is some sense was a tactic that might ensure himself or his Jia-Xun faction an increase in their loyal base. To summarize, we have seen Xun Xu make alliance with an important distaff Yang, who moved toward Xun's faction and its pro-heirapparent (Le., anti-Sima You) stance. In addition, the old Jin support and Xun friend Pei Xiu was invoked by the two men. Finally, Xun Xu's former lyric-writing associate Fu Xuan (d. 278) seems to have been channeled by his son Fu Xian in a policy discussion opposing Xun. Thus, older scholarly acquaintances (Fu and Xun concerning court lyrics) and personal alliances were shifting. In the coming years beginning in 280, with scholarly groups engendered by the Ji Tomb dis-

,

13

ZZTj 80, p. 2560 .

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coveries, we see more occasions for Xun to supervise programs, and consequently to inspire new factions. In the process, Xun's broad, bureaucratic esprit de corps seen above turned into mere officiousness.

A

NEW DAY: VICTORY CELEBRATIONS

Chapter Two alerted us to the role of factions surrounding the heirapparent Sima Zhong and the threat that any talk of clipping his or his wife's power might pose; also factions were crucial in the run-up to and execution of the Wu War of 280. We learned that by 274 Zhong's Lady Jia Nanfeng was already the official consort, and that by 279 the war was imminent. Xun Xu's faction won out on the first score, but could not stop the invasion. The war proved successful, and when it concluded swiftly, celebrations were in order. Xun Xu wrote a celebratory poem seemingly right after the victory: in Lu Qinli's 3£iXiL modern compendium it is the only Xun Xu verse not written in the context of inner-palace ritual. It is tetrasyllabic and titled "A Feasting Poem for a Gathering with Wudi at Hualin Park" 1~ Jt\*.1*[f]~~:,J,14 the latter place located in the northeast corner of the imperial city inside the palace walls. In 280, during the fifth lunar month (which began June I5), various celebrations were mounted and fief advances given to high officials. Wudi awarded the actual generals of the war, but he also mentioned the nonmilitary achievements of men like Xun Xu, who at the very least for political reasons had to be honored along with Zhang Hua and Du Yu. Thus we learn that, "For Xun Xu's merit in managing the imperial edicts and orders $#t!~1fp, one of his sons was made tinghou."15 The next year, on April 9, 28I, large festivities took place. This date coincided with the ancient Third Month-Third Day J3 B Lustration Festival, which by Jin times was a holiday of poetry writing and for watching the beautiful formations of cups floating down narrow streams, and dragon-boats on the wider waterways. 16 The April festivities also introduced to the Jin court the subject palace women from WU. 17

==

14 Lu/Shi, p. 59 2 ; also inXun's wenji (seeHWLC38). I am indebted to David R. Knechtges for corrections and interpretive suggestions for my translation, which follows. 15 jS 39, p. II54; ZZTj 81, p. 2572, but "gengchen" is problematic: no such day existed in the fifth month. II> See Derk Bodde, Festivals in Classical China: New Year and Other Annual Observances during the Han Dynasty, 206 Be-AD 220 (Princeton: Princeton U. p', 1975), pp. 281-84, for the Lustration Holiday, and its development from a more ancient form. 17 ZZTj 81, p. 2576; jS 3, p. 73, is briefer, saying also that it was on the bingshen day,

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It is not definitely attested that Xun's poem was for the celebrations of 281, but my following interpretation of various allusions and tropes point in that direction. Moreover, there is a fragment of an alternative, pentasyllabic, poem with four surviving lines by Xun that states "313," that is, Lustration Day, in its title. Lu Qinli claims that it and the tetrasyllabic poem that I translate, below, were made for the same occasion. That helps us think ofXun's "Feasting Poem" as a 3/3-themed poem. There were many Hualin Park and Lustration Day poems written during Jin: Lu gives about ten, for example one by Ying Zhen JJ! (d. 269). Furthermore, the poets ChengXian fj~ and WangJi.:£~ wrote pieces that specifically celebrated the end of the war, using itt" in their titles; these were probably for the same April 9 occasion. 18 Let us look at Xun's poem, before deciding finally if it was written for the war celebration.

"+ *

''A Feasting Poem for a Gathering with Wudi at Hualin Park" fftiEV"I'i:J'j'I~*~\mII In the gentle spring sun t(¥~1 I~)} "our ruler issues east" ;,'j'i IU 19 "Heaven dispenses, earth brings forth" *JlttiltJ!/I~_,20 thereby responding to "mid-spring" ~)JQHII*F.21 Oh! of cultured elegance is our sage sovereign. )i!J )U-flUtL He "follows the times," and holds fast benevolence Jllri 1I~:*{~_.22 Respectfully following divine norms ~,t'i:~IH!u; we serve drink and food to fine guests flk {{Ell ]7'; ~ . namely, April 9, 281, the third day of month three. 18 LulShi, Jinshi I, pp. 552, 597, respectively. On Ying Zhen's 268 AD poem created for a poetry-writing occasion at an imperial banquet (not a "3/3" occasion), Meow Hui Goh (personal communication, September, 2009) feels that it possesses an overall tone very close to Xun's "Hualin" verse and uses the similar term "qun (or dong) hou," as discussed below, n. 25, throwing the dating ofXun Xu's work into question. Ying's poem is at LulShi, Jinshi 2, p. 580; also in Wenxuan 20, p. 19a ff. (952 ff.). Goh has a paper-in-progress titled "When There Is No Feasting: The 'Lord's Feast Poetry' of the Western Jin (265-316) Court." 19 For "t!'It'.Wl'tlg.j}" cf. Shi Mao 35: "In repeated gusts comes the east wind, bringing clouds (yin) and rain"; Berhard Karlgren, The Book of Odes: Chinese Text, Transcription and Translation (Stockholm: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950), p. 22. For the second phrase, see Yijing J0r.~rr, the Ten Wings ("Shuogua" sect.) (cf. trans. WIB, p. 268). 20 Yijing, hexagram 42 "Yi (Increase)," Ten Wings "Commentary on the Decision"; trans. WIB, p. 597. 21 See Shangshu ,jltji¥: ("Yao dian"); trans. Bernhard Karlgren, "The Book of Documents," Bulletin of the Museum ofFar Eastern Antiquities 22 (1950), p. 3. The seasonal mark is a traditional phrase, not calendrical terminology. 22 Zuozhuan (Cheng 16): 1J(11lJJlJ~III~" {§IJ/~fq0J; James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 5, The Ch'un Ts'ew with the Tso Chuen (rpt. Hong Kong U. p', 1960), p. 395, rt., "doing

x:llili

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Vast grace broadly permeates yJtJ~lI1(('II~L23 We felicitate you multitude of officials J2M)J l:(! But why this celebration JU~HH"J? [Felicitations] are granted as blessings from lord-on-high ~J L),;,'j dil:. 24 "He gives audience to the various <Eastern?> princes liltillJ! ~I,r < *?> ."25 There are guests who have arrived 1::Jf? )xl[',. From outside, we have received men from border-lands )tHrtl},J-g,lcU~G; internally, we welcome ministers and counselors I*J:g gl!lll: . Pan-pipes and flutes intone [our] virtue l!t}d,'~; the eight sounds are all in order )\.{l~' Ji&;IHL To triumphant music we drink toasts li!jl~;~fiXrV~: None excluded from the joyful feast ~~/F

*

t

m

As with Xun Xu's court ritual lyrics studied in Chapter Three, today's scholarship does not take much interest in third-century poems like this one, with blunt ideology and references to the Confucian classics. It was a time of newly intimate poetry and of personal visions. But formal court events could convey facts and emotions in verse. In the above, Xun seems to write as the emperor's companion, or at least as a close observer. We should remember that Xun had been the anti-war factionalist par excellence, and so in the spring of 281 there was every reason to mend bridges by lauding the emperor for his cunning war plans (which had been posed by Yang Hu and Zhang Hua in 278-79). If I am right about the date of the "Hualin" poem, then running through it is a conciliatory plea. Xun's references to "east" point to the southern Wu state, which is often called "east." Here, the emperor has marched off ("issues") eastward (under the rubric "Zhen )I"). Playing on words from the classics that elide with notions of "the gods" or the supernal ancestors of the dynasty, the emperor is presented as convocator and leader. He sets up the festivities, as one preparing a great victory rite, and he invites spirithings at the proper times," in a prolegomenon to the reasons for a certain battle. 23 Guang Wenxuan JltX:l!ili, a 16th-c. sequel to Wenxuan, readsWf astIr,. 24 Shi ("Huangyi"1f~,~t Mao no. 241): "received god's blessings"; Zheng Xuan notes: ""'i'i:J(tJ:i.,, ;f11:H~-tJ:i.,." 25 I am suggesting, pace David Knechtges' view (personal communication, March, 2009), a perhaps justifiable textual alternative. Shu ("Shundian") has the line" ... gave audience to the eastern princes l~I!:!JlJnI~JS'''; Karlgren, Book of Documents, p. 4. "Shundian" also has several nearby uses of" of1-tJ;=]'" (various lords), but "l~I!:!JlSL))!iJn'" seems a close match to Xun's wording. (Ying Zhen's use of "'lj-lJ;C;'," mentioned in n. 18, above, is not inside any hint of "east," so his phrase means "various lords".) I believe Xun used the Shangshu phrase EI!:!JlJ~JI{JG, but because of the "Shundian" uses of ~i:)w', a lexic and perhaps graphic confusion resulted at a later point in transmission. Even without the reading ~RJi==;', Xun's overall trope of "eastness" in my opinion remains valid.

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tual beings. At this point, Xun's lyrics turn to a picture of mundane activities-crowds of officials, some from the "border-lands" (this would be Wu, and no doubt including the Wu court ladies). Xun rhetorically asks, "why are we making this celebration"? The answer he gives is that Wu (and actually all officials, even those of the Jin court) are to receive benefits. No one, Xun says, should be left out. He also remarks that the eight ensemble sections sounded orderly. Perhaps the musicians playing at the festival were those trained in the court ensembles that Xun and Lie He had retrained with new flutes and recalibrated pitchstandards about four or five years previously. Xun's rhetorical "Why this celebration" may be further support for my dating, besides the motif of the "east." If this had been only a normal Lustration Day feast, then the poetic themes would be predictable. To explain this, let us read selected lines of a Lustration Day poem that Zhang Hua wrote in 285, a date stated in Zhang's title. The English renderings are those of Anna Straughair: Gently the sweet rain falls, And rich moisture runs in abundance. A soft wind wafts and murmurs ~T&lf:,(:JfUC, And all things are endowed with renewed life .... With due regard to season, [the emperor] watching over his creatures, Now he will enjoy the gardens of his palace. To his feast flock all the many princes When the word is given, they seat themselves around. Take delight together in the ponds of water-flowers, Refresh themselves beside clear running streams. Then they sail away in the dragon-boats, ... 26

Zhang's images are more gentle and a bit more concerned with nature and springtime than Xun's. In Zhang's verse we can conjure the little crooked streams (elsewhere called" qushui a±l7j(") for floating the cups. Zhang continues after this point in the poem by painting an image of crowds sitting on mats with "winged winecups," listening to "pipes and strings blend[ingJ together," and taking in the civilizing instructions of the Emperor Wudi. He ends with a groveling expression of gratitude to Wudi, stating happiness at being recalled to the court: "Far away I dwelt for three long years, / Longing for you, my lord, like a dog or a horse for its master." We need not be overly cynical about 26 Lu/Shi (Jinshi 2), p. 616; trans. Anna Straughair, Chang Hua: A Statesman-Poet of the Western Chin Dynasty, Occasional Paper 15 (Canberra: Australian National University, Faculty of Asian Studies, 1973), pp. 98-99.

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Zhang Hua: I for one can easily sense a level of sincerity in the admission that during his duties in exile in the northeast garrison at Youzhou ~j\I\1 from 282-285, Zhang had ached to be free and to return to his books and friends. Perhaps Lustration Day poems were known to have been vehicles for inserting personal pleas. If so, then Xun Xu's verse can be seen as a subtle factional apology. His poem has details that would be paralleled in Zhang's-the gathered notables (Zhang used "1tJi}$") , the music, the drinking. I believe that the evidence for dating Xun's Hualin poem to 281 is strong if not certain, and that the poem does not share qualities with, for example, Ying Zhen's 268 poem such that one might deduce Xun's as written for the same 268 occasion. In 281 Xun did not need to be as explicitly pleading as Zhang would be in 285. Xun's faction, although failing on the war policy, was still powerful: they would be the ones to expel Zhang in 282. The Zhang Hua who would later reenter Luoyang would also be confident. Thankful to be back in Luoyang, he would begin to reshape the scholarly world. We look at that process later in this chapter.

FIRST REACTIONS TO THE JI TOMB

Let us back up to several months before the end of the war. In the autumn of 279 the scholarly world, especially that in Luoyang, was startled by the discovery in Ji l& commandery (present-day northeastern Henan) of a cache of texts and other objects in a late-Warring States tomb; Ji was two or three days' ride by cart from Luoyang. 27 Such an event was important to textual scholars and antiquarians, and the 27 The early sources contain varying dates, reflecting perhaps the differences between when the tomb was found robbed, when reported robbed, and when the texts were first presented to the capital for editing. A well-reasoned view is that late-fall of 279 was either the robbery of the tomb or the discovery of the robbery (see jS 3, p. 70, Wudi's annals; and the useful note 23 of the Zhonghua eds., p. 85). The report to Luoyang cannot have come before about January or February 280, with work beginning later. See Edward L. Shaughnessy, Rewriting Early Chinese Texts (Albany: SUNY, 2006), pp. 133-35; also a review of the dating arguments in Wang Lianlong ]·:)iliH~, "Ji Zhong Zhoushu kao" f& Guji zhengli yanjiu xuekan -lclcr$tH~Jm:rvf3'~'~Ji1'~PJ 2005-1, pp. 14-19. The most important chronology of the Ji Tomb affair is that of Zhu Xizu *1iHIl, jizhong shu kao rffi.~f~~:;\j· (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1960), a basis from which Shaughnessy expanded. In my chap. 4, following table 4, I cautioned about purported bells from this tomb; there are some reasons to doubt Tang-era Li Chunfeng's statement to that effect, although Zhu accepts it (p. 8). If bells were found, then they cannot have been a complete and useful set: Xun Xu never mentions any Ji Tomb bells or lit tuners.

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finds might have been treated carefully and slowly for decades had not political conditions been so stressful. But also the bamboo texts were handled poorly by local officials and received rushed treatment by Emperor Wu's team headed by Xun Xu. Although deposited in a palace archive, the originals eventually yielded in importance to transcriptions and to related factional politics and controversies. In the 310S nearly all of the recovered items were lost when Luoyang was destroyed during the warfare that brought non-Chinese usurpers of the throne. Yet, because transcriptions of some (if not all) items had been made and were quoted by scholiasts continually for centuries, we have means for understanding some aspects of the Ji Tomb texts. Today there is renewed interest among Chinese and Western scholars concerning one Ji Tomb item that is extant via the normal route of Sung to Ming printed editions-namely, the dynastic chronology that has come to be called Zhushu jinian ttiffo.fc-,¥ (or, Bamboo Annals). After centuries of widespread belief, now revised, that its text was forged during Ming times from early quotations, scholars like David S. Nivison (emeritus at Stanford University), Shao Dongfang B~ (Stanford), Edward L. Shaughnessy (University of Chicago), and Zhang Fuxiang *j;~-* (Shandong University) have proposed theories about the received Annals. Such work may inspire a future reconstruction that gets us closer to the text of the original slips, but most of all it will result in revised historical chronologies of the earliest periods in Chinese history.28 That is a task that will take many years, and may only become definitive if and when other ancient texts emerge as corroboration. My expertise is not in the area of ancient chronology and epigraphy; neither do I take up here the complicated skeins of post500 AD citations and transmissions of Zhushu jinian text-passages. Shaughnessy has shown that the latter reflect two transcriptional editions of the Annals that arose in the 280s and 290S (Xun's team's prod-

*7J

28 See esp. Nivison, The Riddle of the Bamboo Annals (Taipei: Airiti Press, 2009); Shaughnessy's "Chronologies of Ancient China, A Critique of the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project," in Clara Wing-Chung Ho, ed., Windows on the Chinese World: Reflections by Five Historians (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2008), pp. 15-28; Zhang, "Jinben Zhushu jinian zuanji kao" 4-*1·!nJo}:~c;'F~H~f.~, Wenshi zheX9:1~r 2007.2, pp. 22-46; idem, "Zouchu yigu de kunhuo, cong 'Xia Shang Zhou duandai gongcheng' de shiwu tanqi" ;E!:l19~'~1'1'1~i;fI:%'~1fta:W~W[JWr1-\';rf!]il'i'l'}(it*f~~, Wenshi zhe 2006.3, pp. 1-12; Dongfang Shao, "Controversy over the 'Modern Text' Bamboo Annals and Its Relation to Three Dynasties Chronology," Journal of East Asian Archaeology 4.1-4 (2002), pp. 367-74; idem CBlr])IO':r), "Shiji jijie 'Xun Xu yue He Qiao yun' duan zhi biaodian kao" ~~il3~ffl1HI 'i'UIWJI==:I;flldf~z/ ¥Qzf~lk~III;o\j, Tianlu luncong 7d4~~6H!~ (Guilin: Guanxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2010), forthcoming.

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uct being the first).29 David Nivison's work on the Annals has led him to hypothesize otherwise: that the textual disjunctions we now detect occurred before the slips were interred and show that ancient chronologists had attempted to systematize dates in the annals as per their view of ancient anniversary cycles. As already mentioned, my contribution is in the area of the social history of the Ji Tomb editing, focusing on Xun Xu's intellectual and career motives, and the intellectual and factional situation of others who took up the challenge from their own perspectives for several decades until the fall of Luoyang.

Antiquities Emerge as Victory Is Celebrated In the fall/winter of 279 the grave robbers had destroyed items, many of which were already damaged by water; and the authorities in Ji had bungled management. Emperor Wu right away placed the materials under the supervision of Xun Xu, who at the time held the post of Inspector of both the Imperial Library and the Palace Writers. There survive today three overall descriptions of the finds by third-century scholars: I) a report by Xun, 2) one by Du Yu (carried in an "Afterword" to his Zuozhuan commentary), and 3) Shu Xi's *~ (b. ca. 260-65; d. ca. 302). The last, found in Shu's Jinshu biography, is a remarkably detailed report covering sixteen different interred bambooslip texts. One must assume that it got passed down as a free-standing essay that the Tang Jinshu editors had at their disposa1. 3o Several salient facts will emerge, below. One is that the Xun team was the first to go over the slips and very quickly made a fair-copy transcription of at least two of the texts; second is that the events of the Wu War and its wind-down, and the ongoing factional situation of certain scholars, caused Xun's work to suffer; and third, factionalism and secrecy created both pressure for access and controversies over the editing. The Xun team's transcription and editing of some portion of the bamboo-slips took until at least about 283-84. Compounding the work was Xun's decision just then to categorize and list the Ji Tomb texts within the imperial catalog project that had begun years before. 29 See his Rewriting; he has recently written about further evidences of Annals slip reordering; see Xla Hanyi ~1t9~ [Edward L. Shaughnessy], "San lun Zhushu jinian cuo jian zhengju"--':fffitr1"rf~t=*G:{rillfHIJ'ji~Hk\t, Jianbo fiU~t'M 3 (2008), pp. 1-13. 30 For Du's complete description, see Shaughnessy, Rewriting, pp. 143-46; and pp. 153-84, for a complete analysis of Shu's report. On the makeup of Shu's currently reconstructed wenji, see Howard L. Goodman, "Shu Xl wenji"; article in Albert Dien et al., eds., Six Dynasties Sourcebook (working title; forthcoming); Shu's Ji Tomb report did not remain as part of his later, reconstructed wenji.

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As we proceed, these aspects of the Ji Tomb affair will be analyzed and explained. Xun Xu's role as leader of the examination and transcription of the Ji Tomb texts was seemingly not challenged, although Xun's enemies existed. In the emperor's mind, Xun would have seemed to be the archeology "czar." Xun Xu's Jinshu biography says: Later (the context implying about 280), [after] the ancient-script bamboo texts were discovered in the Ji tomb, Xu [and He Qiao] were ordered to collate and order them. They used them to make the Zhongjing (or, "Palace Classics"), and they were formed into categories in the Imperial Library ~X~VIIt.{i~, 3,iU;(ET£\#r 31

The Tang editors here were more interested in the just-mentioned cataloging than in the Ji-text paleology and historiography, so we look elsewhere for evidence. To do that, first we examine Xun's own document about the finds and the makeup of his team. It is the only fully articulated, surviving "preface" to a Ji Tomb text. Xun Xu, as head of archiving activities at the capital, wrote the preface in a succinctly official capacity; and in its text are phrases that constitute a "report" (though not stated as such) on the bamboo slips as a whole. The name of the Ji Tomb text being prefaced was Mu Tianzi zhuan ;f~:x-=r1~ (which Shaughnessy shows may have been titled differently in the original bamboo slips, and/or by other commentators).32 A version of the team's complete transcription of the body of Mu Tianzi zhuan itself is extant, as is the body of the Zhushu jinian. Because Xun's court status remained high, sometime around 282, but not late 282, as he and his team were transcribing, Xun was praised by the emperor for his long service to the dynasty:33 Today we make Xu Imperial Household Grandee,34 with ceremonies equal to those of the Three Counselors,35 and with the privilege of establishing his own office and making summonses to officials. He will continue to take care of his posts as Inspector of the Palace Writers, Palace Attendant, and marquis, as before. 31 IS 39, p. II5+ The first sentence of the passage seems to follow the notice about Xun Xu and He Qiao given in SS 33, p. 955, but dropping mention of He, which I restore in brackets; also LiulBiannian 7, p. 105. 32 Shaughnessy, Rewriting, pp. 17 2 -73.

33

IS 39, p.

II56.

Imperial Household Grandee was ranked just above the various ministers y[ijl; in Han this official was manager of funeral rites; in Wei it was an honorary title, and this continued under Jin; thus it was very much a non-specific add-on for especially high rewards and promotions; see IS 24 ("Zhiguan"), p. 725. 35 IS 24 ("Treatise on Officials"), pp. 724-27, offers a concise view. The three counsel34

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The date of this promotion is difficult to deduce. The Jinshu biography says "in mid-Taikang ::tEl9=t ," which might mean anywhere in that reign, 280 through 289, or perhaps only 284-86. But the next passage of the biography mentions Jia Chong's death, occurring May 19, 282, as happening "at the time 8'if." Immediately after Jia's death, Xun made proposals to the throne about Jia's replacement as Grand Commandant. Therefore, on circumstantial evidence I would date the honorary promotion of Xun Xu to somewhere in 282. Chapter Two (the section "Factions") noted that about ten years previously Xun's appointment as Household Grandee was purposefully delayed; now it was redeemed with added honors. The Mu Tianzi zhuan preface has survived as part ofXun Xu's oeuvre, which is known as his "wenji }C*" (collected writings), a genre name that indicated a collection of an individual's various pieces. There are many dozens of contemporaneous wenji at least partly extant, some of which, like Xun's, were reconstituted in the late-Ming Han Wei Liuchao baisan jia ji {Ift/\ ~Jj *~, first printed in the 1640S and eventually copied in the Qing imperial Siku Library. In the Sibu congkan [9 £FiltU series (using a sixteenth-century printing), the preface is followed by the entire Mu Tianzi zhuan. 36 My translation of the preface is basically a slightly emended version of Shaughnessy's. I have taken the next step of collating several of the editions, and I mention several substantive variants. More importantly, I start with several lines of an "old colophon" not found in standard versions; these were referred to but not quoted by Shaughnessy. We must call the lines "spurious" because their independent transmission is attested in a vague manner; yet both Shaughnessy and I accept certain embedded facts concerning members of Xun's team, one of whom, if my theory about his identity is correct, is more important than previously noticed in scholarship.37

=

ors had derived from the Zhou model of the three archons Taizai, Taifu, and Taibao. Jin took the system as practised sporadically by Wei and made it into Sansi: all being classed as top archons. The perquisite called "ceremonials equal to" was added by precedent in the Han (106 AD); and that concerning "establishing offices" was a Wei precedent. 36 For a history of the HWLC as a chief supply of reconstituted wenji, and its printing history, see Howard L. Goodman, article forthcoming in Dien et al., Handbook of Six Dynasties Sources. The SKQS edn. carries the preface only (j. 38, pp. I2a-b); having checked it against several editions, I can say that it is in some sense the preferred one. See also the version in QjW 31, pp. lOb-IIa. 37 Trans. Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 140, gives part of the preface, and the part not included (see ellipsis) is translated p. 172 because of the structure of his argument. His

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Translation of the«Mu Tianzi zhuan" Preface by Xun Xu's Official Team, Written 282-83 The following is based on the text in Han Wei Liuchao baisan jia ji (having collated the Siku quanshu edition against other ones). This first paragraph, however, is found only in the Sibu congkan version: Preface to the "Mu Tianzi zhuan drawn up by minister Xun, a Palace Attendant, Inspector of Palace Writers, Imperial Household Grandee,38 and Marquis of Jibei 1'lt)(I1W}l;1\~' Illrll I,WdllA*:kjld)'W)t1~ 1:(1"1] lUjm.39

Below are five lines stating team members. The lines purportedly once belonged to the preface and were restored based on an "old colophon" to Mu Tianzi zhuan; this is described in Qu Yong's lUI Qingera catalog "Tieqin tongjian lou zangshu mulu" ~~iliWwW § ~~. Each phrase below is said by Qu to be a "line" and thus here are numbered 1-5. 40 r) < Minister Xun, a Palace Attendant, Inspector of Palace Writers, Imperial Household Grandee, and Marquis of Jibei 1S: III 1,%:YGr~7cjl( rJW~t1~ I:UtJj' >

reference to the data contained in the old colophon is on p. 138. 38 Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 140 (n. 27), via Zhu,jizhong, p. 38, mentions that Xun at this time may have been "Left" Imperial Household Grandee, for which post see IS 24, p. 728. Just above, I deduced that it occurred in the months leading to early 282. This is the main reason that I have made "282-83" the date of the preface. Zhu's reason for mentioning "Left" grandee is not clear to me; the only use of that' in reference to Xun Xu comes in Wudi's annals US 3, p. 79), announcing Xun's death in 289. 39 In Xun's wenji (HWLC) we have only the preface, and not the body of the ancient Mu Tianzi zhuan itself. The SBCK (chubian ser.) edn. (based on the 16th-c. Tian yi ge *'I:jf] printing of"Mu Tianzi zhuan") carries both the whole work and Xun's preface, as well as a 1350 preface and the commentary of Guo Pu (276-324); see Remi Mathieu, "Mu t'ien tzu chuan" fW::kI1W, in Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China, and Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1993), pp. 343-44, including listing of all known edns., some independent of the Tianyi ge. Zhu, Iizhong, p. 38, feels that the line may have been the first of the five lines of the "old colophon" (see below), with "1IUItMl~" becoming altered by the time of the Tianyi ge edn. Much ink has been spilled over whether Fan Qin ylZJJ;X (1506-1585), the assembler of the Tianyi ge library, may have forged the Bamboo Annals and Mu Tianzi zhuan; on this, see Shaughnessy (esp. pp. 193-204). 40 See "Tieqin" in the Xuxiu SKQS collection, vol. 926. There is no clear date anchor for the process: Qu quotes an "old colophon" that narrates how a Yuan-era printed text of Mu Tianzi zhuan had inspired quite a bit of editing and manipulation, through other owners and hand-copies, in order to arrive at a "guwen" version. If one technically rejects the five lines, then at least what we are seeing is how scholars and book collectors from about 1300-1600 reconstructed the Xun team. I argue, below, that one person mentioned (chen Zan) can be plausibly identified via external context.

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2) < Minister Qiao, fulfilling duties as Intendant Gentleman-Consultant in the Palace Writers and Earl of Shangcai ~J'lill L:i lllt& r'-( HI) >

3) < Masters of Documents and Foremen Clerks in the Imperial Library [ministers] Qian, Xun, and Ji JWJ, ~fj- > 4) < Text Collator in the Imperial Library, Zhang [minister] Zhou 1Y:~t:-: III QI5 ~l~

[Gl.] Hf > 4l

5) 42 < The ancient-script Mu Tianzi zhuan has been completed; we respectfully make a report that combines and orders [the text(s)].111·50r,&kf 1~~ C,'f~ 1'[<'1'( ~\/: tH }iR>

This ends the spurious portion ofXun's preface. The text of today's extant editions of the preface now follows. My translation, below, adopts that of Shaughnessy with stylistic and nonsubstantive variations, but also gives several comments in the notes concerning substantial differences. In the second year of the Great Vigor [Taikang] era ;((»}t)I': (from February 6,281, through January 25,282),43 people ofJi county illicitly burgled and opened an ancient tomb. As for the texts that they obtained, they were all bamboo strips, bound with silk r~frfm~~j~f,~;d. Based on the minister [Xun] Xu's L), 1: 1lWj44 prior determination of the ancient (that is, Zhou) foot-rule, we measured the lengths of the strips as being two chi, four cun~J\!'ITg -'llong; they were written with black ink, each strip having forty characters. Ji is in the the territory of the Warring States-period state of Wei. Based on the Annals that were obtained ~NI' q!,~acif:, this was the tomb of Wei Huicheng Wang's ~J1Ut!:.~nx;r son Ling Wang {>( _T. [sic] .45 In "Roots of the Generations [Shiben],,,46 this was

41 Zhu, }izhong, p. 49, thinks this should be "chen Zhou" but was later miswritten as "Zhang Zhou." 42 Ibid., also holds that this originally was "chen Zan." 43 Assuming actual first robbery or first report of robbery was in late fall of 279 (following Wudi's Annals), here Xun's statement shows that well-connected officials themselves may have been confused over the date of the act versus the date of the report. See, above, n. 27. 44 Shaughnessy has "Based on my.,. ": this is plausible, but I prefer to see the preface as written as a bureau announcement, in passive tone and third person. 45 Pei Yin's commentary at Shiji 44, p. 1849, quotes He Qiao (via Xun) stating this fact as well, but using the phrase "~I.. " The SBCK edn. also writes the incorrect "~"; the Ming edn. of HWLC as well as the principal Qing-era re-cuts of the latter, all continue with "ling", but the SKQS version of HWLC as well as Yan Kejun's C}W version of the preface both correct it to "jin." See Shaughnessy, Rewriting, pp. 134-35, 140, for an explanation of ''jin wang." He is right to say that we cannot know whether Xun Xu and his team or a later printing made the error in the preface text. 46 "Shiben" was mentioned in HS 30 ("Yiwenzhi"), p. 1714, as a genealogical histo-

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Xiang Wang Based on the "Chronological Tables of the Six States" in the Records of the Historian from the twenty-first year of Ling Wang [sic] until the year of the burning of the books in the thirty-fourth year of Qin Shihuang47 was eighty-six years, and to the second year of [current] Taikang when these texts were first obtained was in all 579 years. (The following ellipsis represents a passage dealing solely with the narrative features of "Mu Tianzi zhuan" itself. I am dispensing with that discussion.) ... Ji commandery collected the texts carelessly, losing and breaking many of them. Although their phrases are not standard, they are all the ancient text [versions], and can indeed be viewed and gone over ~lfl~JtY(/f"; j.I~ ryJikI'I-flj':)J},l"nl~l 'itX. [We, or, the Imperial Library]48 carefully transcribed them onto yellow paper two-feet [high]49 and submitted them ~. ·.)~jlURI[SJ:, requesting that after events had settled down both the original strip texts and the transcription be given to the Palace Library to be copied. [The officials] will store them in the Palace Classics and duplicate [them] in the Third Archive (or, Three Archives) »i~Lrlrf.~l~, mlj;(E~_·.-:I*J.50 [This] Preface respectfully [submitted].51

Seven points emerge from the preface: I. Chronology of discovery, retrieval, transcription, and preface Xun understood much of the in situ conditions of the tomb materials, but this would have been got from hearsay. Despite the remarks about physical aspects, it is doubtful, even if possible, that he inspected the tomb in person in Ji commandery. He assigns the year Taikang 2 (ending late-January, 282) to the robbery and the handover of slips to the authorities. Generally in chronological summaries like this, the use of

ry; commentators have asserted that it was a source used by Sima Qian. See also SS 33 ("Jingji" B), p. 990. 47 The HWLC and SKQS edns. incorrectly read "Qin shiwang ~:F"; following SBCK, I use Qin shihuang "ltL" 48 I differ from Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 140, who translates the previous sentence as ''Although the language is not eloquent, they are all ancient texts rather worthy of note. The Director carefully transcribed them ... " He may have accidentally read ~~ as\:gi:, thus implying a full-stop after W3L I have observed the punctuation provided in the Ming edn. of HWLC, namely: "nnIBI1~." The subsequent sentence thus contains no stated subject. 49 Shaughnessy, ibid., says "width," but this in the sense of a long scroll's width. Yithai ],Jr~ 58 (Xuxiu SKQS edn., p. II5I), quotes Zhongxing shumu's rclrJl'~~·~ln-::1 small precis of the preface, which states that the transcriptions were made on "one-foot" "writing paper fif*[l;" not "two-foot" "yellow paper." 50 Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. I4 0 , says" ... and to be placed in the Central Classics ... ". The action here may be simply the inserting of the yellow sheets of new transcription into Xun's ongoing catalog called "Jin Zhongjing." Alternatively, rlrl.:\~{ may have been shorthand for the specific archive of the Palace Writers offices. On both points, see below, sect. "The Ji-Tomb Texts Are Folded into Ongoing Work." 51 Ibid., does not translate this final, short sentence.

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dates tends to flatten events. We can refine things by using circumstantial evidence from official titles and other details. We can accept "fall/winter 279-80" (from Wudi's "Annals") as the officially reported time of the robbery, even though the robbery per se may have involved many months of tunneling and deception. From about January of 280 to February of 281, while large-scale war logistics, including demobilization, were underway, the bamboo slips were gathered into carts by Ji authorities and taken to Luoyang and stored at first in the Imperial Library. There, the Library Inspector Xun Xu and others measured, cleaned, and sorted damaged slips. Based on processes seen in modern archeology, it is unlikely that Xun's team could have finished cleaning and sorting more than a very small percentage of the texts by February, 281. Moreover, we do not have to assume that after "Taikang 2" (after late-January, 282) no further cleaning and sorting occurred. A fair deduction about the actual time of transcribing Mu Tianzi zhuan is that the Xun team, having established that its bamboo-slip text was in decent enough shape, perhaps the best of all,52 spent from about mid-281 to mid-282 transcribing it onto presentation paper in modern characters. We saw that Xun Xu was made Imperial Household Grandee in 282, an appointment that logically occurred prior to the presentation of the preface. In the "old colophon," He Qiao was called "GentlemanConsultant in the Palace Writers" and listed after the name of his superior, Xun Xu. He is treated in detail, below, but one fact must be mentioned: he is known to have been Prefect of the Palace Writers in about 282, an apparent promotion occurring late in that year. In sum, the text of Mu Tianzi zhuan and the preface (with its general description of Ji Tomb texts) were completed by a point late in 282-before He Qiao's promotion. 2.

Timing vis-a-vis Du Yu

Given factionalism and Xun Xu's tendency to control personnel, we have to assume that at first only the Xun team had access to the Ji Tomb original slips. Xun must have decided to use the Mu Tianzi zhuan preface in particular for some reason as a vehicle for making a report on the damaged texts and the team's techniques. I would argue that it was the very first such report to have been based on examining the bamboo slips. Du Yu's report narrates his own itinerary: already 52 Initial shipment to the Imperial Library and the good extant condition of Mu Tianzi zhuan are both stated by Du Yu in his own report; see Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 143.

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ensconced in the south upon closure of the war, he went from Jiangling 1Ir5~ to Xiangyang ~ ~J)J in "282, month 3" (which began March 26). A few lines later, he says, "I got to see [the slips] late."53 In my opinion, "seeing" would place him in Luoyang, but probably early in 283. Deducing when and how Du saw the slips is a difficult matter that is pursued later in this chapter. 3. Editing difficulties We learn that the original strips had been strung with silk chords, had used black ink, and had been handled poorly by Ji commandery authorities. There is reference to loss and breakage (confirmed by Du Yu and Shu Xi). Xun thus has an excuse for possible mistakes in rearranging the jumbled slips. He seems to be letting us know that it was difficult. Another sort of excuse is the phrase "after events had settled down," which indicates that there had been some confusion, perhaps in the area of lines of authority and orders, as personnel and resources were thinned out during the war. But if we take the verb as "settle down" (in the future indicative), it may refer to intense goings-on in the Library, with Xun's mustering personnel.

4. Summary of Mu Tianzi zhuan The preface gives a full summary of the contents of Mu Tianzi zhuan. I have not included Shaughnessy's translation of that portion. 54 It lists its narrative parts and mentions its descriptive language. This will have, as we see, some bearing on the matter of Xun's having provided, or not, summaries of the contents of items that went into the lin Palace Classics register, as discussed later. 5. Measuring strips and line-lengths Above, Xun Xu refers to his metrology of the 270S that established a reformed Jin "foot" that he could demonstrate was a return to the Zhou foot. After stating that the lengths of the ancient bamboo slips (perhaps implying all of them) were 2.4 Zhou feet R (= approx. 55.44 cm),55 the preface then says that he transcribed them to yellow paper Ibid. See ibid, p. 17 2 . 55 Many pre-Qin slips from Chu (most of our retrieved examples) are in the 35-55 cm range (personal communication from E. Shaughnessy, April, 2009), and we can extrapolate this to northern practices. In Han times 55 cm was also one of several standard lengths; see Michael Loewe, "Wood and Bamboo Administrative Documents of the Han Period," in Edward L. Shaughnessy, ed., New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to the Reading of Inscriptions and Manuscripts (Berkeley: So53

54

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2.0 new-Jin-feet tall (46.2 cm)-significantly different in size. Any notion that Xun's "2 feet" resulted from a metrological conversion from the "2.4 Zhou feet" would seem incorrect. In earlier chapters we learned that the standard that Xun Xu reformed by shortening was the incorrect Eastern Han- Wei foot, not the Zhou foot, and the differential for that had been .04 foot, not" .4". (Eastern Han and Wei practice had lengthened the purported Zhou foot by this tiny amount.) The Ji Tomb had contained late-Zhou-era slips, thus Xun would not have corrected downward by a ".04" per foot, since his "New Jin chi" paralleled the Zhou value. Furthermore, by choosing a much shorter paper size, the team either squeezed the original 40-character-per-line standard onto the much shorter dimension, or let the lines flow their own way. 56 Shaughnessy's study has shown that in fact, considering the extant Zhushu jinian (we are thus not speaking of Mu Tianzi zhuan) with its 40-character lines, Xun's transcription did not parse into accurate 40-word lines. Xun was seeking a certain regularity outside the needs of mere facsimile transcription: he was aiming for both fine display and modular efficiency in archival storage. In addition, the fact of colored paper bears on our discussion, below, of a classifying scheme being imposed on the Palace Classics register.

6. Disposition and storage As with the Han-era flute-regulators that he and Zhang Hua discovered in 274, Xun again demonstrates the extensive control he had over retrieved objects of antiquarian and ritual interest; he could, if he so deemed, destroy objects that he thought incorrect or of no use, or he could direct them to be carefully saved, which he ends up announcing as: " ... store them in the Palace Classics and duplicate [them] in the Third Archive (or, Three Archives)." This alerts us to the probability that at least two, and maybe more, copies of the team's transcriptions were made, and possibly even direct facsimiles of the bamboo-slips per se, imitating their ancient character forms and damaged areas. Moreover, storage in the Archives indicates that a more secure place than the

ciety for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1997), pp. 161-68. 56 Zhu, Jizhong, p. 10, believes that in fact Xun was making a metrological correction (followed by Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 141, who also assumed that the Ji Tomb supplied the items that allowed Xun to reform metrology: the latter had occurred, however, in 273-74). Further, I do not accept Zhu's theory about Xun's having produced 2o-character lines on his paper medium.

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Imperial Library was sought, one less vulnerable to access by scholars of whom Xun Xu did not approve.

7. Shiji and chronology The team noticed that the slips used datings based on a local king's own reign years. They consulted Shiji for converting those to a more general chronology. In the part of the preface not included, above, Xun also states that the bamboo-slip story of Muwang was similar to that found in Shiji. This will bear on our further discussions of the approaches to historiography during Xun Xu's time.

The Team Members Xun Xu's imperially commissioned team was pressing forward to get the Ji Tomb texts organized into something they viewed as close to the originals but also to transcribe them into modern orthography. A chief aid was He Qiao fU dill (b. ca. 235; d. 292), named in the "old colophon" as a "Gentleman-Consultant in the Palace Writers." We have a problem with errors and poor organization in his Jinshu biography. 57 We learn facts about his older kin, a few of his titles and posts, and his style of mourning for parents, but few chronological anchors exist, probably reflecting even earlier textual deficits. He Qiao's family were of somewhat lesser noble status than the Xuns but were rising in stature and especially in wealth. 58 He was lauded as governor at Yingchuan ~)II, which was the home region of the Xun family, a factor possibly contributing to Xun Xu's suspicion. Acting as a kind of prefatory summary of He's life, without any datemarkers, the first paragraph says that he gained praise from Jia Chong and came to the emperor's attention, then became Prefect of the Palace Writers. (This is a key datum and is analyzed, below.) He Qiao openly disliked Xun Xu and seems to have been aligned with the proWar faction. He was in fact lauded by Zhang Hua. In the biography of Ren Kai 1:f't:1t1:, who was an influential adviser of the throne throughout the 270s, we are told that Ren's associates included He's "followers" and Zhang Hua, and that these (and other) friends of Ren were 57 One example is at IS 45, p. 1283: He together with Xun Xu and Xun Yi goes to assess the heir-apparent's condition; the episode is placed after the date-marker "When Wu was pacified"; but it cannot be dated post-280, since Yi died in 274. Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 138 (and his n. 20), although citing the old colophon seems to err by saying He Qiao was on Xun's team with the rank of ling Zhongshu ling. We have just seen that the colophon says "ling Zhongshu huiyi lang." 58 Du Yu stated that He was obsessed with money; see He's biography, IS 45, p. 1284.

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aligned against several chief members of the Jia-Xun faction-namely, Jia Chong, Yang Yao, and others. 59 We must attempt to reconstruct He's career ladder because his role in the Ji Tomb texts and in Xun's life is much more complex than simply aiding Xun Xu in the Mu Tianzi zhuan transcription. His biography later states that "when Wu was pacified" He Qiao was made Palace Attendant 1~ t=p and received special courtesies, thus occurring about 281. The appointment as Palace Attendant was not linked to a place in the Palace Writers hierarchy; in fact, a high official in the Writers could also be a Palace Attendant. The Jinshu editors then restate a famous Shishuo xi nyu anecdote about the conflict between the Prefect and the Inspector of the Palace Writers. To infer that the conflict was only about personal emotions would be misleading. At the beginning of Chapter Four I discussed in detail the way the two positions conflicted in vertical authority because of changes in the offices made by Cao Pi, the first emperor of Wei. The longer, more nuanced, version of the prefect-inspector conflict given in Shishuo relates that He and Xun Xu had to share the Palace Writers' carriage (one thinks of today's limousine service for many hundreds of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.). The sharing was in my opinion, however, caused directly by the Wei-era change in the structure of the bureau. Prefect He Qiao could not contain his dislike of Inspector Xun Xu partly because the two were a twinned leadership, and He did not want such a close association. After this, according to Shishuo, the bureaucracy stopped the carriage-sharing requirement. 6o The story itself, however, yields no fact by which to date the year He Qiao received appointment as prefect, but we have other evidences. One evidence comes from an extensive debate recorded in the "Treatise on Rites" in Jinshu that concerned proper etiquettes and relationships in cases of second wives. The debate began in about 280, but included about a dozen opinions lodged separately by leading scholars, and thus may have extended for a year or two. About one-third of the way into the opinions we hear that He Qiao, called an Intendant 4J[ Prefect of the Palace Writers, shared the opinion of a certain group consisting of Inspector Xun Xu, a certain Xun Xu relative, and Xiahou Zhan ~ 1*rt!: (243-91).61 The next evidence is the roughly mid- to late-282 preface

59 (,(l

61

jS 45, p. 1286. SSXY no. 5-14 (SSHYIMather, p. 156). jS 20 ("Li zhi" B), p. 63 6 .

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to Mu Tianzi zhuan itself, as seen, with He's status given as Intendant Gentleman-Consultant in the Palace Writers. The third is a document written by the historian Chen Shou (233-297) and carried in his Sanguo zhi. It is a memorial dated March 25, 274, presenting a certain work of Chen to the Jin court. 62 Referring to his superiors Xun Xu and He Qiao, Chen calls He an Intendant Prefect of the Palace Writers. Of these three, the ritual debate evidence is the best, assuming the debate was protracted and He Qiao was called upon about 281-82. Second best is the preface datum from the old colophon to the Mu Tianzi zhuan preface, which although "spurious" gives us no cause to reject the reconstructed office title for He. We must, however, reject Chen's Sanguo zhi datum. It seems to reflect Chen's words as written in the 280s while he redacted Sanguo zhi, giving the still-living He Qiao his properly updated title. Most important, from about 271 forward, the Prefect of Palace Writers was Zhang Hua, probably (but not certainly) until about 279-80. This must rule out He Qiao's occupying the post then. Finally, although men's office titles can be used anachronistically, the "Rites Debate" and the old colophon may be accurate: He Qiao was aligned with Xun Xu on policy in the former case and ranked officially below Xun Xu in the latter. Since both seem to reflect He in the year 282, then we can say that they show the moment He Qiao move up a notch on the Palace Writers career path. We must recap. He Qiao, leaning toward Zhang Hua's faction and haughty towards Xun, was put into Xun Xu's Ji Tomb project around 28r-perhaps through Jia Chong's influence. In that year he had been made Palace Attendant, a post traditionally linked to historiography and textual work. For the Mu Tianzi zhuan team, He was made Gentleman-Consultant in the Palace Writers. After that, in about mid-282, he was promoted probationarily to Prefect of the Palace Writers by his nominal superior, Xun Xu. The post of prefect seems not to have been filled since 279, when Prefect Zhang Hua went off to oversee the Wu War.63 After the war Zhang struggled against the Jia-Xun bloc, and as 62 SGZ 35, pp. 929-31. See William G. Crowell and Robert Joe Cutter, trans. and annot., Empresses and Consorts: Selections from Chen Shou's Records of the Three States with Pei Songzhi's Commentary (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999), pp. 62-63. 63 I base myself partly on the table of leading Jin offices by Qing-era Wan SitonglJi~ HfrIBJ, "Jin jiang xiang dachen nianbiao" -111(-jl?J·1;ll*J:l:/cl<~; in Ershiwu shi bubian -~·.I·h S1:{1IH~fiJ (Shanghai: Kaiming shu dian, 1936-37), vol. 3, pp. 3327 ff. Wan places He as prefect from the last half of 279 through 281; that makes a certain sense (this was the Wu War), but I can find no datum to support it; and He's biography is no help.

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he faced the prospect of banishment to Youzhou he would have found it advantageous to have He Qiao as the prefect, even if He was being billed as a faction-mender. But to Zhang, a real benefit may have been that as the new prefect, He Qiao was freed from Xun Xu's scholarly control and could pursue other Ji Tomb texts independently; apparently he remained as prefect until about 286 (see Table 5, below). We have indirect corroborating evidence that He in fact wrote his own remarks on Zhushu jinian, work that was criticized by Xun Xu. (These last points are taken up, below.) We have no record of any other separate prose or verse title written by He Qiao. 64 There were other scholars on Xun's team who are listed only in the old colophon, quoted above. Five are called by their given names (not surnames, except possibly Mr. Zhang) and official titles. Four have titles as lower personnel in the Imperial Library, three being Masters of Documents, and one a Collator. We know nothing else about them, but their role in the Library indicates that Xun Xu continued to use that bureau for his projects, and he continued to locate personnel, appoint them, and name them in his official pronouncements. It is not hard to imagine, further, that dozens more low-ranked technicians were working to decipher the disordered bamboo slips and transcribe ancient graphs. At this point in the old colophon, we come to Fu (?), or "chen" Zan. He is not described as a member of the Library staff, but a Gentleman of the Palace. It turns out that among Six Dynasties and Tang commentators of Shiji and Hanshu, this person was thought (actually guessed at) by some to be surnamed Fu 1f. I believe that the old colophon's use of "Fu," above, was a Song- or Yuan-era emendation that made it possible to identify him by drawing on that earlier guesswork ("chen" later getting copied as "Fu"). Zhu Xizu is the only modern scholar to even hint that the man may have been surnamed Wang but he provided no details. 65 Later in this chapter, I will argue that the 64 On He Qiao's remarks about Zhushu jinian, see Zhu, }izhong, pp. 6, 48 (the source is Pei Yin's commentary to Shiji 44, p. 1849). Songshi )j~)l: (Zhonghua edn.) 203 ("Treatise on Literature"), p. 5088, lists the title "Zhushu jinian" specifically as "zhu (annotated) by Xun Xu and bian (edited) by He." 65 Zhu, }izhong, p. 50. See Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 138, n. 20, who cites Zhu and the early sources in detail. The Tang remark is by Yan Shigu, who says that the surname of a certain early Hanshu commentator almost always referred to as "chen Zan" was unknown, but that he was of the Jin era and often referred to the Ji-tomb Zhushu jinian in his glosses. Yan stated that the attempts to identify him as "Fu" were not solid enough to treat as fact; see "Xuli," preface to Hanshu (appendix to the Zhonghua edn.,

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man on the Ji Tomb team was Wang Zan, thus from here on I call him "Wang/Fu Zan." (There is confusion about three Wang Zans in Jin sources: one has the given name:l:, one W(, and one 31, our man.) The jinshu context, one of historiographical debates, actually called him a zhuzuo lang, or Drafter. This post was low-ranked but not low in status. In late Eastern Han times, Palace Gentleman was often assigned to well-known scholars for the purpose of working in the Dongguan JRiJL a bureaucratically isolated but prestigious archive that was not revived per se in Western Jin. Moreover, Drafters had been associated with history-writing projects in the Dongguan. 66 We should recall that Xun Xu himself had been a Drafter in 266 while concurrently Inspector of Palace Writers, thus suggesting that "drafter" was more of an ad hoc duty term than an office per se. The Mu Tianzi zhuan preface has clearly indicated the existence of a team, but as we see, following, the Ji Tomb effort was compounded by a renewal of the jin Zhongjing bu 9=' ~t-~~ Uin Palace Classics Register) project, thus we should envision a very large supply of scribes to work on that. We recall from Chapter Four that Xun had tried to decline work in musicology, because he faced "a book-compilation of over 100,000 scrolls ." This was a reference, albeit an exaggeration, to the jin Palace Classics project, which after 280, with the new infusion of ancient Ji Tomb texts, burgeoned in size. We turn to that project next.

THE ]I-TOMB TEXTS ARE FOLDED INTO ONGOING WORK ON THE JIN PALACE CLASSICS REGISTER (jIN ZHONGjING BU)

The phraseology of his jinshu biography, as quoted above, hinted that Xun Xu and his team were ordering the Ji Tomb texts and analyzing them so as to place them into Xun's four-part bibliographic categorization of the imperial archive. The earlier part ofXun's cataloging had begun in 274, when, after his appointment to the Library and the access that it afforded to archives and storage rooms, he and Zhang Hua p. 4). For a translation of Yan's passage, see "Scott Galer, "Sounds and Meanings: Early Chinese Historical Exegesis and Xu Guang's Shiji yinyi," Ph.D. diss. (University of Wisconsin, 2003), pp. 66-67. Zan was also quoted in Shuijing zhu, calling him "chen Zan"; but it once calls him "XuerW Zan," which Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 215, suspects was just a mistal<e (as do I). 66 See Howard L. Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths, 100-300 AD: The Tung-kuan, Taoist Dissenters, and Technical Skills," AM 18.1 (2005), pp. 117, 129. For the Jin debates, see JS 40, p. II74-

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instituted methods of organization (see Chapter Four). In 281-83, in addition to the Ji Tomb slips and the work those required, Xun and his team (of course now without Zhang Hua, who was vilified by the Jia-Xun faction beginning in 280 and exiled in 282) were cataloging the entire holdings into an expanded imperial "register 1~J ."67 More about this is in Suishu in the introduction to its "Treatise on Literature" :68 When Wei succeeded the Han, the Wei court collected works that had been scattered and lost, and stored them in the three archives-those for the Library, the Palace [Writers], and outside [the Palace] (or, the Magnolia Terrace) Hlatl:f&'l'f, 'i', !>'I-J14:J. 69 The Wei Gentleman of the Imperial Archives Zheng Mo tg!~W,A started to compile the Zhongjing 'I' ~(~~ (or, "Writings in the Palace Library." [Later, under the Jin], Inspector of the Imperial Library Xun Xu drew upon [this] Zhongjing and remade (changed) it as the New Register (Xin bu ,Wi"t'it,:). It was divided into four sections, and included the amassed books. No. I was called the jiabu Erl~f!~, which had [works in] the Six Classics and included minor studies (that is, calligraphy and etymology); no. 2, the yibu Zi}!), contained schools of both the ancient and current masters (i.e., scholar-teachers), military documents, military specialists, and reckoning-divining it]" WX. NO.3, bingbuIJqtfl), contained historical records, precedents (that is, state policy and institutions), catalogs of [former?] imperial conspectuses J,jV1lli£~@ (or, The Catalog [or Register] of the Imperial Conspectus],70 67 In the following translation this word is used once, yet in references to Xun's catalog "bu" was not always used. I believe that some scholars who saw remnants of it over the centuries maintained the word" bu" to show that it was a register, that is, a catalog of all titles of palace books, with headings and perhaps occasional brief notes. It is possible that Xun included a number of short summaries or transcriptions; see the following discussion, and n. 70, below, nevertheless the bu genre must be distinguished from that of "anthology" (leishu). 68 SS 32 ("Jingji" A), p. 906. Cf. trans. Anthony Bruce Fairbank, "Ssu-ma 1(179-251): Wei Statesman and Chin Founder, An Historiographical Inquiry," Ph.D. diss. (Seattle: University of Washington, 1994), pp. 61-62, and discussion, p. 65. Other general remarks are those by Xie Zhuohua l~~W'1jW, gen. ed., Zhongguo tushu shi yu Zhongguo tushuguan shi '1'lg~"f,\\I¥&:)l.:~IQ'I'I!iXlh\',\I:ttcHrrst: (Wuhan: Hubei sheng gaodeng xuexiao shuguan gongzuo weiyuan hui and Wuhan daxue tushu qingbao xueyuan, 1985), pp. 88-89; and Jean-Pierre Drege, Les bibfiotheques en Chine au temps des manuscrits (jusque'au Xc siecfe) (Paris: Ecole Fran<;:aise d'Extreme-Orient, 1991), pp. 25-27. 69 On the Magnolia Terrace as the "external" archive, see SGZ 13, p. 422, cit. an unattributed biography ofXue XiafWn.Jl:. I have changed the SS editors' punctuation, because I interpret" 'II" as "the Zhongshu offices." 70 The Zhonghua editors do not side-score yet it was an attested work in Sui that became lost by Song times. Although logically the words used in SS to describe each ofXun Xu's four parts should be generic terms, not titles of works, this item possibly is a book title, meaning that a huge Wei-era bibliographic work, per se, was included in Xun Xu'sJin zhongjing [bu], but we cannot be certain. Huang fan perhaps was partly a table of contents and, judging from its size, also an anthology of transcribed works. The

NEW ANTIQUITIES, NEW FACTIONS

307

and miscellaneous [state] matters; no. 4, dingbu Tr',l), had poems, rhapsodies, portrait encomia 11',\HtiEt and the [transcriptions of] books from 71 the Ji Tomb. Altogether the four sections contained 29,945 juan.

There is some scholarly debate as to Xun Xu's specific role in establishing the sibu 12] if~ system. Some believe that Xun originated it, and that Liu Xin's ;UWc (46 BC-23 AD) Bielu JjU~* (stated in 274 as having been Xun's and Zhang Hua's model) in six divisions was directly transformed by Xun. Others claim that Wei-era Zheng Mo could not finish his project, which was merely taken over by Xun Xu using Zheng's color-coding. Finally, there is a view that Xun was not the system's creator, but that it was actually established by Li Chong of Eastern Jin times.72 I subscribe to version one, although one should carefully generalize this by saying it was a Wei-Jin and Southern Dynasties process, as described neatly by David R. Knechtges. The latter notes that the fourth part (ding bu) was a prototype of the later ji genre of anthologization, but probably was not truly devoted to belles lettres in its

*:ft

4th-c. "Wei lue" (SGZ 13, p. 422) gives details, some of which state that it was compiled ca. 220-22 by several important scholars, including Miao Xi t.~'§'.~ (186-245), Liu Shao ¥8tlWJ (fl. 220-240), and Wang Xiang=E%<. (fl. 220), who is elsewhere said to have dedicated a long time "editing (composing) an anthology m4!l4" ("Wei lue" at 23, p. 664). Huang Ian was stored in the Imperial Archives (bifu +~\JN); there were more than 40 bu (sections), each several tens of pian, totaling more than eight million characters. SS 34 ("Jingji" C), p. 1009, lists it extant at 120 juan, but Ruan's 6th-c. notes (see n. 72, below) indicate that as late as Liang it had had 680. See Fairbank, "Ssu-ma I," pp. 43-47; also Hu Daojing ,'iJHl1Hl'ft, Zhongguo gudai de leishu rl"Jl~I,JT1~~I'I~1!fi~lt: (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1982), pp. 40-43. On this question of the descriptions of what was in Xun's four parts, I believe the Zhonghua editors were mistaken by side-scoring "1R~IJIT:" as a title in the very next line of the translated passage, under Xun's fourth bu. See the sect. "Translation of the 'Mu Tianzi zhuan' Preface," above, on Xun's making transcripts of several Jizhong ancient texts and placing them in the Palace holdings: none is named "jizhong shu"; it is clearly a generic phrase and was often used that way in later writings. Just above, the SS passage introduced Xun's huge catalog as "Xin bu ffJl·~t1t"; but in a later part of the "Jingji zhi" (part 2, 33, p. 991), it is listed under the name jin zhong jinglllf'lrt.~fL with only 14 juan in Sui times! 72 This is based primarily on a remark in Ruan Xiaoxu's IVL:1':r.#'i (479-536) preface to his own catalog "Qi lu" -tJ1R, in Guang Hongming chi J.i.;rj~LI~HI~ (SBBY edn.) 3, pp. 5a-6b, which says that Xun Xu's, cum Li's, project was in five parts, with a section on Buddhist works. See also Yu Jiaxi Muluxue fa wei, han Gushu tongli I~I ~&~-1Jl lY~, i'fI~Li·IlH:iill1Ytl (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue, 2004), p. 89, and p. 86 reo Zheng Mo's color coding. All these arguments are summarized in Tang Mingyuan Jfffl~J:Jc, "Sibu fenlei fa zhi qiyuan bianxi" 174HII5}if-1'IrkzAidf)j(:rJHR, Tushu guan zazhi Ifi,Tlf~f~lif jf;1l}~~; 2005.9, pp. 77-79; also see David R. Knechtges, "Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms: The Anthology in Early Medieval China" in Scott Pearce, Patricia Ebrey, and Audrey Spiro, eds., Culture and Power in the Reconstitution of the Chinese Realm, 200-600 AD (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asian Center, 2001), pp. 200-41; see pp. 215-17.

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later sense, nor is it clear what was meant by "poems." Finally, Knechtges and earlier scholars are right in concluding that the fourth category became the repository of the Ji Tomb texts for logistical reasons: the texts were only just being transcribed,?3 and since the general catalog had begun in 274, Xun was not about to revamp previous work. One modern scholar, Zhao Wangqin Jl:it~~, gives evidences indicating that Xun's team devisedjin Zhongjing partly with high-quality display in mind, and used colors (at least for the Ji Tomb texts placed into the dingbu).74 The mention of yellow paper in the Mu Tianzi zhuan preface thus is significant as evidence of a method of categorization: possibly each bu was written on a different color of paper. In 282-83, Zhang Hua was no longer a participant in cataloging projects, having been exiled to Youzhou. It would have been Xun himself who developed the new four-part concept and a pro-Jin legitimizing name for the generic Wei-era "Zhong jing." We recall that in the 270S Xun had denounced the Wei for ritual mistakes in musicology, thus would have wanted his catalog as well to be "reformed" and purged of Wei aspects. The resulting four bu $ in descending order were: classics; early masters; historiography and institutions; and, finally, belles-lettres of a certain type. The Ji Tomb texts, which had lain incognito in 274, now had to be dealt with, and Xun's answer was to transcribe them into modern orthography and make them into paper scroll-books standardized in dimension and possessing decorative aspects like color that could signal their imperial quality and the bu to which they belonged. We know far too little about the final format and disposition of the transcribed Ji Tomb texts that ended up in the jin Zhongjing register. How many of those ancient texts made it in, and how many were deemed impossible to convert to a transcription due to corruption? More important, did Xun Xu write synopses for them, or only include their titles and some other short remark, or both? Were their entire transcribed texts placed into the register? The above Suishu passage goes on for another sentence, which casts further light. It says that Xun's jin Zhongjing bu only recorded "notices ;Ii'! and phrases ," and was replete with silk and bindings, but "As far as the intent of the [original] authors, there was no analysis."75 Knechtges, "Culling the Weeds," p. 215. Zhao Wangqin, "Xun Xu 'Zhongjing xinbu' shi you xulu de" 1'ijJJ)JlI'~~~;Jgl'WHEAr~;\[ ili~UI~J, Zhongguo dianji yu wenhua 111j!ili1~~MN!NxJt (2004.4), p. 15. 74

75

SS 32, p. 906 .

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309

This is curious, since we have just seen that a full, analytic summary of a Ji Tomb text was made by Xun's team. Suishu probably is referring to the larger register of books. If there was barely enough time for the team to have written small notices, then there was probably not enough time for full transcriptions and synopses of everything including Ji Tomb texts. Zhao Wangqin feels that Xun Xu did in fact write notices of Ji Tomb works in the Jin register, claiming that Xun would have kept up the model set by Liu Xin. 76 This seems to be correct, and we know based on evidences, raised below, that Xun Xu wrote small notices in another of his projects. I am suggesting two points: first, whatever notices were made about the thousands of Jin palace books were small notices, and that Suishu's point is that Xun's register did not have full reviews of the histories of texts or analyses of their contents. Second, Xun was treating his unusual fourth section differently from the other three. In fact, he did insert at least several full transcriptions of ancient writings (the Ji Tomb texts such as Mu Tianzi zhuan with its analytical preface) and perhaps relatively modern examples of belles lettres, reflecting Xun's decade-long compilation of small notices on recent literature, mentioned above. Before turning to these points, we must remember that Xun Xu began to be criticized on several fronts, starting around 283 with Du Yu's and Zhi Yu's ~~ (b. ca. 250, d. 3II) comments, as we see later on in this and the next chapter. It is one reason why I feel that his team's Ji Tomb work did not last much past 285. Zhao Wangqin has usefully pointed out that the above criticism in Suishu about lack of "analysis" reflects the fact that ideas about "histories" of literature were evolving just in Xun's own day, and by the Six Dynasties and Sui-era cataloging became an act of aesthetic shaping, increasingly geared toward discussions of the literary endeavor per se, not just the listing of titles and the careers of authors. 77 This phenomenon is evident in works concerning literature by both Xun Xu and Zhi Yu. Let us look at those now. Xun had already been compiling what seems from fragments to have been a history or review of literature. It may have functioned like a collection of literary lives, perhaps intended as a future chapter inside a history of Jin, on the order of a "Rulin zhuan" 11**1$, or a preface to an imperial book list. The name of this work was Wenzhang

76

Zhao, "Xun Xu 'Zhongjing xinbu," p.

12,

gives evidence from a quotation of jin

Zhongjing by Pei Songzhi that refers to a "mulu"; see n. 83, below. 77

Ibid., p. 14.

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xulu X~*0Z~~ ("Summaries of Literary Works," or "A Narrative Record of Literary Works"). The "Treatise on Literature" in Suishu calls it "Zazhuan wenzhang jia ji xu" *tU~X~*~~" and considers that it was a catalog § ~~, listing it just after Xun's fin Zhongjing register. 78 About fifteen surviving quotations show that Wenzhang xulu was oriented heavily (but not exclusively) toward writers' lives and writing careers-something like "narratives of wenji X*~~." It was being worked on by Xun as early as the mid-27os, and in one case it quotes a scholar's discussion of the Ji Tomb finds, bringing it down to late 281, or later. 79 Wenzhang xulu often grades writers' achievements in genres, ranging from poetry and fu to historiography and philosophy. Here and there we see quotations from belles lettres, and in some passages Xun summarizes overall ideas. In post-Western Jin quotations of passages from Xun's fin Zhongjing there is no direct evidence that such quotations came originally from Xun's Wenzhang xulu. Extant passages of fin Zhongjing in fact tend to be concerned with the Confucian classics (which reflects Xun's section I,jiabu),80 and they have no topical or subject overlap with the literary men discussed in the extant Wenzhang xulu fragments. Based on such meager evidences, we cannot deduce with certainty that the types of summary seen in Wenzhang xulu got placed in fin Zhongjing, but it is of course possible. Zhao Wangqin (in the article cited here) suggests that they did exist in the fourth section (dingbu) of fin Zhongjing. This question should be addressed as scholarship clarifies further the rise of anthologies and wenji and Xun Xu's role in it, especially his relatively literary "section four" of the fin Zhongjing project. Zhi Yu, who as we shall see was interested in the Ji Tomb project and critical of Xun-family scholarship, was also writing a literary compendium at this time titled Wenzhang liubie ji X~{m}ju~; we know very little about its function as a "catalog" or a critical ranking of later literature, although Suishu clearly thought it was the first and most influential of all zongji ~@ ,or general literary collections that anthologized a wide variety of genres, from court edicts and various 78 SS 33, p. 991, which lists it as having 10 j; see Rafe de Crespigny, The Records of the Three Kingdoms, Occasional Paper 9 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1970), p. 83. For a collection of fragments, see Lu Xun fl,'ill, Zhongjia wenzhang jilu XR~C~': ~'dlGW1t, in Iu Xun jilu jigu congbian t\U:J:1il([f.IYNI[IJ~VJ1H~;,J (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1999) 3, pp. 4II-q. Besides quotations in Pei Songzhi's commentary to SGZ, there are quotations in, e.g., SSXY no. 4.10, and Yiwen leiju '&\XYJJi~. 79 On dating Wenzhang xulu, see Zhao, "Xun Xu 'Zhongjing xinbu,'" pp. 10-11. 80

Zhao, ibid., p. 13.

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311

prose, to sets of poems. However, extant sections of the fun (essays ~) that Zhi Yu himself wrote to accompany his Wenzhang fiubie ji offer articulated arguments on didactic aesthetics, with much detail about genres, one of the very first of this type of discussion. 81 It is also possible to see factional and scholarly tension between Zhi and Xun Xu, arising in the late 270S when Zhi, a Zhang Hua protege, was perhaps twenty-five to twenty-eight years old. From 283 forward, Zhi applied ever more forceful criticism against Xun. After Xun's death, he took over the whole literary project of summing up past literature and even became Imperial Library Inspector in 302. Our discussion must return to Xun's larger project, the fin Zhongjing bu register. It was cited and discussed beginning very soon after his time. For example, Wang Yin's ~I early-fourth-century "Jinshu" gives details about the actual compilation process: Xun Xu was made Inspector of the Imperial Library. In 28r, from a tomb in Ji commandery he (or, the court) obtained bamboo books in ancient script. Xu's own hand went into ordering [it] IWJ T 1'-' assistants in [their various] departments annotated and wrote out [texts], and this became Zhongjing ~)~-r)~tr.~H~j~~J:IJ~(i~. Missing (perhaps meaning "uncertain") graphs in the classics and commentaries were in great part given evidential clarification f.i:~HW.lif&JX~r!fTif(~IYj .82

mrx;

In the middle of the fifth century, Pei Songzhi was reading Xun Xu's Zhongjing (calling it "Wudi Zhongjing bu" :J1\W r=p ~JlHiiljf or "Zhongjing bu" r=p ~~:g:~); he suggested in his Sanguo zhi commentary that in order to learn about a certain scholar's writings, one could consult Zhongjing. 83 It is not clear whether Pei meant only its title and place in the organizational scheme, or whether there was a whole text or a precis, but, as Zhao has demonstrated, it was more than likely the former-merely title and category. Later, during the Liang era (502-56), and on into Tang, further attention was paid, and we must assume that portions of the work still survived. 84 81 See SS 39, pp. 1081-82, for listings of Zhi's works, and 1089-90 for its placement of them at the head of a history of zongji anthologies. Joseph Roe Allen, III, "Chih Yii's Discussions on Different Types of Literature: A Translation and Brief Comment," in Parerga 3 (Seattle: Institute for Comparative and Foreign Area Studies, University of Washington, 1976), pp. 8-14, covers the didactic nature of Zhi's theories of literature. 82 Quoted in Beitang shuchao ~It:tit~fi:~) (before 638 AD; n.p.: Nanhai kongshi sanshi you san wan quan tang edn., 1888) 57, pp. 8a-b. There are variants of this passage that do not have ~T11); and some say !{ for T. 83 SGZ 13 zhu, p. 420, note to biography of Wang Su; and 38, p. 974. Pei remarks on the way a title in "Zhongjing bu" was structured, one juan being a list of contents and the remaining being broken down into pian. 84 Niu Hong 4-·11" the influential Sui-dynasty scholar, considered Xun's Zhongjing,

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To sum up, there is no evidence that Xun Xu and the Library staff produced complete, redacted transcriptions of any other Ji Tomb texts besides Mu Tianzi zhuan and Zhushu jinian (the Bamboo Annals). Both texts have survived via post-Tang printings. 85 Xun Xu probably had little remaining time, considering his ongoing catalog of the imperial book holdings Uin Zhongjing) and his project to narrate and characterize literature- Wenzhang xulu. The imperial catalog seems to have been title lists and brief bibliographic descriptions of all works in the imperial archives, and it was housed either in the Imperial Library or the archive of the Palace Writers (hence "Zhong[shu] jing"). Using small evidences, I believe it was written on uniformly cut and decorated paper of different colors to correspond with Xun's four categories. After 280, Xun probably planned to make complete summaries of all Ji Tomb works and place them, along with his new, modern-script transcriptions of them, into the fourth bu (section) of fin Zhongjing bu, but by about 284 had not got past Mu Tianzi zhuan and Zhushu jinian. I see Wenzhang xulu as tangentially related. It was begun in the mid-270s, but after 281 began to function for Xun as a supply of descriptions available for use in the imperial catalog, especially in the literary section (dingbu), and he may also have seen it as potentially a free-standing treatise.

THE REST OF THE WORLD WEIGHS IN

Other scholars were curious about the Ji Tomb finds, and, as mentioned, two other reports were made of the physical situation of the as well as his editing of the tomb texts, to have been excellent, but that the loss of political stability just after that was a great disaster in court archival history; 55 49, pp. 1298-99 (Niu's biography). On such loss, see Yu, Muluxue fawei, p. 89; and Drege, Les bibliotheques en Chine, pp. 33-34. A memorial to the Liang throne submitted by Shen Yue is quoted in the seventh-century "Treatise on Music" in Suishu to the effect that Shen found Xun's " ... Jin [-era] Zhongjing bu devoid of any restored music texts ~~W; and [the pertinent music writings] carried in Liu Xiang's Bielu J3iJ~ ended up being lost once again"; 5513, p. 288. (Shen also had at his disposal a transcribed Ji Tomb text of the Bamboo Annals, since he wrote a complete, surviving commentary to it.) In a 719 debate on the merits of Xiaojing and Laozi commentaries, Sima Zhen ;;]N§Jtl referred to Xun's Zhongjing; see Quan Tang wen ~mfX 402, p. 4a; on the debate, see David McMullen, State and Scholars in T'ang China (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1988), p. 85. Scholars in Qing times made references; e.g., Zhu Yizun Pushu ting ji 1I~~~lr ;~q;M (SBCK edn.) 55, p. 2a, in a bibliographic postface to Bencao yanyi 4-,:j'I'i:m~~, says that a work called Ziyi I1'f~ bencao jing was cited in Xun's Zhong jing bu. 85 Shaughnessy concentrates on the Annals, but gives an overview of the same problems attendant upon Mu Tianzi zhuan; see Rewriting, pp. 172-77.

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313

jumbled slips that resided in the Imperial Library by 280. Before turning to those scholars, we must consider the social and intellectual paths that led them to the Ji Tomb project, of course other than sheer excitement and curiosity. First was access, which is complicated in and of itself. It seems that no Luoyang scholar got to see the tomb and its remaining unpilfered items before removal-only local officials in Ji. Thus, the two other reports (by Du Yu and Shu Xi) were based on access in Luoyang due to the authors' statuses and connections. Also, Xun Xu could not prevent (if he was in fact trying to do so) various of his team's transcriptions from circulating externally. This brings in a social aspect-namely, factional arrangements and timing. A person basically had to be in Luoyang at a good moment. The Wu War factions were melting, but a realignment along scholarly lines was just then developing, and personal enmities that had festered from the mid-270s to the end of the war still existed in some cases. Filiations of access, sometimes involving teacher-student, faction, and mentor relationships, can be teased out of the evidences, as we see. Third, scholars generally could not engage Ji Tomb problems at a deep level without the ability to read ancient scripts, raising the question of orthographic skill. Finally, factions can lead to intellectual concerns: they are not always about Realpolitik. As we flesh them out here and in the next chapter, we find that the second wave of Ji Tomb scholars were motivated to resolve chronology and to realign and correct already standard historical works; some had distinct ideas about commentarial methods per se, especially commentary's role in preserving and revealing original meanings in history.

Calligraphy and Access By 280 Xun Xu, though skilled in portraiture and technical kinds of design, was not known as an expert in ancient calligraphy and orthography; however, he may have thought about gaining such help. A former intimate would have been one such candidate, had he not rebelled against the Wei throne and been executed in 264. That was Zhong Hui ~1!, Xun's adoptive same-age uncle. Hui had received his own father's skill in calligraphy and ancient orthography; in fact, Zhong Hui's rebellion featured a famous act of calligraphic forgery. The rebellion also spelled the end of his lineage, and by 279 no surviving Zhongs could, as far as we know, examine ancient script or were politically viable in Western Jin. 86 Other candidates as calligraphy consultants were alive 86

Zhong-family attenuation after the 264 rebellion is discussed in Howard L. Good-

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in 280. Two were from a family that Xun Xu was actively patronizing, namely, Wei Guan (220-291; see Chapter Two, Table r) and his son Heng '\:"§: (d. 291). Wei Guan's father was Wei Ji mN] (fl. 200-240), a calligrapher and a drafter of important announcement texts surrounding the dissolution of the Eastern Han dynasty.87 Wei Ji became a courtier of the Caos, mostly inhabiting scholar-scribal offices and known to protest against imperial excesses, especially Wei Mingdi's drug-taking and spending in the 230S. It is believed that he wrote part of, or the earliest materials for, a work titled "Siti shushi" 1m .~~ ("Written Forms of the Four Calligraphy Styles")-itself an important document for the history of calligraphy. Wei Guan's metier as a scholar reflected exactly that of his father: legal codes, calligraphy, and ideas on state policies for testing and induction of officials. In addition, Guan took up a military role for the Jin court and gained a marriage relationship with the imperial family, the latter becoming a dangerous problem. He had risen to Commandant of Justice, then head of the Masters of Writing in 275. Most crucial to our analysis is that in January of 283, perhaps just months after the Mu Tianzi zhuan preface, Wei Guan was recommended by Xun Xu to the high status of Minister of Works. 88 This would require that Xun see beyond personal, in a sense factional, problems, since Guan had taken credit for having had Zhong Hui put to death in 264.89 Later, in 291 Wei Guan would become regent along with Sima Liang PJ J~ ,overseeing the newly crowned Jin Huidi. But immediately, the Empress Jia (Nanfeng) undertook her well-known purge of key enemies, forcing another prince, Sima Wei, to murder Wei Guan and Sima Liang; Wei Heng was put to death the same year.

wrIt

rl

man, "The Calligrapher Chung Yu (ca. 163-23°) and the Demographics of a Myth,"

JAOS II4-4 (1994)· 87 Wei Ji's life is given in Howard L. Goodman, Ts'ao P'i Transcendent: The Political Culture of Dynasty-Founding in China at the End of the Han (Seattle and Sur-

rey, England: Scripta Serica and Curzon, 1998), pp. 65-69. In 216 he was commissioned with Wang Can to compile, arrange, and correct Han administrative code. Wei Ji's and Guan's lives are looked at from the angle of intellectual culture in idem, "Exegetes and Exegeses of the Book of Changes in the Third Century AD: Historical and Scholastic Contexts for Wang Pi," Ph.D. diss. (Princeton: Princeton University, 1985), pp. 104-6; Guan's biography is at jS 36, pp. 1055-66. 88 Jia Chong and Li Ying had both just died; Xun recommended Shan Tao for one of the vacancies, Minister of the Masses; jS 39, p. II56; jS 3, p. 74 for the edict (also ZZTj 81, p. 2581). See also Dominik Declercq, Writing Against the State: Political Rhetorics in Third and Fourth Century China (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p. 242. 89 TCTC/Fang 2, pp. 457-59.

NEW ANTIQUITIES, NEW FACTIONS

315

"Siti shushi," having been started by his grandfather, was edited by Wei Heng, who wrote a preface. When we look at just one passage next, we see that Xun Xu had to have been aware of this Wei-family enterprise. Clearly, too, Wei Heng (if not also his father, Guan) had had access to the Ji Tomb original bamboo slips. The Weis were not neatly on one or another side of the Jia-Xun faction of the 270s. Wei Guan had brought down Zhong Hui (but one wonders if that really still mattered much past 266). Furthermore, as a young man in the 270s, Wei Heng had served in the princely establishment of Sima You, thus on the wrong side of the Jia-Xun fence concerning the heir-apparent problem. 90 I am suggesting that by providing access to Wei Heng after 281 and promoting his father in 283, Xun Xu would have been seeking calligraphy consultants. There is no remark in our sources to indicate any other interaction between Xun and the Weis. At least it is certain that Xun Xu admired Wei-family scholarship, since he placed a direct quotation of "Siti shushi," as edited by Wei Heng, into his Wenzhang xulu. The passage says that their grandfather Wei Ji, during the last years of the Eastern Han, had learned ancient script (commonly called "kedou f44," or tadpole script) by copying a leading calligrapher's guwen ("ancient text") Shangshu. The "Siti shushi" preface then states: 91 Robbers in 279 opened the tomb of Wei king Xiang in Ji commandery, and over 10,000 words of slip-texts were obtained. According to the [graphs] that Jing Hou fu!d~ (the noble title given Wei Ji) had written out, there was similarity [with ancient tadpole script]. The ancient calligraphies were of many types. One of its juan that discussed the affairs of the state of Chu f,lfiJ~£J~: was of extremely fine work. I, Heng, took a certain private delight in it. ...

Wei Heng goes on to extoll the written forms. His point is that the script observable on certain Ji Tomb slips had the same, or nearly the same, calligraphic form as that of a guwen version of Shangshu learned by his grandfather. Wei Heng's description of a particular Ji Tomb text comports with an item in Shu Xi's later report of fifteen Ji Tomb items. Shu's sixth item was "A Guoyu if ,in three bundles, talking about affairs of Chu and Jin 1'f ~ ~ $ ."92 It is possible that Wei Heng, in his

IS 36 , p. 1061. IS 36 , pp. 1061-62. Xun Xu's Wenzhang xulu quotation includes a part of this; SGZ, zhu 21, p. 621. I have emended the translation published in Goodman, Ts'ao P'i Transcendent, p. 67. 92 See Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 162. 90

91

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above remark, was delighting in an unusual and beautiful form of calligraphy seen in the Guoyu bamboo-slip text from the Ji Tomb; and it is possible to suggest that the Guoyu slips dealing with Chu were actually made in the Chu area and written in that curvy and elegant ancient script that has come to the attention of archeology in the past decade or two. There is a controversy that began in early-modern scholarship and concerns claims that a work in the "Treatise on Literature" of Suishu titled "Guwen guanshu" ~:::t'§iI and ascribed to an early Eastern Han literatus named Wei Jingzhong mil)j[ 19=' should correctly be ascribed to the Western Jin Weis, especially due to their interest in ancient orthography. In our own day Zhu Xizu held with some of the earlier savants that it was not an Eastern Han work on official script of Han times because the work carried fanqie Ii t)J readings: thus it was by Wei Heng and dealt with the Ji Tomb texts. I tend to agree that the work was edited by our Western Jin Weis, although I think it originated with Wei Ji, whose cognomen "iWl1~" seems to be a good candidate for a graphic mistake resulting in "il)j[ 19='." Then it was finished by Wei Heng in a time whenfanqie was more known. 93 This would connect Wei Heng and his family's expertise even closer to the Ji Tomb texts and offer more details about the family's concerted work for decades on their expert skill. When Wei Heng died tragically in 291 Shu Xi mourned at his grave. We learn from another person's Jinshu biography that Wei had not finished his work on the Ji Tomb texts, yet his Ji Tomb studies were debated and renewed after his death. 94 We look further into that, just below. It was not necessary that Xun Xu gain a well-known expert to help with ancient writing. He would have had recourse to two sets of court-commissioned stone-inscribed classics given in parallel calligraphies-one was undertaken by Cai Yong in the 180s and the other was done in the 240s. Much of those stele texts remained for inspection in the 270s. But it would be hard to say whether what was called "guwen" and rendered on the stones was the same script that appeared on many of the Ji Tomb strips. Just the fact that expertise in ancient scripts among Wei-Jin men is so often encountered-the Zhongs, the 93 See 553 2 , p. 945; extracts of the debate in Shaughnessy, Rewriting, pp. 150-51, n. 56; Zhu, pp. 17-19, repeats a long discussion in 5uishu jingji zhi kaozheng l~fW,~F~\)q!j~:f~~ J,j-fiX} (Xuxiu SKQS edn.) 10, p. 184. The complex arguments will not be gone into here.

No one in previous scholarship has suggested a "1~~ < {III" error, as I do. 94 IS 51, p. 143 6.

NEW ANTIQUITIES, NEW FACTIONS

317

Weis, Shu Xi, Zhi Yu (indirectly), and Ou Yu and his student, as we see next-helps us to see that scholars like Xun Xu and He Qiao, neither of them known for such skill, would not have found it necessary to get all their required transcriptions by examining only the stele inscriptions of the Five Classics. There was another network of men highly skilled in ancient texts and calligraphy; it was made up of Ou Yu and his student Xu Xian rot (d. at age 95 ca. 325-35). I have mentioned Ou several times here and in other chapters. He displayed a fascinating combination of skills: logistical planning for local agriculture that included hydraulic improvements via gear-drives, military logistics and campaigns including his design of a pontoon bridge, and specialized work in astronomy, ancient calendrics, and a commanding commentary to Zuozhuan. His biography and the "Afterword" to the commentary contain personal remarks indicating that having been wrapped up in military and local restoration projects from roughly 275 to 280, he was anxious to get back to his studies. Thus, he rapidly produced Chunqiu tables, his Zuozhuan commentary, a new calendar, and other works from about 280-82. 95 The fact that Ou was extremely busy right after the war is evidenced by his report on the Ji Tomb texts (one of the three extant reports that I have mentioned). It has been translated in full and discussed by Edward L. Shaughnessy. I emphasize only that the date stated in it (spring of 282) refers only to Ou's having gone from Jiangling to Xiangyang (this was explained, above, in point 2 that follows my translation of the Mu Tianzi zhuan preface), not to his seeing the Ji Tomb texts. Ou next says that while planning to return to Chunqiu studies, suddenly the Ji Tomb was discovered. The most important comment follows: "The tadpole script has long been in disuse and attempts to interpret it were not completely successful. At first, the [strips] were stored in the Imperial Library. I got to see them late."96 Thus we can build a 95 SeeJS 34, pp. I031-32. Lu/Xinian, pp. 687-88, places all ehunqiu and Zuozhuan achievements in 280 alone. To the best of my knowledge there is no evidence of Du's whereabouts after his statement that he went to Xiangyang in 282; see Ye Zhengxin ~~j£j( FiX, Du Yu ji qi ehunqiu Zuoshi xue ttli~i&Jt;fffj(A:~&JJ! (Taibei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1989), which gives a nianpu. On his mechanical designs, see sec 4. 2, pp. 393-94, 403 (re. trip-hammer drive mechanism), and 4.3, p. 161 (re. pontoon bridge). Du is heavily featured inJS 26, "Treatise on Food and Money," for which see Lien-sheng Yang, "Notes on the Economic History of the Chin Dynasty," HJAS 9.2 (1946), pp. 161-66. 96 Trans. Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 143. In the Tang, Kong Yingda's JL!FJ~j~ subcommentary to Du's work affirmed that Mu Tianzi zhuan and Zhushu jinian were among

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reasonably deduced scenario: Du rushed specially to Luoyang from Xiangyang at some point after mid-282, but probably soon after, since Du would need many months to complete his Chunqiu work before his death in 284. The strips were under the control of Xun Xu and his staff at the Library, who had just finished their version of the Ji Tomb Mu Tianzi zhuan, yet Du did get to see them. It is highly unlikely, although at least possible, that he asked Xun for access, since beginning in about 278 the two were on opposite sides over the war policy, and in 283 Du's close war-planning ally Zhang Hua was anathema to Xun's faction. Scholars have argued that Du never left Xiangyang, and saw merely one of the several transcriptions produced by Xun's efforts. But I do not accept the reasoning, and Du's clear statement about "seeing them" surely referred to the slips themselves. 97 I suspect that the emperor, happy with the Wu victory, allowed the crucial military hero Du Yu his request in 282 to see the slips. In this scenario, I see the place as having been the Imperial Library, before Xun Xu had the originals deposited in the Third Archive. Du realized that Xun's team had been working for at least twelve to sixteen months and he should see them as soon as possible. He thus reviewed the slips quickly because they could not be accessed for long inside Xun's official realm. Du also managed to review at some point in time, even if briefly, certain transcriptions (he does not state which ones), and his subsequent comment about the poor attempts to interpret the slips was directed without any doubt at Xun's work. Du's biography says that his own writings were not well thought of for some time, and were first praised by Zhi Yu in the early 290s.98 The context of the remark is loose and hard to flesh out, but there is some reason for accepting it. Du Yu seems to have been a scholar of laws and systems, an engineer on the move, and a busy dynastic aide; he seems neither to have been a 100 percent factionalist nor an artistically attuned poet (there is no example of any surviving verse). Thus he was outside of certain networks and social worlds. There is no evidence, moreover, of any direct, personal struggle against Xun Xu. The only aspect of such would have been the general Wu War factionalism; the four most well-preserved of all the tomb texts; he added that only in "modern times" had people reintroduced errors through copying; see Zuozhuan zhushu H:{~(:il:ifi[, "Jiaokan ji houxu" 1~WJi'f1:'.1&F]\ pp. 2a-b. 97 See Cao Shujie "Zhushu jinian zonglun" i"rflHll:'.:;rf,~];t;fili, Lishi wenxian yanjiu l'fE~50~J1iJrJ'~ 26 (Wuhan: Huazhong shifan daxue chubanshe, 2007), pp. 14-15. 98 IS 34, p. 1032.

NEW ANTIQUITIES, NEW FACTIONS

319

Du was fully aware that Jia Chong and Xun were memorializing in 280 against the war and against Zhang Hua. Du's countering memorial at that time aimed specifically at Jia's maneuverings, and did not name Xun XU. 99 But in any event, after 280 the factions were changing. Not only do we not perceive enmity between Du and Xun, but between two such major scholar-technicians there was no intellectual contact even about metrology and harmonics, things that Du understood well. Neither Du Yu nor the Weis (above), aspired to posts in the offices that were principal venues for historiography, antiquities, and archiving. Du Yu did, however, have a student, Xu Xian, who was both a wellknown expert in ancient calligraphy, and he became a known expert on the Ji Tomb texts. Xu received a very short Jinshu biography inside juan 91 (reserved for literary men). He wrote well-known prose, including a title on strange phenomena (or, "extraordinay personages")"Yiwu zhi" ~t2JJ;t; most relevant, though, is his work titled "Jizhong guwen shi" ¥».](i1x~ ("Explication of the Ancient Script of the Ji Tomb [slips]") in ten juan; it was mentioned in his biography but not in the Suishu or Jiu Tangshu bibliographical essays.lOO He was nearly the same age as Du, and so was a relatively mature scholar in the 280s-able to take up work on ancient texts of this type. We know absolutely nothing else about him, itself an indication that his official rank never was high, and that his family status in the no biliary had never been high, if ranked at all. We must also assume, then, that his access to the ancient texts was gained through Du Yu alone, perhaps by reading a transcription that Du obtained. A final speculation may be offered: even a polymath of deep talent such as Du may not have had advanced skill in ancient calligraphy. He may have relied heavily on his student, giving him simultaneous access in Luoyang, and getting his own negative judgment ofXun Xu's editing from Xu Xian. In view of all this, Du's criticism of Xun appears technical and scholarly in tone, not simply a factional screed. Moreover, his student Xu finished his critique of Ji Tomb philology (if that was what his work entailed) after Du's death in 284, and may have supplied corrections to Xun's editing: we know that others were doing likewise. One of them was Shu Xi, whom we discuss, below.

99

IS 40, p. I170 ; and 42, p. I208. IS 9I, p. 2355. The work is not extant in any form whatsoever. His biography says

100

he died at 95 "in the time of Shijilong," thus he would have been born ca. 230-40, not much younger than his teacher Du Yu.

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The Zhang Hua Ambit During the short time during which Du Yu finalized the Wu War, heard of the Ji Tomb texts, and saw them briefly in Luoyang late in 282, another important scholar and Du's political ally, Zhang Hua, was creating intellectual links that allowed Ji Tomb scholarship to flourish down past the year 300. Zhang has assumed a key position all through this biography of Xun Xu; our impression is that his was a unique scholarly mind, capable of engaging philosophical, and occasionally daoistic-sounding, themes and working them into numerous fu and verse. He worked alongside Xun in the pre-276 period as a potential dual-advisor partner along the lines of the Wei-era duo of Liu Fang and Sun Zi (see Chapter Four, "Problems in the Bureaucratic Structure of the Palace Writers Office"). In this chapter, I wish to emphasize two salient facts about Zhang. One is that he was a busy documentarian and archivist at work on private and public texts of many types, with a particular interest in historiography. The other is that, although we have no record of his working on the Ji Tomb slips, it will become clear that as he reshaped Library and Palace Writers offices after 290, he was fostering such work in others, who were better prepared, particularly in ancient calligraphy. Early in 280, Zhang Hua had been rescued by Du Yu from an imminent execution being lobbied by the Jia-Xun clique; the latter, claiming the war was doomed, were not happy with Zhang's pleas to continue it. When the war did succeed, Xun was powerful enough to have Zhang sent away in 282 on a distant posting after the spring celebrations. IOI Zhang therefore, due to factional matters and actual physical separation, was not in the Ji Tomb loop until his return to Luoyang in 285. He missed the seminal period of work. Zhang Hua was deeply interested in archives and historiography. Without any context allowing a date, his biography states that because of his vast knowledge, Zhang was given management of palace documents. "Jin historiographical documents including regulations for ceremonials and rites, all were taken in hand [by ZhangJ; he made a great number of additions and deletions; all the imperial edicts of that time were put into order [by himJ."lo2 It is likely that he had begun put101 Zhang's life is studied in Straughair, Chang Hua; for an excellent condensed biography, see J. Michael Farmer, "On the Composition of Zhang Hua's 'Niishi zhen'," Early Medieval China lO-II, Part 1(2004), esp. pp. 157-67; and with a different focus, Howard L. Goodman, "Zhang Hua wenji," forthcoming, Dien, ed., Six Dynasties Sourcebook. 102 jS 36 , p. 10 7 0 .

NEW ANTIQUITIES, NEW FACTIONS

321

ting his mark on court paperwork earlier, but the more intense phase would have been undertaken after his return to Luoyang in 285, when Xun Xu's reputation as scholar was falling. The years 283 to 301 saw numerous discussions about history, including negative opinions of Xun Xu. In addition, as Wudi slipped in health toward 288-89, scholars thought of how they would narrate his reign; Zhang Hua was mentor and facilitator to many of these historiographers. Once back in Luoyang in 285, with his nemesis Xun Xu still alive (Jia Chong had died in 282), Zhang soon was appointed taichang A or Grand Master of Ceremonies. We must assess how Zhang Hua fit in, if at all, with Ji Tomb scholarship. At least politically he could not have gained access to the bamboo slips from Xun's team after 280, and he may not have been interested in the bamboo slips enough to request special access, as Du Yu seems to have done. There is no datum or even indirect mention of Zhang's devoting work directly on the slips. However, Edward L. Shaughnessy, having delved into certain passages in Zhang's Bowu zhi tftmlt, convincingly shows that Zhang had begun to utilize the transcriptions that were emerging after roughly 284. By about that time it was no longer necessary that a scholar be a member of Xun Xu's team or a lauded war general to get to see transcriptions, and in fact a stele erected in 289 in Ji commandery quoted the Bamboo Annals. 103 Zhang was quoting them (for example, Mu Tianzi zhuan and Bamboo Annals) and repeating, it would seem, Xun Xu's own transcription errors. Two of Zhang's proteges were Shu Xi 3Rt[ (b. ca. 260-65; d. ca. 302) and Zhi Yu ~Jj; (b. ca. 250, d. 3II). Shu had had a difficult and delayed career start, and was eventually brought into service for the first time thanks to Zhang Hua in 294. 104 Shu was rather young (roughly twenty) when Xun's team were working on the Ji Tomb, and at that time he could not have seen the slips or transcriptions for sheer political reasons. The years after 290 were when the court suffered under Jia Nanfeng (now Huidi's empress), who had arranged the murder of the Weis, among others, in 291. Moreover, Xun Xu had died in 289. In this shifting world Shu Xi gained physical access to all the Ji Tomb objects because Zhang Hua placed him in the post of Left Gentleman [03 On Zhang's quoting a Bamboo Annals transcription, see Shaughnessy, Rewriting, pp. 147-50; for the Ji stele, see p. 148 (n. 49), and pp. 178-81. [04 For a brief review of Shu's life, see Howard L. Goodman, "Shu Xi wenji," forthcoming in Dien, ed., Six Dynasties Sourcebook. LiulBiannian 7, p. 10, cites a stele erected by his students to opine that he was born ca. 260.

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Drafter in 296. The following passage shows that Shu had access to either the Third Archive or the Library storage areas, and his third of the known Ji Tomb reports recounts retrieval and conditions of the items. His report is carried in only one place-his Jinshu biography, whose editors had fourth- and fifth-century writings on and by Shu. It concludes with something of an archeologist's overview of the decisions made by officialdom back in 280: There were many charred strips and broken pieces, the texts already being fragmentary so that they could not be put back into order. Wudi had had the texts put in the Imperial Library to be collated and edited, and transcribed into modern script. lOS

This is the end of Shu Xi's observations per se. But the biography pastes in the following statement, seemingly from a different source, 106 since it is a third-party narration of Shu's own actions and thoughts: "When [Shu] Xi was in the post as Drafter, he got to look over the bamboo texts Ilttif, and consequently doubted their divisions and interpretations for all of which he had documentation I§'ff~ ~i. He was made a Gentleman Master of Writing." It is an assessment of the state of the slips that resonates well with Du's and Xun Xu's in about 282-83. Furthermore, the assessment of the poor job done by Xun's team agrees with Du's, but it provides a new point-that concerning Xun's "divisions and interpretations." This seems to refer to the reordering of slips into integral texts and, perhaps, to some overall scheme of chronological divisions. We should note that Shu was widely known for his expertise in ancient calligraphy. Zhang Hua once approached him concerning other bamboo slips in tadpole script that were recently discovered. Zhang needed Shu's advice since "there was no one who knew what to make of it." Shu's answer on provenance was quick, and it was later investigated and judged correct. 107 If we examine Table 5, below, especially the column showing Library appoinments, we see that from Xun Xu's removal in 287 down to 291 there were no appointments in the Library. But under the newly installed Huidi the Library was reconstituted in 291, and it had a new

51"*"

105 SeeIS 51, p. 1433; for this (including its continuation, below), I have emended the translation of Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 151 (see n. 30, above). 10(, Ibid., p. 191 (n. 9), also suspects that the Tang-era IS biography may have lost some of the narrative clarity of its fourth-century sources. 107 IS 51, p. 1433. The place of discovery was Mt. Songgao X~~I~{jLLi, which was another name for Songshan, as we saw in chap. I a place northwest of Xun Xu's home area, on a plausible route leading to Luoyang.

NEW ANTIQUITIES, NEW FACTIONS

323

head, Inspector Hua Qiao -~lUil (b. ca. 235-240; d. 293). Its next inspector was the historian He Shao 1PJRiJ (d. 302), who held it until somewhere in the period 297-99. Thus Shu Xi's access to the Ji Tomb items in the Library, if not directly supplied by Zhang Hua, the Inspector of the Palace Writers, may have come from He Shao. No connections between He and Shu are known, although He's poetry was praised by Zhang Hua. In 300, Shu was appointed as secretary to one of the warring Sima princes, Sima Lun, but he declined for poor health and returned home to teach, lucky to be alive. We turn now to Zhi Yu. Beginning in 302, Zhi Yu, as the next to be appointed Inspector of the Imperial Library, was responsible for compiling and correcting documents of Jin government; and in doing so he carefully reviewed Zhang Hua's posthumous papers: "He edited official documents; for all of them he used [Zhang] Hua's texts to select the correct [versions] j~JE,§ LJJf:£iE ."108 He had been well liked by Zhang, who once wrote a poem titled "Zeng Zhi Zhongxia shi" ~~~1~1it~~ that depicts Zhi as a Daoist embedded in a forest in quietude, nourished by the "mysterious void."109 However, Zhi seems not to have had direct personal contact with Zhang Hua, nor was he specifically skilled in ancient orthography. We do know that he knew Ji Tomb scholarship deeply and discussed it with other scholars. Zhu Xizu goes so far as to claim that Zhi had "specially requested to edit and correct the Ji-tomb texts," and that it was Zhi who had orders issued for Wei Heng to start reordering the slips. 110 But I find no solid evidence for this: all we know of Wei Heng's actually performing Ji Tomb research, other than having remarked on Chu calligraphy, above in his "Sid shushi" preface, is the following from another scholar's Jinshu biography: At the time, the Library Assistant (bishu cheng) Wei Heng (appointed ca. 291 and died that year) was examining and correcting the Ji Tomb documents. He had not finished, but met with his end. The Left Gentleman Drafter Shu Xi completed the writing of it. In many cases [Wei] had documented different meanings r~lgIJl:if.Qj ."111

108 IS 36 , p. 10 74. Zhu,jizhong, pp. 14, 18, takes the phrase "'Hif" to be a book title; I prefer to follow the IS eds. Lu/Xinian, p. 800, dates Zhi's appointment to 302; I do not follow Zhu, Iizhong, pp. 53, who argues that it was 287-91 because otherwise Zhi would not have been able to take charge of Zhang Hua's papers in 300. 109 Translated by Straughair, Chang Hua, p. 91. 110 Zhu, Iizhong, pp. 14 and 53, respectively. III IS 51, p. 1436; events summarized in Shaughnessy, Rewriting, pp. 150-52.

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CHAPTER SIX

There is little doubt that a revision of the Xun Xu team's transcription-edition of the Bamboo Annals was begun in the period 283 to 289 by Wei Heng, who may have first got access to the slips or the Xun transcription from Xun Xu himself. But after Xun's removal from the Library in 287, Wei took over the work, which was completed after 296 by Shu Xi. In all this there is nothing about Zhi Yu's role. Zhu Xizu makes his claims based on particularistic readings. One such reading involves the title "Guwen guanshu" (only indirectly ascribable to Wei) that I discussed, above. Further, Zhu, followed by Shaughnessy, makes a claim about another title of a work, this one by Zhi Yu. I give the relevant phrase in Zhi's biography: Zhi compiled Wenzhang zhi; he made a commentary to San/u juelu. Further, he worked on (or, compiled) ancient (or, simply, "early") prosepieces, making categories [for them] and distributing them into 30 juan; he (or, people) called it Liubie ji. Each [juan] had an essay. Its reasoned statements were exactly to the point, and it was much valued in its day. J~mX·f~jG~PLl·;ffi, ?tf(Jf(:.·::rIQIJ¥J({ffj, 1.:I'{fiUJU~, ~X<1:\0z;'iniJ, 1kl¥:J'i!'[]9Uff"

5I...t;HI'TX'rfC,

~Jl~]r'fi'~7}1i~=:+-:ff,

f;

?,','0tLlJfl-W:."112

I follow the Zhonghua editors, who do not parse the phrase "-e:!}( ~~J[ ~" as a book title, 113 but as simply a description of Zhi's second-

named major work, namely Liubie ji, also called Wenzhang liubie ji. Earlier, we discussed this work as an early analysis of literary genres. The above passage simply implies that in addition to his Wenzhang zhi, Zhi also made up a compilation of older works by genre categories, giving each one an essay. I do not see here an indication that Zhi was a paleographer or an expert in either ancient orthography or the Ji Tomb slips. He was a generalist antiquarian drawn to such matters by associates like Zhang Hua and Shu Xi, as well as through his teacher Huangfu Mi. The latter had used a guwen Shangshu as an authority for his Diwang shiji W I t!±~c. 114 As we see at the end of this chapter, Zhi Yu even discussed metrological objects and how they showed Xun Xu's court reform of the foot-rule to be methodologically incorrect. We must review. By about mid-282 Xun Xu's team had finished Mu Tianzi zhuan. Their work on the Bamboo Annals intensified from that point and it called for calligraphy expertise. Xun knew of the Wei fam-

lIZ

jS 51, p. 14 2 7.

For "111-Xr'~J~~J'j~" as a title of a work, see Shaughnessy, Rewriting, pp. 150-51 (n. 56), who follows Zhu, jizhong, p. 19. 114 On this work, and later scholars' use of it for chronological history, see Liao Jilang}~ l i (DI5, Liang jin shibu yiji kao 114f'J5t:I}I);llU:MV~ (Taipei: Jiaxin shuini, 1970), pp. 1-7. II]

NEW ANTIQUITIES, NEW FACTIONS

325

ily's study on ancient scripts and promoted the father of Wei Heng to a high court position in January, 283. I see this as providing the We is access: in fact, Wei Heng would begin his own systematic revision of the Annals. Du Yu, busy with the war and post-war activities in the south until 282, rushed to the Library late that year to see the slips and the Xun team's transcriptions. Du's access would have been arranged by high officials or by the emperor. He too disapproved of the way the slips had been handled or transcribed. Consumed with Zuozhuan and Chunqiu projects, Du had his own calligraphy consultant in the person of his student, but he himself did not return to Ji Tomb matters and died in 284. From 282 to 285 Zhang Hua had been kept out of Luoyang at the height of Xun's and his team's work. But from 285 to about 296, Zhang groomed Shu Xi, another calligraphy expert whom he appointed as Drafter in 296. Shu then got to see all Ji Tomb items in storage and somehow inherited Wei Heng's revised transcription. Shu too offered a negative opinion of the Xun Xu team. Zhang had Shu and Zhi placed in historiography offices, and they maintained Ji Tomb studies for some years. They received access in different ways, and both had opportunities to see the circulating transcriptions. I IS Zhang Hua's role in all this was to mold a new faction that was historiographical and scholarly in nature and which emerged from within two bureaus. We turn to that development now.

XUN

xu

AND ZHANG HUA AS FORCES IN THE

JIN OFFICES FOR HISTORIOGRAPHY

Western Jin was a time when the procedures and offices of court historiography developed ad hoc, dependent upon private scholarship and research. Regularized court historiography reached a fully articulated shape only, it can be argued, in Tang times. This section focuses on two Jin offices, the Imperial Library (Bishu f&,.) and Palace Writers (Zhongshu 9=t.), which when combined with such posts as lang ~~, shizhong 1~ 9=t, and zhuzuo were loose equivalents of the historiography offices and archives of Eastern Han times, particularly the Dongguan (Eastern Observatory). Toward the beginning of Chapter

115 Shaughnessy, Rewriting, chap. 4 (esp. pp. 241, 250) shows that Shu instituted numerous changes and corrections to Xun Xu's transcriptions, more than likely utilizing those begun by Wei Heng, such that Shu's work on the Bamboo Annals constituted a separate edition.

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Table 5. Xun Xu's and Zhang Hua's Influence in Western Jin Historiography Offices DATES

250s 259-61 263 264-66 266

BISHU (LIBRARY) APPOINTMENTS

ZHONGSHU (PALACE OTHERS (not hierarWRITER) APPOINTMENTS chically in either office)

(from jiaoshu, fang, upward to cheng, ling, and jiaf!)

(fang, zhuzuo, upward to ling, (fang, langzhong, ziJuzuo, jian) shizhong)

Wang Chen Chenggong Sui (lang, cheng) .---_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _----. Chenggong Sui (lang)

ISima Biao (lang), ca. 265

Wudi edict melded Bishu with Zhongshu US 24.735, saying "when Jin was founded").

Zhang Hua (lang), 264 Xun Xu (jian); formally kept Xun Xu also (see left) this title until 287. NOTE: made "supplmt'y JJII" No ling appointed shizhong & "intendant ~J[" zhuzuo.

Xun made "jian" in 274; & ca. 271-85 headed projects across Bishu/Zhongshu areas.

I

ca. 266-71 Sima Biao (cheng) ca. 268

265-75: 2 anti-Jia shizhong these yrs.: Ren Kai {ft'd,t & Pei Kai ~rt"r

INo ling appointed No ling appointed

Zhi Yu (zhonglang)

ca. 269

Chenggong Sui (shilang). No lin a td. Chenggong Sui (zhuzuo ca. 270 Yu Chun ~*lH (ling), 270part of 271 Ian) Zhang Hua (ling), down 271 Chen Shou (zhuzuo lang) to 279 Xun Xu (jian), seemingly ad Liu Gong (zhuzuo lang) 274 Liu Xiu (lang; in Imp. hoc post for access to items and personnel in Librarv Music bureau) Hua Qiao (supva the ca. 276-80 Hua Qiao (shizhong) Zhongshu zhuzuo) jl-TOMB TEAM, 280+ 280-83/84 XUN'S .II-TOMB TEAM, 280+ jl-TOMB TEAM, 280+

I

[Zhang?] Zhou (jiaoshu zhonglang) ; 3 unnamed (zhushu ling shi) ca. 281

He Qiao (huiyi lang) Wang/Fu Zan (langzhong Probably no ling appointed, and/or zhuzuo lang; late 279 to ca. 282 (Wu War, served perhaps down to factionalism) 280-90) He Qiao (shizhong)

Four, I explained the elision of the Library and Palace Writers that began under the Wei and was reasserted in about 266. This created tension in the vertical relationship between the inspector and prefect of the Palace Writers. Xun Xu had been interested in historiography since the late 260s. With the Ji Tomb discovery in 280, the Library, at that time a subsidiary function of the Palace Writers, saw new activity led by Xun. His investigation of the bamboo slips was related to new concerns about historiography generally among scholars. Below, we see how these two Western Jin bureaus, as in Eastern Han times, offered official status for scholars interested in historiographic work, and how Xun and Zhang impacted those offices.

NEW ANTIQUITIES, NEW FACTIONS

327

~~~~~~~~~~~

ca. 282

He Qiao (ling), promoted from hubrllal1g

ca. 282-87

287 287-91

Evidence suggests that He Qiao was ling around 28586 US 44.1264). But in most of these yrs. no ling appointment is attested.

Xun Yue M (Iangzhong), 286 He Shao (shizhong), 286-87

Xun Xu removed from Zhongshu/Bishu, to Prefect of Masters of Writing

Zhu,fizhong, 53, believes Zhi Yu was jian ca. this time; but more likely Bishu was in hiatLls.

Hua Yi (jian), ca. 287-90; (Qiao's bro.) He Shao (ling), 289; (jian), 290

291, April Huidi edict "reactivates i1s'Lti1" Bishu US 4.90) 291-93

Hua Qiao (jian)

291

Wei Heng (cheng)

293

He Shao (jian)

~~~~~~

295

Chen Zhun ~*i$ (ling), 295 to 300

296-98 ca. 297-99 300 301 302

No jian appointed for 3 years Fu Zhi {WiJiK (jian), to 301 ~ Zhi Yu (jian) probably this year. Wang Yue .=E;J;ill (jian)

Table 5 gives the known appointees from about 250 to 302 at severallevels of the Library and Writers bureaus, and also the ad hoc lang, shizhong, and zhuzuo. One may estimate that during Western Jin there were roughly twenty or twenty-five scholar-officials known to have debated or opined about history writing and methods in a learned way, or who wrote biographies, treatises, commentaries to previous histories and the like, or made historically oriented compilations (such as edicts, statutes, protocol). The table shows fifteen of them in bold face, the majority of all those appearing here in these bureaus. There are indications that Xun Xu and Zhang Hua shaped these offices from the 260s to 300 and brought factional and intellectual antagonism to bear. A juncture occurred 281-82, when overall control started to lean toward Zhang, aided by He Qiao's apparent shift. To see the shift, I have distinguished visually those who in some way or other were in Xun's ambit (the straight borders) from those in Zhang's (the wavy-line borders). "Ambit" is flexible: cases in which Xun or Zhang effected an appointment directly are few, and several situations have contradictory aspects, especially concerning factional alignments. I

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have relied chiefly on modern chronologies, such as those of Lu Kanru and Liu Rulin, data from other sources, but also the overall tracking of Jin offices in Wan Sitong's £1fi ['§J (1638-1702) "Jin jiang xiang dachen nianbiao" 1:f~~1§jchi1f~.116It must be remarked, though, that Wan did not collect data for the Library, as he did for both the Palace Writers and Palace Attendants. Table 5 fills that gap. It is fair to say that almost everyone in the table was highly educated and known for work in different genres of personal and court literature. It would be hard to say with certainty that those not known as historians, like Chenggong Sui (see 259), Ren and Pei (265-75), and Hua Yi (287-91), produced no historiographical ideas or institutional compendia. Further, those quite low in rank, namely Xun Xu's technical helpers in 274 and 279-82, were almost certainly literate and skilled in texts. In general, though, we are in fact looking at most historiographers active in Western Jin, and our table's concentration on the two offices is meaningful: there were no clusters of historiographers around other offices. I 17 As the Simas were forming their power during Wei times, a major project concerning Wei history was moving ahead under the direction of Wang Chen (Chapter Two, Table I), and at this time Wang occupied a Library position, and would rise to prominence at the beginning of Jin. Yet he died in 267, and just at that point Xun Xu, having already contributed to the early Jin committees for ritual and law, began his own rise in the writing offices. He no doubt knew Palace Writer Chenggong Sui, and a year or two later Chenggong and Zhang Hua were revising the court's lyrics with Xun Xu (Chapter Three). We see a pattern of Xun influence, which I demarcate as Western Jin's "Period One of Bureaucratic Historiography and Archives" and show as the straight-bordered cells. From about 266 to 287 Xun Xu in one form or another headed both the Writers and the Library. From For Lu and Liu, see the Bibliography. I cited Wan in n. 63, above. The review of Jin historiographers found in Liao, Liang jin shibu, shows that for Western Jin there are hardly any others than mentioned in Table 5. (I do not account for Huangfu Mi and Ruan Xian, whose work concerned legendary prehistory; Huangfu's "Diwang shiji" was a chronology of prehistoric rulers.) Further, the Treatise on Literature in 55 has numerous anonymous "court accounts of imperial activity" ili\M;·t:t for Jin, and also there is the hard-to-trace historiographer 4-: IIYL, who probably served Eastern Jin. Finally, one should mention historians in Wu through the 270s, such as the commentator Wei Zhao (see chap. 5, n. 42), and Hua Hel'l'q~y:, for whom see B. J. Mansfelt Beck, The Treatises of Later Han: Their Author, Sources, Contents and Place in Chinese Historiography (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), p. 26. 116 I

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about 266 through 269 we see men over whom Xun may have exercised influence or official control. Zhang Hua, like these others, was below Xun hierarchically and served alongside him in early Jin projects. But intellectually, Zhang exerted independence and had recommended Chenggong into the Writers earlier in the 260s. There were two shizhong who also were not notably among Xun's associates, Ren and Pei, who were probably pro-Zhang; but they were not known as writers in historiographic genres. Period One witnessed the careeers of three successful historians, so we should discuss them briefly. Sima Biao P] J~ JJfj, (b. ca. 237, d. 306) was a second cousin of Sima Yan (Jin Wudi after early 266).118 His father Mu §~ became embroiled over his own status and inheritance in the new imperial family; on top of that Biao had "a weakness for women and frivolousness," thus was disinherited and adopted into the family of Sima Yi lifi (179-251), the preimperial Jin founder. The Simas in general are not ranked high in scholarly or literary affairs, and that characterization can be applied to Biao's natal and adoptive families. However, later in his career he turned toward writing and literature, with a special interest in historiography having to do with state sacrifices and portentology. He was at some point made Chief Commandant of Cavalry, then appointed Gentleman of the Imperial Library in about 264, and in 266 became Assistant, cheng, in that office. It was most likely in these years in the Library, nominally under Xun Xu after 266, that he compiled Xu Hanshu ~'~J., which received a major commentary early in the 500S.119 One of Sima Biao's projects after 280 would be to use the Ji Tomb texts to correct a narrative history of ancient China written by the late Shu scholar Qiao Zhou ~~ (b. ca. 199, d. 270). This raises the question of Sima's relationship with Xun Xu, but there is in fact no evidence of any kind that links them, and Sima's access to the tomb texts may be attributed to the leaking out of the transcriptions of Xun's team after about 282-83. In the next section of this chapter, I discuss Sima Biao's historiographical ideas and methods. lIS

I have based my understanding of Sima's life on the treatment given in Beck,

Treatises, pp. 5-17, which analyzes the literary career in toto; Sima's biography is at jS 82, pp. 2141-42. 119 In the Tang, Fang Xuanling remarked positively about him in the judgment placed after the collected biographies of historiographers injinshu 82, saying that he and Chen Shou were the best of their era. Sima Biao also wrote commentaries to Hanshu, Huainan zi, and Zhuangzi, the latter reconstituted in Wang Xianqian's ~E:5\:;fH~ (1842-1918) Zhuangzi jijie ]EE-:r~roY" (see Xuxiu SKQS edn., vol. 958).

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Next was the Shu native Chen Shou (233-297), who had direct interaction with Xun. Chen is well known as the writer of Sanguo zhi -=: 1I;t. He began compiling and writing biographies in Shu, but by 271 he was invited by the Jin court to Luoyang and attained the post of Gentleman Drafter through the recommendation of Zhang Hua. Chen was in a post that may have been under Xun's overview; but although that is not certain, we do know of their interaction. On March 25, 274, Chen discoursed to the throne about his compilation of the literary works of Zhuge Liang (181-234) on which he had been working for some time. He claimed that Xun Xu and He Qiao had "earlier" assigned him that project, and now he wanted to make sure that it would be copied and stored in the archives. 12o Some time later Zhang wanted to have Chen made a Gentleman inside the Palace Writers, but this was blocked by Xun Xu: 121 Zhang Hua recommended that [Chen] be ordered to take a concurrent post as Gentleman of the Palace Writers. Yet Shou's "Wei zhi ~jtl~" had some [aspect] that diverged from notions held by Xun Xu. Xu did not want him to be located at the capital, so he memorialized that he be made Grand Administrator of ChangguangL~)il1.

Over what historiographical matter Xun and Chen clashed is not stated but can be cautiously deduced from other contexts (see Chapter Four, "Xun Chuo, Writing For and About Family"). Xun Xu may have disapproved of the positive sheen that Chen applied to Cao Cao and to the motives of Cao men and Cao courts. After all, Xun Yu, the famous father of Xun Yi and Xun Can had been abandoned politically by Cao Cao and perhaps been made to commit suicide by him. 122 Moreover, Chen's being a protege of Zhang was certainly a factional problem, even though the truly strident factionalism developed after about 274- Finally, Xun Xu's deep commitment in the early 270S to proving that Wei-era court music was ritually incorrect may have been a factor. Chen was the only historiographer ever to have written a biography of Du Kui 1±~ (fl. ca. 180-225), which he did sometime between 270-278. I have translated and explained it in full elsewhere, 123 120 Cited n. 62, above; also Crowell and Cutter, Empresses and Consorts, pp. 61-88, on career and other writings. 121 Liu Lin ~tllt{\, ed., Huayang guozhi jiaozhulll'I~llt}l!.!xl;Gqxn (Chengtu: Ba Shu shushe, 1984), j. II, p. 849. A somewhat different version is in IS 82, p. 2138. 122 On Xun Yu's death and its handling in historiography, see See Paul William Kroll, "Portraits ofTs'ao Ts'ao: Literary Studies on the Man and the Myth," Ph.D. diss. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1976), pp. 187-89. 123 Howard L. Goodman, "A History of Court Lyrics in China during Wei-Chin

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and I need only mention that Chen Shou took the clear position that Du, the music leader of Cao Cao's court, had been a skillful antiquarian-a true musicologist who followed classical guides in constructing the twelve lulu and appropriately tuned bells and ensemble music. In short, Xun Xu's dislike of Chen's "Wei zhi" may have reflected Xun's own leadership in musicology, and, even more important, his anti-Wei positions about all manner of ritual. 124 Finally, we have Hua Qiao ¥ull (ca. 235-40; d. 293). Due to the poor organization of his Jinshu biography, 125 his major offices occurred either around 266-71 or after 290, or perhaps he repeated offices. Before' 266, Sima Zhao appointed Hua secretary with added duties as a Gentleman Master of Writing: we can guess that he was then about thirty. When Jin was founded he was made Guannei Marquis and proceeded by raises to Palace Cadet of the Heir-Apparent. Upon appointment as a local Grand Administrator, he quit to care for parents, then was reappointed as Regular Cavalier Attendant, and supervisor of Drafters in the Palace Writers and Erudit in the Imperial Academy, then Palace Writer. 126 Because the Academy was reinstituted in 276, I place these latter posts at around that date. Zhang Hua was Prefect of the Palace Writers from 271 to about 279, and he may have effected Hua's appointments; but since Xun was the Inspector, I mark Hua Qiao as in Xun's ambit. In fact, as we see in Chapter Seven, Hua's work on Eastern Han history would be reviewed and supported by both Zhang and Xun in about 286, as Xun's career was declining. Hua Qiao's profile was low after about 280 but thanks to Zhang Hua was revived when Huidi came to the throne. That is why his appointment as Library Inspector in about 291, till his death in 293, I consider to be in Zhang Hua's ambit.

Times," AM I9.I-2 (2006), pp. 69-76 (see SGZ 29, "Biographies of Fangji ::IT:fx [Men of Methods and Skills]," pp. 806-7). 124 On Chen's involvement with Luoyang factionalism vis-a-vis Xun Xu, see Crowell and Cutter, Empresses and Consorts, pp. 62-64. Also see Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, "Historic Analogies and Evaluative Judgments: Zhuge Liang as Portrayed in Chen Shou's 'Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms' and Pei Songzhi's Commentary," Oriens Extremus 43 (2002), pp. 60-70. See Yang Yaokun +t)J;I;lVI/r and Wu Yechun 1h!l!-f;{c~, Chen Shou Pei Songzhi pingzhuan 1~IHr~~10z1jiHw (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, I998). 125 IS 44, pp. I260, I263-64. His father Hua Biao lived from 204 to 275 and had six sons; Qiao seems to have been the third. 126 Lu/Xinian, p. I47, says this was in 286, which I think is wrong. QIW 2 (Jin Wudi's prose) and 66 (Hua's prose) is also wrong: the Hua-related item in j. 2 should go under Jin Huidi's prose.

*

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As I have stated, down to about 287 was "Period One of Bureaucratic Historiography and Archives," and it was heavily affected by Xun Xu's career-building. Notice the horizontality of his appointments. In 266 he was shizhong and inspector of the Writers; he broadened this in 274 with the Library inspectorate. It is worth noting, too, that his famous ancestors Xun Yu and Xun Yue held those two posts, respectively, serving at Cao Cao's court in the 1905, at the end of Eastern Han. Early Western Jin was a time of private history writing: Sima Biao and Chen Shou worked independently from Xun, although, at least in the case of Chen, subject to his pressure. It is probably not a coincidence that up until 270-71 there was no Prefect of Palace Writers; this, in my opinion, may have been from Xun's effort to keep Zhang Hua from rising into that slot for reasons that were raised in Chapter Four (the section "Problems in the Bureaucratic Structure of the Palace Writers Office"). Xun's cross-bureau influence was highest in the years 274-83. He pursued three projects that used staff from both offices and also from music offices. After the Wu War planning ramped up at the end of 279, Zhang Hua was gone from Luoyang, and once again there was no Prefect of the Palace Writers until about 282, with He Qiao. From the time that He Qiao was made Prefect of Palace Writers (ca. 282) to past 286, he remained in Zhang's ambit and must have been a counterweight to Xun Xu's last years in power, when Xun was using chronology and Shiji studies to complete his transcription-edition of the Zhushu jinian slips. Xun may even have desired to "pack" the writing offices by appointing his fourth-cousin Xun Yue -ffi as Palace Attendant. We learned about Yue in Chapter One; his was basically a military career, and leaves no evidence of belles lettres or historiography of any kind. He Qiao was thus the last person to exert anti-Xun leverage in the Palace Writers, and his actions vis-a-vis Xun signaled Xun's vulnerability. After 282, except for slight evidence about He Qiao in 286, the Writers saw no high appointments until Hua Qiao's brother Hua Yi became inspector in 287. On the Library side, after Xun Xu there was no inspector until about 291, when Huidi reinstituted the office. Based on these facts, it is not far-fetched to claim that Xun Xu's Ji Tomb editorial team, its large size, the combining of projects, and the blunt editorial moves all caused scholar-officialdom to hail any action that might bring criticism ofXun and dampen his power. Zhang Hua did not deliver such public criticisms against Xun at this time, but his protege He Qiao did, and later so did Shu Xi and Zhi Yu. Zhang, however, may have been crucial from behind the scenes.

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By 282-83, with He Qiao's rise in stature and Zhang in exile, we see the beginning of "Period Two of Bureaucratic Historiography and Archives" -Zhang Hua's period. 127 As discussed, Zhang was placed in the quasi-dual Palace Writers leadership role with Xun Xu, yet I sensed that Zhang was kept from being prefect until 271. His career peaked only later, after Xun Xu's death, and its real height was from 291 to 300. In 291 Zhang began to advise Empress Jia; in 292 He Qiao died, and then we see many appointments of Zhang's other proteges like Hua Qiao, Wei Heng, Shu Xi, He Shao, and Lu Ji ~i~. Just before Zhang's death in 300, his literary protege Jia Mi Ji~ (d. 300; see Table 5, year 297), who was in fact a political kingpin, was tasked with a "national history ~!£"; I deduce that this was a result of Zhang's urging. Recent scholarship has not paid attention to the historiographical activities among Jia Mi's "Twenty-four Friends"; but in fact several of the group-Shu Xi, Lu Ji ~i*~, Zuo Si ft,I[SI" Jia Mi, Zhi Yu-were placed in Library and Writers offices from 296-302,128 and made statements about or writings on historiography. We might characterize the impact ofXun Xu and Zhang Hua in the following way. Xun Xu had opportunities to interact positively with historians like Sima Biao and Chen Shou in Period One, but did not do so, instead pursuing his own walled-off projects in ritual research. On the other hand, during Xun's Period One Zhang Hua was grooming proteges, and then in Period Two, with Ji Tomb-inspired interest in historiography and chronology, his proteges began a concerted attack on Xun Xu and in a sense took over Ji Tomb research and the historiography offices. Xun Xu had fashioned a career aided by factional politics; whereas Zhang Hua after the Wu War created a new faction that first was motivated by scholarly criticism ofXun, then proceeded to guide literary and historiographic theory and method, forming offshoot cliques. Like Du Yu, Zhang Hua was away from Luoyang, but he used proxies to continue his intellectual pursuits. Compared with 127 Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 147, errs by stating that Zhang took over the Imperial Library after Xun Xu was demoted. Zhang was never appointed directly in the Library offices. 128 On Zhang's patronage of He Shao, see his poem to He, trans. Straughair, Chang Hua, pp. 88-90. On the Twenty-four Friends, see David Knechtges, "Sweet-peel Orange or Southern Gold: Regional Identity in Western Jin Literature," in Paul Kroll and David Knechtges, eds., Studies in Early Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History (Provo, Utah: The T'ang Studies Society, 2003), p. 32, and the sources cited there. For Zuo Si's reputation concerning historiography, see IS 92 (biography of Zuo Si), p. 2377.

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Xun XU, Zhang may have been less interested in plain political power: he did not build a Xun Xu type of horizontal control across bureaus, but groomed and helped others in their work and careers.

CHANGES IN METHODS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

We recall that Xun Xu's four-part scheme of organization for the Imperial Library as reflected in his Jin Zhongjing bu provided historiography, as distinct from the "classics," a separate footing. Such thinking about historiography had been developing since Wei times. Moreover, in Xun's review of literature, "Wenzhang Xulu," he remarked on Weiera writings on Wei history.129 Xun had interaction with Chen Shou and Hua Qiao and was familiar with recent official projects on Wei and Jin materials. He supported historiographers per se, at least to the extent that for some (for example, He Qiao and Wang/Fu Zan) he provided access to the Ji Tomb texts. 130 By 282-83, some of these just mentioned, and others, began to discuss the tools and methods of historiography, particularly chronology, both ancient and current.

Chronology as Theory and Practice Somewhere around 284, or even a bit later, a debate arose over methods for developing the historiography of the new Jin dynasty. Its date and context are uncertain, but it addressed what we might call a matter of dynastic divisions, in the modern Chinese sense of" duandai .§[ 1~": in effect, the question was "when does a dynasty's history start." Where is the year zero? Recently, Anthony Fairbank showed that Xun Xu promoted a certain idea in this matter at a moment when he began receiving attacks from several sides. Jinshu's biography of Jia Mi, in a very short passage that is the only evidence of the existence of a subgroup of the "Twenty-four Friends" who were concerned with histori129 A passage (SGZ 21 zhu, p. 622) documents Wei-era scholars who wrote "Wei shu": "At nineteen, Sun Gai f*t~ (Wei era; otherwise unknown) served as clerk in the Office of Transmission of Accounts (shangji), and was made Gentleman of the Palace. He compiled 'Wei shu'; and [after] a transfer as Erudit and Chief Clerk of the Right for the Minister over the Masses, he returned [to Luoyang] and into the office of Gentleman Compilers." 130 Feng Dan (chap. 2, table 1), a Jia-Xun partisan, was conversant with "anecdotes about Wei and Jin"; IS 36, p. 1071, where he discusses the sources that described Zhong Hui's treachery. On Jin historiography in general, see Fairbank, "Ssu-ma I," chap. 2; also chap. 6 of]. Michael Farmer, The Talent of Shu: Qiao Zhou and the Intellectual World of Early Medieval Sichuan (Albany: SUNY, 2007); reviewed by H. L. Goodman, TP 94-1-2 (2008), pp. 163-76.

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ography, notes that sometime well before the "Friends" circle, scholars had argued about where to begin chronicling Jin history: Inspector of Palace Writers Xun Xu thought it appropriate that the Wei Zhengshi period be the initiation year; Gentleman Drafter Wang Zan . LJ!fJ" (who I deduce was in fact "Fu M:" Zan, a Hanshu commentator) wanted to draw on the Jiaping (249-54) reign and forward, and enter the [affairs of its] courtiers into Jin history. At that time, with lingering doubts, they could not resolve it. 13 !

Xun favored an ur-beginning at the opening of the Wei's Zhengshi lE ~fs reign. That reign's first month was December 13, 239, to January 12, 240, at which time calendar corrections established the regnal newyear J3. Sima power then was only ad hoc and partial. However, Wang/Fu Zan favored a Jin beginning in the Wei reign-period just after the coup of 249, that is, the time when Sima Yi and his sons had assumed broad power. From the sources we get no more than this brief outline of the debate. Xun Xu's position may have reflected loyalty to the Simas that stemmed back to 250, and thus he would be lauding the Simas by adding years to their overall period of power. Fairbank mentions the theory that Xun Xu was smoothing over the violent origins of the Simas, and making the coup of 249 legitimate by its having been committed by the proleptic Jin founders. It is not a strong theory: an attempt to refocus or hide Sima violence would not have been helped much by a start date of 240. 132 Furthermore, we have no clues as to why Xun and Wang/Fu both focused on such early parts of the Wei. Why was this debate not talking about certain months around 260, or 264-65, that 131 See jS 40, pp. II73-74. Liul Biannian, p. 171, places this in 291, but makes no attempt to explain Xun's being mentioned nor the Jinshu chronological marker "Before this time .... " In chap. 7, sect. "The Post-Xun Xu Resumption of the Debate about the Beginnings of the lin Dynasty," I comment further on dating the debate and its two parts. On the Xun-Wang/Fu debate, see Fairbank, "Ssu-ma I," pp. 71-80. Declercq, Writing Against the State, p. 124, n. 3, uses Xun's official title here to date the debate to 271, but I disagree. Declerq follows LulXinian, pp. 641, 649, and p. 924, who elides all three Wangs who had the names: jr, and :fl~. This triple-elision is followed neither by jinshu renming suoyinf'f~:AA'I*;j I nor Jinshu cidian1Mfi~H~*~~; they consider them all separate Wangs. But it is in fact logical to elide only the first two, as explained in Cao Daoheng Wnlli1ffis and Shen Yucheng tt~.Jjx., Zhonggu wenxue shiliao congkao '1!I~rX,r'§J,5t*-lirJt~ (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2003), pp. 175-76. For lin times it gives us only a Wang/Fu Zan Ji~ and a Wang Zan l~t (orrlN{), who was a poet and military man who died in 3II in fighting surrounding the fall of Luoyang. 132 Fairbank, "Ssu-ma I," p. 74; see Zhou Yiliang Wd'L~, "Wei lin Nanbei chao shixue yu wangchao shandai" ~ . t""fl;rl:jtjlYj~,Ih}l,9Q=HYHJj11-~, Beijing daxue xuebao ;It};t:k~tl, ~f1,t;l~ 1987.2, pp. 26-31.

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is, Jin's realpolitik origins under the Wei dynasty. It is certain, as Dominik Declercq has observed, 133 that the impact of Sima intrigues from 240 to 265 on political legitimacy would have made the debate a sensitive one. In any event, it was not resolved and would be revived by Jia Mi's literary coterie in about 298, long after Xun Xu's death (see Chapter Seven). As stated, this Wang was the Wang/Fu Zan who had been on the Ji Tomb team as a "Gentleman Drafter" and had researched paleographic matters concerning the reign periods of the ancient Wei state. Now in 284-85 he had the stature to oppose Xun Xu concerning the current Wei-Jin transition; and this historical reflexiveness may be part of our answer. The debate improves our sense of the evolution of historiography both in abstract organizational terms and as an intellectual process predating the well-known developments in Tang bureaucratic historiography. After the 280 Ji Tomb discovery, concerns about chronology added to the picture. To gain wider context for that as well as for Xun Xu's and Wang/Fu Zan's debate in 284-85, we should consider the Bamboo Annals and the problems of ancient chronology.

Xun Xu's Attempt to Impose a Zhou Chronology in the "First" Annals Edition One of the Ji Tomb texts, the Bamboo Annals (Zhushu jinian ttilfo.\"e, 4), was as far as we know the first, or one of the first, political chronologies to cover all of ancient Chinese history. Edward L. Shaughnessy, by sorting out the numerous early quotations that cited it with variant titles, has shown that our received version (that carried in the Sibu congkan series and derived from a Ming-era printing), contains a large amount of integral passages that reflect the Xun team's transcription-edition. This not only contradicts the centuries-old skepticist opinion that the current edition is a total forgery, but provides an approximate sketch of tactics that the Xun Xu team members, not just Xun himself, were applying in their editing and interpreting of the Bamboo Annals. Shaughnessy's tracking backward and forward through quotational history has identified the Xun team's (or simply Xun's) version mostly through quotations in Li Daoyuan's 1~:1ij[; (d. 527) Shuijing zhu 7j(#&B:, and yet another version through quotations in the eighth-century Sima Zhen's commentary to Shiji.134 The Declercq, Writing Against the State, pp. 124-25. Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 214, establishes the data: Sima's commentary to Shiji quotes an edition of Annals 76 times; and Li's commentary to Shuijing quotes it I09 133

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former turns out to be more or less analogous with our received Bamboo Annals text; the latter was a product of a post-Xun Xu editor or editors. Toward the end of this section, I open up this one matter by using what we have learned so far about the lives of those who pursued Ji Tomb studies and show clearly how "another edition" has a variety of candidates. I have mentioned already the three Jin-era reports on the nature of the Ji Tomb texts (Xun Xu's, Du Yu's, and Shu Xi's). They all demonstrated that the Bamboo Annals contained many year-entries of the local Wei kings during Eastern Zhou. Du Yu's report was the most detailed; he said that there was also a through-chronology of Xia, Yin, and Zhou, but that for the Zhou state of Jin "special records" were given, going past the time when Jin was destroyed by Wei, at which point the Annals only carried Wei kings' regnal years. Du Yu's report made these points: I) the annals began from the Xia, Yin and Zhou eras; 2) beginning with the ancient Jin ruler Shangshu J!ffR (r. 784-81 BC),135 entries used local Jin regnal years, and that Du had to "calculate" to determine that these were in fact the period of Wei control over Jin (Du matched up Wei Ai Wang's dates with those of the rulers of Qin, Han, Chu, and other states); 3) the lengths of local reigns were specified by numeral years, but had no ganzhi; 4) the calendric system used a yin-month New Year, not the zimonth one prescribed by Lu calendrics; 5) Wei king Huicheng declared an additional reign in his 36th year and reigned sixteen more years. l36 Through arguments that will follow, I claim that it was specifically Xun Xu, He Qiao, and Wang/Fu Zan who, after finishing Mu Tianzi zhuan, began to work jointly on the Bamboo Annals-the result being the first, or "Xun Xu," edition by about 284. They would have perceived the Warring States Jin/Wei focus of the Annals text. As Shaughnessy states, "Xun Xu and his team of editors were doubtless led to organize the text in this way by their desire to make it correspond, to the extent possible, with the chronology contained in the Shi ji, which they would have considered normative."137 As we see, below, this overtimes but with significant textual differences. The received version, based on a Ming printing, basically agrees with the Li quotations: 106 of its 109 usages. 135 Du turns out to have been mistaken on this point; see ibid., p. 192. 136 Ibid., p. 19 0 . 137 Ibid., pp. 23 8, 24 6.

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view should be slightly emended to show that Shiji was not always venerated, but sometimes criticized. This first Bamboo Annals transcription introduced significant changes to the original wordings and format. To solve problems in Shang-Zhou chronology the Xun team repositioned loose bamboo strips and filled in breaks and corruptions sometimes using slips from other Ji Tomb works that they may have inadvertently thought belonged to the Annals. Shaughnessy shows that they made mistakes when moving the strips, especially when they sought a solution for Du Yu's point number five, above. 138 Shaughnessy has deduced that they made calculations to find out which year in Wei Huicheng Wang's reign formed a better match; for example, one passage concerning moving the capital contained a jiayin year's fourth month. The team found a "better" year for that and adjusted the text to conform to their idea of chronologically correct dates. Subsequently, Shu Xi and Wei Heng, or some other post-Xun editor, restored that passage to wording that erased Xun's change. 139 Ultimately, the boldest Xun Xu change was to convert the Bamboo Annals from reign years of the local preQin states, mostly the Warring States entities Jin and Wei, to the yearentries of the Zhou kings, and at least in some cases adding ganzhi 3t sexagenary year-notation. This arrangement is the one we see today in the Sibu congkan version, or "current Bamboo Annals." As commentarial strategy it was unprecedented. It would be a hundred years before Xu Guang 1~ 11: (352-425) introduced ganzhi dates in a historical commentary, placing them in his notes to Shiji's tables. 140 The act of converting local Jin/Wei reign years into Zhou universal reign years, with some references to the ganzhi system, was typical ofXun Xu's career-long agenda to affirm Sima dynastic legitimacy through a prisca Zhou system of ritual standards.

The Use ofShiji, and Several Candidates for the "Other" Annals Edition Anyone researching ancient chronology in the 280s would rely on the centuries-old Shiji. To bring that work into Western Jin relevance, we return to Sima Biao. A close relative of Jin Wudi, he seems not to have been party to the factionalism surrounding Xun and Zhang in the 270s, and took a strong intellectual interest in Qiao Zhou's ~m (d. 270) materials on Eastern Han history. Qiao, like his student Chen 138 139 140

Ibid., pp. 20 3-4, 24 6, 25 0 -51. Ibid., pp. 241 , 25 0 . Ibid., esp. n. 12 5.

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Shou, was from a scholar-family of the state of Shu. His father was an expert in classics and in tuwei ~$, or charts and "weft-texts" of the classics, and two of his teachers were well-known diviners. 141 He had proposed successfully in 264 that Shu surrender to Wei. He was too ill to take up Sima Zhao's offer to go immediately to Luoyang with tide as marquis. But he did go in 267 at the summons of Jin's first emperor, Wudi, or Sima Yan.142 Even though he spent nearly all his years in Chengdu, Qiao rose eventually to the honorarium of Imperial Household Grandee under the Jin, the same status once awarded Xun Xu. The work of Qiao Zhou that Sima Biao studied closely was Gushi kao ~ 5I:.~, more than likely a narrative history of ancient China, perhaps going into Han. We read in Sima's Jinshu biography: Earlier, Qiao Zhou considered that Sima Qian's Shiji's dealing with matters before Zhou and Qin sometimes adopted vulgar expressions and sayings from all philosophical schools without exclusive reliance on correct scriptures. For that reason, he wrote Gushi kao (Examinations of Ancient History) in twenty-five pian. It relied completely on old canons to correct Sima Qian's mistakes. Sima Biao found, in turn, that Qiao Zhou's work still lacked perfection, so he made a list of 122 incorrect items in Gushi kao that in great part was based on words in the [Zhushu] jinian [l"ri1 fo,ic-1j:: (Bamboo Annals) from the Ji tomb. This [commentary on Qiao's work] became known in [Biao's] time. 143

n

The well-connected Sima Biao, known among historiographers in Luoyang because of his mounting collection of Han historiographic materials,144 was seeking out useful materials of other scholars, and Qiao Zhou was already famous for his Shu-Wei political dealings and had received special treatment from Sima Yan. Mansfelt Beck's careful sorting through the external evidence demonstrates that Qiao had in fact compiled many parts of a potential history of Eastern Han, specifically chronologies of predictions and observations in mantic astronomy and their impact on court sacrifices. 145 141 For Qiao's divinations and prophecies, see SGZ 42, p. 1022, pp. 1032-33 (predicting his own and Sima Zhao's death-dates, using hemerology); and jS 28, pp. 828, 834. 142 See Farmer, Talent of Shu; also see Beck, Treatises, pp. 27-31, who also gives a full, analyzed list of Qiao's writings (pp. 29-30). On Qiao's place in Shu history, see J. Michael Farmer, ''Art, Education, and Power: Illustrations in the Stone Chamber of Wen Weng," TP 86.1-3 (2000), p. 125. 143 jS 82, p. 2142; translation based partly on Beck, Treatises, p. 3L 144 See Beck, Treatises, p. 5 (citing Sima'sjinshu biography), and p. 16 for the second part of the biography, which was taken from Sima's postface to his Gushi kao commentary; it gives his overall negative opinion of previous attempts at writing Eastern Han history, singling out Qiao. 145 See Beck, Treatises, pp. 27-32; also Liao, Liang jin shibu, p. 64, on Qiao's mate-

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In my view, there was an even stronger reason for interest in Gushi kao: it was that Sh iji , while only just emerging as the benchmark for ancient history, after about 280 became open to correction in the light of Ji Tomb evidence. In taking up Qiao Zhou's materials, Sima Biao was engaging in an ongoing revolution in historiography; it is unfortunate that we cannot date his access to the Ji Tomb slips or transcriptions. His extensive use of Bamboo Annals data was a point that the Tang editors of his Jinshu biography emphasized by making it the final remark on his life. Sima Biao was showing that although Shu scholars like Qiao Zhou and Chen Shou had much to offer (Qiao's Gushi kao may have been one of the first commentaries on Shiji), nonetheless Qiao had died before the new evidences emerged, and his work would have to be updated by such fortunate Luoyang scholars as Sima himself. Sima Biao emerges as the second of four candidates for compiler of a post-Xun Xu edition of the Bamboo Annals, the Wei Hengl Shu Xi version, discussed above, being another. In Sima's case the evidence is indirect and vague, namely, his having been a relatively high Library official from the late 260s forward (see Table 5) and his systematic compilation of Annals data when correcting Gushi kao. There is no way to determine if Sima did that around 281-82, when Xun Xu's team were finishing work on the preface to Mu Tianzi zhuan, or only later, when Xun's stature fell. While working on the Bamboo Annals, Xun Xu et al. were also appealing to Shiji data as benchmarks for chronology, relying on both its shijia tit ("hereditary families," or, "genealogy") accounts of the individual Warring States and its "Liu guo nianbiao" /\ ~4*, and additionally they called on Shiben tIt::zjs:, a pre-Han source of royal chronologies thought to have been used by Sima Qian, and later by Huangfu Mi ~ li~ (215-282). Reliance on these sources was specifically mentioned in the preface to Mu Tianzi zhuan. Sima Qian's Hanera work had already achieved a high place, perhaps since the middle of Eastern Han: we have noted Qiao Zhou, above,146 but after 283, with transcriptions of the Bamboo Annals becoming public, Shiji was more carefully scrutinized. There is important evidence that both Xun Xu and the man I have been calling his erstwhile chief assistant for the Ji Tomb transcription and editing project, namely He Qiao, developed chronological argu-

*

rial on Eastern Han rites. 146 Goodman, Ts'ao P'i Transcendent, p. 130 (and n. Sima Qian as a venerable model for historiography.

28),

relates a mention in

220

of

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ments by using Shiji evidence. We find this in Pei Yin's ~,~1El fifthcentury commentary to Shiji. There, in a much-debated passage, the words of Xun actually at first quote He Qiao, who is made to say: 147 The Annals begin with Huangdi and end with the "current king ':-1:." of Wei. The current king was the son of Wei Huicheng Wang ~l~)jY;:=E. According to the Shiji, Huicheng Wang was only called Hui Wang JiLt F., and Hui Wang's son was called Xiang Wang ~F., and Xiang Wang's son was called Ai Wang .. Hui Wang died in his thirty-sixth year, and Xiang Wang died in his sixteenth year, such that Hui and Xiang combined reigned for fifty-two years.

At this very point, Xun Xu's voice reenters, saying: "Now, based on the ancient text 4-~tlJt .... " Xun proceeds to reveal that the Annals (I agree with Shaughnessy that this is the work to which "guwen" refers, specifically indicating the original bamboo slips) proves that Huicheng reigned thirty-six years but then to mark his rise in Zhou ranks he created a second reign that lasted seventeen years. Thus, Xun claimed, Shiji was mistaken to state that this was a period of two kings' reigns and that there had even been a king "Ai Wang." Xun also refers to Shiben for corroboration. I shall not repeat the centuries-old controversy about the reigns of the ancient Wei state, leaving that to Shaughnessy's study, which is clear and accessible on the matter. 148 I will, however, comment on the time, the thrust, and the implications of Pei Yin's passage. My reading punctuates differently from that of several Qing, Republican, and modern scholars who have remarked on the difficulties, yet my seeing Xun Xu's reply as starting with ''jin an guwen" and as a chastisement of He is defensible: Xun is quoting his underling (or former underling), He Qiao, and has shown that He was getting corroboration only from Shiji and thus not up to his task. 149

147

Cited above, n. 45. With slight changes, I follow the translation of Shaughnessy,

Rewriting, pp. 190-9I. Ibid., pp. 233-4I. See Shao, "Shiji jijie 'Xun Xu yue He Qiao yun' duan zhi biaodian kao" (pre-publication draft), for a complete review of those opinions. (I thank Prof. Shao for making his draft available to me.) Both Shao and Shaughnessy, Rewriting (pp. 190-91), follow the Zhonghua eds. of Shiji in punctuating so that Xun's opinion starts with ''According to the Shiji ... " and continues until the end. Shao correctly claims (p. 7) that He would have been below Xun in official status, and that the two were mutually antagonistic, which fact was discussed, above, in my section "The Team Members." Further, Shao is right to notice that Xun was the project chief of the Tomb texts; thus ''jin an" in my view was emphatic: not merely "now," but "now from my view," contrasting with the plain "an" that referred to He Qiao. All these points support interpreting Xun's comment as a chastisement. 148 149

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There remains the question of what sort of text Pei Yin quoted. I do not think it was a remnant of Xun Xu's so-called summaries that went into his fin Zhongjing catalog. Earlier in this chapter, we looked into the probable structure of that work. Here, in his criticism of He Qiao's chronology, we do not have anything like a bibliographic description. It is also in the realm of possibility that the Xun-He dialog is a remnant ofXun Xu's Wenzhang xulu, which, as we saw, contained a quotation from Wei Heng's observations about the Ji Tomb texts. But it is unlikely, since most of the extant passages of Wenzhang xulu show Xun's role there as that of a biographer of literary men and commenter on their literary and in some cases political impacts, not as a philological critic. ISO Instead I see two other possibilities. First of all, it may have been a remnant of some separate record by Xun of philological problems in the Annals, one that argues with his technical assistants, as we saw in the case of his dialog with Lie He in Chapter Five. The Lie He dialog in fact remained an integral free-standing text for some time, was copied into Xun Xu's wenji, and ended up in Songshu Here an indirect dialog (Xun speaks to He Qiao only in writing) may have had a similar history. Second, it may have been a running commentary that originally was part of the Xun team's transcription of the Annals. In form, it would have been something like the Type I "largecharacter notes" or one of the "small-character notes," both styles of commentary visible even in today's "current Bamboo Annals," some arguably attributable to Xun Xu (the Annals comments of Shen Yue are, however, clearly announced).151 Xun shows us that He Qiao believed the Annals started its ancient chronology with Huangdi, a fact that differed from the observations of Du Yu (see above). Du Yu and the Xun team may simply have considered different, loose bamboo slips as candidates for the beginning portion of the Bamboo Annals per se. Xun seems to agree with this "Huangdi" assessment, since he does not make a case against it, concentrating only on the problem of the reign length of Wei Hui Wang. The Xun-He disagreement may be dated quite early, perhaps in 281-82, when He Qiao was still working on the preface to Mu Tianzi zhuan and had not yet (quite possibly no one had) started to arrange ISO Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 191 (n. 7) suggests that the Xun-He passage "derives from Xun Xu's jinian xulu ~cjl::j&@!j." There is no such Xun title, and I believe Shaughnessy here means that the passage was Xun's "xu" (summary description) covering the Ji Tomb "jinian" that went into his larger jin Zhongjing. lSI Ibid., pp. 20 5-7.

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and interpret the Bamboo Annals slips. This is why Xun states "Now, based on the ancient text 4'-~~X ... ," reflecting the fact that he, Xun, had begun to examine them and make a running commentary. It is also possible that the criticism occurred slightly later-around 284-87-with He Qiao already pursuing a Bamboo Annals transcription of his own after being promoted to Prefect of the Palace Writers in 282. Then the comments by Xun Xu would be seen as directed against a rival's editorial skill. Such an interpretation is supported by a fourteenth-century datum, namely, an item in the Treatise on Literature of the dynastic-history Songshi *51::, which lists "Zhushu jinian" as having three juan, and having been commented on by Xun, and com152 piled/edited f.jJ by He Qiao. This datum is made difficult, though, by the fact that both scholars are given a role in the named boole From everything we know of the two men, this book would not have been created by Xun's making a set of notes and then He's acting as a supporter of those notes by arranging and completing them. I favor an "early" scenario, making the Xun-He passage an excerpt from a Xun Xu system of notes on the Bamboo Annals composed when He was still an Imperial Library underling. The hint that only Xun Xu was starting to work on the "guwen" Annals makes this more plausible. In the end, no one scenario, especially where it concerns exactly who was developing a separate, non-Xun or post-Xun Bamboo Annals version, is decidedly better than any other. I merely suggest that with He Qiao we have our third possible candidate for a Bamboo Annals editor-if not writing a full transcription-edition, then at least entering opinions about chronology verbally, or as notes placed along with Xun's. A fourth candidate is Wang/Fu Zan. He had direct access to the ancient slips from having been on Xun Xu's original team. He was also a scholar of the classic Hanshu: his commentary would become known and used in later generations. 153 As we saw, he became opposed to Xun Xu on methods of organizing Jin dynastic history. More important is that aspects of Wang/Fu's Hanshu jijie ~i.*~~ provide additional support to his candidacy as a Bamboo Annals editor. Extant passages several times quote the various formats of commentary (large- and small-character) that somehow entered the Xun team "first" edition of the Bamboo Annals, and he also seems to have been aligning and com-

Songshi (Zhonghua edn.) 203, p. 5088 . His work was titled Hanshu jijie [yinyi] ~9Hlt:J;lMfJT(O [:M··~j;]; see Galer, "Sounds and Meanings," pp. 66-67. 152

153

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paring different editions of the Annals that in later years had slightly differing titles. [54 These extant passages also show that he referred frequently to the pre-Han Shiben. 155 Reliance on the latter had been explicitly stated by Xun Xu both in the preface to Mu Tianzi zhuan and in the Xun-He passage about chronology, which we just analyzed. Wang/Fu Zan thus may have had a role in bringing the work into the foreground, acting in some sense like the kind of technical expert that Xun Xu was used to in other projects; conversely, he may have become interested in Shiben because ofXun, or simply knew that text independently. All these aspects ofWang/Fu Zan's work show him to have been an organized researcher into Bamboo Annals chronology, knowledgable in its first annotated transcription by the Xun team and in early variant editions under variant titles. Besides the prisca Zhou program fostered by Xun Xu, and the fact that a universal count of years had a pleasing systematicity, there are other explanations for Xun Xu's and his teams' actions to change the original Ji Tomb Bamboo Annals. Edward L. Shaughnessy raises the fascinating suggestion that the team may have had the current Western Jin's legitimacy in mind. [56 Zhou universal dates could deflect the ancient importance of the Wei state and smooth over the fact that the ancient Jin had been absorbed by ancient Wei. This would cast a triumphalist approval on the blatant facts of the fall of modern Wei from 249-65 AD, as it devolved into the hands of the modern Jin dynasts! Moreover, Xun Xu, like any historian ancient or modern, was perhaps simply concerned to establish meanings from broken and obscure texts through a universal chronology. If he could get the years to compute and be in accordance with modern benchmarks of chronology like Shiji and Shiben (or in fact criticize those latter sources), then the vagueness often entailed by moving bamboo slips and translating ancient graphs would seem less objectionable. This section has provided Western Jin texture to Shaughnessy's breakthrough picture of the scholarly world at that time. It appears that Xun Xu's Mu Tianzi zhuan team took up the task of making a "first" Bamboo Annals edition, and their work on it probably stopped (finished or unfinished) around 285. We have gained new context for the bare Jinshu report of the debate between Xun Xu and Wang/Fu 154 On his quotingtheAnnals commentary, see Shaughnessy, Rewriting, pp. 206-7; and on the differing Annals texts he was working with, ibid., pp. 218, 228 (n. 86), and 231. 155 See, e.g., HS 28A (zhu) ("Dili zhi"), pp. 1557, 1560, 1669. 156 Shaughnessy, Rewriting, p. 25 6.

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Zan and for Pei Yin's passage showing Xun's criticizing He Qiao on matters of chronology and the use of Shiji. Xun Xu's reputation as an editor, with his overarching Zhou agenda that caused a reordering of the original slips and changes in format, was challenged starting around 283-84. We learned of three critical philological projects on the Bamboo Annals that may be considered as concurrent, and perhaps rival, to the one Shaughnessy rightly deems the first post-Xun Xu corrected "edition"-by Shu Xi (via Wei Heng). The latter was in fact the major revision, but other sorts of Annals commentary existed. Such Ji Tomb scholars reflected trends in historiography outside of Xun Xu's purview and also changes in the court's historiography bureaus. My discussion hopefully helps us see how Western Jin scholarship dealt with both old and new issues of reliability and forgery. When the Ji Tomb texts came into focus, the scholarly world found itself awash with "old texts" of a highly charged nature, reopening lines of questioning about historical fact and interpretation of history. It was an atmosphere perhaps not seen since early Eastern Han, after the work of Liu Xin to revamp the masters and the sages; furthermore, much of the scholarly world in the 270S and 80S was not yet finished digesting and refining the new proposals about antiquity, sages, and ancient texts that were propounded in xuanxue circles. Thus, with such startling material evidence in 280, sincerity of purpose and probity were important questions, ones that redounded to the man placed into the task of controlling and delivering the Ji Tomb texts. Was he admired and thought trustworthy? Clearly, the answer was "not so": if there was anyone in Luoyang capable of bending facts, making reality and physical forms conform to an agenda, it was Xun Xu. In the published argumentations of Edward Shaughnessy and David Nivison (and at public conferences), the matter of "editorial change, qua mischief" has been a chief dividing point. From Nivison's point of view, it seems unlikely that anyone in the 280s, even if technically capable, would have wanted to change the discovered annals of pre-Han China. To corroborate Nivison's idea that the Bamboo Annals were subjected to the sorts of juggling that pre-Qin calendar experts performed as they used both arcane and well-known celestial and historical cycles sometime before interment-a sound idea worthy of explorationthere will have to be in situ discoveries of pre-Qin calendrists' and astronomers' texts. However, Shaughnessy's opinion about third-century AD manipulation, whether the latter was malign or muddled, can now, with the above social world of exegetes, calligraphers, access, and pol-

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itics, be given a major support. His sense of a fluid and multivalent world of text-copying and editing motives is, in my opinion, correct and insightful. This fluidity made for deep mistrust of Xun Xu's handling of the texts, and mistrust of a man with already twelve years of an obsessive prisca Zhou reform agenda. All of this shows us that the lines between editing and forgery were thin, as they have always been in contexts of culturally charged texts and ideas.

A

FOOT-RULE BUBBLES UP AS ATTACKS ON XUN XU BEGIN

In 283, Luoyang experienced severe floods, and Xun Xu was forced to turn his attention away from the bamboo slips. He advised the court to set up a Commissioner of Waterways to manage Luoyang's riverine systems. 157 Just after that, he voiced yet another policy opinion about the functioning of the bureaucracy. His aim in it was to soften recent calls for appointing officials to revamp the panoply of administrative codes. The two officials whom the court proffered are completely unknown in history. Xun opens by extolling the virtues of relatively well known men-officials of Western Han named Zhang Shizhi ~~~2:.. and Bing Ji p;j~5. They had risen from lowly stations and had warned emperors about how and when to apply adminstrative codes and hierarchical statuses, thus achieving a harmonious atmosphere among officialdom. Iss Xun brings up the fact that his famous kinsman Xun You iiJ 11)[ had been asked by Cao Cao to reform penal law, but that by the next reign that chore was only being pursued by one low official. 159 According to Xun Xu, recent calls to reduce offices and thus affairs would only cause a need for more lower officials. Here he seems to have been harking back to the policy debates of 279 with which this chapter began, and as expected he advises that the bureaucracy not make cuts. He claims that it is actually the higher officials who are relied upon for knowledge of administrative procedure. In 283 Xun's agenda broadly 157 The official title used is ~tll~!j({lJ.!1t In Western Han times there was a Dushui office with several levels of officials; but none had this exact title, which came into play in Jin, probably pursuant to this action by Xun Xu, and in later periods of history as well. The editing ofXun's biography, IS 39, p. II56, places the incident before that concerning his and He's report to Wudi on the heir-apparent (see chap. 7). I use "283" based on Zhi Yu's biography, below, and LiulBiannian 7, pp. 139-40. 158 On the two, see Michael Loewe, A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods (22I Be-AD 24) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 12-13 and 690-91. 159 You's role as legist during Cao Cao's rule in the 1905 is described at IS 30, p. 921; see also chap. I, "Xun Musicologists and Legists."

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matches that of 279, but it uses different reasoning. Now, he is pointing out that the upper offices supply guidance, and they too need the support of the court, not just the bottom tier. We return to the Luoyang floods. The man whom Xun Xu appointed as Commissioner of Waterways was a well-known military tactician, Equipage Master for the throne, engineer, and Court Architect named Chen Xie ~~~!f.J. In his post-flood work, digging in Luoyang after the disaster, Chen found a foot-rule R.. 160 Xun Xu was of course famous in Luoyang, and in some quarters excoriated for officiousness, factionalism, and his insistence on a certain prisca Zhou. It is no surprise that of all the scholars interested in antiquities and in the aesthetics and principles of standards, it would be Zhi Yu who was drawn to Chen's discovery of the foot-rule. We learn about this in Zhi's biography, from which I translate the following passage: 161 Court Architect Chen Xie was digging and found an ancient footrule. 162 The Masters of Writing office ~LO~11: (possibly meaning simply Zhi Yu himself, who had just been appointed shangshu lang) sent up a memorial: "The 'present-day' foot-rule [standard] is longer than the ancient one; it is appropriate that we [instead] use the ancient as correct." Pan Yue {fIt-I~' thought that [something] used so regularly for so long should not be changed. Zhi Yu disagreed and said: "Formerly the sages observed the traces [of things] in the world and determined their appearances. They gave images to [material] things and fashioned devices, so as to preserve them for use at proper times. Therefore they gave a tripled quality to heaven and a doubled quality to earth, and so fixed the rules of computation. They followed the lit regulators to set out divisions. By so doing they determined the degrees of lengths. In making things they had models, so that when employing [those things] there were verifications. They marked out the progress of stellar movements per the yin and yang (namely, using solar and lunar calculations), thus the heavens and earth could not hide their true na160 ChenXie has no biography injS. Butwe know that early in his career he was highly regarded by both Sima Zhao (for expertise in military tactics) and Sima Yan, for whom he frequently was master of carriage and hunting equipage US 24 ["Zhiguan zhi"], p. 741, which also says that "late in the 280s" he was manager of Luoyang waterways; such dating means that Chen held the 283 post for several years. Chen was also a builder of court structures and domiciles: sometime around 288 he held the post of Court Architect, responsible in one case for leading 60,000 workers in rebuilding the Jin Ancestral Temple, which had been undermined by a deep spring US 27 ["Wuxing zhi"], p. 802). In another case he was the builder for structures associated with the mansion of Hua Biao's '(I~~ (204-275) son Yi (IS 44, p. 1261), for whom see Table 5, under 287-91. 161 jS 51, p. 14 2 5. 162 Chen is called by his late-280s title, but it can be an anachronistic usage: "[the eventual] 'Court Architect' Chen once found a foot-rule."

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tures. They made a standard of right-ascension [for stellar observation] and thus the dangling constellations could not contain mistakes. They applied [these principles] to the metal [bells] and [sounding] stones, and thus the pitches and scales were harmonized. They brought this to bear on compasses and try-squares, thus devices agreed in their applications ... , The present-day foot-rule is longer than the ancient one by something approaching half an inch. The music bureaus have used it and their pitch-regulators do not blend; the astronomers have used it, and the constellations have given wrong interpretations. The offices of the physicians have used it, and the hollow interstices (nodes along jingluo t.i!l\*?t pathways) have been completely off. In all three of these, dimensions and volumes must have their sources, and correct and incorrect must have verifications. They have all been impeded and so fail to work; thus we ought to change the present-day [standard], to follow the ancient."

With the history of Ji Tomb scholarship having been examined, we can interpret this opinion and locate it in a milieu. When he was young, Zhi Yu had been a protege of the well-known physician and medical theorist Huangfu Mi, who had only recently died before the Chen Xie discovery. Huangfu's own prose shows the same sort of interest in the epistemology of "form," as contexted in technics and arts. 163 Zhi's thoughts contain an even more philosophical approach to precision that, as expected, starts with "sages." The sages gave numerate aspects to "forms," which they made to reflect nature's "images." Those numericized forms in turn became linear measure and divisions, because the sages had integrated them with the sacred harmonic ratios inherent in tubal regulators. Zhi claimed that all the present-day standards of length were wrong and were negatively impacting astronomy, music, and medicine. To Zhi, that "ancient" foot-rule from the floods could be used to criticize Xun Xu's reformed foot-rule of 274. He implied, but incorrectly, that what metrics needed here in about 284 was a re-shortening to match Chen Xie's found-object. Zhi Yu was probably as confused about metrics as most any scholar who had not spent the time to understand the problems. His statement, "The 'present-day' foot-rule [standard] is longer than the ancient one" is highly problematical. We have seen that Xun Xu in 274 determined that the Zhou foot had become elongated late in Eastern Han times, 163 See Huangfu's biography, jS 51, pp. 1409-10, and p. 1418 for Zhi Yu as among his disciples. A biographical study of Huangfu is given, along with contexted translations of his prose, in Declercq, Writing Against the State, chapter 5. On systematizing aspects of Huangfu's medical work, see Vivienne Lo, "Huangdi Hama jing (Yellow Emperor's Toad Canon)," AM 14.2 (2001), pp. 70, 89-90.

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and thus Xun's "present-day foot-rule" became shorter to match Zhou, not longer. Zhi may have not cared which "ancient" metrics the Chen Xie rule reflected. Perhaps he had not surveyed metric devices as Xun had done, and as Li Chunfeng would do three centuries later in order to prove that many people ignorantly thought certain "ancient" footrules were of Zhou provenance. No matter Zhi's lack of training, his indictment of Xun could not be stronger. Very soon after this, Zhi would be tasked by the court to review and criticize the "New Rites" ~JTT!I that Xun Xu's mentor Xun Yi had compiled as part of the exegetical project of 264-65. In the next chapter, we learn about that critique, a thoughtful essay on the nature of exegesis and the inferior approach of Xun Yi. The time was becoming ripe for a thorough debunking of the whole Xun method itself-with its imposition of a precision based on complex proofs from antiquity, and with its editing and interpreting of ancient scripts via a method that many now disapproved.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"THE'VE STOLEN MY PHOENIX POOL;' 284-289 AND BEYOND Biangong ~'l;I;: The Base Now Changed In actual practice, the last, seventh, note of the Zhengsheng scale has none of the closure and cadential power of the modern Western leading-tone. In early China biangong did not define an accompaniment or a new mode. It was a fillip and a decoration, to be discarded. It engendered few theoretic or poetic references. During his last years, Xun Xu tried to forge ahead but ultimately ran aground, and his base of operations was taken from him.

After about 283 Zhang Hua's ambit was a broad, evolving web of people and groups. There was no strictly factional aspect to it, although some scholarly opinions against Xun Xu could reflect Wu War bitterness. Zhang's key proteges were Zhi Yu and Shu Xi. We saw that Shu, about ten or fifteen years younger than Zhi, took a strong interest in Ji Tomb studies beginning in about 296, when he saw the bamboo slips and encountered Wei Heng's corrected transcription. As for Zhi Yu, we saw his reaction to the discovery of yet another old foot-rule; in my interpretation he seemed to signal the end ofXun's program of reforms. Antiquity, for Zhi, was worthy of respect on its own terms, an opinion that had a strong meaning for the post-Xun Xu scholars who lived through the end of Western Jin. This chapter helps to confirm Zhi Yu's anti-Xunism. It examines the continuing interests of Zhang Hua's proteges and offshoot scholarly circles, in particular Zhi Yu and his own friends. For these scholars, historiography remained important, thus in 284 Zhi offered the court an analysis of the faults of earlier scholarship on the Rites 11. Compendia of music, rites, laws, and the like can be thought of as historiography, since a chief function of that research was to assert the histories of institutions. Zhi's 284 memorial in fact talks of methodology-specifically the way commentaries should function to help maintain those histories of institutions. Although a devotee of antiquity, he recognized a place for contemporary scholars.

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First we shall look at Zhi's analysis and how it served as anti-Xun Xu criticism. Next comes an episode that I believe reveals Xun Xu's last intellectual position at court concerning court scholarship. It shows that in about 286 he was still vetting and reviewing historiography. Subsequently, we learn about Xun's demotion and death, and then, in about 298, a revival of the 284 debate between Xun Xu and Wang/Fu Zan over where to begin chronicling Jin history. The person responsible for that revival, in which Xun was posthumously voted down, was another of the later offshoots of the Zhang Hua ambit, Jia Mi, whom we have already met as well. The chapter ends by considering the meaning of Xun Xu's life in scholarship and his prisca Zhou. I offer my own evaluation of how the latter might have been interpreted by Xun Xu's peers in light of their personal notions of antiquity, and in light of the mentoring and literary bonds that had helped cement them as a group.

ZHI YU'S AMBIT AND A NEW ANTI-XUNISM

With Zhang Hua in exile, and with Ou Yu's death in 284, a new group of scholars emerged. Among such men Ji Tomb studies, and particularly Xun Xu's disturbing control of the project, were of great concern. Shu Xi was at this time still young: it would be several years before he came under Zhang Hua's patronage and take over the Ji Tomb studies of Wei Heng. It is not clear what Wei Heng's position was in 283 or 284, and in fact there are no episodes or anecdotes linking him with Xun Xu or with Shu Xi and others. Buried inside the opening pages of the "Treatise on Rites" in Jinshu however, is evidence of Zhi Yu's creation of a direct anti-Xun opposition. The previous chapter showed that only two contemporary remarks were even indirectly suspicious ofXun Xu's Ji Tomb competence-Ou Yu's and Shu Xi's. Edward L. Shaughnessy's study shows in a convincing way that the "other" edited transcription of Zhushu jinian tt.~2 -4 (Bamboo Annals) was attempting to eliminate the intrusions committed by Xun's "first" edition, especially the use of Zhou regnal dates. Yet neither those nor other remarks about Xun Xu's scholarship, all edited in the fifth through seventh centuries, state specific faults of Xun Xu. We do not have whole passages from letters, notes, or discussions that show exactly how Xun Xu's approach to paleography and restoration, or indeed his entire prisca Zhou program, was perceived. To gain insight into anti-Xunism, we must follow the outer edges of comments

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made by those in Zhi Yu's ambit. Those edges of discourse show that historiographers continued to shape arguments about historiography itself, as they had already started doing with chronology. Now, the arguments would focus on the nature of commentaries and strike out at Xun Xu's famous relative Xun Yi. We now turn to Zhi Yu's and Wang Jie's I 1~ (267-305) ideas about commentaries that, as indeed many would have agreed, indicated a respect toward antiquity that was more sincere than that shown by Xun Yi and Xun Xu. Deep antiquity, that time-realm before the Zhou and before even the Xia, had been promoted by Cao Pi in the 220S; and by the mid-280s Western Jin scholars could still suggest that antiquity was paramount in any thinking about sages, or about hallowed texts. But at the same time they did not refuse modern scholarship its due. They even promoted Wei scholars-a surprising move.

Zhi Yus and Wang Jies Ideas about the Historiographical Value of Commentaries Zhi Yu wrote a thorough review of the problems encountered in court projects to redact the inherited skeins of ritual texts. His review was placed by the Tang Jinshu editors near the beginning of the "Treatise on Rites" tI iit, which occupies juan numbers 19-21. A short editorial preamble starts off the Treatise, giving a condensed version of the ancient history of the rites and their changes in Wei and in Jin times. The work of Wang Su (195-256) and Gaotang Long ~i: (d. 237) during Wei Mingdi's reign is commended, but noted too is the difficulty in restoring rites studies after the fall of Luoyang in 315-16, citing Dai Miao's ~:[tX;~ post-317 speech urging in broad hortatory terms the establishment of a state academy in Jiankang. 1 After the editorial preamble, Western Jin developments are taken up in detail, especially the importance of the sacrificial rites, because the object of Zhi Yu's critique will be Xun Yi's compilation chiefly as it concerned mourning proprieties. We start this important document with theJinshu compilers' own short history ofWesern Jin ritual scholarship, after which they quote Zhi Yu's long memoria1. 2 At the beginning of Jin, the Masters of Writing Xun Yi itUNj'i and Zheng Chong ~~Iqrl' (both men died in 274; see Chapter Two, Table r) fashioned , The speech of Dai Miao is found at IS 69, pp. 1848-49. The passage following, about the history of rites studies, is summarized in a paragraph in Nanqi shu I*H~\'f~~: (Zhonghua edn.) 9 ("Li," A), p. II? 2 The passage here begins at IS 19, p. 580, last line.

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the institutes of the state. After the dynasty moved south, there were Xun Song il.i#~ (d. 329/30) and Diao Xie /jlhh (d. 322), who added and subtracted items of court protocol (in the period 317-18;3 see below). As to the offices of Zhou and the Five Rites, there are the Auspicious [jili rites for the state's spirit-ancestors], the Inauspicious [xiongli lXltt'Y. rites for mourning], the Military [junli 'tW~~ rites for executions]' the Guest [binli rites for visitors]' and the Blessing [jiali rites for weddings].4 But for the type of grandness of the Auspicious Rites, nothing surpasses the sacrifices. Therefore the third of the Eight Institutes in Hongfan is called "Sacrifices."s As to the sacrifices, they invoke filial piety in serving the dynasty's ancestors, and they communicate with the spirit numens. When Han arose, it was after the destruction of learning that ocCUlTed under the Qin, and the majority of the gradations of ritual could not be restored to [pristine] antiquity. Through these more than 400 years, going from the Western to the Eastern capitals, gradually things changed. When the Wei inherited the chaos of the end of Han, the old writings were destroyed. The Palace Attendant Wang Can (d. 217) and the Master of Writing Wei Ji f1Wj:\\.JJ (fl. 200-240) wrote out the court protocols, and when the princely fiefdom of Jin was established (in 264), Wendi (Sima Zhao) ordered Xun Yi to refer to Wei precedents and compile them as the "New Rites J~~%-'8~Jijl,~."6 [Xun] studied both modern and ancient [works] and restored concision $},j'-?i'J, SITJt£ilY X. Yang Huc'(·f,'j, Ren Kai fU\2:, Yu Jun JJ%:uJ?2, and Ying Zhen J1QU:'-J, in 3 The mention of the court order to compile rites around 317-18, after the move of the dynasty, is at jS 75, p. 1976. Xun Song's jinshu biography is at 75, pp. 1975 ff.; he was the great-grandson ofXun Yi's eldest brother, Yun. Song was noted for literary ability and associated with Wang Dun and Lu Ji. During the turmoil of the 300S he served in military posts especially in the south. In the post-317 period in Jiankang he helped reestablish the Imperial Academy and unsuccessfully argued against reducing the number of commentaries to be used by official students and against establishing only Wang Bi's commentary to Yijing. Eastern Jin Yuandi did not approve ofXun Song's idea about maintaining Guliang and Gongyang as well as Zheng Xuan studies. Under Mingdi, though, Song became Inspector of the Imperial Library in the Taining reign (323-25). He died in 329 or 330, at the age of sixty-six US 75, p. 1979, and n. II on p. 1996). Diao Xie's biography is at jS 69, pp. 1842 ff. He and Xun Song seem to have moved in parallel through posts in the Masters of Writing. Diao became heavily involved in military affairs resisting Wang Dun, and died in the associated fighting. See his biography in SSHYIMather, p. 576. 4 My explanatory words in brackets reflect the summary given in 55 6 ("Liyi" A), p. 105; the more complex locus classicus is Zhouli (SSJZS edn.), sect. "Chunguan: dazong bo," j. 18, pp. lOb ff [274 ff], on which see Liang Mancang ~¥~~frfr, Wei jin Nanbeichao wuli zhidu kaolun ~JlJ,f,-j'li(J~UiYUJ},*fliU}Jt~'ij6tr (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2009), pp. 127-30. 5 See Bernhard Karlgren, "The Book of Documents," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 22 (1950), p. 30. e, No mention of this title is seen in the treatises attached to 55 or jiu Tangshu (see List I, part 2); below, Zhi Yu also calls what Xun Yi was working on "Wu lili1Jlb'."

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addition jointly worked to collate and correct/ and this resulted in 165 pian, which were submitted in a memorial. At the beginning of the Taikang reign (in my opinion approximately 284) the Superviser of the Masters of Writing Zhu Zheng :51\:W~8 and the Gentleman of the Masters of Writing Zhi Yu discussed [Xun's "New Rites"]. [Zhi] Yu memorialized about what was appropriate to take out or add: Your minister has read critically the Five Ritesh>t~!9 compiled by former Grand Commandant Xun Yi. I believe that the magnificent affair of emperors is to transform [institutions] in order to perpetuate rule, and the great duty of the state is to improve the rites. For this reason, officials first delay in memorializing about ritual affairs, but then they seek to hurry them to completion and put them into effect. Because the Mourning Vestments (Sangfu t~JJlnlo are much in doubt it is appropriate to fix them; further, because in today's ritual code the pian and juan are so highly problematic, we ought to bring things together by categories. For so long now the matter has not been resolved, that I fear I will see my own deathbed [first]. Alas! In general, there have been few changes in the rites for capping, marriage, and all such Auspicious Rites. But the Mourning Vestments are the important tool of any generation, and we should make sure to change any incorrect items in it .... 11 All those (disciples of Confucius) were enlightened and knew fully about the rites. They respectfully recited the institutes of Zhou, while taking instruc-

7 See chap. 2, nn. 29-30, which cite the two places in jS that state the makeup of the team for revising law codes in 264, when Sima Zhao was made Prince of Jin; the men mentioned here in the "Treatise on Rites" as assisting Xun Yi are not that law-code team. Confusion may occur from the overlapping of personnel and areas of learning. Even the early Chinese scholiasts could confuse phrases that used the term la ill:, because it applies to both musicology and law. S There is no biography of Zhu; at some point in time he gained the noble title of Guangxing Marquis )];J:!wU·1~t In 287, Zhu gave opinion in court about sumptuary protocols for weddings (IS 21, sect. "Li" C, p. 664). In 288, approximately March, he was appointed as Right Supervisor of the Masters of Writing, but died the next year (IS 3, PP·7 8-79)· 9 This refers to Xun Yi's "Xin li," which built on Wei and Jin scholars' reforms of earlier Han scholarship and created categories more resonant with the "Five Rites" as laid out in Zhouli (see n. 4, above). 10 The early ritual text "Mourning Vestments" was part of the evolving set of ritual texts that through the Han period was called by different names, but which after the Han was settled as Yi!i 1~JHl"}, and which had numerous sections (pian) on different topics. Among those, only Sangfu received intense exegetical work and was written about separately, as a free-standing work; see William G. Boltz's essay on "I li" in Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China, and Inst. of E. Asian Studies, U. of California, Berkeley, 1993), pp. 234-35· 11 The ellipsis stands for a passage (IS 19, p. 581) about Confucius' disciples and their approach to mourning rites.

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tion from Zhongni. They imbibed the sage teachings and debated about them for many many years. But whenever we must deal with the affairs of mourning, we find ourselves still in this [sorry] state. To understand the confusing changes in the rites we must take up the details. Because since that [ancient, Confucian] time the scroll texts have been burned and scattered, and since we are now so far separated from the sage (or "such sages" if we include Confucius' disciples), it is no wonder that the mourning rituals have taken on errors. It is for this reason that although a single juan of Mourning Vestments doesn't even occupy one's open hand, nonetheless the contending opinions are quite various. 12

The original text of Mourning Vestments is terse and summary, and must depend on commentaries so that the meanings take shape. Today people consider that the different levels of detail in the handed-down explanations were composed by Zixia. Zheng Xuan and Wang Su primarily revered the Classic ~!ii and after that they honored the Tradition 11#- Ll [of Zixia]. But still each brought up differences, and people everywhere thus have been in doubt [about the meanings]; no one has known how to put it into order. Yet Xun Yi wrote strictly concerning the text of the ancient Classic, and he completely eliminated the Zixia Tradition and the commentaries of the early ru scholars. Ritual matters [in this way] cannot be practiced. If they were practiced, then with such mutual contradictions, one against the other, there would be no way to set institutions right. I, your minister, think that at present we must judiciously select from Liji,14 and borrow the discussions in the Tradition to supplement what is not otherwise supplied, and unify the divergent meanings. By using Wang Jinghou's (Wang Su's) work titled Changes and Redactions in "Mourning Vestments"~Jm~I~15 as a model to make [these matters] categorical and clear, then we can end the conten12 I leave out Zhi's detailed comparison (IS I9, p. 58I) of Zheng Xuan's and Wang Su's interpretations over matters of the levels of family mourning, e.g., cases of stepmothers and infant deaths. 13 The Zhonghua eds. (I9, p. 582) marked both words "Jing 1.\\;(" and "Zhuan 1~\" as book titles. In the former case they may be reading jing as one of the alternative titles for the Li texts, namely "Lijing 1~K§i"; but it also may mean simply "the main text"; see also below. Boltz's essay ("I li," p. 236) discusses the earlier belief that the "Tradition" (the accepted Rites commentaries) had been written by Zheng Xuan, but how archeological discoveries have thrown that idea into doubt. This passage of Zhi Yu's memorial would confirm the archeology, since Zhi believed, or his sources showed, that both Zheng and Wang "honored" an extant "Tradition" that accompanied the "Classic." 14 Here, I am not sure to what exactly Zhi refers by the word "Liji"; most likely he means the complete suite of the various pian that made up Yili. 15 55 32 , pp. 9 20- 2I , lists three similarly worded titles, but none is stated as being written by Wang Suo

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tions. After that there will not be two methods in the procedures, and everyone will have the same source [from which to draw]. Further, such a [revised] Rites ought to be published everywhere, and ought not to be burdensome. Xun Yi had made 165 pian; and these pian all went into one juan. All told, it was more than 150,000 words. I still say that even the one juan is too prolix, and it is all very repetitious. For example, for sacrifices made to the mountains and rivers [as found] in the Yaodian of Shangshu, it was only concerning the enumerations of the East Marchmount preparation of sacrificial animals and metal coins that [the classic] set out the required ceremonies. For the rest [of the rituals] it says merely "as before." Also, in the Zhouli sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, and the Five Di [spirits] partaking with former kings when a matter is the same it says "also the same." The style is concise and the meanings apt. Today rites and ceremonials may be the same [in content] but names can differ. They get separated into pian, and the juan become complex and unregulated. In all such cases we ought to reduce the verbiage, and bring together the items of a kind. When we use categories to bring them together, such items will be distinguishable. Only thus may we arrange different [things] into [their] groups. If we do this, we can reduce [Xun Yi's work] by a third. Zhi Yu finished his critical review of [Xun Yi's] "New Rites" and sent it to the throne in the first year of the Yuankang reign (291). Included was his presentation of the matters concerning the Mingtang Iljj 1ft and Five Di, the two altars and six lineage heads, the system for determining auspicious and inauspicious [calendar days] for the princes. In total it was fifteen pian. An edict was issued approving of its opinions. Later, Zhi Yu and Fu Xian 1~~:JIJ!Z (d. 294) continued to work on the project. In the end they did not complete it. The Central Plain was thrown into disaster, and the only remains of their work is Zhi's "Jueyi zhu" YJ(~)ftt.16 In Eastern Jin times, the Superintendent Diao Xie, and the Grand Master 16 This title is quoted in a Tang commentary to Shiji, p. 3035; but no reference is seen in SS; see also Liao Jilang w:tl'&r5, Liang jin shibu yiji kaoRn'f~f:f[IJ.ifWi~ (Taipei: Jiaxin shuini, 1970), p. 213. Zhi's opinions on the Mingtang and Five Di are discussed by Chen Shuguo I~UJU~]I, Zhongguo lizhi shi (Wei jin Nanbeichao juan) 1=1'1fi21 i~fl]IJ9:. (w'lhfl'~0'~ltjtvr0) (Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), pp. II4-16. Zhi Yu also made a case to the court about the importance of genealogies, arguing that people had become unable to establish their ancestries after the disruptions of the end of Han; thus he compiled a work in ten juan called "Zuxing zhaomu" JJ~J~:lIflf!.J1 (or, "Patriarchal Zhao-Mu Lineages," a term indicating the two ancestral lineages in the ancestral temples of Zhou times, with one lineage called mu and the other zhao, after the names of Wen wang and Wuwang; see Hou Xudong, "Rethinking Chinese Kinship in the Han and the Six Dynasties: A Preliminary Observation," AM 23.1 [2010], forthcoming). In SS's bibliographic treatise Zhi's "Zuxing zhaomu" is not listed per se, but is discussed in passing (SS 33, "Jingji zhi" B, p. 990, corroborating that it was in 10 juan, and claiming that it was very popular in the period 480-556).

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of Ceremonies Xun Song made additional editing to the original text [of "Jueyi zhu"], and Cai Mo further worked on it, and so forth.

The above constitutes valuable information about the level of attention that the Western Jin court devoted to the Rites. First, Xun Yi had been commissioned to make a "New Rites" in the mid-26os, and then, in a time of new factions and agendas after the Wu War, and with the Xuns' reputation declining, Zhi Yu was given the task to review the whole matter. Zhi first memorialized in 284 or thereabouts, a date that I deduce despite Zhu Zheng's being made Right Supervisor of the Masters of Writing in 288.17 Zhi seems to have merely begun to examine the "New Rites" of Xun Yi just at the time of his memorial and then told the court what he thought of it and what his plan would be to change it. He proceeded to work according to the plan, and we saw, above, that he finished at least a major part in 291. His work did not stop even then, since he worked with Fu Xian until sometime before Fu's death in 294. Thus Zhi Yu spent as much as nine or ten years revising Xun Yi's "New Rites." Subsequently, a descendant ofXun Xu and Xun Yi named Xun Song worked on Zhi Yu's revisions as late as about 318. If I am correct about the year 284, give or take a year, then Xun Xu was still in office as inspector of both the historiography-oriented bureaus and was probably, according to the timing that I have worked out in Chapter Six, still working on the difficult transcription of the Bamboo Annals. Zhang Hua was in exile, but Zhang's indirect protege He Qiao had already been made Prefect of the Palace Writers and had made public his dislike ofXun Xu. He Qiao may also have been working on his own Annals transcription. Xun Xu no doubt felt the sting of Zhi Yu's denunciation to the court of Xun Yi's scholarship. Such a critique may have seemed to Xun as a wedge-a potentially volatile new dispute that could cause already lingering doubts about Xun Xu's projects to tip toward larger condemnations and factionalism. A particular feature of Zhi Yu's criticism ofXun Yi was to point out that Xun Yi had ignored not just the comments of the great Confucian disciples and those of Zheng Xuan of Eastern Han, but that he had ignored the most valuable Sangfu commentary of them all, the one written by Wei-era Wang Suo This is crucial because of our general lack of evidence for the anti-Xun campaign. How do we know that contempo-

17 We must weigh carefully how and when we choose a text's retrospective use of official titles; Zhu's appointment as "right" supervisor may have come some years after his being merely "supervisor"; or it may be an anachronistic mention of that title.

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rary scholars attacked Xun Xu's specific agenda? One reason is that Zhi seems interested in bringing Wei-era scholarship back into the fold of the scholarly community. In turn this negated the anti-Wei, and implicitly anti-Cao, ideology of the Xun family. In fact, the "Wuli" style of organization of the Rites, being shaped for the first time in Western Jin chiefly through Xun Yi's work, represented a firming up of the Zhouli system. Therefore, we can speculate that a prisca Zhou framework may have undergirded Xun Yi's work even before Xun Xu's. This offers yet another field in which Yi may have taught or influenced the younger Xu, as well as providing a way to analyze Zhi Yu's statements. Finally, the Jia-Xun leader Jia Chong had died on May 19, 282, and his death caused a ritual furor about patrilineal inheritance that was probably still being discussed when Zhi wrote his opinions ofXun Yi's "New Rites." Lady Jia Nanfeng's mother had got her way in the matter of who should be Jia Chong's legal heir, and thus an attack on the ritual scholarship of a X un would be an attack on Nanfeng's (and the emperor's) dispensation of Jia's estate. is This is a richer picture of Zhi Yu's scholarly work than has emerged in previous literature. We already learned in Chapter Six that his teacher Huangfu Mi was interested in ancient texts and in using them to build chronologies of the rulers of primordial antiquity. For scholars of the Western Jin, our modern discussions of "legend" would not have had much resonance. For already a" hundred years "ancient text" and "new text" scholars alike, and especially Zheng Xuan, were blurring the distinction between historical documents reliably considered as products of real historical figures and documents that seemed to e~erge anonymously in revelatory and quasi-religious contexts. The latter type may have seemed not just "mysterious" but deeply ancient. As a result it was not always clear if any writing that contained comments on or compilations of genealogies, calendars, or naturalhistorical cycles pertaining to deep antiquity lay beyond mundane historiography and thus meant to inspire mere moderns toward reverence or contemplation, or, on the other hand, if such a writing was a contribution to actual "ancient history" in the manner of Sima Qian. Huangfu Mi had been one of those who tried to rebuild deep antiquity through reconstructed genealogies. He died in 282, just at the 18 See Hou, "Rethinking Chinese Kinship," esp. notes 92-98. For Jia's death date, see jS 3, p. 73. My discussion ofZhi's attack on Xun Yi reveals actual intellectual reasons for Zhi's promotion of Wang Su; cf. the purely ad hominem reason of Wang Su's family ties with Jin Wudi, as suggested by Wechsler, Offerings o/jade and Silk, p. 46.

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point that Xun Xu's team in the Imperial Library were beginning their transcription of the fourth-century Be texts that were changing men's understanding of ancient chronology. He cannot have had knowledge of their work, and in the same way we cannot know if he might have perceived of his own Diwang shiji W Itltfo.l'c as correctable or consonant with the post-Ji Tomb historiography. Huangfu's student Zhi Yu carried this forward as a generalist sort of antiquarian. The last section of Chapter Six discussed Zhi's notion that scholars should venerate the three primary "ancient" methods of numerate measure so as to maintain the ancient frameworks for astronomy, harmonics, and medicine. Zhi seems not to have had any expertise in skills like those: his interest in them would have come from the breadth of learning exhibited by Zhang Hua's ambit generally. From out of that broad ambit, and with intellectual links to Zhi Yu and Shu Xi, there emerges another scholar concerned with historiography and with Ji Tomb studies. This was Wang Jie, who left no historical mark other than the facts given in a short biography in Jinshu. 19 His ample oeuvre, in numerous genres of prose and verse, was not collected or passed on as far as we know, and his works were said to have disappeared in the disasters at the end of Western Jin. Despite this gap, we know several important things: first is that his scholarship focused on Ji Tomb studies and criticism in the period 290-300 and shows that he had contact with several scholars related to such; and second, Wang reflects the kind of historiographic thinking about the role of commentaries that we just saw in the case of Zhi Yu. Wang was from a family of historians and he himself was expert in the ancient Chunqiu commentaries Zuozhuan and Gongyang. His father Wang Wei was interested in historical studies; and this seems to have been passed down to his son, who was orphaned however at the age of twelve, or, around 279. Jie was highly touted after a test on the classics was administered to a large field of young candidates. He was known to be skilled in reading texts for the errors they contained, and he remained aloof from local society until finally noticed by Pei Wei *luf! (267-300); then he received a post in the capital. It seems safe to assume that the following cannot be the remark of a young scholar; I think that it must have been spoken when Wang Jie was at least twenty-five years of age, thus perhaps sometime after about

Im

19 All descriptions of Wang and related quotations are from his biography, jS 51, pp. 1434-36.

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290 or 295. There is no surrounding context, and it appears the Jinshu editors were summarizing a now nonextant source: Although broadly read, Wang Jie specialized in the Rites and the [Zuo-] zhuan (or possibly, "Rites and their commentaries"). He once said that Mr. Zuo's words and meanings were replete. [But], in and of themselves they are the records of a specific pedagogical group '~(IJL and are not a chief element stemming from the classic. The Gongyang establishes a teaching text by being an added attachment to the classic. If the classic does not record something, then the [Gongyang] teaching text would not approach it mindlessly. It is limited as to literary content, but is fruitful as a tool to understanding the classic.

The above seems to be a slight warning about Zuozhuan-that it is filled with anecdotes but must always be viewed as a record of how a community of Chunqiu scholars over centuries filled out the lean classic, but that its text is not to be taken as a continuation of the meanings of the classic itself. On the other hand, Gongyang reflects the main text of the classic relatively more gently, by adding on where appropriate yet staying separate. Wang lie, having perceived problems with He Xiu's 1ElT 1* (129-182) commentary to Gongyang, wrote a new commentary with many new interpretations. The Jinshu biography of Wang lie at this point moves on to another subject: At the time, the Library Assistant Wei Heng was examining and correcting the Ji Tomb documents. 2o He had not finished, but met with his end. The Left Gentleman Drafter Shu Xi completed the writing of it. In many cases [Wei] had documented different meanings. At that time a certain Wang Tingjian=F.JfLU\~ raised objections to [Shu's work], and had evidential authorities. Shu Xi could solve [Wang Tingjian's] objections, but Tingjian had just died. The Gentleman Cavalier Attendant Pan Tao RltriTI (d. 3II)21 said to Wang Jie: "You are a talented scholar and are logical in your points. You are able to solve the differences between the two men, and might set out an examination of them in a discourse." Jie subsequently gave the details of the correct and incorrect points [in Shu's and Wang Tingjian's works]. Zhi Yu, Xie Heng j'tH1~L and others were well familiar with the matters, and all considered Wang Jie's review fair.

Of Wang lie's numerous works listed at the end of his biography, it was perhaps the one titled "Bonan ,~il ("Critical Objections") in over 20 If IS is using Wei's official title correctly, then the year had to be 291, which was when Wei was appointed, only to be killed shortly thereafter. The first four sentences here were given in chap. 6, sect. "The Zhang Hua Ambit." 21 Pan was related to Pan Ni and Pan Yue; he was a military adviser to the Sima heirapparent in the early 300S and was killed in the sack of Luoyang.

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100,000

words that decided Shu Xi's and Wang Tingjian's Ji Tomb dis-

pute. We might think of Wang Jie as on the outer ring of Zhi's world of associates: probably he was not one of those young scholars who came to Zhang Hua's attention in order to receive mentoring and recommendations. Wang's biography describes him as aloof from the surrounding social world. But Wang Jie brings us also to another denizen of the outer ring, Wang Tingjian, for whom we have not even one biographical clue. 22 All of this shows us how deeply Ji Tomb studies had penetrated circles of scholars who had communications among each other. It shows also that methods and philosophies of historiography were being discussed, and could supplement scholars' exacting work on paleography and philology. Zhi Yu's position on the role of commentarial writing was accommodating and modern: a broad appeal was made to scholars that they study the great commentaries of old and the critical editors of modern times as deeply as they study the "main text ~~." They should not be like Xun Yi. Zhi wanted scholars not to block out a modern commentary just because it might be antiZheng Xuan or because it might be from the Wei court. Wang Jie, for his part, supported Gongyang studies by warning about over-reliance on Zuozhuan, that is the treatment of it as if it were naturally imbedded in the classic.

Xun Xu in a Time ofAnti-Xunism Along with Zhi Yu's intricate attack on Xun scholarship, there were still problems for Xun Xu that stemmed from an early aspect of the Jia-Xun faction. Unlike their anti-Wu War agenda, the faction's support of heir-apparent Sima Zhong had not ceased to be relevant. If we can date a certain anecdote in Xun Xu's Jinshu biography to around 283, then the figures in it, Xun and He Qiao, are in the politically uncomfortable position as the Palace Writers leadership duo (the inspector and the prefect), with Zhang Hua still banished from Luoyang. Drawing on older texts, Jinshu says that at about the time when Xun Xu appointed Chen Xie to be Commissioner of Waterways to manage post-flood repairs in 283, Xun Xu was called upon by the emperor to look into the domestic and personal situation of Sima Zhong. With Jia Chong's death, the throne hoped to strengthen the heir's overall

22

On Wang Tingjian's Ji Tomb studies, see also Edward L. Shaughnessy, Rewriting

Early Chinese Texts (Albany: SUNY, 2006), pp. 151-52.

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pOSitIOn and forestall any external attempt to seat Sima You. Just as had occurred ten years previously when the emperor called on Xun Xu and his cousin Xun Yi, now the emperor called on Xun and He Qiao to observe the heir. At the time (ca. 282-83),23 the emperor clearly knew about the heir-apparent's shallow and dissolute [behavior]. He feared that he might later subvert the nation. He sent Xun Xu and He Qiao to go observe him. Xun returned to crow about the heir-apparent's virtues, but He said that the heir-apparent remained as usual. 24 Because of this, everyone honored He and demeaned Xun. The emperor was about to dismiss the consort Jia, and did not do so after Xu and Feng Dan {'),hlt.iG, with others, pleaded the case against it. People of the time discussed how Xun Xu could topple a state and harm the times-that he was of the same ilk as Sun Zi J~i~ and Liu Fang ~U)Dz:.

Dating this to late in 282, or in 283, is helped by a pre-Tang source of the anecdote that calls He Qiao a "Palace Attendant 1~ r:p ."25 We know from Table 5 (Chapter Six) that He was given that title in about 281, and because of the nature of these offices may actually have been called either Palace Attendant or Prefect of Palace Writers even after he became the prefect in 282. One wonders if by late in 282, the attacks upon Xun Xu's and the late Xun Yi's scholarship had given confidence to those who wanted to hound Xun Xu out of office for his vouching for Sima Zhong, and having thus facilitated Jia Nanfeng's rise. The use of the names "Sun Zi" and "Liu Fang" in fact would have been particularly harsh criticism. 23

24

jS 39, p. II57; ZZTj 81, p. 2581, dates it to about summer of 282. Another version is in He's biography (IS 45, p. 1283): "[Sometime after the war

against Wu] Qiao would visit the heir-apparent without being commanded. He used that relationship to tell the emperor, 'The imperial heir-apparent has the attitude of real purity, but because lately there are so many in society who are fakers (Le., Xun Xu), I fear that the heir-apparent will not be able to execute your highness' family affairs.' The emperor was gloomy about that and did not answer.... (Here the biography is muddled, placing the long-dead Xun Yi into the incident.) [Despite Xun Xu's praise of the heirapparent] Qiao said, 'The imperial make-up is as it always was.' The emperor was not pleased and rose ro leave. Qiao went back home, feeling disillusioned and frustrated, knowing that he would not be used anymore, and unable to get over that feeling." The compilers of He Qiao's biography may have used Gan Bao's and Sun Sheng's writings on Jin history; Gan placed Xun Yi in the affair, but Sun claimed that Xun Yi should be Xun Xu; see SSXYjj no. 5.9, p. 225; SSHYIMather, pp. 151-52. Pei Songzhi remarked about this problem as well, suggesting that the other Xun was Xun Kai 'ifi (see Figure I, Jin II), arguing that the latter's career was more advanced than Xu's. Pei was wrong about that: he may have read texts that graphically confused ;til!, and 'fill.; see SGZ ro, pp. 320-21, note 4 (see also Figure 1, note 9). 25 See SSXYjj no. 5.9, p. 225, quoting Gan Bao, jin ji.

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In Chapter Four (the section "Problems in the Bureaucratic Structure of the Palace Writers Office") we learned about the career-fashioning of those two men who had served the Caos; they had gained Cao Cao's trust and then emerged under Cao Pi as the Palace Writers leaders who handled internal policy and memos. I speculated that Cao Pi's shifting them out of the Imperial Library into the Palace Writers was an attempt to break their links to the Library and the power gained from twenty years of dealings under Cao Cao. They were talented men, and in some ways in the 280s could easily inspire comparisons with Xun Xu. When aiding Wei Mingdi's military effort to thwart Wu's plan to ally with Gongsun Yuan, Liu Fang had used calligraphic forgery and edict redaction to plant disinformation among the Wu leadership. As Mingdi lay dying in 239, Liu and Sun carefully manipulated the emperor's decision and edicts so as to ensure Cao Shuang's obtaining the position of regent over another Cao heir.26 The relevance to Western Jin is clearfactionalism, spurious redactions of documents, succession politics. The eleventh-century historian Sima Guang J~7t devoted an entire aside for the year 238 to reflect on the way Liu and Sun had taken years to shape institutions to their advantage, and on their twinned careers. Following that, he devoted long narratives relating the warnings of respected Wei advisers about the duo.27 Probably their greatest notoriety had been in permitting Cao Shuang's rise, after which both men received rewards and lived out their lives peacefully. Were officials in the 280s imagining the wealth and titles that Xun Xu and, for example, Feng Dan would accrue after being rewarded by Sima Zhong's consort Jia Nanfeng? We also must wonder whether the Jinshu's saying that people talked of Xun as "of the same ilk as Sun Zi and Liu Fang" reflects actual evidence, or if the Tang editors were indulging their imagination about Western Jin gossip in order to warn about the nature of court power. Whether documented or not, Jinshu goes deeper yet into men's intimate views to bring out the darkness that it sees as having tainted the great Jin official Xun Xu: [Xun] was secretive by nature. Whenever there was an edict with instructions about an important state affair, although it had already been announced, still, till the last moment he would not discuss it, not wanting to give people cause to understand what he himself had gained in-

26

27

See SGZ 14, p. 457, 459; also TeTe/Fang I, pp. 607-8, 6u-I2. See TeTe/Fang I, pp. 581-83, translating ZZTJ,j. 74.

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formation about. His cousin Xun Liang til. once came to confront Xun Xu and said, "You, sir, just don't get it. If it can benefit you to speak up [about affairs], why not? As a result, you will court favor." His sonin-law Wu Tong iUg~ also told Xu: "You ought to manage affairs, and then you will have your group [again]." Xu in both cases just remained silent and did not respond. He went back [to his home] and spoke with his numerous sons: ''As servitors, we must be secretive lest we lose our lives; [but] if we cultivate personal interests, that would be going against public (that is, the court's) interests. It is a great lesson. You all, like me, will enter service and get to be among men. You ought to remember me by this idea." Here, if the Tang editors were setting Xun Xu up for condemnation, they were at least being rather gentle, just as they were in the Jinshu encomium about the two Xuns translated at the end of Chapter Two. Xun is shown as disturbingly committed to intrigue, but on the other hand he is humanly pathetic, and at the end of his lesson to his sons even contemplative and judicious. Ultimately, the Tang editors might merely have wanted us to sense what a high official felt in his heart when his career was deflating.

ASSESSMENTS IN 286 OF HUA QIAO'S HISTORY OF LATER HAN

Another important historian to have worked, as had Sima Biao, on a history of Later Han was Hua Qiao-introduced in Chapter Six. During this time of a downturn in Xun Xu's career, Hua completed his history, and arranged to have the most important courtiers review it, among whom was Xun. Although Hua Qiao's Jinshu biography has chronological problems, it seems that his learning flourished and received institutional backing especially when Jin Huidi came to the throne in 290, and no doubt also through the offices of Zhang Hua. He is said to have assiduously "written up documents and compiled facts with the aim of becoming an excellent historian."28 His elder brother Hua Yi (d. ca. 291-92) had been a talented scholar as well, and wrote a work titled "Shan wen which "gathered up the important points in the classics"; such a work may have been a commonplace book, or anthology. Yi was made Inspector of the Palace Writers for about two or three years before his death, and his partner, namely the prefect, was He Shao, well known to the Xuns as the biographer of their infamous kin Xun 28

IS 44, p. 1264-

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Can (see Chapter One, "Xun Can, a Prototype of the Zhengshi-Era Mavericks").29 Hua Qiao's own historiographical appointment was as Inspector of the Imperial Library in 291. He was the first to take it over since Xun Xu's removal in 287 and since Huidi reinstituted the Library as an independent entity earlier in 291. Hua Qiao is said to have taken over duties concerned with Huidi's rites, music harmonics, and astronomy and computative prognostics r13;f1, 3(YtXifi. 30 We can date the following, from Jinshu, to 286. It is an explanation of Hua Qiao's History of the Later Han: 31 Originally, Qiao thought that the [Dongguan *WJ~] Hanji 1~WG was a muddled mess, and so intended to correct it. Because he happened to be in the inner offices and managed the affairs of the compiler-officials, he got to see sequestered documents from all holdings. He then took up the task of ordering them. They ranged from Guangwu [-di] and ended with Xiaoxian (Xiandi), thus 195 years. He made emperors' chronicles in 20 juan and empresses' in 2. The dian ~~ (institutes, or treatises) were 10, biographies 70; also he had 3 juan of tables, a postface, and contents list. Altogether these were 97 juan. He believed that the empresses were to be [ritually] matched with heaven to make partnerships, something earlier histories did not understand, since they placed them in the category of distaff relatives, coming as continuations in the last sections [of those]. [Hua] changed this to have annals of empresses follow the imperial annals. He also changed "treatises" to "institutes," following the model of the "institutes of Yao" (in Shangshu). Having done this he changed the name into "Han Hou shu" (often tided "Hou Han shu") and presented it in a memorial; an edict came down ordering the court to discuss it. At the time, Inspector of Palace Writers Xun Xu, Prefect of Palace Writers He Qiao, Grand Master of Ceremonies Zhang Hua, and Palace Server Wang ]iIti1\t all thought that Qiao's manner of composition was fine and his [sketch of] events concise, being in the mold of Sima Qian and Ban Gu and carrying the style of Basic Annals. His work was sent for keeping in the Library offices. Later, the Grand Commandant Wang Liang _F.;Y'f of Runan and the Minister of Works Wei Guan were aids to the heir-apparent in the Eastern Palace, and they proffered a thorough discussion of [Hua's work] section by section, so that after this episode [Hua's work] became widely known. 29 30

IS 44, p. 1261. IS 44, p. 1264; the Zhonghua edition's "Jiaokan ji," n. 2, says that this was not "mu-

sic" but "law);]'1~1!:," a familiar emendation from confusion; in fact Hua's being a master of harmonics (yinlii.) complements the computative skills implied by "tianwen shushu." 31 IS 44, p. 1264. I have tried to rerationalize the tangled chronology of Hua Qiao's career. The year "286" is supported by Liul Biannian, p. 147. Hua tried to decline appointment as Inspector in a show of humility; see Howard L. Goodman, "Chinese Polymaths, 100-300 AD: The Tung-kuan, Taoist Dissenters, and Technical Skills," AM 18.1 (2005), p. 144, n. 124.

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This is useful information about the Western Jin court's "review process," and about career self-fashioning and the role of archives in maintaining historiographical research. In Hua Qiao's work we see technical ideas about historiographical formats, though not at the synthetic level of Zhi Yu concerning commentaries, above. He saw himself as a corrector of a famous Eastern Han project, and besides merely changing names of sections and reordering them, he is known to have smoothed out phraseology, winning a good mention in that regard by Liu Zhiji ;U~Q~ (661-721).32 At this particular moment in Western Jin, it is surprising that at court Xun, He, and Zhang were gathered together (if they in fact discussed Hua Qiao's work face to face). These three were the core of Ji Tomb antagonism, and in 286 there may have been palpable enmity in the room. Xun's participation, however, may have been merely perfunctory at a time when his stature was at its nadir and his projects stalled. In any event Hua Qiao was praised, yet he was troubled by over-drinking, and the sources suggest that this is what prevented him from completing the "institutes."33

XUN xu'S DEMOTION AND DEMISE

Soon after, in 287, Xun was suddenly made Prefect of the Masters of Writing rED . For the late-Han through Western Jin, it is difficult to chart with certainty the vertical hierarchies and promotion tracks of the state offices, especially given the changes in structure. During much of Han, the Masters of Writing, or Secretariat, had been where eunuch cadres could develop power and influence. Eunuch domination ended in 189, and in the 220-40s, beginning in Wei Wendi's reign (Cao Pi), the two leaders of the Palace Writers surpassed the office of Masters of Writing in influence. In Xun Xu's time, Prefect of the Mas32 "The words and phrases of Hua Qiao are plain and direct, his discourse elegant. In considering style: wouldn't he be second [only] to [Ban] Mengjian? £~])Jc rN,t~1[~, I*J~t;j~~, ijJ\ir;;:ltzI::i~{X"; Shitong tongshi !st:il1Lli1H~~1,"Xuli ~,(z1Ytl" 10 (Hong Kong: Taiping shuju, 1964); also ibid. at 12 (waipian), "Gujin zhengshi 2," p. 27, Liu Zhiji uses "pian" not "juan" to describe the divisions in Hua's work and some of the number totals differ from the ones given in IS. Hua's contribution to Han historiography is reviewed in Song Zhiying 51,z;G<~, "Hua Qiao Hou Han shu kaoshu" '!IU!iii1tt{~t£\::7¥J'J£, Shixueshi yanjiu .'J:&~5tTiJF.5'~ 104-4 (2001), pp. 26-31. 33 On the attempt by Hua's sons to finish his work, see B. ]. Mansfelt Beck, The

Treatises of Later Han: Their Author, Sources, Contents and Place in Chinese Historiography (Leiden: E. ]. Brill, 1990), p. 51.

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ters of Writing was at a roughly equivalent grade with the Prefect of the Palace Writers. It was, thus, not any kind of grand promotion for Xun Xu. By 287, real power for Xun meant having the means and imperial support for his projects: cataloging the Library's collection including the Ji Tomb texts, transcribing and editing the Ji Tomb texts, and, based on small evidences discussed in Chapter Four, the creation of a bell set to further his previous achievements in harmonics. These he could do within the Palace Writers and the Imperial Library. Xun's Jinshu biography reads: 34 Xun Xu had been in the Palace Writers for a long time, and in control of affairs. When he lost that position, he was very depressed. Some men came to congratulate him, and Xu said "They've stolen my Phoenix Pool,35 and you gentlemen come to congratulate me!" At the [office of the] Masters of Writing, he tested officials from the Foreman Clerk on down, examining their abilities. And when there was someone who was benighted about codes and procedures and unable to determine what was needed in taking charge of affairs, such men would be drummed out on the spot. The emperor told [Xun]: "Wei Wudi (Cao Cao) said, 'Xun Wenruo's i'UX;'I: (Xun Yu's 1f~) way of advancing what was excellent was that if he could not advance it, he [still] did not cease 1 acting. Xun Gongda's 1jJ"0it (Xun You's 1~) way of pushing back displeasing things was that if he could not push them back, he [still] did not rest.' [Both] these gentlemen's special quality is seen in you, sir.,,36 Xun was in this position for over a month, and then offered up his seals and insignia of office because of his mother's death. The emperor would not permit it, and sent the Regular Attendant Zhou Hui JI~J 'I:&<. to explain his points. Thereupon, Xun took up the order and appeared in office .... Xun Xu died in 289 [December 29].37 An [imperial] edict [posthumously] conferred upon him the title Minister over the Masses and granted special objects from the Eastern Garden, one set of court burial costume, 500,000 cash, and roo bolts of silk. [The throne] dispatched a secretary to direct the services and lead the mourning. [Xun Xu] was given the temple name Cheng HI(;. Xu had ten sons, among whom the most accomplished were Ji ilu,:, Fan 1i:IL and Zu ~Il.

34

IS 39, p. lI57.

During the Tang, the Phoenix Pool was a part of the resplendent architecture of the inner Imperial City; see TD 21, p. 561. It also could refer to the position of Grand Councilor, because the latter was also known as jointly managing affairs with the Secretariat-Chancellery; moreover, it was a synonym for the gardens of high officials at their metropolitan mansions. 36 See comments about the earliest use of this Cao Cao quip, in chap. I, n. 54. 37 See IS 3, p. 79, for the specific date as lIth mo., bingchen day; also ZZTI 82, p. 35

2594·

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Sometime in the 290S, Xun Fan (245-3I3), Xu's third son, was ordered by the Jin court to complete his father's work to restore bells and sounding-stones. As recorded in the sources, it is the only information that we have pointing to the fact that Xun Xu had even begun to think about creating a full set of bells-a major undertaking. It is easy to see how that project was delayed by the Ji Tomb finds, and then derailed after 285; and it is quite unfortunate that there is no more evidence about this, even the fact of who at court wanted Xun Xu's son to take up the project, after years of anti-Xun sentiments. A passage from Jinshu's "Treatise on Music" that we examined in Chapter Four bears repeating: Once having devised the new pitch-standard, [Xun] Xu created two choreographies, and proceeding from there he [planned to] restore correct bells and sounding-stones. But at that time he passed away without having finished his project. In 302 the court ordered his son Fan to fix up and set the metal and stone instruments for use in the suburban sacrificial temples. But shortly thereafter came the general chaos [of the fall of Luoyang], and in the end there was no one to record [the details] of the project. 38

It would seem, then, that at the end of his life Xun Xu wanted to improve upon Du Kui's t±~ Wei-court bells. Chapter Five constructed a narrative of the process by which Xun deduced that Du's bells, or at least Du's pitch-regulator tubes, were incorrect. I believe that the fact that Xun Xu started late on making a bell-chime supports Li Chunfeng's claim that bells and stones had been discovered in the Ji Tomb and tested positively against Xun's devices, even though the evidence he adduced was vague. 39 Xun would not have had sufficient time and personnel to examine Ji Tomb bells because of energies being given toward text transcriptions. Thus, mention of testing the Ji Tomb bells probably points to metric and sonic measurements conducted by Fan or others after 289. Xun Fan's son Sui was also said to have been an expert in music harmonics ~¥1f~. But there is no evidence that he undertook any project. We learn from an item in Songshu that in the 430S research and computation for correcting the flutes were revived under the auspices of Prefect Imperial Grand Music Master Zhong Zongzhi ~*Z, 38 jS 22, "Yue zhi" A, p. 693; cf. Xun's biog., 39, p. II58, which states specifically that Fan was ordered to complete work on "bells" and "sounding-stones." 39 See chap. 4, sect. "Li Chunfeng's Antiquarian Jury"; none of the sources datable to the 28os-90S mentions any such items from the Ji Tomb.

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and a bit later under Xi Zong ~Mjf. Both those scholars reduced the lengths of Xun Xu's Huangzhong, Taicu, Guxian, and Ruibin pitchregulators. 4o Thus through time the problems of pitch-standards and pitch-regulation marched ahead, but it was not a random process. For, living in the 430S and contributing vastly to the documentary record of Xun Xu's and others' work in harmonics, was the mathematician He Chengtian. He was just finishing his treatise on harmonics that smoothed out and ordered the details of Xun Xu's entire project and transcribed Xun's long deposition of Lie He.

THE POST-XUN XU RESUMPTION OF THE DEBATE ABOUT WHERE TO BEGIN THE JIN DYNASTY

When we consider the distinct time frames into which I have unfolded the life of Xun Xu, it is easy to see that besides court rewards or Wu booty, after 280 the "New Day" was all about the archeological discovery in Ji. There is a certain irony attached to the intensity of interest in historiography, since, from our own point of view or if we had been alive at that time, we would expect to see an industry rise up that focused on the other Ji Tomb bamboo-slip texts, ones that seem to have gone unremarked in Western Jin times. The tomb's ancient-script Yijing had been proclaimed as in very good shape by Du Yu; and further, there were Yijing divination guides, a Guicang-like alternative Yi, sections of "Speeches of Chu" and "Speeches of Jin" as parts of a Guoyu, a text similar to parts of Liji, parts of an ancient record of anecdotes from Zhou, and even an ancient ritual calendar purportedly by Zou Yan 1~1lJ.41 Either scholars just did not consider any text that was too disarrayed to be worth analysis, or they were not as interested in Yijing and divination guides as they were in chronology. One has to assume that the bamboo slips concerning rites were very damaged, since Rites Classics (variously named) were of keen interest at this time. In general, historiographical work in Jin-era China (and even today) consisted of puzzles about the meanings contained in actual surviving documents, about damaged links in chronology, revelations about facts and episodes of antiquity, and last but not least, method itself-its implications for politics and local identities, such as the JinSgS II ("Yue zhi" A), p. 21 9. These are titles of Ji Tomb works as described by Shu Xi; Shaughnessy, Rewriting, pp. 153-84. 40 41

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to-Wei transition in the 400S Be. In Chapter Six, in the section "Xun Xu and Zhang Hua as Forces in the Jin Offices for Historiography," we saw how, in simple terms, Xun Xu had forged ahead with a pat agenda that did not address such concerns, whereas after about 282, during Jin's Period Two of Bureaucratic Historiography and Archives, Zhang Hua and his proteges took on several of them, especially as a direct outcome of their Ji Tomb scholarship, particularly the reevaluation of Shiji. When Xun Xu himself was drawn into debates over chronology and method, he disagreed with two from his Library staff-He Qiao and Wang/Fu Zan. This section takes up yet another offshoot of the larger Zhang Hua ambit, namely Zhang's protege Jia Mi (d. 300) and Jia's own circle. Born around the years 268-70 and surnamed Han ¥¥, he was the son of a certain Han Shou who had married the first daughter of Jia Chong. In 284 Jia Chong's third wife Guo Huai ¥~1t, the mother of the Empress Jia Nanfeng, insisted at court that ne Han Mi be shifted over to the lineage of Jia Chong's deceased first son and thus become Jia Chong's legal, posthumous heir. This was a highly controversial proposal since it mingled the collateral with the patriarchal branches of the family, and it met with extreme opposition. In the end, it was agreed to by the emperor himself. Now named Jia Mi, the young man achieved power after about 296, when Guo Huai died, and his maternal step-aunt Jia Nanfeng was already empress of the realm. 42 In 296 or soon afterward, Jia Mi was appointed as Inspector of the Library, specifically assigned to head up the writing of the "National History i151::" (see Chapter Six, Table 5).43 This was arranged in great part by Zhang Hua, who had been Inspector of Palace Writers from 291 to about 296 (also Table 5), in which year he was promoted 42 All facts about Jia Mi, his blood father, and his maternal relatives are at IS 40 (biography of Jia Chong), pp. Il70-74- I have deduced the approximate birth year of Jia Mi based on facts in the life of his father Han Shou, assuming a normal life-span for the latter. The life of Guo is thoroughly analyzed and a discovered epitaph dedicated to her translated in Timothy M. Davis, "Potent Stone: Entombed Epigraphy and Memorial Culture in Early Medieval China," Ph.D. diss. (New York: Columbia University, 2008), chap. 4, part 1. The controversy over Han/Jia Mi's becoming Jia Chong's heir is discussed in the context of the history of zongzu j'i~JJ~ (patrilineal descent group) as both concept and reality in early-medieval China in Hou, "Rethinking Chinese Kinship." 43 The IS biography of Jia Mi, IS 40, p. Il73, does not give an exact year of death for Guo, but her entombed epitaph does (see Davis, as cited in previous n.), namely 296 AD (no month or day stated). IS dearly states, however, that it was "after [Guo's] death that Jia quit office [for mourning], and then before that was finished, he rose to become the Inspector of the Imperial Library, taking charge of the National History."

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to Minister of Works (sikong). After 296, however, Zhang's day-today influence and control over such historiographical and literary appointments seems to have abated, and there was not even an Inspector of the Palace Writers for the years 296-99. Zhang's shift of focus occurred because in 296 he became embroiled in controversy and political struggles that would bring about his death. First of all, he resisted the peremptory assignment of Sima Lun J~1ffU (277-301) into the Masters of Writing offices after Sima Lun and his entourage returned to Luoyang and insinuated themselves into the running of the empire. By 298-99, Zhang was also involved in the succession crisis created by the empress, and ended up in the middle of a triangle made up of the then heir-apparent, Empress Jia, and Sima Lun. He did not survive and was put to death in 300, upon the fall of the empress. 44 Thus Jia's coming into his own as head of the National History seems to indicate that he was helping Zhang to organize historiography, and to assign relevant tasks to men like Lu Ji ~i*~, Shu Xi, and Zuo Si. (Table 5 indicates those appointments as having been under the guidance or influence of Zhang Hua; but more essentially it shows the growth of Zhang's general sphere as it took in other ones, like Jia Mi's.) Literary specialists have discussed Jia Mi's rise, and the circle of scholars whom he patronized known as the "Twenty-four Friends 12] lb." Despite premodern Chinese scholarship that dated the principal activities of the Friends to 291, it is now clear that they began with Jia's celebrating the return of Lu Ji to Luoyang in about 296 and the appointment of Lu as Intendant (or Manager of) Gentlemen of the Palace (see Table 5).45 As discussed just above, it was in 296 or 297 that Jia Mi finished mourning for Guo Huai and received his Library post and history-writing task. From 296 to about 298, his "friends" met on and off, in different combinations; and their interests were taken up 44 Anna Straughair, Chang Hua: A Statesman-Poet of the Western Chin Dynasty, Occasional Paper 15 (Canberra: Australian National University, Faculty of Asian Studies, 1973), pp. 3-5· 45 Liul Biannian, p. 171, probably following ZZTj 82, p. 26°9, places their principal gathering at 291 AD; but Alan Berkowitz, "Courting Disengagement: 'Beckoning the Recluse' Poems of Western Jin," in Paul W Kroll and David R. Knechtges, eds., Studies in

Early Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History: In Honor ofRichard B. Mather and Donald Holzman (Provo: Tang Studies Society, 2003), pp. 88, II4-15, correctly, I believe, disputes the ZZTj date, and makes it instead 296; see also David Knechtges, "Sweet-peel Orange or Southern Gold: Regional Identity in Western Jin Literature," in ibid., p. 32. Knechtges says that Lu's appointment in 296 was as "Gentleman of Palace Writers," but according to Wan Sitong that post came in 302, and in 296 the appointment was "dian zhonglang :!l~lllmIS"); see my chap. 6, table 5 and relevant notes.

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heavily with poetry, especially the poetry of estates and landscapes, and lyrical, perhaps none-too-real eremitism. But it was historiography, I would argue, that was a chief concern for a subcircle of Jia associates. Jinshu states that Jia Mi, "when Huidi was installed, once again called [on scholars] to critique [the earlier debate between Xun Xu and Wang/Fu Zan] ;!;w iL, ]I! 1se~iz." It seems, though, according to modern scholarship, that the resumption occurred around 298.46 Especially by having used the adverb "renewedly," or, "once again," the Jinshu editors implied that Jia Mi knew of the 284 episode and was motivated to solve it. Jia would have been quite young back then, thus he may have learned of its critical bearing on the conduct of Jin historiography from his associates, men like Zhi Yu, Shu Xi, and their leader Zhang Hua, all having been active critics ofXun Xu. Jinshu gives us nothing but the names of the ten participants and their intellectual positions, like a roll-call. Jia Mi and six others, including Zhang Hua, who is called by his post-296 tide of "Minister of Works," are said to have been in favor of having the Jin start with the first reign of Jin Wudi, that is, the Taishi ~f1 (266-75) reign-period. It is safe to say that this was the "official" position. Three scholars took the late Xun Xu's point, that the Jin should be chronicled beginning in the Zhengshi reign of the Wei dynasty. In this camp were in fact two Xuns: Xun Xu's son Fan and Fan's nephew Jun ro~ (Xun Xu's grandson through his second son Ji fit.). Representing what had once been Wang/Fu Zan's position back in 284 were two men: a Xun (not of the Yingchuan Xuns) and the same Diao Xie whom we met in the first section of this chapter, a scholar who in about 318 would work in association with a Xun descendant on a project to edit the Jin Rites. In my discussion of the 284 episode in Chapter Six (in the section "Chronology as Theory and Practice") I brought to bear a modern opinion that Xun Xu's "Zhengshi" solution was an attempt to help the Jin dynasts hide their violent origins. But now, seeing the official position devised by Jia Mi for the resumed debate, Xun's motive stands

*

46 The passage is atJS 40, p. II74. It might mean 290-91, but that is not the only interpretation: it could mean any time in Huidi's "establishment" as emperor. On "298," see Zhu Xizu )/-C:;nHU, Jizhong shu kao j&~~::::\j' (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1960), p. 58; and Anthony Bruce Fairbank, "Ssu-ma I (179-251): Wei Statesman and Chin Founder, An Historiographical Inquiry," Ph.D. diss. (Seattle: University of Washington, 1994), pp. 74-79. Zhu is not cited by Fairbank there, but is listed in his bibliography. Part of Fairbank's reasoning has to do with other sources who mention Lu Ji and Shu Xi as participants in the discussion; see below.

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out more clearly: it had been anti-Wei in conception. Xun Xu had desired to delegitimize Wei by having it stop in 240, much as he had delegitimized early-Wei protocols of music. Now, in 298, the court was sending a message about the need for a more standard form of historiographical framing, one that did not give Jin so much imperial sway over the calendar and also reached out favorably to the Wei. If these scholars were actually gathered together for the discussion in 289, then it would have made for yet another fascinating tableau, with Zhang Hua triumphantly facing surviving descendants of his intellectual and factional enemy and at the same time using historiography as acute critique aimed at Empress Jia Nanfeng and her group. We are told that the affair and presumably its findings "were soon put abroad in the land $~JJffi1f." This may have been the case, but the problems of historiographic method and the way a dynasty is set into motion by the historiographic framework of annals were not so easily solved. From sources other than Jinshu we learn that Lu Ji, probably Jia Mi's most favored intellectual companion, lodged a formal court opinion in 298 that shaded Jia's dictum. Lu felt that historians of Jin had no choice but to treat the lives of its three great predynastic founders (Sima Yi, Shi, and Zhao) as "annals tic," instead of through the mundane genre of "traditional biography 11." Shu Xi, furthermore, is said to have disagreed with Lu on this matter. Lu is known to have authored just such a work, titled ''Annals of the Three Ancestors =ft.lli tic." Lu's position, then, if I interpret it correctly, was a compromise that cast the lives of the three ur-dynasts into "annals," but still had the dynasty begin in Taishi. 47

PRISCA ANTIQUA: THE SPIRIT OF WESTERN JIN SCHOLARSHIP AND LETTERS

The energetic life of Xun Xu can be seen through the hinge of antiquity. Antiquity could be Han or Wei, or it could be what lay beyond Yao and Shun, pointing to the Yellow Emperor or Shen Nong. It could be a simple screen of authority, that is, a source of values that could be attached to one's ideas so as to make them weighty. Antiquity could be a realm from which to retrieve thoughts and phrases, and it was also formless and disturbing in its power to erase and unify. It could be a 47 This is my own interpretation; for the relevant sources, see Fairbank, "Ssu-ma 1," pp. 77- 81.

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person's literary aid and retreat, even a friend. Everything about this conundrum may be expressed in ideological terms, and we do so now in order to establish a closing summary of Xun Xu. As with the "There-is-not" versus "There-is" and the regulated versus the freely imperfect, topics discussed in several places of my book, here toward the close of the Western Jin there were clearly those on the left and those on the right side of the equation. The left side was Dao, "There-is-not", linguistic transcendence, the Yellow Emperor and his ilk, formless erasure; but also there was intimacy and aid. On the right were the Wei-Jin transition (only briefly in the past) and its need for legitimation, Zhou authorizations for rites, and a place to retrieve imprimatur and proofs. Furthermore, the right side of the equation was not transcendence. Here, I want to suggest briefly a certain view that concerns Zhang Hua and others of his type. Especially through Zhang we begin to see the shaping of an approach to antiquity and intimacy, one that would help the purveyors of Jin court culture survive and remold themselves later, after the post-3II transition to the south. His was a carefully edged left-side approach. It was daoistic; it was mature in its ability to carry complaint and irony and could, in the spirit of Han poetics, be brooding about fate. Clearly the approach of Zhang's world did not favor those who, like Xun Xu, traveled grandly on the right side of the road, who did not cultivate literary feelings, or were obsessed with mining a troublesome young antiquity-the subjunctive world of Zhou rites for the empire. The Zhang Hua ambit drew its spirit from the left side. To make a fitting interpretation, we might say that it appealed to a prisca antiqua, or "veneration of the truly ancient spririt," to be seen as the search for self-identity in the fluid, sympathetic, and primordial past, not the prisca Zhou past of Xun and his ilk. Let us look at Zhang and his circle, bringing in the thoughts of Shu Xi, Du Yu, and others. For these men, who were Xun Xu's peers and who often confronted or worked uneasily alongside Xun, the personal was wrapped up with the primordial. When moved to express notions and ideas of what we may call truth, or about overarching values to be got from their readings, they put themselves into a clear connection with primordial antiquity.

The Primordial as Contactable Let us take the example of Shu Xi, but in a two-step process. First comes his thought about antiquity. Although it is not about the pri-

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mordial past, it was a desire to connect to the spirit of Confucius' words. In hisfu rhapsody titled "On Reading" ~JHIPit, Shu creates an image of what a true reader was doing as he read. Such a "reader" is meant by Shu to be a Daoist-like adept: "The Master Who Abandons Himself to the Way," living in "pure spirit." Shu emphasizes certain physical acts, which start with relaxation techniques but end in exertions. At first a true "reader" "inhales and exhales" the emptiness; he "folds away his form," "lowers the curtains," and "relaxedly" turns to performing vocal renditions of odes from the Confucian Classic of Odes ~~ ~~. In giving voice, the reader "sings," "declaims," and "trills." Here Shu Xi is on both sides of the equation: teasing out the potentially transcendent feelings to be got from performing antiquity properly. One has to put oneself forward physically to reconstruct the Odes in their pristine form, yet not too energetically, since relaxation must not be breached. 48 Shu Xi continues to search for the Odes, especially "lost" Odes, by going farther out into the abyss of history. Things lost in antiquity can be touched again and perhaps reconstructed. This sentiment comes in his preface to his famous set of tetrameter poems titled "Bu wang shi" *ffiL ~~. Dominik Declercq translates this as "Lost Odes Supplied," and he shows that Shu's aim was, to quote Shu's phrase there, "distantly to visualize the past and to concentrate his thought on antiquity ~;t~ ~5E11, 1¥ }[!ttE -g" in order actually to restore lost Shijing items. 49 Shu's pentient for literary antiquarianism was evident, and probably was noticed intently by his mentor Zhang Hua, an active antiquarian himself. Dominik Declercq goes on to make a deep insight: [Shu's preface shows] not merely a concern to root one's writings in the impeccable orthodoxy of the Classics; it is evidence of a belief that if a writer is to create a work of value, he has to enter into the spirit of past monuments of his craft and will dilute the power of his own creation if he goes so far as to depart from their original phraseology. 50

Declercq's insight can act as a key to our small closure on the life of Xun Xu. The context in which Declercq stated the above was to explain the formation of genres and genre imitation, and thus the emphasis on

48 See Shu's "On Reading," trans. Susan Cherniack, "Book Culture and Textual Transmission in Sung China," HJAS 54.1 (1994), pp. 51-53, and the sources given there. 49 Dominik Declercq, Writing Against the State: Political Rhetorics in Third and Fourth Century China (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p. 77, Shu's preface as quoted in Li Shan's commentary to Wenxuan XJlili (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1977), p. 16a [272]. 50 Declercq, Writing Against the State, p. 77.

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writers' sticking with original forms and phraseology. But that is actually not the essential point for my purposes; I prefer instead to focus only on "enter[ing] into the spirit of past monuments." Declercq also directs us to Fu Xuan 1f~ (219-278), whom we have encountered. I do not see Fu as having been either a Xun or a Zhang factionalist, but he participated with Xun Xu in the ritual lyrics project. In a passage of his well-known compendium Fuzi 1fT, Fu maintained the view that Mencius had imitated the Analects in order to carry forward his own thoughts. Declercq once again provides a key: One wonders whether the explosive growth of the Chinese written corpus following the invention and spread of paper is not at least partly responsible for this development, a reactionary urge by leading literati to introduce a distinction between 'higher' literature and newly emerging forms of writing by insisting that the former have a pure and ancient pedigree. 51

I strongly agree, and would add that it was of course not merely the spread of inexpensive materials and media that caused literati of Western Jin to seek out a higher realm for themselves, to remain above the fray and the crowd; their literary journey into deep antiquity was importantly a reaction against over-exacting agendas like Xun Xu's. In other words, Declerq might have emphasized his primary insight even more: that writers and thinkers were highly interested in the power of the past, a place in which they could retrieve lost models and find aids to thinking. After the post-Ji Tomb struggles over the interpretation of the past through chronological tools and paleography, the scholarly spirit by the end of Western Jin became more sanguine. Zhi Yu and Wang Jie, as we saw at the beginning of this chapter, wanted to offer antiquity their protection and support through careful consideration of latter-day scholars who had contributed to "Tradition," antiquity's helpmate. Du Yu, someone who would be mentioned often by later generations, was this very type of commentator. Research into early-medieval China has so far failed to produce a full study of Du. But we might suggest some things. He was not so much in Zhang Hua's ambit as much as a separate focus of an even wider circle. Du provides an effaced example of approaches to antiquity and their relevance to the reception of Xun Xu. This is because Du was relatively more aligned with the scholarly style of the Xuns. Du researched in the spirit of the There-is, and he was neither poet nor

51

Ibid.

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musician; like Xun Xu, he was a maker and a seeker after systematic solutions, spending years in provincial locales dealing with hydraulics and economic projects. When it came to the art of commentary, he was diametrically opposed to the Xun style. It may be argued that in his Zuozhuan commentary Du wanted to treat the past cautiously and with reverence, if not for its mystery and transcendence (as Zhang and Fu may have felt) but for its possessing facts. One recent scholar has said that Du Yu, given numerous opportunities to enlarge upon and deduce new facts based on the text of Zuozhuan, chose not to do so. Du did not extrapolate about ancient men's feudal office titles or their places in great-family genealogies if he had no basis for doing so. In short, he was respectful of evidence and "reticent" to infer things from weak conjecture. 52 For thinkers like Du Yu, Xun Xu's entire approach, with its agenda to trim facts and put them into the near-antiquity of the Zhou, and, most importantly, his willingness to change a venerable text from a pre-Han tomb, was an incautious one. This helps explain the hub-bub surrounding Xun's editing of the bamboo-slip texts.

The Personal as Contactable Worldwide, scholarship is only just beginning to assess the Jin and the Southern and Northern dynasties, and we have only small offerings on the nature of Western Jin scholarship. I would venture to say, though, that we should consider a certain irony behind the new trends during Wei and Jin toward the personal and personable. Especially when the context was the highly influential court-oriented scholarship (even in cases where commissions were avoided), what was personal was often not intimate or friendly but consumed by critique, and by the arduous tasks that might involve teams of workers and decades spent on projects; ultimately it entailed correction and judgment. Yet, on the other hand, the belles lettres of Western Jin, and Eastern Jin even more, has shown us writers who were sympathetic, friendly, fun loving, and seekers of guides for their own personas and careers. Those guides could be obtained directly through their nearto-hand friends, past famous men, or even from the sages of primordial antiquity. This was the beginning of the Shishuo sensibility of the intimate, about which I remarked in my Introduction and at the end of Chapter Five.

52 This is the argument of Barry Blakeley, "Notes on the Reliability and Objectivity of the Tu Yii Commentary on the Tso Chuan," JAOS 101.2 (1981), pp. 207-12.

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Zhang Hua was a key to this scholarly way. In a verse-set titled "Three Poems in Reply to He Shao" ~1ar t?jrff~ = 18, we experience words that are quite believable for their interiority. He lets us know how much being a leading official could cost a man his freedom and peace. We recall that He Shao was placed into the Imperial Library as inspector in 293, most likely on the bidding of Zhang. Zhang's sentiments, below, were expressed upon receiving a notice, probably a poem, from He. They are Immediate: he feels a relief, a surge of peace, as he recalls the old friendship, mentioning that he cannot respond to He Shao's "warm and cordial" letter very easily. One senses that the time that he wrote this was either during his 282-85 exile from Luoyang or during the factional squeeze from 296-300 under the Empress Jia Nanfeng: "Whether my task is great or small, I must proceed with care ... I sit restrained by fear. / I felt that your letter was like some fine present, / You poured out all your heart with real sincerity, ... "53 Zhang Hua also gifted Zhi Yu with a sentimental poem, this time more daoistic, with mention of the "void." It is titled "Presented to Zhi Zhongzhi" ~\~$':1r:p¥tl~~: The gentleman does not strive after fame, He lingers always on the same hill. Looking up to the shade of the forest, dense and tall, And down to the place where the rushing river flows. Quiet and solitary, nourishing the mysterious void, Immersed in the essence, he studies the sage counsels. 54

This is not as biting as the lines, above, for He Shao; it is merely admiration for a younger scholar, one who captured for Zhang the essence of a sage who was in tune with essential truths that come from remote places. We cannot find in Zhang's writing anything about primordial antiquity, per se. Reading through his poems, as collected in his reconstituted wenji,55 one spots a recurring attitude toward the past as simply his despair about loss as marked by the fleeting years. Moreover, Zhang left no major opus containing an extended argument on historiography, institutions, or even a commentary to a classic. But what I wish to suggest is the importance overall in these years of Zhang Hua as a 53 See Lui Shi, sect. Jinshi 3, p. 618; trans. Straughair, Chang Hua, pp. 88-90. The poem by He to which Zhang responds seems to be the one titled "Hf~iJfUI";iW"; LulShi, p.648. 54 Ibid., p. 621; trans. Straughair, Chang Hua, p. 91. 55 See HWLC (SKQS edn.), j. 40 •

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social leader of his circle, his ambit. We have seen his deeply felt mentoring as applied to two critical figures of the post-Xun Xu world of scholarship-Shu Xi and Zhi Yu. He also marked his friendship with He Shao in the most intimate of terms. Thus, we can see that for the scholars most involved in a revolution in historiography after the discovery of the Ji Tomb texts and the end of the Wu War, their sense of identity as a group was moved along and nurtured by Zhang Hua. I see them as having been motivated by Zhang's constant play of emotions involving the Dao and the mysterious void; they would have noticed when, in his ritual song lyrics for the lyric "competition" involving Xun Xu in 269-70, he diffused the dancers of the great spectacle, having them" ... enter, and then retreatingly yield; the transformations gradual, without form." From such impetus, and from the remarks and styles of others in that time, writers like Fu Xuan and Huangfu Mi, Shu Xi would begin to peer into antiquity for answers to help reconstruct what was lost. Shu, Zhi Yu, and others could begin to treat antiquity as worthy of the kind of awe that had been the tenor of thinking from the 220S to the 240s, with Cao Pi, the writings of Ruan Ji and Xi Kang fte ~, and the counter-cultural maneuvers of such xuanxue exponents as Xun Can, Wang Bi, He Yan, and others. It not only created a philosophical framework for their work in chronology and paleography, but it also represented a sharp rebuke of the anti-xuanxue and clearly anti-Wei (anti-Cao) agenda of Xun Xu and Xun Yi-the obsessively pro-Jin men. Xun Xu was not part of this post-Ji Tomb world of belles lettres, instead being its target of suspicion. If there had been no discovery of a tomb of a Warrings States Wei noble and no Wu War, then one wonders about the life of Xun Xu: it might have turned out to be more integrated socially at court. Xun might have gone on for years in his somewhat uncomfortable but manageable relationship with Zhang Hua-he as inspector and Zhang as prefect, modeling the structure of the Cao-Wei inner court. But that could not happen. As we saw, in 287 Xun Xu moved unhappily into the Masters of Writing office, but continued to exert officious control, and at that time he could have been planning to revisit his strong, anti-Wei musicological agenda by reforming Du Kui's bell harmonics. It would have been yet further grounds for his peers to want to keep him at bay. Xun was one of only a few scholars since Western Han times to master systems (whether computations, divination techniques, constructions, or textual interpretations) in order to make blanket reforms

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of entire programs of rites. This was a dangerous ambition not only politically, but intellectually, since the precedents, chiefly Li Si, Jing Fang, and Wang Mang, became negative models. They had chosen to pursue techniques and arts that used deep antiquity to extract answers to suit a modern, political project. It is why the Zhou aspect of history and the Rites became so heavily studied by late in Western Han, but engendered little agreement as to how it all might be used to revitalize a Han court or a post-Han one. Several generations later, by late Eastern Han, scholars fashioned new categories of learning that in fact finally were returning to the arts like those practiced by Jing Fang and Wang Mang and that had been treated as disturbing and perhaps not gentlemanly. But these scholars, for example Ma Rong, Zheng Xuan, and Cai Yong, were not seeking to use ancient arts to control an emperor. They represented a new type of scholarly antiquarianism. When Eastern Han collapsed, the next generation of scholars preferred to go right on through the Zhou and into deep antiquity; to tease out intimations of perfection and utopia through transcendence of language and social bounds. By Xun Xu's day, that experiment with deep, or primordial, antiquity had not been finished. Xun's approach was a countering of the young Han-Wei xuanxue-ists, and thus his prisca Zhou was not what the times warranted. In the end, it is perhaps appropriate to note what Xun Xu did not create. He gave to the world no intimate lyrics or lines of poetry about friends, about travails in searching for the meaning of antiquity, or travails in state offices and careers. It was not a life punctuated by a longing for serenity in the Dao. Nor did he proceed from his lively contacts with Lie He and Lie's group of master musicians in entertainment ensembles to the composing of yuefu lyrics or tunes. Xun's rhapsody on the grape (see Chapter Three, the section "Competing Lyrics for the Dance-Song Performances") did not get saved nor did it lead to a body of memorable Xun rhapsodies. We do not see in Xun Xu any of the lyric engagement that typified writers and scholars like Chenggong Sui, Zhang Hua, Fu Xuan, and Shu Xi, although there is the one exception-Xun Xu's intriguing rhythm that he encoded into his lyric for the Jin's music and dance spectacle. It may take more explanation than I am capable of, or may simply be nugatory. Xun therefore was not part of the ongoingprisca antiqua, nor a part of the wider world of sociable scholars who were clustered and supported by-and this is a circular insight indeed-his enemy Zhang Hua. Part of the explanation may lay in the smallness of the world of

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the Western Jin court. Xun's family was one of perhaps only twenty or thirty, feeling perhaps a bit temporary in their pursuits of mansions, objects, and wealth in Luoyang, as the polity seemed to be trending toward political ruin. One has merely to think of the high Tang, or Northern Song, when the capital was peopled with many hundreds of rich families, coming in or passing through, preparing sons for scholarship and office. Numerous thinkers in those later years engaged in the same sort of polymathic program that typified Xun Xu and others. Yet, the contexts for critical work and research into systematic, even in some sense scientific, knowledge were more accepted and supported by schools, both court-established and private. Writings on obscure and difficult topics were saved and gathered, to be referred to and critiqued over and over, and copied and printed in books. Rites and agendas to set straight dynastic legitimacy were debated and written up voluminously, producing "schools" of moral and even technical learning. In the third century, this was not the case. The life spent in precision by a man taken up wholly with technical learning, compounded by his intense factional commitments, would be critiqued, scorned, and then passed over. Except for contexts of legendizing, Xun Xu would not be referred to or quoted, as were talented scholars like the great Sui and early-Tang exegetes, or the Tang monks Fazang ?!. (643-712) and Yixing ~1.:y (683-727), or the Song geniuses Shen Gua 1X115 (1°31-1°95), Su Shi if($t (1036-IIOI), and Sima Guang PJ)~ Jt (1019-1086). Xun's precision was unsociable, perhaps merely as a result of the Xun family's own sixty- or seventy-year struggle to maintain court stature and their reliance on tightly knit influence and connections. The politics of precision for the Western Jin Xuns, and particularly for the one great technical man, Xun Xu, did not join with the politics of a world of scholarship that was girding up for a further journey, into new lands and new values.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CITED WORKS

Abbreviations Used throughout the Footnotes and Bibliography Full citations of items that are tides of published works are found in the following sections.

AM deC/BD HS HHS HjAS HWLC JAOS jS jSjZ Liul Biannian LulShi LulXinian QHHW QjW QSGW SBBY SBCK SCC SgS SGZ SGZjj SKQS SS SSHY/Mather SSJZS SSXY]j TCTC/Fang TD TP TPYL W/B WX Xuxiu SKQS YFSj ZZTj

Asia Major, third series de Crespigny, Biographical Dictionary Ban, Hanshu Fan, Hou Hanshu Harvard Journal ofAsiatic Studies Zhang, Han Wei Liuchao baisanjia ji journal of the American Oriental Society Fang, jinshu Wu and Liu, jinshu jiaozhu Liu, Han jin xueshu biannian Lu, Xian Qin Han Wei jin Nanbeichao shi Lu, Zhonggu wenxue xinian Yan, Quan Hou Han wen Yan, Quan jin wen Yan, Quan Sanguo wen Sibu beiyao Il~ffIHfa~ edition Sibu congkan ILLltfl)w:FIJ edition Needham, Science and Civilisation in China Shen, Songshu Chen, Sanguo zhi Lu, Sanguozhi jijie Siku quanshu IL4JI!i:'Ci#: edition Wei, Suishu Mather, Shih-shuo Hsin-yu Shisan jing zhushu ·1·~:j~l~r:lj:fiE edition Yang, Shishuo xinyu jiaojian Fang, Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms Du, Tong dian Toung Pao Li, Taiping yulan Wilhelm (Baynes, trans.), The I-ching Knechtges, Wen xuan Xuxiu Siku quanshu r.f~~H~IJllJl:ll~"il:~ edition Guo, Yuefu shiji Sima, Zizhi tongjian

384

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Citational and Other Abbreviations Used in Main Text and Notes annot. biog. b. c. ca. chap. cit. compo d. ed. edn. e.g.

annotator, annotated by biography birth century circa chapter citing/ quoting compiler, compiled by death editor, edited by edition for example

esp. mo. n. Ph.D. diss. r. rpt. SUNY trans. vol. Zhonghua

u.P.

especially lunar month note Ph.D. dissertation reign reprint, reprinted State University of New York Press translator, translated by volume Zhonghua shuju University Press

Note on Office Names and Officials' Titles In all cases I use the renderings of offices and their spellings as given in Bielenstein, Bureaucracy of Han Times (cited below, under Monographs). I believe his renderings approach the actual situation in Western Jin times and reflect certain continuities from W. and E. Han administrations.

Primary Texts This section lists premodern and modern annotated editions of early texts that were used as source materials in this book. I have included only texts that were treated in a significant way and that have been printed as independent editions. Also listed are Westernlanguage translations of certain primary texts consulted. For phrases and passages tal{en merely as quotations from compendia and florilegia, see the following section. Also in following sections are Western-language studies of primary texts that may contain at least partial translations but that I consider basically as monographs. For an overview of writings by Xun Xu and his extended-family kin, as well as primary biographical or anedcotal writings about the Xuns, see the description at the end of the Introduction; also see List I, "Items of Xun- Family Intellectual Culture," appended to Chapter One. Ban Gu .Ji1EI~I;·1 (32-92), compo Hanshu ~9'iN+. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1962. Biot, Edouard, trans. Ie Tcheouli, ou Rites des Tcheou. Peking: Wen Tien Ko, 1939; rpt. Taipei: Ch'eng Wen, 1969. Chen Shou 1~~5; (233-297). Annot. Pei Songzhi ;&+0z (372-451). Sanguo zhi~:I!1.liIjcl;~. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1982. Couvreur, Seraphin, trans. I-Ii, Ceremonial. Rpt. Paris: Cathasia, 1951. - - - - . Ii Ki, OU, Memoires sur les bienseances et les ceremonies. Paris: Cathasia, Serie Culturelle des Hautes Etudes de Tien-Tsin, n.d. Cutter, Robert Joe, and William G. Crowell. Empresses and Consorts: Selections from Chen Shou's Records of the Three States with Pei Songzhi's Commentary. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000. Du You H:1,(i (735-812), compo Tong dian illlWt Beijing: Zhonghua, 1988. Fan Ye yE£""(~ (398-445), compo Hou Hanshu 1&i;'J~im;. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1965. Fang, Achilles, trans. The Chronicles ofthe Three Kingdoms (220-265): Chapters 69-78jrom the Tzi1. Chih Tung Chien of Ssi1.-ma Kuang (I029-I086), ed. Glen W. Baxter. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. P., 1952, 1965. Fang Xuanling JH~:if¥ (578-648) et al., compo Jinshu ttt~}=. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1974. Guo Maoqian -'i11)jl;1W (fl. I084-II26), Yuefu shiji ~H~ni\~·,t1~. 4 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1979.

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385

Guoyu 1IT~lfflL SBCK. Huainan zi 1H~WfT. SBCK. Huangfu Mi. l]nl~·ffilli:. Gaoshi zhuan i\~:j I:'(w. SBBY. Liu Xu WUlltU (887-946). Jiu Tangshu 1XmHI.}:. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1975. Karlgren, Bernhard. "The Book of Documents." Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 22 (1950): 1-81. The Book of Odes: Chinese Text, Transcription, and Translation. Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950. Knechtges, David, trans. Wen xuan: Or Selections ofRefined Literature [by Xiao Tong, 501531]. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. 3 vols to date. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1982, 1987, 1996. Knoblock, John, and Jeffrey Riegel, trans. The Annals ofLii Buwei: A Complete Translation and Study. Stanford: Stanford U. P., 2000. Lau, D. c., ed. A Concordance of the Liji. rcs Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series. Hong Kong: Shangwu, 1992. - - - - , trans. and annot. Mencius. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970. Legge, James, trans. The Ch'un Ts'ew with the Tso Chuen. Volume 5 of idem, The Chinese Classics. 2d rev. edn. Rpt. Hong Kong: Hong Kong U. P., 1960. - - - - , trans. The Shoo King, or The Book ofHistoricctl Documents. Volume 3 of idem, The Chinese Classics. 2d rev. edn. Rpt. Hong Kong: Hong Kong U. P., 1960. Li Shan "'}s~jj\~ (d. 689), annot. Liuchen Wenxuan zhu /,\E:~~}(jIDiJ'ft. SBCK chubian edn. Liu Zhiji WU~II4i] (661-721). Shitong tongshi 9:::illLillH~L Ed. Pu Qilong ymJh;i'1~. Hong Kong: Taiping shuju, 1964. Liu Lin WUI"t annot. Huayang guozhi jiao zhu cW~ll}ij}I~.QI;;lA5d't. Chengdu: Ba Shu shushe, 19 84. Lu Bi 1)J.j'(5IiS (1876-1967), annot. Sanguozhi jijie =:IDgl;c~;~MWp. Rpt. Taibei: Xinwen feng, 1975· Mather, Richard, trans. Shih-shuo Hsin-yii: A New Account of Tales of the World [By Liu Ich'ing, with Commentary by Liu Chiin}. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976. 2d edn., Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies 95,2002. Mu Tianzi zhuan fl.JjC·:F1-W-. SBCK chubian edn. Nanshi 1'(49::. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1975. Quan Tang shi .L[::)fiJ~JL 25 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1996. Shen Yue VCr-I:) (441-513). Songshu 5l~r~f. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1974. Shih, Vincent Yu-chung, trans. and annot. The Literary Mind and the Carving ofDragons, by Liu Hsieh. Taipei: Chung Hwa Book Co., 1970. Sima Guangf:jJ)i!~)'t (1019-1086). Zizhi tongjian Wif1f:1;iill~. Beijing: Guji, 1975. WaIey, Arthur, trans. The Book ofSongs, ed. Joseph Roe Allen. N.Y.C.: Grove Press, 1996. Watson, Burton, trans. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia U. P., 1968 . Wei Zheng ~!lH!l& (580-643) et aI., compo Suishu Ilf'fjili;~. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1973. Wilhelm, Richard, trans. The I-ching or Book of Changes. Trans. Cary F. Baynes (from the German). 3d rev. edn. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1967. Wu Shijian 7~:+jjWi and Liu Chenggan mEi:j\jji'f, comps. Jinshu jiaozhujifr=lfIPltt. Taipei: Yiwen yinshu guan, 1956. Xiao Tong ~nHJ~ (501-531), compo Wenxuan x;i!ili. Recut Sung woodblock edn. Shanghai: Huiwen tang, 1910. Xin Tangshu )r;fj·mff!~:. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1995.

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INDEX

Acker, William R. B., 125n7, 125n9 aerophone. See Flute agriculture, 138, 283, 284, 317 antiquarianism and archeology, 25-27, 53, 7 6, 85, 94, II7, 120, 124n6, 125, 134, 135, 152, 162, 178, 186, 194, 196, 213, 322, 347, 381; found-objects of, 175-76, 178, 179, 182-83, 18 7-9 0 , 19 2 , 195-96, 197, 19 8- 200 , 20 5- 6 , 21 3, 21 4, 222, 225, 23 0 , 233-3 8 , 269, 347-49; modern, 175, 177, 19 6, 234, 316; Renaissance, 210-II See also Ji Tomb; Mawangdui; Mount Song; Nanjing tomb; Shiping archeological discovery; Shun Shrine; see also under Xun Xu antiquity, 351, 35 2 , 353, 354, 374-80; definitions of, 374; primordial, 21, 24, 33, 201, 359, 381; return to (jugu 1~8), 19, 20n33, 24; venerated (see Prisca Zhou) Anyang 1215&1,98,103 apocrypha. See under Philosophy archeology. See Antiquarianism architecture, 121, 136, 163, 172, 173 archives. See under Historiography, offices artisans, 26, 102, 120, 125, 135, 151, 157, 161, 171, 178, 253, 262; palace workshops (shang/ang), 213; social position of, 212-14, 285 Assmann, Jan, 86m12, 87 astronomy. See under Philosophy Balazs, Etienne, 14 ballets. See under Musicology: dance Bamboo Annals (Zhushu jinian 1"nlt:f.;~ jF), 26, 291, 300, 304; and chronological problems of, 291, 297, 301 , 336, 34 2, 345, 35 2; editions, 20 4, 337-4 6 , 352; editorial changes to, 338, 342, 344, 345, 361 , 36 4, 37 8; as source for correcting other histories, 339, 340; transcription, 312 , 321 , 324, 325, 33 2 , 336, 343, 358, 361 ; transmission, 291, 295n39, 317n96, 321 , 33 6 , 337-46; Xun

Xu and, 204, 304, 324-25, 332, 336, 337,358. See also under He Qiao; Sima Biao; Wang/Fu Zan Ban Gu JJEILln (32-92),171-72,174, 197, 21 4, 255-56, 366 Bao Si ~~GL (Zhou era), n6, n6n56 Barbieri-Low, Anthony, 212 Beck, Mansfelt, 339 bells. See under Musicology Berkowitz, Alan, 372n45 biezhuan jjIj1l#f. See under Historiography, primary sources Bing Ji~jl)t'T (W Han era), 346 Bishu i1:'fty: (Imperial Library). See under Historiography, offices Boltz, William G., 356m3 Brown, Miranda, 36m Cai Mo 358 Cai Yong %~ 0! (133-9 2), 46, 48, 50, 69, 202, 209m21, 212, 213, 255-56, 258, 269,316,381 calendar and calendrics. See under Philosophy calligraphy and calligraphers: ancient, 25, 313, 315, 316, 319; history of, 314; and Ji Tomb, 313-19; Jin-era, 170; as skill, 43, 280; styles, 170-71; Wei-era, 169m6. See also Scholarship, arts and methods: paleography Cao Cao \J1nw~ (155-220): and law, 70, 346; in legend, 94, 330; and Liu Fang and Sun Zi, 166; and music, 129, 157, 179, 187, 234-35, 33 1; opposition to, 49; and recruitment of officials, 19; and Ruan family, 269; and Xun Yu, 48, 49-52, 57, 60n54, 61, 368. See also under Factions Cao Fang (231-74; r. 240-54), 92 Cao Hong Wl¥J~ (d. 23 2), 59, 59n51 Cao Mao1Y{~ (241-60; r. 254-60 as Gaogui xiang gong ij~a~jJlllli~), 63, 99, 101

398

INDEX

Cao Pi IIUi:-1i (187-226; r. Wen Wendi X if'j'i, 220-26),19,20,21,24, 59n5I, 61; and antiquity, 353, 380; and court ritual, 92, 167nI2; and Daoism, 154; and historiography offices, 166, 302, 364; and music, 132, 179; and oracles, 163; and xuanxue, 149 Cao Rui (206-39; r. Wei Mingdi lijj ;I'i~i, 227-39), 71, 92-93, 93n4, 130-31, 13 2 , 167,235,23 6 Cao Shenllt1r'W (d. 190 Be), 284 Cao ShuanglMi~ (d. 249), 13, 59, 63, 67, 7 2 , 73-75; in legend, 92, 364; opposition to, 99; purge of old-guard advisors by, 131; purged, 93; regent, 92. See also under Factions "Cao Shuang taint" (reputation during Jin of those who had served Cao Shuang), 30, 92, 94-I02, lI8, 280, 364 Cao Shujiellllr~t1~, 280 Cao-Wei dynasty, 56, 58, 62, 92, 2IO, 23 6 , 28 4, 330 Cao Yu Wl'j':, 93 cartography, 258, 281 Chang'an, 206, 233, 246 ChangsheElll:, 40, 40n8 Chen Ch'i-yun, 39,43, 45 n 5, 47, 52, 53, 55 Chen family I~~ ofYingchuan, 40, 43, 50, 52, 63, 73, 85; marriage alliances of, 102 Chen Jun IN~~~\', 158 Chen Qi (or Hang) IN~Jrl'i OYJi) (Wei era), 134, 135, 153, 23 6 , 247, 249 Chen Qun I~Wf, 71 Chen Shi I*~ (I04-86), 43, 46, 48, 65 Chen Shou I%[~ (233-97), 152, 179, 303, 32 6 (Tbl. 5), 330-3 1, 33 2 , 333, 334, 33 8-39,34 0 Chen Xie I)#db!~\, 190 , 347-49 Chenggong Sui )&i~r.J?: (232-73): career, 13 8-40 ,326 (Tbl. 5), 328 , 329; critical reception of, 149; and music, I27, 136, 139-40, 328; and law, I06, 139; and xuanxue, 148, 154 chi J< (foot-rule or standard-rule). See under Metrology Chongyangling ~j~llWjll&, 34 (Map), 42, 82 chronology. See under Historiography; also see Historiography: ganzhi dates Classic of Filial Piety. See Scholarship, on individual classics: Xiaojing classicism. See under Scholarship, commentary

collecting and connoisseurship, I23-25, 14 6 , 15 6 , 159, 21 4, 279 Collins, Randall, 22, 22n37 commemorations. See under Death commentary. See Scholarship, commentary computation. See also Philosophy: shushu arts Confucianism. See under Philosophy Confucius, 20, 66, 210; disciples of, 355-5 6 , 35 8-59 counter-culture and counter-history. See Historiography: coun ter-history Courant, Maurice, 233nI5 criticism, historiography of. See under Historiography cun'l ("inch," or one-tenth of a chi). See Metrology: chi Dai Miao !lJ!t®J1, 353 Dalii A II~I (pitch-standard 2). See under Musicology Dan Zhu H:$j-:::, lI6 dance. See under Musicology danggu ~~£ Illil persecutions. See Factions: Eastern Han Daoism. See under Philosophy Davis, Timothy, 28, 77n83, 78n86, 81, 82 de Crespigny, Rafe, 45n5 death and mournin~: accompaniment burial (peizang 151"i iF), 82; Cao-Wei imperial funerary culture, 93n4; cemeteries and tombs, 25, 30, 41-42, 62, 82 (see also Xun family: cemeteries); clan cemetery burial (zuzang JJ§(~l3.), 82; commemorations, 28,30, 36 , 37, 38, 47, 48, 57, 62, 63-64, 82, 85, 86, IOI-2; and culture, 86; epitaphs, 25, 28, 38, 42n9, 49, 75-84, IOI-2; excessive mourning, 61; frugal burial, 62, 64; imperial eulogies, 62, 64, 78-79, IOI-2; joint burial (hezang i'lqF) , 82; ling lIt: (imperial burial sites), 42, 82; mourning clothing, 48; music (see Musicology: mourning); parental, IOI, I02, 368, 371n43; rites, 353, 35 6-57, 37 2 ; stele memorials, 46, 48, 57, 62, 62n59, 84; temporary burial, 79, 79 n88 , 82, 83; tomb portraits, 273-75, 277; women and children, 82 debate. See under Philosophy Declercq, Dominik, 335nI31, 33 6, 376-77 Deng Hao 1l1~:!,it 250, 252-53, 254 Dengfeng, 41

INDEX

design. See under Xun Xu DeWoskin, Kenneth, 209, 24In34 di 1'l'i flute. See under Flute Diao Xie /JltJJ (d. 322 ), 354, 354n3, 357, 373 divination. See also Philosophy: shushu arts Dong Zhuo (d. 19 2 ), 46, 47n17, 48, 49, 55 Dongguan. See under Historiography, offices Du Kui tl:~ (fl. 180-225): biography of, 330; criticism of, 150. See also under Metrology; Musicology; Scholarship, arts and methods of Du Mi tl:fff (d. 169), 46, 84 Du Xi ofYingchuan (d. ca. 232), 56 Du Yu :t1:H~ (222-84),41,87,97 (Tbl. I), 30In58; and Bamboo Annals, 342; and calligraphy, 317; commentary by, 378; critical reception of, 318; criticism of Xun Xu, 309-10, 318 , 319, 322 , 325; historiographical methods, 377; and historiography offices, 319, 333; honored by state, 286; and Ji Tomb, 292, 29 8-99, 29 8n 52 , 313, 317-19, 321 , 325, 337,352; and law, 318; military posts, lIO, 317, 318; need for biographies of family of, 9; skills, 317; and student Xu Xian, 319 dualism. See under Philosophy Duke ofZhou mJ0, lI5, II5n54, 210 Eastern Han: court, 4 0 , 49 n25, 55, 57; factions (see under Factions); Jin Wudi comparison with, 100; metrology (see under Metrology); music, 222; scholarship, 166 (see also Historiography, offices: Dongguan) Ellis, Alexander J., 2lInI23 engineering and engineer (premodern sense), 215, 250, 255, 265, 318 , 347 epitaphs. See under Death Ess, Hans van, I6n26 etiquette, 66, lI5n54, 274, 302 examinations, 106, 206 exegetical methods. See under Scholarship, commentary factions and factional issues, 30; Cao Shuang, 92, 92n3, 93-102, 276 (issues of, 92, 93); in Cao-Wei dynasty, 63, 92, 93-102, lI8-20, 167; and conflict, in general, 107, no, 137; in Eastern Han, 42, 46, 47, 55, 75; generational

399

differences between, 99; and historiography offices, 24, 167, 302, 326 (Tbl. 5); and Ji Tomb investigation, 29 2 ; Jia-Xun, 23,107-8,109, 137, 276, 281-82, 285, 286-90, 302, 306, 313, 319, 320 , 334 nI 30 , 35 8, 362 (issues of, 23-24, 94, 107-II, II8-I9, 280, 281-85, 358-59, 362-64) (see also Xun Xu: and factions); Jin court, in general, 73, 74 (Fig. 3), 107-II , II8-20, 136-39, 267n77, 276, 279, 286,3 13, 318 - 19, 33 8, 364, 36 7, 374, 377; in legend, II2; Liu Fang-Sun Zi, 166-67, 363; loyalty to Wei dynasty, factional policies on, 98-102, lI8-I9, 330; in Luoyang, 58; and music, 136-40, 272; mutability of, 104, 109, lIon39, Il8- I 9, 280, 285, 319, 327,358; pro-Cao Cao, 39; Ruan Xian and, 267n77, 272; Shan Tao ambit, 274, 276; Sima Yi, 92, 93-102; Sima family, factional issues of, 92, 93; and succession crisis, 23-24, 107-09, 281-82, 285,359,362-64; Twenty-four Friends, 333, 334-35, 371, 372-73; violence, 37, 81,137; Wu War, factional issues of, 23-24,107, I09-Il, Il9, 280; in Yingchuan, 43; Zhang Hua ambit, 13 6-39,3 01 , 30 3, 3Il , 318 , 320 - 2 5, 33 0 , 33 1, 33 2-34, 35 1-5 2 , 35 8, 360 , 36 5, 36 7, 371-74, 375-80 (issues of, 24, 109-lI, 324-25, 351-52, 380); Zhi Yu ambit, 35 2- 6 5 Fairbank, Anthony Bruce, I65n9, I68nI4, 334 Falkenhausen, Lothar von, 24In34, 253 n 49 family, 61, 86, 104, 106, 302, 37In42. See also Filiality; Marriage Fan Qin y[~ (1506-85), 295n39 Fan Ying (d. after 130), 53 Fang Xuanling J3rir®t (578-648), lI2, II4,II7,II8 a~Firibi (872-950), 262 Farmer, Michael, 137 Fei Zhi (ca. 50 BC-lO AD), 53-55 Feng Dan iJ·!§WL (d. 286/7), 97 (and Tbl. I), 107, 109, III, 334nI30, 364 Ferguson, John, 175-76, 194 filiality, 47, 61, 63-64, 85, 101, 106, lI9, 354. See also Family Five Phases. See under Philosophy Five Ranks system, 105, 281, 284 floods. See Natural disasters

400

INDEX

flute and aerophone: chi 5JJt flute, 226; chiba FU\ flute (shakuhachi), 227; design of, 156-57, 202, 226, 230, 245, 249-50, 25 2, 256-59; di l'f)' flute, 23, 190, 21 5-16 , 225-26, 23 6, 242, 245, 249, 254, 256; finger-holes, 215, 226, 23 0 ,23 1,235,237,239,241,245,24 6 , 249, 250 , 252, 25 6-59, 260-62, 263; found-objects, 189; hengchui ;Ji1~11j( or hengdi rlfHfY transverse flute, 226; makers, 26, 253 (see also Lie He); materials (bamboo, jade, etc.), 227, 243, 252, 253; modes, 237; as regulators, 218, 252-53; scaling of, 236, 245, 253; technique of play, 239, 259, 262, 264; temperamentology of, 12, 31, 164, 204, 216, 217, 225-65, 369-70 (see also Musicology: testing pitches); xiao JII;',: flute, 227 foot-rule. See under Metrology forgery. See Bamboo Annals: editorial changes to; Historiography: forgery; Historiography: reliability Frankel, Hans, 158 "froth" model of intellectual change. See Xuanxue: Zhengshi timbre, "froth" model of Fu Chang f'~J'I~}J (early 300s), 268-69, 276 Fu Gu {iJ}:"il~ (ca. 205-55), 59, 61, 63, 73, 98, 128, 136, 140, 149, 158 Fu Xian {~jJ:J;!!Z (d. 294), 357-58 Fu Xuan {'H~' (217-78): and antiquity, 33, 380; bureaucratic reform, 283-85; career, 138; and historiography, II3, 138, 152, 236; lyrics by, 147, 153, 283, 285, 377; and music, 126, 132, 138, 152; and Xun Xu, 96 (Tbl. I), 97, 283, 28 5, 377 Fu Zan. See "Wang/Fu Zan" lugu is[ II,'. See under Antiquity Fung Yu-lan, 14n21, 15, 16n26, 17, 18, 20,21 Gan Baol-I'lI} (fl. ca. 300-25), 180-81, 183, 185, 186, 213, 363n24 ganzhi dates. See under Historiography Gao Ruona (fl. ca. 1059-54), 194, 195 Gaotang Long (d. 237), 353 Gongsun Yuan i~f~i)1tI (d. 238), 92 Grafton, Anthony, II-12 Gu Kaizhi hllltiH!i~ (d. 406), 275 Gu Yanwu Jfl1~:iki~ (1612-81), 18 Guan Lu (210-56), 18n30, 58

Guanqiu DianHJJiTlIj, 71 Guanqiu Jianlll'Jl:1f&, 63, 71 Guo Huai !¥I)t;,l£ (d. 296), 108, 371 Guo Maoqian !j1)J1;{~W (Song era), 146 Guo Pu !¥1)J.t (276-324), 295n39 Guo Tai (127-69),49n25 Guoyu, section "Zhouyu". See under Scholarship, on individual classics guwen,'t':Y.:. See under Philosophy Han Fu ':[:n1L (d. 191),49 Han Shao W:jtlWi, 46; son, Rong wJ~l, 46, 48 Han Wendi, II6, 284 Han, Eastern (Later). See Eastern Han Hart, James, 241n34, 247 He Ceng {i'I'f'"',' (199-278),96 (Tbl. I), WI, 108, 279 He Chengtian {i'J)f)( (370-447), 181-83, 184, 185, 186, 213, 229, 230, 231, 2}2, 257, 259, 37 0 He Qiao iflltllf}& (b. ca. 235, d. 292): career, 301-3; and court historiography offices, 168, 298, 301, 302-4, 326 (Tbl. 5), 33 2-33, 334, 363; as an editor/annotator of Bamboo Annals, question of, 343; and factions, 301 -3, 332-33, 36 3; and Ji Tomb, 293, 29 6n45, 304, 317, 337, 340-43; and Jin Huidi (Sima Zhong), 363; and Xun Bozi, 232; and Xun Xu, 342-43, 358, 363, 371 He Shao {iiJWJ (d. 302), 68, 69-70; and historiography offices, 323, }27 (Tbl. 5), 333, 366; and Sima family, WI, 323; and Xun family, 365; and Zhang Hua, 323, 333, 379 He Xiu {IIJ (129-82) 361 He Yan {ijJ ~ (d. 249), 15, 17, 17n28, 58, 59, 66-67, 68, 95, 98, 100, 101, 380. See also Wang- He He Yong {i'J~L'l (d. ca. 191-92), 48, 49n25 heptatonic scale. See Musicology, sevennote scales hermeneutics. See under Philosophy historiography: biography, modern, 4-12, 26; biography, premodern, 29, 35-3 6, 68, 72, 73, II3, II6, 167; Buddhist studies or Buddhology, 7-8, 8m3, 16, 27; change during W. Jin in methods of, 334-46, 353, 362, 366-67,370,374,377,380; chronology, 281, 291,301, 313, }22, 328 , 333, 334-3 6 , 337, 339, 34 0 -4 1, 344, 345, 35 2 , 359- 60 , 37 0 , 373, 377, 380 ; counter-history, 20, 33, 86-88; of criticism,

1*

INDEX

9; of Daoism, 27, 201; distinguished from "classics," 334; on Eastern Han, 33 1, 33 8-39, 365-67; European, 87; forgery, 345-46, 364; ganzhi dates, 23, 26,33, 337, 338, 35 2; genealogies, 357 m6 , 359; genres, 4, 8m3, 55, 374; Han approaches, 39, 52, 325, 381; and hermeneutics, I7n27; history of, 27; Hua Qiao style of, 365-67; institutional, 351; Jia Mi and, 327 (Tbl. 5), 333, 334-35, 33 6 , 35 2 , 37 1, 373-74; legendic elements of, 1-4, 18, 359; modern approaches (and Western scholarslsinologists), 6-7,38-39, 65, I87n60, 259, 280, 291, 308, 328, 341, 378; of music (see under Musicology); narrative, 15; National History IDJ.:15e, 371, 372; of philosophy, 15; primary sources (see separate heading Historiography, primary sources); private, 325, 332; prosopographies, 7, 18, 26; reliability, 345-46, 359; in religious context, 359; on rites, 351, 353-59; of science, II, 25-27, 162, 258; social history, 8m3, 15n23, 22n37, 38-39; of technologies, 25-27; of thought, 39; typology, 20; vertical chronologies (nianpu "1=:Wf), 7; Wei-Jin approaches, 24, 32-33, 67, II3, 138, 162, 269, 281, 32 5, 32 8, 33 1, 333, 334-4 6 , 359, 366 , 370, 378; Xun Xu and (see under Xun Xu); See also Literature historiography, offices: access to, 299, 300 ,3 13, 315, 317-18 , 319, 321 - 22 , 323, 325, 329, 334, 366; archives, 151, 21 4, 297, 297 n 50 , 300, 318 , 322 , 324, 36 7; Dongguan *r!iQ (Eastern Observatory), 46, 125, 166, 212, 213, 305, 325, 366; in Eastern Han, 332; in Eastern Jin, 328nII7; and hierarchic elision of Imperial Library and Palace Writers, 165-68; Imperial Library, 24, 31, 56, 77, 85, 123, 139, 164-7 0 , 178, 183, 18 7, 193, 213-14, 280, 281, 29 2, 293, 297, 298, 29 8n 52 , 301, 30 4, 306, 3II, 312, 313, 317, 318 , 320 , 322- 24, 32 5, 332, 343, 354 n 3, 360, 36 4, 366 , 371, 379; Magnolia Terrace, 306; "ordering" of archives, 169-70; Palace Writers, 24, 31, 4 8, 56n 44, 73, 7 8, 79, 85, 106, 123, 126, 136, 137, 139, 151, 164-68, 183,184,192, 193, 213, 281, 292, 293, 297n50, 29 8, 301 , 302-4, 306, 312 , 320, 323, 33 2 , 343, 35 8, 362 , 36 3, 36 4, 365, 366 , 36 7- 68 , 37 1, 372n45; reform

401

of, 285; as "Santai ~::: f:I" offices, 166; store-rooms, 183, 186, 214, 230, 232; Tang approaches (see separate heading Historiography: Tang, below); in Wei era, 306, 364; writing offices, 123; in Wu (state), 170, 328m17; Xun Xu and, 122, 123, 193, 285, 29 2, 293, 300, 302 -4, 32 5-34, 345, 35 8, 366 , 368 ; Zhang Hua and, 325-34, 345, 37 2 historiography, primary sources: Basic Annals of Jin Wendi, II3, 123n3; Basic Annals of Jin Wudi, II4; biezhuan J:JU1W-, 27, 28-29, 68; court memorials, 229; Chunqiu #f)C, 317; Hanshu ¥~tlt 174, 18 5, 197, 21 4, 24 0n28 , 343 (see also Ban Gu); HOlt Hanshu 1&¥~ ~}:, 27, 53, 235 n20 ; jiazhuan %:11, 27, 28, 112; Jinshuf'1"r IJ, 27, 31, 36, 94-95, 1II-18, 120, 126, 128, 132, 133, 152, 161, 162, 164, 177, 189-90, 191, 197, 198, 20 3, 204nII6, 207, 269, 271, 275, 279, 29 2 , 294, 301 , 302 , 30 5, 319, 322 , 323, 33 1, 334, 335 nI 31, 339, 344, 35 2, 353-54, 354n3, 360 - 61 , 362 , 36 4, 36 5, 368 , 373-74; Jiu Tangshu 11W Jflff~f, 270n89, 319; loss of, 257, 354; on music, 128, 130, 133; register of language in, 229, 231; revision of, 313, 365-67; on science, 258; Sanguo zhi ~:::rIT'£Iiit=;, 329; Shangshu r]lfjf!H:, 197, 267n76, 287n21, 288n25, 315,357, 366; Shiben 111::4(, 340, 341, 344; Songshi 7lc9:, 343; Songshu 51~flY:, 31, II4, 126, 131, 156, 182, 187, 189, 216, 228-65, 342, 369 (see also Shen Yue); Suishu I~f!:, II5, 128, 162,189, 191-92, 198, 203, 204nII6, 231, 246, 267n76, 306, 308-9, 316, 319; technical dialogs, 229, 342; treatises, standard-history, 27, 71, 72, 1II-12, 177, 258, 313; wenji x1Jf~, 27, II2, 229, 294, 295 n28 , 310 , 34 2 , 379; Xin Tangshu ffvr mf!=, 270n87; xingzhuang 1J'~,* (accounrs of ~~r:!~~~t), 4, 10,77, 275; Xu Hanshu r.~i~Ii·, 329 historiography, Tang scholars' approach to: 94nIO, 1II-18, 120, 152, 155, 157, 161, 162, 177, 197, 203-6, 207, 28 5, 290n27, 29 2, 3II , 317 n 9 6 , 32 5, 329, 336, 340, 353-54, 364. See also Historiography, primary sources: Jinshu Holcombe, Charles, 15n23 Holzman, Donald, 8-9, 12n20, 136n32, 269 Hou Hanshu See under Historiography, primary sources

402

INDEX

Hou Wailu 1~5'1'1l);(, 18 Hu Zhao "jJj 1113 (162-250), 169, 170-71 Hua He 328nII7 Hua Qiao ~'i'ljli\% (b. ca. 235-40; d. 293), 323, 326 (Tbl. 5), 33 1, 333, 334, 36 5- 6 7 Hua Yi ::'~l!'~m'~ (d. ca. 291-92),327 (Tbl. 5),32 8 ,33 2, 347nI60, 36 5 Huainan zi. See under Scholarship, on individual classics Huangfu Mi Lft (215-82), 258, 324, 328nII7, 34 0 , 34 8, 359, 380 Huangzhong i'!l~li't (or Yellow Bell, pitchstandard I). See under Musicology Imperial Academy, 167, 182, 331, 353, 354 n3 Imperial Library. See under Historiography, offices institutions, 102; revision of, 71 intellectual discussion and coteries, 54 (Fig. 2), 60, 65, 66-69, 85, 98, 99100, III, 122, 285, 352, 380. See also Xuanxue: coteries Ji Liankang flf~ljrHc, 233nI5 Ji Tomb lffi.'Jl., 25, 26, 280, 285; access to materials (see under Historiography, offices); Bamboo Annals (see separate heading Bamboo Annals); discovery and recovery of items in, 290, 296-98, 313, 315, 322; metrology, 299-300, 369; Mu Tianzi zhuan *~* T1w, 293, 294-3 01 , 295 n 39, 29 8n 52 , 30 9, 312 , 317, 324, 34 0 , 344; objects found in, 188 (Tbl. 2), 188-90, 197, 198, 369; texts, cataloging, 308; texts, ignored, 370; texts, transcription of, 299, 301 , 308 -9, 312 , 317, 329, 360 , 361, 368; texts, transmission of, 291, 294-96, 295n40' 3I7n96; Xu Xian and, 319; Xun Xu's role in investigating, 32, 162, 169, 292-94, 298, 308-9, 324- 2 5, 337, 34 0 , 34 2 , 35 2 , 360 , 380 . See also Antiquarianism; Jijun; see also under Du Yu; Scholarship, commentary; Shu Xi; Sima Biao; Wang/Fu Zan; Wei Heng; Zhi Yu Jia Chong J}"tft (217-282), 45n9, 83,96 (Tbl. I), 97, 99, 101, 102, 105-6, 109, IIO, III, II9, 137, 266, 27 6, 279, 294, 301 , 302 , 30 3, 314 n88 , 359, 362 , 371. See under Factions Jia Kui (30-101 AD), 248 Jia Mi }~HiWfl (d. 300). See Factions: Zhang Hua ambit and Factions:

Twenty-four Friends; see also under Historiography Jia Nanfeng 1l411,r]).ml (d. 300), 83, 107-8, 108n33, III, II6n56, 137, 282, 314, 321, 359, 36 4, 37 1, 374 Jian'an Masters ~J(-t;f, 269 Jiankang, 353, 354n3. See also Nanjing (Jiankang) tomb jiazhuan ~d~f. See under Historiography, primary sources Jijun ¥,bUil) (or Ji commandery), III, 197, 29 0 , 29 2 , 29 6-99, 3II , 313, 315, 321 Jin dynasty. See Sima family Jin Huidi M¥;,t'i'i (Sima Zhongf,j);!DZ!:, 260-307; appointed heir 267; r. 290307), 76, 78, 83, 107-8, 108n33, IIO, 168, 281, 282, 286, 314, 322, 332, 362, 366 , 373 Jin Wendi 5e,'i); (Sima Zhao -'ijk!,jII{1, 2II-65), 42, 63, 73, 79, 82, 83,33 1; and Chen Xie, 347nI60; death, 108; and rites, 354; and Xun Xu, 98, 103-4; in Zhengshi reign, 93 Jin Wudi i~;,'i1; (Sima Yan,~H!,j~, 235-9 0 ; r. 266-90),42, 62, 64, 77, 80, 83, 93, 95, 100-2, 107-8, 109, 321; and Chen Xie, 347nI60; criticism of, lOOnI5; and Feng Dan; III; and historiography offices, 167, 318, 322, 325; judgment of former Wei officials, II9, 274; and music, 133, 179, 181, 182-83, 205; and princes, 283; and Xun XU, II6, 279, 293-94, 363, 368 Jing Fang j~()X (d. 37 Be), II, IInI8, 43, 52, 53-55, I9 2n 79, 24 6 , 255, 26 5, 381 Jingzhou J'ruj+I, 16, 17n27, 109 Jinshu See under Historiography, primary sources Junyangling Ui&ll&I>&:, 34 (Map), 42 Karlgren, B., 255n54 Keightley, David N., 171 Kern, Martin, 208 Kibi no Makibir'dfIU~1fIJ (695?-775), 233 nI 5 Knechtges, David R., 95, 99, II8, 2881125, 30 7- 8 , 30 7 n7 0 , 37 2n 45 Kong Rong 1LI~11! (153-208), 56 Kong Yingda ILfl'iili (574-648), I97n92, 3I 7 n 9 6 Lam, Joseph, 2II Laozi (person), 149 Laozi (text). See under Scholarship, commentary

403

INDEX

law: bureaucratic regulations, 106; codes and revision thereof, 105, 106, II5n54, II9, 121, 122, 123, 125, 139, 266, 284, 314,328,346, 355n7; under Han Gaozu and Xiao He, II5n54; publication of, 137; study of, 43, 70-71, 318. See also under Xun family legend and legendizing. See under Historiography; Literature; Memory; Ruan Ji; Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove; Shishuo xinyu; Xun Xu legists. See Law: study of legitimacy, political, 94, 105, 105n27, II8, I20, 152, 153, 155, 219, 265, 308, 335-3 6 , 33 8, 344, 374, 375, 382 Lei Cizong 'tW(lj(/~~, 193, 193n81 Li Chong (Eastern Jin), 307 Li Chunfeng ~;:W).ffi~ (602-70), II5, rr8, 128,162, 176, 180, 184, 185, 187, 189, 19 0 -9 1, 19 2n8 0, 193, 194, 195, 197206, 258, 268, 275, 29 0n27, 349, 369; opinion of Xun Xu, 203-6. See also under Historiography, Tang scholars' approach to Li Daoyuan J/tllji!'iI5c (d. 587), 336 Li Si ~Wr, 24, 381 Li Ying (d. 169), 46, 47, 49n25, 84,

*:fc:

314n88

Li, Wai-Yee, 88 Lie He JUtl1 (fl. 230-75): cooperation with Xun Xu on flute construction, 216, 217, 23 0 , 231, 234, 235, 240-46, 250, 251-54, 257-58, 262, 289; expertise, 236; on performance, 247, 251-54; record of dialog with Xun Xu, 342, 370; on scales and modes, 241n34, 263; social position of, 235nr9; and Wei-court ensembles, 156-57, 251-52, 254; Xun Xu's opinion of, 241, 242-43 Lien, Y. Edmund, 31, 258, 261 Liji (and Yili). See under Scholarship, on individual classics Ling Tingkan {:3'tE.llt (1757-1809), 249 n 44

Linghu Defen 4-1)li1@~t 114 linguistic transcendence. See under Xuanxue literature and literary analysis: ancient, 87, 146, 376; catalogs of (see Scholarship, arts and methods); "Choreographed Chant for Jin's 'Just Potency' CZhengde')," 140-50, 153, 156; com-

petitions, 149 (see also under Lyrics); as court concern, 130; "daoistic" thought, 19, 24, 24n38, 66, 139, 148, 153, 320 , 375, 37 6 ; and faction, 10 7; "A Feasting Poem for a Gathering with Wudi at Hualin Park," 287-90; genres, 7, 7n9, I2, 28, 30, I25, 126n9, 143,14 6 , 155, 15 8, 294,3 0 7,3 24, 37 6 ; history of, 309-II; intimacy, new ideal of, 375, 378-80; line length, I28, 134-35, 139, 247; and paper, invention of, 377; poetry (shi), 52, 151, 286, 287,373; political implications, 154, 286; prosody, 10, 23, 30, 70, 87, I28, 141-47, 247, 26 3, 381 ; register, 377; rhyme schemes, 143-44, 143nn60-61, 145-46, 147; in rites and ritual, 92; yuefu t\~}H, 12, 23, 27, 30, 31, 146, 156 (see also Musicology: yuefu); etc. See also Historiography and under Xun Xu Liu ~U, Lady (d. 304; wife ofXun Yue 1~j m·), 75, 76, 80, 82 Liu family f&U of Donghai Wyil):, 75, 79. See also Liu, Lady Liu Fang f&UJ})i: (d. 250) and Sun Zi 1'% tf;;t (d. 251); see under Factions; also see Historiography, offices Liu Gong f&U1J~, 181n49, 182, 187, 213, 21 4, 326 (Tbl. 5) Liu Hui f&!J1ff'&: (fl. 250s-260s), 177, 185, 194, 199, 202, 206, 258 Liu Jingfu f&UjlJ'fr)~, 39 Liu Rulin, 7, 7nro, 328 Liu Shao ~U14I) (d. after 240), 71, 28+ See also under Law: study of Liu Xiang (79-8 BC), I26n9, 169, 170, 312n8 4

Liu Xin llifUl'ix (46 BC-23 AD), 194, 195, 255-5 6 , 30 7, 30 9 Liu Xiu f&U%, 233, 234, 240, 250 , 25 2-53, 254, 326 (Tbl. 5) Liu Yi f&U~ (ca. 210-85), 80, 1Oonr5, 133 n2 5

Liu Yiqing (402-44), 266-67, 273 Liu Zhiji llifUjlljj; (661-721),367 Liu-Song dynasty, 150, 182 lixue J'Il,r~: and daoxue 13, 15 Lu Ji Il'Hm (261-303), 14In47, 327 (Tbl. 5), 333, 37 2, 373 n 4 6 Lu Kanru, 7, 328 Lu Qinli, 7n9, 286, 287 La (p,itch-regulators). See under MuSicology

f*

404

INDEX

,',:1, Nt (pitch-standards). See under Musicology Lunyu. See under Scholarship, on individual classics Luo Zhenyu ~fl\1Rk (1866-1940),76 Luoyang 1~15$j (~fln50J), 13, 17n27, 18-19, 25, 37, 38 , 4 0 , 4 1, 4 2, 4 6 , 4 8, 55, 57-58, 59, 64, 65, 68, 73, 75, 7 6 , 81, 82, 123, 127,134,136, 216, 236, 27 1, 281, 298, 318, 319, 321 , 33 2, 333, 346-47, 382; Fenzhuang JJ'n!l:, 42, 76; Luo-Yi river system, 41, 42,83; Mang Hills!"': LLi, 25, 41-42, 76, 83; Pantun ~jl:!:, 76. See also Natural disasters Lustration Festival, 286, 289 lyrics: Chenggong Sui and, 328; competitions, 128, 133-50, 153, 380; conformity to existing music, 134-35; Fu Xuan and, 147, 153, 283, 28 5, 377; in Liu-Song dynasty, 150; and political philosophy, 142n56; as propaganda or ideology, 142n56, 146-47, 148, 150; reform of, 133, 150, 153, 283, 328; as ritual, 250; by Ruan Xian, 270; selfreferentiality, 143-45; types of, 127, 146, 255n54; Xun Xu and, 140-47, 210, 263, 285, 288, 328; Zhang Hua and, 147-49, 328. See also Musicology: names of songs; Literature: prosody

IMit

Ma Guohan, 192n80 Ma Heng )~~1~!j, 194-96, 198, 202 Ma Jun )'!D~8 (fl. 230s-240s), 258 Ma Rong M~M1! (79-166), 46, 381 Makeham, John, 16-17, 17n28, 20 mandate, dynastic, 144, 147, 155 Mao Shuang .::§~ (Sui-era), 198 marriage, 102, 104, 109, IIon39, 302, 314, 355,355 n8 Masters of Writing, 126, 164, 166, 314, 322 ,33 1, 347, 354, 354 n 3, 355, 35 8, 367-68, 380 mathematics. See Calendar; Philosophy: mathematics; Philosophy: shushu arts Mather, Richard, 6, 267, 270n88 Mawangdui (archeological site), 222n3, 234 medicine, 258, 262, 348, 360 memory, 84-88, 87nII3, 237-38 Mencius, 377 Meow Hui Goh, 287m8 metrology: archeological determinations of, 175-76 (for E. Zhou), 177 (for Qin and Wand early E. Han), 196 (for Three Kingdoms, Eastern

Jin, and Sixteen Kingdoms); and architecture, 172, 173, 203, 207; and astronomy, 360; chi II( (foot-rule or standard-rule), 23, 25-26, 31,72, 85, 171, 175-77, 190, 192; chi, changes to, 177,180,181,183,184,185,186,187, 191, 19 6, 199, 201-3, 205-8, 214; chi, Eastern Han elongation of, 177, 181, 183, 186, 187, 202, 207; chi, "Former Jin" or "New Jin" (Xun Xu's), 184, 191, 192-94, 195, 198, 199, 200, 200moo, 203, 205-6, 210, 213, 225, 244, 260, 26 5, 268, 296, 299-3 00 , 324, 347-49; chi, "Han Officialdom's," 201, 205; chi, "Latter Jin," 199, 202-3; chi, "Wei" or "modern-day" (Du Kui's), 193, 202, 206, 234, 300; chi, "Zhou" (so called by Li Chunfeng), 198, 201-2; and coinage, 175, 184, 192, 194, 19 6, 207; cong-tubes, 171; differing standards for different spheres of activity, 173-74, 196, 206, 207-8; Du Kui and, 179, 192, 193, 202, 203, 213, 214; Du Yu and, 319; early history, 171-75; and Eastern Han era, 184, 186, 192, 197, 202, 214; "embodied" and "disembodied," 171-72, 174, 176, 2II; grain-based, 171-72, 173, 180, 182, 185; Liang-era reforms, 200moo; materials (jade, bronze, etc.) for devices, 199-201; and medicine, 360; as "metrosophy," 214, 348; and music, 164, 207, 215, 245, 360 (see also Musicology: pitch-regulators; Musicology: pitch-standards); "New Rule iJY," )\." (defined, 191; otherwise see Metrology: chi, "Former Jin"); purposes of, 207-12; and ritual, 174, 206, 207, 250; and rulership, 174; scale-sticks, 186; social effects of, 348; Songera scholarship on, 194-95; Sumerian, 172; Tang-era, II5, 196, 275; and taxation, 203, 208; and textiles, 196, 200-1; and trade, 175, 206, 207; volume measures, 185, 186, 195, 213; and Wang Mang-era, 184, 186, 193, 194, 195-96,202; Western, 172-73, 174, 207; Xun Xu and, 23, 25-26, 31, 70, 85, II5, II7, II9, 140, 159, 161,162,175-96, 203,205,213,215,265,319,347-49 (see also Metrology: chi, "Former Jin"); Xun Yi and, 161; Zhi Yu and, 324, 347-49; Zhou-era, 177, 184, 202 metrosophy. See under Metrology military affairs, 98, 102, II9, 159, 165,

INDEX

281-82, 284, 285, 286, 314, 318, 332, 347, 354n3, 361n21 . See also Wu War

Mixian w;JJ%, 46 Mount Song;\Jci~ LLi (or Songgao LLi), 41; archeological discovery on, 322nI0 7 mourning. See Death Mu Tianzi zhuan. See under Ji Tomb music bureaus. See Musicology: court offices of musicology and music: accompaniment, 247-49; adornment, 154; aesthetics, 208, 215, 216, 217, 225; "ancient," 243; beat-keeper, 255; bells, 6, 56, 129, 131, 133, 134, 135, 147, 171, 177,178,179, 181n48, 182, 184, 185, 189-90,197, 200, 204, 21 7, 218, 219, 222, 234-35, 239, 244, 247-4 8, 25 2-53, 268, 290n27, 331, 348, 368 , 369, 380; bitonality, 215; bridge (musical section), 145; and change of dynasty, 130; chants (ge 132,133; "corrupt" (Zheng), 129-30; court offices of, 126, 134, 159, 163-64, 180, 182,183,187, 208, 213, 236, 243, 250, 251, 253, 332; classical verse songs (shii'j4J'), 132, 210; correctness, 208, 209, 260; Dalu pitch-standard, 246, 249, 250, 254, 264 (see also Musicology: pitch-standards); dance, 126, 141n 4 8 , 143-44, 14 6 , 147, 14 8, 153, 157, 180, 254n50; definition of, 2n6; Du Kui and, 150, 179, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 233, 234, 244, 268, 33 1, 369, 380; early instruments, 70, 138n37, 204, 225-26, 238-39 (see also Antiquarianism: objects, found); Eight Timbres, 180, 182, 239; and ethics, 217; and factions, 136-4°; feasting, 131, 13 2, 144, 146, 252; "foreign" music, 129, 131; Han-era, 222; hemiola, 159; high music, 56, 70, 125,129, 240; historiography on, 128, 130, 132-33, 135, 140, 152, 153, 158, 162, 180, 231; Huangzhong pitch-standard, 140n44, 171, 183, 184, 184n55, 209, 209nI21, 215, 220, 221 (Figs. 6A-C), 223, 227, 234nI8, 254, 257, 261, 263-64, 270 (see also Musicology: pitch-standards); instruments, 70, 131,135, 139, 164, 210, 243, 248, 250, 251, 260, 263-65, 270 (see also Flute; Musicology: bells; Musicology: early instruments); Japanese, 130, 21 7, 227, 233nI5, 242, 246; in Jin era, 135, 151; in Jin Huidi's court, 366;

405

"key," 145-46; in Korean court, 130; legendary, 197; "light," 129, 131, 133, 14 6 , 147, 149, 155, 157, 179; in LiuSong court, 150; lyric pieces 132, 133; lyrics (see Lyrics); martial implications, 133, 141n48, 141n 50 , 143; memorization, 237-38; and metaphysics, 267n76; modes, 215, 216, 218-19, 223- 2 5, 235-3 6 , 237-3 8, 24 1n 34, 245, 259, 263-65; and mourning, 56, 181n48; mystical qualities, 236n21; names of modes, 247, 254; names of notes, pitch-standards, etc., 220, 223, 234, 241n34, 251, 254, 261; names of songs, etc., 94, 130, 131, 150, 152; and New Year's Day, 127-28, 132, 156, 267; Northern Song, 2II; notation (see Musicology: tablature); octave, 219-20; orthodoxy, 146, 244n36, 245, 24 6 , 249, 257; pedagogy, 237; pentatonic (five-note) scale, 139, 223, 227, 239, 244 n36 , 255, 256; performance, 31, 12 9, 130, 141n 4 8 , 143, 147, 15 1, 154, 190, 208, 209, 218, 224, 236, 238, 240, 243, 24 6 , 247, 254-55, 254 n 50 , 255 (director of), 256, 263, 267, 271, 275; and physics, 260; pitch distortions, 259-65; pitch-regulators (lii fW), 70, 128, 164, 174, 176, 177, 179, 180n47, 182-83, 185, 186, 189, 190, 192, 197, 200, 203, 204, 2II, 213, 214, 215, 218, 222-23, 233, 234, 235, 237-3 8, 241n 34, 242, 243, 244, 245, 25 2, 29 0n2 7, 347-48, 369, 370; pitch-regulators, materials for (bamboo, jade, etc.), 197, 203, 204-6, 209, 209nI21, 222n3, 225, 233, 233 nI 5, 237, 239n25; pitchregulators and pitch-standards distinguished, 219; pitch-standards (lulu 111111~ll; arrayed, 221 Figs. 6A-C), 6, 23, 47 n 9, 56, 133, 134, 139, 164, 175, 180,184, 185, 190, 192n79, 209, 2II, 215, 217-18, 219-22 , 231, 233, 24 1n 34, 246, 248, 249, 250, 252, 254, 255, 256 , 257, 259, 261, 263-64, 265, 268, 28 9, 331; political implications, 154, 205, 208, 219, 237, 268, 272; Qingjue rt~' frj scale, 257, 264; reform of, II7, 157, 266, 275 (see also Xun Xu: and musicology); register (e.g., high, low, ritual, entertainment, etc.), 127-33, 146-48, 149, 153, 156, 158, 179, 210, 264; and religions, 209, 210-II; reproducibility, 256; rhythm, 159, 249, 381 ; in rites and ritual, 92, II7, 133-50,

406

INDEX

209, 2II, 265; Ruibin pitch-standard, 249,256, 370 (see also Musicology: pitch-standards); sanftn sunyi ffaJ-: )}Jllt~ [{in ("[Method of] Adding and Subtracting in Thirds," or cycleof-fifths), 220, 240, 249, 258, 259-60; scales, in general, 121, 139, 157, 208, 218, 219, 223-25, 227, 23 0 , 235, 239, 241n34, 242, 246, 256; and scholarship, 179-80; seven-note scale (see separate heading Musicology, sevennote scales, below); and shushu arts, 217; social effects of, 154, 205, 255, 268; sounding-stones (lithophones), 134, 147, 181n48, 189-90, 200, 222, 248, 252-53, 268, 348, 369; supernatural effects of, 267n76; tablatures and notation, 130, 208; Tang-era, 130, 227, 242; technical writing on, 27; and temples, 131; testing of pitches, 183-84, 184n55, 190, 21 5, 223, 234, 24 2 , 250-53, 262, 265, 347, 369; tonality (sense of "key" or coloration), 145-46; transposition, 223, 237, 23 8-39, 247; tunes (qu 1111), 132, 133, 157, 219; venues, 131-32, 133, 150, 156; Wang Mang-era, 197; in Wei court, 130-31; Western, 161, 210-II, 214, 219, 220, 238, 259, 351; and women, 131; Wuyi pitch-standard, 247-48, 254 (see also Musicology: pitch-standards); xianghe Wlfll, 129; and xuanxue, 87; and Yijing, 269; yuefu ~~)N (entertainment or party music) 129, 130, 131-32, 152, 155, 157, 236 (see also Literature: yuefu); and Zhengshi reign-era, II8; Zhou-era, 197, 200, 219, 24In34. See also under Cao Cao; Cao Pi; Xun family musicology, seven-note scales (arrayed, 221 Fig. 6C), 29, 35, 56n45, 87, 154, 218, 221, 226, 227, 241n34, 255; as "ornate," 131, 244n36; note names: 351 (biangong .~;~;), 161 (bianzhi '~1!1&), 35, 121, 161, 239, 239n26 (gong 'l;J;), 121, 239n26 (jue fir]), 91, 121, 239n26 (shang WH), 91, 139, 239n26, 279 (yu )J5J), 91, 121, 139,215,231, 239n26, 279 (zhi 1~&); XiazhiF1~ scale or mode, 224, 244, 246, 249, 257, 263; Zhengshengilj1¥: scale or mode, 23, 29, 31, 157, 161, 216, 223-25, 238, 244, 245, 24 6 , 247, 249, 257, 26 3- 6 4 mystery school. See Xuanxue

Nanjing (Jiankang) tomb archeological discoveries, 273-75, 277 natural disasters, 25, 41, 78-79, 78n86, 83, 83 nr0 9, 34 6 nature. See under Philosophy Needham, Joseph, 6 "New Rites," 106. See also Rites: revision of; see also under Xun Yi; Zhi Yu New Year's Day, 127-28, 132 N g, Kwok Wai, 246 nianpu "'flH(- (vertical chronologies). See under Historiography nihilism. See under Xuanxue Niu Hong II--')L\ (545-610), 231, 246, 247, 3IIn8 4 Nivison, David S., 291, 29 2, 345 Niwa Taiko j'})Jt§tI, 39 nobility, grants and titles of, 103, 104-5, IIO, 121, 122, 266, 274, 281, 282, 283n8, 28 4, 293, 315, 33 1, 339, 355 n8 notes (yinl'':'f- or sheng tWn. See under Musicology, seven-note scales: note names Pan Tao ¥ffl¥r:~ (d. 3II), 361 Pan XU NIH!;] (d. 215), 50-51 Pan Yue 1ffl 1'1;- (247-3 00) 347 paper, invention of, 377 Pei Hui ~1~& (fl. 230-50), 58, 59, 61 Pei Kai :iHf'Y (237-91), 326-27 (Tbl. 5), 328 , 329 Pei Songzhi 1-tti~Z (372-451), 3II, 36 3n2 4 Pei wei:i~f@l (267-300), 87, 360 Pei Xiu (224-71), 70, 97 (Tbl. I), 100, 104, 106, 108, 122, 151, 258, 266, 279, 281, 285 Pei Yin ;;&!m~ (fifth-century), 296n45, 342 pentatonic scale (five-note scale). See under Musicology Petrov, A. A., 17n27 philosophy and systematic thought: apocrypha, 15, 18, 20, 21, 53n39; astronomy and astrology, 43, 94, 102, II5, 162-63, 182, 203, 206, 207, 209, 233 nr 5, 241n 34, 317, 339, 345, 347-4 8, 360, 366; Buddhism, 21, 27, 182; calendar and calendrics, 87, 94, 102, 121, 163,173, 229, 26 5, 317, 335, 337, 345, 357,359, 370 , 374; "clear mindedness" (qingxin ¥ilj{,\), 284; Confucianism and Confucian ritual, 3, 15, 16, 19, 20, 39, 60, 153, 154, 182, 208, 216, 274,

*%

INDEX

376; Confucianism, reform of, 24; as court concern, 130; Daoism, 10, 15, 16, 21, 27, 65, 93n4, 153, 159, 19 6, 275, 279; Daoism, Yellow Emperor, 154; "daoistic" thought (see under Literature); dualism, 18, 65, 66, 153; Eight Trigrams, 21; epistemology, 66, 148, 348; Five Phases, 265; and lyrics of ritual songs, 142n56; mathematics, 177, 182, 185, 192, 194, 203, 204, 206, 207, 21 3, 21 7, 21 9, 229, 240, 25 8, 259, 262, 284, 284n1O, 370, 380; and metrology, 214, 348; modern, 15n26; and music, 348; nature and natural philosophy, 86; neo-Daoism, 15; non-knowing, 148; ontology, 66; physics, 260; pi (7[, mathematical constant), 185; political, 142n56; positivism, 154-55, 276; qi, 209nI21 (see also Musicology: qi); sciences, II, 212-14; shushu WJcWj arts, 3n6, 15, 21, 53-55,136,163, 203, 217, 265,339, 366, 380; Song thought, 13, 15; spirits, 86, 148, 267n76, 354, 357; Taixuan (see under Xuanxue); technologies, II, 214; There-is-not 1!W (and There-is) (see under Xuanxue); Xun Xu's approach to, 13; Yijing, 3, 5,15, 25,43, 517'133, 53, 57, 59, 67- 68 , 80n95, 217, 240, 265, 287nnI9-20 (see also under Scholarship, commentary; Xun family; Xun Shuang; Xun Xu). See also Prisca Zhou; Xuanxue Pi Xirui b'd~JirJ (1850-1908), 16, 16n26 Picken, Laurence, 217, 241n34, 254 pitch-regulators. See Musicology: pitchregulators plays (theater), 144n62 politics. See Factions; Precision: politics of; Rites: as politics; Sima family: succession crisis; Wu War portraiture. See under Xun Xu poverty, rhetoric of, 55, 64, 84 precision, 85; aesthetics of, 24, 174, 187, 347; correctness (see under Musicology); critique of, 139; as critique of shushu and xuanxue, 265; and medicine, 348; obsessive scholarly approach to, 24, 159, 265, 382; and poetry, 70; politics of, 3-4, 23-24, 120, 265, 377; purposes of, 2II, 216; reproducibility, 256; ritual, 245; Shun as patron of, 201; social effects of, 348; and time, 127. See also Prisca Zhou Pretorius, Michael (1571-1621), 210-II,

407

2IInI23, 214 prisca antiqua. See also Antiquity, primordial; Prisca Zhou prisca theologia, 22, 23-24, 210 prisca Zhou: critiques of, 33; and music, 250, 259, 262, 263, 265; as technique, 24; the term, 22; tetrameter shi 11'J' and, 23; versus prisca antiqua, 33,374-80 (see also Antiquity, primordial); in Wang Mang court, 121, 177; as Xun Xu's ideal and agenda, 22, 33, 94, 121, 12 7, 13 6, 157, 159, 174, 177,196, 198, 209-10, 216, 259, 262, 26 3, 281, 33 8, 344-46, 347, 35 2 , 371, 374-80; Xun Yi and, 359; Zhou "restoration," 121. See also Duke of Zhou prognostication. See Philosophy: shushu arts prosody. See under Literature; Xun Xu prosopographies. See under Historiography pure stream, 49 n2 5, 53 "pure talk," 86. See also Xuanxue Qiao Zhouf,1.HPiJ (b. ca. 199; d. 270), 329,33 8-4 0 qingtan {11H~. See "Pure talk" Qu Yong 1'1:!.~"f, 295 recruitment of scholars. See under Cao Cao; Sima family regulator. See Musicology: pitch-regulators Ren Kai 11'1:~:, 301, 326 (Tbl. 5),328, 329, 354 rhyme. See under Literature rites and ritual: and aesthetics, 174; codes, 105; and faction, 107; Five Rites (or Wuli) , 354, 355, 359; as political, 174; reform of, 73, 93, 94, 105, II5n54, 122, 210, 266,328,354-55,375 (see also under Zhi Yu: criticism of Xun Yi's Rites); scholars and study of, 3, 7 0 , 7 2 . See also "New Rites"; and see under Literature; Musicology; Philosophy: calendar; and Philosophy: Confucianism Ruan Hun IVl:Vl[ (fl. 260-85), 269 Ruan Ji Ivdf11,; (210-63): and antiquity, 380; biographies of, 8-9, 269; and Confucianism, 154; and kuangda l~l?lilii group, 14n21; and music, 153-55, 212; reception in legend, 3, 266; and Sima rule, 271; and xuanxue, 154; and Xun Yi, 67; and Zhang Hua, 136. See also

408

INDEX

Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove Ruan Xian IVl;)i&; (jar dates see 270n88), 24; criticism of Xun Xu by, 32, 154, 204-6, 216, 265-75; and historiography, 328nI17; pipa named for, 270n87; reception in legend, 272-77 Ruan Xiaoxu IVIAr:r.\~' (479-536), 307n72 Ruan Yu Ivd~ (d. 212), 269 Ruan Yuan IVG)C (1764-1848), 195 Ruibin ~
ods, 17m7, 30,55,65,75,313,362; on Gongyang, 360-61, 362; Great Treatise, 217; on Guanzi 1'Jr-, II7; on Guoyu, 241n34, 247, 248; on Hanshu, 304; hermeneutics, 16, 16-17nn27-28, 20; "hidden talents," 106; on Laozi, 15, 20, 24n38, 51n32, 275, 312n84; on musicological texts, 231; necessity of, 356; on Sangfit, 355-56, 358; on Shiji, 304, 336, 340; on Shishuo xinyu, 2n3, 201; techniques of, 16, 17, 248n42, 362, 377; Ten Wings, 15, 55, 66; Tradition o!Zixia, 356; uses of, 26,353-65; on Xiaojing, 122, 312n84; on Xun Xu's flute-construction guide, 257, 259, 263; on Yijing, 5, 15, 20, 39, 43, 45 n 9, 49, 52-55, 57, 65, 86,149, 21 7, 269, 270, 354n3, 370; on Zhouli, 18 5, 214, 254, 359; on Zhuangzi, 20; Zuozhuan /d~J, 87, 217, 287n22, 292, 317, 360-61, 362, 378. See also under Xun family; Xun Shuang; Xun Xu; Zhi Yu scholarship, on individual classics: Five Classics, 317; Guoyu ID.£I)'{fj-, 176, 231, 241n34, 257, 315-16, 370; Huainan zi 1fl~I'~lI', 222; Liji f~~!ifG, 142n57, 239m6, 240, 240m8, 255, 268, 356, 370; Lunyu fi1fu1ffi', 66-67; Sangfu y~ !JIll. (Mourning Vestments), 355-56, 358; Shiji 9:i'ic, 43, 222, 29 6n45, 297, 301 , 332, 337-46; Shijing ;iJi*(I~, 80n93, II6, 135, 152, 287nI9, 288m4, 376; Shujing i)H\~{ (or Shangshu IVUllO, 51, 142n55, 255',288n25; Xiaojing ~:r.;(I~, 122; Yijing }&H~p., 142n54; Zhouli NlHk~, 175, 176, 1,8.°,182, 18 5,25 2 , 255, 357; Zhuangzi JilT, 15, 20n34, 21, 24n38, 236n21, 275 sciences. See under Philosophy self-control, 146 self-cultivation, 93 Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove: aesthetics of, 154; criticism of scholars by, 100; criticism of Xun Xu by, I, 24, 154-55, 216; and music, 139; and politics, 275; portraits of, 125, 272-77; reception in legend, 3, 216, 272-73, 277; and xuanxue, 13, 68. See also Ruan Xian; Shan Tao Shan Tao (2°5-83), 96 (Tbl. I), 108, 122n2, 154, 216, 270-71, 272-77, 314n88 shangfang lili] /i. See under Artisans Shang Junlf'fjJ4J, II6 Shao Dongfang {dI5W/i, 291, 341

INDEX

Shaughnessy, Edward, 17n27, 280, 29 0n2 7, 29 1, 293, 294, 295 nn 38-39, 29 6 , 29 6nn 44-45, 297 nn 4 8-5 I , 300, 30 5n6 5, 312n8 5, 317, 321 , 324, 325nI 5, 333 nI2 7, 33 6 , 337, 33 8, 34 2nI 50 , 344, 345-4 6 ,35 2 Shen Yue ¥JLr.t'l (441-513), II4, 126, 128, 130, 13 1, 132, 133, 135, 140, 144, 146, 15 2, 155, 156, 157, 159, 228, 230-32, 25 1, 256, 257, 312n84, 342. See also Historiography, primary sources: Songshu Shentu Pan III J~~nT (d. ca. 194), 212 shi ;'14j poetry. See Literature: poetry Shi Le, Il3n48 Shiji. See under Scholarship, on individual classics Shijing. See under Scholarship, on individual classics Shiping ~tl.iIZ.: archeological discoveries in, 200, 201, 204-6, 268, 269 Shishuo xinyujU:r&?iil!'ffM-: commentary on (see under Scholarship, commentary); and Confucianism, 3; legendizing, II4, 201, 205, 266-69, 271; omissions from, 14; style of critique, I, 2, 4, 378 (see also Prisca Zhou: Prisca antiqua); and Xun Can, 61; on Xun XU, II4, 124, 302 Shu (state), 103, 109, 121, 283, 329, 330, 339 Shu Xi !fit[' (ca. 263-ca. 302): and calligraphy and paleography, 322; criticism ofXun Xu, 332, 352, 373n46; and "daoistic" thought, 376; as an editor/ annotator of Bamboo Annals (via Wei Heng), 325, 325nII5, 345; and historiography, II3, 325, 345, 37 2, 374, 375-76; and historiography offices, 327 (Tbl. 5),333; and Ji Tomb, 292, 313, 315, 316 , 319, 321- 22 , 324, 325 33 6 , 338, 361; need for biographies of, 9; and primordial antiquity, 33, 380; and Zhang Hua, 321- 22 , 333, 351, 372 Shujing. See under Scholarship, on individual classics Shun Shrine: archeological discovery at, 197, 201, 203, 205; pitch-regulator found under, by Xi Jing ~ ljl' (W Han),I97 shushu WXif] arts. See under Philosophy Sima Biao (b. ca. 237; d. 306), 326 (Tbl. 5), 329, 33 2, 333, 338-40, as an editor/annotator of Bamboo An-

409

nals, question of, 340 Sima family and Sima dynasts, 20, 93; and bureaucratic regulations, 106; "Cao Shuang taint" (see under Cao Shuang); Chongyang ling X~I)£,JI)~ (tomb), 42; chronology ofJin dynasty, 334-36, 370, 373; court, 25, 63, 71-72; princes, 281-85; and prisca Zhou, 23; recruitment (and culling) of scholars and officials by, 100-I, 10 5, 106, II9, 122, 152, 274, 283-84, 28 5,3 14, 321 , 329, 330, 339, 34 6 , 353; succession crisis, 108n35, 281, 282, 286, 314-15, 362-64; and xuanxue,69; and Xun family (see under Xun family) Sima Liang 'ljH!§~"6, 314 Sima Lun f:lJJ~MlfU (277-301),137,372 Sima MUI 329 Sima QianI1j);!;)jig, 340, 340nI46, 359, 366 Sima ShiEijH!;jllili (208-55), 63,71,73, 93, 108 Sima Wei Prince of Shiping, 77, 7 8 , 83, 314 Sima Yan. See Jin Wudi Sima YiEIJ);:!{;;;f'..Qj (179-251), 56, 63, 73, 92. See also under Factions Sima You ilj);!D{r)(: (248-83): claim to throne, 108, IIO, III, 279, 281-86; death, 108; refusal of noble title, 105; and Wei Heng, 315 Sima Zhao. See Jin Wendi Sima Zhen Ij'JJi!§5~ (8th c.), 3I2n84, 336 Sima Zhong. See Jin Huidi Sima Ziwen 'E1]HE}T:J(, 279 sinology, Western. See Historiography: modern approaches Songshu Jf,(fJc';:. See under Historiography, primary sources Soper, Alexander, 124n5 spirits. See under Philosophy Spiro, Audrey, 270n88, 273-74, 274n97, 277 status, social, 154. See also Xun family: social position Straughair, Anna, 289 Sun Sheng 1iJlX: (ca. 302-75), 363n24 Sun Xiu 1i1*, 170 Sun Zi. See Liu Fang

Tang Taizong Jilf:;:l(1'j~, II2, II4 Tang Yongtong r-0j)IH1~, 16, I6n26, 16I7 n2 7, 27

410

INDEX

Tave rn or, Robert, 174 taxation, 138, 174, 203, 208, 283 technicians and technical experts, 102, 125, 151, 153, 178, 181n49, 183, 186, 234, 247, 256, 257, 26 5, 28 5,3 0 4, 328 , 34 2, 344 technology. See under Philosophy; Technicians Temple of Purity (Qingmiao r,lH:9]), 64, 64 n6 5 Ten Wings. See under Scholarship, commentary time. See Calendar; also see under Precision Ting Pang-hsin, 143, 143 n60 , 145, 147 treatises, standard-history. See under Historiography, primary sources Triple Concordance '::i1ll, 21 tuwei l~qiIM\ ("charts and weft-texts"), 136, 339 typology. See under Historiography Vogel, Hans Ulrich, 174, 214 voice (yin See Xuanxue: Zhengshi timbre Wagner, Rudolph, 16m6, 17m7, 21 Wan Sitong ;~l~JWlliJ (1638-1702), 303n63, 32 8, 37 2n 45 Wang Baoxuan 19, 20, 21, 65, 66 Wang Bi ~[~i'i~ (226-49),13,16, 55, 58, 66, 67--68, 68n72, 69-70, 28 4, 354n3, 380. See also Wang-He Wang Can (d. 217), 354 Wang Chen ~UJL (d. 267), 80, 97 (Tbl. I), 99, 99 nI 4 WI, 10 4, 279, 326 (Tbl. 5), 3 28 Wang family ,of Donghai *rfB~, 40 Wang GuoweiTIDxlMt (1877-1927),195 Wang Ji 287, 366 Wang JieFJ:t! (267-3 0 5), 353, 360- 62 , 377 Wang Lang{J~I) (d. 228), 9,163, 166 Wang Mang (r. 9-23 AD), 24, 121, 177, 210, 381 Wang Sengqian (fl. 480s-90s), 158 Wang SuI;;ll'I (195-256), 9, 131, 152, 166, 168, 353, 35 6 , 35 8 Wang Tingjian 361, 362 Wang Yin::[J~, 169nI6, 200, 3II Wang Yunxi:ljllil'li~, 157 Wang Zichu '-{<'M, 233nI5, 241n34, 259 Wang/Fu Zan J.I{1,t"(Jj\:1 (fl. 270-80s), 30 4-5, 326 (Tbl. 5), 334, 335, 335 nI 31, 33 6 ,337, 343-44, 35 2, 371, 373; as an

editor/annotator of Bamboo Annals, question of, 343-44 Wang-HeT{i,J (Wang Bi and He Yan), I, 2, 2n5, 3, 13, 20, 21. See also He Yan; Wang Bi Wei family: and authorship of "Guwen guanshu " 316, 324; and calligraphy and paleography, 315, 316, 324-25; and factions, 315; and historiography offices, 319; and Xun Xu, 315. See also Wei Guan; Wei Heng; Wei Ji Wei Guan ~1,'(jI'& (220-91), 96 (Tbl. I); and calligraphy and paleography, 314; career, 314; death, 314, 321; and historiography, 366; recommended by Xun Xu, 103, 314; and succession crisis, 314 Wei Heng {!\\j'[I( (d. 291): and calligraphy and paleography, 314-16; death, 314, 315, 321; as editor/annotator of Bamboo Annals (via Shu Xi), 325,345; and historiography offices, 327 (Tbl. 5), 333; and Ji Tomb, 323- 24, 325, 338, 34 2, 345,351, 361; and succession crisis, 315 Wei Ji il,v:WJ (fl. 200-40), 314, 314n87, 315, 354 Wei Mingdi IDHi'/ (r. 227-39). See Cao Rui Wei Shu 2!JU{I)L 283n7 Wei Zhaoj'rHI{i (d. 273), 24In30, 248, 328nI17; lyrics by, 248n42. See also Scholarship, on individual classics: Guoyu wenji. See under Historiography, primary sources Western scholars and sinologists. See Historiography: modern approaches women, 45n7, 61, 80n93, 82, 108, 131, 286,289; "Exemplary" YU::£z:, 125, 125n9 Wu (state), 170 Wu War (279-80), 23-24, 32, 92, 104, 107, lo9-II, II9, 137, 168,280, 283, 28 4, 286-9 0 , 29 2 , 29 8, 30 3, 313, 318 , 320 , 325, 33 2, 333, 35 8, 362 , 380 Wuyang ~WI~)j, 108 Wuyi 1H~M (pitch-standard II). See under Musicology Xi Kang ;f119)jl~ (223-62), 271, 274, 284, 380 Xiahou Xuan );i {7~ £: (209-54) 13, 59, 66,30 2 Xiandi t¥;HiY (Eastern Han emperor), 4 8, 56 Xiao He jflWf"J (d. 193 Be), II5, II5n54, 284

INDEX

Xiao Ji (d. ca. 6IOS), 193-94, WI, 202; writings of, I93n83 Xiaojing (Classic of Filial Piety). See under Scholarship, on individual classics Xiazhi scale. See under Musicology, seven-note scales xingzhuang ij-}[k (accounts of conduct). See under Historiography, primary sources Xu fit 4 8, 49, 55, 57, 134 Xu Guang 1~}.t;1 (352-425), 338 Xu Jingzong l,/Hi&7}~ (592-672), II3, II3n49, II4, II8 XU Xian KwlJilli: (d. ca. 325-35), 3Il, 319, 325 xuanxue ~-,~, and xuan, 5, 12-22, 22n37, 375; and Confucianism, 20, 60,153; coteries, 58, 59, 148; and "daoistic" thought, 153; devotees, 15, 19, 69n74; and dualism (see Philosophy: dualism); and government, 20; and hermeneutics (difference between), I7n27; Jin dynasty's turn from, 149, 153; levels of commitment to, 276; and linguistic transcendence, 65-66, 67, 375; Middle Way (zhongdao 1=1=1 :®), 153; musicology as critique of, 87; mysterious governance (xuanhua ;2:1t), 153; nihilism, 15; origins, 37, 58-62, 68-69, 86-87; periodization, I3-14n21, 58; and political power, 153, 275; precision as critique of, 265; qingtan ri~f~, 2, 3, 13, 272; scholarship on, 26; Taixuan )(g-, 16, 268; There-is-not 1!!€ (and There-is), 21, 65, 66, 67, 87, 148, 154, 375; the word "xuan," 20n34; Zhengshi-era philosophy, 19, 21, 85; Zhengshi timbre J[Yf, Zl~:, 13, 18, 60-61, 60n5, 68; Zhengshi timbre, "froth" model of, 17-18, 21 Xun "?" (name unknown; elder brother ofXun Shu), 40, 43 Xun Bozi i"G11~IT (378-438), 28, 28n43, 156, 159, 23 2, 258; and He Chengtian, 232 Xun Can biezhuan, 29, 68-69. See also Xun Can Xun Can 1"G~ (for dates see 59n50): biographies of, 365; and Cao family, 1 58, 59, 272; comparison ofXun Yu i 1j g~ and Xun You by, 60, 60n54; friction with Xun family, 67; influence on Xun Xu, 73; social provocations, 60-62; and women, 61; and xuanxue, 37, 58- 62 , 65-66, 68-69, 154, 380;

411

and Yijing, 66, 86 Xun Chuo illj*I;( (ca. early 300s), 28n43, II3, II3n48, 155-56, 179, 186,189, 213 Xun family i'l} of Yingchuan (family tree, 44-45 Fig. I): anti-Xunism, 32-33, 27 2,3 01 , 30 9-II , 33 2, 333, 334-35, 34 6-49, 35 1- 6 5, 373, 377, 37 8, 380 (see also Xun Xu: critical reception); arts and skills of, 88-90 (List I); branches of, 40; and Cao family, 49, 57, 61, 72, 87,91,157,272,346,359; cemeteries and tombs, 25, 28, 29-30, 37, 38, 47, 57, 58, 62, 64, 75-84, 86; commemorations, 37,57,85,101-2; and Confucianism, 276; conservatism among, 69, 72, 86-87; and historiography, 102, 149, 156; and historiography offices, 332; and law, 70-71, 73, 85, 122, 266, 346; and literature, 122; locales, 4 0 -43, 57-58, 65, 7 2, 84- 85, 123; and mourning, 101; and musicology and musicians, 56, 58, 67, 69-70 ,72, 73, 87,102,149,155,156-57,163,215,266; pedagogy, 37, 85-86, 102; and poetry, 155-56; reputation, 101, 161, 358; scholarly influences among, 54 (Fig. 2); scholarship of, 26, 38, 88-90, 149; scholarship on, 38-39; self-defense, 37, 40, 43, 46, 84; and Sima family, 58, 62, 63, 67, 72, 73, 75, 91, II6, 122; social position of, 72-73, 85, 91, 101, 149, 213, 382; sources for, 27-29; women, 45n7; written works of, 88-9 0 (List I); and Yijing, 5, 39, 43, 45 n9, 52-55, 57, 65, 85, 86, 122, 149 Xun Fan i"ljifff (245-313), 189-9 0, 369, 373 Xun Fei 91 Xun Hui ilUrlll, 45n9, 65 Xun Jing i"U!1Vl (d. ca. 160-70), 47 Xun Jun 111]111.32, 373 Xun Kai i"Ij'I~'f., 363n24 Xun Liang rlj [~, 365 Xun Mao Wi~)~ (d. 267), 62, 101 Xun Rong 1'UPi\1! (b. ca. 216, d. after 246), 65, 67-68, 69, 86 Xun Shao iTj*H (194-244), 62n59 1 Xun Shen 1UfBt, 71, 73; as legist, 71, In 7 77 Xun Shu 1~U1,J~ (83-149),39,43-47, 57, 84; pedagog~ 43-4 6 Xun Shuang 111j5!~ (128-90), 47-49, 91, II5n53; career, 46, 48; and commemorations and mourning, 46, 48, 49n25, 63, 63n62; influences on, 52,

412

INDEX

53, 53 n39, 65; progeny, II5; reputation, 9 2nI ; and Yijing, 39, 43, 45 n9, 47, 52-55, 57, 66, 67, 85 Xun Song ,(0 ¥Lt (d. 329/30),354, 354n3, 35 8 Xun Sui (d. 325+), 190, 369 Xun Tan (fl. 166-69)' 47, 75 Xun Xi 1~jJn, 91 Xun Xin i'tjlijj', Leping Lord, 75, 78, 7 8n8 5 Xun Xu biezhuan, 28 Xun XU :'Mj[O) (b. ca. 220, d. 289), 97 (Tbl. I); accomplishments, 256, 259; aesthetics, II4, 216, 240; antiquarian research, 94, II4, II7, 120, 135, 151, 152, 162, 169, 171, 244, 265, 290-312; anti-Xunism (see under Xun family); appointments to (and removal from) official posts, 98, 108, II2-13, 121, 122, 123, 126, 151, 164-65, 167-68, 193, 21 3, 29 2 , 293-94, 294 n38, 29 8 , 30 5, 322 , 324, 32 5- 27, 32 6- 27 (Tbl. 5), 328 , 33 2 , 362 , 367-7 0 , 380; and artisans (see Artisans); assistance to family members, 77, 332; biographies of, 4-12, 27, 28, 72, II2-14, 128; and Buddhism and Daoism, 27; and bureaucratic reform, 285,346; and calligraphy, 164, 171, 212, 280, 313-19, 324-25; career fashioning, 37, 72-75, 85-86, 94, 151, 165, 33 2; career stages, 30, 85, 98, II9, 121-23, 161, 163; and catalog projects, 305-12, 342, 368; childhood, 91; collecting and connoiseurship, 123-25; commentaries by, 12, 38, 122; Confucianism and Confucian ritual, 208, 216, 276, 375; critical reception of, 24-25, 69, 85, III-18, 120, 149-50, 158, 161, 174, 175, 204-6, 212-13, 265-77, 281, 285, 318, 321 , 322 , 32 5, 33 2 , 345-46, 34 8, 35 2 , 363, 373-74, 377 (see also Xun family: anti-Xunism); and "daoistic" thought, 148, 150, 285; death, 368; denial of Cao-Wei rites and historical legitimacy by, 23-24, 94, 120, 135, 153, 154-55, 179-80 , 18 7, 203, 210, 265, 308 , 344, 359, 374, 380 - 81 ; and design, 26, 125, 151, 213, 215; and ethics, 135; and factions, 107-II, II8-20, 122, 27 2 , 28 5, 286-9°, 327, 333, 347, 36 4, 367, 373, 382; and flute temperamentology, 12, 31, 120, 204, 215, 216, 217, 225-65, 289; and He Qiao (see under

He Qiao); and historiography, 26, 33, II2-13, 114, 122, 151, 152, 165, 28 4, 332, 333, 334, 341, 344, 360; and historiography offices (see under Historiography, offices); influences received, 22, 37-3 8, 69-7°,73,74 (Fig. 3), 85, 91, 95-97, III, 149, 151, 154, 28 4,3 28 , 359; intuition, 267, 267n74; and Ji Tomb (see under Ji Tomb); and Jin court (see subheading Xun Xu: and Sima family and court); and law, 106, 122, 123, 151, 328; and literary criticism, 155, 309-II, 334, 34 2 , 381 ; lyrics by, 140-47, 149, 210, 283, 288, 381; and mathematics, 380; and metalworking, 151, 164; and metrology (see under Metrology); and military affairs, 98, 104, 122, 281-82; and musicology and musicians, 31, 56, 85, II7, 120, 125-27, 13 2, 145, 146, 150, 152,153, 157, 158, 164-65, 168, 209, 21 5, 224- 6 5, 28 9, 308, 319, 330, 33 2 , 368, 380; noble titles, 103, 104-5, IIO, 121, 122, 293; objects made under direction of, 189, 190-91, 204, 215, 225, 256-65, 369; obsessive scholarship of, 3, 159, 216, 265, 346; and painting, 26, 124, 151, 164, 212; and paleography, 85; and poetry, 155-56, 279, 286-90 (see also Xun Xu: lyrics by); and prisca Zhou (see under Prisca Zhou); progeny, 45nIO, 73, 368; prosody of, 10, 23, 30, 87, 128,134, 141-47, 150, 152, 247, 26 3, 264, 265, 381; and public works, 346; reception in legend, 1-4, lII-18, 120, 124, 156, 161, 177-78, 196, 216, 246, 266, 362-65, 382; and reform of ritual system, 94, 104, 210, 328, 380; remonstrating with rulers, 103; research methods, 183-94, 213-14, 228-65, 280, 285, 298, 3II, 33 8, 341, 344, 349, 35 2 , 37 8; residence, 214; secretiveness, 364; and shushu arts, 193n83,380; and Sima family and court, 23, 26, 58, 75, 98, 102, 103-4, IIO, 121, 281-85, 286-90, 329, 335, 36 3, 373-74; skills, 21, 22, 26, 37, 103, II9, 12 4, 12 5, 164, 171, 178, 196, 204, 265, 279, 338; staff, 184, 186, 187, 193, 212, 213, 234, 251, 252, 258, 265, 285, 29 8, 299, 301 -5, 313, 315, 316 , 324, 32 8, 329, 33 2 , 342-43, 360, 371; and standard-rule (chi) (see Metrology: Xun Xu and); and technicality, 135, 204; as technocrat, 258; and technicians (see Technicians); technologies, lO-II,

INDEX

204, 210, 214, 217, 250, 256; wealth, 364; and Wei family, 315; "Wenzhang xulu"j(rfd<;HfR, 155, 309-10, 312, 334, 342; "Xunshi lu" i~j ~~*, authorship question, 155-59; and xuanxue, 13, 153, 216, 284, 381; and yuefu, 149, 155, 157-58; and Zhang Hua (see under Zhang Hua); and Zhengshi regency, 94, 98, 121; and Zhong family, 10 4,17 0 l Xun Yan i U1h, 45, 62n59 Xun Yi l',]±1J'l (205-74), 2, 32, 56, 58, 62-64, 65, 66-67, 69, 70, 73, 85, 86, 96 (Tbl. I); anti-Xunism and, 349, 35 2 , 358, 362, 363; commentary on Lunyu, 98; and Confucian classics, 356; and He Yan, 98, 101; and historiography, II3, 269; honored by Jin Wudi, 279; influence on Xun Xu, 97; and law, 106, 123114; military posts, 102, II9; mourning for parents, 631162, 101-2; and music, 126, 150-51; "New Rites," as author of, 104, 106, 122, 349, 353-5 8, 359; political influence, 122; reception in legend, II5, II5n54; and Sima Yan (Jin Wudi), 101, II9; and Wu War, 109; and Zhengshi regency, 92, 94, 9 8, 99, 101 Xun Yin 1!ijl~~ (d. 304?), 81, 81nI04 Xun You i"tj{i)z: (157-214), 60, 70-72, 78, 346, 368 Xun Yu 1ttjTI~ (163-212),49-52, II51153; and Cao Cao, 49-52, 57, 61,368; and commemorations, 48, 49, 50-52; and Confucianism, 60; death, 50, 57, 61, 72, 91, 157, 330; and Palace Writers, 332; and law, 70-72; progeny, 19, II5; reception, 52, 60; and Sun Zi, 167 Xun Yu 1't]B~ biezhua11, 28 Xun Yu ittBl (d. ca. 16 9), 47, 55,75 Xun Yue 1!t]11J (246-95), 42, 72, 75-84, 85, 327 (Tbl. 5), 332; disambiguation of name, 471121 Xun Yue i!U'~-~ (148- 209), 47, 48, 49,50, 55-56, 57, 65, 85, 332; disambiguation of name, 47n21 Xun Yun 1~'rlri, 45119, 58, 65 Xun Zu i'ij~lt 40n8 "Xunshi jiazhuan" itO K~( {W, 28, 156 Yan lila (Zhou-era), II6 Yan Kejun ~TiJ:l!iJ, 124n5, 181, 2521148 Yan Yanzhi J~i1illZ (384-456), 272-73 Yang ;WJ, Empress, 108, 137, 282

413

Yang family i~j of HO~lgnong 1L\)~, 40, 50 Yang Hu~('.:fili· (221-78) 96 (Tbl. I), 101, 102, 104, 105, 109-10, II9, 122, 279, 288, 354 Yang Jialuo, 2521148 Yang Mao i~~ (d. 3II), 81nIOI, 83 Yang Ming i10llj], 157 Yang Xiong i~4it (53 BC-18 AD), II, IInI8, 21, 258 Yang Yao i?jjJjt (d. ca. 300), 281-82, 302 Yang Yinliu i?jW~1111U, 259, 263 Yangcheng, 41, 46 Yanshi 11~nfIJ, 41, 42 Yellow Emperor, 149, 197 Yiji11g. See u11der Philosophy; also see U11der Scholarship, on individual classics yin-yang arts. See Philosophy: shushu arts Ying Qu }fQUJ~~ (19°-252), 95; Ying family, 42nI2 Ying Zhen (d. 269),7°,151, 287, 290,354- See also Ying Qu Yingchuan JJR'l) II, 37, 40, 41, 42-43, 47, 4 8, 49, 55, 57, 7 2-73, 77, 84, 85, 86, 91, 98, 301; family alliances in, 102. See also Chen family; Xun family; Zhong family Yingyin ffJjl~, 37, 39, 41, 47, 57, 58, 62, 64, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 84, 86, 91, 122. See also Yingchuan Yong, Bell, 2II Yoshikawa K6jir6jl()II~~~?XL~15, 8 Youzhou 1~1%lj'I'I, 290, 304, 308 Yu Jun ).WU~, 354 Yu Yi 71, 7In77. See also u11der Law: study of Yue Guang ~~J.Jl'i (d. perhaps 304), 2-3, 327 (Tbl. 5) yuejit f!;~)H. See under Literature; Musicology Zeitlin, Judith, 1441162 Zhang Fan 1l~Jffi (Jin era), 29 Zhang Fuxiang 1lC,~j(f(:, 291 Zhang Heng iJlQfifff (78-139 AD), II, IInI8, 201134, 127-28, 144, 212, 258 Zhang Hua 1lQ~"i"f (232-300): and antiquity, 379; and architecture, 136; and calligraphy and paleography, 320 career, 320-21; critical reception of, 149; and "daoistic" thought, 153, 320, 375, 379, 380; and factions, II9, 136-39, 301, 352; and He Shao (See u11der He Shao); and historiography, II3, II3n45,

414

INDEX

152, 320, 374, 379; and historiography offices 327 (Tbl. 5) (see also Factions: Zhang Hua ambit); honored by state, 286; and Ji Tomb, 320, 321 , 325, 352; and Jia succession, 108n35, 372; and law, 106, 137; and literature, 376; lyrics by, 147-48, 153, 328; and music, 126, 133-35, 136-39, 140, 152, 158, 229, 240; need for biographies of, 9; and Palace Writers, 136, 168, 303, 330; poetry by, 289-90, 379; proteges (see Factions: Zhang Hua ambit); scholarly style, 379; and Shu Xi (see under Shu Xi); and shushu arts, 136; and Wu War, 288, 303; and xuanxue, 148, 150, 153; and Xun Xu, 31, 32, 33, lo9-lI, 135-3 8 , 14 6-47, 15 2 , 153, 168-71, 228, 229, 247, 26 5, 30 5-8, 320, 325, 327-29,332,380; andyuefit, 158; and Zhi Yu (see under Zhi Yu) Zhang Mo 124 Zhang Tianxi iJt~AiliijJ, General (ca. 344404), 2-3, 276 Zhao Chao ,I'iliilii, 78 Zhao Wangqin mrdJ~, }O8, }o9, 3lI Zheng Chong l)-gl~~II' (d. 274), 96 (Tbl. I), 101,353-54 Zheng Xuan l)-~I~2.- (127-200), 9, 10, 46, 55, 70, 288n25, 35 6 , 35 6n1 3, 35 8, 359, 381 Zheng Zuxiang l)-~I~m~t 157 "ZhengdelE iI(ff;," choreography and chant ("Just Potency") See Literature: "Choreographed Chant for Jin's 'Just Potency"') Zhengsheng scale. See under Musicology, seven-note scales Zhengshi XE~tl reign period (240-49), 5, 13, 19, 20, 26, 69; and dynastic chronology, 335, 373; historical memory of, 93, In; intellectual developments, 93; music in, 135; name, 9 2 , 93-94, lI8,13 1 Zhengshi "timbre"IE ~fl ~ 1'' 1'. See under Xuanxue Zhi Jiang 0/1 j' nr, 158 Zhi Yu 5~H~ (b. ca. 250, d. 3lI), 87; and antiquarianism, 324, 360; and antiquity, 353, 377; and calligraphy and paleography, 317, 323; career, 323-24; and commentaries, 353, 358-59, 362, 377; criticism of Xun Yi, 355-58; criticism of Xuns, general, 309-lI, 324, 332, 352; and Daoism, 323; and factions, 352-65; and/ugu, 33; and his-

toriography, 351; and historiography offices, 323, 325, 326- 2 7 (Tbl. 5), 333; and Ji Tomb, 323; and literature, 324; and metrology, 324, 347-49, 351; need for biographies of, 9; opinion of Du Yu, 318; revision of "New Rites," 358; writings of, 324; and Zhang Hua, 321, 333,351 Zhong family 5ElU ofYingchuan, 40, 73, 85, 91, 102, 170, 316 Zhong Hui ililJ!'iw- (226-64), 13, 58, 67, 269n83; and calligraphy, 313; military posts, 102; rebellion, 103-4, 121, 170, 283,314, 315; reception in legend, 124; writings of, 143n48, 149 Zhong You iliwJ~~ (ca. 163-220), 56, 91, 124, 169, 17° Zhong Zongzhi jflT(jYZ, 369 Zhongshu II-',~:f (Palace Writers). See under Historiography, offices Zhou rites, perception as ideal. See Prisca Zhou Zhou rites, description of, 355-56 Zhouli. See under Scholarship, on individual classics Zhouyu (section of Guoyu). See Scholarship, on individual classics: Guoyu Zhu Xizu /I;::;ffl-il=l, 280, 290n27, 295n39, 296nn41-42, 30 4, 323, 324, 373 n 4 6 Zhu Yizun 71,jrt,.:J:~, 312n84 Zhu Zheng 355, 358 Zhuangzi. See under Scholarship, commentary; Scholarship, on individual classics Zhuge Liang ffM~~*E (181-234),33° Zou Yan ~~1)11J, 370 Zu Chongzhi iIHI'Z (429-500), 191, 192, 19 8 Zuo Si ti~Ji!}, (d. 306),327 (Tbl. 5),333, 37 2 Zuo Yanni an !i-JIT{lc: (fl. 220-40), 233, 234, 243 Zuozhuan. See under Scholarship, commentaries Zurcher, Erik, 8m3