by An Liu
The Huainanzi
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ASIAN CLASSICS
Editorial Board
.............................................................
Wm. Theodore de Bary, Chair
Paul Anderer
Irene Bloom
Donald Keene
George A. Saliba
Haruo Shirane
Wei Shang
Burton Watson
The Huainanzi
A GUIDE TO THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF GOVERNMENT IN EARLY HAN CHINA
Liu An, King of Huainan
Translated and edited by
John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Andrew Seth Meyer, and Harold D. Roth, with additional contributions by Michael Puett and Judson Murray
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2010 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-52085-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Huainan zi. English
The Huainanzi : a guide to the theory and practice of government in early Han China / Liu An, King of Huainan [. . . [et al.]] ; translated and edited by John S. Major . . . [et al.], with additional contributions by Michael Puett and Judson Murray.
p. cm. — (Translations from the Asian classics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-14204-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
I. Liu, An, 179–122 B.C. II. Major, John S. III. Title. IV. Title: Guide to the theory and practice of government in early Han China. V. Series.
BL1900. H822E5 2010
181'.114—dc22
2009019565
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [email protected].
References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
For our children
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Originating in the Way
2. Activating the Genuine
3. Celestial Patterns
4. Terrestrial Forms
5. Seasonal Rules
6. Surveying Obscurities
7. Quintessential Spirit
8. The Basic Warp
9. The Ruler’s Techniques
10. Profound Precepts
11. Integrating Customs
12. Responses of the Way
13. Boundless Discourses
14. Sayings Explained
15. An Overview of the Military
16. and 17. A Mountain of Persuasions and A Forest of Persuasions
18. Among Others
19. Cultivating Effort
20. The Exalted Lineage
21. An Overview of the Essentials
Appendix A. Key Chinese Terms and Their Translations
Appendix B. Categorical Terms
Appendix C. A Concise Textual History of the Huainanzi and a Bibliography of Huainanzi Studies
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WE OWE a particular debt of gratitude to three colleagues who participated actively in this translation project. Michael Puett and Judson Murray served as cotranslators of chapters 13 and 21, respectively, and they also participated in many of our team meetings and online conversations and made many valuable contributions. Jay Sailey’s active and enthusiastic participation in the early stages of our work helped get the project off to a good start, and his continuing interest in our work provided welcome moral support.
William Boltz’s work of determining the ending rhymes for sentences enabled us to proceed with our method of formatting the translations so as to preserve such distinctive features as parallel prose and verse. Jung-Ping Yuan and Bo Lawergren provided much-appreciated advice about ancient Chinese stringed instruments. Similarly, we thank Scott Cook and Dan Lusthaus for lending us their expertise on musical matters. We thank Martin Kern of Princeton University for sharing with us his penetrating insights into the structure and rhetoric of chapter 21 of the Huainanzi, and Michael Nylan of the University of California at Berkeley for her comments on the structure of chapter 7. We are grateful also to Charles Le Blanc, Rémi Mathieu, and their co-workers on the complete French translation of the Huainanzi for their collegiality and goodwill. Our work has also benefited enormously from the textual labors of several modern scholars; we would like to express our gratitude to Zhang Shuangdi, Chen Yiping, and He Ning for their critical editions; to Kusuyama Haruki for his critical edition and Japanese translation; and to D. C. Lau and his associates in the ICS Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series project at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for the splendid concordance edition that we have used as the basic text for our translation.
Anne Holmes prepared this book’s index with her customary effortless-seeming expertise. Sara Hodges did similarly excellent work on the book’s maps. Matthew Duperon at Brown University did yeoman’s work on the book’s bibliographical appendix, as well as helping check the notes and other tasks in the final stages of manuscript preparation. Gail Tetreault, Kathleen Pappas, and Melina Packer at Brown University and Nancy Lewandowski at Connecticut College provided invaluable staff support for the project, for which we are very grateful.
We are deeply indebted to our editor at Columbia University Press, Jennifer Crewe, for her expert and supportive work on this volume. We also wish to thank the project editor, Irene Pavitt; the copy editor, Margaret B. Yamashita; and the book’s designer, Lisa Hamm. In addition, we want to express our appreciation for the careful reading of our manuscript by the press’s peer reviewers, who made many valuable suggestions for improving our work.
We acknowledge with deep gratitude the support of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, which provided a two-year grant to launch this translation project. Without that initial funding, this book very likely would not exist. Some of Harold Roth’s later work on the project was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding from the trustees of Brown University for the Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Awards, and the Brown University Departmental Research Funds for Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences enabled our translation team to meet at Brown several times a year for a period of more than a decade. Those meetings were the key to making this project a truly collaborative effort.
For the members of the translation team, the writing of this book involved not only difficult challenges and sustained hard labor over a period of years but also steadily strengthening feelings of collegiality, friendship, and pleasure in one another’s company. Accordingly, each of us thanks the others for making this project a rich and deeply gratifying experience.
In addition, John Major wishes to thank Professors Nathan Sivin and Ying-shih Yü for first guiding his steps onto the path of Huainanzi studies, and to acknowledge with grateful memory several scholars of an older generation, including Derk Bodde, Wing-tsit Chan, H. G. Creel, Benjamin I. Schwartz, and Joseph Needham, for their kind encouragement and support. He feels a great debt of gratitude to many colleagues in the field of Early China studies, too numerous to mention individually, for their friendship and generosity over the course of a long and rewarding career. He also thanks his wife, Valerie Steele, and his brother, David C. Major, both of whom read large sections of the manuscript and made many valuable suggest
ions for its improvement. He is grateful as well to his son Steve Major for his understanding and enthusiasm, and to his nephew Graham Majorhart for invaluable last-minute assistance.
Sarah Queen wishes to thank her mentors who inspired, encouraged, and guided her in her initial forays into Han intellectual history: Benjamin I. Schwartz, Tu Weiming, Michael Loewe, and Nathan Sivin. She would also like to thank John Major and Harold Roth for inviting her to participate in the most gratifying project of her academic career and for all the years of guidance, expertise, and support that each has offered her as she sought to expand the depth and breadth of her expertise in Han intellectual history. In addition, she would like to thank her colleagues in the field of Early China who shared their knowledge, offered their encouragement, and gave generously of their time as she developed various interpretive arguments for this project: Paul Goldin, Martin Kern, Michael Nylan, Michael Puett, and David Schaberg. Finally, on a more personal note, Sarah Queen would like to thank her family and friends for their endless reserves of love and support. She offers a special thanks to Thomas and Benjamin for understanding their mother’s seemingly insatiable penchant to get lost in early Chinese texts.
Andrew Meyer first encountered the Huainanzi in Hal Roth’s undergraduate seminar, an experience that changed his life. He thanks his mentors in classical Chinese here and overseas and his instructors in Chinese history, especially Peter Bol, whose teaching has indelibly shaped his approach to intellectual history. He thanks his colleagues and administrators at Brooklyn College for their support, and the Whiting Foundation which provided generous financial support during part of his work on this project. Finally, he thanks his wife, Emilie, who assisted in the editing of early drafts, and his daughter, Ada, who was very patient while Mommy and Daddy peered at rows of Chinese writing.
Harold Roth wishes to thank his early mentors, Frederick Mote and Tu Wei-ming, for initiating him into the long and winding path of Chinese studies; Wayne Schlepp for his patient demonstration of careful scholarship; Angus Graham for his brilliant work, his always interesting eccentricities, and his kindly teaching; and Joshu Sasaki for his deep insight and encouragement. Many other colleagues in the field have given him support at critical moments in his career, and he would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge several of them: Fred Ward, Benjamin Wallacker, Roger Ames, Paul Thompson, Sarah Allan, and Henry Rosemont Jr. He gratefully acknowledges the support, over the years, of the chairs of the Departments of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies at Brown University. He also wants to thank his sons, Zach and Gus, and his wife, Lis, for their support and understanding through the fourteen years of this project.
Collectively, we thank our predecessors in the study of the Huainanzi. Only by standing on their capacious shoulders have we been able to accomplish our own work in the field. Above all, we thank Liu An and his long-ago circle of thinkers at the court of Huainan for bequeathing to posterity his marvelous book, which we now have the privilege of presenting for the first time in its entirety to the English-speaking world.
INTRODUCTION
THIS BOOK is the first complete English translation of the Huainanzi, a work from the early Han dynasty that is of fundamental importance to the intellectual history of early China. With this translation, we hope to acquaint specialists and general readers alike, to a degree that heretofore was not possible, with the philosophical richness of the text, its careful and deliberate organization and presentation of a great range of material, and the sophistication of its literary style and rhetorical techniques.
In 139 B.C.E., the imperial kinsman Liu An, king of Huainan, presented to the young Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty a book in twenty-one chapters, today known as the Huainanzi (Master of Huainan). Concise but encyclopedic and drawing on a wide range of sources, this book was designed to survey the entire body of knowledge required for a contemporary monarch to rule successfully and well. Organized in a “root and branch” structure, the work’s early chapters set out the fundamental nature of the world and of human society, while the later chapters deal with the application of that knowledge to various practical concerns. Taken as a whole, the work is in effect a model curriculum for a monarch-in-training.
In this introduction, we give an overview of the Huainanzi, its historical context, and our principles and methods of translation. We also discuss the Huainanzi’s content, organization, and sources; the place of the text in early Han history; and the various ways in which the Huainanzi has been viewed by scholars. In addition, we also provide a substantial introduction to each chapter.1 The translated chapters themselves are the heart of the book.
We believe that most of the Huainanzi was written during the reign of Emperor Jing (157–141 B.C.E.), several decades and three imperial generations into the Han era. During those decades, a controversy raged over the proper organization and structure of the imperial realm: Was it to be centralized, decentralized, or a mixture of the two? Although the Huainanzi deals much more with fundamental philosophical issues and their application than it does with nuts-and-bolts questions of state organization and administration, this controversy is an essential part of the background for understanding the work as a whole. Indeed, this controversy bore directly on the hopes and aspirations of the work’s patron, editor, and coauthor, Liu An. Accordingly, it is with this background that we begin.
The Early Han Background to the Huainanzi:
The History, Politics, and Competing Images of Empire
When the rebel leader Liu Bang proclaimed himself the king of Han in 206 B.C.E., he had to confront the causes of the Qin dynasty’s collapse and its mixed legacy. Although the Qin had succeeded in unifying the empire by defeating or forcing the capitulation of the independent polities of the late Warring States period, the Qin Empire had proved ephemeral, dissolving in rebellion after the death of the First Emperor. As Liu Bang triumphed over his rival Xiang Yu in the post-Qin struggle, taking the title of emperor in 202, he was perhaps already thinking about how to perpetuate the unification of the empire while avoiding the causes of Qin’s rapid collapse. What vision of empire, form of governance, and techniques of statecraft would be most efficacious in the quest to establish a more enduring dynasty? How would the newly founded Han dynasty build on the administrative successes of the Qin but at the same time avoid its catastrophic policy failures?
The answers to these questions were not at all clear. Indeed, they were to be worked out only slowly in the ensuing decades, during the reigns of Liu Bang himself (Emperor Gaozu) and his successors Liu Ying (Emperor Hui), the Empress Dowager Lü Zhi (whose disputed reign lasted from 188 to 180 B.C.E.), Liu Heng (Emperor Wen), Liu Qi (Emperor Jing), and Liu Che (Emperor Wu). During that period, lasting slightly more than a century, numerous scholars, officials, and members of the imperial household made competing claims and offered various responses concerning these vital questions.
The founder of the Han and his immediate successors did not lack for advice. Liu Bang himself was an unlettered man of action, scornful of scholarly long-windedness, but he was willing to listen to the advice of Lu Jia (ca. 228–140 B.C.E.) on the merits of (possibly imagined) Zhou-style court rituals, as well as the maintenance in milder form of many Qin administrative policies and on techniques for recruiting able officials. Shusun Tong (d. after 188 B.C.E.) played a central role in designing Liu Bang’s imperial rituals.2 Emperors Hui and Wen benefited from the advice of the courtier Jia Yi (201–169 B.C.E.), whose literary works are seen as being in the tradition of Confucius and who attacked the statist policies of Qin (associated with such thinkers as Lord Shang and Li Si) as excessively zealous. Chao Cuo (d. 154 B.C.E.) grounded much of his political advice in his understanding of the classic Documents (Shang shu) but nevertheless was a proponent of increasing the power of the central government against that of the neofeudal kingdoms. During the reign of Emperors Wen and Jing, and especially under the influence of their mother, Empress Dowager Dou, prominence was given to the advice of a number
of scholars who proposed an ideal of state policies based on the model of the sage-emperor embodied in the Laozi and the centralizing tendencies and cosmological empowerment associated with the supposed teachings of the Yellow Emperor. (As we note later, all these advisers seem to have based their arguments on their interpretations of specific texts, and all drew on diverse traditions. Thus subsequent efforts to assign these early Han figures to “schools” are, in our view, anachronistic and unhelpful.)
Despite six decades’ worth of conflicting advice, what was true for Liu Bang, the founding father of the Han, remained true for his great-grandson and successor Liu Che. Various models of how to organize and govern an empire, drawn from the collective experience of China’s past with their attendant forms of governance and policies, contended for supremacy. At one extreme was the highly centralized model of the Qin, which, as the Qin implemented it, must have seemed to many Han observers to have been a serious mistake. At the other extreme was, reaching back further to the Western Zhou era, the decentralized model of the preimperial age sanctified by its association with the sage-rulers Kings Wen and Wu and the Duke of Zhou. Liu Bang’s reign, as Michael Puett has argued, reflects an ambivalence toward these competing models of empire,3 and this ambivalence gave rise to a third model that contained both centralized and decentralized elements and was the de facto sociopolitical arrangement of the Han Empire at the time of Liu Che’s accession. On the one hand, in adopting the Qin title of emperor and instituting the commandery system of the Qin in about one-third of the empire, Liu Bang demonstrated his inclinations toward a highly centralized vision of empire. On the other hand, he also engaged in a number of acts expressly meant to distance himself from the Qin. He lowered taxes, a measure that proved to be immediately popular; however, proposals to reduce the strictness of the Qin legal code were made but not implemented. To administer the remaining two-thirds of his empire, he revived the traditional practice of establishing regional kingdoms, parceling out large tracts of land, first to the military allies who aided him in his victory over Xiang Yu and later to his own kinsmen. Both groups were awarded the title of king, and they were granted extensive autonomy and authority in their respective local kingdoms. During the early decades of the Han period, Gaozu’s integrative approach was debated among scholars and statesmen, especially given its association with the dynasty’s founder and because it was the sociopolitical status quo at the start of Liu Che’s reign.