The Huainanzi

by An Liu

  1. These introductory materials in themselves amount to a “book-within-a-book” about the Huainanzi, and some readers might find it helpful to read them consecutively as a way of gaining an overview of the entire text before reading the translated chapters themselves.

  2. Martin Kern, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation, American Oriental Series, vol. 85 (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 2000), 170, 172–73, 176–79, 184–87.

  3. Michael J. Puett, The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), 150–52.

  4. Puett, Ambivalence of Creation, 151.

  5. Ying Bu (also known as Qing Bu) was an ally of Xiang Yu in the wars of the Qin downfall; he later came over to the side of Liu Bang and was enfeoffed in 203 B.C.E. as the king of Huainan. After the failure of his revolt in 196 B.C.E., Ying was executed and his family exterminated. See Michael Loewe, A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Han, and Xin Periods (221 BC–AD 24) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 651–52.

  6. An alternative rendering of this title popularized by Mark Csikszentmihalyi is Masters of Huainan. Such a translation underscores the fact of multiple authorship. See Csikszentmihalyi, Readings in Han Chinese Thought (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), 63. However, we adhere to the traditional understanding of the titles of Chinese classics, which typically took the name of their putative author or patron (even when that author [e.g., Laozi] may have been a mythical figure). We believe that “Huainanzi” refers specifically to Liu An as the “Master of Huainan.”

  7. Han shu 44/2145. For a list of works attributed to Liu An and his retainers, see Le Blanc 1985, 41–52. (For these and other abbreviated citations, see the section “Conventions Used in This Work” near the end of this introduction.)

  8. Roth 1992, 432–34, lists eight such works.

  9. In recent years, the word ru has occasioned a certain amount of scholarly controversy. It is often translated as “Confucian,” and we follow that practice. Some scholars prefer to leave the term untranslated, pointing out that “Confucianism” as a coherent doctrine did not take shape until late in the Western Han period. We are not satisfied with that practice, as the actual meaning of ru is obscure, and the term as such is unfamiliar and potentially confusing or simply not informative to English-language readers except for specialists in early Chinese studies. Some other scholars have begun to translate ru as “classicists,” but in our view that term is too broad. Many Han intellectuals who were not ru (such as Daoists and Mohists) appealed to the texts of their own traditions for classical authority; indeed, the Huainanzi itself takes the Laozi to be a canonical work. In our view, the most important feature of the early ru is that they invested canonical authority in texts (the Odes, the Documents, the Spring and Autumn Annals, etc.) that were closely associated with the tradition of Confucius. Thus we translate ru as “Confucian” or “Confucians.”

  For discussions of the word ru, see Nicolas Zufferey, To the Origins of Confucianism: The Ru in Pre-Qin Times and During the Early Han Dynasty (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003); Michael Nylan, “Han Classicists Writing in Dialogue About Their Own Tradition,” Philosophy East and West 47, no. 2 (1997): 133–88; and Anne Cheng, “What Did It Mean to Be a Ru in Han Times?” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 14, no. 2 (2001): 101–18.

  10. Gao You’s preface in Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:1–2. For a discussion of key terms such as the Way, Potency, Humaneness, and Rightness, see app. A.

  11. Benjamin Wallacker, “Liu An, Second King of Huai-nan,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 92 (1973): 36–49.

  12. Han shu 44/2146.

  13. Liu An’s father and Emperor Jing’s father were brothers; Liu An and Emperor Jing were thus cousins, and Emperor Wu, Emperor Jing’s son, was (in modern genealogical terms) Liu An’s first cousin once removed. But as a member of Emperor Wu’s father’s generation, Liu An’s effective status with respect to the young emperor would have been that of an uncle.

  14. In this way Huainanzi, chap. 21, resembles the final chapter (chap. 33) of the Zhuangzi, which similarly serves as a postface to and summary of the entire work.

  15. Loewe, Biographical Dictionary, 244; Loewe’s views in private correspondence with Aihe Wang, Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 112.

  16. These issues are explored in Roth 1992, 55–58.

  17. Han shu 44/2145.

  18. We are indebted to Martin Kern for calling this important fact to our attention. See his “Language, Argument, and Southern Culture in the Huainanzi: A Look at the ‘Yaolüe’” (paper presented at the conference “Liu An’s Vision of Empire: New Perspectives on the Huainanzi,” Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., May 31, 2008), and “Western Han Aesthetics and the Genesis of the Fu,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 63 (2003): 383–437.

  19. Roth 1992.

  20. Almost the entire middle book (also known as Huainan zhongpian ) has been lost, although some fragments have been preserved. The Tang- and Song-dynasty encyclopedias and commentaries often quote it, and these passages were collected by a number of Ming and Qing scholars under the title Huainan wanbi shu . See also Roth 1992, 432–34.

  21. Charles Le Blanc, “Huai nan tzu,” in Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, ed. Michael Loewe, Early China Special Monograph, no. 2 (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993), 189.

  22. Kern, “Language, Argument, and Southern Culture in the Huainanzi.”

  23. Literally, “float and sink.”

  24. See “Chapters and Chapter Sections” near the end of this introduction.

  25. Serpent-bodied brother and sister deities portrayed in some Chinese myths both as fashioners of Heaven and Earth and as early rulers.

  26. Liu lü () means both “six pitch pipes” and “six standards.”

  27. “Hegemon” and “prince” would obviously have been anachronisms in the Han but would have had structural analogues in the officials and magistrates of the Han state bureaucracy.

  28. For example, Mark Edward Lewis argues,

  Having ascended the primal unity, through first divisions, the structure of space and time, and the origins of man, to the highest forms of men in the sage and the ruler, the text, like the Lü shi chun qiu, loses a clear sense of structure. Nevertheless, the passage in the early chapters from primal unity to the sage provides a natural model for the ideal of an all-encompassing textual unity incorporating all philosophical and technical traditions. (Writing and Authority in Early China [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999], 307)

  29. A very good example of this approach is Huainanzi, chap. 14, “Sayings Explained” (Quan yan ). Although not usually recognized as such, the chapter is a collection of nearly seventy maxims or brief sayings (yan ) whose illustrative points are typically unpacked and explicated by the Huainanzi compilers at the end of each saying.

  30. See, for example, chap. 10, “Profound Precepts” (Mou cheng ); chap. 13, “Boundless Discourses” (Fan lun ); chap. 14, “Sayings Explained” (Quan yan ); chap. 15, “An Overview of the Military” (Bing lue ); and chaps. 16 and 17, “A Mountain of Persuasions” and “A Forest of Persuasions” (Shui shan and Shui lin ).

  31. For two studies conducted by team members on the important topic of the claims that the Huainanzi makes for itself, see Sarah A. Queen, “Inventories of the Past: Rethinking the ‘School’ Affiliation of the Huainanzi,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 14, no. 1 (2001): 51–72; and Judson Murray, “A Study of ‘Yao lue’ , ‘A Summary of the Essentials’: Understanding the Huainanzi Through the Point of View of the Author of the Postface,” Early China 29 (2004): 45–108.

  32. Wallacker 1962.

  33. See “The Debate over the Intellectual Affiliation of the Huainanzi.”

  34. The translation “hundred schools” for bai jia is sanctified by long
usage, but we associate ourselves with scholars who have argued that the term school implies more organizational structure and more doctrinal unity and discipline than was true of the era, and therefore we avoid that term.

  35. Shiji, chap. 130.

  36. Han shu, chap. 30.

  37. For these terms, see app. A.

  38. Vankeerberghen 2001, 4.

  39. For the term ru as “Confucians,” see n. 9.

  40. This is true even though some of the Confucian classics did not assume their final form and content until later in the Western Han period. For a discussion of the formation of the classical canon, see Michael Nylan, The Five “Confucian” Classics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001).

  41. In saying that these chapters “correspond” to the Confucian classics, we are not implying that they parallel those classics or duplicate their content but simply that they play roles in the organizational and intellectual scheme of the Huainanzi analogous to the roles played by the classics for the ru Confucians.

  42. This process has been brilliantly demonstrated by Le Blanc 1985, 86–98, in side-by-side readings of passages quoted from the Lüshi chunqiu and other sources and their Huainanzi adaptations. See also Sarah A. Queen, “The Creation and Domestication of the Techniques of Lao-Zhuang: Anecdotal Narrative and Philosophical Argumentation in Huainanzi Chapter 12,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 21, no. 1 (2008): 201–47.

  43. Feng Yu-lan (Feng Youlan), A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952, 1953), 1:395. Feng Youlan subsequently adopted a more favorable view of the Huainanzi. For a summary of the evolution of Feng’s thinking, see Le Blanc 1985, 34n.45.

  44. See the views of Leon Wieger, Henri Maspero, and Rolf Stein, as summarized by Le Blanc 1985, 32–33.

  45. Knoblock and Riegel 2000, 46.

  46. Lewis, Writing and Authority, 304.

  47. See, for example, Chen Yiping , Huainanzi xiaozhuyi (Guangdong: Renmin Press, 1994), 5–7; and Hou Wailu , Zhongguo sixiang tongshi (Beijing: Renmin Press 1957), 2:78–83.

  48. Vankeerberghen 2001.

  49. See, example, Wing-tsit Chan, A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), 305.

  50. Wallacker 1962, 11.

  51. Hsiao Kungch’uan, A History of Chinese Political Thought, trans. F. W. Mote (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), 570–82; Le Blanc 1985, 4–8; Major 1993, 8–14; Roth 1992, 13–19.

  52. See, for example, Harold D. Roth, “Who Compiled the Chuang Tzu?” in Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham, ed. Henry Rosemont Jr. (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1991), 79–128.

  53. These four texts are “Jingfa,” “Jing,” “Cheng,” and “Daoyuan.” To these, Robin Yates adds a fifth, “Yiyin jiuzhu.” See Robin D. S. Yates, Five Lost Classics: Tao, Huang-Lao, and Yin-Yang in Han China (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997). For a translation of “Daoyuan,” see 172–77.

  54. Among the pioneering works in this field were Tu Wei-ming, “The Thought of Huang-Lao: A Reflection on the Lao Tzu and Huang Ti Texts in the Silk Manuscripts of Ma-wang-tui,” Journal of Asian Studies 39 (1979): 95–100; and Randall Peerenboom, Law and Morality in Ancient China: The Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).

  55. Major 1993, 8–14.

  56. Yates, Five Lost Classics, 42–43.

  57. Angus C. Graham, quoted in Major 1993, 10; Yates, Five Lost Classics; Mark Csikszentmihalyi, “Emulating the Yellow Emperor: The Theory and Practice of Huang-Lao, 180–141 b.c.” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1994).

  58. Wang, Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China, 185.

  59. Vankeerberghen 2001, 4.

  60. Vankeerberghen 2001, 4.

  61. Vankeerberghen 2001, 4.

  62. Ames 1994; Paul R. Goldin, “Insidious Syncretism in the Political Philosophy of Huai-nan-tzu,” Asian Philosophy 9, no. 3 (1999): 165–91; Michael Loewe, “Huang Lao Thought and the Huainanzi,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 4, no. 3 (1994): 377–95; Puett, Ambivalence of Creation, 260–61n.72; Michael Puett, To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 57 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002), 269; Lewis, Writing and Authority; Judson Murray, “The Consummate Dao: The ‘Way’ (Dao) and ‘Human Affairs’ (shi) in the Huainanzi ” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2007); Murray, “Study of ‘Yao lüe.’”

  63. Queen, “Inventories of the Past.”

  64. Goldin, “Insidious Syncretism.”

  65. Ames 1994, xxii.

  66. Csikszentmihalyi, Readings in Han Chinese Thought, 63.

  67. Lewis, Writing and Authority, 303.

  68. Major 1993, 8–14. Major still stands by many of the points made in those pages, including the key statement that for the Huainan masters, “knowledge of the natural world translates into political power” (13). But the question of how to understand Huang-Lao doctrine is, for him, now less clear.

  69. Le Blanc and Mathieu 2003.

  70. In this connection, we are deeply indebted to our colleague William Boltz, who kindly identified for us the Han rhymes that characterize the verse passages in the text.

  71. Huainanzi zhuzi suoyin; see section “Editions.”

  72. We identify persons and places only when, in our judgment, such identification would add significantly to the reader’s understanding and enjoyment of the work. Figures are identified when they first are mentioned in the text. We do not identify famous historical figures like Confucius and Qin Shihuangdi who already will be familiar to most of the readers of this book. Nor do we always identify minor mythical or imaginary personages, especially when the context is sufficient to explain their presence in the text. For those wishing more information, we suggest the following: The recent French translation of the Huainanzi has a useful index of proper names, both personal and geographical (Le Blanc and Mathieu 2003, 1017–1140). Many but not all the people (both mythological and historical) mentioned in the Huainanzi can be found in the excellent “Glossary of Names” in David Hawkes’s translation of the Chuci (Hawkes 1985, 322–45) and in the glossary in John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel’s translation of the Lüshi chunqiu (Knoblock and Riegel 2000, 763–813). The standard Chinese reference work for biographical names is Huang Huixian , ed., Ershiwushi renming da cidian (Dictionary of Personal Names in the Twenty-five Histories) (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1997). The most convenient reference work for historical place-names is Wei Songshan , ed., Zhongguo lishi diming da cidian (Dictionary of Chinese Historical Place-Names) (Guangzhou: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995).

  One

  ORIGINATING IN THE WAY

  “ORIGINATING IN the Way” (Yuan dao ), the first of the eight foundational or “root” chapters of the text, is significant because it provides the cosmological basis for the entire Huainanzi collection. It opens with a beautiful poetic rhapsody on the cosmology of the Way (dao ) and its Potency (de ) in the tradition of the Laozi , certainly one of the canonical sources for this particular essay and for the book as a whole. In it we see a detailed examination of how these cosmic foundations are manifested in the world and an in-depth description of how sages are able to use their unique penetrating vision of these foundations, attained through self-cultivation, to bring peace and harmony to the realm. Coming at the beginning of the entire twenty-one-chapter book and presented to the court at a time when its compiler, Liu An , was trying to dissuade his nephew, Emperor Wu , against the arguments of his Confucian (ru ) advisers, this chapter serves a number of purposes.

  First, even though the chapter never directly affirms a particular intellectual affiliation, its cosmological, psychological, and political philosophy shows its indebtedness to the Laozi and some other important early Daoist sources on the relationship of cosmology and self-cultivation to rulership.1 Only such an ideal of rulersh
ip comprehends the inner workings of the cosmos and applies that wisdom to governing in harmony with them. Second, as the opening chapter of the collection, “Originating in the Way” sets out general themes that will be pursued in more detail in much of the remainder of the work, such as cosmology, human psychology and self-cultivation, and political philosophy. Its importance to understanding the entire book and seeing it in a clearer light cannot be overemphasized.

  The Chapter Title

  We have translated the title of this chapter, “Yuan dao” , as “Originating in the Way.” The word yuan is a noun meaning “origin” or “source.” The Han commentator Gao You takes it to mean “foundation.” Yuan can also be used adjectivally and occasionally verbally, as in Roger T. Ames and D. C. Lau’s translation of this chapter, “Tracing Dao to Its Source.”2 Dao means “the Way,” the primary creative and destructive force in the cosmos that is simultaneously immanent in everything yet paradoxically transcendent of any one of them. It serves as a kind of invisible guide for the spontaneous self-generating activities of all phenomena. Because it is immanent, the Way can be directly apprehended or grasped by human beings through an apophatic meditative practice that I call “inner cultivation.”3 Our translation of the title, “Originating in the Way,” reflects the verbal use of yuan and highlights its authors’ demonstration that the cosmos, human consciousness, methods of inner cultivation, human history, and even the contents of the rest of the book “originate in the Way.” While we might expect the preposition yu (in) to appear between yuan and dao () in the title, it seems to have been left out in order to conform to the two-character title format for all the chapters, but it can be inferred. Furthermore, as a translation, “Originating in the Way” is meant to preserve the parallelism with the title of chapter 2, “Activating the Genuine.” This parallelism, however, creates semantic problems in English, because constructing the title as a verb–object phrase is philosophically unsound from the perspective of the text (the dao cannot really be an object). If we were to cleave very closely to the grammar of the title, we could render it as “The Originating Way,” but this does not make for good style or sense in English. “Originating in the Way,” however, conveys the same sense and is stylistically better suited to English syntax and usage.