The Huainanzi

by An Liu

21. Six imaginary diametral lines that span the celestial circle.

  22. Yu Yan suggests that here taiyi should read tianzi , “Son of Heaven.” Wang Yinzhi suggests wudi , “five emperors” or “five thearchs.” The suggested emendations are plausible but not compelling. Taiyi, the “Grand One,” is a philosophical/cosmological concept, a star, and a god. All the places mentioned here (Grand Enclosure, etc.) are constellations; thus the location of Taiyi among them is reasonable within the framework of the cosmology presented here. See Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:290n.78.

  23. Rejecting Lau’s (HNZ 3/21/12–13) suggestion in the concordance text that gu yue be emended to gu ri and attached to the end of the preceding paragraph.

  24. The four “corner” directions (northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest) are conceived of as cords (wei ) binding the cosmos together and restraining the movements of yin and yang. See 1.1.

  25. The terms “accretion” and “recision,” de and xing , in this passage and after refer to the accumulation and paring away of the yang qi throughout the year. For an extended discussion of this idea, see John S. Major, “The Meaning of Hsing-te,” in Chinese Ideas About Nature and Society: Studies in Honour of Derk Bodde, ed. Charles Le Blanc and Susan Blader (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1987), 281–91.

  26. Reading sheng as sheng , as suggested by Yu Yue. See Lau, HNZ, 21n.13.

  27. A biao , “gnomon,” is a straight stick or rod designed to cast a solar shadow. Gnomons used in sundials are aimed at the celestial north pole. Gnomons used to find direction (e.g., finding a true north–south line by bisecting the angle of shadows cast at sunrise and sunset) or to track the seasons (by measuring the length of the noon shadow) are usually exactly vertical.

  28. Lau (HNZ 3/22/12–29) emends the text here and throughout the passage relating to the twenty-four solar nodes to shift the pitch-pipe notes by one unit in each case. For example, in this line he emends Yellow Bell to read Responsive Bell and similarly throughout the passage. We believe that those emendations are not soundly based, and so we follow the original, unemended text in this translation.

  29. Adding this line of text to maintain the pattern of the passage overall.

  30. The “chronograms” (chen ) are the twelve earthly branches considered as markers of calendrical time: the twelve months distributed around the horizon circle (and around the Earth plate of the astronomical/astrological instrument known as the shi , “cosmograph”). See Major 1993, 34, fig. 2.2.

  31. Although the details are obscure, this whole passage is an example of Han “military astrology” dealing in the vulnerability of states to attack, depending on their geographical location in relation to certain heavenly bodies and calendrical periods.

  32. Rejecting Lau’s (HNZ 3/23/9) emendation of taiyi to tianyi .

  33. Nai shou qi sha . It is not clear what is meant by this unusual phrase; perhaps it is a reference to bringing in game that has been killed in the hunt. Another possible interpretation would be “[the authorities] take charge of those who are to be executed.”

  34. Qing Nü . The color word qing embraces a range of colors from blue to green; our usual translation is “bluegreen.” But with respect to horses, dogs, and other mammals, it means “gray,” a color that also would be appropriate for what is apparently a mythical winter goddess or fairy.

  35. The heng , “balance beam,” is the horizontal member in a hand scale. The heng works in conjunction with a quan , “weight.”

  36. Quan means a “weight.” When using a hand scale, the object to be weighed is suspended from one arm of the balance, and a weight or combination of weights is suspended from the other arm. The weights are equal when the balance beam achieves a stable horizontal position. In the type of scale known as a steelyard, the object to be weighed is suspended from one arm of the beam, while a weight is moved along the other arm of the balance beam until the latter achieves a stable horizontal position. The weight of the object being weighed then can be read on a scale inscribed onto the surface of the beam. Recent scholarship suggests that the steelyard became common in China only from the Latter Han dynasty onward. See Griet Vankeerberghen, “Choosing Balance: Weighing (quan) as a Metaphor for Action in Early Chinese Texts,” Early China 30 (2005): 47–89, esp. 48–53.

  Quan also sometimes refers to the plumb bob of a plumb line, rather than a weight for weighing things. The word also has a number of extended meanings, such as “heft” and “expediency,” beyond its basic meaning of a “weight” as a physical object. See app. A.

  37. This line has been transposed to here from 3/25/14–15, where it is clearly out of place. For textual notes relating to this and the following section, see also Major 1993, 299.

  38. For the numerous puns, both phonetic and logographic, that give this section its meaning and make it very difficult to translate, see Major 1993, 299–300.

  39. Laozi 42.

  40. Following the original wording of the text, rather than the emendation suggested by Lau.

  41. This and the previous line have been moved here from 3/26/24, where they are out of place.

  42. Rejecting Lau’s proposed emendation of sheng to zhu .

  43. Rejecting Lau’s insertion of bu , “not,” in this line.

  44. In early Chinese musical terminology, notes could be designated as “turbid” or “muddy” (zhuo ) or “clear” (qing ). The former were lower in pitch than the latter; so here we might speak of Forest Bell, flat. But the precise meaning of ruo and qing in ancient musical terminology is uncertain. See app. B.

  45. That is, 2.7 chi ; one Chinese foot is equal to ten inches (cun ).

  46. Xun . The Han “foot” (chi ) was about nine modern inches long; thus eight Han feet equals approximately seventy-two inches, or six feet, probably in fact somewhat taller than the height of an “average man” in Han times. In 7.5, the height of a person is given as seven feet (chi)—that is, about five feet, three inches, in today’s terms.

  47. One zhang is ten feet; one pi is forty feet.

  48. Note that fen , a generic term meaning “portion,” is used in 3.31 as both a unit of length (1/10 Han inch) and a unit of weight (1/12 zhu , i.e., 1/144 of a half ounce, ban liang ). It seems unlikely in fact that twelve husk beards side by side would add up to a breadth as small as 1/10 inch, and it also seems unlikely that the weight of 1/12 zhu (in modern terms, equal to about 0.05 gram) could have been measured accurately.

  49. A half ounce, ban liang, was the weight of a standard Han coin.

  50. A “catty” is a jin ; thirty catties make one jun ; four jun make one dan . (The character for dan is normally pronounced shi, meaning “stone”; it has the unusual pronunciation dan when used as a unit of weight.)

  51. A character is evidently missing here.

  52. Yin is the third of the earthly branches and thus the third astronomical month (after zi, the month in which the winter solstice occurs, and chou). In the so-called Xia calendar, the third astronomical month is, by convention, the first civil month; hence yin is associated with the first Jovian year, Shetige.

  53. In the received text this passage reads “in the eleventh month,” and subsequent passages read “twelfth month,” “first month,” and so on. Lau (HNZ 3/27/5–18) emends this to “first month,” “second month,” “third month,” and so on, on the grounds that the civil year begins with yin. But part of the point of this passage is to correlate the civil months of the lunar year with the astronomical months of the solar year: the first astronomical month, zi, in which the winter solstice occurs, is the eleventh month of the civil year that begins with yin. It is important to remember that this passage, like much of the astronomical information in this chapter, refers primarily to manipulations of the shi chronograph rather than to observations of the sky.

  54. The character is normally pronounced dan. For the name of the second Jovian year, it has the nonstandard pronunciation ming; hence, Ming’e.

  55. On this passage, see Donald Harper, “Warring State
s Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 b.c., ed. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 849–50.

  56. Rejecting Lau’s (HNZ 3/27/28–29) emendations of these two lines.

  57. In almost all cases, the received text gives only one lunar lodge for each of the twelve months in this list. We follow Lau in giving the full allotment of lunar lodges to each month, but with some misgivings, as it is not clear to us that the abbreviated list in the received text was not what the author intended. For a translation of the list in its original form, see Major 1993, 127.

  58. Rejecting Lau’s (HNZ 3/29/2) suggestion that taiyin be replaced by ci , “female [deity].” The context of this passage pertains to the celestial location of taiyin.

  59. Not the usual phrase tiandi “Heaven and Earth” but kanyu , literally “support and canopy,” a poetic term for Earth and Heaven.

  60. The text here is obviously defective; most of the names of states to which these “lesser conjunctions” refer are missing; and it is not possible to reconstruct them with confidence. For what I have called the “lesser conjunctions,” see Major 1993, 134.

  61. In this instance, “nodes” (jie ) refers to any place in the body where two bones meet.

  62. This phrase, expected from parallelism with the other years of the Jovian cycle, is missing from the text.

  63. This phrase, expected from parallelism with the other years of the Jovian cycle, is also missing from the text.

  64. Note that in Chinese linear measure, one foot equals ten inches (not twelve, as in the English system); thus two feet minus one inch equals one foot, nine inches, as stated here.

  65. For a highly detailed analysis of 3/31/10 to 3/32/4, see Christopher Cullen’s annotated translation, “A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth,” in Major 1993, 269–90.

  Four

  TERRESTRIAL FORMS

  “TERRESTRIAL FORMS” is an account of world geography from the point of view of the Western Han dynasty. It ignores political geography (such as the states of the Warring States period or the kingdoms, provinces, and counties of the Han Empire) in favor of the postdeluge geography of Yu the Great and the wider world beyond China’s borders, with an emphasis on the mythical, the magical, the distant, and the strange. The chapter emphasizes that physical features of terrain interact in important ways with plants, animals, and people.

  The Chapter Title

  “Di xing” can be understood correctly in either of two grammatical constructions: as a noun plus a past-participle verb (Earth Given Form) or as an adjective plus a noun (Terrestrial Forms). We have chosen the second as the English equivalent for this chapter title, but both meanings resonate with each other, and each informs our understanding of the other. The use in the chapter title of the unusual character di in place of the common character di has no discernable significance, as the two seem to be exact synonyms or, rather, two precisely equivalent ways of writing the same word for “earth.”

  Summary and Key Themes

  “Terrestrial Forms” gives its reader an account of the size, shape, and topography of the earth and of the dynamic interactions of the earth with its creatures. It does not, somewhat surprisingly, concern itself with political geography, of either the Warring States or the Qin–Han periods. (Astrological considerations concerning the states are treated in chapter 3, “Celestial Patterns.”) There does not seem to be any continuous narrative or analytical thread that runs from section to section through the chapter as a whole, but it is possible to discern several important themes.

  The chapter begins with a description of the main topographical features of the continent of which China is a part, including the nine provinces and their associated mountains, passes, marshes, and winds (4.1) and the dimensions of the world (4.2). In section 4.7, the chapter returns to the landscape of China, describing rare and valuable products of the nine provinces. Section 4.17 lists some forty rivers and their sources.

  Having begun with the general size, shape, and layout of the world, in sections 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5 the chapter turns to the magical landscape of Mount Kunlun, the pivot of Heaven and Earth and the staircase of the gods for their ascents and descents to and from Heaven. Kunlun is taken as being located at the center of the entire terrestrial world. The authors of “Terrestrial Forms” envision that world as being divided into nine continents, in accordance with theories propounded by Zou Yan (ca. 305–240 B.C.E.). Those theories admit varying interpretations,1 but in the version most pertinent to this chapter, each of the nine great continents is divided into nine subcontinents, and each of those into nine provinces. China comprises the southeastern subcontinent of the central continent. (The other eight continents are essentially ignored.) Kunlun is depicted as being in that continent’s exact center and thus located to China’s northwest.

  Sections 4.6, 4.15, and 4.16 describe places far beyond the borders of China: a world of barbarians, monsters, and gods. These sections reflect a contemporary fascination with the distant and strange found also in such texts as the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) and the Mu tianzi zhuan (Travels of Son of Heaven Mu). A few decades after the Huainanzi was compiled, much of the world to the west of China was shifted from the realm of mythic landscape to that of known geography, through the explorations of the celebrated Han intelligence agent Zhang Qian.

  “Terrestrial Forms” is not just about geography, however; it also describes the interactions between the earth and its creatures. Section 4.8 shows that the qi of different terrains and waters has different effects on the creatures that live on or near them; similarly, 4.9 gives correlations of soils, diet, and dispositions. Section 4.10 demonstrates that the gestation periods of various animals are numerologically linked to celestial and calendrical phenomena. Section 4.11 contains an interesting and unusual early Chinese example of what in the West would be called “natural history”: it attempts a rudimentary taxonomic classification of animals on the basis of their physical characteristics. Also in this category of connections between topography and the “myriad things” are section 4.12, describing the relationship between types and colors of water, on the one hand, and minerals and crops, on the other; and 4.13, on the Five-Phase characteristics of people living in the four cardinal directions and in the center. Section 4.13 is complemented by section 5.13 in the following chapter of the Huainanzi, which defines the boundaries and characteristics of the territories of the four directions and the center. Section 4.14 focuses on the cycles of the Five Phases, which are shown to govern transformations of all kinds. The theme of transformation is central to sections 4.18, which recounts the “evolution” of various classes of animals and plants from mythical first ancestors, and 4.19, an alchemical demonstration that the growth of minerals in the earth is governed by the numerological principles of the Five Phases.

  * * *

  This diagram shows China’s place in Zou Yan’s nine-continent cosmological theory. China, divided into nine provinces, is located in the southeastern corner of the central continent, with Mount Kunlun to China’s northwest.

  Overall, the chapter provides a reasonably comprehensive, although not always systematic, account of China’s place in the wider world and of how the principles of Five-Phase cosmology govern interactions between the earth and its creatures.

  Sources

  The most important known sources for this chapter are the “Tian wen” (Questions About Heaven) section of the Chuci, portions of the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas, SHJ), and the Lüshi chunqiu (Mr. Lü’s Spring and Autumn, LSCQ). As we have seen, “Questions About Heaven” was an important source for chapter 3 as well, with the more cosmic questions answered in that chapter and the more terrestrial ones addressed here. In this chapter, section 4.1 begins with a few sentences paraphrased from SHJ 6 and continues through section 4.2 with text copied nearly verbatim from LSCQ 13.2 Section 4.2 (in both the LSC
Q and HNZ versions) answers questions 38 and 39 in “Questions About Heaven” about the dimensions of the earth. Section 4.3, which enumerates the characteristics of the magical Mount Kunlun, is closely related to “Questions About Heaven,” 29–34 and 40–43. Much of the material in sections 4.15 and 4.16, on the bizarre peoples and magical landscapes on the far periphery of the physical world, is also found in SHJ, although not always in quite the same form. Most of the rivers in section 4.17 (which returns from the realms of magic to the actual geography of China) are found also in SHJ 1–4. This section may derive from a now-lost text that anticipated the Shuijing (Classic of Rivers), a Han-period work that briefly describes more than one hundred Chinese waterways. Section 4.7, describing the valuable products of the nine provinces, is in the tradition of the “Yugong” (Tribute of Yu) chapter of the Shujing (Documents) but does not directly depend on it textually.

  Sections 4.8 and 4.9, relating terrain, diet, and physical and psychological characteristics; 4.10, on the gestation periods of various animals; 4.13, on the characteristics of territories in the four directions (plus the center); and 4.14, on Five-Phase correlations, all seem to form self-contained units and were probably copied verbatim or nearly so from now-lost sources. So too with section 4.19, on the transmutation and maturation of mineral ores in the earth, which appears to be a set piece copied intact from some unknown source. This is considered to be China’s oldest extant statement of the principles of alchemy.

  Section 4.18, on the evolutionary genealogy of various classes of animals and plants, presents a less clear case because in its current form it seems to be rather garbled, in some places beyond recovery. It originally may have been copied from an earlier source, or it may represent an editor’s not very successful attempt (perhaps subsequently mangled by later copyists) to distill or abridge an earlier source. The possibility that this section is derived in some way from an earlier source is bolstered by the presence in Zhuangzi 18 of a similar (and also now badly garbled) evolutionary passage.