The Huainanzi

by An Liu

  80. That is, no depravity on Zichan’s part. His drafting of a law code was not undertaken with bad intentions.

  81. They accepted only after the third offer.

  82. That is, the principle that the mandate should be bestowed on a meritorious successor.

  83. Odes 240, stanza 2. The reference to King Wu, second founder of the Zhou dynasty, seems to have been emended in this passage to refer instead to Yao and Shun. For the story of how Yao tested Shun, first by marrying him to two of his daughters and then by giving him nine of his sons to care for, see 20.11 and Shiji 1, “The Basic Annals of the Five Thearchs.”

  84. The point here is that two people said the same thing to each other, but for different reasons.

  85. The point would seem to be that both ditching and damming are valid ways of managing water resources, but you must choose one or the other, lest one person’s ditch interfere with another person’s dam.

  86. That is, copper; the reference is to the casting of bronze.

  87. Duke Wen of Jin (also known as Chong’er [r. 636–628 B.C.E.]) was a storied ruler who, despite a crippling physical deformity and despite being forced to live in exile in early life, rose to become one of the most powerful leaders of the state of Jin and the second Zhou vassal lord to assume the title of hegemon. He figures in many early texts.

  88. Baili Xi was a worthy of Yu who was ransomed out of captivity by Duke Mu of Qin and raised to be his prime minister.

  89. Duke Mu of Qin (r. 659–621 B.C.E.) was a powerful ruler who purportedly became one of the “five hegemons” of the Zhou era.

  90. Marquis Wu of Wey (r. 812–758 B.C.E.) was a vassal who led forces in defense of the Zhou when they were forced from their capital in 771 B.C.E.

  91. Compare Xunzi 22 (XZ 22/111/14); a similar phrase also appears in Zhongyong (Liji 32/242/21).

  92. A similar phrase is found in Xunzi 28 (XZ 28/141/6).

  93. See MZ 13.3/67/221–22.

  94. These two lines are also a reference to Mencius. See MZ 13.3/67/21–22.

  95. For the parallel passage in the reconstructed Zisizi, see Harper, “Huai Nan Tzu chapter 10,” app. 1, L; and Csikszentmihalyi 2004, app. 1, no. 13.

  96. Both of these are incidents of the minor failure of diplomatic etiquette leading to important military confrontation. The second line is an allusion to the Song general Hua Yuan’s failure to distribute lamb meat to his charioteer before an important battle. The incident is recorded in Zuozhuan, Duke Xuan 2.

  97. He would not allow personal pique to interfere with the larger interests of his state.

  98. According to Xu Shen, Gong Yong was an official of Chu. See Zhang Shuangdi 1997, 1:1085n.16.

  99. Xiao Ji (Ji the Filial), the son of King Wuding of the Shang dynasty, was renowned for his filial piety. He fell victim to his stepmother’s slander and died in exile.

  100. The Duke of Shao , a loyal official who served as grand protector to King Wu of Zhou, was enfeoffed at Shao.

  101. A cruel punishment attributed to the tyrant Djou, last ruler of the Shang dynasty. A person was forced to walk to his death across a red-hot metal beam. It is also mentioned in 2.14, 11.1, 12.35, 15.2, and 21.4.

  102. The point is that the soft (the tongue) outlasts the hard (the teeth); this is presented as the inspiration for Laozi’s emphasis on water and other “soft” metaphors.

  103. For the notion that the sage follows behind, see 1.11 and 14.56; and Laozi 66.

  104. This saying paraphrases Zhuangzi, chap. 7 (ZZ 7/20/20), where it is attributed to Laozi. It does not, however, appear in the received version of the Daodejing. This saying also appears in 14.4 and 17.84.

  105. Chang Hong (d. 492 B.C.E.) was an officer of the state of Liu famed for his skill in astronomy, calendrics, and divination. There was once a text in his name, now lost.

  106. This saying also appears in 17.70.

  107. A variant of this saying occurs in 17.133.

  108. The implication is that when it is dark, there may still be an inner clarity that is not impaired by the darkness because it goes beyond mere visual acuity.

  109. Commentators gloss the names “Bright Day” (hui ri ) and “Shady Accord” (yin xie ) as poetic names for the male and female of a species of falcon.

  110. See 6.1.

  111. Duke Jian of Qi (r. 484–481 B.C.E.) was overthrown by his prime minister, Tian Chang, marking the ascendancy of the Tian clan over the Qi court.

  112. Ziyang (d. 398 B.C.E.) was a prime minister of Zheng who led that state in resisting the aggression of Chu. The ruler of Zheng killed him in an attempt to appease the king of Chu.

  113. See also MZ 1.4/2/22–23.

  114. This saying is repeated in 16.102, with slightly different wording. This anecdote also appears in Hanfeizi, chaps. 21 and 22. See HFZ 21/44/5 and 22/49/21.

  115. For this quality of the sage, see also 9.7, 9.30, 13.13, 14.65, and 20.35.

  116. This proverbial phrase also appears in 9.4, 16.59, and 20.2. See also HSWZ 1.23/5/13 and SY 7.4/47/23.

  117. See also 9.26.

  118. This saying appears in Xunzi, chaps. 11, 16, and 26.

  119. That is, the two mythical sage-kings Fuxi and the Divine Farmer.

  120. The “Three Dynasties” are Xia, Shang, and [Western] Zhou; “Zhou” in this line apparently refers to the (decadent) Eastern Zhou.

  121. This is possibly a reference to (though not a direct quotation from) Odes 252, verses 7–9.

  122. The interplay of feelings and desires is an important theme in Mencius.

  123. Wu ; lacking an English verb “to thing,” one might translate this in extenso as “differentiate and gain concrete knowledge of.”

  124. See also MZ 4.13/24/21–26 and 13.1–13.2/67/15–19; the phrase also appears in XZ 4/13/19–20.

  125. Daji and tingli , not securely identifiable but evidently medicinal plants.

  Eleven

  INTEGRATING CUSTOMS

  “INTEGRATING CUSTOMS” is an extensive treatise on the subject of ritual. “Ritual,” in the context of both ancient Chinese thought and the text of the Huainanzi, encompassed all forms of symbolic action from the most austere to the most mundane, ranging from the grand sacrifices of the imperial cult to the small courtesies (such as bowing) that transpired between people at a chance meeting. “Integrating Customs” explores the origins of ritual in cosmic and human history and discourses on how the current sage-ruler should establish the rituals appropriate to his age.

  The Chapter Title

  Like many of the chapter titles of the Huainanzi, that of chapter 11 is a verb–object phrase: “Qi su” . The verb, qi, is a richly multivalent word, among whose meanings are “to equalize,” “to put on a par,” “to bring together,” and “to bring into agreement.” The object, su, means “customs,” with a general connotation of “folkways.” As an adjective, su can be used to express the meaning of “common,” “unrefined,” or “vulgar.”

  The title “Qi su” is a clear allusion to that of chapter 2 of the Zhuangzi, the “Qi wu lun” ,1 variously translated as “The Discussion of Making All Things Equal” or “The Sorting That Evens Things Out.”2 Previous American and European scholars have thus translated qi su as “Equalizing Customs / Placing Customs on a Par,”3 and this is undoubtedly one meaning that the title would have evoked for a Han readership. In this context, the title refers to the perspective that views all “customs,” whether the crude folkways of non-Sinic people living at the periphery of the empire or the elegant ceremonials of the imperial court, as being normatively indistinguishable from one another.

  This is only one dimension of the concept of qi su, however; the term is not merely passive or perspectival. Chapter 11 calls on the ruler to harmonize the prevailing and divergent cultural practices in the empire so that customary variation will not obstruct the integral functioning of the universal imperium envisioned by the text. As the summary provided in chapter 21 declares, the teachings of chapter 11 enable one to

>   unify the weaknesses and strengths of the various living things,

  equate the customs and habits of the nine Yi [tribes],

  comprehend past and present discourses,

  and thread together the patterns of the myriad things. (21.2)

  From this summary, we can see that even though a translation like “Placing Customs on a Par” is valid, “Integrating Customs” better preserves the self-conscious parallel between the chapter titles in the Huainanzi and the Zhuangzi. A common double entendre is implied in both texts: the dao of the Qi wu lun integrates all things in the universe in much the same way that the sage of the Huainanzi integrates all the customs of the world. Thus we render the title of the chapter as “Integrating Customs.”

  Summary and Key Themes

  Whereas “ritual” was a matter of supreme importance for Confucians (ru),4 “Integrating Customs” immediately makes clear that ritual is the “creation of a declining age” (11.1) and does not rank among the forces to which the Huainanzi grants primacy and maximum potency. Thus the title of the chapter speaks more generically of “customs,” implicitly asserting (in opposition to Confucius and others) that no set of “rituals,” no matter how sophisticated or wisely conceived, can be ultimately normative. The validity of any “ritual” is contingent on its appropriateness to the time and place in which it is practiced, and the distinction between the tribal customs of the “barbarians” living outside the Han domain and the rituals of the Han court is ultimately arbitrary. The willingness to grant normative validity to non-Han customs was unusual in the milieu of early Han China and may reflect the physical location of the kingdom of Huainan near the ethnically diverse southern frontier of the Han Empire.

  Although the text may deem ritual to be a latter-day phenomenon of secondary potency, it openly admits that ritual is indispensable to effective rulership in the current age. This admission is tactically astute, as in pragmatic terms it is unlikely that any imperial government during the Han dynasty could have succeeded without ritual. The cycle of sacrifices and feasts held in honor of various ancestral spirits and divinities at the imperial court was a vast enterprise that drew heavily on the state treasury and kept hundreds (if not thousands) of functionaries employed.5 Moreover, these ceremonial functions of the court could not be separated from the “practical” organs of government. Protocols and rituals joined court ceremonial offices with the functional bureaus engaged in the day-to-day exercise of imperial power. Attempting to reorganize the Han government in the absence of ritual would be the equivalent of burning a house down and rebuilding it from the ground up.

  In the Han, the topic of ritual also was seen as a matter of some urgency because of the new scope of imperial rule. Even though ritual had been a prime topic of statecraft thinking during the entire Warring States period, the consolidation of imperial rule and the spread of imperial authority outward under the Qin and Han had created a new critical awareness of cultural diversity throughout the imperial domain. Not only were there striking differences in ritual and custom among the Sinic people united under the empire, but, with the expansion of the territorial boundaries into the non-Sinic world, imperial officials now had to face the challenge of governing people who had no knowledge of or sense of participation in the culture of the central court.6 Under these conditions, anyone who lacked advice on how one might “integrate customs” had little of value to offer the rulers of the Han domain.

  These tactical concerns naturally lead us to question whether the Huainanzi ’s admission of the utility of ritual is hypocritical or self-contradictory. The text’s theory of “deep history” does offer some rationalization in this regard. In earlier ages of human history (closer to the cosmic origins of the universe), it was possible to rule only on the basis of the Way and its Potency. But as human society matured and human civilization became more complex, the natural process of devolution made it impossible to establish order without artifices like ritual. The Han came to power in a latter age and thus were compelled to use those implements that current social and historical conditions demanded.

  “Integrating Customs” invests ritual with intrinsic value and power as an indispensable tool of the current age. In this respect, the text’s perspective is like that of the Han Confucians. Ritual is an effective implement of rule because when the channels of power are ritualized, the exercise of state authority does not require the dehumanizing application of threats or bribery. Beyond this, unlike rewards and punishments, which act only on people’s bestial impulses of greed and fear, ritual provides a medium through which human beings may be saved from their self-destructive impulses and gradually transformed so that their spontaneous responses to conditions and events become more harmonious and constructive.7

  The Huainanzi diverges from the Confucian theory of ritual in its view of how rituals originate and are maintained. The Confucians would insist that the only effective path to human perfection involves the acceptance and practice of normatively correct rituals. Accordingly, the ritual order must be reproduced and maintained through painstaking study and reconstruction of the ritual institutions of the ancient sages. Unlike Confucians, the Huainanzi holds that human perfection does not require ritual. There was thus a time when there were sages but not rituals. Sages could create rituals, but ritual itself was never (nor is it now) an indispensable path to sagehood itself. Past sages are therefore not the only or even the best source of effective rituals for the present. The key to creating effective ritual (if and when it is needed) is in the mystical self-cultivation of the sage-ruler in the current age. Only a sage who has come to personally embody the Way and its Potency can produce and maintain rituals that are perfectly suited to creating order and harmony in the current age and to integrating the culturally diverse peoples under his rule.

  Sources

  The rather deflated view of ritual implied by the title “Integrating Customs” naturally raises the question of why the Huainanzi would devote an entire chapter to this topic. This may be answered in part by reference to the text’s claim of comprehensiveness. When the Huainanzi was composed, there already existed a voluminous literature on ritual and its relationship to government. Three texts devoted to ritual—the Liji (Record of Rites), the Yili (Ceremonial and Rites), and the Zhouli (Rites of Zhou)— were ultimately included in the classical canon propounded by the Confucians at the Han court. These Confucian ritual texts, especially the Liji, provide the clear intellectual context in and against which “Integrating Customs” was created.

  Numerous parallels and influences may be found in the Liji and chapter 11 of the Huainanzi, although when these texts echo each other, the context and rhetoric of the shared passages are often quite divergent. For example, in chapter 31 of the Liji (“Fang ji” , one of the four chapters of the Rites reputed to have been written by, or otherwise associated with, Confucius’s grandson Zisi),8 we read that “the rites accord with human feeling and make for them an ordered pattern,”9 a line that appears verbatim in “Integrating Customs.” In the Liji, however, this principle is adduced by demonstrating how ritual serves to curb people’s worst impulses, “Thus in his control of wealth and nobility, the sage makes it so that the people will not be arrogant when wealthy, or miserly when poor, or insolent to their seniors when noble.”10 In the Huainanzi, by contrast, this line states that ritual is most effective when it corresponds most closely to what is spontaneous to human nature:

  The three-year mourning period forces a person to what he cannot reach; thus he supplements his feelings with pretense.

  The three-month observance breaks off grief, coercing and hacking at nature.

  The Confucians and the Mohists do not [find the] origin [of their doctrines] in the beginnings and ends of human feelings and are committed to practicing mutually opposed systems. (11.8)

  Another example of parallelism between the Rites and the Huainanzi is the famous second phrase of the “Zhong yong”:11 “following nature is called the Way.”12 An only slight
ly altered version of this axiom forms the opening line of “Integrating Customs”: “Following nature and putting it into practice is called ‘the Way.’” The conclusions the Huainanzi derives from this principle are quite different from those of the “Zhong yong,” however:

  For this reason,

  when Humaneness and Rightness were established, the Way and Potency receded;

  when Ritual and Music were embellished, purity and simplicity dissipated.

  This argument, coming at the very beginning of the chapter (11.1), is based on Laozi 38: “When the Way is lost, then there is Potency; when Potency is lost, then there is Humaneness; when Humaneness is lost, then there is Rightness; when Rightness is lost, then there is Ritual.”13 By contrast, the authors of the “Zhong yong” attribute ultimate normative authority to the rites of Zhou antiquity: “If one comprehends the rites of the suburban altar and the altar of the soil, and the significance of the di and chang [sacrifices], one may order the kingdom as if holding it in one’s palm.”14

  The date of the Liji ’s composition is a matter of some complexity and controversy. Thus when comparing “Integrating Customs” with those chapters in the Rites containing parallel passages, the question of which text was the “source” for the other is an open one. The Rites was composed through a much more fluid and decentralized process than the Huainanzi was;15 thus the mechanism by which parallel passages appeared in both texts may have been very complicated. The Rites may be citing the Huainanzi; the inverse may be true; or both texts might be sourcing other material circulating in written or oral forms of various kinds. What can be inferred with some certainty, however, is that a debate over the nature and origins of ritual took place in the Former Han, and the patron and authors of the Huainanzi were resolved to engage it.

  The Chapter in the Context of the Huainanzi as a Whole