by Ying-shih Yü
Han writings on ritual.
62 “o soul , c om e b ack ! ”
T H E H U N A N D P O S O U L S
The ritual of fu, as pointed out earlier, is based on the belief in zhaohun fupo, to
summon the hun- soul to re unite with the po- soul. To grasp the full meaning of
this ritual practice, we must proceed to trace the evolution of the Chinese con-
cept of soul from antiquity to the Han times.
Before the dualistic conception of hun and po began to gain currency in the
middle of the sixth century b.c.e., po alone seems to have been used to denote
the human soul. The character po
(or its variant ba
) means “white,”
“bright,” or “bright light,” deriving originally from the growing light of the new
moon. The earliest form of the character has recently been found on a Zhou
oracle bone inscription datable to the eleventh century b.c.e. It is used in the
term jipo
, which, according to Wang Guowei, stood for the period from the
eighth or ninth to the fourteenth or fi fteenth of the lunar month. The term
jisipo
may also be found or another piece of oracle bone indicating the
period from the twenty- third or twenty- fourth to the end of the month.14 These
two terms were later used repeatedly in early Zhou historical documents as
well as bronze inscriptions in the standard forms of jisheng ba
and jisi ba
, which may be translated, respectively, as “ after the birth of the cres-
cent” and “ after the death of the crescent.”15
Since the ancient Chinese took the changing phases of the moon as periodic
birth and death of its po— its “white light” or soul—by analogy, they eventually
came to associate, by the early sixth century b.c.e. if not earlier, the life or death
of a man with the presence or absence of his po.16 Two examples from the
Zuozhuan
(Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals), the
chronicle of the state of Lu compiled prob ably in the fourth century b.c.e., will
serve to illustrate our point. In 593 b.c.e., a man named Zhao Tong
behaved
erratically at the court of Zhou. One offi
cial made the following prediction: “In
less than ten years Zhao Tong will be sure to meet with great calamity. Heaven
has taken his po from him.”17 Fifty years later, in 543 b.c.e., a nobleman named
Boyou
in the state of Zheng (in central Henan) had shown a marked de-
cline in reasoning power and judgment, which also led a con temporary to re-
mark: “Heaven is destroying Boyou and has taken away his po. ”18 In both cases,
the po is identifi ed as the soul of the man, something that when taken away, by
Heaven, causes the man to lose his intelligence. Clearly, the po must have been
conceived as a separate entity that joins the body from outside.
Toward the end of the sixth century b.c.e., however, the concept of hun as a
soul had also become widespread. In 516 b.c.e., Yue Qi
, an offi
cial at the
court of the state of Song (in eastern Henan), had the following to say about the
Duke of Song and a guest named Shusun
from Lu because both had wept
during a supposedly joyful gathering: “This year both our lord and Shusun are
likely to die. I have heard that joy in the midst of grief and grief in the midst of
“o soul , c om e b ack ! ” 63
joy are signs of a loss of mind (or heart, xin ). The essential vigor and bright-
ness of the mind is what we call the hun and the po. When these leave it, how
can the man continue long?”19 Here, both the hun and the po are regarded as
the very essence of the mind, the source of knowledge and intelligence. Death
is thought to follow inevitably when the hun and po leave the body. We have
reason to believe that around this time, the idea of hun was still relatively new.
To the mind of an ordinary Chinese, it was prob ably not very clear in precisely
what way the hun and po were related to each other. In 534 b.c.e., the state of
Zheng was deeply disturbed by a series of events resulting, reportedly, from a
nobleman’s ghost having returned to take revenge on his murderers. This no-
bleman was the above- mentioned Boyou, who had been not only expelled from
Zheng but also assassinated by his po liti cal enemies. As a result of the loss of
his hereditary offi
ce, his spirit was also deprived of sacrifi ces. The disturbances
supposedly caused by this avenging ghost terrifi ed the entire state. The wise
statesman and phi los o pher, Zichan
, therefore reinstated Boyou’s son in
his former offi
ce. Fi nally, as our story goes, the ghost was satisfi ed and dis-
appeared. Afterward, a friend asked Zichan whether there was any explanation
for this strange phenomenon: What does a ghost consist of? How is it pos si ble
for a ghost to disturb the human world? The following answer given by Zichan
is of central importance to our study because it is the locus classicus on the
subject of the human soul in the Chinese tradition:
When man is born, that which is fi rst created, is called the po and, when
the po has been formed, its positive part ( yang
) becomes hun or con-
scious spirit.
In case a man is materially well and abundantly supported, then his
hun and po grow very strong, and therefore produce spirituality and intel-
ligence. Even the hun and po of an ordinary man or woman, having en-
countered violent death, can attach themselves to other people to cause
extraordinary trou bles. . . . The stuff Boyou was made of was copious and
rich, and his family great and power ful. Is it not natu ral that, having met
with a violent death, he should be able to become a ghost?20
To begin with, it is impor tant to point out that the very fact that Zichan found it
necessary to off er such a detailed explanation of the relationship between the
po and the hun indicates that the hun as a concept of soul was not yet familiar to
the Chinese mind. This point can be further seen from the fact that he took the
po to be fundamental and the hun, derivative. In his emphasis on physical nour-
ishment as the foundation of the soul, Zichan’s analy sis strongly suggests a
materialistic point of view. On the whole, I believe, this interpretation is best
understood as refl ecting Zichan’s personal view of the subject rather than being
a common conception in sixth- century b.c.e. China. It is true that Zichan’s
statement, as quoted above, later became the orthodox doctrine of hun and po in
64 “o soul , c om e b ack ! ”
the Confucian (including neo- Confucian) philosophical tradition.21 As we shall
see later, however, it was not the view to be accepted by the common man in
China in subsequent, especially Han, times.
We know relatively little about the origin of hun as a concept of soul. It is
quite pos si ble that the concept was more fully developed in the south and then
spread to the north sometime during the sixth century b.c.e.22 This possibility
fi nds some support in the textual evidence at our disposal.
According to the “Tangong”
chapter of the
Classic of Rites, generally
believed to be a pre- Han text, Prince Jizha
of the southern state of Wu (in
Jiangsu) lost his son while traveling in the north in 515 b.c.e. At the burial
ceremony, he is reported to have expressed the following view about the dead:
“Destined it is that his bones and fl esh should return to the earth. As for his
soul- breath ( hunqi
), it goes everywhere, everywhere.”23 It is impor tant to
note that in this passage, the idea of po is conspicuously missing, which seems
to indicate that it was not as widespread a concept as in the north, for the
“bones and fl esh” refers to the corpse, not the po- soul. At any rate, there can be
little doubt that in the southern tradition, the hun was regarded as a more ac-
tive and vital soul than the po. This is clearly shown in the ancient Chuci
(Elegies of Chu). Two of the songs, datable to the early third century b.c.e.,
describe the shamanistic ritual of “soul summons.” The following lines ap-
pear repeatedly in these two songs: “O soul, come back! In the east you can not
abide. O soul, come back! In the south you cannot stay. O soul, go not to the
west! O soul, go not to the north! O soul, come back! Climb not to Heaven
above. O soul, come back! Go not down to the Land of Darkness.”24 The “soul”
in each and every case refers invariably to the hun and therefore confi rms com-
pletely the belief of the southern prince Jizha that the hun- soul indeed goes
everywhere.
Prob ably as a result of the fusion of cultures, by the second century b.c.e. at
the latest, the Chinese dualistic conception of soul had reached its defi nitive
formulation. A most succinct statement of this dualistic idea may be found
in the “Border Sacrifi ces” (Jiao te sheng
) chapter of the Classic of Rites:
“The breath- soul ( hunqi
) returns to Heaven; the bodily soul ( xingpo
)
returns to earth. Therefore, in sacrifi cial off erings, one should seek the mean-
ing in the Yin and Yang
princi ple.”25 It may be noted that several dualities
are involved in this formulation. In addition to the basic duality of hun and po,
we also see the dualities of qi and xing, Heaven and Earth, and Yin and Yang.
We shall explain the ideas of qi and xing at a later juncture. Briefl y, the dualism
may be understood in the following way. Ancient Chinese generally believed
that the individual human life consists of a bodily part as well as a spiritual
part. The physical body relies for its existence on food and drink produced by
the earth. The spirit depends for its existence on the invisible life force called qi,
which comes into the body from Heaven. In other words, breathing and eating
are the two basic activities by which a human being continually maintains life.
“o soul , c om e b ack ! ” 65
But the body and the spirit are each governed by a soul, namely, the po and the
hun. It is for this reason that they are referred to in the passage just quoted
above as the bodily soul ( xingpo) and the breath- soul ( hunqi), respectively.
The identifi cation of the hun- po duality with the Yin and Yang princi ples was
a later development, evidently resulting from the rise and popularity of the yin-
yang cosmology in the late fourth and early third centuries b.c.e. Although in
the above- quoted statement by Zichan the hun is defi ned as the yang or positive
part of the po, the po itself, or the remainder of it, is not described as yin. The
equation of the paired concept of hun- po with that of yin- yang had yet to be de-
veloped. Now, according to the yin- yang cosmology, there are two basic opposite
but complementary forces at work in the cosmos. Yin is the supreme feminine
force, while yang is its masculine counterpart. As two basic princi ples, the yin is
characterized, among other things, by passivity and negativity, and the yang by
activity and positivity. But life, whether cosmic or individual, comes into being
only when the two forces begin to interact with each other. Heaven and Earth, for
instance, being the highest embodiment of yang and yin, operate in response
to each other to form cosmic life. It was, therefore, quite natu ral for ancient Chi-
nese to fi t the hun- po duality into this yin- yang framework. By Han times at the
latest, as the above- quoted passage from the Classic of Rites shows, it already be-
came a generally accepted idea that the hun belongs to the yang category and is
hence an active and heavenly substance, whereas the po belongs to the yin cate-
gory and is hence a passive and earthly substance.
This identifi cation led to a new conception of the relationship between the
hun and the po. During the Han dynasty, there was a widely shared belief in
both elite and popu lar culture that in life, the hun and po form a harmonious
union within the human body, and at death, the two souls separate and leave
the body. This belief may have originated during a much earlier period because
we already fi nd a clear expression of the idea of “the separation of the hun from
the po” in the Elegies of Chu of the early third century b.c.e.26
When the hun and po separate, however, they also go their separate, or more
precisely, opposite ways. The hun-
soul, being a breathlike light substance
( hunqi), has a much greater freedom of movement. By contrast, the po- soul, being
associated with the physical body, is conceived as a heavier substance with only
restricted mobility. Therefore, at death, the hun- soul goes swiftly upward to
Heaven, whereas the po- soul moves downward to earth at a much slower pace.
This explains why, in the ritual of fu, it is the hun, but not the po, that has to be
recalled from the rooftop. For the same reason, the Elegies of Chu speak of
“summoning the hun- soul” but never “summoning the po- soul.”27
To clarify the term hunqi, a word may be said about the complex and diffi
cult
concept of qi as the “source of life.” The concept has a broad as well as a narrow
meaning. In its broad sense, qi is a primal and undiff erentiated life force that
permeates the entire cosmos. However, when the qi becomes diff erentiated and
individuated to form all the things in the universe, it then varies in purity.
66 “o soul , c om e b ack ! ”
Thus, as succinctly summed up by D. C. Lau: “the grosser qi, being heavy, set-
tled to become the earth, while the refi ned qi, being light, rose to become the
sky. Man, being halfway between the two, is a harmonious mixture of the two
kinds of qi.”28 It is in this broad sense that a Daoist philosophical treatise of the
second century b.c.e. says that the hun is made up of the refi ned, heavenly qi
and the po the grosser, earthly qi.29 But in its narrow sense, the qi refers specifi -
cally to the heavenly qi. It is in this narrow sense that the hunqi, or the breath-
soul, is distinguished from the xingpo, or bodily soul.
We have seen that it was a general belief in Han China that the hun owes its
existence to the refi ned qi from Heaven, whereas the po, always being associ-
ated with the body, is composed of the coarse qi from Earth. But how are the
t
wo souls, hun and po, distinguished from each other in terms of specifi c func-
tions? According to Zheng Xuan (127–200), qi or hun- soul forms the basis of a
man’s spirit and intelligence, whereas the function of the po- soul is specifi cally
defi ned as “hearing distinctly and seeing clearly.”30 In other words, the hun
governs man’s spirit ( shen , including xin, mind or heart) and the po governs
his body (including the senses). It is in ter est ing to point out that a similar dis-
tinction between the hun and the po can also be found in Han Daoist lit er a ture.
According to the Heshang Commentary on the Laozi, Heaven feeds man with
fi ve kinds of qi, which enter his body from the nostrils and are stored in his
heart (or mind). The fi ve kinds of qi are pure and subtle, and therefore go to
form man’s spirit, senses, voice, etc. Thus, a man has a soul called hun. The
hun is masculine; it goes out and comes in through the nostrils and communi-
cates with Heaven. Earth feeds man with fi ve tastes, which enter his body from
the mouth and are stored in the stomach. The fi ve tastes are impure and there-
fore go to form a man’s body, bones and fl esh, blood and veins, as well as six
emotions. Thus, a man has a soul called po. The po is feminine; it goes out and
comes in through the mouth and communicates with Earth.31 Although there
are diff erences between the Confucian and Daoist versions with regard to the
respective functions of the hun and po, the basic structural similarity is never-
theless unmistakable. This similarity testifi es fully to the universality of the
distinction between the hun and po in Han China, the former being a “spiri-
tual” soul and the latter a “bodily” soul.
B E L I E F I N A F T E R L I F E
The above discussion of the changing Chinese conception of soul from antiq-
uity to the Han Period naturally leads to the prob lem of afterlife. Does the de-
parted soul continue to possess knowledge and feelings? Can the soul exist as
an in de pen dent entity forever? Where does the soul go after its separation from
the body? Admittedly, these are not easy questions to answer owing to the paucity
“o soul , c om e b ack ! ” 67
of the sources on the subject. Thanks to recent archaeological discoveries, how-
ever, it is now pos si ble to attempt a reconstruction of a general picture.