Sixth Century BCE to Seventeenth Century

by Ying-shih Yü

  Long before the rise of the dualistic conception of the soul, there had already

  been a common Chinese belief in an afterlife. The notion that the departed

  soul is as conscious as the living is already implied in Shang- Zhou sacrifi ces.

  Shang people generally took sacrifi ce to be an actual feeding of the dead.32 Ac-

  cording to a Zhou bronze inscription, the kinds of animals off ered sacrifi cially

  to ancestral spirits were identical with those presented to the reigning king as

  food.33 As far as daily needs were concerned, no sharp distinction was drawn

  between the departed soul and the living. In fact, ancient Chinese were ex-

  tremely concerned about what they believed to be their ancestors’ hunger in the

  afterworld. In 604 b.c.e., a nobleman from the house of Ruo-ao

  , appre-

  hending the forthcoming disaster of extermination of his whole clan, wept and

  said: “The spirits of the dead are also in need of food. But I am afraid those of

  our Ruo-ao clan will be sure to suff er starvation.”34 What he meant is that when

  the entire clan is wiped out, there will be no one left to off er regular sacrifi ces

  to the ancestral spirits. His concern lies at the very cornerstone of Chinese an-

  cestor worship, for the Chinese have believed until recent decades— indeed

  some may still continue to believe today— that a spirit cannot, as a rule, enjoy

  the sacrifi ces off ered by someone other than his own fl esh and blood, namely,

  his male descendant, owing to the incommunicability between diff er ent kinds

  of the individuated qi. Apparently, it was believed that without sacrifi cial food,

  the hungry ancestral spirits would disintegrate more quickly. The original Chi-

  nese term for “the spirits of the dead” in the above passage is gui. As clearly

  shown in oracle inscriptions, the character gui had already acquired the mean-

  ing of “the soul of the dead” as early as the Shang Period.35 The po or the hun, on

  the other hand, were distinguished from gui by being names for “the soul of the

  living.”

  The belief that the departed soul actually enjoys the sacrifi cial food off ered

  by the living was widely held in the popu lar culture of Han China. As vividly

  described by the critical phi los o pher Wang Chong

  (27–100? c.e.) from

  Guiji (in Zhejiang), “ People never desist from urging the necessity of making

  off erings, maintaining that the departed are conscious, and that ghosts and

  spirits eat and drink like so many guests invited to dinner.”36 This description

  has been archaeologically confi rmed by the large quantities of food and food

  vessels found in Han tombs excavated over the past four de cades.37

  On the other hand, the idea that the individual soul can survive death in def-

  initely seems to have been alien to the Chinese mind. In this regard, once more,

  we may take the Zhou sacrifi cial system as an illustration. Perhaps partly as a

  result of the shift from the predominantly lateral succession of the Shang Period

  to the lineal succession, the Zhou system set a limit to the number of generations

  in ancestor worship according to social status. The royal house, for example,

  68 “o soul , c om e b ack ! ”

  would off er sacrifi ces to no more than seven generations of ancestors, while the

  common people did so for only two generations, that is, their dead parents and

  grandparents. Therefore, every new generation would have to suspend sacri-

  fi ces to the uppermost generation previously sacrifi ced to. An exception was

  made for the founding ancestor, who had to remain as a symbol of the collective

  identity of the lineage. The system was apparently predicated on the assump-

  tion that after a certain period of time, the spirits of the dead gradually dissolve

  into the primal qi and lose their individual identities. As for the diff erences in

  number of generations for diff er ent social groups, the justifi cation was prob-

  ably based on a materialistic interpretation of the relationship between the

  body and the soul. As Zichan’s remark, quoted earlier, makes abundantly clear,

  the soul of a nobleman is stronger than that of an ordinary man or woman

  because, being from a great and power ful family, his physical body is much

  better nourished than a common person’s. As a result, his departed soul disin-

  tegrates more slowly.

  The idea that the departed soul gradually shrinks with the passing of time is

  well attested to by the ancient saying “the spirit of a newly dead is large and that

  of an old one is small” ( xingui da, gugui xiao

  ,

  ).38 The same idea

  was later expressed in a slightly diff er ent way. In a literary work of the early

  fourth century c.e., the soul of a newly dead is described as much heavier than

  that of an old one.39 Thus, both the elite culture and the popu lar thought in

  ancient China shared the belief that the departed soul can survive, in the words

  of Hu Shih, “only for a time varying apparently in length according to its own

  strength, but [it] gradually fades out and ultimately disintegrates entirely.” 40

  This materialistic conception of the soul explains the great importance that

  ancient Chinese had attached to the body of the dead. As archaeological discov-

  ery has shown, people in the Han Period often went to great lengths to preserve

  the body of the dead. Evidently, ancient Chinese, just like ancient Egyptians,

  believed that the soul could not survive much longer unless the body itself were

  preserved.41

  T H E A F T E R W O R L D : S E P A R AT E A B O D E S

  F O R T H E H U N A N D T H E P O

  Fi nally, to answer the question of where the soul goes after its separation from

  the body, we must take a closer look at the conception of the afterworld. Before

  we proceed, however, we must correct a deep- rooted misconception about the

  origin of the Chinese belief in an afterworld. Early in the seventeenth century,

  Gu Yanwu

  , based on a preliminary historical investigation, came to the

  conclusion that the Chinese did not have a clear notion of an afterworld until

  the end of the Han dynasty when Buddhism arrived on the scene.42 In modern

  times, this thesis has received further support from Hu Shih’s study of the his-

  “o soul , c om e b ack ! ” 69

  tory of Chinese Buddhism. He emphatically maintained that it was Buddhism

  that gave the Chinese the idea of tens of heavens and many hells.43 More recently,

  Joseph Needham, taking issue with the distinction between “this- worldly” and

  “otherworldly” xian immortality I proposed two de cades ago, has said: “If one

  bears in mind the conceptions of diff er ent peoples (Indo- Iranian, Christian,

  Islamic, etc.) there was no such thing as an ‘other world’ in ancient Chinese

  thought at all—no Heaven or hell, no creator God, and no expected end of the

  universe once it had emerged from primeval chaos. All was natu ral and within

  Nature. Of course, after the permeation of Buddhism, ‘the case was altered.’ ” 44

  Indeed, it is true that in ancient Chinese thought, the contrast between “this

  world” and the “other world” was not as sharp as in other cultures. One may

  also legitimately argue that, put
in a comparative perspective, the early Chinese

  idea of an “other world” appears to be “refreshing” because it is rather diff er-

  ently conceived. But to say that there was no such thing as an “other world” and

  no Heaven or hell at all is obviously an exaggeration and a position that is con-

  tradicted by known historical and archaeological facts.

  We have noted that as early as the Shang Period, there had already arisen the

  idea of a “heavenly court,” which, however, may have been reserved only for the

  long- lasting, if not immortal, souls of the kings and lords as a depository of

  social authority.45 From about the eighth century b.c.e. on, the term Yellow

  Springs ( huangquan

  ) began to be used in historical and literary writings to

  denote the home of the dead. The Yellow Springs was imagined to be located be-

  neath the earth, a place conceived of as dark and miserable. On the whole, the

  idea is a vague one, however, and very little detail about it exists in the written

  rec ord.46 As we have seen, in the “Summons of the Soul,” one of the Elegies of

  Chu, the soul is advised “not to climb Heaven above” or “go not down to the Land

  of Darkness” ( youdu

  ) . Thus, for the fi rst time, we encounter both “Heaven”

  and “hell” in the same poem. However, Chinese imagination of the afterlife did

  not become fully developed until the Han Period. Tremendous pro gress in Han

  archaeology has allowed us to reconstruct in its general form the early Chinese

  conception of afterlife, including the related beliefs of Heaven and hell.

  As noted earlier, the two T- shaped silk paintings from Mawangdui clearly

  reveal the belief that at death the hun- souls immediately “return to Heaven,”

  just as the above- quoted Classic of Rites passage says. Although we are in no

  position, given our pres ent state of knowledge, to identify each and every one of

  the mythological ele ments in these paintings, the two paintings do provide us

  with concrete evidence that by the second century b.c.e., the Chinese already

  had a vivid conception of a heavenly world above and an underworld below.

  The notion of a government in Heaven overseeing human activities was devel-

  oped later in Han popu lar culture. In the earliest Daoist canon Scripture of Great

  Peace, datable to the second century c.e., that is, before appreciable Buddhist in-

  fl uence on Chinese life and thought, we fi nd at least four cao or “departments”

  in the celestial government. They are the mingcao

  (“Department of Fate”),

  70 “o soul , c om e b ack ! ”

  shoucao

  (“Department of Longevity”), shan- cao

  (“Department of Good

  Deeds”), and e- cao

  (“Department of Evil Deeds”).47 The term cao, it may be

  noted, is a direct borrowing from the Han governmental organ ization. There

  were, for instance, four cao in the offi

  ce of the shangshu

  (“Masters of Docu-

  ments”), which, since the time of Emperor Wu, had become “the key organ of

  the state.” 48 This also explains why in the Laozi Xiang-er zhu

  (Xiang-

  er Commentary on the Laozi), the celestial government is also referred to as the

  Tiancao

  (“Heavenly Departments”), an idea that has been perpetuated in

  Chinese popu lar culture ever since.49 The Scripture of Great Peace also reveals

  something about how the vari ous departments conduct their business. Each

  department keeps detailed personal dossiers on all living persons. When a per-

  son has accumulated enough merits, for instance, his dossier, after evaluation,

  may be transferred to the Department of Longevity.50 On the other hand, there

  is also the possibility that a person formerly of good conduct may eventually

  end up in the Department of Evil Deeds, if he is later found to have committed

  many sins. Thus, not only are the personal rec ords of all living beings updated

  on a daily basis, these rec ords are also constantly subject to transfer from one

  department to another. Indeed, activities of this kind constitute a major func-

  tion of the celestial bureaucracy.51

  Now, let us turn to the idea of “underworld” in Han times. On this subject,

  fortunately, very in ter est ing evidence has also been found in the Mawangdui

  Tomb No. 3. A wooden document from this tomb reads as follows: “On the

  twenty- fourth day, second month, the twelfth year [of Emperor Wen’s reign, 168

  b.c.e.], House hold Assistant Fen to the langzhong

  in charge of the dead: ‘A

  list of mortuary objects is herewith forwarded to you. Upon receiving this docu-

  ment, please memorialize without delay to the Lord of the Grave (Zhuzang Jun

  ).’ ”52

  This document reveals two in ter est ing points about Han beliefs about an

  underworld. First, since the silk painting from the same tomb shows that the

  hun- soul of the dead goes to Heaven, the pres ent document makes sense only if

  understood as dealing with the journey of his po- soul to the underworld. Sec-

  ond, the bureaucratic structure of the underworld is, like that of the heavenly

  world, modeled on that of the human world. It is in ter est ing to note that before

  104 b.c.e., there was an offi

  ce of langzhongling

  (“Supervisor of Atten-

  dants”) whose function it was to render personal ser vices to the emperor.53

  Thus, the analogy between the status of House hold Assistant Fen in the mar-

  quisate of Dai and the langzhong in the underworld is unmistakable. In other

  words, Family Assistant Fen was notifying his counterpart in the court of the

  Underworld Lord of the arrival of the newly dead, in this case, the son of

  the Marquis of Dai. This practice is also confi rmed by two similar wooden doc-

  uments found in the Han tombs at Fenghuang Shan

  (in Jiangling

  ,

  Hubei) in 1975. The fi rst one, from Tomb No. 168, dated 167 b.c.e., was issued

  “o soul , c om e b ack ! ” 71

  in the name of the Assistant Magistrate of Jiangling and sent to the Under-

  world Assistant Magistrate. The former informed the latter of the immigration

  of a newly dead under his jurisdiction to the underworld and requested the case

  be reported to the Underworld Lord.54 The second one, dated 153 b.c.e., is found

  in Tomb No. 10. In this case, the document was submitted to the Underworld

  Lord (Dixia Zhu

  ) directly in the name of the dead, Zhang Yan

  him-

  self. Unlike the Mawangdui case, the two occupants of the Feng- huang Shan

  tombs were neither noblemen nor offi

  cials, but common people of some means,

  a fact that testifi es fully to the universality of this belief.55

  Since the po- soul is closely associated with the body, therefore, at death it

  returns to earth when the body is buried. However, it seems to have been a

  widespread idea during Han times that the life of the po- soul in the underworld

  depends very much on the condition of the body. If the body was well preserved

  and properly buried, then the po- soul would not only rest in peace and remain

  close to the body but prob ably also last longer. Lavish interment and body pres-

  ervatio
n are thus quite characteristic of Han tombs belonging to families of

  some means. Needless to say, not every family could aff ord the Mawangdui

  type of burial. The simplest way to preserve the body was, according to Han

  death ritual, to put a piece of jade into the mouth of the dead.56 This ritual prac-

  tice has been amply confi rmed by archaeological discovery.57 It was generally

  believed in ancient China that jade can prevent the body from decay. The world-

  renowned “jade shrouds,” discovered in the tomb of an early Han prince at

  Mancheng, Hebei, in 1968, were obviously intended to have this eff ect.58

  To sum up, the combination of textual and archaeological evidence suggests

  that pre- Buddhist Chinese beliefs about a heavenly world above and an under-

  world below were closely related to the dualistic conception of soul, the hun and

  the po. At death, the hun and po were thought to go separate ways, with the for-

  mer returning to Heaven and the latter to earth. The idea of Heaven and hell as

  opposing sites as reward and punishment in the afterlife was not fully devel-

  oped in Chinese thought until the coming of Buddhism.

  T H E R I S E O F X I A N I M M O R TA L I T Y

  A N D T H E R E S T R U C T U R I N G O F

  T H E A F T E R W O R L D

  A historical account of the Chinese conception of afterlife would remain incom-

  plete without a brief discussion of the fundamental transformation it underwent

  during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (140–87 b.c.e.). The transformation in

  question pertains to the development of the cult of xian

  immortality.59

  Xian was a unique idea in ancient Chinese thought and prob ably began as a

  romantic conception of total spiritual freedom. A prototype of a xian immortal

  72 “o soul , c om e b ack ! ”

  may be found in the beginning chapter of the Zhuangzi

  , where a Divine

  Man is described as follows: “ There is a Divine Man living on faraway Kuyeh

  [Guye] Mountain, with skin like ice or snow . . . [who is] gentle and shy like a

  young girl. He doesn’t eat the fi ve grains, but sucks the wind and drinks the

  dew, climbs up on clouds and mists, rides a fl ying dragon, and wanders beyond

  the four seas.” 60 The impor tant thing to note here is that the Divine Man does

  not eat anything earthly such as the fi ve grains but only “sucks the wind and