by Ying-shih Yü
pre- Buddhist China.
not e s
1.
This commentary, usually referred to as Laozi heshang zhu
, has been tradi-
tionally thought to be a post- Han work due to the vulgarity of its language. See Zhang
Xincheng
, Weishu tongkao
, 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1954), 2:
743–745. However, with the discovery of several Dunhuang manuscripts of earlier com-
mentaries on the Laozi, the origin of the Heshang text can now be traced to the second
century c.e. or earlier. See Rao Zongyi
, Laozi Xiang-er zhu jiao- jian
(Hong Kong: Printed by the author, 1956), 87–92, and Kobayashi Masayoshi
, “Kajo shinjin shoku no shisô to seiritsu”
, Tōhō shūkyō
65 (May 1985): 20–43.
2.
Particularly impor tant are vari ous kinds of inscriptions found in Han tombs. For the
dating of the Taipingjing, see note 47 below.
3.
On the ritual of fu
, see Liji zhushu
, in Shisan jing zhushu
(1815
edition), 4.20b, 21.9b–11a, 44.3a–5a; Hu Peihui
, Yili zhengyi
, GXJBCS,
26.2–6; Sun Yirang
, Zhouli zhengyi
, GXJBCS, 5.16.20–22. See also
James Legge, trans., The Texts of Confucianism Part 3; The Li Ki, 2 vols., SBE, 1.368–369;
John Steele, trans., The I- li or Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial (London: Probsthain,
1917), 1:45.
4. Wang
Zhongshu,
Han Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 181.
[Quoted with minor editorial changes— Eds.]
5.
See Yu Weichao’s
view in a symposium on the Han Tomb No. 1 at Mawangdui in
WW 9 (1972): 60–61.
6.
Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu
, 2 vols. (Beijing: Wenwu,
1973), 1:41, identifi es the two men as “the guardians of the heavenly gate,” and An Zhimin
“Changsha xin faxian di Xi- Han buohua shitan”
, KG
1 (1973): 45–46, identifi es them as da siming and shao siming. For a detailed and techni-
cal study of this painting in En glish, see Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise: The Chinese
Quest for Immortality (London: Allen and Unwin, 1979), chap. 2.
7. Wang
Buomin
, “Mawangdui yihao Hanmu buohua bingwu Chang- e benyue”
, KG 24, no. 3 (1979): 274.
78 “o soul , c om e b ack ! ”
8. Loewe, Ways to Paradise, 59.
9. See Jin Weinuo
, “Tan Changsha Mawangdui sanhao Hanmu buohua”
, WW 11 (1974): 43.
10. For Tomb No. 1, see Shang Zhitan
, “Mawangdui yihao Hanmu ‘feiyi’ shishi”
‘
’
, WW 9 (1972): 43–47. For Tomb No. 3, see also KG 1 (1975): 57.
11. For fei and hu as interchangeable words in ancient ritual texts, see the views of Tang Lan
and Yu Weichao in WW 9 (1972): 59–60.
12.
Sun Yirang, Zhouli zhengyi, 50.35–36.
13. An Zhimin “Changsha xin faxian di Xi- Han buohua shitan,” 50–51; Ma Yong
, “Lun
Changsha Mawangdui yihao Hanmu chutu buohua di mingcheng he zuoyong”
, KG 2 (1973): 119–122; Xu Zhuangshu
,
“Fupo Jingzhao kao”
, Wenshi
17 (June 1983): 261–263. It is somewhat
puzzling that in spite of the fact that a mingjing is, by defi nition, “inscribed” and that all
the mingjing excavated from Han tombs so far invariably bear the names of the dead,
both An and Ma still insist on identifying the two uninscribed T- shaped paintings as
“inscribed funerary banner.”
14. See “Shaanxi Qishan Fengchu cun faxian Zhou chu jiaguwen”
, WW 10 (1979): 41 and fi gure 5 on p. 43. See also the original jisipo inscription
reproduced in plate 6, 2 (H11:55). For the identifi cation of jipo and jisipo, see further discus-
sions summarized in Wang Yuxin
, Xi Zhou jiagu tanlun
(Beijing:
Zhonghua, 1984), 82–83. The only Chinese scholar who has expressed some reserva-
tions is Yan Yiping
. See his “Zhouyuan jiagu”
, Zhongguo wenzi, n.s., 1
(March 1980): 166.
15. See Wang Guowei’s
classic study “Shengba siba kao”
, in Guantang
jilin
(Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 1:19–26. According to the statistics recently
worked out by the Institute of Archaeology at CASS (Chinese Acad emy of Social Sci-
ences), out of more than 390 Zhou bronze inscriptions, the term jishengba appears 59
times and the term jisiba 26 times. See Liu Yu
, “Jinwen ‘chuji’ bianxi”
, WW 11 (1982): 77. For further discussions of Chinese ideas of life and death related
to the changing phases of the moon, see my “New Evidence on the Early Chinese
Conception of Afterlife,” JAS 41, no. 1 (November 1981): 81–85.
16. See Hu Shih, “The Concept of Immortality in Chinese Thought,” Harvard Divinity
School Bulletin (1945–46): 30. See also Nagasawa Yōji
, “Paku kō”
, Kan-
gaku kenkyū
, n.s., 2 (March 1964), esp. p. 51.
17. The Ch’ un Ts’ ew with the Tso Chuen (hereafter Tso Chuen), in James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics, 5 vols. (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1961), 5:329.
18.
Tso Chuen, 551.
19.
Ibid., 708.
20. Ibid., 618. Here the En glish translation is adapted from Alfred Forke, trans., Lun Heng
(New York: Paragon, 1962), part 1, pp. 208–209.
21. The orthodox Confucian view is best presented in Qian Mu
, Linghun yu xin
(Taipei: Lianjing, 1976). It is in ter est ing to note that Zichan’s view may be compared
to Aristotle’s, as expressed in De Anima, 413a/4: “The soul is inseparable from its body,
“o soul , c om e b ack ! ” 79
or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has parts)— for the actuality of some of
them is nothing but the actualities of their bodily parts. Yet some may be separable
because they are not the actualities of any body at all.” Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic
Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), 556.
22. Hu Shih, “Concept of Immortality,” 31–32.
23. Liji zhushu, 10.19b.
24. These lines can be found in David Hawkes, Ch’ u Tz’ u: The Songs of the South (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1962), 104–105, 110.
25. Liji zhushu, 26.21b. For a comprehensive discussion of the relationship between the hun
and the po on the one hand, and the idea of qi as a cosmic life force on the other, see
Kurita Naomi
, Chûgoku jôdai shisô no kenkyû
(Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 1949), 75–146.
26. The original expression is hun-po li san
, but in Hawkes’s translation (103), it is
rendered simply as “His soul has left him.”
27. See Wen Yiduo
, Wen Yiduo quanji
, 4 vols. (Shanghai: Kaiming, 1948),
2:458.
28. D. C. Lau, introduction to Mencius (Harmonds worth: Penguin Books, 1970), 24, with
change in romanization of qi.
29. Liu Wendian
, Huainan honglie jijie
, GXJBCS, 9.2a.
30. Liji zhushu, 47.14a–15a. In this connection, I wish to call the reader’s attention to Men-
cius’s famous distinction between the dati
and xiaoti
(“The parts of greater
importance and the parts of smaller importance of the person of a man”). According to
him ( Mencius, 6A.14 [D. C. Lau’s translation]), the xiaoti consists of “the organs of hear-
ing and sight,” which “are unable to think and can be misled by external things,”
whereas the dati is identifi ed as “the organ of the mind or heart” whose function it is “to
think.” Mencius specifi cally singles out this thinking organ of the mind or heart as the
gift that man alone receives from Heaven. Therefore, he defi nes “a great man” as one
who is guided by the interests of his dati (i.e., the thinking mind) and “a small man” as
one who is guided by the interests of his xiaoti (i.e., the organs of hearing and sight).
Moreover, Mencius further holds that there is a “fl oodlike qi” ( haoran zhi qi
) in
the cosmos that is, in the highest degree, vast and unyielding. It is this qi that provides
the mind or heart with the very source of moral power ( Mencius, 2A.2). Clearly, then,
Mencius must have shared the cosmological view current in the fourth century b.c.e.
that man’s body consists of the grosser, earthly qi, while his mind or heart is the seat of
the refi ned, Heavenly qi (see D. C. Lau’s introduction in Mencius, 24). Although Mencius
did not mention the ideas of hun and po in his philosophical discussions, it is neverthe-
less unmistakable that his distinction between the dati and the xiaoti bears a resem-
blance to the distinction between the hun and po as defi ned by Zheng Xuan, not only
structurally but also functionally. In view of the gradual fusion of the ideas of hun and
po since the sixth century b.c.e., I fi nd it diffi
cult to resist the temptation to link this
Mencian formulation to a con temporary dualistic conception of the soul as a pos si ble
model. If so, then Zheng Xuan’s interpretation of the diff er ent functions of the hun and
the po may well have been of a much earlier (i.e., pre- Han) origin. Traditionally, it has
80 “o soul , c om e b ack ! ”
been contended, especially by the Qing philologists, that the commentaries written by
Han Confucian exegetes may, by and large, be viewed as depositories of ideas of classical
antiquity transmitted orally from generation to generation down to Han times. It seems
likely that Zheng Xuan’s ideas about hun and po have precisely such ancient origins.
31. Laozi Daodejing
, SBCK, A.3b. Here the hunqi is clearly described as a
breathlike life force. In this re spect, the Chinese idea of hun is certainly comparable to
its counter parts in other ancient cultures. The Greek psyche and thymos, the Roman
animus and anima, and the Jewish nephesh, for instance, were all associated with
breath. See Richard Broxton Onians, The Origins of Eu ro pean Thought About the Body,
the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), esp. chap. 4, pp. 16 and 66–69 (for thymos); 93–95 (for psyche); 168–173 (for anima
and animus); 481–482 (for nephesh thymos). Onians is basically right in pointing out the
similarity between the Chinese idea of hunqi and the Greek and Roman ideas of soul,
although his discussions of the “Chinese conception of the soul” (520–530) are full of
factual errors and anachronisms. For psyche as something airy and breathlike, see the
classic study by Erwin Rohde, Psyche, trans. W. B. Hillis (New York: Harper & Row, 1925
[1966]), 4–5; citations refer to the 1925 edition. See also Emily Vermeule, Aspects of
Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979),
212–213 (chap. 1, n11), and, for a discussion of psyche and thymos, Bruno Snell, The Dis-
covery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of Eu ro pean Thought, trans. T. G. Rosenmeyer
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), 8–12.
32. H. G. Creel, The Birth of China (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1937), 198–199.
33.
Guo Moruo
, Jinwen congkao
, rev. ed. (Beijing: Renmin, 1954), 8b–9a.
34. Tso Chuen, 297.
35. It may be noted that in oracle bone inscriptions, gui and wei
(fear) are sometimes in-
terchangeable. See the vari ous interpretations of the two characters in Li Xiaoding
, ed., Jiagu wenzi jishi
(Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1965), 9:2903–2904 ( gui)
and 2909–2912 ( wei). For a more recent discussion, see Ikeda Suetoshi
, Chûgoku
kodai shūkyōshi kenkyū
(Tokyo: Tōkai daigaku- shuppankai, 1981),
155–198.
36. A. Forke, Lun Heng, part 1, 509.
37. See Wang Zhongshu, Han Civilization, 206–207. See also Ying- shih Yü, “Han,” in Food
in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives, ed. K. C. Chang (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 53–84.
38. Tso Chuen, 234.
39. Gan Bao
, Soushen ji
, GXJBCS, 28.
40. Hu Shih, “Concept of Immortality,” 33.
41. See Loraine Boettner, Immortality ( Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1956),
61–62.
42. Gu Yanwu
, Rizhi lu
, WYWK (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu, 1965), 10:28–29.
43. Hu Shih, “The Indianization of China: A Case Study in Cultural Borrowing,” in In de-
pen dence, Convergence and Borrowing in Institutions, Thought, and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937), 224–225. However, it must be mentioned that in his
“o soul , c om e b ack ! ” 81
later years, Hu Shih apparently modifi ed this extreme view considerably and came to
realize that there was also an indigenous Chinese origin of the idea of hell. See Hu Shi
shougao
, eighth collection, vol. 1 (Taipei: Hu Shi jinian guan, 1970), where a
vast amount of early materials relating to the idea of the underworld in ancient China
may con ve niently be found.
44. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, book 2 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1974), 98 (note c).
45. Jacques Choron, Death and Western Thought (New York: Collier Books, 1963), 24.
46. Needham, Science and Civilization, 84–85.
47. Wang Ming
, ed., TPJHJ (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1960), 526, 546, 551, 552. The dating
of the TPJHJ has been highly controversial. See B. J. Mansvelt Beck, “The Date of the
Taipingjing,” TP 66, nos. 4–5 (1980): 149–182. However, modern scholars generally
agree that although it contains many later interpolations, parts of the work can be dated
to the second century. See Ying- shih Yü, “Life and Immortality in the Mind of Han
China,” HJAS 25 (1964–65): 84n17, and Max Kaltenmark, “The Ideology of the T’ ai-
p’ ing ching,” in Facets of Taoism, ed. Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1979), 19–45. More recently, further eff orts have been made by two
Chinese scholars to establish the Han origin of the text. See Wang Ming
, “Lun
Taiping jing di chengshu shidai he zuozhe”
&nbs
p; , Shijie zong jiao
yanjiu
1 (1982): 17–26, and Tang Yijie
, “Guanyu Taiping jing
chengshu wenti”
, Zhongguo wenhua yanjiu jikan
1 (March 1984): 168–186.
48. Wang Yü- ch’üan, “An Outline of the Central Government of the Former Han Dynasty,”
in Studies of Governmental Institutions in Chinese History, ed. John L. Bishop (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard- Yenching Institute, 1968), 38.
49. Rao Zongyi, Xiang-er zhu, 33, 77.
50. TPJHJ, 602, 625.
51. Ibid., 552.
52. “Changsha Mawangdui ersanhao mu fajue jianbao”
,
WW 7 (1974): 43 and plate 12, no. 11.
53. Wang Yü- ch’üan, “Central Government,” 52n52 and 20–21.
54. See “Hubei Jiangling Fenghuang Shan yiliuba hao Hanmu fajue baogao”
168
, WW 9 (1975): 4 and plate 3, no. 1. See also the remarks by Yu
Weichao in a symposium published in the same issue, pp. 12–14, where other similar
documents are compared. For further discussions of the document, see Chen Zhi
,
“Guanyu Jiangling Chengao ‘Dixia Cheng’ ”
‘
’, WW 12 (1977): 76,
and Huang Shengzhang
, Lishi dili yu kaogu luncong
(Jinan:
Qilu shushe, 1982), 201–206, where the social status of the occupant of Tomb No. 168 is
discussed in considerable detail.
55. Quoted in Yu Weichao’s remarks in WW 9 (1975): 13.
56. Yang Shuda
, Handai hun sang lisu kao
(Shanghai: Kaiming,
1933), 73–74.
57. For examples, see WW 12 (1972): 12, and WW 9 (1975): 7.
82 “o soul , c om e b ack ! ”
58. See Man cheng Hanmu
(Beijing: Wenwu, 1978), 25–26. See also Shi Wei
,
“Guanyu ‘jinlou yuyi’ ziliao jianjie”
, KG 2 (1972): 48–50.
59. For a more comprehensive study of the Han cult of xian immortality, see my “Life and
Immortality in the Mind of Han China.”
60. Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1968), 33.
61.
Ibid., 168n.
62. SJ (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 55.2048. Both practices have now been confi rmed by the
discovery of a pre- Qin text at Mawangdui. See WW 6 (1975): 1, 6–13, 14–15.
63. Hawkes, Ch’ u Tz’ u, 82.
64. TPJHJ, 138.
65. For the development of the cult of Mount Tai as a place for the dead, see also Zhao Yi
, Gaiyu congkao
(Shanghai: Shangwu, 1957), 35.751–752; Édouard Cha-