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Michael J. Puett is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Humanities at Harvard University.

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The Ambivalence of Creation

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Introduction....................................................................................................11. Domesticating the Landscape: Notions of Ancestors and Innovation in the Bronze Age...........................222. The Craft of Humanity: Debates over Nature and Culture in Warring States China...............................393. Sages, Ministers, and Rebels: Narratives of the Emergence of the State.......................................924. The Creation of Empire: The Emergence and Consolidation of Imperial Rule in China............................1415. The Tragedy of Creation: Sima Qian's Reconstruction of the Rise of Empire in Early China.....................177Conclusion......................................................................................................213Appendix: The Semantics of Creation.............................................................................217Notes...........................................................................................................225Bibliography....................................................................................................275Index...........................................................................................................289

Chapter One

Let us begin at the beginning, or at least at the beginning as described by an Eastern Han scholar:

In ancient times Baoxi [i.e., Fuxi] was the king of all under Heaven. Looking up he observed the images in Heaven, and looking down he observed the models on Earth. He looked at the patterns of the birds and beasts and the proper order of the Earth. Near at hand he took from his body, and at a distance he took from things. He thereupon first raised up [zuo] the eight trigrams in order to display the exemplary images.

This passage is taken from the post face to Xu Shen's Shuo wen jie zi, a dictionary composed in the first century A.D. Xu Shen is discussing here the invention of trigrams, divinatory signs consisting of a series of broken and unbroken lines. According to this passage, the ancient sage Fuxi invented these trigrams after being inspired by the patterns of the natural world. His act of invention involved "raising" or "lifting up" (zuo) the patterns found in the natural world and bringing them to the world of humanity.

Xu Shen then goes on to describe how Cang Jie, the scribe of the ancient sage Huangdi, invented characters through a similar process: just as Fuxi introduced trigrams by "raising up" (zuo) the patterns of nature, so did Cang Jie introduce characters by imitating the distinctions found in the tracks of birds and beasts. By so doing, Xu Shen claims, Cang Jie was the "first to raise up [zuo] writing."

In this narrative, neither the trigrams nor the writing is presented as an artificial construct, and neither one is in any way discontinuous from nature. Indeed, they were not created in any strong sense of the term at all: instead, sages invented them by raising patterns from the natural world and bringing those patterns into the realm of humanity.

The Chinese term used to describe this act of invention is zuo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]-a term commonly used in the Warring States and Han periods to describe the sages' invention of culture. A translation of this term as "raising up" or "lifting" is the one given by Xu Shen himself: Xu Shen defines zuo in his dictionary as qi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], "to rise," or in a causative form, "make arise." Thus, references to the ancient sages as zuo-ing various aspects of culture should be understood not as "creating" but as "causing to arise."

This definition of zuo would become highly influential. In later literary theory, for example, authors were frequently said to zuo in this sense: not to create fictions or artifice but to take things from the natural world (patterns in nature or the natural feelings of the poet) and distill them into a poem. The act, in other words, involved no fabrication, no conscious creation, no introduction of discontinuity or artifice.

This is the strain of Chinese thought that so strongly influenced the authors quoted in the Introduction. And the fact that such a vision is found so clearly in the Shuo wen jie zi points to an issue that I alluded to above, namely that continuity between nature and culture is not simply a false Orientalist idea imposed by European scholars on early Chinese culture: it is most certainly a view that has its roots in early China itself. Indeed, I argue in Chapter 2 that Xu Shen's definition of zuo may well have been influenced by the Xici, the third-century B.C. work from which Xu Shen also took the above-quoted discussion of the invention of trigrams by Fuxi.

But this definition was developed in opposition to several other views that explicitly defined culture as an artificial fabrication of sages. In those other writings, zuo was indeed employed with the sense of "create" and was used with a strong connotation of artifice and the introduction of discontinuity. The definitions found in works like the Xici and the Shuo wen jie zi were presented in response to these other usages, and it was only over the course of the Han dynasty that the definition "to create" came to prominence.

But if Xu Shen's definition of zuo cannot be accepted as necessarily indicative of the "basic" meaning, then what exactly was the early semantic range of the term? In the appendix to this study, I discuss the etymology and early usages of zuo and argue that the term had a wide range of meanings in the early inscriptional literature, including not only "arise" but also "be active," "do," "build," "make," and "create." And all of these definitions were utilized in the debates of the Warring States and Han periods as well: thinkers in the early period exploited the full semantic range of the term in their efforts to define their respective positions on the emergence of culture. Here, as with other terms that were widely debated in early China, studying the depth of usage that the word was given in each text and exploring how the word was defined and redefined for particular purposes will well repay the effort expended.

The point about the meaning of zuo can be made for the larger issue of how early Chinese figures conceptualized the relationship between nature and culture. The claim that Xu Shen made in the narratives quoted above was that cultural artifacts like the trigrams and writing were based upon an imitation of the patterns of the natural world. In Chapter 2, I refer to a similar argument in the Xici that everything, from hunting and agricultural implements to boats and houses, was similarly invented by sages in imitation of the patterns of the natural world. But this specific claim of continuity between nature and culture actually developed quite late, like the definition of zuo, and emerged out of a widespread debate in the Warring States period.

In order to provide a background for understanding this debate, I devote the remainder of this chapter to texts and inscriptions from the Bronze Age. Because some of these materials, particularly the poems, became a common reference point for the later debates, a brief discussion of how such texts presented culture, nature, and sagehood will be helpful. I analyze the works contextually, studying how and why they were written. Many of the presentations were quite different from those that appeared in later works such as the Shuo wen jie zi, and yet many of these same texts were employed in support of some of the very claims of continuity that later became so influential. Looking at the earlier materials therefore will facilitate the analysis in Chapter 2 of how and why these texts were reinterpreted and employed over the course of the Warring States debates.

Texts and Inscriptions from the Bronze Age

Late Shang

The extant corpus of Shang oracle inscriptions-the earliest of which probably date to the reign of King Wuding-are aimed at various nature spirits and ancestral deities, as well as Di, presumably the high god. The Shang pantheon was fully theistic-and we shall see that this generalization holds true for the Zhou as well-with natural phenomena seen as being governed by distinct, active deities. The oracular materials then consisted of attempts to explicate, coerce, and control these beings. Thus, to give a standard example from the Bin diviner group:

Crackmaking on guiwei [day 20], Bin divining: "This rain is the sending-down of misfortune." Crackmaking on guiwei [day 20], Bin divining: "This rain is not the sending-down of misfortune."

The purpose of the divinations is to discover whether the rain was to be read as a misfortune sent down from above. Evidently, if the divinations were to reveal that the rain was so sent, then rituals would have to be given to placate or coerce the powers in question. Although the specific deity is not named in these inscriptions, Di himself was frequently named elsewhere as a deity prone to make such attacks: "shen ... si, Di will send down misfortune."

Parallels to this way of dealing with deities can be found in inscriptions related to sickness: "Divining: '[As for] the sickness in the foot, it is the having of a curse.'" Ancestors, particularly those recently dead, were said to frequently curse the living. Here, a person is sick, and the question is whether this sickness is an ancestral curse. If it is, the next task is to determine which ancestor is making the curse. Accordingly one finds numerous divinations like the following:

Yihai [day 12] divining: "It is Da Geng who makes [zuo] the curse." "Da Geng is not making [zuo] the curse." "Di will make [zuo] misfortune for the king."

Once the malevolent ancestor is discovered, an exorcism can be held to rid the body of the curse. Such exorcistic rites of driving away the curses and misfortunes sent by ancestors figure prominently in oracle inscriptions:

Crackmaking on wuyin [day 15], Bin divining: "Exorcise Fu Jing to Mother Geng." "Exorcise the misfortune to Father Yi." Crackmaking on yihai [day 12], Bin divining: "Perform the great exorcism [starting] from Shang Jia." Crackmaking on yimao [day 52], Que divining: "Exorcise Fu Hao to Father Yi. Cleave sheep, offer pigs, and make a promissory offering of ten penned sheep."

Similar concerns underlay military campaigns: the concern in the divination was always to determine the support (or lack thereof) of the divine powers.

Divining: "This spring the king will not ally with Wang Cheng to attack Xia Wei [for if he does] the upper and lower [divine powers] will not approve. It will not be we who will be receiving the divine assistance."

And agriculture as well:

Jiawu [day 31], divining: "Today we will sacrifice [sui], [for if we do we] will receive millet [i.e., harvest]."

On wuchen [day 5] divining: "Pray for millet, [starting] from Shang Jia. We will offer the burning sacrified [liao]."

On guihai [day 60] divining: "We will pray for millet [starting] from Shang Jia."

As should already be clear, then, the divine powers invoked here have little in common with later ideas of a self-generating, spontaneous, natural process. On the contrary, here individuated spirits actively control aspects of the natural world. Considering this, it is perhaps not surprising that the term zuo frequently appears in the oracular material with a sense of construction: making, forming, and the like. We have already seen the term used this way in reference to Da Geng making curses, and the term is also commonly so used to refer to the actions of Di: "Di will make [zuo] misfortune for the king."

Since one of the main concerns of the oracular inscriptions is also to determine what human actions will be supported by the divine powers, zuo also appears in these materials to describe the constructive actions of humans:

Divining: "The king will make [zuo] a settlement, [for if he does] Di will approve." Crackmaking on renzi [day 49], Zheng divining: "We will make a settlement, [for if we do] Di will not oppose." Approved. Third month. Crackmaking on xinmao [day 28], Que divining: "Jifang Fou will build a wall, [for if he does] it will not be cursed. There will be no harm." Fourth month.

Both humans and spirits are frequently posed as active figures, and the main concern of the inscriptions is the potential conflict between the actions of humans and the actions of the divine.

Several points can be made concerning this potential conflict. First, the relations between humans and divine powers appear to involve no ethical calculus. The higher powers do not create trouble or sickness because of an ethical failing on the part of the humans, and the attempt to end the divine malevolence does not involve any claim on the part of the humans that they will act in a more ethically correct way. On the contrary, the malevolence of the higher powers seems unpredictable and arbitrary, and the means of ending the malevolence is simply to successfully complete various ritual actions.

Also, and directly related to the last point, is that the relationship between humans and the divine powers appears at times to be antagonistic. Much of the divination material seems oriented toward controlling, or at least warding off, the actions of these potentially malicious spirits. Not only are the ancestors not moralized here, but their relations with the living would appear to be capricious and, at least at times, extremely oppositional. As a consequence, the actions of humans toward such divine powers seem oriented toward controlling their potential arbitrariness.

Such tendencies became more pronounced as the dynasty continued. By the last two reigns of the dynasty, divination as a practice seems to have become increasingly formulaic, dominated by phrases such as, "There will be no disaster in the next ten-day week," and offered with no negative alternative. As many scholars have pointed out, this seems to imply less an attempt to ask the divine powers about the future and more of a ritual attempt to exhort the spirits not to create harm.

Overall, then, it seems safe to say that the divine powers here are active, individuated, purposive beings, not spontaneous processes. Di and the ancestors are believed to make disasters for no apparent reason, and it is believed that they can be at least partly controlled through divinatory announcements and ritual activity. All of this is quite removed from the later notions of a continuum between nature and culture that Chang wants to read back into Bronze Age China. Indeed, if there is any parallel between this material and the views that came to predominate in the cultures of the late Warring States and early Han, it is something of the opposite, namely that there is a potential disjunction between humanity and divinity, and that ritual activity should be oriented toward gaining some kind of accord between the two. Before continuing with this point, however, it will be helpful to turn to a discussion of some of the Western Zhou materials.

Early Western Zhou

There is a much greater volume of material from the Western Zhou than from the Shang, as well as a much greater variety of genres: a corpus, although small, of oracle inscriptions, a large number of bronze inscriptions, and the Shi, Shangshu, and Yizhoushu texts. Most of these postdate the conquest of the Shang, although some of the oracle bones, and perhaps some of the bronze inscriptions, are earlier. Such a wide range of genres (relative to those in the Shang) enables a deeper discussion. I begin by briefly mentioning the oracle inscriptions.

Extant Zhouyuan oracle inscriptions are few in number, and many are fragmentary. Although the inscriptions have features that render them distinct from those of the Shang, there is a great deal of similarity as well. The following divination is an example: "Dingmao [day 4]. The king at the river announces to Heaven: `Let there be no disasters.'" Unlike the Shang inscriptions discussed above, the Zhou inscription utilizes the term si [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("would that," or "let it be that"), and the inscription is aimed at the Zhou deity Heaven, not to Di. Nonetheless, the genre seems comparable to what we saw above: the divination is oriented toward exhorting a divine power not to cause disasters for the king.

Similar exhortations are found in other genres dating from the early Western Zhou, namely bronze inscriptions and the early poems of the Shi. In both of these, the texts are oriented toward denying the potential antagonism between living humans and the divine ancestors by claiming that the actions of humanity, and of the Zhou rulers in particular, are linked in continuity with those of the divine. A perfect example here is the poem "Si wen" (Mao 275). The poem is directed at Hou Ji, who was seen as the earliest ancestor of the Zhou peoples. A few beliefs concerning Hou Ji are pertinent to the understanding of this poem. According to the poem "Sheng min" (Mao 245), Hou Ji was conceived after a woman named Jiang Yuan walked on Di's footprint. Hou Ji was thus believed to have possessed some of the potency of Di, or Heaven. This was a potency that the later Zhou rulers hoped to recapture-as seen in their utilization of the royal title tianzi, "son of Heaven." Hou Ji was also, as is mentioned in the poem "Si wen," seen as a cultural hero who taught the Zhou people the practice of agriculture:

Would that cultured Hou Ji Were able to be a counterpart to Heaven, Establishing us and upholding the people. There are none who do not take you as a model. You have provided us with wheat and barley.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Ambivalence of Creationby Michael Puett Copyright © 2001 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission.
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