History, More Archaeology, Sima Qian and the Han Dynasty (Period 7 of 16)

The other feature of a culture after its politics and its mythology/religion that helps to mould (and inheres in) a culture is its self-history (in a way, derived from the other features). Since Sima, the first real historian of China, we can say China has had a self-conscious history and it is quite unusual for a culture to have developed that so quickly – he died in 90 BCE. Sima Qian’s (司馬遷’s) history, containing its distinctive poetry and models of heroism, is a culmination of an idea that has roots in Chinese religion so I’ll return to that for a bit to explain why we have it. We can also look back at what preceded him as we do to construct our own history from the fragments that remain from the earliest writings.

We can be fairly sure that before the first writings we now have there was a period when songs and dances that (among other things) told a kind of oral history were passed down through the generations. Earlier writings written on perishable materials such as silk may also have once existed. As I mentioned in an earlier post the first writing we can still see today was done for ritual purposes. What I didn’t note is how political that writing was and how we can still use it today to create partial early histories.

On oracular material opposing questions (such as: it will rain/it will not rain?) would be written before it was worked on by an official consulter of the oracles. Another slightly more complex example of such writing would be: we take 15 Xiang prisoners tomorrow/we take no Xiang prisoners tomorrow? The oracle’s answers would also be written on the bone or shell and also the actual outcome. That actual outcome is our first example of history (and also, over a period of years, a written reason for a ruler to dispose of a relatively unsuccessful consulter of oracles). In the second example, if the consulter’s people took, say, 9 Xiang prisoners and the oracle had said yes to “we take 15 Xiang prisoners” (given only the two options) that would be taken as a successful prediction. From what we have today it seems that eighty percent of all predictions were accurate (naturally there may have been a tendency to destroy the evidence of many unsuccessful predictions). Incidentally, this Shang era form of writing two opposing ideas such as rain/not rain may have survived into modern Chinese in a common question-form X not (bu - 不) X.

Writing was seen in its earliest form as magical and sacred because of the novelty of the power it could potentiate (as in every other early written culture, really). A king could discover without needing a great memory how good his oracle consulters were if only he had full access to it, for example. History was also already being rewritten by oracle consulters seeking to keep their jobs in this magical craft (and perhaps maintain the prestige of their families) by discarding actual written evidence of bad predictions. Dating suggests that this writing began in around the 13^th Century BCE – late Shang. It wasn’t really self conscious history, it was more holy relic, but today we can use it (for example we can work out that somebody took a certain number of prisoners having a certain name (e.g. Xiang) somewhere in the 13^th Century BCE).

This idea of the sacredness of writing is borne out by the next form of writing (chronologically) that we have discovered. It appears people wrote to the ghosts of ancestors on the insides of bronze vessels (called Hu) evidently used for special (mainly family) religious feasts to which the ancestors were welcomed. The ancestors would ‘eat’ the steam or smoke from the meal and be edified by the successes of their descendents via the writing on the inside of the Hu not otherwise readable once the Hu was made. The kinds of writing we have been able to decipher include especially things designed to impress the ancestor such as “the king gave me some land” or “the king gave me some fancy gear”. These vessels were handed down as heir looms and religious relics and objects in aristocratic families so that we now know a certain king gave certain things to certain aristocrats at (not entirely) certain times. Again, it’s a kind of history but not intended as the kind of history we write today. The likelihood of an aristocrat lying to his dead ancestors is as clear (or unclear) as the likelihood of a consulter of oracles destroying incriminating evidence.

Even in around 900 BCE we have a famous pot apparently belonging to a Shi Qiang (Shi in this case meant scribe rather than being a family name) containing a list of the names of the leaders of a clan dynasty in order from the founder (along with some of their alleged personal attributes). It begins by referring to rituals performed by the ‘son of heaven’ (the Emperor) to appease ‘spirits above and below’.

New vessels would be cast anytime someone had news for the ancestors so within an aristocratic family we can potentially trace (as could aristocrats) a succession of bits of good (generally) news. The next stage in the formation of the idea of history was probably prompted by this tangible if biased family history thus available to the aristocrats. That stage was the writing down of the Hu ‘histories’ (as collected over the generations) outside the Hu and in some kind of chronological order. One of these (apparently written in the 4^th Century BCE) was found near Hebei in the tomb of a King Cuo of Zhong Shan. It was written from bottom to top and right to left as traditional Chinese books still are.

Archaeologists have attempted to answer a few historical questions with the above data treated longitudinally about how Chinese religion and culture have branched off from any potential earlier common religions and cultures. A major distinguishing feature of the early Chinese religious observance is the marked centring on the family (and the apparently pervasive use of alcohol). Indications are (from peasant burial site data) that around 98% of the population were illiterate at around the time the ninth or tenth Century BCE pot was produced.

So how did state history develop? It might be fairly guessed that it probably progressed naturally from oracular results as I’ve mentioned to the biased family histories of the senior families that eventually led state structures in the late Zhou era of Spring and Autumn. The increase in fighting in this period and concomitant taxes and laws produced a raison d’être for the state and hence also for the loosely based-on-truth but one-sided state propaganda that the family histories were conveniently suited to producing. Naturally the historical value of these was augmented by the contemporaneous recording of a king’s orders (the laws) by specially appointed recorders and a recording of matters that bear on how well and loyally aristocrats especially followed them.

Clan loyalties became a further subject for written discourse (also especially in connection with the general loyalty question). Finally brief somewhat stilted state histories (like Kong’s own Spring and Autumn Annals) often written in antique language were written. Commentaries were later written on and included with these to ‘flesh them out’ somewhat. Cyril Birch’s Anthology of Chinese Literature Volume 1 provides some examples of the style of such state histories as well as Sima Qian’s.

Sima can best be described as a Han court astrologer/astronomer and scribe. The bulk of his work concerned the correct ascertainment of lunar calendar dates and appropriate intercalations for both astrological and court reasons so he was already a dater of events for multiple purposes. His was the first real China-wide history and a template for all later histories (especially up to the modern period). Many of the records he used in the history’s production had first been collected by his father (apparently in anticipation of producing a similar work so it became a family project). When Sima was accused of an offence that was capital for non-eunuchs it is said he emasculated himself, so important did he consider his continuation of his father’s work. The usual practice of those of his class in such a situation would have been suicide.

The work contained 130 chapters including chapters like: Annals (the general history), chronologies in relation to specific issues, treatises on things like music and the science of hydrology, genealogies and biographies. That was the template.

After more than 400 years of relative unity over China, I’ll next briefly examine the Three Kingdoms period and a bit of literature.

Now on (and/or back) to Period Six – the mighty (brief) Qin Dynasty (with a short prelude)

So it’s back to the Dynastic history but before I note notable Qin notes I want to refer to a bit of archaeology and it actually relates to the following Han dynasty period. The first piece of archaeology involved comes from Mawangdui (馬王堆) in Central China and it relates to a burial site. Essentially I’m noting this with the Qin history because most of Qin history too is really archaeological in a way with one exception: the actual historical work of Sima Qian. I’ll consider Sima, who was a Han official, in the next post.

The Han burial site was excavated between 1972 and 1974 and the two primary burials were of Countess Dai (died 175 BCE) and the son of Li Cang, the Marquis of Dai. Countess Dai’s decorated and sealed coffin contained a version of the Dao De Jing with her mummy (safely wrapped in about twenty layers of clothing). In addition, there was a notable burial excavated in 1968 at Mang Cheng in North China (of Dou Wan, the wife of a Han notable and ruler of Zhong Shan). At least one magnificent jade suit/shroud was found there. This would have been very expensive. Jade was, of course, a symbol of immortality due to its own durability. Burials in various places interest us because they indicate the similarities or otherwise in religious belief and practice between regions.

Briefly, here are a few of the things we’ve discovered both through archaeology and writings that have to do with life and death. The belief concerning souls was that the living had souls called Po (魄) and Hun (魂) and the dead had disembodied souls called Gui (鬼). You can see the Gui character has become a radical in the Po and Hun characters. “Oh, soul, come back” would be shouted from the roof of a ‘recently departed’ person’s house to ensure the soul had definitely departed. One of the above burials contained a T-shaped banner painted on silk that would have been used in such a ritual. It depicted the order of the universe with two crouching men presumed to be calling out to the soul from a rooftop and contained no characters.

There were regional peculiarities. In parts of the southwest, for example, souls of sick children would be cajoled, coaxed and enticed with promises and threats to stay in the ‘safe’ body and away from the ‘dangerous’ underworld. To keep the Po with the body, food was left in coffins. Lady-in-waiting dolls were also found in the coffins of notables by the Han period so at least real ladies-in-waiting no longer needed to be sacrificed. Coinciding somewhat with the growth of bureaucracy and the use of money in the living world, money also began to be required in coffins (to ‘pay the (bureaucratic) ferryman’, as it were).

The Qin period is interesting archaeologically mainly at the believed site of the burial of its first Emperor (still uncovered and not located with complete certainty) and the (presumably) nearby “Terracotta Warriors”. The burial is believed to be under a low wide mound. The warriors were moulded and then individualised with the shaping of additional smeared clay. We have evidence that Qin crossbow-men such as the ones depicted could fire arrows 800 metres.

We also have evidence from the wording of later Qin edicts that earlier edicts concerning weights and measures had very quickly come to be ignored by the people. People may have been buried alive as punishment – a very legalist-style punishment. Did such features of legalism as those eventually bring about a popular revolt that in turn brought about the Han dynasty? Certainly the earliest Han decisions made murder, theft and grievous bodily harm the only capital crimes and this would have been an improvement for the commoner but the first Hans were also still somewhat legalist in practice. Whatever the case was, taxes were still imposed but a new Mandate of Heaven (first discussed in relation to Zhou rulers (especially by Mencius)) seems to have been given for an extended period.

Jack Dull suggested how to read the ending of the Qin using Anton Hulsewé’s archaeological work at Yünmeng. A bamboo-strip administrative manual reckoned to date to around 217 BCE (mid-Qin) was discovered that contained punishments that were not as harsh as (perhaps biased) contemporary (and later) sources indicated. Supervisors of corveés, for example, were mainly to be merely given a dressing down if the labourers arrived up to five days late for work. Corveés were merely dismissed if there was a heavy downpour of rain whereas earlier evidence had suggested they were killed and that this had been alleged as one reason for the alleged popular ‘corveé revolt’ allegedly ending the Qin. Perhaps the rules again weren’t being followed. We do know that the peasants under this supposed brutal regime were given time out to buy fish and that they had silk and cinnabar (used to make vermillion).

The leader of the revolt, Chen She, may have been more senior in the dynasty than was first thought. He apparently had the wherewithal to impersonate the son of the Emperor. This was one of the ways he was able to gain support, again not suggestive of the greatest hatred of the Qin. Imagine the son of Bashshar al-Asad being widely welcomed as a potential ruler in Syria at the moment. Dull checked out everybody’s backgrounds. He proposed that the revolt may have actually been led by a recently overthrown Confucian royal from the local free (pre-Qin) state of Qu and that his pride may have been involved. The methods employed may certainly have been or become populist and also loosely regionalist. In the next post, I’ll move on to the Chinese idea of history, the Han period and Sima Qian, that great Han historian.

The Religion and Mythology Dimensions of China (from the earliest times to beyond the Zhou Era)

I’ve hinted in the foregoing posts at the rituals that were valued by the Confucians and also at the shamanism and human sacrifices that occurred in the first five of China’s official 'dynastic cycle' periods. I now want to turn to these areas in more detail because religion and mythology really are the other major central pointers to how the Chinese and the barbarians decided on their in- and out-groups. The political discussions among the Chinese I've so far been examining all took place with a common religious understanding in the background (providing it all with a relatively coherent meaning). That’s not to say that everybody believed in the same supernatural things any more than everybody had the same political philosophy. It is to say that they shared an understanding of ways of viewing the world that were relatively well-defined among and between them. And like political ideas, religious ideas shaped ancient China and continue to be influential among Chinese today.

So how did they come up?

Shamanism – generally with male shamans – was readily understood by Confucians as a part of the ancient way. It really wasn’t the point of Confucianism to oppose it or encourage it – it wasn’t central to Confucianism.

Dao could mean the Daoist Dao of nature (on which more later) or the Confucian Dao of a great ruler. Not only vocab, though, but also stories were shared between the schools in order to facilitate debate between them. There was a common spiritual language. Many texts were in fact fused together in such a way that today we can’t always be sure who wrote what or even what side or sides of the debate the author was on. Part of any confusion today that scholars need to deal with derives from the way early Chinese writings were written on bamboo strips joined with twine that must have become jumbled up at various points when the twine rotted creating a headache of a job reordering the sophisticated and complex writings correctly down the many centuries.

Adding to the confusion today, all of the most important ancient Chinese thinkers were operating in a completely different conceptual world from most of us. Today we classify the schools as best we can, according to what appears to have concerned them. We note for example that there were three main schools concerned with order: Confucians, Mohists and Legalists. In addition; Confucians, Daoists and Tillers were concerned with political morality; and Daoists, Confucians, Mohists and Cosmologists were all concerned with cosmic relationships. It was the Cosmologists that originated Traditional Chinese Medicine and the five-direction cosmology (Wood-East, Metal-West, Fire-South, Water-North and Soil-Centre).

Despite Xun Zi’s efforts to abhor superstition generally, the Mohists often criticised the Confucians for being too accepting of what Mohists viewed as superstition based on Chinese tradition. They cited the traditional superstitions of certain southern tribes that the Chinese all regarded as weird to bolster their argument against superstition generally. Daoists also entered the debate against superstition in a sense on the basis simply that propitiation and worship of the heavens would have no effect as the heavens simply didn’t care about humans (as they viewed the ‘10,000 things’ of the material world under them as 'straw dogs'). The legalists were wholly concerned with this world as it could rationally be understood (at least according to their lights).

So arguments raged over rationality and this or other worldliness. Confucians were also concerned with whether human nature was good or bad but Daoists and various mystic schools concerned themselves with developing human powers to their utmost regardless of the uses to which they might be put.

The famous Dao De Jing or Dao De Qing of Lao Zi now known as Daoist came from a mystical school that really preceded Daoism as it now is. It was addressed to rulers and written in about the 4^th Century BCE. It says if the heart is in the body, the outside flourishes and clarity is achieved. Qi (energy) comes in. It is a meditational work that doesn’t contain the body-mind dualism of Western philosophical thinking. Another mystical text of a similar vintage proclaims that when the daemonic knows the 10,000 things all reality is one. It’s easy to see how Buddhist thought came to be at home in this environment (though a few centuries later). Yet another mystical text of the era has it that when a mystic rules over the 10,000 things the world will be in order (Christianity, Judaism or Islam, anyone?) Challenges are issued to connect the naming and the desired. The nameless name is apparently the name of a sage. AC Graham called the Dao De Jing mystical statecraft for the ruler in opposition to the benevolence of Confucianism.

The eventual Daoist political argument ran along similar lines to Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” analogy. The Daoist Master Zhuang had certainly argued for something like it. While Confucians were concerned that Daoists were selfish, Daoists retorted that a selfish Daoist ruler, for example, was ideal for political harmony as he would be too lazy and lacking in ambition to consider putting his subjects’ lives at risk engaging in wars of conquest. Selfishness and laziness were attributes Daoists sought to promote as opposed to the serious studiousness of the more politically-minded schools. Education was anathema to them as too far removed from nature. This debate was mirrored many centuries later in Europe by proponents of Romanticism versus those of the Enlightenment.

By the 4^th Century BCE shamanistic and mystical ideas had fed themselves into the philosophy that came to be called Daoism and the religious ideas of one of the preeminent Daoists, Zhuang Zi (Master Zhuang). Shamans were supposed to have clear sight and understanding and to be able to enter into mystical journeys. Their mystical traditions are where Zhuang started his quests. Of course I’ve mentioned that Dao (the Way) was used in most of the traditional philosophical schools as a descriptor of the totality of correct philosophical observance but Daoism has come to be used to describe Zhuang’s particular school.

In a era of sophistry where arguments were entered into for their own sake, Zhuang and his crew used the arguments as springboards to transcendently enter territory that was really completely their own. They sought what truly suited or was natural for humans and what mattered to them. Zhuang’s writings were partly meditational and partly aimed at the protection of the individual human organism in line with the teachings also of Yang Zhu. The chapters of the work traditionally attributed to him that are still believed to have been written by him include the so-called Mystical chapters and Primitivist chapters where he often appears angry and anarchic. He wrote that a man who looks for knowledge and eats at the market of heaven will have the shape of a man but will be unnameable and won’t say “right” or “wrong”. He will grasp totality, accept the discipline of the external world and understand it.

After the political battle was fought and the legalist Qin victors were themselves summarily vanquished and replaced by the Confucian Han dynasty, the religious battles also continued. The Confucian values may have come to a kind of tenuous ascendancy (Legalism was never far from it) but for many the often mystical and always selfish Daoist ideal of a return to nature and the abhorrence of education and public service continued to be appealing. The Confucian ascendancy had only been possible at great cost of life and yet the Confucians continued to moralise that Yangists (early Daoists) were selfish.